Cloudflare servers don’t own IPs anymore – so how do they connect to the Internet?

Historically, we have rarely talked about how our servers fetch
the content from the Internet. In this blog we’re going to cover
this gap. We’ll discuss how we manage Cloudflare IP addresses
used to retrieve the data from the Internet, how our egress
network design has evolved, how we optimized it for best use
of available IP space and introduce our soft-anycast technology.

— Read on blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-servers-dont-own-ips-anymore/

Bike with RGB lights in the wheels

Sergii Gordieiev retrofitted the tires of his bicycle with an RGB LED light strip.

pwn.college

pwn.college is an education platform for students (and other interested parties) to learn about, and practice, core cybersecurity concepts in a hands-on fashion. In martial arts terms, it is designed to take a “white belt” in cybersecurity to becoming a “blue belt”, able to approach (simple) CTFs and wargames. The philosophy of pwn.college is “practice makes perfect”.
— Read on pwn.college/

Why everything looks the same

Real-time paradigm shifts like no-code, cloud computing, drop shipping, AI, and remote work are democratizing entrepreneurship in unprecedented ways.

Long protected by gatekeepers, the means of production, promotion, and distribution are now freely available to anyone with a laptop.

Today, one person with no business or product experience can do what would have taken a team of highly-trained people just a few years ago — in less time, for a fraction of the cost.

That means more crowded markets, more intense competition, and more value placed on uniqueness, or what VCs call “alpha.”

medium.com/knowable/why-everything-looks-the-same-bad80133dd6e

Ruffner Mountain

As a quick day trip we decided to go to a spot we’d never been before, Ruffner Mountain. Ruffner offers several different trails, most of which come off of their main gateway trail called Quarry Trail. We decided to do the out and back of Quarry Trail 2.4 miles, or 1.2 miles one way.

Incredible Lego Engines running with compressed air

This is a test

I am testing what it is like to type with a small Bluetooth keyboard that folds for my iPhone so that I cam post while traveling. More specifically, so I can post while backpacking. Here goes nothing..

The Onion has filed a real brief with the Supreme Court laden with parody in effort to protect parody

I urge you to read the amicus brief in its entirety, but here are some excerpts.

It is description of who they are and what they do:

In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full and part-time journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.

On why they are filing the brief

Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original. The Sixth Circuit’s decision in this case would condition the First Amendment’s protection for parody upon a requirement that parodists explicitly say, up-front, that their work is nothing more than an elaborate fiction. But that would strip parody of the very thing that makes it function.

Here is the link to the brief on the Supreme Court’s site: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf

Every David Bowie Hairstyle

Helen Green
Helen Green

Another new year…

2022 is here, and I think we can all agree a change of pace is needed from the last two years. The pandemic has been exhausting, especially for healthcare workers, parents, and educators.

New Year’s Eve was fun in the Tracy house. We travelled to the lake to get a change of scenery. The lake provides quiet solitude; a place to operate at a slower pace. It provides more opportunity to just look and take in the environment. I saw so many stars last night!

As soon as I got there, I had to do the yard. We haven’t been up to the place in a few months and leaves completely covered the lawn. I was able to use the mower to get rid of most of them, finish them off with the blower. (It’s electric, I have a huge distaste for the volume of gas powered blowers) While finishing it off, I found a tiny snake. Not sure what type it is, but I took a picture

Here he is, not more than 7” in length

We told Thomas he could stay up to ring in the new year, around 8:00pm we realized this was a mistake. We were so tired from being with him and being up all day that it wasn’t a given we were even going to make it to 10:00 before falling asleep. Parenthood y’all, it’s absolutely exhausting!

The neighbors did fireworks a little after 8 that night. It was fun to watch Thomas enjoy as the colors exploded overhead.

Here is an incredibly terrible picture of some of the fireworks. They were much MUCH better than my one picture I thought to take can show.

After the fireworks I got a fire started with the idea that it would help propel us to midnight. Thomas was beginning to realize how late midnight was and decided he was fine with doing his “New Year Countdown” at 10:00pm. Thank Goodness!

I wish all who read this a happy and healthy 2022. Let’s hope this year allows us to see the light of the end of this pandemic.