There’s an interesting thread explaining some of the internal politics that were underneath the deadly Tienanmen Square protests 30 years ago in Beijing.
It’s worth a read, if only to better place what happened in the Chinese context.
I’m Inactive on Mastodon
I’m not much for social media, but on the off chance you want to connect with me, I do have a fairly inactive Mastodon account.
I may not reply immediately, but I do check in from time to time.
Using ssh-agent with Windows Subsystem for Linux
This is fairly basic, but you never know what might be useful to somebody!
Due to the fact that WSL doesn’t bootstrap itself with a normal init/systemd process it can be a bit frustrating to work with SSH keys.
Thankfully the ssh-agent command is designed to set up an environment for key management without much hassle. The trivial method of doing this is to insert the following command into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile script:
# start ssh-agent
eval `ssh-agent`This will initialize a socket to manage your keys and you can then use the ssh-add command as you would on a normal Linux system.
For completeness, stick the following in your ~/.bash_logout script:
# unset ssh-agent
ssh-agent -kThis will remove the socket and unset the environment so that your keys don’t remain loaded after you close your WSL session using exit or CTRL-D.
Linux
Halbstark
Don’t use ETS
The EFF has just published an article about why nobody should be using ETS. This is particularly timely given the recent finalization of TLS 1.3.
NPR Throughline – The Forgotten War
I just listened to the recent NPR Throughline podcast called The Forgotten War (S1:E03).
It’s an excellent summary of North Korea’s geopolitical history and how it relates to today’s news. I don’t think there’s anything that I would call new (if you’re interested in the topic), but it’s an excellent introduction that presents a reasonably serious overview of the topic without being heavy handed or simply propaganda.
I’m going to listen to the other podcasts this week, but so far I’m impressed at their choices of topics and this first episode (for me, third episode overall).
Using Certbot with Route 53 in Manual Mode
I’ve just written a quick and dirty guide on how to use Certbot on Debian 9 with Route 53. This is useful if you are trying to manage wildcard certificates and don’t want to, or can’t, screw around with managing the current state of the Route 53 plugin on Debian 9.
Without further ado: quay:wiki – Let’s Encrypt Usage Notes
ImageGlass Image Viewer
I just finished upgrading my old PC, Hrothgar. I’ve been using IrfanView since my university days as an image viewer, and while it’s still more than adequate, I decided that I’d use this as an opportunity to see if there’s anything else out there that I like.
Enter ImageGlass. I’ve only been using it for a day or so, but thus far there’s a lot to like and nothing that I don’t like. I’m not 100% certain if I’ll completely replace IrfanView, but I’m definitely leaning in that direction. I particularly like the customization options and the UI is clean and simple and it only uses about 12MB of memory on Windows 10.
Check it out if on the lookout for a simple, fast image viewer on Windows.
I Love Brian May
Of course he doesn’t know it, but there’s nothing I’m aware of that this man has done that I don’t admire. Not only does he do things like this, or this but he’s also a published research astronomer.
If I had known this was a possible career path as a child, I have a feeling I might be doing something else these days!