A little fun but a whole lot of scary. That's the future...

Source here.

Microsoft has apparently had this thing included since 2018, and nobody knew... personally the idea of a network sniffer being included without any official mention makes me somewhat suspicious.

Potential reason #34687 not to upgrade after all.

It's been a while since I posted about hosting here.

Last time I did it was to leave a BAD review for Hosting Cove, a company I signed up for a reseller with, and when after two years of having it only as a backup decided to use it... I couldn't. I contacted support. They never got back to me. Later they closed down.

I'm no longer a customer there since they no longer exist... or do they? Not sure. Not looking.

I signed up for a new backup reseller a while back though, this time at just about twice the price, plotting to finally get serious with my side-hustle hosting endeavors, and unfortunately I chose badly. The company I signed up with was KayHosting, which have now been down since December last year. They offered a pretty good plan...

Master Reseller Specials - Master Reseller, 600GB
First Payment Amount: $39.00 USD

I actually didn't notice they were down until I was supposed to receive an invoice to renew my plan this year, but it never came, and when I check the site it's no longer there. Fortunately I only paid for one year, at a lifetime rebate price of course, but that's still one year at twice the price I had on the previous, which I had for half the time.

Seems history keeps repeating itself.

Apparently though this particular host isn't just one that up and disappeared for unknown reasons, but probably an intentional scam.

Along with the above ArkaHosting, Bigfoot Servers, DCNHost, HostBRZ, HostedSimply, Hosting73, KudoHosting, LQHosting, MegaZoneHosting, MyHostingSrv, n3Servers, ServerStrong, SnowVPS, SolvedByData, SparkVPS, StrongHosting, SuperbVPS, SupremeVPS, TCNHosting, UpbeatHosting, UMaxHosting, VPSFortune, WelcomeHosting and X4Servers disappeared in the same swoop. All had the same analytics code.

It seems they were all part of the same thing, yet I didn't even get a notice. Some more info here.

I should probably choose my hosts a bit more carefully. Props at least to WHB for sticking around all this time, my first and foremost. Time to keep an eye out for some alternative sweet deals again; hopefully on hosts that'll stick around too...

I meant to post this a while back. Was pretty impressed with how the Internet Archive handled this when it all started; turned it into a promo asking people to help out and donate no less, and I'm sure people did!

The site's been a bit slow, probably way more overloaded than usual, but it seems they're coping. No better time to support the Archive than now.

Donated this year too btw.

So FireFox recently updated their address bar, to go from this:

...to this massive thing:

And I don't like it.

Also notice the Facebook link, displayed here even though I don't use Facebook. I haven't logged in in over two years now, and even when I did it was rarely, for work-related dues only. I don't have it in my bookmarks. I haven't been there recently. I do stumble onto FB profiles and groups occasionally, but not often enough that it should be at the top of my browsing history. I wonder if they're getting paid for this...

The update notes say this about the new bar:

But you know what? I'm not using a laptop. I have a wide screen and precision mouse.

The update also hides https:// and www prefixes from URLs in the dropdown, and as a developer I really like to see those.

So, if you for any similar or other purpose also feel a need to disable this unnecessary new monstrosity, you can do so by typing about:config in the address bar, accepting the risk, and searching for browser.urlbar.​update1, toggling this, and optionally other options related to it, to false.

The https thing is separate apparently. You'll need to toggle browser.urlbar.trimURLs to toggle that.

That's it. All like it should be, though I wonder if the earlier version was really this wide after all...

So YT deleted this video, and then they banned all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking coronavirus symptoms to 5G networks (source). Does that mean it's not false after all? What other reason could they possibly have to hide it. If it was easy to debunk, why not open for debate and do so instead?

Judge for yourself though. I haven't fact-checked, but whether this is true or not it's sickening to see how far our freedom of speech has deteriorated, how much the Internet - once a bastion of free thinking - is being supervised, and how much of a big brother society we're living in already, where opposition for the establishment is silenced, and views that don't favor a sanctioned corporate agenda are called misinformation.

Whatever happened to precautionary practices? If people are scared, then why not spend a few years on rigorous testing of potential biological side-effects first? If some people don't want 5G then why still force it on them? Since when did business take precedence over our happiness and content?

5G or no, our freedoms are being evoked at an alarming pace lately.

Seems we need alternative media sources more than ever now, if not for undeniable truth, then at least for the full spectrum of theories and ideas that are out there. There's no progress if not popular nor unpopular opinions and beliefs are challenged, and more importantly no true freedom if we don't at least have a way to have our say, and chime in on what we disagree with. Speak. Have a debate. And settle things like civilized people.

Stay safe, but stay skeptical.