Author Archives: jcs

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 →

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No

Posted on 2013-12-28 by jcs

Why not?

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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A Talk with Linus

Posted on 2013-12-22 by jcs

In June of last year Linus Torvalds held a Q&A session at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship. It’s a far reaching and interesting talk. Torvalds talks about tool building, the beginning of Linux, how the project is run, why Linux … Continue reading →

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Phone Tracking

Posted on 2013-12-21 by jcs

Matt Blaze over at Exhaustive Search has an interesting post on how law enforcement agencies track phone calls. Blaze is discussing law enforcement targeting individuals in support of criminal investigations not the wholesale dragnet surveillance of the type that the … Continue reading →

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Two Stories on the NSA

Posted on 2013-12-20 by jcs

This week there were two stories that can’t make the NSA happy. In the first, Rick Falkvinge reports that Brazil, upset over NSA spying, ditched their plans to buy Boeing jets and went with Gripen instead. This despite the fact … Continue reading →

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