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Science, Software, Hardware:

• Firefox und Chrome verraten IP-Adressen trotz VPN ~ WebRTC ist sowieso ein Scheiß. Man kann nicht mal eine direkte UDP-Verbindung zum Server öffnen, ohne ICE-Relay (und hört mir auf mit ICELite ~ einen Standard der form "Standard A = Standard B ohne {X, Y, Z}" kann ich nicht ernstnehmen. Ansonsten glaube ich nicht, dass Flash sich im Zweifelsfall davon abhalten ließe, die IP-Adresse zu veröffentlichen, außerdem kann man bekannte VPNs und Tor-Exitnodes auch aussperren, das kann man sogar mit Kwalitätssicherung begründen, weil ja da die Videos nicht so Latenzarm sind.
• Mozilla: Hating you so you don't have to ~ So now there's a random service running when I start firefox

Zeroth World:

• Illegale Downloads sind nicht halal
• Software That Helps Businesses Rid Their Supply Chains of Slave Labor

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos:

• But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.
• Drones
• Konventionelle Katastrophen
• The greatest Venn Diagram to ever exist
• Does More. Costs Less.
• API
• Spartaaa

Quotes:

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. (Martin Luther King)

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Popular Culture:

• Gewusst wie: Im EU-Ausland zum Arzt gehen

Nerd Culture:

• OverbiteFF ~ Add legacy protocol support back to Firefox.

Science, Software, Hardware:

• Tab notifier ~ useful for the shitty web interfaces for some chats.
• whowatch (1) - console, interactive, process and users monitoring tool
• Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Original Source Code (1978)
• Memory Pool System
• Release 0.2 of clasp is available
• Facebook Launches ‘Lite’ App for Users in the Developing World
• MiniMagAsm ~ minimalistic, but powerful and flexible CMS, implemented entirely in assembly language.

Zeroth World:

• U. S. Air Force study on teleportation

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos:

• Sag Niemals Hollerö!
• Design vs User Experience
• Blame Men
• Allergies
• Textbook Editions
• Walking their Dogs

Quotes:

• What does a hawaiian terrorist say?aloha akbar
• I used to have superpowers...but the psychiatrist took them away

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Popular Culture:

• CSU: Terroristen könnten sich als Flüchtlinge tarnen ~ und CSU-Mitglieder könnten sich als Politiker tarnen.
• Cannabis-Patient stirbt im Krankenhaus ~ Sein Arzt vermutet: Hätte er weiter sein Gras gehabt, "wäre er jetzt vielleicht noch am Leben" ~ na das nenne ich mal erfolgreiche Drogenpolitik.

Nerd Culture:

• I want this zelda figure!!1!

Science, Software, Hardware:

• http://texteditors.org/
• Haptic technology: The next frontier in video games
• Verizons Super-Cookies offenbar sehr beliebt ~ das ist ja heftig. Aber wie machen die das bei SSL?
• Lend your eyes to the blind
• Retiring Python as a Teaching Language

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos:

• Learning curves of programming languages
• A gift for everyone
• Verschärfung jetzt?
• City Hall Approved
• Tattoos
• Trapped
• Boko Haram
• Russia
• Stupid Deer
• The Elephant's Garden ~ what did they smoke?
• Not Very Bright

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The general state of instant messaging is horrible. Google - once the most preferrable commercial XMPP provider - dropped federation, and some people say that they even plan to shut down the XMPP access at all. Facebook already announced that it will do so, but at least provides an open API as alternative, for which there is already an experimental BitlBee extension. Skype dropped its public API a while ago. So while the Linux folks keep building their new ivory tower, all the achievements of the last decades seem to slowly vanish.

Anyway, so there we are, at a time when one must be glad if the "non-computer-people" regularily use Facebook instead of Skype chats. But some do, and since I hate the original Skype client, I spent a few hours in search for alternatives to the public API. Even though I did not yet write anything really usable, I'd like to share what I found out, to give other people inspiration, and as notes for myself. Everything mentioned here is experimental. Furthermore, I am in no way affiliated with Skype or Microsoft.

In theory, it should be possible to access Skype chats via MSN. This page has a nice summary about MSN servers that work. However, though I can manage to log in, my Skype contacts are not shown, and I do not get Skype messages. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

Skype chats can now be accessed via Outlook's Webinterface. It would have been nice to use this webinterface with edbrowse, but it does not even load. It is probably possible to reverse engineer this interface. But then again, web interfaces can be changed, and obfuscated. However, this webinterface seems to use MSNP24, and people are trying to reverse engineer it. This is probably the most promising approach. On the other hand, it is probably violating some terms of use.

My approach was different: I was trying to use the official client, as one would have done with the old public API. I was trying to use AT-SPI, specifically pyatspi2, since orca appears to work well with Skype. I used the accerciser tool to examine Skype.

Skype uses 32 bit Qt, so be sure to have qt-at-spi for that architecture. Under x64 Ubuntu, the package is called qt-at-spi:i386. Make sure that QT_ACCESSIBILITY=1 for your session. If accerciser shows you an entry for Skype, you know that you did it correctly.

The following script works fairly reliable for me and shows the contacts in my contact list. I am using the client version 4.3.0.37. Furthermore, this only works with the English language setting, and the window should not be iconified.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import pyatspi
import time

reg = pyatspi.Registry
skype = None

def getElementBy(parent, prop):
    for i in range(0, parent.getChildCount()):
        if prop(parent[i]):
            return parent[i]
        else:
            child = getElementBy(parent[i], prop)
            if child != None:
                return child
                return None

for i in range(0, reg.getDesktopCount()):
    d = reg.getDesktop(i)
    for app in d:
        if app.name == "skype":
            skype = app

if skype is None:
    print("skype is None")
    exit (-1)

# the main window is unique (hopefully)
mainwindowmenu = getElementBy (skype, lambda x: x.get_role_name() == 'menu bar')
if mainwindowmenu is None:
    print("mainwindowmenu is None")
    exit(-1)

contacts = getElementBy(mainwindowmenu.get_parent(),
                        lambda x: x.name =='Contacts')
if contacts is None:
    print("contacts is None")
    exit(-1)

for i in range(0, contacts.getChildCount(), 7):
    if i != 0:
        p = contacts[i].get_position(0)
        print(contacts[i].name + " → (" + str(p.x) + ", " + str(p.y) + ")")

The less reliable part now is actually sending messages. If the contact list is in the foreground, and sufficiently large to show all contacts, then you can send double clicks on the contact you want to chat with, to open the chat window

p = contacts[14].get_position(0)
reg.generateMouseEvent(p.x+2, p.y+2, pyatspi.MOUSE_B3D)

As I said, this is not really reliable, it is very fragile. Maybe on an own dedicated X-Server with a huge virtual screen, this could be used. To actually set the message that is to be sent, I had to hack a bit: Skype sometimes keeps other message text boxes in the background. However, their size is always zero. The following is very bad style, as it creates a busy infinite loop if something goes wrong. But as a proof-of-concept, it is ok, I guess.

msg = None
while msg is None:
    msg = getElementBy(skype,
                       lambda x: (x.name == 'Send a message') and
                       (x.get_size().x != 0))
    time.sleep(.2)

msg.set_text_contents("This is a test")

So far so good. Sometimes Skype crashes when doing this. But mostly it works. It brings the text window to front. To actually send the message, we can send the Return key:

reg.generateKeyboardEvent(36, None, pyatspi.KEY_PRESSRELEASE)

Another way of sending keystrokes and even resizing and moving windows is xdotool(1), which could come handy when using this method to send messages.

To receive messages, it is probably the easiest to just poll the sqlite database main.db in ~/.Skype/, which is in a subdirectory named after the account name. It has a table "Messages". To get the timestamp of the last message (which you probably want when starting your script)

select MAX(timestamp) from Messages;

then, assuming it was 1421498680, messages can be queried using

select id, author, body_xml from Messages where timestamp >= 1421498680;

In summary, try to convince your friends to use Facebook if they really want a commercial chat provider. Run a good XMPP server (with auto-ping and low tcp keepalive timeout and XEP-0313 or even XEP-0136 I'll probably do so when jessie gets stable), and offer them accounts. And if you really have to use Skype, face the evil!

Update: This project seems nice.

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Popular Culture:

• Fehlschuss eines Jägers trifft Babybett
• Eine Datei
• Outward-Arched Curtain Hooks

Nerd Culture:

• Nike will Schuhe aus "Zurück in die Zukunft 2" dieses Jahr veröffentlichen
• 4 Bullshit Tech Products You'll Hate in 2015
• Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift

Science, Software, Hardware:

• Die CSU will den Ausbau von Breitband-Internet über Oberleitungen ermöglichen ~ endlich mal ein sinnvoller vorschlag.
• Quantum optical hard drive breakthrough ~ "Even transporting our crystals at pedestrian speeds we have less loss than laser systems for a given distance."
• Big O Cheat Sheet
• Intel Compute Stick fits Windows on a dongle
• WLAN-Angriffstool wifiphisher ~ naja, dass das angreifbar ist, ist ja bekannt. Lösungen sind auch bekannt.
• Double amputee controls two prosthetic arms at once, using his mind
• IM Observatory

Zeroth World:

• Fettsüchtige zu operieren, kann ihr Leben retten

Comics/Images/Audios/Videos:

• Verschwörung
• Amazon Complete
• Knock on wood
• Cop Ticket
• Full
• Stammtisch
• Freiheit
• Je Suis Charlie: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
• Decent Exposure
• How to suck at your religion

Quotes:

• Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
• If you ever feel useless, always remember... that North Korea has a hotel.

I have written before about dnsmasq and pxe-booting. I was setting up an old thin client as a print server, which could not boot from usb sticks. Therefore, I needed to run a pxe-server to install debian on its internal memory.

So here is a short description. This is more a "note-to-self", and especially, this kind of stuff keeps changing the way it works from now and then. But at least, sharing it with the world might make it easier for you to find a solution.

This setup is not for permanently running servers. It is for connecting a single other computer to a laptop via ethernet, booting it, and installing.

I want my computer to route from the interface eth0 to wlan0. wlan0 is managed by network-manager. For eth0, my interfaces(5) contains

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.222.1
netmask 255.255.255.0

Make sure to restart your entire network setup, including network-manager, otherwise, network-manager might try to keep setting up eth0. (I am not sure whether one can do this with network-manager too.)

Furthermore, the sysctl(8)-setting net.ipv4.ip_forward must be set to 1. I put that setting into my sysctl.conf(5) and reloaded, but it can be set directly, so it is not persistent. To make eth0 a NAT to wlan0, I run

sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE

My working directory is /home/christoph/software/pxesetup. In this, I have a file dnsmasq.conf with the contents

interface=eth0
bind-interfaces
dhcp-range=eth0,192.168.222.1,192.168.222.128,12h
dhcp-authoritative
enable-tftp
tftp-root=/home/christoph/software/pxesetup/tftp/
dhcp-boot=pxelinux.0
listen-address=192.168.222.1

Be careful to change the interface name accordingly: You will be running an authoritative dhcp server, do not do this in networks you do not own. Now we need the pxelinux files from Debian, which can (at the time of writing this) be found here and here. Create /home/christoph/software/pxesetup/tftp, and put pxelinux.0 in that directory, and uncompress the tarball into it (it creates a subdirectory debian-installer). Do a chmod -R a+rwx on that directory - server-installations should set the permissions more carefully, but for one-time-installations with my own laptop, it is sufficient.

Finally, run

sudo dnsmasq -dC /home/christoph/software/pxesetup/dnsmasq.conf

connect your client and let it boot via PXE. I hope this helps. At least it will help me to remember my setup. Comments and corrections are welcome, just send me an e-mail.