My Cat Taught Me Browser Task Manager

My cat walked on my keyboard, and this happened ,

She launched the Microsoft Edge Browser Task Manager that I didn't know existed. Modern Web Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge are of multiprocess architecture. The Chromium projects have a good introduction about the advantage of this design and that I quote,

"

It's nearly impossible to build a rendering engine that never crashes or hangs. It's also nearly impossible to build a rendering engine that is perfectly secure.

In some ways, the state of web browsers around 2006 was like that of the single-user, co-operatively multi-tasked operating systems of the past. As a misbehaving application in such an operating system could take down the entire system, so could a misbehaving web page in a web browser. All it took is one browser or plug-in bug to bring down the entire browser and all of the currently running tabs.

Modern operating systems are more robust because they put applications into separate processes that are walled off from one another. A crash in one application generally does not impair other applications or the integrity of the operating system, and each user's access to other users' data is restricted.

"

So when a browser runs, it creates multiple processes. However, old fashioned as I am, I wasn't aware that Microsoft Edge browser had a tool to show and to help users manage the processes -- the keyboard shortcut to open Microsoft Edge Browser Task Manager is SHIFT + ESC. The cat must have stepped on the two keys and taught me this.  You can also launch it from the menu as the following screen shot shows, i.e., click at "...", select "More tools", and then "Browser task manager".

Sure enough, FireFox and Chrome browsers have the similar. In FireFox, open the menu, click "More", and select "Task Manager".

In Chrome, open the menu, click "More tools", and then select "Task Manager".

Neat!

Disqus Complaining "Content Security Policy" Error on Jekyll Webite

I was building a website using Jekyll with the Minima theme. Following the instruction of the Minima theme, I set up Disqus to posts on the site by adding the "Disqus shortname" to Jekyll site configuration file _config.yml, such as,

disqus:
    shortname: mysite-short-name

However, the site displays an error message,

We were unable to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our troubleshooting guide.

When I clicked on the error message, Disqus shows an error message

Content Security Policy error

It turns out that to make Disqus work, we must include a url attribute in the configuration file, i.e., after I added the attribute, the configuration now includes,

url: https://mysite-url-used-for-disqus
disqus:
    shortname: mysite-short-name

Jekyll Complains "GitHub Metadata: No GitHub API authentication could be found."

When building a Jekyll site, I encountered the following error message,

$ bundle exec jekyll build
Configuration file: _config.yml
            Source: foosite/
       Destination: _site
 Incremental build: disabled. Enable with --incremental
      Generating...
   GitHub Metadata: No GitHub API authentication could be found. 
   Some fields may be missing or have incorrect data.

The sources of this error are many. What caused the error in my case? It is actually the combination of the two facts:

1. I used the Jekyll SEO Tags plugin, and
2. I did not include a description value in the _config.yml file. 

After my adding a description map to the _config.yml file, the problem went away, e.g.,

$ cat _config.yml
...
description: this is my awesome site. 
...

Installing Jekyll on Windows 10 with Windows Subsystem for Linux

Following the Jekyll document, I installed Jekyll on Windows 10 with Windows System for Linux. The steps were as follows:

1. Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux following Microsoft's documentation, i.e., 
1. In Windows 10, open PowerShell as Administrator.
2. Run the following in PowerShell
   
   

   Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
   

   
   
3. Restart Windows
2. Download and install a Linux distribution from Microsoft Store by opening the following URL in a Web browser: https://aka.ms/wslstore
3.  Open a Windows Command Prompt window, and run
   
   

   bash
   

   
   
4. Run the following in bash
   

   
   sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
   sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends software-properties-common gnupg gpg-agent dirmngr 
   sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install -y ruby2.5 ruby2.5-dev build-essential dh-autoreconf zlib1g-dev
   sudo apt-get install bundler
   sudo gem update
   

   
   
5. Assume you have a Jeykll site at the www directory. Then go to the directory in bash
   

   
   cd www
   

   
   
6. In bash, run the following
   

   
   cd www
   bundle update
   bundle install
   

7. Build the site and launch the Web serer for testing.
   

   
   bundle exec jekyll serve --host=0.0.0.0 --incremental
   

   
   

Collection of Software Tools for Protecting Privacy on the Web

This is a collection of software that we can use to protect privacy and maintain anonymity when browsing the Web.

• Tor browser. Stated on its web page, "it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked." However, the web may appear to be much slower if Tor relays serving you are slow.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation's HTTPS Everywhere. A web browser add-on that rewrites HTTP requests from your web browser to HTTPS requests. Stated on its web page, "On supported parts of supported sites, HTTPS Everywhere enables the sites' HTTPS protection which can protect you against eavesdropping and tampering with the contents of the site or with the information you send to the site. Ideally, this provides some protection against an attacker learning the content of the information flowing in each direction — for instance, the text of e-mail messages you send or receive through a webmail site, the products you browse or purchase on an e-commerce site, or the particular articles you read on a reference site." 
•  HTTP Cookie removers.  There are a number of web browser add-on's to remove HTTP cookies, e.g., Ghostery.
• Flash Cookie removers. There are a number of web browser add-on's to remove Flash cookies, e.g., Better Privacy.
• Web browsers in private or incognito mode. Modern browsers support "private browsing", e.g., Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Browser, and Microsoft Edge.

Note that the level of privacy and anonymity provided by the above are different. Tor browser perhaps provides the best level of privacy and anonymity, albeit at the cost of higher latency and lower throughput. HTTP and Flash Cookies removers makes trackers, such as, online advertisers' job of tracking an individual web visitor more difficult; however, both operators of the web sites you visit and you internet service providers (ISPs) can still track you, i.e., they know which IP address the traffic is originated, and they both know which pages you are visiting if the traffic is a HTTP session, and the site operators know which page you visiting even if the traffic is a HTTPS session. For the part of web sites supporting HTTPS, HTTPS Everywhere prevents your ISPs' from eavesdropping on which pages you are visiting on a site; however, the web site operators can still know which IP address the page visits are originated and which pages you are visiting.

If you have anything that you want to add, please share with me.

Google Mobile Friendly Seaches

Google made the following announcement,

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

For future web development and existing web site optimization, we want to know if a site is "mobile-friendly", for which it is perhaps a good practice to check out Google's blog post entitled Finding more mobile-friendly search results.
Google provides two tools,

• Mobile-Friendly Test
• Mobile Usability Report

These tools are excellent. However, it does not appear that they could be used before deployment. Perhaps, a good starting point is to examine the Google's Mobile-Friendly Web Development Guide.

Web Pages Never Expire

Heard this website http://perma.cc from Marketplace Tech. "Some of the most prestigious institutions in the country are taking efforts to create a new, permanent archive of scholarly work online. new, permanent archive of scholarly work online" as it states. Sounds quite interesting.The site is still in beta -- I hope that it will go alive soon.