Mozilla dropping self signed certificate support.

Late in 2014, many people noticed Firefox, Seamonkey, and many other derived products no longer allowed users to easily access content using self signed SSL certificates. Often simply reverting to older product version (i.e. pre-FF 31) restores ability to access self signed SSL encrypted web and email services. This apparently is deliberate as Mozilla Foundation will soon launch a free Certificate Authority (CA) in 2015, Let's Encrypt.

node.js

I'm not sure why it is important (on many levels) to be able to run Javascript on the web server side as opposed to inside most web browsers. It does seem easy to use once setup - perhaps too easy.

Apache with PHP and many other server side scripting languages have been enabling powerful sever side scripting for decades, have been heavily vetted by security wonks, and have been battle hardened under heavy loads on millions of web sites. It seems the core rhetoric is that node.js is event/callback based where as Apache uses a more traditionally thread-based model. Perhaps this suggests client side and backend programming languages can finally converge on Javascript?

IT Utilities

Nick Carr's latest foray into IT Utilities replacing in-house IT Departments has nice analogies to how electric power evolved to being primarily operated by large utility companies.