Google on Micha Kops' Tech Notes

CVE Scanning and Guided Remediation with OSV Scanner

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Figure 1. OSV Scanner

Security is a critical aspect of software development, and staying ahead of vulnerabilities is essential for us application developers. Google’s OSV Scanner is a powerful tool that helps detect vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies.

This article will guide us through setting up and using OSV Scanner to secure our projects, scan for invalid licenses, scan OCI images and finally how to fix findings via guided remediation.

Importing a Sitemap XML into Google Sheets

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The Goal

In the following short article, we want to import data from an existing sitemap XML file into a new Google Sheet document.

The sheet must pull the sitemap via HTTP protocol and extract all the URLs from the sitemap and insert them. into the sheet.

Implementation

Now let’s implement it .. it only takes 1 minute …

For demonstration purpose, I’m going to use the sitemap from my old blog, to be found at https://www.hascode.com/sitemap.xml.

Factory Reset for Google Pixel-C Android Tablet

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0200

Steps

Reboot the system by pressing "Power" and "Volume down" simultaneously
Boot menu should appear, use "Volume up/down" to select the menu item "Android Recovery", "Power" to confirm
System reboots, a screen appears with a message "No command" - this is no error though it looks like one
Press "Power" and "Volume up" together and a menu "Android Recovery" appears
Use "Volume up/down" to select the menu item "Wipe data/factory reset", "Power" to confirm
User data on the device is deleted and the original meu is shown
Select the menu item "Reboot system now" and confirm by pressing the "Power" Button
The device reboots and you may configure the Android system …

Distributed Authorization and Contextual Caveats for Java with Macaroons and jmacaroons

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Google’s Macaroons are a mechanism to establish distributed authorization. The distinction to the classical bearer-token is their ability that they may be used to perform an action under certain restrictions and may then be used to create a new macaroon with stricter restrictions.

The following short tutorial demonstrates how to create macaroons, serialize and deserialize them, add first- and third-party caveats and finally to verify them.

Figure 1. jmacaroons example

Creating In-Memory File Systems with Google’s Jimfs

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0100

Sometimes when writing an application we might consider using an in-memory file system to speed up data access or to create some kind of cache.

There are different libraries to help us here but one looks especially promising for me because it supports almost every functionality of the Java NIO File APIs added in Java 7 – from creating, reading, deleting files and directory to handling symbolic and hard links or watching directory changes with a WatchService.

How to create an Android App using Google’s App Inventor

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Today we’re going to take a look at Google’s App Inventor feature that offers programming-novices a nice possibility to enter the fabulous world of Android App programming without deeper knowledge of the API or complex SDK installations.

So lets build some stuff ..

Prerequisites

Java 6 JDK
App Inventors Extras Software
A Google App Inventor Beta Account – request one here

What we are going to build

We are building a simple GUI with a Textbox and a button
A click on the button starts an event that queries the acceleration sensor for coordinates
If the sensor is active and enabled then the coordinates are displayed in the text box

A look at Google’s Protocol Buffers

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0200

Protocol Buffers are a serialization format developed by Google- you might ask if another IDL is really needed here – is Google barking at the wrong tree?

But protocol buffers offer some advantages over data serialization via XML or JSON – Google says they (compared to XML)..

are 3 to 10 times smaller
are 20 to 100 times faster
provide generated data access classes for programmatic use
provide backward compatibility

Google Docs Snippets

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Importing XML Data in Google Sheets

Use the XMLIMPORT function

The syntax is XMLIMPORT("url", "xpath")

e.g. for importing an XML sitemap

=IMPORTXML("https://www.hascode.com/sitemap.xml", "//\*[local-name()='url']/*[local-name()='loc']")

Select the preceding cell in Google Sheets

=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())

Create a Todo List Counter in Google Sheets

Each empty cell is a todo, each filled cell is done.

That allows us the following output, that counts all preceding cells of each type:

="Done: "&(COUNTA(B3:INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())))&" Todo: " &COUNTIF(B3:INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW()-1,COLUMN())),""))

This outputs a label like "Done: 35 Todo: 142"