How to Enable NVIDIA RTX Video Super Resolution Upscaling Technology in Mozilla Firefox

This quick tutorial will show you how to enable the NVIDIA RTX Video Super Resolution in Mozilla Firefox.

As RTX Video Super Resolution utilizes the Tensor Cores present in NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs, it is exclusively compatible with graphics cards from the 30 and 40 series.

Prerequisites

  • Mozilla Firefox version 116 (or above)
  • NVIDIA graphics card (30 and 40 series only)
  • RTX super resolution enabled via the NVIDIA Control Panel
  • Open your Mozilla Firefox web browser and enter “about:config” in the search bar.

  • Type in “gfx.webrender.super-resolution.nvidia” into the search box.

  • Click on the toggle icon to adjust the setting to “true”.

  • Now you should see the value set to “true”.

  • Restart the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

You have successfully activated the feature in your web browser. It is important to note this feature is currently in an experimental phase, and you may encounter potential issues with it enabled, such as inaccuracies in image upscaling or even the feature failing to work at all on your computer.


Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Software, Tips & Tutorials

File Backups: Self-Hosted vs. Cloud Storage

In the digital age, safeguarding data has become very important. Whether it’s cherished memories, important documents, or sensitive information, losing data can be a major problem for both personal reasons (e.g., irreplaceable family photos) as well as business reasons (e.g., customer data, data breach).

There are two popular ways to backup your files. One, backing up your files to your own hard drives, and two, backing up your files to a remote location (e.g., cloud storage). Which of these two are best for your needs you ask?

In this blog post, I’ll explain the and pros and cons of these two approaches (self-hosted vs. cloud storage) and help you make an informed decision.

 

Self-Hosted Backups

Using your own hard drives for storing your backups provides complete control and customization at the cost of time to setup and manage. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons:

 

Pros

  • Total Control: When you store your own backups, you have complete control over the storage environment. You decide the hardware specifications, security measures, and software configurations for your backups.
  • Privacy and Security: Storing backups on your own gives you more control over data privacy and security. You can implement encryption, compression, backup automation (your own automation or paid software) and anything else you may need.
  • Cost Efficiency: Over the long term, self-hosted backups are almost always more cost-effective, especially if you have a large amount of data to back up. If you require more than 1TB of disk space, rolling your own backups is going to be less costly in the long run.

 

Cons

  • Technical Expertise: Setting up and maintaining a proper self-hosted backup environment requires technical knowledge. You’ll want to have a separate computer dedicated to hosting your backups. This will entail needing to manage software updates, security patches, and troubleshoot any issues that arise (e.g., failed backup hard drives; trust me, this will eventually happen in the long-term).
  • Resource Management: You’re responsible for managing the backup server’s resources. This can become complex as your backup needs grow. You will need to have some kind of alert letting you know if a hard drive is near full, so you can plan accordingly.
  • Physical Security: Hosting your own backups ultimately means you are responsible for the physical security of your backups. If anyone can just walk up and steal a backup hard drive, you have greater problems to worry about.

 

Cloud Storage: Convenience and Accessibility

Cloud storage services like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive offer convenience and ease of use at the expense of flexibility and control. Here’s a look at the pros and cons of cloud storage:

 

Pros

  • Simplicity: Cloud storage services are user-friendly and require no technical expertise to get started. Most tasks, such as uploading, organizing, and sharing files, are straightforward.
  • Accessibility: Your backups are accessible from any device with an internet connection. This accessibility proves invaluable, especially in situations where you need to retrieve data urgently.
  • Automated Services: Many cloud storage platforms offer automated backups, ensuring that your data is continuously and seamlessly protected without manual intervention.

 

Cons

  • Cost Scaling: While cloud storage is convenient, costs can increase as your storage needs grow. Monthly subscription fees can add up, making it potentially more expensive over time.
  • Dependency: Relying on a third-party service means entrusting your data security and availability to that provider. This can raise concerns about data breaches and service outages. (Encrypting your data on your computer before uploading to the cloud storage is highly recommended.)
  • Limited Customization: Cloud storage services provide a proprietary environment, potentially limiting your ability to customize the storage infrastructure according to your specific requirements.

 

Conclusion

The decision to self-host or use cloud storage for your backups ultimately depends on your individual needs and priorities. If you value control, customization, and have the technical know-how, a self-hosted backup environment might be the right fit. On the other hand, if convenience, accessibility, and automated services are crucial, cloud storage could be more suitable.

In some cases, a hybrid approach might be the optimal solution, combining the control of self-hosted backups with the convenience of cloud storage for redundant backups. Whichever way you choose, remember that the key to effective backup strategies is consistency, security, and regular testing of backups.

Personally, the hybrid approach is my favorite method, since I can quickly restore from my backup, since I have it local, but I have the reassurance that if my local backup gets destroyed (natural disaster, drive failure, etc.), I have (encrypted) copies of my data in cloud storage just in case.

Also, as I previously mentioned, please keep in mind to always (where possible), encrypt your data before uploading your data to the cloud. Otherwise, you risk someone at one of the cloud storage’s data centers snooping through your files.

Click here to view how to keep your files in cloud storage secure.


Posted in Cloud, Computers, Internet and Servers, Security, Software, Tips & Tutorials

Tips to Keep Your Cloud Storage Safe

For the last few years, cloud storage has become popular as a means to backup an individual’s / business’ files, important documents, photos, digital rolodexes (e.g., people’s names, numbers, email addresses, passwords), projects, etc.

Unfortunately, the masses assume their files are secure just because “a large corporation is running the cloud service” or even because “nothing yet has happened to my files”. There are steps you must take to protect your data, and not just relying upon the cloud service to do this for you.

  1. You must make sure the password to your cloud storage is a good one. Having a bad password that is easily guessed does you no good.
    • It is good practice to use a password manager (preferably offline) and generate passwords with a combination of lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols.
    • Some people will combine words together for their password. This is not as secure as the above method, but is better than nothing.
    • Never write down your password. That is a good way to get it stolen.
  2. Enable 2-step authentication (if available) for logging into your cloud storage account.
    • This is a very good method to stop most hackers dead in their tracks. Most will not have access to your phone or email to receive the 2-step authentication request, so they will not be able to gain unauthorized access to your account.
  3. Always encrypt your files before uploading them to your cloud storage.
    • Several file compression software can encrypt files for you. You just need to provide a password.
    • 7-Zip can create encrypted / compressed archives using the AES-256 algorithm (symmetric encryption; this means you use the same password to both encrypt and decrypt the archive).
      • It can even encrypt the file names inside the archive too, so no one can try to guess what is in the archive by just looking at the file names, even if they cannot access the data.
    • I know cloud storage companies claim to encrypt your files. The problem? They have the encryption keys, so they can decrypt your files whenever and snoop.
    • Even if the storage service does not have a secret policy to snoop through their customers’ files, rogue employees could still do it without the management’s knowledge.
    • Imagine if someone uploaded a text file with their bank information on it (never do that!), and it was not encrypted before being uploaded to the cloud storage? A disaster waiting to happen.
  4. Always have at least two backups of your information. Never rely upon just one cloud storage company to backup all your data.
    • If you must, you may buy a hard drive to backup your data to once a week (or whatever works for you), and place it somewhere for safe keeping (basically, cold storage).

 


Posted in Cloud, Computers, Internet and Servers, Security, Tips & Tutorials

Simple Ways to Get Less Spam in Your Email

We have all been there. Wake up in the morning and find you have a dozen or so spam emails sitting in your inbox, all mixed in with your legitimate emails from family and business. You may have wondered how you can prevent so much spam from hitting your inbox.

The truth is …there really is no “magic formula” when it comes to fighting spam. Some people seem to never get any spam even if they give their email out to everyone they meet. For others, they seem to have been “blessed” with tons of spam, when they have been very careful who they have given their email too.

Here are some ideas that may help you prevent spam from hitting your inbox. Please remember, none of these ideas have any guarantee that you will not receive any spam.

  • (As mentioned above) Be careful who you give your email out to. Never just hand over your email to just anyone (e.g., an online “signup” form to potentially win a prize).
    • There are several places on the Internet where people collect email addresses to put into lists to sell to spammers. Unfortunately, many of these signup forms look legit and people fall for them, not realizing that they are getting setup to be spammed.
    • Many companies that require your email have good intentions, but their systems may get compromised and their customers’ emails get leaked to spammers. In this case, that is not your fault. Life happens.
    • In addition, your friends’ and family’s email accounts may become compromised at a certain point in time. This will undoubtedly cause their address books to become leaked. You can guess what the hacker will do with all the emails he collects.
  • Use a third-party email spam filter (e.g., SpamAssassin).
    • Some examples of third-party spam filters are: SpamAssassin, rspamd, and Gmail.
      • SpamAssassin is a self-hosted software program. When your email server receives an email, it sends the email to SpamAssassin which then tries to determine if the email is legit. However, SpamAssassin also has quite the learning curve. So, unless you have time to learn how to set it up properly, I would opt to using a commercial third-party spam filter.
        • SpamAssassin can be trained what emails are spam and what emails are not spam.
      • rspamd is another self-hosted software program for filtering email. While not as popular as SpamAssassin, there is no reason to disregard the program, if you want an alternative to using SpamAssassin or another email filter.
      • Gmail has an excellent spam filter. There are people (mainly businesses) who purposely forward all mail to a Gmail account they setup to have Gmail’s system filter out the illegitimate emails. They can do this even if they own their own domain name, and are not using a Gmail email address for their business.
        • Since Gmail is not self-hosted, all your email ultimately gets seen by a third-party. Some individuals and businesses may not be comfortable with this idea.
  • Use a “catch-all” anti-spam system.
    • What a “catch-all” system does is redirect all your email to a “bin” of sorts and lets you – later – review all the email you wish to forward to your email.
    • An example of a program that does this is “Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA)”.
      • You can do a Google search to learn more about it.
    • The only downside to this type of anti-spam is you now effectively have two emails to manage instead of one. You must watch and manage the “anti-spam bin” and you still must monitor your real email. For many people, this would not be acceptable or practical.
  • Use an email alias instead of giving out your real email.
    • This is when you have multiple email addresses that all forward to your real (main) email address.
    • This is like having a forwarding address at the US Post Office.
    • For example, you have your personal email: alfred@example.com.  Now you want to sign up for a new online service, but you do not want to give out your personal email. You setup an alias ad130@example.com and give that email to the online service instead of your actual email. Now anytime the service emails you, the email is forwarded from ad130@example.com to alfred@example.com.
      • In the event the service gets compromised and you start getting spam to ad130@example.com, you can create another one ad250@example.com and continue using the service while stopping the spam that started coming to the other email alias.
    • Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with this idea.
      • 1. With several email aliases, you must now keep up with all these virtual email accounts, instead of just one (your main email).
      • 2. Unless you are self-hosting your email, in which case you can set as many email aliases as you need, some free email services may not allow you to create 20+ emails for the purpose of forwarding to another email address. It would depend upon the email service’s “Terms of Service” …what they allow and do not allow.

Posted in Computers, Internet and Servers, Software, Tips & Tutorials

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