Links week 01/2024

Selected bookmarks since week 40/2023. As you can see, I started to categorize them. Let's see if this is here to stay.

Space & Astronomy

• Roll Your Own All-Sky, Raspberry Pi Camera - "capture mesmerizing time-lapse images of the heavens" - 06/2023, D. Schneider, IEEE Spectrum

• Astronomy Picture of the Day - "Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer." - nasa.gov

• NASA finds water and organics in asteroid sample - "possible clues to origin of life" - 10/2023, E. Berger, ars technica

• I, Voyager - "a free, open-source software planetarium and development platform for creating games and educational apps in a realistic solar system."

Technology & Programming

• The Decline of Computers as a General Purpose Technology - "We do mean that the economic cycle that has led to the usage of a common computing platform, underpinned by rapidly improving universal processors, is giving way to a fragmentary cycle, where economics push users toward divergent computing platforms driven by special purpose processors." - 03/2021 - N. C. Thompson, S. Spanuth

• COMPUTERS ARE BAD - "is a newsletter semi-regularly issued directly to your doorstep to enlighten you as to the ways that computers are bad and the many reasons why. While I am not one to stay on topic, the gist of the newsletter is computer history, computer security, and "constructive" technology criticism." - j .b. crawford

• Scrollbars are becoming a problem - "[...] scrollbars are getting smaller and this is increasingly becoming a problem. I would show you screenshots but they’re so small that even screenshotting them is hard to do. - 10/2023, artemis.sh

• I REMEMBER IANA - "A long time ago, in a network, far far away, a great adventure took place!" - 10/1998, V. Cerf, RFC2468

• John Gilmore on ARP, RARP, BOOTP, DHCP, and Sun - "the origins of the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP), via the NANOG mailing list." - 05/2022 - G. Michaelson

• Undocumented Feature - #1305, xkcd.com

• DIGITAL FOLKLORE - "this reader contains essays and projects investigating many different facets of Digital Folklore: online amateur culture, DIY electronics, dirtstyle, typo-nihilism, memes, teapots, penis enlargement …" - 11/2009 - O. Lialina, D. Espenschied, M. Buerger

• no-more-secrets - "A command line tool that recreates the famous data decryption effect seen in the 1992 movie Sneakers."

• combined.txt - I heard this is the "bad word list" from the Nintendo Switch filesystem.

• The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox - "..it’s becoming evident that while cloud clearly delivers on its promise early on in a company’s journey, the pressure it puts on margins can start to outweigh the benefits, as a company scales and growth slows." - 05/2021 - S. Wang, M. Casado

• IPv6-mostly on OpenWRT - "Running NAT64 / PREF64 / DNS64 / DHCP108 at home" - 11/2023 - O. Caletka, RIPE87

• RFC1876 - A Means for Expressing Location Information in the Domain Name System

• Fun with DNS TXT Records - "DNS as a Password Manager?" - thoughts.theden.sh

• OpenNIC Project - "Looking for an open and democratic alternative DNS root? Concerned about censorship? OpenNIC might be the solution for you!"

• Beej's Guide to Network Programming - 04/2023, B. Hall

• Modern Pascal is Still in the Race - "[...] it is time to get the big picture, not following marketing trends.", 22/2022, A. Bouchez

• lone - "Lone is a freestanding Lisp interpreter designed to run directly on top of the Linux kernel with full support for Linux system calls. It has zero dependencies, not even the C standard library."

• HTML First - "is a set of guidelines for making it easier, faster and more maintainable to build web software.."

• missing.style - "missing.css is the CSS library we wished already existed."

• PHP - The Wrong Way - "This website has been created in an attempt to present a pragmatic view on PHP programming. A view dictated by experience and practical consequence rather than popular trends, theory, or academic dogma." - Unix Sheikh

• Different Strokes For Different Folks - "So, Emacs and the mouse. This is an unexpectedly contentious topic, with discussions that end, at best, with careless dismissal. [...]" - 11/2023 - Karthinks

• The Incredible History of the Domain mastodon.de - 09/2023 - E. Uden

• Webmention - "Webmention is a simple way to notify any URL when you mention it on your site. From the receiver's perspective, it's a way to request notifications when other sites mention it." - 01/2017 - W3C Recommendation

• The (Internet) Shutdown Game - "[...] we created a game to help shed light on various kinds of internet shutdowns and ways to counteract them." - apc.org

• A schism in the OpenPGP world - "[...] Now, though, it would seem that a split in the OpenPGP community threatens to fragment the OpenPGP-encrypted-email landscape, potentially leading to interoperability woes. [...]" - 12/2023 - J. Edge, lwn.net

• Terminal graphics protocol - "The goal of this specification is to create a flexible and performant protocol that allows the program running in the terminal, hereafter called the client, to render arbitrary pixel (raster) graphics to the screen of the terminal emulator." - K. Goyal

• αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε - "One day, while studying old code, I found out that it's possible to encode Windows Portable Executable files as a UNIX Sixth Edition shell script, due to the fact that the Thompson Shell didn't use a shebang line. Once I realized it's possible to create a synthesis of the binary formats being used by Unix, Windows, and MacOS, I couldn't resist the temptation of making it a reality..." - 08/2020 - J. Tunney

• Unix shells and the current directory - "Famously, Unix has the concept of a process's 'current directory', including for your shell processes. Recently, I saw an interesting Fediverse discussion on some aspects of the current directory which aren't necessarily obvious, partly because both Unix kernels and Unix shells have become more complicated over time." - 11/2023 - C. Siebenmann

• Probe network - how we make sure our data is accurate - 06/2023 - ipinfo.io

Computer Security

• Reflections on Trusting Trust - "To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses. Perhaps It IS more Important to trust the people who wrote the software" - 08/1984 - K. Thompson

  • Running the “Reflections on Trusting Trust” Compiler - "Supply chain security is a hot topic today, but it is a very old problem." - 10/2023 - R. Cox

• Computern kann man nicht vertrauen - 07/2014 - H. Hübner

• Unpacking the First Route Leak Prevented by ASPA - "On 25 January, a fascinating email arrived in my inbox via the Secure Inter-Domain Routing Operations (SIDROPS) mailing list with the subject line “first route leak prevented by ASPA”." - 02/2023 - A. Siddiqui

• Encrypted traffic interception on Hetzner and Linode targeting the largest Russian XMPP (Jabber) messaging service - "..we have discovered XMPP (Jabber) instant messaging protocol encrypted TLS connection wiretapping (Man-in-the-Middle attack) of jabber.ru (aka xmpp.ru) service’s servers on Hetzner and Linode hosting providers in Germany." - 11/2023

• The Mirai Confessions - Three Young Hackers Who Built a Web-Killing Monster Finally Tell Their Story - 11/2023 - A. Greenberg, wired.com

• ssh-audit - "is a tool for ssh server & client configuration auditing."

• awesome-honeypots - "A curated list of awesome honeypots, plus related components and much more, divided into categories such as Web, services, and others, with a focus on free and open source projects."

  • masscanned - "provide generic answers to as many protocols as possible, and with as few assumptions as possible on the client's intentions."
  • FaPro - "Free,Cross-platform,Single-file mass network protocol server simulator"

• honeynet.org - "a leading international non-profit security research organization, dedicated to investigating the latest attacks and developing open source security tools to improve Internet security."

Tools

• ia - "allows you to interact with various archive.org services from the command-line."

• alternative-front-ends - "Overview of alternative open source front-ends for popular internet platforms (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, etc.)"

• IRCCloud - "IRCCloud is an IRC client with a future. Stay connected, chat from anywhere, and never miss a message."

• jsmpeg-vnc - "A low latency, high framerate screen sharing server and client, viewable in any modern browser." - 04/2022

  • jsmpeg-vnc-linux

• Protomaps - "is an open source map of the world, deployable as a single static file on cloud storage."

• Vore - "is a minimal, no-bullshit web-based rss/atom feed reader." - J. Olson

• pa - "a simple password manager. encryption via age, written in portable posix shell" - J. Olson

• age - "age is a simple, modern and secure file encryption tool, format, and Go library." - F. Valsorda

• ladder - "Ladder is a web proxy to help bypass paywalls. This is a selfhosted version of 1ft.io and 12ft.io. It is inspired by 13ft."

• FreeIPA - Identity, Policy, Audit - "Manage Linux users and client hosts in your realm from one central location with CLI, Web UI or RPC access. Enable Single Sign On authentication for all your systems, services and applications." - I heard a talk on this on the SLAC23 in Berlin and FreeIPA was simple and impressing.

• Heimdal - "Heimdal is an implementation of: ASN.1/DER, PKIX, and Kerberos."

• Carbonyl - "Forking Chrome to render in a terminal" - 01/2023 - F. Boundjadj

• Multiple Window 3D Scene - "This project demonstrates a unique approach to creating and managing a 3D scene across multiple browser windows using Three.js and localStorage." - B. G. Staal

• Wireskip - "Wireskip is an open source VPN protocol designed with the goal of providing unrestricted access to the internet from anywhere. [...] It's pretty fast, looks like regular HTTP/2 traffic, has multi-protocol support, multiplexed connections, onion encryption & routing and increased privacy." - wireskip.com

Retrocomputing

• DSlinux - "The DSLinux project has ported the Linux operating system to the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite."

• Nokia 3410 SDK 1.0 & emulator (clear-rip) - archive.org

• Telehack - "is a simulation of a stylized ARPANET/Usenet, circa 1985-1990. It is a full multi-user simulation, including 26,600+ simulated hosts from the early net, thousands of files from the era, a collection of adventure and IF games, an advanced BASIC interpreter with a library of programs to run, simulated historical users, and more."

• Telix - "Telix is a telecommunications program originally written for DOS by Colin Sampaleanu and released in 1986."

• DESQview/X - "an X Window System server running under DOS and DESQview and thus provides a GUI to which X software (mostly Unix) could be ported." - Wikipedia

(DESQview/X - an X Window System server running under DOS - lunduke.substack.com)

• Internet Artifacts - "You may touch the artifacts "

• NLS (computer system) - "the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system developed in the 1960s" - Wikipedia

(On Line System Videoconferencing, 1968 - wikipedia.org)

• Netscape Chat - multiple versions - archive.org

(Netscape Chat - archive.org)

• The Apollo Guidance Computer - "The AGC performed all of the necessary computation to successfully guide, navigate, and control the spacecraft, which carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon back in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission." - 12/2021 - M. Mattioli, IEEE Micro

• One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age - "Digging through the Geocities Torrent"

• digitalblasphemy.com - A site for computer generated art that was very popular in the late 90s/ early 2000s - R. Bliss

(Fluorescence - Probably the most famous piece back then.. - beta.digitalblasphemy.com)

• BSD on Windows - "Things I wish I knew existed" - 12/2023 - neozeed

• EtherDFS - The Ethernet DOS File System - 2017-2023 - M. Viste

Retrogaming

(and related)

• ZQuest Classic - "an engine for making games similar to the original NES Zelda"

• SimEarth - Wikipedia

(A screenshot of SimEarth: The Living Planet - myabandonware.com)

• dosgames.com - "Over 1.900 free DOS games"

• Nintendo Screensaver collection - for Windows - archive.org

• Commander Keen's Adaptive Tile Refresh - "[...] John describes being hit by lightning upon seeing Adaptive Tile Refresh (ATR). That made me realize I never took the time to understand how this crucial piece of tech powers the Commander Keen (CK) series." - 07/2023 - F. Sanglard

• Cathode-Retro - "A collection of shaders to emulate the display of an NTSC signal through a CRT TV"

• Ultima Hacks - "Some modifications to the video games Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992), Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle (1993), Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (1993), written as bits of (mostly 16-bit) x86 assembly, together with a program, written in Java, that patches them into the game's executable." - J. Glassmyer

• Blues Brothers - "Blues Brothers, Jukebox Adventure & Prehistorik 2 engine reimplementation (SDL2)" - twojstaryzdomu

• Reconstucted source code for Duke Nukem II - "This is a reconstruction of the source code of the game Duke Nukem II (Apogee Software, 1993), based on disassembly of the original executable. It compiles with era-appropriate toolchains and produces a binary that's 100 % identical to the original one.."

• bsd-games - "This is the bsd-games package for Linux (and GNU Hurd), containing ports of all the games from NetBSD-current that are free in the usual [...] sense"

• KeeperFX - "is an open-source remake and fan expansion of Dungeon Keeper" - KeeperFX 1.0.0 has been released! - 11/2023

Society, Media, Psychology & History

• Welcome to the age of the hermit consumer - "more than two years after lockdowns were lifted, at least one change is enduring: consumer habits across the rich world have shifted decisively, and perhaps permanently." - 10/2023 - The Economist

• Spain’s high-speed trains aren’t just efficient, they have transformed people’s lives - 10/2023 - M. Ramírez, The Guardian

• How to Boss Without Being Bossy - "Leaders command people. [...] But people don’t often appreciate being commanded. [...] How do you become a good boss, but not be “bossy”?" - 11/2023 - J. Woffword

• Exploding head syndrome - "is an abnormal sensory perception during sleep in which a person experiences auditory hallucinations that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up." - Wikipedia

• The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation - "The Dunning-Kruger effect also emerges from data in which it shouldn’t. For instance, if you carefully craft random data so that it does not contain a Dunning-Kruger effect, you will still find the effect. The reason turns out to be embarrassingly simple: the Dunning-Kruger effect has nothing to do with human psychology.1 It is a statistical artifact — a stunning example of autocorrelation." - 04/2022 - B. Fix

• Bikamerale Psyche - "Die Hauptthese von Julian Jaynes, die er selbst preposterous („absonderlich“) nennt, besagt: Bewusstsein hat sich in historisch nachweisbarem Ausmaß erst in dem Jahrtausend vor der klassisch-griechischen Hochkultur entwickelt, etwa zwischen 1300 und 700 v. Chr. Die Menschen vor dieser Zeit hatten kein Bewusstsein, das heißt im Sinne Jaynes’ kein autonomes, exekutives Selbst." - Wikipedia

• Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on Vacation - 07/2013 - M. Popova

• Deutschland kippt nach rechts - "Die Bundes­republik hat 2023 einen dramatischen Rechtsruck erlebt. Ein Ende ist bislang nicht in Sicht – wenn sich nicht endlich einiges ändert. Sechs Strategien, um der rechten Mobilisierung entgegen­zuwirken." - 12/2023 - M. Quent, republik.ch

• The Images That Shaped History - "Iconic Photos of World War II" - 03/2023 - C. Seaver, historydefined.net

• A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox - 10/2022 - H. Karlsson, Escaping Flatland

• Open, rigorous and reproducible research - "A practitioner’s handbook" - 12/2021 - D. Card, Y. Min, S. Serghiou

• GNUTIEZ - "ein Bot, der die Headlines und Teaser der großen Onlinezeitungen im Blick behält. [...] publiziert [...] alle Änderungen an Headlines und Teasern von bereits online gestellten Artikel[n].

• sources.com - "Searchable deep-indexed database of expert sources, media spokespersons, and news and information sources."

Miscellaneous

• Skeuomorph - "a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original." - Wikipedia

• Navaho Legends - "edited by G.E. Stechert; 1897; American Folk-Lore Society, New York" - The Public Domain Review

• Hogwarts 1996 rave - Not the original source.. Did not found it quickly enough.. - twitter.com

(AI generated image of Harry and Hermione raving - twitter.com/tunguz)

• LEGO-Weltrekorde - "Mit LEGO-Bausteinen erzielen kreative LEGO-Enthusiasten die verschiedensten eindrucksvollen Rekorde." - recordholders.org

• What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2024? - "A Festive Countdown" - The Public Domain Review