initramfs

I used to go to my computer laboratory in high school and at my mom's work to print out GameFAQ walkthroughs in the late 90s. They were excellent. I wrote this to remind myself of simple fun that's been superseded by grander ambitions, and sometimes I think I am wrong for choosing the latter.

Semianalysis also provided some insights: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/most-neoclouds-suck-at...

I've been noticing page views in the past several months with a much wider span of origin on my Blogger stats. Before I would get a few from several countries, but now I am getting views from tiny countries and obscure or outdated browsers and operating systems, which leads me to think scrapers could be using VPN services in various countries along with header anonymizers that mask the device that they are using.

Extensions like ModHeader, BrowserMask do this: https://github.com/apify/crawlee-python

https://github.com/mthcht/Masquerade-Spoofer

Great for AI scrapers, bad for hosters and everyone else.

I have noticed a lot of my Github followers who are either newer students or just new to Github have an immaculate green board of commits on their profile page, but it's so over the top I only like the ones that have creative illustrations or just very limited edits. Some seem so automated that it's hard to know how much they actually work on it. Others even are programmed to follow accounts then drop off once the person doesn't reciprocate, which is technically better than them staying but also systematically checking what sticks (also Github should limit some of these automated follows).

I only look for humans.md and humans.txt.

Such an awesome figure.

Had no idea Leno did a 90 minute infomercial!

True, although when my friend showed me PlayStation could load videos from CD ROM, I was blown away because it looked so effortless for a small system.

I also tested a 386 at 16MHz & 40MHz too: https://youtu.be/83eiLicpsTM

"The box stated that it required a 386DX or better processor, 4 MB of more of RAM, and approximately 50 MB of disk space. Nothing stopped you from installing it on a 386SX. I know because I tried it, mostly out of morbid curiosity. It took forever to install. Booting took forever too. And once it managed to boot, it took forever to do anything.

But if you had a system that met the minimum stated requirements, the experience was still pretty terrible.

The minimum most of us recommended at the time for acceptable performance was a 486 faster than 33 MHz, 8 MB of RAM, and 100 MB of disk space. And some will take issue with that today, because the experience on a machine like that still wasn’t very good. You had to draw the line somewhere, and then, as now, different people had different definitions of words like “minimum” and “acceptable.”

You really needed a Pentium-class machine to be happy with Win95, and I think Win95 did a lot to goose Pentium sales for Intel. If you could afford a 100 or 120 MHz Pentium with 16 or 32 MB of RAM and at least a 540 megabyte hard drive, you were much happier with it."

I had a Pentium 100MHz, and 8MB was acceptable, although I had a friend with 16MB and a 166MHz, and the grass always seemed greener. He was able to play Tomb Raider.

I make a lot of retro videos and tested a 386 on 4MB of RAM here: https://github.com/hatonthecat/linux_distro_tests#9-26-24-wi...

https://nand2mario.github.io/posts/2026/z486/ https://ei2030.github.io/FemtoTX/#about One can make Windows 95 solar powered again. The first time was at ISSCC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juy8xP-hUtA

According to It's FOSS,

:It's FOSS

3h •

Microsoft quietly embeds a hidden tracking identifier in every AI-generated image you create using Paint or Photos on Windows.

A researcher discovered that these apps embed a server-issued GUID (a globally unique identifier) as an invisible watermark in locally generated AI images.

The watermark is tied to the prompts you type. And since those prompts are associated with your Microsoft account, Microsoft could "theoretically" trace any watermarked image back to the user who created it.

This is recycling an idea from the 80s. Back then, laser printer manufacturers added tiny yellow dot patterns to every printed page. With this, they could identify the printer.

Now Microsoft has brought the same idea to AI image generation, and added it to two of the most widely used default Windows apps.

Microsoft had disclosed its AI safety measures in official documentation, but the practical implication, that your output image file carries an invisible fingerprint linked to your identity, was never clearly mentioned, of course.

The researcher found this by reading Microsoft's own published documentation and analyzing the watermarking mechanics.

AI watermarking is a requirement by law in the EU. But "this image was generated by AI" is different than "this image was generated by AI by Mr. Winston Smith".

For anyone who values privacy, this is something to worry about. If you generate an image locally, on your own device, why should it carry a tag that can identify you to the company whose software you used?

But then, anyone who values their privacy won't be using Microsoft Windows anyway."

Since the cat is out of the bag, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft generates an invisible watermark for ALL files and not just AI generated ones. The real story is that since AI watermarks are possible, there is no technical barrier to them adding personal EXIF metadata to a file where it can't be seen, removed, or decrypted, whether it is media, a document or other file.

Forgot about that. I intially thought you were referring to CloudFlare Captcha's, which Google and Firefox are partnering with: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318891/20260623/cloudflar...

It's remarkable how much more time one has to wait just to access the same level of information (Cookie Policy, EULAs, etc).

Even with "lighter" weight HTTP Firewall utilities such as Anubis (https://github.com/techaroHQ/anubis), the average user has to pay for other's (DDoSers) misdeeds. Now no one can visit a site without a firewall unless it's static and rate-limited by IP address to avoid crashing a small home server. Some impressive LMDBs might be able to serve up to 100,000 requests per second on a lightweight PC, but then again they could still be knocked offline from a super resourceful organization. I like not putting all my eggs in one basket.

A similar bug could happen with something like Cloudflare- the computer serving up the firewall could have a bug, and it's not programmed to fall back on serving the site without the gatekeeping. If the site is prominent enough, it might routinely face DoS attacks which prevents it from being used. But if it's an uneventful day, it could still manage a lower-tech firewall and still be functional.

No, I wasn't suggesting that. I was saying that if there was digital art (human made) aesthetically significant that a curator would want to display it in a museum, Microsoft's GUID supplied to a data collection agency would make it possible to retrieve if ever/whenever that data were declassified (assuming it isn't purged)

It's possible a very bad curator with a terrible taste in art might select slop to display, but I was refering to "fine art" or at least finer art that is digital.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for pointing it out. I guess MSPaint scans for that now on Windows 10 and 11, or just 11?

Right, the sub-headline "security through antiquity" is a nod to both the oft-repeated "security through obscurity," while pointing out the fact that antiquity is sometimes underutilized or undervalued as a security mechanism (even if not tamperproof). Cyber defenses are thus best multi-pronged, which offers the best protection- by maximizing the amount of time an intruder would need to spend to determine what system it is using.

About your second comment- newer systems CAN be less secure, but not always. But even if they are, falling back on things like eLoran are important.

Thanks Microsoft, for adding my signature so I won't have to claim authorship when it ends up in a museum in 200 years, and the NSA archives are declassified for art historians filing a FOIA in 2226, who find out, "yep, it was from his PC."

I guess it shouldn't be surprising if an application called "paint.net" can determined if AI was used when connected to the internet. (I have used Paint.net more than a decade ago).

One of the motivating reasons I majored in Biology my sophomore year was that the Vatican was took centuries in accepting the heliocentric theory, and I thought if they got evolution wrong too, then there might be more work to do.

But then I realized that a lot of biologists are religious, and it didn't have to be an antagonistic competition.

Right, it's a small little intro that goes a long way.

I checked the habhub website and found this blurb: "habhub is the home of high altitude ballooning tools developed by UKHAS, and the SondeHub team. The habitat database was retired in 2022, replaced by the SondeHub database and tracker."

This intro was also quite helpful, which I found on the Sondehub github page:

https://github.com/projecthorus/sondehub-amateur-tracker/wik...

"SondeHub started out in 2019 as a database and mapping system for tracking meteorological radiosondes. It's hosted in Amazon Web Services, so it is scalable and reliable (though does cost more to run...). SondeHub is run by a small team lead by x, y and is currently funded through Patreon Sponsors and a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications. SondeHub handles many millions of radiosonde telemetry packets a day, with telemetry contributed by over 700 unique receiver stations."

I didn't include the names because it wasn't the purpose of the comment, just a nice way to introduce the story.

I understand that the habhhub shutdown is part of the story that they later reveal, and now folded into/adapted into Sondehub:

"HabHub, the Habitat database, and associated utilities have been hosted on a server donated by Nevis (name) since 2011. However, due to ongoing issues with server maintenance and rising power prices, continued hosting has become untenable. In addition to this, the software behind the Habitat servers has become extremely difficult to maintain, and a very large amount of work would be required to port it to a more modern operating system."

I've only read the first few paragraphs but I've noticed a narrative issue. I might be the only person to have this peeve, but when introducing a story to non technical and even technical readers, it's always clearer to introduce which website is not theirs and which website is theirs. It's written in a 3rd person perspective that doesn't take ownership of the websites.

"Only Melbourne and Adelaide radiosondes (the transmitter on weather balloons) were being tracked on a website called Habhub - high altitude ballooning hub."

Ok, I can infer that habhub probably isn't the speaker's website.

"A query parameter could be added to the URL to remove the filter and on 12th of May 2018 sondehub.org registered with a single purpose - a URL redirect to Habhub with a radiosonde specific filter."

Ok, I can infer sondehub was set up by a jokey duo or group of weather balloon hobbyists.

But it's really annoying reading and doubting this because I'm not 100% sure that the speaker is actually the domain creator of sondehub.

You can say "we registered sondehub" or "I registered sondehub.org." Poor journalists use this passive voice sometimes. "Something happened. A source said..." Unless you're protecting a source, you can say who said what, and what caused something to happen.

So I stopped reading, and wrote this comment.

I had the same thought too months ago. In fact, I speculated the i840 GPU could also be integrated. Might the i915 GPU (GMA 900) also be ready for patent expiration?? https://inavoyage.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-nm10-chipset-back... although, the Sandy Bridge process would be ideal in terms of efficient iGPU integration.

https://wafer.space allows chips but I think tinytapeout became what efabless was doing: https://chipfoundry.io/

Also Hitachi's SH-2 & SH-4 patents expired in 2016, so J-core picked up where they left off: https://j-core.org/

MIPS also went open source around 2018: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/data-center-hardware/mip...

Thanks for supplying the chain of licensure!

There have been some PowerISA implementations, https://libre-soc.org/openpower/ although libre project had a major setback a few years ago:

https://lists.libre-soc.org/pipermail/libre-soc-dev/2024-Sep...

True, and the only reason I'm partial to x86 and even some older ARMv cores is that there is a huge existing software ecosystem already available, reducing the need to develop new bootloaders and ports, as coding hours aren't free. CISC cores are treated as if they are a dirty word, but are more versatile for covering various applications.

Thanks for that information! I have been interested in getting x86 produced in smaller nanometer (e.g. <32nm). My project: https://ei2030.github.io/FemtoTX/#about

Edit: It also appears Nvidia might also have an x86 license: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/uli-m6117c/

Also, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-licens... (Caveat: The startup is acquainted with the Intel CEO, so it's rare for them to grant the x86 license to non-buddies.)

"Intel provided Rosaic access to an unknown Atom-class core, which enables the company to build its own custom processors based on x86 general-purpose cores, according to the report. The renowned chipmaker plans to ship Rosaic register-transfer level (RTL) code for the Atom processor core, which will let the startup build its custom system-on-chip (SoC) both at Intel Foundry and elsewhere."

What's interesting is that a startup with limited funds would most likely seek a 32-bit x86 license if a) they don't need more than 4GB of RAM, and b), if they don't want to pay AMD for the 64 bit license add-on. :)

"Now price the same journey on the other side, forget x86-64 and that duopoly, patent minefield, with multi-thousand dollar debug probes; we'll take a look at ARM."

The 386 and 486 patent should have expired more than 20 years ago. No one tried to open source it. https://github.com/EI2030/Low-power-E-Paper-OS/blob/master/0... There were many companies that had clones in the early 90s, and I wonder whether any of them still have the rights to manufacture them.

" That is a better reason than elegance. and I want to tell Mr Grinberg, that the word priviledge he tosses around in his article also extends beyond the ISA depending on where you are in the world."

Grinberg is an emigre from Ukraine, which isn't the most privileged place in the world. In fact his research articles go deeper than the average software developer in Silicon Valley.

Accompanying YouTube video (embedded video either still processing, or unplayable): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZtKSJwCzo

Though I am sure with enough time, someone can find a reason to need ECC.

the z386 doesn't output a proper analogue signal, or the ao486?