Some nostalgy rant about convinience of older websites and absense of uneeded crap. Don’t you remember?
Here is some fine examples of modern sites, which try to match older web in terms of ergonomics and overall perception.
HACKER NEWS
COMMAND LINE RADIO
PLAIN TEXT SPORTS
RANDOM TEXT WEBSITES
Imagery by spacedrone808
I suppose that many of you will be interested in looking at the most important operating systems of the past. Today it is possible even withour virtual machine. You can observe vintage operating systems right in your browser. ATARI ST
MACOS 7
[ver II]
MACOS 8
AMIGA OS
WINDOWS 98
BONUS PART
CHIPTUNE.COM
chiptune tracker music site heavily inspired by Amiga OS Workbench v1.
Back in a day when torrents were in a non-existing state there was amazing p2p software called Emule. Some vintage computer geeks prefer Emule over torrents even today. Most of users are located in European countries like France, Italy, Spain.
Rather unusual software for 2022, but i concur that application can be helpful in retrievement of rare and obsure stuff, which can’t be found anywhere else.
Note that official download page is not updated anymore and latest 2021 version can be acquired from community forum
or Githhub page
only.
UPDATED ON: 2022-04-19
Due to heavy blockade of anonymizer services like VPN and TOR in Russia
check out following sites, which still can be reached within Russia region.
▒ VPN SERVICES ZOOGVPN
[Greece] LANTERN
[USA] HIGHLOAD
[Russia] AMNEZIA
[Russia?] PSIPHON
[Canada] ◄ Site is blocked in Russia.
For you convenience i’ll provide download links of Psiphon software on Mega.nz
hosting: Windows client
Android client
▒ TOR RELATED STUFF Also make sure not to skip following stuff:
Take a note that ugly g 3-4 times a year changing YT API to make artificial difficulties to third-party clients like NewPipe, FreeTube
, FireTube. So don’t forget to update programs regularly.
I’m almost sure that you already know about excellent Android YT client NewPipe
. It is praised for it’s lightness, speed and freedom from YT closed source API. As you may know that in recent pursuit for profit google increased ads quantities and methods of it’s delivery.
Previously
i already wrote about Tor blockage in Russia and suggested to use alternative Tor relays. Continuing this topic here are some useful tools to undo most of ISP restrictions.
GoodbyeDPI
► passive Deep Packet Inspection blocker and active DPI circumvent utility To activate software run it in command line with administrative privileges:
goodbyeDPI.exe -1 -a If blocked sites are still don’t open or working as not intended try the following line:
UPDATED ON: 2022-03-16
Degenerative totalitarian regime in Russia just made another pathetic attempt
to block TOR network. In previous try they’ve blocked only TCP datagrams. And now, it looks like that they have added UDP and ICMP to banned list also.
If you experience difficulties in connecting to TOR network using bundled bridges like meek-azure, snowflake and obfs4 try these one:
159.69.156.131:9001
84.117.255.228:9001
37.120.182.1:12443
188.68.62.244:11443
50.7.178.34:443
87.174.114.28:9001
83.97.20.80:9001
80.
IMPROVING FIREFOX PRIVACY & SECURITY FIREFOX ADDONS [Part I]
Finally I’ve managed to finish this part of the FAQ. Note is a loooong-read, so mistakes can occur » please report them to me
.
One of the most distinctive features of FireFox was customization. With each new version it becomes less customizable, thanks to marketing people at mozilla corp. They do everything to make Firefox look like google chrome. I stopped using plain FireFox @ version 80.
For the last 10 years Russian government [and not only Russian] had taken vector to oppress any free speech, which was so generic for internet communities of 90s. Many sites were blocked. Information portals, torrent trackers and even some news microstock sites, like Alamy
were banned.
In current situation i can only suggest to use Tor Browser
or free VPN services.
In case of TOR you trust your traffic to American special services, but doing so you can avoid contact with your local regulators.
Addons, addons, addons!! So many of them! How to choice the right one? Whom to trust to? I will help you with your findings and share my personal experience.
Rule of thumb: do not install too much addons, they will slow down your browser noticeably!
░ SECURITY ADDONS Ublock Origin
► an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory. Far better than famous ADblock Plus with acceptable ads. uMatrix
► potentially could eliminate any threat based upon class/script/frame hi-jacking.
Since Firefox v3.x the browser is capable of managing color profiles like sRGB & AdobeRGB.
When a browser doesn’t support color management or it has been badly implemented, images won’t show up right.
Just want to make a super quick note on neat browsers for legacy operating systems. There is not so much choice for such vintage OS these days.
There are two of last Mohicans. K-Meleon & MyPal.
K-Meleon is way more lightweight and will be good for slow puters. There is even a Windows 98 version.
While MyPal will bring up more modern web compatibility, but of course it is tad slower than K-Meleon.
Yeah, i’m 108% confident
Nowadays people don’t have much choice in terms of choosing their web browser. google chrome is a choice of almost all common people.
I choose not to choose it. Because of it’s invasive philosophy to collect every possible thing it can dig up and then send back to it’s Master. I can’t even call it a browser any more. It is data-collecting platform, with very high privileges.
The most important links of the web will be listed here. Section is constantly updated.
UPDATE: 2021-09-07
░ OPERATING SYSTEMS ADGUARD BUILDS
► up-to-date Windows builds SIMPLIX
► Windows 7 ESU updates TOMASZ86
► Complete library of Windows 2000 updates ZONE94
► Windows XP Integral edition MANJARO
► modern Linux distribution WIN 10 SUCKS
► great article about win 10 suckage
░ DRIVERS AMD
► AMD drivers RICOH
► firmware for Ricoh cameras OLYMPUS
► firmware for Olympus cameras NOVATION
► drivers for midi keyboards WACOM
► drivers for pen tablets BLACK MOD
► best firmware for Nokia PureView 808