Author: Stilgherrian

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Weekly Wrap 207: Much productivity before a delayed winter

Sydney skyline from Camperdown: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 May 2014 was a busy one, despite having effectively lost a day flying back from the US. Excellent.

I suspect that in part this is down to the weather. Normally, things start getting gloomy in April, and the seasonal aspects of my depression kick in. For that not to have happened by now, nearly the end of May, is almost unheard of. I’m not complaining, you understand. I think it’s excellent. Yeah, fuck those polar bears!

Podcasts

I’m very pleased to say that I’ve resurrected my other podcast, Corrupted Nerds, with an episode entitled Conversations 10: Michelle Dennedy, privacy engineering. She’s chief privacy officer at McAfee.

Articles

Media Appearances

5at5

A full week this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Geekery

It’s been three years since I included this section in my Weekly Wrap, mostly because the geekery that I do is usually for clients, and therefore none of your business, or just routine stuff for myself, which is boring. However I’m bringing it back this week because I did a few little things of note.

  • I refurbished the website for my tech business Prussia.Net. As well as giving it a totally new appearance, as easy task thanks to Anders Noren and his WordPress theme Hemingway, I set things so that it uses HTTPS/SSL everywhere. I’ll have more to say about that soon. I also gave it an image of Sydney taken from the same location as the photo in this post.
  • I set up the Tip Stilgherrian page, as already described. I confirmed that such things are decidedly easy these days, and I’ll have more to say about that soon.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I had coffee with some people from ManageEngine. They paid for the coffee.
  • Also on Wednesday, I had coffee with some people from Actifio. They, too, paid for the coffee. This is basic hospitality rather than largesse, I know, but once I started down the path of full disclosure, I decided to do so completely.

The Week Ahead

Today, Monday, consists of a morning of production planning, followed by the production of a new episode of The 9pm Edict. Tuesday and Wednesday are days full of writing, in theory.

On Thursday I’m heading into Sydney to record this week’s Download This Show with Marc Fennell, perhaps a meeting or two, and then the launch of Kaspersky Lab’s new security for virtualisation products — with, as the invitation says, “your choice of drinks”. That’s Kaspersky code for “liver damage is inevitable”.

Needless to say, I’ve booked accommodation for the night.

I’ve got a meeting or two in Sydney on Friday, and then the weekend is currently unplanned.

[Photo: Sydney skyline from Camperdown, photographed on 20 May 2014 from Rydges Camperdown Hotel.]

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“Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches

Stripe logoNow that I’ve run two successful crowdfunding campaigns through Pozible, I’m starting to set up systems to accept direct payments for my various projects. The first, a page to accept one-off donations was mostly straightforward.

I chose to use Stripe as the card payment service because I already had a Stripe account for my second Pozible project, The 9pm Resurrection.

While Stripe is still in beta in Australia, Pozible already uses it to handle recurring subscription payments, and I’d already received an invitation into the beta program. I figured it made sense to keep all my payments in one place.

Plus I’ll eventually be using Memberful to process subscriptions, and that also uses Stripe.

To integrate Stripe into this WordPress site, I used the free plugin WP Stripe from Human Made Limited. This provided me with one payment form per website, which is all I needed for this task. I also installed the WP Stripe Email Receipts plugin by Philip Newcomer.

All that went smoothly. I installed the plugins, activated them, entered my Stripe account keys and a template for the email receipts — and they just worked.

The only difficulties came with configuring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on the web server, and that was down to a bug I encountered in the WHM/cPanel hosting management software while I was installing the SSL certificate. That’s nothing to do with Stripe or WordPress or the plugins, of course, just my dodgy web server.

I’ll document that bug over the fold. Meanwhile, why not try out the system and give me a tip? Was that too blatant?

Continue reading ““Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches”

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“Corrupted Nerds” on privacy engineering

Cover image for Corrupted Nerds: Conversations episode 10: click for podcast pageAfter a gap of some six months, I’ve finally produced another episode of the Corrupted Nerds podcast.

Earlier this month, during Australia’s Privacy Awareness Week, I had the very great pleasure of meeting McAfee’s chief privacy officer, Michelle Dennedy.

Not only did I end up writing a ZDNet Australia column a few days ago, Developers, ask your users about data privacy, I so thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that it inspired me to bring Corrupted Nerds back from recess.

In brief, privacy engineering is the process of turning various policies, from privacy laws to the needs of the business’ plan for data, into something that programmers can work with — indeed, something they’ll want to work with because it’s now an engineering problem.

I think you’ll agree that this conversation with Michelle Dennedy is rather fun.

Corrupted Nerds is available via iTunes and SoundCloud.

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Talking the eBay data breach on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide

FIVEaa logoI’m pleased that the eBay data breach has been getting widespread media coverage. I certainly don’t mind doing a third radio spot today.

As has become a semi-regular thing, I spoke with afternoon presenter Will Goodings on 1395 FIVEaa Adelaide. Just a quick five minutes between a fascinating talkback in which people expressed strong feelings about not being able to smoke at al fresco eateries and the news.

I think we covered the essentials, no?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:40 — 3.2MB)

eBay users should change their passwords immediately, and if they use the same password anywhere else, they should change the password there too — and invest in password management software so they can start using different random, complex passwords for every online service.

The audio is ©2014 dmgRadio Australia.

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Talking the eBay data breach on ABC The World Today

ABC logoFollowing the earlier report on AM, ABC Radio’s The World Today explored the eBay data breach story further, looking at the potential for identity theft.

The reporter was Will Ockenden, and here’s how presenter Eleanor Hall introduced the item:

Internet retailing giant eBay is admitting today that the hacking of its computer systems three months ago could affect all 145 million users of the auction website.

The company has defended the time it has taken to discover the unauthorized access to its network, and the two week delay in letting its users know that their private information was stolen.

Internet security analysts say they now expect a rise in the number of secondary attacks, as hackers attempt to exploit other sites.

eBay users should change their passwords immediately, and if they use the same password anywhere else, they should change the password there too — and invest in password management software so they can start using different random, complex passwords for every online service.

Here’s the full story, served directly from the ABC website, where you can also read the transcript.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:11 — 1.9MB)

The audio is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Talking the eBay data breach on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logoOnline marketplace eBay has suffered a massive data breach. Their official statement outlines what we know so far. This conversation on ABC Gold Coast from earlier this morning was the first of several media spots I’m doing today.

As I explained to presenter Nicole Dyer, if all 150 million or so user records were stolen, this makes it one of the Top 5 biggest data breaches by volume of all time.

eBay users should change their passwords immediately, and if they use the same password anywhere else, they should change the password there too — and invest in password management software so they can start using different random, complex passwords for every online service.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:49 — 4.9MB)

Also worth listening to is Will Ockenden’s report on ABC Radio’s AM this morning. It features security researcher Graham Cluley.

The audio here is of course ©2014 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.