IoT, P2P, Fish, Olvid, NDSS2021, UTF8, Air Navigation

1. Sigfox, LoRaWAN, NB-IoT - Had very long discussions in Finnish tech forums about these technologies. I found out that I had extensive post about the stuff in 2017. Many years have passed at least on consumer side, the devices haven't been really being pushed out in stores. Let's see when and if that happens. On the other hand, Z-wave and Zigbee stuff seems to be slowly reaching Finnish markets as well.

2. Challenges of P2P and mobile devices. Had long frustrating discussion with one user, that didn't understand why some applications don't notify about new messages, and can't send messages if the user(s) aren't online at the same time. Oh well. Maybe the question should be, please explain me in detail how do you think it should work. And when you figure that out, you might then finally understand the drawback related to the model, where everything is cloud stored and all notifications are delivered from cloud to more or less constantly running or activate on request applications. P2P is nice concept, but it doesn't work well with current mobile user expectations.

3. Bit too much tinkering with fish shell and docker and server automation. Now some tasks I restarted / updated manually weekly are also fully automated. Phew! Also worked with annoying APIs which I can now handle using fish shell and shell script alone, instead of using Python to deal with the data. Boom done, even if solving some issues took a few attempts.

4. I find that Olvid messenger is making some claims which highly likely aren't true - 'Inability of the operator to know "who is talking to whom". No third party could ever identify the participants, not even the server. No trace of any metadata.' - If you're making a privacy focused messenger, you should be very careful about the claims you're making. - How do they defeat classic problems of end-to-end correlation / traffic analysis? That's doable by providing cover traffic but basically no apps do that, except very few. Even Tor clearly says that they don't not provide such protection.

5. In one chat there was a long discussion around topic: "How to prove your identity to a bunch of paranoid people when I myself wrote a guide about not trusting anyone - The irony." - Absolutely hilarious!

6. NDSS 2021 Improving Singal's Sealed Sender (@ YouTube) - Nice talk how Signal's Sealed Sender works. Yet this doesn't remedy the issues related to central server and key management. Like mac-then-encrypt would be a new thing? Anyway DNSKV takes this even further, we don't even know whom the message is addressed to, we have no concerpt of sender or receiver at all. kw: metadata

7. I guess it's no news that mobile devices are used for espionage and location data is being sold. American Phone-Tracking Firm Demo’d Surveillance Powers by Spying on CIA and NSA (@ theintercept.com). I would say this is totally expected result.

8. Energy efficient air conditioning? During day, thermal storage is used for cooling and batteries are charged using solar cells. During night, thermal storage is cooled using the energy stored in batteries. Is this more efficient than direct AC? I guess it depends on multiple factors.

9. One more day lost to character set and encoding discussion. I will refuse! Just "GO UTF-8 YOURSELF". There's nothing to discuss anymore.

10. Something different? Reminded my self about ADF, VOR, Marker beacons, DME, ILS (@ Wikipedia) aka old school aircraft navigation (@ Wikipedia), position fixing and landing systems. This because news said that if Russia blocks GPS in Finland planes can't navigate and or land, oh well. Anyway, using those were easy to learn already in 90's using Microsoft Flight Simulator, except it didn't have MLS implemented on Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Yet flying from airport to airport worked just fine, flying in 100% instrumented using navigation aids and gauges alone (IFR). With paper maps, you don't need digital navigation aids. Disabling the "out view window" completely and just enabling before landing decision height.

2023-06-25