Part of the political content that lately makes me uncomfortable about discussing political things are the gotcha posts. Someone makes a mistake and another person on the “good side” catches them in that mistake and cuts them down in epic style. (We call  it “owning.”) The one I saw prompting this post was a name redacted…
There is no enforced standard for passwords for a web site, so they can be all over the place for requirements. Nor do sites typically explain what are the exact standards before a failure. And then most will state the minimum and types of characters. But, too many leave out the maximum number of characters allowed so…
For a while my self-hosted WordPress has been a royal pain in the ass. Trying to compose through the WordPress.com interface through Jetpack would show occasional errors that “Saving of draft failed” or an inability to communicate. Sometimes it was usable, sometimes there were so many errors I gave up and used the site. The…
Ran across a site where if one changes the email address associated with the account, it sends the confirmation email to the new address. Say, I am a Blackhat and used a phishing attack to get the password for the account. Having legitimately logged in, I then change the email address associated with it from victim@outlook.com…
Every time I go through movies I have bought and try to redeem the digital copy, I suspect the companies make the process so difficult that no one will actually do it. Companies like the gift card racket because they get the money and recipients hold on to them for far too long. Movie companies charge…
What are the “Top 5 Books” that have molded your mindset and outlook on life? Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness: introduced me to behavioral economics and helped me learn how to disrupt obsessing over indecision. Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection: counter-intuitively it exposed me to figuring out that…
Yesterday, in Mandatory Voting I wrote: In the end, I think finding ways to lower the costs of voting is the best approach. A low participation rate suggests there are problems. Solving those problems would be better than simply punishing people for not overcoming those costs. Additionally I mentioned: Certainly, I am in favor of things…
A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was interested in reading this because JFK was the grandson of Irish immigrants. The Irish (and Italians, Chinese, and others) at one point were the targets of the kinds of language we saw just recently during the 2016 presidential election.…
Given the closeness of the recent election, the inevitable complaint about how few people voted are swirling in the national conversation from the losing side. Part of the conversation is the winning party does not have a mandate. The more interesting claim is that if everyone had to vote, then Hillary could have won. The rationale is that…