1. mkup Dec 2, 2025 parent

   Shameless plug: I've developed and maintain a couple of tools to control Windows 10/11 updates, telemetry and other potentially unwanted network traffic: FlashBoot and Emergency Boot Kit. Using these tools you can make Windows 10/11 completely silent online if you want to (akin to Windows 7 or Windows XP).

   https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/

   https://www.prime-expert.com/embootkit/

   You are welcome. One-time purchase, lifetime updates. Not a subscription.

2. mkup Nov 30, 2025 parent

   Microsoft has dropped 16-bit application support via builtin emulator (NTVDM) from 64-bit builds of Windows, whether it happens to be Windows 10 or earlier version of Windows, depends on user (in my case, it was Windows Vista). However, you can still run 16-bit apps on 64-bit builds of Windows via third party emulators, such as DOSBox and NTVDMx64.
3. mkup Nov 26, 2025 parent

   I can reset my advertisement profile by creating a new account on ChatGPT, for Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) this is not the case.
4. 1 point Sep 25, 2025

   Malicious-Looking URL Creation Service

   0 comments mkup schneier.com
5. mkup Aug 26, 2025 parent

   I maintain a software to aid in installation of Windows 7 to new PCs (FlashBoot Pro): https://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/ . Recently there was a reduction in sales. You are welcome.
6. mkup May 24, 2025 parent

   Could you please provide more info on this topic, e.g. a link? I intended to buy EV code signing certificate as a sole proprietor to fix long-standing problem with my software when Windows Defender pops up every time I release a new version. Is EV code signing certificate no longer a viable solution to this problem? Is there no longer a difference between EV and non-EV code signing certificate?
7. mkup May 7, 2024 parent

   This remind me of when everybody and his dog was shoehorning blockchain into everything. Blockchain-based pet platforms, pet owners earning tokens for participating in community, pet care services fueled by smart contracts, and the like.
8. mkup Apr 27, 2024 parent

   NASM has an option (-Ox) to specify how many passes it should take trying to optimize near jumps for short jumps. I usually specify -O9.
9. mkup Apr 13, 2024 parent

   I still want sshd updated by my OS package manager. Statically linked spiped, which is out of scope of my OS package manager, is just a second line of defense.
10. mkup Apr 13, 2024 parent

    My idea of getting one step ahead of similar backdoors is to wrap sshd traffic into a spiped tunnel. Spiped is compiled from source and linked statically (last stable version from 2021).
11. mkup Apr 10, 2024 parent

    There's no Win 9x phase in Win XP setup, of course. :) There's optional DOS phase, then text-mode phase (running NT kernel under the hood, but UI is in VGA text mode), and then finally GUI phase of the setup.
12. mkup Mar 30, 2024 parent

    Problem 5 has a simpler geometric solution, it's enough to plot circle of radius sqrt(2) on the Oab plane and a few lines b=-a, b=-a+1, b=-a+2, b=-a-1, b=-a-2 to observe the intersections. The rest of the lines are too far from this circle to intersect with it.
13. mkup Mar 6, 2024 parent

    Did Mozilla really came from Godzilla? I've always thought it was short form of 'Mosaic killa' (Mosaic killer). Original code of NSCA Mosaic was licensed by Microsoft Corp from Spyglass, Inc. (and so become a part of first version of Internet Explorer); while team which had written this code (Marc Andreessen et al) got venture funding from James Clark et al in 1994 to form Netscape Communications Corp and basically rewrite the browser from scratch. I.e. initial goal of that team was to kill NSCA Mosaic, their previous creation, hence the name.
14. mkup Mar 3, 2024 parent

    Does GDI/non-GDI distinction really matter if the only job for GDI is to blit already rendered framebuffer after Skia library (up-to-date part of browser) to the hardware? I.e. when GDI is actually not exposed to the fonts and vector graphics downloaded from the web, just pixels? To me it seems highly unlikely that GDI can be exploited via colors of pixels.
15. mkup Mar 3, 2024 parent

    So today we have Google accounts suspended by corporate bots (on the grounds mostly based on output of /dev/urandom), and I wonder (looking at the sales pitch of these ideas in 1997): are we NUI yet? And if yes, can we have our GUI back please?

    Frankly, idea of mainframe is much older, and never really appealed to me. I prefer a kind PCs where P is for 'personal'.

16. mkup Mar 3, 2024 parent

    An interesting compilation of buzzwords of that time. Ultimately, almost none of them stuck to the walls. I wonder if today's AI hype will look the same in 27 years?
17. mkup Dec 14, 2023 parent

    Stop claiming that I'm spreading FUD and show me at least one Linux app which was compiled to the binary code in 1996 and exactly that binary code still runs under modern Linux desktop environment and has similar visual style to the rest of builtin apps.

    Got no counterexamples? Then it's not FUD at all, rather a pure truth.

18. mkup Dec 10, 2023 parent

    I've switched away from FastSpring in 2021, when they outsourced their payouts to Hyperwallet (for me this change meant double currency exchange USD -> EUR -> USD with associated double exchange fees). It looks like FastSpring rolled further downhill since then. This reminds me of Plimus/Bluesnap collapse: when this kind of company runs of cash, its tends to establish various funny fees before finally flipping up.
19. mkup Dec 10, 2023 parent

    Yes, it would allow to create pipes between 16-bit NTVDM processes and native 64-bit processes.
20. mkup Dec 10, 2023 parent

    Much of the Windows compatibility is "just" stable API for Windows controls, GUI event handling loops, 3D graphics and sound (DirectX). Linux has stable API for files and sockets (POSIX), but that's all.
21. mkup Oct 25, 2023 parent

    Just nitpicking: Latin script from Roman times lacked W and U, among other things.
22. mkup Oct 21, 2023 parent

    There's one thing I can't understand in this story: if that's lawful interception, why Hetzner and Linode bothered to set up MitM interception with different LE certificate and key, rather than extract the TLS private key directly from the RAM and/or storage device of the VPS? Even if this is a physically dedicated server, they can extract the private key from the RAM by dumping the RAM contents after unscheduled reboot. Extraction of the private key isn't visible in CT logs, much more stealthier, practically undetectable.
23. mkup Oct 18, 2023 parent

    The difference between modern days and days of DOS isn't in C/C++ compiler, it's in virtual memory and address space isolation and privilege isolation. So it's not a job of a C/C++ compiler to enforce protection from writing to "special" addresses, because interrupt table updates (and memory-mapped hardware I/O in general) still must happen somewhere (i.e. in kernel, hypervisor, drivers etc) and that code is still written in C/C++, same as in the DOS era.
24. mkup Sep 24, 2023 parent

    I'm on Migadu for 1.5 years (few domains, about a half-dozen mailboxes). I've chosen them for the lowest price. No complaints so far.
25. mkup Sep 18, 2023 parent

    Run Intel MEInfo utility, check if it reports "Alt Disable Mode" or anything like that. Article for some context: https://web.archive.org/web/20170828150536/http://blog.ptsec...
26. mkup Jun 17, 2023 parent

    Actually any RAID is beta in btrfs, but configurations with one storage device (e.g. firmware of Turris Omnia) do quite well on prod.
27. mkup Jun 12, 2023 parent

    I still use Windows 7 + Firefox + third-party personal firewall (to control network activity on per-process level). Despite FUD from Microsoft trolls, I have not had any malware in the last 10 years.

    If the last two versions of their OS are crap, then it makes sense to consider previous versions IMO.

28. mkup Jun 7, 2023 parent

    I prefer Linux to Windows 10/11 because Windows has telemetry and uncontrolled updates. Windows 7 is fine, though.
29. mkup Jun 6, 2023 parent

    It's probably good for running TOTP authentificator or some kind of crypto wallet software, especially considering the lack of internet connectivity on this device, which makes it more secure for this purpose (though it may output QR codes on the screen, so actually it's kind of unidirectional data diode, rather than fully isolated device). I would install OpenBSD on such computer. Recent supply chain attacks on the dedicated crypto wallet hardware [1] indicate that we must rely on open source software if we strive to avoid low-entropy backdoors in the random number generator in such systems. The probability of a successful supply chain attack on such a gadget, given the number of user-controlled variables, is close to zero.

    [1] https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/fake-trezor-hardware-crypto-w...

30. mkup May 23, 2023 parent

    customers will pay with their data

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