Ottmar Klaas

Just recently I wrote about my frustration with developing this website on my laptop. Apple’s changes to the operating system and my tendency to experiment with various —apparently at times conflicting— tools and libraries introduce problems that get in the way when the job at hand is simply writing a new blog post. My solution was the creation of a virtual machine using Oracle VM VirtualBox and Ubuntu as the host system. That worked well, but soon a question came to my mind: “Can we have more fun with a virtual machine?” The answer is yes. Read on.

Password managers are back in the news. This time the news cycle is driven by a breach at LastPass. In 2015 I recommended LastPass and stated why I preferred it over 1Password at that time. However, as time moves on, things change and some products fall behind while others move ahead. As such, I kept watching both password managers’ continued development – or lack thereof. Long story short, in early 2021 I switched back to 1Password. Time to explain why.

As the astute reader will notice I have not been adding any content to this website in quite a while. Nothing I was experimenting with seemed interesting enough to turn it into a blog post that would fit this site. Until Elon Musk took over Twitter. Let me explain.

In the previous post you can read about my switch from Grav to Hexo. It touches on many points I thought were relevant, but only a small paragraph dealt with the configuration for the blog engine itself. That was mostly because the documentation for Hexo and the theme I chose («NexT») is very good. There wasn’t anything of value I could add, short of one exception. The documentation for installing custom fonts was not complete. While one sections talks about font customization, it is focused on selecting fonts that are available online. Specifically, the example is tailored for google fonts. That is great unless you have your own set of fonts.

About four years ago, I settled on Ubuntu 14 LTS^[1] as the server operating system (OS) to host my website. We know that all good things must come to an end, and in the world of Ubuntu, we know precisely when that happens. As of April 2019, security updates for my server were no longer available. Since I didn’t want my server to be turned into a malware distribution system, a decision about upgrading the operating system had to be made.

I’m well aware that this article is in danger to get into an apples vs. oranges comparison. Bookshelves can be filled with books about Wolfram’s Mathematica and JupyterLab/Jupyter, many of them demonstrating how very different the software tools are. Mathematica is a commercial software package, JupyterLab is an open-source web application that is a front end to a variety of interactive compute kernels. And yet, the problems they help to solve do overlap. So it seems fair to compare those products for an application that both are well suited to handle and ignore the vast differences the software packages have in other areas.

This blog post was inspired by two op-eds on arstechnica. One arguing that PGP’s^[1] weak link is the difficulty to ensure the security of the secret key over its lifetime. A compromised secret key is a catastrophic event, making all prior encrypted messages accessible. Additionally, there are disqualifying UX issues. PGP is difficult to use, creating opportunities for mistakes to creep in. The author suggests alternatives for secure messaging, for example Signal or OTR.

A second op-ed shortly after takes the opposite position, pointing out that PGP has unique capabilities, that are not addressable with alternatives. Go read both of those articles, they are worth your time.

I have been using ZFS for a while on more than one platform and I thought it might be interesting to write about my setup at home. I was —admittingly to a small degree— involved testing^[1] when OpenZFS on OS X was in its early development, so I can also present a small part of ZFS history from my personal point of view.

As a Mac user and programmer I have been dabbling with Xcode a few times in the past. It was never a primary interest, but a required tool to get started with Objective-C and native Mac GUI development. Objective-C was a curiosity for me. It is syntactically quite different from the C family of programming languages that I usually work with. That also was the reason I never felt comfortable programming in Objective-C. With a syntax so different the investment in time to become proficient didn’t compare well to the expected return.

About 10 years ago I was working on a project for Procter & Gamble that required me to have remote access to their computer system. To gain access, I not only had to provide a password, but also a six-digit number displayed by a Secure ID key fob. The displayed number changed every minute, preventing anyone gaining access without physical access to the key fob. It was a bit like magic to me back then.