Netfuture: The future is networked

Category: Open Source

  • XMPP: Chat with a Future

    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

    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

    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…

  • svn log message updating script

    svn log message updating script

    Here is a simple script to allow updating your Subversion commit messages and have the repository admins receive a nice email message with the change.

  • VirtualBox DHCP nameserver for NAT network

    VirtualBox DHCP nameserver for NAT network

    VirtualBox is a great environment for testing networking tools such as opDNS. However, I did not get the VirtualBox DHCP server for NAT network to provide nameserver information, even though the client asks for it. Here’s a simple solution to this problem.

  • Compact Archives Widget for WordPress

    Compact Archives Widget for WordPress

    The standard Archives Widget looks like the image right here. It works well when only a few months are to be displayed. However, it fails if your blog’s history goes back a long way. Here is a  quick way to get down from 12 lines per year to 1, increasing usability and page size.

  • Efficient Privacy Preserving Multicast DNS Service Discovery

    Efficient Privacy Preserving Multicast DNS Service Discovery

  • Disable client certificate requests for Cyrus IMAP

    Disable client certificate requests for Cyrus IMAP

    Cyrus IMAPd always asks for a client certificate. This can be unnerving for users running Thunderbird as their mail client which have a user certificate installed and are thus always asked whether they want to send it. (There is no way to tell Thunderbird not to send a client certificate, you can only select which…

  • Using TLS Interposer with OpenSSL 0.9.8g (Debian Lenny)

    Using TLS Interposer with OpenSSL 0.9.8g (Debian Lenny)

    Older installations, such as trusty Debian Lenny, come with versions of OpenSSL 0.9.8. The default cipher suite used by TLS Interposer is very restrictive, on purpose. For OpenSSL 0.9.8g, the only remaining cipher is RC4-SHA. Especially when configuring XMPP servers such as ejabberd to use TLS Interposer, RC4-SHA alone can be not enough (e.g., when…

  • Securing fetchmail with improved TLS parameters

    Securing fetchmail with improved TLS parameters

    fetchmail is the workhorse for downloading mail from legacy addresses. This does not mean that you want to be limited to legacy security for your passwords or mail contents. TLS Interposer helps upgrade security.