Author Archives: jcs

Browsing Users’ Lives

Posted on 2015-09-26 by jcs

Andrew Parker, head of MI5 and Britain’s representative of the international cabal of nosey Parkers1 who wish to scrutinize every bit of our on-line activities—for our own good, of course—is complaining to the BBC about how hard it is to … Continue reading →

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You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Posted on 2015-09-25 by jcs

Would be too snarky for me to point out that these are the same people who want us to give them our crypto keys? — matt blaze (@mattblaze) September 24, 2015

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The Scope of the Interactive Declaration

Posted on 2015-09-25 by jcs

One of the very useful things I learned from Xah Lee’s Emacs tutorials is that almost any code can be attached to the Emacs Interactive declaration. The only rule is that the code must return a list of values for … Continue reading →

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How to be a Real Language

Posted on 2015-09-24 by jcs

A language isn't really a *real* language until its got an #emacs major-mode ;-) https://t.co/wPicLkDvh8 — Ian Rumford (@ianrumford) August 18, 2015

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Adtech: Then and Now

Posted on 2015-09-24 by jcs

With the introduction of iOS 9 and its support for (easy) mobile ad blocking, the commentariat has been working overtime pumping out pixels on the issue of whether or not it is ethical to use ad blocking technology. Some folks … Continue reading →

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How Bad Apples Can Poison a Team

Posted on 2015-09-23 by jcs

Over at Coding Horror there’s an interesting but disturbing report on research by Will Felps on how a bad apple can affect team dynamics. Most of us have worked on a team where a single individual disrupts the smooth functioning … Continue reading →

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Writing a Book in Org Mode

Posted on 2015-09-22 by jcs

Grant Rettke over at Wisdom and Wonder points to an interesting discussion on the Org mailing list about writing a book in Org mode. The thread starts with Vikas Rawal’s announcement of his book, Ending Malnutrition: from commitment to action … Continue reading →

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Plotting with Python and Org

Posted on 2015-09-21 by jcs

Andrew Caird over at For the Love of Suffering has a nice post on how to use Python and Org mode to visualize data. As usual with this sort of thing, Caird leverages Org Babel to integrate a Python script … Continue reading →

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Some Rare Good News

Posted on 2015-09-20 by jcs

The Washington Post has an interesting article by Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson on the Obama’s administration’s support for strong encryption. Nakashima and Peterson are reporting that the administration is backing away from seeking a legislative mandate that technology companies … Continue reading →

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Fixing the Size and Location of the OS X Finder Window

Posted on 2015-09-19 by jcs

John Gruber points to a nice tip from Christopher Phin on how to fix the size and location of the Finder window in OS X. All you have to do is open a Finder window, resize it, place it in … Continue reading →

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