Ricky Mondello on Magic Links and Passkeys
Definitely a nerdy, but also understandable, piece from Ricky Mondelo ("software engineer, known for my work on passkeys, password management, and other app/website authentication technologies") on the use of magic links and passkeys:
You’ve almost certainly encountered magic links in your time online. A “magic link” is just the special, one-time link you get emailed to you that will sign you into a website after giving it your email address.
If you're interested in #security #authentication, or just general #privacy, give it a read.
My favorite bit though was this:
acknowledging that most people have on average approximately 0.8 correct passwords in their memory at a time
I use a password manager so that in general, all my passwords are long and randomized. But even then, when I only need to remember one strong password, remembering what I recently changed it to, or if it's a variation, validates the humorous "0.8 correct passwords" comment.
The Prospect: The Government Has Been Shut Down for Months
Today (Wednesday, Oct 1, 2026) at midnight-oh-one the U.S. government – once again – "shut down". This means that very few federal services are operating anywhere near capacity while our co-called representatives in the Congress figure out how to agree on passing a law to fund federal agencies.
So, government agencies are not able to do their jobs. How is this different from the last 6 months as Trump's administration enthusiastically follows Project 2025's plan to burn it all down and take us back to the golden era of robber barons, misogyny, patriarchy, and slavery? Federal agencies are already hamstrung by an Executive Branch that refuses to - or actively sabotages the ability to – execute the laws that Congress has passed, and/or previous court decisions have validated.
Nevertheless, the idea that Congress couldn't pass something is utter horseshit. The republicans have (and have used) all kinds of tricks to pass whatever they want; David Dayden at The Prospect makes this point well:
The reality is that Republicans have every opportunity to fund the government if they want. They can do what they have done repeatedly when stymied by Democrats in the Senate from achieving their goals; they can change the Senate rules. In this case, they can end the filibuster on legislative activities like the budget and pass it with the majority they have. Democrats are not needed to lend support to a process that is so distorted and broken that the executive is telling Congress he will not honor any deal they make. If Republicans want to hand over Congress to Trump, they can do it themselves.
But of course the Republicans playbook is to always do the most horrible shit they can, as long as they can find a way to blame on someone else. But Democrats don't have to play along:
Schuman has put this best: "There is no point for Senate Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) to negotiate or vote for a spending bill, short term or otherwise, unless it resolves or leads to the resolution the issues of impoundments and restricting further withholding of funds, reinforces GAO authority to investigate and litigate impoundments, places political shackles on Vought (such as a new Inspector General at OMB), and requires regular, accurate reporting of agency spending."
Peertube, the video service John Gruber says we need
I stopped reading John Gruber a few years back as I felt his Apple schtick was just old (I'd been reading him since the early 2000s) but while importing my feeds into NewsBlur today I ran across this recent post of his, riffing on an article in Political Wire about Jimmy Kimmel:
John says:
The big problem is YouTube. With YouTube, Google has a centralized chokehold on video. We need a way that’s as easy and scalable to host video content, independently, as it is for written content. I don’t know what the answer to that is, technically, but we ought to start working on it with urgency.
John is on Mastodon, and I don't know how active he is, but in my corner of "the fedi" PeerTube ("An alternative to Big Tech's video platforms") is fairly visible:
With PeerTube, no more opaque algorithms or obscure moderation policies! PeerTube platforms you visit are built, managed and moderated by their owners.
PeerTube allows platforms to be connected to each other, creating a big network of platforms that are both autonomous and interconnected.
Peertube is a video service that runs like Mastodon - it's an an ActivityPub service - where anyone with the time and inclination can run a video hosting service that allows its users to "like and subscribe" to users on the same server and others.
Yes, John is popular enough that I am certain a great many reply-guys have mentioned Peertube to him, but I am not them and this is for _you :heart:)_
It's only a crime if no one profits
In 2011, Aaron Swartz was arrested after he downloaded millions of academic journal articles from JSTOR via the MIT network. He was charged under federal laws (including wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) with up to 13 felony counts, carrying the possibility of decades in prison, large fines, and other penalties. These federal charges eventually lead to his death in 2013.
https://mastodon.xyz/@johl/115293173964294449
OpenAI is planning to release a new version of its Sora video generator, which creates videos featuring copyrighted material unless copyright holders opt out of having their work appear.
It's kind of hilarious that they go "if you don't want me to pirate your movies, you need to opt out". OTOH it's tragic that any ordinary person would've been fined to hell and back for this behavior, but companies get a free pass as usual.
https://icy.wyvern.rip/notes/ad9ptt2s993v01j8
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet and setting it to download academic journal articles from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT. Federal prosecutors, led by Carmen Ortiz, charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Chicken.pics: For all your weird chicken painting needs
Welcome to Chicken Town
Behold an abundance of fowl. Tap to embiggen. Share with anyone who needs a chickie break.
I loved these so much I used one for my mastodon profile pic.
Yeah yeah I'm back
The site is still a bit of a mess but I've managed to get it up and working. I'm back on Django now, and the home-brew blogging system is multi-tenant through Django's simple but terribly useful Sites framework. I'll be using that to host several of my sites in one place now.
I'm currently using Cloudflare to front the site but as they don't mind hosting Nazis I'll be moving to Fastly as fast as I can (it's more technical and I haven't had time).
I'll post another update soon and hopefully the posts will be flowing again.
The divine is always invoked to conquer, to exclude, to strip away the humanity of others
"The divine is always invoked to conquer, to exclude, to strip away the humanity of others. ...
This is America’s problem. We imagine fundamentalism as the product of religion alone, but in truth it is about power. It thrives in systems that punish dissent and demand obedience. It flourishes where inequality is already deep, where racism already wounds."
~ Lola Ibrahim
#Trump #MAGA #evangelicals #ChristianNationalism #Zionism
/1
https://www.alternet.org/religious-fundmentalism-us/
A co-worker's description of reading old code:
Staring at it long enough so that it may show me its secrets
#programming
Poynter: Resources for Fact Checkers worldwide
Poynter.org – a globally-known organization promoting Democracy though Journalism, has a section on their site for the International Fact-Checking Network:
The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter was launched in 2015 to bring together the growing community of fact-checkers around the world. The network advocates for information integrity in the global fight against misinformation and supports fact-checkers through networking, capacity building and collaboration.
(Source: @nelepoldvere@fediscience.org)
Working on it
updating the site, hope to be done soon #blogging
Goodbye, YouGov
4 years ago, as #Covid19 was just beginning to crest across the world, I started a new postiion as Senior Python Engineer at YouGov. I enjoyed my work immensely and got to help build some truly interesting things (more on that later 😁).
Sadly, Aug 01, 2024 was my last day at YouGov. I worked with the great people in the Research Platforms department for 4 years, helping to build and improve the systems that connect our amazing Panel to the research surveys that guide many organizations' product and political decision-making.
I worked with a great crew and especially want to say thank you to Allan Crooks and Clayton Butler, and the teams they led, for their leadership, and their inspiration adn guidance.
There are too many other folks to list, but I hope they know how much I enjoyed working together to do good things.
So now I'm looking for a new position focusing on #python #webservices #backendsystems, and/or #dataengineering. In addition to getting deep into technical solutions, I really enjoy working across teams to fully understand use cases, stakeholders' pain points, and help define solutions that have the best ROI possible.
Check out my resumé at https://monkinetic.blog/resume.
I really want to change the templates on this site but I made it so clever that now it's hard.
None
I've started Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto and it is... a really heavy read.
A story of #colonization #greed #exploitation #slavery, and #genocide ... and I'm only a few chapters in.
More later.
Executive Disfunction Junction
Was pointed to this standard test of executive function (or at least one's experience of it) called the ESQ-R, the "Executive Skills Questionnaire, Revised". Always one to see what these self-reporting tools say about by neurodivergence, I took the test here.
No idea as to the test's ultimate validity but this tracks:
(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)
"Search is getting too close to the money"
(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)
Ed Zitron is an extraordinary writer, who I just discovered via (I have no idea which app, email, or newsletter) but here are a couple of his stories to make your internet-loving heart burn with rage:
- The Man Who Killed Google Search -- I can remember the cramped shared office I was in when I first tried Google to search the internet and my mind was blown. Ed's story is heartbreaking. -- Steve
- They're Looting the Internet -- quote from the previous link but fits here: "search is getting too close to the money"
Night at the Theater
Went to the theater last night with my girlfriend(😁 👋), like a real adult.
Except it was a shockingly hilarious parody puppet show version of The princess Bride (By S. Morgenstern) by the All Puppet Players, complete with alcohol, musical numbers, 4th wall breaking, flubs, ad-libs and improv.
And I will never hear the lines "I'm going to do him left handed... if I use my right it's over too quickly!" the same again (Vizzini the puppet: "We didn't change those lines -- at all!!)
(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)
A Bit Of Blog Complaining
Guess it's time to revisit the blog engine here. I wrote Goldfrog a few years ago and it's been chugging along on this Digital Ocean instance fairly well, but at the time I had in mind a two-way sync between gitlab, where I maintain a separate repository of my archived content, and the filesystem/db in Goldfrog.
It worked, sort of, for a while, but the deployment on DO is NOT simple to remember, uses Ansible and code from 2 different git repos to set up or update the server, and was just 3 times more clever than it should have been.
I also implemented a flexible/configurable POSSE feature that is supposed to send updates to my mastodon account but ... isn't right now? And the logging setup on the site is abysmal.
I still like parts of my system. If I did it again, I'd still want:
- My custom posting UI that works like the ancient Radio Userland sites did: post form at the top of the home page list of posts:
(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)
And my version in Goldfrog:
(SORRY, LOST IMAGE)
- A small web app - not a static site generator
- Content stored ultimately as markdown files so they can be stored in git or similar
- Content indexed in sqlite for searching. serving various archive pages (tags, etc)
UPDATE: As long as I'm dreaming, I wish it was easier to run a small web app like this off a container. I probably could with Digital Ocean's app platform, I haven't looked into it lately, and I'd still have to solve the "index in a sqlite db file" problem.
Disney's lost "greenscreen" tech re-discovered
In the 1960s, Disney discovered and used an incredible "greenscreen" technique to film the Mary Poppins actors in an animated scene, perfectly capturing flowing semi-transparent clothes and motion blur and sharp animated characters. They then lost the tech.
Corridor Crew found out about it, someone figured out how to replicate it, and they worked to demonstrate it. And it's fucking amazing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuIVsNzqDk
If you’re internet old enough you might remember the Evil Overlord List…
- When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."