Monday, January 1, 2018

What was I reading in December 2017?

December was a busy, busy month. From being on travel for approximately half of the month (cumulative), to a 3-day some-assembly-required post-Christmas session to assemble a toy plastic robot arm, to a multi-week review/interpretation of SSH man pages. Mix in family functions and vehicle inspections, and (overall) there wasn't much time to sleep.

One of my Christmas presents was complete ReSpeaker rig (7-mic array, Core board, Grove board). After playing with it for a week, I can honestly say that I like the mic array but abhor the severely under-powered (and resource-limited) ReSpeaker Core. Maybe I've been spoiled by the RPi and ODroid people but, for the same price as the Core board, I can pick up a board that's 3 times as fast and has 4 times as much memory. I've already pulled the mic array off and attached it to a Raspberry Pi. A review is on the "to do" list.

In the latter half of the below, you'll notice at least one theme. This is because I'm scheduled for multiple training sessions in the coming year and I'm trying to get a head start on learning the technologies involved.

Note: that robot arm is not yet done as Amazon has just provided the USB interface to it.

2017-12-03

- When the Judge Distrusts Your Lawyers: Waymo v. Uber - (tldr; - decide which foot to shoot)
- How the judge on Oracle v. Google taught himself to code - Hopefully he will accept the "geek" monicker.
- Stanford University data glitch exposes truth about scholarships
- Writing a C Compiler, Part 1
- sshtalk - For an unknown reason, I like this. Have been neck deep in the various SSH-related man pages (for a different reason which I'll explain later).
- norvig/pytudes - Python programs to practice or demonstrate skills.
- The power of tmux hooks - a bit deeper into the weeds with tmux (valuable!).
- A Hacker's Guide to Git
- OpenWrt in a WiFi card reader - This one is on my want/to do list though I have a sudden dislike for under-powered OpenWRT devices (re: ReSpeaker Core).
- NY Attorney General Investigating Why Dead People Supported The FCC's Attack On Net Neutrality - (*sigh*) No comment.
- Google is making a computer vision kit for Raspberry Pi - Another for the want/to do list. Apparently it has a Movidius chip on the board. One other Christmas gift (note to self: wish lists are a must!) was a Movidius USB stick.
- Tweaking TCP for Real-time Applications: Nagle's Algorithm and Delayed Acknowledgment

2017-12-04

- joe-shenouda/awesome-cyber-skills - For Theresa, if you're still doing this sort of thing.

2017-12-05

- Neural Networks in JavaScript with deeplearn.js
- Adventures in Computational Lexicology - Short version: languages (spoken, computer, etc.) tend to change over time, are influenced by culture, etc.
- wtsxDev/Penetration-Testing - List of awesome penetration testing resources, tools and other shiny things
- brylevkirill/notes - Miscellaneous notes on machine learning.

2017-12-06

- Writing a C Compiler, Part 2

2017-12-10

- A fablab burned down in France by anarchists
- Bad News for the Highly Intelligent
- Recycling Chaos In U.S. As China Bans 'Foreign Waste'
- The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

2017-12-16

- Modern SQL: Three-Valued Logic 3VL Purpose Benefits and Special Cases
- Fuzzy Thinking: Fuzz Testing and Formal Grammar

2017-12-17

- Array of Things
- Communicating Advanced Mathematics to Kids
- Top Courses to Learn AI Deep Learning and Machine Learning
- AppCypher/WebAssemblyLanguages - A curated list of languages that compile directly to or have their VMs in WebAssembly

2017-12-18

- Jam3/math-as-code
- Neighbors house alarm triggers when I put my car in reverse.
- Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day

2017-12-19

- Barbed Wire Telephone Lines Brought Isolated Homesteaders Together - a bit of history...

2017-12-21

- Adhesive action with position: sticky!
- XenServer 7.3: Changes to the Free Edition
- Advanced SQL Server Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
- Funding Yourself As A Free Software Developer
- WannaCry: End of Year Retrospective
- Staaldraad - netstat without netstat/what to do when the netstat command is not installed
- On Writing Short Papers - I'm told that I tend to violate the first two guidelines.

2017-12-23

- Keras Tutorial - Traffic Sign Recognition - On my list for possible experimentation with the Movidius stick.
- Gamers Want DMCA Exemption for 'Abandoned' Online Games - This one will likely reopen old disagreements.
- Learning to operate Kubernetes reliably

2017-12-24

- Monitoring my phone's internet activity with DD-WRT and Perl

2017-12-27

- Read a MODBUS temperature sensor through USB-RS485 adapter on Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi

2017-12-29

- Let's hand write DNS messages - Call me weird but I find this interesting.
- pulseaudio-systems-programming.md - Notes on using PulseAudio (note: that's not to say that violating some of these isn't fun).
- What happened to tcp flag URGENT, MSG_OOB and SIGURG?
- The Door Problem
- martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater - Another for the "to do" list. I have a handful of these scattered about my desk and haven't had the time to play with them.

2017-12-30

- How to avoid wasting megabytes of memory a few bytes at a time
- Filmmakers Want The Right To Break DRM and Rip Blu-Rays - Given the restrictions placed on us consumers, I'd say make the filmmakes pay a royalty for each and every disk they produce. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
- How Hotmail Changed Microsoft and Email Forever - Comes across as self-referential puffery/history revisionist. That's not to say that I didn't like Microsoft's webmail products. I did win an internal award in 2003 for demonstrating an authentication bypass bug.
- How To Kill Inactive Or Idle SSH Sessions - uses pstree to determine the proper PIDs to target
- Escaping Docker container using waitid - CVE-2017-5123 - one for the "to try" list
- How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly - more advice on writing

Above was generated by a homegrown bolt-on script for Wallabag, which is a free utility for capturing web content so that it can be read later.