ericlaw

Email Etiquette: Avoid BCC’ing large distribution lists

While Microsoft corporate culture has evolved over the years, and the last twenty years have seen the introduction of new mass communication mechanisms like Yammer and Teams, we remain an email heavy company. Many product teams have related “Selfhost” or “Discussions” aliases (aka “Discussion Lists” or DLs) to which thousands of employees subscribe so theyContinue reading “Email Etiquette: Avoid BCC’ing large distribution lists”

Fiddler Web Debugger Turns 20

Twenty years ago (!!?!) was the first official release of Fiddler. I still run Fiddler for some task or another almost every working day. I still run my version (Fiddler Classic) although some of the newer tools in the Fiddler Universe are compelling for non-Windows platforms. I presented some slides in a birthday celebration thatContinue reading “Fiddler Web Debugger Turns 20”

Security Tradeoffs: Privacy

In a recent post, I explored some of the tradeoffs engineers must make when evaluating the security properties of a given design. In this post, we explore an interesting tradeoff between Security and Privacy in the analysis of web traffic. Many different security features and products attempt to protect web browsers from malicious sites byContinue reading “Security Tradeoffs: Privacy”

Security: Tradeoffs

Absolute security is simple– put your PC in a well-guarded vault, and never power it on. But that’s not what PCs are built for, and good luck finding a job that would pay you for such advice. Security Engineering (like all engineering) is a story of tradeoffs. Tradeoffs commonly take place across multiple dimensions: AsContinue reading “Security: Tradeoffs”

Web Platform Weirdness: Babies and Bathwater

When moving from other development platforms to the web, developers often have a hard time understanding why the web platform seems so … clunky. In part, that’s because the platform is pretty old at this point (>25 years as an app platform), partly because changes in form factors and paradigms (particular mobile) have introduced newContinue reading “Web Platform Weirdness: Babies and Bathwater”