yoni 1.0.0

Finally it's here: yoni 1.0.0

This is final release. No much changes here. I just added verbose mode, just in case you like too look at lots of messages running though your console ;)

From now on I'm going to do only bug fixes.

P.S. This release is so much delayed because this project consumes almost all my non-working, non-sleeping and non-family time :)

Google steals photos from your Android phone

Yesterday Google invaded my privacy. The search giant added new spayware function - Instant Upload - to their social network Google+. They enabled that spyware by default. And Instant Upload silently uploaded photos from my android phone to Google+ without asking my permission!!! Google had stolen my photos!!! I realized that something evil is going on due to small notification on my phone (which many people probably will ignore or dismiss without reading).

All uploaded photos become private and not shared to general public. But still Google took them from me and can now share with their big corporate friends or US government which is unacceptable!

Obviously I deleted all those photos from Google+ and turned Instant Upload off immediately. But how can I be sure that Google did not left the copies on their servers?

What if the photos Google had stolen were intimate?

I hope that EU commission will investigate this issue and fine Google appropriately.

P.S. To turn off Instant Upload launch your "Goggle Settings" app (not "Settings"!), go to "Google+" there and uncheck "Instant Upload".

yoni 0.9.0

And here it is: yoni 0.9.0.

This one is beta release.

No big changes this time. I just switched to using logger instead of printing output to console. So, the amount of yoni output greatly reduced.

P.S. Version 1.0.0 should arrive in February.

yoni 0.8.1

Here is first bug-fix release for alpha yoni release :)

No much changes here.

1. I've discovered that my Arch Linux's python 2 binary is 'python2', while it is 'python' in my Sabayon. So, I added ability to configure path for python 2 binary. Just edit bin/yoni and update "PYTHON" variable accordingly.
2. yoni 0.8.0 did not closed vpn connection on exit. I believe this was wrong, because once the application established the connection it is supposed to close it on exit. Kind of clean-up. yoni 0.8.1 has no such problem any more.

yoni 0.8.0

So, here it is: yoni 0.8.0!
I consider it alpha right now. Nevertheless yoni is fully functional tool.
The package contains usage instructions and list of required packages. No installation is needed - just unpack and run. The launcher is (unsurprisingly) in bin folder :)

Further plans. I plan to release 0.9.0 (beta) in January, 2013. Then in February 1.0.0 should see the light of the day.

There might be also bug-fix releases in this period.

Any questions/suggestions are welcomed :)

Introducing yoni

The sad truth is that majority of people of the world are living in totalitarian countries now. This includes not only my beloved Ukraine, its neighbour Russia and a few remaining communist states. This also includes US, Australia and most of EU countries.

As the government tumour grows the space for privacy and anonymity shrinks. 

Luckily, we still have the generic computer. And technology advances very rapidly. And greedy politics are too stupid to keep the pace :)

One example of technology that defends privacy and anonymity is vpn. It's cheap and easy to use. But it has a caveat: sometimes vpn connection breaks. Starting from that moment the privacy and anonymity of vpn user might be compromised.

Until now Linux users had 2 solutions: play around with TCP/IP routes of use VPNCheck. This software is free, but has multiple limitations comparing to paid version, requires Mono and is closed-source.

So, I decided to provide a 3-rd option for Linux folks. It's a very simple open-source software. I called it yoni. It requires puthon, dbus and networkmanager. Yoni is available on sourceforge in git repository (no package yet!) along with a little howto right now. And I'm going to make an alpha release soon.

How it works? It connects to vpn (of user choice) and launches application(s) (of user choice). In case vpn connection is lost, yoni kills the application(s) and tries to connect again. Once connected it launches the application(s) again. And so on. Until user stops it.

Try it out! But be warned: this is my second python application. The first was hello world :)

Do not buy Intel's Ivy Bridge CPU!

Intel just launched new CPU line - Ivy Bridge family. There is a problem however. With shiny new CPU you will buy a back-door for your PC. Intel calls the back-door "Intel Insider". 

Intel Insider is DRM. More precisely it allows third-parties to remotely control your PC when the third-parties wish to.

This anti-feature first arose in Sandy Bridge family. It was warmly greeted by Intel customers. In fact it was so warm that many Intel customers become AMD customers.

Returning to Ivy Bridge. Intel listened to MAFFIA and not to its customers. Intel Insider is still present in those new CPUs.

So, If you want to control your PC, do not buy Ivy Bridge!