Monday Links from the Bench vol. DCLXXI

[_V_]

I intensely dislike SMS-MFA having lived in basement flats for many years with unreliable mobile reception. Why banks decided SMS was the most secure and practical way to deliver these codes is beyond me.

Many banks now offer either a small authenticator device you slide your debit card into, or you can use an authenticator app on the phone. Phone SIMS can be hijacked too easily.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Error saving Click! You haven't clicked this button yet

Today it knew I hadn't clicked "Like" & "Thanks" and let me click both.

Well there's a thing.

[ladymuck]

• brr - ”Hi! This is a place for me to record interesting things I find while working in Antarctica.” All kinds of problems can arise, such as using SMS 2FA on a continent with no mobile phone signal, and this blog provides handy hints for dealing with them

I intensely dislike SMS-MFA having lived in basement flats for many years with unreliable mobile reception. Why banks decided SMS was the most secure and practical way to deliver these codes is beyond me.

[NickFitz]

Having returned to the bench, I spent much of last week feeling like rubbish; not sure if it was a mild cold or a mild dose of Covid. Anyway, while I recuperate, you can be reading this lot for me

• True Grit - ”When a storm surge swept dozens of wild horses and cattle from the coast of North Carolina, no one expected there to be survivors. Then hoofprints appeared in the sand.” The tale of how some of the beasts of Cedar Island survived Hurricane Dorian.
• Explorers find cameras left on a glacier 85 years ago - ”Seven months after the discovery of Ernest Shackleton's ship HMS Endurance, comes a new discovery: the cameras of explorer Bradford Washburn, lost on a remote mountain glacier 85 years ago. Explorer Griffin Post, leading an expedition for Teton Gravity Research, located the equipment on the remote Walsh Glacier in Canada's Yukon Territory during a week-long search in August.”
• The Marine Lab in the Path of Fury - How the DeFelice Marine Center copes with hurricanes sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico: ”Typically, wherever the scientists are sheltered, they can take measure of conditions in Cocodrie by tuning into the marine center’s weather cameras. But at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 29, just as the storm made landfall, the marine center’s power failed. The cameras went dark. A nervous day passed before anyone could make it south to assess the damage. Everyone knew it would be grim.”
• Goblin Mode - Fergus Butler-Gallie attempts to buy a special gift over the Internet: ”Earlier this year my girlfriend’s birthday was coming up and, while I had taken various hints about gifts, I nursed a suspicion that wouldn’t go away. What she really wanted was a goblin.”
• brr - ”Hi! This is a place for me to record interesting things I find while working in Antarctica.” All kinds of problems can arise, such as using SMS 2FA on a continent with no mobile phone signal, and this blog provides handy hints for dealing with them
• The Mysterious Origins of Deity Altars in Carparks and Hawker Centres - The many shrines of Singapore, and those who tend them: ”Located between the entrance of the carpark and the garbage disposal area, the altar is adorned with Chinese Taoist deities… After serving the deities tea, Zhang Hui would rest easy until nightfall, when another set of duties elsewhere in the ageing mall demanded his attention. The altar Zhang Hui takes care of is just one of the many altars peppered in carparks across the country. They often take up space at industrial sites, bus interchanges, or near residential areas.”
• A child star at 7, in prison at 22. Then she vanished. What happened to Lora Lee Michel? - A tale from the golden age of Hollywood: ”A child actress in the 1940s, Lora Lee at 7 was billed as a ‘sensation’ with ‘the greatest appeal since Shirley Temple.’ She appeared in more than a dozen films, sharing the screen with Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Ford and Olivia de Havilland… But Lora Lee was a shooting star — one that would quickly crash-land.”
• The Mysteries of the Astronaut Microbiome - ”The human microbiome has been linked to digestion, depression, and more. How might space travel change it?” Something for Elon Musk to ponder if he has any money left for space travel once he’s finished humiliating himself on Twitter
• Living with a Skinhead, While Living in My Brown Skin - ”As an Indonesian adoptee in Sweden, I was alarmed when my new stepbrother started dabbling in white supremacy. I didn’t realize how far it had gone until I was lying in a dark field, getting kicked in the chest with a steel-toed boot.”
• Kaketsugi – Japan’s Invisible Cloth Mending Technique - ”Kaketsugi – literally ‘invisible mending’ in Japanese – is an amazing cloth mending technique from Japan that involves repairing damaged cloth to the point where you can’t even tell it was ever damaged.” There’s some videos in here showing how it’s done
  
  

Happy invoicing!