You've probably been hearing a lot about Bitcoin recently and are wondering what's the big deal? Most of your questions should be answered by the resources below but if you have additional questions feel free to ask them in the comments. It all started with the release of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper however that will probably go over the head of most readers so we recommend the following articles/books/videos as a good starting point for understanding how bitcoin works and a little about its long term potential:
Limited Supply - There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoin created and they are issued in a predictable fashion per the inflation schedule. Once they are all issued Bitcoin will be truly deflationary. The halving countdown tells you how much time until the next drop in block rewards.
Open source - Bitcoin code is fully auditable. You can read and contribute to the source code yourself.
Accountable - The public ledger is transparent, all transactions are seen by everyone.
Decentralized - Bitcoin is globally distributed across thousands of nodes with no single point of failure and as such can't be shut down similar to how Bittorrent works. You can even run a node on a Raspberry Pi.
Censorship resistant - No one can prevent you from interacting with the bitcoin network and no one can censor, alter or block transactions that they disagree with, see Operation Chokepoint.
Push system - There are no chargebacks in bitcoin because only the person who owns the address where the bitcoin resides has the authority to move them.
Low fee scaling - Most wallets calculate on chain fees automatically but you can view fee estimates and mempool activity if you want to set your fee manually. On chain fees may rise occasionally due to network demand, however instant micropayments that do not require confirmations are happening via the Lightning Network, a second layer scaling solution currently rolling out on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Borderless - No country can stop it from going in/out, even in areas currently unserved by traditional banking as the ledger is globally distributed.
Trustless - Bitcoin solved the Byzantine's Generals Problem which means nobody needs to trust anybody for it to work.
Secure - Blocks and transactions are cryptographically secured (using hashes and signatures) and can’t be brute forced or confiscated with proper key management such as hardware wallets.
Programmable - Individual units of bitcoin can be programmed to transfer based on certain criteria being met
Nearly instant - From a few seconds on the lightning network to a few minutes on-chain depending on need for confirmations. Transactions are irreversible by normal users after one confirmation and irreversible by anyone (including miners) after 6 confirmations.
Portable - Bitcoin are digital so they are easier to move than cash or gold. They can be transported by simply carrying a seed (a string of 12 to 24 words) on a device or by memorizing it for wallet recovery (while cool, memorizing is generally not recommended due to potential for forgetting the seed and the potential for insecure key generation by inexperienced users. Hardware wallets are the preferred method for most users for their ease of use and additional security).
Scalable - While the protocol is still being optimized for increased transaction capacity, blockchains do not scale very well, so most transaction volume is expected to occur on Layer 2 networks built on top of Bitcoin.
Divisible - Each bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, which means you don't have to worry about buying an entire bitcoin.
Bitcoin.org and BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com are helpful sites for beginners. You can buy or sell any amount of bitcoin (even just a few dollars worth) and there are several easy methods to purchase bitcoin with cash, credit card or bank transfer. Some of the more popular resources are below, also check out the bitcoinity exchange resources for a larger list of options for purchases.
You can also purchase in cash with local ATMs. If you would like your paycheck automatically converted to bitcoin use Bitwage. Note: Bitcoin are valued at whatever market price people are willing to pay for them in balancing act of supply vs demand. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Securing your bitcoin
With bitcoin you can "Be your own bank" and personally secure your bitcoin OR you can use third party companies aka "Bitcoin banks" which will hold the bitcoin for you.
If you prefer to "Be your own bank" and have direct control over your coins without having to use a trusted third party, then you will need to create your own wallet and keep it secure. If you want easy and secure storage without having to learn computer security best practices, then a hardware wallet such as the Trezor, Ledger or ColdCard is recommended.
If you cannot afford a hardware wallet there are many software wallet options to choose from depending on your use case. Mobile wallets like BlueWallet are generally more secure than desktop wallets. Beware of fake mobile wallets and check reviews from reputable Bitcoin websites. Avoid paper wallets or brain wallets.
If you prefer to let third party "Bitcoin banks" manage your coins, try Gemini or Unchained Capital but be aware you may not be in control of your private keys in which case you would have to ask permission to access your funds and be exposed to third party risk. There is a saying in the community, "Not your keys, not your coins" meaning if you don't store your coins in a wallet that you control the keys to then you do not really own your bitcoin as you have to ask permission from the third party in order to move them.
Note: For increased security, use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere it is offered, including email! 2FA requires a second confirmation code or a physical security key to access your account making it much harder for thieves to gain access. Google Authenticator and Authy are the two most popular 2FA services, download links are below. Make sure you create backups of your 2FA codes. Avoid using your cell number for 2FA. Hackers have been using a technique called "SIM swapping" to impersonate users and steal bitcoin off exchanges.
Physical security keys (FIDO U2F) offer stronger security than Google Auth / Authy and other TOTP-based apps, because the secret code never leaves the device and it uses bi-directional authentication so it prevents phishing. If you lose the device though, you could lose access to your account, so always use 2 or more security keys with a given account so you have backups. See Yubikey or Titan to purchase security keys. Both Coinbase and Gemini support physical security keys.
Watch out for scams
As mentioned above, Bitcoin is decentralized, which by definition means there is no official website or Twitter handle or spokesperson or CEO. However, all money attracts thieves. This combination unfortunately results in scammers running official sounding names or pretending to be an authority on YouTube or social media. Many scammers throughout the years have claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. Websites like bitcoin(dot)com and the r / btc subreddit are active scams. Almost all altcoins (shitcoins) are marketed heavily with big promises but are really just designed to separate you from your bitcoin. So be careful: any resource, including all linked in this document, may in the future turn evil. As they say in our community, "Don't trust, verify".
Avoid using ad-based search engines like Google or Yahoo: ads are shown based on how much the advertiser bids, and scammers can easily outbid legitimate providers for ad space, since immoral ways of earning money are far more lucrative than moral ways. Use DuckDuckGo instead, which has no ads, and never tracks you as well.
Ignore private messages offering services.
Never enter your seed words in a website of any kind. Hardware wallets will recover by displaying possible seed words on their own interface, never on a website.
Always check addresses on your hardware wallet before sending or receiving. Some malware has been known to replace addresses in your web browser or that you copy-and-paste.
Avoid clicking on links like that look like links, such as https://www.google.com/, without first hovering over it and actually checking where they go to. Just because a link is labelled with an HTTPS address does not mean it actually sends you to that address. It is trivial for someone to comment a link on Reddit that looks like it will send you to one website when it actually sends you to another, and you might not notice the difference until a scammer has gotten all your money, or you have downloaded and installed software that steals your money.
Common Bitcoin Myths
Often the same concerns arise about Bitcoin from newcomers. Questions such as:
Is Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme?
Will governments ban Bitcoin?
Will quantum computers break Bitcoin?
All of these questions have been answered many times by a variety of people. Here are some resources where you can see if your concern has been answered:
Check out spendabit or bitcoin directory for millions of merchant options. Also you can spend bitcoin anywhere visa is accepted with bitcoin debit cards such as the CashApp card or Fold card. Some other useful site are listed below.
Gift cards for thousands of retailers worldwide including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, CVS, Lowes, Home Depot, iTunes, Best Buy, Sears, Kohls, eBay, GameStop, etc.
There are several benefits to accepting bitcoin as a payment option if you are a merchant;
1-3% savings over credit cards or PayPal.
No chargebacks (final settlement in 10 minutes as opposed to 3+ months).
Accept business from a global customer base.
Increased privacy.
Convert 100% of the sale to the currency of your choice for deposit to your account, or choose to keep a percentage of the sale in bitcoin if you wish to begin accumulating it.
If you are interested in accepting bitcoin as a payment method, there are several options available;
Mining bitcoin can be a fun learning experience, but be aware that you will most likely operate at a loss. Newcomers are often advised to stay away from mining unless they are only interested in it as a hobby similar to folding at home. If you want to learn more about mining you can read the mining FAQ. Still have mining questions? The crew at /BitcoinMining would be happy to help you out. If you want to contribute to the bitcoin network by hosting the blockchain and propagating transactions you can run a full node. You can view the global node distribution for a visual representation of the node network.
Earning bitcoin
Just like any other form of money, you can also earn bitcoin by being paid to do a job.
You can also earn bitcoin by participating as a market maker on JoinMarket by allowing users to perform CoinJoin transactions with your bitcoin for a small fee (requires you to already have some bitcoin).
Bitcoin-Related Projects
The following is a short list of ongoing projects that might be worth taking a look at if you are interested in current development in the bitcoin space.
One Bitcoin is quite large (hundreds of £/$/€) so people often deal in smaller units. The most common subunits are listed below:
Unit
Symbol
Value
Info
bitcoin
BTC
1 bitcoin
one bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis
millibitcoin
mBTC
1,000 per bitcoin
used as default unit in recent Electrum wallet releases
bit
bit
1,000,000 per bitcoin
colloquial "slang" term for microbitcoin (μBTC)
satoshi
sat
100,000,000 per bitcoin
smallest unit in bitcoin, named after the inventor
For example, assuming an arbitrary exchange rate of $10000 for one Bitcoin, a $10 meal would equal:
0.001 BTC
1 mBTC
1,000 bits
100k sats
For more information check out the Bitcoin units wiki. Still have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or stick around for our weekly Mentor Monday thread. If you decide to post a question in /Bitcoin, please use the search bar to see if it has been answered before, and remember to follow the community rules outlined on the sidebar to receive a better response. The mods are busy helping manage our community so please do not message them unless you notice problems with the functionality of the subreddit. Note: This is a community created FAQ. If you notice anything missing from the FAQ or that requires clarification you can edit it here and it will be included in the next revision pending approval. Welcome to the Bitcoin community and the new decentralized economy!
In 2019 it was a pleasure, after the recount of the votes, to discover Delegated Proof of Work was the winner of NanoJam, the first international hackaton of the Nano community, taking the first place! Due to the fact that many people confuse the old name of the project “Delegated Proof of Work” with the project “DPoW” (distributed PoW, which maintains a different system, with a centralized api), a rebranding was necessary. u/mitche50 from the Nano Center suggested the current name: P2PoW. I intend to remain with that name that certainly fell very well in our P2P project!
The importance of P2PoW for Nano
P2PoW is the P2P alternative for DPoW (wich is distributed, but not descentralized). With P2PoW it is possible to delegate proof of work directly to “worker peers”, who currently work as miners, independently and autonomously. It is possible to use one worker at a time or several simultaneously; takes the reward who finishes the proof of work first, like a competition.
P2PoW security is decentralized and there is no way for a user or worker to take undue advantage. The only way for the user to validate their transaction is to sign an extra reward transaction for workers. The only way for workers to earn the reward is to validate the user’s transaction. There are no single points of failure. This security mechanism is intrinsic to the Nano block lattice protocol.
The P2PoW protocol, therefore, allows any Nano project in any device to have instant Nano transactions at any time, without the need for any extra registration, without the need to trust any server and without any central authority. P2PoW does not require any permission or bureaucracy to be integrated into software by developers and anyone can become a worker peer just as easily. P2PoW is the purely mathematical and the P2P solution for Nano Proof of Work delegation.
Many things have changed since the first version of Delegated Proof of Work (now P2PoW) to keep the API more robust, efficient, secure and updated with the changes of the Nano protocol. Let’s see:
- Adapting to the new difficulty
Now P2PoW API by default uses different PoW difficulties to send/change and receive transactions according to Nano protocol updates. Minimum difficulty to send/change: 8X the old difficulty. Minimum difficulty to receive: 1/8 the old difficulty. In addition, workers can enable dynamic fee, this requires clients to pay more for larger PoW when the network is more saturated.
-Efficiency
While solving a work, the API automatically checks if the transaction has already been confirmed (possibly by a competing worker). If so, the api gives up the work and can focus all its resources on the next work.
-Logging
Now the P2PoW API comes with a more organized logging system, with different flags: INFO: Common notices, such as startup and new work Warning: User made an invalid request or with some invalid data Error: Error in configuration, API or communication with node nano / worker For those using Linux, logs can be tracked via journalctl The user can also redirect the entire log to a file using arg: -o file.log
-Support for IPV6
In addition to IPV4, the decentralized registration system protocol is already able to convert IPV6 to the Nano account format and make it available to P2PoW clients automatically.
To facilitate and improve the integration of P2PoW in applications, I announce the P2PoW client JS. A library with all the functions needed to use P2PoW. Check usage examples:
P2PoW.sync(delay, callback) //synchronize with workers P2PoW.getWorkersOnline( ) //get workers list P2PoW.requestInfo(workerAddress) //get a worker info P2PoW.requestWork(user_block, workerIP) //solve a transaction
P2PoW Web Demo How about a simple and friendly online demo for any user to test P2PoW working in practice? Try it Now : https://demo.p2pow.online The P2PoW Demo is the first integration with the client JS and allows anyone to test the protocol without the need to install any software or understand programming!
myNanoEmbedded is a lightweight C library that integrates Nano Cryptocurrency to low complexity computational devices (like IoT), with fast transactions and small fees by delegating the Proof of Work with P2PoW. Support: BIP39, P2PoW, TRNG or PRNG entropyARM-A, ARM-M, Thumb, Xtensa-LX6 and IA64 compatible. Linux desktop, Raspberry PI, ESP32 and Olimex A20 tested platforms
Nano-electron is a cross-platform wallet for Nano cryptocurrency. Focused on lightness, agility and portability, this wallet uses the myNanoEmbedded C Library through a binding to provide greater performance. supports P2PoW
Java C bindings for Nano Cryptocurrency with Bitcoin support. Supports P2PoW
Nano Pruning — What will change in P2PoW
This subject will be explained in more detail soon, but so far everything indicates that the pruning will have no negative impact on the P2PoW protocol. On the contrary, it will help! Since pruning does not apply to burn accounts, it will not affect the decentralized registration system of workers at all. However, pruning will make P2PoW more efficient, because although P2PoW requires 2 transactions for each work (1 user transaction and 1 reward transaction), pruning will leave only the last transaction saved in the ledger (state block), therefore, in pruned nodes, P2PoW will not require extra storage compared to other methods of transact Nano!
The future of P2PoW
Many updates and features can make P2PoW even more complete and robust. Some possible implementations stand out:
Integration with Tor: Will allow Nano users to delegate proof of work through an anonymous proxy thus preserving your ip identity and localization. Currently, the main wallets do not provide this type of privacy. Which means that users are exposed.
P2PoW Websockets: The use of websockets will allow faster synchronization with workers and faster work validations, in addition to:
P2PoW Pool Gateways: Using websockets it will be possible to create “mining pools”. This can be both useful for workers who want to connect several machines of their own to their API, or to distribute proof of work among different peers who do not want to run worker API as a server.
Web Interface for worker API
Python Client
node JS API
Pre-computing: Workers peers will be able to pre-compute proof of work from “loyal” accounts.
If you have questions about the project, suggestions or other contributions you can join our channel #p2pow-discussion on The Nano Center’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/GhzdTkD Last but not least, I wish everyone a happy end of the year! And that 2021 brings a lot of news to Nano. This was my Christmas present for the community!
I'm designing a language for use by non-professional programmers. The focus is on usability and interactivity. I'd like to make it easy to draw graphs of equations. In examples of Mathematica and other systems I often see something like this: draw(sin(x)) Here draw is a normal function that can be executed immediately but what is sin(x)? It's not a function to be executed immediately. It's meant to be evaluated by draw as x goes from 0 -> PI*2, or whatever the canvas later decides (it will be interactive). However, it's not a string to be evaluated either like draw('sin(x)'). I want to know what this thing is called so I can Google it and do research? An un-evaluated lambda? Free variables? Algorithmic function manipulation? And what languages would you suggest I look at for inspiration? [update] Thank you for the answers. It sounds like this is called either symbolic computation (in Mathematica) or a lazy evaluated thunk (Haskell and Lisp). In all cases it requires the main language to support expressions which are parsed but not yet evaluated. Sometimes macros perform this task. I'm using Javascript as my current host language and it doesn't support lazy evaluation or macros directly (without eval'ing strings), so you have to use anonymous functions. ex:
f = (x) => sin(x) draw(f)
or
draw( x => sin(x) )
Clearly this is not something that should be in a language aimed at non-professionals since you have to understand that some things are evaluated immediately and others happen at "some point in the future". Maybe it would make sense in the context of math functions because most people have used something like this in school, but outside that it might be more trouble than it's worth. The reason I'm investigating this is also for mapping and queries where you might need to de-structure something. ex: if you want to draw the planets to scale using a list of planet objects you'd need to de-structure the radius. In JS it would be something like:
draw( planets .map(p => p.radius) .map(r => new Circle(r)) )
but all of those parenthesis create noise that could be confusing. Has anyone done research into the UX of programming languages?
You've probably been hearing a lot about Bitcoin recently and are wondering what's the big deal? Most of your questions should be answered by the resources below but if you have additional questions feel free to ask them in the comments. It all started with the release of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper however that will probably go over the head of most readers so we recommend the following articles/books/videos as a good starting point for understanding how bitcoin works and a little about its long term potential:
Some other great resources include Lopp.net, Gigi's resource page, and James D'Angelo's Bitcoin 101 Blackboard series. Some excellent writing on Bitcoin's value proposition and future can be found at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Some Bitcoin statistics can be found here, here and here. Developer resources can be found here. Peer-reviewed research papers can be found here, also course lectures from the Princeton crypto series. Potential upcoming protocol improvements and scaling resources here and here. The number of times Bitcoin was declared dead by the media can be found here (LOL!)
Key properties of Bitcoin
Limited Supply - There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoin created and they are issued in a predictable fashion, you can view the inflation schedule here. Once they are all issued Bitcoin will be truly deflationary. The halving countdown can be found here.
Open source - Bitcoin code is fully auditable. You can read the source code yourself here.
Accountable - The public ledger is transparent, all transactions are seen by everyone.
Decentralized - Bitcoin is globally distributed across thousands of nodes with no single point of failure and as such can't be shut down similar to how Bittorrent works. You can even run a node on a Raspberry Pi.
Censorship resistant - No one can prevent you from interacting with the bitcoin network and no one can censor, alter or block transactions that they disagree with, see Operation Chokepoint.
Push system - There are no chargebacks in bitcoin because only the person who owns the address where the bitcoin resides has the authority to move them.
Low fee scaling - Fees are chosen by the sender - you can choose your own fee. An appropriate fee for an on-chain transaction depends on network demand and how much priority you wish to assign to the transaction. Most wallets calculate on chain fees automatically but you can view fee estimates here and mempool activity here. On chain fees may rise occasionally due to network demand, however instant micropayments that do not require confirmations are happening via the Lightning Network, a second layer scaling solution currently rolling out on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Borderless - No country can stop it from going in/out, even in areas currently unserved by traditional banking as the ledger is globally distributed.
Trustless - Bitcoin solved the Byzantine's Generals Problem which means nobody needs to trust anybody for it to work.
Secure - Blocks and transactions are cryptographically secured (using hashes and signatures) and can’t be brute forced or confiscated with proper key management such as hardware wallets.
Programmable - Individual units of bitcoin can be programmed to transfer based on certain criteria being met
Nearly instant - From a few seconds on the lightning network to a few minutes on-chain depending on need for confirmations. Transactions are irreversible by normal users after one confirmation and irreversible by anyone (including miners) after 6 confirmations.
Portable - Bitcoin are digital so they are easier to move than cash or gold. They can be transported by simply carrying a seed (a string of 12 to 24 words) on a device or by memorizing it for wallet recovery (while cool, memorizing is generally not recommended due to potential for forgetting the seed and the potential for insecure key generation by inexperienced users. Hardware wallets are the preferred method for most users for their ease of use and additional security).
Scalable - While the protocol is still being optimized for increased transaction capacity, blockchains do not scale very well, so most transaction volume is expected to occur on Layer 2 networks built on top of Bitcoin.
Divisible - Each bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, which means you don't have to worry about buying an entire bitcoin.
Bitcoin.org and BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com are helpful sites for beginners. You can buy or sell any amount of bitcoin (even just a few dollars worth) and there are several easy methods to purchase bitcoin with cash, credit card or bank transfer. Some of the more popular resources are below, also check out the bitcoinity exchange resources for a larger list of options for purchases.
Here is a listing of local ATMs. If you would like your paycheck automatically converted to bitcoin use Bitwage. Note: Bitcoin are valued at whatever market price people are willing to pay for them in balancing act of supply vs demand. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Securing your bitcoin
With bitcoin you can "Be your own bank" and personally secure your bitcoin OR you can use third party companies aka "Bitcoin banks" which will hold the bitcoin for you.
If you prefer to "Be your own bank" and have direct control over your coins without having to use a trusted third party, then you will need to create your own wallet and keep it secure. If you want easy and secure storage without having to learn computer security best practices, then a hardware wallet such as the Trezor, Ledger or ColdCard is recommended. Alternatively there are many software wallet options to choose from here depending on your use case.
If you prefer to let third party "Bitcoin banks" manage your coins, try Gemini but be aware you may not be in control of your private keys in which case you would have to ask permission to access your funds and be exposed to third party risk. There is a saying in the community, "Not your keys, not your coins" meaning if you don't store your coins in a wallet that you control the keys to then you do not really own your bitcoin as you have to ask permission from the third party in order to move them.
Note: For increased security, use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere it is offered, including email! 2FA requires a second confirmation code or a physical security key to access your account making it much harder for thieves to gain access. Google Authenticator and Authy are the two most popular 2FA services, download links are below. Make sure you create backups of your 2FA codes.
Physical security keys (FIDO U2F) offer stronger security than Google Auth / Authy and other TOTP-based apps, because the secret code never leaves the device and it uses bi-directional authentication so it prevents phishing. If you lose the device though, you could lose access to your account, so always use 2 or more security keys with a given account so you have backups. See Yubikey or Titan to purchase security keys. Both Coinbase and Gemini support physical security keys.
Watch out for scams
As mentioned above, Bitcoin is decentralized, which by definition means there is no official website or Twitter handle or spokesperson or CEO. However, all money attracts thieves. This combination unfortunately results in scammers running official sounding names or pretending to be an authority on YouTube or social media. Many scammers throughout the years have claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. Websites like bitcoin(dot)com and the btc subreddit are active scams. Almost all altcoins (shitcoins) are marketed heavily with big promises but are really just designed to separate you from your bitcoin. So be careful: any resource, including all linked in this document, may in the future turn evil. As they say in our community, "Don't trust, verify".
Avoid using ad-based search engines like Google or Yahoo: ads are shown based on how much the advertiser bids, and scammers can easily outbid legitimate providers for ad space, since immoral ways of earning money are far more lucrative than moral ways. Use DuckDuckGo instead, which has no ads, and never tracks you as well.
Ignore private messages offering services.
Never enter your seed words in a website of any kind. Hardware wallets will recover by displaying possible seed words on their own interface, never on a website.
Avoid clicking on links like that look like links, such as https://www.google.com/, without first hovering over it and actually checking where they go to. Just because a link is labelled with an HTTPS address does not mean it actually sends you to that address. It is trivial for someone to comment a link on Reddit that looks like it will send you to one website when it actually sends you to another, and you might not notice the difference until a scammer has gotten all your money, or you have downloaded and installed software that steals your money.
Where can I spend bitcoin?
Check out spendabit or bitcoin directory for millions of merchant options. Also you can spend bitcoin anywhere visa is accepted with bitcoin debit cards such as the CashApp card or Fold card. Some other useful site are listed below.
Gift cards for hundreds of retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, CVS, Lowes, Home Depot, iTunes, Best Buy, Sears, Kohls, eBay, GameStop, etc.
There are several benefits to accepting bitcoin as a payment option if you are a merchant;
1-3% savings over credit cards or PayPal.
No chargebacks (final settlement in 10 minutes as opposed to 3+ months).
Accept business from a global customer base.
Increased privacy.
Convert 100% of the sale to the currency of your choice for deposit to your account, or choose to keep a percentage of the sale in bitcoin if you wish to begin accumulating it.
If you are interested in accepting bitcoin as a payment method, there are several options available;
Mining bitcoin can be a fun learning experience, but be aware that you will most likely operate at a loss. Newcomers are often advised to stay away from mining unless they are only interested in it as a hobby similar to folding at home. If you want to learn more about mining you can read more here. Still have mining questions? The crew at /BitcoinMining would be happy to help you out. If you want to contribute to the bitcoin network by hosting the blockchain and propagating transactions you can run a full node. You can view the global node distribution here.
Earning bitcoin
Just like any other form of money, you can also earn bitcoin by being paid to do a job.
You can also earn bitcoin by participating as a market maker on JoinMarket by allowing users to perform CoinJoin transactions with your bitcoin for a small fee (requires you to already have some bitcoin).
Bitcoin-Related Projects
The following is a short list of ongoing projects that might be worth taking a look at if you are interested in current development in the bitcoin space.
One Bitcoin is quite large (hundreds of £/$/€) so people often deal in smaller units. The most common subunits are listed below:
Unit
Symbol
Value
Info
bitcoin
BTC
1 bitcoin
one bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis
millibitcoin
mBTC
1,000 per bitcoin
used as default unit in recent Electrum wallet releases
bit
bit
1,000,000 per bitcoin
colloquial "slang" term for microbitcoin (μBTC)
satoshi
sat
100,000,000 per bitcoin
smallest unit in bitcoin, named after the inventor
For example, assuming an arbitrary exchange rate of $10000 for one Bitcoin, a $10 meal would equal:
0.001 BTC
1 mBTC
1,000 bits
100k sats
For more information check out the Bitcoin units wiki. Still have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or stick around for our weekly Mentor Monday thread. If you decide to post a question in /Bitcoin, please use the search bar to see if it has been answered before, and remember to follow the community rules outlined on the sidebar to receive a better response. The mods are busy helping manage our community so please do not message them unless you notice problems with the functionality of the subreddit. Note: This is a community created FAQ. If you notice anything missing from the FAQ or that requires clarification you can edit it here and it will be included in the next revision pending approval. Welcome to the Bitcoin community and the new decentralized economy!
Trying to output my data to .csv, but I'm getting a file per line. Any help please?
First of all, apologies if I am missing one or more things that should be obvious. I haven't done any JS for about 1.5 years, and I am pretty rusty by now. In fact, I can barely remember having written this code, but would really like to get it working properly. With that out of the way, here is my code: HTML:
function id(file) { return new Promise((resolve, reject) => { reader = new FileReader(); reader.onload = function(e) { parsedLines = e.target.result.split(/\r|\n|\r\n/); resolve(parsedLines); }; reader.readAsText(file); }); } document.getElementById('fileInput').addEventListener('change', function(e) { var file = e.target.files[0]; if (file != undefined) { id(file).then(id => { console.log(id) console.log(parsedLines) console.log(typeof id); var idInt = id.map(Number); var idFiltered = id.filter(function(v){return v!==''}); console.log(idFiltered) idFiltered.forEach(idFiltered => { getRelease(idFiltered); }); }); } }); function getRelease(idFiltered) { return fetch(`https://api.discogs.com/releases/${idFiltered}`, { 'User-Agent': 'Dispodge0.1', }) .then(response => response.json()) .then(data => { if (data.message === 'Release not found.') { return { error: `Release with ID ${idFiltered} does not exist` }; } else { const id = data.id; const artists = data.artists ? data.artists.map(artist => artist.name) : []; const country = data.country || 'Unknown'; const released = data.released_formatted || 'Unknown'; const genres = data.genres || []; const styles = data.styles || []; const tracklist = data.tracklist ? data.tracklist.map(track => track.title) : []; console.log(idFiltered); console.log(artists, country, released, genres, styles, tracklist) // return { idFiltered, artists, country, released, genres, styles, tracklist }; const rows = [ [idFiltered, artists, country, released, genres, styles, tracklist], ]; let csvContent = "data:text/csv;charset=utf-8," + rows.map(e => e.join(",")).join("\n"); var encodedUri = encodeURI(csvContent); var link = document.createElement("a"); link.setAttribute("href", encodedUri); link.setAttribute("download", "my_data.csv"); document.body.appendChild(link); // Required for FF link.click(); } }); }
It's not far off working, as I'm getting back, for instance...
10,Lovetronic,US,1999,Electronic,Deep House,You Are Love (Jay's Afrotronic Vocal),You Are Love (After Hours Payback Session),You Are Love (Petalpusher Dub),You Are Love (Original Vocal)
But that is just the output for the last release ID in the input file (of 10 lines), and I'm getting one file per release instead of joining them all into one single file. I was looking at the method here, but to my eye that seems a lot more verbose than the apparently simpler method I found here. Any help please? I'm hoping there could be a fairly simple fix, since the output looks OK; it just needs joined into one file. Perhaps I need to iterate through the array somehow, but I'm not sure how. TIA. Edit: I just took a look in the console, and I think I can see what's going on. I think it is giving me one file per array, but what I really want is to download is actually an array of arrays. Edit2: I tried the method shown here, but I'm not getting any output at all, even after adding
document.body.appendChild(link); // Required for FF
Edit3: I'm now trying to write a specific function to deal with the download, working from this example. Edit4: I wrote a whole function to deal with the download called downloadCSV, and tried to call it from csv.html with the following button
But it doesn't seem to do anything at all; I'm not seeing anything happening in the console.
Hello I would like to improve my JavaScript skills, it took me a while to figure how functions work. And by work I mean arguments de-structure, default values, spread operator, function recursion Now I would like to get even better, write shorter and easier code to read by following Functional Programming and by Making Pure Functions. And I would like to know if it's best practice to write one-line functions and discourage the usage of anonymous functions is recommended, here is a small snippet (taken from freecodecamp)
As you can see above, we have an array with objects as movies and we want our program to create a new array with only the data we want and apply a filter which returns movies with an equal or greater than 8 rating. And my questions are the following: Which snippet do you recommend ? (both snippets are equivalent) a. Named functions
Concerns: 1st snippet: uses some more advanced concepts of JavaScript as argument/object de-structure inside of the function which might be familiar to Junior Devs or Devs who are starting now and may end up being confused, however: The code is: 1. simpler to read 2. portable 3. you don't write many things with chained functions. 4. you keep the logic separate (create a new array and then filter the array by using different functions for each) 2nd snippet: this style of writing the code, you see it everywhere unfortunately, in writing APIs
app.get("/people", (req, res, next) => { ... })
However the code is not: 1. portable 2. you may end writing the same lines of code again and again
// the only difference here might be the API endpoint app.get("/users", (req, res, next) => { ... })
However it's much more code-friendly to other developers. So what do you advice it's better doing? Should I follow the first (1st snippet) or the second (2nd snippet) approach? Would you like to share your experiences when you had to write code based on 1st and 2nd examples?
How to anonymously host the continued development of youtube-dl offshore
Original sources of this guide (might be more up to date in case you're viewing a mirror of it): https://old.reddit.com/youtubedl/comments/jktx5b/how_to_anonymously_host_the_continued_development/ https://raddle.me/f/AntiCopyright/121477/how-to-anonymously-host-the-continued-development-of-youtube In this guide I will go through how to anonymously host the continued development of youtube-dl offshore using companies that have a track record of being very resilient to DMCA takedowns. As a general disclaimer, youtube-dl is not illegal, no matter how much the RIAA wants it to be. Hosting it is not illegal, but the RIAA doesn't care about what's legal, so we'll have to act accordingly and not rely on companies that will bend over backwards for them. This post is basically my way of flipping the bird to the RIAA. DMCA ignored hosting providers RIAA report including DMCA ignored hosting providers MPAA report including DMCA ignored hosting providers United States Trade Representative report including DMCA ignored hosting providers ESA report including DMCA ignored hosting providers Europol report including DMCA ignored hosting providers La Liga report including DMCA ignored hosting providers Former bulletproof hosting reseller reviews offshore hosting providers Former bulletproof hosting reseller on what the most warez friendly hosting providers are (Novogara aka Ecatel recently got busted for tax evasion and are shady as hell in general, allowing anything to be hosted on their servers, so it's best to stay away from them.) Take into account what data center the hosting provider uses. If they don't run their their own data center the company running the data center can shut down the server if the data center isn't DMCA ignored. That isn't to say that resellers can't be resilient, but it depends on how resilient the data center they use is. This goes without saying, but keeping the hosting provider secret makes it a lot harder to take down. Some countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Korea force hosting providers to use government SSL certificates, meaning that they can MITM the connection. CDNs and proxies to hide the real hosting provider DDoS-Guard - Highly recommended. Based in Russia. Doesn't care about DMCA at all. DDoS-Guard is mentioned in the MPAA's Notorious Markets report and currently provides protection for Nyaa (the world's largest public torrent tracker for anime and manga) and Sci-Hub (the world's largest piracy website for academic papers which is under constant legal pressure from big US publishers). Has a free plan and accepts Bitcoin for paid plans. DDoS-Guard might be inaccessible outside of Europe for a few hours/month, meaning that sites using it would be unreachable outside of Europe during that time. This is probably peering related, but I'm not sure. Just tell site visitors to use ProtonVPN's free plan and connect to one of their VPN servers in the Netherlands if that happens. While I recommend DDoS-Guard, I'll list some other alternatives in case something happens: CloudFlare - Might be a honeypot, especially since I'm not sure how they'd be able to get away with this otherwise, but CloudFlare works for now. Just don't expect privacy from them. They're a US based company so they'll probably be reigned in eventually, but for now they're having their Wild West days. CloudFlare has a free plan. If CloudFlare is not configured properly when set up the real hosting provider will be leaked. More info about that here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
It's a myth that Cloudflare does not forward DMCA complaints, they forward everything. However, Cloudflare does not store any "sensitive data", which means forwarding "useless" information is similar like ignoring the DMCA request. A general advice is that whenever you use Cloudflare you should use a bulletproof backend server as well to avoid DMCA takedown request in the first place, so less or nothing gets forwarded (less "leakage risk").
Source: CHEF-KOCH / Warez / Bulletproof Hosting.md OVPN's public IPv4 proxy (the Switzerland proxy) - Swedish company that provided a proxy for The Pirate Bay for a while, went to court because of it, and won. The two advantages with their Switzerland proxy in particular is that it's hosted by Interxion - the same Netherlands based company that is hosting Feral Hosting's DMCA ignored seedboxes - and that Switzerland is a pretty good jurisdiction. OVPN also scores well on That One Privacy Site. Accepts Bitcoin. Before we go into registering a domain, I think it's worth considering if it's really worth keeping the name youtube-dl or if it could be spun off into a more accurate and less trademark infringing name like media-dl, for example. It downloads video and audio from a lot more sites than just YouTube, after all. Resilient TLDs (there are more options than just these) .is - As of a few years ago ISNIC had only ever suspended one domain and it was connected to ISIS.
When we asked whether ISNIC would follow Greenland’s lead and move for a proactive suspension, we got a clear answer. “The short answer is no. Such an action would require a formal order from an Icelandic court. ISNIC is not responsible for a registrant’s usage of their domains,” ISNIC’s Marius Olafsson told TorrentFreak. “This policy applies equally to any .is domain,” Olafsson says, adding that it’s the domain owner’s responsibility to abide by the law, not theirs.
“Domains can hardly be considered illegal any more than a street address. A street address is not illegal even if there is illegal activity in one apartment at the address,” ISNIC says.
thepiratebay.cr domain is still online despite actions against it from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica. Other notorious infringing sites are following the trend of using .cr domains as a safe haven (e.g., kickasstorrents.cr). Costa Rica’s failure to deal effectively with its obligations regarding online infringement, more than eight years after they came into force under DR-CAFTA, is a serious concern.
In case you want cheaper options that are available on Njalla, .ws and .ch are said to be pretty good. .ec is also looking pretty solid as Library Genesis (the world's largest book piracy website, which is under constant legal pressure from big US publishers) have been using it for some time without getting suspended. Vulnerable TLDs .com, .net, .cc, .tv, and .name are operated by VeriSign, a Washington DC based company that is controlled by the US government. .org, .info, .asia, .aero, .ag, .bz, .gi, .hgn, .in, .lc, .me, .mobi, .mn, .sc and .vc are operated by Afilias, a company that blocked one of WikiLeaks' domains. .site, .website, .tech, .online, .uno, .fun, .space, .store, and .press are operated by Radix, a company that has an anti-piracy partnership with the MPAA. All TLDs operated by Donuts, a company that has an anti-piracy partnership with the MPAA. Resilient domain registrars/resellers Recommended: Njalla - As anonymous as you can get when buying a domain. Njalla is a Nevis registered company that buys the more common domains from Canada based Tucows, which is pretty abuse friendly and some TLDs like .is they buy from the registry directly. They then lease it to you while legally speaking they own the domain. This means that you don't have to give them any personal information to register it and they take Monero. Njalla is mentioned in the RIAA and MPAA's Norotious Markets reports. Njalla has a Tor Hidden Service, PGP key, and has support for registration via XMPP with OTR. Njalla is run by one of the Pirate Bay founders and they kept the Pirate Bay sense of humor alive when dealing with DMCA. Other: NiceVPS - As anonymous as you can get when buying a domain. NiceVPS is a domain reseller based in the Dominican Republic that buys the domain from easyDNS and then leases it to you, meaning that you don't have to provide any personal information since they own the domain on paper. Accepts Monero. Has a Tor Hidden Service, PGP key, and warrant canary. I've seen NiceVPS recommended on some websites, but I'm not sure how solid it is. Doesn't seem to offer all of the TLDs that Njalla, Openprovider, and easyDNS offer, including a lot of the more resilient ones. Openprovider aka Hosting Concepts B.V. - Netherlands based registrar that is one of the most abused registrars by rogue pharma sites. Doesn't suspend domains without a WIPO decision or court order. Has a full section dedicated to it in the United States Trade Representative's 2019 report and a brief mention in the 2020 report. easyDNS - Canada based registrar that has a big focus on due process. The current registrar of The Pirate Bay's .org domain, which it defended against the RIAA. Wouldn't suspend a domain for a video downloader like youtube-dl unless ordered by ICANN, CIRA, or a court according to their takedown policy. Accepts Bitcoin. There are a few resellers of bulletproof Russian and Chinese registrars that accept cryptocurrency, but because those are pretty much only used by cyber criminals they would not be a good look for this project. And there's also the risk that they'll just be gone one day without a word and no way to transfer domain and not much recourse. Because of those reasons I'm omitting them from this list. I think the above mentioned registrars and resellers will be good enough, the project is legal after all. Worth considering: In order to anonymously directly register a domain at any of the other mentioned services than Njalla and NiceVPS you'd have to fake the WHOIS information, which violates ICANN's rules and registrars usually suspend domains because of that. I could especially imagine easyDNS doing this. Not sure how the other registrars would react to that, but ICANN does have the power to withdraw their accreditation - meaning that the registrars would lose the ability to issue domains - if they don't follow ICANN's rules. In the cases of Njalla and NiceVPS they aren't a registrar, they just fill in their own details and buy the domain for you from a registry/registrar when you register a domain using them. If you use Njalla or NiceVPS you're handing over control of the domain to somebody else and have to take their word for it that you'll always have access to the domain. It's easier to trust Njalla than NiceVPS in this case since it's known who owns Njalla and they have more of a track record than NiceVPS, which is fairly unknown. TLS/SSL Let's Encrypt - Free, uses open source software, backed by EFF, Mozilla, and others. Easy to set up and easy to maintain with an auto-renewal script. If you're using CloudFlare, you'll have to use their phony SSL certificate. Keeping your server secure and other technical advice
Check your server, and how reliable it is in terms of security and privacy, online services like https://centminmod.com can test your server and it's configuration to ensure nothing is "leaking". Check if someone can see your hidden backend server IP via https://dnsdumpster.com. In general you should block every IP connection to your backend server, only allow your own connection, VPN's or reverse proxies. You quickly can check if someone has an "open" backend IP service via services like https://censys.io.
Source: CHEF-KOCH / Warez / Bulletproof Hosting.md If you use CloudFlare, also check that your backend isn't leaking using CrimeFlare. If you have set up email with your domain, use SMPT and a custom mail server so it doesn't leak your origin server IP. Email is the easiest way to leak origin server IP addresses. Use SSH instead of VNC. With VNC the login information is sent unencrypted via plaintext, meaning that a rogue exit node in the Tor network and any server the login information is sent over on the clearnet could record your login information if they wanted to. Use a password generator for all accounts and have it set to the max number of characters. Don't put the login information into a proprietary password manager or an online password manager. Make sure to back up the login information to multiple hard drives/SSDs/USBs/etc. Try and make the site portable so that all software and all configurations can be saved to an ISO that can be spun up at any hosting provider at a moment's notice in case the site has to move at some point. If you get a VPS, make sure it's KVM. KVM is much more secure than OpenVZ since OpenVZ doesn't have much separation between different customers on the same server. OpenVZ is also easy to oversell. Xen is also secure, but has worse performance than KVM. Use nginx, it has a lot better performance than Apache. Use MariaDB. It's a more up to date fork of MySQL developed by MySQL's original developer after he sold MySQL to Oracle. Contains bug fixes that sometimes have not gotten into MySQL yet. It is of course fully compatible with MySQL databases. Basic security hardening (I'd probably use OSSEC + Shorewall instead of fail2ban and ufw, but I'm not an expert at this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) nginx configuration for improved security (and performance): GitHub Gist | blog post (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are both Google Public DNS resolvers, so if you enable OCSP stapling, use a more privacy friendly DNS resolver, like Njalla's public DNS, one of the DNS resolvers mentioned on PrivacyTools, one of the DNS resolvers in DNS66's settings, or an OpenNIC server that doesn't keep logs. Digitalcourage e.V. and Chaos Computer Club are pretty trustworthy organizations, so their DNS servers from DNS66's settings along with Njalla's DNS resolver are probably solid, at least. Few OpenNIC servers seem to last very long, judging by that most of them were added in 2019 and 2020. If you use CloudFlare for the site, just use CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 DNS, they'll get site traffic data regardless, so just use them for that DNS resolver as well instead of sending out data to another party. nginx tuning for best performance nginx SSL/TLS hardening including HTTP Strict Transport Security Top 25 Nginx Web Server Best Security Practices Let's Encrypt auto-renewal script If you need FTP server software, Pure-FTPd is the most secure option. Use SFTP instead of FTPS for better security and less of a headache. Disable password access for administration, require login using a SSH key, and limit the number of login attempts. Change default ports, like SSH. If anyone tries to access the default SSH port, have the firewall block them for a few hours. Disable root login. More security tips for SSH are available here. Don't implement port knocking though. Disable nginx logging once everything is set up to protect user privacy and improve performance. Keep the software up to date to decrease the risk of your serveVPS being hacked. Don't use analytics. If you have to, self-host Matomo (formerly known as Piwik). It's open source. Keep up to date backups of the site on multiple hard drives/SSDs/etc. Anonymous payments Bitcoin is fully traceable nowadays and tumbling/mixing your Bitcoin won't make any difference.
Tumblers are useless Against my better judgement, I’m going with this click bait heading, but the premise is correct. Due to the software running real time analysis on the ledger, simply avoiding taint and breaking up coins is now entirely ineffective, as it matches the full bitcoin amount to be received over a period of time, as the software is built around a neural net of sorts (talking out of school here, I’m not a programmer) it appears to self-correct in real time as a more "likely" or "accurate" owner conclusion is reached.
Source: Blockchain Analysis and Anti-Money Laundering (X-post from /DarknetmarketsOz) Meanwhile Monero was the only cryptocurrency that that the US government couldn't track when they took down one of one of the biggest darknet drug markets and seized the site operator's cryptocurrencies. This is because Monero is the only major cryptocurrency properly designed to be private. Update: There has apparently been some recent developments when it comes to tracing Monero. You can read more about it in my comment on Reddit or Raddle. I wouldn't worry too much about it at this stage though. Use I2P or Tor when transacting with cryptocurrency. I2P has some privacy benefits in its design over Tor:
Unidirectional tunnels instead of bidirectional circuits, doubling the number of nodes a peer has to compromise to get the same information. Protection against detecting client activity, even when an attacker is participating in the tunnel, as tunnels are used for more than simply passing end to end messages (e.g. netDb, tunnel management, tunnel testing) Tunnels in I2P are short lived, decreasing the number of samples that an attacker can use to mount an active attack with, unlike circuits in Tor, which are typically long lived. I2P APIs are designed specifically for anonymity and security, while SOCKS is designed for functionality.
However, I2P doesn't have as much funding and reseach or as big of a developer community behind it. I2P's userbase is also a lot smaller than Tor's. A full comparison about that can be found here. Monero chose I2P over Tor. More information about Monero + I2P/Tor is available here. Either get cryptocurrency donations or use a peer-to-peer exchange that doesn't enforce KYC (Know Your Customer) to buy Monero or Bitcoin. Unlike centralized exchanges, private sellers on decentralized exchanges won't automatically submit all their data to the government. Even if you get all of the cryptocurrency via donations and it therefore has no connection to your real identity at all you should still anonymize it via Monero so that it can't be traced from the donation wallet to the hosting provider which you want to keep hidden. Some private sellers on peer-to-peer exchanges won't require IDs, while some might require it. If nothing is mentioned, it's worth asking the seller before you send them any money. A few even accept cash meetups and cash by mail (watch out for being scammed or mugged though). If you do go to a crypto for cash meetup, make sure it's in a public place with lots of people in case something goes wrong. LocalCoinSwap, LocalCryptos, and LocalMonero even has sellers that accept gift cards (which you could buy with cash in a physical store). However, most gift cards are only redeemable in the country they were bought in, making this an option that won't work outside of the countries the sellers are based in. The one exception to this that I know of are Steam Wallet gift cards, which work internationally. If your method of paying for cryptocurrency involves going somewhere to buy it/a gift card/a prepaid card/a burner phone, consider leaving your phone at home since it's essentially a tracking beacon. If it's a cryptocurrency for cash meetup you might want to have it with you in case something goes wrong though. From what I've read there are some centralized exchanges that don't require KYC, but at least some of them freeze funds if they think it seems suspicious (which I would imagine a Tor IP would fall under) and they refuse to release the funds until they have been provided with an ID. If you decide to buy cryptocurrency using a normal payment method, a wire transfer would be the option that involves the least amount of companies getting the transaction info, though I don't think you'd have much recourse with getting your money back if you got scammed and paid via wire transfer. Bitcoin ATMs may require ID and usually have surveillance cameras around them, but this may vary depending on where you live. If you bought Bitcoin, use XMR.to to exchange it to Monero. If the service provider only accepts Bitcoin and not Monero, exchange the Monero back to Bitcoin so that the Bitcoin has been anonymized. Don't pay in Bitcoin without exchanging it to Monero and back first. Prepaid cards usually require SMS verification and are sometimes limited to purchases within the country they were sold in, so be sure to read up on whatever card you're considering using. Vanilla Visa gift cards used to be the go to for VPN buyers back in the day since they only required putting a zip code into a website, but things change, so read up about activation requirements and international purchases for the card in your country before buying anything and if you get information from an unofficial source, try and make sure that it's at least somewhat recent. If SMS activation is required there are two options. One option is buying a push-button burner phone and a prepaid SIM card at a physical store using cash, activate it at a major public place and then once the prepaid card is activated shut off the phone and take out the SIM card and the battery. Another option is buying access to a dedicated number in the same country that you bought the card in at an online SMS inbox site using cryptocurrency (the free SMS inboxes that have shared phone number might be used up already). The catch 22 there is that you wouldn't have any cryptocurrency yet at this stage, so it's not really an option unless you figure something out that I wasn't able to think of. If the prepaid card can't do international purchases you could withdraw the money into an anonymously created PayPal account (requires SMS verification). Expect the prepaid card and PayPal account to almost certainly get frozen if you try to pay with it over Tor. The risk is lower when paying via a VPN IP, but it's still a notable risk, especially if it's a VPN server with lots of users and you can never verify that the VPN provider isn't logging you. An anonymously paid for self-hosted VPN on a dedicated IP address in the same country that you bought the prepaid card would be less likely to cause the card to get frozen. A residential proxy/proxy would be the least likely to get the card frozen. Just don't connect to that residential or self-hosted VPN/proxy directly using your real IP address since your ISP would see that and since you would be the only user of that self-hosted VPN it would be directly identifying. You could use the prepaid card on public WiFi, but that will give out your general location and will give the WiFi network your IP address. It will also give the WiFi network your MAC address, so be sure to set the MAC address to be random (just search something like "[operating system] random mac address on wifi" on DuckDuckGo). Then there's the issue that most browsers other than Tor Browser, SecBrowser, and Bromite are bad combating browser fingerprinting. Sure you could also customize Firefox with arkenfox user.js (formerly known as ghacks-user.js) and a bunch of add-ons to combat all the different kinds of tracking, but you'll just make your browser more unique the more you modify it. Anonymous Internet browsing Use Tor when doing anything in connection with the site, including when using PuTTY and FileZilla. Verify the integrity of the Tor Browser installer using PGP before running it so that you know that it hasn't been tampered with. Use a bridge if you don't want your ISP/government to see that you're using Tor. Running Tor over a VPN may seem like a good idea, but even if the VPN provider really doesn't keep logs (which is impossible to verify) using Tor over VPN can make you easier to track since that makes the VPN service a permanent entry node [1][2][3][4] and there's also VPN fingerprinting. If Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is a concern you can use Pluggable Transports [1][2] to disguise the Tor traffic. Keep Tor Browser up to date. Never run Tor Browser in full screen. That makes you more easily trackable as websites can detect the real resolution of your screen. Don't install any add-ons or plugins, that makes you a lot easier to track. If you have logged in and then logged out of a site it can link you to other accounts you have on the same site using session cookies if you login to those accounts without hitting the "New Identity" button to relaunch Tor Browser with a clean slate. Block JavaScript when the website doesn't require it, that's the closest thing you'll come to an ad blocker. Use the Hidden Service version of sites when available, that way your Internet traffic never goes onto the clearnet and it also adds three more proxies between you and the site's server for a total of six proxies. Since you shouldn't use an ad blocker with Tor Browser it's important that you keep your operating system up to date to minimize the risk of getting infected in case you come across some malicious JavaScript via for example malvertising when you have JavaScript activated. If you use Windows and don't want to switch to Linux (even though you can set up dual boot or just boot it from a USB without even having to install it on your computer), use a non-admin user account and have an admin account that you only use to authorize trusted software to run, that will mitigate 94% of critical Windows vulnerabilities. You can use a tool like W10Privacy to decrease the amount of tracking in Windows 10, just be sure that the tool you use is updated to match the latest version of Windows 10 or you might brick your OS. Email Use an end-to-end encrypted no logs email provider located outside of Five Eyes, Germany, Enemies of the Internet, and countries under surveillance - preferably ProtonMail - when signing up for all of those services. Use a different email address for anything not related to the administration of the website. ProtonMail has a Tor Hidden Service, but signing up for ProtonMail is only possible on the clearnet address, so you'd have to go into Tor Browser's privacy settings and change "Prioritize .onion sites when known" from "Always" to "Ask every time" when you register the ProtonMail account. Change it back to "always" once the registration is complete. And yes, it is possible to sign up for ProtonMail via Tor. It's not easy finding an exit node that hasn't gotten blocked yet, and you will most likely need a secondary anonymous email account on another email provider to send a verification code to, but it is possible. Don't try using a disposable email service, ProtonMail blocks pretty much all of them so you'll just waste time and will probably get your account frozen. Once you have made an account, go into Settings > Security and then wipe and disable the authentication logs. Once that's done - before you sign up for anything - log out and wait a while then log back in, just to see if their anti-fraud system decides to freeze your account or not. If you go for a email provider other than ProtonMail, keep in mind that it has to be there for the long haul in order to be usable. If it suddenly shuts down without notice, you're pretty much shit out of luck. So try and go for one that has been around for a while and seems like it will continue to stick around. Comparison of alternatives: https://privacytools.io/providers/email/ https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/email-comparison/#3 https://www.prxbx.com/email/ Other Use a new username that you haven't used before. Use end-to-end encryption for all private communications. ProtonMail has built-in end-to-end encryption between ProtonMail accounts. If you want to encrypt email with PGP when communicating with non-ProtonMail users follow this guide. That will allow you to import it into ProtonMail. Just remember that the subject line will not be encrypted by PGP. PGP/MIME gives out less metadata than PGP inline and is just better in general, so use PGP/MIME. For file transfers you can also use OnionShare if the receipient also uses Tor Browser or put the file(s) into a password protected .7z file using 7-Zip with the "Encrypt file names" option enabled + a password generator set to the max number of characters that you then upload to Disroot Upload. Be aware that the lufi software that Disroot Upload runs on keeps the filename visible after the file has been deleted. If you need an end-to-end encrypted pastebin, self-host PrivateBin or use Disroot's PrivateBin. Disroot uses a privacy respecting hosting provider and claim that they don't keep logs for services that don't require an account, such as Disroot Upload and Disroot's PrivateBin. Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google. At least when doing work related to the site. It has a Tor Hidden Service that you can easily find by searching "duckduckgo onion" or "duckduckgo hidden service" on DuckDuckGo. Rely on open source software and privacy respecting services when it comes to processing and storing data related to the site. PrivacyTools.io, awesome-privacy, AlternativeTo, and GitHub makes it easy to find privacy respecting alternatives. Keep software on your devices up to date to decrease the risk of it being compromised by an exploit. And yeah, I probably went pretty deep on some of the less relevant sections, but I thought it was best to include everything.
Darknet MDMA market purchase study participants sought $100 prize x 10
Darknet MDMA market purchase study Approved by Admins: I am seeking participants in a darknet market study. Participation involves navigating through a simulated darknet marketplace, reading information about a darknet vendor and product, and answering questions about your impressions on a Qualtrics survey. YOU MAY REMAIN COMPLETELY ANONYMOUS! This is a completely simulated marketplace, located on a Surfacenet server (AWS), and therefore, does not require TOR or any specialised software to access. The entire site has been recoded to simulate an actual market and therefore, there is no requirement for the generation of a wallet, nor can actual products be purchased. You will not be directed to any actual darknet sites in the course of the participation. To participate anonymously in the study, please use the following weblink: https://chfstsdarkmarket.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/index.html By participating, you may choose to enter a prize draw to win 1 of 10 gift cards, each valued at AUD$100. The study has been approved by the University of the Sunshine Coast Human Research Ethics Committee (approval number A201417) FAQs Why are you conducting this study? We hope to better understand how buyers make purchasing decisions on darknet markets and what drives their purchase decisions Factors include vendor appearance, ratings and reputation, forum comments, prices, advertisements and presentation of products, etc… Is this a real darknet illicit market? NO – it is model of a darknet market with a combined forum hosted on the Surfacenet Are these real vendors? NO – I created 16 vendors, logos, and pages offering products for sale, all with unique names and logos. Can I really buy drugs and other items? NO – you cannot purchase anything on this site, you will not create a wallet, and you cannot expend funds Can I access the darknet through this site? NO – at least, you shouldn’t. I have converted ALL of the onion hyperlinks to the local site to keep you safe Do you collect any personal information? NO – you remain completely anonymous; in fact, feel free to use a VPN, TOR (either organic or built in to Brave) or other anonymising software Must I run Javascript? NO – feel free to use any stripped down version of any browser and disable functionality of the browser (including extensions) Must I create an account or log on to access the site? NO – the site does not have the usual access controls (including captchas) to limit access, also, the PGP keys are all bogus What are you going to do with the data you collect? Analyse it and publish articles on our findings. Will you make the findings available to the public? YES – as part of the publication process. Thanks for your participation!
What is the point of storing unnamed functions in a variable?
What is the point of storing unnamed functions in a variable? Why not just create a regular function? Is there any point in doing things this way? For example, in Javascript:
let show = function () { console.log('Anonymous function'); }; show();
Why not just create a function show() in the normal way, instead of storing it in a variable? They are both the same things, afaik.
This is a potentially stupid question, but I'm a little bit high and I'm confused. How exactly does a server get spun up?
So if I'm writing a node server file on my local computer, I spin it up by allowing my local host port 3000 (or frankly whatever I choose) and creating a "listening" state. However, when you host servers online, where exactly do you host them? This may be a really stupid question, but when you upload your server code to an EC2 instance on AWS for example, is that considered a server because the code will run and live on there forever, always being open? And the only way to reach that code is via APIs that code serves, right? Like, what if you hosted on GoDaddy and had your own series of subdomains. Can you consider those subdomains servers if you deployed some kind of VM and ran the code from that VM which served directly to those subdomains? Also, what are LAMBDA functions? Are they like anonymous functions or something in Javascript? I never quite got the grasp of what they were. I'm [8/10]🥦 right now, uhh. I'm sober now. This was NOT a troll post. You guys are awesome at /node. Fuck yeah. Go Lakers.
Hi everyone, I've had this idea for a while now to create and distribute a survey for Emacs users. The primary goal is for the community to have a better understanding of itself and how diverse it is based on interests and Emacs usage. I think it's amazing how the same piece of software can be so useful for so many different people, from software and web engineering, all the way to academia and journalism. On the flip side, there can be miscommunication at time from this diversity and how users essentially want different things from Emacs. Right now, the most accurate data we have are the statistics on Melpa and the yearly Stackoverflow survey. I think there is so much more value we can gain by asking the right questions. But it is not an easy endeavor and I definitely need some help. Obviously, we don't want to bombard the wrong people with the wrong questions, so it has to be done right on the first try.
What needs to be tackled
We obviously need a meaningful and not overwhelming list of questions to populate the survey. I've added some in the section below.
Distribution Channels. What are the proper places to post and share the survey to get it in front of Emacs users out there? Reddit, IRC, devel mailing list, Telegram channels, Blog posts? There would be big selection bias if we only post on Reddit for example.
How to collect data? I used services like SurveyMonkey in the past but I don't know if people have privacy concerns with it. I'm even less sure about what to do for people who do not want to use Javascript, if there is a service that would work without it.
How to incentivize people to fill it out? We need a high response rate but also quality in the responses.
What kind of timeline to expect? How long to keep the survey open for?
How to redistribute the survey results to the community? We obviously have to anonymize if it isn't already. And ideally people who are more well versed in data analysis can take a pass at the results and share findings.
Chrome OS Stable channel got promoted to Chrome OS 85. This is what changed!
https://preview.redd.it/w6v33efodnk51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=64a402d6eafbe49d4660ca46a5599bfd6e3473e7 _All right crew! The Chrome OS Stable Channel got promoted to milestone today - from 84.0.4147.136 to 85.0.4183.84. As with every new milestone update, this brings massive new changes to the table, offering several new features, bug fixes, and security enhancements to better improve your Chrome OS user experience. Due to the sheer size, I may be missing a few things here and there. Here is what changed! Like my content and want to buy me a coffee?You can support me on ko-fi using this linkor by using the link in my Reddit profile. If you want to be kept up to date with everything new to Chrome OS, feel free to give me a follow. Thanks in advance for your support!! :) Accessibility
Color cursors: New accessibility feature flag to change cursor colors in Chrome OS. This feature has 5 colors for now: Red, Orange, Green, Blue, and Purple. Custom cursor colors are important for visibility to some users with vision impairment (e.g. color blindness).
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-accessibility-cursor-colors
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#enable-ambient-mode
Slideshow: new subpage that allows users to customize which album or category they want the Ambient slideshow to pick from. For example, you can customize the Ambient lock screen to show a particular family album on Google Photos, or a specific category of backgrounds curated by Google.
Behavior: Ambient lock screen will keep the screen on only when the charger is plugged in.
Behavior: Pressing any key on the keyboard will take you from the Ambient slideshow to the password page.
Behavior: Ambient lock screen will exit and switch to the password view when creating large mouse movements. Small mouse movements won’t do anything.
Android subsystem
Default apps: Replaced the Google Play Music Android app with YouTube Music Android app. This is done in preparation to fully migrate Google Play Music subscribers to YouTube Music. Note that upgrading to this version of Chrome OS may not uninstall Google Play Music.
Mic gain: the brand new mic gain feature is enabled by default, which allows you to quickly adjust your microphone sensitivity through the Shelf so your voice isn’t too loud or soft in a call.
Login Screen: The login screen will now display system notifications (update notifications, low battery, etc.)
Window Management: Fixed windows not restoring to their original windowed size when flinging the window up to maximize, dragging the window down and flinging up again to maximize, and clicking the unmaximize icon in the window controls.
Window management: New animation when dragging a maximized window down from the top to unmaximize it.
Shelf: The app scaling feature flag is enabled by default. This shrinks the app icons size when the user exceeds the available space to add an additional app icon in tablet mode. Personally, I wish this app icon resizing also occurs in clamshell mode, but this is a good step in the right direction.
Login screen: the lock screen media controls will hide when closing your Chromebook’s lid or if your device sleeps.
Launcher search: Google Play store search in the launcher is enabled by default, which allows you to quickly find an app on the Google Play store through launcher search.
Status Area: Resized tooltip text size in the shelf quick settings bubble to avoid truncation for long labels. This also includes adding a length limit to tooltips used in the status tray.
Multi display: Fixed app scaling not applying to hidden or extended shelf (shelf that displays on a secondary display) after screen rotates.
Shelf: Fixed a bug that caused app icons size to increase on the shelf or launcher when dragging it with the context menu open.
App drawer: fixed a sync bug where dragging and dropping an app from one launcher page to another on one device will incorrectly create a new launcher page with another device.
Overview mode: right click to access the context menu will be suppressed when right clicking the Virtual desk name.
Login screen: New policy to allow SAML users to be set through the online flow on the lock screen in order to verify and sync their password.
Multi display: Opening apps from the Shelf or launcher context menu will properly open new windows in the same display as they were launched from. Previously, windows were always opened in the display of the last active window.
Launcher: Users can close the launcher search bar by swiping left while in tablet mode.
Launcher: The launcher won’t show a drag handle on top if the Shelf is set to show on the side instead of the bottom.
Shelf: the context menu app icon sizes (right-click the apps on the shelf) will have consistent sizes.
Window management: Fixed a small bug where the multi-window resizer widget (the resize vertical rectangle when hovering cursor in between two snapped windows) would persist during the Overview mode transition.
Login screen: changed the Wi-Fi icon from black to white to improve legibility.
Login screen: Relanded change to show enterprise disclosure as a bottom status indicator in the login/lock screen.
Shelf: Fixed a bug where the material design ripple effect when long pressing or clicking app icons on the Shelf would randomly get misaligned.
Login screen: The login screen clock will change clock type (12hr, 24hr) depending on the settings specified on the user profile. If the primary account is using a 12 hour clock and they add a secondary account that uses a 24 hour clock, clicking on the secondary account in the login screen will switch the clock type from 12 hours to 24 hours.
Notifications: Critical system warning notifications will no longer get filtered by Do not disturb.
Virtual desks: New experimental feature flag that limits items on the shelf to the ones associated with windows on the active desk.
Boost your virtual desk productivity now by enabling chrome://flags/#ash-limit-shelf-items-to-active-desk
Virtual Desks: Virtual desk area now uses the same color as the Shelf to be more consistent with the color scheme. Previously, the virtual desk area used a persistent dark gray color.
Google Assistant Media Session integration is turned on by default. This means when you ask the Google Assistant to pause music, it’ll pause the music instead of “this feature is unsupported”.
Camera app
Video: you can pause and resume video recording, and take a still snapshot while recording.
File: Videos are automatically saved in MP4 format, which makes it easy to share them with friends and edit videos in other apps.
Shutter: Added a sound effect to the pause and resume button when recording a video. The sound effect is identical to Google’s camera app on a Pixel device when pressing the pause and resume button.
Chrome
Memory: Improved resource consumption when a window is covered by other windows.
Javascript throttling: New feature flag that throttles javascript timers to 1 wake up per minute in the background. Local experiments conducted by Google conclude that throttling javascript timers to 1 wake up per minute can extend battery life from 4 hours and 42 minutes, to 5 hours and 18 minutes, when YouTube is playing in the foreground and 36 tabs are opened in the background.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#intensive-wake-up-throttling
Performance: increased the browser tab loading performance up to 10% thanks to profile guided optimizations, which allows the most critical part of the code to work faster.
Tab Groups: The tab groups feature flag is enabled by default. You will now be able to organize your tabs into groups and collapse them.
Privacy Redesign: the privacy redesign feature flag is enabled by default, which makes managing cookies, passwords, and privacy settings more intuitive. This includes using secure DNS to improve your security and privacy while browsing the web.
Safety Check: Chrome should now have a built-in safety check feature, which checks for compromised passwords and dangerous websites to keep you safe.
Tab Hover Previews: the tab hover previews flag is enabled by default. You’ll now be able to hover your cursor over tabs to quickly see a small thumbnail preview of that page.
Incognito: Incognito mode will automatically block third-party cookies so websites cannot use cookies to track you on the web. This feature adds a nifty toggle to turn this feature on or off.
PDF viewer: you will now be able to fill out and save PDFs in Chrome
Memory: Dynamic tcmalloc is enabled by default, which adjusts tcmalloc's thread cache sizes in response to memory pressure. Experimentally this improved the number of loadable tabs on low end Chromebooks by 10% while also reducing tab switch times by nearly 5%.
Fixed a bug that caused the incorrect tab URL to be seen on the New Tab Page’s hover card after cancelling “Turn on Sync” overlay.
Permissions: Chrome will now show the quiet notification permission UI for sites known to trick users into accepting the notification permission.
Permissions: new permission “chip” feature flag featuring a slick design when a website asks the user for permissions.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#permission-chip
Chrome OS Print preview: tweaked the dropdown design. There is a new printer icon next to the printer name with a colored status bubble to indicate the printer status. Also, various fixes to the drop down came with this build of Chrome OS, including fixing labels from overflowing the input field and properly displaying the status underneath the dropdown.
Chrome OS Print preview: the print preview will show the printer status of USB printers by informing users that the USB printer is currently connected or disconnected to the device.
WebUI Tab strips: new drag animation when dragging tab groups.
WebUI New Tab page: interactive doodles will now display on themed new tab page.
Fixed not being able to drag and drop files when opening the media controls in the Chrome toolbar.
GPU: New Chrome flag that uses Skia Deferred Display Lists when performing rasterizations in the GPU process. With the flag enabled, the raster decoder will record raster work into a deferred display list first, and then play it back into a SkSurface. For now, recording and playing back are on the GPU main thread. In future, the recording could be moved to raster worker threads. This feature further reduces the CPU load and moves some of the work to the GPU, saving battery and improving performance.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#enable-oop-rasterization-ddl
Client storage: New flag that records the first-party contexts in which client-side storage was accessed.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#client-storage-access-context-auditing
Clear browsing: New feature flag that puts a new installed apps warning dialog to the clear browsing data flow to prevent users from accidentally deleting installed apps’ data.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#installed-apps-in-cbd
Audio: Initial support of 5.1 and 7.1-channel surround sound audio of Chrome on Chrome OS. This is big news for Stadia gamers since this brings surround sound to the gaming experience. I don't have a surround sound audio system to test this, but if you do, let me know in the comments if it works!
Notifications: Chrome will silently notify users on the right side of the URL bar when websites attempt to abuse notification content
Password check: fixed password check banner illustration from exceeding the width of the settings columns when window shrinks to a small size.
Gamepad: Added gamepad mappings for ELECOM controllers (JC-U4013SBK and JC-U4113SBK) when they’re in Direct Input (“D”) mode.
DevTools: Chrome DevTools now supports editing programmatically constructed stylesheet objects.
Print preview: Fixed unable to tab to select sections in print preview after clicking the zoom out icon.
Storage: New feature flag that tells Chrome to inform applications about your device’s low disk space. This allows them to adjust their caching strategy and ensure a smooth and uninterrupted experience for their users.
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#enable-storage-pressure-event.
PDF viewer: increased the page selector minimum width and padding.
Chrome OS Settings
Settings search: The brand new Chrome OS settings search feature is enabled by default. Unlike the old search that used exact string matching, this search uses fuzzy search algorithms to suggest sections of Chrome OS settings, making it easier to search for settings
Wi-Fi sync: Wi-Fi sync feature flag is enabled by default. This will allow Chrome OS to sync Wi-fi network configurations with Chrome sync. This is useful for users who connected to several different networks before and can’t remember what the passwords are. When you enter a Wi-Fi password on your personal profile on one Chromebook, that info is securely saved with your account even when you log in to another Chromebook.
Display settings: fixed a bug where the resolution drop-down could get disabled when changing an external monitor’s display resolution.
Display modes: The list all display modes feature flag is enabled by default. This means that separate refresh rate and resolution dropdowns will be shown in Chrome OS Display settings when an external display is connected.
Network: Fixed small oversight with the Add Wi-fi and VPN dialogs that caused the two dialogs to have no shadow or border.
Smart Inputs: New “Manage personal information” link under “Smart inputs” that links users to Chrome setting’s “Address and more”.
Smart Inputs: New toggle in Smart inputs under the Language and inputs category that disables emoji suggestions.
Icons: Updated Wi-Fi and Mobile data network icons to Google Material outline theme.
Fixed a visual bug with the Chrome OS settings search bar where clicking the search bar would cause it to grow larger than the inactive search bar. Also fixes the strange search bar corners.
Network: The “Metered network” feature is disabled by default, which brought a metered network toggle to Wi-Fi and Cellular connection into Chrome OS settings.
To get this toggle back, enable chrome://flags/#show-metered-toggle
Family Link
Permissions: When a child account tries to modify the timezone preference, a parent must provide an access code to apply the changes.
Permissions: When a managed user attempts to launch a restricted app from the launcher, they will have a new dialog that asks for parent permission if the parent has the “permissions for sites, apps and extensions” toggle enabled; otherwise the user will have an error dialog. Previously, clicking an app that is disabled pending approval does nothing.
Clock: The clock format will change on the child’s lock screen depending on what they switch on in the “Use 24-hour clock” preference.
Files app
Sort: The sort column icon was flipped so the arrow points up when sorting in ascending order.
File type: The files app will now be able to identify AMR files as sound files instead of text files.
Format dialog: Slightly tweaked the format dialog by removing the close button and changing the spacing between the bottom form field and the bottom buttons.
Archive: Slightly tweaked the dialog style for password-protected zips by changing the padding and fonts sizes in the dialog.
Behavior: The files app will now refresh when there are changes in Linux files or other FUSE systems.
Fixed .opus sound files not showing audio icon in the files app.
Context menu: New dropdown menus to "Open with" and "More Actions" when right-clicking a file type in the files app, which allows you to quickly change default apps for that file type. IMO: this is a big improvement compared to using the files app’s toolbar.
Context menu: You will now be able to “Go to file location” when a single file is selected in Recents, Audio, Images, or Videos. This is a small change with a HUGE productivity benefit.
Fixed a bug where saving an HTML file as “single file” incorrectly creates “.html” instead of “mhtml”.
The “Save as” dialog will automatically attach file extensions.
Context menu: Fixed a bug where the sub menus that hang off the right-click context menu can get clipped when the files app window is shrunk horizontally to its minimum width. This bug fix will allow sub menus to slightly overlap.
Save as: Fixed a regression where the “Save as” dialog prompt does not respond to the up/down key arrow after invoking Shift + Tab.
Sharing: Fixed a visual bug where a double horizontal line would appear above “this folder is shared with Linux” after sharing a folder to Linux (Beta).
Input
Virtual keyboard: the brand new bordered virtual keyboard design is enabled by default, which adds a fresh new coat of Google Material theme to the virtual keyboard. This design will not work for languages other than English.
Port forwarding: the port forwarding feature flag is enabled by default. This allows you to make Linux ports available to other devices on your network. It will forward ports on the interface of the highest priority network instead of always forwarding ports on wlan0.
USB: The Crostini USB allow unsupported feature flag is enabled by default. This should allow developers to mount their USB serial devices to their Chromebook without having to change a flag. Your mileage may vary as some serial devices will not work (FTDI, CH341, etc).
Disk resizing: The crostini disk resizer will suggest a recommended disk size for users who want to increase or decrease disk size.
Mic sharing: Enabling the crostini mic sharing toggle will prompt you to restart the Linux container.
USB: When a newly plugged in device reports multiple interfaces and at least one of them is “notifiable”, Chrome OS will notify the user. Previously, all interfaces needed to be “notifiable”.
Fixed Chrome OS not upgrading the Linux (Beta) container when there are dpkg locks.
Fixed crostini apps incorrectly using the cube icon instead of the penguin icon as fallback.
USB: Chrome OS will suppress notifications for devices with forbidden interfaces (e.g. docking stations that have HID and vendor-specific interface, external monitors connected through USB).
Media App SWA
This experimental feature is still in development. To try it out, you'll need to enable a Chrome flag. Copy-paste the following URL and change the dropdown from "Default" to "Enable": chrome://flags/#media-app
Files: You can now launch multiple files simultaneously with the media app by selecting them with your Chromebook’s files app. Previously, selecting two files in the files app and selecting “Open with Gallery” by right-click would only open one file. This update now allows you to launch multiple files with “Open with Gallery”.
Files: When launching a file in a directory, the Media app SWA will asynchronously load every other related file in that directory to speed up file loading.
OOBE (first-boot setup)
Account: Prevent ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID error from showing up when setting up the Chromebook on a slow network.
Account: Administrators will now be able to disable Chromebooks that have been pre-provisioned but not yet enrolled. This means that managed Chromebooks will immediately become disabled, even when going through the OOBE first-boot setup.
Notifications: System notifications (Wi-Fi, battery, etc) will not be suppressed during the first-boot process.
Print jobs app
Print jobs app: the brand new print jobs app is enabled by default. This allows users to manage and view their print history on Chrome OS. The print job app will display ongoing print jobs and will dynamically update depending on the status of the job.
When a print job notification shows up in Chrome OS, tapping on the notification will open the print jobs management app
New policy to prevent managed users from deleting their print history. When the restriction is in place, the delete history button will be disabled.
PWAs
Sync: Web app icons for Chrome OS will update when manifest data is updated.
Autostart: New feature flag that allows users to auto-start PWAs when the user signs into Chrome OS. When prompted to install a PWA, Chrome will offer a new checkbox asking the user if they want to run the PWA after signing into Chrome OS. To try this out, enable chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas-run-on-os-login
Quick Answers
Quick Answers will accept keyboard accessibility inputs.
Fixed a bug where the Quick answers feature would not get focused after pressing the Up or Down arrow on the keyboard.
Wallpaper picker app
Localized wallpaper picker app name
Wallpaper picker app will be searchable from the launcher.
The nitty-gritty stuff
This advanced section is a long list of things changed that impacts web developers and enterprise users. There are a lot more nitty-gritty stuff in the full changelog linked below, but this list coversthe most important Blink and Chrome changesintroduced in this release cycle. Blink
New Bluetooth.getDevices() method that allows sites to easily reconnect to permitted Web Bluetooth devices. Previously, Chrome’s implementation of Web Bluetooth did not have a way for websites to get a list of permitted devices. See this developer document for more details.
New writeValueWithResponse()and writeValueWithoutResponse() to web bluetooth. This helps improve read and write performance on some devices.
Interested web developers should test this out by enabling chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features
Fixed display:inline for not using a “true” CSS inline box when it’s not displaying an image fallback.
Fixed Chrome not honoring CSS dimensions if the doesn’t have a src but has a title attribute.
Web Serial API: addressed a WebIDL issue that causes SerialPort.setSignals()to fail if empty signals dictionary.
Pointer lock: fixed a pointer lock bug where activating pointer lock in mousemove listener won’t allow cancelling with ‘escape’ or ‘Alt + Tab’ keys.
Chrome now supports the counter-set CSS property, which sets a CSS counter to a given value.
Implemented the media element show poster flag, which makes the behavior of poster rendering consistent with other browsers. This removes the old element DisplayMode.
WebRTC: Added adaptivePTime to RTCRtpEncodingParameters, which adds an origin trial for real-time communication applications (Google Meet as an example) to optimize their bandwidth usage so that they can alleviate network congestion.
Storage privacy: fixed a regression caused by Quota where clearing all browser data takes a long time to delete.
Layout: Removed anonymous block wrapper when in line continuation is removed, which helps multicol keep track of what is regular column content and what are spanners.
Flexbox: Fixed a bug where Chrome would not consistently position HTML content inside a flex cell, which prevented developers from creating offset to cells.
Paint: Fixed a bug where the Select Element text gets cut off until the viewport gets resized
Forms: fixed a bug where OPTION should be selected when multiple selected OPTIONs are added by jQuery append().
Layout: Limit PositionForPointInInlineBox() to process inline boxes only.
Renderer: improved performance of client-side phishing detection’s visual feature extraction, which reduces renderer hangs.
Service Worker: fixed Chrome locking up with large amounts of service workers
New String.prototype.replaceAll function that helps developers to global-replace strings without having to escape RegExp syntax characters. See this developer document for more details.
New Promise.any() and AggregateError functions. Promise.any() accepts promises and returns a promise that is fulfilled by the first given promise to be fulfilled, or rejected with an AggregateError holding the rejection reasons if all of the given promises are rejected. AggregateError is a support class that aggregates one or more errors into a single object. See a snippet of what it is here.
New Logical assignment operators ||=, &&=, and ??= to Javascript. This is an incremental improvement for shipping terser, clearer Javascript.
Corrected silence detecting condition in Web Audio. The silence detection should be activated when there are no automatic pull nodes, or the local destination node has an active input connection.
Fixed a bug that caused fonts in fixed-position to appear blurry due to a directly composited layer (triggered by backface-visibility:hidden) with a fractional transform.
Fixed gradient list marker image growing massively when zooming.
Fixed positioned SVG backgrounds unstable with zoom or transitions due to sub-pixel snapping.
New BluetoothDevice.watchAdvertisements() method to enable web apps to receive events when the system receives an advertisement packet from a watched device. This API will allow web apps to detect whether a device is unresponsive because it has gone out of range by listening for advertisement packets from the device.
Fixed rendering drop shadow blur when fillStyle is CanvasPattern with transparency.
Fixed requestPointerLock breaking event.preventDefault for wheel events
Add willReadFrequently attribute to CanvasRenderingContext2DSettings. This helps improve performance for read access. Developers can test this now by enabling chrome://flags/#new-canvas-2d-api
Fixed wrong intrinsic size when orthogonal items are baseline aligned and column's max-sizing function determines the size of the CSSgrid.
Fixed range inputs now look rather broken if they had certain styles e.g. padding applied to them.
Fixed option text not selected to a select box if option has child elements.
Fixed Alt text on broken images overriding CSS dimensions.
Fixed SVG CSS not repositioning with percent translate when parent resizes.
Fixed aspect-ratio not handling min/max content contributions correctly.
Scroll Unification: implemented page-based scrolling in the compositor. Page based scrolling is used in three situations: PageUp/PageDown keys, Main thread scrollbar scrolling, and wheel when a scroll-by-page setting is enabled.
Bluetooth: added getDevices() web feature.
Fixed text not automatically scrolling into view until the page’s scroll offset resets to the top with certain links.
SVG: fixed animation of stop-color with currentcolor on not working.
Viz: fixed page freezing when moving mouse or scrolling page with iframe inside another iframe with href target = blank (needed for asynchronous hit-test event).
Fixed SVG CSS not repositioning with percent translate when parent resize
Chrome
Devtool Fixed not being able to create a new style rule for ::marker.
Devtool: new option to make a11y info optional in inspector overlay
Extensions: new enterprise.networkingAttribute API that reads the device’s local IP and MAC address if it is connected to a network. This API is only available to force-installed extensions.
Preconnect: Addressed a security flaw by removing loading predictor preconnect for pretenders, which had the potential to leak user information during an isolated prerender.
Enterprise
Legacy Browser Support is now built into Chrome. The developers plan on removing the Legacy Browser extension on the Chrome web store when Chrome 86 rolls out.
Insecure pages will no longer be able to make requests to IPs belonging to more private address spaces. Example: https://example.com won’t be able to make requests targeting 192.168.0.1. A policy will be provided to disable this mechanism.
Cross-origin fetches are being blocked from content scripts in Chrome extensions.
Removed ability to define wildcards for PluginsAllowedForUrl policy in Chrome 85. This is another step to prepare for the Flash deprecation at the end of this year.
Grant permissions to the Imprivata login screen to use chrome.platformKeys and chrome.enterprise.platformkeys (_permission_features.json).
The Emoji suggesting feature is disabled by default for enterprise customers. This setting is under a new emoji suggestion policy.
Disabled EnumerateDevicesHideDeviceIDs on Chrome OS which caused issues in some enterprise Chrome OS setups in the past.
Platform changes
This part covers the most significant platform changes I found in this build, from platform version13099.110.0to13310.59.0. Platform updates typically include low level changes like kernel, driver updates, and other device-specific fixes. Linux 4.4
Updated kernel to Linux 4.4.228.
Bluetooth: stopped Bluetooth from scanning if paused.
Linux 4.14
Updated kernel to Linux 4.14.185.
Linux 4.19
Update kernel to Linux 4.19.129
Bluetooth: bluetooth will terminate the link if the user decides to cancel the ongoing pairing process. This should prevent bluetooth devices (e.g. bluetooth keyboard) from retrying to pair again.
Broadcom Wireless: Fixed connection problems with WPA3 Wi-Fi.
Kukui: fixed back-light turning on before video when the Lenovo Duet and Lenovo 10e Chromebook Tablet boots up.
Linux 5.4
Updated kernel to Linux 5.4.48.
Bluetooth: bluetooth will terminate the link if the user decides to cancel the ongoing pairing process. This should prevent bluetooth devices (e.g. bluetooth keyboard) from retrying to pair again.
Broadcom Wireless: Fixed connection problems with WPA3 Wi-Fi.
Libapps
Terminal: the nassh powerline fonts will be loaded on startup.
Enterprise platform: fixed an issue where the Smart Card Connecter app was unable to interface with a Dell Smart Card Reader keyboard.
Smart unlock: fixed a bug where power cycling the Chromebook, logging in, and locking the screen causes Smart Lock feature to disappear.
Overlays
Kukui: initial on-device Assistant support to Lenovo 10e Chromebook Tablet and the Lenovo Chromebook Duet/Lenovo IdeaPad Duet devices. This brings on-device Google Assistant to your Chromebook, which should significantly speed up Assistant responses to commands like “tell me a joke” or “open Google Play Music”. However, I do not have any of these devices to confirm if this feature works.
To test, you’ll need to enable chrome://flags/#enable-on-device-assistant
Atlas: added 24 FPS video range for video conferencing applications on the Pixelbook Go. Since 24FPS is common for video conferencing, your Pixelbook Go will use 24 FPS instead of 30 FPS when conferencing, which improves battery life and performance.
Grunt: updated the HP Chromebook 14, HP Chromebook 11, Acer Chromebook 315, Acer Chromebook Spin 311, and Lenovo 14e touchpad firmware
Attestation: changed the flow in SignEnterpriseChallenge to include customer_id instead of domain name for enrolled Chromebooks.
We have been using lots of mobile applications to carry out day to day tasks. So building applications that users can interact with in real-time has become a standard for many developers. The applications that today we use whether they are mobile, web or desktop apps have at least one real time feature. Mostly real-time messaging and notifications are the commonly used real-time features that we use in applications.
What Do Real Time Applications Do?
As mentioned before, real time applications functions within a time frame the user feels it is occurring in real time. Within real-time applications or real-time computing, the latency is set under a defined value, typically estimated in seconds. Know the important points to consider while developing real time apps at- What To Consider While Developing Real Time Applications?
Role Of Node.js In Real-Time Applications-
Node js helps with its non-blocking I/O and event-driven features to the applications where speed and scalability are constant focus. Nodejs gives continuous two-way connections to applications like social media, forums, ad servers, or stock exchange software.
1. Reusing And Sharing-
Nodejs supports microservices architecture and it allows developers to reuse the library code package and share it in various projects. It not only saves development time and increases productivity.
2. Scalable And Rapid-
As Node Js is javascript based, it executes rapidly like JS. So an application with event loop easily handles multiple client requests.
3. Event Based Server-
Real time apps handles a large number of real-time users. Node.js development supports response based on the event-driven server that supports non-blocking functioning.
4. Proxy Server-
Node js will be your best choice where intermediary administrations are necessary. To use node.js server as a proxy server, a developer needs to add a code of 20-line, and your application will turn into an ideal fit to support streaming information from numerous sources.
5. SEO Friendliness-
The backend rendering by Node.js gives the website more visibility and engagement too. The applications get more speed and user experience as well as a get performance that is required to rank according to SEO prospects defined by Google.
Building A Real-Time Chatroom With Node.js-
Here we’ll see how to build a simple chatroom that users can use to communicate with connected users. With this, multiple users can connect to the chatroom and users can send messages that will be visible to all users connected to the chatroom. Features of simple chatroom-
Change the username of the user
Send messages
Show if another user is currently typing a message
Application Environment Setup-
Create directory
Run the npm init to set up package.json file.
Install Dependencies-
Here we’ll use express, ejs, socket.io and nodemon packages to build app.
Ejs- It is a well known JS template engine
Command to install ejs- npm install express ejs socket.io –save
Nodemon- This package restarts the server every time we make any change to the application code. Due to the use of Nodemon you don’t need to manually stop and start the server every time when you make change. Command to install Nodemon–
npm install nodemon --save-dev
Add a start script to your package.json file to start the application with nodemon.
"scripts": { "start": "nodemon app.js", },
Use the following command to start app-
npm run start
Set Up The Application Structure-
With all the Dependencies that will need for this project installed, build app project structure. For this, you have to create some directories. Get that done so that your app structure look like-
