@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

axleyjc

@axleyjc@federate.social

I do appsec, skeptical & geeky stuff, biking, guitar, travel & stay young goofing around with my kids. Open to mentoring infosec. DM me.

@axleyjc.bsky.social

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Quinnypig, to random
@Quinnypig@awscommunity.social avatar

I'm sorry Slack, you're doing fucking WHAT with user DMs, messages, files, etc? I'm positive I'm not reading this correctly.

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@Quinnypig
Taken from the book, "How to torpedo a SaaS business in record time."

axleyjc, to random
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

Happy #caturday!

simplenomad, to random
@simplenomad@rigor-mortis.nmrc.org avatar

Instead of explaining memory allocation, resource usage, and so on, when a non-technical friend asks why powering it off and back on seems to fix things so much I typically make something up. Current fave is coronal mass ejection, what about you?

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@simplenomad I have two favorites:

  1. All software and hardware has bugs. That's why I'll always have a job in security
  2. At the very small scale our abstractions break down and physics wins
axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@simplenomad Personally, I like bringing in complexity or systems-theory to explain, but don't have pithy quips for it.

Feedback loops and error states happen that nobody could predict and if cause and effect are nonlinear, are not easy to determine after the fact how it got to that state...

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Who wrote this, a CAT?!

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@RickiTarr CatGPT wrote it.

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

I posted a Craigslist community ad looking for people who want to join a club of weird bikes. Some of the responses are incomprehensibly horny even though I did not identify myself or say anything about myself.

But I did get one excellent reply from someone who gets it

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@MLE_online You'd love Stupid Bike Night on Vashon island.
https://www.vashonevents.org/stupidbikenight

Viss, to random
@Viss@mastodon.social avatar

holy crap.
mask up on planes.

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@dogriley @Viss It's measuring CO2 levels in ppm.

My understanding is it's a proxy measurement for air quality in general and that bad air quality may correlate with higher COVID exposure risk so is also a proxy measurement for that risk.

For ref: "OSHA has established a Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for CO2 of 5,000 parts per million (ppm) (0.5% CO2 in air) averaged over an 8-hour work day (time-weighted average orTWA.)"

So 2100 is creeping up to that 5k unsafe average exposure limit

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Only you can give meaning to your career: How to mark moments that matter by planting a flag” https://blog.testdouble.com/posts/2024-01-02-plant-your-flag-career-advice/

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@baldur I Loved this article! Thanks for sharing!

I find that if I don't intentionally slow down and carve out time to reflect, it doesn't happen. You can't fill all your time doing and not reflecting. You think you can, or need to, but you are robbing yourself of valuable opportunity to be intentional with your life and choices.

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

So many of the toys and such that kids brought openly to school in my day would get a kid instantly expelled now. Hell, I must have carried a pocketknife from 7th grade onward. Somehow, we survived. Hell, a kid can get expelled now for pointing a finger at another kid in an ostensible "pistol" position. And some people wonder how the evil Right is able to leverage the term "woke" so effectively.

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@lauren A friend brought throwing stars to recess. We were all terrible at throwing them.

I asked my elementary science teacher to help me make dynamite (never went through with it). Was amazed it was "only 3 ingredients". Somehow knew that without the benefit of the internet.

axleyjc, to random
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

Winnie is coming to work today! Fun experiment

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

Here’s a lovely sign at a street corner near Columbia. The concept is fine—but there’s no braille on the sign or any way for a blind person to know of its existence or location.

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@SteveBellovin where's the sign that says where the sign is?

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

Jon Stewart reportedly cancels current affairs show after Apple declines to give him full creative control. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/jon-stewart-the-problem-canceled-apple-creative-differences-1235623235/

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@w7voa This sounds like a much more accurate title than bland "creative differences"

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

Comcast should stop advertising slower speeds as “10G,” industry group says

Comcast renamed its whole network "Xfinity 10G" despite cable's slower speeds.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/comcast-should-stop-advertising-slower-speeds-as-10g-industry-group-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@arstechnica I had this exact same concern. Not just because it's misleading but because...I like words to mean things...and not have marketing confuse the masses.

lcamtuf, to random

I really dislike the use of "hallucination" as a way to describe the behavior of LLMs. Not because it anthropomorphizes them, but because hallucinations are disorders of sensory perception. They don't make you spew out plausibly-sounding bullshit.

If you need a familiar term, "confabulation" is probably a better pick.

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@lcamtuf

That term is bad for even more reasons.

One is that it misrepresents how LLMs work.

Hallucination implies that when it happens, it's an abnormal state for an LLM. In fact, it's their normal state.

They are always synthesizing new content. Sometimes that content happens to be true. Sometimes the content is incorrect but so plausible that humans assume it is true. Other times, the content is obviously wrong to humans.

simon, to random
@simon@simonwillison.net avatar

Honestly, at this point if you try to make the case that LLMs aren't actually useful for anything I take a little bit of personal offense

You're effectively saying that people like me are deluding ourselves, falling for the hype when there's actually nothing there

There are plenty of valid reasons to criticize LLMs - but not being useful genuinely isn't one of them

(For more detailed thoughts on this, see the "comparing LLMs to crypto" section here: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Sep/29/llms-podcast/#comparing-llms-to-crypto)

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@interpipes @ncweaver @simon @briankrebs there's lots of code that compiles but is completely insecure! And the fact that many LLMs used for coding aren't trained on good code means there's a lot of latent bad code lossily compressed in the data set. If you use one, use one that curates the training data.

This is a great balanced review of using an LLM for development: https://youtu.be/_nG6d6HSGB4

jrefior, to journalism
@jrefior@hachyderm.io avatar

Turns out all the stories about a rise in #retail theft were #misinformation intentionally sowed by a retail #lobbying firm whose own data showed it wasn’t true + retail CEOs.

“I heard a #Walgreens executive walk back the company’s claims that shoplifting had gotten out of hand..Walgreens tried to use shoplifting as the reason behind their decision to close 5 stores in San Francisco in 2021..we know that these stores were planned closures"
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-really-rising/

#corporations #media

axleyjc,
@axleyjc@federate.social avatar

@jrefior just heard story on the daily podcast about fentanyl that the exact same playbook is being used that's known to not work-assuming harsher penalties will deter use and distribution. Some laws even classify some fentanyl related crimes as acts of terrorism...

idoubtit, to random
@idoubtit@mstdn.social avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    axleyjc,
    @axleyjc@federate.social avatar

    @idoubtit COVID sadly shows that people will dig in and resist attempts to curtail fireworks due to fire danger because "freedom".

    I think we will need to do something similar to cigarettes: make personal fireworks socially uncool.

    ct_bergstrom, (edited ) to random
    @ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org avatar

    This week, Science published a stunningly irresponsible news story entitled "Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common" and claiming that upward of 30% of the scientific literature is fake.

    https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common

    Below, the first two paragraphs of the story.

    Headline and intro notwithstanding, the story itself later notes that the detector doesn't actually work and flags nearly half of real papers as fake. Does the reporter just not understand that?

    h/t @Hoch

    axleyjc,
    @axleyjc@federate.social avatar

    @ct_bergstrom @Hoch Does their method at least detect their own paper as fake?

    axleyjc,
    @axleyjc@federate.social avatar

    @ct_bergstrom Right. At minimum they could have at least used ML to their hypothesis to see if it chose the same or similar features...

    But the premise that fake papers can be reliably detected based on metadata alone seems specious on its face.

    Devilstower, to random
    @Devilstower@mstdn.social avatar

    Seems like a good day for a reminder of how quick studios are to screw over writers. In 1999, NBC moved a series from their regular network to Sci Fi Channel. My pay went from $240,000 to $0. Because my contract paid "per broadcast episode" instead of just "per episode."

    The series ran. I just got nothing.

    axleyjc,
    @axleyjc@federate.social avatar

    @Devilstower Loopholes and escape hatches in contracts like this that allow evasion of payment seem like a real problem.
    I learned recently how residual incentives in contracts encourage networks like Netflix to mothball even popular shows or sell to another to avoid paying. That's a very customer-hostile, near-sighted approach but consumers don't have much leverage.
    I worry that any contractual gains in residuals won't be realized in practice unless these loopholes are reigned in...

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