My Browser Builds (Part 6)

[VistaLover]

20 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate AI? Not because I don't find it useful, but because everybody and their God damned dog is trying to scrape the entire World Wide Web to train their damned AI, necessitating all these damned security checks.

Exactly! I still keep a portable installation of Mozilla Firefox 52.9.1esr (the last to officially support XP/Vista) for "nostalgia" , and while it's still able to render many sites, it is forbidden to do so  because it can't pass/complete CF and/or Anubis anti-bot challenges "protecting"  those sites (even old-type ones, like "https://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38") ...

[VistaLover]

On 6/27/2026 at 1:29 AM, roytam1 said:

for people who can't register here, there is another place you can create post for asking/help besides in github and blog:
https://forum.eclipse.cx/viewforum.php?f=33

This URL is no longer valid ; try the one below: 

https://board.eclipse.cx/viewforum.php?f=33

[Mathwiz]

@Skorpios, no; I didn't think that a right-click followed by "Save Link As" would lead to different results than a left-click, which invokes the captcha. I guess XP users have a way to download the latest version after all. Edit: Just tried it. Right-click and "Save Link As" didn't work for me. I got a 6 kB file. Maybe it's that "referer" Roytam mentioned, but....

@roytam1, all my "referer" prefs in Serpent 55 are at their defaults. A standard left-click on the link brought up the captcha. I haven't yet tried the right-click and "Save Link As."

@AstroSkipper, perhaps telling wget to use a Firefox UA along with Roytam's "referer" suggestion might do the trick. I don't really have an option to change my IP address though. I just couldn't imagine Cloudflare leaving such a gaping security hole!

@VistaLover, check this out: https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/

Sneaky devils! I don't (and as long as I can get away with it, won't) own a "smart" TV, but I do own a Roku streaming box. I wonder if any of its "apps" are letting folks use my Internet bandwidth without my knowledge.

Edited 44 minutes ago by Mathwiz

[VistaLover]

21 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

the Cloudflare security checks block me from downloading Serpent with wget any more. I just get "403 Forbidden."

21 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

No more automated downloads

1 hour ago, roytam1 said:

for wget, you may need to add " --referer=http://rthost.win/ "

That suggestion works fine here with WGET (the forum's faulty software wouldn't let me put below content inside "code" tags  ): 

Quote

wget -S --unlink --secure-protocol=TLSv1_2 --no-cookies --no-hsts --referer="https://o.rthost.win" "https://o.rthost.win/basilisk/basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20260627-3219d2d-uxp-98f21468a1-xpmod.7z"

--2026-07-02 02:52:17--  https://o.rthost.win/basilisk/basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20260627-3219d2d-uxp-98f21468a1-xpmod.7z
Resolving o.rthost.win... 188.114.97.7, 188.114.96.7
Connecting to o.rthost.win|188.114.97.7|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response...
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2026 23:52:18 GMT
  Content-Type: application/octet-stream
  Content-Length: 44764201
  Connection: keep-alive
  Accept-Ranges: bytes
  Etag: "3061471561"
  Last-Modified: Sat, 27 Jun 2026 13:16:56 GMT
  Server: cloudflare
  Cache-Control: max-age=14400
  Cf-Cache-Status: REVALIDATED
  Report-To: {"group":"cf-nel","max_age":604800,"endpoints":[{"url":"https://a.nel.cloudflare.com/report/v4?s=Nbl5t3PLKM%2Bld226azgj1aFqYoiBFpQwA6xram1Ewt3%2Bf0eFqVS8wRylaoYMAf9ycjonUlqZ0TGrQfMhItMQAxVjFZq1k1ZWWA09PgYYKY%2FIyhvRM%2FkdhMwS1HRRGBk%3D"}]}
  Nel: {"report_to":"cf-nel","success_fraction":0.0,"max_age":604800}
  CF-RAY: a14952db69921604-ATH
  alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=86400
Length: 44764201 (43M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: 'basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20260627-3219d2d-uxp-98f21468a1-xpmod.7z'

627-3219d2d-uxp-98f  60%[===========>        ]  25,92M  1009KB/s    eta 17s

basilisk52-g4.8.win 100%[===================>]  42,69M  1022KB/s    in 50s

2026-07-02 02:53:08 (868 KB/s) - 'basilisk52-g4.8.win32-git-20260627-3219d2d-uxp-98f21468a1-xpmod.7z' saved [44764201/44764201]

[AstroSkipper]

33 minutes ago, VistaLover said:

That suggestion works fine here with WGET (the forum's faulty software wouldn't let me put below content inside "code" tags  ): 

https://msfn.org/board/topic/187837-the-msfn-forum-editor-–-endless-errors/