This is also true and really well-said.

https://hachyderm.io/@growse/117429433619827176

I think this post makes a great point and is really well said.

https://mastodon.social/@alice_pea_3526/117429377474018414

To be clear, the websites have stopped asking for attestation. Or at least, they’ve stopped asking me. Why? Because they know there’s no use in asking — that the OS vendors, browsers, and passkey managers are unified on this front. And now they’ve seen firsthand that passkeys without attestation are awesome and a big step forward.

https://cybersecurity.theater/@varx/117428884584457992

RE: https://mastodon.balamb.fr/@mehdi_benadel/117428408974244740

Please never underestimate how much love I have for the people of this planet and how much love some other people have.

Everyone deserves strong account security out of the box and the freedom to own their own authentication data and use it however they like. Me talking about the “let’s stop people we love from getting compromised through phishing” space is very clearly a warm and friendly statement and not putting a limit on the people who can be helped. :)

TOTP is a “great solution” for giving people some anxiety when the countdown to the next code generation is approaching. Beyond that tho, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Some people who love open source software and open systems have a sort of weakness or soft spot for distrusting things they’d otherwise appreciate just because corporations or more “closed” vendors are participating in the open system. We all have got to be mentally diligent to work toward the truth instead of conspiratorial thinking. The “AI” is undermining truth enough as it is; we don’t need to help it along.

If you actually read the “Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them.” post going around, you’ll find a transparent attempt to clumsily string together a conspiracy.

The post is predicated on the idea that a feature of WebAuthn called “attestation”, which is only used in high-assurance and usually corporate scenarios, and usually with physical hardware security keys, will be leveraged to hurt people, somehow.

The post posits that a website like X will bait and switch users: first, you get a passkey. Then, later, scary “attested” passkeys! This simply isn’t possible to do because attestation isn’t supported on the web for mass market, consumer authentication.

Attestation for passkeys (software-based, syncable credentials) is antithetical to their mass market goals, and would freeze out independent, non-corporate-backed credential managers. It’s an explicit non-goal of the designers of passkeys, who work together in a forum anyone can join.

And trust me, websites and apps like banks repeatedly asked for attestation at the beginning of the industry’s passkey journey. The platforms, browsers, and credential management apps have held firm that the goal of passkeys is reducing phishing and **not** some kind of trusted computing scheme. (And I will note: over my dead body!)

Besides the theory of the case being fundamentally wrong, there are several things that make the post disqualifying in terms of arguing something useful or important in the realm of security, privacy, and user authentication:

1. Intentionally presenting things that are complicated as inherently suspicious. (Delivering security by design can be complicated, yes!)

2. Describing TOTP as a “great solution” for adding security to a password-based account. When the most common threat model on the web is phishing (a word the post never mentions!), TOTP hardly buys you _anything_. TOTP is phishable.

3. Seeming to be unbothered by how many logical leaps are being taken without actually understanding the topic being discussed.

There are bad things happening in tech and untrustworthy people and companies do exist, but they’re largely in the AI space, not the “let’s stop people we love from getting compromised through phishing” space.

I don’t know, maybe it’s more important to care about how other people are treated than about whether or not you’re having a good time.

The most succinct way I’ve found to describe X is, “A social network for punching down.”

Hands down, this is a certified banger.

I’ve become obsessed with the “Ripple Star: Stage Select” music from Kirby 64, which is funny, because I’ve never once played Kirby 64. Anyway, I just stumbled upon a 15-year-old cover of the song either literally using the Sega Genesis sound chip or inspired by the chip, and I am in HEAVEN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYfgpeqHFDw

X is bad, though: https://lexontech.org/x-is-bad-though

This rocks. https://nintendoeverything.com/f-zero-gx-fans-uncover-new-cheat-codes-after-more-than-20-years/

We’re in a time that plain-clothed and masked agents are kidnapping without process en mass. Use this web app to track reports and share your own ICE sightings. https://iceout.org/

new contender for best email sign-off:

Harvard researchers studied 718 companies and found AI coding agents increased lines of code by 30%, but no meaningful increase in completed tasks or projects.

Meanwhile, review time rose 49%.

Generating code faster hasn’t translated into completing more work. The bottleneck has moved to code reviews.

The solution the industry is landing on is throwing more AI at the problem. AI writes the code, AI reviews the code and no one knows how it works.

https://fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf

My neck? My back?

No.

Our neck, our back. Through unholy experimentation, we both occupy the same body.

My neck? My back?

No.

Our necks, our backs. Solidarity paves the path to freedom.

RE: https://discuss.systems/@kaoudis/117397196260552302

This is such a fantastic way of looking at the world. Some things are legitimately so cool!

RE: https://tenforward.social/@soonycorn/117395784603209448

If anyone has any perspective or help to offer here, I’d appreciate it.