Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

December 29, 2025

OpenVPN Not working for websites when connected over Airtel Xtreme Fibernet

Filed under: Computer Software,Computer Tips,Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:59 PM

Over the past few weeks I have been having issues browsing websites when connected to OpenVPN connection on my Airtel Fibernet connection. The interesting thing was that the same settings/vpn worked fine when I connected to my ACT connection instead of Airtel. So I knew it wasn’t an issue on the VPN side, it was something to do with how Airtel was configured and it was really annoying me. So, over the weekend I decided to spend some focused time to fix this issue and finally managed to fix the issue.

Symptoms:

  • The VPN Connection would connect without errors.
  • No error messages in logs
  • When trying to access websites, it would just wait for the website to respond. (Initially thought it was a SSL issue but hit the same issue with http)
  • Putting the system in the DMZ didn’t work
  • Manually configuring the Routes to match the Route when connected to ACT didn’t work either
  • Traceroute worked fine though

Curl in verbose mode would giving me the following and then it would just sit there waiting for a response:

suramya@StarKnight:~/Media/Downloads$ curl -vvv www.google.com
02:43:17.786482 [0-x] == Info: [READ] client_reset, clear readers
02:43:18.370318 [0-0] == Info: Host www.google.com:80 was resolved.
02:43:18.370467 [0-0] == Info: IPv6: 2607:f8b0:4005:80d::2004
02:43:18.370566 [0-0] == Info: IPv4: 142.250.189.164
02:43:18.370624 [0-0] == Info: [SETUP] added
02:43:18.370723 [0-0] == Info: Trying [2607:f8b0:4005:80d::2004]:80…
02:43:18.370951 [0-0] == Info: Immediate connect fail for 2607:f8b0:4005:80d::2004: Network is unreachable
02:43:18.371175 [0-0] == Info: Trying 142.250.189.164:80…
02:43:18.371332 [0-0] == Info: [SETUP] Curl_conn_connect(block=0) -> 0, done=0
02:43:18.544635 [0-0] == Info: [SETUP] Curl_conn_connect(block=0) -> 0, done=0
02:43:18.570870 [0-0] == Info: [SETUP] Curl_conn_connect(block=0) -> 0, done=0
02:43:18.699887 [0-0] == Info: [SETUP] Curl_conn_connect(block=0) -> 0, done=1
02:43:18.700062 [0-0] == Info: Connected to www.google.com (142.250.189.164) port 80
02:43:18.700228 [0-0] == Info: using HTTP/1.x
02:43:18.700338 [0-0] => Send header, 82 bytes (0x52)
0000: GET / HTTP/1.1
0010: Host: www.google.com
0026: User-Agent: curl/8.13.0-rc2
0043: Accept: */*
0050:
02:43:18.700663 [0-0] == Info: Request completely sent off

Then suddenly just to try something different I tried accessing one of my servers over SSH and surprisingly that worked without issues (The connection was a bit slow, but it worked). That showed me that the issue was only for sites over http/https.

I searched the web for solutions and found the following site Setting correct MTU where they were troubleshooting a similar issue. The site suggested adding the following lines to the Client Configuration and I thought I might as well give it a try since nothing else had worked. 

 tun-mtu 1492
mssfix 1400

I added the lines, restarted the connection and viola all sites started loading even when connected over the VPN. (Yay!) Turns out Airtel needs a higher MTU value than the default for the VPN to work.

– Suramya

December 25, 2025

Bad Idea no 2323546: Chat with AI Version of Ex to ‘get over them’

Filed under: Artificial Intelligence,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Tags: — Suramya @ 9:56 PM

I am making yet another post about AI and again not in a good way. The AI we want is something like Cortana from the Halo games, Chappie from Forbidden Planet or Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. What we have instead is a scholastic parrot that can’t answer basic questions and is more of a plagiarism machine than AI. The scary part is that people are pushing it as the cure for everything and anything. In doing that they want people to stop talking to other people and instead talk to a machine instead. This is bad for all sorts of reasons and has been causing irreparable harm to the world and the way we think of other people.

Loosing someone either because they passed away or because they left you can be hard and it takes time to get over the loss. There are folks who have a hard time with this especially when the relationship was troubled/complicated and that is why Psychiatrists are there to help you get over this loss, another option is to be with friends and family who will help you with the ups and downs.

But now the Techbros have decided that they know better than anyone what is good for the people ’cause they are not people who have friends and a lot of times think of people as interchangeable parts… Elon Musk famously calls people who don’t agree with him or who he doesn’t like NPC’s which is a gaming term for Non Player Characters controlled by the game’s AI i.e. not real. So it is not surprising they have come up with the following abomination:

Chat with their AI-version of your ex. Thinking about your ex 24/7? There's nothing wrong with you. Chat with their AI version and finally let it go.
Chat with their AI-version of your ex. Thinking about your ex 24/7? There’s nothing wrong with you. Chat with their AI version and finally let it go. closure.ink

I found this in my feed and went to their site to learn more (not linking to it because this site doesn’t deserve any more traffic.) and below is their explanation of how things work:

AI-chats with those who disappeared
Chat with the AI version of the person who ghosted you. Get your answers. Regain your strength – and move on.

How It Works
1. Select Who Ghosted You. Choose the type of person who ghosted you – a friend, date partner, recruiter, or long-term partner.
2. Tell Your Story. Share details about your relationship and what happened to help our AI understand your situation.
3. Chat for Closure

Our AI plays role of the person ghosting you. Express your anger, get your answers, and find your closure.

The page is right about the fact that you need to talk about your feelings to someone when you have been Ghosted (or lose someone) but talking to ‘AI’ is not the answer. In fact it can actually make things worse. In Nov 2025, a college graduate who was feeling down shared his feelings with ChatGPT because it was his closest confidant and ChatGPT encouraged him to kill himself as per a lawsuit filed against ChatGPT. More details on the case is documented on this Wikipedia page. This wasn’t the only case where chatbots encouraged/made the situation worse when people who are in a fragile state reached out for help. An incomplete list of Deaths linked to chatbots is available on Wikipedia and multiple mental health professionals have raised concerns about this epidemic which is only going to get worse because of the Hype machine pushing AI as a solution for all ills.

Humans are social animals and need to talk to others. Others might not agree with you 100% of the time but will give you an alternate view that you might not have thought about on your own. It is good for us to have people who challenge our views and thoughts. Otherwise we end up thinking we know everything about everything and end up in situations that could have been avoided if someone had challenged us earlier. Elon Musk is infamous for this, as most of his ideas don’t really work but everyone around him keeps calling him a genius who can do no wrong so we end up with rockets exploding and damaged launch pads because Musk overrode the engineers about the construction. There are countless other examples of this.

I do understand that there are folks who don’t have a good support system around them for various reasons and they should take even more care when interacting with AI as a support system. They can try to chat with online friends, professional psychiatrists, organized groups etc. For example, on Mastodon has a tag that you can follow to have a friendly chat with people on any topic:

Fedi.Tips 🎄@FediTips:

Reminder that if you’re wanting to have a friendly chat with people about everyday things, perhaps Christmas-related or perhaps not, there’s a tag for this at:

➡️

You can talk about what you’re doing or enjoying today. Music, food, television, books, the weather… anything 🙂

It’s meant to connect people who want to have friendly discussions. Everyone is welcome to use it, but it’s especially meant to help people who are a bit isolated for whatever reason.

There are similar other resources available for people who need it including phone lines that you can call for help or just to vent.

To get you over someone, it really helps if you divert your mind by doing something else such as starting a new hobby, activity or changing your daily routine. I started Trekking to meet new people and ended up meeting my wife on a trek. Go out explore the world, you will have a better experience and get more support than what you can ever get from a ‘spicy autocomplete.’

– Suramya

December 12, 2025

30th anniversary of Warcraft II, One of my all time favorite games

Filed under: My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:31 AM

Warcraft II is one of my all time favorite games along with Diablo (I, II & III). Warcraft II was released on December 9, 1995 and I first played it in 1997/98. Even though I am not a gamer I spent way too many all-nighters playing the game. Warcraft III was released a few years later but for some reason I never really got into it much, even now I have the game installed on my machine though its been a while since I last played it. But maybe this is a good excuse to try it out again. 🙂

If you have not played it, you should definitely check it out. I bought both Warcraft I & Warcraft II along with a whole bunch of other Blizzard games from GoG where they were part of the GOG Preservation Program but unfortunately because of various reasons they were delisted from the GoG store a year ago. Thankfully because of their effort the installer works offline without any issues. The game is still available for sale directly from Blizzard but that requires an account with them.

In Warcraft II, as in many RTS games, players collect resources to produce buildings and units to defeat an opponent in combat. Players gain access to more advanced units upon construction of tech buildings and research. The majority of the display screen shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating, and, using the small mini-map, the player can select another location to view and operate on. The fog of war completely hides all territory (appears black) which the player has not explored: terrain that has been explored is always visible in gray tones, but enemy units remain visible only so long as they stay within a friendly unit’s visual radius. Buildings remain displayed as the player last saw them, and do not register unobserved changes such as being built, damaged, or repaired, etc.

Interestingly, this is one of the few games that I am able to run on my Linux machine without any issues. I know Stream allows you to play games on Linux, but I am not enough of a gamer to spend the minimal effort to install and configure it. Thanks to Crossover by Codeweavers, the game works out of the box on my Debian system.

On a side note, Crossover is a fantastic piece of software which allows you to run most Windows software on Linux seamlessly. (The team keeps adding support for the ones that are not yet supported fully). All the Windows software that I need is installed on my Linux machine using Crossover and the best part is that I don’t need to have a separate Windows install in a VM or anything for this to work. Check out the Software Compatibility list published by Codeweavers to see if the software you use is supported or not. It is a paid software but one that I am happy to pay for (If you don’t renew your subscription you lose access to the dedicated support and new releases but your existing installs continue to work fine.)

Source: HackerNews: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness

– Suramya

December 11, 2025

Remotely accessible platform for biocomputing research using Lab-Grown Human Neurons

Filed under: Emerging Tech,My Thoughts,Science Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:33 AM

Biocomputing is the term given to the effort to create a computer based on biological parts or biologically derived molecules such as DNA and/or proteins to function as a computer. It is an evolving field with a huge potential that is aiming to create a computer similar to the human brain which is a phenomenally powerful machine. As per some of the research that I found, the human brain can apparently process 11 Terabytes of information per second and store about 2.5 petabytes (2.5 million gigabytes) of data. Another advantage of a biological computer is that it is relatively easier to power and can be powered by something as simple as glucose mixed in water that is converted to energy by the cells. This would allow the system to become independent of unreliable power sources and the advantages of that are limitless.

Researchers have been working on Bio Computers for more than 30 years now, I first wrote about them back in early 2000’s. They are still in early stages where they can play games such as Pong.

A Swiss startup FinalSpark is taking this to the next level and have successfully grown human neurons from stem cells which are then connected to electrode arrays allowing them to be accessed over the internet. This platform is called Neuroplatform and supports both electrical and chemical stimulation methods. Users can programmatically trigger neurotransmitters like dopamine, glutamate, and serotonin through a Python-based stimulation API. Neuroplatform is used by multiple universities, such as the University of Michigan, Free University of Berlin, University of Exeter, Lancaster University Leipzig, University of York etc.

Wetware computing and organoid intelligence is an emerging research field at the intersection of electrophysiology and artificial intelligence. The core concept involves using living neurons to perform computations, similar to how Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are used today. However, unlike ANNs, where updating digital tensors (weights) can instantly modify network responses, entirely new methods must be developed for neural networks using biological neurons. Discovering these methods is challenging and requires a system capable of conducting numerous experiments, ideally accessible to researchers worldwide. For this reason, we developed a hardware and software system that allows for electrophysiological experiments on an unmatched scale. The Neuroplatform enables researchers to run experiments on neural organoids with a lifetime of even more than 100 days. To do so, we streamlined the experimental process to quickly produce new organoids, monitor action potentials 24/7, and provide electrical stimulations. We also designed a microfluidic system that allows for fully automated medium flow and change, thus reducing the disruptions by physical interventions in the incubator and ensuring stable environmental conditions. Over the past three years, the Neuroplatform was utilized with over 1,000 brain organoids, enabling the collection of more than 18 terabytes of data. A dedicated Application Programming Interface (API) has been developed to conduct remote research directly via our Python library or using interactive compute such as Jupyter Notebooks. In addition to electrophysiological operations, our API also controls pumps, digital cameras and UV lights for molecule uncaging. This allows for the execution of complex 24/7 experiments, including closed-loop strategies and processing using the latest deep learning or reinforcement learning libraries. Furthermore, the infrastructure supports entirely remote use. Currently in 2024, the system is freely available for research purposes, and numerous research groups have begun using it for their experiments. This article outlines the system’s architecture and provides specific examples of experiments and results.

FinalSpark has also released the code related to Neuroplatform as Opensource on GitHub.

Am excited to see what folks come up with on this platform.

Source: itsfoss.com: This Company Uses Lab-Grown Human Neurons for Energy-efficient Computing

– Suramya

December 9, 2025

Security vs Accessibility: Thoughts on the problem and how it can be addressed

Filed under: Computer Security,Computer Software,Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Tags: , — Suramya @ 8:46 PM

Security is something that always comes at an expense of Usability and I wrote about this earlier as well. However, in this post I am going to talk about something slightly different: How security measures impact accessibility. At first glance it might look that both topics are the same but there are extra nuances in the Accessibility that unfortunately are not considered a lot of the time when we design a system. To be honest I didn’t think about it much either until I saw a post by James on Mastodon highlighting the issue:

https://mastodon.social/@jscholes@dragonscave.space/115673620717345529
Security measures impacting Accessibility for blind users

A severe issue I’ve seen very few people talking about is the widespread adoption (in my country at least) of touch-only card payment terminals with no physical number buttons.

Not only do these devices offer no tactile affordances, but the on-screen numbers move around to limit the chances of a customer’s PIN number being captured by bad actors. In turn, this makes it impossible to create any kind of physical overlay (which itself would be a hacky solution at best).

When faced with such a terminal, blind people have only a few ways to proceed:

* Switch to cash (if they have it);
* refuse to pay via inaccessible means;
* ask the seller to split the transaction into several to facilitate multiple contactless payments (assuming contactless is available);
* switch to something like Apple Pay (again assuming availability); or
* hand over their PIN to a complete stranger.

Not one of these solutions is without problems.

If you’re , have you encountered this situation, and if so how did you deal with it? It’s not uncommon for me to run into it several times per day.

why do you think this is not being talked about or made the subject of action by blindness organisations? Is it the case that it disproportionately affects people in countries where alternative payment technology (like paying via a smart watch) is slower to roll out and economically out of reach for residents?

It is easy to forget that others have different requirements and needs than you and navigating a world which is moving towards removing tactile feedback makes it harder for people with vision problems or motor control issues from interacting with the world. Every single security feature that we add to a system the more the potential of making the system inaccessible increases. For example, if we have captcha checks while logging into a site or a computer then screen readers can’t read the captcha by design so blind users are unable to log in to the system. A fix for that was to have audible captcha code but with the advances in voice recognition an attacker can use a voice recognition system to identify the code and bypass the security measure.

Accessibility features / functionality seems to be an afterthought (if that) for developers even in 2025. There are major accessibility issues in Linux and Fireborn (Couldn’t find their real name) did a whole series of blog post’s about the issues they face as a blind person using Linux (I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 1 – Built for Control, But Not for People) on a day to day basis. The sad part is that while a lot of people acknowledged the issue and agreed to work on fixing it there were the usual gatekeepers who wrote nasty/condescending messages in response to the post, Fireborn responded to the comment quite beautifully (and a lot more politely than I would have in their position) in another blog post (You Don’t Own the Word “Freedom”: A Full-Burn Response to the GNU/Linux Comment That Tried to Gatekeep Me Off My Own Machine) This right here is the issue that we need to solve. People don’t think we need to work on accessibility because they don’t need it. I remember reading an article about how there was a group of people really upset because a streaming solution was giving more focus on subtitles for their shows. No one is forcing you to enable subtitles but folks who don’t speak the language or have hearing issues they are a lifesaver.

Coming back to the security & accessibility issue for a POS (Point of Sales system), there is no easy way to solve this problem for card users. One option I can think of is for stores to keep a physical bluetooth pin-pad that is paired with the POS machine so that users with vision problems can use the physical keyboard to enter the pin. This would require effort (and have a cost implication) from the store so I don’t know how many stores will do that. It would work if there was a law that required the store to do this but if that is not there then the users are lost.

Another option would be to have a screen/image reader application on a phone that the user (or store) owns that scans the display and then reads out the numbers displayed. Even better functionality would be to have the app detect which number is covered by the user’s finger and let the user know verbally (over a headset ideally) so that they can enter the numbers.

These are some of the ways that I can think of to solve this problem but since I am not the target user a better way to approach this issue would be to work with folks with vision problems and have them confirm if the solution we are coming up is actually solving their problem or not.

– Suramya

November 21, 2025

Zork I, II, and III code officially released under the MIT Open Source License

Filed under: My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:24 PM

Zork is one of the oldest text adventure games first released in 1977 that most of the old timers who worked with computers played at one time or another. Instead of a visual interface or graphics the game relied on textual information and the user gives commands to the system in plain English such as ‘Open Door’, or ‘move left’ etc. It is one of the most famous and popular interactive fiction games around even though it had no graphics, no joystick, and no soundtrack.

I am not old enough to have played the game when it first came out but got to try it out once I was in college. At one point most of the older techies I met and interacted with had played it to the point jokes about meeting a ‘Grue’ (A monster in the game) were common when talking about potentially unknown/maybe dangerous stuff or places.

Till recently even though the source code for Zork was publicly available on GitHub, the license situation was unclear which meant that any derivative works or any attempt to release/work on the game came with a risk of a cease-and-desist order from Microsoft (which owns the copyright for the came) and a potentially expensive lawsuit. But now that is no longer an issue because Microsoft has officially released the source code for Zork I, II, and III as Open Source under the MIT License.

“Rather than creating new repositories, we’re contributing directly to history. In collaboration with Jason Scott, the well-known digital archivist of Internet Archive fame, we have officially submitted upstream pull requests to the historical source repositories of Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III. Those pull requests add a clear MIT LICENSE and formally document the open-source grant,” says the announcement co-written by Stacy Haffner (director of the OSPO at Microsoft) and Scott Hanselman (VP of Developer Community at the company).

Source: opensource.microsoft.com: Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source

– Suramya

September 24, 2025

No pets for employees because it distracts them from customers

Filed under: My Thoughts,Tech Related — Tags: — Suramya @ 10:20 PM

If you listen to companies online you will hear this common refrain that people don’t want to work or that it is so hard to find good resources. Then you read posts from companies which will make you think “What on earth did I read? and is this guy serious?”. The latest example of this kind of post is from Raymond Guo at Noon AI who posted the following gem on LinkedIn:

At Noon Al, we don't believe employees should own pets Pets demand time and emotional energy that belong to our customers. We once had an employee who had a pet. No surprise, he had a terrible work ethic. Our team's focus is singular: building the world's best Al recruiting platform. Since enforcing this policy, we've cut distractions and boosted productivity by 25%. Dogs, cats, or fish.. they're liabilities when global clients expect instant support. Commitment means no divided loyalties, even to a pet This is the Noon Al mentality. If you disagree, I'd love to see what your revenue is!
No pets for employees because it distracts them from our customers

At Noon Al, we don’t believe employees should own pets
Pets demand time and emotional energy that belong to our customers.
We once had an employee who had a pet.
No surprise, he had a terrible work ethic.
Our team’s focus is singular: building the world’s best AI recruiting platform.
Since enforcing this policy, we’ve cut distractions and boosted productivity by 25%.
Dogs, cats, or fish.. they’re liabilities when global clients expect instant support.
Commitment means no divided loyalties, even to a pet
This is the Noon Al mentality.
If you disagree, I’d love to see what your revenue is!

Or put it another way, we want to suck all remaining joy out of your life because it will allow us to exploit you a little bit more and earn a few extra dollars. If I was told this in an interview or after I was hired I would immediately resign/start looking for another job even though I don’t have a pet and am not planning to get one. If the company is exploitive enough that they are restricting you from getting a pet (which is a personal choice and frankly none of their business) then there is no way they will allow you to have a personal life… The company might make some money in the short term by squeezing their employees but in the long term they will loose talent, and money because people will not want to work in such conditions if they have any other options.

Unfortunately this is not an uncommon way of thinking. Multiple people post daily on LinkedIn (and other forums) expecting employees to be virtual slaves and have no other interests and work other than to slave away in the office making them money. Take the following post as an example:

Full text below the image
If you take vacations or self-care holidays then you should be fired

About half a dozen times in the past six months, I’ve emailed with a junior person
at a firm who has said blithely “sorry, I can’t meet or talk that week” or “I didn’t
read my email last week” because … wait for it … “I was / will be on vacation.

Look, you can say whatever you want about vacation and time off. You can have
whatever opinion you want about work/life balance. There are a thousand fields in
which to work, a million jobs to have in life.

But if your job title is venture CAPITALIST — if you are looking to invest in high-
velocity, high-octane startups — if you are a junior person at your VENTURE
CAPITAL firm that is seeking to match up with hardcore entrepreneurs — if you’re a
junior person whose job it is to hunt deals and find treasures and make
connections to other VCs and to the startups they fund — and if you are treating
yourself to “phones down” vacations and “self care holidays” — you should just be
fired. That’s it. No exceptions. Just fired

This is one of the more ridiculous ways of looking at things that I have seen and trust me I have seen a lot of them in the past 25 years in the industry. If you are a fresher or junior person this might seem normal to you but trust me it isn’t. You need to have time for yourself to recharge/reset else you are on fast track to burnout. It might not happen immediately but the long term impacts are there (and I am telling you this from personal experience).

My suggestion to my team and juniors is that they should get a hobby that takes them away from the computer for a little while and set reasonable expectations on their work. That is not to say in an emergency they will be required to be there till the issue gets resolved but for most days I tell them to decide what time is the latest they would like to take calls (we work very closely a lot with US teams) and then ask their counterparts to schedule calls before that time.

Expecting folks to work the same hours as a founder/owner for a fraction of the pay & benefits doesn’t make sense (as an employee), Give overtime pay for extra hours worked and then you will see folks put in extra hours if they want to. You can’t get something for nothing remember.

– Suramya

September 19, 2025

Swiss cheese font

Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:48 AM

The Swiss cheese has a very unique look and from the first time I saw it in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, I have loved it. Designer Rob apparently loves it as well because he has created a font he calls Swiss Cheese Mono which is a typeface full of holes inspired by the Swiss cheese look.

Introducing Swiss Cheese Mono Font
Introducing Swiss Cheese Mono Font

The font is current in uppercase only and is available for sale at Swiss Cheese Mono font (uppercase only) for $2.99. From the description.

Swiss Cheese Mono is a chunky, sans-serif, monospaced display font created primarily from squares with circular “holes” in them. Currently available in uppercase only.

When Rob posted some images of the work-in-progress font on Threads, many of the nearly 33,000 people who liked the images said the font looked like Swiss cheese. After taking some photos of real cheese, playing around with Adobe Firefly’s generative AI image tools, and finishing the font, Swiss Cheese Mono was born.

I find the font a little hard to read as they are sort of like the images with perspective views that require you to squint in a particular way to see them correctly. So I doubt anyone is going to use it for anything professional (unless it is for food related posts/presentations) but it is still cool to see.

Source: mastodon.social/@cmconseils.

– Suramya

September 18, 2025

Creating a Phishy URL

Filed under: Humor,Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:21 PM

Url shortners have been used for a while now to to reduce the length of a URL to something that can be easily shared online. It became extra popular at sites like Twitter which counted the URL length into the character count for the post (though that was later changed to a fixed number, 23 if I remember correctly). The disadvantage of such shortner’s was that they converted phishing links into a shorter URL that looked legit and the only way to figure out if the link was valid was to access it which could be risky due to Zero day exploits etc. This made life ‘interesting’ from a security controls perspective as it makes it harder to control/restrict such urls.

So someone decided to take it the other way and create a re-director that converts regular URL’s into a really fishy looking URL

This is a tool that takes any link and makes it look malicious. It works on the idea of a redirect. Much like https://tinyurl.com/ for example. Where tinyurl makes an url shorter, this site makes it look malicious.

Place any link in the below input, press the button and get back a fishy(phishy, heh…get, it?) looking link. The fishy link doesn’t actually do anything, it will just redirect you to the original link you provided.

You can try them out at https://phishyurl.com/. I asked the site to create a link to suramya.com/blog and it generated the following URL:

https://cheap-bitcoin.online/evil-hunter/exploit-jacker/fake_launcher_tool.exe?content=overwrite&id=824e35fe&origin=spoof&payload=%28function%28%29%7Blet+a%3D5%2Cb%3D3%3Blet+sum%3Da%2Bb%3B%7D%29%28%29%3B&portscan=scan&referer=tamper

If you visit the above link, it will take you to the blog homepage.

Source: chaos.social/@FlohEinstein

– Suramya

September 14, 2025

There is now a SQL port of Doom on CedarDB

Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:06 AM

There is an ongoing joke that if a device can perform calculations and has a display it will be used to run Doom. The same way a programming language is considered successful if Doom has been ported to it. Lukas Vogel, has added one more language to the list of languages that were used to write a port of Doom entirely in SQL with CedarDB doing all the heavy lifting. His blog post (Building a DOOM-like multiplayer shooter in pure SQL) has a full writeup on the technical nuts and bolts of the implementation.


DOOMQL in action

Due to the limitations of the language and backend engine the implementation looks like an ASCII display instead of the the more familiar 3D art & sprites. That said this is an impressive achievement. I think this would be a good way to stress/load test a DB server. Atleast that is how I am going to pitch it, the next time I am involved in the setup and testing of a Database server.

Source :The Register: Just because you can render a Doom-like in SQL doesn’t mean you should

– Suramya

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