How I Switched to Passkeys
It’s 2025 and the Shai-hulud supply chain attacks are rolling over the npm ecosystem. It’s a wake-up call. The worm exposes how poorly many developers handle security. I too work with npm on a daily basis. I too use insecure practices all over my digital life. I’ve been thinking about improving matters since a while. Shai-Hulud was the last thing it needed to finally get me to take action.
What are Passkeys?
Passkeys are hardware security tokens that follow the FIDO2 / Webauthn standard. The come in the form of tiny USB-sticks with a button.
Day 23 - Living happily ever after
Following previous posts the astound reader might assume that I had my fairy tale ending to my coffee quest. I found a setup that works for me. The coffee is nice, to the point where it leaves nothing to be desired. The sky is blue and the birds are singing.
Of course not. To be honest I’d be sad if there were nothing left to be improved or at least explored. The journey is the destination if you so will. Or less philosophical: I’m a perfectionist who’s never fully happy with his results so I continue. And while I pretend to suffer we both know that I enjoy it.
Day 22 - Don Oscar
It’s been quiet around the blog. Too quiet. Buckle up friends, I’ve been cooking. While you couch potatoes enjoy the cozy safety of your homes I’ve crossed an ocean to find some new content. I’m in Honduras now. Driving a car so small that it can pass under the huge pick-up trucks that share the road with us. Road is of course an euphemism. There are so many potholes. Some are so deep that the whole car could be parked inside, no exaggerations.
Day 21 - Life is funny
I get up and take a first look in my bathroom mirror. It’s not pretty. I didn’t sleep much lately. The little dreams I had were filled with giant soldering irons haunting me, with scary voices uttering gibberish measurements in the background. Yuck. I can’t go on like this. Something has to change. I need to get my stuff together.
Like every normal person when something doesn’t work the way they want I thought about giving up. Do I really need hardware scales? I could just stop my coffee by hand. Or get a 100 euro bluetooth scale. Call it a day and move on. Be happy.
Day 20 - Back in the game
And already losing. Life has been too good lately. So I decided to tackle a new project: Hardware scales. For the normie crowd: I want to integrate scales directly into the drip tray of my machine. This way it can sense when and how much coffee drips into the cup. It can use this information to transition from one shot phase to another or to stop the shot once the target output is reached.