
Remote
Scott Francis
@darkuncle@infosec.exchange
Asking “what if?” for a living • opinions mine, not guaranteed correct • rarely an expert, often an enthusiast • Internet ops since the 20th century • eternally curious • loved beyond comprehension; learning to relax • "we know not yet what we shall become" • be kind • celebrate beauty • fear not • keep hope alive • SoCal 🌊
1670 Followers
1703 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 10, 2022
Signal:
@darkuncle.42
The Rules:
The Reading List:
Profile photos:
Zuma Beach and Henry Cowell Redwoods
RE: https://mastodon.world/@dailyHotWheels/117396209887975004
not pictured: tiny box of milk #IYKYK
Quoting
This Baja Breaker is one of the 1984 Hot Wheels cars. Notes: Van has black plastic rear windows, black hood does not lift up. #HotWheels #year1984

Open post
RE: https://stranger.social/@DeniseG/117346320217276662
This is a good read, and also this from just a few months ago: automakers collectively threatened to stop selling cars in California entirely rather than comply with anti-tracking and customer privacy laws. https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/automakers-rather-quit-california-entirely-120800364.html
Open quoted post
Quoting
Meet The Pardoned Delete Mechanic Who Wants To Stop Your Car From Spying On You
Pardoned mechanic Matt Geouge has built a device that blocks vehicles from spying on their drivers, because in 2018 his fiancée realized investigators were following her. Now he braces for steep opposition from manufacturers as he unveils his new product.
#surveillance #car #automobile #tracking
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/09/25/meet-the-pardoned-delete-mechanic-who-wants-to-stop-your-car-from-spying-on-you/
Open quoted post 14
1
10
0
Open post
RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117352037172517356
This entire thread is just 🤌🤌🤌
Jonny is doing yeoman’s work here
Open quoted post
Open quoted post
Quoting
I fucking can't with this shit sometimes. So there is a skill for rendering local HTML "artifacts", little local websites. However the LLM frequently outputs invalid HTML/JS, and it wants to enforce some other rules like not loading external js. There is already a check for this when artifacts are built into a runnable state, but that guess and check is apparently expensive, so rather than "fixing that and just failing fast in a single codepath" this PR adds a duplicate, slightly diverged layer of checks that can be run without building.
One small part is so wonderfully broken and cursed, emblematic of LLM code: the check for whether all script tag openings have a corresponding close.
So there already IS a proper HTML/js AST parser, which is run, but fuck that too easy. First we call findScriptElements, which searches for the start of a script start tag with regex, and then uses a handrolled character-level parser to find where it's closed. Amazing! Why? Fuck off that's why! That finds the tag, and then we look for the corresponding tag with a similar but slightly different regex+custom parser combination. Whats that you say? Thats invalid? Not how HTML works? Fuck off! If no end tag is found the start tag is ignored and findScriptElements breaks. So at this point we already know if there are unbalanced script tags, even if we are incorrectly parsing HTML with regex, we just don't use that information.
But wait! There so much more! You didn't ask for more? Fuck you! Since the scripts get transformed, and scripts can have strings that look like script tags, we then get a version of the document with all the BODIES of its script tags stripped out. To do that it also uses findScriptElements, but wait, wasn't that based on regex and would incorrectly match against the very thing we're trying to strip out? Fuck you!
What were we doing? Finding unclosed script tags! So we have a list of closed script element locations, a string with all the bodies of its script elements stripped out, so now of course we need a new function countScriptTagStarts, which is of course just a plain regex search for the opening script tags! With everything we need in hand, which is... Whatever... We then compare if the number of script start tags in the script element stripped html matches the count of the script elements we extracted at the beginning. If that doesn't match we say that... Something... Is wrong!
Still not done! Still not released from this torment! You know how validators "scan the whole thing and collect all the errors" and report them, because then you can fix them all at once? Not here! Emit only one error and then bash the LLM at it in a loop! Notice how it says "errors cascade and presenting multiple is just noise" - thats strictly a feature of how shitty their validator is! Usually parse errors are just a different kind of error that shortcircuits further validation that assumes syntactically valid input, so then validation errors don't always propagate! So to compensate for the shitty random walk code churn, we ensure all code that get written in the future has even more preposterously expensive shitty random walk code churn!
Coding!!!! Is !!!! Solved!!!!!!!!!
https://github.com/sneakers-the-rat/muse-skills/commit/48856cfd38dbae6607c3db3925eda8250175ffc8#diff-d30f3a73309eb8ece5a07551cc5a94009c2b704f177df79afe6410580e806bbaR12

3
0
2
0
Open post
Excellent research (and very useful FAQ) out on a new RSA attack: forging 1024-bit signatures in “nearly SNFS time” (not polynomial, but somewhat faster than previous number field sieve approaches by a few orders of magnitude). Real-world risk is low because most RSA implementations in practice do not meet one of the attack requirements; however … more ammunition on the need to transition away from RSA (and protocols like TLS moved to elliptic curve quite a while ago, or are moving to ML-KEM and #PQC). https://github.com/ucsd-hacc/NSNFSSSFSFN #cryptography
tip o’ the hat to Bruce Schneier’s blog for raising it to my attention
3
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@Joshuakevins12@mastodon.social from a family of farmers going back generations, this is so true. Related is this quote that really sticks with me: “Spiritual formation is the slowest of all human movements.” — James Houston (via Chris Hall of Renovaré)
2
1
1
0
Open post
Replying to
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org @ceartas@mastodon.world @godber@az.social my local Denny’s (Moorpark) has *this exact one* on the floor; I remember being bemused when I first saw it several years ago (it was I think right after pandemic)
2
0
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@internic@mathstodon.xyz reminds me of the repeated line in Short Circuit — “it doesn’t get happy, it doesn’t get sad, it *just runs programs*” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJFvqNOorTs
Short Circuit (3/8) Movie CLIP - It Just Runs Programs (1986) HD
2
1
0
0
Open post
#TIL that California passed a law allowing residents to submit a single request that requires *all* registered data brokers to delete personal info and stop selling it.
will it work? for the ones who make a lot of money publicly, yes; for the criminals, probably not. But I’ll take it. https://privacy.ca.gov/drop
2
0
1
0
Open post
RE: https://mastodon.social/@ScienceScholar/117338761945628970
We need to go back to Uranus
I will never not be 15, I guess
Open quoted post
Quoting
“We just need to go back” – Uranus’ moon Ariel may have hidden a 100-mile-deep ocean
Ariel, one of Uranus’ moons, may once have contained a subsurface ocean more than 100 miles deep beneath its fractured icy shell. The finding, combined with similar evidence from Miranda, suggests the distant Uranian system could harbor multiple hidden ocean worlds.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260923035951.htm #science
Open quoted post 3
1
0
0
Open post
Rest is so important, and our society devalues it so much. It really saddens me.
3
1
0
0
Open post
Chrysler, make a battery EV Pacifica minivan you COWARDS
seriously it’s such a good vehicle design on every level, but boy do they need an EV version. Hybrid is insufficient.
2
1
0
0
Open post
Boosted by @MaryAustinBooks@mstdn.social
RE: https://beep.town/@aws/117359217511421189
tired: Amazon drone delivery
wired: Amazon catapult delivery
Open quoted post
Quoting
AWS Catapult for Retail is a fully managed projectile-trajectory commerce acceleration service that launches your retail workloads toward customers at maximum velocity, with launch angle, payload weight, and arc optimization handled automatically across all three Availability Zones in us-east-1. The Free Tier includes 1,000 launches per month, after which you are billed per launch, per arc-degree of correction, per kilogram of payload, and for the landing zone, which is a separate regional endpoint priced in a currency AWS will determine at press time. IAM permissions are required to configure both the catapult and the thing being catapulted, and these are different permissions.
#aws #AmazonWebServices #CloudComputing #cloud #parody #humor
Open quoted post 1
1
2
0
Open post
Replying to
@AmenZwa@mathstodon.xyz @skewray@mathstodon.xyz 100% — this is the T-shaped profile, or the professional generalist (me!)
2
1
0
0
Open post
Going through the screenshot archives and found this gem from Google search autocomplete like a decade ago
3
0
1
0
Open post
Replying to
@AmenZwa@mathstodon.xyz @skewray@mathstodon.xyz I’m (as my bio says) an enthusiast in many topics but a professional in very few
2
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
3
0
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@flyingsaceur@ioc.exchange @pikhq@social.treehouse.systems I, for one, refuse to let AI deprive me of anything just on general principle, whether it's markdown or the emdash or the Queen's English
3
2
0
0
Open post
Replying to
re: maths about jellybeans
@whbboyd@infosec.exchange this post alone was worth a follow @SnoopJ@hachyderm.io @ifixcoinops@retro.social
1
0
0
0
Open post
I guess you’ve really arrived as a scientist or mathematician when the negation of your name is a whole field of inquiry
non-Newtonian
non-Euclidian
etc.
2
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@phlogiston@mastodon.nz My understanding (enthusiastic amateur level) is that almost no certificates use RSA without some kind of padding that would prevent this particular attack (notably, Privacy Pass used by Cloudflare and Apple is an exception, which is ironic given their respective relatively stellar records on secure cryptographic implementations)
1
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
The problem with the convenient action button on the side of my watch is the irregular “do you want to end your workout?” prompts throughout the day because I inadvertently nudged the button.
like … I did not even *begin* my workout but now I feel judged
1
0
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org this is fascinating and strangely entrancing
2
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
Replying to
I mean, the guy literally mixed the soundtrack for World Sleep Day (yes this is a thing, and a holiday I think we can all get behind) https://music.apple.com/us/album/world-sleep-day-2024-dj-mix/1735060037
1
1
0
0
Open post
"Wrinkles and Magnetic Flux Trapping in Graphite Nanoflakes: A Possible Source and Manifestation of Room-Temperature Superconductivity" https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15712
Very interesting; one of the key signatures of superconductivity persists up to 390 K (116 C / 240 F) and above in this experiment with graphite nanoflakes.
Metamaterials are going to continue to be one of the biggest sources of breakthroughs in fundamental tech for the next decade. #emergingtech
2
0
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@AmenZwa@mathstodon.xyz @skewray@mathstodon.xyz I have thought about this a lot over the last 10 to 15 years; in defense of the new generation, the scope of technology in the world is so much broader than it was 25 or 30 years ago that I’m not sure it is still possible to be a generalist in the same way that those of us who started in the 80s or 90s had to be out of necessity
1
1
1
0
Open post
Replying to
@heatsink@infosec.exchange so far it appears to be a problem only on my phone and not on my iPad (which has been upgraded to iPadOS 27) or my Mac or my car (which is logged into my Apple Music account). I am going to try a restart and an upgrade on my phone to iOS 27.
1
0
0
0
Open post
“‘Sceptic’ comes from the Greek skeptikos, meaning enquirer, and has a long and serious pedigree in philosophy. Yet, since the 1990s, the term has been hijacked by science-denial movements, giving us oxymorons like ‘climate sceptic’, ‘vaccine sceptic’, and ‘evolution sceptic’.
These movements understood that ‘sceptic’ has cultural prestige: it sounds rigorous, independent-minded, and anti-establishment, so they colonised it. The move was brilliant and corrosive, as it reframed denial as enquiry. The difference shows in practice: a genuine sceptic, confronted with compelling new evidence, updates – whereas the contrarian does not: they shift goalposts, raise new objections, or ignore what they cannot explain, all while citing studies selectively and appealing to the handful of dissenting experts cherrypicking the evidence. Their doubt is not the productive Socratic doubt that opens enquiry but a rhetorical shield that forecloses it. These self-styled sceptics are in fact dogmatists, having reached their conclusions in advance and thereafter simply engaging in rationalisations.
On the other side, a certain strand of scientism has overcorrected by demanding certainty as the price of admission for any belief worth holding, deploying ‘follow the science’ as a conversation-stopper rather than an invitation to enquiry. That is not how real science works either.”
https://aeon.co/essays/a-good-sceptic-has-more-than-doubt-and-less-than-certainty
1
1
2
0
Open post
Have to admit when I first looked at this I thought it was … something else https://bird.makeup/users/rainmaker1973/statuses/2103016678829203635
1
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
1
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
Open post
Replying to on eigenmagic.net
@elebertus@eigenmagic.net the older we get the more of a back catalog we accumulate
0
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
Open post
Modern computing problems: I have all these gorgeous desktop wallpapers and a remarkably good monitor, and almost no transparent applications (and if I had them, I probably couldn’t see well enough to use them without readers anymore). *sigh*
0
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@deepthoughts10@infosec.exchange I remember loving NetScaler about 20 years ago, before the Citrix acquisition
0
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
Replying to on tech.lgbt
@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt this is *gorgeous* and disturbing at the same time, I love it
0
0
0
0
Open post
Open post
Replying to
Interesting wrinkle: just added an album (that I am currently listening to, which I added a month ago). Came back to Music dot app five minutes later, went to show album … not in library. Re-added. Reproduced bug again. Going to upgrade phone to iOS 27 next. (Also big shout out to Cephas Azariah, his new album is *awesome* https://music.apple.com/us/album/conditions-for-observing-light/6776304162 )
0
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
Interesting add’l data point: the Apple Music interface in my car has up to date records of everything added recently. This may be a phone-specific issue
0
1
0
0
Open post
Replying to
@Laukidh@infosec.exchange the sooner they ban *everybody* except Fox News and OAN, the better. at least it will be unarguable at that point.
0
0
0
0


