30 Jul
2025
30 Jul
'25
1:15 a.m.
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when you
try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do not
provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Johnny
On 2025-07-29 20:46, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
I was out too doing some garden work...
Just cleared my cache and revisited mim.softjar.se -- no response, eventually timed out
with "server took too long to respond" or such (translated from Dutch)
-----Original Message-----
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt(a)softjar.se>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 7:08 PM
To: Wilm Boerhout <wboerhout(a)mailbox.org>
Subject: Re: [simh] MIM move...
Yeah, you're also blocked.
I was out for a few hours. I'll lift your block now, and you can try again, and
I'll have some stuff captured that should allow me to understand what is triggering
it.
Johnny
On 2025-07-29 18:40, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Johnny,
The DECnet circuit is still up without failure, but I too, get no response at all from
the mim.softjar.se website. I'm using Firefox on Windows.
My external IP is 95.98.255.226 (odsw48.mywire.org)
Wilm
-----Original Message-----
From: simh(a)groups.io <simh(a)groups.io> On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
via groups.io
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2025 6:35 PM
To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>se>;
[PiDP-11] <pidp-11(a)googlegroups.com>om>; simh(a)groups.io;
Info-PDP11(a)dbit.com
Subject: [simh] MIM move...
As some people have noticed the last few months, MIM have been difficult to reach.
It has come to the point where I just have to move the machine to a new place, as I'm
not having much success solving the current situation.
For people who maybe don't know, Mim is a PDP-11/74 (simulated) which runs RSX-11M+.
It is kindof a hub for Hecnet, as well as a resource for anyone who wants to find
documentation or information about RSX, and also to find various software for RSX.
I will move Mim this weekend, and so it will be down for a while.
Hopefully this will be a fairly smooth operation, but I'll let people know when
it's going on, and my expectation is that it shouldn't be more than a couple of
hours.
Mim will also change address and name because of this. The new address to reach Mim on
will be Mim.SoftJAR.SE. This name should be stable for the forseeable future. Physically
Mim will move from Sweden to the US east cost, and be living at LSSM. A big thank you to
LSSM and Dave McGuire in particular for helping out with resources for this.
In practice, for everyone else, once the move is done, it means that:
. Any reference to Mim.Stupi.NET needs to be changed to Mim.SoftJAR.SE.
. Any multinet circuits connecting to Mim should adjust their costs. See the HECnet
information page on Mim about this.
. I will also create a new PyDECnet node at LSSM to act as another connection point for
people who might not be able to connect to hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net, but which are still in
area 1.
. hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net will still be around, and will still be possible to use.
This do mean that area 1 will be more geographically spread out. Not
ideal, but I'm not expecting this to cause any major issues.
Performance for some might get a bit better or worse, depending on
various aspects and conditions. But in general, if people just keep
costs aligned with recommendations, things should work well.
Best regards,
Johnny
30 Jul
30 Jul
1:36 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home
on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete,
so all we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping
FTP, and deciding that forcing people to use no crypto in-
stead of bad crypto is always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
1:44 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
Could be. But I suspect it might just be because people tend to not
explicitly tell which protocol to use, and they might now default to
https, and then try http if that didn't work.
So just try to explicitly say http://mim.softjar.se/ and see if things
don't become happier...
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:36, Terri Kennedy wrote:
On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home
on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete,
so all we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping
FTP, and deciding that forcing people to use no crypto in-
stead of bad crypto is always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se 
1:48 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
Most browsers now will transparently turn it into https whether you
type http or not. The key is to disable that behavior. If your browser
doesn't allow you to disable that behavior, you need to move to a better
browser.
-Dave
On 7/29/25 19:44, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Could be. But I suspect it might just be because
people tend to not
explicitly tell which protocol to use, and they might now default to
https, and then try http if that didn't work.
So just try to explicitly say http://mim.softjar.se/ and see if things
don't become happier...
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:36, Terri Kennedy wrote:
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home
on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete,
so all we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping
FTP, and deciding that forcing people to use no crypto in-
stead of bad crypto is always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se 
2:10 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
I am not hitting any page with HTTPS and I'm explicitly using http on all URL's.
I think you are seeing modern default behaviour. I've tested this with Firefox and
Edge and they both do this - even when I specifically use http.
Chrome doesn't appear to have this same behaviour. I've just tested on another
internet service and it's not locking me out.
Is it possible to remove 443/tcp as one of your blocking triggers?
Cheers, Wiz!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2025 9:49 AM
To: The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>
Subject: [HECnet] Re: [simh] MIM move...
Most browsers now will transparently turn it into https whether you type http or not.
The key is to disable that behavior. If your browser doesn't allow you to disable
that behavior, you need to move to a better browser.
-Dave
On 7/29/25 19:44, Johnny Billquist wrote:
Could be. But I suspect it might just be because
people tend to not
explicitly tell which protocol to use, and they might now default to
https, and then try http if that didn't work.
So just try to explicitly say http://mim.softjar.se/ and see if things
don't become happier...
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:36, Terri Kennedy wrote:
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send an email to
hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete, so all
we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping FTP, and deciding
that forcing people to use no crypto in- stead of bad crypto is
always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send
an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
2:28 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
I don't have port 443 as a blocking trigger. I have *any* port on which
I don't have a server as a trigger. It's a generic handling. And having
a browser (or whatever) repeatedly hit a port for which it gets an RST
every time it tries to connect *is* abuse.
It essentially boils down to DoS attacks - let's try and overload the
server by lots of connections that tie up resources.
The fact that other systems have a service on 443 don't make it any less
abusive to hit Mim with it.
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 02:10, David Moylan wrote:
I am not hitting any page with HTTPS and I'm
explicitly using http on all URL's.
I think you are seeing modern default behaviour. I've tested this with Firefox and
Edge and they both do this - even when I specifically use http.
Chrome doesn't appear to have this same behaviour. I've just tested on another
internet service and it's not locking me out.
Is it possible to remove 443/tcp as one of your blocking triggers?
Cheers, Wiz!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 30 July 2025 9:49 AM
To: The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>
Subject: [HECnet] Re: [simh] MIM move...
Most browsers now will transparently turn it into https whether youtype http or not.
The key is to disable that behavior. If your browserdoesn't allow you to disable that
behavior, you need to move to a betterbrowser.
-Dave
On 7/29/25 19:44, Johnny Billquist wrote:
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Could be. But I suspect it might just be because
people tend to not
explicitly tell which protocol to use, and they might now default to
https, and then try http if that didn't work.
So just try to explicitly say http://mim.softjar.se/ and see if things
don't become happier...
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:36, Terri Kennedy wrote:
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send an email to
hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete, so all
we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping FTP, and deciding
that forcing people to use no crypto in- stead of bad crypto is
always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send
an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se 
6:38 p.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
On Jul 29, 2025, at 8:10 PM, David Moylan
<djm(a)wiz.net.au> wrote:
I am not hitting any page with HTTPS and I'm explicitly using http on all URL's.
I think you are seeing modern default behaviour. I've tested this with Firefox and
Edge and they both do this - even when I specifically use http.
That would be a serious bug. I'm not surprised to see that in Edge given the source,
but the Firefox team should know better. As was mentioned, to avoid that bug you can use
Chrome (or Safari if available on your system).
7:39 p.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
FWIW, Firefox has a setting under "Privacy & Security" called "HTTPS
Only Mode". I quote -
"... If HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled, then Firefox will upgrade all connections to
HTTPS ..."
So try setting that to "Don't enable HTTPS Only Mode".
Bob
8:09 p.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
Yes.
But when you "Don't enable HTTPS-only mode", the comment says that
"Firefox
may still upgrade some connections to HTTPS". And it does... uncontrollably
and as we have seen, devastatingly
Wilm
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Armstrong <bob(a)jfcl.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2025 7:39 PM
To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>
Subject: [HECnet] Re: [simh] MIM move...
FWIW, Firefox has a setting under "Privacy & Security" called "HTTPS
Only
Mode". I quote -
"... If HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled, then Firefox will upgrade all
connections to HTTPS ..."
So try setting that to "Don't enable HTTPS Only Mode".
Bob
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se To unsubscribe send an email
to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
11:23 p.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
Out of the box this setting is already set to “don’t enable”.
I went down this path yesterday. You’ve got to change a bunch of about:config settings to
disable the behaviour we are seeing here.
Generally speaking the default behaviour isn’t bad. Between this and hsts preload we are
seeing a world where SSL is the new default, but that’s not a discussion for now.
I know I can fix Firefox to disable this, but Johnny’s fix has been effective and will
survive browser upgrades and reset of defaults.
Cheers, Wiz!!
Sent from my iPhone
On 31 Jul 2025, at 3:39 am, Robert Armstrong <bob(a)jfcl.com> wrote:
FWIW, Firefox has a setting under "Privacy & Security" called "HTTPS
Only Mode". I quote -
"... If HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled, then Firefox will upgrade all connections to
HTTPS ..."
So try setting that to "Don't enable HTTPS Only Mode".
Bob
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
31 Jul
31 Jul
12:48 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
My browser was already set to "Don't enable HTTPS Only Mode".
Have not made any changes to the local browser settings, but now the site is fully
accessible including the node list and document download pages.
All good!
On Wed, Jul 30, 2025, at 10:39 AM, Robert Armstrong wrote:
FWIW, Firefox has a setting under "Privacy
& Security" called "HTTPS Only Mode". I quote -
"... If HTTPS-Only Mode is enabled, then Firefox will upgrade all connections to
HTTPS ..."
So try setting that to "Don't enable HTTPS Only Mode".
Bob
30 Jul
30 Jul
2:24 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
I switched from Firefox to Chome last year (I'm not very excited by
either, but some stupidity in Firefox finally made me change). I can
tell that Chrome don't do such stupidity at least. And I'm really
surprised if any would override what you explicitly tell, but I guess
people have to figure that out for each case.
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:48, Dave McGuire wrote:
Most browsers now will transparently turn it into https whetheryou
type http or not. The key is to disable that behavior. If your browser
doesn't allow you to disable that behavior, you need to move to a better
browser.
-Dave
On 7/29/25 19:44, Johnny Billquist wrote:
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Could be. But I suspect it might just be because
people tend to not
explicitly tell which protocol to use, and they might now default to
https, and then try http if that didn't work.
So just try to explicitly say http://mim.softjar.se/ and see if things
don't become happier...
Johnny
On 2025-07-30 01:36, Terri Kennedy wrote:
On 2025-07-29 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when
you try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do
not provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Many people don't have a choice. Browsers try HTTPS auto-
matically and then fall back to HTTP if there's nobody home
on 443.
This is part of "Browsers are considered feature-complete,
so all we can do is keep rearranging the layout, dropping
FTP, and deciding that forcing people to use no crypto in-
stead of bad crypto is always a Good Thing" (not!) See:
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=853
Is no crypto always better than bad crypto (Part 2)?
https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=1768
_______________________________________________
HECnet mailing list -- hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se
To unsubscribe send an email to hecnet-leave(a)lists.dfupdate.se
1:44 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
That may be a transparent browser override for them now, Johnny.
They'll have to explicily turn that off.
-Dave
On 7/29/25 19:15, Johnny Billquist wrote:
And now I see what you guys were/are doing.
You're trying to use https. I don't have any https server, and when you
try that, you are essentially repeatedly hitting a port that do not
provide any service, and eventually you get blocked.
Stop trying to use https against Mim. :-D
Johnny
On 2025-07-29 20:46, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
I was out too doing some garden work...
Just cleared my cache and revisited mim.softjar.se -- no response,
eventually timed out with "server took too long to respond" or such
(translated from Dutch)
-----Original Message-----
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt(a)softjar.se>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2025 7:08 PM
To: Wilm Boerhout <wboerhout(a)mailbox.org>
Subject: Re: [simh] MIM move...
Yeah, you're also blocked.
I was out for a few hours. I'll lift your block now, and you can try
again, and I'll have some stuff captured that should allow me to
understand what is triggering it.
Johnny
On 2025-07-29 18:40, Wilm Boerhout wrote:
Johnny,
The DECnet circuit is still up without failure, but I too, get no
response at all from the mim.softjar.se website. I'm using Firefox on
Windows.
My external IP is 95.98.255.226 (odsw48.mywire.org)
Wilm
-----Original Message-----
From: simh(a)groups.io <simh(a)groups.io> On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist
via groups.io
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2025 6:35 PM
To: 'The Hobbyist DECnet mailing list' <hecnet(a)lists.dfupdate.se>se>;
[PiDP-11] <pidp-11(a)googlegroups.com>om>; simh(a)groups.io;
Info-PDP11(a)dbit.com
Subject: [simh] MIM move...
As some people have noticed the last few months, MIM have been
difficult to reach.
It has come to the point where I just have to move the machine to a
new place, as I'm not having much success solving the current situation.
For people who maybe don't know, Mim is a PDP-11/74 (simulated) which
runs RSX-11M+. It is kindof a hub for Hecnet, as well as a resource
for anyone who wants to find documentation or information about RSX,
and also to find various software for RSX.
I will move Mim this weekend, and so it will be down for a while.
Hopefully this will be a fairly smooth operation, but I'll let people
know when it's going on, and my expectation is that it shouldn't be
more than a couple of hours.
Mim will also change address and name because of this. The new
address to reach Mim on will be Mim.SoftJAR.SE. This name should be
stable for the forseeable future. Physically Mim will move from
Sweden to the US east cost, and be living at LSSM. A big thank you to
LSSM and Dave McGuire in particular for helping out with resources
for this.
In practice, for everyone else, once the move is done, it means that:
. Any reference to Mim.Stupi.NET needs to be changed to Mim.SoftJAR.SE.
. Any multinet circuits connecting to Mim should adjust their costs.
See the HECnet information page on Mim about this.
. I will also create a new PyDECnet node at LSSM to act as another
connection point for people who might not be able to connect to
hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net, but which are still in area 1.
. hecnet-1-1023.stupi.net will still be around, and will still be
possible to use.
This do mean that area 1 will be more geographically spread out. Not
ideal, but I'm not expecting this to cause any major issues.
Performance for some might get a bit better or worse, depending on
various aspects and conditions. But in general, if people just keep
costs aligned with recommendations, things should work well.
Best regards,
Johnny
1:52 a.m.
New subject: [simh] MIM move...
On Jul 29, 2025, at 7:44 PM, Dave McGuire
<mcguire(a)neurotica.com> wrote:
That may be a transparent browser override for them now, Johnny. They'll have to
explicily turn that off.
If so, a good answer would be to get a better grade of browser. FWIW, both Safari and
Chrome on my late model Mac laptop accept http links without complaints. They both
annotate it as "not secure" in a small warning label at the top of the screen --
which of course is accurate. But they don't try to circumvent what they were told and
they don't put up roadblocks.
paul
15
days inactive
16
days old
13 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Dave McGuire -
David Moylan -
Jason Brady -
Johnny Billquist -
Paul Koning -
Robert Armstrong -
Terri Kennedy -
Wilm Boerhout