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Librarian's Letter to Google Security

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Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#151
post #98

Quoted post unavailable.

She/her covers 3 of the 4 you mention, and the fourth form always ends in an s. So it's not really necessary to hit all 4 in a signature line.

Additionally, the common pronouns (he, she, they) only really need a mechanism to tell a speaker which set to use - "he/his" is a label for a set, not the set itself.

For neo pronouns, I agree, it's probably best to lay them all out to reduce ambiguity.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#152
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your grandma have printed out backup codes?

My grandma just creates a new google account whenever she gets locked out and it doesn't matter because she doesn't use email for anything important. I'm starting to wonder if she's the smarter one.

This is great, until you're locked out of a service that you actually need, and the only password-reset way is to send a reset link to the e-mail account she never uses anymore.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#153
post #118

If a large percentage of computer users who use the library exclusively have ID, the library could purchase a MF device or cheap android phone running an MFA app and use the same device for every user or many users: show your ID, librarian verifies that you're registered, and then come over and log you in with key + username (user still enters password). Would it be possible for some nefarious person to grab these ke…

Forcing public libraries to use a workaround to fix a problem Google created isn't an ideal solution.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#154
post #101

> This elderly woman, looked to be in her 70s, might lose the roof over her head, due to being unable to log into her Google account, because she lost her old phone and with it, her phone number. I think the real issue is outside of Google's reach. You shouldn't have to lose the roof over your head just because you don't have access to your emails. Sure, it sucks that Google doesn't care if these people lose their ac…

We don't want to address the real issue that a democratic government of 350 million people is slow and ineffective, so we demand that private industry make up for the failings of our government.

I dont think it is unreasonable for the 22 trillion dollar a year, 250 year old institution of the US government to solve the problem of why it is denying welfare to its own citizens.

Or maybe the US government monopoly should be broken up into smaller governments to foster a spirit of competition in the marketplace if it can't meet the needs of its customers.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#157
post #108

More than all the antitrust regulations being thrown at Google, I'd like to see regulators force Google to provide users customer support.

Customer support that has access to google accounts, that can give everyone telling a sob story to some customer service rep access to your account?

It certainly beats having to send an email to a faceless "support" address that ends up sending me the same 4 boilerplate questions when I try to figure out why my business locations' rule-compliant map listings were suspended from My Business even when I spend $15k per month on Google ads, sure. It hurts my business (there hasn't been a resolution since when the issue arose four years ago), but it's not nearly the hurt that the folks the librarian is helping are feeling.

Maybe, just maybe, if people are sobbing, maybe there's a good reason why! And maybe, just maybe, if you don't want to receive such support, you can advocate for a system in which you could opt out of all such processes entirely, instead of arguing that any form of account remediation shouldn't exist.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#158
post #147
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should have mentioned I'm a programmer and a librarian, and my suggestion is one of tactics/strategy. I care more about getting the problem fixed than the writer's feelings not being hurt, and I think that things would be more likely to change if she'd written it differently.

sure, maybe you do get more bees with honey. or more often than not you never get seen. we live in a sad era where the only way to get real attention from large companies is to embarrass them in public. this is by their design. > I care more about getting the problem fixed than the writer's feelings not being hurt i don't really follow how the writer's feelings could be hurt in any case. you seem to have an odd persp…

So we disagree on the best tactics to take here. In particular, I think the embarrassing tech companies in public works when it's done by either other tech people OR it gets into the media where the bottom line could be impacted. This

That doesn't make me 'cringe^inf' or boil down my tactical critiques to '"she's not asking nicely enough'. I presumed you were attempting to call me out for tone policing, and usually the point of that call out is to protect the feelings of the person being critiqued. Or to prevent the person making the tone argument from making it for biased reasons, but as I am ALSO a female librarian, that doesn't really apply here.

> you seem to have an odd perspective on all of this.

Yes, I imagine I would. I differ from both HN's average readership and the average librarian enough that my views on things are odd. I also did some time in communications work and I can't turn that off either. It's like seeing poorly written code for me.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#159
post #98

Quoted post unavailable.

She/her covers 3 of the 4 you mention, and the fourth form always ends in an s. So it's not really necessary to hit all 4 in a signature line. Additionally, the common pronouns (he, she, they) only really need a mechanism to tell a speaker which set to use - "he/his" is a label for a set, not the set itself. For neo pronouns, I agree, it's probably best to lay them all out to reduce ambiguity.

the point of doing it for non-neopronouns is to have neopronouns be less of an exception.

> he/his" is a label for a set, not the set itself.

I did not think of this. It makes a lot of sense.

Re: Librarian's Letter to Google Security

#160
post #108

More than all the antitrust regulations being thrown at Google, I'd like to see regulators force Google to provide users customer support.

Customer support that has access to google accounts, that can give everyone telling a sob story to some customer service rep access to your account?

Your concern while valid seems solvable.

They could preauthorize a random token amount on credit card with matching details, have you call the number on the back of your card to figure out that amount and then you have to input that number to authorize the access in an oath like flow.

Please tell me if you see something wrong with my procedure?

edit: I saw something wrong, I have forgotten about the vast unbanked population in the rest of the world as we don't have that problem in Canada¹

1) https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/worlds-most-...

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