shuffling things around a bit - jay.scot - my gopherhole source | |
git clone git://jay.scot/jay.scot.git | |
Log | |
Files | |
Refs | |
--- | |
commit ef69411968fdc716dc4613647ff3417bb7dee237 | |
parent 096f7736b18064b8722366624f2771e13d7dddde | |
Author: Jay Scott <[email protected]> | |
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 22:38:51 +0000 | |
shuffling things around a bit | |
Diffstat: | |
M .gitignore | 1 + | |
M bin/sync.sh | 2 +- | |
M index.gph | 40 ++++++++++++++++++-----------… | |
A meta/changelog.txt | 0 | |
A meta/email.txt | 5 +++++ | |
R about/jay.scot.asc -> meta/jay.sco… | 0 | |
A phlog/001.txt | 73 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/002.txt | 116 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | |
A phlog/003.txt | 79 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/004.txt | 118 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/005.txt | 91 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/006.txt | 236 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/007.txt | 93 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/008.txt | 84 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/009.txt | 33 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/010.txt | 38 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
A phlog/011.txt | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++… | |
D txt/001.txt | 74 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/002.txt | 117 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/003.txt | 80 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/004.txt | 119 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/005.txt | 92 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/006.txt | 237 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/007.txt | 94 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/008.txt | 85 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/009.txt | 34 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/010.txt | 39 -----------------------------… | |
D txt/011.txt | 41 -----------------------------… | |
28 files changed, 1032 insertions(+), 1030 deletions(-) | |
--- | |
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore | |
@@ -1 +1,2 @@ | |
drafts/ | |
+files/ | |
diff --git a/bin/sync.sh b/bin/sync.sh | |
@@ -1 +1 @@ | |
-rsync -vz --delete --exclude=git* --exclude=.git* --exclude=bin* -a . jay.scot… | |
+rsync -vz --delete --exclude=files/*.tar.gz --exclude=git* --exclude=.git* --e… | |
diff --git a/index.gph b/index.gph | |
@@ -8,28 +8,34 @@ | |
J A Y . S C O T | |
+PHLOG | |
-RANTS | |
- | |
-[0|2023-01-21 ... Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc|txt/011.txt|server|po… | |
-[0|2022-09-28 ... Convert mbox to maildir using fdm|txt/010.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2022-09-13 ... A true cheap dumbphone,impossible?|txt/009.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2022-08-01 ... I moved over to wayland|txt/008.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2022-05-01 ... Build, patch and maintain suckless tools|txt/007.txt|server|… | |
-[0|2022-03-01 ... Association of really cruel viruses (arcv)|txt/006.txt|serve… | |
-[0|2022-01-02 ... Why I dropped freebsd after a month|txt/005.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2021-12-01 ... How I use the modern web|txt/004.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2021-11-01 ... Qutebrowser is amazing but|txt/003.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2021-10-01 ... Is github the facebook of coding?|txt/002.txt|server|port] | |
-[0|2021-09-01 ... So much bloat around dotfiles|txt/001.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2023-01-14 ... Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc|phlog/011.txt|server|… | |
+[0|2022-09-28 ... Convert mbox to maildir using fdm|phlog/010.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2022-09-13 ... A true cheap dumbphone,impossible?|phlog/009.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2022-08-01 ... I moved over to wayland|phlog/008.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2022-05-01 ... Build, patch and maintain suckless tools|phlog/007.txt|serve… | |
+[0|2022-03-01 ... Association of really cruel viruses (arcv)|phlog/006.txt|ser… | |
+[0|2022-01-02 ... Why I dropped freebsd after a month|phlog/005.txt|server|por… | |
+[0|2021-12-01 ... How I use the modern web|phlog/004.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2021-11-01 ... Qutebrowser is amazing but|phlog/003.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2021-10-01 ... Is github the facebook of coding?|phlog/002.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|2021-09-01 ... So much bloat around dotfiles|phlog/001.txt|server|port] | |
PROJECTS | |
-[1|GIT ... all of my git repos|git/|server|port] | |
+[1|GIT ... all my git repos|git/|server|port] | |
+[1|HPUK ... organised collection of 1990s-2000 UK hack/phreak scene files|file… | |
+ | |
+ | |
+META | |
+ | |
+[0|EMAIL|meta/email.txt|server|port] | |
+[0|GPG|meta/jay.scot.asc|server|port] | |
-CONTACT | |
+OFFLINE | |
-[h|EML ... me (at) jay (dot) scot|mailto:[email protected]|server|port] | |
-[0|GPG ... 0726AF07C73389E1E4475B7EC88BBC696A39CCB0|about/jay.scot.asc|server|… | |
+PHLOG ... curl -O gopher://jay.scot/0/phlog/[001-011].txt | |
+FILES ... curl -O gopher://jay.scot/0/files/hpuk.tar.gz (651MB) | |
diff --git a/meta/changelog.txt b/meta/changelog.txt | |
diff --git a/meta/email.txt b/meta/email.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@ | |
+run the following in a shell: | |
+ | |
+ echo "[email protected]" | tr '[a-z]' '[n-za-m]' | |
+ | |
+please use my pgp key if you can. | |
diff --git a/about/jay.scot.asc b/meta/jay.scot.asc | |
diff --git a/phlog/001.txt b/phlog/001.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[001] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ So much bloat around dotfiles | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Let's be honest here everyone who uses some form of *BSD or Linux knows | |
+what 'dotfiles' are these days. It's super common to push your local | |
+machines various configuration files to GitHub/GitLab or whatever 3rd | |
+party hosted git provider happens to be flavour of the month. | |
+ | |
+The thing that really annoys me for some reason is the amount of people | |
+that use dedicated programs to manage dotfiles. I am not talking about | |
+tools such as GNU/Stow that have multiple purposes, or home-grown shell | |
+scripts, not my choice but there is nothing wrong them. I am talking | |
+about bloated crap such as Ruby gems or even worse some NodeJS | |
+application with 100s of dependencies included. Let's look at a few.. | |
+ | |
+ AutoDot - "A minimal dotfile manager". | |
+ - NodeJS | |
+ - 230+ dependencies | |
+ - 50+ different maintainers | |
+ - https://github.com/ajmalsiddiqui/autodot | |
+ | |
+ DotStow - "manage dotfiles with stow" (stow front-end???) | |
+ - NodeJS | |
+ - 270+ dependencies | |
+ - Spread over 200 maintainers | |
+ - https://github.com/codejamninja/dotstow | |
+ | |
+ Homesick - "Your home directory is your castle" | |
+ - Ruby | |
+ - Requires ruby, bundler, thor, rack (devel) | |
+ - git clones to ~/.homesick then symlinks... | |
+ - https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick | |
+ | |
+These types of apps make my balls scurry back up from where once they | |
+came. It's just so completely over-engineered and unnecessary, each to | |
+their own I guess. Personally I just use a tool that's already on | |
+everyone's machine GNU/Make nice and simple! Below is a basic make file | |
+you can use to get start, just update the files and configs values and | |
+then run `$ make` and you are good to go! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ files := bashrc xinitrc muttrc vimrc Xresources | |
+ cfgs := qutebrowser ncmpcpp mpd git mutt | |
+ dotfiles := $(shell pwd) | |
+ | |
+ all: link | |
+ | |
+ define symlink_file | |
+ ln -fs $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1); | |
+ endef | |
+ | |
+ define symlink_dir | |
+ ln -fns $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1); | |
+ endef | |
+ | |
+ link: @$(foreach f,$(files),$(call symlink_file,$(f),.)) | |
+ @$(foreach f,$(cfgs),$(call symlink_dir,$(f),.config/)) | |
+ @echo files linked | |
+ | |
+ .PHONY: all link | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Its pretty straight forward and you can't really go wrong with it, in my | |
+own personal Makefile I have a few added steps such as adding backing up | |
+installed packages list and cron entries. You can find it over on my git | |
+repo which might give you a better understanding how it works in the | |
+real world. | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/002.txt b/phlog/002.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[002] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ GitHub: The Facebook of coding | |
+ | |
+ | |
+In my opinion, there is no question that GitHub is the new Facebook for | |
+coders and geeks. What I mean by the new Facebook is two-fold, first the | |
+type of users you find on GitHub and secondly the businesses shenanigans | |
+over the years. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+THE USERS | |
+--------- | |
+ | |
+Essentially, GitHub is now a necessity when you are applying for jobs | |
+inside the tech industry, recruiters look for it, businesses are | |
+requiring it and insist you engage in coding challenges that must be | |
+done on the platform. This doesn't sound like a bad thing really, or | |
+does it? | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ YES, actually, it does! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+GitHub has now become a shit storm of individuals seeking to pimp out | |
+their profiles with bullshit Pull Requests, faking timelines, forking | |
+repos and raising entirely pointless issues. Everything with the goal | |
+of showcasing how much they have contributed to open-source projects. As | |
+a recent example look no further than Digital Oceans Hacktoberfest | |
+clusterfuck, useless PRs such as deleting spaces all in the hopes of | |
+getting a t-shirt. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Another real world dilemma impacting users is the knowledge gap of | |
+actually using git normally, GitHub is NOT git. GitHub is a proprietary | |
+closed-source front-end for a centralized git hosting service. Users | |
+have become completely dependent on features that GitHub have built such | |
+as PRs, forks, online editing, branch protection to name a couple. | |
+I doubt that many users are even aware of commands such as send-mail | |
+which is a core function of many projects outside the GitHub world. Nor | |
+does it help when the web interface of GitHub encourages sloppy git | |
+practices, relying exclusively on one way of doing things, the GitHub | |
+Flow. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+THE COMPANY | |
+----------- | |
+ | |
+Let's start off with the obvious fact that Microsoft owns GitHub. | |
+Microsoft has a long track record of open-source hatred, the CEO has | |
+even gone as far as stating "Linux is a cancer" at one point. This is | |
+not good, Microsoft were outed by the U.S. Department of Justice for | |
+using this internal term. In short, it ties in well with buying their | |
+way into open source projects right? Sounds like GitHub is at the | |
+Embrace stage... | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" [5] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Electron, the Chromium engine / NodeJS pile of shit that requires a few | |
+Cray supercomputers to run a calculator app on was developed and pushed | |
+into the ecosystem by good friends, GitHub. Now we are blessed with | |
+awesome spyware programs such as WhatsApp, Discord and Skype that will | |
+now run on Linux YAY /s. I mean there is just so much mud around GitHub | |
+that I just don't have the urge to go wading through it, searching even | |
+more than I have already. Here's a short fire list with some sources to | |
+follow-up on, if you are interested. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+* Denied employee harassment by CEO | |
+* Blocked users from country's under US trade sanctions | |
+* Have dealings with ICE, they keep kids in cages | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Due to an incredibly weak DMCA take down notice by the RIAA, youtube-dl | |
+was recently banned by GitHub. After it hit main stream news GitHub | |
+crapped the bed and started on the news PR. It was not, however, until | |
+after the EFF moved in and sent a letter [10] to GitHub describing how | |
+the DMCA notification was absolute dog shit that GitHub did something. | |
+After this, GitHub went into complete PR mode after and they made it out | |
+that they were the saviours of the day and how they'd stronger and | |
+better in the future. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Anyway, enough of this rant. If you are looking for a 3rd party hosted | |
+git solution then please take a look at these two: | |
+ | |
+ | |
+* SourceHut, https://sr.ht | |
+* GitLab, https://gitlab.com | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Or do what I do an just use the naked git protocol without any front-ends, its | |
+stupidly simple. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+SOURCES | |
+------- | |
+ | |
+>> https://drewdevault.com/2020/10/01/Spamtoberfest.html | |
+>> https://git-send-email.io/ | |
+>> https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/index.html | |
+>> https://davelane.nz/microsoft-there-way-win-our-trust | |
+>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish | |
+>> https://tknk.io/01P8 Electron | |
+>> https://tknk.io/xnsf | |
+>> https://tknk.io/rddV | |
+>> https://tknk.io/8pfH | |
+>> https://tknk.io/RMLT | |
+>> https://tknk.io/XtFd | |
+ | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/003.txt b/phlog/003.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[003] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Qutebrowser is amazing but.. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+**UPDATE** as of version 2.0, these are not an issue now. Time to move | |
+back to Qutebrowser! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+For those preferring browsers with a minimal GUI and vim-like keyboard | |
+controls, Qutebrowser is a fantastic choice. The project can be compared | |
+to Firefox add-ons like Vim Vixen but with a smoother and more refined | |
+user interface, backed by an active creator. With that being said here | |
+comes the but. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+And it's a big BUT for me, I no longer use Qutebrowser due to lack of | |
+privacy options compared to the likes of Firefox with add-ons. Does | |
+Qutebrowser have any choices at all for privacy? It sure does, BUT for | |
+the requirements of today's modern web it's just not enough to cut it. | |
+This is a list of things that you can do: | |
+ | |
+ | |
+* disable javascript | |
+* disable geolocation | |
+* disable webgl | |
+* custom http headers | |
+* custom user agent | |
+* reject cookies | |
+* stop canvas reading | |
+* host based ad-blocker | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Although the problem is not a poor list of choices, each of these | |
+choices has very limited scope. For example, the ad blocker is | |
+a primitive host based list from a flat file. You're going to get video | |
+ads and page elements still showing. It just doesn't compare to add-ons | |
+like uBlock Origin, where all ads traces are just erased. Setting | |
+cookies to deny all the time often contributes to a poor user | |
+experience. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+As an example, I will be constantly be asked to fill in CATCHPA's for | |
+every site sitting behind CloudFlare. However, I can install a cookie | |
+cleaner on Firefox that manages cookies on a per site basis, deletes | |
+them as soon as you navigate off the site, close a tab etc. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I also discovered that Qutebrowser does not function as intended with | |
+the option to hide the referrer header. This is currently an upstream | |
+issue with the engine Qutebrowser uses, QtWebEngine. In the hopes that | |
+this gets resolved, I have opened a bug report directly with the | |
+project. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Using the EFF's browser fingerprinting tools might show you as rather | |
+unique compared to Firefox with the privacytools.io recommended addons. | |
+In order to randomise the User Agent and HTTP Accept headers, I also | |
+tried to write a Python script to do this in Qutebrowser. Although the | |
+finger printing was improved, it was just not as good as using Firefox. | |
+Once the Qutebrowser feature list has plugin support, I would definitely | |
+switch back to Qutebrowser once it has been implemented, but | |
+unfortunately Firefox and addons are the way for me. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+SOURCES | |
+------- | |
+ | |
+ | |
+>> https://qutebrowser.org | |
+>> https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen | |
+>> https://privacytools.io/browsers/#browser | |
+>> git://jay.scot/dotfiles.git | |
+>> https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30 | |
+ | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/004.txt b/phlog/004.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[004] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ How I use the modern web | |
+ | |
+ | |
+With how polluted the modern web has become over the years, I actively | |
+avoid it as much as possible. From mainstream media sites acting like | |
+the gossip magazines from years back. Remember OK magazine? To sites | |
+riddled with ads, tracking, social media buttons, and a plethora of | |
+utter crap. It feels like navigating down a busy main street where all | |
+the hawkers are hassling you too buy their wares. Now bolt-on how every | |
+UX designer has given up on the basics like page accessibility | |
+standards, loading times, and the important one, usability. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ It's an utter shambles right now. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+When using a browser, I find it far too easy to get caught in a "YouTube | |
+loop" or see something at the corner of your eye that you feel the urge | |
+to spend the next 30 minutes researching. Before you know it, 3 AM | |
+rolls around and your reading a Wikipedia article on some random | |
+bollocks. This is why I avoid using a browser as much as possible and | |
+this is how I achieve it for about 90% of my daily internet usage. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+NEWS | |
+---- | |
+ | |
+Do you need to be reminded every day that Covid has killed X amount of | |
+people, that some political party leader fucked a dead pig? Nope, you | |
+don't! What you should be doing is focusing on what news is important to | |
+YOU. For me, this comes in the form of the latest tech news and | |
+information from my local government. The obvious way to do this is via | |
+RSS feeds. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I am sure everyone has heard of newsboat or similar RSS readers but | |
+there is still the problem that most RSS feeds don't have any content | |
+attached to the feed. Normally it's just a summary of the article, at | |
+best, you still need to open up the browser and view the content. One | |
+RSS reader that seems to have slipped under the radar is one called | |
+sfeed by Suckless. With this tool I can have this setup. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ sfeed ---> fdm ---> rdrview ---> mutt | |
+ | |
+ | |
+sfeed, this RSS reader allows you to output feeds into various formats, | |
+one of them is the mbox. From there I use fdm which is a mail filtering | |
+and fetching program, think a better procmail. Using a custom script in | |
+fdm I can pass the feed URL to rdrview. rdrview fetches the URL and | |
+outputs the page to basic html, using lynx -dump to convert this to | |
+a pure plain text article. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Finally, once the page has been fetched and processed fdm pushes it to | |
+Maildir, filtered by the feedname ready for reading in Mutt. The result | |
+is a full copy of the article in a mailbox ready to read in plain text. | |
+All of the code for this is in my dotfiles if you need to take a look at | |
+the sfeed, fdm, mutt configuration's. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Within the same configuration for fdm I fetch my email which also has | |
+mailing lists subscriptions of things I should know about. Since | |
+switching over to FreeBSD fully a lot of discussions are carried out on | |
+various mailing lists. Have a look and see if the tools, news, forums | |
+you are apart of have mailing lists. It's another good method of | |
+"offline" content. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+MEDIA CONTENT | |
+------------- | |
+ | |
+This one is quite easy to avoid. We all have our favourite channels and | |
+check daily to see if anything has been uploaded by them. Only to find | |
+3 hours after checking your still on YouTube but watching a video of | |
+someone reacting to the latest James Bond trailer while shouting "Make | |
+sure you hit the thumbs up and subscribe!" *cue shitty gif of a bell* | |
+throughout the video. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+The method I was using for this until recently was using a python | |
+application called ytcc by woefe over on GitHub. In a nutshell it's | |
+a front-end to youtube-dl for managing your subscriptions on YouTube. | |
+Simply enter the channel's name and whenever they upload a new video, it | |
+will download this ready to view locally. Simple, YouTube crap avoided. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+As I mentioned though I no longer do this, I have my a shell script that | |
+does something similar that directly uses youtube-dl. The reason | |
+I changed to this is I can download more than just YouTube videos, I can | |
+add other things such as LBRY. I can also customise youtube-dl output | |
+and options in greater detail. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Finally on media content, podcast. Simply use a tool like castget or if | |
+you are a newsboat fan use the built-in podboat feature. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+BROWSING | |
+-------- | |
+ | |
+There is no avoiding using a browser completely. When I do have to use | |
+one I fire up Qutebrowser, now since my rant about QuteBrowser and | |
+privacy in 003.txt things have changed for the better. Qutebrowser now | |
+has ABS ad-blocking enabled as well as fixing issues with referrers not | |
+working. My qutebrowser blocks nearly everything along with a decent VPN | |
+your good to go and get off as soon as you can. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Checkout my dotfiles for a better understanding of how all this fits | |
+together. I will assume everyone reading this is fairly technical! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/005.txt b/phlog/005.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[005] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Why I dropped freebsd after a month | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I switched over to using FreeBSD as my main desktop around 1 month ago. | |
+Last night I had enough of some core issues I was having and ended up | |
+switching back to Linux. My 2-year-old graphics card, an AMD RX 5700XT, | |
+does not work with the current stable release 12.2, so I had no choice | |
+but to use -CURRENT, ALPHA-2 then BETA-1. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+My setup is minimal; I don't use any GUI applications apart from the | |
+rare occasion I need to use a browser; I do use mpv often. Even with | |
+this setup, there was a performance issue that caused Xorg to micro | |
+stutter, causing a system pause for around 1 second. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+When using just a console things seemed to work fine, so my first | |
+thought was the problem must lie with Xorg. Over a few days I tried | |
+tweaking various Xorg options such as Tearfree, SWCursor, etc. This made | |
+zero improvement, my next port of call was the AMDGPU driver, drm-kmod. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+AMDGPU, A trip to the GitHub project page for this project did indeed | |
+show 4 out of 17 issues open are for the exact model of graphics card | |
+I have. Though none of the issues seemed related to the problem I was | |
+having. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+During my research, though, I also found posts on /r/freebsd and the | |
+official FreeBSD forums with similar issues, Sadly, none of them had any | |
+actual solutions. I decided to build the kernel module from the latest | |
+git master, this seemed to improve the stuttering, progress! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Around this time I also found out that -CURRENT, -ALPHA and -BETA builds | |
+have a lot of debugging enabled in the kernel by default, which can | |
+cause degraded system performance. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I found GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel config; I stripped out a lot of modules | |
+I wouldn't need to help the build times. This was so simple to do, and | |
+before I knew it I had a custom kernel built with all debugging removed. | |
+Booting into the new kernel I noticed an improvement right away. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Playing a video still caused a little stuttering, as long as I did | |
+little else. I was happy with this for the time being, thinking that | |
+maybe when BETA-1 or RC came around things would be better. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Woo-hoo, BETA-1 snapshot was released, time to give it a whirl. BAM, | |
+right back to square one. So I went through the same steps again with | |
+building the AMDGPU module from git and building a custom kernel with no | |
+debugging enabled. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+The same day as BETA-1 released, I got a reply on one post I made about | |
+the issue. Just run this, the poster says, All processes are tied to the | |
+first CCX0. This will reduce the usable cores to 4, however. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ sh -c 'ps -aux | cut -w -f2 | xargs -I foo \ | |
+ cpuset -l 0,2,4,6 -p foo > /dev/null 2>&1' | |
+ | |
+ | |
+No way this can be the solution, can it? Well yes it was, suddenly I had | |
+nearly ZERO issues. All the lag had disappeared! The only cost? I had | |
+to gimp the potential of my system. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+At this point I had enough, I spent so long on such a trivial matter | |
+I decided just to go back to Linux until 13.0 is released, then I will | |
+revisit it. I liked FreeBSD. There is so much to it that I loved and | |
+would go back in a heartbeat if I could get my hardware working without | |
+having to jump over so many hurdles. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+* I love ports | |
+* I had set up Bhyve running Poudriere building my own packages. | |
+* Setting up the GPU driver was really simple (if it worked on my card) | |
+* Audio setup was such a breeze. | |
+* I had no issue installing ports/packages I needed, pkg is a wonderful tool. | |
+* Jails are so handy, I didn't think I would need them but man they are | |
+great! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/006.txt b/phlog/006.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,236 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[006] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Association of really cruel viruses (arcv) | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I have saved and collected a **huge** amount of data from the 80s, 90s | |
+and early 00s from the UK Hacking and Phreaking scene. Many of it has | |
+been lost over the years, so I will be dumping it here over the next | |
+while in the hopes someone finds it interesting! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+First up though we have ARCV, a virus writing group from the early | |
+1990s! | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ARCV | |
+---- | |
+ | |
+Around late 1992 a group emerged calling themselves the Association of | |
+Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). The group was initially small, and by all | |
+accounts relatively unskilled, and was made up of two people, Apache | |
+Warrior who was the leader of the group, and ICE-9. They soon recruited | |
+two more, Toxic Crusader and Slartibartfast, and became one of the first | |
+virus writing groups in the UK. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Over the next year, they would write around 100 viruses, the first few | |
+were created using a virus generator called Virus Creation Laboratory | |
+(VCL) but they would soon end up writing their own virii, apparently, | |
+they were also very well written! Apache Warrior would also end up | |
+creating the group's engine, Cybertech Mutation Engine (CME). | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ARCV didn't last too long before Scotland Yard caught up with them in an | |
+unsuspecting way. A year after they entered the scene around | |
+December/January 1993 Apache Warrior and ICE-9 were arrested in the | |
+Salford area in the UK. The group had been distributing their viruses | |
+and newsletters to a BBS in Cornwall as well as others via beige boxing. | |
+In their great wisdom, they decided that the best target of the beige | |
+boxing would be their neighbours' line. Scotland Yard did not even | |
+realise these two phone phreakers they just caught were also the | |
+founding members on ARCV until the confiscation of their computer | |
+equipment. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Apache Warrior cooperated with the police, and further examination of | |
+the confiscated equipment confirmed that not only had the police caught | |
+some phone phreakers, but they also caught the leader of ARCV. On | |
+Wednesday, January 27 1993, four other ARCV members in Manchester, | |
+Cumbria, Staffordshire and Cornwall were raided by Scotland Yard and | |
+their computer equipment confiscated. This was ICE-9, Toxic Crusader, | |
+Slartibartfast and the arrest in Cornwall was the SYSOP of the BBS where | |
+ARCV transferred files too so not officially a member of ARCV. In total | |
+there were six arrests and all were released on police bail pending | |
+further investigations. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit failed to identify anyone | |
+affected by any ARCV created viruses. Due to this Apache Warrior, ICE-9 | |
+and the two other members were let off with cautions. One was cautioned | |
+relating to another matter, the BBS SYSOP, and the last one was released | |
+with no further actions. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+You can download all the files I have on ARCV from the following gopher | |
+site. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, txt format | |
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe format | |
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe screenshot | |
+* ARCV virus collection, 93 in total, be careful you windows users! | |
+* November 1992 article | |
+* April 1993 article | |
+* July 1993 article | |
+ | |
+ | |
+>> gopher://jay.scot/files/groups/arcv/ | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Got any of these files? Let me know! | |
+ | |
+* ARCV Newsletter Issue 2, may not exist. | |
+* ARCV Virus Library Disk 1 and 2, may not of been released. | |
+* EICAR'94 conference talk/slides (ICE-9) | |
+* CME 1.0 and CME 2.0 | |
+* Access All Areas II (96) and III (97) talks/slides (Apache Warrior & ICE-9) | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- Feb, 1993 : Spreading Viruses | |
+--- Personal Computer World Magazine | |
+ | |
+We are a bunch of programmers who, depressed with the lack of viruses that | |
+have originated in England, have sought to change matters. We presently | |
+write viruses for the PC, Archimedes and Atari ST. We have increased the few | |
+viruses written in England by about 25, though this number is increasing all | |
+the time as our programmers churn out more quality computer viruses. | |
+Although there are many viruses about we hope to dominate the UK 'market'. | |
+Won't it be nice, though, for England to have at least one export? Finally, | |
+we as an organisation like to stress that, contrary to public opinion, we are | |
+*not* boring people who wear anoraks, nor are we depraved people who were | |
+beaten as children and so grew up with a hatred of humanity. We are highly | |
+intelligent and good at programming and are just ordinary people. But we are | |
+gonna get you soon! | |
+ | |
+ - ARCV (Association of Really Cruel Viruses) | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- 4 Feb, 1993 : Apache scalps virus cowboys | |
+ | |
+Police raided the homes of suspected computer virus authors across the | |
+country last week, arresting five people and seizing equipment. "The raids | |
+were carried out last Wednesday by police in Manchester, Cumbria, | |
+Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall." Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit | |
+co-ordinated the raids under the codename Operation Apache. A spokeswoman for | |
+the Greater Manchester Police said: 'The investigation began in the | |
+Manchester area following the arrest of the self-styled president of the | |
+virus writing group in Salford last December.' Police would not reveal the | |
+man's name, but said he had been released on bail. "Last week's raids led to | |
+the arrest of a further two people in Manchester. Three other suspects were | |
+also arrested in Staffordshire, Cumbria and Cornwall." PCs and floppy disks | |
+were seized in all the raids. "All those arrested have been released on | |
+police bail pending further investigations." | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- 4 Feb, 1993 : UK Virus Writers Group Foiled by Scotland Yard | |
+ | |
+British police have arrested four members of a virus-writing group that calls | |
+itself the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). | |
+ | |
+The Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit coordinated the raids carried out on | |
+suspects in Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Devon, and Cornwall. The | |
+arrests last Wednesday, January 27, bring to six the number of ARCV members | |
+found by police, after they initially arrested one caught "phreaking" in | |
+Manchester in December. ("Phone phreaking" is the illegal practice of | |
+obtaining free use of telephone lines.) The arrests were made under Section 3 | |
+of the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits unauthorized modification of | |
+computer material, said Detective Sergeant Stephen Littler. The suspects, who | |
+cannot be identified at this stage under British law, have been released on | |
+bail pending inquiries and may face further charges. | |
+ | |
+The members of ARCV used PCs to write viruses, which they shared via a | |
+bulletin board operated by one suspect in Cornwall. The police confiscated | |
+hardware and software, which is being studied by virus experts to determine | |
+how many viruses were written and what the viruses were intended to do, | |
+Littler said. The British anti-virus community became aware of ARCV through | |
+the group's own publicity efforts, such as a newsletter that it had uploaded | |
+to various bulletin boards in the U.S., according to Richard Ford, editor of | |
+the monthly "Virus Bulletin", which is published in Abingdon, Oxon, England. | |
+The newsletter was described in detail in the November, 1992, issue of "Virus | |
+Bulletin". | |
+ | |
+To the best of my knowledge, none of their viruses are in the wild, out | |
+there spreading" said Ford. But they have been found on virus exchange | |
+bulletin board services, and we've had reports of them being uploaded rather | |
+widely in the UK. ARCV claims, in its newsletter, to have links with | |
+PHALCON/SKISM in the U.S. and other virus writers in Eastern Europe. "The | |
+world is a very small place when you've got a modem, or are on the Internet", | |
+Ford said. The newsletter invites new members to join even if they are not | |
+virus writers but prefer other "underground" activities such as hacking and | |
+phreaking. It also betrays ARCV's fears of being perceived as nerds (a term | |
+not used in Britain) saying, "Now the picture put out by the Anti- Virus | |
+Authors is that Virus writers are Sad individuals who wear Anoraks and go | |
+Train Spotting but well they are sadly mistaken, we are very intelligent, | |
+sound minded, highly trained, and we wouldn't be seen in an Anorak or near an | |
+Anorak even if dead." | |
+ | |
+ARCV has already failed at one of the objectives mentioned in its premier | |
+newsletter issue, which said, "We will be dodging Special Branch and New | |
+Scotland Yard as we go." | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- From: [email protected] (Mike C Holderness) | |
+--- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk | |
+--- Subject: This just in from London... | |
+--- Date: 3 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0000 | |
+--- Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK. | |
+ | |
+Police have arrested Britain's first computer virus-writing group in an | |
+operation they hope will dampen the aspirations of any potential high-tech | |
+criminals. Four members of the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV) | |
+were raided last Wednesday in a joint operation in four cities co-ordinated | |
+by Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit. The arrests in Greater Manchester, | |
+Cumbria, Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall, bring to six the members of | |
+the group that have been tracked down by police. Two others, also writing for | |
+ARCV, were arrested a month ago in Manchester. This six are thought to have | |
+written between 30 and 50 relatively harmless viruses.... | |
+ | |
+[continues. By Susan Watts. (C) 1993 Newspaper Publishing plc.] | |
+ | |
+Comments, especially from survivors and even more from people in the UK who | |
+are into a little light looking around but nothing Really Cruel, very | |
+welcome. Yes, I am a journalist. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- 16 May, 1994 : Urnst Couch / Crypt Newsletter | |
+ | |
+About the same time, a hacker was arrested for stealing phone service from | |
+his neighbor's line and his equipment confiscated, too. The hacker turned out | |
+to be Apache Warrior, a member of the small United Kingdom virus-writing | |
+group called ARCV (for Association of Really Cruel Viruses). | |
+ | |
+Some background information not included in the book: Alan Solomon was | |
+apparently able to convince New Scotland Yard's computer crime unit that they | |
+should also try to prosecute Apache Warrior as a virus-writer and that the | |
+rest of the group should be rounded up, too. In conversation, Solomon has | |
+said Apache Warrior turned over the names of other group members. | |
+Subsequently, New Scotland Yard and local constabularies conducted raids at | |
+multiple sites in England, arresting another man. Paradoxically, prior to the | |
+arrests, Solomon joked that ARCV was better at cyber-publicity than virus | |
+programming and its creations were little more than petty menaces. The book | |
+offers no reported incidences of ARCV viruses on the computers of others, | |
+although Virus News International, by extension S&S International, solicited | |
+readers for such evidence in 1993. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 93 09:17:21 | |
+--- From: [email protected] (McAfee Associates) | |
+--- Subject: Forwarded message from Scotland Yard | |
+ | |
+Hello All, | |
+ | |
+I was recently contacted by DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit at | |
+New Scotland Yard in London. As some of you may be aware, Noel is one of the | |
+folks responsible for arresting the members of ARCV, a UK-based group of | |
+virus-writers. He would like to speak with anyone who suffered an infection | |
+from any of their viruses. If you have been infected by one of their | |
+viruses, or know of someone who has, then please give him a call at +44 (71) | |
+230-1177 during office hours (GMT), or send him a fax at +44 (71) 230-1275. | |
+ | |
+Please bear in mind that I'm only forwarding this message for DC Bonczoszek. | |
+If you have any questions, please contact him directly. | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/007.txt b/phlog/007.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[007] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Build, patch and maintain suckless tools | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I am a long time supporter of the Unix philosophy and have been using | |
+tools such as dwm as my daily driver since 2011, as such I mainly use | |
+the terminal for everything. Lots of these tools are best built via the | |
+latest source code release or development copy instead of a package | |
+build, so you can apply your custom configuration. The most common | |
+methods I have come across on managing to do this is a mixture of using | |
+separate git branches for each patch or even just manually applying the | |
+patches and then fixing anything that didn't succeed. | |
+ | |
+I am a big fan of Makefiles, I even use Makefiles to manage my dotfiles | |
+instead of a tool like GNU Stow. So it will be no surprise I use these | |
+to build, patch and install all my suckless based tools such as dwm, st, | |
+dmenu and herbe. My Makefile makes patching easy and means I don't need | |
+to worry about maintaining multiple branches, it's super easy to get the | |
+latest versions etc. It also helps that I don't have any extra patches | |
+apart from dmenu and st, any additions I have for dwm and herbe are | |
+added to config.h as functions. | |
+ | |
+Below is the generic Makefile I use, this one is for dmenu as it's | |
+a good example to use since I use a few minimal external patches. The | |
+options at the top of the Makefile should be pretty obvious, the | |
+defaults should be fine for most people. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ REPOSITORY = http://git.suckless.org/dmenu | |
+ SRC_DIR = dmenu-src | |
+ PINNED_REVISION = HEAD | |
+ PATCH_DIR = patches | |
+ | |
+ all: $(SRC_DIR) | |
+ | |
+ clean: reset | |
+ @if test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \ | |
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s clean; \ | |
+ git -C "${SRC_DIR}" clean -f; \ | |
+ fi | |
+ | |
+ $(SRC_DIR): clone reset patch | |
+ @cp config.h $@ | |
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s | |
+ | |
+ patch: $(PATCH_DIR)/* | |
+ @for file in $^ ; do \ | |
+ patch -d "${SRC_DIR}" < $${file}; \ | |
+ done | |
+ reset: | |
+ @if [ -n "$(strip $(PINNED_REVISION))" ]; then \ | |
+ git -C "${SRC_DIR}" reset --hard $(PINNED_REVISION); \ | |
+ fi | |
+ | |
+ clone: | |
+ @if ! test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \ | |
+ git clone $(REPOSITORY) $(SRC_DIR); \ | |
+ fi | |
+ | |
+ update: clean | |
+ @git -C "${SRC_DIR}" pull | |
+ | |
+ install: | |
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s install | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ .PHONY: all clean update install reset clone patch | |
+ | |
+ | |
+And this is the file structure I have: | |
+ | |
+ |- dwm | |
+ |-- dwm-src # git clone of dwm, handled by Makefile | |
+ |-- config.h # my custom config for dmenu | |
+ |-- Makefile # the Makefile from above | |
+ |-- patches # directory containing patches | |
+ |---- 01-dmenu-centre.patch | |
+ |---- 02-dmenu-border.patch | |
+ | |
+If you have no patches to apply, then remove the 'patch' from line 14 | |
+then run 'make', this will git clone or reset if already cloned, apply | |
+patches, copy your custom config.h and the build, A 'make install' after | |
+that will install as normal. | |
+ | |
+To see a working copy of these you can clone my dotfiles and have | |
+a look in the dwm, dmenu, st or herbe folders. | |
+ | |
+ git clone git://jay.scot/dotfiles | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/008.txt b/phlog/008.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[008] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ I moved over to wayland | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I have been putting it off for ages, it's been on my to-do list for | |
+months. Anytime I saw it pop-up I would just ignore it either due to | |
+laziness, not interested or just general procrastinating. However, not | |
+this weekend! Wayland will be the de facto and soon enough replace Xorg | |
+am sure. | |
+ | |
+My setup is heavily terminal based with the usual tooling you see these | |
+days. Suckless based tools such as dwm, dmenu and st as the main WM | |
+tooling. Mutt for email, all kinds of feeds via Newsboat, MPV for | |
+videos, browsing with Qutebrower and Amfora for Gemini. I was hoping | |
+with such minimal GUI usage the switch over would be easy enough. | |
+A quick look around and it looks like I would need to completely switch | |
+dwm, dmenu and st over to a wayland equivalent. | |
+ | |
+I do have a few edge case applications I use but upon checking, they all | |
+work under wayland. These were Qutebrowser (Browsing), Performance | |
+Portfolio (Accounting) and Calibre (Ebooks), result! | |
+ | |
+First, the window manager! As it turns out there is a wayland port of | |
+dwm called dwl, there seems to be a few trivial changes, but they are | |
+basically like for like. On a sidenote, I had been tweaking dwm recently | |
+and it really became a bit of a pain in the arse building, restart dwm | |
+all the time. With this still at the back of my mind, anticipating that | |
+I will be doing it again with dwl, I thought why not try out something | |
+new. Enter Sway. | |
+ | |
+Sway is the wayland port of i3 with some common patches people used | |
+rolled in. A look at the config file setup for Sway made it look very | |
+straight forward to replicate my dwm keybinds and layout. Another | |
+benefit being I could install the packages via the AUR instead of | |
+building it myself, this felt like a plus after many many years of | |
+compiling from source. | |
+ | |
+I kinda hate st, truth be told. You need to add in a few patches to the | |
+build as out of the box it's very limiting. So on that I was happy to | |
+find a replacement for st. Two options were on the table for me, | |
+Alacritty and Foot. I ended up going with Foot, it seemed to be a lot | |
+faster and lightweight compared to Alacritty, according to their own | |
+benchmark results. I also wasn't sold on the idea of it being GPU | |
+accelerated. Alacritty also clams to be faster than all the rest, but | |
+they didn't seem to provide the actual benchmarks, just the tool they | |
+used. Whereas Foot had a whole ton of information, benchmarks and | |
+screenshots explaining why its fast as fuck. | |
+ | |
+Again the application was in the AUR and with a live reload config file | |
+it was trivial to set up. Interestingly, the out of the box config would | |
+have been fine, only thing I really changed were the colours and font. | |
+ | |
+dmenu, this one I spent most of my time researching and testing out | |
+various alternatives. At first, I was just going to use rofi but soon | |
+found out that it doesn't have native wayland support and uses Xwayland | |
+instead. There is a port called wofi too, I tried both of them out. | |
+I don't know, I just didn't like them, they seemed to flashy, the config | |
+for them seemed tedious. I then tried out bemenu which is based on | |
+dmenu, this was the one. Yet again I just needed to install the AUR | |
+package, the config can be set via an environment variable called | |
+BEMENU_OPTS. After playing about with it I just added this to my bashrc | |
+profile and I was done. So simple, love it. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+> export BEMENU_OPTS="-p '> ' --tb '#000000' --tf '#ffffff' --hf '#444444'" | |
+ | |
+ | |
+So far I have had no crashes or any issues at all. One thing that I have | |
+noticed is MPV playback seems way smoother and scrolling in Qutebrowser | |
+is tear-free. So far so good, and I really don't feel like I am missing | |
+anything switching over. | |
+ | |
+Another side, my installed packages has reduced massively, all | |
+X packages have been removed as they are no longer needed. My dotfiles | |
+directory looks a lot leaner without all the dwm, herbe, st and dmenu | |
+builds. Trivial I know. | |
+ | |
+I guess now I just continue as is for a few more months and see what | |
+I think then! | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/009.txt b/phlog/009.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[009] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ A true cheap dumbphone, impossible? | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I have been on the lookout of a truly cheap dumb phone but trying to | |
+find that sweet spot just isn't happening. I just want to call and get | |
+SMS - that's it. | |
+ | |
+The Lightphone 2 [0] looks ideal at first glance, nice and simple. | |
+However, digging into it a bit more I see the following possible issues | |
+for my use case: | |
+ | |
+ It's expensive, around £350 ($402) when you include import tax. | |
+ Linked to some sort of central login platform. | |
+ From installing apps to first-time boot a "Light Account" is needed. | |
+ | |
+Another one that's looks good is the Mudita Pure Phone [2], they even | |
+have an open source OS running it called MuditaOS. The massive downside, | |
+it's nearly £340 ($385). Crazy prices if you ask me! | |
+ | |
+What I am using currently is an old Nokia 2.3 with Unlauncher [3] | |
+running, cost was around £60 ($75) 2 years ago. I really wish there was | |
+a cheap and truly dumbphone out there.. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+0. https://thelightphone.com | |
+1. https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure | |
+2. https://jkuester.github.io/unlauncher | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/010.txt b/phlog/010.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[010] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Convert mbox to maildir using fdm | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I recently downloaded a bunch of old mailing list archives from Alpine | |
+Linux[0] that I want to merge with my current archives. The problem being | |
+my current archives were in Maildir format while the Alpine Linux | |
+archives were in MBOX. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Since I already use fdm[1] for fetching my mail as well as converting RSS | |
+feeds I just went with that, this is how: | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ $ cat archive | |
+ | |
+ $listdir= "%h/.mail/alpine.users" # where to save the maildir | |
+ $mbox= "%h/tmp/alpine-users.mbox" # the local mbox location | |
+ | |
+ # the local mbox file | |
+ account "convert" mbox "$mbox" | |
+ action "convert" maildir "${listdir}" | |
+ match all action "convert" | |
+ | |
+ | |
+then just run FDM with the above configuration file: | |
+ | |
+ | |
+ $ fdm -f archive fetch | |
+ | |
+ | |
+0. https://lists.alpinelinux.org/~alpine/users | |
+1. https://github.com/nicm/fdm | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/phlog/011.txt b/phlog/011.txt | |
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ | |
+[jay.scot] | |
+[011] | |
+ | |
+ | |
+--[ Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I recently turned off my main pc, a homegrown setup I had been upgrading | |
+over the years. It had quite a decent spec, AMD RX XT5700, Intel i7, | |
+32Gb RAM, 3xSSDs and a NVM drives. I have mentioned in previous TXT | |
+files I mainly use the command line apart from qutebrowser occasionally | |
+so it was complete overkill. Not to mention the energy prices in north | |
+Scotland being absurd, it was time to "downgrade". | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I had a few options in mind, a good old Raspberry Pi, a 2nd hand | |
+Thinkcentre or an off the shelf mini-pc. As you obviously gathered, | |
+I went with the mini-pc, a beelink U59 [0]. The RPI are actually quite | |
+costly now, hard to get. I also wanted an x86 architecture for using | |
+Alpine Linux - my desktop distro of choice these days. Apparently the | |
+Thinkcentre can be quite loud too, so I ended up buying the U59 with the | |
+500Gb SSD, 16Gb Ram options for around £200 on Amazon. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+I installed Alpine Linux with no issues at all. I have a bootstrap | |
+script for Alpine [1], so using this I was up and running with the foot | |
+terminal open on sway 15 minutes later. The U59 is completely quiet, and | |
+the max I have seen the temp get so far was 59C while playing Loom via | |
+ScummVM. I had to compile ScummVM from source which took around 20 | |
+mintues, not bad at all. The power draw was sitting around 15 watts | |
+during this time. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+Really happy with it so far, will be interesting to see how long this | |
+machine lasts for. | |
+ | |
+ | |
+0. https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=334 | |
+1. gopher://jay.scot/1/git/alpine-bootstrap/ | |
+ | |
+.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/001.txt b/txt/001.txt | |
@@ -1,74 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[001] | |
- | |
- | |
-So much bloat around dotfiles | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-Let's be honest here everyone who uses some form of *BSD or Linux knows | |
-what 'dotfiles' are these days. It's super common to push your local | |
-machines various configuration files to GitHub/GitLab or whatever 3rd | |
-party hosted git provider happens to be flavour of the month. | |
- | |
-The thing that really annoys me for some reason is the amount of people | |
-that use dedicated programs to manage dotfiles. I am not talking about | |
-tools such as GNU/Stow that have multiple purposes, or home-grown shell | |
-scripts, not my choice but there is nothing wrong them. I am talking | |
-about bloated crap such as Ruby gems or even worse some NodeJS | |
-application with 100s of dependencies included. Let's look at a few.. | |
- | |
- AutoDot - "A minimal dotfile manager". | |
- - NodeJS | |
- - 230+ dependencies | |
- - 50+ different maintainers | |
- - https://github.com/ajmalsiddiqui/autodot | |
- | |
- DotStow - "manage dotfiles with stow" (stow front-end???) | |
- - NodeJS | |
- - 270+ dependencies | |
- - Spread over 200 maintainers | |
- - https://github.com/codejamninja/dotstow | |
- | |
- Homesick - "Your home directory is your castle" | |
- - Ruby | |
- - Requires ruby, bundler, thor, rack (devel) | |
- - git clones to ~/.homesick then symlinks... | |
- - https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick | |
- | |
-These types of apps make my balls scurry back up from where once they | |
-came. It's just so completely over-engineered and unnecessary, each to | |
-their own I guess. Personally I just use a tool that's already on | |
-everyone's machine GNU/Make nice and simple! Below is a basic make file | |
-you can use to get start, just update the files and configs values and | |
-then run `$ make` and you are good to go! | |
- | |
- | |
- files := bashrc xinitrc muttrc vimrc Xresources | |
- cfgs := qutebrowser ncmpcpp mpd git mutt | |
- dotfiles := $(shell pwd) | |
- | |
- all: link | |
- | |
- define symlink_file | |
- ln -fs $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1); | |
- endef | |
- | |
- define symlink_dir | |
- ln -fns $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1); | |
- endef | |
- | |
- link: @$(foreach f,$(files),$(call symlink_file,$(f),.)) | |
- @$(foreach f,$(cfgs),$(call symlink_dir,$(f),.config/)) | |
- @echo files linked | |
- | |
- .PHONY: all link | |
- | |
- | |
-Its pretty straight forward and you can't really go wrong with it, in my | |
-own personal Makefile I have a few added steps such as adding backing up | |
-installed packages list and cron entries. You can find it over on my git | |
-repo which might give you a better understanding how it works in the | |
-real world. | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/002.txt b/txt/002.txt | |
@@ -1,117 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[002] | |
- | |
- | |
-GitHub: The Facebook of coding | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-In my opinion, there is no question that GitHub is the new Facebook for | |
-coders and geeks. What I mean by the new Facebook is two-fold, first the | |
-type of users you find on GitHub and secondly the businesses shenanigans | |
-over the years. | |
- | |
- | |
-THE USERS | |
---------- | |
- | |
-Essentially, GitHub is now a necessity when you are applying for jobs | |
-inside the tech industry, recruiters look for it, businesses are | |
-requiring it and insist you engage in coding challenges that must be | |
-done on the platform. This doesn't sound like a bad thing really, or | |
-does it? | |
- | |
- | |
- YES, actually, it does! | |
- | |
- | |
-GitHub has now become a shit storm of individuals seeking to pimp out | |
-their profiles with bullshit Pull Requests, faking timelines, forking | |
-repos and raising entirely pointless issues. Everything with the goal | |
-of showcasing how much they have contributed to open-source projects. As | |
-a recent example look no further than Digital Oceans Hacktoberfest | |
-clusterfuck, useless PRs such as deleting spaces all in the hopes of | |
-getting a t-shirt. | |
- | |
- | |
-Another real world dilemma impacting users is the knowledge gap of | |
-actually using git normally, GitHub is NOT git. GitHub is a proprietary | |
-closed-source front-end for a centralized git hosting service. Users | |
-have become completely dependent on features that GitHub have built such | |
-as PRs, forks, online editing, branch protection to name a couple. | |
-I doubt that many users are even aware of commands such as send-mail | |
-which is a core function of many projects outside the GitHub world. Nor | |
-does it help when the web interface of GitHub encourages sloppy git | |
-practices, relying exclusively on one way of doing things, the GitHub | |
-Flow. | |
- | |
- | |
-THE COMPANY | |
------------ | |
- | |
-Let's start off with the obvious fact that Microsoft owns GitHub. | |
-Microsoft has a long track record of open-source hatred, the CEO has | |
-even gone as far as stating "Linux is a cancer" at one point. This is | |
-not good, Microsoft were outed by the U.S. Department of Justice for | |
-using this internal term. In short, it ties in well with buying their | |
-way into open source projects right? Sounds like GitHub is at the | |
-Embrace stage... | |
- | |
- | |
- "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" [5] | |
- | |
- | |
-Electron, the Chromium engine / NodeJS pile of shit that requires a few | |
-Cray supercomputers to run a calculator app on was developed and pushed | |
-into the ecosystem by good friends, GitHub. Now we are blessed with | |
-awesome spyware programs such as WhatsApp, Discord and Skype that will | |
-now run on Linux YAY /s. I mean there is just so much mud around GitHub | |
-that I just don't have the urge to go wading through it, searching even | |
-more than I have already. Here's a short fire list with some sources to | |
-follow-up on, if you are interested. | |
- | |
- | |
-* Denied employee harassment by CEO | |
-* Blocked users from country's under US trade sanctions | |
-* Have dealings with ICE, they keep kids in cages | |
- | |
- | |
-Due to an incredibly weak DMCA take down notice by the RIAA, youtube-dl | |
-was recently banned by GitHub. After it hit main stream news GitHub | |
-crapped the bed and started on the news PR. It was not, however, until | |
-after the EFF moved in and sent a letter [10] to GitHub describing how | |
-the DMCA notification was absolute dog shit that GitHub did something. | |
-After this, GitHub went into complete PR mode after and they made it out | |
-that they were the saviours of the day and how they'd stronger and | |
-better in the future. | |
- | |
- | |
-Anyway, enough of this rant. If you are looking for a 3rd party hosted | |
-git solution then please take a look at these two: | |
- | |
- | |
-* SourceHut, https://sr.ht | |
-* GitLab, https://gitlab.com | |
- | |
- | |
-Or do what I do an just use the naked git protocol without any front-ends, its | |
-stupidly simple. | |
- | |
- | |
-SOURCES | |
-------- | |
- | |
->> https://drewdevault.com/2020/10/01/Spamtoberfest.html | |
->> https://git-send-email.io/ | |
->> https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/index.html | |
->> https://davelane.nz/microsoft-there-way-win-our-trust | |
->> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish | |
->> https://tknk.io/01P8 Electron | |
->> https://tknk.io/xnsf | |
->> https://tknk.io/rddV | |
->> https://tknk.io/8pfH | |
->> https://tknk.io/RMLT | |
->> https://tknk.io/XtFd | |
- | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/003.txt b/txt/003.txt | |
@@ -1,80 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[003] | |
- | |
- | |
-Qutebrowser is amazing but.. | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-**UPDATE** as of version 2.0, these are not an issue now. Time to move | |
-back to Qutebrowser! | |
- | |
- | |
-For those preferring browsers with a minimal GUI and vim-like keyboard | |
-controls, Qutebrowser is a fantastic choice. The project can be compared | |
-to Firefox add-ons like Vim Vixen but with a smoother and more refined | |
-user interface, backed by an active creator. With that being said here | |
-comes the but. | |
- | |
- | |
-And it's a big BUT for me, I no longer use Qutebrowser due to lack of | |
-privacy options compared to the likes of Firefox with add-ons. Does | |
-Qutebrowser have any choices at all for privacy? It sure does, BUT for | |
-the requirements of today's modern web it's just not enough to cut it. | |
-This is a list of things that you can do: | |
- | |
- | |
-* disable javascript | |
-* disable geolocation | |
-* disable webgl | |
-* custom http headers | |
-* custom user agent | |
-* reject cookies | |
-* stop canvas reading | |
-* host based ad-blocker | |
- | |
- | |
-Although the problem is not a poor list of choices, each of these | |
-choices has very limited scope. For example, the ad blocker is | |
-a primitive host based list from a flat file. You're going to get video | |
-ads and page elements still showing. It just doesn't compare to add-ons | |
-like uBlock Origin, where all ads traces are just erased. Setting | |
-cookies to deny all the time often contributes to a poor user | |
-experience. | |
- | |
- | |
-As an example, I will be constantly be asked to fill in CATCHPA's for | |
-every site sitting behind CloudFlare. However, I can install a cookie | |
-cleaner on Firefox that manages cookies on a per site basis, deletes | |
-them as soon as you navigate off the site, close a tab etc. | |
- | |
- | |
-I also discovered that Qutebrowser does not function as intended with | |
-the option to hide the referrer header. This is currently an upstream | |
-issue with the engine Qutebrowser uses, QtWebEngine. In the hopes that | |
-this gets resolved, I have opened a bug report directly with the | |
-project. | |
- | |
- | |
-Using the EFF's browser fingerprinting tools might show you as rather | |
-unique compared to Firefox with the privacytools.io recommended addons. | |
-In order to randomise the User Agent and HTTP Accept headers, I also | |
-tried to write a Python script to do this in Qutebrowser. Although the | |
-finger printing was improved, it was just not as good as using Firefox. | |
-Once the Qutebrowser feature list has plugin support, I would definitely | |
-switch back to Qutebrowser once it has been implemented, but | |
-unfortunately Firefox and addons are the way for me. | |
- | |
- | |
-SOURCES | |
-------- | |
- | |
- | |
->> https://qutebrowser.org | |
->> https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen | |
->> https://privacytools.io/browsers/#browser | |
->> git://jay.scot/dotfiles.git | |
->> https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30 | |
- | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/004.txt b/txt/004.txt | |
@@ -1,119 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[004] | |
- | |
- | |
-How I use the modern web | |
-──────────────────────── | |
- | |
- | |
-With how polluted the modern web has become over the years, I actively | |
-avoid it as much as possible. From mainstream media sites acting like | |
-the gossip magazines from years back. Remember OK magazine? To sites | |
-riddled with ads, tracking, social media buttons, and a plethora of | |
-utter crap. It feels like navigating down a busy main street where all | |
-the hawkers are hassling you too buy their wares. Now bolt-on how every | |
-UX designer has given up on the basics like page accessibility | |
-standards, loading times, and the important one, usability. | |
- | |
- | |
- It's an utter shambles right now. | |
- | |
- | |
-When using a browser, I find it far too easy to get caught in a "YouTube | |
-loop" or see something at the corner of your eye that you feel the urge | |
-to spend the next 30 minutes researching. Before you know it, 3 AM | |
-rolls around and your reading a Wikipedia article on some random | |
-bollocks. This is why I avoid using a browser as much as possible and | |
-this is how I achieve it for about 90% of my daily internet usage. | |
- | |
- | |
-NEWS | |
----- | |
- | |
-Do you need to be reminded every day that Covid has killed X amount of | |
-people, that some political party leader fucked a dead pig? Nope, you | |
-don't! What you should be doing is focusing on what news is important to | |
-YOU. For me, this comes in the form of the latest tech news and | |
-information from my local government. The obvious way to do this is via | |
-RSS feeds. | |
- | |
- | |
-I am sure everyone has heard of newsboat or similar RSS readers but | |
-there is still the problem that most RSS feeds don't have any content | |
-attached to the feed. Normally it's just a summary of the article, at | |
-best, you still need to open up the browser and view the content. One | |
-RSS reader that seems to have slipped under the radar is one called | |
-sfeed by Suckless. With this tool I can have this setup. | |
- | |
- | |
- sfeed ---> fdm ---> rdrview ---> mutt | |
- | |
- | |
-sfeed, this RSS reader allows you to output feeds into various formats, | |
-one of them is the mbox. From there I use fdm which is a mail filtering | |
-and fetching program, think a better procmail. Using a custom script in | |
-fdm I can pass the feed URL to rdrview. rdrview fetches the URL and | |
-outputs the page to basic html, using lynx -dump to convert this to | |
-a pure plain text article. | |
- | |
- | |
-Finally, once the page has been fetched and processed fdm pushes it to | |
-Maildir, filtered by the feedname ready for reading in Mutt. The result | |
-is a full copy of the article in a mailbox ready to read in plain text. | |
-All of the code for this is in my dotfiles if you need to take a look at | |
-the sfeed, fdm, mutt configuration's. | |
- | |
- | |
-Within the same configuration for fdm I fetch my email which also has | |
-mailing lists subscriptions of things I should know about. Since | |
-switching over to FreeBSD fully a lot of discussions are carried out on | |
-various mailing lists. Have a look and see if the tools, news, forums | |
-you are apart of have mailing lists. It's another good method of | |
-"offline" content. | |
- | |
- | |
-MEDIA CONTENT | |
-------------- | |
- | |
-This one is quite easy to avoid. We all have our favourite channels and | |
-check daily to see if anything has been uploaded by them. Only to find | |
-3 hours after checking your still on YouTube but watching a video of | |
-someone reacting to the latest James Bond trailer while shouting "Make | |
-sure you hit the thumbs up and subscribe!" *cue shitty gif of a bell* | |
-throughout the video. | |
- | |
- | |
-The method I was using for this until recently was using a python | |
-application called ytcc by woefe over on GitHub. In a nutshell it's | |
-a front-end to youtube-dl for managing your subscriptions on YouTube. | |
-Simply enter the channel's name and whenever they upload a new video, it | |
-will download this ready to view locally. Simple, YouTube crap avoided. | |
- | |
- | |
-As I mentioned though I no longer do this, I have my a shell script that | |
-does something similar that directly uses youtube-dl. The reason | |
-I changed to this is I can download more than just YouTube videos, I can | |
-add other things such as LBRY. I can also customise youtube-dl output | |
-and options in greater detail. | |
- | |
- | |
-Finally on media content, podcast. Simply use a tool like castget or if | |
-you are a newsboat fan use the built-in podboat feature. | |
- | |
- | |
-BROWSING | |
--------- | |
- | |
-There is no avoiding using a browser completely. When I do have to use | |
-one I fire up Qutebrowser, now since my rant about QuteBrowser and | |
-privacy in 003.txt things have changed for the better. Qutebrowser now | |
-has ABS ad-blocking enabled as well as fixing issues with referrers not | |
-working. My qutebrowser blocks nearly everything along with a decent VPN | |
-your good to go and get off as soon as you can. | |
- | |
- | |
-Checkout my dotfiles for a better understanding of how all this fits | |
-together. I will assume everyone reading this is fairly technical! | |
- | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/005.txt b/txt/005.txt | |
@@ -1,92 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[005] | |
- | |
- | |
-Why I dropped freebsd after a month | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I switched over to using FreeBSD as my main desktop around 1 month ago. | |
-Last night I had enough of some core issues I was having and ended up | |
-switching back to Linux. My 2-year-old graphics card, an AMD RX 5700XT, | |
-does not work with the current stable release 12.2, so I had no choice | |
-but to use -CURRENT, ALPHA-2 then BETA-1. | |
- | |
- | |
-My setup is minimal; I don't use any GUI applications apart from the | |
-rare occasion I need to use a browser; I do use mpv often. Even with | |
-this setup, there was a performance issue that caused Xorg to micro | |
-stutter, causing a system pause for around 1 second. | |
- | |
- | |
-When using just a console things seemed to work fine, so my first | |
-thought was the problem must lie with Xorg. Over a few days I tried | |
-tweaking various Xorg options such as Tearfree, SWCursor, etc. This made | |
-zero improvement, my next port of call was the AMDGPU driver, drm-kmod. | |
- | |
- | |
-AMDGPU, A trip to the GitHub project page for this project did indeed | |
-show 4 out of 17 issues open are for the exact model of graphics card | |
-I have. Though none of the issues seemed related to the problem I was | |
-having. | |
- | |
- | |
-During my research, though, I also found posts on /r/freebsd and the | |
-official FreeBSD forums with similar issues, Sadly, none of them had any | |
-actual solutions. I decided to build the kernel module from the latest | |
-git master, this seemed to improve the stuttering, progress! | |
- | |
- | |
-Around this time I also found out that -CURRENT, -ALPHA and -BETA builds | |
-have a lot of debugging enabled in the kernel by default, which can | |
-cause degraded system performance. | |
- | |
- | |
-I found GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel config; I stripped out a lot of modules | |
-I wouldn't need to help the build times. This was so simple to do, and | |
-before I knew it I had a custom kernel built with all debugging removed. | |
-Booting into the new kernel I noticed an improvement right away. | |
- | |
- | |
-Playing a video still caused a little stuttering, as long as I did | |
-little else. I was happy with this for the time being, thinking that | |
-maybe when BETA-1 or RC came around things would be better. | |
- | |
- | |
-Woo-hoo, BETA-1 snapshot was released, time to give it a whirl. BAM, | |
-right back to square one. So I went through the same steps again with | |
-building the AMDGPU module from git and building a custom kernel with no | |
-debugging enabled. | |
- | |
- | |
-The same day as BETA-1 released, I got a reply on one post I made about | |
-the issue. Just run this, the poster says, All processes are tied to the | |
-first CCX0. This will reduce the usable cores to 4, however. | |
- | |
- | |
- sh -c 'ps -aux | cut -w -f2 | xargs -I foo \ | |
- cpuset -l 0,2,4,6 -p foo > /dev/null 2>&1' | |
- | |
- | |
-No way this can be the solution, can it? Well yes it was, suddenly I had | |
-nearly ZERO issues. All the lag had disappeared! The only cost? I had | |
-to gimp the potential of my system. | |
- | |
- | |
-At this point I had enough, I spent so long on such a trivial matter | |
-I decided just to go back to Linux until 13.0 is released, then I will | |
-revisit it. I liked FreeBSD. There is so much to it that I loved and | |
-would go back in a heartbeat if I could get my hardware working without | |
-having to jump over so many hurdles. | |
- | |
- | |
-* I love ports | |
-* I had set up Bhyve running Poudriere building my own packages. | |
-* Setting up the GPU driver was really simple (if it worked on my card) | |
-* Audio setup was such a breeze. | |
-* I had no issue installing ports/packages I needed, pkg is a wonderful tool. | |
-* Jails are so handy, I didn't think I would need them but man they are | |
-great! | |
- | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/006.txt b/txt/006.txt | |
@@ -1,237 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[006] | |
- | |
- | |
-Association of really cruel viruses (arcv) | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I have saved and collected a **huge** amount of data from the 80s, 90s | |
-and early 00s from the UK Hacking and Phreaking scene. Many of it has | |
-been lost over the years, so I will be dumping it here over the next | |
-while in the hopes someone finds it interesting! | |
- | |
- | |
-First up though we have ARCV, a virus writing group from the early | |
-1990s! | |
- | |
- | |
-ARCV | |
----- | |
- | |
-Around late 1992 a group emerged calling themselves the Association of | |
-Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). The group was initially small, and by all | |
-accounts relatively unskilled, and was made up of two people, Apache | |
-Warrior who was the leader of the group, and ICE-9. They soon recruited | |
-two more, Toxic Crusader and Slartibartfast, and became one of the first | |
-virus writing groups in the UK. | |
- | |
- | |
-Over the next year, they would write around 100 viruses, the first few | |
-were created using a virus generator called Virus Creation Laboratory | |
-(VCL) but they would soon end up writing their own virii, apparently, | |
-they were also very well written! Apache Warrior would also end up | |
-creating the group's engine, Cybertech Mutation Engine (CME). | |
- | |
- | |
-ARCV didn't last too long before Scotland Yard caught up with them in an | |
-unsuspecting way. A year after they entered the scene around | |
-December/January 1993 Apache Warrior and ICE-9 were arrested in the | |
-Salford area in the UK. The group had been distributing their viruses | |
-and newsletters to a BBS in Cornwall as well as others via beige boxing. | |
-In their great wisdom, they decided that the best target of the beige | |
-boxing would be their neighbours' line. Scotland Yard did not even | |
-realise these two phone phreakers they just caught were also the | |
-founding members on ARCV until the confiscation of their computer | |
-equipment. | |
- | |
- | |
-Apache Warrior cooperated with the police, and further examination of | |
-the confiscated equipment confirmed that not only had the police caught | |
-some phone phreakers, but they also caught the leader of ARCV. On | |
-Wednesday, January 27 1993, four other ARCV members in Manchester, | |
-Cumbria, Staffordshire and Cornwall were raided by Scotland Yard and | |
-their computer equipment confiscated. This was ICE-9, Toxic Crusader, | |
-Slartibartfast and the arrest in Cornwall was the SYSOP of the BBS where | |
-ARCV transferred files too so not officially a member of ARCV. In total | |
-there were six arrests and all were released on police bail pending | |
-further investigations. | |
- | |
- | |
-DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit failed to identify anyone | |
-affected by any ARCV created viruses. Due to this Apache Warrior, ICE-9 | |
-and the two other members were let off with cautions. One was cautioned | |
-relating to another matter, the BBS SYSOP, and the last one was released | |
-with no further actions. | |
- | |
- | |
-You can download all the files I have on ARCV from the following gopher | |
-site. | |
- | |
- | |
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, txt format | |
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe format | |
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe screenshot | |
-* ARCV virus collection, 93 in total, be careful you windows users! | |
-* November 1992 article | |
-* April 1993 article | |
-* July 1993 article | |
- | |
- | |
->> gopher://jay.scot/files/groups/arcv/ | |
- | |
- | |
-Got any of these files? Let me know! | |
- | |
-* ARCV Newsletter Issue 2, may not exist. | |
-* ARCV Virus Library Disk 1 and 2, may not of been released. | |
-* EICAR'94 conference talk/slides (ICE-9) | |
-* CME 1.0 and CME 2.0 | |
-* Access All Areas II (96) and III (97) talks/slides (Apache Warrior & ICE-9) | |
- | |
- | |
---- Feb, 1993 : Spreading Viruses | |
---- Personal Computer World Magazine | |
- | |
-We are a bunch of programmers who, depressed with the lack of viruses that | |
-have originated in England, have sought to change matters. We presently | |
-write viruses for the PC, Archimedes and Atari ST. We have increased the few | |
-viruses written in England by about 25, though this number is increasing all | |
-the time as our programmers churn out more quality computer viruses. | |
-Although there are many viruses about we hope to dominate the UK 'market'. | |
-Won't it be nice, though, for England to have at least one export? Finally, | |
-we as an organisation like to stress that, contrary to public opinion, we are | |
-*not* boring people who wear anoraks, nor are we depraved people who were | |
-beaten as children and so grew up with a hatred of humanity. We are highly | |
-intelligent and good at programming and are just ordinary people. But we are | |
-gonna get you soon! | |
- | |
- - ARCV (Association of Really Cruel Viruses) | |
- | |
- | |
---- 4 Feb, 1993 : Apache scalps virus cowboys | |
- | |
-Police raided the homes of suspected computer virus authors across the | |
-country last week, arresting five people and seizing equipment. "The raids | |
-were carried out last Wednesday by police in Manchester, Cumbria, | |
-Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall." Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit | |
-co-ordinated the raids under the codename Operation Apache. A spokeswoman for | |
-the Greater Manchester Police said: 'The investigation began in the | |
-Manchester area following the arrest of the self-styled president of the | |
-virus writing group in Salford last December.' Police would not reveal the | |
-man's name, but said he had been released on bail. "Last week's raids led to | |
-the arrest of a further two people in Manchester. Three other suspects were | |
-also arrested in Staffordshire, Cumbria and Cornwall." PCs and floppy disks | |
-were seized in all the raids. "All those arrested have been released on | |
-police bail pending further investigations." | |
- | |
- | |
---- 4 Feb, 1993 : UK Virus Writers Group Foiled by Scotland Yard | |
- | |
-British police have arrested four members of a virus-writing group that calls | |
-itself the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). | |
- | |
-The Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit coordinated the raids carried out on | |
-suspects in Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Devon, and Cornwall. The | |
-arrests last Wednesday, January 27, bring to six the number of ARCV members | |
-found by police, after they initially arrested one caught "phreaking" in | |
-Manchester in December. ("Phone phreaking" is the illegal practice of | |
-obtaining free use of telephone lines.) The arrests were made under Section 3 | |
-of the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits unauthorized modification of | |
-computer material, said Detective Sergeant Stephen Littler. The suspects, who | |
-cannot be identified at this stage under British law, have been released on | |
-bail pending inquiries and may face further charges. | |
- | |
-The members of ARCV used PCs to write viruses, which they shared via a | |
-bulletin board operated by one suspect in Cornwall. The police confiscated | |
-hardware and software, which is being studied by virus experts to determine | |
-how many viruses were written and what the viruses were intended to do, | |
-Littler said. The British anti-virus community became aware of ARCV through | |
-the group's own publicity efforts, such as a newsletter that it had uploaded | |
-to various bulletin boards in the U.S., according to Richard Ford, editor of | |
-the monthly "Virus Bulletin", which is published in Abingdon, Oxon, England. | |
-The newsletter was described in detail in the November, 1992, issue of "Virus | |
-Bulletin". | |
- | |
-To the best of my knowledge, none of their viruses are in the wild, out | |
-there spreading" said Ford. But they have been found on virus exchange | |
-bulletin board services, and we've had reports of them being uploaded rather | |
-widely in the UK. ARCV claims, in its newsletter, to have links with | |
-PHALCON/SKISM in the U.S. and other virus writers in Eastern Europe. "The | |
-world is a very small place when you've got a modem, or are on the Internet", | |
-Ford said. The newsletter invites new members to join even if they are not | |
-virus writers but prefer other "underground" activities such as hacking and | |
-phreaking. It also betrays ARCV's fears of being perceived as nerds (a term | |
-not used in Britain) saying, "Now the picture put out by the Anti- Virus | |
-Authors is that Virus writers are Sad individuals who wear Anoraks and go | |
-Train Spotting but well they are sadly mistaken, we are very intelligent, | |
-sound minded, highly trained, and we wouldn't be seen in an Anorak or near an | |
-Anorak even if dead." | |
- | |
-ARCV has already failed at one of the objectives mentioned in its premier | |
-newsletter issue, which said, "We will be dodging Special Branch and New | |
-Scotland Yard as we go." | |
- | |
- | |
---- From: [email protected] (Mike C Holderness) | |
---- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk | |
---- Subject: This just in from London... | |
---- Date: 3 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0000 | |
---- Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK. | |
- | |
-Police have arrested Britain's first computer virus-writing group in an | |
-operation they hope will dampen the aspirations of any potential high-tech | |
-criminals. Four members of the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV) | |
-were raided last Wednesday in a joint operation in four cities co-ordinated | |
-by Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit. The arrests in Greater Manchester, | |
-Cumbria, Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall, bring to six the members of | |
-the group that have been tracked down by police. Two others, also writing for | |
-ARCV, were arrested a month ago in Manchester. This six are thought to have | |
-written between 30 and 50 relatively harmless viruses.... | |
- | |
-[continues. By Susan Watts. (C) 1993 Newspaper Publishing plc.] | |
- | |
-Comments, especially from survivors and even more from people in the UK who | |
-are into a little light looking around but nothing Really Cruel, very | |
-welcome. Yes, I am a journalist. | |
- | |
- | |
---- 16 May, 1994 : Urnst Couch / Crypt Newsletter | |
- | |
-About the same time, a hacker was arrested for stealing phone service from | |
-his neighbor's line and his equipment confiscated, too. The hacker turned out | |
-to be Apache Warrior, a member of the small United Kingdom virus-writing | |
-group called ARCV (for Association of Really Cruel Viruses). | |
- | |
-Some background information not included in the book: Alan Solomon was | |
-apparently able to convince New Scotland Yard's computer crime unit that they | |
-should also try to prosecute Apache Warrior as a virus-writer and that the | |
-rest of the group should be rounded up, too. In conversation, Solomon has | |
-said Apache Warrior turned over the names of other group members. | |
-Subsequently, New Scotland Yard and local constabularies conducted raids at | |
-multiple sites in England, arresting another man. Paradoxically, prior to the | |
-arrests, Solomon joked that ARCV was better at cyber-publicity than virus | |
-programming and its creations were little more than petty menaces. The book | |
-offers no reported incidences of ARCV viruses on the computers of others, | |
-although Virus News International, by extension S&S International, solicited | |
-readers for such evidence in 1993. | |
- | |
- | |
---- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 93 09:17:21 | |
---- From: [email protected] (McAfee Associates) | |
---- Subject: Forwarded message from Scotland Yard | |
- | |
-Hello All, | |
- | |
-I was recently contacted by DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit at | |
-New Scotland Yard in London. As some of you may be aware, Noel is one of the | |
-folks responsible for arresting the members of ARCV, a UK-based group of | |
-virus-writers. He would like to speak with anyone who suffered an infection | |
-from any of their viruses. If you have been infected by one of their | |
-viruses, or know of someone who has, then please give him a call at +44 (71) | |
-230-1177 during office hours (GMT), or send him a fax at +44 (71) 230-1275. | |
- | |
-Please bear in mind that I'm only forwarding this message for DC Bonczoszek. | |
-If you have any questions, please contact him directly. | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/007.txt b/txt/007.txt | |
@@ -1,94 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[007] | |
- | |
- | |
-Build, patch and maintain suckless tools | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I am a long time supporter of the Unix philosophy and have been using | |
-tools such as dwm as my daily driver since 2011, as such I mainly use | |
-the terminal for everything. Lots of these tools are best built via the | |
-latest source code release or development copy instead of a package | |
-build, so you can apply your custom configuration. The most common | |
-methods I have come across on managing to do this is a mixture of using | |
-separate git branches for each patch or even just manually applying the | |
-patches and then fixing anything that didn't succeed. | |
- | |
-I am a big fan of Makefiles, I even use Makefiles to manage my dotfiles | |
-instead of a tool like GNU Stow. So it will be no surprise I use these | |
-to build, patch and install all my suckless based tools such as dwm, st, | |
-dmenu and herbe. My Makefile makes patching easy and means I don't need | |
-to worry about maintaining multiple branches, it's super easy to get the | |
-latest versions etc. It also helps that I don't have any extra patches | |
-apart from dmenu and st, any additions I have for dwm and herbe are | |
-added to config.h as functions. | |
- | |
-Below is the generic Makefile I use, this one is for dmenu as it's | |
-a good example to use since I use a few minimal external patches. The | |
-options at the top of the Makefile should be pretty obvious, the | |
-defaults should be fine for most people. | |
- | |
- | |
- REPOSITORY = http://git.suckless.org/dmenu | |
- SRC_DIR = dmenu-src | |
- PINNED_REVISION = HEAD | |
- PATCH_DIR = patches | |
- | |
- all: $(SRC_DIR) | |
- | |
- clean: reset | |
- @if test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \ | |
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s clean; \ | |
- git -C "${SRC_DIR}" clean -f; \ | |
- fi | |
- | |
- $(SRC_DIR): clone reset patch | |
- @cp config.h $@ | |
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s | |
- | |
- patch: $(PATCH_DIR)/* | |
- @for file in $^ ; do \ | |
- patch -d "${SRC_DIR}" < $${file}; \ | |
- done | |
- reset: | |
- @if [ -n "$(strip $(PINNED_REVISION))" ]; then \ | |
- git -C "${SRC_DIR}" reset --hard $(PINNED_REVISION); \ | |
- fi | |
- | |
- clone: | |
- @if ! test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \ | |
- git clone $(REPOSITORY) $(SRC_DIR); \ | |
- fi | |
- | |
- update: clean | |
- @git -C "${SRC_DIR}" pull | |
- | |
- install: | |
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s install | |
- | |
- | |
- .PHONY: all clean update install reset clone patch | |
- | |
- | |
-And this is the file structure I have: | |
- | |
- |- dwm | |
- |-- dwm-src # git clone of dwm, handled by Makefile | |
- |-- config.h # my custom config for dmenu | |
- |-- Makefile # the Makefile from above | |
- |-- patches # directory containing patches | |
- |---- 01-dmenu-centre.patch | |
- |---- 02-dmenu-border.patch | |
- | |
-If you have no patches to apply, then remove the 'patch' from line 14 | |
-then run 'make', this will git clone or reset if already cloned, apply | |
-patches, copy your custom config.h and the build, A 'make install' after | |
-that will install as normal. | |
- | |
-To see a working copy of these you can clone my dotfiles and have | |
-a look in the dwm, dmenu, st or herbe folders. | |
- | |
- git clone git://jay.scot/dotfiles | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/008.txt b/txt/008.txt | |
@@ -1,85 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[008] | |
- | |
- | |
-I moved over to wayland | |
-─────────────────────── | |
- | |
- | |
-I have been putting it off for ages, it's been on my to-do list for | |
-months. Anytime I saw it pop-up I would just ignore it either due to | |
-laziness, not interested or just general procrastinating. However, not | |
-this weekend! Wayland will be the de facto and soon enough replace Xorg | |
-am sure. | |
- | |
-My setup is heavily terminal based with the usual tooling you see these | |
-days. Suckless based tools such as dwm, dmenu and st as the main WM | |
-tooling. Mutt for email, all kinds of feeds via Newsboat, MPV for | |
-videos, browsing with Qutebrower and Amfora for Gemini. I was hoping | |
-with such minimal GUI usage the switch over would be easy enough. | |
-A quick look around and it looks like I would need to completely switch | |
-dwm, dmenu and st over to a wayland equivalent. | |
- | |
-I do have a few edge case applications I use but upon checking, they all | |
-work under wayland. These were Qutebrowser (Browsing), Performance | |
-Portfolio (Accounting) and Calibre (Ebooks), result! | |
- | |
-First, the window manager! As it turns out there is a wayland port of | |
-dwm called dwl, there seems to be a few trivial changes, but they are | |
-basically like for like. On a sidenote, I had been tweaking dwm recently | |
-and it really became a bit of a pain in the arse building, restart dwm | |
-all the time. With this still at the back of my mind, anticipating that | |
-I will be doing it again with dwl, I thought why not try out something | |
-new. Enter Sway. | |
- | |
-Sway is the wayland port of i3 with some common patches people used | |
-rolled in. A look at the config file setup for Sway made it look very | |
-straight forward to replicate my dwm keybinds and layout. Another | |
-benefit being I could install the packages via the AUR instead of | |
-building it myself, this felt like a plus after many many years of | |
-compiling from source. | |
- | |
-I kinda hate st, truth be told. You need to add in a few patches to the | |
-build as out of the box it's very limiting. So on that I was happy to | |
-find a replacement for st. Two options were on the table for me, | |
-Alacritty and Foot. I ended up going with Foot, it seemed to be a lot | |
-faster and lightweight compared to Alacritty, according to their own | |
-benchmark results. I also wasn't sold on the idea of it being GPU | |
-accelerated. Alacritty also clams to be faster than all the rest, but | |
-they didn't seem to provide the actual benchmarks, just the tool they | |
-used. Whereas Foot had a whole ton of information, benchmarks and | |
-screenshots explaining why its fast as fuck. | |
- | |
-Again the application was in the AUR and with a live reload config file | |
-it was trivial to set up. Interestingly, the out of the box config would | |
-have been fine, only thing I really changed were the colours and font. | |
- | |
-dmenu, this one I spent most of my time researching and testing out | |
-various alternatives. At first, I was just going to use rofi but soon | |
-found out that it doesn't have native wayland support and uses Xwayland | |
-instead. There is a port called wofi too, I tried both of them out. | |
-I don't know, I just didn't like them, they seemed to flashy, the config | |
-for them seemed tedious. I then tried out bemenu which is based on | |
-dmenu, this was the one. Yet again I just needed to install the AUR | |
-package, the config can be set via an environment variable called | |
-BEMENU_OPTS. After playing about with it I just added this to my bashrc | |
-profile and I was done. So simple, love it. | |
- | |
- | |
-> export BEMENU_OPTS="-p '> ' --tb '#000000' --tf '#ffffff' --hf '#444444'" | |
- | |
- | |
-So far I have had no crashes or any issues at all. One thing that I have | |
-noticed is MPV playback seems way smoother and scrolling in Qutebrowser | |
-is tear-free. So far so good, and I really don't feel like I am missing | |
-anything switching over. | |
- | |
-Another side, my installed packages has reduced massively, all | |
-X packages have been removed as they are no longer needed. My dotfiles | |
-directory looks a lot leaner without all the dwm, herbe, st and dmenu | |
-builds. Trivial I know. | |
- | |
-I guess now I just continue as is for a few more months and see what | |
-I think then! | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/009.txt b/txt/009.txt | |
@@ -1,34 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[009] | |
- | |
- | |
-A true cheap dumbphone, impossible? | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I have been on the lookout of a truly cheap dumb phone but trying to | |
-find that sweet spot just isn't happening. I just want to call and get | |
-SMS - that's it. | |
- | |
-The Lightphone 2 [0] looks ideal at first glance, nice and simple. | |
-However, digging into it a bit more I see the following possible issues | |
-for my use case: | |
- | |
- It's expensive, around £350 ($402) when you include import tax. | |
- Linked to some sort of central login platform. | |
- From installing apps to first-time boot a "Light Account" is needed. | |
- | |
-Another one that's looks good is the Mudita Pure Phone [2], they even | |
-have an open source OS running it called MuditaOS. The massive downside, | |
-it's nearly £340 ($385). Crazy prices if you ask me! | |
- | |
-What I am using currently is an old Nokia 2.3 with Unlauncher [3] | |
-running, cost was around £60 ($75) 2 years ago. I really wish there was | |
-a cheap and truly dumbphone out there.. | |
- | |
- | |
-0. https://thelightphone.com | |
-1. https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure | |
-2. https://jkuester.github.io/unlauncher | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/010.txt b/txt/010.txt | |
@@ -1,39 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[010] | |
- | |
- | |
-Convert mbox to maildir using fdm | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I recently downloaded a bunch of old mailing list archives from Alpine | |
-Linux[0] that I want to merge with my current archives. The problem being | |
-my current archives were in Maildir format while the Alpine Linux | |
-archives were in MBOX. | |
- | |
- | |
-Since I already use fdm[1] for fetching my mail as well as converting RSS | |
-feeds I just went with that, this is how: | |
- | |
- | |
- $ cat archive | |
- | |
- $listdir= "%h/.mail/alpine.users" # where to save the maildir | |
- $mbox= "%h/tmp/alpine-users.mbox" # the local mbox location | |
- | |
- # the local mbox file | |
- account "convert" mbox "$mbox" | |
- action "convert" maildir "${listdir}" | |
- match all action "convert" | |
- | |
- | |
-then just run FDM with the above configuration file: | |
- | |
- | |
- $ fdm -f archive fetch | |
- | |
- | |
-0. https://lists.alpinelinux.org/~alpine/users | |
-1. https://github.com/nicm/fdm | |
- | |
-.EOF | |
diff --git a/txt/011.txt b/txt/011.txt | |
@@ -1,41 +0,0 @@ | |
-[jay.scot] | |
-[011] | |
- | |
- | |
-Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc | |
-──────────────────────────… | |
- | |
- | |
-I recently turned off my main pc, a homegrown setup I had been upgrading | |
-over the years. It had quite a decent spec, AMD RX XT5700, Intel i7, | |
-32Gb RAM, 3xSSDs and a NVM drives. I have mentioned in previous TXT | |
-files I mainly use the command line apart from qutebrowser occasionally | |
-so it was complete overkill. Not to mention the energy prices in north | |
-Scotland being absurd, it was time to "downgrade". | |
- | |
- | |
-I had a few options in mind, a good old Raspberry Pi, a 2nd hand | |
-Thinkcentre or an off the shelf mini-pc. As you obviously gathered, | |
-I went with the mini-pc, a beelink U59 [0]. The RPI are actually quite | |
-costly now, hard to get. I also wanted an X86 architecture for using | |
-Alpine Linux - my distro of choice these days. Apparently the | |
-Thinkcentre can be quite loud too, so I ended up buying the U59 with the | |
-500 GB SSD and 16 GB Ram for around £200 on Amazon. | |
- | |
- | |
-I installed Alpine Linux with no issues at all. I have a bootstrap | |
-script for Alpine [1], so using this I was up and running with the foot | |
-terminal open on sway 15 minutes later. The U59 is completely quiet, and | |
-the max I have seen the temp get so far was 59C while playing Loom via | |
-ScummVM. I had to compile ScummVM from source which took around 20 | |
-mintues. The power draw was sitting around 15 watts during this time. | |
- | |
- | |
-Really happy with it so far, will be interesting to see how long this | |
-machine lasts for. | |
- | |
- | |
-0. https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=334 | |
-1. gopher://jay.scot/1/git/alpine-bootstrap/ | |
- | |
-.EOF |