Sleeper PC – X205 living room machine.

IBM E-Server Title.

We're back at it again!

For those who witnessed our first sleeper PC blog, our second sleeper PC blog, and finally putting a stupid fan into said sleeper PC.. Thank you. Hardware hacking articles are super fun to write. This opens up opportunities again to hack modern technology into ancient gear. This time around, a Gigabyte Strix H370F into an IBM X205 E-Server.

Care to read more? Enter the diatribe!

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Cleaning up music libraries.

Cleaning up music - Title.

If you stream everything, well, let us say you can stop reading. This is a quick journey on why we play with music files and how we tend to fix them over 20+ years of collecting them. So if you have playlists on Spotify or YouTube, or SoundCloud or MixCloud. This article is probably going ... Read more

LoRa time!

Sometimes, you gotta get out. Touch grass. Walk around downtown. Hang out at your local coffee house while hipsters come up to you asking for money. Offer them your still wrapped chocolate muffins if they publicly state that the B52s are and always will be a terrible band. Only for the profanities to fly as they storm out the shop in a fit of rage. When in reality, they could've just complied, eaten the muffin, and resended his statement. But during all this, I've gotten into a cheap electronic hobby of LoRa, which is low (as in 900-915Mhz in the States) frequency radio hunting.

For those who aren't feeling like getting into my diatribes. It's like a cross between Citizen-Band Radio mixed with instant messaging. Oh, and you can encrypt your messages which somehow scares the shit out of univercities as it could promote "Anarchy" or some bullshit like that. Saved you a fuckload of time.

Read on to continue downward the spiral.

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Dillo is back!

Dillo Browser Title.

The little browser is back.

Although they are now on version 3.2.0; Verison 3.1.0 of Dillo was brought back to life by a developer by the name of Rodrigo Arias Mallo in 2024 with the first release adding SSL support to this browser. Dillo born in 1999 which is right at the Dot-com explosion of browsers and ways for people to access the internet. Dillo was ultra-light weight and had minimalistic features that at the time were not required on the internet. In fact, back when we were playing with RedHat Linux. Dillo was included in distros because we were loading it on old machines, like a 486 as an example. And for as limiting as that may be to launch a browser on a 25Mhz CPU. Dillo responded very well back in its day.

Want to check it out yourself? The actual website is here at https://dillo-browser.github.io/ .

Would you like to know more? Read onwards into the downward spiral!

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Janurary Updates

October Update Title

No, not dead.

For starters. Happy New Year out there. We didn't do anything extravagant like go to a garage filled with video games or go to Illinois to visit a group of people that resent me. Nah! We just stayed home and played a little bit of System Shock. Be told how we're terrible people by a fictional AI named "Shodan". The article was originally supposed to come out in October but kinda stopped mid-writing on this.

I'd find a picture with Lesbians holding Guns. But we think us just saying it is enough to freak out the AI content filters. Beyond this, a lot of background work has been happening throughout my site. For starters:

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The PINEcil!

Pinecil - TItle.

We're unsure how we feel about the name "PINEcil." But sure let's review this!

This is for readers who want the TLDR version. It's a nice portable soldering iron, and so far, there have been no complaints. We'll update you as we use it.

Would you like to know more? Read onwards for my half-baked review!

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OpenNIC

OpenNIC Review Title.

We may be a bit late to the party.

But we decided to investigate OpenNIC which appeared on Webrings early when I joined some of them in 2022. What is OpenNIC you ask? Well, regular top-level domain (TLD) names such as .COM/.NET/.ORG used to be run by the US government but eventually, ICANN took over. OpenNIC gives people the possibility of running their top-level domain and access to people wanting to get domains within those top-level domains. It's like a training/sandbox ground for people who want to try their hand at running a top-level domain without spending a shit-ton of money to go through the bureaucratic process of introducing it officially.

We have enough in our lives to NOT want to run a top-level domain. But out of interest in blogging about technology and USING that technology. I did make myself a domain on one of the primary openNIC TLDs.

HTTP://www.s-config.geek

Kindly note the link WILL NOT WORK work unless you use an OpenNIC DNS server which we will explain later in this article.

We feel like this is a good space to learn/understand how DNS works. But don't think it's really going to go much further than that.

Would you like to know more? Read on!

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Thinking WITHOUT Google. Welcome Old-Web.

The Old-Web Title.

If Google de-lists you. Why continue to 'Think' with Google?

First, there was Google's parent project which purchased "YouTube". This brought forth the word "Demonetization." Which was effectively telling content creators to play nice or else they make no money. Now, Google uses the "Don't be evil" Motto their developers once had and print it on the toilet paper in each bathroom stall. Alphabet/Google is not a search company anymore. They are an advertisement company (remember AOL? They were just an advertisement company too!).

This becomes more and more relevant as Google AI is deployed keeping you on the search engine instead of investigating the website itself. Or having calculative tools on Google's site instead of going to the person that made the calculator such as "millimeters to inches" as just one example. Or worse, having a Google side-project known as AMP just straight up content steal your entire site and stores it on one of their content distributed networks (CDN for short.) The next wave will affect the searchability of your favorite websites. Which is "de-listing" webmasters of low priority and content quality. Because either you're not important enough or you're not marketable enough. Or simply put. Google is panicking because the AI they used on others to perfect their search engine is being used on them by turning content into an endless array of smoke and mirrors.

Read on if you want to know more.

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Pay for your mouse… Forever!

Logitech Forever Mouse Title.

Hanneke Faber, CEO of Logitech wants to sell YOU a "Forever Mouse" that YOU pay... Forever!

This whole process reminded us of another concept that the crypto-bros came up with "Unstoppable-Domains" in which MayVaneDay covered this article exceptionally well. But that's not the same as "Forever" you ask? Well! there are forever domains too! Which is the same scam as Unstoppable. So, there you go!

For the TLDR crowd - Logitech wants to switch to a subscription model for their Drivers. And the reality is NOTHING is forever! Forever violates the laws of life itself. We are self-aware of this so why isn't Logitech? One day this site will be obliterated to ash. After our biological death, the servers will run out of funds and the VPS and DNS will datarot and 404 itself into the sunset. Even our beloved archival services will be attacked by politics or greed and those libraries of Alexandria will burn as well. Then hundreds of years later the next generations of humanity will look upon us as arrogant violent apes laughing at us and then in turn doing the same process all over. Prove us wrong Humanity!

If we interviewed Hanneke Faber, we're pretty darn sure she would walk out or disconnect after 5-10 minutes. Tops.

Read on if you wish to hear more of my diatribes!

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