Windows has shipped with generic drivers for years now. These are basic drivers such as network and display ones that will give you a usable system right after a clean install. You won’t need to install drivers from disks, or other installation media just to get the system up and running. Windows 10 will also install generic drivers for all sorts of hardware that you connect to it.
These drivers install via Windows updates and you will never really have to interact with an executable file to install them. Windows 10 takes care of everything. This does have one drawback; you can’t get the stand alone driver file. If you have a system that can’t connect to the internet, and it needs these drivers, getting them might seem impossible. It’s not. Microsoft has its entire library of drivers and updates available and you can download whatever you need.
Stand alone Windows 10 drivers
Visit the Microsoft Update Catalog website. Use the search bar to look for drivers e.g., if you’re looking for display drivers, search for ‘Display’. The more generic a term you enter, the more results you’ll get and ‘Display’ is about as generic as it gets.
The search results will list various versions of drivers, and for different makes and models. This is where it gets tricky. You need to know which driver it is you’re looking for in order to narrow the results down.
Make sure you know the make and model of the device you want to find drivers for. If you need legacy drivers, you will be able to find them. The catalog has drivers for Windows 7 and later, and might also have some for Vista so you will likely be able to find legacy drivers but you need to know which version is best for the system you’re going to install them on.
Once you’ve found the right driver, click the ‘Download’ button next to it, and select the link in the window that opens. The file downloads as a CAB file. A CAB file is a compressed file format. Open it with a tool like 7Zip, and look for and run the executable inside it, or a look for and run a file named Setup. Alternatively, you can use Device Manager to install the driver. Go with the manual installation option, and select the downloaded driver when prompted to.
It may take a little trial and error figuring out which is the correct EXE to run but there really isn’t an easier way if you don’t go through Windows Updates.
Macs tend to sleep compulsively. If you leave the system unattended, a Mac will sleep after a few minutes. There’s no setting that lets you choose how long macOS should wait before sleeping an idle system’s screen. Getting around this limitation is very easy with the caffeinate command but it only works so long as you’re on the desktop. Once you lock the screen, macOS’ own sleep settings take over and the screen is put to sleep within a minute. Here’s how you can disable lock screen sleep on macOS.
Disable lock screen sleep
To disable lock screen sleep, you need to install a free app called KeepingYouAwake. It’s a simple app with one stand-out feature; it also works on the lock screen.
Install the app and run it. The app doesn’t automatically enable itself. It adds a coffee cup icon to the menu bar and when the icon is just an outline of the cup, it indicates that the app is not active. If you right-click the app’s menu bar icon, you’ll see a menu that lets you set how long KeepingYouAwake should keep an idle system awake. Select a duration that suits you, and click the app icon to activate it.
Once activated, you can lock your screen and it won’t be put to sleep.
KeepingYouAwake has an option to keep your system/screen awake indefinitely and if you select this option, and walk away from your MacBook, its screen will remain awake. If you’re running on battery power, this will cause the battery to drain much more quickly. The good thing about this app is that you can set it to deactivate itself if the battery falls below a certain charge level.
Go to KeepingYouAwake’s preferences and on the Advanced tab, enable the ‘Deactivate when battery capacity is below’ option. Use the slider under this option to set the battery level that will disable the app.
KeepingYouAwake can be set to run on system start up and to automatically activate itself when it is run. These options are not enabled by default. You can enable them from the General tab in the app’s preferences. While you’re at it, you can also change the default duration that the app keeps the screen awake for. It’s set to ‘Indefinitely’ so it’s a setting that you should consider changing.
macOS doesn’t let users set how long their system should be idle before the screen is put to sleep. Anyone looking to control this seemingly simple function will need an app to do the job.
Fallout 4 is the 4th installment in Bethesda Game’s popular post-apocalyptic role-playing game. In the game, you are the “sole survivor” and must travel the Boston nuclear wasteland to track down your lost son Sean. Like all Bethesda games, the developer does not port games to the Linux platform. However, thanks to the magic of modern Linux tools, it is possible to play Fallout 4 on Linux!
Method 1: SteamPlay/Proton
As Fallout 4 never made it to Good Old Games like the previous Fallout games, the SteamPlay method is by far the most fool-proof way to get the game working on Linux. To start the process of setting up Fallout 4 on Linux, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Note: this method requires the installation of the Linux version of the Steam client. To install this app, search your package manager for “Steam” and install the software the way you typically do. Alternatively, check this page on Pkgs.org for instructions detailed to your Linux OS.
Step 1: Fallout 4, like all Windows games running through Valve’s Proton tools need SteamPlay. Sadly, SteamPlay isn’t configured to work with Fallout 4 by default. Instead, you must set your Steam client to run all games.
To set up SteamPlay on Linux for all titles, open up the Steam settings, find “SteamPlay” and enable the setting. Or, if you’re having some issues setting it up, head over to our guide and learn how to set up SteamPlay on Linux.
Step 2: After enabling SteamPlay on Linux for all titles, find “Store” and click on it to go to the Steam Storefront. Then, click on the search box to access the search function.
Step 3: In the search box, type “Fallout 4”. Then, wait for the search results to appear. When the results load up, find “Fallout 4,” and click on it to go to the game’s store page.
Step 4: On the Fallout 4 game page, find “Add to cart” and click it to purchase the game. Upon purchasing the game, it will be instantly added to your Steam library.
Step 5: Once you’ve purchased Fallout 4, find the “Library” button and click it to go to your Steam Library in the Steam for Linux app.
Step 6: Sort through your library for “Fallout 4” and select it. Then, click the blue “Install” button to download the game to your PC.
Step 7: When the Linux Steam application is finished downloading Fallout 4, the setup is complete. From here, click the “Play” button to enjoy your game!
Troubleshooting – SteamPlay/Proton
The SteamPlay/Proton installation method for playing Fallout 4 on Linux is the ideal way to go for this game as it takes a lot of the hard work out of setting it up. However, it doesn’t have a perfect rating on ProtonDB. If you run into some issues playing Fallout 4 with SteamPlay, do check out the ProtonDB page for help.
Method 2: Wine/Steam
Steam is indeed the only way to get Fallout 4 working on Linux. However, the SteamPlay/Proton way isn’t the one way to get the game to run. If you’re not a massive fan of SteamPlay or want an alternative method, it is possible to get Fallout 4 working on Linux via Wine.
It should be noted that the Wine method isn’t as fool-proof as the SteamPlay method. Test results on WineHQ indicate that users have very mixed results getting the game to work. Only follow this method if the SteamPlay/Proton method gives you issues.
Step 1: Wine is critical to installing Fallout 4 on Linux in this method. So, you must install the latest version of Wine on your Linux PC. To do this, follow our guide on how to install Wine.
Step 2: After installing Wine on your Linux PC, you must install the “Winetricks” application. This tool will make downloading and installing the Windows version of Steam much, much simpler.
To install Winetricks, open up a terminal window and follow the instructions below.
After installing the Winetricks application, use it to download and install Windows Steam with the command below.
winetricks steam
Winetricks will download Steam for Windows onto your Linux PC. From there, use the Steam installer to set it up, log into your account and launch it.
Step 3: Inside Steam, find the “Store” button and click it to make your way to the Steam storefront.
Step 4: On the Steam storefront, find the search box and click it. Type “Fallout 4” in the box and press Enter to start a search for the game.
Step 5: Click on “Fallout 4” to go to the game’s Steam store page. Purchase the game, and it’ll be added to your library.
Step 6: Find the “Library” button and click on it, and look for “Fallout 4”.
Step 7: Select the “Install” button and allow the game to install on your Linux PC via Windows Steam. When the installation is complete, click the “Play” button.
Troubleshooting
The Wine/Steam version of Fallout 4 is iffy. For the most part, it should work fine. However, keep in mind that many users who have tried this method have run into problems. If you experience any, do read the WineHQ page on Fallout 4. The page has detailed workarounds and instructions to solve issues that may occur.
Videos have always been recorded in landscape mode. They used be square a long, long time ago but once the era of square monitors disappeared, videos became landscape oriented. Then phones got cameras, and those cameras became insanely good and now, we have vertical videos. Vertical videos were shunned, and then apps like Snapchat and Instagram gave them a real home, so they’re never going away. Here’s how you can automatically resize VLC player for vertical videos if you’re playing them on your desktop.
Resize VLC player for vertical videos
Open VLC player and go to Tools>Preferences from the menu bar, or just tap Ctrl+P to open the app’s preferences.
On the preferences window, go to the Interface tab, and look for an option called ‘Resize interface to video size’. Enable it, and click the Save button at the bottom.
Next, close and then run VLC player again. Play a vertical video and the player will automatically resize to fit it. This means there will be no black bars on either sides, or at the top or bottom of the video. The window will fit snugly around the video frame.
This setting will apply to all videos, and not just to vertical ones. What that means is, any video you play in VLC player will force the app’s window to resize to fit it exactly. The option to resize the window according to the video’s size cannot be applied to just a single type of video.
We should mention that this feature is a bit buggy. It’s been around for over three years but it has been buggy for just as long. Sometimes, VLC player doesn’t resize according to the video size. Other times, it fails to detect the size of a video and just runs in the incorrect size. This might have to do with certain information being absent in the video file.
If VLC player is consistently failing to resize itself correctly for a certain video, but is working just fine for all others, it most likely means that there is a problem with the video. You can always resize the player manually.
Vertical videos are popular on the mobile platform and not so much on the desktop. You will find these videos on Facebook and Twitter but those websites can play the videos just fine and you don’t need a video player that is optimized for vertical videos on your desktop. Let’s hope that never changes.
USBs have become the go-to device for installing any sort of operating system. They’re easy enough to carry, every single computer has at least one USB port, they come in large size configurations at a cheap price point, and optical drives have almost disappeared from computers so there really isn’t much choice.
You will find that there are many, many apps that can burn a disc to a USB drive. The stock tools on Windows 10 doesn’t support burning to a USB just yet but let’s give it ten years and it’s bound to catch up. Burning a disc image to a USB is fairly easy but, if you want to burn a disc image to an SD card, you’ll find that some of the best apps don’t support it. Here’s how you can burn a disc image to an SD card.
Burn disc image to SD card
A reliable tool for burning disc images is Etcher. It supports burning to all sorts of storage devices, and it works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s also free, and easy to use. Download it, install it, and run the app.
Make sure you have a disc image ready to burn, and insert the SD card in your PC/laptop.
Etcher normally auto-selects the first device it detects for burning so it may automatically detect the SD card. If it doesn’t, or it detects a different device, click the Change option under the device name and select your SD card.
Next, select the disc image that you want to burn to it, and then click Flash. Etcher will tell you when the process is complete and you can use the SD card to install whatever you burned to it.
SD cards as boot devices
You can burn just about anything to an SD card with Etcher but you can’t necessarily use an SD card as a boot device for all sorts of devices. There are select devices that allow it to be used as a boot device and a laptop/PC isn’t one of them. Etcher will let you burn a Windows 10 ISO to an SD card but the card itself will not show up as a device that you can boot from in your BIOS, and there isn’t anything you can do about it.
It is up to you to make sure the SD card has enough space to accommodate the image that’s being burnt to it. Having space equal to the size of the image isn’t always enough. Look up the requirements for the image file, and make sure your SD card meets them all.
OSMC is a media player operating system based on the Kodi media center. Its purpose is to make an easy to use, easy to understand entertainment interface for watching TV, Movies, and other types of media. Currently, OSMC is supported on Raspberry Pi, PC, and other types of hardware. In this guide, we’ll go over how to set up OSMC on Raspberry Pi.
Download OSMC for Raspberry Pi
OSMC for Raspberry Pi must be downloaded from the developer’s website before it can be set up on an SD card. To get your copy of OSMC for the Raspberry Pi, head over to the official website, click on “Download,” and find the release for the Raspberry Pi you use.
Note: OSMC does not yet support the Raspberry Pi 4. As of now, the OS only supports Raspberry Pi 1,2,3, and Zero.
Don’t want to go to the official website to download OSMC to your computer? If you’re downloading the OSMC image on a Linux PC, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, use the wget downloading tool to grab the OSMC release image through the command-line.
After downloading your copy of OSMC to your computer, do not extract the TarGZ archive. Instead, keep it in the file and move on to the next step in the setup process.
Install OSMC on SD Card
To set up OSMC on an SD card, you must burn the files to an SD card. To burn an SD card on a computer, you’ll need to download an SD card imaging tool.
There are many good SD card imaging tools available to use. In this guide, we will use Etcher, as the app works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. Also, it is dead simple to use, meaning anyone can figure out how to use it.
To create your OSMC SD card, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Step 1: Head over to Etcher.io, to download the Etcher SD/USB imaging application to your Linux, Mac or Windows computer, and install the application.
Step 2: Launch the Etcher application on your computer desktop. Then, when the app is open, plug in your SD card into the reader port.
Step 3: Find the “Select image” button in the Etcher application and click on the button. Selecting this button will open up the file browser dialog. Use the file browser to find the OSMC TarGZ image file you downloaded previously, and click on it to load it into Etcher.
Step 4: Click on the “Select drive” button. Then, use the Etcher UI to select your SD card so that the Etcher application will use it as the imaging device.
Step 5: Find the “Flash!” button, and click it with the mouse. This button will start the SD card imaging process. Be patient!
When Etcher is done, safely eject the SD card from your Windows, Linux, or Mac computer. Then, plug in the SD card into the Raspberry Pi, power it on, and follow the steps below to learn how to set up OSMC.
Set up OSMC on Raspberry Pi
Setting up OSMC on the Raspberry Pi is a very straightforward process, thanks to its streamlined installation wizard. To get it going, follow the steps below.
Step 1: On the “Welcome” screen, you’ll need to select your language. Using your mouse, remote, or another pointing device, select the language you wish the OSMC interface use.
Step 2: On the next page, OSMC will ask you to set the device name. Select “current name” and change it from “osmc” to whatever you’d like to call your new Raspberry Pi-powered media device. Then, click the “Accept” button to continue.
Step 3: Following the “hostname” section, OSMC will ask if you’d like to enable SSH support. This feature will allow you to access your Raspberry Pi 3 media service remotely. Check the box if you want this feature. Otherwise, skip it and click “Accept.”
Step 4: After the “SSH” section, OSMC will present a software license on the screen. Read through it, and click “Continue” to accept it.
Step 5: In the “Networking” section, after the software license, OSMC will ask to set up a network. Using the interface, configure your network connection. If the connection fails, you may need to do this manually at a later time.
Step 6: Once the OSMC installation is connected to the internet, you’ll be brought to the “Look + Feel” area. Here, you’ll be instructed to choose the OSMC skin that you like best.
Step 7: With the skin chosen, OSMC will ask if you’d like to sign up for the newsletter. Select “no thanks.” Or, if you’d like to keep up with OSMC development, choose the “Sure, sign me up”option.
After dealing with the newsletter settings, OSMC will load up and be ready to use!
Windows 10 has a built-in mobile hotspot feature that lets users share the internet connection on their desktop with up to eight other devices. It’s a pretty useful feature and it’s incredibly easy to use as well. You only have to flip a switch to set up the mobile hotspot. That said, it can sometimes refuse to turn on. If you’re seeing the ‘We can’t set up mobile hotspot’ message on Windows 10, there may be a network device that is disconnected/disabled. Here’s what you need to do to fix it.
Fix ‘We can’t set up mobile hotspot’
Open Device Manager and expand the Network Adapters group of devices. Under this group, look for any devices that are disabled. A disabled device has an arrow button over its icon. If you see any disabled devices, you need to enable them.
In particular, look for a device called ‘virtual adapter’. If it’s disabled, enable it.
To enable a device, right-click it and select ‘Enable device’ from the context menu. This should do the trick and generally, there’s no need to restart your PC but, if you still cannot turn the mobile hotspot on, give your system a restart.
In most cases, this will fix the problem however, if it doesn’t and you’ve enabled all devices under ‘Network adapters’, then it may be time to examine drivers.
Check if the virtual adapter device’s driver has recently been updated. If it has, it is possible that the update broke something. Uninstall/roll back the driver, and use generic Windows drivers for this device. If you’re already using generic Windows drivers and the mobile hotspot won’t turn on, you should look for drivers from the device manufacturer.
What is a Virtual adapter?
If you’re wondering what the mobile hotspot has to do with the virtual adapter device, the device is basically what allows you to share your internet connection with other devices. If this device isn’t working correctly, or if it’s disabled, the mobile hotspot cannot be created.
Unfortunately, Windows 10 doesn’t have the smartest error messages, and its troubleshooter often falls short of actually fixing anything. This is why running the network troubleshooter won’t point you to this fix, and it’s not the sort of thing a system restart can fix either.
If you’ve never created a mobile hotspot on your Windows 10 PC, it is possible that there is some other reason behind it not turning on. If you have created a mobile hotspot on your PC before, without any trouble, then this is probably going to fix the problem.
Web scraping may look simple but it can actually turn out to be a rather complex endeavour. Many website owners try to actively protect against it in order to protect their data which mostly precludes running an in-house script to repeatedly pull data from target websites. For efficient scraping, what you need is a specialized tool such as the Scrapestack API that we are about to review. Using it, you can quickly and efficiently scrape almost any website and extract the information it contains and put it to good use. Scrapestack provides a quick and easy to use and highly scalable way of scraping websites.
Before we go into greater detail on the Scrapestack API, we’ll begin by discussing scraping. We’ll explain what it is and why it is in such widespread use throughout the Internet. And talking about the Internet, we’ll then have a look at the specific case of web scraping as this is what the Scrapestack API is made for and we’ll also introduce some of the most important reasons why anyone would use a third-party scraping API such as this one. After briefly explaining what a REST API is, we’ll finally get to the core of the matter as we present the Scrapestack API. We’ll first have an overview of the product before we further analyze some of its best features. We’ll follow by having a look at how easy using the API is before we present the service’s multi-tiered pricing structure.
Scraping In A Nutshell
Data scraping is the process of extracting data from human-readable output coming from another program or process. It is different from other forms of data transfers in several ways. Data transfer between programs is usually done using data structures suited for automated processing by computers. These interchange formats and protocols are rigidly structured, well-documented, easily parsed, and keep ambiguity to a minimum. These transmissions are not typically human-readable at all. They are designed to be efficient and fast. The main element that distinguishes data scraping from other forms of data interchange is that the output that is being scraped is normally intended for display to an end-user, rather than as input to another program. As such, it is therefore rarely documented or structured for convenient parsing.
There are a few reasons why one would resort to data scraping. For instance, it is most often done either to interface to a legacy system, one which has no other mechanism that is compatible with current transfer mechanisms. It could also be used to pull data from a third-party system which does not provide a more convenient API. In this latter case, the owner of the third-party system can see data scraping as unwanted due to reasons such as increased system load, the loss of advertisement revenue, or the loss of control of the information content.
As widespread as it has become, data scraping is usually considered an ad hoc, inelegant technique which is often used as a last resort when no other mechanism for data interchange is available. Data scraping is often associated with a higher programming and processing overhead as output displays intended for human consumption often change structure frequently. While humans can easily adapt to these changes, a computer program may not, having been told to read data in a specific format or from a specific location with no knowledge of how to check the results for validity.
The Specific Case Of Web Scraping
Web scraping is simply a specific type of data scraping which is used to fetch data from web pages. Web pages, as you know, are built using text-based mark-up languages such as HTML and XHTML. They are, however, typically designed for human end-users and not for ease of automated use. This is the main reason why web scrapers such as the Scrapestack API were created. A web scraper is an API or a tool that extracts data from a website.
Since organizations tend to be very protective of their data, major websites usually use defensive algorithms to protect it from web scrapers. They can, for instance, limit the number of requests an IP or IP network may send. The best web scraping tools include mechanisms to counteract these protections.
Using A Third-party Scraping API
Web scraping from a simple, static web page tends to be rather easy to implement. Unfortunately, simple, static web pages are a thing of a distant past and most modern websites resort to various technologies to provide dynamic content to their visitors. This is where using a third-party tool can become advantageous. These tools will handle all the underlying detail and appear to the website they are trying to scrape as a regular user. Some will even go as far as filling forms for you. But the best reason why anyone would use a third-party scraping tool such as the Scrapestack API is convenience. Using it simply makes things much easier.
What Is A REST API?
An API, which stands for application programming interface, is a means to call one program or process from another one. Furthermore, the called process doesn’t even have to be running on the same device as the callee. As for the REST part, it is a tad more complicated. Let’s try to explain.
REST, which stands for REpresentational State Transfer, is a software architectural style that outlines a set of constraints to be used for creating web services. Those that conform to the REST architectural style are called RESTful web services and they offer interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. Furthermore, they allow the requesting systems to access and manipulate textual representations of various web resources by using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations.
In simpler terms, a REST API is one that can easily be accessed using standard web calls such as HTTP “get”, “post”, “put”, and “delete” and that return the requested data in an organized fashion. In the specific case of the Scrapestack API, it uses the popular JSON format. Results can therefore easily be processed using common languages such as Javascript. Other tools can use other formats—with XML being hugely popular. The REST specification only mandates that a fixed, predefined format is used.
Introducing The Scrapestack API
The Scrapestack API is, you must have figured it out, a REST API for web scraping. In a nutshell, the Scrapestack API can turn any web page into actionable data. It is a cloud-based API service that allows its users to scrape websites without having to worry about technical issues like proxies, IP blocks, geo-targeting, CAPTCHA solving, and more. To use it, you just give it a valid website URL and, within just a few milliseconds, the Scrapestack API will return the site’s full HTML content as a response. The content you get will appear as seen in the browser, including any JavaScript rendering rather than the actual code that is part of the web page. The tool is powered by one of the most powerful web scraping engines on the market and it offers one of the best solutions for all your scraping requirements.
The Scrapestack API is developed and maintained by apilayer, a software company based in London, UK and Vienna, Austria. It is the same company that is behind several popular API and SaaS products worldwide, including weatherstack, invoicely and eversign. This powerful infrastructure is used by more than 2000 organizations worldwide. Currently, the online service, which is built to process millions of proxy IP addresses, browsers and CAPTCHAs, handles over a billion requests each month and it boasts an impressive 99.9 % average uptime. This ensures that the service will be available when you need it.
A Tour Of The Scrapestack API’s Main Features
Feature-wise, the Scrapestack API does not leave much to be desired no matter why you need to scrape websites or what data you’re trying to obtain, the product is most likely a great fit for your needs. Let’s explore briefly some of the most important features of this tool.
Millions of Proxies And IP Addresses
One of the ways websites guard against scraping is by identifying source IP addresses generating multiple, successive requests. For that reason, a web scraping tool must resort to using different IP addresses for each request. The Scrapestack API addresses this by offering an extensive pool of over thirty-five million data center and residential proxied IP addresses spread across dozens of global internet service providers as well as by supporting real devices, smart retries and IP rotation. This ensures that your scraping requests will most likely go unnoticed to the sites that are being scraped.
The datacenter or “standard” proxies are the most common ones. They are not owned by any specific ISP and they simply mask your origin IP address by showing the datacenter proxy source IP address and the information associated with the company that owns the respective datacenter.
As for the residential or “premium” proxies, they provide IP addresses that are connected to real residential addresses and home devices. This makes them much less likely to get blocked while scraping the web. Using residential proxies for web scraping makes it easy to work around geo-blocked content and harvest large amounts of data.
Over One Hundred Global Locations
Some websites will return different information based on the location the request is coming from. Likewise, some sites will only accept requests from certain locations. One such example is a website like Netflix which will only accept local incoming connections. The US Netflix can only be accessed from US-based IP addresses and the Canadian Netflix can only be accessed from Canadian IP addresses. The Scrapestack API can let you choose from over one hundred supported global locations to send your web scraping API requests. You also have the option of using random geo-targets, supporting a series of major cities worldwide.
Rock-Solid Infrastructure
A cloud-based service such as the Scrapestack API is only as good as the infrastructure it is built upon. To that effect, this is a rock-solid service with an impressive uptime. Using the service lets you scrape the web at unparalleled speed. You’ll also benefit from a bevy of advanced features such as concurrent API requests, CAPTCHA solving, browser support, and JS rendering. The service is built on top of the apilayer cloud infrastructure. This makes the service highly scalable and capable of handling anything from just thousands of API requests per month all the way to millions per day. It is powered by a system that scales up and down as needed and it can provide the highest possible response time for any API request at any level of utilization.
UsingTheScrapestackAPI
Using the Scrapestack API is as easy as it can be. The first step, of course, is to create an account. Creating it will reveal your unique API access key you must use with each request to authenticate with the API. You do that by simply appending the access_key parameter to the API’s base URL and set it to your API access key.
The paid plans support 256-bit HTTPS encryption. To use it, all you need to do is use HTTPS instead of HTTP in your API calls.
The most basic type of request is aptly referred to as a “basic” request. In its most elementary form, you simply need to specify your API access key and the URL of the page you want to be scraped. For instance, to scrape the https://apple.com page, the request would look like this:
Note that there are several optional parameters that can be added to your requests. We’ll discuss some of these in greater detail in a moment.
After successful execution, the API responds with the raw HTML data of your target web page URL. Here’s what a typical response from a basic request looks like. Note that it has been shortened for readability purposes. An actual response would include all code within the <head> and <body> sections.
The first and most used optional parameter is certainly the JavaScript Rendering. It is available on all paid plans. As you know, some web pages render essential page elements using JavaScript. This means that some content is not present—and therefore not scrapable—with the initial page load. With the render_js parameter enabled, the Scrapestack API will access the target web using a headless browser (Google Chrome) and allow JavaScript page elements to render before delivering the final scraping result. Enabling this option is a simple matter of appending the render_js parameter to your API request URL and set it to 1.
Another useful optional parameter is the ability to specify Proxy Locations, also available on all paid plans. The Scrapestack API is using a pool of over 35 million IP addresses worldwide. By default, it will automatically rotate IP addresses in a way that the same IP address is never used twice in a row. Using the API’s proxy_location optional parameter, you can choose a specific country by indicating its 2-letter country code. For instance, the example below specifies au (Australia) as a proxy location. The query will thus be run from an Australia-based IP address.
The Premium Proxies is another interesting option. Here’s how it works. By default, the Scrapestack API always uses standard (datacenter) proxies for scraping requests. And although they are the most common proxies used on the internet, they are also much more likely to get blocked when attempting to scrape data.
If you subscribe to the Professional Plan or higher, the Scrapestack API allows access to premium (residential) proxies. Those are associated with real residential addresses and therefore much less likely to get blocked while scraping data on the web. Like other optional parameters, using this option is just a matter of appending the premium_proxy parameter to your scraping request and set it to 1.
While we could go on for quite a while covering the many options available with the Scrapestack API, our goal is to review the product, not to write a manual for it. Besides, the Scrapestack website has very thorough documentation and it should be your primary source of how-to information.
Pricing Information
The Scrapestack API service is available under several pricing plans. At the lowest level, the Free Plan offers a way of getting familiar with the API. It has basic API functionality and a limitation of 10 000 API requests per month. If you need to run more queries or require a more advanced set of features, such as concurrent requests or premium proxy access, you can choose from one of the available paid plans.
With most paid plans offering a similar feature set, the decisive factor when it comes to your technical requirements will often be the number of API requests you need to make on a monthly basis. Payments can be made by credit card or PayPal. Furthermore, enterprise and high-volume customers may request annual bank transfer payments to be enabled. And talking about annual payment, choosing this option entitles you to a 20 % discount as compared to the monthly payments, making the product even more affordable. And if you’re not sure about the billing frequency, note that you can (relatively) easily switch from monthly to yearly and back. However, it involves first downgrading to the free plan and immediately upgrading to a paid plan.
Bottom Line
No matter how simple or how complex your web scraping need may be, the Scrapestack API can most likely help you reach your goals simply and effortlessly. With impressive reliability and scalabilty. This cloud-based service will flawlessly adapt to almost any situation. It has all the options one might need and it offers the means to spoof your scraping attempts behind millions of proxied IP addresses.
Still not sure whether the Scrapestack API is right for you? Why don’t you take advantage of the available free plan and give the service a trial run. I’m pretty sure you’ll be just amazed as I am by its overall usefulness and performance.
App permissions on macOS did not work like app permissions on iOS. This changed with Mojave, and Catalina. If you’ve updated to Catalina, you likely have started to see prompts asking you to give apps permission to access certain information on your Mac. If you want to view all app permissions that a certain app has requested, or will request when you run it for the first time, you can use a free app called Taccy.
Taccy is compatible with macOS Catalina.
View all app permissions
Download and run Taccy. On the menu bar, go to File>Open and select the app that you want to view permissions for.
Once you select an app, Taccy will read the information in the app’s PLIST file and display which permissions it needs access to. These will be listed in the pane at the bottom, along with why the app needs to access something on your Mac.
Check out the Usage Description section, and it should tell you what the app will do with the access that you grant it. In many cases you may have to Google some of what Taccy shows under User Description, or some of its other sections.
Taccy also shows you whether or not an app has access to your photos, location data, camera, mic, etc. It does so in the top half of the window for an app. It will also tell you whether the app is from Apple, if it came from the App Store, if it’s been properly signed by an identifiable developer, among other things. You can get the app ID as well as its version number.
Taccy is a simple, comprehensive way t0 view all the permissions an app needs. The app is likely going to make more sense to developers but even as end users, a little Googling will help you out quite a bit. This app by no means provides you a dashboard to change what permissions an app has. If you want to revoke any special access that you’ve given to an app, you’re going to have to go through System Preferences.
You should know that not all permissions can be revoked e.g., many apps may have access to photos on your Mac. There is no way for you to revoke this permission since you likely never explicitly granted it. If you know an app is accessing your photos, and you don’t want it to, your only choice is to uninstall it.
These days, many applications use the system tray. It’s understandable why so many do, as it’s quite handy to be able to let a Linux application run in the background from the panel. With that said, app icons on the system tray can add up and take up a lot of screen real-estate. So, if you’re sick of looking at all of these icons, it’s a no-brainer to hide them in XFCE4. Here’s how to do it.
Hiding items in the system tray
To hide apps from the system tray in XFCE4, you have to go through panel settings. To access these panel settings, go to the XFCE4 desktop and minimize everything. From there, right-click on the panel with the mouse to open up the right-click menu.
Inside of the right-click menu, look for the option “Panel” and click it with the mouse to reveal the “Panel” sub-menu. Then, go through the sub-menu for the “Panel Preferences” option and select it to open up XFCE4’s panel settings area.
Once in the panel preferences area, you’ll see the main window with several customization options for the XFCE4 panel. Look through the window for the “Items” tab, and click on it with the mouse to reveal the panel applet settings.
In the panel “Items” tab, you’ll see a listing of several different applets set up in your XFCE4 panel. Sort through the list till you find the “Notification Area (external)” item and select it with the mouse.
After selecting “Notification Area (external)” in the “Items” list, look to the right-hand area of the window for a gear icon. Click the “gear” icon. Selecting this icon will bring up the XFCE4’s Notification Area, where you can hide individual applications in the tray on the panel.
To hide an application on the panel, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Step 1: Open up the application you wish to hide in the tray. It must have been opened at least once, or XFCE4 will not add it to the “Known Applications” list.
Step 2: In the “Notification Area” settings, look through the list of “Known Applications” for the program(s) you wish to hide in the tray. Then, click the check-box next to the app(s) in the hidden column.
Once the hidden box is checked, your app(s) will be hidden in the system tray. To reveal hidden items, click on the arrow in the system tray.
Unhiding items in the tray
Unhiding previously hidden applications is done the same way they are hidden. To do it, right-click on the panel, and open up “panel preferences.”
Inside of the “panel preferences,” locate the “Items” tab and click on it with the mouse. Then, locate “Notification Area (external)” and select it with the mouse.
After selecting “Notification Area (external)” with the mouse, find the gear icon on the right-hand side of the window and select it with the mouse. Selecting the gear icon will bring up the “Notification Area” window.
Make your way to the “Known Applications” list, and find the app that you want to unhide. Then, uncheck the box next to the app in the hidden column. Upon unclicking the “hidden” checkbox, your app should show up on the panel again.
Remove system tray altogether
If you’ve tried hiding applications in the system tray on XFCE4, and find that it’s not enough in getting rid of those annoying tray icons, there is a more drastic measure you can take: removing the system-tray from the XFCE4 panel altogether.
To remove the tray from the panel, you’ll once again need to access the “Panel Preferences” area. To do this, right-click on the panel and select “panel preferences.”
Inside of the “panel preferences” window, make your way to “items.” Then, find “Notification Area (external)” and select it with the mouse.
After selecting “Notification Area (external)” with the mouse, look to for the minus sign on the right-hand side of the window. Select the minus button to remove the XFCE4 system tray from the panel entirely.
Once the system tray is removed from the panel, you will no longer see annoying tray icons from various apps running on your Linux PC.
Re-adding the tray
Decided you want to re-add the system tray to the XFCE4 desktop after removing it? Here’s how to do it.
First, open up “panel preferences” by right-clicking on the panel. Then, inside of “panel preferences,” click on the “Items” tab.
In the “Items” area, look for the plus sign and click on it. From there, use the menu to re-add “Notification Area (external)” to the panel.
After re-adding “Notification Area (external)” to the item list, application tray icons will begin to appear on the XFCE4 panel once again.
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