Well, 2021 has been another crazy year – almost like 2020, with lots of ups and downs. I tried post as much content as I could but it’s been tough of course with everything going on in life. I was also bored and trying to make a Music app icon but I didn’t like how it turned out so I’ll post it here to save it for the future. Hopefully the next year coming up will turn out better – happy holidays, stay safe out there!
Extra Icons: fossjon/2020/11/28/custom-squircle-icons
Just wanted to keep a list of manual configuration items for each macOS app, in case anyone also finds them useful as well.
Brave (FF UI is freezing when waking from sleep)
redirector-extensionglob -> http*://www.reddit.com/* -> https://old.reddit.com/$2regex -> ://[^/]*(facebook|fbcdn|fbsbx|fbstatic)[^/]*/ -> http://127.0.0.1Firefox
about:configgfx.webrender.all = truegfx.direct2d.disabled = truelayers.acceleration.disabled = trueTextMate
command_linedefaults write com.macromates.TextMate disableTypingPairs -bool YES–
macOS
memory leaks !Music
There’s something about the ARC4 algorithm that still fascinates me to this day… it’s just fun to play with!
function rc4md(m) {
var r = [], s = [], i = 0, j = 0, k = 0, x, y, z;
for (z = 0; z < 256; z++) {
s[z] = z; r[z] = z;
k = (((k + 1) * z) % 256);
}
var c, l = m.length, n = (l + (256 * 16));
for (z = 0; z < n; z++) {
if ((l > 0) && (z < l)) { c = m.charCodeAt(z); }
else { c = s[k]; }
i = ((i + 1) % 256);
j = (((j << 1) ^ (s[i] + c)) % 256);
x = s[i]; s[i] = s[j]; s[j] = x;
k = (((k << 1) ^ (j + s[c])) % 256);
}
for (y = 0; y < 32; ++y) {
r[y] = (r[y] ^ s[k]);
k = ((k + r[y]) % 256);
}
var o = "", h = "0123456789abcdef";
for (y = 0; y < 32; y++) {
o += (h.charAt(r[y]>>4) + h.charAt(r[y]&0xf));
}
return o;
}
var z = "", m = ["", "0", "a", "abc", "acb", "abcd", "abce", "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"];
for (var k in m) {
z += (rc4md(m[k]) + " " + m[k] + "\n");
}
console.log(z);
=
4edc57104c34679320117fbd98403deb8457a59a1c9b7e91884a4f05c917a7cc
b9b53c6e32f5eeedbfdf0ce22a8e359212bf36f8a6d66c2d645250f3aa682ed6 0
d9188e109e58b64bc48ba481d18920c01ddbb7ea4120b74e7236d95622b82d19 a
55dec6a3e8793925cf9612b3fcd311593bb18210787b0d7b229d6eff8f703dfe abc
b60a8ba9fe569a3d59b70ee9921976039a753aaba0c9209c8b0aa1ded0119043 acb
5774da821f04b8a6b104a08c0b77e6630cbd327348e37f24c8cde41fd84aa013 abcd
13488161d5ef426de0c60162ae167de3a23645ff51b3859e2abfcd7b5ad56b2a abce
1f4461806b98d43b10086e1ebf4aa75e192968587ddaa97e2868c2e09067801d the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
=The beginning of the ARM laptop journey!
Well it finally came through! The size and thinness make it very portable at 14-inches, although it does feel a bit heavier in weight, similar to how my old Powerbook G4 felt. The liquid retina display is smoother, crisper, taller, and more vibrant at a 16:10 aspect ratio, in addition to the extra menubar space and smaller bezels. The keyboard key travel feels solid, firm, springy, and has a satisfyingly-mechanical “clickity-clackity” type of sound to it. Speakers are full and warm. Touchpad is responsive and accurate. The old-school ports are back including MagSafe, HDMI, and SD-Card, in addition to the amazing convenience of TouchID. This machine feels like the modern-retro car equivalent of a laptop computer, the way a proper computer should be, for pros!
Cons: One thing missing is the 802.11ac-3×3 radios (it only has a two-by-two)
— Intel-free since pre-2023 ! 🙂
So I’ve placed an order for my first ARM laptop to finally replace my five year old 2017 Macbook Air (the last Intel processor) — (I’m going all-in on ARM) !
Machine Specs:
This is what happens! 😂 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So I was experimenting and if you can get signed certs from let’s-encrypt and dns records from cloud-flare, then you could store your public signed certificate as a set of split txt entries which anyone could verify with a set of trusted root certificates. You can then use the private key to sign an encryption key (stored as another txt record) along with the encrypted message (also another txt record).
This would allow you to sign, store, and send short messages (in a single direction) with confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity all through a plain text protocol (as long as the root certs exist)!
Verification Chain:
# ./dns_fun.sh fossjon.com d
Certificate:
Data:
Version: 3 (0x2)
Serial Number:
04:b3:64:ec:80:70:47:42:2a:8a:ef:b4:11:60:03:9d:23:78
Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
Issuer: C=US, O=Let's Encrypt, CN=R3
Validity
Not Before: Oct 9 18:35:11 2021 GMT
Not After : Jan 7 18:35:10 2022 GMT
Subject: CN=*.fossjon.com
Subject Public Key Info:
Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
Public-Key: (2048 bit)
Modulus:
00:c8:1c:f6:86:b7:b5:45:63:68:7b:e4:34:10:6e:
0c:51:da:73:5b:65:d4:f7:fd:c8:c7:2e:d8:8b:01:
2d:c5:67:a4:0e:7a:b6:57:bf:fe:2a:c9:52:4d:38:
51:56:a6:08:bb:5a:8f:85:32:88:c0:3c:9b:3e:ad:
f9:1a:aa:21:fb:b6:2f:d1:7c:bc:c1:6e:ae:d8:b4:
c9:87:a5:69:a4:c5:f9:1d:3a:1f:49:68:94:75:b9:
ab:f6:12:9f:56:4c:7f:26:f1:6e:85:9e:1e:66:be:
74:e0:01:91:6d:59:cb:0d:34:01:10:5c:b9:43:44:
52:07:6a:ca:3f:83:1e:41:6c:51:5a:a6:fa:20:8f:
33:40:76:90:ab:4d:04:6f:33:70:f0:09:c7:38:25:
26:15:70:d6:f9:f4:e6:b6:71:11:e0:7a:c6:04:86:
30:c9:56:f0:14:6e:9e:66:60:b3:7d:2b:42:a4:b9:
fb:6d:73:4f:26:2e:17:aa:a8:64:72:e2:f5:a8:b1:
17:8d:f4:db:a8:10:fc:70:ff:1b:cc:78:6f:04:84:
e0:fc:1d:15:72:de:41:bd:14:c5:26:72:3e:56:2a:
aa:1d:9f:1a:3c:17:40:91:21:7e:2a:b4:8a:c2:ab:
79:0f:dd:21:13:a1:2e:da:6a:a3:92:49:e7:f1:58:
36:bf
Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
Secret_key_123-77cf362ab2442e3fa3062d06adb571f0ea92647f0ba137300a272767d6ea0834
this is just a test of the emergency broadcast system, this is not the real thing!
#!/bin/bash
d="$1" ; z="$2" ; m="$3" ; k="$4"
echo
if [ "$z" == "e" ] ; then
h=$(echo "$m" | openssl dgst -sha256 -r | awk '{ print $1 }' | tr -d '\t\r\n')
t="${k}-${h}"
e=$(echo "$m" | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -e -k "$t" -S 00 | base64 -b 255)
echo "$e" ; echo
s=$(echo -n "$t" | openssl rsautl -sign -inkey privkey.pem | base64 -b 255)
echo "$s" ; echo
p=$(cat crt.pem | grep -iv '^---' | base64 -d | base64 -b 255)
echo "$p" ; echo
fi
if [ "$z" == "d" ] ; then
c=$(dig "z.pubcrt.$d" txt +short | tr -d ' "\n' | base64 -d | base64 -b 64)
( echo '-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----' ; echo "$c" ; echo '-----END CERTIFICATE-----' ) > /tmp/crt.pem
t=$(openssl x509 -text -noout -in /tmp/crt.pem | grep -i 'exponent' -B 64)
echo "$t" ; echo
v=$(dig "z.pubkey.$d" txt +short | tr -d ' "\n' | base64 -d | openssl rsautl -verify -certin -inkey /tmp/crt.pem)
echo "$v" ; echo
o=$(dig "z.pubmsg.$d" txt +short | tr -d ' "\n' | base64 -d | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -d -k "$v")
echo "$o" ; echo
fi
So I decided to switch the nameserver records on my fossjon.com domain over to Cloudflare’s service for two different reasons. One is that they offer more advanced https reverse proxying tech along with a better dns management interface as well! I still have the domain registered with Google Domains as they also offer pretty good mx record email forwarding via gmail.
Cloudflare won’t let you directly rewrite the HTTP HOST header field anymore, however, they will let you setup a more advanced HTTP JavaScript worker process. This process can handle the incoming web proxy requests along with the outgoing responses and perform some modifications on them. This is an extremely powerful framework and it behaves more like a proper reverse proxy server would!
I created a GitHub repo to track the worker javascripts: github.com/stoops/cfworkers
Note: It seems like CF offers a better DNS API service, however, I couldn’t yet find a DNS backup button to help save all my records locally (hacky webarchive file but at least it’s sorted nicely).
javascript:(function(){
var t = document.getElementsByTagName("table")[0];
var s = t.getElementsByTagName("tr");
var m = {}, l = [], z = 1;
for (var i=0; i<s.length; ++i) {
var d = s[i].getElementsByTagName("td");
if (d.length > 4) {
var k = d[2].innerText.trim();
if (k.endsWith(".com")) { k = "@"; }
if (!(k in m)) { m[k] = {"r":[]}; l.push(k); }
var r = d[1].innerText.trim();
if (!(r in m[k])) { m[k][r] = []; m[k]["r"].push(r); }
m[k][r].push([d[3].innerText.trim(), d[4].innerText.trim()]);
}
}
var b = "style='border: 1px solid black;padding: 4px;white-space: nowrap;'";
var o = "<table style='padding: 8px;'><tr><th "+b+">No.</th><th "+b+">Time</th><th "+b+">Record</th><th "+b+">Type</th><th "+b+">Value</th></tr>";
l.sort();
for (var i in l) {
var k = l[i];
m[k]["r"].sort();
for (var j in m[k]["r"]) {
var r = m[k]["r"][j];
m[k][r].sort();
for (var d in m[k][r]) {
o += ("<tr><td "+b+">"+z+"</td><td "+b+">"+m[k][r][d][1]+"</td><td "+b+">"+k+"</td><td "+b+">"+r+"</td><td "+b+">"+m[k][r][d][0]+"</td></tr>"); ++z;
}
}
}
o += "</table>";
document.head.innerHTML = document.head.innerHTML.replace(/script/ig, "xscript");
document.body.innerHTML = o;
})();
Source Code: https://github.com/stoops/dockerssl
If you want to get a wild-card certificate with let’s-encrypt then you’ll have to use the DNS verification method. I made an example Docker file and script that can quickly and easily spin up a Debian container to install and run the certbot application. You can then connect to the container via a local URL (http://127.0.0.1:8080/) and interact with the process to setup the TXT record and then verify the DNS entry and then download the signed cert chain + key pem files!
Note: I do wish Google had API access to their Domains service which would allow for automated TXT records!
$ c=fullchain.pem ; k=privkey.pem ; openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in $c | md5 ; openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in $k | md5
ca7e9eba4cde42a000038aa7dae8680b
ca7e9eba4cde42a000038aa7dae8680b
$ openssl x509 -text -noout -in fullchain.pem
Certificate:
Data:
Version: 3 (0x2)
Serial Number:
04:b3:64:ec:80:70:47:42:2a:8a:ef:b4:11:60:03:9d:23:78
Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
Issuer: C=US, O=Let's Encrypt, CN=R3
Validity
Not Before: Oct 9 18:35:11 2021 GMT
Not After : Jan 7 18:35:10 2022 GMT
Subject: CN=*.fossjon.com
Subject Public Key Info:
Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
Public-Key: (2048 bit)
Modulus:
00:c8:1c:f6:86:b7:b5:45:63:68:7b:e4:34:10:6e:
.....
79:0f:dd:21:13:a1:2e:da:6a:a3:92:49:e7:f1:58:
36:bf
Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
X509v3 extensions:
X509v3 Key Usage: critical
Digital Signature, Key Encipherment
X509v3 Extended Key Usage:
TLS Web Server Authentication, TLS Web Client Authentication
X509v3 Basic Constraints: critical
CA:FALSE
X509v3 Subject Key Identifier:
34:94:9E:5B:B9:3C:11:0C:F3:33:3E:A1:C4:41:DA:61:64:ED:1D:97
X509v3 Authority Key Identifier:
keyid:14:2E:B3:17:B7:58:56:CB:AE:50:09:40:E6:1F:AF:9D:8B:14:C2:C6
Authority Information Access:
OCSP - URI:http://r3.o.lencr.org
CA Issuers - URI:http://r3.i.lencr.org/
X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
DNS:*.fossjon.com
X509v3 Certificate Policies:
Policy: 2.23.140.1.2.1
Policy: 1.3.6.1.4.1.44947.1.1.1
CPS: http://cps.letsencrypt.org
Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
48:aa:26:6c:2e:fe:ed:a8:14:3e:80:12:c3:0b:c5:f5:95:5c:
.....
f2:0f:4c:9d:4e:d5:df:18:4a:cd:b3:a2:be:3e:57:2f:fc:d0:
8e:c2:03:3e
$ openssl s_client -connect lo.fossjon.com:8443
CONNECTED(00000003)
---
Certificate chain
0 s:/CN=*.fossjon.com
i:/C=US/O=Let's Encrypt/CN=R3
1 s:/C=US/O=Let's Encrypt/CN=R3
i:/C=US/O=Internet Security Research Group/CN=ISRG Root X1
2 s:/C=US/O=Internet Security Research Group/CN=ISRG Root X1
i:/O=Digital Signature Trust Co./CN=DST Root CA X3
---
Server certificate
subject=/CN=*.fossjon.com
issuer=/C=US/O=Let's Encrypt/CN=R3
---
No client certificate CA names sent
Server Temp Key: ECDH, X25519, 253 bits
---
SSL handshake has read 4628 bytes and written 289 bytes
---
New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
Server public key is 2048 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
No ALPN negotiated
SSL-Session:
Protocol : TLSv1.2
Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384
Session-ID: 5A9CA7F699D780CFD9FAFBC197FDBA14FC4307F225CE6C90E55CE0658E3055F8
Session-ID-ctx:
Master-Key: C84D32162158587663310FB67F482AE63CA9F964158B74C1E40806D8915E1B25AFB3DC2F22E15D58450F7CFCA0FAA8B4
TLS session ticket lifetime hint: 7200 (seconds)
TLS session ticket:
0000 - 48 82 2b be 43 84 b1 13-11 7a e5 bf 39 97 89 55 H.+.C....z..9..U
0010 - 43 41 ce 61 42 f8 16 e7-89 28 67 af 8d 73 6d 5c CA.aB....(g..sm\
0020 - 60 c0 13 20 cc e9 77 0d-5a 34 73 50 85 23 57 b0 `.. ..w.Z4sP.#W.
0030 - 10 fd 8e c7 6b d4 37 8b-59 4e f4 30 b3 46 b4 d7 ....k.7.YN.0.F..
0040 - aa c6 79 ff c0 f9 50 c2-54 f0 8e ca 64 3e 49 15 ..y...P.T...d>I.
0050 - f5 42 fa 29 12 73 a6 f2-92 b0 a8 e0 9f 13 fa 89 .B.).s..........
0060 - d1 8c c0 93 19 bf ea 81-32 0c 86 e7 37 42 f8 20 ........2...7B.
0070 - f6 9d 94 d3 38 d8 c9 38-07 9f b6 99 79 b5 43 6a ....8..8....y.Cj
0080 - c5 11 fd a1 30 3a d6 e0-74 d3 ba b6 6f 35 47 f4 ....0:..t...o5G.
0090 - eb c9 af c3 0f 69 95 9f-d1 4c f2 21 80 cc b5 db .....i...L.!....
Start Time: 1633812734
Timeout : 7200 (sec)
Verify return code: 0 (ok)
---
^C
DNS Server: fossjon.wp.com/2021/03/24/…dns-server-blocker-forwarder/
Edit: This would be a good time to plug another amazing blog site written by Cory Doctorow (a member of the EFF) called Pluralistic!
Note: This is only compatible with the good old.reddit.com website!
javascript:(function(){
function w() {
document.title = (document.title+" . [*]");
var y = Math.random(), x = new XMLHttpRequest();
x.onload = function() {
var c = 0, d = document.createElement("div");
d.innerHTML = this.responseText;
var l = d.getElementsByClassName("thing");
for (var i=(l.length-1); i>=0; --i) {
var p = (l[i].getAttribute("data-permalink") + "");
if (!p.startsWith("/r/")) { continue; }
var f = 0, z = [null, null]; c = 0;
var m = document.getElementsByClassName("thing");
for (var j=0; j<m.length; ++j) {
var q = (m[j].getAttribute("data-permalink") + "");
if (!q.startsWith("/r/")) { continue; }
if (q == p) { f = 1; }
if (!z[0]) { z[0] = m[j]; }
c += 1; z[1] = m[j];
}
if (c > (36-(parseInt(y*5)+1))) {
z[1].parentNode.removeChild(z[1]);
}
if (f == 0) {
console.log(p);
z[0].parentNode.insertBefore(l[i], z[0]);
}
}
var a = (new Date() + "").replace(/[ ]*[^ ]*-.*$/, "");
var h = ("<b><font color='red'>" + a + "</font></b> pop in: ");
document.getElementsByClassName("menuarea")[0].getElementsByTagName("span")[0].innerHTML = h;
document.title = ("("+c+") . reddit");
};
var s="?", r=location.href;
if (r.includes("?")) { s="&"; }
x.open("GET", r+s+"r="+y);
x.send();
}
w(); setInterval(w, ((9 * 60) + 1) * 1000);
})();
So I thought I’d try something new/different these days and buy a domain again! I’ve purchased some in the past but never made much use of them personally speaking…
Domain Example: [fossjon.com]/2021/10/06/…a-domain-for-2021/
I chose Google Domains because they offered some extra valuable & useful features:
The only thing I can’t do is send email outbound with a domain address via gmail itself (without an extra smtp server setup) because Google removed the ability to modify the FROM field in the message headers directly with an alias email (it now requires a persistent external smtp auth login)!
Edit: If you can find a third-party smtp mail provider that allows you to add & verify email aliases more easily, you can instruct gmail to connect to that external smtp server with your other account and then you’ll be able to send email from an alias address via gmail directly!
Got a score of 90+ which is not-too-bad for a super-simple domain-name email address!
$ dig fossjon.com txt | grep -i spf
fossjon.com. 550 IN TXT
"v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.mail.yahoo.com ~all"# dig fossjon.com txt +short | grep '!' | tr -d '"' | base64 -d
I wanted to make a historical list of phones that I’ve owned over the years and the reasons why I purchased them in particular. I generally buy phones on the ‘S’ year (tick-tock cycle) when the small improvements have been made to it over time versus the major redesign years!
2007: An important day to remember in the history books…
<=2009: A long long time ago, we used to have flip phones, and at this point I had a BlackBerry Pearl !
2010: One of the first affordable smart phones I owned was the HTC Desire which ran an early version of Android OS and it was very mod-able/customize-able at the time vs the first iPhones back in those days!
2011: After some time of using an Android phone I remember my main complaint being that the battery life barely got me through the day. I then received a hand-me-down phone called the Apple iPhone 4S which had a beautifully-solid-all-glass design, much better battery life, and my first intro to iOS which felt much more put together but more limited in terms of what it allowed me to do with it!
2012: I then switched back to vanilla Android with the Google Nexus 4 because it offered a bigger screen size, a clean OS / unlocked phone, and it was a very low price compared to the competitors. Battery life again was so-so but the back glass looked amazing and sparkly!
2013: I switched back again to the Apple side with the Apple iPhone 5S even though it had a smaller screen size compared to the Android phones. I liked the square edge design in the Gold color and mainly because it was the first phone in the whole market to offer a fingerprint unlock. I grew tired of entering in the long PIN codes by hand with the Nexus and I also got the good battery life back again!
2015: I kept the 5S for a bit and then upgraded to the Apple iPhone 6S for the same reasons as before except this time it offered the bigger screen size and greater battery life. However, it was still an LCD panel compared to the Android phones which were leading the way with their more advanced screen technology!
2017: I had been waiting since the 6S for Apple to release a bigger-sized-but-less-than-6-inches, edge-to-edge OLED screen and they never did for quite some time. So I purchased the Samsung Galaxy S8 which offered best quality screen on the market in addition to a headphone jack, a fingerprint reader, and a modern version of Android OS. My main issue with this phone was not so much the phone part but the Samsung-as-a-company part where they only provided us with 2 years worth of OS updates for a thousand dollar phone… We also couldn’t unlock the boot-loader very easily (to upgrade the OS manually) or remove their forced apps (press F in the chat for Bixby) and I was getting worried about the security of the device over time!
2020: After nearly 5 years of waiting, Apple finally released a phone that had a smaller-than-6-inches + edge-to-edge OLED display. It was called the iPhone 12 Mini and I immediately purchased it and retired my old Samsung phone. I really appreciated the form factor of this phone and what it had to offer. Even though I do miss the headphone jack and fingerprint unlocker, it is very hard to find a small-sized, full-screen phone these days for those of us with smaller hands!
 |  |
2021: And now, back to today, with the Apple iPhone 13 Mini Blue — it’s the ‘S’ year again! 🙂
Gear List:
So I have been waiting and saving up for the future-rumoured M1X Macbook Pro (while still hanging on to my 2017 Macbook Air, for nearly 5 years now). I also have been trying to support the sales of the iPhone Mini because it’s such a great form factor and size and the rumours are saying that Apple may not produce it next year with the iPhone 14!
 |
| – – |
 |
Since I have been working from home during this fall/winter season up north, in the woods, I also setup a mini-network here with a nice: UniFi tri-band-ac POE-UAP, Netgear gigabit-ethernet POE-SWITCH, and the famous TP-Link archer C7-V5 OpenWRT ROUTER+FIREWALL. These all make for a great, stable, and reliable home network configuration when used together! 🙂
And if so, what will happen to operating systems like Windows if they fail to adapt to a future of homes without “Intel Inside” any longer?
Jon's FOSS Blog 