Today I learned:

Making code snippets prettier

• I did some research for Sean Nelson about making code snippets prettier without using Github’s Gist.
• This problem is already solved. Google’s Code Prettify is javascript that works parses your code pretty well and colors it.
• Put the prettyprint class on your

  tags and put this script in your document:

"https://cdn.rawgit.com/google/code-prettify/master/loader/run_prettify.js">

• I might start using this for my code snippets in the future. Right now I have some CSS styles that conflict with it, so I need to sort those out first.

VPN Connection issues

• I had VPN connection issues today. The solution was to stop using the IPSec client and start using the AnyConnect client.
• Here are the differences between the two clients. (Via Eclipse, Inc)Archived Link

Privacy Policies

I’ve been having a lot of discussions about privacy and data collection recently, both at work and with friends. This episode of What’s the Point on privacy with Kashmir Hill cleared up some common misconceptions. The main points:

• If a company’s fundamental business model is collecting data and figuring out things about you (i.e. Google and Facebook), they aren’t selling your data, but rather selling access to your attention to advertisers. They don’t want to give up your data to other people because it is such a valuable resource to them.
• Some companies who sell you physical products have a side-business selling data on what you bought and when to others.
• Privacy has become a genuine concern for companies recently, as evidenced by the rise in end-to-end encryption in consumer products like iMessage. This is worrying to some government agencies.
• If you read privacy policies, they actually tell you all the ways a company is going to violate your privacy. As long as a company doesn’t do anything they didn’t say they were going to do, they are protected.