observantTrapezium

  • 18 Posts
  • 337 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • The fundamental difference between GPG encryption and encrypted partition is that of asymmetric vs. symmetric encryption. Whether you mount encrypted storage or decrypt a file with GPG, there’s some “effort” in putting in the passphrase and in both cases the system’s keyring is briefly aware of it and the plaintext is saved to memory (volatile, unless you have encrypted swap or other edge cases).

    Asymmetric encryption is not normally used for personal stuff but mostly to exchange material with one party holding the private key, and other having access to the public key (which is public). Of course you can act as both parties if you like. If you do, keep in mind:

    1. Asymmetric encryption algorithms may be vulnerable to quantum computing attacks in the coming years. There are quantum-resistant algorithms, but to my understanding they are not necessarily quantum-proof and could potentially be broken in the more distant future.
    2. If you do choose to use GPG, make sure that the plaintext never touches the disk, for example save it to /dev/shm before encryption.
    3. You can also protect your private key with a passphrase.

    Personally I use Joplin. On the clients it’s secure because the database is saved on encrypted storage secured by my login phrase. On the server it’s secure by Joplin encrypting the files saved to WebDAV storage. Is it 100% safe? Probably not, but probably good enough to stop all but a nation-state level actor.










  • I also bought into the Duolingo hype in the early days, watched it enshittified into oblivion, and not shedding a tear for investors punishing it, even if it’s for the wrong reasons.

    I’m now doing comprehensible input (reading + videos) and flash cards in my target language. Even though some people poo poo flash cards, I find it a good complement for CI (when I encounter a word from flash cards in the “wild”, it does click better). I definitely need to work on speaking ability.



  • To be fair, high noon is rarely 12:00 even without DST. West Saskatchewan and the Yukon have quite a big mismatch with solar time. The idea behind Sandford Fleming’s innovation was that some mismatch is acceptable if it means you don’t get a different time zone in every stop along the railway.

    Personally, I think this system is not really the best for the modern globalized age. I would prefer something like Swatch Internet Time or even just using UTC exclusively everywhere. It’s just a social construct that the sun rises at what we label with numbers between 5 and 9 (usually), and we start working at what’s labelled 9. You could just as easily (more easily in my opinion) shift those labels depending on geography, instead of using the same labels and deciding on an offset. But it will never happen because of inertia. Look how difficult it is to get rid of a dumb idea like the biannual clock shift (not to say DST) because of inertia.