Stephen Hoffman

@rachel@transitory.social @hacks4pancakes@infosec.exchange The sludge is getting posted back-dated, too. 🤬

The Brave browser: Some cheery reading from Cambridge Analytics on the Brave browser, and on other “privacy-first” products and services: “Brendan Eich’s 2015 promise was seductive in its simplicity: a browser that blocks trackers, ads, and the entire apparatus of surveillance capitalism. Seven years later, Brave has attracted 60 million monthly active users with that vision. What those users largely don’t understand is that Brave replaced Google’s tracking with its own.” https://cambridgeanalytica.org/guides/the-privacy-illusion-how-brave-browser-built-its-own-surveillance-machine-50302/ Unrelated to the ad tracking, some years ago Brave was collecting (Brave cryptocurrency) donations on behalf of others, without prior permission or even knowledge of those it claimed to be collecting the donations for: https://www.theblock.co/article/5839/brave-browser-is-collecting-donations-on-your-behalf-did-you-know There was the affiliate-link interception scheme implemented by Brave, too. https://factually.co/fact-checks/technology/brave-2020-affiliate-link-practice-explained-company-response-eb778c Searches will find other privacy and policy discussions involving Brave. This whole Google and the Wannabes — great band name, that — is headed in the entirely wrong direction for my own privacy preferences, though. #privacy

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 C close(): “When there is an outstanding cancelable asynchronous I/O operation against fildes when close() is called, that I/O operation may be canceled. An I/O operation that is not canceled completes as if the close() operation had not yet occurred. All operations that are not canceled shall complete as if the close() blocked until the operations completed. The close() operation itself need not block awaiting such I/O completion. Whether any I/O operation is canceled, and which I/O operation may be canceled upon close(), is implementation-defined.” close() is async. Sorta. Maybe. I just hope it never happens in my app. This all before we even discuss correctly flushing the various buffer caches that can be involved…

RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@eniko/117008034058808495 Or if you were programming a 32 KW PDP-11 the first time ‘round, ran off the end of the address space, and then had to learn about using overlays in the task builder (TLB, the RSX-11M/M+ linker). Other apps avoided TKB overlays by chaining among different apps, while apps directly chaining to apps is less commonly encountered nowadays. Mention of TKB to those of a certain experience has been known to cause twitching, too. If you’ve never before developed for a resource-limited system, such can be an interesting and different place.

More details and a review of Albany's gonzo rainstorm: https://theeyewall.substack.com/p/recapping-an-impressive-northeast JFM: non-tropical

Clarity in Technical Reporting (NASA SP-7010, 1964) A worthy document still, some sixty years onward. https://archive.org/details/ost-technical-writing-19640016507/mode/2up "FOREWORD With the sharp increase in recent years of the volume of technical reports in aerospace fields, it has become even more important for report authors to present their material clearly and concisely. This booklet, which offers commonsense suggestions for improving written and oral reports, is designed not only for prospective writers within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration but also for scientists and engineers among the agency's contractors who must report the results of their research. The history of this booklet is that of a publication that did not set out to be one, but that has been virtually forced into print by the demand of would-be readers. For a number of years prior to and since the initial printing, the author, a busy scientist at the Langley Research Center, has acted as counselor to fresh-out-of-college youngsters coming to work at the Center — guiding these inexperienced authors in the art of writing technical reports that measure up to Langley's exacting standards. In 1955, Dr. Katzoff, convinced of a widespread need for practical pointers on technical writing, put some of his thoughts on the subject on paper. Typed and duplicated in small numbers, this highly informal document was classed as a Langley internal paper. But publications, notably the best ones, have a life of their own quite separate from the intentions of their authors. Soon "Clarity in Technical Reporting^ began to earn a word-of-mouth reputation as a small classic. Several times copies became scarce, and were run off in small amounts, and became scarce once more. Meantime Langley, acting as a kind of seedbed for its rapidly expanding parent agency, sent many of its alumni to other NASA Research Centers, and thus treasured personal copies were carried to other locations, there to repeat similar cycles of modest reproduction and scarcity. When this curious spread of an elderly informal document was discovered, this Division concluded that so prized and useful a paper merited better treatment. In fairness to its author, now Senior Staff Scientist of the Langley Research Center, one should note that he had no intention of appearing in print as an authority on technical writing. Instead, this booklet should be read as what it is : counsel for those who may wish it from a man who has read — and written — many technical papers. Melvin S. Day, Director Scientific and Technical Information Division” Few people and few organizations still write this way, though. #technicalwriting #NASA #NASAhistory #techwriting

@Nick_Stevens_graphics@mastodon.art The docking hatch is on the top of the LEM, not the side of the LEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition%2C_docking%2C_and_extraction

Reddit thread on IT management of Microsoft Windows, Azure, Entra ID… https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1uuas5j/it_admins_feel_overwhelmingly_sick_of_microsoft/ Selling into the C-suite worked for IBM aeons ago, until it didn’t. How long it’ll continue to work? IT history is littered with operating system vendors that derailed too, many having coasted on their installed base, and the wreckage wasn’t pretty. 📉 A very wise senior (AG) once commented that all companies either operate at the edge of the IT complexity they can manage, or past it. You don’t want dependencies on any companies past the their ability to manage that chaos, because their YOLO / Vibe / Vaya con Diós management strategy eventually and inevitably becomes your mess to to deal with.

Many somebodies will be polling for the “bit flip” at eighteen, of course. https://blog.vrypan.net/2026/06/29/260629-whats-wrong-with-eu-age-verification/

@tomw@mastodon.social @ncweaver@thecooltable.wtf This is the foundation of modern censorship. Not of stopping the flow of information, but of making the information difficult to find, burying it in mundane or contested or conflicting information. Of flooding the search indices and resources.

@joelle @hacks4pancakes Met one of those that required (mis)identifying pickup truck campers as buses.

@postmodern There are sooooo very many badly named apps on UNIX and Linux, but each for reasons.

Politics: I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/116903120796259321 The Amazon “top brands” checkbox provides something analogous, and with no browser extensions required.

LG displays reportedly download adware via Windows Update, per Gamers Nexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM Buy an LG display, connect it to Windows, get McAfee ads. Yay. More generally, vendor-provided storage and printer add-on “drivers” (on macOS, at least) have looked increasingly shady for a while, and some browsers and anti-malware apps have looked increasingly like surveillance engines. Of all of what we could be doing, the best and the brightest, this? 🤬

RE: https://tapbots.social/@paul/117333252770746783 We’re overdue for some new structured cabling network wiring scheme, with tiny new and expensive replacements for modular 8P8C / RJ45 connectors. Probably inevitably using USB-C connectors too, but with some new structured networking cabling required. 240 watt PD EPR would run most networking gear, too. And dongles. Always the dongles.

@jfmezei@cosocial.ca I don’t know. None of the regional forecast info references TS Bertha.

@lindsey@recurse.social DEC called it the calling standard. And like most standards, there were some very creative interpretations, too.

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems This is why plugging covert channels in a secure server is impractical. Best bad option keeps the channel,bandwidth low.

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems In some sheds and garages with network wiring — and with occasional critters visiting — plenum-rated four-pair was less chewed than was the vinyl-wrapped non-plenum cabling. Which means a couple of subsequent cable re-run projects got plenum-rated wiring in not-plenum spaces. Whether the plenum-rated jacket doesn’t absorb critter grime, or it just tastes bad?

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems You mean ffmpeg can’t already do that?