Category: Gripes

  • What the Harlem Globetrotters Really Teach Kids

    A couple weeks ago, friends and I attended a Harlem Globetrotters game. It started out as a joke over football about underdog teams, when my friend Amanda reminded me of the poor Washington Generals. If that name rings a bell but you can’t quite place it, they are the go-to team that plays the Harlem…

  • An Open Letter to @Twitter

    Dear Twitter, You run one of the largest and most visible social network sites on the Internet, highly visible to millions that don’t even have Internet access due to media saturation and today’s lexicon. And you suck at it. Despite your recent IPO and suggestions that you finally figured out how to make money off…

  • Quit volunteering my time.

    Every week someone, or several people, think their 140 characters is worth me spending an hour+ writing an article for them. They noticed some plagiarized text or think someone is a fraud, and they turn around and expect me to research and document it. For years now, I get mail to Errata with a single…

  • Any wonder why people use images without attribution?

    Found the perfect image for my @BSidesDE talk. Noticed in the corner a tiny ‘GettyImages’ watermark, so I went to their site to see how much it would cost to license. Because I happen to know they require a license… which I imagine 99.9% of the modern Internet world does not. The auto-pricing options did…

  • Android & Granular Permissions

    For Android-based phone owners, you are no doubt passingly familiar with the permission system that governs applications and what they can do. Every time you install an application, the device will ask you if you accept a list of permissions that it says are required for it to run. If you want the app, you…

  • T-Mobile’s Poor Implementation Works Against Amber Alerts

    Just over a month ago, I received a pop-up alert on my Samsung Galaxy 3 (via T-Mobile) with a standard, and persistent, emergency broadcast noise… Emergency alert Longmont, CO AMBER Alert: LIC/245FLJ (CO) 2001 Blue Ford F350 Pickup truck Type: AMBER Alert The noise stopped briefly, then picked back up again until I tapped “OK”.…

  • Customer Service; Why I am mad before we start talking…

    Back in the early ’90s, as part of my interest in phone systems and BBSs, friends and I looked at creating our own voice mail system. Back in the day, voice mail was still a developing technology. It wasn’t just about calling a number and leaving a message if no one answered. Hackers and phreaks…

  • So you want to present…

    I’ve been attending InfoSec conferences since DEF CON 2, in 1994. Add up all the conferences I have been to, and all the presentations I have seen (in person or video later); quite a few to be sure. In the last year, I have been part of several CFP teams, where we review proposed presentation…

  • T-Mobile SMS Disclosure

    Yesterday while waiting for a friend to arrive for a movie, I got a curious text from an unknown number with a 337 area code, saying that I had the wrong number. Since I had not called or texted that number, I replied as such. A few texts later, the stranger sent a screenshot of…

  • “grandfathered” – You don’t know what it means…

    Some ten years ago when I first subscribed to Comcast cable TV, after returning to Denver, they had two basic options. Basic meant the absolute bare bones basic channels (locals), nothing else. For ~ $20 more, the Basic Plus, you got 100 more channels including all the “basic” ones we’re used to. I took the…