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Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

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Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#61
post #23

This seems like it belonged on freshmeat ca. Y2K.

For this application, current best practice is using Electron stack, or better, cloning VSCode and relying on GeoLeoMaximusDYP v3.2 LLM for geo-location.

How can starting a browser be a best practice? This app is lightweight and does not even use a GUI toolkit. You would roughly use 20x more memory. How is that a best practice?

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this application, current best practice is using Electron stack, or better, cloning VSCode and relying on GeoLeoMaximusDYP v3.2 LLM for geo-location.

How can starting a browser be a best practice? This app is lightweight and does not even use a GUI toolkit. You would roughly use 20x more memory. How is that a best practice?

Using sarcasm. Sarcasm that you missed.

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can starting a browser be a best practice? This app is lightweight and does not even use a GUI toolkit. You would roughly use 20x more memory. How is that a best practice?

Using sarcasm. Sarcasm that you missed.

I stopped reading the rest. I just saw Electron is mentioned. Some people honestly think that is a good approach.

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#64
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, any path longer than 256 characters for `mapFilename` would cause a buffer overrun. An unprivileged app could run your app (say, with more privileges), with a very long `HOME` environment path, causing a buffer overflow, and potentially exploit it to use your app's privileges to do more stuff than it was supposed to. Basically, you should never use strcpy and strcat and but use the secure alternatives like…

> (say, with more privileges) Isn't it a moot point if unprivileged app can already run anything with more privileges? In normal operation, connmap requires no special privileges.

I see you already addressed it but here let me give a scenario.

Say the program was installed and set so the user didn't have privs to modify the executable (so an attacker couldn't just change it to do what they want).

A buffer overflow could allow an attacker to gain control flow of the program and feed bogus data to the user allowing them to scrub their presence from the map.

Also, awesome project!

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using sarcasm. Sarcasm that you missed.

I stopped reading the rest. I just saw Electron is mentioned. Some people honestly think that is a good approach.

Well, it is extremely portable. Just also all the other things you mentioned.

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#66
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 3 dots are your peers, the other end of the TCP connection :) So you basically have some apps running in the background (or foreground) that are making those connections.

I'm colorblind and had to change the dots color. Might be a nice config option.

There's a 'good first issue'-labeled issue for this from 2023: https://github.com/h2337/connmap/issues/14

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading the rest. I just saw Electron is mentioned. Some people honestly think that is a good approach.

Well, it is extremely portable. Just also all the other things you mentioned.

Both Windows and macOS have X servers. Heck don’t they both ship with them nowadays?

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading the rest. I just saw Electron is mentioned. Some people honestly think that is a good approach.

Well, it is extremely portable. Just also all the other things you mentioned.

not really that portable?

Re: Show HN: X11 desktop widget that shows location of your network peers on a map

#69
Nice. My only gripe is that the map is not very easy to read, especially on the smaller sizes. There are too many coast lines and borders, so it can be hard to locate countries, especially in the Mediterranean. Would it be possible to draw land masses in solid (white?), and leave borders in dark (background color?). Other than that, works fine on Debian Linux and KDE. The map shows up on all desktops, which I like (but others might not)

Another idea. Would it be possible to make the dots fade out, a little like in https://www.lightningmaps.org, so I could see some of the older traffic points as well?

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