Recently a colleague of mine posed a twist on a basic algorithms question. It’s easy to see that the worst-case performance to check if a random n-length array is sorted is O(n). But what is the average performance? Is it still linear? Sublinear? Is it a function of the length at all? Continue

At a university where most classes use Java, familiarity with the shell seems Bernoulli-distributed: you either customize to your heart’s desire or not at all. That means that many people can increase their productivity in the shell with only basic aliases, functions, and other simple tricks. Using the Z shell, we’ll start with the low-hanging fruit by installing Oh My Zsh, move on to theme customization, and conclude with an introduction to shell functions. Welcome to the world of shell fu. Continue

Since the Snowden leaks, revelations about government cyberweapons have the public talking about metadata collection. I began to wonder how easy it would be for anybody to collect metadata on a standard WiFi network. Enter Wireshark… Continue