Properly seeding random number generators doesn't always get the attention it deserves. Quite often, people do a terrible job, supplying low-quality seed data (such as the system time or process id) or combining multiple poor sources in a half-baked way.
Scientific Bug Hunting in the Cloud: An Unexpected CEO AdventureThe Wolfram Cloud is coming out of beta soon (yay!), and right now I’m spending much of my time working to make it as good as possible (and, by the way, it’s getting to be really great!). Mostly I concentrate on defining high-level function and strategy.
Reverse Engineering WipEout (PSX)In 1995 one of my all time favorite video games was released: the original WipEout for PlayStation. The brand new PlayStation produced 3D graphics previously unseen on living room TVs and WipEout exploited its capabilities like no other game at the time.
Remote Code Execution Via HTTP Request In IIS On WindowsPatching time. A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the HTTP protocol stack (HTTP.sys) that is caused when HTTP.sys improperly parses specially crafted HTTP requests.
Blowing up LocalStorage (or what happens when you exceed quota)Based on some discussion earlier today on Twitter, I wanted to take a quick look at what happens when you exceed the quota limit in a browser’s LocalStorage system. I knew an error would be thrown, but I was curious about the type, message, etc. I built a quick test and threw some browsers at it.
TopshelfHost your services in-process or in a completely separate AppDomain. Praesent dapibus, neque id cursus faucibus, tortor neque egestas augue, eu vulputate magna eros eu erat. Nam dui mi, accumsan porttitor, facilisis luctus, metus!
Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? (And some workarounds)Last week, Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office. These formats appear to be almost completely insane. The Excel 97-2003 file format is a 349 page PDF file. But wait, that’s not all there is to it! This document includes the following interesting comment:
Microsoft Announces Nano Server for Modern Apps and CloudToday we announced new container technologies as well as Nano Server, a purpose-built operating system designed to run born-in-the-cloud applications and containers.
It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty(Content note: I normally try to keep my natural level of profanity slightly under control on this blog. I won’t be doing that in this post) The major reason I wrote Hypothesis is to destroy shitty software. Everything is terrible, and I want it to be less terrible.
Distributed ID generation with Redis and LuaIntroducing Icicle: a distributed, k-sortable unique ID generation system using Redis and Lua. TL;DR: We are open-sourcing our distributed k-sortable ID generation project called “Icicle”, which generates IDs using Lua scripting within distributed Redis hosts.
This Read-It-Later-list is just that, bookmarks of stuff I intend to read or have read. I do not necessarily agree with opinions or statements in the bookmarked articles.
This list is compiled from my Pocket list.