"Pest" v. 0xFF.

What follows is a long-promised detailed specification of a DDOS-proof, CPU-inexpensive, ciphered-authenticated peer-to-peer communication protocol. I would like to thank Thimbronion for implementing a large subset of this spec already despite not having seen it yet! The document (very much a work in progress!) is available as a vtree. You will need: A V-tron. If […]

Repair of sabotaged mathematical glyphs in certain Linux distros.

Recently, I received a tip that some Linux users saw rubbish in place of certain Unicode glyphs appearing in the FFA series (in particular, in Ch. 14.) If the following two rows of symbols do not appear recognizably-identical in your WWW browser: ← → ⇠ ⇢ ⌊ ⌋ … the following fix is likely to […]

"Finite Field Arithmetic." Chapter 21A-Ter: Fix for a False Alarm in Ch.14; "Litmus" Errata.

This article is part of a series of hands-on tutorials introducing FFA, or the Finite Field Arithmetic library. FFA differs from the typical "Open Sores" abomination, in that -- rather than trusting the author blindly with their lives -- prospective users are expected to read and fully understand every single line. In exactly the same […]

"Cryostat" Genesis.

Cryostat is a Fits-in-Head minimal (~700 LOC, including comments) static library for adding safe and reliable persistent storage to Ada data structures. It makes use of memory-mapped disk I/O via the MMap() system call, present in Linux (kernel 2.4 and newer) and all compatible operating systems. This mechanism permits efficient work with persistent data structures […]

"Finite Field Arithmetic." Chapter 21A-Bis: Fix for Lethal Flaw in Ch.15's Greatest Common Divisor.

This article is part of a series of hands-on tutorials introducing FFA, or the Finite Field Arithmetic library. FFA differs from the typical “Open Sores” abomination, in that — rather than trusting the author blindly with their lives — prospective users are expected to read and fully understand every single line. In exactly the same […]

"Finite Field Arithmetic." Chapter 21A: Extended GCD and Modular Multiplicative Inverse. (Part 1 of 3)

This article is part of a series of hands-on tutorials introducing FFA, or the Finite Field Arithmetic library. FFA differs from the typical “Open Sores” abomination, in that — rather than trusting the author blindly with their lives — prospective users are expected to read and fully understand every single line. In exactly the same […]

Regarding VPNism.

In the spam trap today, I turned up this piece of “fan mail”: Good afternoon there, I became even more concerned about our future after reading your http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1299 page. Our government continues to use surveillance technologies to collect sensitive data and then there’s a real risk that this data can be leaked. Did you know […]

The Fossil Vault.

I have recently built two new WWW mirrors containing certain publicly-available software: 1. Historic Gentoo Distfiles. I have been using Gentoo for nearly all Linux-related work since 2007. It was “the lesser of evils”: to my knowledge, no other Linux variant ever offered a comparable level of rodenticidal control, while at the same time providing […]

"Watchglass" Genesis.

Update (Aug 2021) : billymg wrote a a very spiffy node explorer based on this program. Update (May 2020) : Support for “peers” command. ‘Watchglass’ is a simple program for monitoring the health of a constellation of Bitcoin nodes. The user interface is in the form of an IRC bot, based on my August 2019 […]

"Finite Field Arithmetic." Chapter 20D: "Litmus" Errata: Support for Nested Clearsigned Texts.

This article is part of a series of hands-on tutorials introducing FFA, or the Finite Field Arithmetic library. FFA differs from the typical “Open Sores” abomination, in that — rather than trusting the author blindly with their lives — prospective users are expected to read and fully understand every single line. In exactly the same […]