Posts

Introduction Through this blog post, I want to share the qualities that I’ve admired Laidback Luke for (apart from his DJ sets/skills and music), over the last 10 years. I will talk about who he is, how I came across him, what I’ve learnt from him and also share some links to his vlogs and interviews that have helped me grow. Laidback Luke Lucas Cornelis van Scheppingen, aka Laidback Luke, is a legendary DJ and producer who has been in the music industry for over 30 years. Some of his classic hits include Show Me Love, Leave The World Behind, Turbulence and Rocking With The Best. ...

The following are some of my realisations and frustrations. They are not facts, they are just my opinions formed from my experiences. These are not all my thoughts, obviously. Tushar Nankani pushed me to write about what I’ve been going through, and I thought that this would be a good way to do it. I’ll try to keep this updated. No promises though, I guess. IMPORTANT: These pointers are NOT facts. They are just my opinions formed from my experiences. There might be a lot of Survivorship bias ahead. ...

My Experience I am a part of the organising team of TSEC Hacks, the annual hackathon by TSEC CodeCell. At TSEC CodeCell, I have helped in organising three editions of TSEC Hacks from 2020 to 2022. This blog post is an accumulation of some of those experiences. TSEC Hacks 2020 2021 2022 Mode In-person Online In-person Participants 189 552 225 Registrations 776 650 591 Apart from a hackathon organiser, I am a Web Developer, a Speaker and the Organiser at Our Tech Community. ...

Git Internals This post is the second part of a series on the internal working of Git. The Git Internals series The .git Directory Git Objects (This post) The entire Git Internals series is available as a talk as well. Feel free to watch the talk instead. 👇 Git Objects Git has two data structures, a mutable index that caches information about the working directory and the next revision to be committed, and an immutable, append-only object database (repository) containing four types of objects ...

Git Internals This post is the first part of a series on the internal working of Git. The Git Internals series The .git Directory (This post) Git Objects The entire Git Internals series is available as a talk as well. Feel free to watch the talk instead. 👇 The .git Directory On executing the git init command in a directory, Git creates a hidden .git directory in that directory. The .git directory contains all the project history data on which Git can perform its version control functions. It also contains files to configure the way Git handles things for that particular repository. ...

What is DNS and Why is DNS Needed? DNS stands for ‘Domain Name System’ or ‘Domain Name Server.’ All web sites, web apps and other resources on the internet are uniquely identified through IP addresses. For example, 8.8.8.8 is google.com’s IP address. Computers work well with numbers, but humans cannot remember the IP addresses of all the resources that they want to visit on the internet and words are easier to remember than a string of numbers (in case of IPv4) or an alphanumeric string (in case of IPv6), so every resource has a unique URL (Eg: github.com) that makes it easy to remember the name to get to the intended resource. Now resources can only be contacted by knowing their IP addresses, so there has to be some mapping for domain names to their IP addresses. Here is where the Domain Name System Protocol steps in, wherein the device from which a request is made for a resource first hits a Domain Name Server to get the IP address of the requested resource and uses that IP address to then contact the requested resource to fetch it. The DNS protocol is an Application Layer protocol that uses port 53 and mainly uses UDP as its Transport Layer protocol. Common DNS Records DNS records are used to provide important information about a domain. They are also called ‘Resource Records’ (RRs) and are stored in DNS Zone Files, which are stored on the domain’s Name Server. Almost every record follows the format Name TTL Class Type Data. Eg: www 86400 IN A 192.168.1.1 Name/Host The host name of the record. Also called ‘hostname.’ Eg values: @ (blank), a subdomain (www, blog, links, etc.), * (wildcard), etc. Eg usage If the host value is www for the domain harshkapadia.me, then the record is pertaining to www.harshkapadia.me. Similarly, if the host value is @ (blank) for the domain harshkapadia.me, then the record is pertaining to harshkapadia.me, ie, the base domain itself, so the output will have @ replaced by harshkapadia.me.. TTL Time To Live in seconds, unless otherwise mentioned. Lists the time for which DNS servers should cache the record. An update to the record will thus take time to reflect, as the previous value might be cached. Class It defines the protocol family. IN stands for ‘Internet’ and is used the most. More on classes Type Type of DNS record. There are more than 260 RR types defined by IANA! The most common ones are discussed below. Eg: A record, CNAME record, etc. Data/Value An IP address to which the record points or any other data that should be contained in the record. NOTE: For the following record sections, the base/apex/root domain is harshkapadia.me. ...

What is TLS? The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol helps in encrypting and authenticating the communication between two services. It is a Transport Layer protocol as per the OSI Model. It is the better version of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. (The last SSL version was 3.0.) TLS 1.0 was also called SSL 3.1. The latest version of TLS is 1.3. It is placed between TCP and HTTP. Usually TCP -> HTTP, but with HTTPS, TCP -> TLS -> HTTP. Thus, HTTPS is also called ‘HTTP over TLS (or SSL)’. It is not just used in web sites. It is used for other communication as well, for eg, DB communication, browsing on TOR browser, etc. Examples NOTE: ...

What is IPSec? The IP Security (IPSec) Protocol is a Network Layer encryption protocol most commonly used in VPNs (either to securely browse the internet or to securely connect to a remote network) that is used to create P2P (point to point) associations between tunnel endpoints. It encrypts and authenticates IP packets. It is used to make a secure tunnel between the client and the server (or target machine). It is supported by both IPv4 and IPv6. Features Anti-replay protection Perfect forward safety Data origin authenticity Data integrity Transparency Dynamic re-keying (Keys expire relatively frequently to improve security and they are automatically re-negotiated by the protocol) Confidentiality NOTE: Resources for ciphers (AES, RSA, DES, etc), hashes (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, etc) and key exchange methods (Diffie-Hellman) can be found in the resources section at the end. ...

I had a really good talk with Chirag Nayyar sir on how beginners can get started with Cloud. I learnt a lot in the two hour session, so I summarized the key points into a two minute read. Getting Started with Cloud Sir strongly believes in a bottom to top approach. Focus on the fundamentals Networking Relational Databases (SQL) Storage Compute Choose ANY Cloud Platform. (They all have a generous free tier.) Explore the platform. Understand their services. (Co-relate with your foundational knowledge.) Buy a domain. Make a portfolio. Important Concepts Networking Relational Databases (SQL) Storage Compute Virtualization (Need & role) Understand ‘Software Defined Everything’. Know the purposes of services. General Tips Don’t follow too many resources. Build a strong foundation. Grow step by step. Nothing is a race. Build things that you like and try to test them in other environments. Try and fail as soon as possible. Share your learning with the community. Own a domain and an e-mail with it. Your portfolio site does not have to be the most beautiful one out there. Put a target date (may be months). Reddit and StackOverflow are gold mines. Certifications don’t matter. Only the official ones matter and in the case of cloud they have a certain validity, so do them at the right time and use them properly. Learn, don’t run after certificates. Connect with Chirag sir Watch the session. ...

It was a really good experience to conduct an interview of Ali Mustufa Shaikh with Harsh Navani! Ali is a humble 23 year old, with the tagline ‘I build Human Networks’ (not Computer Networks). He has done massive work for the tech community and is the youngest Intel Software Innovator in India, a Microsoft Student Partner, a Google Certified Educator, a Co-organiser of GDG Cloud Mumbai, the Organiser of TensorFlow UserGroup Mumbai, the lead of the APSIT IEEE branch and an Advisory Member at IEEE Collabratec among other things. He has also been a Global Influencer at Google Crowdsource for two years. ...