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The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG – suspected NSA backdoor (2007)
Random numbers are critical for cryptography: for encryption keys, random authentication challenges, initialization vectors, nonces, key-agreement schemes, generating prime numbers and so on. Break the random-number generator, and most of the time you break the entire security system. Which is why you should worry…
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Mercury Colonization
There is a good reason for colonizing another planet, which is to avoid extinction if the Earth is hit by a 10km or larger asteroid, as has happened many times in the Earth's history. Colonization of Mercury appears to be a very real and practical possibility, whereas colonization of Mars or the other planets, moons…
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Introducing The Paper Bay
Over the last couple of weeks I've been working off-and-on on a little side project. The idea is that there are lots of people that are not in a position to visit a university or that don't have a public library with 'access' at their disposal but that do need to be able to read scientific papers. Ever since the…
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Do things, write about it
One of my favorite phrases is “Do things, tell people”. I came across it in Carl Lange’s eponymous post and could instantly relate.
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Node.js Tools for Visual Studio
Just when you thought it couldn't be crazier in Redmond, today they are ...
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An Efficient Way to Extract the Main Topics from a Sentence
Last week, while working on new features for our product, I had to find a quick and efficient way to extract the main topics/objects from a sentence. Since I’m using Python, I initially thoug…
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Amazon and the "profitless business model" fallacy
[DISCLOSURE: As always when I write about Amazon, I'll note I worked there from 1997-2004 and that I still own some shares in the company. I still have many friends who work there, though I have no more idea what Amazon is working on now than any of you in the public.] With every quarterl
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Drug addiction: The complex truth
We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – little-known experiments over 30 years ago tell a very different tale. Drugs are …
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A year without caffeine (part 2)
(continued from part 1) Diagnosis and prescription The family doctor stared at me sternly, then issued his diagnosis and prescription. He explained that my guts were mostly like in a bad state of …
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Shutting Down a Dream
When I was 17 years old, I wrote a little Applesoft BASIC program to help myself memorize vocabulary for my Spanish class. When I went to college, I wrote a new version for the Mac, adding special features for Japanese. Senior year I wrote two new versions – one for my
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Basics of Neural Networks with example codes and illustrations
I began with inanimate objects living in a world of forces, and I gave them desires, autonomy, and the ability to take action according to a system of
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How Software Companies Die (1995)
Home Page for Charles Rosenberg
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Piercing Through WhatsApp’s Encryption
WhatsApp has been plagued by numerous issues in their security: easily stolen passwords, unencrypted messages and even a website that can change anyone’s status. But that streak is not yet over.
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How to Write an Opening Sentence
Bioinformatics, genomics, and Javascript
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Can Snowden be targeted using the Adobe breach?
Note: As a professional courtesy to those at Adobe who are doing their absolute best to mitigate this breach, I have partially redacted all ...
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How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)
I was talking with a friend the other day about that perennial subject of conversation in the Valley, Google. And finally she gave me the clue that made the whole place make sense. “It’s about infantilizing people,” she explained. “Give them free food, do their laundry, let them sit on bouncy brightly-colored balls…
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Flickr's redesign makes it a photo service actually worth sharing
I’ve been a paying Flickr member since late 2009, but this year was going to be my last. I believed this even after I forgot to change my billing settings and Flickr auto-renewed me into 2015, because it seemed chances were good that Flickr, a long-neglected and resource intensive property, would get the ax soon …
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Two Letters from Steve Jobs
During the 12+ years I worked at Apple I never met with Steve Jobs for work purposes. Of course like all Apple employees I saw Steve in Caffé Macs or walking with Jony Ive around the courtyard insi…
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The Rejection Book: Good luck, bad luck, who knows?
I've been rejected by a lot of people and organizations over the years. The number of my rejections became so comical, that my parents put together a book. This was a special book, since many of...
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How to build great products
If you believe that sales fix everything, it follows that most startups fail because they don’t ship a great product in a growing market before they run out of money. Assuming you’ve picked an explosive market, how do you go about building a great product?1
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Girls Who Code
I feel badly for Paul Graham because he's being made out to be something I am sure he is not. But the brouhaha that he unleashed about women founders, women coders, and women hackers is a good thing because we ought to be having a broader conversation about these issues. Paul asks "God knows what […]
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