Every site nowadays has a username/password login and that is problematic. Google plus and Facebook OAuth2 login exists, but it’s coverage is not 100% and there are privacy concerns. Luckily there is an alternative that has 100% coverage and no privacy concerns. So, let’s stop using passwords. This post will explain how. Single field login Your login form should be: Email: __________ [OK] That’s it! You will receive an email containing a link that you can click to be logged in. The link contains a JSON Web Token (JWT) with the claims “username” and “ip” and is signed by the website with a user specific secret (generated password). ...

In this post we will be installing Microsoft .net Core SDK and Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu Linux and create high performance HTTP end-point in C# on which you can build a micro-service (or anything else). Runtime installation Follow instructions on https://www.microsoft.com/net/core#ubuntu: sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://apt-mo.trafficmanager.net/repos/dotnet-release/ xenial main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dotnetdev.list' sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 417A0893 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install dotnet-dev-1.0.0-preview2-003131 This instructions are for Ubuntu 16.04, but other operating systems are supported as well. ...

PHP-CRUD-API is a single PHP file that provides an instant powerful and consistent REST API for a MySQL, PostgreSQL or MS SQL Server databases. It now supports spatial/GIS columns and filters. PHP-CRUD-API uses reflection to “detect” the table structure and then provides an API without requiring you to write code. Spatial data is automatically detected (both on input and output) and converted from and to Well-Known-Text (WKT) format. Example If you want to find the country of a specific location: ...

Programming in JavaScript is free. Free as in “free speech”, but also free as in “free beer”. There are no fees to pay for platforms, tools or run-times. Still the choice for JavaScript too expensive to make as it increases the cost of development both from a personal and a product point-of-view. The main cause for this is that the ecosystem is changing so rapidly that both people and products are struggling to keep up. ...

A few days ago, a colleague pointed out some unexpected behavior in JavaScript. After a few hours of investigation this weekend I think I have found the cause: a bug in boolean comparison. This post shows my investigation and will help you to reach that same conclusion. A tricky question What does the following expressions evaluate to? > [] && [] == false true Yes, it is “true”! If you don’t believe me, try it. The question that is addressed in the remainder of this post is: “Really? Why?!” ...

I have been doing an online (MOOC) Scala programming course via Coursera. It is a free very well-constructed and challenging course taught by prof. Martin Odersky (the creator of Scala) at the EFPL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. I have finished it within a few weeks and have now started 2 of the 4 follow-up Scala courses to further sharpen my Scala skills. Free Scala programming courses The following links allow you to sign up for the 5 individual courses for free: ...

I’ve found a document on the web titled “The Tao of Programming” that contains IT wisdom. It was copied and translated by Geoffrey James who found it on a NASA website with URL “http://misspiggy.gsfc.nasa.gov/tao.html" (not responding anymore). Below you find my three favorite IT wisdoms from the document. 1. Development team wisdom A manager went to the Master Programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application. The manager asked the Master: “How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?” ...

Agile development is all about reducing “waste” (bureaucracy) and optimizing the percentage of development effort in the process. This makes sense, even for larger organizations to improve the effectiveness of their software development. Startups on the other hand need even less process as value creation is really all that matters. For these organizations Extreme Agile (or ‘Developer Anarchy’ as Fred George calls it) may be a good fit. Bureaucracy is a good thing Larger organizations want to have process that ensures consistent quality and reduces risk of failure. Certifications like ISO 9001 and 27001 require that you have written down your process and that you follow this closely. They may not be helped with an Agile process that steers towards a flatter, more efficient organization where roles are combined to ensure minimal procedural overhead (hand-overs). ...

More and more people use ad blockers and more and more sites try detect them. Sites say that their visitors are stealing their content, by not “paying” by viewing ads, while visitors claim that sites do not comply with the law and blocking third party contents is the only way to protect their privacy when using the Internet. Nothing against ads I have nothing against ads, but the practices of the “ad tech” industry are appalling. The “ad tech” industry mainly consists of ad “brokers”. The most well-known player in that market is “Google ads”. Some of these brokers (if not all) allow their clients to run scripts on the sites the site owners request ads for. ...

The use of torrents is controversial, unless you download Linux (disk/install) images. I have recently been trying many Linux distributions (distros) related to the 16.04 release of Ubuntu. For downloading them I have used torrents and I’m proud that my ratio is above 1. This means that I have uploaded more than I downloaded. Below is a list of some of the best Linux distributions that I tried out and my first impression of them. This is my top 10: ...