Pistachio Musings?
About
  • Apr 26, 2021

    April 1, 2021 RFC

    🚨 Establishing the Protocol Police.
  • Apr 21, 2021

    Running Jekyll locally on MacBook M1

    Fixing Jekyll architecture issues.
  • Apr 21, 2021

    FLoCBlock

    Chrome extension to prevent Federated Learning of Cohorts aka FLoC ad-targeting code from running in Chrome.
  • Feb 21, 2021

    Solving Sudoku using Knuth's Algorithm X

    Have had this post on representing Sudoku puzzles as exact cover problems in my drafts for a long time.
  • Sep 2, 2020

    How to generate a TLS pin from a key or certificate

    Given a key or a certificate, how to generate a TLS pin for key-pinning purposes.
  • May 15, 2020

    Consent in Contact Tracing

    Arguably the most fundamental principle when it comes to automated contact tracing
  • May 8, 2020

    Contact Tracing vs. Exposure Notification

    Some musings on the differences between (assisted) contact tracing and exposure notification.
  • Mar 4, 2020

    Naming map variables

    Mapping meaning to names is hard
  • Dec 30, 2019

    Keeping in touch

    Current strategy for keeping in touch with friends & family.
  • Apr 7, 2019

    PEARG @ IETF 104

    IETF 104 was last week, and I've been trying to find the time and (mental-)space to do a mind-dump about it.
  • Feb 4, 2019

    2018 - a review

    This year was interesting.
  • Jul 30, 2018

    Radio

    Short rant on radios.
  • Jul 26, 2018

    Privacy and consent in the age of browsers: The question of WebRTC

    Examining browser-based user consent using WebRTC as a case study.
  • Mar 21, 2018

    Ethereum scam on Brian Acton's #deletefacebook tweet

    A scammer impersonating Brian Acton posted an 'Ethereum giveaway' on his #deletefacebook tweet.
  • Jul 14, 2017

    How to figure out why users hate your Chrome Extension

    Get user feedback through Google Forms.
  • Jul 3, 2017

    Zero-length arrays in C have to go at the end of the struct

    Why C makes me appreciate the other things in life.
  • Mar 1, 2017

    Brief intro to NFA, DFA and regexes

    Some notes on automata theory.
  • Feb 18, 2017

    TheNews

    Read the latest headline every time you open a new tab.
  • Jan 7, 2017

    Typewriter

    Generate pretty typewriter-style images from text.
  • Dec 7, 2016

    'Clean your desk' : My Amazon interview experience

    The normalization of privacy violation.
  • Oct 6, 2016

    Redirect loops and Wi-Fi login pages: Getting around VIA Rail's stupid network configuration

    Spoofing MAC addresses for fun and profit.
  • Sep 30, 2016

    git fresh

    Git alias to quickly start developing new feature.
  • May 18, 2016

    Writing a compiler for a DSL in Haskell using Parsec

    This winter, I took Compiler Design with Prof Laurie Hendren.

  • Dec 14, 2015

    Markdown to PDF in Vim

    An exercise in yak-shaving.
  • Dec 2, 2015

    Moxie

    Today I got an email from Moxie Marlinspike. Even if it was just an email saying they don’t hire interns, it made my week.

  • Nov 3, 2015

    Boingo HotSpot security loophole

    TL;DR: Illustratory/educational post showing how I was able to tweak the URL to get unlimited Wi-Fi at a Boingo HotSpot at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

  • Oct 14, 2015

    HackMcGill

    I recently published HackMcGill’s inaugural post on Medium. Check it out.

  • Jul 21, 2015

    Finding min and max in MongoDB with null fields

    If looking for the minimum value for a field in MongoDB, use this command:

  • Jun 28, 2015

    aliasify

    Laziness.
  • Jun 10, 2015

    PrettyPrintGmail

    Many months back, Deepanjan and I worked on this small Chrome Extension to print emails in Gmail prettily i.e. without unnecessary cruft like the Gmail logo, etc.

  • Mar 15, 2015

    FrontPageOfScience

    Last night I realized I had completely forgotten how to use Heroku.

  • Mar 4, 2015

    Authentication Certificate Rejected Locally error while trying to connect to wifi on Chromebook

    While trying to connect to McGill’s wifi recently on my Chromebook I ran into an “Authentication Certificate Rejected Locally” error. Given that there is zero support for Chromebooks on the McGill IT pages, it took me a while to figure it out.

  • Feb 28, 2015

    HashMaps

    TL;DR: I made HashMaps, a Chrome Extension to search Google Maps from your address bar.

  • Jan 7, 2015

    Running a script in ChromeOS

    I was trying to run a script in order to circumvent inane rules that my country comes up with on my Chromebook, but for some reason I wasn’t able to do the regular

  • Jan 6, 2015

    Editing Read-Only files on Chromebook

    Whilst playing around with my Chromebook, I had occasion to want to use Google’s Public DNS instead of my ISP’s, because my ISP just went insane and blocked GitHub. I kinda need GitHub (kinda), so I wanted to change the DNS settings on my Chromebook.

  • Dec 30, 2014

    Running Chrome Remote Desktop service on waking up host

    I use Chrome Remote Desktop service to connect from my Chromebook to my main laptop. However, there is a problem: whenever I put my laptop to sleep, I need to restart the service manually.

  • Dec 29, 2014

    Sending email from your McGill email using Gmail

    This post is targeted towards McGill students.

  • Dec 28, 2014

    First post from my Chromebook

    Hey hey hey!

  • Dec 28, 2014

    Connecting to a Linux box using Chrome Remote Desktop

    As mentioned in the previous post, I recently got a Chromebook for Christmas. The plan was to use it for general browsing and writing blog posts, and connecting to my main (heavy) laptop for more serious developmental work. I was looking at Chrome Remote Desktop as a way of doing that.

  • Dec 26, 2014

    How to install Tuareg Mode on Emacs without needing a hair transplant

    Over last semester, I was introduced to OCaml via a class on Functional Programming. The class was fantastic; if you’re at McGill and have any say in your curriculum (aka you’re not in Engineering), I highly recommend taking it ASAP. And try taking it with Brigitte Pientka.

  • Dec 26, 2014

    New Post script

    I recently began working with Jekyll, and I love it. It’s the elusive Goldilocks blend of technical vs non-so, Convention Over Configuration vs The Other Way Around. I’ve liked it so much that I’ve even installed a Sublime Text package called MarkdownEditing which I now use for all my writing (it’s so pretty!).

  • ShivanKaul
  • shivan_kaul

My thoughts on topics in the power set of {software, engineering, privacy, writing}.