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Recent Posts

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26
General Software Discussion / Re: Python 3 - advice required on installing appropriate system/interpreter.
« Last post by Mark0 on April 06, 2017, 12:58 PM »
The 3.0 version is quite old (years). The current one is 3.6.x:
https://www.python.o.../release/python-361/

As for 32 or 64 bit, it doesn't do much difference, except when dealing with some additional/external modules, but even those at this time are usually available in both versions. Basically you can't go very wrong either.

I saw often recommended "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist". You can find online both PDF and online/interactive version, like this one:
http://interactivepy...thinkcspy/index.html

I liked a lot this Google Python Class by Nick Parlante, in 6 parts:



IMHO it's very well conducted and engaging, and can bring one up to speed and coding something interesting in Python very fast. The only con is that it's based on Python 2.x. But the difference in the topic explored aren't that great (mostly just put parenthesis after print, which is a function in Py3 and a statement in Py2).

27
Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"
« Last post by Mark0 on April 06, 2017, 07:29 AM »
 ;D

28
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on April 05, 2017, 07:22 AM »
but this really does sound like something everyone SHOULD be using
-solaris65 (April 05, 2017, 06:51 AM)

Well, I don't think we are quite there at the moment! :)
Let's say that, aside from experimenting, it could surely be used as additional back up/security measure.

Being a suite of command line tools it's not super user friendly, but I hope to add additional documentation and examples soon.


29
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on April 05, 2017, 05:39 AM »
You could consider an SBX archive like a ZIP one, with only 1 file inside, and stored / non-compressed.
So yes, the file will need to be decoded / extracted with SBXDec to get the original file.
But, like there are software that can access files inside a ZIP archive without extracting it (like music players that directly can play MP3s stored inside a compressed archive), nothing prohibits to do the same with SBX archives.
It would be actually very easy, since the format is very simple, and the original file isn't changed in any way, just divided in blocks. As such even random access is possible without any issues.
30
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on April 05, 2017, 05:03 AM »
 ;D :D
31
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on April 04, 2017, 08:43 AM »
Updated to v1.0.0.
Recovery tests have been done in various configurations:

Tests

Seqbox recoverability have been practically tested with a number of File Systems. The procedure involved using a Virtual Machine to format a small (about 100MB) disk image with a certain FS, filling it with a number of small files, then deleting some randomly to free enough space to copy a serie of SBX files. This way every SBX file results fragmented in a lot of smaller pieces. Then the image was quick-formatted, wipefs-ed and the VM shutdown.
After that, from the host OS, recovery of the SBX files was attempted using SBXScan & SBXReco on the disk image. 

  • Working: BeFS, BTRFS, EXT2/3/4, FATnn/VFAT/exFAT, AFFS, HFS+, JFS, MINIX FS, NTFS, ProDOS, ReiserFS, XFS, ZFS.
  • Not working: OFS (due to 488 bytes blocks)

Being written in Python 3, SeqBox tools are naturally multi-platform and have been tested successfully on various versions of Windows, on some Linux distros either on x86 or ARM, and on Android (via QPython). No test was done on OS X but it should works there as well (feedback welcome).

If someone can try it on a Mac (maybe with the new APFS), it will be much appreciated.  :Thmbsup:
32
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on March 14, 2017, 08:44 PM »
I have updated the readme adding a sort of guide tour / demo to illustrate how the tools can be used:

https://github.com/M...lob/master/readme.md



Pretty nightmarish! Now on to SBXScan to search for pieces of SBX files around, and SBXReco to get a report of the collected data:



How is that for a fragmented floppy image?  ;D
33
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / SeqBox - A file container that can be restored after total loss of FS structures
« Last post by Mark0 on March 13, 2017, 08:06 AM »
https://github.com/MarcoPon/SeqBox

A SeqBox container have a blocksize sub/equal to that of a sector, so can survive any level of fragmentation. Each block have a minimal header that include a unique file identifier, block sequence number, checksum, version. Additional, non critical info/metadata are contained in block 0 (like name, file size, crypto-hash, other attributes, etc.).

If disaster strikes, recovery can be performed simply scanning a volume/image, reading sector sized slices and checking blocks signatures and then CRCs to detect valid SBX blocks. Then the blocks can be grouped by UIDs, sorted by sequence number and reassembled to form the original SeqBox containers.


Tools are in Python 3.x, so they should work just about anywhere. I tried on a server with Linux, Win 10 PC, Raspberry Pi, Android.
34
Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?
« Last post by Mark0 on March 06, 2017, 10:41 AM »
Anyone happy with the new ATH?
-Renegade (March 05, 2017, 11:43 PM)

Surely not "Prof. Bitcorn"! :D

35
Living Room / 21.co - Replace your public email with an inbox that pays you
« Last post by Mark0 on February 10, 2017, 01:21 PM »
Set up a 21 profile to receive paid messages from people outside your network. Keep the money, or donate it to charities like Black Girls Code.
It's like LinkedIn InMail, except you get paid!
21.co

An interesting experiment...
I found about it when, just overnight, I started to see tweets by various notable (and non) people that activated an account. I have seen asking prices from 1$ to over 100$.

Will it gain some traction or be just a passing fad?
Don't know, but the idea to reach some otherwise unreachable person may have some appeal. Surely it works as an anti-spam! :)
36
Living Room / Re: The Keybase Filesystem
« Last post by Mark0 on February 09, 2017, 09:48 AM »
Interesting new development:

Introducing Keybase Chat
It's bigger than your address book

At Keybase we collectively use and love WhatsApp, Signal, Slack, and iMessage, to name a few. However, in all those apps: recipients are looked up by phone number or email.
That works ok with friends and coworkers.
But it sucks with people you know on the Internet. First off, they have to give you their phone number in a preliminary back and forth. That takes time and prevents you from sending your message until you hear back.
Then, to make sure you're really secure, you're supposed to compare special codes by meeting in person. That's impossible in most cases.
Keybase is different. For example, in Keybase chat, I can simply use my Hacker News name, malgorithms, as my secure address; no phone number or email needed. My Twitter username would work, too. Or even my Reddit username.

37
General Software Discussion / Gamasutra - From PS4 to 1.44 MB floppy: Porting Retro City Rampage to MS-DOS
« Last post by Mark0 on February 03, 2017, 08:45 AM »
Interesting presentation, and memories!  ;D

At GDC 2016, Provinciano elaborated on exactly how he did it, and in the process shed light on how he reduced memory usage down to 4MB, increased performance to run on a 486 PC, reduced disk space to fit on a single 1.44MB floppy, and finally ported the game to MS-DOS itself.

http://www.gamasutra...Rampage_to_MSDOS.php

The other video/talks referenced in the video are also interesting.
38
General Software Discussion / Re: Hacker Noon - Why I’m writing a Windows 3 Emulator
« Last post by Mark0 on November 14, 2016, 08:24 AM »
Yes, sorry.
I started posted thinking that the description of the process was the most interesting thing. Then realized that the emulator was indeed already in an advanced phase and so posted the video too, but totally forgot about the official website.  :D
39
General Software Discussion / Hacker Noon - Why I’m writing a Windows 3 Emulator
« Last post by Mark0 on November 13, 2016, 07:09 PM »
Saw this series of articles mentioned on OSNews. Fascinating read indeed.

Why I’m writing a Windows 3 Emulator
I’ve decided to write a 16-bit Windows emulator. It’s a bit of crazy idea, but hear me out…

new.png

  • It’s like DosBox in that it’s emulating the CPU — but unlike DosBox in that it’s not emulating other low level hardware.
  • It’s like Wine in that it’s emulating the Windows API — but unlike Wine in that the CPU is emulated instead of running on a physical processor (remember Wine stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”).
  • It’s not like VirtualBox or VMWare or other virtualization software as it’s not emulating or virtualizing low level hardware.


40
Living Room / Re: External 5.25 floppy usb drive or another way?
« Last post by Mark0 on September 22, 2016, 04:53 AM »
Impressive!
Maybe you could make up a web page for it, with executables, documentation, etc.

BTW, Jimmy Maher has written a lot about Interactive Fiction: it may bring back some memories! :)
http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/
41
General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting compression ratio difference between file compression tools.
« Last post by Mark0 on August 18, 2016, 07:19 AM »
A great saving of space from newer archivers come from the so called "solid" mode: basically each file is processed after another as if it was a single  big stream, so that it's possible to exploit similarities among different files.
Probably the first widely used solid compressor in the DOS/Windows world was RAR. The same results can be obtained creating first a non compressed archive of the files, and the compressing the result (like the usual tar+gzip). Of course the compressor need to support windows of adequate size.

In the case of many PDFs with the same document in different languages, that means that a solid archiver can probably identify the pictures as the same blobs of data, so that they will be stored only one time.

https://en.wikipedia...ki/Solid_compression
42
General Software Discussion / Re: Interesting compression ratio difference between file compression tools.
« Last post by Mark0 on August 17, 2016, 07:58 PM »
Lots of compressors compared here: http://www.squeezechart.com/
43
Living Room / Re: Share your photos! Travel shots, photoblogs, etc.
« Last post by Mark0 on August 17, 2016, 07:48 PM »
Colorful Hotel side in Pozza di Fassa, Dolomiti, Italy.

Park Hotel Aurora by Marco Pontello, on Flickr
44
Living Room / Re: External 5.25 floppy usb drive or another way?
« Last post by Mark0 on August 17, 2016, 03:52 PM »
Perfect!  :Thmbsup:
45
Living Room / Re: External 5.25 floppy usb drive or another way?
« Last post by Mark0 on August 17, 2016, 12:40 PM »
If no DC users have a suitable drive, I remember reading about these guys: http://www.retrofloppy.com/
Probably there are many other similar companies.
46
General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Tips
« Last post by Mark0 on July 30, 2016, 08:43 AM »
This happened to me with an old multifunction printer, a Canon Pixma MP750 (that after about 10 years still works perfectly).

After upgrading to Windows 10, the printer worked but the scanner wasn't usable anymore, with the usual yellow alert sign on device manager. Canon website clearly state the for that and other older models there's no Win 10 support, but the Win 7/8 drivers should/could works, with some limitations/problems not better specified.
Searching online was of no help, due to the sheer magnitude of results pointing to fake/spam sites with just walls of words about drivers/printers/scanners/problems - you know them.

Turned out that the old Win 7 drivers were fine, just not signed, so Win 10 refused to use them.
It's just a matter of temporarily disabling the drivers signing verification, and reapplying the old drivers.
The same thing can probably happens with some other piece of hardware.
47
Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?
« Last post by Mark0 on June 13, 2016, 06:21 PM »
Persistence is rewarded!  ;D :Thmbsup:
48
Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]
« Last post by Mark0 on June 09, 2016, 05:12 AM »


 ;D
49
Living Room / Re: The Keybase Filesystem
« Last post by Mark0 on May 02, 2016, 01:41 PM »
How did you get an account? Did you install the Keybase filesystem and request access, or did you manage to get an invite from someone?
-Deozaan (May 02, 2016, 01:07 PM)

I got a Keybase invite. Actually I haven't even tried the FS, as I was more interested in the keys discovery part, the multiple identities proofs based model in alternative to PGP Web of Trust, and the saltpack crypto.
50
Living Room / Re: The Keybase Filesystem
« Last post by Mark0 on May 02, 2016, 06:01 AM »
OK, gave out the invites I had, for the moment. 
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