Category Archives: General

Judge Rules Against the TSA

Posted on 2014-01-18 by jcs

Back in December, I wrote about the government’s dubious tactics aimed at preventing a woman placed on the no-fly from getting a fair trial on the matter. Because the woman is not a U.S. citizen, the government attempted to keep … Continue reading →

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Emacs Index Searching

Posted on 2014-01-17 by jcs

Xah Lee has a blog post (2014-01-16) that reminded me of two useful functions that I can never seem to remember: emacs-index-search and elisp-index-search. They allow you to look up a topic in the Emacs or Elisp manuals by querying … Continue reading →

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Schneier on the NSA Threat

Posted on 2014-01-16 by jcs

Yesterday, I wrote about how there is little evidence that the NSA’s mass surveillance is effective. Bruce Schneier has an interesting article up that argues it’s worse than that. Schneier says that the NSA is a threat to our security. … Continue reading →

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The Usefulness of Mass Surveillance

Posted on 2014-01-15 by jcs

Remember those 50 plus terrorist plots that the NSA mass surveillance was instrumental in stopping? You won’t be surprised to learn that that was yet another lie. Ars Technica is reporting on a New America Foundation study that examined 225 … Continue reading →

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Emacs Colors with OS X

Posted on 2014-01-13 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov has his third post on the features of the coming Emacs 24.4 up. This time, he discusses the addition of sRGB to the NextStep (NS) build section of Emacs. The NS build section is where all the Mac … Continue reading →

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Know Lisp, Get a Job?

Posted on 2014-01-12 by jcs

Over at the Lisp subreddit, nhs111throwaway asks if anyone actually got a job because they know Lisp. The problem with a question like that is that you’re going to get only anecdotal information as answers. Still, it’s interesting to read … Continue reading →

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Before There Was Snowden

Posted on 2014-01-08 by jcs

The New York Times has an absolutely fascinating story about a 43 year old crime that was, until recently, unsolved. It’s a story that shows there is nothing new under the sun. It’s also a story intrinsically involved with the … Continue reading →

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FIDO

Posted on 2014-01-05 by jcs

Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has joined the FIDO alliance. The FIDO, Fast IDentity Online, alliance is an industry group that is developing protocols to replace the passwords for access to Web sites. The idea is to use public … Continue reading →

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Serializable Emacs Objects

Posted on 2014-01-04 by jcs

Christopher Wellons over at null program has a very nice post on readable closures in Emacs. With the introduction of lexical scoping and, consequently, closures in Emacs 24 it’s nice to discover that Elisp closures are readable. That is, you … Continue reading →

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The Sins of the Technical Press

Posted on 2014-01-03 by jcs

Regular readers know that I’m inclined to a jaundiced view of the press. They are, far too often, biased and lazy and write stories that aren’t simply wrong but the opposite of the truth. The late Michael Crichton famously described … Continue reading →

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