Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Happy Hallowe'en

October 31th, 2019

I got treats this year, but only limited. I'm basing this on last years so hopefully it'll be like last year. HOohooo! I'm not dressing up though.

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Three days til Brexit, Goodbye UK! - EU

October 28th, 2019

When I returned to the EU from Canada, in 2002, I felt it was nice to have the UK in the European Union. I had actually started thinking of taking a trip to London per rail through the channel tunnel, but then Brexit came and I didn't feel such a need anymore. Too bad. The UK will be more like Canada in that it's a country next to a great Union (UK next to EU, and Canada next to USA), I wondered if this is the English way, when I made that comparison. One can also include Australia next to China but there is a bit of ocean between them. So well...I hope Britain does well and I hope they'll be able to open doors-of-thinking to the EU in terms of a different point of view. At first the UK rejoining the EU is probably not wise, I don't know if there would be retaliations from the EU if that were to happen. Let's be seperated for a bit, what comes next I hope will be positive. Goodbye UK - European Union Citizen.

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Caught in Holger's trap, patch produced

October 24th, 2019

I upgraded my octeon NAT router even though I knew someone was getting a panic condition. That was monday. What ensued was a 2 day mad hacking event to produce a patch. It was a guy named Holger that first reported the trap 2 upon a pppoe connect. This affects only octeon architecture in OpenBSD. My patch works but is probably not the fix that OpenBSD is looking for. Miod produced a patch but it didn't fix the trap condition. So this is what kept me on my toes in the last little while. It's awesome I have a patch to fall back on, and I made it!

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My Halloween Witches Brexit Poem

October 19th, 2019

I just formulated this on IRC:

brexit brexit what's the deal,
independence we must feel!,
But if it does break our backs,
we go back to live in shacks!
fire, smoke and turmoil,
the soup is about to boil,
and if it causes hardships,
you will hear it from my lips

Not quite a Harry Potter rhyme but I tried.

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OpenBSD 6.6 released yesterday

October 18th, 2019

I have already upgraded most of my OpenBSD computers. There is very little others to do. For my workstation beta I think I'm going to attempt a source code update and then install the 6.6 kernel afterwards. The 6.6 release page is here. The artwork seems to lean on the movie "Trolls 2", for which I saw a trailer yesterday. Thank you OpenBSD, for everything!

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SpaceX Starlink, appease the concerned Astronomers

October 17th, 2019

SpaceX has applied 30,000 (30K) more satellites to be put in orbit. But this is getting a bit too much in my eyes. I would appease the Union of concerned Astronomers first. Perhaps with launches of astronomy equipment to the far side of the moon. We are at a crossroads here and astronomy on earth will never be the same with so many satellites in low earth orbit. Here is a story from slashdot. Compromises will have to be made if we let SpaceX do this.

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Three more USB 2.0 ports on my G5 Mac

October 11th, 2019

Well, I finally got the 2nd PCI card for USB 2.0. I got it from reichelt.de, and it's an exsys.de product. It works in the Mac at least it's not smoking like the previous card. Unfortunately my idea that the USB 1.0 ports on the Mac were responsible for the KVM switch not working was not right. Even with this new card there is a problem booting with 'boot -a' on OpenBSD. My second guess is that when the driver attaches to the USB keyboard, the switch resets it and there is no new handshakes and OpenBSD/macppc sits in a prompt asking which drive to use. Since the keyboard reset, I can't enter anything. Oh well. It is becoming more evident that I need to use this G5 as a standalone device. Perhaps what OpenBSD can do is get rid of the -a flag in ofwboot and really detect which device (ultra0, or ultra1) was the device that was booted with from OFW. It doesn't do this and the -a flag is the workaround. Another workaround could be to allow USB to reconfigure in the -a prompt. Then I think it could work.

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I am now a MacOS-free household

October 09th, 2019

After I put OpenBSD on my 2015 MBP, I realised I created a void. I finally realised what it was. I don't own any more MacOS computers. In a few years perhaps I'll get my hands on one again perhaps. But for now there is a transitional phase where I don't have to worry about the security of MacOS. This is a giant plus. I do have my ipod still running a very hackable iOS 9. So I don't use it much anymore except for google authenticator. But I must look for an alternative for that. My eyes are set on a Purism Librem 5 but only if it carries the CE cert, which should be mid 2020. I'll be watching that scene quite intensely because it would be my first cell/smart phone.

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Ordered a PCI USB 2.0 adapter

October 7th, 2019

I need this because my G5 lacks enough USB 2.0 ports. I noticed the KVM switch does not like the USB 1.0 ports that are there for keyboard and mouse and so I'm trying with this expansion card that has 4 external ports. It should be delivered here thursday at the latest. Hopefully it will make a diff!

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Turned on the heat for 2019/2020 winter season

October 7th, 2019

It's four (4) days later than last year. I got lucky, but now it's getting a bit too cool in the apartment. I set the electric heaters to step 1 out of a possible 3. It will take about 2 days for them to reach normal operating temperature since they are of the "nachtspeicherofen" kind.

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