Rob Janssen (RobIII)

Leveraging Big Data To Create More Secure Web Applications

Here at Etsy, we take measuring things very seriously. We have previously discussed how we harness data to make decisions about software, operations and products, but we have said little about just how useful data can be for the information security practices of a modern web application.

What is Lambda Calculus and should you care?

In this post we try to give a really short overview of what’s ?-calculus and why you might want to know about it. In parts two and three we will see a basic implementation in Scala. Lets start with a short description (quote from Wikipedia):

Hacking into the Indian Education System

Wrought with the monumental anxiety that usually surrounds such a crucial result, Sumit had asked me whether I might be able to break into their system before D-day and quell his curiosity. I knew it was a long shot.

Accidental entities - what about the UI?

In that post, we followed a consultant building an application for a car rental. One of the requirements was that the CEO could manage a collection of available colors.

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The Codist

Of all the things I do or use today, the only thing I have in common with my first job is that I still write code. Everything else has changed and changed and changed again.

A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins

I thought Ligaya Turmelle's post on SQL joins was a great primer for novice developers. Since SQL joins appear to be set-based, the use of Venn diagrams to explain them seems, at first blush, to be a natural fit.

(Un) Reliability in messaging: idempotency and de-duplication

In my post on ditching two-phase commits, I introduced the problem of trying to listen and talk at the same time. Essentially, people typically do two-phased commits in messaging systems because they want to deal with messages “exactly once”.

CSS: reset or normalize?

Building for the web can be like building on quicksand. Browsers have tended to do mostly the same thing, but have occasional, maddeningly unpredictable differences.

Blocking Image Hotlinking, Leeching and Evil Sploggers with IIS Url Rewrite

This is a splog or "spam blog." It's less of a blog and more of a 'suck your feed in and reblog it.' Basically every post is duplicated or sucked in via RSS from somewhere else.  I get this many times a week and have for years.