Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

The TriNet

November 4th, 2017

Here someone wrote about the TriNet which is comprised of Facebook, Google and Amazon (all american companies btw). See here. BTW I have half a dozen websites on the Internet, but none of them do much in terms of user interaction. Of those three companies I use Amazon, to get my books, but I use Google less and less (use duckduckgo for searching now) and don't use facebook at all (last use was 2011?). I think the Web is not going to be surplanted by the TriNet like the author here says. But who knows? If anyone has ideas how we bloggers can appeal more to people let me know.

Currently I get most traffic from the USA, this is probably directly linked to the language I chose on this blog. Next is France, Germany, China and Ukraine. I have room to grow really as I get 2 TB volume on my VPS that hosts the web, but I'm not there yet. Currently the websites take up 1 GB of traffic. So I have lots of resources that I pay for but that aren't utilized. I wish I could say "people wake up", but wake up to what? Many people are clueless to know that they can write a blog, or maintain it. Perhaps something like Facebook is needed for them. Too bad Facebook is not a not-for-profit though, and we already know my stance on the advertising. So yeah the web is dying.

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Internet bandwidths

November 3rd, 2017

In 1994 I first had Internet. Off a 28.8 kbit/s analog modem. In 1998 then I upgraded the analog modem to a 64 Kbit/s ISDN-NA channel. In 1999 I got 1 Mbit/s ADSL and gone were the analog modems. Today I have 100/40 Mbit/s VDSL , so between 1994 and 2018 that is an increase of a factor of 3555.56 over a timespan of 24 years. So in 2042 if this trend keeps up we can enjoy bandwidths of 350 Gbit/s. I think this is only doable with fibre and currently with 1 laser only 100 Gbit/s is achievable, so there is room for improvement in the FTTH technology. I'm locked in to a contract on VDSL until 2019, but in 2020 I'm planning on upgrading my home network to 10 Gbit/s speeds. Once that is done, my router will be switching faster than the 300 Mbit it currently does and I'm ready for gigabit to the home. Whether that is over copper or fibre I don't really care, but by 2024 I sure hope to have over 1 Gbit/s speeds available at which FTTH or FTTB (I'm in a building) should be here. That's 6 years turn-around time for the Telekom or other providers to deliver. Time will tell. BTW I'm for the government to privatise the Deutsche Telekom and use the money to re-invest in fibre to the home.

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20 Years since I started at Globalserve.NET

November 2nd, 2017

It was in November 1997 when I started working at this ISP. At first I started part-time but that changed to full time as I dropped a math course I was taking at the University of Toronto. Dan M. (RIP) had introduced me to Robin D. who was CEO of Globalserve. It launched me on a career that was like a roller coaster. I wish Globalserve hadn't sold but there was no money to be made with analog modems anymore so they had no choice. I worked really hard at that place, and for low wages for the type of job. At Globalserve there was a guy named Dustin (or Justin?) who ran OpenBSD on his laptop, which I thought was really cool. With help from Figz on IRC I installed OpenBSD on my workstation there too. First time I ran OpenBSD (it was 1998), the computer then was called geeklab.globalserve.net, which was odd but I wanted to be a geek back then or something, hehe. Am I a geek? I don't know you tell me. Some people I met at or through Globalserve/Primus are still in my friend-circle, and I miss some other people that I lost contact with. 20 years gone.. damn.. almost half my life, through thick and thin, I'm still here.

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What it tells me

October 30th, 2017

I've been job-hunting for a while now. Conclusion: I'm not wanted. No matter what I may know, if they don't like me. And they don't. They won't hire me. It's so frustrating I want to climb a ceiling or something. Like a cat. I'm really considering starting my own business as I don't see a chance to get hired here by someone else.

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Network re-arranging

October 28th, 2017

Due to the KRACK attacks I have decided to lay a cable from the hallway into the office. This will make the access point irrelevant, but i'm keeping it around just in case. But! I'm at a point where i need more ports in the office and my firewall uranus there only has six ports, and all utilized. So I'm going to swap uranus with venus eventually as venus has exactly six ports utilized with no more coming in the foreseeable future. It also has six spare ports for a total of twelve ports (it's a soekris that is maxed with expandability). I'll likely immediately use up 8 ports on venus in the office, as I'm moving the access point into the office as well (going to keep it off until it's needed, likely never since I am going to explore using IPSEC on a roadwarrior config with freifunk). Here is an updated network map how it should look like:

[Apple TV]----------+                    [LTE FRITZBOX]    +----[mercury]
                    |                          |           |
[Samsung TV]--------+                          |           +----[AREA52U-UPLINK]
                    |                          |           |
[Spica]-------------+-----[uranus]----------[zeta]---------+----[AREA52U-BATMAN]
                    |                          |           |
[saturn]------------+                          |           +----[AREA52U-BRIDGE]
                    |                          |           |
[AREA52W2-BATMAN]---+                          |           +----[TELEKOM pppoe]
                                               |
                                               |
                                               |
                                               |
                                               |
[VOIP phone #1]-----+------+------+---------[venus]-------+------+----[beta]
                    |      |      |            |          |      |
             [phone #2]    |      |            |          |      |
                           |      |            |          |      |
                   ((=[5Ghz AP]   |         [earth]       |  [expansion]
                                  |                       |
                           [AREA52O BATMAN]            [delta]

So I'm likely going to get this done in the next three weeks.

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Purchased last batch of books for year

October 28th, 2017

Last year I purchased 15 books in total. I matched that this year. Here is the last batch of books that I bought for 2017.

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Global Edition - Russell, Stuart,Norvig, Peter
Astrometry for Astrophysics: Methods, Models, and Applications - van Altena, William F.
Fundamentals of Astrometry - Kovalevsky, Jean

I decided to buy two books on astrometry because yesterday I was sifting through ESA's Gaia mission page and downloaded data regarding the parallax of of stars that this mission constructed. It's unrelated to the books but if you were curious check here. I plan to make a small program to help me determine the closest stars in any region in the sky. Anyhow I noticed the data was cross referenced to the Hipparcos mission which ran earlier and did parallax astrometry as well. I found the 13th most distant star from earth in the constellation virgo was called Ross 128 aka HIP 57548. In the distances paper that I got the data from it is the closest star. Why I don't know but it is, I sorted the data and checked. Perhaps because the other 12 closer stars are too close? Or are well known? Anyhow to get to the bottom of some of my questions I bought these books. I'll have to have a lot of reading to do. Perhaps I can couple astrometry with artificial intelligence one day. LOL.

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Delphinusdnsd: What's ahead in the next two months

October 27th, 2017

The year is coming to an end in 2 months, and I'm going to tell what there is still to do until the 1.2.0 release. I'm working on patches to make delphinusdnsd work more around the imsg functions found in OpenBSD. I'm hoping for one more week of vacation between christmas and new years and then I'm going to likely roll the 1.2.0 release. Right now we're a go for a January 1, 2018 release. Time will tell if that is manageable. Beyond the two months I don't want to speculate too much. But I'm interested in putting CAA support in for the 1.3.0 release. Also I need to do key-rollover in DNSSEC as my own zones need new keys (RSA 1024 bit strength currently).

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Purchased Fundraiser Tees

October 24th, 2017

I have purchased two fundraiser t-shirts designed by a friend of mine's daughter that will ultimately rebuild a Nunavut school in Canada. Read the hyperlink to gain more information. Thanks goes to Jackie who helped finding my mails in the stores Junk mail folder. The t-shirts I have asked the store to send to my niece and nephew, also in Canada.

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Finished upgrades to 6.2

October 17th, 2017

I had finished my upgrades to OpenBSD 6.2 on saturday, but i wanted to do a network wide backup as well. That was done last night. AFAICR my network doesn't have any more 6.1 or 6.0 machines.

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Krack Attack, WPA2 broken?

October 16th, 2017

The rumour of the day is that WPA2 is broken. here is a writeup by arsetechnica. At home I'm mostly OK I think as I wrap my layer 3 in IPSEC as well, so if WPA2 is broken there is another layer to crack. Hopefully there will be patches though.

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