nmott

@nmott@infosec.exchange

Senior Editor at README. (Opinions are mine and Mordenkainen’s.)

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nmott, to random

This is particularly funny to me because I was among the first tech bloggers (ugh) not to blindly take Uber's side in its battles with regulators. (It seems Pando's finally been wiped off the face of the internet so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it?)

It's been fun watching public sentiment swing from "Fuck you! Uber's the best thing in the world and the taxi regulators are wrong!" to "You know what, yeah, maybe we shouldn't assume that startups should be allowed to ignore existing rules and regulations because they're inconvenient to their growth charts."

https://mastodon.social/

nmott,

Apparently this is why Pando's gone bye-bye: https://www.pando.com/ (Also, y'all gotta update your copyright notice, it's 2024.)

I think I have an archive of some of my better stuff, but fuck knows where. So I guess that's several years worth of writing gone. Maybe.

Not all that upset about some of the pieces—I wrote some dumb shit!—but it is occasionally nice to link back to some of the more prescient ones and toot my own horn a bit. Oh well.

nmott,

internet archive has my back https://web.archive.org/web/20220625015412/https://pandodaily.com/u/nathanielmott now I just need to find a good way to save the ones I actually care about

nmott, to random

@hrbrmstr not sure if you covered in this in a Drop already, but saw it and thought of you: https://djr.com/notes/daily-special-font-of-the-month

nmott, to random

Redid my site: https://nathanielmott.com/

nmott,

@shellsharks thanks! I just had to tweak one of Bear's themes.

I'll do the Mastodon link-up in a bit. I don't think Bear offers search, but if I can get this damn Hugo problem figured out, that version of the site should have working search.

nmott, to random

I wrote a newsletter! Please read it.

https://readme.synack.com/changelog-u.s.-cyber-leaders-warn-of-china-threat

hrbrmstr, to random
@hrbrmstr@mastodon.social avatar

Just fully de-coupled from Substack and redirected the domain. The bank is not letting me login w/2FA so Stripe refunds will be forthcoming this week once that clears up.

It feels way better than I thought it would tbh.

nmott,

@hrbrmstr where did you move?

nmott, to random

Scumbag shit https://www.404media.co/youtube-says-new-5-second-video-load-delay-is-supposed-to-punish-ad-blockers-not-firefox-users/

drewdevault, to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

Vibe check: how do people feel about Hare? The language, the libraries, ecosystem, docs, community, etc? How's it going?

nmott,

@drewdevault language seems interesting (I’m mostly familiar with Rust) and probably the only thing I don’t like at a glance is the manual indexing within for loops. Seems hella verbose coming from Rust, Zig, or Python, but I get the impression it’s more C-like? Also not enough to stop me from keeping track of its development, especially since I like the presence of actual strings, which strike me as a weird omission from Zig.

drewdevault, to random
@drewdevault@fosstodon.org avatar

I should implement something like uname(1) just so it's clear Ares is not Linux

nmott,

@drewdevault I was going to say it could follow GNU's naming practices as a joke, but that would lead to a very unfortunate initialism

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

I've been told people on this website enjoy me trying to think through computer problems out loud while in incredible pain, so good news: I'm taking my new Thinkpad T14 (https://mastodon.social/@mcc/111218408629532857) out of the box and I'm going to install Linux on it first thing. So expect a LOT of complaining.

nmott,

@mcc happens on Arch as well.

0x58, to random

💤 I'm definitely not a nap person. I just can't nap.

Starting today, trying to squeeze in my daily routines a "forced 20 minutes" of laying down and closing my eyes.

Let's see how that works out as additional /energizing routine. What's your trick to and get some energy back throughout the day?

nmott,

@0x58 same! The only times I can reliably nap are when I am very ill—as in flu, COVID, or kidney stone—and even then it’s not very restful. Hope your experiment works out well!

lcamtuf, to random

deleted_by_author

    •
    nmott,

    @lcamtuf doesn’t Rust look a lot like C++? (Or at least like C++ and Haskell’s lovechild?)

    Linux_Is_Best, to microsoft

    Microsoft, quietly, has published a guide on how to download and install Linux.

    No... Seriously... It is not a joke...

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linux/install

    The article was published September 29, 2023 (9 days ago).

    The guide provides every option available, too. Starting with using their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), to using a Virtual Machine, and even on "Bare Metal" alongside Windows.

    That's right, Microsoft now tells you how to dual-boot Linux. 🤯

    nmott,

    @Linux_Is_Best I wonder if these instructions work with Windows 11 dual boots, because a buddy and I both had to nuke our drives after Windows failed to boot following the Linux install ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    mcc, (edited ) to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    Here is a question about DIGITAL VIDEO

    My wife has a monitor with Thunderbolt 3 input only. That's the "USB-C shaped" Thunderbolt.

    She wants to plug a device with HDMI output into it.

    She has, already, a card that can convert Mini Displayport to USB-C. But to use this we must convert HDMI to Mini Displayport. We have many Mini Displayport to HDMI cables, but not the other way around.

    Cheapest HDMI to Mini Displayport cable we're finding is $60.

    Is this surprising? How should we do this?

    nmott,

    @mcc fear the old… display cable technologies. Or, no, wait. The new ones? Either way, fear is in there.

    campuscodi, to random
    @campuscodi@mastodon.social avatar

    For the love of God infosec community.... stop dumping PoCs two days after a patch is out.

    At least allow IT teams to schedule a patch.

    jfc almighty!

    nmott,

    @campuscodi just have a cron job running yay -Syu every five minutes smh

    nmott,

    @glitzersachen @campuscodi I don’t know how I could’ve made it clearer that I was joking.

    dangoodin, to random

    Interesting debate taking place on the oss-sec mail list.

    One side: How long until people stop using C and C++ to write media codecs? They should use Rust.

    Other side: How long will it take for rust to quit changing the language,
    standardize itself, and enforce some notion of API/ABI stability?

    https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2023/q3/251

    I hadn't heard these criticisms of Rust before. Do programmers and security folk want to weigh in on the strengths/weaknesses of each argument?

    nmott,

    @dangoodin the “quit changing the language” point is weird because of Rust’s commitment to backwards compatibility, especially within “editions” of the language, which arrive once every three years. Neither C nor C++ are set in stone; they also see updates. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    There’s an interesting project under way to address some other common concerns: https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/

    nmott, to random

    Hot take: the rush to introduce LLM-based chatbots into search engines not only undermines their utility as functioning search engines, but also spreads the people who are supposed to make search more secure even thinner, to the point that “use a paid search engine / a search engine that doesn’t put a chatbot front and center” will eventually become as common a recommendation as “use an ad blocker.”

    Search engines already make it easy to spread malware (“People should also be wary of ads in search engine results, since that seems to be a major driver of infections of this nature, especially within the last year. ” https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-insight/zenrat-malware-brings-more-chaos-calm ). Now their chatbots are pushing this malware, too (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bing-chat-responses-infiltrated-by-ads-pushing-malware/ ), which is only going to exacerbate the issue.

    Y’all can’t secure your core product. Now you’re grafting a separate product that brings its own challenges (ranging from “how can we make sure this doesn’t spread misinformation?” and “can we prevent prompt injection attacks?” to “are we properly handling the data associated with these transactions?”) onto it? Godspeed.

    nmott, to random

    "Google was accidentally leaking its Bard AI chats into public search results" https://www.fastcompany.com/90958811/google-was-accidentally-leaking-its-bard-ai-chats-into-public-search-results

    Very, very easy to see problems like this endangering folks who turn to LLMs when they can't discuss sensitive subjects with the people in their lives (https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mnve/we-spoke-to-people-who-started-using-chatgpt-as-their-therapist)

    Also makes me feel great about efforts (https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/23/23732454/microsoft-ai-windows-11-copilot-build , https://blog.google/products/bard/google-bard-new-features-update-sept-2023/) to give these chatbots access to more and more information.

    (I know, I know, "old man yells at cloud.")

    danirabbit, to random
    @danirabbit@mastodon.online avatar

    Okay so internet are strawberries somehow a trans girl thing? I’ve seen a lot of trans girls with strawberry things. What is this about. Am I over analyzing? I just wanna be in on all the queer flagging 👀

    nmott,

    @danirabbit @eliocamp feels like a squares and rectangles situation where in many cases yes, it is about celeste, but it doesn't necessarily have to be

    nmott, to random

    I’ve finally started to exercise again after my bout with COVID in January. It sucks. I’m more winded now walking for 10 minutes than I was when I weighed more—despite all the weight I’ve put back on post-COVID—and committed to a full mile at a time. Forced myself to do two 10-minute walks today and I feel about like I did after my (mild!) concussion in 2020.

    I would really, really like to be the person I used to be.

    nmott,

    @jerry thanks. I had a bit of a weird trek with it—I got hit hard with COVID, felt good a month later, and then probably a month after that everything started going downhill. (Especially post-exercise.) Hopefully it’s a “the only way out is through!” situation.

    nmott, to random

    All I want for Christmas is Berkeley Mono https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/

    nmott,

    @hrbrmstr I’ve thought about Comic Code but can’t quite bring myself to do it. Mostly I’ve stuck with JetBrains Mono Nerd Font (with some dalliances with Iosevka and Fira Code).

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