Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Arjen Kamphuis missing in Norway

September 27th, 2018

If you didn't hear of this, here it is. A computer security researcher has gone missing in Norway. Here is what I heard about him. He worked for wikileaks once and thus could be seen as a threat to the western establishment. He did appearances/speakings with William Binney an ex-NSA intelligence officer who turned whistleblower. Who knows what sorts of enemies he made. I believe he went missing 4 weeks ago, near Bodo (sp) in Norway, he was on his way to Trondheim to catch a flight to the Netherlands (which is his country of birth). He rented a folding kayak, and last week his belongings were found in the bay or fjord near Bodo. It was claimed that he was not suicidal. Norway reported that his cell phone was turned on for 5 seconds near Stavanger which was 1700 km away, but there is room for error so this wasn't reliable. The Netherlands dispatched two criminal investigators to Norway to help the search effort. That's all I know. I hope he's found.

In other news, Wikileaks founder and lead Julian Assange is no more the lead person for the Wikileaks organisation.

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Zitis is going to use a quantum computer

September 27th, 2018

In this link (german) from heise.de, Zitis announces that they are going to use a quantum computer to crack Internet cryptography. This doesn't surprise me. If the germans are doing this, the Americans are probably already there at 10x the budget, so 6 billion USD perhaps. It's hard to tell how many black budgets the USA have. We know that IBM, D-WAVE, Google, Microsoft and others are working on quantum computers. So is NASA and other government contractors. Soo. It may not be possible for a million classical computers to crack your crypto, but the government can. Or if you dish out 20 million dollars for a D-Wave. How does that make you feel? Personally it makes me feel shitty. As the government is a data whore, they take any piece of information they can. At least here. Where is the privacy? And what makes anyone so sure that high crime isn't going to buy their own quantum computer? Or maybe they already have that. I'd like to make you aware of a post-quantum cryptography RFC that has hit us already it's called RFC 8391.

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Trusting Letsencrypt?

September 24th, 2018

Recently it came to my attention that paypal has pulled out of business with Alex Jones of infowars.com. I don't necessarily agree with him 100% and maybe not even 50% but I do recognize that he's being censored, and how easy american corporations have the authority to ban someone.

This story made me think of letsencrypt. Because I was looking for a what's the catch scenario. And I found it I think. Let's encrypt is mostly american corporations who are its sponsor as told at https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/. I always thought they were google and perhaps I'm not wrong. Anyhow. If you get in trouble with an opinion that americans dislike (like alex jones) what are the chances that they'll revoke your TLS certificate? You're basically unable to do business online anymore at that point, and wide open to spoofery and forgery.

Freedom it seems has a price after all. Now I'm a little uneasy going with letsencrypt for this website because there is really no choice. There is no other service that compares. I'll try it though. In a few weeks when OpenBSD 6.4 comes out, I'll be making steps to encrypt this website with the acme-client. It'll be interesting how that will work out. Not my first time working with letsencrypt but first time with acme-client. As a final sentence I'd just like to say "keep looking for the conspiracies out there", maybe someone will find something.

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Smuggling Politics into a Free Trade Zone (goods, services and values?)

September 22th, 2018

When the EU was formed it was called the EEC as far as I know. EEC the European Economic Community was a free trade zone among its member countries. Eventually politics made it into this free trade zone and we have a centralized police force governed by the EU (EuroPol). Now there is talk of a european military, and the original free trade zone is overshadowed by the stench of political values. Where will it end? I for one am growing more and more distant to the EU. How many laws do we have? I know not one. Why am I not being taught these laws? Is a single human being even capable of knowing them all and not be a professor, or professional of law? This is getting ridiculous I say we need only a blacklist of the most important things that we can't do, ie. Murder, Steal, Bribe, Libel, and others to sum these up it's called common sense. Put away the whitelist of the things we can do as they are a given. Don't make politics too complex or the people will not know what you want of them. It seems to me the vision of the free trade zone was lost in the need for values imposed on us the EU citizens. And we don't even know the laws of which we're constrained with. Only until we're charged in a court of law. Pathetic?

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Trivia: Three famous people who went into exile on another Continent

September 22nd, 2018

This was a hard list to create because two were easy and the third not so, easy. Well here goes:

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, spent five years in exile in Bath, England
Napoleon of France, spent the rest of his life until his death in St. Helena, Atlantic Ocean which was closest to Africa or South America.
Fethullah Gülen, is a not so well known person from Turkey who is in exile in the USA
Dalai Lama of Tibet, while he didn't exile into another Continent (Asia) it is said that India is a sub-continent, I'll add him here anyhow as the fourth famous person in exile.

If you know any other figures who are in exile on another continent send a comment.

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What my dad taught me

September 20th, 2018

When doing taxes, my dad taught me that the value of office equipment is stretched over a period of four (4) years. This taught me that office equipment has a lifespan of around 4 years. Then it's time to buy new stuff, and this has to be calculated into the business plan from day one. When I see people using Core 2 Duos still, for work tools, I keep thinking that the problems stem not from the day they bought equipment X years ago but that they didn't think of replacing it (X + 4) years later. I'm totally disgusted by business practices out there. And I have to pass the buck here, I'm not going to involve myself with this, let some other fool take the wheel there.

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My frustration with technology

September 20th, 2018

Windows is a pest, And it's also very much expensive. So much that people can't afford it. Nor can they afford a new AMD computer because their Intel Core 2 Duos are not supported anymore. People can't afford to buy new computers, the old will have to do. So other than the fact that you're an instant hack target and noone wants to work with that, what is Intel and MS giving the people? I can try to evangelize Open Source as an alternative but people never learn. I've given up to preach to others to use X systems. Here in Germany we saw a lot of betrayal where cities and states decided to use Linux and then changed their minds and used Windows again. Linux people out of a job again. But that's not the real problem. The problem is that noone will commit. So good bye. Hey my systems run. If you want me to go through the complexity of explaining it all to you it'll cost money, and you'll have to commit to it. Not backstab, like they do.

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Alternative fuer Deutschland Criticism

September 20th, 2018

These people supposedly are so smart they are professors and stem from academia. OK smart people, tell me, what Operating System do you have planned for Germany because it seems the old conservative route is to go with Windows. I'm going to try to portray that we are a nation of crack addicts addicted to the Windows crack. This in itself conditions each one of us to uphold the same old power structures that shapes thinking and actions. We are not some nation where there is 1% online and the rest offline. It's more like 85% are online. So what alternative for Germany are these people giving in terms of Operating Systems? If it's the same ol', then I wish you good luck. I'll take my hat and walk. No I'll run. Away from you. Because you have no real solutions.

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September Equinox in 3 days

September 20th, 2018

According to wikipedia the September Equinox is on the 23rd of September at 1:54AM UTC. This is also when autumn officially starts. At least in the northern hemisphere. Trees are already starting to turn a little over here. Favourite times.

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Can they just do with us what they want?

September 20th, 2018

Here is some food for thought. Why is there no left-wing anti-EU party in the EU? None of the bigger ones anyhow. When the question pops up whether the EU is really good for us all, it's the AfD who say "well we said it all along 'raus aus der EU'" and the left-wingers will have drooping faces. It's not that I would immediately vote for such a party, but it would perhaps be good to have that option? Because the EU could turn out to be a disaster for individual people rights, especially when it comes to intellectual property issues on the Internet. I'm not a software-pirate in fact I almost exclusively deal with Open Source which makes piracy of that software a non-issue. I'm unsure if the "Pirate-Party" is left leaning, but noone wanted to vote for them when I voted for them so their issues were perhaps too early for the times. They also weren't anti-EU afaik.

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