Sunday, June 10, 2018

Shelby Lyman's chess column has been pretty accurate lately, but...

Here is one needing correction. I read this column in the Times of Trenton of June 10, 2018. The problem is:


Lyman gives 1... Re6, but despite what he says, it does not threaten mate. Please enjoy the pretty positions in which black wins after 1. ...c3 !


Thursday, June 07, 2018

Security advice for Apple:

I don't want to opine on Facebook anymore, so, once again: I'll blog here.

On my iPhone and my iPad, from time to time, Apple requires me to type in my password so that I can go back to using my fingerprint. Quite obviously, the screen into which I am required to type my password consists of nothing but a keyboard.

It is a keyboard in relatively light lettering, probably close to invisible in some lighting, but much worse: it is an ordinary Apple keyboard, in which you have to do a lot of shifting to get numbers, upper case and punctuation. Now Apple, and in fact all security advocates, want us to use interesting passwords, right? Not just a bunch of lower case letters? So why not give us a password keyboard with KEYS FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING. Go ahead, give us seven rows of keys. There's plenty of room on the screent.