Firefox bloquea bookmarlets inseguros en sitios SSL

Al navegar un sitio seguro (que usa HTTPS) Firefox bloquea cualquier Contenido Mixto Activo (scripts de fuentes no codificadas, osea HTTP), que podría ser interceptado y modificado con relativa facilidad.  En la barra de direcciones aparece un icono de escudo con el mensaje Firefox ha bloqueado contenido no seguro ("Firefox has blocked content that isn't secure"), y ofrece la opción de deshabilitar la protección.

Lamentablemente la protección bloquea muchos bookmarlets, incluso después de desactivarla, incluyendo el práctico bookmarlet de KeepVid para descargar videos de Youtube (y otros), que produce un triste error en la consola al intentar descargar desde Youtube (que ahora requiere una conexión segura si haz iniciado sesión):

Blocked loading mixed active content "http://keepvid.com/js/bm.js"

Esto porque el script de KeepVid está en una conexión no segura (HTTP) --y además obtiene datos desde el mismo Youtube, pero usando también HTTP...

Desactivar la protección completamente es una muy mala idea.  Tampoco podemos esperar que todos los creadores de los bookmarlets añadan soporte HTTPS pronto.  Una solución temporal, si no te importa reducir tu privacidad y seguridad, es abrir una ventana en modo incógnito y abrir ahí el video usando HTTP.  O también puedes cerrar sesión.  KeepVid también proporciona un método alternativo usando Java; pero Java es tan inseguro que más que deshabilitarlo, se recomienda desinstalarlo.

Pero hay una solución permanente: copiar el script a un servidor seguro (cómo el del excelente servicio gratutio de GitHub), y editarlo para que utilice solo HTTPS al cargar otros scripts, que es lo que hice con el de KeepVid (arrástralo a tu barra de marcadores y úsalo en Youtube):

KeepVidFix

Cursor invisible y fondo negro al lanzar Tribes Ascend

Al correr Tribes Ascend (por primera vez en mi caso), no es posible ver el cursor del ratón, ni el fondo de la pantalla de inicio (si consigues aceptar la EULA a ciegas).  Un problema de texturas corruptas, de acuerdo con el soporte técnico de Hi-Rez.  La solución fue iniciar Validate/Repair en la utilidad de soporte (Hi-Rez Studios Game Support and Diagnostic Utility), que se encuentra en el menú inicio o en el botón de engrane del lanzador de Tribes.

Escuchar el micrófono o línea de entrada en PulseAudio

Andando con ganas de hacer karaoke, me econtré con que no hay opción para escuchar mi propio micrófono, ni en Gnome ni en KDE.  Pero la línea de comandos no podía fallar; basta con cargar el módulo de bucle de PulseAudio:

pactl load-module module-loopback

Y para desactivarlo:

pactl unload-module `pactl list short |perl -ne 'print $1 and exit if /^(\d+)\s+.*module-loopback/;'`

O en un práctico guión:

pulseaudio-loopback.sh

#!/bin/bash

if pactl list short|grep module-loopback 1> /dev/null
then
    echo Desactivando el bucle de audio
    pactl unload-module `pactl list short |perl -ne 'print $1 and exit if /^(\d+)\s+module-loopback/;'`
else
   echo Activando el bucle de audio para el dispositivo de entrada preferido
   pactl load-module module-loopback
fi

 La calidad del sonido deja que desear, sin embargo, pero eso ya es otro rollo.

"The database was created by a later version of Rhythmbox"

Updated Rhythmbox from Lucid to Maverick's version, to see if it would improve cold startup times.  It didn't, but it did break sync with my iTouch, besides rescanning all my collection.  So I downgraded back to Lucid, only to find Rhythmbox had upgraded its database to a new version:

Could not load the music database:
The database was created by a later version of Rhythmbox. This version of Rhythmbox cannot read the database.

(No se pudo cargar la base de datos de la música:
Una versión posterior de Rhythmbox creó la base de datos.  Esta versión de Rhythmbox no puede leer la base de datos. en Español.)

So I went to take a look at the database at ~/.gnome2/rhythm

box/rhythmbox.xml, except it was not there. locate was no help, since my home directory is encrypted, but strace did the trick, as usual.

Turns out Rhythmbox has had it's user data in ~/.local/share/rhythmbox for a while now.  ~/.local/share is defined by an actual specification, XDG, which is also used for all the pretty Documents, Music and such directories.  Anything that helps reduce the home polka dot syndrome is more than welcome, and the specification is handy to know.  Take a look at  ~/.local/share and $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS for a quick overview of who uses it (not many, sadly).

Back to Rhythmbox, I could have just deleted it's database at ~/.local/share/rhythmbox, but since I like living on the edge... I changed the version from 1.7 back to <rhythmdb version="1.6">, which got me back to where I had started (but somewhat wiser).

I also noticed that there were quite a bunch of type ignore entries on the "database," about a third of the total number of entries.  And of those, two thirds were comprised by the FreeDB directory tree.  Removed the FreeDB directory and its ignore entries (all 6 MiB of them), which seems to have improved startup time slightly.

Well, the least I can ask for after all that is some placebo effect!

Problems upgrading Ubuntu Karmic to Lucid

While overall smooth, a couple of details had to be fixed after upgrading Ubuntu Karmic to Lucid:

• Grub didn't automatically select the previous OS I started, as before:

Had to add "GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true" to /etc/default/grub (and run update-grub after).

•  The message "An error occurred while mounting /media/cdrom0/
  Press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery" at every boot, and being unable to mount the CDROM as a normal user:

The CDROM settings in /etc/fstab were missing "noauto" to prevent it from being mounted on boot, and "users" for normal users to be able to mount it.  The result was:

 /dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 utf8,users,noauto 0       0

•  PulseAudio not starting, so audio is not working in most apps

Running the script used to start PulseAudio (in Startup Applications) by hand provided little information:

$ bash -x start-pulseaudio-x11
+ set -e
+ '[' -z '' ']'
+ '[' x:0.0 '!=' x ']'
+ /usr/bin/pactl load-module module-x11-publish display=:0.0
Connection failure: Connection refused

 The problem was finally found in the comments in /etc/default/pulseaudio.  I had disabled PulseAudio's autospawn (as to be able to kill it and start jackd) in my ~/.pulse/client.conf, which is now required for start-pulseaudio-x11.  Enabling it back made it all good (jackd works without having to kill PulseAudio now).

Palm Hotsync hangs while "Syncrhonizing Tasks"

Actually, the PDA says "Synchronizing Tasks" (or whatever conduit runs before Backup), but the PC shows "Making backup copies of the PDA's databases" (or something like that). And indeed, Tasks are already synchronized and the Palm hangs while starting the Backup conduit, and apparently before it gets to copy any database.

A workaround is to disable the Backup conduit: in Palm Desktop, menu Hotsync -> Custom (the Conduit setup) -> Backup -> Change -> select Do nothing and Set as default. This will disable the Backup of your databases, eliminating the problem, and greatly speeding up HotSync times, so it's a good thing to do in any case. You're better off using NVBackup to backup your apps anyway.

Another solution is to remove the current backup in your hard drive, deleting (or renaming) %PROGRAMFILES%\Palm\USERNAME\Backup. This should allow the Backup conduit to work again, for a while... but Hotsynch will probably remain edgy, freezing/crashing randomly until you do a hard reset and reinstall everything. So again, you'd better disable the lame Backup and go NV!