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poor-man's curtido
Monday, December 30 2024
This morning I added another text-digesting algorithm to the encryption scheme that scrambles the secret being sent to the backend. In this case, it was a simple modulus-256 count of the number of digits equal to one in the binary representation of the sensor data in ASCII format. I could go on adding numerous such digests, and perhaps even orchestrate how they are applied using the value of a secret. Right now, though, I'm publishing the hardcoded way I apply the digests in Github, which essentially means that my authentication system is no more secure than if I sent the original secret in plaintext.
This afternoon I took Charlotte for a walk up the Farm Road and then homeward atop the escarpment to the west. Then I pulled all the weeds and plant-growing hardware (such as tomato cages) from the garden, as that was on my honey-do list. After that, I spent a fair amount of time further improving parts of the stone wall at the bottom of the Woodshed Path. Some of the changes were cosmetic: making the wall look like an orderly stack of stones in places where it had been more of a jumble. But in other places, I widened the wall and made it more stable, in one case opening up a small void perfect for a chipmunk to use as a cache (or a den, if they so choose).
I noticed there was still light in the sky at around 4:40pm, when I started making dinner, meaning the days are decidedly longer than they'd been. This time I made chili, using tempeh as the "meat." I couldn't find the lettuce, so I shredded cabbage, which Gretchen made into a sort of poor-man's curtido by squeezing lemon juice on it.
After watching Jeopardy!, we watched a documentary called
Fanatical: the Catfishing of Tegan and Sara. The last time we'd paid much attention to Tegan & Sara was when we saw them perform at Bonnaroo back in 2008. In the years since, we've not paid much attention, though we did happen to hear one of their later songs and were dismayed at how formulaic and poppy they had become. Where had those amazing blood harmonies and unusual lyrical structures gone? (A similar thing happened with Liz Phair at around the same time.) According to the documentary, some hacker (or, perhaps, someone trusted with secret information) managed to gain access to Tegan & Sara's intimate documents, including scans of their passports, unreleased demos, and even private family information such as their mother's cancer diagnosis. This intruder then impersonated Tegan to multiple fans, but eventually started revealing the wrong kinds of secrets. Would, for example, a real person ever send someone they know only on the internet a picture of her passport, especially when it wasn't requested? Interestingly, unlike the catfishes using celebrities as identities on the YouTube Catfished channel (which I've been rebingeing), the fake Tegan never tried to exploit the fans for money. This might be related to the fact that Tegan & Sara fans are a much more intelligent demographic than aging housewives who think they're in a long-distance relationship with Johnny Depp. The documentary wasn't all that great, only partly because we never got the satisfaction of finding out who the fake Tegan was.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?241230 feedback
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