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Happy New Year, Everyone
Let’s hope it’s a good one, and that the world leans away from oppression in so many arenas.
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The year is finishing on a crappy note with the theft of a load of groceries; hopefully they actually need them, but I doubt it
To commiserate we will ring in the new year with an Australian Sauternes knockoff + yummy biscotti to dip, and watch the neighbourhood fireworks. Happy New Year, everyone.
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What the history of OpenBoot, Phrack, Mudge & Solaris, can teach us about the wisdom (or not) of Apple’s building their iPhone security debugging-backdoor-NSA-hack thing
In the days before people really, really, cared about security — when it was more amazing that mainstream computers worked at all rather than that they offered falsifiable guarantees about privacy and integrity, and most of all in the days before hackerdom decided that it would be great if all the world’s computation ran on…
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Qing dynasty China, where failing to properly subtweet the Emperor would get you — and possibly all your rellies — beheaded, or worse…
“…only death by beheading.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_taboo A naming taboo is a cultural taboo against speaking or writing the given names of exalted persons, notably in China and within the Chinese cultural sphere. It was enforced by several laws throughout Imperial China, but its cultural and possibly religious origins predate the Qin dynasty. Not respecting the appropriate naming taboos was considered a sign of lacking…
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There’s a better English alphabet
I had not heard of Shavian script before this — I have some dim memory of an experimental script ending up on the sides of “alien” space-craft in some Sci-Fi series, but it may not have been this — but it’s clever, cute, and this is a nice video. Aside: I wonder what would happen…
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Umikot Planetary Gear Spirograph Espresso WDT Tool by redfoxdude | Printables.com
I am tempted but I think that I need to tune my Prusa before attempting to print this: https://www.printables.com/model/481587-umikot-58mm-version-planetary-gear-spirograph-espr
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How AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader’ | The Washington Post
Gosh, can you remember when it was the internet itself that was the problem? Or email spam? Or the Web and UGC? Or Social Media? Good times, good times… <laughs in historical perspective> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/17/ai-fake-news-misinformation/
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Mangajin Archives Now Available – Comics Worth Reading
From 2020; I love that there are resources online like this. I also hate that the truth is: I don’t have time for shit like this. It’s hard enough to keep on top of laundry, cleaning, parenting, housekeeping/DIY, and blogging. Mangajin ran from 1990-1997, a total of 70 issues. It was an English-language magazine that taught…
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Dare Obasanjo on Apple’s App Tracking Transparency
Quoth Dare, pointedly: Someone asked what are the tradeoffs that are left unsaid in Apple’s ATT prompts. There are a few 1. You are still going to see ads, in fact you will get more ads as ad systems don’t know your interests and will need more attempts to get you to buy something. 2.…
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Amazing: today we have at least two stories — one old, one new — about Governments wanting to suppress public discussion of attempted surveillance
The first is about Margaret Thatcher and the Peter Wright / “Spycatcher” affair; the second is from India re: the Government being angry at Apple for being frank with people about apparent attempts of the Indian state to hack into activist iPhones. “The Spycatcher scandal contributed more than anything to bring the spies out of…
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The reason why armchair (and professional) lawyers who want to argue the Open AI vs: New York Times copyright lawsuit, should look towards the Dead Sea Scrolls…
This is written-up in a bunch[1] of places, but basically: the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered circa 1946, then excavated, and then hoarded by academics who wanted to only release them piecemeal and slowly, after consideration. Alas for this plan: to assist researchers who wanted to run statistical analyses of which words were where on…