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I am really proud of this week's monster monsteroftheweek.ca/Storm_Crow…
silverwizard reshared this.

If you want a picture of the future of IT, imagine blocking TCP/IP ports and reinventing them. Forever. --TLS Mastery

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in reply to MWL Book Quote Bot Michael Lucas reshared this.

Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🕹 🙄
• •

@mwl I just today saw someone abusing websockets as a network layer, to recreate mail and some kind of remote object CORBA type thing.

SIGH.

@Michael Lucas
sungo reshared this.

I need a good beginner's guide to making images for random weird boards. I feel like no one writes it up because it's hard. I know nothing on the topic - but I have some weird boards with chips I know are supported by the kernels I like.

I think it's like "shove some stuff into uboot" - but I'd love a high level overview. Does that even exist?

in reply to silverwizard

RootWyrm 🇺🇦
RootWyrm 🇺🇦
• •

nobody writes it up because honestly, it's borderline impossible to distill into anything resembling that. For the overwhelming majority of Made in China stuff, it is absolutely impossible because you're quite literally dealing with pirated closed-source binary blobs.

No, seriously. Most of those boards do not have a valid license to the processor and rely on very specific versions because that's what they were able to pirate.

in reply to RootWyrm 🇺🇦

RootWyrm 🇺🇦
RootWyrm 🇺🇦
• •
a perfect example of this is the LePotato AMLogic boards. Basically none of them have a valid or legal license to the firmware. You HAVE to use incredibly specific versions of everything because of cryptographic signing and encryption, which not only can you not build, *they* can't build or obtain. DTB is completely worthless because the problem is the encryption and signing.
in reply to RootWyrm 🇺🇦

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@RootWyrm 🇺🇦 Oooooh I see. I'm looking at porting OpenBSD to random stuff.

So the issue is that the uboot needs to be signed? Or something else? I am - a person who is good at this stuff, but not done this specific stuff, so I'm just trying to understand which crypto is in use? Which firmware is this?

@RootWyrm 🇺🇦
in reply to silverwizard

RootWyrm 🇺🇦
RootWyrm 🇺🇦
• •

the issue is that the whole thing is a complete and utter shitshow that I couldn't begin to describe in toots.

For example, this is for AMLogic GXL:
github.com/repk/gxlimg

Except it requires specifically patched u-boot most of the time, and doesn't work anywhere near reliably. And that's before getting into how AWFUL u-boot actually is.

GitHub - repk/gxlimg: Boot Image creation tool for amlogic s905x (GXL)

Boot Image creation tool for amlogic s905x (GXL). Contribute to repk/gxlimg development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub
silverwizard reshared this.

Something that made me sad and kind of shocked me was the nice Canadian infosec people asking why senior cybersecurity people like me didn’t just immigrate to Canada. A lot of my friends tried, very hard, famous ones. You’re full, we are too old. Bless you, though 💜❤️‍🩹🙏

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in reply to Lesley Carhart

nixCraft 🐧
nixCraft 🐧
• •
Yeah, most people don’t realize how difficult it is to migrate when you are old or have limited savings. The stress it puts on someone is mind-blowing while taking on such migration tasks. I wish it were easier for people to move regardless of their circumstances. Everyone deserves a better chance of a peaceful life.
in reply to Lesley Carhart

BigDaddyzZz
BigDaddyzZz
• •

When I can't fill a position for an O365 Admin with experience implementing DLP for 9 months because the applicants are dentists from North Dakota or similar, I would patently argue with whomever told you we're full.

I would trade 15 (150?) "51st State" fans in exchange for one qualified applicant.

I would trade them all for the list of folks you mentioned on Thursday night...

silverwizard reshared this.

a website just ip-banned me for trying to recursively wget it and in the ban message it linked me to a torrent archive of the website to use instead

based

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in reply to >>>>>>> Ænðr E. Feldstraw reshared this.

tjhowse
tjhowse
• •
HA! We need a HTTP error code for "Content torrentable elsewhere".

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in reply to >>>>>>> John-Mark Gurney reshared this.

Jess👾
Jess👾
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TBH, I think that something similar could be a moderate less toxic way forward for (polite) LLM scrapers. Have a static cached version of the site that is pointed to in the robots.txt, which makes CDN caching easy.

Has anything ever been done with Websockets that makes the hell that is Websockets worth it?
in reply to Malin

silverwizard
silverwizard
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@Malin it's all around you! And I'm so sorry infecting you with the knowledge
@Malin
silverwizard reshared this.

I think that the thing that bums me out about LLM shit the most isn't the rampant theft required to build them; or the ludicrous amounts of energy required to run them; or even the money-boner it gives the capital class at the idea of being able to replace all human labor.

I think the thing that bums me out the most is that, with the massive amounts of bullshit being produced by it, it brings us closer to a world where everything sucks and no one gives a shit.

Like, I give a lot of shit. I take pride in the work I do for others. I try REALLY REALLY hard to give my full best effort at everything I do. But these LLMs seem to encourage a very "shit-it-and-ship-it" mentality around content generation and retch vibe coding

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in reply to Chrisshy Keygen

JP
JP
• •
this is strictly a "yes, and" from me, but: i would even go so far as to separate "effort" from "care and intention"; i actually like a lot of low-effort art and humor specifically because it captures creators' deeply human feelings of spontaneity and the raw desire to create. and a lot of LLM art is about "the aesthetics of high effort", eg meticulous detail that impresses people who don't actually know anything or give a shit about art.
in reply to JP

JP
JP
• •
i keep coming back to Ted Chiang's point that one of the biggest problems with LLM art is that it "reduces the amount of intention in the world". which is quite possibly in total accord with what you're saying here.
silverwizard reshared this.

EDIT: The role has been filled

My company is hiring a fully remote (USA) Python developer for web apps. Salary $75k-$90k USD.

careers.directemployers.org/in…

https://careers.directemployers.org/indianapolis-in/software-developer-backend/3114959CA93F4CC790DAEFF29FED5EE0/job/

DirectEmployers Association Jobs - All Jobs. DirectEmployers is a nonprofit association that offers scalable solutions for OFCCP compliance, recruitment marketing, diversity partnerships, and more.
careers.directemployers.org
This entry was edited (3 hours ago)

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Porn and Crime have mostly rejected LLMs and similar.

Abuse Imagery - porn which is just violence against women, instead of something ethical hasn't. The kind of porn where men can finally shut out women fully and do nothing but abuse. But that's not what people say when they say "porn is an innovator".

Romance novels haven't embraced LLMs.

We need to think about this - how are we using tools that have been rejected anyone in scrappy, innovative, and competitive markets.

Lukasz Olejnik

2025-04-10 13:25:35


No cyber threat actor has been found to use any public AI/LLM for serious cyberattack/cyberoperation goals. Unless they're trolling, because it is already possible to such tools in completely undetectable ways. Cybersecurity and LLM providers have no visibility here.

silverwizard reshared this.

No cyber threat actor has been found to use any public AI/LLM for serious cyberattack/cyberoperation goals. Unless they're trolling, because it is already possible to such tools in completely undetectable ways. Cybersecurity and LLM providers have no visibility here.

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R.L. Dane 🍵 reshared this.

One thing I really dislike, is the amount people think hosting data is hard.

People talk about needing dozens of cores or gigs of ram to host a database or a website. They get impressed by projects where someone runs a website from an Apple ][ or a pi0.

We, as free software advocates, need to remind people that the charger for a Macbook Pro is enough to run a website, not the Macbook Pro

in reply to silverwizard

🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦
🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦
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They landed on the moon with a computer that had less computing horsepower than that charger you mention.
chiasm reshared this.

We should keep our eyes on ICE and disappearances and look away from the tariffs.
silverwizard reshared this.

So much of cybersecurity is "We must secure the Orphan Crushing Machine so that unauthorized people do not crush the orphans," and not "Why the fuck are you building an Orphan Crushing Machine in the first place?"
in reply to evacide

lj·rk
lj·rk
• •

And then they extort you by saying: "Hey, but wouldn't you rather have an Orphan Crushing Machine that *didn't* accidentally leak the data of their parents in an incident, rather than one that did?"

And yes, the only answer to this is: Stop the madness and also stop collecting that data. But capitalism means you're right when you deliver shareholder value I guess.

in reply to evacide

Shaula Evans
Shaula Evans
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Yes! Related to this is the whole discourse of:

Experts: The Orphan Crushing Machine is crushing orphans. People need to know! We must stop this.

People: But but but I like the Orphan Crushing Machine! It's amusing. It solves a problem for me personally. It's cool. If you want to take away my Orphan Crushing Machine you're a killjoy, a bigot, a bad ally and a bad person.

Experts: Okay but the orphans--

People: Can't hear you, having too much fun with the OCM.

Orphans: *cronch*

silverwizard reshared this.

Related to last boost, one of these years I will write the blog post about how you shouldn't actually need or even *want* to restrict what version of each of your program's dependencies can be used and every piece of tooling that makes it easier to do this is solving the wrong problem

silverwizard reshared this.

silverwizard reshared this.

I don't mean to brag you guys but loads of companies really care about my privacy

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silverwizard reshared this.

My team (Observability) at Digital Ocean is hiring 🎉

This job is particularily suited for software ppl who somehow always liked platform engineering and operations.

Our stack: K3S, Argo, Cilium, Opensearch, Clickhouse, Kafka, Rsyslog, Victoria and OpenTelemetry.

Code: Go, a wee bit of Rust and shell scripts extensively. Everything is containerized.

We are "m" shaped engineers: platforming/coding/distributed systems/databases.

We are an informal team hacking happily whatever comes up :)

silverwizard reshared this.

not as dramatic as burning a library but just as effective
tweet from DOGE "The @USGSA IT team just saved $1M per year by converting 14,000 magnetic tapes (70 yr old technology for information storage) to permanent modern digital records."

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in reply to datenwolf datenwolf reshared this.

Jérôme Carretero
Jérôme Carretero
• •
@datenwolf @hyc
The arctic vault uses that (piql) also, but whether the 17th dimensional corner cutters at DOGE used anything else than an AWS service or /dev/null for their long-term data storage remains to be seen.
@datenwolf @Howard Chu @ Symas
in reply to Jérôme Carretero

datenwolf
datenwolf
• •
@cJ @hyc Yeah, thanks for reminding me, that a version of a library I wrote is archived there, that has an utterly embarrassing sign flip bug.
@Howard Chu @ Symas @Jérôme Carretero
RootWyrm 🇺🇦 reshared this.

Can we all agree that using Shopify is almost as bad as using Amazon?
silverwizard reshared this.

A simple drawing of a person wearing a crown and holding a heart in one hand. They are standing next to a sign that says “There are no tariffs on used goods. Buy secondhand. Reduce Reuse Remake.
in reply to Cyberpunk Librarian

calcifer
calcifer
• •

@c0debabe yes. And also used goods will get more expensive and harder to find because of the increased demand coupled with people doing arbitrage with used marketplaces.

Repair is going to get a lot more important unless something changes soon.

@c0de entity
in reply to calcifer

c0de entity
c0de entity
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@calcifer I've been looking at making my own clothing from crochet challenge stand point and I think there may be many reasons to.
@calcifer
in reply to c0de entity

calcifer
calcifer
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@c0debabe agreed. I see a lot of people talking about groceries and tech, but textiles and textile products are gonna take a big hit too. We make almost none.
@c0de entity
in reply to calcifer

aswack
aswack
• •
@calcifer @c0debabe
Yeah, unfortunately we are also glutted with mostly “fast fashion” garbage that isn’t durable at all. Luckily I can sew, so I can fix some things.
@c0de entity @calcifer

My three year old loves me dearly and wants to see me constantly. This is nice.

It also means I've been woken up by a smack to the face 5 out of the last 7 days so he could show me something.

Blah.

in reply to silverwizard

silverwizard
silverwizard
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Today he woke me up by cuddling, so this is an improvement and the ideal world
silverwizard reshared this.

Always “fun” to experience a new kind of financial crisis. 80s had the “deregulate until it breaks” crises. Dot-com was the “delusional tech bubble” crisis. 2008 was “deregulation tango part 2” crisis. 2020 was the “wtf pandemics can kill!?” crisis. Now the “deliberately smash everything” crisis

silverwizard reshared this.

in reply to Baldur Bjarnason

pettter
pettter
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Well it is _also_ a "delusional tech bubble" type crisis _and_ a "deregulate until it breaks", so it's a nice mix overall.
in reply to pettter

Baldur Bjarnason
Baldur Bjarnason
• •
@pettter Given what Kennedy is doing, we can probably add a pandemic crisis as well sooner or later 😭
@pettter
in reply to Baldur Bjarnason

Peter
Peter
• •
Really starting to feel like the "capitalism has finally done it and completely wrecked everything and we don't know what's next or how to reverse any of it fast enough; so, uh, I guess here be GIANT FUCKING DRAGONS" crisis. 🫠
This entry was edited (4 days ago)
silverwizard reshared this.

terrifying statements for anyone who understands this shit

Sensitive content

@Michael Lucas
in reply to Benno

2¢
2¢
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terrifying statements for anyone who understands this shit

Sensitive content

in reply to Benno

stony kark
stony kark
• •
ohhh don’t do that! These doge guys aren’t even the smartest people in an empty room.
silverwizard reshared this.

Oh, don't worry, we use both operating systems here
Linux and Unix

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Darcy Casselman reshared this.

Thinking about when I was 3 years outt of school and asked anout a project for building apprenticeships for sysadmins, and bristling. I was in a Professional Field damnit! But many people, especially @Gord Spence convinced me my work was different. I wish dearly for a security apprenticeship program now. I wish for sysadmin apprenticeships. I want to nurture a next generation and I want to avoid dumping new grads on those who hire Engineers.
@Gord Spence

Canada is complicit in this. Sending anyone to the US is violence

AJ Sadauskas

2025-04-05 14:30:53


WARNING: It's not safe to visit America. You can be locked up for no reason. Even if you're a white tourist from the UK: theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…


I was a British tourist trying to leave America. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre

Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do it
Jenny Kleeman (The Guardian)
silverwizard reshared this.

WARNING: It's not safe to visit America. You can be locked up for no reason. Even if you're a white tourist from the UK: theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…

I was a British tourist trying to leave America. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre

Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do it
Jenny Kleeman (The Guardian)

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silverwizard reshared this.

its always weird for me to remember that website owners don't get a notification when someone new subscribes to their RSS feed

silverwizard reshared this.

silverwizard reshared this.

Alright so - I've decided I need to write more. As such - I'm publishing a monster every week from March to March. It's a Burning Wheel monster - kinda designed to be "something I can use when my players throw me a curve ball and I need something weird". I wont promise anything - but I want to practice having deadlines and hopefully make something people like!

monsteroftheweek.ca/

#BurningWheel #TTRPG #Bestiary #RPG

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

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in reply to silverwizard

silverwizard
silverwizard
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Yes - I started two blogs in March

It's because I'm an idiot.

But you can use RSS to listen to me type MORE

in reply to silverwizard

silverwizard
silverwizard
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Do you like weird monsters?! Has my writing been compared to Dark Souls by *two* people?! Somehow!

Been too long since I built a server. Supermicro apparently lost their way - do they have a successor?
silverwizard reshared this.

@lgbtqia
If you can help us, now is a very good time to do it. We need to extract some folks very, very quickly. We need to raise 2000 we don't have in order to do it. We are under attack.

Please spread this, we don't have much reach.
transrescue.org/donations/dona…

#trans #TransRights #uspol #humanrights #mutualaid

Donate to Trans Rescue - Trans Rescue

[]
Stichting Trans Rescue Foundation
#trans #MutualAid #USPol #HumanRights #transrights @lgbtqia group

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Wait, do we need to make a safer DNS root?
Alex P. 👹 reshared this.

Airbud 12: Into the Void
Ain't no rule a dog can't start a cult
in reply to silverwizard

Alex P. 👹
Alex P. 👹
• •
Airbud 13: Tokyo Drift
Ain't no rule a dog can't build a Doohickey to assassinate a former prime minister
silverwizard reshared this.

I have a knee jerk distrust of military metaphors

silverwizard reshared this.

Oh shit! I just got my first Nicole Post!
in reply to Emmy of the Valley 🏳️‍⚧️

silverwizard
silverwizard
•

@Emmy of the Valley 🏳️‍⚧️ It's just a spammer who sends you a message saying "Hi, I'm Nicole, but you can call me the Fediverse Chick"

Someone did a deep dive into all the links she sends, and they think it's probably a harassment campaign against the woman whose picture they stole, rather than proper malware. But it's annoying and most people on the fediverse are seeing it.

@Emmy of the Valley 🏳️‍⚧️
in reply to silverwizard

Emmy of the Valley 🏳️‍⚧️
Emmy of the Valley 🏳️‍⚧️
• •
oh wow, okay! Thanks. I guess I'll just wait for my turn with the spammer. 😅
silverwizard reshared this.

Guess I am going to to throw my hat into the ring....and start the job search.

Senior Linux/BSD Sysadmin.

Not hung up on titles. Some times I get called DevOps, IT, or developer. Others don't include the Senior.

If it is good work for a decent salary I am interested.

Looking for remote positions or one that is local to Research Triangle Park (Raleigh/Durham, NC). Full-time, part-time, or freelance positions are fine.

#FedHire

#fedhire

Fuck

I'm blogging more
securingeverything.ca/The_Auth…

Yes - I'm still mad about user authorizations - but I'm *also* mad about security and accessibility and the people who think it's ok to think they're in tension.

Ben Zanin reshared this.

The problem with having a nerd for a dad:
3yo: "what is Iron Man's dad"
me: "Howard Stark"
3yo: "Who is Green Goblin's dad"
me: "Ambrose Osborne if it's Norman, Norman Osborne if it's Harry, if it's Ulrich or Hamilton I don't know, but I think it's not Ulrich since he's not a hero"
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to silverwizard

silverwizard
silverwizard
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The only diaper options at costco are Disney branded, meaning it's Disney princesses or Spiderman, and he prefer Spiderman, so I let him watch the show Spidey and His Amazing Friends, but maaaaaaan am I mad he's gotten onboarded to Disney because he wore diapers as a baby.
in reply to silverwizard

Megan
Megan
• •

When my kid was really young, he exclaimed: "Mom, that's Iron Man! He irons things!"

The domestic superhero I never knew I needed.

@Michael Lucas Question: What's the stretch goal where you make an audiobook by watching the movie and trying to read your novel out loud at the same time?
@Michael Lucas
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