make linux fast (unsecure) again

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

The CPU/hardware related bugs surfacing the last couple of years have mostly been fixed by adjusting the software that is run. Sometimes only by disabling certain features of a CPU or patching the microcode in the CPU itself.

The issue with this is that by fixing these issues features got disabled and workarounds had been introduced that lowered performance. Dramatically so for some use-cases.

By how much? Well it really depends on your CPU and use-cases. But maybe you want to try yourself. If you want to know the most current parameters to pass to your kernel on boot-up to disable all the performance impacting fixes, go here:

It is not recommended to have this in productive use – as you can imagine. Those bugs where fixed for a reason.

data security and privacy on this website

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

As of early 2019 I’ve started to bring back my content output stream to this website/weblog.

So far I am feeling quite confident publishing content here and even with changing legislation I am doing my best to provide an as good as possible experience to each visitor.

As of End-of-February 2018 this blog is being provided securly encrypted with SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt.

So security is one thing. Data privacy and safety another.

Apart from the commenting and searching there’s no functionality provided to enter/store data.

comments

When you enter a comment the assumption is that this is your call for consent. Your comment will be stored. With the information you’ve entered and can see on-screen as well as the IP address you’ve used. Akismet then is used to provide Anti-comment-SPAM functionality – so part of this data is transferred over to Akismet for processing. After moderation the comment is visible for everyone under the article you’ve created it.

cookies and browser local storage

No cookies are used or required by the website.

server logfiles

There are no logfiles. No access and no error logs. There is no tracking or analysis. There is no advertisting or monitoring. All I can see is an nginx and php process delivering websites. Your IP address is know to the server for as long as it takes to do his job of delivering the asset you asked for. Nothing gets stored on server side for your read requests.

content loading

No content is loaded from other domains or websites. Everything is hosted on my server. No data is exchanged with externals to bring you this website.

two factor mandatory for apple developers

Posted on by Daniel Kirstenpfad

Apple has started to force developers that want to develop and publish on the MacOS and iOS platform to enable two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA) is a type, or subset, of multi-factor authentication. It is a method of confirming users’ claimed identities by using a combination of two different factors: 1) something they know, 2) something they have, or 3) something they are.

wikipedia

When I just got around enabling it for one of the apple accounts I’ve got there seems to be a much much higher security barrier in place already…

That’s probably some sort of zero-factor no-authentication. I guess. Anyway: Kudos to Apple for finally forcing people to minimum standards. Properly integrating the second factor will make this so much simpler for users. Apples ecosystem solution already is quite well integrated.

Have you switched all your daily used services to two-factor authentication yet?