Weekend Reads 112720

There are a lot of factors to consider when investing in a home automation ecosystem. In my first article in this series, I explained why I picked Home Assistant, and in this article, I’ll explain some of the foundational issues and technologies in home automation, which may influence how you approach and configure your Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Speculation in one form of another has an ancient and honorable history. It not only creates entrepreneurial activity but fuels markets for selling wares and offering services, but also generates competition for consumers and wars over loyalty. The commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s, which extended market activity into virtual (cyber) space, has many of the virtues of the actual but also its vices: cheating and fraud, and other skullduggery.

Verizon recently conducted a trial of quantum key distribution technology, which is the first generation of quantum encryption. Quantum cryptography is being developed as the next-generation encryption technique that should protect against hacking from quantum computers.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab security and privacy institute have devised what they say is the world’s fastest open source intrusion detection and prevention system (IDS/IPS).

Case in point: a broken soap dispenser. Expensive, shiny chrome built-in kitchen soap dispenser whose spring gave out. OK, no problem. Look up replacement parts on the Internet. Found it! Only $4.79 too.

With many organizations now having a significant portion of staff working remotely—and as things are looking, this is going to be the longterm reality—the old model of how companies support a “mobile” workforce is not exactly holding up well.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched Cover Your Tracks, a interactive tool that teaches users how advertisers follow them as they shop or browse online, and how to fight back against corporate trackers to protect their privacy, mitigate relentless ad targeting, and improve the web ecosystem for everyone.

Over the next decade, waves of exponential technological advancements are stacking atop one another, eclipsing decades of breakthroughs in scale and impact.

Upwork, a platform that supports freelancers conducted a major survey of more than 20,000 adults to look at the new phenomenon of people moving due to the pandemic, with questions also aimed at understanding the motivation for moving. Since Upwork supports people who largely work out of their homes, the survey concentrated on that issue.

Back in September of 2020, ICANN CEO Göran Marby wrote a blog post discussing the implementation of “a common strategy for Internet governance (IG) and technical Internet governance (TIG),” raising the question of whether the ICANN org intended to pursue this distinction moving forward, as debated in a previous article.

Solid, a technology aimed at redesigning the way users’ data on the Web is accessed and giving users more control of their privacy, passed another hurdle on Nov. 9 when four organizations announced pilot projects with startup infrastructure provider Inrupt.

Application programming interfaces (API) that connect enterprise applications and data to the Internet are subject to the same vulnerabilities as regular web applications and need to be addressed with at least the same rigor.

Before I could drive, I was working in the sheet metal shop with my dad. I had working knowledge of the brake, Pittsburgh machine, and rolls before I knew how to make a bowl of soup (I’m sure my parents would love to tell you about the time I burned tomato soup). I think the most important lesson I learned was working with tin snips (aviation or compound snips).

The fact that attackers hide malware inside encrypted traffic is not news any longer. What might be surprising, however, is just how much the practice has recently spiked due in part to the shift to remote work in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Hacker” is another name for an ethical researcher. It refers to someone who proactively explores, identifies and alerts organizations to vulnerabilities that an attacker could use for malicious purposes. They seek to disclose in good faith by alerting organizations that may or may not have vulnerability disclosure policies.