I will do a solo presentation of the seventh of edition of The New Leaf Journal’s Sunday content recommendations from around the web. I will handle things a bit unusually today. First, I have an article recommendation that relates to a review of The Great Suspender Chromium extension that I published here at The New Leaf Journal last August. Apparently, The Great Suspender now uses trackers to collect information on users. I will post and discuss that first. After that opening section, I will recommend five other external articles from around the web and one post from The New Leaf Journal’s archive.
First Article Recommendation – The Great Suspender Now Tracks You?
DaFoster: “I no longer trust The Great Suspender”
David Foster. January 20, 2021.
In late August, I published my early impressions of The Great Suspender extension for Chromium-based browsers. Thanks to Twitter, the article became one of our most popular, coming in third place on our most-read articles list for 2020.
In this interesting blog post, Mr. David Foster explains that The Great Suspender underwent a change in ownership, and that change has been for the worse:
Apparent recent versions of the extension have been taken over by a shady anonymous entity and is now flagged by Microsoft as Malware. Notably the most recent version of the extension (v7.1.8) has added integrated analytics that can track your browsing activity across all sites. Yikes.
David Foster
Yikes indeed. While Mr. Foster notes that the options for the extension do allow users to toggle off the trackers, who knows how trustworthy that is or even if the option will be maintained in future updates? I decided to uninstall The Great Suspender extension. For those who are interested, Mr. Foster explains in his post how to install the last tracker-free version of The Great Suspender from GitHub. I may try at some point, but it would be a bit of effort, so I will more likely keep my eye out for a good alternative.
Closing Notes on The Great Suspender
I will append a note to my original review linking to this update so potential users will be able to assess the new information when deciding whether to use the extension. For whatever it is worth, the extension still worked functioned well for me. Some may decide its performance outweighs the issues that Mr. Foster uncovered. But having written a review, I thought I ought to provide up-to-date information about the extension.
Nicholas A. Ferrell’s Content Recommendations From Around the Web
Larry Sanger Blog: “We Want to Pay for a Good, Functioning WordPress Microposting Plugin”
Larry Sanger. January 10, 2021.
I stumbled upon the Larry Sanger blog earlier this week while researching other issues. I found that Mr. Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, produces great content. I agree with every word of his post on decentralization and the desire for a WordPress microposting plugin, and I will be following his project to develop one. This would be something that I would be interested in implementing here at The New Leaf Journal.
The Moscow Times: “A Year After Shock Appointment, Russian Prime Minister Mishustin’s Star is Rising”
Felix Light. January 16, 2021.
An interesting profile of the new Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Mushustin, and what his appointment means in the context of Russian politics.
The Japan Times: “Amid pandemic, children’s activities may be just the distraction we all need”
Kaori Shoji. January 16, 2021.
This post was most interesting to me for its content on Japanese kites.
The Taipei Times: “Virus Outbreak: Too early to draw virus origin conclusions: WHO”
AFP (syndicated). January 24, 2021.
In response to the WHO, China, and their allies at home and abroad, I link to an article I wrote last May.
Unsharpen: “The Best Rollerball Pens of 2021”
Unsharpen Team. December 26, 2020.
Good reading for anyone who is in the market for some new pens to use at home. I am personally well-covered on the pen front, but I thought that it might be of some use to New Leaf Journal readers.
The Old Leaf Journal 〜 Recommendation From Our Archive
The New Leaf Journal: The Aesthetic Digital Environment
Nicholas A. Ferrell. October 19, 2020.
I will spend much of the first half of February publishing Valentine’s Day themed content, including book and game reviews and essays. I will, in some way or form, write about the classic 2007 anime film, Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second. In this October 19 post, I argued for creating an aesthetic digital environment. To show that I practiced what I preached, I posted the launcher and home screen for my Android tablet. The backdrop is one of the iconic scenes from 5 Centimeters Per Second.
