[NCLUG] Tuesday May 14th, 2019 NCLUG Meeting at FCCH

Bob Proulx bob at proulx.com
Tue May 14 19:46:19 MDT 2019


jdewitt at verinet.com wrote:
> What: Tuesday May 14th, 2019 NCLUG Meeting
> When: Tuesday May 14th, 2019, 6pm
> Where: Fort Collins Creator Hub,
>   1304 Duff Dr Unit 15, Fort Collins, CO; map:

Bob talked about web browser hacks.  The first tidbit came from a TWIT
podcast.  I listen to people talk very slowly about computer topics so
you don't have to! :-)

Turn off web notifications.  You know how web sites these days often
want to push you notifications?  I don't personally ever want that to
happen.  Therefore I am always saying, no do not send me
notifications, block.  It turns out that you can disable this globally
in both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chromium/Chrome.

  Firefox
    about:config
    search for webnotifications
    disable first entry.
    dom.webnotifications.enabled false

  Chromium
    Settings
    Advanced
    Privacy and security
    Content settings
    Notifications
    Ask before sending (recommended)
    Flip that control to off, changes to Blocked

I haven't seen any bad effects but I never allow notifications
previously.

Then demonstration of the Vimium browser add-on for both Chromium and
Firefox.  This allows use of either Vi(m) or Emacs keybindings (mostly
simultaneously!) to navigate through web pages.  Check it out.

It's All Text!  An older browser plugin that is no longer working.
Because I *hate* editing text forms in the web browser.  I don't have
'ispell', I don't have rectangle editing, regular expression search
and replace, and everything else.  I hate editing web browser forms.
If you do to then this one is for you.  But It's All Text went away
with a previous browser API change.

However recently ran into Edit With Emacs!  But don't fixate on the
emacs part.  it works with vim, nano, ed, or whatever other edit you
might wish to use.  But that was the motivation for the browser
plugin.  And being a new attempt at It's All Text it uses the same
protocol.  Therefore I am using the standalone edit-server executable
by Wayne Davidson, of rsync and other things.

  http://opencoder.net/edit-server

Actually I have almost completely rewritten it.  Because the original
has shared secrets for security and other security for people running
on a multi-X system.  (Remote VNC?)  I am doing my own rewrite using
that as the original.  But regardless this allows running any other
editor you wish to configure.  Demo'd both Emacs and Vim.  And Nano.

Alex then showed off how CSS only can be used to track you.  Yes.  CSS
only tracking!  This uses the hover attribute GET'ing and tracking
based upon that action.

Then he demo'd a full browser recompile he had created with that
turned off.  Some things work.  Some things do not work.  It was
interesting the effects of it.  It isn't something that can really be
turned off completely.

Alex then asked for input for an upcoming git presentation.  Many of
us uee git and so of course we had a rousing discussion about git and
features and what should go into a talk.  Hopefully Alex will bring
that back to NCLUG on a future date.

Dinner then followed.


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