Dependencies between modules can trigger ripple effects when changes are made, making maintenance complex and costly, so minimizing these dependencies is crucial. Consequently, understanding what drives dependencies is important. One potential factor is code smells, which are symptoms in code that indicate design issues and reduce code quality. When multiple code smells interact through static dependencies, their combined impact on quality can be even more severe. While individual code smells have been widely studied, the influence of their interactions remains underexplored. In this study, we aim to investigate whether and how the distribution of static dependencies changes in the presence of code smell interactions. We conducted a dependency analysis on 116 open-source Java systems to quantify these interactions by comparing cases where code smell interactions exist and where they do not. Our results suggest that overall, code smell interactions are linked to a significant increase in total dependencies in 28 out of 36 cases, and that all code smells are associated with a consistent change direction (increase or decrease) in certain dependency types when interacting with other code smells. Consequently, this information can be used to support more accurate code smell detection and prioritization, as well as to develop more effective refactoring strategies.

Although JavaScript (JS) has been widely used in mobile development, little is known about the security implications of utilizing JS engines shipped as native app libraries. In this paper, we conduct an empirical study by designing a JS-Inspector pipeline to identify the embedded JS engines in Android apps and assess their security. We investigate over 65,000 Android apps released between Jan 2018 and July 2023. The results show that many popular apps use embedded JS engines, and their engines remain outdated for extended periods. Moreover, approximately 85% of apps have not received updates since their initial release. As such, over 70% of the identified embedded engines are vulnerable to known exploits. We further present case studies of popular apps catering to millions of users. By exploiting their unpatched JS engines through various strategies, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, intent abuse, and malicious mini-apps, we can easily seize control of the targeted apps and execute arbitrary code. This work highlights critical security concerns associated with embedded JS engines. It emphasizes the urgency for timely updates and enhanced security measures during app development.

Electronic paper (e-paper) is a display technology that aims to imitate conventional paper. Currently most e-paper applications on handheld devices are restricted to digital book readers. Few studies explore the potential of e-paper on input oriented applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel e-paper application PaperWork, which allows users to offload their commonly used office applications from a PC to an e-paper device remotely. There are considerable challenges when building a system for a resource constrained e-paper device which we will highlight in this work. In addition to presenting a new e-paper system we also conduct a usability study of this system.

The text processing tool LATEX has prevailed as a standard in many fields of exact sciences; it is evident that LATEX is likely to be here to stay. From that perspective, it is important to explore what are the best possible ways to support the author in efficiently editing documents. There have been several approaches that provide graphical editing support for LATEX. We argue that a true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach is a justified requirement for future systems and we present here the first cloud-based true WYSIWYG editor. This allows the author to edit the document in its print form directly in a web-based PDF viewer. Building such a system creates unique challenges compared to existing approaches. We identify these challenges and name workable solutions. We also provide a usability evaluation of the new system. In short our finding is that editing LATEX directly in the PDF view is possible for a wide range of edits and valuable for many major user groups and use cases; hence it is a fair requirement for future top-of-the-line LATEX editors.