@Alex@vran.as
@Alex@vran.as avatar

Alex

@Alex@vran.as

#Netsec Professional. Whitehat #Hacker. #Demoscene spectator. Nerd.

I'm a fan of #Linux, #FOSS, #Decentralization (not Crypto), Crypto (as in #Cryptography), and #Socialism. Always #Antifascist & #Antiwar.

Seattle, WA

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

Alex, to random
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So I noticed that the "now playing" info on the KEXP website comes from a paginated API endpoint that let's you see previously played songs as well as the currently playing track.

It was kinda neat to poke at it to see how far back I could go. You could just keep rewinding to see all the tracks that aired going pretty far back.

And just how far back was that? 2,650,000 tracks, all the way back to 2005.

I love finding little secret info holes like this. I scraped all that data up to play with.

stux, to random
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Nero made you feel like Neo :the_matrix:

Alex,
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@stux Imagine what the world would look like if Frutiger Aero design aesthetics had become the standard.

Alex, to random
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I was on this plane, lol. https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/watch-plane-forced-abort-landing-32528120

Alex,
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Clip: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxBU9_FrdgpwHb7J74zqPRoSdhaEitT2zK?si=cr0WDLUFoqcDH6Uv

Alex,
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So the timestamps seem weird, and the Irish Sun says the plane was coming from Venice, so either this happened more than once yesterday, or the sources reporting on it are mistaken.

But EI0169 from LHR to DUB yesterday absolutely aborted landing on the runway with me on it yesterday.

Alex, to random
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The vulnerability really has me feeling good about not living on the bleeding edge. I'm sure there's still some risk of a terrible backdoor somewhere in Debian or Ubuntu that hasn't been found yet, but at least there's a much higher chance of someone catching it before it bites me.

Only thing of mine that was affected was my Termux installations on my Android devices, something I never use for SSH anyway.

Alex, to random
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It's a shame that communites surrounding Lemmy, Kbin, et al are closer to Pleroma than Mastodon in terms of tolerance for fascism. I really want that part of the Fediverse to succeed, but it's rapidly becoming as toxic as Reddit.

Still better than Reddit by a long shot, and not so toxic that I'm quitting yet, but I might not stick around if things get worse. Already about to switch instances since the flagship mods are slowly shrinking and transforming into corncobs.

ploum, to bluesky
@ploum@mamot.fr avatar

"I’m not on Mastodon because there’s nobody there, there’s not enough users to make it succeed, my whole community is on Twitter and don’t want to migrate and… hey… I now have a account! Please follow me on Bluesky, it’s very cool, it belongs to a billionaire but is decentralised. Or at least, the billionaire promises us it will be, which is cool."

– Basically every silicon valley pundit

Alex,
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@ploum What's funny is that Jack Dorsey, the billionaire who everyone thinks owns Bluesky, is just on the board of directors, doesn't have an account, and is actively endorsing a Web3 competitor to Bluesky. Bluesky is just a shady for-profit Mastodon wannabe that will never amount to anything in the federated social media space. Now we watch as their own users get angry that federation is coming, even though that was the promise from the beginning.

Alex, to random
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Just followed every artist on the @radiofreefedi rotational. Looking forward to discovering lots of new music.

Alex, to random
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Question for everyone who uses cutesy misspelled words and text art in your alt tags: do you know what alt tags are for?

Because people with screen readers don't want to hear the sounds that "chooooooooooonker" or ":-(" make.

Alex, to random
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Cryptocurrency people are so funny. Recently someone with deep pockets spent six-figures embedding 9MB of encrypted data into the BTC blockchain.

I read a write-up about it one some website dedicated to cryptocurrency, and the author was especially impressed with the fact that encrypted data cannot be decrypted without a key. He noted that "not even ChatGPT could decrypt it".

Of course Cryptocurrency people don't understand cryptography... That's why they buy pretend internet money.

Alex,
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There is something so incredibly funny to me about watching a journalist that specializes in Cryptocurrency encountering a 9MB blob of encrypted data, and marveling over the fact that a language model couldn't magically break the cypher.

And then to tell the world that this is how he tried to decrypt data, with zero awareness that they're saying something devastatingly stupid to anyone who actually understands the topic.

And cryptography is literally the backbone of the tech he covers...

Alex,
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Found the article. Seems like I was off on the cost ($64k, not six-figures), but here's the whole thing if you want to die inside: https://cointelegraph.com/news/mysterious-bitcoiner-spends-64k-inscribe-9mb-of-data-on-bitcoin

Alex, to random
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I switched from Spotify to Deezer a little over a year ago, largely because Spotify wasn't adequately moderating disinformation and hate speech in it's hosted Podcasts, but if anything has made me love Deezer it is that I can upload my own MP3s and stream them everywhere.

I never have any issues with Deezer not having something that Spotify has, it's just nice being able to dump all my obscure tracks into one service so I can play whatever I want and make playlists using all of it.

jeffjarvis, to random
@jeffjarvis@mastodon.social avatar

Oh, jeesh: Washington Post is shocked--shocked--that a tool does what it is told. Next they'll find out that chainsaws can hurt you....
Microsoft says its AI is safe. So why does it keep slashing people’s throats? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/28/microsoft-ai-bing-image-creator/

Alex,
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@jeffjarvis If someone were handing out chainsaws to people for free, and people started battling to the death in the streets with them, you might at least point out that the guy handing them out was a key part of the problem.

Alex,
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@jeffjarvis I guess I just don't see the harm in pointing out when a corporation is doing something potentially harmful. The argument that the tool is doing what it's supposed to do isn't a great argument either, because it's doing things worthy of criticism.

Alex, to bluesky
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So everyone gives Jack Dorsey credit for , but he doesn't even have an account. He has zero presence on his own site.

But he posts on multiple times every day, mostly about Bitcoin.

Hard to imagine he has much faith in Bluesky as a decentralized Twitter alternative when he's clearly chosen his preferred decentralized Twitter alternative.

Alex,
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Welp, Jack Dorsey is defending TERFs and Nazis now...

Alex,
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More on this: Jack Dorsey donates money to White Nationalist groups.

Alex, to random
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I would honestly consider a court removing a candidate from a ballot to be massive government overreach if we hadn't written this exact scenario into the Constitution 155 years ago.

The larger story is that 49 states have still failed uphold the 14th amendment requirement that Trump be removed, and we're reaching the three-year anniversary of J6.

Without a 2/3 vote of Congress to override this rule, it is illegal to put him on the ballot. Colorado is the only state obeying this law today.

Alex, to random
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One of the things that I thought was a downside to running a single-user instance is that not all of the comments load for popular posts. I really only see the people I follow, I have no other users filling in the blanks in my database.

But this makes it harder to get stuck in the weeds. If I want to see reactions to a post I can open the thread on its home server and see everything.

It's honestly a good filter to keep me from responding to posts that aren't productive to respond to.

Alex, to random
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It looks like the @matrix flagship server is currently under attack by far-right trolls.

All of the larger rooms are currently flooding with pornspam and slurs.

Alex, to random
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A reminder that, despite the propaganda, veterans/troops are not the reason Americans have rights. If they are Republican, and many of them are, they are part of the fight to destroy the pillars of freedom this country was founded on until all that's left is a Christofacist Dictatorship.

Which is why military/police worship is such a popular Conservative aesthetic: They know who will carry out their will should they ever overthrow this nation.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/15/satanic-temple-vandalism-iowa-state-capitol

Alex,
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“I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” said Cassidy, a former US navy pilot who has previously run for Congress unsuccessfully in Mississippi. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”

The Oath of Enlistment means nothing. It's nationalist theater.

Alex, to random
@Alex@vran.as avatar

I'm seriously considering making legal challenges against the government's use of X.

To state my position simply: It is unacceptable for any government entity to use a for-profit, members-only private platform for communications.

I am going to delete my remaining X accounts, and then start requesting copies of everything my local government posts there.

I should not have to enter into a contract with a private company to access government communications.

Any advice / help is welcome.

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