I don't think so. I think, instead, that you have been looking for an opportunity to leave a snotty and dismissive comment, in the written version of upspeak? And I think you know that, too.
So that's a time-out for a few days. When you're ready to stop enacting childish behaviors and converse with respect like a grown up, you'll be welcome to comment again:)
It's this kind of thing that makes me hopeful about the likelihood of our robot overlords taking over. How?! Everything is going to seize up the first time someone puts the wrong code in.
I remember technology was sold to make our lives easier and go paperless. 20-30 years ago, we were told over and over that we were going to be a paperless society. Yet, it seems to me that we use more paper than ever. I can't count how many times I yell "CAN YOU JUST WORK?!?!" I thought we would have flying cars by now, instead we have 5 million passwords to get to our own stuff that a hacker can get in 5 seconds.
It's not about security, it's about the appearance of security, thereby creating plausible deniability when, not if, the system gets hacked. It won't be their fault, it'll be yours.
It'll be like, "Sir, you were INSTRUCTED not to re-use any of your last 100 passwords. You were WARNED when we sent you the six-digit CODE. And now, we have no choice but to nominate your name for the No-Fly List."
Oh my goodness, I yell that exact thing at my computer multiple times a day. Especially when using the software programs that are now based in the cloud.
In 1983, at the age of nine, I was given to understand that we would have teleportation by the year 2000. Instead, my car is a computer I am unqualified to maintain, while laboratory mice in Atlanta are super-evolving with the assistance of VR games.
What it looks like to me is that the main problem starts with a heedless rush to change and update and innovate. Nobody seems to GAS about what the base level of customer usage will look like in practice. User-friendly should be the first priority instead of being an afterthought that Bill-whose-office-is-a-converted-closet-in-the-basement is solely responsible for.
There is constant changing and updating to make devices and online services more complex and fancier. I wish they'd have a moratorium on that and devote their energy for awhile to making them more reliable and user-friendly. The changes frequently seem solely for the sake of change, and don't make anything better than it was before. Usually worse.
Because who cares about the users? Its all about making the designers and those who 'introduce' these innovative systems LOOK GOOD, GET PROMOTIONS, MOVE AHEAD. Nothing to do with the user, the need. Remember create the problem, introduce the 'solution' and rise wash and re-do. Endless looking good with 0 real change, innovation OR improvement in services for the user.
Ask the companies you deal with how they handle multi-factor authentication. If a company requires it every time you connect to them, ask them how you can pay them electronically without having to connect. For example, my bank can pay my credit card bills online in two business days. The bank that issued my credit card receives the money without any further interaction with me.
You also need to have a financial institution that does not require multi-factor authentication every time you connect to them. This uses cookies… authentication data stored in your computer browser or smartphone browser… but you do have to re-authenticate occasionally because cookies can expire or you may get a new device.
Solving this nightmare may require digital certificates… super-cookies. Financial institutions have been trying to avoid that for decades… I worked for Visa twenty years ago and they were struggling with it already. They decided to use people’s home address instead.
Another option would be easy-to-use smart devices that do nothing but authentication. The kind that give out prearranged authentication codes every so often have been replaced by Google Authenticator or Authy… running on a smartphone. Groan. My hardware key that I carry on my keychain has to be plugged into a USB A port. Though it is not well known, USB has a smart device interface that is implemented on all standard USB technology stacks. Most browsers can connect to any smart authentication device plugged into a USB A port. You have to press on the device to get it to turn on… it is not a dongle to leave plugged in all the time.
Those are a nightmare to administer. There's also an attempt to use "passphrases," which are like SSH public/private keys, but that's a mess, too.
I used to work for a network security company. We spent a lot of our time addressing CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures), which are bugs found in various systems that keep turning up. Some of the severe ones made us drop EVERYTHING to patch our software, because if we got hacked, it would tank the company.
I'm afraid that good security is never convenient. It's tough to administer on the server side, and it is a pain to deal with as a user.
Furthermore, malevolent hackers -- many state-sponsored by China, North Korea, and Iran, and others just plain sociopaths -- are relentless. When you spin up an AWS instance of an app, for example, you have to first create a tight firewall, because the instant the IP address goes live it is attacked.
Josh is absolutely right about lack of good tech support. It's highly frustrating to talk to someone who's told to follow a script to the letter and who doesn't possess the knowledge to adapt to a more advanced user. It's also madness to make your phone a single point of failure when you need to effing transact on your account TODAY.
I don't know what the solution is. The target keeps moving. Everything they try to increase security is shot full of holes in fairly short order, and then it's on to the next thing.
Great response. I first encountered a lot of the technology almost fifty years ago when Ron Rivest and his grad students Shamir and Adleman were developing RSA. Now, we know that GCHQ had already developed RSA and prevented its use by classifying it out of existence.
Josh, we’ve gone way backwards. I think of recent disputes, run-ins I’ve hade with ride share companies, where you will never, ever, ever, ever get a chance to speak with a live person. There’s a disgusting cynicism to how many companies do business these days. I’ve come to the conclusion that they couldn’t give a shit about the consumer. I’m a few years older than you and the hope I hold onto is that I’ll be moving on at some point and won’t have to deal with it anymore.
I often reflect on the same thing when I find myself getting worked up over some of the BS going on today. I'm probably not going to be around that much longer, so I won't have to deal with it. I feel bad for people in their thirties, twenties, and younger who will have to live through the coming shit show for another fifty years or more.
Right?? I hate to sound ungrateful, but when I hear people say, "growing old is tough, but it sure beats the alternative," I want to throat punch them. I for one cannot wait for this sh*t show to end. I wouldn't even mind all of this computer crap, IF you knew that you had a person you could reach if push came to shove. We do not have that. And as Josh stated, even if you reach a person, fingers crossed you'll understand his/her accent.
Stop using Google. It may be inconvienent, but you won't be compromising your personal data, which they probably make far more than what you pay for their "service".
I use primarily Lycos (.com), albeit for casual browsing. But you can also use Startpage .com or Brave. com.
I'm no tech expert, but even Firefox and DuckDuckGo, which still use the main google search engine, are still better because (at least in theory) they help keep you anonymous.
I'm not opposed. What do you suggest for running an agency with ~20 people that is HIPAA compliant and provides email, calendar, cloud storage, and website hosting? I'm not sure of any turnkey suites that meet all criteria.
Unfortunately they probably don't. I'd suggest Bing, but its probably not any better. Since you have to do dedicated office stuff, you should probably just stick with what you have.
At my place of work they put in a super duper special non hackable MFA (multi factor authentication) system to sign on to our computers every morning. All it is, is that after you put your username and password into the computer, the system calls you on your desk phone and you pick up and punch any key on the phone and hang up and then you can access your computer. It is so dumb.
I feel for you. Twenty-first century technology is often exhausting.
In 1987 I worked in an industrial supply warehouse. We would usually get all the work done by around 1:00 in the afternoon, and spend the next couple of hours playing handball and shootin' the shit. Then the company brought in computers, which had to be used for inventory and all transactions. Even after a learning period, after we had the hang of them, it took all day, plus frequent overtime, to keep up with the same amount of work we'd done before in four or five hours a day, pre-computers.
When I was a kid in the 1960s my family had one telephone, bolted to the kitchen wall, with a rotary dial and a coiled wire that would stretch to about four feet. If I wanted to know something, I'd look it up in our encyclopedia or walk to the library. If the tv had a problem, my dad would pull some of the tubes and test them on the machine at the drug store. We were just as happy as I am today.
You touched on a huge pet-peeve. I cannot stand it when someone younger thinks I don't understand the software/technology or command because they see me as "old." I often reply to their condescension with, "Child, I was using computers before you were born. I've used every operating system in existence since DOS."
It also irks me when (mostly Boomers) say things like, "These young kids know sooooo much about technology today." No, no they don't. They know how to hit a "like" button, but they don't know how to organize a spreadsheet, program a database or even admit that sometimes new technology simply doesn't work.
Gen X is when most of today's technology was actually conceived and first implemented.
Gen X were the ones who invented Smartphones, and neither millenials nor GenZ have done much to build new innovations and new products upon the foundations Gen X built.
Odd are very good they don't understand why mashing that particular button works, or what the process behind the GUI are, and they dont really care about it either. All they are doing is ... monkey see monkey do, which does not make for a SMART monkey, no?
I see the main issue is that there's no obvious competition. Every company appears to be in lock-step with one another, so nobody can truly measure what people prefer.
I dropped my old iPhone one too many times and decided to get a new one a few weeks ago. I ordered a new one online and dutifully backed up my old one. The young man at the Apple Store took the time to ensure I was backed up. Then I gave him my old phone for "recycling." What a mistake! Even though my authenticator apps transferred to the new phone, the actual connections (or whatever you call them) to the websites I use that use that type of MFA did not. Reconnecting them took HOURS of time.
I would like to nominate Microsoft Authenticator for an award for awfulness. I cannot input the code shown on Microsoft Authenticator... because I'm on a part of the app that doesn't allow the viewing of its own generated codes.
Amen to all of this. A few years ago, I needed to check my email when I was in the Canadian Rockies where I had no cell service. It was not easy to connect my phone to the internet, but I managed it. Then, because it did not recognize my device, my email insisted on locking me out of my own correspondence until I could enter the pin it had sent me by text. I had no cell service. 🤦♀️
The one that enrages me the most though is a recipe website that I subscribe to. Whenever they log me out (I never do it myself) I have to get an emailed code from them to log back in. For a recipe website! What’s going to happen if someone hacks me…they’ll know which recipes I have saved?? The horror!
Absolutely, computers are turning us into idiots.
I don't think so. I think, instead, that you have been looking for an opportunity to leave a snotty and dismissive comment, in the written version of upspeak? And I think you know that, too.
So that's a time-out for a few days. When you're ready to stop enacting childish behaviors and converse with respect like a grown up, you'll be welcome to comment again:)
God I love that you don't pull punches on this nonsense. It so gratifying to watch.
It's this kind of thing that makes me hopeful about the likelihood of our robot overlords taking over. How?! Everything is going to seize up the first time someone puts the wrong code in.
I remember technology was sold to make our lives easier and go paperless. 20-30 years ago, we were told over and over that we were going to be a paperless society. Yet, it seems to me that we use more paper than ever. I can't count how many times I yell "CAN YOU JUST WORK?!?!" I thought we would have flying cars by now, instead we have 5 million passwords to get to our own stuff that a hacker can get in 5 seconds.
It's not about security, it's about the appearance of security, thereby creating plausible deniability when, not if, the system gets hacked. It won't be their fault, it'll be yours.
It'll be like, "Sir, you were INSTRUCTED not to re-use any of your last 100 passwords. You were WARNED when we sent you the six-digit CODE. And now, we have no choice but to nominate your name for the No-Fly List."
Nailed it.
Oh my goodness, I yell that exact thing at my computer multiple times a day. Especially when using the software programs that are now based in the cloud.
In 1983, at the age of nine, I was given to understand that we would have teleportation by the year 2000. Instead, my car is a computer I am unqualified to maintain, while laboratory mice in Atlanta are super-evolving with the assistance of VR games.
What it looks like to me is that the main problem starts with a heedless rush to change and update and innovate. Nobody seems to GAS about what the base level of customer usage will look like in practice. User-friendly should be the first priority instead of being an afterthought that Bill-whose-office-is-a-converted-closet-in-the-basement is solely responsible for.
There is constant changing and updating to make devices and online services more complex and fancier. I wish they'd have a moratorium on that and devote their energy for awhile to making them more reliable and user-friendly. The changes frequently seem solely for the sake of change, and don't make anything better than it was before. Usually worse.
You stated my thoughts exactly 🙂
Because who cares about the users? Its all about making the designers and those who 'introduce' these innovative systems LOOK GOOD, GET PROMOTIONS, MOVE AHEAD. Nothing to do with the user, the need. Remember create the problem, introduce the 'solution' and rise wash and re-do. Endless looking good with 0 real change, innovation OR improvement in services for the user.
Ask the companies you deal with how they handle multi-factor authentication. If a company requires it every time you connect to them, ask them how you can pay them electronically without having to connect. For example, my bank can pay my credit card bills online in two business days. The bank that issued my credit card receives the money without any further interaction with me.
You also need to have a financial institution that does not require multi-factor authentication every time you connect to them. This uses cookies… authentication data stored in your computer browser or smartphone browser… but you do have to re-authenticate occasionally because cookies can expire or you may get a new device.
Solving this nightmare may require digital certificates… super-cookies. Financial institutions have been trying to avoid that for decades… I worked for Visa twenty years ago and they were struggling with it already. They decided to use people’s home address instead.
Another option would be easy-to-use smart devices that do nothing but authentication. The kind that give out prearranged authentication codes every so often have been replaced by Google Authenticator or Authy… running on a smartphone. Groan. My hardware key that I carry on my keychain has to be plugged into a USB A port. Though it is not well known, USB has a smart device interface that is implemented on all standard USB technology stacks. Most browsers can connect to any smart authentication device plugged into a USB A port. You have to press on the device to get it to turn on… it is not a dongle to leave plugged in all the time.
"digital certificates"
Those are a nightmare to administer. There's also an attempt to use "passphrases," which are like SSH public/private keys, but that's a mess, too.
I used to work for a network security company. We spent a lot of our time addressing CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures), which are bugs found in various systems that keep turning up. Some of the severe ones made us drop EVERYTHING to patch our software, because if we got hacked, it would tank the company.
I'm afraid that good security is never convenient. It's tough to administer on the server side, and it is a pain to deal with as a user.
Furthermore, malevolent hackers -- many state-sponsored by China, North Korea, and Iran, and others just plain sociopaths -- are relentless. When you spin up an AWS instance of an app, for example, you have to first create a tight firewall, because the instant the IP address goes live it is attacked.
Josh is absolutely right about lack of good tech support. It's highly frustrating to talk to someone who's told to follow a script to the letter and who doesn't possess the knowledge to adapt to a more advanced user. It's also madness to make your phone a single point of failure when you need to effing transact on your account TODAY.
I don't know what the solution is. The target keeps moving. Everything they try to increase security is shot full of holes in fairly short order, and then it's on to the next thing.
Great response. I first encountered a lot of the technology almost fifty years ago when Ron Rivest and his grad students Shamir and Adleman were developing RSA. Now, we know that GCHQ had already developed RSA and prevented its use by classifying it out of existence.
Josh, we’ve gone way backwards. I think of recent disputes, run-ins I’ve hade with ride share companies, where you will never, ever, ever, ever get a chance to speak with a live person. There’s a disgusting cynicism to how many companies do business these days. I’ve come to the conclusion that they couldn’t give a shit about the consumer. I’m a few years older than you and the hope I hold onto is that I’ll be moving on at some point and won’t have to deal with it anymore.
I often reflect on the same thing when I find myself getting worked up over some of the BS going on today. I'm probably not going to be around that much longer, so I won't have to deal with it. I feel bad for people in their thirties, twenties, and younger who will have to live through the coming shit show for another fifty years or more.
Right?? I hate to sound ungrateful, but when I hear people say, "growing old is tough, but it sure beats the alternative," I want to throat punch them. I for one cannot wait for this sh*t show to end. I wouldn't even mind all of this computer crap, IF you knew that you had a person you could reach if push came to shove. We do not have that. And as Josh stated, even if you reach a person, fingers crossed you'll understand his/her accent.
I just got a notice from Google that my cost of doing business with its suite will be jumping 21% because they've put AI into everything.
I will never use it, nor do I want it, but I'm now paying 21% more.
Stop using Google. It may be inconvienent, but you won't be compromising your personal data, which they probably make far more than what you pay for their "service".
Which search function browser do you like the best?
I use Brave, but this article gives feedback on others:
https://cyberinsider.com/private-search-engine/
I use primarily Lycos (.com), albeit for casual browsing. But you can also use Startpage .com or Brave. com.
I'm no tech expert, but even Firefox and DuckDuckGo, which still use the main google search engine, are still better because (at least in theory) they help keep you anonymous.
DuckDuckGo
I'm not opposed. What do you suggest for running an agency with ~20 people that is HIPAA compliant and provides email, calendar, cloud storage, and website hosting? I'm not sure of any turnkey suites that meet all criteria.
Unfortunately they probably don't. I'd suggest Bing, but its probably not any better. Since you have to do dedicated office stuff, you should probably just stick with what you have.
Blah. I mean, for what it is, $26/head isn't bad. I'm just miffed that they're compelling me not crap I don't want and will never use.
At my place of work they put in a super duper special non hackable MFA (multi factor authentication) system to sign on to our computers every morning. All it is, is that after you put your username and password into the computer, the system calls you on your desk phone and you pick up and punch any key on the phone and hang up and then you can access your computer. It is so dumb.
I feel for you. Twenty-first century technology is often exhausting.
In 1987 I worked in an industrial supply warehouse. We would usually get all the work done by around 1:00 in the afternoon, and spend the next couple of hours playing handball and shootin' the shit. Then the company brought in computers, which had to be used for inventory and all transactions. Even after a learning period, after we had the hang of them, it took all day, plus frequent overtime, to keep up with the same amount of work we'd done before in four or five hours a day, pre-computers.
When I was a kid in the 1960s my family had one telephone, bolted to the kitchen wall, with a rotary dial and a coiled wire that would stretch to about four feet. If I wanted to know something, I'd look it up in our encyclopedia or walk to the library. If the tv had a problem, my dad would pull some of the tubes and test them on the machine at the drug store. We were just as happy as I am today.
I just accidentally "liked" my own post and don't know how to undo it. I'm really not that narcissistic. Oops.
You touched on a huge pet-peeve. I cannot stand it when someone younger thinks I don't understand the software/technology or command because they see me as "old." I often reply to their condescension with, "Child, I was using computers before you were born. I've used every operating system in existence since DOS."
It also irks me when (mostly Boomers) say things like, "These young kids know sooooo much about technology today." No, no they don't. They know how to hit a "like" button, but they don't know how to organize a spreadsheet, program a database or even admit that sometimes new technology simply doesn't work.
Yes - I am also 50, and GenX is the sweet spot when it comes to technology knowledge and experience.
Gen X is when most of today's technology was actually conceived and first implemented.
Gen X were the ones who invented Smartphones, and neither millenials nor GenZ have done much to build new innovations and new products upon the foundations Gen X built.
Odd are very good they don't understand why mashing that particular button works, or what the process behind the GUI are, and they dont really care about it either. All they are doing is ... monkey see monkey do, which does not make for a SMART monkey, no?
I see the main issue is that there's no obvious competition. Every company appears to be in lock-step with one another, so nobody can truly measure what people prefer.
I dropped my old iPhone one too many times and decided to get a new one a few weeks ago. I ordered a new one online and dutifully backed up my old one. The young man at the Apple Store took the time to ensure I was backed up. Then I gave him my old phone for "recycling." What a mistake! Even though my authenticator apps transferred to the new phone, the actual connections (or whatever you call them) to the websites I use that use that type of MFA did not. Reconnecting them took HOURS of time.
I would like to nominate Microsoft Authenticator for an award for awfulness. I cannot input the code shown on Microsoft Authenticator... because I'm on a part of the app that doesn't allow the viewing of its own generated codes.
I just had an issue with that today too. 🤣
Anyone who programmed that sad excuse of an app should be prohibited from ever writing a line of code again.
Amen to all of this. A few years ago, I needed to check my email when I was in the Canadian Rockies where I had no cell service. It was not easy to connect my phone to the internet, but I managed it. Then, because it did not recognize my device, my email insisted on locking me out of my own correspondence until I could enter the pin it had sent me by text. I had no cell service. 🤦♀️
The one that enrages me the most though is a recipe website that I subscribe to. Whenever they log me out (I never do it myself) I have to get an emailed code from them to log back in. For a recipe website! What’s going to happen if someone hacks me…they’ll know which recipes I have saved?? The horror!