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   Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 14:44:18 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

   An amusing story.

   At my previous employer, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, they were going to renovate the offices in the city. I had to visit for a few weeks for orientation.

   They previewed what our new office walls would look like. They had this weird dark turquoise/green color to them.

   One of the engineers insisted that it was, in fact, "dark slate grey". This became a shitpost at stand-up, and they decided to repurpose the whiteboard to take a poll.

   "What color is this?" (printed thing from new room stuck to whiteboard with magnet).

   * Green
   * Blue
   * Turquoise
   * Dark Slate Grey

   Next to each option, they had the handles of everyone that voted for it.

   I decided to up the shitpost game.

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 14:43:48 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     There are two outcomes for the culture of any security-focused team in tech:

     1. Burned out, high turnover, high anxiety disasers

     2. Shitposting stoics

     I'm sure there's some overlap, but I have yet to see a team that doesn't land in either camp.

     (Camp 2 is the better one, IMO)

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     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 14:44:16 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     This was normal behavior for us, by the way.

     One day, at standup, we decided to brainstorm the worst sprint names.

     Honorable mentions:

     1. The Next One
     2. We Miss [Coworker's Name that Left the Team]
     3. Prod (as in caddle prod, not production)

     Kevin Beaumont repeated this.
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     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 14:44:17 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     Now, this is the Cryptography department, not the art department.

     I dug up an old CFRG mailing list thread about Curve25519 and the alternate formulas that were discussed in the paper.

     https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/cfrg/oOY_QNA6QMsTJHLLbUjch6-GLsc/

     One was named PinkBikeShed, the other was named FuschiaBikeShed.

     So I quickly sketched both of these down as options to vote for:

     y^2 = x^3 + 464586x^2 + x mod 2^255-19

     y^2 = x^3 + 358990x^2 + x mod 2^255-19

     I then wrote my username next to the formula for FuschiaBikeShed. :3

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 14:44:17 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     Epilogue: The very next day, I was supposed to fly back home. Everything was in lockdown, due to the COVID-19 outbreak. There was confusion about whether or not I was permitted to fly home. (I did get to fly home, but it distracted us all from the shitpost!)

     In October 2022, I flew back out there for some presentations. When I stopped by the Cryptography team's offices, I looked at the whiteboard and, lo and behold, my dumb shitpost was preserved for nearly 3 years.