Close to 2,000 Posts and Counting

by Stephen Cobb on March 1, 2012

Stephen CobbHas spring sprung? Weather currently mild in many places. Particularly pleasant here in Little Italy, a great neighborhood in San Diego. My blogging and other activities are now very security-oriented, mainly on the ESET Threat Blog but also SC Magazine’s Cybercrime Corner. But I’m still spreading the word about hemochromatosis on the Celtic Curse blog as well as the Hemochromatosis Facebook page. St. Patrick’s Day would be a great day to check your ferritin! Of course, all views expressed on cobbsblog.com are mine and not those of my employer.

The Google-SOPA-PIPA-DNS-Copyright-Oil-and-Gas Link

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What does copyright infringement have to do with scraping oil from the bottom of a barrel and an acronym soup like SOPA, PIPA, DNS and DNSSEC? The answer lies with Google, not the search engine but the company. More specifically, the answer lies with Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who said the following at the [...]

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Security and Privacy Links: Marketing cybersecurity

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As some of you know, I hit the ground running when I landed in San Diego at the beginning of September, happy to be back in California, wrestling with my first love, information security. Okay, so that prose was a trifle purple–not to be confused with a delicious purple trifle–and information security is not, strictly [...]

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So San Diego: Dog bowls and sunsets

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So what happened to September? Not a single September post on the Stephen Cobb Blog? That’s right, I was busy settling into my new job here in San Diego at ESET North America. I’m part of the research team and, as it  says on my business cards, my job title is Security Evangelist. But I [...]

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Even Stephen Asks: What’s in a name?

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As attentive readers of this blog will know, some big changes are afoot for the Cobbs of Roseboom, New York. Indeed, we will soon be the Cobbs of San Diego, thanks to my new job. Starting in September I will be Security Evangelist for ESET, which has it’s North American headquarters in San Diego. But [...]

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The Apartment With Everything, Now Available Everywhere (Irony Included)

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So here’s something way more ironic than anything in the Alanis Morissette song of the same name. My wife found a gorgeous apartment to rent in San Diego, for only $1,000 a month (I will explain why she was looking in a moment). The place looked great in the photos and it sounded great in [...]

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Blood Money: The economics of America’s most common deadly genetic disorder

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Blood costs money and I know where to get a lot of it, blood that is. Now that might sound callous but it’s true and it could save a lot of lives as well as pump more than a billion dollars into the American economy. Please bear with me as I explain, and please pardon [...]

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Cobb’s Satellite Internet Whitepaper Published by Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance

I’m happy to announce that a document I’ve been working on for some time now has been published by RuMBA: the Rural Mobile & Broadband Alliance. Here’s the full title: Satellite Internet Connection for Rural Broadband: Is it a viable alternative to wired and wireless connectivity for America’s rural communities? You can download the whitepaper [...]

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April 16 Was SSDI Day: Apply for disability now, before it’s too late!

That’s right, April 16 was SSDI Day in America! Time to encourage any disabled people that you know to apply for disability, before it’s too late! SSDI stands for Social Security Disability Insurance. If you are paid via W2 then the money to pay for SSDI is taken out of every paycheck. If you are [...]

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Doctors, Genes, Family Trees, Quora and Hemochromatosis

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Have you visited Quora yet? It’s a increasingly popular website that bills itself as “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” On a recent visit to Quora I saw this question: Q. What are reasons that I should not submit my DNA to a firm [...]

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Fighting Continues on Multiple Fronts: FDA, DTC, Telcos, Hemochromatosis

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Sorry things have been a little slow lately here on Cobbsblog. I have been working pretty hard at the day job and on my “word warrior weekends.” Let me quickly explain: I have been blogging and tweeting and Facebooking on multiple fronts for the past few weeks: 1. Petitioning the FDA to ignore the lobbying [...]

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Spring-ing Forward Misses DST point: Mythic origins of Deus Tea overlooked

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Stephen Cobb laments [in jest] the lapse in learning as the origins of DST in ancient myth and legend are neglected in current school curricula. “No longer do we tell our children about the epic struggle between the Sun god Ra, the Sea god Poseidon, and Zunga the flying lizard.”

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AMA to Control Your DNA? Asks FDA to ban direct-to-consumer genetic tests

Genes

The AMA is asking the FDA to restrict access to genetic tests by requiring doctor approval. Because my wife has hereditary hemochromatosis our daughter is at risk. What if we want her to get tested but she requires permission from her doctor and her doctor says no?

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The Big Day: Your Genetic Profile is Ready at 23andMe!

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Veteran blogger and ancestry nerd Stephen Cobb describes receiving his genetic test results from 23andMe and discusses the relative merits of hearing his DNA risk factors for scary diseases from a website rather than a doctor.

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Happy New Year! Let the learning begin

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To my faithful readers I just want to say: Happy New Year! And if you’re a first time reader: Welcome, and Happy New Year to you too, and to your friends and family, and to the whole wide world. Let’s make this the year we crank it up to 11.

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Genetic Self-Gifting: Give yourself DNA self-knowledge

Human genome

Holiday self-gifting is a term I don’t recall hearing last century, so I’m thinking that the idea of giving yourself something for the holidays is a relatively new concept (please add a comment if you think I’m wrong about that). Also new, relative to the tens of thousands of years that humans have been seeking [...]

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Driveway to Heaven? Snow time for romanticism, plow on

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As attentive readers of this blog know, I live up a hill in Upstate New York. In the Winter it snows a lot up here. That means my wife and I have a lot of plowing to do on the long driveway leading from the nearest county road to our cabin. A few years ago I [...]

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