In other news, your check is in the mail.

Comcast says its customers shouldn't worry about having their browsing histories or personal information sold off by Comcast, because the cable giant doesn't have any immediate plans to do so. And if they do decide to change that policy, customers should rely on the state governments to stand up to a company that writes its own laws in many places.

In short, Comcast may be able to sell out its customers now, but customers should trust them not to.

And who can you trust, if not the company that once changed a customer's name to "Asshole Brown" out of spite?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/31/comcast_we_will_never_sell_your_data/

Joe Coleman presents his range of writing in different levels of obnoxiousness, from "slacker who couldn't be arsed" to "Going Out For Business in Times Square" insanity.

http://getcoleman.com/

In other news, your dishwasher may have a web server in it.
Maybe Kelly Conway wasn't so far wrong after all? (Nah, she probably still was).

Can't wait to see what some script kiddie decides to tell our kitchen appliances to do.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/26/miele_joins_internetofst_hall_of_shame/

Not only are some browsers now throwing flares when forms are presented without encryption, but Google is starting to notice as well.
Bottom line - it's time to get a cert and make your site work over encrypted connections.

Here's a detailed article that will take you through the steps required to get HTTPS working on your site(s).

https://www.lullabot.com/articles/https-everywhere-deep-dive-into-making-the-switch

Did you know 73% of the top 30 media companies use Drupal? Neither did I.

Drupal.org has 3 new industry-specific pages, offering case studies and talking points, like the one above, for prospective site builders who are considering Drupal.

The three market verticals are Higher Ed, Media/Publishing, and Government.

Having worked in all 3, I can attest there's lots of opportunity there. Hopefully these new pages will help get the word out.

https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/drupalorg-industry-pages-are-live

People undervalue persistence. You’ve been told since you were a kid stories of trains getting up mountains with the power of persistence. Get up. Try again. And again. It feels like the most cliche advice there ever was: I think I can.

But still, we underestimate how beneficial that extra effort becomes.

https://m.signalvnoise.com/persistence-is-undervalued-d1f5a5a5fda2#.qzc8k0hyg

It takes roughly three steps to remediate the Heartbleed bug.
 

1. Patching: Update your software to the latest versions of OpenSSL; thankfully almost all organization have accomplished this step.
2. Creation of New Private Keys: Creating new private keys will prevent an attacker, who already exploited the flaw before patching, from being able to spy on your encrypted.
3. Reissuance of Security Certificates: This step will eliminate the ability of any attacker to spoof organizations and fool or phish their customers.

http://thehackernews.com/2017/01/heartbleed-openssl-vulnerability.html

Even if only a few people use precise words, employ thoughtful reasoning and ask difficult questions, it still forces those around them to catch up. It's easy to imagine a slippery slope down, but there's also the cultural ratchet, a positive function in which people race to learn more and understand more so they can keep up with those around them.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/01/the-candy-diet.html

Here's a simple technique for learning something quickly - and I find, also deeply. If you can explain something in layman's terms to an intelligent novice, you will have assimilated the subject in a deep way.

By the way I was trained to teach meditation this way - avoiding spiritual jargon and Sanskrit terminology - and found it marvelously effective.

It is the process of thinking about an idea while teaching it that make the method so effective. Once you can explain an idea with simple language and create graphic analogies, you have deeply understood it and will remember it for a long time.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-feynman-technique-3-steps-to-learning-something-new/