Reading, I was, about a web site security tool from Mozilla, so I had to try it. My site, the one you are on now, rated “D-“. It was no consolation that most sites rate “F”. Within the rating there was this criteria called “Content Security Policy” (CSP) that tweaked my interest.
Content Security Policy: Purpose
A CSP is a policy that you put into the head section of your page that whitelists all the sites that contribute to your page. If someone tries to add something to your page’s content but is not on you CSP, your browser will not load it. This stops a nasty infection of something called “cross site scripting” or XSS.
Hotlinking is simply not cool. Referrer spam is also not cool. I get both of these from 4 Blogspot sites, and have struggled to contain their mess. The problem is that they are hosted by Google, through their Blogger platform, GoogleUserContent.com. Though Blogger is free, they are very difficult to kill. Here’s what I did to combat the problem.
Puzzling, it is at times, that my htaccess does not always behave as intended. As a computer scientist I expect that my programs and file input should output consistent, stable and reliable results immediately. This is not the case with my htaccess file, hosted on Site5, my internet service provider.
Delays in htaccess Implementation
When I do certain changes to my htaccess, there may be delays of a day or two. This is very odd to me, because supposedly the htaccess is checked for every server request. Maybe there are some caching that I do not know about. Nevertheless it seems like the htaccess has a unique personality. I know that I should not anthropomorphize a computer, much less a security file such as htaccess on an Apache server, but it is difficult to not.
ilpuntoantico has to do with former point, Italian openwork needlepoint. Hosted by GoogleUserContent.com, I have tried to contact Google network-abuse@google.com for help to stop this referrer spammer (2016-Sept-29) but they have not replied. I have also contacted GoogleUserContent.com (abusecomplaints@markmonitor.com 2016-oct-19) for help in banning this hotlinking of images. This group of sites burns up a lot of bandwidth every day.
Conclusion: Filed a DMCA equest to Google. Awaiting their response.
Speaking Chinese and English, it is what I do. As my mother tongue is English and I live in Toronto, Canada, it was natural for me to post in English and use Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and other English biased search engines. I also have the ability to speak and write in Chinese, so I often do bilingual posts just for fun. As I regularly monitor my raw access server log, I can see that Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Sogou, 360, Yandex and other search engines regularly index my content. I wondered how well they index my posts, and if there are any hints and tips that might make getting my content indexed better.
Maps, I do like. Not only are they pretty, they are pretty useful, especially if you are unfamiliar with the area. Map and compass in hand, you can walk at your leisure and not get lost, or at least be able to get help from the locals when you do. But which maps are the best for China? I thought I’d do a map slugfest, comparing Google (line and satellite), 360, Sougou and Baidu. I chose 150 meters of Shandong, Changdao on Jiefang (Liberation) Road as an example.
Spare time, I had, and wanted to see where someone was physically located in China. The place is a small town on the border of Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, on the Yellow River. What were the odds that I could find her exact location and get a satellite photo of her building?
I started using Google Maps, which was pretty helpful. Considering that Google is not allowed in China, they still had maps of the small city and specifically the 1km section of road that interested me. The sat photo showed great detail, as you can see, but the roads from the diagram did not coordinate very well with the sat map. In fact they were really so far off that some roads went underwater, like tunnels.
Buy a smartphone, you did, but do you really own it? You use your phone when new, but after a while the phone slows down. Is it the phone or are you just getting irritable and impatient with yourself. Relax and wait a bit, right? Maybe not, because your phone may actually be slowing down. It is at this point, around the 1.5 year mark, that you consider buying a new phone. Has your spanky new phone really degraded that much? Smartphones are at least a couple of hundred dollars, so buying a new one every 1.5 years can get very expensive. But do you really need a new one? Remove the bloatware from your phone first, then decide. Bloatware can account for 1/3d of all apps running on your phone, so removing them can make a significant positive difference to the smooth operation of your phone.
Many days, I did struggle with this problem. My old 2010 HTC Google Nexus One simply would not connect to Ubuntu 14.04. A couple of weeks ago I gave up. Today, I had the brilliant idea to try connecting the Nexus One to Windows 7, and by a fluke of connecting to Win7, Ubuntu 14.04 also detected it. Why did this happen, I do not know, but I am thankful for these lucky flukes of the universe. Praise Zena Princess Warrior, for her good luck and intervention.
Struggle, I do, using Google Chrome and Google+ Hangouts Chat. My Ubuntu 14.04.2 system simply will not display the integrated webcam, and gives me a black screen instead. Apparently this is a known problem. I was expecting that since both products are from Google, that they would work well together, but this is not the case.
My webcam has always worked. Cheese and GUVcview has always worked from day 1. I recently installed Skype and it worked right from the install. Using Firefox I can go to plus.google.com, login and my webcam works. Strange.
