A tale of 4 social networks

I got interested in investing in the stock market when Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) when public with it's IPO in late 2013. When the stock first started trading it shot up to approximately US$72.00 in the first day of trading. This was too expensive for me to buy. My first investment was an oil drilling company which I sold about 4 or 5 months later for a small profit. I have made a number of investments since then. However, this post is not about investing specifically but who or what are behind 4 social networking sites - Twitter, Google, Facebook and Instagram.

An End Of An Era

Computer technology as advanced as far as it can go with the current chip technology. The amazing thing is that although the chips has reached maximum speed and capabilities, all that can be done now is make them smaller for cellphones, tablets and other uses. However, in a few short years a new breed of computers will start to appear - quantum computers that uses laser technology and a cube styled chip that is way more powerful than even IBM's Watson.

 The laptops currently available marks the end of the era when end users were allowed to modify the machine in any way they liked. All computers sold since Windows 8 comes with Secure Boot installed (all laptops have Secure Boot enabled). Because of this, any changes to the physical hardware will result in the computer becoming locked up by Secure Boot. Once this happens, it becomes bricked.

The way Secure Boot works is very simple - everything except the laptop battery has a unique certificate that is stored in the modern version of the BIOS, called UEFI. Whenever any certificate does not match the UEFI list, booting up of the computer is halted. Even if the part with the unlisted certificate is removed the computer will continued to be bricked. Because of this, laptops are now designed to prevent changing the RAM, hard drive, sound card, network cards or video cards.

During the summer I learned that Secure Boot may be placed in setup mode where the computer operator may delete any certificate or add their own certificates. The trick is knowing which "F#" key to press repeatedly during the boot-up process. 

Mobile usability issues and Google's search results

On March 18, I received an email from Google in which they said "Google systems have tested 16 pages from your site and found that 94% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 15 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users."

The advantages of Mozilla Thunderbird email client

Thunderbird is an email client (reader) from Mozilla. Like other applications from Mozilla (Firefox, Seamonkey Internet suite), Thunderbird is extendible by plugins which increases the functionality of the application.

I must have pissed of the Canadian, Chinese and US governments really badly

I must have pissed of the Canadian, Chinese and US governments really badly. I have been fairly active on Twitter, Facebook and, to a lesser degree, G+ pushing for a stop to Keystone XL pipeline, genetically modified foods and Monsanto's control of the US Food and Drug Administration. I have also been active in discussions regarding the Affordable Care Act (also known as ACA or ObamaCare) on G+.

Paper-li and I

In my article Philip Ramsey: Become a newspaper publisher the Paper.li way on Monday October 17, 2011 I talked about the merits of Paper.li and how it helped me increase my Twitter following.

Why is Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) promoting unencrypted web sites for netfiling?

Last year I started using FutureTax for preparing personal income tax for people. In previous years I used CanTax but got tired of their crappy applications that are proned to crashes.

Warning to spammers on Twitter - I take computer security seriously

Lately, I have been receiving text messages on my cell phone from Twitter accounts that are trying to lure me to malicious websites. I use two really great plugins, WIPMania for knowing where a website's geographic location and Web_Of_Trust (or WOT) for knowing the reputation of the website I am visiting, for Firefox. I also use Linux exclusively. Your malware will never affect me for more that a few minutes

Philip Ramsey: Become a newspaper publisher the Paper.li way

Philip Ramsey: Become a newspaper publisher the Paper.li way

NetFirms login page is broken

NetFirms is a web hosting service that operates in both Canada (www.netforms.ca) and United States (www.netfirms.com). Last year NetFirms were bought out by The Endurance International Group, Inc. Once the transition from the Netfirms old OpenBSD servers to The Endurance International Group Debian Linux servers I have noticed the Login page for their Control Panel has broken encryption.