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Notes from the Neugier:Lab.

899 posts connect my own projects with Linux, network practice, DIY, standards and curated tech history.

Source abbreviations explained
  • CCCmedia.ccc.de
  • CLTChemnitzer Linux-Tage
  • DIYPDIY Perks
  • fefeFefes Blog
  • gGolem
  • HaDHackaday
  • HBHostblogger
  • HFHugging Face
  • HNHacker News
  • hßheise
  • KGKurzgesagt
  • MuMMenschen und Muster
  • phrackPhrack Magazine
  • SDSlashdot
  • TGThe Guardian

Latest posts

The ten most recent publications.

Android TV without ads: launcher, SmartTube and ADB instead of the Google TV banner

The developer Cretezy shows how to run Android TV devices such as a Chromecast with Google TV or Hisense TVs without the ad banner and without ads. At the heart of the guide is a set of ADB commands that sets a different launcher as the home screen, disables the Google launcher, replaces YouTube with SmartTube and remaps the remote. This post summarises the steps, names the pitfalls such as a lost Wi-Fi connection or missing HDMI input switching, and explains where DNS filters like Pi-hole fit in.

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Tor exits as an SSH trap: what 333 compromised relays teach about Ebury

On kaba.cx, an affected person describes how, from 2 October 2026, around 333 Tor exit relays redirected SSH connections to interception servers, and how these relays were tracked down and removed from the network. Behind the attack was the long-known OpenSSH backdoor Ebury in version 1.8.3, which had already been installed on the relay operators' servers in August. This post adds the incident report of an affected operator and shows how to recognise Ebury and why keys instead of passwords make the difference here.

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Eight CA keys smaller than 256: why eMudhra is leaving the TLS business

On 22 October 2026, the Indian certificate authority eMudhra announced that it is withdrawing from the global TLS certificate business. The trigger was an incident in which the private keys of eight intermediate certificates had been generated so weakly that anyone could recover them from the certificates and use them to issue certificates for any domain. This post puts the press release into context using Mozilla's bug report and shows why browsers were protected quickly while many other programs still need an update.

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PHP2Shell: install the updates and block multipart in Caddy and Apache until then

On 21 October 2026 the PHP team closed two critical vulnerabilities with 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 that let attackers run code without logging in; on 23 October a third vulnerability followed that can only be exploited in rare configurations and against which a single setting helps until the next release. I show how to check whether the update has really arrived, and how to protect servers until then with a multipart block in Caddy or Apache and the official PHP settings. That includes an honest assessment of how easily the vulnerabilities can be exploited as things stand, what the stopgaps cost and what should stay after the update.

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The Buzzer: listening live to Russia’s hum on 4625 kHz

For decades, a Russian shortwave channel has been humming around the clock on 4625 kHz, known as “The Buzzer” or by the misread callsign UVB-76. According to everything radio monitors have reconstructed, the hum belongs to a military command network that now and then sends short, coded voice messages. This post separates evidence from myth and shows how to follow the channel yourself on my receiver owrx.bk99.de.

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Linux 7.3: what changes in btrfs

In its video on Linux 7.3, released on 18 October 2026, the YouTube channel Maple Circuit focuses on the changes to the btrfs file system. According to David Sterba's pull request, the release brings noticeable performance gains for direct I/O, copy-on-write and fsync, plus changed mount options that admins should know about before updating. This post explains the changes based on the patches on the mailing list and puts the quoted measurements into context.

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Why experience protects against AI: three limits of automation

Sascha Friesike, professor and director at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, explains on the rbb channel Menschen und Muster why AI will not replace human work in the foreseeable future but will change it. The video draws on three research findings: Polanyi's paradox of tacit knowledge, Lisanne Bainbridge's ironies of automation and the observation that expectations grow with technical possibilities. This post summarises the arguments, checks the cited studies and shows what follows for working with AI in everyday professional life.

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Heated freezers: what the attack on French supermarkets teaches

During the night to 12 October 2026, unknown attackers took over the refrigeration controllers in hundreds of French supermarkets and heated up freezers, spoiling the goods. According to the manufacturer Danfoss and the French authority CERT-FR, the cause was refrigeration controllers that were directly reachable from the internet and lacked current firmware. This post puts the incident into context and summarises what CERT-FR and the German BSI now advise operators of networked controllers.

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Farewell to the leap second: UTC runs without jumps from May 2027

The General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) decided in Versailles that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) will run without leap seconds from 20 May 2027 and may drift up to one hour from Earth’s rotation. The trigger was the looming first negative leap second, which experts put at a 30 percent probability by 2035 and which has never been applied. This post explains why leap seconds have knocked servers offline, how Google and others smear them, and what operators of NTP, chrony and radio clocks should know now.

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FLUX 3 Image Klein: what lies behind “5.6B parameters” and “8 GB”

With FLUX 3 Image Klein, Black Forest Labs has released an open image model with 5.6 billion parameters that generates images, edits them with up to ten reference images and places image elements via bounding boxes. According to the vendor, it runs with INT8 on graphics cards with as little as 8 GB and beats larger open models in internal comparisons. This post explains the technology and shows what the mandatory separate prompt upsampler, the memory figures and the first community experiences mean for running it on your own hardware.

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Yearly archives

All posts by decade and year of publication.

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