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Paid SSL vs Letsencrypt
  • DigiCert recently was forced to invalidate something like 50,000 of their DNS-challenge based certs because of a bug in their system, and they gave companies like mine only 24 hours to renew them before invalidating the old ones…

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    Paid SSL vs Letsencrypt
  • My employer had an EV cert for years on our primary domain. The C-suites, etc. thought it was important. Then one of our engineers who focuses on SEO demonstrated how the EV cert slowed down page loads enough that search engines like Google might take notice. Apparently EV certs trigger an additional lookup by the browser to confirm the extended validity.

    Once the powers-that-be understood that the EV cert wasn’t offering any additional usefulness, and might be impacting our SEO performance (however small) they had us get rid of it and use a good old OV cert instead.

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    The Madness behind the Linux Source Code Comments - YouTube
  • Back in the 90’s before the days of Windows 3.0 I had to debug a memory manager written by a brilliant but somewhat odd guy. Among other thing I stumbled across:

    • A temporary variable called “handy” because it was useful in a number of situations.
    • Another one called son_of_handy, used in conjunction with handy.
    • Blocks of memory were referred to as cookies.
    • Cookies had a flag called shit_cookie_corrupt that would get set if the block of memory was suspected of being corrupt.
    • Each time a cookie was found to be corrupt then the function OhShit() was called.
    • If too many cookies were corrupt then the function OhShitOhShitOhShit() was called, which would terminate everything.
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    Port of Piran [OC] in Slovenia
  • Depends on a large part how deep the water is right at the edge. The bows of the boats are largely on top of the surface. The stern of the boats sit lower in the water, and when lowered the outboard motors will sit a foot or more under the surface. It’s very possible that at low tide the prop could hit bottom when backing in…

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    How can I keep my forwarded port secure?
  • If you have ssh open to the world then it’s better to disable root logins entirely and also disable passwords, relying on ssh keys instead.

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    How can I keep my forwarded port secure?
  • Port 22 is the default SSH port and it receives a TON of malicious traffic any time it’s open to the whole internet. 20 years ago I saw a newly installed server with a weak root password get infected by an IP address in China less than an hour after being connected to the open internet.

    With all the bots out there these days it would probably take a lot less time if we ran the same experiment again.

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    Trump and Musk lawyer reminds any Kremlin-backed MAGA assets to stop talking without an attorney
  • Yeah, but in this case, they are talking heads with a significant following, and anything they say in public at this point could also come back to bite them in the keister. And given the track record of these people, more than one of them is likely to publicly put feet into mouths long before they talk to a lawyer.

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    Anarchy Easter Eggs
  • This reminded me of a glass artist named Josh Simpson who is known for his glass spheres he calls “planets” that have amazingly complex scenes in them. For over two decades he’s had what he calls the “Infinity Project” where he encourages people to hide them out in the open where folks are unlikely to find one. If you submit a proposal to him that he likes then he’ll send you two of his smaller planets, one for you to hide and one to keep for yourself.

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    without saying how old you are, how old are you?
  • My first reaction to this question was: hey, I was alive (not by much) when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I don’t remember anything about it though.

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    Trump’s team scrambles after JD Vance’s response to Georgia school shooting
  • Next thing you know Vance will be pushing legislation requiring that every public school classroom have an AR-15 in it, and every teacher be required to regularly pass a test demonstrating proficiency with it…

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  • This just popped into my head after a similar question came up with a coworker…

    Back a few decades ago I worked in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. My office window looked out towards another building about 15 feet away, and for some reason our floors were about 8 feet higher than the other building. So we could look down into the offices across the way.

    The person in the office I could see into had his desk set up so that his back was to the window and he faced his office door. This gave me and my coworkers a clear view of his computer screen over his shoulder. He played Microsoft solitaire constantly, except when somebody walked in. He would very quickly close it so he wouldn’t get caught.

    My coworkers and I actually tried to figure out his phone number, but never did. We wanted to call him up and tell him he should have played the red 9 on the black 10…

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