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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 428 posts.
Creating a rogue CA certificate with MD5 hash collisions
We have identified a vulnerability in the Internet Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used to issue digital certificates for secure websites. As a proof of concept we executed a practical attack scenario and successfully created a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate trusted by all common web browsers. This…
Joel on Software: The new Fog Creek Office
Remember the Bionic Office? Fog Creek moved in there in 2003. After a couple of years we had outgrown the first office so we expanded to take over the whole floor. By the time our lease ran out in …
Debunking Daniel Tammet
Lately I've been encouraged to make more of my posts unlocked. I only do that under certain circumstances, but I feel this is an important occasion because I believe I have spotted a hoax and that I am unusually qualified to unmask it. I just watched The Boy With the Incredible Brain , a video that…
So you want to be a consultant?
Or: Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself?
A programmer's view of the Universe, part 2: Mario Kart
Very thought-provoking article. I especially liked the tie-in at the end to the questions modern science is considering about the Big Bang. You make a very valid point -- those sorts of questions are meaningless in the context of the embedded system. The whole time I was reading your Mario Kart analogy, I couldn't…
Rails and Merb Merge
Today is a fairly momentous day in the history of Ruby web frameworks. You will probably find the news I’m about to share with you fairly shocking, but I will attempt to explain the situation. Before talking tech, and even going into the details of the announcement, I want
Why Learning Haskell/Python Makes You a Worse Programmer
A rant about how annoying programming in C# is, really.
Your idea sucks, now go do it anyway
Your idea probably sucks, and it doesn't matter because your business will probably turn out to be something completely different.
Understanding Ruby Blocks, Procs and Lambdas
Robert leads large and complex firms through mission-critical Digital Transformations with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Engineering. As a Presidential Innovation Fellow at Barack Obama's White House , Robert reformed digital services across the Federal Government, resulting in millions of veterans…
A Defense of Philosophy (against Paul Graham)
In How to Do Philosophy , Paul Graham claims that “judging from their works, most philosophers up to the present have been wasting their time.” His point is that philosophy per se is structurally flawed. How?
Laying off George
George Oates is responsible for much of what is great about Flickr. George Oates is just about the last person any sane company would lay off. I don't know what to think about Yahoo after reading how they laid off George Oates.
How Difficult is it to Write a Compiler?
Recently I was discussing Converge with someone, and mentioned how little time the core compiler had taken to implement (no compile-time meta-programming, limited error checking, but a functioning compiler nonetheless) - only a few days. The chap I was talking to looked at me and told me that he didn’t believe me. I…
On Python packaging
So currently there's a bit of a to-do involving Debian's Ruby packaging team and the Ruby "gem" system. [This document](http://pkg-ruby-extras.alioth.debian.org/rubygems.html) …