Software Endorsements

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Pretty cool site that automatically crops out background of images.
https://www.remove.bg/

I'm going to throw some weird images into that thing...

 

[Warecton565]

ybin.me encrypted pastebin alternative.
My friend also made a Discord client theme thing, to let you run custom CSS and JS in the client, which also includes commands and a few other bells and tweaks.

 

[Sebben Crudele]

Any thoughts on Via Browser?

I gave it a try and I like the fact you can change the font size in order to make proper use of a big screen. Has ad block built in and it lets you browse full screen. It's really comfortable.

What's keeping me from switching to it is the fact that it's Chinese and I don't trust it.

 

[Professional iPad Hoarder]

yiff.party

yiff.party

Great for viewing (and downloading!) Patreon content that is for patrons only.

Example:

YandereDev:

https://yiff.party/379466

 

[nonvir_1984]

There should be a Linux distros section. I've had good experiences with Void, Ubuntu Mate, and Debian (though Debian does have a learning curve, especially since it doesn't contain the firmware by default.)

Yes. Agree. I have used Ubuntu for years. Many of the same software mention in the initial post work for ubuntu as well. Chromium (not Chrome) is OK - but just begun to play with Iridium browser and also Brave. so far, looking ok. But would be happy for others' opinions.
Mostly I use F/F - but with different profiles for different tasks.
As for email, tutanota is OK, as is posteo, if you are willing to pay a euro a month.
Mullvad and Air as VPNs seem OK. But you have to try them out yerself.
At the end of the day, against the NSA or GCHQ, you have fuck all chance if you are gonna do bad stuff.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

I really like ShareX for screencaps. It has several cool features including scrolling and GIF capture. The scrolling capture I have about 75% success rate with.

 

[Professional iPad Hoarder]

exiftool

Removes all EXIF data from your photos.

You can install simply by running:

apt install exiftool

And run with:

exiftool -all= sample.jpg

Spoiler: What is EXIF? Why should I care?

EXIF is the information that your camera (smartphones included) embed in your pictures, most of this info is related to the camera itself (Brand, Model, Lens used, Aperture, Focal lenght, etc) but it can also contain more sensitive information like your camera serial number (maybe even your phone IMEI), it can also contain information abtou the software you used to edit this photo, when it was done and even some information about your PC and even GPS data, you can see an exemple here, this is an EXIF from a sample photo taken with a real camera.

Before:
All the EXIF info: https://pastebin.com/PS9gc4eC

After:

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I like Linux Mint because Unity is fucking shit and I thought it was a babbys first interface made for netbooks.

Even at its best Linux is the bachelor of operating systems, in some ways it's like visiting a dude and taking a piss, when trying to flush the toilet you notice the knob is gone. He says 'just stick your fingers in the tank and pull the rod up'. When asked about it he says 'you get used to it'. How long has it been broken? 'the toilet isn't broken, it still works'

It's not bad by any means but this year, or the next, or the one after that, is not when it will be conquer the desktop.

 

[Stoneheart]

Is there a way to archive protected tweets you can see?

 

[GethN7]

Just tried @Null's advice in the website footer about switching to using Brave.

It's pretty good, actually, like Chrome without the bullshit and faster as well.


Update: Slight caveat. Brave is SUPER ANAL about being secure, which can be a problem for signing in to certain websites, and Google accounts tend to get crossed signals and freak out due to cookie mismatches and other crap like it mistaking you for a bot.

I recommend keeping a secondary browser (like Firefox) around if you have all sorts of issues logging in to certain sites.

Also, keep in mind Brave is forked from Chrome, and any downsides of Chrome (finding Youtube video downloaders is a pain in the ass) carry over, but it is far more secure and somewhat less a resource hog than Chrome.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Something weird seems to be going on with NordVPN and their app.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/26/nordvpn_strange_traffic_domains/

It began after Reg reader Dan became confused when his office network's security products started alerting on traffic from one infrequent visitor's laptop. On looking at the logs, our reader saw it was talking to these "garbage" domains:

f5d599a39d02caef1984e95fdc606f838893ffc5[dot]com
8d46980d994cc618aeed127df1b5c86d8acd86ce[dot]xyz
10bdc75ab2f0486f008dbdd8f1b0a38d7399598e[dot]xyz

Further scratching of heads led to infosec bod Ryan Niemes' personal blog, where he had written about exactly the same odd traffic. Except Niemes had noticed something else too: these domains weren't owned by anybody. So he bought them and spun up an EC2 instance to log what was coming in.

"Fast-forward a few hours," he wrote, "I ran a netstat command and saw a crapload of connections to 443. So, I registered a Letsencrypt certificate & watched my logs start to fill up."

...

Niemes saw a number of API calls within the HTTPS-encrypted traffic hitting his new domains, including:

GET /v1/users/services HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/users/current HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/servers?filters[servers.load][$gt]=85&fields[servers.id]&limit=5114 HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/servers?fields[servers.status]&limit=1&filters%5Bservers.id%5D=939653 HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/servers?fields%5Bservers.created_at%5D=&fields%5Bservers.groups.id%5D=&fields%5Bservers.groups.title%5D=&fields%5Bservers.groups.type.identifier%5D=&fields%5Bservers.hostname%5D=&fields%5Bservers.id%5D=&fields%5Bservers.load%5D=&fields%5Bservers.locations%5D=&fields%5Bservers.name%5D=&fields%5Bservers.specifications%5D=&fields%5Bservers.station%5D=&fields%5Bservers.technologies.identifier%5D=&filters%5Bservers.status%5D=online&limit=5114 HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/servers/count HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/helpers/ips/insights HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/plans?filters[plans.active]=1&filters[plans.type]=android_sideload HTTP/1.1 GET /v1/helpers/hosts/metadata HTTP/1.1

"The POST I'm seeing is concerning because there's a field called renewtoken which appears to be unique," he told The Register. As well as the user-agent string, the inbound requests also disclosed app version, host operating system build and the user's IPv4 address.

 

[AnOminous]

Something weird seems to be going on with NordVPN and their app.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/26/nordvpn_strange_traffic_domains/

They're all compromised in all likelihood, it's just you have to hope they're only compromised by the people who aren't after you in particular.

 

[UngaWunga]

Some real good deals on the McDonalds app!

 

[Zero0]

yiff.party

yiff.party

Great for viewing (and downloading!) Patreon content that is for patrons only.

Example:

YandereDev:

https://yiff.party/379466

Dude that's fucking great, ty.

 

[fartsnstuf]

is there software that can bulk download media from Twitter?

EDIT: I have found Image Cyborg and will see if it pans out, i'll try to keep you updated

 

[Stoneheart]

so how long do you guys think brave will be around? when will the NPC go after it for beeing the sole income source for the evil Nazi webspace known as Kiwifarms?
also @Null can you update us in a month or so about how the firefox glitch and the transition of alot of kiwis to brave impacted the amount of brave money you got?

 

[Null]

so how long do you guys think brave will be around? when will the NPC go after it for beeing the sole income source for the evil Nazi webspace known as Kiwifarms?
also @Null can you update us in a month or so about how the firefox glitch and the transition of alot of kiwis to brave impacted the amount of brave money you got?

It's significant. Once it pays out I'll tell people.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

So, thinking about making the switch to brave on my phone. One thing holding me back is all the saved login stuff I already have on firefox(which is getting shittier by the day). Anyone know how to transfer saved login info from firefox(pc or android) to Brave(android)? If so that would be super cool.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

So, thinking about making the switch to brave on my phone. One thing holding me back is all the saved login stuff I already have on firefox(which is getting shittier by the day). Anyone know how to transfer saved login info from firefox(pc or android) to Brave(android)? If so that would be super cool.

Yes. Though results may vary, I haven't tried it myself. There's a plugin to export logins/password from firefox, use that. Import them into Brave on PC, turn sync on and sync them to Brave on your phone.

 

[Null]

So, thinking about making the switch to brave on my phone. One thing holding me back is all the saved login stuff I already have on firefox(which is getting shittier by the day). Anyone know how to transfer saved login info from firefox(pc or android) to Brave(android)? If so that would be super cool.

Yes, I do, and I've done this myself.

lastpass.com works great across devices and stores passwords under a master password. It's great for password security. It can import your passwords upon installation and the content it stores is encrypted on their servers in a way where even when they've had hacks before they never lost any information.