Day: August 11, 2017

Sesame? Says Me!

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Over the last few days, my newsfeed has been filled with people gloating over the fact that the fellow who came up with that original guidance — make complex passwords and change them often — admitted he was wrong. But, if course, as with most people, they are misinterpreting things. Here are some key takeaways:

  • Complex passwords are still critical, but the answer is not an unpronouncable mix of letters and characters — because you can’t remember that. You can get equal or stronger passwords by choosing random words from the dictionary (passphrases) because although the “string” is shorter, the alphabet is larger. Math is math.
  • Frequent changing of passwords defeats the strength not because frequent changing is bad, but because human nature is. If you change things frequently, you’ll go to patterns that make things easier to remember — and to break.

In reality, the best solution is still a high-quality Password Manager, with a strong master password. In the password manager, you can create strong passwords for all your sites — unique for each site — and not have to remember them. This is something recommend (and not using my Facebook authentication for everything, which is not only weak but gives FB far too much information). I’ve recommended Lastpass for a long time for this purpose. It can keep track not only of passwords, but all that information you fill into forms — such as credit card info — so that you are storing it in your encrypted password vault, not on another machine where you depend on their encryption.

Recently, Lastpass changed their charging model: they upped the price (without notice) of Lastpass Premium from $12 to $24 a year. Everyone was up in arms! Heaven forfend! Doubling the price! (Never mind the fact that we’re talking $1 a month, which is noise, but hey, it’s the percentage!). It’s a concern for me: we have three Lastpass Premium accounts. However, I plan to move to the Family pricing model (which is worth it for 2 or more family members); hopefully, Lastpass will provide a way to consolidate existing Premium accounts into a single Family account with prorata balances applying towards the fee.

In the larger world, NIST is simplifying their password recommendations. The folks at Lastpass believe that will make things easier, but I believe that the fundamentals still remain: pick a unique password for each site, make it suitably complex, ideally gaining complexity through words vs. characters. How to do that? Use the password generator in your password manager, use the nonsense word generator, or use the XKCD Password Generator, XKPasswd.

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Household Chum

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Sometimes news chum is just useful information. Here’s a bunch of items, all related to your house or your household:

 

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It’s a Bundle of 💩

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

An article in today’s LA Times by the usually reliable David Lazurus prompted this rant, especially as Lazurus opined that Disney’s move to its own streaming service was yet another death blow to expensive cable bundles. He opined that it would be better for consumers. I respectfully disagree.

Increasingly, we’re moving to the ala carte method of pricing. Airlines such as United are touting “Basic Economy”, where you get a seat and nothing more, and pay for any other privilege. TV, which used to be simple, is now an increasing number of services to which you must subscribe separately — which hides the total cost of all you see. Add your internet service provider fee to what you pay for Netfix + Amazon + YouTube Red + Hulu + CBS All Access + …. you name it, and your total can quite likely be more than that of cable, but you don’t see it. Sometimes, there is an argument for simplicity: A single price that bundles together what you would likely want.

Perhaps it is because I am older, but I don’t want to have to manage all of these separate fees. I want that simplicity. Alas, this means that much of new TV that is on these streaming services is lost to me. I’d love to watch Star Trek: Discovery, but I don’t want to have to deal with CBS All Access to do so. I’d love to explore some of the Netflix exclusive series, but don’t want to deal with yet another service and how it fits into my system.

All of these systems that increasingly use the Internet as their delivery mechanism are an exploitation of privilege, and a way of strongly focusing on a privileged audience. Much of US likes to forget that not everyone has fast streaming access, or can afford all the computer systems required for access, or the newer TVs. Low-income minorities, seniors — who cares about them. As long as we can reach our middle and upper class well educated audience — with the buying power — that’s what we want. Let those plebians watch the shows that can only be in the Cable and Satellite bundles.

So I disagree with the Times. I think the move of Disney to its private streaming service is a grab for more profits, and yet another way of targeting messages of consumption to those with the means to consume. Quality TV is no longer the opioid of the masses; it is the crack of the rich.

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