Recent submissions

Comment · 1 month ago
A typical signal cabinet has a conflict monitor, also called a malfunction management unit, that’s physically distinct from the controller. It supervises the controller outputs and can force the signal to all-way flashing red if green (or yellow or WALK) is shown for conflicting phases or if red or DON’T WALK is missing. More sophisticated units can also detect problems with sequencing or change or clearance interval timing.
Comment · 2 months ago
Some B2B websites require e-mail validation at each login as a way to confirm that the user’s organizational affiliation remains valid.

Being able to read mail sent to an @example.com address doesn’t prove someone is an employee of Example Co., of course, but the inability to read such mail suggests that the user’s affiliation may have ended and that access granted by virtue of it should be blocked, at least for the time being.

Single sign-on is usually a better method for this, but it’s not always practicable to set up.

Comment · 9 months ago
If you’re wondering, as I was, who Amateur Radio Digital Communications is and how they have money to make grants, it’s the foundation that sold a quarter of the 44.0.0.0/8 IPv4 address block, allocated in 1981 for use in amateur radio, to Amazon in 2019 for $109 million.
Comment · 9 months ago
FS.COM Limited (深圳市飞速创新技术股份有限公司, https://cn.fs.com/) was founded in Shenzhen in 2009. They’ve applied to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; here’s the draft prospectus from a month ago:

https://www1.hkexnews.hk/app/sehk/2025/107950/documents/sehk...

Comment · 10 months ago
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Comment · 1 year ago
Interesting. The left side of the slide at 15:43 in the video is definitely from page 27 of Symbol Sourcebook, but the detail of the ⌘ symbol doesn’t seem to be: not only could I not find the symbol, but also its caption (“FEATURE”) is set in Helvetica rather than Univers as used in the book.
Comment · 1 year ago
Symbol Sourcebook would’ve been my first guess, too, but I just glanced through my copy (7th printing, 1977) and didn’t see the ⌘ symbol. The closest thing in the Graphic Form Section is a symbol for “Atomic d orbital,” but it’s clearly not the same one that inspired Susan Kare.
Comment · 1 year ago
The treaty returning sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, disestablishing the British Indian Ocean Territory, seems to be on track for ratification:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

The consequences for the .IO ccTLD are still unclear and ultimately will depend on how the United Nations, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, and ICANN respond. I’m not aware of anything more definitive than ICANN’s blog posting from November 2024, which emphasizes that “much of the discussion about .io is simply speculation” but also acknowledges the possibility that “a five-year time window will commence during which time usage of the domain will need to be phased out.”

https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/the-chagos-archipelag...

I wouldn’t use a .IO domain name for anything important.

Comment · 1 year ago
I’ve always thought of Kerberos as a centralized authentication system, to establish users’ identities.

Authorization, in the sense of deciding to allow or deny a requested action by a known user on a specific object, remains distributed, even with Kerberos. For example, a Windows file server, having received a Kerberos ticket showing a user’s identity and security group memberships, consults its own access control lists to determine what operations to allow on files and directories.

The article here argues that those authorization decisions should also be centralized, presumably using the sponsor’s “cloud-native authorization platform,” instead of being made within each service or application.

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Comment · 2 years ago
I agree with the advice to ask a lawyer, but it’s sensible to be concerned with license agreements even in early-stage ventures that couldn’t enforce them.

By establishing the company as licensor, an agreement might help the founders avoid personal liability if a customer sues. Later on, it may be desirable to show potential acquirers that, from the company’s inception, its customer contracts included terms to confirm ownership of intellectual property, limit liability, satisfy privacy laws, and so on.

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