Mea Vita: Carpe Diem
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Gravity is not a Force
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Agile is Not Scrum
Waterfall
In the early days of software engineering, when mainframes were the primary form of computing, Waterfall was the key form of software project management. It treated software product development like physical product development in long cycles where each step only flowed in one direction. At the time, this made sense.Scrum
Kanban
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Quantum Computing Realizations
My Three Daily Life Goals
My Three Daily Goals in Life
Monday, March 11, 2024
Hacking Software Developers
I recently heard about an interesting hack that was targeting software developers, especially those on Linux. It basically tricks developers into installing malware on their computer by way of a fake job interview and downloading code from a public code repository.
During an initial call, the fake company asks you to complete a software development exercise by downloading a project from GitHub. The project, which contains a ZIP file, has a seemingly benign non-executable file named something like “readme․pdf” except that the dot, in the filename, isn’t a simple dot/period but rather a symbol that looks like a period such as U+2024. In other words, the OS doesn’t see a file extension (PDF in this example).
When the developer double clicks on the file, it executes. Typically, on Linux, a user must manually chmod a downloaded file to set the executable flag (i.e. chmod +x readme․pdf). However, since this filed was embedded in a ZIP file, the executable meta data can be preserved. Also, a password is sometimes added to the ZIP file so even smart virus protection software can’t scan the ZIP file.
This is a Homograph Attack using Unicode Deception. Two things to be suspicious of this attack is the zipping of small-sized files and the password on a ZIP.
Friday, February 9, 2024
Vision Pro Demo
Vision Pro demo area with eyeglasses Rx reader |
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
iPhone Announcement Anniversary
January 10, 2007 |
The first iPhone was announced 17 years ago, today, approximately 41 minutes into Steve Jobs's MacWorld Keynote address. This is the reason that Apple ads display 9:41 AM in their marketing materials.
At the time, I was working as a software engineer at the Apple Online Store. Like everyone else, I was surprised and amazed at the product announcement.
The next day, I printed out a color image of the iPhone, glued it to corrugated cardboard, and sent photos of me holding it to friends joking that I had an actual iPhone and pointing out that the photo wasn't photoshopped. (The iPhone wouldn't ship until six months later.) My coworker and I even took photos of us holding the cardboard cutout in front of 1 Infinite Loop.
I wouldn't see an actual iPhone in the wild until sometime later when I was in a meeting and Tim Cook walked in, pulled it out of his pocket and flashed it at us while saying, "This is so cool." We were all champing at the bit to get our hands on one.
Thursday, January 4, 2024
A Love for Amazon
AWS Hack
Spreading the Profits
Last Night
Saturday, December 23, 2023
Failure: How to do it Right
There are three types of failure:
1. Basic
2. Complex
3. Intelligent
What is Marketing?
1. Put up a sign in a common place with a call to action: Advertising
2. Put a sign in an uncommon place: Promotion
3. Have the news spread your message: Publicity
4. Have the government or other public entities talk about you: Public relations
5. Highlight benefits and features while answering questions about your product or service to convince people to buy it: Sales
If you planned these five things: That’s Marketing