PDF/A, Taxes, ODBC, FerretDB, Edge, Matrix, Outlook

1. Investigated differences between PDF/A and "other" PDF files. Problem was that the PDF files weren't PDF/A complicit. Solution was quite simple, just use bit newer PDF format, the format was 1.3 and then embed necessary fonts. jpg images were ok, because JPEG 2000 wasn't being used anyway. - All good. - PDF/A must be: Self-Contained, No Dynamic Content, Contain Metadata and Accessible

2. Investigated vero.fi (Finnish tax authority) taxation API, which would allow using API to send tax information. But that's still open. After initial research I concluded that it's totally doable, but requires considerable effort. Next question is, if it's worth of it. And I'm not exactly sure about that yet.

3. Too much discussion and pointless speculation about UK Online safety bill and EU Chat Control. What those actually mean will be found out later in court. Way too much speculation.

4. Backups and data integrity tests automated and scheduled. Encrypted off-line and off-site backups and all the usual stuff.

5. Microsoft SQL Server ODBC driver 18.0 version seems to have changed on key aspect on default settings. Now default connections are encrypted, which also means that the SQL Server should have a valid TLS certificate. Duh. Well, now that's known and there are no problems with it in future. TrustServerCertificate & Encrypt ODBC connection string defaults are now different. If you want it to be compatible with old versions. Just set "Encrypt=no".

6. FerretDB (@ ferretdb.io) - Quite interesting solution. MongoDB connector for PostgreSQL / SQLite3 backends. I really like projects like this, excellent hack. It can be very beneficial in some situations where there's no need or interest to install the MongoDB (@ mongodb.com), even if there's a need to run app which only supports it.

7. Enabled Passkeys for GitHub, now it's working, awesome! UX is just great!Lot of discussion about Passkeys again on multiple forums and platforms. People are really confused about this stuff. Well, it's not my problem. Lot of discussion how good or bad passkey key protection is. Well, it is what it is, and there's no way to enforce it, so... It's kind of pointless to discuss that. - Unfortunately many sites now support Webauthn / Passkeys via something like Google login, uh oh.

8. Microsoft Edge, oh why it doesn't support AVIF (@ Wikipedia) / AV1 (@ Wikipedia) ? Well, when that's fixed then all major browsers support the image format, and it's good time to radically improve image compression, load times and save lot of bandwidth. For most images AVIF is radically better than WebP. - Afaik this has been already fixed, remember posts are delayed.

9. I don't know what Google guys have done, but now Google Sites performance is much better. Earlier it was a joke and kind of example how bad developer and tech they actually got. But now it's nice and usable. Yet, there's still randomization or more likely some kind of race condition when creating new pages. Because it's still random what kind of layout the new page gets. Either it got separate header section, or not. I haven't bothered to really analyze what they key trigger is, but it just means that layout is inconsistent and it gives kind of bad UX and impression.

10. Matrix / Element (@ Wikipedia), bad state handling. Real developer amateur hour. Message is sent, client shows it's not sent, it also shows the same message in the history but can't decrypt it. This shows multiple overlapping ultra lame programming fails. - Great going guys! - Also the message is now stuck in the chat as the newest message. Like at least three lame fails at the same time. All of this because I posted a message and quit the program. Did I say that some people just don't get the idea transactions.

11. New Outlook stealing IMAP credentials and user emails? (@ mailbox.org) - Well. I'm sure they say somewhere that they don't store that information for extended periods. What's the problem? (slight sarcasm) - To be honest, there's nothing new at all about this kind of approach and stuff. Even Nokia did that back in the day. As well as, so many other services allow importing mail from another source(s) using IMAP credentials. - Somehow I'm not surprised. And what does it even matters, people are pro cloud anyway, and all secrets are already stored in cloud, so what's the difference?

12. Something different? T-5 Brave Eagle (@ Wikipedia) Taiwan's new trainer jet which can be armed. Watched the Quantum Supremacy lesson by Michio Kaku.

2024-09-15