The Wood Wide Web

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I am a big fan of metaphors. I believe that there are a lot of complex ideas, in fields like biology, technology, and literature, that are hard to communicate without using metaphors to describe them. Today, I am going to be using an ecological phenomenon I  recently learned about, the mycorrhizal network, to look at the complex connections that we create, and to analyze how we, as individuals, relate to the world around us.  

Redefining Android UI Development with Jetpack Compose

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At Google I/O 2019, Google announced that they were working on a new toolkit, Jetpack Compose, which would redesign how user interfaces (UI) are developed on the Android platform. In August 2020, the alpha version of Jetpack Compose was released. In this post, I will be examining how Compose differs from the current Android UI toolkits, and will discuss the benefits that the new program will bring to Android UI development. 

Ayuda.la: My Personal Protection Project

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Here in Mexico, we have recently experienced a serious rise in personal security issues. People have been kidnapped in their taxis and rideshares, or have increasingly found themselves in situations where they feel unsafe on the street. I wanted to do something to help so I created Ayuda.la, a mobile app designed to help people when they find themselves in dangerous situations. 

Death of the Password: An Introduction to WebAuthn

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Last week, I received an email from Google stating that my email and password had been leaked in a recent data breach. Like many people, I’m guilty of reusing the same password for multiple accounts, so the leak had compromised my information in a number of different locations. I was advised to change all of my passwords and to use different passwords for each of my important accounts. 

Will Deepfakes Destabilize Democracy?

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For the last couple years, I have periodically heard the term “deepfake videos”, but prior to completing the research for this post, I didn’t know much about them. In fact, my knowledge of deepfake videos was limited to a few key facts that I’d heard repeated on the news and the internet: the average person can’t tell the difference between a real video and a deepfake video, anyone with a computer can make one, they will soon be everywhere, and they will definitely destabilize democracy. 

How the Zigbee Specification is Shaping the Internet of Things

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Zigbee is an open source spec for Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) communication that allows Zigbee-certified products to connect and communicate using the same IoT language. Companies that utilize and support Zigbee are part of the Zigbee Alliance. To date, the Zigbee Alliance contains over 500 companies, all of which work together to create and utilize Zigbee in their product design. Some of the most noticeable companies in the Zigbee Alliance include Comcast, Honeywell, IKEA, Legrand, Samsung SmartThings, and Amazon.

Discovering Nginx: A Developer’s Guide to Maximizing Your Web Server Potential

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Nginx is something that most software developers have used at some point in their careers. However, there is a difference between working with Nginx and really understanding it. Nginx offers many advanced features that most people are not aware of and, therefore, not utilizing.

In this post, I’ll go over some of the unique features that Nginx offers and how they can help you take your web application to the next level. 

Modeling User Interfaces with Statecharts

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As developers and designers, we are creating new things every day. I like to say that we are really good at making the impossible possible. In fact, some of us are so good at it, that we actually do it unintentionally. These unintentional outcomes that occur when we are creating code are called “impossible states.” 

An Introduction to the Internet of Things

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“Smart” technology is quickly emerging in all areas of our lives. From smartphones to smart televisions, refrigerators, watches, and even dog collars, it seems like everything around us is being connected to the internet. This phenomenon is known as the Internet of Things (IoT).