Implementing a web server in a single printf() call
clever hack — shellcode in a format string
(tags: printf hax coding web shellcode exploits assembly linux)
Ucas sells access to student data for phone and drinks firms’ marketing | Technology | The Guardian
The UK government’s failure to deal with spam law in a consumer-friendly way escalates further: UCAS, the university admissions service, is operating as a mass-mailer of direct marketing on behalf of Vodafone, O2, Microsoft, Red Bull and others, without even a way to later opt out from that spam without missing important admissions-related mail as a side effect. ‘Teenagers using Ucas Progress must explicitly opt in to mailings from the organisation and advertisers, though the organisation’s privacy statement says: “We do encourage you to tick the box as it helps us to help you.”‘ Their website also carries advertising, and the details of parents are sold on to advertisers as well. Needless to say, the toothless ICO say they ‘did not appear to breach marketing rules under the privacy and electronic communications regulations’, as usual. Typical ICO fail.
(tags: ucas advertising privacy data-protection opt-in opt-out spam direct-marketing vodafone o2 microsoft red-bull uk universities grim-meathook-future ico)
Good explanation of exponential backoff
I’ve often had to explain this key feature verbosely, and it’s hard to do without handwaving. Great to have a solid, well-explained URL to point to
(tags: exponential-backoff backoff retries reliability web-services http networking internet coding design)