Mobile Detox – The Big Itch

The Big Itch – Mobile Detox Smart phones are so pervasive, that they have taken up a large part of our time. Although, there are benefits, there are drawbacks as well and here we will see what we gained for what we sacrificed. Benefits of smartphones Undoubtedly, there are several benefits of smartphones, and some of … Continue reading Mobile Detox – The Big Itch →

Enable LinkedIn two factor authentication (2FA) with FreeOTP authenticator app

LinkedIn allows a user to enable two factor authentication (2FA) with an authenticator app. However, it displays a secret key and does not display a QR code for scanning by the FreeOTP app. To correctly use the FreeOTP app, an entry for LinkedIn has to be added manually in FreeOTP as follows:- Enter the user … Continue reading Enable LinkedIn two factor authentication (2FA) with FreeOTP authenticator app →

An ode to passwords – safeguarding online accounts

Every account created (online or offline) requires additional elements to be remembered the service or the device or the website or the application; the user name or ID that is to be used to login in to it, and; the associated password. It's easy to remember sites, applications, services and associated user IDs. However, to … Continue reading An ode to passwords – safeguarding online accounts →

How to prevent laptop from booting to the grub prompt in Debian 12

Upon installation of Debian 12 on a Dell Vostro 3546 laptop, it was noticed that on boot, the laptop booted into the grub prompt instead of the boot menu. It displayed grub> waiting for an input. To boot normally, it was necessary to type quit <enter> to get to the boot menu. This abnormal behaviour … Continue reading How to prevent laptop from booting to the grub prompt in Debian 12 →

How to display the digital signature green tick in a signed PDF document using PDF Studio Viewer on LinuxMint or Debian or Ubuntu Linux

Signed PDF documents normally display a green tick when the signature is valid when opened with Acrobat PDF reader. Since a long time, Adobe Acrobat Reader is no more available for Linux and the best alternative to verify signed PDF documents is PDF Studio Viewer by Qoppa. Open the signed PDF file using PDF Studio … Continue reading How to display the digital signature green tick in a signed PDF document using PDF Studio Viewer on LinuxMint or Debian or Ubuntu Linux →

FreeOTP app for two factor authentication

Github has an option to add a second factor for authentication. However, whilst at it, I found Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy to be quite bloated and feature-full compared to the simple purpose of generating an OTP. I found that one of the simplest was FreeOTP available at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.fedorahosted.freeotp for Android devices and for others … Continue reading FreeOTP app for two factor authentication →

How to unzip a zip file in Perl

To unzip a file in Perl: use IO::Uncompress::Unzip qw(unzip $UnzipError); my $input = $ZIP; my $output = $UNZIPPED; unzip $input => $output or die "unzip failed: $UnzipError\n"; where $ZIP is the variable with the zip file name and $UNZIPPED is the unzipped file.

How to fetch content from URLs using Fetch method in Perl

To fetch content from a particular URL in Perl, use the fetch method. The following code segment illustrates how it can be done. use File::Fetch; my $ff = File::Fetch->new(uri => $url); my $file = $ff->fetch(to => '/tmp') or die $ff->error; where $url is the URL from where content is to be fetched.

Tools to determine privacy safeguards for web sites and apps – Exodus, Blacklight and Chef Koch Blog

Whilst privacy is the buzz word today, the tug of war between how much is revealed and taken versus how much is protected and safeguarded continues unabated. Towards that end, some privacy tools do enable the decision as an individual on what can be the consequences of using certain applications and web sites. Exodus - … Continue reading Tools to determine privacy safeguards for web sites and apps – Exodus, Blacklight and Chef Koch Blog →

How to check MD5 hash in Windows

To check the MD5 hash of a file in Windows, open a terminal window and enter the following command: C:\>certutil -hashfile <file> MD5 <enter> where, <file> is the file whose hash you want to compute.