Author Archives: jcs

The Real Problem in the Encryption Wars

Posted on 2015-12-04 by jcs

The Washington Post has an interesting take on the on-going encryption wars. Daniel Weitzner, a former White House deputy chief technology officer for Internet policy, has an op-ed in which he lays out the usual arguments against backdoors in encryption … Continue reading →

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The TOR Attack

Posted on 2015-12-03 by jcs

Fusion has a lengthy and informative report on the recent TOR attack. To some extent, the TOR project dropped the ball and failed to understand the seriousness of what they were seeing. The real villains, though, appear to be two … Continue reading →

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How to Fix a Stuck Emacs

Posted on 2015-12-02 by jcs

A very handy tip from Wilfred Hughes: Emacs tip: If your instance hangs and won't respond to C-g, you can use `pkill -SIGUSR2 emacs` to force emacs to stop whatever it's doing. — Wilfred Hughes (@_wilfredh) October 28, 2015 Emacs … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.3.1 Released

Posted on 2015-12-01 by jcs

The latest release of Steel Bank Common Lisp, version 1.3.1, was released on November 27. This month’s release contains 7 enhancements, including SB_THREAD for ARM64, and a bunch of bug fixes. See the NEWS page for details. As usual, I … Continue reading →

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The First Rule for Using Org

Posted on 2015-11-30 by jcs

I’ve seen lots of pointers lately to this message from Carsten Dominik on the use of Org mode and managing its perceived complexity. At the end of the message he says What people miss when they are new to Org-mode … Continue reading →

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Smartphone Scolds

Posted on 2015-11-29 by jcs

Here at Irreal, we’ve been grumpy for some time about the seemingly never-ending onslaught of articles and television pieces about the evils of smartphones. There are the academics, desperate for a publication cred., claiming that using cellphones causes young brains … Continue reading →

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How The Paris Terrorists Really Operated

Posted on 2015-11-28 by jcs

Yesterday I wrote about Clare Foges’ ludicrously dishonest op-ed in the Telegraph. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a more sober article that describes how the terrorists really operated. Here’s a nice summary by Mike Rundle Paris attackers used real … Continue reading →

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The Dumbest Op-Ed of the Year

Posted on 2015-11-27 by jcs

The UK’s Telegraph has published what is certainly the year’s most ignorant and dishonest op-ed. Clare Foges, until recently PM David Cameron’s chief speechwriter, weighs in on the encryption wars and calls out Apple and Google for putting profit before … Continue reading →

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The Truth About Open Offices

Posted on 2015-11-26 by jcs

I’ve written many times about the foolishness and destructiveness of open plan offices. Here is a pithy summary of the truth about such plans. If you want to know why they are so beloved of management, take a look at … Continue reading →

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Emacs for the CEO

Posted on 2015-11-25 by jcs

Back when Josh Stella was coding, he lived in Emacs. Like many of us, he performed most of his everyday tasks—mail, calendar, documents, coding—from within Emacs. Decades later, he’d become the CEO/co-founder of Luminal and had left Emacs behind. Like … Continue reading →

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