Category Archives: Internet

Why “Sender Pays” Is a Terrible Rule for Internet Traffic

Reading national treasure Harold Feld‘s occasional “tales of the sausage factory” at Wetmachine.com (I think it is a play on ‘wetware’?) makes you smarter.

I learned stuff from S. Korea “Sender Pays” Is a Warning, Not a Model, or Why (Almost) Everyone Keeps Telling the EU This Is a VERY Bad Idea. If you haven’t been paying close attention to the telco side of traffic provision, you’ll learn stuff too.

“Sender pays” for Internet traffic always seemed a bad idea, or rather a way to gouge even more from customers; the idea is occasionally resurrected,  this time as a way to stop spammers.

Feld explains why it’s a bad idea. Now if someone could explain why latency seems to be going up around here even without ‘sender pays’ …

Posted in Econ & Money, Internet | Comments Off on Why “Sender Pays” Is a Terrible Rule for Internet Traffic

How to Restore Multi-Line Tabs to Firefox 83

I cannot understand why Firefox refuses to make this a standard option.

Anyway, the full instructions are in the description of this video.
1. Find your FF profile folder (location is in about:support if you don’t know it)
2. Navigate to the Chrome sub-folder (or make one if there is none)
3. Create a file called userchrome.css with this content:

/* Source file https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks/tree/master/chrome/multi-row_tabs.css made available under Mozilla Public License v. 2.0
See the above repository for updates as well as full license text. */

/* Makes tabs to appear on multiple lines */
/* Tab reordering will not work and can't be made to work */
/* You can use multi-row_tabs_window_control_patch.css to move window controls to nav-bar*/

/* You might want to move tabs-new-tab-button outside tabs toolbar for smoother behavior */

/* Change the --multirow-n-rows to change maximum number of rows before the rows will start to scroll */

:root{
--multirow-n-rows: 3;
--multirow-tab-min-width: 100px;
--multirow-tab-dynamic-width: 1; /* Change to 0 for fixed-width tabs using the above width. */
}

/* Scrollbar can't be clicked but the rows can be scrolled with mouse wheel */
/* Uncomment the next line if you want to be able to use the scrollbar with mouse clicks */

/* #tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox{ -moz-window-dragging: no-drag } */

/* Uncommenting the above makes you unable to drag the window from empty space in the tab strip but normal draggable spaces will continue to work */

#tabbrowser-tabs{
min-height: unset !important;
padding-inline-start: 0px !important
}

@-moz-document url(chrome://browser/content/browser.xhtml){
#scrollbutton-up~spacer,
#scrollbutton-up,
#scrollbutton-down{ display: var(--scrollbutton-display-model,initial) }
scrollbox[part][orient="horizontal"]{
display: flex;
flex-wrap: wrap;
overflow-y: auto;
max-height: calc(var(--tab-min-height) * var(--multirow-n-rows));
scrollbar-color: currentColor transparent;
scrollbar-width: thin;
}
}

.scrollbox-clip[orient="horizontal"],
#tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox{
overflow: -moz-hidden-unscrollable;
display: block;
--scrollbutton-display-model: none;
}

.tabbrowser-tab{ height: var(--tab-min-height); }

#tabbrowser-tabs .tabbrowser-tab[pinned]{
position: static !important;
margin-inline-start: 0px !important;
}

.tabbrowser-tab[fadein]:not([pinned]){
min-width: var(--multirow-tab-min-width) !important;
flex-grow: var(--multirow-tab-dynamic-width);
/*
  1. Go to about:config and search for toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations
  2. Toggle it to true
  3. exit and restart firefox

Worked for me!

Posted in Internet, Software | 6 Comments

Kazakhstan Trials Major Attack on Internet Freedom

According to an article in ZDNet the government of Kazakstan is requiring all internet users in the capital to install government-issued certificates on their phones and computers. This will allow the government to eavesdrop on all otherwise secured https web communications by routinizing so-called man-in-the-middle attacks.

Starting today, December 6, 2020, Kazakh internet service providers (ISPs) such as Beeline, Tele2, and Kcell are redirecting Nur-Sultan-based users to web pages showing instructions on how to install the government’s certificate. Earlier this morning, Nur-Sultan residents also received SMS messages informing them of the new rules.

Kazakhstan users have told ZDNet today that they are not able to access sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix without installing the government’s root certificate.

This is the Kazakh government’s third attempt at forcing citizens to install root certificates on their devices after a first attempt in December 2015 and a second attempt in July 2019.

Both previous attempts failed after browser makers blacklisted the government’s certificates.

Posted in Cryptography, Internet, Politics: International | Comments Off on Kazakhstan Trials Major Attack on Internet Freedom

Note to Self: Enable DNS over HTTPs

How to Enable DNS Over HTTPS in Your Web Browser

Chrome instructions didn’t work for me, but Firefox did.

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

In Which I Take Google’s New “Poemportraits” for a Spin

Google has a new toy, created by Es Devlin called the PoemPortrait. Google, unpretentiously, calls it

An experiment at the boundaries of AI and human collaboration.

We are all invited to

Donate a word to become part of an ever evolving collective poem and create your own POEMPORTRAIT.

So I went to try it. It starts by asking you to “donate” a word. At that point, philistine that I am, all I could think of was Groucho Marx on the old game show ‘You Bet Your Life’, which always began with Groucho telling contestants that “Say the secret word and a duck will come down and give you 100 dollars.” (Shockingly, there seems to be no ringtone online with Grouch saying that. So here’s a video clip instead:)

Anyway, back to Google. I gave it my word (“Discourse” of course) and it announced that “An algorithm trained on over 20 million words of 19th century poetry is generating your unique POEMPORTRAIT.” I declined the offer to have my picture taken, and…voilà:

The poem was

That discourse of the word,
Spellbind the corn, sighing and streaming.

It offered me a chance to save the ‘portrait’ so I did.  But this is how it came out:

I’m reassured to see that AI’s too can be dyslexic.

Posted in Internet, Kultcha | 1 Comment

Traffic Simulator

Check out the Traffic Simulator.

Being from Miami, first thing I did is set the slider to simulate less-polite drivers under “lane-changing behavior”. Chaos ensues.

Next up, traffic cones everywhere.  Pretty soon it will look just like local roads!

Posted in Internet, Miami | 1 Comment