Have a look at this URL linking to this post: https://kaspars.net/blog/invisible-click-tracking Notice any tracking variables? Me neither! But check out the HTTP request and response in the network inspector of your browser -- it is redirecting to the "same" URL: URL encoded special characters in the browser console…
The aim of this course is to teach the basics of category theory, in a way that is accessible and relevant to computer scientists. The emphasis is on gaining a good understanding the basic definitions, examples, and techniques, so that students are equipped for further study on their own of more advanced topics if…
IBM's mainframes of the 1960s are based on an interesting technology - Standard Modular System cards or SMS cards. These cards, created in ...
When you think about it, it really is one tangled, small cottage industry. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows what everybody is doing, and nobody talks. One of my informants. This is the f…
Paul Simon has a song called ‘One Trick Pony’ with a bit in it that goes like this:
Although the techniques described below won't be very popular nowadays (after all, why bother using C if we're going to write object-oriented code?), they are still quite relevant for embedded systems and other low-level things (kernel development, etc). For example, lots of Linux Kernel subsystems use similar…
You have probably never written a significant piece of correct software. Neither have I. Here's why that's not quite as bad as it sounds.
Walk about 100 meters east of the Observatory's meridian line. Slow down to a crawl as your GPS approaches 0 degrees, 0 minutes, 0 seconds longitude. There's no sign and no line on the ground.
Binary search is a wonderful algorithm: theoretically optimal, fast in practice, and discoverable by school children playing guessing games. Usually we think of binary search as being applied to a sorted array, and we teach it this way.
As an IBM PC historian, one aspect of my hobby is archiving gaming software. (You can take that statement to mean anything you want — whatever you think of, you’re probably right.) At…
The world of Apple II “cracking” has always held an interesting fascination for me – the thinking involved, the magic of tracing programs, and of course the “crack screens&#…
This post is a simplified version of the accompanying notebook to chapter 6 of my upcoming book Mastering SciPy. Click anywhere on this box for more information.
Our condolences Awesome Stories source John Nash and his wife Alicia were killed in a taxi accident on the New Jersey Turnpike Saturday afternoon. They were on their way back from Norway where he a…
I assume you’ve read the introduction, which tells you the basics of putting a world together. This post is more narrative than mechanical; it’s a tour of my thought process as I try to turn my previous map into something a little more fun to play. I still touch on new editing things I do, but honestly, you already…
Blog of Agatha Mallett: A post in which I provocatively argue that test-driven design results in worse code. I cite real-world examples, discuss why these failures occur, and suggest alternatives.
Today, Wikipedia is widely considered an invaluable resource. There are occasional errors and controversies, but for the most part it…
Finding work as a software person kind of sucks sometimes. Actually, let me strike the "kind of" from that sentence. …
Longer answer: it depends on what you mean by "equivalent". Pointer arithmetic and array indexing are equivalent. In other aspects, pointers and arrays are different.
I noticed a "bug" in the way Audi handles its Cruise Control options. Cruise control is only meant to be used once you drive "30 kilometers per hour or more". …
Last Friday, the TSA snuck out a document updating the “privacy policy” for the nude body scanners. On Tuesday, reports started coming in on the change, including right here. Professi…
