@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

tim_lavoie

@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca

Working in infosec, from my island paradise.
Fascinated by how tech is (ab)used in real life, and how it might help, or hinder our lives.
Love messing with programming languages, photography, getting outside.

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

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Our voice phone systems are seamlessly federated. You can call people across carriers, over national boundaries, instantaneously, and the only friction is slightly more numbers to dial.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan SMS is well-federated, but also the very lowest common denominator. It excels at nothing else.

The designers of systems are making choices, often based on how much access they want to your data.

I'm happy to use Signal, because they don't want my data.

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Hmm… doing a bit of log diving. The continuous onslaught from attackers probing for WordPress vulnerabilities is getting to the point where it’s noticeably stressing my server a bit, and the attack pressure is increasing all the time.

There might be a place for a service that provides an IP address blocklist based on observed behavior…

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray Pretty sure fail2ban has optional actions to this effect, where it can auto-complain to a central service, or the WHOIS contact.

Another thought I liked was to take a bunch of the usual target URLs that aren't present, and feed them a list of also dodgy URLs in a page, to keep them busy forever. Less helpful if you're looking to minimize CPU I guess, but maybe worth it to distract them. (Could sleep in that too, feed out the nonsense content slooooowwwwwllllyy.)

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Admission: I love having full hardware service manuals for equipment, even though I only occasionally end up actually using them.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@lauren At that point, taking the back panel off a major appliance feels like Christmas. That's where they stash the useful manual for the repair techs.

eclectech, to photography
@eclectech@things.uk avatar

OK Friday. I am officially coming at you with determination in my heart, a saw in my hands, and glee in my eyes at the thought I might finally do a job that I've ignored for a LONG time.

Let's do this.

  • wonders where the saw is *

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@eclectech Two thumbs... still attached!

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Should white people listen to reggae?

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray @evan Kids love music! Even if it's music your spouse is less a fan of.

Not crabby-baby related, but I used to lie ours down, grab their feet, and just go ham along with Ministry's "Jesus Built my Hot Rod."

mattblaze, to photography
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

Hallway, NYC, 2014.

All the pixels, subdivided several times, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/13337114073

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@mattblaze imagine living there and having any sort of emergency. Fire, ambulance…

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

What is your favourite blood type?

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan I like A so much, I keep giving away free samples.
(Over 100 units now)

RL_Dane, to fediverse
@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org avatar

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@RL_Dane That said, there are lots of friends and family I would encourage to join me here. They'll send me the odd thing on a Meta site for example, then text me so I see it before the next quarter.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@RL_Dane Some was easy (e.g. never really being an Instagram person), other bits were more challenging. I had used Facebook for quite a while, then decided to nuke my account.

I tried sending a message to each of my contacts, e.g. where else to reach me if interested, and kept getting slapped by their systems that reduce spam.

I did recreate an account so I could contact my kid on Messenger when he let his cell plan lapse, but otherwise, my wife just tells me highlight tidbits occasionally.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@RL_Dane It's funny what sticks around though. Like, I spend a lot more time yakking on Signal now, with a group of guys who I "met" on Twitter.

For the few hundred Facebook "friends" I left behind, largely silence. It's fine though, I get plenty of cat pics here.

ifixcoinops, (edited ) to random
@ifixcoinops@retro.social avatar

Mildly spicy web advertising takes

  • 468x60 static non-animated non-tracking banners for cool webcomics and weird hobby blogs are brilliant and only the most tedious of people have any problem with them at all

  • blog writers and webcomic artists getting paid a couple bucks here and there for running non-intrusive ads is Good Actually

  • the shittiness of web ads scales exponentially in accordance with how much money you're trying to make off them - if you want a few extra quid each month for pizza and beer money, web ads are great and useful to everyone, that's the perfect use case; if you want more money than that then ads are the wrong tool for the job, and you can in fact use the wrong tool wrong enough to destroy democracy

Edit: one more

  • the fact that my adblocker will look at a 468x60 non-animated non-intrusive non-spyware banner ad for a gay webcomic and go "ah yes, this can go in the same hole as this 50 megabyte video ad for a toothbrush you bought last week, loaded with so much spyware javascript that your processor fan roars like a jet engine," by DEFAULT, is... honestly tragic. These are Different Things but, remember the most tedious people in the world I mentioned above? They made the adblocker
tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@ifixcoinops Do you see a lot of these static, non-tracking ads around? I have manually white-listed ads on useful sites a couple times, but the old ad model is very rare these days.

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Where were you on the day that @zuck joined the Fediverse?

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan @zuck Elsewhere, not reading Zuck, until he got boosted here.

timbray, (edited ) to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

This is our younger, more athletic, and not-so-bright cat, who not only has lovely eyes, but…

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray And an epic collar for the birds. We have a couple of hunters, so bought those too. The main problem is that one cat is so fluffy, the collar disappears.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray Oh, our Luna does this too. She is currently labeled as Minnie, since Minnie’s collar couldn’t be seen anyway. Plot twist, neighbours just returned Luna’s collar, found there months after it disappeared.

tim_lavoie, to random
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

It’s March 3, in the Pacific Northwest. Also time to turn the Christmas lights back on, since they were still up anyway.

Panning view from an upper deck, as a million fat snowflakes add to the 10” or so already covering everything. It’s very pretty in the surrounding fir trees though.

evan, (edited ) to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

How often do you use virtual desktops on your computer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan They work very well with tiling window managers for example, where another desktop is just a keystroke away.

I'll typically have shell windows & Emacs on 1, Firefox on 2, note-taking app on 3, Signal on 4. With a largely keyboard-driven workflow, there is a minimum of hunting around with a mouse pointer.

girlonthenet, to random
@girlonthenet@mastodon.social avatar

My friend just told me of a genius idea: her friend & partner have a secret signal for when they have guests. If one of them makes themselves a hot drink in a specific mug, that means ‘I grow weary of company, please help guests out of the door.’

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@girlonthenet

tim_lavoie, to random
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

Hey, there's an excellent deal on a bunch of Cory Doctorow's books on Humble Bundle. Some of the proceeds go to @eff

I especially recommend Radicalized.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books

evan, to random
@evan@cosocial.ca avatar

Thursday: I dropped my phone and it caught the baseboard heater right at the edge of the case, cracking the screen. But I had a trip on Friday, and it worked ok, so I'd deal with it when I get home.

Today: half the screen is black. 😜 I was able to turn on the hotspot and connect with my tablet, and Android Auto still works, but damn. Guess I'll deal with it Wednesday after all. 🤷🏻‍♂️

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@evan Excellent reminder to back up whatever data is on your devices, ideally before cracking them.

timbray, (edited ) to photography
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Purchased a sort-of-exotic new lens, trying to learn how to use it, haven’t quite got there yet. But these are still kind of pretty.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@stshank @timbray I bought an Olympus TG-6 last year, basically a rugged little compact camera with a dive housing to use for diving.

It also has excellent macro capability, and built-in focus stacking as a mode. Really, that gets far more use than something that requires my booking a trip and renting dive gear.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@timbray @stshank Do you have the FD-1 flash diffuser widget? It's a lovely little add-on, basically turns the built-in flash into a close-up mostly-ring light.

ai6yr, to random
@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org avatar

BBC: Mount Everest: Climbers will need to bring poo back to base camp (personal commentary: let's see that rule on your dead climbing buddies and those oxygen canisters, too).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68237123

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@Hiker_Scott @ai6yr Well, and the old ones are probably desiccated and much lighter now.

chetwisniewski, to infosec
@chetwisniewski@securitycafe.ca avatar

I feel like such an underachiever. I have had a Flipper Zero since it launched and I still have the same number of cars I started with.

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@chetwisniewski @maxeddy
So, you put a Kia and a Flipper Zero in your driveway, with a sign saying, "FREE".

Check back later, there's a Flipper Zero and two Kias.

thetyee, to random

Hey Mastodon users, are you also on Bluesky? Or do you have Bluesky pals? ☁️

Good news — The Tyee is officially trialling the platform!
Follow us here! 👇🏽

https://bsky.app/profile/thetyee.ca

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@thetyee I don't, but am still waiting for your RSS feed to cease its Cloudflare blocking of non-browser clients. You know, like feed readers. 🤔

tim_lavoie,
@tim_lavoie@cosocial.ca avatar

@thetyee Hey, IT WORKS!

Awesome, thanks! Glad to see my feed filling up with Tyee stories again.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • khanakhh
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • magazineikmin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • InstantRegret
  • slotface
  • osvaldo12
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • JUstTest
  • Durango
  • everett
  • cisconetworking
  • normalnudes
  • tester
  • ngwrru68w68
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • tacticalgear
  • provamag3
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •