Context

Learned in this study

Things to explore

Overview

• Encapsulate the application within a .phar
• Use obfuscation (can only obfuscate variables inside function/methods as anything else must remain with the same name in order to allow for dynamically called methods (or simply do not support such code))

Requirements

• Must not make it easy to extract the original source code
• Must checksum itself for modification
• Should prevent usage by sharing a single license (TBD?)
• Should not be possible to reuse a trial forever in a VM

Issues

• Relying on opcode (to act as a binary) probably implies you are dependent on the php version used. Furthermore, it also means that the extension must be available and enabled for the code to work
• Given the current implementation of opcache, the cache cannot be reused on other machines as it contains the system ID as part of an opcache file header

PHP OPCache

Header

• OPCACHE
• System ID

• Timestamp

• Checksum

-> zend_accel_load_script (persistent_script, from_memory)

Obfuscation

• Replace classes methods with (generated) traits that contain one or many of the classes method
• Compression/optimization by creating variables

Issues

• Even with obfuscation, PSR0/4 based code is too easy to distinguish (no reason to obfuscate libraries)

Ideas

• Find some way to transform the original source such that it is in symbiosis with a client identifier (and thus cannot be removed)
  • See one-way function

Packaging

• Replace variables within functions with obfuscated names
• Concatenate all files into a single file (or bundle of files)
  • Pre-process require/include, or do not allow their use (as the files will not be available)
• Randomize file order
• Scramble method order
• Inject junk code
  • Insert junk code with encrypted user identification
• Generate a differently scrambled version per download/user

See also

References

• Requirements language

Obfuscation

• https://github.com/naneau/php-obfuscator
• https://www.pelock.com/products/autoit-obfuscator
• https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/
• http://proguard.sourceforge.net/

• Identified a problem
• Determine if it is of importance (metrics)
• Explain why your solution is better than existing ones
• Define a clear pricing model
• Define how your product will be marketed
• Define how the product will scale from personal to large corporate use

Evaluate business opportunities

• Determine sale pricing
• Evaluate various sale models
  • Packages
  • Monthly
  • Per action/item/amount
• Determine various cash flows
  • Money paid to employees/self
  • Money paid for services required by the product
• Evaluate tasks that have to be done globally and per client/project (if any)
• Evaluate anything that has to be paid for every client/project and once/globally
• Determine all factors that may vary
  • Number of customers
  • Number of days/months/years
  • Disk space usage, bandwidth usage, computer usage

Unsorted

• Track users requests
• Track users feedback

Context

Learned in this study

Things to explore

Overview

• Component extraction (find all dependencies and attempt to create a self-contained library)
• Convert function-based code into class-based code (static calls)
  • Copy all functions in a file into a new class where each function is static
  • Find all calls to the initial functions and replace them with calls to the class
  • Verify that all entry points load the autoloader (how to check that? search for the autoload.php string and require/include calls?)
• Template/logic separation
• Extraction of functions into a separate file
• Extraction and replacement of inline style
• Extraction of string resources
• Extraction of inline JS
• Extraction of inline CSS
• Conversion of raw view logic to template logic
• Removal of inline PHP code in js code
• Convert raw SQL into builder queries
• Move queries in controller into a service/repository
• Convert <? to <?php
• Convert echo calls to string concat + return
• Update outdated phpdoc
• Improve typing (parameters and return)

Difficulties of code refactoring

• Lot of code is SQL queries

Refactoring to MVC

See also

• Automated refactoring

References

I am currently looking into javascript based libraries that will allow me to do in-browser queries, similar to how a server-side application would query a NoSQL database.

In order to pick the most appropriate database for my project, I first search for available solutions online. Then, I build a comparison table like the one below in order to determine the most popular database and its current health.

Over the next year (and hopefully years), I plan on working on AI, but more particularly what is known as AGI, Artificial General Intelligence.

Since I am the kind of person that enjoys to overly plan, I've been thinking about the whole process for a while. Here's a brief overview of how I plan to construct my days as well as my work.

Daily

Beginning of the day

• Decide and plan on which projects I will work today
• Video log
  • What will I be doing today?
  • What might be blocking me or will be difficult and how do I plan to tackle that?

During the day

• Record my thoughts: Either through video logs or through written notes, which is the more likely option. This will allow me to search my thoughts as well as organize them as necessary. Furthermore, I hope I'll be able to optimize my thought flow through tools.

End of the day

• Video log
  • What have I done during the day?
  • What are the key takeaway of the day?
  • What didn't I do?

While reading books/papers

• Take notes (of interesting sections and ideas)
• Write down thoughts
• Write down questions related to what is being read (for further exploration)
• Explore right away a question I might have had

After each mini project

I plan on working on multiple mini projects in order to ensure diversity as well as to allow me to spot projects which have the potential to be interesting and rewarding. However all projects are valuable in their own and it is important to reflect on the project at the end in order to extract things we'll want to repeat in the future as well as things we'll want to avoid.

• Post mortem
  • What went wrong
  • What went right

At the end of each month

• Update the status of all tracked activities
• Write a list of things that were done during the month regarding each activity that was done. The purpose is to review what was done as well as provide a way to determine how well a project may/may not be progressing. It is also a good time for me to look at each individual activity that was done during the month and evaluate if I want to keep doing it or not.
• Write a post-mortem of the month, describing the good/bad of my current process and progress, with a section suggesting improvements to try for the next few months.
• Plan the projects/activities I will be working on next month, as well as their time allocation.

Living process

I will be experimenting with this process in the next few weeks and will iterate on it as I see fit. I will thus be updating this post as changes occurs and I think of better ways to do my work.