I came across this, uhh, let’s just call it a “4chan thread,” and I wanted to save the whole damn thing including images and surrounding hypertext. But I want the HTML and text preserved. How the heck do I do that, right? I don’t want to save-as and have it store one file then a folder with a zillion pictures and other random crap in it. No thanks! Taking a PNG screenshot of this huge page or a PDF? I ain’t got ram fo’ dat!

Not a problem chief. Among the 820,085 fine apps and extensions on the Chrome Web Store is SingleFile. You install it, it adds a little icon to the right of your address bar. Once you got it, go to any website, like this one, click that icon, give it a moment to think, and save the single HTML file it produces containing every damn thing of interest. Images, js, css, all of that is stuffed into the HTML file. That’s crazy! And guess what, the resulting file is compatible both with Chrome and also with the less popular browsers your lame coworkers use. Don’t believe me? How do you think I made this?

Yes I know know 66% of you aren’t using Chrome right now and there isn’t that much point in linking this extension, but my point is that Chrome’s a great browser (the best actually, as is Chromium, 1.4 billion users can’t be wrong) thanks to Google developers and the large and growing community of bright, happy people coming up with things like SingleFile. I suspect it can be done in Firefox, but how about IE? Stuck with saving as PDFs? C’mon fellas, grow up and get with the program. I’m looking at you, Jim.

Security researcher Ashkan Soltani, along with ArsTechnica, sent four unknown URLs over Microsoft Skype and watched the server logs. Two of the four URLs, one of which was HTTPS, were accessed by 65.52.100.214, an IP owned by Microsoft. This is proof that Microsoft both has the ability and uses the ability to parse your Skype chat in plaintext, and subsequently may do things with it, like store the data and check relayed URLs. They can also not do things with your data, like not deleting it. There is no secure end-to-end encryption as you might have expected, and possibly might have needed, there to have been in place on Microsoft’s popular P2P chat service.

Whether or not this technically flies through their fine print and is legal everywhere Skype is used, I don’t know; but what I do know is that it is perturbing as Ars articulated well enough themselves (maybe read their article instead if this interests you further):

There’s a widely held belief—even among security professionals, journalists, and human rights activists—that Skype somehow offers end-to-end encryption, meaning communications are encrypted by one user, transmitted over the wire, and then decrypted only when they reach the other party and are fully under that party’s control. This is clearly not the case if Microsoft has the ability to read URLs transmitted back and forth. ‘The problem right now is that there’s a mismatch between the privacy people expect and what Microsoft is actually delivering,’ Matt Green, a professor specializing in encryption at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. “Even if Microsoft is only scanning links for ‘good’ purposes, say detecting malicious URLs, this indicates that they can intercept some of your text messages. And that means they could potentially intercept a lot more of them.

So even if you trust Microsoft, note that they and Skype especially are very friendly with the Chinese and that Microsoft has revealed that its systems have been compromised presumably by the Chinese in grave capacities. So you also have to trust the likes of China, North Korea, Wikileaks and Anonymous with what you send through Skype. Parenthetically, if any of you can replicate this with Google Talk, you’d make my day.

If instant messaging security is a serious concern to you, or if you just want to use a good universal IM client, I recommend Pidgin with the Off the Record encryption plugin which works with many services, including one you can run on your own server if inclined and lower your cloud exposure a notch.

Doug Simmons

Unless you’re a dirty hippie living off the grid, growing ‘shrooms and playing the bagpipes all day (which you also resourcefully use to rip bingers when you’re out of Zigzags), you’ve heard about how you can now attach money to Gmail to send cash to anyone with an email address, 100% free for both you and the recipient if you use your bank account or a 2.9% take from Google if you use plastic (though still free for the recipient, who can use any email service he or she wants). You may have even thought how that’s a pretty sweet deal and wondered if the Paypal crew has upped their Valium dose in light of this hot competition.

My guess is they probably have upped their dose a few millies (at least those who favor Valium over, say, nitrazepam which as you know is the primo stuff), however, while Google has a lovely font on their sales pitch page, they reduce its size by a good (and by good I mean Evil) 25% to link you to the TOS with a mouseover popup that tells you “So you just had to look for fine print, didn’t you, dee-bag… well fine, knock your socks off, hope your schedule’s wide open, better crush up some Ritalin, and if you don’t like these terms then go live off the grid and smoke bagpipe bongs,” a link only second in obscurity to their privacy page (not kidding). Watch, I’m blowing the lid of this whole damn thing (or just skip down to the bullet points).

And that’s for just the elegant FAQ page, not the extremely tl;dr TOS page which you have to sign in with a Google account just to read – lolwut? Well screw that, not only is that messed up, semi-secret conditions of a major product launch, half of our readers don’t admit to having Google accounts so I’m making a local copy here for you guys, PDF link. Sue my ass Google, information wants to be free (or just 2.9% extra if you use plastic)! That was a joke Google, no need to sue my ass, just put a cease and desist in the comments.

Warning, it’s long as hell and there’s a zero percent chance you’ll actually read it (a 32% chance you’ve even made it this far through my article). But in Google’s defense it is least 25% shorter than Paypal’s TOS; however one could argue that Paypal is concealing less information or is being less cryptic or offers more serves; regardless, that that should not be interpreted necessarily as Paypal having more “fine print” in the figurative sense per se. It’s doubtful that either service would want to make things any less appealing to you than the various laws out there force them to. Google probably used Paypal’s as a reference when writing their own. If you do actually read Google’s TOS (I just read the FAQ), let me know if there’s anything in there prohibiting people like me from bootlegging their TOS. Also, it’s not just one document, their TOS refers to more TOS documents, like this sucker.

I will at least leave you with sample takeaways from their FAQ and a few from their TOS. In short, yes this looks like a huge threat to Paypal and no I cannot think of any reason why I would continue using Paypal in light of Google’s new service (other than a lack of money, not to mention bad credit, to send people anything). But, for starters, here you go, les bullet points:

• United States only.
• Both senders and recipients must go through the motions of signing up for a Google Wallet account.
• That process includes, as is mandated by some law, confirming your identity somehow (Google suggests possibly by providing your social or something along those lines, Paypal does it by making you confirm a micro-deposit in your bank account I think).
• While sending money directly from your bank account is free, it, unlike using plastic or your Google Wallet balance which again costs 2.9% but no additional transaction fee like Paypal, “could take up to several days.” I do not know if you can charge up your Google Wallet balance for free with your bank account and how long that takes.
• Transferring money from your Google Wallet to your bank account, once you’ve hooked that up, a “few” days.
• Daily transfer limit of $10K (to make you feel stupid, Google subsequently notes that there is a 5-day cap of $50K), so you’re SOL, high rollers. Gotta send at least $0.30 per transaction, so that means I’m getting a raise, right Smith?
• Perhaps worst of all, you have to use that new, weird Gmail compose “experience” they rolled out a few months ago – you know, the thing you mom called you hysterically to ask you help her turn off.
• Google, in typical “beta mode” fashion, notes they may change everything whenever they want because they feel like it.
• Google Wallet users are not insured by the FDIC or any other governmental agency and you will not collect interest (surprise).
• If your bank or other third parties involved decide to tack on charges, that’s on you, not Google.
• It’s on you if you screw up and send the wrong guy money, or you never get your shroom seeds, no refunds in this system through Google, that’s your problem.
• If you think there’s an error that Google made, you had better tell them within 60 days and they give them selves and additional ninety days to figure things out and resolve disputes, plus an extra three days to tell you about it. What, cut them some slack, they’re busy with the robot cars.

At the tail end of all of this plus the million things I didn’t list, Google notes in all caps that whatever they may have left out of these terms, they disavow themselves of liability not legally imposed onto them, or something like that. It’s complicated, I’m obviously not a lawyer, just making a point that it’s not as simple as their cute video suggests but do feel that this looks like an awesome service that will contribute to consumers, I like almost anything that helps make money change hands and I also really like the idea of competition between Google and Paypal. And no, I do not know where you can score either ‘shroom seeds, bagpipe bongs or nitrazepam (protip, Tor).

Doug Simmons

Don’t you hate it when those all those pesky fanboys rub your nose in some stupid pie chart that’s obviously a bunch of bullcrap? According to this article from the Google OS blog, that pie chart probably is both stupid and packed with crap. Read up on that expose so that you can call these fanboys out with authority!

We all know Chrome is the best, the fastest and the most popular browser in the world, that’s not news, however I am sensitive to the fact that many of you here, while you may love Chrome, do not want to get scroogled and spied upon; and were it not for all that scroogling, you’d use Chrome in a heartbeat. Well let me tell you quickly about Chromium because this may make your day: It’s the open-source counterpart to Chrome. Think of Chrome as Google wrapped around Chromium. Chromium’s logo is not colorful, it does not report crashes or other usage information to anyone, it does not include proprietary plugins and codecs by default (no built-in PDF and Flash, though supports Vorbis, Theora, WebM, AAC and MP3, plus NPAPI plugin support), no Google branding, no auto GoogleUpdate system and  its caching and profile is stored separately from any Chrome installation you might have.

There is no RLZ user tracking (phoning home): Chromium does not tell Google, or anyone, when install and on what, your preferences, logs of usage and crash details. There is no omnibox prediction autocomplete AJAX stream to Google of what you type and there is no URL discovery. Google has no greater ability to scroogle you if you were to use Chromium instead of Firefox or IE. As it is open-source, its code is in plain view to a large audience of developers making it highly unlikely Google could slip something in there to expose you to scroogling and get away with it for a brief period without heavy repercussions. As nothing under such public scrutiny exists for IE, you may use Chromium as your refuge from being both scroolged and banged (I just came up with that!).

Google holds it under the relatively permissive BSD license, making it possible for developers of dozens of Linux and UNIX derivatives to maintain community builds, compiled and in their repositories, and there are browsers available that are based on Chromium but with modifications that might appeal to you, also all open-source. You may access nightly binaries on Windows, OS X and Linux. Additionally, other official ports include Android and Chrome OS, as well as Chromium OS (I’ll save that one for another post). I’m a Chrome man myself but if Chromium appeals to you, you may grab it here if you’re a regular nerd or over here if you’re a hardcore nerd.

Doug Simmons

Well, the latest high-profile Twitter hacking incident went down Friday by the Syrian Electronic Army which compromised multiple sites including The Onion and the Financial Times, including the FT’s website and its Twitter feeds. The FT’s Twitter account was used for something, albeit political, that was categorically horrific and uniquely puke-inducing. Even if your skin is thick I would advise against trying to dig up more on that, and if you have any related links, please do not post them in the comments.

There have been more in between, but this comes on the heels of the Associated Press’s account which tweeted a presidential assassination scare that smashed the Dow down 200 points. These incidents, which include other presidential assassination tweets years back, make up a rather long and colorful list which will continue to grow briskly.

The frequency of these incidents would have been greatly mitigated had Twitter implemented two-step verification. Not a new concept, large-scale implementations arrived years ago. It’s a nuisance most Outlook.com and Gmail users would prefer to live without, but major Twitter accounts of the AP and other media outlets and celebrities, accounts that can be hijacked for a political platform or to cause panic, many of those account holders would be willing to take the extra step to log in if it means fending off the likes of these folks. Without that feature, evidently, having a Twitter account associated with your organization is a significant liability both to you and to everyone, one worth reconsidering.

There have been rumors for months that Twitter is rolling this multi-step authentication system out to those who want it but there is still no sign of it, just talk. Especially given what has already happened, this is an obviously urgent feature to roll out and then to educate users about aggressively. However complicated it may be to pull that off, taking years to continue to fail to figure it out and make it happen is weirdly negligent and by any measure simply unacceptable.

Doug Simmons

If you thought part of the big WebP adoption holdup by Mozilla had anything to do with implementing its support involving a significant undertaking to code it in, nope; it seems that’s not the case at all, judging from Shay Elkin’s contribution to one of the multiple Mozilla bug threads on the topic. Shay offers simple instructions to make yourself a fresh build below.

Mozilla is approaching their third year of WebP debate. Take your time fellas! What’s “just a few kilobytes of savings” across the stupid clueless web worth anyway, right? When you run out of things to debate and daft insults to hurl, before making any devastating decisions you’ll surely regret, no problem, just wait for another player like Facebook to adopt WebP somehow and then you can debate the fallout from their users’ complaints for at least another five months, then repeat that forever while you watch your base of users just slowly fade away. Don’t worry, I’m sure some of them don’t care about progress.

Shay Elkin, 2013-05-12 09:10:18 PDT, Comment 66

I try to maintain a webp-enabled and updated version of mozilla-central (the patch is the same as the one in this bug)

You can find it at https://github.com/EverythingMe/mozilla-central Assuming you have a configured build environment, the following will get you a Firefox build with webp support:

git clone –branch webp git@github.com:EverythingMe/mozilla-central.git
cd mozilla-central
./mach build

Really frustrating fellas. Perhaps Matt Brubeck could swing by and offer me some clarity again, perhaps starting with Fennec’s lack of WebP support, the only Android browser I can find that doesn’t seem to support it.

Doug Simmons

Damn, someone tipped off the Google fanboys: 

David K: Does Google really think that its Android lead is so effing precarious that a decent Youtube app on Windows Phone could jeopardize it? If only MS used the YouTube API that Google was so nice in supplying so that the ads would display…wait what? Oh Microsoft had to do a work around because Google won’t let Microsoft use the API and that’s why there’s no ads? Oh evil evil Microsoft – for shame. If Google blocks an API that means you can’t play in the sandbox and shame on you for trying.  Simmons, any thoughts?

Ram:  David, LOL — Simmons, the PAL of Eric Schmidt, won’t care and in fact says its Microsoft’s fault. Damn effing fawnbuys. They buy into their divas and in fact they are ready to Lend their Personal Ass. Simmons, if you are still wondering what is a PAL, I just gave you the definition. :)

Doug Simmons: I don’t know or care whose fault it is, what I want is their stuff on more platforms. Likewise, I’d like to see Microsoft’s stuff on other platforms — EG Office on iOS and Android. Google’s claimed repeatedly that what they want to be platform-independent. This isn’t WebOS, WP is a viable platform, why try go out of their way to shaft it. Shooting everybody in the feet. Perhaps you’d likewise be “pals” with Ballmer if he, I don’t know, didn’t sweat as much, and other little things like not letting the company go sideways on his watch. The thing I’m pals with is progress. Don’t break my balls just because one particular company incidentally tends to have more overlap in that industry than another.

It’s amazing what we have in the smartphones. We have almost every sensor we’ve ever come up with. I recently got a scale, it measures air quality, and it uploads it to the Internet. I’m sure those things will end up in your smartphone. That’s amazing.

Technology should do the hard work so that people can get with doing the things that make them happiest in life.

The opportunities we have are tremendous. I think we’re all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to improve people’s lives, and the world. Everyday I come to work, the list of things that needs to be done is longer than the day before. And the opportunity of those things is bigger than it was before. Because of that I think we as Google, and as an industry – all of you – we’re really only at one percent of what is possible. Probably even less than that.

Despite the faster change we have in the industry, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities that we have. And some of that I think is due to the negativity. In every story I read about Google, it’s us versus some other company, some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting.

We should be building great things that don’t exist.

Larry Page, Google I/O 2013 (video)