Phone System Error 404

I used to think that phone #’s couldn’t be hacked. I grew up with land line phones and they seemed secure. That was just a feeling. What I thought was a secure way to talk turned out false. The reality is your phone # can be temporarily intercepted and hijacked. Text messages can be read, everything on the phone can be looked into at any time. It turns out that from a security perspective, phones are as dangerous as computers. Even the analog variety. Time for the very best PhDs to figure out something new and provable better than the technology in play today.

2 Factor Lockout – Blocked Access is only Two Steps Away

Although it is possible for someone else to go into your email, as the political events of 2016 has shown, the push for better account security never ends. Recent developments show Google To Replace SMS Codes With Mobile Prompts in 2-Step-Verification Procedure. The latest info is that your phone # can be hacked, quietly, and it would be easy for others to compromise the SS7 system that handles phone calls and text messages. While it seems 2 Factor Verification where you get a text message access code to your account when you log in seems more secure, in reality, that may be an illusion of security. Anyway, I thought about that as I failed to get access to the LinkedIn account under my name. I no longer had the phone # I used for 2 Factor Verification and LinkedIn wanted a digital scanned copy of an ID or signed affidavit. Crazy stuff. Anyway, I decided I didn’t need LinkedIn any longer as I reflected on the concept of lost access to a social media page I worked on for many, many years. The dangers of floating around digital copies of an ID or signature can be much greater than the leisurely activity of participating in social media. As to login security, surely the greatest minds in Tech can solve this more effectively. There has got to be a better way …

Experimental Digital Generation

The consensus from one corner of the science world is that Students Are Better Off Without a Laptop In the Classroom. Understandably, laptops are good outside the classroom for things like homework, research, and cleanly composing documents and other materials. Yet, it is possible the general mystique around laptops for education was oversold. Another pebble thrown into the ocean of the experimental runaround to do nothing. Again, another case of the dangers of unfettered marketing of concepts with little benefit to most people’s future.

Simple Coding

Some say, We Need to Reboot the Culture of View Source, but I say it is more fundamental than that. We need to recognize that some web pages and apps don’t need a thousand different frameworks. Why do you need 10s of thousands of lines of code for a search page when code a tenth of the size would do? At least that is the sentiment expressed by user, green1. I agree.

Fedora 26 Runs Quite Fast on Same Hardware

I did an in-place upgrade from Fedora 25 to Fedora 26. I didn’t expect much as I originally upgraded from Fedora 24 to version 25. What I noticed however was the performance. Programs and windows seem to open much faster, smoother. The apparent optimizations in this version of Fedora is quite stunning. Obviously, the people who worked on this version went quite far to optimize the overall performance. Overall, this is a fast and highly stable build of Fedora.

Silicon Valley Sexism and Non-Disparagement Agreements

The answer to, Why sexism has festered for so long in Silicon Valley involves the rise of non-disparagement agreements. Like their sister agreements such as Non-Disclosure, Intellectual Property Assignment and other such agreements, the all have the effect of inducing people to inhibit how they express themselves beyond reason. These agreements modify a person’s legal exercise greatly in favor of stockholders. Signing your name to the s document effectively suppresses your natural legal rights, in some cases, forever.

Students go through school and one of the subjects they are taught is civics. The implied message is how fair the system is and how a great country declared inalienable rights for all. Then, these students join the work world and one their first acts upon getting hired is to sign away all those rights. What kind of messed up stuff is that?

Women are minorities are told about the boundless possibilities in life. Encouraged to pursue STEM careers. Put through the machine of education that churns out young people destined to swear the written equivalent of a lifetime oath to commit all who they are, rights included, to …

Sexism is widespread in Silicon Valley. It is not just the harrasment, but a sense that only a certain sect of society has credibility in producing the good stuff. A result that does derive, in part, from the socialization of women and minorities into a more refined docile and deferential state of expression. As such, then such expression feed the predatory instincts of those seeing an opportunity to gain even more from those likely to remain silent.

Congrats John McAfee on Regaining His Name

I met John McAfee two months ago and found him to be an approachable, down-to-earth person. He’s cool. I took a photo with him. Since the picture was taken in a work setting I am reticent to post it. Suffice it to say, it was good to meet John and his wife. He briefly mentioned his lament regarding the legalities around his name. I can relate to his sentiments regarding ownership issues in the realm of technology. The news that John McAfee Can Finally Use His Own Name Again, is very pleasant as names should not be locked down like that. Much success to John in his future endeavors. The change in the status surrounding his name is great news indeed.