Clicking, Matrix, Ambiguous Time, TCP RCE, PQE

1. Trippy morning at the office - It was a bit of a weird feeling, there's a clicking sound here every now and then. I was about to call the national radio about the clicks. But then I called a data nerd in the basement to check the weather and radar. Luckily I noticed that he was adjusting the office lights when it started. Anyway, after a moment of forking, it was found that if the device X is in socket group A or B, and both groups VC and VD of the lighting are on, then the device X starts to click. But if the VC or VD light group is not on, or the device X is plugged into socket power group C, then no more clicking occurs. Measuring what the difference is between those sockets, sockets A and B are marked ICT and have ~2 V more voltage, while C is normal electricity and has slightly lower voltage. The device X is still UPS battery protected and has a real heavy duty clamp transformer. A bit mysterious... - A bit of a legendarily set you could say. - So now I have to make an expert summary of this, that it clicks strangely here, if the lights are in a certain setup. - Maybe I'll call the radio station after all. - Btw. This hasn't happened since, and several colleagues confirmed it's true. True wonder of the modern electric grid and device interactions. - If I would have had oscilloscope and more time & interest in the problem, I might have been able to see and isolate the true source / cause of these mind bending cosmic fluctuations.

2. Matrix Megolm (@ sumnerevans.com) - A very nice post how Matrix Megolm encryption works.

3. Matrix video re-compression / re-packing in some cases doesn't maintain aspect ratio, nice fail guys!

4. More issues, main system first crashed with write error to system drive, and now refuses to boot. More details later: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED - status: DRDY

5. Some Python programs crashing with Ambiguous Time Error, oh joy. I had to create separate test project to figure out how it's exactly happening and what the root causes are. Quite expected stuff, actually, if you'll have to ever think about it. Thanks to Summer / Winter time shifts, there are zones of ambiguous time which the datetime library (correctly) refuses to handle. Thsi is A good reminder why UTC should be always used, and that's also exactly how I fixed it. See: PEP 495 – Local Time Disambiguation (@ Python.org)

6. Ephemeral user identifiers - There's no reason you can't use a new identifier for every email. Everything that SimpleX and Keychat do can be done just as well on top of the email protocol (SMTP). - It's just a pseudorandom delivery address(es), server and data. I don't see any key differences why it wouldn't work.

7. CVE-2024-38063 Windows TCP/IP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (@ microsoft.com) - Uuh. Oof size. This is just wonderful. At least all of the systems except a very few exceptions got updated & patched automatically within 24 hours. - But in general things like this are absolutely terrible. - How about bringing up the good old joke about IPv4 diamond hand holders enjoying valuation going up, when Microsoft recommends disabling IPv6. - I think I've posted about those cyber security audit consultants whom said that IPv6 must be disabled everywhere, because it's insecure protocol. I guess they did way too well what they were talking about after all? (hmm)

8. NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards (@ nist.gov) - Nice new algorithms for post quantum world with quantum resistant designs. kw: PQE, CRYSTALS-Kyber, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON and SPHINCS+

9. I hate when some people ask different platforms to add identity verification to the platform itself. Well, there are several reasons why not to do it like that, it's always good if the identity verification is completely platform independent and can be accomplished securely and reliably over any medium. Letter, phone all, CV morse code. It doesn't need to be, and should not be integrated to the existing platform limiting it's usability for other channels.

10. SimpleX Chat gave it up for a few years. It's so badly broken currently and frustrates users. Matrix is also badly broken and really sucks on multiple aspects, but it still isn't that badly broken as SimpleX.

11. Got really sick'n'tired of some forever repeating annoying topics. I'll try to avoid those actively in future. And not only posting about the topics, also practically avoiding those. Things are well known, someone should do something about it. But it's not me, I've said what I've got to say.

12. Privacy and security discussions, never ending and always as pointless. I think I'm gonna give up on that as well. Same pretty much applies to investment, economy and stock market discussions. Never ending pointless argument going on. Zero value produced. - Things were broken, are broken and will be broken. - Nothing new really?

2025-02-16