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Simon Willison

Biography

Simon Willison is a seasoned Web developer from the UK. He specializes in both client-and server-side development, and is the co-creator of the Django framework for JavaScript.

Blog

Simon's blog posts are hosted at:
http://simonwillison.net/

IE 6 and 7 hit by hack attack code

November 22 2009

IE 6 and 7 hit by hack attack code. IE6 and 7 have what looks like a buffer overflow vulnerability caused by a strange intersection of CSS, innerHTML and large JavaScript arrays. No exploits in the wild yet but it’s only a matter of time. read more

Major IE8 flaw makes 'safe' sites unsafe

November 22 2009

Major IE8 flaw makes ’safe’ sites unsafe. IE8 has an XSS protection feature which rewrites potentially harmful code in HTML pages—I think it looks for suspicious input in query strings which appears to have been output directly on the page. Unfortunately it turns out there’s a flaw in the feature… read more

A quote from Paul Graham

November 19 2009

Programmers don’t use launch-fast-and-iterate out of laziness. They use it because it yields the best results. By obstructing that process, Apple is making them do bad work, and programmers hate that as much as Apple would. - Paul Graham read more

Chromium OS User Experience

November 19 2009

Chromium OS User Experience. The 2 minute UI concept video is probably the best way to understand the ideas behind Google’s Chrome OS. read more

A quote from Joe Gregorio

November 19 2009

Authority, historically, gets bestowed on the gatekeepers of information, such as Britannica, universities, newspapers, etc. Everything that can be digitized will be digitized, and will then be available over the internet, which is disruptive, not only to business models, but to authority. - Joe Gregorio read more

Simple CouchDB multi-master clustering via Nginx

November 19 2009

Simple CouchDB multi-master clustering via Nginx. An impressive combination. CouchDB can be easily set up in a multi-master configuration, where writes to one master are replicated to the other and vice versa. This makes setting up a reliable CouchDB cluster is as simple as putting two such servers behind a… read more

The OS Opportunity

November 19 2009

The OS Opportunity. John Gruber repeats his argument that PC makers should create their own OSes, and points out that compatibility concerns are less important than they’ve ever been because “the Web provides us with a core set of software and APIs that work everywhere”. read more

Announcing Kong: A server description and deployment testing tool

November 18 2009

Announcing Kong: A server description and deployment testing tool. An ultra simple website monitoring tool written in Django which makes it easy to manage a list of Twill scripts for testing different sites. It was developed at the Lawrence Journal-World—Eric showed me a demo if this a year or so… read more

Debugging in Python

November 18 2009

Debugging in Python. The missing manual for Python’s powerful pdb debugger. read more

A quote from Anil Dash

November 18 2009

It’s clear that, even those who are privileged by access and wealth and the ability to amplify their own voices have anticipated that we’ll all be disenfranchised by the private companies that own and control our networks of communication. And yet, most of our effort and ambition in the technology… read more

Deep Tracing of Internet Explorer

November 18 2009

Deep Tracing of Internet Explorer. dynaTrace Ajax looks like an awesome tool. For once, Internet Explorer has a development tool that other browsers can be jealous of. read more

Me and Belle de Jour - 'Could it be Brooke?'

November 18 2009

Me and Belle de Jour—’Could it be Brooke?’ (via). Lovely piece of internet detective work and UK blogging history. Darren from LinkMachineGo figured out Bell de Jour’s identity right back in the start, based on his knowledge of the early UK blogging scene. Not only did he keep the secret,… read more

Re-mapping the future for Ordnance Survey - making public data public

November 17 2009

Re-mapping the future for Ordnance Survey—making public data public. “The Prime Minister and Communities Secretary John Denham will today announce that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from next year, as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve transparency.” read more

node.js at JSConf.eu (PDF)

November 17 2009

node.js at JSConf.eu (PDF). node.js creator Ryan Dahl’s presentation at this year’s JSConf.eu. The principle philosophy is that I/O in web applications should be asynchronous—for everything. No blocking for database calls, no blocking for filesystem access. JavaScript is a mainstream programming language with a culture of callback APIs (thanks to… read more

A quote from Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain

November 17 2009

About 80 per cent of public sector data mentions a place. Making Ordnance Survey data more freely available will encourage more effective exploitation of public data by businesses, individuals and community organisations. - Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain read more