onfocus

This looks like a nice stab at making public key cryptography more user-friendly.

Good list of ideas for setting up secure systems at AWS.

More lessons learned from hosting at AWS.

Trying to mitigate all of the known SSL exploits is a challenge. This document is a good summary of current best practices.

Remember your friend from the Cold War, existential terror? It's back in Eric Schlosser's new book. This is a great talk he gave about it. "The consciousness of our nuclear arsenal vanished, but the danger has never left us."

"To the engineers, I say this: we built the internet, and some of us have helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it."

Mat Honan is experiencing a nightmare cascade failure of interconnected services. This is a good reminder to back things up and make sure your passwords are unique for each service.

Some good information here about using Google's iOS Authenticator app to implement 2-factor authentication at any website.

"Sears used to sell houses by mail." Someone please put old catalog pictures side by side with modern pictures of those houses still in use.

"From now on, when I want to visit Facebook, I’ll be using the private browser setting in whatever browser I’m using." This is my new strategy too. What a hassle.

ok, this is worth getting upset over. Update (9/28): Facebook Fixes and Explains.

Ben discusses Moore's law, Internet = Modernity, and changing expectations. I love the "translator" metaphor to describe our generation that has lived in both Internet and non-Internet worlds.

Interesting look at "password padding" to create memorable AND secure passwords. [via Ask MeFi]

"We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future." Painful post to read but it makes sense. Now what?

"When people say there are no easy solutions to our problems, I don’t think they are thinking hard or creatively enough. If our problem is that we don’t have enough technically trained Americans, why are we not focused like lasers on educating people?"

"The kind of naming policy that Facebook and Google Plus have is actually a radical departure from the way identity and speech interact in the real world."

Deconstructing the new Gmail/G+ interface for design ideas.

ok, it's 2011. No site is perfect, but it probably is time to shame sites that store plain text passwords. Especially those sites from big companies with the means to change things.

Dear media, please give Andy Rutledge complete control over the design of your sites. Thanks.

Great security reminders. A password made up of three distinct words is fairly secure against a brute force attack. If developers build in a delay after failed password attempts that also helps deter brute force attacks. [via capn design]

ugh, this isn't good. "The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose)."