Monthly Archives: August 2015

Password requirements FAIL

pwfail

I went to sign up with the DMV website to put in a change of address.  After providing some info off my license and some other bits, they sent a link to the page shown above.

Only eight characters?  Not case-sensitive?  Really?

It also barfed on some of the non-alphanumeric characters KeePass wanted to use…an unstated requirement, apparently, is that only the three non-alphanumeric characters given are acceptable.  I’m used to giving websites passwords that are 20 or more characters of random gibberish to provide plenty of entropy; the limits imposed by the DMV website only allow about 50 bits of entropy, which is fairly weak security.

The length limit suggests that perhaps they’re storing raw passwords in their database, as that’s the only reason to have a length limit.  Even Ashley Madison probably didn’t make that kind of rookie mistake.

(Of course, no post on password strength issues is complete without this: https://xkcd.com/936/)

I bet they paid extra for this level of quality legal analysis

So now they tell us the Constitution is fixed and unviolable.  Guess it’s not nearly as much of a “living document” as they’ve led people to believe:

HuffPo Legal Affairs Writer: Amending the Constitution Is Unconstitutional

Cristian Farias at HuffPo:

Key figures in the crowded Republican field have spoken loud and clear about their desire to do away with birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants.

Donald Trump went a step further Tuesday when he said in a CNN interview that children born to immigrants under the present constitutional order “do not have American citizenship.”

In other words, the citizenship they were born with is invalid, a notion Trump said he’d be willing to “test out” in a court of law.

But one needs not go that far.

It turns out that the very idea of amending the Constitution to end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants — a move that squarely targets Latinos — would probably be found unconstitutional.

That’s right. This guy thinks amending the Constitution is unconstitutional. He thinks that a 28th Amendment outlawing birthright citizenship would violate . . . the 14th Amendment.

One wonders if he thinks the Amendment undoing Prohibition was unconstitutional, because it violated the Amendment instituting Prohibition.

‘Deez Nuts’ polling at 9% among North Carolina voters

Who’s next…Al Kaholic?  Mike Rotch?  Maybe even Mike Hunt?

‘Deez Nuts’ polling at 9% among North Carolina voters

The 2016 race for the Republican presidential nomination is officially nuts — “Deez Nuts.”

The race, which already comprises 17 major candidates, got an additional entrant this week who has fashioned his name after an infamous rap song.

A person named “Deez Nuts” filed official paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for President Sunday, CBS News reported, joining more than 500 other random contenders who have the legal right to run for the presidency.

More shockingly, however, is how well Nuts, who is running as an independent, is faring in the key state of North Carolina, where, according a to a Public Policy Polling poll, the mysterious figure got the support of 9% of likely voters.

5-year-old girl throws out Orioles’ first pitch with 3D-printed prosthetic hand

11358057_737370126409201_796156267_nI don’t normally do sports stories, but this one’s cool: (1) a little girl with a problem gets to live a better life and (2) it’s UNLV that made it happen:

5-year-old girl throws out Orioles’ first pitch with 3D-printed prosthetic hand

At the Baltimore Orioles game on Monday, the work of UNLV and its engineering students will be center stage as 5-year-old Hailey Dawson will throw out the first pitch using the Flexy-Hand 2, which is a 3D-printed prosthetic device created by the UNLV engineering department.

“[Hailey’s] excited because this is her wish. I think the best part for her is she gets to meet Manny Machado,” said Hailey’s mom, Yong Dawson.

Hailey was born with Poland Syndrome, a rare congenital disease that causes underdevelopment in the pectoral muscle and oftentimes also affects fingers on one side of the body. In Hailey’s case, her right pectoral muscle is completely flat and her right hand is deformed in a way that makes it near impossible for her to grip things, such as a baseball. Fortunately she isn’t in much pain at all, according to her mom.

She’s already thrown out a first pitch for the Rebels…looks like she’s moving up. :-)

Billionaire George Soros warms up to coal as stock prices hit bottom

How convenient…right after he has his minions badmouth the industry and drive its stocks into the toilet, he snaps up what’s left for pennies on the dollar:

Billionaire George Soros warms up to coal as stock prices hit bottom

Billionaire investor George Soros, who has demonized fossil fuels for years through his think tanks and political contributions, seems to have warmed up to Big Coal now that stocks are dirt cheap.

The left-wing hedge fund legend has raised eyebrows with major purchases of stock in two large coal companies, firms his critics say he helped bring to their knees. While buying low is the hallmark of any shrewd investor, buying coal goes against the political and environmental ideology Soros has long espoused.

“I find it very interesting that George Soros would buy shares in those coal companies,” said Daniel Simmons, vice president for Policy at the Washington DC-based free market energy group, Institute for Energy Research. “I am confused given the non profits he funds and how hard they have worked to demonize coal.”

Soros, whose Climate Policy Initiative think tank recently urged the world to stop using fossil fuels in general and coal in particular, snapped up 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and half a million shares of Arch Coal, giving him significant stakes in what’s left of the U.S. coal industry.

The trades would have cost Soros a lot more six years ago, when Peabody, which trades under the symbol BTU, was at about $90 a share. Under the Obama administration, which has punished the coal industry with costly mandates and regulation, Peabody shares have fallen to around $1.