Explosive

 

Image from Pixabay

Boom! A loud bang shattered the silence in the living room. My wife, who was there alone, looked around in shock. What was that? A few seconds later she heard splashing. Her eyes followed her ears and found the source of the sound. Then she shouted upstairs, with strong urgency in her voice, “Stop what you're doing and come help now!”

Five heartbeats later I saw pink liquid dripping from the display case. There, in that cupboard, we started a modest collection of Beautiful Bottles a few years ago, when I pointed out to the children on holiday in the south of France a bottle of wine on which the gendarme of Saint-Tropez was depicted - a frenetic film role by the French comedian Louis de Funès from my youth (well, the film itself is older than me, but I have seen several films with this actor in the past – remember Fantomâs?). Even though I don't like alcoholic drinks, my son gave me that bottle as a gift because he understood the sentimental value. Since a recent stay in Croatia, there is also a beautiful bottle of vodka from Old Pilots, decorated with aviation symbols – we bought that for our son, the aspiring pilot.

My daughter also contributed a little while ago. She had a school trip to Spain and brought back a bottle with bright pink contents. For the display cabinet. It was this bottle which had exploded. Well, exploded – the cap had popped off and all but an inch of its contents had spilled out. Please note: the bottle was still upright. The liquid found its way into lower parts of the cabinet. Armed with towels and cleaning cloths, we tackled the stuff. I even had to unscrew a cupboard door to get to some spots. Ultimately, the damage was limited to that one deformed screw cap. What on earth had happened here?

The 250 ml (8.5 fl oz) bottle label says kombucha. Wikipedia says about this: “a drink resulting from fermentation of sweetened tea by acetic acid bacteria and yeast cultures”. And on the label I read that you should always keep the stuff in the refrigerator, between two and eight degrees centigrade (35-46 degrees Fahrenheit). These are circumstances that our display case cannot meet. And so those bacteria woke up, conspired with the yeast and formed gas. And about two months later, the pressure became too much for that poor screw cap, who saw only one way out: up. After which almost all the contents bubbled out of the bottle.

A few blogs ago I advocated reading manuals. I would now like to add labels to that advice. Although I wonder if that would have helped. If you're not planning on consuming something anyway, why would you refrigerate it? And if I had already read the ingredients list, would I have realized that I had something explosive in my hands? I do not think so. In retrospect, I am surprised that the stuff is allowed to be sold at all, or that there is not at least a clear warning on the label. The substance also seems to be controversial due to unproven health benefits. In fact, there can even be very dangerous molds in the drink. Maybe it's a good thing the stuff is gone now. The empty bottle is back in the display case, as a reminder of the school trip and the explosion.

Sometimes it is useful to dose manuals and instructions, because otherwise they can be overwhelming. This week I saw a clever example of that. I recently started taking out a new service from a company. After a few days they sent me an email saying: secure your account even better, enable two-factor authentication (2FA). I like that. In this way they help people who do not read manuals and labels to make a step forward. By the way, I had already enabled 2FA as soon as I saw that they supported it. Do you also have it turned on everywhere? It protects you if one of your passwords ever leaks, for example due to a hack at an organization where you have an account. Without 2FA you are the sucker, and if you use the same password elsewhere without 2FA (ugh!), then you have to change those passwords immediately.

I've said it before: use a password manager, which not only stores your passwords, but also generates them for you. Make them at least twelve characters long, and because you rarely have to type in those passwords yourself, fifteen is even better. Even the best password cannot withstand a hack at an organization that does not properly protect your password; That's why you enable 2FA wherever possible.

 

And in the big bad world...

• the EU may be on the verge of requiring client side scanning in chat apps.
• the boss of one of the chat apps strongly opposes these EU plans.
• North American cyber insurance companies processed significantly more claims in 2023.
• Dutch politicians advocate a Governmental Mail Service and a Governmental Chat Service. [DUTCH]
• this article completely ignores the security aspects of AI. [DUTCH]
• cybercrime can be deadly.
• that email from Microsoft may not be from Microsoft at all.
• The Netherlands must brace itself for criminals with cloned voices. [DUTCH]
• Google wants to train its AI with your Chrome history.
• Cyber Dad argues why you shouldn't publish photos of your young children.
• the US military conducted an anti-vax campaign in the Philippines with fake social media accounts.