1,086 karma · joined January 15, 2019
Updates?
For many years I do an update dance with NetBSD kernels. Two kernels with embedded filesystems on same bootable media, one updated, one not. Select kernel at boot, download appropriate userland to RAM disk then chroot. Download new kernel source, compile, repeat.
As well as the one from the author of ntop.
A few characteristics most projects consistently fail to meet are (a) keeping the source code available, small, relatively simple and easy to compile, (b) allowing peers the option to connect directly after discovery without routing traffic through a third party and (c) recognising that not all peers want to form massive infinitely scalable networks, most will prefer small ones.
Most P2P projects choose a design that forces the majority of users compromise in order to accomodate a few unpredictable/hypothetical edge cases. "Perfect" gets in the way of progress. History shows there is no "perfect" when it comes to P2P.
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42638988/Social%...
Running NextDNS has costs. Given the absence of fees for using NextDNS, it has a commercial interest in collecting information about users. Like other third party DNS providers (middlemen), e.g., Google or Cisco/OpenDNS, NextDNS supports ENDS Client-Subnet. This extension has zero value in terms of ad-blocking and privacy and arguably should be "off" by default unless the user asks for it.
PiHole is non-commercial project AFAIK, although they have registered a trademark.
Third party DNS caches will always be inferior to DIY in respect of certain issues such as ad-blocking, privacy, security, reliablity, etc. (I am a DIY-er and when third party DNS has an outage, the applications I use are still able to use the internet without any problems because I have zero reliance of third party DNS providers.) When using third party DNS these factors are outside the user's control. Users cannot tell third party DNS providers what to do, nor can they execute quality control, they can only accept what is offered to them. Of course, third party DNS will always be superior in terms of convenience and perhaps "features". I personally do not need all of the "features" offered by third party DNS, but I cannot speak for other users.
The user's "choice" between DIY and third party DNS depends on what is important to the user and what the user is capable of doing herself. When the user is not capable of running DNS software herself, then DIY is removed from consideration and the "choice" is simply between one third party provider or another. The user has very little control in that situation.
When it comes to DNS, for me nothing beats having control. For me, "control", not convenience, is the best feature. I prefer whitelist to blocklist. Every user is different.
The browser I use the most does not do any of these things, but it does a nice job of dumping HTML tables to formatted text, which is something the modern graphical browsers cannot do..
Regarding LTE modems, I do not use a data plan on "locked-down" mobile devices for personal use. Somehow I have been able to survive on WiFi alone.
Note I do not recommend using a text-only browser interactively for any sort of commercial or important online activity. I use it for recreational activities like reading HN and the websites posted here.
I used lynx many years ago in the early 90's. After switching to links, I would never intentionally use lynx again. It amazes me that people still mention lynx when the topic of text-only browsers comes up. I would be shocked if these people who recommend it are using it as their browser on a daily basis for decades.
Not the one that authored the text-only browser I am typing this from.
Whether Mozilla turns a profit or not makes little difference in this instance. Mozilla does not survive on donations from users. Its employees are not volunteers working for free to defend user privacy. Its generously compensated executives and staff need money from the online ad business, just like employees from the other browser vendors. If Mozilla stopped taking money from Google or some other online ad business partner, then Mozilla employees would lose their jobs.
Maybe of interest: https://dustri.org/b/mozilla-is-still-screwing-around-with-p...
Probably better to just use "escape" for backslash and "slash" for forward slash.
Provide an example page and I will demonstrate how I would solve the problem.
Not every user visits the same websites and web pages, so without giving specific examples, discussions about how to deal with these pages never go anywhere on HN.
To be honest, out of all the websites I have visited over entire lifetime using the www, the number where I have had to make any extra effort because of Javascript in order to retrieve some text/html, image or video is very small proportion. Not one that is large enough to justify using a JavaScript-enabled browser as default. For me, these are exceptional cases, not the norm.
The extra effort is usually a one-off script, not something I need to save.
Occasionally it is something I save for future use. One example of a saved script would be for non-commercial YouTube channels. Goal was a 2-column CSV of all videos from a channel in the form of title, url. Goal was not "perfection", just quick solution.
yy025 and yy032 are custom utilties for generating HTTP and decoding HTML, respectively.
Using a short script called "ytc" the process would be something like the following. openssl s_client is used as an example of a TLS client. "XYZ" is the name of the channel.
echo https://www.youtube.com/channel/XYZ/videos|ytc|sed wXYZ
Connection=keep-alive yy025 < XYZ|openssl s_client -connect www.youtube.com:443 -servername whatever -ign_eof > 1.html
ytc title < 1.html > XYZ.1
ytc url < 1.html > XYZ.2
paste -d, XYZ.[12] > XYZ.csv
case $1 in
"")exec 2>/dev/null;
export Connection=close;
yy025|openssl s_client -connect www.youtube.com:443 -servername whatever -ign_eof |sed 's/%25/%/g'|yy032 > 1.tmp;
while true;do
x=$(sed 's/%25/%/g;s/\\//g' 1.tmp|yy032|grep -o "[^\"]*browse_ajax[^\"\\]*" |sed 's/u0026amp;/\&/g;s/&direct_render=1//;s,^,https://www.youtube.com,')
echo > 1.tmp;
test ${#x} -gt 100||break;
echo "$x";
echo "$x"|yy025|openssl s_client -connect www.youtube.com:443 -ign_eof > 1.tmp;
done;rm 1.tmp
;;-h|-?|-help|--help)echo usage: echo https://www.youtube.com/user/XYZ/videos \|$0;echo "usage: $0 {title|url} < html-file"
;;1|title) sed 's/\\//g;s/u0026amp;//g;s/u0026quot;//g;s/u0026#39;//g'|grep -o "ltr\" title=\"[^\"]*"|sed 's/ltr..title=.//'
;;2|url) sed 's/\\//g;s/u0026amp;//g;s/u0026quot;//g'|grep -o "[^\"]*watch?v=[^\"]*" |sed 's,^,https://www.youtube.com,'|uniq
esacBy not using a graphical, JavaScript-enabled browser, I have been experiencing the web this way for the last 15 years. It works just fine for the purposes I use if for, mainly informational retrieval. For me, there is no such thing as "page load time". This shifts all awareness to "server response time". This is more or less the same from one website to another and therefore differences are not noticeable, unless a server is misconfigured or has some problem.
printf \\33c
exec echo 1b63 |exec xxd -p -r
echo -e '27\n99\n' |exec nc-data -g
exec echo |exec sed '1i\
27 \
99
' |exec nc-data -gThought experiment: How is Facebook different from a file hosting service.
Do file hosting services provide access to analytics? Do the hosting companies take the position that any information about who is accessing the user's files belongs to the hosting company, not the user? Can user's control how a file hosting service "promotes" their files.
Facebook has never been transparent about who is accessing "your data". Users have a limited view of who is looking at their profiles and posted content. A Facebook account amounts to a "personal website" for many people. It is their own set of globally accessible (but not necessarily "public") webpages, often displaying their own content, hosted on someone else's (Mark Zuckerberg's) public website, allegedly with per page "access controls". Free web hosting, with extremely limited analytics.
Imagine if a Facebook user could look at a log of every username and IP address that accessed her Facebook profile each day. Pre-Facebook, there were early "social networks" that revealed to each user the other users who had looked at their profile. It is interesting that Facebook has never done that. Perhaps having this information would be eye-opening for many Facebook users. Those accessing a user's Facebook profile and posted content may not necessarily be her "family", "friends", "colleagues" or "people [she] may know". Perhaps the reasons a user's profile is being accessed are not ones that the Facebook user might expect, nor agree with.
Sci-Hub (/scimag/) has been located at the same IP address for at least three years, and neither domain names (DNS) nor onion addresses (TOR) are required to access it.
"It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
- Former Google CEO, Google Chairman and Alphabet CEO
Perhaps statements that could apply to David could apply equally to Goliath.
Putting aside the likelihood of an intentional leak, how would enforcement of an NDA work in the event of an "accidental" leak.
Has anyone ever seen Facebook file lawsuits against academic researchers or their employers. When leaks have happened, has anyone seen Facebook file lawsuits to enforce an NDA in order to protect or provide compensation to Facebook users.
Of course we have all seen Facebook file endless lawsuits to protect Facebook.
What sort of "relief" are users going to get under an NDA between Facebook and an academic researcher if their data is leaked.
"Google products" is not how another knowledgeable HN commenter recently put it in another thread.
He said Google created Android to make Google the default search engine on phones.
A commenter on the tbray.com page says the same thing.
Given Google's line of business, online ad services, the cumulaitive search traffic sent to google.tld as a result of being the default search engine easily outweighs whatever value could be generated from other "products". The OS might be loaded with interesting things for users and industry commentators to "review", however nothing could be more important to the company's bottom line than search traffic to google.com. If that traffic were to die down, the company would be in crisis mode.
An entire OS created just to be the default search engine. Was this the first time this was ever done.
What is funny in this case is that Microsoft is going after Firefox users, specifically, so, similar to how an HN commenter would ask "Why is Microsoft being singled out?", we could actually ask, "Why is Mozilla being singled out?" Why not target the users of some other browser.
It should be obvious that this type of question is not aimed at producing a useful answer. I predict we will see this suggestion of "unfairness" again in the next heavily-commented, front page item that is critical of Microsoft. It has been remarkably consistent.
Text-only browser is easiest way.
links -dump https://www.nrk.no/chasing-climate-change-1.14859595
x=$(echo y|tr y '\004');
curl https://www.nrk.no/chasing-climate-change-1.14859595|sed "s/<p /$x&/g;s/ *//"|tr '\004' '\n'|sed -n '/<p /!d;s/<\/p>.*/<\/p>/;/./{/<p /,/<\/p>/p;}' > 1.html
firefox 1.html
curl https://www.nrk.no/chasing-climate-change-1.14859595|grep -o https[^\"]*1080p.mp4|sed 's/\\u002F/\//g;s/.*/<p><a href=& \/>&<\/a><\/p>/'|uniq >> 1.html
firefox 1.html curl https://example.com/setup.sh | bash -vn
cat > 1.sh
echo visible
set +v
set +x
echo hidden >/dev/null
^D
cat 1.sh | bash -x
+ echo visible
visible
+ set +v
+ set +x
The truth is that people download and run shell scripts without reading them all the time. For example, how many people installing software packaged with configure scripts actually read the scripts. (Except in the event they do not work.)
What if, before "run what you downloaded", first perform a dry run and observe it while it is running.
set -x
curl https://example.com/setup.sh | bash -n
set +x
-n Read commands but do not execute them
The "document" is actually comprised of three documents. Lawyers call this "incorporation by reference." The link given by the author is therefore only a starting point. When we incorporate the other two^1 documents -- https://www.wacom.com/privacy and https://www.wacom.com/cookie-notice, this is not a "short" document.
1. Actually it is comprised of four documents if we include the external list of companies -- www.wacom.com/about-wacom/our-passion/our-company that are also beneficiaries of the terms of these policies. Unless the user reads all three documents, she has not reviewed the entire contents of the "policy".
"Wacom didn't say exactly what data they were going to send themselves."
Looking at the privacy policy is there anything that could be in HTTP traffic from the tablet that would be outside the scope of what Wacom has stated they might collect.
Excerpts
3. Scope of this Privacy Policy
This privacy policy explains how we collect and use information that relates to you when you:
- use our other software and products; or
We refer to these uses and interactions as our "Services."
|------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------|
|Usage Information (e.g., indicators of engagement with our |(1) to improve our products and create |(a) with our service providers, including analytics |
|website or usage of Services, IP address, device identifier,|new products |providers, to help us deliver and improve the Services, and |
|etc.) | |to provide targeted advertising |
| |(2) to provide targeted advertising | |
| | |(b) our Affiliates |
| |(3) to better understand how our | |
| |customers' use our Services | |
| | | |
| |(4) for our internal accounting, | |
| |security, and operational purposes | |
| | | |
| |(5) for purposes required by law | |
|------------------------------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------|
"Some of the events that Wacom were recording were arguably within their purview, such as "driver started" and "driver shutdown". I still don't want them to take this information because there's nothing in it for me, but their attempt to do so feels broadly justifiable.
Assuming Wacom respects resolv.conf as it does system-wide HTTP proxy settings, why not run localhost or LAN DNS server, either authoritative or recursive, that does not return a Google IP address for queries like www.google-analytics.com originating from the tablet IP address
The "broadly justifiable" reasoning does not account for the possibility Wacom may collect the data and then fail to improve the product, service or "user experience". Wacom is making no promises of any user benefits arising from collection of data. Even if there were "something in it" for the author, he has no way to hold Wacom to this promise. They get his data and he may or may not get something in return.