Category Archives: General

We Don’t Care About No Stinkin’ Keys

Posted on 2015-12-26 by jcs

In a world in which the FBI is intent on bullying tech companies into giving them “golden keys” that they can use to unlock encrypted communications, the TSA’s compromise of their own golden keys (used to open luggage for inspection) … Continue reading →

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Adjusting Text Size in Emacs

Posted on 2015-12-25 by jcs

For some reason I have a hard time remembering this. If you have a hard time too, consider this my Christmas gift to you. #Emacs of the day: Demoing code to at your desk? C-x C-+ to increase font size, … Continue reading →

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Productivity Packages for Emacs

Posted on 2015-12-24 by jcs

Adrien Brochard over at Xmodulo has a list of 10 productivity packages for Emacs. Some of them are actually built-ins but they’re all something that every Emacs user should consider installing or using. I’m a user of almost all of … Continue reading →

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Org-Ref Update

Posted on 2015-12-23 by jcs

I’ve written about John Kitchin’s org-ref package a couple of times before [1, 2] but now it’s available on Melpa. If you write papers or reports that have references (either internal or external), you need this package. It makes handling … Continue reading →

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A Demonstration of How Hard Cryptography Is

Posted on 2015-12-22 by jcs

In the battle over whether the government should require backdoors in cryptography products, the primary objection from those who actually know what they’re talking about is that we’re not smart enough to safely build in backdoors. That point is often … Continue reading →

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Macro Workshop

Posted on 2015-12-21 by jcs

Howard Abrams has an excellent tutorial on Emacs keyboard macros. It’s structured much like the builtin Emacs tutorial in that you download the tutorial into an Emacs buffer and then do the exercises in situ. Unlike the Emacs tutorial, it’s … Continue reading →

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Comey Dissembles (Again)

Posted on 2015-12-20 by jcs

After Paris and San Bernadino, FBI director James Comey has stepped up his “We’re Going Dark” roadshow, telling everyone who will listen how encryption is making it impossible to stop terrorists. In a Washington Post op-ed, Jihadists are making their … Continue reading →

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Sacha’s Weekly Emacs News

Posted on 2015-12-19 by jcs

I came across this tweet @sachac In case people don't say this enough, thank you for this weekly #emacs news round-up. I always find something new/useful/cool. — Marc Saegesser (@MarcSaegesser) December 7, 2015 and it reminded me that I’ve been … Continue reading →

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Mu4e and Org Mode

Posted on 2015-12-18 by jcs

Ben Maughan over at Pragmatic Emacs has a great post on integrating mu4e and Org mode. He has what I think is a near perfect email setup: An inbox that is empty except for unread emails One folder to hold … Continue reading →

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Building World Class Teams

Posted on 2015-12-17 by jcs

What’s the secret of building great teams? Google researchers decided to find out. They presumed that the ideal team would have a mix of varied skills and personalities. As they put it, “We were pretty confident that we’d find the … Continue reading →

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