If you think two-step, or two-factor authorization and those diabolical CAPTCHAs where you have to identify all blurry images with freckles are bad, wait until A.I. really takes hold. Think of HAL 9000 ("2001: A Space Odyssey") on steroids (or I suppose more accurately, hopped up on qubits). "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm really surprised you don't know your great-grandmother's blood type. And Dave, I know when you're guessing. Let's go back to the fifth step and try again, shall we?" I maintain (and will continue to do so even if proven wrong) that the Escher perpetual loop-like Interactive Voice Response phone tree menus and multi-factor authorization are simply ways to avoid providing customer service...and enjoying it. If a company or organization can piss you off while denying service, all the better. Simple pleasures in an increasingly complicated world. "Our single friendly but professional customer enabler and confidant is busy at the moment helping dozens of other disgruntled customers in an unintelligible language. We experienced higher than normal call volumes immediately with your call. Your wait time is (pause for effect) approximately two years. If you like, we can call you back, you can stay on the line or, you can fuck off."
Getting rid of keys for cars and other automotive innovations. Okay, it's been 15 years since I owned a car. Since 2009 I've probably driven less than a dozen times and nearly all those times it's been my nephew's car. I guess most people are okay with fobs, or whatever they are called, but I'm never sure how to get the car going, confused by the various touches to get a car into reverse or drive or low, and am totally perplexed by using some guided missile system to back up rather than a rear view mirror. I don't need a car to talk to me and I'm perfectly okay with finding my way around when I get lost. I was also perfectly content with pushing buttons and/or twisting a knob to get the radio stations I wanted to listen to. I don't need a scanner which cycles through the universe of sound. Finally, I'll decide when to turn the windshield wipers on or off and how fast they should be wiping. Finally, I think my nephew's car is 7 or 8 years old and it's been a couple of years since I drove it but, it seems like there were a bunch of superfluous things on it, and nothing about its operation that was remotely intuitive. I'm pretty sure the more modern cars would be even more aggravating.
I basically agree with you, especially when it comes to watching (and worse, WAITING) for someone to back out of a parking spot. You know, the ones you can tell aren't you watching the backup camera but are relying on the first beep from the rear sensor. As soon as it beeps, leaving 6 feet of room behind them, they stop and pull forward about two feet. Stop back up to the first beep, pull forward two feet and do this two or three more times.
But I have to admit, heated seats and steering wheel are a godsend!
Then there is the matter of the misnamed "auto park" or automatic parallel parking. Nothing "auto" about it, in my experience trying to pass someone absolutely determined to fit into a space at the curb maybe just big enough by a couple of millimeters, but unable to coordinate the required accelerator and brake action.
I read recently that cars are returning to more analog displays, having realized that trying to make out a digital display while driving is dangerous. My car is a 2005 Saturn Vue, with which I am still quite satisfied, though I do rather wish it had a backup camera, as I am rubbish at backing.
One of the things I love about my 2020 Nissan Rogue is that I also have a front-view camera, which helps greatly when I'm pulling forward into a parking space.
I humbly submit that your post today was like one of those clickbait articles that make you forward through 30 pages to get to the payoff. A very Paul Harvey-esque nugget. I could hear his voice, "Now you know the rest of the story."
2FA is a necessary evil. Allow me to mansplain. Computer account passwords are usually stored as a one-way hash. A hash is a mathematical function that creates a large numeric value that is completely different from the parameter provided to that function, and while not guaranteed to be unique, in real life is generally pretty close, in that collisions (two different parameters getting the same value out of the function) are fairly unlikely. But the important part is that the hash isn't reversible; you cannot calculate the original value with it.
Until relatively recently, that was enough to protect the account, even if the original hash was leaked. In fact, in the 1980s and earlier, hashes for logins to the Unix operating system were stored out in the open, for anyone using the system to see. There was simply no technology available that could crack a hash in any reasonable amount of time. But there's the rub. Computers are now available that can calculate billions of these hashes per second. So you still can't reverse a hash, but you CAN calculate hashes for any possible combination of characters that could be used as a password. You can see where I'm going with this. If a password hash database is released, someone can eventually use this brute force method to crack some of the passwords, even if the password is a completely random set of characters (earlier password cracking attempts included something called a "dictionary attack", where the cracking program would attempt to hash all known words. This is why many websites ask you to include numbers, capital and lower case letters, and non-alphanumeric characters in your password - it makes a dictionary attack more difficult). Contrary to what Hollywood (and clueless politicians) have told you, hackers will not go after a single account; instead they will go after the entire list of password hashes (often millions of them) and then hack the accounts where they've found a match.
So, yeah, in some ways companies are protecting their asses, but they are also protecting you, since they know that no matter how well they try to protect their assets, there are always human error, stupidity and bad actors that are unpredictable.
Re Lillian Cross, I recently read "Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters," by Brian Klaas. I learned something that probably every Civil War buff knows -- that just by chance, two Union soldiers, on a break away from camp, found an apparently mislaid copy of the Confederate battle plans, wrapped around three cigars. Not only that, but their commanding officer recognized the signature as genuine because before the war he had worked with the Confederate officer at a bank.
On a recent unavoidable trip to Florida, my daughter rented a brand new Elantra. As it happened, all our trips were brief or she might have pushed it off the Mid-Bay Bridge into the Gulf. It had cameras, bells and whistles beyond the dreams of avarice. It even sought to wrest the wheel when it perceived you were not dead center in your lane, with a big-cat rumble when she resisted. Any distance closer than a car length in traffic provoked nuclear countdown whinnies and beeps. If we had been there longer, we might have committed actionable offenses against its systems. As it was, we came home gratefully to her 2011 Honda, which assures us every day that it's 2005.
This makes me sad. I had a 2003 Elantra for twelve years. It was basically a little wind-up box, entirely mechanical, and never beeped at me except when my seatbelt wasn't fastened. It finally bit the dust at 252,000 miles, and I have a Subaru now. Its most annoying feature is turning itself off to "save gas." I can and do override that function, but it is SO obnoxious. I will decide if I want to turn my car off, thankyouverymuch.
An advance I would encourage --- and probably being worked up as I write this --- kind of an "Our Town" "Lake Wobegon" running commentary from your GPS. Sure weather and traffic conditions are useful but I'm thinking more along the lines of entertaining, and preferably salacious, to help while away those miles.
"That'll be the Schoenwalter's place on your right. Young Jamie Schoenwalter keeps playing the original cast album of "A Chorus Line" and Carl and Phylida are getting nervous. Hey, better hurry. Looks like ol' Walter Petty and his '46 Fordson are about to get on ahead. Goes maybe 15 mph if ol' Walter floors it. Babys that tractor, ol' Walter does. More than a few 'round here whisper he probably should have spent more time with Clarissa than the tractor. Run off with the Monsanto seed rep a while back. Great shrimp 'n grits place about a mile on your left. Marla there gives as good she gets. A ten-spot goes a long way."
My favorite message from my GPS is when "she" suddenly pipes up and says, "Caution -- high winds in 40 miles." Forty miles which way? I haven't entered anything in the GPS -- how does she know where I'm going? And what am I supposed to do about the wind anyway?
My GPS traffic monitor occasionally informs me that there is heavy traffic in 24,901 miles. Which, if I circumnavigate the planet in a straight line, is roughly where I am already mired in traffic. This is alarming. I would have hoped it would clear up by the time I do that.
Which raises the matter of digital vs. analog clocks and watches (because I say so). Certainly nolo contendere when it comes to dealing with the mumbo-jumbo known as daylight savings time and resetting timepieces. Then there is the very real benefit of analog in being able to actually see the passage of time since our brains are not wired to keep track. Finally, there is simply the fact (or at least the perception) that an analog face is more personal, more human, and usually more aesthetically pleasing.
" Then there is the very real benefit of analog in being able to actually see the passage of time. . ." This! I value being able to look up at a clock and see that I have that particular chunk of time before I have to leave for the airport.
At age 57 (no spring chicken), I suspect that I am easily in the lowest quartile of age among Gene Pool subscribers.
My octogenarian parents are highly educated retirees from the tech and higher ed fields. It seems that the only thing changing faster than their tech skillset (degrading) is the speed with which technology becomes more complex.
It's hard to watch, and if I live long enough, it will inevitably happen to me, too.
Resist the temptation to stop learning tech. Once you are left behind, there is no catching up again.
My fingerprints have disappeared, with age and use. I recently spent an hour with someone who is supposedly good at it trying to capture enough of my prints to satisfy a digital reader, for a background check. The someone was a person I have known for over a decade. They could not get the machine to read my prints (because I don’t have much to read) but were not authorized to say that they know that I am who I am, the same person whose prints are already on file with this agency.
I really, really miss the old days of rolling my fingers on an inkpad.
I also have nearly invisible fingerprints. Never can use for logging in. Lately, I have also been experiencing problems with facial recognition on my laptop and iPad! Am I disappearing?
FWIW, I am in the process of moving to a different state and updating my address with numerous institutions. GEICO made it the hardest to find an actual phone number, but once I did, the human agent on the other end of the phone call was most helpful and was able to circumvent the obstacles the website had thrown my way. Of utmost importance was to update my credit card billing address, which I had changed a day previous, to make sure that my GEICO payment would be accepted in January. I guess the cynical among us would suggest that GEICO wanted to make sure they got their $$, but the agent spent more time than necessary on the phone to chat about my new domicile and the wonders of finally being able to retire.
As a retired Fed - ExFed - , I moved on to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). I was able to swiftly and efficiently set up online access to both with 2 factor authentication (SMS) to cell phone in order to change my address. Quite surprising, to tell the truth. I actually called the toll free OPM number to inquire about changing my heath insurance (past open season) and got an actual human within 2 minutes. Again, the OPM rep was patient and knowledgable, walked my thru the options I selected, and we chatted about the weather in Pennsylvania as that is where the she is located. I was prepared for a much longer slog with TSP and OPM. Hats off to their much improved customer service and the 2 factor authentication didn't bother me as I put me cell phone nearby in anticipation.
I have directed to you some of my freed up capital from canceling WaPo.
Wish you were at WaPo and Bezos had created a nonprofit trust to run the paper headed by, say, Margaret Sullivan (speaking of heroines, although not as dramatic)
I solve this problem by reducing the amount of online activity on my cellphone (which I despise) and conducting it mostly on my Mini Mac desktop computer. Also, I have an iPhone which syncs with my desktop computer through messages (iPhone user messages are blue, Android are green) and also my Watch, iPad and laptop -- all Apple products. This means my phone can be buried in the yard, and I will get my two-factor text meant for my iPhone on my computer instead. Because I use Find My far more than any normal person should.
I understand not wanting to make the appointment or whatever on your phone—it is annoyingly small and lots more scrolling, and my phone typing is horrific. But I am assuming you don’t use a Mac or IPad because my texts show up on all my Apple stuff, so you get the code right there. In fact if you want to be fancy, you can let it ask you if you want to put the code from the text in the site you are on, so you can’t even type it wrong. (I always wonder how secure that is, but I use it.) Is there no way to get your texts on other devices outside the Apple bubble?
If you think two-step, or two-factor authorization and those diabolical CAPTCHAs where you have to identify all blurry images with freckles are bad, wait until A.I. really takes hold. Think of HAL 9000 ("2001: A Space Odyssey") on steroids (or I suppose more accurately, hopped up on qubits). "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm really surprised you don't know your great-grandmother's blood type. And Dave, I know when you're guessing. Let's go back to the fifth step and try again, shall we?" I maintain (and will continue to do so even if proven wrong) that the Escher perpetual loop-like Interactive Voice Response phone tree menus and multi-factor authorization are simply ways to avoid providing customer service...and enjoying it. If a company or organization can piss you off while denying service, all the better. Simple pleasures in an increasingly complicated world. "Our single friendly but professional customer enabler and confidant is busy at the moment helping dozens of other disgruntled customers in an unintelligible language. We experienced higher than normal call volumes immediately with your call. Your wait time is (pause for effect) approximately two years. If you like, we can call you back, you can stay on the line or, you can fuck off."
Getting rid of keys for cars and other automotive innovations. Okay, it's been 15 years since I owned a car. Since 2009 I've probably driven less than a dozen times and nearly all those times it's been my nephew's car. I guess most people are okay with fobs, or whatever they are called, but I'm never sure how to get the car going, confused by the various touches to get a car into reverse or drive or low, and am totally perplexed by using some guided missile system to back up rather than a rear view mirror. I don't need a car to talk to me and I'm perfectly okay with finding my way around when I get lost. I was also perfectly content with pushing buttons and/or twisting a knob to get the radio stations I wanted to listen to. I don't need a scanner which cycles through the universe of sound. Finally, I'll decide when to turn the windshield wipers on or off and how fast they should be wiping. Finally, I think my nephew's car is 7 or 8 years old and it's been a couple of years since I drove it but, it seems like there were a bunch of superfluous things on it, and nothing about its operation that was remotely intuitive. I'm pretty sure the more modern cars would be even more aggravating.
I prefer driving cars with a manual transmission. You feel at one with the road, and it’s fun.
And I have to say it, “Hey you kids, get off my lawn.”
I basically agree with you, especially when it comes to watching (and worse, WAITING) for someone to back out of a parking spot. You know, the ones you can tell aren't you watching the backup camera but are relying on the first beep from the rear sensor. As soon as it beeps, leaving 6 feet of room behind them, they stop and pull forward about two feet. Stop back up to the first beep, pull forward two feet and do this two or three more times.
But I have to admit, heated seats and steering wheel are a godsend!
Then there is the matter of the misnamed "auto park" or automatic parallel parking. Nothing "auto" about it, in my experience trying to pass someone absolutely determined to fit into a space at the curb maybe just big enough by a couple of millimeters, but unable to coordinate the required accelerator and brake action.
I read recently that cars are returning to more analog displays, having realized that trying to make out a digital display while driving is dangerous. My car is a 2005 Saturn Vue, with which I am still quite satisfied, though I do rather wish it had a backup camera, as I am rubbish at backing.
One of the things I love about my 2020 Nissan Rogue is that I also have a front-view camera, which helps greatly when I'm pulling forward into a parking space.
FDR’s legacy is forever tainted by the internment of a targeted group of non-white US citizens without charges, trials or due process.
I humbly submit that your post today was like one of those clickbait articles that make you forward through 30 pages to get to the payoff. A very Paul Harvey-esque nugget. I could hear his voice, "Now you know the rest of the story."
I prefer to think of it as an Agatha Christie novel. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, let's say.
2FA is a necessary evil. Allow me to mansplain. Computer account passwords are usually stored as a one-way hash. A hash is a mathematical function that creates a large numeric value that is completely different from the parameter provided to that function, and while not guaranteed to be unique, in real life is generally pretty close, in that collisions (two different parameters getting the same value out of the function) are fairly unlikely. But the important part is that the hash isn't reversible; you cannot calculate the original value with it.
Until relatively recently, that was enough to protect the account, even if the original hash was leaked. In fact, in the 1980s and earlier, hashes for logins to the Unix operating system were stored out in the open, for anyone using the system to see. There was simply no technology available that could crack a hash in any reasonable amount of time. But there's the rub. Computers are now available that can calculate billions of these hashes per second. So you still can't reverse a hash, but you CAN calculate hashes for any possible combination of characters that could be used as a password. You can see where I'm going with this. If a password hash database is released, someone can eventually use this brute force method to crack some of the passwords, even if the password is a completely random set of characters (earlier password cracking attempts included something called a "dictionary attack", where the cracking program would attempt to hash all known words. This is why many websites ask you to include numbers, capital and lower case letters, and non-alphanumeric characters in your password - it makes a dictionary attack more difficult). Contrary to what Hollywood (and clueless politicians) have told you, hackers will not go after a single account; instead they will go after the entire list of password hashes (often millions of them) and then hack the accounts where they've found a match.
So, yeah, in some ways companies are protecting their asses, but they are also protecting you, since they know that no matter how well they try to protect their assets, there are always human error, stupidity and bad actors that are unpredictable.
Good background explanation.
Gall’s Law: "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
Re Lillian Cross, I recently read "Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters," by Brian Klaas. I learned something that probably every Civil War buff knows -- that just by chance, two Union soldiers, on a break away from camp, found an apparently mislaid copy of the Confederate battle plans, wrapped around three cigars. Not only that, but their commanding officer recognized the signature as genuine because before the war he had worked with the Confederate officer at a bank.
On a recent unavoidable trip to Florida, my daughter rented a brand new Elantra. As it happened, all our trips were brief or she might have pushed it off the Mid-Bay Bridge into the Gulf. It had cameras, bells and whistles beyond the dreams of avarice. It even sought to wrest the wheel when it perceived you were not dead center in your lane, with a big-cat rumble when she resisted. Any distance closer than a car length in traffic provoked nuclear countdown whinnies and beeps. If we had been there longer, we might have committed actionable offenses against its systems. As it was, we came home gratefully to her 2011 Honda, which assures us every day that it's 2005.
This makes me sad. I had a 2003 Elantra for twelve years. It was basically a little wind-up box, entirely mechanical, and never beeped at me except when my seatbelt wasn't fastened. It finally bit the dust at 252,000 miles, and I have a Subaru now. Its most annoying feature is turning itself off to "save gas." I can and do override that function, but it is SO obnoxious. I will decide if I want to turn my car off, thankyouverymuch.
An advance I would encourage --- and probably being worked up as I write this --- kind of an "Our Town" "Lake Wobegon" running commentary from your GPS. Sure weather and traffic conditions are useful but I'm thinking more along the lines of entertaining, and preferably salacious, to help while away those miles.
"That'll be the Schoenwalter's place on your right. Young Jamie Schoenwalter keeps playing the original cast album of "A Chorus Line" and Carl and Phylida are getting nervous. Hey, better hurry. Looks like ol' Walter Petty and his '46 Fordson are about to get on ahead. Goes maybe 15 mph if ol' Walter floors it. Babys that tractor, ol' Walter does. More than a few 'round here whisper he probably should have spent more time with Clarissa than the tractor. Run off with the Monsanto seed rep a while back. Great shrimp 'n grits place about a mile on your left. Marla there gives as good she gets. A ten-spot goes a long way."
My favorite message from my GPS is when "she" suddenly pipes up and says, "Caution -- high winds in 40 miles." Forty miles which way? I haven't entered anything in the GPS -- how does she know where I'm going? And what am I supposed to do about the wind anyway?
My GPS traffic monitor occasionally informs me that there is heavy traffic in 24,901 miles. Which, if I circumnavigate the planet in a straight line, is roughly where I am already mired in traffic. This is alarming. I would have hoped it would clear up by the time I do that.
Which raises the matter of digital vs. analog clocks and watches (because I say so). Certainly nolo contendere when it comes to dealing with the mumbo-jumbo known as daylight savings time and resetting timepieces. Then there is the very real benefit of analog in being able to actually see the passage of time since our brains are not wired to keep track. Finally, there is simply the fact (or at least the perception) that an analog face is more personal, more human, and usually more aesthetically pleasing.
" Then there is the very real benefit of analog in being able to actually see the passage of time. . ." This! I value being able to look up at a clock and see that I have that particular chunk of time before I have to leave for the airport.
Medics like it for measuring heart rates, etc., That's why I still wear a watch with numbers and a sweep second hand.
At age 57 (no spring chicken), I suspect that I am easily in the lowest quartile of age among Gene Pool subscribers.
My octogenarian parents are highly educated retirees from the tech and higher ed fields. It seems that the only thing changing faster than their tech skillset (degrading) is the speed with which technology becomes more complex.
It's hard to watch, and if I live long enough, it will inevitably happen to me, too.
Resist the temptation to stop learning tech. Once you are left behind, there is no catching up again.
My fingerprints have disappeared, with age and use. I recently spent an hour with someone who is supposedly good at it trying to capture enough of my prints to satisfy a digital reader, for a background check. The someone was a person I have known for over a decade. They could not get the machine to read my prints (because I don’t have much to read) but were not authorized to say that they know that I am who I am, the same person whose prints are already on file with this agency.
I really, really miss the old days of rolling my fingers on an inkpad.
I also have nearly invisible fingerprints. Never can use for logging in. Lately, I have also been experiencing problems with facial recognition on my laptop and iPad! Am I disappearing?
You're probably suffering from "Wicked Witch of the West" or conveniently abbreviated to "3W," syndrome. You're melting.
FWIW, I am in the process of moving to a different state and updating my address with numerous institutions. GEICO made it the hardest to find an actual phone number, but once I did, the human agent on the other end of the phone call was most helpful and was able to circumvent the obstacles the website had thrown my way. Of utmost importance was to update my credit card billing address, which I had changed a day previous, to make sure that my GEICO payment would be accepted in January. I guess the cynical among us would suggest that GEICO wanted to make sure they got their $$, but the agent spent more time than necessary on the phone to chat about my new domicile and the wonders of finally being able to retire.
As a retired Fed - ExFed - , I moved on to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). I was able to swiftly and efficiently set up online access to both with 2 factor authentication (SMS) to cell phone in order to change my address. Quite surprising, to tell the truth. I actually called the toll free OPM number to inquire about changing my heath insurance (past open season) and got an actual human within 2 minutes. Again, the OPM rep was patient and knowledgable, walked my thru the options I selected, and we chatted about the weather in Pennsylvania as that is where the she is located. I was prepared for a much longer slog with TSP and OPM. Hats off to their much improved customer service and the 2 factor authentication didn't bother me as I put me cell phone nearby in anticipation.
I have directed to you some of my freed up capital from canceling WaPo.
Wish you were at WaPo and Bezos had created a nonprofit trust to run the paper headed by, say, Margaret Sullivan (speaking of heroines, although not as dramatic)
I solve this problem by reducing the amount of online activity on my cellphone (which I despise) and conducting it mostly on my Mini Mac desktop computer. Also, I have an iPhone which syncs with my desktop computer through messages (iPhone user messages are blue, Android are green) and also my Watch, iPad and laptop -- all Apple products. This means my phone can be buried in the yard, and I will get my two-factor text meant for my iPhone on my computer instead. Because I use Find My far more than any normal person should.
I understand not wanting to make the appointment or whatever on your phone—it is annoyingly small and lots more scrolling, and my phone typing is horrific. But I am assuming you don’t use a Mac or IPad because my texts show up on all my Apple stuff, so you get the code right there. In fact if you want to be fancy, you can let it ask you if you want to put the code from the text in the site you are on, so you can’t even type it wrong. (I always wonder how secure that is, but I use it.) Is there no way to get your texts on other devices outside the Apple bubble?
I have a mac and an iphone and of course I have no idea how to do this.
I, on the other hand, am a huge tech expert, in that my husband tells me how to do stuff. And I think your partner is younger than mine…..