Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 30/06/2023: Fingerprinting People on IRC and TOFU Ruminations



  • Personal/Opinions

    • 🔤SpellBinding: DNOPRWU Wordo: LARKS
    • Histories of the Transgender Child by Julian Gill-Peterson
    • Flowers and Berries

      I think this is low-bush cranberry, a.k.a. lingonberry, a.k.a. Vaccinium vitis-idaea. But the pictures on the Internet don't have red leaves, so I'm in doubt. Some poisonous look-alike, perhaps?

    • TV Showcase: Bandersnatch

      “Black Mirror” is a UK show exploring the dark side of tech and the dark side of humanity; and “Bandersnatch” is an interactive episode.

      Before I go any further, I must give a content warning for Black Mirror; some episodes are very dark, I’d say as disturbing as anything on mainstream TV. You have been warned.

      It’s an “anthology” series, meaning every individual episode stands alone and has a different cast. If “dark side of tech and humanity” interests you but you’d rather skip the disturbing content, I recommend individual episodes S03E01 “Nosedive” and S04E04 “Hang the DJ”, which are great fun. They are about social media ratings and dating apps, respectively.

    • Been so tired

      It's been a hard few weeks and I haven't really written about it but one of my partners has been sick, like really sick. It's not covid. It was, weirdly, a bacterial infection that spread through their face in ways that were just freaky.

      Like it was sort of a sinus infection but it was so strong that it started swelling their entire face shut on one side and it was starting to *move* through their face.

  • Politics and World Events

    • There's lots of smoke in Ohio recently.

      Some coworkers questioned me for driving in with my top down. My car doesn't have a cabin air filter, so it's all the same as far as I'm concerned. This baffled them; I think sometimes people forget that cars older than 10 years old exist.

  • Science

    • Mechanization, Step 1

      I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea, which would certainly explain why I’ve been tired every morning for the last…long time. For awhile I assumed it was a (then-new) antidepressant, but apparently that’s not it, or at least not the *whole* it.

      I began treatment a couple nights ago, which consists of connecting myself to a fancy air pump to make sure my lungs get a steady stream of air overnight so that my whole system doesn’t go into panic mode. I’m not used to it yet, but I definitely noticed that my feelings of sleepiness since I started were qualitatively different from how I felt before.

  • Technology and Free Software

    • Re: What dystopia?

      I used to feel the same way in the middle of the 00s. The “downhill battle” era. The “year of the Linux desktop”. Fewer and fewer .doc and .swf files littering our drives.

      Anything they would write, we in the FOSS world could clone better; and we also had our own ideas and our own apps which were pure fire magic. Compilers, wikis, milters, httpd, rsync, blender, gigs of .oggs—we had it all.



      [...]

      Also a lot of the ills that are plaguing us are social ills (we’re not yet particularly well adapted as a species to the idea of social networks), or environmental disasters (we can maybe solve the network externality but the fossil fuel externality is a harder nut to crack).
    • I Need Your Opinion

      Whether this will be accepted into the game or not depends on what people think of it. The thing is that most of the opinions received so far are "I don't like that exclusive transport rights exist at all and always disable them in the settings."

      While being a perfectly valid preference it doesn't really have anything to do with the proposed change.

    • fingerprinting people on IRC with no privileges

      TL;DR If you want to join an IRC server anonymously, your best bet is to use an e.g. Tails VM. Conventional IRC clients allow correlating seemingly isolated connections to different servers.

      Let me clarify the threat model. Let's say I'm "dzwdz" on one server, and "notdzwdz" on another. I'm using a single client for both, but "notdzwdz" is proxied through Tor, has distinct default nicknames/quit messages/etc, all the obvious privacy leaks are taken care of. I don't want anyone to be able to tell that I'm behind both those identities.

    • Internet/Gemini

      • yet more TOFU ruminations

        In SSH only the fingerprint (of a key type) is available when a host key changes; Gemini instead offers a whole X.509 certificate, for better or worse. The worse involves the complexity of X.509, even the limited modern version, and the too many security vulnerabilities thereof. The better is the metadata, which could be logged, or one might store the whole certificate so that future comparisons can look at whatever fields they want (subject, issuer, etc). Oh no, the disk space usage of unscalable certificate stores!

    • Programming

      • Software? That someone else wrote?

        I was reading a new post by a new user Sugar trying to negotiate Jekyll and settling on Agate for the Gemini side at least!

        This makes me laugh a little at myself for how hard I make own life. If it's writable by myself, why wouldn't I?

        There are many great FOSS solutions to my problems but if I think a few bash scripts and at worst a lil bit of python or something can solve it then why not.

        Why am I like this? I know in some part because it's fun. Making little tools is my wheelhouse, my bread and butter. Part of me just knows the command line can do everything I need for this task so why would I introduce some complex thing when my shell script can call a series of complex things to do it!

      • Unveiling `guprecords.raku`: Global Uptime Records with Raku

        For fun, I am tracking the uptime of various personal machines (servers, laptops, workstations...). I have been doing this for over ten years now, so I have a lot of statistics collected.

        As a result of this, I am introducing `guprecords.raku`, a handy Raku script that helps me combine uptime statistics from multiple servers into one comprehensive report. In this blog post, I'll explore what Guprecords is and some examples of its application. I will also add some notes on Raku.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft-Connected Sites Trying to Shift Attention Away From Microsoft's Megebreach Only Days Before Important If Not Unprecedented Grilling by the US Government?
Why does the mainstream media not entertain the possibility a lot of these talking points are directed out of Redmond?
[Video] 'Late Stage Capitalism': Microsoft as an Elaborate Ponzi Scheme (Faking 'Demand' While Portraying the Fraud as an Act of Generosity and Demanding Bailouts)
Being able to express or explain the facts isn't easy because of the buzzwords
Microsoft ("a Dying Megacorporation that Does Not Create") and IBM: An Era of Dying Giants With Leadership Deficits and Corporate Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
Microsoft seems to be resorting to lots of bribes and chasing of bailouts (i.e. money from taxpayers worldwide)
 
Links 18/05/2024: Deterioration of the Net, North Korean IT Workers in the US
Links for the day
Windows in Lebanon: Down to 12%?
latest from statCounter
Links 18/05/2024: Caledonia Emergency Powers, "UK Prosecutor's Office Went Too Far in the Assange Case"
Links for the day
US Patent and Trademark Office Sends Out a Warning to People Who Do Not Use Microsoft's Proprietary Formats
They're punishing people who wish to use open formats
Links 18/05/2024: Fury in Microsoft Over Studio Shutdowns, More Gaming Layoffs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 17, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, May 17, 2024
Links 18/05/2024: KOReader, Benben v0.5.0 Progress Update, and More
Links for the day
[Meme] UEFI 'Secure' Boot Boiling Frog
UEFI 'Secure' Boot: You can just ignore it. You can just turn it off. You can hack on it as a workaround. Just use Windows dammit!
The Market Wants to Delete Windows and Install GNU/Linux, UEFI 'Secure' Boot Must Go!
To be very clear, this has nothing to do with security and those who insist that it is have absolutely no credentials
In the United States Of America the Estimated Share of Google Search Grew After Microsoft's Chatbot Hype (Which Coincided With Mass Layoffs at Bing)
Microsoft's chatbot hype started in late 2022
Techrights Will Categorically Object to Any Attempts to Deny Its Right to Publish Informative, Factual Material
we'll continue to publish about 20 pages per day while challenging censorship attempts
Links 17/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, More YouTube Censorship
Links for the day
YouTube Progresses to the Next Level
YouTube is a ticking time bomb
Journalists and Human Rights Groups Back Julian Assange Ahead of Monday's Likely Very Final Decision
From the past 24 hours...
[Meme] George Washington and the Bill of Rights
Centuries have passed since the days of George Washington, but the principles are still the same
Daniel Pocock: "I've Gone to Some Lengths to Demonstrate How Corporate Bad Actors Have Used Amateur-hour Codes of Conduct to Push Volunteers Into Modern Slavery"
"As David explains, the Codes of Conduct should work the other way around to regulate the poor behavior of corporations who have been far too close to the Debian Suicide Cluster."
Video of Richard Stallman's Talk From Four Weeks Ago
2-hour video of Richard Stallman speaking less than a month ago
statCounter Says Twitter/X Share in Russia Fell From 23% to 2.3% in 3 Years
it seems like YouTube gained a lot
Journalist Who Won Awards for His Coverage of the Julian Assange Ordeals Excluded and Denied Access to Final Hearing
One can speculate about the true reason/s
Richard Stallman's Talk, Scheduled for Two Days Ago, Was Not Canceled But Really Delayed
American in Paris
3 More Weeks for Daniel Pocock's Campaign to Win a Seat in European Parliament Elections
Friday 3 weeks from now is polling day
Microsoft Should Have Been Fined and Sanctioned Over UEFI 'Lockout' (Locking GNU/Linux Out of New PCs)
Why did that not happen?
Gemini Links 16/05/2024: Microsoft Masks Layoffs With Return-to-office (RTO) Mandates, Cash Issues
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 16, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, May 16, 2024
Ex-Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier Did Not Retire, He Just Left IBM/Red Hat a Month Ago (Ahead of Layoff Speculations)
Rather than retire he took a similar position at another company
Linux.com Made Its First 'Article' in Over and Month, It Was 10 Words in Total, and It's Not About Linux
play some 'webapp' and maybe get some digital 'certificate' for a meme like 'clown computing'
[Meme] Never Appease the Occupiers
Freedom requires truth. Free speech emancipates.
Thorny Issues, Violent Response
They say protests (or strikes) that do not disrupt anything are simply not effective. The same can be said about reporting.
GNU/Linux in Malaysia: From 0.2 Percent to 6+ Percent
That's like 30-fold increase in relative share
Liberty in Liberia? Windows Falls Below 10% and Below iOS
This is clearly a problem for Microsoft
Techrights Congratulates Raspberry Pi (With Caution and Reservations)
Raspberry Pi will "make or break" based on the decisions made in its boardroom
OSI Makes a Killing for Bill Gates and Microsoft (Plagiarism and GPL Violations Whitewashed and Openwashed)
meme and more
The FSF Ought to Protest Against UEFI 'Secure Boot' (Like It Used To)
libreplanet-discuss stuff
People Who Defend Richard Stallman's Right to Deliver Talks About His Work Are Subjected to Online Abuse and Censorship
Stallman video removed
GNU/Linux Grows in Denmark, But Much of That is ChromeOS, Which Means No Freedom
Google never designs operating systems with freedom in mind
Links 16/05/2024: Vehicles Lasting Fewer Years, Habitat Fragmentation Concerns
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Reaches 6.5% in Canada (Including ChromeOS), Based on statCounter
Not many news sites are left to cover this, let alone advocate for GNU/Linux
Links 16/05/2024: Orangutans as Political Props, VMware Calls Proprietary 'Free'
Links for the day
The Only Thing the So-called 'Hey Hi Revolution' Gave Microsoft is More Debt
Microsoft bailouts
TechTarget (and Computer Weekly et al): We Target 'Audiences' to Sell Your Products (Using Fake Articles and Surveillance)
It is a deeply rogue industry that's killing legitimate journalism by drowning out the signal (real journalism) with sponsored fodder
FUD Alert: 2024 is Not 2011 and Ebury is Not "Linux"
We've seen Microsofers (actual Microsoft employees) putting in a lot of effort to shift the heat to Linux
Links 15/05/2024: XBox Trouble, Slovakia PM Shot 5 Times
Links for the day
Windows in Times of Conflict
In pictures
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 15, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 15, 2024