No I Will Not Fix Your Computer

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Geek Luddites

Think of how many people are so afraid of their PCs that they only do the bare minimum with them and never venture into unknown territory because they’re afraid of “breaking” their computers. How many of them recently bought iPads and have become much more confident and adventurous with usage and applications, since Apple tricked them into thinking that the iPad isn’t a computer?

(I don’t want to fix mine, either.)

I love the term that Marco has coined in his title. Luddites rejected technology on (religious) principle, and I’d love to reject unnecessary complexity with the same fervor.

Bethany McLean Reads from All the Devils Are Here

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Bethany McLean Reads from All the Devils Are Here

In their new book, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis (Portfolio Hardcover, November 16), V.F. contributor Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, of The New York Times, go back two decades to expose how the market, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought their homes and invested their nest eggs.

The journalist who broke Enron, Bethany McLean, and co-author Nocera were excellent on the Daily Show yesterday.  Click the link to hear McLean read an excerpt from the book (34min).

Playing with WordPress.com

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For a long, long time I thought it was a good idea to host my own blog. And, when WordPress.com launched, it really was a good idea to stay on my own website. Self-hosting was a better way to stay on the cutting edge of this stuff and experiment with plugins that provide fun and interesting ways to publish content on the web.

But, for the same reason that I gave up Linux in college so I could actually get things done (as opposed to tinkering with wireless card drivers and less-than-stellar office software), I’m giving up on tinkering with a blog in favor of actually writing one. Let’s see how it goes.

That, coupled with our $120/year hosting bill and the long way WordPress.com has come in the last year or two — offering wonderfully stable and mature features for free — has got me thinking that it might be time to switch. I’ve been recommending this service to friends who have been interested in starting their own sites for some time now, too.

Speaking of switching, the first part of the experiment, moving all of my data from kennsarah.net to wordpress.com took about 20 minutes. 1,310 posts and 1,701 comments plus attachments was a rather trivial exercise. And the site stats and linkages to Twitter and Facebook have already yielded some value, so I’m excited to see where this experiment goes.

On the Wisdom of Rolling Your Own Social Network

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Koobface Worm Sharpens Facebook Security

The computer then becomes part of the Koobface botnet, which the security software firm Kaspersky Labs estimates is made up of 400,000 to 800,000 PCs worldwide. “That definitely makes Koobface one of the most significant botnets out there,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher.

To halt Koobface, Facebook uses algorithms that can detect suspicious posts and hijacked accounts, looking for unusual behavior like log-ins from odd places and a surge in messages sent. Facebook also keeps a blacklist of malicious Web links to prevent them from being shared on the site. When Koobface posts find a way through, members of the operations team remove them.

The BuddyPress spam on The Daily Newarker seems infantile compared to the level of sophistication possible in social network malware attacks.

I’m beginning to question the wisdom of attempting to run a standalone social network.