Category Archives: General

Transcript of the Chua-Wiegley Chat Video

Posted on 2012-07-04 by jcs

For those of you who prefer reading to listening, Sacha Chua has posted a transcript of her recent video chat with John Wiegley. As I previously described, the chat was about how Wiegley leverages the power of Emacs to optimize … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Oh Oh: RSA SecurID 800 Token broken

Posted on 2012-07-03 by jcs

The RSA SecurID 800 token is a small USB device that authenticates users when they sign on to secure computers. It offers two factor authentication and contains encrypted keys and credentials that are, in theory, inaccessible to users or attackers. … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

A New Emacs Trick

Posted on 2012-06-30 by jcs

Well, new to me anyway. Xah Lee and the folks over at the ErgoEmacs Google+ Group discovered a nifty Emacs command (apparently from a Sacha Chua tweet) that does something I’ve often wanted to do. Suppose you want to kill … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Google: Hardware Manufacturer

Posted on 2012-06-29 by jcs

Robert McMillan over at Wired Enterprise has an interesting article in which he reports that Google claims to be one of the world’s largest hardware makers. We’ve all heard stories about how Google custom builds much of its equipment but … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Video Chat on Emacs

Posted on 2012-06-28 by jcs

The ever energetic Sacha Chua has a nice video chat up with John Wiegley about Emacs. Wiegley, the author of eshell, is one of those users who pretty much lives in Emacs and he has spent a lot of time … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments

Newspapers

Posted on 2012-06-27 by jcs

As longtime readers of Irreal know, I have a fascination for the various media and how they are coping in the digital age. One of the media sectors about which I haven’t had much to say is newspapers. Mostly that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

How To Design a Successful Programming Language

Posted on 2012-06-23 by jcs

Sooner or later, every programmer gets bitten by the “I want to design a programming language” bug. Sadly, most of these efforts, Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, and Yukihiro Matsumoto notwithstanding, will come to naught. Now Caleb Garling reveals the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Contrast

Posted on 2012-06-22 by jcs

From time to time something happens to make me think that maybe big media has caught a clue and is moving to saner policies. The last such example was Tor’s abandonment of DMR—a significant step forward. Sadly, reality inevitably intrudes … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

RSA Explained

Posted on 2012-06-20 by jcs

Barry Steyn over at I’m Still Learning has a nice post on RSA and how it works. Steyn explains the needed mathematical background in small pieces that should be accessible to everyone. At each step he works through a small … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Flame Malware Uses New MD5 Collision Attack

Posted on 2012-06-18 by jcs

Much has been written lately about the provenance of the Flame malware. Recent reports suggest that it was a joint project of the United States and Israel. Now comes the startling revelation that Flame used a hitherto unknown MD5 collision … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment