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strifey

188 karma · joined February 25, 2013

Infra/networking engineer at Render.com
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strifey··on The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
Go to pbs.org. It will ask you to select a station based on your location and popup a big donate banner. There's also a donate button on the top bar. I feel like they make it pretty easy and obvious.
strifey··on Stripe Identity
I used this for an online car rental service recently. My only main complaint was that it didn't work with FF for Android. Once I switched to Chrome, everything was great, but I'm disappointed in how often sites expect to be ran in a Chromium-based browser these days.

Still appreciate seeing Stripe's name when taking a pic of my ID rather than just the rather small startup I was using. No offense to small startups, but I might've balked at it otherwise.

strifey··on Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)
Sure, brute force doesn't online typically, but isn't the reason we have most password requirements generally for the scenario where someone gains offline access to password hashes?
strifey··on Firefox 88.0
True, there's not a huge difference. I just tend to prefer to reaffirm my permissions on occasion than permanently allow them. Similar to how I appreciate that most website occasionally require you to re-login.
strifey··on Firefox 88.0
> Firefox will not prompt for access to your microphone or camera if you’ve already granted access to the same device on the same site in the same tab within the past 50 seconds. This new grace period reduces the number of times you’re prompted to grant device access.

This is a super nice little QoL improvement, but I'd love to be able to configure this to be even longer (optimally by domain, but I'd love a global setting too).

strifey··on Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)
I think I'm more worried about the lack of complexity than the guessability. It removes a huge amount of potential variance in any sort of brute force attempt.
strifey··on Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)
Schwab used to do the "silently truncate to 8 chars" fail, but they _also_ silently changed all chars to upper/lower so the password was case insensitive.

Still can't believe they were allowed to have such a bad and secret password policy for so long.

strifey··on Beej's Guide to Network Programming (1994-2020)
When I TA'ed a course that taught networking fundamentals, I always pointed folks at this guide when they were struggling with assignments. Can't believe that was 8 years ago.
strifey··on Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)
I would also _highly_ recommend The Dispossessed from her same universe. I personally preferred it, but both are really great "sci-fi tackles seriously complicated real life topics" reads.
strifey··on Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)
Have you read Lathe of Heaven? I don't love all of the Hainish Cycle books (they're all good, just not peak Le Guin good), but that book I would consider in my top 5 books of all time easily.
strifey··on Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)
I would concur with this. Wolfe and Le Guin, to me, both write sci-fi/fantasy as literature while also closely using themes that most would consider "genre fiction".
strifey··on Goodreads plans to retire API access, disables existing API keys
I was super disappointed in this but not surprised, honestly. Started building features for a Discord bot to share book reading updates, etc. with friends, and the API was rough to say the least (especially their OAuth implementation). You could tell they hadn't dedicated any resources to it in a long time.
strifey··on Tech elites leaving San Francisco threaten Silicon Valley's supremacy
I grew up in a deeply conservative part of the country. The amount of casual bigotry that permeates even the most mundane social exchanges now shocks me whenever I visit my family. I can't imagine what it's like to be a minority there. Even being a white man who people treat kindly is uncomfortable enough.
strifey··on Firefox 83 introduces HTTPS-Only Mode
Oh wow, this is huge! Ever since switching back to FF, I constantly forget what my "shorthand" shortcut is for my custom search engines.
strifey··on Users may be unable to connect or experiencing degraded performance
If everyone is bought-in on using them, they can be a really nice way to keep single topics in one place rather than having interleaved conversations in a single channel. If people don't use it 100% of the time, though, it's honestly worse because now you're not always sure where to read/continue a conversation.
strifey··on Smokers quit in record numbers amid Covid fears
I quit smoking a few years ago after getting pneumonia in my 20s. Definitely even more glad I did now.
strifey··on Firefox 76
It also pairs with an app called Lockwise now! It means you can generate passwords and even auto-fill them in other native mobile apps these days. At least I can fairly easily on Android. Found it much easier for my luddite to be comfortable adopting over things like LastPass/OnePass.
strifey··on Tsundoku
I always have a pile of fiction near at hand, but I'm relatively good with getting through those. My non-fiction pile is the one that gathers the most dust...
strifey··on USB-C Has Finally Come into Its Own
Yet another anecdotal data point, but I've done the same with my Switch and MPB. I've charged both from a battery pack, phone chargers, etc. in a pinch and never had any issues (other than really really slow charging speeds).

I've just assumed those "warnings" are there for liability reasons because these companies didn't test their devices' charging capabilities across all possible USB charging devices.

strifey··on Visa, Mastercard, Others Reconsider Involvement in Facebook's Libra Network
Whoa, I've never clicked that button before. Now I just want a firefox extension that adds this to all paywall article links on all websites.
strifey··on Visa, Mastercard, Others Reconsider Involvement in Facebook's Libra Network
I frequently just do a google search for the title and click the link to the same article there. Typically, I don't get paywalled that way.
strifey··on The Rise of the Electric Scooter
I've basically had the same experience but picking up skateboarding again. I spent a lot of time skateboarding as a kid, and it turns out it's also a really efficient, compact way of getting around a city too! I now feel a lot more comfortable moving further away from BART while maintaining a consistent commute time.
strifey··on Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm
I should learn to love the nubbin. I've used Thinkpads briefly in the past and just never got the hang of it.
strifey··on Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm
What model of Thinkpad? How is the touchpad? The MBP touchpad quality is the main thing I don't want to lose.
strifey··on Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app
My guess is if you reactivate and immediately deactivate, it should do what you want. I don't know what else that triggers, though.
strifey··on Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app
Yep. It currently explicitly states this and does it by default when you get to the final deactivation step. Previously it was an option you had to notice and click.
strifey··on People using Venmo to spy on cheating spouses
I recently went through and unfollowed 100+ people because there's still no mass-unfollow feature :(
strifey··on Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits
Strange, yeah if I open it in an incognito window I'm shown the old reddit homepage. Maybe it only works for signed-in users?
strifey··on Reddit's redesign could kill discussion subreddits
You should be able to interact with the redesign directly at https://new.reddit.com. The main complaints I've seen leveled at the redesign are: user profiles becoming more like Facebook profiles, the new chat functionality missing core features, and the newly created "best" ranking becoming the default.
strifey··on Yelp’s Style Guide
Win 8 & Chrome here and it looks much better than that.
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