Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

Angela Merkel shaking again (3rd time)

July 10th, 2019

Publically Angela Merkel is shaking again. This isn't normal, I think. I'd like an explanation whether she's still fit to lead Germany. What's wrong with the Chancellor?

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Have you ever planted a tree? I have.

July 9th, 2019

It must have been around 1992 when I planted a tree with my mother. Today I can see that tree from google maps satellite link. It's close to 28 years old, and it's fantastic. About 15-20 meters high, and providing lots of shade in the summer. In winter the shade is not there, really and it's not needed. As we turn on earth into the 2020's trees are really needed. We need lots of trees. Maybe you'll plant one?

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The next 15 years of my life

July 7th, 2019

God willing, I'll live to see another 15 years of my life pass. I have done some estimates on what I'm facing when I turn 58. If I get a stable job that allows me to put away savings I'll have made 100K EUR in savings. This is at the rate that I managed to save 44K EUR in 8 years, from 2010-2018. It isn't much in any sense, but my goal is to have at least 100K EUR saved by the time I'm 58. When I'm 58 I'm too old to start a programmer or sysadmin job. I'll be more of the age of a manager, and perhaps that's where the 100K will flow to, a business. I didn't start a business last year because I felt I wasn't ready and 44K wasn't all that much, as you can see it's almost 2020 at which point I'm expected to have spent most of it, the money goes quickly meaning to me 44K really isn't jack shit money. But I do the best we can with little money. The 15 years is also the time I have devoted for the delphinusdnsd project to live on. What will the daemon look like in 15 years? I can only guess. I know however after a 30 year development cycle it's time to stop delphinusdnsd. It may be a bit of a waste, or it may be worth it. Time will tell. Also let's look at some events that will happen in the next 15 years. Moon landing, first woman on the moon, perhaps Mars landing. Definitely SpaceX Starlink will be complete half way through. We won't have hit the 2038 problem but we will see the time_t roll over to 2 billion in May 2033. 15 years will go quickly, I hope to make it there.

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Delphinusdnsd does Algorithm 13 DNSSEC

July 5th, 2019

I was working all week on this. I finally got it finished today. The test zone that is using the algorithm 13 signed zone is "schweinfurtdating.de". DNSVIZ.net seems to agree that it is correctly signed, so will verisign DNSSEC debugger. What prompted me to write this this week? On monday I happened to update my RFC's and the last one was RFC 8624, which is on the standards track and says to be compliant one MUST support algorithm 8 and 13. Well I got both now.

I also upgraded algorithm 8 to use 3072 bit keys, and while there fixed a problem with bitmaps in NSEC3 records. While it may not have mattered for forward lookups in denial of existance it might have caused problems.

Anyhow I'm celebrating now that I know a bit more about Elliptic Curves and how to program them with LibreSSL. Rejoice!

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Delphinusdnsd on OpenBSD is safer

June 28th, 2019

I have added conceal memory allocation routines. This will protect keys when/if the daemon crashes and leaves behind a corefile. The tsig.c changes are here as an example. I'm also considering shielding these keys from rowhammer and spectre attacks as is done by openssh. But the code for that isn't exactly simple to do in half an hour. It'll take some time. Hurray!

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Delphinusdnsd has a new config keyword: mzone

June 26th, 2019

mzone allows finer grained control of replication servers (or also called slave servers). I took the "notify" keyword out of the config and new versions after this date will error on the old notify config. Here is my test mzone config:

mzone "internal.centroid.eu" {
        zonename "internal.centroid.eu";
        notifydest 192.168.177.40 pass;
        notifydest 192.168.177.1 pass;
}

it is stuck into the config file and zone keywords still exist (they hold the zone data). I'm not sure if I want to make a zinclude inside a mzone. This is work in progress, and some things may still change. I'm aiming to release version 1.4 of delphinusdnsd in late december.

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What is a degree worth?

June 26th, 2019

When I went to college in 1995/1996 I screwed up. But it wasn't just me alone. I found one college in particular to be incompetent and only there seemingly to give the professors jobs. I realised this along with the fact that this particular college was trying to push me out. I was insane and they might have known it. It also didn't help I didn't have a stable home, I lived in a basement apartment at the time and had no family in Canada in my immediate vicinity. In 1997 I got my first job as a system administrator and paid off my student debts (roughly 2 semesters worth) with in one year. It was shitty pay there, but I was hoping on continuance as a system administrator. That wish never came to fruition and I've been placed on again off again in the job market over the last 22 years.

Why am I writing this? It's because Bernie Sanders in the USA wants to forgive the student debt of people worth 1.2 Trillion dollars. If the USA is anything like Canada all those people who went to a post secondary education have amassed debts to go to colleges, but they also pushed out others who became known as the college dropouts, who went into industry immediately (like me) who tried to balance their bank books. The damage is done. Those that have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt can't pay the debt and need to be forgiven as the pressure is just too great and their talent wasted on worries over money. But it leaves the dropouts at a disadvantage. So what to do? Here is a link on slashdot about two-thirds of american employees regretting their college degree.

In the meanwhile I'm living in Germany, a country that has free post-secondary education. It's next to impossible to find work without a degree here, but on the other hand the germans are on this trip that they think they are the best. It's frustrating for me because I know I'm not incapable. When I came back here at age 26 I was too old to go back to school I felt. Also I had problems with my mental health and that was priority #1 to fix. The schooling system everywhere is broken it seems to me, and this attitude that someone is better than someone else just becuase they are from another place is wrong too. I'm pretty sure over 50% of things that I can do can be immediately filled by someone from a third world country. Also if you know how to google you can do most tasks I did at former jobs. The reason people need to google is that things change. Different OS's, different languages, different approaches and new technologies. Especially the tech sector is moving extremely fast.

So I'm done dishing out insults to everyone. :-) Maybe it's not like I see it but if you were in my shoes, you'd realise things are complicated. Good luck to all those that are in debt, good luck to those that are not in debut but don't have a formal degree, and good luck to everyone in realising a better education system that works for all.

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It's hot! 31.8C currently

June 25th, 2019

I've done my shopping for today and tomorrow when temperatures are supposed to reach 35C (forecasted). On thursday morning I'll probably have to get more drinks at the supermarket.

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Living with Schizophrenia: Whatever happened to AripiPan?

June 23rd, 2019

This is a continuization of this article, somewhat. I spoke with my Psychiatrist last time I was there about Aripipan which is a drug I used to take that contained Aripiprazol (aka abilify). One day, a few years ago my health insurance stopped/blocked me taking Aripipan, and I mentioned that to my Psychiatrist (it keeps popping up in conversation, last I asked her last month). She checked her computer system and it's not on the list of offered medications for me (or everybody?) anymore.

To recollect I have taken these following medications since 2002. In no particular order:

Luvox
Zeldox
Zyprexa
Abilify (Aripiprazol during patent)
Aripipan (Aripiprazol after patent expiration)
Aripoya (Aripiprazol after patent expiration)

So what happened to Aripipan? One benefit those pills had was they were just the right size to swallow, and I felt generally pretty good with it. The pharmacists though told me my health insurance does not want me to take aripipan for unknown reasons.

So how is my health? I'd say it's deteriorating, I've had problems with a fungus and my weight. Last week I had psychosomatic symptoms over a possible trojan on my system and had to barf. Turned out the trojan was my tax software and I complained to them. I'm not going to keep the OS much longer after some time.

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