Author Archives: Dan

Texas Instruments shenanigans

A group of enterprising TI calculator programmers have taken it upon themselves to factor the 512-bit RSA keys used by TI to allow applications (and OS updates) to run on TI calculators.  (For those of you who aren’t cryptographers: basically it lets TI decide what can run on the calculator and what can’t.) In response,… Read More »

Isn’t local government grand?

For the last few weeks the news has been telling us over and over again to make sure we have flood insurance, to make sure we’re “prepared”, and to make sure we have an emergency plan.  That’s because near a dam on the Green River, there’s (apparently) an earth embankment that’s likely to (somehow) fail… Read More »

The ICU Protocol

I just read this post and found it quite humorous, especially this comment at the end: And, of course, if you want to make things really awkward, I suggest printing out this article and trying to explain it to the guy peeing next to you. There are times when you think you waste most of… Read More »

Conflict of interest

So I just realized something sad.  A few weeks ago, I downloaded and played the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum.  It was released on one console or other a few days ago, and it comes out for Windows in a few weeks, so I was all excited for its release, and I planned to buy… Read More »

PHP Slicehost API

A couple of days ago I added a bunch of features to my Slicehost API interface class (for PHP).  Most of you are about to say “Uh, what’s Slicehost?”  Click here.  (They’re the server hosting company I use.  If you sign up, please use this referral link or put “heron@xnapid.com” as the referrer so I… Read More »