David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
Youtuber SMT Mainline recently encountered a Marx 4915S Steam type electric train set when recording a video. He said he didn’t know much about it but thought it was neat. In this blog post, I’ll give some background on Marx train set 4915S.
Successful vulnerability management is deceptively simple. It comes down to being able to answer yes to two questions: Are you fixing the right things? And are you fixing them fast enough? But how fast is fast enough? In this blog post, I’ll explain how I use peer benchmarking to help companies figure out how fast is fast enough. I’ll also explain how to know if your security policies are less popular than speed limit laws, and why that will make them fail.
Rax was a fast growing fast food restaurant chain in the 1980s. It was based out of Columbus, Ohio, and it was a direct competitor to Arby’s. The chain still exists today. But the total number of stores in Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky where it survives is lower than the number of stores they once had just in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
There are times when you need to trace an outlet to a circuit breaker. Maybe you need to replace the outlet. Maybe you need troubleshoot. Or maybe you are adding additional outlets and want to make sure you don’t overload the circuit. In this blog post, I will describe two ways to determine what circuit an outlet is on. I’ll also tell you how to know if two outlets share the same breaker.
The post war Lionel 6014 box car and other post-war box cars made from the same tooling present some good examples of cheap classics. They also present a few challenges for collector types, and they also have uses for Marx and American Flyer fans. In this blog post, I will explore this frequently overlooked little brother of the 6464 series.
Pallet wood is trendy right now, if only because you can’t beat the price and working with it can present a challenge that people enjoy. And if you are finishing a basement and want a rustic appearance, the appeal of pallet wood is undeniable.
NCIX was a Canadian computer retailer, similar in concept to Fry’s or Micro Center. It went out of business in 2017 and its data was breached in 2018. Here’s what happened to NCIX.
I found this photograph along with the question about its intent. The photo was a RAM module with holes drilled in it. The person who posted the photograph asked a very valid question as to why physical destruction of RAM is necessary.
Marx train set 526 was a windup train set introduced in 1962, typically sold in discount stores. It featured Marx’s best plastic windup locomotive pulling 6-inch metal cars, making an inexpensive starter set for a young child.
A blog post titled “The beauty of finished software” went viral a week or two ago, and it puzzled me a bit. The blog post wasn’t terribly long. It was just a few paragraphs extolling the virtue of something it called finished software. And then it lumped two very different things into the category of finished software. In this blog post, I will explore the concept and explain why being finished software isn’t always a good thing.