FSMdotCOM

You are Here: FSMdotCOM

Feb

2018

How Munch Info is Google Getting From Your Phone? [video]

When you say “Google”, 9 out of 10 people think of “searching the web”. The other guy thinks of mass surveillance. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

But you don’t have to think just about the search engine, and all the wonderful, life-saving services they offer us, for “free”. They also have a phone in millions of people’s pockets. So how much information is Google getting from those phones?

Jan

2018

HOW TO: Block Cryptocurrency Miners System-Wide

Ads are not only used to advertise products and services, but also to track your activity and behavior on the internet, steal your data and infect you with malware. The worst part? You don’t even have to click on ads to be affected by malware, tracking and ransomeware.

In the past uTorrent quietly installed cryptocurrency miners and The Pirate Bay was discovered to run browser-based miners. YouTube was recently caught displaying ads that covertly leach off visitors’ CPUs and electricity to generate digital currency on behalf of anonymous attackers.

There’s a few things you should take care immediately…

Jan

2018

HOW TO: Quickly Identify 32-bit Apps Installed on Your Mac

At WWDC 2017, Apple told developers that macOS High Sierra will be the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without any compromise. And now with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 beta, Apple is also notifying users of the imminent change.

Jan

2018

IINA: The Missing macOS Media Player

Playing media files out of the box on macOS is a pretty lousy experience. So, we have to rely on 3rd party software.

Most of us use VLC, and we’ve been using it for years. So maybe, we’re due for an update. Here’s IINA.

Dec

2017

Homebrew Starter Guide: The Missing Package Manager for macOS

Homebrew – the missing package manager for macOS. Probably the most popular package manager for macOS, Homebrew provides an easy way to install UNIX tools and binary apps.

For the average user Homebrew will definitely make life easier when installing binary apps. For example…

Let’s say you want to install Firefox. Normally you will do a Google ( or DuckDuckGo ) search for Firefox, click on the Mozilla link, click the download button, wait for the .dmg to download, open the dmg, and drag the app to /Applications folder.

With Homebrew you can install Firefox just by typing a short command in Terminal ( e.g. brew cask install firefox ). That’s it.

Jump over the break to learn how to install and start using Homebrew…

Dec

2017

Movavi Screen Capture Studio, A Simple Yet Potent Screen Recorder

Recording footage from computer screens has become a popular way to create video guides of apps, or even save content such as video calls, online streaming videos, live events, and so on. However as much as it has become more widely-used many still avoid it – mostly because of how complicated it seems to set up and start recording.

In many ways Movavi Screen Capture Studio turns all that on its head by providing a screen recorder that is focused on being simple and user-friendly. It does that by designing both the interface as well as features to be intuitive, so they are easy for even a first-time user to grasp.

Dec

2017

Gas Mask: A Simple Hosts File Manager for macOS

Maybe I should start by explaining what a hosts file is. But you can read all about it here. The average user probably shouldn’t mess with the hosts file unless…

Dec

2017

Get Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Watch Dogs, and World in Conflict for Free

I’ll keep this short and sweet. Ubisoft is having a holiday promotion where you can get three free titles. For PC: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, Watch Dogs, and World in Conflict.

To get the games you will need to register for a free Ubisoft account, then claim the titles and add them to your game library. To actually play the games you will need to download and install the Play client.

Once the client is installed, you will find the games in your library from where you can download and install them.

Get the bundle here.

Dec

2017

HOW TO: Encrypt Your Mac and Set a Firmware Password

Here’s something you probably don’t think about when using your Mac: encrypting your startup disk and setting a firmware password.

Device encryption and firmware passwords will not only protect your personal data from unwanted access but it will also make it easier to recover lost or stolen devices.

Disk encryption is self explanatory, but you might be confused about that firmware password. Simply put, a firmware password prevents your Mac from starting up from any device other than your startup disk.

It can be helpful if your Mac is lost or stolen and will protect your against Direct Memory Access ( DMA ) attacks which can read your FileVault passwords and inject kernel modules.

Luckily you can easily enable both on your Mac, without 3rd party software, so let’s get started…

Dec

2017

A Quick Look At VeraCrypt Encryption Tool

It’s a good idea to encrypt your digital life. Especially when you upload it to the cloud. You can already encrypt files and encrypt folders using macOS, but you might want to consider adopting a tool like VeraCrypt.