1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings!  It's been 6 months since the last newsletter, and this edition of the newsletter isn't just super-sized -- it's the biggest newsletter we've ever put out.

I'm going to talk a little in this editorial about happenings on the website and forum.  So if that doesn't interest you, feel free to skip the remainder of the editorial and the first few sections of the newsletter and jump right to the roundup of the most interesting new posts on our forum.

In March we held a fundraiser to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the site, and raised $15,649 from 927 donors (an average donation of about $17).  For 10 years our software has remained free of adware, spyware, bundled toolbars, or other unwanted stuff -- all made possible by donations from ordinary users.  It was a rejuvenating experience to hear from so many people who have supported our site over the last decade. 

The fundraiser made it possible for us to finally spend a couple of months putting in place a major forum upgrade, which was unveiled on August 30th.  The forum upgrade brings lots of small improvements on the user interface side of things, and some major improvements in the back end that will make it easier for us to improve, maintain and secure the forum for the next ten years.

And with the successful forum upgrade behind us, we're not slowing down -- next up is a major site overhaul.  We're moving the entire website to a CMS which will allow us to more easily add more content from more users, and make it easier to keep the website content updated.  We should be ready to unveil that in November (section 2 has links with more details), so stay tuned -- your donations are hard at work.

Ok, onward to the newsletter!

-jesse (mouser)

DC Member wraith808 writes:

I've posted a few other threads about failed kickstarters, but the articles behind those where no where as indepth as the treatment by the NY Times:

ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder

One of the first quotes nails the whole thing, I think:

Kickstarter and its crowdfunding competitors have invented a new sort of economic relationship, and a corresponding frontier of Internet acrimony.

It's a very interesting read- and it's also interesting that even with the best of intent, things just fail.  How do you manage those expectations?  Especially when there's money involved from people that are not used to the market?

Seagate wireless hard-drives provides undocumented Telnet services accessible by using the default credentials of 'root' as username and the default password.

via https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/903500 and http://www.theregist..._poisoned_purloined/

FWIW, other vulnerabilities surfaced too (see links).

---

IIUC, this type of device has been mentioned in a few threads over the years...hence the post.

Christopher Simpkins and others' hack font, which I neither knew nor have used (obviously) has been renewed. It presents itself as 'a typeface designed for source code' and is open source. I'm trying it right now and it is actually the first font which I think could make me abandon Consolas.

Hack 9 is about the same height as Consolas 10, but a bit narrower (which is not a disadvantage at all).

http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

Often it feels to me like economic success is one big pyramid scheme... Here's an article about the central role lying plays in the startup model where companies raise billions based on a mirage of get-rich-quick success they create.

They have little choice. Funding is contingent on growth, but that growth can only happen if no one really understands the funding situation. Founders have to tell the lie – that everything is fine, that a feature is going to launch even though the engineer for that feature hasn’t been hired yet, that payroll will run even though the VC dollars are still nowhere on the horizon.

Lying is a requisite and daily part of being a founder, the grease that keeps the startup flywheel running.

http://techcrunch.co...ups-and-the-big-lie/

I use AWS for backing up my web sites mostly, though I use it for other reasons sometimes.  I switched to 2-factor, even though it's annoying and I don't use it much.  After all, if I'm only using it for a few things, how much trouble could I get in?

I saw these articles, and realized that 2-factor was a very good idea.

How a bug in Visual Studio 2015 exposed my source code on GitHub and cost me $6,500 in a few hours

Developers, Check Your Amazon Bills For Bitcoin Miners

Amazon AWS Account Hacking and How to Avoid it

How my Amazon S3 account was hacked with 10,776$ in billing.

Check your S3 and secure it... even if you don't use it.  Basically, they login, and then create EC2 instances with bitcoin miners.  They make the money, and leave you with the bill.

Just figured I'd post this as I'd not seen this particular phenomenon before.