Eric Mann's Blog

  • Be Aware of Context

    Nothing is more annoying than a customer service representative responding out of context to a customer concern.

  • Ultra-rapid Prototyping

    I built an app last night that allows me to look up bus arrival times via SMS. It took me 2 hours. Node is incredible!

  • Fasting

    Fasting isn’t just “not eating,” it’s re-sensitizing yourself to the things of this world you take for granted.

  • Security, Legal Bypass, Warrants, and Apple

    Apple has announced they won’t be unlocking iOS 8 phones in response to warrants, not as a point of policy, but because the system they’ve built won’t allow it.

  • If you’re not part of the solution …

    I use WordPress daily; I critique it almost as frequently. Are my suggestions contributing to a solution or just further conflating the problem?

  • DNS and Cross-Site Scripting

    One of the first things on any security auditor’s list is checking to see if a site is vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS).

  • When I Say I’m Proud of You

    For one reason or another, I relate to you and your experience. I feel similar to you in some way, and seeing someone like me do what you just did makes me proud of that identity I share with you.

  • Advertising Experiments

    I took the time to run a quick experiment using Twitter’s new “Sponsored Tweets” functionality. I’m less than impressed with the results.

  • Freedom of Information

    A world where the information to which we have access is tightly controlled is a world in which democracy, free thought, and liberty dies.

  • Birthdays and Three-way Hash Collisions

    Let’s work out the probability that, in a given group of individuals, at least three share a birthday.