Microsoft Windows
How to enable file versioning on Windows
File History lets you go back and browse and restore previous versions of your files and folders. Restore accidental changes and deletions in Windows 11 and 10.
Latest
Web Browsers
Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge
Brave and Firefox implement support for the microsoft-edge: URL scheme. Brave to hijack Bing search links. Plus, the history of all this anti-competitive crap.
WebPerf
Brave reduces the page load performance cost of its adblocker
The Brave browser has significantly cut the page load time overhead of its adblocker. Brave loaded pages slower than competing browsers without adblockers.
Security
Patch origin trust vs GitHub’s URL hierarchy
Opening a pull request is all it takes to get a GitHub patch URL that’s indistinguishable from patches/commits that are a part of an open-source GitHub project.
Ruby
Cut I/O bound Rakefile task evaluation time by 12,4%
My patches remove some unnecessary syscalls that keep the Rake task and build system needlessly waste time waiting for I/O. Spend less time waiting for Rake.
CSS
Improving the New York Times’ line wrap balancer
Web browsers don’t yet support (text-wrap: balance). Adobe and the NY Times have offer free JavaScript alternatives. I improved the latter to suit my needs.
Microsoft Windows
Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar?
A new promo message for Microsoft Teams broke the Windows desktop shell and the taskbar for Windows 11 Insider users. Why can cloud services break Windows PCs?
Microsoft Windows
Windows 11 gets new and less stressful notification sounds
I find the Windows 10 sound notifications loud and stressful. Microsoft has made the new sound themes for Windows 11 calmer and less overwhelming than Win10.
P2P
A privacy review of Tribler, the onion-routed BitTorrent app
An in-depth privacy and security review of Tribler, a more private BitTorrent client backed by an onion/layered encryption proxy relay network. Is it anonymous?
DNS
What domain name to use for your home network
Always use the ‘.home.arpa’ top-level domain (RFC 8375), and don’t use the special-purpose ‘.local,’ or made-up undelegated domain names like ‘.lan’ or ‘.home.’
Networking
Review of the MikroTik hEX (3rd rev.) as a home router
The RB750Gr3 is an inexpensive network router with advanced network management capabilities for just €50/$60. It’s highly configurable with a steep learning curve.
Microsoft Windows
How to make Windows Update prioritize Delivery Optimization downloads
How to get Windows Delivery Optimization to download updates from PCs on your LAN network (or the internet). Reduce internet data/bandwidth usage with LAN P2P.