mspencer712
@mspencer712@programming.dev
- Comment on Driving through Nebraska twice nearly broke me. The people who live there must be among the hardest motherfuckers alive. 1 week ago:
Omaha resident. I don’t drive through Nebraska from end to end. I just live here.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
As a BBS era kid, I know you’re not trying to simulate the whole thing right now in the comments section. I’d say: you would have done fine, in any era. People talk, they share methods, and you would’ve picked up whatever you needed.
I think it’s just a common sort of nightmare, worrying about being unprepared, dealing with the consequences of lack of preparation.
I recommend the first few minutes of Jason Scott’s The BBS Documentary, for an overview of how people communicated in the pre-internet days. Especially if you imagine yourself a telegraph operator chatting with neighboring stations in the 19th century or something.
- Comment on A Presence-sensing Drive For Securely Storing Secrets 3 weeks ago:
I can’t tell if I communicated badly or I’m really just off the mark. But we already encrypt storage at rest, when we have valuable or sensitive data, because of the risk that thieves might read stolen data.
So take that a step farther. A thief can “know a guy” who spent a few hundred on soldering equipment and watched some tutorials on YouTube. We don’t consider sensitive data to be unavailable to thieves just because it isn’t readable via plug and play.
- Comment on A Presence-sensing Drive For Securely Storing Secrets 4 weeks ago:
Wait, desoldering a chip and dumping contents makes an attacker “resourceful”? A sub-$50 hot air rework station (or $330-ish if you don’t want one that’ll burn your house down) and a $50 programming cable is … not a lot of resources.
- Comment on Black Mirror AI 4 weeks ago:
Wait… I just had an idea.
Make a tarpit out of subtly-reprocessed copies of classified material from Wikileaks. (And don’t host it in the US.)
- Comment on Why do so many piece of Hardware come with windows only software requiring admin right for installation 4 weeks ago:
Market share. Basic permissions model.
- Comment on Can the Internet be an ethnicity? 5 weeks ago:
I’m probably doing some kind of “this solution worked for me, so it should work for everyone!” thing, but it does seem that our understanding of autism has improved in recent years. Even if all you can see is some variant of mild autism (autism spectrum disorder) a professional might see other related things. Like in my case, where my problems were being amplified by constant anxiety … they might find something chemical they can treat, or something that counseling can train you to mitigate or moderate.
I wish you the best.
- Comment on Can the Internet be an ethnicity? 5 weeks ago:
I’m genuinely scared I could do damage if I explain this badly. I’ll try my best. And bear in mind, mild autism, I communicate things strangely sometimes.
In a general sense, diagnoses are predictive statements, not just labels for communicating about a condition. There’s often sets of related behaviors and common kinds of advice or treatment. Think of it as peer reviewed science, instead of an algorithm, saying “struggling with this? You might also be struggling with this and that, and here’s how we can help with all of those.”
Also, diagnoses unlock access to medication. In my case I’ve also struggled with generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety meds are having a profound and positive effect on my life. I do so much stupid shit when my brain is constantly making small worries into thought-destroying anxiety and fear. I was really resistant to the idea, thinking medication just avoids problems instead of letting you learn how to deal with them. I was very wrong.
And since I’m in the US where health insurance is a profit making industry, I had to go the route of counseling (“yeah I’m recommending you get tested”), then testing, and then with a diagnosis in hand, psychiatrist for possible medication. (It can take a long time to get meds dialed in. I was lucky, the first thing he prescribed worked great and we’ve just been slowly ramping the dosage, starting at half the usual starting dose in January and going up slowly every month.)
I don’t know if this was persuasive but I hope it at least made sense.
- Comment on Can the Internet be an ethnicity? 5 weeks ago:
This is going to sound like an insult or snappy comment, but I genuinely mean this as something that might be helpful because I relate to this and think it’s affected me my whole life.
I think you’re describing mild autism. I got my own diagnosis a few months ago, at age 47, and I wish I had known so much sooner. Some of the things you describe were part of what the psychologist who diagnosed me talked to me about.
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
No worries. I hope things get better.
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
That’s got to be a nightmare. I’m really sorry to hear that, and I appreciate you sharing.
I can’t think of any ways to rephrase that, that don’t sound empty or performative. You sent my thoughts towards my own parents. I’m sorry for your pain.
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
Thank you. I stole that from Philip (I think) in Off To Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. He was describing that book’s antagonist but I’ve taken it to describe people who casually break rules to get ahead.
And I think that’s kind of what they’re doing, flooding social media with stories of how they broke rules in ways that make me go “foul! That’s a foul! Why is the ref doing nothing? This breaks my brain and I have no idea how to respond to this!”
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
No I know you’re being genuine.
So this is going to sound really weird, because I think you’re talking about the experience of debating troll farm accounts - understandably really frustrating - but I’m talking about the people, the voters, the weird family members you can’t talk about politics with any longer. (I have some of those - they’re in rural Illinois while I’m in blue-dot Omaha, I love them very much, and I absolutely hate that we can’t talk politics any more.)
But I think you need to give them more sympathy. (The IRL humans, not the online trolls.) The worst of them grew up in a system where they only see minorities as risks, because (a) brains look for patterns, for free, factory firmware, and (b) they don’t realize evil people set things up long ago so that minorities had things on Hard Mode. And maybe © fighting against your factory defaults takes work and practice.
Like, because TLOU is back on TV I’ll share something uncomfortable. S01E03 was really uncomfortable for me to watch. I was a nerdy kid, teased for being gay in high school when I was not and am not gay. So I have some homophobia I haven’t gotten rid of yet. I’m trying. But I still look away whenever men kiss. My wife doesn’t love that part about me, but she still loves me.
Do you give up on me because my journey isn’t complete there? Am I to be hated because I look away, lumped in with the people who vote against gay rights? Clearly not. Mostly because I’m clearly making an effort.
Some people who voted for Trump don’t wear red hats. They were on the fence and they went one way and not the other. And I promise they’re not the people you’re tired of debating. They deserve your positive thoughts. Don’t let the troll farms steal those thoughts. Please.
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
Which “They”? The voters or the politicians?
- Comment on Trump’s Social Media Surveillance: Social Scoring by Another Name 1 month ago:
(Apologies to parent, this is something I’ve been itching to say, but the parent isn’t the problem I’m discussing.)
They will clap because it makes them feel good. It makes them feel good because they think we don’t respect them, that we celebrate their losses (in the Laslow’s Hierarchy sense, not the political sense) and that we don’t want to lift them up with us.
So yeah, we have differences. (Stay with me for a bit.) They think a foul in basketball is something you’re allowed to do a certain number of times and then you have to stop. We think a foul in basketball is something you Should Not Do.
Is the solution more hate for the people who got duped by Trump’s team? Yeah they got played. Yeah they have cognitive dissonance. Yeah they’re on Facebook too much, fed poison by an algorithm that optimizes for engagement (you know, happy, horny, angry, anything except writing letters or volunteering or registering to vote). That’s no reason to hate them.
Help them. Love them. Even if there’s no internet points in it for you. (Certainly none for me because I’m usually a crappy communicator.)
- Comment on YSK that a new internet/account bypass during Windows 11 installs already exists. Here is a 7 step guide. 2 months ago:
That’s right. Even if you have to use a windows app that Linux compatibility layers don’t support, you can banish Windows 11 to a virtual machine.
Oh, weird, even in a virtual machine it wants an account. Anyone know where I can find a bypass method? :-)
- Comment on Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian acquire Digg 3 months ago:
I feel like innovations that improve moderation should be celebrated. (And then immediately cloned from new-Digg into new Fediverse features.)
- Comment on The Return of Digg, a Star of Web 2.0 (Gift Article) 3 months ago:
I, too, think humans become incapable of learning from their mistakes when they become wealthy. That’s what keeps them wealthy of course.
- Comment on Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian acquire Digg 3 months ago:
Is moderation difficult? What makes it difficult?
What happens to the “spirit of discovery and genuine community” when moderation fails?
- Comment on Kevin Rose, Alexis Ohanian acquire Digg 3 months ago:
It’s ok to fear that someone else could get rich through trickery.
It’s also ok to have hope that people learn from past mistakes and try to build something good.
AI can generate slop, but it can also understand, categorize, filter, moderate. It can also be slow to adapt to new attacks, or be analyzed and manipulated.
I can’t offer much help to people who need to decide right now if it’s good or bad. Predicting the future is a messy thing. But I choose to be cautiously optimistic.
- Comment on Spam Phone Calls Question 3 months ago:
Companies share info about their customers sometimes. That shared info gets added to data products for marketing. Sometimes spammers buy or steal those data products.
- Comment on Srinkflation is actually enshifitation when you think about it. 3 months ago:
I love this, and I’m definitely going to use it when describing enshittification to relatives. Kudos, genuinely.
- Comment on Why do most Americans use an iPhone? 3 months ago:
I’m a professional C# developer, and I switched to iPhone in 2020. Mostly I wanted a more controlled, curated App Store for increased confidence in a safe execution environment. I’ll pay the $100/yr for a developer account if I really need to build and run my own code.
The lack of ad block options bugs me. I also don’t use iCloud.
I have doubts about whether this question is asking or proselytizing.
- Comment on DeepSeek Proves It: Open Source is the Secret to Dominating Tech Markets (and Wall Street has it wrong). 4 months ago:
I don’t like this. Everything you’re saying is true, but this argument isn’t persuasive, it’s dehumanizing. Making people feel bad for disagreeing doesn’t convince them to stop disagreeing.
A more enlightened perspective might be “this might be true or it might not be, so I’m keeping an open mind and waiting for more evidence to arrive in the future.”
- Comment on ‘Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases 4 months ago:
Judges can act.
- Comment on ‘Forbidden Words’: Github Reveals How Software Engineers Are Purging Federal Databases 4 months ago:
These systems all have disaster recovery plans. We can’t possibly know how competent their admins are or how up to date their backups are. But it’s not our job to know this. Debating details isn’t the point, and there’s zero amount of online discussion that will make the worry and anxiety go away. Just remember there are backups and be calm.
Personally I know that media companies, who use their content to sell ads, will not protect me from this “worry and anxiety denial of service” that’s going on. They sell more ads when people doom scroll. So I have to protect myself. I want you to protect yourself as well.
I try to recognize when there are things I can’t do anything about, but that I know good people are still working to protect.
- Comment on Advice needed for networking/architecting 8 months ago:
Are you going to be hosting things for public use? Does it feel like you’re trying to figure out how to emulate what a big company does when hosting services? If so, I’ve been struggling with the same thing. I was recently pointed at NIST 800-207 describing a Zero Trust Architecture. It’s around 50 pages and from August 2020.
Stuff like that, your security architecture, helps describe how you set everything up and what practices you make yourself follow.