TLDR:

# Use 'always' so headers are also set for non-2XX and unset to avoid duplicates
<IfModule headers_module>
	header unset Strict-Transport-Security
	header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=16070400; includeSubDomains;"
</IfModule>

Slightly¹ longer version:

HTTPS everywhere is a worthwhile goal. Even when you have traffic that isn’t super interesting or sensitive by itself, the fact that you’re encrypting it makes traffic that really does need to be encrypted safer against tools that grab all of the encrypted traffic they can to decrypt later if/when possible.

One of the downsides of using HTTPS though is that without certain things in place, many users will still type domain.com in their address bar from time to time, completely missing out on the https://. While you can immediately redirect them, that very first request is a risk, since if a man-in-the-middle attack happens to catch that request, they can downgrade the entire connection.

Enter HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). It’s a HTTP header that you can send on the first HTTPS connection you establish with a compatible client. Once you’ve done that, any further requests (until the header’s TTL expires without being renewed) will be sent to https:// no matter what the user types. Which solves the first request problem for all sessions… but it still doesn’t fix the very first time you have to get the header. So how do you fix that?

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I wrote up a script that I used to take an AWS S3 bucket and count how many objects there were in the bucket and calculate its total size. While you could get some of this information from billing reports, there just wasn’t a good way to get it other than that at the time. The only way you could do it was to… iterate through the entire bucket, summing as you go. If you have buckets with millions (or more) objects, this could take a while.

Basically:

conn = boto.connect_s3()
for bucket in sorted(conn.get_all_buckets()):
    try:
        total_count = 0
        total_size = 0
        start = datetime.datetime.now()

        for key in bucket.list_versions():
            # Skip deleted files
            if isinstance(key, boto.s3.deletemarker.DeleteMarker):
                continue

            size = key.size
            total_count += 1
            total_size += size

        print('-- {count} files, {size}, {time} to calculate'.format(
            count = total_count,
            size = humanize.naturalsize(total_size),
            time = humanize.naturaltime(datetime.datetime.now() - start).replace(' ago', '')
        ))

The Fires of Heaven is mostly a book to extend what we’ve seen before.

Elida solidifies her control on the tower while the rebels come together to oppose her. Nynaeve tugs her braid. A lot. Elayne and Nynaeve end up in the circus (not even kidding) and with a captured Forsaken...

One problem that has come up a time or two is dealing with email-based domain validation (specifically in this case for the issuance of TLS certificates) on domains that aren’t actually configured to receive email. Yes, in a perfect world, it would be easier to switch to DNS-based validation (since we have to have control of the DNS for the domain, we need it later), but let’s just assume that’s not an option. So, how do we ‘catch’ the activation email so we can prove we can receive email on that domain?

Look at your mistakes long enough to learn from them, then put them behind you.

On one hand, The Blood Mirror takes the storyline of the previous books and turns it up even more.

Review of .

Pale Green Dot: Sequel to The Forest is the sequel to The Forest, but really they should have been (and often are) combined into a single book. The Pale Green Dot continues where The Forest left off and expands the world significantly. We see a bit behind the curtain at just what the Forest is and how the world works.

The Forest came out of /r/WritingPrompts:

[WP] Instead of Oceans, they are all big forests, that gets taller and darker instead of deeper, with more dangerous animals living further out in the forest. A person decides to cross the Mariana Trench

I tried. Really I did. But when you read as quickly as I do and realize that you’ve already spent more than a month on one book, it’s time to move on.

I think most of my frustration with this book comes from the fact that Pendragon is a teenager and acts like it. He is hit in the face with a world where humanoid cats are the dominant species and humans are little more than animals and just cannot get it through his head. Over and over, he expects the world to work one way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Mat snorted. “I don’t want to be any bloody hero.”

Bit late for that. For all of them.

Til shade is gone,

til water is gone

Into the shadow with teeth bared

Screaming defiance with the last breath

To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.

As The Great Hunt was a step up from The Eye of the World, The Dragon Reborn is a step up from the Great Hunt. Things are really moving now.