Scooter luggage and travel cosplay.

May. 14th, 2013 02:17 am
terriko: Adorable icon care of John (bubble bobble)
Luggage with a built-in scooter is awesome. I've seen ride-on wheeled luggage for kids (and coveted it mightily), and this appears to be the adult-friendly equivalent. Sadly, does not meet a lot of my other criteria (I'd be shocked if they let me avoid gatechecking this) and it's $250 (But at least shipping is free...). I'm tempted just for the awesome factor.


Here's a small hard case that meets a lot more of my criteria. It clocks in at 35cmx39cmx23cm (that's 14"x15"x9" for those of us who have to fly in America) and comes in cheerful colours. I'm actually not sure which one I'd choose -- normally I shun the pinks but that dark one is pretty lovely and would fit nicely into some sort of business-travelling fashionista persona if I dressed the part with some business casuals. But maybe the green or red would be less likely to clash with my existing wardrobe.... Honestly, I'm approaching this project much like I do cosplay, and now that I think about it it's not really that different: I'm playing for an audience to believe me to be someone very specific. Nevermind that I'm still projecting a variant on me; it's all the same body language, fashion, and carefully chosen accessories that make it work.

Similarly, a bright orange gem that could probably work with the persona too. 36x44x20cm (14x17x8") for that one, and only two wheels tucked into the edges so probably a bit more packing space in the final tally.

But despite the obvious appeal for my in-progress traveler persona, I'm not seeing any useful way for me to get reviews of these that I can actually understand since they're shipping from Hong Kong, and I haven't quite decided if I really should be making a hundred dollar gamble just because the colours are fun. I wonder if it's possible to find something similar that's at least a little more local to me? I have learned the useful new search terms "rolling business case" but it's mostly been turning up uninspired blackness.


Incidentally, I *did* check the wirecutter and they do have a section on bags, just not the kind I'm looking for. Bags are one of those few things I'm exceptionally picky about (especially right now while mildly injured, but even when not I tend to have precise requirements) so it probably isn't that much of a loss. They're apparently looking for a freelance bag editor and I rather wish I were actually the right person for that job. Lot of work for little pay, but a chance to try lots of bags!
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Smaller travel bags

May. 9th, 2013 11:47 am
terriko: Adorable icon care of John (bubble bobble)
I currently own a 20" rolling carry-on bag that has met my airline & train travel needs for years (I switched to it a year or two before airlines started charging for checked bags), and it's perfect for a week-long conference where I'm coming back or going out with a lot of stuff, or when I'm visiting my parents for close to a month at Christmas, but it seems excessive when I'm going for a weekend trip or a job interview.

I'm considering getting a smaller suitcase for those shorter trips, so I'm working out my requirements. This thread covers more or less what I have in mind, but here's some personal preference/requirement notes:

1. Must have wheels. I used to do backpack+purse for shorter trips, but I've been finding that I often pinch a nerve during travel and I'm pretty sure carrying my camera/laptop on my back is a factor.

2. Can fit my laptop and possibly SLR camera + 2-3 days worth of clothes. Thankfully my clothes are pretty small. Camera may be optional: I'm trying a downgrade to a point and shoot for short trips.

3. Preferably I'd like something that can fit into the overhead bin on the smaller regional jets, since often my flight will have one hop with those. A search says that this means the bag will have to be around 18Lx14Wx7D. Sounds like you can fit larger, but I'd rather not have to argue it out with the gate staff / flight attendant every time. I am perfectly ok with being given a checked tag and then "obliviously" carrying my bag on the plane anyhow as long as it will fit, though.

4. Butnot arguing with the gate/flight staff every time I fly would be awesome. This may mean going with something more backpack-like so I can just put it on my back when I walk on the plane, but mostly it just reinforces "small" and "looks like it holds a laptop." Briefcases should work.

5. Should have an open clothing section as opposed to a bunch of filefolder divider things that will make it harder to pack.

6. Should open fully, at least for the clothing section. Pure preference on my part.

7. I'm not too picky about laptop sleeves, although something I can easily slip a laptop out of for the TSA or in case I do have to check the bag is good. I basically never use my laptop on the plane, I just don't want to skycheck it.

8. If at all possible, not black. Something like 90% of the suitcases I see are black and I don't want to be worrying about someone grabbing mine by mistake.

9. But (and i realize this may contradict the "not black" thing) something that looks more business traveller-y would be good. I have a *lot* of trouble with TSA reps assuming I'm young or an infrequent traveler which is especially frustrating when I go somewhere with J and they immediately assume he's an expert while I get the "oh, hon, you know our machines are perfectly safe?" talk-down-to-the-little-girl spiel. (My new response: "My sister is a physicist who works in health and safety; I'd like to opt out." which is factually true but irrelevant and calculated to throw them and possibly nearby travelers out of their default headspace without getting into an argument.)




I've been finding that
(a) A disturbing number of online sites don't give pictures of the inside of the bags.
(b) A disturbing number of online sites don't give dimensions or even pictures that could help me guess the dimensions
(c) Bags are expensive (duh)
(d) There is an entire market for "women's suitcases" which I find somewhat strange. Particularly given that the "women's briefcase-bags" seem pretty much identical to the non-women's ones.



I don't have any short trips scheduled, but I'm hoping to find some bag options I like and catch a sale (luggage goes on sale quite frequently, so it's a bit ridiculous to pay full price if I've got time to spare).

I would love to hear first hand testimonials from any of you who travel with a bag that might meet my needs, though. It was a recommendation from Linuxchix that drew me to my current bag which has done me pretty well although it's starting to show its age now.
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Ada Lovelace Day profile: Robin Jeffries, Her Systers Keeper Emeritus and HCI expert

Oct. 16th, 2012 03:04 am
terriko: (Default)
Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike.

When I first met Robin Jeffries, I had no idea how important she was. My friend Jen said, "hey, you need to talk to Robin about this" and the three of us sat down and chatted about technical stuff for an hour or so in the middle of a busy conference. It didn't hit me until much later that I'd just spent a time geeking it up with a woman who half the women at GHC would have loved to shake hands with, let alone get a whole lunch with.

Robin has just retired as Her Systers Keeper, a role she took over from Anita Borg when Anita's health was failing. She's not wrong in calling managing a community like this a job of cat herding, but with her guidance Systers has long been a list with an unusually high signal to noise ratio, and one that many technical women turn to when they need advice, want to share a story, or want to rant about the latest news piece about women in computing. I started realizing how much of a role model Robin herself has been to so many when I'd mention her and people would go, "wait, you know Robin Jeffries? I've always wanted to meet her in person!" These were women who were inspired by the stories she shares and her ability to get to the heart of the matter when it comes to the experience of technical women.

I've been fortunate enough to work with Robin doing Google Summer of Code mentoring for Systers, where we've been doing modifications on an open source project dear to my heart, GNU Mailman. She's got an uncanny ability to find good chunks of technical work that our students can manage, a knack for inspiring the people she works with, a good system for managing us all and keeping us to our deadlines, and every time we sit down to talk about how to fix a problem she impresses me with her insights into better architectures and designs. I've rarely had the chance to work with someone of Robin's experience in human computer interaction (read her bio, but in short, she's crazy accomplished and I probably would have been way intimidated if I'd known how much so when I first met her). I'm constantly in awe of how easily she not only applies that experience, but how good she is at conveying it to others and how willing she is to share her skills.

We're probably all benefiting from her knowledge as she applies it to her job at Google, but it's the more direct personal experiences that really get me. For example, despite being in great demand with the Systers 25th anniversary celebrations at GHC12 this year, she came out to help me run Open Source Day activities for women interested in hacking with Systers and Mailman, quickly adopting a whole table of prospective volunteers and walking them through the first stages of evaluating and contributing to an open source project. She regularly makes me wish I'd spent more time studying HCI myself, and forces me to re-evaluate how I design software. We've got one big feature we want to see in Mailman and I'm really looking forwards to working with her on making it happen.

I admire Robin for her amazing technical expertise, for her support of women in computing, and for her ability to balance the two as part of her own busy life for so many years. It has most definitely been my privilege to work with such an amazingly talented woman, and I hope that some day I can approach her level of professional and personal accomplishment.
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Web Insecurity: Should you really change your re-used passwords after a breach? Maybe not.

Jul. 12th, 2012 02:46 pm
terriko: (Default)
Cross-posted from my security blog, Web Insecurity.


Should you really change your re-used passwords after a breach? Maybe not.




DiceThe news is reporting that 453,000 credentials were allegedly taken from Yahoo, and current reports say that it's probably Yahoo Voice that was compromised. If you want to know if yours is in there, it seems like the hacker website is overwhelmed at the moment, but you can search for your username/email here on a sanitized list that doesn't include the passwords.

Probably unsurprisingly, the next bit of news is that people haven't changed their hacked passwords from previous breaches. To whit, 59% of people were re-using the passwords that had previously been hacked and released to the public in the Sony breach. Which seems a bit high given the publicity, but I'm not as surprised as I maybe should be.

What I'd really like to know is how many of those people actually suffered from this password re-use. Did anyone bother to try re-using their credentials?

I'm reminded of one of my favourite security papers, "So Long, and No Thanks for the Externalities: the Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users," by Cormac Herley. In it, he claims that many security "best" practices like changing passwords frequently are actually a waste of time for the average user, when you take into account the risks involved.

So, is changing a password after a breach one of those things that we can skip without much incident? Sadly, I don't have any definitive way to analyze how many folk were inconvenienced by their password reuse in the Sony and subsequent Yahoo breaches, but I can make a guess: If those accounts were compromised on Yahoo after the Sony breach, we'd be seeing a lot more people changing their passwords between the two. So probably at least those 59% were not inconvenienced enough to change their passwords subsequent to the breach.  That's a lot of people.

Of course, it's possible that the accounts were breached and used in a way that the owner never noticed. But if they're not noticing, are they really being inconvenienced? Probably in a global sense (i.e. spam) but maybe not in a short-term decision-making sense. Of course, we could assume that the alleged hack is a hoax using many of the previously hacked passwords from Sony, but given how easy it is to compromise web apps I'm currently assuming that the hack itself is a real thing.  In which case, that's a lot of no-change. It looks suspiciously like you're likely to be more inconvenienced taking the time to change your password than you would if you did nothing, statistically speaking.

So, should you change your password after a breach? It depends on how much you feel like rolling the dice. Failing to change their breached passwords doesn't seem to have hurt that many of the Yahoo Voice denizens, but with numbers on re-used passwords hitting the news today, it's possible we'll see more people trying this avenue of attack in the future.  Still, rather than assuming those 59% are foolish for keeping the same credentials, it's worth considering that they might have just been savvy gamblers, this time.
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Web Insecurity: Apparently consumers do care about privacy

Mar. 28th, 2012 12:13 pm
terriko: Evil Soup (evil soup)
Cross-posted from Web Insecurity

I often get into discussions about whether people really do care about privacy, given that they give away personal information regularly when they share with friends via Facebook or other services. A recent report suggests that people do care, at least when it comes to banking and shopping:


The Edelman study released in February 2012 shows that consumer concerns about data privacy and security are actively diminishing their trust in organizations. For instance, 92% listed data security and privacy as important considerations for financial institutions, but only 69% actually trusted financial institutions to adequately protect their personal information. An even sharper disconnect can be seen with online retailers, with 84% naming security of personal information as a priority but only 33% trusting online retailers to protect it.


The blog of the Office of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner (from which I drew this quote) sums it up in the title: Privacy: Not just good business, but good for business.

But I have to wonder, do these numbers indicate that privacy-preserving businesses will be winning customers, or will we simply see claims of privacy that aren't backed up by carefully constructed systems? Do consumers really care about privacy or do they just say they care? How will consumers evaluate potentially spurious privacy claims? In Canada we at least have the privacy commissioner who brings issues to light, and worldwide we have the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but while both organizations are astute and do their best, privacy claims are something that will need to be evaluated by organizations like Consumer Reports that are used by consumers when making decisions about where they spend and keep their money. Right now, by and large, we only hear about the relative privacy of an organization when a breach occurs.

I attended a talk on Internet voting yesterday and the speaker quoted an official in DC who claimed that, "voters like internet voting, so it must be secure," which is really quite a terrifying quote if you think about it. The speaker joked, "does this mean that because my kid likes cake, it must be healthy?" It really clearly demonstrates first that users of the system have very little understanding of its safety (despite strides in the area, internet voting as currently implemented is rarely secure) but also that officials who roll out such systems have little understanding of the flaws of the system and are much too willing to overlook them for convenience sake. If this is the case with voting, it's hard to believe that business would avoid such cognitive mistakes.
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