Category: society

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internet privacy security society tips

help defeat internet censorship with the Snowflake browser plugin

Photo by Holly Greene on Unsplash

In some countries, you aren’t allowed to surf freely on the internet. Sites are censored, your traffic is monitored, your privacy and freedom are limited.
Tools like the Tor browser help to bypass these internet blockades, but they rely on Tor-proxies. Running a Tor proxy takes some dedication and a certain technical background, but with the Snowflake project, anyone can help and be a part of the Tor network without effort.

All it takes is installing the Snowflake plugin in your browser, and you are set. When it’s active, you’ll be a middle-man getting restricted content from the web to censored users using the Tor browser. Don’t worry, there’s never a direct connection between you and whoever requested the page. It’s all routed through the Tor network, which anonymizes the traffic.

The plugin works on Chrome and Firefox. If you want more detailed info, check out the Tor wiki. You can even run a standalone version in Docker if you want to go full geek. ;)

So if you feel like giving some authoritarian dictator the finger, go ahead and install the plugin in your browser.

Categories
geek linux society software ubuntu Uncategorized

fight corona with folding@home on a headless ubuntu linux box

I wrote about using Grid computing to fight cancer a while back using leftover Azure credits.
So now with Corona having the world in its grip, it’s time to shift our attention to that nasty virus and throw some CPU cycles at it instead.

If you have an Ubuntu machine running somewhere and you want to install the Folding@Home client on it, you can do so by following the simple steps listed below.

First download the FAH client application:

wget https://download.foldingathome.org/releases/public/release/fahclient/debian-testing-64bit/v7.4/fahclient_7.4.4_amd64.deb

Then, run the installer. It will guide you through the setup process.

sudo dpkg -i --force-depends fahclient_7.4.4_amd64.deb

Just choose a name and an optional team. You best let it start automatically as well.

That’s basically it. Since you’re running it all headless, there’s no need for any of the other packages listed on the site.

You can check if things are running by checking the log file stored in /var/lib/fahclient/log.txt

If you want to change the configuration after installing the client in /etc/fahclient/config.xml you have to start and stop the client like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/FAHClient stop
sudo /etc/init.d/FAHClient start

If you had the World Grid Computing client installed already, you can stop that by using:

sudo /etc/init.d/boinc-client stop

If you want to full install instructions for the FAHclient or installation instructions for other flavors of Linux, check out the official installation guide.
Once it’s running and processed a few work units, you can check your stats at this URL: https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/yourname

Have fun kicking Corona ass!

Categories
copyright internet law politics society

stop the EU from destroying your internet freedom

The EU Parliament will debate and vote on Article 13 & 11. Time to fire up your email and social media devices and let yourself be heard again, which is why I’m resurfacing this post about the what and the why.
The fight is still not over so sign the petition and let yourself be heard.

Yep. They are at it again, those pesky governments. If it ain’t the US trying to destroy net neutrality it’s the EU trying to setup a link tax and an automated content filter/surveillance/censorship machine.

I’m talking about the copyright reform law the EU is trying to get through in a few days.

Article 11 is bad. It tries to setup a link tax, meaning you cant link or post snippets to e.g. news articles on your site. A similar law was passed earlier in Spain and it causes Google news to simply pull back out of Spain. If the same happens to the whole of the EU, that would suck mayor balls.

Article 13 is far worse though. That’s the content filter, which means any site where content can be uploaded e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Imgur etc will be forced to automatically scan your upload and filter it if it isn’t allowed. The claim is that they want to stop terrorists and bad people from spreading illegal content on the internet. The reality will be that those bad guys will find ways around it and the rest of us will be stuck with a filter that’s going to block our uploads because of flawed algorithms and bureaucratic decisions. Internet memes use copyrighted content, but will the filter be able to detect sarcasm? I don’t think so.

Hey look, a meme, with a copyrighted image. I guess we won't be able to do that anymore once Article 13 is in effect.

To quote Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the WWW:

Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet, from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.

So please help out and email, tweet or call your MEP’s and make it clear Article 11 & 13 have to go. The freedom of the internet depends on you!

Categories
internet privacy security society

join the EFF summer security reboot and get some cool dice

DSC01217The Electronic Frontier Foundation is on the fore-front when it comes to defending our digital rights. Even as a European I think they are doing important work even though they are mostly US centric. This because whatever happens in the US ripples over the pond and affects Europe and the rest of the world anyway. That means that next to larger fast-food portions increased digital surveillance is on its way to the EU as well.
Next to protecting our digital rights they are the author of a number of awesome security plugins and tools like the HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger browser plugins and a driving force behind the Let’s Encrypt free web site certificate tool set.

Next to a lot of security tools and tips (see the site & newsletter) they now have a Summer Security Reboot fund drive where you can get a cool geeky secure-password generating dice set for a mere $20 membership until the 20th of July.

So if you like what they are doing for a secure and free internet in the future, go check them out and get yourself some cool dice in the process.

If you feel more like donating to a EU centric counterpart of EFF, you can check out EDRI.org instead (no dice there though).

Photo by Violet Blue, cc-licensed.

Categories
geek internet security society software tips tools

reset the net

On´n´Off - Going into standby mode

It’s on!

If you want to kick some NSA buttocks and claim your privacy then get yourself this reset the net pack and install some super-duper encryption for your PC, Mac and phone(s).

There ain’t that much on there really, but if you scroll down to the Other Resources section there’s links there like the Prism Break one I mentioned before, which contain tons of (more techy) tools and software for all your stealthy encryption needs.

Photo by Sven Seiler, cc-licensed.