Jae's Blog

In this year 2025, the main GitHub domain still doesn’t serve over IPv6.

Some subdomains do have IPv6 though, just… not what you would expect.

For instance, avatars.githubusercontent.com:

; <<>> DiG 9.18.28-1~deb12u2-Debian <<>> AAAA avatars.githubusercontent.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18015
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;avatars.githubusercontent.com. IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
avatars.githubusercontent.com. 159 IN   AAAA    2606:50c0:8002::154
avatars.githubusercontent.com. 159 IN   AAAA    2606:50c0:8001::154
avatars.githubusercontent.com. 159 IN   AAAA    2606:50c0:8003::154
avatars.githubusercontent.com. 159 IN   AAAA    2606:50c0:8000::154

;; Query time: 32 msec
;; SERVER: 2a09::#53(2a09::) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Wed Jan 08 04:55:56 UTC 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 170Code language: CSS (css)

Whereas none of the other domains accessed when accessing github.com (named github.com, github.githubassets.com and alive.github.com) has IPv6.

The package registry ghcr.io as well doesn’t support IPv6:

; <<>> DiG 9.18.28-1~deb12u2-Debian <<>> AAAA ghcr.io
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 967
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
; EDE: 29: (Result from negative cache)
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ghcr.io.                       IN      AAAA

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
ghcr.io.                547     IN      SOA     ns-773.awsdns-32.net. awsdns-hostmaster.amazon.com. 1 7200 900 1209600 86400

;; Query time: 32 msec
;; SERVER: 2a09::#53(2a09::) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Wed Jan 08 04:57:35 UTC 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 152Code language: CSS (css)

And so does gist:

; <<>> DiG 9.18.28-1~deb12u2-Debian <<>> AAAA gist.github.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52139
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;gist.github.com.               IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
gist.github.com.        1019    IN      CNAME   github.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
github.com.             182     IN      SOA     dns1.p08.nsone.net. hostmaster.nsone.net. 1656468023 43200 7200 1209600 3600

;; Query time: 32 msec
;; SERVER: 2a09::#53(2a09::) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Wed Jan 08 04:58:11 UTC 2025
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 123Code language: CSS (css)

So yeah, years later, always the same excuse, and no support at all.

Star Citizen is a game that has been in development since around 2013.
It claims to be a space simulator, MMORPG, FPS and a bunch of other things.

More than 10 years later, 750 million USD invested, what have we got?

The good

The game looks visually good, even if overly generic “space stuff”.

Nothing much else to say on that point, the ships have real thought put in their design, starting environment seem to be somewhat consistent and hand built (tho I noticed there are really a lot of food shops everywhere for some reason).

There is also a good already existing selection of ships, all having their own stats and benefits, which you can also upgrade.

The bad

Not a single of my sessions was what I would call a good experience.

From server crashes, game crashes, contracts items magically disappearing during loading, contracts themselves disappearing after a game crash, ships going through the floor, getting kicked out of your ship for no reason at all and having a fine, the list just goes on.

As of now, the game feels like any Unreal Engine asset flip of a “space stuff” game.

The game is mostly empty, contracts get repetitive really quickly, you can barely talk to any NPC and despite having those, you have to shop using touchscreens (which barely work if the server is a tad laggy).

Nothing in the game is really explained, it feels like there is feature creep even though no single feature is actually finished and in a working state.

The performance is also a huge issue, never going above 45fps, even when no players are around (and it goes without saying my computer specs blows the minimal ones out of the water).

The ugly

The game itself requires putting on the table at least 50€ to get into, the more expensive starter pack being at more than 1300€ as of time of writing.

In normal times, I wouldn’t have an issue having a store where you can buy things to support the development of a game, however, we’re talking about one that is possibly one of the most expensive game of all time, where in the end, there barely is a game.

The fact that if you lose in-game something you bought with real money for 250€, you lose it permanently, is also the cherry on top.

They also use the “we are in development” as a shield to deflect any criticism of the game, which honestly cannot be done when talking about a game having this much money poured into it and already that much development time.

---

So, conclusion: don’t waste your money.

Star Citizen is a game that will continue with its unscoped development and probably will never release in a stable or playable form anytime soon, if ever.

It’s an already seen tale of a game too ambitious to be done in one go, with developers trying to do it anyway.

I’ve seen Bethesda games with fewer bugs.

Happy new year, btw.

Location: Vantaa, Finland

Date and time: 2024/12/08 11:45 (local time UTC+2) – 09:45 (UTC)

Frequency: 15290kHz

SINPO: 2/5

Equipment: Tecsun PL-680 + wire antenna

Content Heard:

Unsure, asked a friend and only words they could understand were “Tokyo 23”.

Notes: I cannot speak Japanese, sadly. Lots of static and interruptions.

Contact: NHK WORLD-JAPAN | Contact Us

Card received:

In the middle of the year, I got a Quest Pro, mainly to use with Resonite for face and eye tracking.

With this standalone headset made by Facebook, came a small program that (allegedly) cost them billions to make: Horizon Worlds, their own platform. You know, the one without legs.

Well, I tested it for a bit.
Why? I was curious.
Will I move to Horizon Worlds anytime soon? Hell no.

Because I’m lazy, here is a list of pros and cons with the platform.

Pros:

• Avatar have legs nowadays (wow)
• Cool TTS accessibility feature

Cons:

• Worlds are mostly empty
• If the world is not empty, it’s probably full of kids
• If the world isn’t full of kids, people have awful opinions about foreigners
• 99% of worlds are generic (corporate art style in VR if you will)
• Has a shitty in-game currency system
• Half of the buttons on the Quest Pro controllers aren’t mapped
• Even tho everything is completely baked in and can’t be modified, the game lags when you’re alone
• For some reason, my hands stop tracking at all when in it
• Available games are boring
• Avatars are extremely limited in their expressions
• You can’t uninstall it from the Quest

So yeah, that’s it for the review, as I imagined, it’s a big no from me.

Until next time.

Verkkokauppa.com is a chain of web and physical stores originating from (and limited to) Finland, akin of Amazon here if you will.

When trying to search for a USB-C computer mouse, IPvfoo told me that the website was accessible over IPv6, which I never noticed before.

I then queried the DNS server to see where it was hosted and:

Server:		127.0.0.53
Address:	127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	verkkokauppa.com
Address: 34.95.73.242Code language: CSS (css)

Weird, no v6 there, let’s try with the www subdomain now:

Server:		127.0.0.53
Address:	127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.verkkokauppa.com	canonical name = www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.
Name:	www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Address: 104.18.33.183
Name:	www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Address: 172.64.154.73
Name:	www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Address: 2606:4700:4400::ac40:9a49
Name:	www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Address: 2606:4700:4400::6812:21b7Code language: PHP (php)

Turns out the www subdomain (which the apex redirects to) is proxied through CloudFlare, therefore offering IPv6 connectivity, and uses different nameservers.

The apex uses Netnod DNS (AS8674)

; <<>> DiG 9.20.4 <<>> NS verkkokauppa.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35173
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;verkkokauppa.com.		IN	NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
verkkokauppa.com.	2986	IN	NS	nsu.dnsnode.net.
verkkokauppa.com.	2986	IN	NS	ns2.verkkokauppa.com.
verkkokauppa.com.	2986	IN	NS	nordic1.dnsnode.net.
verkkokauppa.com.	2986	IN	NS	ns1.verkkokauppa.com.
verkkokauppa.com.	2986	IN	NS	nsp.dnsnode.net.

;; Query time: 16 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Sun Dec 29 17:41:39 EET 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 150Code language: CSS (css)

The www subdomain uses CloudFlare (AS13335)

; <<>> DiG 9.20.4 <<>> NS www.verkkokauppa.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 41779
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.verkkokauppa.com.		IN	NS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.verkkokauppa.com.	1020	IN	CNAME	www.verkkokauppa.com.cdn.cloudflare.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
cloudflare.net.		1800	IN	SOA	ns1.cloudflare.net. dns.cloudflare.com. 2359389931 10000 2400 604800 1800

;; Query time: 16 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Sun Dec 29 17:42:04 EET 2024
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 157Code language: CSS (css)

Now, back to finding my USB-C mouse.

As per my usual tradition when I receive a new cool device, I have to write about it a week later, then either three months or a year later (as I did previously with my Index, or work MacBook Pro M1).

As you may know, my previous laptop was a ThinkPad x200.
It’s not exactly a young machine, being around 16 years old now.

As I started working on more demanding projects (mainly C# ones), the x200 simply wasn’t enough (it couldn’t even run a modern web browser any more).

This is why I decided to scout for a new laptop.

Fear not, the x200 is not going to waste! It will now be used mainly to test Libreboot and other stuff like that.

Now, I had a bunch of criteria for the new laptop:

• Can last as long as the x200
• Can run my IDEs correctly (namely Sublime Text and JetBrains Rider)
• Has a proper GPU (to run VR stuff)
• Has modern hardware in general

The Framework 16, tho expensive, checked a lot of those cases:

• Can last long by sheer virtue of being repairable
• Has modern hardware, therefore can run my IDEs correctly
• Can be upgraded to have a dedicated GPU

So for around €2100 (ouch, my wallet D:), this is what you get with Framework:

• AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (8c16t)
• Radeon 780M Graphics integrated graphics (decided to buy the GPU upgrade later)
• 32GB of RAM (single stick to leave room for upgrades)
• Wi-Fi 6
• A 2560×1600@165hz display
• 2x USB-C expansion cards
• 2x USB-A expansion cards
• 1x HDMI expansion card
• 1x DisplayPort expansion card
• 1TB of m.2 storage
• Power supply
• Keypad module

Overall, pretty good specs by my standards for a laptop.
Before you say anything: the HDMI is for a second screen, the DisplayPort is for VR headsets.

To save up some money, I also decided to take it as the DIY edition without any OS, and then install Fedora on it.
The laptop itself was painless to build, even fun. The only issue is my hands trembling when doing anything requiring a bit of precision (in this instance handling a screwdriver with small screws), but that’s a me issue.

There was a small issue on first boots where the keyboard wasn’t responding at all, but taking it apart and verifying all the connections one by one made it work.

Fedora is one of the supported OSes on the Framework, along Ubuntu and Windows. I would have gone with Arch, however I wanted a headache-free setup this time, which Fedora offered.

During this week we actually got a new BIOS upgrade for the 16 being 3.05, fixing some security issues and adding a cool new feature to extend the battery longevity.

Upgrading the BIOS was pretty much painless thanks to fwupdmgr and was easy as:

$ fwupdmgr refresh --force
$ fwupdmgr get-updates
$ fwupdmgr updateCode language: Bash (bash)

Then, being patient.
I remember having to fiddle with USB keys back a few years ago, so this CLI utility is much welcome.

The battery life itself is correct, never really running out when working on stuff.

Fedora itself also is a breeze to use, having GUIs for everything simplifying the task a lot.
I do miss a bit my good old XFCE4, but GNOME does the job just fine as well.

Another thing I totally forgot to do after the first install was to get the EasyEffects profile, which does makes a huge difference on the laptop’s audio.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with what I got, remains to see a few things:

• Will new hardware upgrades come out (for instance, additional GPU modules)
• Will any other companies start making expansion cards (instead of relying on Framework alone; though the community already made a lot of those)
• Will Framework as a company remain in business long enough to offer the longevity I want

But those can only be answered with time. It goes without saying that most of the hardware replacement (or upgrades) (RAM, storage, etc) can be done with any off-the-shelf components and not just ones sold by Framework.

For now, I’ll keep using it, and I’ll see you peeps in either three months or a year (or both) if I don’t forget for the traditional update!

It’s no secret that I work around GitLab during my day job and that I generally love this software.
This blog post is therefore not biased at all in any way or form. (do I need to mark this further as sarcasm, or did everyone get the memo?)

For this quick tutorial, you’ll need:

• Some machine where the instance will be hosted
• Docker installed on the machine
• Ability to read instructions

For this, we’ll be using docker compose which provides an easy way to bring services up from a configuration file.
This tutorial just provides a bare bones instance that you will need to configure further later.

Small note: for this to work, your system SSH daemon will need to run on something else than port 22.

The compose file for GitLab is really simple:

services:
  gitlab:
    image: gitlab/gitlab-ce:17.6.1-ce.0
    volumes:
      - ./gitlab/config:/etc/gitlab
      - ./gitlab/log:/var/log/gitlab
      - ./gitlab/data:/var/opt/gitlab
    ports:
      - "22:22"
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
Code language: YAML (yaml)

And there you go, name this file docker-compose.yml on your server and issue:

$ docker compose up -dCode language: Bash (bash)

After a few minutes, the GitLab instance should be reachable on the IP of your machine.

To reset the root password, use:

$ docker compose exec gitlab gitlab-rake "gitlab:password:reset[root]"Code language: Bash (bash)

Now, some few steps that are recommended to take after having a working instance:

• Reverse-proxy GitLab and get HTTPS certificates for everything
• Host a runner (to be able to utilize CI/CD)
• Refine the Gitlab.rb configuration, most notably:
  • Configure the container registry
  • Configure object storage
  • Configure emails

In a future blog post, I’ll show how to configure one cool feature of GitLab which is the service desk which can be useful for some projects.

I recently re-started my BGP shenanigans, and with that, re-setup some VPNs using WireGuard for my personal machines.

I basically use those to whitelist connections to certain applications to only the prefix used by my machines.

The host machine runs Debian and BIRD, and the end devices are diverse from standard Linux machines, to Windows desktops, to iOS devices.

First, the BIRD configuration is pretty trivial, just adding a route for the prefix via lo:

route 2a12:4946:9900:dead::/64 via "lo";Code language: PHP (php)

I’m aware my subnet configurations can be sub-optimal, but I’m just running this for fun, not for it to be perfect¨.

Then, generating WireGuard keys on the host (the package wireguard-tools will need to be installed):

$ umask 077
$ wg genkey > privatekey
$ wg pubkey < privatekey > publickeyCode language: Bash (bash)

Now, the WireGuard host configuration is pretty trivial:

[Interface]
Address = 2a12:4946:9900:dead::1/128
ListenPort = 1337
PrivateKey = myVeryPrivateKey=

The key generation on the client follows the same procedure, if not easier via a GUI. The configuration itself looks like this:

[Interface]
PrivateKey = myVerySecretKey=
Address = 2a12:4946:9900:dead::1337/128

[Peer]
PublicKey = serverPubKey=
AllowedIPs = ::/1, 8000::/1
Endpoint = [2a12:4946:9900:dead::1]:1337
PersistentKeepalive = 30
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Note that I’m using ::/1 and 8000::/1 in AllowedIPs on Windows as setting it to ::/0 kills IPv4 connectivity (that is sadly still needed) and local connectivity to stuff like my storage array. On Linux, ::/0 works as expected, letting IPv4 through correctly.

Now, we can add a Peer section into the server’s configuration:

[Peer]
# PC Client
PublicKey = clientPubKey=
AllowedIPs = 2a12:4946:9900:dead::1337/128
Code language: PHP (php)

Now you should be all set and ready to bring up the tunnel on both ends.

On the server (assuming your configuration file is named tunnels.conf):

$ systemctl enable wg-quick@tunnels
$ systemctl start wg-quick@tunnelsCode language: Bash (bash)

And on the client using the same procedure, or just clicking the “Connect” button on the GUI client.

I’ve had some cases where this all of this alone isn’t enough, and had to add the prefixes to lo.

For instance:

$ ip -6 add 2a12:4946:9900:dead::/64 dev lo

And in /etc/network/interfaces:

iface lo inet6 static
        address 2a12:4946:9900:dead::/64
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Tho I will admit, I had more issues setting this up than I should have, and most configs would benefit from being re-written. Admittedly, I executed and documented this procedure while being extremely tired, which of course causes some issues.

But at least, this works, and can be very useful when I’m connected to networks not offering IPv6 connectivity as well.

After searching for a bit, I found a way to send commands to a Resonite headless within Docker programmatically without having to run docker compose attach <container> and having to manually detach.

You will need the software socat installed on the host machine, given most of my machines are running Debian, this can be done via apt install socat.

Now, you can use:

echo 'worlds' | socat EXEC:"docker attach $(docker compose ps -q reso-headless)",pty STDINCode language: Bash (bash)

In this command, replace:

• worlds by the command you want
• reso-headless by the defined name of your headless container

Alternatively, you can just specify the container name directly instead of doing $(docker compose ps -q reso-headless).

Addendum:

For this to work, you will have to make sure your container is defined with:

    tty: true
    stdin_open: true
Code language: YAML (yaml)

in the Compose file.

In this blog post, we’re gonna see some places where I find music. Some of those are paid, some of those are free.

First, let’s go over some good players:

• XMPlay – Probably the most accurate MOD player out there
• Foobar2000 – Also a really good player, multi-platform as well
• VLC – Plays everything, though badly for some files

Most of the music I listen to are modules (or MODs), to get those, I have a few places:

• https://modland.com/ – Generalist, has a list of all most software for a variety of platforms, with modules classified
• https://files.scene.org/ – More scene-focused, has a lot of demos as well as modules
• https://amp.dascene.net/ – Amiga-focused directory
• https://deepsid.chordian.net – Large aggregation of collections of Commodore 64 modules, also comes with a good web player

Those can generally be found there for free.

For more traditional music, my go-to solution remains Bandcamp, though sometimes, some artists may allow to buy music directly from their site (which is the case of Lman for instance, but it’s more to get physical media).