Monthly Archives: September 2024

Unlockers

Hacks, security, , , , , ,

My new office is the nicest place I’ve ever worked. It’s gorgeous.

As part of a more intentional office strategy, not everyone comes in at the same time. For occasional “everyone in at the same time” events we have extra overflow space.

But since all the desks are shared, there’s a clean desk policy. Anything you don’t want to take home goes in a locker. You pick an empty locker, put your stuff in, set the code and lock it. When you return, unlock it with the code. Simple!

I love lockers because I can use them as dead drops. When I had to return a kiteboarding kite or send someone a present it’s more fun to put it in a locker and message them the combination. Sneaky fun!

But I just found a terrible hack:

The lockers unlock for any code.

I discovered it accidentally when I went to open the wrong locker and put in my code. It opened and I, a fool, thought “That’s so weird that they put in the address of our last office as the code!” Then I moved on, until I did it accidentally again. Then I went hog wild and tested that ANY four number opens it.

I’ve let the admin team know but I also feel the need to go put presents in every locked locker until they get it fixed.

The Beaches – Blame My Ex

I stumbled on this fantastic band while dumbscrolling youtube shorts. I love so many of their songs. I like this one that seems like it’s part way through and changes to a different video. This song strikes me as one that probably leads to people attaching to the primary emotion of Blaming Brett instead of seeing the complexity of the song – same thing that Ani Difranco had to deal with when fans loved “Untouchable Face”.

I went to an Ani Difranco concert once where she said she had stopped playing Untouchable Face because of how crowds reacted to it, and she took the time to explain that the Fuck You part of the song is an expression of longing and hurt, not rage and revilement. It’s because the uh, Face is Untouchable. So she asked folks if they sing along to sing with a heart full of longing rather than a heart full of rage and it was wonderful.

Same way that the makers of Breaking Bad were shocked that people thought Walter White was a hero, that the makers of the movie Wall Street were shocked that people wanted to emulate Michael Douglas and took “Greed is Good” at face value. Same way that Michael Lewis thought that Liar’s Poker was a cautionary tale to warn people away from the financial industry but attracted them in droves.

But people love an antihero! There’s something delicious about becoming a beast. Anyway, you should also check out Takes One to Know One.