Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

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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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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