Response from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) on Net Neutrality
I emailed Pat Toomey (R-PA), my U.S. Senator, to encourage him to support net neutrality. As you can see from his response, he is opposed to it:
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Solve your problem by almost asking a question on StackOverflow
If you were to look at my StackOverflow profile, you would see that I’ve only asked a handful of questions in the years that I’ve been a member. However, this is not because I don’t run into programming problems or don’t think to ask questions. In the process of formulating a good StackOverflow question, I usually find the answer myself.
First of all, it’s embarrassing to spend time typing up a question and have someone respond with a Google search providing dozens of hits that provide the answer. So before I even start typing, you’d better believe I Google the hell out of the problem. And many times, I find what I’m looking for.
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Cut the HealthCare.gov people some slack
On October 1, 2013, HealthCare.gov was opened to the nation. As one of the more tangible aspects of the Affordable Care Act (aka ACA, Obamacare), the glitches it has experienced are getting lots of negative attention. It’s been described as an “inexcusable mess“ and a “disaster”. I’m not going to discuss the merits of the ACA here. But as someone who spends every day building software, I think the criticisms of the HealthCare.gov application have been unfair. Here are a few reasons why we should cut them some slack.
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Secure Password Storage - Lots of don'ts, a few dos, and a concrete Java SE example
Note: this post frequently refers to “encrypting” passwords, a term that usually implies that they could be decrypted. We’re really talking about doing a one-way hash. I used the term “encrypt” to make it more accessible to those who are less familiar with cryptography, but “hash” would have been more precise.
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