Increase video resolution with an opensource machine learning algorithm for upscaling video image frames using an automated command line script. Bringing machine learning algorithms a step closer to usability. Given a low-resolution video file, this script uses a machine-learning algorithm…
Were early travel bans effective against the spread of Covid-19?
Evidence from previous pandemics, and early simulations generated after the beginning of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, suggested that travel bans are a common political tool for alleviating public anxieties, but have only limited effect in delaying international spread of the…
GNOME session save and restore
Save and restore your GNOME Shell desktop active running application windows and their positions across multiple workspaces using an automated command line script. Synopsis: To save your session, press Alt+F2 or on a terminal: >session save To restore your session,…
Thunderbird: Highlight row on focus
I use the keyboard a lot. For many years now, Thunderbird’s default theme (probably inherited from the desktop, which does the same thing on many dialogues) has had a little quirk that is slightly less conducive to keyboard use: It…
https and the browser conspiracy
While Google promotes HTTPS Everywhere, browsers have been working with a certifying authority oligopoly for many years promoting and enforcing an industry based on perception. https: The good and the bad The ‘s’ in https stands for ‘secure’ and indicates…
The Introspection Illusion
Decision Awareness In the early 1980s, Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist at the University of California in San Francisco, conducted a series of pioneering experiments designed to study properties of conscious awareness. By this time it was already known that…
HTTP DDoS: “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)”
Our servers were attacked recently by a constant stream of HTTP POST requests. The requests were coming in from a large range of IP addresses, at a rate of about 5-10 per second, with random POST data. However, all the…
Shell escaping in Perl
Shell Escaping: There are several methods for escaping special characters in the Linux shell: Double quotes: Double-quoted strings require escaping of only a few characters. Example: >echo “Some String: &>|\”\$’\`\s\\” Some String: &>|”$’`\s\ This method is useful as long as…
GNOME session save and restore
A newer version of this script is now available. This script is used to save and restore a desktop session. Why this script? Some desktop managers do offer some session management features. Under GNOME it may be possible to run…
Prevent GNOME screensaver during full-screen Flash videos
While movie players (such as VLC) prevent the GNOME screensaver from activating during movie playback, playing Flash videos does not affect the screensaver, which means having to move the mouse occasionally, or turning off the screensaver while watching YouTube videos…