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Last Notes

2026-09-10 00:21:19 CEST

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Everyone at the airport was like "I've never seen THAT before".

2026-09-10 00:20:08 CEST

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A while back I was on a widebody (767, probably) that failed to properly disarm the side on the arrival door. It was very loud, and had sufficient force to rock the plane and push the jetbridge back. I think the jetbridge operator needed an ambulance.
We eventually were able to disembark (quite a while later) via stairs pulled up to the opposite side of the plane. It was quite the adventure.

2026-09-05 02:49:43 CEST

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That's at least the second Tesla coil on a wagon I've seen. The first being this, via Jim Jarmusch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL9bq3YmHJo

2026-08-26 21:47:56 CEST

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Also, people who aren't election geeks often are unaware of the huge differences on voting procedures in different states. They often assume everyone in the country votes roughly the same way they do, but that's not true at all. Some states primarily use in-person voting at local precincts, with narrow exceptions for people out of town. Others use vote-by-mail as the default method for everyone. And everything in between.
So alternatives that work for me might not work for you.

2026-08-25 04:08:00 CEST

I'm done engaging with the election doomers here. They're indistinguishable from an influence operation, but more smugly self-satisfied wallowing in their own fatalism.

2026-08-25 00:04:12 CEST

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Remember, the administration has attempted a LOT of outrageous things. Thus far the courts, including the Supreme Court, have allowed some of them but rejected others. No one can predict with certainty how things will ultimately play out with the vote-by-mail restrictions, and it is by no means over or a foregone conclusion.

2026-08-14 20:02:41 CEST

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The taller tower (550 feet) at right is the main KNBR antenna, built in 1949. It employs an unusual "pseudo-Franklin" design; it's actually an array of two antennas stacked atop one another. The 400 foot lower section is insulated from the ground. The upper 150 foot section is insulated from the lower section. The large (50 foot) diameter "capacitance hat" at the top (reminiscent of the Parachute Jump at Coney Island) electrically lengthens the top section, saving 250 feet of additional height.

2026-07-30 21:32:20 CEST

RE: https://mastodon.social/@andreamm/117010585163840329
Welcome to the future, where the TV volume is controlled by "the corporate office".
#note1zr6…rlak

2026-07-28 04:18:01 CEST

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36 years ago, on January 15, 1990, a software bug in the 4ESS switch triggered a cascade of failures that took down most of the AT&T long distance telephone network for about nine hours.
It was treated as a national crisis. There were investigations and task forces, both internal and external, and detailed findings were published and scrutinized. The case is still studied today in networking and software engineering courses.
Today's national T-Mobile failure will be forgotten by next week.

2026-07-28 00:39:35 CEST

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Been completely dead on Amtrak in NJ (train WiFi works though)

2026-07-26 19:51:51 CEST

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Those kinds of safeguards are helpful, but inherently limited. They can’t defend against attacks that involve malware that detects when it’s being tested or that restore to a clean state after the election. Worse, you can never be sure they haven’t occurred, or what the true election outcome is if they haven’t occurred, because everything about the election is under control of the machine software. This is why you want an independent artifact if the true votes for auditing.

2026-07-25 20:58:58 CEST

RE: https://masto.ai/@Nonilex/116982022921976813
The administration’s politicization of election security is extremely unfortunate and unproductive, and now it’s spreading internationally.
I’m not familiar enough with Brazil’s election technology and processes to comment authoritatively, but it similar like the situation there is similar to the US: the use of insecure voting technology (such as DRE voting machines) introduces some real security vulnerabilities, but there’s no evidence of actual fraud.
#note1hle…6rv4

2026-07-24 23:50:24 CEST

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One of the worst sins of Hogan's Heroes was teaching a generation that it's called "The Geneva Convention", not "The Geneva Conventions".

2026-07-24 23:41:39 CEST

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The surveilance nerd in me wants to know if captured Nazi prisoners of war have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and if the FISA court would have granted a warrant.

2026-07-21 22:13:34 CEST

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I have a passing familiarity with voting myself, too. I don’t understand what I’ve said to make you angry with me, but I wish you well.

2026-07-21 22:08:28 CEST

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Election law is generally a strong exemplar of Chesterton’s Fence. Not every rule or process might be currently necessary, but you remove rules only at great peril if you don’t find out why they were enacted in the first place.

2026-07-21 22:04:14 CEST

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If you say so.

2026-07-21 21:49:38 CEST

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I didn’t say it happens. In fact, if you read what I wrote, I said that it’s inherently limited, and retail to the extent it happens at all. But it dispenses with the privacy of the supervised voting booth, which is a real safeguard.

2026-07-21 00:45:10 CEST

"Taylor Farms salad" has replaced "gas station sushi".

2026-07-20 19:41:19 CEST

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RLAs represent a HUGE breakthrough. It means we can enjoy the efficiency and accuracy benefits of automation without the risks that the machines are behaving incorrectly or even maliciously.
A big focus of current work in election security is helping state and local election officials implement RLAs as a routine part of their election certification process.

2026-07-20 19:34:44 CEST

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"Software independence", posed by Ron Rivest in 2007, formalizes a design goal for a voting system: A software error (even malicious software) anywhere in the system must not be able to cause an undetectable, unrecoverable change to the correct outcome of an election.
Risk-limiting audits, invented a few years later by Philip Stark, provide a practical way to achieve software independence with a type of existing voting technology (optical-scan paper ballots).

2026-07-18 12:19:03 CEST

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I have a pinned post that describes the kinds of things I post about. I don’t want anyone to follow me who would find any of what I post about unduly distressing. https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115523387764510055

2026-07-18 04:55:44 CEST

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Seriously, if you're allergic to posts about election technology, you really, really, should't follow me. Or at least keep an epi pen on hot standby.

2026-07-17 06:23:41 CEST

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Given that the White House itself is now endorsing this point, it's especially odd that almost immediately after Trump took office, he gutted CISA, which was providing federal-level threat intelligence and other defensive support to state and local election offices.
Hopefully they restore these vital resources soon.

2026-07-17 02:57:07 CEST

Got yelled at again for “pontificating” about election security. If that kind of thing bothers you, I’m probably a bad person to follow here.

2026-07-11 01:46:14 CEST

RE: https://flipboard.social/@newsguyusa/116898329613173808
If you use Instagram, you probably want to read this.
#note1wur…rtqk

2026-06-29 04:05:26 CEST

People talking about Faraday bags as general countermeasures to phone surveillance, which they definitely are not. They have a very limited role in personal "opsec". Do you need one? Probably not. But if you DO need one, make sure it actually works, and that you understand what it does and doesn't do.
Here's an old post of mine that goes into some depth on testing Faraday bags. https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

2026-06-24 03:34:43 CEST

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I'm afraid I am unable to explain my jokes.

2026-05-25 22:49:46 CEST

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To be fair, he could probably only launch about a thousand of them in a fit of madness. The rest would require some work first.

2025-04-14 01:47:23 CEST

I referred to a group recently as “a bunch of clowns” and I regret that. It was uncalled for.
Clowning is a serious and honorable art, requiring years of study and practice to master. The people I was referring to would more properly be described as clown college rejects.

2025-03-02 00:54:18 CET

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It's hard to think of a place people are more universally proud to work than NASA. At least, that's how it was until, you know...

2025-02-18 01:20:40 CET

Question for the people currently swarming me to tell me I’m a fascist apologist who’s not doing enough: I’m curious, other than yelling at me, what exactly are *you* doing? Like, what exactly is your role in this revolution you want me to drop what I’m doing to join? Just wondering.