Programming

Free Programs!

Below will be my list of programs that might be useful for you! You might notice that it’s Russian based. If Ukraine triggers you… most of my content should have triggered you already.

→ KMS Tools Portable
Great tool to activate Windows if you haven’t activated it (never pay for Windows). It comes with Microsoft office. Install it and run. You’ll never have to pay for a subscription. It is older but has everything you need.
→ Rutracker.org
Torrent site for Russians. You will need a plugin to translate to english but their programs has an ‘all language version’. Torrent any additional programs like photoshop here. Goes great with…
→ Yandex
Search engine by Russians I’m sure you heard about it at some point. Great to search for torrents that you need. Never pay for any programs :) If you want to support developers, always donate to them directly.

Firefox addons

Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Brave, Waterfox, the list goes on and on... They're all compromised. Anything which takes a team of knowledgeable programmers is questionable and there will be some sort of backdoor. All that really leaves is some bad browser which no one will use. Who's to say that browser isn't compromised? Dig Deeper says it best. They're all heads to the same hydra.

With that being said, I still use Firefox. I use add-ons and customize the settings to try to be as close to private. I understand there's TOR but, if everyone knows that TOR is used for privacy... I feel like 'they' will focus on those who use it. I use this youtube link as a baseline to customize Firefox to the best of my abiliities. I also go off of PrivacyTools which the video does mention. It does break some websites and you will lose some conveniency but, there are some ways to mitigate that. On top of the add-ons the video mentions, I use the following add-ons:

-> Imagus - Blows up images when you put your mouse over it.
-> Grammer and Spell Checker - Language Tool - Self-explanatory
-> SingleFile - Saves the webpage as a HTML to save
-> Absolute Enable Right Click and Copy - Self-explanatory
-> Export Tabs URLs - Saves tabs as .txt file
-> Search by Image - Uses search engines to search images

There are other programs that I use in conjuction with add-ons but that cover's add-ons. Let me know if I'm missing anything or are interested in anything.

Python3 Programs

If you followed the add-ons for Firefox, you'll realize that it's annoying how you can't save your tabs. I tried searching for some 'professional' program to fix this but I couldn't. I ended up writing some short python3 script to get the job done. It might not work for you if you're unfamilar on how to run it on the command-line interface (CLI). I've used this script for the longest and it's not impressive by any means. Problems with the script:
-> When you export your tabs using "Export Tabs URL's", it must be the last file on your Downloads Folder (~/Downloads)
-> Will open up a new browser on top of one with your current tabs. I just close out of it
-> You must type 'n' to exit out of the program

You can improve it or take it as is. It's good enough for me and serves as a simple check and balance. I can fix it if it becomes a big problem and if there's a demand for it. Here's the script.

Linux

SIK mentions downloading websites and preserving images in case it gets deleted. Wget is a linux programs which grabs everything and compresses it (sometimes). I downloaded a whole 4chan page and it's roughly 1mb. It's in topics. You can also go to the 'man' page for the manual for more options. Below is what I use to download webpages. I used it for my website and it downloaded it EXACTLY how I created my website. Type this into the CLI (terminal).

Whole Website
wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent https://takeapiece.neocities.org/

Images
wget -nd -r -l 2 -A jpg,jpeg,png,gif https://takeapiece.neocities.org/

Websites that explain how it work.
Entire Website
Entire Website with Windows option
Download only images

I use MxLinux. I've been using it for a year and some change. Best Linux distro I personally used. A lot better than Windows. It does take some time to adjust to and Linux isn't exactly the greatest thing. There are problems with MxLinux but I'll take those problems over Windows problems.

Here's what I used to learn Linux. It's the best book I read on it.

General Tips

Those three books are my fundamentals. I don't know how others learned their trade but I just looked at code in Github and try to write code on things that I wanted to automate. Search engines are my best friend. I just tried to figure things out on my own. You can think it as a child smashing circles into a square wooden toy until that child eventually learns that brute forcing things doesn't work.

Python Crash Course
Learn Python 3 The Hard Way
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

These two websites are the websites that I use to download free books. Works great with VPNs as you can reset your restrictions on downloads. Library Genesis is used to grab books that you usually can't get somewhere else.

Main Book Sites
->z-library
->Library Genesis

Not So Great websites
->Free PDF
->IT eBooks
->AvaxHome
->LibGen
->Openlibrary

Reddit for the most part is like every other media giants. A giant controlled cesspool of garbage. The one thing that I give it credit is that you don't need an account. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter kind of frowns on those who don't have an account. The old style of reddit is still decent and there are good discussions every now and then. The new style has dark mode.

Something that a lot of people don't know. Before you click on a website, hover your mouse over the URL. You'll see the complete URL spelled out. It'll be a little white box on the bottom left of your browser. If it looks sketchy, don't click it.

Programs

I said I would put more programs that I use so I will! I have a couple more but it might not be useful to most people since it ties in specifically to coding. I'll put it here if there's a demand.

Programs
-> 'nnn' - Terminal Filemanager for linux (uses regex and many useful functions) It's really awesome once you learn it (it's easy). Github
-> Youtube-dlc - Downloads videos from multiple websites (youtube included). There's tons of variations of youtube-dl once it got taken down a couple months ago. Youtube-dlc still works for me. Github
-> Bashtop - Resource monitor that shows usage and stats, seems like Bpytop is better. Github
-> RGA - CLI PDF, E-book, document searcher, etc. They haven't updated it but you can go to issues and they have the solution to the problem. They submitted trouble tickets for it. You'll need nightly for it. Helps if you're looking through hundreds of PDFs. Github
-> Thunar Bulk Rename - Comes with most linux distros (thunar). Renames hundreds of files with a GUI (interface). Type this in the CLI 'thunar --bulk-rename' Opens up a GUI with regex (regular expression).

These programs are not tied to Linux.

Flameshot
Flameshot is the best screenshot software that I used. I enjoyed Lightshot for Windows but once I learnt all the features for Flameshot... there's no coming back. You can configure it to activated under print screen. You can make a variety of shapes, save the name however you please, add text, change highlighter color... there's just a lot to cover. Defintely worth getting. I started using it for my Bible Notes

Bibletime
It's decent. It's a little lackluster but, good enough for me. You can save verses and chapters and take notes.

Gnote
I use in conjuction with 'notes'. Gnotes is awesome as you can divide up everything easily. Organizable.

Sublime
Best text editor that I used. People use VIM or NANO but, I had no problems with Sublime. Atom is very similar to it but Atom is extremely BIG for what's it used for. Sublime is a small text editor.

Quod Libet
Small audio player. Simple and plays music.

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