Ruben

Blog posts and open-source work

About

Ruben

  • Software Engineer
  • ruben@tweedegolf.com

Ruben can rightfully be called a full stack developer, with many years of experience. He knows a lot (a lot!) about many different techniques. He watches over the architecture of applications and does not accept half-baked solutions. He always makes his strong opinion heard.

Ruben studied computer science at the RU and previously embarked on the entrepreneurial path together with Marlon. In his spare time, he enjoys playing tabletop games and cycling through the beautiful surroundings of Nijmegen.

At the beginning of October, David and I went to ISPCS in Tokyo. The ISPCS (IEEE Symposium on Precision Clock Synchronization) is all about the PTP protocol and related technologies, and we attended because of Statime, our Rust implementation of the Precision Time Protocol.
October 30, 2024

Enabling pools in NTS

We previously talked about how secure time is required for a safe internet. We mentioned how we want to increase the adoption of NTS, the secure time synchronization standard built on top of NTP. For this, we proposed to develop a public NTS pool. In this article, we expand on what pooling is, and what is required to enable an NTS pool.
The internet has a hole at the bottom of its trust stack, and we need to do something about it. In particular, the internet needs secure time synchronization to fortify the security of our digital world. In this article, we present a path towards the adoption of securely synchronized time.

Open-source work

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openleadr-rs

openleadr-rs is a work-in-progress Rust implementation of the OpenADR 3.0 specification. OpenADR is a protocol for automatic demand-response in electricity grids, used, for example, for dynamic pricing or load shedding.

openleadr-rs was initiated by us as openadr-rs, but is now part of the OpenLEADR project, governed by the Linux Energy Foundation.

zlib-rs

zlib-rs is a memory-safe Rust implementation of zlib, the widely-used compression library, used primarily on the web to provide gzip compression to the text/html/js/css we send around.

The initial development of zlib-rs was started and partly funded by Prossimo. It's now governed by the Trifecta Tech Foundation as part of their Data Compression initiative.

sudo-rs

Sudo-rs is a memory safe implementation of sudo and su, a project by Prossimo jointly implemented by Ferrous Systems and Tweede golf.

Read more in this blog post.

ntpd-rs

ntpd-rs is an open-source implementation of the Network Time Protocol completely written in Rust, with a focus on exposing a minimal attack surface. This video explains how ntpd-rs brings NTP into the modern era.

The project was initially funded by ISRG's Prossimo, as part of their mission to achieve memory safety for the Internet's most critical infrastructure. The NTP initiative page on Prossimo's website tells the story.

ntpd-rs is part of Project Pendulum. In July of 2023 the Sovereign Tech Fund invested in Pendulum, securing development and maintenance in 2023, and maintenance and adoption work in 2024.

teach-rs

teach-rs, formerly Rust 101, is a collection of modular teaching materials to build a university course for computer science students, introducing the Rust Programming Language. It is open source and thus available to anyone who wants to teach Rust.

It is governed by the Trifecta Tech Foundation.

Read one of our teach-rs blogs for more info.

Statime

Statime is an initiative of Tweede golf, an open-source implementation of the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) in Rust.

High-precision timing is part of crucial networking infrastructure. With Statime we provide a memory-safe alternative for existing implementations.

The first milestones of the project were kindly co-funded by the NLnet Foundation.

Statime is part of Project Pendulum. In July of 2023 the Sovereign Tech Fund invested in Pendulum, securing development and maintenance in 2023, and maintenance and adoption work in 2024.

RP1

Developed by Ruben, RP1 is a procedural macro that generates a set of useful basic CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) endpoints in a REST-like API with JSON output.

Check out the blog post RP1: an experimental Diesel-based CRUD for Rocket, for more.