LuaJIT Hacking: Getting next() out of the NYI list

At Cloudflare we’re heavy users of LuaJIT and in the past have sponsored many improvements to its performance.

LuaJIT is a powerful piece of software, maybe the highest performing JIT in the industry. But it’s not always easy to get the most out of it, and sometimes a small change in one part of your code can negatively impact other, already optimized, parts.

One of the first pieces of advice anyone receives when writing Lua code to run quickly using LuaJIT is “avoid the NYIs”: the language or library features that can’t be compiled because they’re NYI (not yet implemented). And that means they run in the interpreter.

CC BY-SA 2.0 image by Dwayne Bent

Another very attractive feature of LuaJIT is the FFI library, which allows Lua code to directly interface with C code and memory structures. The JIT compiler weaves these memory operations in line with the generated machine language, making it much more efficient than using the traditional Lua C API.

Unfortunately, if for any reason the Lua code using the FFI library has to run under the interpreter, it takes a very heavy performance hit. As it happens, under the interpreter the FFI is usually Continue reading

Aliens ate my laptop

To misquote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the Apple Genius Bar, but that's just peanuts to space.And out there, in the vast reaches of the cosmos, continuously streaming towards Earth are what are called cosmic rays which are  protons and atomic nuclei theorized to come from both supernovae explosions and probably the centers of galaxies. The earth is continuously bombarded by these alien particles which, in turn, collide with the atmosphere and generate a whole range of secondary particles including neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aliens ate my laptop

To misquote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the Apple Genius Bar, but that's just peanuts to space.And out there, in the vast reaches of the cosmos, continuously streaming towards Earth are what are called cosmic rays which are  protons and atomic nuclei theorized to come from both supernovae explosions and probably the centers of galaxies. The earth is continuously bombarded by these alien particles which, in turn, collide with the atmosphere and generate a whole range of secondary particles including neutrons, muons, pions and alpha particles. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Changes to Windows 10’s data-gathering not enough to satisfy EU privacy watchdog

European Union privacy watchdogs are still not happy with Windows 10's gathering of data about its users, over a year after they first wrote to Microsoft to complain.While the company has developed ways to give users more control over what data is collected, their consent to its collection cannot be valid without further explanation, according to the Article 29 Working Party, an umbrella body for the EU's national privacy regulators.The working party welcomed Microsoft's introduction of five new options in Windows 10 to limit or switch off certain kinds of data processing, but said they provided insufficient information about their operation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Changes to Windows 10’s data-gathering not enough to satisfy EU privacy watchdogs

European Union privacy watchdogs are still not happy with Windows 10's gathering of data about its users, over a year after they first wrote to Microsoft to complain. While the company has developed ways to give users more control over what data is collected, their consent to its collection cannot be valid without further explanation, according to the Article 29 Working Party, an umbrella body for the EU's national privacy regulators. The working party welcomed Microsoft's introduction of five new options in Windows 10 to limit or switch off certain kinds of data processing, but said they provided insufficient information about their operation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Add Bluetooth 5 to Raspberry Pi 3 or create gadgets with this new chip

One of Raspberry Pi's weaknesses is a lack of wireless technologies, which limits its communications capabilities with other devices. One new chipset from Qualcomm could help fill that gap.The QCA4020 chipset packs in Bluetooth Low Energy 5, ZigBee 3.0, WiFi 802.11n, and OpenThread wireless communications protocols.The chipset is like a mini-developer board -- an integrated chipset with an ARM-based CPU. It can be used to create smart home or industrial devices.It can also serve as a wireless access point for Raspberry Pi and other developer boards used to make smart gadgets, drones, robots, and industrial devices. It has a number of connector protocols and can work with Arduino boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Add Bluetooth 5 to Raspberry Pi 3 or create gadgets with this new chip

One of Raspberry Pi's weaknesses is a lack of wireless technologies, which limits its communications capabilities with other devices. One new chipset from Qualcomm could help fill that gap.The QCA4020 chipset packs in Bluetooth Low Energy 5, ZigBee 3.0, WiFi 802.11n, and OpenThread wireless communications protocols.The chipset is like a mini-developer board -- an integrated chipset with an ARM-based CPU. It can be used to create smart home or industrial devices.It can also serve as a wireless access point for Raspberry Pi and other developer boards used to make smart gadgets, drones, robots, and industrial devices. It has a number of connector protocols and can work with Arduino boards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facing sexism charges, Uber says Eric Holder will investigate

Uber Technologies scrambled on Monday to counter the sexism charges raised by a former employee, and said it would appoint former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to the panel that would investigate allegations by the engineer that the company mishandled her complaint of sexual harassment.The company, which did not release diversity data when asked by civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, also said Monday that 15.1 percent of its employees in engineering, product management, and scientist roles are women and this has not changed substantively in the last year.In an email to employees that was also circulated to media, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote that he and Liane Hornsey, chief human resources officer, will be working to publish a broader diversity report for Uber in the coming months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Live US 2017 – The Plan So Far

Put it on your calendar.  Cisco Live US is June 25 – 29, 2017, in Las Vegas.  This is the largest conference I go to every year, and it’s the highlight of my professional year.  I’ve been going for a few years now and enjoy it for the content and camaraderie.  What are we doing this year?

We’ll fly in on Friday again and do something.  No idea what, but I imagine we’ll throw out an invitation for dinner to the public and meet somewhere.  If you’re going to be in town, let me know, and we’ll meet up.

The Saturday Adventure was going to be ham radio related since that’s ARRL Field Day.  I reached out to the Las Vegas ham club, and they told me that the clubs out there all go to the top of a mountain to operate.  The problem : that mountain is 44.8 miles away from Mandalay.  That’s one helluvan Uber ride, so that’s out.  I looked at some other epic sites like the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam, but, based on past participation, the time requirements for those don’t make the cut for the group.  We probably need to meet Continue reading

Skillz: editing a web page

So one of the skillz you ought to have in cybersec is messing with web-pages client-side using Chrome's Developer Tools. Web-servers give you a bunch of HTML and JavaScript code which, once it reaches your browser, is yours to change and play with. You can do a lot with web-sites that they don't intend by changing that code.

Let me give you an example. It's only an example -- touching briefly on steps to give you an impression what's going on. It's not a ground up explanation of everything, which you may find off-putting. Click on the images to expand them so you can see fully what's going on.


Today is the American holiday called "Presidents Day". It's actually not a federal holiday, but a holiday in all 50 states. Originally it was just Washington's birthday (February 22), but some states choose to honor other presidents as well, hence "Presidents Day".

Thus of us who donated to Donald Trump's campaign (note: I donated to all candidates campaigns back in 2015) received an email today suggesting that to honor Presidents Day, we should "sign a card" for Trump. It's a gross dis-honoring of the Presidents the day is supposed to commemorate, Continue reading

Launching an Open Source Book Project

In my list of planned 2017 projects, I mentioned that one thing I’d like to do this year is launch an open source book project. Well, I’m excited to announce The Open vSwitch Cookbook, an Apache 2.0-licensed book project aimed at providing “how to” recipes for Open vSwitch (OVS).

Portions of the book are already available, with more content being added soon (more on that in a moment).

I’m using GitBook as the publishing platform; this allows me to write in Markdown and publish to a variety of formats. I’ll only be publishing to HTML at first; other formats may come down the road. I chose GitBook for a few reasons:

  1. It’s free for open source projects. This book, as well as the software that is its focus, are both open source projects.
  2. As I mentioned already, I can use Markdown for all the content.
  3. It allows me to store the book in a Git repository and use standard Git workflows.

I decided against using GitBook to host the Git repository for the book. Instead, the book’s source is found on GitHub. This enables collaboration on the book’s content—an aspect of this project that I think Continue reading

Worth Reading: ARM gains a foothold in China

China represents a huge opportunity for chip designer ARM as it looks to extend its low-power system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture beyond the mobile and embedded devices spaces and into new areas, such as the datacenter and emerging markets like autonomous vehicles, drones and the Internet of Things. China is a massive, fast-growing market with tech companies – including such giants as Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent – looking to leverage such technologies as artificial intelligence to help expand their businesses deeper into the global market and turning to vendors like ARM that can help them fuel that growth. —The Next Platform

The post Worth Reading: ARM gains a foothold in China appeared first on 'net work.

Reaction; Do we really need a new Internet?

The other day several of us were gathered in a conference room on the 17th floor of the LinkedIn building in San Francisco, looking out of the windows as we discussed some various technical matters. All around us, there were new buildings under construction, with that tall towering crane anchored to the building in several places. We wondered how that crane was built, and considered how precise the building process seemed to be to the complete mess building a network seems to be.

And then, this week, I ran across a couple of articles arguing that we need a new Internet. For instance—

What we really have today is a Prototype Internet. It has shown us what is possible when we have a cheap and ubiquitous digital infrastructure. Everyone who uses it has had joyous moments when they have spoken to family far away, found a hot new lover, discovered their perfect house, or booked a wonderful holiday somewhere exotic. For this, we should be grateful and have no regrets. Yet we have not only learned about the possibilities, but also about the problems. The Prototype Internet is not fit for purpose for the safety-critical and socially sensitive types of Continue reading

Iraqi hacker takes credit for hijacking subdomain, defacing Trump site

A hacker, purportedly from Iraq, defaced a site previously used by President Donald Trump for campaign fundraising. The “hack” occurred Sunday on the server secure2.donaldjtrump.com. It was short-lived.A screenshot of the defacement was posted on the subreddit Hacking. The page displayed an anonymous man in a fedora above the message: Hacked By Pro_Mast3r ~Attacker GovNothing Is ImpossiblePeace From Iraq g33xter Ars Technica reported the server was “behind Cloudflare’s content management and security platform, and it does not appear to be directly linked from the Trump/Pence campaign's home page. But it does appear to be an actual Trump campaign server.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Iraqi hacker took credit for hijacking subdomain and defacing Trump site

A hacker, purportedly from Iraq, defaced a site previously used by President Donald Trump for campaign fundraising. The “hack” occurred Sunday on the server, secure2.donaldjtrump.com. It was short-lived.A screenshot of the defacement was posted on the subreddit Hacking. The page displayed an anonymous man in a fedora above the message: Hacked By Pro_Mast3r ~Attacker GovNothing Is ImpossiblePeace From Iraq g33xter Ars Technica reported the server was “behind Cloudflare’s content management and security platform, and does not appear to be directly linked from the Trump Pence campaign's home page. But it does appear to be an actual Trump campaign server.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Iraqi hacker took credit for hijacking subdomain and defacing Trump site

A hacker, purportedly from Iraq, defaced a site previously used by President Donald Trump for campaign fundraising. The “hack” occurred Sunday on the server, secure2.donaldjtrump.com. It was short-lived.A screenshot of the defacement was posted on the subreddit Hacking. The page displayed an anonymous man in a fedora above the message: Hacked By Pro_Mast3r ~Attacker GovNothing Is ImpossiblePeace From Iraq g33xter Ars Technica reported the server was “behind Cloudflare’s content management and security platform, and does not appear to be directly linked from the Trump Pence campaign's home page. But it does appear to be an actual Trump campaign server.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Scaling @ HelloFresh: API Gateway

HelloFresh keeps growing every single day: our product is always improving, new ideas are popping up from everywhere, our supply chain is being completely automated. All of this is simply amazing us, but of course this constant growth brings many technical challenges.

Today I’d like to take you on a small journey that we went through to accomplish a big migration in our infrastructure that would allow us to move forward in a faster, more dynamic, and more secure way.

The Challenge

We’ve recently built an API Gateway, and now we had the complex challenge of moving our main (monolithic) API behind it — ideally without downtime. This would enable us to create more microservices and easily hook them into our infrastructure without much effort.

The Architecture

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