November 2010
34 posts
3 tags
“The TSA will say, “Oh, we’re not allowed to talk about successes.” That’s...”
– Bruce Schneier, Security Theater and the TSA (via maniacalrage)
Nov 30th
25 notes
“You, sir, work against the constitution of the United States, you work against...”
– Call Me Fishmeal: Q&A with TSA Chairman John Pistole Awesome Wil Shipley is Awesome. And delightfully acerbic. You owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.
Nov 30th
2 tags
Nov 28th
3 tags
Nov 28th
4 tags
NSNotificationCenter + Blocks: The Solution
So since I posted my original article, I’ve heard from a couple of people about a nice solution to the problem, although I’ve then heard from another that it can still bite you in the ass. Using __block variables So the first couple of links above show an approach which takes advantage of the way __block variables are handled by blocks; Loren even suggested a nice macro-friendly...
Nov 26th
8 notes
“Once, some time ago, during another time of economic downturn, a president named...”
– Where I draw the line - Roger Ebert’s Journal
Nov 26th
4 tags
An NSNotification + Blocks Gotcha
So a little earlier Matt Drance opined about -[NSNotificationCenter addObserver...usingBlock:], claiming it wasn’t so good. I personally love being able to specify a block to handle a notification, and especially love being able to have the observer run on the main thread, or on a queue of my choice. This is absolutely awesome. However, he’s right that there is a gotcha. As he...
Nov 26th
6 notes
1 tag
“We want to enable social reading experiences that help people engage with their...”
– Interview: Kobo talks e-books, apps and social reading | News features by Mobile Entertainment Gosh, that sounds rather interesting doesn’t it
Nov 24th
3 tags
TestFlight: Recruitment Features Live →
testflightapp: In our quest to make beta testing easier we just pushed our recruitment features live. Sometimes it’s frustrating to ask people to email you if they want to test your application only to have to wade through tens, if not hundreds of emails of potential testers. With the recruitment options this… Damn this looks good. I’d love to use it at Kobo for our iOS...
Nov 24th
25 notes
2 tags
Anonymous asked: Hey Jim,thanks for the reply to.
I am just stuck with a one thing:
I am using AES128 algo that comes with CommonCrypto.
And I use AES 256 bytes key.While putting in the keychain, i dont know what attr value to use for kSecAttrKeyType in:
[attributes setObject:<WHICH_CSSM_ALGID_FORAES> forKey:(id)kSecAttrKeyType];
I am not able to figure/find it out from...
Nov 24th
1 note
6 tags
Lesson For Today
So today we had an interesting issue at Kobo: [[NSThread currentThread] threadDictionary] was returning nil. This is never supposed to happen, as it’s created on demand. After some investigation, we noticed that stack leading to the -layoutSubviews call which resulted in this failure started at +[NSThread exit], going through pthread_exit() and pthread_tsd_cleanup(). This latter function...
Nov 24th
Nov 24th
755 notes
Anonymous asked: Hi Jim,
I have a question regarding storing the securely on the iPhone.Building for iOS 3.0+.
I have a username & password that user enters for connecting to the web-service.Plus there is some more user & app preference data that i am persisting in a plist. I want to encrypt/secure that data.Currently my approach is:
generate an encrypting key on the first launch of an...
Nov 22nd
3 notes
1 tag
“[F]ront line TSOs do not like the new pat downs and that they do not want to...”
– TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View (via John Gruber) We don’t like it, they don’t like it. There are strong suggestions that it doesn’t help anything. Why the fuck is it still happening?
Nov 22nd
1 tag
“Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) is running to be the head of the Energy and Commerce...”
– New House Climate Czar | Talking Points Memo (via John Gruber) My immediate reaction involved the phrase “Jesus Christ on a bicycle”. I wonder if he’s aware that his comments are inspiring a metric boatload of blaspheming from those who hear them? ;o)
Nov 22nd
4 tags
Nov 21st
Nov 20th
354 notes
3 tags
Farewell urftopdf, we hardly knew ye
So I got an email from Apple Legal today. Long & short of it was that they were contacting me directly instead of just sending a C&D via courier since I’m a real developer working for a decent company. They told me that they believe my urftopdf implementation is derivative of theirs. I can’t afford to fight them in the courts, despite believing that this isn’t the case,...
Nov 19th
4 notes
3 tags
Nov 19th
3 tags
AirPrint Code →
So as Steve Troughton-Smith revealed, Apple’s AirPrint functionality had three components: two config files and a CUPS image filter. The config files are simple enough to replicate, but the filter was more involved. It needed to be able to take UNIRAST images (identified by the image/urf MIME type) and output pdf data. The problem, naturally, was that UNIRAST isn’t a well-documented...
Nov 18th
3 tags
WONDER-TONIC: TSA Announces Facebook Integration... →
wondertonic: John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, announced yesterday that full body scanners at airports across the nation will be seamlessly integrated with Facebook next month, allowing travelers to save, tag, and share their near-naked security photos with friends,… What, no love for Flickr? Boooooo…
Nov 17th
413 notes
1 tag
“Then the TSA agent pressed her hand directly up into the girls crotch. I was...”
– Stories and Observations | Fly With Dignity Christ on a bike. I’ve got two trips into the US within the next month. How fun is that going to be?
Nov 16th
3 tags
Nov 13th
2 tags
Nov 13th
Anonymous asked: Can you share Time Machine tutorial and source code, please?

Thai,
Vlad.
vllad@niit-miit.ru
Nov 13th
Nov 13th
Nov 13th
“Unfortunately those experiences have not been in the radar of majority of...”
– Why are you losing the iPhone developers? « NoBuCo
Nov 11th
4 tags
“Having tried [the Kindle and Kobo iPhone/iPad apps] extensively, I’d have to...”
– Yeah, you heard that. We bring the AWESOME. Yeah, dawg. (via iPhone In Canada’s comparison)
Nov 11th
2 tags
“Rethink’s forecast shows the iPad keeping its lead but with significant...”
– This quote from The Register shows, I think, the reasoning behind any & all ‘the iPad is DOOMED by competitors’ rhetoric. Essentially the only reason is that it didn’t improve quite as much as the analysts wanted. A ‘mere’ 28%. *sigh*
Nov 7th
3 tags
Open-Source ATV2 DevKit Update
A small update for those who are currently waiting on the appearance of the open-source components of the ATV2 developers’ kit: Due to one donor taking exception to the stipulations in my previous post, I’ve refunded $300 of the currently-accrued donation amount. I couldn’t see any way to ‘remove’ that donation from here, so I’ve upped the goal by $300 to...
Nov 2nd
5 tags
Nov 2nd
3 tags
Nov 2nd
Rebellious Coders Home In on Apple TV Hacks, App... →
Wired article on the hackers working to open up the new AppleTV system for third-party developers.
Nov 2nd
1 note