Using OpenSSL I can apply a symmetric 128 bit AES block cipher (RFC3686) in “counter” mode using “testpwd” as the password to produce a salted encryption of the word “testing” encoded in Base64 as follows:
If I ever need to store a value in secret I can encrypt it like this, and decrypt whenever I need it so long as I remember the password. If an automated process in possession of the password wants to know the secret value, [click title to read more…]
It’s not often that some piece of software makes me miserable, but over the past few weeks I’ve been subjected to an example of exceptionally bad software and I’m near breaking point. The culprit in the spotlight is EzCad3 (pr. “Easy CAD”), a graphics tool intended to control laser etching/cutting hardware. In fact, the version I have is a slightly customised (i.e. feature deprived) derivative of the official EzCad3 but I won’t mention the name as the suppliers of this kit are not to blame for the shoddy software. That honour belongs to the Beijing JCZ Technology Company, Ltd, who were founded 20 years ago and should know better by now.
EzCad3 is a 64-bit Windows application and it has [click title to read more…]
There are many ways to make a program/script pause for a few seconds. Here are some of my favourites.
Windows
There are two built-in sleep functions you can include in command scripts (.cmd, .bat and PowerShell):
pause
The pause command pauses until you press a key. It has no option to set the period of time. While pausing, it displays the message “Press any key to continue…” (or “Press Enter to continue…:” in PowerShell).
timeout /nobreak /t 20
This will sleep for 20 seconds, displaying a constantly refreshing message saying “Waiting for N seconds”. With the /nobreak option you have to use Ctrl-C to cancel the timer. If you omit the /nobreak then pressing any key will stop the timer.
The phrase “free, as in beer” is often used in connection with Open Source software, to indicate that the software is being given to users without any expectation of payment. This distinguishes it from “free, as in speech” which might erroneously suggest that the software could do whatever it liked.
Actually, were it not for Andres Freund’s recent discovery, a certain piece of software called xz utils might have actually become free to do whatever it liked (or more correctly, whatever its evil master desired). NIST gives it a criticality of 10/10. Freund announced his discovery a month after the tainted xz had been released, though thankfully before it had worked its way into production systems.
The xz utilities provide [click title to read more…]
Artificial Intelligence is appearing everywhere and it is increasingly difficult to stop it seeping into our lives. It learns and grows by observing everything we do, in our work, in our play, in our conversations, in everything we express to our communities and everything that community says to us. We are being watched. Many think it is just a natural progression from what we already created. To me, it is anything but natural.
Spellchecking: an AI precursor
Half a century ago, automatic spell-checking was introduced to word processing systems. Simple pattern matching built into the software enabled it to detect unknown words and suggest similar alternatives. By adding statistical information it could rearrange the alternatives so that the most likely [click title to read more…]