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Ian's Blog

Ian's Blog
Hardware-Accelerated Video Encoding with Intel Arc on Redhat Linux I've been wanting hardware-accelerated video encoding on my Linux machine for quite a while now, but...
4 months ago
19
4 months ago
I've been wanting hardware-accelerated video encoding on my Linux machine for quite a while now, but ask anybody who's used a Linux machine and they'll tell you of the horrors of Nvidia or AMD drivers. Intel, on the other hand, seems to be taking things in a much different, much...
Ian's Blog
Having a Website Used to Be Fun According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that...
4 months ago
19
4 months ago
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that thought alone makes me feel old, but going back through the old snapshots of my websites made me feel a profound feeling of longing for a time when having a website used to be a novel...
Ian's Blog
GitHub Notification Emails Hijacked to Send Malware As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are...
5 months ago
11
5 months ago
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are notifications sent on behalf of GitHub users to let me know that somebody has interacted with something and requires my attention. Perhaps somebody has created a new issue on one of my...
Ian's Blog
Mourning the Loss of Cohost The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting...
5 months ago
8
5 months ago
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting down, with the site going read-only on October 1st 2024. This news was deeply upsetting to receive, as Cohost filled a space left by other social media websites when they stopped...
Ian's Blog
Why my Apps Aren't Available on Apple Vision Pro Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring...
7 months ago
10
7 months ago
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring why the apps aren't available on Apple's new Vision Pro headset. While I have briefly discussed this over on my Mastodon, I figured it might be worthwhile putting things down with...
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Protected Apple Distribution Certificates Using a YubiKey iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning...
a year ago
9
a year ago
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning certificate issued to you by Apple for signing your release artifacts before you distribute them. Protecting that signing key is important, as Apple must blindly trust any binaries...
Ian's Blog
Learn how Windows builds its store of trusted root CA certificates Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It might surprise you, and it certainly did for me, but out-of-the-box Windows doesn't come with a set of root CA certificates sufficient for web browsing. You can see this for...
Ian's Blog
The Zune "HD" It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name,...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name, released by Microsoft in October of 2009. A direct competitor to Apple's wildly successful iPod Touch, the Zune HD was the first Zune to feature a multi-touch display, full web...
Ian's Blog
Securing Your GitHub Account Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account security. There's plenty of good reasons why you should try to keep any online account safe, but I feel that GitHub deserves special attention among developers. With automation...
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots The concept of a "Snapshot" In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot" In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine. You ever end up doing something like this? Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it. Snapshots provide us...
Ian's Blog
What the heck is OCSP? The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web browser) to check if a certificate has been revoked or not. Certificate Revocation? With asymmetrical encryption, your encryption is only as good as long as your private key remains...
Ian's Blog
Pragmatically Generating a Self-Signed Certificate and Private Key using OpenSSL Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS app using OpenSSL, what surprised me was the total lack of documentation for OpenSSL. While there is plenty of function documentation, what OpenSSL really lacks is examples of how it...