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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Its what literally changed my life. I was really socialy awkward, spend most of my lide behind a computer, and when I managed to go out to parties in a subculture scene parties I loved, I couldnt talk to anyone, had a few beers awkwardly in a corner and went home.

    Then I met someone who introduced me to MDMA. That happened almost 8 years ago, and now I am an organizer of 2/3 of the same scene regular parties in our city, Im helping and DJing on a festival that happens here, and am living my best life in that regard. All thanks to that one best friend who got me something that made me talk to, and get to actually know people in the scene in the extent that I always wanted, and get comfortable enough that I no longer need to be high to interact with anyone. Since now they are friends and regulars, and not random people I wanted to talk to, but was afraid of approaching.

    But, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I was always trying to be responsible and cautious, and In did get bordeline to addiction in the process, which I was fortunately able to recognize early and put a stop to it by getting help in a adictiology nonprofit. It was never bad, more like a precaution. And I caught it in the best possible moment. I’ll never forget my first group session, where literally everyone else said “I’m 35+, I used to take stuff at parties for fun when I was 25, and then I ended for 10 years in meth…”.

    Everyone had similar story. And I went “Well, I’m 25, and I take stuff on parties for fun…”. And that was a really strong lesson, where I realized I’m stopping a really huge problem at exactly the right time.

    So, it might help. It is definitely fun, but it is so hard to not end up badly. You will need a lot of luck, especially if you are exploring it on your own. I still take things on parties, but with personal experience about the dangers it has. And getting that, is something that no one can give you, unless you see it for yourself. And for most of the people, that comes too late. I was lucky, you probably won’t be. But in conclusion - drugs are amazing, and have changed my life. Its a shame that personal experience will probably vary.



  • Crypto is doing kind-of ok. But what about other blockchain apps and startups, or blockchain integrations into every tech imaginable? There were so many popping up, just like there are with AI now. Business models and use-cases that are based solely on the hype of the tech in question, without any consideration about whether it’s actually a good fit for the tech. That is the point, and what it has common with AI and other “buzzwords”.



  • I’m not sure about other countries, but here in Czech we actually have a mandatory subscription, that’s absolutely bullshit.

    So far, the law is that if you own any TV or radio, you have to pay monthly fee for public service broadcasters (national Czech TV). It’s bullshit, the channels are full of ads anyway, and the shows they run and create is insultingly bad. Sure, it is important to have public service broadcasters that are not dependent on the state (because state-owned TV is reeaallly bad idea), but FFS can they just reduce costs and stick to news, instead of doing another stupid series, and stop forcing us to pay for something I don’t care about or use?

    You could just not pay the fee, if you state you don’t have a TV capable of receiving it (which I don’t). But now, they are changing the law that everyone who has any kind of internet-capable device has to pay the monthly fee, while also rising prices to something like 6 EUR per month. Fuck that and fuck them.




  • I self-hosted it few months ago, and it’s actually surprisingly easy! Someone has made an Ansible script for Matrix with Element and some bridges, that (at least a month ago, IaaC tends to be pretty fragile) worked out of the box on a first try. I just set up some config values (mostly about enabling bridges I want) based on their amazing documentation, and then ran it once and everything is working so far. I even updated it several times already, and every time it was smooth, and it was basically just running a single ansible command. Their documentation is pretty well written, and with my basic cloud, IT and Linux knowledge I had no issues with following it. All you need to know is how to set up cloud VM, get a domain and set DNS, and set up SSH keys to access the server.

    In total it took me about two hours in total, from when I decided “I’m setting up Matrix tonight” without any prior knowledge, looking up my options and finding the ansible script, setting up cloud and getting Matrix up and running.

    I’m renting a VM on Hetzner for like 6$ per month, and it worked without issues so far. I use it for Discord and Messenger, although the Meta bridge does have some problems, for example I didn’t figure out how to message someone with whom I haven’t had a conversation since I set up the bridge, since only then it creates the room for it. But that can be solved by keeping the Messenger app or usign the browser to send a first message, and it immediately shows in your Matrix bridge (and stays there forever).




  • Ever since I played watchdogs and shadowrun, I wanted to work in cybersecurity, especially as a Red Teamer, which is literally Shadowrun - you run complex ops that have to break in, and steal stuff from largre banks without anyone but the management knowing about the test, with almost nothing being off-limits, as long as it doesn’t cause some kind of damage.

    Five years later, I do work as a Red Team Lead. Hpwever, our company was just scrambling to start doing RT since thats the buzzword now, and while we did have amazing pentesters, unfortunately pentesting and Red Teaming requires vastly different skills. Ypu never need to avoid EDRs, write malware with obscure low-level winapi, or even know what kind of IoC ajd detections will a command you run create, when you are doing a pentest.

    But since no one knew better, and I love learning and researching new stuff, while also having Red Teaming romabticized, my interrest in it eventually led to me getting a Lead position for the barely scrambling team.

    Mind you, I was barely out of being a junipr, with only three years of part time pentesting experience. It was NOT a good idea.

    I quickly found out that RT is waaay harder and requires the best of the best from cybersec and maleare development. We didnt have that. Also, turns out that I love to learn now stuff and take on a challenge, but being a Lead also means you are drowning in paperwork and discussions with client, while also everyone from the team doesn’t know what to do and turns to me about what should we do. Which I didn’t know, and barely managed to keep learning it on my own. Our conpany didnt want to give us much time for learning outside of delivery, I was only working parttime, and I was slowly realizing that we don’t have almost any of the skills we need.

    We were doing kind of a good job, most of our engagement turned out pretty well, but it was atrocious.

    Turns out, I’m not good at managing and planning projects, or leading people. I’m better just as a line member.


  • I also have a dual-boot, with fresh install of Windows I debloated as much as possible, that I use for games that I can’t get to run even after trying protondb.com. However, it has only happened one or two times since I switched more than half a year ago, and I usually just give up on and refund games that I can’t get to work on Steam. I have a lot of other things to play, and usually I wasn’t that much dead set on playing that particular one. I do make sure to post on the forums of the game when that happens, though.

    I’ve also recently stumbled upon https://windowsxlite.com/24H2ProV2/, which should be a debloated and minimized Windows (4Gb installed size is mindblowing, considering that all my Windows VMs have like 40Gb freshly installed). The site looks shady, but it was recommended to me by my coleague who works in cybersecurity, so I hope he knows what he’s doing. I haven’t got the time to test it yet, but it does mention that it should work for games, so who knows.


  • My favorite windows update was when I was attending an onsite coding competition hosted my Microsoft. We were all in this large meeting hall that looked like a theater, and we spent first 10 minutes or so at the start of the competition just looking at Windows update, with the Microsoft rep apologizing to us, because his pc decided to do the “Forced update restart you cant postpone any more” literally two minutes into the presentation



  • I suppose it’s written in a way to sound way worse and alarming than it actually is, due to the upcoming elections. It sounds almost unreal, i mean “EU secret plan to ban any kind of encryption or privacy” can’t be reallistically happening, right?

    I know about Chatcontrol, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but this article sounds pretty overblown, to the point of sounding more like a wild conspiracy theory. Does anyone have more resources or info about this, that don’t read like an election ad?

    I’m not trying to dismiss or disrespect the author, and I trust that it was written with best intentions, but it’s a really worrying topic about which I’d like to get more information about.

    However, thanks for bringing it up, I contacted our local Pirate party about the topic, because they don’t have anything related to crime prevention vs. privacy in their programe. I suppose that I know what the answer would be, but getting a confirmation before I vote for them would definitely be nice.



  • I’d like to mention one exception, because it took me ages to properly debug.

    If your endpoint is serving mirrors for APT, don’t redirect to HTTPS.

    APT packages are signed and validated, so there is no need to use TLS. Lot of docker images (such as Kali) do not have root certificates by default, so they can’t use the TLS, because cert validation fails. You also can’t install the certificates, because they install through APT. If your local mirror redirects to https by default, it will break it for people who choose the mirror, which IIRC happens automatically based on what’s closest to you. I think this issue is still there for Czech Kali package mirror, and it took me so long to figure out (because it’s also not an issue for most of the users, since they have different mirrors), so I like mentioning this when talking http/s. It’s an edge case, but one that I find interresting - mostly because it would never occur to me that this can be an issue, when setting up a mirror.

    But that was more than a year ago, it may be better now.