Notices by Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)

Signal finally launched a means to register without giving them a phone number and techies are responding with bad faith paranoia about the registration fee.

God damn this is irritating.

Can someone who's not me and has experience dealing with spam and content moderation at scale explain how bad the problem really is? Because the dolts spreading FUD have clearly never had to manage a popular platform in their lives.

I understand the situation entirely, but I cannot bring myself to ever give half a shit about most celebrities, and I get tired of hearing about it quickly.

Ed Sheeran this, Macklemore that, no one will shut the fuck up and talk about anything else.

If you've ever felt a sense of "wow some of these AI enthusiasts are kind of cult-like" you've probably seen the effects of them.

I'm constantly torn between two positions:

1. Nobody with a modicum of sanity should be forced to read Dario Amodei's essays. (The Anthropic CEO.)
2. It would be really funny to gather a group of experts to Mystery Science Theater 3000 them.

I've shared these thoughts among some of my friends, and I can't get a consensus from them, either. It always splits the room.

This is a valid position to take on AI/LLMs: https://ploum.net/2026-09-09-ai_policy.html

Most folks on Fedi will probably agree with it wholeheartedly.

DHH is a bad person and I hope he runs out of money and influence before he has the chance to hurt anyone

In 2027, I'd like to be done with my current project and move onto newer ones.

What projects are those?

https://soatok.blog/2025/10/15/the-dreamseekers-vision-of-tomorrow/

This is cool! https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/skitter-creek-bath-salts

This week, something reminded me of a weird experience I've had over the years.

I was probably intending to blog about it at some point, but it's a difficult topic to cover without sounding weirdly self-congratulatory, and I kind of hate that tone. I dunno, maybe it's from years of working in tech? :V

One of the hazards you'll face if you share any of my hobbies or interests is other people--well-meaning, honest, and usually very kind people--praising your apparent "intelligence".

This has also come up a few times indirectly, where friends would be like, "So I asked my [very technically respected] friend about you, and they said cryptography is only for mega-geniuses."

This sort of experience, however it manifests, makes me feel uncomfortable for many reasons.

At the top of the list, blogging about cryptography is something I do, in part, because excessive gatekeeping is counterproductive and even toxic.

See https://soatok.blog/2021/03/04/no-gates-no-keepers/ for more on the subject ^^

https://soatok.blog/2026/07/15/the-long-tail-of-work-left-until-activitypub-has-e2ee

@gnu2 Hope isn't worthless, but it isn't a fucking strategy.

"Hope for the best" is usually preceded by "prepare for the worst" for a reason. That preparation is where strategy comes in.

The worst offenders are the sovereignty-pilled European tech bros who think plaintext-in-Europe is just fine.

I argue that well-implemented cryptography ia resilient even when your governments go more authoritarian. Hope isn't a strategy.

Me: "All the so-called private messaging apps have inferior cryptography engineering and need to step up their game. It kind of sucks that Signal is the only game in town that has decent e2ee. We can do better. The community just has to have higher standards and stop settling for bad designs."

Random people: "Signal shill"

@david_chisnall I use a Skyrim patch that lets me wear 10 rings whenever I play for this exact reason lol

Alright, it's official! 💰

@matthew_d_green and I bet on what will break first, ML-KEM-768 or X25519. The loser donates to a 501(c)(3) picked by the winner.

If you have an opinion on quantum computers or lattices, you can join with a side bet. Just submit a PR!

https://github.com/FiloSottile/ecc-vs-lattices-long-bet

@erkhyan Of course.

In some games, humans can wear two rings and a neck piece with enchantments.

Furries should have a fourth accessory slot: A sort of bangle at the base of their tail.

@soatok

The NSA is handicapped by being a dual-mission agency. The same organisation is responsible for:

• Making sure that the USA's signals are secure.
• Making sure that no other country's signals are secure from the USA.

These are in obvious tension when the USA and everyone else are using the same off-the-shelf standards and implementations of those standards.

I'm generally happy that they now prioritise the former over the latter, if only because they now know that there is a good chance that any weakness that they put in will be exploited by the Chinese, but I'd be a lot more comfortable if they properly separated the two concerns.

I am still curious about Heartbleed because a lot of the US government was vulnerable and I know the NSA did some review of OpenSSL, so I don't know which of the following options was true:

• They didn't bother to review a core piece of security-critical software that a lot of the government's security depended on (I have some evidence that it wasn't this one).
• They did review it and missed a really important bug.
• They did review it, found the bug, and made a staggeringly bad call about whether it was better to fix the bug or keep it as a thing to attack other people with.

None of these possibilities makes them look especially competent.