The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development. The EFF works to ensure that rights and freedoms are enhanced and protected as our use of technology grows.
With recent events privacy and secure communications have become important technologies. The EFF has put together an excellent project called Surveillance Self-Defense. It outlines everything you need to know about how to protect your privacy online and offline. Not everything in this guide will apply to you. Luckily the EFF does a good job of explaining the threat model to help you choose what is important to you. Since this is a living document I am going to link to their site. I hope you enjoy it and can take something away that helps you secure your digital life.
Travel gear is a subject that may be different for everyone. So after doing a lot of online and hands on research, I have come up with a short list of the items that have worked for me.
Carry what you need:
Sometimes less is more. When staying at a hotel you can use a small daypack to carry what you need for just the day. This backpack was perfect for day trips it packs up small so throwing it in your suit case is easy. It also fits light rain jackets, bottles of waters, random tech, with plenty of space left over for souvenirs.
Power on the Go:
The cell phone has become our navigation, camera/camcorder, and mobile Internet device but the batteries often fall short of a whole day. We found ourselves plugging in our phones wherever we could find power. With approx. 4 full charges out of the Jackery Giant Portable External Battery, this thing was a life saver. We slid the charger in the front flap of our backpack and were able to charge our phones while on the move.
Flight Serenity:
I have been looking for quality on the ear bluetooth headphones for flying. I had tried Beats and for the price they didn't really do it for me. My major issue with Beats was a lack of a passive mode (plugging in to a headphone jack when power dies.) So after doing a lot of research I found the Jabber Revo wireless headphones, they were half the price of Beats headphones and I thought they sounded better, much less bass focused.
Laptop Alternative:
Last but not least I made the leap of faith and did not bring a laptop - instead I brought my iPad with a keyboard case. I have tried a couple keyboard/cases and this one has been my favorite. I wanted a case that would allow me to use my iPad as a laptop, fold behind like a cover, and protect it when it was in my backpack. Pro Tip they are asking $79.00 for the cover I bought the cover from the Amazon warehouse used (damaged packaging) for $30.00 and was totally happy, no issues.
Bring your Own Wifi:
Staying in a hotel or a hostel on shared wifi can be a little nerve wracking. If your a tech savvy traveler and you want your own travel wifi router with built in firewall the Travel Sith is for you. It also has some cool features with IPS and android where you can back your photos us to a local thumb drive you can plug into the wireless route.
Platypus PlusBottle, 1 Liter with Push-Pull Cap
Belkin SurgePlus 3-Outlet Mini Travel Swivel Charger Surge Protector with Dual USB Ports (2.1 AMP / 10 Watt)
The cloud in my opinion serves a purpose, first and foremost to host stand-alone public facing applications. This is not a place to host heavy web applications that depend on data or content you are not wiling to host in the cloud. But there is still a need to connect to your corporate network for monitoring, auditing, or publishing content.
That being said, we have recently built out AWS infrastructure and wanted to share the design we came up with. Our first hurdle is the amount Amazon charges for VPN connectivity to a VPC. And if you want connectivity to a VPC it must have its own VPN connection. This was a limitation that drove us crazy. So we asked ourselves, if we are hosting truly stand-alone websites, why do we need direct connectivity to those servers? So with that question in mind we came up with the idea of creating a management VPC that is connected to or corporate network. Then as we create new applications we could add application specific VPCs that where connected to that management VPC. This not only provides a single VPN connection to our corporate network but also isolates each application in its own VPC giving us segmentation at a network and billing level.
Here are the steps we went though:
- Assigned a /16 network to the AWS infrastructure and set a static route to our AWS IPSec device. (This is not mandatory since you will only be routing the management VPC network, but I did it to tag those networks for AWS)
- Build out the management VPC with a /24. (This will be where we build our management servers such as Bastion hosts, patch server, LDAP, etc.) This VPC does not need to have internet access.
- Per application build out of new VPC networks using /22 this gives you 4 /24 networks to use between a web, app, and DB tier across two availability zones. (Remember Elastic Load Balancers are going to burn up a number of IP addresses.)
Pros
- You only need one VPN connection
- Complete segmentation between applications
- Easy to track application billing
- Super scalable
- Added security since the application VPC servers can not route directly to your corporate network
Cons
- You can not route through the management VPC to connect directly to a server in the application VPC, or the reverse. You will need to use an SSH proxy server in the management VPC
- Web applications that are dependent on corporate resources will not work
- You will need to build all your management tools in the management VPC to connect and monitor application VPC servers
I was introduced to at Trader Sams at the old Disneyland Hotel. It's called the Piranha Pool and when you see it you'll understand why it's called that.
Blend the following
8oz of Pina Coloda mix
3oz of coconut rum
1oz of blue caraco
In a hurricane glass
Pour 2oz strawberry pureé in the bottom
Pour the blended mixture into the glass
The strawberry should spread out like a bloody piranha attack in a glass.