@mattblaze@federate.social
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

mattblaze

@mattblaze@federate.social

Scientist, safecracker, etc. McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown. Formerly UPenn, Bell Labs. So-called expert on election security and stuff. https://twitter.com/mattblaze on the Twitter. Slow photographer. Radio nerd. Blogs occasionally at https://www.mattblaze.org/blog . I probably won't see your DM; use something else. He/Him. Uses this wrong.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mattblaze, (edited ) to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

I’m once again reminded of how deeply I despise the default behavior of this (and damn near every other) social media platform to crop photos to a pre-set aspect ratio in previews. (Some clients allow viewers to disable this, but that’s outside the control of the poster, who has no way to predict how your work will render)

The reasonable behavior to conserve screen real estate in previews is to downsize. Cropping alters the image, often in ways that destroy its meaning.

Grumble

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Yes, I know about the checkbox that disables this. But as I noted, that’s a client option for the READER, not the poster. Most people just have the default set, so as a photographer, I end up with no way to control how my work is presented.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

I’m reminded of Twitter’s attempt at “smart” cropping, which tried to center faces. Naturally, it didn’t recognize certain skin tones (one guess which!) as being faces.

Just show the whole picture, please.

mattblaze, to photography
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Former Philadelphia Inquirer Building, Philadelphia.

Image made during the liminal period between the Inquirer slipping out and the Philly police colonizing it as their headquarters. Purpose-built office buildings are like the shells of hermit crabs, but for organizations.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/32309131520

mattblaze, (edited )
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

I captured this with a DSLR and the then-new Nikon 19mm shift lens, rather than my usual view camera setup for this sort of thing. It's a bit soft at the top, but I think it works overall.

Mostly it was a race against borrowed time. It was only shortly after that they removed the signage above the entry. So when the sky was just right one night, I took the opportunity to run out and make the photo.

Mostly, I remember it being very, very cold. Brrr.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@Rajiv Nope, all digital. I'm like a vegan, but for photo emulsions.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@ColinOatley @gfwellman The lens is straight on, but there's some pincushion distortion that gives it a look as if the building is puffing itself up to look bigger. So I decided not to correct it.

mattblaze, (edited )
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

A decade or so before they moved out of their building, the Inquirer relocated their printing plant elsewhere. (It was, I believe one of the last customers of the freight rail line that ran under the building). The old NY Times building in NYC followed a similar decline after its presses were moved to less fancy real estate.

Are there any big daily papers left in which the editor can run downstairs from the newsroom and yell "Stop the presses!!"?

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@kentborg it was part of the Reading RR’s “City Line”, a short cutoff branch between the Reading/B&O (now CSX) line that rubs along the Schuylkill and the old 9th Street Reading viaduct. It also served the original Baldwin Locomotive Works plant near Callowhill St. (Boosting because others have asked the same question).

gme, to random

@mattblaze There are alternatives. Maybe it’s time you investigated the myriad of other options other than Mastodon that exist on the Fediverse.

RE: https://federate.social/users/mattblaze/statuses/110380464934526966

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@gme no. Same problem. Because it’s part of the fediverse. Artist has no control or way to predict.

And with respect, belittling my concerns is the opposite of respectful.

pirateradiomap, to random

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy3gaq/pirate-radio-has-made-its-way-back-to-aotearoa

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

And now that I got my grades (mostly) in, I check my email to discover an indignant complaint about the "insensitivity" of my Faraday thread.

W T actual F.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@anne_twain I did, and I decline. I don't think your reading is reasonable, and your insistence that I re-write a year+ old blog post to defend against the remote chance that someone will come to the improbable conclusion that I'm suggesting phone tracking is not a legitimate concern is not something I am willing to do.

To be clear about what I think about phone tracking, see these words that I also wrote, which are at the end of the post you're complaining about.

mattblaze, (edited )
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Look, obviously I'm not a very good writer, because no matter how many ways I try to convey "no, I'm not going to do what you're asking me to do", I fail to make myself clear.

lou, to random

@mattblaze I just read the stuff on your thread about DMs on the other server. Did you try submitting a bug report or feature request thinggy to the overlords? I thought that part of the response cloud had some validity.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@lou In any case, I reject this weird idea that it's not OK to talk about bugs or problems unless you go though the reporting process. It's OK to talk about things we don't like informally. And warning others about non-intuitive behavior has value.

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

For some reason, I got a ton (or at least several ounces) of people asking me about Faraday bags for phones the last couple days.

While I’m not in the Faraday bag testing business, you might find this writeup I did a couple years ago helpful, mainly to explore how you can think about what Faraday bags do and don’t do and how to measure them. Go science!

https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Tl;dr: actually making one that works well can be surprisingly tricky. Some of the commercial ones work well, but not always. Homebrew is hard, especially if you want strong assurance that it works. And a Faraday bag probably doesn’t solve your actual problem.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Again, the use case for Faraday bags is narrow. Basically, modern phones are promiscuous trackers, and it’s impossible to be certain that they’re actually off (especially in the presence of malware). That’s probably not a significant threat to most of us in daily life, or even the worst way a modern phone can betray you, but if you actually do need a Faraday bag, you want it to least work well.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

But again, the use case is narrow. All they do is ensure your device can't send or receive radio signals. If your phone is in a Faraday bag, it won't work. So it's of no use if you need your phone to be on and available. And if you're going somewhere secret, you need to put the phone in the bag BEFORE you go there, and leave it there until you're somewhere else. And Faraday bags do nothing to block audio.

Not useless, but not a "magic privacy box" either.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Infuriatingly, Faraday bags are often marketed to genuinely vulnerable people who not only don't actually need them, but might use them in ways that will make them more vulnerable. For example, a domestic violence victim living in a secret safe house needs a private burner phone far more than they need a Faraday bag. If their partner is tracking them with their old phone, any benefit they'd get from a Faraday bag disappears the moment they turn the phone on at their safe house.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

(This isn't to say a Faraday bag is useless for DV victims, only that it doesn't address their central need for a secure phone, and requires a fairly deep understanding and sustained care to use effectively).

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Anyway, my Faraday writeup (see beginning of this thread) was mostly to encourage people to think and learn about measuring stuff. Science is fun and sometimes even useful, despite what they say on the Internet.

isac, to random

✨ FILM ALERT! Newly remastered version of Wings of Desire is releasing on 24 June in cinemas.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/22/wings-of-desire-review-wim-wenders-elegiac-hymn-to-a-broken-cold-war-berlin

mattblaze, to photography
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

The One World Trade Center tower, occupying its place in the lower Manhattan skyline.

Enough pixels to reach the sky at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49291055921/

adamshostack,

@mattblaze Thanks. I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography is more useful to me in learning than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle

Noupside, to random
@Noupside@saturation.social avatar

Their job isn’t to “make news”, it’s to cover news. This was a pseudoevent - a produced moment envisioned by an outlet, made for entertainment. No one learned anything new about the world from it.

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

My decision about whether to try Bluesky depends on what everyone else does. I just want to be where everyone else is, and not be around too many Nazis. My needs are simple.

mattblaze,
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

@FinchHaven @nunesgh Is this better than verifying via text on a web page? I dunno. Either way limits verification to people who have either a web page they control or a domain, neither of which is anywhere near "everybody"

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