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Single points of failure in IPv4
In my previous blog post, I made the bold claim that like NAT and HTTP’s Host Header, was sufficient for our current internet needs, perfect enough to work around the limited number of IPv4 addresses. However, a recent revelation about government surveillance through Apple’s and Google’s notification servers has led me to reconsider. These IPv4 workarounds, I’ve realized, introduce critical vulnerabilities: they create centralized points of failure, starkly contrasting the decentralized ethos of the Internet Protocol.
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The backward compatible hack that keeps the web together
The internet is nothing short of a modern miracle. It’s astonishing that I can video call friends and family in China from halfway across the globe in the UK with almost seamless connectivity. My luggage get lost in transit and things I tried to send through mail gets stopped by custom, yet tiny changes in electrical current somehow manage to get through dozens of networking devices run by different groups of people with various technical ability and agenda somehow make it to the other end with remarkable reliability.
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NAT Is Good, I hope it still exists for IPv6
I used to hate Network Translation Layer (NAT) because it made hosting anything so much more complicated. It also makes devices waste a lot of power because they have to constantly poll a server to receive push notifications. IPv6 is supposed to address this problem so decided to experiment with it. Although the experiment failed (I still mostly use IPv4), I began to see several huge advantages of NAT.
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Why I Use Windows on Desktop Rather than Linux
I love using Linux on servers. I run web servers, write code, and do experiments with interesting projects using Linux (specifically Debian and Ubuntu). This blog post explains why I don’t use Linux on desktop.
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Sunk Cost Fallacy and My Struggle with It
I went to have a driving test a few days ago and I failed because of one simple mistake — moving off without giving way. I was quite devastated because I had spent 40 hours plus thousands of pounds taking driving lessons. Rationally, that is just the sunk cost and should be ignored but I still feel very upset and even lost sleep because of it. That made me reflect on why I experienced this.