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Planet Debian

SMS Verification

I’ve received an email today from Barclaycard with the following: “From time to time, to make sure it’s you who’s using your Barclaycard online, we’ll send you a text with a verification code for you to use on the Verified by Visa screen that’ll pop up on your payment page.” The proprietary nature of mobile phones with the hardware specifications and the software being closed off from inspection or audit and considered to be trade secrets make my phone and my tablet the least trusted devices I own and use.

Free Software Efforts (2017W38)

Here’s my weekly report for week 38 of 2017. This week has not been a great week as I saw my primary development machine die in a spectacular reboot loop. Thanks to the wonderful community around Debian and free software (that if you’re reading this, you’re probably part of), I should be back up to speed soon. A replacement workstation is currently moving towards me and I’ve received a number of smaller donations that will go towards video converters and upgrades to get me back to full productivity.

Onion Services

In the summer 2017 edition of 2600 magazine there is a brilliant article on running onion services as part of a series on censorship resistant services. Onion services provide privacy and security for readers above that which is possible through the use of HTTPS. Since moving my website to Netlify, my onion service died as Netlify doesn’t provide automatic onion services (although they do offer automated Let’s Encrypt certificate provisioning). If anyone from Netlify is reading this, please consider adding a one-click onion service button next to the Let’s Encrypt button.