My Twitter odyssey - locked out for months because of 2-factor authentciation

I was locked out of my Twitter account. For months. The struggle with Twitter support was unbelievably hard! But finally I have it back.

Twitter's two-factor authentication is broken. Not everywhere but in regions or with providers where Twitter's SMS services do not work.

Here is what happened to me: mid of June, my smartphone went dead. Unfortunately, I had been foolish enough to enable two-factor authentication (in Twitters terms "log-in verification"). The way the verification worked for me was that when I tried to log in in the browser, a push notification with a verification code was sent to my already logged in Twitter app. But what nobody tells you: should your Twitter app EVER be logged out or unavailable, you have NO chance to get access to your account again, provided that you live in a country like Germany - which Twitter seems to treat regard as some kind of 3rd world country.

The problem is: Twitter has so called "short codes", which are short phone numbers they use for SMS communication. Those are used to tweet and to configure Twitter via SMS. However, Twitter provides these short codes only for some mobile providers. In Germany though, only a so called "long code", i.e. a regular mobile phone number is available. Deep in Twitter's documentation, you find the information that in countries, where only a short code is available, the SMS interface does not work, so Twitter cannot send you SMS.

But their system is so incredibly ignorant. When you live in a country where only a long code is available and have 2-factor notification enabled and try to log in, it prompts you to enter a verification code that it claims that it has sent to your mobile phone via SMS. However, since SMS are not working in coutnries with long codes, the SMS never reaches you and you are stuck.

So next thing you do is RTFM. Again, the documentation is wrong. Is says you should send SMS containing "START" to your code - which however does not work, since you are in an area with a long code.

Next thing you do is to ask their customer support. Now it gets really Kafkaesque. Twitter's support is to dumb to know their own system. They send you pre-fabricated text blocks over and over again. I gave them detailed bug reports, that they confidently ignored. At some point they even told me, they were sorry, they could not disable two-factor authentication form me (which could never work in my area) and I should simply get another account as mine would be lost. I was furious as you can imagine.

But I tried over and over again, as I read in some forums that in other cases they were willing to disable it. I quoted the support answers which others quoted in their posts, proving that Twitter can disable it. And finally, today, they did.

I'm happy on the one hand, but on the other hand I'm still furious on Twitter. How can their support be so ignorant. They treat you as if you were a dumbass although you give them a detailed error analysis. Nevertheless, I'll be tweeting again.

tl;dr
Twitter sucks when you live in a long-code area and have two-factor authentication enabled. Disable it immediately or you can easily get locked out of your account.

RepRap - an affordable, open source 3D printer for home use

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

English is evil: do you know the correct writing of the word "fish"? It's "ghoti"!

English is one of the meanest languages in the world. It persuades you when you start learning it. It tricks you into a warm gut feeling, making you believe that it is easy to learn and to master. What your teacher does not tell you: as a non-native speaker you almost never get past a point of basic understanding and even more basic capacity of expression.

Just one example is English spelling, which is extremely decoupled from pronunciation. There is a popular story about G. B. Shaw, where he sarcastically suggests to the English speaking community to spell the word fish as ghoti: f like in tough, i like in women, and sh like in nation.

Gibt es bald keine normalen Navis mehr?

Was wird jetzt aus PTV in Karlsruhe? Werden da alle arbeitslos?

Musikvideo

Just some easy pop to switch off your brain, lean back and enjoy!

Zufallsfund: Nur ein bisschen eingängiger Pop um sich zu entspannen!

Häuser aus dem 3-D Drucker

Eine britische Firma möchte das Bauen revolutionieren. Gebäude die in 3-D CAD-Software entworfen wurden sollen von einem gigantischen 3-D Drucker einfach in die Landschaft gedruckt werden! Warum ist da eigentlich vorher noch niemand drauf gekommen?

A British enterprise wants to revolutionize the art of building. They want to "print" houses as they are designed in 3D CAD software using a gigantic 3D printer. Why did nobody have that idea before?

http://www.d-shape.com/

gefunden auf heise.de

TTF font from you own handwriting - as a free oline service!

What a great service: http://www.fontcapture.com/
Many years ago, I created my own handwriting TTF with Corel Draw. I wonder if this service does a good job on kerning - That was a major effort back then.

Junge Briten - dionysisch drauf!

Als Kontrast zu den vielen seriösen Beiträgen der letzten Zeit hier ein Beispiel absoluten Schund-Journalismus à la RTL Explosiv.

Warnung, nicht ganz safe for work!



Nichtsdestotrotz, eine Augenweide. Und ok, ich geb's zu - ab und zu steh ich auf Prols. Vor allem wenn denen das Testosteron so aus den Ohren quillt wie diesen hier.

Trotzdem irgendwie verstörend! Früher war alles besser! Die Schwulen waren exzessiv und unverkrampft und die Heten verklemmt. Wo soll das noch hinführen. Aber letztendlich sind sie ja doch verklemmt und nur wegen des Alkohols locker. Da haben wir noch mal Glück gehabt!

Schreibt doch mal Kommentare was ihr so davon haltet?

Solidarität für die gleichgeschlechtlichen Ehepaare in Kalifornien

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Gute Sache - Wahnsinns-Soundtrack!

Pepsi war schon immer die coolere der beiden Zuckerbrausen

Office 2007 and Vista: Error message when opening with double-click in Explorer

Mal wieder ein Eintrag auf Englisch, wegen schwerer Er-Google-Bar-Keit.

This nasty bug nagged me for half a year now: I was not able to open Office 2007 documents in Vista in the Explorer. Also the integration with Office Groove was broken. If I double-clicked on a document to open it, Vista showed a stupid nice error message, saying: "Windows cannot find '{path to yourfile.abc}'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again." This was really annoying!

Today, I stumbled over the solution at in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (Article 211494). You have to turn off the obscure setting called "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange" in any of the office program's options.

Very obvious, isn't it?

Why Homosexuality Should Be Banned

Ein Video, dass sehr gut funktioniert:

Obama!

Heute morgen im Deutschlandfunk: Wahlberichterstattung über die Wahl zum US-Präsidenten. Und mittendrin ein O-Ton von Obama:



"It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, hispanic, asian, native american, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans who send a message to the world, that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America!"

Da ist mir aber die Kinnlade heruntergeklappt. Hat man jemals von einem der Präsidenten der USA, den mächtigsten Männern der Welt, gehört, dass er Schwule (das englische "Gay" schließt hierbei die Lesben natürlich mit ein) überhaupt erwähnt? Noch dazu in seiner "Victory"-Rede, wo die ganze Nation, wahrscheinlich die halbe Welt, zuhört?

Ich denke wir sollten heilfroh und dankbar sein, dass es diesmal ein Schwarzer geschafft hat; jemand der am eigenen Leib erlebt hat, wie es ist, immer ein bisschen mehr leisten zu müssen als die sogenannten "Normalen", der sich immer wieder neu behaupten musste gegen eine latente, vielleicht von den Diskriminierenden gar nicht gewollte aber tief sitzende Ablehnung und Ausgrenzung. Wenn das mal kein Anlass zur Hoffnung für alle Minderheiten ist!

Wen soll man sich bloß als Vorbild nehmen?

Achtung, jetzt wird's sehr nachdenklich: Wenn man Karriereratgeber, seinen Chef, seine Eltern, ... fragt, wen man sich zum Vorbild nehmen soll, kommt meinstens so etwas wie: Erfolgreiche Leute, Manager, intelligente Leute, ...

Da mag ja was dran sein. Ich frage mich aber auch, ob man nicht extrem viel von Leute lernen kann, die eigentlich gar keinen Plan haben, selbst noch auf der Suche sind und einfach offen für alles, so wie der hier:

The Secret Ten Year Rule

unbedingt auch die anderen Videos von ihm anschauen

Wenn einem nämlich mal alles Kindliche im Leben verloren geht, wird es vermutlich sehr öde, oder?

Wie findest Du diese zugegebenermaßen etwas wirre Überlegung? Gib jetzt gleich einen Kommentar ab!

Das Internet wie man es sich 1969 vorgestellt hat

Gar nicht sooo weit von dem entfernt, was wir heute haben. Und wie immer krass politisch unkorrekt sexistisch. Zum Glück sind wir zumindest da heute weiter.

Adobe Reader: Removing the stupid hand symbol with the down arrow

Ever wondered how to get rid of the stupid hand symbol with the down arrow you sometimes get in Adobe Reader when viewing documents? The one that zooms to width on first click and then emulates a "page down" operation?

Go to Page Display Preferences >> General and disable the option "Make Hand Tool Read Articles". What a relief!

A really stupid bug in Windows Vista

Erde an Redmond: Bitte fixen:

There is a nasty bug in Windows Vista. After accessing a file on a CD and removing the CD (after cleanly ejecting it via Windows Explorer), some hours later, when I wanted to start NetWeaver Developer Studio (NWDS, an extended version of Eclipse), I got the error message "Windows-No Disk, Exception processing message 0xc0000013 parameters ...". It was extremely sticky and re-appeard no matter on which button I clicked. The solution (after some serious googling) was to put a CD in the drive. This is just one example of the benefits you get from using the great new operating system from Microsoft. My recommendation: stick to XP for another two years, until Vista has emerged as stable.

[coding] Cooles Tool zum Testen von Web-Services

Heute mal wieder ein engischer Programmierungs-Produktivitäts-Post

If you ever develop an application that exposes web services (in the W3C sense of the word), at some point you will need to test the functionality. I recommend soapUI (http://www.soapui.org/) for this. The tool can generate random SOAP requests based on any imported WSDL file. You can change and save the requests and submit them any time and get the SOAP response displayed in a nice and clean way.
I use it for development of Java 5 EE on SAP Netweaver and I prefer soapUI over the built-in, web-based testing tool "NetWeaver WS Navigator".

Viel Spaß damit!

[coding] How to make Eclipse behave when working on code managed by SVN

So, heute mal auf Englisch:

Eclipse can really screw up your locally checked-out SVN copy. The problem is, that it copies the “.svn” directories from the source folders (where they belong) to the output folder next to the compiled classes (where they should not be). The result is disastrous: you can neither commit nor update any more – and even the cleanup fails.

To avoid this, make sure to make the following build path settings for each of the projects: open the build path properties on the source page and add the following exclusion pattern to every source folder: **/?svn/**

This is Ant syntax for any path below each svn folder anywhere in the source path. Now your output folders will remain clean, since Eclipse will ignore and not copy them when creating your build folder.

PS: Ja, ich weiß, es ist schlechter Stil Deutsch und English in einem Blog zu mischen. Allerdings ist diese Lösung so universell und so schlecht er-google-bar, dass ich meine, ich müsse die Lösung dem erreichbaren Wissen der Menschheit hinzufügen. Und mit Englisch erreicht man eben mehr Menschen.