This Keyboard Tester can save you hours of frustration

       Have you ever been in a situation where your keyboard or mouse/trackpad started malfunctioning all of a sudden, leading to pages being automatically scrolled up/down, text being scaled automatically or windows and tabs losing focus without explanation? Then this post is for you. Experienced this issue multiple times? Then this post is definitely for you.(No? Just me? Okay then =/)

        When you face an issue like this it can be either a software problem, or a hardware problem. Try a restart of your system first (Fixes a myriad of issues nine times out of ten). Updating outdated drivers is an effective fix in the case of a trackpad if the issue started after a hardware upgrade or major system update. Plugging in an external mouse and disabling your current pointing device is an excellent way to check if the issue is with your current mouse or trackpad. Similarly plugging an external keyboard and disabling the current one can check for keyboard issues.

        However this post targets a solution for a very specific issue that has occured over three times in my time spent on a computer: malfunctioning keyboard. This can be very obvious, like a  malfunctioning "D" key causing errors when attempting to type or making your character move to the right erratically during a game, to slightly harder to identify errors with arrow keys and page up/down keys that can cause erroneous scrolling and folders and files getting selected randomly. Whatever be the case, if you suspect a keyboard malfunction, visit the Keyboard Tester

        The keys on the keyboard map flashes orange when they are pressed on your keyboard, and keys that have registered at least once are shown in green. Loading up the keyboard tester and doing nothing for several seconds is a good way of checking if any keys are firing without you pressing them. This can also be used to check for unresponsive keys: If it doesn't flash orange, its not working.

        If you have found an key that keeps screwing up, and trying to brush the dust out from under it (which is the most common cause for this problem) did not prove effective or is not easily possible (Looking at you, netbook owners.) , you might want to disable or reassign the key entirely. That's were a tool called KeyTweak comes in. It is a small tool (<1MB) that requires a download and install. Then on launching the tool, you can select a key from the map and reassign it to another key using the drop down menu or disable it entirely. Super handy. (A restart is required to apply changes as it reassigns the key by editing the Windows registry.) This tool is obviously not applicable for Linux and Mac users, but similar tools exist for those operating systems as well.

Also just for fun, notice how "No disadvantages" is listed as a con in the downloads section of it's website. Wow.

Internet tracking: Should it be a concern?

        The violation of privacy has been one of the hottest topics up for debate on the internet for a while now. With the influence of tech giants like Google and Facebook seeping into our daily lives to the extent where these companies know us better than we know ourselves, leaving an online 'footprint' too large is a concern for a lot of people. I have made posts in the past relating to this concern, such as methods to remain completely anonymous online and a website that can display your torrenting history.

        This post is for those of us who get creeped out when a totally random website displays advertisements of products you where browsing on Amazon a day ago, which, let's be honest, is most of us. This is because of internet 'tracking' done on you by websites such as online shopping hubs, Facebook, Google and so on.

What is tracking?

        Tech entities recording your actions and using them to change the behavior of their service to you is called tracking. Using accounts that you are permanently logged in to (such as your Google account on android phones and Apple account on iPhones), storing 'cookies' on your browser that record your preferences are some of the ways in which this is done. So let's say you decide to check a smartphone on Amazon. Amazon realizes that you are interested in this product as you have checked it, and records this information, then gives it over to advertisement serving companies, such as Google's AdSense. Next time you search something related to smartphones on Google, the ads that show up will be of the phone that you searched on Amazon, because AdSense now knows you are interested in that device.

        Similarly Google or Facebook will record your interaction with posts and links to find out what kind of content you are interested in, and will provide ads related to such content when you use their services. This is how internet tracking works.

How is tracking good/bad?

        Tracking, to an extent, is extremely useful. It allows Google Search to give you relevant results, it allows Maps to show you the traffic on the way to work every morning, it allows Facebook to remove posts that you have no interest in from your newsfeed, it allows everything from Play Store or App Store to Ebay and Amazon to show you items that you are more likely to be interested in. In other words, it personalizes your internet experience.

          So what are people terrified of? Well, if you think about it, such entities knows where you live and where you work, what kind of clothing you like and your favorite food, what kind of books you read and which songs you listen to, who are your friends and the type of people you would associate with, where you sense of humor sits, what you find offensive and what you don't, what you would like to do in your leisure, things that you would like to buy, your lifestyle, and even the times when you go to sleep and wake up in the morning. And all of this is being sold or can be sold to advertising companies and other agencies. 

Conclusion

        In the end tracking is not as horrible as many people have made it out to be. Most reputable companies like Google and Facebook have privacy policies that they adhere to (Although they do change occasionally and no one ever bothers to read through them), and give users multiple notifications when they change something in their policy that could potentially divulge their privacy. They don't sell too much information to advertisers and have streamlined options to control and manage and even partially delete tracked information.

        So in the end, how much you want to eliminate tracking depends on where you draw the line between 'useful' and 'creepy'. I personally don't like being tracked, but I realize its uses and allows it to an extent, blocking it only when required.

That's it for now, hope you found it useful. Stay tuned for a post on methods to reduce/elimiate tracking in a few days!

Here's a collection of Text Faces! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

     Gone are the days when emojis were limited to two character contraptions like :) and :P ...
As the information revolution continue to explode forward, an artful collection of complex emoji has become commonplace in every app to which it matters. But the mighty ASCII army never stays down, and over the last year a bunch of new emoji has evolved that cannot be typed out on your keyboard, or cannot be found in any app (yet).

     Since these emoji's cannot be typed out and you are unlikely to know what their names are (( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is called "Lenny face", by the way.), here's a super useful website that has a collection of the latest freshly baked rage faces free to fill your clipboard. Saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ has never been easier.

Link to this super useful site: https://textfac.es/

Cheers!

Hiding your IP address online to remain anonymous

          In the last post, I demonstrated how anyone who knows your IP address can track your torrent downloads without your permission. If you are concerned about your privacy on the internet, the first and most important step to take is to mask your IP address. (Or stop whatever you are doing on the internet that makes you feel insecure -most things shouldn't. But then again, if you wanted to do that instead, you wouldn't be reading this.) Accessing blocked content is another bonus of masking your IP address.

        If you don't know what an IP is, it is an address used to identify your device in a network, and is required for normal communication on the internet. It will be a set of numbers, like "127.0.0.1". IP addresses are not unique to a device, but rather unique to a router. This means that all devices connected to your home WiFi will have the same IP address, but if you connect your laptop to your neighbor's WiFi, it will have a different IP address.

        If you are a user of wireless mobile data, you should be assigned a random IP address by your carrier each time you connect to the internet, most of the time, effectively eliminating the chances of someone tracking your activities via IP. If you don't use mobile data, or want your IP address to make it seem like you are in another region or another continent altogether, read on.

1.Use a proxy

        This is perhaps the quickest and easiest method to mask your IP. A proxy is an intermediate server, and when you use a proxy service, all your internet usage is redirected through a proxy server. So all the sites you visit can only see the IP address of the proxy server assigned to you, while your real IP remains anonymous. There are hundreds of free proxy sites on the internet -although several of these can contain malicious content. Hence, as with all things on the internet, use these at your own risk.

        www.dreamytricks.net/free-proxy-sites-server-list/ is a very useful and up-to-date list of some of the top online proxy services available today, the majority of them being completely free to use.

        Here I am using www.4everproxy.com , although all sites in that list should work in a similar way.

        All you have to do is enter the website you wish to access anonymously in the box on the bottom, and hit "Go to site".

        Here I have opened YouTube via 4everproxy. The bar at the top can be used to navigate to more websites as well. I find that my usual "trending in India" (Since I'm from India) section has been replaced with videos trending in the U.S instead, since the proxy server is located in the US. And just like that, I am able to become anonymous on the internet.

2.Use a VPN

        If the above section did not satisfy the Edward Snowden-inspired "Big brother is watching" enthusiast in you, then look no further than Virtual Private Networks, a.k.a VPNs. Fundamentally these are 'advanced' proxy systems, that offer antivirus filtering and high level encryption to every action you make on the internet while not keeping any logs of your usage anywhere. And when I say all actions on the internet, I do mean all actions, unlike proxies which only work within your browser.

        This super-secure layer on anonymity comes at a price however, as most reputed VPN services on the internet require a paid subscription to use. PCmag has a very good list here. But it's not all dark for those hoping for free VPNs, as a few of these does exist, albeit lacking many of the features of paid VPNs.

        A popular example of a free VPN is CyberGhost, which gives you several options (Some of them require purchasing the premium version, however.) and allows you to choose the country through which your traffic will be redirected. It doesn't have fancy features like ad-blocking and firewalls, but it does offer a high level of encryption, enough to make anyone feel secure.

        It is worth noting that using either proxies or VPNs will make your internet connection a bit slower, as all of your traffic has to be redirected through a server on a completely different part of the world.

So, there you have it folks. The only guide you need to stay in shadows when browsing the internet. Remember there is no such thing has complete anonymity online, but unless you did something to incur the wrath of the FBI or deadly hacking organisations, these should serve your purpose just fine.

I Know What You Download

        Privacy is perhaps the biggest issue booming around the netizen world over the past few years. From Edward Snowden to the outcry for end-to-end encryption on Whatsapp, people are always sensitive about who can see or track what they do on the internet, and for good measure. Being tracked on the internet is about as invasive as a person watching over everything you do, in real life. So I can only assume many users will be shocked if I told you I can tell you everything you have downloaded off popular torrenting websites, most of which would be illegal content.

        Well, I can't just do that, not without having your IP address anyways. Your IP address is used to identify your device on the internet, and every node that connects to the internet, such as your home WiFi or mobile device has it's own unique IP address. This information can be extracted very easily. In fact, every website you ever visit or any internet service you use can view your IP. This itself is not a privacy violation, as the IP address is required to communicate with your device. But once a person interested in stalking your download activity has your IP address, all they need to do is plug it into this website, aptly named "I know what you download", and your torrenting history lists itself, ready to be viewed by anyone's eyes. 

        Okay, so say you are interested in checking if your best friend's favorite midnight past time is downloading TV shows or watching porn. (Please, this is an explanation. Don't ever do that to anyone you sick stalker!). Problem is, you do not know his/her IP address. This website even allows you to get past that. All you have to do is find a website address, any address, to send your friend that you know he will click. Then enter it into the download tracker and hit 'Transform' to generate another URL. Send this to your friend, and let him click it. Everything will seem normal and the link will take him to the intended website. But what really happens is that the link goes to the iknowwhatyoudownload website, which captures his IP address, and then redirects him back to the original link. No suspicions aroused, and one successful IP capture done.

        The existence of websites like this is an ode to the fact that no one can truly remain hidden or cloak their activities while on the internet. You can only take the necessary precautions, and, well, make sure your list on nemeses don't include some creep who would stalk your internet activity.

        I shall soon follow up this post with some basic methods to hide your IP, so that trackers like this won't work on you. Meanwhile, mobile data users can remain safe in the knowledge that they are assigned a random IP address most of time they connect to the internet, preventing creepy trackers from stalking them. For the most part, at least.

            That's all for now, cheers! =)

Code in with Google

        A few weeks back, through a post by one of my mentors during a short summer camp on ethical hacking, I came to know of something called Google Code In. It had "code"in it's title and was conducted by Google. That was all I needed to know before I signed up. Turns out, it is an event where students of the age 13-17 are given the opportunity to work on many tiny tasks that involve a range of skills from coding, designing and documentation. The way it was set up was great, and I cursed myself for not knowing about this event in previous years and set to work on my first task despite the looming annual exams.

        Since then, despite the lack of time, I've gone through a number of tasks, learned about a variety of topics ranging from application programming frameworks, collaborative work on github and internet relay chat. Programming in general and being able to work in a development-driven environment is a skill that all teens should posses in this computer dominated world. The largest companies, the widest reach, and the biggest opportunities all lie in the field of information technology in the present day. However, as statistics suggest, only a fraction of students who pass out of schools are properly equipped to understand and comprehend technology, mostly because of the prioritization of math, chemistry and physics over computer science. As a result, those curious on expanding their knowledge in coding and related skills have to turn to the internet.

        While there are a multitude of resources available online, many of them are spread apart and differ sharply in accuracy and quality. Picking the reliable tutorials out of the muck can be a tedious task. But for those who are determined, the world is an open window. But when it comes to testing out theses skills, the opportunities are far more narrow. Running simple Python scripts in you local console can only take you so far. With a limited skill set, every youth who enters this field will not be launching android apps or designing webpages in no time. There is a learning curve to be negotiated, and there is a need for more supporting resources to do so. As a person interested in ethical hacking, participating in hacking CTFs over the past years has been the biggest stage to test my knowledge of computers and programming. While clubs and  organisations in my locality hold competitions on literature, science and arts with fervor, there is a disappointing lack of coding-related events.

        In such a situation, finding out and entering Google Code In felt liberating, as it was finally an opportunity to apply and expand my skill set. I'm sure I'm not the only participant who feels this way.  I hope, or in fact I'm sure, that by the time this event ends, I shall become a better coder.

        Closely related to the issues mentioned here is a NGO called Sugar Labs, an non-profit organisation that aims to bring interactive learning to more children. They have developed a platform called the Sugar learning platform where Sugar activities are created with the aim of boosting the cognitive development of young minds through various interesting activities. They also participate in the Google Code In as one of the many organisations that create tasks for students to solve, and in this manner they are bringing technology into education and playing a great role in bridging the gap between the current learning system and what is hopefully, the future of education.

Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

The new Google Play feature that everyone missed

        Google Play introduced a rather important and useful feature in it's latest update, but no one seems to have taken note of it.

        Google Play, the hub off all android apps, is one of the most prominent and important application in any android device. Google Play alongside Play Services coordinates nearly every action you make on your phone, ranging from Google games sign-in to contacts sync.

        Google Play also updates whenever it gets a chance and is notoriously difficult to stop it from sapping your data for doing the same. Not that it's a bad thing, since an up-to-date version of Play is essential for the software end of your device to run smoothly. But the vast majority of these updates bring little noticed changes that really don't mean anything to the end user.

        But the last update (Until they release a new one, which seems to happen every few hours) brought a pleasant addition, something I felt could be very useful: When your device has insufficient storage, it tells you exactly how much you need to free up in order to be able to install an app, and also shows the most space-consuming apps and offers you an option to uninstall them on the spot.

        For a device with limited or non-expandable storage, this is a problem that users run into very often, especially after using the device for a year or so. Previously, when you had no space to install an app, all you could do was to move your pictures and songs to the cloud or another device, uninstall some apps you do not use any more and hope that did the trick. Now, you know exactly how much you need to free up and get information on the most space consuming apps so you can take the required action. In the screenshot above, my largest app is Facebook. Obviously, I am not going to uninstall Facebook, but a shockingly large size reminded that it was time I cleared Facebook's app data. On doing this, I had the space needed to install the app I wanted.

        If you are missing this feature, open Google Play, tap on Settings → Build version and the app should automatically check for updates and download the latest version in the background.

Logan: The swansong of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine

       

 

       They say you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself turn into the villain. But despite playing arguably the most popular character in a film franchise that spans nine movies over nearly two decades, the world still hasn't had enough of Hugh Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine. So when the actor revealed that he won't be reprising the role of Wolverine as his contract expires post Wolverine's third solo outing, millions of hearts where broken around the world.

        Yet all things must come to an end, and while depressing thoughts like Robert Downey Jr no longer portraying Tony Stark a.k.a Iron Man is still a long way away, the time is coming closer for the internationally acclaimed Aussie to hang up his claws. And the trailer release for the final film, titled "Logan" , dropped two days ago, reminded us just how close this was going to be.



The trailer has garnered nearly 8 million views in less that 48 hours, and is still topping trending charts across various social media.

        As not one person shall walk into a theater playing Logan without being filled with emotions, the film trailer carries with it an air of calmness that is in sharp contrast to the usual louder-than-thoughts screen smashing action packed trailers that accompany X-men films. As revealed before, the film is based on the comic series Old Man Logan and features, well, an older, ageing Wolverine.

        Another highlight of the film is that it is going to be R-rated. Fans of the franchise has long been yearning for a film that features the gory and intense scenes of the X-men comics portrayed faithfully on the big screen, yet every film the franchise with the exception of Deadpool (Which got it's R-rating for different reasons) has been PG-13. With Logan moviegoers can expect to see Hugh Jackman in his most intense, most extreme representation of the titular character yet.

        In the longer run, a shift in perspective from the usual make the X-men beat the bad guy while dealing with typical problems of being a mutant will serve the franchise well, whose films apart from having a notoriously confusing timeline has been often criticized for being repetitive (Although that is unlikely to stop it from topping the box office, just look at the Fast and Furious franchise.)

         But still the comic and X-men fandom shall weep as the credits roll at the end of Logan, with many of us unable to imagine a different actor ever playing Wolverine. Right now the film seems to be set on the right track to give the character, which shall soon fade into legend, a fitting goodbye. Logan releases on March 3rd, 2017.

Article on Swachh Bharat initiative

This is an essay written by me in accordance with the cleaning program 'Swachh Bharath' initiated by the PM of India, Mr. Narendra Modi.

Cleanliness is one of the most required, yet one of the most frequently ignored aspect of our lives. Good sanitary practices in a neighborhood may be the only thing keeping the local doctor from racking up his profits. Several deadly diseases that can lead to a painful rehabilitation or even a torturous death can be easily prevented by observing basic hygiene. The lack of cleanliness is constantly associated with places like slums, and thus it is no surprise that such slums and poor colonies are the source of several disease breakouts. Cleanliness is also one of the most striking characters of developed nations. Therefore, it is absolutely essential for us to convert India into a ‘Swachh Bharat’ for us to progress down the path of development.

All organisms need raw material obtained from outside their body for performing life processes. Humans are no exception to this, and we take in food to obtain a wide variety of proteins, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates and minerals. Since the constituents of food is taken from outside our body, it is inevitable that it will not be composed purely of what our body wants. Our body is capable of removing any contaminating impurities from foodstuffs up to a limit. However, when this limit is breached, as often is the case in a developing country like India, deadly diseases starts to run amok. From the life threatening epidemics of hepatitis to the debilitating E-Coli inflicted food poisoning, food-borne diseases can threaten the health of the entire nation.

The primary cause of food-borne diseases is, obviously, the consumption of contaminated food. When we consume contaminated food, any harmful pathogens that survive our body’s natural defenses start multiplying in large numbers and secrete chemicals that aid their survival, while poisoning us and sapping our internal resources. A higher pH value in the stomach greatly reduces the number of pathogens required to break through the defenses and infect our body. Symptoms of most diseases include vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. Many are deceived by these symptoms and put it off to a bad meal, all the while the germs spread across the alimentary canal. This can also be the starting point of even deadlier diseases as the toxins secreted by some bacteria and viruses tend to get absorbed into the bloodstream, wreaking havoc across the entire body in a matter of hours. Unclean food can also have eggs of parasitic worms that can hatch inside out body upon consumption, leading to a slow deterioration of one’s health.

More than half the world’s population do not have total food security, and 1 in every 4 is likely to suffer from food poisoning in his life. Food-borne diseases also kill millions around the world every year, with the worst death rate in African countries. About 2 million children die annually due to food poisoning, and the amount of money spent for treating food-borne diseases in the US alone is over 35 billion dollars every year. This dreadful situation is escalated by the fact that the poorest of India doesn’t have access to good quality hospitals to obtain treatment.

As a result, ensuring access to medical facilities and promoting research and development on cheaper and more effective cures will help alleviate the impact these diseases can have on the society and its economy.

But the old saying ‘Prevention is better than cure’ still very much holds true, and uprooting this problem entirely is better than developing cures, which should only be an intermediate measure. It is a shocking fact that most cases of food poisoning and food-borne diseases happen not because the consumers were struck by ill-luck or was misinformed, but because they have no choice but to eat unclean food. Although India has been working towards achieving food security since independence, we are far from realizing this goal, and this combined with the huge population of India results in a large number of people at the base of the economic hierarchy that are forced to consume contaminated food to continue their existence. As a result, our society remains crippled.

From simple gestures like not wasting food during meals to reinforcing the public distribution system by the government, there are a multitude of ways in which this situation can be improved. While general economic development will significantly contribute to solving this issue in the long run, the measures to deal with this issue should start with a proper overhaul of the aforementioned public distribution system. The tendency of ration shop workers to supply sub-standard materials while usurping the supply from the government is not unknown. A stricter set of laws and higher quality standards will go a long way in helping to solve this problem. Quality checks should also be enforced on restaurants and hotels and constant flash raids on godowns and warehouses to check for improper handling of foodstuffs is a must. Sadly, it is a true fact that much of the buffer stock kept by the government to alleviate famines turns to rat food in the godowns due to inefficiency and corruption of officials. Food security promotion and fundraising campaigns should be organized at the poorest localities of India. It is also the duty of every citizen of India to actively participate in the government campaigns regarding this issue, donate money to NGO’s working to solve this issue, and encourage their friends and family to do the same.

The combined efforts of the society and the government together can certainly help oust this plaguing problem. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi put what we need to do in a nutshell when he asked: "We reached Mars. No PM or Minister went. It was the people who did it, our scientists who did it. So can't we create a Clean India?"

By Aswin G

DOS Network Commands

        The Command prompt/DOS in Microsoft Windows or terminal in Linux distros and Mac OSs are incredibly powerful tools that are often ignored by the average user. In this article I'm demonstrating two simple network command utilities that is fun and useful: Ping and Traceroute.

        In the past, I've written a post about using isup.me to check if a website is up or not. Now, what this website does is that it pings the server you've mentioned from different locations around the world. If the server responds in every case, the website is up. If it does not, it might be partially or completely down. Pinging is a method of testing the accessibility of a host by sending some arbitrary data which is then sent back (or more correctly, echoed back) to the source.

        Did you know that you could ping any server from your very computer? If a website or server appears to be down, you can just ping it yourself to see if it's up. Here's how to do it:

The command to do this is the same in Windows, Linux and Mac. Just enter ping and the URL or IP address of the website to be pinged.

If the website is not up, you'll see a request timeout instead. Keep in mind that certain websites and servers may have intentionally blocked responses to the ping command as it  is also the source of many type of attacks that can be used to exploit websites.

The ping command also returns the time in milliseconds taken for the request to echo back, which reflects the speed of your internet connection/load on the server.

        Time to do something more fun: Traceroute. As the name suggests, this is used to trace the path of the communication from your system to the server with which you are communicating. This allow you to discover all the different routers and sometimes surprisingly long distances every data packet from system goes to fetch what you need from the internet.

The command for this in Linux and Mac is traceroute and in Windows it is tracert. I've noticed that the Windows Command Prompt displays the information information in a much more organised and easier to read format than the terminal.

You can now read the number of hops each data packet makes before reaching it's location, and time delay between each one. This is essential in finding out if a particular point in your data route is clogging up your connection to a server. You can also see the IP addresses of each successive host. Now this is where the real fun starts. Go to www.iplocation.net, enter 
in each IP address to get the location in latitude and longitude. No go to a map-plotting utility like Google MyMaps and enter the coordinates to find out just how far and wide the packets are hopping geographically.

The results might be surprising.

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Cheers!