People who are the victim of stalkers have a startlingly different cybersecurity risk profile. I heard the idea articulated and clearly defended by Allison Bishop at CyberWeek. Here is her twitter, proof that she is funny and evidence that she is wicked smart. She articulated several specific positions that are worth carefully articulating. First, she […]
No Shit In The Ranch House
Please forgive my use of a four-letter word. But it is central to my overall point, as I hope you will soon see. Ranches are shit-management systems. There are other ways to think about a ranch, more refined and polite. But this way of looking at a ranch is useful. A ranch is all about […]
How to be Cyber Woke for patients. Facebook lesson 1
So I wrote a post supporting the notion that Facebook could do some good by integrating with hospital data. That blew up on Twitter, and so much so that it eventually ended up on CNBC. Before I go on, I must recommend the continued reporting from @chrissyfarr who broke the original story. I also recommend […]
Facebook and Healthcare data, the contrarian view.
(Update May 2019.) Publishing this article was part of what started my recent investigation into Facebook’s cybersecurity and privacy practices. The outcome of that investigation means that I do not have any hopeful or positive things to say regarding Facebook and I believe that I was… and we all were, naive. I no longer hold […]
3D printed QR code coasters
Someone who is not me (very jealous) has figured out a good method for 3d printing QR codes. Mikeasaurus, chose to put his QR codes on coasters, and to use the link to allow guest to get on his wifi quickly. But the method looks pretty solid and I bet you could do some really […]
Cascading Configuration Design Pattern
I have not been able to find simple plain-language descriptions of what the Cascading Configuration Design Pattern is. And really not that many complicated descriptions either. Basically, this pattern is used to simplify very complicated configuration problems, by simplifying what would be a matrix of configuration decisions into a “cascade” of configurations using a hierarchy. […]
QR Code as Art
Recently, I have come to realize how many issues I have hidden from by being a work-a-holic. Especially losing my mother and brother so close together. It was coming out in unhealthy ways and I have been looking for better ways to process those events, rather than letting them fester as a back-ground brain process. […]
The Federal Government Recommends JSON
It is the policy of many governments to support transparency with the release of Open Data. But few understand how important it is that this Open Data be released in machine-readable openly available formats. I have already written a lengthly blog post about how most of the time, the CSV standard is the right data […]
Harris Health Ben Taub Refusal to Triage
This week I went to the Harris Health Ben Taub ED because I was passing a kidney stone. I was refused triage and told that I would have to wait 7 hours for treatment, behind a waiting room full of people who were obviously in the ED for urgent issues that were not as acute as […]
My political bias
I think, when one starts to write what could be a politically explosive blog posts, it is good order to reveal your political biases and opinions. I am about to write several, so this is a nice preface that I can just link to, in order to explain my perspective on current political issues. Let […]