Ever notice how Christopher Nolan’s movies (Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige) feel like an anxiety attack? Well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. But.
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The Guy Who Invented Those Annoying Password Rules Now Regrets Wasting Your Time. We’ve all been forced to do it: create a password with at least so many characters, so many numbers, so many special characters, and maybe an uppercase letter. Guess what? The guy who invented these standards nearly 1. He is also very sorry. The man in question is Bill Burr, a former manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In 2. 00. 3, Burr drafted an eight- page guide on how to create secure passwords creatively called the “NIST Special Publication 8. Appendix A.” This became the document that would go on to more or less dictate password requirements on everything from email accounts to login pages to your online banking portal.
All those rules about using uppercase letters and special characters and numbers—those are all because of Bill. The only problem is that Bill Burr didn’t really know much about how passwords worked back in 2.
He certainly wasn’t a security expert. And now the retired 7. Much of what I did I now regret,” Bill Burr told. The Wall Street Journal recently, admitting that his research into passwords mostly came from a white paper written in the 1. In the end, [the list of guidelines] was probably too complicated for a lot of folks to understand very well, and the truth is, it was barking up the wrong tree.”Bill is not wrong. Simple math shows that a shorter password with wacky characters is much easier to crack than a long string of easy- to- remember words.
Watch breaking news videos, viral videos and original video clips on CNN.com. We’ve all been forced to do it: create a password with at least so many characters, so many numbers, so many special characters, and maybe an uppercase letter. The classic US stereotype of attempted Iranian ideological indoctrination via chants of “Death to America” and such has been old hat for quite some time. As noted. Get more of the music you love, by our most visited artists. Add tracks to your playlist, and discover new music from BBC Radio DJs. A devastating heat wave surging through southern Europe has earned the unofficial moniker of “Lucifer,” according to several news reports this weekend. Things.
This classic XKCD comic shows how four simple words create a passphrase that would take a computer 5. This is why the latest set of NIST guidelines recommends that people create long passphrases rather than gobbledygook words like the ones Bill thought were secure. How To Watch Moon Man Cartoon. Pro tip: Use this guide to create a super secure passcode using a pair of dice.)Inevitably, you have to wonder if Bill not only feels regretful but also a little embarrassed. It’s not entirely his fault either. Fifteen years ago, there was very little research into passwords and information security, while researchers can now draw on millions upon millions of examples. Bill also wasn’t the only one to come up with some regrettable ideas in the early days of the web, either.
Remember pop- ads, the scourge of the mid- aughts internet? The inventor of those is super sorry as well. Oh, and the confusing, unnecessary double slash in web addresses? The inventor of that idea (and the web itself) Tim Berners- Lee is also sorry. Technology is often an exercise of trial and error. If you get something right, like Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg have done, the rewards are sweet.
If you screw up and waste years of unsuspecting internet users’ time in the process, like Bill did, you get to apologize years later. We forgive you, Bill. At least some of us do.[Wall Street Journal].
Surely Nothing but Satan Himself Could Explain This European Heat Wave Named 'Lucifer'A devastating heat wave surging through southern Europe has earned the unofficial moniker of “Lucifer,” according to several news reports this weekend. Things over there do seem pretty bad, real bad, bad enough there that the only logical conclusion is Satan danced down there himself, possibly with a fiddle, and played a song which cursed the very winds themselves with the tunes of brimstone and ruin after somebody lost a bet. At least two people died over the course of the heat wave, which caused temperatures to spike as high as 4. Celsius (1. 11 Fahrenheit) in southern Spain and 4.
Celsius (1. 04 Fahrenheit) in the French Riviera, per the New York Times. Temperatures were forecast as high as slightly over 4. Celsius (1. 08 Fahrenheit) in mainland Greece. According to Agence France- Presse, local conditions in Italy’s Campania region caused temperatures to feel much higher, around 5. Celsius (1. 31 Farenheit). Surging electrical demand in Poland caused the government to warn of “possible infrastructure failures” and disperse staff early. Train tracks in southern Serbia warped, the Romanian government urged Bucharest residents to stay indoors and an Italian drought which has already cost over $1 billion dragged on.
Per Reuters, the Italian grape harvest started weeks early, with Slow Food movement leader Carlo Petrini telling La Stampa he had never heard of it ever starting before August 1. Reuters also reported 3. Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Croatia. While the Times reported two deaths, AFP reported as many as five, with hospital admissions in Italy running 1. It’s almost enough to make one wonder if this heat wave could be correlated with all those other heat waves across the world, or the inexplicable trend of the planet breaking global heat records on a regular basis.
Maybe there’s some kind of thing that we, humans, are pumping into the atmosphere that causes it to retain more heat, perhaps making said events more likely. Hmm. But since no such theory, perhaps of so- called global climate “change,” has been devised or vetted by the vast majority of climate scientists, we’re just going to have to hand it to the devil on this one and guess the thing we are pumping into the atmosphere is sin. Curse you, Lucifer![New York Times].