Something wrong with Google's Device Activity page?

Google’s device activity page used to let me remove devices that I no longer used:

https://myaccount.google.com/device-activity

Today it lists 3 iPhones for me. I think they are all actually one device, showing up with two different names — none of them current.

There used to be away to remove these devices, but today I can’t. I am able to Remove Account Access, but not the devices.

I removed access to all devices, then reentered credentials on my phone. So now I know that ‘iPhone” is my phone (phone name is John6s).

I think something is broken somewhere….

DreamHost remixer - a brief trail

I tried DreamHost’s remixer web site dev tool. I was able to create a page with it. Reminds me a bit of Apple’s old iWeb. 

It doesn’t output static files though. It is mapped to a folder on my DreamHost site, but there’s some redirection behind the scenes.

That means it’s transient. When Remixer dies, so will all the content in it. It’s not portable either, I can’t move my Remixer work anywhere else.

Might be a good app for something transient, but the little I do on the web today I like to keep portable. WordPress is as far as I’m willing to go into things I can’t readily move and backup.

Why is Apple's mysterious two factor authentication better than a strong password?

What would I do if my home burned down and Emily and the kids get out alive but I’m dead?

That’s what I think about when I read about Apple’s “two-factor” authentication (vs. the now obsolete but similar “two-step verification” they used to have). Particularly the scary procedure you need to follow if you’ve lost your authentication devices …

Two-factor authentication for Apple ID - Apple Support

…. If you can’t sign in, reset your password, or receive verification codes, you can request account recovery to regain access to your account. Account recovery is an automatic process designed to get you back in to your account as quickly as possible while denying access to anyone who might be pretending to be you. It might take a few days—or longer—depending on what specific account information you can provide to verify your identity…

… With two-factor authentication, you don't need to choose or remember any security questions. Your identity is verified exclusively using your password and verification codes sent to your devices and trusted phone numbers.

 and

Regain access to your Apple ID with two-factor authentication account recovery - Apple Support

… You might be asked to verify other account information to help shorten your recovery period. After you verify your phone number, you’ll see a confirmation that your request has been received and you’ll be contacted when your account is ready for recovery...

… We’ll also send an email to your Apple ID or notification email address to make sure you’re the person who made the request. You can click Confirm Account Recovery in the email to help us shorten the account recovery period. …

Scary indeed. It’s vague as hell. Even control of a confirmed email account (presumably different from the iCloud account) only “shortens” the recovery period. There’s nothing in Apple’s process comparable to Google’s inactive account manager. There’s no secret recovery key I can store in an encrypted repository on an offsite drive with a password known to 3 family members.

Apple’s 2FA either makes my data too hard to recover or too easy for someone to steal … or both.

I don’t see the advantage, yet, over a strong password used only on a secure device. Google does this better — and even Google 2FA is too complex for me to manage for multiple family members.

I’m staying with a strong iCloud password for now — until Apple forces me to change. (The way they’re forcing 2FA with the 10.3.1 update makes me wonder if iCloud really was thoroughly hacked.)

PS. As best I can tell if you use Apple’s new 2FA when you change your iCloud password on one device you change it on every authenticated device. Better be sure you have them all.

PPS. At least they got rid of the secret questions … but only to replace them with some mysterious, fully automated, no humans involved, identity validation process.

PPPS. Ok, we’re traveling. Both our iPhones are lost. What do we do? hmm. I think Charlie Stross had something about this in a story … accelerando?

See also

• Gordon’s Notes: Preparing for the inevitable - Google Docs for the “Not available” letter 2/16/2013. There are certain passwords in this document that useful to people who have physical access to one of my backup drives. I have a task that triggers a reminder 3 times a year to my trusted persons that this exists.
• Gordon’s Notes: Inherit the Cloud: Who gets your Google Docs when you die? 2/17/2013

Migrate Contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X Contacts

I last wrote about migrating contacts from Outlook/Exchange server to OS X in 2011.

Back then one of the issues with migration then was that Exchange uses X400 format email addresses. One way to make Outlook convert to internet is to drag contacts into an email — that produces .vcf files (undocumented) with internet email addresses. In 2011 I wrote that dragging into a local PST did the same thing. Not sure that still works.

Here’s what I did recently …

1. Drag and drop from Outlook/Exchange into email (undocumented export)
2. From email save to desktop.
3. Drag and drop the .vcf files into OS X Contacts (undocumented import.

From OS X contacts they can go to iCloud as usual.

Incidentally, i couldn’t see any way to readily import a set of single contact .vcf files into Outlook 2016. It only wanted to import them one a time. Drag and drop of the files into Outlook resulted simply in Outlook opening each one until Windows 10 die.

Exporting multiple emails from macOS OS X Mail.app on 10.11 (El Cap): only PDF works.

An email search retrieved 100+ emails. I wanted to copy them to a separate folder for archival purposes. I know one can drag and drop a message and create a net standard ‘.msg’ format but when I tried that only worked for 1 message at a time.

Save As allegedly worked at one time, but when I tested both rich text and .mbox export they produced one large file that wasn’t very readable.

What worked was File:Export as PDF. That worked.

pnut.io - an app.net heir

There are several heirs to app.net — I know of 10Centuries.org, pnut.io and Manton Reece’s micro.blog kickstarter.

Each of these efforts is a largely one person project. All good people. pnut.io’s creator is  33mhz/Robert. I believe the API is based on the app.net API, which means the many apps created for app.net can have a second life. I’m using ChimPnut.app for iOS and the https://noodle.s3rv.com web client to access pnut.io. I’ve been told the app.net client Riposte.app may reappear.

pnut.io has an interesting approach to social networking …

Our community network is a small, sustainable hobby. We are tied closely to our users and developers through their Patreon pledges and small opt-in features. When you invite someone, they are associated with you in the user tree and you may be responsible for them if they abuse the network.

 I made a Patreon pledge at the $5/month level but anyone can use it for free. The spam protection is the user tree. It will be interesting to see how well that works.

If you know me from app.net days or elsewhere and need an invitation send a note to me at jgordon@kateva.org. Best to mention how you know me.

 

 

Escape from Outlook Notes - export as text files, import into NvAlt or other

Back in 2010 I wrote Gordon’s Tech: Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, Simplenote for iPhone and Notational Velocity.

Seven years later ResophNotes, Notation Velocity (I now use nvAlt), and Simplenote are still around — despite lack of a revenue stream for any of ‘em. Not only are they still around, but it’s still possible to keep notes in plain text or RTF — which is as future proof as computing gets.

They are still around — but not in great health. ResophNotes was last updated in 2012 or so and it is donation ware (always was). Simplenote was purchased by Automattic (WordPress) and is now open source and apparently run as some kind of charity operation [1]. nvAlt is ancient but Brett Terpstra recently updated it to run on Sierra (a notoriously buggy version of macOS).

These apps are old and kind of worn — but so am I. So we’re a good fit. 

Recently I had another set of Microsoft Outlook Notes files to move to Simplenote. Talk about old and kind of worn! Outlook Notes is old, odd, and useful. It’s a winner in a category of one. Functionally it’s a lot like Simplenote — though you can’t print from Outlook [2].

The problem with Notes isn’t that it’s old and odd, it’s that everyone has given up on it. Microsoft tries to make it invisible. Apple dropped support for Notes sync via iTunes/iCloud — though I think Exchange sync may still work. Google ignores them too.

Which is why I needed to again move a data set of out Outlook Notes. I think export to Outlook CSV them import to ResophNotes is still the best bet. From there to Simplenote and from Simplenote to nvAlt, etc.

There’s another way to go though. You can use VB to script export from Outlook to c:\notes:

Sub NotesToText()
    
Set myNote = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI").PickFolder
  
For cnt = 1 To myNote.Items.Count
        
noteName = Replace(Replace(Replace(myNote.Items(cnt).Subject, "/", "-"), "\", "-"), ":", "-")
        
myNote.Items(cnt).SaveAs "c:\notes\" & noteName & ".txt", OlSaveAsType.olTXT
   Next
End Sub

The key thing is this script creates file names with the note title. It’s not a perfect result because the top of each file looks like this:

Modified: Thu 1/12/2017 2:36 PM

accidents and injuries

In this case ‘accidents and injuries’ becomes both the file name and the third line of the note. The “Modified: …” bit is just annoying. I suppose it could be removed using regex and a text editor that can iterate over a set of files … or script the removal.

I imported the plain text notes into nvAlt where they got the title from the file name so it looks something like this:

accidents and injuries

Modified: Thu 1/12/2017 2:36 PM

accidents and injuries

A bit of redundancy in there, and, of course, the Modified string is still around.

Overall this doesn’t work quite as well as the ResophNotes method, but it’s helpful to have options.

- fn -

[1] Automattic recently released a redo of the macOS Simplenote client. I haven’t tried it, but I hope it fixes the perennially broken search of the current client. In any case, Simplenote is not dead yet.

[2] Outlook 2013 broke Notes by essentially removing the list view — I think this might have been fixed in Office 365.

Update 3/13/2017

Speaking of ResophNotes, the current version has an impressive set of import options. Outlook CSV, Toodledo Notes CSV, text files, single file with note separator …

I donated years ago, time to send another donation.