Alexander Bochmann @galaxis@mastodon.infra.de
generic computer and internetworking geek
network and systems administration, infosec, retrocomputing
Joined May 2017
Turns out that the Opera Mini proxies still can be accessed from Opera Mini 7.1 on an Nokia E6 (Symbian Belle), and Opera even still supplies the download. Can't get Opera Mobile 12 from them anymore though, but it's available from some download sites that seem only marginally more shady than the Symbian software sites 10 years ago...
(Ok, I certainly still have it somewhere in my archives too, but searching the web seemed easier...)
Anyways, added three user agents to the uadb 😉
Missed this earlier on until I was catching up on the RISKS Digest: https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/32/49/#subj18.1
Quote:
> Margaret Salter was the author/architect of Dual_EC_DRBG, the best-known instance of the NSA attempting to subvert civilian cryptography and security standards.
> Margaret Salter is now Director AWS Applied Cryptography at Amazon.
> This is perhaps not what one would call ideal in terms of trust in the security of the world's largest hosting service.
Links back to a tweet my Matthew Green
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
Do you know anyone browsing web with unusual hardware and/or operating system? Out of the usual Windows/Linux/Android/iOS scope? Please point them here:
Explanation here: gopher://i-logout.cz/1/phlog/posts/2021-02-13_my_little_user_agent_database.txt
If you don't speak gopher: http://hracka.org/~logout/phlog/2021-02-13_my_little_user_agent_database.txt
"Making of" screenshot attached.
(Boosting the post will help.)
I don't think I like these kernel messages showing up occasionally:
BTRFS error (device dm-1): invalid tree nritems, bytenr=209646862336 nritems=0 expect >0
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
Remember the names Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven, Lev Ratnovski, as signatories to the death of all privacy and the opening of universal surveillance in all commercial and financial dealings.
Under the remarkably anodyne title "What is Really New in Fintech" and published by the International Monetary Fund blog, these four men proposed that credit ratings be improved by "tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases".
https://blogs.imf.org/2020/12/17/what-is-really-new-in-fintech/
Everything you do online, transferred to, assessed, rated, and stored permanently, one would suspect, by that most highly egalitarian and trusted of all institutions, the global financial system.
Arnoud Boot is professor of Corporate Fiance and Financial Markets at the #UniversityOfAmsterdam, in the country whose census records were used during WWII to prosecute the Holocaust on the Netherland's Jewish population. Of 107,000 deported Jews, only 5,200 survived.
Peter Hoffman is an economist working at the Financial Research Division of the #EuropeanCentralBank (#ECB), researching microstructure of financial markets, but apparently neither ethics nor privacy and surveillance.
Luc Laeven is Director-General of the Directorate General Research of the #ECB, and previously worked with the #IMF, #WorldBank, and #ABNAmroBank.
Lev Ratnovski is Sr. Econoist at the #IMF's research department.
These men would sell your entire informational history to gain a few fractions of a percent of interest income.
The banality of evil indeed.
#ArnoudBoot #PeterHoffmann #LucLaeven #LevRatnovski #Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #Privacy #BrowserHistory #SearchHistory #Profiling #Credit #Risk #Holocaust
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
Damn it #Mozilla! How do you keep making #Firefox worse? Bookmarklets that open a new window are blocked by firefox as popups, even though the user is the one initiating them. Its infuriating to try to perform some common daily task, only to discover that now its broken because Mozilla decided you shouldn’t be able to do it.
Retro music day...
(Player is actually Audacious with the old ASCII Amp Winamp skin.)
Heh... Right next to the desk I had two cover strips that had fallen off from the window blinds years ago, so sawed one of them off and just put it next to the LEDs with more double-sided adhesive.
Let's see for how long that stuff stays in place 
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
Found an old unused LED stripe, so the workbench now provisionally has some more light. Will have to add some kind of shade in the long run, maybe a thin strip of wood, to hide the bright spots from direct view...
Das mit dem Briefwahl beantragen geht dann wohl doch nicht so einfach...
...also the system lost time and firmware settings that made it boot into OS X instead of MacOS 9, so I really should go check the battery before anything bad happens in there...
Haha - ah, yeah, no... I just lost the USB power supply for the VGA/HDMI adapter while crawling under the desk...
Black screen connected to an PowerMac 9500. Didn't expect that?
Funny. Using the Inventronik ECL/VGA adapter displays the boot screen in TT high mode, but goes blank as soon as the system switches to the desktop.
Standard TT VGA modes are shown, no surprises there.
Intermittently displays something like this when connected to an Atari ST (where the signal timings are way off from VGA standards). Not really usable, but I'm kind of surprised it shows any picture at all.
There's currently tons of these HDMI capture devices out there for under €10, presumably all built on the same Hefei MacroSilicon MS2109 chip.
The VGA/HDMI dongle is just some random no name thing that's another €7...
Ah, pity - though not really a surprise: My combination of VGA-to-HDMI adapter with an HDMI USB frame grabber does not seem to be able to handle non-standard timings or resolutions. Tried to put it behind a 13W3/VGA adapter (the Sparcstation was nearest to the system I was trying this on), but all I got was a black picture.
Have a screen capture taken with this setup from my old G4 iBook instead - that one puts out normal standard VGA.
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
Alexander Bochmann
boosted
@zwol One of the basic tensions of academia that we do not help people navigate is that learning the skills we need to impart _necessarily involves_ re-walking well-trod ground. We grade on what people carry across the finish line - arguably the least important part of the process - and punish people who try to game that process as harshly as possible.
generic computer and internetworking geek
network and systems administration, infosec, retrocomputing
Joined May 2017
