Setting up my new laptop, spending time in New York City, and visiting the National Cryptologic Museum.
I received my Framework laptop this week and spent the first couple days setting it up. I wrote up my first and second days with it. TL;DR: I put it together and installed NixOS on it, and promptly had to stop working on it on Tuesday evening.
My goal with writing up my experiences this way is to try to capture the why behind my decisions, alongside how I do something. The biggest problem I had while trying to learn my basic NixOS configuration is that a lot of the content out there is pretty complicated and doesn’t necessarily explain why certain changes are made. It’s not really meant to be a tutorial or anything. More like a Captain’s Log of setting up my NixOS laptop.
We took a quick trip to New York City this week, as a sort of miniature vacation. Our lodging plans changed at the last minute on our way to the airport, which was a bumpy start. But once we got that sorted out, it was nice to just take a couple days off and explore New York.
If you find yourself in New York City, I highly recommend Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan. There used to be one in Las Vegas that I would eat at lunch nearly every day during Defcon. Unfortunately that location closed, and the only remaining location is in New York City. I get 4 drumsticks and plain fries. But also I’d probably enjoy just getting like 6 drumsticks.
On Saturday, we took the Northeast Regional from New York City to Baltimore and visited the National Cryptologic Museum. I’ve been wanting to visit the National Cryptologic Museum for years, but it’s just far enough away that whenever I’ve been in Washington D.C., usually for Shmoocon, I haven’t been able to reasonably go.
Admission to the museum is free, which is hard to beat. I really enjoyed the historical computer and communication artifacts, and in particular I really enjoyed this NSA Blackbox. It’s meant for generating key material, and I found it funny that you can also get hardware PRNG devices in a USB form factor (I bought Infinite Noise TRNG some time ago to make my own root CA at home).
I’d highly recommend visiting if you’re interested in cryptology, the history of cryptography, or playing with a working set of Enigma machines. You can also learn about William Friedman sitting on encryption 0day in an obscure commercial encryption/decryption device.
Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy
By Ben Collier
ISBN: 9780262548182
Learn More
I finished the first chapter while at the airport this week, but haven’t been able to get further. I’m hoping this week I am able to get some more reading time in, though.