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Mastodon

I joined Mastodon today. So did metrics-bot who is now simultooting to the fediverse.

metrics-bot on Mastodon

metrics-bot on Mastodon

Annoyingly, the API for Mastodon is different enough from the API for Twitter that I’ve needed to use a new library in metrics-bot. I’m using the mastodon4j library for now, but I’m really using so little of the API I do wonder if it would be easier to just reimplement the parts that are needed and drop the rest. The only part I’m really worried about is the OAuth authentication and I’m sure that won’t be anywhere near as bad as I think it will be.

Behringer Xenyx 302USB

I have decided to invest in a USB audio interface. My primary motivation for this is that I might like to produce some screencasts in the near future. My secondary motivation was being able to have a headphone socket on my desk to give me more freedom of movement than I would have plugged into the front of the workstation under my desk.

I went with a Behringer Xenyx 302USB and I’ve been quite happy with it so far.

Security by Obscurity

Today this blog post turned up on Hacker News, titled “Obscurity is a Valid Security Layer”. It makes some excellent points on the distinction between good and bad obscurity and it gives an example of good obscurity with SSH.

From the post:

I configured my SSH daemon to listen on port 24 in addition to its regular port of 22 so I could see the difference in attempts to connect to each (the connections are usually password guessing attempts). My expected result is far fewer attempts to access SSH on port 24 than port 22, which I equate to less risk to my, or any, SSH daemon.

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