How experts protect themselves online. This is a really good list of how the “normal” computer users attempts to secure their information differ from how most security experts secure their systems. Glad to see that my strategy has fallen closer to the “security expert” side. Key points:
Keep your system updated
Use two-factor authentication (ie have Google, Facebook, etc send you a text message when you log into their servers from a new computer so they know it is really you – it is extra work, but makes a HUGE difference).
Use unique and strong passwords and use a password manager. The graphic breaks these down into three different areas, but really they are interrelated. Installing a program like LastPass not only lets you store all your passwords in one location but is excellent at generating new passwords – therefore you can have it create complex passwords like: g9xDJisX5F@3 that have an incredibly low likelihood of every being guessed by a brute-force attack (hack), and you can have a different password for every site you use, instead of always using the same password for multiple sites, with something that is a common word or phrase that is easy to guess.
Just stumbled upon this great video by Kalle Mattson, like the song quite a bit too, called “Avalanche”:
And since it has been a while since I’ve given this blog any love, here’s another song, Yo La Tengo covering The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love”. If there was a KRUI (college radio station I worked at) for old people, I’d have this in heavy rotation.
“The question each of us has to answer about the institution we care about is: Does this place exist to maintain and perpetuate the status quo, or am I here to do the work that the radical founder had in mind when we started?”
The worst thing about Lenovos adware isn’t the adware. Semi related: AT&T is charging customers not to spy on them. I’ve been thinking about covering the topic both these articles speak to in a class I’m taking this semester. Both incidents represent a natural progression that has been happening for some time with the economic incentives of data mining verses the personal interests of privacy, and I don’t necessarily see this changing anytime soon; rather, I’d expect it to continue to grow and become increasingly less obvious to the end user. Overall lesson: using HTTPS, VPNs, and encryption is your friend, but even that isn’t perfect.
“There’s a perverse impulse to get defensive when confronted with anything that might make us feel embarrassed or force us to admit that we maybe did something foolish or unthinking. And that defensiveness can lead us to resent or to reject the simple advice that can free us from what may turn out to be wholly avoidable and easily resolvable problems.”
A Farewell to Mallrats. Prior to this article, I’ve been thinking how malls are no longer the “third space” they were for teens 20 years ago. The article speaks of some economic factors behind this, but I also wonder about the social factors – the ways shopping centers have been policed and monitored for the last 20 or so years I think have been actively designed to keep teens away – leaving them with very little public space to freely gather anymore. The rise of social media, I think, is a direct consequence of this displacement. Since there are now so few public, physical spaces for teens to gather they have resorted to digital spaces.
Stephen Colbert talks about his faith. What I LOVE about this video is that: 1. Colbert “gets” who Peter is in Scripture 2. The discovery that he used the very same scripture for his wedding that I used in mine (and no it’s not the traditional 1 Corinthians 13):
