litchralee

@ litchralee @sh.itjust.works

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29
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776
Joined

3 yr. ago

6h ago

Network Security Audit
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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 6h ago

Fair, though I personally don't let my ISP indirectly dictate what I do with my LAN. If I didn't already have a v6-enabled WAN, I would still manage my LAN using IPv6 private range addresses. There are too many benefits to me, like having VMs and containers be first-class citizens on my LAN, rather than sitting behind yet another layer of NAT. That lets me avoid port forwarding at the border of my home Kubernetes cluster (or formerly, my Docker Swarm), and it means my DNS names correctly resolve to a valid IP address that's usable anywhere on my network (because no NAT when inside the LAN).
I will admit that NAT64 is kinda a drag to access v4-only resources like GitHub, but that's only necessary because they've not lit up support for v6 (despite other parts of their site supporting v6).
This is my idea of being future-ready: when the future comes, I'm already there.

7h ago

Network Security Audit

The approach isn't invalid, but seeing as you already have the framework set up to deny all and log for IPv4, the same could be done with IPv6.

That is to say, your router advertises an IPv6 gateway to the global internet, but you then reject it because your VPN doesn't support v6 (sadly). I specifically say reject, rather than drop, because you want that ICMP Unreachable (administratively prohibited) message to get returned to any app trying to use v6. That way, Happy Eyeballs will gracefully and quickly fall back to v6. Unless your containers have some exceptionally weird routing rules, v6 connections will only be attempted once, and will always use the route advertised. So if your router denies this attempt, your containers won't try again in a way that could leak. v6 leaks are more likely when there isn't even a route advertised.

This makes your apps able to use v6, for that day when your VPN supports it, and so it's just a question of when the network itself can be upgraded. IMO, apps should always try for v6 first and the network (if it can't support it) will affirmatively reply that it can't, and then apps will gracefully fall back.

This also benefits you by logging all attempted v6 traffic, to know how much of your stuff is actually v6-capable. And more data is always nice to have.

9h ago

what is this

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 9h ago

I'm so confused on what the point of such a hash would be. If the time that an email was sent was so important, would existing DKIM timestamps also work? Is this basically the digital equivalent of including today's newspaper in a ransom note?

Not to say that DKIM as-used is perfect.

1d ago

No, a moped doesn't always have pedals – and other inconvenient truths you may hate

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 1d ago

Once again, shame on the editor for distorting what the author wrote, using a clickbait headline when the article can stand on its own. No, there is no "inconvenient truth" in the article, but rather a sober discussion of the fluid colloquial definitions of "moped" and "scooter", as a result of technological change being much faster than the written language can adapt, all while legal language remains as tight (and impenetrable) as it's ever been.

On that latter point, I will rehash what I wrote earlier:

In California, the largest motorcycle market in the USA, this would be regulated as a moped (CVC Section 406), since it is electric, has a motor less than 3 kW (4 HP in old money), and a top speed of less than 30 MPH (48 kph).

Riders wouldn't need an M1 motorcycle license, but instead an M2 moped license would suffice. An M1 license allows riding anything that needs an M2 license, such as this moped. The process for an M2 is classroom instruction, and then a brief practical exam. There is no annual registration for mopeds, but there is a one-time plate fee, to obtain a plate from the DMV. There is no insurance requirement for mopeds.

A moped can be ridden in either traffic lanes and bike lanes (but not shoulders, which only bicycles are permitted to use). Whereas bicycles are obligated to use a bike lane when present (with a few obvious exceptions), a moped is not forced to use a bike lane. When riding in a traffic lane, a moped must keep to the right-most lane if slower than all other traffic.

This is all to say, California explicitly allows certain non-pedal, electric two-wheelers to be mopeds. But also the original, pedal, combustion two-wheelers are also mopeds. Rather than quibbling on definitions, this state would rather people go out riding.

4d ago

Honda unveils new electric moped cheaper than gasoline equivalent, no motorcycle license needed

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 4d ago

If you have a question about your own ebike and not the Honda moped in the OP's post, you should start a new post so that other people can try to answer.

That said, at least in California and many other states, 28 MPH is not allowed on a Class 2 ebike. Only a Class 3 ebike can do 28 MPH, but a throttle is not allowed on a Class 3. Class 2 tops out at 20 MPH.

4d ago

Honda unveils new electric moped cheaper than gasoline equivalent, no motorcycle license needed

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 4d ago

In California, the largest motorcycle market in the USA, this would be regulated as a moped (CVC Section 406), since it is electric, has a motor less than 3 kW (4 HP in old money), and a top speed of less than 30 MPH (48 kph).

Riders wouldn't need an M1 motorcycle license, but instead an M2 moped license would suffice. An M1 license allows riding anything that needs an M2 license, such as this moped. The process for an M2 is classroom instruction, and then a brief practical exam. There is no annual registration for mopeds, but there is a one-time plate fee, to obtain a plate from the DMV. There is no insurance requirement for mopeds.

A moped can be ridden in either traffic lanes and bike lanes (but not shoulders, which only bicycles are permitted to use). Whereas bicycles are obligated to use a bike lane when present (with a few obvious exceptions), a moped is not forced to use a bike lane. When riding in a traffic lane, a moped must keep to the right-most lane if slower than all other traffic.

IANAL, but all of this can be verified in the CVC. The result is that mopeds (a vestige of the 1970s oil crisis) could absolutely make a comeback if priced correctly, since ebikes already provide similar mobility.

5d ago

'Acer has not only adopted an unfamiliar design but also hedged their bets on AI features' What it's like riding Acer's futuristic electric bike

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 5d ago

$4,999.99 USD

single-armed front fork

not a foldable e-bike

airless tires

a SIM card

the ebiiGo app

Every single one of these design decisions -- except the single front fork -- seems entirely unjustified when taken together as a whole. This is not an ebike for actual use, but a technical demo, not unlike proof-of-concept automobiles that never make it to series production. But the reason those cars never see production is because they're often exceedingly impractical, like when mechanical engineers go racing in concrete boats. They do it for the challenge and the lolz.

But unlike cars, the triumph of lithium ion batteries and cheap production costs means that ebikes like this can actually enter production. But should it have? I don't think so. We are basically using time, energy, and resources to build instant ewaste. It's the fast fashion problem, but with ebikes.

1w ago

Why is amperage more "obscure" than voltage (or watts)?

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 1w ago

For an example of where constant current sources are used -- and IMO, deeply necessary -- we can look to the humble LED driver circuit. LEDs are fickle devices, on account of their very sharp voltage-current curve, which also changes with operating temperature and is not always consistent from the factory. As a practical matter, the current through an LED is what predominantly controls the brightness, so constant current sources will provide very steady illumination. If instead an LED were driven with a constant voltage source, it would need to be exceedingly stable, since even a few tens of millivolts off can destroy some LEDs through over-current and/or over-heating.

For cheap appliances, some designs will use a simple resistor circuit to set the LED current, and this may be acceptable provided that the current is nowhere near overdriving the LED. Thing of small indicator LEDs that aren't that bright anyway. Whereas for expensive industrial LED projectors, it would be foolish to not have an appropriately designed current source, among other protective features.

1w ago

Why is amperage more "obscure" than voltage (or watts)?

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 1w ago

In a nutshell, voltage incompatibility is generally more damaging than current mismatch, typically in a frightening or energetic manner. Many Americans tourists find this out when they bring their 120v AC hairdryers to an overseas hotel with 230v AC power. If there is only room for one number to be emblazoned on an outlet or plug, it should be the rated voltage, first and foremost.

For current protection, we've had thermal fuses since the 1890s, and thermo-magnetic circuit breakers since the 1940s. There are even more fancy transistor-based current protections available for industrial equipment that can shut off extremely fast. In a sense, protection against over-current has basically been solved, in the scenarios where there's enough of a risk of humans or property.

Whereas voltage mix-ups still happen, although consumer electronics are now moving to automatic voltage detection (eg an 18v electric drill battery charger refuses to charge a 12v battery) and through actively negotiated power parameters (eg USB PD). And even without human error, under- and over voltage transients still happen in residential and commercial environments, leading to either instant damage or long-term product degradation (eg domestic refrigerator motor drive circuits).

It should be noted that a current starvation scenario, such as when an ebike is current-limited per regulations, does not generally cause a spike in voltage. Whereas in a voltage starvation situation, resistive loads will indeed try to draw more current in order to compensate. Hence why current protection is almost always built-in and not left to chance.

2w ago

Element/Matrix Official Docker Install Method?

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

Firstly, I wish you the best of luck in your community's journey away from Discord. This may be a good time to assess what your community needs from a new platform, since Discord targeted various use-cases that no single replacement platform can hope to replace in full. Instead, by identifying exactly what your group needs and doesn't need, that will steer you in the right direction.

As for Element, bear in mind that their community and paid versions do not exactly target a hobbyist self-hosting clientele. Instead, Element is apparently geared more for enterprise on-premises deployment (like Slack, Atlassian JIRA, Asterisk PBX) and that's probably why the community version is also based on Kubernetes. This doesn't mean you can't use it, but their assumptions about deployments are that you have an on-premises cloud.

Fortunately, there are other Matrix homeservers available, including one written in Rust that has both bare metal and Docker deployment instructions. Note that I'm not endorsing this implementation, but only know of it through this FOSDEM talk describing how they dealt with malicious actors.

As an aside, I have briefly considered Matrix before as a group communications platform, but was put off by their poor E2EE decisions, for both the main client implementation and in the protocol itself. Odd as it sounds, poor encryption is worse than no encryption, because of the false assurance it gives. If I did use Matrix, I would not enable E2EE because it doesn't offer me many privacy guarantees, compared to say, Signal.

2w ago

'E-bike for your feet': How bionic sneakers could change human mobility

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

Stroads are best understood as a product of emergent evolution. That is to say, no thinking went into their development, except as incremental, thoughtless upgrades from what was probably once a rural country road.

The only good thing about stroads is that when they're demolished and rebuilt properly, there's usually enough room to build an express two-lane road, or two-way busway, or dual-track light rail line, plus room for adjacent frontage/access roads for local traffic.

The land and technology exists to build things properly, but often not the political and community will.

2w ago

'E-bike for your feet': How bionic sneakers could change human mobility

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

These remind me of a time when French shepherds walked on stilts to overcome swampy landscape.

The modern equivalent would be stilts to "walk over" lanes of stroads, since the stilts could land on the lane dividers and thus provide uninhibited, elevated urban travel. Just don't fall.

I jest, but that would be a solving a real issue, where crosswalks at stroads take forever and a half.

2w ago

VLAN for Thermostat?

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

My Ecobee thermostat -- which is reasonably usable without an Internet connection -- has one horrific flaw: the built in clock seems to drift by a minute per month, leading to my programmed schedules shifting ever so slightly.

I could have it connected to a dedicated IoT SSID and live in a VLAN jail so that it only has access to my NTP server.... or I just change the time manually every six months as part of DST.

2w ago

Using an engineering notebook

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

I don't currently have any sort of notebook. Instead, for general notes, I prefer A3-sized loose sheets of paper, since I don't really want to use double the table surface to have both verso and recto in front of me, I don't like writing on spiral or perfect bound notebooks, and I already catalog my papers into 3-ring binders.

if I'm debugging something, and I'm putting silly print statements to quickly troubleshoot, should I document that?

My read of the linked post is that each discrete action need not be recorded, but rather the thought process that leads to a series of action. Rather than "added a printf() in constructor", the overall thrust of that line of investigation might be "checking the constructor for signs of malformed input parameters".

I don't disagree with the practice of "printf debugging", but unless you're adding a printf between every single operative line in a library, there's always going to be some internal thought that goes into where a print statement is placed, based on certain assumptions and along a specific line of inquiry. Having a record of your thoughts is, I think, the point that the author is making.

That said, in lieu of a formal notebook, I do make frequent Git commits and fill in the commit message with my thoughts, at every important juncture (eg before compiling, right before logging off or going to lunch).

2w ago

Fast-paced and exciting environment

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

Musical chairs would indeed be a "fast paced and exciting" environment, but in the least desirable way.

2w ago

I made a way to remotely control my homelab without any internet access required

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

Obligatory mention: !keming@lemmy.world

2w ago

Ebike ‘swarms’ descend on roads and parks across Australia as meet-ups gather pace

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

"young people irking the community" is a complaint as old as written history lol

2w ago

why is the beginning on the left and the end on the right?

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 2w ago

Approximately 90% of people are right-handed. In European writing systems that use quills and pens, reading and writing left-to-right makes more sense so that you can hold the pen in your right hand and drag it rightward, not into the ink you just laid down.

In East Asia, before writing on paper was a thing, they wrote using inscribed bone, but then eventually moved to vertical wood boards, bound together by string. Each character on the board would be ready from top-to-bottom, and then move to the next board. The most logical choice for a right handed person is to stack the wood pile on their left, and use their right hand to draw the next board to meet their gaze, then set it down on their right. Later, this bundle of wood boards would become paper scrolls, but would still be pulled from left-to-right by a right-handed scholar.

For this reason, the historical writing system common to China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam for centuries was read right-to-left (because instead of scrolls, we have pages, which can be moved easily). But the native Korean script is left-to-right, as is the modern Vietnamese script. And Chinese and Japanese in the 20th Century switched to left-to-right. And yet, Japanese books are still ordered "backwards" so that the title page is what Westerners would say is the back of the book, and manga panels are read from the right side toward the left.

So far as I'm aware, this means some Japanese signs can be rendered left-to-right (modern), right-to-left (historical standard), and top-to-bottom (traditional). The only orientation that's disallowed is bottom-to-top (although vertical news tickers will do this, so that readers see the text from top-to-bottom).

It all boils down to right handedness, but it depends on whether your hand is moving, or the text is moving.

3w ago

I made a way to remotely control my homelab without any internet access required

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 3w ago

Are ham radio operators in the EU able to use LoRa radios and be exempt from duty cycle limitations?

3w ago

I made a way to remotely control my homelab without any internet access required

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litchralee @sh.itjust.works 3w ago

Admittedly, I haven't finished reflashing my formerly-Meshtastic LoRA radios with MeshCore yet, so I haven't been able to play around with it yet. Although both mesh technologies are decent sized near me, I was swayed to MeshCore because I started looking into how the mesh algorithm works for both. No extra license, since MeshCore supports roughly the same hardware as Meshtastic.

And what I learned -- esp from following the #meshtastic and #meshcore hashtags on Mastodon -- is that Meshtastic has some awful flooding behavior to send messages. Having worked in computer networks, this is a recipe for limiting the max size and performance of the mesh. Whereas MeshCore has a more sensible routing protocol for passing messages along.

My opinion is that mesh networking's most important use-case should be reliability, since when everything else (eg fibre, cellular, landlines) stops working, people should be able to self organize and build a working communications system. This includes scenarios where people are sparsely spaced (eg hurricane disaster with people on rooftops awaiting rescue) but also extremely dense scenarios (eg a protest where the authorities intentionally shut off phone towers, or a Taylor Swift concert where data networks are completely congested). Meshtastic's flooding would struggle in the latter scenario, to send a distress message away from the immediate vicinity. Whereas MeshCore would at least try to intelligently route through nodes that didn't already receive the initial message.