A couple weeks ago, I purchased a lava lamp for $5 at a thrift store. It was in brand spanking new condition, and worked like a charm. The only thing going through my head at the time? I can't wait to point my webcam at it, and start generating some random numbers! Okay, well that, […]
I've been on IRC for a long time. Not as long as some, granted, but likely longer than most. I've had my hand in a number of IRC clients, mostly terminal-based. Yup, I was (shortly) using the ircII client, then (also shortly) BitchX. Then I found irssi, and stuck with that for a long time. […]
Peter Gutmann on the "[Cryptography]" mailing list wrote some thoughts about the impending crypto monoculture of all-things-Bernstein that seems to be currently sweeping the crypto world. In his post, he mentions the following (emphasis mine): The remaining mode is OCB, which I'd consider the best AEAD mode out there (it shares CBC's graceful-degradation property in […]
You may have noticed some tweets from me that look.... strange. Probably something like these: UNYEf FXgOZ ILokj nIbFM qIlTr BRwQX iQciZ OtVhi GbUzj IGMVC SrOix sXHRZ TCtfJ #talon #cardciphers — Aaron Toponce (@AaronToponce) February 17, 2016 1455741420: 198027fd95bb881b223161d0df1b325fea7dab7f #ripemd160 #unix #epoch — Aaron Toponce (@AaronToponce) February 17, 2016 First, let me provide some background. […]
This probably the 40th millionth time, since owning this phone, that I've needed to root my device. Because I keep doing it over and over, while also referring to past commands and notes, it's high time I blogged the steps. If I can benefit myself from my own blog post, then chances are someone else […]
Lately, I have been studying pseudorandom number generators (PRNGs, also called "deterministic random bit generators", or DRBGs). I've been developing cryptographically secure PRNGs (CSPRNGs), and you can see my progress on Github at https://github.com/atoponce/csprng. This project is for nothing more than for me to somewhat get a feeling for new languages, while also learning a […]
I hope my readers don't mind, but I'm going to break from the standard geekery for a second, and type up a personal post about something that has been bugging me for the past few years. For those that don't know, I live in Utah, and work in Salt Lake City for the best local […]
On June 25, 2004 I received the following email: To: Aaron Toponce From: Gmail Team Subject: Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know. Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit First off, welcome. And thanksfor agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional […]
I've owned a pair of GUNNAR Optiks for a couple of months now, and figured it would probably be a good time for a review. For those unaware, GUNNAR Optiks are specially designed eyewear for long exposure computer use. The claims on the main site are: Eyes are more moist. Headaches are reduced. Blurry vision […]
I'm pleased to announce something I've been working on, on and off, for over a year. Introducing d-note, a self hosted web application with self destructing notes. d-note is written in Python using the Flask web framework. d-note comes from the idea that sending private information across the Internet can be very insecure. Ask yourself- […]
As many of you may know, I am a licensed Amateur Radio operator in the United States. Recently, I've taken up a desire to learn Morse Code at a full 25 WPM using the Koch method. I only started last week, and tonight I copied my first beginners code "A NOTE TO TENNESSEE", and other […]
I've been spending a good amount of my spare time recently configuring NTP, reading the documentation, setting up both a stratum 1 and stratum 2 NTP server, and in general, just playing around with NTP. This post is meant to be a set of notes of what I've learned in the process, and hopefully, it […]
Many things about NTP are elusive. At the casual user, there are a lot of things to understand: broacast, unicast, multicast, tally codes, servers, peers, stratum, delay, offset, jitter and so much more. Unless you setup your own NTP server, with the intent of providing accurate time keeping for clients, many of those terms can […]
I just assembled a public access NTP stratum 2 server. Feel free to use it, if you wish. It is considered "Open Access". It has a public webpage at http://jikan.ae7.st. This stratum 2 server has a few advantages over some others online: It connects to three stratum 1 GPS time-sourced servers. Each stratum 1 server […]
So yesterday, Microsoft announced that it is ending support for Tag, (on Facebook?) it's proprietary barcode format. To me, this doesn't come as a major surprise. Here's why: Tag arrived very late in the game, after QR Codes were pretty much establishing themselves as "the norm". Tag is a proprietary barcode. No way around it. […]
