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Umum

Password Manager: Let’s Give Bitwarden a Chance!

I have been using password manager since 2017 since I think there should be an easy, secure, and handy mechanism to deal with passwords. Of course, by using password manager, life is a little bit easier.

And, I chose LastPass. Last year, I still renewed my premium subscription for US$36 per year. LastPass works really well, but at the same time I am sure other password manager applications — like 1Password, DashLaneKeeper — share similar quality of features. But, it’s about choice.

Most “popular” password manager applications also offer similar subscription price, around US$36/year. My LastPass subscription will end next April, and I am thinking of moving to other application that does its basic jobs like storing password (of course!), generating good passwords, and managing credentials in categories/folders. Also, it should be also work on multiple devices and browsers.

After reading many articles, I decided to give Bitwarden a try. And, I read pretty much information about Bitwarden. One of the big differences with other password managers is that Bitwarden is open source. The other reason is on the pricing. It’s only US$10/year for personal use, or US$40/year for personal (family/organization).

My decision is not related to LastPass’ upcoming plan regarding the limitation for the free account since I was a paying customer since day one. According to a blog post:

We’re making changes to how Free users access LastPass across device types. LastPass offers access across two device types – computers (including all browsers running on desktops and laptops) or mobile devices (including mobile phones, smart watches, and tablets). Starting March 16th, 2021, LastPass Free will only include access on unlimited devices of one type

LastPass blog: Changes to LastPass Free

From the interface point of view, it’s not that beautiful — at least compared to LastPass. But hey, it’s about the features. As long as it works for me, I am fine with the interface.

About Bitwarden:

  1. Bitwarden official site
  2. Bitwarden on GitHub
  3. Bitwarden apps (desktop, mobile, including CLI)
  4. A detailed review about Bitwarden. CNET has some basic comparisons of multiple password managers.
Categories
Umum

Biaya Denda Kekurangan Dana di Layanan Jenius BTPN

Walaupun sudah lebih dari satu tahun saya memiliki akun Jenius, sampai saat ini Jenius masih belum menjadi pilihan utama untuk urusan terkait perbankan. Bagi saya, berpindah layanan perbankan bukan sebuah keputusan yang cukup mudah dilakukan. Ini juga terkait dengan perubahan pola/cara saya dalam bertransaksi yang makin hari ternyata makin banyak menggunakna e-wallet seperti GoPay, OVO, Dana, dan ShopeePay.

Untuk layanan perbankan, saya masih menggunakan BCA dan CIMB Niaga sebagai akun utama.

Bagaimana layanan Jenius?

Karena tidak terlalu aktif menggunakannya, bahkan sepertinya saya lebih banyak menggunakan karena beberapa rekan sudah cukup lama perlu melakukan transfer dana ke saya melalui Jenius. Untuk transaksi lain seperti pembayaran menggunakan kartu fisik, atau transaksi digital, hampir tidak pernah saya gunakan.

Beberapa kartu tambahan yang saya miliki hampir tidak pernah saya gunakan. Tentu saja ini efek dari bahwa saya cenderung lebih memilih untuk cardless.

Jadi, bukan berarti layanan atau fitur Jenius jelek, tapi memang sepertinya tidak cocok untuk saya. Kartu Jenius bisa langsung dipakai untuk pembayaran MRT di Singapura, atau memudahkan dalam penarikan uang tunai di ATM selama di luar negeri. Tapi, sejak saya punya kartu ini, otomatis hal tersebut saya tidak gunakan sama sekali karena memang tidak ada keperluan ke luar negeri.

Kalau tentang mobile application, saya cuma merasakan kalau kecepatan aplikasi Jenius belum dapat dibandingkan dengan aplikasi perbankan lain. Di linimasa Twitter — walaupun ini tidak sepenuhnya bisa dijadikan acuan — banyak keluhan kalau aplikasi lambat, dan tak jarang tidak dapat digunakan karena data tidak muncul dengan sempurna.

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General

Third year: LastPass

I started using LastPass for my password manager application in March 2017. So, this year, it’s my third year now. Before LastPass, I used 1Password. I didn’t remember the exact reasons why I switched to LassPass, but I think it was about the integration with applications in mobile devices.

I am satisfied with LassPass features. For some people, Google’s Password Manager will work. But, when it comes to more complex password and identity management, I think LassPass fits me more.

Is LassPass free? Unfortunately, not. I started my subscription for US $12/year (for Premium package). A year later, LassPass increased its pricing to US $24/year. And, this year, they increased the subscription pricing again to US $36/year.

Hat tip: LassPass was acquired by LogMeIn back in 2015.

LassPass offers competitive pricing compared to its competitor like DashLane (US $40/year), 1Password (US $36/year), and Keeper (US $30/year). Since LassPass works for me (until today), I think I will keep my subscription.

Categories
Umum

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019 For Mac

When I switched to Mac (from Windows), I never looked backed on Windows-only applications. One of them is CorelDRAW. There was a time when CorelDRAW became a popular graphic design software.

Recently, Corel Corporation released its latest CorelDRAW Graphic Suite 2019. And, it’s for Mac.

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General

Bye Google’s Panoramio

Google Local Guides

Google will shutdown its Panoramio in November 2016. It’s a photo sharing application in which all photos can be accessed on Google Earth and Google Maps. But, its popularity is left behind since Google Photos and Google Maps are more favorable in a way how photos will be functioning as the primary contents or additional information.

I almost never look at Panoramio since I’m more on Google Maps. Google Maps already has deep integration with photo contents especially using its Google Local Guides. And, I have started contributing few months ago. Google Maps and Local Guides integration is just seamless and I have nothing but enjoyable experience.

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General

How-To: Calling Siri on Mac Using Custom Keyboard Shortcut or Dictation

What Siri can do

I tried using Siri on Mac after my upgrade to macOS Sierra, and it works as expected, even I’m still using some basic commands. It’s just like they way I talk to Siri on my iPhone and iPad. Asking Siri is simple, just hit the Siri button on the menu bar, and send your command.

But, can we call Siri from a keyboard shortcut or even dictation? Yes, we can.

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General

Upgrading to macOS Sierra

macOS Sierra

I love keeping everything updated on my Mac, from the operating system, and also the applications. I just updated to macOS Sierra — the latest operating system by Apple. I upgraded from OS X El Capitan. This post is posted after the upgrade.

Preparation

On my Mac, I installed all upgraded applications. Some applications already released the update to make them work with macOS Sierra. About my Mac, it’s 15″ MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) with 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 of memory.

It’s highly recommended to backup everything. The simplest way is probably using Time Machine. But, I decided not to backup using Time Machine. I copied the important files to my external drive. It takes time, but having everything backed up is a good scenario.
Before hitting the download button, this was my setup:

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General

How do I Rate My Uber Trips (in Jakarta)?

When I visit Jakarta, I usually took Uber as for my ride. So far, I have good experiences with Uber, a company founded back in 2009. I have some basic considerations on taking Uber. First, it’s cashless. This is a good point for my convinient. The second one is that it has applications that works. Last but not least, it’s cheaper compared to the regular taxi. Even sometimes, during the busy hours, Uber has different price.

I like the way Uber keeps its service quality by its rating systems. In most of the time, I gave 4 or 5-star rating for the drivers. But, how do I rate my trip? I will give 5-star rating on these following conditions:

  1. The driver contacts me first to confirm that he wants to pick me up. If I have the notification on my phone that a driver pick my order, I usually wait for one or two minutes while watching his location. Even if it’s still 5-10 minutes, I don’t mind waiting.
  2. The driver greets me and make sure that we both ready to start the trip. “Good morning… Shall we start the ride?” is a simple and nice greeting.
  3. The driver does not ask me for direction. Even I have Google Maps on my phone and I can see the route — and I know how to get to my destination, I prefer to the driver to start the trip without asking for route. But, if since there are many route alternatives, I appreciate if the driver give me suggestion for example due to the traffic.
  4. After arriving on the destination, if the driver reminds me to check my belongings and says ‘thank you’, I really appreciate that.

Simple.

Categories
General

How to remove My Browser Bar

On my Mac — running on OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), I just remove the Spigot folder located under /Users/thomasarie/Library/Application Support/. There are three files there: ApplicationManager, [email protected], and [email protected].

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General

Google Offers Free 2GB Extra for Google Drive

Screen Shot 2015-02-10 at 11.43.52 PM

Google offers 2GB of storage for Google Drive for those who completes Google’s security checkup process. This offer ends on February 17, 2015. It’s also to celebrate Safer Internet Day. Right now, I have 15 GB of storage for my Google Drive and use around 5 GB of it). There are still plenty of room for my storage, but 2 GB of free upgrade is too good to be skipped.

The security checkup is a simple and straight forward. It’s to make sure that your Google account is safe by doing some checking on these areas:

  • Recovery information. Make sure you to have an active phone number and alternative email for account recovery.
  • Recent activities. Review the recent login activities using Google account.
  • Account permission. Check the services, or apps you give permission to use or connect to Google account.
  • App password. You can use specific password for logins. So, using Google, you don’t always supply your primary password. If you’re not sure or find the applications you don’t recognize, remove them.
  • 2-step verification. I use this security method. Just make sure to have backup phone number there, including the backup codes.

Even this offer does not apply to Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education, but it’s recommended that Google account owners should review the security checkup. After completing the security review checkup, the additional storage will be automatically added at the end of February 2015.

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General

Delete Old Devices Backup on OS X to Reclaim Disk Storage

One of the routines relate to my laptop is to keep everything organised. This includes folders management, removing unused files or installing/uninstalling applications, etc.
For disk usage checking purpose, I use OmniDiskSweeper. Yes, I also have Macpaw’s CleanMyMac 2, but OmniDiskSweeper will do a simple and specific task as mentioned on its site:

OmniDiskSweeper is really great at what it does: showing you the files on your drive, in descending order by size, and letting you decide what to do with them.

One of the directories using lots of storage was ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/. This directory stores the backup of the iOS devices. I have iPad and also iPhone. I only have 250 GB of storage configuration for my Macbook Pro, and the backup consumes tens of GB.
iTunes Devices Preferences
To remove the unnecessary backup files, open iTunes, choose Preferences, and select the Devices menu. There are some old backups that I think safe enough to be removed. So, I did that. So, I only keep the latest backup for now.
odw-183581841-20851-0825
The backup solution is pretty easy and straight forward. Even I don’t regularly synchronised my files, in most cases I only backup the media files especially photo. And, I prefer to use Image Capture to save the photos/videos to the folder I wanted.

Categories
General

Solution: WhatsApp crashes on iOS 8 Beta

WhatsApp Logo
Last week, I finally decided to upgrade my iPhone 5 to iOS 8 Beta 4. When the iOS Beta 1 was available, I took the risk to have it installed. But, it was too disappointing for too many bugs and errors. I’m excited about the upcoming iOS 8 features, and I want to try some of the features. There is a discussion thread at MacRumors Forum which lists the application compatibility on iOS 8. Anyway, I have lots of apps installed right now. If you’re not sure about having the iOS Beta, you can wait for the official release.
I have some applications that are not running well, and one of them was WhatsApp. It keeps crashing. I can accept the fact that some other applications are broken or crashed. But, WhatsApp is an app that I use on daily basis. After searching for solutions, there are two popular ways to fix this issue:

I chose the second option, because it’s pretty straight forward. Big thanks to Ritvij Pathak’s The Tech Portal. So, what was the problem? Quoting from the site:

The main reason for the crashes is typographic ligature. For those of you who didn’t get what it is, don’t fret, we didn’t either. Turns out it has something to do with two letters being read as one syllable. Ex: letter combos like ff, fi, ffi, fii, will make WhatsApp crash.

What I found was that WhatsApp crashed when I typed some words or there are some words that are already in the database file. So, I followed the instructions and had everything solved. I want to reproduce the solution based on my experience.
I need to download two applications: iExplorer and Navicat for SQLite. Both are paid applications but the trial version are available. After I had it installed, these are steps I did. Anyway, WhatsApp iCloud setting should be turned off.
Open iExplorer — your iPhone should be connected, of course — and navigate to Apps > WhatsApp > Documents. Export the ChatStorage.sqlite file by right-clicking on the file and choose the export destination of your choice. You will need this file later. Having the backup for this file is advisable. So, after exporting this file, duplicating this file won’t hurt.
iex-1972401972491724
Open Navicat for SQLite and import the ChatStorage.sqlite from the previous step. Navigate to Query and add a new query. Paste the query below, and Run it.

update ZWAMESSAGE
set ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'ff', 'f f')
where ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%ff%';
update ZWAMESSAGE
set ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'fi', 'f i')
where ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%fi%';
update ZWAMESSAGE
set ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'fl', 'f l')
where ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%fl%';
CREATE TRIGGER insert_Ff AFTER INSERT ON ZWAMESSAGE
BEGIN
  UPDATE ZWAMESSAGE
  SET ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'ff', 'f f')
  WHERE ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%ff%';
END;
CREATE TRIGGER insert_Fi AFTER INSERT ON ZWAMESSAGE
BEGIN
  UPDATE ZWAMESSAGE
  SET ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'fi', 'f i')
  WHERE ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%fi%';
END;
CREATE TRIGGER insert_Fl AFTER INSERT ON ZWAMESSAGE
BEGIN
  UPDATE ZWAMESSAGE
  SET ZTEXT = replace( ZTEXT, 'fl', 'f l')
  WHERE ZWAMESSAGE.ZTEXT like '%fl%';
END;

Your ChatStorage.sqlite has been updated. The next thing you need to do is bring the file back to the iPhone using iExplorer. Move it to the same place and if you’re asked to replace the file, just replace the file.
My previous errors with WhatsApp was fixed immediately. But, it seems that the errors still occur under different situation. The most common problem is that WhatsApp still keep crashing when I type some words in the window. For now, the temporary solution works, and let’s wait the official update from WhatsApp team. I’m sure they will fix it once iOS 8 is available.

Categories
General

1Password-ed

There are many services on the internet. It means there are many accounts (if you’re registering to those services) to remember. Some services offers login using popular “connect” feature. For example you can login using Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter for some specific services. This is a good scenario since we only need to remember password for those services.
But, I personally likes the “native registration” process. Meaning that I have to register manually and using a specific password each service. The consequence is that I have many passwords. I mean many. Of course, it might be easier I use the same password for multiple services. But, it’s not a recommended workflow. Anyway, if a service provides a 2-step authentication process e.g. Google, I will be using it.
1Password 50% OFF
I’m an Apple customer. So, I work most of the time on my MacBook and iPhone. There should be an easy way to manage these passwords. There is a popular application called 1Password by AgileBits Inc. I’ve heard about the application, but I didn’t buy it until yesterday. 1Password gets 50% discount. I decided to buy 1Password for Mac and iOS. I got my Mac version for $24.99 or IDR 289,000.00 (regular price: $49.99), and iOS version for $8.99 or IDR 99,000.00.

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General

Heardbleed

The Heartbleed Bug — It is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).