Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

Facebook Android app update is insane …

… even for me.  I’ve been saying for a while that the privacy is pretty much dead, but this new update of Facebook Android app is asking for way too may permissions even for my taste.  Some of the things that it “needs” now are: access to make phone calls without user intervention, accessing information about other running applications, and drawing over other applications’ screens, so you won’t even know anymore who is responsible for what you are seeing.

When I got an update notification, I thought, at first, that that was a mistake of some sort or a really late and lame April 1st joke.  Albeit it’s not.  Even Slashdot runs the story.

For now, I’ll hold the old version.  Maybe Facebook will rectify this new change.  If not, then I’ll get rid of it and go back to Twitter and, possibly, Google+.

WordPress version check

With all the news of brute force attacks against WordPress, I thought I’d at least update the installations running on my servers.  Since there are quite a few instances of WordPress on some of them, I was in need of some automated way to check the installed version, hence – the WordPress version check script.

I have some really old versions that I wouldn’t update automatically, so that functionality is not in the script yet (hopefully in the future). But as they say, knowing the problem is half of the solution or something like that.

If you don’t like mine, build your own, using WordPress.org API.

3D Printed Guns (Documentary)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DconsfGsXyA

This one actually sent me into a lot of thinking (which is still not complete).  On one hand, I am very anti-gun.  On the other, I am very pro-Open Source.  I do agree with the point Cody raises about there being no more politics or politicians, just a pseudo-selection between the candidates who protect the same class of people.  Also, Nick’s saying that 3D printing technology is getting better and cheaper fast, and that law has always been way behind technology – this all makes 3D gun printing a complicated issue.

Thoughts?

The biggest merge ever

I am having a really proud and exciting moment at work right now.  We’ve just deployed the biggest merge ever.  I can’t really share enough details to provide you with the context (NDA and all), but here is a GitHub screenshot that gives you an idea.

the biggest merge ever

If you are not familiar with GitHub and don’t know how to read this, here is a summary:

  • 1,633 individual commits
  • 2,696 modified files
  • 424,292 lines of code added
  • 82 lines of code removed
  • work done by 4 people

And it all went so smooth, that we even deployed it on Friday, without a single second of downtime.  Awesomeness!

Update (April 15, 2013): And just when I thought that that was the biggest merge ever, we did one more the next working day.  Have a look!

the biggest merge ever again