Great paper from USENIX on the security asymmetry between writing and reading cookies (even those ones marked secure) and some practical security implications.
This is where tearing out those 999 flowers by the roots comes in. Once your engineering org gets to be a certain size the benefits you can obtain by investing in making all your engineers slightly more productive start to swamp the slight gains that one team might get from doing things their own, slightly different way. During the "let a thousand flowers bloom" phase people will have planted all kinds of exotic blossoms, some of which are lovely and even well adapted to their local micro-climate; you need to be able to decide which ones are going to be first class, nurtured members of your garden and which ones are weeds.
Microsoft is definitely working through this process right now as teams standardize development atop the tools we sell, such as Visual Studio Online.
Along with reported computer breaches of a French TV network and the White House, a number of attacks now being attributed to Russian hackers and some not previously disclosed have riveted intelligence officials as relations with Russia have deteriorated. These targets include the Polish stock market, the U.S. House of Representatives, a German steel plant that suffered severe damage and The New York Times.
They melted down an industrial steel furnace and yet people say the Internet of Things is a good idea...
Good primer from Ars Technica on the state of zero-day security research, sale, and exploitation.
By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. [...]
All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party.
That's why I'm a conservative.
Something strange is happening at America's colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.
A detailed look at how victimhood culture is hurting critical thinking skills.
On Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that requires police get a warrant to use a stingray during investigations. The devices, which are also known as cell-site simulators, are usually used to locate a phone but can also in some cases intercept calls and text messages.
The law, known as the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, imposes other sweeping new requirements to enhance digital privacy, and imposes a warrant requirement before police can access nearly any type of digital data produced by or contained within a device or service.
Huge win for California citizens and likely to effect similar changes across state legislatures.
Dr. Lee's information-gathering has saved the University of Utah money and improved patient care.
The struggle within the Republican Party right now centers on those who, figuratively speaking, want to rebuild the village and those who want to burn it down, those who want to fight irresistible demographic changes and those who want to responsibly embrace them, those who think they can win over new Americans and those who want to turn them away. There are a number of Republican presidential candidates — senators, governors and former governors — who, if given the chance, can make the Republican Party the party of aspiration instead of resentment, the party for this era instead of one seeking to reclaim a lost era.
Anger, doom, and insularism characterize the party right now.
"Our texts are fine," he said. "It's what texting does to our conversations when we are together that's the problem."
In solitude we learn to concentrate and imagine, to listen to ourselves. We need these skills to be fully present in conversation.
Sherry Turkle once again makes a compelling case that technology interrupts the interplay between solitude, empathy, and conversation.