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Duff's Device

Duff's Device is a brilliant software optimization most commonly used to efficiently copy data from one place to another. In the same tradition, this blog seeks to efficiently convey ideas, opinions and useful information to its readers.

Google Chrome overlooks one small security flawSeptember 2

The release of Google Chrome today, the new open source browser by Google today has the whole internet talking. If you want an exhasutive review you can look elsewhere, everyone has it covered.

One thing I haven't seen discussed anywhere is the lack of the ability to secure my stored passwords. I often let other people just my laptop to check the internet, and while I would trust almost everyone I give access to, I still feel unsecure when all of my passwords can be revealed to someone with just a few simple clicks.

What they did get right is that (at least for Gmail) the browser doesn't attempt to store my password until I successfully log in, so I no longer have 2 or 3 incorrect credentials in every login box.

It's a simple fix that the Go

Inheriting before_filters and naming collisionsAugust 4

I've been using Ruby on Rails on and off now for over a year for different kinds of projects. It's great for a quick prototype or creating simple web applications, but there is so much "rails magic" that goes on behind the scenes that I doubt anyone really knows how Rails works.

As a programmer, I like to know how every part of my application works, especially when I need to debug a problem when something isn't working right.

When I started working today I updated my local copy to the head revision in the repo, and after I logged into our application, I was redirected to the edit user page (this was expected), but I was shown the error "Couldn't find User without an ID". As I continued to play around, I noticed that logging in worked fine until I went to a page handled by my Users controller.

The only change since the update in the users controller was in the login method:

class UsersController def login
session[:user] = nil
end
end

The addition of the single line in it was the only change, but it makes sense; when someone accesses the log in page, the current user should probably be logged out. Since this was the only change, I removed the line, and magically everything seemed to work again.

But why would this cause the session[:user] to be set to nil whenever I hit the Users Controller. The answer to that lies within my Application Controller which users a be

13 things I would work on to make Pandora betterMay 25

Pandora is a great service, it plays music I like, and I'm often finding new music that I like. It has almost completely replaced my desktop music player when I'm at my computer.

In no particular order, here are some of my suggestions on how to improve Pandora. (Disclaimer: I use Pandora, and due to my affiliation would like to see what's best for the company)

1. Link to Wikipedia for Artist information. I found a new band I've never heard of and I like this song. Great! I go into the song menu and I click on 'Artist'. I get a a short blurb about the artist if I'm lucky, worst case I get a nearly blank page. Link to the wikipedia content, because your pages suck.
2. Don't skip songs I like. This new song is awesome! I'm going to create a new station from it (which I prefer to creating stations from artists - you get a more focused station). Wait! You found what I wanted, but you stopped playing what I was listening to and switched to the other station, and I don't get to finish th

PSA: social|median invitesMay 21

I'm sure there's more than enough of these around now, but I just received an email saying that I have 5 invites which expire on Friday May 23rd. Just use my username ryansv if you want to try out the site. I haven't used it much, but it's worth checking out.

On May 14, 2008, your socialmedian account has been specially provisioned for you to be able to invite 5 additional people to check out the socialmedian alpha. These special invites are set to expire on Friday May, 23, 2008.

To invite your friends to the socialmedian alpha, you can direct them to:

1. go to www.socialmedian.com

2. click on "create an account"

3. Instruct them to use your socialmedian username as their special invite code.

We are getting close to a public beta of socialmedian -- probably about 4-6 weeks away. Having more of your friends try the service will help us get there faster and help with the launch.

Thanks

-the socialmedian team

Friendfeed unavailableMay 11

I'm surprised I haven't seen a huge uproar from all the Scoble followers.