I am a hacker (Breaker), investigator, and Defender against the dark arts in cybersecurity — so I always look for ways to get alerted to any passwords I use that are compromised. My work (and my fun) have also taken me through dark and shady corners of the world, which means I’ve been regularly subject to having my credit cards and personal information compromised.

One of the essential free tools you can use in the United States, for defense against the dark arts — is Credit Karma. While there are many free credit score monitoring tools — Credit Karma is the only one I’ve found that has an extensive password breach notification. …

Tuesday morning, 6am. Time to exercise and be thankful. Being thankful is critical to starting each day. I hope you remember this as you grow up, son:

Family Status: Our family is roughly 7000 miles apart. Today marks the start of our 14th month apart, separated by US Immigration.

The last few years have been the hardest years of my life. Each moment I think we reach karmic rock-bottom, we arrive at a new nexus and things get harder. It is easy to get sucked into the cold, inviting darkness, but dwelling there destroys your soul.

How bad is it really? On a Life-Badness scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “no badness and 10 being “Living in war-torn Afghanistan”, our worst moments barely rate a 5. Overall we are extremely lucky, and thankful for amazing friends helping us at critical steps along the way. …

Does your work or fun take you through dark and shady corners of the world? Back alleys of Jakarta? Budapest’s wild parties and ruin bars? Undiscovered parts of Riga? Travel regularly to Mexico? Have you had your identity stolen or credit cards cloned and compromised, as a result? As a Defender against the Dark Arts in #Cybersecurity, I have experienced it all, even in San Francisco. This is my guide for creating your international emergency survival kit, which should complement your first aid travel kit.

Problems you should be prepared for:

• Problem 1: International charge and ATM fees add up quickly. …

With Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposing jail for CEOs for breaches — Cybersecurity is definitely mainstream. Demand for talent is likewise growing exponentially — 2019 is an incredibly exciting time to be in Cybersecurity!

Basic Training for Cybersecurity

However — increasingly I meet brilliant new people in cybersecurity that haven’t been exposed to Infosec fundamentals — and often aren’t sure where to begin. We should help them!

Aside from the traditional CISSP — It feels like there is a large gap in educational materials to help new practitioners come up to speed quickly.

I’ve spent a significant part of my career on the problem of growing, teaching, training, and scaling Infosec teams from 0 to 1…

Do you have multiple online accounts and cloud storage services you want to consolidate? Synchronize file replication between folders or services online, on local hard drives, and/or with a NAS (network attached storage)? This guide explains how my wife and I do it:

First — Pick one primary service. We use Google drive — it has the best search capabilities and has been far more reliable than services like Microsoft OneDrive. Many of our friends use Amazon Drive as well…but I don’t like the UI/Ux. Killer feature: Google Drive app now supports logging in with multiple accounts simultaneously! …

Are you trying to decide if a Ketogenic or Carnivore style diet is right for you? I’m going to help you make your decision. This is what I looked like in 2013:

Changing diet and exercise habits changed my life. In 2013 I was approaching 40 sadly: fat, flabby, weak, tired, depressed; fighting daily acid-reflux; and had non-existent testosterone levels (==no sex drive). I had just lost my father and was ending a long-term relationship. Wondering daily “is this is what growing old is like?” It felt awful. …

Thus begins Chapter Three of the MSA Chronicles

Slow updates?!: When this blog was started Mary and Arian thought (and were told) they were executing on a short, predictable timeline…

That turned out to be a false assumption.

Q: So what is going on with the Evans family?

A: the usual. court cases and paperwork and attorneys.

TL;DR:

Things Mary and Arian are thankful for:

1. Amazing friends. Support from amazing friends helped avoid bankruptcy and worse. Infinite appreciation for wonderful people.
2. Modern video/chat technology that helps mitigate time & distance! It is incomprehensible to imagine how hard solving weekly challenges would be if attempted just 30–50 years ago. Imagine communicating by overseas POSTAL MAIL! Wow. …

MSA Chronicles Chapter Two

To call this Sage’s story is slightly disingenuous: that hand that will write this story has just begun mastery of the pen. This is surrogate-backstory until the prose flows from Sage’s own hand:

Mary has a bright and lively son named Sage whom just turned 8 years old. His personality leaves no doubt whose child he is: We call him mini-Mary.

Before Sage turned six — he was kidnapped by his estranged sperm-donor, whom did so using deception and force.

Ironically — this is the same age that Arian was kidnapped and taken to Mexico by his own sperm-donor. For those unaware: the cosmic coincidence control center specializes in these collisions. …