Author Archives: jcs

Bozhidar Batsov on Emacs 24.4

Posted on 2014-01-01 by jcs

Over at Emacs Redux, Bozhidar Batsov is promising a peek at some of the Emacs 24.4 features. Because he contributed code to the release, he’s followed the development carefully and has been using it exclusively for the last six months … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

RTFM

Posted on 2013-12-31 by jcs

Some time ago1, I noticed that the Org footnote mechanism was not working correctly. As with similar footnote facilities, you add a footnote by marking where you want the footnote to appear in the text and then adding a paragraph … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mickey on Emacs 24.4

Posted on 2013-12-30 by jcs

As he has for the past several releases, Mickey over at Mastering Emacs has perused the NEWS file for the upcoming Emacs 24.4 and produced an informative post on what’s new. There are a couple of good reasons to read … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Progress on the Discrete Logarithm Problem

Posted on 2013-12-29 by jcs

A team of French mathematicians and computer scientists have developed a new algorithm that makes substantial progress on certain types of discrete logarithms. The general discrete log problem is given a and b from a finite field find n also … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

No

Posted on 2013-12-28 by jcs

Why not?

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

LispStick!

Posted on 2013-12-27 by jcs

If you’re a Windows user and want to try Lisp, getting started can be a bit of a hassle. Now Patrick Krusenotto has come to the rescue with LispStick!, a Zip file that has everything you need to get started. … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Data Loss and Reproducible Research

Posted on 2013-12-26 by jcs

As long-time readers know, I’m a big fan of reproducible research (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). The aspect that I’m particularly interested in is keeping the data, software, and other supporting material together with the source for the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Emacs 24.4 Draws Nigh

Posted on 2013-12-25 by jcs

Not quite in time for Christmas but a new Emacs is coming our way. Stefan Monnier has announced the feature freeze for Emacs 24.4 on the emacs-devel list. I am hearing that things are pretty much working now so if … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tor Best Practices

Posted on 2013-12-24 by jcs

Over at Digital Era there’s a nice post on Tor best practices. While the Tor protocol and software are reasonably secure, you can’t use them blindly. The most recent example of what happens when you do is demonstrated by Eldo … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Git Bisect

Posted on 2013-12-23 by jcs

Over at randyfay.com, Randy Fay has a great screencast on debugging with git bisect. If you’re not familiar with git’s bisect command, the idea is to find the git commit that introduced an error. The process is basically a binary … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment