Banks are amazingly bad at digital security. I once was in a bank (where my wife had an account) where they used first generation wireless keyboards. The ones that did not encrypt anything and could be received to a distance of up to 10m, more if you had a better antenna. I told them about the security issues, but they did not understand. I went to the newspaper agent and bought the newest edition of a computer magazine that had detailed descriptions of how to eavesdrop on those keyboards, returned to the bank, and handed them the article. Which featured exactly their keyboard model as the title photo. I told them “If you don’t understand this, it’s fine, but then give it to the person responsible for your IT and security, they should know how to deal with this.”

Next time we were there, they still had the insecure keyboards. Yes, the IT department had told them that they should replace them with wired ones, but they rejected it, because the wireless ones were sooo convenient. Our next move was to close my wifes’ account there.

I needed to get a certificate for digitally submitting my taxes. This, of course, requires me to set a password for it. The tax office’ web site lists a number of requirements and rejects any password that does not match those (so it said). So far, so good, the usual stuff, lower and upper case, numbers, special characters, minimum lenght. No surprises there.

For one of the “special characters” I used “ö” (umlaut o), which is a normal character in my language (which is the same as the tax offices, so they should be aware of those). The web site filter happily accepted this password containing the “ö”. But the back engine got a severe case of digital diarrhea from it. I had to clear my caches and cookies to completely re-starting the application process.

Another password SNAFU I had many years ago in a place using TN3270 terminals. To those who have never seen such a thing, it is a so-called “smart terminal”. It does not send and receive single characters like a telnet or SSH session, but the host sends a mask to the terminal, defining fields that can be filled out, and with a “send” or “function” key (IIRC) you could send the data back. Those fields had fixed lengths, of course. You might guess the problem…

So the login screen had two fields of eight characters each: “Username” and “Password”. I entered the credentials I have been given and sent them. The first thing I did was to select “change password”. It opened a form with three fields: “old password”, “new password”, and “repeat new password”. Nothing odd about that, but the fields had twelve characters. So, not knowing the particulars of that system (I was used to UNIX style terminals back then), I entered a new password that was longer than eight characters. Guess what? I logged out, I tried to log in, I was stuck. I had to ask my admin to reset my password. And had found the first of many, many bugs in that system.

Monkey piss has flavours? I always thought the chemical blue was to hide whatever rotting leftovers they put in the blender for this.

Not even close to what the US does. Far from it. The US military budget is larger than most other countries overall budget.

Pot, Kettle, Black. The US Republican party is about as, if not more fascist than the German AfD or Austrias FPÖ.

In comparison, the US Democrats are about where European conservatives can be located on the political spectrum.

This does not imply that the current political direction is not problematic.

I met him at a train station. He was a junkie, did not recognize me, and begged for money.

Either sloppy and overcooked on the outside, or raw in the center. Choose only one option.

That’s why no official service should use commercial social media.

It does run Linux, but it would probably more precise to say it walks Linux.

Funny, though, that there have been working methods of reducing the number of guns in civilized countries in the past.

But somehow every gun-toting American is totally convinced that reducing the amount of guns on the road is technically impossible,

The fuel tax in other countries primarily exists to make people use less fuel in order to save the world from global warming.

Do you know that you can now get Terrys Orange chocolate as little bars in a 3x35g pack?

Free-Range Battle Bots!

And what an impressive list of bugs that is…

Looks like you are a few years behind events.

The first two years of a child: When will it walk? When will it talk?

The next 16 years: Will you finally sit down and shut up?

Maybe it is a client thing, but I saw this especially fitting.

Maybe, but in another, more civilized country than the US.

Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a

That sentence also shut down apruptly. How fitting.

I’ve got a Seat Alhambra. It is basically a VW Sharan, but cheaper, and I bought it for space. Seven seats if needed, five with quite some space for transporting things, and down to two seat and a lot of space if that is needed (and I ran this configuration twice in the last three weeks, so it is not something once-in-a-cars-lifetime like.

It also has a trailer hitch which allows me to pull 1.8t. That’s a feature I have only tried to see how it works out, pulling a trailer around the block and doing some reversing and parking with it to see how it works, but the hitch was included and might be needed next year, so I’m fine with that.

I originally wanted to buy an electric car, but at that time, most electric cars were overpriced matchboxes on wheels, so they were simply useless for me. At the moment, the VW ID Buzz is one electric model that would do size-wise, but it is way, way too expensive, and it is ugly as f-ck to boot. If prices and design have reached acceptable levels, maybe the next one will be electric.