At the Register: Linus Torvalds on security: ‘Do no harm, don’t break users‘ By Simon Sharwood — “Fixing for the sake of security alone means ‘all your work was just masturbation’“ Torvalds was angry that developers wanted to kill dangerous processes in Linux, a measure that would have removed potential problems but done so in ways […]
Two stories uncovered today provide a lot of insight into who we are and how we got that way. One is about The American Indian foundation of American gun culture by David Kopel. This is on Wapo in the Volokh Conspiracy, a lawyer’s blog so it’s got reader harassment and bias to watch out for. The essay […]
Headless machines need a head somewhere. A barebones text terminal run via a serial port is the base option. A remote graphics desktop gets into the virtual machine and full access territory. Faster networks and more capable computers and graphics have made the full desktop option feasible enough that Raspbian takes very little to set […]
freetechbooks.com has posted Don’t Panic: Mobile Developer’s Guide to The Galaxy, 17th Edition. More than 20 writers from the mobile community share their know-how in dealing with topics such as accessibility in mobile apps, UX design, mobile analytics, prototyping, cross-platform development, native development, mobile web and app marketing. It is an easy to read rundown about […]
The Amazing $1 microcontroller by Jay Carlson — “A new series that explores 21 different microcontrollers — all less than $1 — to help familiarize you with all the major ecosystems out there.” It is a good overview of what is out there for the electronics guiding much modern equipment as well as a guide […]
How I would explain a decade of web development to a time traveler from 2007 by Ivan Zarea Today we have many more of them than we did 10 years ago, and that comes with new challenges. We wear computers on our wrists and faces, keep them in our pockets, and have them in our fridges and […]
October is around the corner so a new Ubuntu version is getting ready. See the Release Notes. The control buttons for each window are moved back to the right top after seven years and Unity has been replaced by Gnome 3.26 so you might be a bit discombobulated by user interface changes. The standard issue image […]
It started with an observation based on the Equifax fiasco by Hao-Kai Pai: Defanging identity fraud by verifying identities – “part of the damage here stems from organizations assuming that Social Security Numbers are secret … another part of the problem is that some businesses are startlingly lax about confirming who they are extending credit to.” That is […]
Apple did their big show to sell the next iteration of improvements and enhancements. That raises the usual cheers and jeers as well as a few questions and concerns. One is: Do “THEY” Really Say: “TECHNOLOGICAL Progress Is Slowing Down”? — Consider the 256 GB memory iPhone X: Implemented in vacuum tubes in 1957, the transistors […]
He says they are ‘hiring’ … and it’s an ad hoc group of volunteers trying to make Python better. The problem is significant: how do you encourage and motivate volunteers to join in and add to, rather than detract from, a project such as Python. Hettinger has some rather harsh words about the need to […]