Biggles @Biggles@qoto.org

God fucking dammit Mozilla

You just need to build a damn fucking browser.

You go on this AI path, you alienate your core audience and won’t attract any new users. It’s not like ChatGPT morons will suddenly switch to Firefox because it does ethical AI.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/

This one is wild even by the very high Ask A Manager historical standards. It should be titled "I was rejected [for a job] because there is something deeply wrong with me" https://www.askamanager.org/2024/02/i-was-rejected-because-i-told-my-interviewer-i-never-make-mistakes.html

Here's some ridiculously exciting news...

One of the most useful nerdy documents on the internet is "Beej's Guide to Network Programming", a comprehensive tutorial on C socket programming that's been continually improved since 1995

I just found out Beej has a new guide (started in March 2023) called "Beej’s Guide to Networking Concepts" - which teaches networking concepts using Python!

https://beej.us/guide/bgnet0/

The long wait is finally over: BITECLECTIC has created a website where it checks if your browser has support for serial ports (Web Serial API, which I'm just going to call Jurassic Park-level "because we can") and lets you BOOT AN APPLE II VIA THE WEBSITE and run software.

www.biteclectic.com

I think about this tweet a lot. Absolute classic of the genre

Take 5 arranged for acoustic guitar arranged by Lucas Brar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rISENsVuGdY

Being really tall and using the Internet sucks because nobody knows you’re better than them.

After months offline, DISCMASTER rises again! 💿 The site, which is not run by the Internet Archive, offers users the ability to perform semantic search of thousands of shareware & compilation CD-ROMs preserved at @internetarchive 👉
https://blog.archive.org/2024/01/21/discmaster-rises-again/

After half a year away, the DISCMASTER service has returned. It's just finishing up its restore process and is very usable now.

Go re-visit one of the biggest events in deep digital diving now:

http://discmaster.textfiles.com/

Your @AWScloud EKS cluster control planes are about to be 6x more expensive if you don't keep them updated to current.

I think this is genius; if you don't patch your infrastructure, you're inflicting externalities on the rest of us. It's time you bore some of that cost.

Nice way to eliminate inter-zone egress on AWS. Just push it to S3 and pull: https://www.bitsand.cloud/posts/slashing-data-transfer-costs/

Steamboat Willie in 4k, digitized from 16mm film: https://archive.org/details/steamboat-willie-16mm-film-scan-4k-lossless

Amazing.

Winter weather keeping you inside? Check out this excellent guide from @mental_floss — 7 Fun Ways to Use the Internet Archive https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/internet-archive-fun-features

To prove the point that users will continue to click links, regardless of how obvious it is that they shouldn't, I worked with the person in charge of the monthly phishing trainings at $dayjob last month. Historically, they have used the hated ruses like fake gift cards, and I wanted to try to get away from that, especially during the holidays. We ended up using something to the effect of the following:

---
Hello <first name>,

Happy Holidays. This is the monthly phishing test. Yes, really. It's not a trick. Use the <phishing reporting function> to report this as phishing. If you do not know how to use <phishing reporting function>, feel free to ask a colleague. If you still have questions, search for <phishing reporting function> on <internal docs site>.

Do not click the following link as it is there for metrics and will cause you to be assigned phishing awareness training: <phishing training 'malicious' link>

Sincerely,
IT Security Team
---

I don't know how well it was received by users, but I do know that we still had more clicks than two other months in 2023, despite being explicitly told not to click the link. Users will always click links with their link-clicking machines. Relying on their discretion is either ignorant, or I expect in some cases, malicious in that there will always be a scapegoat to blame for the inevitable breach.

#phishing #infosec

“I want to make it mean something to you. That you are in the cosmos. That you are of the cosmos.”

@AstroKatie has written (and spoken) how I experience the universe, how I want everyone to experience the universe.

…five years ago, so I’m late to the party. But thank you, Katie. It’s timeless.

https://sciences.ncsu.edu/news/disorientation-a-science-poem-by-katie-mack/

Jim quietly smiled in response while looking away from the young software engineer, “You know what I did before this? Before coding?”
“No.”
“I was a chemical plant operator. You can’t just restart one of those. The fire, the spark, the pressurization, the catalyzation, it has to keep running. Has to be tended at all times. You walk the jungles of process lines at 4AM and feel their swirling and vibration and heat. They are a physical thing. An obligation. They are more a child than the thing back there will ever be, John. You drop them and they break forever. You talk about your fear of machines. But I know someone killed by a machine.”
John started to talk, but was gently preempted in a rumbly voice.
“A human decided that. Not the braided stainlessless steel hose rotting away. A human decided it could last longer, to save money. That machine was just a messenger for the choice of a man.”

Three new TILs today:

Running Varnish on Fly: https://til.simonwillison.net/fly/varnish-on-fly

How to get Cloudflare to cache HTML: https://til.simonwillison.net/cloudflare/cloudflare-cache-html

Writing Playwright tests for a Datasette Plugin: https://til.simonwillison.net/datasette/playwright-tests-datasette-plugin