Anyone else find this scheme completely atrocious?
1. Relying on a home computer on the critical path for data backup and persistence for a business
2. Relying on a high latency, low quality networking path between the slave db and the 'home mac' rather than a more reliable link between two machines in a datacenter.
3. A poor persistence model for long lived backups
4. No easy way to programatically recover old backups
What's even more disturbing is that this isn't a new problem. Its not like we don't know how to backup databases. This solution seems very poorly though out.
Regarding point #1 - Marco's "Home Computer" is a Mac Pro (per other posts he's made) - it has Xeon proceesors, ECC RAM, etc. Much closer to a server than what you can pick up at Best Buy for $399.
It's not about performance nor price, but conditions in which the machine operates. Many servers used nowadays are cheaper than high-end desktop machines.
The point wasn't that his system was in some way adequate because he happened to be using one good piece of kit, but that that particular piece of kit was better than average.
Additionally, the GGP post makes some assumptions about acceptability of backup procedures that may not be correct - for example, that in Instapaper's case anything but the most current backup copy would be useful, and therefore long term storage of older copies isn't of primary concern.
The biggest source of credit card fraud is that there's no standard way of proving that someone is in physical possession of the card.
Online transactions only require CC#/Exp/CV2 name/address etc which are stored on merchant machines and then compromised and released to the while.
A much more secure option would be to have CCs with built-in RSA key gen. Stealing the CC#s would no longer be enough to make a fraudulent transaction.
The CVV2 is not supposed to be stored in any merchant system, that's it's entire point! A merchant who does store it is actually violating their contract with the card issuer.
They are also violating the terms of their contract if they make fraudulent transactions on your behalf (to put it mildly). Which is why we're not worried about above-board merchants committing outright fraud, but we are worried possibly internal security holes through which your credentials may leak. The CVV2 is on their hardware while the transaction runs, which makes it vulnerable to unauthorized internal snooping.
I don't know how merchants like Amazon handle fraud, but they don't use CVV2 because they don't bill you until items ship.
1. Relying on a home computer on the critical path for data backup and persistence for a business
2. Relying on a high latency, low quality networking path between the slave db and the 'home mac' rather than a more reliable link between two machines in a datacenter.
3. A poor persistence model for long lived backups
4. No easy way to programatically recover old backups
What's even more disturbing is that this isn't a new problem. Its not like we don't know how to backup databases. This solution seems very poorly though out.