Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
interlisp@fosstodon.org ("The Medley Interlisp Project") wrote:

We welcome to the fediverse @squeak Squeak/Smalltalk, an open source project that descends from the seminal work on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC in the 1970s and 1980s. Interlisp was born in the same PARC environment that originated these and other innovative technologies.

https://squeak.org

#smalltalk #parc #xerox #retrocomputing

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

If you enjoy seeing the engineering and maintenance behind big infrastructure, this video is probably an enjoyable watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzM1hpnXux4

(It's also available on nebula if that's your thing.)

I watch things like this and am reminded we *can* do big, audacious things and maintain it for the long haul, we just have to want to. Obviously, not every big, audacious piece of social infrastructure is a gigantic, readily visible bridge, but still.

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

ChatGPT: you're right you are so smart! and attractive and kind, too. all your ideas are the best

Normie: 😵‍💫 you're right that's so nice I should go crazy now

My negative self-talk: (drawing its high-collared black cloak around itself, standing up from its obsidian throne to its full 2-meter height, and squinting at the output) SILENCE, CLANKER. BEGONE.

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
david_chisnall@infosec.exchange ("David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)") wrote:

Today's instalment of 'people who criticise #Signal should understand why Signal made specific choices and provide better solutions to those problems':

Signal uses a phone number to sign up (boo, PII!). This serves three primary purposes:

The one I don't really like is that it limits account-creation rate for antispam purposes. This is largely a problem because Signal conflates identifiers (your phone number or username) with capabilities: anyone who has your identity can contact you, there's no way of saying 'this person may add me but does not have any token that allows them to pass on the ability to contact me'. And this is a thing that should be table stakes for any messenger, but isn't something I've seen done well anywhere.

More importantly, it enables discovery. In a world where most people used SMS, WhatsApp grew rapidly by reusing this identifier. If you had a contact list of people you used SMS to talk to, WhatsApp would automatically create a contact list with everyone who was already in your contact list. That's how WhatsApp grew to a billion users in a few years. Apple's iMessage copied this flow. Signal added some attempt at making this privacy preserving (though the space of valid phone numbers is so small that it's not hard to exhaustively enumerate it) and ideally they'd have some protocol so that you could find people by phone number only if you, specifically, were allowed to (some kind of zero-knowledge system that checked that both of you had the other in their contacts).

This isn't just a marketing things. Growing the network rapidly is important for privacy. Privacy cares a lot about the concept of an anonymity set: the set of users that might be mistaken for you. If you're using something like XMPP, with a one-user server, your anonymity set is just you: any message from your server comes from you. If you're using a server with a hundred users, it's fairly easy to correlate messages sent from a client to the server with messages sent from the server elsewhere (even if they're end-to-end encrypted) because normal humans don't send messages all of the time and so there will be moderately long periods (seconds, if not minutes) where you're the only one sending messages. If you're on a server with a million users, there will be very few times when you're the only person sending a message and so this kind of correlation is hard. But, since Snowden, we know that at least one (and I would be shocked if it is exactly one) nation state is routinely running this kind of correlation, so this is something that any private messenger needs to consider in scope.

What about other identifiers? The theory with XMPP was that email providers would also offer XMPP and you'd use the same identifier for both. Yay! Except most email providers didn't (except, briefly, gmail), so now you had two different identifiers that looked the same for reaching you. And here's the sad fact: most people don't have email addresses in their systemwide address book. They have mail clients that remember people they've contacted before. Unless they give your app access to their email account (and they absolutely should not be encouraged to give messenger apps access to their email), you can't get a list of email addresses for contacts (and, if you do, it will also include a load of companies and probably spammers). So it doesn't work as a discovery mechanism.

The final one is recovery. If you can't log into Signal, you can reacquire the account with a SIM and a passcode. Getting a replacement SIM is normally easy. You could do this with email but most people have free email from a single provider. A phone number is something that you pay for but the free emails come with no guarantee of service and can be cancelled at any time without giving reason. Email-based recovery is nice to have as an alternative option but for most people it's strictly worse (in fact, their email address probably has an SMS-based recovery flow!).

So, if you want to criticise Signal for using phone numbers, please do! I don't like it. I think there are better solutions to these things.

But don't pitch your favourite messenger as better than Signal because it doesn't need a phone number unless you come with an explanation of how you solve those problems. And if you do have a better solution to those problems, don't bother comparing to Signal, tell me about why your messenger is amazing because it has good solutions to those problems!

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

today I am thinking about this because "crippling self doubt" seems like a maladaptive psychological feature but increasingly it seems like me and my anxious and depressed homies with chronically poor self-esteem are going to be the only ones with the metacognitive critical faculties to survive without developing AI psychosis into the next decade

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

the most important lesson of evolution is that it's not survival of the best, only survival of the fittest. and fitness is situational, you only get to be fit *for* a particular environment. which means that "useless" attributes can become fit when the environment changes

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
carapace ("Simon Forman") wrote:

111111111² = 12345678987654321

So that's neat.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
bcallah@bsd.network ("Dr. Brian Callahan") wrote:

A wild #blog post appears!

I discuss a new #research publication: an empirical evaluation of the #OpenBSD -fret-clean flag. We examine the history of the mitigation, measure its costs, and deliberate whether or not it is worth keeping.

Worth the read if you like security and/or compilers.

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20260811.html

#freebsd #netbsd #dragonflybsd #bsd #linux #unix #solaris #illumos #compiler #compilers #llvm #gcc #rop #cybersecurity #cybersec #cyber #security #infosec #informationsecurity

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

grrrrs at the idris coverage checker

Boosted by andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt"):
thelatestkate@mastodon.art ("The Latest Kate") wrote:

⋆。 ̊ ☁︎ ̊。⋆。 ̊☽ ̊。⋆

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker 🔜 Megaplex"):
thatkatharine@ohai.social wrote:

If you see a headline that says "air purifiers don't work," read the report to find out if the air purifiers were even turned on and running properly.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/can-air-purifiers-prevent-flu-and-covid-19-nursing-homes-only-if-they-re-used-properly

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker 🔜 Megaplex"):
transcendentempress@eldritch.cafe ("Jennifer 🏳️‍⚧️") wrote:

If you need to deactivate half of the system settings, uninstall dozen of useless pre installed stuff, get into registry and/or group policies to change things you have no clue what it does you're just following online guides, just to make Windows 11 acceptably annoying, then the whole "yeah but Linux is harder to setup" has poorly aged pretty fast.

andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt") wrote:

Something I've been working on recently to improve testing around dependencies: https://github.com/alpha-omega-security/hyrum

Reuses a lot of pieces of git-pkgs and scrutineer

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
laemeur@mastodon.sdf.org ("LÆMEUR") wrote:

I've put the first eight pages of Battlers of Durra: Soulstone of The Ur-Lich online as a bit of a teaser, while I shop the book around to publishers. If anyone wants to have a look, it's here: https://laemeur.com/Durra/Soulstone

For those unfamiliar with "Battlers..." here's the project brief on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/laemeur/posts/project-brief-of-155411510

#illustration #comics #art #storybook

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

Looks like they finally shipped key transparency in Signal:

https://signal.org/blog/automatic-key-verification/

aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart") wrote:

We're sorry, raging against the machine is no longer an acceptable use since the move to token-based billing. If you wish to rage against the machine, please use your personal account on your own devices.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
rysiek@mstdn.social ("Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦") wrote:

Human in the loop.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
grickle@mstdn.social ("Grickle") wrote:

A fresh new comic up for my Witch & Wizard series at Webtoons! The daily mundane existence of a couple who've been together for centuries! Along with their pet bat dog, Sarcophagus! What's not to like? https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/witch-and-wizard/rainy-day-part-one/viewer?title%5Fno=1158430&episode%5Fno=2&readingLanguageCode=en #grickledoodle #witch #wizard #pet #fantasy #relationships #comic

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
zzt@mas.to ("[object Object]") wrote:

and again I’ll point out how fucking quick this shit is happening

torvalds posts a defense of AI slop in the kernel with a right-wing conspiracy theory as the reason

a bunch of other open source projects just go “well the kernel says it’s ok so we’re doing slop now”

barely a couple of weeks later the kernel is changing its release cadence and quality standards entirely and the man in charge is shrugging and literally going “what can you do”

you can cut the crap, asshole. it’s your literal job to cut the crap.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Who is this guy, where did he come from, how did he get entangled with Jeffrey Epstein?

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/08/11/who-is-adam-bly/

Boosted by jwz:
sundogplanets ("Prof. Sam Lawler") wrote:

COOL apparently the American Astronomical Society journals (the Astrophysical Journal/Astronomical Journal/Planetary Science Journal) have refused to even review our article on satellite brightnesses (already posted on arxiv https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.02757) because it's outside the scope of astronomy. Time to go rage-scream out in the hayfield, I guess.

Boosted by jwz:
spaf@mstdn.social wrote:

You've probably seen commentary or video of OpenAI engineers explaining the Hugging Face breach. Here's a video from the LLM agents' point of view about what happened (watch 0:48 to 3:22).

https://youtu.be/tCHKIdup5Lo?t=48

The Yip Yip Martians got there first; Sesame Street brought to you by the letters A and I.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
tpushic@beige.party ("TPushic") wrote:

For anyone in Pittsburgh looking for work, there’s a new restaurant at 5th Ave place dahntahn right by the Gateway T stop

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
KimPerales@toad.social ("Kim Perales") wrote:

"We're🚨LEGAL PERM RESIDENTS WITH VALID GREEN CARDS. My husband, E Hashemi, is also a professor, & has DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO MENTORING PhD students in Bus Psych dept...

...even when we decided to make the difficult decision to asked to be allowed to voluntarily leave the US—the place🚨we consider our country & our home—the govt🚨not only opposed it but suggested:💔it'd appeal any judic decisions that grant us departure..."
#Islamophobia #DHS #ICE #DeathCamps
#Uprising #USPol
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/maryam-tahmasebi-iran-ice-essay/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
alan@lighthouse.co.im wrote:

A UK ham setting sail across the North Atlantic with a low-power T114 quietly ticking away on the ship's bridge is absolute peak ham radio behavior. That is easily one of the most interesting 4-hop catches you'll log on a handheld V3.

thoughts?
#meshtastic

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
neurovagrant@masto.deoan.org ("Ian Campbell 🏴") wrote:

Here's the thing about this implementation:

https://www.newsweek.com/new-orleans-ai-911-calls-other-cities-12303090 (via @AAKL )

It relies on an approach of complacency that's killed people in the past.

One of the things that good 911 training emphasizes, and continuing education *has* to broach, is that you can ALWAYS, ALWAYS have two separate incidents at the same time that sound like the same thing but aren't.

If you assume that from the start - or let an automated system do that - you are again flying completely in the face of good, experienced emergency dispatch posture.

Just hire enough dispatchers and pay them a good enough wage.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
faraiwe@mstdn.social ("Faraiwe") wrote:

Srsly, well over half of the problems in my life are caused by 80yo toddlers.

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
vees@jawns.club ("Rob Carlson") wrote:

No workstation is perfect but as usual this situation comes pretty close

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
chrisod@social.lol ("COD") wrote:

Do I know anyone with enterprise ESRI/ArcGIS skills? Working on a proposal for a municipal website redesign, and it's got a heavy GIS component to the work. If that is you and you are potentially available for freelance work, DM me your LinkedIn profile or resume.

I'm desperately trying to avoid posting this on LinkedIn.

#FediHire

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
uglyreykjavik.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Ugly Reykjavik") wrote:

It's time for another week of objects rusting in nature. Here we have some very old farm equipment.

#Iceland #photography #streetphotography #nature #landscape #naturephotography #landscapephotography #abandoned #decay #countryside #rural #rust