Beware Of HTML5 Development Risks

As a result, developers have to design with the dangers in mind and weigh that against the type and sensitivity of data stored in the client. At the moment, many development shops are not training their staffs to do that, says David Eads, founder of Mobile Strategy Partners, a mobile development firm that specializes in financial and insurance applications. In fact, he recently ran into a bank that used example HTML5 code for training developers that put data in permanent storage on the client system as opposed to temporary storage.

via Beware Of HTML5 Development Risks — Dark Reading.

Open Source is Not Just About Cost

While some in the past have associated open source with cost – it’s the cheaper alternative to proprietary approaches – that’s not the point anymore. The innovation model for open collaboration enables multiple competitive vendors to co-operate on core functionality and then compete on value added support and services.

via Red Hat CEO: Open Source is Not Just About Cost – Datamation.

UML Tool for Fast UML Diagrams

UMLet is a free, open-source UML tool with a simple user interface: draw UML diagrams fast, produce sequence and activity diagrams from plain text, export diagrams to eps, pdf, jpg, svg, and clipboard, share diagrams using Eclipse, and create new, custom UML elements. UMLet runs stand-alone or as Eclipse plug-in on Windows, OS X and Linux. (Also, check out its sister tool PLOTlet to create chart grids and our other tools.)

via UML Tool for Fast UML Diagrams.

Review: Facebook Home

It’s not simply the case that ­Zuckerberg is sneaky in his promotion of sharing and creepy in his ambivalence about privacy. Rather, he is a true believer. Privacy lowers the value of the social graph. If one sincerely believes in the merits of the graph, then one should be suspicious of privacy, because privacy is selfish.

via Review: Facebook Home | MIT Technology Review.

Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions

The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.

via Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions « Berkeley Lab News Center.

This seems like an amazing discovery.

Their analyses showed that the Roman recipe needed less than 10 percent lime by weight, made at two-thirds or less the temperature required by Portland cement. Lime reacting with aluminum-rich pozzolan ash and seawater formed highly stable C‑A-S-H and Al-tobermorite, insuring strength and longevity. Both the materials and the way the Romans used them hold lessons for the future.

Attacks on Package Managers

To provide an example of the sorts of attacks an attacker can launch on package managers, this page describes an example attack called a replay attack. Other attacks are described on a separate page.

via Attacks on Package Managers.

Here’s a piece of advice I always adhere to for any kind of upgrade.

Manually update your systems (and local mirror caches). Know when package updates become available and what the versions should be. Manually verify and install the updated packages (or add them to your local mirror cache that your systems update from) rather than relying on automated updates. We have observed mirrors many months out of date for some distributions, so you should check periodically that your mirror is being updated.