Tahoe-LAFS, a decentralized p2p file system in Python

While browsing through my "to-read" bookmarks I again stumbled upon Tahoe-LAFS, a decentralized peer-to-peer filesystem implemented in Python. This thing really looks promising, providing encrypted and (hopefully) secure storage of all your data across the web. Thaoe is not meant to be for the end-user (yet) really, but maybe there will be some nice addons to all the Dropbox clones out there which then finally could be used with end-to-end encryption. For non-geeks: This means that, if Thaoe is being used together with a service like Dropbox, nobody but you - not even by the Dropbox staff itself - can access your data anymore.

I'll have to play around with this a bit more in the next upcoming days. Let's see how it performs.

Oh, and here's the website in case you can't wait to get your hands on yourself: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs
 

A (Mostly) Gentle Introduction to Computer Security (by Todd Austin)

Just dug out a nice video recorded over at  LinuxConf.au 2012 from Todd Austin, which gives an introduction of (general) computer security concepts and some details behind it. Well done stuff, be sure to check it out:

Another crazy dubstep video (by Mike Tompkins)

Lead Breakfast ('Pulp Fiction' Remix)

Another very cool video remix, this time using flicks from Pulp Fiction:

What happened to Syncany? Not dead -- really?

I recently visited the Syncany page again to check what (finally) the status is: Apparently a news entry from April 2012 is there telling that the project is not dead. Well, at least something, but hopefully this won't end up being the next Duke Nukem Forever. Don't get me wrong: I'm really looking forward trying out Syncany as soon as it's ready, but competition (aka OwnCloud, CamliStore and such) is not sleeping. While I don't really believe in SparkleShare coming up with something really good anymore there must be a new alternative ...we will see (and hope).

ASCIIFlow - diagrams the 1337 style

Ever wondered how much time certain people spent creating cool-looking ASCII diagrams in all sorts of documentation and technical stuff? Well, wonder no more because there's now ASCIIFlow! Without any registration hassle and completely for free you finally can draw ASCII diagrams using a hip and responsive web 2.0 application.

Be sure to give it a try! http://www.asciiflow.com/

Yet another backup solution: Backshift

If you follow my blog a bit more closely you surely recognized my habit of always looking for the perfect backup solution.

Well, here's another (rather new) one: Backshift.
To quote the webpage:

• rsync can be used to copy a filesystem from one host to another, or for backups using rsync's --link-dest option plus a small wrapper script
• Backshift is only for backups, and works analogously to rsync --link-dest, but it deduplicates variable-lengthed blocks of the files both intra-host and inter-host, and compresses those blocks using xz.

Although it's pretty new it already claims a lot -- just have a look at the nice comparison table over here.