Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Ditch the Computers for Elections!

March 4th, 2017

It's too bad what I'm about to say. But computers of today are not secure enough for todays election (!!!). A white hat hacker in the Netherlands agrees and has facts why. His story is at soylentnews.org. Computers these days are a joke and I'll give you another example. I bought a computer in 1997. It was the cheapest of its kind for $850, and they really skimped on the parts. That same computer would be worth $1,240 today with inflation. But we can buy PC's for $300 so they really got a lot cheaper and/or skimped on the parts (and polluted rivers in China). We know they skimp on the parts because computers have not become inherently safer. In fact they are faster but brain damaged. So it's to no surprise that security software often slow computers down. (Why is that?!) It's because security requires processing in order to make smart decisions! I'll give you one example. The ISN of a TCP session in OpenBSD uses the cryptographic routine called arc4random(). Do your homework why this is important (see /usr/src/sys/netinet/tcp_subr.c - function tcp_set_iss_tsm(), an RFC 1948 is quoted in the comments). So while computers have gotten 4 times as cheap over 20 years, they haven't changed in design. This is too bad, this must change! In fact I'd expect a computer to cost more than $1,240 if it were anything more than crap!

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My first SIP ALG program

February 26th, 2017

ALG is a VOIP term and means Application Layer Gateway. I have created in the last week a SIP ALG program that I call rtptrack. It makes sure that outbound (inbound untested) calls work on the t-online.de network. The router I use is OpenBSD with the pf filtering system (which is supreme!).

The reason that t-online.de did not work with its existing setup was that they don't utilize an "rtphelper" algorithm which helps RTP punch a hole into a firewall. Sipgate.de and the VOIP company I work for do this and their setup just works (tm). RTPtrack should make Telekom work too. Finally something there works!

The download is here for a limited time.

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Four years in this ol' place

February 24th, 2017

I forgot to say...I am now four years in this apartment. Time has really flown. It's almost as long as my last apartment, which was a long time. I'm hoping on staying in this apartment beyond 2020. Unless I get other opportunities.

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Networking Plans for future Computers in my Home

February 24th, 2017

I'm hoping to replace everything (everything!) in my house with 10 gbit Ethernet equipment by/at the year 2020. For those equipments with many ports I have planned to get a high-end NUC or so and a switch that does VLAN'ing. My personal preferences for such a switch is 8+ ports and 22 watts power consumption or so. I've seen some switches that do 40 watts and that's too much for me. The cables will have to get upgraded too as they are cat5e standard, and I believe 10gigE requires cat 6 or 7. At least the countup of all of this is gonna be easy. These are my dreams for 2020 anyhow. There is 3 years to go, and I know I'll get cravings to get new equipment in between that. I hope I can stay disciplined enough.

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ZeroPager.de domain about to expire

February 21st, 2017

I registered this one either last year or the year before as a test domain. It served its function well. I'm letting it expire.

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Jobless despite Certification

February 21st, 2017

Golem.de (a news portal I read) reports that a 36 year old IT pro with system admin certifications and 10 years experience can't find work. Hear, hear! I believe it as I'm unofficially looking as well. Problem is that the golem article talks about 3000 such sysadmins also can't find work. It makes you wonder what is going on here?

We get Linux certified and can't use our skills? There is 50,000 job postings for IT jobs, why do 3000 people have to be out of work? The industry has not adjusted to what people are being trained on. Give us Linux jobs! Give us UN*X jobs! Also I would like to have the government probe into workplaces that are just faking job postings. To gain information for statistical purposes and advertising. If that is the case it should be highly illegal.

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Why I won't be renewing my Parship.de membership

February 17th, 2017

Parship.de is a matching/dating service. After one year and 500 EUR or so, I do not think I got the best service in the country. In fact I feel parship got a free ride off my money. Like I told my mom I'd have a better deal with a hooker for that money than get to look at the blurred out pictures of parship. Unlucky for me I don't really believe in hookers. So I had one person who I even talked to in messages there, noone else was interested in me. And she was an 80 out of a possible 117 points, so rather a bad match. They base these points on some psychological profile and try to match strengths with weaknesses. She stopped talking to me just before christmas right after I told her I had visual hallucinations before, I'm quite honest about my mental illness. Hiding from myself rests on my conscience and I can't go through with it. I like to be as honest as possible. In this case the person I talked with wasn't interested in psychos. How boring.

So I won't be renewing and I have already cancelled. Also I have noticed whenever they tried to match me with someone else the other party was fat like me. Just an observance.. mix all the psychos with the psychos, the fat ones with the fat ones and the coloured with the coloured ones is the impression I got from that. In the end the skinny, white and truely pretty people can continue their games of cheating, lying and using others. Go ahead.. not my game! I can't lie I'm attracted to normal sized women as much as anyone else. I'd date a fat one too but I feel the algorithm chose them for me because they were fat, and I'm sorta sick of that. In many cases, like in mine, being fat is not our fault but a side-reaction to medication used.

Also I sorta missed the bus. If I meet someone and we possibly marry and have kids... what worries me is that at older age there is higher chance of downs syndrom for the babies, so I looked for women mostly 8-10 years younger than me. And it felt weird because these women were just getting their lives going and I felt I wasn't on their wavelength. It just didn't work out. I'm glad for all those couples that met online through a matchmaker, but for me it wasn't great. I dunno I don't think I'll ever marry or have children anyhow. And getting into a relationship with someone who has kids...well that's too hard for me to follow through with. I don't want to use them because they're desperate finding a partner that can raise their kids, and it's too much of a burden for me as well. I'm a big baby myself and needn't be an extra chore for someone with a lot of chores. So meh. Forever doomed?

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I switched Internet Providers

February 14th, 2017

M-net was my old provider. They changed around 5 years ago and didn't give out goodies such as static IP's. That peed me off enought that I decided to switch the competition has all the stuff they have by now and more! I get VDSL2 now and get 100/40 speeds (more like 102/38 but meh). All in all I'm happy with this move. Unfortunately the new IPTV won't work on my network, I'm hoping to be able to give it back to the ISP and get a discount for just IP and SIP phone service. I still have to connect my SIP account but that shouldn't be so hard.

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Munich show a little more respect to Linux

February 10th, 2017

Linux for the city of Munich was innovative and popular. Now the CSU and SPD municipal government wants to turn back the clock and go with Microsoft products again. They forgot the lock-in they were in before. All over Germany people said "you should go to Munich" if you had anything to do with Linux. Such a movement should be rewarded not punished by tearing it down. They say that Microsoft is the standard. Well, to be honest I haven't used Microsoft products for over 20 years. I often can't find work when I'm looking for new work, perhaps because I didn't buy into the Microsoft hegemony. Those that use alternatives should be rewarded for being different in my opinion. If you saw the business opportunities the alternatives can create you'd want the alternative too. Microsoft is a dead-end. Anyhow shame on the munich municipal government for their wrong decision.

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Updated Network Map

February 9th, 2017

I have updated the Network map on how my network will look like after monday:

[gaia]--                    [raspberry pi]
          \                      |              [mercury]
[phone1] - \                     |                  |
            --- [uranus] === [Access Point] --- [gamma] ---- to pppoe cloud
[phone2] - /                    |
          /                     |
[beta]--                        |
                             [venus]-+--[spica]
                                ||   |
                                ||   +--[fritzbox LTE]------- to LTE network
                                ||   |
                                ||   +--[Telekom IPTV]
                                ||   |
                                ||   +--[Samsung TV]
                                ||   |
                                ||   +--[saturn]
                                ||
                             [freifunk]

New is that I drilled a hole through a wall for a cat5 link between access point and venus. I have also laid conduit for 2x 10 meter cabling for the TV and the IPTV set-top box. One thing that is funny is when I'm connected from beta to supercluster which is on the Internet, and I reboot venus, then the connection will drop between supercluster and beta. I haven't figured out why yet though. There is an IPSEC tunnel going from beta via uranus via gamma to mercury, that IPSEC's the part going over wireless. It too doesn't touch venus, so mega weird.

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