Klaatu barada nikto!

On By JohnIn politics, sociologyLeave a comment

I left the Army about… uh… **mumblemumble** years ago. I’ve had several roles, positions, and a career or two since then. It was, in a way, a lifetime ago. But I still took an oath. Not just any oath. But The oath.

A legally-binding statement that you make when you enlist. It’s purposefully codified into the United States Code:

(a) Enlistment Oath.-Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:

“I, ________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

10 U.S.C. §502 (a) (2021)

You must say the words. You must say them exactly as they’re written. It may not be readily apparent, but grammar and meaning is paramount.

Ever wonder why it doesn’t say “only do what Trump says” nor “be Biden’s bitch”?

No?

That’s because it doesn’t.

Grammatically, there are three stanzas that are presented in order of priority:

  1. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; — that’s priority one. It’s not negotiable. Defending the Constitution takes top priority. Against whom? Enemies. It doesn’t differentiate between “only foreign enemies” nor does it say “only internal enemies” nor “only Russia”. You’re defending it against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Let that resonate.
  2. that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; I will ally with those who have the same single priority — to support and defend the Constitution of the United States — unless the faith and allegiance is misguided and is an enemy of the Constitution. Then Rule #1 is the priority.
  3. and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me… — unless they aren’t actually orders or the President or officers are demonstrably enemies of the Constitution. Rule #1 is still the priority.

Say the words. Say them exactly as they’re specified.

Not sure about anyone else, but I never un-took that oath.

Emojis are Hard…

On By JohnIn sociology, sysadminLeave a comment 
<rant>

American English speakers, listen up — and, yes, this does tend to be primarily a monolingual American issue, so I’m calling you out. Why? Because languages are more than just twenty-six letters and a few numerals along with words and concepts more complex and expressive than “fuck” with every other utterance.

Sharing a sad tale of fear, isolation, and sorrow and following it with this 🤣 or this 😂 won’t convey the message or meaning that you think it will. Those are “rolling on the floor, laughing” and “tears of joy”.

Unless, of course, you’re a fan of Sadism or perhaps Schadenfreude. Self-schadenfreude? Is that a thing? I’m reminded of a line from Prisoner of Azkaban, “So you’re gonna suffer, but you’re gonna be happy about it.”

If you insist on including a few emojis in your statement, perhaps what you mean to use is this: 😢 or this 😭

And, while I’m at it — because it seems that people still have some difficulty with this new-fangled interwebs-fad and the whole emojis concept — this is the flag of the nation of Liberia: 🇱🇷

While this is the American flag: 🇺🇸

Wow, we really skewed things when we gave Latin/English/Americans an extra 146,859 characters more than the 26 letters in the English alphabet.

</rant>

And Now for Something Completely Different

On By JohnIn sysadminLeave a comment

Not long ago — in the 32-bit days of MacOS, the OSX days — it had a feature built-in to the Keychain Access tool that would create pronounceable passwords.

They removed it.

**sigh**

So, I came up with a trivial bash-based solution. https://github.com/w1lnx/passphrase

And, as its ReadMe says:

Quick tool to generate meaningful memorable password phrases.

Presently in macOS 10.15.5, the Password Assistant offers only these four options with (examples for reference):

  • Letters & Numbers: BWib0hGLZg0N…
  • Numbers Only: 3311049148…
  • Random: x*B{m6MNH…
  • FIPS-181 Compliant: wehritirby…

Every one of them will generate a password that is either quite difficult for a human to remember, or, paradoxically, trivially-simple for a computer to brute-force. See also: xkcd #936

This is an expeditious interim solution.

Uses the word list that is included with all macOS / OS X versions and randomly selects a word length and uses generally-safe characters to separate them.

Usage

Only need to run the passphrase.sh script:

./passphrase.sh

Also, seriously, just read the shell script before you run it. It’s not very long at all and not at all complex — it does contain some rather uncommon bash terms.

But if you’re scratching your head for a password when you create a new account somewhere, rather than rely on the old standards of ‘changeme’, ‘password1’, ‘12345’, or ‘correct horse battery staple’ (or any other amazingly common passwords), just type passphrase.sh and it’ll create and present to you a sufficiently-random password that you can just copy/paste into the account creation and your keyring.