Here is an argument against donating to presidential candidates, stated less glibly than I did last night.

First premise: downballot races need the money. Even small donations to House and state candidates make a difference.

Second premise: presidential candidates don’t really need your money. They won’t notice it. They’re swimming in it.

Third, and most important premise: a downballot donation helps the top of the ticket.

That is to say: every dollar you donate to JD Scholten in IA-4 is going to help Sanders, Warren, Klobes, whoever. The voters JD Scholten turns out aren’t going to vote for Trump.

(Is that 100% true? No, but, close.)

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Thomas H. Ptacek

@tqbf

11 Oct 19

While I’m babbling about hiring: one thing we do for our startup clients is help with recruiting. We do that in a bunch of different ways (everyone recruits a little differently).

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE let me tell you about Hudl, who we’ve been working with for awhile and are just awesome people. Hudl does sports analytics.

I am (s h o c k e r) not a sports person, but I’m not a day trader either and found pentesting FIX endpoints and order routers totally fascinating.

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Thomas H. Ptacek

@tqbf

11 Oct 19

https://twitter.com/jaesonschultz/status/1182627587568234497

Let me see if I can explain the logic to you: security is about competing costs between attackers and defenders. DoH is cost-effective --- free, in fact, for the huge number of home/private users who benefit from it, and directly addresses a real threat they face.

https://twitter.com/jaesonschultz/status/1182627587568234497

Passive DNS security monitoring, on the other hand, is just another metaphorical box enterprise people stack on the giant shambolic stack of boxes they’ve been sticking on their networks for 20 years in the hopes of protecting endpoints without protecting endpoints.

I am fine, really, truly, just fine if Allstate or Schwab wants to monitor DNS on their networks. They can use DoT.

Read 4 tweets

Thomas H. Ptacek

@tqbf

4 Apr 19

I took the question to crypto slack, because real cryptographers are a lot smarter than me, and, submitted for your approval, and because their contributions are very much worth reflecting on: some amazing women cryptographers:

The obvious place to start would be Shafi Goldwasser, a giant in the field, Turing award winner, co-inventor of zero-knowledge proofs. #womencryptographers

If you follow crypto nerds on Twitter you’re also surely thinking about Tanja Lange, crypto chair at Eindhoven and bad-ass elliptic curve and PQ researcher. We got tips for cryptopals from Tanja. #womencryptographers

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