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NEIL KANDALGAONKAR


HACKER, MAKER OF THINGS

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February 11th, 2016


ISIGN: RESIGN IOS APPS ON LINUX

Today I’m proud to announce that Sauce Labs has open sourced one of the coolest
projects I’ve ever done: isign. Check out the source on Github!

isign can take an iOS app that was authorized to run only on one developer’s
phone, and transform it so it can run on another developer’s phone.

This is not a hack around Apple’s security. We figured out how Apple’s code
signing works and re-implemented it in Python. So now you can use our isign
utility anywhere – even on Linux!



Why would you want to do this?

 * Maybe you want to integrate with some other Linux-based continuous
   integration process, so the app and the web API are released the same way.

 * Or, maybe you want to hold your company’s Apple developer credentials in some
   Linux-based system, rather than on Keychain in a random developer’s laptop.

 * Or maybe you just want to study how iOS’s security works.

You might ask why Sauce Labs – known for testing as a service on virtual
machines – is messing around with the innards of iOS real devices? It’s kind of
a strange story….

Read on →

May 18th, 2015


ANSWER TO ED FELTEN’S HELLO WORLD PUZZLE

Ed Felten, a well-known computer security analyst, recently became the Deputy
U.S. Chief Technology Officer for Obama’s White House.

As his introduction to the presidential team, he posted a brainteaser.

I haven’t read any other answers. Here’s mine, and the thought process behind
it.

Read on →

April 21st, 2015


MANLINESS FOR MANLY MEN LIKE ME

I’m really bad at consumerism. Even as a highly-paid engineer I can’t stand
spending money on most of the things in a mall or supermarket. Every time I try
to buy something, I’m tormented by the knowledge that what I’m buying is mostly
rent for the store, packaging, advertising, and additives and colorants I don’t
need, and possibly the entire product category has been a manufactured need.

So, it was a given that my recent project of growing a beard was going to run
into that. I will need some new products or practices to curb scratchiness and
maintain the beard, but what?

Read on →

February 14th, 2015


HEARTFORTH


AN EMOJI-BASED STACK LANGUAGE


SYNOPSIS

Instead of standard Forth…

: factorial 0 swap begin dup 1 - dup  1 = until begin * over 0 = until swap drop ;

5 factorial .

>> 120 


In HeartForth…

0110

5

>> 120


Read on →

November 18th, 2014


THOUGHTS ABOUT OUTERNET

Outernet is a bold concept to broadcast a stream of data to the whole world via
satellite. Here’s the founder’s vision video, complete with inspiring
soundtrack.



This all sounds really cool until you realize they are talking about a 100MB/day
stream. One single stream for the whole world, that amounts to a handful of
ebooks. And the Lantern can’t even read them; you need something else like a
laptop or mobile device anyway.

I did a little tweetstorm about them - here they are with some expanded
comments.

Read on →

September 14th, 2014


LESS REPRESENTED AND LOVING IT

XOXO AT THE REDD - INTERIOR PANORAMA BY SAM BEEBE, ECOTRUST





For the first time, XOXOfest has shaped its attendance to be more diverse.
Thanks to a simple question on the registration form, it’s reportedly gone from
over 80% white male dudes to 60%.

XOXO isn’t over yet, and the ultimate arbiter of whether this experiment is
successful is of course the under-represented groups themselves. But, speaking
as someone who now looks around the room and now sees fewer people like himself:
it’s been awesome.

There are probably tremendous benefits to the people in those under-represented
demographics. First of all, they get to go. And to talk about their issues with
a critical mass of attendees, and make them a central focus, at least from time
to time.

But I’ll let them tell those stories. Instead I want to talk about what benefits
there were for me.

Read on →

August 9th, 2014


A MAP THAT IS JUST GOOD ENOUGH

Kellan Eliot-McCrae asked me to make a home for this on the web, so I did.

A few years ago, someone asked Quora “Why are software development task
estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3?” Michael Wolfe wrote a very
entertaining answer comparing software development to a hike along the coast of
California, which he has since copied to his own website. What seems like a
pleasant ramble turns into a death march. Unexpected difficulties arise,
commitments are broken and broken again, and friendships are destroyed.

The answer was deservedly upvoted by over ten thousand people, but I felt there
was something missing, so I replied:



105101 BY EL BIBLIOMATA

"Oficial de marina observanco con el sextante".



Ilustraciones pertenecientes al libro :

El mundo físico : gravedad, gravitación, luz, calor, electricidad, magnetismo,
etc. / A. Guillemin. - Barcelona Montaner y Simón, 1882



> This is really good, but if I can offer a suggestion – the analogy could be
> even more apt with a slight shift. Currently it only shows how people go wrong
> when they develop software in a naive way – by starting at the beginning, and
> coding each step to final quality, in order. The story, as written now, makes
> it look like writing software is just an impossible slog and nobody can do it.
> 
> The truth is, software is research. It’s a matter of discovering the solution,
> not plodding through it. This is implicit in your story, because they keep
> encountering unexpected problems. But let’s make it explicit.
> 
> Imagine, instead, that our intrepid pair is charged with mapping the coastline
> of California from SF to LA. Mapping is more like software development because
> it involves discovery, and getting things right at multiple “points”.
> 
> The naive mappers start off from SF and it all fails exactly as you outline. A
> more clever pair of mappers instead decide to hire a boat, and map just a few
> points on the coastline precisely, just to get a rough estimate, and to survey
> the coastline for the tricky places. Then they know where to apply their
> efforts – an intern can be hired to pace out some of the easy bits, and a team
> of well-equipped hikers can be brought in to handle the hard parts.
> 
> They can even stop when they have a map that is just good enough.

June 24th, 2014


TYPE BRIGADE

UNTITLED PHOTO BY BAUHOUSE





Kenneth Ormandy recently relaunched the local typographer meetup, now called
Type Brigade. I spoke about my Cherokee typography project, turning it into an
updated slideshow. I’m afraid that many of the slides have no context, as I
spoke off the cuff, but you can get the gist.

The response was very enthusiastic. I’m very glad I did this, as I’m way out of
practice at public speaking, but I’m told I did really well. I tried to imagine
the audience as a large group of new friends, which seemed to work.

You can also see other images from the event in this Flickr set by Stephen Bau.

← Older Blog Archives

A creative human that makes software and other things.

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RECENT POSTS

 * isign: resign iOS apps on Linux
 * Answer to Ed Felten’s Hello World puzzle
 * Manliness for manly men like me
 * HeartForth
 * Thoughts about Outernet



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