Hi fellow DC folks..  I am saving up to buy my first car, which I plan to make the official DonationCoder "CodyMobile".

It will spread the visage of Cody and the DonationCoder name throughout the land and be used to ferry visiting DC members from the train station to my house. But most of all it will be used by me to go grocery shopping.

I don't have a particular car picked out yet -- I only know that I am looking at used small hatchbacks from 2004 or so, with 100k+ miles, to be purchased off of craigslist (a Cody decal will be applied after purchase).

My target price is $5,000, which is where I could use your help .

I have about half that much saved up, and I'm looking for all the help I can get for the remainder.

So if you can spare a few DonationCredits to send my way or if you've never donated to the site but you've used my software, consider this a request to finally take the plunge and donate:



Note: This fundraiser is really a selfish thing for myself, and does not benefit the site so please don't consider this a big deal like our main fundraisers.. This is just me asking for a little personal help.

-mouser

Update WP Super Cache and W3TC Immediately – Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Disclosed

Shame on us for not catching this a month ago when it was first reported, but it seems that two of the biggest caching plugins in WordPress have what we would classify a very serious vulnerability – remote code execution (RCE), a.k.a., arbitrary code execution:

   

…arbitrary code execution is used to describe an attacker’s ability to execute any commands of the attacker’s choice on a target machine or in a target process. – Wikipedia

It appears that a user by the name of kisscsaby first disclosed the issue a month ago via the WordPress forums. As of 5 days ago both plugin authors have pushed new versions of their plugins disabling the vulnerable functions by default. The real concern however is the seriousness of the vulnerability and the shear volume of users between both plugins.

http://blog.sucuri.n...ility-disclosed.html

Many people here have probably heard of Geocaching.  It's like a treasure hunt where you use a GPS device to navigate to a specific set of coordinates where someone has buried some treasure, and i guess usually a logbook that you sign when you find (dig up) the treasure.  You then replace it for the next person.

But the main point of this post was that I just read about another similar thing called "Letterboxing", which sounds more interesting to me.

In letterboxing you are not locating something using GPS coordinates, but rather by following some clues that guide you to a secret spot (you will start out knowing the general region, like in a specific park, and then follow clues posted by someone online for how to find the exact spot).  A big difference with letterboxing is that what is hidden is a unique carved ink stamp and a log book, and you will be carrying around your own custom-carved ink stamp.  So when you find it you will make an impression of YOUR stamp in the secret hidden logbook you've discovered, and make an impression of the secret stamp inside your own logbook.  In this way you have a unique set of stamps like a passport to show your journey.

I love the idea of letterboxing and how the stamps are unique and hand made and are like passport stamps showing where you've traveled.  I'm going to get my niece a stamp carving set and see if it's something she might be interested in.

Letterboxing web pages:

• http://en.wikipedia....erboxing_%28hobby%29
• http://www.atlasquest.com/
• www.letterboxing.org/

Have any of you done any geocaching or letterboxing?

From PC World:

Are you guilty of a bad tech habit? Here are 21 of the worst technology-oriented habits, plus potential fixes for all of them. (And we have a bonus at the end, on mending bad email habits.)

http://www.pcworld.c...w-to-break-them.html

This is a well-written, heart-wrenching article by writer and coder Andy Baio, of Portland, Oregon, organizer of XOXO, builder of  Playfic and Supercut, and one of the builders of Kickstarter.

http://waxy.org/2013/04/the_death_of_upcomingorg/

"In hindsight, selling Upcoming to Yahoo was a horrible mistake. Selling your company always means sacrificing control and risking its fate, and as we now know, online communities almost always fail after acquisition. (YouTube is the rare exception, albeit one with billion-dollar momentum.) But Yahoo was a particularly horrible steward for [upcoming.org] the community." -- Andy Baio

DC member TaoPhoenix posts about a science fiction magazine he is involved in:

"I shall post a promotional piece for the Science Fiction - Fantasy - Horror - Poetry webzine Aphelion.

It's been around since 1997. However we gradually lost the "regular" posters through attrition and we haven't undertaken much marketing at all. This post is "semi-unauthorized". That means I'm doing it ad-hoc, with a wink and a nod to "what isn't forbidden becomes Do First and Ask Permission Later"!

I am the (somewhat erratic!) Archives Editor over there. It was a fluid position that evolved out of my interests in poking around in information related to past issues and lately some basic manual site stats. There aren't many trackers - they might be using some basic stuff on the back end, but it's certainly not crushed with stuff, and Ghostery only shows Google Analytics, which from what I know of their culture is probably "just because it's likely best of breed" and not at all related to our more intense focus on the goings-on of Google.

This campaign:
Since darn near everyone on DC is smarter than me, you're one of two crews I would like to encourage to join and post a note about at least a couple of stories! They do have a focus on newer and developing writers, so go REAL EASY on the comments - if you see something that a writer could have improved, PLEASE work REAL HARD to soft-ball it! As part of a bit of backstory that we don't need to visit here, in this somewhat fragile year it's important to get a couple of really nice newcomers, because we/they don't have a Basement to put anything hotblooded.

I would love to see say 7-12 strong enthused newcomers sign up who hope to be around for at least a couple of months!

*Important Signup Note* They recently had a rather severe spam problem, so they put in an extremely aggressive anti-spam measure. Even if you are not a SciFi fan, I also would like to do a call to arms for the DC crew who is as tech savvy as they get, to do some kind of False-Negative test. That means to sign up and post at least one nice note, to test if by accident we're not losing real users. Bathwater, Babies.

Holler at me in this thread for any specific notes you folks may have.

The Lead intro page:
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/ - typically a graphic that changes for each issue
They do a "Flip" where the current month issue is on a "hardlocked" set of links by story/item category such as Short Stories. So if you get busy, and want to go back next month, they'll be gone (temporarily!) and replaced by the new issue. There's a big topic in Archives, but that's another day.

The intro Editorial by the senior editor:
http://www.aphelion-...tions/editorial.html

Short Stories:
http://www.aphelion-...sections/shorts.html

Poetry:
http://www.aphelion-...sections/poetry.html

"Features:" - most usually an instructional article on writing but a few other things sometimes
http://www.aphelion-...ctions/features.html