Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Shock wake from a soothing nightmare

    Just the other day I was wandering the street and pondering about the things that have been happening, wondering about the state of the world and what it was that was really happening, and the why of it all. Lost in my thoughts I was that I didn't notice when a strange vehicle had stopped right next to me, and out of it came a caricaturesque old man of messy white hair and wearing what looked like a lab coat. He struck me as a particularly stereotypical personage that I felt as if I were the target of some kind of joke that I started looking around for a hidden camera. The old man approached me and said something along the lines of "Great erudite detritus, it's an honor."

  • all the parts

    I lean on the frame 
    and stare out the window
    to ground myself
    the outside world so alive
    so I must be too 
    and then you're there
    so tenderly
    

• Technology and Free Software

  • A possible theory for the Brazilian SYN attacks

    I've received several emails about the SYN packets I've been seeing [1]. One person that emailed me today, a cybersecurity researcher from Brazil (their words), wrote about a theory they came across: [...]

  • modernizing cli utilities

    again, haven't been writing here much. why not ramble for a minute so people in the tiny web have something to read in their downtime.

    i just replaced sed with sd. sd is so much simpler (which means better) for cli find and replace tasks.

  • "Son of DCE"

    This post is about IT, not software engineering, so I might be a bit out of my comfort zone but I've always been a UNIX fan. At the very least, I could use this post as a request-for-proposal for some IT consultancy to do the job.

    The first version of UNIX I used was DEC OSF/1, which had some interesting features. One feature that that same OSF wrote was DCE, the Distributed Computing Environment. This is a layer on top of single-machine UNIX to implement in a coarse-grained manner the most useful features of a true distributed OS. So it's concerned with providing a general-purpose computing service to users, i.e. something that at least partially sits on your desk. I suspect it's a different set of requirements to running servers or a cloud. In DCE, the following services were provided.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Re: Looking for Someone to Take Over Antenna

      I saw this last night on antenna [...] added it to my todo list then went to bed. sent ew0k a message on IRC, but figured making a post and submitting it to antenna might work a bit better.

    • Thanks Sean Conner for explaining what the hell I was seeing on my server

      I've been wondering for months about why I was seeing so many Brazilian IPs stuck in SYN_RECV on my server. The upshot is that this situation forced me to learn more about networking, networking tools, TCP, and all sorts of other fun things that I previously had very little knowledge about. I still have very little knowledge about them, but I know more. And I've implemented a number of improvements to the security of my server as a result — not so much to mitigate this particular situation, but because of what I've learned in reading and researching.

    • and where to find them

      this is kind of what I mean by darknet, but I usually mean something that operates on a low-enough layer that I can do arbitrary TCP connections through it, but preferably low enough to do IP connections.

    • anonet. cryptoanarchy and BGP

      if you want to join anonet you'll need this:

      * an ASN (pick any 32 bit number that isn't already taken by other anonet users)

      * a /24 range in 21.0.0.0/8 (same as with ASN, pick any range not already taken)

      * someone to setup a tunnel with (probably me)