Tony Arcieri urges developers storing user-sensitive data, such as a passwords, not to use bcrypt (via Michael Tsai) for deriving the encryption key: The first cipher I’d suggest you consider besides bcrypt is PBKDF2. It’s ubiquitous and time-tested with an academic pedigree from RSA Labs, you know, the guys who invented much of the cryptographic [...]

Some of my Twitter friends are buzzing about Alex Payne’s arguments on what constitutes a respectable entrepreneurial pursuit. In case you want to catch up on the pre-reading, it starts with a post by Justin Vincent, basically promoting the idea that indie “mom-n-pop” businesses are a reasonable alternative to massive, venture-funded pursuits. Payne responded with [...]

I enjoy running my own business. One of the things I find most interesting is learning about business mechanics from a completely hands-on perspective. While I would not classify my education as nearly complete, in the several years I’ve run Red Sweater I have a learned a few objective truths about all businesses, and many [...]

In response to my comment on Twitter about wanting to commission a good entry-level web site for aspiring bloggers, Ian Beck experiments with nailing down exactly what blogging is. Obviously, it’s many, many, things. Like chess, you can teach the ground rules to somebody, who then has a practically limitless number of choices about how [...]