WordPress – Jupiter Broadcasting

A fast-moving botnet that appeared over the weekend has already infected thousands of Android devices with potentially destructive malware that mines digital coins on behalf of the unknown attackers, researchers said.

Early Warning: ADB.Miner A Mining Botnet Utilizing Android ADB Is Now Rapidly Spreading

Google Cloud Platform Blog: 12 best practices for user account, authorization and password management

Account management, authorization and password management can be tricky. For many developers, account management is a dark corner that doesn’t get enough attention. For product managers and customers, the resulting experience often falls short of expectations.

The Future of Network Security: BeyondCorp

Operation FreeNAS Rescue

eSata vs new Hardware rig.
Staged upgrade, move the USB Internal header drive FreeNAS drive.
Slide in the new disks, and power it up!

After it booted, and we verified it saw the drives.. It was time to create our pool.

Feedback / Follow Up

Google’s partnership with WordPress aims to jump-start the platform’s support of the latest web technologies — particularly those involving performance & mobile experience. And they’re hiring WordPress experts.

The post Operation FreeNAS Rescue | TechSNAP 355 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Here Come the Script Kiddies | TechSNAP 354

chris — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 21:30:47 +0000

RSS Feeds:

HD Video Feed | MP3 Audio Feed | iTunes Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Audio Adversarial Examples

We have constructed targeted audio adversarial examples on speech-to-text transcription neural networks: given an arbitrary waveform, we can make a small perturbation that when added to the original waveform causes it to transcribe as any phrase we choose.

Keylogger Found in Many WordPress Sites

But, in a twist, this particular attack isn’t just interested in mining Monero. While the website’s front-end is digging for cryptocurrencies, the back-end is secretly hosting a keylogger designed to steal unsuspecting users’ login credentials.

Pre-Reqs to using WordPress

Need root privs, or sudo.
Install the LAMP stack, or something that equiv.
Secure your site with SSL: WordPress serves dynamic content and handles user authentication and authorization. TLS/SSL is the technology that allows you to encrypt the traffic from your site so that your connection is secure
Create a MySQL Database

QubesOS is Re-Architecting

This leads us to a conclusion that, at least for some applications, we would like to be able to achieve better isolation than currently available hypervisors and commodity hardware can provide.

Making Network Authentication Simple

We are a non-profit student organization providing Internet access to ~2000 people living on campus. We manage all the active network equipment, and users simply have access to RJ45 wall sockets and shared Wi-Fi access points. Last year, as we were leaving our historic campus and moving into a freshly built one at Paris-Saclay, we set out to build a more modern and robust network infrastructure for our users.

“Autosploit” tool sparks fears

400 lines of Python code + Shodan + Metasploit equals a whole heap of hand-wringing.

AutoSploit, a new tool released by a “cyber security enthusiast” has done more than spark controversy, however, by combining two well-known tools into an automatic hunting and hacking machine—in much the same way people already could with an hour or two of copy-pasting scripts together.

Feedback

The post Here Come the Script Kiddies | TechSNAP 354 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

State Sponsored Audiophiles | TechSNAP 307

chris — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 21:41:43 +0000

RSS Feeds:

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Trend Micro’s Own Cybersecurity Blog Gets Hacked

We covered the WordPress bug in TechSNAP 306
See also [Security Firm Trend Micro’s Blog Falls Victim To Content Spoofing Attack]https://www.silicon.co.uk/security/trendmicro-blog-security-205197
and WordPress Quietly Fixes Zero-Day Flaw Tom
WordPress was alerted to the flaw on 20 January
WordPress officially released WordPress 4.7.2 to the world on Thursday 26 January.
- “The release went out over our autoupdate system and, over a couple of hours, millions of WordPress 4.7.x users were protected without knowing about the issue or taking any action at all.”
Dan confirms the above upgrade timeline; his WordPress sites were updated on 26 January, between 2:30 and 3:30 EST
Researcher’s Feb 1 blog post with details
WordPress’ Feb 1 10:59 AM blog post
NOTE: Virally growing attacks on unpatched WordPress sites affect ~2m pages
Attacks on websites running an outdated version of WordPress are increasing at a viral rate. Almost 2 million pages have been defaced since a serious vulnerability in the content management system came to light nine days ago. The figure represents a 26 percent spike in the past 24 hours
Google trend chart

Hackers who took control of PC microphones siphon >600 GB from 70 targets

Real information in the blog post
Suggestions: put such devices on their own VLAN, but I’m not sure how their connections work
Large-scale ~= 70 organisations
Most of the targets are located in the Ukraine, but there are also targets in Russia and a smaller number of targets in Saudi Arabia and Austria. Many targets are located in the self-declared separatist states of Donetsk and Luhansk, which have been classified as terrorist organizations by the Ukrainian government.

Feedback

Round Up:

The post State Sponsored Audiophiles | TechSNAP 307 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Windows XP of the Net | CR 178

chris — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 15:04:33 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Is open source software immoral in some market conditions? The guys debate. Plus Google’s impressive new open source project, standing while you work is going out of style & how to adapt to the changing need of your users gracefully.

Plus is open source on the verge of being outlawed by the TPP? And a few of your great thoughts on Offshoring vs Onshoring.

Thanks to:

Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Hoopla

Meet the $1,500 Android Wear smartwatch with an Intel CPU

On Monday in New York City, TAG Heuer unveiled the Connected Watch, a $1,500 Android Wear smartwatch made in partnership with Google and Intel.

WordPress now powers 25% of the Web – Is The Market Owned?

The latest data comes from W3Techs, which measures both usage and market share: “WordPress is used by 58.7% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 25.0% of all websites.” While these numbers naturally fluctuate over the course of the month, the general trend for WordPress has been slow but steady growth.

Google Just Open Sourced TensorFlow, Its Artificial Intelligence Engine

This software is called _TensorFlow, and in literally giving the technology away, Google believes it can accelerate the evolution of AI. Through open source, outsiders can help improve on Google’s technology and, yes, return these improvements back to Google._

Google built the underlying TensorFlow software with the C++ programming language. But in developing applications for this AI engine, coders can use either C++ or Python, the most popular language among deep learning researchers. The hope, however, is that outsiders will expand the tool to other languages, including Google Go, Java, and perhaps even Javascript, so that coders have more ways of building apps.

TensorFlow.org

TensorFlow(tm) is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. Nodes in the graph represent mathematical operations, while the graph edges represent the multidimensional data arrays (tensors) communicated between them. The flexible architecture allows you to deploy computation to one or more CPUs or GPUs in a desktop, server, or mobile device with a single API. TensorFlow was originally developed by researchers and engineers working on the Google Brain Team within Google’s Machine Intelligence research organization for the purposes of conducting machine learning and deep neural networks research, but the system is general enough to be applicable in a wide variety of other domains as well.

Altwork Station computer desk costs $5,900, but lets you work lying down

Altwork says it has taken five years of engineering to get the workstation ready for production. If working while laying down isn’t your thing, the Altwork Station can be locked into a regular sitting position.

Feedback

The post Windows XP of the Net | CR 178 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Nerd Nest Media | WTR 32

chris — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 03:35:52 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Breanne is the owner & web developer for Nerd Nest Media. It provides web design, development, SEO work, brand consulting & social media marketing!

Thanks to:

Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found below:

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: Angela, so this week, my friend Breanne joins us. She is a solo founder for the company Nerd Nest Media, and she talks about her journey in technology, what’s like to be a solo founder a little bit, and just kind of the many hats that she has worn in her journey.
ANGELA: Awesome. Before we get into the interview, I want to DigitalOcean. They are the sponsor for this week. They are a cloud housing provider dedicated to offering the most intuitive and easy way to spin up a cloud server. And let me just tell you, I was faced with a situation a couple months ago where my son turned six and was really into MineCraft and had been playing the pocket edition on his iPad. But it just quite wasn’t enough. And of course I — well, I think I might have been able to find a way to play with him via my iPad, but I’m not sure. But regardless, I wanted to get a dedicated server up and running so that he and I could play on the same maps. So, I used a DigitalOcean droplet to spin up a MIneCraft server that will always be up and running. They have locations for their data centers in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. I don’t have to worry about if our house has a power outage. Well, I wouldn’t be able to play at that point, but anyway, wherever the server is hosted, I don’t have to worry about a power outage, because the server will always be up and running in the cloud. And it’s only $5.00 a month. And if you use the code heywtr, you can get a $10.00 credit, which is a two month credit. So, think about the projects that you could use DigitalOcean for and use heywtr promo code for it.
PAIGE: And don’t forget, if you already have a DIgitalOcean set up, but you haven’t used one of our codes, go ahead and pop it in there. Sometimes it just might work.
And out question for Breanna when we got started was to kind of give us a overview of what she does in Technology.
BREANNE: Hi. I’m Breanne Smith. I am the current owner and web developer for Nerd Nest Media. My company provides web design development, SEO work, brand consulting, social media marketing. And that is my current role in technology.
PAIGE: So, you’re kind of a many hat wearer? Would you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
BREANNE: I would. The entrepreneur side of me has definitely been coming out as each day progresses. But I really love technology, so I’ve just been kind of one of those closet nerds, if you will. Just researching, doing things on my own. And then it’s kind of given me the love for wanting to provide these services for people to get them to understand what the web is and how it can help their business.
PAIGE: So, it was kind of the journey for you learning to understand that made you want to kind of help others do the same?
BREANNE: Yes and no. You know, I went back to school later in life. I’m in my 30s now and just graduated in 2012. When I first went to college back out of high school I thought I wanted to write for Rolling Stone magazine. So, I was doing journalism, music theory stuff back then. Which is great, because now I still get to use my love writing and creativity, but just in a totally more technologically advanced way. So, that’s what I started doing. And then I moved from Indiana to Austin Texas and I started working for a nationwide property maintenance company. So, I was managing like 20 people at the time and had a portfolio of like 7,000 foreclosed homes all over the country that I was maintaining. So, it taught me a lot about professionalism, completing tasks on time. really kind of prepped me for that real world situation. And then, from there, I, we moved out to Oregon and I really didn’t have a job or anything going on. So I thought, you know what, I am going to take my love for technology and see what I could do with maybe going back to school and starting a business of my own. My parents owned a couple of furniture stores in Indiana and they’re actually who really catapulted me into wanting to start my own business, because as a small company themselves, they were paying this “web company” that was really not doing much for them, $350.00 a month to maintain their website, do social media posts, things like that. And my parents were getting frustrated and not understanding why they weren’t getting results and this web company was helping them. So, I asked, you know, hey I know a little bit about a little bit. Can I talk with them and maybe see what they’re doing and use the big technical terms and kind of coxe out of them what they’re doing. I called these people and turned out, they were just a marketing company who said they can do web work and were outsourcing this web work.
ANGELA: Oh my goodness.
BREANNE: To other people who knew nothing about my parent’s business. They knew nothing about their business practices. And so, getting off that phone call, I was the most frustrated I’ve ever been in my life for my parents. You know, that they’re this small company, they’re older, they don’t understand the value of the web and what it can do for you. They know, just from me harping on them, that they needed a website. And a the time, I didn’t have my degree so I didn’t know all the ins and out of it. So I literally went back to school solely to-
ANGELA: Help your parents?
BREANNE: Kind of negate these people. Yeah. Well, no. I actually don’t like to do business with my family.
ANGELA: Right.
BREANNE: Because it can — I don’t want to mix business with pleasure there, but it really kind of made me see what type of people are out there saying that they can do the stuff for small business and build their brand and build their company, but in reality they’re not doing anything. They’re just taking money and saying that they’re going to put this post up. And the post, you know, even on their social site, has nothing to do with what their business is.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: So, once my husband I moved out here to Oregon I thought, okay I’m going back to school. I’m getting my degree in web design and development, and I’m going to start company that has morals, wouldn’t treat people the way that these so called web companies were treating my parents, and really pride myself on kind of hand holding a lot of my clients through this process of understanding how their business can actually grow with putting a little money into the web side of it.
ANGELA: Right. That sounds-
BREANNE: I know that’s a little long winded but-
ANGELA: No, no, no. It sounds exactly like what I went through with my mom. Because she’s self-employed. She’s owned a restaurant in downtown Seattle for 20 years now. I think.
BREANNE: Oh wow.
ANGELA: Anyway. Yeah, and she recently was on the, I need to, I need the social media aspect. I was the one that forced her to do a Facebook page and she’s really popular on there. She post her specials there every day. But then a social media company, just like you said, came along and was like we can build your brand and whatever. And she went for it. ANd it’s really not yielding anything.
BREANNE: Oh man.
PAIGE: It seems like a market that seems so easy to take advantage of people, because you just have to use some jargon.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: You’re exactly right. And they think, oh wow, they’re using all these great buzz words. I’ve heard that word before but I don’t really understand it. And so, it took a lot of me sitting down with my parents and getting them to understand how they were taking advantage of my parents. Because they didn’t even really understand what they were or weren’t doing, to be honest with you.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
BREANNE: I was so frustrated. Seriously. I was just horribly frustrated for them and knowing that there’s hundreds of companies, probably thousands of companies like that out there, where there’s outsourcing everything. It really doesn’t give that personal touch. And it really just makes me feel like all these small businesses are just giving away money and not getting anything in return, and then getting a sour taste in their mouth about what the web can do for them.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: I’m going to pick your brain then. What’s a good thing to watch out for? If I can’t necessarily work with you, how do I know, if i own a business or something, like what’s the difference between working with someone like you and someone who is going to take advantage of me? How can I tell the difference?
BREANNE: A big thing is reading the name of their company. If they have the word marketing in their company, nine times out of ten they are a marketing company. If they can offer web services that’s great, but I would, as a small business I would talk to them about what their services provide and who is providing those services for me. Is there a point of contact I can call and talk to that person who is building my site and have them explain to me why it looks this way or talk to them about how I want it to look differently. If they’re impersonal with you and, oh I have to get back with you, and 13 emails later they’re still not answering your questions, if they’re dodging questions, dodging answers, things like that, those are big signs really, for me at least. And knowing that they’re just solely in for marketing and that hundred to $400,000.00 whatever it is montly fee that they’re getting. And honestly, it’s a gut thing too. You know, if you’re not getting the right service from somebody and you’re not feeling like they’re really being helpful, that’s another big key point that they’re probably — they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
PAIGE: So you started out hoping to do music journalism.
BREANNE: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: And you ended up in web design and development, essentially, right?
BREANNE: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: What does that transition look like? Why? have you always been nerdy? Were you the kid with the Commodore 64 hacking away at the keyboard? What does that look like for you?
BREANNE: Well, for me I wasn’t — you know, I was always int, you know, we always had, my dad actually has always been very much so up on the technical side of things. Like, we always had the latest, greatest TVs and radios and as soon as the computer came out we had the computer, desktop in our house at the time. So, which was huge, mind you. So, you know, I always have been interested in it, but I don’t think I really grasped the understanding and really the power of technology until I was working for that management company, the property management company. And we had such a cool system we used on the back end and I saw just really how it helped their business. That kind of pushed me forward and shifted my gears. Like I said, I’m in my 30s, so I’m, you know, it really shifted my mind into thinking, okay how can this benefit every company out there. And so, I really, you know, I’ve always dabbled. I love video games. I always played video games as a kid, but I really don’t think it was until I got older and understood how it could compute to business that made me really want to start doing this as a career.
PAIGE: All right. So, I”ve got to ask. What was your favorite video game as a kid?
BREANNE: I mean, I’m old school though. I didn’t do, like I got a little bit-
PAIGE: We’re equally old school in this room.
ANGELA: Yeah. We’re your age too.
BREANNE: Okay, cool. So I was more in, I mean I loved Mario and Duck Hunt and, you know, all of that stuff too, but I love-
ANGELA: Donkey Kong. Say Donkey Kong.
BREANNE: Yes. Yes. I was going to say Donkey Kong, but I just am aging myself here, but yeah Donkey Kong. All those little games I loved to play. Mario Bros of course was my — I mean, that’s true to my heart. I always played it.
PAIGE: You know, I still know how to get all the warp zones, right?
BREANNE: Me too.
PAIGE: Yeah. Totally. Yeah, Mario, Legend of Zelda and original Tetris on the Gameboy for me. Those were the big ones. Especially in competitive mode, because I still have yet to meet anyone who can beat me on Tetris in competitive mode. Which is not normal mode people, it’s different.
BREANNE: What about Punch Out? Did anybody play Punch Out all the time?
ANGELA: Nope.
BREANNE: No?
PAIGE: I like the, we had the Olympics. We had the power mat and so you do the olympics thing. That was definitely better than (unintelligible).
ANGELA: Yeah, i remember that now.
BREANNE: That’s way cooler.
PAIGE: I learned very quickly, as did my little sister, that running on the powermat was not nearly as fast as sitting next to the powermat and hitting it with your hands like bongos.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh. Yeah.
PAIGE: Much, much faster. You can get way farther, and then you can jump infinitely because you just lift your hands and on the long jump you just win.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.
PAIGE: Right. Yeah, it’s cheating.
BREANNE: Where were you growing up?
PAIGE: Massachusetts.
ANGELA: VIdeo game hacks.
PAIGE: Yeah. Well, you know, when you can’t go outside in the sun because you’re a ginger you have to do something in the summer. So, do you still pay video games?
BREANNE: Yeah, I do. I mean, and of course I’ve stayed true to Nintendo, so I just have a Wii, because I literally, like that’s how much I love Mario Bros. Like, I will play every single one that comes out.
PAIGE: Have you played the new Mario titles where you can play like four players simultaneously?
ANGELA: What?
BREANNE: I don’t have a Wii U, so I’m not sure if that’s new with the Wii u?
PAIGE: No. No. It’s a Wii title.
BREANNE: It is? Okay.
PAIGE: Yeah. You’ve got to check it out.
BREANNE: I haven’t played it.
PAIGE: Yeah. You can play four players simultaneously, and when you have a Yoshi you can eat the other players and then spit them.
BREANNE: Oh my gosh.
PAIGE: It’s amazing.
BREANNE: I”m typing this right now so I don’t forget.
PAIGE: So if you folks at home haven’t tried it out, it’s old now, but, and i think they just put out another new one, but I don’t have a Wii U either. So what do you use as tools to get your job done? Like, you — I know, because we’ve talked before, that you use WordPress, but either what do you use in WordPress, what sort of text editor do you use? What helps you get your job done?
BREANNE: So, text editor wise, I mean I love Sublime Text and Notepad ++. Those are both my go to text editors and things like that. But I do love WordPress and I love to work on content management systems, especially for my clients, because it really helps them be able to feel like they have a grasp on their website. And even go in, if I teach — I can teach them how to go in and make their own blog posts, their own changes. And then they don’t have to utilize me or pay me money. Especially if they’re a little bit on the tech savvy side, so thats’ why i use WordPress and why I love WordPress.
PAIGE: Yeah. I totally agree. I like to tell people, I’m like, if you can post on Facebook, you can learn enough WordPress to help yourself out.
BREANNE: Exactly. That’s exactly right. And I’m actually just — I just got done before this walking through my last client with his blog and getting him up to speed with everything. And he made his first blog post and uploaded the images and everything himself. So, and knows how to change the sidebars to what it needs to be. So it’s really empowering for me to see them get it and smile and understand they’re in charge. It’s not just me, it’s them. So, that’s why I love WordPress so much. I mean, it’s got it’s faults as far as security sometimes, but other than that, I mean, as long as you have a good security plugin in place, you’re good to go. But then I love Illustrator and PhotoShop and stuff. I do all — I love those for design and doing mock ups and things like that. That’s about all I use.
PAIGE: Did you learn most of that in your school program, self-taught? Did you have online resources?
BREANNE: I’m mostly self-taught. I loved school. I am — I think that’s where my nerdiness comes from is because I always loved school as a kid. I never missed a day of school from kindergarten to my senior year. Got a special nerd award for that at the end of my senior year.
PAIGE: That is a very special nerd award.
ANGELA: Yep.
BREANNE: I still have it. But, yeah, so I think my love of school really carried me through, you know, getting through college this time and helped me be more successful. I don’t want to tell someone who is in school that they shouldn’t be in school, but honestly, the type of work that we do, a lot of it is self-taught. ANd you have to continually educate yourself aster school even, you know, to keep up with the latest trends and keep your ear to the ground with technology. So, it’s not say that I didn’t — that I’m not glad I didn’t — went to school and got my degree, but, you know, to be honest with you, most of the stuff I’ve learned as been self-taught. I used Lynda.com a lot for things that — I don’t like to tell my clents no, ever. So if i don’t know it, I don’t tell them I don’t know it, I just research and learn and try, you know, and charge them less for that since I have to do more education time on my end. So that’s kind of how I feel. I’m more successful in this industry, because I am so willing to learn — so much more willing to learn all of the new technology that’s out there.
ANGELA: So, do your clients basically use you to get up and running or — do they do that and then they’re on their own and you also have continuing customers where you actually do the stuff for the?
BREANNE: Yes. I kind of am a one stop shop. I think Paige said, you know, I’m a woman of many hats. I can do a full service as far as if someone just comes to me and they’re like , I don’t want to understand this. I don’t care to understand this. I need a new website. I can do their hosting for them. I do hosting reselling. And also set up their domain, buy their domain, set up everthing from scratch. And then I can either help them maintain that every month if they want me to, or like I said teach them how and they can do that, and I take a back seat unless there’s an emergency I”ll come back in. But then, there’s that flip side of things where someone is already up and running. My main client that I have, I’ve had her for two years and when she came to me two years ago she had had a web designer who was getting frustrated with her. I love her with all of my heart, but she’s more into the pretty side of things and not the technical side of things, which is fine, but I don’t think it translate well if a web person isn’t able to kind of speak to her in those layman’s terms and get her to understand it and why she has to pay this money.
ANGELA: RIght.
BREANNE: So that web person left her and took her entire website down. So she was stranded with no website and she runs a very high end salon and so she was completely stranded with no website. So, I came in, got it back up, because it was a WordPress site. I was able to recover it and since then has helped maintain her site and am rebuilding that one plus a new one for her for a separate salon she’s doing currently. So, I’ve been working with her for two years and it’s been great. So, I love the ongoing stuff, but am able to just do one quick fix for clients and then they can about their business if they don’t need me anymore.
ANGELA: Sure.
PAIGE: Yeah. It think it sounds, I don’t know what (unintelligible) this is, but I think that if you have a small business working with other small businesses for your other services is really beneficial for both parties usually. As a small business, you can do things that as a giant business someone might not be able to, because they’re tied up in red tape or corporate policy or whatever . Like some marketing company that has all these standards and SOP and jazz.
BREANNE: Exactly. I really like it, because you can really, you know, dive into their culture and kind of really get to understand their company. And so, I think I do better work when I understand the business, obviously, and understand what they’re mission is and what they’re goals are. It helps me to really format the site to help their end user a lot better.
PAIGE: Yeah. I agree with that. Even as a developer, people think you’re just making computer stuff work, because I don’t really do design or when I do it’s terrible, but even understanding what the user experience is supposed to be or –and necessarily, the client doesn’t always know what they want in the experience. They’re just like, this is what we do and these are the customers i have, and being able to kind of craft that. I can do so much better when I can sit down and have talk time with them and get to know their business, or stop by their business, or whatever.
BREANNE: Exactly. I really love that so much more than — because I do — I have lived in many states so a lot of my clients are out of state. And so it’s — there’s something to be said about sitting down and having a cup of coffee or tea with somebody and explaining their business, versus being on Skype or something like that. Because there can be distractions and they’re not really into it. So if I can get somebody to focus with me it goes a lot easier.
ANGELA: Have you ever been to a sewing retreat?
BREANNE: I have not, but I do love sewing.
ANGELA: I recently went to a sewing retreat and it was so much fun. It was just two full — well two and a half days of sewing and it was just amazing. But what do you like to sew?
BREANNE: I like to sew anything. I love to make clothes. That’s what i started doing as a young girl. My mom made all my baby clothes when I was kid and so — and then she made these awesome dolls that she would sell to get more fabric to make my clothes.
ANGELA: Wow.
BREANNE: So, I learned from a very young age. Yeah, she’s really awesome. But I learned from a young age how to sew and to work around a sewing machine. But in more recent years I’ve been teaching myself to knit and crochet a little bit. It’s not my strong points but the sewing machine is my strongest point. And I love to sew anything. From pillows to clothes to anything.
ANGELA: Cool.
PAIGE: I have a love/hate relationship with sewing and crocheting. I’m amazing at sewing and crocheting in straight lines.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: But not turning. So, if you have a pattern that is straight lines, I actually sew very well. It was — part of theatre degree is that you have to do costuming. I know how to do all the seeming and all the edging, but if i have to turn, not as good. Pillowcases, awesome.
BREANNE: Yep, just a square.
PAIGE: Oh yeah. Yep. No problem there.
BREANNE: Well you’ll have to tell me more about the sewing retreat. That sounds really cool. Can you bring whatever type of sewing stuff or is it-
ANGELA: Yeah. You just — in this case you — it was about 25 women and we went to Warm Beach, which is here in Washington, and we rented out a bunch of rooms and we just set up and we were able to keep out setup in this banquet room all weekend, and the beachfront was right there. It was amazing.
BREANNE: Sounds awesome.
ANGELA: And all the meals were catered. Yeah. I ate so much, I thought that I would literally weigh five to 10 pounds more when I was done, but I actually lost a couple pounds because I would walk. I would go for a walk on the beach after eating, which speeds up your metabolism. It was awesome.
PAIGE: I just wanted to ask one more thing.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: If there is one thing in technology that kind of is either coming down the pipe or gets your really jazzed now what is it?
BREANNE: Wearables. I’m all about wearables right now and the power that they have.
ANGELA: So how is your Apple Watch?
BREANNE: I don’t have an Apple Watch.
ANGELA: I’m just kidding.
BREANNE: I’m an Android fangirl.
ANGELA: Ah, okay.
BREANNE: I have been Android from the start. We do not even have any Apple products in our house until my husband had to get a work phone and I said, well get an iPhone so I can test my websites on it and stop using emulators.
ANGELA: Perfect. Perfect, right? That works.
PAIGE: So, do you have an Android watch?
BREANNE: I do. But I started out with like Fitbit then other things like that, but I really love the blending of the fitness side of things with the nerdy tech smartwatch side of things.
ANGELA: With the practicality. Yeah. So, do you have the Pebble? Is that Android? I don’t even –
BREANNE: Uh, yes. Yes. It’s actually what I have. Yeah, I’m waiting for the two to come out though.
PAIGE: The Pebble is (unintelligible). That’s very cool.
BREANNE: I’m waiting for the Pebble 2.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: Nice. I am a little intimidated. So, Angela, in studio, has the Apple Watch and I keep watching her flip it and it looks really shiny and stuff, but I’m a little intimidated because I have found in my life right now, where I’m trying to get a lot of high volume work, high quality work done, like the less notifications I can have in my life the better off I am. Like, how do you balance that, the two of you?
ANGELA: I have certain people disabled for notifications and Telegram, it can only tell me so much on my watch and i can’t respond to it, so mainly it’s come in handy like if I”m at the bus stop and trying to get Dylan off the bus and put a stroller, I can just look at my watch real quick and see a notification or know that somebody is available.
BREANNE: Yeah, I agree with you on the integration of the watch with my phone. I think, you know, especially for me the working out more and stuff, I just my phone , or excuse me, my watch a lot more for that than i do my phone. I can keep it nearby but not have to carry my bulky phone around.
ANGELA: Uh-huh.
BREANNE: And then as far as, I use my phone more for like long winded emails. But if I just need to send something really fast I can use my watch. Or just notify my husband really quick, I”m on my way. Anything like that. It’s a lot easier on my phone to just reply with a little emoji or something than it is to pull out my phone, like you were saying, and mess with that. It’s just an (unintelligible) of use type of things for me. Anything to make my life easier I’m all for it.
ANGELA: And I was wearing a Fitbit as well up until I got the Apple Watch. And in fact, I wore both of them for two weeks on the same wrist, because I just didn’t want to let go of the social aspect of Fitbit.
PAIGE: Well, you can still use the phone for Fitbit.
ANGELA: Yeah. Oh, I don’t know, yeah, okay. Well it still had — so I still use my Fitbit at night for sleep though.
PAIGE: You can use both.
ANGELA: Really?
PAIGE: Uh-huh.
ANGELA: Okay. You’ll have to show me how to set that up.
PAIGE: I will show you that.
ANGELA: Because I have no idea.
PAIGE: Yeah. I like FItBit, but I don’t own a Fitbit device anymore, because I never got the wrist one and they’re small and I lose everything.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Well, so you guys have me interested. I have one other question. Were either of you watch wearers before you got your smart watches?
BREANNE: I was not at all. I literally only, I don’t even wear earrings anymore. I just wear my wedding ring. So it is like the only other thing besides my wedding ring I wear.
ANGELA: I wanted to be, but I am one allergic to nickel, I believe, and two I have very acidic skin. So any watch I’d wear it would literally corrode the metal. It’s weird. It’s not like the metal would wear away. The metal would explode from inside. It would, like a barnacle. You know, it was so weird. And it would cause rashes and stuff so I stopped wearing. but I have the sports band Apple Watch, which isn’t metal at all. And so far I”ve had no irritation from the back of the watch where it’s metal.
PAIGE: Yeah, I’ll be interested to see if your Apple Watch explodes.
ANGELA: I know, right?
PAIGE: If it does, we need pictures.
ANGELA: Well, it doesn’t literally explode. You know what I mean? So I would, I love having a watch.
PAIGE: Interesting.
BREANNE: A friend of mine has the Apple Watch and he has tattoos on his wrist, and they’re very dark as it gets down to his wrist, so he actually has to wear it on his other wrist, because it won’t read his wrist.
PAIGE: Yeah. It can’t read through the-
BREANNE: Because there’s dark. Yeah.
PAIGE: Because it’s an optical heart rate monitor, so it literally can’t read through your skin.
BREANNE: Yeah.
PAIGE: I think that they’ve adjusted so that people of darker color are okay, but tattoos are too much.
ANGELA: Wow. Yeah, I didn’t even think about that.
PAIGE: The ink is still too much in the way.
ANGELA: Huh.
PAIGE: Yeah, because it’s based on the same technology that the use in hospitals where they clip the little pulse monitor to your finger.
ANGELA: Right. Right. But I didn’t think about people of people of darker color. It’s kind of like Band-Aid coming out with skin tone, but only for Caucasian.
PAIGE: And correct me, audience, if I’m wrong, but as far as I know it works for skin but tattoo ink, especially in the very dark colors is too much, because it’s several layers of problems.
ANGELA: Oh.
BREANNE: And I’m pretty sure you’re right. That they’ve fixed the darker skin, but just not the tattoos. And his are like two big, huge black lines that come down towards his wrist. Not good. But I just — I actually read this morning that Google is actually trying to get this tiny, tiny little radar system that actually and sense your hand gestures and stuff, because I guess in their mind smartwatches and stuff aren’t taking off as well as they should be. And so, you know, it’s more like early adopters and stuff like that. Like us, that really, really want new technology and stuff that are getting it, not so much the general population. And so they’re trying to — and I guess Google’s thinking behind it is that they’re such tiny little touch screens that it makes the device difficult to control it, I guess. And so they’re developing this radar system that can sense hand gestures instead of having to just put your finger on the screen.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember that you can find the show notes with full transcription over at jupiterbroadcasting.com. Just go to the shows dropdown and select Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: You can also use the contact form on the web page to select Women’s Tech Radio to get in touch with us, or shoot us an email at wtr@jupiterbroadcasting.com . You can also find out show on iTunes and you can follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Nerd Nest Media | WTR 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

M is for Monopoly | Tech Talk Today 168

chris — Thu, 07 May 2015 09:59:08 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

A WordPress flaw in the wild is under attack & Microsoft releases more software for Linux. Plus a sneak peak at Google I/O & what new features might land in Android M.

Direct Download:

RSS Feeds:

Become a supporter on Patreon

Show Notes:

Actively exploited WordPress bug puts millions of sites at risk | Ars Technica

The cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability resides in genericons, a package that’s part of a WordPress theme known as Twenty Fifteen that’s installed by default, according to a blog post published Wednesday by security firm Sucuri. The XSS vulnerability is “DOM based,” meaning it resides in the document object model that’s responsible for how text, images, headers, and links are represented in a browser. The Open Web Application Security Project has much more about DOM-based XSS vulnerabilities here.

Microsoft Releases PowerShell DSC For Linux – Slashdot

jones_supa writes: Microsoft is announcing that PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) for Linux is available for download in form of RPM and DEB packages. DSC is a new management platform that provides a set of PowerShell extensions that you can use to declaratively specify how you want your software environment to be configured. You can now use the DSC platform to manage the configuration of both Windows and Linux workloads with the PowerShell interface. Microsoft says that bringing DSC to Linux is another step in the company’s “broader commitment to common management of heterogeneous assets in your datacenter or the public cloud.” Adds reader benjymouse: DSC is in the same space as Chef and Puppet (and others); but unlike those, Microsofts attempts to build a platform/infrastructure based on industry standards like OMI to allow DSC to configure and control both Windows, Linux and other OSes as well as network equipment like switches, etc.

Confirmed: Media Center is Dead – Thurrott.com

“Due to decreased usage, Windows Media Center will not be part of Windows 10,” Mr. Aul tweeted recently.

Digging into the Google I/O 2015 schedule: Android M, voice access, and more | Ars Technica

Google has posted the schedule for Google I/O 2015. While the company tries not to give away too many things with the early schedule, the release always ends up being full of new information. We dug into all the session descriptions, and here’s all the info we could squeeze out of it.

Android M—It looks like Android M, the next version of Android, will be at the show. One sandbox session is called “Android for Work Update” and says, “Android M is bringing the power of Android to all kinds of workplaces.” While full Android releases have alphabetical snack code names, “Android L” launched last year at Google I/O, and the release was a developer preview for what would eventually become Lollipop. So it sounds like Android [letter] is a new pattern that indicates a dev preview.

The post M is for Monopoly | Tech Talk Today 168 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Network Is Your Net Worth | WTR 23

chris — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 15:35:00 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Juliet works as the Director of IT and Creative Services for Hearing Care Solutions. She made her way into the tech field because she likes money!

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found below or also at heywtr.tumblr.com

Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: Angela, today we’re interviewing Juliet Meyers who is a friend of mine, and she works for Hearing Care Solutions as an IT and web manager. She wears a lot of hats, and we get to talk about a whole bunch of that in the show.
ANGELA: And I hear she likes money.
PAIGE: I have heard that.
ANGELA: SO, before we get into the show, I want to tell you about how you can support this show. If you like this show, you can go to patreon.com/jupitersignal. That is how you support the whole network. Today represents Tech Talk Today. It is a show that we put on as a thank you for the people that subscribe to our network. By subscribing, you support the shows of the network, not just one in particular. And, as I mentioned, Tech Talk Today is the thank you show. You can also look forward to some interviews because we will be at Linux Fest Northwest this weekend, and it is going to be amazing. We hope to get some interviews and just some good content to talk about in a future show.
PAIGE: Women’s Tech Radio will be there along with most of the other hosts of the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, so come by and say hi if you’re there.
ANGELA: Yep, it’s in Bellingham, Washington.
PAIGE: And we started our interview today by asking Juliet to explain what she’s into in IT now.
JULIET: Hi there. My name is Juliet and I’m really excited to be on the show today. I’m the director of IT and creative services for a hearing aid company, and my role is to support all of our WordPress sites, of which there are multiple, desktop support as well as doing all the Photoshop, managing all the social media. I’m really a jack of all trades for my company, on top of trying to manage my VM ware boxes. I really run the gamut between doing more local box stuff as well as some of the server stuff, and as well, of course, running around and chasing people down through the internet for various different tasks, things like that. And, it’s a really varied role and I’ve learned a ton in the last couple of years, so I’m really, really excited to get to talk a little bit about it today.
ANGELA: So, any hats. I think that is a common theme of a lot of our interviews. IT can’t be pegged down to just one particular task. It’s not a button pushing job, that’s for sure. Like, not one single tasks. Can you elaborate on the social media aspect of what you do?
JULIET: One of the things that I do, I do a lot of the SEO installs for our various different websites, and then I also deal with some of the social media aspect. Social media is something that I have worked with throughout my last four jobs. I was a super early Twitter adopter. I think my Twitter handle is from 2007, my original one. I got to watch social media evolve. I used to be a community manager actually, for a company that went from having one million users to 13 million users.
ANGELA: Wow.
JULIET: Yeah, that was an experience. I’ve got some war stories from that. I used to work for a group called MapMyFitness and so I had the pleasure of watching them grow from an angel invested company all the way through to three rounds of VC funding and they actually got bought out by Under Armor in the last year, after I departed the company, but I really got to see social media as it started to grow. Back when they were just starting the F5 conferences, things like that.
PAIGE: So, do you enjoy your social media role?
JULIET: I do. The demographic that I work for is actually 55 and over, so a lot of the social media that I do presently is more answering questions and kind of directing people to the website. So, you know, we don’t have — we have more of a passive social media presence at the moment than we do an active one, where you might see in a startup or a tech firm.
ANGELA: Now, does that mean that the hearing aide company, I mean obviously mainly is geared towards elderly, but do you offer children’s hearing aids and young adults?
JULIET: We can, mostly we do a lot of Medicare and Medi-Cal, Medicaid.
ANGELA: Oh, okay, sure. Right.
JULIET: So, the majority — we have done children’s aids, but they are the rare exception, not necessarily the rule. But we do have some individuals who come in through Facebook every now and again, but it’s important for SEO and SEM to have those social media links and to push your blog. We get a lot of blog traffic, actually, through a couple of our different sites. So, that’s been really interesting to see. Obviously that’s a big deal in terms of your SEO rating.
ANGELA: Right. You know, interestingly enough, even though elderly is your target demographic, it’s probably their kids helping them –
JULIET: Yep, exactly.
ANGELA: – getting the hearing aids. So, yeah, it’s definitely not all for not.
PAIGE: That’s interesting, because I was actually going to ask. It’s fascinating to me that you’re even getting questions on social medial about stuff.
JULIET: We do. You know, it’s funny, if you talk to — obviously you’ve got kind of the newer end of social medial, but the kids now, like the tweens, you early 20s looks at Facebook as the old people network.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh, no way.
JULIET: I kid you not. I kid you not.
PAIGE: No, that’s true.
JULIET: It breaks my heart. I remember when — I mean, obviously you guys do too — when Facebook and Myspace started hitting the scene.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: Well, when Facebook first came out you had to have a .edu to even get on.
JULIET: That’s correct.
PAIGE: You had to be in college.
JULIET: Exactly, which is why I didn’t join initially, because I thought that was elitist.
ANGELA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’m like no, Myspace is fine.
JULIET: Right. I had two Myspace profiles, one for my radio persona and then one for me, because I used to work in radio. I used to be cool.
ANGELA: That’s news to me.
JULIET: But, it’s really fascinating to see — because both of my parents are well over 55 and they both have Facebook pages. They both use them to connect with family. So Facebook is not what it once was. I mean, what it is, one in six people on the planet has a Facebook.
ANGELA: Geez.
PAIGE: Yeah.
JULIET: I think I read that statistic somewhere on the internet, which means it has to be true.
PAIGE: Statistics don’t lie.
ANGELA: As long as it was @fact on Twitter I think you’re good.
JULIET: Right.
ANGELA: I believe everything that one says, no.
JULIET: Clearly you should. And I believe everything Reddit tells me, so we’re about even.
ANGELA: Right.
PAIGE: So, you’ve talked some about SEO, and for those in the know, what does SEO mean/stand for?
JULIET: SEO is Search Engine Optimization. You’ll also occasionally read SEM, which is Search Engine Marketing. What that is, is basically trying to kick Google in a way that Google likes to be kicked to put your webpage up at the top.
PAIGE: Okay, and is that a skillset like you went to college for to learn search engine marketing or whatever?
JULIET: No. Yeah, right, no. I’ve been out of college a while. So, my degree is actually in broadcast journalism. My background is in television and radio. I know of organically — that’s a fun word — fell into this area of tech. My journey kind of started — I left Las Vegas and CBS in 2009 and actually got a job here in Denver working as a quality assurance tester. My background for QA is actually in video games. I worked for Petroglyph Studios for a number of years (inaudible) out of Las Vegas. And I think they have a new game out. They always have a new game out. I don’t recall what it is, but — Grey Goo, I think is the name of it. Anyway, I started doing quality assurance and testing for MapMyFitness in software and I ended up moving into their customer service division, which included all of — there was 12 employees when I started and I think it was around 100 when I departed. So, I ended up in customer service and became their CSR Manager, and that meant I was doing all of the software testing and then doing all of the releases on Facebook, all of that fun stuff on Twitter, and through all of their different marketing channels. So, I kind of learned about SEO and SEM in the field as it was becoming more prevalent around 2010. So, I just got very lucky in that I got to grow up with the position and kind of grow into SEO marketing. It was a huge part of what we did for MapMyFitness, because everything had to be very geotagged. Which is to say, I live in Austin, Texas, and I want to find all of the great runs or cycling routes. And so, everything that we did for that company was very, very built into — we actually had a great development team — everything was very, very stringently built into the code to encourage people to, when they Googled trail Austin, Texas, that’s what would come up. So it’s a marriage of marketing as well as an agile development team, and I mean that more in the actual term of agile, not just the developmental style.
PAIGE: Obviously, you didn’t start in tech, and you’ve kind of wound up in tech. What was that moment like or kind of the transition? Why the transition? What kind of spurred you to get out of radio to move over to do QA?
JULIET: I like money.
PAIGE: I can understand that story.
ANGELA: I like money.
JULIET: Yeah, that’s really the base part of it. I was living in Las Vegas and I worked for NPR for a number of years, and that was absolutely fantastic. It was a great experience, and I did a lot of different things for them, and then decided that I wanted to travel a little bit more. So, I wandered off to Guam for six months. Came back to the United States and just kind of wanted to get back into radio, but I wanted to get back into commercial radio. Commercial and non-profit radio are very, very different, and I wanted to live that lifestyle, but part of the joy and detriment of radio is that it is a lifestyle. You are literally eating, sleeping, and breathing radio. I mean that is — that’s all of it. So, I went back to school, go another set of certifications and got into it. Had a great time, met some really interesting people, did some interesting things, and then decided that I didn’t want to work three jobs to support my radio habit, because the only way you can truly support yourself in radio is if you have the morning show or you are the afternoon drive show and/or have an wealthy spouse. So, I worked four jobs, 70 hours a week to support the radio habit.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh. Wow.
JULIET: Yeah, I loved it though. I mean, it was great. I did it for a number of years, and it was fantastic, but then I kind of was starting to stare down the barrel of my 30s and a buddy of mine said hey we have an opportunity, why don’t you come out to Denver and I said I really would like to stop working like a crazy person.
ANGELA: Okay, so I have a question.
JULIET: Sure.
ANGELA: In my background, I worked for five years at a medical supply company, and I started in the shipping department and worked my way up. Then I moved to purchasing, and then I moved upstairs to customer service, and then I kind of just became the operations manager without the title.
JULIET: Oops.
ANGELA: Oh, it’s fine. It’s because there was an operations manager, but anyway, the point is, I had to learn all about the billings aspects and all the different — have you had to learn that and has that been an adjustment? Do you enjoy it? What is your level of participation?
JULIET: I love my job right now. Every day is different for me. It’s fantastic. I get to — you know, from the little things of why doesn’t my printer work to, oh God, oh God, it’s on fire, why are the servers not responding. Oh God, Oh God, please help. Crisis management is something I’m very accustomed to when you work in radio and there is flooding happening, or you have to suddenly change things, or someone says a naughty word on the air. There are a series of fire drills that go with that. And then I jumped directly from that particular pan right back into the fire, which is to say a startup. And anybody who has worked in a startup knows what that comes with. It is like a four letter word. I still had PTSD from something called the Tour de France. So, crisis management is something that I live for, I’m very comfortable in, and I’m very lucky that the company I work for now is actually run and managed by women. All of our executives — the majority of our executives, excuse me, are women who are exceptionally skilled in their field. They’re visionaries in their field and are absolutely fantastic. So, you know, I’ve been given the opportunity to really learn how to use a VM ware machine. Obviously, my background was not necessarily in that. I have an extensive Photoshop background, so I’ve gotten to learn more about CSS. I’ve gotten to really get to know WordPress in a very intimate fashion, because we do a lot of — we are very agile in our website development here. So, we make a large number of changes, and so it’s my job just to never say no. So, I’m sure you guys understand where that goes.
PAIGE: That is the IT magic, right? Never say no.
JULIET: Right. So, my job is to say yes and get it done as (inaudible) and with pizazz and a smile on my face, and I absolutely love the company I work for. I cannot say enough good things about them. They take great care of their team members, and empower their executives and their management to make those decisions that are going to make the company better. We are doing something amazing. We are really helping people get hearing aids, because it’s a bloated market. People can pay up to 3,000 — Three, four, $5,000.00 per hearing aid and we offer them for significantly less, so I get to go home feeling good about what I do.
PAIGE: Yeah, that’s huge is when your job feels like it makes a difference. What is the hardest part for you? You like the crisis. It seems like you like the learning and the job. What are your pain points with IT?
JULIET: I have learned a lot, but there are still some things that I don’t necessarily understand. You know, when something doesn’t work, I use an Asterisk phone system and I don’t program in Asterisk, in fact, I don’t program much in anything, except maybe HTML. I’m a WordPress jockey, I’m not a dev. So, when I run into something where I’m going — my problem is maybe, you look at a problem and you know it’s above your skill level, and it’s that moment of I need to get everything back online and back okay, but I’m not exactly sure how to do that. Fortunately, we have a wonderful offsite IT team that I can call on and say hey guys, this is above my pay grade, so what’s broken. And they’re fantastic. They’ve actually been great tutors and have been very helpful. So, it’s been a really, really good experience. But definitely my challenges are when I come across something where I just have absolutely no idea. I had to teach myself Active Directory. I had to teach myself how to deal with a Microsoft Exchange server. I have several things that run on SQL. While I’ve done a ton of SQL quarries, which I hate by the way, if I had to choose one thing to hate, I’m going to go with SQL quarries.
PAIGE: That’s not a bad choice.
JULIET: Yeah, I don’t feel like it is. I think my biggest challenge — I don’t — I think if I worked in a different company that had a different management — I think if I had a different management team my experience would be very different. I remember in other companies there’s that jockeying for tech supremacy, or who knows the most things about X, Y, and Z. And I have an incredibly supportive management team. I think probably dealing with the Mac is probably my least favorite. Fortunately, my boss, the COO of the company is fantastic and speaks Mac more fluently than I do.
PAIGE: Yeah, that tech superiority, I’ve definitely run into that. I think one of the biggest problems I had when I was working in IT was the IT culture where what you know is what makes you valuable, so sharing what you know is not necessarily a good move on your part. And so kind of breaking down those walls of, hey let’s make this information open, it’s all online anyway now guys. Like, we have to be a team.
ANGELA: Yeah.
JULIET: Stack overflow is your friend.
PAIGE: But especially with geek culture, what you know and how smart you are is how valuable you are. Kind of breaking those barriers down is very difficult in some of these older (inaudible) IT departments. So, that’s really cool that you found a space that that’s not the case. Very rare.
JULIET: I’m so protective of my company, because they have been so good to me, but it is rare. And you find that, I think, more in male dominated culture. In some of my previous companies, and I won’t name names, people were retained because of the knowledge that they have, or because they built something that was vital. Even though they had no business being in the company anymore. They were jaded. They were bitter. They were upset.
PAIGE: Yeah.
JULIET: But they were retained because they had a certain skillset or because they had coded something that only they knew how it worked. Because you run into that technical debt issues if you want to try and fix that particular code base.
ANGELA: That’s a great term for it, technical debt.
JULIET: I did not come up with that term. I stole that from someone else. It’s a buzzword.
PAIGE: It’s a perfect duplication of the word though. It is that, you know, you have to pay back this technical debt or you have to deal with some jerk. Your choice.
JULIET: Yep.
PAIGE: And most companies are going to choose the jerk, because it’s cheaper.
JULIET: Yep, it’s so expensive to bring on new people, especially at that level.
PAIGE: It is really fascinating once you dig into HR management at all, is like the most expensive part of people is onboarding. We are very, very expensive to onboard.
ANGELA: Oh yes.
JULIET: Yep.
PAIGE: Your productivity in most companies doesn’t hit its normal until at least six months in.
JULIET: Yep. And it’s a miserable place to be in. I mean, fortunately we’re not bringing any high-end tech people out there, but even my call center representatives or any of that kind of middle management section, it’s a long time before they’re onboard. And we find that here, even though we’re not an overwhelmingly technical company.
PAIGE: You’ve talked a lot of about learning a lot of different things on the job. What are you favorite resources?
JULIET: My boss.
PAIGE: Nice.
JULIET: Honest to God, she’s my favorite resource.
PAIGE: So, that one on one kind of mentorship almost, is really super valuable for you?
JULIET: You know, being able to sit down and talk to somebody who — because her background is actually in — she did a ton of QA work. She’s done project management. She’s extremely valuable and she knows the business so, so well. The team here is absolutely the best resource that I have. My peers are fantastic. My bosses are fantastic. That’s really a great resource. But, in terms of tech, if I run into something that I have no idea on or my boss has no idea on, but it’s still my responsibility, and it’s not something I can hand off to our offsite folks, Skype and G Chat to be perfectly frank. I have a huge network of friends who are developers, who are DBAs who I’m still in contact with. And so when I run into something that I just can’t seem to crack, I will absolutely reach out to them. Either they’ll direct me to a blog or they’ll direct me to something that they’ve worked on, or they’ll simply write the SQL query for me.
ANGELA: Yay.
PAIGE: So, you’re living the, your network is your net worth?
JULIET: Yes. And that is true in my personal life as well. My skillset is my Verizon network. I’ve got friends who spent the last few years working in WordPress, and so when I run across something that’s rough like that, really it’s your ability to use Google. How good is your Google-Fu. If you don’t have a network to reach out to, how good is you Google-Fu?
PAIGE: Alright, so one more question on that. How do you get over that fear of asking questions, because I think a lot of people that we talk to kind of have that initial fear. And a lot of people that I talk to who are just getting into software are like, you know, I don’t want to sound dumb, or I don’t want to feel like a burden. What kind of let you have that transition to not feel that way?
JULIET: I spent a lot of time interviewing people. I’m an extrovert, unlike most of my comrades in tech. I know there is a lot of introverts in this field, and it makes sense because you truly geek out about this stuff. Like, I could I could sit here and talk about Google algorithms for hours, but I think it’s — getting over that hurdle for me is understanding that I didn’t start out in this field. I accept that here are, I know nothing John Snow. I — there is a lot of kind of — there’s a lot of sections of this that I know nothing about, and I’m okay with that. But the only way to learn is to ask. And more importantly, most tech folks, if you ask them, they’ll talk ad nauseum (sic) about this stuff. They absolutely love to goob about it. I have a lot of experts in various (inaudible). Like, I’ve got people who work for cloud storage companies who could talk endlessly. I’ve got a buddy who’s an evangelist for Solid Fire, one of the cloud companies out in Boulder, Colorado, because that’s where all the cool tech things are these day, apparently. So, it’s human nature. Folks like to talk about what they do for a living. They like to talk about tech. Really, just asking them, they’re happy to yammer about it.
PAIGE: Yeah, the one thing that I’ve found is that most geeks are introverts, which is always hard to deal with, but they have passions and that’s what makes us geeks. Being passionate about something is why we call it geeking out on something. So, if you can kind of find those people in your network or meet those people at meetups, and find their geeky thing. You’re like, oh that’s the thing I need to know about.
ANGELA: And then they turn extravert, just momentarily.
JULIET: Yeah.
PAIGE: You just pull the string on a little toy that talks and it just goes. Very cool. Actually, I think that’s actually an interesting thing that you brought up is the art of the interview. I think, you know, I got really super into radio and the PRN stuff, and I love the art of the question. I think kind of setting that, as a geek, because I geeked out on it, I feel like I was able to incorporate that skill too. I would also recommend if you’re feeling like you don’t even know how to start a conversation, check out interviewing.
JULIET: Listen to NPR for a few hours, Morning Edition or Fresh Air.
PAIGE: Yeah, totally.
I had one other question as we wrap up.
JULIET: Sure.
PAIGE: What software piece do you spend the most of your day in? What are your tools of the trade for your job?
JULIET: Photoshop I think is at the tippy, tippy top. What is Chrome for $500 Alex. I love Chrome. I love the extensions on that. I’ve got CSS viewer, I cannot live without. I cannot live without that plugin, oh my God.
PAIGE: You’ve got to try Firebug, Juliet, I’m telling you.
JULIET: Oh, if I’m in Firefox and I’m QA’ing, Firebug 100 percent.
PAIGE: Oh, they put Firebug in Chrome now too.
JULIET: Really?
PAIGE: Yeah.
JULIET: Oh, I need that. I need that a lot. I thought I could only use it in Firefox so I have both browsers. So, if I’m doing QA work or something is not working, Firebug is absolutely my go to.
PAIGE: Yeah, awesome dev tools.
JULIET: So good. So good. There’s a couple of other ones that I use. Really, the Adobe suite, because I do a lot of PDF conversions, so In Design, I spend a lot of time in In Design. Obviously, WordPress, WordPress, and more WordPress. I can’t live without Dropbox. Microsoft Office, they’ve done some cool stuff with PowerPoint recently. I know it’s really rare to actually give props to Microsoft for anything, but I really do love PowerPoint, as well as Excel. But yeah, I think Photoshop and Chrome are really where I spend the majority of my day. There are so many good resources just (inaudible) as it is. That’s really where I spend a lot of my time. And I can’t live without Spotify, just for the record.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can contact us using our contact form at www.jupiterbroadcasting.com , which is also where you can go to the show’s dropdown and look at all the Women’s Tech Radio episodes that have been released. There you will also find the transcription of the episodes, which you can also find at www.heywtr.tumblr.com.
PAIGE: You can also check us out on iTunes or follow us on Twitter at heywtr. If you have a moment, take the time to leave a review on iTunes and let us know what you think of the show. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter – transcription@cotterville.net.

The post Network Is Your Net Worth | WTR 23 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

OMG the Internet! | WTR 20

chris — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 01:42:04 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Liz Abinante began her journey at the age of 12 and is now a software engineer at New Relic! She also funded her way through school by selling knitting patterns!

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found at heywtr.tumblr.com

The post OMG the Internet! | WTR 20 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Social Marketing | WTR 17

chris — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 12:23:52 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Erica Melzer is a support agent at Campaign Monitor, a service for excellent marketing mailings. She is also a site admin for Lady Loves Code.

Thanks to:

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found at heywtr.tumblr.com

The post Social Marketing | WTR 17 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

How Non-Devs Can Help Linux | LAS 350

chris — Sun, 01 Feb 2015 19:20:50 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

What are the best options for non-coders and developers to contribute to their favorite open source project? We’ll break down some of the barriers we’ve faced & approaches we like to help out in a non-development capacity.

Plus the common ways the Ghost vulnerability is being exploited, how you can do your taxes under Linux & a few surprises!

Thanks to:

Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

Direct Download:

RSS Feeds:

Become a supporter on Patreon:

— Show Notes: —

Contribution to open source when your not a developer

Brought to you by: System76

Problems we’ve faced trying to help

Who could use the money the most ie: Mozilla vs Tox
Abandoned IRC, unclear if anyone still “owning” the project.
Mixed ways of funding. I want to contribute, but each project has their own payment system, and way of handling it.

Non-Monetary ways to help

Advocation for software,
Documentation
Community outreach
Bug Triage, find dupes, discover missing information developers would need to fully troubleshoot.

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

Samsung Smart Refrigerator

The Samsung 4-Door refrigerator with 8″ Wi-Fi Enabled LCD will allow you to browse the web, access apps and connect to other Samsung smart devices – opening up a world of interactive communication and entertainment.

Samsung’s new smart fridge mirrors your smart phone

Desktop App Pick

Gourmet Recipe Manager

Gourmet Recipe Manager is a recipe-organizer available for Windows, Linux, and other Unix systems.

Weekly Spotlight

BeansBooks

Easily create invoices and purchase orders, pay bills and track sales tax. Import and automatically categorize bank transactions.

Our Past Picks

These are the weekly picks provided by the Jupiter Broadcasting podcast, the Linux Action Show.

This site includes a separate picks lists for the “Runs Linux”, Desktop Apps, Spotlight Picks, Android Picks, and Distro Picks.

— NEWS —

WordPress, PHP Apps, Subject to Ghost glibc Attacks

“Less than 48 hours after the disclosure of the Ghost vulnerability in the GNU C library (glibc), researchers have uncovered that PHP applications, including the WordPress content management system, could be another weak spot and eventually in the crosshairs of attackers.

Ghost is a vulnerability in glibc that attackers can use against only a handful of applications right now to remotely run executable code and gain control of a Linux server. The vulnerability is a heap-based buffer overflow and affects all Linux systems, according to experts, and has been present in the glibc code since 2000. ???An example of where this could be a big issue is within WordPress itself: it uses a function named wp_http_validate_url() to validate every pingback???s post URL,??? wrote Sucuri research Marc-Alexandre Montpas in an advisory published Wednesday. ???And it does so by using gethostbyname(). So an attacker could leverage this vector to insert a malicious URL that would trigger a buffer overflow bug, server-side, potentially allowing him to gain privileges on the server.???”

LibreOffice gets a streamlined makeover, native alternatives for major Microsoft

The Document foundation announced availability of the latest version of LibreOffice on Thursday, which it says is the most beautiful version of the open source productivity suite yet. LibreOffice 4.4 also fixes some compatibility issues with files that are saved in Microsoft’s OOXML formats.

Official Google Drive Linux Client Screenshots Leaked

The screenshots above are bundled with the official Google Drive Mac client and they first appeared with version 1.18.7821.2489 (I checked the previous version and some random old versions and none contained these screenshots), released on October 30, 2014, which isn’t long ago and it most probably means that Google is testing Drive for Linux internally. So we might actually see an official release pretty soon.

Bill Gates Inadvertently Shows Off Ubuntu on His Facebook Page

The Internet is abuzz today after Bill Gates published an image on his Facebook page and a link towards his website with the text “15 years from now, most people in poor countries will be able to take classes online.” It’s a sound goal and it’s perfectly doable, but in the image posted on Facebook the operating system is Ubuntu.

— FEEDBACK —

— CHRIS’ STASH —

Hang in our chat room:

irc.geekshed.net #jupiterbroadcasting

— NOAH’S STASH —

Noah’s Day Job

Find us on Google+

Find us on Twitter

Follow the network on Facebook

Catch the show LIVE Sunday 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UTC:

The post How Non-Devs Can Help Linux | LAS 350 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Project Zero Goes To War | TechSNAP 177

chris — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 19:01:59 +0000

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

Pre-crime is here, with technology that lets you predicting a hack before it happens. We’ll tell you how. Google’s project zero goes to war, we get real about virtualization.

And then its a great batch of your questions, our answers & much more!

Thanks to:

Direct Download:

RSS Feeds:

Become a supporter on Patreon:

— Show Notes: —

Predicting which sites will get hacked, before it happens

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a tool that can help predict if a website is likely to become compromised or malicious in the future
Using the Archive.org “Wayback Machine” they looked at websites before they were hacked, and tried to identify trends and other information that may be predictors
“The classifier correctly predicted 66 percent of future hacks in a one-year period with a false positive rate of 17 percent”
“The classifier is focused on Web server malware or, put more simply, the hacking and hijacking of a website that is then used to attack all its visitors”
The tool looks at the server software, outdated versions of Apache and PHP can be good indicators of future vulnerabilities
It also looks at how the website is laid out, how often it is updated, what applications it runs (outdated wordpress is a good hacking target)
It also compares the sites to sites that have been compromised. If a site is very like another, and that other was compromised, there is an increased probability that the first site will also be compromised
The classifier looks at many other factors as well: “For instance, if a certain website suddenly sees a change in popularity, it could mean that it became used as part of a [malicious] redirection campaign,”
The most common marker for a hackable website: The presence of the ‘generator’ meta tag with a value of ‘Wordpress 3.2.1’ or ‘Wordpress 3.3.1’
Research PDF from USENIX
There are tools like those from Norse, that analyze network traffic and attempt to detect new 0-day exploits before they are known

Google’s Project Zero exploits the unexploitable bug

Well over a month ago Google’s Project Zero reported a bug in glibc, however there was much skepticism about the exploitability of the bug, so it was not fixed
However, this week the Google researchers were able to create a working exploit for the bug, including an ASLR bypass for 32bit OSs
The blog post details the process the Project Zero team went through to develop the exploit and gain root privileges
The blog post also details an interesting (accidental) mitigation found in Ubuntu, they caused the researchers to target Fedora to more easily develop the exploit
The blog also discusses a workaround for other issues they ran into. Once they had exploited the set-uid binary, they found that running: system(“/bin/bash”) started the shell with their original privileges, rather than as root. Instead, they called chroot() on a directory they had setup to contain their own /bin/sh that calls setuid(0) and then executes a real shell as the system root user.
The path they used to get a root shell relies on a memory leak in the setuid binary pkexec, which they recommend be fixed as well as the original glibc bug
“The ability to lower ASLR strength by running setuid binaries with carefully chosen ulimits is unwanted behavior. Ideally, setuid programs would not be subject to attacker-chosen ulimit values”
“The exploit would have been complicated significantly if the malloc main linked listed hardening was also applied to the secondary linked list for large chunks”
The glibc bug has since been fixed

Secret Service warns over 1000 businesses hit by Backoff Point-of-Sales terminal malware

The Secret Service and DHS have released an advisory warning businesses about the POS (Point-of-Sales terminal) malware that has been going around for a while
Advisory
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encourages organizations, regardless of size, to proactively check for possible Point of Sale (PoS) malware infections. One particular family of malware, which was detected in October 2013 and was not recognized by antivirus software solutions until August 2014, has likely infected many victims who are unaware that they have been compromised”
“Seven PoS system providers/vendors have confirmed that they have had multiple clients affected“
“Backoff has experts concerned because it’s effective in swiping customer credit card data from businesses using a variety of exfiltration tools, including memory, or RAM scraping, techniques, keyloggers and injections into running processes”
“A report from US-CERT said attackers use Backoff to steal payment card information once they’ve breached a remote desktop or administration application, especially ones that are using weak or default credentials”
“Backoff is then installed on a point-of-sale device and injects code into the explorer.exe process that scrapes memory from running processes in order to steal credit card numbers before they’re encrypted on the device and sent to a payment processor. “
“Keylogging functionality is also present in most recent variants of ‘Backoff’. Additionally, the malware has a C2 component that is responsible for uploading discovered data, updating the malware, downloading/executing further malware, and uninstalling the malware,”
US-CERT Advisory
Krebs reports that Dairy Queen may also be a victim of this attack
“Dairy Queen says it has no indication of a card breach at any of its thousands of locations, but the company also acknowledges that nearly all stores are franchises and that there is no established company process or requirement that franchisees communicate security issues or card breaches to Dairy Queen headquarters”

Feedback:

Round Up:

The post Project Zero Goes To War | TechSNAP 177 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.