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How many journals did you lose in the crash?
It was a half dozen for me:
Ask Soylent - Kubuntu
Review: Sony STR-DH190
The Router
The Horrible Reason Most Professional Sports Players Are Black
Review: Battery Powered Lawnmowers
They're in my "Random Scribblings" folder of my hard drive. The last two are at mcgrew.info. Were yours backed up anywhere but SN's servers?
Fun with my Volition RAT!
3 years ago, I posted a little explainer on my big pet project, Volition, a remote access tool/bulk systems administration tool. Development has been sporadic, with various subtle improvements over that span of time. Now, I'm getting excited again, because I've got some very interesting features in the latest Volition, and I thought I'd shout into the void here where nobody cares. :^)
- Full LuaJIT-style FFI support. Thanks to this brilliant son of a bitch, LuaJIT's (RIP) awesome FFI abilities have returned to modern Lua 5.4, and I've added his stuff as an optional git submodule, enabled in cmake with -DLUAFFI=ON. (You need meson and ninja build tools for his Lua FFI, that's why it's still optional.) This means you can declare a C function in a string, load the .so dynamically, and call into raw C code from Lua! It should work on any OS that Volition supports, but of course, be careful of calling conventions on i386 Windows. Its table is exported as the global 'ffi' in Volition's Lua interpreter.
- GIL-less full multithreading in Lua code using channels! The VLAPI Lua function VL.SpawnWorker() returns a handle you can safely send Conation streams to and from the child threads with, much like Rust's std::sync::mpsc channels. Turns out that Conation is a terrific protocol for inter-thread communication! See here for an example of how to do that. And, of course, you can start new threads from other threads, as well. It truly is full multithreading!
Together, these features allow Volition to be a place to write CPU and partially OS independent code to run tasks on all your servers and PCs at once. With node-to-node communications, you can do things like a WAN rsync without opening ports, and what's more, I have exported some POSIX and libc primitives into the ffi.C namespace, including most of what you'd need for raw sockets. Think port forwarding and tunneling across the globe! See here for what's already included. To compile Volition, you'll need to generate an SSL certificate. See this dumb script to do it for you. And, you'll need to compile "utils" as well, specifically brander. I moved to CMake not too long ago, so an example to compile the node might be: cmake .. -DDEBUG=1 -DOS=linux -DCPU=x86_64 -DSERVER=myserver.com -DAUTHTOKEN=myauthtoken -DIDENTITY=testytest -DCERT=mycert.pem -DLUAFFI=ON You can also build the "big three" components of Volition (server, control, and node), using this included example script. Setting -DDEBUG=1 compiles in a pile of extra debugging messages, but they can be helpful or informative, so it's up to you. Volition is pretty much silent to stdout without that option. There's not great documentation at this point, so you'll probably need to read the code for some things. I already use Volition in my daily life myself. All my PCs are connected to it. Even my PinePhone. I can do things like install updates on all my systems at once, restart/power down all of them at once, things like that. If this sounds like fun to you, enjoy!
Rust won't let you disable strict aliasing at all!
So per the conversation I'm having with the Rust guys, from what I can make out, it seems they want to use always-on strict aliasing to prevent you from ever creating multiple &mut references from a raw pointer. That's not something I'd likely even do deliberately, but what disturbs me here is that they object to this at all. -fno-strict-aliasing has been around forever! Hell, MSVC doesn't even do strict aliasing at all!
They want to talk about safety and lack of undefined behavior, while forcing this option to always be enabled directly causes a whole new class of UB to be possible.
I'm angry. If I had money, I'd donate it to the gccrs guys, provided they can promise not to do the same draconian shit.
I see a lot of the Rust devs trying to control the code their users can and cannot write, and I personally find that extremely offensive, and I'm not easily offended. It seems this is another control-motivated decision.
I don't know. Am I the asshole? Am I the unreasonable one here? Sometimes I can't tell. But I really don't think I am.
EDIT: What can you do to help? I'll tell you. Rust is a fairly good language in the hands of shitty people, so, use Rust, but:
- Use nonstandard styles with #![allow(nonstandard_styles)], for everything
- Contribute to and/or donate to alternative Rust compilers like gccrs
- Use weird and unstable options.
- Put export RUSTC_BOOTSTRAP=1 in your .bashrc etc. to use unstable features on stable Rust.
- Wrestle control of Rust out of their hands.
A sex trafficker walks into a women's event at a Trump hotel
An alleged sex trafficker walks into a women's event at a Trump hotel....
Oh sorry, did you think that was the beginning of a joke?
‘Wait for the 6th When We Are All in DC to Insurrection’
Prosecutors in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening released a slew of communications indicating that three para-military militia groups had formed a coordinated “alliance” in the weeks ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege — discussing strategy and use of force tactics as they prepared to “get shit kicked off” following the “Save the Steal” rally.
The communications were revealed in court documents opposing leader of the Florida Oath Keepers Kelly Meggs’s latest request to be released from jail on bond in advance of his criminal trial.
....
“This week I organized an alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys,” Meggs wrote in a Dec. 19 Facebook message to an unknown person. “We have decided to work together and shut this shit down.”
Days later, he discussed specific numbers and attack strategy the groups planned to use on Jan. 6.
“We will have at least 50-100 OK [Oath Keepers] there,” Meggs wrote on Dec. 22. “Plus we have made contact with PB [Proud Boys] and they always have a big group. Force multiplier.”
...
Asked when that would happen, Meggs said it would be the following week, adding, “Then wait for the 6th when we are all in DC to insurrection.”
Meggs again discussed “insurrection” with an unknown associate on Jan. 3, apparently believing that Mike Pence publicly agreeing to entertain challenges to Congress’s certification of votes was a call to arms.
Assuming handjobs in massage parlors is racist all by itself
So a guy murders a bunch of women who are 80% Asian because he assumes they're giving out handjobs in massage parlors...
How is that supposed to be NOT racist?
The Atlantic - How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-internet-doesnt-have-to-be-awful/618079/
I... simply can't summarize it. I can tease with some selections, but I won't.
It's a 20mins or more reading (if you don't just want to tick a box) and longer to digest it and let the things settle in their place.
Gab data surfacing
I don't find much time to procrastinate lately. But anywho:
Back in Feb 28, Wired was reporting on Gab being hacked
...
DDoSecrets cofounder Emma Best says that the hacked data includes not only all of Gab's public posts and profiles—with the exception of any photos or videos uploaded to the site—but also private group and private individual account posts and messages, as well as user passwords and group passwords.
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DDoSecrets says it's not publicly releasing the data due to its sensitivity and the vast amounts of private information it contains. Instead the group says it will selectively share it with journalists, social scientists, and researchers.
Today, it looks like some of the material may start to surface, with a report in the Grauniad
Gab: hack gives unprecedented look into platform used by far right
I'll let the gossipy content inside a
The leaked files contained what appears to be a database of over 4.1 million registered users on the site and tags identifying subscribers as “investors”, “verified” users and “pro” users.
Gab investors contributed in one of three share offerings and one convertible note, a form of short-term debt that converts into equity, according to its financial reporting...
Some of the people associated with investors’ accounts had high-profile jobs and public roles, while spewing hate and extremist beliefs online. Among the accounts labeled as an investor is a user named “Manwe Sulimo”, who presents themselves in their user bio as a “former NASA Engineer turned Flat-earther”...
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BiglySpeaks is another account tagged as belonging to an investor.
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The email address attached to the account belongs to Steven Reid, a former Republican party activist and conservative political blogger in Provo, Utah.
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Verified users whose email addresses appear to have been exposed in the leak range from longtime political operatives, such as Roger Stone, to far-right political commentators including Michelle Malkin and Peter Brimelow, editor of VDare, and far-right activists such as Nick Fuentes and Jared Taylor, who heads the white nationalist organization American Renaissance.
...
More than 770 registered accounts on the platform, including some active ones, appear to be marked in the service’s own database as bots.
The Guardian emailed all of the verified users named above for comment on the breach, but none immediately responded except for Jared Taylor, who wrote in an email: “This hacking operation was a federal crime, but don’t expect the Biden administration to care.”
...
In the messages, Torba and the user Neon Revolt, who has been identified as Richard Cornero Jr, a QAnon influencer, discuss the direct messaging feature, then relatively new on the platform. The messages suggest a close relationship between Gab’s CEO and one of the key proponents of a baseless conspiracy theory...
just to emphasize the "security by faith" approach:
Rochko said in an email that Gab adopted Mastodon’s codebase “as a way of circumventing Google’s and Apple’s ban... In doing this, Gab’s programmers introduced two serious security vulnerabilities into its code, according to Rochko, one of which was publicized by another programmer in early February. Rochko says that Gab did little to address these “obvious” problems, adding: “I’m not aware of them ever adopting our bug fixes, including important security fixes.”
Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University and longtime researcher on the far right’s use of internet technologies said the vulnerabilities Gab introduced in its codebase were “basic, basic stuff”.
“Gab was negligent at best and malicious at worst” in its approach to security, she added. “It is hard to envision a scenario where a company cared less about user data than this one.”
...
Torba himself initiated communication with the Guardian after it had started contacting users identified in the data breach. Torba sent an empty email with the subject line, “Deuteronomy 28:7”, a Bible verse promising victory over enemies.
Who still wants to have an account with them?
I know it's selfish...
But I am perfectly fine with the US hoarding our vaxxes until every American has had the opportunity to get them.
Those companies are free to sell to whomever they want but we got our orders in early and we're currently first in line.
RNC - brainwashed, totally dependent, abused spouse
Making the former "RNC - brainwashed, totally dependent, abused housewife" title less sexist. Not that it was intended so, I'm not a native English speaker
RNC - nobody loves what they became if not for Trump.
And now Trump formally brands them as his possession and takes their money
Trump, RNC clash over using his name in fundraising
The Republican National Committee is defending its right to use former President Donald Trump’s name in fundraising appeals after he demanded they put an end to the practice.
In a Monday letter to Trump attorney Alex Cannon, RNC chief counsel J. Justin Riemer said the committee “has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech” and said “it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals.”
But he maintained that Trump had also “reaffirmed” to the chair of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, over the weekend “that he approves of the RNC’s current use of his name in fundraising and other materials, including for our upcoming donor retreat event at Palm Beach at which we look forward to him participating.”
Trump responded to the letter with a statement that put that agreement in doubt. “No more money for RINOS,” or Republican in name only, he stated. “They do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base — they will never lead us to Greatness.” He instead again urged his supporters to send their contributions directly to his own Save America PAC by using his personal website, adding, “We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!”
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The statement came days after Trump's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) to stop using his name and likeness for fundraising and merchandise sales.
Ah, my fair lady Schadenfreude, I wonder what were they thinking?
Were they thinking? (no, that's not an echo)
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Senate Republicans bailing out on 2022 are opening the door for more QAnon candidates and Trumpers
At least five GOP incumbents are planning not to run for re-election next year, making way for a potential seismic ideological shift in the upper chamber.
...
"It seems that in recent times, it's all about beating the other person or preventing them from winning, not about putting forward good, sound policies," Del Percio said. "These are more than just political people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. They cared about what they were doing, and about moving policies forward. It is devastating."
