in Blog / Cancer on Mental health, Cancer, Nixon, Covid
An open letter to the world about healing from cancer.
Dear World Wide Web: 18 years ago, a few months shy of my 18th birthday, I was diagnosed with stage IV testicular cancer and blood clots. I am forever indebted to: the scientists, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers and professionals that saved my life; President Richard Nixon who signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 into law 50 years ago today; advocates such as Mary Lasker; survivors who spoke about their illness in the face of criticism, such as John Wayne; the philanthropists, such as Jon Huntsman Sr; scientists—who continue necessary research today—such as Mauro Ferrari; and Non-Profit organizations, such as Friends of Cancer Research. I am especially grateful for the nurses. There is a myriad of others who have fought in the War on Cancer who deserve our respect and appreciation. I give my heartfelt condolences to those who lost loved ones to this horrific disease.
How I circumvented restricted Google APIs and discovered the Chinese applications that took advantage of it on 1.2 billion+ devices.
In 2015, I was working on an Android app that needed to retrieve a list of running process names to display to the user. Upon upgrading to Android 5.0 (Lollipop) I noticed that my app no longer worked as intended. The list of processes returned my application process only. I discovered that Google deprecated getRunningTasks(int) and getRunningAppProcesses() in Android 5.0. Both of these methods now only return the caller’s application process.
SafetyNet is a data collection system used by Google to gather security-related information from 1 billion Play-enabled Android devices.
I love free public information so, when I received an email asking for help decompiling Google’s tamper detection for Android called Safety Net I decided to respond with this post.
Easter eggs, as far as software is concerned, are hidden messages, jokes, or games hidden in an application—intended to be a delightful surprise to anyone who finds them. Easter eggs can put smiles on users faces, lead to free marketing, increased interest in your application, and quality reviews.
My cancer story. Written for Stripes of a Warrior, a nonprofit organization that helps cancer patients fight cancer financially.
If you watched any cartoons in the 1990’s you are probably familiar with the animated series “Hey Arnold!” and the fictional character Eugene. Those who know me may accurately compare some of our characteristics. Like Eugene, I can be accident-prone and a nerd who tries to find the optimistic side of my general misfortunes.
