Fat Shaming

Leave who you were. Love who you are. Look forward to who you will become.

Unknown (via deeplifequotes)

Save Your Computer

I have the worst luck. I’ve broken five computers and four laptops but I’ve finally learnt my lesson. After losing my work so many times, I have been great at rewriting because I’d never backed anything up. Take it from me:

Even if you backup your work in one external source from your computer, back it up online or in as many places as you can

Back up according to how much valuable work you have so if you save work/programs frequently, back up once every week

If you have a Windows computer, go onto Control Panel and search “back up”. Click on the first link and follow through from there

Do not wait until it’s too late

I may add more information on if I can think of any, but here are some useful links on some other ways to back up your computer: Windows help to backing up files How to Back Up a Computer (among other devices) How to Back up Data The absurdly simple guide to backing up your PC Three Best Ways to Back Up Your Files 6 cheap ways to back up your files 8 Ways to Back up Your Computer Files How to back up your data Done a Computer Backup Lately?

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Oscar Wilde (via story-dj)

me: why haven't i bought this game yet

me: oh right i forgot i need money to purchase goods and services

*5 minutes pass*

me:

me:

me:

me: why haven't i bought this game yet

Software engineering (SE)

is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the design, development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software

6 Tumblr shortcuts for blogging on a computer

Quick scroll, like, and view notes of a post on your dashboard: Keys J, K, L and N come very handy. Hit J for next post, K for previous post, L to like a post and N to show post’s notes 

Quickly compose a new post from anywhere on your Dashboard:  key combo Z + C (Option + Z for Mac)

Quickly reblog a post: Shift + R (Not working? Make sure you are on the right post by pressing J or K)

Quickly add a post to your Queue: Shift + E

Quickly play a video: Just click Enter

Quickly switch between your Dashboard and your Blogs: key combo Z+ Tab

Facebook helps companies detect rogue SSL certificates for domains

Facebook has launched a tool that allows domain name owners to discover TLS/SSL certificates that were issued without their knowledge.

The tool uses data collected from the many Certificate Transparency logs that are publicly accessible. Certificate Transparency (CT) is a new open standard requiring certificate authorities to disclose the certificate that they issue.

Until a few years ago, there was no way of tracking the certificates issued by every certificate authority (CA). At best, researchers could scan the entire web and collect those certificates being used on public servers. This made it very hard to discover cases where CAs issued certificates for domain names without the approval of those domains’ owners.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

via http://www.computerworld.com/article/3149741/security/facebook-helps-companies-detect-rogue-ssl-certificates-for-domains.html#tk.rss_news and www.computechtechnologyservices.com

A software problem which has already been solved, but not everywhere.

In the early days of the WWW, some websites were a lot better than others. Some places you would fill out a form and it would log you out and forget your stuff; the meaning of icons varied across the web; ….

Nowadays, there are a lot of Standards. There’s a certain way things generally work. Visual cues consistently mean the same thing and work the way I, as a semi-daft user with a lisp and a peg leg, would expect it to, without any further thought or research.

How did this wonderful increase in usability and optimisation happen? I think it’s due to JQuery.

For those who don’t know, JQuery is a bunch of software libraries that do common tasks like “initiate twitter-like pagination” or “build a form” the right way. In other words, some people who had seen a lot of good and bad choices, wrote some functions that any other programmer can use, and wrote down all the best 500-line programs so that other people could do them with just 1 line. (If you still don’t understand what I mean by a “library”, look at the third or fourth lesson on an introduction to C++ tutorial – somewhere in the beginning the instructor will explain why sometimes you want to take a long program and split off bits of the code as separate functions.)

  So here are several problems that have all been solved very nicely. The problems were that:

not everyone has the time/funds to perfect every last nanometer of their website

not everyone has the expertise to do everything perfectly

consequently, users had a bad experience

consequently, less business was transacted online

many people were solving the same problem

too much code was being written to solve the same problem in different places

consequently, management’s and programmers’ interests were disaligned.

The problem was solved through specialisation, as well as programming techniques like abstraction, callbacks, encapsulation, so on.

How far can this Library solution be taken? I mean both in the sense of economic viability and in the sense of programmability.

If I’m typing in some random stuff into R, I kind of expect that sparse matrices are multiplying in the best way possible, or in general that calculations are being done as quick as they could be.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every data structure could automatically tap into any relevant mathematical theorems that reduce calculation time or provide insights? For example the computer shouldn’t literally add the numbers 1+2+3+…+97+98+99+100 because mathematicians already know that 1+100 + 2+99 + 3+98 + 4+97 … = 101 × 50, which is way quicker to calculate. Wouldn’t it be great if data structures could automatically “know” (via libraries) any theorem about curvature, graph traversal, Yoneda lemma, and so on, without the programmer having to be a maths textbook him/herself?

Is this impossible? Or has it just not been done yet?

Dates

{Foods of the Sunnah}

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) would break his fast with fresh or dried dates, ajwa dates being his favorite due to their abilities to heal. He would break his fast with an odd number, so we should as well.

Dates are

rich in minerals, which our body cannot supply so we must consume in order to grow and function properly

they improve digestion

contain antioxidants

even aid in our eye sight

reduce labor pains

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said,

“Break your fast by eating dates as it is purifying” [Ahmad]

“Whoever finds dates should break his fast with them and the one who does not should break his fast with water it is pure.” [Ahmad]

“Whoever has seven ajwa dates every morning he will not be harmed on that day by poison or magic.” [Bukhari]

“Ajwa dates are from paradise.” [Muslim]

Allah says:

“Shake the trunk of the palm toward you and fresh, ripe dates will drop down onto you.” (Maryam 19:25)