As someone who worked at an early ISP and later has moved onto working on the plumbing for the Internet, this NY Times article with @pluralistic and Tim Wu captures a lot of What Went Wrong. And while a lot of the ecosystem gives rise to despair, the Internet's plumbing is largely still okay […]

A trivial example about the toxicity of today's Internet is the set of scammers sending out "we want to buy your business" mails. They're all using the same recipe, and burn a new domain and put forth a fake VP for each email. I'm up to 24 blocked domains in six months. In each case, the […]

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@morattisec/115929249640927958 Aren't we a little early in the plot-line for the Nam-Shub of Enki?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116054214682139683 My first computer was a Commodore 64. A great deal of my early computing experience was buying magazines and typing in stuff from the articles. And there's a lot of lingering sense memory from the art in those zines.

ai, didn't read. brilliant. #artificialintelligence #AI

RE: https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116053409147777228 The lack of proper "friend list" control of who can interact with your posts is my biggest gripe about current mastodon.

RE: https://tech.lgbt/@jyn/115978810910012039 The highest quality developers you'll find are usually the ones you grow yourself.

RE: https://social.secret-wg.org/@olaf/116042005154296464 I tend to send such things to my domain's /dev/null interface when it wants a real domain.

RE: https://mastodon.me.uk/@mort/116031920390698961 A nice summary on some of the issues related to lawful access; AKA intentionally broken privacy. In computer networking, such systems have been exploited to compromise systems beyond those that are intended to be the "lawful" parties in […]

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mitchellh/116031529238351318 One of the biggest bit of collateral damage you get from bad actors is a degradation in Trust in your network. Small networks can build that trust directly. Large and diffuse networks require trusted connectors to provide introductions and […]

As I stare at the most recent "Our service prices are going up!" e-mail, the math of it made my brain itch. The usual late night TV infomercial voice will try to sell you something with, "Pay for 12 months, get the 13th one free!" I realized that every single price increase could be framed as […]

The word "coping" has been getting passed around a lot right now. It's appropriate. It doesn't mean that things are fine. It just means you're "dealing with it" however you can. And that's okay. Bonus points if we help each other deal with it. #coping

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jwz/115923532606708182 And, frankly, helping to rip out unnecessary javascript features to reduce the attack surface of that monstrosity.

Wilhoit’s Law states: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Nothing says "We don't trust the US" quite like turning off Bluetooth, en masse. Denmark Orders Public Officials to Turn Off Their Bluetooth Due to High Risk of Being Spied on by U.S. Intelligence Denmark Orders Public Officials to Turn Off Their Bluetooth Due to High Risk of Being Spied on by U […]

It's true that when a government becomes tyrannical it is the duty of the citizens to overthrow it and form a new one. It's just that the people who have been saying it in my lifetime have been saying it in response to stuff like the existence of Hannukah, and Black people, and the Spanish language.

The money quote: "Those who become anti-government extremists when there’s a Democrat in the White House have seamlessly transitioned to becoming pro-government extremists" There was always a chunk of the Gadsen flag crowd that were old school big-L Libertarian that were the "leave me alone" […]

RE: https://mstdn.social/@ricardoharvin/115917931791144780 Act Blue got burner emails on my email domain that I was able to blackhole. But at some point I was clumsy enough to have listed my mobile#. They're responsible for 90% of my text spam. #actbluedelendaest

Forty years ago, 21 people gathered for the first meeting of what became the Internet Engineering Task Force or #ietf . Every day billions of people use the open standards and technologies developed in the IETF. And nearly 8000 volunteer IETF participants from around the world collaborate in […]

I published this fictional scenario planning piece about mitigating a hypothetical newsroom raid yesterday. It feels a lot more relevant today. https://werd.io/the-zurich-protocol/

One of the toilets in the house was leaking. Water near the base of it and a loose bolt, suggested the wax ring was damaged as part of the toilet moving. After six failed attempts to address the problem, using new-style silicone seals, a professional plumber was called. The plumber […]

RE: https://planet.moe/@Adam_Howard/115868710687516270 Everyone keeps assuming that if Donald Trump leaves office, that things will be OK, again. They're ignoring the fact that they were not OK, before. #donaldtrump #trump #ice #justice

Mastodon / Fediverse is the only social network that doesn't flood me with rage when I open it, so I'm just gonna hang out here for a while.

RE: https://tech.lgbt/@fay59/115820976457239705 Ah. Engineers.

Agrivoltaics boost crop yields even when the solar panels aren’t generating power. New research from Canada shows that shading crops with elevated solar panels creates a cooler, wetter microclimate that can lift yields and improve performance across dozens of crops, from peppers to pasture grass […]

[🧵] There's been a bit of a scare running through the meme-sphere about US postal service post marks. "It is true that the USPS updated its DMM regarding postmarks, but officials stressed it didn't change any existing postmarking practices." The important thing is if you're concerned about […]

Article on how to subscribe to your Apple calendar on CalDAV systems, including clients such as Thunderbird. Useful to help integrate Linux systems and similar with your Apple environment. https://adamijak.github.io/posts/calendar-sync/ #apple #calendaring

I find my content on Mastodon to be both more informative, and often more disturbing, than the stuff I get on FB. But I'm more bothered by the FB content - it feels more toxic. I'd speculate that in addition to the self selection I'm getting from my Mastodon […] [Original post on a2mi.social]

Red velvet crinkle cookies. Recipe: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/red-velvet-crinkle-cookies/ #christmascookies

RE: https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/115759309140971638 A habit my friends who are better editors have to push me out of is "burying the lead" / lede. This is a useful acronym to remind me of how I should be writing my papers.

Chris wanted a different variety of sugar cookies this year. So, instead of the butter cream frosted variety, this one is a lofty sugar-sprinkled one. As a variant, he also wanted to see what happened if we used sugar in the raw instead of simple beet sugar. A […] [Original post on a2mi.social]

Pushing back the darkness. #longestnight

"Let us be the repository of your passkeys" and "We may terminate your account at any time and permanently refuse to communicate with you" ... seems like a bad combination?

Three days ago my neighbors suffered a power outage from a transformer that exploded. I've received emails that last two days from #dte touting their reliability improvements in the area. One of these things is not like the others.

This Thursday, December 11, a sweet garden companion for 11 years - Winnie, and blue ajuga reptans photographed on April 16, 2025. #floweradventcalendar #Bloomscrolling #gardenadventcalendar

"This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calles an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes." The corollary to this is that in a healthy ecosystem, the […]

Friends, if you, your colleagues, or your organization has the means, especially if you've gotten some value out of rpki-client (also OpenBGPD or StayRTR), please consider donating to the non-profit Route Server Support Foundation (RSSF) to keep the software coming. This is the important […]

RE: https://pouet.chapril.org/@dallo/115641711239395703 A general reminder that "your" device that includes work stuff is not really yours. Seriously, keep a separate work device and drop it into a Faraday cage when you're not using it.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/115633791960750253 #advertisingruinseverything

RE: https://ohai.social/@GIFS_of_Puppets/115633363172291331 Xander, don't speak Latin in front of the books. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyPhX-geVfw

With the holidays upon us, it's easy to default to giving the tech gifts that retailers tend to push on us this time of year: smart speakers, video doorbells, bluetooth trackers, fitness trackers, and other connected gadgets are all very popular gifts. But before you give one, think twice about […]

RE: https://aus.social/@decryption/115538708151279106 So, that XKCD 2347 comic everyone is fond of citing? Yeah, these guys are one of those small bricks. Consider donating. Encourage vendors using their stuff to also donate.

RE: https://social.secret-wg.org/@julf/115626870293764758 I'm waiting for the traditional purveyors of DDoS "services" to start offering "AI scraping" as a service. As someone that works on routing technologies, it's things like this that will eventually start driving #splinternet partitioning […]

Some snow for US Thanksgiving.

An unexpected report this morning that one of the few schools of craft brewing in North America is relocating from Chicago to Montréal. Taking into account the challenges of moving to a Francophone jurisdiction in another country that itself is experiencing a reduction in the cap of […]

BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. 🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states. This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺

Centralised platforms shape the conversation to serve their interests. Mastodon returns power to you. Here connections are authentic, communities set their own rules, and your voice isn’t for sale. Help to power the servers, tools, and communities making […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Log face.