You are probably familiar with the Old Computer Challenge - I think I wrote about it several times - you get all the benefits of using a slow computer for seven days.

like it’s 1999

• Limit your computer’s CPU
• Limit your computer’s memory
• or use an old computer

This year’s topic is simple. Challenge yourself to the best of your abilities. Whether it’s a slower computer, obscure OS, or limiting your internet, it’s up to you what you make this year’s challenge about. It’s always a good idea to get inspired by other challengees! homepage

The challenge starts on July 13 and ends on July 20, or never, it’s your choice after all.

A user of the 4chan /g/ board leaked a massive 270GB of data from The New York Times, over 6000 source code repostories and approximately 3600000 files in total. Yes, it does have the original source code of the game Wordle, which NYT acquired in 2022. It contains internal communication from NYT’s Slack channels, authentication URLs and passwords, secret keys, API tokens, the whole shebang. Also some private data, names/surnames, email addresses and hashed passwords (from NY Times Education).

If you happen to have a RISC-V SBC (probably a VisionFive 2 or a newer board), you might want to install Gogs (and not Gitea or Forgejo, fuck ecosystem fragmentation) to host your private git repositories, the only problem is that there is no Gogs binary for RISC-V. So we need to compile it from source, fortunately it’s really easy, so I’ll keep the instructions as simple as possible and let the reader decide about the extra features.

Prerequisites

To build Gogs from source (and run) you will need go, a recent gcc version (for cgo-sqlite) and the git package installed. I’m also assuming that you’re running a fairly recent version of Debian for RISC-V, provided by the manufacturer of your SBC.

$ sudo apt install build-essential git

You didn’t want to be loved. You hated touching people and being touched. When someone hugged you I saw you make a face. You hated being complimented, and you tried to ignore it when it happened. When someone put time and effort into doing something for you, you were grateful but I could tell by your expression and your tone that you wished they hadn’t bothered. Sometimes I would see you turn down invitations or offers to hang out with people. Other times I’d notice that you tried to prevent others from getting close to you, or sabotaged relationships with them deliberately.

#19: CaptainBlackbeard Vs. George Soros

THE GREATEST EPIC AUDIO THRILL RIDE RETURNS!!!

The Finest Sounds Around From The Underground returns with the biggest epic in CaptainBlackbeard Radio history! We have wanted to do this story for years but had to wait for the technology to catch up. With the new leaps in AI technology, we are now able to do things once unthinkable at the beginning. CaptainBlackbeard Radio has always been pushing the extremes of experimental. But this episode pushes this new AI technology to the limits. With a first of its kind audio epic featuring several real actors cloned in AI. This was a dream project, just deciding on famous personalities to work with, like choosing colors out of a crayon box.

In this episode, we bring ye a gripping, intense and perhaps all too real audio thriller. The 21st century has ushered in an utterly confused, frantic and perhaps self destructive reality. This story explores those modern things in detail, while detailing the effects George Soros has had on modern reality. From a front line ambush in Afghanistan. To visiting Epstein Island. To battling a space alien invasion to save humanity. Episode #19 CaptainBlackbeard Vs. George Soros takes ye there on an audio roller coaster unlike anything ye have ever experienced.

Ever since I made contact with the OpenSearch spec I wanted to implement it on my website, but it was postponed, and postponed, and postponed. Not anymore, I had some free time and I implemented it (not like it was a huge change, took less than 5 minutes).

Add a new Hugo output format declaration (in config.toml):

[outputFormats]
	[outputFormats.OpenSearch]
		baseName = "opensearch"
		isHTML = false
		isPlainText = false
		mediaType = "application/opensearchdescription+xml"
		noUgly = true

The more I study the works of men in their institutions, the more clearly I see that, in their efforts after independence, they become slaves, and that their very freedom is wasted in vain attempts to assure its continuance. That they may not be carried away by the flood of things, they form all sorts of attachments; then as soon as they wish to move forward they are surprised to find that everything drags them back. It seems to me that to set oneself free we need do nothing, we need only continue to desire freedom. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

Very frequently I get flashes of “This is exactly how I saw this when I was a kid” about random things. Sometimes specific things, like if I watch a video of a game I used to play when I was a kid, I’ll have a sudden flash of “how open the world seemed to me, how amazingly full of possibilities it was”, etc., along with a lot of (this is almost impossible to describe) “how just this weird shiny red patch on the health bar seemed so important, or special, or amazing”. I think I’m basically remembering fragments of a child really thinking and believing things like “If I just had a shiny mech suit like that I’d be so happy” or “I want to live in this space-sim world where everything is just chrome.”

This article is the next in the “I have a Nokia Booklet 3g netbook and I want to do retro stuff on it” series. I’ll install virtualization software (namely Microsoft Virtual PC) on Windows 7 and virtualize some operating systems, which is an amazing thing to do on such an underpowered netbook (Intel Atom CPU, 1GB RAM). Remember you’re probably connecting a severely outdated operating system to the network, so you might get the chilly willy.

Microsoft Virtual PC

Virtual PC is an x86 emulator for PowerPC Mac hosts and a virtualization app for Microsoft Windows hosts. Virtual PC emulates the following environments:

• Intel Pentium II (32-bit) processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset (with PIIX4E southbridge).
• Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB by manually editing a virtual machine’s settings file).
• System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI).
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP.
• DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.
• Programs using undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work.

Lately I’ve been having fun with my Nokia Booklet netbook and Windows 7, and I wanted all Internet traffic blocked when there is no active VPN connection (VPN killswitch); this can be done with just Windows Firewall.

There are several steps involved:

1. Download and install OpenVPN GUI for Windows 7 (make sure you don’t install OpenVPN Connect by mistake).
2. Get a OpenVPN profile from a VPN provider (Proton, Njal.la, Riseup).
3. Setup all VPN traffic to be allowed.
4. Setup all other network traffic to be blocked.
5. Fine-tune the firewall rules.

Go to Start Menu -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. In the left panel click on Outbound Rules and once the outbound firewall rules are listed, click on New Rule in the right panel.