13 May 2015
phpass (pronounced “pH pass”) is a portable public
domain password hashing framework for use in PHP applications.
phpass has been integrated into WordPress 2.5+,
bbPress, Vanilla, PivotX 2.1.0+,
Chyrp, Textpattern 4.4.0+, and
concrete5 5.6.3+.
Lua module lua-phpass implements a subset of
phpass (iterated MD5). It’s sufficient to create and check a
password hash compatible with portable phpass hash, e.g. a
password from wordpress database. Blowfish-based bcrypt and
BSDI-style extended DES-based hashes are not supported.
This module is distributed under terms of the MIT
License.
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11 May 2015
The parser for MO files was packaged for LuaRocks
and uploaded to LuaRocks site as rock “mo”.
It is available for installation under terms of MIT
license.
MO file is binary format of GNU gettext used to
store translations. It is created from PO file using tool
msgfmt. It can be used to translate an application or a site
from English to other language.
J.Jørgen von Bargen sent the code of parser to
lua-l mailing list on Apr, 01, 2010. I have changed
behavior of the function: now it returns translating function
in case of success and function(x) return x end in case of
errors. The code was covered with unit tests with coverage
100%. Unit tests are written using unit testing
framework Busted.
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28 Mar 2015
ROTE is a simple C library for VT102 terminal emulation.
It allows the programmer to set up virtual ‘screens’ and send
them data. The virtual screens will emulate the behavior of a
VT102 terminal, interpreting escape sequences, control
characters and such. The library supports ncurses as well so
that you may render the virtual screen to the real screen
when you need to.
There are several programs that do terminal emulation, such
as xterm, rxvt, screen and even the Linux console driver
itself. However, it is not easy to isolate their terminal
emulation logic and put it in a module that can be easily
reused in other programs. That’s where the ROTE library
comes in.
The goal of the lua-rote library is to provide terminal
emulation support for Lua applications, making it
possible to write programs that display terminals in
embedded windows within them, or even monitor the display
produced by other programs. The lua-rote library depend
only on Lua, ROTE itself, ncurses and luaposix.
The ROTE library is able to render the
virtual screens to the physical screen (actually any
ncurses window) and can also translate ncurses key codes to
the escape sequences the Linux console would have produced
(and feed them into the terminal). Using ncurses is not
mandatory however, and ROTE will work fine without it, but
in that case the application must take care of drawing the
terminal to the screen in whichever way it sees fit.
ROTE also encapsulates the functionality needed to execute
a child process using the virtual screen as the controlling
terminal. It will handle the creation of the
pseudo-terminal and the child process. All the application
has to do is tell it the command to run in the terminal and
call an update function at regular intervals to allow the
terminal to update itself.
ROTE is extremely useful to programmatically interact
with curses applications (e.g., for unit testing).
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18 Dec 2014
Bitcoin is a very convenient and reliable as a storage of money.
But how can you carry out deals with it?
Traditional methods introduce a trusted third party.
Bitcoin turned out to be powerful enough to carry out
deals safely without involment of third parties.
Below is a detailed instruction of how to carry out a deal with
anybody you do not trust without involment of third parties.
Let us review existing methods at first.
Using a transaction with traditional money
When using a transaction with traditional money, you rely on
existing laws protecting both parties from each other.
This requires the inclusion of a third party. Furthermore,
there is no anonymity and exchange fees are added.
Carrying out transactions using an escrow account
An escrow is a third party trusted by both parties to the transaction.
the buyer gives money to an escrow, and the seller gives the goods
to the escrow. Then the escrow gives money to the seller and the goods to buyer.
This method has a drawback. The escrow has to accumulate a good reputation.
The better the reputation, the more deals are consequently
mediated by the escrow. Escrow is a system with positive feedback, therefore
the overall number of escrows decreases, which results in centralization.
Centralization is not ideal, because it results in a monopoly
and creates less competition.
Bitcoin deals without third parties
Third parties are not needed for a bitcoin deal.
A buyer, a seller and the bitcoin itself are sufficient
for a secure deal. Banks, money exchanges, lawyers, and
escrows are parasitizing on deals.
The protocol of bitcoin already has all that is needed to
carry out a secure deal.
The algorithm is very simple: both parties deposit some money.
If the deal succeeds, the money is returned, otherwise it is lost.
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