Diary of a Network Geek

Solar power has come to represent hope in science fiction, and climate change.

My wife and I got solar panels in 2018. It was not a decision we made lightly, but we’re quite glad we did. For one thing, solar power almost completely off-sets our electricity bill. For another thing, we feel that having solar power helps the long-term health of our planet. It’s just a good idea and the technology is finally catching up to the promise solar power first held in the ’70s. We don’t have batteries yet, since where we live there’s a requirement for solar systems to be tied to the power grid. And, too, four years ago, battery technology just wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be to invest in a battery backup solution. It pretty much is there now, or close enough, at least, that it’s worth doing.
When we got the solar panels, I told my wife that it felt like I was living in a science-fictional universe. When I was growing up, solar power was almost exclusively the province of the future or science-fiction. Today, we’re closer than ever to realizing the promise of that future. Sadly, it’s still more fiction than science, but at least there’s hope.
So, to encourage you in that hope for the future, I thought I’d share two free collections about the promise of a solar future from Arizona State University. First, there’s The Weight of Light, which came out in February of 2019. Then there’s Cities of Light, which came out this year in February. Both are described as “…[a] collection of science fiction stories, art, and essays…” that explore how our future may look fueled by solar energy “… with an upbeat, solarpunk twist…” And, of course, for the ebook versions, both are free as well.

Why not download them now for your first “summer read”?

This post first appeared on Use Your Words!

Do you know those horrible password rules about adding random characters and numbers and stuff?

IT professionals hate them, too. Honest. I can say that because I am, in fact, an IT professional and have been for just shy of thirty years. (You can read more about my qualifications to call myself an IT pro at my other website, which includes Jim Hoffman’s CNE Resume, because, yes, I’ve been doing this so long I’m certified in things that no one really uses anymore.) I remember when the standard for passwords changed, requiring normal people to do things like including special characters or numbers and a mix of upper case and lower case letters. We were told that it would make the resulting passwords exponentially harder to guess. At the time, that may have been true, though I doubt it. It turns out, those rules were written by a government bureaucrat who used an out-of-date white paper to make his recommendations. And, now, even that bureaucrat regrets making those rules that only make your password harder to remember. Also, all that advice about translating a famous quote into a password by changing out words for symbols or letters? Essentially useless. With the computing power of moderns machines, the randomness of a short password really doesn’t matter at all. Length is the real key. So, having a password like “P@SSw0rd” isn’t significantly more secure than “password”, except, of course, that hackers are likely to guess the simple words first and “password” is actually one of the ten most popular passwords. So don’t use that. What’s better is to use a longer password, like an entire sentence without punctuation. And, if you have to include numbers and special characters, just tack them at the end or beginning. In other words, something more like “MyPasswordIsVerySecure@9”, because the length of that password IS exponentially harder to guess than “password”. Don’t believe me? Then just look at this infographic that shows how the length of your password is really the determining factor in how hard it is for hackers to crack.

https://www.dailyinfographic.com/brute-force-your-password

Of course, some systems limit the length of a password, unfortunately, but, until everyone else catches up to us, you have to work with what you’re given.
Come back next week to see what uncomfortable truths I have to share with you!

This post first appeared on Use Your Words!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are."
   --Montesquieu