HSU IT Department

Somewhere, deep in their little robot brains, they are thinking, "Yay! We get to play!!"

Or perhaps, "THE HUMANS WILL PAY FOR THIS..." It's hard to say.

In case anyone reading this was not already aware, in March there was a security breach at DreamWidth and a number of user names and passwords were compromised (DW announcement here). Per their instructions, I immediately changed my DW password and also my LJ and AO3 passwords. Recently I got an email that correctly stated my (former) DW password, and then threatened various actions unless they got money (bitcoin) from me. Since that password is no longer valid, and I'm not concerned about the nonsense threats, I've deleted the email and don't intend to do anything.

BUT it's proof that the stolen data has been shared, and that my account was one of the ones compromised. So, if you have not yet changed your DW password, you should do so immediately, and if you use that same password on any other social media or other accounts, you should change those also, to something different.

Edit: FYI, what I got was one of these extortion emails. Annoying but basically toothless nonsense. If you get one too, don't sweat it :)

Apparently they used to be in California, thus subject to US law etc. No longer, apparently. It's not clear what this will mean for the non-Russian arm of LJ, but you can read lots more here, including links and directions on how to port your entire LJ to Dreamwidth.

Interesting in light of recent events with Obama, Trump, etc. I hope this isn't some sort of omen for how 2017 is going to go :P

There is a meme circulating: put the letters of the alphabet into your search window and write down the first auto-complete for each. Other people get all kinds of interesting things (shyfoxling got "dg33fb led connectors" for D and "skankin' pickle" for S, which I don't know what it is but it makes me giggle). When I do it I get precisely what you'd predict if I were, say, George F. Babbitt: A = amazon, B = best buy, and so on down to Y = youtube and Z = zillow.

What does this mean? Why is my browser so conventional, so dull, so uninteresting? Let the record show that I have never searched for zillow in my life, and really who needs to google Amazon when you can just type in "amazon.com"?

I did notice today that if I type "what is" into google, the first autocomplete is "what is a caucus". No surprise there; it's a very unfamiliar concept to most Americans, even if you have had it explained to you as a child by a Dodo.

Edit: Ah, I believe I have sussed it out. It's because I do private browsing and clear my cache every time I close my browser. This means my search history never gets stored, so all google has to offer me is the most popular search for a given letter.

So my browser isn't boring, I'm just very very secretive :)