For an assignment, I've asked students to produce two different Python programs with the same MD5 hash that behave differently (without depending on things like file names). I gave them two 5-line programs to start with that have the same hash.

This is so gross. Teachers are out here buying snacks and books for their students and you want to give these ghouls another chunk of taxpayer money. On top of the overtime and toy budget. On top of the 6 digit public salary. Just gross.

I'm writing an NSF grant proposal now. How do I justify spending my time writing proposals to an agency that is targeted for a greater than 50% budget cut, has made almost no new awards in 2026, and clearly is being destroyed from the inside out according to the Russ Vought playbook?

I sent a classified letter to House and Senate colleagues about a secret interpretation of surveillance law that every American should be concerned about. Representative Massie is right. The Constitution requires EVERY member to vote against a clean reauthorization.

Published a blog post about how I got my congressperson to convince SFO to change their illegal mandatory biometrics collection blog.yomna.net/opting-out-o...

Hey, look at Substack promoting Andrew Tate as the #1 new bestseller. The company's amoral leadership & backers will platform anyone, even ludicrously toxic rapists & human traffickers.

I want to do a bigger BADBOOL update this month so if you have requests, now is the time! You can post here but ALSO file a pull request or send me an email with BADBOOL in the subject line or it may get lost in the ether. github.com/yaelwrites/B... [email protected]

Drew it. Experiments with colored pencil (& sharpie for some black). 🔭🐡

EFF is finally leaving X and here is a blog post about why: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

The next Murderbot is out on May 5 www.barnesandnoble.com/w/platform-d...

We cannot allow him to wipe out a civilization. And I also worry that if he opts for devastating air strikes that don't involve nuclear weapons, it will somehow be reported as "cooler heads prevailing". No, that's unacceptable. It's all unacceptable and he has to be removed from having these powers.

This is a supervillain monlogue. I will never understand how anyone can watch this man say things like “a whole civilization will die tonight” and fail to recognize evil when they see it.

When I went to bed last night about 03:00 EDT, the Orion capsule only had 3 working PCDs (the tablets) and Outlook still wasn't working properly. Did those ever get resolved? (Yes, I stayed up very late watching the moon mission. Also, my cats were doing this.)

Me to my wife (showing off my 13 move premove win against the @chess.com Yoko Ono bot): I have the white pieces.

We encourage undergraduate, master’s, and early-stage PhD students interested in programming languages to apply for PLMW at PLDI 2026. It is a great opportunity to learn from researchers, build connections, and explore future directions in PL. Apply here: pldi26.sigplan.org/home/PLMW-PL...

Human banner at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, as part of Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” protests
 🎥 Adam Pardee/for SFGATE

And, instead, NYT comms is insisting that they know the position of the AMA better than the AMA itself!?! How does this serve the readers of the New York Times, who deserve to understand WHAT THE ACTUAL POSITION OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION is?

I feel genuinely flabbergasted by the defiantly anti-journalistic approach of NYT Comms here. They're saying the NYT's reporting on the stance of the American Medical Association is correct, despite the American Medical Association saying their stance is different from what NYT reported.

"On April 24 we'll start using GitHub Copilot interaction data for AI model training unless you opt out." Hmm

I’m EFF’s next Executive Director! So proud to take the torch from Cindy Cohn and lead @eff.org forward in its next chapter. Here’s the link to the EFF announcement – www.eff.org/press/releas... Together, we can meet the challenges and keep building a future where technology works for the people.

oh so TSA agents are being pieces of shit FOR FREE

I quietly read this aloud to my wife just now in the vet waiting room (routine check up/shots) in rural OH. (Jim Jordan’s former district for what that’s worth.) A woman in the waiting room responded, “Hell yeah!”

The cats are eating crumbs from each other’s bowl. Neither cat was interested in eating their own crumbs.

I applied to a few places for grad school. Mixed acceptance and rejection (2 and 4 respectively). Stanford’s rejection was the funniest. Its application cost the most and the rejection was the least personal, “Dear applicant.” Everywhere else at least used mail merge to use my name.

Apropos of nothing, I'll say again for the record that the world is a better place without Kirk in it.

I'm kind of just farting around the house today, so why not I turn this into and ask me anything? If anyone out there has serious and sincere questions about what they need to use an EV, please ask away.

The thing is people were pleading with Mainers MONTHS ago to find another progressive candidate to support that didn't have a Nazi tattoo and the response was just "lol no."

this cartoon from 2017 was allegedly satire but there's absolutely a decent chance he'd do it, given the opportunity

i know bsky is not full of Technical Linux Enjoying Dorks like myself, but i am boosting this here for added reach plz feel free to comment below if you have any recs/any good experiences with hosting services and folk

Trying AI again. I gave ChatGPT 5.3 some POSIX-specific Python code and asked for a portable version. The response was code that could hang if a likely sequence of events occurs. It pointed out this possibility as a "would you like to see an obscure bug similar software sometimes has?"

Why is @jamellebouie.net so good at this? He's a frustratingly competent political analyst. Just extraordinary. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXZv...

English speakers who play chess love to import words/terms from other languages. E.g., luft, intermezzo, zwischenzug, zugzwang, and en prise. I’d like to suggest we adopt kachi-koshi/make-koshi. Example usage: A: How’d you do in the tournament? B: Not great, I got a make-koshi.

These Senate Democrats are selling out every citizen of the US that has resisted the Trump regime. They will vote for Trump nominees. But how many will show up at NoKings protests, how many went to Minneapolis to lead the people? Everyone on this list must be primaried.

Environmental Hero Makes Fossil Fuels Too Expensive for Anyone to Keep Using: tinyurl.com/yc6m5fzk

RIP Tony Hoare, March 5 2026, age 92 blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/03/tony...

We can vote this privileged moral cipher out of office in November, Ohio.

Great. Another way to hide disfavored content from adults.

Ok, but why is Graham Platner actually a thing? Wtf is wrong with yall?

New — My case for why it’s not enough to call this “Trump’s war” when violence abroad implicates us all, and how we don’t need hindsight to know that unequivocally opposing this war will be the correct (and only morally defensible) choice:

Her trip to Ireland was ruined by this one question?? Gee, I wonder why…

I have a fun pen and paper return-oriented programming activity. I give students 11 sequences of instructions ending in ret and ask students to construct 5 higher-level gadgets. checkoway.net/teaching/cs3... I also have the same thing in code: checkoway.net/teaching/cs3...

YOOOOOOO fucking KNUTH dropped a lil note on a problem of his being solved w/claude y'alllllll

A fantastic rundown from @jamellebouie.net about what it means to live through Republican governance. "We elected a Republican president, and the Republican president is doing things that Republican presidents do." www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tEX...

Every so often @chess.com releases new bots. The Yoko Ono bot is the most interesting I've seen. Both sides play with white pieces. (Deleted and reposted to add alt text. First time I've forgotten. My bad.)

I can't respond to Gita's thread here bsky.app/profile/xoxo... but I want to note that the response to the final "Shut the fuck up" directed at Bouie by Martin was especially gross. I thought that @evanurquhart.bsky.social had a good take on the whole thing. Going back to my own lane now.

Yeah this has been bothering me for a while. Bouie is able to be wrong about things, that’s not in dispute. But I have experienced the sheer glee people get when they can tell a black person “um actually” and like, people truly salivate at the chance.

Kansas is sending letters to trans people telling them that their licenses will be revoked as of tomorrow and that they risk arrest for driving on a suspended license. This is pure cruelty. www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

Random memes from like a decade ago.

This sad tale is the most American story ever. You have a non-violent refugee, in need of help. You have racist neighbors, calling the cops on him. You have violent cops, beating him for "not complying" by not dropping his "weapon" (walking stick) then claiming they were hurt. Then abuse by ICE.