Notices by Marsh Ray (marshray@infosec.exchange)

@soatok nice post, reading it now…
My understanding is that
the identity element for addition is zero
the identity element for multiplication is one
…?

@astraleureka @dalias @anthropy Checkbox where?
Who is authorized to check it, and how are others prevented?
How is the setting persisted?
How does it interact with secure boot and disk/filesystem encryption?
How do you troubleshoot and repair it when it’s [un]checked incorrectly?

@dalias @anthropy @astraleureka Out of curiosity,
what percentage of customers do you suppose would like their hosting provider to assist with tasks such as VM creation and initial boot, generating and distributing credentials, troubleshooting, and providing console and ssh access within a logging/auditing framework,
and what percentage wish to defend against any code and configuration provided by their hosting provider?

@lanodan @eloy I recall backup systems in the 1980’s that encoded data in standard video formats for VCRs.

@mattl I wouldn’t recommend it.

If what you really want is stand-alone episodes rather than steady story development, maybe it’s not for you. 🤷♂️

@mattl Three Body Problem,
though it doesn’t start to make sense until ~ep4

@mattl Murderbot ep 1-2 (they’re short)

@mattl The Good Place ep 1, but it’s hard to separate from the whole first season

@davidcelis “May no grass grow on your pastures until the day MechaHitler has met the fate of its idol.”
- Aliraveliara, 2025

@dalias @etsyy So since you seem to be ok expressing strong opinions, can I ask:
Do you think it was the right thing for government, scientists, and media to conspire to suppress consideration of the lab-leak hypothesis of origin of covid19?
(or reject the premise, something else, etc)

@etsyy @dalias @luckytran Agree 💯%.

But to be fair, it’s extremely rare that anyone becomes convinced they were wrong. Especially so for people susceptible to conspiracy beliefs.

The Brave “browser” on iOS aggressively wants me to know that its developers have added support for the least efficient medium of exchange ever devised.

@karlykingsley.bsky.social If a country of 340M people has literally only “thousands” of records with missing birthdays, that sounds like ridiculously good management.

@dalias @gregly @rootfake @GavinChait @cwebber If you’re that kind of bigot you might as well stick just with the original term.

@gregly @rootfake @GavinChait @dalias @cwebber The term “faith-based” is already in widespread use.

@slotos @rootfake @GavinChait @dalias @cwebber Remember that the “cargo cult” of the metaphor were mostly operating rationally based on the information that they had available. They were simply missing key fundamentals of the theory, so their efforts couldn’t be more than superficial mimicry.

I think we can all sympathize with that.

@cwebber That was a great read.

I wish I could think of a good replacement metaphor for “imitation without true understanding that sometimes worked before”.

@cr1901 @gsuberland There were IP stacks for plain DOS too.
The driver system for DOS had gotten pretty mature by Windows 3.0.

@ryanc (F) Installer left the spreadsheet with all their customers’ email addresses and password(s) open on the web and your HP was banned for sending spam and ddosing

@ryanc @marshray @Natanox Yeah.
Having used many source code control systems over decades, that just deeply feels like a merge mistake.
Imagine some invisible whitespace change introduced by different tooling. A tab character or line terminator is automatically “normalized” before checkin.
Then the merge UI presents the developer with three lines in a row that all say “goto fail;”, each line a different color.
The developer must click the circle, the triangle, or the square, or an icon with all three, to resolve the conflict.
What’ll it be: “yours”, or “theirs”, “merged”, or “both”?