Remember: Tiananmen Square protests and massacre June 4th, 1989

Posted by JD 06/04/2022 at 04:36

Tiananmen Square protests and massacre June 4th, 1989

TLS in 2021

Posted by JD 10/01/2021 at 20:00

Was watching a talk from EuroBSDCon from a few days ago by Michael Lucas on TLS in 2021. You can find it YT link
Anyway, there were a few slides that really caught my attention,

US National Debt 2020 (so far)

Posted by JD 09/12/2020 at 04:00

US National Debt 2020 as of 8/31/2020:

 |   Date      |   Dollar Amount     | Annual Inc | President |          |
 |-------------|---------------------|------------------------|----------|
 |  09/30/2000 |  $5,674,178,209,88  |            | Clinton   |          |
 |  09/30/2001 |  $5,807,463,412,200 | 102.35%    | Bush      |          |
 |  09/30/2002 |  $6,228,235,965,597 | 107.25%    | Bush      | 9-11     |
 |  09/30/2003 |  $6,783,231,062,744 | 108.91%    | Bush      | 9-11     |
 |  09/30/2004 |  $7,379,052,696,330 | 108.78%    | Bush      | 9-11     |
 |  09/30/2005 |  $7,932,709,661,724 | 107.50%    | Bush      |          |
 |  09/30/2006 |  $8,506,973,899,215 | 107.24%    | Bush      |          |
 |  09/30/2007 |  $9,007,653,372,262 | 105.89%    | Bush      |          |
 |  09/30/2008 | $10,024,724,896,913 | 111.29%    | Bush      | Subprime |
 |  09/30/2009 | $11,909,829,003,512 | 118.80%    | Obama     | Subprime |
 |  09/30/2010 | $13,561,623,030,892 | 113.87%    | Obama     | Subprime |
 |  09/30/2011 | $14,790,340,328,557 | 109.06%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2012 | $16,066,241,407,386 | 108.63%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2013 | $16,738,183,526,697 | 104.18%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2014 | $17,824,071,380,734 | 106.49%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2015 | $18,150,617,666,484 | 101.83%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2016 | $19,573,444,713,937 | 107.84%    | Obama     |          |
 |  09/30/2017 | $20,244,900,016,054 | 103.43%    | Trump     |          |
 |  09/30/2018 | $21,516,058,183,180 | 106.28%    | Trump     |          |
 |  09/30/2019 | $22,719,401,753,434 | 105.59%    | Trump     |          |   
 | 08/31/2020* | $26,728,836,000,000 | 117.65%    | Trump     | COVID-19 |
  • https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2020/opds082020.prn

DNS Blocking with a Pi-Hole

Posted by JD 05/20/2020 at 01:00

Installed a pi-hole on the network here a few weeks ago. It is running inside an LXD container using next to no resources. Also set it up as the primary DNS server for the LAN here. It is not internet facing.

Anyways, after about 3 weeks, thought I’d share some data about the DNS queries it has been blocking by the types of network devices.

The Big Numbers

In the last 24 hrs, about 24,000 DNS queries have hit the pi-hole. That’s local and remote queries.
Just under 40% of the queries were blocked due to being in a block list. Most of the time, about 55% of the queries are blocked, so today my use was nicer, I suppose.

Letter of dismissal - Scam

Posted by JD 04/28/2020 at 23:00

Subject: Letter of dismissal
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 12:24:10 -0900

Dear XXXXXX XXXXX

Employee at jdpfu.com Company,
                                
We are deeply saddened to inform you that your term of employment at 
jdpfu.com company has come to an immediate end. Due to the covid-19 
epidemic, we have no choice but to end your employment with us.This 
decision is effective immediately.
                                
Find attached your 2 months salary receipt.We thank you for your service 
and we wish it didn't have to end this way.

Sincerely,
Human Resources Manager
cc: VP-HR



April 28, 2020, 12:07 PM HDT

IDGAFWKSYBSYBAITMFH!

Posted by JD 04/23/2020 at 02:00

Dear Georgia,
IDGAFWKSYBSYBAITMFH
-ed.

IoT Device Nutrition Labels

Posted by JD 03/23/2020 at 17:00

Computing & IoT devices need to have a few things printed on the box:

  • Support EoL date
  • Patch schedule
  • What works without internet connectivity
  • What requires internet connectivity to work
  • List of all {domains|IPs}:{ports} required for each network connection
  • List of protocols used for each external connectivity
  • 2FA standards supported
  • How new firmware is updated – USB flashing, network load, something else

Think of those items as the Nutrition Label on boxed foods.

What is missing from the Label?

Removing Loop Devices from fdisk Output

Posted by JD 03/04/2020 at 17:00

Since Canonical decided to start pushing snap packages, many old Unix commands have had their output screwed up by snap loop device output. That output is meaningless almost always, so we usually don’t want/need to see it.

Below are my attempts to remove the snap crap output from commonly used commands. I’ve been shamelessly stealing some of these command options from people around the internet. Most end up as aliases for my shell. Hopefully, they will be useful to someone else.

Thanks to the people who posted these elsewhere. Not all of them work in all environments or even on all my own systems. YMMV.

df output:
alias dft='df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs'
I don’t want to see pseudo-file systems. Only works for mounted storage.

lsblk output:
alias lsblkt='lsblk -e 7 -o name,size,type,fstype,mountpoint'
Blocks loop devices but still shows some useful information for all connected storage.

fdiisk output:
sudo fdisk -l | perl -lne 'print if /^Disk \/dev\/[fhnsv]/ ... /\n\n/'
this one actually needs to be killed on one of my systems, but works fine on all the others. I tried not to include any LVM2 LVs, but that has failed. If using LVM2, best to stay with the full output and use pvs, vgs, lvs commands to see more details.
It should get floppy disks, IDE HDDs, SATA HDDs/SSDs, NVMe SSDs, and virtual machine storage devices. In theory. Please manually verify that it works for your storage before trusting it.

Have improvements or fixes? Please comment. I’m fairly certain they can be improved.

If you like this, check out my Quick System Overview Recently updated. But inxi is still pretty awesome.

Fun Printer Hacking

Posted by JD 02/27/2020 at 02:40

A little printer hacking for fun, not profit.

Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImage - Oh My!

Posted by JD 05/05/2019 at 03:18

I haven’t been a fan of snaps since the beginning. Why? Because they include all the dependencies in the install packages, AND those package versions are only used by the single snap/flatpak/appimage, the amount of waste is huge.

Snaps also have restrictions for which storage can be accessed. Snaps usually allow access to HOME and stuff under /media/, but nowhere else.
No, you can’t access NFS storage or CIFS storage that is mounted elsewhere.
No, you can’t access /tmp/.
I’ve found no way to override the compiled-in limitations.

How much disk and RAM waste is involved? An example, is the vidcutter tool. Normally, I’d use mkvmerge —split parts: to accomplish simple cutting, but sometimes a GUI is handy. The cuts will be on GOP boundaries anyway, so it isn’t like this is frame-accurate.