I recently started using Ungoogled Chromium on Invisible Arch Linux after looking for alternatives to Firefox. After a couple weeks of use I can say Ungoogled Chromium is a great browser and it’s become my goto alternative to GNU IceCat on Linux when not using Tor Browser. The only downside I found is that you need to jump through a few hoops to install Chrome Extensions.

But it’s not that much work to get extensions running in Ungoogled Chromium. And you don’t even need a Google account. Let me show you how.

Today we’re going to create a starter website using Yew for Rust. This should take you about 20-30 minutes depending on the speed of your Internet connection and computer. At the outset you will have a website so bleeding edge you didn’t even feel the cut. Kind of like how Node developers didn’t see Deno coming…

To get started install or upgrade Rust. If you don’t have Rust installed, you can install it from the stable channel using the following command:

The last time I played my favorite computer game was almost 5 years ago now back in 2015. After recenty creating textfiles.bit I went abandonia.com and was saddened to see they started charging to download Ultima Underworld.

That’s okay though as I found a different site which still had a free copy. In case I don’t find the site again I’ve enclosed the game archive with this post. And the following are instructions on how to play it on Linux.

After upgrading my Invisible Arch box to use the new Deepin Desktop V20 beta I ran into a hiccup trying to start Ungoogled Chromium:

% chromium
/usr/lib/chromium/chromium: error while loading shared libraries: libre2.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.

What the shit is libre2.so.6? Initial web searches were fruitless so I fell back to GNU IceCat for a minute while I explored Deepin 20’s buttery new interface. Later I found a debugging trick on bugs.archlinux.org to find the problem:

It was around 2004 when TBP was infiltrated by the Feds. For at least a day or two the homepage of the website showed nothing other than an emblazoned FBI logo. I’m sure I still have a screenshot somewhere but I trust you know how to verify claims people make on the Internet.

Back then I was an avid IRC user and knew how to set up a sophisticated FTP server replete with eggdrop reporting real-time connection activity to a hidden channel on EFNet. Those were the days when anything felt possible online. Then, all of a sudden, the walls came crashing down.

Inspired by a chiptune topic on ZeroNet I downloaded one of the songs shared using youtube-dl but wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the video encoding. The song on the other hand was great. And thankfully the author’s website was still up so I could download the original MP3 and creating a new video.

I spent a few hours learning FFMpeg from the comfort of the chair behind my Invisible Arch. The manpages for FFMpeg include tons of diagrams and examples so cobbling something together wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. Once I was satisfied with the result I transitioned over to my 2019 Mac to share the video…

If you’re a software developer working ethically you’re almost certainly using GnuPG to sign your work. And if you’ve been at it for any length of time you’ve almost certainly been forced to switch machines. Unless your aim is to create a new identity for each machine you use you need a simple, repeatable strategy moving GPG keys privately. Let me show you how.

I’m no Steve Wozniak but I carry a healthy distrust of computers. After hearing of the Equifax data breach affecting the privacy of more than 145 million Americans, learning Uber paid and tried to cover up the loss of 57 million driver and passenger records and seeing the lasting impact of the Meltdown attack I’m starting to understand the gravity this quote from Woz:

After giving a talk once in Bali – where I showed how to use a $5 Vultr box and Redis with Load Impact to support up to 7000 concurrent WordPress users – I was asked to help turn some of the performance optimization work demoed into a WordPress plug-in.

It’s the first of it’s kind — and like no other performance plugin to precede it. Based on initial tests it speeds up the stock Twenty Seventeen theme about 300% and I suspect time will show even greater gains for other themes. It builds on top of a performance optimization technique called Fetch Injection, enabling external scripts to download asynchronously in parallel while preserving execution order.