giantrobothead

Now, that is fun. Made the morning a bit more thoughtful.

I'm a Slackware man in everyday life, but I do use Debian to run our NAS at my workplace. Stable, easy to use, and dependable; I have no complaints about its performance.

It's not the failure that matters in the long run, but what you take from the experience to respond to it.

Good luck.

I can see the utility of the tablet as a browsing/reading/listening device. However, I am a bit of a curmudgeon and will clutch my laptop to myself as long as possible.

Agreed. Any device that limits my ability to communicate effectively is not for me.

Also, as an avid CLI user, a tablet is next to useless for me. I don't really feel like buying a bluetooth keyboard for a tablet just to optimize text input.

Also, Alexis Madrigal brings up the Pynchonian aspect of the attack at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/sniper...

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea wrote a character into their Illuminatus! trilogy who employed a very similar strategy. He would leave cryptic messages and commands strewn about various businesses and locations (such as "no spitting"), some with The Mgmt. appended to them. They were so blandly authoritative that the rest of the characters blithely obeyed them without question. Social Engineering hacks keep working for a reason, hey?

Indeed.

Jorge Luis Borges would have loved this article.

I greatly admire Kubrick's use of typography in his films, and share his love for Futura, the only typeface on the moon. This is an excellent article, thank you for sharing.

No, but that link is definitely intriguing.

I would like to see some numbers on that. Is it as pervasive as it seems, or are the ones that get through just dramatic enough to set people on edge?

You say "were" as though that has somehow changed.

It couldn't hurt. At least the general populace's purchasing power would increase.

Tremendous. I love how the simulation threw its hands up at the end and gave up in such spectacular fashion.

Mathematical abomination, indeed.

Perhaps. Unfortunately, that's probably a pretty big "if".

Pass phrases are more memorable and at least appear more resistant to password cracking attempts, but as Mat Honan's experience and this recent post here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142916) both show, your account security can come down to a successful social engineering hack on a minimum-wage customer service employee who has the power to reset your account password.

Unfortunately, those opportunities appear to be as boundless as human stupidity.

Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that. Probably because I have around two years worth of service built up on mine.

Definitely. While it's not a perfect solution, it provides an extra layer of protection for your accounts by making an extra hurdle for any attacker to clear. Needing two components to access/change your accounts is elegant and effective.

Pay-as-you-go phones are advisable to use for two factor verification, as they are affordable and could be used only for this purpose. Don't hand out the number and you've got a nice disposable tool for protecting your accounts.

>MR. SEEGER: I continued singing, and I expect I always will.

May you always. By far the most meaningful line of the exchange.

Other than hand-delivered letters and face-to-face conversation in a secluded space, but then again, how can you trust the person you're communicating with to keep those communiques private?

Argh...paranoia...all consuming!

Yes, but what about those of us that enjoy playing NetHack?

Agreed. The most important thing to take away from this is to make reading a part of everyday life.

In fact, my advice would be to read everything you can get your hands on, and then keep going.

I was going to write an insightful response here, but lunch time came up and well, I'll get to it later. :)

Seriously, though, I've found that procrastination is my greatest hurdle to overcome. I always think: "I'll get to it later", or "There will always be time to get to that". Invariably, all that time ends up getting away from me and I feel down on myself for not getting to said project/essay/whatever.

So, when you have an idea, act on it. Don't wait, because waiting will kill that nascent idea as surely as anything. Make time, even if it's just a few minutes, it will end up benefiting your project in the long run.

Regardless of how much writing I do on my laptop, I am never without a sketchbook and pen. Indispensable tools.

Why does anthropomorphizing our machines always seem to lead to sadness?