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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 Fuzzy Aliens
I have just launched a new company, Fuzzy Aliens[*], offering application security consultancy services for smartphone app developers. This is not the FAQ list, this is the “questions I want to answer so that they don’t become frequently asked” list. … Continue reading
Posted in Business, code-level, iPad, iPhone, Privacy, software-engineering, threatmodel
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On secrets
Secrets are hard. Especially in the digital domain, but we can see examples in other environments too. Let’s take a look at a couple of historical examples. It used to be the case that all of Britain’s diplomatic traffic was … Continue reading
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On utilities
When I worked on an antivirus application, we used to have a joke in our team that we’d choose which one of us would accept the Apple Design Award for our product. Not that we weren’t striving for ADA-quality work; … Continue reading
On phone support scams and fake AV
A couple of weeks ago, I posted on Twitter about a new scam: Heard about someone who was phoned by a man “from Windows” who engineered his way into remote access to the mark’s computer. Fast forward to now, the … Continue reading
Posted in antivirus, Malware, Phishing, Scam, user-error
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On free Mac Anti-Virus
On Tuesday, my pals at my old stomping ground Sophos launched their Free home edition Mac product. I’ve been asked by several people what makes it tick, so here’s Mac Anti-Virus In A Nutshell. What is the AV doing? So … Continue reading
Posted in antivirus, Business, Malware, PCAS
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Rumors of your runtime’s death are greatly exaggerated
This is supposed to be the week in which Apple killed Java and Flash on the Mac, but it isn’t. In fact, looking at recent history, Flash could be about to enter its healthiest period on the platform, but the … Continue reading
Posted in AAPL, Business, Updates
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What do you think of this?
I’m interested to find out what us Cocoa developers (alright, I know my opinion already) think of the following distinction between Foundation and, well any other object-oriented foundation library. The distinction is this. In many libraries, compound objects (not only … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, software-engineering
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An example of unit testing working for me
Some specific feedback I was given regarding my unit testing talk at VTM: iPhone fall conference was that the talk was short on real-world application of unit testing. That statement is definitely true, and it’s unfortunate that I didn’t meet … Continue reading
Posted in code-level, iPad, iPhone, Mac, software-engineering, TDD, tool-support, VTM
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On Ignoring the Tests
As mentioned over two months ago, I’ll be giving two talks this weekend at the Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Fall conference. I’m feeling good about both of the talks that I’ve worked on, though I definitely think the Unit … Continue reading
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On documentation
Over at the daily WTF, Alex Papadimoulis writes about Documentation Done Right. His conclusion is spot on: The immediate answer to what’s the right way to do documentation is clear: produce the least amount of documentation needed to facilitate the … Continue reading
Posted in software-engineering, tool-support
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