Good Bye BlogFranz and 20th Century

Hello franzgedank.

Finally decided to give WordPress and try and leave this klunky place behind.

"Twitter Segmentation": or why you need at least three accounts

After I'd been using Twitter for a few months (ok, I really don't remember how long it had been) I realized that I needed two accounts for a number of reasons: privacy, personal branding, and audience. Well, when I created @seclectech I'm up to three accounts. Here is why. Besides that I take my time on Twitter way too seriously.

As much as I love shooting the shit with folks as @frednecksec that is just one side of me. And arguably not my best side. I know it. It is the the snarky, sarcastic, cynical side that can't help but mock the endless FUD about SCADA and Smart Grid Security and the never ending drumbeat of Sinophobia and generally react by picking positions I may or may not believe, just for the fun of it, and just to mess with people.

But I don't want to engage in that all the time and it is not healthy either. Sometimes, I don't want to follow people that engage in that sort of nonsense (or cause me to engage in that sort of discourse) I just want to learn about cool technical stuff (whether security or non-security related). Folks like @jonoberheide @jordansissel @jedisct1 @rgaidot consistently provide solid technical information about the topics I'm interested in (and might be interested in) without the snark (i.e. security and technology politics) of other folks I follow on @frednecksec who might be more entertaining.

If twitter had better filtering options (for example that would allow me to block hashtags such as #stuxnet or #wikileaks or #tsa) I might not need to do that, but until that happens I need two different public accounts depending on the tweets I want to produce or consume.

Personal or Professional (or, why one Twitter account is Not Enough?)

So I just hit my 400th tweet on @mdfranz but am scarcely up to 20 @frednecksec and I've learned a few things about how I like to use this addictive service in the past few months. And yeah (if you went there) my updates are protected, but more or that later.

When I was first started following people, I was annoyed by technical people (whose blogs I read or knew personally) that only tweeted about personal stuff, so I didn't follow them. I could give a shit about what what sort of decadent food they were cooking, what they were doing with their wife, or their kids accomplishments. But I was interested in 140 characters of wisdom on some technical/technology topic. If there was at least a 50:50 ratio of personal to professional context I kept following, otherwise I dropped them.

Personal Branding
As Tom Peters would say, "you are your customers." Your personal brand is reflected in the those that you do business with and those that do business with you. The same applies to you twitter followers and folks you tweet with. If people that follow you tweet about stupid shit (to put it crudely, but probably characterizes some large % of tweets) that reflects poorly on you, since one of the first things I do when I follow someone (or someone follows me) is I check out the people they follow and their followers. It is the same principle as only connecting with "people you trust" on LinkedIn. On my public account I'm more open to follow somebody I don't know well enough or let anybody follow me, including spambots. But on my private account I approve all followers.

Privacy
Frankly, a lot of stuff you tweet on has no business on public Internet (and all the various bots that follow you) where you shop, what you eat, the activities you do with your family, where you are geographically is none of the damn business of people that you don't really know, let alone twitter's public timeline. This is why I protect my updates on @mdfranz but don't on @frednecksec. Several weeks ago I registered for a demo version of some webapp and a product manager/sales person started following me. Creepy. I don't want sales people following me. And during the inauguration I wondered about how well Sprint's EVDO network would hold up and I had somebody in customer server ping me. She was nice/professional enough but I don't want that sort of interaction. I also don't want people I don't know to where I frequent.

Different Media for Different Messages
I've found that there are also two kinds of tweets: those personal, biased observations, and more objective factual statements that answer the original twitter question, "what are you doing?" More specifically what I'm am I reading that might be of interest to my readers. More reflective, opinionated tweets go on my personal account while the others (especially that are narrowly security related) go on my public account. This is the reason I've moved most of my high volume twitter lists (that mostly shared links and article) over to my public account. Public content stays public, private content stays private and I can also see on my public account when something I've read about, seen has already been tweeted on. I think RT is lame since the whole point is to post original content or content that reflects a certain perspective or range of interests.

So what Twitter client allows you to use multiple accounts at once, twhirl. Or use multiple browsers which is generally a good idea.

Libgmail, Twitter, Ideapad S10 Hardware Info on Linux

Not sure why but (under Ubuntu) the fan has been running nonstop for the past hour (not sure why, perhaps because the temperature is 61 C, who knows) even booted into fluxbox. I have a little project/tool involving gmail that I'm hoping to get done before the end of the year (not a vuln or anything, don't get too excited) that I've had my head in libgmail for the past 24 hours as well as starting to sort of get the point of Twitter (notice my tweets on the side) but I started poking around at /proc and lshw/dmidecode, etc on the S10. There is definitely something funky with power management. A couple of times (even under XP) the battery value doesn't show up properly and gnome-power-manager doesn't start up properly 20-25% of the time.

description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2

description: Ethernet interface
product: NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 drive rversion=3.94 latency=0 link=no module=tg3 multicast=yes port=twisted pair

description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4312 802.11b/g
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yesflags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3191.95
clflush size : 64
power management:
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

Bejtlich Metablogs

Why Blog? has some good ones:

Blogging organizes thoughts. Recently I nodded in agreement when I heard a prolific author explain why he writes. He said the primary purpose for writing his latest book was to organize his thoughts on a certain topic. Writing an entire book is too much for most of us, but consolidating your ideas into a coherent statement is usually sufficient.

Blogging captures and shares thoughts. Once your thoughts are recorded in electronic form, you can refer to them and point others to them. If I am asked for an opinion, I can often point to a previous blog post. If the question is interesting enough, I might write a new post. That satisfies this reason and the previous one.

Blogging facilitates public self-expression. This is a positive aspect of the modern Web, if approached responsibly. Many social networking sites contain information people would not want to preserve for all time, but a carefully nutured blog can establish a positive presence on the Web. If you blog on certain topics that interest me, I am going to recognize you if you contact me.

Blogging establishes communities. The vast majority of the blogs I read are professionally-oriented (i.e., digital security). I follow blogs of people handling the same sorts of problems I do. I often meet other bloggers at conferences and can easily speak with them, because I've followed their thoughts for months or years. Book authors share a similar trait, although books are a much less fluid medium.

Blogging can contribute original knowledge faster than any other medium. Blogging is just about the easiest way to contribute knowledge to the global community that I can imagine. It costs nothing, requires only literacy, is easily searchable, and can encourage feedback when comments are supported.

I'll add some others:

• With 3 kids, ranging from 10 to 9 months, I don't get out much.
• You'd be how fast you can get in the top 5 on google searches for certain obscure (or not so obscure) technical topics if you time it right.
  
• As historical record and reference to the sorts of technical (and personal) problems you were interested (or disinterested) in over the long run.
• Packet loss. Since my memory has gone to shit over the past 3 years documenting sites, tools, or common tasks here vs. depending on someone else's site to be there.
  
• Rattling the cages/venting. I should do this less often, but I can't help myself and I know a few readers find it amusing. Whether it is bitching about SCADASEC or GNUCITIZEN I'm always amused folks get so defensive about someone calling their baby ugly.
• I used to consider myself a writer. And it gives me the illusion of writing. I spent most of my undergraduate years (as an English major with a creative writing concentration and I met my wife in a writing workshop) struggling to write short fiction and poetry. I racked up a hundred or so rejection slips and perhaps 2-3 publications in small literary journals. It is a counterbalance to the guilt I feel about selling out for the big bucks and the technology gods.
• To share, damnnit. To get an audience. That might be one of the reasons I became a public school teacher 15 years ago and why I recently went back to doing training for a living (what he's doing training, I thought he was technical?) this year, as a way to remain interest in the security field. It is about making connections. To readers/students.