Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

With the growing reliance on AI-assisted coding, managing application security is more critical than ever, as humans ultimately have to own the code they are responsible for. As the authors of Software Security for Developers note early on: "While developers often focus on libraries, frameworks, and tools at the mid-level, true security stems from foundational knowledge of standards, protocols, and patterns, as well as adherence to corporate and industry security practices." The first section provides the big picture and does a good job of explaining the high-level security vocabulary of modern software systems, which is further unraveled in subsequent chapters. The following sections move into deep cryptography primitives (AES, RSA, ECC), implementing secure transport layers (mTLS, X.509 certificates), and mastering enterprise-grade identity patterns like OAuth2, OpenID Connect (OIDC), PKCE, WebAuthn, and microservice call-chain authorization. The code examples are Java-cen...

If you directly paste raw Markdown syntax (like bold or # Heading), Word treats it as plain text. To get properly styled text (headings, bold, lists, tables), you need to convert or render the Markdown first. Here are some ways to maintain formatting when copying Markdown content into Microsoft Word: 1. The Preview / Rich Text Method  If you use a Markdown editor (such as VS Code, Obsidian, Typora, or Joplin), you can use its rendered preview to copy formatted text. Open your Markdown file in your editor. Toggle the Preview Mode (in VS Code , press Ctrl + Shift + V or Cmd + Shift + V). Select and highlight the rendered text in the preview pane. Copy it (Ctrl + C) and paste it directly into Microsoft Word (Ctrl + V). Word will recognize it as Rich Text, converting headers, lists, and bold text perfectly. 2. Using an Online Converter (Quickest for one-offs) If you don't use a dedicated Markdown editor, you can let a web browser do the heavy lifting: Copy your raw Markdown text. Paste...

This Week I Learned -  * Vertex AI has been rebranded and evolved. Google officially replaced and expanded it under the name Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.  This change marks a major structural shift for Google Cloud, moving away from a traditional MLOps platform (focused on training and deploying standalone models) toward an "Agentic AI" ecosystem.   * Turkey based HubX Studios used Gemma 4 to build BetterSpeak, an AI English tutoring platform that uses the Gemma 4 E2B model as the reasoning engine for its on-device pipeline — enabling private, low-latency tutoring without the need for an internet connection. HubX deployed the 4-bit quantized version of the model to handle tasks like grammar explanations and progress monitoring across languages. By using Gemma 4’s native audio input capabilities, HubX’s app is able to support direct speech-to-speech learning , while reducing costs and ensuring privacy. * Midjourney, the AI lab best known for image generation...