Aral Balkan @aral@mastodon.ar.al

Well I just successfully encoded my first ASN.1 structure with the help of a 3rd-party library and it only took me about 10 minutes to create the equivalent of [5] in JavaScript:

forge.asn1.create(forge.asn1.Class.UNIVERSAL, forge.asn1.Type.SEQUENCE, true, [ forge.asn1.create(forge.asn1.Class.UNIVERSAL, forge.asn1.Type.INTEGER, false, forge.asn1.integerToDer(5).getBytes())])

That’s WITH A LIBRARY. A sizable library. And why? To tell Let’s Encrypt: ocspMustStaple = true

ASN.1 is devil spawn.

PS. Here it is if you want to use it. Just download it somewhere and add its path to the Icon field in your kitty.desktop file (GNOME/Ubuntu/etc.)

I’m not procrastinating… YOU’RE procrastinating!

#HelloKitty #kitty #terminal #icon

ASN.1 is the biggest middle finger to humanity that nobody’s ever heard of. This is my opinion and I’m sticking by it.

FML

Our car insurance is due to be renewed in April. This is what my Apple News feed looks like right now.

Apple protects your privacy my ass.

#SurveillanceCapitalism

Imagine how bad someone’s code must be* that not only does it make you implement your own library via an RFC from scratch but that now it has you learning ASN.1 – fucking ASN.1 FFS – because you don’t want a single line of it anywhere near your app.

🤬

* hint: centralised telemetry added to nearly every module of what is supposedly an open source project bad

ASN.1 Made Easy

https://www.oss.com/asn1/resources/asn1-made-simple/example.html

PS. If you ever find yourself needing this… I’m sorry. I know. Things will get better. Please stop crying.

Just updated my blog post on Apple killing Offline Web Apps with questions after they silently updated their blog post (thanks for the heads up @xerz).

I’m now confused and wondering if they thought this out at all.

I’ve also added a link to @soapdog’s blog post on the same subject.

https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-while-purporting-to-protect-your-privacy-why-thats-a-bad-thing-and-why-you-should-care/

Apple just killed Offline Web Apps while purporting to protect your privacy: why that’s A Bad Thing and why you should care

https://ar.al/2020/03/25/apple-just-killed-offline-web-apps-while-purporting-to-protect-your-privacy-why-thats-a-bad-thing-and-why-you-should-care/

(And just to be clear, that’s all “local storage”, not just LocalStorage – Indexed DB, etc.)

Of course, if Apple were actually serious about protecting your privacy, they’d implement all this in their News app also. They won’t. And they won’t allow content blockers work in it either. Because just like every other trillion-dollar corporation, they’re massive hypocrites.

Block all third-party cookies, yes, by all means. But deleting Local Storage after 7 days effectively blocks any future decentralised apps using the browser (client side) as a trusted replication node in a peer-to-peer network. And that’s a huge blow to the future of privacy.

So Apple just threw the baby out with the bathwater and killed offline web apps (unless you’re cool with all your data being deleted if you don’t use an app for a week). You’d almost think they had an App Store to promote or something.

https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocking-and-more/

🤦‍♂️

Updated my little missing required argument joke module for Node.js with @Paul’s suggestion to use Error.captureStackTrace (neat, thanks, Paul!) and, because I have no life, it now has 100% code coverage ;P

Also, thanks to @severo_bo who uncovered prior art from two years ago – there goes the patent and the riches… oh, well :)

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/elegant-patterns-in-modern-javascript-roro-be01e7669cbd/

Blog post: https://ar.al/2020/03/23/fail-fast-on-missing-required-arguments-in-javascript-using-default-values-that-throw/