Notices by Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)

Fun observation:

If you do cool stuff, then over time you will gather a bunch of people who are interested in doing cool shit, and will quickly feel like the cool shit you're doing is inadequate because you're surrounded by people who can do cooler shit than you.

This is a desirable outcome. (It's related to the friendship paradox, too!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox

If any of the {blogs, software} I've written over the years was useful at all to you or someone you know, I'd like to hear about it.

@dalias @FlatFootFox If they do that and put the quoted thing first in the UI, I think all the ways quotes were abused on other platforms would be mitigated?

@FlatFootFox We'll see how it works out, yeah

Subtext: so are my worst puns

https://bsky.app/profile/soatok.bsky.social/post/3lybjcaoocc2l

One thing I don't miss about Twitter, which is unfortunately also very prevalent on BlueSky, is the reply guys who want to argue with strangers

"Thanks for asking, whoever the fuck you are. Moving onto questions from the actual community..."

The one thing I actually dislike about BlueSky is that it's home to people who thought "old Twitter" was a good thing

https://bsky.app/profile/emeraldxmusic.com/post/3lybpi6ipik2d

One of these days, there will be two simultaneous phenomena:

1. A shitpost will be taken seriously
2. A serious issue will be taken as a shitpost

And there's a good chance I'll be the cause of both

@evan I don't talk about my dayjob stuff here :P

@evan I sure hope not, or else someone's really getting a bad deal

I had some referrers show up to my blog in the past few days that I consider quite gross. Most fedi instances agree and defederate with them. You probably know the ones.

Anyway, I wanted to add a polite "you are not welcome here" in the client-side JS, but I didn't want to drop a list of domain names in case they think it's "advertising" for their gross content.

So I decided to write a script that:

1. Generate a random key.
2. Shuffle the list of domain names, using a CSPRNG.
3. Store a truncated HMAC-SHA256 of the domain name with the ephemeral key.
4. Generate a JSON containing the random key and truncated HMAC tags.

Then I dump this JSON into my WordPress site. If the domain hashes to the same truncated tag, it overwrites the body tag.

https://gist.github.com/soatok/2929e319fa65752c67dbf18d5d38b657

You didn't need another reason to hate Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), but here ya go anyway:

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/08/14/meta-robby-starbuck-ai/

Every Fedi instance that preemptively blocked Threads is good and should feel good.

@GreenSkyOverMe There is a distinct difference between an addiction and a compulsive behavior. Confusing the two does a great disservice to the public.

I'm tired of moronic anecdotes being offered in the replies when I cite the actual scientific consensus that sex addiction isn't a real thing. (Neither is porn addiction.)

I frankly don't care if your lived experience with sex/porn involved a prolongued unhealthy relationship. That doesn't make your compulsions a clinical fucking addiction.

If you want to try to argue scientific consensus with me, save me the trouble and just block me instead.

@SuperDicq I would need to review GNU Taler before I recommend it.

@SuperDicq Yeah I'm loosely familiar with it, but "blind signatures" is a hobby horse for some of my friends in the cryptography space, and other GNU cryptography implementations have been awful so I'm wary.

https://soatok.blog/2020/07/08/gnu-a-heuristic-for-bad-cryptography/

Against the Censorship of Adult Content By Payment Processors

This is a furry blog, where I write about whatever interests me and sign it with my fursona's name. I sometimes talk about furry fandom topics, but I sometimes also talk about applied cryptography. If you got a mild bit of emotional whiplash from that sentence, the best list of posts to start reading to get a feel for my usual fare is…

http://soatok.blog/2025/07/24/against-the-censorship-of-adult-content-by-payment-processors/

Y'know those hug consent badges?

They should make them for "does [not] know how to flirt" and "can [not] recognize flirting"