Category: Uncategorized
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Skip Flask, even for tiny projects
Flask is a lightweight Python web application framework. It makes clever choices to be simple but powerful, such as using existing libraries like SQLAlchemy and Jinja, and keeping boilerplate down to nothing. This makes it very compelling when you want to create “just a few functions” sized applications. But I’d strongly recommend skipping Flask. If…
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Howto: run a single application behind a VPN on linux
VPNs have lots of benefits like privacy and geo-diverse egress, but also can have worse latency, throughput and be blocked by some sites. So it’s natural that you might want a VPN for some of your internet usage, but not all. I found I wanted to run one application behind a VPN but not others,…
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My Google Epitaph
This post originally appeared as a Google-internal “Epitaph” – a leaving note for a parting employees. Larry and Sergey’s 2004 letter to investors said “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” However, laying off 12,000 workers, despite having a $114B war chest, $60B in 2022 profit and growing revenue[1],…
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Stackdriver HTTPS uptime check, with certificate verification
Stackdriver offers Uptime Checks for HTTPS. Sadly these checks don’t verify the certificate, so you won’t get an alert if a certificate expires. A simple solution is to add a Google Cloud Function in between Stackdriver and your site. This allows the usual Stackdriver monitoring and alerting, plus a check in Google Cloud Function that…
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Life with Crypto Backdoors: Stingrays, Government Surveillance and Crime
Playing out today is a debate about the control of future of technology. After revelations of massive government surveillance programs, new applications deploy strong encryption, touting privacy as a key feature. The authorities, afraid they will not be able to access communications, are attempting to mandate weaknesses in these applications to ensure they can gather…
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Make bash show the return code
When using a command line interface, I like to see all the output a program makes. The standard out and error are already dumped to my console, but there is one piece of information usually hidden from the user: the return code. Add the following to your .bashrc to get a nice notification if a…
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NSA Puzzle
The NSA recently declassified their Cryptolog internal magazine. I would like to share one gem from Cryptolog XIV, No. 1 – 1st Issue 1987: “NSA” PUZZLE The occurrence of “NSA” as a letter sequence in English words is rather uncommon. Some of the rare examples are show below. Fill in the blanks to reconstruct the…
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The Ablogalypse Already Happened
xkcd predicted that “The Ablogalypse” would occur in October 2012, it actually occurred in November. Pretty neat prediction though!
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How Domains Became Backwards
Internet URLs, file system paths and IP addresses usually get more specific as you move towards the right hand side. This is a clearly a byproduct of the left-to-right language of the designers of these systems. So why is it that this website is david.newgas.net and not net.newgas.david? The familiar hierarchical naming is part of…