I realized that I had never closed the loop on the flaw I discovered in the Google Play store years back.

A recent incident at my work came to my attention involving a takedown request for an unauthorized app in Google Play using my company’s brand.  This happens often in appstores all over the world, which is why having brand protection monitoring for these is really critical.  It is all too easy for these to slip into even legitimate appstores like Google Play.

Given all of the serious security flaws in open source software lately, such as OpenSSL, it has been frequent subject of posters to use the open source hack-du-jour as a counterexample to a purported claim that “open source software is more secure” than proprietary software.  And I just saw it come up again the other day:

Community For Youth Changes Lives. I Know – It’s Changed Mine!

I couldn’t believe how supremely difficult it is to securely use VNC to access an OSX mac remotely.  Turns out that by default, using a standard VNC client (as opposed to an Apple Remote Desktop client) does not afford you an option to have the physical console lock when someone connects to the VNC server.  Some third-party clients make this an option, but all that I could find were paid VNC clients that support it.  It is somewhat ridiculous that this setting is left to the client rather than enforced on the server, but I digress…

Had to share this hilarious voice-mail I received from an IRS scammer (happened to come in with Unknown caller ID – I read online that others had been spoofing US phone numbers for caller ID in the past). The transcript does not do it justice.  I laughed out loud when I heard the phrase, “and you get arrested” as that is precisely what one would expect to hear from the IRS.

First, I’m a big fan of amazon mp3.  They offer high-quality DRM-free music that plays on anything and often at very competitive prices.  And they make it very easy to spend a good amount of money and get some quality music.  Their suggestions and free content have also been where I’ve discovered lots of new artists, such as ZZ Ward.

The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation | Wired Design | Wired.com

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