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What Is Date:Italy?

aesthetikx.info

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MITM attack on a read-only text webpage... okay. More annoying is the slightly shiny/shaded text that is supposed to highlight something. Who chose this style palette?

Haha this is my blog -- its pretty new. I agree it's readability is less than ideal -- going to change it at some point. HTTPS as well probably at some point. Its been an experiment for me doing everything by hand. The entire blog is a large single Rakefile using Markaby :)

Even just disabling CSS makes it readable. For HTTPS, I think that (like someone else mentioned) it should be made optional (at least for read-only access to public files) rather than mandatory.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#22

Please use HTTPS. I use HTTPS only. I don't think HTTP is acceptable for anyone let alone a technical blog post. It takes a few minutes, and it prevents me and all your visitors from getting all kinds of MITM injections. Thanks.

Surprised this is downvoted. Chrome forces me to click through a warning to even visit HTTP sites nowadays.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#23
It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times.

There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be?

For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that particular days are meant to be the longest or shortest of the year?

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#24

Please use HTTPS. I use HTTPS only. I don't think HTTP is acceptable for anyone let alone a technical blog post. It takes a few minutes, and it prevents me and all your visitors from getting all kinds of MITM injections. Thanks.

I think you would have a better argument if you said something like: "I don't want my ISP knowing about the content I read" or something along those lines. MITM for a text download is like saying we have to have https for dns (yes DoH exists now), but the point still stands. You aren't sending any sensitive data to the website, MITM is unlikely.

Without HTTPS, every link in the chain between me and your website is a potential attack vector. Maybe I trust my ISP, but do I trust my buddy's cheapo router? What about the shadowy cabal that offers airport wifi?

With static webpages, the concern isn't someone snooping in on what I'm reading. It's someone injecting content, probably malware, into the page. Let's say I have a zero-click exploit for Chrome. What can I do with it? If I just stick it on a page I control, best I can hope for is spamming it all over the web and hoping someone clicks on it. Probably not a lot of impact before it gets patched. If instead, I can wait until some router firmware gets pwned, or an ISP, I can do a mass attack where I make all the vulnerable routers inject my exploit into all non-HTTPS web requests. Much greater exposure.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#25
post #3

I wonder how Paradox handles this stuff in their games like Europa Universalis. Have they ever made a "the pope wants you to switch calendar systems" event which changes the actual in-game date?

Some notes:

Paradox's Clausewitz game engine seems to handle "negative" years very poorly, so stuff like historical Roman emperors in Crusader Kings have some oddities. It's probably also why Imperator: Rome uses ab urbe condita dating (aside from immersion).

The Elder Kings 2 mod actually has custom date handling (it's actually a custom date localisation system) to enable transitioning to the 3rd era on founding the Empire of Tamriel.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#26

It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times. There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be? For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that part…

If I recall correctly - it was surprisingly well known (in fact it was a common way to make fun of "lettered" people because they'd claim dates that were obviously silly; everyone knew when the solstice was).

Some of the earliest things we have a sun-based calendar trackers, which need not be more complicated than a stick and a rock (meaning millions more have not survived).

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#27

Please use HTTPS. I use HTTPS only. I don't think HTTP is acceptable for anyone let alone a technical blog post. It takes a few minutes, and it prevents me and all your visitors from getting all kinds of MITM injections. Thanks.

Surprised this is downvoted. Chrome forces me to click through a warning to even visit HTTP sites nowadays.

Yup, very secure. Then every single IT department installs a cert on the machines to MITM everything.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#28

It's wild to think about how different things were in pre-modern times. There are no computers, sensors, watches, or spaceships. There are also no TV-style distractions, and a lot more people are growing food. When would you notice that the longest day of the year is a few days away from what the books say it's supposed to be? For that matter, the printing press was only a century old. How well-known was it that part…

In an agrarian economy people are definitely much MORE attuned to the cycles of the seasons. If your town always starts planting crop X two weeks before the solstice, and the harvest festival is the week after the equinox, you’re going to keep track of these things.

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised this is downvoted. Chrome forces me to click through a warning to even visit HTTP sites nowadays.

Yup, very secure. Then every single IT department installs a cert on the machines to MITM everything.

I have no idea what you're trying to say, there's no IT department managing my laptop and none of the IT departments I've worked in or with "MITM everything." Do you want to try again?

Re: What Is Date:Italy?

#30

Please use HTTPS. I use HTTPS only. I don't think HTTP is acceptable for anyone let alone a technical blog post. It takes a few minutes, and it prevents me and all your visitors from getting all kinds of MITM injections. Thanks.

Man I really hope this doesn't get autoflagged because people need to see that this is an opinion people actually have, and what the (justified) reaction to it is.

HTTPS on a blog does nothing. It doesn't protect you from anything. I guarantee you're not getting "all kinds of MITM injections" on this block of text. The only reasonable desire I can think of for "HTTPS everywhere" is hiding the content from your ISP but a) they still see the URL so they can get the content if they want it, and b) if you're so worried about that, use a VPN which coincidentally is even better because it will also hide the URL, and most importantly c) it puts the onus on you, the person who wants the thing, instead of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of text-only website owners who rightly couldn't care less about HTTPS.

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