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  Vim: revisited

I’ve had an off/on relationship with Vim for the past many years. Before, I never felt like we understood each other properly. Vim is almost useless without plugins and some essential settings in .vimrc, but fiddling with all the knobs and installing all the plugins that I thought I needed was a process that in the end stretched out from few hours to weeks, months even; and it the end it just caused frustration instead of making me a happier coder. Recently, I decided to give Vim ano...

   Linux,Editor,Vim,Setup,Quick guideline     2011-12-12 07:55:27

  Difference Engine: Luddite legacy

AN APOCRYPHAL tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant. “Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,” gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company. Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?”Whether the exchange was true or not is irrelevant. The point was that any increase in productivity required...

   Artificial intelligence,Engine,Difference,Human,Computer     2011-11-07 08:33:16

  SQL Injection through HTTP Headers

During vulnerability assessment or penetration testing, identifying the input vectors of the target application is a primordial step. Sometimes, when dealing with Web application testing, verification routines related to SQL injection flaws discovery are restricted to the GET and POST variables as the unique inputs vectors ever. What about other HTTP header parameters? Aren’t they potential input vectors for SQL injection attacks? How can one test all these HTTP parameters and whic...

   Code security,SQL injection,HTTP header     2012-04-05 11:42:04

  Native Audio with HTML5

Once upon a time, audio on the web lived primarily in the world of third-party browser plug-ins like Flash, QuickTime and Silverlight. This was not a bad world, but it had its issues.For one, most plug-ins require the user to install them, but not all users are willing (or able) to install them. Also, many players built with these plug-ins are inaccessible, making it difficult for folks who use assistive technologies to access the audio or alternative content.Then there are the front-end design ...

   Audio,HTML5,Built in,Audio tag,Video     2011-10-13 13:04:07

  Designing Fun

What is “Fun?”“I’ll know it when I see it.”In 1964, in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court needed to decide whether the state of Ohio could ban a film it called “obscene”—a concept people understood but were hard-pressed to define. Justice Potter Stewart, in his concurring opinion, wrote: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I ...

   Design,Fun,Create,Define,Research     2011-09-19 13:35:12

  The 10 Greatest Hacks of My Life

My co-founder and I briefly considered applying to YCombinator for the Winter 2012 session. We eventually decided to bootstrap Curvio initially, and raise a seed round on our own after we launch (so far so good!). But looking over the YC application, one question intrigued me:Please tell us about the time you, tansey, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.Now, there are a lot of ways to interpret this. A mechanical interpretation would be about...

   Hack,Most important,Example,Curvio     2011-10-22 12:47:42

  Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice

If there was one course I could add to every engineering education, it wouldn’t involve compilers or gates or time complexity.  It would be Realities Of Your Industry 101, because we don’t teach them and this results in lots of unnecessary pain and suffering.  This post aspires to be README.txt for your career as a young engineer.  The goal is to make you happy, by filling in the gaps in your education regarding how the “real world” actually works.  ...

   Career,Programmer,Advice,Low level,Development     2011-10-29 07:09:23

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