2022-Jan-13

Merging Dicts of Dicts

I am not a coder, but i do dabble with Python from time to time. I know enough Python to be dangerous but not enough to be clever. I know there are Pythonic ways of doing things, but i’m not just there yet. But since the tagline of this blog is Learning in public, i might as well do so, with the hope that somebody will tell me how to do this properly.

2021-Dec-22

Safe Christmas

In February 2016, Bangladesh was robbed of US$101 million by cunning cyber criminals using fraudulent SWIFT transfer requests. The money was siphoned from the Bangladesh National Bank’s account at the US Federal Reserve to banks in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Another US$850M was stopped from being transferred due to a happenstance. Check The Lazarus Heist for juicy details. What made the heist possible? Timing. Careful, thought-out execution. Ruthlessness. The bank robbery took place during a weekend of Lunar New Year festivities in South Asia, so there wasn’t really anyone on call to check and stop the transfers.

2021-Nov-18

Custom HP Printer With Kandji

UPDATE! HOLD YOUR HORSES! THIS MIGHT NOT WORK! STILL REQUIRES MORE INVESTIGATION! DO NOT USE! AT LEAST NOT IN PRODUCTION! I AM SO SORRY! IT WAS MY FAULT! Update on the update! I found the problem and i will post about that soon. The article below is part of the solution, but it will require another trick. Now please read on, at your own risk :) HP has a strange way of (not) distributing proper drivers for their printers.

2021-Jun-30

Sharing Two Factor Authentication With Your Admin Colleagues

It’s surprisingly easy to share two factor authentication among your peers (depending on your definition of ‘easy’). You’ll need just a little work on the command line to prove that any of you are, in fact, you.

2021-Jun-09

Sufficiently Close to Magic

Any integration done well enough is sufficiently close to magic. With apologies to Isaac Asimov. In this article, i’m stunned by the ease of creating an ebook from a web page to an iPad with precisely two commands.

2021-Apr-26

How Not to Lock Yourself Out of Two Factor Authentication

Adding a second layer of authentication to your account is essential for your security, but like having a lock on your door, it can lock you out when things go wrong. You really need to think of the spare keys before that happens.