wampus

It's called a "man in the middle" because it intercepts connections between the source and destination. The physical location is irrelevant.

Why does Superfish sign new certificates on the fly? Why not just use wildcard certificates?

I've used rdiff-backup daily for years, but recently needed to store backups on machines I don't control, so I gave duplicity[1] a try. It encrypts, doesn't need to be installed on the target host and is simple to use if you're already familiar with rdiff-backup and gpg. Test restores were simple, but were all first generation, so not really a good test (but there are hints you'll want to prune backups to one month's worth). I haven't figured out an acceptable way to automate it, so I've been running it manually on an infrequent basis while I evaluate it. Give it a look, if you haven't already.

I used to feel the same until I remapped CapsLock to Insert on a MacBook running Linux so I could regain the ability to paste with Shift-Insert. After that I realized that none of my other keyboards had Insert in the same location, so having a non-standard keyboard wasn't unique to Apple. Now I try to remap certain keys on all my machines to the smallest set they share in common, so I can take my muscle memory with me.

GM once used an in-house version of Modula-2 for its embedded controllers [1]. I wonder if they regret the switch to C in light of all the bad press about remote vulnerabilities[2][3]. It sounds like the biggest problem is that features are exposed without any protection, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2#Modula-GM

[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/car-hacked-on-60-minutes/

[3] http://www.caranddriver.com/features/can-your-car-be-hacked-...

I was in a similar boat, and switching to WP8 solved most of my calendar issues (and a lot of UI issues, as well). It also has very good support for multiple email accounts of different types. Not surprisingly, it has excellent Exchange support, but that's no guarantee it will be painless, due to the many bizarre configuration options offered to Exchange administrators:

1. There's no guarantee that autoconfiguration will work, especially if your address is user@example.edu but your server is exchange.example.edu.

2. You may be required to lock your screen with a password.

3. You may be required to allow remote wiping of your device (by your email provider, seriously?).

4. You may be required to enable ActiveSync in an out-of-band operation.

To make matters worse, error messages from any of the above tend to be completely meaningless.

But once you get past those hurdles, it's actually a pretty nice experience.

If you need to access calendars from other systems, you might be able to import or subscribe to them in your Microsoft account (live/outlook/onedrive/yahoo.com) online. I was able to integrate the school calendars of my children this way. It's not intuitive, but it's a set-and-forget task.

I like the article and think it makes some good points, but I can't help but think the author is cheating a bit. If you really want to show the extent to which a language can be inherently reasoned about, it seems like a slight-of-hand to provide hints in the names.

Take a look at this snippet from example 6:

    // create a repository
    var repo = new CustomerRepository();

    // find a customer by id
    var customer = repo.GetById(42);

The fault is "I can't tell by looking at this code whether a null is returned or not."

The improvement is this (in a language without nulls or exceptions):

    // create a repository
    var repo = new CustomerRepository();

    // find a customer by id and
    // return a CustomerOrError result
    var customerOrError = repo.GetById(42);

Aside from the comments and a change to the variable name, isn't this code identical? The fact that subsequent code must process the result specially if the input (42) is garbage is true of any language, whether or not null is allowed. I still can't tell "by looking at it" what is happening.

In fact, I would reason differently about this code if the comments were removed and the names changed:

    var a = new B();
    var c = d.E(42);

In this context, it seems the real error is that an invalid parameter value is passed, so I'd see if I could fix that first, possibly eliminating the need for any error handling code. That approach might be common for a functional mindset, but not exclusively so.

What happens when the drive is shared among Macs? Why isn't this a vector for exploitation?

Upon reading your post, it strikes me how archaic it seems to install any OS these days. It would be awesome if every OS was available as a base VM image that worked out of the box (networking, video, audio, etc.), ready to enhance and customize. I wouldn't even want a host OS beyond what is needed to manage the hypervisor.

Thanks for the tip. I have three resolvers on my LAN, but two of them require the FQDN for reverse lookups. I'll make sure to add "search localdomain" to /etc/resolv.conf next time.

No, he's providing an alternative reason for gcc's popularity in response to Rob Landley's email[1] that asserts that it was due to developers determined "to avoid paying Ed Zander extra for Sun's Solaris compiler."

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.toybox/1890

I installed OpenBSD on an old Dell B130 last week, but it choked on the Broadcom BCM4318 wireless controller. I got it to connect with little difficulty after installing the driver, but speeds were slower than molasses (it took minutes to establish SSH connections between machines on the same LAN). Attempts to use the wired Broadcom BCM4401-B0 ethernet controller prevented it from booting. I finally gave up and installed Slackware Linux on it again, which also requires extra work for the wireless controller but yields great performance.

I don't blame OpenBSD and am still looking for an appropriate machine to install it on. I'm no stranger to the OS, having used it to build transparent bridging firewalls in the 3.x days. The installer has really improved a lot since then.

But I am concerned with the state of networking hardware, now that more and more machines are produced with WiFi only. The number of points for failure seem to be multiplying and the dependence on an Internet connection is a given these days (sometimes even during OS installation). I look forward to the day when all OS installations handle network connections as simply as OS X does (which I realize is by virtue of its control over hardware & software integration).

The author makes a very good case for why this approach won't threaten password-based authentication, including:

...hard for first-time users to get right:... The private key being unlocked and available via ssh-agent.

For this to be convenient for daily use, ssh-agent is essential, and that could expose naive users to compromise. I know enough to disable ForwardAgent in my personal config by default and generate site-specific keys for hosts I can't trust, but that's beyond most ordinary users and even many of the technical professionals I deal with.

It's a shame PGP was the target of so much persecution when it came out. Maybe by now we would have worked out the key exchange problem and would all be enjoying personally encrypted communication on the Internet. I sometimes feel that any attempt to move beyond passwords without realizing that ideal is doomed to failure.

If the answers are comprehensive and accurate, this could aid the simplification of law by revealing conflicts and inconsistencies.

Reforming law to be machine readable might eventually provide a litmus test to prevent the passage of bad laws. It could also provide a way to flag prior law that is invalidated by a new law.

Since most ads are effectively blocked at the domain level, I doubt your scheme would provide much bang for the buck.

It's trivial to rewrite plaintext on the fly and the number of people in a position to do so is staggering. Like passing a note in class, it's basically about trust. You want to ensure the message hasn't been tampered with by the time it reaches you. HTTPS is one way, even if the recent past has backed it into a tiny corner (RIP SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1.0 and a long list of cipher suites).

Instead backing up the raw disk with dd, you can create a USB installer in OS X. The trick is to download Yosemite from the App Store and prevent it from running. There are plenty of articles describing the process. If you also have data to preserve, connect an external disk and do a Time Machine backup. If anything goes wrong, you can reinstall OS X from scratch and restore your data (and even restrict the size of your OS X partition so you don't have to resize it again).

Same here. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to come by older machines where installation is a breeze. Most support HD displays and some might even handle 4K.

But I'm really grateful for posts like these that document the issues with cutting edge hardware, so they might be resolved by the time I'm pulling the machines of the scrap pile for recycling. Some of my old workhorses had terrible problems with drivers when they were current, but now they Just Work.

The problem with using cleaning tools like the ones you mention is that I'm always left wondering, "What did I miss?" when they've finished. Since it's a long process that's always potentially incomplete, I abandoned that approach years ago. The first thing I ask a client is "What data do you want to keep?" Then I scan the drive offline (mostly for my own curiosity, but also to get an idea of what I'm dealing with), save the data, reinstall the OS from scratch, then restore the data (sometimes with additional scans). This is the only way I feel comfortable handing the computer back to the client.

I also run a local DNS blacklist that benefits everyone on my network, but I rarely update it since I started using the RequestPolicy Firefox extension. It supports the point of view of "Don't fetch resources from third party domains unless I need them." If a page is broken, I can temporarily or permanently add the missing resource for that domain or globally with a simple click. Denial by default is a much better strategy as it provides some real protection against serious threats like XSS, in addition to thwarting tracking and ads.

There's no question that the hard 90-day deadline of Google's Project Zero is undermined by collisions with holidays and other calendar events, but Patch Tuesday is a restriction that Microsoft imposes on itself and its users. They had advanced warning and an opportunity to work within the limits of their own policy or roll out an unscheduled update.

Even so, this is a clash of two policies and Google needs to reevaluate its deadline (is 120 days better for everyone, including users?).

My wife just discovered that if she puts her phone in airplane mode when playing solitaire it doesn't overheat and her battery lasts longer. This app should be the poster boy for being lightweight and efficient, but is instead used to showcase an advertising network. Who is the actual user here? Everything that doesn't improve the experience of playing solitaire is bloat in this case. There are countless more examples.

Relatively speaking, it is frequently changing. I can plug a depression-era radio into an electrical outlet and it will work. Delivering power via a cable, even with AC/DC conversion in the middle, is a solved problem. I can think of five Apple devices currently in use in my house that can't share the same cable. None of them are more than seven years old. That's nonsensical. The fact that none of them can use the same connector as other non-Apple devices merely adds to the annoyance.

As for MagSafe, it's only a partial success. All of my MacBooks have outlasted their original MagSafe power supplies. They aren't robust, can't be easily repaired, and are expensive to replace. I'm happy they're easy to use and help to prevent damage to the laptop, but Apple should have fixed the other problems by now.

The Lumia 920 I bought over two years ago has wireless charging (via the Qi standard) that I consider so convenient and revolutionary, I was stumped when Nokia released subsequent models without this killer feature. If I need to charge it, I just set it on a pad. I want this so badly in portable devices, including laptops, for everyone in my household. Whenever Apple creates yet another "new and improved" charging port that requires a proprietary "smart" cable, I cry a little.