Passwords, Brotli, Compression, SSD, Virtualization, Optimization, Physical Web, Cloudflare, Python

Post date: Jul 6, 2016 3:25:19 AM

  • About passwords and disabling paste: I think it would be highly beneficial in some cases to record password writing patterns & timings. If it's important system which requires high security. If key administrators try to login under "influence" whatever that is, drugs, booze, someone pointing a gun at them, extremely tired or very stressed, login would simply fail. Because you're not being "you" then. Requirement to write a bit longer phrase to check writing timings & patterns would pretty much ruin your day if your baseline is off. kw: password, passwords, security, cns, drugs, stress, influence
  • Lossless compression with Brotli - A very nice article by Dropbox guys. Yet no news.
  • Compression is also one of the fields where there's no "right solution" it always depends on so many factors. In some cases compression is very beneficial in some other cases it really ruins your day. One of the cases where we've been thinking about compression options is installing large system images over network. In some cases installation is done over 100 Mbit/s network with i7 CPU. And in some cases it's done over 1Gbit/s network with Atom CPU. This is more than enough to totally change what's required for the compression and where the bottleneck in the process is. In best case compression doesn't only save space, it also saves a lot of time.
  • Checked some funny statistics. My SSD has been powered on for over 10000 hours in last three years. Yet it's still in full condition 0% worn. This will mean that I'm going to probably expire personally before this drive expires.
  • Super long discussions with administrator friends about KVM, OpenVZ, LXC, and so on. Yawn, I could say. But it's not that simple, there's no single it's the best solution. It depends so much. I personally would go for LXC if and when running my own personal virtualized platforms. Also long discussions about if SSD / HDD manual allocation is better than SSD cached HDD storage system. Well well, it depends. Does the server proximity matter or not. Is higher bandwidth better than low latency or unlimited traffic. Is faster disk versus more RAM better. And many more other similar double edged sword discussion points.
  • Fixed the issues with Physical Web. It seems that they now only accept HTTPS urls and even HTTPS -> HTTP redirection doesn't work.
  • Cloudflare opened it's 83th data center in Moscow. Now it seems that some Cloudflare protected sites are being served from Moscow (DME) for Finland (HEL) instead of Stockholm (ARN). DME is lot slower than ARN as well as it raises some privacy questions is someone is worried about the Russian Privacy Legalization and Big Brother Laws.
  • Checked Python 3.5.2 release notes. PEP 448 Liked unpacking generalizations, PEP 471 os.scandir(), nice. Yet another way to do it, but bit faster. Also the classic os.walk got a speed boost. PEP484 Type Hints is of course awesome. PEP 485, isclose is really nice. I've coded my own comparison routines at times just because == with floating points is almost guaranteed fail. There has to be some predefined tolerance to accept the value as being same. PEP 488 No more PYO files. Hmm. Sure. Doesn't affect daily operations, just looking for purity.
  • Studied some Hyperloop related technologies: Kantrowitz Limit - Gas flow simulations in tube - Air bearing skis - Maglev using passive plate - Maglev using active coils - Required cooling neeeds. - Vacuum Energy Cost - Stations - Airlocks - Passanger Loading facilities - G forces - Thermal Expansion
  • Something different: Hsiung Feng III - Explosively formed penetrator (EFP, SEFP, MEPF)