Category: blog

This project was a few weeks in the making. When I started there was a problem with some of the software not behaving. I leave the hardware driver voodoo to those that understand it. After an update this morning I was able to get all the parts working. So what exactly is a WiFi VPN access point?

It’s the combination of several pieces of hardware and software that when running on my Pogo provides me with:

One thing that’s taken a few days to sink is how Apple managed to improve the keyboard on the new MacBook model. During the announcement Tim Cook mentioned that the key tops were 17% larger than the current MacBook keyboards. I noted it in my live blog on Monday, but didn’t think too much about it.

This evening I thought about going to an Apple Store to see it in person, but decided to do a virtual comparison first. Using screenshots I put together a quick comparison of the new and old keyboards. The new MacBook is about 1.3” narrower than the MacBook Pro that I currently use. I adjusted the size of pictures so the comparison would be accurate. (It’s not perfect, but it’s damn close.)

The article goes onto say, “It remains unclear how intelligence agencies would get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode.”

Getting the hacked Xcode package out in the wild would not be that hard. Before the creation of the Mac App Store, Xcode was a direct download from Apple.com. As with anything that’s served out on to the Internet, it’s possible that it could have been intercepted and replaced with the hacked copy. The CIA and it’s friends have showed remarkable competence and hacking, diverting, and collecting web traffic.

Of of the things announced today, Apple’s ResearchKit strikes me as the one thing that will have a long-lasting impact on the world. I think Apple might realize it too. Making ResearchKit open source was a main point in the presentation.

This is about actually getting data into the hands of researchers. Medical research is expensive. It involves paying people for participating in the study, and the time it takes for each consultation. Some researchers have turned to online platforms to find a population for the study. The downside of the is some people are participating just for the money. In some cases it has become a job. PBS recently produced a segment about these professional survey takers.

I watched the Apple event this morning so you wounldn’t have to. Tim Cook covered a lot ground in the 90 minuite event. The last half-hour was devoted the Apple Watch.

It’s time for my weekly word count check-in. At the end of every week, I post a screen shot from my writing results spreadsheet. This shows the current week and the three before. My week starts on Monday. The numbers are current through Sunday night. I also only average over six days. This allows me one day of no writing that doesn’t impact the weekly totals.

I was shooting for more, but a bug in the Pogo software left me spending my time troubleshooting instead of writing. The average turned upwards again. I’m happy with that.

Yay! As it stands in the beta version, exported ePubs will validate.

One of the great features of Mac OS X is having Time Machine backups of your data. Time Machine can work with an external hard drive plugged in to a USB port, or it can operate over the local network. I have a laptop that spends most of its time on my lap. An external hard drive is just inconvenient. I also don’t want my backups to happen only when I remember to plug the drive in.

This all traces back to the Clinton administration. The US government wanted decided that cryptography was the same as military weaponry. This led to an export ban in which US designed crypto apps couldn’t be sold outside the US borders. This was also a time when most software was shipped on physical media. There also a belief that software respected international borders.

What happened then was “export grade” (i.e. weak 40-bit encryption) became the default used in “international” versions of things like web browsers. This was one of the first attempts to create an encryption backdoor. The idea was that the US could decide who gets strong crypto. Then it could eavesdrop on the countries or groups that had the weak encryption.

I’m bad at groceries. I don’t keep an updated list, and often forget the list when I go shopping. One thing that seems to elude me is pancakes. I continually forget to put pancake batter on the shopping list. Not that it would do much good. I’d probably forget the list anyway.

So when I saw someone mention National Pancake Day on Twitter over the weekend, I planned for it. The restaurant chain IHOP promotes this as a charitable event, with funds raised today going to the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals charity. IHOP provides a free short stack1 of pancakes, and then asks for a donation when paying the bill.