Category Archives: General

How to Read Papers Efficiently

Posted on 2017-06-14 by jcs

If you’re a researcher, or a grad student, or even just a diligent developer, you probably spend a great deal of time reading technical papers. Some of those will be of little or no use, some will be beyond your … Continue reading →

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More on Google’s Ad Blocking

Posted on 2017-06-13 by jcs

When I first wrote about the changes coming to Chrome and Safari in the Adtech arena, I noted that some observers were worried that Google’s changes gave them too much power and could be abused. It turns out that they … Continue reading →

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More on Mu4e

Posted on 2017-06-12 by jcs

I know I’ve written a lot about Emacs and email lately but I can’t help myself—Stop me before I post again!—because there’s so much interesting material. Recently, I saw a pointer to a post from Martin Albrecht on his setup … Continue reading →

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Apple Does it Again

Posted on 2017-06-11 by jcs

In yet another privacy enhancing move, Apple announced that iOS 11 will no longer allow app developers to force always-on location services. If you’re like me, you became aware of this issue when Uber removed the “when App is running” … Continue reading →

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Adtech Followup

Posted on 2017-06-10 by jcs

As a followup to my post the other day on Adtech Progress, here’s some commentary from the EFF on the Google and Apple announcements. The TL;DR is that although the EFF welcomes both initiatives, they regret that Google, unlike Apple, … Continue reading →

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Replacing Scrivener with Emacs

Posted on 2017-06-09 by jcs

If you’re a writer who’s been using Scrivener, here’s a video on replacing Scrivener with Emacs and Org mode. The author is really a Vim guy so he’s using Evil but that’s really just a detail. His configuration as well … Continue reading →

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Karl Voit’s Emacs Configuration

Posted on 2017-06-08 by jcs

Karl Voit is an expert on organizing and storing information. One of his basic building blocks is Emacs and Org mode. It’s interesting, therefore, to see the history of how he’s organized his Emacs configuration. If you follow the link … Continue reading →

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Some Progress on Adtech

Posted on 2017-06-07 by jcs

Regular readers know that Adtech is the general term for the technology that advertisers use to spy on us and collect information about our buying and surfing habits. It’s widespread, mostly fraudulent from an advertisers’ point of view, is a … Continue reading →

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Importing Data from a RESTful Website into an Org Table

Posted on 2017-06-06 by jcs

Charl Botha has a really interesting post on importing data from a RESTful Webservice into an Org table. He gives the example of downloading cryptocurrency trading values and updating a table showing the total value of a user’s holdings but … Continue reading →

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Semantic Locality

Posted on 2017-06-05 by jcs

I’m an old time Unix guy who’s still more comfortable on the command line than a big GUI. That’s probably why I enjoy living in Emacs to the extent possible. One of the most powerful concepts from Unix is the … Continue reading →

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