-
XMPP: Chat with a Future
XMPP is the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol standardized by the IETF. This standard provides the framework for doing anything you want to do with chat, and more. Why is XMPP (formerly known as Jabber) not the mainstream chat protocol? Actually it is. It is the most secure messaging standard: battle-tested, independent, and privacy-focused. And…
-
Interoperable Chat in Your Web Browser: JSXC 3.0 released
Open, standards-compliant and interoperable chat sounds like a boon. However, proprietary and closed systems (WhatsApp, Facebook chat, Google Hangouts, …) are often easier to deploy, as they are nicely integrated in existing ecosystems. The freshly-released JSXC 3.0 shows that this is not necessary.
-
pselect() Pitfalls
When dealing with multiple network connections or timeouts, the select() Unix system call is still the workhorse for many applications. Its well-known and frequently used interface beats the learning curve on the more scalable poll(), epoll(), or /dev/poll interfaces, especially if only a few file descriptors have to be monitored. select()‘s younger sibling, pselect(), adds…
-
DNSSEC for .ch domains
This year, all owners of .ch domains need to switch from the DNS registry SWITCH to a new registrar. Getting an overview over these registrars is hard. Thankfully, Marc Wäckerlin has started the road to transparency with a price comparison of Swiss .ch domain registrars. Here, I extend his results with a survey of DNSSEC…
-
Automatic svn file addition/removal
You have files under version control, which are updated through a different mechanism (software update, another VCS such as git, …) or are using svn to archive automatically generated files? Then you are likely to constantly manually determine the appropriate svn add and svn rm commands. This can be automated…
