Electricmonk

Ferry Boender

Programmer, DevOpper, Open Source enthusiast.

Blog

Category: freedom and privacy

Umatrix makes the web usable again

As happens with all media, once corporations join in because there is money to be made, things quickly devolve into a flaming heap of shit. The internet is no exception to this rule. With the coming of Javascript and DHTML in the late 90’s, ads soon started appearing on the web. Not long after, pop-ups […]

Why the EasyList DMCA takedown notice is perfectly valid (and fair)

There’s a story going around about a DMCA takedown notice filed against the adblocking list EasyList, causing them to remove a domain from one of their filters. As usual, lots of indignation and pitchfork-mobbing followed. It seems though, that few people understand what exactly is going on here. Here’s a brief history of ad blocking […]

Criticize grsecurity? Get sued.

Thinking about using the grsecurity linux kernel hardening patches? Better check with your legal team. Not only are they likely violating the GPLv2 with their patch-set, but if you point out that, in your opinion, they are violating the GPLv2, they’ll sue you. And not only you, but anybody that is even remotely involved in […]

Two-factor authentication via SMS is worse than no two-factor authentication at all

Another case of online theft whereby the attacker takes over a victim’s phone and performs an account reset through SMS has just hit the web. This is the sixth case I’ve read about, but undoubtedly there are many many more. In this case, the victim only lost $200. In other cases, victims have lost thousands […]

Script to start a Chrome browser with an SSH Socks5 proxy

Socks5 proxies are great. They allow you to tunnel all traffic for applications that support Socks proxies through the proxy. One example I frequently use is starting a Chrome window that will do everthing as if it was an a remote machine. This is especially useful to bypass firewalls so you can test websites that […]

The All-Web paradigm is a long way away

Google, with their Google Chrome OS, are betting on our computing-experience moving to the Cloud in the future. Some people agree with that prediction. As Hacker News user Wavephorm mentions: The “All-Web” paradigm is coming, folks. And it really doesn’t matter how much you love your iPhone, or your Android, or Windows phone. Native apps […]

This is why I don’t use Apple products or DRM media

This company is going out of business because they put all their eggs in a very delicate and quite frankly evil basket: BeamItDown Software and the iFlow Reader will cease operations as of May 31, 2011. We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple […]

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

Talks Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice: Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

How Democracy works…

Here’s a good example of how democracy works: NASA Christens Space Station Treadmill ‘COLBERT’.

Rokers zijn sexy (Dutch)

Want laten we eerlijk zijn, rokers hebben humor. Rokers hebben stijl. Rokers zijn sexy motherfuckers. Na het neuken rook je samen bezweet een sigaret in bed. Niet-rokers aaien samen een kat. Beste.. column.. ooit: Rokers zijn sexy

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