cseeeceim

website of the week #1 – techtarget

Website of the week #1

https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/

techtarget.com/whatis is your one stop solution reference manual for all your queries regarding IT terminologies

Consider this as ‘wikipedia of IT’

The glossary is divided into sections like Networking, security, cloud computing etc.

Starting from basic definitions like DNS, DHCP to advanced concepts at present are covered in a clear and concise manner.

Incase of further explanations of the terminologies you need the present definitions also has hyperlinks to connecting terms which will take you further. eg: ipv4 inside ip address definition

The only hustle for you is to register using your company email address to use this site

hack I found: you can use tutanota or protonmail address to subscribe.

Enjoy! Happy reading 😊

How to restart chrome in Android

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if there was a restart button to restart chrome in android? Well the answer is you don’t have one but you can make one by the features that chrome comes with.

Chrome has a built in feature called ‘chrome-urls’ using which you can customise your browser the way you want it to be. So without wasting much time let’s take a look at the steps needed to do it.

Step 1: open your chrome browser and start typing in ‘chrome://chrome-urls’ on the address bar as shown below

Once done hit enter or you can choose the suggested link as as it pops up even before you finish typing in.

Step 2: confirm the ‘chrome://restart’ link before you type in by visiting the ‘chrome-urls’ menu as shown below.

You can directly type in ‘chrome://restart’ in the address bar but this is just for your reference.

Step 3: as mentioned before type in ‘chrome://restart’ in the address bar and hit enter or the proceed arrow (on the green button on the keyboard) as shown below

That’s it now your chrome browser shuts down and starts again by clearing your previous session.

To make things even easier you can assign a shortcut by making this link as your home page by doing the steps provided below

Click the three dots on the top right corner of the browser as shown

Next choose settings from the drop down menu as shown below

Once done head on to the ‘advanced section’ and click on ‘Homepage’

Then under ‘open this page’ choose the option below the ‘chrome’s homepage and type in ‘chrome://restart’ as shown

Once done exit the page and close the browser. Open the browser again and now if you click the home button on the top left corner as shown below the browser restarts immediately without any further actions.

That’s it you have now successfully learned how to restart your chrome browser in android. The process is same for chrome browser in windows you can try doing using the same steps provided above.

Hope you have enjoyed this post and found it to be useful. Will see you people with another interesting post soon till then happy surfing.

Loopback Adapter – A no cost device that is a must have and easy to make at home

Tired of trying different ports in your switches and routers and not sure which one works and which doesn’t? or not sure how to check them with a device that you are unaware of? well the answer is “loopback adapter” (a must have port testing device for network engineers and IT enthusiasts). Well you can buy one from any IT peripheral stores or you can make one by yourself at home. In this blog I will explain how I made one at home for my own use.

Things required:

1. Cat 5 cable 5cm

2. Crimping tool

3. RJ-45 Ethernet clip – 1 no.

4. Wire stripper

Now first find yourself a clean table or make space like one at home so you can make it without errors and any disturbance.

Second take the wire stripper and gently hold the cat5 cable in between the stripping area with 1cm protruding outside. (Note: you don’t need to buy a cat5 cable as it is costly instead cut it out from any leftover cable by some ISPs near your area). Then slowly but steadily twist the wire in both directions without damaging the cable, once the cable outer jacket seems little frayed pull out the cover which exposes the twisted pair cables inside it.

Now pull a pair of twisted cable from the bunch and separate the two wires from each in that pair, after that trim slightly at both ends using the wire stripper or crimping tool (yes all crimping tools have a wire cutter provision that is provided by default) for efficiency.

Once that is done take the ethernet clip in hand and turn it upside down i.e., the cable release knob facing downwards. After that take any one of the wire that you separated from a pair of wire and insert one end at the first hole to your left and the other one at the 3rd one (note: we’re taking T568B connection here as an example that is used widely and the ones ISPs use for 100mbps connection – this is not needed but just know if you are interested) now similarly take the other wire and fix one end at the 2nd hole and the other one in the 6th hole.

Once it is done take the crimping tool in your right hand by holding the ethernet clip on your left (vice versa if you are left handed) now insert the clip in the provision provided and tightly press against the clip this ensures that the wires are holded firmly inside the clip without slipping.

That’s it you have now successfully made a ‘loopback adapter’ by yourself at home. To further ensure that it works correctly take your home router and turn it ‘on’ without any wires connected to the port except the power cable. Now after the post operation is completed and your router displays the ‘power on’ light steadily plug in the ‘loopback adapter’ that you made in any one of the ports behind your router now if everything went right the indicator light for that corresponding port blinks or turns on indicating that it is working and functional. You can also check the other ports and on other devices and make sure which one works and which doesn’t.

That’s it you have successfully made a ‘loopback adapter’ by yourself at home and tested router ports without any errors. Hope you enjoyed this post and learned something useful. See you with another interesting post soon until then it’s bye from me. Thanks for reading.

Firefox: The browser that many failed to notice

It was only after Edward Snowden revelations and many cyber threats during the period of 2013 and beyond lots of people started becoming privacy conscious and were looking for browsers & softwares that are more privacy and user centric and one such browser was Firefox from the non profit organisation called Mozilla. But what is so shocking is their recent market share dropping below the acceptable level for almost all the platforms.

Take the user base of android for instance as of this writing chrome has over 10 billion users, opera after switching to chromium engine earned over 100 million users, similarly brave which started late got over 50 million users with microsoft edge is also catching up faster with 10 million users and counting firefox sitting with barely over 100 million users. There is a reason to bother about this because what once seemed to be a browser of choice now has its user base dwindling day by day.

For many who needed to know the history in short firefox started as netscape earlier when there was only one browser monopoly from microsoft called internet explorer. It was only after the rise of netscape (earlier version of firefox) web users started to have a sense of freedom, because they had no choice other than internet explorer at that time.

Right from those days until now firefox has been the most privacy focused and user centric browser which gives some tough competition even to browsers like chrome (the browser from google with most number of users) as the later doesn’t have privacy focused setting as default, also not to forget how users have less control of their data while using chrome even though it has its own advantages comparing to firefox.

As net users we should be concerned about this because tomorrow if firefox era comes to an end then there will be no competitors for the big monopoly browsers from companies like microsoft and google leaving us with no option but to go with their hardcoded default setting which will only worsen our browsing experience as they will have the upper hand.

Firefox
uses gecko/blink engine, if you had used tor browser you might have
noticed similar user interface to that of firefox as tor uses firefox
engine (since it is also a privacy focused browser) and also for this
reason we must notice that killing firefox kills tor too as there won’t
be a viable alternative engine other than chromium (not so private)
which will kill privacy all together as web browsers are the gateway to
access the internet for whatever reasons we have to.

Earlier when Mozilla (firefox parent organization) named netscape as firefox and had their own set of addons (a small piece of software that can be installed inside the browser for extra features) people began to notice that this browser is far different from internet explorer and other browsers. Those days firefox solely depended on user contributions and donations as it was ‘corporate free’ but as time flew by they started to notice that users need more features than privacy and security (even if it takes to sell their ‘data’), as a general rule of thumb one needs to be put down in order for the other to come up and it is true in firefox’s case too. They started noticing the drop in their user base as the users started to switch to chrome & other chromium based browsers like opera, brave, edge etc. as chromium based browsers began to gain popularity for their speed, ease of use, feature integration and stability.

So mozilla realized that in order to keep up with the competition and secure their user base it has to introduce other products and features that are privacy focused and also fulfill user needs and thus it gave birth to products like firefox relay, pocket reader, firefox vpn (currently in USA) and firefox send (not available anymore). Not all are free but firefox began to generate revenue apart from the $400 million they get from google for every few years for making their search engine their default. Even though firefox began to generate revenue from its products it still has a long way to go.

It is a no brainer that nothing nice (whether people or things) lasts forever and firefox is no exception as a result they too started to find ways to generate revenue by showing sponsored ads and promoting their paid products but you are given an option to opt out of it. They have no option but to do this to survive.

Rather than asking people to support privacy by dumping chromium browsers and switch to firefox they may choose this browser as a second option for private browsing. i.e people may use chrome or other related browsers for regular tasks and firefox for private browsing. After all no one can be asked or forced to like something by explaining the good & the bad the right & the wrong. Everyone has their own choice.

Also there are many fork browsers based on firefox source code such as palemoon, waterfox, librewolf etc., but they are all ‘forks’ not like the original. Also they can’t be trusted to provide the same level of privacy, security and support like the one provided by firefox (since it is backed by mozilla organisation with a huge team of developers, support staffs, volunteers etc.)

Even though what we saw about the problems faced by firefox there is still a long way to go for this browser to call it a day as still millions are sticking with and pouring support day by day to keep it going. Lets hope that the future of firefox turns out to be in the best way that we all want it to be.

How to set password for a zip file

Hello everyone nice to see you all. Every day most of us use any email service to send documents as attachment regarding our work but what we fail to understand is whether the documents we send regarding our work is not modified during transit or whether it reaches and gets read by the right person.

One option is to use encrypted email service like ‘protonmail’ or ‘tutanota’ but not everyone will be tech savvy and also it is not possible for the receiving party to open an email account as it may not be feasible for them to use.

So the best option would be to use a password for the documents we send as attachment but if those documents are not in pdf or word format instead it is a .jpeg image or a .txt text document then it is a tedious task to look for a program to encrypt and decrypt those files.

Luckily there is a free option available for this task and it is present in 7-zip application. All you have to do is put the different kind of files like image, word, pdf or text that you want to send inside a folder and archive it as a zip file using the 7-zip application with a password option.

To make it easy I have explained this process in a step by step approach using screenshot annotations as shown below.


Figure 1: Creating Files

First create two text files namely ‘one’ and ‘two’

Figure 2: Content of file 1

Next let its contents be ‘text one’ for file one and ‘text two’ for file two as shown above and below

Figure 3: Content of file 2

Figure 4: Open 7-zip application

Now open the 7-zip archive manager by going to start menu as shown above or from any location that you have access to that application

Figure 5: Select the files for archiving

Once opening the application navigate to the location where those two files exists then choose them and click ‘add +’ icon as shown in figure 5

Figure 6: Choose the archive type

After that the ‘add to archive’ window opens in that choose the file type of the archive from the drop down menu of the ‘archive format’ section as highlighted, here we choose ‘zip’ as the file type for archiving our files as it is most commonly used.

Figure 7: Set the password

Next proceed to the ‘encryption’ section on this window and choose a password that is long and strong but easy to remember once entering and re-entering is completed click ‘ok’

Figure 8: Extract the zip file to a location

After that process head on to the location where your password protected zip file is and right click and select extract to the location where you want your files to be extracted.

Figure 9: File prompts for a password

Before extraction the ‘enter password’ window prompts for a password input as shown above, enter the password you choose to encrypt the file in this field.

Figure 10: Enter the password for the zip file

After entering the password click ok and the extraction phase begins

Figure 11: Extracted file contents after correct password entry

Once done the extracted folder opens by default showing you the contents present inside the password protected zip file.

Thats it! You have successfully learned how to create a password protected zip file with various file contents of your choice. You can now send this password protected zip file as attachment to someone via email or by any digital medium safe and secure.

Before sending let the receiving end know what the password for this zip file is or else they won’t be able to open the file.

With this the article comes to an end hope you found this useful, will see you all again soon in another article that is useful and interesting. Thanks for reading!