Sameer Ahuja

Why Plenty Of Fish Stores Passwords in Plain Text

When a user enters text in a password field and the browser turns that text into unrecognizable symbols, there is a subtle, unsaid contract being negotiated between the browser and the website on one side, and the user on the other. The user is agreeing to reveal a secret to the website and the browser, and by masking what she is typing, the browser (and the site) are telling her that it’s okay, her secret is safe with them.

Website owners have, time and again, proven themselves to be too irresponsible to enter into this contract. Most of them don’t, but some of them always will, store user passwords in plaintext. Most of them don’t, but some of them will, get hacked.

So my plea to the browser makers of our times is this: Please come up with a standard to perform a one-way hash of passwords with the site domain name (Or some other salt) before the bits ever reach a website. Or, please stop implying that passwords are in any way more secure than any other field on a site’s registration form, and stop masking them.

Dave Barry:

Elsewhere on the disaster scene, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull (literally, “many syllables”) volcano erupts, sending huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and forcing airlines throughout northern Europe to ground all flights. Greece, although not directly affected, announces that it will take six months off, just in case; France, as an added precaution, surrenders.

Long, but worth it. For added kicks, read through the fact-checking, position-debating, completely-serious comments.

“When you read that, you’re like, okay, screw the hedge fund world.”

In other words, the “default” body plan is female, and a fetus will go down this path unless diverted. It is as if the God of the Bible, in a departure from the usual story, actually made Eve first, then took one of her ribs, added some testosterone and other male hormones, and presto: Adam.

via medhelp.org

For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?

via scritube.com

Here’s the trailer for a movie about an overweight girl trying to find her soulmate:

And here’s the trailer for a movie about a girl whose love life gets muddled with a series of murders: