Over the first 138 days of this year, digital rights group AccessNow estimates there were 80 internet shutdown incidents across 21 countries. Feldstein says that all free internet advocates can do is keep innovating. And, he says, eQsat is a prime example of that.

A team of cybersecurity researchers believe they have come up with a clever new way to fight back: a trojan horse. Specifically, a satellite feed designed to look like a television station, which actually carries a payload of uncensored news and information. It’s a particularly retro solution to a very modern problem.

The program, dubbed eQsat, has been tested and is ready to be put into action during the next internet shutdown—whether it’s in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Iran, or one of the many repressive regimes that regularly block internet access.

It's true that whilst there is some form of Internet connectivity, it is not too difficult to use various technologies to circumvent the censorships. For example, even the Telegram app, Tor browser and others have such capability built in. Some of it is also disguised to look like normal http traffic. But a complete Internet blackout is a different story.

Traditional radio is still around, but fewer and fewer people actually have good short wave radio receivers, and it's also true that the more something gets used, the quicker authorities catch onto it. Something being used is also pretty useless if the population has no knowledge about it.

But the old scout motto is still true: Be Prepared! It's always better to test and prepare for something, than to wait until after the event, and then try to establish communications. As another saying goes: When all else fails, there's ham radio.

See https://www.wired.com/story/equalitie-trojan-horse-internet-censorship/

#technology #censorship #InternetBlackout

Over the first 138 days of this year, digital rights group AccessNow estimates there were 80 internet shutdown incidents across 21 countries. Feldstein says that all free internet advocates can do is keep innovating. And, he says, eQsat is a prime example of that.

A team of cybersecurity researchers believe they have come up with a clever new way to fight back: a trojan horse. Specifically, a satellite feed designed to look like a television station, which actually carries a payload of uncensored news and information. It’s a particularly retro solution to a very modern problem.

The program, dubbed eQsat, has been tested and is ready to be put into action during the next internet shutdown—whether it’s in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Iran, or one of the many repressive regimes that regularly block internet access.

It's true that whilst there is some form of Internet connectivity, it is not too difficult to use various technologies to circumvent the censorships. For example, even the Telegram app, Tor browser and others have such capability built in. Some of it is also disguised to look like normal http traffic. But a complete Internet blackout is a different story.

Traditional radio is still around, but fewer and fewer people actually have good short wave radio receivers, and it's also true that the more something gets used, the quicker authorities catch onto it. Something being used is also pretty useless if the population has no knowledge about it.

But the old scout motto is still true: Be Prepared! It's always better to test and prepare for something, than to wait until after the event, and then try to establish communications. As another saying goes: When all else fails, there's ham radio.

See https://www.wired.com/story/equalitie-trojan-horse-internet-censorship/

#technology #censorship #InternetBlackout

Over the first 138 days of this year, digital rights group AccessNow estimates there were 80 internet shutdown incidents across 21 countries. Feldstein says that all free internet advocates can do is keep innovating. And, he says, eQsat is a prime example of that.

A team of cybersecurity researchers believe they have come up with a clever new way to fight back: a trojan horse. Specifically, a satellite feed designed to look like a television station, which actually carries a payload of uncensored news and information. It’s a particularly retro solution to a very modern problem.

The program, dubbed eQsat, has been tested and is ready to be put into action during the next internet shutdown—whether it’s in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Iran, or one of the many repressive regimes that regularly block internet access.

It's true that whilst there is some form of Internet connectivity, it is not too difficult to use various technologies to circumvent the censorships. For example, even the Telegram app, Tor browser and others have such capability built in. Some of it is also disguised to look like normal http traffic. But a complete Internet blackout is a different story.

Traditional radio is still around, but fewer and fewer people actually have good short wave radio receivers, and it's also true that the more something gets used, the quicker authorities catch onto it. Something being used is also pretty useless if the population has no knowledge about it.

But the old scout motto is still true: Be Prepared! It's always better to test and prepare for something, than to wait until after the event, and then try to establish communications. As another saying goes: When all else fails, there's ham radio.

See https://www.wired.com/story/equalitie-trojan-horse-internet-censorship/

#technology #censorship #InternetBlackout

I vividly remember the DOS wars when I was using an early IBM compatible. I also remember DR-DOS being noticeably better than MS-DOS (accessing high memory etc) but I had no idea about all these tangles behind the scenes, or that DR-DOS was essentially a clone of the OS that had previously cloned CP/M.

It also seems that Gary Kildall embraced many of the principles that are enshrined in open source today, long before open source was coined as a term.

What was particularly tragic for me, in this story, was that essentially IBM had not agreed to Digital Research's request for royalties instead of an outright license purchase, and yet ultimately the deal with Microsoft was based on royalties. In other words, the original deal could have been done with DR.

And yes, Microsoft was originally just a language company without any operating system. They actually bought their first operating system (said to be a clone/copy of Gary Kildall's OS) for a steal.

In the business world, though, it comes down to who is the most ruthless and who has the money. The innovators basically get bought out. Yet as far as brilliant products go, we are totally still dependent upon those innovators to innovate.

I'm glad Hackaday featured this article about Gary Kildall, as it is a pity we did not know all this then, but the world was a very different place in the 1980s. All three parts of the video are well worth watching to understand how all the parts unfolded, and Part 3 gives insight into where DR-DOS came into the picture, what Gary did after that, and how he tragically died so young in the 1990s.

Given today's susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and the DOS wars etc raging in the early 1990s, I really had to hold myself in to stop thinking his death was something sinister, given his pending book publication, and the later fact that his kids did not want to publish the latter part of his book.

See https://hackaday.com/2023/09/25/bill-steve-and-gary-computer-pioneers/

#technology #garykildall #computerpioneers

I vividly remember the DOS wars when I was using an early IBM compatible. I also remember DR-DOS being noticeably better than MS-DOS (accessing high memory etc) but I had no idea about all these tangles behind the scenes, or that DR-DOS was essentially a clone of the OS that had previously cloned CP/M.

It also seems that Gary Kildall embraced many of the principles that are enshrined in open source today, long before open source was coined as a term.

What was particularly tragic for me, in this story, was that essentially IBM had not agreed to Digital Research's request for royalties instead of an outright license purchase, and yet ultimately the deal with Microsoft was based on royalties. In other words, the original deal could have been done with DR.

And yes, Microsoft was originally just a language company without any operating system. They actually bought their first operating system (said to be a clone/copy of Gary Kildall's OS) for a steal.

In the business world, though, it comes down to who is the most ruthless and who has the money. The innovators basically get bought out. Yet as far as brilliant products go, we are totally still dependent upon those innovators to innovate.

I'm glad Hackaday featured this article about Gary Kildall, as it is a pity we did not know all this then, but the world was a very different place in the 1980s. All three parts of the video are well worth watching to understand how all the parts unfolded, and Part 3 gives insight into where DR-DOS came into the picture, what Gary did after that, and how he tragically died so young in the 1990s.

Given today's susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and the DOS wars etc raging in the early 1990s, I really had to hold myself in to stop thinking his death was something sinister, given his pending book publication, and the later fact that his kids did not want to publish the latter part of his book.

See https://hackaday.com/2023/09/25/bill-steve-and-gary-computer-pioneers/

#technology #garykildall #computerpioneers

I vividly remember the DOS wars when I was using an early IBM compatible. I also remember DR-DOS being noticeably better than MS-DOS (accessing high memory etc) but I had no idea about all these tangles behind the scenes, or that DR-DOS was essentially a clone of the OS that had previously cloned CP/M.

It also seems that Gary Kildall embraced many of the principles that are enshrined in open source today, long before open source was coined as a term.

What was particularly tragic for me, in this story, was that essentially IBM had not agreed to Digital Research's request for royalties instead of an outright license purchase, and yet ultimately the deal with Microsoft was based on royalties. In other words, the original deal could have been done with DR.

And yes, Microsoft was originally just a language company without any operating system. They actually bought their first operating system (said to be a clone/copy of Gary Kildall's OS) for a steal.

In the business world, though, it comes down to who is the most ruthless and who has the money. The innovators basically get bought out. Yet as far as brilliant products go, we are totally still dependent upon those innovators to innovate.

I'm glad Hackaday featured this article about Gary Kildall, as it is a pity we did not know all this then, but the world was a very different place in the 1980s. All three parts of the video are well worth watching to understand how all the parts unfolded, and Part 3 gives insight into where DR-DOS came into the picture, what Gary did after that, and how he tragically died so young in the 1990s.

Given today's susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and the DOS wars etc raging in the early 1990s, I really had to hold myself in to stop thinking his death was something sinister, given his pending book publication, and the later fact that his kids did not want to publish the latter part of his book.

See https://hackaday.com/2023/09/25/bill-steve-and-gary-computer-pioneers/

#technology #garykildall #computerpioneers

I had not tried Omnisearch, but apart from that and Advanced Tables, the suggested ones are not really "my best ones". But the linked article does again highlight one of Obsidian's most powerful features - it's community plugins. Many note takers are good Markdown editors, but few come close to rivalling Obsidian's plugin power, largely created by the community themselves.

Even though free Obsidian is not open-source, it gained a lot of traction and users have created so many valuable plugins. I also like that it leaves all my Markdown formatted files in place where they are. One excellent open-source notes editor I tried, insisted on inserting an odd character at the start of every new line as it was intended an outliner, not a notes editor. Thing is, I like to keep my notes as standard as possible so that I can switch to another note taker in future.

The ones I find really useful are:

• Advanced Tables
• cMenu
• Code block from selection
• Copy Image and URL context menu
• Dynamic Table of Contents
• Excel to Markdown Table
• Highglightr
• Kanban
• Kindle Highlights
• Local Images
• Markdown Formatting Assistant
• Obsidian Enhancing Export
• Omnisearch
• Ozan's Image Editor Plugin
• Related Notes Finder
• Tag & Word Cloud
• Tag Wrangler
• Text Format
• txt as md (edits existing .txt files)
• Underline
• Vault Statistics

But we all have different requirements (like some wanting to play Zoom inside Obsidian, use AI, publish to Nostr, etc), so it is well worth browsing the community plugins and seeing what is of interest to you. There are around 1,180 plugins right now.

See https://www.alphr.com/best-obsidian-plugins/

If you've not seen Obsidian, I did quite a long video about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_4LR76g-jU

#technology #markdown #notes #productivity

I had not tried Omnisearch, but apart from that and Advanced Tables, the suggested ones are not really "my best ones". But the linked article does again highlight one of Obsidian's most powerful features - it's community plugins. Many note takers are good Markdown editors, but few come close to rivalling Obsidian's plugin power, largely created by the community themselves.

Even though free Obsidian is not open-source, it gained a lot of traction and users have created so many valuable plugins. I also like that it leaves all my Markdown formatted files in place where they are. One excellent open-source notes editor I tried, insisted on inserting an odd character at the start of every new line as it was intended an outliner, not a notes editor. Thing is, I like to keep my notes as standard as possible so that I can switch to another note taker in future.

The ones I find really useful are:

• Advanced Tables
• cMenu
• Code block from selection
• Copy Image and URL context menu
• Dynamic Table of Contents
• Excel to Markdown Table
• Highglightr
• Kanban
• Kindle Highlights
• Local Images
• Markdown Formatting Assistant
• Obsidian Enhancing Export
• Omnisearch
• Ozan's Image Editor Plugin
• Related Notes Finder
• Tag & Word Cloud
• Tag Wrangler
• Text Format
• txt as md (edits existing .txt files)
• Underline
• Vault Statistics

But we all have different requirements (like some wanting to play Zoom inside Obsidian, use AI, publish to Nostr, etc), so it is well worth browsing the community plugins and seeing what is of interest to you. There are around 1,180 plugins right now.

See https://www.alphr.com/best-obsidian-plugins/

If you've not seen Obsidian, I did quite a long video about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_4LR76g-jU

#technology #markdown #notes #productivity

I had not tried Omnisearch, but apart from that and Advanced Tables, the suggested ones are not really "my best ones". But the linked article does again highlight one of Obsidian's most powerful features - it's community plugins. Many note takers are good Markdown editors, but few come close to rivalling Obsidian's plugin power, largely created by the community themselves.

Even though free Obsidian is not open-source, it gained a lot of traction and users have created so many valuable plugins. I also like that it leaves all my Markdown formatted files in place where they are. One excellent open-source notes editor I tried, insisted on inserting an odd character at the start of every new line as it was intended an outliner, not a notes editor. Thing is, I like to keep my notes as standard as possible so that I can switch to another note taker in future.

The ones I find really useful are:

• Advanced Tables
• cMenu
• Code block from selection
• Copy Image and URL context menu
• Dynamic Table of Contents
• Excel to Markdown Table
• Highglightr
• Kanban
• Kindle Highlights
• Local Images
• Markdown Formatting Assistant
• Obsidian Enhancing Export
• Omnisearch
• Ozan's Image Editor Plugin
• Related Notes Finder
• Tag & Word Cloud
• Tag Wrangler
• Text Format
• txt as md (edits existing .txt files)
• Underline
• Vault Statistics

But we all have different requirements (like some wanting to play Zoom inside Obsidian, use AI, publish to Nostr, etc), so it is well worth browsing the community plugins and seeing what is of interest to you. There are around 1,180 plugins right now.

See https://www.alphr.com/best-obsidian-plugins/

If you've not seen Obsidian, I did quite a long video about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_4LR76g-jU

#technology #markdown #notes #productivity