Dropped by to perform routine maintenance to discover that this cache has been partially muggled: the lifting mechanism has been cut and the pencils have been removed. However the cache
itself is otherwise functional. As a stop-gap the cache is temporarily hidden BEHIND the tree (rather the hoisted up it); I’ll look into a proper fix as soon as I’m able.
Dropped by to perform routine maintenance to discover that this cache has been partially muggled: the lifting mechanism has been cut and the pencils have been removed. However the cache
itself is otherwise functional. As a stop-gap the cache is temporarily hidden BEHIND the tree (rather the hoisted up it); I’ll look into a proper fix as soon as I’m able.
The next suspect insisted that he had been arrested by mistake—that his name was similar to that of someone in ISIS. A private defense lawyer explained that his
client had confessed to ISIS affiliation under torture—he had a medical examination to prove it—but none of the judges appeared to be listening. As the lawyer
spoke, they cracked jokes, signed documents, and beckoned their assistants to collect folders from the bench. Sahar yawned. The trial lasted eight minutes.
…
“Enough evidence—I ask for a guilty verdict,” the prosecutor said. It was the only phrase she uttered in court that morning.
…
Iraq’s well out of the news cycle and even ISIS isn’t getting the coverage it once did. But for many in post-ISIS Iraq, the battle is far from over. A country bloodthirsty for revenge
against the terrorists who held Mosul, a judiciary more-interested in fast results rather than right results, and a legal system that promotes and accepts confession under torture
creates the perfect breeding ground for tomorrow’s disaster.
Low road or high road?
World War I. Gas in trenches.
Or salt shared, tears shed.
A haiku for every element on the periodic table up to atomic weight 103, and also one for the as-yet-unsynthesised ununennium, I especially like magnesium’s.
Somehow in the intervening years I’ve gotten way out of practice and even more out of shape because our expedition was hard. Partly that was our fault for choosing to climb on
one of the shortest days of the year, requiring that we maintain a better-than-par pace throughout to allow us to get up and down before the sun set (which we actually managed with
further time in-hand), but mostly it’s the fact that I’ve neglected my climbing: just about the only routine exercise I get these days is cycling, and with changes in my work/life
balance I’m now only doing that for about 40 miles in a typical week.
For the longest time my primary mountaineering-buddy was my dad, who was – prior to his death during a hillwalking accident – a bigger climber and
hiker than I’ll ever be. Indeed, I’ve been “pushed on” by trying to keep up with my father enough times that fighting to keep up with Robin at the weekend was second nature. If I want
to get back to the point where I’m fit enough for ice climbing again I probably need to start by finding the excuse for getting up a hill once in a while more-often than I do, first,
too. Perhaps I can lay some of the blame for my being out of practice in the flat, gentle plains of Oxfordshire?
In any case, it was a worthwhile and enjoyable treat to be able to be part of Robin’s final reflection as well as to end the year somewhat-literally “on a high” by seeing off 2018 in
the Scottish Highlands. If you’ve not read his blog about his adventures of the last 52 weekends, you should: whether taking a Boris Bike from Brixton to Brighton (within the rental window) or hitching a ride on an aeroplane, he’s provided a year’s worth of fantastic stories accompanied by some great photography.
2004 called, @virginmedia. They asked me to remind you that maximum password lengths and prohibiting pasting makes your security worse, not better. @PWTooStrong
In more detail:
Why would you set an upper limit on security? It can’t be for space/capacity reasons because you’re hashing my password anyway in accordance with best security practice, right?
(Right?)
Why would you exclude spaces, punctuation, and other “special” characters? If you’re afraid of injection attacks, you’re doing escaping wrong (and again: aren’t you hashing
anyway?). Or are you just afraid that one of your users might pick a strong password? Same for the “starts with a letter” limitation.
Composition rules like “doesn’t contain the same character twice in a row” reflects wooly thinking on that part of your IT team: you’re saying for example that “abababab” is
more-secure than “abccefgh”. Consider using exclusion lists/blacklists for known-compromised/common passwords e.g. with HaveIBeenPwned
and/or use entropy-based rather than composition-based rules e.g. with zxcvbn.
Disallowing pasting into password fields does nothing to prevent brute-force/automated attacks but frustrates users who use password managers (by forcing them to retype their
passwords, you may actually be reducing their security as well as increasing the likelihood of mistakes) and can have an impact on accessibility too.
Counterarguments I anticipate: (a) it’s for your security – no it’s not; go read any of the literature from the last decade and a half, (b) it’s necessary for integration with a
legacy system – that doesn’t fill me with confidence: if your legacy system is reducing your security, you need to update or replace your legacy system or else you’re setting yourself
up to be the next Marriott, Equifax, or Friend Finder Network.