Flavio's blog

I can’t stand captchas any more

Flavio — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:04:20 +0000

Site operators: please stop using captchas. They’ve become too difficult for humans to read. Think of something different.

How to fix Neo Diggler on Firefox 10

Flavio — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:54:59 +0000

Neo Diggler is a Firefox addon you shouldn’t live without. Unfortunately it doesn’t work well in Firefox 10 with the new forward arrow that disappears when there’s no further page forward.

However, there’s an easy fix: open the toolbar customization dialog and insert a flexible space (or a normal space, or a separator if you’re so inclined) between the back/forward arrows and the location bar. The forward arrow won’t disappear anymore, which is the way I like it, and Neo diggler will work again.

Sony is suing George Hotz for hacking HIS OWN PS3

Flavio — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:18:11 +0000

Just in case you didn’t know already, Sony is suing George Hotz, also known as “geohot“, a talented young guy who among other things helped unlock the iPhone. Sony sued him for violation of the DMCA and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because he hacked HIS OWN PlayStation 3. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise however, as Sony once tried to sue a guy for getting his AIBO to do non-Sony approved tricks.

George even has a page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz

I’m tempted to get a PlayStation 3 and hack it just to make a statement. Sony, this is not how you should treat customers. I was considering buying a Vaio because they’re some of the best laptops I’ve seen but I definitely changed my plans!

Smooth operator

Flavio — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:52:14 +0000

This Friday the 13th was special. I’m not in any way superstitious, mind you, but I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary either. So imagine my pleasure when, rather than bad luck, I got an unexpected phone call: my new BMW F800GS was ready, registered and fueled, a whole week before the estimate I was given about two months ago. Not that I was fearing any significant delay from the Bayerische, but I’ve come to learn that such estimates are usually a bit optimistic… Between me and her stood only an unending pile of papers to sign and, of course, a sizable check.

Already a few hundred km on the odometer, unfortunately most of them under cloudy skies and even some light rain. Smooth is the keyword — smooth engine, smooth handling. Now if only the weather could get a little bit better…

A couple of reviews and in-depth descriptions for you:

from webBikeWorld
from American Motorcyclist

“He move in space with minimum waste and maximum joy…”

Euler’s identity

Flavio — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:50:28 +0000

Do you know the value of e^iπ (also known as Euler’s identity)?

iproute2: Linux kernel configuration

Flavio — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:57:37 +0000

Note to self: if you want to use iproute2, remember to enable CONFIG_IP_ADVANCED_ROUTER=y and related stuff in the kernel configuration.

If you don’t, the ip rule add command will answer “RTNETLINK answers: Operation not supported”.

Dear Apple

Flavio — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:22:40 +0000

Dear Apple,

I really love my iPod nano (1st gen). I also love Linux, but I’m told you don’t like the two things to live together. Fortunately, I’m also told that some good guys already worked around the protection, but still this really makes me wonder if I should keep buying your products; I didn’t know the story about DAAP and RAOP either. I’m not going to sell my nano outright, but why would I buy the new one if I can get the same functionality, minus the closeness, from my Nokia phone, for example? And I can also install any software I like on it.

Really. Your products are good. Your policy is not. Fix that, please.

Submitted this through Apple’s iPod feedback form, let’s see if I get an answer.

Defeating paranoid system administrators

Flavio — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:51:56 +0000

If a paranoid system administrator has blocked ssh access from Linux hosts to your office’s network — using the OpenBSD packet filter‘s fingerprinting — and you find yourself without access to the office’s mail server, you might want to make your Linux workstation’s TCP stack look like something else by changing the TTL, for example:

echo 128 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_default_ttl

The road to this hack is quite easy, anyway:

install OpenBSD in a virtual machine;
look hard at /etc/pf.os and look for possible useful differences;
see that Linux uses a TTL of 64 while Windows XP uses 128;
profit!

Item 1 was needed because I couldn’t find a copy of /etc/pf.os quickly, so I figured that it’d take less to just install an OpenBSD.

Free as in “we decide which fonts you use”

Flavio — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:09:08 +0000

Yesterday I found an article on digital rights management on the GNU web site. The article itself is interesting, although IMHO a little bit too biased towards the “see how many freedoms they could take away from us” angle — but that’s the way RMS thinks. However, I was disappointed to see that the article — the entire www.gnu.org site, in fact — was using the Bitstream Vera Sans font. Here’s the relevant part from the style sheet, and note the comment:

font-family: "Bitstream Vera Sans", sans-serif; /* favour free fonts!! */

Now don’t get me wrong, I like the Bitstream Vera fonts just as much as you do and I use them extensively, not just because they’re free, but because they do indeed look quite good — at least on Linux. But I was reading that article from the office on a Windows XP machine and the Bitstream Vera fonts don’t look good there, or at least not as good as Verdana. Anyway, that’s not the real point: if one prefers a different font, perhaps just as free like Isabella, what can (s)he do?

The funny part is, Stallman’s own site (http://www.stallman.org) doesn’t force you to use free fonts…

Bookmarks-wiki

Flavio — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:14:26 +0000

Finally, I put my bookmarks in a wiki.

(of course, it’s not user-editable; not yet, at least)