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cboettig / labnotebook

:notebook: Source code and version history for my online lab notebook
http://www.carlboettiger.info
Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal
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Add sha hash on vita #89

Closed cboettig closed 11 years ago

cboettig commented 11 years ago

I understand from the UCSC office that timestamping, versioning & verifiability of vitas is important. This leads them to believe that vitas must be pdfs, as the contents at a link can change continually.

While I provide a (latex-timestamped) pdf for download, we can in fact address this problem much more robustly in a online environment than we can by simply relying on downloaded pdfs with claims to their date that could be changed by intention or clerical errors.

I do this using cryptographic SHA1 hashes generated by git, as shown on the sidebar. The hash represents a cryptographic encoding of the changes made to the file. It is impossible to change the vita file without also changing the hash. By making sure the hashes match one can verify that the version of the document. The link provided at the SHA hash provides a persistent URL to the earlier version.

cboettig commented 10 years ago

For more information on my use of hashes in the notebook, see this entry: http://carlboettiger.info/2013/05/03/notebook-features-hashes-providing-an-immutable-and-verifiable-research-record.html