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Archives for August 2016

Is Tor Secure?

The Onion Router, otherwise known as Tor, is a free browser that can help you defend against traffic analysis and network surveillance which threatens personal freedom and privacy. It gives you anonymity by bouncing communication around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world. It prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and prevent sites that you visit from learning your physical location.

Is it bulletproof? No. There are some nodes that collect data as reported by ExtremeTech.

Reasearches have reported that 110 live nodes in Tor are “misbehaving” by collecting data on the connections that pass through it. The purpose of this collection is unclear, and there seems to be some variation in what the nodes are collecting. Some are much more sophisticated and are pulling in data that could be used to identify users. Others seem to just be tracking statistics. The most likely scenario is that some computer science researchers are running studies on Tor, which involve collecting some data. At the same time, law enforcement is running similar nodes that are trying to unmask users of illegal “hidden services” that are hosted in Tor. The Silk Road was one such hidden service.

The Heroku Platform

What is the Heroku Platform?

Heroku is a cloud platform based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and a powerful ecosystem, for deploying and running modern apps. The Heroku developer experience is an app-centric approach for software delivery, integrated with today’s most popular developer tools and workflows.

The Heroku Platform is designed so you can focus on what matters the most: the app. Getting apps out in the wild, in front of real users, and then iterating fast, is what can make or break companies. Heroku lets companies of all sizes embrace the value of apps, not the hassle of hardware, nor the distraction of servers — virtual or otherwise.

The Heroku Platform is great for the early part of the app lifecycle, but it really shines when you go into production. Heroku seamlessly supports every step of the app lifecycle — build, run, manage and scale. Heroku Postgres provides trusted database options at terabyte scale.

More Than Half Use Chrome

Google Chrome has now reached 51% use according ComputerWorld.

According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, Chrome’s user share grew by more than 2 percentage points in July, the fourth time in the last six months that its gains were of that size, to end the month at 51%. In the last 12 months, Chrome has added 23.1 percentage points to its user share, starting that stretch with less than 30% and ending by owning a majority of the worldwide desktop browser market. Only two browsers have controlled more than half of the global browser share this century: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), which held a majority until December 2015, and now Chrome.