Thursday, March 12, 2026

QB64.com | QB64 BASIC for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

https://qb64.com/

See also: QB64-PE, SmallBASIC, FreeBASIC, PureBasic, Xojo, Gambas 3, ByWater Basic, BlitzMax …

Fwd: Secure Email Providers

7 Most Secure Email Providers 2025:
https://signalvaultprivacy.com/secure-email/best-secure-email-providers-2025/
"ProtonMail ($4.99/mo) wins privacy, Fastmail ($3/mo) wins features."
"... if you use a regular email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), your emails could be scanned for ad targeting or handed over if requested. Privacy-focused email providers put security and encryption first, ensuring that even the provider can't read your mails."

"Transport-level encryption is powered by TLS – SSL's successor- to encrypt emails during transit. Yes, this is the same TLS you frequently encounter while browsing websites.
In the case of emails, TLS applies on top of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) to protect SMTP (sending email to server) and IMAP (retrieving email from the server) protocols. That's how it protects messages from the sender to the receiving end, given that the server at both ends supports encrypted communication.
Transport-level encryption basically secures your plaintext emails from hackers and snoopers.
...
In the case of transport-level encryption, the email provider's servers control the transmission of secure messages. The servers can store and even read your emails; hence, anyone intercepting or hacking the server can access your messages."
"End-to-end encryption - in the case of high-level encryption, the encryption begins right at the user's device – the endpoint. It remains encrypted during the entire transmission to the receiving end (the recipient's device), with no chance for the server to intercept or read the email. Also, the servers (and the service provider) cannot decrypt your message since the decryption keys only remain private to the sources.
Some common end-to-end encryption protocols include the following.
S/MIME: The Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is an asymmetric end-to-end encryption protocol that works by verifying senders' identity via signed certificates from a Certificate Authority.
PGP: Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a safer decentralized encryption system that utilizes symmetric and asymmetric protocols. It's easy to use the services as it doesn't require the parties to exchange private keys. However, users must rely on third-party services (such as privacy-friendly email clients) for encryption."

("Complete Your Privacy Setup: Secure email protects your messages, but a VPN encrypts your entire internet connection. Get NordVPN Now {https://go.nordvpn.net/aff_c?offer_id=15&aff_id=131444&url_id=902} → Hide your IP address and encrypt all internet traffic - $3.39/month with 30-day money-back guarantee. Combine secure email with NordVPN for complete privacy protection.")

1. ProtonMail – Best Overall Secure Email (lots of recommendations on FB):
https://www.tkqlhce.com/click-101537733-17089345
"Pricing: Free (500MB, 1 address), $4.99/month (5GB, 5 addresses)"
"IMAP only on paid plans
Subject lines not encrypted"

3. Fastmail – Best for Business Users
https://join.fastmail.com/59135b8224db
"Pricing: $3/month (2GB), $5/month (25GB), $9/month (100GB)"
"Not all businesses can jump to end-to-end encrypted mail, especially if they rely on integrations, but Fastmail is a good middle-ground (it provides TLS in transit and encryption at rest). Based in Australia (with mirror servers in the US), Fastmail is a privacy-respecting email provider that doesn't mine your data and offers lots of productivity features."
  • "Privacy-Respecting: No data mining or ad targeting
  • IMAP Support: Full email client compatibility
  • Custom Domains: Professional email addresses
  • Calendar & Contacts: Integrated productivity tools"

The 20 Most Secure Email Providers to Use in 2026:
https://privacysavvy.com/email/best/secure-email-providers/
Top 5 secure email providers – Quick list:
  1. "ProtonMail – An open-source, end-to-end encrypted, freemium platform with zero-knowledge and zero access technology.
  2. Tuta – Top-notch encryption standards with a user-friendly interface. However, lacks inclusive search features.
  3. Mailfence – End-to-end encrypted email service supporting encrypted email messages to non-PGP recipients too.
  4. CounterMail – Stores emails on temporary servers in encrypted form; supports additional protection with USB key. Paid service only.
  5. Hushmail – Easy-to-use encrypted email service with a premium model and free trial; supports personal and business uses alike."

Mailfence:  https://mailfence.com/
"Mailfence, headquartered in Belgium, is a security-focused email provider that has strong security features. Like other providers featured in this article, it offers end-to-end encryption to ensure your email messages remain secure from snoopers.
It is an excellent private email client offering 500 MB file storage for free alongside added features.
On top of standard features, this private email service offers a built-in Keystore, which helps manage your OpenPGP encryption keys. You also get to send encrypted messages to anyone who doesn't use PGP."

Hushmail Review 2026: Secure But not a Privacy-friendly Option:
https://privacysavvy.com/reviews/email/hushmail/
"Pricing: $11.99/month (Starter plan) - $49.98/year and $119 for 3 years with a 60-day money-back guarantee."
"Hushmail is a Canadian-based email service that has been in the industry for more than twenty years. It uses standard encryption algorithms such as TLA/SSL and OpenPGP to secure email messages."
"The company guarantees the protection of your email messages. However, the privacy policy complies with warrants requesting user data from the US and Canadian governments."
"Hushmail uses a secure SSL/TSL tunnel to encrypt your mail in transit, and OpenPGP encrypts it at rest. In addition to encryption, the service employs other advanced security features like certificate pinning and forward secrecy. Also, it uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to protect you against Man-in-the-middle attacks."
"...  when sending an email to a third-party email service, the email is not sent directly. First, it is sent to the Hushmail servers, and then Hushmail takes charge of the authentication process.
The recipients will then receive an email bearing a link. The link leads to Hushmail servers; they must set a password. Upon clicking the link and setting the password, users can decrypt the message sent. This means the message never leaves the Hushmail servers and is always protected by OpenPGP encryption, whether sent to Hushmail servers or an external email account."

Mailbox: https://mailbox.org/en/
"Pricing: $1/month ..."
"Mailbox is one of the classics of the sector based in Berlin, Germany. This is another sustainable service powered by green energy.  It boasts a native web client that users can access from anywhere. The email client also offers useful add-ons such as a calendar and task manager."
  • "Simple and easy user interface
  • 30-day no-risk free trial
  • Anonymous, ad-free, and secure"

Posteo: https://posteo.de/en
"Pricing: $1/month ... the provider allows you to pay for your email account through multiple channels, such as via a bank card, PayPal, or courier. That guarantees an account owner leaves no digital traces when making payments."
"Posteo has no free account, but its entry-level plan offers 2 GB of email storage for €1 per month. If you need more email storage, add an extra gigabyte for €0.25 per month, up to a limit of 20 GB."

"Although Posteo offers strong built-in encryption options, they also support IMAP. That allows you to use it with different email clients on any device you want.
Posteo goes beyond most email services to protect its users' privacy by automatically removing IP addresses from emails. So, anyone monitoring your email traffic can neither see the location from which you sent an email nor the sender's location when you receive one."
"No spam folder (spam is either rejected or sent to a normal inbox)
  • Everything is encrypted in the subject, headers, body, metadata, and attachments
  • Mail, attachments, calendar, and contacts are encrypted with OpenPGP on secure servers in Germany
  • Supports anonymous payment (in cash)
  • Strong commitment to protecting privacy, sustainable energy, and other social initiatives
  • Self-funded; good results
  • Maximum confidentiality: no logs, deletion of the IP address, secure storage with daily backups"

StartMail:  https://www.startmail.com/
"Pricing: $57/month ... StartMail doesn't have a free account but allows you to test its service for free for 30 days."

"It is completely interoperable with other PGP clients due to its integrated use of PGP. That enables the users to send encrypted emails to a non-PGP user who knows a secret question to decrypt the email.
StartMail allows you to create unlimited disposable email addresses (aliases).
It has no dedicated mobile applications. But complete SMTP and IMAP support allow you to use any third-party email application with the service on almost all operating systems, including Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, and macOS."

Best Private and Secure Email Providers 2026 -

StartMail: https://cyberguy.com/StartMail
Create a private email account to safeguard your privacy and security:
https://cyberguy.com/privacy/best-private-and-secure-email-providers/
"EXCLUSIVE CYBERGUY DEAL – 50% OFF:  $29.94 for first year ($2.50 per month, billed annually). Includes a free 7-day trial. https://cyberguy.com/StartMail"
"StartMail may sound familiar, and there's a good reason for that. It was created by the same founders who originally launched StartPage, the privacy-focused search engine known for delivering Google results while protecting people under strict EU privacy standards."
  • StartMail email address
  • 20 GB of email
  • Unlimited custom email aliases with every account at no extra cost
  • Unlimited burner/ disposable email addresses with every account at no extra cost
  • Access email on any device
  • BTC payment (user only creates a username and thus stays completely anonymous when paying with Bitcoin)
  • End-to-end encryption via IMAP/ OpenPGP
  • Password-protected emails
  • Easy email migration without technical expertise
  • No ads, no tracking
  • Advanced spam filter
12 Best Secure Email Providers for Privacy in 2025:
https://typewire.com/blog/read/2025-08-05-12-best-secure-email-providers-for-privacy-in-2025

Best email services for security and privacy:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/best-email-services-for-security-and-privacy-052725.html
"   ProtonMail, Outlook, and Gmail (!?) are the three top scoring emails for security and privacy.
    Mail.com, AOL and Yahoo are the three lowest scoring."

Best secure email provider of 2025:  
https://www.techradar.com/best/best-secure-email-providers

10 Most Secure Email Service Providers for Personal Use:
https://computer.howstuffworks.com/e-mail-messaging/most-secure-email-service.htm

The 18 Best Private Email Providers in 2026:
https://vpnoverview.com/privacy/anonymous-browsing/secure-email-providers/
  1. "Proton Mail: The best private email service for ordinary users and top-level executives
  2. Mailfence: Excellent private email service with strong encryption and aliases
  3. StartMail: Secure email service with unlimited aliases
  4. Tutanota: Green private email service with a generous free plan
  5. Librem Mail: Useful private email if you want a security suite
  6. Thexyz: Secure email service with a robust spam filter
  7. CounterMail: Private email to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks
  8. Soverin: An easy-to-use and secure mailbox
  9. Zoho Mail: Secure email provider for businesses
  10. Hushmail: A secure email service for healthcare and law professionals
  11. Kolab Now: Useful private email for teams and families
  12. Posteo: Green private email service at an affordable price
  13. Mailbox.org: Browser-based email service with extra productivity tools
  14. ServerMX: Reliable encrypted mail hosting with multiple custom domains
  15. Private-Mail: Excellent mail and file synchronization options
  16. Runbox: Sustainable email service from Norway
  17. Disroot: Private email provider for different languages
  18. Neo: Good cloud storage for entrepreneurs and growing businesses"
"In addition to using any of the private email services listed above, you should always use a VPN when dealing with sensitive information. A VPN encrypts your activity and keeps your identity and personal data away from prying eyes."

What are passkeys? Hint: They're faster and safer than passwords:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/what-are-passkeys-hint-theyre-faster-and-safer-than-passwords-050925.html


CSMWrap: Enable Legacy BIOS Support on Modern UEFI PCs

"Do you yearn to run Windows XP, play vintage games, or utilize specialized software designed for older systems on your modern PC?
The transition from Legacy BIOS to UEFI has created a compatibility chasm, leaving many of us stranded.
But fear not, because a brilliant solution has emerged: CSMWrap."

"CSMWrap is an EFI application designed to be a drop-in solution to enable legacy BIOS booting on modern UEFI-only (class 3) systems. It achieves this by wrapping a Compatibility Support Module (CSM) build of the SeaBIOS project as an out-of-firmware EFI application, effectively creating a compatibility layer for traditional PC BIOS operation."

"That means you can boot classic operating like FreeDOS directly on newer EFI-only laptops and 
PCs. The developers "highly recommended that the partition table used is MBR" for compatibility."

Bring Back The BIOS! (To UEFI Systems, That Is): 
"At the dawn of the PC, IBM provided the Basic Input Output System (BIOS). It took care of bringing the machine up, and exposed a series of software hooks for the hardware. Over the years the BIOS and its updated descendants served us well, but as we entered a 64-bit world its limitations began to show.

The replacement was the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface or UEFI, and the chances are you're viewing this on a machine which uses it in some capacity. But what if you only have UEFI and need BIOS to run a piece of older software? Never fear, because here's CSMWrap, which brings it back, just for you.

Under the hood it's a wrapper for the SeaBIOS compatibility support module, doing the work of setting up the memory mapping such that it will load, and ensuring that other services such as the VGA BIOS are loaded. As it stands it can boot FreeDOS and some older Windows versions under UEFI in QEMU, and it's claimed also run on real hardware. We don't often need to run DOS on our 2025 machine, but it's neat to know we can.

Meanwhile if the BIOS interests you, know that there's also an open source BIOS for the earliest of PCs."

CSM wrap 2.0.0:  https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=23205

" PCI BAR Relocation - Automatically relocate PCI BARs from >4GB to <4GB, eliminating the need to disable "Above 4G Decoding" in UEFI settings.
PCIe Resizable BAR Support - Shrink large BARs (e.g., 4GB GPU VRAM) to 256MB using PCIe ReBAR capability, eliminating the need to disable "Resizable Bar/Smart Access Memory" in UEFI settings.
BIOS Proxy Helper Core - Dedicate an AP for BIOS calls from the BSP. This allows usage of CSMWrap with legacy OSes calling BIOS routines from Virtual 8086 Mode and other improvements.
MP Table Generation - Generate Intel MPS 1.4 tables from ACPI MADT for legacy OSes that don't support ACPI.
SMBIOS 3.0 → 2.x Synthesis - Generate SMBIOS 2.x entry point when only 3.0 is available.
Boot Device Detection - Auto-detect boot drive and build BBS table with correct priority."

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

FreeNAS vs. OpenMediaVault vs. Amahi: Which Is Best for a DIY NAS?


Also see:


" Virtual Private Networking, right out of the box! No hardware to install, no cables to wire, no hassle! Amahi includes a pre-configured, customized OpenVPN server and a one-click install IPsec VPN. All you need is a VPN client program for your OS..."

Amahi iOS App - check Apple app store.


Amahi default is Fedora, but it could be installed on Ubuntu instead ( (Amahi 6) in 2013 - no longer being updated:

"As of Amahi 8 we only support 64bit platforms. this included most if not all INTEL or AMD processors.
  • Support for 32bits, marvell and other platforms have been dropped."
  • winevdm - A 16-bit Windows emulator, ported to 64-bit Windows, for running OLD programs

    "16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows."
    An alternative to DOSBox or  vDosPlus  that may work better in some situations:

    "It can also run DOS executables (DOS emulator-like). You can set the DOS version with the VDMDOSVER environment variable.

    DOS emulation is incomplete and it is recommended to use DOSBox or MS-DOS Player."



    Friday, March 6, 2026

    Best Car History Report Services in 2026 (Zilocar, Carfax, AutoCheck, etc.)

    This seems like a legitimate comparison of Carfax and it's alternatives.  They picked Zilocar as #1 ...

    "Zilocar was the only report that felt clear, complete, and actually useful without all the marketing fluff."
    "Zilocar was the only report provider I tested that nailed every category I care about. It pulls from over 70 trusted sources, including the big names: NICB, NHTSA, insurance carriers, auction houses, and lien databases with a detailed timeline of ownership, mileage verification, and title issues."
    "If you're serious about doing your homework before buying, Zilocar is the report worth paying for."

    "Carfax has the brand recognition for a reason — their reports are comprehensive and well-formatted. However, pricing can get expensive quickly if you need multiple reports. The service record section is particularly strong, showing detailed maintenance history when available. The mobile app is also well-designed for checking VINs on the go."

    "AutoCheck (owned by Experian) offers solid value for money with their unlimited report packages. The scoring system is helpful for quickly assessing vehicle condition. While not as detailed as premium services, it covers the essentials well and is particularly strong on auction data..."

    "GoodCar focuses on simplicity and user experience, providing clean, easy-to-read reports. Their mobile-first approach makes checking vehicles on the go seamless. While the data coverage is decent, it lacks some of the deeper insights found in premium services. The pricing is competitive, making it a good option for casual buyers."

    "ClearVIN provides comprehensive reports with a focus on transparency and data accuracy. Their reports include detailed sections on title history, accident records, and market analysis. The interface is professional, though sometimes feels cluttered with information. They offer good customer support and stand behind their data accuracy."

    "carVertical brings blockchain technology to vehicle history reports, promising more secure and tamper-proof data. While the concept is innovative, the execution still feels early-stage. The reports cover international vehicles well, which is a major advantage for imported cars. However, the interface can be confusing and the blockchain features don't always add clear value for typical buyers."

    "How do I interpret each section of a VIN?
    Each part of the VIN encodes specific information such as manufacturer, model details, year, plant, and serial number.

    • 1–3 (WMI): Manufacturer & region
    • 4–8 (VDS): Vehicle descriptor (engine, body, trim)
    • 9: Check digit (validates VIN authenticity)
    • 10: Model year
    • 11: Assembly plant
    • 12–17 (VIS): Serial/production number

    Which official or free VIN decoding sources are reliable?
    The NHTSA offers a free VIN decoder using manufacturer-reported data, but coverage may be incomplete for some models.   https://www.nhtsa.gov/vin-decoder


    Download and run Hornady Reloading Guide on PC & Mac (Emulator)

    Use Bluestacks emulator to run the smartphone app:
    https://www.bluestacks.com/apps/tools/hornady-reloading-guide-on-pc.html