jay.scot

shuffling things around a bit

Diffstat:
M .gitignore | 1 +
M bin/sync.sh | 2 +-
M index.gph | 40 ++++++++++++++++++-------------
A meta/changelog.txt | 0
A meta/email.txt | 5 +++++
R about/jay.scot.asc -> meta/jay.sco… | 0
A phlog/001.txt | 73 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/002.txt | 116 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/003.txt | 79 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/004.txt | 118 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/005.txt | 91 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/006.txt | 236 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/007.txt | 93 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/008.txt | 84 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/009.txt | 33 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/010.txt | 38 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A phlog/011.txt | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
D txt/001.txt | 74 -------------------------------
D txt/002.txt | 117 -------------------------------
D txt/003.txt | 80 -------------------------------
D txt/004.txt | 119 -------------------------------
D txt/005.txt | 92 -------------------------------
D txt/006.txt | 237 -------------------------------
D txt/007.txt | 94 -------------------------------
D txt/008.txt | 85 -------------------------------
D txt/009.txt | 34 -------------------------------
D txt/010.txt | 39 -------------------------------
D txt/011.txt | 41 -------------------------------

28 files changed, 1032 insertions(+), 1030 deletions(-)
---
(DIR) diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
drafts/
+files/
(DIR) diff --git a/bin/sync.sh b/bin/sync.sh
@@ -1 +1 @@
-rsync -vz --delete --exclude=git* --exclude=.git* --exclude=bin* -a . jay.scot:/srv/gopher
+rsync -vz --delete --exclude=files/*.tar.gz --exclude=git* --exclude=.git* --exclude=bin* -a . jay.scot:/srv/gopher
(DIR) diff --git a/index.gph b/index.gph
@@ -8,28 +8,34 @@

J A Y . S C O T

+PHLOG

PROJECTS

-CONTACT
+OFFLINE

-[h|EML ... me (at) jay (dot) scot|mailto:me@jay.scot|server|port]
-[0|GPG ... 0726AF07C73389E1E4475B7EC88BBC696A39CCB0|about/jay.scot.asc|server|port]
+PHLOG ... curl -O gopher://jay.scot/0/phlog/[001-011].txt
+FILES ... curl -O gopher://jay.scot/0/files/hpuk.tar.gz (651MB)
(DIR) diff --git a/meta/changelog.txt b/meta/changelog.txt
(DIR) diff --git a/meta/email.txt b/meta/email.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+run the following in a shell:
+
+ echo "zr@wnl.fpbg" | tr '[a-z]' '[n-za-m]'
+
+please use my pgp key if you can.
(DIR) diff --git a/about/jay.scot.asc b/meta/jay.scot.asc
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/001.txt b/phlog/001.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[001]
+
+
+--[ So much bloat around dotfiles
+
+
+Let's be honest here everyone who uses some form of *BSD or Linux knows
+what 'dotfiles' are these days. It's super common to push your local
+machines various configuration files to GitHub/GitLab or whatever 3rd
+party hosted git provider happens to be flavour of the month.
+
+The thing that really annoys me for some reason is the amount of people
+that use dedicated programs to manage dotfiles. I am not talking about
+tools such as GNU/Stow that have multiple purposes, or home-grown shell
+scripts, not my choice but there is nothing wrong them. I am talking
+about bloated crap such as Ruby gems or even worse some NodeJS
+application with 100s of dependencies included. Let's look at a few..
+
+ AutoDot - "A minimal dotfile manager".
+ - NodeJS
+ - 230+ dependencies
+ - 50+ different maintainers
+ - https://github.com/ajmalsiddiqui/autodot
+
+ DotStow - "manage dotfiles with stow" (stow front-end???)
+ - NodeJS
+ - 270+ dependencies
+ - Spread over 200 maintainers
+ - https://github.com/codejamninja/dotstow
+
+ Homesick - "Your home directory is your castle"
+ - Ruby
+ - Requires ruby, bundler, thor, rack (devel)
+ - git clones to ~/.homesick then symlinks...
+ - https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick
+
+These types of apps make my balls scurry back up from where once they
+came. It's just so completely over-engineered and unnecessary, each to
+their own I guess. Personally I just use a tool that's already on
+everyone's machine GNU/Make nice and simple! Below is a basic make file
+you can use to get start, just update the files and configs values and
+then run `$ make` and you are good to go!
+
+
+ files := bashrc xinitrc muttrc vimrc Xresources
+ cfgs := qutebrowser ncmpcpp mpd git mutt
+ dotfiles := $(shell pwd)
+
+ all: link
+
+ define symlink_file
+ ln -fs $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1);
+ endef
+
+ define symlink_dir
+ ln -fns $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1);
+ endef
+
+ link: @$(foreach f,$(files),$(call symlink_file,$(f),.))
+ @$(foreach f,$(cfgs),$(call symlink_dir,$(f),.config/))
+ @echo files linked
+
+ .PHONY: all link
+
+
+Its pretty straight forward and you can't really go wrong with it, in my
+own personal Makefile I have a few added steps such as adding backing up
+installed packages list and cron entries. You can find it over on my git
+repo which might give you a better understanding how it works in the
+real world.
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/002.txt b/phlog/002.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[002]
+
+
+--[ GitHub: The Facebook of coding
+
+
+In my opinion, there is no question that GitHub is the new Facebook for
+coders and geeks. What I mean by the new Facebook is two-fold, first the
+type of users you find on GitHub and secondly the businesses shenanigans
+over the years.
+
+
+THE USERS
+---------
+
+Essentially, GitHub is now a necessity when you are applying for jobs
+inside the tech industry, recruiters look for it, businesses are
+requiring it and insist you engage in coding challenges that must be
+done on the platform. This doesn't sound like a bad thing really, or
+does it?
+
+
+ YES, actually, it does!
+
+
+GitHub has now become a shit storm of individuals seeking to pimp out
+their profiles with bullshit Pull Requests, faking timelines, forking
+repos and raising entirely pointless issues. Everything with the goal
+of showcasing how much they have contributed to open-source projects. As
+a recent example look no further than Digital Oceans Hacktoberfest
+clusterfuck, useless PRs such as deleting spaces all in the hopes of
+getting a t-shirt.
+
+
+Another real world dilemma impacting users is the knowledge gap of
+actually using git normally, GitHub is NOT git. GitHub is a proprietary
+closed-source front-end for a centralized git hosting service. Users
+have become completely dependent on features that GitHub have built such
+as PRs, forks, online editing, branch protection to name a couple.
+I doubt that many users are even aware of commands such as send-mail
+which is a core function of many projects outside the GitHub world. Nor
+does it help when the web interface of GitHub encourages sloppy git
+practices, relying exclusively on one way of doing things, the GitHub
+Flow.
+
+
+THE COMPANY
+-----------
+
+Let's start off with the obvious fact that Microsoft owns GitHub.
+Microsoft has a long track record of open-source hatred, the CEO has
+even gone as far as stating "Linux is a cancer" at one point. This is
+not good, Microsoft were outed by the U.S. Department of Justice for
+using this internal term. In short, it ties in well with buying their
+way into open source projects right? Sounds like GitHub is at the
+Embrace stage...
+
+
+ "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" [5]
+
+
+Electron, the Chromium engine / NodeJS pile of shit that requires a few
+Cray supercomputers to run a calculator app on was developed and pushed
+into the ecosystem by good friends, GitHub. Now we are blessed with
+awesome spyware programs such as WhatsApp, Discord and Skype that will
+now run on Linux YAY /s. I mean there is just so much mud around GitHub
+that I just don't have the urge to go wading through it, searching even
+more than I have already. Here's a short fire list with some sources to
+follow-up on, if you are interested.
+
+
+* Denied employee harassment by CEO
+* Blocked users from country's under US trade sanctions
+* Have dealings with ICE, they keep kids in cages
+
+
+Due to an incredibly weak DMCA take down notice by the RIAA, youtube-dl
+was recently banned by GitHub. After it hit main stream news GitHub
+crapped the bed and started on the news PR. It was not, however, until
+after the EFF moved in and sent a letter [10] to GitHub describing how
+the DMCA notification was absolute dog shit that GitHub did something.
+After this, GitHub went into complete PR mode after and they made it out
+that they were the saviours of the day and how they'd stronger and
+better in the future.
+
+
+Anyway, enough of this rant. If you are looking for a 3rd party hosted
+git solution then please take a look at these two:
+
+
+* SourceHut, https://sr.ht
+* GitLab, https://gitlab.com
+
+
+Or do what I do an just use the naked git protocol without any front-ends, its
+stupidly simple.
+
+
+SOURCES
+-------
+
+>> https://drewdevault.com/2020/10/01/Spamtoberfest.html
+>> https://git-send-email.io/
+>> https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/index.html
+>> https://davelane.nz/microsoft-there-way-win-our-trust
+>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
+>> https://tknk.io/01P8 Electron
+>> https://tknk.io/xnsf
+>> https://tknk.io/rddV
+>> https://tknk.io/8pfH
+>> https://tknk.io/RMLT
+>> https://tknk.io/XtFd
+
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/003.txt b/phlog/003.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[003]
+
+
+--[ Qutebrowser is amazing but..
+
+
+**UPDATE** as of version 2.0, these are not an issue now. Time to move
+back to Qutebrowser!
+
+
+For those preferring browsers with a minimal GUI and vim-like keyboard
+controls, Qutebrowser is a fantastic choice. The project can be compared
+to Firefox add-ons like Vim Vixen but with a smoother and more refined
+user interface, backed by an active creator. With that being said here
+comes the but.
+
+
+And it's a big BUT for me, I no longer use Qutebrowser due to lack of
+privacy options compared to the likes of Firefox with add-ons. Does
+Qutebrowser have any choices at all for privacy? It sure does, BUT for
+the requirements of today's modern web it's just not enough to cut it.
+This is a list of things that you can do:
+
+
+* disable javascript
+* disable geolocation
+* disable webgl
+* custom http headers
+* custom user agent
+* reject cookies
+* stop canvas reading
+* host based ad-blocker
+
+
+Although the problem is not a poor list of choices, each of these
+choices has very limited scope. For example, the ad blocker is
+a primitive host based list from a flat file. You're going to get video
+ads and page elements still showing. It just doesn't compare to add-ons
+like uBlock Origin, where all ads traces are just erased. Setting
+cookies to deny all the time often contributes to a poor user
+experience.
+
+
+As an example, I will be constantly be asked to fill in CATCHPA's for
+every site sitting behind CloudFlare. However, I can install a cookie
+cleaner on Firefox that manages cookies on a per site basis, deletes
+them as soon as you navigate off the site, close a tab etc.
+
+
+I also discovered that Qutebrowser does not function as intended with
+the option to hide the referrer header. This is currently an upstream
+issue with the engine Qutebrowser uses, QtWebEngine. In the hopes that
+this gets resolved, I have opened a bug report directly with the
+project.
+
+
+Using the EFF's browser fingerprinting tools might show you as rather
+unique compared to Firefox with the privacytools.io recommended addons.
+In order to randomise the User Agent and HTTP Accept headers, I also
+tried to write a Python script to do this in Qutebrowser. Although the
+finger printing was improved, it was just not as good as using Firefox.
+Once the Qutebrowser feature list has plugin support, I would definitely
+switch back to Qutebrowser once it has been implemented, but
+unfortunately Firefox and addons are the way for me.
+
+
+SOURCES
+-------
+
+
+>> https://qutebrowser.org
+>> https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen
+>> https://privacytools.io/browsers/#browser
+>> git://jay.scot/dotfiles.git
+>> https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30
+
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/004.txt b/phlog/004.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[004]
+
+
+--[ How I use the modern web
+
+
+With how polluted the modern web has become over the years, I actively
+avoid it as much as possible. From mainstream media sites acting like
+the gossip magazines from years back. Remember OK magazine? To sites
+riddled with ads, tracking, social media buttons, and a plethora of
+utter crap. It feels like navigating down a busy main street where all
+the hawkers are hassling you too buy their wares. Now bolt-on how every
+UX designer has given up on the basics like page accessibility
+standards, loading times, and the important one, usability.
+
+
+ It's an utter shambles right now.
+
+
+When using a browser, I find it far too easy to get caught in a "YouTube
+loop" or see something at the corner of your eye that you feel the urge
+to spend the next 30 minutes researching. Before you know it, 3 AM
+rolls around and your reading a Wikipedia article on some random
+bollocks. This is why I avoid using a browser as much as possible and
+this is how I achieve it for about 90% of my daily internet usage.
+
+
+NEWS
+----
+
+Do you need to be reminded every day that Covid has killed X amount of
+people, that some political party leader fucked a dead pig? Nope, you
+don't! What you should be doing is focusing on what news is important to
+YOU. For me, this comes in the form of the latest tech news and
+information from my local government. The obvious way to do this is via
+RSS feeds.
+
+
+I am sure everyone has heard of newsboat or similar RSS readers but
+there is still the problem that most RSS feeds don't have any content
+attached to the feed. Normally it's just a summary of the article, at
+best, you still need to open up the browser and view the content. One
+RSS reader that seems to have slipped under the radar is one called
+sfeed by Suckless. With this tool I can have this setup.
+
+
+ sfeed ---> fdm ---> rdrview ---> mutt
+
+
+sfeed, this RSS reader allows you to output feeds into various formats,
+one of them is the mbox. From there I use fdm which is a mail filtering
+and fetching program, think a better procmail. Using a custom script in
+fdm I can pass the feed URL to rdrview. rdrview fetches the URL and
+outputs the page to basic html, using lynx -dump to convert this to
+a pure plain text article.
+
+
+Finally, once the page has been fetched and processed fdm pushes it to
+Maildir, filtered by the feedname ready for reading in Mutt. The result
+is a full copy of the article in a mailbox ready to read in plain text.
+All of the code for this is in my dotfiles if you need to take a look at
+the sfeed, fdm, mutt configuration's.
+
+
+Within the same configuration for fdm I fetch my email which also has
+mailing lists subscriptions of things I should know about. Since
+switching over to FreeBSD fully a lot of discussions are carried out on
+various mailing lists. Have a look and see if the tools, news, forums
+you are apart of have mailing lists. It's another good method of
+"offline" content.
+
+
+MEDIA CONTENT
+-------------
+
+This one is quite easy to avoid. We all have our favourite channels and
+check daily to see if anything has been uploaded by them. Only to find
+3 hours after checking your still on YouTube but watching a video of
+someone reacting to the latest James Bond trailer while shouting "Make
+sure you hit the thumbs up and subscribe!" *cue shitty gif of a bell*
+throughout the video.
+
+
+The method I was using for this until recently was using a python
+application called ytcc by woefe over on GitHub. In a nutshell it's
+a front-end to youtube-dl for managing your subscriptions on YouTube.
+Simply enter the channel's name and whenever they upload a new video, it
+will download this ready to view locally. Simple, YouTube crap avoided.
+
+
+As I mentioned though I no longer do this, I have my a shell script that
+does something similar that directly uses youtube-dl. The reason
+I changed to this is I can download more than just YouTube videos, I can
+add other things such as LBRY. I can also customise youtube-dl output
+and options in greater detail.
+
+
+Finally on media content, podcast. Simply use a tool like castget or if
+you are a newsboat fan use the built-in podboat feature.
+
+
+BROWSING
+--------
+
+There is no avoiding using a browser completely. When I do have to use
+one I fire up Qutebrowser, now since my rant about QuteBrowser and
+privacy in 003.txt things have changed for the better. Qutebrowser now
+has ABS ad-blocking enabled as well as fixing issues with referrers not
+working. My qutebrowser blocks nearly everything along with a decent VPN
+your good to go and get off as soon as you can.
+
+
+Checkout my dotfiles for a better understanding of how all this fits
+together. I will assume everyone reading this is fairly technical!
+
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/005.txt b/phlog/005.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[005]
+
+
+--[ Why I dropped freebsd after a month
+
+
+I switched over to using FreeBSD as my main desktop around 1 month ago.
+Last night I had enough of some core issues I was having and ended up
+switching back to Linux. My 2-year-old graphics card, an AMD RX 5700XT,
+does not work with the current stable release 12.2, so I had no choice
+but to use -CURRENT, ALPHA-2 then BETA-1.
+
+
+My setup is minimal; I don't use any GUI applications apart from the
+rare occasion I need to use a browser; I do use mpv often. Even with
+this setup, there was a performance issue that caused Xorg to micro
+stutter, causing a system pause for around 1 second.
+
+
+When using just a console things seemed to work fine, so my first
+thought was the problem must lie with Xorg. Over a few days I tried
+tweaking various Xorg options such as Tearfree, SWCursor, etc. This made
+zero improvement, my next port of call was the AMDGPU driver, drm-kmod.
+
+
+AMDGPU, A trip to the GitHub project page for this project did indeed
+show 4 out of 17 issues open are for the exact model of graphics card
+I have. Though none of the issues seemed related to the problem I was
+having.
+
+
+During my research, though, I also found posts on /r/freebsd and the
+official FreeBSD forums with similar issues, Sadly, none of them had any
+actual solutions. I decided to build the kernel module from the latest
+git master, this seemed to improve the stuttering, progress!
+
+
+Around this time I also found out that -CURRENT, -ALPHA and -BETA builds
+have a lot of debugging enabled in the kernel by default, which can
+cause degraded system performance.
+
+
+I found GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel config; I stripped out a lot of modules
+I wouldn't need to help the build times. This was so simple to do, and
+before I knew it I had a custom kernel built with all debugging removed.
+Booting into the new kernel I noticed an improvement right away.
+
+
+Playing a video still caused a little stuttering, as long as I did
+little else. I was happy with this for the time being, thinking that
+maybe when BETA-1 or RC came around things would be better.
+
+
+Woo-hoo, BETA-1 snapshot was released, time to give it a whirl. BAM,
+right back to square one. So I went through the same steps again with
+building the AMDGPU module from git and building a custom kernel with no
+debugging enabled.
+
+
+The same day as BETA-1 released, I got a reply on one post I made about
+the issue. Just run this, the poster says, All processes are tied to the
+first CCX0. This will reduce the usable cores to 4, however.
+
+
+ sh -c 'ps -aux | cut -w -f2 | xargs -I foo \
+ cpuset -l 0,2,4,6 -p foo > /dev/null 2>&1'
+
+
+No way this can be the solution, can it? Well yes it was, suddenly I had
+nearly ZERO issues. All the lag had disappeared! The only cost? I had
+to gimp the potential of my system.
+
+
+At this point I had enough, I spent so long on such a trivial matter
+I decided just to go back to Linux until 13.0 is released, then I will
+revisit it. I liked FreeBSD. There is so much to it that I loved and
+would go back in a heartbeat if I could get my hardware working without
+having to jump over so many hurdles.
+
+
+* I love ports
+* I had set up Bhyve running Poudriere building my own packages.
+* Setting up the GPU driver was really simple (if it worked on my card)
+* Audio setup was such a breeze.
+* I had no issue installing ports/packages I needed, pkg is a wonderful tool.
+* Jails are so handy, I didn't think I would need them but man they are
+great!
+
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/006.txt b/phlog/006.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,236 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[006]
+
+
+--[ Association of really cruel viruses (arcv)
+
+
+I have saved and collected a **huge** amount of data from the 80s, 90s
+and early 00s from the UK Hacking and Phreaking scene. Many of it has
+been lost over the years, so I will be dumping it here over the next
+while in the hopes someone finds it interesting!
+
+
+First up though we have ARCV, a virus writing group from the early
+1990s!
+
+
+ARCV
+----
+
+Around late 1992 a group emerged calling themselves the Association of
+Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). The group was initially small, and by all
+accounts relatively unskilled, and was made up of two people, Apache
+Warrior who was the leader of the group, and ICE-9. They soon recruited
+two more, Toxic Crusader and Slartibartfast, and became one of the first
+virus writing groups in the UK.
+
+
+Over the next year, they would write around 100 viruses, the first few
+were created using a virus generator called Virus Creation Laboratory
+(VCL) but they would soon end up writing their own virii, apparently,
+they were also very well written! Apache Warrior would also end up
+creating the group's engine, Cybertech Mutation Engine (CME).
+
+
+ARCV didn't last too long before Scotland Yard caught up with them in an
+unsuspecting way. A year after they entered the scene around
+December/January 1993 Apache Warrior and ICE-9 were arrested in the
+Salford area in the UK. The group had been distributing their viruses
+and newsletters to a BBS in Cornwall as well as others via beige boxing.
+In their great wisdom, they decided that the best target of the beige
+boxing would be their neighbours' line. Scotland Yard did not even
+realise these two phone phreakers they just caught were also the
+founding members on ARCV until the confiscation of their computer
+equipment.
+
+
+Apache Warrior cooperated with the police, and further examination of
+the confiscated equipment confirmed that not only had the police caught
+some phone phreakers, but they also caught the leader of ARCV. On
+Wednesday, January 27 1993, four other ARCV members in Manchester,
+Cumbria, Staffordshire and Cornwall were raided by Scotland Yard and
+their computer equipment confiscated. This was ICE-9, Toxic Crusader,
+Slartibartfast and the arrest in Cornwall was the SYSOP of the BBS where
+ARCV transferred files too so not officially a member of ARCV. In total
+there were six arrests and all were released on police bail pending
+further investigations.
+
+
+DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit failed to identify anyone
+affected by any ARCV created viruses. Due to this Apache Warrior, ICE-9
+and the two other members were let off with cautions. One was cautioned
+relating to another matter, the BBS SYSOP, and the last one was released
+with no further actions.
+
+
+You can download all the files I have on ARCV from the following gopher
+site.
+
+
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, txt format
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe format
+* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe screenshot
+* ARCV virus collection, 93 in total, be careful you windows users!
+* November 1992 article
+* April 1993 article
+* July 1993 article
+
+
+>> gopher://jay.scot/files/groups/arcv/
+
+
+Got any of these files? Let me know!
+
+* ARCV Newsletter Issue 2, may not exist.
+* ARCV Virus Library Disk 1 and 2, may not of been released.
+* EICAR'94 conference talk/slides (ICE-9)
+* CME 1.0 and CME 2.0
+* Access All Areas II (96) and III (97) talks/slides (Apache Warrior & ICE-9)
+
+
+--- Feb, 1993 : Spreading Viruses
+--- Personal Computer World Magazine
+
+We are a bunch of programmers who, depressed with the lack of viruses that
+have originated in England, have sought to change matters. We presently
+write viruses for the PC, Archimedes and Atari ST. We have increased the few
+viruses written in England by about 25, though this number is increasing all
+the time as our programmers churn out more quality computer viruses.
+Although there are many viruses about we hope to dominate the UK 'market'.
+Won't it be nice, though, for England to have at least one export? Finally,
+we as an organisation like to stress that, contrary to public opinion, we are
+*not* boring people who wear anoraks, nor are we depraved people who were
+beaten as children and so grew up with a hatred of humanity. We are highly
+intelligent and good at programming and are just ordinary people. But we are
+gonna get you soon!
+
+ - ARCV (Association of Really Cruel Viruses)
+
+
+--- 4 Feb, 1993 : Apache scalps virus cowboys
+
+Police raided the homes of suspected computer virus authors across the
+country last week, arresting five people and seizing equipment. "The raids
+were carried out last Wednesday by police in Manchester, Cumbria,
+Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall." Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit
+co-ordinated the raids under the codename Operation Apache. A spokeswoman for
+the Greater Manchester Police said: 'The investigation began in the
+Manchester area following the arrest of the self-styled president of the
+virus writing group in Salford last December.' Police would not reveal the
+man's name, but said he had been released on bail. "Last week's raids led to
+the arrest of a further two people in Manchester. Three other suspects were
+also arrested in Staffordshire, Cumbria and Cornwall." PCs and floppy disks
+were seized in all the raids. "All those arrested have been released on
+police bail pending further investigations."
+
+
+--- 4 Feb, 1993 : UK Virus Writers Group Foiled by Scotland Yard
+
+British police have arrested four members of a virus-writing group that calls
+itself the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV).
+
+The Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit coordinated the raids carried out on
+suspects in Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Devon, and Cornwall. The
+arrests last Wednesday, January 27, bring to six the number of ARCV members
+found by police, after they initially arrested one caught "phreaking" in
+Manchester in December. ("Phone phreaking" is the illegal practice of
+obtaining free use of telephone lines.) The arrests were made under Section 3
+of the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits unauthorized modification of
+computer material, said Detective Sergeant Stephen Littler. The suspects, who
+cannot be identified at this stage under British law, have been released on
+bail pending inquiries and may face further charges.
+
+The members of ARCV used PCs to write viruses, which they shared via a
+bulletin board operated by one suspect in Cornwall. The police confiscated
+hardware and software, which is being studied by virus experts to determine
+how many viruses were written and what the viruses were intended to do,
+Littler said. The British anti-virus community became aware of ARCV through
+the group's own publicity efforts, such as a newsletter that it had uploaded
+to various bulletin boards in the U.S., according to Richard Ford, editor of
+the monthly "Virus Bulletin", which is published in Abingdon, Oxon, England.
+The newsletter was described in detail in the November, 1992, issue of "Virus
+Bulletin".
+
+To the best of my knowledge, none of their viruses are in the wild, out
+there spreading" said Ford. But they have been found on virus exchange
+bulletin board services, and we've had reports of them being uploaded rather
+widely in the UK. ARCV claims, in its newsletter, to have links with
+PHALCON/SKISM in the U.S. and other virus writers in Eastern Europe. "The
+world is a very small place when you've got a modem, or are on the Internet",
+Ford said. The newsletter invites new members to join even if they are not
+virus writers but prefer other "underground" activities such as hacking and
+phreaking. It also betrays ARCV's fears of being perceived as nerds (a term
+not used in Britain) saying, "Now the picture put out by the Anti- Virus
+Authors is that Virus writers are Sad individuals who wear Anoraks and go
+Train Spotting but well they are sadly mistaken, we are very intelligent,
+sound minded, highly trained, and we wouldn't be seen in an Anorak or near an
+Anorak even if dead."
+
+ARCV has already failed at one of the objectives mentioned in its premier
+newsletter issue, which said, "We will be dodging Special Branch and New
+Scotland Yard as we go."
+
+
+--- From: m...@doc.ic.ac.uk (Mike C Holderness)
+--- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
+--- Subject: This just in from London...
+--- Date: 3 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0000
+--- Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
+
+Police have arrested Britain's first computer virus-writing group in an
+operation they hope will dampen the aspirations of any potential high-tech
+criminals. Four members of the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV)
+were raided last Wednesday in a joint operation in four cities co-ordinated
+by Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit. The arrests in Greater Manchester,
+Cumbria, Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall, bring to six the members of
+the group that have been tracked down by police. Two others, also writing for
+ARCV, were arrested a month ago in Manchester. This six are thought to have
+written between 30 and 50 relatively harmless viruses....
+
+[continues. By Susan Watts. (C) 1993 Newspaper Publishing plc.]
+
+Comments, especially from survivors and even more from people in the UK who
+are into a little light looking around but nothing Really Cruel, very
+welcome. Yes, I am a journalist.
+
+
+--- 16 May, 1994 : Urnst Couch / Crypt Newsletter
+
+About the same time, a hacker was arrested for stealing phone service from
+his neighbor's line and his equipment confiscated, too. The hacker turned out
+to be Apache Warrior, a member of the small United Kingdom virus-writing
+group called ARCV (for Association of Really Cruel Viruses).
+
+Some background information not included in the book: Alan Solomon was
+apparently able to convince New Scotland Yard's computer crime unit that they
+should also try to prosecute Apache Warrior as a virus-writer and that the
+rest of the group should be rounded up, too. In conversation, Solomon has
+said Apache Warrior turned over the names of other group members.
+Subsequently, New Scotland Yard and local constabularies conducted raids at
+multiple sites in England, arresting another man. Paradoxically, prior to the
+arrests, Solomon joked that ARCV was better at cyber-publicity than virus
+programming and its creations were little more than petty menaces. The book
+offers no reported incidences of ARCV viruses on the computers of others,
+although Virus News International, by extension S&S International, solicited
+readers for such evidence in 1993.
+
+
+--- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 93 09:17:21
+--- From: aryeh@mcafee.com (McAfee Associates)
+--- Subject: Forwarded message from Scotland Yard
+
+Hello All,
+
+I was recently contacted by DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit at
+New Scotland Yard in London. As some of you may be aware, Noel is one of the
+folks responsible for arresting the members of ARCV, a UK-based group of
+virus-writers. He would like to speak with anyone who suffered an infection
+from any of their viruses. If you have been infected by one of their
+viruses, or know of someone who has, then please give him a call at +44 (71)
+230-1177 during office hours (GMT), or send him a fax at +44 (71) 230-1275.
+
+Please bear in mind that I'm only forwarding this message for DC Bonczoszek.
+If you have any questions, please contact him directly.
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/007.txt b/phlog/007.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[007]
+
+
+--[ Build, patch and maintain suckless tools
+
+
+I am a long time supporter of the Unix philosophy and have been using
+tools such as dwm as my daily driver since 2011, as such I mainly use
+the terminal for everything. Lots of these tools are best built via the
+latest source code release or development copy instead of a package
+build, so you can apply your custom configuration. The most common
+methods I have come across on managing to do this is a mixture of using
+separate git branches for each patch or even just manually applying the
+patches and then fixing anything that didn't succeed.
+
+I am a big fan of Makefiles, I even use Makefiles to manage my dotfiles
+instead of a tool like GNU Stow. So it will be no surprise I use these
+to build, patch and install all my suckless based tools such as dwm, st,
+dmenu and herbe. My Makefile makes patching easy and means I don't need
+to worry about maintaining multiple branches, it's super easy to get the
+latest versions etc. It also helps that I don't have any extra patches
+apart from dmenu and st, any additions I have for dwm and herbe are
+added to config.h as functions.
+
+Below is the generic Makefile I use, this one is for dmenu as it's
+a good example to use since I use a few minimal external patches. The
+options at the top of the Makefile should be pretty obvious, the
+defaults should be fine for most people.
+
+
+ REPOSITORY = http://git.suckless.org/dmenu
+ SRC_DIR = dmenu-src
+ PINNED_REVISION = HEAD
+ PATCH_DIR = patches
+
+ all: $(SRC_DIR)
+
+ clean: reset
+ @if test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s clean; \
+ git -C "${SRC_DIR}" clean -f; \
+ fi
+
+ $(SRC_DIR): clone reset patch
+ @cp config.h $@
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s
+
+ patch: $(PATCH_DIR)/*
+ @for file in $^ ; do \
+ patch -d "${SRC_DIR}" < $${file}; \
+ done
+ reset:
+ @if [ -n "$(strip $(PINNED_REVISION))" ]; then \
+ git -C "${SRC_DIR}" reset --hard $(PINNED_REVISION); \
+ fi
+
+ clone:
+ @if ! test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \
+ git clone $(REPOSITORY) $(SRC_DIR); \
+ fi
+
+ update: clean
+ @git -C "${SRC_DIR}" pull
+
+ install:
+ $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s install
+
+
+ .PHONY: all clean update install reset clone patch
+
+
+And this is the file structure I have:
+
+ |- dwm
+ |-- dwm-src # git clone of dwm, handled by Makefile
+ |-- config.h # my custom config for dmenu
+ |-- Makefile # the Makefile from above
+ |-- patches # directory containing patches
+ |---- 01-dmenu-centre.patch
+ |---- 02-dmenu-border.patch
+
+If you have no patches to apply, then remove the 'patch' from line 14
+then run 'make', this will git clone or reset if already cloned, apply
+patches, copy your custom config.h and the build, A 'make install' after
+that will install as normal.
+
+To see a working copy of these you can clone my dotfiles and have
+a look in the dwm, dmenu, st or herbe folders.
+
+ git clone git://jay.scot/dotfiles
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/008.txt b/phlog/008.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[008]
+
+
+--[ I moved over to wayland
+
+
+I have been putting it off for ages, it's been on my to-do list for
+months. Anytime I saw it pop-up I would just ignore it either due to
+laziness, not interested or just general procrastinating. However, not
+this weekend! Wayland will be the de facto and soon enough replace Xorg
+am sure.
+
+My setup is heavily terminal based with the usual tooling you see these
+days. Suckless based tools such as dwm, dmenu and st as the main WM
+tooling. Mutt for email, all kinds of feeds via Newsboat, MPV for
+videos, browsing with Qutebrower and Amfora for Gemini. I was hoping
+with such minimal GUI usage the switch over would be easy enough.
+A quick look around and it looks like I would need to completely switch
+dwm, dmenu and st over to a wayland equivalent.
+
+I do have a few edge case applications I use but upon checking, they all
+work under wayland. These were Qutebrowser (Browsing), Performance
+Portfolio (Accounting) and Calibre (Ebooks), result!
+
+First, the window manager! As it turns out there is a wayland port of
+dwm called dwl, there seems to be a few trivial changes, but they are
+basically like for like. On a sidenote, I had been tweaking dwm recently
+and it really became a bit of a pain in the arse building, restart dwm
+all the time. With this still at the back of my mind, anticipating that
+I will be doing it again with dwl, I thought why not try out something
+new. Enter Sway.
+
+Sway is the wayland port of i3 with some common patches people used
+rolled in. A look at the config file setup for Sway made it look very
+straight forward to replicate my dwm keybinds and layout. Another
+benefit being I could install the packages via the AUR instead of
+building it myself, this felt like a plus after many many years of
+compiling from source.
+
+I kinda hate st, truth be told. You need to add in a few patches to the
+build as out of the box it's very limiting. So on that I was happy to
+find a replacement for st. Two options were on the table for me,
+Alacritty and Foot. I ended up going with Foot, it seemed to be a lot
+faster and lightweight compared to Alacritty, according to their own
+benchmark results. I also wasn't sold on the idea of it being GPU
+accelerated. Alacritty also clams to be faster than all the rest, but
+they didn't seem to provide the actual benchmarks, just the tool they
+used. Whereas Foot had a whole ton of information, benchmarks and
+screenshots explaining why its fast as fuck.
+
+Again the application was in the AUR and with a live reload config file
+it was trivial to set up. Interestingly, the out of the box config would
+have been fine, only thing I really changed were the colours and font.
+
+dmenu, this one I spent most of my time researching and testing out
+various alternatives. At first, I was just going to use rofi but soon
+found out that it doesn't have native wayland support and uses Xwayland
+instead. There is a port called wofi too, I tried both of them out.
+I don't know, I just didn't like them, they seemed to flashy, the config
+for them seemed tedious. I then tried out bemenu which is based on
+dmenu, this was the one. Yet again I just needed to install the AUR
+package, the config can be set via an environment variable called
+BEMENU_OPTS. After playing about with it I just added this to my bashrc
+profile and I was done. So simple, love it.
+
+
+> export BEMENU_OPTS="-p '> ' --tb '#000000' --tf '#ffffff' --hf '#444444'"
+
+
+So far I have had no crashes or any issues at all. One thing that I have
+noticed is MPV playback seems way smoother and scrolling in Qutebrowser
+is tear-free. So far so good, and I really don't feel like I am missing
+anything switching over.
+
+Another side, my installed packages has reduced massively, all
+X packages have been removed as they are no longer needed. My dotfiles
+directory looks a lot leaner without all the dwm, herbe, st and dmenu
+builds. Trivial I know.
+
+I guess now I just continue as is for a few more months and see what
+I think then!
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/009.txt b/phlog/009.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[009]
+
+
+--[ A true cheap dumbphone, impossible?
+
+
+I have been on the lookout of a truly cheap dumb phone but trying to
+find that sweet spot just isn't happening. I just want to call and get
+SMS - that's it.
+
+The Lightphone 2 [0] looks ideal at first glance, nice and simple.
+However, digging into it a bit more I see the following possible issues
+for my use case:
+
+ It's expensive, around £350 ($402) when you include import tax.
+ Linked to some sort of central login platform.
+ From installing apps to first-time boot a "Light Account" is needed.
+
+Another one that's looks good is the Mudita Pure Phone [2], they even
+have an open source OS running it called MuditaOS. The massive downside,
+it's nearly £340 ($385). Crazy prices if you ask me!
+
+What I am using currently is an old Nokia 2.3 with Unlauncher [3]
+running, cost was around £60 ($75) 2 years ago. I really wish there was
+a cheap and truly dumbphone out there..
+
+
+0. https://thelightphone.com
+1. https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure
+2. https://jkuester.github.io/unlauncher
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/010.txt b/phlog/010.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[010]
+
+
+--[ Convert mbox to maildir using fdm
+
+
+I recently downloaded a bunch of old mailing list archives from Alpine
+Linux[0] that I want to merge with my current archives. The problem being
+my current archives were in Maildir format while the Alpine Linux
+archives were in MBOX.
+
+
+Since I already use fdm[1] for fetching my mail as well as converting RSS
+feeds I just went with that, this is how:
+
+
+ $ cat archive
+
+ $listdir= "%h/.mail/alpine.users" # where to save the maildir
+ $mbox= "%h/tmp/alpine-users.mbox" # the local mbox location
+
+ # the local mbox file
+ account "convert" mbox "$mbox"
+ action "convert" maildir "${listdir}"
+ match all action "convert"
+
+
+then just run FDM with the above configuration file:
+
+
+ $ fdm -f archive fetch
+
+
+0. https://lists.alpinelinux.org/~alpine/users
+1. https://github.com/nicm/fdm
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/phlog/011.txt b/phlog/011.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+[jay.scot]
+[011]
+
+
+--[ Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc
+
+
+I recently turned off my main pc, a homegrown setup I had been upgrading
+over the years. It had quite a decent spec, AMD RX XT5700, Intel i7,
+32Gb RAM, 3xSSDs and a NVM drives. I have mentioned in previous TXT
+files I mainly use the command line apart from qutebrowser occasionally
+so it was complete overkill. Not to mention the energy prices in north
+Scotland being absurd, it was time to "downgrade".
+
+
+I had a few options in mind, a good old Raspberry Pi, a 2nd hand
+Thinkcentre or an off the shelf mini-pc. As you obviously gathered,
+I went with the mini-pc, a beelink U59 [0]. The RPI are actually quite
+costly now, hard to get. I also wanted an x86 architecture for using
+Alpine Linux - my desktop distro of choice these days. Apparently the
+Thinkcentre can be quite loud too, so I ended up buying the U59 with the
+500Gb SSD, 16Gb Ram options for around £200 on Amazon.
+
+
+I installed Alpine Linux with no issues at all. I have a bootstrap
+script for Alpine [1], so using this I was up and running with the foot
+terminal open on sway 15 minutes later. The U59 is completely quiet, and
+the max I have seen the temp get so far was 59C while playing Loom via
+ScummVM. I had to compile ScummVM from source which took around 20
+mintues, not bad at all. The power draw was sitting around 15 watts
+during this time.
+
+
+Really happy with it so far, will be interesting to see how long this
+machine lasts for.
+
+
+0. https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=334
+1. gopher://jay.scot/1/git/alpine-bootstrap/
+
+.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/001.txt b/txt/001.txt
@@ -1,74 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[001]
-
-
-So much bloat around dotfiles
-─────────────────────────────
-
-
-Let's be honest here everyone who uses some form of *BSD or Linux knows
-what 'dotfiles' are these days. It's super common to push your local
-machines various configuration files to GitHub/GitLab or whatever 3rd
-party hosted git provider happens to be flavour of the month.
-
-The thing that really annoys me for some reason is the amount of people
-that use dedicated programs to manage dotfiles. I am not talking about
-tools such as GNU/Stow that have multiple purposes, or home-grown shell
-scripts, not my choice but there is nothing wrong them. I am talking
-about bloated crap such as Ruby gems or even worse some NodeJS
-application with 100s of dependencies included. Let's look at a few..
-
- AutoDot - "A minimal dotfile manager".
- - NodeJS
- - 230+ dependencies
- - 50+ different maintainers
- - https://github.com/ajmalsiddiqui/autodot
-
- DotStow - "manage dotfiles with stow" (stow front-end???)
- - NodeJS
- - 270+ dependencies
- - Spread over 200 maintainers
- - https://github.com/codejamninja/dotstow
-
- Homesick - "Your home directory is your castle"
- - Ruby
- - Requires ruby, bundler, thor, rack (devel)
- - git clones to ~/.homesick then symlinks...
- - https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick
-
-These types of apps make my balls scurry back up from where once they
-came. It's just so completely over-engineered and unnecessary, each to
-their own I guess. Personally I just use a tool that's already on
-everyone's machine GNU/Make nice and simple! Below is a basic make file
-you can use to get start, just update the files and configs values and
-then run `$ make` and you are good to go!
-
-
- files := bashrc xinitrc muttrc vimrc Xresources
- cfgs := qutebrowser ncmpcpp mpd git mutt
- dotfiles := $(shell pwd)
-
- all: link
-
- define symlink_file
- ln -fs $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1);
- endef
-
- define symlink_dir
- ln -fns $(dotfiles)/$(1) ${HOME}/$(2)$(1);
- endef
-
- link: @$(foreach f,$(files),$(call symlink_file,$(f),.))
- @$(foreach f,$(cfgs),$(call symlink_dir,$(f),.config/))
- @echo files linked
-
- .PHONY: all link
-
-
-Its pretty straight forward and you can't really go wrong with it, in my
-own personal Makefile I have a few added steps such as adding backing up
-installed packages list and cron entries. You can find it over on my git
-repo which might give you a better understanding how it works in the
-real world.
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/002.txt b/txt/002.txt
@@ -1,117 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[002]
-
-
-GitHub: The Facebook of coding
-──────────────────────────────
-
-
-In my opinion, there is no question that GitHub is the new Facebook for
-coders and geeks. What I mean by the new Facebook is two-fold, first the
-type of users you find on GitHub and secondly the businesses shenanigans
-over the years.
-
-
-THE USERS
----------
-
-Essentially, GitHub is now a necessity when you are applying for jobs
-inside the tech industry, recruiters look for it, businesses are
-requiring it and insist you engage in coding challenges that must be
-done on the platform. This doesn't sound like a bad thing really, or
-does it?
-
-
- YES, actually, it does!
-
-
-GitHub has now become a shit storm of individuals seeking to pimp out
-their profiles with bullshit Pull Requests, faking timelines, forking
-repos and raising entirely pointless issues. Everything with the goal
-of showcasing how much they have contributed to open-source projects. As
-a recent example look no further than Digital Oceans Hacktoberfest
-clusterfuck, useless PRs such as deleting spaces all in the hopes of
-getting a t-shirt.
-
-
-Another real world dilemma impacting users is the knowledge gap of
-actually using git normally, GitHub is NOT git. GitHub is a proprietary
-closed-source front-end for a centralized git hosting service. Users
-have become completely dependent on features that GitHub have built such
-as PRs, forks, online editing, branch protection to name a couple.
-I doubt that many users are even aware of commands such as send-mail
-which is a core function of many projects outside the GitHub world. Nor
-does it help when the web interface of GitHub encourages sloppy git
-practices, relying exclusively on one way of doing things, the GitHub
-Flow.
-
-
-THE COMPANY
------------
-
-Let's start off with the obvious fact that Microsoft owns GitHub.
-Microsoft has a long track record of open-source hatred, the CEO has
-even gone as far as stating "Linux is a cancer" at one point. This is
-not good, Microsoft were outed by the U.S. Department of Justice for
-using this internal term. In short, it ties in well with buying their
-way into open source projects right? Sounds like GitHub is at the
-Embrace stage...
-
-
- "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" [5]
-
-
-Electron, the Chromium engine / NodeJS pile of shit that requires a few
-Cray supercomputers to run a calculator app on was developed and pushed
-into the ecosystem by good friends, GitHub. Now we are blessed with
-awesome spyware programs such as WhatsApp, Discord and Skype that will
-now run on Linux YAY /s. I mean there is just so much mud around GitHub
-that I just don't have the urge to go wading through it, searching even
-more than I have already. Here's a short fire list with some sources to
-follow-up on, if you are interested.
-
-
-* Denied employee harassment by CEO
-* Blocked users from country's under US trade sanctions
-* Have dealings with ICE, they keep kids in cages
-
-
-Due to an incredibly weak DMCA take down notice by the RIAA, youtube-dl
-was recently banned by GitHub. After it hit main stream news GitHub
-crapped the bed and started on the news PR. It was not, however, until
-after the EFF moved in and sent a letter [10] to GitHub describing how
-the DMCA notification was absolute dog shit that GitHub did something.
-After this, GitHub went into complete PR mode after and they made it out
-that they were the saviours of the day and how they'd stronger and
-better in the future.
-
-
-Anyway, enough of this rant. If you are looking for a 3rd party hosted
-git solution then please take a look at these two:
-
-
-* SourceHut, https://sr.ht
-* GitLab, https://gitlab.com
-
-
-Or do what I do an just use the naked git protocol without any front-ends, its
-stupidly simple.
-
-
-SOURCES
--------
-
->> https://drewdevault.com/2020/10/01/Spamtoberfest.html
->> https://git-send-email.io/
->> https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/index.html
->> https://davelane.nz/microsoft-there-way-win-our-trust
->> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
->> https://tknk.io/01P8 Electron
->> https://tknk.io/xnsf
->> https://tknk.io/rddV
->> https://tknk.io/8pfH
->> https://tknk.io/RMLT
->> https://tknk.io/XtFd
-
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/003.txt b/txt/003.txt
@@ -1,80 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[003]
-
-
-Qutebrowser is amazing but..
-────────────────────────────
-
-
-**UPDATE** as of version 2.0, these are not an issue now. Time to move
-back to Qutebrowser!
-
-
-For those preferring browsers with a minimal GUI and vim-like keyboard
-controls, Qutebrowser is a fantastic choice. The project can be compared
-to Firefox add-ons like Vim Vixen but with a smoother and more refined
-user interface, backed by an active creator. With that being said here
-comes the but.
-
-
-And it's a big BUT for me, I no longer use Qutebrowser due to lack of
-privacy options compared to the likes of Firefox with add-ons. Does
-Qutebrowser have any choices at all for privacy? It sure does, BUT for
-the requirements of today's modern web it's just not enough to cut it.
-This is a list of things that you can do:
-
-
-* disable javascript
-* disable geolocation
-* disable webgl
-* custom http headers
-* custom user agent
-* reject cookies
-* stop canvas reading
-* host based ad-blocker
-
-
-Although the problem is not a poor list of choices, each of these
-choices has very limited scope. For example, the ad blocker is
-a primitive host based list from a flat file. You're going to get video
-ads and page elements still showing. It just doesn't compare to add-ons
-like uBlock Origin, where all ads traces are just erased. Setting
-cookies to deny all the time often contributes to a poor user
-experience.
-
-
-As an example, I will be constantly be asked to fill in CATCHPA's for
-every site sitting behind CloudFlare. However, I can install a cookie
-cleaner on Firefox that manages cookies on a per site basis, deletes
-them as soon as you navigate off the site, close a tab etc.
-
-
-I also discovered that Qutebrowser does not function as intended with
-the option to hide the referrer header. This is currently an upstream
-issue with the engine Qutebrowser uses, QtWebEngine. In the hopes that
-this gets resolved, I have opened a bug report directly with the
-project.
-
-
-Using the EFF's browser fingerprinting tools might show you as rather
-unique compared to Firefox with the privacytools.io recommended addons.
-In order to randomise the User Agent and HTTP Accept headers, I also
-tried to write a Python script to do this in Qutebrowser. Although the
-finger printing was improved, it was just not as good as using Firefox.
-Once the Qutebrowser feature list has plugin support, I would definitely
-switch back to Qutebrowser once it has been implemented, but
-unfortunately Firefox and addons are the way for me.
-
-
-SOURCES
--------
-
-
->> https://qutebrowser.org
->> https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen
->> https://privacytools.io/browsers/#browser
->> git://jay.scot/dotfiles.git
->> https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30
-
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/004.txt b/txt/004.txt
@@ -1,119 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[004]
-
-
-How I use the modern web
-────────────────────────
-
-
-With how polluted the modern web has become over the years, I actively
-avoid it as much as possible. From mainstream media sites acting like
-the gossip magazines from years back. Remember OK magazine? To sites
-riddled with ads, tracking, social media buttons, and a plethora of
-utter crap. It feels like navigating down a busy main street where all
-the hawkers are hassling you too buy their wares. Now bolt-on how every
-UX designer has given up on the basics like page accessibility
-standards, loading times, and the important one, usability.
-
-
- It's an utter shambles right now.
-
-
-When using a browser, I find it far too easy to get caught in a "YouTube
-loop" or see something at the corner of your eye that you feel the urge
-to spend the next 30 minutes researching. Before you know it, 3 AM
-rolls around and your reading a Wikipedia article on some random
-bollocks. This is why I avoid using a browser as much as possible and
-this is how I achieve it for about 90% of my daily internet usage.
-
-
-NEWS
-----
-
-Do you need to be reminded every day that Covid has killed X amount of
-people, that some political party leader fucked a dead pig? Nope, you
-don't! What you should be doing is focusing on what news is important to
-YOU. For me, this comes in the form of the latest tech news and
-information from my local government. The obvious way to do this is via
-RSS feeds.
-
-
-I am sure everyone has heard of newsboat or similar RSS readers but
-there is still the problem that most RSS feeds don't have any content
-attached to the feed. Normally it's just a summary of the article, at
-best, you still need to open up the browser and view the content. One
-RSS reader that seems to have slipped under the radar is one called
-sfeed by Suckless. With this tool I can have this setup.
-
-
- sfeed ---> fdm ---> rdrview ---> mutt
-
-
-sfeed, this RSS reader allows you to output feeds into various formats,
-one of them is the mbox. From there I use fdm which is a mail filtering
-and fetching program, think a better procmail. Using a custom script in
-fdm I can pass the feed URL to rdrview. rdrview fetches the URL and
-outputs the page to basic html, using lynx -dump to convert this to
-a pure plain text article.
-
-
-Finally, once the page has been fetched and processed fdm pushes it to
-Maildir, filtered by the feedname ready for reading in Mutt. The result
-is a full copy of the article in a mailbox ready to read in plain text.
-All of the code for this is in my dotfiles if you need to take a look at
-the sfeed, fdm, mutt configuration's.
-
-
-Within the same configuration for fdm I fetch my email which also has
-mailing lists subscriptions of things I should know about. Since
-switching over to FreeBSD fully a lot of discussions are carried out on
-various mailing lists. Have a look and see if the tools, news, forums
-you are apart of have mailing lists. It's another good method of
-"offline" content.
-
-
-MEDIA CONTENT
--------------
-
-This one is quite easy to avoid. We all have our favourite channels and
-check daily to see if anything has been uploaded by them. Only to find
-3 hours after checking your still on YouTube but watching a video of
-someone reacting to the latest James Bond trailer while shouting "Make
-sure you hit the thumbs up and subscribe!" *cue shitty gif of a bell*
-throughout the video.
-
-
-The method I was using for this until recently was using a python
-application called ytcc by woefe over on GitHub. In a nutshell it's
-a front-end to youtube-dl for managing your subscriptions on YouTube.
-Simply enter the channel's name and whenever they upload a new video, it
-will download this ready to view locally. Simple, YouTube crap avoided.
-
-
-As I mentioned though I no longer do this, I have my a shell script that
-does something similar that directly uses youtube-dl. The reason
-I changed to this is I can download more than just YouTube videos, I can
-add other things such as LBRY. I can also customise youtube-dl output
-and options in greater detail.
-
-
-Finally on media content, podcast. Simply use a tool like castget or if
-you are a newsboat fan use the built-in podboat feature.
-
-
-BROWSING
---------
-
-There is no avoiding using a browser completely. When I do have to use
-one I fire up Qutebrowser, now since my rant about QuteBrowser and
-privacy in 003.txt things have changed for the better. Qutebrowser now
-has ABS ad-blocking enabled as well as fixing issues with referrers not
-working. My qutebrowser blocks nearly everything along with a decent VPN
-your good to go and get off as soon as you can.
-
-
-Checkout my dotfiles for a better understanding of how all this fits
-together. I will assume everyone reading this is fairly technical!
-
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/005.txt b/txt/005.txt
@@ -1,92 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[005]
-
-
-Why I dropped freebsd after a month
-───────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I switched over to using FreeBSD as my main desktop around 1 month ago.
-Last night I had enough of some core issues I was having and ended up
-switching back to Linux. My 2-year-old graphics card, an AMD RX 5700XT,
-does not work with the current stable release 12.2, so I had no choice
-but to use -CURRENT, ALPHA-2 then BETA-1.
-
-
-My setup is minimal; I don't use any GUI applications apart from the
-rare occasion I need to use a browser; I do use mpv often. Even with
-this setup, there was a performance issue that caused Xorg to micro
-stutter, causing a system pause for around 1 second.
-
-
-When using just a console things seemed to work fine, so my first
-thought was the problem must lie with Xorg. Over a few days I tried
-tweaking various Xorg options such as Tearfree, SWCursor, etc. This made
-zero improvement, my next port of call was the AMDGPU driver, drm-kmod.
-
-
-AMDGPU, A trip to the GitHub project page for this project did indeed
-show 4 out of 17 issues open are for the exact model of graphics card
-I have. Though none of the issues seemed related to the problem I was
-having.
-
-
-During my research, though, I also found posts on /r/freebsd and the
-official FreeBSD forums with similar issues, Sadly, none of them had any
-actual solutions. I decided to build the kernel module from the latest
-git master, this seemed to improve the stuttering, progress!
-
-
-Around this time I also found out that -CURRENT, -ALPHA and -BETA builds
-have a lot of debugging enabled in the kernel by default, which can
-cause degraded system performance.
-
-
-I found GENERIC-NODEBUG kernel config; I stripped out a lot of modules
-I wouldn't need to help the build times. This was so simple to do, and
-before I knew it I had a custom kernel built with all debugging removed.
-Booting into the new kernel I noticed an improvement right away.
-
-
-Playing a video still caused a little stuttering, as long as I did
-little else. I was happy with this for the time being, thinking that
-maybe when BETA-1 or RC came around things would be better.
-
-
-Woo-hoo, BETA-1 snapshot was released, time to give it a whirl. BAM,
-right back to square one. So I went through the same steps again with
-building the AMDGPU module from git and building a custom kernel with no
-debugging enabled.
-
-
-The same day as BETA-1 released, I got a reply on one post I made about
-the issue. Just run this, the poster says, All processes are tied to the
-first CCX0. This will reduce the usable cores to 4, however.
-
-
- sh -c 'ps -aux | cut -w -f2 | xargs -I foo \
- cpuset -l 0,2,4,6 -p foo > /dev/null 2>&1'
-
-
-No way this can be the solution, can it? Well yes it was, suddenly I had
-nearly ZERO issues. All the lag had disappeared! The only cost? I had
-to gimp the potential of my system.
-
-
-At this point I had enough, I spent so long on such a trivial matter
-I decided just to go back to Linux until 13.0 is released, then I will
-revisit it. I liked FreeBSD. There is so much to it that I loved and
-would go back in a heartbeat if I could get my hardware working without
-having to jump over so many hurdles.
-
-
-* I love ports
-* I had set up Bhyve running Poudriere building my own packages.
-* Setting up the GPU driver was really simple (if it worked on my card)
-* Audio setup was such a breeze.
-* I had no issue installing ports/packages I needed, pkg is a wonderful tool.
-* Jails are so handy, I didn't think I would need them but man they are
-great!
-
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/006.txt b/txt/006.txt
@@ -1,237 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[006]
-
-
-Association of really cruel viruses (arcv)
-──────────────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I have saved and collected a **huge** amount of data from the 80s, 90s
-and early 00s from the UK Hacking and Phreaking scene. Many of it has
-been lost over the years, so I will be dumping it here over the next
-while in the hopes someone finds it interesting!
-
-
-First up though we have ARCV, a virus writing group from the early
-1990s!
-
-
-ARCV
-----
-
-Around late 1992 a group emerged calling themselves the Association of
-Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV). The group was initially small, and by all
-accounts relatively unskilled, and was made up of two people, Apache
-Warrior who was the leader of the group, and ICE-9. They soon recruited
-two more, Toxic Crusader and Slartibartfast, and became one of the first
-virus writing groups in the UK.
-
-
-Over the next year, they would write around 100 viruses, the first few
-were created using a virus generator called Virus Creation Laboratory
-(VCL) but they would soon end up writing their own virii, apparently,
-they were also very well written! Apache Warrior would also end up
-creating the group's engine, Cybertech Mutation Engine (CME).
-
-
-ARCV didn't last too long before Scotland Yard caught up with them in an
-unsuspecting way. A year after they entered the scene around
-December/January 1993 Apache Warrior and ICE-9 were arrested in the
-Salford area in the UK. The group had been distributing their viruses
-and newsletters to a BBS in Cornwall as well as others via beige boxing.
-In their great wisdom, they decided that the best target of the beige
-boxing would be their neighbours' line. Scotland Yard did not even
-realise these two phone phreakers they just caught were also the
-founding members on ARCV until the confiscation of their computer
-equipment.
-
-
-Apache Warrior cooperated with the police, and further examination of
-the confiscated equipment confirmed that not only had the police caught
-some phone phreakers, but they also caught the leader of ARCV. On
-Wednesday, January 27 1993, four other ARCV members in Manchester,
-Cumbria, Staffordshire and Cornwall were raided by Scotland Yard and
-their computer equipment confiscated. This was ICE-9, Toxic Crusader,
-Slartibartfast and the arrest in Cornwall was the SYSOP of the BBS where
-ARCV transferred files too so not officially a member of ARCV. In total
-there were six arrests and all were released on police bail pending
-further investigations.
-
-
-DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit failed to identify anyone
-affected by any ARCV created viruses. Due to this Apache Warrior, ICE-9
-and the two other members were let off with cautions. One was cautioned
-relating to another matter, the BBS SYSOP, and the last one was released
-with no further actions.
-
-
-You can download all the files I have on ARCV from the following gopher
-site.
-
-
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, txt format
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe format
-* ARCV Newsletter 1, exe screenshot
-* ARCV virus collection, 93 in total, be careful you windows users!
-* November 1992 article
-* April 1993 article
-* July 1993 article
-
-
->> gopher://jay.scot/files/groups/arcv/
-
-
-Got any of these files? Let me know!
-
-* ARCV Newsletter Issue 2, may not exist.
-* ARCV Virus Library Disk 1 and 2, may not of been released.
-* EICAR'94 conference talk/slides (ICE-9)
-* CME 1.0 and CME 2.0
-* Access All Areas II (96) and III (97) talks/slides (Apache Warrior & ICE-9)
-
-
---- Feb, 1993 : Spreading Viruses
---- Personal Computer World Magazine
-
-We are a bunch of programmers who, depressed with the lack of viruses that
-have originated in England, have sought to change matters. We presently
-write viruses for the PC, Archimedes and Atari ST. We have increased the few
-viruses written in England by about 25, though this number is increasing all
-the time as our programmers churn out more quality computer viruses.
-Although there are many viruses about we hope to dominate the UK 'market'.
-Won't it be nice, though, for England to have at least one export? Finally,
-we as an organisation like to stress that, contrary to public opinion, we are
-*not* boring people who wear anoraks, nor are we depraved people who were
-beaten as children and so grew up with a hatred of humanity. We are highly
-intelligent and good at programming and are just ordinary people. But we are
-gonna get you soon!
-
- - ARCV (Association of Really Cruel Viruses)
-
-
---- 4 Feb, 1993 : Apache scalps virus cowboys
-
-Police raided the homes of suspected computer virus authors across the
-country last week, arresting five people and seizing equipment. "The raids
-were carried out last Wednesday by police in Manchester, Cumbria,
-Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall." Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit
-co-ordinated the raids under the codename Operation Apache. A spokeswoman for
-the Greater Manchester Police said: 'The investigation began in the
-Manchester area following the arrest of the self-styled president of the
-virus writing group in Salford last December.' Police would not reveal the
-man's name, but said he had been released on bail. "Last week's raids led to
-the arrest of a further two people in Manchester. Three other suspects were
-also arrested in Staffordshire, Cumbria and Cornwall." PCs and floppy disks
-were seized in all the raids. "All those arrested have been released on
-police bail pending further investigations."
-
-
---- 4 Feb, 1993 : UK Virus Writers Group Foiled by Scotland Yard
-
-British police have arrested four members of a virus-writing group that calls
-itself the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV).
-
-The Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit coordinated the raids carried out on
-suspects in Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, Devon, and Cornwall. The
-arrests last Wednesday, January 27, bring to six the number of ARCV members
-found by police, after they initially arrested one caught "phreaking" in
-Manchester in December. ("Phone phreaking" is the illegal practice of
-obtaining free use of telephone lines.) The arrests were made under Section 3
-of the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits unauthorized modification of
-computer material, said Detective Sergeant Stephen Littler. The suspects, who
-cannot be identified at this stage under British law, have been released on
-bail pending inquiries and may face further charges.
-
-The members of ARCV used PCs to write viruses, which they shared via a
-bulletin board operated by one suspect in Cornwall. The police confiscated
-hardware and software, which is being studied by virus experts to determine
-how many viruses were written and what the viruses were intended to do,
-Littler said. The British anti-virus community became aware of ARCV through
-the group's own publicity efforts, such as a newsletter that it had uploaded
-to various bulletin boards in the U.S., according to Richard Ford, editor of
-the monthly "Virus Bulletin", which is published in Abingdon, Oxon, England.
-The newsletter was described in detail in the November, 1992, issue of "Virus
-Bulletin".
-
-To the best of my knowledge, none of their viruses are in the wild, out
-there spreading" said Ford. But they have been found on virus exchange
-bulletin board services, and we've had reports of them being uploaded rather
-widely in the UK. ARCV claims, in its newsletter, to have links with
-PHALCON/SKISM in the U.S. and other virus writers in Eastern Europe. "The
-world is a very small place when you've got a modem, or are on the Internet",
-Ford said. The newsletter invites new members to join even if they are not
-virus writers but prefer other "underground" activities such as hacking and
-phreaking. It also betrays ARCV's fears of being perceived as nerds (a term
-not used in Britain) saying, "Now the picture put out by the Anti- Virus
-Authors is that Virus writers are Sad individuals who wear Anoraks and go
-Train Spotting but well they are sadly mistaken, we are very intelligent,
-sound minded, highly trained, and we wouldn't be seen in an Anorak or near an
-Anorak even if dead."
-
-ARCV has already failed at one of the objectives mentioned in its premier
-newsletter issue, which said, "We will be dodging Special Branch and New
-Scotland Yard as we go."
-
-
---- From: m...@doc.ic.ac.uk (Mike C Holderness)
---- Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
---- Subject: This just in from London...
---- Date: 3 Feb 1993 13:57:06 -0000
---- Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
-
-Police have arrested Britain's first computer virus-writing group in an
-operation they hope will dampen the aspirations of any potential high-tech
-criminals. Four members of the Association of Really Cruel Viruses (ARCV)
-were raided last Wednesday in a joint operation in four cities co-ordinated
-by Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit. The arrests in Greater Manchester,
-Cumbria, Staffordshire and Devon and Cornwall, bring to six the members of
-the group that have been tracked down by police. Two others, also writing for
-ARCV, were arrested a month ago in Manchester. This six are thought to have
-written between 30 and 50 relatively harmless viruses....
-
-[continues. By Susan Watts. (C) 1993 Newspaper Publishing plc.]
-
-Comments, especially from survivors and even more from people in the UK who
-are into a little light looking around but nothing Really Cruel, very
-welcome. Yes, I am a journalist.
-
-
---- 16 May, 1994 : Urnst Couch / Crypt Newsletter
-
-About the same time, a hacker was arrested for stealing phone service from
-his neighbor's line and his equipment confiscated, too. The hacker turned out
-to be Apache Warrior, a member of the small United Kingdom virus-writing
-group called ARCV (for Association of Really Cruel Viruses).
-
-Some background information not included in the book: Alan Solomon was
-apparently able to convince New Scotland Yard's computer crime unit that they
-should also try to prosecute Apache Warrior as a virus-writer and that the
-rest of the group should be rounded up, too. In conversation, Solomon has
-said Apache Warrior turned over the names of other group members.
-Subsequently, New Scotland Yard and local constabularies conducted raids at
-multiple sites in England, arresting another man. Paradoxically, prior to the
-arrests, Solomon joked that ARCV was better at cyber-publicity than virus
-programming and its creations were little more than petty menaces. The book
-offers no reported incidences of ARCV viruses on the computers of others,
-although Virus News International, by extension S&S International, solicited
-readers for such evidence in 1993.
-
-
---- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 93 09:17:21
---- From: aryeh@mcafee.com (McAfee Associates)
---- Subject: Forwarded message from Scotland Yard
-
-Hello All,
-
-I was recently contacted by DC Noel Bonczoszek of the Computer Crimes Unit at
-New Scotland Yard in London. As some of you may be aware, Noel is one of the
-folks responsible for arresting the members of ARCV, a UK-based group of
-virus-writers. He would like to speak with anyone who suffered an infection
-from any of their viruses. If you have been infected by one of their
-viruses, or know of someone who has, then please give him a call at +44 (71)
-230-1177 during office hours (GMT), or send him a fax at +44 (71) 230-1275.
-
-Please bear in mind that I'm only forwarding this message for DC Bonczoszek.
-If you have any questions, please contact him directly.
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/007.txt b/txt/007.txt
@@ -1,94 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[007]
-
-
-Build, patch and maintain suckless tools
-────────────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I am a long time supporter of the Unix philosophy and have been using
-tools such as dwm as my daily driver since 2011, as such I mainly use
-the terminal for everything. Lots of these tools are best built via the
-latest source code release or development copy instead of a package
-build, so you can apply your custom configuration. The most common
-methods I have come across on managing to do this is a mixture of using
-separate git branches for each patch or even just manually applying the
-patches and then fixing anything that didn't succeed.
-
-I am a big fan of Makefiles, I even use Makefiles to manage my dotfiles
-instead of a tool like GNU Stow. So it will be no surprise I use these
-to build, patch and install all my suckless based tools such as dwm, st,
-dmenu and herbe. My Makefile makes patching easy and means I don't need
-to worry about maintaining multiple branches, it's super easy to get the
-latest versions etc. It also helps that I don't have any extra patches
-apart from dmenu and st, any additions I have for dwm and herbe are
-added to config.h as functions.
-
-Below is the generic Makefile I use, this one is for dmenu as it's
-a good example to use since I use a few minimal external patches. The
-options at the top of the Makefile should be pretty obvious, the
-defaults should be fine for most people.
-
-
- REPOSITORY = http://git.suckless.org/dmenu
- SRC_DIR = dmenu-src
- PINNED_REVISION = HEAD
- PATCH_DIR = patches
-
- all: $(SRC_DIR)
-
- clean: reset
- @if test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s clean; \
- git -C "${SRC_DIR}" clean -f; \
- fi
-
- $(SRC_DIR): clone reset patch
- @cp config.h $@
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s
-
- patch: $(PATCH_DIR)/*
- @for file in $^ ; do \
- patch -d "${SRC_DIR}" < $${file}; \
- done
- reset:
- @if [ -n "$(strip $(PINNED_REVISION))" ]; then \
- git -C "${SRC_DIR}" reset --hard $(PINNED_REVISION); \
- fi
-
- clone:
- @if ! test -d $(SRC_DIR); then \
- git clone $(REPOSITORY) $(SRC_DIR); \
- fi
-
- update: clean
- @git -C "${SRC_DIR}" pull
-
- install:
- $(MAKE) -C "${SRC_DIR}" -s install
-
-
- .PHONY: all clean update install reset clone patch
-
-
-And this is the file structure I have:
-
- |- dwm
- |-- dwm-src # git clone of dwm, handled by Makefile
- |-- config.h # my custom config for dmenu
- |-- Makefile # the Makefile from above
- |-- patches # directory containing patches
- |---- 01-dmenu-centre.patch
- |---- 02-dmenu-border.patch
-
-If you have no patches to apply, then remove the 'patch' from line 14
-then run 'make', this will git clone or reset if already cloned, apply
-patches, copy your custom config.h and the build, A 'make install' after
-that will install as normal.
-
-To see a working copy of these you can clone my dotfiles and have
-a look in the dwm, dmenu, st or herbe folders.
-
- git clone git://jay.scot/dotfiles
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/008.txt b/txt/008.txt
@@ -1,85 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[008]
-
-
-I moved over to wayland
-───────────────────────
-
-
-I have been putting it off for ages, it's been on my to-do list for
-months. Anytime I saw it pop-up I would just ignore it either due to
-laziness, not interested or just general procrastinating. However, not
-this weekend! Wayland will be the de facto and soon enough replace Xorg
-am sure.
-
-My setup is heavily terminal based with the usual tooling you see these
-days. Suckless based tools such as dwm, dmenu and st as the main WM
-tooling. Mutt for email, all kinds of feeds via Newsboat, MPV for
-videos, browsing with Qutebrower and Amfora for Gemini. I was hoping
-with such minimal GUI usage the switch over would be easy enough.
-A quick look around and it looks like I would need to completely switch
-dwm, dmenu and st over to a wayland equivalent.
-
-I do have a few edge case applications I use but upon checking, they all
-work under wayland. These were Qutebrowser (Browsing), Performance
-Portfolio (Accounting) and Calibre (Ebooks), result!
-
-First, the window manager! As it turns out there is a wayland port of
-dwm called dwl, there seems to be a few trivial changes, but they are
-basically like for like. On a sidenote, I had been tweaking dwm recently
-and it really became a bit of a pain in the arse building, restart dwm
-all the time. With this still at the back of my mind, anticipating that
-I will be doing it again with dwl, I thought why not try out something
-new. Enter Sway.
-
-Sway is the wayland port of i3 with some common patches people used
-rolled in. A look at the config file setup for Sway made it look very
-straight forward to replicate my dwm keybinds and layout. Another
-benefit being I could install the packages via the AUR instead of
-building it myself, this felt like a plus after many many years of
-compiling from source.
-
-I kinda hate st, truth be told. You need to add in a few patches to the
-build as out of the box it's very limiting. So on that I was happy to
-find a replacement for st. Two options were on the table for me,
-Alacritty and Foot. I ended up going with Foot, it seemed to be a lot
-faster and lightweight compared to Alacritty, according to their own
-benchmark results. I also wasn't sold on the idea of it being GPU
-accelerated. Alacritty also clams to be faster than all the rest, but
-they didn't seem to provide the actual benchmarks, just the tool they
-used. Whereas Foot had a whole ton of information, benchmarks and
-screenshots explaining why its fast as fuck.
-
-Again the application was in the AUR and with a live reload config file
-it was trivial to set up. Interestingly, the out of the box config would
-have been fine, only thing I really changed were the colours and font.
-
-dmenu, this one I spent most of my time researching and testing out
-various alternatives. At first, I was just going to use rofi but soon
-found out that it doesn't have native wayland support and uses Xwayland
-instead. There is a port called wofi too, I tried both of them out.
-I don't know, I just didn't like them, they seemed to flashy, the config
-for them seemed tedious. I then tried out bemenu which is based on
-dmenu, this was the one. Yet again I just needed to install the AUR
-package, the config can be set via an environment variable called
-BEMENU_OPTS. After playing about with it I just added this to my bashrc
-profile and I was done. So simple, love it.
-
-
-> export BEMENU_OPTS="-p '> ' --tb '#000000' --tf '#ffffff' --hf '#444444'"
-
-
-So far I have had no crashes or any issues at all. One thing that I have
-noticed is MPV playback seems way smoother and scrolling in Qutebrowser
-is tear-free. So far so good, and I really don't feel like I am missing
-anything switching over.
-
-Another side, my installed packages has reduced massively, all
-X packages have been removed as they are no longer needed. My dotfiles
-directory looks a lot leaner without all the dwm, herbe, st and dmenu
-builds. Trivial I know.
-
-I guess now I just continue as is for a few more months and see what
-I think then!
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/009.txt b/txt/009.txt
@@ -1,34 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[009]
-
-
-A true cheap dumbphone, impossible?
-───────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I have been on the lookout of a truly cheap dumb phone but trying to
-find that sweet spot just isn't happening. I just want to call and get
-SMS - that's it.
-
-The Lightphone 2 [0] looks ideal at first glance, nice and simple.
-However, digging into it a bit more I see the following possible issues
-for my use case:
-
- It's expensive, around £350 ($402) when you include import tax.
- Linked to some sort of central login platform.
- From installing apps to first-time boot a "Light Account" is needed.
-
-Another one that's looks good is the Mudita Pure Phone [2], they even
-have an open source OS running it called MuditaOS. The massive downside,
-it's nearly £340 ($385). Crazy prices if you ask me!
-
-What I am using currently is an old Nokia 2.3 with Unlauncher [3]
-running, cost was around £60 ($75) 2 years ago. I really wish there was
-a cheap and truly dumbphone out there..
-
-
-0. https://thelightphone.com
-1. https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure
-2. https://jkuester.github.io/unlauncher
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/010.txt b/txt/010.txt
@@ -1,39 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[010]
-
-
-Convert mbox to maildir using fdm
-─────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I recently downloaded a bunch of old mailing list archives from Alpine
-Linux[0] that I want to merge with my current archives. The problem being
-my current archives were in Maildir format while the Alpine Linux
-archives were in MBOX.
-
-
-Since I already use fdm[1] for fetching my mail as well as converting RSS
-feeds I just went with that, this is how:
-
-
- $ cat archive
-
- $listdir= "%h/.mail/alpine.users" # where to save the maildir
- $mbox= "%h/tmp/alpine-users.mbox" # the local mbox location
-
- # the local mbox file
- account "convert" mbox "$mbox"
- action "convert" maildir "${listdir}"
- match all action "convert"
-
-
-then just run FDM with the above configuration file:
-
-
- $ fdm -f archive fetch
-
-
-0. https://lists.alpinelinux.org/~alpine/users
-1. https://github.com/nicm/fdm
-
-.EOF
(DIR) diff --git a/txt/011.txt b/txt/011.txt
@@ -1,41 +0,0 @@
-[jay.scot]
-[011]
-
-
-Reducing my footprint, using a mini-pc
-──────────────────────────────────────
-
-
-I recently turned off my main pc, a homegrown setup I had been upgrading
-over the years. It had quite a decent spec, AMD RX XT5700, Intel i7,
-32Gb RAM, 3xSSDs and a NVM drives. I have mentioned in previous TXT
-files I mainly use the command line apart from qutebrowser occasionally
-so it was complete overkill. Not to mention the energy prices in north
-Scotland being absurd, it was time to "downgrade".
-
-
-I had a few options in mind, a good old Raspberry Pi, a 2nd hand
-Thinkcentre or an off the shelf mini-pc. As you obviously gathered,
-I went with the mini-pc, a beelink U59 [0]. The RPI are actually quite
-costly now, hard to get. I also wanted an X86 architecture for using
-Alpine Linux - my distro of choice these days. Apparently the
-Thinkcentre can be quite loud too, so I ended up buying the U59 with the
-500 GB SSD and 16 GB Ram for around £200 on Amazon.
-
-
-I installed Alpine Linux with no issues at all. I have a bootstrap
-script for Alpine [1], so using this I was up and running with the foot
-terminal open on sway 15 minutes later. The U59 is completely quiet, and
-the max I have seen the temp get so far was 59C while playing Loom via
-ScummVM. I had to compile ScummVM from source which took around 20
-mintues. The power draw was sitting around 15 watts during this time.
-
-
-Really happy with it so far, will be interesting to see how long this
-machine lasts for.
-
-
-0. https://www.bee-link.com/catalog/product/index?id=334
-1. gopher://jay.scot/1/git/alpine-bootstrap/
-
-.EOF