Some Notes on the Machines

Simple web-filters often cannot do the job on YouTube, because YouTube is one big web site. To deny access to certain kinds of content, a worthwhile route is Group Policy for Chrome and Edge, to require YouTube restricted mode:

www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-enforce-youtube-restricted-mode-in-chrome

www.thewindowsclub.com/youtube-restricted-mode-in-microsoft-edge

This plus cleanbrowsing.org DNS, seems to do the job very well.

There have been a number of attempts at this. Here’s the one I use:

xbrowsersync.org

Desktop and mobile. Sometimes the beta versions, later than the releases, can be helpful:

github.com/xbrowsersync/app/releases

By default, Google tracks user location. To stop this, we log in here:

https://myaccount.google.com/

In Personal Info & Privacy, then My Activity, then Activity Controls, then Web & App Activity. Turn Web & App Activity off, and Location History also.

Then we may want to go here:

https://myactivity.google.com

and also here:

https://maps.google.com/timeline

to delete data Google has amassed.

The original “IE Tab” appears to work well with Windows 10. It has seen quite a lot of development over the years, and now includes a binary helper MSI:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ie-tab/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd

“IE Tab Multi” was recommendable for several years, but does not appear to work on 10:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ie-tab-multi-enhance/fnfnbeppfinmnjnjhedifcfllpcfgeea

Adobe is supporting Flash less and less on Linux. Google Chrome was the way to do it for a while, but then Google abandoned 32-bit platforms, and there are a lot of 32-bit users who want full Flash web-site compatibility. There still is 32-bit Flash code out there, but making it work can still be very confusing on many Linux platforms. Happily, as is the wonderful modus operandi in the Linux world, an enquiring mind figured it out, and gave us a way. It’s here:

https://gist.github.com/ruario/215c365facfe8d3c5071

A quick way to apply it, is to run these commands in order:

cd ~
wget https://gist.github.com/ruario/215c365facfe8d3c5071/raw/1d7e5838b14df0da694638ba59b1c97232b01bb8/latest-pepper-flash.sh
chmod +x latest-pepper-flash.sh
./latest-pepper-flash.sh

Flash does not show up as an Extension, but it appears to work very well, you can verify it on Adobe’s check page.

The latest stable version of Chrome does not support Java by default. Oracle has a tweak, but it did not work:

http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml#npapichrome

I have read in other resources of a combination of tweaks, the above plus one or two more, which may work. Regardless, this does not bode well for Java under Chrome in the short and mid-term. Oracle will either create a Chrome-standard add-on quickly, or Chrome will run Java only with overrides left in for “advanced” users, and will become entirely non-Java-compatible in September:

http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.htm

Here is the page:

https://www.google.com/work/chrome/browser/

Please note, there appears to now be a special 64-bit download on this page.

Try this:

http://www.exactseek.com

Very interesting searcher, it does not try to read your mind or your history, just does good search. This is the way web-searching used to be. A precious resource today!

Here is a great resource:

http://www.sitejabber.com/

MSNIM can be done from a web 2.0 client:

http://people.live.com