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		<header>
			<h1>I can no longer trust my mobile for now</h1>
			<p>Day 00546: Saturday, 2016 September 03</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>16 days until mobile voice/<abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>46 days until mobile data service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>43 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	Vanessa and our mother came home today.
	It seems that they didn&apos;t have any success in finding a place to live, and as such, Vanessa is not yet registered in school.
	Vanessa seems to be being strong for our mother, though I&apos;m almost certain that this turn of events is bothering them.
</p>
<p>
	I forgot to mention that NotABug has come back up, only a day after it went down.
	Perhaps it was just scheduled maintenance that I simply didn&apos;t know about.
	I tend to panic more and quicker than I should.
	The last time that I had a Git host running on free software though (Gitorious), they got bought out by a company (GitLab) that scrapped the free service in favor of their existing proprietary service.
	It&apos;s worth noting that GitLab does offer a free version of their software, but they don&apos;t <strong>*host repositories*</strong> using it.
	If I had the means to host my own repositories, GitLab software might be an option, but repositories hosted by the GitLab company are hosted using the proprietary version of the software.
	At the moment, I know of only two free Git hosts that don&apos;t come with restrictions that I don&apos;t feel like dealing with: <a href="https://notabug.org./">NotABug.org</a> and <a href="https://git.vola7ileiax4ueow.onion/">Volatile Git</a>.
	Fearing disk damage, service discontinuation, and company buyout, I like having a bit of redundancy.
	Losing either of these two Git hosts would be quite unfortunate.
</p>
<p>
	Cyrus located the source of the bad scent.
	It wasn&apos;t the sink after all, but a bag of rotten potatoes.
	I never could smell it, but at least that&apos;s cleaned up now.
</p>
<p>
	My mother is quite inconsiderate when it comes to my mobile Internet connection, which we&apos;ve both been having to use.
	They asked to use it while I was trying to study, used it for a bit, then took a nap without returning my mobile to me.
	I couldn&apos;t continue studying because I had no Internet connection, but they weren&apos;t even using it! This isn&apos;t really going to work out well, especially once we get moved.
	Out of desperation, I&apos;ve done something that I never wanted to do: I&apos;ve <a href="https://code.paulk.fr./article16/missing-proprietary-firmwares-in-android-systems">installed proprietary firmware on my Replicant</a>.
	Paul K has a script that makes the task easy, and after looking at both the code and the file system of the device before the noxious firmware was added, it looks like removing it will be easy.
	With a root shell, I only need to delete <a href="file:///system/vendor/firmware/">one directory</a>, which didn&apos;t exist before, but now contains all the firmware.
	With this firmware, I was able to get a Wi-Fi hotspot going, so we no longer have to use a wired tether.
	We can both use the Internet at the same time.
	The catch, of course, is that I can no longer trust my device.
</p>
<p>
	It&apos;s worth noting that as installing the nonfree firmwares would compromise the system, I was considering just giving up and installing CyanogenMod.
	However, in explaining what firmware was to Vanessa, I realized that this was a bad idea.
	By instead installing the firmwares on Replicant, I could keep at least the code running on the main processor free - or so I thought.
	However, after installing them, my mobile forgot the <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr> needed to connect to the Internet! I tried re-entering that information, but the mobile still didn&apos;t have it.
	I entered another <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr>, this one just quick and bogus.
	This <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr> too didn&apos;t show up.
	I rebooted the device, and all three showed up.
	I tried deleting the bogus <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr> and one of the identical-yet-working <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr>s, but neither would accept deletion and rebooting again didn&apos;t help.
	I ended up using the <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr> reset option, which deleted all three, but then the device wouldn&apos;t allow me to add new <abbr title="Access Point Name">APN</abbr>s for several reboots.
	I don&apos;t know what the issue is, but somehow, the firmwares are not only acting in their hardware components, but screwing with the main system as well.
	I suppose that this is my punishment for using nonfree firmwares.
	I can&apos;t wait until we&apos;re in a situation where we no longer need them.
</p>
<p>
	The process was taking longer than I&apos;d quoted to my mother, so I explained that I was having difficulties and that the shady software that I&apos;d had to install to make this work was causing problems.
	I didn&apos;t explain why I was calling the software shady (I consider all proprietary software to be shady), as my mother would only argue pointlessly about it.
	It&apos;s better to just leave them in the dark if they&apos;re going to be a pain about things.
</p>
<p>
	I was going to try to install <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> on my mother&apos;s machine, as they&apos;d already agreed to allow me to install a proxy if it got the Internet connection working.
	Originally, we couldn&apos;t get <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> to resolve over the tethered connection, so the <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> Browser Bundle had allowed us to have the remote <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> servers resolve the <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> for us.
	That is no longer an issue, though my carrier could still yell at me and revoke my account if they find out that we&apos;re tethering.
	<abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> on the desktop machine wouldn&apos;t fix the fact that the <abbr title="time to live">TTL</abbr> of packets wasn&apos;t at quite the right number, but it would eliminate all cleartext communications through the device, fixing the problem of &quot;incorrect&quot; User-Agent header strings.
	Before I could get the software transfered to my mother&apos;s machine though, I realized that it didn&apos;t matter.
	In hotspot mode, random strangers might get on the network, and they wouldn&apos;t be using <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>.
	If my carrier is going to catch me, there is nothing that I can do about it now.
	Putting a password on the Wi-Fi access point is possible, but it&apos;s not a nice thing to do.
	Wi-Fi access points should always be open.
</p>
<p>
	Cyrus found a video of <a href="http://professorshyguy.com/">Professor Shyguy</a>&apos;s <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com/track/science-life-abcs">
Science, Life, &amp; ABCs</a>.
	While the video is not free (likely due to an oversight, as the song itself is under <abbr title="Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike">CC BY-SA</abbr> 3.0), it contains all of the lyrics! I&apos;ll probably transcribe them here in my journal when I have time, as I&apos;ve been looking for a lyric sheet on that song for quite some time.
	Also though, the video explains the word choice in the song a bit.
	In the first verse, every word starts with a letter of the alphabet, from a to zee.
	In the second verse, it goes backwards.
	Every word starts with a letter from zee to a.
	The third verse&apos;s rules were a bit too challenging for Professor Shyguy to even work with, so while it mostly follows a pattern of each word representing two letters (the first letter of both the first and second syllable), it has a few exceptions.
	I had no idea that that much effort went into that song! Then again, I&apos;ve been unable to make out the lyrics because of how fast Shyguy sings, so I didn&apos;t stand a chance.
	This might be the world&apos;s only awesome alphabet song though.
	Well, maybe that&apos;s going a bit far, but it&apos;s certainly the only awesome alphabet song that I&apos;ve personally heard.
</p>
<p>
	My state-issued <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card arrived in the mail today.
	It&apos;s a bit ahead of schedule, but considering that this is the second time that they shipped it and it didn&apos;t arrive at all the first time, it&apos;s also way late.
	I&apos;m still not amused with the <abbr title="Department of Motor Vehicles">DMV</abbr>, but at least I have mu <abbr title="identification">ID</abbr> card now.
</p>
<p>
	Also in the mail, I received a letter meant for <a href="https://opalrwf4mzmlfmag.onion/">wowaname</a>.
	My understanding is that someone wrote some hacky code using the domain name <a href="https://afsadgsdcgdcfgefcasfcascfsadf.com./"><code>//afsadgsdcgdcfgefcasfcascfsadf.com.</code></a>, assuming that this domain name would never be registered.
	However, of course, that&apos;s a stupid assumption, no matter how ridiculous the domain name is.
	Instead, domains under the <code>//invalid.</code> <abbr title="Top Level Domain">TLD</abbr> should be used.
	Wowaname decided to show them their folly by registering the domain name that their code assumed not to exist.
	I don&apos;t know if this resulted in any issues for them, but wowaname now owns that domain.
	The letter that I received today was from a domain registrar, requesting that wowaname transfer the domain to their registration services, as well as register two more ridiculous domain names: <code>//afsadgsdcgdcfgefcasfcascfsadf.net.</code> and <code>//afsadgsdcgdcfgefcasfcascfsadf.org.</code>.
	Clearly, this was some sort of automated mailing.
	If any human had looked at this domain name, they wouldn&apos;t be asking wowaname to register two more nonsense domains.
	As wowaname&apos;s whois privacy provider though, it&apos;s my job to pass that information on to wowaname in case they actually do want it, so I got in touch and let them know.
	However, upon hearing the news, wowaname informed me that the company must be using cached data, as they no longer use my name and address for their domain registrations.
	They&apos;ve found a new solution that they think will work, without compromising their own privacy.
	I wish them luck in their endeavors, and hopefully no one will hassle them like last time.
</p>
<p>
	It looks like the quiz today doesn&apos;t count toward my grade.
	Having done fairly well on it though has increased my confidence a bit though.
	I&apos;ve absorbed at least some of the reading from yesterday.
	I&apos;ve asked about the missing discussion assignment in one course and posted on the discussion board in the other.
	The discussion questions were unrelated to one another a bit, so my post looks a bit more scattered than it really is:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Unfortunately, I feel that the role of many higher education institutions, especially in the United States, has become to hoard knowledge.
	Schools actively seek patents, which are legally-imposed monopolies on vague ideas (Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d.).
	If you invent something new, but it&apos;s too similar to something &quot;protected&quot; by a patent, you can get sued.
	Likewise, if you improve upon someone else&apos;s design, you can get sued! With these monopolies in place, competition is snuffed out, and even the patent holders have no real incentive to try to produce their goods more efficiently, as there is no competition to try to beat.
</p>
<p>
	In the past, educational institutions were actually about education.
	This knowledge-hording doesn&apos;t seem to have been as prevalent.
	This may partially be the fault of the students.
	Students are choosing to attend more for-profit schools than they used to (Online Universities, 2012), and knowledge-hording can be quite profitable in the short term.
	In the long term though, patents are a hindrance to innovation (Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d.) and only serve to slow us down.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;m not sure what is meant by &quot;student profiles&quot;.
	My best guess would be student demographics, so unless someone wants to correct me, I&apos;m going to assume that that&apos;s the case.
	It seems that student diversity has grown quite a bit.
	The main people getting an education in the past were rich white males, but now educated women outnumber educated men, poor people can be educated too, and while Caucasians still outnumber other races in educational institution (in the United States, anyway), other races are starting to join in as well (Online Universities, 2012).
	Students these days are also more likely to be older or disabled than in the past.
</p>
<p>
	Ways of learning have greatly changed.
	In my parents&apos; day, computers were just barely coming into existence.
	They were huge, room-sized machines.
	People didn&apos;t keep such things in their houses, and instead, it was mostly the schools that had them.
	Research was conducted in libraries using books found via a card catalog system.
	I&apos;m not sure if the Internet existed yet, but if so, it was likely still confined to use in places of research in education, so it couldn&apos;t be used from home.
	These days, even in brick and mortar schools, students often conduct research online, both on campus and at home.
	There&apos;s much less thumbing through physical databases, as we can simply ask our favorite search engines to return results from their enormous databases, which they do almost instantly.
	We have access to even more learning materials than before, and those materials are usually easier to find than in the past.
</p>
<p>
	If I were to establish my own university, its mission would be to spread the idea that information and knowledge should be available to and usable by everyone.
	If we all shared our knowledge and worked together instead of against one another, we&apos;d advance much more quickly as a society.
	Not only would there be no need to reinvent old wheels from scratch, previous designs could be improved in both subtle and drastic ways, allowing incremental improvements to benefit everyone.
	Schools should be a place of learning; a place where knowledge is set free.
</p>
<p>
	References:
</p>
<p>
	Electronic Frontier Foundation.
	(n.d.).
	How Patents Hinder Innovation (Graphic) | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
	Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/issues/how-patents-hinder-innovation
</p>
<p>
	Electronic Frontier Foundation.
	(n.d.).
	Patents | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
	Retrieved from https://www.eff.org/patent
</p>
<p>
	Online Universities.
	(2012, September 17).
	20 Amazing Changes in College Demographics - Online Universities.
	Retrieved from http://onlineuniversities.com./blog/2012/09/20-amazing-changes-college-demographics/
</p>
</blockquote>
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