Gemini* and Gopher

• Personal/Opinions

  • Hind Swaraj

    No idea about the provenance of the PDF, so hopefully it doesn't have any security issues. Maybe there's a text only version somewhere?

    [...]

    Yeah, I think some of the dislike of lawyers is because there are so many problems and inequities in the legal system. Lawyers are associated with maintaining that system which often produces unjust results that impact people in really personal, powerful ways.

    — legacy web search for "lawyers disliked"

  • Bureaucratic Nightmare

    I'm at Target. It's the most packed Target I've ever seen, there are people everywhere and the line of registers seems to go on forever. There's also a large sprawling lawn outside, with people sitting and lounging, and even more lines and service counter carts outside. All of the employees are rushing about, doing things as fast as they can, trying not to crumble under the huge crowds of people and the huge lines.

    I'm trying to pay a bill for remodeling / construction. I went to a checkout and stood in line and got to the front, and... they tell me I can't just pay at a checkout, apparently my payment method is special and I have to go find someone who knows how to handle that payment method to help me. So I go looking.

  • mugshot by pete & bas

    pete & bas's second album. if you've never heard of these gentlemen, please look up a video! i'll link a good starting point down below. they're a delight and an inspiration. i've been obsessed with them for weeks and when i'm not listening myself, i'm looking up people's reactions on youtube. in fact, i enjoy them so much i've purposefully left some songs unheard and videos unseen for later. there's enough to be getting on with for now! the album itself is maybe a bit short, but it's just enough for my morning routine. sets a positive mood, gets the energy up. and maybe sets off some amusing echolalia with the guest flows at the end.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Staying Organized with todo.txt and the todo CLI

    Keeping track of tasks shouldn't require a complex system. Sometimes, a simple text file is all you need. That's where todo.txt and the todo CLI shine.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • No place to hide

      I was meaning to use this place to post about non-gemini things, since all niche communities seem to have a tendency to only talk about themselves (see also: Esperantists incessantly bickering about Esperanto instead of discussing world affairs or their favourite coffee blends). But I've been looking at my gemini server logs the past few days, and I discovered I keep getting malformed TLS requests (or non-TLS requests). Even stranger, today I noticed some HTTP requests. Some of them seemed innocent enough, others were clearly looking for vulnerabilities.

      So I did some quick lookups at abuseipdb.com and discovered I'm being portscanned by Palo Alto and Infrawatch – companies boasting about their real-time, AI-powered global cyber threat intelligence, or whatever they're calling it. Infrawatch even attempted to make a real gemini request, but failed because they used my server's IP address instead of the domain. Within two seconds, they had made one non-TLS request, one gemini request and two HTTP requests. What I don't get is why they keep returning – my server drops packets on all ports except the ones I use, which will return correct responses. If they wanted to scan my gemini server, a single prod would tell them what it is and that it's operating according to spec. Yet they've kept returning for days (I haven't looked back in my rotated logs to see how far back it goes).