This is a short announcement to say that I have changed my main OpenPGP key. A signed statement is available with the cryptographic details but, in short, the reason is that I stopped using my old YubiKey NEO that I have worn on my keyring since 2015. I now have a YubiKey 5 which supports ED25519 which features much shorter keys and faster decryption. It allowed me to move all my secret subkeys on the key (including encryption keys) while retaining reasonable performance. I have written extensive documentation on how to do that OpenPGP key rotation and also YubiKey OpenPGP operations.

Warning on storing encryption keys on a YubiKey People wishing to move their private encryption keys to such a security token should be very careful as there are special precautions to take for disaster recovery. I am toying with the idea of writing an article specifically about disaster recovery for secrets and backups, dealing specifically with cases of death or disabilities.

Autocrypt changes One nice change is the impact on Autocrypt headers, which are considerably shorter. Before, the header didn't even fit on a single line in an email, it overflowed to five lines:

Autocrypt: addr=anarcat@torproject.org; prefer-encrypt=nopreference;
 keydata=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

After the change, the entire key fits on a single line, neat!

Autocrypt: addr=anarcat@torproject.org; prefer-encrypt=nopreference;
 keydata=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

Note that I have implemented my own kind of ridiculous Autocrypt support for the Notmuch Emacs email client I use, see this elisp code. To import keys, I pipe the message into this script which is basically just:

sq autocrypt decode   gpg --import

... thanks to Sequoia best-of-class Autocrypt support.

Note on OpenPGP usage While some have claimed OpenPGP's death, I believe those are overstated. Maybe it's just me, but I still use OpenPGP for my password management, to authenticate users and messages, and it's the interface to my YubiKey for authenticating with SSH servers. I understand people feel that OpenPGP is possibly insecure, counter-intuitive and full of problems, but I think most of those problems should instead be attributed to its current flagship implementation, GnuPG. I have tried to work with GnuPG for years, and it keeps surprising me with evilness and oddities. I have high hopes that the Sequoia project can bring some sanity into this space, and I also hope that RFC4880bis can eventually get somewhere so we have a more solid specification with more robust crypto. It's kind of a shame that this has dragged on for so long, but Update: there's a separate draft called openpgp-crypto-refresh that might actually be adopted as the "OpenPGP RFC" soon! And it doesn't keep real work from happening in Sequoia and other implementations. Thunderbird rewrote their OpenPGP implementation with RNP (which was, granted, a bumpy road because it lost compatibility with GnuPG) and Sequoia now has a certificate store with trust management (but still no secret storage), preliminary OpenPGP card support and even a basic GnuPG compatibility layer. I'm also curious to try out the OpenPGP CA capabilities. So maybe it's just because I'm becoming an old fart that doesn't want to change tools, but so far I haven't seen a good incentive in switching away from OpenPGP, and haven't found a good set of tools that completely replace it. Maybe OpenSSH's keys and CA can eventually replace it, but I suspect they will end up rebuilding most of OpenPGP anyway, just more slowly. If they do, let's hope they avoid the mistakes our community has done in the past at least...

If you clear your browser cookies regularly (as you should do), Google will annoy you with a full screen cookie consent overlay these days. And - of course - there is no "no tracking consent, technically required cookies only" button. You may log in to Google to set your preference. Yeah, I'm sure this is totally following the intent of the EU Directive 2009/136/EC (the "cookie law"). Unfortunately none of the big "anti-annoyances" filter lists seem to have picked that one up yet but the friendly folks from the Computerbase Forum [German] to the rescue. User "Sepp Depp" has created the following filter set that WFM: Add this to your uBlock Origin "My filters" tab:

! Google - remove cookie-consent-popup and restore scroll functionality
google.*##.wwYr3.aID8W.bErdLd
google.*##.aID8W.m114nf.t7xA6
google.*##div[jsname][jsaction^="dg_close"]
google.*##html:style(overflow: visible !important;)
google.*##.widget-consent-fullscreen.widget-consent

I've just released version 1.3.0 of Nageru, my live software video mixer. Things have been a bit quiet on the Nageru front recently, for two reasons: First, I've been busy with moving (from Switzerland to Norway) and associated job change (from Google to MySQL/Oracle). Things are going well, but these kinds of changes tend to take, well, time and energy. Second, the highlight of Nageru 1.3.0 is encoding of H.264 streams meant for end users (using x264), not just the Quick Sync Video streams from earlier versions, which work more as a near-lossless intermediate format meant for transcoding to something else later. Like with most things video, hitting such features really hard (I've been doing literally weeks of continuous stream testing) tends to expose weaknesses in upstream software. In particular, I wanted x264 speed control, where the quality is tuned up and down live as the content dictates. This is mainly because the content I want to stream this summer (demoscene competitions) varies from the very simple to downright ridiculously complex (as you can see, YouTube just basically gives up and creates gray blocks). If you have only one static quality setting, you will have the choice between something that looks like crap for everything, and one that drops frames like crazy (or, if your encoding software isn't all that, like e.g. using ffmpeg(1) directly, just gets behind and all your clients' streams just stop) when the tricky stuff comes. There was an unofficial patch for speed control, but it was buggy, not suitable for today's hardware and not kept at all up to date with modern x264 versions. So to get speed control, I had to work that patch pretty heavily (including making it so that it could work in Nageru directly instead of requiring a patched x264) and then it exposed a bug in x264 proper that would cause corruption when changing between some presets, and I couldn't release 1.3.0 before that fix had at least hit git. Similarly, debugging this exposed an issue with how I did streaming with ffmpeg and the MP4 mux (which you need to be able to stream H.264 directly to HTML5 <video> without any funny and latency-inducing segmenting business); to know where keyframes started, I needed to flush the mux before each one, but this messes up interleaving, and if frames were ever dropped right in front of a keyframe (which they would on the most difficult content, even at speed control's fastest presets!), the duration field of the frame would be wrong, causing the timestamps to be wrong and even having pts < dts in some cases. (VLC has to deal with flushing in exactly the same way, and thus would have exactly the same issue, although VLC generally doesn't transcode variable-framerate content so well to begin with, so the heuristics would be more likely to work. Incidentally, I wrote the VLC code for this flushing back in the day, to be able to stream WebM for some Debconf.) I cannot take credit for the ffmpeg/libav fixes (that was all done by Martin Storsj ), but again, Nageru had to wait for the new API they introduce (that just signals to the application when a keyframe is about to begin, removing the need for flushing) to get into git mainline. Hopefully, both fixes will get into releases soon-ish and from there one make their way into stretch. Apart from that, there's a bunch of fixes as always. I'm still occasionally (about once every two weeks of streaming or so) hitting what I believe is a bug in NVIDIA's proprietary OpenGL drivers, but it's nearly impossible to debug without some serious help from them, and they haven't been responding to my inquiries. Every two weeks means that you could be hitting it in a weekend's worth of streaming, so it would be nice to get it fixed, but it also means it's really really hard to make a reproducible test case. :-) But the fact that this is currently the worst stability bug (and that you can work around it by using e.g. Intel's drivers) also shows that Nageru is pretty stable these days.

Instant classic

Trusted:
NO, there were errors:
The certificate does not apply to the given host
The certificate authority's certificate is invalid
The root certificate authority's certificate is not trusted for this purpose
The certificate cannot be verified for internal reasons
Signature Algorithm: md5WithRSAEncryption
    Issuer: C=XY, ST=Snake Desert, L=Snake Town, O=Snake Oil, Ltd, OU=Certificate Authority, CN=Snake Oil CA/emailAddress=ca@snakeoil.dom
    Validity
        Not Before: Oct 21 18:21:51 1999 GMT
        Not After : Oct 20 18:21:51 2001 GMT
    Subject: C=XY, ST=Snake Desert, L=Snake Town, O=Snake Oil, Ltd, OU=Webserver Team, CN=www.snakeoil.dom/emailAddress=www@snakeoil.dom
...
            X509v3 Subject Alternative Name: 
            email:www@snakeoil.dom

For your own pleasure:

openssl s_client -connect www.walton.com.tw:443 -showcerts

or just run

echo '
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
'   openssl x509 -noout -text

At least they're secure against heartbleed.

A recent discussion on debian-project remind me I have to do this:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1,SHA256
Hello,
I am transitioning GPG keys from an old 1024-bit DSA key to a new
4096-bit RSA key.  The old key will continue to be valid for some
time, but I prefer all new correspondance to be encrypted in the new
key, and will be making all signatures going forward with the new key.
This transition document is signed with both keys to validate the
transition.
If you have signed my old key, I would appreciate signatures on my new
key as well, provided that your signing policy permits that without
reauthenticating me.
The old key, which I am transitional away from, is:
   pub   1024D/9057B5D3 2002-02-07
         Key fingerprint = 7AA1 9755 336C 6D0B 8757  E393 B0E1 98D7 9057 B5D3
The new key, to which I am transitioning, is:
   pub   4096R/31ED8AEF 2009-05-08
         Key fingerprint = DE8F 92CD 16FA 1E5B A16E  E95E D265 C085 31ED 8AEF
To fetch the full new key from a public key server using GnuPG, run:
  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key D265C08531ED8AEF
If you have already validated my old key, you can then validate that
the new key is signed by my old key:
  gpg --check-sigs D265C08531ED8AEF
If you then want to sign my new key, a simple and safe way to do that
is by using caff (shipped in Debian as part of the "signing-party"
package) as follows:
  caff D265C08531ED8AEF
Please contact me via e-mail at <vanicat@debian.org> if you have any
questions about this document or this transition.
  Remi vanicat
  vanicat@debian.org
  remi.vanicat@gmail.com
  remi.vanicat@ens-lyon.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.14 (GNU/Linux)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=c5fJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Here is the link to the .txt version for easier checking of signature.

The Japanese post-rock band Mono delivered an amazingly powerful album in 2006: You Are There. It features beautiful and spacious sound scenes produced with real instruments (as opposed to electronic music), in some ways much more so than Mono s other, earlier albums, which I adore as well. This album captivates me to the point that I can t really to work to it; yet, it s also just too good to turn off. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, it seems. On a related note: I am going to see Explosions in the Sky in Zurich s Abart club next week. The music is very similar, not only because both bands are published by the same label, Temporary Residence (along with many other really good artists). And I am excited about this for two reasons: first, because they rock. And second, because I ll be with a certain someone then, whereas now I d have to say that you are there . NP: Mono: You Are There

or How Mozilla Corporation is FUDing on Debian. Again. This time, Christopher Beard, Mr Mozilla Marketing is talking about Firefox in Ubuntu, that it’s great, Ubuntu is a good boy, that it cooperates with Mozilla , and that by cooperating, it can use the great Firefox name and logo. To be honest, I don’t care that Ubuntu calls Firefox Firefox instead of Iceweasel or whatever. I don’t care that Ubuntu doesn’t care about freedom as much as Debian does. I could not care less. But, indeed, I do care about (yet other) false claims about Firefox in Debian. Let’s see what Christopher has to say about it:

I understand that Ubuntu is based upon Debian. Is that the same or different than the IceWeasel browser that Debian is shipping with their latest release?
It’s different. The patches that Debian applied to the Mozilla source code (which then resulted in their IceWeasel product) are more significant in scope than those in what Ubuntu is shipping (and branding as an official Mozilla Firefox release). Firefox in Ubuntu represents a somewhat more modest set of divergences from original Mozilla source code.

Let’s check out what it is about. And as I don’t want people to doubt my words, I’ll give you, readers, the ability to check for yourself what it is all about. First, please download the latest currently available patch for Firefox 2.0 beta 2 in Debian. It has been in experimental for some weeks now. It is a bit different from the patch I described earlier, so I’ll also tell you what has been changed since this 2.0b2 patch:

• security/coreconf/rules.mk is not patched for the perl dependencies thing any more because the patch (taken from bugzilla #325148) has been applied in Firefox 2.0rc1
• The patch from bugzilla #336056 has been applied because the directory in which we would build the 2.0rc1 version contained a ~ character, which would make the build fail because of this bug.
• The patch from bugzilla #294879 has been applied for obvious reasons. It has been applied later in the Firefox 2.0 release process.

(Also note that another change has been done since then, which is actually reverting a previous patch on gfx/src/gtk/mozilla-decoder.cpp, that was adding code that became dead code when we changed the way to fix the bug.) Next, please download the official and supported Firefox diff from Ubuntu. Uncompress both these diff files, and create two directories (let’s call them ubuntudiff and debdiff) which will contain the individual patches for each file. To fill these directories, please use the following commands:

$ filterdiff --strip=1 firefox_2.0+0dfsg-0ubuntu3.diff > ubuntu.diff
$ filterdiff --strip=1 firefox_1.99+2.0b2+dfsg-1.diff > deb.diff
$ cd ubuntudiff
$ splitdiff -d -a ../ubuntu.diff
$ cd ../debdiff
$ splitdiff -d -a ../deb.diff
If you don’t have the splitdiff and filterdiff utilities, you can get them from the patchutils tools (you will also need another of these tools later). Now, let’s have fun with these split patches… Files that are only patched in Debian: (excluding any file that would be in the debian subdirectory, that contains maintainer scripts for build and installation)

$ LANG=C diff -ru debdiff/ ubuntudiff/ grep "^Only in deb" grep -v debian wc -l
6
So, that’s 6 files that Debian patches that Ubuntu doesn’t. Let’s check what they are:

$ LANG=C diff -ru debdiff/ ubuntudiff/ grep "^Only in deb" grep -v debian

(reordering result for convenience)

Only in debdiff/: browser_base_content_aboutDialog.xul

Adds rows=5 to the user agent textbox so as to display the user agent string uncut by default

Only in debdiff/: content_html_content_src_nsGenericHTMLElement.cpp
Only in debdiff/: content_html_content_src_nsHTMLInputElement.cpp
Only in debdiff/: dom_src_base_nsGlobalWindow.cpp

It’s a patch I submitted in bugzilla #343953 and that got applied in Firefox 2.0. No surprise the patch is not applied on Ubuntu.

Only in debdiff/: extensions_reporter_Makefile.in

Patch I submitted in bugzilla #354413 and that got applied in Firefox 2.0.

Only in debdiff/: security_coreconf_rules.mk

Patch from bugzilla #325148 that got applied in Firefox 2.0 (see above), and a small patch to build the NSS library with debugging symbols (put -g in CFLAGS). That leaves only 2 small patches : CFLAGS = -g added to security/coreconf/rules.mk and rows=5 to browser/base/content/aboutDialog.xul Files that are only patched in Ubuntu: (same exceptions as for Debian)

$ LANG=C diff -ru debdiff/ ubuntudiff/ grep "^Only in ubuntu" grep -v debian wc -l
45
Yes, that’s right, that’s 45 files that Ubuntu patches that Debian doesn’t. Most are windows sizes and similar things that upstream can’t get right because they are values adapted to Windows, but that also includes some changes to the code and some other things. Let’s now check differences in files that are patched in both. It’s a bit of shell black magic, but you can check by hand that it does nothing wrong :

$ LANG=C diff -ru debdiff/ ubuntudiff/ filterdiff -p1 -x configure -x debian"*" lsdiff --strip=1 while read f; do diff -u debdiff/$f ubuntudiff/ awk "! /^--- ^\+\+\+ ^ ^[-+]*\@\@/ print \"$f\"; exit "; done

That gives a list of patch files that have more differences than line numbers changes, and that do not apply to the debian directory or the configure script (which is generated from configure.in), which is what we really want to compare here. You can take this list and run interdiff between these files from the ubuntudiff and debdiff directories. I’ll explain for you what these differences are:

• Makefile.in: Ubuntu adds a line in order to install the NSS include files,
• browser_app_Makefile.in: Patch from bugzilla #314927 applied by Debian
• browser_app_profile_firefox.js: (interdiff fails because the changes apply to different versions of the file) Ubuntu changes the homepage, and sets profile.allow_automigration to false,
• config_autoconf.mk.in: Ubuntu changes includedir and idldir,
• configure.in: Ubuntu changes MOZ_APP_DISPLAYNAME, and adds some echos,
• gfx_src_gtk_nsFontMetricsXft.cpp: Ubuntu sets FC_ANY_METRICS to some patterns,
• intl_lwbrk_src_nsJISx4501LineBreaker.cpp: Patch from bugzilla #161826 applied by Debian for sparc64, which is not an architecture supported by Ubuntu,
• modules_libpref_src_init_all.js: Ubuntu changes some default fonts from serif to sans-serif, while Debian changes fonts for serif, sans-serif and monospace (setting to generic names instead of Times, Helvetica and Courier) ; I think both should be applied in Debian, actually. Ubuntu also sets dom.event.contextmenu.enabled to false,
• security_nss_lib_freebl_unix_rand.c: (interdiff fails because the changes apply to different versions of the file): both patches have the exact same effect, but are different due to changes to original file between 2.0rc1 and 2.0 final.

Overall, Ubuntu applies the same set of patches as Debian, plus some more. A somewhat more modest set of divergences, huh ?!? For what it’s worth, Ubuntu, like Debian, builds its Firefox with flat chrome and pango enabled.

What’s different in the shipping Ubuntu version of Firefox than the proposed Debian version of Firefox (that didn’t ultimately ship)?
Technically, changes include fixes to the User Agent string and the feed preview, a well as addressing issues of coherent branding. More significant than any specific difference in code, however, is Ubuntu’s commitment to work together with Mozilla and our community on releases going forward to insure product quality and integrity.
Why are you working with Ubuntu when you wouldn’t work with Debian?
We did try to work with Debian and would prefer a situation in which we work together. Ultimately, Debian took a position that was consistent with their own policies, and not compatible with some of the exceptions to Mozilla trademark policies that we offered. While we understand and respect their decision not to work with us under our branding guidelines, Mozilla believes that brands like Firefox are important for consumer protection. In any event, Ubuntu developers are working closely with Mozilla developers to insure product quality and features that are what users expect when they use Mozilla Firefox, which means that they’ll ship (and will continue to ship) a fully branded version.

Reading between the lines, that means Debian is not working with Mozilla. It’s not like we’re submitting patches. No. Never. Ever. I’m also glad to hear from Asa Dotzler, in comments to Mr Beard’s article, that this great collaboration with Ubuntu will lead to patches applied to Firefox (I guess the paid Canonical employees having more time to deal with Mozilla than the volunteer Debian maintainers may have helped, especially considering they didn’t have to do all what we already prepared). Anyways, it’s not like some of the patches we sent got applied. So, while I’m at it, here is an exhaustive list of the bugs where we took or sent the patches that are applied to Iceweasel: #51429, #161826, #252033, #258429, #273524, #287150, #289394, #294879, #307168, #307418, #314927, #319012, #322806, #323114, #325148, #326245, #330628, #331781, #331785, #331818, #333289, #333308, #343953, #345077, #345079, #345080, #345413. These don’t cover the following patches (see the rationale for these in my previous article):

• security/manager/Makefile.in, security/nss/cmd/shlibsign/Makefile: Don’t build the shlib signatures, see the rationale in my previous article,
• security/nss/cmd/shlibsign/manifest.mn: Don’t build the mangle utility,
• browser/app/Makefile.in: Force linking against libxpcom.so despite -Wl,–as-needed,
• browser/app/profile/firefox.js, gfx/src/gtk/fontEncoding.properties, modules/libpref/src/init/all.js: Preferences changes,
• browser/base/content/aboutDialog.xul: That’s one of the patches that Debian applies that Ubuntu doesn’t. See above,
• config/autoconf.mk.in: Remainings of an old patch for pangocairo, which is now useless, and setting of mozappdir,
• config/rules.mk, configure.in: Patch from Thiemo Seufer to increase stability and performance on mips, useless upstream until bugzilla #258429 is fixed, but on my to_send list,
• extensions/inspector/Makefile.in: Something that should be added to #331785, but well, it’s WONTFIX, anyway,
• layout/build/Makefile.in, layout/build/nsLayoutModule.cpp: Change to the Gecko string,
• modules/libpref/src/nsPrefService.cpp: Add a preferences directory for /etc/firefox/pref,
• widget/src/gtk2/nsWindow.cpp: Extended mouse buttons support, on my to_send list,
• configure.in, xpcom/reflect/xptcall/src/md/unix/Makefile.in: Basic patch for bugzilla #343975,
• configure.in: Check for pangoxft.

It’s so great to spend a great amount of time on a package, send patches, try to understand how things work to get patches applied, and yet, see such denial and false claims about our work. So please, Christopher, Asa, and the others, just stop talking about Debian, it will be better for everyone. PS for Rob in comments out there: No, ColorZilla won’t work on Ubuntu, because of the ABI incompatibility I explained in my previous entry, that Mozilla doesn’t seem to care much about.

Sadly, it uses the broken GPLv3 comment system. Please let me know if you have problems with it, or can help to make it work in a Firefox-name-changed browser. View the draft guide.

Have you noticed, that most of the web 2.0 "sites" aren't really worth being called "web 2.0"? Take for example friendster. Many people say that friendster is a web 2.0 thing. Sure, it's using Ajax. But apart from that? Where's the open API? Where is remixing? What is it really different from, lets say, geocities with the addition of some easier linking and search functionality (read: "social networking") And seriously, the profile pages there suck just as bad as the homepages people made with geocities. Especially social networking pages tend to sit on their data and keep it closed. No FOAF files available. That's so web 1.0ish... the web 2.0 is a lot about APIs and open data access. Can you imagine a blogging service not offering syndication (e.g. RSS)? So why a social networking without FOAF? One of the few "true web 2.0 services" remains Google Maps. Even though it doesn't have tag clouds or social networking. ;-) But Mashups adding all that. We should rename the term to "Web 2.0 beta" anyway. It's not released yet. Or use the proper term for it: "DotCom 2.0" Or we should just stop using it, because it's all marketing buzz. Talk about open APIs, remixing, mashups, semantic web, syndication, tagging instead. [Update: web 2.0 is officially just "beta" - see for yourself. It ain't a true web2.0 logo if it doesn't contain "beta"... - also check out this huge list of web 2.0 logo mockups for known brands, including FedExr, McDndld's and of course S.NY beta...]