Monthly Archives: August 2013

Your Last Warning

Posted on 2013-08-21 by jcs

I’ve been writing a lot about the NSA, government snooping, and what it all means for us. I’m an American and my writing has reflected that by viewing the events through the lens of what it means to America and … Continue reading →

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Iain M. Banks Gets an Asteroid

Posted on 2013-08-20 by jcs

Regular readers—or those who have read the quote in the masthead—know that I am a big fan of Iain M. Banks’ work. I was incredibly saddened by his premature death and (selfishly) the end of the Culture novels. Now, in … Continue reading →

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Essential Elisp Functions

Posted on 2013-08-19 by jcs

Emacs Lisp has a reputation for being difficult to learn but as I’ve said many times, the main difficulty—especially for someone already familiar with Lispy languages—is learning the text-editing specific functions. Most of the rest is just standard Lisp. As … Continue reading →

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My Solution to the Latest VimGolf Challenge

Posted on 2013-08-18 by jcs

Readers contributed many good solutions to this challenge. The mundane solution involves using query-replace-regexp with regular expressions \(w+\) → (\1) for 14 keystrokes or, if you’re a bit more clever w+ → (\&) for 10. Actually, I have electric-pair-mode enabled … Continue reading →

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Schneier Gives Tech Firms Some Advice

Posted on 2013-08-17 by jcs

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article in The Atlantic entitled The NSA Is Commandeering the Internet. This is a great read and I urge you to take a look if you haven’t already. The title is a little misleading, however. … Continue reading →

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Google and Gmail Privacy

Posted on 2013-08-16 by jcs

The Internet is ablaze with reports of a Google lawsuit filing claiming that Gmail users have no expectation of privacy. After all the pixels I’ve spilled lately bloviating about privacy and the misdeeds of large Internet companies, including Google, you’d … Continue reading →

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The Lighter Side of NSA Surveillance

Posted on 2013-08-15 by jcs

Actually, there is no lighter side to what the NSA is doing. One thing that every politician knows is that they’re in trouble when the late night comics start making them the butt of their jokes. That’s already happening with … Continue reading →

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Emacs Keybindings in OS X

Posted on 2013-08-14 by jcs

I think I’ve mentioned this before but a recent post by Anton Nikishaev reminded me that this is useful information if you fall into the intersection of Emacs and OS X users. OS X has a very configurable keybinding facility … Continue reading →

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A VimGolf in Emacs Challenge

Posted on 2013-08-13 by jcs

I’ve been obsessing and writing about the continuing NSA scandal and as a result we haven’t had any fun with VimGolf for a while. Just in case you’re as rusty as I am, here’s an easy one. Starting with one … Continue reading →

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Mega Mail

Posted on 2013-08-12 by jcs

There is so much to love in this announcement. Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz is going to offer secure, encrypted email and house the server out of the reach of the illegal snooping of the NSA. Not content to make the US … Continue reading →

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