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brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:") wrote:

Turns out there are whole swathes of drama I get to miss with my new GoToSocial setup.

Yay!

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
miss_rodent@girlcock.club ("V") wrote:

@soatok Honestly, physics doesn't require being like Albert Einstein, nor math like Tao, either.
A lot of "smart people" fields are things anyone with the internal-motivation/curiosity/passion for, and sufficient opportunity and resources to learn it, can do very well.
The 'special trait' associated with it is usually 'really loves math' rather than 'is smarter than you'

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

I don't drink alcohol but at furry room parties I'm known to ask for something stiff

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

All of this was made much easier because the automations, naming, and areas were already beautifully laid out and gardened thanks to @phae. Makes it that much easier to be the monkey turning the proverbial wrench.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
jupiter@mastodon.gamedev.place ("Juno Jove") wrote:

@soatok Be pure of heart, and dumb of ass.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

When I went to the LGBTQ+ lunch at Real World Cryptography in my fursuit a couple years ago, and then decided to take a stroll around the conference space in suit before the next session began, several highly esteemed cryptographers greeted me and were unashamedly friendly.

I'm sure I got a few scowls or puzzled glances too. I don't remember. I did take a selfie with @filippo though!

https://soatok.blog/2025/04/17/retrospective-five-years-blogging-about-cryptography-as-a-gay-furry-online/

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Moved ~50 devices from SmartThings to HA (a mix of older and newer switches, sensors, etc.), and it feels *so* good to have the ST hub out of the loop. More ports back on the switch, lower latency overall, and it turned out that ST wasn't even patching firmware on all the devices, which HA is dutifully attending to now.

I wish HA had a global-entity-replacement feature so that when you're updating an automation it would also update the same entities in your dashboards, but not a big deal.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

But let's be real: At least 10% of my reason for doing any of this is because I'm a shitlord at heart.

Do you know how funny it is for folks at cryptography conferences to be like, "Oh I helped design the Keccak permutation that became SHA-3 and later went on to work on sponge-based authenticated ciphers?"

And to want in that moment to be like, "I have a blog. It has stickers!"

You have to be willing to make a total fool of yourself for your own amusement to understand me at all.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

(I included Tao in the last post mostly as a joke because, despite his success in mathematics, he comes across as humble and approachable in everything he writes, and I admire that.)

You can do this too.

Maybe don't roll your own crypto today. That's a team project anyway.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

Whenever I'm confronted by these sorts of judgments, I'm never quite sure how to feel (let alone react).

Like, sure, it's flattering. I can take compliments!

(If by "take" you actually mean "skillfully deflect", heh. :P)

But I don't like the weird framing it implies.

Cryptography isn't hard because you need to be part of the Special Boys Club of Mega Geniuses.

(I guess they call that Mensa?)

Cryptography is hard because it can go wrong in a lot of subtle ways, many of which fail silently while offering false confidence that puts people in harm's way.

Cryptography requires training, discipline, and a deep curiosity to keep up-to-date with new attacks and blind spots in earlier designs.

It doesn't require being, like, Terrance Tao or Albert Einstein.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

Pulling off a career switch isn't easy, and it requires some degree of privilege to be successful at all, but it's possible. "We have the technology", except not entirely ironic.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

None of what I described requires a bigger or more special brain to do. Hell, almost anyone can pull this off if they have the right opportunities and invest the time to learn it.

In 2020, I wrote a series to help people get into tech.

https://soatok.blog/furward-momentum-starting-and-growing-an-open-source-project/

Most of what still works today (current job market being what it is) isn't the hard skills part, it's the first step of building a support system.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

But it's also just... not true of me at all?

I'm a dumbass quite often. I'm just not afraid to be a dumbass, nor am I in denial about my tendency to make blunders.

My job title is some variant of "Security Engineer"; has been for many years now.

Security Engineering is related to Safety Engineering.

Both disciplines are about studying Failure.

Understanding how systems fail is half of my job. The other half is a weird form of group therapy.

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

At the top of the list, blogging about cryptography is something I do, in part, because excessive gatekeeping is counterproductive and even toxic.

See https://soatok.blog/2021/03/04/no-gates-no-keepers/ for more on the subject ^^

soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

This week, something reminded me of a weird experience I've had over the years.

I was probably intending to blog about it at some point, but it's a difficult topic to cover without sounding weirdly self-congratulatory, and I kind of hate that tone. I dunno, maybe it's from years of working in tech? :V

One of the hazards you'll face if you share any of my hobbies or interests is other people--well-meaning, honest, and usually very kind people--praising your apparent "intelligence".

This has also come up a few times indirectly, where friends would be like, "So I asked my [very technically respected] friend about you, and they said cryptography is only for mega-geniuses."

This sort of experience, however it manifests, makes me feel uncomfortable for many reasons.

db@social.lol ("David Bushell 🪿") wrote:

dear [whomever needs to hear this]:

stop trying to make IPv6 happen on my local machine/network

"Listening on http://[::1]:8000" 🙄

Boosted by andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt"):
michelin@hachyderm.io ("Michel Lind :fedora: :debian:") wrote:

@andrewnez @gvwilson @fedora is planning to use

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Adopt%5FPURL%5FMetadata

which is at the very least SBOM adjacent.

We find that otherwise each packaging ecosyatem has its own way of specifying dependencies, and this makes it harder for security teams to flag issues accurately

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
roguecnidarian@meemu.org ("Industrial Gender Accident") wrote:

I love how, because I specifically and on purpose don't have a license that includes Copilot, Microsoft puts a nasty little button in the title bar of every Office application encouraging me to "upgrade" to get more "features" (the "feature" is Copilot)

This is in addition to throwing out HIG and sticking window elements in the title bar its self. Where do I click and drag??

The button is not removable. I guess not unless you give Microsoft significantly more money.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:

I don't drink alcohol but at furry room parties I'm known to ask for something stiff

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

Added myself to https://handcraftedcode.org/. I've had an idea that something like this would be nice to have, and I'm glad someone started it. And who knows, it may fall into neglect before long, but it's not reason not to try.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
nolan@toot.cafe ("Nolan Lawson") wrote:

"The mean means nothing" by Farid Zakaria https://fzakaria.com/2026/07/27/the-mean-means-nothing

This is the kind of stuff you learn when you go really deep on performance. The visualizations are excellent too.

Boosted by neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik"):
lauren@social.lol ("Lauren Herda") wrote:

I've never seen The West Wing, so I decided to watch a couple episodes. GODDAMN, this is the competency porn I need right now (with an extra shot of nostalgia for the way they used to make television). It's ironic that I'll be binging it on a streaming service during such an incredibly incompetent era as the one we live in now.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
slowe@mastodon.me.uk ("Stuart :progress_pride:") wrote:

I once played a very brief game of cricket in the Lovell Telescope (after a resurface but before it got properly tuned) because we wanted to recreate a scene from The Dish. We used a tennis ball to avoid damage. The Chief Engineer was wicket keeper. I'm bowling.

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen") wrote:

@NfNitLoop 🤐

NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️‍🌈") wrote:

My husband is outside washing the car. He's using a power washer and/or vacuum. And he has headphones on, and is (scream-)singing along with whatever he's listening to.

I bet he assumes that with the walls between us, and the sound of the washer/vacuum, I can't hear him. But I can and it makes me happy he's enjoying himself. 🥰

But I can't let him *know* I can hear him, or he'll get self-conscious and stop. So let's just keep it between you and me. 😉

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
isagalaev@social.seattle.wa.us ("Ivan Sagalaev") wrote:

The way to make it happen is, of course, donate. This week is a make or break for the July goal of $10,000: and they are just $1,340 shy of it!

Head over to https://wholewashington.org/donate/ and help make it happen! This will be a huge precedent, if it works out.

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
isagalaev@social.seattle.wa.us ("Ivan Sagalaev") wrote:

Y'all didn't ask, but here's some news from @WholeWashington — the group working on making universal healthcare happen in WA.

Their new goal is to put their initiative on the ballot, as opposed to trying to go through legislature. My own very personal opinion from watching legislative work is that it's a very, very efficient mechanism of not letting anything happen. Hence the ballot. In WA, one a ballot measure passes, it becomes really hard to ignore.

So let's make it happen! 1/2

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

this is really sad. vandalism of shared memory. all the diffs are unavailable now. it claims that edits made after the wiki migration work, but they don't.

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

maaaaaaan even meatball wiki got AI'd

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
gsuberland@chaos.social ("Graham Sutherland / Polynomial") wrote:

I'm looking for a new job.

I've been in security for 13 years. I spent the last year at Trail of Bits doing code reviews and security assessments on desktop/web apps, kernelmode code, and firmware. I co-wrote the C/C++ testing handbook we published recently, contributing the Windows usermode and kernel sections. I've got strong hardware skills and industrial experience.

UK based but flexible on operating hours. Looking for similar work, full-time remote.

CV: https://poly.nomial.co.uk/graham%5Fsutherland.pdf

#fedihire