miniblog.

Nov 2, 2019
Cute usage of chpwd() in bash to convert directories into a simple text adventure game: https://belkadan.com/blog/2019/08/go-east/
Nov 2, 2019
How do you prevent "trusting trust" attacks with malicious compilers? You don't need a trusted production-grade compiler. It's sufficient to have a really limited trusted compiler or even an untrusted compiler provided the triggers don't overlap.
Countering "Trusting Trust" - Schneier on Security
Way back in 1974, Paul Karger and Roger Schell discovered a devastating attack against computer systems. Ken Thompson described it in his classic 1984 speech, “Reflections on Trusting Trust.” Basically, an attacker changes a compiler binary to produce malicious versions of some programs, INCLUDING ITSELF. Once this is done, the attack perpetuates, essentially undetectably. Thompson demonstrated the attack in a devastating way: he subverted a compiler of an experimental victim, allowing Thompson to log in as root without using a password. The victim never noticed the attack, even when they disassembled the binaries—the compiler rigged the disassembler, too...
Nov 2, 2019
A nifty blog post showing all the websites designed by the author since the late 1990s. It's remarkable how distinct the different web design eras are!
A History of Personal and Professional Websites
A History of Personal and Professional Websites
I started creating websites in the late 90s, while I was in high school. In the early 2000s, while in college, I kept a professional website with my ...
Nov 1, 2019
Incredible post showing the reverse engineering of a Fitbit style device, so you can reflash it with custom software:
Hacking a cheap fitness tracker bracelet
A blog post on reverse engineering and customizing the firmware of a cheap fitness tracker bracelet.
Nov 1, 2019
GitHub READMEs work exceptionally well for projects which only need a single page of docs. Transitioning to a hosted, multiple page documentation structure is hard though. I've dabbled with a few tools but not found a clear favourite yet.
Oct 31, 2019
A snake game implemented entirely in the browser element inspection interface! https://matthewrayfield.com/goodies/inspect-this-snake/ A wonderful example of creative computing.
Oct 31, 2019
Stack Overflow is changing the wording of some of its close messages. For example, "unclear what you're asking" is now "needs detail or clarity". https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/337013/new-post-notices-rollout-on-stack-overflow Definitely seems like a positive step.
New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow - Meta Stack Exchange
New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow - Meta Stack Exchange
Oct 31, 2019
Excellent overview of WebAssembly, its asm.js predecessor, and how the Rust ecosystem fits in: https://youtu.be/CMB6AlE1QuI
Oct 30, 2019
An English teacher introducing the notion of 'digital humanities', live coding with Wolfram Alpha and The Great Gatsby, and showing text mining projects done by students! https://youtu.be/UaCrK6vyz_0
Oct 29, 2019
Deno is a JS/TypeScript runtime from the creator of node, with built-in sandboxing and URLs for importing packages without a central npm server:
What is Deno, and how is it different from Node.js? - LogRocket Blog
What is Deno, and how is it different from Node.js? - LogRocket Blog
Deno, a JavaScript runtime developed by Ryan Dahl, aims to fix inherent issues with Node.js. Learn what Deno is and how it works.
Oct 29, 2019
Bugs in AMD Ryzen microcode, BIOS updates, and how CPUs report capabilities: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/how-a-months-old-amd-microcode-bug-destroyed-my-weekend/
Oct 29, 2019
A critique of XML usage, and annotating documents rather than exchanging data: https://www.devever.net/~hl/xml It's rare to see discussions of good XML usage! I've seen marked-up word definitions (a multilingual dictionary) that were a nice fit for XML, but it's rare.
XML is almost always misused
Oct 29, 2019
Lots of people have pointed out the advantage of https://foo.bar/ or foo->bar for syntax. It makes it easy to explore things you can do with foo. I think it's an instance of a more general pattern: prefix syntax that an IDE can spot. This has interesting consequences!
Oct 27, 2019
Impressive growth in the Indian tech startup scene:
Indian startups have raised a record $11.3B this year | TechCrunch
Indian startups have raised a record $11.3B this year | TechCrunch
With two months of 2019 still to go, Indian tech startups are already having their best year as a record amount of capital flows into the local ecosystem
Oct 26, 2019
Delightful talk on teaching programming to children: https://youtu.be/g1ib43q3uXQ Explanations are important, teaching them to read code aloud helps, and skill development begets motivation!
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