I'm a little late on this, admittedly. $dayjob is requiring us all to set up a pair of YubiKeys, and I'm using them for the first time and my mind is a little blown.

I was seeing articles about "passkeys" all summer, not really grokking what they were talking about, clinging to my usernames and passwords and 2FA codes coming out of 1Password, etc.

I just set it up on a few accounts today, initially as an additional 2FA source, but when I set them on GitHub, I saw for the first time how exactly they are used instead of the username and password and 2FA combo to log in, and it seems incredible to me!

For long-time YubiKey users: what are some cool things in the ecosystem that you would recommend looking at?

Apologies if posting before October is truly upon us is frowned upon, it's been a while and I don't recall the etiquette! This post is going to be a bit of a brain-dump about how I've gone about allocating my time towards Timasomo 2023. It might come across as a bit self-indulgent, which is not intentional. I think talking about processes is valuable, and hopefully others who are figuring out what they want to do for this year and how to find the time for it may find some inspiration as well.

In my comment on the announcement thread, I mentioned that I don't have a huge amount of time in October that I'll be able to dedicate to the project I'm planning to work on. I decided that I do actually want to get it done, and it'll be a good exercise in working to a deadline and not being too much of a perfectionist.

So I needed to figure out how to allocate my limited time towards the creative process in such a way that I should (hopefully) be done by 31st October. During my masters degree, we were gently guided towards breaking down each of the component tasks of writing the dissertation and creating a gant chart for the project, allocating the time we thought we'd need towards the project. I decided to do something similar for this project as well. It's a useful skill to be able to take a large project and break it down into individual tasks, and being able to estimate how long each chunk will take is helpful as well.

My project is to arrange, record, and film video of me playing a metal version of Reel Around the Sun, the opening tune from Riverdance. It's been an idea rattling around my brain for ages, and I think it should be doable in the time. I'm intimately familiar with the tune already, which helps massively. So that means that there are 4 overall stages of the project:

• Arranging
• Recording
• Filming
• Release

Arguably the Release stage is implied, but I felt it was good to have some time set aside for the actual process of putting the tune out into the world, and posting here for the showcase once it's done. I broke down each of those main stages into smaller portions, typically per instrument:

• Arranging
  • Guitars
  • Drums
  • Bass
  • Keys/other

And so on for each of the first 3 stages, with a few extra bits thrown in for better coverage (mixing and mastering under Recording, for example).

The next stage was to put the month of October onto a gant chart and to start putting things onto it. I split each day into two parts to better capture days where I can put time in during the afternoon but not the evening, and vice versa, and started blocking out the slots that I absolutely cannot fit anything into. Due to my work being fully remote I have left most daytime slots for workdays unblocked, since I can sometimes fit non-work related stuff into the day or my lunch break. I anticipate this being considerably easier for certain stages over others.

Here's the more or less finished chart. Grey is dead time, and the palest colours are to indicate where I will need to make time during work or other activities to get the task done. You'll note that there are some where I haven't got a more solid colour, meaning that I am going to have to steal time from work to get those bits done. Where those exist, I have tried to be more generous with myself, giving at least two opportunities for completion. Where I have the less pale colour is time that I can definitely put into the project, so I have gone to my calendar and actually blocked out the time so I don't book anything else in.

Braindump complete! I now have a rough schedule in my calendar and in my mind that I can run with for my Timasomo project. Of course none of it is rigid, it's a guide, not a requirement. Many aspects will naturally take more or less time than I have estimated, but having the structure there has helped me to realise that I can actually make this work. Bring on October!

Next week, I will be closing on my first ever home (hello Michigan tilderinos!). One of the projects I want to tackle and work on after I move in is setting up a smart home ecosystem that is sustainable long-term. I saw the open-source Home Assistant but I think I need to do more research on it and find compatible products. For now, my wishlist of projects are:

• Controllable lighting from my phone or computer
• Carbon Monoxide/Natural Gas detection
• Water leak and usage monitoring
• Thermostat

Are there any other use cases that you use home automation for? If you use Home Assistant (or used it in the past), what are some things I should consider? Any products that you bought in the past and regret now?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I'm not new to two-factor authentication (2FA) as a concept, but available options and how they'd fit into a workflow has always felt somewhat opaque. Everytime I've been required to use 2FA, I've used SMS despite knowing how insecure that really is.

GitHub's 2FA requirement is about to lock me out of my personal account, so I figured it's time to get a grasp on this:

• What second factors are available to me and what do the workflows looks like?
  • Preferably these second factors wouldn't require me to sign up for some associated service.
• What are my options for redundancy?
  • Can I have multiple second factors?
  • Where are you supposed to keep recovery codes? (I've read that keeping them in your password manager essentially defeats the purpose)
• What happens if I screw up and lose my second factor? With services that just have password requirements, you can use your email to reset, are there analogous systems for 2FA?

Before I visited Suzuka, I found reading people's experiences (mainly on reddit) to be helpful, so I thought I'd post my own thoughts from driving down this past weekend.

I came from Tokyo, driving to Suzuka and parking in one of their official lots, and I stayed at a small resort about 50 minutes by car away from the track. The race tickets, and parking ticket were bought from the official "mobilityland" website, and it was 14,000 yen for a parking pass for the weekend, and I paid I think about 9000 yen to get there, and 6500 yen on the way back in tolls. For two people it worked out to be cheaper then the trains (and more fun to drive it!). They had some cheaper parking options as well in an unpaved lot, but I get the feeling the official parking passes sell out super quick, so you should take what you can get. There was a lot of unofficial lots nearby selling day parking, but I think you'd have to arrive very early to use them since most of them were full by the time I strolled up to the official lots around 9-10am. Speaking of which, if you buy the official parking ticket, you get an exact assigned space to use for the whole weekend, so no roving up and down the lots looking for a space. Also some people were sleeping in their cars as well so that's an option if you want to save on a hotel..

Crowds (cars and people) were managed really well. I was dreading leaving the parking lot at the end of the race, but I got out before it was crowded at all, and was able to make a beeline for the highways.

About the stands, my tickets were in Q1, at the final corners closest to the track. Aside from seeing Logan's accident in qualifying they weren't the best seats. The monitor was absolutely worthless, it was so small and so far away that without binoculars you couldn't tell the position of anyone on the track, or what lap they were on. There was also a pole blocking the middle of the monitor as well which was very distracting. Washrooms were quite far from these stands as well, although underneath the neighboring Q2 stands there was a water bottle filling machine which was pretty nice. Speakers were playing only the Japanese audio, and they have a FM radio station with the same Japanese commentary. I had hoped to get live timings on my phone, but there was basically no internet due to the huge number of people.

If anyone has questions, please ask. Overall I had a great time, although after the exciting Singapore race prior to Suzuka, this was pretty boring by comparison. Max held the lead at the first corner, and he just extended the lead over the whole race. Seeing Perez get retired and then suddenly show up again was really weird/ confusing, also it was good to see Sainz fighting with the Mercs.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like automotive industry, enshittification and donald trump. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was unclear.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Let's say I want to draw/paint things like this: 1 2

Think black/death metal album covers, medieval renaissance, dark/sci fi scenarios.

I know this takes years of practice and I just want to do these as a hobby.

I am just lost to where I start. Just pen and paper and focus learn how to draw people first? Is there any online courses/resources?

The second thing is I don't want to spend money so I won't learn to do these with oil or any real world material. If I do commit to the hobby with pen and paper, I will go to digital (drawing tablet + Linux/krita) and stay on that forever.

It's the same with guitar. I play guitar for years and I'm settled for life with a nice guitar + mid priced digital pedalboard with nice effects/simulations (ampero II stomp) and a 1x12 flat speaker cabinet. No more purchases.