Apple Pay, Cyber Monday, and the Terminal That Said No
A first real-world test of Apple Pay on Cyber Monday, including the one store where it flat-out refused to work, and why.
Tutorials
Tutorials
Finally Killing SSLv3 On This Server
A weekend chore I put off for a week and a half: patching SSLv3 out of this blog's nginx config after the POODLE disclosure, with the actual lines I changed.
Turning Off SSLv3 Before POODLE Gets You Too
A quick, practical walkthrough for disabling SSLv3 on Apache and Nginx after this week's POODLE disclosure, plus a small rant about 2014's parade of protocol bugs.
Patching Around POODLE
Google's security team disclosed the POODLE SSLv3 vulnerability this week, and it cost me an evening patching nginx. Here's the one-line fix and why the browser vendors' response matters more than yours.
Killing SSLv3 Before Bed
Google's POODLE disclosure means it's time to kill SSLv3 on your servers — here's the quick Apache and nginx fix, plus why 2014 has felt like one long string of vulnerability patches.
I Installed the Windows 10 Preview in a VM So My Real Machine Would Be Safe
Notes from running Microsoft's brand-new Windows 10 Technical Preview inside a VirtualBox VM instead of risking a real machine, plus a stray thought about this week's Nobel Prize for blue LEDs.
What Shellshock Cost Me This Weekend
A weekend spent patching three servers for Shellshock, one shared host that wasn't patched yet, and a small aside about Apple's iOS 8.0.1 disaster.
Deleting a Free U2 Album Should Not Take This Long
Skipping the iPhone launch-day lines to deal with the actually annoying tech story of the week: getting that unrequested U2 album off my phone for good.
Turning On Two-Step Everywhere (Finally)
After a week of iCloud headlines I finally spent a Saturday turning on two-step verification everywhere, and found out Apple's version still doesn't cover what you'd think it does.
Home Depot's Breach and the Password Spreadsheet I Finally Deleted
Home Depot just confirmed it's investigating a possible card breach, which finally pushed me to delete my embarrassing passwords.xlsx and set up a real password manager.
Getting My OBS Settings Sorted While Everyone Talks About Amazon
Amazon buying Twitch is all anyone's talking about this week, but here are the actual OBS encoding settings that stopped my own stream from looking like a slideshow.
Three Weeks Into the Yosemite Beta
Three weeks into running the OS X Yosemite public beta: what's actually good (Spotlight), what's half-broken (Handoff, iCloud Drive), and why Helvetica Neue is bugging my eyes at night.