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Worried Who’s Watching Your Web Browsing? Adafruit’s Onion Pi Tor Proxy Project Creates A Private, Portable Wi-Fi Access Point
Author: Rod Sutherland
Adafruit Industries has put together a weekend project for people worried the NSA is watching how many reruns of Seinfeld they watch on their tablet. The Onion Pi Tor Proxy is a weekend project that uses the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, along with a USB WiFi adapter and Ethernet cable to create “a small, low-power and portable privacy Pi” for using with portable or other computing devices (e.g. your work laptop) that can’t otherwise run the anonymising Tor network.
In the Onion Pi configuration, the Pi creates a secure access point which automatically routes any web browsing through Tor’s distributed network of relays. The Tor network is designed to disrupt web surveillance by preventing web snoopers from learning which sites you visit, and also the sites you visit from learning your physical location. It does this by ensuring every Internet packet goes through three layers of relays before going on to its intended destination. Hence Tor’s many layered onion motif.
Adafruit says the Onion Pi is good for those who…
…want to browse anonymously on a netbook, tablet, phone, or other mobile or console device that cannot run Tor and does not have an Ethernet connection. If you do not want to or cannot install Tor on your work laptop or loan computer. If you have a guest or friend who wants to use Tor but doesn’t have the ability or time to run Tor on their computer, this gift will make the first step much easier.
Getting the Onion Pi access point up and running means plugging the Ethernet cable into any Internet access point and powering up the Pi via its micro USB cable plugged into your laptop/the wall adapter. The Pi will then create the Onion Pi access point. Connect to that for a less NSA-friendly browsing session.
That said, Adafruit’s Onion Pi page does contain caveats regarding exactly how anonymous this set-up is — noting: “We can’t guarantee that it is 100% anonymous and secure! Be smart & paranoid about your TOR usage.”
Other Adafruit tips for keeping your web browsing on the down-low include:
- deleting and blocking your browser cache, history & cookies — and/or using a browser that offers anonymous sessions
- avoiding logging into existing accounts with personally identifying information
- using SSL to end-to-end encrypt communications — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also said encryption works
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Technicolor’s Color Certified Program ensures consistency across displays (video)
Author: Rod Sutherland
There’s THX certification for TVs, ensuring potential buyers that they’ll get solid home-theater audio, so why shouldn’t there be an equivalent for displays? Technicolor, along with software company Portrait Displays, is stepping up to the plate with a new standard for guaranteeing hue quality across panels. The Technicolor Color Certified Program will award screens that meet its requirements with a seal — or logo, as it were — of approval. What are the qualifications, you ask? Technicolor’s spec is based on software from Portrait Displays, which works with OEMs to fine-tune screens for color accuracy. For the end user, the result should be consistent tones across all certified devices either automatically or when the Technicolor color setting is enabled for specific programs or apps. Head past the break for our eyes-on impressions.
Filed under: Displays
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Tags: across, certified, color, Consistency, Displays, ensures, program, Technicolor's, Video | 
No Comments »Here Are Some Amazing Photographs Of Early Astronauts And Their Wives
Author: Rod Sutherland
Lily Koppel’s new nonfiction book, The Astronaut Wives Club , looks at the historic time in America when astronauts were heroes and their families were emblems. She talks about the book and the photos she gathered.
The family of Jim Lovell (of “Houston, we have a problem” fame) watching Apollo 8 liftoff on Dec. 21, 1968. From left: James, Jeffery, Susan, Marilyn Lovell, and Barbara.
Via: Courtesy: NASA
The adventurous spirit of the space era of 1960s America feels awfully far away. Spending billions of dollars for the sake of science and exploration — are we still doing that in any way anyone notices, or wants to know about? I have no idea.
Lily Koppel’s new nonfiction book, The Astronaut Wives Club, out this week, takes its readers from the inception of the astronaut program in 1959 through Apollo 17 in 1972, the final manned moon landing. It effectively — and rivetingly, I found — goes through those 13 years of U.S. history by telling the NASA story through the domestic sphere: specifically, through the wives' lives. And for most of the space program, a wife and children were a job requirement for the astronauts — though fidelity and being physically present were not — so there ended up being a lot of them.
And they became close to each other. There was a literal Astronaut Wives Club. “They really had to sort of rely on each other to make it through the space race — and they were on this parallel mission to their husbands,” said Koppel in a recent telephone interview.
Most of the wives went from being military spouses just scraping by to celebrities with cash they'd never had and reporters trailing after them. “It was intoxicating,” said Koppel. “The whole country had space fever. And they were a part of it. They felt very much like they were playing a really important role.”
Their marriages, like that of the space-championing Kennedys', whom some of the astronaut families got to meet and befriend, were meant to reflect an ideal. It was a fulltime PR job. “All the astronauts, even today, fully attest to the fact that without them, it would have been sort of impossible, because they were just working all the time,” said Koppel. “The women kept the whole public relations image that everything was still perfect back on Earth.”
Koppel shared some photographs with BuzzFeed that she had gathered during the reporting of The Astronaut Wives Club.
Here is the Lovell family.
Via: NASA
This photograph was taken in their home in Dec. 1968, a few days before Apollo 8, which was the first mission to orbit the moon, and “was given a 50/50 chance by NASA,” Koppel said. Describing the Lovells, Koppel said: “In a way, they’re representative of many of the astronauts and their wives: they were high school sweethearts, they got married after Jim graduated from Annapolis. Marilyn was with him all throughout his test pilot career. These are careers that were sort of built on partnerships. Although they started in the '50s when we don't think of women as particularly liberated, you had to be adventurous to the point of almost being a superwoman to be married to one of these guys. Because their job was so dangerous, and they were so macho.”
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SoftBank sweetens Sprint acquisition bid as shareholder vote is postponed
Author: Rod Sutherland
SoftBank is reaching deeper into its pockets to increase its bid for third-place US carrier Sprint, raising the stakes to $ 21.6 billion in cash and stock. The bump is coming in the form of extra cash — $ 4.5 billion worth — but the nominal total still remains lower than Dish’s $ 25.5 billion bid. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had previously been adamant that even though Dish is offering a higher figure, his company’s bid offers a better value for shareholders, calling Dish’s bid “incomplete and illusory.” A shareholder vote on SoftBank’s proposal had been planned for Wednesday, but Sprint’s board has since pushed it back to June 25th.
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Leaked Windows Phone screenshots reveal notification center, UI changes, and more
Author: Rod Sutherland
Microsoft has previously admitted it “ran out of time” on a Windows Phone notification center, but it looks like the company is testing early future versions of Windows Phone with this feature in place. A Reddit user has posted a series of screenshots from a recently purchased Lumia 920 that appear to include an internal Windows Phone build. The software identifies itself as version 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407, meaning it was compiled on May 9th. An early notification center can be seen in one of the screenshots, providing access to the typical Live Tile notifications.
There’s also a redesigned calendar interface with weekly views, and the ability sort applications by name and frequency in the app list. Microsoft appears to be…
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Tags: Center, changes, leaked, more, Notification, Phone, reveal, screenshots, Windows |
No Comments »Apple MacBook Pro “Core i5″ 2.3GHZ 13″ 2011 W/AppleCare– 8/9/2014 Adobe CS5.5
Author: Rod Sutherland
 | $255.00 (27 Bids) End Date: Wednesday Jun-19-2013 9:38:22 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list |
 | $650.00 End Date: Sunday Jun-23-2013 18:04:26 PDT Buy It Now for only: $650.00 Buy It Now | Add to watch list |
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The Daily Roundup for 06.07.2013
Author: Rod Sutherland
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
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Multipurpose: Functional Glass Bong Electric Guitar
Author: Rod Sutherland
This is the functional glass bubbler electric guitar constructed by glassblower Nate Dizzle. You smell that? Smells like a JAM SESSION. Plus herb. It smells like herb. You trying to get high? Because I’m trying to get high AND NEVER COME DOWN. You know what I’m saying? I’m saying let’s blast off in a rocketship and leave this shithole behind. “But can we smoke weed?” WHAT — and risk setting off the ship’s emergency smoke alarms?! We’ll have to do it in the bathroom and blow out the vent.
Hit the jump for a shot of Nate holding the thing.
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Samsung galaxy tab 2 7.0 case review
Author: Rod Sutherland
Subscribe my chanel.
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HTC Droid DNA — How Do I Use Bluetooth
Author: Rod Sutherland
http://phonesavvy.com Learn your phone and find fun apps!!
