Nostr notes by Matthew Garrett

RE: https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/116845291090365543 ...

2026-07-02T08:32:48Z

RE: https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/116845291090365543

Obviously everyone knows that Vic Gundotra killed Reader, but he didn't succeed immediately. He could destaff the project, but people could still spend 20% time maintaining it. It was inevitable that it would die, but what the final blow was a standard Google outcome - load bearing infrastructure was going to be turned off, and everyone had to port their project to the replacement that didn't really work yet. Reader just didn't have the resources, so died.

quoting
note1d2d…60ks

Today the good people of the world commemorate the passing of Google Reader thirteen short years ago on July 1, 2013.

To honor their memory (and in lieu of flowers) please add an RSS, Atom, JSON or equivalent feed to your web site and keep building towards a web that connects people in meaningful and positive ways.

The downside of full-on self-hosting is, of course, that your ...

2026-05-07T15:56:46Z

The downside of full-on self-hosting is, of course, that your server will inevitably choose to have weird hardware issues while you're in another country

Speaking of Unicode, I think many people would be surprised just ...

2026-04-27T08:12:54Z

Speaking of Unicode, I think many people would be surprised just how strong the pushback against it was even in the early to mid 2000s. UTF-8 adoption in Linux was a fight.

Unicode is one of the most transformative technologies of the ...

2026-04-27T07:54:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…533p
_________________________

Unicode is one of the most transformative technologies of the past 50 years

It is absolutely wild that it is only in this century that it has ...

2026-04-27T07:53:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…xmyd
_________________________

It is absolutely wild that it is only in this century that it has become possible to reliably send a message that contains a mixture of latin, kanji, and hangul

Revisiting the fact that DVD subtitles are bitmap images and ...

2026-04-27T07:52:00Z

Revisiting the fact that DVD subtitles are bitmap images and sighing and also accepting that in the 90s the alternative was having DVD players speak all of the weird language encodings that existed before widespread Unicode adoption

Garrett Hardin: I described the tragedy of the commons as a ...

2026-04-22T06:05:17Z

Garrett Hardin: I described the tragedy of the commons as a warning against a system that drives people to consume common resources for personal benefit
AI companies: Good news, we have implemented the tragedy of the commons as a service

Palantir telling their foreign customers that their priority will ...

2026-04-19T20:08:27Z

Palantir telling their foreign customers that their priority will always be to defend the USA is certainly a choice

I should be clear that I write code by hand and enjoy the ...

2026-04-18T23:49:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…ryfm
_________________________

I should be clear that I write code by hand and enjoy the process, and also agree that the only way you're going to get high quality human developers is through doing that. But I also think that the world is probably better if more people are able to modify code to meet their needs, even if those people never turn into high quality human developers as a result.

Clearly my most unpopular thread ever, so let me add a ...

2026-04-18T09:27:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…9vx4
_________________________

Clearly my most unpopular thread ever, so let me add a clarification: submitting LLM generated code you don't understand to an upstream project is absolute bullshit and you should never do that. Having an LLM turn an existing codebase into something that meets your local needs? Do it. The code may be awful, it may break stuff you don't care about, and that's what all my early patches to free software looked like. It's ok to solve your problem locally.

If you're willing to accept that then what's the problem? ...

2026-04-18T09:05:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…htyg
_________________________

If you're willing to accept that then what's the problem? Are we threatening to burn down Ikea stores now?

Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a ...

2026-04-18T08:29:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…m60l
_________________________

Personally I'm not going to literally copy code from a codebase under an incompatible license because that is what the law says, but have I read proprietary code and learned the underlying creative aspect and then written new code that embodies it? Yes! Anyone claiming otherwise is lying!

(Yes ok there are cases where code is beauty and embodies an idea ...

2026-04-18T08:25:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…ajt2
_________________________

(Yes ok there are cases where code is beauty and embodies an idea that could make a grown man cry and:

(1) your code is not that code
(2) you would think nothing of copying the creative aspect of that code if you needed to don't fucking lie to me)

Nostr event nevent1qqsvwcugnn6uvwyqrhrn8ph9huas2svwv9a3f4vgy5mh30sxsezdacszyzg9ymep360glu5dcah9xj87m7fepu3nexv54vp5gcj0g7eg5yarvnleeem

2026-04-18T08:23:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…pyze
_________________________

Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn ...

2026-04-18T08:20:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…hy9z
_________________________

Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.

When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical ...

2026-04-18T08:17:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…jguw
_________________________

When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM

Free software people: A major goal of free software is for ...

2026-04-18T08:14:40Z

Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that

Fucksake I'm going to need to write some elaborate agent that ...

2026-04-17T07:34:01Z

Fucksake I'm going to need to write some elaborate agent that snoops my packets and rewrites anything heading to the BBC through a VPN just so I don't get paywalled, but also this is a great reason to figure out what level of ebpf bullshit can be carried out

(For absolute clarity there is no secret third party paying my ...

2026-04-17T07:32:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…d82p
_________________________

(For absolute clarity there is no secret third party paying my legal bills, as I said in court under penalty of perjury I am in the unfortunate position of having to do so myself)

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/116418277310717935 The ...

2026-04-17T05:09:24Z

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/116418277310717935

The secret third party paying my legal bills has finally been revealed

quoting
note15xg…7amt

I had a dream that there was this notorious crazy old rich lady with no heir she could respect, and on a whim she designated Matthew Garrett (npub1jpf…vqhj) specifically to receive her inheritance. Congratulations and please spend your newfound dream billions ethically

Just think of your poor grandmother's love of exploring open ...

2026-04-02T09:10:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…l67q
_________________________

Just think of your poor grandmother's love of exploring open buckets

Blog post about my #bsidessf talk on using SSH certificates for ...

2026-03-21T21:35:06Z

Blog post about my #bsidessf talk on using SSH certificates for git signing: https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/blog/p/ssh-certificates-and-git-signing/

Trying to convince my students that having all your security ...

2026-03-20T06:01:02Z

Trying to convince my students that having all your security policy changes include a design doc describing the status quo, the desired outcome, why this change will achieve it, why alternatives were rejected, and then implementing it via some automation schema so it can't accidentally be reverted for no obvious reason is good actually

What I'm taking away from this right now is that for the ...

2026-03-16T08:51:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…3dzh
_________________________

What I'm taking away from this right now is that for the extremely narrow case of a problem that humans have documented well and written strong tests for, a robot can be competitive with a human expert. And then also today I got an LLM slop bug report that entirely misrepresented the code in question and had entirely fake conclusions. I'm still solidly team human.

I am watching an absolutely fascinating exchange between a domain ...

2026-03-16T08:10:56Z

I am watching an absolutely fascinating exchange between a domain expert and someone driving Claude compete to produce the smallest functional implementation of a well-defined problem and wow the robot is being competitive, but this is very much a best case scenario of there being a very clear functional specification the output can be tested against

Way back in the day a friend had to move an Apple Xserve across ...

2026-03-12T06:07:22Z

Way back in the day a friend had to move an Apple Xserve across London to get it racked, and because massively rich South Africans are stingy with money he couldn't expense a cab so took it on the underground and someone looked at him, looked at the Xserve, looked back at him and said "That's a fucking big iPod"

The nature of side channel attacks is that CPU-imposed barriers ...

2026-02-23T04:58:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…dct7
_________________________

The nature of side channel attacks is that CPU-imposed barriers are no longer as strict as they should be. This means that hypervisor boundaries are porous - it's possible to extract material from other virtual machines. I understand the perspective that simply avoiding executing any untrusted software removes that risk, but I do not control the software running in other VMs on the same hardware. How do you solve that?

Never going to stop being angry about the subset of the free ...

2026-02-21T11:06:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…jxpe
_________________________

Never going to stop being angry about the subset of the free software community that would rather pretend that non-free software embedded in hardware doesn't exist than allow that non-free software to be replaced with equivalently non-free software that fixes bugs

18 years of the Linux fork that refuses to load the microcode ...

2026-02-21T11:05:12Z

18 years of the Linux fork that refuses to load the microcode that mitigates a range of CPU vulnerabilities

Ring cameras using wifi are obviously vulnerable (as are all ...

2026-02-13T10:19:40Z

Ring cameras using wifi are obviously vulnerable (as are all other wifi devices) to just jamming wifi channels so they can't communicate, but that's noisy and attracts attention. But they also don't appear to implement WPA3 or 802.11w and so you can also just spam them with deauth frames while being much less obvious. This is very easy and also, in the US at least, very illegal. You shouldn't do it.

Enjoying the "Tech is more important than ideology" ...

2026-02-10T05:05:15Z

Enjoying the "Tech is more important than ideology" people removing rust on ideological grounds

It doesn't matter whether C is good or not. It matters that ...

2026-02-06T03:45:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…led5
_________________________

It doesn't matter whether C is good or not. It matters that if I write code in two languages that aren't C, and I want it to all be part of the same process, I need to care about C. C pervades all. You cannot escape it. C will outlive all of us. The language will die and the ABI will persist. The far future will involve students learning about C just to explain their present day. Our robot overlords will use null terminated strings. C will outlive fungi.

https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/ deserves a fucking ...

2026-02-06T03:34:17Z

https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/ deserves a fucking record for managing to trigger people into being extremely upset while also demonstrating that they don't understand the actual point being made

Nostr event nevent1qqs9464c2vp4eq7rl48jr7y43z4gvcu7e4qv2nlav8akn5qnpp3kzlgzyzg9ymep360glu5dcah9xj87m7fepu3nexv54vp5gcj0g7eg5yarvwd239r

2026-02-03T00:11:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…sln9
_________________________

Ah! https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/iio-sensor-proxy/-/issues/216 ok I'll dig into this

If you're finding that gdm is falling back to X11 and refuses ...

2026-02-02T21:47:59Z

If you're finding that gdm is falling back to X11 and refuses to start Wayland sessions then uh make sure you haven't accidentally changed the owner of / because that results in some exceptionally weird breakage

[@hadessuk](https://hachyderm.io/@hadessuk ) I have a tablet that ...

2026-02-02T20:48:49Z

[@hadessuk](https://hachyderm.io/@hadessuk ) I have a tablet that exposes two accelerometers via iio which are supposed to be used to identify whether it's in tablet mode or not. Any idea what a generalisable solution to that would look like? There's various hacky device specific ones.

Frankly: binaries are the thing that executes on your system and ...

2026-01-26T04:51:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…y9k7
_________________________

Frankly: binaries are the thing that executes on your system and embody the truth of software behaviour, and with modern technology it's often *easier* to determine that truth through the binary than through the source code (throw the "login" app from Reflections on Trusting Trust into Ghidra and you'd learn the truth even if the source code wouldn't tell you that)

But merely being free software isn't sufficient - software ...

2026-01-26T04:49:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…pyzp
_________________________

But merely being free software isn't sufficient - software developed in a way that prevents arbitrary observers from witnessing design conversations may still be free software, but doesn't give us a strong reason to trust the developers. We all know how easy it is to hide dubious code in the open. The libxz backdoor was discovered by examining the binary and tracking that back to the source, not through source examination.

The presumption that free software is sufficient or necessary to ...

2026-01-26T04:46:56Z

The presumption that free software is sufficient or necessary to ensure all software you depend on is trustworthy is simultaneously naive and ignorant of what software is capable of. The only realistic way to develop trust in software is to trust the people who write it, and development processes associated with free software make that trust easier.

"Why is my IPv6 not working" because I assigned that ...

2026-01-21T08:36:14Z

"Why is my IPv6 not working" because I assigned that machine a static address associated with an he.net tunnel I'm no longer using because Google corp security had it tagged as being a Chinese VPN and disabled employee accounts if they joined my wifi from a company device

Sometimes I feel like I'm Jonty Wareing (npub1838…krhz) except my fuckups involve less nuclear material and fewer geodesic domes

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/20/2 OH MY ...

2026-01-20T20:32:49Z

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/01/20/2 OH MY FUCKING GOD complete auth bypass in inetutils telnetd for over a decade and obviously nobody inside that decade should have been running a telnet daemon but wow

Still going to argue that ...

2026-01-15T09:56:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…0dm4
_________________________

Still going to argue that https://gitlab.com/mjg59/linux/-/commit/13cd6ec5e0e99124dd730156a4d921b20f192e2d would maybe be the most security per lines of code this decade

Can someone please just write an ebpf script that blocks ../ and ...

2026-01-15T09:54:04Z

Can someone please just write an ebpf script that blocks ../ and make it possible to automatically load that in systemd units and docker and any other security boundary

Screen locking is actually pretty arcane magic and it's ...

2026-01-13T07:12:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…u3rj
_________________________

Screen *locking* is actually pretty arcane magic and it's been very bound up in screen saving and as a result the complexity of both has become conflated

So: In the past the infrastructure was simpler, the underlying ...

2026-01-13T07:00:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…d79w
_________________________

So: In the past the infrastructure was simpler, the underlying hardware was simpler, the number of use cases you had to satisfy was smaller. And now everything is fundamentally more complicated and you're competing with platforms that have millions of absolutely normal computer users using them. But we've also got greater avenues of sharing knowledge, collaboration, better understanding of how to build abstractions. Was the golden age 30 years ago, or is it now?

And yeah there's all sorts of cases where X exposes ...

2026-01-13T06:45:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…32q5
_________________________

And yeah there's all sorts of cases where X exposes functionality that doesn't really exist in Wayland and I understand people wanting that but also I shared my desktop with some people today on a call and got a notification icon letting me know it was happening and I didn't have to rely on the client to behave correctly for that to be something I could rely on

I'm pretty fascinated about why this is happening and my gut ...

2026-01-13T06:42:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…rx7h
_________________________

I'm pretty fascinated about why this is happening and my gut feeling is that people have simply written better abstraction layers on top of Wayland than were possible on top of X and now people can just write shit without needing to care anywhere near as much about the sharp edges that exist everywhere

It is actually kind of wild that we're simultaneously in an ...

2026-01-13T06:41:40Z

It is actually kind of wild that we're simultaneously in an era of people complaining that Wayland is destroying choice and also maybe the greatest number of high-quality desktop environments aimed at different use cases the free software world has ever had

Hello everyone I moved to a new self-hosted blog thing and here ...

2026-01-04T18:47:20Z

Hello everyone I moved to a new self-hosted blog thing and here is my first post on why "PC Compatible" is a social construct https://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/blog/p/what-is-a-pc-compatible/

I had to spend a bunch of time researching the implementation of ...

2025-12-17T13:21:40Z

I had to spend a bunch of time researching the implementation of IRC ping timeouts for a lawsuit so now you get to know as well: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/73777.html

iRobot apparently just declared bankruptcy, so if you have an ...

2025-12-15T03:04:32Z

iRobot apparently just declared bankruptcy, so if you have an internet connected one and want to retain control if the cloud platform vanishes, take a look at https://github.com/koalazak/dorita980#how-to-get-your-usernameblid-and-password and stash that information somewhere safe (and note that it changes if you ever factory reset the device, so try not to do that)

If you wanted to hear me maybe talk about a thing at EMFCamp next ...

2025-12-10T07:25:12Z

If you wanted to hear me maybe talk about a thing at EMFCamp next year, what would be a thing you'd like to hear me talk about?

Nostr event nevent1qqsdymxxhnu30xt3jqwfqmepdu365xeje8jyjl6xan038n8zukaejzczyzg9ymep360glu5dcah9xj87m7fepu3nexv54vp5gcj0g7eg5yarv6uqdr4

2025-12-07T00:14:21Z

Why does my soundbar have 184 systemd service files

Poll for people from the UK and US only sorry I am being ...

2025-11-28T05:51:38Z

Poll for people from the UK and US only sorry I am being restrictive there is actually a reason

In and around 2023, Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were subject to a ...

2025-11-20T12:12:19Z

In and around 2023, Roy and Rianne Schestowitz were subject to a horrific campaign of online harassment. Unfortunately they blamed me for it, and in turn wrote and published an astonishing array of articles making false accusations against me. Last year, I sued them in the high court in London. In turn, they countersued me for harassment. The case was heard last month and I'm pleased to say that the counterclaim was dismissed and I prevailed in my case. The court awarded me £70,000 in damages.

I have been learning more about PDFs than I really wanted to for ...

2025-09-24T22:25:29Z

I have been learning more about PDFs than I really wanted to for maybe the absolutely most funny reason possible - letting agency forgery: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/73317.html

You obviously can't use LLMs to review code written by LLMs. ...

2025-09-22T07:12:49Z

You obviously can't use LLMs to review code written by LLMs. So you still need people who know how to read code. How do you get those people without having people write code?

Spending time with my in their 70s parents and they're very ...

2025-09-11T19:53:22Z

Spending time with my in their 70s parents and they're very successfully managing not to be racist or transphobic so I still don't buy the "They're a product of their age" argument

A fun thing you can do right now to test whether your system will ...

2025-09-06T21:54:04Z

A fun thing you can do right now to test whether your system will stop booting next week because of a secure boot certificate expiring!

1) Does your system currently have secure boot enabled? If not, go to step 5
2) Download Fedora 42
3) Does it refuse to boot with a secure boot violation? If not, go to step 5
4) This is interesting and unexpected! Please let me know, you will literally be the first
5) Nothing is going to happen to you next week

Only one more week to take advantage of ...

2025-09-04T17:14:36Z

Only one more week to take advantage of https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/115048295075274818 (so far nobody has, so I assume at this point everyone is on board with the idea that nothing whatsoever is going to happen as a result of non-existent secure boot certificate expiry on 2025-09-11)

People who are still inclined to believe that Linux systems will ...

2025-08-18T06:14:26Z

People who are still inclined to believe that Linux systems will stop booting next month because of secure boot rollover! Send me evidence that you have donated to a charity and, if Linux stops booting on any system after 2025-09-11 because of some sort of certificate rollover bullshit, I will (your choice) either match that donation or pay you back your donation (you will need to deal with the tax consequences), up to a total of $50,000.

2012: "Secure boot is a plot by Microsoft to kill Linux" ...

2025-08-15T17:21:20Z

2012: "Secure boot is a plot by Microsoft to kill Linux"
2025: EA's insistence on invasive anti-cheat results in a bunch of Windows users managing to get their secure boot configuration into a state where their GPUs no longer work and there's no recovery path: https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/1miaynl/secure_boot_megathread_guide_community_support/

Microsoft would have to be *very* bad at this for a plot to have backfired this badly

I suddenly need to care about Amiga DMA cycle timings and this ...

2025-08-11T05:00:03Z

I suddenly need to care about Amiga DMA cycle timings and this isn't an improvement in my quality of life

Need my GB driver's license details For Reasons, can't ...

2025-07-27T22:20:29Z

Need my GB driver's license details For Reasons, can't find the card, remember it's saved in my Hertz profile, go there, page shows me most the the number ***d out, check developer tools, API is returning the full number and just obfuscating it client side, hurrah

Anyone sharing anything about phones always listening to your ...

2025-07-23T08:42:23Z

Anyone sharing anything about phones always listening to your conversations and showing you adverts about that:

(a) Do you realise how incredibly easy it is to monitor all the traffic coming from your phone?
(b) Do you understand how giant a scandal it would be if that were demonstrated?
(c) Do you know how many people there are who would love to be at the confluence of (a) and (b) and yet have not been because it's not a thing that's happening?

Today's non-sensical TPM-related bullshit: someone telling me ...

2025-07-18T23:08:13Z

Today's non-sensical TPM-related bullshit: someone telling me that TPMs can prevent you from clearing firmware variables

"Huh why is logging into the server in the room next door so ...

2025-07-07T06:57:37Z

"Huh why is logging into the server in the room next door so slow" because my eeros rebooted overnight and my laptop roamed onto the other SSID that's VPNed back to the UK and all my packets have been travelling 10,000 miles to go a few metres

"Why bother writing free software if nobody's going to ...

2025-06-25T22:28:25Z

"Why bother writing free software if nobody's going to use it" why bother producing art or documenting the life cycle of an extinct insect or sharing anything that you find interesting or fun - if people find something I've done useful then wonderful, but even if they don't I want to be able to share it with them

Nostr event nevent1qqsrv0w6d5k32qsafk0s2uwwqajeakqd7jvpf2vu8xxtx7wjw5af2uczyzg9ymep360glu5dcah9xj87m7fepu3nexv54vp5gcj0g7eg5yarv93x7j8

2025-06-25T19:42:30Z

Writing my first actual Rust project tell my family I loved them

My first paid software development job was on accessibility ...

2025-06-20T07:30:00Z

My first paid software development job was on accessibility software. I remember visiting a user to help set up our code, and the sheer joy he had at being able to communicate more quickly than he had been able to for years.

Seeing the effort put into improving modern Linux accessibility is heartwarming. There's been almost 20 years of almost nobody caring. It's important. It's worthwhile.

Say thank you to the people doing that work. Stop amplifying the people saying that work isn't happening.

In the odd limbo space of having cleared US immigration on a ...

2025-06-12T11:08:52Z

In the odd limbo space of having cleared US immigration on a different continent, so while I'm not strictly back in the US yet I'd rate the probability of arrest as low

no meaningful secure messenger asserts that messages cannot be ...

2025-06-09T21:03:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…mast
_________________________

no meaningful secure messenger asserts that messages cannot be shared by the recipient, and any developer of such an app that made that claim would be an indication that app shouldn't be trusted

are you arguing that it should be impossible to take screenshots ...

2025-06-09T20:51:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…l7wp
_________________________

are you arguing that it should be impossible to take screenshots of messages sent to you? Because that's a really bad line of argument to start down

a client running on an end user's system is, as it should be, ...

2025-06-09T20:39:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…anaa
_________________________

a client running on an end user's system is, as it should be, under that end user's control. If you send someone messages then they are going to be able to choose how they're retained. The alternative implies computers that are not under the owner's control.

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ is the writeup ...

2025-06-09T11:44:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…04hd
_________________________

https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ is the writeup of it, I don't know if there's a further spec other than the implementation

the enclave attests itself to the client, the server admin ...

2025-06-09T11:40:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…w2pt
_________________________

the enclave attests itself to the client, the server admin can't fake it or monitor the communication

Which Signal logs?

2025-06-09T10:24:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…nxyr
_________________________

Which Signal logs?

It's storing the phone number/XMPP ID, and it claims that the ...

2025-06-09T10:23:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…fwle
_________________________

It's storing the phone number/XMPP ID, and it claims that the app will periodically re-query, so if you run the server you can just log the lookup

Signal's social graphing is done in secure enclaves, that ...

2025-06-07T12:16:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…7rxj
_________________________

Signal's social graphing is done in secure enclaves, that information isn't extractable

yes, you can trade off functionality to gain privacy on a fairly ...

2025-06-07T11:57:58Z

In reply to nevent1q…78jq
_________________________

yes, you can trade off functionality to gain privacy on a fairly arbitrary scale, but teaching people to make informed decisions about where they should be on that scale is hard and you still end up with metadata transfer between servers with very different security properties. Is this a good choice for some people? Yes! Are most people going to end up making well informed choices? Not even slightly

you're trading off centralised server infrastructure for ...

2025-06-07T10:54:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…k8t8
_________________________

you're trading off centralised server infrastructure for contact discovery that's less privacy preserving (quicksy has a list of every Jabber ID and phone number combo!), which may be worth it for some use cases but certainly isn't for all!

what does the server being in the US have to do with anything?

2025-06-06T11:29:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…ywrl
_________________________

what does the server being in the US have to do with anything?

Twitter's new encrypted DM system stores your private key ...

2025-06-05T11:12:20Z

Twitter's new encrypted DM system stores your private key material on Twitter-owned services, protected with nothing more than a 4-digit PIN. If hostile, or if legally compelled to, Twitter could easily decrypt all your messages. It's also MITMable and doesn't secure metadata. Use Signal.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/71646.html

Yeah great ok the manufacturer also has no ability to patch my ...

2025-05-24T06:40:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…2vaz
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Yeah great ok the manufacturer also has no ability to patch my fridge but how does that help me this differentiation between software in ROM and software in flash is absolute bullshit, it's all software and it should all be free and modifiable

RMS printer moment, but it's about my fridge failing to run ...

2025-05-24T06:38:46Z

RMS printer moment, but it's about my fridge failing to run the ice maker fill tube heater for long enough so it freezes so the ice maker gets no water and makes no ice, but also the software controlling this is in ROM so the FSF says it's fine even though there's no way I can fix it even though I am entirely capable of reverse engineering and patching it otherwise

sadly my girlfriend is from outside Gothenburg so I think I'm ...

2025-05-19T07:47:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…hqpq
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sadly my girlfriend is from outside Gothenburg so I think I'm actually contractually forbidden

Nostr event nevent1qqsf5dfhwrrd632ds2r9efztczcsp54w3s48avxgymqvl7y0cvpmzhqzyzg9ymep360glu5dcah9xj87m7fepu3nexv54vp5gcj0g7eg5yarv38d93s

2025-05-19T07:34:52Z

Ah good flight to the UK booked for next month

I'm kind of surprised that there's still no hypercall for ...

2025-04-25T06:15:37Z

I'm kind of surprised that there's still no hypercall for mark_kernel_ro() that marks the kernel code read-only in the hypervisor page table such that even if someone finds a gadget to make it writable again it won't work in a VM situation - are there hypervisors that automatically detect this case and do it implicitly?

This is hilariously Northern Ireland (both the initial fuckup, ...

2025-04-17T08:52:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…6yyp
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This is hilariously Northern Ireland (both the initial fuckup, but also the somewhat confused response of everyone else, including the journalist)

Extremely niche content, but: back in the early 2000s the ...

2025-04-05T07:03:26Z

Extremely niche content, but: back in the early 2000s the AmigaOne was released using a northbridge produced by a company called MAI Logic. It apparently had awful cache coherence bugs when using DMA, but the details are lost in a sea of ludicrous infighting between different Amiga splinter groups. Does anyone actually know the technical details of what was broken with it?

If the membership chose a candidate that the board refuses to ...

2025-03-21T16:10:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…py69
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If the membership chose a candidate that the board refuses to appoint, the membership deserves to know that.

There is a well defined process for how elections are run ...

2025-03-21T16:07:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…9eyt
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There is a well defined process for how elections are run (https://opensource.org/about/board-of-directors/elections). This year, several candidates were removed from the election results for supposedly refusing to use proprietary software to sign the board agreement. The requirement to do so is not stated anywhere in the election process. The bylaws allow the board to ignore the will of the electorate, but removing candidates who didn't violate any election rules is just fucking ridiculous.

Like many nonprofits, membership of the @npub1djq…zj5f board of ...

2025-03-21T16:00:25Z

Like many nonprofits, membership of the Open Source Initiative :osi: (npub1djq…zj5f) board of directors is technically down to the existing board choosing to appoint new directors. OSI "membership" (in the sense that donors can become "members" of the organisation) isn't a thing that's defined by the by-laws, it's a process that the directors have chosen to adopt. As such, the elections that members participate in are just guidance for the board's decisions, rather than anything they're obliged to respect.

When Twitter launched encrypted DMs they were bad. They ...

2025-03-19T00:01:10Z

When Twitter launched encrypted DMs they were bad. They haven't improved. The person behind them is now a senior member of DOGE and getting appointed to the board of a government-backed mortgage giant: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/71188.html

Nobody is going to try to make money on a proprietary fork of an ...

2025-03-18T03:19:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…6n9s
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Nobody is going to try to make money on a proprietary fork of an MIT Coreutils. Nobody is hiding their trade secrets there. This isn't the 80s.

What is a bigger issue is the more symbolic nature of things. People had the opportunity to pick a copyleft licence and chose not to. We can view this as an attack on copyleft (albeit one that's likely symbolic at best), or we can accept that the copyleft community has been doing a poor job winning the hearts and minds of new generations of developers

What Coreutils-adjacent GPL enforcement there has been centred ...

2025-03-18T03:14:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…qc9w
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What Coreutils-adjacent GPL enforcement there has been centred around Busybox, a GPLed implementation of many POSIX and Unixish tools, commonly used in embedded devices. Busybox-related enforcement has been an effective tool in obtaining compliance, to the extent that it's been reimplemented under a permissive licence with the explicit goal of reducing enforcement risk. Coreutils has simply never been subject to enforcement in the same way, so there's no significant impact.

I'm a huge proponent of copyleft licensing, I'm in favour ...

2025-03-18T03:05:47Z

I'm a huge proponent of copyleft licensing, I'm in favour of using the GPL as a tool to ensure users have the ability to modify the software on their devices, and I'm just having trouble getting too worked up about the Rust reimplementation of Coreutils being MIT. Philosophically? Yeah, it sucks. Practical outcomes? Almost certainly none. The GPL violators aren't going to change coreutils implementation to avoid being sued, the FSF wasn't going to do that anyway

The discovery that lifepo4 power banks are now at the point where ...

2025-03-08T18:46:45Z

The discovery that lifepo4 power banks are now at the point where they can switch from AC fast enough that they're usable as UPSes is about to change my life in a short term expensive but long term cheap way

Every so often I remember this quote from the old Unix Support ...

2025-03-04T21:49:49Z

Every so often I remember this quote from the old Unix Support page at Cambridge:

"Please note that we don't support VMS or Ultrix, the former because while it is a worthy operating system it isn't Unix and the latter because while it is a Unix it isn't a worthy operating system."

You see a transphobe in your mentions? You reject them, just like ...

2025-03-02T05:13:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…46wd
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You see a transphobe in your mentions? You reject them, just like you'd reject a nazi. A bar that accepts transphobes is a transphobe bar.