Tag: Sunday Paper

Sunday Paper - Cloud Misconfiguration, The Standard Two Kitchen House

It seems that most cloud security lapses are due to misconfigurations.

The biggest problem is that when deploying cloud environments, many pieces need to be configured, including the routing and firewall rules that grant access to the servers being deployed, the servers themselves, and the application-level firewalls and access rules within those servers. With so many components, and with effectively non-existent security in most default configurations, it is easy to see why one or more components may be deployed in an insecure state.

Even when users go through these configurations, some settings (like access control lists or ACLs) can be extremely long and complex to manage. This means that extensive testing is required to validate each rule. When time is insufficient, insecure settings may persist. According to the Cloud Security Alliance’s report Top Threats to Cloud Computing: Egregious Eleven, [a]n absence of effective change control is a common cause of misconfiguration in a cloud environment. Cloud environments and cloud computing methodologies differ from traditional information technology (IT) in ways that make changes more difficult to control.How to Prepare for Misconfigurations Clouding the Corporate Skies

After reading articles like this one, I think of Americans as vacuous, vain, fools.

For some American families, one kitchen is apparently not enough. What is wrong with having just one kitchen? Well, people cook in kitchens, and when they cook in kitchens, they make messes, and then, to make matters worse, if their kitchen is in full view from the rest of the house—as many today are—their mess is out in the open visible as they eat their meals, hang out with their families, entertain their guests, and go about their lives.

That is why one company, Schumacher Homes of Akron, Ohio, has a fresh new design on offer: a house with an open floor plan, with its kitchen, dining area, and living room all flowing into one another. But then, behind the first kitchen, lies another. A “messy” kitchen. There, the preparation for or remainders from a meal or party can be deposited for later cleanup, out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

That this is “necessary” at all is a consequence of the rise of the open floor plan in the first place.
...
In this respect, the open plan might represent the most distinctly American home design possible: to labor in vain against ever-rising demands, imposed mostly by our own choices, all the while insisting that, actually, we love it. It’s a prison, but at least it’s one without walls.The Curse of an Open Floor Plan by Ian Bogost

Sunday Paper - Cybersecurity, Writing, Molecular Coffee, NJ Transit, Fish Tube, Stop Being Positive

Jim Grey on how he can write a new blog post almost every day.

I write about whatever I want — it’s a personal blog after all. Anything is subject fodder. I write about photography and cameras a lot because it’s a lifelong interest and I’ve found my largest, most engaged audience there. Yes, I pander shamelessly to you film photographers!Jim Grey

Some people just want all the profit for themselves.

Lab engineered coffee means nothing good for the environment or humanity, least of all for the farmers upon whose livelihood the coffee trade depends. It means only more money for western tech dorks with Mike Judge Silicon Valley sounding start-up names, and less delicious product in the cup.“Molecular” Coffee Just Got A $2.6M Investment From The Impossible Burger

I commuted less into Lower Manhattan this summer, and I'm fortunate I had that option.

Last year was dubbed the “summer of hell” for NJ Transit riders due to track work in Penn Station New York.

But riders say the commute last year was almost heavenly, compared to the almost daily purgatory of canceled trains and severe overcrowding that has plagued NJ Transit this summer.Larry Higgs at nj.com

For employers, it's challenging to find qualified information security professionals, mostly because those same employers are not willing to train the next generation. Most experience professionals, including myself, have worked in the field for decades and have had to fund our training.

According to the study, 42% of respondents planning to see out their careers in cybersecurity have a bachelor’s degree and 33% a master’s degree.Most Cyber Workers Plan to See Out Their Careers in the Field

The "Fish Tube" is cooler than Elon Musk's Hyperloop.

In a video that went viral over the weekend, a man in a bright-yellow rubber suit, standing chest-deep in the Columbia River, in Washington State, grabs a hefty salmon from the water and loads the fish into a chute. The fish suddenly shoots upward, through a rubbery, translucent sleeve—the “fish tube,” as the Internet decided to call it, which is a contraption that evokes a rollercoaster and a luge, if those things were constructed out of a slippery, rubbery material, kind of like the silicon used to make nonstick cookware. You see the fish’s silhouette wagging along against a desert-mountain backdrop, as if it were still swimming—but now it’s in the sky, over the dam, barrelling back down, and then splash, back into the water. The narrative arc, in one minute flat.The Nihilistic Euphoria of the Fish Tube

Is your glass half-empty or half-full?

Things aren’t mutually exclusive, awesome or awful. Mostly they’re both, and if we poke around our thoughts and feelings, we can see multiple angles. To Hamlet, Denmark was a dungeon. But the real prison was his thinking, as he admitted.

Neutrality sets us free. It helps us see something more like the truth, what’s happening, instead of experiencing circumstances in relation to expectations and desires. This provides clarity and eliminates obstacles, making things neither awesome nor awful but cool.

It can even lead to illumination. In fact, abandoning duality is the way to enlightenment in the Taoist and Zen Buddhist traditions. Truth has no this or that. The path has no ordinary or holy, said Zen master Fu-Jung 1,000 years ago.Stop Being Positive and Just Cultivate Neutrality For Existential Cool

Sunday Paper - Privatizing Censorship

The End of the Free Internet Is Near by Declan Mccullagh (Reason.com)

So far, at least, the U.S. government has yet to appoint a chief censor. But Silicon Valley's coastal elites have been eager to volunteer their services gratis.

The last year has marked a dispiriting new low in the "deplatforming," or banning from various online channels, of dissident voices. The ax fell on Infowars' Alex Jones, actor James Woods, the editorial director of AntiWar.com, the director of the Ron Paul Institute, and radio talk show host Jesse Kelly. (Some of these accounts have since been reinstated.)

Lawmakers have encouraged these social media bans. Congressional hearings have been called to interrogate tech execs on how their products are being used. Last August, Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) urged an even broader crackdown, proclaiming on Twitter that "the survival of our democracy depends on it."

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D–Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, must have been listening. In March, Thompson sent a letter to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft insisting that they remove "toxic and violent" content, even if it is legal to distribute in the United States. (The platforms already prohibit illegal content.) If the companies are "unwilling" to do so voluntarily, Thompson warned, Congress will "consider policies" to compel their cooperation. Left unexplained was how any such requirement could comply with the First Amendment.

The idea that the internet should enjoy minimal government oversight precisely because it was a technology that enabled open and free speech for everyone has been turned on its head. #indieweb

The End of the Free Internet Is Near by Declan Mccullagh (Reason.com)

So far, at least, the U.S. government has yet to appoint a chief censor. But Silicon Valley's coastal elites have been eager to volunteer their services gratis.

The last year has marked a dispiriting new low in the "deplatforming," or banning from various online channels, of dissident voices. The ax fell on Infowars' Alex Jones, actor James Woods, the editorial director of AntiWar.com, the director of the Ron Paul Institute, and radio talk show host Jesse Kelly. (Some of these accounts have since been reinstated.)

Lawmakers have encouraged these social media bans. Congressional hearings have been called to interrogate tech execs on how their products are being used. Last August, Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) urged an even broader crackdown, proclaiming on Twitter that "the survival of our democracy depends on it."

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D–Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, must have been listening. In March, Thompson sent a letter to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft insisting that they remove "toxic and violent" content, even if it is legal to distribute in the United States. (The platforms already prohibit illegal content.) If the companies are "unwilling" to do so voluntarily, Thompson warned, Congress will "consider policies" to compel their cooperation. Left unexplained was how any such requirement could comply with the First Amendment.