Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 June 21

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June 21

If you are using Tor

Could you be contributing as a proxy for all kind of activities: from internet trolling, (passing through illegal downloads, SPAM, online scams, and child pornography) up to organized criminality? OsmanRF34 (talk) 13:52, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Or avoiding digital stalking, or supporting whistleblowing. See Tor (anonymity network). It has legitimate and illegitimate uses. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:11, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

By that logic, using the internet is also "contributing as a proxy for all kind of activities: ...online scams, and child pornography." Now, if by "using Tor" we mean "hosting a Tor exit node", then you're probably right. But if "using Tor" just means routing your traffic through the extant Tor network, then it's not really contributing to anybody else's activities, not any more than me using the internet is contributing to child pornography. A more clear-cut illustration might be freenet. In that case, to use the service, you have to also host other encrypted bits of unknown origin and unknown content, and this activity is clearly supporting/contributing to the functioning of that network and all who use it for nefarious or righteous purposes. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:20, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Useful clarification. If you are hosting a Tor exit node, you are contributing to various legal and illegal activity. If you are routing your traffic through Tor, you are engaging in your own legal or illegal activity, such as avoiding digital stalking, whistleblowing, online scams, or child pornography. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:33, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

when I am online, no one is using my computer with my knowledge to do anything ilegal, so, my use of the internet is not helping them. But I got the impression that Tor would be a kind of p2p proxy service, and anyone using it would be a Tor relay smudging the traffic, althogh it's clear that concrete user are not exit nodes. OsmanRF34 (talk) 17:46, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Using Tor does not automatically make you a relay. (This is different from, say, Skype, which I believe can relay other users' calls, which could be discussions of illegal activity, through arbitrary clients.) -- BenRG (talk) 19:35, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's info about Tor here notes that all active members of the network are relays, and so relay whatever traffic is moving through the network, despite being unaware of its contents. EFF says here "it is statistically likely that an exit relay will at some point be used for illegal purposes". -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 17:54, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

If you read that page as saying that anyone who makes connections through Tor is also relaying other people's connections, then you misread it. Members of the Tor network are distinct from users of it. -- BenRG (talk) 19:35, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Creating shortcuts on Android

I'd like to make a shortcut on my Android internal SD card to my external SD card. How do I do that? The mount point is /storage/sdcard1 - I'd like to be able to do it from within Windows 7 (I have managed to make the internal SD card shared over Wifi) but I could also do it on the phone if that's not possible. ----Seans Potato Business 14:25, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I tried using a terminal emulator in Android to run the command 'ln -s /storage/sdcard1 shortcut_to_sdcard1' but the response was 'link failed Operation not permitted'. I tried prefixing with sudo and it responded 'sudo: not found'. I'll continue fumbling until I achieve something or get a response or give up. ----Seans Potato Business 15:11, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

My Android is rooted, btw. --Seans Potato Business 15:14, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

I used command 'su' to obtain a # prompt but this still produced the same 'link failed Operation not permitted'. --Seans Potato Business 15:16, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

If the SDcard is formatted FAT32 (which I think is the default for Android), you can't create a symlink on it - the underlying filesystem doesn't have such a concept, so the Linux filesystem driver returns the error you're seeing. You can't create a hardlink either. If you chose to reformat to a filesystem to ext2 (and your system supports that) then you can use symlinks there. A Windows shortcut (cf File shortcut#Microsoft Windows) is a different beast altogether - it's a special file that really only Windows Explorer honours; I'd be very surprised if anything in Android knows about them. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:28, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, NTFS (not FAT32) does implements NTFS junction points and NTFS symbolic links. But Android does not (natively) support NTFS. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 15:36, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the card is formatted in Fat32. What a hassle! I'll keep looking for solutions. --Seans Potato Business 16:12, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

@Seans Potato Business: I don't know much about fancy file formatting and whatnot, but I think I have a solution. Back when Google Play Music didn't let you store music on your external SD card, I was able to make a shortcut using ROM Toolbox. This is back from early 2013, but perhaps it still works. The video tutorial I used is here. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 23:28, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, I get an error which states that some file systems do not support symbolic links which suggests it's trying to do the same thing I was attempting to do manually. --Seans Potato Business 02:11, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I only just found out that you could move the music to external storage. Now I can finally have a good amount of music and a reasonable amount of internal space free! MChesterMC (talk) 09:12, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Any way to add .HTML suffix to Blogger pages&posts?

thanks. Ben-Natan (talk) 23:30, 21 June 2014 (UTC)