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Archives for 2011
Hitchens vs. Strunk and White
I am quite curious how top tier writers square the circle of Strunk and White’s demand for being concise and avoiding long, complex sentences, and Hitchens’ ability and inclination to do so beautifully. An example from a Hitchens essay: I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this…
An HTML 5 Christmas
It’s Christmas day and I just happened upon a post by the Google Webmaster team talking about removing the HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags from their code, as they are evidently no longer necessary. I started looking at their code (particularly for their 404 pages), and it was very interesting. It’s a few minutes later now and most…
A Collection (of Collections) of Obama’s Accomplishments
This next year is going to yield many debates on what our current President has or has not accomplished in his first term. Here’s a collection (of lists) of what he has accomplished. http://obamaachievements.org/listA seriously comprehensive list of accomplishments, by category. PolitiFact Promises Kept ListingA phenomenally unbiased list of promises and statements made by Obama, with analysis of…
Who Makes the Best Web Security Testers?
There’s been some debate in my circles recently on the topic of what type of person and background makes the best web security tester. The issue is that web testing involves and requires a number of skills. It includes performing a staggering number of monotonous actions according to a methodology, as well as being able to use deduction…
Plane Crashes and Child Molestation
In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books he talked about how respect for authority has caused a massive number of plane crashes over time. Basically, the relationship between a senior and junior pilot was so severe in many countries that the co-pilot (junior) knew that his effective boss could bury him in an instant, and so he walked extremely…
Why Christopher Hitchens Inspires Me
News of Christopher Hitchens’ death was crushing to me last night. I can think of no other author that is so inspiring to me. Here are a few simple reasons why: Reading, or listening to, his prose makes me a better writer. His skill with language was simply magical. I can listen to him speak for hours upon…
Observations of Japan
I had the opportunity to go to Tokyo, Japan for a week this month for work and while there I kept a running list of observations. I was able to commute to work on the subway, which I found quite fun. First, my observations: the Japanese are extremely orderly; everything is very neat and clean Japanese men are…
Three Proxy Options Every Security Pro Should Consider Using
Working in the information security field it’s frequently handy to be able to browse the web in different configurations. Sometimes you want to be able to see and interact with our traffic we speak with a server, sometimes you want to hide where we’re coming from on the other end, and other times we need to bypass a…
A Potential Issue With Immersive Fantasy Games
I’ve been a role-player since junior high school, and I have been a reader of non-fiction long before that. I have a group of friends from junior high that still game (role-playing), and I noticed over the last couple of years that there was something very negative about it for me. I haven’t been able to capture it…
The Worst Way to Waste Time
There are many things to regret as one nears death, but I understand people tend to regret most the things they didn’t do rather than those they did. You may be thinking now of activities, such as jumping out of an airplane, applying to become an astronaut, or moving to Europe to be with an early lover. But…
Handling Redirects with Varnish and Nginx
[ NOTE: I am now using Nginx for everything, i.e. not using Varnish anymore, and getting the same or better results. ] I run Varnish here on the site, with Nginx as the backend. I’ve written before about my overall setup, and how to improve site performance, so I won’t go into it here. Here I want to…
The Other Half of Online Education
We’re all well aware of the growing list of high-quality universities offering free online classes. It’s remarkable by any measure. But we also know the counter-argument: you don’t receive near the benefit from free online education that you get from attending university because much of the benefit comes from being forced to go to class, to take exams,…
Recording and Replaying Experiences
One of the things I worry about most is not being able to recall the great experiences that have happened to me over time. It’s not about forgetting that I went to the beach in Israel that one time, or any other highlight event. Those types of events should be captured as well, of course, but I am…
A Civilization Manifesto
This will be rough. I’ve always been attracted to the idea of identifying unifying characteristics of desired society, and defining those ideals as sacred to the group that embraces them. The Constitution does this, of course, but it deals with principals where I aim to talk about behaviors. I come to this from decades of observing dissimilar people…
Visualizing Interesting Log Events Using Splunk’s Google Maps Application
I never stop being fascinated by the fact that web admins have boxes online that anyone in the world can reach out and touch. Visualizing this activity is enthralling to me, as visualization often highlights answers to existing questions while exposing new ones. Geolocated firewall drops within the last 4 hours [ Fullsize image. ] Splunk excels at…
10 Ways to Test Your Website Performance
So you’ve replaced Apache with Nginx, or put Varnish out in front of your main webserver. Or maybe you just spent time converting all your main site images to CSS Data URLs. Either way, you’re now ready to taste the fruits of your work via speed tests. Here are some of the best resources for doing that. Google…
How I See Class
I recently read perhaps the best book ever written on the American class system, and it set me to thinking quite a bit about the subject. First, I put this together as a capture location for what I learned. Then I began to process it. The concepts listed there are appealing to me for a very basic reason:…
Linkclump for Web Testing
Anyone who does web security testing knows that the browser is the most important tool in the arsenal. Scanners are nice and can help save time, but no technology is the equal of manually making requests to a page while passing through a good proxy. Linkclump is a Chrome extension (you are using Chrome, right?) for selecting multiple…
Human Accomplishment: Engines vs. Fuels
I think a lot about why some people are highly productive and successful while others produce nothing in their lifetimes. Some get Ph.Ds and spend their time writing books, giving talks, and working on their next big idea. Others punch a clock somewhere, refuse to eat right or exercise, and consume hollow media until they die. The difference…
My Comment on the NYT Free Will Article
There was a recent article on the New York Times regarding free will. I posted it here earlier and I just finished posting a comment in the thread. It follows below: — The author succeeds in bringing life back to the debate, but he doesn’t make any new progress. The issue, as a few commenters have touched on,…
Do a Google Search for ‘ip’ and Get Your IP Address
Millions of us know the trick of getting our public IP address. Most go to ipchicken or the site aptly called “whatismyip”. Well, Google just made all that unnecessary. You can now just search for ‘ip’ (yes, two letters) and it’ll return your public IP at the top of the page. Note that if you’re using Chrome that…
A Response to Dinis Cruz’ Comments on Invisible Security
Dinis Cruz did a presentation at OWASP recently on why security should be invisible to developers. His basic idea is that security is for security people and building things is for people who build things. He says that security people should stop rubbing developers’ noses in their problems and make security transparent so developers don’t need to think…
Is Discipline a Solution for ADD?
Caution, anecdotes ahead. I was reading some symptoms of ADD today and was stunned by the fact that they all were the exact symptoms of not having enough discipline in a household. doesn’t pay attention doesn’t follow-through doesn’t listen unfocused unorganized Try this: imagine a family that you know where the parents are pretty strict. Not like beatings…
I’ll Not Hear Another Word About Apple Restricting Freedom
From Stallman to Raymond, the favorite counter-tone in recent days has been that jobs was a great marketer and a shrewd businessman, but that he was ultimately a force for evil due to his restriction of freedom of computing. This argument is not even wrong: it’s outright silly. Consider why it is that BMW is not criticized in…
The Individual Problem
I believe that humans transferring their minds to digital form is inevitable. In fact, I think it’s precisely the way in which we as a species will achieve immortality. That’s interesting, of course, but what may be more intriguing is the problem that will come from it. The issue is that once we are digital it will be…
Do Children Make Parents More Conservative?
I had an interesting idea this weekend regarding the effect that having children has on one’s life views. I was talking to a friend of mine about what our plans were for ten and twenty years from now, and he basically said that he stays focused on being very conservative with his money because he plans on having…
My Problem With the Libertarians
I have many friends who are libertarians, and when I spew here regarding politics I often hear from them in comments or via email, “I agree with you that the Republicans are crazy, but I’m a Libertarian…”, and so on. Let me explain why I’m not a libertarian–and I’ll start by mentioning that I used to be one.…
The Rich and Selfish Have Enlisted the Poor to Fight For Them
It seems the poor and uniformed are partial to the rhetoric of the rich and selfish. This is a most unfortunate fact, as it means that the slaves are demanding the right to be beaten, and they have named the abolitionists as the enemy. As sad as this is, I can’t help but laugh at it. But my…
Android’s Biggest Hardware Problem is Deceptive
A lot has been said, here and elsewhere, regarding the relative weakness of Android hardware. It’s too varied, it’s clunky, poor battery life, etc. But the biggest problem with Android hardware is not any of the things above, and it’s not even with any particular attribute of hardware itself. The issue that’s hurting Android is that they’ve produced…
The Truths of America in 2011
There is shockingly little truth in any of the normal outlets in America. Universities, mainstream media, common conversation — they all focus on their own particular vector and spin on truth. And often they’re not even lying: they’re just biased and wrong. So let me give my version of biased and wrong — hopefully with less bias and…
Dawkins on Free Will and Moral Responsibility
From Edge.org: Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem…
Your Problem with Vim is That You Don’t Grok Vi
From StackOverflow: Your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi.You mention cutting with yy and complain that you almost never want to cut whole lines. In fact programmers, editing source code, very often want to work on whole lines, ranges of lines and blocks of code. However, yy is only one of many way to yank…
Reality is Organization
Our entire universe consists of matter and energy interacting with itself according to the laws of physics. That is reality. This is a world of subatomic particles smashing into each other trillions of times per second according to a list of rules. The result of some of these collisions is a particular type of organization. Examples include atoms,…
Why Lock Technology Stagnated for Decades
At BSides-LasVegas this year I saw an exemplary talk on the history of lock technology and lock picking. Not only was it informative, but it was highly entertaining as well. At the end of the talk, the speaker had a question for the audience. After charting astounding progress in lock technology up through the 1860’s, locks basically stagnated…
Don’t Be Agnostic About Ridiculous Propositions
Many are confused about the meaning of agnosticism as it relates to things we as humans are not certain about. The common mistake is combining things we don’t know yet (A) with those that are probably unknowable (B) with those things that are ridiculous (C). Agnosticism is reserved for types A and B, not C. To add flesh…
SQL Injection is 90% SQL, WebSec is 90% WebDev
I believe too many people take the wrong approach to security, or “hacking”. Most who seek this ability clamor for answers to questions like, “How can I hack SQL?” “How can I hack Linux?” “How can I hack web applications?” There’s a really simple answer. Learn SQL. Learn Linux. Learn to build web applications. What people call “hacking”…
A Philosophical Reason for Preferring Apple Over Android
The horse is dead. Design, feel, features, openness, customizability — we’ve heard it all. The main arguments are well understood by anyone with an interest in this discussion. But there’s another one that I’ve not heard articulated yet — the argument for why both companies do what they do. Or, more specifically, why one would prefer one or…
Anything Worth Saying is Worth Owning
I’ve been coming repeatedly to a simple conclusion regarding content creation and the use of social services: If something is worth creating, it’s worth keeping within your own control. This includes quick little comments on the world, or sharing interesting links (Twitter), to posting and sharing content through something like Google+. I’ve been blogging since 1999, so I…
A Deductive Argument for Most Agnostics Being Atheists
One of the most commonly held debates between non-believers is that of whether someone is agnostic or atheist. The problem is that both terms have, in addition to their various, actual definitions, a number of associations that go along with them, and this generally injects confusion into the discussions. What I wanted to do then was build a…
Digital Inputs and Outputs
Consume content Think about it Produce output Share that content Repeat [ Jul 16, 2011 ]
Adding a Trailing Slash to Directories Using Varnish
My web configuration makes use of Varnish as a front-end, and I noticed a bug recently where asking for “/study” was failing, while asking for “/study/” would succeed. But when I moved Varnish out of the way, Nginx handled this without issue. So I set out to figure out a recipe for adding the trailing slash within Varnish.…
Interesting Web Data from a Day on the Front Page of Hacker News
I spent yesterday on the front page of Hacker News for my git primer, which resulted in over 12K page views and some fascinating insight into what technologies are being used by HN’s readers. Here are some of the main data points: Chrome is stomping Firefox among HN-browsing developers (50% vs. 27%). Almost 10% of readers came from…
The Power of Good Design
Man, this is a stunning site. Very few things make me as happy as strong typography—especially when done in a simple style. It honestly makes me want to associate with that thing, whatever it is. It feels as if it makes me a better person. I think that it’s a simple matter of association. Being in a bookstore,…
The Republican Agenda is Bad for America
Modern Republicans have succeeded in promoting a narrative of being for the middle class in America when in fact they are the single largest enemy of it. Here I will explore a number of points that combine to form an extremely clear picture of what they truly stand for. 1. First Principles One political philosophy in this country…
Add Women to Groups to Make Them Smarter
There’s some fascinating new research showing that adding women to a group of problem solvers makes them more effective. The reason is clear and unsurprising to me: smart men tend to dominate and restrict the flow of ideas, while smart women focus more on sharing and nurturing ideas, which assists the overall progress. :: (thanks to @laurenroth for…
An Elegant Explanation for Why Famous Men Constantly Get Caught Cheating
Testosterone does two things to men: 1) it makes them horny, and 2) it makes them more likely to take risks. Famous people (politicians, athletes, etc.) tend to have high testosterone because getting to that position required significant competitiveness. As a result, famous people (Tiger Woods, Anthony Wiener, General Patraeus) are more likely to both pursue young women…
Class Markers Used in the Real World
Image from Andrei Nacu Some are unaware that there are strong class distinctions even within the middle class, and that there are specific and key tells that those in the upper tiers look for when determining if someone is part of their group. Here are the main ones: Teeth Few things are noticed more keenly than teeth. Good…
On Tap Water vs. Bottled Water
I have a simple question: If tap water is better for you because it’s better regulated why is it that in various places across the country the tap water tastes like different kinds of crap, while a bottle of Dasani always tastes exactly the same? I want to believe in tap water, but until you can explain why…
Two Minds on the Suffering Class
I frequently find myself of two minds when faced with those who are suffering from poverty and lack of education, and these depend heavily on my mood and state of mind. If I’m in a poor or aggressive mood I tend to quietly condescend, taking notes of the various indicators of class and filling in the blanks of…