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The simple tool I'm most proud of is spiped. If you have two systems which need to be able to talk over TCP without worrying about evilness on the network betw

The simple tool I'm most proud of is spiped. If you have two systems which need to be able to talk over TCP without worrying about evilness on the network between them, spiped is the answer. The simple tool which has probably had the largest impact is bsdiff -- now found used in hundreds of millions of devices -- but I'm not particularly proud of it because it was a quick hack and horrible code written by a C novice. The non-simple product which I'm most proud of is Tarsnap, of course; I've spent a decade of my life on it, and don't expect to stop any time soon.

danielhunt 10y ago
https://tankardapp.com https://tankardapp.com Ludicrously simple but I rely on it and use it every single day for Dev (and real) purposes <3 single purpose apps edit the app I use for HN (MiniHack) seems to have mistakenly replied to the first reply instead of the root Sorry for comment sniping!
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> The simple tool which has probably had the largest impact is bsdiff -- now found used in hundreds of millions of devices In your thesis, you mention an updated algorithm that produces smaller patches. Do you have any code available that implements that algorithm?
- cperciva 10y ago
  Some of that, and some further improvements, made their way into https://github.com/cperciva/bsdiff https://github.com/cperciva/bsdiff . But I don't think anyone is using that new code; the company which was paying for me to work on it decided not to continue with that project before I had a chance to finish polishing the work.
justinsaccount 10y ago
That reminds me, I keep meaning to look into seeing how hard it would be to add a reverse mode to spiped. Right now it acts like a ssh -L tunnel, but doesn't have a mode where it acts like ssh -R, right?
- cperciva 10y ago
  Those are really the same thing, considering that you run a copy of spiped on each side.
  - justinsaccount 10y ago
    Oh? Maybe it's just that the documentation specifically mentions ssh -L but not ssh -R. Can you do something like run spiped on a machine behind NAT or on a dynamic ip address to create a reverse tunnel via a publicly reachable host?
    - cperciva 10y ago
      Well, spiped lets you say "when connections arrive here, encrypt/decrypt them and send them over there". But if "over there" is behind a NAT, there's no way to do that; you would need a persistent connection, which is what ssh does and what spiped is designed to avoid.
meerkatyen 10y ago
thank you for spiped. Surprised at how often I find myself using it

danielhunt 10y ago

https://tankardapp.com https://tankardapp.com Ludicrously simple but I rely on it and use it every single day for Dev (and real) purposes <3 single purpose apps edit the app I use for HN (MiniHack) seems to have mistakenly replied to the first reply instead of the root Sorry for comment sniping!

JoshTriplett 10y ago

> The simple tool which has probably had the largest impact is bsdiff -- now found used in hundreds of millions of devices In your thesis, you mention an updated algorithm that produces smaller patches. Do you have any code available that implements that algorithm?

cperciva 10y ago
Some of that, and some further improvements, made their way into https://github.com/cperciva/bsdiff https://github.com/cperciva/bsdiff . But I don't think anyone is using that new code; the company which was paying for me to work on it decided not to continue with that project before I had a chance to finish polishing the work.

justinsaccount 10y ago

That reminds me, I keep meaning to look into seeing how hard it would be to add a reverse mode to spiped. Right now it acts like a ssh -L tunnel, but doesn't have a mode where it acts like ssh -R, right?

cperciva 10y ago
Those are really the same thing, considering that you run a copy of spiped on each side.
- justinsaccount 10y ago
  Oh? Maybe it's just that the documentation specifically mentions ssh -L but not ssh -R. Can you do something like run spiped on a machine behind NAT or on a dynamic ip address to create a reverse tunnel via a publicly reachable host?
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Well, spiped lets you say "when connections arrive here, encrypt/decrypt them and send them over there". But if "over there" is behind a NAT, there's no way to do that; you would need a persistent connection, which is what ssh does and what spiped is designed to avoid.

meerkatyen 10y ago

thank you for spiped. Surprised at how often I find myself using it