On its last legs?

I’ve been using nvALT for notes since I started using a Mac. Yes, I’ve tried other options but have always ended up coming back to nvALT. I’ve written a few posts about nvALT on this blog in the past.

Today Brett posted that he had been having problems getting nvALT to work with High Sierra but had finally gotten it fixed and released a new version 2.2.8.

Here’s to nvALT’s survival until BitWriter gets back on track!

I’m wondering if it isn’t time to make a permanent move to Bear which I’ve used, for short periods, in the past? Or at least until Brett gets BitWriter finished.

How to display Favicons in Safari tabs on Mac

A few weeks ago John Gruber wrote a blog post about how Safari should display favicons in tabs. I agree. It would make it so much easier to identify and navigate between open tabs.

Daniel Alm, the developer of Timing, thinks so too. This week he released Faviconographer an app with the single purpose of adding favicons to tabs in Safari for Mac.

I’ve installed the app on my iMac and MacBook and it’s working as expected.

You can learn more about how Faviconographer works and download it here. It’s also free.

How to show the PopClip menu on a selection

PopClip is one of my favorite Mac utilities.

PopClip is a Mac utility for working with selected text. When I highlight text with my mouse or trackpad an actions menu pops up with options to do something with the text. I don’t have to right-click, it just appears automatically. And if I don’t use it, it’ll disappear when I move my mouse.

PopClip includes standard actions like copy, cut, paste, and delete. There are also extensions to get the highlighted text into some of my favorite apps. Another action I frequently use is taking highlighted text and converting it to markdown. There are over 100 extensions that can be downloaded from the PopClip download site.

The only problem with PopClip is that occasionally the menu doesn’t appear when I make a selection or I’ll sometimes accidentally dismiss it. When this happens I have to re-select the text to get the menu back again. That’s a pain. Thanks to Brett Terpstra there’s a simple script to get the menu to appear. To solve this problem, I’ve set the script to a Keyboard Maestro hotkey trigger ⌥⇧P so I can get the menu to appear anytime I want.

Here’s the Keyboard Maestro macro:

Equifax breach caused by failure to patch two-month-old bug

Negligence! If they would have patched their server(s) the day the patch was released this would have never happened.

This is inexcusable! Heads should roll. Maybe it’s time some people go to jail for this kind of sh^t.

Dan Goodin, writing for Ars Technica 9/13/2017, 8:12 PM

We know that criminals exploited a US website application vulnerability. The vulnerability was Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638. We continue to work with law enforcement as part of our criminal investigation, and have shared indicators of compromise with law enforcement.

The flaw in the Apache Struts framework was fixed on March 6. Three days later, the bug was already under mass attack by hackers who were exploiting the flaw to install rogue applications on web servers. Five days after that, the exploits showed few signs of letting up. Equifax has said the breach on its site occurred in mid-May, more than two months after the flaw came to light and a patch was available.

Up to now, Equifax has said only that criminals exploited an unspecified application vulnerability on its US site to gain access to certain files. Now, we know that the flaw was in Apache Struts and had been fixed months before the breach occurred.

Supported devices for iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra

We’re just days away from the release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. Here’s a list of the supported devices for both.

Official list of supported iPhones:

iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 6s
iPhone 6s Plus
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 Plus
iPhone SE
iPhone 5s”

Official list of supported iPads:

12.9-inch iPad Pro (2nd generation)
12.9-inch iPad Pro (1st generation)
iPad Pro (10.5-inch)
iPad Pro (9.7-inch)
iPad Air 2
iPad Air
iPad (5th generation)
iPad mini 4
iPad mini 3
iPad mini 2”

Supported devices for macOS High Sierra:

iMac: (late 2009 or newer)
MacBook/MacBook (Retina): (late 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro: (mid-2010 or newer)
MacBook Air: (late 2010 or newer)
Mac Mini: (mid-2010 or newer)
Mac Pro: (mid-2010 or newer)
iMac Pro (2017)”

The Equifax Breach: What You Should Know

I’m sure you’re pissed about the Equifax breach just like I am. And I’m sure you’re as concerned about how this affects you as I am.

Brian Krebs of KrebsonSecurity is an expert in the area of data breach’s has written an excellent article about what we need to know to protect ourselves in light of the “Equifax Breach”.

Please – Please take the time to read his article.

Brian Krebs, writing for KrebsonSecurity

Here’s what you need to know and what you should do in response to this unprecedented breach.

Some of the Q&As below were originally published in a 2015 story, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Security Freeze. It has been updated to include new information specific to the Equifax intrusion.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/the-equifax-breach-what-you-should-know/

How I use Alfred for Safari bookmarks

Safari is my default browser. The Alfred feature I’m going to tell you about works with what ever browser you have set as your default. You’ll also need the Powerpack.

I launch all my bookmarks using Alfred. Alfred recognizes URLs when I type them into the Alfred box so I can launch a website in Safari from anywhere. Once I’ve typed a URL Alfred remembers it in a history.

Now the next time I want to launch a bookmark that’s in my history all I have to do is start typing in the Alfred box. For example, if I want to go to the Mac Stories website I can type “mac” in Alfred box and hit ⌘3. As you can see the macdrifter and macsparky URLs also appeared.

This saves me several mouse clicks over using bookmarks in Safari. And remember, you can launch a bookmark this way from anywhere.

This feature can be enabled under Features > Web Search > URLs/History.

The mistake I made by re-publishing my blog content to Medium

I came across this article the other day “Do’s & Don’ts of Re-publishing Content on Medium or LinkedIn”. The article has some good guidance on re-posting your blog content to Medium.

Here’s what I got out of the article. My blog was losing readership because I was re-publishing my content on Medium. Why? Google was ranking my Medium posts higher in googles search results. Thus my Medium posts were getting all the readership. I tested this with a few google searches. In each case tested my Medium post would show up on the first or second page of results. The original post from my blog didn’t show up at all in the first ten pages of results and I didn’t look any further.

Here’s how this is explained in the “Do’s & Don’ts of Re-publishing Content on Medium or LinkedIn” article:

Re-posting your content or syndicating it on other sites is great for expanding your reach and capturing a new audience, but if it’s not done correctly, you could run into some ramifications, such as a loss in traffic and being penalized by Google, hurting your rank.

Due to higher site authority, there’s a good possibility that your article on LinkedIn, Medium, or other sites could outrank the original piece on your website in search results.

If you have a blog and are re-publishing to Medium or LinkedIn do yourself a favor and read the article. You may want to quit re-publishing to Medium as I have.