Some IT guy, IDK.

  • 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 5th, 2023

help-circle
  • I just assumed that they forget the horrid shit because of some twisted confirmation bias.

    Everyone keeps pointing it out, and they keep telling themselves about the “good” things he’s done. Reinforcing their own confirmation bias.

    I first heard about this phenomenon in “how to win friends and influence people”… It’s a book, crazy, right? It’s about human nature, and how arguing with someone often results in them arguing for their point, further entrenching them in their opinion. While they don’t convince you with their arguments, they convince themselves and that makes arguing with someone a difficult thing to do, and “win” at (by convincing the opposing person of your viewpoint).

    The fact is, the more we argue with them about Trump, the more they have to argue for him being someone that’s going to “make America great again”, and the further they get entrenched into that viewpoint.

    The sooner more people realize that this is a viscous cycle of mental violence and simply decide not to continue, the better. Obviously that’s hard to do when you are faced with the very real possibility of him being reelected, and essentially bringing back the Nazi party with him…

    Idk what’s the right thing to do, but clearly, nobody is going to change the minds of the deranged “MAGA” crowd anytime soon.





  • I prefer security keys. At work I use a yubikey, and I have Google’s security keys for my personal stuff. I tend to use totp as a backup.

    For everything not banking, it’s great, I agree. I still prefer my security keys to everything. It’s hard to duplicate a digital key when it only exists on protected storage on a physical device, where that key never exists outside of that physical device.

    In case anyone doesn’t know: FIDO works using a pair of asymmetric digital keys, the public key is sent to the remote site, and only the private key can decrypt anything encrypted by the public key. So a challenge (usually some mathematical calculation, not sure), is encrypted by the site/service that is handling the login, it sends over the encrypted request, which is passed, in it’s entirety to the fob. The fob requires a physical activation to process the challenge (usually a touch, but some require a fingerprint). The challenge is then decrypted, processed, the response is encrypted, and sent to the site for login, which decrypts the response with the public key, and compares the result to the result of the challenge that was sent.

    There’s no part of this that can really be compromised. An eavesdropper can obtain the encrypted challenge (unable to be decrypted in any reasonable manner), and the response/public key… The public key isn’t useful, and the response is only valid for that specific login because there are aspects of the challenge that are unique per login.

    All information in flight is unreadable nonsense. The only unique information to the key that is sent anywhere is the public key, which is supposed to be public.

    Totp has the vulnerability of needing to relay the seed, usually by QR code. The only vulnerability there is when you set it up and the seed is shared to you, it can be intercepted. If that seed is stored anywhere that becomes compromised, then it becomes meaningless. It can be mined from an authenticator, or captured in flight.

    Both of these are better than alternatives. Email/sms codes can be intercepted, either by an administrator or by an internet relay, or by sim duplication, etc. You know that already.

    I don’t hate totp, I just recognize the faults in it.

    There’s problems with physical security keys too, mainly in the fact that, if you lose the fob, you’re screwed. So it’s recommended to have a backup. Either in the form of a second fob, which is setup for all the same accounts which is stored securely, or in the form of another authentication method like totp.

    Personally, I use a backup FIDO key for my accounts whenever possible. I also have a password manager that can store my totp so everything is in a single vault. If the vault is compromised then I’m screwed though… 90% of my accounts use a password reset email which is not stored in my vault. Only two things are not in my manager: that recovery email login (secured by my Fido key) and my bank (obviously also the vault login).

    At work, I use the yubikey for everything that supports it, with totp as backup in my work’s duo authenticator account (duo is also setup to use my yubikey). So it’s all Fido/totp.

    The only service I really want to use my security keys with that doesn’t support it, is my bank account… I suppose, also my government stuff, but almost all of that is informational. I can’t really make changes to my government stuff from their webpages. It’s generally just the government telling me things about my tax returns and whatnot (all SMS secured).

    I hate the trend of companies requiring an app for 2FA… Something that’s not totp, but similar. You have a specific authenticator app for a single service on your phone only and it’s not great… Obvious examples include steam and Blizzard. Fuck that. I hate it. Go away. Give me normal MFA options… Dick.

    I’ve ranted enough. Back to work for me.



  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.worldBe careful.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    5 days ago

    Your story reminds me of something that my bank started doing. I got a robocall about something to do with my credit card, and the voice said to verify using x and y using my keypad, I think it was day/month/year of birth or something and I immediately noped out of the call. I hit all the wrong buttons until it got me to a person and I ripped them apart, and their supervisor for basically training their userbase to answer security questions given by an automatic voice on the other end of the line with no way to verify who is calling.

    You can spoof your caller ID, you can get a text to speech robocall bot with DTMF recognition and just spam call a whole area where the bank operates and gather a bunch of personal information because it sounds just like the bank and there’s no way to prove who called.

    What a crock of shit. It’s a security nightmare.

    I did call my bank after at a known valid number, verified them as they verified me, and there was something going on, so the call was legit, and totally unacceptable.

    These clowns want us to trust them completely, and give us no reason to do so, but they want us to bend over backwards to validate ourselves. Fuck that.





  • I’ve spent too much time on computers.

    I don’t see people as their age, gender, color, name, whatever. To me, a person is a construct, that construct is immutable. You, as a person, exist, only your variables change. Your name, age, gender, sex, personality, political views, culture, race, skin color, etc, are all properties of the immutable object that represents you.

    In this way, your name, gender, age, political views, etc, can all change, and the human object that is you, never changes.

    Technology does this already. A good example is with user accounts for something like active directory (the windows domain login thing). Your user object isn’t assigned by name, or login ID or whatever. You have, what is referred to as a UUID inside of the system. To that UUID, you have parameters like your name, email, phone number, etc, attached to it. When permissions are given, they’re given to your UUID, not to your name.

    Because of this, the administrators like me, can update your name, phone number, login, email, etc, without changing what you have access to. Your email account is tied to your UUID as well, so your user object has permission to access that mailbox, and it’s listed in the parameters as your primary mailbox (for stuff like auto configure).

    It’s all very basic object oriented stuff.


  • This… Is actually a pretty good idea.

    There’s a few meme images around that Celsius is how water “feels” and Fahrenheit is how people feel (and Kelvin is how atoms feel), which isn’t entirely off base…

    But frankly, I would support human scale more than Fahrenheit. I live in a country with Celsius, and my only real gripe with it is that whole degrees are not very precise. You have to go to half-degrees, or even 1/10th of a degree to get reasonable precision on temperature.

    Just seems like the human scale would work well for 90% of use cases, aside from science where we should be using either Celsius or Kelvin.







  • I agree with the idea of bodily autonomy. Above all, someone should have the right to do, or not do, whatever they want with their own person.

    Whether that is to listen to doctors advice, buy pharmaceuticals and self-administer as prescribed, or even end your own life, and everything in between.

    Quick disclaimer, suicide should still be evaluated by a psychiatric professional, and simply being suicidal shouldn’t necessarily mean that nobody can, or should stop you from committing that act. I’m mostly referring to medically assisted self termination, after the appropriate safeguards, checks, and balances have been cleared. Simply wanting to off yourself without being cleared as having sound mind should be something we, as a society, should address carefully, with the assistance of mental health professionals.

    With all that being said: I probably would DIY some pharmaceuticals. Anything that’s an opiate or other restricted substance, definitely not. But if I can buy the ingredients without needing a special permit or license, I definitely would.


  • I’m not American, but this happens a lot more than you’d think.

    I live in Canada.

    A relative of a friend actually voted for a party called “the People’s party of Canada”, and one of their goals as a party was to eliminate subsidized housing. That relative of my friend… lived in subsidized housing and was not able to afford to have a home if not subsidized.

    They literally voted for a party that, if they had won, would have made them homeless.

    I don’t think that the PPC won a single district (giving them no seats in government); much to their benefit and their disappointment.

    Schools really need to teach critical thinking.