During Covid, my son (who is deaf and attends a deaf school) has issued masks with transparent windows at the front, especially for assisting with lip-reading for deaf users. This is in Switzerland though - I don't know if this innovation reached across the Atlantic ;)
They honestly do sound quite interesting, and if I could fork myself off a few times to look at fun & interesting things, this GreenArray stuff would be in the list ;)
I 'learned' Forth decades ago (on a Sinclair ZX81, so essentially a quite horrible experience), and tripped over it again recently.. ending up ploughing through the books "Thinking Forth" and (currently) "Starting Forth" both of which are extremely interesting and so very very different to what we use these days. It very much fits into that saying "A language that doesn't change how your think about programming, isn't worth knowing". I realise now just how shallow an understanding of Forth I had as a teen, back in the day ;)
But I think the win here - these days - for Forth is in things like "running on small embedded devices".. I'm looking with interest at some of the activity around say Arduinos and am thinking that Forth is a rather nice fit for that sort of system. Have bought a kit, and am looking forwards to some non-work quality time to play further :)
(The Books I meantion can be found online very easily, but you'll forgive them for being written back in a time when systems were _simpler_ to grok ;) )
> I think the win here - these days - for Forth is in things like "running on small embedded devices"
In principle that's not a bad idea, it's just that you're at least 40 years late to the party. FORTH was and propably is used in embedded systems for most of it's existence. Often simply with a minimal text console over UART, that being your "way in". Once you've got that going you can start builing up your system from the inside.
Maybe some stuff are hard to perceive as a teen though. I used turbopascal, had a book, but I could't foresee the value of some types or ideas. Forth can be even more alien in a way.
I also live in Switzerland, and it is perfectly possible to survive 48 hours or so here without needing one, unless of course every single transaction you engage in requires 2FA, which.. here, you generally do not.
I mean, I feel for the guy moving to a new country - been there, done that - but, with respect he's hyperventilating just a little bit.
This is one of the various reasons why I dislike the encroaching mandatory 2FA.
Mind you, I have no plans of spending days without a smartphone, and maybe I'll never want to do that, but I don't like the way in which 2FA is making it outright impossible. It should be my own business whether I want a phone or not, and now it's becoming outright mandatory to interact with society (I can't even log into my workplace without 2FA). Another freedom that vanishes.
2FA doesn’t require a smart phone. It just requires a second form of authentication.
TOTP (the one time codes that are common methods of 2FA) don’t even need a smart phone. You can store them in most password managers, if you wanted to.
With regards to other forms of MFA, you can use email, SMS, hardware keys and I’ve seen some banks use a second password (which is dumb but probably no worse than email or SMS). Some sites just ask your for “memorable information”, which is also terrible in my opinion.
It just so happens that TOTP is the best second form of authentication because it is both secure but also cheap.
If you don’t want to store those TOTP codes on your smart phone then you can store them in your password manager or buy another physical device just for 2FA. I wouldn’t normally advocate storing your 2FA codes with your passwords, but that’s still better than not having any second factor of authentication at all.
You can, if you really care about this, get a dedicated hardware to store your TOTP tokens (for example [1]). There's also various open hardware projects (like [2]). Or you can just use an old smartphone without a SIM card, which probably doesn't "interact with society" any more than the website you're trying to log on to in the first place.
You could only have that if your bank account being emptied by someone knowing your password is your problem, not the bank's problem or employees forgoing 2FA carried the liability for their passwords leaking.
If the bank has to be partially responsible for your access credentials and your workplace is going to get in trouble from you reusing a password, of course they are not going to let you have much freedom here.
Firstly, before online banking existed fraud was quite common, and this dind't make banks unsustainable. And indeed, one of the key points that made people trust credit cards was that the bank had your back if someone emptied your account somehow. I once had fraudulent charges from a country thousands of kilometers away, on a card that I hadn't even used (so there was no chance it could be my fault). I just flagged them as fraudulent and the bank returned the money a few days later, no questions asked.
Secondly, even if you are a security expert with great password practices, do you really want your banking security be considered just your problem? What if one day your account is hacked through no fault of your own, because of some breach/hack of the bank's systems, and the bank denies it, giving you full responsibility? I think it's extremely dangerous to give banks the option to do that. Fraud should always be the bank's problem by default, unless they can prove that the user was negligent.
Thirdly, even if we accept the assumption that 2FA is needed for security, there are more ways to do 2FA that don't involve a smartphone - for example with a physical device, or with a coordinate card. The fact that most 2FA (at least where I live) is mobile-only, and even banks that used to offer other choices are now moving to mobile-only, is evidence that there is a motivation beyond security, they want to make smartphones mandatory.
I have an old iPhone SE (2016) in the drawer at home, with a backup Google Authenticator and passwords backup by iCloud. It doesn't need a separate phone plan, or even any other network connection to function as a backup 2FA/password manager. Network (wifi) access is useful to keep the password data synced (which I scheduled for myself to check manually once a month).
1. paying the bills is something you do once every month for people not having setup direct payment. Sure most banks wants 2FA nowadays but you could live without a phone daily and only use one (or a tablet, a VM or an emulator) once a month (without SIM and plan). Or go to the actual bank once a month. People used to go to the post office once a month to pay the bills in Switzerland. I am pretty sure a lot of people still do it that way.
2. access to maps. Do what any tourist has done for decades. Go to the tourism office and grab a free map. If you wants more details, buy or print an actual detailed map + the public transport system map. done.
3. I have been a foreigner and have learnt languages just by living in a place. This is by interacting with the people that you start learning better and feel part of the community and culture. Asking for directions is part of it. Sure swiss people may not be on average the warmest people but you will always find people willing to help.
Your phone broke down, sorry, but you deal with it. You can even get a cheap android anywhere and a cheap prepaid plan if you can't afford a new iPhone
Yes I can understand, having to confirm transactions on a phone lacks a proper fallback plan most of the time
As with people that think their phone is a substitute for their car keys, especially when going countryside with 12% battery, you don't get a lot of sympathy from me
ok, let me clarify my comment.. storage should occur once the fuel has been reprocessed and re-used enough times to have been exhausted, and then stored.
The "use once and store" attitude that results in needing safe places for highly radioactive material for 100's of thousands of years is insane, when you can just use the stuff until it's "worn out" and the resulting lower level waste only needs caring for for some small handful of decades.
And we need more fast-breeder reactors, too, FWIW.
Mildly disappointed that there's no listing of "The Net" in there. I help created some shared virtual worlds for the series circa '96 which involved the participation of members of the public in the 6 spaces we created.
Hell, there was even a short clip of myself and (later to become my wife in reality) one of the TV production company members getting married in VR, aired on BBC TV.
Ah well.
The team I was part of did it all again the year after, for Channel 4 TV (Renegade TV "Heaven & Hell").
Good times. Glad to see the BBC computing resources from over the years offered again - takes me back to my teens, exploring this new world of (ha!) fantastic opportunities.
The Net was really fascinating for me and came at a time where I was just starting to try this internet thing.
Those early days (at least for me) of 14.4k modems and mosaic and pre-1.0 Netscape were a truly mesmerising time for me.
I was totally hooked on computers and the internet in general by the time I was a mid-teen largely due to shows like The Net so thanks for your work there (and congrats on getting married in VR!)
I only have a copy of the CD with the VRML worlds on it, sadly. I had a copy of the CH4 thing we did the year after (and it was put up on YouTube a few years ago too, maybe it's still there (I'd have to check).
Swiss-German sign language is.. interesting. It has Cantonal dialects (I wish I was joking!). I'd really prefer everyone switched to German sign-language for simplicity's sake - in the same way most Swiss-German speakers write High-German instead of dialect.
I could imagine signing emoji being pretty successful. My son is deaf, but too young to be using chat software, so it's difficult to say without asking about at his school.
Been there, done that at a UK Telco Research Lab back in the mid 90's. Now those _were_ the good old days. I miss my Amigas (I had 4 over the years, now all gone. sob).
I've collected all the Amigas I've lusted after as a child now I have more means to afford them. A500, A500+, A600 and A1200 to date. Looking for other to add to the collection. Would love to get a 2000.
