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Chiron Codex: helping software engineers become centaurs. APPropriate Behaviour
The book about all the things software writers do that aren't writing software.
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Author Archives: Graham
On, or rather in, Seattle
I’ve never been to Washington before, so I’m looking forward to Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference in April. Of course, you know I like the sound of my own voice enough to be speaking: my talk this year will … Continue reading
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On repeatable builds
One of the key features of software engineering, as distinct from cowboy coding or hacking, is that it should be repeatable. That doesn’t mean that you should do the same project twice in identical ways from beginning to end: that … Continue reading
Posted in software-engineering
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On squeezing out that last ounce of performance
As I get confused by a component of an application that should be network-bound actually being limited by CPU availability, I get reminded of the times in my career that I’ve dealt with application performance. I used to work on … Continue reading
Posted in antivirus, software-engineering
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On Timeless Programming Books
Recently, the Dog Spanner wrote about Programming With Quartz, a book written at the tail end of 2005 but which is still useful to Mac developers everywhere. I have to agree, this book is still on my shelf and gets … Continue reading
On the broken(?) Mac App Store
A day after the Mac App Store was launched, people are reporting that it has been cracked. There are two separate stories here, a vapourware circumvention of the FairPlay DRM used to generate the receipts and a report that certain … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Crypto, Encryption, Mac, Vulnerability
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Protecting source code
As I mentioned on the missing iDeveloper.tv Live episode, one of the consequences of the Gawker hack was that their source code for their internal software was leaked into the Internet. I doubt any of my readers would want that … Continue reading
Posted in Business, code-level, Data Leakage, Encryption, Policy, Responsibility, software-engineering
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On the Mac App Store
I’ve just come off iDeveloper.TV Live with Scotty and John, where we were talking about the Mac app store. I had some material prepared about the security side of the app store that we didn’t get on to – here’s … Continue reading
Posted in AAPL, Business, code-level, Encryption, government, iDeveloper.TV, Mac, Policy, Talk
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Did the UK create a new kind of “Crypto Mule”?
It’s almost always the case that a new or changed law means that there is a new kind of criminal, because there is by definition a way to contravene the new law. However, when the law allows the real criminals … Continue reading
On how to get crypto wrong
I’ve said time and time again: don’t write your own encryption algorithm. Once you’ve chosen an existing algorithm, don’t write your own implementation. Today I had to look at an encryption library that had been developed to store some files … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, Crypto, Encryption
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A site for discussing app security
There’s a new IT security site over at Stack Exchange. Questions and answers on designing and implementing IT security policy, and on app security are all welcome. I’m currently a moderator at the site, but that’s just an interim thing … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, Policy, Privacy, Talk, threatmodel
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