Alpha Testing

Version 1.0 of the Application had a very crude chatroom which was taken out at version 2.0 and reintegrated into version 3.0 with audio chat functionality which was again removed and is now being reintegrated into version 6.0 (which might properly be called version 0.6 as the application at present with features spread in an unintegrated fashion across several incompatible versions is not exactly competetent against Squarespace or Wordpress or such like.

Chatrooms are being re-introduced but to prevent in the issues of how crude they were in Version 1.0, they are being built very slowly and carefully thought out. When I say "re-integration of a feature" it generally means "had to write the whole source code again from scratch". The way plug-ins work in version 6.0 is more settled than they were in previous versions and rewriting a feature does not mean rewriting the whole site so much nowadays. However, this is the second write of the chatroom feature as the previous chatrooms plug for version 6.0 of the application was put together with selotape and sticky back plastic making it not very robust or easy to mend if a bug was spotted. Race conditions when two people are trying to write to a chatroom at the exact same moment would have taken weeks to discern and even longer to debug, so version 2.0 of chat for version 6.0 of the application is now being alpha tested at The Chatrooms Page.

This version of the plug-in integrates with the website theme and offers a variety of categories which can be easily changed (only if you have FTP or cPanel access at present). It allows logged in users to text chat to one another but there are a few features missing and a few things that dont quite work as well as I would want them to. There's no private message facility available as yet, albeit that the user interface for it can be seen in the background by the appearance of a dead article underneath the main chat window. This is where PM's will pop-up for users who receive them. There is also the issue of the same user being in the same room twice. I'm not quite sure if this is a desirable feature or a bug. Suppose they switch devices but dont want to miss a thing as they log into their phone while they are still logged into their desktop? Suppose they just open up ten browser tabs and take up lots of bandwidth for no good reason? Design is a decision making process.

There's no audio-chat. To be fair the version 3.0 audio chat functionality was never quite completed and was featured as a special kind of forum rather than a chatroom feature in version 3.0. The audio-chat functionality will be the last feature of the chatrooms to be developed, not only because there is no full code example to just adopt and adapt like some of the feature re-integrations of the past and present but because it's the most difficult part for a single developer to debug. How do I talk to myself on two channels at the same time?

It will not be using WebRTC but it may support video in later versions. The whole point in WebRTC seems ill founded when most people are accessing the internet throug their phones which require a TURN server due to port blocking NATs on the ISP side. To run an audio conference, most participants will be needing to you to supply a TURN server which will be a pseudo "them" on the internet taking all their bandwidth and supplying it to the site where TURN servers all the other participants of the audio conference are using. Ultimately, its not really peer to peer which would takes the bandwidth required of a traditional audio conference server and places this burden on the peers themself. Due to port blocking NATs by mobile phone ISP's, the modern audio conference is peer-TURN-peer rather than peer-peer and the person running the audio conference has to supply the TURN or most people wont be able to participate. Since the host has to supply that bandwidth anyway, why go to the complexity of providing TURN and STUN servers just to cater to the needs of the very few. May as well provide the bandwidth directly throug the main server until phone providers stop the port block antics which are really about restricting people from running webservers without relying on big businesses capitalising on designed obsolecence and inoperability.

Next on the Cards

Well finish writing these long overdue news items for a start and since they are almost complete, it's bathtime, shoptime, then I will be getting stuck into the One user logged in twice design choice and then the mechanism for Private Messaging. Don't quote me on it but the text chat should be fully complete in less than a week and then its moving on to the audio chat which, quote me on it, will be penned in to take one week to develop, will take a second week to do an entire rewrite, will take a third week to work out the problems that come up on the live site and yet another one week to fix the issues. Hopefully if I brace myself for the worst, the storm wont be so bad right?

Having completed chat, there's a bug on the profile page flagging an error on the live site that doesn't show on the local development site that isn't a fatal error but it's bugging me (pun intended). When this is done I intend to write a paypal plugin using the code from a previous version as a starting point but the previous version had paypal integrated into the app itself and this will be a plugin for this application and it will not only support buy now and donate but subscribe as well which will open up the subscriber member category which has been around since version 2.0. Subscriber members are paid up members who enjoy features that make it worth paying for. Perhaps I will restrict audio chat such that everyone can hear it but only subscribers can talk. Perhaps it would be better to allow everyone can talk in only a few rooms but allow subscribers to talk in other rooms and in private messaging which incidently are already more than three-quarters written since they employ the same code as the main chatroom with an alternative entry point and audio chat should work as well on those as normal chatrooms. Design, design ... and what was I saying about designed inoperability? Well, these aren't your car seats, these are mine, or the owner of a website who has paid for this software and you are being allowed to use restricted features for free unless you pay something toward keeping the website running. Have some free beer, but stay away from the 40 year old malt as thats only for the people who pay for the lights right?

Well ta ta for now. Bathtime ...

Another 30 Day Ban

Was it something I said? It's almost as if there are some trigger happy at Facebook et al just waiting for me to make a spelling mistake while writing about how it was airlines which were the first websites to use tracking cookies which were at the time thought to be a form of internet hacking. If I spell the name of an airline wrong, they can have an article posted on the BBC saying that there is a rumour going around the internet that Bwitish Midiland and other airlines are spying on people and sharing the private data they collect. Independent Fact Checkers can point out that Bwitish Midiland has never existed and thus the stories similar to the one I posted have no basis in fact whatsoever or sometime may even lack context. I find myself in agreement with the Russians that Facebook is an extremist website, but this doesn't take away from the fact that western governments are absolutely involved in funding such domestic espionage, censorship and propaganda, particularly by spending some level of millions or billions on free money for people who adapt their websites to enhance the google eyes so that they can then use the free money to advertise on the very platforms enaged in all the human rights violations. (At least on here, independent fact checkers cant just block me for 30 days because I'm saying stuff they don't want people to hear or believe should they ever do.)

To cut a long story short, I'm banned from Facebook and I was so hoping to build my audience using that platform, so I got to thinking that when I do start to build an audience, perhaps it would be better to have the audience here, on the website, where they can always see me, rather than on Facebook, which is beginning to feel like a game of Russian Roulette, and hardly the wisdom of the bee to be on as bees are reknownedge for ensuring their supply of food in winter. Facebook and for that matter all those social media sites are not reliable places to build a business in unless you are one of the independent fact checkers with their weird view of reality that they simply dont feel free to express in the real world where they intend to destroy every liberty we have, including our medical rights.

I am not the only internet extremist who thinks stupid little things like fundamental human rights should take precedence to big important things like government powers and I'm wondering if there is maybe a market out there for freedom loving people to gather and communicate freely with one another without worrying about creepy pro-authoritarian who we would be independently fact checked as wrong to call fascists.

I have the skills and I have the will but I have to admit, my business sense is something like my Hugo Boss suits. I don't have any! I'm going to keep developing this software with a primary focus on liberty for all (but the fascists) albeit that I will continue to employ external scripts from them on the main domain for the time being but in the end it is hoped that I will find an audience for my work who will hate me for allowing facebook et al to do what maybe only a programmer realises they do with your data.

The basic member category of user is one step above a visitor who never logs in but will always be below a proper member who logs in using the username/password(/email verfication when its switched on). Basic members login by OAuth2 rather than directly into the website itself. (Currently only Facebook Logins are supported but I have code for Google from version 3 of the application I will re-integrate as time permits and perhaps start looking at logins with Wikipedia, Twitter, LinkedIn and StackExchange but to be fair, as I am saying, I am hoping Social Media will play less of a role in third generation internet than they do today and Social Media features in general will only be developed on a demand basis compared to the overall goal of facilatiting Article 12 compliant communications in an age where governments have clearly failed to do what others must do in their stead.

WebGL on the Back Burner

Prompted by the main funders of our existence to improve the business as the first year of operating as an official Limited Company comes to pass, we investigated ways of promoting the business better since the whole line of Repairing People's Computer's Phone's is both labour intensive and at the same time not all that lucrative.

In out free time, we develop software. We thought, what if we had website technology that could knock peoples socks off and so was born the advanced WebGL website technology you have been hearing about in recent news articles. It's all very well to be able to write good software that works better than the best that Google and Facebook have to offer but it's entirely another thing when it comes to bringing such software to the market. WebGL based web sites will sell at the upper tier of the market to rare ubiquitous customers and these are not exactly easy to find and the tailoring involved in virtual reality website is extreme compared to more simple functionality that has been around for years.

Social Media Plugins Return

It was though to just develop the main web application to its fullest so that it could be rolled out easily for whoever wanted to buy it, and while we got our heads around Social Media (which is an advertising guru's job in and of itself), we focussed some effort in bringing back the old features of V3.0 of the Auranos App which had Facebook and Google logins built in. This does mean out extremist external code and cookie policy has had to be thrown out for the time being, but a more private non-big-teched experience has been set up under the UDHR subdomaing where the same application runs with the social media extensions switched off. (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as signed by the coutries who survived World War 2 forbids the interference in communication which prevents the free expression of opinion and ideas which has become a common feature in platforms being heavily promoted and funded even by government organisations in the once free world.

Out of both a need to improve social media standings while at the same time satiating the conscience of the developer to allow third parties to ... well do whatever they please as far as the client side scripting goes ... the udhr subdomain has been set up which as well as providing a more human rights compliant internet experience (like few sites today do), it also demonstrates the power of the application to be configured for human rights compliance or Normal Operation like every other website the media would never condemn like they would Canadian Trucker faced with very obvious violation of the Nuremberg Code in order to keep their job. Maybe a more human rights compliant internet would solve the problem of increasingly authoritarian and decreasingly accountable western governments but that's another news story. We make software.

June 2022 Update

Last month, we posted here that Auranos.org was going Virtual Reality and produced an early demonstration of our engine which demonstrated our ability to rotate a matrix and render a polygon. This month, we release the pre-alpha version 0.2 which shows our ability to animate whatever "polygon soup" we hand to our engine.

The polygon soup in this instance happens to be amateurishly modelled by a software engineer, the best of which are the humans which were modelled by renderpeople.com who provide models constructed of so many polygons that we aren't sure if someone's device will fall over before rendering, so we have had to signficantly reduce the polygon count of these models, which leads to certain aspects showing up that makes the whole think look a little less presentable than it ought to be. Our goal here is to demonstrate the technology, which shows interpolated vertice animations on both Sophia, the lady holding her phone, and ALFI, the miming mask inside the lab.

As well as interpolated animations, we also demonstrate regular multi-model animations in the form of a car which we have programmed to drive repeatedly around the two blocks of the park and the lab.

If you go to the pond and look carefully, the water IS actually moving. Although it doesn't look too realistic such as the kind of water texture you will see in engines such as Source (Half-Life), Creation (Fallout) or Crytek (Farcry), it is early days and this is the first introduction of animated textures (to be distinguished from video textures). It uses an algorithm created be Adrian Boeing for 2D environments and is employed at present merely as a proof-of-concept that rippling water effects can be produced from time derived mathematical forumlas.

Again I have uncluded Synthia and Andy, the statuesque models from the "Home of the Sky People". These models have been reworked and cost around 7000 polygons each, compared to the 20,000 polygons they were running at in the version 0.1 release. Unlike, Sophia, the phone lady, they are of a quality suitable for release now, albeit that they are not yet animated.

Each "synth" (as I like to call them) doesn't just carry a cost in terms of computation performance but since they are modelled by professionals and will be voiced by professional voice actors and of course animated by yours truly, there will be a financial cost per synth used on each website. The more synths, the more costly the website will be.

Webite Sales

Moving toward business, we are considering the bog standard website to be one synth inside one room with standard fittings (office or shop). The synth will communicate textually according to a standard set of scripts we will provide such as

The customer would then click on the item and details about the item would pop up with a buy button. This is of-course just one of several scripts which would include answering questions about the company or privacy policy and such like.

The bog standard website would basically be a 3D navigated ordinary web site but the scripts can be fleshed out by the customers themselves by the addition of audio to match the scripts being said by both the customer and the synthetic assistant and the scripts themself can be enhanced. Howwever due to the nature of what a synth is, the speech would not be lip-synched and might look a little unrealistic as though the lips are moving but not in accord with the sounds which are being heard. Once the basic assets are produced, bog standard websites can be rolled out in a week, maybe even a couple of days at a push. Estimated price of around £500 per site but the expectation is that the customer will fill out alot of the blanks in the same manner as creating the options on a call centre telephone robot.

For more money we can do this for them!

In addition, the customer will be able upload wavefront object files of their products (such as those exported from the windows 3D viewer app). If a product has a model, and is in the stock catelogue, it will appear on an appropriate shelf inside the virtual shop. The model can be something as simple as a box with the item name written on all sides or "a teapot" (which is programmers language for a complex three dimensional shape. There are existing markets for 3D models which we can direct our customers to if they want their products modelled. There are even services where a customer can have themself turned into one of our synths.

For more money we can do this for them!

All websites will have this bog standard capabilities but higher quality sites will have more work perfomed on them such as we can cover the the entire stock list and any question a customer might ask through a voice actor or voice actress and the customer can speak with a larger variety of synths with voices and appearances they might find more ... appetate(?).

The stock catalogue can be produced by a simple SQL join statement to the customeres current stock catalogue, with the joined table including the extras such a three dimensional model, audio tags for the syths to use when saying the name or details of the item.

Business Retention

Customers needs change as their product list changes. Once they have purchased a license to the software, it is their software to use as they see fit and it will include an API such that they can upload their content such as 3D models of their merchanise, synth scripts and audio of the things that their synths will say. They can do these things all by themself and the API and its web interface will make this as easy as possible but it is a time consuming task that a teapot factory might prefer to contract out to others.

As a central hub for the type of things these website owners will want we will be in a key position to sub-contract their needs to the best artists we can find. If you have the talent, register with the site (2D) and put something on your profile suggesting you have some talent we can use. Make sure you fill out your email address (which will not be shown) incase the site is set to not require email addresses for registrations. You can also phone me on the Auranos.org Number +44 07903 064488 for enquiries.

As pre-alpha version 0.2 is released

As we go into the third month of development of the Auragine engine, this second update demonstrating last months progress on an engine which now shows the qualities which are normally only available on high end computer games, but with the goal of presenting such a user interface as bespoke web sites for companies moving toward "Web 3.0". (It's getting all very Matrixy, Neo!)

The latest update is available on WebGL enabled browsers such as Firefox, Edge, Opera, Chrome and Safari and you can sample the engine for yourself right here:The Auranos.org Virutal Reality Engine.

It is highly recommended at the current development stage to use a desktop or laptop as some features will not be supported on touchscreen devices at the time of writing but you should still be able to see some of what has been achieved so far, even on an old Android.

The development environment is Xubuntu 18.04 using Firefox 92 as the main test platform, however, it has been tested to work on Edge under the latest version of Windows 10 and is expected to be working on all modern browsers.

The fifth of the month has been set as the deadline for these pre-alpha releases as this is the day on which those funding the work expect to hear reports on. If you want to fund development, to gain shares in the engine's deployment and access the source code, free from obfuscation and copyright protection mechanisms, you should contact Auranos.org by phone on +44 07903 064488.

Shares are also available to those willing to contribute their time to the engine. At present there is an urgent need for:

JOBS

1. Modeller: Someone who can create low polygon photorealistic models, such as humans with polycount of 5k-7k created without the use of an optimiser which tends to throw the vertices into hard to predict positions. As you can see from my current effors, I'm not much of a modeller and had to rely on Free Content From Render People to produce the eventual badly drawn animated humans on display. The modeller will be more than capable of producing models of manmade objects and will be a source of advice on terrain texturing. The modeller will receive a chunk of any payments for websites which employ the modellers work.
2. Sound Engineer: Someone who can create music tracks and sound effects with a variety of themes such as the crazy bell music in a 1970s supermarket or the background hum of a traffic heard by website visitors in a virtual office. These sounds will not need to be stereo mastered as this will be done by the engine. The sound engineer will be responsable for all audio used by the engine and will receive a chunk of the payment from customers whose websites employ the sound engineers work. The sound engineer will liaise with the voice actors.
3. Marketeer: Someone who can find people who have the kind of cash to pay for a cutting edge website and the motivation to do so. These websites will be at the top end of market where users will enter the website and interact in a manner not dissimilar to the user interaction in a role play game but rather than killing zombies and upgrading robots, the "player" will simply be shopping using a 3D interface assisted in the questions by synthetic human assistants which may in future support online portals such that the assistants can be "inhabited" by an actual human, speaking to an actual customer. This is just to give you an idea of the vision. Payments will be processed in 2D through a third party (most likely Paypal). The marketeer will be paid a commission on all websites which are sold.
4. Voice Actors/Actresses: Our synthetic human's will have scripts for frequently asked questions that shoppers have and will be able to to count from "zero" to "nineteen", "ten", "twenty", "thirty", "forty", "fifty", "sixty", "seventy", "eighty", "ninety", "hundred", "thousand" and "million". Once business has been generated by the marketeer, the most suitable voice actors will be selected and given a one time payment for the basic script all the synths will have but our customers will have specific requirements such as product details and the voice actors selected will be given a chunk of the payment for each website where their work has been deployed.
5. Programmers: Javascript ECMA 6.0, no JQuery, no external libraries, no google code, full stack(ish), able to make sense of PHP but not neccessarily proficient. No SQL required etc, mainly JS but code must be correct, concise and efficent. Demos? Able to produce bug free classes/methods which work efficiently and according to specifications. The programmer will be paid a chunk of websites where their code is employed according to the post-obfuscation char percent of the full source code produced by the programmer. The code will be closed source and will not engage in online communication with outside service providers in order to function, except in cases where the specification explicitly requires it.
6. Boss: Someone who can do all the bureaucatic stuff required by funders and government agencies, making sure everyone involved is paid accurately and every customer we serve is paying us accurately and that we have accurately fulfilled their expectations to the extent there will be business retention as the products, needs and wants of our customers change. The manager will get a chunk of the payments for work generated by the marketeer and the purpoise will be to prevent stalls in productivity caused by the various things which are irrelevant to the factory floor (so to speak).

Remember all these jobs are paid in shares of profits from each website sold or "as and when required". There's no guaranteed wage as in a regular job. If you are willing to work under those conditions, and there are other jobs that you think you could do that we havent considered, drop us a line on +44 07903 064488.

Auranos.org set to become a virtual experience!

Auranos.org presents, its very own implementation of a virtual reality engine, written entirely in javascript, which is an odd language to carry out the complex tasks involved in rendering graphics and synthesising real world physics on.

If you are on a WebGL enabled browser, you can sample the engine for yourself right here:The Auranos.org Virutal Reality Engine.

Javascript being an interpreted language means that these kinds of operations would traditionally be outside the scope of what could be done but since browser manufacurers are providing direct links into the GPU hardware through the WebGL api, the rendering process becomes something of a hybrid between interpreted language constructs and direct manipulation of the GPU itself.

With the rendering pratically done in two shakes of a lambs tail, this leaves lots of procossor time per cycle to do the physics.

Physics Engines Vary

A chemist might want to get some idea of atoms bouncing off one another in a mathematical model and it has to be highly accurate if the model is to be of any scientific use. These types of physics engines replicate natural reality and it is the type of thing that someone studying aerodynamics might be interested in.

Consider ye though ... a person walking into a wall. A scientific model would cause the person to bounce off the wall but in the real world outside of what we Glaswegian's would call headbangers, a person is probably walking towards somewhere very close to the wall, perhaps with intent of sneaking along the wall so as to peak round the corner and see if there are any zombies, aliens, unfriendly robots, or beasts of the apocalypse round that corner (in the real world :) ). The type of physics used in games, differs a bit from the type of physics currently shown on the engine as it currently published at The Auranos.org Virutal Reality Engine.

There are several forks within forks to consider for the physics part of the engine and the current focus is somewhere between a modelling application and a first person shooter game. The physics for first person shooter are not quite set up as there is a development stall on the collision detection.

Although not ready for general release yet, the engine features several modes and sub-modes of operation which will be suitable for a variety of purposes from modelling and strategy games to role playing adventure epics and of course, the classic, "kill those zombies before they eat your brains".

Home of the Sky People

The demo at The Auranos.org Virutal Reality Engine is pre-alpha but should not be buggy as some effort has been made to make it more presentable than the development version which involves purple boxes bouncing off one another inside a highly abstract world of strangely shaped things which are useful for testing things to the limits.

Home of the Sky People was the best I could come up with in a short period of time and it is meant to show the engine in its early stage and does not suggest any kind of finished product.

If you read the billboards posted around the Home of the Sky People, you will get some idea about what the purpose of "the map" is. A demonstration map will be released to the same url at some point once the engine is more worthy of having a proper map made for it.

The engine in the demo is set to slow fly mode with a first person perspective but it is equally capable of walk mode in a third person, model view perspective or various combinations of these modes. There is no interaction functionality yet as the current development interaction functionality is very limited and not considered worthy of development yet, especially when the human models are ostensibly statues rather than something which animate in an idle pose.

Obviously, the engine is at an early stage but if you are thinking of investing and want to see the latest version of the engine before the next publication, if you can agree to keep the source code confidential, I will be happy to let you see the engine working in its various modes of operation to the full extent it has been so far developed.

The History of Internet Browsers

Once upon a time the humble web browser was an application available on a personal computer which allowed one to access a library of texts from what was then being called "the information super-highway". Video and music was available, if one could find it, but it took so long to download over 14.4 Kb per second connection that no one really bothered.

Web browsers have changed significantly since NCSE Mosaic was being challenged by AOL and Microsoft Internet Explorer, so much so that Netscape communicator was born.

All your online applications in one place. Your emails, your web browsing and even some technologies like news groups which have fallen into general disuse was all there on your one suite of applications for using the internet. Not much different from the suite of applications for doing office tasks or the suite of applications for when the boss didn't notice you had completed all your work for the day and you could try for a higher score on solitaire.

Web browsing was a particular aspect of computing rather than the reason so many people decided to get a computer. Web browsers have changed!

What were once applications for reading HTML documents from remote servers became applications that could even run some programs rather than just present text formatted to the servers specifications. Microsoft favoured ActiveX components but their proprietory nature meant that Sun Microsystems Java became the main platform for running Java Applets inside a web page. Microsoft and Sun had a bit of a spat over Java and Microsoft's not-particularly-standard implementation of Java and it resulted in the situation where Java just didnt ship with Windows (which was and may still be) the main operating system of the day. It took extra effort to install Java so no one would develop it since its perceived users are lazy and prefer not to install extra components just to get a website to work fully.

ActiveX being proprietory meant that very few developers would develop with it for anything outside of in-house applications on Microsoft centric back offices. People headed toward developing in flash which was very like Java, available on most browsers at the time and so ubiquitous that there would only be a very few users who would not already have Flash installed in their browser.

Meanwhile, browsers were using a standardised client side scripting language called javascript which was similar to C and Java and eventually developed into the full scale object oriented language that it is today. As HTML5 became the new standard, Javascript could now do things that were once only possible with the use of Flash, Java Applets or ActiveX components.

Now multimedia was available natively and the much sought after <video> tag was added. Features which would have to have formerly been perfomed at a very slow rate in an interpreted language like javascript using a <canvas> tag were now being made available by browser manufacturers which allowed the video hardware to be controlled directly.

With access to video hardware from a browser, more sophisticated use of virtual reality functionality became natively available to the once dismissed "website writer" who can now write full scale virtual reality applications for the web in the same way which was once only doable on compiled applications like the many first-person shooters and roleplay aventure games which have been out there since Wolfenstein 3D kick Duke Nukem up the butt!

The technology has been around to do virtual reality for the web for quite some time. Browser extensions which support the now obsolete VRML (virtual reality modelling language) have been around, but not since HTML5 or the later version of HTML4 was it possible to implement VR with the full scope of options available in the WebGL api. Just one of the ever expanding APIs which are available on *"most browsers". (*That is to say they are supported by the leading browsers used by 90% or the people online. This includes, at the current time, Mozilla Firefox (auranos.org's preference), Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari and to some extent the browser called Opera, which although always lagging behind the most recent developments, has for over a decade, managed to keep up.

As for epiphany, sensible, gnomeweb and the various forks of Gecko and Webkit that are out there, well, some of these API's may or may not work but for most users they do, and that makes these APIs worth developing on! That means more software, and as the days go by, more sophisticated software

... available on what used to be an application for reading HTML documents from the information super-highway.

Browsers have changed!

Did you download the file that was uploaded?

You may have come across accessory files called crc files which you can download along with the actual main file you are trying to get your hands on. These files contain numbers which are calculated along the length of the main file you are downloading and if you run a crc check on the main file once downloaded, the number your crc check will generate will be exactly the same number contained in the crc file.

CRC stands for "cyclical relay check" and its intent is to provide the downloader of a file with notice that the file contains erroneous parts which were not in the file which was provided on the download link. Most often it is provided on security critical software such as downloading a browser or an operating system with the intent that should a man-in-the-middle attempt to push a false version of the file to the person trying to pull it from the genuine source but only reaching the man-in-the-middle, then the CRC check will (hypothetically) ensure that the file received is the same file that was presented for download.

Credits to @gangstermailsexy on minds.com, an exploit has been pointed out which could allow the man-in-the-middle to send a file with the correct CRC value by simply manipulating some bytes at the end of the file in order to make the false file pass the CRC check that its intended only the true file can pass.

@gangstermailsexy points out the following:

Full Array of Services

If you are living in Cumbernauld, Auranos.org is the most advanced technical service provider catering to a full range of computing services anyone could need.

Call us on 0703 064488 whether you are needing to upgrade of buy a new computer. Our prices cannot be beaten by regular retailers. We can also advice you on various economies with regard to both software and hardware, whether its the difference between using a slightly slower memory at a significantly lower cost or whether its how to replace those subscription fees to Microsoft by using fully compatible software which does not attract a subscription feee. If you are looking to make your computing as low cost as possible, Auranos.org is the ideal tech support site for people in Cumbernauld.

We also offer a range of bespoke services including setting up and maintaining your website where not only can we provide a variety of pre-written webware solutions such as wordpress or your own tailor made flavour of E-Commerce platorm or Wikipedia like system, Auranos.org can also provide you with webware which has been created inhouse which can be tailored to your needs with a beautiful design.

If you have something more sophisticated in mind, like connections to the internet which will not fail when in remote locations and you cannot get a signal on your mobile phone, we have plans which will fit your need. We can provide banks of cryptochips if you plan on mining and we have our own proprietory encryption mechanisms should you feel the "unbreakable by a desktop computer" part of public key encryption is not quite up to par with your organisations privacy requirements.

We will fix your mobile phones, we will fix your tablets, we will fix your laptops, your all-in-ones, your desktop computers and anything that needs fixing on your server rack.

Auranos.org is a computer service provider and there is nothing with regard to computing that we will not cater to. Get in touch today.

Freedom Phone Service

Auranos.org specialises in all kinds of computer technology, not the least of which is the ubiquitous Mobile Phone.

Both Google Android and Apple iPhone's have shared a monopoly on mobile phones since everything went smart but when these devices became prisoner ankle tags for swathes of the population put under unexpected house arrest and the various malware detection software houses didn't seem to notice, Auranos.org has been working on solutions which will ensure continuance of free speech, anonymity and much valued privacy from corporate spyware for whoever Santa delivers a phone to this Christmas.

We have previously offered and continue to offer a degoogling service Android phones, but we recognise the vulnerabilities implicit in using a Google operating system at all are such that if at all possible it is better to replace it with something that has no potential for further backdoors which could allow Google to install spyware onto the devices of their end users.

Our Freedom Phone Service does more. Our Freedom Phone Service does away with Google altogether by replacing the entire Android Operating System on select phones with a choice of operating systems although we highly recommend the use of Ubuntu Touch.

Unfortunately we cannot provide a Freedom Phone Service to those with Apple iPhones at this juncture but once the legal avenues regarding Apple proprietory warez have been negotiated, we may be able to offer this at some point in the future.

The Auranos.org Freedom Phone Service recommends the use of Ubuntu Touch as the best Mobile Phone Operating System available today. It has a larger support base than either of the duopoly of Android and iPhone, is more efficient, has a large software collection which includes not only APK's which can be run in an android emulator if desired, but also .exe files in a Windows emulator and a whole variety of emulators which will support anything from the Sony Playstation to the Sinclair Spectrum with the only question being, is your phone soupy enough to run the latest version of Grand Theft Auto V (probably not) and would it be any good on a touch screen phone? At least you'll get offline Excel to work okay but since you are using Linux, alot of the software that costs a bomb on Windows is a fairly well replicated native to Linux with no need for the Snazi Windows Emulator to run the various programs you might want to run if only you were at your desk.

So ... thats just "the other software" that will run on your much better Phone Operating System and there's little need to touch on the touchscreen apps which most seasoned Linux users would not be used to since they like their keyboards so much. As an added bonus, your internet connected, video playing, calculating, SNES emulating, personal stereo device can also be used to make phone calls and send text messages to people.

There are other versions of proper Linux mobile device OS's we can install for you but with the exception of Debian Mobile, not all of these operating system are as quite touchscreen capable as we would like them to be. It doesnt mean you cant have us install Kali Linux for example which is probably the most security conscieous operating system available for a phone but that currently comes at a cost of having to open something called a bash terminal to type in passwords at every oppotunity and although it will work on any of the listed phones below, its maybe not the ideal OS for ordinary consumer use.

Now the biggest advantage of the Freedom Phone Service is that Google cant track you unless you deliberately install Google software and allow it to alter your device settings. It can't install any software on the fly through whatever backdoors Google has hidden in it's now self-compromised Android Operating System. Most of the software on your new system is open source from communities which are well established with a pedigree in the kind of information security that large profit making corporations tend to ensure for themselves but attempt to restrict for their consumers. Some Google software is open source but no one who considers end user information security and important feature bothers to look at it since by the very definition it is Google software, there is the implication that end user information is something to be harvested rather than genuinely meriting coroporate statements like "we care about your privacy". If they cared so much they wouldnt collect anything without you specifically allowing it. By default, they collected everytime you went to Pizzahut which garages you visited and they gave you some free offers while admitting they were doing it. While some people seem to think this is a wonderful thing, there are those of us who feel like this cyberstalking on an industrial scale.

Auranos.org can help you thwart these criminal activities even when the police don't want to notice.

Why Doesn't Everyone Have a Freedom Phone?

Well Google and Apple have cornered the market for phones and they give away a free operating system with their phone. Until now there wasn't much need for a more secure operating system because you would have though that the Operating System manufacturers would be the last people to install spyware on their customers' phones. The fact that Android tends to hide its Linux core from the world and the way the word Linux conveys a sense of dread since the days when 1995 Red Hat 4.0 would take half and hour to install and half a year to find all the drivers makes people unneccessarily wary of modern Linux which is today much more competent than Windows which would have been the preferred choice for me around the time of Windows XP.

In the US, Freedom Phones are being sold in US retail markets and it looks likely that many European's will begin to follow suit. Unlike the retailers in the US, Auranos.org do not sell the phones with the OS installed at present time per se but speak to us and we can come up with some deal which may involve a deposit. What we offer to our regular customers is the installation of a new operating system on a phone that our customers bring to us. In time we hope to upscale this to provide new phones pre-installed with Ubuntu Touch but it depends very much on how likely we are to sell the service itself and we are hoping our customers can help spark a demand, so give us a call on 07903 064488 and discuss upgrading your operating system to something which is compatible with these strange times we now live in in the 2020s.

Is My Phone Supported?

Unfortunately we cannot provide any assistance to iPhone users with the Freedom Phone Service. We can still fix your screens and replace your batteries as always but the Freedom Phone Service is only available for users with Android Phones and I'm afraid to say not all Android devices have been tested to be working as yet.

Phones degoogled from £15

If you are concerned about your online and physical privacy breached by the use of an undocumented backdoor in 2020 that google held on their mobile Linux operating system Android, Auranos.org is here to help you.

While many anti-virus have failed to give warning or provide any protection from Google's spyware, a large number of techs attempting to warn the public about the dangers and illegality of the shockingly revealled Android "feature" have been silenced across many large tech corporations heavily controlled by the Blackrock and Vanguard multinational investment foundations.

Linux is an operating system kernel which ships with a fairly liberal license allowing anyone to modify and distrubute the software and even profit from doing so, without paying a penny in royalties to Linus Torvalds or the others who play a role in maintaining the kernels. The one stipulation is that any system based on the Linux cannot prevent end-users (the actual people who walk about with the phones in their daily lives) from altering the system as they see fit.

However, in the move in summer of 2020, Google, without the end-user's knowledge or consent, installed software on every Android which wholly meets with the description "spyware" and this software is not as simple to remove as uninstalling and app from the phone.

Many have expressed concerns about the invasion of their privacy this ability to install spyware without the end-users knowledge or consent presents but they outvoiced by loud and very well funded Google sponsored agents who also engage in deranking anything that suggests that there is something wrong, or how to go about undoing the alterations which have turned peoples communications devices into social monitoring devices by those who clearly have something to hide. The new software is closed source as is the means by which the backdoor functions.

Auranos.org recommends that smartphone users check out GNU Linux operating systems for mobile devices such as Ubuntu Touch and purchase a phone which is known to be compatible with these operating systems in order to maximise protection from exploitation from these corporations which are now trampling over humanities most basic liberties.

However at Auranos.org, most of our customers cant just afford a new phone to keep up with the level of creepyness of mega corporations and we cater to every need.

If buying a new phone is out of your reach, there is the middle ground of having your Android phone degoogled. Android is based on Linux but many of the additional bits, including the user-password system have been specifically designed by Google and its not entirely possible to get rid of Google entirely from Android, other than installing a completely different operating system that Google have had no input into. Not all Android devices are supported by the various GNU Linux distributions which are available so if you have a phone that is not known to support GNU then we can replace as much as Google software as possible on your phone.

A degoogled android will still support APK applications like a regular Android but it will not support tracking APIs, it will not support Googles Play Store but most of the applications you use which are not Google can be installed and made to work on your degoogled Android device.

By using alternative software on systems which have been especially installed with privacy in mind, we can effectively reduce your visibility to the Google AI system, restricting them from tracking your location, knowing your medical details or looking at your search history and the various other invasions of privacy detailed on the various documents annexed to the Android license which users agree to in whole by clicking a single button.

For £15, you can be rid of gmail, playstore, gpay, videos and a whole load of other apps spying on your every activity, including your location and have them replaced with similar applications providing much more protection than is available by just trusting a mega-corporation like Google to not exploit you.

Get in contact with us to discuss your software needs.