After watching Office Space for the first time a few weeks ago, I was struck by the scene where Peter is talking about his average working day, and it got me to wondering about how much actual work I do at my job. I'm pretty sure that even on a good day, I put in less than 2 hours of actual graft. The rest is just mindless internetting, chatting with my colleagues, and wishing I was elsewhere.
So I'm curious how much work other people actually do in a day, and how you pass the time when you're not doing anything at all?

I am going to be graduating with a BA in Economics in May, and I am overwhelmed, like most people, with all the stuff that I am now responsible for. I was mostly wondering what advice you wish you heard when you were 22.

Please, if you haven’t already, see Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Having access to the source code of application software helps to ensure its security. Here is a brief list of the highest recommended open source apps that are designed to protect your online privacy and security.

Browser

Firefox: The Mozilla Foundation offers a “bug bounty” (US$3,000 to US$7,500) to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox.

Browser Extensions/Add-ons

• HTTPS Everywhere: The principal motivation for HTTPS is authentication of the accessed website and protection of the privacy and integrity of the exchanged data while in transit. It protects against man-in-the-middle attacks. Read more.

• Privacy Badger: Automatically learns to block invisible trackers. Read more.

• uBlock Origin: The least memory-intensive content-filtering and ad-blocking extension. Read more.

• Decentraleyes: Protects against tracking through centralized content delivery networks (CDNs). Read more.

• Bitwarden: A password management system that stores sensitive information in an encrypted vault. Read more.

Messaging Service

Signal: It uses the Internet to send one-to-one and group messages, which can include files, voice notes, images and videos. Read more.

Please, if you haven’t already, see Part I and Part II.

Besides using anti-virus software, I wondered if there were other ways in which I could reduce the amount of threats to my online privacy and security. One method that I came across was to block adware and malware before it had the chance to reach my browser and computer.

For the technically inclined person there is Pi-Hole which is a network-wide adware/malware blocker. The name comes from the use of a Raspberry Pi to act as a black hole for adware/malware. Currently, supported operating systems include Raspbian, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS.

A much easier method, which essentially does the same thing, is to modify your computer’s hosts file. For a safe and easy way to do this, I recommend that you use free GUI software to implement this. Windows users can download Hosts File Editor+ and Mac users can download Gas Mask.

Next, you will want a DNS blacklist that comes from trusted sources. The ones that I recommend are from Steven Black here: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Scroll down the page a little until you come to a table of all the different combinations of blacklists.

From there you would choose which list to use, as your new hosts file depending on your personal preferences by clicking on the corresponding Non Github mirror.

Using your hosts file editing software, you would then create a new hosts file by copying and pasting your preferred list. You may want to check for an updated list every once in a while. Most of these lists have their associated creation dates near the top for convenience.

My premise is that you genuinely want to help the company and the next person who moves into your old position. Maybe you got a promotion, or you found an even-better job. In any case, you want the old coworkers to succeed, and you want to make a smooth transition.

So there’s a few pieces to this:

• What do you do when you leave a job?

• What have other people done, when they left/moved on, that gave you the knowledge and skills you needed to excel?

• What did they NOT provide that you wish they had?

It’d be easy for me to focus on “what did you do” but none of us know how successful that was. So tell me, rather, about your experience as the person picking up the reins. What did that teach you about the process?

Anecdotes welcome! (And tell me how to refer to you in the article. Private is fine.)