I talked to my company today and told them how phishers use a sense of 1) danger, and 2) urgency, to push smart people to do rash things. I offered to be their personal, confidential fear consultant: “hey, I got this scary thing. Is it real?” Let me do the worrying for them.
This, more than goofy phishing tests that make people feel dumb, is how we help our friends avoid scams.
Finished reading: Class Clown by Dave Barry 📚
Govt. Issues SIM Binding Directions To WhatsApp and Telegram
India sees US and EU lawmaking idiocy and wants to get in on the fun. Basically, they demand that popular messaging apps link your online ID with a physical element the government believes they can control. They say so right in their claims: it will deter “fraud”; that is, any activity you wouldn’t want traced back to yourself.
In this specific case, I hope the corpos tell them to shove it.
Another hiker caught my wife and me cresting the top of a hill, then airdropped the photo to us. People on this trail tend to be either don’t-bother-me busy with their workout, or very social and ready to chat. Not that I’m either of those, exactly.
The Black Panther Party had a 10 point platform. These demands are painted in various places around Oakland, CA. This is the painting for number 4:
We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter of Human Beings.
It’s in the middle of a homeless encampment. Some things are better now. Some are not.
Mise + fnox + macOS Keychain is a great combo for running Ansible with stored, encrypted secrets.
In mise.toml:
[env]
DBSERVER_PW = { value = "{{ exec(command='fnox get DBSERVER') }}", tools = true, redact = true }
In Ansible’s host vars:
my_servers:
hosts:
dbserver:
ansible_become_password: "{{ lookup('ansible.builtin.env', 'DBSERVER_PW') }}"
Now you can run ansible-playbook and friends without hardcoding your sudo passwords anywhere!
For giggles, I added a new Rust implementation of Little Fluffy Clouds so that you can use it as a standalone binary. The Python version isn’t going away! It’s still the only solution I know of for merging lots of IP networks quickly and correctly.
Chinese Regulators May Kill Retractable Car Door Handles That Never Should Have Existed
Compared to mechanical door handles, however, these door handles come with a trade-off in complexity. They require electricity, motors, and a functioning control system to work. When all is well, this isn’t a problem. However, when things go wrong, a retractable electronic door handle often proves inaccessible and useless.
I’m glad this is getting attention. I would not ride in a Tesla. I’m astonished that these insane door handles are legal at all, and that they haven’t been sued into bankruptcy for willful negligence.
The crucial part to booting FreeBSD on my 2018 Intel Mac Mini (macmini8,1) was in the FreeBSD wiki:
$ mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes
$ bless --mount /Volumes --setBoot --file /Volumes/efi/boot/BOOTX64.efi --shortform
$ diskutil umount /Volumes
$ reboot
Emergency cat pics! June Bug is grooming “her” kitties, Sam and Dean.
PG&E charges $1.50 to make debit/credit card payments on their website. I’m going to research the most expensive possible way for them to process my payments. Drive to their office and swipe an American Express? Check written in crayon that has to be manually entered? Pennies duct-taped to a caribou? I need to think on this.
North Carolina Town First in U.S. to Deploy Defibrillator Drones During Actual 911 Emergencies
“Once the call goes in, the drone is launched to that location, the person is on the phone with a 911 operator, they’re guiding them, letting them know what to do, what to expect. The drone is in flight with the AED attached. Minutes later, the drone appears in the sky–not a bird, not a plane, not Superman–a drone and an AED[…]”
- That’s amazing!
- “To skip the 1 minute ad, insert your credit card. Thank you for using Trauma Team.”
The jq command line tool is a useful way to query, filter, and reformat JSON files. I use it every day at work. It’s great. However, replacing a jq command having a beefy select() clause with a simple call to rg cut a script’s runtime from 79 seconds to 6.
Choose the right tool for the job.
I’m carrying a pot full of homemade macaroni and cheese to work today. I’ve successfully navigated the first 2 of 3 legs of public transit. A worker came by and asked what I had in this giant pot. I showed him the cheesy goodness and he asked if he could join us for lunch. I said I’d save him a seat and he laughed.
Technology is not evenly distributed, even in the US. Every time I use Apple Pay on my watch here in my ancestral home, which is not often because I don’t go waving my arm at cashiers like a maniac, but still, even at things like a coffee shop, or a McDonald’s drive through — a McDonald’s! — every time, the person says something close to “whoa, you can pay with your watch?”, and I cannot possibly be the first person here to do this.
The current art exhibit at SFO D gates is a bunch of old phones.
Mom would never have described herself as a feminist. The local politics made that unlikely. She just didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t do the same job as the men at the railroad, so she went for it — and excelled. She was the first Wire Chief there, responsible for keeping the surprisingly huge and complex communications systems up and running, and therefore the trains rolling.
She was the first computing professional I knew of. When I was a little guy, I was thrilled when she told me that boys were also allowed to work on computers.
One of the greatest things she taught her kids was not to be afraid to say yes to good opportunities we didn’t feel qualified for. That worked out pretty well over the years. But more than that, she never let us forget that we were completely loved and accepted.
Love you too, Mom.
My mom passed away this morning. We knew this was coming. She’d been sick for a while. The last stages were mercifully brief and comfortable.
I ran 3 miles worth of intervals today, and the numbers weren’t spectacular but they were pretty great by my standards. I’m pleased with how it went.