Category Archives: General

The Wages of Sin

Posted on 2013-03-25 by jcs

Well, not sin really. More like the consequences of ill considered decisions. As we all know by now, Google has decided to terminate their Google Reader service. On the face of it, the decision doesn’t appear particularly controversial. The service, … Continue reading →

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Meetings Are Mutexes

Posted on 2013-03-24 by jcs

From Vivek Haldar, an absolutely wonderful characterization of meetings.

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What to Do About the Worst Law

Posted on 2013-03-23 by jcs

Over at the New Yorker, Tim Wu writes about Fixing the Worst Law in Technology. That law is, of course, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. CFAA was the vehicle that federal prosecutors used to threaten Aaron Swartz with decades … Continue reading →

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An Emacs Crash Course

Posted on 2013-03-21 by jcs

Andrey Kotlarski has posted a very nice Emacs Guide on github. He says he wrote it for his coworkers after he got tired of being asked to give introductions to Emacs. It’s the perfect guide for someone who wants to … Continue reading →

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Hashing Passwords: An Object Lesson

Posted on 2013-03-20 by jcs

Irreal regulars know that I periodically go off an a rant about the proper hashing of passwords and the dire consequences of failing to do it correctly. Not even I, however, could have imagined that Cisco would get it wrong. … Continue reading →

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A Talk on Lisp Machines

Posted on 2013-03-19 by jcs

Over at LoperOS they’ve put up a video of a talk that Kalman Reti gave last year at the Boston Lisp Meeting. The talk is about the Symbolics Lisp Machines and includes a demo of the original software running in … Continue reading →

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Analysis of the Gauss Malware

Posted on 2013-03-18 by jcs

Over at Ars Technica Dan Goodin has a nice article analyzing the Gauss malware. Gauss appears to be related to Stuxnet and internal code signatures suggest that its provenance is the same1. Although Gauss was discovered last year, very little … Continue reading →

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Tilting At Windmills

Posted on 2013-03-17 by jcs

If you enjoy charging windmills and otherwise taking on semi-hopeless causes, you might consider signing the petition to save Google Reader. So far there have been over 100,000 signers. In all honesty, it probably won’t do much good but at … Continue reading →

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Secure Communications Apps

Posted on 2013-03-16 by jcs

Over at A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering, Matthew Green has a useful review of some secure communications apps. He looks at Cryptocat Silent Circle RedPhone Wickr from the standpoint of code quality, encryption protocols, and ease of use. Interestingly, … Continue reading →

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Git-Gutter

Posted on 2013-03-15 by jcs

If you liked the functionality I described in vc-annotate, you might also like Syohei Yoshida’s git-gutter. It’s a port to Emacs of the Sublime Text plugin of the same name. The idea is that it marks changes to your files … Continue reading →

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