Jeremy Cherfas

2020-02-16

1 min read

Are unsecured cafe wi-fi networks deliberately hostile to VPNs?
I’m in Bill’s cafe in Cambridge, which offers ‘free’ Wi-Fi — which of course I don’t trust. So I switch on my VPN to find that, mysteriously, it can’t connect to its server. And I’m wondering if this is just some kind of glitch, or a policy by the firm that provides the Wi-Fi. After all, they don’t want clients sending communications that are encrypted and therefore inscrutable for advertising and tracking purposes. In this stuff, only the paranoid survive.

I had the same experience as John Naughton yesterday and Friday, signed in to the wifi in a bed and breakfast. No matter what, my VPN (Mullvad) would not connect. Rather than go unsecured though, I signed out of the wifi, but it definitely is strange and I think I am seeing something similar more and more often.

Currently reading: The Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré, ISBN: 9780340552056

#Fiction

Finished reading: The Final Solution by Michael Chabon, ISBN: 9780060777104

#Fiction

My DropBox bill is going up, and while I get value from it, I wonder whether there might be alternatives. I don't think I want to be responsible for hosting something like NextCloud, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Could anyone who has done so offer an honest appraisal. Thanks.

Rye (or spelt) ???

1 min read

Thanks to an unfollowable stream on Twitter, I came upon the website of Joshua Nudell, an historian with an interest in ancient Greek breads. A post of his, translating from Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae, refers in passing to "the loaf from rye (or spelt)". That's strange. So I left a comment on the post, as follows:

I don't know Ancient Greek, but I do know some ancient and modern cereals, so I am hoping you can elaborate on this. Does the list mean two different loaves, one of rye and one of spelt? Or does it mean that rye is sometimes known as spelt, which would be a very interesting reading indeed.

Thanks.

This could be interesting.

Replied to a post on boffosocko.com :

How did I find the link? https://stream.jeremycherfas.net/2020/just-discovered-i-have-a-digital-note

Replied to a post on boffosocko.com :

I read both of the pieces Chris Aldrich linked to, and my main response was to feel underwhelmed. Maybe that's because I don't have the baggage of caring one whit about George Washington's teeth. And of the other discussion, on "open" I am too ignorant to form an opinion.

Replied to a post on modernretrome.com :

Yay, and welcome to WithKnown. Glad to see you got it working. One comment, I think that the twitter logo might be missing from the syndicated link for this post.

Just discovered I have a digital note called today that has entries that go back to 2015-10-10. How did that happen?

So I added "Process this note to the top of it".

Replied to a post on www.kickscondor.com :

Thanks to Kicks Condor I too have discovered Legible News, which is a great way to scan the previous day's events. But seriously, why did it need someone else to build the RSS feed? I imagine that creating the daily Legible News is fully automated anyway. How hard would it have been to add the microformats to make it an h-feed?