@kaoudis Literally no one knows what the organizers were thinking. Oh and they were worried about sex in general which makes the decision even weirder. They were confronted about this too, without any result.

I'm experimenting with #NixOS and it's all good so far, chezmoi works like a charm, successfully cleaned up some Debianisms, etc.

Then I ran into the problem of shebangs o.O

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/shebang-locations/28992/7

@peterbutler @esther You are right, and in this particular case it is a non-profit thing. But that's beside the point, as their business model doesn't really affect my situation (I will donate to them just as I would pay for a for-profit service).

My colleague @nickmalcolm made a pretty cool vuln explainer video

https://youtu.be/ydg95R2QKwM

My university faculty made the news by banning condoms in this years freshman camp (don't ask...).

Now a midwife offered discount for anyone getting pregnant there.

I'm not sure if she is aware of the ratio of compatible reproductive organs in the Elecrical Engineering and Informatics faculty tho...

@pitrh @lcamtuf @whitequark Original post with the link: https://mastodon.social/@whitequark/112983759218649202

this is an absolutely fantastic license and i will certainly use it for some of my software https://github.com/meithecatte/bashfuck/blob/master/LICENSE

@joepie91 @esther We had a magazine (free, as in paid for by the ads btw) like this, then a website. FB killed both ofc...

@joepie91 @esther Yes, the current model is bad.

@joepie91 @esther First, I think I described a pretty realistic scenario, so I don't think this is idealism.

Second, my point with this whole discussion is exactly to avoid potentially harmful generalizations, so naturally I will point to examples where having ads makes sense and where proposed generalizations (ads inject need, zero-sum discoverability) fail.

Do I think the current ads ecosystem is anywhere near good? Absolutely not. But without identifying the *actual* problems we won't get workable solutions.

@joepie91 @esther Let's say you promote $BAND's show. $OTHERBAND is also in town. As a potential guest I could easily handle knowing about 10 different shows for a weekend but I won't go to one that I don't know of.

In other words I don't think your money-for-presence model is a zero-sum game.

@sidereal @esther Rn I need to move heavy stuff in the city, without a car, and I came to this solution. I had to perform similar tasks previously, but at those times I was simply less smart and it would've been helpful if someone (even an ad) told me that this service exists.

Re your 2nd point, the general usefulness of ads is undoubtedly bad. I still wouldn't say that "good deals" are nonexistent: shows/events come to my mind as another example.

@esther Presentation can be an important factor, but an ad is an ad. My prev example also shows that we don't necessarily know what to look for in the first place.

I think we should ask questions like "What is the proper way to distribute information about different classes of products/services?" (the answers for medicine and fancy cars surely must be different) or "Why do we have ads in the first place?" so we won't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

@esther I probably hate advertising as it is more than most people, but we have the old saying: "even the best wine needs a banner", and I can't dispute that.

Example: It recently crossed my mind that maybe I could rent cargo bikes when needed and turns out I could! This service would've been very useful to me, but I simply didn't know about it before. An ad in this case would've been beneficial for everyone.

My point is that ads don't necessarily "inject" a need but an option. Problem is that while the latter increases buyer freedom, the former increases seller revenue so guess which type of ads we see more frequently...

Part 2 of our new series on identifying and exploiting router vulnerabilities, including practical examples from real-world cases is now out:
https://medium.com/@odedvk/identify-and-exploit-vulnerabilities-in-routers-an-introductory-guide-technical-case-studies-d0f1a24d35ef

On C (and not only C) locales

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/commit/1e70e82baa9193f6f027338b0fab0f5078971fbe

#ragecommit

I do realize I'm screaming into a void, but writing this email was cathartic.

Top articles from this week: White hat hacker shines spotlight on vulnerability of solar panels installed in Europe http://dlvr.it/TBvXRM?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

CVE-2024-38063 (the Windows TCP/IP vuln) patch diff by @clearbluejar

https://gist.github.com/clearbluejar/d13fba26cab3a7ff2a995558d62cdd80?s=09

MIT gets rid of their Elsevier contracts:

“For MIT to continue to pay millions of dollars to corporations that lock up the scholarship that comes out of our own campus was just inconsistent with MIT’s history of supporting open education and research,” said Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries at MIT.

https://sparcopen.org/our-work/big-deal-knowledge-base/unbundling-profiles/mit-libraries/