By @edent · Computer Science standards totp · 4 comments · 350 words · read ~334 times.
Imagine, just for a moment, you and your friends decide to travel in time. In order to make sure you can authenticate your communications with each other, you set up a shared Time-based One Time Password (TOTP). The TOTP algorithm uses a Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC). The hash is calculated from a shared key […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science language programming python · 7 comments · 300 words · read ~168 times.
I've been thinking about programming languages and their design. In her book about the divergence of the English and American languages, Lynne Murphy asks this question: wouldn’t it be great if language were logical and maximally efficient? If sentences had only as many syllables as strictly needed? If each word had a single, unique meaning? […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science Open Source · 2 comments · 600 words · read ~144 times.
This isn't an original idea, but I needed to get it out of my brain. There are many different definitions of what "Open Source". We can have a lovely argument over a pint as to whether GPLv3 is too open or if a licence which hasn't been validated by the OSI counts. But, more fundamentally, […]
Continue reading →By @edent · compression Computer Science python · 11 comments · 350 words · read ~5,672 times.
(This is, I think, a silly idea. But sometimes the silliest things lead to unexpected results.) The text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is about 146,000 characters long. Thanks to the English language, each character can be represented by a single byte. So a plain Unicode text file of the play is about 142KB. In […]
Continue reading →By @edent · compression Computer Science images · 7 comments · 400 words · read ~367 times.
I have a screenshot of my phone's screen. It shows an app's user interface and a photo in the middle. Something like this: If I set the compression to be lossy - the photo looks good but the UI looks bad. If I set the compression to be lossless - the UI looks good but […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science database gender trans · 5 comments · 800 words · read ~390 times.
I recently read a wonderful paper by Mar Hicks called "Hacking the Cis-tem" which is about database design in the 1960s and the nascent digital state's approach to transgender individuals. It's a short and readable paper with some jaw-dropping anecdotes. Like the man who immediately got a pay rise after his transition, despite working in […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Book Review Computer Science · 300 words · read ~159 times.
A superb book! It traces the origins of 26 facets of modern life so that you can understand the code which underpins them. There's only a smattering of actual code you need to read - most of it is constrained to gorgeous hand-drawn illustrations. Although I got a bit of a shock in the 2nd […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science geek history openuk · 600 words · read ~107 times.
This is a retropost. It was written in 2022, but published later. Well, that was the most bizarre day. A few days ago, Amanda Brock - the CEO of OpenUK - asked if I'd be on a podcast. I agreed, and offered up my office's media studio for the recording. Then she asked if it […]
Continue reading →By @edent · bcs CITP Computer Science · 2 comments · 550 words · read ~223 times.
Computing is a comparatively young industry. We don't have hundreds of years of history, or secret societies jealously guarding our knowledge, or much love for hierarchy. This makes it difficult to progress in a world which values strict demarcations between people. There's an obvious and well documented path from Army Private to Sergeant. If you're […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science programming regex · 28 comments · 600 words · read ~5,366 times.
(This is a rant because I'm exhausted after debugging something. If you've made RegEx your whole personality, I'm sorry.) The other day I had to fix a multi-line Regular Expression (RegEx). After a few hours of peering at it with a variety of tools, I finally understood the problem. Getting that deep into the esoteric […]
Continue reading →