Lazybear

How do I take fleeting notes

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 06:40:32 +0000

Different people use various methods to take notes. Some prefer Apple Notes, while others use Obsidian, Standard Notes, or simply a pen and notebook.

As a user of the Zettelkasten method, I utilize a combination of different tools.

Fleeting notes

The purpose of fleeting notes is to capture ideas or thoughts when one is occupied with other tasks. When reading a book, one can use a pen to take notes. As I use a Remarkable to read, annotating in the book and extracting the notes afterward is easy.

Later, the notes can be reviewed and included as permanent notes in one’s system. It is recommended to review any note at least once a week. If there is no value in a note, because it was not taken correctly or some information was missed, it should be erased.

Permanent notes

Permanent notes are the ones you want to keep forever. They are always written in the same way, in the same place.

They should be written in your own words and contain the necessary information to be understood a week, a month, years after they were written.

How do I write them?

While I used to use Obsidian on my mobile, I have not reinstalled the app since upgrading my phone and installing GrapheneOS.

When it comes to writing notes, the tools I use depend on whether I am at my laptop or on the go.

For longer notes, I primarily use Standard Notes.

Signal ‘Notes to self’ to write a short note with a reference.

Then, I review it and decide whether to keep it or not.

Linux

On my Debian, I use AwesomeWM, a tiling window manager.

The main reason: to avoid using the mouse!

To add a quick note, I added this to my ~/.config/rc.lua:


 -- Add a quick note
 awful.key({ modkey }, "e", function ()
 awful.spawn("kitty --single-instance -e /home/hyde/bin/addnote",
 {
 floating = true,
 ontop = true,
 placement = awful.placement.centered
 })
 end,
 {description = "add note", group = "hotkeys"}),

Pressing Modkey4 + e opens a new floating window which invokes the addnote script. This script adds a note to my Vimwiki diary if one is not already present for the current day.

If a note is already present, it is added to the end of the note.

The note looks like this:


 # YYYY-MM-DD 

 # HH:MM:SS

 Foo
 reference:

 # HH:MM:SS

 Bar
 reference:

OSX

My working laptop is a MacBook Pro.

I use Yabai to emulate a tiling window manager and skhd for keybindings.

While these tools are helpful, they are not as comprehensive as those available for Linux.

The configuration is use in my ~/.skhdrc is:


 alt - e: open -n -a /Applications/kitty.app/Contents/MacOS/Kitty --args -e
 /Users/hyde/bin/addnote; yabai -m space -toggle padding; yabai -m space
 --toggle gap

Pressing <Alt-e> opens a new kitty terminal using the same addnote script.

On OSX, my spaces are organized like this:

Space 1: Tmux / terminal
Space 2: Librewolf
Space 3: Slack
Space 4: Element
Space 5: Docker Desktop

In the same way, I always use the same window arrangement on my Linux box.

The initial tag or space will always be for Tmux or Terminal. The second tag is for the browser, and the third is for Slack for work or Signal for my personal laptop. This system allows me to locate my items quickly. I do not wish to spend time searching for the desired window.

You can use this configuration in your ~/.yabairc to organize it how you want:


 yabai -m rule --add app="^kitty$" space=1
 yabai -m rule --add app="^Librewolf$" space=2
 yabai -m rule --add app="^Slack$" space=3
 yabai -m rule --add app="^Element$" space=4
 yabai -m rule --add app="^(Docker Desktop)$" space=5

Zettelkasten and Vimwiki

Notes are organized in the directory ~/projects/zettelkasten.

Fleeting notes are added to ~/projects/zettelkasten/diary with a date format of YYYY-MM-DD.md.

In Neovim, the Vimwiki diary index can be quickly accessed using its keybinding, where all the fleeting ones can be found.

The index appears as follows:


 ❯ cat -np diary.md
 # Diary

 ## 2024

 ### February

 - [2024-02-11](2024-02-11)
 - [2024-02-08](2024-02-08)
 - [2024-02-05](2024-02-05)

 ### January

 - [2024-01-29](2024-01-29)
 - [2024-01-25](2024-01-25)
 - [2024-01-24](2024-01-24)
 - [2024-01-19](2024-01-20)
 - [2024-01-19](2024-01-19)
 - [2024-01-18](2024-01-18)
 - [2024-01-15](2024-01-15)
 - [2024-01-13](2024-01-13)
 - [2024-01-09](2024-01-09)
 - [2024-01-03](2024-01-03)
 - [2024-01-02](2024-01-02)

NB: In Vimwiki, link extensions are hidden.

All notes are stored in the same directory. I use Neovim’s telescope to search for the notes I need.

I do not categorise them, but instead use tags to link them together.

Vimwiki is primarily used for diary notes.

Conclusion

It is important to note that this evaluation is subjective. While it works for me, it may not work for others who use their computer differently.

However, I hope that this approach will inspire individuals to try it.

Post 5/100 - Round 5 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How to use a thesaurus with Vim ?

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:42:01 +0000

Neovim, along with tmux, is probably the software I use the most on a daily basis. I use it for taking notes, configuring servers, coding, and writing blog posts. I cannot imagine my life without it anymore.

Occasionally, when writing blog posts or documentation, I need to find synonyms. While I could search for them online, the good news is that I can use Vim/Neovim for this purpose.

Thesaurus

First, a little definition. What is a thesaurus?

A thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped by similarity of meaning, often with definitions, antonyms and usage examples.

By default, Vim/Neovim doesn’t come with a thesaurus installed.

There are plugins available to add them, but that’s not what we’re going to do. I’ll show you how to use a text file full of synonyms.

Here is a French, and an English one, that you can also find in the documentation (:h compl-thesaurus)

Those files contains lines like this:


 spy operative spectator witness viewer watcher looker descry spot espy sight
 spyeria Spyeria
 spyglass glass
 spyhole peephole hole
 spying watch vigil intelligence detection catching espial spotting discovery

There is nothing particularly noteworthy about those files. It is possible to add your own words if desired.

Configuration

If you use Vim:

download or create your thesaurus files
configure your ~/.vimrc to use them by adding that line:


 set thesaurus += ~/.vim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt # or any path you want
 set thesaurus += ~/.vim/thesaurus/thesaurus-french.txt # if you have more than one

That’s all!

For Neovim, I have a ~/.config/nvim/lua/hyde/options.lua with a small loop:


 -- options.lua
 local o = vim.opt

 [...]

 -- thesaurus
 local thesaurusfiles = {
 "~/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt",
 "~/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-french.txt"
 }

 for _, path in ipairs(thesaurusfiles) do
 o.thesaurus:append(path)
 end

Let learn how to use once it has been configured.

Usage

When using Vim/Neovim, you can access a thesaurus completion feature by typing Ctrl-x Ctrl-t while in Insert mode. This will provide you with a list of synonyms.


 abbey[Ctrl-x Ctrl-t]
 abbey /home/hyde/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt
 church /home/hyde/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt
 convent /home/hyde/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt
 monastery /home/hyde/.config/nvim/thesaurus/thesaurus-english.txt

The only issue arises when a completion occurs on certain words, such as ‘spy’. This word is also present on different lines of the thesaurus file:


 a*spy* rough gruff hoarse husky piercing raucous strident rending ripping splitting noisy
 counterspy mole spy
 cri*spy* crisp
 descry spot e*spy* spy sight
 detection espial *spy*ing spotting discovery find uncovering contracting acquiring getting

The line completion feature searches for and suggests the following lines based on the input. Therefore, the suggested synonyms may not be accurate.

I have raised an issue, and hope that it will be resolved soon.

Post 4/100 - Round 5 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The blog got a "now" page

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 22:00:29 +0000

Our Mexican friend, Joel added a “Now” page based on Derek Sivers' one.

Sivers described it like this:

So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life.

For short, we call it a “now page”.

Derek Sivers

So, I added one too.

This page has been added to the existing pages on the site, including /hate, /love, /quotes, and /use.

I have added a couple of links in the menu for them as well.

Post 3/100 - Round 5 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How I take notes and synchronize them

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:37:16 +0000

Almost 4 years ago, I wrote about how I used to take notes.

Let’s see what changed, and what didn’t.

What changed

I have stopped using Moleskine notebooks due to the poor compatibility with fountain pens.

Although I tried using Leuchtturum 1917 notebooks, I did not continue using them for some reason. Currently, I use Dingbats notebooks, but there is still room for improvement:

There are no numbered pages, but I can manually number them.
The paper should have a higher weight.

I have been bullet journaling for a while now to keep track of my tasks.

I have stopped using Taskwarrior completely.

Same thing with the Nextcloud’s notes app.

Instead, I use the ‘Note to self’ feature in Signal to quickly jot down my thoughts and then add them to my Zettelkasten system. This approach is straightforward and efficient, especially since I also use the Signal desktop version.

I have been using also Vimwiki in my workflow for over a year. However, I recently made some changes and may switch exclusively to Neovim and its new configuration. But, I’m not sure at 100% about this, I may keep Vimwiki 😅.

What didn’t change

Logbooks! They are my preferred option for journaling as I intend to pass them down to my children.

Additionally, I exclusively utilise plain text files with Markdown. That way, I’m pretty sure any editor in the future will be able to edit them.

I still use daily my Faber-Castell e-motion fountain pen on a daily basis.

Conclusion

I primarily adhere to the same practices. The significant alterations were related to Neovim, Vimwiki, and Zettelkasten.

Soon I will share my complete notes configuration and how I manage them. Please stay tuned.

Post 2/100 - Round 5 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The Now page

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 09:00:36 +0200

Updated, February 6th, 2024.

This is a now page based a bit on Derek Sivers' page.

There are many examples on nownownow.

What I do?

Breaking things as a sysadmin, a SRE, or a DevOps.

Books

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.
Power Hold’em Strategy by Daniel Negreanu.

Watching

Of Money and Blood, a French TV Show, that relates the biggest ever case of VAT fraud on the EU carbon market.

Enjoying

Zettelkasten articles from Zettelkasten.de, and taking notes in my new Neovim configuration.
Starting the #100DayToOffload challenge for the 5th year in a row.
More pictures since I got my Fuji XPro-3 back from repair.

January 2024

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:30:00 +0000

It is unclear to me whether this is due to being busy or the passage of time as one ages. But, January has passed too quickly.

During this month, I listened to several podcasts, watched a couple of movies, and attempted to read.

Podcasts

European Portuguese with Karolinti

I’m learning Portuguese, and I found podcasts to learn the language. For now, I started with that one.

I listened to more than 20 episodes this month.

Darknet Diaries

Episode 141: The Pig Butcher

World of Secrets

The Abercrombie Guys: 8 episodes. Quite crazy to learn how they abused so many males models under NDA. The fashion’s dark side.

You’ll die smarter

42 episodes of small random facts. I learnt that Vietnamese Nguyen name is the 4th most popular in the world behind Lee, Zhang, and Wang.

OSINT Origins

#7 - Flefgraph - Comment détecter la désinformation sur Twitter.

DEV Discuss

S9:E8 s How to introduce coding to your kids

Rust in Production

Ep.1 - InfluxData’s Paul Dix

New Rustacean

e000: Hello, world!
e001: Document all the things
e002: Something borrowed, something… moved?
e003: No. more. nulls.
e004: Functionalized.
e005: Allocate it where?

Feel better, live more with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Why Anxiety is your superpower with Dr Wendy Suzuki

Linux Lads

Episode 115: This episode was (not) generated by AI. One about Kagi’s utilization of Brave’s API, copilot key, OpenBSD, cwm, Ardour and Audacity.

Le code a changé (French)

Une vie sans Internet - A life without Internet.
How an elderly man lives without internet or technology. An amusing reflection on our “modern” world, and how we could probably live without the useless things that big tech companies have brought into our lives.
Les dames de l’algorithme
The French government is employing lower-level employees to perform repetitive tasks, allowing their data model to learn from their input. This is similar to what OpenAI does (did?) with Kenyan employees.

Les Baladeurs (French)

#04 - Au cœur des vagues géantes de Nazaré avec Justine Dupont. Nazare is a popular destination for surfers. The author describes how she found the courage to face 30-meter waves.
#05 - Le cri de la tempête avec Molécule A sound engineer spent months on a boat recording ocean sounds.
#06 - Ascension glaciale dans les monts Célestes avec Evrard Wendenbaum Evrard Wendenbaum, and his friends Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, Nicolas Favresse, and Stéphane Hanssens, set off on an icy climb through a remote valley in western China.
#07 - Marche nomade dans les montagnes d’Iran avec Sophie Massieu She dreamt about Iran, and finally decided to discover it.
#08 - Noir pétrole dans l’Arctique russe avec Alban Grosdidier In the summer of 2014, Alban Grosdidier joined Greenpeace’s Russian office for a three-week expedition to Ussinsk, a city disfigured by the oil industry. With 60 volunteers of all nationalities, their aim is to clean up a 1,000-ton leak in the heart of the Komi forest. But soon, faced with the magnitude of the task, morale plummets and the operation turns into a nightmare.
#09 - Le murmure de la banquise avec Anne-Claire Bihan-Poudec February 2016, Anne-Claire Bihan-Poudec joins the sailing boat ATKA trapped in the ice off Greenland.
Daily life during wintering with the ship’s captain and mate is punctuated by trips to the nearby village, repairs on board and a few strolls among the icebergs, just for fun.
But when the blizzard suddenly breaks, the terrifying and mysterious face of the polar world is revealed to the crew…
#10 - Sur les traces du grizzli le long du Yukon avec Them Anargyros et Julien Mavier The adventure begins when Wayne, a Canadian from Whitehorse, drops Themo Anargyros and Julien Mavier off on the shores of Quiet Lake with a canoe and their waterproof canister.
For a month, the two friends will live on the cold waters of autumn.
On the shores of the Yukon, the wilderness awakens, animals surprise them, and all around them, grizzly bear tracks multiply…
#11 - A la recherche des plantes sauvages de Nouvelle-Zélande avec Vincent Pinton. At the end of 2017, Vincent Piton is about to embark on Te Araroa, a 3,000-kilometer trail that crosses New Zealand from north to south, from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
In his bag, a minimum of provisions…
A plant enthusiast since childhood, he plans to feed on the various edible and medicinal species he encounters along the way, while mapping them from subtropical forests to alpine mountains. How far will nature be able to feed him?
#12 - Mission d’urgence dans les étoiles avec Jean-François Clervoy In June 1999, Hubble, lost among the stars, saw its third of six gyroscopes flicker before shutting down completely. The famous telescope responsible for dating the universe was in survival mode.
NASA plans an emergency mission to repair it.
The best astronauts, including France’s Jean-François Clervoy, are mobilized to handle the complex operation of the telescope, disorientated more than 600 kilometers from the Earth’s surface…

This one was a great one !

#13 - A la conquête du pôle Nord avec François Bernard François Bernard is one of the few adventurers to have climbed the “seven summits”, the highest peaks on each continent, and to have taken on the challenge of the three poles: Everest, the South Pole and the North Pole.
In 1996, to check off a new box on this crazy challenge, the North Pole, he and three other alpine hunters embarked on a polar adventure with the makings of a nightmare: crossing from Cape Arktichevsky to the northernmost point of the planet, on skis and in complete autonomy. A feat never before achieved by the French, and only the third attempt worldwide…
During the 54-day, 1,000-kilometer raid, danger is everywhere, behind every crevasse, in every gesture, even the most insignificant.

That was another great episode.

#14 - L’appel des sommets berbères dans l’Atlas marocain avec Stéphanie Bodet Ever since she was a child, Stéphanie Bodet has forged an incredible relationship with nature. An avid rock climber, she quickly became accustomed to difficult boulders, revealing herself through contact with legendary routes such as El Capitan in Yosemite, or the vertiginous walls of Madagascar and Pakistan.
And yet, her heart remained attached to a particular rock. An intense, poetic story. In the heart of Morocco’s red stone, in the Taghia massif, the encounter is both mineral and human…
15 - L’amour sous la surface avec Julie Gautier et Guillaume Néry. Julie Gautier has been surrounded by fish since she was born on Reunion Island. She spends whole days trying to catch them by hand. Later, she discovered underwater hunting and the world of freediving.
Travelling to Nice for her first international competition, Julie immersed herself alongside renowned freedivers: Umberto Pelizzari, Andy Le Sauce… On the organizational side, the safety divers were in place. Among them, a promising young man named Guillaume Néry…
Now champions of their discipline, Guillaume and Julie explore the world’s deep waters together. Beneath the surface, their intimate story with the ocean is written through encounters as magical as they are unexpected…
#16 - Ecrire la montagne du diable avec Miguel Bonnefoy In the heart of the Auyan Tepuy plateaus, bordered by immense cliffs, in the great Venezuelan savannah, the murmur of the jungle escapes from dark cracks and the breath of the immense Salto Angel waterfall becomes more oppressive with every step…
French-Venezuelan writer Miguel Bonnefoy follows the trail of a band of adventurers to chronicle their dangerous experience. But as the men stride confidently towards the waterfall, the fear that rises in his belly makes his pencil tremble on his notebook…
Do you have to experience fear to be able to put it down on paper?
#17 - Les vapeurs de soufre du volcan Kawah Ijen avec Sydney Léa Le Bour Sidney Léa Le Bour is a young photo-documentarist. As she criss-crosses the world to capture its natural beauty, she gradually gets closer to places where nature becomes danger.
At the top of the Kawah Ijen volcano, sulfur fumes swirl around her, and in the smoke screen she can make out the faces of miners, exhausted by their long working days…
She sets out on a mission to meet them, so that she can bear witness to their plight.

Book Log

This month, I didn’t finish any book, but I started:

Power Hold’em Strategy by Daniel Negreanu, a book about poker “Small Balls” strategy that I wanted to read for a while. - 27% read

I continued:

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - 43% read

And, those are still waiting to be completed:

The Wim Hof method by Wim Hof - 8% read
How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell - 75% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut il arrêter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.
Kubernetes Best Practices by Brendan Burns

I need to allocate some time to complete the increasing number of books I have begun, but have not yet finished.

Articles - Blog posts

Curl and emails

How the lead developer archived emails he received being in one of these categories:
- Accusing me of wrongdoings
- Thinking I’m responsible for or know anything about a product (that probably uses curl)
- Random weirdness

Random

What is Starlite?
Where the billionaires have built their bunkers? (French article)

Movies - TV Show

Here’s how I rate them.

Bullet Train - 2022

The latest movie with Brad Pitt. I enjoyed the ride in that train.

Knives Out - 2019

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, a world-famous detective hired to investigate the death of the patriarch of an eccentric, combative family.

Nice casting with Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon (who is also on the train with Brad Pitt), and Jamie Lee Curtis. Those are the only ones I know.

Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery - 2022

A second opus with Benoit Blanc. This time, invited to a Greek island owned by a tech billionaire, a murder happens, and his skills will help to solve the case.

The previous one was superior to this one. However, I still found it enjoyable to watch.

Wish - 2023

As a parent, one often finds themselves watching a lot of animated movies with their children. Recently, we watched the latest Disney film, Wish.

While the kids enjoyed it, I found it to be an average movie.

Sport

I watched, as usual, the NBA. Many great games, including two scoring machines, Embiid who scored 70 points, and Doncic who racked up 73 points!

Post 1/100 - Round 5 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My Top 50 of 2023

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 11:02:36 +0000

It is that time of year again when I review my top 50 of the past year.

Here it goes:

Finally, John Wick is dead! I’m still unsure why I watched all of the movies.
Twitter is dead too!
I’m not dead, and in good health. Thank God!
I have stopped playing Padel due to the time it consumed. I realized that I wanted to spend my time doing something else.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish with the kids.
Friends who visited us this year.
I discovered Cards against Humanity, and I fucking loved it.
Finally, I got a Pixel 7 for GrapheneOS.
Surfers, swimmers, and the beach in January.
Using tmux exclusively now! Good bye screen 👋.
Poker games with friends.
For the third year in a row, I have been granted free access to the NBA League Pass 🤞🏽.
Using Vimwiki for more than a year now.
Taking an early walk alone on Comporta beach.
The Last of us, a zombie TV show.
Dallas Burger, the best burgers in Lisbon.
A pink sweat-shirt I bought in April ❤️.
I made Russian Piroshki.
A weekend with in Madrid.
We made our first pizza with the kids.
We also baked Financiers, and Tiramisu.
Watched ‘12 Angry Men’, a 1957 movie, which I recommend!
Bought a Kaweco Al Sport fountain pen.
In the course of the two years we spent abroad, it is unlikely that we will ever return to live in Paris.
Finally, a Neovim configuration that works great.
Plank: 13 minutes with no rest.
A MongoDB production issue. A cheat sheet. A book. A fix!
I have read 13 books this year, which is less than my original goal.
I lost some weight. Still need to lose maybe 3-4 kilograms though.
Improved understanding of Kubernetes.
Nobody I know or any of my friends have died this year.
I have completed the 100DaysToOffload challenge for the third time in four years.
Attempted to be a good parent, even if my patience has been at a premium at times.
Meeting colleagues in Newcastle.
Enjoyed the sunset in Lisbon.
I stopped using centralized platforms, even if it meant using some privacy-invasive at work.
Listening to this on repeat.
Logbook for 4 years in a row.
Snowfall! I loved it!
No photography gear has been purchased this year.
However, my Fujifilm X-Pro3 has been returned to me after being repaired, at a cost of approximately €570.
I tried to take more photos this year. However, I did not get as many as I had hoped.
Read a book in 2 days.
Jokic, on being awarded the NBA Finals MVP and receiving his first trophy.
Djokovic is the GOAT! Period!
The Wizard of Oz - a children’s version my kids loved.
The discovery of Pakkeleg, a Danish Christmas game that is both amusing and entertaining.
To see the happiness on my child’s face when they open their Christmas present.
Enjoyed a pleasant dinner with good old friends between Christmas and New Year.
It is uncertain what 2024 may bring, but I’m impatient.

December 2023

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:30:00 +0000

December marked the end of 2023.

It was a busy month, during which I took two flights.

The first was a business trip to Newcastle, which was also my first time back in the office since 2021.

Secondly, I travelled to Paris to spend Christmas with my family.

In addition, I completed several other tasks last month.

Podcasts

Linux Lads

Episode 107: ARMed with Debian
Episode 108: Hare under the willow
Episode 109: Trying your Hat at Fedora
Episode 110: Shane’s plane
Episode 111: Newsworthy habits
Episode 112: Four Cs Thick
Episode 113: Something, something Linux

Darknet Diaries

Episode 140: Revenge Bytes

Human Hacking

Small, medium, and large phishing trends of 2023

The diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett

Moment 134: 10 hacks for the perfect memory: Jim Kwik
Moment 138: The power of letting go & embracing the unknown Bozoma Saint John

Your undivided attention

No one is immune to AI harm with Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Do you want to become a vampire? - with L.A. Paul
Ask us anything

OSINT with ShadowDragon

S01 E01: You offer forensics and you don’t have a CSI room?
S01 E02: Cyber Cyber Bang Bang - Attacks exploiting risks within the physical and cyber universe. Poor security can get someone killed.

OSINT Origins

#8 - Thomas Roccia aka _fr0gger

Ep. 237: The Doctor is in Series - Music and the Senses
Ep. 238: Human Element Series - S.M.A.R.T Reading with Nick Hutchinson

SpyCast

“My life in American Intelligence” with Barry Zulauf
The most famous art detective in the world with ex-FBI legend Robert Wittmann
The eye of Horus: Egyptian Intelligence with Dina Rezk

WE’RE IN

Season 3 trailer
Lauren Zabierek on “Sharing the Mic” to foster with Cyber Innovation
Many answered questions
A Hacker community conversation with totally_not_a_haxxer
A community conversation with RINGMAST4R
Jeremiah Roe unpacks the “Puzzle” of pentesting

Smashing Security

Ransomware gang reports its own crime, and what happened at OpenAI?
Hacking for chimp change, and AI chatbot birthday

You’ll die smarter

Many small 2 minutes random facts. I love those 2 minutes podcasts.

Incroyable (French)

Same as “You’ll die smarter” but in French.

Chose à savoir Culture Générale, Santé, Sciences, Cerveau, Gastronomie, Planète (French)

Again, French podcasts, but multiple ones with many topics.

Les Baladeurs (French)

#01 - Face à face polaire avec Jérémie Villet. A photographer travelled to Iceland and met an ex-commando who had become a solitary trapper.
#02 - Pédalier d’enfer sur la plus haute route du monde avec Matthieu Tordeur. How a cyclist went from China to Pakistan without an official authorization.
#03 - Le silence du singe araignée avec Nataexplorers.
Bonus Ep.67: La malédiction des 10.000 km avec Sophie Planque.

Cyclists face a curse: they will have an accident every 10,000 km. The author recounts a personal experience of an accident that could have been much worse.

Cyber pouvoirs (French)

Technopuissance: qui dominera le monde au 21ème siècle?

Book Log

This month, I finished:

Abolish the Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu.

I started:

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - 30% read

And, those are still waiting to be completed:

The Wim Hof method by Wim Hof.
How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 75% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut il arrêter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.
Kubernetes Best Practices by Brendan Burns

I need to allocate some time to complete the increasing number of books I have begun, but have not yet finished.

Articles - Blog posts

Tesla / Musk fuck ups

Rust

Writing a CLI with Rust using clap

Michael Bazzell

My Irish exit

TV show

The Bear

A young chef going back to Chicago to run a sandwich shop with Jeremy Allen White, the actor that was in the US Shameless show.

Movies

I watched two movies when I was in my hotel in Newcastle.

Ready or Not - 2019

A horror movie with Adam Brody, and Samara Weaving. It was more funny than scary.

The Mechanic - 2011

An old Jason Statham movie that I watched before. Not his best movie.

End of Advent of Bloggers

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This is the final post of the Advent of Bloggers.

Joel, a well-known Casio watch enthusiast on the Fediverse, has been participating in the 100DaysToOffload challenge for the past two years. We both have completed it at least once.

His blog covers a wide range of topics, including games, manga, Linux, phones, and more.

Joel Chrono

Author: Joel Garcia
URL: https://joelchrono.xyz

Advent of Bloggers: 24/24

Advent of Bloggers: Gregory Mignard

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 10:32:09 +0000

This blog showcases breathtaking surfing photographs taken by French photographer Gregory Mignard, who utilises both film and digital cameras.

In addition to photography, Mignard also produces films, including the one-hour documentary ‘Immersion’.

He has recently released his first zine, a collection of images from his trip to Iceland. To support his work, the zine is available for purchase.

Gregory Mignard

URL: https://gregorymignard.com

Advent of Bloggers 23/24

Advent of Bloggers: Ivan Enderlin 🦀

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 01:12:17 +0000

The first time I heard about Ivan was on Tristan Nitot’s podcast ‘L’Octet Vert’ in October 2022. He talked about his self-sufficient house and his blog on the subject. Fascinating!

However, I recently discovered that he also has an interest in Rust, and another blog, mnt.io.

Unfortunately, it has not been updated in two years.

Hopefully, this post will encourage him to start blogging again.

URLs of his blogs:

Advent of Bloggers 22/24

Advent of Bloggers: Jonas Rask

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 07:07:26 +0000

If you own a Fujifilm camera, you may have already seen some of Jonas Rask’s pictures. Jonas Rask served as an ambassador from 2014 to 2021.

After leaving the Ambassador program, the frequency of posts on his blog decreased.

However, he returned in both September and November with two posts.

The author reviewed several old lenses that can be adapted to many Fujifilm cameras. If you are looking for a specific combination configuration, the author may have already tested it.

If you are a fan of Fujifilm or simply a photographer who appreciates vintage lenses, this blog is worth checking out.

Jonas Rask Photography

Author: Jonas Rask
URL: https://jonasraskphotography.com

Advent of Bloggers: 21/24

Advent of Bloggers: Mo8it

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 07:07:26 +0000

We are nearing the end of Advent of Bloggers with only five left.

Today’s blog is about Rust. Although there are not many articles yet, you can follow the blogger on Mastodon where he posts about Rustlang.

Recently, he posted many things about the Advent of Code in … Rust of course.

A post I enjoyed reading:

Momo8it

Author: Mohamad Bitar aka Mo URL: https://mo8it.com/

Advent of Bloggers: 20/24

Advent of Bloggers: Steph Ango

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 07:07:26 +0000

Have you heard of Obsidian? It is a new note-taking tool that has become quite popular.

The CEO, known as kepano on Mastodon, frequently responds to inquiries and provides clear explanations about their pricing and strategies.

I also discovered that he has a blog which I have added to my RSS feed. Perhaps you will find it interesting as well.

Enjoy!

Steph Ango

Author: Steph Ango
URL: https://stephango.com/

Advent of Bloggers: 19/24

Advent of Bloggers : Oatmeal

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This is day 18!

A blog featuring various pictures of the author’s life with children, dogs, nature, programming, gaming, and other similar topics.

The blog has a nostalgic feel, reminiscent of blogs from the 90s, perhaps due to the yellow background.

Oatmeal

Author: Eli
URL: https://eli.li

You can follow him on Mastodon

Advent Of Bloggers : 18/24

Advent of Bloggers: PoirPom

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 07:07:26 +0000

A straightforward blog, written in French, featuring photographs taken by the author.

He shares the movies he has watched, similar to how I do in my monthly review.

Some posts that I enjoyed:

PoirPom

Author: Fabrice
URL: https://www.poirpom.com/

Advent of Bloggers: 17/24

100DaysToOffload - Round 4

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 06:31:54 +0000

Round 4 is complete!

This marks the fourth consecutive year that I have taken on this challenge, and I have successfully completed it three times. Unfortunately, I fell short with 96 posts in 2021.

This year, I finished almost a month in advance.

While I plan to continue posting here, I am uncertain if I will participate in the challenge again, as it no longer presents a significant challenge.

Despite occasional lulls, I find pleasure in blogging and sharing intriguing findings from the internet.

Advent of Bloggers: Simome Margio

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 06:47:03 +0000

Today is Day 16, and I will be reviewing another software engineer’s blog.

The blog is well-written and I appreciate the weekly posts.

The content covers a range of topics including Apple, security, and programming.

This blog is one of many in my RSS feeds.

Simone Margio

Author: Simome Margio
URL: https://simonemargio.im/

You can follow him on Mastodon, and other places.

Advent of Bloggers: 16/24

Advent of Bloggers : Mitchell Hashimoto

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Terraform, Packer, and other tools are tools provided by Hashicorp.

Today, I want to share a blog of a developer that created Ghostty, a terminal emulator. He was also the co-founder, CEO, CTO, and contributor of Hashicorp.

Mitchell Hashimoto

Author: Mitchell Hashimoto URL: https://mitchellh.com/writing

I discovered his blog recently, and it looks like he started to blog more frequently since he left Hashicorp.

Advent Of Bloggers : 15/24

Advent of Bloggers: Brian Bennett

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 10:00:20 +0000

I noticed that this is the third blog maintained by a teacher.

I cannot recall when I added this blog to my RSS feed, but I continued to read the posts.

Here are a few examples of his posts:

Oh hey Brian

Author: Brian Bennett
URL: https://ohheybrian.com

From his website, you can read:

Brian Bennett is a collaborative educator and leader focused on using innovative instructional methods to design authentic learning experiences for all students.

He is currently a chemistry and environmental science teacher for Buchanan High School in Buchanan, Michigan.

Advent of Bloggers: 14/24

Post 100/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers: David Revoy

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 10:00:20 +0000

You probably know him from his work.

David Revoy is a freelancer based in the south of France. He works exclusively with open source software and GNU/Linux.

He does a lot of illustrations for Framasoft and has customers all over the world.

Also, if you don’t know his web comic project, Pepper & Carrot, you really should check it out.

David Revoy

Author: David Revoy
URL: https://www.davidrevoy.com/

Advent of Bloggers: 13/24

Post 99/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : bbbhltz

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Today’s blog is about another professor.

A Canadian professor who now lives in France. He was fed up with Microsoft, and adopted Linux.

And, just for that, you should check out his blog.

bbbhltz’s blog

Author: bbbhltz
URL: https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page

You can follow him on Mastodon

Advent Of Bloggers : 12/24

Post 98/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : Damien Lemire

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Today’s blog is about a professor.

He’s a computer science professor at the Data Science Laboratory of the Université du Québec in Montreal.

Damien Lemire

Author: Daniel Lemire
URL: https://lemire.me/blog/

He often posts links to many scientific papers or studies that you can learn from.

He publishes many articles on software performance that may be of interest to many engineers.

You can find him at Mastodon.

You can find him on Mastodon.

Advent Of Bloggers : 11/24

Post 97/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers: Liz Climo

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 07:52:22 +0000

I’ve always had a strong affection for comics and all things related to pens and pencils.

Today, I would like to share a blog post featuring a bear, which I feel compelled to mention.

Hey, I’m Liz

Author: Liz Climo
URL: https://lizclimo.tumblr.com/

I stumbled upon that website several months ago, and added it to my RSS feed. It features numerous cartoons showcasing a charming bear alongside other animals.

Advent of Bloggers: 10/24

Post 96/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : Ben Werdmuller

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 08:51:31 +0000

A new blog today! Day 9!

Ben Werdmuller

Author: Ben Werdmuller URL: https://werd.io

He writes extensively on a variety of subjects on his blog. Subscribing to his RSS feed provides access to valuable information. He shares also many links, and articles.

Some of his posts regarding his mother were poignant. Likewise, as a father, some of his posts resonated with me.

You can follow him on Mastodon.

Advent of Bloggers: 9/24

Post 95/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent Of Bloggers: Stephan Judis

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 14:14:12 +0000

Today, a blog will focus on various web technologies including CSS, Javascript, and other related subjects.

Stephan Judis

Author: Stephan Judis
URL: https://www.stefanjudis.com

Every week, he publishes a “Web Weekly” post containing numerous fascinating links.

In addition, I stumbled upon a few GitHub projects that piqued my interest.

It’s mostly like my monthly review, but on a weekly basis.

The latest one:

https://www.stefanjudis.com/blog/web-weekly-116

Good news, you can follow him on Mastodon 🙌.

Advent Of Bloggers: 8/24

Post 94/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers: Sector035

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 01:51:40 +0000

Day 7! It is uncertain who is responsible for this blog, however, it contains several articles that may pique your interest.

Sector035

URL: https://sector035.nl.

If you are knowledgeable in OSINT, you may already be aware of this blog. If you are seeking information on Open Source Intelligence, I highly recommend it. It is a method of collecting publicly available online data.

This platform is full of unexpected discoveries, and you may be amazed or worried about what you may find online regarding yourself.

Advent of Bloggers: 7/24

Post 93/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : Austin Kleon

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:41:22 +0000

Another day, another blog!

Austin Kleon

Author: Austin Kleon
URL: https://austinkleon.com

The writer who draws. I love his blog.

That’s where I got inspired to start a “log journal”, or also called a log book.

I’ve been doing since 2019, thanks to him.

He’s doing zines with the kids, a lot of doodling, collages, and so many other things. If you have not yet read his books, I highly recommend doing so.

Unfortunately, he is not active on the Fediverse.

Advent Of Bloggers: 6/24

Post 92/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent Of Bloggers : Amos Wenger

Tue, 05 Dec 2023 12:49:13 +0000

Day 5 !

I’ve been trying to learn Rust for a couple of months now. Looking for great content about the language, I stumbled upon an account on Mastodon, and then today’s blog.

Amos Wenger

Author: Amos Wenger URL: https://fasterthanli.me

A blog with great, detailed articles. Some of his posts are really technical, and … loooong.

He also have a YouTube channel, and if you enjoy his content, you can become a Patreon.

If you are looking for Rust content, you can’t pass that blog.

You can follow him on Mastodon.

Advent Of Bloggers: 5/24

Post 91/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent Of Bloggers : Yannick Schutz

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 12:49:13 +0000

Blogs should be the way we communicate on the internet, not social networks.

And the one I am sharing today is a simple and enjoyable one. I would like to see more of them.

Yannick Schutz

Author: Yannick Schutz
URL: https://yannickschutz.com

Yannick shares thoughts on photography, coffee, reading, and his personal life.

You’ll find great pictures of his travels and interests.

He writes in French and English.

Advent Of Bloggers: 4/24

Post 90/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : Waylon Walker

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

A new day, a new blog.

Today, the blog I want to talk about is about Python, Vim, Linux.

Waylon Walker

Author: Waylon Walker
URL: https://waylonwalker.com

I appreciate the aesthetic of his blog design and the quality of its content.

Many Vim, and Neovim posts, as well as many TIL about Linux.

Recommended! You may learn something reading it.

Advent Of Bloggers : 3/24

Post 89/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers : Boffsocko

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 12:03:59 +0000

Day 2!
Today, I want to share a great blog about Zettelkasten.

Boffsocko

Author: Chris Aldrich
URL: https://boffosocko.com

If you require information on pkm, also know as personal knowledge management, as well as the Zettelkasten system, I recommend visiting Chris’ blog.

He has multiple excellent historical articles about Zettelkasten and other techniques.

I found some of his articles particularly enjoyable:

You can find his blog on Mastodon and other platforms.

Advent Of Bloggers : 2/24

Post 88/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

November 2023

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:30:00 +0000

A new month just ended. Even if I wanted to write more here somehow, I didn’t find the time. Or, my focus was just on other things…

Anyway, here are the things I’ve done this month.

Podcasts

A bit more than last month, but still not how much I wanted. I guess the remote work doesn’t really help.

Darknet Diaries

Episode 139: D3f4ult
Episode 138: The Mimics of Punjab

15 minutes in hell

Episode 6: Neil de Grasse Tyson
Episode 5: David Slack, TV Writer

Smashing Security

Hacking for chimp change, and AI chatbot birthday
How hackers are breaching booking.com, and the untrustworthy reviews.

OSINTCurious

Our last OSINT Curious Episode

Cyber Sector 7, OSINT, Hacking, and Privacy

Many answered questions

Unsupervised learning

Why I’m not getting the new Humane AI Pin

Le code a changé (French)

La vraie histoire de l’@ - The history of the @ symbol we use every day.
Un catholique face à l’IA

Cyber pouvoirs (French)

Drones, robots tueurs, soldats augmentés: les guerres du futur sont-elles là?
Back to moon… or not!

Book Log

This month, I haven’t finished any book 😔

MongoDB cookbook - over 80 practical recipes to design, deploy, and administer MongoDB by Nayak Amol. I almost read everything I needed about this one. I’ll probably pick it up again if needed.
The Wim Hof method by Wim Hof.
Abolish the Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu. I have 40 pages to finish this one.

And, those are still waiting to be completed:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 75% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut il arrêter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.
Kubernetes Best Practices by Brendan Burns

I need to allocate some time to complete the increasing number of books I have begun, but have not yet finished.

Articles - Blog posts

Movies

Austin Kleon watches many classic horror movies with his family, choosing a different film each day from a curated list.

Photography

Some wonderful pictures.
Family, and photography.
How some lenses are made.
Wow !

Zettelkasten & PKM

Eminem’s notes.

Rap, and Boxing

Talking about Eminem, I discovered this interview between Eminem and Mike Tyson. ❤

CSS

CSS is awesome.

Climate

How Portugal is doing things right

CLI tools

Two tools, written in Rust, better than jq:

jaq (Jacques)
jql (Jackal)

TV show

Only one TV show this month!

Ferry the series

I watched a Dutch television programme centred around a drug dealer; however, it did not captivate me, and I could have skipped it. The show’s first season comprises only eight episodes.

Documentary

The Pigeon Tunnel

A documentary detailing the life of John Le Carre, discussing his relationship with his father, the departure of his mother, and many other anecdotes. It was a documentary that I enjoyed immensely.

Movies

Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse - 2018

I forgot that I’ve seen it before 😅. The two hours flew by so quickly, because the anime was excellent.

Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse - 2023

This is the follow-up to the initial movie, and it is excellent. I will refrain from revealing any specific details, but if you have an affection for Spider-Man, it is worthwhile to view it.

And the good news is that a third one is already forthcoming.

Post 86/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Advent of Bloggers

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:21:22 +0000

As per annual tradition, the Advent of Code commenced today.

For my part, I’m going to start the “Advent of Bloggers”. I’ll be sharing some of the blogs I follow in my RSS feed that I enjoy.

So, without further ado, let us begin!

Zerokspot

Author: Horst Gutmann
URL: https://zerokspot.com

One of the first people I discovered when I arrived on the Fediverse was Horst.

He has a passion for journaling and all sorts of pens and notebooks.

He codes in Golang and possibly other languages, and occasionally writes about CI/CD as well.

And, you can discover a diverse range of reviews on his blog, covering movies, books, restaurants, TV shows, games, and more.

It’s recommended that you follow him Mastodon.

Advent Of Bloggers : 1/24

Post 87/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Basket-ball fans

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:24:20 +0000

The Basketball World Cup ended two months ago, however, both the NBA and Euroleague have now commenced 🙌

One evening, I found myself engrossed in several videos about passionate basketball fans, and my interest stemmed from this:

Fans in Europe and the USA are different. YouTubers have recorded their reactions [1], [2], [3] to this video. And, many of them were just surprised by by the use of flares, the singing and the fervour exhibited by European fans. Even some NBA players talked about it.

Then, I came across this video about the derby match featuring the K.K Partizan, and the Red Star, two clubs engaged in court battles since their inception post-WWII.

The Partizan, founded in October 1945, is a comprehensive organization with 30 sports clubs. It was named in honour of the Partisans, the communist military formation who fought against fascism during WWII.

Crvena Zveda also known as Red Star, the same way, was created in March 1945 by police authorities.

During my childhood, my neighbours were Red Star fans and my father supported Partizan.
It was natural for children to adopt their parents’ club loyalties.

This has always been a subject of mockery in the local community.

The most notable aspect of the Derby is that guest fans were not allowed to attend. Organisers wished to maximise the presence of their own fans and cited public safety concerns as the second reason for the decision due to incidents where people were killed.

Being a referee at those games is not easy. People threw many things at them … Coins, bottles, lighters, and even mobile phones! I can’t imagine how angry the fans must have been 😅.

Another weird story …

There was a sex tape on the internet where a girl asked a Red Star player for €20,000 or she would put the video online. He probably said no, because the video ended up on the internet. Partizan fans printed a massive flag of the guy from a screenshot of that video, and they hung it behind the Red Star’s team bench. Crazy!

Even if all this could look completely crazy for many, I would love to experience one of these games. I only did it once, but it was a Partizan football game…

Belgrade boasts more than 350 outdoor playgrounds. Sports, including basketball, have long been a crucial aspect of our culture.

Furthermore, I highly recommend this fantastic documentary about basketball and its connection to Belgrade.

Post 85/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Leica, and Portugal

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:40:49 +0000

Today, I learnt that Leica does have two factories in northern Portugal.

And, that for 50 years already.

How I rate things

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 12:25:57 +0000

Ratings were invented centuries ago, in 1540, when Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits. His main obsession was to stop the spread of the Protestant movement through education. The idea was to create schools across Europe, with an elite of competitive students selected from among the best. Grades were created.

I hate the fact that today we evaluate everything. Our Uber driver, our last visit to the doctor, an app on our phone, etc. Especially when I know that employees’ salaries are based on these ratings.

But I still rate movies, TV shows and books from time to time.

I used to use a three-star system, but found that it was difficult to rate things accurately.

So I’ve switched to a five-star system:

Hall of Fame
Great
Good
Poor
Terrible

This will work better until the next change.

Post 84/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

October 2023

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:30:00 +0000

October has elapsed quickly amidst work, parenting, and illnesses. Despite having a few drafts awaiting completion, I did not manage to publish any posts on the blog throughout the month.

Podcasts

Not many podcasts this month, except French comedians doing a daily chronicle of the news.

Darknet Diaries

Episode 137: Predator - A spyware sold to intelligence agencies over the world to hoover all your mobile phone data.

Le code a changé (French)

Écouter Donna Haraway parler de cyborgs sous un arbre - I discovered Ms Haraway, and the essay she wrote in 1985: a cyborg manifesto.

Book Log

This month, I haven’t finished any book. But, I started a couple of them:

MongoDB cookbook - over 80 practical recipes to design, deploy, and administer MongoDB by Nayak Amol. Took that one because we had an issue at work with the DB, but no skills available.
The Wim Hof method by Wim Hof.
Abolish the Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu.

I continued:

Kubernetes Best Practices by Brendan Burns

I need to finish those:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 75% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut il arrêter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I need to allocate some time to complete the increasing number of books I have begun, but have not yet finished.

Articles - Blog posts

NBA

NBA player athleticism physicality evolution

Privacy

Rust

Two beginner channels:

And, one about parsing arguments:

Rustflix

AI

A scary article with Geofrey Hinton, an AI pioneer.
Propaganda, deepfake and AI.

History

CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed up was undemocratic

CLI tools

Rimage - a tool to simplifies and enhances your image optimization workflows.
Infiscal - passwords management tool.
Pluto - a CLI tool to find deprecated Kubernetes apiVersions in their code repositories and their helm releases.

TV show

Gen V

Some scenes may not appeal to all viewers, however, I have found them to be on par with those in The Boys.

Loki

I struggled to recall the events from the first season, prompting me to re-watch all previous episodes. I proceeded to the second season where Loki meets one of the variant of Kang the Conqueror that I discovered in the latest Ant-Man. Pretty funny to observe the intermingling of diverse realms.

Movies

The Three Musketeers - Part I: D’Artagnan - 2023

French movie about the Musketeers with Romain Duris, François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Pio Marmaï, and Eva Green.

This coincides with an anime from my childhood, D’Artagnan that I introduced to my children.

I enjoyed those two hours.

Reptile - 2023

A crime thriller featuring corrupt police officers is not a novel topic, and this particular movie falls somewhere in the middle ground between excellence and mediocrity.

Benicio Del Toro, Justin Timberlake take on the main roles, alongside an actress I haven’t seen on screen since this Aerosmith song: Alicia Silverstone in Cryin’.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 2008

I’ve waited for fifteen years to watch this Indiana Jones, and a few more wouldn’t have been amiss. I must say that this one is the weakest among the five movies. I was taken aback to see Spielberg directing this film, and Georges Lucas contributing as one of the writers.

I assume that their names were merely utilised for marketing. I cannot envision them consenting to that aspect of the saga.

I watched other ones a couple of times, but I’m sure I won’t do it with this one.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - 2023

The first Indiana Jones film is now 42 years old. Ageing is an unavoidable fact, even for Indy. Certain fight sequences hold an amusing element due to his inability to fight at the same level as he once could.

Without giving too much away for those who haven’t viewed it yet, I appreciated the references to previous entries in the franchise.

Mission Impossible - Dead reckoning Part One

Another mission featuring Ethan Hunt and the IMF involves an AI weapon that has raised the interest of agencies and terrorists worldwide.

I rate this blockbuster with 3 stars. The film is easily watchable and lasted just 2 hours and 46 minutes 😅.

Sport

The NBA is back! And, the Nuggets are 4-0 already, with two triple-double of Jokic.

Still boxing, I aim to train three or four per week.

Post 83/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

September 2023

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 05:30:00 +0000

Another month has passed, during which I devoted myself mostly to watching films and television programmes. Although I did manage to read a couple of books and some excellent articles, I did not listen to as many podcasts as I usually do.

Podcasts

This month, I haven’t listened to many podcasts. Many 4-5 minutes French podcasts by comedians, and the two below.

15 minutes in hell

Episode 6 : Neil deGrasse

Le code a changé (French)

Au fait, à qui profite le Bitcoin ?

Book Log

I started to post some of my books notes on this page.

This month, I finished:

Brief answers to the big questions - Stephen Hawking

I discovered that : “This idea that the universe has multiple histories may sound like science fiction, but it is now accepted as science fact.”

Not surprising that many sci-fiction writers wrote so many multiverse stories.

Draw your day an inspiring guide to keeping a sketch journal - Samantha Dion Baker

I started:

Kubernetes Best Practices by Brendan Burns

I need to finish those:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 75% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles - Blog posts

Photography

Photography of Michael Jordan sold $175K
Jonas Rask is back

OSINT

DEF CON 31 Recon Village - Joe Gray - Oh! The OSINT You Can Do!

Climate

High speed rail connecting all European capitals
How the greedy big oil companies want to blame us
Ticket prices of planes versus trains in Europe

Web, advertising, and privacy

FOSS

The Maintainer Of The NVIDIA Open-Source “Nouveau” Linux Kernel Driver Resigns

Raspberry

Many users from the community got upset because they hired a cop.

Rust

1 Hour Dive into Asynchronous Rust

AI

The AI incident database

Economy

How an Austrian techie builds an open-source grocery chain price-tracking database, discovers industry-wide price-controlling collusion.

History

Why the guillotine logic is not the right way

TV show

Top Boy

The programme concluded its run after five seasons, and despite rewatching the first two, it still seemed fleeting. My feelings were comparable to those I experienced upon viewing the final episode of The Sopranos.

Ahsoka

So far, I watched the first 7 episodes. Episode 5 was a bit longer, maybe because Anakin is back.

Gen V

I don’t even know how I got around this one. It’s a spin-off of the Boys’ TV show. And, even if I watched only the three first episodes, it was quite entertaining.

The Changeling

A drama / horror TV show set in NYC. The first episode wasn’t that scary 😅 I’ll see how the rest of the season goes.

Movies

The Flash - 2023

This film stars Michael Keaton in his role as Batman in a multiverse storyline featuring multiple Flash characters. Even, George Clooney and Nicolas Cage made brief appearances.

Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania - 2023

Michael Douglas, and Michelle Pfeiffer are getting really old 😲

Not the best one of the series. If you’re not a fan of the Marvel, you can pass on this one.

The Place Beyond The Pines - 2013

A crime/thriller movie with Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling, Ray Liotta, and Bradley Cooper.

A great movie divided in three parts. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it’s one of the best performance of Eva Mendes.

Ryan Gosling discovers that he has a kid, and wants to provide, but without any decent job. His decision will affect the life of many.

Bradley Cooper is a young cop that got involved in a corruption story. Liotta plays one of those corrupt cops, and he’s just great in that role.

Sport

FIBA World Cup 2023

The competition ended with Serbia losing against Germany in the Finals. A close game, but at the end the German team was better 😔.

Canada took the third place, dominating the USA team.

Post 82/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Follow Friday

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 21:37:36 +0000

I began compiling a directory of individuals tagged with #FollowFriday.

Although not all profiles are included, you can browse through a sizeable number of individuals categorised on this page. It is still a work in progress, but I intend to develop a more refined version featuring individuals and their preferences.

September, 29th

FOSS

@notnorm@fosstodon.org @praetor@social.sdf.org @zzt@mas.to

Photography

@AmiW@mastodon.online

@closeuprussia@mastodon.social

@nikhilk@mastodon.social

@zutalorz@haunted.computer

@yanncphoto@piaille.fr

PKM

@andricheli@mastodon.social

People

@Amcr@mastodon.world

Serbia

@kokan@balkan.fedive.rs

September, 22th

@badlogic@mastodon.gamedev.place

September, 15th

Privacy

@Lockdownyourlife@infosec.exchange

Photography

@Ambivalena@pixelfed.social

@djflore@mastodon.online

@dr_adri@mastodon.social

Podcast - #Blog

@dimregnier@h4.io

FOSS and people

@pthane@toot.wales

@nfoert@mastodon.social

@degoedel@bdx.town

@JackOfAllTraits@mstdn.social

September, 8th

Writer

@carolynaluna@mastodon.online

@SJHoodlet@writing.exchange

Public Health practitioner

@DocCarms@mstdn.social

FOSS

@array@fosstodon.org

@theruran@hackers.town

@chrisba@fosstodon.org

@kidsan@hachyderm.io

@adam@hax0rbana.social #qmail maintainer

Web3isgreat creator

@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Macstories

@viticci@macstories.net

Rustlang

@lodurel@mastodon.social

@mo8it@fosstodon.org

Julialang

@themantra108@julialang.social

Infosec

@malwaretech@infosec.exchange

Remarkable2 owner

@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place

Photography

@mlyon0486@photog.social

@vanitasvitae@pix.diaspodon.fr

Actors

@georgetakei@universeodon.com

People

@PetitCoeur@mastodon.iriseden.eu

@astrophoenix@pkm.social

@lapcatsoftware@appdot.net

@mijustin@mastodon.social

September, 1st

Rust

@Hemera@meow.social

@kornel@mastodon.social

@tomo@floss.social

@mre@mastodon.social

Photography

@tim@photog.social

@the_heruman@mastodon.acm.org

@vanitasvitae@pix.diaspodon.fr

@jan_mayen@social.tchncs.de

@Swanton@pixelfed.social

@yanncphoto@piaille.fr

@Arkenston@mastodon.world

@danberger@aus.social

Artists

@vilain@piaille.fr

Climate activists, and professors

@straphanger@urbanists.social

@davidho@mastodon.world

@mcnees@mastodon.social

Podcasters

@mpesce@arvr.social

FOSS

@sll@pouet.chapril.org

@simon@utveckla.re

@YellowRaven@mastodon.online

@astrophoenix@pkm.social

@lapcatsoftware@appdot.net

@michalzelazny@indieweb.social

@peturdainn@mastodon.social

@JosephSGiacaloneArt@mstdn.party

August, 11th

Infosec

@adam_caudill

@indrora

Journalism

@martu

@CorentinLamy

@flrnd

@Loukas

@MotherJones

@gbhnews

Cory Doctorow, the creator of the term #enshittification : @pluralistic

Opensource projects

@SpiderMonkey

@letsencrypt

Activism, Climate, anticapitalism, privacy

@aral @luckytran

@openrightsgroup

August, 4th

@kissane

@mhalila

@codinghorror

@leahdriel

@jwz

@simonthommes

@lucasfalcao3d

@kednar

@MrFF

@fil

@homlett

@BiaSciLab

@NoraReed

@Sp3r4z

@johnnydecimal

March, 10th

@tarek@social.sdf.org

@riada90@mastodon.world

@zlatiah@mastodon.zlatiah-no.one

March, 3rd

@mara@hachyderm.io

@iyalei@toot.lgbt

@mtriclot@aleph.land

@Giselle@mastodon.me.uk

@mwichary@mastodon.online

@SrEstegosaurio@mstdn.social

@amaretta@mastodon.art

February, 17th

@sophie@social.lol

@ellane@pkm.social

@noellemitchell@mstdn.social

@alice_digest@mastodonbooks.net

@Onmyom@mstdn.social

@josh@theradio.au

Post 81/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How to extract notes from your Remarkable2

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 21:27:59 +0000

The Remarkable2 device is an exceptional tool. I purchased it more than two years ago, and it has become an indispensable part of my routine. When combined with the Lamy EMR pen, it provides the ideal setup for taking notes while reading or sketching during meetings with ease.

But, I dropped my device the other day, and my initial reaction was one of distress at the thought of losing all my notes. However, the damage is not as severe as I feared. One of the corners sustained damage and the screen has cracked, but it is still functional.

The first thing I did back at home, because of course it happened outside, was to check online for some tools to get all the notes. I don’t pay for Remarkable cloud service.

Many GitHub projects have a way to enhanced your experience with the device.

For example, I use Dobrin’s von Känel remarkable hacks to get more brushes, and many gestures you don’t have by default.

Looking through Lucas’ repository, I came across his tool, Remarks, that compiles all your book notes into one place. I typically bookmark the page when commenting on a note.

The tool provides different outputs:

Export PDFs highlights to parseable ones. Someone who highlights lots of PDFs (e.g., researchers, academics, etc) can export their highlights for processing with a reference management tool, like Zotero
Extract highlighted text from PDF to markdown. Infovores of the world can export highlighted text to Markdown and insert them into their preferred “tool for networked thought”, like Obsidian or Roam Research.
Export annotated PDF pages to full-page images Sometimes having just the textual content is not enough, sometimes you need the actual (visual) context around your annotation. To help you in such situations, remarks can export each annotated PDF page to a PNG image file. Images can be easily uploaded or embedded anywhere, from personal websites to “tools for networked thought”.

The missing feature is an OCR one that understand my comments, and transform them to markdown notes.

Installation

Clone the repository:


 % git clone https://github.com/lucasrla/remarks.git && cd remarks
 % apt install python3-poetry ocrmypdf
 % poetry install

You may need to install those too:


 % pip3 install shapely
 % pip3 install fitz
 % pip3 install frontend

Usage

First, copy the raw documents to your computer. I use rsync to sync all my files:


 % rsync -avzP root@192.168.0.x:/home/root/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl/* books

To get the ip address of your Remarkable, you need to go to:

Menu -> Settings -> Help -> Copyright and licenses

The ip address is at the bottom of that page.

That will copy all your files to the books directory.

Files on the Remarkable have weird names, and it can be difficult to find the book you are looking for. Their names may look like this:


 % ls
 drwxr-xr-x 2 hyde hyde 20K Sep 20 20:50 ffffffff-da93-4861-89ed-1d222670f1c2
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 2.0K Sep 20 21:15 ffffffff-da93-4861-89ed-1d222670f1c2.pagedata
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 23K Sep 20 21:15 ffffffff-da93-4861-89ed-1d222670f1c2.content
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 5.5K Sep 26 23:14 ffffffff-da93-4861-89ed-1d222670f1c2.epubindex
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 409 Sep 26 23:14 ffffffff-da93-4861-89ed-1d222670f1c2.metadata
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 378 Sep 26 23:25 ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.metadata

Not really useful… But, there is one file that will give you the information you are looking for, the metadata one.

Its content looks like this:


 % cat ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.metadata
 ───────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 │ File: ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.metadata
 ───────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 1 │ {
 2 │ "deleted": false,
 3 │ "lastModified": "1694996210013",
 4 │ "lastOpened": "1695766485927",
 5 │ "lastOpenedPage": 115,
 6 │ "metadatamodified": true,
 7 │ "modified": true,
 8 │ "parent": "a0d44625-6eb6-4282-b69b-060cd9fc37bd",
 9 │ "pinned": false,
 10 │ "synced": false,
 11 │ "type": "DocumentType",
 12 │ "version": 0,
 13 │ "visibleName": "Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.pdf"
 14 │ }
 ───────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Many valuable insights, particularly the one you seek, the title of the book.

To find it, you can use grep or rg also known as ripgrep, to filter it quickly:


 % rg -i "digital minimalism" *.metadata
 ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.metadata
 13: "visibleName": "Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.pdf"

Once I know where is my file, I copy all the files, and the directory to a new directory where I want to extract my notes.


 % cp ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.* digital-minimalism/

Finally, I extract my notes:


 % python3.11 -m remarks digital-minimalism output --per_page_targets png pdf md --modified_pdf

 Found 1 documents in "digital-minimalism", will process them now

 File: "Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.pdf" (ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a)

 Done processing "digital-minimalism"

In the output directory, I received a PDF containing comments, a comprehensive file with highlighted sections and annotations, a Markdown file with numbered highlights, and a folder containing three subfolders (PNG, PDF, and MD) that contain pages with notes in the respective formats.

In conclusion, open-source tools developed by the community can accomplish all the tasks for which you may otherwise pay, involving sync with their cloud, and note extraction.

The only issue I have is the automated optical character recognition (OCR) system has not been successful in transcribing my handwriting, it may be due to my poor penmanship. 🤷

Post 80/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

GNU's 40th birthday

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 21:51:20 +0000

Today, I learnt that I share something with the GNU project. The same day of birth, but not the same year 😅

It celebrates its 40th birthday today!

So happy birthday to the project, and, also, to myself.

Days of our life

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 16:05:21 +0000

I came across Rebecca’s post the other day. She’s 37, and she said that if she lived to be about 80, she’d have about 16,000 days left in her life.

I had never thought of our presence on earth in terms of days.

Since we were born, and if everything goes well until we’re, say, 80, that’s 29,200 days. That’s a lot, and not a lot at all. If you count in months, it’s even less… It’s a small 960 months.

We shouldn’t be complaining about the lack of time we have, we should be making the most of it, as Seneca said.

I don't complain abouth the lack of time... What little I have will go far enough.

Today - this day - will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about.

Seneca

Post 79/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

August 2023

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 23:20:29 +0000

The summer is gone. And, soon, the great weather.

At least, it’s still better than the one we used to have when we used to live in Paris.

Podcasts

August, and not many podcasts to listen to.

Darknet Diaries

136: Team Xecuter - A nice one about console games piracy.

Privacy, Security and OSINT

303 - IOS, Privacy & Security

Ask the hosts

A new podcast about everything except Linux, and OpenSource. (Not sure if I’ll listen to this every month).

Episode 0, and 1.

15 minutes in hell

That’s a new podcast. Quick interviews focusing on the big issues in tech, and the interaction with societies.

Ep. 3 : Taylor Lorenz, The Washington Post
Ep. 2 : Derek Guy, @dieworkwear
Ep. 1 : Ben Collins, NBC

Le code a changé (French)

Smartphones : éloge de la réparation

Les histoires de quartiers d’Oxmo Puccino (French)

Momo le Suédois - Courses poursuites et cagoules
Valérie Manteau - Les larmes et la colère de la rue d’Aubagne

Book Log

This month, I started:

Brief answers to the big questions - Stephen Hawking

I continued this one:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 75% read

I need to finish those:

Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Blog posts

Tor

https://pirelay.computer or how to transform a Raspberry Pi into a relay powering the Tor Network.

Europe fighting against privacy

The UK, and Europe in general, is fighting against encryption messaging, but not only.

Fediverse

Magpie, a federated alternative to Etsy.
A long rant why Fosstodon is English speaking only. It looks like many have left the instance. 🍿
Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t by Erin Kissane.

Remote work

Remote is not enough.
The joke! Even Zoom makes employees return to the office.

Privacy

Removing my home information from the Internet. As a parent, they think differently, and don’t want their home address to be available online. That’s where Bazzell book about privacy may help.
Google fails to end $5 billion consumer privacy lawsuit
Intel GPU cards collects information on how you use your computer🤦.
Test your ads blockers with this page. I got 100% on my Linux laptop, and 96% on the mobile.

The Linux Kernel

A patch submitted by a 4 years old girl.

Metaverse

Disney exits the Metaverse

Twitter / X

ABC Australia leaves the X crappy centralized platform.

Free books

MIT Press: Open Access Materials.

Science

How a scientific study generated a huge bill 😅.
The Myopia Generation - Why do so many kids need glasses now? Half of the population could be myopic by 2050 😲

Gaming

Linux surpasses macOS users among Steam users.

AI

Containers / VM

Incus, a modern, secure and powerful system container and virtual machine manager.

Movies / TV shows

TV show

FUBAR, with Schwarzenegger. I watched it after reading some toots from Horst Gutmann.
Hijack, with Idris Elba. It was … alright. It could have been better.
Ahsoka, the latest Star Wars / Disney show. Once again, 30 minutes more or less for each episode.

Movies

I’m trying to go through my IMDB 250 movies list. This month, I watched a couple of movies.

The Hunt - 2012

A teacher, a lie, and a descent into hell.

Rush - 2013

The rivalry between Formula One rivals, James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

If you love F1, you should watch it. Even if that’s not the case, it’s a great movie.

The Professional - 1981

A French movie with Jean-Paul Belmondo. It’s not on the IMDB list, but last time I watched this movie was when I was a teenager.

A fun fact is that one of the character in the movie, Radisa “Steve” Jovanovic, a former boxer, and bodyguard of Belmondo plays one of the cops. That’s ironic since he was wanted by every police force in France during the shooting of the movie. He even had a watch on his wrist, that was the fruit of a robbery.

He was also known for the Cartier jewelry store robbery in Cannes. Dressed as tennis player, he entered the store, took everything, and left to seat on the beach near to the place robbed. A famous robbery done with his friend Bruno Sulak, also known as Arsene Lupin’s heir.

He will meet the same tragic end as Belmondo in this film. He was shot down near a helicopter while trying to break out his friend.

Sport

The FIBA World cup of Basket-ball just started last week, and will finish next week. Not happy to see many players not present in this competition, but still great games.

I watched the UFC 292, with a great fight between Sterling, and O’Malley.

On my personal side, I started doing a routine of 100 rounds of 30 seconds of exercise with 10 seconds of rest. Exercises includes burpees, squats, push-ups, boxing bag, plank, and many others. Then, I do around 1000 abs, and the plank between 6 and 10 minutes without rest.

And, that’s all for this month.

Post 78/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My Awesome WM config

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 09:00:40 +0000

Awesome is a tiling window manager I’ve been using for years. The day I started to use it is too far away to be remembered.

I tried Gnome, Compiz, and other things. But, I always came back to Awesome. I’ve never liked KDE, or any apps using QT. It reminds me too much Microsoft systems. And, I stopped using them back in 2000 😅.

Awesome is light, fast, and written in Lua. I never properly learned Lua. Now, that I switched to Neovim, it could be a good opportunity to improve that configuration.

Tiling window managers are great because you never use your mouse. Everything is about keybindings. You don’t waste time organizing your windows, and that’s a big plus. You can move them around tags also known as desktops quickly, or define specific tags for specific apps.

For example, my tags are organized like this:

Tmux
Browser
Instant messaging apps
Gimp or Inkscape
other things

Even if I have 8 of them I rarely use more than 4.

Tom Robinson asked me about my configuration, so it’s now available on Codeberg.

Post 77/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim's creator, Bram Moolenaar, passed away

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 15:30:00 +0000

Vim creator is gone. At a fairly young age. He was 62.

His family announced that on the Vim announce mailing list.

I have been a Vim user for at least 15 years. And, I remember the first time, a colleague, older than me, playing around with Vim pretty quickly. That’s when I wanted to learn more about it.

Mr Moolenaar never became a Mark or Elon kind of idiot. He helped to finance children clinics in Uganda ❤ with the https://iccf-holland.org association.

Not a day goes by that I don’t use Vim or its shortcuts in my computer daily usage.

I have Vim everywhere.

In my shell, with the set -o vi. In my browser with the Tridactyl plugin. In many other tools, like mupdf for example. Or, in mutt, my email client.

His work will be missed.

Thank you for everything, and rest in peace.

Post 76/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Fixing fonts

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 09:35:09 +0000

From time to time, some upgrades messed up with my fonts. To remember it for the next times, I’ll post it here.

The Arch Wiki helped a bit 😅.

Here are the steps I took:

creating this directory % mkdir ~/.fonts.conf.d
creating a symlink % ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf .fonts.conf.d/
adding a .fonts.conf with the configuration below.


 # ~/.fonts.conf
 ?xml version="1.0"?>
 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
 <fontconfig>

 <!-- settings go here -->
 <match target="font">
 <edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
 <edit name="hinting" mode="assign">
 <bool>true</bool>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
 <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign">
 <const>hintfull</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="font">
 <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
 <const>lcddefault</const>
 </edit>
 </match>
 </fontconfig>

Post 75/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

July 2023

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 05:30:00 +0000

I haven’t seen how quickly July flew by.

And, like every month, here’s a summary of what I watched, read, and listened to in the last weeks.

Podcasts

Not so many this month. Simply, because there are fewer episodes during summer.

Darknet Diaries

135: The D.R. Incident

Privacy, Security and OSINT

302 - Self-Hosted 4: The next level
301 - Self-Hosted 3: Calendars, contacts, and notes

Linux Lads

Ep. 105: And now for something completely different

CyberPouvoirs

L’affaire Snowden, techno-surveillance, dataworld ou l’insoluble question démocratique

Les histoires de quartiers d’Oxmo Puccino (French)

Redouane Bougheraba: la capture du loup blanc

Book Log

This month, I didn’t touch any book. 🤦 I need to finish those:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 67% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Blog posts

Many links I tried to keep this month to post them here.

Newpipe

Google submitted a DMCA take down notice for NewPipe.

https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/announcement/newpipe-net-dmca-google-search/

PKM aka Personal Knowledge Management

A review of the “Building a second brain by Tiago Forte”

https://thewallflowerdigest.co.uk/life/thoughts-on-building-a-second-brain-by-tiago-forte/

Bellingcat interviews

They post all their interviews on soundcloud ❤

https://soundcloud.com/bellingcat

DNS filter

If you need some DNS lists to block some domain names

https://0xacab.org/my-privacy-dns/matrix/-/milestones/2#tab-issues

Mastodon, comments, and blogs

Unicode, and Emojis

https://slackmojis.com - Many emojis for Slack
https://unicodeplus.com - You should find all your Unicode signs there

Twitter, and Musk

A thread about Must, and his madness.

https://mastodon.me.uk/@garius/110775069963968471

Infosec

It’s always interesting to see if your company has misconfigured their s3 buckets 😅.

https://grayhatwarfare.com - Find public buckets not correctly configured

iPod

https://ellie.wtf/ipod/ - Restore an old iPod.

Privacy

Google’s new policy, and other news.

RedHat

Another fiasco …

Photography

Cloud

https://www.vantage.sh - Understand cloud costs

Movies / TV shows

TV show

Silo, a new dystopian TV show that I ate in two days.

Movies

I’m trying to go through my IMDB 250 movies list. This month, I watched a couple of movies.

Dances with wolves - 1990

A movie with Kevin Costner that is 33 years old already. It’s a 3 hours movie, but it didn’t really feel that long. Even if there are some inconsistencies like the fact he spoke a woman version of the Sioux language, and the fact that’s always the white version that is told, I enjoyed the movie.

Seven Samurais - 1954

Again, another movie over 3 hours (3h27). As a kid, I watched the American remake, The Magnificent Seven (1960) with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Eli Wallach. I never realised that it was released only 6 years after the original one.

I loved it. It’s nicely done for a movie from the 50s. Some scenes are really great. It could have been a photo book with beautiful images.

12 Angry Men - 1957

A great movie. I understand, now, why it’s at the 5th position of the list. I won’t spoil. Just watch it.

It’s a wonderful life - 1946

A movie that could be easily an Xmas movie. I loved the end, and the moral of the story. But, again, watch it!

Saving Private Ryan - 1998

This one is not a 3 hours movie. It’s only 2 hours 49! I don’t know why I never watched it before. It’s a great movie. The first 25 minutes are insane. I think I’ve never seen a scene like this before.

And, the cast is great! Many actors so young! Here’s the list:

Tom Hanks
Matt Damon
Tom Sizemore
Edward Burns
Vin Diesel
Giovanni Ribisi
Adam Goldberg
Barry Pepper

Casablanca - 1942

A good movie, not the best of that list… At least for me. But, excellent performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

The Great Dictator - 1940

A great movie, especially when you realised when it was released. Chaplin plays both leading roles: a ruthless fascist dictator and a persecuted Jewish barber. Chaplin is great in both roles. It was an excellent surprise.

Sport

I trained three, four times per week. No NBA, so no TV.

And, that’s all for this month.

Post 74/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

What happened to Pawoo.net?

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 05:23:00 +0000

Who remembers Pawoo.net, which used to be one of the largest Mastodon instances?

Are they still around since they got acquired by Mask Network?

Silo, a new dystopian TV Show

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 07:00:00 +0000

This week, I started a new TV Show, a dystopian one: Silo. The previous television series that I watched from Apple TV was See, another dystopian show, where humans have lost their sense of sight in a not so far future thanks to some virus.

If you know Spooks, the British show about MI-5, you probably will recognize David Oyelowo, that was part of the cast during three seasons. The other members are well known actors like Common, or Tim Robbins.

The main character, the Swedish actress, Rebecca Ferguson, was unknown to me before watching the series.

The plot is that over 10,000 people lives in a 144 levels underground silo for over 140 years. Coincidence?

It reminded me of Snowpiercer. Poor people living at the back of the train, and the rich ones in the front. A militia there to protect them. In some way, there are similarities there with the poor living in the lower levels, and the rich ones at the top of the silo.

The first season is “only” ten episodes, and I finished it in two evenings 😅

All futuristic movies, or in that case TV Shows, depict a dark future for humankind. Remember Terminator, Snowpiercer, Minory report, 12 monkeys, Children of men, Ex Machina, Elysium or … Mad Max.

It feels weird that absolutely none of them has a bright end. AI, climate change, viruses, not enough resources on the planet are common problems that inspire the creators of those stories. And, where their inspiration come from? Unfortunately, of our own world…

Post 73/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Two years abroad

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 05:30:00 +0000

In a couple of days, it will be two years since I left France, and Paris. And, I’m quite happy to have done that move. The country left behind me doesn’t look having a bright future in any way. Plus, having to raise kids in a big city like this it’s not the best in my humble opinion.

Some facts about France:

government signing laws to abolish many rights people fought during years to get
government with so many corrupted people that make you sick
people getting killed by the police
more people injured under Macron that the last 40 years during demonstrations
demonstrations to denounce police violence banned
authorizing the police to turn cameras and mics on to spy on people demonstrating (even if I don’t see how they are going to do this)
etc…

And, I could probably continue with that list. But, I won’t.

We chose a country, and a city not far from the sea, with a calmer, more peaceful life than the hectic, crazy life of Paris.

And, I don’t regret, nothing.

Post 72/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #24: granted

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 21:48:47 +0000

Let’s see a nice tool if you manage multiple cloud accounts, and need to access them quickly. If you are in that case, you know how it can be a pain to switch between accounts.

The tool is called granted.

Here I’ll cover AWS configuration, but the other cloud providers should be straightforward too.

Installation

If you don’t have the AWS CLI, just go grab it, and install it on your computer. Once done, I assume you already have at least one role in your ~/.aws/config file.

On Linux, you can install it like this:


 # for x86_64
 % curl -OL releases.commonfate.io/granted/v0.14.0/granted_0.14.0_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
 % sudo tar -zxvf ./granted_0.14.0_linux_x86_64.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/
 % granted -v
 Granted v0.14.0

You can install it on OSX, and Windows. Check the documentation.

Usage

Let’s run it:


 % assume

 [i] Thanks for using Granted!
 [i] By default, Granted will open the AWS console with this browser: Chrome

 [!] Granted works best with Firefox but also supports Chrome, Brave, and Edge
 (https://docs.commonfate.io/granted/introduction#supported-browsers). You can
 change this setting later by running 'granted browser set'

 ? Use Firefox as default Granted browser? (y/N)

Once configured, run assume again:


 % assume
 ? Please select the profile you would like to assume: [Use arrows to move, type to filter]
 > account-1
 account-2
 account-3

You can use assume -c to open a console in your browser in a new tab, in a new container. That mean you don’t have to worry about opening yourself a new container for each account. That’s pretty great. The supported browsers are:

Firefox
Safari
Edge
Brave
Chrome (Please just avoid using Chrome, and Chrome based browsers 🙏)

You have a configuration in ~/.granted/config. I tried to tweak it for LibreWolf, and I was able to change the PATH to use it. But, the tab wasn’t opened in a container, meaning the credentials weren’t separated. So when you try to open a new console, that should be in a container, it says that you need to log out of the other account first.

That’s a bit boring, so I opened an issue to see if they will support Librewolf. But, if you use one of the supported browsers, you are good to go. I tested it with Firefox, and it works like a charm.

The tool offers also different options:

open a specific region
open a specific service
sso
session duration
etc…

Check the documentation if you need something specific. If you use cloud accounts on a daily basis, this tool can save you a lot of time.

Post 71/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Dvorak and typing

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 05:56:23 +0000

I’ve been using a Dvorak layout for a couple of years now. I think I started around 2019, but I’m not 100% sure.

I got pretty decent with it. Probably not the fastest typist, but I try to improve my typing using MonkeyType, or similar websites. But, I quite like how simple is MonkeyType, that’s why I came back to it so often.

Checking some videos online on how to type faster, one thing erupted to my mind. The fact that I use the delete button quite a lot when I miss a typing. One person explained we should learn how to delete quickly the last word or character. Often, when I miss a key, I have to extend my fingers to hit the backspace button. But, I found there is a better way.

Terminal

In a terminal, you can use <C-w> to delete the previous word, and I discovered that you can use <C-h> to delete the previous character like when you hit the backspace.

My caps lock is used as the Control key. I love it that way, because it’s just under my small finger. Hitting the combination <C-h> to delete the previous character is pretty easy. My brain has just to get used to it.

To delete the previous word, we use generally <C-w>, but I found a better mapping: <C-d>.

Since I’m using a Dvorak layout, my Home Row is:

A O E U I D H T N S

So, hitting <C-h>, and <C-d> to delete a character and a word really better that way. And, it avoids me the finger extension.

To be able to use it in Vim, I added just one mapping for the deleting a word, since <C-h> works out of the box. The mapping is:


 :inoremap <C-d> <C-o>daw

And, for my zsh configuration, I added:


 bindkey '^d' backward-delete-word

The issue

That works great in a terminal, but not really for other apps. At least, on Linux, I haven’t found yet a solution. For example, in Librewolf, <C-d> add a bookmark, and <C-w> closes the current page. Not really useful… especially when your two main tools are the terminal, and a browser. 😔

On my work Macbook, you can make it work in Slack, and other tools using a file you need to add:


 % mkdir ~/Library/KeyBindings/
 % touch DefaultKeyBinding.dict

And, add this in that file:


 {
 "^d" = "deleteWordBackward:";
 }

But, it still doesn’t work in Firefox/Librewolf. At least, <C-h>, and <C-w> works on OSX, but I still don’t have a solution for Linux 😔.

Do you have some useful keybindings you can’t live without?

Post 70/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Kaweco AL Sport

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 05:31:19 +0000

A new pen: the Kaweco AL Sport. A local store not far where I live had some sales. I was going there to buy a pen, and a notebook for my kid when I saw that small pen.

Compared to my Faber Castell e-motion black, it’s 1/4 shorter, but when you put the cap on, it’s almost the same size. And, it feels good in my big hands.

Kaweco 1

Kaweco 2

The AL stands for aluminium, and I love the fact it’s not plastic, and a bit probably heavier. The nib is an M one, like on the e-motion. It shows the Kaweco logo, and says Germany, since 1883.

It was available in different colours, but I choose a Matte Black one.

It came with a small cartridge of blue ink. I bought the Ruby Red Kaweco Ink with it because it was only €7. But, since it’s a cartridge filling pen primarily, I had to order a Kaweco converter to be able to use that ink. It should arrive today. So, I wasn’t able to test it properly yet.

The pen is a small pen well-designed, and made. If you want a smaller pen, it may be a good fit for you.

Post 69/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Systems are not failing

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:20:35 +0000

A nice quote that’s still relevant today with our societies:

A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect

W.E.B Du Bois

Vim Weekly Tips #30 : Harpoon

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 22:30:00 +0000

Sometimes you work on a couple of files in some project. Switching between them using Telescope, or :bnext, :bprev, or any keybindings you have for them could be not the best solution.

Harpoon

This plugin made by ThePrimeagen could be something useful. You can mark the files you are working on, and create keystrokes to access them really quickly. And, that’s pretty nice.

Installation

The Installation is straightforward with the plugin manager you use. On my side, with packer, I have just to add:


 -- harpoon
 use 'ThePrimeagen/harpoon'

And do a :PackerSync.

Configuration

Here is my configuration:


 -- harpoon

 local mark = require("harpoon.mark")
 local ui = require("harpoon.ui")

 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-a>", mark.add_file)
 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-e>", ui.toggle_quick_menu)

 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-h>", function() ui.nav_file(1) end)
 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-t>", function() ui.nav_file(2) end)
 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-n>", function() ui.nav_file(3) end)
 vim.keymap.set("n", "<C-s>", function() ui.nav_file(4) end)

I know the plugin can be integrated with Tmux also, but I’m not really doing any fancy thing.

What I like is to use <C-a> to mark files.

<C-e> will show this pop-up:

You can navigate through the files, copy and delete the lines using vim commands, and even edited those filenames to create new files. You can also from the quickmenu window open the file in:

a vertical split with
a horizontal split with
a tab with

I work on a maximum of 4 files at the same time. Never gone above that. That’s why I have those keymaps set to:

<C-h> my first file marked
<C-t> my second one
<C-n> my third one
<C-s> my last one

I use H, T, N, and S because I’m a Dvorak user 😅. I can then quickly switch between all of them.

Another great thing is that it keeps the marks depending on the directory where you are, even when you closed your editor. And, it keeps also the position in your file. And, that’s pretty great, isn’t it!?

Conclusion

Harpoon is a nice plugin. Once you start using it, you won’t stop. Don’t hesitate to visit the [GitHub page][1] to check the full documentation.

Post 68/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A great 66 years old movie

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 23:12:21 +0000

Last night, I watched a great movie from … 1957! With Henri Fonda, and some actors, that I discovered.

It’s name is “12 angry men”!

If you never watched it, I recommend it. Not really surprising that it’s on the 5th place of the IMDB Top 250 list.

Will Meta kill the Fediverse?

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 06:05:00 +0000

I stumbled upon this excellent post by ploum:

❤️ https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

I really hope that we won’t end with the same fate that XMPP and other products had…

CLI of the week #23: kubectx & kubens

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 06:21:38 +0000

This week, I wanted to show you not little CLI tools really handy if you fiddle with Kubernetes.

Switching between clusters, and namespaces is sometimes a pain with kubectl. Let’s improve our experience with kubectx, and kubens

kubectx is a tool to switch between contexts, aka clusters. kubens is another tool to switch easily between K8S namespaces.

Installation

Check the Gitub page, there are many ways to install them depending on your OS.

Usage

Pretty straightforward:


 % kubectx minikube
 Switched to context "minikube".

 # switch back to previous cluster
 % kubectx -
 Switched to context "yourlastcluster".

 # change the active namespace on kubectl
 % kubens kube-system
 Context "test" set.
 Active namespace is "kube-system".

 # go back to the previous namespace
 % kubens -
 Context "test" set.
 Active namespace is "default".

It works like cd - in your shell.

Fzf works with it, as well as the TAB completion if you don’t like fuzzy searches. But, who doesn’t like it. 😅

Pretty handy 🙌

Post 67/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Backup everything locally

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Reading how Disney removed a tvshow in seven weeks because it wasn’t an instant hit made me again think about the importance of having local copies of all the things that I have interests for.

This morning, I stumbled upon this post from Brian, which reinforces the idea of having local copies of everything you value. That could be notes, pictures, old movies or TV shows, or basically anything.

You’ll never know when something will be banned, deleted, and removed from the Internet.

Of course, those local copies should have a backup somewhere else, just in case of a burglary, a fire, or if your cat/dog/kid/… destroys it. Make a copy, keep it at work, or at your parents, or friend’s home, or anywhere else where you could get it easily.

You could use different tools to archive everything. I quite like archivebox, that allows you to copy everything on your computer, and, if you want, you can also push it to archive.org.

Of course, you can have all of this on a rented server somewhere online, but you rely on a third party service/company. What happens when they decide your content is not appropriate, or if they put the key under the door. Your data could be lost forever.

Michael Bazzell in his latest podcasts episodes talks about self-hosting. For him, it’s not really self-hosted if you can’t access the server for X reason. And, I do agree with that. Don’t forget that the cloud doesn’t exist, it’s someone’s else computer.

Of course, don’t make copies of everything. But, keep copies of bills, your ID papers, invoices, pictures, audio notes, anything valuable. Hard drives are pretty cheap, and you can have many Terabytes for a hundred of euros/dollars.

Take pictures of your purchases. That could be vital in case of a fire, or a burglary for insurances. A couple of my friends had issues to prove they really owned some hardware because they lost the invoices.

Synchronization of the remotes disks can be a hassle, but you could probably work with multiple disks. This way you have local copies, and you switch the most outdated one when you visit the place(s) where the remote copies are.

When we rely on 3rd party services, it’s not a matter of will they be breached, or be broken, it’s a matter of when. That’s why I prefer to have my things on the local copies that I can access at any time.

Post 66/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

June 2023

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 00:29:45 +0100

Another month gone. Already at the half of the year, and finally the summer is here. June, many podcasts, a bit more blogging, and getting back to sport after a backache.

With the Reddit fiasco, I started to follow some communities on Lemmy from Mastodon. I would love to have only new thread subjects instead of a toot on each comment, but so far it’s okay.

I started to play with Monkeytype, and I’m between 50 and 60 wpm with a 95% accuracy that could be better I guess, but I’m okay with it. I’m not yet sure how to improve it.

Anyway, here’s a summary of what I watched, read, and listened to in the last month.

Podcasts

Hard fork

I haven’t listened to any of them this month. I’m not sure if I’ll continue. I don’t really agree with some of their talks.

Darknet Diaries

134: Deviant - an episode about Deviant Ollam, a physical penetration specialist, famous in the community.

Privacy, Security and OSINT

300 - Self-Hosted 2: Offline Knowledge
299 - Self-Hosted 1: Introduction

In episode 300, I discovered that you can download multiple archives of things like the Wikipedia! Its size is around 120Gb compressed, but I guess that’s the English version only.

Hacking humans

Password managers and their benefits

DevDiscuss

S2E3 - The History of IRC and the Evolution of Community Tools

Linux Lads

Ep. 104: Desktop Lap Dance

Up First

Sunday Story: so you want to be an influencer? Many questions about the viability of this career path? I still don’t get kids who are interested in that crap.

You’ll die smarter

Like the French podcast about general knowledge, this podcast is a 2-3 min format, and the subjects are wide. Some examples:

Why do they run 42.195 km in a marathon?
Why do Greek statues have a small penis?
Why do we become more irritable when we are hungry?
Why are solar eclipses doomed to disappear?
Why are beer bottles sometimes made of dark glass?
Why do we rub our eyes when we are tired?
What is the ideal number of days far a vacation?
Why do main Disney characters wear gloves?

Spycast

A great podcast about spies, and the undercover world of espionage.

FBI counterintelligence and the Robert Hanssen spy case
The movie breach and Hollywood’s take on espionage
Reviewing Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd
Israeli Intelligence and the Jonathan Pollard spy case
The Litvinenko murder, and other riddles from Moscow
The secret history of disguises
From the Vault: “El Chapo, the war on drugs & Intelligence” with trial reporter Noah Hurowitz
From the secret files of the CIA

Espions, une histoire vraie (French)

Ana Montes, agent double pour Cuba
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, alias Herisson
Philippe Rondot, le tombeur de Carlos
Maria Butina, l’espionne russe qui approcha Donald Trump

Les histoires de quartiers d’Oxmo Puccino (French)

Hayat Atia: une bagarre dans les quartiers nord
Akhenaton: deux skinheads dans une soirée rap

Culture générale (French)

Many small facts podcasts of 2/3 minutes about many subjects. Too many to list them all here.

Le Code a change (French)

ChatGPT dans le texte

Book Log

This month, I finished only one book:

Difficult conversations - How to discuss what matters most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

I haven’t touched those:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 67% read
Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I really need to read a bit more in July.

Movies / TV shows

TV show

Barry - Season 4. I finished the show. I loved the first season, and from then I found it less, and less interesting, but hoped it would eventually get better.

Movies

I watched also The Unforgiven, a Clint Eastwood movie with Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and Morgan Freeman. Not the best western I ever saw, but it was alright.

Sport

The NBA is finished. The Denver Nuggets are the champions, and Nikola Jokić was named the NBA Finals MVP. ❤️ 🏆 🏀

And, that’s all for this month.

Post 65/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim weekly tips #29 - Gitsigns

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 20:25:38 +0000

This week, let’s talk about Gitsigns.

For Neovim users, Gitsigns is a plugin to improve your Git experience with your editor. It gives a status bar integration, signs for added, removed, and changed lines, and many other things.

I use it primarily to check differences with the file I’m editing. For this, in Command Mode you can use:


 :Gitsigns diffthis [Tab]
 main origin/HEAD origin/lazybear-2.0 origin/master
 master origin/bulma origin/main

This helps you to diff it with branches. You can also use it with:


 :Gitsigns diffthis ~1 # Thats the most recent version committed
 # To see older versions just use ~2, ~3 etc...

The other things I like about Gitsigns, it shows the changes of your file.

As you can see on this image there are many informations:

First line, the red sign indicates a line has been removed.
On the third line, in a light grey, you can see who committed that line. If it’s a new line, you’ll see “Not committed yet”.
The blue highlight on the 5th line indicates a change on the line.
The green line indicates new text.

I use three keymaps with Gitsigns:


 keymap("n", "<C-b>", ":Gitsigns blame_line<CR>", opts)
 keymap("n", "<C-m>", ":Gitsigns preview_hunk<CR>", opts)
 keymap("n", "<leader>tb", ":Gitsigns toggle_current_line_blame<CR>", opts)

The first one, it gives you the name of the committer of that line:

The second keymap gives you the changed hunk:

And, the last one is to toggle the blaming information displayed on the current line.

Conclusion

That plugin is pretty nice to immediately see how the file has changed, and it provides nice features when you have to commit code with other persons.

Try it, and let me know what you think about it.

Post 64/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Licence to kill

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 06:34:12 +0000

A refusal to stop doesn’t rhyme with a licence to kill.

Police killed 13 persons for that reason last year in France.

It’s getting worse, and worse…

End of Invidious?

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 05:30:15 +0000

Once again, YouTube, and Google are threatening an open-source project that doesn’t go their way.

Invidious got a letter from YouTube to stop their work, because it violates their API rules.

Invidious, is a front-end to YouTube, without the shitty trackers, and ads. It offers the possibility to download also the video, or the audio of any video.

Recently, I found many instances were abandoned, or just not working anymore. Not sure if that’s linked, but it’s quite annoying.

We understand why they want to shut down a product that avoid data collection, and annoying ads, that make them tons of money.

The worst part is that the author, TheFrenchGhosty, said: 110614630794051217"They don’t understand that we never agreed to any of their TOS/policies, they don’t understand that we don’t use their API,"

Invidious works a web browser, it loads the YouTube page, gets the data it needs, and loads them in another website.

I really hope the author doesn’t get in any legal trouble, and I would love to see more people using PeerTube.

Would people give donations to big YouTube creators if they were on PeerTube?

If the community or the content is great, I guess they would, probably. Would they earn more money?

I don’t know. But, I would love to see some numbers around this.

Post 63/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Git Worktrees

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 19:57:02 +0000

Today, almost all old sysadmins moved doing IaC, or also known as Infrastructure As Code. We had to learn many tools, and we commit codes way more often than before. We get less on call hours too 🙌.

One tool, I use on a daily basis is git. Let’s see some features not really known.

Git

First, let’s see what is a repository.

A repo is usually a directory with your code, and its different subdirectories. People cloning a repository call it a git repo.

To clone one, it’s pretty straightforward:


 % git clone git@github.com:repo/XXX
 % cd $_ ; ls
 % actions app.py awx.py config.py logging.conf requirements.txt rundeck.py users.py

Here you can see the files that have been created by your colleague or yourself.

But, actually, there are two things here:

The repository
The workspace

The workspace

The workspace is a directory with your code. It will be on a specific branch with a specific hash. People call it the repository, when it should be called the workspace.


 % git branch
 * main
 % git log
 commit a383fc32d0aae9711439571100fe4ed094aa4fd0 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)

The repository

The actual repository is the .git folder inside the project.


 % ls .git
 COMMIT_EDITMSG FETCH_HEAD HEAD ORIG_HEAD config description hooks index info logs objects packed-refs refs

Let’s create a bare repo, and observe something.


 % git clone git@github.com:repo/XXX XXX-bare
 % ls $_
 COMMIT_EDITMSG FETCH_HEAD HEAD ORIG_HEAD config description hooks index info logs objects packed-refs refs

Your workspace .git repository, and the git bare repo are exactly the same thing.

You could even clone from this bare repo locally:


 % git clone XXX-bare XXX

The issue with git stash

We all had that issue at some point:

You work on something
An issue appears in production
You need to stash your current work
Patch the production
Remember what you added to the stash 😅

That’s boring, sometimes painful, and there is a better way to do it.

Worktrees, or how to get rid of git stash

Worktrees allow you to work on multiple branches with multiple workspaces. No need anymore to stash, pop, drop your changes.

Adding worktrees

Let’s add two worktrees, one for the main branch, and one for the production patch.


 % git worktree add main
 Preparing worktree (new branch 'main')
 % ls main
 actions app.py awx.py config.py logging.conf requirements.txt rundeck.py users.py
 % git worktree add patch-prod
 Preparing worktree (new branch 'patch-prod')
 % ls patch-prod
 actions app.py awx.py config.py logging.conf requirements.txt rundeck.py users.py

As you can see, we have the same files, but each one on a specific branch. In the root directory of the clone bare repository, you can see two new directories:


 % ls
 HEAD config description patch-prod hooks info main objects packed-refs refs worktrees
 ^-- The patch-prod branch ^---- The main branch

Each worktree is a workspace corresponding to a specific branch. You can work on each one independently, and merge them as you would with a basic git cloned repository.

Listing worktrees


 % git worktree list
 /home/hyde/projects/XXX-bare/ (bare)
 /home/hyde/projects/XXX-bare/patch-prod f65e3c4 [patch-prod]
 /home/hyde/projects/XXX-bare/main a383fc3 [main]

Removing worktrees


 % git worktree remove patch-prod
 % git worktree remove main
 % ls
 HEAD config description hooks info logs objects packed-refs refs

If you want to try something else than git stash, worktrees are the answer. 😉

Post 62/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Reddit fiasco

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 11:00:41 +0000

Reddit follows Twitter path, or at least it’s how it looks like from an external point of view. Reddit raised, or will raise, theirs API prices. Many subreddits will protest against it by going dark.

I’ve never been a regular user of the platform. I stumbled on some subreddits when I was looking for a specific answer on some subjects.

I discovered over the weekend Lemmy, and Kbin, two alternatives to Reddit, that are part of the Fediverse.

The great thing about the Fediverse, and ActivityPub, is that you can interact with various platforms without having an account on them.

For example, you can follow a PixelFed account from Mastodon. The same way, you can follow communities on Lemmy without having an account there.

To explore what communities are available, you can use Lemmy Explorer to search for a specific instance or community. The communities names are in this format: !communityName@instanceName. To follow them from Mastodon, all you need to do is to replace the ! by @, and you should find the account name.

Here are some communities I started to follow:

@vim@lemmy.sdf.org
@privacy@lemmy.ml
@unix@sh.itjust.works
@unixporn@lemmy.ml
@piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
@share_your_art@lemmy.dbzer0.com
@anarchism@slrpnk.net
@pirate_party@sopuli.xyz
@privacysecurityosint@sopuli.xyz
@lua@programming.dev
@passwords@infosec.pub
@fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu

When you toot with one of this account, it creates a new thread in the community. Pretty simple. But, be aware that any new comment will be posted too. That’s could make your timeline really busy. 😅

After Reddit’s CEO comments, I hope it will go down like Twitter, and that more people will understand the benefits to have a decentralized social network. Let’s bring communities to the Fediverse!

Post 61/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The Fedi pact

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 08:42:27 +0000

Apparently, Meta looks interested in the Fediverse. I don’t know if it’s only rumouring, or if it has happened yet. But, seeing big tech companies landing in our communities is not a great thing.

Did we forget that we are just “dumb fucks”?

I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SMS... People just submitted it.
I don’t know why... Dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg

Even if we don’t know yet what the purpose of that project92 is, I don’t trust Meta or any other data greedy company.

That’s why the Anti-Meta Fedi pact emerged. Many Fedi admins already signed it, and it’s important to make a block against everything jeopardizing our freedom, and privacy.

If you are an admin, I encourage you to sign it, and block any server from Meta & co as soon as we detect one of theirs servers.

Post 60/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #22 - Atuin

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 21:39:18 +0000

Friday rhymes with the #followFriday hashtag on Mastodon.

This morning, I tooted about some people I stumbled upon this week. One of the person is Ellie Huxtable

She created Atuin, “a tool to sync, backup, and share your shell history”.

It’s a tool written in Rust, and basically it replaces your shell history with a SQLite database.

It also provides encrypted synchronization between computers if you use an Atuin server.

The installation process is pretty straightforward, and well documented.

You can then import, list, search, get stats, sync your history.

Here are some examples from the official documentation:


 # Open the interactive search TUI
 atuin search -i

 # Open the interactive search TUI preloaded with a query
 atuin search -i atuin

 # Search for all commands, beginning with cargo, that exited successfully
 atuin search --exit 0 cargo

 # Search for all commands, that failed, from the current dir, and were ran before April 1st 2021
 atuin search --exclude-exit 0 --before 01/04/2021 --cwd .

 # Search for all commands, beginning with cargo, that exited successfully, and were ran after yesterday at 3pm
 atuin search --exit 0 --after "yesterday 3pm" cargo

 # Delete all commands, beginning with cargo, that exited successfully, and were ran after yesterday at 3pm
 atuin search --delete --exit 0 --after "yesterday 3pm" cargo

 # Search for a command beginning with cargo, return exactly one result.
 atuin search --limit 1 cargo

 # Search for a single result for a command beginning with cargo, skipping (offsetting) one result
 atuin search --offset 1 --limit 1 cargo

 # Find the oldest cargo command
 atuin search --limit 1 --reverse cargo

You can selfhost a server for the synchronization, but it requires a PostgreSQL 14 or above, and the ability to run a container.

Here’s the documentation for selfhosting.

I just installed it, so my experience is quite limited 😅, but the project looks cool. Let me know if you use it, and give us your feedbacks.

Post 59/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Navigating through your buffers

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 05:41:41 +0000

Buffers, all vim users love them… I guess. At least, I love them 😅.

You can use :bp or :bn to go to the previous one or next one. But, I love keybindings, that’s why we use Vim, right?

Here are shortcuts to use your leader key to navigate quickly between buffers. Add these to your vim configuration:


 nnoremap H :bp<cr>
 nnoremap L :bn<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>ls :ls<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>1 :1b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>2 :2b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>3 :3b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>4 :4b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>5 :5b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>6 :6b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>7 :7b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>8 :8b<cr>
 nnoremap <Leader>9 :9b<cr>

Now you can use your leader key to switch quickly between your files.

Post 58/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Made abroad, worn at home

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 22:17:26 +0100

Tshirts, we all have at least one in our wardrobe. Black, white, with multiple colors, design printed on them, t-shirts are probably with sockets, and underwear, the most common type of daily clothes.

It’s simple, I wear only t-shirts. When it’s really needed, I may wear a shirt, but that’s pretty rare.

I just love t-shirts, and … Lacoste’s polos, even if I only have one left.

But, one night I was wondering about them, and how they were produced looking at some documentary on the TV. I guessed, some are probably made in China, or Turkey.

So, decided to be sure, I took them all outside my cupboard. And, I checked all of them. Here’s what I found out.

I only have one t-shirt, and one polo made in Europe!

Here’s the list by country, and brand:


 | Asos | Benetton | Burberry | COS | H&M | Lacoste | Levis | No Name | Uniqlo |
 --------- | ------ | -------- | -------- | ------- | ------- | ------- | ------- | ------- | ------ |
 Bangladesh | | | | 2 | 4 | | | | 5 |
 China | | | | | | | | | 1 |
 India | | | | | 1 | | | | |
 Pakistan | | | | | | | 7 | | |
 Portugal | | | | | | | | 1 | |
 Spain | | | | | | 1 | | | |
 Thailand | | | | 1 | | | | | 2 |
 Tunisia | | 4 | | | | | | | |
 Turkey | 1 | | | | | | 1 | | |
 Vietnam | | | 1 | | | | | | |

Only a Lacoste polo, and a no name t-shirt have been made in Europe. That’s problematic!

Everywhere, everyone is talking about the climate change. How we should consume locally, and support local businesses to challenge the impacts of globalization.

But, the reality is different. For a simple product like a t-shirt, you can see that basically none are produced around where I live.

Or, if they are, the prices are way higher than other brands. There are many marketing bullshit also. And, the worst part is that the quality is often not even there.

I really want to help local businesses, but it’s just difficult to find the right product.

Maybe, I should collaborate with local initiatives, and get involved to offer great t-shirts that promote sustainable and community-oriented practices.

And, you? Where are you buying your t-shirts?

Post 57/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

May 2023

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:29:45 +0100

May was quite busy. Many work related subjects that kept away from the blog. Again this month, I was quite away from Mastodon. And, it’s not a bad thing. I did many other things, like listening to podcasts.

Some friends made me install the chess.com app on my phone. And, it was a bad idea. I played 515 games, and 188 puzzles. I need to close my account, but I can’t remember the password.🤦

I tried to improve my typing skills too. Not an easy task, but I’m getting better at it.

Anyway, here’s a summary of what I watched, read, and listened to in the last month.

Podcasts

Hard fork

Google’s A.I. Bonanza + Driveless car talk with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt
Mr. Altman goes to Washington + Casey goes on the American life
Bluesky has the juice + AI Jobs apocalypse + Hard Questions

I got bored by this podcast, especially since one of the two guys said that Open-source and Linux are not viable things that can challenge Google or any big company. For Tech journalists, they should probably understand how it works, and see that all those companies adopted Open-source because they didn’t have the choice.

Darknet Diaries

133: I’m the real Connor
132: Sam the Vendor

Privacy, Security and OSINT

298 - OSINT maintenance
297 - KYC, 2FA, macOS, & OSINT updates
296 - The argument of a stock browser
295 - Breach data collection revisited
294 - Preparing for home disaster
293 - Financial software considerations
292 - Vital News and updates

The 294 episode was surprising. Bazzell talks about how it could be helpful to have pictures of everything at home, and store offline/online just in case of a fire or any other issue with your residence. I may take some pictures soon.

Linux Lads

Ep. 103: Fun Quail
Ep. 102: Interview with Chris from the Gio project

Cool tools

350 - Kern Kelly

Up First

The Sunday story: So you want to be an influencer?
Biden - Trudeau talks + TikTok CEO testifies + March Madness returns

Culture générale (French)

Many small facts podcasts of 2/3 minutes about many subjects. Some random subjects:

What time is on the moon?
Why half of Paris is made of plaster?
What secret ingredient is hidden in the “Joconde”?
Are humans the only ones to vote?
Why cats have nine lives?

And, many others. I love that little format. So far, I’ve listened to 148 episodes.

La Rumeur (French)

This podcast takes the same small 2/3 minutes format. It’s about rumours or urban legends we all hear from time to time.

Subjects of some episodes:

Calls for help on Shein labels?
Eating mummies, a cure for all diseases?
Do women retain their ex’s DNA?

La Rumeur (French)

Again same format. Not really surprising because it’s the same author doing all of them.

Subjects of some episodes:

There are 0 euro banknotes
Chess is mandatory in Armenian schools
Turkey may change its name
Making sausages was banned in Germany
Darwin invented the office chair

Le Code a change (French)

L’amour par petites touches

An episode where he interviewed a woman who’s married to someone living in NYC, while she’s in Paris. And, how the long-distance relationship works. Of course, they are in an open relationship.

Book Log

This month, I didn’t finish any book. I’m almost done with this one though:

Difficult conversations - How to discuss what matters most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

I continued:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 67% read

I haven’t touched those:

Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Movies / TV shows

I only watched this TV Show:

Barry - Season 4. Almost finished the show. I need to check the last episode.

Sport

I watched every NBA Playoffs game. I love this game !!

And, that’s all for this month.

Post 56/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

I'm back to monokai

Sat, 27 May 2023 06:02:35 +0100

In January, I switched my vim colorscheme from monokai to everforest. Since that day, many things changed. I moved from Vim to Neovim. I tried to learn more about Lua. I tested alternatives to Vim plugins for Neovim. I tested many new things on Neovim. And, finally, I’m happy with it. I still need to finish some configuration, like moving my UltiSnips to LuaSnip. But, except that, the experience is quite nice, and I will get better using Lua.

But, one thing didn’t last is that colorscheme, Everforest. I used it for more than two months, but I didn’t fall in love with it.

Switching to Neovim, of course I tried the tokyonight colorscheme, that many users love. But, it’s too blue to me, or maybe it’s because it reminds me of that old Blue Screen of Death :)

I thought I would really enjoy Everforest, but at the end, I just came back to that old monokai that I just love.

Post 55/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #21 : 1password

Fri, 26 May 2023 23:00:21 +0100

Passwords! Even if some companies are trying to get rid of them, passwords are probably here to stay for a little while

For my personal use, I like pass, and the pass-tomb extension. But, at work, we use 1password, and an SSO. And, I deeply hate to have to connect each time on a web page to get the credentials.

So, I checked if there was a CLI. Of course, 1password provides one. And, you can install it on Linux, OS X, and even Windows.

Once the 1password app installed, it’s a gui app by the way, you need to go to “Settings → Developer”, and then check the “Connect with 1Password CLI”.

Once it’s done, add this function in your favourite shell configuration:


 1pass(){
 # that's 1password cli tool used with fzf
 # it's the best to have it in a tmux session because if not it will require
 # you to reauthenticate for each new terminal that you open
 op item list |fzf --bind 'enter:become( op item get {1} )'
 }

The only thing a bit annoying is that 1password authorize access for every new terminal you create for security reasons.

That could be annoying, but since I’m always in tmux, that’s not a concern because I have a “1password” session that’s always there if needed to check something.

That’s it!

Post 54/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Star Wars - 46 years old

Thu, 25 May 2023 21:11:36 +0100

Star Wars release date in the US was May 25 … 1977. I can’t believe it’s almost half a century that the movie was recorded.

Time flies…

Happy Birthday Malcolm X

Fri, 19 May 2023 06:42:16 +0100

He would have been 98 years old today.

His sentences make even more sense today when you observe how the world turns out to be.

"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

“A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”

“My alma mater was books, a good library… I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

“There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.”

“If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”

“Without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world.”

“You don’t have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”

"We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity."

Post 53/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #27 : Neovim configurations

Fri, 19 May 2023 05:28:52 +0100

I’ve been quite busy lately, and the Vim weekly tips became almost a monthly one. We’ll get back to one post per week soon because I have many new things to write about Vim, and Neovim.

I almost moved all my configuration to Neovim, and so far I love it 😅.

Talking about configuration, I spent quite a decent amount of time customizing it, watching videos, reading documentation, and learning Lua a bit. That’s how I stumbled upon Dotfyle.

Dotfyle, a lovely made website, with some “Draculish” colorscheme, offers the possibility to discover, and share your Neovim configurations if you have a GitHub account. I would love to see other options like Codeberg, or any other forges..

I haven’t really went through all profiles, but I’m pretty sure you can find your happiness there.

The homepage is split between configurations, plugins, colorscheme, and preconfigured configurations like LazyVim, LunarVim & co.

Dotfyle reminds me VimAwesome, but with the advantage of seeing people configs, and customizations.

Will you share yours?

Post 52/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Your best functions

Mon, 15 May 2023 21:11:36 +0100

For those who spend their time in a terminal, what are your best shell functions?

CLI of the week #20: krew

Sat, 13 May 2023 06:59:49 +0100

This week, I discovered Krew, a plugin manager for kubectl.

Today, there are over 200 plugins available. They’re not all managed by the Krew’s team, so be sure wanting to use some of them.

Installation

Pretty straightforward, run this command:


 (
 set -x; cd "$(mktemp -d)" &&
 OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" &&
 ARCH="$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/')" &&
 KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}" &&
 curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
 tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
 ./"${KREW}" install krew
)

And, add $HOME/.krew/bin to your $PATH.

Usage

First, you need to download the plugin list:


 % kubectl krew update

To find a plugin, you can do a search:


 kubectl krew search
 NAME DESCRIPTION INSTALLED
 access-matrix Show an RBAC access matrix for server resources no
 advise-psp Suggests PodSecurityPolicies for cluster. no
 [...]

And, finally install, and use it:


 % kubectl krew install access-matrix
 % kubectl access-matrix

Of course, you can uninstall them with:


 % kubectl krew uninstall access-matrix

If you are a k8s user, that could probably help you a bit. 😅

Post 51/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Luck, and an old iPod

Thu, 11 May 2023 23:26:02 +0100

Recently, I saw a couple of articles about old iPods that got resurrected with a hardware upgrade.

I still got an old 30Gb iPod classic in a drawer, but I didn’t have the USB cable anymore. And, the other day, walking down a street, I got lucky, and found one next to a trash. And, thinking about it, could that be one of those fake cables with a backdoor in it.

Anyway, the good news is that I was able to charge it, and it still works. The bad news is that it didn’t get recognize by my Debian. A dmesg doesn’t indicate anything about that device.

I tried a couple of apps, but nothing really helped. Amarok is not on Debian anymore, apparently. Or, maybe, the project is dead. I haven’t used those products with Linux for a while. And, I will have to dig a bit to see what modules are needed, and what tools can be used to upload music to it.

The best moment trying to make it work was when my older kid asked what is this thing for. I replied:

a device to listen to music
oh, like a phone
… yeah.

Post 50/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

April 2023

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:29:45 +0100

April is gone, and the spring is here. I’ve been quite busy the last couple of weeks.

Away from Mastodon, and the blog too. I hope this month, I’ll be able to write a bit more here.

Anyway, here’s a summary of what I watched, read, and listened to in the last month.

Podcasts

Hard fork

Deepfake Drake + HatGPT + BEn Smith on the end of the BuzzFeed era
Hard Fork presents: The most amazing and dangerous technology in the world
Inside the Hunt for the Discord leaker + Twitter chaos updates
A.I. Vibe check with Ezra Klein + Kevin tries phone positivity
Google CO Sundar Pichai on Bard, A.I. ‘Whiplash’ and competing with ChatGPT
Bard Fork + How to talk, so chatbots will listen

Command Line Heroes

A RedHat podcast with many interesting subjects. Especially, seeing how things evolved. The end of Perl, or the Dreamcast, which was probably ahead of its time with his embedded modem.

Gladys Perkins: the pioneer who took us to new heights
Roy Clay: the Entrepreneur who transformed an industry
A language for the Web
Jerry Lawson: the Engineer who changed the game
What kind of coder will you become?
Becoming a coder
Consoles: the Dreamcast’s life after death
Floppies: the Disks that changed the World
Heroes in a Bash Shell
Diving for Perl
The Data Explosion: Processing, storage, and the cloud
The One about DevSecOps: Evolving Security and Reliability
The Containers Derby
Invisible Intruders
Ruthless Ransomers
Lurking Logic Bombs
The Containers Derby
DevOps Tear Down the Wall
The Agile Revolution
OS Wars Part 2
OS Wars Part 1

Darknet Diaries

133: I’m the real Connor
132: Sam the Vendor

Linux Lads

Ep. 101: Gio Dudes
Ep. 100: A hundred Shenanigans

Culture générale (French)

Many small facts podcasts of 2/3 minutes about many subjects.

Le Code a change (French)

Silicon Valley, “l’art de la guerre avec le sourire”

Book Log

This month, I finished:

Hook Point: How to stand out in a 3-second world by Brendan Kane.

I started:

Difficult conversations - How to discuss what matters most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

I continued:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 61% read

I haven’t touched those:

Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Movies / TV shows

I watched a couple of TV series:

Snowfall - Seasons 4-6. I loved that show I loved this series mixing the CIA, the drugs, the gangs, and the story of a kid who became a kingpin. I finished the last two seasons which were great.
Barry - Season 4. Apparently, it will be the last one. Not really great compared to the first two.
Rabbit Hole - First Season. Kiefer Sutherland as a master of deception in the world of corporate espionage. I’ve never watched 24, because I didn’t like the fact he always saved the world. But, this one got me hooked. The first season is only 8 episodes of ~40 minutes.
The Old Man - First season. Another CIA agent living off the grid, but his past comes to his new retired life. Jeff Bridges is great in this role.
The Mandalorian - Season 3. I found it … meh. Could have been way better in my opinion.

I watched also Eagle Eye, a 2008 movie, about a military A.I.

Sport

Mainly NBA games, the end of the season, and now its playoffs! I haven’t done as much sport as I wanted in April.

Music

I discovered Kamauu, and Adi Oasis this month.

Post 49/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #19

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 21:15:15 +0100

Working remotely for a company having people everywhere on the planet is great. Even if I haven’t met then IRL, in real life, my team is great.

But, there are always some little pieces annoying me: meetings and timezones.

Everytime I’m trying to guess what’s the time at 3pm somewhere I mess around.

Usually, I end up looking online for those websites that will tell you what time is in city X.

The shell

How it can help you know what’s the time in Japan, for example?

The $TZ is the variable that will indicate the timezone to the date command. You can use it like this:


 % TZ=Japan date
 Sat 15 Apr 05:24:59 JST 2023

That’s not bad, but we can make it better. Let’s write a function to get an easier way to find the country we want.

Fzf, our beautiful friend

The tzset command uses timezones information in the directory /usr/share/zoneinfo. Those files are described in the RFC 8536, and have all timezones information needed.

Here’s what we have under that directory:


 % ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
 America CET EST5EDT GMT-0 iso3166.tab localtime Pacific ROC UTC
 Antarctica Chile Etc GMT0 Israel MET Poland ROK WET
 Arctic CST6CDT Europe Greenwich Jamaica Mexico Portugal Singapore W-SU
 Asia Cuba Factory Hongkong Japan MST posix Turkey zone1970.tab
 Atlantic EET GB HST Kwajalein MST7MDT posixrules tzdata.zi zone.tab
 Australia Egypt GB-Eire Iceland leapseconds Navajo PRC UCT Zulu
 Brazil Eire GMT Indian leap-seconds.list NZ PST8PDT Universal

Those files are the helpful ones.

Let’s write it:


 tz(){
 TZ=$( fd . /usr/share/zoneinfo | cut -d'/' -f5- | fzf) ; echo "Timezone: $TZ" ; date
 }

Let’s see how it works:

It’s not really a proper CLI binary, but it gets things done. With small creativity, you can do a lot.

Enjoy, and share your functions on the fediverse thread 😉

Post 48/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Today - Titanic

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 02:15:13 +0100

111 years ago, the Titanic striked an iceberg, and began to sink. Over 1500 persons died on this day.

Why the Remarkable2 doesn't empty the trash?

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 23:14:20 +0100

The Remarkable2 is a great for notes taking, and for reading.

Coupled with the Lamy EMR, it’s a perfect combo.

But, recently, the memory was always full. Even removing files didn’t help, the storage kept indicating a 96% usage.

I found out that even when you clean the trash, the files are still on the device.

That was confirmed by some people on Reddit.

Solution

There is a Linux embedded on the Remarkable2, and an ssh server.

To get the ip of the device, go to:

Menu -> Settings -> Help -> Copyrights and licences
At the end of the page, you should have the ip address.

Connect to the device, and go to the directory:


 % ssh root@ip
 ｒｅＭａｒｋａｂｌｅ
 ╺━┓┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓ ┏━┓╻ ╻┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓
 ┏━┛┣╸ ┣┳┛┃ ┃ ┗━┓┃ ┃┃╺┓┣━┫┣┳┛
 ┗━╸┗━╸╹┗╸┗━┛ ┗━┛┗━┛┗━┛╹ ╹╹┗╸
 root@reMarkable:~# cd ~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl

All the files you upload to the device are in this directory. But, it would be too easy to just empty a Trash folder.

Here’s the content of that directory:


 f78d73cc-50b6-49b9-b391-37b0f6335563.metadata ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a
 f78d73cc-50b6-49b9-b391-37b0f6335563.pagedata ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a.content
 f78d73cc-50b6-49b9-b391-37b0f6335563.pdf ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a.metadata
 f78d73cc-50b6-49b9-b391-37b0f6335563.thumbnails ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a.pagedata
 f7d18cf5-e88a-47d3-a49e-e4a92e1f738d.content ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a.pdf
 f7d18cf5-e88a-47d3-a49e-e4a92e1f738d.metadata ffffffff-4ad5-46e7-a4f5-475c3a7c409a.thumbnails
 f852c3e4-0eac-4753-9353-88697ae2507c ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.content
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa.content ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.epub
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa.metadata ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.epubindex
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa.pagedata ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.metadata
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa.pdf ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.pagedata
 f8c48c47-4f75-4f10-b42b-a17854fd7baa.thumbnails ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.pdf
 fa66cf63-899a-45f2-ad38-3f22a5b76c91 ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.thumbnails
 fa66cf63-899a-45f2-ad38-3f22a5b76c91.content ffffffff-4b25-42f4-9f1d-065e60662a4b

Each uploaded book has many files like .content, .thumbnails, .pagedata, etc.

It’s a pain to find the files you removed, especially because all are in the same folder with weird filenames.

What I found valuable, though, are the metadata files. Let’s see what they include.


 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl# cat ffffffff-4b02-4968-99b0-9637cb286413.metadata
{
 "deleted": false,
 "lastModified": "0",
 "lastOpened": "0",
 "lastOpenedPage": 0,
 "metadatamodified": true,
 "modified": false,
 "parent": "c4ae9c19-cbfd-4807-bc59-d4e8b7b6e6ab",
 "pinned": false,
 "synced": false,
 "type": "DocumentType",
 "version": 0,
 "visibleName": "Agent Zigzag The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman Lover, Traitor, Hero, Spy by Ben Macintyre.epub"
}

There is a deleted key with two possible values: true or false.

That indicates files that have been deleted, but are still there.

Let’s find out all the deleted files, and store those filenames in a deleted.txt file:


 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl#
 for i in $(ls *metadata);do grep -i '"deleted": true' $i && echo $i >> deleted.txt ; done

What do we have in the file:


 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl# cat deleted.txt
 ffffffff-ec28-49bb-be0e-c72c5ea1da4a.metadata
 ffffffff-ef31-4e57-b554-d9ba8b7ec96a.metadata
 ffffffff-efd3-43c7-a7f7-efedfe9a7eef.metadata
 ffffffff-f0c0-43b0-bb34-550181b778f4.metadata
 ffffffff-f154-445d-939f-22d63a2038eb.metadata
 ffffffff-f178-4301-b396-2bf0ea7641e7.metadata

You can’t remove only those files, you need to remove also associated files to that metadata file. We need to remove the metadata suffix, and put a star (*) instead.

Let’s use sed for this:


 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl# sed -i 's/metadata/\*/' deleted.txt

 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl# head deleted.txt
 0065519b-d15a-445d-b25b-a49d17bf6efd.*
 0392ac06-b993-4750-8f90-23f42458344d.*
 048d51b3-d711-4482-8f42-88d4d3edc7d2.*
 04f96d9f-c2d1-4ab4-ae93-fae2a2e7ed94.*
 06ab0d52-8170-46a3-882b-c4a48a92a270.*

Finally, let’s remove those files:


 root@reMarkable:~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl# for i in $( cat deleted.txt ); do rm -fr $i ; done

And, this freed over 1.5Gb of space.

I hope this post will help people who stumbled upon the same issue.

Post 47/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My JBL is gone ...

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 20:01:44 +0100

Less than two years since I bought a JBL GO3 speaker, and it doesn’t work anymore.

I tried everything…

Checked online videos to reset the speaker, tried different chargers, but nothing worked 😔

It’s still detected by paired devices, it connects, and in less than 2 seconds, disconnects.

Online videos explain how to dismantle the device to change the battery. A battery that’s pretty cheap, it costs ~$20. But, once opened, there is a grand chance that it won’t be waterproof anymore.

A new one costs $39, so I’m not sure if it’s not better to buy a new one, even if I would love to repair it… 🤷

Post 46/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #18 : duf

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:29:10 +0100

I was quite busy the last ten days, and I missed the CLI, and the Vim weekly posts.

Back at it, this week let’s talk about duf, a CLI similar to df, but prettier. It’s a Go binary similar to dust.

Installation

On Debian systems, you can install it with apt.


 % sudo apt install duf

On other systems, you should be able to install it, easily, too.

Usage

Here are some commands:


 # List accessible devices:
 % duf

 # List everything (such as pseudo, duplicate or inaccessible file systems):
 % duf --all

 # Only show specified devices or mount points:
 % duf path/to/directory1 path/to/directory2 ...

 # Sort the output by a specified criteria:
 % duf --sort size|used|avail|usage

And, here is one output:


 % duf
 ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
 │ 4 local devices │
 ├────────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────────────────────────┬──────┬─────────────────────┤
 │ MOUNTED ON │ SIZE │ USED │ AVAIL │ USE% │ TYPE │ FILESYSTEM │
 ├────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────────────────────────┼──────┼─────────────────────┤
 │ / │ xxx.0G │ xxx.xG │ xxx.xG │ [#################...] 85.7% │ ext4 │ /dev/root-vg/root │
 │ /boot │ xxx.0G │ xxx.xG │ xxx.xG │ [###########.........] 59.8% │ ext2 │ /dev/nvme0n1p2 │
 │ /boot/efi │ xxx.0G │ xxx.xG │ xxx.xG │ [....................] 0.7% │ vfat │ /dev/nvme0n1p1 │
 │ /home │ xxx.0G │ xxx.xG │ xxx.xG │ [##################..] 93.0% │ ext4 │ /dev/home-vg/home │
 ╰────────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────┴──────┴─────────────────────╯
 ╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
 │ 5 special devices │
 ├────────────────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬───────────────────────────────┬──────────┬────────────┤
 │ MOUNTED ON │ SIZE │ USED │ AVAIL │ USE% │ TYPE │ FILESYSTEM │
 ├────────────────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼───────────────────────────────┼──────────┼────────────┤
 │ /dev │ xx.xG │ 0B │ xx.xG │ │ devtmpfs │ udev │
 │ /dev/shm │ xx.xG │ xx.xM │ xx.xG │ [....................] 0.1% │ tmpfs │ tmpfs │
 │ /run │ xx.xG │ xx.xM │ xx.xG │ [....................] 0.0% │ tmpfs │ tmpfs │
 │ /run/lock │ xx.xM │ xx.xK │ xx.xM │ [....................] 0.2% │ tmpfs │ tmpfs │
 │ /run/user/1000 │ xx.xG │ xx.xK │ xx.xG │ [....................] 0.0% │ tmpfs │ tmpfs │
 ╰────────────────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴───────────────────────────────┴──────────┴────────────╯

That’s all!

Do you use similar tools? Share them on the Fediverse 😉

Post 45/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Happy Easter

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 12:23:58 +0100

Happy Easter to everyone! Enjoy that day with your family.

Bitcoin Whitepaper

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 10:43:32 +0100

If you have a recent Mac OSX, at least Mojave 10.14.0, you can type this command in you terminal:


 % open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

Not sure why it’s included on OSX though … maybe some joke between Apple developers 😅

Git tricks

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 16:31:11 +0100

Do you use some useful git aliases? A better workflow? Let’s share our configuration!

What's your favourite tool for presentation

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 12:30:20 +0100

What do you use for your presentations? I would love something to create nice looking slides with a Markdown source ideally. If you have any tips…

CLI of the week #17 : grex

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 07:02:46 +0100

This week, let’s see a small tool to generate regex: grex.

Yeah, grex is another Rust tool that provides a library and a CLI. It’s a port of the Javascript one: regexgen.

I always loved regex because it offers you, often, many ways to improve searches, creation of filename, and directories, etc. As an old Perl user, regex was our daily drug.

Installation

Easy if you have already Rust install, just run cargo or :


 ( brew | cargo | choco | huber | port | scoop ) install grex

Usage

Here are some examples from the GitHub page:


 % grex a b c
 ^[a-c]$

 % grex a c d e f
 ^[ac-f]$

 % grex a b x de
 ^(?:de|[abx])$

 % grex abc bc
 ^a?bc$

 % grex a b bc
 ^(?:bc?|a)$

 % grex [a-z]
 ^\[a\-z\]$

 % grex -r b ba baa baaa
 ^b(?:a{1,3})?$

 % grex -r b ba baa baaaa
 ^b(?:a{1,2}|a{4})?$

 % grex y̆ a z
 ^(?:y̆|[az])$
 Note:
 Grapheme y̆ consists of two Unicode symbols:
 U+0079 (Latin Small Letter Y)
 U+0306 (Combining Breve)

 % grex "I ♥ cake" "I ♥ cookies"
 ^I ♥ c(?:ookies|ake)$
 Note:
 Input containing blank space must be
 surrounded by quotation marks.

Of course, there are many other ways to use it. Check examples on GitHub.

Post 44/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

March 2023

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 07:45:00 +0000

March is already gone, and April is here.

Here’s a summary of what I watched, read, and listened to in the previous month.

Book Log

This month, I finished:

Building your Mouseless Development Environment by Mathieu Cneude. A nice book if you are new to the tiling, tmux, vim world. I didn’t learn many things, but discovered 2 or 3 tips.
Modern Vim by Drew Nell. Many things about Neovim, and things I don’t use. There are great tips to learn if, once again, you are new to Vim.

I continued:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 41% read

I haven’t touched those:

Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark - 25% read
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I really need to finish those four books.

Podcasts

I started a new podcast, Spycast, about spooks and Intelligence services. I stopped ZettelCast, which never provide anything interesting about Zettelkasten. I subscribed to Command Line Heroes, but started to listen this month only.

Hard fork

Bonus: Hard Fork Live! Big Tech’s Arch Nemesis + Bot, or Not?
GPT-4 is here + The Group Chat Bank Run
A congressman goes to A.I. school + How to ban TikTok
Everyone pivots to A.I. + Bad news for crypto

Hacking Humans

ChatGPT

Spycast

Black Ops: The life of a Legendary CIA shadow warrior

Command Line Heroes

Menace in the middle - about machine-in-the-middle attacks.
Dawn of Botnets - Digital zombie hordes.
Lurking Logic Bombs.

Linux Lads

Episode 99: Off the Rails
Episode 98: Interview with Gabe Kangas, the creator of Owncast.
Episode 97: Lotsa FOSS.

L’octet vert (French)

Julien Devaureix et son livre le monde change et on n’y comprend rien

Le Code a change (French)

L’ère des propagations
La typographie: Ce qu’on voit, ce qu’on ne voit pas.

Articles / Videos

Thanks to Benjamin, I spent hours watching Neovim videos online. And, still, haven’t really used Neovim yet.

Lockpicking

Always loved that kind of videos:

Death

Living your best life

Email

Secure mail server for low-maintenance self-hosted email

Movies / TV shows

I watched, maybe, way too many TV shows this month:

The Last of Us - I enjoyed the first season.
Your Honour - This second season wasn’t really great, and I understand why there were only two seasons.
Godfather of Harlem - The 3rd season with Malcolm X was great.
Snowfall - I got addicted to this one and watched 4 seasons this month 🤦
The Mandalorian - The 3rd season is still ongoing. I still find episodes too short.

On the movies side, I watched with my kids:

Mummies (2023)
Pinocchio, the Disney movie from 2022.

Sport

Many NBA games! The regular season is almost finished! The Play-offs will be fun!

I watched UFC 284 which had great fights. The UFC 285 which was meh… The UFC 286, we went to watch it in a sports bar, and it was a fun night.

I still play Padel once or twice a week, but got frustrated because I need to improve some skills.

I do boxing every week to be in shape.

Post 43/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

DPReview is shutting down

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 10:34:00 +0100

After 25 years, DPReview is shutting down on April 10th! 😱😱😱

I didn’t know that it was owned by Amazon.

Forums are outdated, and that’s where they excelled. Their YouTube channel will close the same day too. Chris and Jordan will move to the PetaPixel YouTube channel. At least, everything is not lost.

Pause Giant AI experiments

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 06:26:24 +0100

Terminator, we all watched it. We saw Skynet, and how human life sucks in the future. It’s a funny to see that all sci-fi depict our future as a hell on earth, or on some planets. Sure, technology heals cancer and other diseases. But, the extended life goal is to live longer as slaves to a hand of capitalist extremists.

Last year, all the folks have only one word in their mouth: NFTs. Today, they replaced it with AI. They want AI everywhere. I’m waiting the day for an AI to learn how to clean myself in the toilets.

Even the CEO of Open is afraid of that technology.

Really, what could possibly go wrong? We already see a state wanting to use robots to kill.

Don’t forget that Hawkins warned that artificial intelligence could end mankind.

We also tend to forget that two AI talked together with a strange language only they understood.

Let’s stop with this insanity.

Couldn’t people, in those companies, use their brains to ban guns in the States? Stop the war in Yemen? End the poverty, and famine in the world?

There is a petition to stop the AI experiment race that I encourage you to sign, even if we are not sure if it will help. Even Musk and Wozniak signed it, it must be good 😅

Post 42/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Keep knowledge in plain text

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 22:54:26 +0100

Knowledge should always be in plain text. Plain text were available when I was a young kid in the 90s, and will be probably available in the future.

I ❤️ Markdown.

All my posts are written with it, then processed with Hugo, to finally deliver HTML pages of this blog.

Markdown is easy to understand. Even if you never used it before, you can learn it in less than 15 minutes.

Tools like pandoc can convert it to PDF, ps, or other formats.

Any editor can open it, and that will be always the case.

That’s their beauty.

Try to open some old proprietary files today. Headaches in perspective. Companies trying to push their own format should be fought. They should use open formats instead of a format that will eventually die.

Let’s keep our notes in plain text files 🙌

Post 41/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #16 : asciinema

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 10:31:22 +0000

Sometimes you want to share some tricks you do in your terminal. You could use ffmepg for example, but there is a small CLI that I love: asciinema.

What I like about it:

lightweight
easy to use without having to remember specific options

Installation

Use your prefered package manager to install it. On Debian:


 % sudo apt install asciinema

Usage

It’s pretty easy to record your terminal actions using:


 % asciinema rec [filename]
 # the filename is optional but useful if you don't want to have a random name.

If you don’t provide a filename, it will ask if you want to upload to asciinema.org or save it locally. Obviously, you need an account to be able to do that.

If you want to replay it in your terminal:


 % asciinema play filename

The asciinema website has many cast files. You can watch them using:


 % asciinema play https://asciinema.org/a/22124

You can also host a specific cast on your blog, but it requires something like this in your HTML page :

in page’s HTML

And, then you can access it from your terminal:


 % asciinema play http://blog.yoursite.com/post.html

There are also ways to embed them in your blog posts too. Check the documentation.

The issue if you don’t have a blog, or an account on asciinema.org, is that the other person needs asciinema installed on their computer.

To avoid this, and create a small GIF, we have a Rust tool for this: agg.

To install it, you will need to have cargo and rust installed. Then use:


 % cargo install --git https://github.com/asciinema/agg

To convert your cast to a GIF:


 % agg file.cast file.gif
 # agg --help has a couple of options

Finally, you can just send your GIF to everyone.

Post 40/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #26 : Jumps

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 06:37:20 +0000

Vim offers some special motions allowing to jump easily to some positions in your files.

Jumps list

Every time you use a jump motion, the position of the cursor is saved in a list. You can see that list using:


 :ju[mps]
 jump line col file/text
 19 20 43 content/posts/oh-the-last-of-us.md
 18 1 0 content/blogroll.md
 17 15 34 content/blogroll.md
 16 5 0 .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 15 3 53 .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 14 4 53 .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 13 2 0 .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 12 1 34 .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
 11 1 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/index.md
 10 65 2 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/index.md
 9 1 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/notes.md
 8 1 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/advent-of-bloggers.md
 7 66 19 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/index.md
 6 15 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/advent-of-bloggers.md
 5 18 0 ~/.config/nvim/init.lua
 4 1 0 ~/.config/nvim/init.lua
 3 21 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/advent-of-bloggers.md
 2 1 0 ---
 1 20 22 <span class="drop-cap">V</span>im offers some special motions allowing to jump
 >
 Press ENTER or type command to continue

Now, you can jump easily between all of them even if not in the same buffer using:

Ctrl+o : Jumps to prvious cursor positions.
Ctrl+i : Jumps to the next cursor positions.

Pretty handy, isn’t it.

And you can clear the list if you want using :cle[arjumps]. Then, your list should be empty:


 :jumps
 >
 Press ENTER or type command to continue

Changes list

The same way, there is a list that keeps every insert you do in your buffers when you switch to the Insert mode. Again, your cursor position is saved in that list.

You can jump to those position of changes using two commands:

g; - go to [count] older position in change list.
g, - go to [count] newer position in change list.

You can use a count to jump as far back or forward as possible with commands like 50g;.

Methods

You do some OOP languagues programming, you can jump from method to method using:

[m - jump to the start of the method
]m - jump to the end of the method

Conclusion

That’s all for this week. Hope you’ll find those jumps interesting. It can help you move quickly in your buffers 😉.

Post 39/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Oh, the last of us

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:10:15 +0000

I’m not really a fan of zombies. I never watched Walking Dead, or other movies of that kind. But, this year, I watched The Last of Us with Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, Narcos, and many other), and Bella Ramsey, the little kid queen in Game of Thrones.

I was waiting for a new episode this week, but I figured out there is only nine episodes in this first season.

How did I get hooked by that show?

I kept watching because it’s not only about infected people killing whatever they find. Zombies are there, we know it, but they are not omnipresent. The story focuses on how humans behave when they have to survive. Selfishness, betrayal, or other dark aspects of the human being like cannibalism are depicted in that show.

History has proved that during wars, people will do anything to not get beaten, tortured, or killed. I won’t spoil, but even the hero acts like a selfish bastard in the finale of the season.

For all those reasons, I watched, and enjoyed The Last of Us, and I’m waiting for the next season even if I didn’t play the game.

Post 38/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #15: mupdf

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 10:07:16 +0000

This week, we’ll talk about documents viewers. I love Vim, and obviously Zathura, with all its Vim keybindings, could be a good choice. But, by default, it can’t read all types of documents. You’ll need to install other plugins provided.

Instead, I’ll talk about mupdf, a lightweight PDF, XPS, openXPS, CBZ, epub, and FictionBook2 viewer. A lot more than Zathura’s default installation.

You can also annotate, edit and convert documents to other formats. And, you also have some Vim keybindings.

Installation

You can install it with your favorite package manager.


 % sudo apt install mupdf

You can install its tools also:


 % sudo apt install mupdf-tools

This package contains command line tools using the MuPDF library:

mutool - tool for clean, extract, inspect PDF documents and render PDF/XPS/CBZ documents.

Keybindings

Some keybindings have similarities with Vim like:


 123g Go to page 123.

 g, G Go to the first or last page.

 m Mark current page for snap back. Up to 256 pages can be marked.

 t Pop back to the latest mark.

 [0–9]m Save the current page number in the numbered register.

 [0–9]t Go to the page saved in the numbered register.


 Panning:

 h, left, j, k, l, right
 Pan page left, down, up, or right.

 Searching:

 /, ? Search for text forwards or backwards.

 n, N Find the next/previous search result.

 Miscellaneous:

 <, > Increase/decrease EPUB/XHTML font size.

 P Displays the current page number temporarily.

You can also toggle between colors and grayscale rendering, or invert colors.


 c Toggle between color and grayscale rendering.

 C Toggle full-page color tinting.

 I Toggle between normal and inverted color rendering.

 E Toggle ICC color mode.

 e Toggle spot color mode.

 A Set bit of anti-aliasing to use. The default is 8. 0 means no anti-aliasing, 9 means no anti-aliasing,
 centre-of-pixel rule, 10 means no anti-aliasing, any-part-of-a-pixel rule.

You can check the man page for more options.

mutool

The mutool from mupdf-tools package gives you access to tools to manipulate documents. Here are some examples:


 - Convert pages 1-10 into 10 PNGs:
 mutool convert -o image%d.png file.pdf 1-10

 - Convert pages 2, 3 and 5 of a PDF into text in the standard output:
 mutool draw -F txt file.pdf 2,3,5

 - Concatenate two PDFs:
 mutool merge -o output.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf

 - Query information about all content embedded in a PDF:
 mutool info input.pdf

 - Extract all images, fonts and resources embedded in a PDF out into the current directory:
 mutool extract input.pdf

 - Print the outline (table of contents) of a PDF:
 mutool show input.pdf outline

Thanks to tldr for those examples 😅

Conclusion

I love the fact that mupdf supports more documents by default. But, Zathura has options that mupdf doesn’t have, and which could be useful. So, it’s up to you to test both, and chose the one you prefer.

Post 37/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #25 : 7 habits

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 20:55:22 +0000

This week, it will be a “short”, but quite long moment with this post. For any new user, even if it’s old, I recommend the video below with Bram Moolenaar named: 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0.

It fits well if you just started with Vim, and you want to learn tips on how to avoid text editing bad manners.

The thing I don’t like about this video, is the Google logo 🤷

Post 36/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Do The Right Thing

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 08:16:58 +0000

Even if it’s not in the IMDB Top 250, that Spike Lee movie was a movie I wanted to see for a long time. The film is from 1989. It was released 34 years ago!

Spike Lee was, well, young! As well as Samuel Jackson, John Turturro, Martin Lawrence, and many other actors! The only issues with all of them, I can’t tell their names 🤷 Some of them are in some recent TV shows, could you spot them?

The movie takes place in Brooklyn, on the hottest day of the year. Crescendo, the hatred buried in everyone rises to the surface to explode in an act of violence.

One scene reminded me of Monty (Edward Norton), in The 25th Hour, and the famous “Fuck You” monologue. Monty stares into a bathroom mirror, and rants viciously about people in NYC, but not only. Of course, that movie was also directed by Spike Lee. If that movie doesn’t ring a bell, you should watch it.

That scene inspired me one of my first post, about Facebook’s stupid CEO.

Do The Right Thing reminded me of another movie, La Haine, a French movie from 1995.

What those two have in common? Hate, and frustrated cops.

Over 30 years have passed, and we still have cops killing people, and getting free. It happened in the States, in France, and many other countries. Of course, some countries are even worst. Based on World Population Review, here is the top 10:

Philippines — 6,069+ (avg 2016-2021—includes only deaths during anti-drug operations)
Brazil — 5,804 (2019)
Venezuela — 5,287 (2018)
India — 1,731 (2019)
Syria — 1,497 (2019)
El Salvador — 1087 (2017)
United States — 946 (2020)
Nigeria — 841 (2018)
Afghanistan — 606 (2018)
Pakistan — 495 (2017)

And, of course the USA are still there too.

The worst part is that it will probably never change… because most humans don’t learn from their mistake. Just pick Seneca’s books or any other philosopher who lived over 2000 years ago, and notice how we don’t change.

And, unfortunately, we’ll get other movies about hatred cops, or people, obsessed by colour, religion, or whatever support their raging cause. 🤷

Rating

★★★ Good

Post 34/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #14: tldr

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 07:32:24 +0000

Man pages are great! I used a lot, and still use, IRC. When I was young, many times I got the same answer: RTFM! Yeah, that’s the famous READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!
Probably some of my questions were silly, or I haven’t read correctly, or at all, the documentation.

Even now, when someone asks a question that I know the answer is in the man page, I just reply RTFM 😅

But, sometimes people say there aren’t examples. That’s our CLI of the week: tldr.

From the man page: tldr - Simplified and community-driven man pages.

Tldr provides many examples for different commands.

Installation and update

To install it on a Debian based system:


 % sudo apt install tldr

To update it:


 % tldr -u
 Downloading tldr pages to /home/hyde/.local/share/tldr

The installation should be straightforward on each Linux distro.

Usage

This tool will give you many examples on how to use some commands. Let’s see a tcpdump example:


 % tldr tcpdump

 Dump traffic on a network.
 More information: https://www.tcpdump.org.

 - List available network interfaces:
 tcpdump -D

 - Capture the traffic of a specific interface:
 tcpdump -i eth0

 - Capture all TCP traffic showing contents (ASCII) in console:
 tcpdump -A tcp

 - Capture the traffic from or to a host:
 tcpdump host www.example.com

 - Capture the traffic from a specific interface, source, destination and destination port:
 tcpdump -i eth0 src 192.168.1.1 and dst 192.168.1.2 and dst port 80

 - Capture the traffic of a network:
 tcpdump net 192.168.1.0/24

 - Capture all traffic except traffic over port 22 and save to a dump file:
 tcpdump -w dumpfile.pcap port not 22

 - Read from a given dump file:
 tcpdump -r dumpfile.pcap

Here’s another one for ripgrep:


 % tldr rg

 Ripgrep is a recursive line-oriented CLI search tool.
 Aims to be a faster alternative to grep.
 More information: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep.

 - Recursively search the current directory for a regular expression:
 rg regular_expression

 - Search for regular expressions recursively in the current directory, including hidden files and files listed in .gitignore:
 rg --no-ignore --hidden regular_expression

 - Search for a regular expression only in a subset of directories:
 rg regular_expression set_of_subdirs

 - Search for a regular expression in files matching a glob (e.g. README.*):
 rg regular_expression --glob glob

 - Search for filenames that match a regular expression:
 rg --files | rg regular_expression

 - Only list matched files (useful when piping to other commands):
 rg --files-with-matches regular_expression

 - Show lines that do not match the given regular expression:
 rg --invert-match regular_expression

 - Search a literal string pattern:
 rg --fixed-strings -- string

Pretty nice, isn’t it. You can leave chatGPT now 😅

Post 33/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The ducks

Fri, 10 Mar 2023 11:20:41 +0000

Do you remember James Veitch, the guy who spent some time replying to spammers?

He’s also a terrible roommate!

Vim Weekly Tips #24

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 17:02:54 +0000

This week, some little tips. Recently, I discovered the Primeagen channel where he talks about Rust, Vim, Typescript and other software engineering things.

He mentioned a couple of commands that he discovered, even being a long time Vim user. Let’s see those commands.

Imagine you have a line with this text:


 [a specific link](some-link)

If you put the cursor at the beginning of the line, and type in Normal mode:

vi(

That will highlight the words betweens (). Then, you can use the c to change the text, or d to delete it.

It works the same way with:


 vi[ # Highlight text between []
 vi{ # Highlight text between {}
 vi( # Highlight text between ()
 vi' # Highlight text between ''
 vi" # Highlight text between ""

Pretty nice. But, you can do actually the same without highlighting the text:


 di[ # delete text between []
 di{ # delete text between {}
 di( # delete text between ()
 di' # delete text between ''
 di" # delete text between ""
 S # delete the line and go into insert mode

and to change the text:


 ci[ # change text between []
 ci{ # change text between {}
 ci( # change text between ()
 ci' # change text between ''
 ci" # change text between ""
 cc # change the complete line

That’s all for this week. Hope you learnt something.

Post 32/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Kids and sicknesses

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:23:45 +0000

Last week, I got a beautiful gift from my kid: a conjunctivitis.

Every morning was a glued eyes’ nightmare. First, the left eye. When I thought I was done with it, the second one got infected. After a couple of days, it went away.

Yesterday, I woke up with a swollen throat. The kind that hurts every time you swallow. A disgusting feeling.

Through the day, big headaches, and still that throat killing me. In lunchtime, we got a call. My kid’s school. She threw up many times, and we needed to pick up her. She also had an inflammed throat, and stomach aches. We thought it was just a flu, maybe. And, decided to see a doctor the next morning.

Last night, I woke up around 2AM. I couldn’t breathe correctly. Opened windows didn’t help. I decided to go to the hospital. Four hours on a chair waiting for a call that never came. At 7am, tired and bored, I left.

Finally, we got a doctor to come to our place.
Results of the race: the scarlet fever hit us.
Ten days of antibiotics to get back on our feet.

To me, that type of virus rhymes with the middle age. But, what do I know?

What I do know is that my throat and nose are obstructed. I can’t take deep breaths. And, it’s unbearable.

Another feeling, probably exacerbated by the pandemic, was present. The fear. Not for my health, something else. The image of my kids. The worry that I hadn’t provided enough for them.

Being a parent really change your life, and your priorities.

Post 31/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #13 : libby

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 14:06:14 +0000

This week, the post will be short. It’s about a small CLI that will get books from Library Genesis. If you prefer, you can still go check Anna’s archive.

Disclaimer: It could be illegal to download books in your country 😅

Installation

It’s pretty straight forward:


 % git clone https://github.com/carterprince/libby
 % sudo cp libby/libby /usr/bin/

Usage

Just type:


 % libby title

And you’ll get:

Pretty easy to use. That’s it for this week!

Post 30/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Plextor

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 13:55:23 +0000

Who remembers Plextor ?

Vim Weekly Tips #23 : Snippets

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 23:33:25 +0000

This week, let’s see how you could do boring things faster in Vim. Here comes a snippet plugin: Ultisnips!

What is a snippet?

Based on Wikipedia definition, it’s a feature that allows the user to avoid repetitive typing in the course of routine edit operations.

Basically, it’s just a text triggered by a keybinding that will expand into a larger portion of text that you won’t have to type entirely.

Even if it’s doable with vimscript, Ultisnips will allow you to write better snippets.

Installation

I use Plug for my Vim plugins:


 Plug 'SirVer/ultisnips'

You can check the GitHub page for other type of installation.

Configuration

Add those lines to your ~/.vimrc:


 " UltiSnips
 let g:UltiSnipsSnippetDirectories=["~/.vim/UltiSnips"]
 let g:UltiSnipsExpandTrigger = "<tab>"
 let g:UltiSnipsJumpForwardTrigger = "<c-j>"
 let g:UltiSnipsJumpBackwardTrigger = "<c-k>"
 let g:UltiSnipsListSnippets="<c-l>"

That defines a couple of things:

a directory where you’ll save your snippets
a trigger, here the <tab> key, that will insert the text
a way to move within the snippet
a keybinding to list the snippets for the current file type

The directory can have multiple files:


 - all.snippets # for all kind of files 
 - html.snippets # html snippets 
 - markdown.snippetsa # snippets for your md files
 - vimwiki.snippets # Vimwiki snippets
 - sh.snippets # shell snippets
 - snippets.snippets # even nippets for your snippets

Basically, the filename should be filetype.snippets.

Create and use your snippet

A snippet is really easy to create, tho format is:


 snippet <triggerWord> "Description"
 The code/ text you want to insert
 endsnippet

Let’s see some examples.

Mardown

Here are some snippets for my Mardown files:


 snippet table
 | ${1:title} | ${2:title} | ${3:title} |
 | ----------- | ------------ | ------------ |
 | $4 | $5 | $6 |
 endsnippet

When you type table, followed by <tab> it will display the above table in your file.

Another example for my Zettelkasten notes:


 snippet zek
 ---
 #### `date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S `
 Source:$1
 Author:$2
 Related to:$3
 Tags:
 - $4
 - $4
 - $4
 ---

 $5
 endsnippet

Once again, I’ll type zek and hit <tab>, and it will insert the text between snippet and endsnippet.

Shell

Here is one for your shell:


 snippet usage
 usage(){
 echo "Usage : $( basename \$0 ) $1"
 echo
 echo "$2"
 echo
 exit
 }
 endsnippet

You probably noticed the $1, $2, etc. That is called a placeholder. When your snippet is expanded, you can use Ctrl+j or Ctrl+k to move between those positions. You could note them also {$1:title}. The text title wil be highlighted, and your cursor will be directly on that word in Insert mode. Using Ctrl+j / Ctrl+k will allow you to move quickly to predefined positions needed to be filled.

Pretty neat.

Listing all your snippets

We saw in the config above that we have a <Ctrl-l> keybinding. In Insert mode, when you hit that combination of keys, you’ll get:


 [...] # removed lines for clarity
 94: (passive) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:167)
 95: (phoenix-readme) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:278)
 96: (pullquote) (/home/hyde/.vim/plugged/vim-snippets/snippets/markdown.snippets:145)
 97: (quote) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:149)
 98: (strong) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:133)
 99: (table) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:171)
 100: (tags) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:163)
 101: (tb) (/home/hyde/.vim/plugged/vim-snippets/snippets/markdown.snippets:136)
 103: (time) (/home/hyde/.vim/plugged/vim-snippets/snippets/_.snippets:12)
 105: (webmention) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:205)
 106: (wiki) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:217)
 107: (yewtube) (/home/hyde/.vim/plugged/vim-snippets/snippets/markdown.snippets:133)
 108: (zek) (/home/hyde/.vim/UltiSnips/markdown.snippets:57)
 Type number and <Enter> or click with the mouse (q or empty cancels):

That display all the snippets for the current file type. It’s nice, but we could probably do better.

FzF

Of course! Fzf! UltiSnips is well integrated with Fzf, and provides a :Snippets:

I use also a keybinding in my ~/vimrc to avoid typing :Snippets:


 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>U :Snippets<CR>

I create my own snippets for many things, but there is already a great collection available online.

Vim-snippets

This repository has snippets for many languages:

python
rust
shell
c
and many other things.

I personally don’t use them, but I got inspiration to create mines.

That’s all for this week. If you use snippets, share them in a Fediverse comment below 😉.

Post 29/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

February 2023

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 07:46:31 +0000

What I’ve listened to, watched, read, and did in February.

Podcasts

I added two new podcasts this month:

Unsupervised learning - Security, Tech, and Society in 10 min
Smashing security - Cybercrime, hacking, etc.

But, I haven’t started to listen to them yet 😅.

Hard fork

Kevin Killed Sydney + Reddit’s CEO defends Section 230
The Bing who loved me + Elon rewrites the Algorithm
Bing’s revenge + Google’s AI Faceplant
A trip to TikTok + ChatGPT’s Origin Story + Kevin Systrom’s Comeback

ZettelCast

Tools, tips, and tricks

Linux Lads

Episode 96: An Outsider’s perspective.

Episode 95: The future is …bright? Many questions about how tech companies are creating useless things that we don’t fucking need.

Espions, une histoire vraie

Matei Pavel Haiducu: agent roumain chargé de tuer en France l’écrivain dissident Virgile Tanase
Jean Clémentin, journaliste du “Canard Enchainé”, agent du STB tchécoslovaque
Anthony Blunt, historien d’art anglais, agent du KGB
Ashraf Marwan, égyptien, agent double pour Israël

Book Log

This month, I finished:

Zen Doodle Oodles of Doodles by Tonia Jenny.
Doodle Art Handbook The Non-Artists Guide in Creative Drawing by Lana Karr and Olga Dee
The data detective - ten easy rules to make sense of statistics by Tim Harford.

I continued:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 21% read

I started:

Command line Rust: A project-based primer for writing Rust CLIs by Ken Youens-Clark

I haven’t touched those:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

Zettelkasten / PKM

AI

Facebook has decided that paid user validation is also the way to go. Again, FB prooves that they are managed by idiots.

Fediverse

Next time you need to explain Mastodon to someone, use this video.
Flipboard believes the Fediverse is the future for social networks.
The Fediverse is already dead.
The Netherlands will provide Fediverse accounts for all Dutch university students. 👏

Hardware

Man sells $38 part to enable AirPods Pro case self-repairs, USB-C connectivity

Projects

A curated list of falsehoods programmers believe in.
Pico.css a css framework that looks great.
Rust learning many links to learn Rust.

Movies / TV Shows

Movies

I watched Memento, and The Big Lebowski this month. I crossed them out of my IMDB list. A bit disappointed by The Big Lebowski, though, even if I enjoyed some scenes.

TV Shows

I watched many shows this month 🤦:

Barry, season 3.
The Last of Us, the first season.
Your Honour, season 1 & 2.
Godfather of Harlem, Season 3.

Sport

Mainly, the NBA. I still somehow have access even without paying. 🤷 Love to watch Jokic play.

Watched the fight between the Youtuber, Jake Paul, and Tommy Fury, the little brother of Tyson Fury, the world Champion. It was boring… Furry not as good as his brother, obviously. And, Paul, even if training with new coaches, not as good as many boxers from Cuba, Mexico or other countries around the world.

On my side, I played some padel, and did some boxing when my back allowed me to do it.

Post 28/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My static site worflow

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 22:13:49 +0000

Seeing Kev’s latest post, and Joel’s one, I thought it could be helpful to share mine based on Hugo.

I don’t have the same kind of issues, but I share some similarities with their needs, described below:

Easily insert links to my other posts
Drag and drop images into posts
Preview my posts without running a local server
Publish with a single command/button click.

Let’s see my workflow.

Aliases, functions, and Vim

I write all my posts in Vim. So, I have many keybindings, aliases, and tools I use. For example, I have a small function, article, that takes the title of the post as an argument, and change my position at the root of my blog repository.

When I start a post, I use my fmatter snippet that creates this:


 ---
 title:
 date: 2023-02-27T23:08:02+00:00
 draft:
 replyto: https://lazybear.io/posts/my-static-site-worflow/
 replytoname :

 comments:
 host: lazybear.social
 username: hyde
 id:
 description:

 tags:
 -
 -
 -
 ---

 <span class="days"> _Post d /100 - Round 4 of the [100DaysToOffload](https://100DaysToOffload.com) challenge !_ </span>

And, I have that replyto: field which is useful to insert links.

Easily insert links to my other posts

As I said, I use Vim with a couple of plugins. One of them is fzf. It helps find things quickly, in this case links to previous posts. In my configuration, I use:


 nnoremap <silent> <C-g> :Rg<CR>

This will trigger a window like this one.

There I can start typing a keyword, like lego in this example, and I have a preview on the right side with the url I’m looking for. But, how to copy it?

Kitty is my terminal, and I have this keybinding in my kitty.conf:


 map ctrl+shift+p>c kitten hints --type url --program @

Hitting Ctrl+shift+p and c will highlight all the urls with a number/letter, once I hit the one I want, kitty copies it to the clipboard (--program @). Then I can paste it in my post.

Drag and drop images into posts

Using snippets again, I have one that will insert, and format image automatically. To convert images, I use mogrify in a small function with those options:


 # $1 is the size of the image I want and $2 the filename
 mogrify -resize $1 -quality 65 -strip $2

Since I don’t use often image, I never automated this thing too much.

Preview my posts without running a local server

I use tmux a lot, and I have always a hugo -D serve command running in one of the session. It doesn’t consume much memory, that’s why it’s almost always up, and it doesn’t really bother me.

Publish with a single command/button click.

I use toot, the CLI, to publish my posts/notes. If interested, you can check my post about it.

What else?

I do a have function that check the syntaxes, and other little mistakes that I could have missed.

It uses pylanguagetool, which is a python library and CLI for the LanguageTool JSON API.

Here’s the function I use on my post:


 grammar () {
 sed -n '/```/,/```/!p' $1 | pandoc -f markdown -t plain - | pylanguagetool -r -d 'DASH_RULE,WHITESPACE_RULE,EXTREME_ADJECTIVES,MORFOLOGIK_RULE_EN_US,NO_SPACE_CLOSING_QUOTE,UNIT_SPACE'
 }

I can’t really remember if the text has to be in plaintext, that’s why I use pandoc and that sed if I recall correctly. The -d removes rules that annoyed me.

Automation

Every time a repeated task occurs, I try to automate it. That goes for everything, work or personal stuff. And, nothing beats CLI tools for that purpose.

Post 27/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Lego, and the Dude

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 22:17:47 +0000

Yesterday, I was supposed to enjoy my afternoon waching the Dude in “The Big Lebowski”.

Instead, I did some Lego with my kids, and we enjoyed that family moment creating some animals.

Lego 2

Lego 3

Lego 4

Lego 5

Lego 6

Lego

I managed to watch the movie anyway last night, and it was … alright.
Jeff Bridges, and John Goodman are excellent. Goodman as a ‘Nam veteran is hilarious. Some scenes made me laugh, but others could be avoided, like the one with the “Germans”, and their big scissors. To be honest, I expected more from it because I heard so many times how good it was. Overall, I enjoyed the Dude, but it’s not a movie I will watch many times.

Now, I can cross out the 130th movie from the IMDB top 250. About that list, I added a movies page on the blog that I will update until I complete it.

Another updated page is the blogroll-RSS page. New blogs have been added, and one got removed; Dilbert!

I can’t stand racism comments, or racism at all! It doesn’t have its place in my feeds anymore.

And, F*ck you Scott Adams!

Post 26/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Movies

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 21:55:10 +0000

I wrote a couple of times about IMDB Top 250 movies list, and this page will list all the movies I’ve watched over the time.

I may add some other list like TMDB in the future.

IMDB Top 250

So far, I’ve seen 143 movies.

~~The Shawshank Redemption (1994)~~
~~The Godfather (1972)~~
~~The Dark Knight (2008)~~
~~The Godfather Part II (1974)~~
~~12 Angry Men (1957)~~
~~Schindler’s List (1993)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)~~
~~Pulp Fiction (1994)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)~~
~~The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)~~
~~Forrest Gump (1994)~~
~~Fight Club (1999)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)~~
~~Inception (2010)~~
~~Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)~~
~~The Matrix (1999)~~
~~Goodfellas (1990)~~
~~One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)~~
~~Se7en (1995)~~
~~Seven Samurai (1954)~~
~~It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)~~
~~The Silence of the Lambs (1991)~~
~~City of God (2002)~~
~~Saving Private Ryan (1998)~~
~~Interstellar (2014)~~
~~Life Is Beautiful (1997)~~
~~The Green Mile (1999)~~
~~Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)~~
~~Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)~~
~~Back to the Future (1985)~~
~~Spirited Away (2001)~~
~~The Pianist (2002)~~
~~Psycho (1960)~~
~~Parasite (2019)~~
~~Léon: The Professional (1994)~~
~~The Lion King (1994)~~
~~Gladiator (2000)~~
~~American History X (1998)~~
~~The Departed (2006)~~
~~The Usual Suspects (1995)~~
~~The Prestige (2006)~~
~~Whiplash (2014)~~
~~Casablanca (1942)~~
~~Grave of the Fireflies (1988)~~
Harakiri (1962)
~~The Intouchables (2011)~~
Modern Times (1936)
~~Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)~~
~~Rear Window (1954)~~
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
~~Alien (1979)~~
~~City Lights (1931)~~
~~Apocalypse Now (1979)~~
~~Memento (2000)~~
~~Django Unchained (2012)~~
~~Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)~~
~~WALL·E (2008)~~
~~The Lives of Others (2006)~~
~~Sunset Blvd. (1950)~~
Paths of Glory (1957)
~~The Shining (1980)~~
~~The Great Dictator (1940)~~
~~Avengers: Infinity War (2018)~~
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
~~Aliens (1986)~~
~~Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)~~
~~American Beauty (1999)~~
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
~~The Dark Knight Rises (2012)~~
~~Oldboy (2003)~~
~~Inglourious Basterds (2009)~~
Amadeus (1984)
~~Coco (2017)~~
~~Toy Story (1995)~~
~~Joker (2019)~~
~~Braveheart (1995)~~
The Boat (1981)
~~Avengers: Endgame (2019)~~
~~Princess Mononoke (1997)~~
~~Once Upon a Time in America (1984)~~
~~Good Will Hunting (1997)~~
~~Your Name. (2016)~~
3 Idiots (2009)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
~~Requiem for a Dream (2000)~~
~~Toy Story 3 (2010)~~
High and Low (1963)
Capernaum (2018)
~~Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)~~
~~Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)~~
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
~~Reservoir Dogs (1992)~~
Come and See (1985)
~~The Hunt (2012)~~
Citizen Kane (1941)
M (1931)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
North by Northwest (1959)
Vertigo (1958)
Amélie (2001)
Ikiru (1952)
The Apartment (1960)
~~A Clockwork Orange (1971)~~
~~Top Gun: Maverick (2022)~~
Double Indemnity (1944)
~~Full Metal Jacket (1987)~~
~~Scarface (1983)~~
Hamilton (2020)
~~Incendies (2010)~~
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
~~Heat (1995)~~
The Sting (1973)
~~Up (2009)~~
A Separation (2011)
~~Taxi Driver (1976)~~
Metropolis (1927)
~~L.A. Confidential (1997)~~
~~Die Hard (1988)~~
~~Snatch (2000)~~
~~Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)~~
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Like Stars on Earth (2007)
1917 (2019)
Downfall (2004)
Dangal (2016)
~~For a Few Dollars More (1965)~~
~~Batman Begins (2005)~~
The Kid (1921)
~~Some Like It Hot (1959)~~
The Father (2020)
All About Eve (1950)
Green Book (2018)
~~The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)~~
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
~~Casino (1995)~~
Ran (1985)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
~~The Truman Show (1998)~~
~~There Will Be Blood (2007)~~
~~Unforgiven (1992)~~
~~The Sixth Sense (1999)~~
~~Shutter Island (2010)~~
~~A Beautiful Mind (2001)~~
~~Jurassic Park (1993)~~
Yojimbo (1961)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Great Escape (1963)
~~Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)~~
No Country for Old Men (2007)
~~Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)~~
Rashomon (1950)
The Thing (1982)
~~Finding Nemo (2003)~~
The Elephant Man (1980)
Chinatown (1974)
Raging Bull (1980)
~~V for Vendetta (2005)~~
Gone with the Wind (1939)
~~Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)~~
~~Inside Out (2015)~~
Dial M for Murder (1954)
The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
~~Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)~~
~~Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)~~
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
~~Trainspotting (1996)~~
Prisoners (2013)
Warrior (2011)
~~Fargo (1996)~~
~~Gran Torino (2008)~~
~~My Neighbor Totoro (1988)~~
~~Catch Me If You Can (2002)~~
~~Million Dollar Baby (2004)~~
Children of Heaven (1997)
Blade Runner (1982)
~~The Gold Rush (1925)~~
Before Sunrise (1995)
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Klaus (2019)
~~Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)~~
On the Waterfront (1954)
~~Ben-Hur (1959)~~
~~Gone Girl (2014)~~
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
The General (1926)
The Third Man (1949)
~~In the Name of the Father (1993)~~
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
The Wages of Fear (1953)
~~Memories of Murder (2003)~~
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Wild Tales (2014)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
~~Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)~~
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Mary and Max (2009)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Room (2015)
~~Monsters, Inc. (2001)~~
~~Jaws (1975)~~
~~The Big Lebowski (1998)~~
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Tokyo Story (1953)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
~~Hotel Rwanda (2004)~~
~~Ford v Ferrari (2019)~~
~~Rocky (1976)~~
~~Platoon (1986)~~
~~Ratatouille (2007)~~
Spotlight (2015)
~~The Terminator (1984)~~
~~Logan (2017)~~
Stand by Me (1986)
~~Rush (2013)~~
Network (1976)
~~Into the Wild (2007)~~
Before Sunset (2004)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Pather Panchali (1955)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
~~The Exorcist (1973)~~
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
~~The Incredibles (2004)~~
~~La haine (1995)~~
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
~~Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)~~
Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
My Father and My Son (2005)
Jai Bhim (2021)
Amores Perros (2000)
Rebecca (1940)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Handmaiden (2016)
The 400 Blows (1959)
The Sound of Music (1965)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Persona (1966)
Life of Brian (1979)
The Iron Giant (1999)
The Help (2011)
Dersu Uzala (1975)
~~Aladdin (1992)~~
Gandhi (1982)
~~Dances with Wolves (1990)~~

Updated: 15-02-2024

Corrupted SD-CARD

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 19:30:15 +0000

A long week-end, many pictures, and now a corrupted sd-card 🤦

Let’s see if photorec, ddrescue & co will help me to recover them…

CLI of the week #12 : amass

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 11:26:50 +0000

This week, let’s see an OSINT tool for reconnaissance.

Installation

There are many guides on how to install it on their GitHub page.

If you have golang installed, you can use:


 % go install -v github.com/OWASP/Amass/v3/...@master

The tool should be available in your $GOPATH/bin.

Usage

There are many usages, and options available with the tool.

You could use DNS information to collect information about networks:


 % amass enum -d linux.com
 linux.com
 japan.linux.com
 www.linux.com
 redirect.linux.com
 jp.linux.com

 OWASP Amass v3.19.1 https://github.com/OWASP/Amass
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 5 names discovered - dns: 1, api: 4
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ASN: 54113 - FASTLY - Fastly
 23.185.0.0/24 2 Subdomain Name(s)
 2620:12a:8000::/44 4 Subdomain Name(s)
 ASN: 3701 - NERONET - Network for Education and Research in Oregon (NERO)
 140.211.0.0/20 1 Subdomain Name(s)
 2605:bc80::/32 2 Subdomain Name(s)

 The enumeration has finished
 Discoveries are being migrated into the local database

The enum option has -d for subdomains, -brute for brute-forcing additional subdomains, and -src to check the techniques used.

The intel option helps you find organizations with a specific word in their name. Let’s try with “privacy”:


 % amass intel -org privacy
 ASN: 28715 - BRASSHORNCOMMS Brass Horn Communications is a privacy centric ISP in the UK
 185.104.120.0/23
 2a06:3000::/36
 2a06:3000:2000::/35
 185.104.120.0/24
 185.104.121.0/24

You could base your search on a CIDR range, to find all the domains on that range:


 % amass intel -ip -cidr 54.68.182.0/24
 us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com 54.68.182.6

There are many other options available, and I encourage you to read the documentation.

Post 25/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #22 : Registers part 2

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:47:58 +0000

In the previous post, we covered a couple of registers. This week, we will see the system clipboards, the selection register, and some other things that can be done with them.

All the registers seen last week were internal to Vim, without any interaction with external programs. Copying/pasting outside Vim, we must use system clipboards.

System clipboards: “+

If we want to paste a text copied/cut in other programs like your browser for example, we can use:


 # in Normal mode
 "+p

 # or in Insert mode
 <Ctrl+r>+ # It's Control-R plus the + sign

If we want to copy/cut a text from Vim to an external program, we can use:


 "+yy # to copy the entire line
 "+dd # to cut the entire line

Everything done with "+ will be captured in the system clipboard.

You need to be sure Vim has been compiled with the system clipboard register. To check, use:


 % vim --version
 VIM - Vi IMproved 9.0 (2022 Jun 28, compiled Oct 30 2022 20:59:44)
 Included patches: 1-813
 Modified by team+vim@tracker.debian.org
 Compiled by team+vim@tracker.debian.org
 Huge version with GTK3 GUI. Features included (+) or not (-):
 +acl +file_in_path +mouse_urxvt -tag_any_white
 +arabic +find_in_path +mouse_xterm +tcl
 +autocmd +float +multi_byte +termguicolors
 +autochdir +folding +multi_lang +terminal
 -autoservername -footer -mzscheme +terminfo
 +balloon_eval +fork() +netbeans_intg +termresponse
 +balloon_eval_term +gettext +num64 +textobjects
 +browse -hangul_input +packages +textprop
 ++builtin_terms +iconv +path_extra +timers
 +byte_offset +insert_expand +perl +title
 +channel +ipv6 +persistent_undo +toolbar
 +cindent +job +popupwin +user_commands
 +clientserver +jumplist +postscript +vartabs
 +clipboard +keymap +printer +vertsplit
 +cmdline_compl +lambda +profile +vim9script
 +cmdline_hist +langmap -python +viminfo
 +cmdline_info +libcall +python3 +virtualedit
 +comments +linebreak +quickfix +visual
 +conceal +lispindent +reltime +visualextra
 +cryptv +listcmds +rightleft +vreplace
 +cscope +localmap +ruby +wildignore
 +cursorbind +lua +scrollbind +wildmenu
 +cursorshape +menu +signs +windows
 +dialog_con_gui +mksession +smartindent +writebackup
 +diff +modify_fname +sodium +X11
 +digraphs +mouse +sound -xfontset
 +dnd +mouseshape +spell +xim
 -ebcdic +mouse_dec +startuptime -xpm
 +emacs_tags +mouse_gpm +statusline +xsmp_interact
 +eval -mouse_jsbterm -sun_workshop +xterm_clipboard
 +ex_extra +mouse_netterm +syntax -xterm_save
 +extra_search +mouse_sgr +tag_binary
 -farsi -mouse_sysmouse -tag_old_static

You should have +xterm_clipboard listed like above. If it’s a minus in front of -xterm_clipboard then you need to install another version.

Selection register: “*

On Linux, we have the clipboard called the primary. It’s the one when you select a text, and use the middle button of your mouse to paste it somewhere. Vim’s register to this case is "*.

Of course, Microsoft and Apple’s systems don’t have that, so you can use both interchangeably.

Expression register: “=

This register is a bit special. When you type "=, you’ll go to the Command-line mode. Vim will show you an = prompt. You can then type a Vimscript expression and press Enter to execute it. Any string returned will be saved in the register.

Imagine you are in Insert mode, and you type Ctrl+r =, a = prompt will appear. Then you can type 10+10 <CR>, and it will print 20.

You could use it also to print the output of an external command using the same keys, Ctrl+r =, then system('ls $HOME') for example to print all the files in your $HOME directory.

Read only registers

Here is a list of the read-only registers Vim offers:


 ". # Last insert text.
 ": # Last Ex command. 
 "% # Name of the current file
 "# # Name of the alternate file, or the last edited file
 "/ # Last text searched with *, %, / or ?

The ". is great if you need to write the same text twice without yanking/pasting.

I love the "; register, especially when I substitute some text using something like :s/fat/thin/. Then, I can go to another line, hit @:, and it does it again.

Other nice tip is to "/ to do a quick replacement. Imagine you search the word apocalypse in your text, you’ll type /apocalypse. Now, say you want to replace all apocalypse words in your text with heaven. You can type:


 :%s/Ctrl-r/heaven/g
 # Ctrl+r will put the last search term in your command 😉

That’s it for this week. I hope you’ll get creative with all these features. Don’t hesitate to share some tips on the Fediverse.

Post 24/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #11 : hledger

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 13:38:09 +0000

Being sick last weekend, I didn’t post the CLI of the week.

That coincided with a toot I saw about Ellane who discovered plain text accounting.

This week, the CLI is: hledger.

I posted a question if I should use ledger or hledger, and got few answers on the Fediverse. After checking all of them, and the documentation, hledger was better to me.

I love the fact that’s a plain text format. It’s easy to have everything in a Git repository, and it’s basically just a file with double-entry transactions.

Installation

hledger is easy to install, and any package manager should do its job.

On Debian, just do:


 % apt install hledger

There are other packages that may interest you:


 % apt search hledger
 hledger-interest/unstable 1.6.3-2 amd64
 interest computing for (h)ledger

 hledger-ui/unstable 1.25-1 amd64
 curses-style user interface for the hledger accounting tool

 hledger-web/unstable,now 1.25-1 amd64 [installed]
 web interface for the hledger accounting tool

Usage

The first step is to create a journal:


 % mkdir finances; cd $_
 % touch 2023.journal

You can create multiple files, and select the one you want with the -f file.journal or use a LEDGER_FILE environment variable you can add to your shell’s dotfiles.

After this, just add these lines at the top of your journal:


 ; Declare top level accounts, setting their types and display order;
 ; Replace these account names with yours; it helps commands like bs and is detect them.
 account assets ; type:A, money you own
 account liabilities ; type:L, money you owe to others
 account equity ; type:E, equal to A - L (not used much in personal accounting)
 account revenues ; type:R, revenue/income categories
 account expenses ; type:X, expense categories

 ; Declare commodities/currencies and their decimal mark, digit grouping,
 ; number of decimal places..
 commodity $1000.00
 commodity 1.000,00 EUR

Select the ones that apply to you. Here are mines:


 account Assets ; type:A, money you own
 account Liabilities ; type:L, money you owe to others
 account Revenues ; type:R, revenue/income categories
 account Expenses ; type:X, expense categories

 commodity 1.000,00 EUR

Then, we can start adding our first entry:


 % hledger add
 Adding transactions to journal file /home/hyde/finances/2023.journal
 Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
 Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
 An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
 An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
 If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
 To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
 To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
 Date [2023-02-17]:
 Description: Groceries
 Using this similar transaction for defaults:
 2023-02-17 Bakery
 Expenses:Food:Groceries 10,00
 Assets -10,00

 Account 1 [Expenses:Food:Groceries]:
 Amount 1 [10]: 5
 Account 2 [Assets]:
 Amount 2 [-5]:
 Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction):
 2023-02-17 Groceries
 Expenses:Food:Groceries 5
 Assets -5

 Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:

That’s all. Basically, the double-entry system is to add to expenses and remove from your assets.

You could also use your text editor, Vim, of course, to add lines in the file.

You generate reports in the terminal, or the output can be an HTML file:


 % hledger is -Y -3 -S -o is.html

There are many things doable with hledger, and I recommend you to read the Quick Start Guide, and its documentation.

Post 23/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The Fediverse is not just Mastodon

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:59:16 +0000

Newcomers probably don’t know that Mastodon is just a small part of the Fediverse.

And, the picture below, made by Axbom, is a perfect showcase of the different Fediverse’s branches, all communicating thanks to the ActivityPub protocol.

Post 22/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Who remember Ubuntu cds?

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 09:29:57 +0000

Who remember CDs that Canonical used to ship for free when they start Ubuntu? I did order them and gave them away to friends to try out. Did you?

Vim Weekly Tips #21 : Registers

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 15:51:42 +0000

The clipboard usually rhymes with cut, copy, and paste. With Vim, we are not restricted to those three actions, and we have at our fingertips more power thanks to its registers.

They offer us the possibility to store text in several ways.

We all know, maybe, that dd cuts the line, and P or p pastes it. What maybe you don’t know, it’s that the dd command copies the line in an unnamed register. The same thing happens when we use yy, the line is put in the unnamed register too, and you will use p or P to copy it.

So far, nothing really difficult. But, what happens with this example:

 
 Proprietary sucks
 Microsoft rocks

Imagine we want to copy the sucks word to replace the rocks word. We could do:

place the cursor on sucks
type yiw to copy the word
2w to move to the desired word
diw to delete the word
P to copy the word

And, then you realized you just copied the word you cut, rocks, with the diw command. Let’s see how Vim’s registers can help us to make it right..

Vim’s registers

Vim offers many registers:

named
unnamed
numbered
yank
black hole
system clipboard
selection
expression

In this post we’ll focus on the first five, the last three will be in a second post about registers.

Named registers : [a-z]

Vim offers a register for each letter of the alphabet, so 26 of them to copy, paste, and cut your text.

With those registers, it’s easy to fix the “issue” we had.

We could copy the word in a register using "ayiw which copies the word into the register a.

Then, if needed, we paste the content of that register with "ap.

We can also use the uppercase letters to append texts to existing registers.

Imagine you want to grep all the ## titles in a Markdown document, and add it to the b register, you could do:


 :g/^## /yank B
 # grep all lines starting with ## and yank them to register b

We can check the register with:


 :reg b
 Type Name Content
 l "b ## Unnamed register^J## Vim's registers^J
 Press ENTER or type command to continue

Every newline is showed with the symbol ^J. You can then paste those lines with:


 "bp
 ## Unnamed register
 ## Vim's registers

This can be useful when you want to save selected texts to treat them later, or to create a new file.

The unnamed register : ""

The default unnamed register has its own prefix “”. We could use it explicitely, but since it’s the default behaviour, we don’t have to do it.

Vim stores deleted or copied text in this register.

The numbered register : [0-9]

There are also 0 to 9 named registers, or should we say numbered ones. Those registers contain texts from yank and delete command.

Two things to know:

the “0 register contains the text from the most recent yank command.
the “1 register contains the text deleted by the most recent delete or change command.

The yank register : “0

When you use the y motion command, the text is copied in the unnamed register, but also in the yank register "0 or also named the numbered register.

The text will be present in the register until you yank something else.

In our example above, the last command should have been: "0P

The black hole register : “_

The black hole is a place from where the text never comes back.

In our example, if we used "_diw, the text would be gone without altering the previous unnamed register.

List registers

As we have seen above, we can verify registers using:


 :reg {registerName} # print a specific register
 :registers # print them all

That’s all! Next week, we’ll see the missing registers.

Post 21/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Memento

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 23:54:08 +0000

Just finished to watch Memento, the Nolan brothers movie from 2000 with Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano.

Now, I remember why I felt asleep, twice, trying to watch it when I was younger. It’s hard to follow, and we never know what the truth is. Does Teddy say the truth at the end of the movie? Was that all in Leonard’s head? Should we trust Teddy since during all the movie we see a “don’t believe his lies” picture?

That movie reminds me of Mulholland Drive, a 2001 David Lynch movie, that includes many questionable things, characters that you see only once, etc. I watched it at the movies, and I still see people’s puzzling faces when the lights came back on.

I felt exactly the same feeling tonight.

That’s the kind of movies that could lead you down a rabbit hole trying to find an answer on the web. But, nope, it won’t. I’m going to sleep, I won’t let the Nolan brothers screw up my night.

Good night, and good luck.

Post 20/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #20 : vimdiff

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 10:19:51 +0000

This week, let’s see a thing I often use: vimdiff. It’s used to see the difference between two files, and I preferred it to the regular diff command because it’s more visual.

To start in diff mode, there are many ways:


 % vimdiff file.md file2.md
 % vim -d file.md file2.md # It's the same thing

It will split the screen vertically. If you prefer the horizontal split, which is, at least to me, useless, you can do:


 % vimdiff -o file.md file2.md

If you aro already in Vim, you can start a diff like this:


 :diffs[split] fileX # This will split horizontally the screen with the new file
 :vertical diffs fileX # vertical split instead

Or, if you opened your two files directly in vertical mode like this:


 % vim -O file.md file2.md

You can now use:


 :windo diffthis

And, this will show the differences.

Please note, there can be up to eight buffers with ‘diff’ set.

To get out of the diff mode, you can use:


 :diffo[ff] # switch off diff mode only for current window
 :diffo[ff]! # switch off diff mode for the current window and all windows in
 # current tab

Viewing differences

Here’s how it looks like:

Folds are used to hide the text that wasn’t changed.
zo\zc commands can be used with those folds.

The context of lines above a difference that are not included in the fold can be set with the ‘diffopt’ option. For example, to set the context to 5 lines:


 :set diffopt=filler,context:5

You can use two keybindings:


 [c jump backwards to the previous start of a change
 ]c jump forwards to the next start of a change

Updating buffers

Vim offers commands to update buffers with the changes available:


 :[range]diffg[et] # Modify the current buffer with another buffer
 :[range]diffput # Modify another buffer with the current buffer

 # do and dp don't work in Visual mode
 :[count]do # Same as ":diffget" without range. The "o" stands for "obtain"
 :[count]dp # Same as ":diffget" without range. The "p" stands for "put"

 :diffget # Use the other buffer which is in diff mode
 :diffget 3 # Use buffer 3
 :diffget v2 # Use the buffer matching "v2" and is in diff mode (e.g., "file.v2.md")

Colorscheme

You can also use custom colorscheme for vimdiff, just add to your ~/.vimrc:


 if &diff " specific colorscheme for vimdiff
 colorscheme dracula
 endif

As usual, don’t hesitate to check the :help diff page.

Git and vimdiff

A last tip, we can use vimdiff with git to display local changes.


 % git difftool --tool=vimdiff --no-prompt

You can always use Vimdiff with the following commands:


 # for all your repositories or just locally in a repo without --global
 % git config --global diff.tool vimdiff
 % git config --global merge.tool vimdiff

 ## Or in your ~/.gitconfig 

 [merge]
 tool = vimdiff

 [difftool]
 prompt = false

 [diff]
 tool = vimdiff

 ## And with a small alias :)
 [alias]
 d = difftool

Then, doing a git d will show your difference between your changes in your repository using vimdiff 🙌

That’s all for this week!

Post 19/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

IMDB Top 250

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:28:37 +0000

Almost three years passed since I wrote a post about IMDB Top 250 movie list.

My goal back then was to watch all the classic movies, and the must-have seen ones. But, I’m still a long way from it.

I was wondering if the list changed during that period. And, yes, it did.

Some movies are gone:

Ace in the hole (1951)
Akira (1988)
Andhadhun (2018)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Chak de! India (2007)
Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
Guardians of the Galaxy (2012)
Hera Pheri (2000)
In the mood for Love (2000)
Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India (2001)
Marriage Story (2019)
Monty Python’s Life of Bryan (1979)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
PK (2014)
Paris, Texas (1984)
Rang de Basanti (2006)
Stalker (1979)
The Bandit (1996)
The Invisible Guest (2016)
The Princess Bride (1987)
The Red Shoes (1948)
White Heat (1949)

Some got in the list:

Dance with Wolves (1990)
Dersu Uzala (1975)
Gandhi (1982)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Hamilton (2020)
Jai Bhim (2021)
Jaws (1975)
Life of Brian (1979)
Pather Panchali (1955)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Ratatouille (2007)
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
The Best Years of our Lives (1946)
The Exorcist (1973)
The Father (2020)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
The Incredibles (2004)
The Iron Giant (1999)
The Sound of Music (1965)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

I’m quite disappointed about Akira not being on this list anymore. But, since it’s rated by regular IMDB voters, I guess they just don’t like old anime.

So, on the 2023 list, I’ve seen more movies than the one in 2020.

Goal for this year: finish to watch all those movies.

So far, I’ve seen only ~~128~~ 129 movies, which is 7 8 more than the previous list.

Here’s the new 250 IMDB list:

~~The Shawshank Redemption (1994)~~
~~The Godfather (1972)~~
~~The Dark Knight (2008)~~
~~The Godfather Part II (1974)~~
12 Angry Men (1957)
~~Schindler’s List (1993)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)~~
~~Pulp Fiction (1994)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)~~
~~The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)~~
~~Forrest Gump (1994)~~
~~Fight Club (1999)~~
~~The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)~~
~~Inception (2010)~~
~~Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)~~
~~The Matrix (1999)~~
~~Goodfellas (1990)~~
~~One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)~~
~~Se7en (1995)~~
Seven Samurai (1954)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
~~The Silence of the Lambs (1991)~~
~~City of God (2002)~~
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
~~Interstellar (2014)~~
~~Life Is Beautiful (1997)~~
~~The Green Mile (1999)~~
~~Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)~~
~~Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)~~
~~Back to the Future (1985)~~
~~Spirited Away (2001)~~
~~The Pianist (2002)~~
~~Psycho (1960)~~
~~Parasite (2019)~~
~~Léon: The Professional (1994)~~
~~The Lion King (1994)~~
~~Gladiator (2000)~~
~~American History X (1998)~~
~~The Departed (2006)~~
~~The Usual Suspects (1995)~~
~~The Prestige (2006)~~
~~Whiplash (2014)~~
Casablanca (1942)
~~Grave of the Fireflies (1988)~~
Harakiri (1962)
~~The Intouchables (2011)~~
Modern Times (1936)
~~Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)~~
~~Rear Window (1954)~~
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
~~Alien (1979)~~
City Lights (1931)
~~Apocalypse Now (1979)~~
~~Memento (2000)~~
~~Django Unchained (2012)~~
~~Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)~~
~~WALL·E (2008)~~
~~The Lives of Others (2006)~~
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Paths of Glory (1957)
~~The Shining (1980)~~
The Great Dictator (1940)
~~Avengers: Infinity War (2018)~~
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
~~Aliens (1986)~~
~~Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)~~
~~American Beauty (1999)~~
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
~~The Dark Knight Rises (2012)~~
~~Oldboy (2003)~~
~~Inglourious Basterds (2009)~~
Amadeus (1984)
~~Coco (2017)~~
~~Toy Story (1995)~~
~~Joker (2019)~~
~~Braveheart (1995)~~
The Boat (1981)
~~Avengers: Endgame (2019)~~
~~Princess Mononoke (1997)~~
~~Once Upon a Time in America (1984)~~
~~Good Will Hunting (1997)~~
~~Your Name. (2016)~~
3 Idiots (2009)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
~~Requiem for a Dream (2000)~~
~~Toy Story 3 (2010)~~
High and Low (1963)
Capernaum (2018)
~~Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)~~
~~Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)~~
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
~~Reservoir Dogs (1992)~~
Come and See (1985)
The Hunt (2012)
Citizen Kane (1941)
M (1931)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
North by Northwest (1959)
Vertigo (1958)
Amélie (2001)
Ikiru (1952)
The Apartment (1960)
~~A Clockwork Orange (1971)~~
~~Top Gun: Maverick (2022)~~
Double Indemnity (1944)
~~Full Metal Jacket (1987)~~
~~Scarface (1983)~~
Hamilton (2020)
~~Incendies (2010)~~
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
~~Heat (1995)~~
The Sting (1973)
~~Up (2009)~~
A Separation (2011)
~~Taxi Driver (1976)~~
Metropolis (1927)
~~L.A. Confidential (1997)~~
~~Die Hard (1988)~~
~~Snatch (2000)~~
~~Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)~~
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Like Stars on Earth (2007)
1917 (2019)
Downfall (2004)
Dangal (2016)
~~For a Few Dollars More (1965)~~
~~Batman Begins (2005)~~
The Kid (1921)
~~Some Like It Hot (1959)~~
The Father (2020)
All About Eve (1950)
Green Book (2018)
~~The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)~~
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
~~Casino (1995)~~
Ran (1985)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
~~The Truman Show (1998)~~
~~There Will Be Blood (2007)~~
~~Unforgiven (1992)~~
~~The Sixth Sense (1999)~~
~~Shutter Island (2010)~~
~~A Beautiful Mind (2001)~~
~~Jurassic Park (1993)~~
Yojimbo (1961)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Great Escape (1963)
~~Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)~~
No Country for Old Men (2007)
~~Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)~~
Rashomon (1950)
The Thing (1982)
~~Finding Nemo (2003)~~
The Elephant Man (1980)
Chinatown (1974)
Raging Bull (1980)
~~V for Vendetta (2005)~~
Gone with the Wind (1939)
~~Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)~~
~~Inside Out (2015)~~
Dial M for Murder (1954)
The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
~~Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)~~
~~Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)~~
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
~~Trainspotting (1996)~~
Prisoners (2013)
Warrior (2011)
~~Fargo (1996)~~
~~Gran Torino (2008)~~
~~My Neighbor Totoro (1988)~~
~~Catch Me If You Can (2002)~~
~~Million Dollar Baby (2004)~~
Children of Heaven (1997)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Before Sunrise (1995)
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Klaus (2019)
~~Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)~~
On the Waterfront (1954)
~~Ben-Hur (1959)~~
~~Gone Girl (2014)~~
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
The General (1926)
The Third Man (1949)
~~In the Name of the Father (1993)~~
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Barry Lyndon (1975)
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
The Wages of Fear (1953)
~~Memories of Murder (2003)~~
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Wild Tales (2014)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
~~Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)~~
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Mary and Max (2009)
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Room (2015)
~~Monsters, Inc. (2001)~~
~~Jaws (1975)~~
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Tokyo Story (1953)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
~~Hotel Rwanda (2004)~~
~~Ford v Ferrari (2019)~~
~~Rocky (1976)~~
~~Platoon (1986)~~
~~Ratatouille (2007)~~
Spotlight (2015)
~~The Terminator (1984)~~
~~Logan (2017)~~
Stand by Me (1986)
Rush (2013)
Network (1976)
~~Into the Wild (2007)~~
Before Sunset (2004)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Pather Panchali (1955)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
~~The Exorcist (1973)~~
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
~~The Incredibles (2004)~~
~~La haine (1995)~~
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
~~Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)~~
Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
My Father and My Son (2005)
Jai Bhim (2021)
Amores Perros (2000)
Rebecca (1940)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Handmaiden (2016)
The 400 Blows (1959)
The Sound of Music (1965)
It Happened One Night (1934)
Persona (1966)
Life of Brian (1979)
The Iron Giant (1999)
The Help (2011)
Dersu Uzala (1975)
~~Aladdin (1992)~~
Gandhi (1982)
Dances with Wolves (1990)

Post 18/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #10: dust

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 06:33:54 +0000

This week, let’s see a new “graphical” tool for your terminal: dust.

Let’s install it. It’s a rust binary, so you’ll need cargo.


 % cargo install du-dust

Then, you just run it with dust.

And, it’s pretty fast:


 % time dust
 dust 0.93s user 2.29s system 511% cpu 0.630 total

It also helped me to discover that .local/share/Trash directory with 25Gb of useless files. 😅

Post 17/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The People's Library

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 23:00:51 +0000

Over the months, I asked people on Mastodon what books they preferred or read more than twice.

There are several of them already on my “Reading list”, some are completely unknown to me, but will check them.

Here are the list of ~100 books:

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Essays by Montaigne
Drawing at the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Fear and loathing Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion from JRR Tolkien
Dune by Frank Herbert
QualityLand 1 &2(audio) by Marc-Uwe Kling
The end of everything by Katie Mack
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Life Engineered by JF Dubeau
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Town House by Norah Lofts
The Story Girls by Alice Hoffman
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Fool’s Errand by Louis Bayard
84, Charing Cross by Helene Hanff
The World according to Garp by John Irving
N’en jetez plus by Carrie Salomon
Le Standinge selon Berurier by Frederic Dard
Yoko Tsuno series by Roger Leloup
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
Le Génie des Alpages by F’Murr.
The Dark Phoenix Saga
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
Solar clipper by N. Lowell
Sentenced to Prism by Alan Dean Foster
So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane
Deeds of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin
Villains by Necessity by Eve Forward
The Shining by Stephen King
The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
Hitchiker Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Montalbano crime stories
The Old Man & the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Perelandra by CS Lewis
L’équateur d’Einstein de Liu Cixin
Sleep Experiment by Jeremy Bates
I Have No Mouth and I Must scream by Harlan Ellison
Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
Electronic Dreams: How 1980’s England Learned to Love the Computer by Tom Lean.
What Remains? by Rupert Callender
Dark Mirror by Bart Gellman
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
Designing With Web Standards" by Jeffrey Zeldman
La Horde du Contrevent by Alain Damasio
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Waylander (I, II and III) by David Gemmel
MoonPalace by Paul Auster
Le premier souper by Alex Dickow
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Le Sentier des Astres by Stefan Platteau
Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle
Le Sorceleur by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Likeness by Tana French
Beloved Exile by Parke Godwin
Trojan Gold by Elizabeth Peters
The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
20000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne
The Time Machine by Herbert George Wells
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
The War of The Worlds by Herbert George Wells
Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric S. Nylund
Dracula by Bram Stroker
1984 by George Orwell
Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes
Civic Wars by Mary Ryan
Taking the Land to Make a City by Mary Ryan
The Nineteenth-Century Boardinghouse by Wendy Gamber
Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton
Masterless Men by Keri Leigh Merritt
Down the Asphalt Path by Clay McShane
Downtown by Robert Fogelson
Bourgeois Utopias by Robert Fishman
Manhattan for Rent by Elizabeth Blackmar
Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars
The Business of Living by Cesare Pavese
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
Daemon by Daniel Suarez
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes
Poems Written Before Jumping Out Of An 8 Story Window by Charles Bukowski
Beatus Ille by Antonio Muñoz Molina
The Art of Fermentation by Sander Katz
Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman
Siddartha by Hermann Hesse
Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
Le pendule by Foucault, d’Eco
Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
Ficciones by J.L. Borges
Cien años de soledad

Post 16/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #19: vim-sneak

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 00:21:58 +0000

This week, we’ll talk about the plugin Benjamin likes … a lot: Vim-sneak.

It’s described as the missing motion for Vim.

Installation

First, let’s install it. I’m using vim-plug, but you can use Pathogen or copy files manually if needed.


 Plug 'justinmk/vim-sneak'

Usage

Everything to remember is to use this:


 # Forward
 s{char}{char}
 sto # jumps to the 1st occurence and highlights all other 'to' characters in the buffer

 # Backwards
 S{char}{char}

It will search exactly the two characters in your buffer, and will highlight them. Then, you use ; to jump to the next occurence, and , to the previous one.

Better, add this line to your ~/.vimrc:


 let g:sneak#label = 1

It’s a label mode, a minimalist alternative to EasyMotion. Instead of having to type 3 times ; or 3; to jump to the third occurence, this label each occurence with a letter to type to jump exactly where you want.

If you used vimperator in the past or now, Tridactyl with Firefox, it’s like pressing f in your browser.

On my side, for some weird reason, s didn’t work as intended. It switched to INSERT mode. After checking the mapping, I found out the culprit. On old mapping to remove trailing whitespace:


 :verbose map s
 x s <Plug>Sneak_s
 n ss * :%s/\s\+$//egc

Changed it, and, now, it works perfectly. It’s a decent alternative to vanilla f and F keys. It works on multiple lines, with operators, keymaps, visual mode and many other features.

You have to try it.

Post 15/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Hledger or ledger?

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:47:09 +0000

Everything is in the title. Which one do you use?

January 2023

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The first month of the year is already gone. Time flies…

This month, I added two new podcasts:

99% invisible, which is about design that we stop noticing.
372 pages we’ll never get back, a podcast about books they’re going to hate.

So far, I listened to the first six episodes of 99%. 372 pages was recommended by Joel, but sorry over 2 hours podcast is just a bit too much.

Podcasts

Hard fork

Episode 14: Meta’s Trump Calculus + Regime change at Netflix
Episode 13: Elon’s crumbling empire + Generative AI goes to the court
Episode 12: ChatGPT transforms a Classroom + Is “M3GAN” real?

ZettelCast

Being thoughtful about what we read
Writing is the thinking process

99% invisible

Ep. 06: Symbolic
Ep. 05: Forgotten
Ep. 04: Details
Ep. 03: 99% reality (only)
Ep. 02: 180
Ep. 01: Noise

Privacy, security and OSINT

Ep. 281: The Obsession of Extreme Privacy
Ep. 279: Comms ownership and Open databases

Linux Lads

A look back at 2022.
Rocking like a pro

L’octet vert (French)

S3E02: Timothée Parrique sur la décroissance.

Culture générale (French)

Many two minutes podcasts about general knowledge. I love that short format.

Le Code a change (French)

Anne et Jeanne parlent d’Instagram, et ratatam.

Two older persons talking about Instagram over Whatsapp audios. A funny way to observe how people not in the tech world analyze those platforms.

Book Log

This month, I finished:

The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker. I loved it, and took so many inspiring notes.
The ABC’s of Hand Lettering by Abbey Sy.
Hand Lettering A to Z A World of Creative Ideas for Drawing and Designing Alphabets by Abbey Sy.

I started those two:

How to live or a life of Montaigne in one question by Sarah Bakewell. 12% read
The data detective - ten easy rules to make sense of statistics by Tim Harford. 24% read

I haven’t touched those:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

Emails

Not an article, but a long Mastodon thread about emails.

Mechanical keyboards

Comment j’utilise un clavier 50% comme clavier principal

Blogging

Bring back blog, everything is in the title.
Bring back personal blogging

Cars & security

Millions of vehicles at Risk

T-1000

Terminator T-1000 is here.

Infosec

Hacking with ChatGPT.
A long list of offsec tools. Thanks Valere for keeping this list.
Bitwarden design flaw: server side iterations.
Git had some issues too.
The 2023 Bitwarden PBKDF2 Changes & why your master password entropy still master the most.

Zettelkasten

If you take notes, a great series of posts about Obsidian and Zettelkasten.

PDFs and Ebooks

A new project: Anna’s archive

Star Wars

The Original Star Wars Trilogy Adapted into a 14-Hour Radio Drama by NPR (1981-1996).

Projects

pastes.sh, a pastebin for hackers.
Appflowy, an alternative to Notion in Rust.
Affine.pro, another alternative to Notion.

Movies / TV shows

Puss in boots, the last wish. We watched it twice this month with my kid. It was fun.
Strange World, the new Disney movie. It was ok, but nothing really great.
Godfather of Harlem, the third season just started.
The Last of Us, the new HBO zombie/I am a Legend serie. I’m really not in this kind of things. I’ll see if I continue to watch it.

Sport

Many NBA games.
UFC 283

On my side, my back feels better. I started to play Padel again, with some boxing training too.

That’s all for this month 🙌

Post 14/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #9 : tokei

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 17:43:58 +0000

Last month, I wrote about cloc, a tool that counts, computes differenres of lines of source code and/or comments.

Today, we’ll see another tool that does the same things: tokei. However, there are some key differences between the two tools:

cloc is written in Perl and can count in many different programming languages. It can also detect duplicated code and blank lines. It’s able to count lines of code of multiple files and directories, and can output the results in a variety of formats, such as plain text, CSV, HTML or XML.
tokei is written in Rust and can also count in many different programming languages. It can display results in a variety of formats, such as plain text, JSON, or CSV. You can exclude files and directories from counting, and can also count file sizes, comment and code lines, and more.

Installation

There are many package managers to install it.

If you prefer, you can build it with cargo:


 % cargo install --git https://github.com/XAMPPRocky/tokei.git tokei

Once installed, you can use both to count your lines.


 % tokei /usr/include/
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Language Files Lines Code Comments Blanks
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Alex 19 3956 3538 0 418
 Bitbake 16 110899 108711 1266 922
 C 5 7137 5029 873 1235
 C Header 6989 2102514 1205229 621040 276245
 C++ Header 14953 2940004 2078313 464676 397015
 Module-Definition 97 20051 18325 0 1726
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Total 22079 5184561 3419145 1087855 677561
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Fastest?

The Rust version is way faster, as we can see here:

It’s 8x faster in this case. :)

That’s it for this week.

Post 13/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #18: Ctags

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 04:18:41 +0000

This week, let’s talk about ctags. It wasn’t the original subject of this week, but after Arne’s toot, I guessed it could be great to write something about tags.

In case you don’t know, tags are symbols defined in your codebase, and generated by a tool like Ctags. It’s a great way to jump to the definition of a function that you want to understand with a simple keystroke.

To generate those tags, different tools exist:

ctags, pretty old and only for C source code
exuberant ctags has many programming languages
universal ctags which is the maintained version of the ancestor exuberant ctags
ptags for perl
Jtags for Java
etc…

We’ll be using universal-ctags. First, you’ll need to install it using your OS package manager like apt, dnf or brew.

Once installed, you need to run a command in the root directory of your project to generate the tags:


 % ctags -R .

That will create a tags file in the current directory. The file looks like:


 !_TAG_OUTPUT_FILESEP slash /slash or backslash/
 !_TAG_OUTPUT_MODE u-ctags /u-ctags or e-ctags/
 !_TAG_PATTERN_LENGTH_LIMIT 96 /0 for no limit/
 !_TAG_PROC_CWD /home/hyde/test/ //
 !_TAG_PROGRAM_AUTHOR Universal Ctags Team //
 !_TAG_PROGRAM_NAME Universal Ctags /Derived from Exuberant Ctags/
 !_TAG_PROGRAM_URL https://ctags.io/ /official site/
 !_TAG_PROGRAM_VERSION 5.9.0 //
 Action autojump_argparse.py /^class Action(_AttributeHolder):$/;" c
 ArgumentError autojump_argparse.py /^class ArgumentError(Exception):$/;" c
 ArgumentParser autojump_argparse.py /^class ArgumentParser(_AttributeHolder, _ActionsContainer):$/;" c
 ArgumentTypeError autojump_argparse.py /^class ArgumentTypeError(Exception):$/;" c
 CONTENT_TYPES xlsx2csv.py /^CONTENT_TYPES = {$/;" v
 ContentTypes xlsx2csv.py /^class ContentTypes:$/;" c
 DEFAULT_APP_PATH xlsx2csv.py /^DEFAULT_APP_PATH = "\/xl"$/;" v

The first lines will TAG* are metadata about the ctags program. The lines under are the ones which are interesting. It will contain a tag for each function, macro, typedefs, enum, etc.

The format is:


 {tagname} {TAB} {tagfile} {TAB} {tagaddress} {term} {field} ..

If you are need more information about the format, I suggest you to check :help tags.

Now, we installed everything, and we launched the generation of our tags file. Let’s try it. Open a file, and put the cursor on some function, and hit Ctrl+]. It will jump automatically to its definition, and will open a new buffer with the file where it’s defined. To go back to your file, you can use Ctrl+t.

You can do exactly the same in Normal mode with :ts:


 :ts con[TAB]
 convert convert_recursive consume_positionals ContentTypes
 convert_arg_line_to_args consume_optional CONTENT_TYPES
 # pri kind tag file
 1 F f convert_recursive /home/hyde/test/test.py
 def convert_recursive(path, sheetid, outfile, kwargs):
 2 F f convert_recursive t.py
 def convert_recursive(path, sheetid, outfile, kwargs):
 Type number and <Enter> (q or empty cancels):

That will list you the files where that function is defined. And, a little bonus, the completion works too.

Instead of switching to a new buffer, you can use :sts con[TAB] in my example to split the screen. Unfortunately, the same command doesn’t exist to split it vertically, but you can use Ctrl-w t Ctrl-w H to switch to a vertical split.

Vim-gutentags

While it’s great to have those tags files, it will be a pain to add them to your .gitignore files. That’s how this plugin will help us.

Vim-gutentags relies only on ctags and vim. It will index automatically, in the background, when you open a file in a new project. You won’t need to wait to the end of the (re)generation of tags. And, finally, will keep away your tags files in all your projects.

Installation

I use vim-plug to install my plugins. All you need to do is add the following line to your ~/.vimrc:


 Plug 'ludovicchabant/vim-gutentags'

And, install:


 :PlugInstall

Configuration

I added those that line in my ~/.vimrc:


 " GUTENTAGS
 let g:gutentags_cache_dir="~/.cache/ctags/"

It will create a separate tags file for each project. And, it will update each one separately based on your work in specific folders.

fzf-vim

That’s great, but I like fzf. And, fzf-vim provides two useful commands if you use tags:

:Tags [QUERY] Tags in the project
:BTags [QUERY] Tags in the current buffer

Then you need only to type the first letters, and it will find out about your functions, and where they are defined.

Here’s a screenshot:

That’s all for this week.

I hope it will help people to see that we can do the same thing that some IDEs do.

Post 12/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Is there a book ...

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 13:05:29 +0000

… you read more than twice?

Let’s see in the comments what books have been read many times.

CLI of the week #8

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:56:33 +0000

Already two months since the article of this series. This week, let’s talk about youplot, a tool to display graphs in your terminal.

Last week, we presented qsv, and we’ll be using it with this csv file:


 "Rank","Film","Country of Origin","Weekend Gross","Distributor","% change on last week","Weeks on release","Number of cinemas","Site average","Total Gross to date"
 "1","Avatar: The Way Of Water","USA","4172161","Disney","-0.29067388","5","659","6331","63733634"
 "2","M3gan","USA","2356357","Universal","-","1","562","4193","2356357"
 "3","Empire Of Light","UK/USA","1721921","Disney","-","1","683","2521","1721921"
 "4","Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody","USA","1103064","Sony Pictures","-0.20633285","3","662","1666","8203259"
 "5","Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical","UK/USA","857293","Sony Pictures","-0.28197634","8","673","1274","25027891"
 "6","A Man Called Otto","USA","796076","Sony Pictures","-0.26889577","2","652","1221","2575470"
 "7","Varisu","Ind","648230","Ahimsa Entertainment","-","1","161","4026","648230"
 "8","Tar","USA","394649","Universal","-","1","136","2902","394649"
 "9","Thunivu","Ind","273277","DG Tech","-","1","91","3003","273277"
 "10","Black Panther: Wakanda Forever","USA","143774","Disney","-0.47231441","10","198","726","34218317"
 "11","Strange World","USA","128986","Disney","-0.08746436","8","448","288","3731300"
 "12","Waltair Veerayya","Ind","123174","Dreamz Entertainment","-","1","55","2240","123174"
 "13","Till","UK/USA","119939","Universal","-0.63438805","2","341","352","630598"
 "14","Enys Men","UK","103250","BFI","-","1","49","2107","103250"
 "15","Veera Simha Reddy","Ind","95423","Dreamz Entertainment","-","1","57","1674","95423"

That’s the UK box office of the weekend 11-13 of January 2023.

We use this command to extract some info like the name of the movie and weekend gross:


 % qsv select 2,4 uk-boxoffice-13-15-jan-2023.csv
 Film,Weekend Gross
 Avatar: The Way Of Water,4172161
 M3gan,2356357
 Empire Of Light,1721921
 Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,1103064
 Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical,857293
 A Man Called Otto,796076
 Varisu,648230
 Tar,394649
 Thunivu,273277
 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,143774
 Strange World,128986
 Waltair Veerayya,123174
 Till,119939
 Enys Men,103250
 Veera Simha Reddy,95423

Then, we can combine it with youplot or uplot, which is just an alias:


 % qsv select 2,4 uk-boxoffice-13-15-jan-2023.csv | uplot bar -H -d, -t "UK Box office : 11-13 Jan 2023 " -c magenta

And, here’s the result:

Nice, isn’t it ?

There are different kinds of diagrams, everything is on the GitHub page.

Post 11/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Lamy EMR, and Remarkable2

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 04:12:30 +0000

The Remarkable2 has been with me for almost 2 years now. And, I still love it. I bought it when I moved abroad, and I like to use it for notes, and particularly to take notes when reading.

I have their Marker Plus, which is now €30 more expensive compared to the moment I bought it. But, I’m not using it. I had some issue with it. Basically, when you put too much pressure on their nib, it damages it. Then, even without touching the screen, it will start to write, making it unusable.

I bought the Lamy EMR, and it works really well. Plus, it feels like a real pen. The downside is you don’t have anymore the eraser the Marker Plus provides.

But, the Lamy had a small button to activate the eraser when you press it. But, there was a compatibilty issue between the two. Until this page came out of the blue.

All you have to do, is connect over ssh to your Remarkable2, and launch this:


 % ssh remarkable2
 ｒｅＭａｒｋａｂｌｅ
 ╺━┓┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓ ┏━┓╻ ╻┏━╸┏━┓┏━┓
 ┏━┛┣╸ ┣┳┛┃ ┃ ┗━┓┃ ┃┃╺┓┣━┫┣┳┛
 ┗━╸┗━╸╹┗╸┗━┛ ┗━┛┗━┛┗━┛╹ ╹╹┗╸
 root@reMarkable:~# wget https://github.com/isaacwisdom/RemarkableLamyEraser/raw/v1/LamyInstall.sh; \
 chmod +x LamyInstall.sh; ./LamyInstall.sh; rm ~/LamyInstall.sh;

The script installs a binary, and a system service to start it. That will just activate the eraser, but you can do more.

If you edit the systemd service located in /lib/systemd/system/LamyEraser.service, there are some options:


 [Unit]
 Description=Lamy Pen Button as Eraser
 After=xochitl.service

 [Service]
 #configure by adding arguments to the line below. supported arguments are: --press, --toggle, --double-press undo, --double-press redo, --left-handed
 #running the command with no arguments is equivalent to using: --press --double-press undo
 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/RemarkableLamyEraser --toggle --double-press redo
 Restart=on-failure

 [Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

I don’t like to keep the button pressed to use the eraser, so I use the --toggle option. The only issue is the second option is not working.

Don’t forget those actions when you edit the service:

systemctl stop LamyEraser
vi /lib/systemd/system/LamyEraser.service
systemct daemon-reload
systemctl start LamyEraser

I’ll try to open an issue on the GitHub account where that author got the tool, and the service.

Happy to have found this :)

Post 10/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #17

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 06:18:09 +0000

Marks are a powerful feature that allows you to set, jump to, and move in a file quickly. Let’s see how to use them to be more productive.

A mark is a position in the file where you want to come back. It’s especially great to use when you need to go back and forth between two places in a very long file.

To set a mark at the current cursor position, use the command ma, where a is the name of the mark. For that example, You must be in Normal mode, and ma will set a mark named a at the current cursor position.

Now we have a mark, you can scroll down in your file, and jump to your mark with commands:


 'a : the single quote, will position your cursor on the first non-blank character in
 the line wher the mark has been set.

 `a : the backtick, will position the cursor at the specific position of
 the cursor when you made the mark
 
 '' : which jumps to the position before the last jump.

 '. : which jumps to the position before exiting the editor.

You can create marks using:

lowercase marks: a - z, and are valid within one file.
uppercase marks: A - Z, also called file marks, are valid between files.
numbered marks: 0 - 9, are set from .viminfo file.

The .viminfo file is a file used by Vim to store various information such as command-line history, search history, global marks, and the state of various options. This file is usually located in the user’s home directory and its name is usually .viminfo, but its location and name can be configured with the ‘viminfo’ option.

A mark is not visible in any way, excepts when you type :marks:


 :marks
 mark line col file/text
 b 21 0 productive.
 P 46 6 ~/projects/lazybear.io/content/posts/vim-weekly-tips-resurrection.md
 0 10 0 ~/.cfg/bin/sshot
 1 6 0 ~/.cfg/bin/sshot
 2 252 0 ~/.cfg/zsh/functions.zsh
 3 25 22 ~/.cfg/ssh/config
 4 137 1 ~/projects/lazybear.io/content/posts/vim-weekly-tips-10.md

Now, you can see the different marks you have. You can then easily go back to a previous mark. So, as you can see, we have file marks with uppercase letters, so we can jump between files with the same command 'P to jump to the vim-weekly-tips-resurrection file.

The same way, you can create a file mark to come back to the file you’re editing right now with an uppercase letter like mA for example.

You could also type :marks ab to see only specific marks:

 
 :marks ab
 mark line col file/text
 a 19 0 Marks are a powerful feature that allows you to
 b 21 0 productive.

To delete a mark, use the command:


 :delm[arks] {marks} Delete the specified marks. Marks that can be deleted
 include A-Z and 0-9. You cannot delete the ' mark.
 They can be specified by giving the list of mark
 names, or with a range, separated with a dash. Spaces
 are ignored. Examples: >
 :delmarks a deletes mark a
 :delmarks a b 1 deletes marks a, b and 1
 :delmarks Aa deletes marks A and a
 :delmarks p-z deletes marks in the range p to z
 :delmarks ^.[] deletes marks ^ . [ ]
 :delmarks \" deletes mark "

 :delm[arks]! Delete all marks for the current buffer, but not marks

Marks are a great way to move quickly to specific position you decided to put in your files, and can increase your productivity if used correctly 😉.

Post 09/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Books of 2022

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 06:08:09 +0000

Last year, I finished 18 books, and started 22. My goal was 25. I missed it, but it’s okay 😅.

Hopefully, this year I will reach my goal.

Here is the order of books by preference:

How to take smart notes by Sönke Ahrens. I loved that one.
Digital minimalism by Cal Newport.
Several short sentences about writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg.
Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss.
Young Philby by Robert Littell. – La nouvelle guerre des étoiles – Vincent Coquaz.
Human Hacking by Chris Hadnagy, and Seth Schulman.
Building a second brain by Tiago Forte.
Lost in Work, Escaping Capitalism by Amelia Horgan.
Lazyness does not exist – Devon Price.
Betrayal: The story of Aldrich Ames, an American spy by Tim Weiner
Je ne lache rien – Philippe Etchebest, Stephane Davet.
The Antidote: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking – Oliver Burkeman.
It’s not all about me: the top ten techniques for building quick rappert with anyone – Robin K. Dreeke.
The productive programmer – Neal Ford.
The Psychology of money – Morgan Housel.
Cybersecurity Career Masterplan – Gerald Auger, Jaclyn “Jax” Scott, and Jonathan Helmus
Rust in 8 hours – Ray Yao.

Soon, I’ll add my notes about them.

What were your best books of 2022?

Post 08/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim colorscheme

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 22:00:52 +0000

Monokai has been my default colorscheme for Vim for at least 8 years, if I recall correctly. I always loved the colors it brought to my favourite editor.

The other night, I read a toot about newsboat, and someone was asking if an everforest theme existed for the RSS reader.

That’s how I discovered this colorscheme, and I found it pretty great for my eyes to be honest. I installed it, and started using the default dark medium theme.

To install it, you can use via your plugin manager, a pack feature or manually. For more details, check this page.

The future will show if I’ll keep it. So far, I’m really enjoying it.

Post 07/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The Last of us

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 21:51:11 +0000

Is the new HBO show, The Last of Us, better or worst than “I Am A Legend” with our “Mr Slap”, Will Smith.

What book are you currently reading ?

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 07:21:27 +0000

Let’s see what people are reading on the Fediverse…

Rofi, it's not for me

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 07:00:17 +0000

Last month, I stumbled on one of Distrotube video. And, I noticed he was using Rofi, and thought “oh that looks cool”.

I tweaked my rc.lua configuration, but after maybe a month, I just removed it. There are basically things it doesn’t do by default that annoys me:

Apps in my $PATH aren’t autocompleted.
The fonts are not the best ones
And, I just don’t like it as much as I thought I would love it.

It’s probably customizable, but I have other things to do instead. And, why the hell I thought it was going to be fun to use this stuff. It’s probably because of that Spotlight from OS X, that the new job brought to my life.

Back to the default launcher:


 awful.key({ modkey }, "r", function () awful.screen.focused().mypromptbox:run() end,
 {description = "run prompt", group = "launcher"}),

Back in my shoes. 😅

Post 06/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #7

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 10:09:46 +0000

Last week, I wrote about xsv. I wasn’t aware, until Jan pointed out the tool wasn’t maintained anymore.

The new cool kid on the block is qsv !

I haven’t played too much with it, but some features look neat:

diff: Find the difference between two CSVs with ludicrous speed! e.g. compare two CSVs with 1M rows x 9 columns in under 600ms!
frequency: Build frequency tables of each column. Uses multithreading to go faster if an index is present
fixlengths: Force a CSV to have same-length records by either padding or truncating them.
index: Create an index for a CSV. This is very quick & provides constant time indexing into the CSV file. Also enables multithreading for frequency, split, stats & schema commands.
rename: Rename the columns of a CSV efficiently.
replace: Replace CSV data using a regex.
reverse: Reverse order of rows in a CSV. Unlike the sort –reverse command, it preserves the order of rows with the same key.
safenames: Modify headers of a CSV to only have “safe” names - guaranteed “database-ready” names.
stats: Compute summary statistics (sum, min/max/range, min/max length, mean, stddev, variance, nullcount, quartiles, IQR, lower/upper fences, skewness, median, mode/s, antimode/s & cardinality) & infer data type (Null, String, Float, Integer, Date, DateTime) for each column in a CSV. Uses multithreading to go faster if an index is present.
table: Show aligned output of a CSV using elastic tabstops.
to: Convert CSV files to PostgreSQL, SQLite, XLSX, Parquet and Data Package.

That’s only a couple of things available, but there are many more options. If you need to work with CSV files, I can’t recommend it enough.

Thanks again Jan! 🙏

Post 06/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My first website

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 05:39:41 +0000

After reading Joel’s post, I can only note that we had probably different youth. I did play some games on the first consoles, like the Master System or the NES. But, it wasn’t often because only one friend had them. We weren’t that lucky. Usually, I used to visit shops to watch people playing games on NeoGeo or NEC’s console, the PC engine.

We didn’t have phones, but we were out every day. Today, 4 out of 10 kids don’t play outside during the week. Just look on the web, and you’ll find many articles about the subject. Globally, parents are overprotecting kids. I remember going to play football when I was 8 or 9, alone, in some unsafe places in Paris. But, all my friends did, and we didn’t really care. Today, many of us became parents, and we definitely won’t allow the same freedom to our kids.

But, when I wasn’t out, I was lucky to have a computer. Then, after a couple of years, the internet connection arrived at our home. The first modems, the lines that broke up when someone picked up the phone, that brings a lot of memory.

The BBS, IRC, the first blogs, the phreaking and hacking community with their beautiful ASCII text were awesome. I loved it.

Then, I met Tux, and Linux. Trying to understand things like how to start X was challenging. That’s when I started my first website. I wrote articles about Apache, ipchains, the ancestor of iptables, and many other tools. I even started a French mailing list about shell scripts.

Ayo, the designer who made the first Linuxfr.org logos, was kind enough to create my logo. He did some graphics in the game Frozen Bubbles, if you remember/know it.

This period is when I started to play with Qmail, Exim, Postfix, Bind, and other tools. That’s when I self-hosted for the first time my own services.

I always loved Debian and their manifesto. That made me a translator of the Weekly Debian News for almost two years. I participated in the French translation of the Securing Debian Manual. As well, I did some parts of the Advanced Bash Scripting guide.

The Debian Maintainer process was quite long. I never applied to become one. But, I had a couple of Perl libraries I packaged for Debian, as well as a stenography tool. That’s gone now.

It was fun to learn new things. But, as a teenager, I was always out. I started to play basket-ball and having fun with my friends. I even played in a semi-pro basket-ball league. But, one summer I forgot to renew my domain name, and got cyber squatted. That’s how my website adventure ended. I guess a copy is, maybe, available on archives.org, but I didn’t even bother to check.

Three years ago, I started a Mastodon instance, met new people, and that’s how this blog started 😉.

Post 05/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

This post was a reply to https://www.joelchrono12.xyz/blog/the-first-blog-i-had/

TIL: Hikikomori

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 14:21:53 +0000

Today, I learnt what a Hikikomori was.

Based on the Wikipedia, it’s:

"(Japanese: ひきこもり or 引きこもり, lit. “pulling inward, being confined”), also known as acute social withdrawal, is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement. Hikikomori refers to both the phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves. Hikikomori have been described as loners or “modern-day hermits”

Bing makes more than Twitter in ads revenues

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:37:54 +0000

Today, listening to this episode of HardFork:

TikTok’s Spying Scandal + ChatGPT Puts Google on Notice + Phone Jail

I learnt that Bing makes twice the amount in ads revenues than Twitter 😱

Vim Weekly Tips #16

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 06:36:33 +0000

This week, let’s see how to use some native options of Vim that doesn’t require any plugin. All of those options could be find using the :help guide by the way.

Let’s start with a few basic tips that can help you be more productive while using the editor:

* and # commands will search for the word under the cursor. The * command searches for the next occurrence of the word, and the # command searches for the previous occurrence.
Use the gqap command to format lines to a specified text width. This command will format the current paragraph to have a text width of 80 characters.
Use the :set number command to turn on line numbering. This can be helpful when working with large files.
Use the :set relativenumber command to turn on relative line numbering. This will display the line numbers relative to the current line.
Use the :set cursorline command to highlight the current line. This one is a lifesaver when you need to know where you are in a file.
The same way, you can use the :set cursorcolumn command to highlight the current column. But, I’m not using this one because my cursor is a blinky pink one.
Long lignes could be a pain to read. Use :set wrap command to turn on line wrapping. This can help you to see more of the file at once.
Use the :set spell command to turn on spell checking. You can add multiple languages in your ~/.vimrc like this:


 set spell " spelling check English
 set spelllang+=fr " and French

Use the :set hlsearch command to turn on highlighting of search results. This can help you find what you’re looking for more easily.
:set incsearch command will highlight the search results as you type the search pattern.
:set ignorecase command to search case-insensitive. That could help when you search for something.

Of course, all the :set commands could be added to your ~/.vimrc file to enable them when you start editing your files.

That’s all for this week.

Post 04/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Aaron Swartz

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 07:37:40 +0000

Hello Fediverse ! Enjoy RSS, and don’t forget how Aaron Swartz fought for a better Internet, before committing suicide on this day.

GPT takes the Bar exam

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:02:02 +0000

ChatGPT takes the “Bar Exam”, a professional licence exam.

What’s cheaper: an attorney’s hourly rate or hosting an LLM?

Issues with my logbook

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 01:05:36 +0000

I bought a new Moleskine for my logbook. I’ve been using a Moleskine for the last three years with a Faber Castell Emotion fountain pen. The combo worked well, but now it’s bleeding through paper.

I compared the two daily planner I use, the paper should be the same. The pen is the same, except I took a new bottle of Parker Quink to replace the one I just finished. Basically, everything looks the same, but every time I used since the beginning of the year, the other side of the pages are a mess.

For my bullet journal, I use a Dingbats notebook, and didn’t have the issue. But, the paper is thicker. I regret they don’t do planners though.

The other night I spent some time on Jet Pens, and discovered a whole new world about planners, especially the Kokuyo Jibun Techo that looks great.

It comes with “three separate booklets: “Diary” for everyday scheduling, “LIFE” for life events, and “IDEA” for thoughts, memories, and everything else. You can fit one, two, or all three of these booklets into a single cover.” They offer many specific grids, and other things that I already do in my bullet journal. But, having already everything printed, like habit trackers, calendars, etc., could save you some time when you draw/write them every week.

I wasted two hours looking at those diaries, and I’m still not sure why the ink is bleeding through my pages. For now, I use a Pigma Micron 05 🤷. Maybe, I’ll move away from Moleskine planners …

Post 03/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #6

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 14:40:26 +0000

This week, let’s see a small tool, written in Rust, to play with csv files. That CLI’s name is xsv. The program has been made for indexing, slicing, analyzing, splitting and joining CSV files.

Installation

You need Rust on your computer. Once installed, you can install xsv by running the following command:


 % cargo install xsv

This will download and compile xsv, and then install it on your system. Once xsv is installed, you can use it from the command line by typing xsv.

If you want to update to the latest version of xsv, you can run the following command:


 % cargo install xsv --force

This will download and install the latest version of xsv, overwriting any previous version that was installed on your system.

Usage

xsv is really good at manipulating CSV files. Let’s see what we can do.

Start with a file like this one:


 name,height,weight,gender
 Alice,5.5,120,female
 Bob,5.9,180,male
 Charlie,6.1,200,male

To print the headers:


 % xsv headers file.csv
 1 name
 2 height
 3 weight
 4 gender

To select the name, and the weight:


 % xsv select name,weight file.csv
 name,weight
 Alice,120
 Bob,180
 Charlie,200

Better printing of the file:


 % xsv table file.csv
 name height weight gender
 Alice 5.5 120 female
 Bob 5.9 180 male
 Charlie 6.1 200 male

We can also pipe results:


 % xsv select name,weight file.csv | xsv table
 name weight
 Alice 120
 Bob 180
 Charlie 200

Count the number of lines without the headers:


 % xsv count file.csv
 3

You can sort data also:


 % xsv sort -s height test.csv
 name,height,weight,gender
 Alice,5.5,120,female
 Bob,5.9,180,male
 Charlie,6.1,200,male

We can display the data in different form with the flatten option:


 % xsv flatten file.csv
 name Alice
 height 5.5
 weight 120
 gender female
 #
 name Bob
 height 5.9
 weight 180
 gender male
 #
 name Charlie
 height 6.1
 weight 200
 gender male

On large files, operations can be very slow. The CLI offers an index option that will create an index to speed up the processing.


 % xsv index file.csv
 % ls
 file.csv file.csv.idx

Show 5 random entries:


 % xsv sample 5 file.csv

You can join two columns from two different files:


 % xsv join --no-case column1 file.csv column2 file2.csv | xsv table

That’s it for this week.

Post 02/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Your best moments of 2022

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:18:53 +0000

This sunday, I posted my top 50 of 2022, and tonight I finished reading many others. Here is the list, mainly in French.

English

100 things thah made my year (2022) by Austin Kleon.

French

100 trucs en 2022 by Yannick Schutz.
100 trucs cools en 2022 by Gregory Mignard.
100 trucs cools en 2022 by Jeremy Janin.
2022 en quelques lignes by Nicolas Birckel.
Des trucs cools en 2022 by Thibaudd.
2022 en 50 lignes by Eiffair.

If you have a blog, you should do it. It’s pretty great to write down things you loved during the last year.

PS: That’s the first post of the Round 4 of #100DaysToOffload.

Post 1/100 - Round 4 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Round 3 done!

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 16:09:59 +0000

That’s it! This is the 100th post of the #100DaysToOffload challenge. It’s my third year in a row. Last year, I failed at 96 posts. Today was my last day to finish it.

Since I plan to continue blogging, I’ll update my posts with numbers as I did the past three years.

I hope more people will join the challenge, especially the newcomers to the Fediverse.

A great new year resolution would be to convince people around you to start blogging. Kev nailed it on his new website. 😅

Post 100/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #15

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 12:52:02 +0000

This week, let’s see what is the visual mode, and what you can do with it.

Vim has three variants of visual mode working with:

characters
lines
blocks of text

Many of the commands you know in Normal mode will work in Visual mode. h,j,k,l are the same, f too, you can search also with / with n/N too. But, in Visual mode, we start the selection, and then apply the command. While in Normal mode, it’s the opposite.

The c command to change the text works a bit differently between those modes. Imagine you want to change the word Windows in the example below:


 Windows is a better os!

In Normal mode, you place your cursor on Windows and type caw and type Linux instead. In Visual mode, you select the word with viw, and you can’t use the Backspace button to remove it. You need to type c to change the selected word, delete it, and be in Insert mode.

Enabling Visual modes

We’ll use the v key to enter the different modes:

v to enable characters Visual mode
V to enable line Visual mode
Ctrl+v to enable block Visual mode

In your window, you will see the mode you are:

-- VISUAL --
-- VISUAL LINE --
-- VISUAL BLOCK --

You can switch between the modes using the keybindings. Note, if you use v you will get out of the visual mode.

Redefining the selection

When you enter the visual mode, you start from one point, and you move your cursor to make your selection. But, if you made an error with the start of your selection, you can use the o key to go to the start, and change it.

Repeating commands

You can repeat commands using the dot, . like in the Normal mode. Imagine you want to indent a couple of lines:


 # TASKS 

 * task1
 * task2

If you want to indent the tasks, you select the first line with V and hit >. Then on the next line you just hit . in Normal mode. Of course, you could have done 2>, but when you have many lines that could be tricky. Of course, if you use relative line number, it’s an easy task.

The Visual mode is usually how other editors work. In my opinion, using it appropriately with the Normal mode is the best way.

Visual block

Imagine you have a formatted file like this:


 Country Prefix
 France +33
 Serbia +381
 USA +1

But, you want to something like this:


 Country | Prefix
 ---------------------
 France | +33
 Serbia | +381
 USA | +1

You’ll use those keystrokes:

Position your cursor in front of the Prefix word.
Ctrl+v select the 4 lines
I type a couple of spaces
Esc to apply to the selected lines
gv to reselect the last visual selection
r| replace each character with the pipe character
yyp to copy the line
Vr- replace all characters of the line with a dash

Create a numbered list quickly

Imagine you want to create a numbered list of 15 tasks. You can do it quickly with this sequence of keystrokes:

i 1.
Esc
yy14pp
14V
g<Ctr-a>

The first line just create the first task 1.. Then, we go back to Normal mode, we copy that line 14 times with yy14pp, then we select them with 14V, and we increment each one with g<Ctrl-a></Ctrl-a>.

You’ll end with this:


 1.
 2.
 3.
 4.
 5.
 6.
 7.
 8.
 9.
 10.
 11.
 12.
 13.
 14.
 15.

Easy !

That’s all for this week.

Post 99/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Paris, I will not miss you

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 23:42:18 +0000

This winter, I went back to Paris for Christmas. We spent a great time with our families, and friends. But, except those moments, we made the right choice to move abroad. Our life is way better.

Paris is great… without the Parisians. I almost forgot how poorly educated people are in the capital. Few people thank you when you hold the door. They try to pass you in the lines without any respect. In the bus, or the metro, they push you without apologizing. Those behaviours drive me crazy. That must be the reason why Japanese have the Paris syndrome when they visit the city.

I’m glad we don’t live there anymore.

In my youth, I saw insane things:

Various violent fights, even sometimes had to defend myself.
Families destroyed by drugs.
Kids slapped in the face for their shoes, or their Starter jackets when it was cool to have one.
Girls got always annoyed, and it’s still the case.
Etc…

You don’t want to raise your kids in that kind of city.

Paris was different when I was a kid. We had many friends, and we were from everywhere. Italy, Yugoslavia, Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, we didn’t give a shit about our origins. We used to make fun of each other. We joked about everything. Every day, we were on the playground playing basket-ball, football, or boxing. We were going out.

We didn’t have social networks, and kids weren’t “connected”, alone, in their room. Actually, that wasn’t my case. I spent many nights on IRC, or the Internet, waiting for Altavista pages to show up with a poor 33.6 kbit/s connection. But, even with the Internet emergence, I was out whenever I could.

Our parents didn’t overprotect us, they trusted us. Many of us won’t act the same way with our kids. Is it due to the fact that horrible news are everywhere?

I wrote about Macron, and he continues to lie to people. His arrogance and behaviour during a controversy World Cup was disgusting. Like the government he chose.

One man was a visionary, though.

"Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult…."

1984 - George Orwell.

Governments divide and conquer between the upper and lower class. Rich are getting richer, and poor people are poorer. What his government did during the last five years, funnily, resonates with Nemik’s manifesto.

Still, Paris can be fun when you don’t have a family to raise. I had a cheeky and deliciously indecent nightlife. I’ve met actors, singers, comedians, writers, and even porn stars. We had great experiences, we laughed a lot, and, maybe, drank too much 😅. From this, I kept friends I can count on five fingers.

Being a father, you desire another life for your kids.

It was great while it lasted, but, Paris, I will not miss you.

Post 98/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Frida Kahlo Moleskine

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 21:57:09 +0000

New year, new logbook.

For the past three years, I wrote details of my days in a Moleskine daily planner. A friend’s father passed away, and left behind him around 20 years of notebooks. He wrote every single day details of their life. Even if it’s not him who inspired me to start this, I love the idea to bequeath them to my kids.

It’s not a proper diary, it’s a way to list things I’ve done, persons I met, where I’ve been. It helps me to review my year, and to create my top 50. I do it every evening or morning, and since I have only one page to write, it’s a quick daily task.

This year, it’s my 4th planner.

The first one was an 18 months planner. It was blue. The next two were black. This year, I stumbled upon that Frida Kahlo edition.

Here’s how it looks like:

Having some colour in your life can’t be bad, right?

Post 97/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My top 50 of 2022

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 23:50:45 +0000

It’s the usual time of the year when I review my top 50 of the past year. Not sure if I will continue, though. Maybe, I’ll change it to something like the “40 questions to ask yourself every year” made by Stephan Ango.

The beach in January.
Great people, I’ve met this year.
Witnessed Jokic being two times in a row the NBA MVP.
After school ice creams with kids.
Seeing people leaving Twitter for the Fediverse.
Improving my Zettelkasten notes system.
Many drawings with my kid.
Time spent on Tryhackme.com.
I enjoyed “The Bureau” that I postponed watching for years.
I made my first Tiramisu, and everyone loved it.
Lamy Pen for my Remarkable2.
Friends got babies around us.
Third year of bullet journaling.
Boxing twice a week at least.
Two great books: How to take smart notes, and Building a Second Brain
XMas time with family.
Vim Weekly tips are back, and I started to write a “CLI of the week” series.
Great moments with friends in Paris.
My second kid first steps, and words.
Teached my kid to count, and basic sentences in Serbian.
PSG vs Benfica, I got invited by a friend from the “300”, a PSG fans group.
Family who came to visit us.
A show in Paris: “Les hypnotiseurs”.
Discovered old pics when I was a kid at a friend’s place.
Candlelight, Hip-Hop on a piano.
The end of the year school parties of my kids.
The NBA Finals between Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics.
My new K3 Keychron mechanical keyboard.
“La nouvelle guerre des étoiles”, a book about how we note everything around us.
COVID restrictions are gone.
Bas Rutten’s MMA workout routine.
Discovered Sintra’s beautiful landscapes.
Antique Museum: “Chess and board games through the centuries”.
Left a toxic job, with a toxic manager.
Played basket-ball for the first time since 2020. It was great.
Benfica Stadium visit.
Minions: The rise of Gru - my kids loved it.
Installed Pop!_OS on the laptop I gave to my kid.
The stickers choice for that laptop, and the moment we had together.
A 10 minutes plank.
Convinced more people this year to install Signal, and to test the Fediverse.
Padel, the racket sport that mixes tennis and squash.
The sunset at the beach… Always a pleasure.
Learned to clean my XPro cameras sensors.
Andor and Tulsa King. Two TV shows, I enjoyed.
My new job.
Log book for 3 years now.
Poker games with old and new friends.
Read more books than last year.
Many friends came to visit us.

Post 96/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Happy New Year

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 23:32:44 +0000

And best wishes for 2023! Hopefully, Twitter, and other centralized platforms will die 😅

December 2022

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

First thing: Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2023!

This month was a looong month, especially due to the fact that I spend two weeks with the kids 😅

Thanks to Chris Aldrich, I discovered a new podcast, Zettelcast by Camden Bucey about Zettelkasten.

Podcasts

Zettelcast

A podcast about zettelkasten. I don’t know if it will get more interesting through the coming weeks. So far, it was … alright.

Charles Williams on Dune
Family heritage, legacy, and the places where we live
Introducing the Zettelcast

Hard fork

Ep. 10: SBF arrested + 2023 predictions + your questions answered.
Ep. 9: Can ChatGPT make this podcast.
Ep. 8: Elon’s Two-Day War with Apple + How to beat an AI Censor + SBF’s bad month.

WE’RE IN

Sean Zadig on the “Paranoids”, Ethical Hacking and crafting a security culture.

Think Fast, Talk Smarter

Added this podcast this month, I’ll see if I keep it or not.

Quick think: Communicating and leading virtually.
Quick think: Use this framework to speak up in virtual meetings.

OSINT with ShadowDragon

S02E01 - What we’ve learned in the last year about Social media, OSINT, and Russia.

Darknet Diaries

Ep. 131: Welcome to Video.
Ep. 130: Jason’s pen test.
Ep. 129: Gollumfun (part 2).

Linux Lads

Live from Ubuntu summit
Matrix or Musk

If Books could kill

I removed this podcast. The despicable way the two hosts of the show were talking about books and their authors made my decision easier.

L’octet vert

S3E01: Thomas Bourgenot sur le budget carbone et la publicité.

Le Code a change (French)

Ethan Zuckerman, l’homme qui regrette d’avoir inventé la pub pop up.

Books

I haven’t read much this month. Still have some books to finish.

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

VPN / Privacy

Ending support for cryptocurrency refunds

Encryption

Charles V secret code cracked

Science

Marie Curie’s personal effects will be radioactive for another 1500 years

Gitea is dead! Welcome Forgejo!

Hello forgejo

Photography

2022 photos of the year – It’s hard to believe some of those pictures were taken this year. 😔

Twitter suspends #Mastodon account, prevents sharing links: Our statement

Projects

Radio.garden - Listen to any radio stations all over the world, but it didn’t work with my Librewolf.
When a Wii meets an Apple M1
Rustviz - Interactively visualizing Ownership and Borrowing in Rust

Movies / TV shows

Archer Season 13 - Only 8 episodes, and not really better than previous ones.
Tulsa King - Stallone as a Mafia Capo who got exiled by his former family to Tulsa. A funny show, and Stallone is great in it.

Sport

UFC 282: globally just boring fights.

I hurt my knee, didn’t do any boxing the last three weeks. And, played Padel once, and I was catastrophic.

Post 95/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #5

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 05:54:00 +0000

One CLI tool many of use on a daily basis is ssh. We use it to connect to servers, raspberries media centers or another computer at home. Many features are not well known. I’ll dig in some of its features.

Some music

Did you know you could do something like this:


 % ssh server 'cat myfile.mp3' | mplayer -

It will stream the mp3 output directly to your local mplayer or mpg123 if you prefer that one.

Editing remote files

If you read this blog, you know I love Vim. We can edit remote files using ssh/scp:


 % vim scp://user@server//home/user/README.md

It will use your user credentials for authentication and the ssh/scp protocol to connect.

SOCK Proxy

You don’t need another tool to create a proxy, ssh offers it by default. You can create a SOCKS 4 or % proxy server with you ssh client.


 # open port 8080 on your local machine as a SOCKS proxy
 % ssh -D 8080 remote_server

All your HTTP traffic can be redirected to go through this ssh tunnel, and out on your remote_server. Then, you only have to configure you browser, or app to use it.

I like some options:


 -C Requests gzip compression of all data
 -N Do not execute a remote command. This is useful for just forwarding ports.

The -C is obvious. The -N is to avoid the connection to the remote_server. And, you can use it like this:


 % ssh -ND 8080 remote_server

I use it that way, so I can use Ctrl+C to kill the proxy quickly. If you have multiple remote connections, you’ll need to find the one used for the proxy because it actually connects to the server.

That’s it for this week!

Post 94/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Social networks

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 05:36:20 +0000

Woke up… It’s 5:45. I could sleep more, but I don’t. So, I checked the NBA, and I don’t know why, but I can still watch games even with my subscription hasn’t been renewed. Of course, it doesn’t work on my Linux laptop, but I have my work MacBook if needed.

While watching the end of the Denver vs Sacramento game, I checked Mastodon. And, apparently Twitter is/was down… And, I’m happy, the new toy of that egocentric moron is not working well anymore.

Did it ever work?

Some people think Musk doesn’t deserve the hatred comments he gets. They say it’s jealousy, and believe the guy is clever. Of course, not one spent time to learn more about him. They rely on reading on centralized platforms. I tried to convince them before, now I ask them to do some research.

While it’s the chaos on the little bird, we see more and more instances popping out. It’s great, because the most famous are getting hammered, making admins life harder. At my work, I promote the Fediverse. Some colleagues even said we should join mastodon.social or any other well known one. Instead, I proposed to set up one. We still have to convince the marketing, HR, and other teams about it. But, it’s still in progress… 🍿

We need more people embracing the Fediverse, but also more instances. I don’t know the numbers, but I guess we don’t have enough.

We don’t need centralized social networks, we need new kind of social networks where we own it. I want a social network with fewer people based on same interests. We would share knowledge, tips or anything related to that community. It would mean multiple accounts, because you don’t want to mix your online profiles. Ruining people timelines with useless things is not a thing we appreciate. Wouldn’t it be great to have lawyers, accountants, or architects instances like the infosec, photography or art ones? Those instances would be smaller, but more valuable.

It’s not difficult to create a social network for cheap. A server in a data center doesn’t cost much. The moderation is something else. But, if that place is a professional one, or one you enjoy, you would moderate it because toxicity is not needed. People would share bills. A full profile description would be mandatory to join the community. The members would govern and administrate their own space as they want. Once again, fewer people, but more valuable content for each member.

Those networks would be like old forums from the beginning of the Internet…

Post 93/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #14

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 23:22:32 +0000

This week, I want to share some keybindings that will hopefully make your life a bit easier. I know some of my former colleagues were grateful with some of them. I hope you’ll find them useful too.

Let’s start!

Ctrl+c

I remapped my Caps Lock key to Control. Since I’m a Dvorak user, my left hand little finger is just above the Caps Lock key.

To exit the Insert mode in Vim, you can, of course, use Esc, but you can also the Ctrl+c combination. It’s easier, and I don’t have to change the position of my hand to switch between modes.

Ctrl+o

The same way, I use from time to time Ctrl+o when I’m in Insert mode to pass a Normal command, and be back typing.

Shift+s

Sometimes when your cursor is on a new line, and you want to start typing at the right indentation, people usually go to Insert mode, press TAB a couple of times, and start typing.

You can avoid this by typing Shift+s. Vim will place your cursor at the right indentation, directly in Insert mode.

zz / zt

Two commands I use frequently are zz and zt. The first one place the current line in the middle of the window, and the second one place it at the top of the screen.

What I usually do when I’m typing, is Ctrl+o zt, and I continue typing without leaving the Insert mode.

That’s some keybindings between many others I use every day. What about you?

Post 92/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the Week #4

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 20:37:58 +0000

If you read my posts, a couple of weeks ago, I got an Apple MacBook Pro. It comes with customized company settings, and apps like VPN or a 3 minutes automatic screen saver for example.

Of course, not being admin on the laptop, I can’t change some settings, like that timing locking the screen. Annoyed to have to type my 15+ characters password every time, I discovered a tool that prevent the screen idleness.

caffeinate is a CLI that does perfectly the job. In my tmux, there is one of my tab dedicated to this tool.

To install it, you can use the package manager homebrew. Then, to prevent the system from sleeping, you just need to type in a terminal:


 % caffeinate -ds

 # or use a timing in seconds
 % caffeinate -t 3600

To stop it, just use a killall caffeinate or Ctrl-C the process.

This tool can’t be used on older MacBook. You need at least a 10.8 also known as Mountain Lion version of OS X.

A Linux version is also available. On Debian, you can install it with apt, and I’m pretty sure you can find it on others distributions.

It’s slightly different from the OS X version, but should work the same way. You can check the man page for any additional information.

Post 91/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Will instances be bought?

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 14:03:11 +0000

The first time I created an account on the Fediverse, it was on Pawoo, but then discovered that it was focused mainly on the Japanese area. Then, I moved my account to the Mastodon.social instance. And, finally, in 2019, I set up my own instance for family and friends.

Not many friends were really interested. The main argument was there wasn’t enough people on that network. Now, with the #TwitterMigration, it’s nice to see more and more people there. Hopefully, I’ll see more of my friend join the Fediverse.

Some people are seeing Mastodon like the Twitter from 2013. Even if it’s friendly, sometimes there are still issues with [dumb, arrogant, mean, add the adjective you want] people. Hopefully, it will stay safe and less toxic than the blue bird.

This morning, a toot about the acquisition of the Pawoo.net Mastodon server landed in my timeline. My first question was “For how much?”, and then “What’s their goal? How will they monetize it?” We don’t know how much they spend to get Pawoo, but I guess they have ideas how to get their money back.

Will other specific communities instances get bought in the future? Will that affect the peaceful timelines we currently have? Will some VC buy communities to spread ads everywhere?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but I hope the Fediverse will stay above centralized platforms with great people like the ones I discovered over the last three years.

Post 90/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim Weekly Tips #13

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 21:58:17 +0000

When I stopped the Vim weekly news, it was the 12th week. That’s why this one is named number 13.

I cheated a bit for this one, because it has been written by www-gem who doesn’t have a blog, but wanted to contribute.

This week we’ll see what are relative and absolute numbers lines, and how we can mix them together.

Let’s start.

While relative numbers are handy, the “hybrid” mode is real power.

The table below comes from the :help number_relativenumber.


 # nonu : Don't print the line number in front of each line
 # nu : Print the line number in front of each line

 # rnu : Show the line number relative to the line with 
 # the cursor in front of each line.

 # nornu: don't show the line number relative to the line 
 # with the cursor in front of each line.

 | nonu / nornu | nu / nornu | nonu / rnu | nu / rnu |
 | -------------- | -------------- | -------------- | ---------- |
 | apple | 1 apple | 2 apple | 2 apple |
 | pear | 2 pear | 1 pear | 1 pear |
 | nobody | 3 nobody | 0 nobody |3 nobody |
 | there | 4 there | 1 there | 1 there |

In this table, your cursor is on the “nobody” line.

Looking at this, you will notice that:

Column 1 gives you no clues about where you are in the file, nor about the lines below and above your cursor.
Column 2 shows the number of each line, which helps you to know where you are in the file.
Column 3 gives you clues about the lines below and above your cursor relatively to your cursor line.
Column 4 gives you clues about the lines below and above your cursor relatively to your cursor line, but also lets you know where you are in the file by using the absolute number for your cursor line. That’s the “hybrid” mode.

This feature has been introduced in vim 7.1

If you think about a real file with dozens of lines, you can imagine how difficult it can be to work on a range of lines if you have to count how far from your cursor line the first/last line you want to select, copy, or delete is. With relative line numbers, you can easily identify this line. Hence, you can for example select, copy, or delete the 10 lines above your cursor line with v10k, y10k, or d10k.

How cool is that?

Additionally, if you have multiple files open, it may be painful to have the “hybrid” mode turned on everywhere. If it’s handy for the file you are editing, you may prefer the use of absolute numbers for the other files. This can be achieved by adding the code below in your ~/.vimrc:


 set number
 augroup numbertoggle
 autocmd!
 autocmd BufEnter,FocusGained,WinEnter * if &nu | set rnu | endif
 autocmd BufLeave,FocusLost,WinLeave * if &nu | set nornu | endif
 augroup end

Post 89/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Your time, their money

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 17:41:08 +0000

Don’t waste your time on centralized platforms because YOUR TIME = THEIR MONEY.

Fediverse

Sun, 18 Dec 2022 08:20:31 +0000

Is there a comparison between Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma available somewhere?

I would love to see the hardware needed/recommended for each one?

Did anyone try to have too small or medium instances on the same server for example?

I love RSS

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 06:51:47 +0000

I still use a RSS reader, a CLI one, Newsboat. No AI there, I see a website, or blog I like, and BAM subscribed.

This week, Musk fucked up again with his new toy! He banned the official Mastodon account, and many journalists that retweeted @elonjet, an account that follows his jet using public information.

Many new users landed on Mastodon, not all of them knowing exactly how it works. Some pissed that “they had to learn how tho AI works there.” 😅

For the newcomers, there is another tip. Did you know that Mastodon support RSS feeds? You can follow people and tags with RSS.

How?

Just add .rss to the URL. For example, my profile is https://lazybear.social/@hyde.

To subscribe to my profile feed, add this in your RSS reader: https://lazybear.social/@hyde.rss

The same way, if you want to follow a specific hashtag, you can do it by using the same technique.

Let’s say you want to follow different hashtags on various instances, just add .rss to:


 https://someinstance.net/tags/infosec.rss
 https://someotherinstance.com/tags/twittermigration.rss

That can be really useful if you don’t want to miss a thing from people living on the other side of the planet.

Give a try to RSS, it’s still a great thing to use.

Post 88/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #3

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 11:15:58 +0000

This week, a little tool that gives details about files. As the man page describes it, cloc is count, or compute differences of, lines of source code and comments.

The installation could be done with your favourite package manager. Then, it’s straightforward:


 % cloc content/posts/cli-of-the-week-2.md
 1 text file.
 1 unique file.
 0 files ignored.

 github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.94 T=0.01 s (196.3 files/s, 14526.7 lines/s)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Language files blank comment code
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Markdown 1 26 0 48
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 % cloc clevo_wmi.c
 1 text file.
 1 unique file.
 0 files ignored.

 github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.94 T=0.02 s (52.4 files/s, 8440.4 lines/s)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Language files blank comment code
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 C 1 24 25 112
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It works on markdown files, but also on any source code files.

You can also use it on tar files:


 # Count the changes in files, code, and comments between Python releases 2.6.6 and 2.7:
 % cloc --diff Python-2.6.6.tar.bz Python-2.7.tar.bz2

Or, you can even see the differences between git commits


 #Count file, code, and comment changes between two git commits:
 % cloc --git --diff b409850824 HEAD

That’s all for this week.

Post 87/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Book notes

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 22:34:17 +0000

Book notes… I wanted to add them to the blog for a while. And, now it’s done… partially. Only one note is available right now.

The idea came after I stumbled upon notes of the book Several Short Sentences About Writing taken by Derek Sivers.

Taking notes continuously when I read has become a habit. Many of them are on my Remarkable. Usually, I read them two weeks after I finish a book, and take some time to consider if it is worth saving to my Zettelkasten system for a future reflection.

The notes are just ideas, facts, or anything I find interesting.

Those notes are not a summary of the book, and if you heard about the book, I suggest you read it, take some notes, and maybe compare them with mine.

Post 86/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim weekly tips resurrection

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 10:34:18 +0000

Vim weekly tip stopped two years ago after 12 weeks. But, since I gathered a couple of notes in my zettelkasten, I thought it could be nice to share them.

The Vim weekly tips are back as short notes. I don’t want to just throw a long, probably, boring, and annoying post for newcomers.

Let’s start!

Marks

Imagine you have a big file, and you want to go to a specific function/part of the file. You could use marks, a local bookmark inside your file.

Here’s how to use it:

Place your cursor to the line/column interested.
Be in Normal mode, not Insert one.
Press m[letter] where [letter] is any letter from a to z.

That creates a local bookmark to that specific line and cursor position. To access later to that line, you can type:


 # to get back at the same cursor position
 `p
 # to get back at the line where you made the mark
 'p

To view all your bookmarks, you can type :marks :


 mark line col file/text
 ' 48 0
 0 1372 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/notes.md
 1 72 53 ~/.cfg/newsboat/urls
 2 1360 0 ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/notes.md
 3 7 13 .git/config

As you can see, there are other marks created by Vim, that stores your previous edits. You can quickly get back to them the same way. But, there is a great feature that Vim has: global marks.

Instead of having local bookmarks, you can create global ones to get back to a specific file.

To create a global bookmark, use m[capital_letter] where [capital_letter] is an uppercase letter.

For example, mG will create a bookmark to your current file, at the cursor position.

The only thing to get you back to this file is to type:


 'G or `G

Post 85/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week #2

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 22:06:45 +0000

Aria2 is a small tool to download files online. It can be compared to wget or curl. I like the fact it can be used to download large files over HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink.


 % aria2c https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/mips64el/iso-cd/debian-11.5.0-mips64el-netinst.iso

Or, with a torrent file:


 % aria2c https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-dvd/debian-11.5.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso.torrent

You can throw a couple of URIs in a text file and give it to aria2c. Each URI needs a TAB as a separator on a single line file:


 % aria2c -I uri.txt -j 5
 # -j 5 indicates the number of parallel connections

And, the file should be like this :

http://server/file.iso http://mirror/file.iso

You can also download a file from one host using multiple connections:


 % aria2c -x2 -k1M "http://host/file.zip"

The -x option specified the number of allowed connections, while the -k option specified the size of chunks.

Download from 2 sources:


 % aria2c http://www.site1.com/f.iso ftp://site2.com/f.iso

Those are just some examples of what you can do with this CLI. If interested, check the project and the huge man page for more information on this tool.

Post 84/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The Fediverse is not Twitter

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 06:37:53 +0000

Things have changed a bit at the headquarters of Twitter, thanks to a stupid egocentric billionaire. People got fired for tweeting, the moderation team on child protection is gone, Trump and other racists are back, and he still wants to charge people $8 for a stupid blue sign. How can you respect a bad boss mocking people going out? He reminds me Staline, who was so paranoid that he cut the heads of good people around him.

My first interaction with Twitter was in 2009, when I opened an account. Last month, I deleted it, because I self-host by Mastodon instance since 2019, and wasn’t tweeting anymore. I kept it only because some friends were there, and I wanted to share toots about privacy and FLOSS projects.

For this, I used a service that send your toot to Twitter. The service is crossposter.masto.donte.com.br, and it worked well. That’s not the case anymore… Twitter allows the service to send only 100 toots every hour for a dedicated API key, when it used to send waaaaay more. Third parties apps will move away from the service at some point.

Some developers already started new Fediverse apps, like Tapbots. Their product, Tweetbot, aimed to Twitter, was a successful app for iOS and OS X users. Now, they focus on a Mastodon app called Ivory.

New users, new developments, new features, that’s great, but will the Fediverse stay peaceful as it is/was. It still has, like Twitter, or any social media, some flaws. People you don’t know who will comment, be harsh with you, or be dumb. But, is that the fault of the social media or people being awful, like in the real life. When that happens, I avoid them. I don’t have time to spend on toxic people. And, I’ll do the same wherever I am. Online or not.

At 20, I was nice with everyone.
At 30, I started to reply to annoying individuals.
At 40, I don’t give a f*ck about your damn opinion.

Anyway, many new users enjoy the quietness of their timeline without any AI, ads or message appearing chronologically. They love the lack of race for followers or likes.

I’ve read some journalists didn’t even understand how to create an account or where to create it. And, we are better without them if resolving that equation is too difficult for a journalist.

People who joined should focus on the content they provide to connect with interesting humans. I had more interactions on the Fediverse than I used to have on the blue bird, and everyone, in general, is nicer than on Musk’s platform.

Hopefully, it will stay that way …

Post 83/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Lord of War

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 22:10:03 +0000

So … the Lord of War is out! Looks like the Russian government made a better deal on that prisoner swap.

Crypto

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 21:24:26 +0000

Crypto means cryptography, not cryptocurrency.

CLI of the week #1

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:42:18 +0000

The first CLI of the week will be about scrot, a small tool to take screenshot. A pretty easy to use tool. I’ll add a small bonus tip for all the photographers who recently landed on Mastodon.

If you want to take a full screenshot of your desktop, you can use:


 % scrot filename.png

But, you can use it to take a specific part of your screen with -s. It lets you select a part of the screen:


 % scrot -s filename.png

On my side, I like to use it with convert from imagemagick to add a white border on every image.


 % scrot -s sshot.png -e "convert -bordercolor white -border 15 sshot.png sshot.png"

But, typing all this could be long, and boring. Why not just use a function to get this thing shorter:


 # add this to your shell .{bash,zsh}rc files
 sshot() {
 scrot -s $1.png -e "convert -bordercolor white -border 15 $1.png $1.png"
 }

Then you can just use it like this:


 % sshot name_of_screenshot

That will generate a name_of_screenshot.png image file in the current directory.

Bonus tip

You can use the convert command to add a border on a directory full of images:


 # zsh 
 % for pic in *; convert -bordercolor white -border 15 $pic $pic

 # bash 
 % for pic in *; do convert -bordercolor white -border 15 $pic $pic ; done

Post 82/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Mastodon and introduction

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:52:34 +0000

On Mastodon, there is the #introduction hashtag to make a quick description about yourself.

With the #TwitterExode it’s weird to see some of them with things like :

I'm a #Google nut -- #Pixel, #PixelWatch, #Nest Hubs, and more. Google's AI powers my day.

Most people, or at least those I follow, don’t like big tech companies, and I hope it will stay that way.

November 2022

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:30:00 +0100

This month, many things happened. Let’s see what I’ve read, watched, listened to, and done in November.

Podcasts

I discovered a new podcast, If books could kill, and Cyber Sector 7, a show about Hacking, Privacy, and OSINT

Hard fork

Ep. 7: FTX’s Unraveling and Elon’s Loyalty Oath.
Ep. 6: A verified mess: Turmoil from Twitter to FTX.
Ep. 5: Life under Musk: Two Twitter employees speak out.

Privacy, Security & OSINT with Michael Bazzell

Ep. 282: Major OSINT updates
Ep. 279: Comms ownership and Open Databases

WE’RE IN

Jack Rhysider on Podcasting, Plot Twists and Infosec burnout

Darknet Diaries

Ep. 128: Gollumfun also known as Brett Johnson, the crimes he did, Shadow Crew and other projects.
Ep. 127: Maddie. An episode about a security researcher working for Google’s project Zero.

Linux Lads

Season 7 Ep. 16: Achtung!

If Books could kill

David Brook’s “Bobos in Paradise”
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”
Freakonomics

The OSINT jobs podcast

Interview with Anne-Lynn Dudenhoefer - What it’s like to work with AI and big data
Interview with Gareth Westwood - What it’s like to work in Business Intelligence

OSINT Origins

Ep. 5: OSINT Jobs vint Lorand Bodo

Cyber Sector 7, a show about Hacking, Privacy, and OSINT

Many answered questions

Le Code a change (French)

“Quand le numérique colonise la ville africaine.” How big tech companies try to transform African cities… And, I hate it.
“Cybele Lesperance, la première pute de Montreal à accepter le Bitcoin” - the first whore of Montreal to accept Bitcoin.

Books

Finally, I finished:

Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss.

And, also:

Building a second brain by Tiago Forte. A book about notes taking. I’ll try to mix this PARA method with Zettelkasten.

I need to finish:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

Life off social media, six months in

Businesses

Layoffstracker, a website that tracks layoffs in big companies.

Photography

Sin Salida by Tariq Zaidi - A good Xmas gift.
Leica and auctions

Societies

Maybe, Robocop wasn’t only a movie… And, it’s scary.

Projects

Guide to using Yubikey for SSH and GPG

Movies / TV shows

Barry, the TV Show where a pro killer wants to become a comedian. It’s an okay show that I watched mainly doing something else. But, I managed to see the first two seasons.
Andor is the latest Star Wars TV show, and my favourite one. I found there are fewer issues compared to Obiwan Kenobi or Boba Fett.
Black Adam, a new superhero movie. Definitely not the best one, but a good enough action movie.

Sport

I was pissed by the NBA, I didn’t renew my subscription, but by some magic I’m not aware of, I still have access to all the games. So, I spent time watching Denver and Golden State’s games.

The UFC 281 was on my list too. And, some great fights, with a third lost of Adesanya against Pereira.

On my side, I kept playing Padel at least once a week. Really a funny game. I did some boxing too, at least twice a week.

Post 81/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

CLI of the week

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 23:07:57 +0000

The terminal is the daily drug I abuse. On a daily basis, I’m probably 85% of my time in a terminal with tmux. Many users don’t get why I love it so much. “There are better GUI tools”, they, often, argue. Some of them never tried to learn Vim, the shell and its powers, and still they complain when they have to use those tools.

One of my friend, a data scientist also known as a statistician, works on Windows. He creates a ridiculous number of folders every day to store his datasets … Manually. 😅

I told him the story of a person who used to type a signature on each of his emails. His nephew seeing that said:

You know you can add a signature that will be added automatically at the end of each of your email?
It takes only two seconds.
How many mails do you write by day?
Hmmm… Maybe 30.
So, you spend 6 hours per year typing your signature…
Ok, I’ll learn how to do it.

How spending 5 minutes to learn something can save you hours of your time.

That didn’t work with my friend, though. He still argues that he has too many things to do, and he continues to create his folders by right-clicking and creating directories by hand.

CLI tools help us to do things quickly.

That’s why I’ll write every Friday about one of them.

And, I hope my friend will read this at some point…. Even if he’s über busy 😅.

Post 80/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Andor

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 22:20:20 +0000

Andor, the latest Star Wars TV show, is probably the best compared to Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Even if I liked the latter, some scenes were really badly filmed.

I loved, somehow, the Jedi-less in this one. It’s still Star Wars, but without the laser sabers, and other magic tricks. The Empire is there, the spaceships, the troopers, and the Rebellion. It makes the movie more human… In some way.

I’ve read people found the jail scenes boring, I found them interesting. They raised the question, when will we see that kind of prisons in our future? A place where you can’t fight your gaolers, and where you’ll be jailed for life even if you thought you’re going to be freed. Something like Severance, where they will put a chip in your brain, and reprogram you to think that you have still some shifts to do before seeing the outside world. An infinite loop …

“Modern” societies, sold to us, are becoming scary dystopias. Every year that pass by makes 1984 more real.

Everything was not extraordinary in that new TV show, like the Ferrix planet/city, some parts of that town could have been done better in my humble opinion. But, still, I enjoyed it more than the recent ones Disney released.

What are your opinions?

Post 79/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A beautiful answer

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 09:25:09 +0000

To a job interview question you don’t know the answer:

"I can Google it for you"

Anne-Lynn Dudenhoefer in The OSINT Jobs Podcast

Leica and auctions

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 16:23:01 +0000

Leica’s cameras are really expensive in general. But, when there is an auction of those toys, price can skyrocket 😱😱😱

TIL - Notebook

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 22:49:23 +0000

Today I learnt while reading Building a second Brain by Tiago Forte, the Chinese word, biji, and the Japanese, zuihitsu, both meaning notebooks.

People around the world used notebooks to keep private notes, anecdotes, quotations, random musings, or anything that was worth for them to note down.

Bookmarks and Favourites

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 11:09:38 +0000

Just upgraded to 4.0.2, and it probably existed before, but somehow I didn’t think about it. What’s the difference between Mastodon’s favourites and bookmarks. Because it looks quite the same to me…

Mastodon update and some CSS

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 09:45:25 +0000

Many were disappointed by the new Publish button instead of the old Toot one.

Thanks to Matt, the founder of Write.as, I was able to change it to Tooooot!.

It’s just a matter of a bit of CSS to customise your Mastodon instance. To add your CSS, just go to: Administration --> Server settings --> Appareance. That’s for the v4.0.2 of Mastodon. The older versions have something similar.

Then you can add this:


 .compose-form__publish-button-wrapper button {
 text-indent: -9999px;
 line-height: 0; /* Collapse the original line */
 }

 .compose-form__publish-button-wrapper button:after {
 content:'Tooooot!';
 text-indent: 0;
 display: block;
 line-height: initial; /* New content takes up original line height */
 }

That’s all. And, thanks again to Matt.

Post 78/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Federation relays

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 17:01:44 +0000

Today I learnt about Federation relays. I’m not on any big instance on the Fediverse. I would recommend anyone who can to have his own instance to avoid to DDOS the big instances with the Twitter migration.

Reading some toots, I stumbled upon Greg’s toot about how hashtags following work. I just discovered the Federation relays.

You can find those settings in


 Settings --> Administration --> Relays

The description is:

A federation relay is an intermediary server that exchanges large volumes of public posts between servers that subscribe and publish to it. It can help small and medium servers discover content from the fediverse, which would otherwise require local users manually following other people on remote servers.

I wasn’t aware of this thing, and I’m wondering if that will increase the disk usage in some way. The media are already eating a large portion of the server’s disk. By the way, if you have any tips on how to clean them, leave a comment.

Which relay do you use?

Post 77/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Origami and kids

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:48:45 +0000

Kids love origamis, and I was wondering if you have any good books, articles, videos that young kids could follow to make some of them?

Cc: @joel@fosstodon.org

Deleting twitter

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 20:46:00 +0000

After 13 years on Twitter, I’m done. The last things I’ve read, heard about Musk make me sick. Since he bought Twitter, employees are under a high level of useless stress. Horst gave many reasons why Twitter is a mess right now, and why he’s leaving the platform.

This week, journalists from Wired landed on Mastodon. But, not only, Elvira joined, some photographers, Gregory Mignard and Yannick Schutz, and many more. Apparently, there are over one million daily active users right now.

All those people, and communities, moving to the Fediverse convinced me that the right choice is to leave Twitter. Even if it was in a corner of my head for months, I never crossed the line. I kept it because I have a few friends there, and to tweet when companies don’t reply to your support requests.

Will some companies switch to Mastodon? Or, even better, install their own instances for their customers, but also employees.

From 2019, I used exclusively the decentralised social network, and only on my laptop. To avoid being glued to my phone, I removed many apps. Fedilab was one of them.

Since my toots are cross posted, automatically sent from Mastodon to Twitter, I hoped to convince people on the blue bird to move to the Fediverse. I’m not 100% sure it worked 😅.

There is really no reason to keep that account anymore. I subscribed to RSS feeds when available, and I’m using Birdlive to follow some Twitter accounts on Mastodon.

Hopefully, the Fediverse will continue to be a good place to hang around in a couple of years…

Post 76/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2022/11/12/leaving-twitter/

Wired on Mastodon

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 14:17:50 +0000

Seeing people from Wired on Mastodon made my day!

Welcome to Andrew Couts, @couts@mastodon.social, and Matt Burgess, @mattburgess@infosec.exchange.

Signal ... seriously?

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 22:53:39 +0000

A friend asked me when I’ll quit Signal. My first reaction was: “Why? I won’t…”. He replied that stories are there now. I updated the app, and, effectively, they were there. And, the only words that came to my mind were What the Fuck?!.

I didn’t enjoy when crypto wallets arrived in the app. Then I saw some Google captchas. Now, stories… Really?!

Why the hell would I want stories in a messaging app? Why did they have to be so lame, and copy useless social networks features.

The good part is that they can be disabled.

Using the KISS principle, and doing simply a messaging app would have been a better idea IMHO.

Maybe Molly.im, the Signal fork, will not add that crap…

Post 75/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

October 2022

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 00:30:00 +0100

Like every month, the things I’ve read, watched, listened to, and done in October.

I’ll start with this video made by the Dubai authorities and the Emirates NBD bank that I found brilliant. #shaggy

Podcasts

I discovered a new podcast, Hard fork, with many new tech subjects. I recommend it.

Hard fork

Ep. 4: Elon Musk owns Twitter.
Ep. 3: Generative AI is here. Who should control it.
Ep. 2: Legs are coming, $36 burritos, and Shocking AI
Ep. 1: Elon’s hidden motives, and a meetup in the Metaverse

Privacy, Security & OSINT with Michael Bazzell

Ep. 278: Breach assumptions offert confort

Darknet Diaries

Ep. 126: REvil
Ep. 125: Jeremiah

Layer 8

I had four episodes left to be up-to-date with this podcast. It’s now done!

Ep. 81: Andrew Lemon - Just walk right in! A not so social pentester/social engineer.
Ep. 80: Rosa Rowles - Goin’ Vishing!
Ep. 79: Jack Rhysider - Darknet Diaries. He shares his background experience and how he went from being a network engineer to a full time podcaster.
Ep. 78: Christine Talley - Contact Exploitation.

The OSINT jobs podcast

Interview with Tracy Z. Maleeff (@InfosecSherpa) - Open Source Intelligence in Information Security
Interview with Skip Schiphorst - The importance of language skills in OSINT
Interview with Jovan Radakovic - What it’s like to work in Business Intelligence

OSINT Origins

Ep. 2: Interview of Peter Kleissner, the founder of IntelligenceX
Ep. 1: Interview of Jean-Marc Manach

Le Code a change (French)

Smartphones: éloge de la reparation

Books

I haven’t read much this month. Visits, new job, and life in general took all my free time.

I need to finish:

Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it (64% read) by Chris Voss.
Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

Tools

Shell scripts best practices

Photography

Leica released a new MP-6, and here’s JCH’s thoughts about it.

Talking to strangers with Fujifilm

Projects

httpx - httpx is a fast and multipurpose HTTP toolkit that allows running multiple probes

Nerdfonts - Iconic font aggregator, collection, and patcher. Some nice fonts patched with over 3600 icons from popular sets.

VHS - write terminal GIFs. I’m not sure that I will ever use it, but found it interesting.

Movies / TV shows

I didn’t watch a single movie this month, but I watched Andor, which is my favorite of the latest Star Wars show, and Animal Kingdom, 6th and last season.

The finale episode was great, and globally I enjoyed the show. I’ll try to watch the movie from 2010 based on the same story, and with the same name.

Sport

This month, I watched the UFC 280, with a surprising loss of Oliveira. Sean O’Malley won versus Petr Yan, a controversial fight.

The NBA pissed me off with their move with Microsoft. But, I was still able to watch a couple of games on my Android TV… until the end of my subscription.

Post 74/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Employees at Twitter

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 15:38:17 +0000

I’ve been away from Mastodon for the last couple of days, and just heard yesterday the big news of the week.

It finally happened, Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars. I thought it would be a never lasting story, but it’s now a real thing.

I wonder how the employees feel there. Are they removing all their Slack messages where they talk badly of him? Do they post welcoming messages on the #general channel? Are they going to leave the company knowing that morons like Trump & co will be back soon on the platform?

Musk fired as soon as he bought the company, the CEO Parag Agrawal, who will get $40M for less than a year in the company 🤦. He fired a couple of other top executives showing that he want to change things quickly there. If I was an employee, I would probably be worried, and would probably leave the company.

Tesla engineers will come soon to check Twitter’s code. I’m wondering what those guys, doing cars engineering, will have to say to people about a social media best coding practices 😂.

With all that mess, how many people will come to Mastodon?

Post 73/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

NBA and Microsoft gave a finger to Linux users

Sat, 22 Oct 2022 06:57:50 +0100

The NBA is back. I forgot to cancel the NBA League pass I subscribed just for the Play-offs two years ago, and the NBA charged me twice. And, as a big fan of the orange ball, it was alright, even if it was a bit expensive.

My subscription is valid until the end of this month, and I wanted to watch the first games of the season. I checked the NBA app on my phone, but had to update it.

What surprised me is that logo on the front page: Microsoft !

Then, tried to log in using the email I set up with Firefox Relay, and I got an error saying that’s an invalid email because it’s something like: otnhntaoehk@relay.firefox.com. Apparently, they think it’s not a real email. That already started to annoy me.

Then, I tried to log in on Librewolf. It worked, I was happy to watch the opener games. But, then:

I thought it was Librewolf because by default DRM are disabled. Then, I tried Chromium, and Firefox. Same thing!

This morning, I checked online and found that answer from the NBA support on Reddit. They actually replied saying :

The NBA has never supported Linux. At times you may have had access in the past but it's not a OS we support, unfortunately.

NBA League Pass is available to stream through your computer (Windows PC or Mac) at NBA.com and with the use of the NBA application on the following devices. Mobile and Tablets:

iPhone (OS 14+) iPad (OS 14+) Android (OS 7.0+) Android Tablet (OS 7.0+) Chromecast (Gen 3+)

Connected Devices:

Roku (select countries) Apple TV (OS 14+) Android TV Amazon Fire TV and Fire Stick (OS version 5.x or 6.x and on Amazon Fire Stick devices Gen 3+ & select countries) Hisense (select countries) Comcast Xfinity Flex (select countries)

Gaming Consoles:

PlayStation 5 (select countries) Xbox One, Xbox Series X (select countries)

Virtual Reality:

Oculus (US only)

So, I gave a try to the mobile app again. This time, I could log in. They probably fixed the Firefox Relay issue. But, then the app kept closing.

Last thing, I tried: Librewolf on my work laptop, the MacBook Pro M1. Same thing! And, finally, I tried Safari. And, of course, it worked.

The subscription was cheaper this year, and I was going to pay for this season. But, seeing the NBA, and Microsoft gave a big middle finger to Linux users, I will pass my way.

Post 72/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Tools on OSX

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 11:39:40 +0100

Homebrew helps to find many missing packages in the Apple ecosystem. Last time I used it, it was years ago.

Trying to use my dotfiles on OSX, I had many small issues. Which ones? Many options were missing, like xargs -i, but that’s an unknown option on OS X that use BSD xargs. The arguments/options I use are based on the GNU alternatives.

The good news is that brew has all the packages I needed to make that transition easier to me.

And, I found:

Package name	Purpose
gnu-sed	sed
gnu-tar	tar
gawk	awk
gnu-getopt	getopt
findutils	for find, locate, updatedb and xargs
coreutils	too many tools to be listed here

All the GNU versions will be installed with a g prefix. Brew will show you what directory to add to your $PATH to be able to use them without it:


 ==> Caveats
 All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

 If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
 can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

 PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

That’s an other day in my OSX journey.

Post 71/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

New job, new laptop

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 23:42:49 +0100

Last week, I started a new job. A new position, a new laptop. I got surprised with a package containing a shiny new MacBook Pro M1 Max with 32Gb of RAM, and a 1Tb SSD disk.

My last Apple product was a 2010 iMac that left my house last year. I was using it exclusively for photography. And, now I’m back with an Apple product 🤦

It looks like a great laptop, I was able to use the laptop for over 24 hours on a full battery. It’s fast, the build quality is great, a bit heavy though, but that’s what comes with a 16" screen computer.

I regret I didn’t get an email from HR asking me if I really needed that 24" external screen, two keyboards with one including the “Touch ID”, that I won’t use anyway, and an external trackpad (I still don’t know what to do with it).

Still, I would have loved to get a Linux laptop from Tuxedo or System 76.

Why? Because I love tiling window managers. I’ve been using awesomewm for over a decade, and getting back to use OS X is difficult when you have your habits.

I managed to install all my dotfiles easily, even if my mutt isn’t working properly yet.

But, everything else works pretty well: vim, zsh, fzf, tmux, dracula themes, etc… About fzf, I was shocked to see over 50k various Apple files doing a Ctrl+t.

The only thing left to customize would be the window management. I hate using the mouse just to move my windows around.

Digging online, I found a great article by Christian Bargmann on how to customize your OS X to look like i3.
I don’t know why I never made the switch to that window manager.
Probably too lazy to learn new shortcuts when my awesome configuration was good enough to me.

The next step this week will be to install Yabai and skhd to feel “at home”.

Post 70/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

September 2022

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:30:00 +0100

Like every month, the things I’ve read, watched, listened to, and done in August.

Many hours spent on Tryhackme, a website to learn about security, tools, and techniques.

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries

Ep. 122: Lisa - Social networks are evil.
Ep. 123: Newswires - Hacking, insiders, trading, and a lot of money.
Ep. 124: Synthetic remittance - Episode about Evaldas Rimasauskas who make a scam to get paid by many big tech companies.

Layer 8

Ep. 90: The next generation of phishing attack vectors
Ep. 91; Sylvain Hajri - What can you do with an email address?
Ep. 92: Dalin McClellan - SE’d into a highly secure building… How?!?
Ep. 93: The Gumshoo - Tales of a PI in OSINT
Ep. 94: Alan Neilan - The phishing kit hunter
Ep. 95: Intel Inquirer - Using dating apps and exercise apps from an OSINT perspective
Ep. 96: Dr Abbie Maroño - The Science of social engineering. The TV show “Lie to me” got it completely wrong.
Ep. 97: Charles Shirer - BSDBandit talks OSINT. A guy with a lot of energy and happiness. He explains how he got into OSINT, and gives suggestions and advices.

Really interesting talks this month, leading to this OSINT talk about Strava, the fitness app.

We had a PI point of view about OSINT, and how sometimes you can’t get everything online, and need to get it IRL.

New tools discovered like the one provided by Sylvain Hajri, Epios, that helps to find information on an email.

Alan Neilan finds crap on the internet, and shares it on his blog.

Dalin McClellan, a pentester, that share his experience on how to get in buildings.

Books

Finished:

Lost in Work, Escaping Capitalism by Amelia Horgan.
Cybersecurity Career Masterplan

I’ve continued to read Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it (64% read) by Chris Voss.

I haven’t really touched those books this month:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

OSINT

You can run, but you can’t hide

AI and art

I discovered, thanks to Valere, Stable-diffusion this month.

First reaction: WOW!

Then, all the bad things you can do with that kind of tools went through my head.
Why would someone do something harmful? Because human beings are rotten. 🤷

Dating & Ketchup

Loved this short story by Derek Silvers.

DeFi and crypto

The consequences of silence. I still don’t get people who gamble money they can’t afford to lose. But, as always, human beings are so greedy.

Projects

Hugging Face - “The AI community building the future” - A machine learning heaven for those who love to play with datasets and other things in that field.
GoToSocial, a new way to get into the fediverse.

Movies

I watched a few movies about killers/assassins this month:

Memory - Liam Neeson again in a role intertwined between murders and assassins. Definitely not his best movie, but not the worst neither. Funny anecdote, I had two scenarios for two different roles in the movie Taken, but never went to that audition.
John Wick 1, 2, and 3. The first one, I was “Hmm okay… maybe the 2nd one will be better”. Not the case, even the last one, I still don’t know why I watched them. I can’t understand why those movies got so much traction.
One of the latest movie with Matt Damon, Stillwater. A thriller about a father doing the maximum to prove the innocence of his estranged daughter.
Top Gun Maverick, it reminded me of an aging Rocky that doesn’t want to quit. The movie was entertaining with great images.

Sport

I continue boxing every week, with a record of ten minutes plank.

Except that, I tried a new sport this month: the padel.

I played it four times, and found it really fun. It’s a mix between squash and tennis, with a different type of racket, same balls size as the one in tennis, but with little less pressure.

You want to see how it looks like, check this video:

Sport on TV this month summarizes to:

UFC Fight Night: Gane vs Tuivasa. First UFC event in France, with 3 French fighters. The main event was a good fight.
UFC 279: Nate Diaz vs Tony Ferguson. Even with a win, Diaz should retire.
EuroBasket, and a huge disappointment for the Serbian team. As my 6 years kid said: “Everyone encouraged them too much that they lost their balance”

Post 69/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Dvorak keycaps

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 15:41:43 +0100

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Keychron K2 mechanical keyboard. And, so far, I love it. But, there is something that really bothers me, is the fact that I can’t find Dvorak keycaps for those MX models.

After hours spent online looking for the perfect set, so far the only ones I found are colourful, but not one propose Dvorak.

I tried to move them around, but since that type of keyboard has 4 different shapes for each row, the typing experience was awkward. But, some letters on the Dvorak layout could be switched if they were on the same row.

So, my keyboard looks like this now 😅.

Since I don’t really need to watch the keyboard when I type, I will probably go for blank ones… I just need a place to buy them.

Post 68/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Romance and crypto

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 16:11:49 +0100

Love! Everyone is chasing it. Being one with the perfect soulmate.

Everybody is looking for that.

Ok, not every one of my friends, which goal is to get laid. But, I would rather say, out of the blue, that 80% of people are looking for that perfect match with whom you could found a family.

Recently, I wrote about dating, and how it could go completely go rogue.

This afternoon, trying to catch up with all the RSS feeds I have, I stumbled upon this article about a guy who got drugged by a woman. The all project was to discover and steal everything he had in his crypto vault.

Once again, be careful if you use any dating apps. Don’t say online anything about your cryptocurrencies funds that could potentially make you shine on the Dark Web.

Crypto and Romance don’t mix like two dicks…

Post 67/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Tracking expenses

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 12:28:08 +0100

Do you use/know any good CLI tool to track expenses?

One maybe that can generate great reports in PNG or HTML?

Candlelight and Facebook

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 23:16:36 +0100

Three months ago, Ms Hyde and I, we went to a particular Hip Hop concert. An Italian artist played famous hits on a piano. I can’t remember his name. I wrote it down somewhere, but lost the paper.

That show called The Candlelight experience has been in over 90 countries, and over 11,000 events.

We enjoyed it, even if we didn’t recognize all the songs he interpreted. Two Instagram girls were just next to us, they were on their phone during all the show. They raised their head when it was possible to take pictures. And, they got back in their bubble again. Pictures were allowed during one song only.

After the show, Ms Hyde said she had an issue with her Facebook account. I tried to get her off that platform, haven’t succeeded … Yet. She couldn’t log in anymore. She tried to renew her password with no luck. Her first reaction was to ask if any weird post appeared on her timeline. Nope.

Next morning, she tried to contact the support. They asked her to try different things. It didn’t work. After unknown number of emails, they decided to remove her account without any reason. She asked many times what she has done wrong. They said they don’t have to give us a reason.

Her account was used to join some expat groups since we moved abroad. She didn’t post anything on her profile, and had some old friends from the States hanging out there. She decided to create a new account, but couldn’t use the name she used to have. She found out many accounts with a similar name. Reporting them was her first action. Facebook gave us a middle finger, and said they won’t remove those obvious fake accounts.

Pissed, she was. Data of that account were gone… Of course, only for us. I doubt that Facebook doesn’t keep all that data somewhere. I suggested her to create a socket puppet to get the information she needed from those groups. About her friends, drag them to use Signal instead… And, she actually did what I said to her. Quickly, she got annoyed with suggestions about brands, people or sports, she didn’t care about. We are on the right path to get her to quit, or at least use less that social network.

Once again, having all your contacts on a centralized platform that don’t give a shit about you should be a red flag. And, you should leave it.

Anyway, deep down, I laughed at her misadventure, but don’t tell her that 😅

Post 66/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Do people still go to the library?

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 11:43:57 +0100

That’s a question we had with a friend recently.

I can’t remember the last time I visited one.

With the internet, are those places dying slowly?

TIL - Joe Rogan's contract

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 11:14:19 +0100

Today I Learnt reading Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow that Joe Rogan signed a contract of $100M with Spotify to have his podcast exclusively on their platform.

I know Joe Rogan because he interviews quickly UFC fighters after their fight, and I knew he had a podcast, but that’s all. I’m shocked to learn about that amount 😳😳😳

Dating and stalkers

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 08:26:19 +0100

Chatting with some friends recently, we found people courageous to go on a date with someone met on an app.
Of course, you could, eventually, find your soulmate on those platforms.
But, you could find also some weirdos.

People are crazy

Horrible stories can be heard from time to time. One of them was about a guy who pierced condoms to spread diseases in Sweden a couple of years ago. Or, someone who came back with a kid two years after a one-night stand. The last august, a woman got tracked down in her hotel lobby. She’s an influencer. Another reason to get rid of your social networks. I’m sure you have some weird tales too.

How could you avoid being the next main character in those stories ?

Background check

One of the first thing to do is to check online. I was listening to an OSINT talk about Strava, the fitness app. One of the two researchers encourages everyone to make a profile background check on any eventual date. That’s what she did with her boyfriend.

Wouldn’t it be useful to know something about your future date before entering the lion’s den?

The tools

Many OSINT tools are available:

WhatsMyName is a webapp providing information about a nickname and its social networks. It could be interesting to see the kind of posts, your future date does.
This OSINT repository where I collect all kind of tools.
LinkedIn could also help you to see if that person is not lying about his job.
A reverse image search to be sure it’s not the picture of someone else. TinyEye or something similar like Yandex, but the latter doesn’t work well anymore.
Search engines in general will provide you many things if you know what you’re looking for.

The information gathered could help you to make a profile about your next date. You’ll get to know a bit more about his habits, his political opinions, or anything he forgot to mention on his Tinder description.

First date

You did your homework, and you decided to meet the person. You should still be aware, and not give away too much information on your first date. Don’t add him/her on all your social networks, it would be preferable to wait a bit. It could turn out, you are not compatible, the person is a freak, or someone who doesn’t like ketchup. But, it’s already too late to go back. That person could track you down to your favourite restaurant because of that Instagram post.

Install AirGuard on Android to avoid being followed using Apple air tag. I’m sure Apple provides something similar.

And, of course, be careful about your drinks.

Yesterday, a person was talking about a guy who met a couple in a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. They shared drinks, they laughed together, and they drugged him. He was lucky to lose only his shoes, shirt, and wallet. And, that’s not happening only in poor countries. A friend of mine got robbed in Paris after someone put something in his glass.

Conclusion

I’ve never used dating apps, I always preferred to meet people in real life. But, I see why people like it. More choices, easier, and quicker.

All that technology is great, but it brings non-existent issues in the past. I don’t talk about stalkers, but the geolocation, the data provided that could lead someone to hurt you eventually.

In all cases, be careful out there, the world can be scary.

Post 65/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Privacy and iPhone

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 08:23:23 +0200

The ad below made by Apple is really well done, and it describes exactly the issues about our data and privacy.

But, still, I won’t buy Apple products anymore. I’ve been there in the past, it will never happen again. Even if they continue to promote privacy, having every detail about me on their servers doesn’t look right.

My plan is to buy an old Google phone to install GrapheneOS, “the most secure and private mobile OS” on the market. Even if you have to use an evil phone 🤦, it looks like a better alternative.

Currently, I’m still using my 2019 OnePlus 7 Pro model with LineageOS.

Since it still works perfectly, there is no need to change it just because a new one is out. Let’s try to keep it a couple of years more. 😉

Post 64/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The first Canon camera

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 04:10:23 +0100

I discovered the first Canon camera, a 35mm rangefinder from 1935, used to have a Nikkor lens!

Back then, Canon’s name was Hansa Canon, like Nikon was Nippon Kogaku.

Check Japanese Camera Hunter, and see how Bellamy was stressed holding a piece of history, that doesn’t even work 😅.

Debian is Linux minus ...

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 11:41:30 +0100

Loved what Klaus wrote about Debian:

Debian is Linux minus the bullshit

Klaus Zimmermann

August 2022

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:30:00 +0100

Like every month, the things I’ve read, watched, and listened to in August.

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries

Ep. 121: Ed, stories from Ed Skoudis, a pentester.
Presenting: Click Here “Lapsus$”

Layer 8

Ep. 86: Griffin Glynn, the Hatless1der!
Ep. 87: Steven Harris aka NixIntel

Books

This month I finished only one book, mainly because we had so many friends coming to visit us.

Finished:

The productive programmer by Neal Ford.

I’ve continued to read:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 31% read
Never split the difference negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss - 21% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read
Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I’ve started also:

Cybersecurity Career Masterplan 25% read
Lost in Work Escaping Capitalism - 65% read

Articles / Videos

Skateboarding and photography

Ray Barbee: A Common Thread
Joe Brook: Skateboarding is our religion
Randezwest - A photographer from New-Jersey.

Surveillance capitalism

Surveillance Capitalism I: How digital platforms watch, track & control you

Zettelkasten

Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten
Eminem uses a ‘stacking ammo’ which looks like Zettelkasten, but with less organization.

Jobs

Senior developers create more senior developers

Well-being

For maximum recharge, take a Wednesday off It has always been my preferred way to get a day off.
Why I Pick up Trash at the Beach

PINE64

PINE64 has let its community down

Pandora Papers

Pandora Papers by the numbers

Projects

Rust 1.63 is out
GDPRHub - A place to find GDPR knowledge. That “wiki” could help many people.
Sugi project - a community of Forest makers and Oceans gardener.
A list of all the “bestmotherfuckingwebsites” and their variants
Settings for Keychron keyboards
Upscayl - Free and Open Source AI Image Upscaler, but you need a GPU card.

TV shows

Severance, a Sci-fi TV series where memories of employees has been surgically divided between work and personal lives. It’s a strange show, but intriguing. And, they put some great blue mechanical keyboards.

And, it looks like the show inspired Dilbert too 😅 : 1 2 3 4 5 6

Movies

Don’t Look Up - I finally watched it! Depicted as a scientist on Prozac with panic attacks, DiCaprio was great in that movie. The movie describes, way too well, many people around me that, unfortunately, don’t care about the planet 😔
Minions: The rise of Gru was fun to watch with the kids. I’m not sure if I prefer the first one or this one.
Lightyear, the latest Pixar movie. My kid loved it, and I found it quite enjoyable, even if it has only a 5.9 rating on IMDB.

Sport

Usyk vs Joshua II. And, Usyk is really a great boxer. That 10th round, just after what Joshua did to him in the previous round, was just crazy.
UFC 278 … Insane high kick! 😱
UFC 277, not really interesting fights on this one.
UFC 276, Volkanovski is on another planet. Holloway was just lost. Same for Adesanya, just better than his opponent.
UFC 275, Texeira had it … until 30 seconds left. A small mistake, and a loss.

Post 63/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Democracy

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:17:23 +0100

Murray’s Rule: Any country with “democratic” in the title isn’t.

WhatsMyName

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 05:36:58 +0100

Stumbled upon WhatsMyName. It’s a website that looks for users/username to find someone online. It’s one of the many tools available online to do some OSINT.

DNGLab, a converter of RAW files

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 12:37:57 +0100

The Digital Negative or DNG, is a file format developed by Adobe.

It’s been around since 2007, and should be there for a long time, since it’s based on open formats. Those files can be opened with tools like Lightroom, Photoshop or non-Adobe products like Darktable.

DNG files are containers including metadata, a small JPG preview, and the image. They are usually smaller than RAW files from the manufacturers. At least, that’s what I thought.

I stumbled upon dnglab, a camera RAW to DNG file format converter, written in Rust. After installing it, I wanted to see if converted Fujifilm RAF files to DNG will show up quicker in Darktable.

The tool works well, and it’s fast. Less than 1.5 seconds to convert a 49M file.


 % for i in *RAF ; dnglab convert $i $i:r.dng
 Writing DNG output file: 20220817_0100.dng
 Converted 1/1 files
 Total time: 1.38s
 Writing DNG output file: 20220817_0101.dng
 Converted 1/1 files
 Total time: 1.37s
 Writing DNG output file: 20220817_0102.dng
 Converted 1/1 files
 Total time: 1.30s
 Writing DNG output file: 20220817_0103.dng
 Converted 1/1 files
 Total time: 1.40s

But, I got a surprise. All the DNG files are ~10% bigger. Not really what I excepted. DNG files are usually up to 30% smaller. It can save you a great amount of disk space when you have a huge library of photos.

I haven’t tested yet with some old Canon CR2 files. But, I’ll try to see if I can save some disk space with them at least.

Do you use any tool to convert your RAW files to DNG? Or do you convert them at all?

Post 62/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Time and work

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 06:51:36 +0100

A quote from Lost in work, Escaping Capitalism by Amelia Horgan:

Time is what the factory worker sells: not time, not skill, but time, dreary time. Desolate factory time that passes so slowly compared with the fleeting seconds of the weekend.

Monday morning starts with a sigh and the rest of the working week is spent longing for Friday night.

Everybody seems to be wishing his life away. And away it goes - sold to the man in the bowler hat.

A worker in a cigarette factory in the 60s

Nothing really changed in 60 years, for many of us, the job looks nearly the same.

Many colleagues just waiting for Friday to get hammered with booze, and back Monday morning with the feeling the weekend was too short.

That’s also true when you have kids, your weekends will just disappear from your life 😅

Post 61/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Disney is spamming

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 04:53:57 +0100

Disney could you just remove my account, and stop spamming me with “Your subscription will soon be cancelled” emails! Just do it for god sake.

It looks like a GDPR request will be done soon 😏

A motherfucking list

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 06:17:45 +0100

Thanks to Stefan Judis, I discovered this motherfucking list of all motherfucking websites.

GAS or Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 18:56:52 +0100

GAS or Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a well known issue with photographers. It was a bad habit before, but it’s not the case anymore… At least, for my photography gear.

But, that old habit struck me again. This time, it wasn’t for a new lens or a new camera, but the Keychron K2 mechanical keyboard.

I received it after two weeks. Just plugged it, used bluetoothctl to connect, pair, and trust it. It works like a charm. For some weird reason, blueman-manager struggled to connect to it.

So far, the feeling is different than the Keyboard Paradise V60. Not sure yet which one I prefer. But, the design is great, it’s not too clicky, and I think there is a special configuration to do to use the F1..F12 keys and functions. At least, it’s what I found on that page.

Even if my old keyboard works well, I’m happy to have a wireless one with a great battery.

Post 60/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Darktable 4.0

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:56:46 +0100

Just installed Darktable 4.0… And, already an issue with the library.db file 🤦

Let’s reimport 26k photos again 🤷

Debian turns 29

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 12:49:58 +0100

Debian GNU/Linux turned 29 years old yesterday. I remember I touched my first Debian in ‘96… That looks so close, and so far at the same time.

Is ReiserFS still used?

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 16:00:59 +0100

Reading LWN this morning, I was wondering if anyone is still using ReiserFS.

Keychron keyboards and Dvorak

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 07:46:43 +0100

I’ve been using a KBParadise V60, a 60% keyboard, for years now. It’s the first generation of the V60, and it’s now discontinued.

I like that keyboard, but it still has that old mini USB cable that I want to get rid of. So, I started to look around.

Keychron has many wireless keyboards. Their latest K6 Pro, and K8 Pro looks well-designed, but I don’t like the colors they offer.

I prefer this K6 or K2 beige/white colorscheme.
They are on sales right now, and at $57.20, not too expensive.

Dvorak has been my layout for a couple of years, and I would love to have keycaps matching it. But, they don’t offer it.

Of course, you can move keys around, but on my KB Paradise their shape make the typing really awkward. I’m not sure about this on those two models. Their keys all look pretty the same.

Maybe, I could get some blank ones instead. I know there are some on Aliexpress, but I’m a bit worried about their build quality.

Or, maybe I’ll just buy one of those two, and leave it the way it is.

Post 59/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

If I had only one destination it would be

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 17:05:59 +0100

Where would you go if you only had one destination?

NBA Legend Bill Russell

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:38:50 +0100

Bill Russell NBA legend died today.

Celtics fans are mourning.

The Boston Celtics team statement:

“To be the greatest champion in your sport, to revolutionize the way the game is played, and to be a societal leader all at once seems unthinkable, but that is who Bill Russell was.

Bill was a champion unlike any other in the history of team sports – an 11-time NBA champion, including winning eight consecutive titles, a five-time MVP, an Olympic Gold Medalist and the NBA’s first Black head coach.

Bill Russell‘s DNA is woven through every element of the Celtics organization, from the relentless pursuit of excellence, to the celebration of team rewards over individual glory, to a commitment to social justice and civil rights off the court.

Our thoughts are with his family as we mourn his passing and celebrate his enormous legacy in basketball, Boston, and beyond.”

July 2022

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 00:30:00 +0100

Like every month, the things I’ve read, watched, and listened to in July.

Podcasts

Ep. 169 - Human Element Series - A Real Life Doogie Howser with Dr. Abbie Maroño

The privacy, privacy and osint show

Ep. 254 OSINT + fugitives = rewards
Ep. 259 leaving kindle
Ep. 260 google’s new policy changes
Ep. 261 a client stopped by
Ep. 262 brief updates
Ep. 263 proton changes and new breach lessons
Ep. 264 linux basics
Ep. 265 HP dev one
Ep. 266 the sole proprietorship
Ep. 267 MacOs privacy and security revisited
Ep. 268 CCW permits, unredacted 03 and Linux questions
Ep. 270 OSINT cools update

8th layer insight

An interview with a password
Lockpicking, Physical Penetration Testing, and More with Deviant Ollam

Layer 8

Ep. 82 : Lock down pour life

Two episodes 85 🤔

Ep. 85 : Erich Kron - Phishing as a service
Ep. 85 : Josten Peña - Using Bias in social engineering

Books

This month I finished:

Lazyness Does Not Exist by Devon Price
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
Betrayal: The story of Aldrich Ames, an American spy
Je ne lache rien by Philippe Etchebest, Stephane Davet.

I’ve started a couple of books:

Faut-il arreter de faire des enfants pour sauver la planète by Emmanuel Pont - 11% read
Never split the difference negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss - 12% read
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks by Michal Zalewski - 18% read

Still in progress:

Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

Articles / Videos

Signal strength the first NYC Wi-Fi orchestra, music by Ljova.
I used to be a human being by Andrew Sullivan. I postponed the reading of this 2016 article for months.
How to hijack a drone
Removing jQuery is good for performance
A new attack can unmask anonymous users on any major browser
Europe faces Facebook blackout
Personal Publishing Principles

Projects

Asahi Linux - A project to port Linux to Apple Silicon Macs
Darktable 4.0 released
Clone Wars
Rust 1.62 released
URLhaus - Share malware distribution sites with the community

TV shows

I finished to watch Slow Horses, a six episodes TV Show, about an old British spy. Only Gary Oldman is great in that show…

Movies

The bad guys, a fun cartoon that I watched with my kid.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, definitely not the best Marvel movie.

Post 58/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

What is your top 10 lists of CLI tools?

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 10:58:03 +0100

Being always in terminals, I use many CLI tools like :

mutt
tmux
vim
fzf
newsboat
many others …

What is your top 10?

fzf, aliases, and functions

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 09:58:56 +0100

Automation. That’s why the terminal, and keybindings are my daily drugs. I love to tweak my shell, aliases, or functions. The goal is to avoid using the mouse at all cost. Not that I don’t like it, it’s just I find using the keyboard easier, and it makes me more productive. The few times I use the mouse is for software like Gimp or Inkscape.

Awesomewm and zettelkasten

My zsh functions included one named addnote to … add a note in my markdown file used for Zettelkasten:


 # zsh function
 addnote(){
 vim '+ normal! Gzzozek ' +startinsert ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/notes.md
 cd ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/
 git add -p notes.md
 }

Let’s explain that vim line:

vim '+ norm Gzzozek ' +startinsert ~/projects/zettlekasten-notes/notes.md

vim ‘+ norm’ it starts vim in normal mode.
G goes to the end of the file.
zz re-center the text on the current line instead of being at the end of the file.
o add a newline.
zek just add the text ‘zek’. It’s a snippet used in my notes files.
+startinsert goes to the insert mode.

The zek snippet:


 zek[TAB]

 # Once I hit tab the snippet expands to 

 # 20220725T104451
 Tags:

 Related to:
 Source:
 Author:
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This function has been changed in an addnote script in $HOME/bin directory. I added this script to awesomewm. That way if I have an idea out of the blue, I can add a note, commit it, and get back to what I was doing.

I wanted a keybinding integrated with my awesomewm configuration.

I added in rc.lua this change:


 -- Add Zettelkasten note
 awful.key({ modkey }, "e",
 function ()
 os.execute(string.format("kitty --single-instance -e %s/bin/addnote", os.getenv("HOME")))
 end,
 {description = "add note", group = "hotkeys"}),

Now, every time I want to bring up my notes, I just hit Meta+e, and a terminal opens vim, and my file.

FZF and Rust

Rust has been used to create many new fancy tools recently.
Cargo is great to create new projects, or to find binaries provided by crates.
The tool is great. You can combine it with fzf, and a function like this:


 getCrate(){
 local crate
 crate=$(cargo search $1 | fzf | awk '{ print $1 }')
 cargo install $crate
 }

Let’s install ripgrep, the faster Rust grep:


 % getCrate ripgrep
 >
 11/11
 > ripgrep = "13.0.0" # ripgrep is a line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a… 
 ripgrep_all = "0.9.6" # rga: ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc.
 hgrep = "0.2.6" # hgrep is a grep tool with human-friendly search output. This is similar to `-C` option of `g…
 repgrep = "0.10.5" # An interactive command line replacer for `ripgrep`
 homebins = "0.2.1" # Binaries for your $HOME
 grep_json_deserialize = "0.1.2" # A parser for the output of ripgrep --json
 ripline = "0.1.0" # This is not the greatest line reader in the world, this is just a tribute. Fast line based
 itree = "0.3.1" # An interactively navigable version of the Linux utility `tree`
 cargo-quickinstall = "0.2.6" # Precompiled binary installs for `cargo install` 
 clyde = "0.2.0" # A cross-platform package manager for prebuilt applications
 ... and 55 crates more (use --limit N to see more)

Select ripgrep, and it will download dependencies, compile and install it. Of course, you need to have Cargo installed first.

FZF and apt

You can do exactly the same with apt to install a package:


 getPkg(){
 local pkg
 pkg=$(apt-cache search $1 | fzf | awk '{ print $1 }')
 apt install $pkg
 }

Check the Fzf Wiki to see all the great stuff people did.
Try them, adapt them, and get creative.

Man pages in vim

A last tip, a quick function to have your man page in vim 😉


 % function man {
 /usr/bin/man $* | vim -c 'set ft=man nomod nolist' -
 }

Post 57/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

From Nova to Olauncher

Sun, 24 Jul 2022 10:15:22 +0100

I try to get less, and fewer notifications. Last week, I removed my old Android launcher, Nova, in favour of a minimalist one, Olauncher.

Olauncher is available on F-Droid, it’s a FOSS, and contains no ads. I’ve never seen any on Nova, neither. I switched because I wanted even less things on the screen. I don’t have many apps left on my phone. For those who never heard about it, here how it looks like on my mobile:

My principal apps are:

Signal
Firefox Focus
P!n
Conversations
AntennaPod

I have 65 apps in total, many of them are system ones. Even this number is high in my opinion, but they come with LineageOS, and can’t be uninstalled.

This morning, I learnt that Nova got acquired by Branch, and every time a company got bought, it’s for a reason. Why did they get it if there is no financial interests behind? Will they add ads? Will they get metrics on your phone usage? Your apps?

I’m happy with Olauncher, and will keep it… for now.

Post 56/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Don't look up ... in real life

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 22:14:13 +0100

This woman is despicable. I haven’t seen “Don’t Look Up” yet, but I’m pretty sure she’s like that blonde girl in the movie.

Apparently, there was a “record”, if we can call it that way, about the temperature in London: 41C !

In France, Nantes was over 42C, Brittany was on fire last weekend. And, still no government legislation on pollution from big companies.

This world is sick! 🤢🤢🤮

Ransomware & Rust

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 13:35:11 +0100

Bookmarked 💀

https://thehackernews.com/2022/07/new-rust-based-ransomware-family.html

I guess the same code could be ported easily on each platform.

Git tips

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 12:12:26 +0100

Git 2.37 is out since a couple of weeks, and I didn’t take time to check tho latest changelog. This morning, I found some new tips.

New options

To get git version, we used to type:


 % git version
 # or 
 % git --version

 # now you can use 
 % git -v

 # and the same thing for the --help page
 % git -h

New git log command

A new option is available to show all the commits not older than a date:


 % git log --since-as-filter=DATE

git log has the --since=DATE but commits can be wrongly displayed because a commit has been created with a faulty clock.

Remote branches

Since 2.37, you can push new branches directly. Usually, you had to type:


 % git push --set-upstream origin branchName

Now, now you can configure it with:


 % git config --global --add --bool push.autoSetupRemote true
 % git push

Don’t hesitate to check the Git v2.37 Release Notes

Post 55/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

TWSBI bottles

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 10:11:38 +0100

Once again, I refilled my fountain pen, and of course had ink all over my hands.

I was looking for some cheaper alternative of those TWSBI Diamond bottles that I discovered thanks to Horst Gutmann.

But, apparently you have to be careful when you travel with them 😅

I’ll probably buy one, even if I find $25 overpriced for “just” a bottle.

Or maybe I could just put a small floating cap in my Parker bottle to see if that works 😅.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2022/07/18/til-do-not-fly-with-twsbi-diamond-bottles/

Dear Fuji

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 12:07:26 +0100

My Fuji film camera, the XPro3, came back from the shop where I left it almost two months ago.

Good news: they fixed the optical viewfinder, and cleaned the sensor, and I didn’t pay for anything.

Bad news: the hidden back screen is still broken, and useless. The person of the shop scratched some part of the camera.

A better solution would have been to send it directly to Fuji. They tried a new screen, it didn’t work. “Probably the motherboard…” Probably, expensive too.

The camera works, though, but every change has to be done in the electronic viewfinder. No way to check your photos on the screen… Only in the viewfinder again. Which is a pain, and I don’t do it.

Using this defective camera looks like using a model from the film time. And, I love it! It reminds me the first time Leica announced its M-D model without a rear screen and without buttons. The purpose was to help photographers focus on the moment using only the ISO, the aperture and the speed.

This Leica M-D video was the first I saw then:

Some will probably argue they could just use a film camera instead, or put some duct tape on the screen. But, it’s not the same. We want to be able to get back home and just unload our pics. Films are great, but it’s expensive, and there is an out of control delay to discover them.

While my camera was at the shop, I used my XPro2, and I felt annoyed by that big display at the back of the camera.

Dear Fujifilm, what I would love is a XPro version without a screen at all. Maybe even with fewer buttons. I’m sure many XPro owners would love this, so if anyone at Fuji read this, please make the dream comes true.

Post 54/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Kim Philby epigraph

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 16:00:59 +0100

For those who don’t know, Kim Philby was a double agent for the Soviet Union. Philby’s epigraph for himself was:

To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby.

Phishing over SMS

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 14:11:56 +0100

Lately, I keep getting phishing attempts over SMS. It’s annoying, clumsy, and so boring.

Today, I got about a delivery:

"Leo tried to deliver a package, but nobody was at home. Click on this link, http://enohis.com/xRBRVfg to reschedule."

Anonymous scammer

Of course, every time I get something like this, I have James Veitch that pops up in my head.

Then, I replied:

- Oh no! Leo tried. Let him try again... I just arrived at home.

But, I spent five minutes thinking what could I do just to annoy him back…

First, I thought about subscribing his number to marketing services, so he gets many useless SMS back. But, I need to find that kind of services.

Then, I thought about a reply with a zip bomb attached, with a name like forms.zip and a message like:

I just downloaded that on your website, but I'm not sure what to do with it?

Finally, maybe try to find police services, and report that number online if possible.

How do you deal with those stupid scams?

Post 53/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A new data breach: Mangatoon

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 11:11:28 +0100

This week Have I Been Pwned added … 23M new accounts to their website. All of them come from Mangatoon, a manga website.

The breach comes from an ElasticSearch server weakly secured.

A new week, a new breach… I guess that’s what our online world will face again, and again.

More info at BleepingComputer.

1x Engineer

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 11:28:37 +0100

Bookmarked https://1x.engineer/

Some qualities I like that some idiots I know should consider to work on:

Doesn’t act surprised when someone doesn’t know something.
Treats others how they would like to be treated.
Sometimes feels hurt by critical feedback, but doesn’t react destructively.
Willing to admit when they’re wrong, and aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know.”
Believes that everyone in the room is equally as smart and capable as they are.
Doesn’t take themselves too seriously.
Has productive and unproductive days.
Works to live, rather than living to work.
May work from home, the office, a coffee shop, or where ever else best works for them.
Doesn’t riddicule entire professions within engineering, especially not when in a position of leadership.

Just check the website 😉

My RSS feeds

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 09:57:33 +0100

Two days ago, Doug Belshaw asked for new stuff for his RSS reader.

I proposed a top ten, but probably not really the ones I read the more.

After some cleanup, here is the list of all my RSS feeds with both English and French ones.


 ## bloggers
 https://andregarzia.com/feeds/all.atom.xml
 https://amycastor.com/feed/
 https://fury.hk/feed.xml
 https://pimoore.ca/feed.xml
 https://bbbhltz.codeberg.page/rss.xml
 https://eli.li/feed.rss
 https://alirezahayati.com/feed
 https://lucasdidthis.com/feed
 https://jetgirl.art/feed
 https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/index.xml
 https://nolanlawson.com/feed
 https://erzadel.net/feed.xml
 https://thoughtshrapnel.com/feed/
 https://dougbelshaw.com/blog/feed/
 https://austinkleon.com/feed/
 https://baez.link/feed/
 https://belmoussaoui.com/feed
 https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/feed.xml
 https://blog.melyanna.net/feed/
 https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/index.xml
 https://bravenewgeek.com/feed/
 https://desmondrivet.com/feeds/all.rss
 https://drewdevault.com/feed.xml
 https://feed.ctrl.blog/latest.atom
 https://gilest.org/feed/
 https://hund.tty1.se/feed.xml
 https://jamesvandyne.com/feed/
 https://jamiesnotes.com/feed/
 https://jan.boddez.net/feed
 https://jlelse.blog/index.xml
 https://julian.digital/rss
 https://jvns.ca/atom.xml
 https://lemire.me/blog/feed/
 https://m.signalvnoise.com/feed/
 https://markosaric.com/feed/
 https://michael.stapelberg.ch/feed.xml
 https://miek.nl/index.xml
 https://pluralistic.net/feed/
 https://sivers.org/en.atom
 https://strangevistas.com/feed/
 https://trivial.observer/index.xml
 https://werd.io/content/all?_t=rss
 https://without.boats/index.xml
 https://www.dandevri.es/weeknotes/feed.xml
 https://www.jefftk.com/news.rss
 https://www.stefanjudis.com/rss.xml
 https://yarmo.eu/rss/all
 https://zerokspot.com/index.xml
 http://feeds.feedburner.com/nakedcapitalism?format=xml
 https://rakhim.org/index.xml
 https://xiu.io/index.xml
 https://melindawyers.com/feed/rss
 https://paulphilippov.com/articles.rss
 https://oscarbenedito.com/blog/index.xml
 https://colinwalker.blog/dailyfeed.rss
 https://wilw.dev/feeds
 https://rusingh.com/feed/
 https://tilde.town/~kzimmermann/articles/atom.xml
 https://gomakethings.com/feed/index.xml
 https://elswr.co/feed/
 https://ashfurrow.com/feed.xml

 ## Linux - system - foss
 https://lwn.net/headlines/newrss
 https://adamdesk.com/feed/blog.xml
 https://hunden.linuxkompis.se/feed.xml
 https://www.researchut.com/index.xml
 http://jimmac.musichall.cz/feed.xml
 https://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml
 http://ithare.com/feed/
 https://unixism.net/feed/

 ## Vim - tmux
 https://ctoomey.com/atom.xml

 ## Rust related
 https://this-week-in-rust.org/rss.xml
 https://feeds.feedburner.com/steveklabnik/words
 https://fasterthanli.me/index.xml

 ## Photography
 https://fujixweekly.com/feed/
 https://www.japancamerahunter.com/feed
 https://blog.joaoalmeidaphotography.com/en/feed/
 https://jonasraskphotography.com/feed/
 https://waylonwalker.com/rss.xml
 https://fujilove.com/feed/
 https://www.fujixpassion.com/feed/
 https://yannickschutz.com/index.xml
 https://paulstamatiou.com/
 https://gregorymignard.com/index.xml
 https://readframes.com/feed/
 http://www.peterdrastrup.com/personal?format=rss

 ## Art
 https://saulsteinbergfoundation.org/feed/

 # Infosec
 https://www.schneier.com/feed/
 https://www.welivesecurity.com/feed
 https://feeds.feedburner.com/TheHackersNews?format=xml
 https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/rss
 https://threatpost.com/feed
 https://www.nist.gov/news-events/nist-rss-feeds
 https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/all.xml
 https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/feed

 ## Privacy
 https://ar.al/index.xml
 https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/feed/
 https://www.icij.org/feed

 ## Literary
 https://www.karlcalagan.com/reads?format=rss
 https://lithub.com/feed/

 ## Web design
 https://alistapart.com/main/feed/
 https://css-tricks.com/feed/

 ## Doodling - drawing - comics
 https://feeds.feedburner.com/DoodlersAnonymous
 https://dilbert.com/feed.rss
 https://www.monkeyuser.com/feed.xml
 https://emmaclit.com/feed/
 https://weeklypencil.com/the-weekly-pencil?format=rss
 https://newspaperblackout.com/rss

 ## Stoicism
 https://ryanholiday.net/feed/atom/

 ## Technology - News
 https://annoying.technology/index.xml
 https://www.protocol.com/feeds/feed.rss
 https://hackernoon.com/feed
 https://netflixtechblog.com/feed
 https://hackaday.com/feed/
 https://www.theatlantic.com/feed/best-of/
 https://factourism.com/feed

 ## Magazines
 https://believermag.com/feed/

 ### Ethical / climate change
 http://standblog.org/blog/feed/rss2
 https://designersethiques.org/feed/
 https://www.hautconseilclimat.fr/feed/
 https://cec-impact.org/feed/
 https://bonpote.com/feed/
 https://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/feed/
 https://www.greenit.fr/feed/
 https://www.cyclable.com/feed/
 https://www.wedemain.fr/feed/
 https://www.goodplanet.info/feed/
 https://www.thegood.fr/feed/
 https://www.barreverte.fr/feed/
 https://carnets-traverse.com/feed/

 ## Desktop design
 https://www.makerstations.io/rss/

If you have any great links, let me know in the comments.

Post 52/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

FKJ: Tiny desk concert

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 01:49:33 +0100

Thanks to my RSS feed, and Lucas in this case, I discovered FKJ, the French Kiwi Juice.

That French producer and multi-instrumentalist reminded me of FaceSoul, an artist I stumbled upon listening to the Colors channel.

Creative people like those two always amazed me.

If you know other similar artists, don’t hesitate to leave a comment. 😉

Post 51/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Macron, Mc Kinsey, and now Uber Files

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 21:15:40 +0100

The Mc Kinsey scandal was already shameful. The French government paid over €2.4 billion in consultancy fees over 4 years, a number probably lower to reality.

Thanks to the Guardian, Le Monde, and ICIJ, the Uber Files have been revealed. What are those files about? Macron, an ex banker, then French economy minister, made a secret illegal deal with Uber. I’m wondering what did he get from that contract?

Once again, Macron is just a lobbies’ puppet.

SystemD creator

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 15:08:16 +0100

This morning I discovered that Lennart Poettering, one of the creator of systemd, left his job at Red Hat to join… Microsoft. Looks like that project was rotten since the beginning …

Disney+

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 10:59:10 +0100

I stopped paying for Disney+. They keep sending me emails to change my credit card information to be able to charge it.

This morning got an email saying they will cancel my account with an email that starts like this:


 Disney+ Email &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;

That’s what I got in my mail client: mutt.

I hate those HTML emails, and that preview crap.

If you don’t know what those &zwnj are, you can check that article.

Again, and again

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 21:46:43 +0100

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again…

When will the US government do something about the violence in their country?

As a kid, we used to fantasize about the NBA, our American Dream.

Today, seeing my kids over there would scare the shit out of me.

July, 3rd: cops shot 60 times Jayland Walker, a 25 years old man.
July, 4th: 220 persons died shot.

Those numbers are insane!

How many deaths before a change? How long will weapons be available to possess?

Fucking guns should be banned, period!

Post 50/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Interviews questions

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 13:33:54 +0100

What is the silliest question you got during an interview for a job?

I had many during my career like :

Where will you be in 10 years? (it was for a job in London when I was just there for a couple of weeks)
Are you Serbian or Croatian? - What’s the purpose of the question? (I ended the interview there)
Why are you here? (I saw some light, and I just entered the room)
What makes you angry? (probably that kind of question)

I can’t remember all of them, but I think I will write them down in the future.

Did you get any dumb question during your interviews?

Unredacted magazine

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 02:14:27 +0100

Michael Bazzell was an FBI agent for years. Today, he writes books, and hosts the “Privacy, security and OSINT” podcast where he talks about all those subjects.

Recently, he started with his team a magazine, Unredacted based on the same themes. His inspiration came from the famous “2600: The Hacker Quaterly” magazine he used to read.

The final result is great. I love the layout of the magazine, and the colors selected. There are a couple of ads inside, but to be honest they don’t bother me, and it’s fair to have some for the work involved to create it.

The 3rd edition for July was released 3 days ago. You can download all the issues directly from the website for free.

The first editions had many contributors, but Bazzell announced in one of his podcasts, the magazine needs contributions to exist. If you want to write an article for them, you can check this page for information.

Post 49/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

zsh and suffix aliases

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:39:27 +0100

Stumbled upon this article about suffix aliases. And, I wanted just to share mine.

Like many other shells, zsh allows you to define aliases with a command like:


 % alias mounted='mount | column -t '

But, it allows you to define also suffix aliases with the -s option.

What does it do exactly?

You define which program will be used for specific type of files in your zsh configuration like this:


 # suffix aliases
 alias -s {epub,pdf}='mupdf'
 alias -s {mp4,mpg,mov,avi}='mplayer'
 alias -s svg='inkscape'
 alias -s {doc,docx,odt,xls,xlsx,ppt,ods}='libreoffice'
 alias -s {jpg,jpeg,png,tiff}='imv-x11'

Then you type :


 % some_pic.jpg # this will automatically use imv-x11 to open the file 
 % movie.avi # this will use mplayer to open the file

It’s a quick way to type less characters in your terminal, a thing that many shell lovers will appreciate.

This post was a reply to https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/suffix-aliases-in-zsh/

Post 48/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Ducks and ego

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 01:15:16 +0100

Ducks bear no grudges. People with ego do.

Eckhart Tolle

June 2022

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 04:30:00 +0100

Like every month, the things I’ve read, watched, and listened to in June.

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries, episode 119: Hot wallets, explains how North Korea stole cryptocurrencies valued over 2 billion over a couple of years. 😱

A French podcast, Decryptualité, about opensource and technical subjects, stopped after 12 years.

Books

Young Philby by Robert Littell.
A novel about Kim Philby, one of the most famous double agent who worked for Russian and British governments.

Several short sentences about writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg.
Great book if you want to improve your writing.

La nouvelle guerre des étoiles by Vincent Coquaz.
A French book about how we rate our life every day. A great book.

Rust in 8 Hours by Ray Yao.
More a cookbook with examples. Not really great to be honest. I don’t recommend it for anyone starting with Rust.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
I’ve read 74% of it, according to my Remarkable2. Many facts I wasn’t aware about money and people.

Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.
Still in progress…

Articles / Videos

I definitely dislike that man - Musk
It’s Been 50 Years. I Am Not ‘Napalm Girl’ Anymore
GiveUpGitHub.org - The domain name speaks for itself
Writing one sentence per line - about writing and blogging

Projects

Vim 9 is out

TV shows

The 6 episodes trend allows you to watch an entire season in one night. Personally, I’m not a fan.

This month, I finished Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was better than Boba Fett, but could have been better.

A new spy thriller, Slow Horses, six episodes also, arrived in my to watch list. I managed to watch four of them in one evening. Gary Oldman is great as an old closeted spy. Apparently, Will Smith was involved in this show, but not sure on which part.

Movies

Only one this month, an anime with kids : Joseph, King of Dreams. Not great, not bad.

Sport

The NBA Finals ! It was a great event to watch, with a victory of the Golden State Warriors over the Boston Celtics.

Post 47/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Diamond 50 ink bottles

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 22:09:12 +0100

Thanks to Horst, last night I discovered those Diamond 50 ink bottles. They provide a system to avoid having ink everywhere when you refill your pen.

I tried to find a cheaper alternative, in vain.

I’m sure someone find a way to 3D print this small upper reservoir… I just need to find it 😅

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2022/06/26/npd-twsbi-diamond-580alr-navy-blue/

Doubt

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 07:05:48 +0100

When in doubt, use brute force.

Ken Thompson

The Godfather Notebook

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 01:21:31 +0100

Bookmarked !

https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/16/55806096

One of the annotations: How would Hitchcock design this?

Thanks Chris for this discovery! 🙏

This post was a reply to https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/16/55806096/

Dubs nation

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:28:18 +0100

The NBA season is over.

Second year in a row, I forgot to cancel my NBA League Pass subscription. Originally, I took it only for the playoffs for ~€50. This oversight cost me over €400 for two seasons. I should definitely cancel it RIGHT NOW! Or should I? Being able to watch any game, at any time, was great. Maybe I’ll continue to pay, and just watch the condensed games only. 🤦

About the Finals, the Warriors won their fourth championship in eight years! And, Curry won the NBA Finals MVP title, finally. Two years in hell, and now back to paradise. The splash brothers defeated Boston’s young stars.

The Celtics will be back, but now I can only think about this fan, Benjamin Bienvenue, and his tattoo 😂.

Post 46/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Freedom

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 22:55:59 +0100

Freedom means responsibility. That is why many men fear it.

Bernard Shaw

Vim, to infinity and beyond!

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 23:22:30 +0100

Vim, is my favourite editor. Lightweight, fast, and customizable, are the reasons why you could find vi or vim installed on any Linux or *nix servers for over 40 years.

People have preferences. We all have. For me, it has always been Vim. Colleagues I met during the years loved others. Sometimes Emacs, sometimes VS Code, sometimes something else. Atom was one of them.

Atom, born in 2014, will be buried December 15, 2022. The favourite editor of a former colleague won’t exist any more next year. The “Next Gen Editor” will be forgotten soon.

Two, the number of times I used it. Performance wise, Vim beat it every time. Atom never looked like a great product. Big files were an issue. The seconds, or even minutes, to open a file was a hindrance to me. Yes, the interface was pretty, but the other issues put me off.

Terminal, CLI, and Vim are my playground.
Vim is quick, customizable, and it just works! Its future is, in my humble opinion, not in danger. I can’t say the same with other editors.

GitHub announced Atom’s death, will VSCode have the same fate?

Post 45/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Cybersecurity books

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 16:58:15 +0100

A bundle of Cybersecurity books is available on HumbleBundle.com.

TIL - Speaker disabled Airtags

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 08:20:17 +0100

I wrote about Apple’s Air Tags, and I learnt that companies are selling them with the speaker disabled. The only way to be aware that a device is nearby was when the Air Tag starts beeping because not paired recently with the original iPhone.

Now, people will stalk you silently 🤦 …

Roland Garros and climate change

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 18:50:14 +0100

I didn’t watch any game of Roland Garros this year. I’m not a big Tennis fan, but as a kid I enjoyed the rivalry between Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. And, more recently, the one between Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. But, still, I don’t follow their careers, and it’s a matter of luck if I happen to come across a match.

This year, I just didn’t turn on TV to watch any game. Probably, also, because not being in France anymore, they don’t broadcast it everywhere.

This morning, I stumbled upon a French article about Alizée, a climate change activist, who interrupted one of the semi-finals game. She got herself attached to the net, and the security needed over ten minutes to extract her from the court.

Sorry for interrupting your game, but all eyes are on the French Open today, and we need to sound the alarm. No one gives a sh*t when we're doing climate marches, when we're all going to die, so this is where we chose to act.

Alizée, 22 years old.

That’s not the first time we see things like this. In the past, people could have been sceptic about the future of our planet, today you can’t just ignore it anymore. What left me speechless are the words that came out of the mouth of one of the commentator:

Unbelievable that we can see this in our time

Michaël Llodra, old pro tennis player/commentator

They tried for a couple of minutes to get the message of this young woman. I guess he doesn’t really care about the Earth, and I would love to see how they will continue to play when the temperature will be over 40°C every year. What is even more unbelievable, is how all those people don’t even consider that this tournament, or any big tournament, won’t exist if we continue to consume the way we do, and if we don’t change our habits.

The same behaviour is everywhere around me. Often, I hear things like:

- Waste sorting is a waste of time.

- Why should I think about the Earth when the corporations and governments are not concerned?

Too many anonymous friends

People are just selfish, and don’t want to limit their own pleasure. They don’t care about eating fruits that traveled the globe to finish in their hands. They don’t care about the melting of glaciers in the poles, or the dying polar bears. Or, they do care, just the time of a post on their social networks. They don’t care about how they will leave the planet for the next generations. They don’t care that, in India, the temperature have never been so high. They don’t care that islands will disappear. And, I could potentially continue that endless list, but it makes me sick…

Sometimes discussions about climate change, and what we should do about it, are heated, and often useless. I currently work for a company using over 1000 barebone servers. When I arrived, I asked if all were used at 100%, and if we could do something to reduce the carbon fingerprint. The manager said he doesn’t really care about the Green IT, and it wasn’t his priority 🤮.

Our modern society sells us pleasures, but no happiness. Everything is made to make us consume more. And, as I wrote before, I want a slower, and simple life without being worried about the future of the planet, and our kids.

But, I’m pessimist, and I hope the future will not have me writhing about our conducts.

Post 44/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Librewolf, a privacy friendly Firefox

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 08:53:25 +0100

After an upgrade to the latest version of the Developer Edition of Firefox, I still had issues with it. I tried the standard version, same issues with menus disappearing, and not being able to use right click menus.

Librewolf, a Firefox fork, is focused on privacy, and security. It comes with uBlock Origin, and some tweaks like fingerprinting avoidance using letterboxing, and other techniques. Since its installation yesterday, the issue is gone.

I took advantage of this migration to remove some add-ons. Now the only ones I enabled are:

uBlock Origin
Tridactyl
Temporary Containers
Privacy Redirect
Privacy Possum
NoScript

What privacy add-ons do you use?

Post 43/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Re: Write short posts and write faster

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 01:12:52 +0100

Always nice to see new bloggers participating to the #100DaysToOffload challenge.

Welcome JW !

This post was a reply to https://fury.hk/blog/write-short-posts-and-write-faster

Goodbye DuckDuckGo

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 23:16:14 +0100

Again, we got lured by promises. This time, it’s Duck Duck Go’s turn. They lied, and I don’t trust them anymore. Even if they have been only whitelisting Microsoft trackers in their browser, and the search engine should be safe, it’s too late. I lost faith in them.

I loved it, and I’ve been using it for a long time. On my Android, I even have the DDG web browser installed. And, that’s what pisses me off. To know that all that time, they were lying to us saying they care about our privacy.

All the things they said about Google, and others, look so deceitful now.

So far, alternatives I tried are:

Mojeek, looks alright so far.
~~Startpage~~ is out, because of this article.
Searx, their theme is not what will bring people to use it.

Still not sure which one I will use, but definitely DDG is gone.

On my phone, Firefox Focus will be my primary browser, until I find something better. I would love to have Librewolf browser for Android. Who knows, one day maybe, a release will be done 🙏.

DDG, you had it all, but you fucked up big time!

Post 42/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

TIL - Facial expressions

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 17:08:14 +0100

Going through my notes, I forgot that human various muscles that control the mouth, lips, eyes, nose, forehead, and jaw can produce an immense variety of expressions. Over 10,000 facial expressions could be done by humans.

Joe Navarro, cited Paul Ekman, that brought this number in his book : Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life.

Issues with Firefox and Invidious

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 00:24:55 +0100

Two days ago, I upgraded my Firefox, because I had some issue with my menus/right clicks. I thought the upgrade solved the problem, but today I faced exactly the same thing.

I removed the NoScript add-on, being the only one I recently added. Since this afternoon, it looks like the menus are back.

But, now I have an issue with videos on Invidious, or any other site with videos with the message:

The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.

Trying to find out why it’s happening, some comments suggested removing browser cookies and/or cache. I really don’t see why that should help, but I gave it a try anyway. It didn’t work.

I checked the video on YouTube, and I was surprised to see the issue was gone. I tried to switch to other Invidious instances, no luck. But, I was able to download it, though.

At this point, I installed Chromium to see if the issue was Firefox or Invidious? The same link opened on Chromium worked 😌 But, not being a fan of that browser, it wasn’t a solution.

Finally, when I was going to publish this post, I remembered the “Enhanced Tracking Protection” available in Firefox. So, I disabled it. And, surprise! No more weird message!

Using Firefox Inspector, I wanted to check if something wasn’t loaded correctly. So, I enabled that protection feature. But, this time, the video was loaded and playing correctly.

Why that Tracking Protection blocked Invidious? Is there some tracking enabled that we are not aware of? Opening the Protection Dashboard didn’t bring anything interesting.

I’ll have to wait until it occurs again, to have a deeper analyze of this. I was wondering, am I the only one to have noticed this kind of problems with Invidious?

Post 41/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Upgraded Firefox

Tue, 31 May 2022 11:11:41 +0100

I had a weird issue with my right click menu. It just stopped working, and disappeared. Tried a couple of things in vain.

So, I just upgraded to the new Developer version of Firefox, the 101.x. I still don’t know if that’s linked with the NoScript add-on I added recently or something else. At least, it works now…

May 2022

Tue, 31 May 2022 04:30:00 +0100

Things I’ve done this month including new podcasts, a couple of movies, new books, and other interests I had.

Podcasts

As usual, I listen to many podcasts. But, there wasn’t one that really need a specific mention this month.

Books

I finished 3 books this month :

What every body is saying by Joe Navarro.
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman, and I loved it.
It’s not all about me: The Top Ten Techniques for building quick rapport with anyone by Robin K. Dreeke.

I continued a bit of Extreme Privacy.

Articles / Videos

Why developers should experiment with the Fediverse
Higher levels of CO2
Coinbase earnings were bad
Chat control leaked commission paper eu mass surveillance plans
Taking a Break from Social Media Makes you Happier and Less Anxious
Is this the future of the music industry? Marketing, marketing, and marketing 🤦

Projects

Tut - A text user interface for Mastodon
The NFT bay - Never buy NFTs 😂

TV shows

Finished Moon Knight, and honestly Disney ruined it. I loved the first episode, and was disappointed by the season. Only six episodes, some episodes look like they were in a rush to finish them, the god’s fight at the end was clearly something I found lame.

I watched the Ganglands first, and only, season. Robberies, drug dealers, and guns.

Obiwan Kenobi, the first two episodes, it was good, and not good. Disney is ruining many TV shows/movies IMHO.

Movies

I watched again Blow, and Cop Land this month. Two old movies with Ray Liotta, who passed away last week.

Sport

NBA, NBA and NBA! The end of the season is around the corner. The NBA Finals series start this Thursday! ❤

Post 40/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Have you thought about the Fuji X100v ?

Mon, 30 May 2022 21:29:30 +0100

I would definitely go with Fujifilm cameras. Cheaper than Leica, but with products that are really great.

The X100V, even if I only used the first three X100, looks like a great camera. It’s a bit more expensive than the Leica D-Lux 7, but I would go with this one.

This post was a reply to https://werd.io/2022/i-know-little-about-cameras-and-id

Searx, an alternative to DDG

Mon, 30 May 2022 11:06:59 +0100

DDG also known as DuckDuckGo, had a contract with Microsoft to not stop their trackers. It’s a profound betrayal from DDG, and they should have been transparent on this.

Anyway, I was looking for an alternative, and Searx could be the way to go.

Who has a Searx instance? What are the server requirements?

Obiwan Kenobi

Fri, 27 May 2022 23:53:19 +0100

Let’s see if Disney f*cked up again, and ruined Star Wars fans expectations?

Just guessing … Five? Six episodes in this season? 😂

The mobster Ray Liotta

Thu, 26 May 2022 21:15:18 +0100

Last week, I watched Blow for the fourth or fifth time. I completely forgot that Ray Liotta was the father of George Jung, the drug trafficker and smuggler nicknamed Boston George and El Americano. I always loved the father/son relationship depicted in that movie, and how even knowing his son was on the wrong path, he knew he couldn’t do anything to avoid it. Despite all of his son’s setbacks, at the end, he was still his son.

While watching the movie, I was thinking it’s awkward that Liotta never had other great roles after The Goodfellas, and his Henry Hill role. Joe Pesci won an Oscar as the best actor in a supporting role, while Liotta was completely forgotten in the nominations. His career after that never really took off.

I’ve seen him in other movies like Copland, or Field of Dreams, but he wasn’t as good as he was in The Goodfellas. Recently, I’ve seen him in The many saints of Newark as Dickie/Sally Moltisanti. A movie about the making of Tony Soprano, the mobster of the HBO show that lasted many seasons between 1999 and 2007. It looked like a new beginning in his career, but that didn’t last.

The Goodfellas along with The Godfather I & II, Carlito’s way, Once upon a time in America, Casino, and Heat are probably my favourite gangster movies. I probably forgot some…

Today, Ray Liotta passed away. He was 67.

Post 39/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

RE: photos on a git blog

Thu, 26 May 2022 19:16:29 +0100

Have you thought about git lfs? I never used it, but it may resolve that issue. I think Aral uses/used it at some point.

Likewise, I should probably consider it, because my repository is currently quite big.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2022/05/25/photos-on-a-git-blog/

New Proton universe

Thu, 26 May 2022 09:35:38 +0100

I always loved Logos, and websites like Logopond. Designers can post some of their work, and use it like a portfolio for potential customers.

Some logos, with double meanings are fun, and well done :

This morning, I discovered Proton new universe, a visual new one. They changed their icons, logo, and color to match the purple tone used at the beginning of their project.

By the way, what’s going with that trend to add universe, multiverse, or metaverse in various title over the media? Are they trying to copy the Fediverse 😏 ?

About their new visual universe, I’m not a big fan. Actually, the only thing I find good is the logo. The icons and colors, remind me too much of Microsoft products. Honestly, am I the only one to find those ugly?

With all the talented people out there, in my humble opinions, I’m pretty sure they could have done better about those icons. But, sometimes you guess if people were really around the same table validating the launch of a specific ad or product.

Post 38/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A new tragedy

Wed, 25 May 2022 08:32:18 +0100

Woke up this morning, and read that once again there was a massacre in a school, with over 20 kids killed.

The US, from the outside, looks scary. On one way abortions are wrong, and on the other side, selling guns and rifles to anyone is fine 🤦 A real nonsense to me …

When I was a kid, I wanted to live the American dream, but that was a long time ago …

Books and life

Tue, 24 May 2022 06:46:04 +0100

Is there any book that dramatically changed your life in any way? And why?

On my side, I havent found one yet. But who knows, that book may be on my path at some point in my lifetime.

Tea: Milk or Water before?

Sun, 22 May 2022 00:36:53 +0100

I’m a coffee drinker, but when I lived in London, I was not accustomed to see people drink tea with milk. And, I learnt that there is a difference, proved scientifically, between pouring water or milk before.

I need to give it a try one day. And you? How do you drink your tea?

Not again

Fri, 20 May 2022 20:09:00 +0100

And now, a new (or maybe not) virus emerged, a monkey one. Please, not again…

Hugo and Mastodon

Fri, 20 May 2022 14:18:58 +0100

This static blog is generated with Hugo, posts are done with Vim, and I use a small Javascript to display Mastodon comments.

Three weeks ago, I left Bridgy thanks to Carl’s post who provided that JS. But, one part of it was still manual. You needed to toot with a link to your blog post. Once you tooted, you needed to get its ID, and added it manually in the front matter of your post.

Here’s the example of Carl’s frontmatter:


 comments:
 host: linuxrocks.online
 username: carl
 id: 105105837504372590

I wanted to automate that process. That’s where some basic knowledge of shell scripting can help you.

Toot, a Mastodon CLI

To toot from the command line, I use Toot, a Mastodon CLI.

Once installed, the configuration is pretty straightforward :


 % toot login
 Choose an instance [mastodon.social]:
 Looking up instance info...
 Found instance Mastodon running Mastodon version 3.5.2
 Registering application...
 Application tokens saved.

 This authentication method requires you to log into your Mastodon instance
 in your browser, where you will be asked to authorize toot to access
 your account. When you do, you will be given an authorization code
 which you need to paste here.

 This is the login URL:
 https://mastodon.social/oauth/authorize/?response_type=code&redirect_uri
 =urn%3Aietf%3Awg%3Aoauth%3A2.0%3Aoob&scope=read+write+follow&client_id=
 y8IO0_G6dasblGxNTc4s4oZRQsTju6EqJ09UXAd3D6c

 Open link in default browser? [Y/n]

Of course, you have to modify the instance you use. Once the link visited, you should get an authorization code.

The script

I did a small script that:

toots from the command line
gets the latest status ID using Mastodon API
make a substitution in the fmatter of the post/note
rebuild, and redeploy the blog


 #!/bin/zsh

 toot="/usr/bin/toot"
 content="${@:2}"
 api="https://lazybear.social/api/v1/accounts/1/statuses?limit=1"
 final_toot="/tmp/toot"

 function usage {
 echo 'post-toot.sh [-np] "content of the toot"' 2>&1
 echo ' -n Toot a note'
 echo ' -p Toot a post'
 exit 1
 }

 # if no input argument found, exit the script with usage
 if [[ ${#} -eq 0 ]]; then
 usage
 fi

 # Define list of arguments expected in the input
 optstring=":np:"

 while getopts ${optstring} arg; do
 case ${arg} in
 n)
 POST='notes'
 ;;
 p)
 POST='posts'
 ;;
 ?)
 echo "Invalid option: -${OPTARG}."
 echo
 usage
 ;;
 esac
 done

 last_file=$( ls -1 -drt $HOME/projects/lazybear.io/content/${POST}/* |tail -1 )
 url=$( rg replyto: $last_file | awk '{print $2}' | head -1 )

 echo $content > $final_toot
 echo $url >> $final_toot

 # tooting 
 $toot post < $final_toot

 sleep 5

 curl -s ${api} | jq '.[].id' >! /tmp/status.id; sed -i 's/\"//g' /tmp/status.id
 id=$( cat /tmp/status.id); sed -i "s/id: /id: ${id}/" $last_file

 # redeploying the blog
 ${HOME}/bin/lazybear-deploy

 # cleaning up
 rm $final_toot

My frontmatter looks like this:


 ---
 title: Hugo and Mastodon
 date: 2022-05-20T14:18:58+01:00
 replyto: https://lazybear.io/posts/hugo-and-mastodon
 replytoname :
 draft: false

 comments:
 host: lazybear.social
 username: hyde
 id: 108335026543501477

 description:

 tags:
 - Hugo
 - Mastodon
 - shell
 ---

I wanted to be sure to get the URL of the post. So, I used url=$( grep replyto: $last_file | awk '{print $2}' | head -1) to get the first link to include it in the toot. If there is another replyto: in my text, it will be ignored.

Finally, I just use the script this way:


 # if it's a note 
 % post-toots.sh -n "My toot blah blah blah"

 # if it's a post 
 % post-toots.sh -p "My toot blah blah blah"

The script should be easily adapted, and improved, but it was a 10-min quick and dirty one 😅.

Post 37/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Elon Musk is evil

Fri, 20 May 2022 13:48:56 +0100

I’ve never been a fan of Tesla, the company. That’s not the case of Nikola Tesla of course. And I hate Musk used his name for that company.

Musk banned a kid that was following his jet trips, and thus his carbon print. That shows how disrespectful he is about everyone.

And now, the latest scandal makes him really execrable.

TIL topophilia

Fri, 20 May 2022 06:47:10 +0100

I discovered this word today:

Topophilia: the love of or emotional connections with place or physical environment

ALSA issue

Tue, 17 May 2022 11:04:55 +0100

Just a quick reminder for myself, and it could help someone too.

Yesterday, my sound stopped working, no sound in mplayer, vlc or in Firefox. The alsamixer tool looks alright, not muted or anything, but it wasn’t working.

Found out the solution was pretty easy. Just did :


 % alsactl init

And, TADAAAA… The sound was back.

I wonder if that’s an issue with power management, and the resume of the laptop 🤔.

USA and guns

Mon, 16 May 2022 05:48:16 +0100

Media titles are reporting 198 mass shootings have been made in the US in 2022. Being only the 136th day of this year, that number looked like a lot to me.
So, I checked online, and found out the Mother Jones - Mass shootings DB, where only two were reported this year:

year	location	fatalities	injured	total_victims
2022	“Buffalo New York”	10	3	13
2022	“Sacramento California”	4	0	4

Why there is a difference? Because the term of mass shooting could be interpreted in many ways. The alarming title is based on a collection of shootings, including gun casualties without necessarily deaths involved. That database is based on a higher number of fatalities, and includes mainly cases like the yesterday one with a certain amount of deaths minimum.

That 1982-2022 database provides many details on mass shootings. Only 5 women were recorded in mass shootings, and it’s basically a white man thing.

The younger one was 11 years old, and the older one 66.

The most tragic one was done by a 64 years male lunatic :

age	fatalities	total_victims	year
64	58	604	2017

The shooters, based on race, are :

Race	Number of shooters
White	68
Black	21
Latino	10
Asian	8
Other	5
Native American	3
unclear	12

There are 63 of them with mental health issues, and 24 cases where it’s unclear 🤷

What is clear to me, playing with xsv, and this dataset, is that the USA should ban access to guns. How long will we be the witness of people opening fire on classrooms, and live streaming that on Twitch 🤦 ?

For years, the NRA had long tentacles amongst politicians. As a lucrative business, I don’t see them changing anything about firearms.

At least, in my lifetime…

Post 36/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

SHAMEFUL!

Sat, 14 May 2022 08:26:16 +0100

I have no words for this!

Should you give away your privacy for a new job?

Sat, 14 May 2022 00:43:26 +0100

Privacy, in some companies, is a thorny problem. Often, you have to give away some of it even before starting your new position. Usually, it’s because the persons in charge want an easygoing solution, even if that’s include using doubtful tools.

HR teams, of course, need to know many things about their new employees. And, often, they will use some 3rd party tools like Personio, Spendesk, or Okta. That’s where the issues occur. Those 3rd party apps maybe won’t have the same level of security, and/or privacy requirements you may have. Okta, got breached recently, putting at risks many companies, but not only them. Your own details could be found somewhere in some dark forums.

As an employee, you have, usually, to use tools in place. For example, numerous companies use Gmail solutions. First, I really dislike the fact they don’t use their own email servers. Secondly, because your full name is used when then create an email for you, usually with the name.surname@company.com format. Some get lucky, though. They started early at the company, and could have just their initials instead of their full name. You try to avoid those big tech companies, and your employer brings you back to them.

Other terrible disfavor done by HR teams is to use you to fulfill their goals. Why should you be an advertising sign for the company. I witnessed many people being obliged to use the logo/header on their LinkedIn profile. They use the ‘be a part of the XXX family’ motto to convince some of their employees. Will they enter the fray tomorrow if you have real private problems like your family would? I don’t think so.

Slack, is THE tool used to communicate in probably over 80% of tech companies. Even with alternative like Mattermost, Matrix, or even IRC, companies go to a private solution. I’ve seen best wishes channels where your birthdate is shared within the company, so colleagues can wish you a beautiful day. But that’s not the worst. The main issue are the credentials shared in channels. The number is just insane. All that information is stored on someone’s else hard drives. How could you be sure what is done by Slack, or all the survey or 3rd party apps integrated with the product that is collecting data hidden in the bushes.

Projects sometimes can be secret. Think about a new design, R&D, or strategic plans for the future of the company. Sometimes people would love to have some feedbacks from colleagues. So, what they do? They create a Google Form! Of course! 🤦 I’ve seen so many times companies using that tool for inside projects because it’s easier 🤦🤦

Dropbox & co are other apps that should be avoided. Some companies even have a private NextCloud, but use external tools where once again, we don’t know what is done with your data.

Solutions

So, what could you do? Here are some little advices.

Email

During the interview, ask the tools used in the company. If the email is at Google, just ask for one with your initials. They could reply that they can’t do that for all the employees. Just say that you have been harassed previously, and you don’t feel confident to have your full name exposed.

Birth of date / pictures

I just ask HR teams to avoid having my private information shared. With the GDPR, companies are more, and more prone to reply to your request.

Try to avoid having one. Period. I wrote about it two years ago, and today I still don’t see any advantage of that platform. On the contrary, I find there is a main security issue with that network. The website offers you a way to obtain a complete map of any company with all their employees. That’s probably used by many cyberwarfare soldiers when useful information on specific targets is needed.

If you need to find a job, try Otta. Just found out about them, and I loved the UX, plus the fact that you can choose to avoid some industries or technologies. And, always use a different email for your job hunt, and then nuke that email address. That will avoid you some useless spamming.

Slack, Dropbox and other tools

If you need privacy, and security, to share passwords, documents, ideas, or anything, just use gpg/pgp tools.

Overall

You’ll have to argue with conviction that your privacy is not something you are willing to give away. Be smart to find the right arguments, even false, to provide you the maximum privacy you could get.

Of course, having that flexibility as an employee could be more difficult than having your own company, or being a freelancer. But, even then, you can choose the right company for you, and your privacy.

Post 35/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Fediverse new users

Fri, 13 May 2022 00:52:07 +0100

The acquisition of Twitter by the egocentric Musk, made people go away from the centralized platform. And, that’s a good thing IMHO.

Many of them came to the Fediverse recently, and since we are Friday, let’s do a #FF also known as #FollowFriday or #FollowFolks with accounts created less than six months ago.

Here is a list of people that commented, liked or boosted some of my toots recently:

⬇️

Post 34/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Read Like An Artist

Thu, 12 May 2022 05:43:56 +0100

Austin Kleon wrote 5 excellent points on how to read more. I totally agree with all of them .

Data brokers should be banned

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:19:57 +0100

Again, and again, the modern web is creepy. Many of my contacts took some extra steps trying to hide their trails online just to preserve some privacy. But, many friends don’t have anything to hide until maybe something happen to them.

I loved the John Oliver show about data brokers, and especially what he did at the end. And, we should all do the same kind of things to politicians who don’t give a fuck about people privacy, just to see if they get anxious about what they searched online…

All those companies should be controlled by laws, or just banned.

Post 33/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

9 minutes!

Mon, 09 May 2022 06:57:58 +0100

Higher, and higher CO2 levels, and some jerk is using his jet for a … 9 min flight!

Bolt Translate

Sat, 07 May 2022 20:11:16 +0100

Bolt is a competitor of Uber. I don’t use any of them since I don’t have the app. But, Ms Hyde does. Yesterday, she observed that the driver sent us a message in one language, and we got it automatically translated.

The translation industry really changed over the years …

FF or Follow folks

Fri, 06 May 2022 09:05:31 +0100

Ff or #FollowFriday was a hashtag used at the beginning of Twitter, it should be renamed to #FollowFolks IMHO.

I will use this page as a reference for newcomers to follow interesting persons on the Fediverse.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al
@switchingsoftware@mstdn.swiso.org
@echolib@pleroma.echolib.re
@sebsauvage@framapiaf.org
@valere@hostux.social
@jz@mamot.fr
@dada@diaspodon.fr
@jalcine@todon.eu
@Roland@framapiaf.org
@Troll@maly.io
@blinry@chaos.social
@mmu_man@m.g3l.org
@Shinra@mastodon.social
@tyldurd@framapiaf.org
@oufmilo@travelpandas.fr
@simounet@mastodon.simounet.net
@sexybiggetje@mastodon.social
@devnull@mamot.fr
@pourrito@mamot.fr
@danslerush@framapiaf.org
@Framasoft@framapiaf.org
@aeris@social.imirhil.fr
@jamie@social.helios.red
@Roka@mamot.fr
@edel@fosstodon.org
@kev@fosstodon.org
@mike@fosstodon.org
@joel@fosstodon.org

Less and less Android apps

Fri, 06 May 2022 05:48:53 +0100

Since I left main social networks, my mobile phone usage changed. I remember the urge to check the device, even without any real goal, just like a smoker will light a cigarette just by habit. And, after a while, I was checking it less and less… Or that’s what I was thinking.

Screen time app showed me that I was still using it too much. On the last seven days, my screen time was 25 hours and 12 minutes! That’s way too much, but I know it is probably due to the NBA playoffs, and the almost two hours per game spent on that evil piece of technology. It would be good to see the percentage of time spent on each application to confirm my thoughts. I could probably try ActivityWatch that Edel uses to compile her time on screens.

Two years ago, I was spending around 4 hours on my phone. I know it’s way less today, even if I need to wait to the end of the NBA season to really get real numbers. But also because I got rid of different apps that I don’t need to be available on my phone. Here is the list of apps I used two years ago:

~~Fedilab, the mastodon client~~ gone! I’ll check Mastodon only on the laptop
~~Wallabag~~ gone! It’s fine to not bookmark everything
~~Materialistic, a hacker news app~~ gone! I can’t even remember what it looks like
~~Lichess~~ gone!
Signal
DuckDuckGo
AntennaPod, a podcast app
StandardNotes

Today, the list of Android apps I really use is :

Signal
DuckDuckGo
P!n
AntennaPod

I got rid of Lichess because I spent too much time on it. I love chess, but to really improve your Elo, the chess rating, I would need to read, and study chess more. Since my goal is not to become the next Kasparov, I just ditched it. I felt the same sensation again. The urge to play a game every time I wasn’t busy, but the app wasn’t there anymore. I had the same feeling before when I erased social networks apps like Twitter, or even Mastodon.

I still have some other apps installed on my phone, but I rarely use them. I try to check Signal only a couple of times per day. But, the same way, I don’t really need to do that. I need an app that will lock the phone, and let me only use it at some hours of the day. Or, maybe, just to use the actual phone just to call someone if needed. I used an app called Lock me out in the past, but I can’t find it anymore. If anyone has a suggestion for an alternative, free to leave a comment.

Globally, I try to use it less. I have a book, or my Remarkable tablet, next to me to read a book instead of wasting my time. If I want to check something online, I note it down using the P!n app. Later, I will review it, and see if I really need to spend time on this.

I have Slack installed on it for work, and former colleagues, but even Slack will be removed this week. I’ll get a proper list of all apps, and remove everything from the phone that is available on a laptop, and that could be checked later.

I want a slower life, with no fast lexicon. Furthermore, I don’t want to hear about fast-food, fast growth, false quick connection with friends.

I want a simple life to appreciate the moment I’m leaving with family, friends or even alone…

Post 32/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Introduction

Tue, 03 May 2022 18:16:23 +0100

Since last week, many new users on the Fediverse are posting an #introduction. That made people that have been around for a while to repost their own introduction.

Since I’ve never done an #introduction, and many are doing it the last week. I’m Hyde, #blogging when I have free time, #linux user since ‘96, #vim lover, mechanical #keyboard fan, and #zettelkasten adept.

I spend my time in #shell and #terminal using my favorite tiling #windowmanager : #awesomewm

Doing some #photography with my #fujifilm gear, and trying to read more #books recently.

Goodbye Bridgy

Mon, 02 May 2022 18:00:19 +0100

Goodbye Bridgy! I’ve been using it to display Mastodon comments on this blog. But, there were some issues with replies not appearing sometimes. I searched online and found a solution.

Thanks to Carl’s post, I changed the way how my comments are displayed now. It should be better, and I hope lost comments will be behind me.

The blog still accepts comments using webmention.io, so Horst will probably continue to comment that way.

I have to check if I should get rid of that button, and load all the comments directly. That would impact the load on my Mastodon server, but since I don’t have millions of visitors, it should be alright.

Thanks to Carl for this awesome tweak!

Post 31/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Top 10 books

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 06:45:32 +0100

If there were only 10 books, which ones would you take with you?

April 2022

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 04:30:00 +0100

Things I’ve done this month including new podcasts, a couple of movies, new books, and other interests I had.

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries, an episode about cheat codes, people developing them, and how some players are willing to pay a lot for them.

I added two new podcasts to my list this month:

a new French anti fascism podcast by Ugo Palheta.
WE’RE IN!, a cybersecurity podcast from Synack.

Books

I finished Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. A great book for people wanting to leave their phone, or any screen in favor of more quality time with friends, family, or just with yourself. The author suggests a step-by-step guide to get rid of things that, in reality, we don’t need and that has only been brought to our life by engineers from the Silicon Valley.

I almost finished What every body is saying by Joe Navarro. I’ve started to watch how people behave, trying to spot things described in that book. For now, I’m not really good at it 😅.

I’ve started The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. I picked up that book because its title made me smile.

I didn’t open Extreme Privacy last month.

Articles / Videos

English

I’m a Scam Prevention Expert, and I Got Scammed
An overview of version control in programming
You should selfhost your own content, Twitter shows you why.
Cool things people do with their blogs
Alternatives to GoodRead
Number of journalists behind bars reaches global high
Contrachrome, a comic about privacy, Google, and Chrome. Bonus point, Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power, makes an apparition, and talks about privacy.
The Argument for Location-Based Salaries Is Falling Apart
The beginning of our love
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Rock, Will Smith, and a slap.

French

A round table discussion about the crucial choice to vote Macron or to avoid voting?
Elon Musk et Twitter VS Mastodon et le Fédiverse
Immersion

Projects

Unreal Engine 5 Release - Just wooow ! Go check that video!
Vim in your Emacs with Evil. The name is a beautiful troll 😂.
BirdsiteLive - Follow people from Twitter without being on the blue bird.

TV shows

Moon Knight, the latest Marvel series, looks promising after watching the first episode, but then Disney just blew up everything. So far, I’ve watched the first four episodes, and I’m not sure to continue.

Movies

Spider-Man: Far from Home. Oddly, I missed that one in 2019.

Spider-Man: No Way Home. I didn’t really love the multiverse and the three spider-men in the same movie. And, I preferred the Far from Home one.

Doctor Strange. Again, I missed that one too. It reminded me a bit of Batman Begins, with Christian Bale, and his journey to train with his mentor in Asia.

Sport

Watched too many NBA playoffs games! I should probably spend my time on the condensed ones with the highlights the NBA app offers.

I managed to watch the UFC 273, which was not really interesting.

Post 30/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Finally, the Lamy EMR

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:46:19 +0100

Last month, I wrote about that Lamy AL star black EMR pen. My plan wasn’t to order one, but the original pen that I bought, for only €129, started to have too many issues.

My kid loves to draw, and of course, that new toy was a new experience. But, the pressure applied on the pen just nuked the nib and/or the pen. The support said I need to replace the nib with a new one, and put it gently inside. But, even doing that, I can’t apply any pressure because the pen starts to write above the screen of the device again.

The guy in the video of my last month post said the experience writing with the Lamy is awful if you use their nibs, and you should instead use Remarkable ones. To be honest, so far I didn’t notice really difference.

What I love about the Lamy is the handling of the pen, and its size. It’s a bit too light for me, I prefer heavier pens. Using the Lamy, you lose the magnetic feature the official Remarkable Marker offers. And, if you own the Marker Plus, you lose also the eraser built in the head of the pen. But, you save around €70 compared to the Marker Plus. And, I really think it’s a better alternative to their Markers.

I haven’t tested yet the pen with the official Remarkable nibs, since this one is working well for me. I’ll see how it goes through the next couple of weeks …

Post 29/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Fujifilm X100V

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:31:50 +0100

I had the first three cameras from the X100 series. And, I loved them. Now, I’m only using my XPro2 and XPro3.

I didn’t touch the 4th edition, but I hope that at some point I will get my hands on that 5th edition.

This post was a reply to https://gregorymignard.com/fujifilm-x100v/

Fujifilm Black and White Camera

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:23:51 +0100

I personally think that the X100V or X-Pro3 would be the best base for an “Acros Edition” model

Ritchie Roesch

I would definitely be thinking about buying one too. The Leica Monochrome always looked interested to me, but Leica’s prices are way too overpriced.

This post was a reply to https://fujixweekly.com/2022/04/12/an-open-letter-to-fujifilm-in-bw/

Immersion

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:59:43 +0100

Watched this week, this 52 minutes French documentary: Immersion. Made by Captain Yvon, with Gregory Mignard and Jeremy Janin, they followed Lea Brassy, a surfer, who went to meet inspiring people living alongside the English Channel.

I watched it with my 5 years kid, who said about one of the first music in the beginning, that it was a death one 😱. But, we enjoyed the images, and the stories of those persons.

If you don’t know what to watch on Netflix, check it, even without understanding French. Just mute it, and put the soundtrack of some movie like… Le Grand Bleu.

Post 28/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Added to blogroll

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 10:26:58 +0100

Found out this morning, that my blog got added to Blogroll, a website listing many fine personal & independent blogs […] No algorithms ever!.

I discovered it after Kev tooted about it a couple of months ago. If you have a blog, you should contact Ray, and nominate your blog.

I love personal websites/blogs, and Blogroll is a golden nugget to discover real people with random thoughts, no ads, no tracking, nothing that make me sick when I hear excitement in some folks about web3, or other AI crap. It reminds me of the beauty industry, where a certain type of standard is sold to young teenagers. We don’t want to be cloned, and there is beauty in everyone. Those societies supposed to be modern are really disgusting to me. But, that’s another story.

If you want to read real people, just visit Blogroll! You won’t be disappointed. I already added a couple of new RSS feeds to my Newsboat configuration.

Post 27/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

YouTube once again

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 23:48:20 +0100

A famous French channel with 960k subscribers got removed from YouTube without any warning. Thinkerview offers interviews of politicians, CEOs, hackers, journalists, actors, etc. They published their first content nine years ago. Quickly after their start, they adopted a recognizable video format with three items: an armchair, a black background, and the guest. It quickly raised attention, and now with almost one million subscribers, they are quite famous.

Yesterday, YouTube decided to remove the channel. After a couple of tweets, probably some emails, the channel is back today. Framasoft tweeted about PeerTube, and how they could be better leaving those centralized platforms. I guess the main reason for them to be there is, like always, mo - ney!

But, once again, we are helpless if they decide for X reason to shut your channel down. They don’t care about you or your audience. If you don’t comply to their rules, you’re out. That’s it! You can complain again, and again, but at the end, you lost!

Instead, all the creators should use better alternatives like PeerTube for example. The main issue, of course, is the monetization. Some of those channels employ a whole team of talents, and pay them with revenue they got from YouTube. On the other hand, on PeerTube, it’s quite hard to get the same thing. The only option, as far as I know, is to ask for donations. Of course, we are not on the same amounts.

I would rather pay a monthly fee for a great PeerTube channel than going on a Goog^YouTube platform. But, I know many won’t because they can’t afford or because they just want free content.

Both sides have issues, but I prefer privacy, even if it costs me something. I would rather help creators than be a part of that data gathering GAFAM ecosystem…

Post 26/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

The beginning of our love

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 01:35:50 +0100

https://www.fujixpassion.com/2022/04/11/the-beginning-of-our-love/

A zoom lens on a gameboy

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 23:48:37 +0100

Some people are genius in their own way

https://hackaday.com/2021/12/19/gameboy-gets-ridiculously-good-lens/

My XPro-3 screen died

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 22:11:24 +0100

Last week, the little screen, the sub monitor, was acting awkwardly. The next day, both screens, that little one and the hidden LCD screen, died.

The camera still works, but all the menu, adjustments, or images viewing need to be done in the viewfinder. After trying different settings, having an eye fatigue, and a couple of resets, nothing changed. The screen remained black and useless.

The little flat cable between the LCD and the camera is probably the piece of hardware guilty. I tried to find someone who eventually changed that cable himself, but so far no video or article about it. I checked Fujiaddict’s page, where they disassembled many cameras, but nothing about the XPro3. I guess I will have to find a reseller/repair center to fix it.

On the other hand, it’s quite enjoyable to say to people: “sorry, there is no screen” or “it’s broken” if someone knows there is a hidden screen. But, I wonder if that will have any impact on the camera. If that’s only the connector cable, then I should be fine…

Post 25/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Is Warp terminal a joke?

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 10:03:24 +0100

Friday, a friend sent me a blog post about Warp, The terminal for the 21st century.

Reading that post, I didn’t discover anything that I’m not already doing with my current configuration.

Two arguments they have :

Terminals are hard to use

They don’t work for teams

It looks like using the mouse is the easier way. I’m not that kind of person. Awesomewm is my window manager, a tiling one focusing mainly on keybindings. Combined with zsh and fzf, I do everything quickly. You can even use zsh autosuggestions to have some fancy features.

Until Warp, terminals have been inherently single-user, local applications. But as I learned when I was leading engineering on Google Docs – and as Dylan showed with Figma – every productivity application is more powerful when it’s collaborative. This is true 100% of the time – from Figma to GDocs to Notion to Front – and I’m confident that the terminal is no exception.

Screen & tmux have those features since years. I guess people behind Google Docs, and similar other tools, are not aware of this.

Warp is made in Rust with GPU-accelerated graphics

The only good thing is that it was done in Rust, and it’s probably fast. But, in the demo, you can see a lot of pop-ups suggesting options as directories or filenames. But, we already have all those things in current terminals.

I would like to see how it works on older hardware.

Apparently, the guys over there raised $23M for that project. That looks like a lot of money wasted on something already existing, and the all goal is to make a clickable term… or to scam some VCs 😅.

Post 24/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Media consumption - March 2022

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 14:30:00 +0100

Podcasts

A conversation with Bruce Schneier with some Internet Q&A. Security, privacy, and why companies don’t have any interest to provide good security.

Two Darknet Diaries podcasts, Adam, and Dirty Coms.
The second one was about sim swapping, and crypto thieves. Quite an enjoyable episode.

Books

I finished Human Hacking by Chris Hadnagy, and Seth Schulman.

I continued Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I started What every body is saying by Joe Navarro.

Articles

OpenStreetMap for Emacs users
- I’m a Vim lover, but some people may find this useful.
American capitalism needs a reboot
- Capitalism in general should need a global reboot, or even a better alternative.
The Asymmetry of Open Source

Projects

Rich - a Python library for beautiful formatting in terminals.
URLhaus - a project sharing malicious URLs with the goal to avoid them.
Yq - a lightweight and portable command-line YAML, JSON and XML processor
Awesome-tmux - a list of tmux resources.

TV shows

Finished the 5 seasons of Animal Kingdom, a series that reminded me of Point Break, the 1991 movie with Patrick Swayze, and Keanu Reeves.

Watched the five seasons of The Bureau, a TV show about a French Intelligence officer interpreted by Mathieu Kassovitz, known mainly for his movie: La Haine.

I loved that series, where even Stuxnet was mentioned in the 4th cyberwarfare season. The last two episodes were directed by Jacques Audiard, but they disappointed me compared to the rest of the season.

Movies

Deep Water - Usually I love Ben Affleck’s movies, but this one could have been way better.

Turning Red - Watched it with the kids… Disney / Pixar should spend more time working on those movies before releasing them.

Sport

I’m not a big soccer fan. Usually, I love watching the World Cup/European Cup. I stumbled on the game where the Parisian team, the PSG, got kicked out from the Champions League. Millions spent on old stars won’t create a team, just a bunch of players with excessive egos. The PSG is focused on branding, and selling jerseys, than creating a real team. They even opened a PSG store in the 5th Avenue in NYC 🤦.

And, the NBA, of course. The end of the season is near, which team will miss the playoffs …

Post 23/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Nethunter

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 21:50:55 +0100

Last night, I gave a try to Nethunter, the Android version of Kali Linux, the penetration testing distribution.

I have a spare Oneplus 7 Pro, and after a talk with a colleague, I thought it could be interested to install it for testing purpose.

The commands used to reboot, and flash the Oneplus :


 % adb reboot bootloader
 % fastboot boot twrp-3.3.1-4-guacamole.img # newer version didn't work
 % adb sideload Magisk-v19.3.zip
 % adb sideload nethunter-2022.1-oneplus7-oos-ten-kalifs-full.zip

Everything went well for the installation, tried to reboot … And, now have that message 😌 :


 QUALCOMM CrashDump Mode
 -----------------------------

 Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x0000000b

After a couple of unsuccessful restarts, I gave up. I need to find a way to restore it with the original ROM… or maybe a custom one. And, then I will try it again… If I didn’t brick it completely 😅.

Post 22/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Sprite Fight

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:56:25 +0000

Blender, the famous open-source 3D software, just released a new 3.1 version of their product. Apparently, many new things available, and also better performances by 3-4 times.

Personally, I haven’t touched a 3D program since 3D Studio Max 1.0 (codename Jaguar). That was in … 1996. I tried a couple of times Blender, but its unending options slow me down to improve my skills there. And, to be honest, I spent my time on less time-consuming things.

Reading about that new release, I stumbled upon this short movie, Sprite Fight, made by Blender Studio.

The movie is funny, and was inspired by the horror comedy movies from the 80s.

When a group of rowdy teenagers trek into an isolated forest, they discover peaceful mushroom creatures that turn out to be an unexpected force of nature.

Hats off to the guys behind that little animation. It’s quite remarkable what you can do with free, and open-source software.

Post 21/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How to secure your communications

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 01:25:24 +0000

Often, I have to argue with people around me why I’m not using Whatsapp or any other social network from Facebook, Apple & co.

One question is coming back again, and again:

- Why should I use Signal, I don't have any friends there?

Random people

Here are some pretexts to make them use the app.

Post old pictures in groups

It will bring memories, and be a subject to talk about. Sometimes, the persons in the group will not see them, but someone else will talk about them. That could trigger the envy to see them too. It’s even better if it’s not only the paranoid guy who talks about the app, but someone from the group where you shared the photo.

“I can’t send it to you over SMS”

Invoke that the pictures, or files, you are trying to send are too big for SMS. Just say: “Could you just install Signal, so I can send it to you easily?”

Be the change

If someone says he/she doesn’t have any friends using it. Respond with something like: “Wouldn’t be great that you help your contacts to communicate securely for the good of everyone in the long run? I’m sure many of them will thank you. Don’t be a follower, and be the change!”

It’s easy

If some of your contacts are concerned about the security of their data exchanged over non encrypted SMS, point them in the right direction. Ask them what tools they use, and show them how easy it’s to use Signal. Often, people don’t know where to start.

That’s the only way to contact me

I’ve been using this one for a while. It could be a bit hard to use that pretext, because you may lose some of your contacts. But, at least, I see clearly who wants to stay in touch with me.

Conclusion

Over the years, I persuaded over 80 persons (family, friends, colleagues or even strangers) to switch or to install Signal on their phone. It’s not always easy, but with the right context, and the right arguments, it can be done easily.

Of course, there are other methods to secure your communications with XMPP, GPG or similar things, but Signal is straightforward for random people.

What are your ruses to make them use secure apps?

Post 20/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Media consumption - February 2022

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:30:00 +0100

Podcasts

An old, and long conversation between Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss found on his podcast.

Darknet Diaries’ podcast about spam bots where I learnt

2008, Viagra sales brought Pfizer $2 billion in revenue that year.
Hacker, named Google 😂, sent 74 billion spam emails a day through Cutwail.
2009, spam botnets were sending over 150 billion spam messages a day 😱

As usual, I listened to some French ones, and Michael Bazzell’s podcast about security, privacy and OSINT.

Books

This month, I’ve read :

How to take smart notes by Sönke Ahrens. It’s about the Zettelkasten note taking system. I recommend it to anyone who takes notes while reading.

I almost finished Human Hacking by Chris Hadnagy, and Seth Schulman.

I started also Extreme Privacy by Michael Bazzell.

I didn’t open Python and Hacking Made Simple, Black Hat Go or Emergence: Seven steps for radical life change.

Articles

Projects

Jless a replacement to less, jq, and cat.

TV shows

“The Book of Boba Fett” episodes 5 & 6 were great. But, were they because Boba Fett wasn’t there? And, the all season is just 7 episodes. Why seven only? Anyway, except the two episodes mentioned above, I didn’t really find it interesting, and found the scripts quality quite poor in general.

I watched the three first seasons of Animal Kingdom, a series that reminds me Point Break, the 1991 movie with Patrick Swayze, and Keanu Reeves.

Movies

Movies with kids:

Ron’s gone wrong. That’s the second movie after The Mitchells vs the machines where privacy, and surveillance is a subject. In The Mitchells, the CEO name was Mark, and in this one it’s Marc. Coincidence ? 😂

I’ve watched also Pil’s adventure, and a movie/anime with Tom and Jerry.

Sport

UFC 271: it was alright. No big fights that were really worth watching them in “normal” mode, meaning I fast forwarded many of them.

NBA, a lot of games this month. Nikola Jokic, the 2020-21 NBA MVP is still performing really well this season.

Post 19/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Mr José Chacon

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 13:29:34 +0000

The first time I put on boxing gloves, I was 17 years old. That’s when I met Mr José Chacon, a man that created BAC9, the Boxing Athletic Club 9, in Paris.

My youth was spent between three things: computers, basket-ball, and boxing. After many years of basket-ball, a trip to London, I came back to Paris, and of course back to that place where you can feel, and smell the sweat, and blood that flowed there.

Boxing, you love it, or hate it. Many friends came to try … Usually, only once, and they were done with it. They never got it. Many think it’s just a violent sport, but boxing is more than that. It’s a technical art, that needs a daily commitment, and unlike other sports, it’s an ungrateful one. Many pros have a side job, and only the bests have the luck to be 100% focused on their training. But, no matter what your level is, there is something pushing you to go there every day.

For the last ten years, I spent many hours sweating, giving, and taking punches from people who became friends. I always loved that place where people of all social classes did workout together. You meet bankers, young thugs, actors like Vincent Cassel, who used to train there years ago, and many others. But, none of that is important, because as soon as you go through the door, all that is gone. Boxing has helped many young people to get off the streets, to learn to surpass themselves, and to learn the respect. Since I moved abroad, the thing that I miss the most is probably there.

Last night, I got a message that Mr José Chacon passed away during his nap. I will always remember how he loved to slap boxers by surprise, on their back, their cheeks, in their abs, and how he made laugh everyone.

His good mood will be missed.

Peace to his soul.

Mr chacon 0001

Mr chacon 0002

Mr chacon 0003

Mr chacon 0004

Mr chacon 0005

Mr chacon 0006

Mr chacon 0007

Mr chacon 0008

Mr chacon 0009

Post 18/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Vim and fzf

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 22:49:01 +0000

Last week, I wrote about fzf. Today, I want to share how I use it with Vim.

First, install fzf (see this post), then I personally use vim-plug to handle my vim plugins.

To install a new one, I add this to my ~/.vimrc :


 Plug 'junegunn/fzf.vim'
 " make sure you have the latest binary
 Plug 'junegunn/fzf', { 'do': { -> fzf#install() } }

And, then just use :PlugInstall to install it.

The plugin will ask you to install fzf if it doesn’t find it in your $PATH.

Here is my fzf configuration:


 " fzf stuff ❤ 
 
 inoremap <expr> <c-x><c-k> fzf#vim#complete#word({'window': { 'width': 0.4, 'height': 0.2 }})

 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>b :Buffers<CR>

 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>f :Files<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>/ :BLines<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>' :Marks<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>g :BCommits<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>H :Helptags<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>hh :History<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>h: :History:<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <Leader>h/ :History/<CR>
 
 nnoremap <silent> <C-g> :Rg<CR>
 " Rg requires ripgrep to be installed on your system
 " You could use :Ag if you prefer ag, the silver searcher, and it has to be present " on your system too

I use the comma as a leader key. In my configuration, I use those keybindings:

,b list open buffers
,f look for files in the current directory
,/ to search for a pattern in the current file
,' to find the latest edits I’ve done over various files
,g to check the commits of the current buffer
,H to search through vim help
,hh old files and open buffers
,h: commands history
,h/ searches history
Crtl+g to search pattern in current directory using ripgrep

What does it look like? Here’s a screenshot using ,b that brings a window with all the opened buffers on the left side, and a preview (you can toggle it with Ctrl-/) on the right side.

To open the one, I want I use Ctrl+v to open it in a vertical split window, or Ctrl+x to open it horizontally.

I really love the preview, and of course ripgrep integration. It’s way faster than the included default vimgrep.

Some other customization, I have in my ~/.vimrc :


 " [Buffers] Jump to the existing window if possible
 let g:fzf_buffers_jump = 1

 " [[B]Commits] Customize the options used by 'git log':
 let g:fzf_commits_log_options = '--graph --date=relative --color --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h %C(cyan)%ad %Cgreen[ %aN ] %Creset%s %C(bold yellow)%d"'

There are many others customizations doable. Check the official documentation for more information.

Post 17/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Going through my archive

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 21:59:43 +0000

Finally, I decided to go through my archive that I took over the years. I wanted to do it for a long time, but never took the time to update the photography section of this website/blog.

Today, I post the first page of a series of pictures : the bouncer.

Post 16/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

fzf ❤

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 21:31:57 +0000

The shell, is the place where I spend most of the time when I’m on a computer. It goes from reading my mails with mutt to coding through chatting over IRC or checking RSS feeds with Newsboat.

To be efficient, I use many tools, and one I love particularly is fzf, an interactive fuzzy file search tool for the CLI. What I like about this little program is its speed. On my laptop, it indexed all files (~25k) in one or two seconds. ❤

Installation

You may clone the GitHub repository, or install it with your distribution package manager.


 # cloning method 
 % git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf
 % ~/.fzf/install

 # Debian based systems
 % sudo apt install fzf

Usage

Fzf includes some shortcuts out of the box :


 % [Ctrl+r] # to search through your history
 % [Ctrl+t] # to search file or directories names
 % [Alt+c] # to cd (change directory) directly without typing cd

The last two commands will search recursively through all the subdirectories from where you start the search.

Fzf uses find by default when it looks for files. I prefer to use rg also known as ripgrep. You can customize many things (check the man page), here are my shell variables :


 # we use ripgrep, but you can use also ag, fd 
 FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND=rg --files --no-ignore-vcs --hidden

 # default options I don't like borders and I want 40% of my terminal to be 
 # used to display the results
 FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS='--height 40% --no-border'

 # No preview-window on Ctrl+r except if you type '?'
 FZF_CTRL_R_OPTS=--preview 'echo {}' --preview-window down:3:hidden:wrap --bind '?:toggle-preview'

 # Preview window with content displayed 
 FZF_CTRL_T_OPTS=--select-1 --exit-0 --preview '(highlight -O ansi -l {} 2> /dev/null || cat {} || tree -C {}) 2> /dev/null | head -200'

 fzf_default_completion=expand-or-complete

You should be ready to use it in the shell with just some variables you can in your (.bashrc|.zshrc) files.

Fuzzy completion for files and directories can be executed using ** at the end of the line like this:


 % vim **[TAB]
 # You can use the TAB key to select many files

 % cd **[TAB]
 # or directly 
 % [Alt+c]

To navigate through the results, use Ctrl+j or Ctr+k like you would in vim, or in your shell if you use the vim mode (% set -o vi).

You can use it with many commands like this:


 % ssh **[TAB]
 % telnet **[TAB] # I would prefer netcat ... it probably exists
 % kill -9 **[TAB]

That’s basically all you need to know to start using it.

Bonus: A video showing many things you can do with it.

Post 15/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Lamy AL star Black EMR

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 05:29:57 +0000

Ten days ago, an issue with my marker arose. I managed to fix it, and for now it works.
Yesterday, browsing for some specific things on the web, I discovered a thing that will maybe make Horst happy.

He has one, or many 🤔, Lamy fountain pens. On my side, I only have one fountain pen, the Faber Castel e-motion that I love.

My finding is about a pen made by Lamy for tablets: LAMY AL-star black EMR.

Apparently, they support many devices going from Acer to Wacom through Samsung, Onyx or Remarkable. That pen, like the original marker, doesn’t need a battery, has over 4000 pressure points, and it’s the same price … if you get the simple marker from Remarkable.

Remarkable offers two type of markers:

a white one for €59
a black one, named marker plus, for €129

The Plus version, except for the price bump, has an eraser built in the head of the pen. It avoids extra steps to click in the menu to choose the eraser. Both versions are magnetics, and stick well on the side of the tablet. The Lamy is cheaper than both of those two, but you will have to use Remarkable’s nibs as explained in the video below where that person shares his experience with both of those pens.

Right now, I’m not considering ordering one, but if my marker stops working I will probably buy that cheaper alternative that looks better in my opinion. It would be nice to see a partnership between those two brands in the future, but I guess Remarkable will lose some revenue in that case.

Post 14/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Media consumption - January 2022

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 14:30:00 +0100

Podcasts

No new podcasts added. Finally, I started to listen to Tim Ferry’s podcasts, only listened two of them because they are so … long! The shortest one I found was 55 minutes.

Books

I didn’t open Python and Hacking Made Simple or Black Hat Go this month.

The book Emergence: Seven steps for radical life change is still at the same point.

I’ve started a new book about Social Engineering, Human Hacking by Chris Hadnagy, and Seth Schulman.

TV shows

‘Dexter New Blood’ was alright, but it could have been better. There were many errors like the Ketamine, that he never used in the original ones. Plus, that sherif who never solved a serial killer case over years, and now found the Bay Harbour butcher who never got caught before.

‘Godfather of Harlem’ was enjoyable to watch, and if you love gangsters movies, you will probably like that one too.

“The Book of Boba Fett” is not really good. I just watched the first three episodes, the sixth got out last night. And, why the episodes are not the same length?!

Gang of London, not really good. Advised by a friend, but I didn’t like it.

Movies

Eternals, it was just … alright. They are eternals, but they can be killed 🤔

Ghostbuster Afterlife was a fun moment. Lots of allusions to the first episodes, and I learnt that Harold Ramis, also known as Egon Spengler, died in 2014, and didn’t speak to Bill Murray for over 20 years.

The Many Saints of Newark, is a movie about the youth of Tony Soprano, the mobster boss from the HBO Show, Soprano. I discovered that the actor playing the young Tony Soprano is Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who portrayed that boss for years.

Kids, and Friday pizza/movies:

Encanto didn’t really love that one, but girls loved it.
Hotel Transylvania 4 : my kid loved it.
Clifford, the big red dog… it’s just for kids. 🤷

Sport

UFC 270, the only good fight was between Brandon Moreno and Deveison Figueirdo, who won his belt back. The main event was boring, even if I found Ngannou really strong to slam Gane so easily.

Post 13/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Show your children who you are

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 13:30:56 +0000

“Your kids… They don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”

—Jim Henson

I totally agree with that post on Austin Kleon’s website. I’ve seen too many parents giving a screen to their kids just to be left alone, and being able to scroll their feeds quietly.

Read more, and your kids will imitate you.

Keeping a mailing list

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 23:19:23 +0000

Reading some of my RSS feed articles, I stumbled upon this post where Austin Kleon encourage people to have a mailing list. I love the idea, primarily because I’m not a fan of the social networks, and secondly, I love emails. But, I’m not really sure how the GDPR works concerning them. Should the person send an email every month, six months, year to ask for the consent from the people in that list? Of course, they gave in some way their consent subscribing to the newsletter, but what happens when they change their mind?

Anyway, I’m not starting a mailing list any time soon, so I’m not really concerned, but would love to have that information for people I know. I will have to dig a bit about that part …

Post 12/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

January

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 23:24:44 +0000

January, a month that rhymes with dry for all the social alcoholics I know. It was quite the opposite on my side. My holidays in Paris for the new year were rainy, cold and boring. A perfect 10/10 score on the daily rain scale. Thanks to the God of the Internet, and to the lovely weather, I was able to finish the second season of Godfather of Harlem with Forest Whitaker.

We were glad to come back to our new home where the sunshine is present over 250+ days per year. Since last July, I only got, maybe, around 10-15 days of rain max. Being able to get up every morning with a blue sky has a huge impact on the mood.

This Sunday, we went to the beach. On the part of the coast where we seated, at least a hundred bathers were getting in the freezing water. Ok, many of them wore surf suits, but still. In this period, the temperature of the sea is around 15/16C.

Ms Hyde told me she was jealous, and admired them. But, she will never get in water, in January, except if it’s the Caribbean beaches with a +25C sea 😅.

On my side, I would like to test, but before that I need to read The Wim Hof Method: Own Your Mind, Master Your Biology, and Activate Your Full Human Potential to survive it. 😂

My feet didn’t touch the water, instead I spent some time to immortalize those surfers insensitive to cold. The Fujifilm recipes I used were:

All shots straight out of the camera, my Fuji XPro-3.

Post 11/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Less notifications

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 21:28:24 +0000

Social networks, I’m almost done with them. On my phone, I only have Mastodon, and Signal. LinkedIn, and all social networks, are gone. The only two I kept are Mastodon, on my own instance, and Twitter where the toots are retweeted automatically. I really want to close the latter, but I keep it opened only because I have some friends there, and some photographers I follow. I hope that my toots there will eventually draw attention to the Fediverse, to decentralized networks, and to privacy.

I don’t have Twitter on my phone, I rarely check the website even if it’s opened in a temporary tab in my Firefox. It’s just in case there is some news… To be honest, I don’t want to waste my time scrolling, and scrolling my AI organized timeline.

Mastodon, no AI, no ads, no suggestions, and really cool people. I met many great persons there, even if it’s not IRL, but who knows maybe one day we will. And, recently, I found myself in the same loop I was with Twitter, I checked my phone way too often..

For this reason, I removed Fedilab, one of the Android Mastodon apps, from my phone. I will only check it from my laptop. I will spend more time with books, my Remarkable 2 tablet, tweaking recipes in my XPro2 and XPro3, or just doodling with my kids. I want them to see their father doing something better than wasting time on some screen.

Will wrote a good post about blogging, and the same way, I want to spend more time on my blog. Instead of a short answer to a toot, I will try to slow down, think, and write a better thought through a post. Also, one of my goal this year is to add more pages like /uses, /books, /hate, /love.

Post 10/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Late Sunday, notes, and music

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 22:16:55 +0000

Sunday evening, after an afternoon at the beach, where I witnessed over 100 surfers going in the ocean in January 😅, I decided to clean my notes on my Remarkable 2.

First thing I discovered tonight when I changed the nib of the marker is that you have to put it softly. Why? Because the pen drew without touching the screen. After two minutes on Duckduckgo, I found a comment on Reddit:

Reason why that happened: The screen creates a magnetic field when on. When the pen comes near this field, the magnetic field powers the pen, and the pen constantly tells the tablet the pressure level it detects. Unless the pen is touching the screen, this pressure level is zero.

You must have pushed the nib in too hard so that the pressure level detected was always >0. In that case, the pen would start writing on the device as soon as it came within the magnetic field (and received power from the device). The fix to this is (as you’ve already done) take the nib out and put it back in a bit more gently and carefully.

And, actually being gentle with the nib resolved that amusing behaviour. Going through the notes, I listened to music I discovered, and enjoyed recently.

Post 9/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Using the Remarkable2 for six months

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 13:21:51 +0000

Tablets, screens, are everywhere. I had the 1st iPad Mini, when it got out a couple of years ago. Never used it a lot, and I finally gave it to my mother back then. It was funny to see a person saying she doesn’t need it becoming an addict to that little piece of technology.

When I moved abroad, I bought the Remarkable2, the next-generation paper tablet. The main goal was to use it to read books, and take some quick notes. What made me buy that device, instead of any other, is the fact it has a Linux OS, and you can ssh to it.

Some people on the Fediverse also pointed to this GitHub repository that lists many projects to customize it, and add features not implemented by the manufacturer. I did install some new tools, enabling new brushes, new gestures, and other things.

That tablet is probably the thinner I’ve ever seen. And, it’s really well-designed. Writing on it, it’s not like using an iPad where you write on a piece of glass.

The only annoying thing is the price of the accessories. The leather folio is €169, the polymer version is €119. The markers are not included will cost you, €59 for the standard one, and €129 for the Plus that offers an eraser when you flip over the pencil like a traditional one.

I was quite happy with it, until I saw that every 3rd party tools I installed got removed, and I was back with the original software. I suspect the auto-update to be the source of this.

Once rebooted, the Release Notes showed they offer now a connection to Microsoft Connect, and you can have the device for €100 cheaper if you subscribe to their Connect plan at €7.99 per month. Of course, I won’t be using that Microsoft service, and I’m not a big fan of that move.

The subscription offers :

All your notes in one place
Unlimited cloud storage
Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive integration
Handwriting conversion
Screen Share
More powerful features

It’s a shame they didn’t include Nextcloud integration, and the handwriting conversion. I have to check if that’s available somewhere, when I reinstall everything.

That product is definitely not cheap, it doesn’t have apps, you can’t play videos on it, but it does the job it was designed for.

Post 8/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Dotfiles on Codeberg

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:44:39 +0000

Dotfiles are files like .zshrc, .vimrc, or .muttrc. Their purpose is to configure the app you like the way you want. There are already plenty of them online, and I just started mine too on Codeberg. Why? Because a friend saw some of my vim customization, and asked if I had the configuration somewhere.

That’s, I guess, a good reason to start that repository, it could help many users to discover some tweaking I’ve done to my daily tools.

You can find my repo at https://codeberg.org/hyde/dotfiles.

Do you share your dotfiles somewhere too? Let me know …

Post 7/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Sony Bravia updates suck

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 22:16:51 +0000

How to spend a lovely Sunday afternoon? Try having a Sony Bravia TV with auto updates enabled 😅

I bought that TV back in 2015 for over €1000. Worked pretty well until a couple of weeks ago when it started to loop on Android animation. After a couple of minutes to some hours, it usually came back… until today.

Looking online to see if anyone has the same issue, I found out many owners of Sony devices have exactly the same issue. Sony has some videos on YouTube about how to factory reset the TV. It’s just a key combination on the TV that differs depending on your model. On mine, the KD-43X8309C, here what you are supposed to do :

Unplug the TV
Press On/Off + Volume down buttons
Holding the buttons, plug it again
Wait for a green LED, and release the buttons.

I had the green light, then no more animation loops. Just the Sony logo, and a black screen.

Lovely 🤬

Many people tried to contact Sony, who said they don’t know anything about that problem. One person had his TV for less than four days, and got the same issue. At least, two dozen persons had the same issue with various models. Some of them probably threw away their devices, because usually Sony advise changing the motherboard for only €600-700. 🤬

I guessed there was probably a way to flash the Android TV, I checked Sony’s website, found a 1.5Gb zipped package update. There was a procedure to use a USB key, and put that package on it, and just install it over the settings menu… when your Android TV works.

I kept digging to finally find a solution in a YouTube comment. That package could be put on a USB key, you plug it, turn the TV on, and wait. It took over 30 minutes to finally have an update/reset of that box. Of course, all the apps were gone, and reinstalling everything was a pain in the *ss. But, at least it didn’t finish in the bin.

Post 6/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How could we help FujiXweekly ?

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 04:01:20 +0000

Recently, I’ve been playing with many FujiXweekly film simulation recipes. I tried a couple of them, and I’m still exploring the work made by Ritchie Roesch, the person behind the website.

He provides an Android, and iOS app to have all the simulation available quickly on your phone. It also offers some extra features if you become a Patron that enables you to filter by camera, sensor, and maybe something else.

On his website, hosted on WordPress.com, you can subscribe, for $2 or more, to see all articles. Ritchie does all the work on his free time, has a day job, and it makes sense to get something back.

I wanted to pay to help for the work done, but I faced some issues:

The mobile app works only with Google services apparently, and I don’t use them with LineageOS
I don’t like WordPress.com policies, how you get stuck there if you want to move from it, and how they charge you for everything.

Reading that post, I discovered the subscribe option for his website. And, I stumbled upon this comment.

Hi Ritchie, Great stuff.

I like your work, and therefore I gladly pay for it like this Creative Collective and Patrol. BUT please find another cooperator than WordPress ! Their way to manage your clients is the worst I ever experience for online services. I think it will destroy your try to establish the CC. Sorry for my frustration.

Roger Solbakke

I do completely agree with this. Ritchie replied, saying it would cost a lot to migrate from WordPress. I’m pretty sure people on the fediverse could help him with better ethical solutions, and even help to migrate his content.

I posted a comment on that article, and it helped him to discover Mastodon. But, I’m pretty sure he never heard about Pixelfed, Peertube, Pleroma, or the Fediverse in general. Probably many creators, artists don’t know about those services too.

I don’t know many things about donations, but I guess ethical alternatives exist. The same about hosting his own instance of WordPress. I know there are technical skills to have, but I’m sure we can find him a great alternative. Yunohost could be one of them. Then just need to find someone who can host his website or do the sysadmin thing for him.

It would be nice to help people doing great things to get some revenue without using big tech companies like Google & co that don’t care about your privacy, or even your project. Their only goal is to make extra money exploiting your data.

Just some links I was thinking about to help him, or any creators, to discover new services. Feel free to add some links in the comments.

Donations

Fediverse

Pixelfed Instagram kind of clone without ads
Peertube YouTube alternative
Pleroma Federated microblogging
Fediverse.party listing all of federated networks.

If you moved away from WordPress.com, leave a message to share your experience.

Post 5/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Moxie is not Signal CEO anymore

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 11:15:05 +0000

Moxie Marlinspike stepped down as Signal CEO. As he wrote on this blog post, he will stay on the Signal board, and will search for a new CEO. Brian Acton, one of the original founder of Whatsapp who left because of privacy issues, will be the interim CEO during that period.

In my new country, everyone, every business, and many teachers are using Whatsapp. I miss a good deal of information about my kids, because I don’t want to use Meta/Facebook crappy app.

Friends, family, and many colleagues followed me, and installed Signal. I plan to make some stickers to ditch Whatsapp, and start using Signal instead. And, will cover the city with them. Hopefully, some will understand why privacy is a civil right, and why it’s important to preserve it.

And, as Horst Gutmann said, thank you for everything you’ve done! 🙌

Post 4/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

TIL, Ansible and role paths

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 22:23:18 +0000

At work, I had to find a way to share some Ansible roles with a specific project. The first idea was to use roles_path, but it looks like it overwrites the default path, or maybe I need to list all the roles directories.

Then, with the help of a colleague, we discovered that you can call a role from a fully qualified path this way :


 ---
 - hosts: webservers
 roles:
 - role: '/path/to/my/roles/'

That avoids duplicate roles over different projects, and provides an easy way to share them between repositories.

Post 3/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Legion of honour

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 00:10:06 +0000

The Legion of Honour, a title awarded by the French president, is a joke. The beginning of this new year has seen 547 persons on that list of over 90,000 personalities. Among them, Agnes Buzyn, who served as Minister of Solidarity and Health during 2017 and 2020.

She’s also the wife, of Yves Levy, who was the president of the INSERM, and that union made many controversies.

Just to quote the Wikipedia page:

The Minister of Health and Minister of Research oversee the INSERM where Yves Lévy, Buzyn's husband, was CEO at the time of her appointment. A controversy emerged as to whether Buzyn could effectively oversee an institution headed by her husband. On 29 May 2017, a decree was issued which stated the Prime Minister would carry out acts related to INSERM instead of Buzyn.

And, the other one, that really makes me sick is this one :

In January 2020, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, she caused controversy by calling temperature checks at airports "a symbol that is useless, except to please the population". In October 2020, Buzyn was one of several current and former government officials whose home was searched by the authorities following lawsuits about the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in France. In September 2021, she was placed under investigation when Prosecutors at a Paris court decided that there were grounds to prosecute her for "endangering the lives of others".

She lied about masks, saying they were useless, and handled really awfully the start of the pandemic.

Today, she works at the World Health Organization, with a salary of 15k per month, and, of course, not paying any taxes on that! And, now the little club of friends, gave her that title for the good services rendered to the French government. Really!?

Again, those politicians are incredible. So many of them are involved in illegal affairs, suspected of sexual harassment, or other shady business, and still have a seat in the highest place in the state. 🤮🤮🤮

Post 2/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

100DaysToOffload Round 3

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 16:29:33 +0000

5 Five, that’s the number of posts I needed to finish the second round of the 100DaysToOffload challenge started by Kev in 2020.

Last year, I spent too many weeks without writing anything. For 2022, I’ll plan to publish, at least, three posts per week.

I’ll try to convince friends to start it too. They need to understand the interest of writing on their own website instead of centralized platforms. Those ones are the cancer of the web, with their rules, and their ways to moderate content.

With this post, I’m starting a new round of the challenge. And, hopefully, I will finish this one in a couple of months, and join Horst who completed it twice already.

Post 1/100 - Round 3 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

My Top 50 of 2021

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 17:50:19 +0000

This year was supposed to be the one we bury the COVID-19 behind us. But, it looks like a bad movie where the virus mutates, and we can’t eradicate it. Our freedom has been jeopardized in many countries, Assange extradition is a shame, and there were many other issues globally during 2021. But, still, I managed to get a list of 50 positive things.

Birth of my second child, despite some complications, everyone is alright 🙏
Continued to write in my logbook for the second year in a row.
Bullet journaling, year 2.
Moved from France.
Started a new 100% remote job.
Witnessed Curry pass over Ray Allen as the best 3pt shooter of the NBA history.
Read more books this year, but still not enough.
Bought a heavy boxing bag.
My first restaurant in months with my wife.
Had some friends visiting us in our new country.
Learning a new language.
Started to learn golang.
Got the COVID-19, without any complication.
Discovered the Fuji recipes.
Friday Pizza and movie night with my family. Recently, we loved The Mitchell vs the Machines
The rC3 event
I convinced some friends to move away from WhatsApp.
Jira CLI, a nice cli tool.
Started a 5 years diary to write down some big moments. I don’t use it like my logbook, instead I just add a big event with the year inside.
Newsboat, CLI RSS reader.
Grave of the Fireflies, an anime not for kids.
The book, Atomic Habits, to boost your productivity.
Living near the sea was a great move.
Playing UNO with my kid.
Thoughts on how to be a great father.
Still using the Zettelkasten notes system.
Almost finished the 100DaysToOffload Round 2. (96/100 posts)
Started an OSINT repository.
Happy to see Facebook down for many hours.
Doodling with my kid, and seeing her improvement.
Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder.
My cooking lesson at the Ritz.
Improving my Vim setup.
Creativity Inc, a book about Pixar.
Got a pre-sales email for Rage against the Machine, but finally made a friend happy since I’m not going to be in France.
Discovered many new podcasts.
Enjoying the new house, and life abroad.
An exposition about Hergé, and Tintin.
Solved an issue with an old friend. Getting older, ego shouldn’t dictate our decisions.
Over two years on the Fediverse, and still glad that I left centralized social networks.
Discovered many great persons on the Fediverse.
Watched the NBA, and some great fights, boxing and UFC.
Spent more time with my camera, but still need time to process all pics I took.
Trying to be a more active reader by taking notes.
Continued to read stoicism articles.
Helped to secure some projects.
Riders of Justice, a movie with Mads Mikkelsen, I enjoyed.
The new laptop I got from my new job, a System76 one.
Having friends who helped me when I moved.
Weekly calls with many of them.

Post 95/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Media consumption - December 2021

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 14:30:00 +0100

Podcasts

I added a new one, BSD Now, a podcast about BSD systems. So far, I’ve only listened to one of the 435 podcasts available.

Books

I’ve not opened Python and Hacking Made Simple this month. Instead, I’ve started to read Black Hat Go.

The book Emergence: Seven steps for radical life change is still at the same point.

I’ve started a new book to learn Portuguese.

Articles / Videos

SOOC Live videos where the main subject is Fujifilm recipes. I’ve been testing many of them over the last month.

I stumbled upon that documentary on privacy watching #rC3, and I recommend it.

I’ve started to read Pentest magazines. Theirs articles are written by professionals in the field, and I really enjoyed reading the first ones I got.

TV shows

I’ve watched the new ‘Dexter New Blood’ TV show, and the first season of ‘Godfather of Harlem’ with Forest Whitaker. I enjoyed that first season, and will probably quickly watch the second one. It’s a combination of mobsters, Harlem, Nation of Islam, racism, and everything that city encountered during the 1950-60 decades.

I’ve watched also the first episode of “The Book of Boba Fett”, and it was just alright

Movies

OSS 117 : From Africa with Love was not as good as the first two movies. Nicolas Bedos, who was the director, and one of the writer, could have done a better work.

Venom: Let there be carnage, like OSS 117, this second part is not really good. I was expecting a better movie …

Sport

NBA, as usual.. Steph Curry made over 3000 3pts in his career, and established him as one of the best shooter in the history of the league.

Projects

12ft.io or how to bypass paywall websites! It doesn’t work with all of them, but a majority.
Metabigor a tool to do OSINT tasks without any API.

Post 94/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Favreau did it again

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 16:01:54 +0000

Same player, shoot again. John Favreau, and his team, made a new Star Wars TV show. Again, a masked man, but this time it’s about the mercenary, Boba Fett.

The first episode aired last Wednesday, and like some episodes of the Mandalorian, it was really short. It lasted around 35 minutes only, and with many moments of non-understandable dialogues.

Overall, that first episode was just alright, nothing really great. But, they found a way to keep a rolling revenue with Star Wars fans.

I hope the next episode will be a bit better, or I will just spend my time on something else.

Day 93/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Round 2 of 100DaysToOffload

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 16:00:25 +0000

Kev asked over a toot who will be interested in the #100DaysToOffload challenge for 2022. Last year, I managed to finish the challenge in 101 days. This year, it was another story, but having a second kid, a move abroad, finding a new home, and a new job. All this takes time.

I started the 3rd of January, so technically I have a couple of days left to finish it. I think some people already finished the second round.

I’ll try to post at least some posts every week over 2022. Many drafts are still in my backlog, and I’ll just need to prioritize them, and find some time to polish them.

8 posts left to go!

Post 92/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Documentary on privacy

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 22:50:23 +0000

Second day of the rC3, the remote, and already enjoyed some good talks:

That’s all what I managed to attend today 🤷.

The last link about privacy was a good movie to show around to people that “don’t have anything to hide”. It tackles racism, privacy, and states surveillance over their population.

The documentary was realised by Theresia Reinhold, founded only via Patreons! You can find it online on Yewtu.be or any good invidio.us instance.

Post 91/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Nonsense!

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 01:17:35 +0000

Again, Castex, the Prime Minister of France, and Véran, the Minister of Solidarity and Health, made an announcement tonight. And, honestly, how can we continue to trust that government? They contradicted themselves about everything linked to this pandemic. It shows their incompetency, and points out their goal : to keep the population under control.

La Quadrature du Net works on many way to preserve people’s freedom, but it’s more and more difficult. The government bypass everything :

allow drones during events after it has been banned for privacy reasons
they tear apart laws that protect privacy, and private data in the name of some experimentation
they gave the right to the police, and army to not be vaccinated
etc., etc.

Back to the announcement, here are some really, really great measures they took:

In bars, you have to be seated to have a drink.
In cinemas, seated, you can’t eat popcorns or drink anything during the movie.

A fucking nonsense!

After suggesting to open windows, those two brilliant ideas confirm that France has clowns at the top of the state.

Those ministers continued to close hospital beds during the pandemic, and now they point out the non vaccinated, and those with only two doses. They put pressure on them, saying it’s their fault if emergency rooms are full…

Again, a fucking nonsense!

Post 90/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

RC3 world

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:47:18 +0000

Once again, here it comes again the rC3, the Remote Chaos Experience. For the second year, it will be an online event due to the COVID-19, and restrictions.

Opening day, and listened to a couple of talks:

Facebook Files Explained
Stop General Data Retention in the EU - current plans for mass surveillance
Lightning talks 1

Missed ones :

Hacking containers, Kubernetes and Clouds
Operation Mindfuck vol.5
Tox CryptoParty - Install a Tox client and have some fun with it
Unwinnable prices on the internet

As usual, there are many in German, but the replay will be online soon with subtitles.

Tomorrow, I will check those:

Catching NSO group’s Pegasus spyware
“Information. What are they looking at?” A documentary on privacy
Public money? Public code! During Corona
Get your tools offline
Kyber and Post-Quantum Crypto - How does it work?
Practical bruteforce of military grade AES-1024
…

And, many more during the afternoon that look interesting. I’ll have to check them on the replay anyway…

Post 89/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

How to read more

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 01:47:23 +0000

This year has not been great on the reading side. I’ve read ten books, and have three in parallel that I need to finish. It’s still better than the last two years, but definitely not enough.

I need to find a routine, and stick to it to be able to read on a daily basis. The best way could be early in the morning, or in bed before sleeping. Tonight, I came across this video of Ryan Holiday on How to read more. He has some great advices on not only on how to read more, but also how to be a better reader. He describes his strategy, and how he takes notes when he reads. That’s a thing I’ve started this year. Prior to that, I read a book, put it on the shelves, and basically forgot it.

I organise, and keep my notes in a zettelkasten system. Holiday keeps his notes on cards, and many others do the same. Writing down helps to remember subjects you have read about. I do prefer to use a simple text file, edit it with vim putting hashtags to quickly search through it. The file is quite long now, and I should probably split it in many themes to clarify all those notes.

My goal for next year is to read at least 25 books. That’s about two books per month, and that’s definitely should be an easy task to accomplish.

Post 88/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Mailing lists, and GDPR

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 23:47:06 +0000

Today, I stumbled on this toot. It’s a SmallWeb mailing list, and the author created an archiver with Rust that run updates every ten minutes.

The about page says :

The smallweb mailing list is a space for discussing content and projects on the web outside the mainstream, corporate-controlled web.

In the past, I’ve been on many linux mailing list, debian related mainly, but also some infosec ones, and even managed one in French about shell scripts.

I was wondering how, with the GDPR, the communities are handling emails? After checking seclists.org or Debian Mailing lists, I couldn’t find anything about the regulation, or how they manage email addresses they have.

Of course, when you subscribe to that kind of mailing lists, you deliberately gave your consent about your email. But, what happens if a malicious person wants to mess around with someone’s email, and add his emails to some mailing list. With those two, we are lucky because you need to confirm your subscription. But, I’m pretty sure there are some that don’t have that “confirmation” feature.

GDPR is a great way to preserve some privacy, but I’m really intrigued if all those mailing lists should have legally a reminder email sent to all subscribers to ask for their consent…

Post 87/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Sunday Screenshot

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 15:17:18 +0000

I’ve seen other on the fediverse doing a #sundayscreenshot. I’ve never really done it, so here’s mine.

Tools used :

Awesomewm
tmux, and Dracula theme
kitty terminal

The wallpaper could be found on Codeberg.

Post 86/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Updating my nextcloud

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 14:39:19 +0000

Sunday, a day to rest or to do some sysadmin tasks. On my mobile NC client, a notification indicated that my server version was too old. So, I took advantage of this day off to upgrade it.

There are two ways to upgrade your instance: GUI or CLI. Usually, I go for the GUI updater, but today I had an issue with it:


 Step 5 : Verifying the integrity : failed

I had to remove the left over from the GUI updater in your NC directory data/updater-xxxxxxxxxxxx. Then, as usual, the CLI works way better:


 % sudo -u www-data php updater/updater.phar
 Nextcloud Updater - version: v19.0.3-8-gbfdc40b

 Current version is 19.0.13.

 Update to Nextcloud 20.0.14 available. (channel: "stable")
 Following file will be downloaded automatically:
 https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-20.0.14.zip
 Open changelog ↗

 Steps that will be executed:
 [ ] Check for expected files
 [ ] Check for write permissions
 [ ] Create backup
 [ ] Downloading
 [ ] Verify integrity
 [ ] Extracting
 [ ] Enable maintenance mode
 [ ] Replace entry points
 [ ] Delete old files
 [ ] Move new files in place
 [ ] Done

 Start update? [y/N] y

 Info: Pressing Ctrl-C will finish the currently running step and then stops the updater.

 [✔] Check for expected files
 [✔] Check for write permissions
 [✔] Create backup
 [✔] Downloading
 [✔] Verify integrity
 [✔] Extracting
 [✔] Enable maintenance mode
 [✔] Replace entry points
 [✔] Delete old files
 [✔] Move new files in place
 [✔] Done

 Update of code successful.

 [...]

 Maintenance mode is disabled

I’ve never used the CLI, but it worked like a charm.

Post 85/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A rotten government

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 13:57:33 +0000

This morning, I woke up quite early. I love those moments when everybody is sleeping, and I can enjoy the morning silence before the storm created by the kids as soon as they wake up.

I took advantage of that being alone to watch this Blast interview of Vincent Jauvert, a French journalist, that wrote La Mafia d’Etat, literally State’s Mafia, a book full of investigations about the French government.

85 minutes of discussion where I discovered how some elites switch between public, and private companies, or get tokens to be present in private big companies boards to compensate their salary cap. He describes how some of those 2000 profiles at the top of the state, put wives, family, and other friends in key position in big companies, public or private.

All those kinds of behaviour couldn’t be done in Scandinavian countries for example, and most of them would be in jail. I have a funny story. I’ve seen the former Prime Minister of France, now Mayor of Le Havre, at the school of my kid because his kid(s) were also there. The fun part is that, it was in Paris, not the city of Le Havre. But, it’s probably not illegal to have your kids in one city, and your obligation in some other. It’s just a bit far to go to the office since there are 193km between the two cities.

And, during that interview, you learn that Édouard Philippe has many hats: Mayor, president of Horizons, his new political party, and also a big seat at Atos, a big French tech company, whose 20% of theirs revenues depend on from the government. That kind of conflicts of interests could be an issue in many countries, but that’s definitely not the case here.

Quite disgusting how they lie to people. Basically, there are no more left or right, it’s just a musical chairs game between people who shared the same schools benches. Everything has been done to do less, earn more, change laws to avoid prison, and create an even more abyssal breakup between the politicians and the French people…

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

Post 84/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

A week with C-19

Fri, 24 Dec 2021 00:56:12 +0000

It’s been a week since we got the news that the couple we know got infected by the COVID-19. And, it’s been a few days that we live, with my family, infected too.

Excepted the back, head and stomach pains, I feel better, and the headaches are almost gone. Mrs Hyde, and one of our kids, are feeling better too. We got lucky compared to some people. The virus knows to be wild with persons having some health issues. We got lucky, even if the first three days were a real nightmare. I haven’t felt so tired in years. The last time was years ago, when a flu kept me in bed for a whole week.

We’re in quarantine for ten days, and we’ll see how it evolves then. That crap is still everywhere.

Be safe…

Post 83/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Less images

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 00:43:34 +0000

For a while, I wanted to change some little things on this blog. I’ve read about the 512kb club launched by Kev, and even if my attention is not to join that club, my goal is to reduce the number of useless images.

My front page used to have an image for every post. It didn’t really bring any value to the article. Furthermore, I had to find, and choose each one of them. That takes time, and I want to optimize it instead of losing it. That’s gone, my future posts will have a picture only if it adds meaning to the words.

I love the idea behind Kev’s club, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to put everything in that tiny pocket.

But, during the next few days, my goal will be to remove all unnecessary images in my previous writings, and get as near as possible to that 512kb Graal.

Post 82/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Mind map

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 22:17:41 +0000

Closing many of my tabs opened, I stumbled upon a post of Austin Kleon on “how to make a map of your mind”. He posted a video explaining how he does that kind of “maps”.

I always loved this kind of maps.

Post 81/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Re: Dracula met tmux

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:53:36 +0000

Indeed, everything these days has some kind of plugin management, vim, tmux, and probably many other tools.

Tmux has even two of them I think.

But, is that good or bad?

I do prefer to manage my vim plugins with a manager. Don’t you?

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2021/12/19/dracula-met-tmux/

Vim, and autosave

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 15:51:33 +0000

Yesterday morning, I wrote about tmux. I was almost done when I hit this key combination : Ctrl+Shift+w.

And, just like this, it closed my terminal. I said to myself, that’s alright, Vim is autosaving my text in my ~/tmp. The reality was completely different. No backup of that file 🤦.

I did a couple of search to find out, what produces that behaviour. Not awesomewm, not tmux, the guilty one was kitty, my terminal.

I didn’t find, yet, how to change that keybinding. Instead, I try to figure out why I didn’t have a swapfile.

Easy, answer : set noswapfile.

That directive doesn’t create my swap file holding any changes.

Vim has many options to save your work:

a swap file
a backup file
an undo file

Swap file

The swap file contains unsaved changes, and looks like .README.md.tmp. You can set its default location using directory. The default ones where vim will look are :


 - `.` the current directory
 - `~/tmp`
 - `/var/tmp`
 - `/tmp`

Backup file

The backup file option is to create a backup like README.md~ before you make any editing.

Default directories are :


 - `.`
 - `~/tmp`
 - `~/`

Undo file

The undo file holds all editing you’ve done to the document. It creates a README.md.un~.

Default directory is ., the current one. They can be set with the undodir directive.

Note, that this option is only available with Vim.

Other option

You can also use an autocmd command to save your buffer every time a change is made:


 autocmd TextChanged,TextChangedI * silent write

It’s just one line to add compared to the other options.

It’s really up to you, how you want to set up your vim. Just be sure to not add a set noswapfile 😅.

Post 80/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Dracula met tmux

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 17:54:29 +0000

I’ve been using screen, the terminal multiplexer, for years, but since the start of 2021, I switched to tmux. For those who don’t know what the purpose of those tools, it’s basically to be able to control many terminals/windows from a single terminal. It offers many key bindings, and it offers a choice of Emacs or Vim key layouts.

Basically, tmux offers you a way to organize your terminals/workspace.

Start a session

It’s pretty easy, here are some commands to start:


 # start a named detached session. We won't join the session straight away
 # we are creating two session work / private
 % tmux new-session -d -s private
 % tmux new-session -d -s work

Now, we have two sessions, named private and work. Let’s start using them:


 % tmux attach

You should see 0:zsh at the bottom of the page if your shell is zsh of course. Let’s see other commands:


 # add a new window
 % Ctrl+b+c
 # to see all options you have
 % Ctrl+b+?
 C-b C-b Send the prefix
 C-b C-o Rotate through the panes
 C-b Space Select next layout
 C-b ! Break pane to a new window
 C-b " Split window vertically
 C-b # List all paste buffers
 C-b $ Rename current session
 C-b % Split window horizontally
 C-b & Kill current window
 C-b ' Prompt for window index to select
 C-b ( Switch to previous client
 C-b ) Switch to next client
 C-b , Rename current window
 C-b - Delete the most recent paste buffer
 C-b . Move the current window
 [...]

You should now have a second tab at the bottom with 1:zsh. You can rename the windows as you want, you can split them, and basically organize everything as you want.

To see all your windows, I love to use Ctrl+b+w :

 (0) - private: 4 windows (attached)
 (1) ├─> 0: zsh-
 (2) ├─> 1: mail*: "~"
 (3) ├─> 3: blog
 (4) └─> 4: hugo(5)
 (5) - work 4 windows (attached)
 (6) ├─> 0: vim#
 (7) ├─> 1: zsh*
 (8) ├─> + 2: openvpn#
 (9) └─> 3: zsh-

 # You can use vim j,k (or arrows) to go up and down

Tmux has also plugins made by the community you can load in your workspace. TPM is the one I use.

To install it, just clone it, and add two things in your ~/.tmux.conf :


 % git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm

 # in your tmux.conf
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tpm'
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'
 # Initialize TMUX plugin manager (keep this line at the very bottom of tmux.conf)]
 run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'

Reload TMUX environment so TPM is sourced:


 # type this in terminal if tmux is already running
 $ tmux source ~/.tmux.conf

One mandatory plugin to have when you use tmux is resurrect. It provides a way to save/restore your workspace without having to reconfigure it every time. Let’s add it by adding it to your configuration:


 # add to your tmux.conf
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect'

Then to install it, type:


 % Ctrl+b+I #capital I for Install
 TMUX environment reloaded.
 Done, press ENTER to continue.

 # To save your workspace
 % Ctrl+b+s
 # You should see at the bottom
 Tmux environment saved!

 # To restore your workspace
 % Ctrl+b+r
 # You should see at the bottom
 Reloaded Tmux config.

There is many ways to configure it, and I recommend to read the man page.

Theming

The other day discussing about the Dracula theme price on this Fediverse thread, I tried the Dracula’s tmux configuration. And, I love it.

Here’s how the status bar looks like :

The instructions to install the theme are easy to follow and well explained. There are some configuration you can tweak a bit too.

Here’s my ~/.tmux.conf. Enjoy!



 # List of plugins
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tpm'
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'
 set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect'
 set -g @plugin 'dracula/tmux'
 set -g @dracula-show-powerline true
 set -g @dracula-show-flags true
 set -g @dracula-day-month true
 set -g @dracula-git-show-current-symbol ✓
 set -g @dracula-git-show-diff-symbol !
 set -g @dracula-git-no-repo-message ""
 set -g @dracula-show-fahrenheit false
 set -g @dracula-show-right-sep 
 set -g @dracula-show-left-sep 
 # available plugins: battery, cpu-usage, git, gpu-usage, ram-usage, network, network-bandwidth, weather, time
 set -g @dracula-plugins "git network-bandwidth weather time"

 # scrollback size
 set -g history-limit 10000

 # Redraw the client (if interrupted by wall, etc)
 bind R refresh-client

 # reload tmux config with ctrl + b + r
 unbind r
 bind r \
 source-file ~/.tmux.conf \;\
 display 'Reloaded tmux config.'

 # kitty as my primary terminal 
 set -g default-terminal "xterm-kitty"

 # Vertical splits with g or C-g
 unbind v
 unbind C-v
 bind-key v split-window -h
 bind-key C-v split-window -h

 # Horizontal splits with v or C-h
 unbind z
 unbind C-z
 bind-key z split-window
 bind-key C-z split-window

 # Ctrl - t or t new window
 unbind t
 unbind C-t
 bind-key t new-window
 bind-key C-t new-window

 # Visual Activity Monitoring between windows
 setw -g monitor-activity on
 set -g visual-activity on

 # Show tmux positions in titles
 set -g set-titles on
 bind h select-pane -L
 bind l select-pane -R
 bind j select-pane -D
 bind k select-pane -U
 bind k kill-window

 # Initialize TMUX plugin manager (keep this line at the very bottom of tmux.conf)
 run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'

Post 79/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Github, ssh and multiple accounts

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 11:05:17 +0000

I only use GitHub to submit issues, or contribute from time to time. I moved most of my stuff to Codeberg. Yesterday, I stumbled upon a small issue. If you have multiple GitHub accounts, say a private one, and one for your company, you could stumble upon this kind of errors :


 % git clone git@github.com:company/some-repo.git
 Cloning into 'some-repo'...
 ERROR: Repository not found.
 fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

 Please make sure you have the correct access rights
 and the repository exists.

You checked the ssh key added to your account, everything looks correct, but you still got this error. It could be an issue with the ssh-agent, and your private account.

To find out which account tries to authenticate with GitHub, when you clone a repository, is pretty trivial:


 % ssh -T git@github.com
 Hi account-used! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

To be able to use both accounts, you just need to adapt your ~/.ssh/config file this way:


 ### Private account 
 Host github
 Hostname github.com
 User git
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

 ### Company account 
 Host gitcompany
 Hostname github.com
 User git
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Then, to clone a repository from your work :


 % git clone git@gitcompany/your-repo
 Cloning into 'your-repo'...
 remote: Enumerating objects: 112, done.
 remote: Total 112 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 112
 Receiving objects: 100% (112/112), 6.23 MiB | 1.20 MiB/s, done.
 Resolving deltas: 100% (54/54), done.

Tadaaa… Now it should work as it was supposed to.

Post 78/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Books

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 13:30:31 +0100

This list has been created in November 2019, and it’s updated monthly.

– Book note – No book note

2023

– Draw your day an inspiring guide to keeping a sketch journal - Samantha Dion Baker

– Brief answers to the big questions - Stephen Hawking.

– Difficult conversations - How to discuss what matters most - Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen.

– Hook Point: How to stand out in a 3-second world - Brendan Kane.

– Building your Mouseless Development Environment - Mathieu Cneude

– Modern Vim - Drew Nell.

– Zen Doodle Oodles of Doodles - Tonia Jenny.

– Doodle Art Handbook The Non-Artists Guide in Creative Drawing - Lana Karr and Olga Dee

– The data detective - ten easy rules to make sense of statistics - Tim Harford.

– The Art of Noticing - Rob Walker. I loved it, and took so many inspiring notes.

– The ABC’s of Hand Lettering - Abbey Sy.

– Hand Lettering A to Z A World of Creative Ideas for Drawing and Designing Alphabets - Abbey Sy.

2022

– Building a second brain by Tiago Forte.

– Never split the difference, negotiating as if your life depended on it by Chris Voss.

– Lost in Work, Escaping Capitalism – Amelia Horgan.

– Cybersecurity Career Masterplan – Gerald Auger, Jaclyn “Jax” Scott, and Jonathan Helmus

– The productive programmer – Neal Ford. false

– Lazyness does not exist – Devon Price.

– The Psychology of money – Morgan Housel.

– Betrayal: The story of Aldrich Ames, an American spy - Tim Weiner.

– Je ne lache rien – Philippe Etchebest, Stephane Davet.

– Several short sentences about writing – Verlyn Klinkenborg.

– La nouvelle guerre des étoiles – Vincent Coquaz.

– Rust in 8 hours – Ray Yao.

– Young Philby – Robert Littell.

– It’s not all about me: the top ten techniques for building quick rappert with anyone – Robin K. Dreeke.

– The Antidote: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking – Oliver Burkeman.

– Digital minimalism - Cal Newport.

– Human Hacking – Chris Hadnagy, and Seth Schulman.

– How to take smart notes – Sönke Ahrens.

2021

Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, remarkable results by James Clear

Creativity Inc by Amy Wallace and Edwin Catmull

Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic

River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins

Tribe by Sebastian Junger

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas

Prometheus: Up & Running by Brian Brazil

The Social Engineer’s Playbook by Jeremiah Talamontes

Manipulation: Dark Psychology to manipulate and control people by Arthur Horn

Trailing stops by Jim Kane

2020

  Practical Vim by Drew Neil.
  Principles by Ray Dalio
  The Greatest Trade Ever by Gregory Zuckerman

2019

   Les nouvelles guerres: Sur la piste des hackers russes by Boris Razon et Etienne Huver
   Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
   Building a storybrand : clarify your message so customers will listen by Donald Miller
   Hooked: How to build habit forming products by Nir Eyal

2018

   Kubernetes Cookbook by Sebastien Goasguen and Michael Hausenblas
   Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman
   A murder of quality by John Le Carré
   Mémoires d’un maître-espion du Mossad - L’espion au champagne by Wolfgang Lotz
   Mémoires d’un spéculateur by Edwin Lefevre

2017

   Predictably Irrational, Revised: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
   Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott
   Les espions russes de Staline à Poutine by Patrick Pesnot
   Les armes secrètes de la CIA by Gordon Thomas
   Mossad : les nouveaux défis by Gordon Thomas
   Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques by Steve Nison
   L’économie de la connaissance by Dominique Foray
   Blockchain by Swan

2016

Les mots qui polluent, les mots qui guérissent by Joseph Messinger
Les gestes du succès, les mots de la réussite by Joseph Messinger
Le dico illustré des gestes by Joseph Messinger
Ces gestes qui vous trahissent by Joseph Messinger

2015

Humans of New York by by Brandon Stanton
A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré
Meteor in action by Stephan Hochhaus and Manuel Schoebe
You Don’t Know JS - Types & Grammar by Kyle Simpson
You Don’t Know JS - Async & performance by Kyle Simpson
You Don’t Know JS - This & Object Prototypes by Kyle Simpson
You Don’t Know JS - Up & Going by Kyle Simpson
You Don’t Know JS - Scope and Closures by Kyle Simpson
You Don’t Know JS - ES6 & Beyond by Kyle Simpson

Before …

Le livre vert by Mohammar El-Kadhafi
Gilles Caron Scrapbook by Marianne Caron-Montely
Robert Capa by Richard Whelan
Champions! by Richard Aujard
Cash Games - How to win at Hold’em money games - Volume I and II by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie
Baseball’s golden age by Charles M. Conlon
A beautiful catastrophe by Bruce Gilden
Gangs Story by Yan Morvan
28mm by JR and Marco Berrebi
South Southeast by Steve McCurry
Provoke - Between Protest and Performance by Duncan Forbes
Tomcat The Definitive Guide by Brittain and Darwin
Petit traité de manipulation à l’usage des honnêtes gens by Robert-Vincent Joule and Jean-Léon Beauvois
Version control with Subversion by Michael Pilato, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian W. Fitzpatrick
The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security by Kevin D. Mitnick
Programming in Perl by Wall, Christiansen and Orwant
Introduction to Perl by Schwartz, Phoenix and Foy
Practical PostgreSQL by Drake and Worsley
SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide by Daniel J. Barrett
TCP/IP, administration de réseau by Hunt, author, and translated by Eric Dumas for the french version
Les Bases de l’administration système by Frisch
Les fleurs du mal by Baudelaire

Media consumption - November 2021

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 14:30:00 +0100

Not a lot of things this month. I spent a lot of time with my Fuji XPro3 camera, and tweaking some recipes from Fuji X Weekly.

Podcasts

I listened mainly to a French podcast, “Le code a changé” with Xavier de la Porte, and different subjects like :

The French guy who saw Google’s birth
One about Exodus Privacy, and how they track trackers in Android apps.
How could we love Instagram?

If you speak French, it’s worth listening to.

Books

I finished Creativity, Inc, written by Edwin Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar. The book describes how the company almost failed to exist, and how they create a great culture for their employees, and how to stay creative. I highly recommend this book.

I’ve not opened Python and Hacking Made Simple this month. It should be great to finish it before the end of the year.

Finally, the last book I’ve started in October is Emergence: Seven steps for radical life change, is still at the same stage.

I’ve started a new book to learn Portuguese. Basic stuff right now.

Articles

What I learned about my writing by seeing only the punctuation. That article led me to this one where you can discover punctuation in novels like Dracula, Peter Pan or Moby Dick.
Savedotorg.org I just discovered that website, and the fact that the sale never happened.
Can killing cookies save journalism

Two articles about green IT and carbon footprint:

TV shows

Narcos Mexico, the 3rd season. It’s not the best one, not the worst one. Still, it kept me entertained for 3-4 days.

Movies

No Time To Die, or the last movie with Daniel Craig as James Bond. He portrayed him between 2006 and 2021. 15 years already … Time flies 😔

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this marvel was definitely not my favourite one. I would have rather spent my time on something else.

Nine Days was not what I expected after seeing the trailer. It’s about a man conducting interviews with human souls for a chance to be born.

The Croods: A New Age, I watched it with my kids, and it was more fun than the two previous ones.

Sport

NBA, NBA, and NBA mainly.

The UFC268 was great:

Usman vs Covington was a great fight. Covington looks like an *sshole.
Rose Namajunas kept her title against Zhang Welli.
The best fight was in the Lightweight division between Justin Gaethje vs. Michael Chandler. Those two guys fought like gladiators!

Projects

degit - clone git repositories faster. Actually, I really don’t think I will use it…
KnightOS, an open-source OS for Texas Instruments calculators.
Uptime Kuma is a self-hosted website monitoring tool like “Uptime Robot”. Just tested the demo, and will probably install it.
OSINT, a repository I’ve started just to share links, and tools I stumbled upon.

Post 77/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

My favourite F-Droid apps

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 12:04:43 +0000

Fdroid is an alternative to Google’s PlayStore. You’ll find many free apps in their repositories. I stumbled upon a status on Mastodon making a list of favourite apps on F-Droid.

Here is my list :

Termux : A nice terminal for your mobile
Fedilab : A Mastodon client
Quickdic : An offline dictionary
Element : Matrix client
AntennaPod : Podcasts app
Jellyfin : Mobile client for Jellyfin Media system
Exodus : Show trackers and permissions from other apps installed
Airguard : AirTag tracking protection
Mullvad : VPN app
FreeOTP+ : 2AF app
PersonalDNSfilter : DNS requests based host blocker
Standard notes : Notes app
Duckduckgo browser : A browser that respects privacy

What about you?

Post 76/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Fuji recipes

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 16:00:13 +0000

Fujifilm, is a brand I felt in love with, a couple of years ago. I owned many of their models, the new ones: X100, X100S, X100T, XPro-1, XPro-2, and XPro-3. The last two are the only ones I still have.

Last summer, I heard about Fujifilm recipes made by Ritchie Roesch. His blog, Fuji X Weekly, started in 2017 was originally going to be about his Fuji X100F, but over the years he wrote about all his cameras. It wasn’t just cameras, he tried to mimic specific old films. His first two were Acros, and Classic Chrome. Since then, he produced over 100 recipes that emulates many films, for many Fuji sensors.

Even with all those film simulation, I didn’t take the time to get into it. But, I’ve stumbled upon a thread in French on the blue bird from Gregory Mignard. He was trying to find out if Fuji users were shooting in JPEG coupled with film recipes for everyday use.

By the way, if you like surf, and photography, I recommend you Gregory’s blog. He has many great pictures there 🙌

Back to the recipes, I still don’t know which one to choose. I made a selection of six recipes:

Dramatic Chrome
Ektar 100
Color Negative 400
Ultramax
Kodachrome 64
Portra 800 v2

Why not seven? Because when you want to use one of the standard film simulation, it keeps the last custom settings. To fix that, I leave the first slot in the Q menu with the default settings, just in case I need to switch to one of the default mode.

I will try each one of these film simulation for one week, and I will see which one I prefer. I will probably shoot both JPEG, and raw files, just in case I want to play with the latter ones.

Post 75/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Selfhosting a XMPP server

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 10:26:07 +0000

Last night, I wondered if I should host a private XMPP server. Of course, I could join many available online, but as always I prefer to have a service on my servers.

I tooted to get some information, and Amolith suggested me Snikket. It’s basically a layer above Prosidy delivered with Docker.

Reading the installation page, it’s quite straight forward. The only thing that differs between my configuration and the one described is my use of Nginx as a reverse proxy.

After one hour, I gave up because it was late and only one service was up. There was some issue with SSL certificates. Apparently, I’m not the only one having the same setup, and the same issue. Some lads already opened an issue on their GitHub page.

An unused Raspberry I have in a drawer may fit that purpose. I’ll give it a try later this week. If it’s not working, I guess I will try something else, maybe like Yunohost, recommended by lps, that includes an XMPP server out of the box. Other alternatives are ejabberd or Prosody without Docker, but as far as I’ve seen there are more configuration implied as Amolith commented on the toot…

Post 74/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

OSINT tools and links

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 06:34:54 +0000

The last couple of months, I was really interested in OSINT. It means open source intelligence, a way to gather information on a company/individual that are publicly available on the internet.

I compiled many links, and tools I stumbled upon in a file on my laptop. But, I was thinking it could potentially interest people. I created a repository, OSINT, on Codeberg.

Why should I want information on someone? To prevent my own private life. With the weekly data breaches, it could be safe to know what could be found about yourself online. OSINT is used by people for good, and, of course, bad things. But, let’s take a look at the bright side of it.

Christopher Hadnagy, founder and CEO of Social-Engineer, uses social engineering plus OSINT tools to find things about people. He created Innocent Lives foundation to identify children predators online. They have helped law enforcements to resolve over 400 cases.

He’s also the host of the Social Engineer podcast where he invites penetration testers, and other persons from the OSINT community to chat about their job. I love that podcast, and the energy from it. Bonus point, each guest gives a book recommandation. My reading books list is quite long thanks to that podcast.

If you are interested, let’s try to improve that repository!

You can find me on Mastodon, but you probably already know that 😅

Post 73/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Luke Tanis

How to check a LinkedIn profile?

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 23:12:46 +0000

I’m not on LinkedIn anymore. I wrote about that platform previously, but sometimes you need to inspect some profiles. That happened to me recently since I was looking for a new contract. I decided to look over some recruiters profiles.

The issue is when you don’t have an account, it’s quite difficult… For someone who doesn’t know where to look for. Let’s see how we can bypass their “Join LinkedIn or Sign in” message.

First, you need to find the profile of the user targeted. Any search engine should do the trick. Usually, it’s something like :


 https://www.linkedin.com/in/username

Copy that URI, and paste it to … wait for it … A Google website. The address is : http://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. It’s a page to test if your website is mobile friendly 😂.

Hit the test button, wait a bit, and then click on View tested page. You’ll get this :

Copy all the HTML, and paste it to https://codebeautify.org/htmlviewer, and hit the RUN button. Now, you should be able to see more information on that profile.

Of course, if you prefer you can copy/paste the HTML code in a text file. Rename it with the .html extension before opening it with your browser.

That was quite easy, isn’t it?

UPDATE

You can search companies too, juste find the right URI. It should be something like this :


 https://www.linkedin.com/company/Microsoft
 # or any evil company name using LinkedIn 😂

Post 72/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Greg Bulla

My printer died

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:13:59 +0000

My old printer died or is dying. It’s an old Lexmark c544DN bought around 2005 I think. I can’t remember exactly. It’s a color laser printer, that got discontinued from the manufacturer.

I used to live in London between 2007 and 2010. When I moved there, naturally I took all of my stuff with me, including that 21kgs chunk of hardware. This year, when I moved again, some friends told me : “You still have a printer?! Who owns a printer nowadays ?!”. The thing is, during the year, there is always a moment when I will switch it on to print some paperwork.

Funny fact, the same friends who were mocking me because I have a printer asked in our Signal group where they could print quickly some documents. Karma 😂

The printer still works… kind of. It just releases way too much blue toner not only the page, but everywhere. I tried to clean everything I could, but there is some magic I don’t understand.

I guess, after more than 15 years, it has done its duty, and I can release it. Now, the question is, ‘Should I get a new one?’. Mrs Hyde is not really a fan of those big devices around the house, but often I have requests like “Could you print that for me?” 😅. Both working from home, we won’t have the opportunity to print documents at work anymore. I guess, there is a 90% of chance that we’ll get a new one. Now, it’s time to choose the right one. I will probably go for a Wi-Fi one, I could hide in some closet.

Does anyone have a wireless laser color printer to suggest?

Post 71/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Happy 30th Bday Vim!

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 05:25:10 +0000

This week, Vim turned 30! It was based on STevie, an editor for Atari ST that only dinosaurs know about.

In 1988, Bram Moolenaar’s first release, the 1.0, which was never publicly released, was originally named Vi IMitation. It was a port for the Amiga, then renamed to Vi IMproved in 1993.

I never had an Atari or Amiga, and was quite jealous of my cousin who had the Atari 1040 STE, but she basically never used it. Kind of things that happens in family when parents are avid of surpassing siblings by offering things that others can’t afford. Anyway…

I discovered Vim, in the late 90s. Back then, I didn’t use it that much, and had another friend. Joe was its name. Born the same year as Vim, August 22, 1991, and latest release, the 4.6 released in 2018. It was an editor available in many distributions, and that’s probably a reason why I used it. Also, its goal was to be user-friendly, and emulated many Emacs keybindings.

Then, I have to admit, I spend some of my time with Emacs too. That coincides with my firsts experiments with bash, and other CLI tools. Loved the Tab completion, and other small things, until the day I discovered the command set -o vi. I remember seeing someone doing things quickly in ksh. I was intrigued, and asked him a couple of questions about his shell. Then, I started to play a lot more with Vim, and ksh after he told me to spend some time to learn those two tools. I can’t remember this lad’s name, but thanks!

Even today, I try to sell Vim to colleagues, friends or anyone needing an editor. That brought me a good deal of argumentation with them, and trolls about VSCode vs Vim. They still argue Vim can’t do the same thing as VSCode, but I have witnessed some idiotic workflows way slower than what Vim can provide.

Even with all these new editors, I’m quite happy with Vim, and the community behind it. It’s a never ending learning curve. Of course, Emacs users will say the same, and that’s perfectly fine. But, my love will always go to Vim because it fits better my usage.

Once again, Happy 30th Birthday to Vim!

Post 70/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Media consumption - October 2021

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 14:30:00 +0100

This month, I took some days to rest before chasing for a job. I managed to read, listen to some new podcasts, and watch some TV shows. We had also some friends visiting us, so I was the guide around the city 😅

Podcasts

I added new podcasts this month:

French

English

Books

I almost finished Creativity, Inc, written by Edwin Catmull, the co-founder Pixar. The book describes how the company almost failed to exist, and how they create a great culture for their employees, and how to stay creative. I highly recommend this book.

I’ve started also Python and Hacking Made Simple. So far, I only read 25% of it. It’s quite basic stuff about Python and its installation, the Python shell, its language with many examples.

Finally, the last book I’ve started in October is Emergence: Seven steps for radical life change. After reading only 17% of the book, I don’t know yet what to think about it. I will probably do a review next month.

Movies / TV shows / Sport / Articles

Articles

I stumbled upon this article _why, the long lost open source developer that lead me to this documentary about why the lucky stiff. I’ve never really used Ruby, and didn’t know him or his work, but I would love to see the same kind of comic book about Rust.

TV shows

I finished the second season of See, and while I enjoyed it, some friends found it too violent. 🤷‍♂️

I watched also the HBO show, the White Lotus, that includes only six episodes. It was alright but definitely not one of my favorite ones.

With Ms, we watched the 3rd season of Family Business, a French comedy show. Not really bad, but not really good. Only 6 episodes of 30-40 minutes.

I’ve finished Alex Garland’s mini-series, Devs.

The synopsis is :

A computer engineer investigates the secretive development division in her company, which she believes is behind the disappearance of her boyfriend.

The show depicts how big tech companies could make horrible choices for humanity. I didn’t enjoy the main character, Lily Chan, or what could happen to her. I found way more interesting the character of Forest, the creator of the company, and why he started it.

Movies

I’ve watched only 3 movies:

Riders of Justice with Mads Mikkelsen, and I loved that Danish movie!
There’s someone in your house
The voyeurs The end could have been way better.

Sport

The Gipsy King did it again! Tyson Fury won once again against Deontay Wilder with a TKO in the 11th round.

Post 69/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Re: The RSS Discovery Engine

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 01:14:18 +0100

Thanks to Jamie, and his post, I discovered a new tool to find new blogs, a thing potentially difficult today.

The only regret is that it doesn’t display the RSS to get it quickly. You have to go to find it on the website :/

Back in the 90s

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 14:38:45 +0100

My RSS feed, brought me this video of David Bowie.
That was in 1999, over 20 years ago, and he was right all down the line.

The potential of what Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable

David Bowie

Internet has done wonderful things, but also really awful ones…

Yesterday, I saw a video showing a young man talking about his young sister, who committed suicide because of harassment over Whatsapp and other social networks. What reason push teenagers to be so mean? Bullying always existed, but now it’s exponential with social networks.

When I was one of those teenagers, I had friends from everywhere. Our origins were never a debate. We were from Senegal, Yugoslavia, Italy, Portugal, Algeria, Morocco, Mali, France, etc., but we just didn’t care, we were just friends.

Today, I hear way too often kids mocking about origins. Social networks have been a plague for kids. A few years ago, a trend was to slap someone in a bus, school or, basically, anywhere and run. Now, kids adapt Squid Games ideas to school playgrounds. There is something really wrong…

Growing up in the 90s was awesome for many reasons, at least for me. We weren’t spoiled kids with everything at ours fingertips. In France, we had only a few channels only on TV, Internet was just for some lucky ones, but it made us go out way more. Of course, I don’t blame kids today to have all this. It was just different times.

Back then, a home usually had only one phone. This communication device made many young men to be ingenious. When you wanted to ask a girl out, you had to call on that family phone, and you hoped she picked up the phone, and not her parents/brothers. 😅 Today, social networks, and apps like Tinder wiped out all those things… Some will find that great, I don’t.

I loved the interaction we had, and communication was different. We had pagers!

These small devices were only receiving a one/two line(s) messages. And, you had only the sender number on it. You could call back then from a phone booth, for example. And, the best of all, you didn’t have a little spy in your pocket.

Of course, internet brought also many good things. GNU, Linux and opensource projects unveiled a new way to think, and to collaborate. It has helped people over the world to use computers, often old ones, without the need to get a new shiny device because Microsoft or Apple just updated their software. And, that’s great!

We have seen the birth of great projects like Gimp, Openstreetmap, Wikipedia, and many others. Developers should embrace Aral’s Ethical Design for all their new projects. This way the uberization, or modern slavery, would not be a thing. Instead, we would appreciate software that respect humans and their privacy.

Post 68/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Our brain

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 11:29:47 +0100

Reading the book, Creativity, Inc., I found this quite surprising:

Only 40% of what we think we "see" comes in through our eyes, the rest is made up from memory or patterns that we recognize from past experience

Yesterday, I learnt also that the right part of our brain controls the left side of our body, and, of course, the left part controls the right side.

I guess we don’t know a lot about brains, and on my side I’ve never really get in that field… But, maybe I should dig a bit deeper.

Photoshop in a browser

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 21:43:36 +0100

Apprently, people have been trying to port Adobe’s main product, Photoshop, to the web for the last three years. I stumbled upon this article that gives many details on what have achieved, and how they’re happy to see this kind of application coming to the web.

My first reaction was, “Why?!”. And, then reading the article, I felt embarrassed with sentences like this one:

The simple power of a URL is that anyone can click it and instantly access it. All you need is a browser.

Yeah, that’s probably true in countries where internet connections work well. But, what about poorer countries? Before, you could have a product with a specific version that worked fine. Now, you’ll need an ISP with, probably, a fast link, the latest computer capable to run that kind of web app, and the worst of all Chrome.

Today, you don’t own anything anymore, your wallet is the only thing that matters. You pay a monthly fee for a service. That’s it! Spotify, Netflix, Adobe, Google, and many other companies unique goal is profit. But, what happens when you don’t have the ressources to pay? Have you tried to listen to Spotify, without paying? The ads will drive you completely insane.

Those companies are killing potential artists from developing countries. How could they afford a monthly rent for all their needs? I genuinely think that those people are not their problem, and they just don’t care. And, I disagree to “This makes the web the ideal collaboration platform, something that is becoming more and more essential to creative and marketing teams.”. Marketing teams, yes, they are probably happy with this, but creative I don’t think so. Many artists just don’t have the money for those things. Maybe, some yuppies with the latest MacBook and its 128Gb of RAM will adore this. But, what about students or people that can’t afford savage machines to just edit an image?

On the privacy side, it’s ugly, too. Spotify, Netflix, and other companies’ objectives are data gathering. It’s the new gold rush. Your privacy is not really a subject that import. What matters is what you listen to or watch depending on your mood, your activity or your location. All this information is food for their computer monsters that will spew up a client profile. I’m sure they have great ideas on how to get the most of you when you’ll use that online version.

That’s why I’ve stopped using their services. Their genius AI, usually wrong, keep you always in the same loop of music or videos. What if I want to watch Chaplin, or enjoy some old Yugoslavian music? No suggestion, of course.

The same way, I used to have an iMac from 2010 with an old version of Lightroom, that used to work well, but upgrading wasn’t possible because of the hardware. So I ditched them both. Now, I use opensource alternatives for photography, and so far it works well.

Instead of selling us some online version of bloated apps, a better approach would be to promote Ethical Design, and to help to develop alternatives for everyone on this planet, not only the rich ones…

Post 67/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

TIL about Limelight

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 23:10:03 +0100

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about a Vim plugin I love : Goyo.

Today, I discovered a new plugin made by the same author, Limelight. Its goal is to help you to focus when you write in Vim. Of course, it works quite well with Goyo.

Here’s a demo GIF from its GitHub page.

I just installed it, and will give it a try to see if it really helps or not. So far, it looks great.

I’m always amazed to see how creative some persons can be…

Bonus tip

I’ve been using Vim for years, and I just discovered a thing:


 # let's open some markdown files
 % vim *md

That will open the first file in your list. Let’s say you want to change some tags in your posts, for example, TIL to “today I learnt”. A macro could be like :


 qq/- TIL<enter>Da- today I learnt:wnq

So what is this? Here’s the explanation:


 qq : record the macro to the q buffer
 /- TIL : search for - TIL tag
 <enter> : type enter
 D : delete the line from the cusor
 a : add the text
 - today I learnt : the new text
 :wn : write the file and open the next one
 q : stop recording the macro

What’s important here is the :wn that moves to the next file.
It speeds up your editing, and you can make many changes in a couple of minutes or seconds.

I wished I knew this before. Of course, there are other ways to do it, but that’s what I love with Vim, the constant process of learning new things.

Post 66/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Have you tried Mullvad ?

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 22:37:58 +0100

A VPN helps hiding your IP address when you are online, it can also allow you to access websites not available in your country. A VPN establishes a secure connection between you and the Internet. Via that link, all your traffic is routed through an encrypted tunnel that may exit on the Internet in the country of your choice.

Why should you use one?

For security and privacy reasons. When you use public Wi-Fi hotspots, you don’t really know who is on that network, and what they’re doing. A VPN could protect you against someone with malicious ideas. Also, you leave fewer trails behind you about your real ip address.

That are the main reasons to use one. But which one should I use? Many VPN providers promotes the fact they don’t log your true ip, but as we’ve seen with Protonmail recently, since it’s a Swiss company, they had to obey the law, and give information to the police.

There are many VPN providers, ProtonVPN, is one of them amongst NordVPN, ExpressVPN and many others. They all praise no logging and anonymity, but it’s far from being 100% true. At this point, which one to consider?

Mullvad

The one I use is Mullvad. It’s a Swedish company with a legislation that should be safe for our privacy. They started their business back in 2009, and have been pioneers in many sectors.

But, there are reasons why I love this provider particularly:

They don’t ask for an email or any private information about yourself
They encourage anonymous payments with cryptocurrencies or the old fashion cash. Yeah… Cash! You can send some banknotes if you want 🙌
Kill switch that stops all network traffic if you have a connection issue
External audits
The price! €5 per month is a fair price for the service they provide
Multi hops connection

To create an account, it’s pretty easy. Just go to the website, and click on generate a new account button. It should give you something like this.

It’s that simple. Then you decide how you want to pay, and you are ready to go.

Configuration

Mullvad provides an app for Linux, Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, and even a Firefox extension. If you don’t want to use their app, you can download OpenVPN or WireGuard configuration files. The way I use it, is using WireGuard.

Install WireGuard:


 % apt install wireguard wireguard-tools

Log in to Mullvad with your account and then go to the Wireguard-config page. Choose Linux as platform, then click generate key to generate a public key. In a terminal, issue the following command to generate a private key:


 % sudo wg genkey

Click on “Manage keys” on the Mullvad WireGuard config page, and insert the private key you just generated into the field that says “Enter private key”, and click on “import key”. Fill out step 3 on the website and download the file. Unzip the file you downloaded to get one or several config files, depending on your selection. You can download all or specific countries only.

I decided to download all servers’ configuration(424 files). Each file contains information like this :


 [Interface]
 PrivateKey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Address = xx.xx.xxx.xx/32,fc00:bbbb:bbbb:bb01::3:715f/128
 DNS = xxx.xxx.xxx.xx

 [Peer]
 PublicKey = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0,::0/0
 Endpoint = xx.xxx.xx.xx:51820

The instructions above to generate the private key are from the ArchLinux wiki page.
They use nmcli to start/stop a secure connection, I use wg-quick:


 # one of the French servers

 % wg-quick up mullvad-fr13.conf
 [#] ip link add mullvad-fr13 type wireguard
 [#] wg setconf mullvad-fr13 /dev/fd/63
 [#] ip -4 address add xx.xx.xxx.xx/32 dev mullvad-fr13
 [#] ip -6 address add fc00:bbbb:bbbb:bb01::3:715f/128 dev mullvad-fr13
 [#] ip link set mtu 1420 up dev mullvad-fr13
 [#] resolvconf -a tun.mullvad-fr13 -m 0 -x
 [#] wg set mullvad-fr13 fwmark 51820
 [#] ip -6 route add ::/0 dev mullvad-fr13 table 51820
 [#] ip -6 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
 [#] ip -6 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
 [#] ip6tables-restore -n
 [#] ip -4 route add 0.0.0.0/0 dev mullvad-fr13 table 51820
 [#] ip -4 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
 [#] ip -4 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
 [#] sysctl -q net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
 [#] iptables-restore -n

 # to stop it

 % wg-quick down mullvad-fr13.conf
 [#] ip -4 rule delete table 51820
 [#] ip -4 rule delete ta7>>ble main suppress_prefixlength 0
 [#] ip -6 rule delete table 51820
 [#] ip -6 rule delete table main suppress_prefixlength 0
 [#] ip link delete dev mullvad-fr13
 [#] resolvconf -d tun.mullvad-fr13 -f
 [#] iptables-restore -n
 [#] ip6tables-restore -n

You can use Mullvad check page to see if your connection is up and the ip a command where you should see a new interface:


 % ip a
 18: mullvad-fr13: <POINTOPOINT,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1420 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
 link/none
 inet xx.xx.xxx.xx/32 scope global mullvad-fr13
 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 inet6 fc00:bbbb:bbbb:bb01::3:715f/128 scope global
 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I love to pick up random servers from the 424 files I have, so I added a zsh function:


 mull(){
 # where I stored all the config files
 cd $HOME/.mullvad

 # kill if a Mullvad connection is up 
 iface=$(ip a | awk '/mull.*:/ {print $2}' |sed 's/:/.conf/')
 if [ ! -z $iface ]; then
 wg-quick down $iface
 fi

 # pick a random file and connect 
 server=$(ls |shuf -n1)
 wg-quick up $server
 }

That’s it! 😉

Let me know if you use a particular VPN and why?

Post 65/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

TIL about Cinecylo

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 22:23:29 +0200

Today I learnt about Cinecylo. Since 2014, they organized events where you gather to watch movies. The fun part is that you need to pedal to watch them.

The idea behind the project is to help people realize how much you can do with a little energy.

60W that’s all! It’s peanuts compared to the 1300 to 10KW in some theaters.

Even a toaster consumes more than the video projector used in that set-up. Lucille Chauvin, one of the organiser, enjoys remembering that you’ll need 10 bikers to get only one toast.

How it works:

Only 120 persons can join the event because of the speaker’s size. The experience needs complete darkness. You’ll have to wait after the sunset to be able to enjoy the screen. If you hoped for the latest piece of high-tech hardware, you could use in your living-room, you were wrong.

Of course, no blockbusters there! Environmental awareness through a selection of small movies is this project’s goal. I would really love to know the titles they projected.

The project took a trip to 3 countries with 20,000 cyclists, pedaling over 25.000km, and over 400 screenings.

It should trigger questions inside each one of us :

How could we change our habits?
What every one of us should do?
How to leave a better planet for the next generations?

The climate change should be the number one priority for everyone. All politicians shouldn’t pour billions in weapons and army. Instead, their first choice should be our planet. If the nature goes wild, nothing will save them, and us…

Just to end this post, I stumbled up two videos this week :

An excellent talk by Tristan Nitot, sadly, only in French, about the climate change.
“Can you fix climate change?”

Post 64/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Lost in tabs

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 19:21:42 +0200

I have a big issue… I always find myself with too many tabs opened. Currently, I have 267 of them. At some point, I even had over 1300 I think 🤦‍♂️

But why?!

I use Newsboat, a CLI RSS reader, and I’ve configured it to open unread links in Firefox. When I hit Ctrl+a it opens all the unread URLs in my browser. After a couple of keys pressed… Abracadabra, 20 tabs just appeared. Of course, I shouldn’t fire them up all at once, and use the default O keybinding of Newsboat to read them one by one.

@hamefang on Mastodon, suggested me a Firefox add-on named one-tab. When you use it, it closes all the opened tabs and generates an HTML page with all the links you can review later.

But, what to do with that now? 😅

I used Wallabag before, but all those articles stayed there unread. I love how this extension summarizes all the content in one page. But, I’m not sure if I will even bother to read it after a while.

What’s next?

I need to let it go. I can’t read every RSS feed I subscribed to. After all, It’s not the end of the world if I miss one from time to time…

Post 63/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

A mistake can happen

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 10:11:47 +0200

Yesterday, I found myself teaching DNS to members of my family. Not an easy task, especially with non-technical persons. They all wanted to know what happened with Facebook, Instagram & co. I would rather discuss the mess brought to the table by those companies than trying to get them a computer degree.

I moved away from common social networks, the only one I kept is Twitter for two reasons:

To use it as an after-sales service. Companies don’t like bad press, and usually they’re faster to reply there. Every rant can go viral.
I toot often about privacy, my goal is to convince my Twitter friends to consider apps like Signal, Matrix or Mastodon.

I don’t use the app, and rarely connect to the web interface. Every toot is forwarded to Twitter using this crossposter. At some point, I will delete Twitter. I have faith those guys will leave with all the new data breaches we face every week.

A funny fact. After yesterday Facebook’s debacle, my friends asked me again about ethical alternatives. That made me smile 😄 Usually, I point them to Switching Software. And, if it doesn’t help, I get my hands dirty managing specific things like emails or NextCloud for them.

This morning, enjoying my coffee, a story that happened to me came back to the surface.

A few years ago, I had to upgrade some DNS Blue Coat boxes. Before the upgrade, I conducted various tests to be sure the operation goes smoothly. I took one box, got the configuration exported, tested on a dev environment. Everything was fine.

The D-Day came! We had 4 boxes in production, I started with the first one. Upgrade done! Next one! Box two upgraded! As I was going to start the next upgrade, I had a guy who came into the office yelling : “Email and the website are down! What’s going on ?!"

I remember having a cold sweat…

It wasn’t a big company, but in less than ten minutes, I had a dozen of guys over my shoulders shouting in my ears to speed up. Not helpful at all. Having a good manager as a buffer to stop them gave me some air to concentrate. Finally, I managed to fix it in a couple of minutes.

What happened was some manual changes were available only in memory. Why? Because someone forgot to save his changes. And, who got lucky by chosing that system on the four available? 🤦‍♂️

Yesterday, it took them 6 hours to get everything up. I imagine the mess, no emails, no messenger, no groups, nothing … Were they all on Slack? Signal? Or mobile with jerks yelling at those poor guys. 😂

A friend of mine works for Facebook in San Francisco, I sent him a message to know how did they deal with the situation? Until now, I didn’t get a reply.

A mistake can happen to everyone. But when you lock out billions of users, will they be lenient, or will they execute you and put your stuff in a box?

Post 62/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Marvin Meyer

Facebook was down

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:40:27 +0200

Today, I was going to write about a completely different subject. But, I’ve heard complaints around me that “the Internet was down”.

Checked debian.org, it was up and running.
Checked kernel.org, it was up and running.

Then, someone told me… “Facebook is down!!”

Since I left that platform years ago, I didn’t have any issue. Furthermore, I don’t use Whatsapp, Instagram or Messenger, so I really didn’t have any problem with my internet. But, for many, Facebook is the Internet. The same way, Google is the web for others. It makes me sick to see someone typing a website name in Google instead of the address bar. Just remember, Google, Facebook, TikTok & co are NOT THE Internet. They are only a part of it.

During the few hours Facebook was down, decentralized platforms like Mastodon, Pixelfed or Diaspora were up. Even blogs like this one was up. And, many on Mastodon joked about Zuckerberg, money lost, and Facebook in general. I was one of them too 😅

But, all that mess made me think, should we really spend so much time on any social network? The decentralized systems have fewer issues than GAFAM ones, but they are not less dangerous, and bullying/harassment exist everywhere. So, how could we change people behaviour? I have an idea, but many won’t embrace it.

RSS feeds!!

They are great to follow websites/blogs you decided to follow without any AI pushing you things you don’t care 95% of the time. They reflect contents you decided to read. I love that approach because you are the one in charge, not recommandations based on potentially wrong/fake data.

On my side, I’ve been using RSS for years, and I love to see it coming back amongst many bloggers. I wrote about Newsboat, a clean CLI RSS reader with some vim shortcuts, that I use to fetch and read my feeds. If you love CLI, just try it out and let me know what you think about it.

Post 61/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

What's the leader key in Vim ?

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 11:24:09 +0200

Vim is a highly configurable editor that could be customized to fit your work habits. A couple of weeks ago, a colleague asked me to share my ~/.vimrc to see how I configured it.

Then, he asked me what <Leader> was doing in my configuration. So, I guess he is not the only one to need some clarification.

The leader key is a feature provided by Vim to create your own shortcuts. By default, the leader key is the \, but on some keyboard layouts it can be difficult to reach. Many Vim users remap the backslash to something else, like the comma or the space bar. To change it, just add this line in your ~/.vimrc :


 ## to use comma 
 let mapleader = ","
 ## to use space bar
 let mapleader = " "

Of course, adapt it to whatever key fits the best for you.

Examples of shortcuts

I like Goyo, a distraction-free Vim plugin. To enable it quickly, I added this configuration :


 # to enter Goyo mode 
 nnoremap <Leader>w :Goyo 100x90<CR>

 # to quit Goyo 
 nnoremap <Ctr-w> :Goyo!<CR>

That way I just use ,w to activate Goyo and Ctrl-w to quit it.

Another one I often use, is ,h mapped to :noh to hide highlighted searches done with /. I have only to type 2 characters instead of 5, Esc+:noh.

I use also often ,b for buffers that display my opened buffers.

The only limit is your imagination 😉

Post 60/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Media consumption - September 2021

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:30:00 +0100

This month was the last at my curre^^previous job. As usual, I’ve listened to many podcasts, and read a book only and started a new one.

Podcasts

I’ve been mainly listening to Layer8 Conference and the one about Social Engineering hosted by Chris Hadnagy.

Since I continued to listen to older episodes of Social Engineering, it’s awkward to discover future conferences that never happened because of the pandemic. Nobody predicted the last year and the half, and how the world changed due to the COVID-19.

Books

The only book I’ve finished this month was Tribe by Sebastian Junger, suggested by a guest on Chris Hadnagy’s podcast.

It combines historical, psychological and anthropology facts for the eternal human quest for meaning. It describes our modern societies, and how they are far from being perfect. He depicts how in many American native tribes, there was no treason, therefore no punishment. But, cowardice was not tolerated, and a death sentence was usually pronounced towards cowards. They shared what they had, and selfishness was just nonexistent. “Modern” societies in contrast emphasizes competitive individualism, and egoism. For example, after the 2008 subprime crisis, a handful of traders received bonuses instead of prison sentences.

Junger goes then through many traumas caused by war or natural disasters. The author quotes people who lived those events, and who are nostalgic for the common purpose of those groups that prevailed at the time.

He also goes through PTSD and US veterans, disparity of wealth and income, suicide and depression decrease during some tragedies.

I don’t agree with everything he said, but he portrayed many issues in Western society.

Movies / TV shows / Sport

TV shows

I discovered that Apple now produce TV Shows when I watched See. After the first episode, I quickly finished the first season.

The Plot:

Far in a dystopian future, the human race has lost the sense of sight, and society has had to find new ways to interact, build, hunt, and to survive. All of that is challenged when a set of twins are born with sight.

I never made the connection that Jason Momoa also known as Aquaman was also Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones.

Now, in this new show, he’s … Baba Voss!

Movies

Only watched kids movies with my daughter :

Asterix : The Mansion of the Gods
Asterix : The Secert of the Magic Potion
The Boss Baby : Family Business
Hotel Transylvania 3

That happens when you have children. 🤷‍♂️

Sport

On the sport side, I watched the UFC 266, and the Usyk versus Joshua fight. This Ukrainian, Usyk, is really impressive. If you like boxing, you should watch it.

Post 59/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Edelia, my last day

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 21:31:57 +0200

Today, was my last contracting day with Edelia, a branch of EDF. After 38 months there, the pandemic slowing down, my moving abroad, and the fact that soon we all have to come back to the office, my contract came to an end. It makes sense, since I didn’t want to come back every week to spend two days on site. If I was single, it would be okay, but I’m not.

During those three years, I had the opportunity to work on various projects with many new shining tools : Ansible, Openshift, Terraform, cloudy stuff, IoT & MQTT, Prometheus/Grafana, and other sysadmin/ops things.

Everything was great. Teams, Agility that I’ve never seen before, and cool projects. I really enjoyed working there. Even with the pandemic, we managed to work, and improve. That’s what I loved too. I learned quite a few things :)

But, what I preferred there is the fact that I’ve met smart, and kind people who loved … Beers!! Joking of course… Or am I ? Definitely, I will miss those guys 😅

It was a terrific experience, and like in all companies, their life is interwoven with arrivals, and also departures.

Today, it’s my turn.

Post 58/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Are people really finding jobs on LinkedIn?

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 22:10:21 +0200

More than a year ago, I left LinkedIn. And, I didn’t look back to it. But recently, I had a disagreement with a friend. He argues I was lucky to be able to do without it because I work in IT. And, for him, there is a so high demand for people in our field that we can just ignore that professional network.

I don’t really agree with that. Before leaving it, the only use of it was to keep contact with old colleagues. But, that’s not even really the case. People that matters have my phone number or my email address. You get referrals about you, and your skills, but that’s all. It’s only a showoff about yourself, your work, and your previous experiences.

For him, you must be on LinkedIn to prove your professionalism. In various domains like marketing, communication, or any modern company, if you’re not on LinkedIn, you will be poorly regarded, and it will make you non-professional. I really don’t agree with that. Your resume will speak about itself. I don’t need a Microsoft website to validate my previous professional experiences.

The other thing, I wrote about, is the lack of great opportunities there. The copied/pasted sentences from headhunters that, sometimes, don’t even read your resume piss me off. How many times I got offers for jobs with Windows system when there is not a single line about that OS on my CV.

I told him to start a poll to see if people found a job on that network. I know he didn’t do it, so here it comes :

https://webapp.oulu.fi/framadate/studs.php?poll=cmQ93EosqOaorYVT

Let me know if you were lucky there … or not 😅

Post 57/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Greg bulla

How to get rid of air tags

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 23:49:51 +0200

Today, scrolling down my Mastodon’s timeline, I stumbled upon great news. Three weeks ago, I wrote about Air tags, and how for Android users it can be difficult to monitor if that kind of device is sneaked in your belongings.

But, apparently some people from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany created AirGuard, an Android app that will show you those little snoopers.

Just installed the app, and … No devices around me 😅 I will try to see if any of those tags pop up when I walk around the city.

I was wondering if that kind of app existed, and it’s nice to find out that some dudes had the same concerns, and actually did something about it.

A nice thing also is to see the app available on F-Droid.

Post 56/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Mark Chan

Macron scolds French Olympic athletes

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 14:34:42 +0200

Where to start?

Let’s talk about French athletes, and their achievement at the Olympics :

33 Olympic medals
54 Paralympic medals

France finished at the 8th rank. Not too bad, don’t you think? Compared to Serbia, my origin country, and its 28th place.

This Monday, in front of 187 athletes, the French President said :

I say it clearly, we must do more. Way more.

Macron

He declared also that “our English neighbours, invest less public funds than us, but have better results”. In other words, French athletes are ungrateful bastards who waste the state’s money. How can you say that in front of persons who spent years to train trying to bring a medal to that same country.

To resolve that, he decided, with the help of his henchmen, to reform how the funds will be split, and focus only on sports with high potential. If your sport is not fancy enough, forget about any help from the government. And, if that wasn’t enough, they decided to create a “Performance Act”. The idea is to turn athletes into startups, in which we invest to turn a profit. And, of course, they must be profitable, or they will cut the financial help.

That verbal diarrhea, over its indecency, is so disdainful to the athletes, and it’s absolutely the opposite of what the sport is supposed to be. I’m surprised that nobody left that room, but they were probably shocked by his words.

On top of being an expert in virology, Macron is a coach now! Does he look like someone who can scold professional athletes?

I already wrote or tooted about him, and I say it again, Macron is the worst French president ever.

Post 55/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

18 months of remote work

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:02:20 +0200

September 16th will mark 18 months of remote work interwoven with ten days at the office. That pandemic transformed many habits we used to have. Everyone managed to get online using videoconference tools like Teams, Zoom, Slack, Jitsi or Matrix, chasing a social life took from us.

We changed.

People in the streets became faceless due to the masks, and so uninteresting. But at home, a gallery of faces appears every day on our laptop screen.

From going to work, and having a private life completely separated, online meetings brought colleagues in your home.

That invasion of cameras reminds me of the Truman Show. Sure, it’s not on the same level, but that external vision of your sweat home has something pervert. You observe others, and they watch you back as well. Then, you adopt a posture, and because you see yourself in the corner of your screen, you start asking yourself “How do they see me ?”

I’ve seen people with camera setup done in a manner to expose themselves as a smart/interesting persons with specific furniture behind them implying they read, do photography, or have great habits. People invested in lights, pictures for the wall or some plants to decorate their flat. Everything looking so perfect…

Even on my side, I bought a dedicated webcam to get a better video quality. I made a translation from phone to video calls with my family and friends, and I wanted to have best options to communicate clearly with them. But, for work, my setup is always the same: a white wall behind me.

New businesses emerged also from that pandemic. Some artists made private concerts to earn more money from home than they should have during live tours. A new manner many influencers/artists will find profitable in some way. For example, Travis Scott did a virtual concert in Fortnite, earning him $20 million. The NBA brought fans on virtual screens during games. I don’t know if you had to pay to be on those displays or just have the NBA League Pass that you pay anyway.

At the beginning, everyone saw the potential benefits of it. You can be in a meeting, and do other things : be in your underwear, eat something or iron your clothes. But, now I noticed many colleagues want to go back to the office. They think technology has reached its maximum, and we need to be together to improve our meetings or/and our social life.

My contract will end at the end of this month, and I just started to look for a new job, a remote one because I don’t see myself going back to an office yet…

Post 54/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Nubelson Fernandes

Media consumption - Summer 2021

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0100

This summer, I moved abroad. My family joined me one month after I finished the house move. The moving costs were doubled because I needed a specific van, but my friend sent me a smaller one, and I had to do a x2 on everything : fuel, driver plus their expenses, and van rental. That was great! Thank you, my friend.

I updated my Top 250 list with two movies I watched recently:

Memories of Murder, great movie about a serial killer in South Korea.
Parasite, an excellent black comedy Korean thriller.

Podcasts

I’ve been mainly listening to Layer8 Conference and the one about Social Engineering hosted by Chris Hadnagy.

I added six new podcasts :

Hacking Humans by CyberWire
Caveat by CyberWire
LibrePlanet 2021
Command Line Heroes by RedHat
8th Layer Insights by Perry Carpenter
World’s Greatest Con

Books

I’ve finished The Social Engineer’s Playbook by Jeremiah Talamontes. It covers briefly tools like Metasploit, Maltego, SET, and the Kali Linux distribution. It provides also storylines and tools to use on various targets. The book is better than the previous one I read.

At the end of each podcast, Christopher Hadnagy ask his guest if they have any book recommandation. From those podcasts, I made a list of books I will try to read :

Tribe by Sebastian Junger
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen forces that stand in the way of true Inspiration by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
The Landmark Herodotis : Histories by Robert Strassler
The hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz
Emergence by Derek Rydall
Get a Grip by Gino Wickman
Learning from the Octopus by Rafe Sagarin
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Truth and Lies, What People are really thinking by Mark Bowden and Tracey Thomson
The Ellipsis Manual by Chase Hughes

Post 53/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Air tags

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:03:23 +0200

Jamie wrote a note about someone who hid two Air tags, the new toys from Apple, to recover his stolen scooter.

With all the privacy issues Apple is facing right now, they don’t need negative publicity, but Air tags could potentially be a source of problems if used for evil purposes.

In the case described above, Air tags are useful, but imagine a stalker, a colleague or someone you randomly meet putting one of this little device in your bag or in your belongings to find where you live. That could be a real threat to your privacy and/or your life.

From what I’ve read, the device could notify nearby iPhones of its existence. It will eventually beep if not paired with the owner device within two or three days. That’s enough time for any ill-intended person to find you. But what happens when you don’t use an Apple product? How to protect yourself from being tracked? Some Bluetooth offer that kind of services, and of course you could scan/search your stuff every time you have to get back home. But, at that point, either you are in real problems or you are paranoid.

Even what looked like a good idea could be used to do evil things.

Post 51/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Mark Chan

What I've been doing lately

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 07:36:35 +0200

As I wrote in my last post, I moved abroad, and left Paris behind me. The last month has been a mixture between work, discovering a new city, a new language, getting back in shape, getting new furnitures, listening to podcasts, importing pictures to Darktable, and reading.

Work is still the same, and summer times is often quiet, but I had quite some work to do with Prometheus, Grafana, and Ansible. Mainly, doing metrics with various exporters like kafka-exporter, grok-exporter, and other similar things.

I wanted to get back in the habit to have a workout routine every day, a thing I stopped couple of months ago, doing only twice a week some sport with friends before moving. Darebee is a great site to get many workout ideas. You can download the content as a PDF. For me, it’s way better than Freeletics, that charges you indecent money just to do push-ups. They offer their content for free, make a donation if you can.

I’ve been doing exercices for a month, and I’m getting back in shape slowly but surely:

Super-Saiyan
Everest
100
Spartan
Boxer
Arms of Steel
Arms of Steel not the same as the previous one.

Each page is a program for one month, but doing only one wasn’t really enough, so I included other ones. I’ll test new ones this month.

This month, I finished two books.

The first one, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, remarkable results by James Clear. Basically, the author describes how you can change little things in your daily life to improve anything. It provides a plan on how you make that happen. It has to be an easy task, say you want to get back in shape, make 5 push-ups per day, then increase it slowly. He provides tips for many things like productivity for example. Ask your partner or colleague to change all your social media password each Monday. You’ll get that password only Friday night, so you’ll have your weekend to “enjoy” it. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and what it brings to the table.

The second one was Manipulation: Dark Psychology to manipulate and control people by Arthur Horn. SE also known as Social Engineering is a subject that always fascinated me. Recently, I’ve spent a lot of times in that field, and often it’s a rabbit hole, and before you get conscious about the time it’s already 3AM. Arthur Horn tackles some subjects like manipulation versus influence, methodology to get someone to do what you want, self-analysis why some techniques didn’t work, body language and facial expression, etc… The book wasn’t really interesting because I knew many concepts already.

About SE, if you love podcasts, I suggest you The Social-Engineer podcast with Chris Hadnagy, the author of Human Hacking, a book I bought but not read yet. Mr Hadnagy has been doing that podcast since 2009, and guests are quite interesting. They also have a Slack channel with over 1000 persons now. Give it a try and let’s talk about it.

Finally, I’ve spent many hours walking around the city, and taking pictures.

Post 50/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Mohammad Metri

Finally, I moved

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 13:12:00 +0200

The last couple of weeks were quite busy. I moved abroad exactly one month ago and, I don’t regret it at all. Many advantages: the weather, people I’ve met so far and, I don’t have Macron as a president anymore.

Every decision made by the French government recently is a nightmare for privacy and freedom. I didn’t think I would see worst presidents than Sarkozy or Hollande, but the former banker created from scratch is the number one on my list. And, coming from Serbia, I’ve seen a lot of bad ones.

On the work side, I’m still contracting with a French company because we are working remotely until the end of September. Then, I’ll probably have to hunt a new job because the new CEO wants us to come back to the office at least twice a week. My idea is to get a full remote with a company abroad, and enjoy our new life in this sunny country.

Why we moved abroad? The pandemic.

With all the variants, dumb governments decisions, and the various curfews, lockdowns if we must be locked in our home again, at least we could enjoy a better weather, and a bigger flat. For the price we used to pay in Paris, now we enjoy a house on three levels.

I will definitely have more time now to finish the second edition of the 100DaysToOffload challenge.

Post 49/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Passwords and websites

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 11:19:15 +0200

Today, everything is about data. All companies want to know a maximum about yourself to provide you the best tailored features just for you. Never asked for all that attention, but they still want the best for you 🤦‍♂️

To be able to do that, they will track all your comings and goings on their website. All the point is to be able to better analyze how their customers behave, and adapt to get the most of them : PROFIT!

The problem I have still is what happens when their security is not good enough. Or, like the issue, Ctemplar had this week when they lost many accounts mails due to a lack of backup policy. What if they get breached? Could someone use those questions to get information about you ? Social engineering has been used and is still used against a lot of people. In the last episode 97 of Darknet Diaries, you can see how someone evil used SE to abuse someone just to get his Instagram account. If you are a stressed kind of person, those situations could make you very anxious.

How to avoid those situations ?

For emails, I’ve been self-hosting my own emails for 20 years more or less with multiple backups. So, I should be fine, never got real issues, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future.

On the account side, here are some precautions I take when I create a new account on a new website.

To avoid my true name to be linked to those websites, I create an account with fake data that I keep in my password manager. Keepassx, pass or any vaults should be good enough to store this information.

Doing this, I will know that my real name doesn’t appear anywhere and even if they got hacked, I don’t have to be worried about it.

Here is an example of info I put in my vault for a specific website :


 Website : blahblahblah.com
 Name : John Poo
 Birthday: 01/01/1992
 Security Question 1 : Name of my dog : Max
 Security Question 2 : Favourite movie : Pochahontas

Why you should do that? Bad people usually use social engineering to get information about their targets. If they know some information about you, they will probably be smart enough to guess a password or other valuable information. Using random fake things like above prevent me to be in that situation. And, you should adopt that kind of behaviour for your own sake.

Payments and deliveries

If I need to pay for something, I’ll try to go with some cryptocurrencies if they accept it. If not, I create a virtual card with an online bank for a single use. Revolut, and some online banks, offer you the possibility to create a virtual card. When you pay, usually only the card number is checked, not the name of the card. You should be able to put the alias for that account in the payment details. That way, if the website get compromised, I should be fine.

For the delivery of a product, I know one is coming soon, I put the alias on my mailbox for a week. Once, I got the package, I just removed it. Sometimes, some deliveries ask for ID. I did say before that I’m just sharing the flat with the alias in question, and usually they don’t bother to check your identity since you are at te right place. But, that could be an issue… So far, it was not.

Last thing about passwords

Personally, I use pwgen, a small CLI tool, to create my password:


 % pwgen -sy 32 -N6
 xrX,{,\q($)*w)~czF^r1Te6jWe)Zg&v W){aG=e1:IS7QXl(E'--cL:4OFnD)Fx&
 (2[.FgR!mpM{?/]z*3D9K4XMVH7Z^|Df ^VP*_HWg,\{kS|Ko)\e1A`vzwXv+{lGS
 ^qtkPHLM_j?,Im<ID|q|[w4TdI|ded0n auBJwHPKsP)+iKM?kH&0Z_1.JLuTG"#A

Don’t use name, nickname or others things weak password.

Have you seen Jimmy Kimmel’s videos : “what’s your password?”

Here are some of them :

Please just don’t do that. 😅

Post 48/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Bernard Hermant

NBA and COVID-19

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 05:48:32 +0200

Just woke up. Checked the clock, 4AM. The last week, my nights were a chaos. Many times, I found myself up at 2AM until 5AM. Then, knackered, I got two or three hours of sleep before getting up to work.

Tonight, since I couldn’t get to sleep, I watched the second game of the 2021 NBA Finals. Actually, the second half of that game.

Two things shocked me. How quickly Giannis Antetokounmpo recovered from a hyperextented knee when I thought his season was done. And, the other one is about fans.

During these playoffs, people were getting back slowly in the arenas. But, I’ve noticed during the Conferences finals a thing reminding me of the life before the pandemic… How people gathered together in the front of giant screens to support their teams.

In Europe, French government suggested to its citizens to avoid Portugal and Spain for holidays because the Delta variant is everywhere, apparently. They said masks are not mandatory any more outside, but you need to keep distance, wash your hands, and be cautious about what you’re doing.

Here’s a picture of Bucks fans after they won versus the Celtics.

Tonight, the Phoenix Suns Arena was full! That’s over 18k people in the same space. In Milwaukee, fans were glued together in a fan zone. Maybe they checked everybody at the entrance of the stadium to be sure they are all vaccinated, but I doubt that’s the case. I love the NBA, but couldn’t we be more cautious? Even with a vaccine, you can get the COVID again.

So, was that a great move? Couldn’t we be more prudent?

Last year, in France at least, they let people do a lot of things during the summer… Before seeing a new curfew in September. This year, they said it won’t be a fourth wave if everybody is careful. And, obviously, the summer is the perfect way to behave that way. Beaches, the sun, alcohol, and tongues in other mouths, I really can’t see what could possibly go wrong…

Post 47/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Back to the office

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:34:35 +0200

Last Thursday, a rumbling storm woke me up at 4am like a warning about a thing I hate : the crowded train to go back to work. Two weeks ago, managers of the company I contract with asked us to come back to the office once a week for … three weeks. Then, we will be again working full time from home until September because some work needs to be done in our offices.

It’s exhausting commuting every day, and that’s a part I didn’t miss at all during the pandemic. Actually, I loved to work from home, and I will probably look for a full remote job.

Last year, at the beginning of that world disease, some colleagues were against the work at home. Now, they can’t imagine going back to the life they used to have. Others have changed their mind the other way around. They were 100% for it, and now they want to come back. They have their reasons, but mine is that I could manage my time as I want, except when I have meetings. And, I love it.

Working from home can be difficult if you don’t have any routine, a proper desk, or even better an office where you can focus without being interrupted. But, everybody doesn’t have that kind of luck. That’s why some co-workers came to work almost every time when it was authorized.

I work as a SysAdmin/Ops in a Feature Team, and we embrace agility and all the SCRUM ceremonies to maximize productivity, promote collaboration, adapt, and improve from each other.

That’s the first time I found it effective. I’ve seen in previous companies some implementation of it, but it was always a failure. Almost three years after, that alchemy is gone. The Tech Lead left, leaving a void, and the management merged two teams with IoT in their names. One of that team was ours. That’s when we lost the cool stuff.

We used to have really interesting grooming and retro ceremonies. The scrum master was full of great ideas to make these events fun. Now, it’s just a number to grade the sprint we just finished.

For those who don’t know what is it, here how a two weeks sprint is divided :

SPM also known as Sprint Planning Meeting where we talk about the work needed to be done in the next two weeks.
Groomings are meetings once a week about new subjects for the next sprints.
The Demo is the last day of the sprint, where we demonstrate what has been accomplished.
Finally, the Retro is a retrospective about our sprint.

The demo/retro afternoon is the only moment that’s worth the come back to the office. But, I’m sure we could find a way to do it properly remotely. It has been done for more than one year already.

As you can see, I’m not really happy to go back there…

Post 46/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Nastuh Abootalebi

The Slap

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 06:41:30 +0200

Yesterday, the French president got a slap in the face by someone from the crowd. It’s not the first time, someone tried to interact with a French president.

In 2001, someone said to Jacques Chirac :

- Asshole !

- Pleased to meet you, I’m Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac

In 2008, an angry farmer at an agricultural fair in Paris refused to shake the hand of Nicolas Sarkozy. He replied :

"Casse toi pauvre con! ("Sod off!")

Nicolas Sarkozy

Yesterday, Macron got slapped in the face by some dude in a small city with less than 6000 inhabitants.

Since he got to the head of the State, the police had clashes and clashes with people during protests, even peaceful ones. There was more violence in 4 years than in the last 30 years. We could talk about people losing a hand or an eye during those demonstrations, or even life, but I won’t.

So maybe that slap is just a reflection of the current government, a violent one.

Post 45/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Takacs Alexandra

Media consumption - April and May 2021

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 23:30:26 +0100

The last two months were quite busy. Between work, a new life abroad soon, and a baby it has been difficult to find some time for myself. Still I managed to do some sport, watched the NBA play-offs, and listen to podcasts.

For the last three months, I haven’t crossed out any movie, from my Top 250 list.

I watched the first four episodes of the second season of Mr Robot, and finished Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

We watched the latest Disney movie, Raya, and the Last Dragon. The movie is really well-designed, and globally it’s a good movie for … kids. 😅

Summary

I haven’t kept a precise list of all the things I’ve done, but I really enjoyed three episodes of Darknet Diaries :

Ep. 90 : Jenny Radcliffe, she’s a social engineer, and a physical pentester.
Ep. 92 : The Pirate Bay ! A lot of things I didn’t know about the well known torrent search engine.
Ep. 93 : Kik, the messaging app … which became a paedophile network.

In the Layer8 podcasts, I’ve noticed many women are social engineers doing physical pentests. Is it easier for a woman to get in a restricted area? I would love to hear them share their experience on this.

Podcasts

English

Darknet Diaries :
- Ep. 89 : Molerats in the cloud(59 min)
- Ep. 90 : Jenny (71 min)
- Ep. 91 : webjedi (59 min)
- Ep. 92 : The Pirate Bay (106 min)
- Ep. 93 : Kik (95 min)
Privacy, Security & OSINT :
- Ep 211 : Privacy security and OSINT potpourri (43 min)
- Ep 212 : Vital privacy, security and OSINT updates (39 min)
- Ep 213 : Hashes 101 (62 min)
- Ep 214 : Offense/Defense : The Capitol Siege (48 min)
- Ep 215 : When OSINT is abused (23 min)
- Ep 216 : The consequences of extreme privacy (47 min)
- Ep 217 : Extreme Privacy 3 & New VOIP Strategies (47 min)
- Ep 218 : Rebate tracking (32 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 52 : Stefanie LaHart - The DefCon social engineering capture the flag experience (48 min)
- Ep 52 : Tokyo_v2 - anonymous reviews might not be so anonymous (12 min)
- Ep 53 : Collegiate SECTF (90 min)
- Ep 54 : Searching the Dark Net (38 min)
- Ep 55 : Magic and social engineering with Lee Anderson, Richard Davy and Chris Kirsch. (68 min)
- Ep 56 : Michele Stuart - Evolution of OSINT tools and talking her way into a Super Bowl party (43 min)
- Ep 57 : Collegiate Social Engineering Capture the Flag Organizing Team (64 min)
- Ep 58 : Siobhan Kelleter - “be stubborn and want to learn” (23 min)
- Ep 59 : Twig - Identifying locks and vishing her targets (21 min)
- Ep 60 : Breaking into buildings with Crystal (28 min)
- Ep 61 : Polarisu solves the OSINT challenge (38 min)

French

Books

The only book I’ve spent some time with is :

Prometheus: Up & Running by Brian Brazil (80%)

I haven’t touched those below or the new books I ordered recently. 😔

The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (50%)
River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (35%)

Movies / Series

Mr Robot second season - 2015
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - 2021

Post 44/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

You want a RSS reader, try Newsboat

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 15:35:51 +0200

I have been using the Livemarks Firefox add-on to manage my RSS feeds for a while. It’s supposed to bring back the live feeds we used to have a couple of years ago in our browser.

I follow many blogs, so I wanted a better way to manage my feeds. Why? Because lately, that add-on didn’t work as it used to. I wanted something that keeps a status of what I’ve read/not read yet.

Baccardi55 replied to one of my toot, and pointed me to Newsboat, a CLI RSS reader. 😄 Two minutes after his answer, it was installed on my laptop. It should be available with the package manager of your Linux distro.

The configuration is quite simple. Just put your feeds URL in $HOME/.newsboat/urls, like this :


 https://annoying.technology/index.xml
 https://ar.al/index.xml
 https://austinkleon.com/feed/
 https://baez.link/feed/
 https://belmoussaoui.com/feed
 https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/feed.xml
 https://blog.melyanna.net/feed/
 https://boats.gitlab.io/blog/index.xml
 https://bravenewgeek.com/feed/
 https://codewithoutrules.com/atom.xml
 https://css-tricks.com/feed/
 https://desmondrivet.com/feeds/all.rss
 https://dilbert.com/feed.rss
 https://drewdevault.com/feed.xml
 https://emmaclit.com/feed/
 https://factourism.com/feed
 [...]
 https://miek.nl/index.xml
 https://netflixtechblog.com/feed
 https://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml
 https://pluralistic.net/feed/
 https://ryanholiday.net/feed/atom/
 https://sivers.org/en.atom
 https://strangevistas.com/feed/
 https://this-week-in-rust.org/rss.xml
 https://trivial.observer/index.xml
 https://www.schneier.com/feed/
 https://www.stefanjudis.com/rss.xml
 https://yarmo.eu/rss/all
 https://zerokspot.com/index.xml
 https://paulstamatiou.com/
 http://feeds.feedburner.com/nakedcapitalism?format=xml
 https://rakhim.org/index.xml
 https://xiu.io/index.xml
 https://melindawyers.com/feed/rss

Then, launch it with newsboat, and you should see something like this :

On Debian, a file with all kind of options is available in /usr/share/doc/newsboat/examples/config. All you need is to copy it in your ~/.newsboat/ directory to tweak the features included with that reader. So far, I have just changed two things:

the sort order to get by unreadarticlecount
added a key binding to open all unread articles in Firefox, and mark them as read:


 bind-key ^A open-all-unread-in-browser-and-mark-read

Of course, you can customize key combination the way you want. Some of them use, kind of, vim shortcuts to move between articles. But, once again, you could change them the way you want. Themes are also available, but I haven’t try them yet.

For now, I’m quite happy with that CLI reader. It does the job way better than Livemarks that I removed from my add-ons.

What do you use on your side ?

Post 43/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Libera, a new realm

Fri, 21 May 2021 11:48:11 +0200

Freenode, was the IRC network I used to spend a lot of time in various channels, #vim, #zsh, #awesome, #lineageos, etc… I was also on some others servers like irc.perl.net or Undernet.org where I met many people, as I do today on Mastodon.

Even with Mastodon and some Matrix rooms, I’m still on IRC. Today, all companies are on Slack, owned by people you don’t know, and with behaviours that could change eventually in the future.

That what happened with the Freenode network. Christel, head of freenode staff, did a deal with a guy named Andrew Lee, and when she stepped down from her position, he was owning alone Freenode Ltd. A company she created to help organize the members and the network. I don’t really know what the deal was, and that’s probably the case of many users and staff members.

That guy wasn’t supposed to take control over the network, and servers. He didn’t have any privilege too. But, now alone at the head of the network, he changed his mind and didn’t want to agree to the terms concluded in 2017. Apparently, he built a new team that will be in charge of everything.

If you are interested, staff members posted their point of view about all this mess. Here are some of them :

The good news is a new network emerged from all this crap : Libera. And, the other one is that it could be possible that the nick you always wanted on Freenode will be available if you hurry up 😅

After checking my irssi, I’ve noticed all topics have been changed and updated to point users to the new place to be: irc.libera.chat:6697

The new website has a logo that reminds me Codeberg’s one with a lot of guides for those of you who never been on those networks. You can choose between many clients, my personal one is irssi. Of course, if you have read some of my posts you know I love CLI and that tool is one of them. You can find a tutorial on how to connect to the new network.

I would love to see more self-hosted IRC servers than Slack in companies, but I’m probably asking too much…

See you there :)

Post 42/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : v2osk

Reading and writing

Thu, 20 May 2021 23:37:28 +0200

The #100DaysToOffload, round 2, didn’t really take the path intended. Not that I don’t know what to write about (I have a lot of drafts I want to tackle), it’s just I had so many things to handle recently that I didn’t take some time to plan my posts. But, some recent events changed my daily habits a bit.

Being a father a second time is one of the reason, work is the second one, and a moving abroad project is a third one. All these things combined, I found myself in a position where writing on this blog wasn’t my number one priority. But, I still managed to write almost every day in my logbook, and I still use my bujo daily, but it’s not really the same kind of writing.

On the reading side, my procrastination is abysmal. It’s like a superpower I have to start a book, and then leave it for a complete week or even worst a couple of months. I don’t know why I find myself in that situation again and again. I even lay my hands on How to read a book - The classic guide to intelligent reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, but I still haven’t started it, but I probably should 😅

It’s 00:25AM, and I’m still up when I should be in bed. I used to have rituals that made me productive, and I should really get back to them…

Good night, and good luck…

Post 41/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Alfons Morales

Re: Parasite

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:38:44 +0200

Parasite is on my movies to watch list, but I haven’t taken the time yet to sit down to enjoy it. From your review, it reminds me of the Grave of the Fireflies where you hope something good will happen to those kids, but it’s only a darkness descent.

The tragic path appears in many Asian movies, and has the ability to touch you in many unexpected ways.

That’s what I look for when I watch a movie.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2021/05/09/parasite/

France and privacy

Fri, 23 Apr 2021 10:14:55 +0200

Privacy, a concept some governments don’t really care about. For example, the French Council of State refused to apply the European Court of Justice decision made in October 2020. That judgement was about government desire to keep all logs (IP, localization, etc…) of everyone, and how it is against citizens fundamental rights.

La Quadrature du Net defends the rights of everyone in the digital world fighting censorship and surveillance both from governments and big tech companies. Mainly, their work is funded with donations.

Today, with that denial, everyone is a potential suspect. This carte blanche gives to the State every right to annihilate private life, and potentially the freedom of speech. Once again, the National Security was used as an argument to extend their fight against terrorism to any kind of movement not going their way.

Democratic rights are abused, and will continue to be. The National Security card will be the main argument to defend a “threatened” country. Will other countries follow the same path France did, and hide behind the National Security to avoid their international duties?

This government destroyed so many things people fought during years to get. La Quadrature spent six years on that case to see it dismissed with a wave of the hand. What are the legal options to fight a State that don’t give a fuck about International laws?

Macron, who loves to criticise Putin or the Chinese government, has nothing to envy them. He destroyed all institutions, more injuries during demonstrations than the last 30 years, said there is no money for hospitals, but magically got money for cops to handle the mass. He’s probably the worst French president we ever had. Nothing really surprising when you know he was a banker.

Politicians, or 95% of them, are disgusting with no shame. They cheat until they get caught, and then got a free pass. Scandinavians countries have a way better handling of their governments. I don’t recognize myself in any of the French candidates. I would love to see the blank ballot counted, but that will never happen. Why would they authorize it anyway?

Elections in France will be in 2022. The right wing will be the evil to cut down. Of course, everyone will vote against racism. The same schema was done before, and they found an infinite loop to have people to vote for the right thing.

France, 1984, here it comes …

Post 40/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : EV

LineageOS 18.1

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:55:33 +0200

After many fights with with Microsoft the last couple of days, they won. I tried many things, a Windows 10 VM, a Windows 7 on an old laptop, a Windows 10 installation attempt on that computer. Everything failed, and globally It was a nightmare to use Windows.

After all those tries, I was stuck with a soundless OnePlus 7 Pro. Luckily, I had an other phone in the meantime.

With the folks on IRC, we had a long talk, and nobody understand why it happened.

Last night, a LineageOS 18.1 update landed in the notifications. I didn’t really expected that it would fix my phone… But, it did. 🍾

Post 39/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Kitty, vim and colours

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 18:51:41 +0200

In December, I tried a couple of terms. Still looking for a true colour terminal, I came back on Kitty again. It’s not that urxvt is not good enough, but some colours plugins in Vim were weird with it. The issue is that Urxvt doesn’t provide true colours. But Il like its speed, and the way you can configure it.

Kitty is not as fast as my preferred terminal, but I wanted to give it a second try.

Why? I’ve seen a colleague using VSCodium to edit some CSS files. And I saw an appealing feature of that editor : a preview of an hex colour in the front of the line. Was that something doable in Vim? After a quick search, I found those two plugins :

vim-colorizer.
vim-hexokinase suggested by the plugin above.

The preview can be customize, and could look like this :

But to be able to achieve this, I needed a true colour term which wasn’t the case with urxvt. Here how it looks like in urxvt when you had set termguicolors as suggested in the documentation:

After trying a couple of things, I couldn’t get it right. Since there is no true colour support on that terminal, I had to find an alternative.

Kitty offers true colours, and an easy way to configure a theme. This GitHub repository has over 40 of themes, and there is a chance that you find something you like. Monokai is one of my favourite colorscheme for Vim I’ve been using for a while. But, this time I went for Dracula.

Dracula is a theme available for 181 apps from Vim to Emacs including Coda, DuckDuckGo, etc… The same way as some people have switched completely to dark themes, some have done the same with Dracula. On my side, I’ll keep it only to my terminals.

With urxvt I love the fact that I can open links without my mouse. Kitty offers you the same feature using Ctrl+Shift+e. That will add a letter or digit in front of each link it finds in the current term. You press the key corresponding to the link you want to open, and it will open it in your default browser.

Transparency is also a feature I use coupled with some shading and fading. It helps to avoid running commands in the wrong terminals. That’s the configuration I have in my ~/.Xdefaults file :


 ! teh transparency stuff
 URxvt*tintColor: white
 URxvt*shading: 30
 URxvt*fading: 70
 URxvt.transparent: true

I haven’t found yet how to manage the shading and fading with Kitty if anyone has a solution, let me know.

For transparency, I needed to use xcompmgr in my ~/.xinitrc. From the apt show description:

xcompmgr is the standard composition manager for the X Composite extension, which allows clients to modify what is drawn to the screen before it happens. This composition manager implements shadows, fading, proper translucency, and more.

The last thing, I noticed some glitches when you do something quickly like switching between tags, or when you type too fast. It displays weird pixels in the terminal. Never noticed that with urxvt, and after some tests it’s linked with Kitty.

To conclude, I switched to Kitty, and the future will say if I’ll keep it. For now, it does the job even if I don’t like the little bug mentioned above.

Post 38/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

LineageOS and Windows

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 07:47:58 +0200

Privacy and mobile phones, an impossible blend. I try as hard as I can to be cautious about the apps I have on the phone. LineageOS is the OS I go with on my OnePlus 7 Pro. Everything was running smoothly until that little icon popped up in my screen.

There is a new update.

The little Updater app fucker!

The update was about moving from the version 17.1, Android 10, to LineageOS 18.1, the new Android 11 version. As I did when I moved from 16.1 to 17.1, I used adb and fastboot to install everything. I rebooted and got stuck in an infinite loop. With the help from some folks from #lineageos on Freenode, IRC, I got out. I was happy until…

For some weird reason, my encryption got screwed, and I had to remove all the data. Everything on it has a backup on a NextCloud instance. So, It wasn’t a real problem. But, some audio recorded on the phone were not included in the Instant backup of my phone. Those records were some lunches we had in family with my father who has a lot of stories I wanted to keep. 🤦‍♂️

After the wiping out, I had to reinstall my apps. I’m pretty cautious about the apps installed on my phone. I don’t have any game except LiChess to play chess online. I have about 20 apps top. Everything on this side went well.

Then, it happened. The slow, but sure, descent to hell.

I love podcasts and listen to them whenever I can. Doing my shopping, I usually launch AntennaPod to digest a new episode of one of them. But this time, I got a media type not supported (1001) message. Weird … Tried a different podcast. Same thing. Concluded it was probably an audio codec missing.

Back at home, I checked on IRC to see if someone had the same kind of message. Then they asked me if I had sounds at all. At that moment, and after trying to call my voicemail, I realized the sound was gone 😱. And, after some tweaking, I found out that the front camera that pops up on OP7 pro didn’t work too 😱😱

After a long talk with people on #lineageos, they suggested me reinstall the stock firmware and start everything from zero. They told me to use a software called MSMDownload. It’s a tool to flash Oppo and Realme devices with the stock firmware. The issue is I don’t own any Windows computer.

VirtualBox came to my mind to get a Microsoft OS as I heard you can download some iso on their website for “free”. Got the Windows 10 iso, booted up and went through the installation process. After 15 minutes, and some shady questions about my privacy concerns, the OS was installed.

OK, I got the OS, the tool, the ROM and was ready to go. But, the USB wasn’t ready yet. Had to install some extra VirtualBox package to be able to use the ports. The first thing to do was to update the Qualcomm driver. Then start the OnePlus in some EDL mode pressing volume Up and Down buttons at the same time. Then, you can connect the phone to your computer. VirtualBox failed after bringing the USB port up for 3-4 seconds before disconnecting it. That make the flashing process undoable.

My option there was to find a Windows laptop. Luckily, I bought a cheap Thinkpad X240 from work with a Windows on it. I completely forgot I had that spare in a drawer.

Again, got all the tools and ROM ready. And, again it failed. This time the tool got stuck on some Preload action. Back to IRC, someone suggested me to use USB2 ports because the tool doesn’t work well using new ports. And, of course, none of those old ports available on that laptop. 😡

Went to the shop, bought a USB2 hub, launched everything again. Same results … 😢

By the way, I launched Firefox on Windows, and got ads and pop-ups everywhere, a real pain in the ass. Everything on that Windows 7 was despicable. Maybe it’s because I haven’t used Windows at home for almost 21 years or because I’m used to my awesome window manager.

Late last night, I tried to install Windows 10 on that X240, but it doesn’t want to boot on the USB key. Tried many options in the BIOS, tried different tools to create the bootable USB key because wasn’t sure dd was enough maybe. Nothing worked …

Fortunately, I have an old OnePlus I can use in the meantime until I found a solution …

Post 37/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Signal and cryptocurrencies

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 14:54:38 +0200

Signal announced they will add payments using a cryptocurrency named MobileCoin.

Signal has been my messaging app for almost five years. After convincing over 90 friends, colleagues and family members to use it, I’m facing a big dilemma. Will I have to move them to a new app again, and will they be ready to follow me again ?

KISS also known as Keep It Simple Stupid is a principle I love. Bringing payments in a messaging app looks like a bad idea to me. Instead, they should focus on their app, and create a new one for payments. We’ve seen with Telegram, and their cryptocurrency TON, that this idea was not a great one. They abandoned their project after a lost fight with a US court. MobileCoin will bring payments, but will also add complexity and potential regulation.

On the privacy side, there are some annoying features I would like to see gone. If you use the app on various devices, you must remove each message one by one on each device. For example, Wire removes them without any human intervention. Creating accounts with a mobile phone is also a privacy issue. Using email instead of your phone number would be also desirable for any new account.

Compared to Telegram, Signal is opensource on both sides, client and server. Telegram is not secure because only the client is opensource, and we don’t know how they use data on the server side. But, we have the same issue with Signal because we can’t be sure their servers use the code they provide. Though, after many months, they finally updated theirs servers to remove that doubt.

Still, I’m not sure if I’ll keep it in the future …

Post 36/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Adem AY

Facebook is evil

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 13:19:03 +0200

Reading Will’s post, he wondered why his Facebook timeline was full of trams. His Facebook account has been created just for work and some job testing. Apparently, it’s not linked to any other accounts, but still he couldn’t understand why he was bombarded with trains. Then, he realized that he posted a pic of trams on Pixelfed.

Pixelfed, the Instagram clone, is decentralized, the same way as Mastodon and other ones making the Fediverse. But, even if it’s decentralized, it can be scrapped by anyone. Every time you toot, they are available on the web.

I’ve read recently that Facebook made a patent for their “people you may know” feature. Nothing really new, those big companies filling patents is a common thing in their world. But what I learnt is how they snoop on you using scratches and dust from your camera to compare pictures. Then, even if two persons don’t know each other, some data in a database will trigger a ‘people you may know’ feature because details indicated that two pics, maybe shared over signal, email or other tools, have the same kind of dust or scratches.

We don’t know for sure if they use that kind of things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. Are they scrapping the fediverse to find out what people do on other networks ? I’m sure they can … and they probably do.

Evil, there is no other name for those companies.

This post was a reply to https://wilw.dev/blog/2021/04/07/is-facebook-scraping-fediverse/

Post 35/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Максим Власенко

Russian hackers and french schools

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 23:39:56 +0200

Last week, Macron announced that schools will close for one month. Actually, for kindergartens it’s only three weeks including two weeks of holidays. What kind of thing should the government do before that kind of announcement ?

If it was me, I would check if the infrastructure is able to handle the incoming traffic. Why? Online courses mean a few connections to their servers. I don’t know the exact number of French students, but I guess the number is quite large.

So when the schools closed this week, you know what happened… Servers crashed. This mess could have been avoided if they planned everything correctly. But since the beginning of this pandemic, they screwed up all decisions. And what came after was great.

The minister of education said :

We had to face many cyberattacks, especially from Russia. But our firewalls are sturdy.

Jean Michel Blanquer, half-time minister / half-time comedian.

It’s probably Putin who hired experts to screw the French youth education program. Kids are the main reason, and we all know Russians hate them 🤦‍♂️.

That remind me a great expert we had a couple of years ago. Her name was : Christine Albanel. She was mother of the HADOPI law supposed to reduce piracy online. That project was a failure and a waste of money. As an IT expert, she declared :

We have a free software, known as Open Office [...] and of course it provides a great free firewall. [...] That's all I wanted to say ...

Christine Albanel, Security expert / hacker.

Couldn’t they just hire the right people for the right job instead of being a laughing stock on the web. 🤦‍♂️

Post 34/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Kevin Ku

A new data leak

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 13:34:46 +0200

Two months ago, I wrote about a 3.2 billion of emails data leak and two days ago, a new one appeared online. It includes 533 million of Facebook profiles information. Phone numbers, Facebook IDs, dates of birth, locations and emails are available online. When you combine both leaks, someone can make a profile about a specific person to target him. I’m not really worried about that Facebook leak. Why ? Because I left that platform a while ago, but other things make me think about all those leaks.

I wondered if any information about me was available in those files. I easily found online about COMB also known as Compilation Of Many Breaches. Those files were stripped of various information leaving only emails and passwords. After some online digging, I found this file. It includes many directories ordered alphabetically.

They provided a script query.sh that you can use :


 % bash query.sh me@domain.com

It will give you a fast answer if the email is in the files. It doesn’t provide a way to filter by password. You can of course use grep or ack to search things in them. The script is way faster than the unix tools available if you look for an email. After a couple of commands, I found 4 email addresses I used to have with some old passwords. Not surprising with a huge breach with 3.2 billion of emails, chances to be inside those files is pretty high. I was quite happy to not see any of my recent passwords in them. I cleaned up my laptop and removed those files.

If you decide to download that file, be careful its size is 20Gb compressed and 100Gb uncompressed. The file is password protected, but you should find it easily online. Keep in mind, depending on your country, having access to this kind of files could be illegal.

The same way, I wanted to find information about the Facebook data leak. It wasn’t really hard to find these leaked files. I give you a hint, you can find them on ufile.io. 😅 Again, I was safe. Sadly, that’s not the case for many friends who have their phone numbers and other details in that breach.

A friend of mine had to change over 40 passwords. I recommended him to use 2AF whenever it’s possible. A good practice is to avoid using the same password on each site. They should be unique and random and kept in a safe place.

It’s only the beginning, and we’ll probably see more and more leaks like those in the future.

What about you? How do you protect yourself online?

Post 33/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Jason Dent

You want a bat not a cat

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:52:30 +0200

Bat since the beginning of this pandemic don’t have a good reputation. But, still I prefer a bat to a cat. 😉

The bat I’m talking about is the Rust CLI tool I use instead of my old shell companion cat. But I still have that old habit to use the old command instead, so I added that alias :


 # On Debian the bat command is batcat because there is a conflict in some packages
 alias cat='/usr/bin/batcat'

So what is a bat ? A better alternative to the old cat ! Here’s what he looks like :

By default, it adds a decorator, line numbers, syntax highlighting for many languages and other options. I love it

And the same way, you shouldn’t abuse the cat using grep, don’t abuse the bat! And use :


 % grep pattern file

 # instead of 

 % cat file | grep pattern

Post 32/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Media consumption - March 2021

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 23:30:26 +0100

A busy month, many things to do at work and I experienced some tiredness. Maybe because of the curfew and the fact I spend my all day in front of the laptop I’m facing right now. Holidays, with a beach, a great book and a cocktail would be a great way to get some energy back.

But that’s not happening anytime soon. The French president announced tonight that schools will close at the end of this week for four weeks, the curfew will be extended as well as the ten kilometres from home get out pass.

We can feel everyone is mentally challenged by the pandemic and all these restrictions. Variants are coming out every day, or it sounds like this to me. Today, they announced a new one named after the hospital where it was discovered. At that pace, we will soon have more variants than all other known illnesses.

This month, I finished the 36 episodes of Hackable, a security podcast. It’s not really technical, but it’s quite enjoyable even if you are not a technophile. Some episodes and stories about creepers who hacked kids connected toys are disturbing.

I’ve finished Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic, an activist who started the “Otpor” movement against Slobodan Milosevic, that I started last month.

I haven’t crossed out any movie, from my Top 250 list this month. Instead, I watched the first season of Mr Robot, the six episodes of Behind her eyes and started Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Summary

110 podcasts (1717 min)
5 movies (628 min)
three series (842 min)
and NBA including the All-Star game. Still no tracks how much time I spent on this.

Podcasts

English

Darknet Diaries :
- Ep. 86 : The LinkedIn incident (55 min)
- Ep. 87 : Guild of the Grumpy Old Hackers (50 min)
- Ep. 88 : Viktor (45 min)
Hackable :
- Moused Jacked (25 min)
- Up your Game (31 min)
- Face the fax (27 min)
- Malicious Brews (38 min)
- The evil twin (25 min)
- Locked out (25 min)
- Cyber Wash (28 min)
- Virtually vulnerable (28 min)
- Internet of Toddlers (34 min)
- Digital Breadcrumbs (26 min)
- Access granted (25 min)
- High Frequency (29 min)
- Phreaks and Geeks (31 min)
- Remote Control (33 min)
- The Weakest Link (31 min)
- Rat Attack (28 min)
- Flying blind (29 min)
- Searching for Avril (27 min)
- Pwnd (29 min)
- And we’re in (32 min)
- Pet-nology (30 min)
- Cars are computers (27 min)
- Camera Creepers (25 min)
- All Dolled up (31 min)
Privacy, Security & OSINT :
- Ep 183 : The trouble with VPNs (49 min)
- Ep 189 : iOS 14, Usenet, and self-publishing (36 min)
- Ep 197 : Big Sur update and Amazon sidewalk (25 min)
- Ep 201 : New OSINT Online Investigations Techniques (48 min)
- Ep 204 : Radio frequency monitoring (60 min)
- Ep 205 : Fives shows in one (41 min)
- Ep 206 : Website Analytics concerns and solutions (19 min)
- Ep 207 : VPN Routers revisited (42 min)
- Ep 209 : New OSINT Tactics (33 min)
- Ep 210 : Lessons in Online purchases and domain expiration (15 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 48 : PwnSchool, pentester blueprint and wrestling a bear with Philip Wylie(45 min)
- Ep 49 : Going undercover for roses and the PornHub interview with Nicole Beckwith(29 min)
- Ep 50 : Let’s talk methodology with BOsintBlanc (21 min)
- Ep 51 : The Defcon social engineering capture the flag experience with Stefanie LaHart(48 min)

French

France Inter : 60 podcasts (212 min)
Decryptualite : FLOSS news in French - 5 episodes (74 min)
L’Octet Vert : 4 episodes (125 min)

Books

The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (50%)
River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (35%)
Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic (100%)
Prometheus: Up & Running by Brian Brazil (20%)

Movies / Series

Uncut Gems - 2014 (135 min)
Aquaman - 2018 (143 min)
365 days - 2020 (114 min) don’t waste your time on this one.
Behind her eyes - 2021 (258 min)
Mr Robot First season - 2015 (484 min)
The One and Only Ivan - 2020 (95 min)
Wonder Woman - 2017 (141 min)
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier - 2021 (100 min)

Post 31/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Re: From master to main

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:02:47 +0200

I’ve tried to make that change at work… in vain. Apparently, nobody cares and have more urgent things to do. I don’t really know how to change their mind … 🤦‍♂️

At least, on my personal projects, I’ve already made the switch.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2021/03/29/from-master-to-main/

One year already

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 06:03:13 +0100

One year already. On March 16, 2020, we got our first lockdown. Twelve months. Countless deaths, or at least I don’t want to count them. Countless meetings and video calls. This year was rough and nobody was prepared.

Last night, the French prime minister, Castex, announced a new 4 weeks lockdown. During his speech, that I didn’t listen to, he announced shops will close again. We will be confined, but we can go out for

an undefined time
if it’s less than 10 km from your home
if you have a statement for you made by … you 🤦‍♂️

French people are probably the only one to make their own attestation to get out. I don’t get the point of all this. A couple of months ago, the spread of the virus was caused by bars and restaurants, so they closed them. Now it’s still spreading, but who will they blame this time?

The imposed curfew at 6PM is a great way to let people hurry in grocery shops creating potential cases. Colleagues often have to hurry for lunchtime to get some shopping done or to leave before the end of the day.

Schools will stay opened. Still don’t get that choice either. Kids are safe. Or that’s what they say. But kids of 3-5 years playing together won’t spread the virus. Of course not! Do they really think they wash their hands every 15 minutes. 🤦‍♂️

A great thing about all this is I got to blogging again and learnt about journaling. I was lucky to keep my job, and to be able to avoid that damn virus.

Some friends lost a year when they could have started a new habit or tried something even if it’s just to make some bread 😂.

I don’t know how much longer all this will last, but I’ll try to improve my days by reading or learning new things.

What about you? How do you handle that pandemic ?

Post 30/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Edwin Hooper

A sad story ...

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 10:15:09 +0100

Kids and teenagers may be mean and sometimes really nutty.

In this story, a young boy had a girlfriend, they broke up, he got a new one. The new “couple” hacked one of the social network account of his former girlfriend. Then, they started posting pics of her in underwear. Not enough they shared the same pictures to their classmates. What could happen next? A fight between the girls of course. That’s the kind of things happening everywhere, but what’s coming next looks like a bad thriller movie.

A couple of days passed by, the new girlfriend calls her foe to meet and discuss. Naively, she met her and felt into a trap. She got beaten, left unconscious, and that’s when they panicked. They got scared, and threw the body in the river… The girl drowned.

This happened a couple of days ago in the suburb of Paris. Those teenagers screwed up the life of an entire family, and their own too. They both risk a 20 years sentence.

As a parent, I can’t imagine the grief and pain for both families. It’s horrible for the parents who lost their daughter. On the other side, a mother had to report her son to the police knowing his life will never be the same.

Another similar case happened one month ago without any death, but it was close enough. A boy got beaten by 15 guys and left in the coma. He’s 14-15 years old…

As if COVID-19 wasn’t enough, how could we see that kind of behaviour in 2020?

What’s wrong with people? 🤦‍♂️ Weird people and the climate change are reasons why some of my friends don’t want kids.

In some ways, I understand them…

Post 29/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Kenny Orr

Emojis everywhere

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 11:46:37 +0100

Emoji are everywhere. Kids and adults use them daily. Is it a thing that we want to see everywhere ?

A study showed people using emoji have more sex. 🤦‍♂️ I remember relationships when mobile were not around us. You had to call the landline to talk with the person you liked. And, usually, you got parents on the phone and had to be quick to find a pretext for that call. Today, app like Tinder & co. are common things.

Emojis invaded our terminals, and I’m not a big fan of that. I love my terminals to be simple. Colours are mandatory, but not emojis. But I understand people loving and wanting them everywhere. It’s not my case.

Mailoji, a new service described by its author in this blog post, provides email addresses with emoji domain like 🚀.kz. The author bought around 150 emoji domains all based in Kazakhstan. I learned that only 13 TLDs accept registrations of emoji domain names:

.cf, .ga, .gq, .la, .ml, .tk, .st, .fm, .to, .je, .gg, .kz, and .ws.

He spent around $1200 to buy all these domain names, and he didn’t get his money back yet. I’m doubtful about having emojis in my email, and no it’s not because I use mutt 😅.

Emails are painful enough already with people answering above the last email. You don’t know what part is replying to, and it’s on you to find out. Also, I’ve seen 2500 lines emails with just a “thank you” at the top. If you want to thank someone, do it without including everyone and all the past content. 🤦‍♂️

The other thing about email is : HTML. I hate it! How many bad HTML formatted emails we get make me want to vomit. Tracking pixels are a common privacy issues with HTML emails. That’s also a valid point to avoid them like the plague.

And now emojis! I really hope we won’t see a democratization of them in domain names. It’s fun for messaging, and we should keep them for that purpose.

Post 28/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Domingo Alvarez

Fukushima ten years already

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 14:28:49 +0100

Yesterday was the tenth year since an earthquake hit Japan and Fukushima became a second Chernobyl.

Ten years already, time flies …

Seeing the news this morning made me think about Chernobyl. Back then, French politics communication was laughable. They had the brass to say the radioactive cloud stopped to the eastern borders and everybody was safe. Over time, some things don’t change and governments making fun of their population is one of them.

I remember watching some news about Fukushima and how the crisis was well handled. Between the earthquake, the tsunami and the radiation over 15,000 people died. That’s the official numbers, but I guess as usual some of them are hidden. Japan is known for its fish based food and I guess many species were affected, thus many people too.

As usual, time will tell.

Post 27/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Deon van Zyl

Quotes

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:35:54 +0100

Like my /uses page, I just added a quotes page. In my first BuJo, I had a quotes page where I wrote down some quotes found in articles or books I was reading.

Since I don’t share it online, I thought it would be interesting to have a page like this here.

I may add also a now page as I’ve seen on some blogs I follow.

Here are some of them :

Dogs bark at what they can't understand

Heraclitus

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything

Mark Twain

Post 26/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Quotes

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 15:35:54 +0100

Random quotes collected from various sources…

The American Dream is Humanity's nightmare

Albert Dupontel

It's not a lie if you believe it

George Costanza

Revolution is not a one-time event

Audre Lorde

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think

Marcus Aurelius

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders

Albert Camus

Life is divided into three periods, past, present and future. Of these, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past is certain

Seneca

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde

Dogs bark at what they can't understand

Heraclitus

The purpose of life might be life itself

Montaigne

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything

Mark Twain

Ask yourself at every moment, 'is this necessary?'

Marcus Aurelius

The whole future lies in uncertainty : live immediately

Seneca

How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?

Epictetus

Impatience for victory will guarantee defeat

Lord Baylan - Ahsoka

Being poor is not having too little, it's wanting more

Seneca

New BuJo

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 10:00:09 +0100

Here it comes, my second bullet journal. Last August, I started to write things in those small Dingbats notebooks. It helped me to boost my productivity because tasks didn’t get reported and were left forever on some pages. This new BuJo got some readjustment.

My first attempt to bullet journaling got many mistakes. Many pages weren’t full and many pages got wasted. Little tweaks helped me to change that. Here is my weekly spread.

I used to have 4 pages for one week. Now, I managed to store everything on two pages. I removed my monthly tracker and added a small one on things I want to be focused week after week. A top tasks of the week is a part where I put some things I want to do this week.

Globally, I kept these pages :

index
future log
monthly tasks
birthdays
photographers I heard of, and I want to learn more about
movies, tv shows, podcasts and documentaries to track my media consumption.
brain dumps where I write down ideas or random thoughts that need to be investigated

No big changes, but it will save me pages and extend my journal for a couple of weeks.

Post 25/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Media consumption - February 2021

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 23:30:26 +0100

This month, I’ve stumbled upon a great post : The case of the 500-mile email.

On the NBA side, I’ve been watching games every day. Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks, and the Denver Nuggets have been the teams I enjoyed watching this month. Jokic got the best player of the month title and had amazing games.

This month, I discovered two:w new podcasts. A French one created by Tristan Nitot : l’Octet Vert, and OSINT curious. I’ve listened also to a lot of Hackable episodes, two about car thieves are worth your time.

I’ve started to read Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic, an activist who started the “Otpor” movement against Slobodan Milosevic.

I crossed out Incendies, a disturbing movie, from my Top 250 list.

Summary

96 podcasts (1258 min)
6 movies (703 min)
one documentary (77 min)
and NBA games but I didn’t track how many I watched…

Podcasts

English

Darknet Diaries :
- Ep. 84 : Jet-setters (75 min)
- Ep. 85 : Cam the Carder (78 min)
Hackable :
- The Mr Robot Spectular (35 min)
- Keyless entry (25 min)
- Keyless ignition (25 min)
- Dead drops (37 min)
- Who’s watching (30 min)
- False charges (30 min)
Jordan Harbinger Show :
- Ep 467 : Getting people to reveal the Truth with Jack Schaefer - Part One (55 min)
The Social Engineer:
- Ep 139 : Don’t believe this podcast with Michael F. Schein (51 min)
Social Engineering Tips :
- Ep 07 : Malicious USB for vending machines (5 min)
- Ep 08 : Proper pretext footwear (4 min)
- Ep 09 : Tailgating with food curity by scheduling tours (6 min)
- Ep 10 : Bypassing physical security by scheduling tours (6 min)
- Ep 11 : Parking lot passive information gathering (5 min)
- Ep 12 : Bypass elevator restrictions (6 min)
- Ep 13 : Active information gathering with dry ice (5 min)
- Ep 14 : Airport audio for pretexts (6 min)
- Ep 15 : Locker Room Loot (6 min)
The OSINT Curious project :
- Ep 51 : What do you need to become an intermediate OSINTer? How can Shodan contribute to OSINT investigations? (58 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 17 : AMA with Snow and TinkerSec (73 min)
- Ep 24 : OSINT AMA with Noneprivacy and Ding0snax (49 min)
- Ep 25 : Tracy Z. Maleeff aka The InfoSecSherpa (53 min)
- Ep 27 : TrustedSec Social Engineers Ask me anything (56 min)
- Ep 44 : PsyOps and Disinformation Campaigns with Jon Nichols and John Kirbow(26 min)
- Ep 45 : Zlata Pavlova (26 min)
- Ep 46 : Using OSINT to get the win with Ryan Mc Dougall and Curt Klump(16 min)
- Ep 47 : The Covert entry specialist with Devian Ollam (42 min)
Dev Discuss :
- S4E1 : This is how you have effective meetings (42 min)

French

France Inter : 61 podcasts (215 min)
Decryptualite : FLOSS news in French - 5 episodes (73 min)
L’Octet Vert : Episode 0 with Sebastien Brault(39 min)

Books

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas (100%)
The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (50%)
River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (35%)
Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic (20%)

MOVIES / DOCUMENTARIES

Malificient - 2014 (97 min)
Jungle Book - 2016 (106 min)
Shutter Island - 2010 (133 min)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse - 2018 (117 min)
Incendies - 2010 (130 min)
Independence Day : Resurgence - 2016 (120 min)
No Más - 2013 (77 min)

Post 24/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Be safe online

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 00:28:00 +0100

The Internet is fun, but it may be dangerous if you don’t protect yourself there. In the beginning of the ’90s, that decentralized network was exciting, but today it looks scary. I’m not afraid of the web, but how less technical people protect their privacy online?

Online world is dangerous. Ransomwares, bullying, weirdos, state employed hackers, cyber crimes of various kind, etc… Many other threats could be on your path when you are online. How to protect yourself?

First, you home router should be secure by your ISP, but in reality that’s not really the case. Many routers use old versions of Linux containing bugs and don’t provide updates. Your internal ip addresses should be filtered and authorized with MAC addresses only. Everything in the router not needed should be disabled. An extra layer of improvement could be to add a Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi, for those who came out from their caves, are small cheap computers of the size of a credit card. It will cost you a couple of euros depending on the version you get. Now, you can install a small full Debian version now on a Raspberry Pi 4 or use Raspbian, a light version of Debian.

How adding that device will help me to secure my network? You can force you traffic to go through it, monitor all the connections, etc. There are many tutorials online on how to secure your private network using them. Here is one example based on ArchLinux.

Pi-Hole, could also be added to block ads. The project offers :

Network-wide protection
Block in-app advertisements
Improve network performance
Monitor statistics

Everything is based on DNS requests. An app or a website will try to send collected data to theirs servers. The fun part is all those requests get routed locally and never go out. How? You configure your router to use the Pi-Hole ip address as the local DNS server. The Pi has a list of over 100,000 URLs blocked by default. The app or website will get a timeout answer. Quite simple and effective.

Finally, a VPN coupled with Tor could be an extra layer. I recently discovered Mullvad, a VPN provider focused on privacy. What I loved about the service is the fact they don’t ask for any data. They give you a 16 digits login and offers you two options:

Subscription only with PayPal and credit cards.
One time payment using Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, credit card, PayPal, bank wire, Swish, vouchers and cash.

Yeah! You’ve read well, cash! You can send them by mail banknotes for one month or one year. It costs only $5 per month, and it’s cheaper than ProtonVPN or other providers. What I really love about that Swedish company is the lack of data collected. You can even test it for 3 hours for free. It’s long enough to check their service. They offer OpenVPN and WireGuard options, and I prefer the latter one because it’s better performance wise. The mobile app works well, and I haven’t seen any issue using it for the last couple of days. If you use their services or not, let me know what you think about it.

Even if you don’t have anything to hide, a bit of privacy in your home network is not an unneeded luxury.

Post 23/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Jason Dent

Weird phishing scam on Signal

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 11:22:22 +0100

Messaging apps are a trendy topic with Whatsapp recent fiasco. I moved to Signal, more or less 3 years ago. I convinced ~80 persons to migrate from Messenger, Viber or Whatsapp to Signal. That number includes friends, colleagues and family. Some of them where not happy to install a new app and told me I was annoying. Politely, I just replied :“do as you want… You still got my phone number, right?” and I moved away. I can’t force them to install it and I won’t go in an unending debate. Most of them still use both worlds because they can’t avoid proprietary products. The main argument is *“all our contacts use those tools, I can’t let it go”.

On my side, I act as a guru and try

Last couple of weeks, I’ve seen plenty of my friends adopting the tool. Every time a contact joins Signal, you get a notification. It gave me the opportunity to talk again with some friends I lost contact for a while. But a weird thing happened…

Lately, in a new group we created, some contacts received the same message. It brags that they won the latest iPhone 12 offered by Amazon. The message looks like this :

Phone numbers starting with +84 are from Vietnam. Of course, you can block and remove the message. And Signal does a great job by asking if we want to accept those messages or not. When I was on WhatsApp, I witnessed the same phishing campaigns, but how and where did those guys get the numbers?

Does this occur only for French numbers? Did you notice the same kind of phishing in other countries too?

Post 22/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Top 250 update

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 18:12:48 +0100

Working from home, I don’t have to commute anymore. It offers me some free time to read, to watch some movies or NBA games. So far, I haven’t watched a lot of them, but I managed to get some off my list.

IMDB has a top 250 list of movies and I wrote about it last year. Back then, I had 104 movies crossed out from their list. One year later, I’ve only seen 14 more bringing it to 118 titles.

But since the beginning of the year, I managed to remove these 6 :

Shutter Island

Scorsese switched from Robert De Niro to Leonardo DiCaprio. Again DiCaprio is the main character of this psychological thriller. Throughout the movie, I wasn’t sure if there was some paranormal things or if Leo was dead. At some point, it reminded of The Sixth Sense movie with Bruce Willis. If you like thrillers, it’s a must-see.

Princess Mononoke

Like Akira, I postponed this anime for years. When it was released, everyone has its name on theirs lips. To avoid disillusion, I prefer to avoid the movie for a while. Finally, I have to admit that this anime was great! Anime are not my cu. of tea, but I’ve seen three recently 😅

Once Upon a Time in the West

I wrote about this movie last month, and I wasn’t sure if that was one of the spaghetti western I did see when I was younger 😅 The answer is YES … It’s just I forgot it.

Your name

An other anime, the story reminded me of Big. An old movie with Tom Hanks acting as a young boy making a wish to be an adult. And guess what, it happens overnight. The plot here is not exactly the same, but they have common points.

Globally, the movie was fun, and enjoyable.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

A great surprise for someone who doesn’t read comics. I don’t have the background neither to know if that animation movie follow the books. What I know for sure is that I enjoyed the movie. If you like Spider-man, it’s definitely worth your time.

Grave of the Fireflies

It’s the saddest anime, and maybe movie, I have ever seen. Throughout the entire anime, you think a bright ending is coming… I’m still waiting for it.

This movie shocked me! A masterpiece to see but without your kids.

Post 21/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Hooked

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 07:25:12 +0100

We got hooked by big tech companies by using tools like Slack, Teams or Zoom. User interfaces are great and when people move from it, they have the sense of losing something. But what people don’t realize is the lost of their private data.

Through the years, I’ve seen bad security habits. Common ones are the passwords pasted in Slack or on GitHub. Every link, every message typed on Slack is recorded and who knows what is done with it. And that’s the visible part of the iceberg.

How secure is a platform providing those services? What are their policy guidelines? How often do they perform security audits? There are many questions we should think about using freemium.

Freemium is a basic product free of charges, but features have a cost. In the past, we have seen an issue with that kind of company. Avast, the antivirus company, harvested browsing data and used Jumpshot to sell them. The main problem is the fact we use that software.

This month only, 3 billion of emails and passwords leaked from centralized platforms. HaveIbeenPwned has an inventory of more than 10 billion of emails, on earth we are ~7,846,268,000 🤦‍♂️. Many of them come from hacks of worldwide known companies. Ethical opensource alternatives should be the way to go every time if possible.

FOSDEM hosted everything on Matrix this year. Matrix is an open standard protocol for decentralised communication. It offers IRC, XMPP, Slack, Discord and more bridges to connect from your favourite app. A beautiful showcase of 30,000 users connected at the same time using opensource tools.

If volunteers succeeded to gather 30,000 users online, I’m sure your company may achieve the same results. Be sure to be off the hook by avoiding third party companies you can’t trust.

Post 20/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Diana Polekhina

Linus Torvalds and Tux

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 10:21:27 +0100

I discovered this quote from Torvalds 😂

Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.

Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0

XMas and the Ritz

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 19:42:52 +0100

Three months ago, I bought cooking knives because the one we used to have been not really great ones. Xmas was coming, and Ms Hyde surprised me with a four hours cooking class at the Ritz Paris.

The Ritz, the well-known international Hotel offers cooking class in its kitchens. All culinary enthusiasts are welcome to learn new techniques or improve their own. My booking was about meat and fish carvings.

After almost two months, on a cold but sunny Saturday morning, I’m on my way to the Place Vendôme to get some cooking skills. Today, on the menu were :

Fillet of Brill, Dugléré style
Beef fillet with a shallot crust, potato confit and some wine condiment

The Chef, Jerome Legras, explained how to cut vegetables and how to make a simple bouquet garni. Then came the Brill, a flat fish like a sole, and we had to experiment how to cut it to get nice a fillet. For a first experience, I didn’t ruin it 😅. We learnt how to use every part of the fish to make a fumet, a fish aroma, used for the sauce.

Then, we learn how to prepare the beef with techniques I’ve never seen before. For example, in a saucepan, put some olive oil and use garlic on a fork to flavour it. Back to the beef, we cut part of it, tied it up, and we were ready to go.

What surprised us, the students, was the amount of butter used. 😱 For both dishes, we used probably over 750 grams. The Chef made some potatoes with thyme, parsley, butter and olive oil. Both combined it may look like a bad idea, but butter burns fast and the olive oil helps to avoid that. It was de - li - cious.

Usually, it’s a three hours course with an extra hour to savour what you have cooked. COVID-19 being still around, we weren’t able to stay there to enjoy our own made menu. Everything was well packed, we got the two recipes printed for us, and we got to keep the Ritz apron we got when we arrived.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the all experience was great, and I will be happy to do it again in the future. If you are lucky to get the same kind of gift and if you like cooking, I’m pretty sure you will love it.

Here are some snapshots…

Post 19/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

3 billion of emails leaked

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 11:25:18 +0100

Privacy has been corrupted once again. Three billions passwords and email addresses have been stolen and are in the hands of hackers. Huge databases have been hacked, and we don’t exactly know which one right now (probably Outlook, Hotmail and Gmail but maybe more). I don’t use those services, so I should be alright but …

Yesterday, I got an email from Kubii, an online shop where you can buy Raspberries, saying they had a leak too. Apparently, only email and passwords have been leaked and credit cards have not been hacked as they said in the email. That was a part of a big hack, Cit0day, where 220 millions passwords and emails got lost on the web.

Cit0day targeted plenty of French and Canadian websites including Kubii (the list of websites is available at the end of this post). Going through that list only Kubii impacted me so once again I should be safe, but I checked HaveIBeenPwned to be sure.

HaveIBeenPwned is a service made by Troy Hunt, an Australian security researcher, to check if your email has been in a data breach. The website started in 2013, and he adds data breaches he finds online. Today, it represents 505 pwned websites and 10,594,333,080 pwned accounts. My email was safe … Until now.

Online, even if the same email is used on various websites, I apply different passwords on each one of them. I generate my password with the pwgen utility.
Here is an example:


 % pwgen -sy -N1 64
 VBk<9-rWN4H9Be$9kM0H;zQBfeDO/Jyhuax@yTS7{bt@hP2d+RyD4f5Z8._?L*4q

Pass-Tomb is a small CLI tool to store your passwords. Since I create a unique one for each website, the list is now quite huge. I’ve read some people even create one email per website, but that’s a lot of hassle to be safe, but I do agree it could help you to reduce security issues.

The pandemic brought many new scams online, and we should be careful with our passwords and take security seriously. If you had an account on one of the website below, you should update your password as soon as possible and if possible use a 2FA.

Here are the French and Canadian websites concerned about the Cit0day hack.

FRANCE


 analytics.ladmedia.fr
 Arcademy.fr
 Cconcertsdevollore.fr
 Faux-billet-avion.fr
 Icgauth-bhapa.fr
 Minefield.fr
 Sunvaluation.com.fr
 accessoires-camping-car.fr
 achetezenautunois.fr
 acupuncture-valence.fr
 afar.asso.fr
 affep.fr
 agencedelaplage.fr
 agglo-montbeliard.fr
 agil.fr
 aj-atelierdescuivres.fr
 akifkite.fr
 algames.fr
 algerie.franchises.fr
 amap.cirad.fr
 ambiance-et-deco.fr
 amelioration-continue.fr
 anglais-gratuit.fr
 animalcie.fr
 annonces-corse.fr
 annuaire.articite.fr
 annuaire.fr
 apitrio.fr
 aqua.fr
 aravistrail.fr
 arcademy.fr
 archives-de-france.fr
 archives-francaises.fr
 asian-autoparts.fr
 asseoirmonimage.fr
 asso-minerve.fr
 atelier-fleurs.fr
 atelier-orphee.fr
 athlenet.fr
 ati.fr
 atouthasardshop.fr
 autosportwilly.fr
 backtovinyls.fr
 balladain.fr
 barjouvilleauto.fr
 basket.classport.fr
 bayard-homme.fr
 bdd.worldofcars-forum.fr
 beaute-alpine.fr
 belimmo.fr
 bellevue-carrelages.fr
 bemagie.fr
 bemysound.fr
 bgebalise.fr
 biblionanteuil.fr
 bidaud.fr
 bijoux-direct.fr
 bijouxamethyste.fr
 billetterie.exclusivedrive.fr
 bingooo.fr
 bio-forme.fr
 biocbio.fr
 bioetbienetre.fr
 birdsound.fr
 blackcastle.fr
 bluegarden.fr
 boisdamont.fr
 boisetben.fr
 boisset.fr
 bol-d-air.fr
 bompasinfoscommerces.fr
 bondyhabitat.fr
 bouchard-aine.fr
 bour-immobilier.fr
 bourbince.fr
 boutique-bassin.fr
 brelect.fr
 busiloe.fr
 bustram.irigo.fr
 campuscci.fr
 canada.franchises.fr
 capeb-alpes-maritimes.fr
 capeb-auvergnerhonealpes.fr
 capeb.fr
 caphorniersfrancais.fr
 carbon-blanc.fr
 cepadep.fr
 cerahtec.invalides.fr
 cfa-cpse-canappeville.fr
 charme-dependances.fr
 charmingcharms.fr
 chateaugontier.fr
 chezbaptiste.fr
 chimphys.fr
 chirolistic.fr
 chrisetcompagnie.fr
 christophepicot.fr
 ciat.fr
 citymotoclub.fr
 clef.fr
 cogest.fr
 collection-appareils.fr
 comicsblog.fr
 communethire.fr
 comparatif-argent-web.user.fr
 components.alldatasheet.fr
 conceptxformation.fr
 concertsdevollore.fr
 confort-entreprise.fr
 connectic.fr
 connexion-y.fr
 contact.audivox.fr
 convertibledefrance.fr
 convoi-exceptionnel.fr
 cotrolia.fr
 cowblog.fr
 cryostar-recrute.fr
 danse-sur-loire.fr
 degas.fr
 digitalworld.fr
 diplos.citedesmetiers.fr
 divisionxiii.fr
 djpro-france.fr
 dkwebsarl.fr
 dlrpexpress.fr
 doga.fr
 doledujura.fr
 dolspizza.fr
 domeoo.fr
 donamaria.fr
 dpp.fr
 dr-barcelonne-arnaud.chirurgiens-dentistes.fr
 drivup.fr
 dynabuy.fr
 easy-sondage.fr
 easyclix.fr
 ebeniste-drome-ardeche.fr
 ecocar-s.fr
 ecole-de-chiot.fr
 ecolendirect.fr
 edase.fr
 edimeta.fr
 editions-chariot-dor.fr
 editions-deliees.fr
 editions-du-college.fr
 editions-oxus.fr
 editions-universelles.fr
 editions.cmbv.fr
 editorial-adulte.gtx.fr
 efeo.fr
 ekoi.fr
 electricians.fr.webcompany.fr
 electriciens.fr
 encreservices.fr
 epafvacances.fr
 epe.fr
 epicetoorecettes.fr
 equalizer.fr
 esenceo.fr
 esipro.fr
 esistoire.fr
 esistore.fr
 esst-inrs.fr
 etsad.fr
 etsduveau.fr
 expert-compta.fr
 exposants.salon-du-bourget.fr
 fabetrob.aeitpe.fr
 fantasyfoot.fr
 faux-billet-avion.fr
 fdv.univ-lyon.fr
 feider.fr
 ffbt.asso.fr
 ffnatation-recherche-optimisation.fr
 films.skamlet.fr
 flaner-en-provence.fr
 flipjuke.fr
 fnapem.fr
 fncta.fr
 fontromeu.peyrot-immo.fr
 footnet.fr
 formationcontinue.agroparistech.fr
 formmail.fr
 fort-boyard.fr
 forum-emploi-international.fr
 forumfantic.fr
 france-artisanat.fr
 france-image.fr
 france-luxury.fr
 franceapprentissage.fr
 franceholidayrentals.fr
 francestagepermis.fr
 franchises.fr
 frieseautoverzekering.fr
 gailhou-durdos.fr
 galantecasa.fr
 gardena-house.fr
 gardendiscount.fr
 gc.fr
 good-immo.fr
 gpd.basf-agro.fr
 groupefih.fr
 groupeguillin.fr
 gto-stargate.gtx.fr
 gtturborhone-alpes.fr
 guide-hebergeur.fr
 gy.fr
 handianim.fr
 helpmedical.fr
 hilden.com.fr
 horadio.fr
 houdard.fr
 ifsi.ch-larochelle.fr
 immogenius.fr
 info-medecin.fr
 innovaprint.fr
 intellego.fr
 interne.ciclic.fr
 jardinerie-lardon.fr
 jasdesclans.fr
 jingles.fr
 keeway.fr
 ktmaddict.fr
 kubii.fr
 l-impertinent.fr
 laboratoirebride.fr
 laboutiqueduplafondtendu.fr
 lacrouteetbuffet.fr
 lamaisondupastis.fr
 lapieceautomobile.fr
 larevuedupraticien.fr
 laurence-barruel.fr
 lba-paris.fr
 lbc-clan.fr
 le-monde-en-enigmes.fr
 le-porte-velo.fr
 lebonmariage.fr
 leforumdubowling.fr
 leggys.racv.fr
 leguidedumilitaire.fr
 lehautdupanier.fr
 lemaringouin.fr
 lemondeinformatique.fr
 lemoniteurdespharmacies.fr
 les-annees-.fr
 les-maisons-angelique.fr
 les-milles.fr
 lesfichiersdesprofs.fr
 lesfilmsdici.fr
 lesfruitsfrais.fr
 lesgourmets.fr
 leslegumesfrais.fr
 levauban-cherbourg.fr
 librairie-vrin.fr
 lieuxdedrague.fr
 location-etudiant.fr
 luniverschasseetpeche.fr
 lycee-jeanmoulin.fr
 m.horaires-cinemas.fr
 m.nogentbc.fr
 magasin-de-producteurs.fr
 magicalement.fr
 mairie.asso.fr
 maison-galhaud.fr
 manouvellemutuelle.fr
 massageaparis.fr
 master-eco.fr
 matrace.fr
 medecine-douce-alternative.fr
 media.ecoledesloisirs.fr
 mee-chartres.fr
 mes-jeux-gratuits.fr
 metal-box.fr
 miljeep.fr
 montournais.fr
 motoexpert.fr
 motott.fr
 mundusbellicus.fr
 music-selection.fr
 mxcircuit.fr
 mycor.nancy.inra.fr
 myjob.fr
 mypack.fr
 nanaki.fr
 natura-clairvi.fr
 natureetharmonie.fr
 nautic-occasions.fr
 neocord.fr
 niveau-oaci.fr
 nounou-paris.fr
 nutriforyou.fr
 objectifsur.fr
 okprix.fr
 old.classic-days.fr
 old.film-documentaire.fr
 onfaikoi.fr
 optec-developpement.fr
 orchestre-musica.fr
 outils.easycup.fr
 paduweb.fr
 parisunitedk.fr
 particuliers.annoncez-vous.fr
 patrickkientz.fr
 payetriviere.fr
 peps-reussite.fr
 peyrot-immo.fr
 phastest.fr
 photoplongee.fr
 phovoir.fr
 php-nw-exia.gtx.fr
 phytotech.fr
 pictanovo.fr
 pierresdeparis.fr
 planeteparis.fr
 pneu-shop.fr
 pointerclub.fr
 potemkine.fr
 poulette.fr
 premo.fr
 pressloft.fr
 prod.alaxione.fr
 proliveformation.fr
 pronostics-gratuits-turf.fr
 pronostics.belascain.fr
 protek.fr
 provalve.fr
 pslweek.fr
 quartiers-en-scene.fr
 radioponton.fr
 rapideyewear.fr
 redaction-juridique.fr
 remocon.fr
 residence-secondaire.fr
 resultats.avironfrance.fr
 resultats.ffaviron.fr
 rlc-diffusion.fr
 rossignol.fr
 roumet-hp.fr
 rpcnet.fr
 rpg-maker.fr
 rueduconservatoire.fr
 rungeard-gasteclou.notaires.fr
 runningmag.fr
 sadec.fr
 sadec.fr
 saintlouisavocats.fr
 saintmaxmusic.fr
 salgar.fr
 salmson.fr
 santis.fr
 sarf.fr
 scanzone.fr
 scd.univ-fcomte.fr
 screening.iarc.fr
 sdee-lozere.fr
 sdef.fr
 secure.ensan.fr
 selarl-rossato-lefebvre-moreau.chirurgiens-dentistes.fr
 semcoda.fr
 serie-tv.les-annees-.fr
 shop.altissimo.fr
 sictombbi.fr
 simtrade.fr
 ski.fr
 skin.freehug.kr
 slhs.univ-fcomte.fr
 sodepar.fr
 sonodis.fr
 soupcon.fr
 spadaccini.fr
 spm-tourisme.fr
 squadra.fr
 stillcraft.fr
 supandmove.fr
 supball.fr
 support.storex.fr
 tam-surplus.fr
 tapages.fr
 tardyagencement.fr
 taxiproxi.fr
 telecablesat.fr
 telecom-st-etienne.fr
 telecommandes.fr
 test.secourisme-udsp.fr
 ticketpool.fr
 toulouse.festivaldujeu.fr
 trekking.fr
 trending.fr
 troyleedesignsbike.fr
 ttc.folomi.fr
 turf-paris.fr
 turfselect.fr
 turfselect.fr
 uachtung.fr
 universelles.fr
 universite-ouverte.univ-fcomte.fr
 urobichat.fr
 vaison-ventoux.fr
 vannerie-pack.fr
 vapcook.fr
 vdbaudio.fr
 ve.free-travels.ru
 velostore.fr
 vente-poppers.fr
 ventoux-bikes.fr
 veran-vents.fr
 victorylane.fr
 videotel.fr
 vigier.fr
 ville-mornant.fr
 voiture-pas-chere.fr
 vtt-tonic.creaben.fr
 vttour.fr
 vulcanoid.fr
 watertech.fr
 web-greniers.fr
 webnature.fr
 webpedigrees.fr
 webshop.aksint.frl
 welljob.fr
 windsurf-sessions.eg.fr
 wshark-graphic.fr
 www.divisionxiii.fr
 www.osinet.fr
 www.univ-ag.fr
 xn--teinture-mre-db.fr
 yaqui.fr
 yksi-med.fr

Canada


 hnlprovincials.ca
 cnaahl.ca
 confederationcup.ca
 hsfalcons.ca
 djhl.ca
 funvantage.ca
 hickmantruckcentre.ca
 powerone.ca
 cbminorhockey.ca
 escortbiz.ca
 everydayrecipes.ca
 incomeresearch.ca
 savvyshopper.smartcanucks.ca
 curlingrink.ca
 imersa.ca
 remax-realtyspecialists-stjohns.ca
 remax-united-mountpearl.ca
 gfobcfr.ca
 kmstudio.ca
 djmc.rynahockey.ca
 www.gtcocalcomp.ca
 realontario.ca
 bvraringette.ca
 bvraringette.ca
 cb.ca esecretsrevealed.ca
 astro.qc.ca
 wcrc.ca
 soulshine.ca
 dspolicyfind.ca
 kickforacure.ca
 dev.starfm.ca
 fire-academy.ca
 clearwateremployment.ca
 jobsecps.ca
 cklq.mb.ca
 houseofhair.ca
 crc.ca
 redbookgolf.ca
 soulshine.ca
 linxtech.ca
 ringetteu.ca
 cm.ca
 escortwebsitedesign.ca
 agent.ca
 swra.ca
 cravingforagame.ca
 futurenet.qc.ca
 staconvention.ca
 cbcpensioners.ca
 slc.qc.ca
 gamesfree.ca
 rfg.gibsongroup.ca
 w.avisdedeces.ca
 inkpot.ca
 m.starfm.ca
 escapevelocitybook.ca
 chrisd.ca
 medweight.ca
 wchshockey.ca
 vision.rcinet.ca
 pure.ca
 houseofhair.ca
 remax-plus-stjohns.ca
 streetconnections.clickonce.ca
 remax-plus-stjohns.ca
 escolo.ca
 escapeintotheclouds.ca
 masthead.ca
 mikesflooring.ca
 Prostatitiscanada.ca
 jobsecps.ca
 atlaspizza.ca
 titanchair.ca
 remaxavalon.ca
 stjameselmira.ca
 motostation.ca
 minitraiteur.ca
 servicebasket.ca
 crazylisting.ca
 helpmefindahome.ca
 escapepuzzles.ca
 jobboard.ca
 civicjobs.ca
 escriptionasp.ca
 ww.avisdedeces.ca
 milleniummicro.ca
 systamex.ca
 books.dsu.ca
 qwanoes.ca
 canadianbusinessdirectory.ca
 escarpmentgallery.ca
 vision.uqac.ca
 woodsidebowlarama.ca
 savvyshopper.smartcanucks.ca
 osas.ca
 dspolicyfind.ca
 mpa.mb.ca
 cikmedia.ca
 emond.ca
 geoottawa.ca
 channelelectronics.ca
 canaldays.ca
 mypita.ourconference.ca
 yellowheadcs.ca
 mapletour.ca
 funnybusiness.ca
 kmstudio.ca
 erindaleacademy.ca
 erwaward.ca
 vbhomes.ca
 givi.ca
 baseball.bc.ca
 concordcollege.ca
 jeff-fraser.ca
 theherder.ca
 keithgordon.ca
 nshl.ca
 paradiseminorhockey.ca
 southernshoreminorhockey.ca
 stjohnsjuniorhockeyleague.ca
 highlife.dushi.ca
 prescottapex.ca
 monctonianchallenge.ca
 designscommunications.ca
 nlaaahl.ca
 www.remax-realtyspecialists-stjohns.ca
 canadianbusinessdirectory.ca
 swirlscupcakes.ca
 m.calendrier.espacepourlavie.ca
 barebackvideos.ca
 ir.baystreet.ca
 retrouvailles.ca
 promotionalproductsglobalnetwork.ca
 royalperfumery.ca
 riverwoodinn.ca
 m.valleyevents.ca
 zr.ca
 sportsgroup.ca
 resumecourier.ca
 nbgs.ca
 interworld.ca
 es.unb.ca
 mastheadonline.ca
 portcolborne.ca
 escape-quest.ca
 cyberquetes.ca
 retrouvailles.ca
 posisoft.ca
 flyariana.ca
 biographi.ca
 royrouleau.ca
 qcountryfm.ca
 tofun.ca
 canadianrallyo.ca
 opaonline.ca
 mapleleafstickets.ca
 avisdedeces.ca
 eliteathletes.ca
 galsonlabs.ca
 .ca
 nissanparts.ca
 riepertsalt.ca
 toutalouer.ca
 w.avisdedeces.ca
 cti-sandbox.ca
 mybarracuda.ca
 lddhs.ca
 lencrier.ca
 grow.ca
 mb.ca
 gac.ca
 truenorthloghomes.ca
 yellowsheet.ca
 monsterauto.ca
 monsterauto.ca
 forum.vmedia.ca
 plurproductions.ca
 jm.ca
 lounge.ca
 muslimassociationofcalgary.ca
 trentu.ca
 lestouilleurs.ca
 networkvip.ca

Post 18/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Mika Baumeister

Make your own decision

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 15:06:36 +0100

Social networks are bad. Addiction, stress, fatigue and even ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are troubles social media may cause. Those tech giants developed products to keep you, how long as they can, on their apps using various technologies.

Algorithms and profiling are their evil techniques. You are not in position to choose what you want to read or watch. Everything is about maximising content consumption tailored to fit your habits with the hope to provide them revenue. But there is a good news, and definitely an easy solution.

For real, just quit those centralized platforms. How to quit them? Easily, I wrote a post on how to disconnect where you’ll find links, often well hidden, to remove your account. People left Facebook and other social media, and honestly I don’t miss them at all.

Ethical alternatives exist, and the most common software like Pixelfed (Instagram clone) or Mastodon (Twitter clone) at least are not using some shady algorithm suggesting profiles you don’t care about. You are in a control of your choices, and it’s up to you to decide who you will follow, not a fucking AI.

Lastly, RSS is back in the spotlight. RSS also known as Real Simple Syndication is a way to subscribe to any website with a single feed and get notified with any new content published. Personally, I use tridactyl and Livemarks, a Firefox add-on, to read the content I chose.

RSS, podcasts and other media I consume is always because I’ve read about it or got a friend recommendation, not because it’s the latest trend on Twitter or Facebook.

And what about you?

Post 17/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Jesse Bowser

Suck Less, Practice!

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:47:32 +0100

Austin Kleon inspired me with articles he wrote on his website about keeping a logbook, doing some newspaper blackout or the latest one about sucking less at things.

The goal is to practice and suck less !

Austin provides a pdf (that’s a DropBox link… Bad, bad, bad!) as a 28 days challenge for this entire month and I already track some habits on the same scale. Food, coffee, sleeping, blogging or other things are all logged in my bullet journal. But, this one may be great tracker for specific weekly goals.

You could use this setup to track anything. On my side, it will be for this week and probably the next one to read at least 30 minutes every day and do some rust coding.

Here is how it looks like in my bujo, starting from Monday 1st to Sunday 7th February.

That’s all for today. I have some book to read and write some line of codes before bed.

Post 16/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Bezos left

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 23:48:20 +0100

Just saw random posts about Jeff Bezos and the fact that he’s leaving Amazon as CEO.

After so many years, he probably thought :

I ripped apart enough small companies, the COVID-19 pandemic made me millions... I can rest a bit"

The Empire will probably survive without its Master since a majority of companies and people use their products. 🤦‍♂️

Re: The Alastair method

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 22:23:25 +0100

I do use the Alastair method but not on the weekly log.

Instead, I set up two pages for my future log, that way I have a more concise view of my year and have more space to add them.

I could maybe test it for tasks that must be done in the week at specific dates. But usually, I add the tasks directly in the day box when I’m supposed to finish it.

I need to think about that …

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2021/02/01/the-alastair-method/

Media consumption - January 2021

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 04:30:26 +0100

This month, I realized the NBA got me.
In 2021, the season was postponed with the pandemic. Due to the lockdown/curfew, I took the play-offs NBA League pass and forgot about it until … December 2020 where I got billed over $200 for the all season pass. I was a bit pissed but finally kept it 🤦‍♂️

Of course, I watched way more games, condensed games, full games, highlights and all that in background without sounds except for big games.

Like every month, I listened to a lot of podcasts. I started to read River out of Eden : A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins, and I tried to cross out some movies from my Top 250 list.

Summary

73 podcasts (972 min)
5 movies (634 min)
5 episodes of series (231 min)
and NBA games but I didn’t track how many I watched…

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries :
- Ep. 83 : NSA Cryptologists (85 min)
France Inter : 44 podcasts (181 min)
Privacy, Security & OSINT :
- Ep. 189 : iOS14, Usenet, and Self-Publishing (36 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 12 : Value of flexibility during vshing with Keith Cox (47 min)
- Ep 16 : Top 5 things not seen on Hunted with Julie Clegg (26 min)
- Ep 20 : Tips and Tricks from OSInt techniques with Ritu Gill (11 min)
- Ep 26 : One woman’s domination in a male dominated field with Krittika Lalwamey (23 min)
- Ep 29 : SE Engineers from Rapid7 (58 min)
- Ep 30 : Brent White and Tim Robertn (52 min)
- Ep 31 : His origins and a Phish with Joe Gray (23 min)
- Ep 32 : Tropical spy: stories and tricks from SE with Marina Ciavatta (43 min)
- Ep 33 : The don’t get arrested challenge with MangoPDF (36 min)
- Ep 35 : Buying Selling body parts on the DarkWeb with Joshua Richards(23 min)
- Ep 38 : The experience catch-22 with Tigran Terpandjan (17 min)
- Ep 39 : The Cat and the Cake (20 min)
- Ep 40 : The Unredaction expert by Hakeem Thomas (14 min)
- Ep 41 : Pwing the Check Casher with Leon Jonhson and Shane Young(33 min)
- Ep 42 : Social Rideshare experience and Hacking your own brain by Edward Miro(30 min)
- Ep 43 : OSINT Takedown of West Papua Disinformation with Benjamin Strick(21 min)
Dev Discuss :
- S2E3 : The History of IRC and the Evolution of Community Tools(43 min)
Decryptualite :
- 10 podcasts about FLOSS news in French (150 min)

Books

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas (80%)
Trailing stops by Jim Kane(100%)
The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (50%)
River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins (15%)

MOVIES / SERIES

Unknown (113 min)
Lupin first season - 5 episodes (231 min)
Spiderman : Homecoming (133 min)
Princess Mononoke (134 min)
Once Upon A Time In The West (165 min)
Grave ofthe Fireflies (89 min)

Post 15/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Privacy and stocks

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 06:35:12 +0100

In the last couple of days, a GME trend was and is still everywhere on the web. Hedge funds opened a short position on the GameStop company. A short selling trade is a strategy that speculates on the decline in a stock.

It works this way :

A trader borrows say 100 stocks at a $100 price.
Then he sells them to buyers thinking the price will continue to go down.
Now, he owes 100 stocks to the broker
He buys back at a lower price say 75 dollars
He returns borrowed shares, and he made a $25 profit on each one

The difference is that you can possibly lose way more shorting a stock. If you buy a stock for $20, and it goes to 0 you lost 20 bucks. But with short selling, your maximum loss is theoretically limitless. If the price goes in the other direction and hits $500, you’re going to lose 480.

Sometimes short sellers can be squeezed. If enough people buy the stock instead of selling them, the sellers have to cover their position to avoid a big loss. That’s exactly what happened on Reddit…

And more specifically in r/WallStreetBets where some guys realized that a huge amount of GameStop shares were being shorted. That community has over 2 million of users, and somehow they convinced people to buy the stock. One of them, u/dumbledoreRothIRA, claimed to have won nearly $350,000. Basically, they found a way to beat Wall Street guys at their own game.

The price went from ~$40 to a peak of over 400 at its peak. I don’t know if the hedge fund bought back yet and took a big lost but that’s a huge middle finger to Wall Street. 🖕

Two news I remarked this morning browsing Hacker News are :

Google deletes nearly 100k Negative reviews of RobinHood app
Facebook shut popular stock trading group amid GameStop frenzy

RobinHood, a famous trading app, announced yesterday that they would block purchases of GME stock made popular by the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. Everyone made a one-star review to bring down its ranking on Google PlayStore. It had 4.7 ranking and went to only one. Users added a lot of angry comments about their decision. Even AOC tweeted it :

This is unacceptable.

We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.

As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I’d support a hearing if necessary.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The outcome will not be great for RobinHood.

That brings an other subject on the table : “digital democracy”.

Being on a platform like, RobinHood, Facebook or any centralized network, will expose you to data tracking, eventually censorship and other restrictions. That’s already the case with YouTube channels being closed for no real reason just because they decided your content is not valuable for THEM. Facebook closes groups and track everything they can, RobinHood forbids to use the app the way it was supposed to… But it is for your own good. All those companies products should be avoided as often as possible.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself each time you want to join a new community/platform :

How secure is it ?
Can I own my data ?
Is it a decentralized network ?
What information do I have to provide ?
Do I really need this ?

If you can’t find right answers to those questions, maybe you are better off those platforms, and you may consider having your own domain name and/or your own space.

Post 14/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Sigmund

Kobe, one year already ...

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 07:00:00 +0100

One year already since one of the greatest basket-ball passed away with his daughter, Gianna in a helicopter crash with friends of the family and the pilot : John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Alyssa Altobelli, Christina Mauser, Sarah Chester, Payton Chester, and Ara Zobayan.

I slept only 4 hours that day. The French cable TV broadcasted his last game where he scored 60 points with a victory and a lot of emotions at the end. I spent the rest of the night browsing the web reading articles and fan tributes to one of the best Lakers’ player of all-time who played for the same team for 20 years (1996-2016).

To be clear, I’ve never been a Kobe fan, the same way I wasn’t a fan of Michael Jordan. I always preferred smaller players like John Starks, Kenny Anderson, Tim Hardaway, Allen Iverson or Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.

Back then, I lost my appetite for NBA games after the sixth Bulls championship and Jordan retirement. Michael Jordan changed everything about the NBA and the basket-ball industry. Bryant, as a young wolf, just followed what MJ created in the first place.

Today, the NBA wouldn’t be the same if Jordan never existed. Kobe brought a lot to the game, but you just can’t compare them.

Combined they won 11 titles, 6 for Jordan and 5 for Bryant. Both shared the same passion for the game and had the same rage to be the best at any price even if they had to be rough with teammates sometimes.

Jordan was an idol to Kobe who copied his moves to the perfection. He even called him some nights to get advice on how to train his daughter, GiGi who had the same Mamba mentality:

“Mamba mentality is all about focusing on the process and trusting in the hard work when it matters most,”

“It’s the ultimate mantra for the competitive spirit. It started just as a hashtag that came to me one day, and it’s grown into something athletes — and even non-athletes — embrace as a mindset.”

Kobe Bryant

I haven’t watched the NBA for almost ten years before seeing a small magician in 2014, named Stephen Curry, who gave me the desire to watch games again. Why then ? Because Curry is the same type of players as the ones quoted just above. Not a big guy like Lebron whose only luck was his DNA. Yeah, he can shoot, pass the ball, takes rebounds … of course but there is no grace like Mike, Kobe or Steph.
What smaller players like Curry do is way more exciting to watch. Kobe was just under the average height in the league, but that man was a tough competitor who train like a fanatic.

Even if I wasn’t Kobe’s number 1 fan, you must give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. That man was way above basket-ball and his death affected everyone. Not only basket-ball players but people who never touched a ball of their life. You can ask anyone in the street about who is Bryant, and you’ll probably get the right answer.

The same way that everyone knows who is Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson, everybody knows who was Kobe Bryant, and that’s what make him a superstar but first and foremost a father who loved his daughters.

Post 13/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Re: alt vs figcaption

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:04:44 +0100

I stumbled on the same article and discovered how the alt description was used. Usually, I add some text but not a descriptive one like provided in that post. Should I go back and fix my alt texts too ? 😅

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2021/01/26/alt-vs-figcaption/

Affiliate links and Ethical Design

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:41:14 +0100

Podcasts, I listen to them a lot. On a recent episode of the Jordan Harbinger show, Srdja Popovic was the guest. He’s a Serbian political activist, who led the student movement Otpor against the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and who wrote the book Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World. Could that name be any longer? 😅

Since my origins are from the ex-Yugoslavia, and Serbia to be more precise, Mr Popovic’s arguments made me wanting wanted to buy his book. To support the show, I wanted to use their affiliate link to bring them some revenue. But the link directly opened a French Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.fr/dp/0812995309?geniuslink=true

I was quite disappointed by this.

The last part of the URL, geniuslink=true made me check online what it was exactly. I found out that Geniuslink is a company helping you to:

Capture lost income with smarter links.

When you link to your book using Geniuslink, we help make sure it takes each visitor to the place where they are most likely to make a purchase.

Basically, they check your IP address and redirects you to the nearest Amazon website because it’s probably the most likely store I would love to use 😡 They offer various packages to authors, content creators and affiliates to automate and do things in a unique interface. Things probably non-tech guys are looking for to set up things quicker.

Browsing their website, I was looking for privacy information and found this part about GDPR :

For clicks on geni.us links: We store no personally identifiable information, including IP addresses.

For Geniuslink website visits: We ask for consent from EU visitors before serving non-essential cookies used in marketing.

And, of course, a new lie of that kind of companies. A click on the link never asked about my consent. So, I guess my IP and other things have been recorded. 🖕

Providing content online is time-consuming. Some are doing it for fun, some by passion and other to make a revenue from it, and it’s totally understandable. But still, couldn’t people in tech have a moral code or, for example use Aral’s Ethical Design, when they start a new project instead of that data tracking collection? We really should stop feeding beasts like Amazon, Microsoft and all other non-ethical companies. Does those CEO need billions to have a great life? Shouldn’t they try to help people instead of making more revenues due to the pandemic ?

Does anyone know a project or a company with some ethics providing the same kind of features to help small companies to survive during this pandemic?

Let me know using a webmention, an email or on Mastodon.

Post 12/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Tamanna Rumee

WFH and rituals

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 11:11:08 +0100

In a flash, almost one year of remote work. I’ve been only 6-7 times to the office since last spring thanks to the global pandemic. I don’t really miss my colleagues, not that I don’t appreciate them 😅 but it’s just I got comfortable being at home. Speaking of them, in our team at least, we don’t feel the need to be together since we chat over Slack all day. We even leave a “chat” channel open all day, so we can just discuss everything like you would in an office. It’s nice because it reminds us moments when we were all in the same room. Of course, I shut it down when focus is needed. It’s not the same as a real life experience, but it’s better than nothing.

I try to keep a daily ritual :

Wake up early between 5-6
Coffee
Updating my BuJo
Writing/doodling to my logbook
Reading or doing some work on private or professional projects
Shower
Getting my kid to the school
Stand-up followed by meetings meetings meetings 😅
Jogging and doing some exercises
Shower
Work until 5-6 PM

Having a kid changed everything, I switched from being a night owl to a bed early person. Waking up early has never been a thing I used to do but these moments alone in the morning feel better than the evening ones. At least, it just works for me. Still, from time to time an old habit resurface and I find myself up late reading some blogs or watching something on the TV.

Rituals are mandatory for me to keep my mental health and still be focused on tasks I have to do. Since last August, bullet journaling helped me to finish things I have on my to-do list. It’s a nice way to see what you have done and what you have left to do. Taskwarrior was my CLI tool for everything around tasks, and slowly, but surely, I went back to notebook and pens. Writing and sketching offer you more ways to organize your thoughts than any tool.

Working from home is not easy especially if you don’t have enough space at home or if you’re with your kids all day. During the first full lockdown, keeping concentration with a kid was a real challenge, and without a strong discipline and working routine it would have been impossible for us. 😅

All these habits helped me to continue to be productive, and today I enjoy being at home. The same sentiment is shared by many colleagues hating it at first and now not seeing themselves going back to the office the way we used too.

But before all else, we are just f*cking lucky to have a job during this difficult era.

Day 11/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !

Photo credit : Nelly Antoniadou

Spaghetti Western

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 09:11:07 +0100

Last night, I wanted to watch something on the TV and I switched on Netflix and after 3-4 minutes of browsing I shut it down. Instead, I checked my Top 250 IMDB movies list to see if I couldn’t cross out a title on this catalogue.

Once Upon a Time in the West, a 1968 movie, wasn’t marked as seen. When I wrote that post, if I wasn’t sure if I ever watched a movie or not, I preferred to left it uncrossed.

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italian Western or Macaroni Western, is a kind of movie that emerged in the mid-1960s mainly with Sergio Leone. Movies were shot with low budgets in southern Italy or even Spain.

As a kid I loved western movies, one I watched a lot was the Magnificent Seven, not a spaghetti one but with a first class casting:

Yul Brynner
Eli Wallach
Steve McQueen
Charles Bronson
Robert Vaugh
James Coburn

Anyway, last night I decided to watch Once Upon a Time in the West, 2 hours 40 minutes movie. The soundtrack was made by Ennio Morricone, who left us last year, and known for more than 400 scores for movies and cinema. The music is excellent and reminded me of one of my all-time favourite movie with almost the same title and made also by Mr Morricone : Once Upon a Time in America.

Finally, I’ve seen that movie when I was younger but just couldn’t remember it. Claudia Cardinale is magnificent, Jason Robards is excellent as Cheyenne, a bandit looking for redemption, Henry Fonda is a cold blood killer and Charles Bronson is a mysterious avenger.

Since that movie is a 52 years old movie, I know some of my contacts haven’t seen it yet, so I won’t spoil, but I encourage you to take an evening and watch it. You won’t be disappointed or if you are, let’s talk about it.

Post 10/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Calendars and terminals

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 10:45:50 +0100

At work, our emails are on … Office 365, the Outlook in the clouds. Yeah, I know! Don’t judge me it’s not my choice. 🤦‍♂️

I still manage to use mutt with it, but I hated to get online to check my meetings and my first reflex was to check if a CLI tool existed. And, of course, it does.

Khal

Today I learnt a thing about Khal, a shell calendar manager that looks like the cal utility :


 % cal
 January 2021
 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
 1 2
 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
 31

Installation

I installed it with apt, and you should be able to install it with your distro’s package manager or using pip :


 % pip install khal

Configuration

By default, khal checks for a configuration file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/khal/config or ~/.config/khal/config.

I use a personal git repository where I have all my dotfiles.

Here is my configuration:


 [calendars]

 [[my_calendar]]
 path = /home/hyde/.cfg/calendars/my_calendar/my-calendar
 type = calendar
 color = light magenta

 [[birthdays]]
 path = /home/hyde/.cfg/calendars/my_calendar/contact_birthdays
 type = calendar
 color = yellow

 [[work]]
 path = /home/hyde/.cfg/calendars/work-calendar
 type = calendar
 color = light green

 [view]
 theme = dark

 [locale]
 timeformat = %H:%M
 dateformat = %d/%m/%Y
 longdateformat = %d/%m/%Y
 datetimeformat = %d/%m/%Y %H:%M
 longdatetimeformat = %d/%m/%Y %H:%M

 [default]
 timedelta = 2d

To sync your calendars you need to install vdirsync and to configure it properly. Basically, it will update your calendars regularly, but you need to set up a cron entry for this :


 % crontab -l
 */30 * * * * /usr/bin/vdirsyncer c /home/hyde/.cfg/vdirsyncer/config sync > /dev/null

My vdirsyncer configuration :


 [general]
 status_path = "~/.cfg/vdirsyncer/status/"


 [pair work_calendars]
 a = "work_calendar_local"
 b = "work_calendar_remote"
 collections = null

 metadata = ["color", "displayname"]

 [storage work_calendar_remote]
 type = "http"
 url = "https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/XXXXXXX/calendar.ics"

 [storage work_calendar_local]
 type = "filesystem"
 path = "~/.cfg/calendars/work"
 fileext = ".ics"

 # nextcloud
 [pair my_calendar]
 a = "my_calendar_local"
 b = "my_calendar_remote"
 collections = ["from a", "from b"]

 # Calendars also have a color property
 metadata = ["color", "displayname"]

 [storage my_calendar_local]
 type = "filesystem"
 path = "~/.cfg/calendars/my_calendar"
 fileext = ".ics"

 [storage my_calendar_remote]
 type = "caldav"
 url = "https://your_nextcloud"
 username = "hyde"
 password = "mysecure_passwd"

Now you should be able to see your meetings.

The only issue is … Microsoft! Surprising you would say. 😂

As you can see below, they included some HTML with endless links in the meeting description. 🤦‍♂️

Why do they add HTML everywhere? Especially in a mail client…


 15:00-17:00 Subject :: Sujets abordées :
 ________________________________________________________________________________
 Vous êtes invité à participer à une réunion Microsoft Teams Nous rejoindre sur
 votre ordinateur ou votre appareil mobile Cliquez
 ici pour participer à la réunion<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-
 /19%3a787680aef5f141edb6f6539257634403%40thread.tacv2/
 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX> Pour en
 savoir plus<https://aka.ms/JoinTeamsMeeting> | Options de
 réunion<https://teams.microsoft.com/meetingOptions/?
 organizerId=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 XXXXXXXXX&language=fr-FR> _____________________________________________________
 ___________________________

Khal offers you options to format its output so let’s try to get a better view of our meetings:


 % khal -c $HOME/.cfg/khal/config calendar --format "{calendar-color} {start-time} {end-time} {title}"
 Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Today, 19/01/2021
 Jan 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 MEP
 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 08:00 15:00 veterinary
 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 09:50 10:00 Standup
 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 10:30 11:00 Product X config
 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 11:00 11:45 Chiro
 Feb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 15:00 17:00 Canceled: OPS Guilde
 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15:00 17:00 OPS Guilde
 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
 Mar 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tomorrow, 20/01/2021
 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 09:50 10:00 Standup
 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 10:00 11:00 Grooming backlog
 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 14:00 15:30 Canceled: CI - CD - OPS
 Apr 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 15:15 16:00 CICD - Focus on build factory

The options I use are :

-c to indicate my custom configuration
calendar to show the next three months on the left
–format to display only some parts :
- calendar-color : to use a different colour for each calendar
- start-time and end-time : display hours
- title : just the meeting title without the endless description

And finally, you can add an alias in your shell’s rc file to avoid typing everything :


 alias kal=khal -c $HOME/.cfg/khal/config calendar --format "{calendar-color} {start-time} {end-time} {title}"

Enjoy !

Post 9/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Charles Deluvio

Today, I learnt

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 05:56:45 +0100

Last year, I wrote weekly articles about Vim for about 3 months. I ended it because I wasn’t able to keep the pace, and it became a burden on my shoulders every week to find something to write about. Not really that you can’t find new subjects (I still learn new things about that editor every other day) it’s more I didn’t want to have a mandatory thing to do every week.

This year and after starting the round 2 of #100DaysToOffload, I want to write about small tips that will land in a TIL also known as “Today I Learnt” section. Shell configuration, Vim tips or any other interesting tool will be added to that list.

So let’s start it with a tool I discovered recently : tmpsms.

It’s a small CLI tool based on a German team who provides Upmasked.com. From their website, you can read something I appreciate :

Privacy, for anyone

Privacy shouldn’t have to be difficult. Upmasked strives to bring privacy to anyone.

What it does ?

It offers you a temporary phone number to get anonymous SMS in your terminal.

Installation

The repository is available on GitHub and you just need to clone it :


 % git clone https://github.com/sdushantha/tmpsms.git

Have fun

Before using a tool you don’t know, I recommend reading the source code before. First for security reason because you don’t know if the tool is safe. Second, just to better understand it.


 % tmpsms init
 CA +12896774702
 US +12029721324
 US +12029721324
 US +12029721324
 US +12029721324
 GB +447418310977

Select the phone number you want to use, and then you can check if you receive an SMS with :


 % ./tmpsms --count 8
 [ Messages for +12896774702 (CA) ]

 14158776866 Your Proton verification code is: 385946
 13103072097 Yubo code: 4730. Valid for 5 minutes.
 13103072081 Yubo code: 1907. Valid for 5 minutes.
 18558853741 Your Personal Capital security code is 4072.
 18337030503 Telegram code 20217
 12495029489 Telegram code 20217
 14805088375 Your Otter verification code is 209938. Expires in 3 minutes.
 14805088375 Your Otter verification code is 156270. Expires in 3 minutes.

As you can see, it’s a shared number between users, and it’s mainly used to authenticate on some online websites or apps. Be careful about how you use it and who you text 😅

Post 8/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Patrick Tomasso

Curfew extended!

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 20:45:02 +0100

Thursday, the French prime minister announced various actions the government decided about the COVID-19 and its variants. Mrs Hyde asked me to check what message will they bring to the Nation. A better idea would have been just to leave that TV shut down since my week can be summarized to all-day meetings and headaches. Politicians really make me sick and the government we have is the worst I have seen in a while.

So, briefly :

schools are open, but variants are more dangerous for kids 🤦‍♂️
people from European countries are the only one allowed to come in France
companies making over 1M€ / month will get an extra help from the government, 🖕 to small companies.
extended and reinforced curfew for at least two weeks

So today, starting from 6PM, we are confined at home until 6AM, so half of the day.

We learned this week from Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO scientific officer that :

We will not be going to achieve (...) collective immunity in 2021.

I really have lost faith and interest in this government and now even in the WHO, who last week got Agnes Buzyn a job.

Buzyn who said the 24th January 2020:

The risk to see the virus imported from Wuhan is null.
The virus proliferation is really low.

And then lied about informing everyone about the seriousness of this pandemic since the … 11th January.

Anyway, we’ll handle this at home because we don’t have other choices.

The only good news today: the snow and the family moment in the park throwing snowballs, and the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles we started today.

PS: I think I was too ambitious about the puzzle.

Post 7/100 - Round 2 of the 100DaysToOffload challenge !_

Photo credit : Priscilla Du Preez

Pay it forward

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 06:47:29 +0100

Who remembers or knows that old movie from 2000 : Pay It Forward ?
It’s a movie with Kevin Spacey, when he wasn’t a disreputable person, and Haley Joel Osment. Who ?

The little kid’s face may remind you The Sixth Sense movie where he played a kid whose psychologist is Bruce Willis. If you never saw it, it’s a must-see movie. But that’s not the subject.

Back to “Pay It Forward”, the storyline is about a kid pained by his mother’s alcoholism, a social studies teacher and a way to change the world. I won’t spoil you the movie but the main idea the kid had is to do a good deed for three people who must in turn each do good deeds for three other people, creating a charitable pyramid scheme.

Back then, I loved that utopian idea about a world where people would eventually be thoughtful to each other. One of the most famous father of stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, learned to be meek and gentle, and to forbear from any anger, evil or passion.

That’s the kind of philosophy I love : Just be a better person.

Nowadays, in big cities streets, it’s common to witness sayings like “I don’t have time” as an answer to a “Hello” from pollsters that are avoided like dog turds. Even worst, people ignoring a homeless person like he doesn’t exist or has the plague. And personally what drives me crazy is the kind of people taking for granted that you have to hold them doors without even a “Thank you”.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see people act in the favour of people they don’t even know. How could we achieve that in our society? Could we use the idea from this movie to be helpful somehow on social networks, our blogs or in real life?

On social networks, and Mastodon to be more precise, I’ve seen toots asking for money for people’s rent. It would be nice to help other too once they get any kind of help, don’t you think?

Could a pay-it-forward page on your blog or a #PayItForward hashtag be a way to launch a movement to help people about anything? Questions about vim, self-improvement, donations, legal stuff, a relocation or basically everything.

The only rule is : return a good deed to three other persons.

Post 6/100 - Round 2 of 100DaysToOffload!_

Outline Ep.01

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 22:41:14 +0100

Ces derniers mois nous auront beaucoup appris.

A quel point la nature est importante pour notre équilibre.

A quel point l’humanité peut-être fragile et que tout peut basculer.

Gregory Mignard & Yves Quere

Outline Ep. 01

Re: Dear Apple

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 06:38:38 +0100

Android mitigates this problem a lot by allowing to make other apps — like Signal — the default SMS/MMS app on the phone. Suddenly people are able to use Signal for SMS/MMS and Signal messages transparently.

Apple probably doesn’t want to do allow people doing this and wants them to keep their tools as the primary ones.

Big Sur is the guardian of that behaviour too on OSX.

That is the way

Mando

🖕 to 🍎

This post was a reply to https://venthur.de/2021-01-dear-apple.html

When a terminal meets Jira

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:36:00 +0100

A new comer, Guillaume in my Mastodon contacts wrote about starting a blog again after many failed attempts. Suggestions were made about starting the #100DaysToOffLoad challenge to help him keep writing every day and post every 3.5 days on his blog.

Reading the #100daystooffload blogroll, I stumbled upon his Jira on the CLI article, and being a terminal lover, I wanted to test the tools of that article:

JIRA CLI

I tested jira-cli first, I spent 15 minutes only with it. It has a nice CLI with colours, completion and some other tricks. But I couldn’t find a way to log my work with it.

Here is a screenshot of the tool :

The easiest way to install it is using npm :


 % sudo npm install -g jira-cl

The documentation is clear … but really poor right now. It lacks a lot of features you have with the other little go binary.

go-jira

This tool is way more polished and finalized compared to the previous one. To install it, you can grab a release here and just add it to a directory present in your $PATH.

Personally, I use a ~/bin directory for those kinds of tools or private scripts.

To see all the options, just type :


 % jira
 usage: jira [<flags>] <command> [<args> ...]

 Jira Command Line Interface

 Global flags:
 -h, --help Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and
 --help-man).
 -v, --verbose ... Increase verbosity for debugging
 -e, --endpoint=ENDPOINT Base URI to use for Jira
 -k, --insecure Disable TLS certificate verification
 -Q, --quiet Suppress output to console
 --unixproxy=UNIXPROXY Path for a unix-socket proxy
 --socksproxy=SOCKSPROXY Address for a socks proxy
 -u, --user=USER user name used within the Jira service
 --login=LOGIN login name that corresponds to the user used for authentication

 Commands:
 help: Show help.
 version: Prints version
 acknowledge: Transition issue to acknowledge state
 assign: Assign user to issue
 attach create: Attach file to issue
 attach get: Fetch attachment
 attach list: Prints attachment details for issue
 attach remove: Delete attachment
 backlog: Transition issue to Backlog state
 block: Mark issues as blocker
 browse: Open issue in browser
 close: Transition issue to close state
 comment: Add comment to issue
 component add: Add component
 components: Show components for a project
 create: Create issue
 createmeta: View 'create' metadata
 done: Transition issue to Done state
 dup: Mark issues as duplicate
 edit: Edit issue details
 editmeta: View 'edit' metadata
 epic add: Add issues to Epic
 epic create: Create Epic
 epic list: Prints list of issues for an epic with optional search criteria
 epic remove: Remove issues from Epic
 export-templates: Export templates for customizations
 fields: Prints all fields, both System and Custom
 in-progress: Transition issue to Progress state
 issuelink: Link two issues
 issuelinktypes: Show the issue link types
 issuetypes: Show issue types for a project
 labels add: Add labels to an issue
 labels remove: Remove labels from an issue
 labels set: Set labels on an issue
 list: Prints list of issues for given search criteria
 login: Attempt to login into jira server
 logout: Deactivate session with Jira server
 rank: Mark issues as blocker
 reopen: Transition issue to reopen state
 request: Open issue in requestr
 resolve: Transition issue to resolve state
 start: Transition issue to start state
 stop: Transition issue to stop state
 subtask: Subtask issue
 take: Assign issue to yourself
 todo: Transition issue to To Do state
 transition: Transition issue to given state
 transitions: List valid issue transitions
 transmeta: List valid issue transitions
 unassign: Unassign an issue
 unexport-templates: Remove unmodified exported templates
 view: Prints issue details
 vote: Vote up/down an issue
 watch: Add/Remove watcher to issue
 worklog add: Add a worklog to an issue
 worklog list: Prints the worklog data for given issue
 session: Attempt to login into jira server
 sprint: display issues
 subtasks: show subtasks
 ops all: display OPS issues
 ops me: display OPS issues assigned to me
 infra: display INFRA issues
 ano: display ANO issues

That’s a lot of options 😅.

What I really love with this tool is its quickness compared to the web interface of JIRA. Like many CLI tool, you can customize it with your own little scripts, add aliases or any other thing increasing your productivity without the hassle of clicking here and there.

At work, we are supposed to log work hours. And I think a lot of my colleagues hate that, me included. The Jira web interface where I’m supposed to log my hours is shitty. Often, I have to switch between opened tabs to make sure I don’t make mistakes. Sometimes, I completely miss to report what tasks I was working on leaving me with my faulty memory to try to remember what I’ve done a few days ago.

After half an hour, here is the small configuration I did:


 endpoint: https://your_jira_url
 user: my_login 

 custom-commands:

 - name: sprint
 help: display issues
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "project = PROJECTX AND issuetype in ('PRESERVE PEOPLE', 'DONT GET KILLED', 'OSINT ') AND sprint in openSprints() AND 'Feature Team' in (FT_TEAM_1, FT_TEAM_2, FT_TEAM_3) ORDER BY Classement ASC"

 - name: subtasks
 help: show subtasks
 args:
 - name: PROJECTX
 required: true
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "issueFunction in subtasksOf('key = {{args.PROJECTX}}')"

 ## OPS 
 - name: ops all 
 help: display OPS issues
 default: true
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "project = OPS and resolution = unresolved ORDER BY Classement ASC"

 - name: ops me 
 help: display OPS issues assigned to me 
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "project = OPS and resolution = unresolved and assignee=currentuser() ORDER BY Classement ASC"

 ## INFRA 
 - name: infra
 help: display INFRA issues 
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "project = INFRA and resolution = unresolved ORDER BY Classement ASC"


 ## ANO 
 - name: ano
 help: display ANO issues 
 script: |
 jira list --template table --query "project = ANO and resolution = unresolved ORDER BY Classement ASC"

The nice thing is the custom-commands: option allowing you to create your own commands that will be automatically added to the jira binary.

Scrum, the agile framework, is the one we use. To be able to see the current sprint, I use my custom command sprint this way :


 % jira sprint
 +-----------+-----------------------+-----------------+--------------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------------+
 | Issue | Summary | Type | Priority | Status | Age | Reporter | Assignee |
 +-----------+-----------------------+-----------------+--------------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------------+
 | XXXX-4148 | Find a jewellery | OSINT | P2 - Medium | In Progress | 21 days | Cabot | Mr Orange |
 | XXXX-4149 | Don't kill every one | PRESERVE PEOPLE | P1 - High | In Progress | 18 days | Cabot | Mr Blonde |
 | XXXX-4159 | Try to not get killed | DONT GET KILLED | P3 - Low | Opened | 15 days | Cabot | Mr Brown |
 +-----------+-----------------------+-----------------+--------------+-------------+----------+-------------+------------------+

You could combine two commands if you wish :

For those two ops commands, you must have an argument after ops. Here you have :

ops all
ops me

The default: true in the ops all commands allow you to have a default ops command that will list all issues. In this case, you can shorten the command this way to do the same thing :


 % jira ops all
 # OR 
 % jira ops

 +---------+-----------------------------+-----------+--------------+---------------+----------+---------------+----------------+
 | Issue | Summary | Type | Priority | Status | Age | Reporter | Assignee |
 +---------+-----------------------------+-----------+--------------+---------------+----------+---------------+----------------+
 | OPS-62 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P2 - Moyenne | Opened | 888 days | Cabot | Mr Pink |
 | OPS-375 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P1 - Haute | Opened | 199 days | Cabot | Mr Orange |
 | OPS-175 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P2 - Moyenne | Opened | 603 days | Cabot | Mr White |
 | OPS-202 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P2 - Moyenne | In Progress | 553 days | Cabot | Mr Blue |
 | OPS-214 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P2 - Moyenne | In Progress | 519 days | Cabot | Mr Brown |
 | OPS-222 | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | INFRA | P3 - Faible | Opened | 497 days | Cabot | Mr Blonde |
 +---------+-----------------------------+-----------+--------------+---------------+----------+---------------+----------------+

And I could filter only tasks assigned to me :


 % jira ops me

 +-------+---------+------+----------+--------+-----+----------+----------+
 | Issue | Summary | Type | Priority | Status | Age | Reporter | Assignee |
 +-------+---------+------+----------+--------+-----+----------+----------+
 +-------+---------+------+----------+--------+-----+----------+----------+

As we can see, I don’t have any right now. 😅

That’s it for my little feedback on this tool that I will definitely use. I haven’t talked about the basics becaue Guillaume’s post explained it quite well. You can alse find more documentation on the GitHub project page.

This post was a reply to https://xiu.io/posts/jira-cli/

OpenTracks, the privacy respecting sport tracker

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 14:58:38 +0100

OpenTracks is “A sport tracker that completely respects your privacy.”.

Just love that kind of apps

This post was a reply to https://xiu.io/posts/09-opentracks/

Goals for 2021

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 23:32:39 +0100

Goals for 2021. Usually, I don’t do new year resolutions but 2020 was a crappy year, and let’s try to build some habits for 2021.

Here is a small list, but it would be good if I can achieve at least those things:

Read 30 books.
Drink less alcohol.
Meditation / Yoga
Workout every 2 days or every day
Explore new hobbies
Keep writing to my logbook.
Continue BuJo.
Go to bed early.
Learn new skills.
Include walnuts everyday can help reducing LDL, the bad kind of cholesterol.
Visit a new country.
Keep learning Rust.

Lockdown in France ?

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 09:06:53 +0100

Britain went into full lockdown again yesterday. Austria has applied the same procedure more or less ten days ago. In France, two curfews are applied depending on the region you live in, one at 6PM and one at 8PM. If other countries follow the same path, there will be a probability that France go the same way … or not.

The government here is probably one of the worst I have witnessed in my life. From the beginning of the outbreak last spring, policymakers said everything and its opposite.

Firstly, masks were useless because of the lack of knowledge on how to use them properly. Then, we got the message “you must wear a mask”, but the government failed to provide them to people.

Secondly, tests moved progressively from not useful to mandatory in certain cases. But once again, not enough tests provided.

And finally, and to be consistent in mediocrity, only ~400 persons got vaccinated where the rest of Europe got a dozen of thousands.

Macron and its advisors said to the French people that we will face 400.000 deaths if, at least, a curfew was not imposed. We still don’t know where they got that number but, facing a possible second wave, people needed to understand the potential death rate. But comparing official data :

Year	Month	Deaths
2020	October	58100
2020	September	49400
2019	October	50410
2019	September	46181

Only those two months numbers have been revised, but we can clearly see that we are far away from 400k deaths. And I’m not even sure they were referring to these numbers anyway.

What I have observed so far is that a considerable amount of persons around me don’t want to inoculate themselves with the current product. The government said we will have the choice, but on the other hand everything has been done to force you to get it. And there is at least one main issue, patients privacy flouted as well as the medical deontology.

If you want to travel, soon you will have to get a battery of tests or to have a dedicated health passport. Airline companies are already on that slippery slope of sharing private information between all the companies members of the three global airline alliances : Oneworld, SkyTeam and Star Alliance. Combined they represent 58 companies and over 60% of air traffic. Are you happy with your medical records potentially shared that way ?

Don’t get me wrong, I am for a vaccine but a proper analysis of the situation requires taking a step back. And that’s not currently the case with the vaccine race and the potential jackpot for the winner lab. 😔

What about you ? Will you get the current vaccine or will you wait ?

Photo credit : Glen Carrie

OnionShare or private sharing

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 15:02:42 +0100

A friend who lives in NYC asked in a private group on Signal what app do we use to send/receive data. She had over 130Gb to deliver to a friend on the West coast. She tried WeTransfer and DropBox but both failed. One guy proposed her a ftp server but I proposed her to try OnionShare that I had on my try app to-do list.

OnionShare

What is it ? It’s a way to share files of any size securely and anonymously. A web server will be started on your computer as a Tor Onion. Added to this, a random address will be generated that you’ll have to share with the other person you want to share data.

On Debian, you can install it with:


 % sudo apt install onionshare

Then launch it that way :


 % onionshare the_file_you_want_to_share.txt

 OnionShare 2.2 | https://onionshare.org/
 Connecting to the Tor network: 100% - Done
 Setting up onion service on port 17640.
 Compressing files.
 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:17640/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)

 Give this address to the recipient:
 http://onionshare:dime-distinct@bkqoz7gxhchfsbwtia24c64vwsgl7g2szaioq5zvy4iremqgahw3mbid.onion

 Press Ctrl+C to stop the server

Then give the http://onionshare:dime-distinct@bkqoz7gxhchfsbwtia24c64vwsgl7g2szaioq5zvy4iremqgahw3mbid.onion address to your contact.

Your contact doesn’t need to have OnionShare, he just needs a Tor browser to open that link to be able to download the file you sent.

Our friend was quite happy to not use a 3rd party to send her files and left it opened during the night to transfer those 130Gb.

Easy-peasy 😅

Tridactyl and rss feeds

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 21:47:16 +0100

Tridactyl is a Firefox plugin, a successor of the extinct Vimperator and its fork Pentadactyl, allowing you to have Vim key bindings in your browser. The main idea is that the keyboard is greater than a mouse. For the same reason I use the tiling window manager awesomewm whose goal is to move around only with your keyboard.

Naturally, I found out about those plugins because I always loved aliases, functions and other tweaks to boost my productivity. Recently, I wrote about Tridactyl and today I want to tackle a situation I had with my RSS feeds that bothered me.

Livemarks is a plugin that restores RSS Feed Livemarks in Firefox that disappeared years ago. It provides RSS feed bookmarks folders that auto-update with the latest articles posted. I loved it but it lacks of keyboard shortcuts. We were two to ask the author to implement a way to open all unread links in new tabs, but you have to right-click on each folder to load them. Quite boring when you hate using your mouse 😅

Livemarks has some options to add bookmarks prefixes to indicate status of posts.

I use #! for unread and ✓ for posts already read.
Why #! ? Because some posts have titles with a # or a ! and I needed to differentiate them (more on this later). That helps me to see what I’ve read or not, but I still have to click on folders. Again it’s not ideal 😕

Tridactyl to the rescue

This plugin can do a lot of things and I haven’t checked yet all the opportunities it offers but apart the Vim shortcuts, you can bind your own key combination. And that’s exactly what I’ve done enabling me an easy way to open unread posts of the various blogs I follow.

I added this to my ~/.config/tridactyl/tridactylrc :


 bind ;q fillcmdline bmarks #!

That binds ;q opens the command line and fill it with the bmarks command to open only bookmarks. Adding the #! filters only the unread ones exactly what I wanted.

Now, every time I press ;q, I got this :

Then using just the Tab key I can choose which one I want to read. As soon as I opened it, its prefixes change to ✓ and disappear from the current list. At the beginning, I had only a # prefix for unread articles, but if they use the hash symbol in their titles, they got filtered even if already read and never removed. That’s why I choose to use #! as a prefix instead.

I can also add for example:


 # to filter only new posts from LWN also known as Linux Weekly News
 :bmarks #! lwn 

 # or to filter Horst's posts. 
 :bmarks #! zero

I haven’t found yet how the bmarks command works exactly. I just understood that it sorts posts by date, the newer first in the list. But I would be happy to read them maybe in a reverse order or even randomly.

At least, I’m happy I don’t have to right-click on those folders anymore. 😉

Let me know if you use and how do you use those plugins.

My top 50 of 2020

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 22:28:07 +0100

In a bad way, this year was unique. For various reasons, just pick one : Kobe Bryant death, Macron, COVID-19, Trump, masks, deaths, curfews or/and lockdowns.
Still I found a way to get a top 50 of things that made this year positive even if I lost some friends and family during this period.

Wrote 100 posts in 101 days thanks to #100DaysToOffload challenge started by Kev.
Stop alcohol for 8 months, and now I drink only one glass from time to time.
Kept writing in my logbook almost all year (I missed some days).
Had great interviews with Datastax even if I didn’t get the job at the end.
Read more books than in 2019 even if I could have finished way more.
Enjoyed Camera Punk : Creation of the Fuji XPro-3
Throw some axes last January with colleagues.
Listened to podcasts … a lot !
Watched last game of Kobe Bryant when he scored 60 points.
We helped a friend with a money pot because he was burgled and that made him happy.
Had a couple of boxing sessions before the pandemic.
I was fortunate to keep my current work.
We had a couple of poker games at home.
Wrote 155 blog posts and 29 notes.
Watched movies from my IMDB top 250 but haven’t finished it yet.
Bought tickets for Rage against the Machine … but never got there.
An old lady who said that my daughter was awesome.
Discovered marginalia on Austin Kleon’s post.
My new Benq SW321c screen.
Loved the Last Dance.
Week-end in Normandy, St-Aubin s/mer with a beautiful sunrise.
My daughter loves “My neighbor Totoro”.
Gaspard Proust spectacle.
Joker !
Indieweb and webmentions.
My Vim weekly tips.
My daughter discovered how we make popcorn.
Weekend in Belgium where we ate way too much.
My new Tuxedo laptop.
Poker online with remote friends during the lockdown.
All podcasts about social engineering.
My Faber-Castell fountain pen.
Tridactyl, Vim in your Firefox.
Left LinkedIn.
To thank me for his boxing pics I took a while ago, a friend offered me a pair of boxing gloves.
My new Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4.
24930 unique visitors since June 4th. I rotated and erased older logs. 🤦‍♂️
My post “What’s wrong with Email ?” got some attention and views.
The Gentlemen at Max Linder cinema, the last time we had a movie outside.
Holidays in Guadeloupe and the afternoon at the Grand Anse beach where we took nice pics.
Permanent Record by Snowden.
Started ZettleKasten taking notes method.
Bullet journaling finally.
Got interested in stoicism.
Moved to tmux from screen.
Cooked more.
Draw a lot more in my logbook and with my little princess.
Family moments and the fact the pandemic helped me to see my girls more.
Watched all Star Wars movies starting from Episode I to IX. That came after the end of the Mandalorian.
Soul, the latest Pixar movie is really great.

There are probably more daily little things that could be added here but if I haven’t listed them, they are probably not really significant.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2021/01/01/this-was-2020/

Media consumption - December 2020

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 08:23:26 +0100

December rhymes with Xmas, a period of the year when you can watch all these mushy movies and Love actually is one of them. That’s probably the third time I watched it, and it’s the kind of movies I don’t dislike. The first two minutes made me nostalgic of the moments people had before all that COVID-19 pandemic crap…

On the reading side, I haven’t really touched books this month, and I’ve spent a lot of time on some blogs posts I wanted to finish reading and clean them from my to-do list.

I continued to listen to podcasts about social engineering and loved some Harbinger show episodes too.

And since it’s Xmas and New year, I watched a couple of movies including animation ones with my daughter. 😅

And Happy New Year to everyone hoping it will be better than 2020.

Summary

65 podcasts (1264 min)
Haven’t really read books this month. It was more about blogs…
10 movies (1058 min)
11 episodes of series (280 min)

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries :
- Ep. 81 : The vendor (80 min)
France Inter : 29 podcasts (111 min)
Stuff You Should Know:
- What is a hangover, really? (39 min)
The Social Engineer:
- Episode 103 - How to be a good parent with Michael Bazzell(53 min)
- Episode 035 - Mastering elicitation with John Nolan (26 min)
Privacy, Security & OSINT :
- Ep. 014 : JJ Luna (44 min)
- Ep. 197 : Big Sur Update & Amazon sidewalk (25 min)
- Ep. 181 : 4 updates in 10 minutes (10 min)
- Ep. 169 : This week in Privacy (24 min)
Social Engineering Tips :
- Ep. 016 : Using drones and rooftops in pretexts (5 min)
- Ep. 017 : Constructing devices with potted plants (5 min)
- Ep. 018 : Lost and found Archology (7 min)
- Ep. 019 : What is that awful smell (5 min)
- Ep. 020 : Corporate style guides (6 min)
- Ep. 021 : Secret stash of uniforms (5 min)
Jordan Harbinger Show :
- Ep. 423 : How to have conversations that matter with Celeste Headlee (68 min)
- Ep. 429 : The Disciplined pursuit of less with Greg McKeown (60 min)
- Ep. 440 : Dark Money and the Science of Deception with David Michaels(72 min)
- Ep. 441 : Finding freedom from our addictions with Russell Brand (57 min)
- Ep. 443 : Kidnap me once, shame on me with Jordan and Gabe (55 min)
- Ep. 444 : Kidnap me twice, shame on me with Jordan and Gabe (43 min)
- Ep. 448 : Blueprint for revolution with Srdja Popovic (61 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 09 : Unraveling an online puppy scam with Wondersmith Rae (19 min)
- Ep 10 : Just ask for feedback with Marina Ciavatta (47 min)
- Ep 11 : Happy birthday… or is it? with Kirby Plessas (47 min)
- Ep 13 : Social Engineer your own brain with Alethe Denis (53 min)
- Ep 14 : Spot the Jihadi (17 min)
- Ep 18 : They never saw her coming with Christina Lekati (21 min)
- Ep 19 : One of the best stories I can tell with Jayson E. Street (24 min)
- Ep 21 : The ladder and the big gulp with Adam Compton (18 min)
- Ep 22 : Going to college … for the bust with Derrick Levasseur (21 min)
- Ep 23 : The $15.000 Teddy Bear with Amanda Berlin (12 min)
- Ep 28 : Josh (@Baywolf88) Huff (17 min)
- Ep 34 : ScaryLilHuman in the trash chute (11 min)
- Ep 36 : Teamwork makes dreamwork with Inês Narciso (20 min)
- Ep 37 : Billy and Vache - Flair Bartending and SE (37 min)
Dev Discuss :
- S3E3 : Is Vim worth your time (39 min)

Books

I read some pages from the last month books… 😔

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas (40%)
Trailing stops by Jim Kane(60%)
The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (30%)

MOVIES / SERIES

The Mandalorian : Episodes 6, 7 and 8 (100 min)
Archer season 11 : 8 episodes(180 min)
Justice League (120 min)
Rogue One (133 min)
Star Wars Episode VII (135 min)
Solo - a Star Wars story (135 min)
Love Actually (136 min)
Spectre (148 min)
The Accountant (128 min)
Bear Brother I & II (158 min)
Soul (100 min)

Re: Telegram and ads

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 13:03:47 +0100

DerStandard is probably a reliable source, but I have to revise my old German lessons first 😅.
From what I’ve read, there won’t be any ads on private one-to-one or group chats but instead :

He pointed to what he called Telegram’s “one-to-many” channels that have their own dedicated posse following one specific Telegram poster. These act more like a Twitter feed than an SMS conversation, and like Twitter, they’ll be getting the ad-serving treatment.

Anyway, as I said before, Telegram is just there because some contacts are using it, but I could easily live without it.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/12/27/re-telegram-and-ads/

Telegram and ads

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 23:27:26 +0100

Telegram announced through co-founder Pavel Durov’s public channel that ads are landing on the apps to be able to maintain a service for its 500 million users.

Coming from Russia, at the beginning there were privacy concerns, and I’m not sure if the code was available but now links are provided on their website and everyone can check the source code.

The latest update added a “chat room” where you can join a room to discuss or just listen to people. The other update is hence the ads that will be added to public channels, a thing that will probably piss me off.

WhatsApp, when it got acquired by Facebook, saw stories turning up and there were rumours about ads coming to the platform. These were the reasons for me to leave it as well as the privacy policy at Zuckerberg’s company.

Seeing ads make me wonder if users data will be safe or will they lower the encryption like Facebook does/did. I’ve never really searched for answers about all the WhatsApp security since I decided to quit it. I’ve read that they store metadata like numbers, device type, mobile networks, contacts lists, time and duration of chats, @ip addresses, etc… If you have chat backup enabled, and if you store them on a cloud, there is a great chance that encryption has not been activated leaving your chats in clear text to anyone having access to your cloud legitimately or not.

I guess you understand why I don’t use that app anymore 😅

On the other side, Telegram is still installed on my mobile, but I use it rarely and prefer to communicate over Signal where friends, colleagues and family followed me.

Will you continue to use Telegram once the ads around your chats?

Looking for a font ?

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 22:21:00 +0100

The perfect fonts were always a thing I have to dig out and test multiple times to be satisfied with. Over the years, I liked various fonts and I switched a lot to finally found a font that I enjoy : Inconsolata.

Recently, I stumbled upon the devfonts.gafi.dev website that list fonts. It’s well done and you can see directly how it will render in your editor or terminal.

Links to download them are provided and almost all of them are free to use.

Here what the website looks like :

Re: Re: Re: my journal can be messy

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:37:52 +0100

Leuchtturm, I had a couple of those notebooks but since I tried Dingbats, I prefer those because the paper looks better IMHA. One thing I miss is the page numbers printed on each Leuchtturm notebook.

They look pretty similar in built quality, and overall both are good, but I opted for Dingbats since they give 2% to WWF and are eco-friendly.

I would probably use them too for my logbook if they had daily or weekly planners.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/12/22/re-re-my-journal-can-be-messy/

Re: My journal can be messy

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 11:17:27 +0100

As you, I have exactly the same problem with my journals. At the beginning, I was turning pages too quickly ending with ink everywhere. But as you get used to writing with fountain pen, I slowed down my pace and I take time before jotting down things on pages. That way the ink has some time to dry and I wait before turning pages. Or I hold some pages between my fingers for a couple of seconds.

What notebook do you use ? It could also be the paper or the ink used ?

On my side, for my logbook I use a Moleskine Daily Planner and for my bullet journal I have a Dingbats A5 notebook and I think I prefer its paper. I use this ink : Parker Quink ink and from the Wikipedia page :

Quality of ink flow, it resisted water and molding, it was non-corrosive, and it was claimed to be quick-drying

Maybe it may be worth trying different inks. 😉

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/12/21/my-journal-can-be-messy/

Archer

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 18:00:00 +0100

Archer is an animated sitcom for adults about an intelligence agency led by the hero, Sterling Archer. It’s a ~20 minutes episode show, and you can watch an entire season in less than 3 hours. Currently, there are 11 seasons and the latest one, just landed on Netflix two weeks ago.

It’s the same humour you can find in these movies : OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio. If you loved those movies, you will enjoy the show. Archer and Dujardin are the same kind of hero who share their love for beautiful women doing the dumbest things you could ever imagine a spy would do.

Animated series are not really my thing but a good friend told to give it a try. And indeed, I enjoyed every season I watched. I love the 20min format because it’s easy to watch a couple of episodes quickly.

I finished the 11th season in two days and the good news is that the series was renewed for a twelfth season. 🙌

Logbook, one year already

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 11:54:04 +0100

One year and one month since I started to keep a logbook because of my flawed memory. The journey began at the same time as this blog. Then I learned about the #100daystooffload challenge that made me realize I share interests with some people on the Fediverse and especially Horst Gutmann. We both have been doing bullet journaling and we got inspired by Austin Kleon about logbook and how to keep tracks of our daily life.

I usually write or draw little things of my day. I stumbled on the Sketchnote Handbook and I bought it to gather ideas on how to draw more to represent moments or any other thought of my life. The book says that with basic shapes you can scribble a lot of things even if you consider yourself bad at it. I recommend it if you like to doodle or if you want to try a new way to order your thinking 😉

What I enjoy with a logbook is to be able to go back to a specific date and see/check things I’ve done during the year. In ten days, a new year and a new logbook. I will probably add an index, as I do with the bullet journaling system, to annotate some moments I want to go back easily because it’s complicated to go back to a specific event without knowing the exact date.

An other reason why I love it is because it leaves something behind you. A friend’s dad passed away lately and he inherited 20 agendas where he found out that his father wrote about their life for the last two decades. One day I want to be able to bequeath it to my daughter or/and maybe read them together when she gets older.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/12/18/diaries-are-evidence-of-our-days/

Should I change my terminal ?

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 00:14:28 +0100

Today, I spent some time trying terminals, new and old ones : st, tilix, kitty, tilda, terminator.
The reason ? I wanted to try bpytop, the Python port of bashtop a colleague suggested.

A little advice, don’t do it if you use rxvt as I do because you will probably get something like this :

I didn’t spend time searching the reason of that behaviour until today when I saw that a second colleague posted on our Slack the same tool. And once again it gave me the same result.

After a couple of queries online, I found out bpython needs True Color also known as “888” colors (aka 16 million). To know if your terminal supports it, you can test with :


 % printf "\x1b[${bg};2;${red};${green};${blue}m\n"
 # or
 % printf "\x1b[38;2;255;100;0mTRUECOLOR\x1b[0m\n"

or with different examples of command available on this page.

I was wondering what people use, so I tooted to find out. That’s how I discovered nobody really use rxvt (5%). It’s a bit better with xterm (14%) and Gnome terminal (31%) but the majority (51%) use something different:

st
tilix
Kitty
Tilda
Terminator
LXTerminal
Konsole
Alacritty
Yakuake

By the way, looks like there is an issue on Mastodon’s poll because it makes 101% instead of 100% of votes.

Back to my comparison, I tested only the first five, and I couldn’t get something I really like. Kitty used ~80Mb of RAM for every window opened … but I wasn’t using it correctly. 😅 A Kitty user pointed out why I had many processes when he had only one. I was opening a new term each time without using the internal key binding resulting in a new process. Instead, you can use Ctrl+Shift+N to have a child process of Kitty’s main process.

I love st because is light. To configure it, you need to compile it and that’s not really a common thing today.

Terminator, I don’t know why I never really liked it. Tried it today and the same way, I won’t use it. That’s maybe the Java behind 😅

I like text files for my configuration instead of menus. Tilix, Gnome terminal, Konsole, LXTerminal are all using them, but I would rather have shortcuts instead of clicking on some buttons. Maybe it’s doable with all of these, but I never rummaged it. .Xdefaults is still the file I use for my terminals colour and styling that I store in a dotfile repo. This way If needed on a new computer I can just clone my config and be able to have quickly the same look on all my workstations without fiddling menus.

That’s also why I use awesomewm as my window manager because everything can be done just with the keyboard leaving the mouse alone. Anyway, I have to give it a longer shot to see if I leave behind me my old 19 years long friend.

Internet and archives

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 23:55:11 +0100

The world and the internet are constantly evolving. Keeping a track of volatile things like a URL can be difficult. A link can change, redirect to a new page or just be deleted. And it’s just a matter of time before seeing it gone.

For my bookmarks, I tried many tools but the main ones were : Pocket then Wallabag. And I was quite happy with the second one until an upgrade broke it. Since then and for the last 5 months I was mainly using bookmarks in Firefox… Not my best option.

Tonight, I tried to install it again but for some crappy PHP reasons some stuff didn’t work. Wallabag’s documentation wasn’t the same as the one I had in my memories and the installation that worked like a charm last year was a pain in the *ss today. The good news is all my links are available in the database and I can still export them to a new tool.

Wondering if that alternative exists, hopefully with a CLI, I stumbled upon ArchiveBox and apparently there are projects galore online.

ArchiveBox main goal is to store locally a copy of a URL at a certain moment. The same way archive.org is saving websites available on the internet to keep a trace of them, ArchiveBox will help you to keep copies of content that made you laugh, taught you something or just made you enjoy reading it. Apparently, you can configure it also to push your links on a 3rd party tool like Archive.org. You can basically save everything, images, texts, audio, pdf, videos and even the javascript used on the website to render pages on your workstation or on a server with some configuration.

Services like Wallabag or Pocket are great but I had some issues with links that disappeared leaving me without any way to get that content back.

At the end of the 90’s, I loved the website, SysAdmin Mag about *nixes and Linux, and I would be glad to have a readable copy now. Instead, the only thing left of 15 years of great articles is a CD-ROM I bought when they were shutting down. Since I don’t own a CD-ROM player anymore, I can’t even use it … if it’s still readable. But even some recent links disappeared from my bookmarks because the website just decided to remove it. That happened quite a lot recently here in France about our dear president, Mr Macron. And I’m sure links about Trump had/have the same kind of fate. 😅

Of course, keeping a copy of every URL will take some space on your disks. So far, I read that 1000 articles will take around 5Gb of storage. That’s not so bad and disks are quite cheap letting you store way more if needed.

It’s late now and the installation can wait until tomorrow.

Goodbye Wallabag and welcome ArchiveBox.

Photo credit : Harald Arlander

rt.cpan.org, the end of an era.

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:31:13 +0100

Perl, a language I used a lot as a sysadmin is on its decline. Through the years, I noticed less and less activity on IRC and especially in the French channel #perlfr where I used to hang around.

I just stumbled upon this post https://log.perl.org/2020/12/rtcpanorg-sunset.html announcing the end of rt.cpan.org on March 1st 2021 posted on that channel presaging a dark future for Perl.

For those who never heard of Request Tracker also known as RT, it’s a ticket tracking system tool written in Perl and used in the community to submit issues and bugs. The first release is 21 years old and had its 5.0.0 version released last July.

Today, novices tend to go with Python as it looks easier to learn than Perl. Python’s fame is also due to some tools like Jupyter that new developers are fond of but some guys don’t share the same feeling because it doesn’t really teach you the core of the language.

Another reason of that fall is also due to Perl 6. It made way too much time to be released. And I just learned that it was renamed to … Raku :

"Raku is a member of the Perl family of programming languages. Formerly known as Perl 6, it was renamed in October 2019. Raku introduces elements of many modern and historical languages. Compatibility with Perl was not a goal, though a compatibility mode is part of the specification."

For private things, I still use Perl from time to time but lately I started to learn Rust, Python and even Lua.

Perl was born on December 18th, 1987 and will celebrate its 33rd birthday in less than ten days. I don’t know how long the language will survive but hopefully this year won’t have the same fate as Jesus. 😅

Re : Certified Azure Solution Architect

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:13:45 +0100

Congrats!! Even if I’m not a big fan of Azure 😅.

I tried it at work, and I found out that even the web interface looks like a Microsoft OS, a thing that I haven’t used for 20 years.

A couple of years ago, when Solaris and AIX were “à la mode”, I considered taking some exams because I thought it will maybe help me. Today, It wouldn’t be just some things I did to impress companies with valuable skills.

To be honest, I’ve never been a fan of certifications, these small trophies on your resume, that don’t prove someone is better than someone else just because of a piece of paper. Some companies are not willing to take someone because of the lack of a certification even if the guy used the technology for the last two years.

The downside is some certified guys I’ve met weren’t better than guys in our teams without the Holy Grail 😉

But using AWS on a daily basis maybe It could be a reasonable thing to consider since I’m getting older and my age could enter in equation for the next job. But even then you need to redo it every X years.

So far I never needed one…

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/11/30/certified-azure-solution-architect/

November media consumption

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 17:23:26 +0100

November… I spent a lot of time listening to podcasts. If you are interested in SE also known as Social Engineering, Layer8 is a great podcast with feedbacks from professional from the field.

Ask Noah is a show about Linux and Opensource, so far I’ve listened to only 3 episodes. Looks like I share the same love to Microsoft operating systems as Noah does 😅.

A great podcast episode is the one with Frank Abagnale. Maybe you have seen Catch me if you can the movie with Tom Hanks and Leonardo Di Caprio. Mr Abagnale was performed by Di Caprio.

I haven’t done much in Rust this month. 😔

Summary

117 podcasts (1043 min)
started 2 new books
17 episodes of series (591 min)
13 movies (1637 min)
a multi-part documentary - 2 episodes (60 min)

Podcasts

Darknet Diaries : Episodes 78 & 79(139 min)
France Inter : 99 podcasts (311 min)
FLOSS Weekly : Episode #600 - Chatcola (66 min)
The Social Engineer: Episode 134 - Altered Memories and altered realities (46 min)
Jordan Harbinger Show :
- Frank Abagnale (91 min)
- How to deal with conversational narcissist (55 min)
Ask Noah : first 3 episodes (180 min)
Prehype : Health innovation for busy entrepreneur (25 min)
Layer8 :
- Ep 1 : Rapport building with vishing by Trevor O’Donnal(17 min)
- Ep 2 : Taking down a criminal by Katelyn Bowden(11 min)
- Ep 3 : Her first OSINT by Katelyn Bowden (10 min)
- Ep 4 : A full PSE walk through by Steve Laura(47 min)
- Ep 5 : Combining OSINT with SE in Germany by Matthias Wilson(21 min)
- Ep 6 : How a social Engineer (ab)uses trust by Robby Stewart(7 min)
- Ep 7 : Sometimes the client wins by Robby Stewart(10 min)
- Ep 8 : Turning a Facebook feature into a ticket to DefCon(7 min)

Books

Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday (70%)
Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas (30%)
Trailing stops by Jim Kane(40%)
The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (20%)

Articles

MOVIES / SERIES / DOCUMENTARIES

Making of : The Mandalorian - 2 episodes (60 min)
Mandalorian Season 2 : 5 episodes (216 min)
Ocean’s Eight (110 min)
Rogue city (116 min)
Dead Pool 2 (119 min)
All that divide us (99 min)
Panic Room (112 min)
Casino Royale (144 min)
Star Wars Episode I (136 min)
Star Wars Episode II (142 min)
Star Wars Episode III (140 min)
Star Wars Rogue One (134 min)
Star Wars Episode IV (124 min)
Star Wars Episode V (127 min)
Star Wars Episode VI (134 min)
Business Family : Season 1 & 2 (375 min)

Alternatives to proprietary software

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 08:54:08 +0100

GIMP turned 25 years old last Friday.
Inkscape had its 17th birthday at the beginning of this month. Not too bad for free alternatives to proprietary software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. GCompris on its side celebrated its 20th anniversary four days ago. It’s really enjoyable to see all these communities of opensource software lasting so long.

First time I met Gimp was in 1998 or 99 and I wasn’t sure if the project was going to survive through the years. But here we are 25 years later and the project is still in development and used more and more since Linux is slowly but surely getting adopted by people.

Back then I used mainly Corel Draw and Photoshop, both with a cracked licence found online. When I discovered Linux and the open source community, I felt in love with the ideology behind all these projects. Finding something useful and free was not an effortless task. Some freeware were available but nothing that you eventually could compare to Photoshop. Seeing a project like Gimp was really a delightful experience and I’m glad to see people using it on OSX or Windows.

I don’t use Windows and I’m trying to sell my old 2010-11 iMac I only have for my photography. I will be using exclusively opensource software now. The fiasco about trustd since the last update pushed me to go full opensource even if I like Lightroom and CaptureOne. I don’t really like how LR evolved though.

A couple of years ago, I bought an old version of LR and the copy I purchased was mine. Today, you can’t do that anymore. The only option you have is to rent, or should I say subscribe, to a software to be able to use it. When you stop paying, you can just watch your screen and cry.

The second thing this type of offer brings to the table is the hardware upgrade. On my old iMac, I may use that old version of LR for years without spending a dime. On the other hand, the subscribe option will probably force you to upgrade your old hardware to a new shiny iMac without any real advantage. Of course, you’ll get better disks and better CPU but does it worth the upgrade. I don’t think so.

For all those reasons, Darktable will be my app to go for everything related to photography and I will see how it goes. Inkscape and Gimp among other did well for years so why not DT.

Firefox and Vim

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 00:59:30 +0100

Mozilla has released a new version of Firefox : the 83 is here. Apparently, it’s faster, some new keyboard shortcuts and an interesting feature : HTTPS-Only Mode.

I don’t get why it’s happening only now. Is it linked with the pandemic and the work from home? Phishing attacks have increased with the remote work and adding that kind of option won’t prevent advanced techniques where scammers have set up an HTTPS website but the quick and dirty ones will be dismissed and that’s a good thing.

I hope this new version doesn’t break some add-ons like Vimium-FF that provides Vim keyboard shortcuts but for your browser. “Vim again!?” some will say. The short answer is YES.

I discovered Pentadactyl in 2011 or 2012 and it was a fork from Vimperator. The project split mainly for political reason. It was a plugin I loved so much because you were able to create your own shortcuts quickly and avoid using the mouse completely. Everything you needed was to know Vim and you were able to move around web pages quickly without touching the mouse. But Firefox changed completely the internal working system making the add-on obsolete. To be able to use it again the whole project has to be rewritten. I was stuck with an old Firefox version if I wanted to keep using it. So I stopped and since that day using the web wasn’t the same again until I discovered Vimium-FF.

Vimium-FF brings back some features I had on Pentadactyl, But I don’t use it as much as I used to. Some features are lacking like the command menu and other things.

Tridactyl was an option I tried before Vimium but it was a bit buggy and I wasn’t happy with it. But it was the add-on providing more or less everything Pentadactyl did. Here’s a screenshot of the command menu.

As some of you know if you saw some of my toots, I often have way too many tabs opened (300 right now) and sometimes finding one in particular is a bit tedious. Using a :tab pattern_of_my_tab brings up all the tabs with the specific pattern I’m looking for.

Try it if you are a vim user … or not, and let me know what you think about it.

Lockdown in Paris

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 20:14:46 +0100

Two weeks ago, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, declared a new lockdown but this time it’s different : all schools are open except universities. Of course, masks are mandatory everywhere, even at home in some cases, and the French population is encouraged to work remotely when it’s possible.

Yesterday, the French prime minister announced that we, the French, should be more respectful of the lockdown and avoid as much as possible movements not authorized hoping this way we could all have a nice Xmas family dinner. How we could interpret his message is : more controls and more €135 fines. A quick way to fill its pockets. That same government took many poor decisions about the pandemic.

For example, subways are full but that’s alright because they said it’s not a suitable contagion spot. The virus prefers restaurants apparently. For those who visited Paris, maybe you took the 13th line and you probably understand why it’s the worst in the French capital. People are on the top of each other and it’s like the devil created it to have some fun gazing at people arguing or even coming to blows. It’s dirty, often so crowded you could believe free money was handed out and it’s definitely a place I avoid whenever I can. The last two years, I took it only four times and preferred walking instead. Everyone is literally walking on each other without any excuse. I used to live in London and never witnessed bad manners like those. Just hate it.

Seeing how many people are in the streets, I guess we won’t probably be able to spend Christmas with our family. It’s simple I haven’t seen any difference before / after the lockdown. Parks are overcrowded with parents and kids. I think the one near my flat has even more people than before the lockdown. Undoubtedly because they try to get out from their apartments whenever they can. Buses and the metro are still jam-packed because some jobs can’t be done remotely, but also because parents need to get their kids from the preschool, older ones need to go to school but still they announced a lockdown that doesn’t make any sense. Even worse a guy from the government said a curfew could be added to … the lockdown. Seriously ?! 🤦‍♂️

With the last two presidents, we thought we hit the bottom but this one is the worst so far. Hopefully, the COVID-19 will disappear and in the worst case scenario a vaccine will be created by some lab.

SEGA, the end of an era

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 06:56:44 +0100

SEGA, the company that stood next to me all my youth. They provided us so many titles and to name just a few :

Wonder Boy
Fantasy Zone
OutRun
Shinobi
Golden Axe series
Sonic series
and a lot more …

It gave us great moments to remember. It was the beginning of the home gaming business. A friend had the luck to have the SEGA Master System and often after schools we finished at his home playing some games. I completely forgot about the Fantasy Zone shoot’em up game that we played a lot!

Today, kids have gaming consoles we never dreamt we could see one day. The technology evolves so quickly… Not sure it’s a good thing though.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon an article about the fact that SEGA is selling its arcade business to Genda, a Tokyo based company involved in arcade games rentals. Over 200 arcades across Japan will go to Genda, and they will keep the branding to keep old customers. SEGA will continue to develop games for that specific market but with fewer developers, bringing the rest to home console games.

COVID-19 is probably the main reason behind that sale.

It’s a sad day and definitely the end of an era.

Good bye Pixelfed

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 11:44:03 +0100

Received a reminder from Gandi, my registrar, about a domain name I set up last year when I installed Pixelfed, the Instagram like clone.

Months have passed but at the end, I finished uploading only 45 pictures. I never really connected to the account and I found out it reminded me Instagram way too much.

Dan Sup account on Mastodon is the one to follow if you want to be aware of the latest news about the project since he’s the person behind the code.

Reading some of his toots, I didn’t get the point to have the same kind of features implemented on the proprietary platform. Stories and IG TV were things I didn’t like and seeing them coming on Pixelfed made me questioning myself about its purpose.

From my point of view, those shorts videos are the plague on social networks. Today, nobody wants to read a long article, watch a long documentary or sometimes even movies. Everything is about quick consumption and that’s awfully well done with unlimited scrolling timelines or endless stories. That’s why TikTok works so well with kids and even with adults. Psychological disorders, those keeping you glued to your small device, are exactly why experts got hired in those companies to make sure they make you do everything as expected.

On my side, too many ads was the main reason why I left IG combined with the fact that Facebook bought it. It’s nice to have an opensource project to share images with friends and family but I hoped to see new things and not just a clone of the photo-based platform, the worst social media network for mental health.

Though, there are good things about it :

you can hide likes and boosts
you can have your own instance with just some friends/family
you own the data

As far as I am concerned, I will post pictures on this website and share with my close friends or family using my own NextCloud instance.

One day I may come back …

Media Consumption - October 2020

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 10:43:49 +0200

This month, less NBA but that’s normal since the season is finished. Spent some times watching some cheesy series with Ms Hyde that I could have avoided 😅 and listened to some interesting podcasts.

49 Podcasts (1035 min)
3 books
1 movies (115 min)
4 seasons of series (969 min)
2 videos (27 min)
5 NBA games (560 min)

PODCASTS

Darknet Diaries : Episodes 76 (89 min)
France Inter : 28 podcasts (137 min)
Cortex : 100 - Quarantine (115 min) and 101 - Productivity (110 min)
Jordan Harbinger Show :
- Episode 414 (69 min) Jonah Berger : How to change anyone’s mind
- Episode 417 (98 min) Dan Ariely : The Hidden logic that shapes our motivations
The Undersiders : 8 episodes (204 min)
Business Wars : Netflix vs BlockBuster - 8 episodes (213 min)

BOOKS

Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday (70%)
On the shortness of Life by Seneca (100%)
The Rust Programming Language by Steve Blanik & Carol Nichols (20%)

MOVIES / SERIES

22 Bullets - 2010 (115 min)
Barbarians - 2020 (278 min)
The Hookup plan - 2018/2019 (413 min)
Emily in Paris - 2020 (278 min)

VIDEOS

Photography videos (27 min)

NBA

5 NBA Finals games (560 min)

Photo credit : Julius Drost

Microsoft hasn't changed

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 23:38:10 +0100

Microsoft, is and will always be Microsoft. As I said before, I stopped using it in 2000 making me, as you guessed, a guy with a certain age.

This week, I learned that youtube-dl, the tool used by so many people around the world to download YouTube among other online videos platform, has seen its repository getting a DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, notice by RIAA to take it down.

Is it just the beginning of these kinds of notices? Is Microsoft chasing repositories illegal in the eyes of the RIAA ? Future will say …

Microsoft, GitHub and LinkedIn

What’s the common point between Microsoft and GitHub ? For those who are not in the tech world or who lived in a cave during the last couple of months, Microsoft bought GitHub. Being also behind the professional network, LinkedIn, we can guess their best engineers work probably on both platforms data to achieve their primary goal : make money.

Of course, they also use GitHub for their own projects like the VSCode editor and that way they get the insurance of never seeing the project disappear. They added some feature though like the unlimited number of private repositories that used to be limited to three if my memory is right. Providing some free services to get more people involved in their new toy make sense.

Even if they are sincere I can’t forget the fact they used to say Linux is just a tool for nerds in their garage. All their efforts to make the opensource distribution look like just a non-professional OS make no doubt about their first goal : profit ! Ballmer, the Bezos look clone, said once :

I may have called Linux a cancer but now I love it

Steve Ballmer

It’s like saying Hitler loved Jews, I just can’t believe them. And I’ll continue to use opensource products instead of Microsoft’s ones.

Alternatives to GitHub

Git is decentralized by default meaning if someone around you has a private server, he could probably provide you a place to host your repositories on his server. If that’s not the case you can still use one of these services :

They are both free and are a way better alternatives to GitHub. Just try them.

When did I start using Linux ?

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 09:20:25 +0200

When did I start using GNU/Linux systems … A while ago. My first encounter with a Linux distribution was back in 1996. It was a Debian 1.2, codename Buzz, released June 17th ‘96 which only had 474 packages and used a 2.0 Linux kernel. Today, Debian counts around 59.000 packages in its latest release : Buster.

Since the first day I met a terminal, I was conquered. I loved everything about the opensource ecosystem, the philosophy and every little thing in the community. Even the incalculable number of times I got an RTFM in my face on IRC wasn’t a thing that annoyed me because of course the documentation is the first thing to read before bothering people.

Today, when someone has an issue he usually posts a question or browse for a solution on StackOverFlow without having the common sense to read the man pages in the first place. Recently, we found out the most copied Java code snippet on StackOverFlow was buggy. At work, we had a young colleague that was questioned about a code he wrote, he said he just found the answer on the web without even knowing how it was supposed to work. 🤦‍♂️ Throwing them an RTFM from time to time is a great way to help them understand how things work and be more autonomous.

During the years, I’ve tried these GNU/Linux distros :

Debian
RedHat
Mandrake
Mandriva
Fedora
Gentoo
Arch
CentOS
Suse/ OpenSuse
TurboLinux
Knoppix
Kali
Parrot
Ubuntu
Qubes
DragonFly
Ubuntu Studio

At work, my daily routine was a concerto on Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. And of course, I tested/used *bsd systems like OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD. My favourite was OpenBSD because security was a subject I was interested in and I just loved their logo. 😅

A long time passed before seeing a Linux server in a data centre but slowly and surely it happened. Now, servers using GNU/Linux are everywhere and that’s really a good thing but it was a long, long journey and it’s not even close to be on every personal computer.

Microsoft’s systems left the house in 2000 when I stopped playing games on my desktop computer and invested in a laptop. My main games are chess, sometimes go, the Chinese game not the language, and poker with friends, a difficult game to play with lockdowns and curfews.

An old 2010 iMac is the only devil software present in my house because I use CaptureOne. I would rather ditch it and buy a big screen to be able to have only one big screen to use an opensource alternative like Darktable. Paying DT developers would be a pleasure to see improved features and a better camera support. I haven’t spent enough time on DT to see if it would be a great alternative. And my printing issue isn’t resolved yet.

The rest of my laptops are all installed with Debian. After a ton of experimentation, I always came back to Debian. People tend to avoid it for their workstation because software are not always up-to-date but that’s why I usually go for the testing/unstable branches. It’s been a while since one of this branch broke my laptop and force me to reinstall everything. From memory, it only happened twice over 24 years… Not too bad I guess for an unstable version.

People around me try to convince me to give a new shot to Windows to see how it improved over the years, and they keep saying “Now you have Linux inside” making it even more repellent to me.

Years have passed and I still love Debian and will probably stick with it for many other years.
What about you ?

Rust, a very soft initiation

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 10:08:57 +0200

Rust is a language I wanted to learn for a while but I struggled to really commit myself to it. Some features and concepts are irritating and bring some frustrations even to senior developers.

Quite amusing to read last week that Horst is learning it at a slow pace too. Of what I’ve read the learning process is the same for everyone. 😅

Before starting to learn it, I wanted to configure my preferred editor to be able to use it with that new language. Here how I configured it!

Rust-vim

First, I installed rust-vim with vim-plug. For those who don’t know about vim-plug, it’s an easy way to install new vim plugins.

Just add this line to your configuration :


 Plug 'rust-lang/rust.vim'

and do a :PlugInstall.

It adds syntax support plus it integrates with Syntastic and registers cargo as a syntax checker that could help you when you start with the language.

That will indicate errors and line numbers when you make a mistake in a new buffer at the bottom of your page. Like this :

If you like you can also configure it to use rustfmt to format automatically your code. Not doing it on my side because I prefer to be the one choosing how my code will be formatted.

Racer

First, we need to install racer also known as Rust Auto-Complete-er. I use cargo to install it :


 ## Requirements
 % rustup toolchain add nightly

 %cargo +nightly install racer

It provides context Rust code completion. I coupled it with deoplete, a completion neovim/vim 8 plugin, that I installed a while ago.

To install vim-racer, with vim-plug it’s the same way :


 Plug 'racer-rust/vim-racer'

Then you will need to add these lines to your ~/.vimrc :


 set hidden
 let g:racer_cmd = "$HOME/.cargo/bin/racer"
 let g:racer_experimental_completer = 1 # show the complete function definition
 # (e.g. its arguments and return type) 
 let g:racer_insert_paren = 1 # insert the parenthesis in the completion:

I needed to add two things : the rust source package and a variable to be able to use racer completion:


 % sudo apt install rust-src

 ## This line should be added to pour ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc or any other shell
 ## you use 

 % export RUST_SRC_PATH=/usr/src/rustc-1.46.0/src

Then you have this kind of completion:

There are other tools and plugins but so far that’s the only ones installed on my setup.

What about you ? What do you use ?

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/10/11/rust-more-modular-than-expected/

RE: Inboxes and the Eisenhower Method

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:50:16 +0200

My way on prioritizing my tasks. I have a 1/2 page with my top tasks of the week where I write down my top tasks of the current week. Some of them are coming from my monthly to-do list.

Daily, I have three numbered items ordered by priority this way :


 I .
 II .
 III .

 .
 .
 .

And bullet points just below to list others tasks. If I have an urgent one coming out of the blue, I add it to the end this way :


 I .
 II .
 III .

 .
 .
 .

 IV . new urgent task

If it’s really pressing, I use an ! in the front of the task this way :


 ! IV .

For now that’s the way, I’m dealing with this kind of things 😉

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/10/06/inboxes-and-the-eisenhower-method/

Media Consumption - September 2020

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 10:43:49 +0200

My bullet journal helps me to track daily things I do. After seeing the August page of Julian, I’ve decided to wrote down and hunt my media consumption month over month. The idea is to spend less time on useless things and more on reading for example. After summing up everything, I didn’t except those numbers 😅 :

46 Podcasts (1210 min)
3 books
4 movies (471 min)
11 videos (81 min)
19 NBA games (2273 min)

PODCASTS

Darknet Diaries : Episodes 66 to 75 (550 min)
France Inter : 23 podcasts (108 min)
Rabbit Hole : Episodes 3-8 (250 min)
Social Engineer : Episode 130 (46 min)
Stuff You Should Know: 2 episodes (79 min)
The One about Information Consumption (49 min)
Hackable : Gone Phishing (37 min) and Malicious Life (30 min)
Risky Business : Episode 547 (61 min)

BOOKS

The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde (100%)
Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday (50%)
On the shortness of Life by Seneca (20%)

MOVIES

American Made - 2017 (115 min)
Black Panther - 2018 (134 min)
Your Name - 2016 (107 min)
Escape - 2013 (115 min)

VIDEOS

Defcon 27 : The Basics of Social Engineering (24 min)
Bullet Journal (57 min)

NBA

19 NBA games (2273 min)

Photo credit : Julius Drost

What social media brings to your life ?

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 10:10:14 +0200

May 2018 was the month I deleted my Facebook account. I remember them asking if I wanted just to disable it temporarily, a way to get your profile back quickly just in case you needed a quick scrolling fix. Friends, family and people boil down their digital lives to centralized platforms where the key is to know everything about your habits. Nir Eyal wrote an excellent book, Hooked, describing why some products capture our attention and how it is exerted against us. On social media apps, our behaviour is constantly scrutinized with one unique goal : to sell our data to their partners.

Over the ensuing weeks, Instagram and WhatsApp suffer an identical fate and one after the other were deleted from my phone and laptop. The first mainly because of the pervasive ads you get every 4th or 5th image in your timeline. The second due to the fact that we saw stories landing on their new shiny acquisition. Why would I want Stories in my messaging app !? All these lack of innovation companies are using the same patterns and features : stories, likes, shares and comments. Do we really need the same useless things on each app ?! Even LinkedIn got the same sanction and I wrote about why I left it.

In my daily life, certain things drive me even more crazy, targeted ads and articles are some of them. They used to overrun my timeline, losing my friends posts between the spread ones they promote. I hated it deeply. And, one day, out of the blue, I wondered :

What all those apps brings to my life? Should I just leave ?

Initially, Facebook offered me an easy way to stay connected with people. Through the years, you lose touch with old friends or even family. Living in different cities or countries and keeping in touch is often a difficult task. Then new people enter your life, you add them on your social network and you share moments even if you aren’t able to see each other in real life. It felt like a great way to be together again… or at least that was I used to think. But quickly, a thought overwhelmed me about mean comments and endless quarrels on useless things. Wasn’t social media supposed to be a great experience? When I got out all I could remember is the annoyance and disruption on people’s timelines. Social media is an addiction everybody should stop and quit. Life existed before and will continue without it. The only reason it was created was to make money in our capitalism world where you are only judged by what you possess.

To summarize, today my social media combines Mastodon and Twitter accounts and this website. Twitter is only used to chat with some friends but I really think about quitting it soon.

Pixelfed, the Instagram fediverse clone, instance I have is not a thing I want to waste my time with anymore. No it’s not because of the stories arriving there too… Or is it? 🤔 It’s just I prefer to commit my time on this website where I can post anything I want including pics, random thoughts or rants.

Social media will keep you focused on useless things and you should really quit it.

Canon, I gave up !

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 11:59:57 +0200

Canon, I loved you but those feelings are gone. I used to have a Canon 7D that I sold to buy a 5D MK III. Everything was great, we were in love until a new rival appeared. The discovery of the Fuji X100 changed everything, that little piece of technology was light, charming with that old vintage look and fit in all my pockets compared to that big black dusty chunk of magnesium. She wasn’t loved any more and left behind on the shelves, that’s when I decided to break up with Canon more or less.

Owning a camera in our digital world isn’t a fancy trend anymore. The main reason is because everybody got a camera in his pocket thanks to our multitasks mobile phones. They almost do everything for us even when don’t want them too (backups to GAFAM clouds for example) and they changed how we photograph our daily life. One more thing people don’t do those days is to print the pictures they take. They are left in our pockets or are posted online on platforms where they can be used the way they want by our dear friends from the GAFAM.

Printing my pics is a thing I like to do. Leaving memories to my daughter or offering them to my friends/family is always a pleasure. That’s why I bought a few years ago the Canon Pixma Pro 10, a 20 kg heavy 10 cartridges printer giving great results… when it works.

The printer is not a cheap one and it will cost you about ~€115 to change the ten ink tanks. I tried some 3rd party ones and it failed really hard, so I got back to the Canon ones. Ten months ago and before the COVID-19 lockdown, the printer started to behave weirdly. I stumbled upon Jose Rodriguez videos on YouTube about best practices on how to use that printer.

Things I discovered :

you need to print at least once a week a page to avoid the ink to dry. 😱
you can fill the tanks manually but it’s quite tricky, time-consuming and you need a specific hardware to reset empty tanks (they have some electronic chips on them to know the level ink and to avoid manual ink filling).
every time you clean your printer’s heads it consumes ink … a LOT!

The issue I have on mine is that there are two parts in the ink carriage. When you clean them you can decide if you want to clean them all or the right/left side with specific colours. It looked like the left part was clogged up and a dozen of cleaning didn’t help. A replacement of the head and inks didn’t fix it.

My initial thoughts and calculations were it will be cheaper if I often print but the issues I got weren’t supposed to be so awful. I had to go twice to the support center to get it fixed…

First time, they told me it was fixed but the same issue was there. Spent some time on a call with the support but I ended up to go back there again. Second time, the problem was fixed for 13 days only. The exactly same problem appeared just one week after, but I managed to fix by doing two deep cleaning. But then a couple of days after, the same pain in the ass was there!

8 was the number of times I tried to clean up the head in vain. The only thing I succeeded to do was to clear out my ink cartridges leaving me just with the envy to through it out the window. 😡

The money spent on that printer so far is :

two heads : €318
40 ink tanks : €452
cleaning at the Canon support center : ~ €40
taxi to the Canon support center : €120

TOTAL : €930

Now, I won’t try to fix it. The time and money spent on that piece of hardware was way too high.

I need to find an alternative to be able to continue to print my pics. The issue I face right now is about privacy because I don’t really like the idea of sending private pics to some photo lab. The other reason may be because of Robin Williams in the movie One Hour Photo 😅.

Epson has some good printers apparently but I’m already bored with the idea of reading benchmarks…

Canon, my love, your latest customers cloud ransomware issue and everything we went through sealed our relationship. I’m done with you!

Re: Ordered 1984 again

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 09:40:46 +0200

Got it in English yesterday in my mailbox. I do the same as you do except I made a mistake and got “The Sketchnote Handbook” in french. 🤦‍♂️

Usually, I tend to get English versions because they’re better than the translated ones.

Remind me what my father told me once about western movies dubbed in French (almost all movies have that feature) :

“It’s really weird to hear Jonh Wayne in French”

Not surprising to see French people not good at talking English.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/09/13/ordered-1984-again/

My favourite acronyms

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 11:55:06 +0200

My journey with computers started a long way ago. When I discovered GNU/Linux distributions, I was 19 years old and I remember spending a lot of times online and on IRC where I often got answers to some of my questions. But sometimes I just forgot to read the man pages and the response I did get were just a couple letters glued together. And since then my favourite acronyms are :

RTFM aka Read The F*cking Manual
PEBKAC aka Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

Today, I still use them to point out the documentation that people obviously never read before asking their question. 😅

Webmentiond and redirects

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 00:17:29 +0200

Apparently the bug was on webmentiond side. Horst fixed it

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/09/12/webmentiond-and-redirects/

One month of bullet journaling

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 18:01:03 +0200

Bullet journaling was a thing on my to-do list for a while and last month I decided to give it a try. I always loved paper and pens and even if I like Taskwarrior I found out that I have a lot of tasks that didn’t move an inch and are glued on that list.

Notebooks were always my companion but every time many tasks got lost between pages and I needed an easy way to reschedule them again. Bullet journaling helps you to report them easily and have a clear view what needs to be done, what you have done and important future dates.

Personally, I use Dingbats notebooks and I prefer them to Leuchtturm 1917 or Moleskine that I had before. The paper just feels better and it’s eco-friendly, certified Vegan and produced in a green factory with recyclable materials.

Pens

I don’t use a lot of them even if I have a full pencils case of various kinds.

The 3 I used to write in my bujo are :

a Faber-Castell fountain pen that I love
a red ink PIGMA Micron 0.4
a 0.3mm mechanical Staedler pencil

If you check online, you’ll probably find a lot of really artistic journals but the point of this is to have a system that allows you to track habits, get more things done and increase your productivity. That’s the reason, I stick only with 3 types of pens.

Organizing my bujo

Every bullet journal has the usual pages :

index
future log
monthly tasks
habit tracking

On mine I added specific pages for :

birthdays
quotes I like
photographers I heard of and I want to learn more about
movies, tv shows and documentaries
podcasts, articles and books page where I track what I’ve read or listen to
brain dumps where I write down ideas or random thoughts that need to be investigated

The goal is to find a way to organize your workflow to avoid losing track of your tasks. It’s fine to have different systems until it helps you to be productive.

When I don’t have my journal with me, I add some notes on my phone that I will report in the brain dump pages as soon as I can.

Week pages

My week is divided in 4 pages this way :

Each page is divided in two. The first page upper part is where I write my Top Tasks of the Week. Then each day has a half of a page with on the right side a timeline to know where I spent my time. That’s a thing I added because we need to track time spent for the company I work for.

Top 3 tasks are also written down to know what I should finish first the next morning.

Habit tracking

Habits was an app I had on my mobile but I prefer the paper version tailored the way I want. That’s the beauty of BuJo, you can adapt it for your needs.

Here is mine that I stole from Elsa Rhae 😅

That’s all for my setup. So far I love it and it takes me a couple of minutes each morning or evening to review what I have to do. The boring part is to rewrite over and over your next week but I listen to podcasts when doing it.

Below are some pics of my pages.

Bujo 2

Bujo 3

Bujo 5

Bujo 6

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/09/13/six-months-of-bullet-journaling/

Junk food and love

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 11:02:16 +0200

Burger King was a sacred place we loved to go when I was younger with some friends. But as you getting older, you start thinking about what kind of food you have in your plate. Super Size Me was the first documentary I saw about Mc Donald and the side effects it has on your body if you eat every day their products. 30 days after he started it, Morgan Spurlock gained 11 kilograms, got mood swings and others awful repercussions.

Few years ago a French documentary investigated Coca-Cola and how they drained all the water available in a Mexican countryside. That left people with two choices : to buy water or the cheaper Coke option. Seeing young kids drinking that black sugared water made me furious. The impact on the wildlife is also dramatical because they took all the available water in that region forcing animals to move. For information, you need approximatively 5 litres of water to produce one of this mixture. During the all documentary, the reporter tried to interview the company’s staff … in vain.

A friend told me an interesting story about a meeting he had with a 9 people team coming directly from Atlanta, the Coca-Cola HQ is located there, and for three days those guys drank only water. They avoided their own products during meals or meetings and that made me wonder if they had some results of how bad those beverages could affect our bodies.

All these restaurants are places I would rather see going in bankruptcy but instead we saw people in line waiting for the McDrive as soon as the lock down was lifted. 🤦‍♂️

Even if their food is not great for your health, an aspect I love about those companies are some of their advertising campaigns which are from time to time excellent.

Burger King ones are always funny and often mocking their big adversary : Mc Donalds.
But this one is a bit different and the purpose is to spread love and give support to the LGBT movement.

And to be honest, it’s quite brilliant.

Ordered 1984 again

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 14:10:19 +0200

Yesterday, I ordered 1984 because I lent the book to someone and never saw it again 😢.

It was on my wish list for a while and I made a mistake to give it to some friend before reading it first.

Anyway, I’ll probably get it soon and will share some of my thoughts too.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/09/09/some-thoughts-on-1984/

Darknet Diaries

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:16:30 +0200

If you are interested in infosec you may have already heard about some of the stories but on my side I discovered also new really entertaining ones.

I discovered also the “social engineer” podcast that you can find on social-engineer.org but haven’t listened to it yet.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/09/09/podcasts-darknet-diaries/

Podcasts : Darknet Diaries

Wed, 09 Sep 2020 06:21:56 +0200

Podcasts, I love them. Some friends can’t understand that love or just can’t be focused for 30+ minutes on someone talking at the radio. Every free moment I have, I use it to learn things. That could be when I’m at the grocery store, doing a jogging, washing dishes or any other tasks that my brain can be used to do multitasking.

Darknet Diaries is a podcast I discovered a couple of months ago and I really enjoyed the show. There are 73 episodes around one hour each. The first episode was released in October 2017 by Jack Rhysider.

Darknet Diaries is a podcast about cyber-security and in general hacking even if the term should be cracking. The show provides a lot of great stories about the world scene and how individual persons, groups like Anonymous or even states break into systems all over the globe.

The last three episodes, from 71 to 73, are mainly about North Korea. How the dictatorship keeps tight control of all information available in the country and how they modified and created their own Linux OS to screenshot what people are doing. North Korea used also some blackhats to try to rob a $1 billion from a Bangladesh bank and was really close to be a success. Everybody heard about ransomware and there was one really naughty made by … you guessed it : North Korea again.

Various episodes talk about pentesting and I really enjoyed the one with Freaky Clown that I discovered in this video where he talks about his “rob a bank” job :

It’s not really a technical podcast and you don’t need a degree in computer sciences to understand them and that’s great for people who want to learn more about the infosec culture.

It goes from XBox cracking to states hacking each other passing through darknet websites created to sell drugs, worms creation, hacktivists, hacking MySpace and casinos and a lot more.

I won’t spoil you anything and I really encourage you to check the podcast.

Disney+

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 22:35:17 +0200

My brother told me the same thing the other day, and he was quite disappointed because the French offer, or probably the European one, doesn’t include the same movies as the US based subscription. Using a VPN could maybe solve the issue but I’m not even sure because they probably logged the origin country of the subscriber making him unable to use the US one even with a VPN.

The same way, you did I personally watched only The Mandalorian and some Disney and Pixar movies with my daughter. I was thinking about cancelling my subscription but I prefer her to watch old Disney movies than the ones you have today.

What I would love is to subscribe to HBO though because they have some great series but I haven’t checked if that’s a possibility for Europeans.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/08/21/rumored-adult-section-for-disneyplus/

Netflix are you serious ?

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 06:51:58 +0200

Netflix, what’s wrong with you ?! Last night, I stumbled upon some post about a new show coming 9th of September called Cuties.

Here’s the description:

“Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.”

That description was really … strange not to say really disturbing. The movie was made by the French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré.

Doucouré, who is also Senegalese, as Amy, won the jury award at Sundance for directing the movie. She got the inspiration from a shocking talent show in Paris where she had a lot of questions she talked about with ScreenDaily :

“They danced in a very sexually suggestive manner. There also happened to be a number of African mothers in the audience. I was transfixed, watching with a mixture of shock and admiration. I asked myself if these young girls understood what they were doing.”

She tried to understand how a difference of culture can be seen from the eyes of a young kid torn between her family traditions and the society we live in. She followed and interviewed the girls for a year trying to understand what are their motive and if they understood how people could misinterpret their dance.

Doucouré won a prize, so I guess the movie is probably interesting in some way (I’ve never been a dancing movie fan). But what made people angry online is not really the dancing part but more how Netflix promoted the movie using a disconcerting image and description that Epstein could have used for his sick friends.

Trying to reach the movie details on their website gave me a 404. Probably because a petition was signed by more than 30.000 persons and because social media got crazy about it.

Here are the pictures used to promote the movie. Netflix on the right side, Maïmouna Doucouré on the left side.

The message sent is definitely not the same and I guess some people are getting fired today …

YouTube alternative

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 06:30:06 +0200

YouTube, that small website that became a giant of the web streaming hours and hours of video contents.

Google paid $1.65B to buy YouTube in 2006, one year after it was created. People working at Google saw the huge potential the website had and that’s the reason why it was so expensive to buy.

The first video uploaded to the platform was this one :

Since that one a lot of videos have been uploaded. YouTube announced that ~300 hours of video are uploaded every minute, so that’s 18,000 hours uploaded per hour. Almost everybody did an upload to their platform at least once.

YouTube doing its job, it removes from time to time videos including racism, violence, child sexual exploitation and other scams. And that’s a good thing.

But YouTube removed also channels that are legit. Since 2019, they changed their Terms of service and now can remove any channel that is not commercially viable meaning : “you don’t get enough views so get out of my platform”.

Here the change :

Terminations by YouTube for service changes. YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or parts of the service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the service to you is no longer commercially viable.

That’s bad… But it’s not the only thing. YouTube knows exactly how to target you with ads that you’ll be happy or incline to watch. How? Every time you watch a video, you have this annoying ad at the start. Depending on if you skipped it quickly or not, an algorithm can determine what kind of content you prefer and will trigger only the ones that matches your previous behaviours.

Of course, you can use https://invidio.us/ to get rid of those ads but you’re still using a centralized platform that could shut down at any moment or change again their terms of service making some of your videos banned.

A better alternative exist…

PeerTube

Started in 2015 by Chocobozzz, development of PeerTube is now supported by Framasoft. The goal is to provide an opensource decentralized version of YouTube, Dailymotion or Vimeo.

The technology behind uses ActivityPub and WebTorrent and the main goal is to reduce load on each server running an instance using P2P also known as peer-to-peer.

As Mastodon or Pixelfed, you can create a user on a specific instance or self-host your own if you have the skills.

I discovered this morning a PeerTube search engine allowing you to search for a specific video amongst all the instances, just check it at https://peertube-index.net/.

I couldn’t find a GitHub or any statement about the copyright of that crawler but I hope they will make it opensource.

For all the video makers, I really encourage you to use and spread the word about that alternative to GAFAM.

Photo credit : Dan-Christian Paduret

What's next ?

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 13:19:36 +0200

Thanks! Hope you’re enjoying your holidays.

And hopefully we’ll be writing again soon 😉

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/notes/2020/08/15/last-one/

Last one

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 22:22:13 +0200

After 3 months, that is the last post for the #100DaysToOffload challenge initiated by Kev. The main goal of his project was to encourage people to write more and it did work with me with the feedbacks and help of some nice persons I met.

Thanks to Kev, Horst, Guillermo, Basil, Yarmo and many others who spent some time to read annoying things of my life. 😅

I suggested to Horst to check the #100DaysToRead challenge but I’m not sure he will 😅. Same on my side, I will see how it goes. One of my goal this year was to read more.

What I know for sure, I will keep writing and I’ll do a better postmortem of this challenge. For now, I’ll take a step back and take some time to meditate on all this.

Post 100/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Javier Graterol

Face masks mandatory

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 21:18:31 +0200

Monday, 10th August 2020. The world surpassed 20 million recorded coronavirus cases. Last week, the government announced that starting from today some zones in Paris can’t be approached without wearing a face mask.

Things, once unthinkable, are part of our daily life now. I never thought that I would live something like a world pandemic.

Politicians in France made really some weird decisions during the last months. Saying things and their opposite in a matter of days losing people faith in them. Personally, they are all the same to my eyes and I just can’t trust them.

Our dear president flew to Beirut after the port incident blasting all the neighbourhood. Why ? Probably to bring more contracts to his big companies friends.

At the same time, in Paris, you need to be a cartographer to know the streets where you can go with or without a mask. If it’s a public health concern, just tell people to wear masks instead of playing with us.

Post 99/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Pawel Czerwinski

Feedback about Tuxedo InfinityBook

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 08:59:04 +0200

Debian, was, is and will always be my favourite GNU/Linux distribution if we don’t see other weird decisions like systemd. My new laptop, an InfinityBook from Tuxedo, got delivered one week ago and I didn’t get time to use it more. I still use my X1 Carbon since I got it because to be honest I didn’t want to spend time with that shiny Ubuntu pre-installed. It looks probably great for new users but I can’t live without my awesome window manager environment.

Ubuntu, I had some bad experience in the past that doesn’t make me more confident with the operating system. Do you remember this issue which used to wipe out all partitions? I’m not sure if it’s the same but there was also an update script that didn’t check if a variable was correctly set leading to something like rm -fr $VAR/. But without a check, you’ll basically wipe out your hard drive. That happened to a lot of people back then.

So, today I decided to install a new OS on my new toy. I got an iso on the official Debian webpage and did a basic installation based on the testing version, Bullseye.

Almost everything worked out of the box except the Wi-Fi. I usually use Debian Sid on my workstation, so I did a kernel upgrade to the latest available, the 5.7.0-2 and upgraded also the firmware-iwlmifi package. Oh and yes, you’ll need a USB->Ethernet cable to be able to upgrade your OS.

One thing surprised me is the fact that a lot of commands where not working until I figured out that /usr/sbin wasn’t in root’s PATH anymore and I had to set up it manually. Weird.

I have also an issue with my .Xdefaults and my terminal fonts but that will be easy to fix.

Little things about this laptop, first the annoying ones.

I prefer the keyboard of the X1 Carbon that is smoother and less cliking.

The same way, I prefer the Thinkpad’s trackpad with its buttons. I can’t figure out how to get a right click or how to copy/paste correctly with it unless using the Shift+Ins key combo. There is just no button on this one.

I would have loved maybe an external chassis more robust, it looks like plastic. That’s the only thing I like about MacBook laptops, their solid built quality. I noticed also that it gets quite hot when you charge it, an USB-C charge is possible too but I haven’t tested it yet. Maybe it will be cooler that way.

Otherwise, it’s blazing fast thanks to the i7 CPU, the 40Gb of RAM and to the SSD disk. I love the fact that Tuxedo offers a native Dvorak keyboard. That’s possible because they do a laser printing on blank keyboard and I’m still wondering why every manufacturer is not doing the same. The battery is great so far but I’ll wait to use it a bit more extensively to see how it goes.

Overall, it’s a nice laptop that I need to get used to.

Post 98/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Share your terminal

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 22:02:57 +0200

Terminals are where I spent most of my day when I’m in front of my computer. It’s my main daily tool. Almost everything I do it’s in that little black box. When I need a new tool, I always check if there is a CLI equivalent.

One thing, I stumbled upon today is StreamHut, it enables you to share your terminal with anyone using netcat and your shell. You can also selfhost the tool on your own server using Docker.

Here is a demo of the tool :

Other tools can be used to do the same, one I use from time to time is simply screen. They are both enabling to use multiple remote terminals with only one on the local side. You can start a remote session, detach it and reconnect to the same session later to see if the job is done.

screen

Here is how to do it with screen :


 # start a remote session
 % screen

 # press Ctr-a + d to detach the session

 # ssh again to the same box
 % screen -r

If you started more than one sessions, you’ll have to tell which one you want to attach to explicitly :


 % screen -r
 27246.pts-0.remote (08/08/20 21:32:19) (Detached)
 17180.pts-0.remote (13/05/20 01:13:37) (Detached)

 % screen -r 27246.pts-0.remote
 # and you're back where you left become detaching the session

You can also share your session with a friend, a colleague or your mom.

To be able to share a session between two accounts you need to set a SUID bit on screen binary which can lead to some security issue. That’s why, I prefer to create a shared user where people can use the same login/password to be able to join the session. Then you only need two commands :

First user logs in and create a session :


 # we give the session a name
 % screen -S my_fancy_session_name

then the second user joins the session :


 % screen -x my_fancy_session_name

That’s it!

I never took the time to configure tmux but I know you can do exactly the same with it.

Teleconsole

It’s a tool pretty simple and easy to use :

Install it with :


 % curl https://www.teleconsole.com/get.sh | sh

 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
 100 933 100 933 0 0 2380 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 2380
 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
 Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
 100 142 100 142 0 0 196 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 196
 100 648 100 648 0 0 644 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 --:--:-- 644
 100 5673k 100 5673k 0 0 2576k 0 0:00:02 0:00:02 --:--:-- 7544k
 Copying teleconsole binary into /usr/local/bin
 [sudo] password for hyde:
 Teleconsole has been installed into /usr/local/bin/teleconsole

then start it with :


 % teleconsole
 Starting local SSH server on localhost...
 Requesting a disposable SSH proxy on eu.teleconsole.com for hyde...
 Checking status of the SSH tunnel...

 Your Teleconsole ID: eu1f84e9b98ntenasl12nteol1lol4d3d5ceaa0186
 WebUI for this session: https://eu.teleconsole.com/s/eu1f84e9b98ntenasl12nteol1lol4d3d5ceaa0186
 To stop broadcasting, exit current shell by typing 'exit' or closing the window.

Be careful with that Teleconsole ID because if anyone has it, he will be able to get a shell on your computer.

Then your colleague or mom can join using :


 % teleconsole join eu1f84e9b98ntenasl12nteol1lol4d3d5ceaa0186

or by clicking or the WebUI link.

Now you are sharing the same session.

To end it, just type :


 % exit

That’s a great and easy way to create an access even if your box is behind a NAT to just get access to a computer remotely.

Post 97/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Screen time

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 22:54:26 +0200

Spent some time today, reinstalling apps on my second OnePlus 7 Pro where I ditched /e/ to install LineageOs instead. One good thing I miss, with the OnePlus OxygenOS, is the automated way to migrate your data and apps from one phone to a new one. I didn’t find any way to do it easily. Maybe an adb backup and restore but I didn’t try.

Screen time is a thing I wrote about at the beginning of the #100DaysToOffload challenge. I used an app called Lock me out that used to be on F-Droid. But today, I couldn’t find it. Available on Aurora Store, actually with no trackers reported by Exodus, I was still a bit intrigued why it’s not on F-Droid anymore.

I don’t know why I thought that app was opensource but it’s apparently not the case. The company behind is Teqtic, a Canadian one. I checked their website and I can’t see what is their business model. All of their apps are free. So even if their privacy policy statement is :

Information Collection and Use

Lock Me Out will keep a record of what apps you have used and for how long if usage monitoring is enabled. It may check your location in order to perform its location-based lockouts. Teqtic does not collect, or share any of this information. It is securely stored locally on the device to perform the Lock Me Out’s functions.

I didn’t like this shady part :

If we make a change to this policy that, in our sole discretion, is material, we will update https://www.teqtic.com/lockmeout-privacy-policy. By continuing to access or use the Services after those changes become effective, you agree to be bound by the revised Privacy Policy.

Plus, I don’t like the website, it looks like one made by a scammer with small html knowledge or using free templates found on the web. As often said, if it’s free, you are the product.

That’s why I won’t be using that app to track how often I lock/unlock my phone or what app I use the most.

I guess I will have to find an alternative or just to slow down the amount of time I use my phone which is probably too high anyway.

Post 96/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Mildly Usefel

Apple, for God sake stop it!

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 15:11:19 +0200

Once again, Apple takes his fans for fools making product so expensive that I don’t get why people are still buying them. Since Steve Jobs passed away, the only thing that matters is to provide new products with higher prices at each new Keynote. I don’t see any improvement over the last few years.

I had the first iPhone and we were all happy and embracing a new tool that was going to change the way we communicate today. Jobs, during the Keynote announced a perfect tool for their new product : our finger. No pencil, no gadget but just our little pinkie finger.

A few years ago, they made a huge step back, adding a pencil in their iPad products. And for the modest sum of $129. Isn’t that great ?! Jobs must be turning in his grave.

This time, the product I want to talk about is a UBER PRODUCT.

No it’s not the latest MacBook, iMac Pro or the latest iPhones. By the way, I just discovered the fact they added back a physical ESC key who will bring joy on Vim users faces. So, it’s not about those products, it’s about this :

The price : $699 or €849 !

If you are wondering if that some kind of new earbuds or some waterproof speakers, you’re damn wrong!

These four little things are just stainless steel wheels. That’s right, just some f*cking wheels so you can move the worth a king’s ransom Mac Pro with a starting price of $5999 up to $38399 if you include all the most expensive things on it.

There are two good news though :

if you buy a Mac Pro, the wheels are only $400.
those wheels are only compatible with the current generation of Mac Pro.

More and more extra products are needed to be bought to be able to use your computer. Apple is really not products I want to own again. On their latest MacBook you don’t have any USB ports and you have to buy a specific hub to be able to connect a device.

Wasn’t the motto at one time “Think different” ?

I will definitely and hope to see other great companies like Tuxedo or System76.

Post 95/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Xavier Wendling

Love and Hate

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 15:14:41 +0200

The same way, I have a /uses page, I created two pages : /hate & /love.

The goal is just to write things pissing me off or enjoying doing on each page respectively. I don’t know yet how they will be shaped. Maybe some links, quotes, food, places, books, I liked/disliked.

The original idea was to create a website and let people chose which one they wanted to visit. I don’t have a clear vision yet but as I saw on Horst’s post quoting Ton Zĳlstra :

Your blog is your avatar, a full representation of yourself, made manifest online in HTML texts. Whether you want it to be or not. Time makes it unavoidable.

So I guess having those pages have their place here.

Other thing I’ve done today along my meetings, I unbricked my OnePlus 7 Pro and installed LineageOS.

Previously, I did an /e/ installation but something went wrong and I had it in my drawer for months. Both versions are quite similar but what I like about LineageOS is the Privacy Guard enabled by default on all new apps installed preventing them to access your personal data such as contacts, messages or call logs.

That wraps up this post and brings me 5 days left of that #100DaysToOffload challenge.

Post 95/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : DesignEcologist

100 days of blogging

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 14:30:27 +0200

Well done! I’ll finish mine Monday. And I have missed only one day. That’s a great challenge and a lot of people should try it.

I’ve read almost all posts from the blogroll on 100daystooffload.com. I’ve discovered great people and maybe one day we could have a drink together if the COVID-19 disappears at some point.

Will you try the #100DaysToRead challenge ? It’s my next one I think 😉

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/08/05/100-days-of-blogging/

Working from home and masks

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 22:05:18 +0200

Almost five months that I’ve been WFH aka working from home. And apparently it won’t stop before a long time. A friend, who works at Uber in San Francisco, told me it has been officially been announced that people won’t see their office for at least another year. The remote office has been extended until the next summer. Will Europe follow the big tech companies and keep their employees at home ?

Is that great or not? For some people, it is. For some it’s not.

Not having to go the office is a relief because I don’t like to depend on the vagaries of the French railroads system. When I lived in London, if your train is late, a partial refund of your ticket is possible. Not the case in Paris, I tweeted a while ago about constant train delays and the RATP told me to take a bus instead, and they would eventually make an effort if everything is down. 🤦‍♂️

Currently, the company where I’m contracting asks their teams to meet at least twice per month. You can avoid coming if you have any symptoms of illness whatever is it. So far, we have met only 3 times but some lonely colleagues have been there more often. Every time, I cycled to work because it’s just a 25/30 minutes journey.

On her side, Ms Hyde had a COVID-19 case today at her job. Apparently, a guy was tested positive recently. I don’t know how they got the information because nobody is automatically tested when you arrive at work. This won the team a go back home ticket.

A lot of cases are coming back to the point, and we see more and more cities or even countries closing their borders. That’s the case with Greece who closed theirs to Serbia where cases are spreading like wet Gremlins.

In France, we have another issue. Until now and started last July week, masks were mandatory in public spaces like stores, malls, buses, etc… Prefects of some departments can force people to wear masks in public spaces. That’s the case in some northern cities like Honfleur.

I don’t have anything against masks except I can’t stand using them for a long period but the main issue is something completely different. The cost!
Take a family with two kids, it will cost you around €300 per month to be compliant with the law. That’s quite a sum for some families or any family. And if you get caught not wearing one, you’ll probably get a fine of a certain amount. It’s €135 in a public place and I guess it’s going to be the same punishment.

Social distancing, washing hands regularly and avoid crowded places are common sense not adopted by everyone yet. We still have to be careful because it’s still around us. But applying that law will bring a not wearing mask hunt

I really hope that law will not be spread everywhere.

Post 94/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Note-taking: Zettelkasten

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 23:58:30 +0200

One week left and I’ll be done with the #100DaysToOffload challenge. Publish a post every day is not an easy task, especially if you want to post great articles. But I learnt a lot about different subjects like the Zettelkasten on Amolith’s blog. I started to dig a bit deeper to see how I could integrate a note-taking method in my daily blogs, newspaper, books reading and on podcasts I listen to.

Niklas Luhmann was a sociologist using that note-taking system. He wrote around 90.000 index cards and store every one of them in small boxes. He was born in 1927 and, back then there wasn’t a lot of software really helping him. 😅. The method helped him to write over 70 books and around 400 scholarly articles.

Today, there are a dozen of apps to write down notes. You should probably try a couple of them and find a system that works for you. The one I will try is Neuron, a CLI app that combines vim and search capabilities. On my mobile, I’ll probably use StandarNotes or the Notes for NextCloud app and synchronize them with my system later.

For now, I use only a simple file with vim and basic markdown snippets coupled with some plugins based on Amolith’s post where I can go through the tags using my favourite editor and some keys binding. Neuron looks more advanced but I have to give it a try first to see what I prefer.

I see a real value in that kind of method because I often forget or have been struggling to remember something. Plus, it’s a challenge to read or listen to something and write notes with your own words. It will help me to write more about interesting subjects with arguments. A problem could occur when you have too many notes on the same category because you could spend too much time to read each one of them. That could probably be filtered by looking for problems and answers to the paper you write about.

Going through your notes, you’ll learn maybe why you were right or wrong about a topic or an issue. But being right or wrong, shouldn’t be what you look for, instead the truth should be your goal. When two people are arguing about something, I don’t care to know which one is right, I only want the truth and open-mindedness. Being transparent, open-minded and looking for the truth are well described in Principles: Life and Work, a book written by Ray Dalio, a guy, starting from nothing, who applied his principles during all his life making him a billionaire.

Taking notes should be something we teach at schools with a basic system that students could improve to a method fulfilling any of their needs.

I’m sure I will be surprised what this method will bring to me and that’s definitely a method I’ll be teaching my daughter in the next years.

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End of the world

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 07:00:51 +0200

3.50AM. Woke up because of a bad dream, or maybe I should label it a nightmare. I don’t know yet. Anyway, I was going to miss another day of the #100DaysToOffload challenge because I didn’t have really nothing to talk about until now.

The dream goes this way.

Summer. Friends. Holidays.

We rented a nice house, the kind of architect-designed house with plenty of large windows, a pool and a lot of rooms. The weather was sunny, and we enjoyed it until a really weird thing happened. It started to get colder and colder, not just like an evening gentle breeze, but more like a real winter cold. We saw animals flying away. It was really like in the movie The day after tomorrow, when the eye of the storm started to freeze everything. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a disaster end world movie where climatic effects usher in global cooling and a new ice age.

Back to my dream, after trying to find some food and getting back to the place where we all stayed, I noticed ice starting melting and water getting higher and higher. We started seeing a lot of things floating around, and we needed to move quickly. There was a big sea wave coming towards us. I saw Ms Hyde and my daughter walking in front of me when my little princess said she forgot her little cuddly toy in the house and started to run in that direction.

And that’s when it aroused me. I don’t know why I dreamt about that. Usually, dreams are autobiographical thoughts based on your recent activities, conversations, or other issues in your life. Nightmares tend to be caused by stress, anxiety, or sometimes as a reaction to certain medications.

On my side, it’s maybe because my kid said the other day when we were dining :

Daddy is going to the sky.

That didn’t felt right and scary at the same time. It reminded me that boy, Cole Sear, from The Sixth Sense who was able to see and talk to the dead. Like she knew something I didn’t 😱

And maybe also because Ms Hyde made me noticed I have maybe a high blood pressure (and indeed that’s the case after testing it) and now she wants me to get a health check-up… Just in case.

My other day post about death and grief could also be a reason of this weird dream. Or the fact, that I almost drowned during my holidays or that we noticed a lot of Tsunami signs around the Guadeloupe.

That dream will definitely fit the nightmare category.

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Photo credit : Dave Martin

Squash and friends

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 23:27:36 +0200

Today, was a lazy day kind of. Breakfast with my girls, cleaning the house a bit, park and dinner with some friends. A male reunion where our halves were not invited. We spent the night to talk mainly about economics, this crazy COVID-19 pandemic and our kids future. Not really like a joyful talking but it was great to see them.

Two of them are cousins who love to argue who is the better at squash. One not living in Paris, every time he’s in town, they have to play together but this time, it didn’t go well for him, and he had a calf strain and couldn’t walk without crutches. I played that sport a couple of times and had sore back legs and ass due to the fact that they made me run on each centimetre of this tiny room of torture.

Squash, for those who never played it, is a game where you have to hit the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. It’s played with two persons in a box made of four walls, sometimes in Plexiglas, with painted lines on them delimiting the borders of the court. The ball is a small rubber one with dots indicating the bounce level. There is 4 kinds of balls :

Colour	Speed of Play	Bounce	Player Level
Double yellow	Extra Slow	Very low	Experienced
Yellow	Slow 16mm	Low	Advanced
Red	Medium	High	Medium
Blue	Fast	Very high	Beginner/Junior

If you never tried, I recommend it but be aware you need some stamina.

Anyway, always loved to see them bragging who is the best. We had a lot of trash talks but always just to have a good laugh and nothing really serious.

Went back at home near 1am. Couldn’t sleep and fired up Netflix and watched two French movies:

Five 6.3 on IMDB. I would have given it less than 6 for sure.
Lost bullet 6.2 on IMDB. That’s more a 5 to me.

They are not worth your time, watch something else.

Bedtime: 4:35 am.

Good night and good luck.

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Photo credit : Sven Mieke

A new laptop

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 23:51:58 +0200

Received my new laptop, a Tuxedo model, thin and light maybe too light, but more on that later. The current laptop I’m using is a 2015 ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen 3 released in 2015. I had some hardware issue with it and decided it was time to move on and get a new one.

This time I wanted to go with a company embracing FOSS completely and my first choice was to check System76 laptops because I stumbled upon the Lemur Pro that looked like my X1 Carbon that, by the way is a great machine.

I wanted something thin and light but not looking too plastic. The Lemur Pro looked like a great choice but it was in the States and in the meantime Martijn on Mastodon suggested me to check Tuxedo. What I loved also was the fact they are present on the fediverse and replying to customers really quickly. They pointed me to their InfinityBook S14 V5 model.

Compared to the Lemur Pro, it looks almost the same on the hardware side : CPU, RAM, screen size are the same. You can customize the hard drives, both offering a second HD option. On the external look, System76 opted for a black body and Tuxedo for a grey in magnesium.

The operating systems are :

Ubuntu 20.4 LTS for both
Pop!OS 20.4 with full disk encryption for System76
Tuxedo offers also OpenSuse and their own OS

I finally made my choice on Tuxedo because it’s closer to where I live, a two-year warranty compared to one year of System76 and a Dvorak keyboard. As far as I know, that’s the only company that offers it.

The following configuration is the one I ordered :

CPU i7
40Gb of RAM
512Gb Samsung 970 pro nvme PCIe disk.
Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200
Dvorak keyboard
An extra small charger

Disks capacity can go up to 4Tb but it’s far enough because I have only 256 not filled right now on my current laptop.

First impressions

I got the package delivered by UPS and first thing I noticed is that the box is inside another not branded box. Is that against theft? I don’t know but if not necessary it could be nice to use less paper and cardboard. The box contains two big Tux on A3 paper, the same way I don’t think it’s a necessary thing. Instead giving some stickers would be preferable 😉. A think I liked is the Admin mag reminded me Linux Mag, a French magazine about Linux and FOSS.

There is a small manual, a bootable USB stick, a postcard, a Tuxedo pen, my two chargers and the laptop.

The laptop was in a dark grey bag and I took it in my hands, it was light … Maybe too light. Opened up it feels a bit too toyish compared to the X1 that is a bit heavier but I prefer that weight. But that’s maybe because I’m not used to it yet.

I switched it on and it started quickly. I did tweak some parameters and Ubuntu showed up to be used.

I’m not a big fan of Ubuntu tried it twice when you could order Canonical’s installation CD-ROM for free back in 20.. Can’t remember the exact year.

Gave it another try two years ago, it lasted less than an afternoon on my work laptop. I just installed a Debian instead. ❤️

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Covid and plastic

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 23:24:34 +0200

19 That’s the number of masks I’ve seen on the ground riding to my office this morning. There were potentially more but that’s only the ones I came across. I haven’t read those protections are really biodegradable and seeing them everywhere is really a disgrace to our Mother Nature.

I’m pretty sure I prefer animals to some kind of people whose brains are just too fucked-up to make connection between a public bin and a used mask. For them, those stainless steel products with a hole inside are mistaken for RoboCop’s butt hole and presumably too filthy to use.

Anyway there is a superstar back in the spotlight again that we see everywhere : PLASTIC!

It is one key element of the masks everybody uses with a soft cotton part on one side covering our mouth and nose. There is also those made of a rigid transparent and thin piece of plastic in front of your face reminding me Dexter just before he cut and spread pieces of villains in the sea. I didn’t come across those one in the streets yet, but they will have to be recycled too at some point.

In some countries, plastic bags have been reauthorised in malls for sanitary reasons. Talking about malls, fruits and vegetables, those little bastards, who travel the world for free before getting on our shelves, are sometimes even more lucky to get wrapped individually in their own piece of plastic. Isn’t that great ? 🤦‍♂️

But why we use it everywhere? Because we think it will protect us! If condoms were made of some other substance, we wouldn’t use them as much. 😅

Our clothes, water bottles, computers, televisions, every product around us involve some kind of plastic.

Ecology? We pee on it!

There is an island, like a real f***ing island, in the middle of the ocean made of plastic and other detritus we, humans being, have created. Oceans of our planet are just a big filthy pool where we kill every day other species of this Earth.

Human beings are just too dumb to take a step back and think about the crisis we just had.

Instead, I’ve witnessed queues in front of Mc Donald’s drive-in as soon as we were authorized to get our ass out again. They probably thought :

“people are dying of COVID-19 but I rather die of some junk food”.

What’s wrong with us?!

They could have learnt new things, read more or take challenges like the #100DaysToOffload for example. Instead, they spent their time on Netflix. Don’t get me wrong, I do it also but sometimes, we should take time to think about life, not only our personal and private life, but the planet’s one and act as adults for our future generations.

As far as I know, this rock, called the Earth, is the only one where we can live for now.

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Death and grief

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 23:41:41 +0200

Today was one of these days when you get a lot of meetings. Spent my afternoon in two of them.

This morning I tried to get some job done but procrastination hit me hard when trying to work on some tasks I was supposed to.

I felt tired and couldn’t stop thinking about the latest deaths around me.

How bad do you need to be to drink that much to get a cirrhosis ? The person I knew was an athlete and an occasional drinker. Never seen him drunk to the point that he couldn’t walk for example. What really happened in his life? I will probably never know since I don’t have any contact with his family. He left this earth way too early with kids behind him. He was 43.

The second one had a heart attack and a fear to go to the hospital due to the COVID-19. Collateral damages like this one are probably plentiful. That person was 46.

Third case, a stroke causing the person to be in a coma that will probably leave serious consequences and never get him back how we used to know him. Parents chose to let him go… I can’t even imagine the feeling to see his kid pass away because it’s not supposed to be in this order. He was 45.

Fourth case, a heart attack. Stress and probably a manner of living that could have be improved in many ways. But it could also be a DNA heritage too. He left us. He was 41.

The last case, the one I feel terrible is about a young man who made an inexplicable act without leaving any note. He was young and had his life in front of him. Could that be avoided in some way ? What did we miss ? A broken heart ? The same way my friend who got the cirrhosis, they were probably both emotionally broken to not fight or ask for any help. He was only 19.

I remember myself as that age with a lot of dreams in my head. Basketball was all that was important back then. I wanted to live off it. Never get close to that even if I played in a semi-pro league. But I managed to learn from all those experiences making me the person who I am today with a confidence that some people are still looking for. Life is harder for some of us, everyone is different. Some have strength that others don’t, some are probably better at dealing hard choices in their existence too. But we must all fight back and be strong against this kind of things crossing our path.

I feel sad for this young lad and for people left behind leaving with grief. I really would have loved to help him in any way but, I guess, we just missed it…

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Back to reality

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 19:12:29 +0200

Since I got back from Guadeloupe, I still feel jet-lagged and I couldn’t get a great night of sleep. Not that I need plenty of hours, usually 6-7 are enough, but I slept only 9 in the last two days. And my body has started to feel it. Tonight, I’ll try to get early to bed hoping to get a relaxing night.

I still can’t believe the holidays are already behind us. It felt like I was there only a couple of days. Probably because we were so busy that time flew away so quickly. I wouldn’t have said no to an extra month on that idyllic island.

Back to work Friday afternoon … And still being lucky to do my job remotely and to have one.

I could have waited until Monday but I have a habit to get back the last day of the week mainly to read my emails, Slack and get the latest office’s news. That way, Monday morning I am ready to start the week without being left on the sidelines. I will have to get to the office this Thursday and ride to get there because I don’t want to get the bus or the metro.

Getting back in a masked Paris feels really strange. I never thought I would witness a city where the mask is mandatory in public places. We still don’t know what awaits us for the rest of this year. Will kids go back to school the way they used to ? Will we be able to go to concerts or any live exhibition? But the main question is still : will we have a vaccine soon?

In the meantime, an incalculable number of masks have been thrown away in the streets of Paris. I really don’t get that irresponsible beings acting that way. 🤦‍♂️

Real life, the one where we almost all have the same daily habits, including a 9-5 work, a journey to get there, saving money to be able to get a couple of weeks off per year for the luckiest ones. Should our life really be that way?

Paris! London! New-York! All are big cities! Places where you have a lot of things to see and to enjoy… In an ideal world. Reality is quite different though. When you live in France or in Paris, you don’t visit beautiful castles or latest Louvre’s exposition every week. Why? Because it’s there and often you will postpone it thinking you’ll have time for that.

SPOILER ALERT!!

It never happens or if it does it’s because you have visiting friends or family who wants to go there.

That said, would a remote work far from big cities bring me a better life ? I used to say that I will always stay in the metropolis. But getting old makes me think differently. Stress, panic attacks, now a pandemic make those asphalt jungles places to avoid. A pleasant sea view, a good internet connection and a remote work would be the perfect union to bring the best to you. We should all be working towards a better existence because we are only passing on this planet. And life is really too short.

The last four months have seen five close persons passed away. Three friends, a cousin and a young 19 years man who made an unthinkable act and left us way too early. Heart attacks, alcohol, stress and angst were common points in their life. Could they have lasted more choosing the quiet of the countryside to the excitement of the city? Who knows?

Do big cities’ glitz and glamour are worth the anxiety and pressure?

In my humble opinion, I don’t think so, and for sure a change need to be made …

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Disconnect!

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 06:30:00 +0200

Companies have been controlling way too many things in our life with only one goal : PROFIT !!
Data breaches and scandals on how our data has been used and sold have been exposed to the world. More and more people are conscious of how harmful these networks are. But, still they are using them due to the fact their family and friends are sharing moments, pictures and their life on these platforms.

Globally, people who deleted Facebook or Instagram felt better with less anxiety or stress and more free time. I was an addict too and first things when I wake up was to get updates from the social networks. That was at least a 20 minutes wasted on useless status, cats GIF, etc…

Without that bad habit I get free time to post something here or read articles I bookmarked for later reading. But, I won’t lie I still squander some time on social networks or should I say Mastodon because it’s the only one I use now. But overall, I blow far less time and content is better.

Signal is my daily app we use with friends and family. Pushing them to change and adopt a new tool is sometimes difficult especially when you have comments like :

Why you just don’t use WhatsApp like all people ?!

You don’t have a Facebook or Instagram account ?!

Then usually comes the time-consuming I have nothing to hide debate.

Another big issue about social media is bullying. A lot of kids bullying or people harassment has been made with those platforms where mean people can really hurt young or sensitive persons. A friend’s daughter, 10 years old, opened an Instagram account and got some people over 30 years old following her. That’s another kind of issue with these apps. You can’t really control what kids are doing and who is following them. Will they get injured ? Will people make fun of them ? These behaviours will hurt young kids inevitably. Parents should not let them spend time in front of a screen but sometimes it’s easier. I know I have been there too and I’m not proud of it.

I stumbled upon these two articles before and I just point them because it is worth the read : Yes, You Should Delete Facebook. Here’s Why and Instagram and Kids mental health. It’s about mental health with kids using Instagram and on how Facebook knows a lot about you.

Just don’t forget :

When a product is free, YOU are the product.

It’s the same way when you are at a poker table and you’re looking for the fish. Usually, when you can’t find it, you are the one.

Conclusion

The web should be a personal place where you post whatever you like or … hate. You should have your own domain name and a little space on the internet just for you and your thoughts. If you need some informations on how to set up this kind of things, you can reach me on Mastodon.

You should not be tracked down on every click you make or any website you visit. It used to be that way when I discovered the Internet back in the early 90s. It was fun to connect with people from the other side of the globe without the feeling of being spied.

Two days ago, I tooted about TMO’s desocial page with quick links to delete accounts on some social media. I just added some more here :

Delete your LinkedIn account

Delete your Twitter account

Delete your Instagram account

Delete your Facebook account

Delete your TikTok account

Delete your Snapchat account

Delete your accounts and remove those platforms from your life.

You’ll may feel better and happier too. 😅

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Ending Vim weekly tips

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 22:29:07 +0200

After 12 weeks of Vim Weekly tips, I just don’t have any idea what to write about it anymore. I will probably post some articles about my favourite editor in the future but right now, ideas to provide articles every week are gone.

Writing inspiration is still there and I have quite a bit of things to talk about in my to-do list though.

#100DaysToOffload

This post marks the 85th daily post I’ve done. Ok, it’s a lie I missed one day 😅. But it’s still a nice accomplishment. Covid-19 and remote work definitely allowed me to write more too. But on the other part, I’ve read fewer books because I did spend too much time reading #100DaysToOffload blogs and doing things potentially avoidable.

After this challenge, I’ll start a new one :

#100DaysToRead

where the goal is to read for one hour per day, take notes, post a short summary and gather your thoughts to provide maybe a great article from it.

Reading more was one of my goal for 2020 with two more :

Travel more
Read more
Photography more

And so far I’ve been failing really hard on the first two. Not all my fault though 😅.

Reading habit could be a great way to finish more books per year. Almost finished this challenge, so I’ll try to stick to this new one too.

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This post was a reply to https://secluded.site/100-days-to-read/

Keyoxide

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 09:25:37 +0200

Keyoxide was on my to-do list since Yarmo announced it on Mastodon. When keybase.io got acquired by Zoom, a lot of people removed their account. Covid-19 helping, Zoom got a lot of attention during the last couple of months, not only because it’s an easy way to have online video meetings but particularly of its lack of security.

I loved the idea behind keybase.io because it allowed you to link your online accounts and websites proving you are the owner. Actually, you are not really the real owner of them, and the real ones are the companies behind it. But that’s another subject.

The ownership feature is not the first thing you see on their website anymore and the only thing I see is :

Keybase is secure messaging and file-sharing.

I don’t see the identity proof anywhere on the front page. Weird …

Keybase also offered a 250Gb of space for your projects, add one or more team with their own 250Gb too, an integrated slack kind of and other little things I can’t remember right now.

Yarmo on his side doesn’t offer everything Keybase offered. But it allows you to prove that you own different accounts online. And I that !

Here how a profile looks like :

I have to check all the details on how to use it and see what I want to make public.

Thanks again Yarmo.

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Jet-lagged

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 23:34:59 +0200

After an 8 hours flight and almost three movies, I arrived home completely tired because I couldn’t get any sleep on the plane. I fought all day trying to avoid to sleep but failed and slept almost 5 hours split into two sessions. It always feels the same when I came back from a long trip, I need at least a couple of hours to feel at home.

Movies I watched during the journey were :

Incredibles 2

The second part of the original Pixar movie And I preferred this one to the first movie. It was quite funny and Ms Hyde joined me to watch it together.

Doctor Sleep

A sequel, Doctor Sleep, written by Stephen King, of his original Shining novel adapted by Stanley Kubrick to the cinema. I can merely remember because I watched it years ago. But from my memories, it was scarier than this episode and Jack Nicholson was really awesome. You probably stumbled upon this poster …

I’ll probably get the books and watch the Shining again.

Ford vs Ferrari

We arrived before I could finish the movie and I missed a 15-20 minutes at the end. I’ll have to see it again but I really enjoyed the movie. Matt Damon and Christian Bale especially were really great.

PSG vs Saint-Etienne

At the end of the day, I met a friend for a drink. Tonight was the French Cup between the PSG and Saint-Etienne and the bar next to where we were is known in Paris for his Saint-Etienne fans. They made a lot of noise but finally left with a bitter taste of something they could have done during that game maybe. There was a TV too on our side but I’m not a big soccer fan except for the World Cup.

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D-Day

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 13:16:15 +0200

Wake up time : 5:40am.

Probably ate too much last night and the three Ti-Punches didn’t help but I woke up early. Rainy day so far and not too hot… yet.

After 6 scolopendras, 3 spiders, an unlimited number of mosquitoes, frogs, zandolies also known as tree lizards, 2 beers, 5 Ti-Punches, one agoulou, 5 bokits, 11367 jumps of my daughter in the pool, a lot of beaches, we are leaving that beautiful island today. We did a lot of things but I feel like I need at least one more month here.

We both feel the same way and can’t realize that the holidays are already finished. Maybe the time passes quickly because we get older. I don’t really know but I felt like I arrived yesterday.

This morning we planned to go to see the beach a last time but it’s raining a lot so nothing is sure. We have also to :

package the 40+ kg of presents we got yesterday
clean and check the house a last time
check-out
check-in for the flight
clean the car
get some lunch
get on the plane
return to Paris 😢

We have to change something about all this…

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Last day

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:55:22 +0200

Last day! Tomorrow, we already fly back! This morning, it was mainly cleaning and shopping. I posted also the last two days articles including my 80th one 🙌. I’m not really pleased by all posts I made but the whole point was to write more. And so far I did it.

Ms Hyde’s friend proposed an afternoon at the Auberge de la vieille tour hotel’s beach and pool. They have a little bar at the beach where you can get some snacks and drinks. For a 4* hotel, I found it quite in bad shape. But it’s probably because they just reopened it not so long ago.

The weather was awful and it rained all afternoon. Didn’t really bother my daughter who learned to float on her back and enjoyed the pool for 3 hours.

We were supposed to go to a basket-ball summer league organized in Sainte-Rose but as we did every time we came here, we had to get packages from the family including jam, liquors, Rum and other local specialities. Luckily, I have a big baggage but basically nothing inside it. I managed to get rid of old t-shirts and All-Stars Converse that I throw away leaving me space for all the presents we got. Of course, everything is not of us and it’s a common tradition to bring things for other members of the family back in France 😅.

We met an auntie, then an uncle, and the time was up. Going to these games was probably too late, so we finished the evening at their place.

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Beach and family time

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 15:06:48 +0200

Woke up early as usual. On their side, girls were still knackered from the last night bokit party and didn’t wake up before 10:15. I took advantage of that free time to read some news and sunbath alone at the pool. It was early, I thought I wouldn’t need a sun protection …

WRONG!

At the end of the day, I got burned a bit but it was could have been way worse. Don’t underestimate the sun even early in the morning.

We went to a restaurant booked by one of Ms Hyde’s friend. When we got there, a few tables were already taken. The guy asked us to wash our hands with some gel and notified us the need to wear a mask if we needed to go to the bathroom.

We ordered some accras and appetizers but we should have ordered them when we booked, they would have been ready for our arrival. It’s like a Microsoft copy when it says 2 minutes left and half hour later, you’re still waiting. I’m mean and I haven’t use Windows since … can’t remember exactly but in my memories the notion of time was always an issue on that operating system.

The waiter had a flowered shirt and a mask. He was probably one of the worst waiter of all my life. Here how we ordered the main dish :

- Ms Hyde : I’ll take the chatrou
- Him : Ok

- Friend : I’ll take the grilled fish
- Him : …

- Me : I’ll take …
He left and went to another table.

And it was like this for everyone there. At least, we didn’t have to wait over one hour to eat it.

Taking a desert was probably not a good idea, but we are gamblers 😅.

Finally, back home to dress up, and we headed to a nice family dinner.

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Datcha and bokit party

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 14:52:33 +0200

Today was a quiet and calm day. Ms Hyde went to visit her aunt and her grandfather. Both went to the cemetery to bring some flowers and visit their ancestors. On my side, I spent the morning at the pool with my little princess.

We tried to go to the restaurant Au Petit Creux but it was closed and we swung across to one of the beach restaurant, a trap for tourists. Not good at all, dishes were way too greasy and expensive for what we had in the plate but our surge to eat something quickly was over our common sense.

Datcha beach was the place we spent the rest of the day. Ms Hyde slept for 45 minutes and I shared my time with sand castles making, swimming, some reading and pictures taking.

We got invited by family to a bokit party. A bokit is bread fried in oil. These puffy fried bread discs are then sliced open, stuffed with any number of ingredients–local fish, shredded chicken, egg, ham and cheese, usually some type of salad–and served as sandwiches. As usual in that kind of meetings, we are always at least a dozen op persons. The bokits, homemade, were the best I had so far. Our daughter played all evening until late with her cousins and didn’t want to leave.

A common situation in a lot of parents’ life …

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Will I use espanso ?

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 01:46:13 +0200

Today, the menu was river and family. There were a lot of kids, food, beers and Rum.

Ti-punch is a common drink made of lime, Rum and cane sugar or honey.
It’s sweet and strong at the same time and that’s probably why I love it. Before my holidays, I had only two beers over six months. Mid-December I decided to stop booze completely because the social alcohol at work or in our society is a common thing. And when you start counting, you quickly notice how much you drink and spend money on useless and harmful beverages for your life.

I did drink two of them today. Aside of the other guys, I read some interesting post about espanso. A small tool written in Rust allowing you to use the same shortcuts in all your applications.

I’m a heavy user of aliases, keybindings and custom shell functions either in vim and/or in my shell but I actually don’t know if I would use this software. Because I think I have everything I need currently.

On the web, I don’t see any useful alias that I would use in my Firefox. I don’t use LibreOffice that much and what I use on a daily basis don’t need those features. I really don’t think it fits any of my needs.

How do you use it on your side ? Any examples are welcome.

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Photo credit : Lachlan Donald

Point-A-Pitre

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:31:26 +0000

Point-a-Pitre was our destination today.

9.30 at the Spices’ market was the meeting scheduled with two girls from an association, Ileya, for a one hour and a half walk around the city.

All the tour is based on old persons interviews form Point-a-Pitre to have different stories than the usual ones you get on regular guided ones. They gave us anecdotes based on the short stories gathered from the elderly they talked to.

Before 2014, a lot of buildings were colourless and an association decided to start the Pli Bel Lari operation bringing graffitis on these houses' wall. Artists, including Pacman, did a lot of them around the city. The movement stood out and every year there is a graffiti festival there. The girls pointed out young generations like it but old ones preferred flowered balconies.

It was really an interesting visit of the city. We learned things that even Ms Hyde was not aware of. On the other part, what shocked me a bit is the fact that people are slowly but surely leaving the city. With this a lot of buildings are uninhabited meaning homeless persons will probably get the place for themselves but without water and electricity.

Instead of investing money in the city, big brands and many kinds of shops and restaurants did it in the suburbs. Actually, we had a lunch in one of these restaurants because one of our friend booked there. The restaurant was nice and I kept thinking, they should have done it in the town instead.

The problems, or at least what I understood, are the poverty, drugs and prostitution. But all big cities had it. London, New-York, Paris. … just name one and I’m sure you could find the same kind of situation. But getting back life in those districts is what will make them shine again. Often, political rivalry is the main curb. They told us also that some places burned down and there are gossips about them and maybe the fact they have been ordered by some local politician.

After the lunch, I would have preferred a nap than a long walk. But the one we did was actually tallied with an event France will hold to celebrate next year the Napoleon 1st bicentenary death. A large exposition will be done in Paris but slaves slaughters done in Guadeloupe and in Santo Domingo won’t be mentioned as well the fact he got back slavery in 1802. The French government is not really keen to talk about some parts of its history.

The walk we took is located at Petit Canal (Small Canal) where a stairway of 54 dressed-stone steps led to the esplanade where slaves were sold directly off the boat.

Plaques on the steps display the names of various African ethnicities:

Yoruba (southwestern Nigeria, Togo, Benin),
Congolese (from the former kingdom at the mouth of the Congo River)
Ibo (southeastern Nigeria)
Wolof (Nigeria, Senegal, and Congo),
Fula (west Africa)
Bamileke (western Cameroon)

At the foot of the stairs stands a bust of Louis Delgrès, who fought to the death against the reinstatement of slavery in 1802.

There is also the ruin of an old prison where slaves were they were brought waiting to be trade. Inside the jail, there is a gigantic mango tree. Rumours say it’s a curse tree and place. We did actually see a sealed box in a corner of one of the cells. I was told to not touch it even if I don’t believe in sorcery.

We finished the day with a basketball game near the cemetery of Le Gausier. My daughter ran so much that everybody was in shock how she didn’t get tired.

She’s a champion

Point-a-Pitre

Petit Canal

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Linus Torvalds

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:05:12 +0200

A lot of people don’t really like the guy but he did some great work with Linux and he will definitely leave behind some funny quotes.

A computer is like air conditioning - it becomes useless when you open Windows

Linus Torvalds

Botanic garden

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 22:08:36 +0000

The sun was already shinning and the temperature quite hot when I got out of the house to lay down near the swimming pool to finish my yesterday post about work. All-nighter mousquitoes were also there waiting for me.

After an hour alone, ladies were up too. We decided, meaning mainly Ms Hyde, to go to Deshaies, or Déhé as pronounced by local inhabitants, because there is a botanic garden with flamingos, aras and other birds species.

First time seeing flamingos was a real excitement for our kid. She just couldn’t stop talking about them during the 30-40 minutes we drove to get there.

Masks have to be worn in specific places during the visit remembering us Covid-19 is still among us (74k in 24hour in the US). Luckily, those places can be counted on one hand.

There is a parrot part in the park with the blue and yellow ara ararauna also known as the blue-and-yellow macaw. They were free to go anywhere they went and I wondered why there was no cages for them. The older one, named, Jacko, was born in 2004. There was also a big red and blue ara but it was in a cage dancing when kids were singing in front of him. Really would have preferred to see him outside of its prison. What surprised me is how long they can live : easily over 30 years and some have lived over 60 years.

Globally, I enjoyed that garden because it was well maintained. The fauna and flora is really likable even if you’re a nerd who never gets out of your datacenter. Needless to say, our daughter loved it

Then we came back to the Grand Anse beach and to end the day, we finally met with family.

We got back at home earlier than planned because the lack of sleep was slowly muting our Giszmo to a Gremlin…

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The Hunt

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:54:13 +0200

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced that everybody in closed public places will have to wear a mask starting from the 2nd August. Why the 2nd ? Why not now ?

Again the government does a new inexplicable choice and still tries to avoid the repercussion making laws in favour of people who took wrong decisions.

On the mask side, we don’t know yet how much they will charge people not wearing them. But I’m really impatient what the fares will be.

For sure, it will make money for someone. The question is who ?

NB: got your mail, will reply later. Didn’t get the time 😅abut it’s weird because everything shoulde be throuch SSL.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/07/16/fight-against-the-unmasked/

Work, work, work ...

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:13:14 +0200

Yesterday and today were the last two days of the current sprint, so I decided to work remotely to at least finish the story I was working on. Never happened.

At work, we are embracing agile and its scrum methods. When I arrived, I was in a great team with smart people. People were involved in their work and were challenging themselves trying new things. It was really a great experience.

We were working mainly on iot things with not a lot of customers but enough to have a group of people working together.

In years of working experience, it was the first time I liked scrum philosophy. The company did also a great job organising BBL, letting us having an agile coach. He organised and helped the team with a great piece of advice and always with the right word. Of course, we played also Lego and all this was something I actually never seen in other “agile” companies.

But, because there is always a but, that alchemy changed. Two guys left the team, a new one, a junior, came.

The team, or even more, the company struggled to find a clear vision for the product we were working on. A point the agile coach told us about before the company cut his contract. He tried to help us to work on this and how to find new customers. Even if it was great to brainstorm on these kinds of things, I think some members of the team just didn’t like it or weren’t fit for that job. It’s a marketing/sale duty to find new clients, not a role for developers.

That led the Tech leader to leave the company after creating that team and without a bright future for the product.

Experienced enough, his move was probably the right one for him. Since he left, the team, with seven members originally, shrank to only two guys left there : a dev and me.

The company made the choice to join the teams together. Now, our team is made of :

a product owner
a scrum / backend dev
4 devs
an ops (me)

After six months together, my former dev never had the chance to see the product of the new team we joined. And he has been assigned to a new project but still has to maintain the old one.

The developers of the other team never had the time to see what we’ve done and don’t have a clue of how to resolve conflicts if a bus factor hit the dev.

On my side, I have been working on both projects at the same time plus a transverse ops team. That led to some frictions today because I wasn’t able to deliver for three sprints a functionality that is not really hard. But being distracted by a lot of issues not included in the current sprint, helping people around and having a lot of agile ceremonies made me look like an incompetent guy. That really pissed me off even more when the product owner tells you I don’t know what to do with that story and points you in front of the guys.

Maybe I should have left the work last week and chose not to work for those two days.

Thing done right now and I will enjoy the end of my vacation without any slack or email.

The bright side of the day was when we draw Forky from Toy Story 4 with my daughter and the fact she learned to jump in the pool alone. She loves it … a bit too much now 😅

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Le Moule's market

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 23:31:38 +0000

Today, I worked remotely on some Terraform and an issue with some web servers whose ip addresses change every time a pod is down or has been restarted. We need to add some eip or Elastic IP which are also known as a static ip. But AWS has its own jargon I guess for every thing.

Using vim, I added two plugins :

vim-terraform
vim-terraform-completion

I use vim’s Plug to install plugins by adding just in my ~/.vimrc :


 Plug 'hashivim/vim-terraform'
 Plug 'juliosueiras/vim-terraform-completion'

And this configuration for the terraform completion with some extra syntastic configuration :


 let g:deoplete#omni_patterns = {}

 call deoplete#custom#option('omni_patterns', {
 \ 'complete_method': 'omnifunc',
 \ 'terraform': '[^ *\t"{=$]\w*',
 \})

 call deoplete#initialize()

 " Syntastic Config
 set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
 set statusline+=%{SyntasticStatuslineFlag()}
 set statusline+=%*

 let g:syntastic_always_populate_loc_list = 1
 let g:syntastic_auto_loc_list = 1
 let g:syntastic_check_on_open = 1
 let g:syntastic_check_on_wq = 0

 " (Optional)Remove Info(Preview) window
 set completeopt-=preview

 " (Optional)Hide Info(Preview) window after completions
 autocmd CursorMovedI * if pumvisible() == 0|pclose|endif
 autocmd InsertLeave * if pumvisible() == 0|pclose|endif

 " (Optional) Enable terraform plan to be include in filter
 let g:syntastic_terraform_tffilter_plan = 1

 " (Optional) Default: 0, enable(1)/disable(0) plugin's keymapping
 let g:terraform_completion_keys = 1

 " (Optional) Default: 1, enable(1)/disable(0) terraform module registry completion
 let g:terraform_registry_module_completion = 0

What it looks like to use it :

I wasn’t able to finish what I was supposed to do because you get meetings, disruptions and other tasks added on the pile. As if that wasn’t enough I had some issue with my Internet link too. 😠

Afternoon

We drove Ms Hyde sister to the airport and waited until she got on the plane. She wanted to be sure that her sister get on it safely.

A lot of masked people there, if they had capes, you could imagine being at a superheroes reunion. For those who loved to escort friends and/or family inside the airport will have to reconsider it and kiss them at the main entry.

A big masked guy just came across and I almost didn’t recognize him. He’s one of my friend with whom I used to play basket-ball for years. He was there just for a week. It’s really a small world. 😄

Back home, we spent some time at the swimming pool and then we moved to Le Moule’s market. Le Moule is the sixth-largest commune in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe. It is located on the northeast side of the island of Grande-Terre. a small one road local market. We got a nice sunset and some accras, a codfish fritters, a speciality of the island.

Here are some pictures I took there.

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Nautilus

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 23:30:58 +0000

Last night, we planned to go to visit the Jacques Cousteau’s underwater reserve near Bouillante and Pointe-Noire. There, you can get on the Nautilus, a boat with a glass bottom, to see the coral reefs, its garden, sponges and fishes… a lot.

The weather was really hot today : 36°C !

We arrived at the Malendure beach around 10am, and we booked the Nautilus for 12.00. That beach is a black sand one where scuba diving is the thing to do. Even with just a snorkel, you can swim and follow turtles. And, I was fortunate to see a small one not too far from the shore. Ms Hyde, with her friend, saw two of them.

We embarked at noon for an hour and half. Towards the Pigeon Islands and Covid-19 still around, groups were moving one by one to tho bottom of the boat. We were the last group and were lucky to be just with another one.

My daughter was really happy to watch fishes dancing along the corals and sponges on these islands. After a visit of the bottom of the sea, the boat stopped for 30 minutes for those wanting to swim and explore the coral reefs. The boat had a slide and, of course, my daughter cried because she wanted some part of the fun too. Ms Hyde’s friends as herself were sea sick.

We finished and tried to find a restaurant. The first one we tried didn’t have anything left to eat, and we finished at Dada, a place where we went three years ago. In our memories, the food was good and indeed it was.

Then we went to the Saut d’Acomat, a place where there is a nice waterfall. The only issue is the 10 minutes descent with a 3 years and half kid. Once there, it was a nice little pool under the cascade with a ~3m depth until you have … a cramp. A beautiful one on my leg, with my daughter on my back gesticulating, laughing and nothing to cling onto on that slippery rock.

AWESOME !

Hopefully, a guy helped me and my kid had a safety vest, so she was alright. The feeling was not … great 😅, and I was a bit seized by panic. Again, I was lucky people were around. Probably a lack of sleep, not enough water and tiredness were the cramp root cause.

It was a great day after all, even with the scary moment because it reminds you how life can be stopped abruptly. This weekend, I learned that a guy we used to play to poker with at his home died from a heart attack. He was 41-42 years and his mother find him laying on the floor.

Life is short and can end at any moment, either in a street in Minneapolis, a flat in Paris or during a sunny day during holidays. Enjoy every moment of your life and those around you.

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Toubana

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 03:22:34 -0400

Toubana, it’s a 5* hotel in Guadeloupe with a great view. It also has a private beach and two restaurants, one at the beach and the other at the hotel’s entrance.

Ms Hyde’s friend proposed us to go there to enjoy the private beach and the food. So she said yes, even if I don’t really enjoy that kind of places, especially, when you’re not a customer of the hotel. If I don’t stay there usually I prefer a proper beach where everything doesn’t look so asepticised and … fake.

COVID-19 helping, there weren’t a lot of customers, so we could be almost in full possession of the private little beach. We came early and there was only a 5 members family and 5-6 persons there.

Music, a mix between some weird techno and Buddha Bar playlists wasn’t always the best choice.

We opted for the beach restaurant which was … far from what I expected for a 5* hotel. Of course, it’s not the restaurant who has that many stars but still. There were some surprising things :

rusted and dirty salt cellar
a local fresh juice cheaper than a grenadine syrup with water
no local water or soda
stale bread

And, the worst part was when I came up against a long hair and a small one in less than 20 seconds after they brought me some French fries. Usually, I don’t really care about this kind of mistakes. It could happen everywhere. But for a restaurant of this kind of hotel, that’s an unacceptable error.

Girl’s burgers were good. Mine was alright but had far better ones.

At the end, the beach was great for my daughter because it’s small without big waves. The weather was amazing, and we got an excellent sunbath. But all this came with a €288 salty bill for six persons with a small kid.

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Aquarium

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:59:42 -0400

Today was an other rainy day. Not the little typical Parisian rain but a tropical one. We were wondering what to do and we decided to go to see the Aquarium of Guadeloupe.

We arrived at 12.30 and they were about to close at 1pm but our daughter wanted really to go there and see fishes.

I visited, this one included, only 3 aquariums in my life, mainly because I don’t like the fact to pay to go to see captive animals. The two other I’ve seen is the “Aquarium of Paris” and one in Mexico, on the “Isla Mujeres” or the Women island were I’ve been able to see the turtoise from Nemo and swim in a small pool with baby sharks. Thinking about it years after, It was not a good idea and those creatures should live their life in oceans, not in some dumb pools.

Being in the Caribbean islands, I hoped to see way more species than the ones I already see. I didn’t and somehow I felt good about it because the wildlife is better this way. We’ve seen some a shark pools with some little sharks but nothing really fancy. No turtles, no narwhal, no whale, no sea lion or penguins. Those ones shouldn’t like the weather here anyway. 😅

My daughter was happy anyway with what she saw. I felt the same way too for different reasons. The €14 to get in was the part I didn’t really like for a 15 minutes visit. But I guess it’s the kind of tourist trap we all stumbled upon from time to time.

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Tropical paradise ... or not

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 21:18:08 +0200

It’s my 3rd time in Guadeloupe and I really love its nature. You have the sun, beaches, mountains, rivers and it’s green everywhere. It’s a tropical island I really love and, that’s why I came back. Also, because Ms Hyde is half Guadeloupean and half Breton, and she likes to come back to see her family even if we didn’t meet yet because of the quarantine we had. Plus some members are really frightened by the pandemic and maybe we won’t see them this year.

Anyway, tropical islands are really beautiful locations if you love everything I mentioned. But there are things to know before coming here.

The rainy season starts from June to November. So be ready to have a lot of tropical rains, storms and a choppy sea. The worst month is probably October where risks of cyclones is higher. You could be still able to enjoy a sea with a temperature between 25 and 28°C all year.

That’s the first things to know, the second one is the wildlife. There are a lot of beautiful tropical flowers, beaches, trees and … all kind of bugs.

First, mosquitoes! If you hate them, you’ll need a real solution to fight these little almost invisible bastards. We’ve tried a lot of things but it’s like they don’t really care about what lotion you used on yourself. They just want to have some fun and bite you as many times as they can. My daughter got bitten 6 or 7 times on the same arm. We used some spray against them, we tried citronella essential oil and other mixtures. Nothing really helped…

Second, insects! If you are afraid of them or have a phobic disorder about them, maybe you should give a new consideration and chose a different destination. To make my point, here what happened today.

Ms Hyde has some friends who moved here two years ago. They proposed us to come to the river today and to enjoy a BBQ. It was a rainy day and all the way there It looked like a bad idea. We got lost because the GPS location wasn’t really precise or the signal strength was not ideal.

Finally, we got to the meeting point where we were lucky to find a large shack sheltering us from the rain. At the end, we were a dozen of persons there with a lot of kids. Even if we had a heavy rain, we had a great moment at the river. We brought some fishes to make them on the grill and apparently flies love that too. In 5 minutes, there was at least 50 flies around the fire and the lunch. Some women didn’t really like it 😅

A lot of rain, a grey sky and some thunderbolts but ultimately a great moment for my daughter who loved the river and her day there.

We came back at home, tired a bit, we dropped off our bags and Ms Hyde, her sister and my daughter faced an adult scolopendra of, at least, 12 cm. They screamed so loudly I almost pee on myself getting out of the toilets.

The other day, I got bitten by, what I thought, a baby millipede, but actually was a scolopendra which is kind of a millipede with a length above 40 cm for the largest one. There are 332 kinds of scolopendra around the globe. From the Wikipedia page :

It is a carnivore that feeds on any other animal it can overpower and kill. It is capable of overpowering not only other invertebrates such as large insects, spiders, millipedes, scorpions, and even tarantulas, but also small vertebrates including small lizards, frogs (up to 95 mm long), snakes (up to 25 cm long), sparrow-sized birds, mice, and bats.

WTF ?! 😱

On the same page, we learn a 4 years kid died after being bitten by one of them in 2014 in Venezuela. 😢

Going in a hurry to the kitchen, I saw that thing coming towards me quickly. I grabbed a mop and started hitting the evil thing. But it kept moving and trying to bite the broomstick.

At the end, I won and put the mop and the crawling creature in a bucket full of water.

Not even 5 minutes later, a new high pitch scream. This time a 7-8 cm spider on the floor just in front of our room. Ms Hyde didn’t expect that. I managed to not kill this one and left it outside the house.

Right now, it’s 6 am and I woke up at 4.30 because my kid wanted to go the bathroom. Then, wanting some water I got to the kitchen to face again a new creature I haven’t seen yet since I arrived : a giant cockroach on the floor that I swept outside.

For people with an insect phobia, without question and beyond doubt, I wouldn’t recommend the Caribbean islands. But if you can handle those kinds of situation, you’ll love your journey here

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Holidays ... finally

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 23:43:16 +0200

At last, here we are. Just enjoying the beach.. almost alone on a beach usually crowded as hell.

It feels great just to enjoy the warm water of the ocean, the sun and the sand of this beach.

It looks like we privatized the island 😅

The sunset was perfect and we had a lovely family day

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Moving to main

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 17:20:59 +0200

A trending subject happening right now on social media is about the CEO of GitHub responding to a tweet to rename the master git branch to main.
I won’t force people to do it but for my personal projects, I will definitely trade my master branch to the agnostic one main.

Even if you don’t do it, actually it’s a nice tip to know how to rename a branch. Usually, it’s quite straight forward but you may encounter some issue when trying to push to a remote repository.

Here is a tiny how-to on how to rename your repositories :


 # renaming to main 
 % git branch -m master main

 % git status

 On branch main

 Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

 nothing to commit, working tree clean

Our main branch is set to the upstream master branch. If you try to push, you’ll get this error :


 % git push
 fatal: The upstream branch of your current branch does not match
 the name of your current branch. To push to the upstream branch
 on the remote, use

 git push origin HEAD:master

 To push to the branch of the same name on the remote, use

 git push origin HEAD

 To choose either option permanently, see push.default in 'git help config'

Renaming the local master to main didn’t change the remote master. Now git is stuck because it doesn’t know where to push your local main branch.

However, it offers you two choices :

git push origin HEAD:master This will push al your changes to the remote master branch.
git push origin HEAD This will create a branch main on the remote branch.

We’ll take the second option. Now, if you use GitHub, GitLab or any other, log in and change your default branch from master to main. Since my repositories are on a private server, there is an extra step to do to be able to delete the remote master branch :


 % ssh remote-server

 # go to the bare repo 
 % cd project.git

 % git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/main

The branch main has been renamed but its origin is still master. You must point the HEAD to the main heads references with the last command.

Then you can locally remove with :


 # the ":" tells to remove master 
 % git push origin :master
 To server:~/projects/project.git
 - [deleted] master

 # update local upstream to point to main and not master anymore
 % git branch --set-uptream-to origin/main

Don’t forget to notify everybody in your teams about the change. It’s quite easy to rename

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This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/07/08/about-main-and-master-branches/

Gaming consoles

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 23:35:02 +0200

Games, I’ve been playing them for almost 35 years. Even if now, my main games are Lichess and some poker nights, I do like to play some retro games from time to time or Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch with colleagues on Fridays for lunchtime. But that was before the pandemic we all faced. During my life, I owned some gaming consoles.

First steps

I can’t recall exactly the year, because I was really young back then, but I remember having an Atari 2600 my father brought at home. I wasn’t allowed to play it really often and can’t even name games we had on this little gaming console. The joystick was the thing I can still picture from my memory. That odd stick with the little red button. That was the first time, I ever touched something like this. Back in the 80s, it was really rare, at least between my friends, to own that kind of device.

A friend of mine, on his side got the Nintendo NES with great games. Super Mario Bros of course but also Duck Hunt, The Legend of Zelda and my favorite one : Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. We loved that game because it needed focus and fingers skills to be able to get in the ring with Iron Mike.

My father used to wake me up to watch his fights and sometimes they were so quick I didn’t even have the time to wake up properly the fight was already finished. TKO!

We spent so much time at each other places playing and sharing great moments. It was the start of a new kind of entertainment.

After the NES, he quickly got the Sega Master system with Wonder Boy, the little baby/man running in underpants, skate-boarding and throwing axes on snails an others animals. OutRun or Shinobi were also great titles that we enjoyed.

First computers

At the same time, on my side I got an Amstrad CPC 464 for my birthday or Xmas (I can’t remember) 🤷‍♂️. It was a small personal computer, the CPC meant Colour Personal Computer and it had a cassette deck and only 64Kb of RAM. Only 64Kb of RAM, but we still had a lot of fun. I guess it was designed to compete against the Commodore 64.

I first met the C64 in Serbia, a friend’s acquaintance had it and we were once invited to play. I can’t even name a single game that was produced on the c64. It was less popular In France or at least not with the people I knew then.

On my Amstrad, games were on tapes and it took a couple of seconds or minutes to load them. I remember playing Airwolf, a game based on a famous TV show in the 80s. Prince of Persia, was a nightmare ! It was so hard, I’m pretty sure I never finished it. I discovered the Prince at school on their Amstrad PC1512 and it was the first time I touched a 5 1/4 floppy disk.

Paperboy was also one I loved to play but that’s the only names I can think of.

I had years later the updated version of the CPC464, the 6128 which used to have 128Kb of RAM and 3 1⁄2 floppy disks instead of tapes. It was way quicker than its older brother.

I got it from my grandmother for my 10th or 11th birthday. 🙏

Back to console

A couple of years after my Amstrad era, I got the Sega MegaDrive known as Genesis in the States.

Of course, we played Sonic games, Golden Axe, Revenge of Shinobi and NBA JAM but my favourite game is still Ghouls ’n’ Ghosts .

Playing King Arthur was a real pleasure. He had a shiny armor that you could lose and then run naked in underwear killing zombies and other creatures. The game was quite hard, we played it for hours and screamed every time you had to start over when you died. If you like hard games, launch a retro emulator on a raspberry and enjoy.

Super Nintendo was my next little gaming box that I traded with a friend for my Mega Drive. I got the Super Ghouls’n Ghosts, a version for Nintendo. Super Mario Kart and Super Mario World were cool too.
The ones I played the most were Super Street Fighter II Turbo and NBA Live 95. We played basket-ball every day and whenever we had some free time we played as MJ, Bird, and Barkley.

The next one I owned was the N64. I had only Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and Golden Eye on that console. Playing James Bond was the only thing I did on that black device. It was fun to be able to play with 4 players at the same time by splitting the screen in 4. You could compete against each other and that brought hours of swearing and frustration.

The first PlayStation was the one we used to play mainly PES, a football game that was better in my opinion to FIFA but it didn’t have the official player names due to some licences. I did play some Resident Evil and Medal of Honor too. But it was all about PES.

It was the beginning of the end. I spent less and less time in front of the TV. An ex offered me a PlayStation II but I rarely played it and it was more a DVD player. And the last piece of gaming I got is the Nintendo Switch that colleagues offered to me when I left my last job. Mario Kart, Zelda, Mario Maker II and Mario Odyssey are the ones I own but I play rarely. But I love everything they did with that console. Bringing the fun everywhere you go must be really a thing enjoyable for kids of this generation.

Maybe I’ll play with my kids in the future 😉

Post 67/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Missed a day

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:23:55 -0400

Being on, kind of, holidays, working remotely with my team is … different.

We have daily stand-ups around ten o’clock in the morning. That’s 4 am from where I am right now. Some colleagues told me : You’re nut or asked me when do I sleep. That was already the case when I was at home since I used to post articles at 5.30 am on Slack.

Yesterday, I didn’t feel tired or anything but my writing desire was just not there. Instead, I spent some time reading some articles I bookmarked a while ago and spent some quality time with my family.

Meditation is a subject brought up for discussion by some friends and I tried to found good articles about how to start. Just before the COVID, a colleague was doing sessions at work but I missed them. I should probably ask him for advice. If you have some good links, let me know.

Even if had a blank page yesterday and I broke the chain I’m still quite happy with my little record of 65 days in a row.

And by the way, did I say how much I hate mosquitoes !?

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Photo credit : Markus Spiske

Millipede

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 21:10:49 -0400

First day of holidays, arrived in a nice little house with a swimming pool. The only issue is a seven days quarantine has been imposed. Since I’m a contractor, not working means no pay. So I’ll be working remotely this week. The only little issue for anyone would be to get up at 4am to be synchronized with the team. But I usually wake up at 5am so it’s just one hour earlier. Looks good for me 😉

The other news worrying me a bit is that WHO chief announcement saying COVID-19 is far to be over. And yesterday, a friend sent me this Twitter thread about scientists saying the virus is airborne. 😱

I’ve seen way too many people acting strangely, were they on Mars the last four months ? Nobody really cares about social distancing or wearing a mask. Australia has or is going to close its borders until 2021. Will others countries follow the same path? Will we be forced to stay on this paradisiacal island?

And today, sitting next to the pool, I got bitten by a baby millipede on my knee. I didn’t except a few millimeters of that kind of insect will be make so much pain. Apparently, it injects you some poison and for a so small bug, I was really surprised by the pain. For a grown-up not too oversensitive to pain it’s ok but for a kid it’s probably worse. Someone told me that an adult millipede can be deadly for diabetic people or with cardiovascular disease. For people without these kind of problems, you would probably have a powerful pain. Finally, I was quite lucky. 😅

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Photo credit : James Wainscoat

Holidays

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 23:35:55 -0400

Awkward moment this morning when I arrived at the airport. Arrived a bit late because of last night poker, this time taking a plane felt different. Cops checking flight tickets of everyone and masks were mandatory for any one wanting to enter the airport. I guess people who used to escort family/friends are not welcomed until the end of the pandemic. Globally, social distancing has been respected but it felt really weird to see kids with masks though.

Quick check-in, queues, unpacking backpack, security gate, packing it again. Bought some coffee and water and getting in the plane.

Luckily, I got a seat near the exits where I had plenty of room for my legs. The unlucky part is the baby seating next to me crying during almost 70% of those 8 hours. I was lucky to have enough offline music on my phone.

First time I didn’t open my laptop during a journey. Instead, I brought 4 books for holidays and started Permanent Record with me. For those who never heard about it, it’s Ed. Snowden’s biography. Between two little naps, I managed to read 180 pages of the book. I’ll do maybe a review of it … or not.

Ms Hyde with my daughter were waiting for me. Jet-lagged but great to be on holidays even if a 7 days quarantine is mandatory. A new COVID-19 test must be done in a week.

Last year, I took only one week to rest and I really needed a break from work. It’s good to get some free time to rest even if there is quite a lot of mosquitos 😅

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Poker nights

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 19:54:32 +0200

A busy day at work with many things to finish before the holidays. This year, we’re going to Guadeloupe and that will be my 3rd time. The flight is about 8 hours and the COVID-19 doesn’t really help because you have to wear a mask from the moment you enter the airport until you get out on the other side of the Atlantic.

Every time, I went on a journey like this, I don’t sleep a lot to be able to sleep in the plane.

So tonight, it’s poker time!

It’s one of the game, with Chess and Go, I really enjoy playing. It brings friends together and we have really good laughs. These nighs are all about fun, laughing and seeing old friends.

Have you seen this hand before ?

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Photo credit : Rich Smith

Sadly

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:03:54 +0200

Sadly, I’ve noticed the same behaviour here in Paris. People are insanely not cautious. It looks like the pandemic never existed or was just a scary tale for kids.

The good news is that I have only 2.65% chance of dying from COVID-19 if infected based on the survival rate calculator of Avi Schiffmann.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/07/03/austrian-sars-cov2-infections-rising-again/

Write, write, write...

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:10:29 +0200

50k Exactly 52718 words have been written on this blog. It’s an average of 358 words per file.

The website is composed by 147 markdown files and processed by Hugo.

Hugo is a great tool to create a static website, a website without any database behind, it’s basically just HTML files. Those one are generated from Markdown.md files that you can just upload to your web server then.

Today is my 62nd day of writing. 62! For me that’s quite an achievement because I didn’t write a post for years. The #100DaysToOffload challenge definitely helped me to write a lot more. The IndieWeb and Webmentions played a role also in my writing by replying to posts or notes posted here and there.

For the last two months, I’ve seen more and more souls getting involved or wanting to start the challenge on Mastodon. A lot of them saying it will bring some discipline and habit in their life.

I heard from friends also that people are getting encouraged by life coaches or psychologist to write their daily routines even if it’s irrelevant for readers or looks useless because it could become a great therapy for some of them.

I’ve also read that writing :

improve the way to learn new things.
helps you to avoid stress or at least make you think less about it once written down.
it’s fun. And yes it is because a lot of folks would just avoid it.
things about what you are grateful for increase your optimism.
helps personal growth to come back on some days and say to yourself “that was dumb” or “I should have done more things like that”.
allows you to leave something behind you when you’ll not be there anymore.

The last point is what I really focused on since I became a father. I know I’ll never be a person known worldwide, and to be honest I love my privacy so it’s just fine, but how will you impact your surrounding public? Your colleagues? Your friends ? And mainly your family. What kind of legacy will you leave to them. I started my logbook seven months ago and I started it to take notes of my daily life. And thinking about my kids reading it one day make me feel happy because they will remember or discover little things about themselves or our life as parents.

I wrote 60 days in a row. That’s quite a success to be honest. I was really wondering if I could even go through the first 20 days. But I loved it and will, hopefully, be able to continue to write for many more months or years.

After the challenge is done, I will focus to bring a more polished content because sometimes subjects need more time to have a better article.

Just try it … at least for two weeks and I’m sure you’ll love it.

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Photo credit : Kelly Sikkema

Wiping out a disk

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:55:11 +0200

Yesterday, a friend came at home to get some help to backup his professional laptop, an old Windows 7 installed on it, with a lot of private documents and pictures. After 30 minutes spent seeing him organizing his folders, I just took over the all process.

I fired up an usb stick, downloaded a Debian Live, allowing you to boot a Linux distribution without installing it on the hard drive. A quick rsync of his User directory was enough to get all his data. It was way faster than waiting from him to finish browsing all the directories one by one. And it was “only” 30Gb of data.

Once the backup done, he wanted to wipe out completely the hard drive because he came into conflict with his current boss who owns the company where he works. He told me some shady stories about his creeping boss and that he will probably check his laptop if he goes to the office again.

Helping him to avoid leaving tracks of data on his laptop seemed the right thing to do.

Wipe out a hard drive

There are many software that can help you to do that :

our old frienh dd
and the one I shred

dd

dd is often used to copy and convert iso file to a cd or usb stick to make them bootable. The syntax is


 % dd if=<source> of=<target> [Options]

You can use of of these two commands to wipe out a disk :


 % sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdxx bs=512 count=1

 # or 

 % sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdxx bs=4096

 # /dev/sdxx is the partition or disk to wipe out .

The first one just put zeros all over the disk, the second one makes the recovery a little bit harder with random data over the all disk.

Be careful using these commands, because you could easily format the wrong disk. It happened to one of my colleague. 😅

shred

shred is a small tool included in the package coreutils. Its main goal is to make the recovering process almost impossible.


The command has some options which can be used to wipe a disk as:

 -f changes permissions to allow writing if needed
 -n (iterations=N) overwrites N times instead of the default (3)
 -s (size=N) specifies the number of bytes to shred
 -u truncates and removes files after overwriting
 -v shows verbose information about the progress
 -x does not round file sizes up to the next full block
 -z adds a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
 -u removes the file after overwriting

So I wiped out the all disk, like this :


 % shred -vfz -n 50 /dev/sdb3
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (random)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (ffffff)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (249249)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (000000)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (555555)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (random)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (6db6db)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (aaaaaa)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (db6db6)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (random)...
 shred: /dev/sdb3: pass 1/51 (000000)...

On a larger disk it can takes some times… It’s still processing it since 12hours ago… 😅

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DM-crypt

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 23:38:24 +0200

Last week, I wrote about my new external hard drive and the fact that I used an HFS+ filesystem on it to be able to share data with my old 2010 iMac. As Toby mentioned, he uses the same filesystem but with zulucrypt/veracrypt that currently has only read-only ability on Linux.

The purpose of this disk is just to have an archive of my Capture One catalog. Eventually, I would love to use to store some files and since I don’t know yet what kind of files I will store, I choose to reformat the drive and put two partition on it. A big one for my archive and a small one.

The big one has been formatted in HFS+ and for the small one I used a combination of dm-crypt and btrfs.

Partitioning the disk

I used fdisk and did two partitions :


 % sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

 Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.34).
 Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
 Be careful before using the write command.


 Command (m for help): p
 Disk /dev/sdb: 931.53 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
 Disk model: Extreme SSD
 Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
 Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
 I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 33553920 bytes
 Disklabel type: gpt
 Disk identifier: 7BEB0DFF-F58D-4FB4-A12D-D31FE54A5D3B

 Device Start End Sectors Size Type
 /dev/sdb1 65535 104921534 104856000 50G Linux filesystem
 /dev/sdb2 104921535 1953525134 1848603600 881.5G Apple HFS/HFS+

Setup LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup)

Cryptsetup is a utility used to conveniently set up disk encryption based on the DMCrypt kernel module.

Basically, you can create different kind of volumes :

plain dm-crypt volumes
LUKS volumes
loop-AES
TrueCrypt (including VeraCrypt extension)
BitLocker

Let’s create a LUKS one :


 % sudo cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdb1
 WARNING: Device /dev/sdb1 already contains a 'crypto_LUKS' superblock signature.

 WARNING!
 ========
 This will overwrite data on /dev/sdb1 irrevocably.

 Are you sure? (Type 'yes' in capital letters):

Type YES and enter a strong password.

Then, you need to map the physical device to a virtual one.


 % sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb1 encrypted_partition
 Enter passphrase for /dev/sdb1:

Create fs

To create filesystems on the partitions :


 # BTRFS 
 % sudo mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/encrypted_partition

 # HFS+
 % sudo mkfs.hfsplus -v ARCHIVE /dev/sdb2

Mount the partitions

You can now mount your encrypted partition :


 % sudo mount /dev/mapper/encrypted_partition ~/media #or whatever mount point you want

Work and close

Once you’re done with your work, you need to unmount and close the partition :


 % sudo umount /dev/mapper/encrypted-partition # unmounting the partition 
 % sudo cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/encrypted_partition # lock your partition

That’s it !

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LinkedIn is gone!

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 10:22:47 +0200

LinkedIn is gone. After my last week post, I decided to close my account and I’ve done it last night.

Never really found it useful and the introduction of stories made me think to close it. It’s going downhill towards where Instagram or Facebook are today. For a professional network I don’t give a f*ck about stories.

That’s why I have started asopo to gather ideas and eventually people to work on something better than Linkedin.

Synonyms

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:02:18 +0200

Today I learnt that Scots have 421 words for snow.

It appears that weather in Scotland “has been a vital part of people’s lives for centuries”. I wonder if it’s the same with the heat, sun or drought in some regions of the globe, like Africa or the desert in Australia.

The word set has on its side the most senses with 430. It has the longest entry in the dictionary at 60.000 words and 326.000 characters.

In French, there are plenty of words designing the same thing. According to this page, prostituée has 77 synonyms and is the one with the most of them. The meaning should be obvious and I won’t translate it.

But I found out that the word mort, death, has even more with 115 synonyms. And I’m sure there is a cornucopia of identical terms I haven’t even think about.

Finding a great thesaurus online is not an easy quest for these kinds of information. Many websites just don’t provide a complete list and I didn’t find anything really astounding. I even stumbled upon a video of a guy saying that penis has more than 300 meanings. That’s maybe plausible but haven’t checked.

Back to English words, I found out the one with the most synonyms is

… drum roll …

DRUNK!

It has exactly 2,985 synonyms.

Paul Dickson, a great author and lexicographer, even wrote a book about it.

I would love to know what language is the richest one in terms of vocabulary, slang, synonyms and antonyms. There are probably many books on the subject. If anyone has a good recommendation, let me know.

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Photo credit : Romain Vignes

Hollywood

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 19:30:52 +0200

And that even worse in tech companies where 67% of them are made up of less than 5% of Black employees. Actually, I don’t really know if that’s really worse but it’s definitely not enough. 💔

Ethical Bookstores

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 09:02:06 +0200

The other day, Horst told me about some online bookstores where he bought some of his books. We all heard stories 1, 2, 3 about companies avoiding to pay taxes in countries where they sell products.
GAFAM, with their armies of lawyers and tax specialists, are the worst.

Here are a list of online bookstores that you should consider instead of Amazon :

Austria

Germany

https://buch7.de/

France

UK

If you know good bookstores in other countries, let me know and I will add them to this list.

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Photo credit : Susan Yin

Vim weekly tips #12

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 14:29:55 +0200

Every day, you can learn a new thing about Vim and that’s also why I it !

Lower/Uper case

Say you have a sentence :

An anarchist is a man who is careful to always use pedestrian crossings, because he utterly detests talking with policemen.

In the current file you are editing and you want to change from lowercase to uppercase the word detests. Here how you can do it :


 " put the cursor on the word detests, go in command mode and hit ~ 7 times
 " or you could do : 

 Ctr+o gUw

 " in INSERT mode Ctr+o allows you to use one NORMAL command without leaving the
 " mode. Then gUw changes from the lowercase to uppercase the current word. 

 " To do to the opposite just use : 

 Ctr+o guw

You could uppercase a whole paragraph using :


 gU{ " previous paragraph
 gU} " next paragraph
 gU$ " from the cursor to the end of line

Number lines

You can add set number in your ~/.vimrc to enable lines numbering or directly from vim:


 :set number " enables it 
 :set nonumber " disables it 
 :set number! " disables it too

set relative number line

As we’ve seen, we can toggle number lines easily. But when you need to copy/remove a specific number of lines and you don’t know exactly the number you will have to grope around to find the exact number.

To avoid that, you can use relative line numbers that will display the current number line as 0 with the real line number just in front. To enable it :


 :set rnu " enables
 :set nornu " disables
 :set rnu! " disables

then you’ll see relative line numbers to the current one like this :


 4
 3 As we've seen, we can toggle number lines easily. But when you need to
 2 copy/remove a specific number of lines and you don't know exactly the number you
 1 wil have to grope around to find the exact number.
 75
 1 To avoid that, you can use relative line numbers that will display the current
 2 number line as `0` with the real line number just in front. To enable it :
 3
 4 ```vim
 5
 6 :set rnu " enables
 7 :set nornu " disables
 8 :set rnu! " disables

Remove annoying Windows character

People using Microsoft products to edit files will often leave the character ^M. That’s because the file format is probably in dos format. To change the file format just type :


 :set ff=unix

That will remove the ^M character from your file.

You can also use :


 :%s/^M//g " search and replace all ^M and replace them nothing on the entire
 " file (%)

Undo forever

Since Vim 7.3, a new feature, persistent undo, allows you do undo/redo as much as you want even after a reboot because every change is logged in files.

To set up, add this to your ~/.vimrc

 
 if has('persistent_undo') "check if your vim version supports
 set undodir=$HOME/.vim/undodir "directory where the undo files will be stored
 set undofile "enables the feature
 endif

That’s all for today. See you next week. 😄

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Find a SSID

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 13:21:24 +0200

If, one day, you need to find a SSID from anywhere on the planet, just take a look at : wigle.

You’ll find a worldwide map of wireless access point location and information about them.

People install the Wigle app and scan wifi everywhere they go and then upload these information to a central database at Wigle.net.

Funeral

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 21:00:12 +0200

Not really a day where I feel about writing anything.

Attended friend’s funeral today and that was a sad moment.

Enjoy the time with your family and friends. Take pictures of them… leave something for people behind you.

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webmentiond

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 21:36:37 +0200

Since I implemented webmention on this site, I use brid.gy but I was looking for a self-hosting alternative.

Thanks to Horst and his webmentiond, I will be able to host my own webmentions.

Thanks again and no I won’t spam you 😅

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/25/auto-approval-in-webmentiond/

Do I really need LinkedIn ?

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 11:27:43 +0200

The first answer would probably be… No.

Did I find a job on it ? No !

Did I get a lot of messages ? Yes !

Do the recruiters annoy me ? Definitely !

I’ve never been a fan of LinkedIn, even more since they got bought by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016.

LinkedIn makes a lot of money mainly by selling ads, providing recruitment services and premium memberships. A friend tried it once, and got billed two months in a row because he couldn’t find a proper link to cancel the subscription. And that wasn’t cheap! It costs around €30 per month.

LinkedIn bought Lynda.com, a learning portal, in 2015. Microsoft decided to move all users from Lynda to LinkedIn in 2019, allowing them to sell and propose courses on their platform.

Privacy

Once again big companies are trying to centralize and get control over everything. Of course, it has been done probably to rationalize the cost of having two distinct sites to manage. But people got angry. They forced people to have a LinkedIn Learning account once they get moved there. And people just got upset and said it was privacy issue.

As a member of LinkedIn, you could be easily aimed by recruiters. Your profile has been identified and linked as a person who took some specific courses helping recruiters to find the next talent for their NASDAQ clients.

Problem with LinkedIn

Recruiters are often annoying and incompetent. Repeatedly, they don’t even read your professional experience and propose you inadequate jobs because they don’t do theirs. I can’t recall how many times they proposed me jobs with, Linux of course, but also Windows sysadmin that is irrelevant since I don’t have a single line about Microsoft systems in my skills. Plus a lot are too familiar with me like we know each other for years. Maybe I’m too old fashion but I don’t really like that.

There is also a real threat for companies using it. Hackers and governments have been doings maps of companies they target. Basically, you can find everyone’s position in the company and then you could easily do some social engineering to get the information you need. China has used it to recruit spies. In this Darknet Diaries, you learn that Chinese spies threat people having still family in China to spy for them. Obviously, China is not the only one to behave that way.

The episode in question :

That’s a serious problem.

The other pesky point is the posts I see there. It’s becoming more and more like Facebook that I quit two years ago because I was targeted by ads and useless articles I didn’t care about. The same about Instagram and their ad after every 4 or 5 pics. Yesterday, I had a notification on my mobile. Opened the app and saw … STORIES. WTF!? Why the heck I would like to have stories there. That’s the final straw! Going to close my account too but I have first to check if I can get a dump of my profile with contact list maybe. I doubt but worth to try.

What’s next ?

What should we do to get a real and ethical professional network ?

I would like to see, a website based on something like PGP/GPG key signing parties but for your professional profile.

Just an avatar! No picture of yourself, name or anything that will avoid you to get a job interview. You could get references based on real people you met or you trust.

I’ve set up a Codeberg repository, named asopo meaning link in Yoruba language. The project has nothing right now but the idea is to gather people and ideas. You’re welcome if you are interested to build a better network than LinkedIn.

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Photo credit : Anastasia Dulgier

Meetings

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 23:58:12 +0200

Meetings. Too many today.

Spent half of the day at them. I find a lot of people losing their time in meetings. Often people are multitasking or spending time on their phone. Who never met someone when asked about his opinion makes a reply like :

Could you summarize me the need again ?

First, it’s obvious that you didn’t listen to what people were chatting about. Second, it’s disrespectful for people there. Just leaving would be better IMHO.

Where I work currently, they used to often organize *BBL, Brown Bag Lunches, where they invite people from other companies to share their experience with us. It was the first time I’ve seen that kind of “meetings” and the best part for a lot of them is the free lunch offered by the company. The same way as I’ve noticed in *“normal”" meetings, I’ve seen people just grabbing free food and who didn’t care about the presentation made by some random guy talking about tech stuff that bothers them most of the time.

Dis-respect and cheap beahaviour again.

Globally, we spent too much time in meetings. According to some stats, in the US there are 220 million meetings per year. So worldwide, I guess a lot more.

I would be happy to avoid useless meetings but often you just can’t. And god knows we all have been in that position.

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Photo credit : Nastuh Abootalebi

Alternatives to Amazon

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:11:51 +0200

Two surprises today.

You loved the WWDC and you use Amazon.de. 😅

Is there any great ethical alternatives to book shopping in Austria or Germany ?

Here in France I’ve managed to find some :

Would love to have more links where to buy books without using Amazon.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/23/someone-is-buying-amazon-listings-against-john-bolton/

Using disks on OSX and Linux systems

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 22:57:15 +0200

External hard drives are useful when you need to travel light. Today, a small package arrived by mail. It was the SanDisk I ordered ten days ago.

The disk is available in 3 sizes: 500Gb, 1Tb and 2Tb with the latest NVMe technology. I opted for the 1Tb since my catalog is ~ 500Gb of pics. Its size really surprised me because it’s really a small flat external hard drive.

Having a lot of photos on my iMac, I wanted to have an extra backup that I could carry with me.

First step was to try it on macOS X, it was detected as an … hmmm NTFS I think. Not sure and I can’t check since I formatted it directly with the Disk utility available on OSX. Before copying anything on it, my experience told me to be sure I could use that device also on my Debian laptop. Plugged it in, device detected and I could mount it. pmount has an option to force the write mode when you connect your disk. For some reason, it didn’t work and I got stuck in read-only. Avoiding the waste of time, I chose to format the disk directly from my Linux box.

HFS+ seemed to be the best compromise for files between macOS X and Linux. FAT32 has a lot of issues :

4Gb file size limit
huge space waste in slack space as devices grow faster
not preserving case

I could have chosen NTFS but since I don’t use any Microsoft OS, I never considered that possibility.

Instead, I did :


 % sudo apt-get install hfsprogs

 % sudo mkfs.hfsplus -v SanDisk /dev/sdb1 # replace sdb1 with your disk

Unplugged and connected it to my iMac, the device was detected straight away with the same message asking if I wanted to use it as Time Machine disk. Never used that software and always preferred an old rsync for some of my stuff.

Will do a copy of my Catalog on it before going to bed. Will update this post if I encounter any particular issue with the hard disk.

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Use

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 09:00:36 +0200

Below you will find a list of stuff I use day-to-day.

Software

NeoVim with Monokai colorscheme.

My favorite shell is zsh.

Tmux, a terminal multiplexer, a better solution to screen.

Using mutt as my email client.

Markdown for all my writing with Pandoc when an export in HTML, PDF is needed.

Awesome, a lightweight tiling window manager.

MPD, Music Player Daemon, with ncmpcpp, a ncurses client.

MPlayer, a CLI media player.

Inkscape for logos and other creative things.

Librewolf a custom version of Firefox focused on privacy, security and freedom.

Self-hosted :

Own cloud with Nextcloud
Mails with iredmail
Social network with Mastodon
Music with Funkwhale
Pictures sharing with Pixelfed I stopped using it

Hardware

An external screen, the BenQ SW321c that is insane

~~Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3rd generation)~~

Tuxedo InfinityBook S14v5 with 40Gb of RAM and 512Gb HD.

An old iMac from 2010, mainly for photography with Capture One
I switched to use only open source tools which was already the case. I kept this one only for my photography editing.

A M1 Macbook pro for work. I didn’t really have the choice to choose a Linux.🤦

A Synology 1812+ NAS.

4 external 1Tb NVMe SanDisk hard drives. 1 external 4Tb Toshiba disk.

The Remarkable II tablet that feels like paper.

Photography

Fujifilm XPro-2 and XPro-3 cameras

Lenses	Focal length	Max aperture
Voigtlander	35mm	f/1.4
Voigtlander	25mm	f/4.0
7artisans	25mm	f/1.8
Fujifilm	16mm	f/2.8
Samyang	12mm	f/2.0
Helios 44-M	58mm	f/2.0
Carl Zeiss Sonar	90mm	f/2.8

What I use ?

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:54:34 +0200

Lately, many guys from the #100DaysToOffload challenge added /uses, /now, /feeds pages on their blog. Apparently, there are many more who do the same.

I’ve decided not add a RSS one since I don’t see the point to split those feeds. So far I’ve added only a /uses page on this website.

I will probably add a /now page to update with my current projects.

Post 52/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

This post was a reply to https://yarmo.eu/post/added-now-feeds-uses

Got a new toy : Voigtlander 35 f/1.4 mk II

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:35:53 +0200

Yesterday, my new toy arrived by mail . It’s a lens, and it comes as a replacement of my Mitakon 35mm f/0.95, broken after only one year. That lens was a prime lens I bought after reading numerous articles, and this one especially convinced me to buy it. And, even in the worse case, selling it was an alternative option. The f/0.95 was really the reason I bought it in the first place. Zero point nine five! The only other options are Leica Noctilux, SLR Magic, and Canon ones where you need to sell a kidney to get one of these gems. It was quite a disappointment how it broke, it looked like the metal just cracked inside.

But let’s talk about the one I got yesterday, it’s actually an old friend : the Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4.
The one I loved to use but who got smashed in 2018.

What happened ?

A pub, a friend, me, my Fuji XPro2 and the 35mm attached to it. We were waiting for the Quarter-finals of the 2018 World Cup between France and Uruguay.

Kick-off!
5 minutes later, the lens was destroyed because of a barroom brawl.

A crowd behind started to push and yell behind us. My friend got punched in the face, and then it was on. Luckily, those 7-8 kids were not real gangsters because we could have been stabbed easily in the skirmish.
My friend got a black eye, I got a twisted finger blocking a chair with my hand, but the real pain came from the death of my lens. I loved and missed that tiny lens.

Two months after I bought the Mitakon. Again, after one year, the 35mm died in my hands. Hopefully, it’s not a curse. This time, I decided to order from a French shop, that Voigtlander lens again.

Surprised I was because the one I got is the mark II of that Voiglander Nokton. I haven’t checked before ordering, and actually I wasn’t aware that a version II existed.

It just fits perfectly with my XPro cameras, and I look forward using it more in the weeks ahead.

Post 51/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/20/new-toy-sony-e-30mm-macro-35/

Just Write!

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 20:41:11 +0200

50Here we are! Half way to finish the #100DaysToOffload launched by Kev more or less two months ago. I wasn’t sure I will be able to keep the pace to post something every day.

Originally, the main goal was to post something every day for 100 days but it shifted to 100 posts in one year. People who joined the challenge, as well as Kev, thought one post per day was too constraining to produce great content. That’s why it has been changed and that way it leaves you 3.5 days to write a post.

On my side, the content is far to always be captivating. This blog was started because I wanted to get my own space where I could lay down my thoughts, share technical experiences and tips. Writing things online was something I missed.

Then, I stumbled upon the challenge on Mastodon and my first reaction was :

Doing it will force me to write more.

So far, the adventure is really great because I discovered great blogs, the indieweb and some smart guys.

Those of you who are not confident about writing should try it. Even if you don’t know yet what you will talk about or have doubts if you will get any audience at all, it doesn’t matter. We are not here to get likes or followers. All the point of this challenge is to “Just write”.

So jump in!

Post 50/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Behnam Norouzi

Vim Weekly tips #11

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 20:18:28 +0200

This week we’ll see how to do things quicker using Vim, its sessions and other tips.

Read man pages

This week, I read somewhere that you could install a vim plugin to read man pages in vim. That’s great but vim does it by default. You have just to put your cursor on a command name in your file and in Normal mode type the letter K. It will open the man page of the command under the cursor.

Create an HTML file of your current vim session

If you want to show your vim colorscheme or things you do with vim, you can create an HTML file of your current session this way :


 :TOhtml

It generates a beautiful HTML. Just try it :)

About HTML

You can open directly a HTML file of an URL with you editor :


 % vim https://lazybear.io/notes

back to future… and vice versa

Even if you don’t have a DeLorean to travel back in time, with Vim you can use two commands to do it :


 :earlier 10m " will display the current file how it was 10 minutes ago.

 :later 5m " will revert changes that were written 5 minutes after going back
 " 10 minutes

Sessions

Sessions are a useful vim trick. It allows you to reopen exactly all buffers and split windows when you quit your current editing. To create a session :


 :mksession ~/tmp/work_session

And when you want to get back at work, you do :


 % vim -S ~/tmp/work_session

or directly in vim, sourcing the file


 :source ~/tmp/work_session

Post 49/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Get an ip origin

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 16:47:49 +0200

Following my post about logs and security, I found out some ip requesting a lot. There are services online to get the origin of an ip.

ipinfo.io is one of them and you can curl it like this :


 % curl -s ipinfo.io/116.203.17.124 |jq . | egrep "(ip|hostname|city|region|country)" | \
 sed 's/[",]//g' | lolcat

and you get :

You can make a small function/alias in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

Optimizing images, emails and security

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:58:15 +0200

Yesterday, something came to mind. Images! The ones I’ve been using to illustrate the daily #100DaysToOffload posts. The ones I forgot to strip down and optimize for the website.
After checking my images directory, I realized I had ~245Mb of them. Some were just too heavy.

Imagemagick came to save me and to shrink them a bit :


 % for image in *jpg; mogrify -resize 1600 -quality 65 -strip $image $image

That made the trick and I went from ~245Mb to 49Mb. Not too bad and without loosing image quality for something like a website. That would be probably an issue if I wanted to print them on a big wall but that’s not the case here.

Two weeks ago, more or less, I installed GoAccess to get some web metrics in your terminal. After optimizing, I wanted to see if there was something about size and data metrics for static files.

Surprisingly, I found out that I got “a lot of visits” since Tuesday. Digging a bit in the referring sites I found out my post about emails has been posted there by Freddy who just wanted to share it probably because he liked it.

I got “a lot” of visits, compared to what I have daily. Freddy sent me also an invitation on Lobste.rs to be able to create an account to reply to some people saying that data provided there were false, and they wondered where I got them from. I pointed out the articles I found and what I cross-checked.

I kept down the rabbit hole, found out the post was also on Tildes.net and I didn’t want to get an account there.

Globally, I found some answers interesting some not really.

Many of the author’s wants (including plain text email) are simply never going to happen. The benefits are also not clearly laid out. While we’re at it, should websites be plain text? Think of the carbon savings!

Websites have always used HTML, that’s not the case with emails.

About the fact I’m using Signal and said to my friends they can interact with me there. What I meant I’m using of course SMS and voice calls too but I just don’t want any WhatsApp or FB Messenger. Apparently, looks like a lot wouldn’t be in touch anymore if I was their friend :

If this was one of my friends, he would never hear from me again. It’s all very well for him to have a fetish about how he wants to communicate, but I’m not signing on to a different service just to talk to one person. It’s bad enough I currently have two messaging services to deal with: SMS and Facebook Messenger.

A more constructive criticism …

If global warming is a concern, get to the root of the problem. Price the cost of carbon into every possible transaction by taxing carbon at extraction. […] If emails are a problem, then your internet prices & and email prices are going way up. Ecologically unsustainable business models will be destroyed. Free stuff like Gmail will disappear.

… Except the last lines 🤦‍♂️.

Some people enjoyed the post though :

I read your post, and I liked it. I wasn’t clear on why you dislike HTML emails. Edit: I did some thinking, and I came to agree on this point. Emails are letters, not websites

And I finally found a great reply :

These sorts of everyone-who-doesn’t-use-a-tool-the-way-I-want-is-WRONG-and-I’ll-refuse-to-speak-with-them-if-they-don’t-do-exactly-what-I-think-is-best rants don’t seem constructive, and commonly come up in discussions about email. Software developers are not the world. Software developers’ needs are not the world’s needs. Different people have different needs for communication. The continual insistence that plain text emails work best for everyone is ridiculous. They don’t: they work well for software developers.

In one of my pursuits, I frequently need equations and diagrams in my emails. Plain text does not practically allow this: past very simple equations, it’s not reasonable to try to have a discussion in TeX source. My choice is not between HTML and plain text emails, it is between an HTML email, or a plain text email with a PDF attached. In another pursuit, I frequently need images, referenced or inline in the text, because those images are either photographs or scans of the topics we’re discussing.

My current standard is to send clean HTML emails that are converted Markdown (and, of course, contain no external content, which shouldn’t be allowed). This allows me to include equations and inline images, and to write with reasonable formatting. It also means that my emails are still quite readable as text: in fact, I often use Emacs+mu4e, along with conversions, as an email client. I used to buy into the idea that plain text emails were superior. But with clean HTML emails, my emails look far better, actually support communication in the fields I work in, and are more reliably readable in more ways on more devices.

Could there be a better middle ground? Yes. Widespread Markdown support, for example, would go a considerable way toward nice, formatted emails. A common standard for clean HTML email content would be nice: HTML is, at its heart, a text markup language that is actually reasonably suited to email-style content. To some extent, there even is a middle ground that is not as described: most HTML email readers I know of block external content and connections by default, so tracking pixels shouldn’t be a problem.

Loved the comment because it’s clear and well better thought than a lot of comments I’ve read. And I have to agree that the idea to use Markdown to write emails would be a great idea to have both world. But we should do something for plaintext emails like this one for example :


 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj;
 &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; &zwnj; 

 http://click.e.odigeo.com/u/?qs=daeacdb6679e

I stopped reading because I didn’t get any reply to me on Mastodon. And I will probably keep using plaintext emails and maybe some Markdown ones if needed. But I would rather give a link to an HTML page made with a markup language and self-hosted somewhere instead of putting it in an email. But only idiots don’t change their mind.

Back to GoAccess, I saw strange queries like these :


 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.57 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /.well-known/security.txt
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 738.0 B GET HTTP/1.1 /posts/why-i-blog/indieweb.org
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 530.0 B GET HTTP/1.1 /hyde.stevehttps://lazybear.io/hyde.stevenson/nson/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /admin/index.php
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /foo'"><script src=./xss.mx></script><x="
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /0x01"><img src=x onerror=alert`hello`>">
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /search?q=foo"><script+src=//xss.mx></script><x="
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /search/foo"><script src=./xss.mx></script><x="
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /search/SearchResult.aspx?q=foo"><script+src=//xss.mx></script><x="
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /1'"><iframe srcdoc='<script src="data:text/javascript,alert(/hello/)"></script>'></iframe>
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /<audio src=1 href=1 onerror="javascript:confirm('hi')"></audio>
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /foo'"><img src=
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /_wpeprivate/config.json
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /app/etc/local.xml
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /store/app/etc/local.xml
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /lazybear.key
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /lazybear.pem
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /privatekey.key
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /myserver.key
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /key.pem
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /id_rsa
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /id_dsa
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.56 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /.ssh/id_rsa
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /wordpress/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /new/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /cms/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /dev/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /old-wp/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /web/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /old-site/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /temp/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /2018/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /2019/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /bk/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /wp1/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /wp2/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /v1/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /v2/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /bak/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /sito/
 1 0.10% 0 0.00% 3.34 KiB GET HTTP/1.1 /2020/

Looks like a lot of directories scanning has be done these days on the site. One of advantages of using a static generator website is that we don’t have to worry about WordPress and therefore its plugins, MySQL and all vulnerability patches.

You still need to be careful about your web server though and apply the best security policy.

For this, you can start by reading Securing Debian Manual which has many ways to help you to administer your server, a secure way.

You can get more security best practices on Hardening the Linux Server article.

Post 48/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Greg Rakozy

Going back to work

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 21:27:07 +0200

Yesterday, our team went back at work for just one day after 3 full months of remote work. Luckily, cycling to the office is just 30 minutes, so I didn’t have to take the train to get there.

Floor markings, empty office and just our team in the building was really a strange feeling. We don’t know yet what will be the frequency of those days at work. Maybe two or three days of remote work per week will be the norm. A survey indicated that more than 50% but less than 70% are willing to work from home. Even persons who were against it have changed their mind.

What worries me is the ALL-IN reopening the government announced. All bars are crowded and not once since last week I’ve seen the social distancing respected.

On the other hand, Beijing has been chasing new cases and there is a chance to see the country locked down again. In Italy, two new clusters have been detected and the administration is monitoring their evolutions.

On my side, I write down daily stats about deaths and COVID-19 cases. And new cases are not rare and really still present worldwide. Here are some numbers :

C-19 cases	Deaths	Days
8.075.882	437.527	Monday
8.382.729	450.213	Wednesday

That’s more than 300k new cases in just two days. Ok, these are numbers for the entire planet but are still important ones. If the airports reopen as they used to, we may see new cases everywhere again.

I really don’t know what to except for the next weeks or months… Are we going to continue to WFH or not ? Will a new wave come around ?

Wait’n see…

Post 47/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Greg Rakozy

Do the job in front of you

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 12:16:26 +0200

Read that post on AustinKleon this morning :

Quarantine be damned. I did yesterday’s work yesterday. I’m doing today’s work today. I’ll do tomorrow’s work tomorrow.

And so on.

Doing the work that’s in front of me.

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/17/simplified-daily-weekly-planning/

Darknet Diaries - ep. 26 & 27

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 11:43:31 +0200

Podcasts, I listen to a lot of them. Darknet Diaries is one of the show that I love and try to catch up all the old episodes.

Listened episodes 26 and 27 today.

IRS

IRS, and how guys got away with $40M from them.

Chartbreakers

How people from Bangladesh promoted some podcasts to the top list on Apple Itunes.

Humblebundle fight for racial justice

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 23:01:44 +0200

Gaming is not really my thing anymore excepts for poker and chess. But tonight, a toot got me to HumbleBundle - Fight for Racial Justice. They offer until Sunday a bundle worth $1,243 of games and DRM free books. Everything will go to charity.

I bought the bundle, but since I don’t have a steam account and playing is not a thing I do anymore, I give the games for free in FIFO (First In First Out) mode. I keep the books though. 😃

Enjoy !

UPDATE: Everything is already gone !

Baba is You

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=BMc2d3MzYBmBEm5Z~~

Company of Heroes 2

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=USh7Zbn2xYTDTzHF~~

Hyper Light Drifter

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=ADxSf8BER3UWFukZ~~

Titan Quest Anniversary Edition

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=5b6bUvP7uNV6CnYt~~

Sonic & SEGA All Stars Racing

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=Rp4KxsMnanHuybqZ~~

Bioshock Remastered

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=WUCCaEpRNAYwVEpR~~

Endless Space - Collection

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=AkMvCtS3ucf7AvrT~~

>observer_

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=Smy2M2utS8anpXzA~~

NBA 2K20

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=Ms3w2ZRfvACWEuwS~~

Spelunky

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=kY8VUeacKf55K3ce~~

Kerbal Space Program

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=RXGGYt2srzVfVZxy~~

Darkest Dungeon Shieldbreaker DLC

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=bv4SFXHuqHwW3Zym~~

Eastside Hockey Manager

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=qbyuhXNc7rzDpy72~~

Jackbox Party Pack 4

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=Z66bBcwbxXymwNDq~~

This War is Mine

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=EZKCVCG7nqs8ftfX~~

The Ball

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=DdzaxdtmapVqp2m4~~

Super Time Force Ultra

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=8PxZRmsby7dAshaE~~

FTL

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=76aeWsPmYsmyarWd~~

Surviving Mars

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=yT5dFdVaTazGtNfE~~

Armello

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=rshSHAd6T3FpV2ma~~

Age of Wonders III

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=X5uZHhppGSa5kMB7~~

Overlord II

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=rdmxrhW5DfatBrqX~~

Kingdom Classic

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=xvvSxuX4Z8m6tBcE~~

Gonner

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=vFT2ChDRYXGsCsGq~~

Overgrowth

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=nSUv8UaYp38AmX3X~~

System Shock: Enhanced Edition

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=B7dDynvBBh6netW7~~

System Shock 2

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=vBFq8u7qAAanzuNP~~

Broken Age

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=YcKkKHNqbst22eh3~~

Newt One

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=SnuS8TkE2NtzGMkH~~

All You Can Eat

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=38eYz884DvAvYu57~~

A New Beginning - Final Cut

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=Eksc6Tzh4V6a7PXa~~

No Time to Explain Remastered

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=GUac3zxBBUWtW43C~~

Knights of Pen and Paper 2

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=nUUZzdpFVK6tmXmA~~

StarCrossed

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=4EFmMyAPp6UFDBN3~~

Vertiginous Golf

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=n7PRcHqYPzeVPHXY~~

EarthNight

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=rurSs4aGHFBZn8yn~~

Plunge

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=zMtyxwsYYECs3dD7~~

Pesterquest

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=SwMrMXdPddWUYp5m~~

Realpolitiks

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=8dtXSFVsWahYwxzH~~

Elite Dangerous

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=MmfydVVddUHxkmEv~~

My Memory of Us

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=3TynF2CUcbwFBZfB~~

MirrorMoon EP

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=dqhcqwvkrc43srV4~~

In Between

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=usGT6hfdGeZC6Zzt~~

Gunscape

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=fmAwR7q6VDZNcZHW~~

Neo Cab

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=c5GD8SWnPXwkhfUC~~

Regular Human Basketball

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=MWzRGrrDPDXdydqD~~

Planet of the Eyes

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=RcBRrfaz3vdBnbYw~~

FRAMED Collection

~~https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=H4ryPRphzSWhKYUz~~

Crowntakers

Steam Key : 0GTGH-AM8RX-3N6GA

Starfinder Core Rulebook

Paizo key : 2NCS L6WE 6S6W SVYG

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Wiby.me

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 01:24:50 +0200

Rediscover or discover some old web sites coming right from the 90’s.

https://wiby.me

Love to be surprised hitting the surprise me button.

Reading troubles

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 23:41:08 +0200

Some tips from Austin Kleon if you are having reading troubles.

The first one is definitely the best way to read more.

Keep a book at the breakfast table and read it in the morning instead of looking at the news on your phone.

Even if it’s just one page per day, you’ll read at least a book per year doing that way.

How much it costs to run this blog ?

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:06:33 +0200

Everybody is blogging about how much it costs to run your personal blog.

After Kev, Horst, Roland, here is how much I pay on my side:

Domain name : €38.40 / year.
Dedicated server : €53.99 / month.
Total per year : €686.28

Compared to what other paid, it’s quite expensive.
The .io wasn’t probably the better choice since it’s ~24€ more than a .com.

Gandi is my preferred registar and I’ve been using it for … well I can’t remember exactly but more than 15 years for sure. Even if I used to self-host my own DNS servers using Bind, now I use the one they offer since it’s free and easy to use.

The dedicated server is quite powerful :

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1220 V2 @ 3.10GHz
32Gb RAM
4Tb of disks
100 Gb available for backups
SMS alerts

Of course, you can have your own blog for free using Wordpress.com for example or other ones available on the web. But you are quite limited in actions or options offered to you.

A dedicated server costs more but having many projects on the same host, I was ready to pay more for the freedom to use any software I want. Plus, working as a contractor, all these expenses are paid by my own company.

For example, you have the liberty to choose the operating system you want to use or specific kernels and modules. If you have some sysadmin knowledge and some time to administer your server, you can do whatever you want with your Linux, or even *BSD, box.

If I had to go for a free option though, I will definitely consider using ipfs. It’s quite easy to pin any content you consider important to ensure is retained over a long term. It’s not really trivial for non-technical people but if you spend some time reading the documentation, you should be ready to host your static site on ipfs.

Post 45/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Eric Prouzet

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/15/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-this-blog/

Black Lives Matter

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 14:48:55 +0200

A nice illustration made by Kadir Nelson

Green light

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 23:03:54 +0200

Tonight, French president, Emmanuel Macron, gave a speech on TV.

Starting from tomorrow, restaurants and bars will reopen and be allowed to welcome clients not only at terraces but inside too but still with social distancing. That means a better revenue for those businesses. I really don’t know if people, here in Paris, will apply the minimum distance between each other. As far as I’ve seen, that’s not the case. So I guess that restaurants should not get as many customers as it used to have before the pandemic, but they should not be too far.

The other point was about airports. Starting from the 1st July, they should be reopened with countries where the COVID-19 has been contained. Taking planes is a thing that worries me too. Will opening borders bring back some cases again ?

Going back to school next monday for … two weeks and it’s mandatory. Summer holidays start July 4th, what’s the point to send them back in school for ten days only, especially for kids going to preschool. How will you get 3 to 5 years old kids to keep distance between them? You educate them to share toys and now they should not anymore. Probably a lot of parents won’t send their kids to school IMHO.

The last part is the most stunning one. Macron insisted that France will not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures. He said also :

The republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue.

Macron

That sentence will make people even more angry at the current government. On the other hand, there are no more Marshal Petain street names in France since 2013. Again, the administration had and will make choice for a specific category of people. Some crimes must be erased and some not. Apparently, there is a ranking in acts of cruelty.

The country I used to know as a kid definitely evolved … but not in a good way at all.

People were also waiting for an announcement about the economy and a concrete solution to fight the jobless rate that will come until the end of the year. None of this was brought up during his oration.

Yesterday, China locked down again in Beijing where 52 cases have been discovered. Quite funny to open borders when that news just came out. Even before the official reopening, a friend of mine came back from Los Angeles, and she was speechless seeing that no control whatever was done at the French airport. She came through like that virus never existed.

Are we safe ? I don’t know but this government during those 10 weeks made bad choices all along. I stumbled across that blog post analyzing a potential second wave and there are still cases out there.

On my side, I’ve been writing down number in my logbook on a daily basis. And in less than two weeks, there is 2 million cases more worldwide. At the moment, there was 7,951,252 cases and 434,217 deaths due to that virus. COVID-19 is still spreading but the death rate is less than at the beginning though.

Wash your hands, keep distance and stay safe.

Post 44/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Evgeni Tcherkasski

Web dev

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 22:06:34 +0200

It has far too many tools. This note is just to list some of them that I will eventually update in the future.

If you need some svg icons for your website, there is a collection on :

- Heroicons.dev

- Fontawesome

- Forkawesome

I found also tinyhelpers that got plenty of references to HTML, Js, typography and other subjects.

Notes

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 22:10:23 +0200

Indieweb’s webmentions are a nice feature people doing the #100DaysToOffload use on their blog. The challenge is really stimulating and since I started I got more and more ideas to write about. People who take part of the challenge have some day off when they don’t feel like writing a long article or maybe they are just busy.

Today, was one of that day but I managed to create a Notes page where I’ll post my webmention replies and some quick and short thoughts.

Post 43/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Dimitri Houtteman

Meetings

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 16:18:50 +0200

I’m a little bit blessed in that I’m in a position to do this but unless it’s a company announcement rather than a meeting I’m not attending anything that large. It’s folly to pretend it’s useful to anyone except the person who’s dodging the responsibility of narrowing the scope. I also won’t queue meetings up, so a 1 hour meeting shows busy at least half an hour either side. It’s rare I’ll take a meeting that won’t need thought before and after, otherwise it’s a sign there was no point in me being there at all.

Meetings are rarely well organized.

At the current job, they are better planned and most of the time you don’t get any really useless ones.

That is pleasant but uncommon.

And just a quote I love :

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Thomas Sowell

This post was a reply to https://trivial.observer/notes/1591832220/

What's wrong with email?

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 18:43:17 +0200

I am the kind of stubborn guy wanting to change people’s demeanor. Around 80 persons switched to Signal around me because I told them it’s better for them and their privacy. And since that’s my main tool to communicate, if they wanted to keep in touch it’s Signal or nothing. The same way, I encourage them to stop using GAFAM products and try ethical alternatives pointing out Switching Software.

For example, Gmail is used way too much. In the past, Android mobiles forced you to have a Google account to be able to use your phone. Now with LineageOS or /e/, it’s not mandatory anymore. I hated the fact that they potentially know your contacts, your agenda and other things about your life. That’s why I self-host everything I can.

My daughter’s school has a newsletter for each classroom and I noticed a majority of parents are using Gmail. That makes me sick. At some point, I will probably try to introduce to them other providers like ProtonMail or Tutanota.

Even when you try to keep your life private, when you communicate with people using Google it’s complicated. Quitting mainstream social media platforms was a great way to get rid of people I didn’t really know or care about. Real friends are the ones who call me or use Signal because it’s my main tool to communicate. I just ditched the others.

How people use emails is the main subject of this article so let’s focus on that part.

I stumbled upon that article about mailing lists and the fact they are spying on people including tracking pixels.

A term marketing people don’t like but by definition :

spy :

One who secretly collects information concerning the enemies of a government or group.

One who secretly collects information for a business about one or more of its competitors.

That kind of things can’t be done with a simple plain text email.

HTML in mails was and is still a thing that should be prohibited.

First, your MUA, a Mail User Agent or commonly known as a mail client, is not a browser! Stop sending pictures in them or, at least, add them as attached documents. I used to have an automatic reply in mutt for people sending HTML saying something like :

Please don’t send emails in HTML format. It’s bad and I won’t reply to you!

Second, people put images in their signature and then add these kinds of messages :

Please do not print this email unless it is necessary. Every unprinted email helps the environment.

Is it necessary to print this email? If you care about the environment like we do, please refrain from printing emails. It helps to keep the environment forested and litter-free.

Adding a short message about ecology is great but why add images to your mails is a bad idea ?

The carbon footprint of email are approximately something like :

Spam email, even not opened : 0.3 CO2e
A proper email : 4g CO2e
An email with long attachment : 50g CO2e

To put this into perspective, the carbon output of hitting “send” on 65 mails is on par with driving an average-sized car a kilometre.

10 emails with big attachments are like burning 240g of coal.

The global carbon footprint from spam annually is equivalent to the greenhouse gases pumped out by 3.1 million passenger cars using 7.6 billion litres (two billion gallons) of gasoline in a year.

So please stop adding images or HTML in your emails. Period !

And my last point is about how people reply to emails and it connects to my last argument.

My reference of choice is the RFC-1855 also known as the Netiquette describing how to write emails :

Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message, include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.

and

Watch cc’s when replying. Don’t continue to include people if the messages have become a 2-way conversation.

About signatures :

If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is, the more they pay.

That Netiquette or how to be polite has been lost over the years.

Everyone replies above all the previous mails and the worst part is all of them are included in the current mail. I’ve seen emails over 1000 lines just to say “Thank you” and Cc:ed more than 20 persons.

That last part is quite a difficult habit to change for a lot of people. Sometimes people tell me :

- You sent me an empty email!

- No I didn’t I just replied under your message stripping irrelevant parts.

Doing it that way people reading the thread know exactly what the question was and what you replied to.

When you reply above all the other messages, you waste time reading previous emails because you just don’t know what was the question and you need to figure it out between 15 emails sent.

Microsoft, Gmail and all these new email clients are doing it WRONG. And that should be known by people, so they can adjust and use email properly again. Marketers, and their HTML emails, should just be banned from using a MUA.

Next time, you fire up an email ask yourself how your response could be well better formatted and not harm the ecology adding big images to them… or HTML.

Post 43/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Muukii

Story telling

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 19:18:58 +0200

42 days.

We are almost half-way to the #100DaysToOffload challenge started by Kev. Keeping the pace with the writing was something I wasn’t sure I could do but so far so good.

Yesterday, I posted this on Mastodon :

The same way @kev started #100DaysToOffload, who is interested in #storytelling as a group using #webmentions or a thread on a mastodon.

I saw a French #mercredifiction meaning #wednesdayFiction and the idea is to have small #stories.

We could start a sentence or two telling a part of the story and leaving a cliffhanger for the next person to add something to the story. We start the morning and end at the end of the day.

We have just to choose a day and a name for this.
That could be fun 😅

NoDistrict was a website with subjects like music, art, sports and other things we loved to write about. We created it with some friends because it was fun. That led us to organize parties and exhibitions about some Parisian artists.

One of the category people liked was Gisele’s column because it was about her sex life. Friends were asking who she was and how come they never met her. We kept the secret for months saying she loved privacy.

Gisele was a fictional character and the girls who created her used to listen to guys stories and use those to craft an imaginary creature whose life was a lot of fun.

They used to write one or two sentences each and one after the other, they created the craziest stories who made Gisele famous amongst our friends.

My Mastodon post idea was just to get creative and have some fun. We’ll see how it goes …

Post 42/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Kelly Sikkema

Always stick to principles

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 08:23:31 +0200

One morning, you open your eyes and, in an instant, 20 years had passed. That was the last time, a Microsoft operating system was at my home.

I dropped theirs products two decades ago and I won’t use them again personally. For work, I did use them once at a company where they didn’t want to provide a Windowsless workstation to administer servers running on … Linux. I found myself struggling to use Cygwin and other tools available by default on any Linux distributions. Finished by installing Virtualbox and using it exclusively leaving the host doing just that : running a VM with my favorite distribution, Debian.

The main reason they did not provide Linux was because of lack of people knowing how to install them. IN - SANE ! Just hire some dude!

The company is quite large and wanted, even big, to behave as a startup. You get the idea and as you may already figured out, it didn’t work. During an employee meeting with a planned roadmap for their future and a room full of attendees, they asked if anyone had a question, mine was :

- You're saying you want to act as a startup and embrace opensource but we can't even have a Linux laptop and you're wasting money on licenses, could you explain why ?

Of course, no real answer and merely got a “We took note of your point and will get back to you as soon as possible”. Never happened. That was my first week there.

My fight with them lasted until I gave up because nobody really cared about it. Had a few heated debates with some managers who told me “Just use a VM it’s the same”. Of course … NOT!

That was the moment I said to myself I won’t work any more on those systems. Once, I refused a bank job because you could only use Windows for your workstation. Now, during job interviews I always ask and decline positions where Microsoft products must be used in your working environment. If Windows OS were part of my job, that would be understandable but that’s not the case.

Google, Apple and Microsoft technologies goals are to make people’s lives easier but that’s not enough to me to just give up my privacy and freedom principles. In an ideal world, every company should be able to have an opensource team providing tools and products data-vaccuum free. They should not rely on Office365 or Gmail for their mail, Google Docs for documents, Dropbox for file sharing, etc…

Hopefully, we will see more and more organizations going to projects like NextCloud and dropping proprietary software breaching GDPR and privacy in too many ways.

In the meantime, I won’t flinch and will stand by my principles.

Post 41/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Mark Duffel

This post was a reply to https://jlelse.blog/thoughts/2020/06/principles-convenience/

Busy day ... kind of

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 22:05:53 +0200

Quite a busy day full of remote meetings. My afternoon was one of these days when you don’t do really anything except squandering time to very exhausting sessions.

We should have maximum hours of meetings per day. A friend of mine told me that his wife spend all day in video conferences and basically doing 11 hours of work per day.

Because the meetings are one thing but then you need probably to produce some work. After 5 hours of Slack/Teams meetings, you need to sit down to actually do something you are paid for could be sometimes hard.

Everybody had meetings starting late or people rolling up one by one. That’s just annoying and it’s not sending a good message to others especially if you’re the late one that everyone is waiting for. That could be seen as arrogant and/or that your time is more valuable than theirs.

From time to time, I got invited in some meetings and I just wonder why I’m in a room with 10 people about an unknown subject. The same kind of things happens with WFH but at least you can continue to work listening to others chitchats. That could be seen as a rude manner in a “physical” meeting. But how the heck you got there in the first place ?

Leaving the room could be also an option but the same way, people there would probably think you are a jerk. It happened to me a couple of times but I prefer to be frank and say that there is no point for them and me to be in that meeting and I just prefer to say sorry and bail out.

With the pandemic, WFH, also known as Working From Home, has been adopted in several companies but really poorly in some of them. A friend of mine is often in meetings with at least 20 attendees. And even once they were near 80 in a Zoom session. 🤦‍♂️

Apart from using Zoom, being in that kind of meetings is wrong. It’s everything but not productive. You got a lot of noise from mics not muted and you get people trying to speak simultaneously. I can’t even understand what some guys think : “Hey let’s put a maximum of employees there to nail that issue down!”

I sometimes spend afternoons in meetings but luckily most of them are with people smart enough to understand how to be productive and with a list of points to tackle.

About my yesterday Vim post

Had a small victory today when a colleague told me, he will eventually try Vim with some refactoring plugins when Eclipse will annoy him again. 😄

And that was my Day 40/100! - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!

Photo credit : Edwin Andrade

Vim Weekly tips #10

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 22:58:28 +0200

Developers!

I used to work with different teams where we, as sysadmins, were not with them every day, and that old fight was common : “But it works on my workstation”

That changed with agility and the new DevOps roles where both sysadmins and devs are in the same team working hand in hand. But often, it comes again, the same talk : “You can’t use vim to do real coding”.

As a sysadmin, it’s true I don’t do heavy coding as they do probably but I disagree that Vim can’t be used as an IDE. There are plenty of posts online to customize Vim as your IDE. Just a quick tip to have a terminal in Vim because some of my colleagues told me “I have a terminal directly in my IDE” :


 :vertical terminal
 "or
 :bel terminal

But we won’t talk about that today. We will focus on a discussion that happened the other day on Mastodon about Basil post where Vim didn’t fit with what he does/wants about an editor.

A common argument is that Vim is “it’s a command line editor”, “it’s old” and “today you have better alternatives and I just don’t want to learn it”.

For me, all those people are just lazy (Basil I’m not talking about you on this one 😅 ) because Vim has been there for decades and there must be a reason why people still use it, don’t you think?

First, it’s blazing fast compared to Atom, Brackets and others where you have HTML5 engines, node, browser and who knows what under each program. Vim on its side, uses system memory and it loads extremely fast. I dare you to open a 100 Mb file with each one just to see which one will be open first or try to do many changes in the file. Vim will be quick and won’t be lagging compare to others. There was a great post about how quickness of each one of them are but just can’t find it right now. But just check online there are many of them.

Vim is old. Yeah, sure but actually I like that because you will probably have more maturity than the new kid on the block with its shiny new tools. Vim also has more than 14.000 plugins and I’m pretty confident you will probably find what you need between all of them.

Vim indeed is a command line editor but that’s great. A friend of mine started to play with Jupyter Notebooks to learn Python. It’s probably something great even if that guy, Joel Grus, doesn’t agree with that (I’m on his side too). My friend didn’t want to learn CLI commands and said he didn’t have time for that. So we keep chatting and at one moment he said to me :

I've spent my day to create directories and move my data around.

He’s using Windows if some of you doubted it, and he created a lot of directories manually which for me is insane… really.

I showed him a command line to create like this one


 % mkdir -p test{0..10}/{a,b,c}

He just looked at me with his big eyes and said : “I’m shocked … I have to learn that kind of things”. Obviously, he’s just at the beginning of his learning curve but I always wonder why people don’t get some time on something and if it doesn’t fit ok move on. But don’t just curse at things just because you’re lazy.

Vim is portable. You have it everywhere. On any server you will find a version of it. I don’t really like the fact that I’ve seen people using nano on some servers but those are not mine obviously.

Macros! It will boost your productivity. The same way my friend was struggling with his directories, when you want to format a big file with Vim it’s quite easy. Just check that random video I just picked.

Some people are also saying all internal commands are hard to remember when it’s actually pretty easy because a lot of them are mnemonic:

i to insert
a to append
d to delete
cw change word
dap delete a paragraph
etc…

“Why we can’t use arrows to move around !?” Of course you can but you will be just faster using the way it is. I wrote about why hjkl was set up the way it is in the week 3 post. Just learn about vim motions and you’ll forget about arrows.

Nobody is a pro about Vim because every day you will learn a new thing or another way to do. That’s why I love it too. You just can’t stop learning !

All the things you have in other editor should be available in Vim too. You should really gives it a try, If you are new to this editor, just open a terminal and type in it :


 % vimtutor

And enjoy your ride.

Post 39/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

This post was a reply to https://trivial.observer/blog/mission-vimpossible/

Oneplus and /e/

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 23:13:55 +0200

E or /e/ or e.foundation ?

Never knew how this ROM was supposed to be pronounced. Its goal is to provide a clean Android without Google apps. It’s a fork of LineageOS and Android.

UnGoogling your mobile device is the main reason pushing its creator, Gael Duval, to develop that operating system.

On my side, I felt in love with Oneplus since their first device. It was cheap, loved the look and worked like a charm. On all the devices I had from that brand, I didn’t break any of them.

Got the 7th pro edition, broke 2 in less than ten days. 🤦‍♂️

The first one was sent for fixing, and I got it back 2-3 weeks after they picked up the mobile. The second, the back lens glass is broken but everything works.

On both devices, my choice was to use /e/. Works well except when you try to use the hands-free kit included in the box. The phone detects it like a charger and you can’t use it to make a call leaving you without any option.

REALLY REALLY ANNOYING

The one I got back, LineageOS was my ROM of choice, but for some unknown reason it keeps looping in Fastboot mode. I don’t know if I made it useless or not. Probably, those XDA forums will be a great source of information.

I’ll try to get it working this week because I’m too tired right now.

Do you use a custom ROM and which one ?

Post 38/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

TikTok

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 22:58:05 +0200

Social media are wrong.

A friend send us in Signal group a weird video about a challenge he stumbled upon on TikTok : the doggystyle chalenge when young women took video of themselves in a sexual position.

Watching the video I told to myself : “A parent will probably pop up in the room of one of these girls making the video awkwardly funny” … NOPE ! Never happened. It’s just young girls doing a dumb challenge!

On the other hand, the last couple of days we’ve seen a lot of hashtags about George Floyd and BlackLivesMatter, and oddly TikTok blocked these two hashtags. The website announced it was a bug on random words like cat or hello displaying zero views too. But a lot of people aren’t buying it.

I never had an account neither on TikTok nor Snapchat mainly because I don’t like videos and always preferred photography. But the annoying part of these social media platforms is the content available and displayed to young kids. They are not supposed to be able to see sexual or violent content. A friend of mine caught his 10 years daughter having a hidden Instagram account and found that she had some 30+ years dudes following her. Of course, he deleted her account and the app with a phone restriction.

We live in a weird world and I still preferred my youth where I have memories of that small Serbian village from where my father comes from. We used to play basketball in the afternoon and chatting a lot around an ice cream or meet at each other place for some home made crêpes or pizza parties. I’m still friends with them after more than 25 years, and they always remember my birthday without the help of Facebook or LinkedIn reminders.

Generations evolved … in a good way? Not really sure about that.

Post 37/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Cafés

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 20:11:26 +0200

Loads of posts this week with the #blacklivesmatter hashtag. Of course, it’s essential to write about it because police’s vile acts we’ve witnessed are not bearable.

But I won’t talk about it and my focus will be on something else, a plague, that never existed or, at least, was half-forgotten by people drinking at terraces.

Last Tuesday, cafés have been reopened in France. On the map presented by the government politics, all regions are green except Paris and its suburbs still in orange meaning precautionary principles should be adopted.

A glance at this situation, and straightaway something was inappropriate with their decision. Avoiding that decision with Parisians would have been a far better choice.

Prudence is not a thing for Parisians and the lack of good sense is present at every street corner.

The social distancing is supposed to be at least 1.50 meters between people. All the bars I crossed paths with tonight, none of them respect the instructions gave by the government. NOT ONE OF THEM !

From my point of view, that Coronavirus never happened in gobs of heads. Nobody, at these terraces or in the bars, wore a mask. Just a lot of chilling, eating and drinking on top of each other. Even paid, I would not like to seat amongst all these folks.

Are we safe ?

We don’t know yet but I know for a fact I won’t go anytime soon to any bar.

Interest in those places has vanished as my appetite for alcohol. Paying a lot of rounds was one of my best asset for my “friends”, who out of the blue, disappeared from my life the day I got a kid. Abracadabra !!

We all know the demon drink is a harmful health product, one of the reason I didn’t get a sip of for almost six months. Plus, nobody says no to some extra money not squandered on booze.

Anyway, are you going back to the bar soon ?

Post 36/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit :Yannis Papanastasopoulos

Reading more

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 22:45:50 +0200

Books!
I’ve never been a heavy reader. When I was a teenager, I always wanted to read more but it always finished the same way : me going out to play basketball or to roller-skate.

Getting older, and with a new 2020 resolution, I’ve decided that I definitely should read more this year.

June 4th : 3

3 books !!! Some people read 3 books in a ten days.
That’s not really what I hoped five months later. 😔

What happened ? Well, I had a good start but then that crappy COVID-19 pandemic hit us everywhere. A lot of time spent reading about that virus online and watching TV news. All that was useless because nobody really knew or knows if it will come back or not. Are we safe or not ? Will all these protests around the globe bring a new wave of c-19 cases ?

That was one of the reason, the second one is the TV. I started that IMDB list of movies that I want to see. There are 250 of them and I’ve seen only 110 of them. On top of that, there is Netflix, that filthy innovation, that keeps you watching episodes over episodes with that auto-playing feature until it stops and asks you :

ARE YOU STILL WATCHING "XXX" ?

Continue watching

Exit

That’s the moment you need to take to escape and run far away from your TV … or just turn it off. I’ve spent around 10 hours watching “The Last Dance”, I enjoyed the show but I should have put some boundaries like one episode - 50 pages read of any book. That would have helped me to read more.

The last thing that took me a lot of times, is the #100DaysToOffload challenge and everything around it. Don’t get me wrong, keeping writing every day for the last 34 days in a row is an enjoyable experience that I will push to the 100 days goal and probably beyond that. First time I write so much… but it requires time, time over my reading.

That challenge brought me a lot of things : the indieweb and a lot of new people to follow over the fediverse and/or their blogs. But, every morning, there is a ton of new posts to read and that is really time-consuming. My reply to Mike’s toot about how many open tabs he has was nothing compared to my browser. Currently, I have 347 open tabs of things I wanted to read later and … wait for it … 3950 unread bookmarks on my Wallabag.

It’s time to let it go.

There is just too much online content and 3-4 lifetime would not be enough to go through everything I would love to do.

Cherry-picking what really matters to me is going to be my objective and hopefully I will be glad about my choices.

Post 35/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Alfons Morales

The 25 facts

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 20:58:34 +0200

I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SMS... People just submitted it.
I don’t know why... Dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg

- Dumb fucks!

- Dumb fucks ? You dumb fuck ! Fuck you!

Fuck your paid campaigns! Sharing moments with our friends was the only thing we wanted! Not being forced to pay to see our messages going through to connect with our contacts.

Fuck the advertising, grubbing for money and smiling at us behind our back.

Fuck your 22nd birthday and that memo stating women should wear T-shirts with your dumb face on it! Fucking spoiled kid !

Fuck your penny-pinching behaviour. You can’t even leave a decent tip. Stingy fucker!

Fuck you, bison I only eat what I kill Billy ! The world is not fucked up enough you have to kill animals yourself !?

Fuck WhatsApp and all its tracking tools. Brian Acton, should have never sold it to that evil company!

Fuck Instagram and their influencers! Most of them bragging about their incredible life and the number of followers they have - get a fucking job!

Fuck your classy manners. Poaching Sandberg for a long time and first thing you said about her is that she had a good skin.

Fuck Sandberg too! That evil pair of devils ultimate goal is profit over people.

Fuck you algorithms and that fucking PYMK recommending clients who did not know her true identity to a sex worker or a biological child to a sperm donor he never met. What’s FUCKING wrong with you ?!

Fuck your fidelity and how you fucked over your friends stealing their ideas. If I was Eduardo Saverin, I would have smacked your face.

Fuck Cambridge Analytica and the way you stole data of millions of persons and at the same time exposing more than 250 millions phone numbers in a security breach! Seriously … fuck you!

Fuck your tone of voice, so patronizing! “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you”. The only thing I smell is a huge whooper. You fucking liar.

Fuck illegal drug sales! Your fucking platform contains more than 1.5 million listing for illegal drugs alone! That’s 6 times more than the evil Silk Road. Ross Ulbricht got a life sentence for less than this.

Fuck your privacy policy! We won’t gob it so easily! On your side, you bought all the houses around your home to preserve your privacy but we should give it away!

Fuck stubborn idiots that drink your words without questioning themselves because they don’t have anything to hide.

Fuck your lack of security leading to numerous fake facts pages getting Trump elected. Well done Russia!

Fuck you and politicians spreading misinformation. You have tools to stop it! Just do it!

Fuck your meeting with Macron! We don’t need your fucking company to tackle hate speech!

Fuck your platform and the fact that you don’t want to block Trump’s messages encouraging violence.

Fuck your president arse-licker behaviour! Get a personality and act for human beings you fucker!

Fuck the Silicon Valley and all those data sucking companies. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

Fuck your lies! Since day one, it was always about lying to people and to companies using your fucking website.

No. No, fuck you, Zuckerberg! You could have it all, and you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

Post 34/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

This post was a reply to https://zerokspot.com/weblog/2020/06/03/are-you-still-supporting-facebook/

Indeed, Git is great

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 14:23:40 +0200

Git is really great in comparison to some software I used to work with.

The first time SCM I used was ClearCase. An IBM product I had to play with in 2004 more or less. Back then, I didn’t keep a logbook so I can’t remember exactly how it was. Though, I remember being intrigued by that piece of software and wanted to know more about it.

At that working place, the guys moved to CVS. Then again, like any new software I liked to understand features of those things. It was way better than ClearCase from what is left in my memory.

Big improvements came with the introduction of svn also known as subversion from the Apache Foundation. It brought a lot of new features and was used by the FreeBSD guys, GCC, Sourceforge and other ones. Its main purpose was to be the successor of CVS.

We had to migrate some CVS repositories to svn and I can clearly remember that we struggled with it. It was supposed to be easily done but that wasn’t our case. Did we do something wrong ? Who knows and it doesn’t matter anymore 😅

Subversion is still used by a lot of projects and companies. The latest stable release is the 1.9.12 released 10 months ago, the 25th July 2019.

2005

Linus Torvalds introduced git that year to manage the kernel code source and to get rid of BitKeeper, a proprietary source-control management.

The name git, which means unpleasant person in British English slang, comes from the fact that Torvalds was seen that way by a lot of developers. The man pan describes Git as “the stupid content tracker”.

Torvalds said about git and himself:

"I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."

Linus Torvalds

On my side, I’ve been using since 2007 and I’m quite happy with it. There are a lot of others tools to maintain your source code :

The same way I write a lot about Vim, sharing my experience of git, like in that post, could be useful to some people.

Post 33/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

This post was a reply to https://kevq.uk/i-now-know-how-to-use-git

Racism and a lazy day off

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 23:31:28 +0200

Sleep, I’ve never been a big sleeper. Since I was 15, I sleep between 5 and 7 hours per night. Getting older doesn’t help either and last night was even worse. Couldn’t get any shuteye before 1.30 and woke up at 5.15am. Spent 30 minutes rolling over my bed and finally got up.

Tried to read some news online and have to admit our world is really fucked up.

Some facts :

George Floyd got killed by an idiot
A woman who slapped a cop got knocked out by a big dude
A moron pointed a bow and arrows against protesters
A guy defending a bar he liked got hit and stamped on
A shop owner got out of his car with a shotgun and opened fire on people
A guy had a riffle and got disarmed by another who had a gun and riffle too
A family picture with kids and father posing with machine guns
A french cop doing exactly the same hold that killed George Floyd on some guy in Paris
French cops using tear gas on a solidarity walk in the french capital city
Riots literally in a lot of spots over the globe

After this, I just turned off my laptop and watched tv today because I didn’t get any motivation to write anything special and was too tired to do anything else.

As I’ve never been a siesta guy I couldn’t get any sleep all day until the beginning of the evening when I collapsed on the couch. And now, woke up at 9.30 pm and don’t feel like sleeping.

So here I am writing a note about my lazy day off where I haven’t done a thing except trying to get some rest between the last Harry Potter movie, that I’ve never seen before, and a light tv show on Netflix, New Girl, in the background.

This morning, I didn’t feel like writing but all these insane things around the world made me mull things over.

Racism, has always been present.

From Egyptian to George Floyd case by way of Romans, Indians or international conflicts, it has always been a part of our life and premeditated and pushed for political and economic reasons.
Randomly over decades, history repeats itself and what is obvious is the fact that people can’t learn from their mistakes.

I remember Makomé M’Bowole, a 17 years old teenager, got killed in a police station in the 18th district of Paris. A day or two after the murder, I was coming back from the basketball playground and saw a lot of guys, more or less my age, running because police was charging. And even if I didn’t do anything illegal, I saw them running and I ran too.

As a kid, I never played as the cop or the cowboy, but always the bandit or the Native American. Writing those words looks like the native ones where the bad guys but that’s quite the opposite actually. That’s probably why I ran that afternoon because even back then we didn’t trust cops.

I was 16 back then and that could have happened to me or some of my friends. One evening, an undercover officer, stopped us, a friend and myself, and started asking us where we were coming from and what we had in our bags. And added, showing us his fists :

- They broke some noses and jaws. So don't lie to me.

We were 14 or 15 years old. From time to time, I meet that aging idiot coming the other way, and I thought once that I should go talk to him and ask him why he acted the way he did. But I haven’t done it because I have better to do than guessing the behaviour of an old frustated person.

The 1995 French movie, la Haine (Hate), depicts a society where racism is present every day in French suburbs where people are less educated and where the government just parked them in those projects. The movie is 25 years old, but nothing has changed. Even worse, France is actually going downhill. The dreadful situation how the media have pulled apart people in communities is really worrying.

Racism has always been around us but not between us. As a kid, we were all just friends, and we didn’t care about where your family came from or the color of your skin. All my close friends, except one, Jean-Pierre A.to not mention him, met during these years, haven’t changed, and we are all concerned by the future society we are going to leave to our children.

We don’t want our kids to go to some job interview and being asked if they are Serbian or Croatian or to be called to order five times to wear a tie for the final interview because it’s “mandatory” in our culture and our society. The guy probably thought my friend wasn’t smart enough to understand it the first time because he was black. Here was my friend answer :

- Don't worry I'll wear a tie, an orange one, like yours.

- At least, I have a job!

That’s exactly the kind of idiots that I hope will one day be helped by strangers and will eventually change their opinions. But I’m not really confident about the human beings’ ability to change.

Every time, I see a futuristic sci-fi movie, the Earth and world ahead is a giant mess.

Take any movie in the same category and it’s scary. We’re always doomed by robots (Terminator, iRobot, Elysium, Matrix, etc…), a pandemic (I am Legend, 28 Weeks Later) or an asteroid that would eradicate humans from Earth. Oblivion was on the TV last night, just the trailer repelled me and I preferred to watch a romantic comedy.

The same way nothing really changed over the course of these 25 years in France, nothing really changed in the US. Riots they’re facing right now have been seen before and the only one I remember was the 90s in LA but America had and will always have a lot of incidents unless real changes occur.

Hopefully, people will get smarter and will learn the guy facing you who doesn’t have the same skin color, religion or accent should be accepted and treated as any other human being.

Post 32/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Francky Cordoba

Birthday, Darknet and Webstats

Sun, 31 May 2020 23:17:03 +0200

5 Today, my wife’s nephew turned 5. A little party was thrown this afternoon, so I joined all the family at the end of this morning after cycling … 23 km.

After a lot of balloons, a Pikachu cake and a nice afternoon with the family, I came back home cycling again. Around 45 kilometers in total today. I can’t remember last time I did that kind of ride.

After 2 hours and 40 minutes, my buttocks were starting to be a bit on fire 😅

The time spent on the saddle allowed me to listen to one of the podcasts that’s currently on my to-do list : Darknet Diaries.

I was able to listen to :

EP 21: Black Duck Eggs.

EP 22: Mini-Stories: Vol 1

These two were a lot about pen-testing and social engineering. Reminded me of one of the first famous social engineer, Kevin Mitnick.

Then that one about first bank robberies in history by Vladimir Levin :

EP 23: Vladimir Levin

And the last one on my way back was about darknet, Tor, Silk Road the darknet marketplace and its successors,

EP 24: Operation Bayonet

Back home, tired a bit, after a long shower I just sat down with my laptop on my couch thinking about my website statistics.

Piwik, now Matomo, was a software I used for the website we used to have. Prior to that I used also Awstats. For this blog, I don’t use any of these and was wondering if there was a CLI tool to get statistics from my apache logs. After a couple of minutes spent looking around on the web, I found GoAccess.

GoAccess installation

On Debian, a package is available :


 % sudo apt install goaccess

Then to process a log file, just type :


 % goaccess access.log -c

Then it asks you to choose you log format :

After processing your file, here what it looks like :

Here is the full-size image of that screenshot.

I haven’t checked all the options available but it looks nice and everything could be run in a terminal

You can generate an HTML report too :


 % goaccess access.log -o report.html --log-format=COMBINED

And the output is quite nice :

full-size image of that report.

That’s all for my 31st day and a full month of blogging. 🙌

Post 31/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Adi Goldstein

Day 30 : Why I blog ?

Sat, 30 May 2020 19:21:36 +0200

Day 30 ! Writing daily for a whole month… and enjoyed it.

Writing every day can be a real problem for a lot of people. Lack of subjects, time or just being too busy with daily life may drag you out of it. That’s probably one of the reason blocking people to maintain a blog or a website.

Then, of course, are the skills to set up a blog or website. Of course, you could go for some hosted solutions like Medium, Wordpress or all these platforms with all the aches coming with them.

Medium was a platform that I kinda like at the beginning but quickly I got annoyed and then furious with the way they force you to log in on their website through Facebook, Twitter or Gmail. There was the email option but I got disconnected every time after reading 4 or 5 articles. And had to log in again but for that you need to check your mails because an approval link is automatically sent to you. And I said to myself : “Fuck this!” and removed my account. Plus, they never answered when I tried to reach them online.

Wordpress, if you really want to use it, just download it and ask some friend to help you out. That will you give more powers on plugins you want to install, your domain name, and obviously your data and privacy.

Often people say that they don’t have a blog because they have anything to say r they had one but nobody cared about what they wrote. Personally, I don’t give a shit if someone read me or not. I mainly do it for myself and eventually for people sharing the same interests than me.

My viewpoint is I’m old enough to not be affected by the lack of likes or mean people online. As a friend said when he argues with people :

"I stopped feeding golden fishes that think they have seen all oceans ... But are still in their bowls."

Mat'

Everybody has something to say, it’s just your choice if want to keep it for yourself or share it and engage a discussion with people who had the same kind of experience or who look for a piece of advice.

Debianworld.org was a French website about Debian I made at the end of the 90s. The main goal for me was to learn GNU Linux and all the tools available in that ecosystem. Sharing my experience and writing articles was something really fun. I met a lot of people through it and started to translate the DWN also known as the Debian Weekly News and the Securing Debian Manual from English to French. Every week, I posted them also on my website and that was a great thing to be able to contribute in some way to opensource.

For no real reason I stopped to write until back 2013 when with some friends we started a small website, Nodistrict.com. We were a bunch of friends blogging about music, urban style, culture and politics. Of course, we were on all the social media and after running the website for almost 3 years and quite a lot of fun, the team imploded. Everyone got busy with his own life and, even if we were invited at a lot of parties and at some point we went to the Cannes festival parties too, we weren’t making money and people just had their own life and wanted to move on. On my side, privacy mattered more and more to me and my guts were telling to quit all those nasty networks. And out of the blue, we stopped.

After that episode, writing again online was the thing I wanted to do for a while because I don’t care anymore about the number of likes and all these self-esteem metrics even if I feel interesting and encouraging to know that people actually read what you have to say. But on the other side, it could be demoralizing because nobody read them. The main tip is : Just write.

Connecting to real people, not influencers proposed by some stupid “AI”, getting in that #100DaysToOffload challenge and discovering real people is way better than just scrolling and hitting likes or share buttons.

By the way, I hate that word influencer. My parents always told me to not get influenced by people and today every kid want to be one. That’s weird, isn’t it ? :man_facepalm:

Discovering the IndieWeb and being a part of it is really motivating. It reminds me the beginning of the internet where you had all these small personal and old-fashioned websites.

Privacy is an essential factor about being online. That’s why giving advices, sharing and helping people around me to get out of these social networks and encouraging them to not use these proprietary software is something I’ll continue to do as long as I can.

Sharing experiences and be able to write down my thoughts are the main reasons I have a blog. Ideas and opinions change and be able to come back and read some of them will be probably appealing.

Plus, friends asked me why I don’t have a website with some of my pics. Even if I’ve set up an instance of pixelfed, I will use my own blog to post and categorize photos worth sharing for me.

Post 30/100
Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Randalyn Hill

Ninja code

Fri, 29 May 2020 23:04:18 +0200

Kafka and JavaScript today.

Kafka was one of my main subject today at work because I moved to a new team just before the lockdown. They do use that system and I need to increase my ability to answer possible questions that people in other teams could have. A lot of configuration and documentation reading today.

And that’s not the only ones I’ve read.
Javascript.info is a well done website about JS with a lot of good clear examples.

Rubbish at JavaScript, I’ve decided to get a decent level and I’ve spent the evening reading that website. And between all the examples, I’ve stumbled upon that dark page.

Ninja code

If you want really to be an expert, a real ninja in Js, just learn everything available on that page : the Ninja code

The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.

Confucius

I’ll let you read it, and we can start a discussion on Mastodon 😉

Random thoughts

A lot of people in the #100DaysToOffload challenge have added a "notes" section on their blogs. Still, not sure how to organize that kind of things like these notes on Horst Gutmann's blog.

I really need to figure out, what's the best way for short answers to webmentions.

That’s the same kind of question about my “STORIES BASED ON SAME TAGS” section at the bottom of each post. Should I remove it or not ? I don’t know yet … Thought it could be a good idea but not so sure anymore.

Post 29/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Negan Scofield

Webmentions

Thu, 28 May 2020 23:41:38 +0200

Indieweb, a nice ethical way to get in touch with people and to reply to their blog posts directly from yours.

I’ve spent some time this evening to get webmentions on this blog. It kinda works and the css is alright, not the best one, but alright.

Javascript is a pain in the a** that I never really learned. I’ve read the first three books of the collection “You Don’t Know JS” by Kyle Simpson but haven’t been further in the learning drills. Those things need to be sorted out so I’ll probably read them again and will understand how to display my data correctly at the bottom of each post.

I got inspired by this article and this one. They have a lot of informations about how to use webmentions on your own website. It’s a little bit tricky for someone that comes, for example, from Wordpress but perseverance will help you out.

Thanks guys!

Post 28/100
Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Mike Setchell

Why does even capslock exist ?

Wed, 27 May 2020 22:06:14 +0200

The Qwerty layout was originally created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter in the late 19th century. It became popular because it helped those old typewriters to avoid jams when you typed too quickly. The Azerty layout is the French version of that layout and it appeared also at the end of the same century. These layouts are still widely used everywhere and that’s not good. Why we should continue to use a system that was designed for vanished products ?

Dvorak, is a better layout for modern keyboards but I haven’t found a laptop or keyboard manufacturer selling that kind of product. Of course, you can change the layout in your operating system software though.

That’s exactly what I’ve done in september 2018. And so far, I’m still using it every day. Living in France, some asked we why don’t I use the bépo layout because it brings accents and some other things better for French. Using Dvorak for accent is not a complicated thing and it’s quite easy to make them with a key combination. That’s why I’ve never even tried bépo.

Dvorak keyboard training is a nice way to improve your typing. Last time I tested it, I was around 30 WPM which is probably less than what I used to have with my Azerty keyboard but I’m happy with it even if I should try to progress. And ultimately, you should be able to write faster with that layout with less wrists pain too.

Talking about keyboard there is one key that I don’t know why it’s still present on current layout. For those who didn’t get it, I’m talking about the capslock key !

The same way the Azerty and Qwerty layouts were created, that key doesn’t belong to our era anymore and should be removed from new keyboards. Who really use that key really ? On the web, having capslock ON is a bad behaviour because it’s considered as someone yelling at someone else. So just drop it please! Google on some chromebook used the CapsLock key as a search button.

A good way to use that key is to remap that key to something different. On my side, My capslock has been remapped to Control and I’ve been using it for a while and you probably should do the same. It just feels better to have your Ctr key just under your little finger. 😉

If you want to give it a try, check that page that has a lot information:

http://www.noah.org/wiki/CapsLock_Remap_Howto.

On my laptop, I use Dvorak with my CapsLock key remapped this way:


 % setxkbmap -layout us dvorak-alt-intl -option ctrl:nocaps

You will never come back to use that damn CapsLock key the way it was designed.

Post 27/100 - Just write and join in 100DaysToOffload!_

Photo credit : Matt Artz

A "new" cool kid : nftables

Tue, 26 May 2020 22:39:18 +0200

Firewalls, first defence against naughty little boys on the internet. I’ve been using them for years and I’m old enough to have played with ipchains on the 2.2 series of GNU/Linux kernels and later was replaced by iptables.

UFW was something that I wanted to try and, for some reasons I don’t understand, the same rules on ufw and iptables didn’t have the same expected results.

So after about 45 minutes, I just stopped trying to use that Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW) and said to myself that I should continue to use iptables. But then, I remembered that I wanted to try nftables for a while.

nftables is the successor of iptables and was inspired by the tcpdump syntax for its rules. Also, a lot of improvements have been made to the code to avoid race condition, better error reporting and a lot of new things. It is supposed to replace iptables, ip6tables, arptables and ebtables.

Debian 10 (Buster), among other Linux distributions, uses nftables along with iptables-translate as the default packet filtering backend.

And, since I’m a Debian lover, let’s try that new shiny tool.

New toy, new rules

Let’s begin with that new toy.

First, we should disable iptables and flush all rules to avoid any potential issue:


 % sudo iptables -F
 % sudo ip6tables -F

You should check if nftables is enabled in your kernel using modinfo nf_tables and lsmod.

Now with nftables, a new client utility arrived : nft.
Basically, it should be used as you would use iptables.

Tables

At the top of the ruleset, there are Tables.

Rules are in Chains, which are themselves in Tables.

Then within nftables, all objects have a namespace including the family type. These are used to know what kind of stream you will process.

The family types are :


 * ip # ipv4
 * ip6 # ipv6
 * inet # ipv4+ipv6
 * arp # arp traffic 
 * bridge # etables equivalent
 * netdev # early stream filter below OSI 3 layer

To create a table :


 % sudo nft add table family_type table_name

List, delete and flush tables :


 % sudo nft list tables
 % sudo nft delete table family_type table_name
 % sudo nft flush table family_type table_name

By default, you have two tables : ip and ip6.

To list the default chains in each table :


 # change table ip with table ip6 for ipv6 chains 
 % sudo nft list table ip filter
 table ip filter {
 chain INPUT {
 type filter hook input priority 0; policy accept;
 }

 chain FORWARD {
 type filter hook forward priority 0; policy accept;
 }

 chain OUTPUT {
 type filter hook output priority 0; policy accept;
 }
 }

 # that's the same as iptables -nvL

Chains

You created your table, now you need to create a chain that will contain your rules.

Two kinds of chains are available :

base which got a hook in the kernel meaning it can see the traffic from the networking stack point of view.
regular mainly to organize your rules of what I understand.

If you don’t specify a family type ip will be the default.

To create a chain :


 # regular chain 
 % sudo nft add chain family_type table_name chain_name

 # base chain and priority values 
 % sudo nft add chain family_type table_name chain_name \
 '{ type chain_type hook hook_type priority priority_value ; }'

 # chain_type : filter, route, or nat.
 # hook_type : prerouting, input, forward, output, or postrouting.
 # priority : lower numbers are processed first.

List, delete and flush chains :


 % sudo nft list chain family_type table_name chain_name
 % sudo nft delete chain family_type table_name chain_name
 % sudo nft flush chain family_type table_name chain_name

To edit a chain, just recall the one you used to create it with your changes.

Rules

To create a rule, you need an expression or a statement, an operator and an action.

To add a rule :


 # handle_value is optional 

 % sudo nft add rule family_type table_name chain_name handle handle_value statement
 # That's equivalent to iptables -A 

 % sudo nft insert rule family_type table_name chain_name handle handle_value statement
 # That's equivalent to iptables -I

To delete a rule :


 % sudo nft --handle --numeric list chain_name family_type my_table my_input

 # To delete all rules in a chain
 % sudo nft delete rule filter output

Let’s try all that theory

Firstly, let’s clear everything, add a table and input, forward and output base chains. Of course, we drop everything on the incoming side and allow everything to go out :


 % sudo nft flush ruleset
 % sudo nft add table inet firewall
 % sudo nft add chain inet firewall my_incoming \ 
 '{ type filter hook input priority 0 ; policy drop ; }'
 % sudo nft add chain inet firewall forwarding \ 
 '{ type filter hook forward priority 0 ; policy drop ; }'
 % sudo nft add chain inet firewall going_out \
 '{ type filter hook output priority 0 ; policy accept ; }'

Add a rule for lo :


 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming iif lo accept
 # iptables equivalent : iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

Related and established traffic will be accepted:


 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming ct state related,established accept
 # iptables equivalent : iptables -I INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

Any invalid traffic will be dropped:


 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming ct state invalid drop
 # Iptables equivalent : iptables -I INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate INVALID -j DROP

We add 2 regular chains for tcp/udp streams and add traffic to them :


 # one for tcp 
 % sudo nft add chain inet firewall firewall_tcp_chain
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming \
 'meta l4proto tcp tcp flags & (fin|syn|rst|ack) == syn ct state new jump firewall_tcp_chain'

 # one for udp 
 % sudo nft add chain inet firewall firewall_udp_chain
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming \ 'meta l4proto udp ct state new jump firewall_udp_chain'

That’s just to organize your incoming streams but you could skip that and just use your “incoming chain” if you prefer.

We reject TCP/UDP connections not processed by other rules.


 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming meta l4proto udp reject
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming meta l4proto tcp reject with tcp reset
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall my_incoming counter reject with icmpx type port-unreachable

That’s the minimum to have to be at least a bit secured. Now, we chose what ports to open. On a web server, we need at least ssh, http and https. We add three rules for them :


 # HTTP 
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall firewall_tcp_chain tcp dport 80 accept

 # HTTPS 
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall firewall_tcp_chain tcp dport 443 accept

 # ssh 
 % sudo nft add rule inet firewall firewall_tcp_chain tcp dport 22 accept

Saving your ruleset

To be able to save your rules, you need to list them :


 % sudo nft list ruleset
 table inet firewall {
 chain my_incoming {
 type filter hook input priority 0; policy drop;
 iif "lo" accept
 ct state established,related accept
 ct state invalid drop
 tcp flags & (fin | syn | rst | ack) == syn ct state new jump firewall_tcp_chain
 meta l4proto udp ct state new jump firewall_udp_chain
 meta l4proto udp reject
 meta l4proto tcp reject with tcp reset
 counter packets 161 bytes 11790 reject
 }

 chain forwarding {
 type filter hook forward priority 0; policy drop;
 }

 chain going_out {
 type filter hook output priority 0; policy accept;
 }

 chain firewall_tcp_chain {
 tcp dport http accept
 tcp dport https accept
 tcp dport ssh accept
 }

 chain firewall_udp_chain {
 }
 }

To save it :


 % sudo nft list ruleset > /etc/nfstables.rules
 % sudo nft flush ruleset
 % sudo nft -f /etc/nfstables.rules

Conclusion

It looks like the syntax is more complex but actually it offers more features and it should be straight-forward if you already know iptables.

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Photo credit: Kelly Sikkema

Vim Weekly Tips #9

Mon, 25 May 2020 22:39:53 +0200

Jumps !
We talked about jumps without naming them in the Week 4 of these weekly tips when we used Ctr+o+o to go back to older files you edited.

Jumps are the last places or locations you have visited in the current files or older files you have opened.

As we did with in that post, actually the shortcuts to jump to the last place is to use Ctr+o and hit the same sequence as many times you want to go to previous places. The same way Ctr+i or [TAB] do the same in the forward (newer) location.

Every line or column number and file names are recorded in a jump list which include substitution, marks and searches. Scrolling is not recorded.

You can see all jumps with :


 :jumps 
 " or the shorten version 
 :ju 
 jump line col file/text
 16 33 10 ~/.muttrc
 15 1 0 /tmp/mutt-hades-1000-9191-8397950031110520878
 14 63 0 /tmp/mutt-hades-1000-9191-8397950031110520878
 13 41 0 /tmp/mutt-hades-1000-9191-8397950031110520878
 12 95 71 ~/20/themes/twenty-twenty-hugo/layouts/index.html
 11 4 5 date: 2020-05-25T22:39:53+02:00
 10 13 45 <img src="/img/vim-logo.png" alt="Vim" align="right" class="img-fluid rounded lazyload">
 9 15 27 <span class="drop-cap">J</span>umps !
 8 77 0
 7 78 24 Day 25/100 Just write and join in [100DaysToOffload](https://100DaysToOffload.com)
 6 29 55 Every line or column number and file names are recorded in a *jump list* which
 5 1 0 ~/20/themes/twenty-twenty-hugo/layouts/index.html
 4 1 0 ---
 3 30 0 include substitution, marks and searches.
 2 69 0
 1 1 0 /tmp/mutt-hades-1000-2508-1510267736880460600
 > 0 32 21 You can see all jumps with :
 1 18 68 tips](https://lazybear.io/posts/vim-weekly-tips-4) when used `Ctr+o+o` to go

Here you could use that information like this :

7 then Ctr+o to jump to line 78 column 24 in the current buffer.
Ctr+i to jump to line 18 column 68 in the current buffer.
16 then Ctr+o to jump to line 33 column 10 in my ~/.muttrc file.

Every time you split a window, the jumplist will be copied to the new window.
The maximum number of jumps is fixed at 100.

Every time you make a change, the cursor position is saved. Two commands can be used to jump to changes made. In Normal mode, to see all changes type :

 :changes 
 change line col text
 10 78 3 " positions go to the oldest change.
 9 74 49 :changes 
 8 77 3 " If [count] is larger than the number of older change
 7 78 3 " positions go to the oldest change.
 6 79 2 " If there is no older change an error message is given.
 5 80 1 g;
 4 80 0 g;
 3 82 2 "
 2 74 11 :changes 
 1 14 54 the latest changed line
 >

And then to navigate, use in Normal mode, type :


 [count]g; " Go to [count] older position in change list. 
 " If [count] is larger than the number of older change
 " positions go to the oldest change.
 " If there is no older change an error message is given.
 
 [count]g, " Go to [count] newer position in change list. 
 " Just like `g;` but in the opposite direction.

Changes may be something you want also to know 😄

Of course, you can always check the :help jump-motions and :help changelist for more information about jumps and changes.

And because we talked about jumps, for those of you who are old enough, let’s get back to 1991. 😉

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Dracula and mutt

Sun, 24 May 2020 23:56:50 +0200

Dracula is a website with a lot of dark themes for a lot of your apps on different platforms (Linux, OSX and even Windows). They propose a lot of themes for vim, Notepad++, VSCode, Slack. Emacs, Xchat, etc.

Today, I changed my work mutt colorscheme to use the one proposed by Dracula. It helps me to know quickly which mutt config I’m in.

Why two configs ?

Because I was lazy to adapt everything in one. And, since I work as a contractor, the company may will not be the same in a couple of months. So It makes sense to have two separate configurations. Plus, both are not on the same laptop. I have my personal one on my laptop and the work one over ssh on an other machine.

What is mutt by the way ?

Mutt is a text-based mail client preferred by a lot of “power users”. Using Mutt was natural for me because I love terminals and spend a lot of times in them. It’s fast to open, it displays threads correctly and it’s offers a lot of configuration options.

For example, signatures can be customized by directory. That’s helpful when you have a certain numbers of domain names and you want to have a specific signature for each email you use.

The same way, if you’re in a specific directory, you won’t have the same From: header.

You can also use it to send an email from the command line this way :


 # Send a message:

 mutt -s "a bit of log" colleague@work.com < /var/log/syslog

 # Send a message with a file attached (syslog file) and my_feedback.md with
 # the body of the email 

 mutt -s "a bit of log" colleague@work.com -a /var/log/syslog < ~/my_feedback.md

I encourage all the new sysadmin or should I say DevOps to try it and play a bit around to see all the features it offers.

A further article will be posted with my way to use mutt and some of its powers.

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Unorthodox

Sat, 23 May 2020 23:37:55 +0200

We spent the day doing things that family do during these days when you avoid going out. We did some pancakes, drawing and at the end of the day we just finished watching the new Netflix TV show, Unorthodox, based on the life of Deborah Feldman, who wrote about her experiences with the ultra Orthodox jew community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

I’m not aware enough about their tradition and I’m not a religious guy. When I was kid, religion was a thing that I saw as a meeting with family members. Tradition of my grandparents was something funny for me as kid and later as a teenager, I loved to see everybody around the same table to share moments together.

Agnostic would be the definition describing me the best. I believe that some kind of force exist, but we, as humans, don’t have that kind of knowledge, and as far as I know nobody came back to give an interview about afterlife. But I respect people and the diversity of their religious beliefs. The only thing that bothers me is the extremism in all of them. And that’s exactly what is about in that show.

And Happy Eid to all my Muslim friends.

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Back to running

Fri, 22 May 2020 10:40:26 +0200

Woke up at 7.15 AM.

Out at 7.30.

This morning I went on a run.

A little one.

25 minutes only.

After two months of lockdown, the push-ups and core strength exercises I’ve done were not enough to have a good stamina.

But here I am back in action to run a bit more every day or two days. How often I will run will depend on how I feel or how my knees endure that.

What else to talk about ?

The Last Dance

Yesterday was a day off in France for some companies not doing the solidarity day. In France, one day of every salaried worker’s pay is taken and used for projects to help the elderly. The company that I work for was closed, so I enjoyed my day watching The Last Dance.

Two days ago, I wrote about the fact that I love stories about people who made it to the NBA. And that’s exactly what this documentary is about. Ok It’s about the double 3peat, the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan but not only.

It’s the story of each player that was involved in that success. Without them would Jordan had won 6 titles? Probably not.

The episode about Rodman where you learn he was kicked out of his home by his own mother and lived for two years in the street is the kind of things that makes you love the dude. Ok he is bizarre for some but as he said during an interview :

- the sunglasses, the velvet hat, the rings, the ... stuff. Why ?
- I like doing what I'm doing. It makes me happy. It makes me feels like I'm a 10 year boy.

He needed it. And his teammates understood that. And that’s why the chemistry worked out.

Today, a lot of kids know only Jordan because they do buy his branded shoes. A lot of young ones are telling me they see basketball and Jordan differently because they were too young or not even born when he played. But seeing that documentary changed their point of view.

The question about the GOAT between Lebron or Kobe is not a question anymore. Even Bryant said about fans saying :

- Kobe, you'd beat Michael one-on-one
- Yo! What you get from me is from him.

Finally, I’m really happy to have been able to see all these games, the six NBA championships and the Dream Team. The real and only one.

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20 days

Thu, 21 May 2020 08:57:17 +0200

Writing for 20 days in a row. Even if the posts are not the same length, I’m happy to have been able to stick to the plan for 20 consecutive days. Since Kev Quirk made some changes to the challenge, a lot of people decided to post only maybe a post every 3 days to get better content. Some added a notes page where small posts will go to make a difference between just random thoughts and long well-formed article.

I’ll try to stick to the plan of posting one every day even if some posts are small ones.

It’s still better than no post.

Lazy day off, I’ll probably watch a lot of “The Last Dance” today.

BRB.

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The Last Dance

Wed, 20 May 2020 12:49:10 +0200

The Last Dance.

I’ve been waiting for weeks to see the end of “The Last Dance”, the new trending documentary broadcasting on Netflix. The waiting was easy because I wanted to enjoy all episodes at once.

Using Mastodon and Pixelfed, two ethical social networks, is a good thing when you try to avoid a trending TV show or as in this case, a sport documentary. No spoiling alerts or any dumb angry guy whose little life sucks and just want to ruin your little intimate moment with your TV. I’m not saying that all users of those social networks are just running, yoga or Pilates people but I haven’t seen any hashtag on that documentary, basketball or Jordan. And I’m not saying there is only fat nerds too 😅.

Even if spoilers were there it woud be fine … I don’t really care because I’m lucky to be old enough to have watched those NBA Finals when I was young. LIVE!!

I’ve never been a Michael Jordan fan, I was quite the opposite. But I’ve changed and you can’t deny that he brought basket-ball somewhere that nobody could have imagined it. He is the GOAT.

Period.

I’ve never been a particular team fan neither but more a game lover. The second point is I always enjoyed, admired people history behind a basketball player. Difficult paved roads to the NBA Holy Grail are fascinating subjects to understand sacrifices they did.

I loved other teams like the Pistons of Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman.
Back then you could buy VHS about any teams or players but I’ve never seen a documentary about Pistons also known as ‘Bad Boys’ who won the ‘89 and ‘90 NBA championships. Probably the NBA didn’t want to promote that vision of the game. Still a shame …

An other team I loved, the Golden State Warriors, with Tim Hardaway and Chris Mullin. Hardaway, the killer cross-over, who was one of the first ankles breaker, was an exciting guy to watch on a court. And it was way before Steph Curry and the Dub Nation.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, formerly know as Chris Jackson, was the ’90s Steph Curry. He was so exciting to watch and kills other players. His journey in the league was everything but not easy. First, he suffers from a moderate form of Tourette syndrome and then there was this controversy because he did not stand for the national anthem. The same kind of issue that NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick faces today. Traded couple of months after that to Sacramento, it was more or less a career ending, but apparently he doesn’t regret it.
Recently, It was nice to watch him play again on the Big3, the Ice Cube league for former NBA players.

John Starks!! The first ever guy in the NBA history to make over 200 3-pointers in one season (217) and the Knicks’ all-time leader in three point field goals (982)! I was a big fan of that guy! And he became famous also for his dunk known simply as “The Dunk” during the Game 2 of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals against the Chicago Bulls where he slammed over Grant and Jordan.

I always loved the rivalry between the 90s Knicks and the Bulls. It was always rough defense that reminded me of the one Pistons used on Jordan too.

It was a men game !

And nobody cared to be tough on Jordan. And knowing how competitive MJ was, the Knicks of Patrick Ewing, Anthony Mason, Charles Oakley, Mark Jackson and John Starks probably helped him to get higher and higher to become The Greatest Of All Time.

Back to this first episode of “The Last Dance”, I got goosebumps during the ten first minutes. It brought me back to 1992 with exactly the same excitement when I watched “Come Fly With Me” for the first time.

Maybe I’ll watch it again before the second one.

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Podcasts I listen to

Tue, 19 May 2020 23:33:11 +0200

Since last september, more or less, I started to listen to podcasts again. Younger, I used to listen to them but for some reasons I can’t even remember I stopped.

But since last autumn, I enjoy them again. I only use my Android phone and I don’t use any desktop app for that. If anyone has a nice CLI, let me know 😉

I’ve read somewhere that some people don’t like antennaPod but I used it daily and it works pretty well for me.

Here is my podcasts list :

English

French

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Vim Weeky tips #8

Mon, 18 May 2020 09:39:51 +0200

Today, we’ll talk about plugins and how to install them. There are different ways to install vim plugins, manually or using a plugin manager.

Installing a plugin is just a couple of things to do :

you download a plugin
you place it in ~/.vim/plugins/
add and check the runtimepath
source that file

There is a lot of documentation online describing how to install them manually. But here we are interested it plugin managers and precisely about vim-plug. I did use vim-pathogen but since I discovered vim-plug. I’m only using this one because it offers more than the other ones. There is also vim-vundle but never really used it.

vim-plug

Easy to install :


 % curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim

In your ~/.vimrc file, add this :


 call plug#begin('') 
 Plug 'junegunn/vim-easy-align'
 Plug 'Shougo/deoplete.nvim'
 Plug 'roxma/nvim-yarp'
 Plug 'roxma/vim-hug-neovim-rpc'
 Plug 'SirVer/ultisnips'
 Plug 'junegunn/goyo.vim' 
 Plug 'honza/vim-snippets'
 endif
 call plug#end()

Here are the plugins git repositories that I use. The main idea is just to add a line like this between call plug#begin('') and call plug#end(). If the repository is not on GitHub you can add the full URL like this :


 Plug 'https://github.com/junegunn/vim-github-dashboard.git'

Once your plugins selection done, just do :


 :PlugInstall

This will split the screen vertically and display :

 
 Updated. Elapsed time: 0.132841 sec.
 [=======]

 - Finishing ... Done!
 - ultisnips: Already installed
 - vim-hug-neovim-rpc: Already installed
 - vim-snippets: Already installed
 - deoplete.nvim: Already installed
 - vim-easy-align: Already installed
 - goyo.vim: Already installed
 - nvim-yarp: Already installed

Here, the plugins were already installed. Let’s update them :


 Updated. Elapsed time: 1.720904 sec.
 [=======]

 - Finishing ... Done!
 - ultisnips: 5 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
 - vim-hug-neovim-rpc: 2 files changed, 20 insertions(+)
 - vim-snippets: create mode 100644 snippets/svelte.snippets
 - deoplete.nvim: 12 files changed, 207 insertions(+), 56 deletions(-)
 - vim-easy-align: Already up to date.
 - goyo.vim: Already up to date.
 - nvim-yarp: 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

All plugins have been checked and if new updates available downloaded and installed. Neat!

I could have update only one by doing :


 :PlugUpdate goyo.vim

Plugins statuses

You can check status of your plugins.


 Finished. 0 error(s).
 [=======]

 - ultisnips: OK
 - vim-hug-neovim-rpc: OK
 - vim-snippets: OK
 - deoplete.nvim: OK
 - vim-easy-align: OK
 - goyo.vim: OK
 - nvim-yarp: OK

Upgrading vim-plug

You can of course upgrade the plugin manager too :


 :PlugUpgrade

A lot more

Check the vim-plug page because there is a lot more options that you could potentially love.

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Capture One Pro

Sun, 17 May 2020 00:22:13 +0200

Cleaning !
Basically, that’s all I’ve done today… I had 611 tabs opened on my Firefox that I cleaned or bookmarked.

Once my browser freshen and lighter, I started to watch some Capture One Pro tutorials to see how catalogs work and how things are different from Lightroom.

One thing that I didn’t think about it is the fact that taking the Fuji version of the app, my old CR2 Canon files are not supported anymore on that version. I don’t know if I can subscribe for Canon camera just for one month, do my editing and quit the monthly subscription. I’ll try to get an answer from their support probably. Because I don’t want to pay for a full license for some files and a file format that I won’t be using anymore.

Since I updated to macOS High Sierra, thing I thought it wouldn’t be possible because of my aging hardware, my Lightroom doesn’t work anymore. Probably too old to work on that OSX version.

Hopefully, I will be able to sort things out soon.

Once my old Lightroom catalogs migrated to Capture One, I’ll let you know what I think about this new software. For now, it does look a little like Lightroom.

Exploring the Indieweb

Sat, 16 May 2020 22:22:22 +0200

Spent the evening and this morning reading about the Indieweb.

The Indie what ? Indieweb !!

The definition they have on their website says:

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the "corporate web".

The main concept is to get back control over your data, to get connected a better way without being tied to a company platform and be able to post anything you want the way you want without format restriction or any other constraint.

I wanted to do it for a while and finally, after reading that post by Kev Quirk, I decided to give it a try.

Too tired, to go through a long article tonight… mainly because I finished The Mandalorian tonight. Felt nice to see Apollo Creed back on the tv. 🥊

So I won’t go into what is the process but what you need to know is if you have any knowledge about HTML and CSS, that should be enough to implement it on your website.

Will write a better one tomorrow.

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How I take notes and sychronize them ?

Fri, 15 May 2020 06:58:27 +0200

Notes taking looks like an art for many people online. They give you tons of techniques on how to implement a productive way to take notes or make to-do lists. One of them is the Bullet journal that lot of people is using. Even if I find the idea appealing, I haven’t been in that direction.

On my side, I’ve always loved a simple notebook and a pen. And actually, I bought recently a fountain pen from Faber Castell that I really enjoy using every day.

I use my logbook to write down things that I’ve done during the day and not really for to-do list. For these kinds of tasks, I stick to taskwarrior. For ideas, I like to use some of these Leuchtturum1917 notebooks that are cheaper than Moleskine and come in numerous colours.

Even if we don’t move a lot from home, sometimes I want just to take some quick ideas down, and I don’t always have my notebook next to me. That’s why in that case I use my phone and the StandardNotes app because it’s encrypted, free and open source. You can pay if you want to have some extensions but I don’t find them personally interesting for myself. The fact they only offer to sync your notes to providers I don’t trust is a NO-GO!

Here are the features :

Free version

AES-256 encryption. No one but you can read your notes.
Easy to use, open-source apps on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux
Automatic sync with no limit on data capacity
Unlimited devices
Web access
Offline access

Extensions

Encrypted attachments for your notes stored directly in your Dropbox or Google Drive.
Unlimited access to powerful extensions, editors, and themes.
Note version history (up to 100 years)
Automated backups of your data to your Email, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive
Two-factor authentication
Support our mission for privacy and longevity in software

Why I will stop using it

Last week Zoom bought Keybase, a service that I really loved because you could get free space for projects, get a team of people and link proof of identity to your Keybase profile. StandardNotes is free and you can get a lot of notes in it. But what if a new Zoom buys them tomorrow. Not that I have top security classified notes there but still, I want to be free to do whatever I want with them.

That’s why, I turn my phone note apps to Notes using Nextcloud. I already have my own Nextcloud instance and syncing my notes to it make sense when you want to control your data. It’s a straightforward little app where you can save your notes in txt or markdown format. And to be honest, that’s all I need.

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My love affair with the X series

Thu, 14 May 2020 22:14:24 +0200

I’ve been a Fuji user since 2011 and the release of the X100.
I felt in love with it as soon as I saw it.
I enjoyed using it, and due to its size, it was with me every day.

In 2012, when the XPro-1 came out, I wanted badly to get one, especially because it had interchangeable lenses.

But after a couple of months I sold it because I enjoyed more the X100 and I preferred its size and ergonomics over the XPro. So I sold both of them to get the new X100s.

The new one was a better than the first one. They introduced the Q button, a redesign of the back buttons, a new sensor and overall that new model was just better in a lot of fields. It was the new kid on th block that got a lot of positive reviews and a lot of magazines/websites rated it very well.

At some point, I bought even a second one because my nightly rides over Parisian parties killed it. A drunk guy spilled a glass of rum on it making it unusable because all the wheels were glued to the body.

I was still using my Canon 5D mark III but, for a lot of things, I preferred the size and weight of the X100 and the fact that you can have it in your pocket every day.

The release of the XPro-2 was the moment when I decided to switch completely to Fujifilm systems. I was a bit frustrated with the first edition because the autofocus was too slow and some other things that annoyed me back then, but I can’t really remember all the details. I had the luck to try the XPro-2 of one of my friend, and I loved all the improvements over the XPro-1 :

autofocus was way better
dual memory card slots
the new 24.3 megapixel sensor X-Trans CMOS III
the little joystick at the back

That made me think why I loved the X series and the reasons were plentiful. The first thing is image quality, especially of their JPEG.
Then, their film simulation. Fujifilm used to produce a lot of films, and they made an excellent work to bring that knowledge in that camera.

I’ve been using the XPro-2 for quite some time now. When they announced the new XPro will be released soon back in September, I was really impatient to see what Fujifilm will bring for that third version.

There was and still there is a lot of fuss about the rear hidden screen. And I won’t talk about it, since I like it that way. It reminds me of the Leica M-D that doesn’t have any rear screen or buttons and the main goal is to focus on photography.

Of course, you could just get an old camera and fill it with some film rolls, but the main idea is, I guess, to be able to shoot a lot and just focus on photography without to have to change films every 36 shots. Leica says the camera is designed for the ‘essentials of photography’, or ‘Das Wescentliche'.

Fujifilm had probably the same idea, brainstorming the XPro-3.

Finally, back in January, I got the XPro-3, Durablack version. And I love that camera … A lot !

It’s a nice improvement over the XPro-2 that I still use, by the way. The rear screen or the lack of it doesn’t bother me much. I love the fact that it’s annoying to flip down the screen to check your pictures. That way, I almost don’t look on them until I come back home to see what I’ve done on a big screen.

Can’t wait to go out to shoot again !

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Should you self host your email ?

Wed, 13 May 2020 21:47:45 +0200

Self hosting email is a subject tackled last week by Yarmo Mackenbach on his blog.

The same way he does, I’ve been self hosting my emails for myself, family and friends for years. The point there is to avoid as much as possible big tech companies that know when you’ll get your next plane and advise you to leave early because of a traffic jam to the airport. Sure it could be convenient but knowing your coming and going are monitored is something that makes me really uncomfortable. And not only that but everything about my mails should be only read by myself. Would you be pleased to know that your postman read every mail you get ? No !? You should feel the same way with your email.

Even if you don’t have the knowledge to administer a full SMTP server, at least, PLEASE, PLEASE’ PLEASE, get an email address with ProtonMail or Tutanota.

For all these reasons, and years before Google and others became evil, I self hosted my own emails for privacy matters. I’ve been doing it before all theses barbaric terms like DKIM, SPF & co. emerged and became a standard to not see your mail go directly in spam folders.

But you adapt and you learn new technologies with a sentiment to have acquired some experience of all that struggle. And that’s what I love with open source software. Even if I got a lot of RTFM on IRC when I was younger, that’s how you progress and learn.

So I’ve been self hosting my emails for more than 15 years. Moving from old server to new one. At the beginning, learning how things work was my main goal. I studied sendmail and its filthy configuration, Qmail and finally Postfix that I’ve been using for years now. Do I love to maintain and learn new things ? Of course!
As an old wise man said :

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Confucius (551BC - 479 BC)

Now I don’t really do a lot of configurations when I need a mail server to be up and running quickly. Some tweaks here ad there is all I need in the iRedmail solution.

For those who never tried, I encourage you to give it a try. You are able to get a functional SMTP server with everything you need in several minutes literally.

What you get with iRedmail is :

First off, privacy
Open source software with Postfix and Dovecot
Security with TLS
Backends of your choice between OpenLDAP, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL to store your mail accounts
Antispam & Antivirus with SpamAssassin, ClamAV, SPF, DKIM, greylisting, whitelisting, blacklisting
A Web admin panel to register domains and users accounts

My mail server has been running flawlessly for years now.
These guys have packaged everything perfectly.
It just works!

So should you self host your mails ? Yes ! Definitely !

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Vim weekly tips #7

Mon, 11 May 2020 08:51:08 +0200

Today, we explore some features I use in my daily vim workflow because YES, I use vim every day.

Do you know that you can use vim keybindings in your shell ? How ?

Just add this line to your (zsh|bash|ksh).rc file depending on the one you use or type it in your shell if you don’t want to make it permanent :


 % set -o vi

By default, you have Emacs kind of keys combination like Ctr-A to go at the beginning of the line or Ctr-E to go at the end.

After adding the above line, you enter vim mode in your shell.


 % set -o vi # now you have two modes : Normal and Command one 
 % [Esc]/ # to search in your history
 % [k] # to go up your history 
 % [j] # to go down your history 
 % [0][$] # go to the beginning or end of the line
 % [daw] # delete current word
 % [de] # delete from the cursor to the end of the word
 % [db] # the same but to the beginning of the word
 % [dd] # delete the line
 % [A] # append at the end of the line 
 % [I] # insert at the beginning of the line

That’s some command you can use in your shell. Why I prefer it compared to the emacs keybindings. For example :


 # emacs mode 
 % ls /var/log/apache2 # if you made a mistake and want to go /var/log/apt 
 # you could use [Esc+b] but it goes back to the start of
 # /var/log/apache2 and not just at the start of apache2 

 # vi mode 
 % ls /var/log/apache2 # you just hit [Esc]bcw 
 # Esc : Normal mode
 # b : back one word
 # cw : change word

Plus I don’t like the emacs keybindings to move. 😉

Actualy, there is only one thing that I use from the emacs mode :


 # in my ~/.zshrc 
 bindkey '^R' history-incremental-pattern-search-backward
 bindkey '^N' history-incremental-pattern-search-forward

What this thing does ? It makes me use Ctr-r and Ctr-n to search through my history. When you press the first one you get :


 % [Ctr-r]
 bck-i-search:_

Every time you hit Ctr-r, it will go one step further in the last commands you typed and that match the one you type right now. If you went to far, just hit Ctr-n to come back to the previous one. Quite handy 😉

Even in my daily Firefox use, I used to have vim keybindings to navigate but since the version 57, Vimperator doesn’t work anymore. It’s an add-on that let you have great shortcuts in your browser. I’m an absolute fan of this and it’s a shame that you can’t use it anymore in the newest version… I found out a new one, Tridactyl that looks promising but haven’t use it enough. But will probably talk about it soon.

That was a small post. Hopefully, next week I’ll have a better one.

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Apple, part II

Sun, 10 May 2020 19:33:03 +0200

Apple, still better in pie.

Yesterday, after spending my day upgrading my macOS, I got finally a system up to date.

Today was family time, making pancakes, fresh juice and sketching with my daughter.

Member of the 5 AM Club, I managed to do some Lua and I read a bit of the Rust book this morning when everybody was in bed.

Rust learning curve is not the easiest one but apparently the time spent struggling is worth it. Time will tell…

This afternoon, I tried to continue my photography archive cleaning and wanted to import some raw from my XPro3 but the Lightroom version I own doesn’t support their new format.

As you maybe guessed, I tried to upgrade it and … NOT POSSIBLE. The operating system requirement is at least :

macOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
macOS 10.14 (Mojave)
macOS 10.15 (Catalina)

None of this works on my hardware.

And to be honest, I’m okay with that since there are two things that really upset me with Adobe. Today, you can’t buy, or I haven’t found it on their website, a license you pay only once and that copy is yours. Nowadays, you must rent a piece of software and the only benefit is if your gear is updated often. My elderly Lightroom was a license that I own since I bought it. The second thing that piss me off, is to have to pay for something that could be unusable if Adobe decide that your country has issues with America. For example, that happened to Venezuela users due to US sanctions.

The option I took is to try Capture One Pro, they say that Fujifilm cameras are even better supported than Lightroom for some features. There is a good and bad news. The good one is you can buy a full license and that you can get a free trial before choosing to buy or rent it. The bad news is I subscribed, paid for a month to try to but still didn’t get the email to activate my account. 🤦‍♂️

The last option will be to use darktable but I don’t have all the details but I’ve read in the past that some Linux has issues with something about colors but I can’t remember exactly what the issue was.

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Apple, what the heck ?

Sat, 09 May 2020 12:19:47 +0200

Proprietary software is a real mess.

Yesterday, I decided to spend some time to clean up my old photography archives from 2012 to 2020. It’s approximately 18000 photos. 😅

So I decided to clean up old raw files that were missed shots. All the blurry and badly framed are almost gone but since I have a lot of directories to clean it takes a lot of time.

The good thing is that I can go back through memories with all those moments I captured.

I’ve been a huge fan of Fuji X series cameras since the first X100 came out. I felt in love with that tiny little camera and basically used it whenever I could instead of my Canon gear that has been sold since.

The X100, X100s and x100T, I had all of them. The first XPro was also one of the camera I used to have. But I sold it quickly because some little things annoyed me.

Today, I have only two cameras the XPro 2 and the new XPro 3 coupled with some prime lenses.

The bad news is I’m using proprietary software. And I fucking hate it.

I have an old macOS from 2011 that still works and I’m only using it for my photography stuff.

The only applications installed on it, except all the crap coming with the Apple world, are :

Homebrew
Nextcloud client to back up on my server my pics
Lightroom
Gimp
Inkscape

But the last two haven’t been opened on that OS for a while because I use them on my laptop running Debian.

System updates popped up often on OSX asking me to update it.

So yesterday, I decided finally to do it. And it was an obstacle course. I thought it would be easy, that’s a macOS right ? Guess what not so easy …

The first problem was my Apple account. I couldn’t log in. Thought it was probably the password, I tried to recover it but … they removed it! Apparently, there was a security issue with my account. WTF ?!

It’s true I haven’t used it for a while but why would you remove an account without even notifying the person.

Didn’t want to waste too much time trying to chat with them to recover my account, I decided to create a new account since I don’t care about what I had on that account.

A freshly new account created, I waited over one hour to get the activation email. A pigeon would have dropped it to me faster.

New account created, I opened the app store to get the latest update, the macOS Catalina. But it appeared that my hardware was too old to get that update. Scratching my head figuring out what version to install. I had to go through a lot of forums to find an answer.

Found out I can upgrade only to macOS Sierra. That was a good news but the update is not anymore in their app store. A YouTube video showed me how to find the proper link to be able to upgrade the OS.
For those in the same situation, you have to type the version in your search engine. I typed macOS Sierra in DuckDuckGo and the first link “How to upgrade to macOS Sierra” was the right one. I tried to find that page on the Apple web page without success.

Finally, upgraded to Sierra but apparently the OS is still linked to the old account in some way. I’m logged with the new account to the store but iCloud is still asking for the old one! And you can’t sign out because you have to disable the “Find my mac” option and for that you need … you guessed it the old password of an account that doesn’t exist anymore.

GREAT! Well done Apple!

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Day 8/100

Fri, 08 May 2020 11:52:58 +0200

Today, I’m tired and don’t feel like writing anything long.

Instead, I will just post a newspaper blackout I did this morning with an old NY Times I had at home.

For those interested, https://newspaperblackout.com/, was an inspirational project made by Austin Kleon.

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Death and privacy

Thu, 07 May 2020 00:44:27 +0200

Since yesterday and that sad news, I’ve been thinking about COVID-19 and what will come after this pandemic. People around me lost their job, some closed their business, and the worst part is people who lost someone.

Yesterday, we lost a friend. He made a suicide probably because the isolation due to COVID-19.

He was not my best friend, but we appreciated each other. We always had a good laugh when we used to party or when we spent time around poker tables in Paris but not only. We met again in London between 2007 and 2010, when we moved abroad mostly at the same time.

I remember him as a smart guy, working in IT as I do, both *nix lovers even if he used to work mainly on Solaris systems and Red Hat. He was a hard worker, at work, at the gym or at … a poker table.

Back then, we used to often play poker at the Victoria Casino. Almost every Friday night, we used to play a small tournament and sometimes we went straight after our jobs to play some cash games. I remember he lost a couple of grands for two weeks in a row, and he said to me :

- Ok that's not a proper way to play poker! I need to improve!

And then he read around 80 books in less than a year and was permanently thinking about how to get better.

That’s how stubborn he was but finally he became a good poker player and even went to the Austrian EPT in Vienna.

We lost track of each other back in Paris. Mostly, because he followed his German manager who went back to Munich and offered him a good job there. He was always between here and there. And that’s probably why we didn’t really keep in touch even if we bumped into each other from time to time.

My last couple of SMS sent never seen an answer though. Was the number the right one ? Was he busy ? I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter today.

A thing that piss me off is how weirdly people communicate today.

If you’re not on Facebook, Instagram or any other social network, you don’t exist anymore for a lot of “friends”.

No one has the common sense to pick up his phone and just to call you to have a chat, get some news or have a random conversation. Everyone is “busy” or are they really ? Some of them don’t even take the time to come to see your new born child because they saw a picture on an Instagram story. By the way I hated the fact that some friends posted those pictures. If I’m not on these platforms, at least respect my private life.

And I was shocked to hear from some of my poker friends that they have read the news of his passing on Facebook.

Even if I understand the reason why someone would post that online, I don’t like it.

Why ?

First, because we’ve all been confronted to death, and it’s a private subject that should be kept that way.

Secondly, because those companies should not be able to keep a record of people death. Isn’t that enough they vacuum all your data already ? Now, you will even give them that !?

And finally he maybe had some people who were not really friends on that network and do they really need to be informed that you are not there anymore ?

That sad news has thrown me completely and I still don’t know what to think about it.

Rest in peace my friend !

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Tesla and COVID-19

Wed, 06 May 2020 09:20:54 +0200

52nd day of quarantine and remote work.

Went to bed late last night after watching The Prestige that is on my IMDB top 250 movies list. I quite enjoyed the movie, loved the plot and seeing Tesla there make me wondering the only things I know about him are :

he had issues with Thomas Edison
he invented the alternating current
he said he created a death ray
he rarely slept
the Belgrade airport has been renamed after him

I spent an entire hour this morning reading about his work and what he has accomplished.

Next time, I’ll go to Serbia, hopefully soon, I will take some time to go to visit the Tesla Museum.

I was going to talk a bit more about Tesla but just got sad news about a friend who made a suicide, probably, because of isolation.

That wraps up this post for today. Fuck you COVID-19.

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Vim Weekly tips #6

Tue, 05 May 2020 07:10:47 +0200

Last week, a lot of work and I couldn’t find time to post something useful about vim.

So I’ll try to get you some good or less known vim tips today.

Let’s start with a feature that, I’m sure, not a lot of people know about.

Opening a man page

Say you’re writing a shell documentation about sed and you forgot what an option does. You have just to put your cursor on the word sed and in Normal mode hit K and it will pop you up the sed man page.

Abbreviations

There is one command really useful to be more productive and to save you some time :ab also known as abbreviations.

 
 :ab aka also known as

Now every time you type aka it will automatically be replaced by “also known as”.

You can also use it to correct common typing mistakes like :


 :ab some sowe " i'm using a dvoark keyboard

To remove a specific abbreviation use :una.
For example :una some.
To remove all abbreviations, use :abclear.

To avoid expansion in insert mode, type Ctrl-V after the last character of the abbreviation.

If you want to save the abbreviations you added in your file to be able to use them later, add to your ~/.vimrc :


 ab aka also known as

But if you have a lot of abbreviations, your ~/.vimrc will soon be messed up with all these lines.

The last part could be improved. Here is a better way.

Sourcing files

Imagine you know that you find yourself typing a lot of long word or same sentence. We saw just above that abbreviations are here to help us.

Just create a file named for example abbreviations.vim and place it in your ~/.vim/plugin directory. All the files there are automatically loaded when you launch your editor.

In that file add the abbreviations that you want to use :


 ab asap as soon as possible 
 ab aka also known as 
 ab dont don't
 ab doesnt doesn't

You could also source the file located anywhere with the :source command.

That could also useful if you want to try a new vimrc file or any other experiment.

It’s basically like the source shell command.

Moving around with motions

Here are some ways to move around a line using vim motions. As usual, you can check the help page using :h motion.txt.

Here are some useful commands that I use really often :


 "f[char] search next char
 "t[char] search until next char

 " example 
 Today, it's raining. 

 f,dt. "search next , delete until .
 
 Fifteenth 
 d/th "delete until th and will leave you with th.

After using f[char] you can type ; to go to the next occurrence or , to go to the previous one. The t motion is similar to f. The only difference is that t (think of until) places the cursor just before a character.

Completion

Here are some completion commands as the last tips for this week.


Ctr-x Ctr-f " In insert mode to find file name in the current directory 
com[Ctr-p] " that will complete the word with words that begin with com. if you
 " hit [Ctr-p] many times it will go through all words 
 " beginning with com in that file.

That’s all for this week.

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Len Bias, a tragedy

Mon, 04 May 2020 08:00:00 +0200

Netflix started broadcasting three weeks ago “The Last Dance” , a documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

I haven’t got time to sit down to watch it yet. But every time I remember the rivalry between the Bulls and the eastern teams, I can’t get out of my mind how would that have been if Len Bias had played for the Celtics during those years.

Born and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, he had a loving family compared to a lot of players coming from different projects.

"one of the cruelest things I've ever heard"

- Larry Bird

He was quickly seen as a good basketball player with a bright future.
He had all the skills to become the next NBA superstar. But life had a different plan for him.

Like many other kids of his neighborhood, he felt in love with basketball really young and became a star in high school and university. He will be quickly compared to Michael Jordan, freshly drafted by the Bulls and in his 2nd year in the NBA.

On June 17, Bias was selected by the Boston Celtics as the second overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft to join the team of the current NBA Champions team roster including Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson. They earn a 2nd pick from a trade that took place in 1984 with the Seattle SuperSonics.

Nobody was more enthusiastic than Bird to play with the young prodigy. Bias was going to be the next key player for the Celtics as he could have extended the C’s dynasty during the 1990s. We all know where almost all rings of that decade went.

A lot of people compared him to MJ, and we will never know who was the best between those two players. And all that waste because of some cocaine took with his local drug dealer and friend, Brian Tribble, to celebrate the draft.

Len Bias, a potential Hall-Famer, died on June 19, without even playing a single NBA game. Larry Bird declared later to a reporter that this was “one of the cruelest things I’ve ever heard.”

A young talent left too early.

Here is a vintage university game between Michael Jordan and Len Bias :

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Awesome, my window manager

Sun, 03 May 2020 05:49:37 +0200

Awesome !

Back then, that was not really my first sensation when I launched that window manager.

In those days, we are talking 2006-2007, I was using openbox or fluxbox, both really light, but I was always trying to arrange my app windows to not overlap each other. And that pissed me off. I knew that some tiling wm existed that could potentially fix my issue.

And I tried a couple of them : xmonad, dwm, ion, pwm, ratpoison (yeah that’s the real name) and awesome.

The main reason I tried all these wm was the fact that I wanted to manage my windows using only the keyboard with keybindings and leave that mouse alone. I spent a couple of days to get accustomed to it but then it was really a pleasure to use.

After 12 years, I am still using it and so far loving it.
I love seeing people face when they see my laptop for the first time :

“but where is the menu ?”
“you’re a geek !”
“That’s minimalist !”

Even at work, some colleagues don’t know anything else other than GNOME because it’s the default on Ubuntu or Debian. It would be nice to include a couple of other wm letting users discover options available to them.

Try them, get an opinion and give a feedback to developers.

That’s what I in the opensource community.

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Zen mode

Sat, 02 May 2020 22:39:03 +0100

Who remembers what a pager is ? That small little device that you could clip to your pants. A must-have back in the 90s to be connected.
What I loved about them was the fact that you could reply only to people that mattered to you. Nobody was scared that something happened to you or was bothered if they didn’t get a call back in the next minute. And guess what … That was fine.

With the rise of mobiles phones these devices got outmoded.

The 9th January 2007, a genius from California, introduced a handheld tool that you can use with your finger and that combined 3 tools in 1 :

a “widescreen iPod with touch controls”
a “revolutionary mobile phone”
a “breakthrough Internet communicator”

2007, the year when the iPhone was born changed our lives and the world we live in. And back then it was a revolution with hidden flaws spotlighted today.

Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences

Hooked: : How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal is a book explaining how companies use exactly this disorder to get us to watch useless things on Netflix, buy some of their products or spend time on their data vacuum apps.

I try to use and spend less time on my phone but that habit is quite difficult to change.

A nice app that OnePlus introduced on their latest products is the new Zen mode. The main goal is to keep you away from your mobile or at least limit its usage.

I really loved the concept and design of this app. But I can’t use it anymore because I switched to /e/ because I don’t want Google apps on my phone anymore.

Unfortunately, OnePlus doesn’t provide the apk and the app is not available on F-Droid. Luckily, I found out the Lock Me Out app which does almost everything what Zen Mode does. It tracks :

total screen time and per app
device unlocks
time DND (Do Not Disturb)
time locked out

You can lock you out from your phone for a period of time that you can choose. Even if I’ve done it only twice in a week, I will definitely use it more in the future.

I’ve been using it for a little more than a week and the numbers I got are :

more or less 4 hours per day on my phone!
an average of 59 unlocks per day.

The apps I use the most are :

Fedilab, the mastodon client
Signal
Duckduckgo
Wallabag
Lichess
Materialistic, a hacker news app
AntennaPod, a podcast app

Honestly, I guess it could be way worst.

That app is quite a good way to put down your phone, grab a book or just get your thoughts together and join this #100DaysToOffLoad challenge.

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Day One !

Fri, 01 May 2020 18:10:03 +0200

I’ve stumbled upon that challenge : #100DaysToOffload launched by Kev Quirk on Mastodon where I spent most of my time. With Signal these are tho only social networks that I use daily with my family and friends. I still have a Twitter account just because some people can only be reached there. I left all the other because privacy is a thing that matters a lot to me.

So the purpose of this challenge is to write a post on a personal blog every day for 100 days. It’s more or less like a 365 photography challenge that I’ve also started on this blog. The goal here is to write! The post doesn’t need a specific number of words or theme, the main purpose is just to write.

A list of blogs participating in the challenge can be found here. You can also search the #100DaysToOffload hashtag on the Fediverse.

Since I started this new blog 5 months ago, that challenge could be a nice way to improve my writing.

I will probably post about FOSS, open source projects, Vim obviously, privacy and photography subjects. Or, who knows, maybe something completely off-topic because I won’t have anything else to write about.

So that’s all for the Day 1/100.

Why Nextcloud ?

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 18:37:28 +0200

Nextcloud is a great alternative to Dropbox and others cloud solutions.
It’s free, open source and you can self-host it on your server or you can sign up with one of their providers.

For those who remember, Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud and offers more or less the same features. This article, which was written last year, explains the differences and why Frank Karlitschek, the Owncloud creator, left with his team to create Nextcloud and his new company.

If you use Dropbox, iCloud or other cloud software just drop them and move to Nextcloud. You’ll get basically everything they offer and even more. And the good news is that It will probably cost you nothing compared to the proprietary ones.

And you get privacy too and that doesn’t have a price, period.

Nextcloud

I’ve been a user of both, Owncloud and Nextcloud, but since quite a moment I’m exclusively using the second one. Some members of my family, friends and even colleagues use it too.

It comes with a lot of apps that you can install for free. I haven’t tried all the plugins but there are quite a lot of them that allow to create tasks, polls, forms, etc …

You can also set up a calendar that you could share with anyone you want. That works on iOS, android and on any software understanding CalDav.
You can easily share directories, files with public links with password or not, an expiration date and even between users on the same server.
You can also set up a file drop that is basically just a link to upload a file that could have an expiration date and be sent automatically by email.

Privacy

A lot of companies and governments used to have their files in the cloud, either Google, Dropbox or Microsoft. But a lot them are moving away from the cloud which by the way is just one or dozens of hard disks owned by someone else. Marketing teams are using their best talents to sell you their products saying it’s secure but as we have seen with a lot of companies, that’s not the case.

The German government said they were moving 300.000 workers from 3rd party providers to a Nextcloud solution. Some public school moved also to Nextcloud. At my current job, a Nextcloud solution will be set up soon as a replacement of the old Owncloud server.

All these companies got the fact that the cloud is not the best answer regarding privacy and security of their documents. And I love to see more and more people starting to use these open source software.

I’ve never been a fan of all these services that’s why I host my own tools and emails for more than 20 years. Now with the fediverse, there is plenty of ethical social networks that you can host yourself.
Some of these alternatives:

Twitter :

Instagram :

Pixelfed

Youtube :

Peertube

and a lot more.

A list of ethical alternatives to GAFAM are listed on Switching Software

Drop Facebook and all the others that consider you as “dumb fucks”.

Vim weekly tips #5

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 23:33:49 +0200

This week we talk about tabs and netrw, the system file explorer reminding eventually Midnight Commander for the older ones or those who love ncurses tools. Tabs look like tabs in Firefox or others programs but you can do a lot more with them in vim. But first, you need to understand what is a buffer and a window in vim.

What is a buffer ?

A buffer is basically just a file on the hard disk that you opened in vim. That’s the file that be shown to you when you type vim file. Now say you want to open 2 files and you type vim file1 file2. You’ll see only file1 by default.

Of course, you could have used vim -O file1 file2 to have a vertical split with both files but that was not the point.

You are probably wondering where is our file2 ? It has been loaded in its own buffer.

To be able to see all buffers and move between them, you can use :


 :ls " list all opened buffers
 :b# " go back to the last buffer edited 
 :bn " go to the next buffer
 :bp " go to the previous buffer
 :bl " go to the last buffer
 :bf " go to the first buffer
 :bdelete " close the current buffer

Window

A window in vim is a view of a specific buffer.

When you open a new window with :split or :vsplit, you can add the filename. This opens the file in a new buffer, and then opens a new window as a view onto it.

Tabs

A tab is a collection of one or more windows with buffers. You could group them by features you are working on or themes or whatever you find useful.

If you want to open a new empty tab in vim, you can use :tabnew or use :tabnew file to open that file in a new tab.

You could also open multiple files using :


 " open each file in his own tab 
 % vim -p fileA fileB fileC fileD

You may want to move the current window into its own tab :


 [Ctr-w]T

Switching between tabs can be done using :


 gt " switch to the next tab
 gT " switch to the previous tab
 [N]gt " go to the tab N. The first tab is 1.
 Ctrl-PgDn " switch to the next tab 
 Ctrl-PgUp " switch to the previous tab

Moving tabs can also be done using :tabmove [N]. To move it at the beginning use 0, if you omit the tab number it will be moved to the end.

By default, vim open only a maximum of 10 tabs. To see all the tabs you can use :tabs. To change the max default tab view, add this to your config :


 " max number of tabs displayed
 set tabpagemax=25

If you have two files loaded in two tabs, you can quickly change a word in them using :


 " this will do a search/replace command in each tab opened 
 :tabdo %s/batman/spiderman/g

netrw : a file system explorer

Vim has a useful tool to help you to navigate through your directories. It’s called netrw. And you can use this way :


 :e. " open file explorer in the current window 
 :Sexplore " open file explorer horizontally in a split window
 :Vexplore " open file explorer vertically in a split window

You can also use :Sex to invoke a horizontal split.

Here are some options to add to your ~/.vimrc file :


 " by default files will be opened in the current window but you change that 
 " 1 - horizontal split
 " 2 - vertical split
 " 3 - new tab 
 " 4 - previous window

 let g:netrw_browse_split = 4

 " width of the explorer
 let g:netrw_winsize = 20 

 " remove the useless banner 
 let g:netrw_banner = 0

As usual, you can use :h netrw-ref for all options available.

Remote work, sleeping and working habits

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 08:34:51 +0200

This morning is the beginning of our 6th week of quarantine.

Technologies offer us the commodity to be able to work from anywhere. There are still jobs where people don’t have that kind of luck. I’ve seen some of my friends who got outright refusal about remote work but oddly this pandemic has been a game changer. And now, of course, they can work from home… Of course !

I hate those companies … 🤦‍♂️

Crazy moments we are living right now require some work adjustment. That’s only possible if the people and managers you work with are smart enough to understand it.

We are privileged persons who can stay and work from home… and get paid. Some of my friends didn’t work last month and don’t have any idea when they will be able to work again.

And I have other friends who keep complaining about the boring side of this lockdown. Seriously I can’t understand them. Internet offers many ways to do things that you usually don’t have time to like learning a new language, a new skill, watch that documentary that is still on your to-do list for months. And if you really don’t know what to do just check that top 250 IMDB movies list and enjoy.

Personally, since the quarantine started my days involve a lot of creativity. And it’s not my daily work as a DevOps that requires me to be ingenious. Actually, I have to be inventive to offer a lot of new activities to my … DAUGHTER. Kids are so demanding and time-consuming that it’s really difficult to get a moment to be really focused on your tasks. A good and well organized to-do list (thanks taskwarrior) will probably help you to get some work done. 😅
The worst part is that she doesn’t even care that you spent a lot of times online to find out how to entertain her.

One thing that changed when I became father is my bedtime hour.

I used to be a night owl and was going to bed around midnight and often even later. And when I say late I mean 3 or 3.30 AM with a 8AM wake up time. But since a little creature arrived in our life, I made a switch from staying late to be a member of the 5 am club.

I haven’t read that book and I always thought that I was more productive in late evenings. But I have to admit since my days start really early I found out myself more productive between 5 am and 8 am. I like the fact that there is no TV or any noise outside disturbing you. Did I feel more tired than before ? Not at all, since I always slept 6-7 hours per night and the fact that I’m going to bed at 10 or 11pm gets me the same amount of sleeping hours.

That helps me to start my daily work really early before stand-ups and other meetings. Luckily, I don’t have too many of them unlike some of us. Being able to get 3 or 4 hours of work before everyone is up help me to handle and arrange the rest of the day the way I want without leaving my daughter completely alone.

After five weeks of remote work, I found out that spending hours at my desktop wasn’t ideal and I should get a different desk to be able to work properly. So I mainly spend my time at the dinner table instead. And my position is probably not a good one since my laptop is too low and I guess that’s the reason why I have back aches.

I thought it would be nice to track my back pain and my sleeping hours to see if it’s correlated. I could use one of the tracking apps that you can find on F-Droid. But since I use a logbook I preferred to write them down and keep it simple. No needs to say that I’m a big fan of the KISS principle and I try to use the same philosophy for about everything.

I’ll see if the lack of sleeping, days when I only sleep 4/5 hours, are linked with my pain or if it’s the way I sat during those long hours of remote work.

Anyway, I love remote life and be able to work as I want without too much hassle and without the need to be at your office to get some work done.

Vim Weekly Tips #4

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 00:19:00 +0100

Lockdown : week 4.
Vim Weekly tips : week 4.

Coincidence ? “No no no my friend …” (that reminds me this TED Talk)

I managed to get some time to bring a post this week about vim.

Here are some tips that some of you may know.

Open the last edited file

Of course, you could use the shell command :


 % !vim [tab]
 # that will complete that vim command with the last filename you used

but that will just put your cursor at the top of the file. There is a magical command in vim that will open the last edited file with your cursor on the latest location :


 % vim

 # then just hit 

 Ctrl+o+o

Keep hitting o and see what vim does for you.

Indenting

In Normal mode to indent your text you can use one of these commands:


 > # that will indent your current line 
 < # that will go back one indentation back
 == # remove all indentation of the line 

 >G # indent all lines from the cusor until the end of the file
 >gg # the same but from the cursor up to the beginning of the file 

 10> # indent the next ten lines 
 10< # remove one indentation for the previous ten lines

In your ~/.vimrc you can define your indentation settings with :


 set expandtab # insert space characters when tab is pressed instead of hard tabs 
 set softtabstop=2 # number of space characters inserted when tab is pressed
 set shiftwidth=2 # number of space characters inserted for indentation

The directory ~/.vim/after/ftplugin allows you to have specific settings depending of the file type you are editing.

First enable file type detection with the following in your ~/.vimrc :


 filetype plugin indent on

Say you want a 3 columns for HTML files, create a file html.vim with contents:


 setlocal shiftwidth=3
 setlocal tabstop=3
 setlocal expandtab

and put it in the ftplugin directory above.

Now you will have three spaces inserted each time you press the Tab key for you HTML files.

incrementing / decrementing numbers

If you place your cursor on a number say 10 and hit Ctr+a it will increment by 1 the number and decrement by 1 if you hit Ctr+x. You can also do some basic counting using this. Put you cursor on a number say the number 2 and hit 10Ctr+a it will change the 2 in 12. The same works for substraction if you use number Ctr+x.

What happens if your cursor is not on a number it will check the line to see if there is one and will jump to it and do the magic.

Be aware that if your number is padded with zeros, vim will interpret it as an octal notation. If you don’t deal a lot or not at all, you should probably put this line in your ~/.vimrc file :


 set nrformats=

Duplicate or move lines with :t & :m

In Vim, there is an :Ex command that helps you to do a lot of commands quickly in the file you edit.

Here we’ll see how to quickly copy or move some lines in your file using some :Ex commands. The format of the :copy command is like this :


 :[range]copy (address)

Its abbreviation is :co or shorter and better :t. The same applies for the :move command, you get two abbreviations :mo and the shorter one :m.

Here comes a couple of examples :


 :t. (it's like typing yyp in Normal mode)
 :12t$ : copy line 12 to the end of the file
 :15t0 : copy line 15 to the beginning of the file
 :%t$ : copy the entire file to the end of the file
 :12m. : move line 12 to the current line

Some infos needed here, $ represents the last line as 0 represents a virtual line above the beginning of th current file. The dot represent the current line and the % symbol is shorthand for the current file name.

History

You can search you :Ex commands commands you typed before like you can do in your shell. You just type :[key up] and it should bring you the last command you typed. If you start typing the beginning of a command and hit the key [up] you will have only the ones that had the same beginning.

By default, only the last 20 commands will be saved. You can easily increase that by adding this line to your history :


 set history=500

You will have to restart your vim to be able to enjoy the new settings.

That’s all for this week.

Git config with multiple identities

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 09:48:00 +0200

When you work with different repositories, private and professional ones, you probably don’t want to use the same identity, email address and name, on all yours projects.

How to configure your git ?

By default, the /home/johndoe/.gitconfig file is used for all related information during commit. This can be a problem if you have a nickname on Codeberg or GitHub that you don’t want to use in your professional commits.

Git comes with a couple of commands to help you to set up your initial configuration that will be stored in ~/.gitconfig :


 # for your name 
 % git config user.name "John Doe"
 # for your email 
 % git config user.email "john.doe@mia.com"

These two commands will add these lines in your file :


 [user]
 name = John Doe
 email = john.doe@mia.com

That’s the default configuration for all your commits.

Now, inside each git repository you have a .git directory with a config file where you could also add the [user] config. That could be a solution to our issue but if you have 50 repositories, it can be quickly a deadly boring task.

What can we do ?

Starting from git version 2.13+, you can use conditional include that will help us to configure everything correctly.

The idea is to set up a git username and email address depending on the directory you are in. Remove the [user] part in your ~/.gitconfig and add these lines :


 # when you are in ~/projects the ~/.gitconfig-private will be used 
 [includeIf "gitdir:~/projects/"]
 path = ~/.gitconfig-private

 # when you are in ~/projects/work the ~/.gitconfig-professional will be used 
 [includeIf "gitdir:~/projects/work/"]
 path = ~/.gitconfig-professional

In your ~/.gitconfig-.gitconfig-private, you can add your private information:


 [user]
 email = john.doe@home.io
 name = John Doe

In your ~/.gitconfig-professional, add your professional information:


 [user]
 email = john.doe@work.io
 name = John Doe

Now you can test each folder with :


 % git config --get user.email # should return your email depending on where you are 
 % git config --get user.name # should return your name

That’s it for this configuration 😉.

Git has a lot of features that can be tweaked. For those of you who don’t know it, I recommend you Oh shit, Git !?! and the Pro Git Book.

Vim Weekly Tips #3

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 08:58:32 +0200

Today we go back to vim basics. Open files, quit, searching, deleting, copying/pasting and other things like that.

I see more and more kids using nano and it keeps to irritate me. Why ? Because vim is everywhere and by far a better solution compared to nano. Of what I heard why they love nano it’s just becase they have a menu down the screen so they don’t need to remember how to exit or open a file in vim. 😑

Vi modes

What people usually don’t get is why they can’t start to type directly what they want in the editor. That’s basically because they don’t know that three modes exist :

Normal or Command mode where you have a lot of stuff to help you to be better using the editor
Insert mode is the one that you use when you type something in your editor
Last line mode is the line you get at the bottom in your editor

A lot of people are saying but why is this working that way ?!

It’s all about habits I guess …

Open a file

To open a file it’s quite basic :


 % vim your_file

You can open a file at a specific line like this :


 % vim +14 your_file

It will put your cursor exactly at the beginning of the 14th line of your file.

You can open two files with a split screen :


 # vertically
 % vim -O fileA fileB

 # horizontally
 % vim -o fileA fileB

An other tip that not a lot of people know about is that you can use the gf command to open a file name under the cursor when editing a file. Say you have these lines in your file :


 You included this line in your file :
 /usr/share/doc/linux-image-5.3.0-3-amd64/copyright

If you put your cursor on /usr/share/doc/linux-image-5.3.0-3-amd64/copyright and type gf, go file, it will open the file in a new buffer.

To list all buffers :


 : buffers

 # to get back to the file you were editing one 

 :b#

I will talk about buffers in an other post. In the meantime you can always check the documentation using


 :h buffers

Close a file

To close a file, there are different methods :


 # close without saving
 :q

 # close all buffers 
 :qa

 # close the current buffer but stay in vim (buffer delete)
 :bd

 # close with saving (write and quit)
 :wq

 # almost the same but if the files hasn't been updated, it doesn't change the
 # file timestamp 
 :x

The last one is really something I encourage people around me to use because a lot of times we have files that timestamp have been changed without any modification in them. That’s because people use wq and that would not happen with :x by example.

Insert a text

By default, you are in Ex command mode. To be able to start writing you must activate the Insert mode using one of these commands :

i for inserting text under the cursor
a for append it will pass into insert mode after the cursor
A to append text at the end of the line
I to insert text at the beginning of the line
o to append text after the current line
O to insert text above the current line

Special Insert Normal Mode

There is a special version of Normal Mode that lets us fire just one Normal Mode command from the Insert Mode and get back to typing. You can get it using the key combination Ctr+o.

Say you’re typing a paragraph and you actually don’t like what you typed and want to erase it, you can hit Ctr+o and then dap (more on this later) and be back to typing without leaving the Insert Mode.

I found this really handy for sometimes.

Move around

To move around your vim file the keys to use are :

h to go to the left
l to go to the right
j to go to the down
k to go to the up

You are wondering probably why it has be done that way and why can’t you just use the arrows of your keyboard. You can also use them on recent vim but in the old days and the first version of vi you couldn’t. So why these letters ?! Here is the explanation :

Bill Joy, the vi creator, used to work on this kind of keyboard. Here is the explanation I found about it.

Vim has motions and that helps a lot to move around your files.

To get help as usual, you can type :h motion.txt

Here is a list of how you can use them :


 $ Move to the end of the line.

 0 Move to the beginning of the line.

 ^ Move to the first non-blank character of the line.

 e Move to the end of a word.

 w Move forward to the beginning of a word.

 5w Move forward 5 words.

 W Move forward a WORD (any non-whitespace characters).

 b Move backward to the beginning of a word.

 B Move backward a WORD (any non-whitespace characters).

 5b Move backward 5 words.

 G Jump to end of file.

 gg Jump to beginning of file.

 30G Jump to line 30.

 '' Return to the line where the cursor was before the latest jump.

 '. Jump to the last-changed line.

 | Jump to the 1st column of the current line.

 22| Jump to the 22nd column of the current line.

 ) Jump forward one sentence.

 ( Jump backward one sentence.

 } Jump forward one paragraph.

 { Jump backward one paragraph.

 5j Jump forward 10 lines

 15k Jump backward 10 lines.

 H Jump to the top of the screen.

 M Jump to the middle of the screen.

 L Jump to the bottom of the screen.

 3<CTRL-B> Move 3 pages up.

 5<CTRL-F> Move 5 pages down.

 mx Set mark x at the current cursor position.

 'x Jump to the beginning of the line of mark x.

 `x Jump to the cursor position of mark x.

Search

To search you have these commands :

/something : search the word something forwards in the file
?something : search the word something backwards in the file
* : search for the current word under the cursor forwards
# : the same but backwards
% : search the closing character that matches the opened one and vice versa.
f[b] : search for the next b character on the line. Instead of repeat fb for the next b, you can use ; to find the next occurence of b and , if we hit the key too many times and missed our mark and want to come back to the good occurence.
F[b] : the same but backwards

Copy / Paste / Delete / Cut

You can copy and paste words, lines or characters :


 yy or Y # copy the current line. 
 y$ # same without the newline character. 
 yw # copy the current word 
 yiw # copy the current word excluding surrounding whitespace
 yaw # copy the current word including surrounding whitespace
 yfb # copy from the current cursor position up to and including the character (find b) 
 ytb # copy from the current cursor position up to and before the character (til b)

Delete in Normal Mode :


 db # delete backward a word from the cusor to the beginning of the word.
 dw # delete forward from the cursor to the end of the word.

Both solutions leave you with some kind of preparation or cleanup to delete completely the word. A better option exists :


 daw # delete a word no matter where your cursor is, it will delete the word.

You can also delete a character, a complete paragraph, a line or multiple lines using :


 x # delete a character 
 4x # delete 4 characters
 dap # delete a paragraph
 dd # delete a line 
 3dd # delete 3 lines 
 9dd # delete 9 lines

These lines are still in the buffer and you can use these commands to make a cut / paste like this :


 dap # delete/cut a paragraph you want to move 2 paragraphs before 
 2{ # move the cursor two paragraphs up
 p # paste the paragraph that we cut with dap

Delete in Insert Mode

To delete just one character you can use Ctr+h or hit the backspace.
To delete back a word you can use Ctr+w.
To delete back the entire line, use Ctr+u.

My logbook

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:20:19 +0100

Time flies quickly whether you’re wasting it or not.

Back in January, I wrote a post about things that I’ve done during the 2010-2020 period. And what came out of this is that I was lucky to have a lot of pictures that could remind me things that my brain forgot.

So I tried to find out examples on the web about how to classify my thoughts and I stumbled upon that article of Austin Kleon and I love the idea.

Today, writing things down and using a pen looks a forgotten skill since everyone uses a computer or even more a smartphone. But I always enjoyed doodling little things on paper organizing them as a story that would help me to remember them later… even If I don’t do that enough.

I found out that Moleskine did an 18 months daily planner starting from July 2019 until December 2020. And since we were in November and I didn’t want to wait until the 1st January to try that new exercise I bought the only one available.

November 28th, 2019

It was the day when I started to write and/or draw my daily life.

It’s a lot about my work, my daughter of course because she’s at an age where she’s evolving a lot. It’s not really a personal diary but more a “log” book like all sysadmin knows well that records events or day-to-day activities that can be checked later. And that’s exactly what’s this thing is for … to document our life and to leave something that my girl could read when I won’t be there anymore. But first It will help me do my top of 2020 as the one I did for 2019.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement, I started also to check and write down statistics based on this WHO, World Health Organization, dashboard to track the amount of cases every day. And yes there is quite a lot of new cases (more or less 50k), I think that number will go exponential as soon as we get more information about India or Africa.

I have a wallabag instance that I use on my laptop and my android to bookmark and sync articles.
I had a bad habit to have more than 200 tabs opened in Firefox because I wanted to read them later. Now I store them in wallabag that is, by the way, a free and opensource alternative to Pocket. Since I try to self host all the things I need I uninstalled the app and the Firefox extension. But since then Pocket get acquired by Mozilla.

I try to read 5 bookmarked articles every day and the interesting ones are also written down in the Moleskine. I still don’t have an index to go back quickly to some moments that were important. Something like the bullet journal system to be able to jump between notes that were significant to me could be an interesting system to try.

I told some of my friends that I was keeping a logbook, and they all said to me that some personal coaches are using that therapy with some of their clients to help them improve themselves. Is that’s an improvement ? I don’t know but I like the fact that something could be checked quickly.

I’ve been doing it for 4 months already and I haven’t seen how quickly days are passing by but I know I will keep writing them down.

Recurring tasks with taskwarrior

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 10:31:17 +0100

Recurring tasks are boring. The same kind of things that we must achieve again and again on a daily, weekly or monthly basis is something that I want to take care painlessly.

I use taskwarrior for my to-do list because it’s a CLI app and since I spend most of my time in terminals it was a natural choice.

What’s handy is that I’ve got everything in a git repo that is synchronized between my work and home laptops.

I spent quite a lot of time online trying to find answers about how some new features were working or to see if some will be added soon. What I found out is that it looks like a lot of people using taskwarrior have issues about recurring tasks and don’t really understand how it works. It’s not really difficult once you get how the app is handling these tasks.

Here is how I use it on my side to add this kind of tasks.

Adding a recurring task

If you need to add a daily task, you could use this command :


 % task add "a daily recurring task" recur:daily due:eod

The important parameter is the due:eod meaning that it must be done today. Once you mark it done it won’t appear until the next day.

I’ve seen people adding a due day like eom but that’s actually adding a task that has to be done until the end of the month. The next day you will have a new task and you will have until the end of the next month to finish it.

So the right way to add a daily / weekly / monthly is :


 # daily
 % task add "a daily recurring task" recur:daily due:eod

 # weekly
 % task add "a weekly recurring task" recur:weekly due:eow

 # monthly
 % task add "a monthly recurring task" recur:monthly due:eom

You can add of course some aliases. Mine are


 alias trd="task add recur:daily due:eod"
 alias trw="task add recur:weexly due:eow"
 alias trm="task add recur:monthly due:eom"

Deleting a recurring task

When a recurrent task is created, children ones are spawned in the background that will pop up every time its needed. So to delete a task and all the children you need basically to remove the parent task.

You can display all parent tasks with the parameter +PARENT. For example :


 % task all +PARENT
 ID St UUID Age Done Project R Due Description
 45 R c85cd2a9 25s R 2020-03-22 test

Now you can delete it with :


 % task delete 45
 Delete task 45 'test'? (yes/no) yes
 Deleting task c85cd2a9 'test'.
 This is a recurring task. Do you want to delete all pending recurrences of this same task? (yes/no) yes
 Deleting recurring task 47be2278 'test'.
 Deleted 2 tasks.

Now the recurring tasks shouldn’t show up any longer.

Vim weekly tips #2

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:56:15 +0100

With the COVID-19 rise during last week and different government announcements, I was quie busy organizing my personal life and work. But here we are and her come some the weekly tips !

I’m a big fan of zsh and on my own servers I use it exclusively instead of bash. The first tip this week is one that will remind you a zsh behaviour.

If you’re a zsh user, you are probably familiar with the completion menu style that displays all suggestions as soon as you hit the TAB key.


 05:15:06 ~/terraform-skel [master] % ls [tab]

 files
 env/ instances.tf main.tf output.tf README.md sg.tf variable.tf vpc.tf

Did you know that you can have the same kind of behaviour in vim.

How ?

Just add these two lines in your .vimrc :


 set wildmenu
 set wildmenu=full

Now if you type an :Ex Command, you should be able to scroll through all of the suggestions that vim finds for you.

Save a file as root

Everybody once in a while opened a file in /etc to change a quick conf and got stucked because he opened it with a regular user and not as root. In that case, here what you can do instead of quitting your session and changes and opening it again as root or sudoing it :


 :w !sudo tee % >/dev/null
 Password:
 (O)k, (L)oad File, Load (A)ll, (I)gnore All:

Neaaaat !

Command line window

Last little tip of this week is about the command line window.

A useful way te execute again a command is to use the command line window.

In command mode, just press q: and you will see a pop window at the bottom of your screen that gets the focus. Basically, that windows helps you to go through the last :Ex commands you typed and executes them by hitting [Enter].


 : 6 q!
 : 5 read content/about.md
 : 3 w
 : 2 q
 : 1 w

As any buffer in Vim, you can change one of your last command and hit [Enter] key to get it executed. Just try it !

Voila ! That’s all for this week 😉

Why I love rxvt-unicode

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 06:37:43 +0100

As a sysadmin or should I say a DevOps to be à la mode, I spend a lot of time in terminals. I don’t use Gnome terminal or any other fancy ones. I used to play a lot with xterm but I switched to rxvt-unicode because it’s light and customizable … a LOT.

Some things that I like about it :

Embedded Perl for endless customization
Daemon mode: one daemon can open multiple windows on multiple displays, which improves memory usage and startup time considerably
It crashes less than other forks or rxvt or any other terminals
UTF-8 well-supported
A lot of fonts supported
A well documented man page
Tabs even if I don’t use them it’s nice to know that’s available

The Arch Linux page is a good place to start customizing because by default the term is quite ugly.

Everything can be done in ~/.Xresources or ~/.Xdefaults file. I use the second one.

Here is my config :


 ! borderless and no scrollbar
 URxvt*scrollBar_right: false
 URxvt*scrollBar: false
 URxvt*borderLess: false

 ! history
 URxvt*saveLines: 50000

 ! the transparency stuff
 URxvt*tintColor: white
 URxvt*shading: 30
 URxvt*fading: 70
 URxvt.transparent: true

 ! fonts
 URxvt*font: xft:Terminus:regular:size=10:antialias=true:hinting=true
 URxvt*boldFont: xft:Terminus:regular:size=10:antialias=true:hinting=true
 URxvt*foreground: AntiqueWhite
 URxvt*background: black

 ! I don't use tabs
 URxvt*tabbed.autohide: true

 ! cursor things
 URxvt*cursorUnderline: true
 URxvt*cursorBlink: true
 *.cursorColor: #D70040

 ! URLs
 URxvt.colorUL: #4682B4
 URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,clipboard,url-select,keyboard-select,bell-command,matcher
 URxvt.keysym.C-u: perl:url-select:select_next
 URxvt.url-select.launcher: firefox
 URxvt.urlLauncher: firefox
 URxvt.url-select.underline: false
 URxvt.keysym.C-Up: perl:keyboard-select:activate
 URxvt.keysym.M-s: perl:keyboard-select:search

and here is how it looks like

full size image

With my window manager, it fits just well. I enjoy the fact that it’s clean without any borders and since I use a tiling wm, I don’t have to be concerned about resizing my windows. That’s handy when you have all kinds of keybindings and a deep love about shortcuts and aliases.

The URLs part of my .Xdefaults allows me to open links directly from my terminal in Firefox. Since I use mutt for my mail, I like to be able to open links directly from my terminal. In that specific configuration, I use the Ctr-u keybinding to activate the selection in the terminal and then I use the j and k keys to navigate between the links like you would use in vim. If you are interested, check the Arch Linux page that I mentioned above to configure it the way you like.

I use also the fading option to make only the term I use bright the other ones are faded in the background. That way I’m sure I type in the right window. I remember a colleague rebooting the wrong server because he thought he was doing things in the right terminal. This little trick can help 😉

I customized the color and aspect of my cursor to have a rich carmine blinking one.

I really encourage people to try it.

Vim weekly tips #1

Sat, 07 Mar 2020 09:46:41 +0100

Vim weekly tips is a series of small articles that I intend to write every week to share tips about my favorite editor : Vim

I want to start this collection by showing you one feature that a lot of people don’t know about.

In Vim, you can use the large panel of external commands available in the *nix ecosystem inside your terminal. By example, say you want to list the files in your current directory, you can type :


 :!ls

 Press ENTER or type command to continue
 [No write since last change]
 archetypes config.toml content public resources static themes

You could use some *nix natural way to suspend a program by pressing Ctr+Z that will freeze your vim session and puts it in the background. You can then check your files in your terminal and to bring it to the foreground again by typing :


 Ctr^Z
 [1] + 23189 suspended
 % ls
 archetypes config.toml content public resources static themes

 % fg

And you’re back in your session. 😉

Vim provides also a shortcut quite interesting to use external command : !G

It opens a prompt with the range :.,$! already filled.

How that is interesting you may ask! Try to imagine you’re working on a file and you want to sort alphabetically three lines just above your cursor :

balloon
bout
but

You hit !G and you can give the range for this 3 lines. If they are on between the lines 12 and 15, you can hit !G and then change it from :


 :.,$!
 to
 :12,15!sort

And you will have your lines sorted alphabetically.

An other example of how to use an external command to count the numbers of words in your file :


 :! wc %

This tells Vim to run the file (%) through the wc utility and report the results to the screen. Note that you should save the file before doing this command because it doesn’t count the current buffer but read what’s in the file.

If you just want to rerun the last external command, you can use

:!!

For those unfamiliar with Vim, you can use this command to read or to insert a file in your current buffer :


 :r your_file

You can combine this with the ! command to read the output of some shell commands this way by example :


 :r ! ls -l ~/.ssh/

That will include the output of that folder in your buffer :


 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 1205 May 14 2019 authorized_keys
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 2200 May 14 2019 config
 -rw------- 1 hyde hyde 1675 May 14 2019 id_rsa
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 392 May 14 2019 id_rsa.pub
 -rw-r--r-- 1 hyde hyde 2944 Feb 5 08:28 known_hosts

You could use the same command to print the resuls of the counting words in the example above directly in your buffer.

You can of course use a pipe and other *nix tools to manipulate a command and get the output in your current file.

That could be really handy if you have to write a report about an app based on your server logs :


 :r ! grep ERROR /var/log/your_app/error.log

That will grep errors from your logs and print them in your file.

That’s all for this week.

Lazybear

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