#250 – February 11, 2018
12 best practices for user account, authorization and password management
Account management, authorization and password management can be tricky. For many developers, account management is a dark corner that doesn't get enough attention. For product managers and customers, the resulting experience often falls short of expectations.
Here’s the Solution to the 3-Year-Old, $50,000 Bitcoin Puzzle
On Thursday morning, a closely watched Bitcoin wallet address known as 1FLAMEN6 had a surprise transaction that drained the account of its five bitcoins, worth nearly $50,000 at the time. This Bitcoin wallet belonged to a crypto artist who goes by @coin_artist on Twitter, but she wasn’t despairing about the lost bitcoins—in fact, she was ecstatic.
Googlebot’s Javascript random() function is deterministic
I was conducting some experiments on how Googlebot parses and renders Javascript, and I came across a couple of interesting things about the way it does so. The first is that Googlebot’s Math.random() function produces an entirely deterministic series.
Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
Three years ago I came across an interesting paper written up by a Microsoft employee, Kent Sullivan, on the process and findings of designing the new user interface for Windows 95. The web page has since been taken down – one reason why I’m a bit of a digital hoarder.
Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.