The Design and Implementation of laffer1

So older TLS versions are deprecated including TLSv1.1.  Started working on changing apache configs to exclude them with -TLSv1.1

Enable mod brotli using a LoadModule line and then add this configuration

<IfModule mod_brotli.c>

BrotliCompressionQuality 6

# To enable globally 

AddOutputFilterByType BROTLI_COMPRESS text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript application/javascript application/json application/x-font-ttf application/vnd.ms-fontobject image/x-icon

BrotliFilterNote Input brotli_input_info

BrotliFilterNote Output brotli_output_info

BrotliFilterNote Ratio brotli_ratio_info

LogFormat '"%r" %{brotli_output_info}n/%{brotli_input_info}n (%{brotli_ratio_info}n%%)' brotli

CustomLog "/var/log/brotli_log" brotli

#Don't compress content which is already compressed

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \

\.(gif|jpe?g|png|swf|woff|woff2) no-brotli dont-vary

#Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content

Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

</IfModule>

In august, I completed my masters degree. Now I'm nearly completion on 1.0 of my operating system.  A lot of bad things have happened this year as well but it's nice to reflect on the positive for a change.

I've been looking at Flyway, a tool to manage database migrations. It can correct the database version at startup and has a standardized way to manage deltas via standard SQL scripts.

https://flywaydb.org/getstarted/how

I've been looking into Spring Cloud Netflix lately. It looks pretty cool. There are libraries for proxy of micro service calls (zuul), service discovery (eureka), and circuit breaker functionality (hystrix) to help with high availability.

https://www.todaysoftmag.com/article/1429/micro-service-discovery-using-netflix-eureka

https://github.com/Qkyrie/spring-boot-netflix-example/tree/part1_eureka

https://dzone.com/articles/the-netflix-stack-using-spring-boot-part-2-hystrix

https://github.com/Netflix/zuul

https://spring.io/guides/gs/service-registration-and-discovery/

https://spring.io/guides/gs/circuit-breaker/

https://spring.io/guides/gs/client-side-load-balancing/

Here are some interesting links I found for etags.

http://www.baeldung.com/etags-for-rest-with-spring

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40950005/how-to-embbed-etags-into-crud-api-in-spring-boot

http://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/mvc.html#mvc-caching-etag-lastmodified

https://github.com/pglebow/rest-data

I've been looking into etags again. I looked into them several years ago as I found a very bad etag hand rolled implementation for Just Journal. It's an old pre spring approach.

I decided to add a few etags to some common API endpoints in just journal. I think I may have to version the api.

So I started a new job last week. Now I'm trying to learn a few new things like rxjava.

Having problems connecting Java apps to amazon RDS instances? Try installing the CAcerts from amazon as follows. These instructions cover freebsd and Mac OS X.

# (use curl or wget on mac)
fetch http://s3.amazonaws.com/rds-downloads/rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem


# create individual files from the bundle for loading into java
split -p "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----" rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem individual-


# load them into your cacerts file in freebsd
find . -iname 'individual*' -exec keytool -import -file {} -alias {} -storepass changeit -keystore /usr/local/openjdk8/jre/lib/security/cacerts \;

# mac version, tweak for your JDK path
find . -iname 'individual*' -exec keytool -import -file {} -alias {} -storepass changeit -keystore /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_25.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/security/cacerts \;

According to this article, apple admits the design of the mac pro limited what they could do with it. They also claim they are working on it with next year possible for a refresh.

More waiting.

http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives

In the event you need to proxy from say /api/ and the context root is / in your app, you can set a header for the proxy as follows

RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Prefix "api"

This will make hateaos URLs work properly in output.

I doubt one can generalize that a remote software team is more productive. I know that when I worked for Prime Research, I got to work from home for the first 9 months and I got a lot more done that way. Of course, then I ended up working in the office and managing a team.
When you're trying to build something complex, it's impossible to get anything done with distractions. I can code up some front end changes or add a new endpoint for an existing controller in spring without a lot of thought, but if I'm trying to design a major new feature, I need quiet and a white board.
I can say in the last 3 months, I've avoided starting several tickets at work until I knew I could get at least an hour to actually focus on them without meetings or other interruptions. It's happened at least 5 times. The farther I go with my career, the harder it is. I remember when I used to get 2-3 hour blocks of time to work on things. Those were the good old days.

https://ask.slashdot.org/story/17/02/18/223215/slashdot-asks-are-remote-software-teams-more-productive

It's kind of amazing what they have been able to do with DosBox in browsers. You can now run Windows 3.1 in a web browser and play solitaire or minesweeper, old school!

https://archive.org/details/win3_stock

Intel has given up on another CPU generation getting any speed. More 14nm and no more cores. DEFAULT TO SIX CORE GUYS. Sell mobile chips with PERFORMANCE for power users.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/02/10/1322206/intel-confirms-8th-gen-core-on-14nm-data-center-first-to-new-nodes

There are way too many sites out there that don't patch. Since wordpress is the most popular platform, it's an obvious thing to attack. I think they should develop some type of auto update mechanism for critical patches.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/virally-growing-attacks-on-unpatched-wordpress-sites-affects-2m-pages/

I purchased a Wii U refurbished the other day. I was always skeptical after trying one out in Best Buy. Turns out the demos just sucked. I actually do like some of the games.

Ended up buying several Wii U games yesterday. Got pikman 3, Mario maker, new Super Mario bros u, donkey King tropical freeze and Zelda ww.

The first wild office macro virus for Mac OS X is out.

http://thehackernews.com/2017/02/mac-osx-macro-malware.html

I'm really happy that Yale decided to rename the building after Grace Hopper. Big influence on computer science.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/11/514747243/yale-renames-calhoun-college-over-namesakes-ties-to-slavery-and-white-supremacy

I've been woking on upgrading an app from Spring Boot 1.2.4 to 1.2.8. It seems that the app wouldn't work with any version past 1.2.5 and that turned out to be an issue with Jackson serialization. Back references were not working as expected. I ended up punting on it and making a new class to represent incoming post data and then transforming that into a valid entity. Things are going smoothly now.

I setup a water cooling kit and new case for my desktop PC in January. It's an xspc setup with a alphacool waterblock for the AMD R9 Fury Nitro card. It's running as low as 22C idle and 55C under heavy load (Overwatch) with the gpu. CPU load seems to keep it in the 40s.

The best part is that unlike those self contained loops for CPUs, this is actually quieter. It's often quieter than my mac mini. That thing is loud when the fans spin up!

My testing shows it runs around 20db with overwatch going (and audio muted)