Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Let's just end this here

March 14th, 2017

Turkey is just using Germany and the EU, to get support for its already anti-EU course. Why should they be in the EU? They shouldn't. The differences between Turkey and the EU are too great. Turks might feel offended by Europes stance, but this is not your country that you pledge allegiance to! Unfortunately we have to watch all the human rights abuses come out of Turkey, just to prove a point that they are different. Why do we need them in NATO? How strategic is a dictator run Turkey to NATO? We don't need them! Let this end. It's better this way.

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Replaced SPF with TXT records

March 12th, 2017

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;centroid.eu.			IN	TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
centroid.eu.		86400	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 ip4:108.61.211.139 \
ip4:78.47.14.22 ip6:2a01:4f8:d13:1980::/64 \
ip6:2001:19f0:6c00:9041:5400:ff:fe11:3332 ~all"

I did this change because RFC 7208 section 3.1 says that SPF records were discontinued. Finally someone told me! lol.

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A thought just came...are humans in the way?

March 12th, 2017

Brexit came at an interesting time. This time we realise that human resources for labour are starting to dwindle. This is not because of a lack of humans. In fact we have more humans than ever. But I'm talking about automation. About a decade ago I attended gatherings of laid-off personell and other job seekers and I remember one lady was among the first victims to digitalization. She was a photo developer working for Kodak or some company, and was laid off because digital cameras replaced analog film cameras. I predict in a decade or two time I will again be visiting those meetings as the System Administrator who was replaced by Artificial Intelligence.

Then there is Great Britain whose humans voted for exiting the EU. This can be a chance for britain to up its manufacturing as automation only and to develop its AI backed with quantum computer technology. A quantum computer on that small island is almost a saviour when comparing the island with the human resources of the continent Europe. Britain can enter as a guardian and security analyst by checking Internet traffic that transits its country en-masse with artificial intelligence and quantum computers and thus it might get a pretty good picture of what a single firewall state or flow is about to do. It can then sell this information to 3rd parties or governments. What this leaves the british public with is unknown. Either everyone is gonna travel the world and hardly be home while computers do all their work, or they'll be locked up in their house and using virtual reality to entertain themselves. Would this create a nation of VR addicts? Is that life really satisfying?

And lastly I want to throw in why basic income is perhaps a good thing in times where industry is automated. We should be persuing a model for humans that allows us a satisfying life (since our economy is rolling) and much like in the series Star Trek TNG humans try to better themselves intellectually and spiritually. Unfortunatly the speed at which automation happens is faster than the speed at which politics are realising that humans will be out of work and temporarily or permanently depressed about this state. We need to make it clear that yesterdays politics need to be replaced by todays needs.

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OpenBSD 6.1 will be released on May 1st

March 8th, 2017

Once that release is done, I'll be upgrading computers around here, and I'll get a new domain too, as I want to run delphinusdnsd in production somewhere with a test domain. I have the capacity to do this now with the new VPS. Also I've been thinking around how to better the database with delphinusdnsd which uses BerkeleyDB from Oracle as it's underlying database. I may have to rewrite the database entirely and make a shared memory hash table. Time will tell and it will tell if OpenBSD will upgrade BerkeleyDB or not. Currently I believe it's at 4.6.21p3.

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The North Sea's deepest point

March 8th, 2017

In the north sea, north of Germany, there lies not far from Norway the Norwegian Trench. It is as deep as 700 meters. This is the only point where the north sea is 700 meters so it makes sense that the norwegian trench is the intended place for these "power" spheres that are pumped storage facilities, as the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems Engineering has envisioned. So I looked a little at this. I tilted my head a little and thought, that would make an incredible underwater replenishing station for submarines. If enough power spheres are made it won't be immediately noticeable that they would repurpose some to be hydrogen storage containers. Hydrogen? What for? Well if you haven't heard by now Type 212 submarines of the German Navy use hydrogen to get their power. And did Norway have the same subs? Well yes. They just ordered a batch of four from Germany last month. So there is the operators of the replenishing facility. Only problem is: Can Type 212 subs dive to 700 meters? And I checked on wikipedia and the answer is, yes. So perhaps there is a military mandate as well as the economic mandate for these power spheres. I gotta admit I really used my imagination to the fullest here, and used wikipedia to back up hypotheses. Would be something right? If there was a submarine base just off Bergen? BTW Bergen is strategic, in all my games of the submarine simulation "Red Storm Rising" as a youth it was the Soviets that would capture Bergen first and a submarine had to stop the landing crafts. It was usually that the Soviets succeeded in taking most of Norway and Germany, so if that's in simulations it must have been a fear. Red Storm Rising was a game that probably had navy advisors as common knowledge would have never been enough to make that game as real as it is.

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New VPS

March 7th, 2017

I know I have a lot of these but I really need one over in Canada. It's a $10/mo digital ocean VPS in Toronto. I hope it sees use.

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The car I intend to buy

March 5th, 2017

I've not had a car since 1993, so close to 25 years. Back then I had a 1987 Dodge Shadow (turbo). And after moving to a metropolitan area of 4 million or so inhabitants (rough estimate), I preferred taking the subway, bus, or even go about by bicycle. Since I've been working at a job in the VOIP industry for close to 7 years now, I've saved up my money. And I'm finally wanting to spend that money again. First I wanted to invest it into a business, but that is harder than you think. I'd rather get a car now and i've set my eyes on an electric car. Particularily the Renault Zoe. I've fallen in love with that little car, even though I haven't driven it yet. Should be interesting taking my first ride in it. With the car I'm going to get a few other gadgets. For example a cell phone. Yep I haven't had a cellphone for close to 15 years now. I'll need it to call emergency services when my car has problems. Also I do want to persue astronomy more and perhaps get a Newton or such scope. With a car I can put it all in the trunk and drive to locations where it's dark enough. I don't know what it is but it seems I've been granted a new stage in life from a very skimpish lifestyle to being normal. I'm just soaking it in, and spending the money I aquired over the years. Should be good.

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When I fell into the EU's lap, or, what's wrong with you?

March 5th, 2017

When I left West Germany as a child to live in Canada for a decade and a half, I left not knowing about the EU. I retained a german passport however and returned to now-united Germany in 2002. In fact in 2002 I don't remember using the DM anymore and it was the Euro. The EU was big in population. Real big. Bigger than the USA, and I had to get to terms with that, that I'm now living in a 500 lbs Gorilla superstate.

Sooner or later I began to like what the EU allowed me to do. I took on trips to France and the Netherlands in the next decade, without needing to go to customs or money exchanges, and it was a great feeling. It was like something directed me into place that I was a European now and not just a German citizen.

I also considered taking a train to London via the Channel Tunnel right from home and considered the route on bahn.de. Unfortunately with Brexit I'll have to delay that London trip a little bit. I don't feel comfortable with customs at all. We should live in a borderless world. Really! And we should become world citizens. But it will have to be European as a first step.

Don't get me wrong. I too have had my share of hard times being unemployed for 7 years at a length, in Europe. It may seem sometimes that Europe is not able to compete with itself for jobs. But at the same time we're getting richer as a community so the money goes somewhere. I'd say look not at globalization as the culprit but the un-equal structures that evolved before states united into the EU.

We have to make the EU great. And not again. Because we were never great. We're in our infancy and the six founding members of the EU, of which Germany (West) is a part of, needn't try to break up this once in a lifetime opportunity. We are the core, we should set the examples for the rest of the EU.

In the past I have seen an unseen hand of the Internet try to downgrade the EU. Try to sever our bonds from far. With me that doesn't work however I see much to be desired for when it comes to the number of crisis situtations that we have to endure. I'd like to see us become closer tied in the future. That means not just internal affaires being handled in the EU but also that we have an arm of external affaires and handle those. Only then can the EU defend itself.

Germany is having an election year this year and I do intend to vote for a pro-EU and pro-solidarity party. Have a nice day.

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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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