1
Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users
Microsoft announces vague changes to the default web browser setting for Windows Insider. Nothing but wishful thinking. Still force-opens web links in Edge.
Daniel Aleksandersen
A personal blog mostly on everyday tech.
- Popular posts
- 33
- Total points
- 9,869
- HN comments
- 6,034
- Rank
- #85 personal
Visit ctrl.blog → RSS feedOn Hacker News Dec 2017 – Sep 2023
Security & Privacy 13Web & Frontend 9Society, Policy & Culture 9Tools & Productivity 7Systems & Performance 6Tech Industry & Business 5
2
TeamViewer installs suspicious font only useful for web fingerprinting
A weird almost unreadable font file bundled with TeamViewer for Windows software lets website detect if you’ve installed the software. Raises privacy concerns.
3
Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge
Brave and Firefox implement support for the microsoft-edge: URL scheme. Brave to hijack Bing search links. Plus, the history of all this anti-competitive crap.
4
SELinux is unmanageable; just turn it off if it gets in your way
I’ve been an SELinux complexity apologist for years. Lately, I’ve concluded that every implementation with difficult-to-configure policies is just unmanageable.
5
TP-Link firmware sends six DNS requests and one NTP query every 5 seconds
A design flaw in TP-Link Wi-Fi repeater firmware causes it to waste an excessive amount of bandwidth on NTP timekeeping. DDoS’ed public NTP servers in the process.
6
You don’t want to be on Cloudflare’s naughty list
My home IP ended up on Cloudflare’s naughty list for six days. Most websites and many apps loaded slowly, partially, or not at all. Just had to wait it out.
7
Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar?
A new promo message for Microsoft Teams broke the Windows desktop shell and the taskbar for Windows 11 Insider users. Why can cloud services break Windows PCs?
8
How Google Chrome’s ad blocker works
Get the details on how the built-in ad-blocker in Google Chrome works. The ad-blocker only kicks in on websites in violation of the Better Ad Standards policies.
9
The 0.5 MB of nothing in all Apple Music files (2020)
Six percentage of each music files you’ve bought from Apple Music (iTunes Store) contain, literally, nothing. Why is Apple padding their music with zero-bytes?
10
First-party isolation in Firefox: what breaks if you enable it?
Firefox’s FPI system keeps websites from tracking your movements across websites. This gives excellent privacy protections but at a cost of web compatibility.
11
From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server
Why I uninstalled Plex Media Server after over a decade and migrated my movie and TV show collection to Jellyfin instead of Emby.
12
On-device browser translations with Firefox Translations
Firefox can now do offline and privacy-preserving translation of eight languages with more on the way. Powered by open-source and machine-learning.
13
Your online identity is owned by your email provider (2019)
Your email provider owns your online identity by controlling your email address. You can’t port your email address to another provider as with phone numbers.
14
Systemd service sandboxing and security hardening (2020)
The systemd-analyze security command gives your systemd service units an automated security rating. This is a good starting point for security hardening.
15
Yahoo, AOL results biased in favor of parent company Verizon’s websites
Verizon Media’s search engines promises “unbiased” search results, but serves results clearly favoring the company’s media websites over competitors.
16
How to take back control of /etc/resolv.conf on Linux (2018)
Take manual control of your Linux system’s DNS resolution and keep programs from interfering with and overwriting your resolv.conf file.
17
You can no longer bypass microsoft-edge:// links using apps like EdgeDeflector
Microsoft doubles-down on its user-choice hostile web browser behavior; blocks competitors from opening links from many Windows apps and web experiences.
18
Should you contribute open data to OpenStreetMap?
Google Maps is incredibly detailed and useful. But Google uses it for tracking and deliver ads. Should you contribute for free to build its monopoly?
19
What domain name to use for your home network
Always use the ‘.home.arpa’ top-level domain (RFC 8375), and don’t use the special-purpose ‘.local,’ or made-up undelegated domain names like ‘.lan’ or ‘.home.’
20
Twitter preconnects to the wrong domains
Twitter tried to reduce load times for external links, but made things slower instead. It mistakenly normalizes domains to a point where they’re no longer useful.
21
How to take back control of /etc/resolv.conf on Linux (2018)
Take manual control of your Linux system’s DNS resolution and keep programs from interfering with and overwriting your resolv.conf file.
22
Cardboard: a scrollable tiling window manager
After the initial learning curve, I found that Cardboard WM help me stay focused on one task and it greatly reduced how much time I spent rearranging my windows.
23
Aren't AMP Caches committing copyright infringement?
How can mass-copying pages from web publishers without a license not be mass-copyright infringement? The weird copyright law exemption that enables AMP Caches.
24
I was terrified of an eyeball injection
I needed medication to preserve my sight, and it had to be injected directly into my eyeball. It’s a real thing and not just something they do in horror films.
25
Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)
The tech behind peer-to-peer (P2P) social networks such as Secure Scuttlebutt enforces permanency. Absolute permanency isn’t what you want in a social network.
26
Some discouraging anecdotes on how services handle account deletions
I asked 124 services to delete my user account. The results were mixed. 21 never responded, and 16 responded by created even more accounts. Some outright lied.
27
How I recovered a lost email from my email client’s memory
A bug caused 30 minutes of work on an email to disappear. However, I was able to recover it by poking around in the process memory using gdb/gcore. Here’s how.
28
Finally fixed my PC’s persistent graphics and audio stutters
I experienced intermittent stuttering when my PC ran Linux and Windows. A mix of hardware, firmware, and driver issues created a difficult to diagnose problem.
29
How to stop a robot vacuum from getting stuck on the laundry rack
Is your robotic vacuum cleaner getting stuck on the laundry drying rack? Just raise the rack slightly off the floor and it becomes a natural robot barrier.
30
Flattr now deletes your web browsing history within 3 months
Flattr improves customer privacy protections by automatically deleting collected data when its no longer needed for its core service.