Seattle in the Snow

Posted on by

Seattle snow (From The Oatmeal.)

It’s widely understood that Seattle needs a better way to measure snowfall. However, what’s lacking is a solid proposal for how to measure snowfall around here. And so I have a proposal.

We should create a new unit of measurement: The Nickels. Named after Greg Nickels, who lost the mayorship of Seattle because he couldn’t manage the snow.

Now, there’s a couple of ways we could define the Nickels. It could be:

  • The amount of snow needed to cost a Mayor 10 points of approval rating
  • The amount of snow needed to cause a bus to slide down Olive way and teeter over the highway
  • 2 millimeters
  • Enough snow to reduce the coefficient of city road friction by 1%.

I’m not sure any of these are really right, so please suggest other ways we could define a Nickels in the comments.

Ulf Muller

Posted on by

Ulf MüllerI am saddened to pass on the news that Ulf Müller, a colleague at Zero-Knowledge Systems, has died in tragic and violent circumstances.

I remember Ulf as quiet, gentle, kind and am tremendously saddened by his loss.

The most recent news story is “Computer-Experte in Transporter erschlagen“.

Nils Kammenhuber of the Technical University of Munich is acting as a representative for the family.

Chocolate Waffles

Posted on by

Too good not to share (inspired by: Chocolate-Hazelnut Waffles with Frangelico-Brown-Butter Syrup)

Ingredients :
6 oz. (1-1/3 cups) fresh ground whole-wheat flour
2 oz. (2/3 cup) natural cocoa powder
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. kosher salt
3/4 cup granulated palm sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3 oz. (6 Tbs.) unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup yogurt
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup warm water

Directions:
Pre-heat waffle maker.

Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium sized bowl and mix thoroughly.

In a large bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until smooth. Stir in the butter, yogurt, and vanilla until smooth. Mix in the warm water until smooth. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and fold until just mixed. It should still have some lumps.

Cook in waffle maker and serve warm.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15

Posted on by

Powered by Twitter Tools

Please vote New School

Posted on by

We’re honored to be nominated in three categories for the Security Bloggers Awards:

  • Most Educational
  • Most Entertaining
  • Hall of Fame

On behalf of all of us who blog here, we’re honored by the nomination, and would like to ask for your vote.

We’d also like to urge you to vote for our friends at Securosis for “Best Representing the Security Industry.” We don’t think Securosis actually is the best representative of the industry today. But I think they represent what we all ought to aspire to be, a empirical, business-aware industry. So please consider them as a part of the broad “New School” sort of slate. We’d also like to put a word in for the ThreatPost podcast as a great mix of technical and non-technical content, and for Veracode for best corporate blog. We’re suggesting Veracode in large part for Chris Eng’s empirical and side-splittingly funny thought leadership videos, but also for a general avoidance of FUD in their blogging.

But whomever you like, please take a moment to vote.

(Cross-posted from the New School blog.)

Google+ is not a space for free expression

Posted on by

Earlier today I noticed something funny. My Google profile picture — the picture associated with my Gmail account, my GChat account, my Google+ account, etc — had vanished. A bug? Nope.

It turns out, Google — without telling me — went into my account and deleted my profile picture.

See “Dear Google+” for the details of why MG Siegler’s picture looks like this:
Gmg3
Yet another reason that we, retro-style, run our own blogs.

Shocking News of the Day: Social Security Numbers Suck

Posted on by

The firm’s annual Banking Identity Safety Scorecard looked at the consumer-security practices of 25 large banks and credit unions. It found that far too many still rely on customers’ Social Security numbers for authentication purposes — for instance, to verify a customer’s identity when he or she wants to speak to a bank representative over the telephone or re-set a password.

All banks in the report used some version of the Social Security number as a means of authenticating the customer, Javelin found. The pervasive use of Social Security numbers was surprising, given the importance of Social Security numbers as a tool for identity theft, said Phil Blank, managing director of security, risk and fraud at Javelin. (“Banks Rely Too Heavily On Social Security Numbers, Report Finds“, Ann Carrns, New York Times)

Previously here: “Social Security Numbers are Worthless as Authenticators” (2009), or “Bad advice on SSNs” (2005).

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08

Posted on by

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-01

Posted on by
  • RT @timoreilly Amazon patents inferring religion from choice of wrapping paper http://t.co/MmCMx2OO << Over the "creepy" line #
  • RT @kevinmitnick Did you ever want a blue box to make free calls? Now you can in the Apple app store. Search for "blue box". EPIC!!! #
  • I wonder what Woz thinks of being able to get a blue box on his apple phone? (cc @kevinmitnick) #
  • I'm super-happy to see @rmogull, @Beaker, @nselby & more arguing over quality & speed of breach disclosure. #AVeryNewSchoolChristmas :) #
  • It's cool that Skype's preferences uses a segment of 1984 as the sample chat when showing that logs are kept. #
  • Very interesting history of names at #28c3 http://t.co/dL1ztjmL /cc @_nomap @privacyint #
  • RT @doctorow Adversarial stylometry data-set/research https://t.co/SPtQ72XX #28C3 < Totally rad! #
  • RT @jeremiahg New blog post: "Terrified" http://t.co/AlorWtcd << Kudos on speaking up! #
  • RT @Beaker Easy, because "outcomes" require analysis, modeling & understanding. Controls can be bought, installed & checked off #
  • So has anyone written up an analysis of the GoD dump? (mm.txt) #
  • RT @evilcyber I can probably narrow the GOOG stuff down to about a 6 month window in 2003. :) << There's stuff when Aleph1 was at SFocus #
  • RT @argvee @evilcyber @adamshostack we got it down to 3. #

Powered by Twitter Tools