CanadaPlus
@CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
- Comment on Can someone explain to me what is happening in /c/humanrights 1 day ago:
Ah. The slash usually means “not”, sorry about that.
- Comment on Can someone explain to me what is happening in /c/humanrights 1 day ago:
No, serious.
If SDF definitely knew this instance existed I’d bug them about maybe looking into this. Someone might need some medical help.
- Comment on We're Back! 2 weeks ago:
I went to my backup instance. Now I’ll be on two for a bit I guess - I wouldn’t want to leave anyone hanging.
- Comment on Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ? 4 weeks ago:
.ml is kind of Hexbear or Lemmygrad-lite. They’ll ban you for criticising places like North Korea. I got it once for saying Dengism isn’t socialist.
I still use it, because it’s mostly normal, and “we’re secretly the bad guys” isn’t a very dangerous conspiracy theory.
- Comment on Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ? 4 weeks ago:
No. I self-censor a bit there, and prefer other instances so I don’t have to, though.
- Comment on I wish Japan was easier to immigrate to. 1 month ago:
They don’t want you, basically, and the laws reflect that.
- Comment on What’s the best method for documenting a ROM that I’m reverse-engineering? 1 month ago:
Yikes!
Yeah, I don’t think I can help too much with that. I hear there was quite an art to annotating hand-written assembly (to the point where you’re basically play-acting an interpreter or compiler), but I wasn’t there to learn.
- Comment on What’s the best method for documenting a ROM that I’m reverse-engineering? 1 month ago:
Do you have any idea what the high-level language in question might be? There has to be some logic to it (or alternatively it was spaghetti code as written). Even just the era and platform would narrow it down a bit.
- Comment on What’s the best method for documenting a ROM that I’m reverse-engineering? 1 month ago:
Hmm. Isn’t there a theorem that every combination of GOTOs is equivalent to some structured programming equivalent?
- Comment on USB Floppy Drive 1 month ago:
Yes, was about to post Greaseweazle. That and whatever scavenged drive sounds like the way to go in general. I don’t have one yet just because it costs the right amount to go on my gift wishlist, lol.
- Comment on I don't see Threads when I try to block it as an instance. Why? 2 months ago:
Does it federate with Lemmy? I thought it was more of a Mastodon-like service.
- Comment on I don't see Threads when I try to block it as an instance. Why? 2 months ago:
I would be shocked. They don’t even notice when we’re defederated.
- Comment on Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter 3 months ago:
Wait, where was the G*rmanic simping?
I also regret that she didn’t go into the sexual norms they did have, or put the guy who was concerned about being black at ease that they wouldn’t have noticed or cared, and would be more concerned about his lack of a “civilised” language. Both sexual free-for-all Rome and racist Rome are common misconceptions that basically come from recent history.
- Comment on Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter 3 months ago:
Geez, that one isn’t even a grill, it’s literally a small wood-fired stove.
- Comment on Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter 3 months ago:
That’s really cool!
How often do you deal with barbarian invasions? /s
- Comment on Ancient Rome Expert Answers Roman Empire Questions From Twitter 3 months ago:
I literally reposted here at their advice, lol.
(!roughromanmemes@lemmy.world is for, well, memes and there’s no Roman history sub)
- Submitted 3 months ago to history@lemmy.world | 14 comments
- Comment on Study finds health risks in switching ships from diesel to ammonia fuel 3 months ago:
Sounds like someone needs to start making catalytic converters for nitrogen oxides.
- Comment on Federation issues recently? 3 months ago:
Still nothing, and my comment just went through right away. It’s broken in the inbound direction.
- Comment on Federation issues recently? 3 months ago:
It’s just too big for you, I guess?
- Comment on Federation issues recently? 3 months ago:
Neat. The data doesn’t go back very far yet, though.
Two immediate observations: Hexbear is surprisingly huge in terms of activity, and lemm.ee had a crazy spike happen at 14:00 UTC on Tuesday (probably spam or similar).
- Comment on Federation issues recently? 3 months ago:
Local link, so we can see stuff coming back, if it does.
- Comment on IWTL - I Want To Learn 3 months ago:
I’m nothing it not… inciteful.
(It’s insightful, OP)
- Submitted 3 months ago to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org | 12 comments
- Comment on A new Would You Rather Community 4 months ago:
Chicken. I’m a vegetarian.
- Comment on Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) 4 months ago:
Will have to get back to you sometime this week - family took more time than anticipated. But, I can layout a few things:
No worries. I had just spent a bunch of time replying to another guy about this, and then had to pop into surgery and recover for days, which is why I felt bad and specifically mentioned it.
Yeah. This is why I recommend avoiding it altogether. Regulatory agencies are too on top of the licensed spectrum when just worrying about keeping HAMs and others in line. The tools to catch unlicensed operators are just too well-developed and proven to consider it practical for a transport layer, outside of things like natural disaster and the like where transmission in the clear isn’t usually a concern.
Like I mentioned, this is inspired by an existing thing, so I know it’s possible to not get caught if transmissions are kept very short, and done in a busy area. Definitely not recommending it, though; it’s also just rude to fill up spectrum with massive cyphertexts if you don’t have a good reason. Industry Canada (in my case) is one thing, but basic human decency comes first.
I hadn’t actually thought of natural disasters. I suppose that could be a niche just because low-power transmitters are so much more common now. Above the physical layer it makes little difference as far as I can tell, so we can talk about that and not worry about the philosophy or practice of law-breaking.
I really think it can pretty well. Using IP would give a native way to route on traditional networks and make traffic more likely to blend in with existing traffic. Building a protocol on Layer 4 reduces the implementation overhead by taking advantage of existing abstractions. Layer 3 doesn’t need to know anything about the layers above it or below it, it just needs to know which server is sending, which server is receiving, and the payload.
So would the hub just function as a local network, then? I can see what you mean by that. So basically, each container would get an IPv6 address, and could communicate with the outside world normally when a low-latency connection - like maybe via satellite constellation - is up.
and having the final “hop” as part of the encrypted packet header.
Hah, is there an official term for the move from one node to another? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard a complete mix of things IRL.
You could do full-blown onion encryption if you wanted, assuming you know in advance the path your traffic will take (or at least the very end of it). If you don’t, you pretty much just have to trust everyone to see what route your traffic took. Given that nodes are mobile, can change identities, and optimally only share encrypted traffic, does that sound like a huge risk?
I suppose in a disaster situation, you could just openly publish the GPS coordinates of the hub, and make a transmission strategy by as-the-crow-flies distance.
Might look into PGP/GPG. It could be a useful approach. Essentially, the idea being to be able to not take someone’s word for who they are but rely on a consensus of trusted parties. Like PKI but not as centralized.
I’m familiar as a user, but I’m not sure how few packets you could fit that into. You could definitely set your container to do a web of trust check over the normal internet, and just ask the other party to sign something with their published key.
Also, a bit off topic, has PGP/GPG already been adapted for post-quantum algorithms? You’d think it would be one of the first things to get set up.
- Comment on Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) 4 months ago:
That’s funny. I’m on a really old laptop right now, and I’m running oldstable. Even going up from oldold broke it a bit.
- Comment on Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) 4 months ago:
Alright, I’m back.
I was talking about amateur radio as a physical layer because I’m totally familiar with it, and know it can support short, wide-enough bursts with total radio silence in between. That’s an important requirement because if you’re loud continuously, in the “prod” case, jackboots with a yagi will show up and arrest you. Spies use fast, wide digital radio transmissions a bit like this in really locked-down countries, just not networked together in any way.
If more standard hardware - or even a non-RF medium - would work, great, no issue. Like you said, there’s no way to support too many assuming they’re safe.
For routing, I would suggest no incoming transmission (or “transmission” if it’s really a hardwire connection) is ignored, but when to rebroadcast is left flexible for the user, who will be able to assess risk and likelihood of success getting closer to the destination in a way no reasonable software could.
Hybrid: Could take many forms but the one that comes to my mind is a multilevel hub and spoke architecture (I’ll draw this out). Basically, you end up having 2-3 “modes” for a client/server: hub, spoke, and endpoint. One or more client/servers operating in a hub “mode” act like traditional servers, kinda like a bulletin board, holding packets for local delivery or transmission to another hub. Client/servers in the spoke mode act as hops between hubs. Client/servers in the endpoint mode are the actual intended destination (this could be combined with the spoke mode). To protect endpoint identity, the destination could be part of the encrypted data packet allowing an endpoint to attempt to decrypt packets received from a hub locally, making it harder to know which endpoint a message is intended for. This does still require greater visibility of hub addresses for routing.
Yeah, so a hub just makes good sense - with such a modest network capacity relative to hardware capabilities, why not gather as much in one place as possible? Because one hub might get busted or just fall to some version of enshittification, it should be easy enough for a user to switch, but I think it’s the best choice of central organising principle.
Other than anonymity, is there a reason to separate out spokes from endpoints? One thing I already have worked out is a system where the hub can keep track of who has helped transmit things (in a cheat proof way), and could simply give credit for traffic moved, offsetting whatever cost there is to use it (ISPs aren’t usually free to start with, and this one is a safety risk to operate). The bandwidth overhead is literally just a key ID (address) and a hash per hop.
I figured switching keys frequently would be enough to ensure a degree of anonymity, since it’s completely pseudonymous. We don’t have a guarantee packets will arrive in order or in any reasonable timeframe, but if we did I’d suggest rolling through keys by count or timestamp.
A web of trust may be a good approach for authentication and identity.
I don’t really have anything to add there. Proving identity beyond just “I hold this key” is out of the scope of what I was considering. I’d probably go about it the same way I would over a more traditional network, if it came up.
- Comment on Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) 4 months ago:
Darn, I have to go now. Apologies for the considerable latency there might be getting back to you on this, haha!
- Comment on Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) 4 months ago:
Thanks for the effortpost! Scuttlebutt in particular is similar in spirit, although I agree with the blog post that the implementation sounds funny. One conceptual difference, I think, is Scuttlebutt sounding fully decentralised, which necessarily introduces an O(n^2^) kind of overhead. Hubs could operate more like the content distribution networks that already exist in really locked-down countries, which are proven to work, just with the new protocol as a lower risk way of getting to the end user. Their own page is loading blank for me, unfortunately.
Public keys were identities, and were bound to devices; unfortunately people may have multiple devices, or change devices over time, so this was a hindrance.
I’m not sure why even they added that, haha. How hard is moving a private key? I’m also imagining it would be pretty routine to just discard a key-identity and make a new one, for anonymity’s sake.
I mention all these because, in an extreme censorship environment, any local state (session history on paper, an app on a smartphone, an odd device) might not be good to have around. So usability may require reducing the total amount of state that a command carries. The current working directory at the time a command is run changes the meaning and outcome of the command; you may not remember that directory in a day or two. The vocabulary and syntax of command-line switches are easy to look up in online manuals - but are there offline manuals? I don’t know if this avenue of inquiry helps you, but it’s interesting to think about for a moment.
Some local state is probably necessary for usability. I mean, at the very least you need to have the software, which is probably illegal itself. The trick, as always with contraband, is either hiding it or not getting searched in the first place. In emergency situations having a way to securely delete everything quickly is the best that can be done, I think.
I don’t expect the average user wouldn’t be writing shell scripts themselves. There should be user-friendly frontends for common tasks like email messaging, but that doesn’t help developers. A certain level of statelessness at the hub end would be good, just to avoid unwanted interactions like that. Maybe execution always starts with the same environment variables in the same directory, and your payload bootstraps other shell scripts or actual programs needed to add context.