Jul (they/she)

Problem is finding something that is universal that is a “something you have” is difficult to find that almost everyone has. Almost everyone has a cell phone these days, so it’s a good option to use as that kind of factor. Email is a second “something you know” factor (I.e. via the password to your email account) and could be the same something if you use the same password. And getting someone to carry yet another device even if it’s simple like a Yubikey or something like that can be difficult. And unless biometric devices become universal on computers as well as phones, the “something you are” factor is hard to accomplish universally as well.

So, what options do you think are better that can be a “something you have” for use as a second factor to a password or other type of “something you know” factor?

How so?

It’s a second factor. It’s “something you know”, “something you have”, and/or “something you are”. The username and password is the “something you know” and the sms message is “something you have” (I.e. the phone). There’s no need for the second factor to be secret as long as it is single use and time sensitive and is only used as a second factor, not the only factor.

This article was about single factor messages that are the entirety of the login flow, so not about 2FA, but I’m still interested in the concerns for second factor. It is still adding security over a password alone which is the only goal in the 2FA subject.

2FA isn’t the issue. The issue is single factor logins with only text messages, no password and often no username. Those messages allow anyone who intercepts them to login, no username or password is involved at all.

2FA via SMS is a perfectly fine solution, though there are more secure options like yubikeys or TOTP generation apps.

FYI, I also did a quick search and it seems like Ritalin allergies are not exactly uncommon especially compared to amphetamine-based medications. Again, I’m not a doctor or pharmacist, just did some basic Googling.

Not a doctor or pharmacist, who you probably should ask, but I think Adderall anf other amphetamine based medications are significantly different from Ritalin. Also, allergies are sometimes related to ingredients other than the drug itself. And maybe an allergist could help determine what specifically you are allergic to in a safer way than just trying another drug if it was that significant of a reaction.

Yes, but mostly because it’s a spectrum disorder and there are concerns about how much care a person will need and thus how much of a burden they will be to a healthcare system. I think it depends on the country you’re emigrating to, of course, but a country with a really good public health system is not going to want ro support someone with a very expensive disease. But for someone like me who doesn’t need care, it isn’t an issue, but because of misunderstanding of what Autism is and the poor classifications of “levels” or “severity”, there’s concern that it could be an issue. At the very least it might require extra documentation and thus lots of extra time to process.

Diagnosis is a relative thing. What do you mean, should you get diagnosed? Are you sure that ADHD isn’t mentioned in your psychiatrist’s chart? It might be hard for them to justify prescribing controlled substances in case of an audit if it’s not. Right now most pharmacies and insurance don’t require a diagnosis code to be sent to justify prescriptions, but it is something that’s starting to get traction as the industry modernizes, even if slowly. But the diagnosis may already be there and may or may not be in your chart. If it is, it likely will get out as insurance companies often require large amounts of information to be sent to them as they tend to just deny claims and say, “we need more information”, so the doctors have no choice but to send entire charts. Also, a lot of the big medical records systems tend not to have good security as well as the intermediaries that transmit data to insurance companies. There was just a big hack last year that shut down a whole bunch of systems due to the consolidation of various systems recently. Anyway, the only way to keep your diagnosis private is to ensure that your doctor doesn’t use electronic records and you don’t use insurance. Otherwise, it’s going to get leaked eventually, somewhere.

Now as to whether that information will be used to discriminate against you, that’s another story. It might be if you intend to emigrate and you likely will be excluded from high security clearance work due to general mental health discrimination in those areas. But otherwise, an employer is unlikely to go looking for the info, at least for now. Usually jobs didn’t require disclosing medical conditions unless they require high physical labor, security clearance, or some other very specialized work that is very sensitive, so YMMV.

And, if you’re in the US at least, the full repeal of Obamacare/ACA has stalled as conservatives have realized how bad that would hurt them. So it’s being picked apart piece by piece instead, and the preexisting conditions part is low on the priority list as it would be high on impact and thus very unpopular if done alone without hiding it in a larger repeal of the ACA.

Anyway, I had similar concerns and decided it was well worth the risk. I may want to emigrate some day, so I have been avoiding an Autism diagnosis, but that has no treatment options for adults anyway, unlike the ADHD. And I no longer have a job with security clearance, so no concerns there.

For reference, I’ve worked in medical billing and charting technology for a couple of decades and I’m currently a software architect for a major health insurance company in the US.

I have around 3500 liked songs on Spotify alone just from the last 5 years or so and just stuff that Spotify chooses to plat for me. I have about 9,000 tracks in my primary collection from old ripped CDs and purchased MP3s/FLACs. This is without stuff that I dont really like that much anymore or stuff that I would only listen to in specific circumstances, like Mozart or something. It’s over 100GB. There is definitely some overlap there, but definitely less than 1/3 of the Spotify likes I also own. So probably I’d end up somewhere in the 125-150GB range. If phones still had SD card slots I could do it, but that’s not that common anymore since they want you to buy streaming and backup services.

I could probably pare it down even more without missing out too much, but it would take a lot of time and it would be removing stuff I like to listen to. And I wouldn’t have room to add new stuff.

I listen to a pretty wide variety of genres and I listen on my phone often, pretty much anytime I’m driving or on a bus/train, and I dont like hearing the same songs repeated too much unless I’m just getting to know the song. I’ve thought about writing a script that automatically randomly replaces files when I’m on my home network to take a smaller set with me, but that’s a lot of work. The other alternative is creating playlists of a few hundred songs each and switching them out when I’m home, but again, lots of work.

Streaming just covers it well for my use case, if it was reasonably priced and did it’s job well to help discover new music, but seems that’s not what they’re selling anymore. I also don’t have a data cap anymore, or at least it’s a soft cap and not ridiculously low, but not sure how long that will be the case either.

Radio only plays a few dozen songs or only “classic” stuff, so I never get to hear new stuff. Having streaming audio was always my way to find new music. That said, Spotify has started doing the same, just playing the sponsored songs and the themes they have generally only play stuff I’ve heard a million times. Rarely “b-sides” or new stuff based on my actual interests.

I miss the days of the original Pandora service with its database of music elements, and it would go across genres to find things with similar elements and didn’t have any influence from the recording industry sponsoring songs because they were actively destroying their own industry fighting to kill off streaming, instead. I found a bunch of new stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It totally changed my listening habits.

So with the streaming services consolidating and raising prices as a result, I likely won’t stick with it anymore. My music library is too large to store locally on my phone and I like variety rather than making playlists. I’m thinking of setting up my own streaming server, but music discovery is still an issue I need to solve.

Hope if comes in the next decade because I’ve needed knee replacement for decades due to tibial stress fractures from military service tearing up my cartilage and can’t afford it, the time off, or someone to help during recovery. American healthcare sucks…

Um…Koch Industries donated tons of money to politician to not retaliate against Russia when they invaded Ukraine, and they refused to pull out of Russia when lots of other companies were. And that’s just one small, recent example of their connections to Russia. Google can find lots of others. I mean go back far enough and their family had close connections to Stalin as well.

But why are the patches kept separate at all. Especially if it’s a copyleft licensed code they’re patching. Many of those require release of the code. And the spirit of that was to make companies who profit off of the code release anything they add as they add it. Otherwise, they’re welcome to instead of taking open source code and patching it, creating closed source code from scratch without using any of the code from the open source version and selling that. It’s very simple. The license says, you want this code, you’re welcome to it, but release any fixes or improvements you make do we all benefit, not just developers, but users all benefit. If they keep it locked up, even if they release it as a patch that’s not accessible to the large majority of users, then it’s violating the spirit if in some cases not the letter of the license.

There’s lots of things that could be innovated without faster processors. I mean if we’re just talking cell phones, adding a camera was an innovation, adding a touch screen and eventually touch keyboards that actually worked, different form factors. These things were aided by faster processors, but not directly dependent on them. But these could be totally unrelated devices to phones or even computing at all. Innovation across the board including med-tech, business models, city planning, and tons of other industries have suffered from privatization, deregulation, and leading then to consolidation and thus little need to compete and thus little need to innovate.

It used to be useful when there was competition to actually provide good service and actually negotiate prices. Consolidation to basically one parent company ruined the whole thing like most late capitalism consolidation tends to do…

Yep. Let us survive while creating all the cool stuff and contributing all our energy to society instead of draining it performing painful tedious tasks for a corporation.

“Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy” is what it should say. When late stage capitalism leads to consolidation and cost cutting, stock buybacks, and other short term profit when competition is no longer necessary, that’s what kills the economy. That’s why monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are bad, but the US doesn’t punish that anymore.

Combined with commoditization of necessities like food and automated and near instantaneous trading of those commodities without needing them to physically change hands, this is a big driver of the insane inflation/shrinkflation were seeing.

A lot of that was sexism and racism forcing less fascist loving conservatives over to Trump combined with a general sense of betrayal. The Democrats made a huge mistake forcing Biden down everyone’s throat by forcing other candidates not to run (which they do most years bit it was really obvious this time with the disapproval of how far right the party moved to even select Biden) and an even bigger mistake switching to Harris against the will of the (admittedly sham) vote.

But charge the capacitor with what? That’s the point. If it doesn’t kill the data immediately upon pushing the button, even when unplugged, it’s useless unless some bumbling idiot thief/cop/agent plugs it in before just disarming the button.

And as for fully physical, do tests with what? Another computer? Its a memory storage device with only an I/O driver and basic firmware. There’s no CPU to separately run software to detect if the components are destroyed. And if there were, that would have to be physically/electrically separated from the short that is going to kill the device and then physically reconnected, which would mean some kind of mechanical device most likely. Now were getting into a huge device, not a flash drive. The device already has capabilities to read and write data. Very easy to add a chip to give that random data to write over the existing data and a lot less power than a processor and motorized components.

And again, it doesn’t solve the redundancy problem. Single point of failure is always going to go wrong at least one in some number of cases. Even top of the line components and the best quality control available can’t beat redundancy and it’s way, way cheaper.

Exactly. But the corporations do it because it benefits them more than starting from scratch. They should release all changes to the central repository for all to consume as part of the agreement to get the benefit of the already created software. Not hold onto the patches to give them to their customers and people who pay them with their personal information.