Replying to
This is malware behaviour and I don't think calling it that is an exaggeration.
Remote
packetcat
@packetcat@tenforward.social
mastodon 4.7.3Writer, sysadmin, and book enjoyer. Felis Silvestris. Brown queer dude. Autism haver. He/they.
🇧🇩 🇦🇪 🇨🇦
Header image is a photo I took with my phone from Mount Royal in Montreal, Canada.
Profile picture by Sarah - https://www.instagram.com/2hasssans/
424 Followers
365 Following
50 Posts
Joined January 01, 2020
blog:
support me:
after dark account:
all my other links:
I was just thinking that if Dr. Pepper didn't have caffeine it I would drink it more often
but now that i think about it, why do so many sodas have caffeine in them anyways? what is it for?
Review: Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
"Seasons of Glass and Iron was a lovely read. Not only was it a more than adequate as a palate cleanser, it also delivered more of Amal El-Mohtar's beautiful writing in the form of poignant short stories and poetry. This book was short, sweet and packed an emotional punch."
https://nullrouted.space/2026/04/11/review-seasons-of-glass-and-iron-by-amal-el-mohtar/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Review: The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee
> The Last Contract of Isako delivered the goods. It was another remarkable demonstration of Fonda Lee’s ability to build well thought out worlds with the right blend of political intrigue and deadly action; the combat scenes in this book wouldn’t be out of place in a cyberpunk show. I haven’t read a lot of science fiction this year and it has been fairly hit and miss as a genre. This is by far the best science fiction I’ve read this year and nothing else comes close.
https://nullrouted.space/2026/05/05/review-the-last-contract-of-isako-by-fonda-lee/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Replying to
I don't use any Adobe applications myself but somebody else on my home network does and I can tell you, Adobe app telemetry is very noisy.
Adobe telemetry domains like the following are amongst the top blocked by my local pi-hole installation which is using the OISD big list:
adobecorp.data.adobedc.net
aepxlg.adobe.com
hbrt.adobe.com
So this kind of behaviour is to be expected from Adobe but modifying the local hosts file is a new low, even for them.
Replying to
@rysiek its causing a cascading failure onto de.net as well since de.net uses nic.de for nameservers.
Replying to
look I'm not going to be overly prescriptive about long/run-on sentences but 300 pages of run-on sentence is a bit much methinks
Replying to
oh wtf from reviews of this book I am finding out that the entirety of this 300 page book is one run-on sentence
hell nawwwww
Review: Upward Bound by Woody Brown
> Ultimately I ended up feeling disappointed after I finished Upward Bound. I thought there was some interesting character work done from a perspective we very rarely get in media and some of the themes it tackled were handled with nuance and care. However, the book’s ending and its casual use of a certain slur meant that my negative feelings about the book overshadow any positives.
https://nullrouted.space/2026/05/02/review-upward-bound-by-woody-brown/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Replying to
As far as I know the only major software developer that does software telemetry consent right is Mozilla and the way they do telemetry in Firefox.
once again finding out that a really buzzy/popular new book out right now is only available *physically* as a paperback in Canada 🙃
dude I'm so tired of this, publishers please
[ its Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke ]
Review: Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd
> Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal is in equal measure poetic & precise, and on occasion laugh out loud funny. I was not expecting the humour to be part of this book, it was a pleasant surprise and Mohammed El-Kurd wields sarcasm & satire with as much effectiveness as he does poetic prose.
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Review: The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan
"The Red Winter was an incredibly good read. A well written story about power, monstrosity, and love that once it had gripped me in its talons, I didn’t want it to let go. I enjoyed everything about this book, the narrative, the characters, the fantasy world, and most of all the tragic love story. This is one of those books where I felt a bit sad after I finished it because I wanted to live in the world it had created for just a bit longer."
https://nullrouted.space/2026/04/07/review-the-red-winter-by-cameron-sullivan/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/
Is the phenomenon Jason describing here a form of hypervigilance? I know that term from mental health professionals using it but I don't know if it describes this situation.
[ I have a bunch of other thoughts about this essay but I need to think about them some more before I post them anywhere. ]
Review: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
"The Memory Police was technically fine. It did a more than adequate job of portraying a bleak dystopian world with its plot and character interactions. However, its use of unnamed characters and occasionally sterile prose left me feeling disconnected from the overarching narrative and at the end of it I didn’t come away feeling particular strongly about any of it."
https://nullrouted.space/2026/04/14/review-the-memory-police-by-yoko-ogawa/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Replying to
I imagine this is partially why it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction lmao, tbh its somewhat impressive to write experimental fiction using a single run-on sentence like this and have the story be coherent
but also I'm not reading this, I would hate reading something like, I already don't like when writers write overly long paragraphs with a lot of interiority and stream of consciousness (*cough* Sally Rooney *cough*) so this is my personal nightmare
Review: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
> Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter was fine. It was a very light and easy read and it was exactly the kind of palate cleanser I needed after my last book. I ended up finishing it in one day. I loved most of the characters, especially Agnes and her cats and the setting. However the romance subplot felt very much undercooked and I had rather the book spend more time exploring the very interesting magic system it presented.
https://nullrouted.space/2026/04/22/review-agnes-auberts-mystical-cat-shelter-by-heather-fawcett/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Review: The Book of Fallen Leaves by A. S. Tamaki
> The Book of Fallen Leaves was a disappointment. I really wanted to like this book, the premise and the setting was very much up my alley but the execution left much to be desired.
https://nullrouted.space/2026/04/18/review-the-book-of-fallen-leaves-by-a-s-tamaki/
If you enjoyed reading this book review, please boost this post and perhaps consider buying me a book.
Replying to
@researchfairy@scholar.social Ivory is what I use and recommend with the caveat that it requires a paid subscription.
YouTube: The Online Predator's Best Friend by Stephanie Sterling
https://www.404media.co/ucf-ai-commencement-speaker-booed/
yes, good, more of this
Replying to
What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire.
[ from the description of Angel Down by Daniel Kraus ]
I am sorry but this is an incredibly stupid premise for this story if that's indeed what happened, wdym an angel got struck down by artillery fire?
Replying to
I'm not reading this in the same way I am probably never reading House of Leaves lol
Replying to
While I'm here, I recently found that Discord is using a newish telemetry domain in their desktop application. It doesn't seem to be used in the mobile application (at least not on iOS).
As far as I can tell, the telemetry call only happens at application start.
The domain is dc-telemetry.net. I don't know what kind of telemetry this is being used for.
Replying to
my thoughts on software telemetry have remained unchanged since 2023 since I wrote this:
https://nullrouted.space/2023/02/16/on-telemetry-in-software/
Replying to
@gnomon@mastodon.social wtf, this is the first I'm hearing about this, do you have a news article or other link about this?
Replying to
@deliberately_me@blackqueer.life yes, on purpose, its supposed to be some experimental WW1 fiction
Replying to
to clarify, that is not really meant to be a dig at Sally Rooney's writing, its just very much not a style that works for me - I don't think it is inherently bad that she writes like that (and clearly a lot of people like her writing considering her books sell a gazillion copies)
Replying to
@Monzz@elekk.xyz hey! I'm good, what have you been up to? nice to see you around these parts!
Replying to
@kyle@mastodon.kylemacquarrie.co.uk lmao, I actually had the same thought, there used to be a time when I had cracked CS apps on my computer and I remember modifying my hosts file to null their domains
Replying to
@wohali@timeloop.cafe AFAIK, Firefox no longer checks for OCSP responses. Any settings for it in Preferences are gone and I don't see OCSP related DNS requests from Firefox anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URmcSu-L7ew
:blobcatknife:
I took Charlie Puth's AI music class so you don't have to
this month is Jazz Appreciation Month apparently, what are folks favourite jazz albums?
a couple of mine:
Hiromi's Another Mind
Kamasi Washington's The Epic
Replying to
@forestjohnson@social.pixie.town lol, you are the second person to mention this nulling of Adobe's license validation servers for CS apps
I have also done this in the past because I wanted to have CS apps installed for funsies (never actually made any real use of them)
it's #BandcampFriday today and Bandcamp is having a bad time, it's slow as molasses
guess I'll check back later in the day
Replying to
@jneen@unstable.systems er is the body of the blog post supposed to be ~7MB of HTML and take ~28s to load?
Replying to
@nivex@tenforward.social I think somebody had that Talk and some of it is in latest Firefox stable
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-ai-controls
but IIRC, these "AI" features are opt-out by default so its not perfect
Replying to
I really only care about the fiction winner tbh and it doesn't look like anything I want to read
Replying to
this post brought to you by this news:
https://variety.com/2026/music/news/kid-cudi-fires-m-i-a-tour-republican-rant-1236736864/
