As soon as a (human) civilisation becomes advanced and “rich” people start to realise that life is meaningless and they always existed in a relative, post-modern condition. They struggled for so long to discover that. To evolve out of a cave that just floats around. Human history and evolution as a mere Truman show, but also as a stepping stone - to finally see reality for what it is, one must go through heavy narrativism to even survive and evolve to this point. Who knows how many organisms went through the same thing in the universe.

And normal people are drawn downward toward the false synthesis (merely tolerating contradictions’ ambiguities) while you, my friend, are drawn upward (actually trying to reconcile them in higher syntheses, coincidentia oppositorum rings a bell?). When you are talking to a normie he’s showing you his normie brain and you are sensing the normie-sewer-system he is a part of, in which all normie stuff is mingled together and everybody partakes of the muck, and you are trying to show him the higher ineffable syntheses in which contradictory principles like “Duty at all cost” and “Don’t people have a right to be happy?” ought to be reconciled.

Modern 32bit software can be compiled and ran on any low-powered machine (like my Nokia Booklet 3G) with as low as an Intel Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM. Just make sure you have enough swap space (and maybe install a SSD instead of the old HDD) and don’t expect to compile Firefox or Chromium. You could cross-compile stuff on your beefier machine but that would be cheating, right?

IM: Ricochet Refresh 👍

Ricochet Refresh is the new updated version of Ricochet, supported by Blueprint for Free Speech.. We are a non-government, not-for-profit organisation working to safeguard the freedom of expression for whistleblowers, activists, and everybody else, worldwide. Blueprint was the original sponsor of Ricochet, written by developer J. Brooks. source

$ sudo apt install cmake tor build-essential libprotobuf-dev \
	protobuf-compiler libssl-dev libfmt-dev qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev \
	qml-module-qtquick-layouts qml-module-qtquick-controls \
	qml-module-qtquick-dialogs qttools5-dev \
	qtmultimedia5-dev qtquickcontrols2-5-dev
$ git clone https://github.com/blueprint-freespeech/ricochet-refresh.git
$ cd ricochet-refresh
$ git submodule update --init src/extern/tor
$ mkdir build
$ cmake -S ./src -B ./build -G"Unix Makefiles" \
	-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel \
	-DRICOCHET_REFRESH_INSTALL_DESKTOP=ON \
	-DUSE_SUBMODULE_FMT=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/
$ cmake --build ./build -j$(nproc)
$ sudo cmake --build ./build --target install

If you don’t already know, Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd that allows users to reclaim control over their system by avoiding unnecessary entanglements and ensuring Init Freedom.

While latest Devuan Daedalus (version 5) is getting close to the release date but it’s still beta, some people might be impacient and want to already upgrade Chimaera (version 4) to Daedalus. It’s a really simple upgrade but your mileage may vary depending on what packages you need.

Start by replacing all occurencies of chimaera with daedalus inside /etc/apt/sources.list. You should have those three lines, everything else should be commented out for now:

deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-updates main
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-security main

The USBGuard software framework helps to protect your computer against rogue USB devices (a.k.a. BadUSB) by implementing basic whitelisting and blacklisting capabilities based on device attributes. source

Basically, USBGuard prevents all unauthorized USB devices from connecting to your machine.

Start by installing it, if you’re running Ubuntu, Debian or other Debian-based distros:

$ sudo apt install usbguard

Or, if you’re running Fedora:

$ sudo dnf install usbguard

Make sure all USB devices that you want to be allowed by default to connect to your system are plugged in (don’t worry about the built-in USB devices, like your laptop webcam or Bluetooth module, they get whitelisted automatically), and generate the default policy:

Did you ever wish to make an error (or warning) message appear so big in the web browser’s developer tools that the unsuspecting victim who opens the console will be scarred for life?

Fear not, we all wanted to do that, and you can do it very easy. How, you might ask? Using CSS styles inside the console.log() function, of course.

The basic usage of the function is console.log('This is a message!') but by using %c-style substitutions you can apply any CSS styles you can think of to the log message.

If you work in security or you like to pretend you work in security (we all do, friend, we all do), you must’ve heard about BusKill. Every infosec person going to a Defcon (or like some of us call it, NSA Job Recruitment Fund) has one of those because it’s so cool pretending to be a 133t hacker and their threat model definitely requires an immediate shutdown of the computer, else the nefarious actors (APT21, APT22, APTsqrt(69)) will retrive their porn stash. And nobody want to lose their porn stash.

But just in case you think it might be interesting to have a way to shut down (and lock, if it’s encrypted) your laptop in case somebody snatches it from your hands (hello USA, get well), keep reading because I have a solution that doesn’t involve paying those BusKill people your hard-earned pennies.

You will need an USB disk drive (any capacity, better left empty and/or unformatted, or even better, you can put several /dev/random dumps disguised as files named NATO_protocol.docx, PiZZ@G@t3.doc and Nuclear_Launch_Codes_v4.5.pdf, just for the kick of it). Don’t keep important stuff on the drive because the trigger is system power off and the data on the drive might (read WILL) get corrupted.

It’s that time of the year when I post website (and not only) updates, as in what changed, what improved, what is still failing, how much the Internet sucks, the society sucks, people suck, you know the drill. Personal stuff mostly.

For starters, I decided some sort of a git repository is required for my projects but I needed to provide that by maintaining the current status-quo, which means no PHP/Ruby/Python CGI support in the web server(s) and no additional server(s) ports opened except 6969, 80 and 443. And once I ran into Stagit it all made sense: static git page generator.

And now git repositories can be browsed at http://sizeof.cat/git/, git deploy is done via a custom workflow which I will detail more in a future article. Not only the repos can be browsed but they can also be cloned from the same address, because the actual git repo contents is rsynced to the web server(s), both the Clearnet and Tor ones. Feel free to inspect my git config and post-receive hooks for sensitive information, penis tasters. I mean pentesters. Or not.

And, as a bonus, repos can be cloned via Tor, too. That has to be pushing static website hosting to the extreme, right?

Tapo C310 is a full-featured weatherproof security camera that you can access from anywhere. Receive instant notifications and check feeds when the motion is detected. Moreover, the automatic siren system will trigger light and sound to frighten away unwanted visitors after the camera detects motion. Day or night, rain or shine, the Tapo camera protects what you love most. source

My “investigation” begins with a TP-Link Tapo C310 IP camera, which is a type of smart camera connected to the Internet and reachable through any web browser and an IP address. From the documents provided by the manufacturer, no additional information was given about the type of hardware architecture (CPU and RAM) or the security of the device. Only the software can reveal clues about what is actually inside the hardware, so all that remains is to analyse the camera’s firmware.

▶ Operating System: Debian

I always felt a strong connection to Ian Murdock (the founder of the Debian project, the name is a portmanteau of the first name of his girlfriend and later wife Debra and his own first name; Deb Ian) and I considered him an older brother even though I have never met him. I followed the last period of his life with great sadness and it’s very easy to draw a parallel between the lives (and deaths) of Ian Murdock and Terry A. Davis. I could write endless paragraphs on the power, stability and coherence of the Debian operating system, but I won’t. You just need to try it.

Thank you for everything, Ian.

▶ Game: Beyond All Reason

I was and still am a HUGE FAN of Total Annihilation, so its spiritual successor is on the top of the list; it even has multiplayer and can be used for competitive gaming if you’re into that sort of self-flagellation. I know that in theory Chris Taylor (the original designer for TA) created much later the Supreme Commander series, but for me Beyond All Reason really captures the essence of Total Annihilation, and it’s open source to boot. Chris is my other brother and I can only thank him so much for the fun he provided to the younger me, by playing his masterpieces, Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege.

• Buy your own domain and establish your online presence.
• Start your own website (as quirky or cool or cringe as you want) and grow it:
  • No ads.
  • No product promotions or sponsored links.
  • Hand-crafted.
  • Compatible with older browsers and machines.
  • Join webrings.
  • Link to people like you.
• Get involved, participate in forum conversations, it’s what keeps them alive.