The Gopher Times
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Opus 5 - Gopher news and more - Jun. 2022
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Bitreich Con 2022, Come and Talk! 20h
____________________________________________________________
Greetings at 852.770114854 km/h, 34943.004 miles over
the Atlantic Ocean.
This is a happy reminder, that in less than 30 days,
brcon2022 will happen.
There will be two parts:
July 25th to 28th Online presentations, then one day
to get to Belgrade
July 30th to 31st We will be in presence, having fun
in Belgrade, Serbia.
If you want to hold a presention of your interest,
please see the Call for Papers: [1] and send your pro-
posal to Christoph Lohmann <
[email protected]>
There is already a wide variety of topics registered,
from medicine to simple software over geology and
hopefully a special greeting from our science supervi-
sor Prof. Skildgaard who wants to give advices to all
of us humans.
See you online and in presence!
Sincerely yours,
20h Chief Conference Officer (CCO)
1
gopher://bitreich.org/1/con/2022
Animated ASCII art linuxconsole
____________________________________________________________
With all the history of ASCII art and demoscene, it
would be a shame if noone ever tried to combine the
two in animated ASCII art. Courtesy of textfiles.com,
we can browse through a collection of 93 animated
ASCII pieces of arts. [1]
They are also mirrored at the bitreich gopher site [2]
The animation speed will likely be too high for a ter-
minal, and can be slowed down with the throttle(1)
program as advised by linuxconsole.net, or with pv(1)
as below:
1
http://artscene.textfiles.com/vt100/
http://linuxconsole.net/ascii_art.html
2
gopher://bitreich.org/1/vt100/animations/
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curl -s
gopher://bitreich.org/1/vt100/animations/twilight.vt | pv -qL3000
____________________________________________________________
You may use the "reset" command to get your terminal
normal again after watching.
Some are just a pun, a few frames to only give impres-
sion of movement, while other might be closer to a
short animated movie. Talking of which, long movies
were also done:
https://www.asciimation.co.nz/
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
These characters transmitted through one protocol or
another, whispers to us, through our terminal screen,
tales from the imagination of plain text artists.
Prof. Skildgaard: Only Turtle Fans 20h
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I am happy to announce, that the scientific head of
bitreich, Prof. Skildgaard, the professor for slow
sciences at the Aarhus university in Denmark, now has
opened his own website [1]
You can see many #turtlefan pictures. [2]
Please recommend his work! He has done so much for us,
like reviewing all entries to the last and the coming
brcon. This takes ages!
Sincerely yours,
20h Chief Slowness Executive (CSE)
1
http://onlyturtlefans.com/
2 <annna> #turtlefan:
gopher://bitreich.org/I/memecache/turtlefan.png
Synthetic ASCII Art tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
When an entirely new way to solve problems is discov-
ered, all sorts of medias, and not only the tech-
oriented ones, are fond to publish abundantly about
it. Be it quantum computing, blockchains, machine
learning... Shortly after a new big toys like these
comes-up, hackers come, and start experimenting with
it, sometimes coming-up with entirely new way to use
it.
This time we are reviewing the combo of Machine Learn-
ing and ASCII art.
I was expecting to present cute attempts at drawing
images with computer-made text, but this is nothing of
the sort. Be prepared to see Science at the service
of Art.
Generated Typewriter Art This research paper (no
less!) shows that it is possible to write software
for placing characters, later typed during 6 hours
by a human operator (for this example). It is un-
settling to see details much smaller than the char-
acters themself be drawn on paper, along with shades
of grey of various intensities. [1]
Generated ASCII Art in 2010 This is possibly the state
of the art of 2010 technology. It was announced in
the yearly conference SIGGRAPH hence presented to an
audience full of computer graphics engineers. The
work of three researchers from Hong Kong, Xuemiao
Xu, Linling Zhang and Tien-Tsin Wong, shows results
of surprising accuracy. The story does not tell
whether there ever was a job offer "looking for
ASCII artists for a scientific experiment" posted on
the job board of the Chinese University of Hong
Kong. While the paper contains the complete math
used, it also illustrates and explains methods to
acheive this level of accuracy. And no, it is not
exactly machine learning, but hand-crafted strate-
gies, combined statistics and other data massaging.
After all, it was published five years before things
like Tensor Flow were introduced... [2]
Generated ASCII Art in 2017 Is seven years enough time
to improve upon that previous acheivement? Quoting
the previous paper as well as others in its own
work, Osamu Akiyama of the Osaka Faculty of Medicine
kept the ball rolling. This throws the big guns of
machine learning to reach higher skies. Its input
data were Japaneses BBS such as 5chan (2chan) or
Shitaraba, which extends the ASCII set to all of
unicode, notably the CJK set. If the result of the
paper are not enough to convince you, the "Bad Ap-
ple" often used as a video demo in the Asian market
have been converted in its entirety. Something out
of reach if doing every frame by hand. The Tensor-
Flow and Python code used is released publicly, and
an online demo is offered for the curious. [3] [4]
[5] [6] [7]
Is it so futile? Not so sure. After all, representing
anything with a computer is a matter of making a real-
ity fit onto something terribly awkward and unnatural:
a display. The pixels, the square elements praised
for providing a grid to throw data at, are promising,
but themself have their quirks to be worked around.
For instance, sub-pixel geometry uses the same tech-
niques as those presented by these papers for improv-
ing the realism of images beyond what a single pixel
can offer. It is, for ASCII art like for anything
else, a matter of representing something, real or fic-
tious, through a medium of some kind.
ASCII art has the ability to fit an image somewhere
where there could only be text. For the example of a
train station concourse with a large split-flap dis-
play: for displaying a big arrow at the end of the
service, replacing the display by an equally large
color screen can be costly and much more power-hungry,
while an ASCII arrow on that existing display would be
consuming no power for that still image.
1
https://graphicsinterface.org/wp-content/uploads/gi2021-13.pdf
2
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/papers/asciiart/asciiart.html
3
https://nips2017creativity.github.io/doc/ASCII_Art_Synthesis.pdf
4
https://nips2017creativity.github.io/
5
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=8GulN69Cgbg
6
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmymwx/machine-learning-ascii-art-neural-net
7
https://github.com/OsciiArt/DeepAA
BIG BROWSER IS WATCHING YOU! 20h
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Are you feeling watched all the time? Do you feel un-
sure when doing something nasty? It is true, you are
watched: By BIG BROWSER. Whenever you use the web,
someone else is masturbating to your web history.
You want to know how to be able to do nasty things on-
line without someone masturbating to it? Come to br-
con2022 and find out more. [1]
This time online and in presence!
See you there!
Sincerely yours,
20h Chief Espionage Officer (CEO)
1
gopher://bitreich.org/1/con/2022
Sailing With Grace tgtimes
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The sea! Water all around, not a single piece of land
around to stand in, only a single boat that becomes
one with you, its capitain. Infinite waves under the
blue or cloudly sky is all you see for a long trip of
many days. Feeling lost, but at the same time united
with surrounding nature. After all, the largest part
of Earth is covered by the sea.
This is the world of Sailing that awaits each of us,
for a single trip hosted by a well proven crew, or as
a lone sailor braving tempests after tempests.
Sailing blogs are definitely a good opportunity to
dream, the instant of an article.
This blog, Sailing With Grace, has taken the decision
of offering all its content through HTTP, but also
proxied over Gopher. [1] This recalls an interesting
point: it proves that Gopher is not only good for
talking about Gopher and computer things, but is also
oriented toward the outside. Is it ready to be used
by people who are not gopher geeks?
It always was to begin with, so why would it not? Are
people less able to use computers now than they was
before the web came? The discussion is open.
1
gopher://gopher.sailingwithgrace.com
sfeed 1.5 Released Hiltjo
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sfeed [1] is a tool to convert RSS or Atom feeds from
XML to a TAB-separated file.
sfeed has the following notable changes compared to
1.4:
o sfeed_curses: interrupt waitpid while interactive
child program is running. This now handles SIGTERM
on sfeed_curses while an interactive child program
is running.
o sfeed_curses: close stdin before spawning a plumb
program in non-interactive mode, which is more intu-
itive: the program doesn't seem to hang when it ex-
pects input in this case since there is no way to
send input anyway.
o Properly escape backslashes in the man pages (thanks
adc!).
o Documentation improvements to the man pages and a
progress indicator example script for sfeed_update.
I want to thank all people who gave feedback.
Thanks, Hiltjo.
1 git://git.codemadness.org/sfeed
gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed
https://codemadness.org/releases/sfeed/
gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/sfeed/
Wireless, wireless everywhere tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
Wires! Cables! Connectors! Computer and electric sys-
tems seems to befriend with plugs and sockets. Why is
the computer industry running away from them for ev-
erything exposed to users?
Where do I plug the cable? Everyone needfully face
this question at least once, be it the first time
they own a computer. From the various connector
shapes to choose from, to the various set of proto-
col the Universal USB connector supports, cables
provoke confusion to cable-haters and computer neo-
phytes.
Cables are ugly It might not be true for everyone, but
computer manufacturers seems to say differently.
Starting with the name "wireless", that comes by op-
position to wires, supposing they were something to
avoid. Cable management is a full time job for dat-
acenter jockeys, and a chore for the cable-hating
computer user.
Cables are immobile Unless making use of an uncommon
cable management strategy, objects connected to ca-
bles cannot be carried too far away without unplug-
ging everything devices are connected to.
So here comes wireless. While not frequent in large
computer infrastructure, wireless is invading the mar-
ket along with battery devices. Using radio waves to
make device talk to each other, at various frequen-
cies, modulation, datarate and distance. Ready to
sacrifice any amount of good engineering to make it-
self more seducing to the market, marketting perpetu-
ates the same illusion of making computer troubles
fade away with wireless.
From the Bluetooth protocol swamp of mixed edge-cases
and complexity, to the security vulnerabilities of
Wi-Fi, to the security vulnerabilities of Bluetooth,
to the proprietary but popular protocols like LoRaWan,
to the unreliability and unstability as opposed to
wires, to the black box of wireless broadband such as
UTMS and LTE, Wireless does not have the same fame
among developers valuing simplicity and reliability.
Even the United Army holds griefs against wireless
such as Bluetooth, and disrecommand it for use by mil-
itaries: [1]
>> Do not use Bluetooth devices to send, receive,
store, or process classified information.
This means no Bluetooth keybaord, no Bluetooth headset
during phone calls, no Bluetooth sharing between the
phone and the computer... In other words, no Blue-
tooth.
Nontheless, wireless is fun, beautiful, and filled
with culture. While marketting pushed engineers from
the wireless cliff, long before computer came, radio
waves were put at good use in the most simple forms:
radio communication. From the AM and FM radio sta-
tions to listen while on the road, the medium-range
boat, airplane, truck, pedestrian talkies, and even
satellite communications, hobbyists building-up their
own antennas for inter-continental communication,
garage door openners and remotely controlled drones...
Complex and twisted wireless protocols are only a spe-
cial case of radio communication, and simple unobfus-
cated methods of communication are possible, and even
frequent.
Be it a simple and inexpensive RTL SDR dongle receiver
[2] or a complete receiver-emitter such as HackRF [3]
or LimeSDR, [4] many gears exist for experimenting
with radio transmissions.
Every year, the American Relay Radio League (ARRL) is
publishing a large book focused on radiocommunication,
and its chapter 1 section 1 is Do-It-Yourself Wire-
less.
This is an invitation for everyone to discover or re-
discover the universe of electromagnetic fields commu-
nication.
1
https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/
ARN4771_Pam25-2-9_Final_Web.pdf
2
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/
3
https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/one/
4
https://limemicro.com/products/boards/limesdr/
Open-Source Breathing tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
The previous opus had a word or two about how diffi-
cult it could be to get open hardware medical devices.
The Freespireco [1] project aims to bring a respirator
device to life as a completely Open Hardware project.
The challenge is not coming-up with something that
works and is reliable, but instead to provide a struc-
ture robust enough to be accepted (and funded) for
performing all the necessary certifications needed be-
fore being allowed to the medical device market.
There are usually categories of criticalities, and an
artificial respirator is not escaping to the rule. The
organiser of the project have pursued this goal since
long, and might likely have a very long road to go.
It is essentially a pioneer of Open Hardware for crit-
ical medical devices, step-by-step paving up the road
toward certification: designing and building devices
to test these equipment, issuing standards for data
(like a JSON schema received over a serial port di-
rectly from the device).
The strategy: offering reproducible tests as an anchor
for trust. Precious argument for facing big pharma
equipment vendors that are having an interest in lock-
ing their device down, preventing repair or even in-
spection.
In a same journey toward braving Goliath: accessing
the Outter Space. And it is, as crazy as it looks,
far from impossible to contribute to space research
even without a diploma: The RTEMS [2] project is open
to contribution.
But that does not discourage the authors of the respi-
rator project to keep going. Not in a blind trust for
the medical industry, but in full foresight that no-
body would want its mom's life given to a hobbyist toy
made in a garage. With this reality in mind, "what-
ever it takes" turns into "whatever is done", and the
road to certification progresses, one breath at a
time.
1
https://www.pubinv.org/project/freespireco/
2
https://rtems.org/
20h Presents: Geomyidae 20h
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This project existed since a while, and kept improv-
ing. In this interview with 20h, he shows us what
Geomyidae's got under the hood.
>> What is Geomyidae?
Geomyidae is a Unix/Linux daemon/service serving the
gopher protocol.
>> So what is gopher?
Gopher here is an internet protocol, which was first
developed at the University of Minnesota. After its
short success, it declined, but is now striving again
to be used for its simplicity and hierarchy. For bet-
ter visual display of your gopher experience, use
something like links, lynx or sacc. Those are gopher
clients.
>> How does Geomyidae help with getting started with
gopher?
The installation of Geomyidae is very simple. You can
setup your Geomyidae right away:
____________________________________________________________
git clone git://bitreich.org/geomyidae
cd geomyidae
make
curl -s
gopher://localhost:7070
____________________________________________________________
Yes, curl supports gopher! And it supports gopher and
TLS too!
>> Are there many alternatives among gopher daemons?
Yes, there are many. Some are there due to historical
reasons, others have gone out of shape over time. One
of the most popular alternatives is pygopherd.
>> How does Geomyidae compares to other implementa-
tions?
Geomyidae offers a unique simple way of expressing go-
pher content. See the manpage or the examples in the
source for how .gph files are formatted. And it does
just what you want it to do. No strange abstraction
files like in the original gopher daemons are the de-
fault way. In the newest release of Geomyidae compat-
ibility scripts were added. But those are to preserve
the unique history of gopher.
>> Did Geomyidae have significant evolutions since the
beginning?
Yes. Originally Geomyidae was named gopherd for Plan
9. It then was ported over to Linux. On Linux it was
renamed to Geomyidae. During that development much
has happened: There were significant speedups (due to
the patches and work of other people!), features were
added especially in new dynamic content handling. You
can easily see all features in the documentation and
especially the simple manpage.
>> Does Geomyidae work with all gopher clients?
Yes. Geomyidae supports the original protocol from
the beginning, up to modern gopher with TLS. For the
intermediary gopher+ protocol there is a compatibility
layer.
>> Has NSA inserted a backdoor onto Geomyidae?
I am not allowed to tell you.
>> How does gopher help with privacy?
The gopher protocol has the unique property that all
data you send over the line can be easily controlled
and seen. This is different to HTTP, where headers,
HTML and Javascript got so complex, it is uncontrol-
lable. See the gopher onion project [1] for how to
combine this with tor for total privacy and anonymity.
>> Are there TLS support on some gopher clients al-
ready?
There is support in curl, mpv/ffmpeg, sacc and more.
It is very easy to add TLS support to any client. You
simply connect via TLS on the gopher TCP port (de-
fault: 70) and if it works, keep that connection open.
>> Are there been any evolution of the gopher protocol
itself since the beginning of Geomyidae?
The technology used is simple. Gopher does not allow
requests, which begin with the first bytes of a TLS
request. So any proper and old gopher daemon will
simply refuse the connection. Then the client is free
to reconnect without TLS based on its security config-
uration. Any ISDN line will handle such probing re-
quests for TLS easily.
>> Did Geomyidae have to adapt itself to the gopher
protocol? Did it make gopher change?
Geomyidae changed the part of gophespace it was able
to reach. Many servers run on Geomyidae. There is
software written just for Geomyidae and its gph for-
mat. The TLS extension of the protocol came from Bi-
treich / Geomyidae. We also set the standard to sim-
ply use UTF-8 as default representation in gopher
menus and so bring it into the 21st century. I can
conclude: Yes, Geomyidae changed and will change go-
pher.
>> Have you seen Geomyidae ever used outside a hobby
project?
Well, Bitreich is serious in changing the software
world. Most of gopherspace is »hobby projects«. But
then, most of gopherspace is made from heart blood and
love, which makes it part of the life of the authors.
>> Is Geomyidae ready for non-hobby uses?
Geomyidae is ready for any use. It is stable and op-
timized to scale better than the cloud.
>> Geomyidae uses ".gph" files.
Does it replace the gophermap standard? Yes, in Ge-
omyidae it does. Gph is simpler and easier to adapt
to, especially when you come from some markup world.
>> Does Geomyidae support dynamic pages?
Geomyidae supports two forms of dynamic pages: One
which uses the gph markup and one, where the
script/application outputs raw gopher output. Addi-
tionally it supports in the latest release a form of
REST, where paths are transformed into arguments to
scripts. There is also support for
index.dcgi/index.cgi scripts to have better looking
paths and URIs.
>> Is Geomyidae already packaged in some Linux/BSD
distributions?
As far as I know it is packaged in gentoo, Archlinux
(and more), all BSDs. Since it is so simple to pack-
age: Just extract the tarball, run make and make in-
stall, the packages are easily made for any package
manager.
>> What is planned for the next releases of Geomyidae?
As of now I have worked through my whole long-standing
TODO list for Geomyidae. New ideas will evolve from
people sending in patches or through practical need.
Geomyidae follows the Bitreich manifesto [2] where a
software can be done.
>> How to get involved? Getting help, discussing, bug
hunting, code contribution, documentation...
If anyone wants to get involved, first download Ge-
omyidae, run it, have fun using it, creating gopher
content. If you run into problems, have patches or
suggestions, come on IRC [3] and discuss with us your
problem. For e-mail, send such requests to 20h@r-
36.net. All contact is in the manpage too.
>> Can I have an ice cream?
Yes, you will get one, once we meet again.
1
gopher://bitreich.org/1/onion
2
gopher://bitreich.org/0/documents/bitreich-manifesto.md
3 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
Embedded Forth Programming tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
Big computers can run large and complex programming
languages, so what can small computer run?
Compiled languages, in particular those with a small
runtime are often chosen. But the interpreted lan-
guages also have an audience willing to code with
their favorite programming environment for them. Pro-
gramming languages as big as Python have their embed-
ded counterpart (MicroPython) thanks to significant
efforts. They serve their purpose to embedded enthu-
siasts as educational and scripting languages to many.
But small "language in a nutshell" are fitting right
the small resources of microcontrollers. This is the
case of Forth and its stack-machine approach.
____________________________________________________________
Mecrisp This implementation immediately targets micro-
controllers. See for instance the work of
librehacker.com author Christopher Howard. [1]
chipFORTH Another implementation of Forth, which were
used by NASA [2] for improving reliability of its
flight control system, among the mosts critical
pieces of software of a shuttle.
https://github.com/corecode/forth Among notable Forth
projects is Simon "corecode" Schubert's nimble forth
implementation as well as hardware code describing
the working of a CPU that executes Forth natively
[3]
https://forth.chat/ If feeling like having a taste of
Forth and Forth community, there are several chan-
nels featuring forth that you could enjoy, some of
which are oriented toward hardware projects directly
[4]
https://github.com/chmykh/apl-life This is Conway Game
of Life in APL in Forth What a long chain! It is APL
programming language implemented in Forth, and Con-
way game of life implemented in APL
https://github.com/remko/waforth Feeling like pushing
the irony of "Web" assembly even further? Why not
blasting a Forth implementation at it? [5] This
proves Forth as the new programming language en
vogue
http://collapseos.org/ What else does a programming
language need to prove itself useful? A kernel?
Check! Collapse OS is an operating system target-
ting resilience beyond extreme, as it is designed to
resist everything around it tearing apart, including
the whole civilisation. When nothing remains but
wastelands, CollapseOS will be there for a rebirth
of civilisation out of computers made from scavenged
parts. Civilisation is rising and falling all of
the time, just not all parts at the same time.
>> Forth is, to my knowledge, the most compact lan-
guage allowing high level constructs. -- Collapse OS
author.
gopher://retroforth.org/ https://retroforth.org/ A
forth implemented in C, Python, C#, Nim, JavaScript
and Pascal! The C version permits to embed the
script into a binary along with the interpreter, for
a single-binary deployment process. The more clas-
sic way to use it is to use shebangs scripts to have
executable scripts.
Many smaller utilities can already provide something
you needed:
http://retroforth.org/examples/Casket-HTTP.retro.html
An HTTP server
http://retroforth.org/examples/Atua-WWW.retro.html A
Gopher to HTTP+HTML Proxy on top of Atua.
http://retroforth.org/examples/Atua.retro.html A go-
pher server, already listed on the Gopher index of
links, the Gopher Lawn [6]
http://retroforth.org/examples/7080.retro.html A s
https://gitlab.com/goblinrieur/spreedsheet/ A spread-
sheet application in the terminal.
gopher://forth.works:100 This is a collection of code
blocks written in the Retro Forth's author (crc)
newest Forth implementation. It is itself served by
a gopher server (blocks 203-205 on the list above)
in Forth.
https://github.com/oriontransfer/pl0-language-tools A
PL/0 implementation in Python that can emmit Retro
Forth code as ouput. It looks like Forth simplic-
ity, portability, stability and speed of execution
made it a good candidate as a target language. The
PL/0 language is known for the book Algorithms +
Data Structures = Programs from Niklaus Wirth, him-
self famous for the Wirth Law:
>> The hope is that the progress in hardware will cure
all software ills. However, a critical observer may
observe that software manages to outgrow hardware in
size and sluggishness. --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law
https://ribccs.com/candy/ If you were doubting about
Forth being fit for the industry, bear in mind that
the above is a very-large scale VFX Forth project
with over a million lines of code!
http://sam-falvo.github.io/kestrel/2016/03/29/vibe-2.2
Why not spin a vi-like text editor itself in forth?
See how few code it takes to implement one.
https://git.sr.ht/~vertigo/shoehorn An answer to the
bootstrapping problem: how to get from no software
to a complete system? Which compiler compiles the
first compiler? Forth's simplicity is a good candi-
date for solving this problem.
https://git.sr.ht/~vertigo/forthbox Software environ-
ment for computers to base upon right after booting:
a system shell in forth with real hardware projects
dedicated to it. Think of a LISP machine, but in-
stead being a Forth machine.
http://deathroadtocanada.com/ This video-game uses
Forth as a scripting language. When a whole script-
ing language fits on a thumb, putting it everywhere
costs nothing!
____________________________________________________________
Such a large tool chest for such a small language.
With the Covid, Wars under disguise, and other supply
chain troubles, the demand of feature stability rises
face to the traditionnal "more features". In these
trying times, anyone is welcome to go Forth.
1 gemini://gem.librehacker.com/gemlog/tech/20220331-0.gmi
gemini://gem.librehacker.com/gemlog/tech/20220305-0.gmi
2
https://www.forth.com/space-shuttle-instrumentation-interface/
3
https://github.com/corecode/forth-cpu
4 ircs://irc.hackint.org/#forth-hardware-projects
5
https://el-tramo.be/waforth/
https://el-tramo.be/thurtle/
6 bitreich.org/1/lawn/c/gopher.gph
A new IRC network: IRCNow! tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
A new IRC network is in town! [1] Ever wanted to feel
what an early community looks like? The admin jrmu
brought the project together, and is currently col-
lecting users along the way.
Whether you looked for a place to host your own commu-
nity, or wanted a see a fresh community be grow from
fertile ground, the community is welcoming and active.
>> IRCNow: Of the Users, By the Users, For the Users
Something else from this community might catch your
attention, is its orientation toward being adminis-
trated by its users themself: rather than letting the
founder handle everything, the community is oriented
toward serious teaching of unix command line and sys-
tem administration to anyone, from beginners to ad-
vanced users seeking improvement.
In-person teaching sessions were covered during the
LibrePlanet 2022 event [2] with recording of a test-
run of the event [3] where future and present hackers
met together working our their system administration
and community building skills. Linux Magazine also
ran an interview giving a good impression about the
spirit of the project: [4]
Beyond yet another IRC network to chat with, IRCnow
offers hosting services for IRC bouncers, Bots, E-
Mail, VPN, Code, File Storage, and Shell Accounts.
The wiki itself features plenty of technical informa-
tion on system administration as a support for its
bootcamps, which offers a comfortable step-by-step in-
troduction to a complete server administration. [5] I
have seen system administrators getting hired knowing
less than this!
1 irc://irc.ircnow.net:6667
ircs://irc.ircnow.net:6697
2
https://jrmu.host.ircnow.org/libreplanet/libreplanet.pdf
3
https://0x0.st/oTal.webm - 0h20m: audio starts - 1h15m: talking about Gopher
4
https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2021/249/Interview-IRCNow
5
https://wiki.ircnow.org/index.php?n=Minutemin.Bootcamp
Search podcasts via Gopher tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
Do you happen to be a podcast enjoyer? Maybe you con-
sidered to have something to listen to on the road or
while cooking.
Combining many different sources, you may encounter
some heirlooms by searching through this gopher
front-end for podcast search. [1]
The platform aggregates multiple search APIs of RSS
link aggregators with a focus on audio podcasts, and
extracts the RSS links for you, so you do not have to
search throug a dozen of webpages just to find the RSS
button.
For instance, knowing about the Amp Hour podcast, I
tried searching for it: "Amp Hour" in the search
field, and bingo! The first result is "The Amp Hour
Electronics Podcast", that was quickly added to my
list of RSS feeds in a blast.
Being based off Gopher, this makes it insanely easy to
automate a script searching for podcasts, then down-
loading the entries and uploading them to an MP3
player of any kind (dedicated, or as part of a phone
or other portable computer).
Want to know more about it? One place to discuss
about it is the Bitreich IRC server [2]
1
gopher://gopher.icu/1/pod
2 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
Relics of Fast Fourrier Transform rue_mohr
____________________________________________________________
In 1967, the Kooley-Tukey FFT algorythm (the one we
all use now) was written in Fortran. What the hell
were they running it on, and what damned data were
they feeding into it?!
____________________________________________________________
SUBROUTINE FOUR1(DATA,NN,ISIGN)
C THE COOLEY-TUKEY FAST ROURIER TRANSFORM IN USASI BASIC FORTRAN
C TRANSFORM(J) = SUM(DATA(I)+W**((I-1)*(J-1)). WHERE I AND J RUN
C FROM 1 TO NN AND W = EXP(ISIGN*2*PI+SQRT(-1)/NN). DATA IS ONE-
C DIMENSIONAL COMPLEX ARRAY (I.E.: THE REAL AND IMAGINARY PARTS OF
C THE DATA ARE LOCATE IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT IN STORAGE, SUCH AS
C FORTRAN IV PLACES THEM) WHOSE LENGTH NN IS A POWER OF TWO. ISIGN
C IS +1 OR -1, GIVING THE SIGN OF THE TRANSFORM, TRANSFORM VALUES
C ARE RETURNED IN ARRAY DATA, REPLACING THE INPUT DATA. THE TIME IS
C PROPORTIONAL TO N*LOG2(N), RATHER THAN THE USUAL N**2. WRITTEN BY
C NORMAN BRENNER, JUNE 1967, THIS IS THE SHOURTEST VERSION
C OF FFT KNOWN THE THE AUTHOR, AND IS INTENDED MAINLY FOR
C DEMONSTRATION. PROGRAMS FOUR2 AND FOURT ARE AVAILABLE THAT RUN
C TWICE AS FAST AND OPERATE ON MULTIDIMENSIONAL ARRAYS WHOSE
C DIMENSIONS ARE NOT RESTRICTED TO POWERS OR TWO. (LOOKING UP SINES
C AND COSINES IN A TABLE WILL CUT RUNNING TIME OF FOUR1 BY A THIRD.)
C SEE-- IEEE AUDIO TRANSACTIONS (JUNE 1967), SPECIAL ISSUE ON FFT.
DIMENSION DATA(1)
N=2*NN
J=1
DO 5 I=1,N,2
IF(I-J)1,2,2
1 TEMPR=DATA(J)
TEMPI=DATA(J+1)
DATA(J)=DATA(I)
DATA(J+1)=DATA(I+1)
DATA(I)=TEMPR
DATA(I+1)=TEMPI
2 M=N/2
3 IF(J-M)5,5,4
4 J=J-M
M=M/2
IF(M-2)5,3,3
5 J=J+M
MMAX=2
6 IF(MMAX-N)7,9,9
7 ISTEP=2*MMAX
DO 8 M=1,MMAX,2
THETA=3.1415926535*FLOAT(ISIGN*(M-1))/FLOAT(MMAX)
WR=COS(THETA)
WI=SIN(THETA)
DO 8 I=M,N,ISTEP
J=I+MMAX
TEMPR=WR*DATA(J)-WI*DATA(J+1)
TEMPI=WR*DATA(J+1)+WI*DATA(J)
DATA(J)=DATA(I)-TEMPR
DATA(J+1)=DATA(I+1)-TEMPI
DATA(I)=DATA(I)+TEMPR
8 DATA(I+1)=DATA(I+1)+TEMPI
MMAX=ISTEP
GO TO 6
9 RETURN
END
____________________________________________________________
And no, you cannot get the IEEE document because IEEE
broke it up into pages and sells each page individu-
ally.
____________________________________________________________
"PROGRAMS FOUR2 AND FOURT ARE AVAILABLE THAT RUN
C TWICE AS FAST AND OPERATE ON MULTIDIMENSIONAL ARRAYS WHOSE
C DIMENSIONS ARE NOT RESTRICTED TO POWERS OR TWO."
____________________________________________________________
But, this code was easy to port because it was small,
so, to this day, we use it. It was ported from For-
tran to BASIC, then to C, then to C++ and everything
else.
Nobody ever actually understood it, so they didn't fix
anything. You see, Fortran has no bitwise operateors,
so alot of the acrobatics in that code are just doing
bitwise operations in regular math. Its absolutely
amazing when you tear it apart.
I got the code from a bad scan of a document off a
military ftp site. What I love, and find halarious,
is that this code has been ported and hacked a million
times since it was written.
But, from the comments, it, itself, is a hack. It is
a mash up of cooley and tukeys code. It is a hack,
from 1967.
Maemo Leste keeps kicking in! tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
The ultimate hacker's toy project: a OpenSource pow-
ered hand-held computer.
Where to start from? There can be two walls prevent-
ing every Linux enthusiast from having its own phone
with a "Linux Powered" sticker on it:
1. hardware support: getting Linux to boot on the
twisted hardware setups of smartphones can be frus-
trating.
2. application support: writing all the tools that
make a plain unix shell useable as a phone, that we
usually take for granted on a phone operating sys-
tem. It may be as simple as a daemon watching in-
coming phone call from hardware abstractions (those
from in 1.) and playing a ringtone.wav whenever a
call comes in, it still has to be written. Same
goes for a keyboard application if it uses a touch-
screen. Same goes for anything.
Since it goes beyond the scope of a week-end hack,
collaboration takes place for making these projects
happen.
Maemo Leste is now existing since more than four
years, and keeps being developed at good pace. It
even shines where Android does not: it uses mainline
Linux kernel instead of forks that never get upgraded
nor contributed back to Linux. This means that all
software officially supported by Maemo Leste might
also be available to many more Linux-based projects.
Of course, there are non-official porting efforts for
more hardware underway to become a completely sup-
ported target. Like it is for every operating system
project.
Maemo Leste, the project bringing a real UNIX shell
where you only had a Android Java ecosystem, featuring
GPS chips reverse engineering, and a working phone
module.
The support for the inexpensive PinePhone means you
can get a fully working linux phone in your pocket.
Grab it while it is hot, the lack of bloated prebuilt
application forced into it by the vendor means it will
not catch fire! [1]
1
https://maemo-leste.github.io/maemo-leste-sixteenth-update-november-and-
december-2021-january-april-2022.html
I Do Not Know, Do Not Ask Me josuah
____________________________________________________________
The post-Snowden era is marked by a new fact that can-
not be ignored anymore: NSA (among others) is watching
you (among others).
Does that change anything to my everyday life? Proba-
bly not, they already were before you knew about it.
Should I do anything about it? No answer. The eter-
nal doubt that modern society is famous for:
>> I do not know, do not ask me. That question is
weird anyway. Let me go back to my life.
That same doubt that occurs when you look up on a su-
permarket and see the mess of wires, tubes, cables and
neon lighting, barely even hidden, at best painted in
white... The worst scene of industrial warehouse, as
if taken straight out of the Brazil [1] movie.
A landscape that is in such opposition with the images
printed onto every food product being sold, picturing
what more or less fits the collective imagery of
"house of my grandparents in back-country", promising
a natural environment and suggest quality, authentic-
ity, tradition to the buyer... Pictures of a caring
lady baking something appetizing, a honest farmer of-
fering a handful of home-grown vegetables or meat...
Where did they even find all these landscapes of back-
country without phone line everywhere, tracktors, al-
sphalt, cattle warehouses, wind turbines to put on
these product background images?
>> I do not know, do not ask me. That question is
weird anyway. Let me go back to my life.
How did such a landscape, neon distopia pictures that
seems straight out of a /r/cyberpunk [2] post or the
latest Blade Runner, got invited into the cozzy bubble
of the average citizen doing shopping? [3] Who made
these places so ugly? Why do I feel like human is be-
ing considered like cattle in these kind of places?
>> I do not know, do not ask me. That question is
weird anyway. Let me go back to my life.
What weird things am I even saying! It is not like an
NSA agent is sitting on every metal beams of these su-
permarket looking at passersby with an empty gaze.
There are cameras though. What do they film?
Thieves? Who is checking? Software? Peoples? Are
marketting managers looking at these pictures? Of me
too? Right now? What do they think of me? Did they
look at my hand hesitating between these two products?
>> I do not know, do not ask me. That question is
weird anyway. Let me go back to my life.
Going out, one might encounter someone sitting on its
empty backpack, with a small cup filled with coins,
looking a bit panicked, looking a bit dirty, looking a
bit lost, sometimes even a bit drunk, or is it dizzi-
ness from living outside? Occasionally they will ask
you for another coin to add to their small collection.
Passerbys offer them a lie such as "I do not have
cash", or a kind word like "no, sorry", keep walking
faster without looking, and eventually stops paying
the tax and quickly keep going before they got asked
for more. What did happen to them? Did they choose
to live here? How can I know it will never happen to
me? Why do I feel bad if I do not give them what they
ask? Why do I feel bad if I give them what they ask?
>> I do not know, do not ask me. That question is
weird anyway. Let me go back to my life.
Let's not get fooled or reverse the roles here: Writ-
ing this, I am not asking these questions to you, nei-
ther you are asking these questions to yourself. The
places we live in are suggesting these questions.
By building a supermarket out of a warehouse but dis-
playing eye-catchy pictures of a scenery that does not
even exist, it is obvious that people will notice the
disbalance between the two.
By placing cameras filming every square meter of such
a place, or even a whole city, it is obvious that peo-
ple will wonder at some point, who is behind the
screen reviewing these images.
The questions are left open. Nothing is made to even
give hint about the answer. We are left in the doubt,
letting some comfort themself with "it is just in case
of a burglary, only a police officer is going to
watch" or other claim "they are using these images to
study how we think to better control us!"; claims
based upon convictions, not facts.
The technician installing these cameras up there has
no hint either, its manager just followed the recom-
mandations of the mothership company, itself getting
directions from the investor group who purchased the
brand, who themself are only trying to keep-up with
the trends in that domain.
Why would I care? I stopped to care about these silly
questions since long. I came back to the real world
for the better. I live my life ignoring what happens
around me and it works plenty well.
>> So why is that, at deep down, in the middle of my
gut, there is a voice whispering to me that
something's wrong. [4]
The thing with living like an ant in the anthill is:
you do not get too many answers about how the whole
anthill works.
1
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
2
https://teddit.net/r/cyberpunk
3
https://theuws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/supermarkt.jpg
4
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QcSlAihVM0Q
Mallumo Encrypted IRC darkfi
____________________________________________________________
IRC is part of the protocols that survived to the ad-
vent of the Web.
It still has users, it still has new network and com-
munities initiatives springing out, it is alive.
One single little touch it lacks is end-to-end encryp-
tion. Without it, it is perfect for public communi-
ties such as software projects discussions and support
chat, live event chats... but private 1-to-1 communi-
cation could suddenly become a good candidate for
end-to-end encryption.
Part of the DarkFi project, this is what Mallumo [1]
brings in a simple piece of code using libNaCl, the
crypto library from Dan Bernstein, author of ED25519
(in its repackaged libsodium form). This is state-
of-the-art, well-proven and fast cryptography for
end-to-end communication.
With this plug-in dropped in the plugin folder, all
private communication start by a simple key exchange
over normal IRC, and the conversation upgrades to
nacl-encrypted messages over regular IRC.
There might not be any simpler way to encrypt peer-
to-peer communication online.
1
https://github.com/darkrenaissance/mallumo
Publishing in The Gopher Times you
____________________________________________________________
Want your article published? Want to announce some-
thing to the Gopher world?
Directly related to Gopher or not, reach us on IRC
with an article in any format, we will handle the
rest.
ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/
Did you notice the new layout? We now can jump be-
tween single and double column as it is more fit: Some
large code chunks will not fit in a two-column layout,
but text is more pleasant to read on two columns.
