Heather

Translating geek to human  #WomenInTech #DigitalIdentity #Internet #Standards #IDPro

Pronouns: She/Hers
Website: https://sphericalcowconsulting.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hlflanagan/
Podcast: https://sphericalcowconsulting.com/digital-identity-digest/

Last Notes

2026-08-29 14:13:04 GMT

It’s a cool and rainy day in the PNW and I am pinned by my cat.
Darn.
#caturday
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/117/179/200/703/963/917/original/8d4dbf87bfc31f71.png

2026-08-27 20:38:12 GMT

#TIL that this is a thing. And I must see it.
https://theempirestripsback.com/

2026-08-27 15:46:25 GMT

The nice thing about having conversations with technologists outside your direct field is that you realize: that word, it does not mean what you think it means.
The word of the day is “interoperable.”
So, yes, we have standards (wooo!), and we have systems that use them (wooo?) BUT profiles, extensions, trust, policy, deployment assumptions, optional “features”... there are so many places for two perfectly conformant implementations to disagree.
Should our specs focus more on “under what conditions is this interoperable?” rather than just asking “in a theoretical world, is this interoperable?”

2026-07-28 13:29:17 GMT

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How strange! https://sphericalcowconsulting.com/2026/07/28/how-to-research-a-defensible-paper/

2026-07-28 09:00:14 GMT

Research is not just finding sources. It is deciding which sources deserve weight, tracking what you found, verifying details, and being honest about what remains uncertain.
New post: how I approach research for defensible, decision-ready papers, including Google Scholar, NGO and international organization searches, source spreadsheets, database checks, cold outreach, and careful use of AI as an organizing aid rather than an authority.

2026-07-20 16:19:49 GMT

With over 100 active Internet Drafts on various topics around AI, a third of the available side meetings, and nearly half of the HotRFC lightning talks at #IETF 126, I’m feeling more than a little overwhelmed with all the heat and so very little light.

2026-07-12 14:00:51 GMT

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I’d have to agree with @npub15ql…c4kz . PKI does a lot of heavy lifting, and goodness knows if you dig deep enough, everything in cybersecurity feels like it is a key management problem. That said, when it comes to the private key being your identity, which identity? Your legal identity in the eyes of the government? Your employee identity in the eyes of your employer(s)? Generating sub-keys from a primary key to cover all the contexts in which you’d need to prove something would turn into a key management problem very quickly, and most people aren’t prepared to handle that. People want whatever end product or service they’re trying to prove themselves to; they do not want to put thought into managing a raft of keys.