Stuff Yaron Finds Interesting – Page 7 – Technology, Politics, Food, Finance, etc.

Identifying basic security threats for Paeony

As part of evaluating potential technologies to use for Paeony I need a list of threats I can evaluate those technologies against. This document tries to capture the most basic possible scenario (two users sending messages to each other) and the attendant threats. I can then use this list in creating threat models for potential technologies to determine which are the best to choose.

Welcome to Paeony

I have registered the domain paeony.org and pointed it at an empty github site as a tiny baby step in investigating a question of interest to me - what would it take to make it falling off a log easy to create an open ecosystem web of interconnected, monitizable, services that run on user’s devices?

What about open licenses for specifications?

So you are starting on your new project and you decide (gasp) to write actual specifications for the network and API interfaces. Being a good ’open’ type you want to have a solid open license for the specifications. Below I look through what I think are the key terms the license needs and conclude that the Apache 2.0 License seems to have all bases covered.

Updating the web

When the web as we know it was originally designed the world was a very different place. In this article I look at the world as it was and the world as it is and explore what I think this means for the web.

A data web user’s bill of rights

Building a data web needs to start with a clear statement of a user’s bill of rights. This is the core of the requirements that should drive the technologies used. Below I list what I think are the four fundamental rights and then explore their technical implications.

Whatever happened to the open data web?

Once upon a time HTTP and HTML were trucking along nicely. This meant that we had a truly open, meaningfully interoperable framework to allow for rich human based web interactions. The next obvious step was to look into machine to machine web interactions. A bunch of work went into this area. XML, WS-*, POX, JSON, RSS, OData, etc. With the exception of RSS none of it came to much of anything, especially in the personal space. In this article I look at why I think the previous efforts to create an open data web failed.

Failing to buy a new keyboard

I love Microsoft’s ergonomic keyboards. I got a Microsoft Natural Keyboard in the 90s and used it until a handful of years ago when it just got so old and grody that I felt it had to be replaced. I replaced it with the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 which I liked even better, especially with its negative incline. But I have had a problem with the semi-colon key no longer hitting properly. I was going to buy a new 4000 but I thought, what the heck, why not get one of the mechanical keyboards? The keyboard on the 4000 is nice but I bottom out when I hit the keys and that can’t be great for my fingers nor is it a very nice feeling. I summarize below what I learned about keyboards and why in the end I couldn’t find the keyboard I really wanted.

Life and long term disability insurance

I have a wife and a family and in case something happens I need to make sure they are protected. ’Something’ however can range from death (which is relatively easy to plan for) to long term disability (which turned out to be a nightmare to plan for). It is tempting to think that my work insurance is sufficient, but what happens if I ever leave my employer? Who says that my next employer will have as generous insurance offered on as good terms? What if I want to do my own start up? I really don’t want to be out in the insurance market at an older age trying to get life insurance. The same logic applies for disability insurance but times two due to its complexity. So I need to put protection in place now. This article walks through how I did it.

11/6/2012 – General and Special Election, Seattle, King County, Washington State

It’s voting time again! But since I now officially refuse to engage in the false trade off of choosing between Republicrats and Democans my voting is simpler.

President and Vice President of the United States - Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala
United States Senator - No vote
United States Representative - Congressional District No. 7 - Jim McDermott
Governor - No vote
Lieutenant Governor - No vote
Secretary of State - No vote
State Treasurer- No vote
State Auditor - No vote
Attorney General - No vote
Commissioner of Public Lands - No vote
Superintendent of Public Instruction - No vote
Insurance Commissioner - No vote
State Senator - Legislative District No. 46 - No vote
State Representative - Legislative District No. 46 - Position 1 - No vote
State Representative - Legislative District No. 46 - Position 2 - No vote
Sheriff - John Urquhart
State Supreme Court - Justice Position No. 2 - No vote
State Supreme Court - Justice Position No. 8 - No vote
State Supreme Court - Justice Position No. 9 - No vote
Court of Appeals - Division No. 1- District No. 1 - Judge Position No. 4 - Ronald E. Cox
Court of Appeals - Division No. 1 - District No. 1 - Judge Position No. 7 - Marlin Appelwick
Superior Court - Judge Position No. 42 - Sue Parisien
District Court West Electoral District - Judge Position No. 1 - Johanna Bender
Initiative No. 1185 - No
Initiative No. 1240 - No
Referendum Measure No. 74 - Approved
Initiative No. 502 - Yes
Engrossed Senate Joint Resolution No. 8221 - Rejected
Senate Joint Resolution No. 8223 - Rejected
Advisory Vote No. 1 - Engrossed Senate Bill 6635 - Maintained
Advisory Vote No. 2 - Substitute House Bill 2590 - Repealed
King County Proposition No. 1 - Regular Property Tax Levy for Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) - Approved
City of Seattle Proposition No. 1 - General Obligation Bonds - Rejected

Unicode, Windows and C++

Unicode, Windows, C++, it should all be good right? The answer seems to be that, well, actually, yeah, it is. But there are a lot of details. I do my best to walk through some of them below.