Firefox, Encrypt & Sign, Blake2, IPv6, Bioacustic, Containers, Locations, Algorithms, CIA, Convex hull, Python

1. Firefox mobile (Android) got a big update. At the same time they added new collections feature and removed the much loved keyword and tags feature from bookmarks. Now bookmarks are mostly useless. The keyword feature was absolutely awesome and made accessing many sites so much faster and nicer. But not anymore, they decided to get rid of it. I usually used it to access all sites, except the very few, I've got added in the home screen. kw: Firefox, Mobile, Android, Keywords, Tags, Fail, Bookmark, Bookmarks!

2. Checked situation of alternate / newer encryption tools. Unfortunately it's the same as it has been always (for decades). No good tools exists, which would be widely used, except OpenPGP (@ Wikipedia). And even that can be argued if it's "widely used" haha, nor good or user friendly. Yet Signify and Age are worth of mentioning, but two separate programs, no good integration or GUI. So both are practically totally useless for most of people. As horrible as it is to say, 7-Zip (@ Wikipedia) is one of the "best encryption tools" there is. No, I don't mean it would be particularly good, it's pretty bad. But it's still much better than nothing. There were some IV issues, which are fixed in later versions.

3. Added file content checks using b2sum and digital signatures for a few projects. Making it guaranteed, that no unauthorized changes are possible, unless of course, properly signed in some magical way.

4. Microsoft Put Off Fixing Zero Day for 2 Years - The Microsoft JAR file signature verification stuff was really amazing stuff.

5. Started to catch up IPv6 Buzz audio cast show from Packet Pushers (@ packetpushers.net). Good stuff. Especially lowed the IPv6 header and hardware optimization discussions, where they detailed how how hard it's make fast IPv6 processing with current data structures.

6. Studied Tutanota DDoS case (@ tutanota.com), what happened and how they mitigated the attack.

7. Got again seriously annoyed by Microsoft Outlook blackholing and losing emails. When I did run my own server, it was much more reliable than Microsoft's quality cloud services.

8. Biometric identification using Bioacoustic Signatures (@ spectrum.ieee.org). Hmm, well, almost anything can be used for identification, but is it accurate and practical enough is another question. Yet combining several even not so accurate methods can create very accurate final result. As example fingerprint + bioacoustic signature. + walking style detection. Now even if someone steals your phone, and lifts your fingerprint, they still can't unlock it.

9. Configured browser to use internal containers, lot of configuration work and yet another feature which breaks down many poorly designed sites. Sigh. I don't know if it's really worth of it. At least for most of users. But now it's done. I can't wait how much ahh, fun, I get when I'll try some shopping with this configuration. Firefox temp & persistent containers / tab isolation. After lots of configuration work and getting used to things, these containers are pretty nice, and provide proper site isolation.

10. Read long article about risks of exposing location data. Of course that's nothing new. If you don't want to be tracked, get rid and don't use any of the technologies which will allow tracking. Isn't that told to everyone during military service anyway? One phone, can endanger whole operation. Only by revealing the location of troops.

11. Data Structures & Algorithms I Used Working at Tech Companies (@ blog.pragmaticengineer.com). Really nice algorithm post. kw: Tree, Dijkstra, A*, Sort, Hashtabe, Stack, Queue. Gris, Indexes. - For LclBd I used square grids, not hexagonal grids.

12. Just a reminder what CIA stands for: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability = (CIA).

13. Something different: Convex hull (@ Wikipedia), Antifragility (@ Wikipedia) 

14. Had to deal with extra Python 3 http.server.HTTPServer / SimpleHTTPRequestHandler Content-Type:s. Once again, source code is the best documentation there's available. It didn't take too long to find out that there's extensions_map.update({'.my-file', 'my-mime-type'}) feature already present, without need to subclass / override anything. - Perfect!

2021-10-10