inportb

This morning I woke up to an inbox full of suggestions to “like” a certain page on Facebook. Curious, I decided to have a look. It turned out to be a service promising to show you who views your profile (which, of course, is absolutely absurd), and all you had to do was press ctrl+c, alt+d, ctrl+v, and enter. Apparently, a lot of people did this and found themselves wondering how their browsers got hijacked.

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Popularity: 10%

I recently bought a small virtual server (OpenVZ, 128mb memory, 256mb burstable) for web hosting. I knew that it would be a challenge to work with limited memory, especially since OpenVZ doesn’t swap like Xen. For starters, I went with a 32-bit minimal Debian setup, because 64-bit pointers use twice as much memory as 32-bit pointers. Apache was also out of the picture, but Lighttpd easily filled the role. MySQL was also heavily tweaked to limit resource usage. All in all, I had a happy little system that used 60mb-100mb of memory.

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Popularity: 18%

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but I think it’s time for another cleanup! Recently, I almost wiped the wrong database when switching between blog and bleeding-edge code. Yes, I know I was silly, and I believe the time has come to separate blogging from experimentation.

The blog will continue to be accessible at this address, while the experiments are now to be conducted at Area 51. As projects mature, they may be migrated here or simply redirected, resources permitting. The other homepage is still quite young and boring, but there will be all sorts of goodness.

Thanks for your continued readership!

Popularity: 4%

Almost every conversation on Omegle contains the ubiquitous “ASL” (age/sex/location) query. You might be asked if you were American (“STAR”) or if you live near the city of St Albans (“STA?”). More recently, a band of Twitter users have set out to find each other on the Web service for strangers. An instant messaging service that pairs random strangers anonymously, Omegle attracts a variety of users.

The majority of users behave as expected. Anonymity leads to abusive language and general silliness online. Advertisers have taken advantage of the unfiltered and unmoderated service using robotic and human zombies alike. Still others engage in cybersex. In a world where identity does not matter, sophomoric behavior is the norm and civility has no bearing.

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Popularity: 8%

I now have a shiny new cover for my Kindle 2 (okay, it’s matte, but you get the idea). With a gutted notebook, a bit of felt, and some time, I stitched together a lightweight carrying case. It’s not going to protect the Kindle against a fall, but it’d sure keep it clean. The only drawback is that it covers the speakers, but I’m happy as long as the 3.5mm audio jack is available. As a bonus, the transparent cover shows what’s on the screen even when closed.

The felt back keeps the device strapped to the cover.

Popularity: 6%

It’s today! According to SparkFun,

You can blame it on Chris Anderson’s book Free. After reading his book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that’s ‘free’. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs, available code, etc.), but we don’t have free physical widgets. Now combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter, Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There’s always a catch. So up front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it’s open season.

• $100 max per household
• You pay shipping
• Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
• Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
• Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
• Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

So… go grab some parts?

Popularity: 4%

Thanks to my awesome uncle, I now own a Kindle 2. I have updated the firmware and loaded up a couple of PDF’s, and am browsing Amazon’s library of free and public domain content. And ultimatebuster has mastered the art of converting any website’s content to PDF.

full of e-ink win

Popularity: 4%

Totally unrelated photo of the moment, just because. May the warmth of the flame carry us through the long winter nights of finals preparation?

It is morning and I have two final exams later today back to back… and I’m slightly ill. As a result, I have been taking a lot of time off to think about random things. Today will be a disaster, but I’ll survive. I know that whenever I think of my wonderful friends. Because of you, I feel that I am not alone in the world. Because of you, I feel that I am special. Because of you, I have an audience for my silly exploits. Because of you, I can pour my mind out onto the internets. If you’re reading this, I thank you very much for sharing in my thoughts.

Sometimes I feel that I have not spent as much time with you as I could have. While I am not studying, I am your regular hacker and script monkey, instead of being useful. I might even have offended you at times when I am not feeling my best. And during the past few days I have not been keeping up at all with what’s going on around me. It is my ultimate goal to be useful to society… but how could I, if I could not even help my closest friends? As I partake of this wild life’s journey, there are those that I would not, could not forget. I hope you can forgive my selfishness.

It may sound strange, but I’m going to say this anyway: I love you and I treasure your friendship. Knowing you has made my life meaningful in so many ways, and I have grown so much because of you. I am proud to know you all.

Bark with me if you’re my dawg?

Popularity: 3%

Since the introduction of Omegle Group Chat, a netizen by the name of OmLeif (presumably Leif K-Brooks of Omegle) joined my IRC channel and expressed his dissatisfaction with both the spam bots and my solution. Although he declined to discuss his plans for improving Omegle, he did promise to work on the problems. We knew that change was afoot.

When I checked my chat bot this morning, I discovered that it was being subjected to reCAPTCHA challenges. This welcome change has drastically cut down the amount of spam seen on Omegle. While it appeared that Group Chat was no longer necessary (its original purpose was to create an oasis amidst the spam) or viable, those in my IRC channel asked for more. Knowing that Group Chat still had a place, I set out to rewrite the entire framework.

The fundamental changes are:

• the bot no longer needs to maintain tens of simultaneous connections, since the spam rate is much lower
• IRC support sits at the core of the system instead of having been added on as an afterthought
• should the bot encounter a reCAPTCHA challenge, users present in the channel will be able to solve the challenge via the reCAPTCHA API

To see Group Chat in action, feel free to join #inportb on freenode. Or if you want, you might just luck out on Omegle… Have fun out there!

Popularity: 14%

Omegle is a website used to communicate with random, anonymous people across the Internet. Thousands of users troll the website every day, following its slogan to “talk to strangers.” Because of the lack of moderation, there has also been a recent proliferation of spam bots and human spamvertisers, and sometimes it takes 20 wasted connections before one could have a normal conversation. Now, with the Omegle Group Chat extension, users can finally talk to multiple strangers simultaneously while avoiding spam! If you have been using Omegle lately, you might have come across this introductory message:

You have been randomly selected to join an exclusive Omegle group chat…

The fundamental rules are the same: there is no need to reveal your identity and you may leave at any time. I hope Group Chat has been an enjoyable experience for you. Since you’re here, I might as well answer some common questions:

• Group Chat is neither part of nor endorsed by Omegle
• Yes, this is a real chat room on Omegle
• Up to around 20 people are in the chat room at once
• The chat room is powered by a proxy bot written in Python
• The script uses less than 4MB of memory and less than 40MHz of processor time
• The chat lags purely because of Omegle’s AJAX interface
• Group Chat is bridged with IRC! Join #inportb on freenode for less lag

Due to the recent proliferation of spam, I have implemented a number of spam filters, both automatic and manual, designed to keep the chat clear of junk. Here’s a sampling of the cruft caught by the filters:

** STAT:        spambots/s      22.2272497218
13317 :: bot filter – hi, 18/f/new york, wanna see my nüde video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
85117 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/florida, wanna see my naked video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
67937 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
54294 :: bot filter – hi, 20/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n video? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE
83998 :: bot filter – hi, 19/f/new york, wanna see my pr0n vid? GO HERE: hxxp://……/8hMmzE

Here’s some other crud that I would not dare post on any blog… and on average, the spam rate is approximately 80%. Enjoy spam-free Group Chat!

Update: there has been more work on Group Chat.

Popularity: 22%