Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I just found out, in online chat, that during the pandemic T-Mobile is offering free international calls to a large number of countries, though not all (and sometimes only to landline numbers). This isn't something T-Mobile bothered to tell us about; I happened to be talking to someone else who lives in the US and has family in Britain. I have emailed my mother to let her know that if she sees my number as incoming, it doesn't mean there's a crisis worth paying $3/minute to call her rather than emailing and asking her to call me (which is cheap).

Their website has a list of countries this offer applies to.

ETA: My informant says that they got a text from T-Mobile saying that they are being billed for their recent call but also will be credited for it, so fingers crossed.

liv explains what alcohol is, and isn't, good for in the context of COVID-19. Most of this is valid for other viral and bacterial infections; a little of it is specific to coronaviruses (i.e., MERS, SARS, and a few of the viruses that cause the common cold).

elisem just posted LIONESS CHALLENGE: Moon in a Rocking Chair, a writing challenge/contest based on a sterling silver and opal pendant she made. Details there, but it's pretty open-ended: a piece inspired by the pendant, no more than 500 words long.
The winner will receive the pendant "Moon in a Rocking Chair" and bragging rights. The winner retains all copyright to their work(s).

I'm signal-boosting this because, many years ago, Elise did a similar challenge for poetry a pair of earrings, "Song of the Lesbian Elephant." I don't think of myself as a poet, but they were pretty earrings, and an interesting title, and one day I decided I could write something good enough to lose a poetry contest. I was surprised, and pleased, when she told me I'd won.

Rose Lemberg has put out a call for submissions for a Le Guin tribute poetry anthology:

I am seeking poetry that engages with Ursula K. Le Guin’s life and work broadly construed – including her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I will be looking for a variety of voices, themes, treatments, and approaches. Both critical and celebratory approaches are welcome, as is anything in-between.

You are welcome to engage with specific books and/or stories, or take it in other directions. Your poems do not have to be speculative, although a speculative element is always welcome. There are no length or style limitations.

Lemberg is explicitly inviting people from marginalized backgrounds, and from both seasoned poets and people who never wrote poetry before: "Don't self-reject.

(I found this via ursula.)

browngirl made an excellent post about so-called "isolated incidents" a couple of days ago. Signal boosted with permission, and it's probably best to keep the discussion in one place, so I'm turning comments off on this one.

joedecker is a net-friend of mine, and a landscape photographer. (If I've sent you a birthday or other card with a photo in the last couple of years, it's likely Joe's work.) If you go to Joe's site and tell him tell him which image you like best, you will have the chance to win a print of that photo.

The chip-and-pin authentication system is badly broken, such that a hacker/thief with anyone's chip-and-PIN Visa or Mastercard can make arbitrary purchases. The problem appears to be that these cards can be used with chip and pin, or chip and signature, and by telling the card they're using one and the terminal they're using the other, people who know where it's broken can make purchases using any arbitrary PIN. The problem behind the problem is that there are lots of different, overlapping implementations of the security for chip-and-PIN, and lots of people with unsupported confidence that their implementations are sound.

The researchers reported this to the banking industry a couple of months ago. They note that this may explain at least some of the cases of phantom withdrawals. It may make it harder for the banking industry to deny refunds on the grounds that the challenged transactions were authenticated with a PIN: the researchers demonstrated using this attack on a system that was calling the bank for authentication, getting the authentication, and completing the transaction.

A cancelled card is still a cancelled card, and won't be authorized even with this attack. Also, it doesn't work at ATMs/cashpoints, only at merchants. But there are lots of stores that will sell any number of things that a thief either wants or can resell.

(If you're North American and don't know what chip-and-PIN is, hope that this gets fixed for real, and on a large scale, before it's implemented as "security" for our credit and debit cards.)

[via Bruce Schneier]