Firefox 58 will soon ship with the option to toggle on and off the system title bar. This toggle will be at the bottom left under the customization window, it is already there in nightly, but it is a mixed bag about which systems it will work on. It has worked on mine, but in return I can’t move the window around. Still, it is a possible that they will have the kinks worked out by the time it reaches stable. Also, HTTP is being replaced by HTTPS. What this means is that websites that use HTTPS will be encrypted, meaning most if not all of your traffic will be shielded from third parties being able to see what you’re doing there. Most websites already implemented this before in regards to credit car and billing information autofills, but now browsers are going to start marking HTTP as unsecure, which will drive many websites to start getting their act together and making HTTPS the new standard. I should also point out that the EFF foundation is planning to continue fighting for net neutrality in the upcoming year. The fight is still on and I’m sure improvements will be made to their extensions as well. It is in part because of HTTPSeverywhere that many sites became HTTPS proficient.
Some more good news, Redhat is working on “Bolt” a successor to their “Thunderbolt3” security protocols which gives the kernel a set of instructions regarding USB devices. It includes levels to which the device must adhere, this would prevent malicious code from being spread via USB or other portable devices. This will not only service Red Hat, but later it will service all linux distributions in the future. The kernel already has certain parameters in place for securing against things like this but the it is still missing something. Red Hat are still developing “Bolt” and only the first iteration has been released, but so far, “Thunderbolt3” as it is called is faster than USB and is already in use in other systems besides Linux. What Red Hat is planning will bring it to home devices eventually. This story is relatively new and more specifics can be found here:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/12/project-bolt-improves-thunderbolt-security-linux
Manjaro have released a new rc version of Manjaro 17.1. If you already had manjaro installed you won’t have to do anything. If you are installing new, you will have to go to their website and download a copy of the operating system. Manjaro adds the Calamares installer to a sturdy Arch-based system. Manjaro has many applications installed by default, however, they leave many configurations to their users. Manjaro users have the ability to access the AUR among the four other fully stocked repos. Lastly, manjaro comes in two mainstay versions, the KDE and the XFCE, with Gnome recently being added to their front line. To download this amazing distribution of Linux go to:
https://osdn.net/projects/manjaro/storage/xfce/17.1-rc1/
or:
https://manjaro.org/get-manjaro/
Also in Manjaro, Manjaro has another community project starting called WebDad. WebDad, is a new Iso of Manjaro using the Just Another Desktop Environment desktop. It is mean to be useful to web developers and programmers. This Desktop Environment allows the user to divide programs into different workspaces and then halt those programs as needed to allow the space in which they are developing to take full advantage of all of their hardware. This is an alpha project right now and should be treated as such if tested. You can get it on sourceforge right now, but I am sure that Manjaro will host it on their own community site as well eventually. The workspaces are supposed to be somewhat intelligent in design. They are supposed to be able to prioritize processes for you.
You can get it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/manjaro-webdad/.
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-webdad-community-edition/34571
Microsoft has finally released an Openssh client inside of Windows 10 now, I’ll leave that one up to you…
Opera recently made it back in the news over their rebranding to Otello now, they assured their users that they would remain Opera in Norway and that they would be privately owned there. Opera is the development team behind the beloved web browser. I say that, but it hasn’t gotten nearly the love and attention these days that it needs. This is why that over a year ago the investors in the company decided to allow a buy out by a Chinese company. The same company that brought you Qihoo. The company has not been well known for a good a reputation, but it remains to be seen how this will effect the Opera browsing software. Opera browser released Ad Blocking and VPN over a couple of releases back in 2016, only a few months before the Chinese Consortium started talking buy out. The company wants to get Opera exposed more thoroughly in India and other places. India currently doesn’t user Opera browser as widely as America, China and other countries do. Opera was overall quite positive about the deal, however, some of its board members and employees were disgruntled with the idea at first. Only time will tell what kind of impact this will have on the browser itself. I wouldn’t say it’s bad just yet. I will keep my eyes peeled.
In unrelated news, this new year will see some personal changes for me as well. I will still be trying to get better as a writer on this blog. I’ll still devote time to it as much as possible, but I’ll also be spending a lot more time focusing on honing my own programming skills. I’ll be working on RUBY, PYTHON, HTML and CSS mostly. These are my go to languages aside from shell. I really hope to further improve my scripts on github and further my knowledge of the platform as well. I hope that by the end of the year I might have either more features added, or that I will be able to make them more user-friendly. I have some ideas in mind. I also hope to move my blog perhaps later on in the year. Maybe not a drastic change, it might not happen all right away, but I have been thinking about that, looking at other platforms, maybe wordpress even. That’s kinda where the HTML and CSS might come in handy later on down the road. I may also start working on my own website by the end of the year as well. Just some things to think about, I haven’t really had time, with dad’s business on the side and my own health and well being getting in the way sometimes.
I do hope to devote more time to my work on the blog though overall. Seeing as this is the time of year, I’d like to say that I am very thankful for the ones who do read my articles. It means a lot to me, this is something I wanted to start doing mainly just to show myself that I could. You guys have made this worth while. I started this blog because I knew that I needed to motivate myself to write, I used to be a poet, I still feel like one at heart, but life gets in the way sometimes. I do hope that some of you will continue to follow the blog in the next year and year after that. I do have some new stuff planned and coming soon.
