Category Archives: Uncategorized

The security apprentice

This originally appeared in a post at Sophos’ Naked Security blog. There have been two recent occasions on which my computing life has been influenced by Lord Sugar, the business mogul in charge of Amstrad and star of BBC One’s … Continue reading

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Synthesized ivars are private

Perhaps this isn’t news. Perhaps it doesn’t matter because you’ve provided public accessors. But here are the results anyway. #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> @interface A: NSObject @property (nonatomic, assign) int a; @end @interface B: A – (int)differentGetter; @end @interface C: NSObject @property … Continue reading

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Some LightReading about mobile app security

[This article was co-written with @securityninja] If mobile app security is failing, it’s up to the security industry, not developers, to repair it. An article published yesterday at security news site DarkReading announces “Developers not applying secure development life cycle … Continue reading

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Building an object-oriented dispatch system in Objective-C

iTunes was messing about rebuilding the device I was trying to use for development, so I had time over lunch to write a new message dispatch system in the Objective-C language. “But wait,” you say, “Objective-C already has a message … Continue reading

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Irresponsible tolerance

Context @unclebobmartin said: One of the bad behaviors that destroys projects is “irresponsible tolerance”. Tolerating what you know you should fix. This triggered a discussion between @phil_nash and myself. As far as this got on the Twitters, we agreed that … Continue reading

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These things are hard

Mike Lee recently wrote about his feelings on seeing those classic pictures from the American space program, in which the earth appears as a small blue marble set against the backdrop of space. His concluding paragraph: Life has its waves. … Continue reading

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A bunch of monkeys with typewriters

As with many of the posts in this blog, this one originally started as a tweet that got too long. With the launch of Path 2, a conversation about Atos ditching email for social media and Yammer posting a video … Continue reading

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Mac App Sandboxing: it may not be for you (but that’s probably OK)

The MAS section of devforums is, along with a healthy subsection of the rest of the interwebs, aflame with the news that the deadline for sandboxing store-delivered apps is further away than it used to be, but still too close … Continue reading

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On Windows 8

Right from the beginning, you have to accept that this analysis is based on the presentation of Windows 8 shown at the //build/windows conference. I’ve watched the presentation, I’m downloading the developer preview but I’m over an hour away from … Continue reading

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On device identifiers

Note: as ever, this blog refrains from commenting on speculation regarding undisclosed product innovations from device providers. This post is about the concept of tracking users via a device identifier. You might find the discussion useful in considering future product … Continue reading

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