List of blog entries

Every network needs DNS, at its most basic level to look up IP addresses of host names. If you don’t run services of your own, maybe you can get away with configuring a public DNS resolver like Cloudflare’s (1.1.1.1) or Google’s (8.8.8.8). Perhaps you set up a forwarder on your network yourself that does some ad blocking, like a PiHole. If you’re feeling slightly more adventurous and/or privacy-conscious, maybe you operate your own recursive resolver. Authoritative DNS is a little different: an authoritative DNS server doesn’t look up addresses, it acts as a source of truth for some part of the DNS namespace. /.../

Secret management is hard to get right. When dealing with access to something as mission-critical as a database server, it’s nothing to scoff at. Traditionally, the way you allow an application to connect to a database is by configuring it with the username and password for a database user. But passing around static, long-lived credentials for database users is cumbersome, error-prone and frankly dangerous. /.../

The PDF Association is currently running a week-long event in Paris to discuss PDF standards & technology. The current round of meetings of ISO/TC 171/SC 2 is being held at the same time & venue. /.../

The impetus for this post is simple: I recently used an online printing service to place an order for paper cards to announce the birth of our newborn son. Since I planned to put together the card design using iText anyhow, I figured I might as well submit in PDF/X. After all, I would’ve been charged extra if the printing company had to fix my files! /.../