garrettmills

multicrypt: a library for multi-key encryption

Recently, I've been working on adding secure vaults for user secrets to my auth server project, CoreID.

To implement shared-vaults, I wrote an implementation of multi-key encryption using enveloped keys. It seemed fairly useful on its own, so I pulled it out into a standalone TypeScript package called Multicrypt.

Multicrypt provides a simple interface for multi-key two-way encryption for arbitrary keys and values, and makes it easy to add & remove keys from the shared values.

Learn more here.

Photo Challenge 01: Self-Portrait

One non-technical interest of mine is photography. I'm starting a new 30-prompt photo challenge, which I'll be posting on my blog.

The first challenge is a self-portrait. Mine tries to capture my technical side, and allowed me to tinker with depth of field and reflections.

Follow along here.

g.bash: A simple Bash framework

Between work and my personal lab, I write a lot of command-line tools to help automate various tasks. But, as anyone who's worked with Bash before knows, adding multi-command support, flags, and other handling can be difficult to get off the ground.

However, including a multi-file Bash framework is kinda... gross. One of the benefits of a shell script is that it can usually be distributed as a single-file affair. I was also unpleased with the current state of Bash argument-parsing.

Enter: g.bash. This is my take on a single-file framework and standard library for Bash that addresses these issues. I might write a more extensive blog in the future, but for now the broad strokes are:

• Utility & array helpers
• Filesystem helpers
• Error handling & try-catch
• String manipulation helpers
• Logging to standard error/files by levels/flags
• Math constants & helpers
• Import system w/ singleton includes
• Configuration file system
• Command definitions & argument parsing
• Locking & singleton execution

This side-project is still very much a work-in-progress, but if you're curious you can check it out here.

Monochrome Redesign

I decided that it was time for a visual refresh of this site. I liked the bright & flashy design I've had for about a year now, but decided on a return to relative simplicity.

The new design has the added benefit of being very light and semantic, and relies on no external stylesheets or frameworks, unlike the old. This has the added benefit of making the page more accesible and improving load times.

Technical Info on *.garrettmills.dev Sites

For the past few weeks, I've been reworking my analytics collection system with an eye to privacy.

I've tried to make my system collect only the data I wish to use in aggregate, and give users the ability to permanently opt-out of page-view collection.

For details and interesting nitty-gritty about this site, I've added a new technical info page that talks about how the analytics system works, the data it stores, and how you can opt-out.

Opting Websites Out of FLoC

Google announced recently that the beta version of their Chrome browser will include a new tracking system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This system is their replacement for 3rd-party tracking cookies. You can learn more here.

FLoC perpetuates the track-by-default system in Chrome that violates users' privacy. Worse, because it's baked into the browser itself, this tracking can occur on all sites by default.

I remain strongly opposed to these privacy-invasive moves. As a result, starting with version 0.59.0, all Flitter-powered sites (including this one) will opt-out of FLoC by default.

As a user, if this change makes you uncomfortable, consider using a browser that respects user privacy like Firefox or Brave.