> If you laid all the people I contacted end to end along the equator, they would die, and you would be arrested.
Possibly the best line in an article full of really fantastic lines.
When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
271–280 of 354 posts
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#272Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…
> I personally recommend blacking out (add a black rectangle) instead of blurring
I've seen people use image editors on mobile and they'll "scribble" out sensitive information, but one of the problems is that if you pick the wrong pen it'll blend your strokes so it's not 100% opacity (but on a casual glance it's close enough). You can zoom in and change the contrast of a photo that has been redacted this way and recover information.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#273Looked interesting, but as an old fogey I just couldn't get past the "omg u guise yikes jklsflsfdjfds" style.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#274Nice. Here's a similar personal story with a PSA that sometimes blurring is NOT sufficient. A friend of mine posted on Instagram a picture of a U.S. visa (or something similar; it was probably five years ago) to announce her trip to the U.S., and she took care to blur out sensitive information such as her passport number. But a Gaussian blur is easy to reverse and I successfully unblurred it and told her my discovery…
My all-time favourite recommendation is "print, cut out the sensitive parts with an exacto knife, rescan". Firstly because it's a nice mix of analog and digital, and secondly because it's short enough to fit in a tweet - yet extremely secure.
This is how military redactions have been done forever. If a soldier writes home to his family and includes classified details (“I watched the sun rise over Mt Vesuvius yesterday but today we are moving west”) the censors just cut out the text with a knife.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
A pedophile ringleader was once caught by reversing a graphical swirl he used to try to hide his face in a picture.
Yes. Wikipedia has an article about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil
Nuts. He sexually abused multiple children and distributed pictures of this, but spent less than five years in jail and is now out.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#276Apart from the really interesting content, this is an extremely good read, strikes me as the right kind of balance of information and keeping you entertained. I really enjoyed this writing style!
Interesting, I liked the story but got the opposite impression you did. At first the humor was amusing but I felt like the relentless, extremely heavy sarcasm dripping off every sentence quickly turned it into a slog and even started to make me wonder which parts were genuine vs. joking. Not great.
I had a feeling it might be a very off putting style for some people.
However, for me, I found it absolutely hilarious and very intelligent despite being obviously extremely... I'm not sure the right description. Young? Modern internet colloquial? Either way, it worked for me.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
That reminds me of this legendary comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
Ha, I knew what that comment was before I clicked. (“Is it that rsync/ftp comment? Yup.”) ((EDIT: but it was curlftpfs, not rsync))
The HN equivalent of "I put on my robe and wizard hat".
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
A similar anecdote from my family. My uncle (a sheep farmer) and I discovered that: 1. I was afraid to touch anything in a car engine, but happy to muddle through unfamiliar computer issues 2. He was afraid to click unknown buttons on a computer screen, but comfortable pulling apart and rebuilding an unfamiliar car engine. In both cases, we were confident because we knew whatever mistake we made we'd be able to rever…
That's basically how I taught my father to use a computer. It came down to two things: 1. He was terrified of breaking it, so I told him that there was nothing he could possibly do to it that I couldn't fix. I made sure to sound overly confident -- almost like I was challenging him to break it. That gave him the confidence to do whatever. 2. Every time there was a problem with it, I would Google the answer in front o…
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man how to google, and he'll never go a day in his life without being obsessed with conspiracy theories.
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#279I would encourage anyone interested in this article to read it thoroughly to the end. This is one of the most satisfying articles I’ve read recently and I really enjoy the author’s unique sense of humor.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this as well. It’s very rare I read blog posts of this length to the end but I was hooked
Re: When you browse Instagram and find Tony Abbott's passport number
#280In some countries, identity documents are in relatively frequent use. The number of authorised strangers who would have access to one's identity document might be significantly higher in these jurisdictions than, say, the number who would be able to view Tony Abbott's passport number. I'm thinking of - for instance - the 'personnummer' in Sweden (I've heard friends recite theirs in public when asked for them). Q: Sho…
In theory no, but in practice yes. It's the same for a lot of metadata about our lives that routinely doubles up as authentication factor, e.g. "to verify your identity, can you please confirm the first line of your address and your postcode?"... Most of my neighbours know that!