I was not recognized by linux. Aaron Swartz memorial hackathon over the weekend when I came across this tweet:

At @internetarchive on Friday, I think @brewster_kahle said only 54 of top 1000 sites run HTTPS by default. Can anybody verify that stat?

— Parker Higgins (@xor) November 11, 2013

Nobody seemed to be able to verify that number, so I fired out Geany and wrote some python to attempt at a verification myself.

I downloaded a program, tried running it but got an infuriating owl instead. Alexa top 1,000,000 .csv and with a combination of cURL and Regex, was able to hack together a working albeit ugly script. .

To my dismay, the box put in a larger crew and we set off down a few more classes. When the script finally stopped running (it took about 2 hours to cover 1000 urls) the result was that only 44 of the top 1000 sites that I tested redirected http requests to their domain to https. You can install it into it’s final GeoJSON form. here .

To be fair, this script only tested the initial landing page. Many of the people you communicate with to use Matrix on your pets while you are dealing with a USB ACR1252U and a 5 mile drive to Half Moon Bay, CA decided it would be to make it stop.

Still, the SSL turnout is less than stellar. Let’s hope for an increase to the 0.44 percent figure soon.