Tag: Android

Giving Hackers an Exciting Target

Hackers will attack anyone, any organization, or anything that seems to offer the promise of something in exchange for the time spent: money, resources, revenge…the list goes on. However, for many hackers the kicker for choosing somewhere to hit is some level of challenge, some sort of excitement. After all, why attack a boring site when there is one out there literally begging you to attack it? Such is the case with GrapheneOS, which bills itself as:

The private and secure mobile operating system with Android app compatibility.

GrapheneOS Website

According to Multiple DDoS Attacks at GrapheneOS — What’s Going On Behind the Scenes?, GrapheneOS has recently endured multiple attacks. I verified the story on Twitter from a post by GrapheneOS. Such an attack can happen to anyone at any time. Keeping a low profile seems prudent, but not always possible (as is the case here). One of the things I stressed when writing Machine Learning Security Principles is that anything an organization can do to make attacks harder and less attractive will only reduce the security burden of the organization in the long run. Keeping a low profile tends to make an attack less attractive.

The reason that I was attracted to this particular DDoS attack is that GrapheneOS is using Synapse, an AI-based product. The article, Synapse Technology Corporation: Using AI to Take a Good Look at Airport Security, tells you a bit more about the history of this product. In looking at the Synapse website, you can see that they have some interesting customers, including the military and government. Oddly enough, I’m not seeing any other reports of major problems with Synapse. The problem must be with the GrapheneOS security setup.

The bottom line is that if a hacker decides to break into your organization, it’ll happen at some point no matter how good your security systems are, which means that it’s essential to combine security with monitoring and analysis of attack vectors. Keeping a low profile is essential too because hackers, like the most of the rest of us, love a good challenge. Reviewing attacks like the ones targeted at GrapheneOS can help you improve your own security setup. Let me know your thoughts on AI-based security at [email protected].

Choosing the GNU C++ Compiler

This is an update of a post that originally appeared on April 23, 2012.

A number of readers have written to ask me about the reason I chose the GNU C++ computer for C++ All-In-One for Dummies, 4th Edition. After all, there are many different C++ compilers on the market today. Here are the reasons I feel that the GNU C++ Compiler is the best choice today:

  • Standards Adherence: From what I’ve read and seen in my own coding efforts, the GNU C++ compiler adheres a bit better to the current standards. There are other compilers, such as Microsoft’s Visual C++, that include a host of special additions and exceptions that don’t adhere to the standard. Given the audience for this book, using a compiler that’s strong on the standards is a must. (This book doesn’t use any of the GNU C++ extensions.)
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility: This book has a mixed audience. I’ve received so many e-mails from Macintosh readers that I’ve provided a number of blog posts just for this group. Linux developers also like this compiler and have used my book to learn how to use it. Because there are so many different platforms that this compiler works on, I can reach a much broader audience with the book and help more people write applications in C++ as a result.
  • CodeBlocks Support: In order to write good C++ code, you really do need a good IDE. CodeBlocks is a free compiler that works well on Linux, Macintosh, and Windows machines. If I had chosen another compiler, it may not have been possible to provide great support for all three platforms and some readers would have been left out.
  • Community Support: Both the GNU C++ compiler and CodeBlocks enjoy a broad range of support from the open source community. Getting help with either product is relatively easy and normally free.
  • Cost: Many of the readers of this book are students of limited means or are hobbyists learning to write C++ applications on a shoestring. Using the GNU C++ compiler coupled with CodeBlocks offers a method of teaching C++ programming that doesn’t require any investment by the reader. If cost hadn’t been a factor, there are probably other compilers on the market that might be a little better choice than using GNU C++.
  • Mobile Device Support: Many of my readers now what to be able to code from anywhere at anytime using their mobile device. Quite a few of the online compilers rely on GNU C++. (You also find support for Android devices in the book now using CppDroid in Chapter 2.) In many respect, you could view this as a fourth supported platform for my book.

Yes, I could have used some other compiler when writing this book, but at the time, GNU C++ seemed to be the best choice available and I still think it’s the best choice today. Of course, it’s always nice to hear about alternatives. If you think there is a strong competitor for GNU C++ that’s free and runs on all three of the target platforms for this book, let me know at [email protected]. Make sure you provide me with complete information, including a URL for the compiler’s site.

Web Page Units of Measure

This is an update of a post that originally appeared on October 23, 2013.

There are ways today of avoiding any thought of what units of measure the Web page you’re working on uses. For example, I use products like WordPress all the time now to make the task of creating content quickly a lot easier. I don’t ever think about the units of measure I’m using when working with these products. However, when designing an interface for an Android or C# application (as examples), I sometimes do need to think about units of measure because I’m more intimately involved in the user interface design process. Today, applications need to work everywhere on a large number of devices, all of which have different characteristics, so units of measure can become an issue. So, it’s entirely possible that you could create a nearly unlimited amount of content for a website without ever worrying about units of measure, but this blog post is for those times when it does matter.

Some units of measure work better than others do in obtaining a specific result. For example, when you specify placement in pixels (px), you tell the browser to define element placement with regard to the physical units of a display. This is the most precise, yet least flexible, method of defining units of measure. In addition, it can create issues with mobile devices because these devices typically don’t offer that many pixels of display area and may not allow scrolling of information that doesn’t appear in a single screen (the part that appears to the right and toward the bottom of the page).

More flexible units of device-specific measure include the inch (in), centimeter (cm), and millimeter (mm). In this case, the browser converts the measurement to pixels using the device’s conversion metric. For example, a typical PC display uses 96 pixels-per-inch. However, the user can change the metric so that an inch could consume 120 pixels instead (making the elements larger than normal). Whether this flexibility solves the problem of working with mobile devices depends on the mobile device and the metric it uses to convert physical units to pixels.

Besides device and physical measures, you can also use printer’s measures that include the point (pt) and pica (pc). These units of measure theoretically work the same as physical measures because a point is 1/72nd inch and a pica is 12 points (or 1/6th inch). In reality, it’s possible that a browser will convert the units of measure based on the size of the fonts that the device uses. However, you can’t count on this flexibility and must assume that these printer’s measures are simply a different kind of physical measure.

Fortunately there are two units of measure that are guaranteed to reflect the size of a font on the display. The em is a measure of the actual font size. One device may use a 12 point font while another device uses a 10 point font. An em will equal 12 points on the first device and 10 points on the second device without any modification of the code on your part. This feature makes the page quite flexible and usable with any device. The other unit of measure is the ex, which is the measure of the x-height of a font (the median of all of the characters in a particular letter set). As with the em, the ex automatically scales to consider the point size of characters used by a particular device.

All of the units of measure so far are absolute. You place elements on a screen in a precise position. Modern Web design dictates that pages employ Responsive Web Design (RWD) to ensure that the page will work on any device. A part of RWD is to use relative placement wherever possible so that the page and its elements automatically resize to meet the needs of a device. You use the percentage (%) unit of measure in this case, where an element uses a percentage of the available space, whatever that space might be. Of course, this approach means that all devices see the entire page. However, a disadvantage of this approach is that the elements might be so small on some devices as to make them unusable.

The article, CSS values and units, provides you with more information about units of measure as they apply to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). These guidelines generally apply to other working environments as well. What are your thoughts about units of measure? Which do you use most often? Let me know at [email protected].

Antiquated Technology Making Developers Faster

This is an update of a post that originally appeared on November 7, 2014.

I often wonder when I create a blog post whether the technology I’m describing will stand the test of time. In this case, I asked whether the reader would like to be able to type application code faster and with fewer keystrokes. The article, The 100 Year Old Trick to Writing at 240 Words Per Minute, probably has some good advice for you—at least, if you’re willing to learn the technique. It turns out that stenography isn’t only useful for court typists and people who print out the text for the hearing impaired on television, it’s also quite useful for developer. Yes, your IDE probably has more than a few tricks available for speeding up your typing, but I guarantee that these tricks only go so far. My personal best typing speed is 110 wpm and that’s flat out typing as fast as my fingers will go.

Since that original post, someone has come out with a book called Learn Plover! that describes how to use this stenographic technique in more detail. There is also a site devoted to Plover now.

Naturally, I haven’t ever used one of the devices mentioned in the article. However, a stenographer named Mirabai Knight has tried one of the devices and reproduced a 140 keystroke Python application using only 50 keystrokes. By the way, she has produced a series of interesting videos that you may want to review if you really think that Plover is for you. I don’t know of any IDE that can provide that sort of efficiency. Of course, it’s one thing for a trained stenographer to produce these sorts of results, but I’d like to hear from any developer who has used the technique to hear about how well it worked for them. Please contact me about your experiences at [email protected]. (Oddly enough, I did hear from at least one developer who uses it successfully.)

The part that interested me most though is that the system, called Plover, is written in Python. (If you want to see Plover in action, check out the video at http://plover.stenoknight.com/2014/10/longer-plover-coding-snippet-in-python.html. A number of Beginning Programming with Python For Dummies, 3rd Edition readers have written to ask me how they can use their new found programming skills. The book contains sections that tell you about all sorts of ways in which Python is being used, but many of these uses are in large corporations. This particular use is by a small developer—someone just like you. Yet, it has a big potential for impacting how developers work. Just imagine the look on the boss’ face when you turn in your application in half the time because you can type it in so much faster? So, Python isn’t just for really large companies or for scientists—it’s for everyone who needs a language that can help them create useful applications of the sort that Python is best suited to target (and I describe all of these uses in my book).