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What manual testing is in security

The SANS vulnerability management maturity model has an entire section on manual testing. That may not be a phrase you hear very often because there are several types of manual tests. So what is manual testing in security?

Manual testing is a form of security testing, namely, looking for security vulnerabilities in a non-automated or semi-automated fashion at most. It is not the same as vulnerability scanning like one does with tools like Nessus or Qualys.

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WordPress Jetpack stats won’t load? Try this

With much fanfare, Automattic released a new version of Jetpack Stats for WordPress in March 2023. And sometimes the page doesn’t load, giving the spinny ring of death. Wait all day if you want, you’ll just get the ring. Hitting F5 to reload the page will almost always cause this to happen, as will your computer going to sleep while the page is open. But sometimes I’ve seen it happen on its own as well.

The fix is easy but non-obvious.

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Marx 400 locomotive

The Marx 400 locomotive was Marx’s entry level plastic locomotive that it sold in inexpensive electric sets.

Introduced in 1952 as a windup and in an electric version in 1953, the 400 was an 0-4-0 steam locomotive made of plastic. Initially, it supplemented pressed tin engines, although plastic eventually overtook metal in the most inexpensive sets. But in 1953, plastic was still somewhat new and novel. So a set with a plastic engine and tender could actually sell at retail for about 10% more than an all metal set.

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Marx train set 4222

The Marx 4222 steam type electric freight train set was a hybrid set from the early 1950s with a plastic 400 locomotive and four wheel plastic tender paired up with 6 inch tin freight cars. At least four variations of this set exist. They all came with the same locomotive and tender and a New York Central 20102 caboose. The differences in the variations are in the type and number of freight cars.

This specific set illustrates the challenges of collecting Marx sets. Marx used the same catalog number on multiple variations in the same decade. It’s not something Marx did all the time, but someone at Marx must have liked the number 4222. One of the variations I found wasn’t in Robert Whitacre’s 1991 Greenberg’s Guide to Marx Trains Vol 3: Sets.

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Why the Atari Jaguar is so expensive

Atari’s final game console of the 20th century was a console called the Jaguar. It entered a crowded game console market when it was released in late 1993, and it left the market in 1996 with more of a whimper than a roar. Today, it is a prized collectors item. Here’s why the Atari Jaguar is so expensive.

Launched in November 1993 at a price of $249 and soon reduced to $199, and then to $159 and $99, the Jaguar is worth considerably more than that today.Read More »Why the Atari Jaguar is so expensive