Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 August 4

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August 4

Proxy servers

What is the easiest and most virus/malware free way of using a proxy to access a web site? I'm looking for something that a not very technically minded person would be able to use. Dismas|^(talk) 10:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll need to tell us what practical problem you're hoping this will solve. Is it privacy, ad blocking, national firewall circumvention, corporate firewall circumvention, pretending to be in another country, or something else? -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:25, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Probably the easiest thing to do is to set up a SOCKS proxy over an ssh session. If you're on Windows, PuTTY can be used as a SOCKS proxy; all you need is a suitable SSH server (e.g. any *nix computer for which you have an account) to connect to - that will become your proxy server. Then you just point your browser to use your localhost as the proxy; and PuTTY and SSH take care of the plumbing. This encrypts traffic from your client to the proxy-server, so it meets at least a minimum threshold of security; and I will vouch that PuTTY is not malware (though its author, Simon Tatham, seems to have changed web hosts since I last recall. The ultra-paranoid should take heed!) SOCKS is very simple; it forwards individual TCP packets, not application-layer protocols; it doesn't have any performance optimizing tricks like a dedicated caching proxy (e.g. squid); but it's much easier to set up the client and the server.

If you're on *nix on your client, you can do the same without PuTTY: OpenSSH and dropbear both support SOCKS tunneling. Update: after trying it myself, and verifying in our list of SSH software technical features, dropbear (when used as the client) does not support SOCKS proxy. Nimur (talk) 15:56, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

It's for some people who are in Hong Kong to use to reach a site here in the US. I am not in HK, so I need something that I can walk them through at a distance. The users are getting server time out errors (from a couple different locations within HK) but that's all I have as far as what is keeping them from getting to the site. I've spoken to the US host and they claim that going through a proxy will solve the problem. Dismas|^(talk) 19:22, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Tor is just one download away: https://www.torproject.org/ . Be aware that many Tor exit nodes (free proxies in general) snoop your traffic. --81.175.225.92 (talk) 23:16, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Adding a coda symbol to my signature

I would like to replace the ichthys symbol at the end of my signature with a coda symbol, but it doesn't seem to be rendering the unicode. Anyone have any suggestions? Many thanks! Ditch ∝ 15:25, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that only three obscure fonts support this symbol, so it's unlikely that it can be supported on the client side. CSS3, however, has support for WebFonts, which allows a font to be stored on the server and retrieved and displayed on the browser. Maybe if a 'music' script is added to the list of MW-supported WebFonts, it will be possible to use WebFonts for this, but not at the moment. There might be other ways to display it that I'm not aware of, though. ;) Kayau (talk · contribs) 15:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Disabling autoplay videos?

While I'm here: Is there an app or browser setting that will disable videos from auto-playing when the window launches? Short of keeping my system volume on mute, my current method is to keep a mental list of websites that do this, and avoid them. But that's not really practical. Local news affiliates seem particular egregious in doing this. I need to have the volume on for work, as keeping up with current news reports is part of my job, but it's very annoying and embarrassing in the office when I click to a story, and get a loud TMZ report about Kim Cardasian, rather than the health care reform story I am researching. PS- I am not particular about what browser I use while at work, so any will do if they have this functionality. Thanks! Ditch ∝ 15:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

There used to be an autoplay blocker for Firefox but it got canceled and isn't usable anymore. Apparently NoScript can do this (though I've never tried it out); and there still exists one for YouTube only here. Hope this helps! --Yellow1996 (talk) 16:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Thanks! The one for YouTube alone will cut down more than half of the offenders. A friend offline said that certain OSes feature a way to set your security settings to prompt with an "allow" button before running some video scripts, so I'm looking into that now as well. Small soapbox comment here: If comments are available on a webpage that runs an autoplay video, I often comment something like "Did not read due to autoplay video." I mean, they still got my click, which is probably all they care about, but it makes me feel better :) Ditch ∝ 17:27, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

No problem. :) Hmmm... I've never heard of that feature (must be something unixy! ;)) --Yellow1996 (talk) 01:26, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

iOS blocks autoplay for web content, and requires a click first. It's not configruable though, as far as I know. Unilynx (talk) 19:37, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I know for certain that Chrome can be set to require a click to load a plugin, and I think Firefox and IE can as well. 209.131.76.183 (talk) 11:57, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, NoScript will help you out here. I use it an like it, though it does serve as a reminder of how much (or how little!) of modern the web functions properly without javascript. SemanticMantis (talk) 00:38, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I wish I could just detect when clicking a link will send me to an autoplay video, so I could avoid picking those links. Just happened an hour ago, when I wanted a list of the baseball players suspended in the Biogenesis scandal, but instead kept getting annoying videos. I eventually found the Wikipedia article, which had the list and no annoyances.

As a practical suggestion for you, how about wearing headphones ? Even if you are listening to the proper work-related sites, I'm sure your neighbors would prefer silence. StuRat (talk) 00:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Google Chrome

Hello. I am an Arab and I was using Google Chrome in Arabic, but it turned to English automatically, and I do not know how it returned to Arab --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 17:08, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, if you are on Chrome, go to the "preferences" icon (the three black bars at the top right). Go to "settings -> advanced settings" (a link near the bottom of the settings page). Select language, and click on the "add language" button to select your preference. Ditch ∝ 20:15, 4 August 2013 (UTC)