tgtimes4.txt - tgtimes - The Gopher Times
HTML git clone git://bitreich.org/tgtimes git://enlrupgkhuxnvlhsf6lc3fziv5h2hhfrinws65d7roiv6bfj7d652fid.onion/tgtimes
DIR Log
DIR Files
DIR Refs
DIR Tags
DIR README
---
tgtimes4.txt (35187B)
---
1
2
3
4 The Gopher Times
5
6 ____________________________________________________________
7
8 Opus 4 - Gopher news and more - Apr. 2022
9 ____________________________________________________________
10
11
12
13
14 Molasses Gopher/Gemini Client
15 ____________________________________________________________
16
17 Jonathan Simpson is announcing a new Gopher client:
18 Molasses.
19
20 >> A new gopher client, Molasses, is now available for
21 general use. It is a multi-platform graphical client
22 that runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
23
24 Leveraging functionnal programming with Racket, the
25 binaries come battery included, bundling the racket
26 runtime code, famous for building-up robust graphical
27 user interfaces straight from the core language li-
28 braries.
29
30 Inline images, multiple tabs, keyboard navigation, Go-
31 pher and Gemini support, opening external http://
32 links on an external browser, Molasses has everything
33 one might expect to browse the little Internet.
34
35 >> Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
36
37
38
39
40 sfeed 1.4 released
41 ____________________________________________________________
42
43 I want to thank all people who gave feedback.
44
45 sfeed is a tool to convert RSS or Atom feeds from XML
46 to a TAB-separated file.
47
48 It can be found at: [1]
49
50 sfeed has the following notable changes compared to
51 1.2:
52
53 Fixes
54
55 o Fix a compiler warning with some curses implementa-
56 tions, like NetBSD curses.
57
58 o sfeed_curses: add keybinds for the home key and the
59 default home and end key for urxvt.
60
61 o sfeed_curses: fix a redraw when reloading a file
62 with a feed file read from stdin and using an URL
63 file and changing this URL file externally.
64
65 o sfeed_curses: cast character for SFEED_AUTOCMD to
66 unsigned char to allow character sequences outside
67 the ASCII range.
68
69 Documentation
70
71 o README: add an example script to count new and un-
72 read items. This can be useful for some statusbar
73 indicator (asked about by e-mail).
74
75 o Small code-style, comments and documentation im-
76 provements and fixes.
77
78 Testsuite improvements
79
80 The testsuite repo has had improvements to test the
81 most important code paths of sfeed_curses in an auto-
82 mated way (currently 95% automated coverage). The
83 sfeed.c and xml.c parser coverage has also near 100%
84 coverage.
85
86 The goal is to find bugs and avoid regressions.
87
88 The input/sfeed/realworld/ directory contains files
89 with various feeds from popular systems to more ob-
90 scure ones. These may be useful to test other
91 RSS/Atom programs aswell.
92
93 These tests can be found here: [2]
94
95 Thanks, Hiltjo
96
97
98
99 [1]
100 git://git.codemadness.org/sfeed
101 gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed
102 https://codemadness.org/releases/sfeed/
103 gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/sfeed/
104 [2]
105 https://git.codemadness.org/sfeed_tests/
106 gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed_tests/
107
108
109
110 BBC Reviving the Plain Old Radio
111 ____________________________________________________________
112
113 BBC, one of the earliest if not the first radio broad-
114 casting ever, comes back to using a WWII era technol-
115 ogy, to overcome limitation Russia imposes over
116 Ukraine.
117
118 In between a rain of missiles and a short moment of
119 temporary peace, fetching information on what is hap-
120 pening around is a relief, maybe even a requirement
121 for survival.
122
123 Internet infrastructure of Ukraine are being impacted,
124 and the backbone getting shackled by all kind of limi-
125 tations, provoked the BBC news bulletin to be unreach-
126 able.
127
128 A more primitive way to broadcast critical headlines
129 than Internet: shortwave radio, which can live off a
130 simple emitter for covering a large region.
131
132 >> It has launched two new shortwave frequencies in
133 the region for four hours of World Service English
134 news a day. These frequencies can be received clearly
135 in Kyiv and parts of Russia. [1]
136
137 Shortly after, possessing a shortwave radio device at
138 home became forbidden, proving that in spite of being
139 a low-technology solution, it was efficient enough to
140 disturb the control of the press by the government.
141
142 This showcases how quickly-deployed and resilient sim-
143 ple technologies can be in comparison to fragile,
144 high-tech interdependent ecosystems.
145
146 Radio is also trivially interfaced with high-tech: Any
147 person with an analog emitter may start broadcasting a
148 radio signal, reading a news digest out loud.
149
150 Given instructions, a receiver is also very easy to
151 build with scavenged parts. An antenna is simply a
152 wire producing an input signal, that after demodula-
153 tion, becomes a sound signal to be fed to a speaker.
154
155 It also shows benefits of putting all the technically
156 difficult parts onto the side of the content producer.
157 It helps with adoption of a new technology: Making the
158 client device/software trivial and safe to build, set-
159 up and use. [2]
160
161
162
163 [1]
164 https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/millions-of-russians-turn-to-bbc-news
165 [2]
166 https://hackaday.com/2022/03/17/owning-a-shortwave-radio
167
168
169
170 New Bitreich Project: rfcommd
171 ____________________________________________________________
172
173 There is a new project on bitreich: rfcommd. Rfcommd
174 is a daemon sitting on top of your bluez/bluetooth
175 stack, waiting for RFCOMM devices to connect. The
176 daemon will then run scripts or daemons on that
177 new rfcomm connection. This can be used to cre-
178 ate a custom bluetooth printer without buying some
179 dedicated hardware device. See the filter spirofil-
180 ter in the repository for some pcl printer script.
181
182 Here is the first release: [1]
183
184 All questions and comments welcome!
185
186 Please send them to Christoph Lohmann <20h@r-36.net>
187
188 or come on bitreich.org IRC #bitreich-en.
189
190 Have fun!
191
192
193
194 [1]
195 gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
196 gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
197 ftp://ftp@bitreich.org/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
198 ftp://ftp@bitreich.org/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
199 gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
200 gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
201 ftp://ftp@bitreich.org/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
202 ftp://ftp@bitreich.org/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
203
204
205
206 2022-03-06 GangBAN aftermaths 20h
207 ____________________________________________________________
208
209 This Sunday was a fun one. After lunch we had the su-
210 pertuxkart tournament of five(!) players competing
211 against eachother on various tracks. All kind of CPUs
212 and hardware setups participates and rushed off the
213 cliffs.
214
215 In the evening there was the huge OpenRA battlefield.
216 Sadly the hardware requirement of OpenRA is too high,
217 so only two players could participate. But this time
218 against seven other AIs. The humans won multiple
219 times!
220
221 See you at the next GangBAN!
222
223 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
224
225
226
227
228 Breaking free from medical devices 20h
229 ____________________________________________________________
230
231 Unlike most USB gadgets around, medical devices re-
232 quire a specification to be proven fit for handling
233 patients data. This makes doctor-hacking difficult
234 for the sake of better control over what is allowed
235 for medical use.
236
237 While this may sound as a non-starter for many, not
238 all doctors are discouraged. Interview with 20h:
239
240 >> You are __20h__, a doctor in Falken, the best vil-
241 lage to live in in Germany, is that correct?
242
243 Yes.
244
245 >> You managed to do some hacking around a medical de-
246 vice. What was it? How did it help you in your di-
247 agnostics?
248
249 I wrote rfcommd to have my spirometer print out the
250 results to a standard printer. It helps me having a
251 more detailed view on the results.
252
253 The normal printout is just like 8 centimeters wide.
254 Now it is A4.
255
256 I plan on using rfcommd to read out ECG data from a
257 ECG for further analysis.
258
259 The collecting computer is a gentoo hardened on
260 x86_64, with a standard bluetooth dongle, sending the
261 print jobs via TCP/IP to a network printer.
262
263 For printing there is a cups installation, converting
264 the PCL output of the spirometer to postscript for the
265 network printer.
266
267 >> What software were provided to collect the data on
268 a computer? On which kind of system was that run-
269 ning?
270
271 Before rfcommd there was no collection of the data.
272 The spirometer has some built-in printer, which is
273 very expensive and the printout is small.
274
275 >> Are you using it often?
276
277 I/We are using it every day for printing out spirome-
278 try (lung function) results.
279
280 By the way. A secondary function why rfcommd has fil-
281 ters: We have a sterilization device, which has a se-
282 rial printout of sterilization runs.
283
284 This is what rfcommd does print out too.
285
286 The features of rfcommd moved from: Accept every rf-
287 comm request to having filters per device mac, was be-
288 cause of those two devices.
289
290 But it will allow to have the ecg readout as a filter
291 for free.
292
293 >> It had limited interaction, and yet you managed to
294 made it available from a linux computer. How did you
295 do it?
296
297 First I had a python script using pybluez to offer
298 some bluetooth printer service, which bluetooth
299 clients connect to and send print jobs.
300
301 But I migrated this to some C implementation and gen-
302 eralized it as rfcommd so it is more modular for me
303 and others can reuse it too.
304
305 Bluez stack had some rfcomm client application, but it
306 was removed in newer version because they hate comman-
307 dline users.
308
309 >> Was it difficult? How long did it take?
310
311 Digging around bluetooth is difficult. It looks simi-
312 lar to TCP/IP, but is its own terminology, protocols
313 and principles. Look at rfcommd for how to announce
314 some service.
315
316 It took me two weekends to write rfcommd as it is now.
317
318 >> What would you advise to designers of such devices
319 to make everyone's life easier?
320
321 If you mean medical devices: Please open source all
322 firmware and open up all schematics. In ten years you
323 will be dead or in pension but still people can extend
324 or update your devices.
325
326 And second: Never have specific assumptions and fool
327 end users into costly standard. You never know better
328 than your users.
329
330 For example in the spirometry description, they say,
331 that only some bluetooth printers are compatible.
332
333 This is due to the bluetooth standard not having de-
334 fined, what is sent to bluetooth printers.
335
336 It should be the minimum, to define this, as it is in
337 the USB printing standard.
338
339 >> What kind of protocol interface would have been the
340 easiest?
341
342 The easiest protocol interface, also considering secu-
343 rity and data protection standard, would be ssh over
344 TCP/IP. Everyone knows SSH, it can be integrated into
345 everything and it is easily upgradable to newer secu-
346 rity standards.
347
348 >> What does it permits to do that was not possible
349 before?
350
351 With the spirometry data ready as simple text data, I
352 can further process it using standard unix tools, in
353 case I ever need this.
354
355 >> Are other people using it in the practice as well?
356 Even indirectly?
357
358 My nurses use it mainly. They press the »print« but-
359 ton on the spirometry device and it prints the re-
360 sults.
361
362 I, as doctor, only see the printed out results and ex-
363 plain them to patients.
364
365 >> Does she have to use command line interface for
366 that?
367
368 No, it's all practical. The spirometer starts its
369 bluetooth client for rfcommd and rfcommd runs the
370 spirofilter printing filter script, which invokes
371 lpr(1).
372
373 >> Are there many situations like that, where cumber-
374 some interfaces makes life harder for working with
375 medical devices?
376
377 Yes, it's built into all medical devices to enforce
378 proprietary and expensive Windows software to be
379 bought.
380
381 For example the newer version of my ECG device has
382 some undocumented network mode. The ECG standard I
383 will be using over serial was defined in 1990. Since
384 then old devices only got bluetooth and ethernet, but
385 did nothing else new.
386
387 The price stayed the same, of course.
388
389 >> Do you think designers would benefits themself from
390 offering another interface that is easier to use?
391
392 In the short term viewpoint it protects you from com-
393 petitors to enter the market. But in the long run,
394 this now stops me from easily processing patient data
395 for further research. I am using a 25 yr old ECG and
396 some 10 yr old spirometer.
397
398 >> Are there any similarities in other devices to
399 reuse the existing work you just did?
400
401 Yes. Bluetooth is the new hype in medical devices.
402 All those smart devices for body measurement are for
403 example BLE, some insecure bluetooth standard to read
404 out key=value from bluetooth clients. Some bled(8)
405 should be easy to write.
406
407 Nearly every medical device still has some serial
408 port, either for communication or measurement.
409
410 For measurement this will never die out, since raw
411 data is required.
412
413 And some serial2bluetooth, that's what I am using for
414 my practical examples.
415
416 >> Would it have been possible to build such device
417 yourself from parts, but with sane interfaces in-
418 stead?
419
420 Building such a device is not the hard part. The hard
421 part is licensing the device as being a medical de-
422 vice.
423
424 I am, as a doctor, am allowed to license some medical
425 device for my patients. But if I'd want to sell or
426 give this device to some other doctor, I'd need some
427 EU medical device license.
428
429 This is a complex process.
430
431 You have severial medical device classes. Some always
432 require some EU-wide licensing.
433
434 The logic of some ECG is very simple. But licensing
435 it for selling is what makes it expensive and/or keeps
436 the competition low.
437
438 >> What do you advise to people also stuck with cum-
439 bersome device, but without reverse engineer super-
440 powers?
441
442 Force the device producers to open up standards.
443 Write into contracts, that devices have to be interop-
444 erable, so producers need to adapt.
445
446 It's the same for software. If you can't write it on
447 your own, force them to open up standards, because you
448 want to extend the software.
449
450 For extension of software, reverse engineering is le-
451 gal.
452
453
454
455
456 Carrying the Cross tgtimes
457 ____________________________________________________________
458
459 Walking on the streets, slowly, slowed-down by carry-
460 ing a huge wooden cross, tall as three persons, paint-
461 ed in blue, a recognisable cross shaped as an 'f', the
462 'f' of facebook.
463
464 This is the project Filipe Vilas-Boas, inviting anyone
465 to watch the unrealistic scene, and question themself
466 on the weight of social media, and beliefs associated
467 with technology.
468
469 >> investigating global interconnection utopia, spiri-
470 tual magic and contemporary algorithmic slavery dys-
471 topia
472
473 Was there an event declaring that technology was not
474 only for looneys on their geek basement? The opening
475 of facebook? The advent of the iPhone? The first day
476 you could fired from an office job for not being able
477 to turn on a computer? Technology did not really ap-
478 pear all at once in our lives, and does not even reach
479 every citizen of every country. Looking at ourself
480 with a fresh candide look and wondering if how we live
481 make sense is becoming increasingly difficult.
482
483 Like Filipe Vilas-Boas, artists offers us a tiny win-
484 dow onto our own life, a porthole toward ourself, for
485 allowing us to watching ourself from the outside. [1]
486
487
488 [1]
489 https://filipevilasboas.com/Carrying-The-Cross
490
491
492
493 Fortran Diahrea
494 ____________________________________________________________
495
496 Quoting Ganssle in The Embedded Muse mailing list:
497
498 >> The University of Maryland's Ralph compiler would
499 abort after 50 compiletime errors and print out a
500 picture of Alfred E. Neuman, with the caption "This
501 man never worries, but from the look of your code,
502 you should." [1]
503
504
505
506 [1]
507 http://www.ganssle.com/tem/tem439.html
508
509
510
511 High-Tech, Low-Life tgtimes
512 ____________________________________________________________
513
514 High-Tech Refers to the ability to use complex tools
515 created by engineering, or hacking things together.
516
517 Low-Life Refers to those put aside by society, such as
518 criminal or drug dealer, making itself edgy; or ho-
519 bos and beggars, pushed to the edge by more or less
520 everyone.
521
522 One way to develop the idea of High-Tech Low-Life
523 would be a criminal using modern tools such to empower
524 its crimes. A transaction giving the bad guys the big
525 guns. Not good.
526
527 But another way to portray it is someone rejected by
528 its surroundings, seeking support through technologi-
529 cal tools. May it be as a source of direct income, or
530 as a way to get informed, or inform its surrounding,
531 perhaps the entire world such as what did happen with
532 the late revolts in China.
533
534 The "High Tech, Low Life" (2012) documentary shows us
535 that it is not a science-fiction plot, but a phe-
536 nomenon happenning today.
537
538 Giving High-Tech toys to poor population sounds more
539 like a GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Mi-
540 crosoft) plan to rule over the third-world while look-
541 ing like a humanitarian hero saving the world. But an-
542 other way to see it is surrending the Low-Life people
543 to the claws of High-Tech corps, extending further the
544 frontiers of ad-tech.
545
546 Giving entertainment platform is probably not the most
547 urgent kind of technology people without a meal a day
548 is going to need. What about a tractor though? In its
549 simplest form, in China again, a 55 years-old lady
550 farmer started to use a hoverboard (board to stand on
551 with a wheel on left and right) to change 3 hours of
552 daily walk to carry the vegetables harvested, into 40
553 minutes riding this board. [1]
554
555 Or what about deploying long-range point-to-point
556 wireless links in west Africa to circumvent the poor
557 cable infrastructure? This would help escaping the
558 lobby and regulations that take over the few IT re-
559 sources of that country? [2]
560
561 Or even inventing affordable small solar or wind-power
562 stations for the tights budgets of off-grid villages?
563 Or an on-street display continuously showing live job
564 offers?
565
566 >> Did you open-source a driver for the community as
567 part of your job? Installed Linux on an old laptop
568 for someone in need? Convincing the boss to make the
569 project open-source? Attended a surprising situation
570 of that kind? Tell us your story of High-Tech given
571 to Low-Life on #bitreich-en IRC channel on the
572 irc.bitreich.org server.
573
574
575 [1]
576 https://nextshark.com/chinese-farmer-hoverboard-life/
577 https://www.chinanews.com.cn/tp/hd2011/2018/02-13/800254.shtml
578
579 [2]
580 http://www.melissadensmore.com/papers/m4d08-mho-reassessing.pdf
581 https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-10-27/how-to-build-a-low-tech-internet/
582
583
584
585 FreeDOOMDay on 2022-03-27 20h
586 ____________________________________________________________
587
588 In comemoration of the beginning summer time in cen-
589 tral Europe, we will celebrate FreeDOOMDay! On
590 2022-03-27 20:00 CEST (be careful!), we will play
591 chocolate-doom [1]
592
593 This is a doom variant which runs on nearly every ma-
594 chine out there and supports extra modes: [2]
595
596 Please try to install the FreeDOOM wad files as a
597 base:
598
599 See you on Sunday!
600
601 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
602
603
604 [1]
605 https://www.chocolate-doom.org
606
607 [2]
608 https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Three_screen_mode
609
610
611
612 Beerware: Hardware for Beer tgtimes
613 ____________________________________________________________
614
615 Retreated industrial robot hardware recycled into a
616 bartender. Such is the project of the Bistromatik,
617 born in Brittany, now visiting countries abroad.
618
619 A mechanical robot arm was built for the industry, but
620 while still working, was removed from production, and
621 collected dust in a warehouse.
622
623 Jean-Marie Ollivier took this bored machine that he
624 named "Nestor", got it to move again, and rather than
625 servicing the industry, was programmed it to serve
626 beers.
627
628 >> It is not rare to see Jean-Marie make Nestor dance
629 on a violin melody.
630
631 Moving from town to town, this iron giant, taller than
632 any human, goes on display grabbing gobelets, filling
633 them at the tap, and offering them to the curious
634 crowd passing by.
635
636 And if you feel hungry too, you may ask it for a
637 treat, it can also prepare some crepes, the Bretons'
638 favorite dessert. [1]
639
640
641 [1]
642 https://bistromatik.com/
643
644
645
646 Memecache atom feed
647 ____________________________________________________________
648
649 Thanks to the innovation from the Netherlands, we can
650 now offer an atom feed for the memecache at
651 bitreich.org: [1]
652
653 Please subscribe for your newest meme pleasure!
654
655 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Meme Officer (CMO)
656
657
658
659 [1]
660 gopher://bitreich.org/0/memecache/news.atom
661
662
663
664 St-Lazare's Paris Train Station tgtimes
665 ____________________________________________________________
666
667 Ah! The Saint Lazare train station. Emblem of the Par-
668 isian train station, and today still looking like on
669 the painting by the XIXth century painter Monet.
670
671 This typical look were somehow preserved regardless of
672 the modernisation of the train equipments. Lately, new
673 equipments have been installed to prevent fraud: tick-
674 et barriers are now surrounding all the stations and
675 their surrounding, only letting those owning a ticket
676 onto the station.
677
678 Not unexpected from a train company for a country with
679 fraud around 10% on long train lines. Mr. Monet would
680 probably still be able to come and settle down for
681 painting the train station nowaday, although to the
682 price of a ticket to anywhere.
683
684 Yet the devices themself seems not of the greatest
685 comfort to both fraudsters, beggars frequently coming
686 where most passengers are, and legitimate passengers
687 alike. While it might be improved shortly, there is an
688 high error rate for passengers trying to insert their
689 ticket or NFC card.
690
691 In case of a misunderstanding of how to use these de-
692 vices, the train stations are not overcrowded with
693 staff to welcome passengers in need for information,
694 and it would take a bit of time.
695
696 Setting-up a new solution seems a difficult challenge,
697 putting in compromise price to setup, comfort of use,
698 reliability, finding the new staff in charge of main-
699 tenance... A reminder that technical solutions only
700 solve technical problems. [1]
701
702
703 [1]
704 https://lenouvelautomobiliste.fr/actualites/39949/des-portes-pour-transformer-la-vie-de-la-gare-saint-lazare/
705
706
707
708 FreeDOOMDay results
709 ____________________________________________________________
710
711 Thanks to everyone participating in our first tryout
712 to play doom over our bitreich infrastructure. It
713 worked out pretty well. In the end we played the
714 freedm.wad of freedoom.
715
716 Some statistics: Maximum up and down bandwidth re-
717 quired was 14 kbytes/s. Maximum CPU usage here: 2% of
718 one core. RAM: 400 kb.
719
720 Chocolate Doom is compatible to vanilla doom. Every-
721 one having some old DOS doom can join in using rf-
722 commd: [1]
723
724 Just attach a serial2bluetooth dongle and some blue-
725 tooth dongle in your linux machine, then use the new
726 added filter: [2]
727
728 This will automatically connect your serial connection
729 to a doom server over tcp/ip. Change it to
730 bitreich.org and the standard port and you are set.
731
732 Of course you can use socat from some ttyUSB0 or ttyS0
733 too. Nothing stops you, but your own laziness. The
734 possibilities are endless.
735
736 See you next time, with whatever machine you can find
737 and which runs DOOM!
738
739 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
740
741
742
743 [1]
744 git://bitreich.org/rfcommd
745 [2]
746 gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/rfcommd/commit/
747 9b77ca90e9cf4ca7cd9521e6756dc2b833cdefce.gph
748
749
750
751 What really happened on Mars?
752 ____________________________________________________________
753
754 What can possibly go wrong while sending a device en-
755 tirely controlled by software on a remote location
756 where noone would ever be able to go for a long while?
757 The question opens a vast field of answers.
758
759 1997, Pathfinder, a solar-powered ground lander and
760 station, with VxWorks proprietary real time operating
761 system onboard, embedding an 6-wheeled Sojourner rover
762 with custom firmware, landed on Mars.
763
764 During a field data collection mission a priority in-
765 version did happen on the Pathfinder station total
766 loss of control for the time of a reboot.
767
768 The bug was reproduced on earth and patched, latter
769 explained on a mailing list, published online. [1]
770
771 At its core, most operating systems are built around a
772 scheduler that orchestrates execution of many tasks
773 onto one or several CPUs. It is a critical piece of
774 software in the case of real-time operating systems,
775 that must ensure to trigger some actions right on
776 time.
777
778 Complex systems may be unfit for such purposes, and
779 software simplicity has found its way through experi-
780 menting how complex systems may end-up in difficult-
781 to-debug situations.
782
783 Imagine yourself in charge of reproducing a bug on
784 earth for something that went wrong on another planet,
785 with a patch expected for next Monday. A strong argu-
786 ment toward keeping systems simple and easier to de-
787 bug.
788
789 Although, the Mars operating system landscape is not
790 all VxWorks and nothing else. For instance, the RTEMS
791 system, Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems
792 was open-sourced from US army 1993 and is today ac-
793 tively maintained by both corporations and the open
794 source community.
795
796 Being part of Google Summer of Code, it is also wel-
797 coming newcomers to real-time operating system devel-
798 opment, who might be able to contribute to embedded
799 software making its way onto space. [2]
800
801 While the ISS project was put at threat by the current
802 events in Ukraine involving all nations, outter-space
803 still represents a middle ground where all sides have
804 a same objective and can collaborate: extending the
805 horizons above what could be reached before.
806
807
808
809 [1]
810 https://www.cs.unc.edu/~anderson/teach/comp790/papers/mars_pathfinder_long_version.html
811 [2]
812 https://www.rtems.org/
813
814
815
816 Gopher for Medical Research
817 ____________________________________________________________
818
819 The National Institute of Health is well used to the
820 Gopher protocol, for it used it as a way to publish
821 medical documentation. You named it: PubMed itself
822 have been delivering documents through Gopher:
823
824 Phone books with name, phone number and e-mail ad-
825 dresses of those willing to submit it,
826
827 Images like weathermaps,
828
829 Audio such as 1992 presidential debates,
830
831 Books and all kind of publcations, also proposed to
832 users as a way to publish their own content,
833
834 Videos short ones, but also on-demand movies!
835
836 Telnet interfaces with login and password,
837
838 Search engines For browsing this entire content.
839
840 The technical bulletin of March-April 1994 reveals as
841 much. While 1994 does not sounds like a world gifted
842 with nowadays unlimited technology, equivalents to
843 modern tools, with less bells and less whistles, were
844 already widespread among providers, but much less used
845 as they are today:
846
847 Spotify were files through Gopher.
848
849 Netflix were files through Gopher.
850
851 PubMed, ResearchGate were files through Gopher.
852
853 Instagram were files through Gopher.
854
855 Facebook were publication as files through Gopher.
856
857 Amazon Kindle were text files through Gopher.
858
859 Office365 were telnet interactive session, or Word-
860 Star, PostScript, and ASCII files through Gopher.
861
862 Google was either gopher search, or interactive telnet
863 sessions, with sometimes powerful query languages,
864 permitting to filter the result held in the data-
865 bases: Searching for references about Italians with
866 AIDS that are not indexed with ITALY (MH)
867
868 This showcases that a lot of thing declared as possi-
869 ble today thank to the advances of technology were
870 available since as early as 1994. With much less bells
871 and much less whistles. With much less bandwidth for
872 everyone, but existing bandwidth much less used as
873 well.
874
875 Interactive database querying languages would look a
876 bit uninviting, and TurboGopher (showcased in the doc-
877 ument) has not all the font, layout, media integration
878 features of modern day web browsers.
879
880 Under that perspective, the race to technology looks
881 like not a quest for new use-cases, but taking what
882 was possible in the early days to in a crude format
883 and only to some initiated, to the masses, in an
884 inviting layout, packed onto small, shiny objects that
885 fit on a mere pocket. [1]
886
887 One year later, the Gopher for Science and Medecine
888 project still is blown at full steam, as the National
889 Library of Medecine publishes a bibliography for
890 setting-up gopher servers for collaborating on spe-
891 cific medical topics.
892
893 >> Developing a subject-specific Gopher at the Na-
894 tional Library of Medicine [2]
895
896
897
898 [1]
899 https://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/archive/nlm_technical_bulletin_march_april_1994.pdf
900 [2]
901 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7599590/
902
903
904
905 Secret voting for Bitreich Council
906 ____________________________________________________________
907
908 Bitreich is always ahead in its structure, organisa-
909 tion and technology. So is our democracy: [1]
910
911 The majority of council members has decided, that:
912
913 >> Secret voting is possible on certain topics. When
914 council members vote in secret, they need to vote un-
915 der a bedcover. Multiple council members can be un-
916 der one bedcover.
917
918 Bitreich is reacting to the decision of Debian to in-
919 troduce back chamber corruption in its decision mak-
920 ing: [2]
921
922 This is completely prevented in the Bitreich model,
923 since multiple council members are allowed under one
924 bedcover, while hidden from any eavesdropper in the
925 room.
926
927 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Democracy Officer (CDO)
928
929
930
931 [1]
932 gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/bitreich-council/commit/
933 f43daad938405d966c158a12b6fcb8f13a9d1868.gph
934 [2]
935 https://lwn.net/Articles/889444/
936
937
938
939 TMP.0UT Volume 2 is Out
940 ____________________________________________________________
941
942 In the sytle of the Phrack online resource, tmp.0ut
943 publishes its second volume.
944
945 >> TMP.0UT stands on the shoulders of giants, and we
946 lend a hand for the next generation of giants to
947 stand on ours.
948
949 Focused on the ELF format reverse engineering, the on-
950 line zine culminates a rich set of resources and arti-
951 cles by experts for everyone interested in the world
952 of ELF hacking.
953
954 o Bare Metal Jacket
955
956 o How to write a virtual machine in order to hide your
957 viruses
958
959 o Every Boring Problem Found in eBPF
960
961 And much, much more... News straight out of the com-
962 piler: [1]
963
964
965
966 [1]
967 https://tmpout.sh/2/
968
969
970
971 Bitreich migrating to Windows Server 20h
972 ____________________________________________________________
973
974 Yesterday the last SSH.com license we had expired. We
975 are now unable to access Linux on the old bitreich.org
976 servers. In an approach to modernize Bitreich, the
977 council decided to go further:
978
979 o Windows Server 2022 will be the new server OS for
980 growing our business opportunities and fast deploy-
981 ment of critical workloads such as SQL Server with
982 confidence using 48TB of memory, 64 sockets, and
983 2048 logical cores.
984
985 o Irc.bitreich.org will be replaced by Microsoft Teams
986 to create a more engaging meeting experience with
987 together mode. Focus on faces, pick up on nonverbal
988 cues, and easily see who is talking.
989
990 o The ed(1) cloud will be replaced by Microsoft Office
991 365 to connect and empower every employee, from the
992 office to the frontline worker, with a Microsoft 365
993 solution that enhances productivity and drives inno-
994 vation.
995
996 We hope to see you on the new services, which enrich
997 your daily business life.
998
999 Sincerely yours, 20h Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004 Linux Sysadmin Job Offer announce
1005 ____________________________________________________________
1006
1007 The web is hiring over and over. A lot of professions
1008 were converted from something, to something with on-
1009 line web tools and a lot of computer systems are using
1010 a webinterfaces that are just skins for a database.
1011
1012 If you feel like giving a good sweep in all the dust
1013 of webservers, and transform fragile, complex, buggy
1014 ecosystems onto leaner, more stable systems, and are
1015 currently looking for a job as an Admin, we might have
1016 an offer for you.
1017
1018 The offer is located in France, within a warm and
1019 horsing team in a 20-sized company powering a little
1020 part of the Internet (not only the Web), dealing with
1021 clients from local shops to international groups.
1022
1023 Come and discover the culture of Lille, in North of
1024 France, one of the only places where you can taste
1025 both Carbonnade (Belgian, meat cooked onto Belgian
1026 beer) and Welsh (Great Britain, quality melted cheddar
1027 served on a dish).
1028
1029 Contact josuah on #bitreich-en channel on
1030 irc.bitreich.org server to know more about it.
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035 Publishing in The Gopher Times you
1036 ____________________________________________________________
1037
1038 Want your article published? Want to announce some-
1039 thing to the Gopher world? Directly related to Gopher
1040 or not, reach us on IRC with an article in any format,
1041 we will handle the rest.
1042
1043
1044
1045 ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
1046 gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
1047 git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/
1048
1049
1050
1051