Category Archives: General

Proof Reading with Text-To-Speech

Posted on 2018-11-13 by jcs

Via Wilfred Hughes here’s a really neat trick for those of you who write things other than code: Life hack I don’t share often enough: using text-to-speech to proofread your writing. Your eye will gloss over all sorts of mistakes … Continue reading →

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Rob Pike’s Personal Unix History

Posted on 2018-11-12 by jcs

Rob Pike gave an really nice talk on Unix hisotry as he experienced it. If you’re a Unix-head you already know who Pike is. If not, Pike was one of the researchers at Bell Labs who worked on Unix and … Continue reading →

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Adtech Prepares for a Big Hit

Posted on 2018-11-11 by jcs

A series of complaints targeting user information gatherers, data brokers, and third party users of that information could portend a tsunami bearing down on the adtech industry. In what could be the first test of whether GDPR enforcement is going … Continue reading →

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An Emergency USB for When You’re Stuck on Windows

Posted on 2018-11-10 by jcs

Gustavo A. Ballen has an interesting story about his journey to Linux and Emacs. Ballen is a PhD student in the biological sciences and although Emacs did not come naturally, he soon came to rely on it. He also became … Continue reading →

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De-Googlifying Your Life

Posted on 2018-11-09 by jcs

I came across a post from Kev Quirk on why he was ditching his Android phone. He’s trading it in for an iPhone SE. The TL;DR is that Quirk tired of having Google pry into his life and record everything … Continue reading →

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Refiling in Org Mode

Posted on 2018-11-08 by jcs

Longtime Irreal readers may remember my post on Aaron Bieber’s talk on moving from Vim to Emacs that he gave to the Boston Vim Meetup back in 2015. Since then, I’ve mentioned him in a few other posts. The other … Continue reading →

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Troy Hunt on Why Passwords Aren’t Going Away

Posted on 2018-11-07 by jcs

I was trying to create a Web account with my credit card company so I could update some information. The process was painful beyond endurance and their password policy revealed that they weren’t using the best practices method of hashing … Continue reading →

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A Win for Open Access

Posted on 2018-11-06 by jcs

In a win for open access in publishing two major funders will no longer cover publishing in hybrid journals. The two funders, The Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that they will not provide research funding … Continue reading →

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Blocking Elsevier

Posted on 2018-11-04 by jcs

I’ve written before about Sci-Hub and their fight with the publishing industry (1, 2). It’s easy to see both sides of the argument but one side, the publishers, have acted in ways that deplete whatever goodwill they might have had. … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 53: Emailing Your Agenda

Posted on 2018-11-03 by jcs

Mike Zamansky is back with another video in his Using Emacs Series. This time it’s about mailing himself a copy of his current Org agenda. I found this video useful for a couple of reasons. First, he discusses the Org … Continue reading →

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