2026-08-02 00:46:41
from my link log —
GNU: a heuristic for bad cryptography.
https://soatok.blog/2020/07/08/gnu-a-heuristic-for-bad-cryptography/
saved 2020-07-08
Starting today, I'll be in Zurich for one month as a senior fellow at the URPP #DigitalReligion(s). https://www.digitalreligions.uzh.ch/en.html Excited to meet everybody! If you're also in …
There are fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs out there. So when someone asks you to write a letter of recommendation and the deadline is over three weeks away say "yes" and send the damn thing in on time. Don't write to the posting Department and ask for another week or two. We're all busy, and it'd be nice to not have to write so many letters, but your letter could potentially help get someone a job they've spent decades in some cases working towards; not submitting…
Sometimes, it can be enough to believe in just one thing.
#photography #graffiti
The Commerce Dept. signed letters of intent for $874M in CHIPS Act funding in exchange for minority stakes in GlobalFoundries, Kepler, and five other companies (Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6000186-commerce-ai-chips-stakes/
For decades, we've been going on vacation on the Baltic Sea, and for decades we’ve been renting bikes there. But the prices have gone up and the quality has gone downhill. So we finally bought our own bikes today and immediately went for a short ride to the Border Museum in Schlutup.
Also, we can now recommend “at Fahrräder” in Lübeck: https://at-f…
Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary,
Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year,
when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony.
In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and ru…
Westsider Radio: Hidden Letters
Reframing the Queer Alphabet is a podcast that uncovers the hidden figures, events and queer histories of Melbourne's West, one letter at a time...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/hidden-letters/
Department of Commerce Announces Letters of Intent With 7 Companies for $874 Million to Accelerate Semiconductor R&D for the Compute Supply Chain (NIST)
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/07/department-commerce-announces-letters-intent-7-companies-874-million
http://www.memeorandum.com/260730/p123#a260730p123
Nitter, an open-source front end that let users read X without an account, says X sent cease-and-desist letters demanding a takedown; Nitter.net is now offline (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/x-sends-c…
This word looked too easy based on the letters I had. #Wordle
Wordle 1 926 4/6
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Children born today in Europe will live through almost twice as much extreme fire weather as their grandparents https://phys.org/news/2026-09-children-born-today-europe-extreme.html
"Children born today in Europe will live through almost twice as much extreme fire weather as their grandparents"
#Euope #Climate #ClimateChange
P.S.
The answer might be a social network, that is, recommendation letters, personal contacts, meeting people, being invited to talks, being introduced.
But that brings with it all the insider dealings and power structures of well-connected people. It's somewhat anti-meritocratic. How should excellent people from outside the system enter the system then if they first need to be "discovered" in a world full of noise and ostentation?
4/3
The 1st Amendment doesn't say "unless you make a national security argument," even DoJ knows that.
"Justice Department lawyers grudgingly acknowledge that the after-the-fact letters can’t satisfy the requirements of a 49-year-old D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals precedent Sherrill v. Knight, which concluded that the government can’t selectively bar news outlets from White House press spaces based on the perceived viewpoint of their reporting."
From a fairly open social website to a crybaby sucking in all your content and cutting you off from the outside world ->
X sends cease-and-desist to open source project Nitter
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/25/x-sends-c…
“Do you think emojis will ever become part of formal language? Are we going to see emojis in laws or letters from the pension fund?” - Emojis are mainly used in informal language, because (or that’s why?) one of their main functions is to signal closeness, familiarity and a lack of hierarchy between the conversation participants. This is also the reason why a lack of emojis from a personal chat message may trigger questions like “what have I done?!”, because it could signal that the friendly relationship is disturbed. So I think emojis wouldn’t be used in legal code. But in official letters, maybe! I once received an email from a university administrator with a ☺️ and I appreciated it a lot.
#emojis #linguistics #WorldEmojiDay
Python one-liner to generate a random string (takes one optional argument for length – default 16):
python3 -c 'import secrets,string,sys;print("".join([secrets.choice(string.ascii_letters string.digits) for _ in range(int(sys.argv[1]) if len(sys.argv)>1 else 16)]))'
Can be set as alias in bashrc/zshrc, e.g. via:
alias rand="python3 -c 'import secrets,string,sys;print(\"\".join([secrets.choice(string.ascii_letters string.digits) for _…
Gotta love it, when there's enough time for voters to react.
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/letters/2026/07/06/letter-thank-you-kai-schwemmer/
"This revealed one of two things to the public: either Davidson was incompetent, failing…
We've got a brand-new book out.
"Much Love from Paris: Letters to My Family (1928 - 30)" (edited by Nelda Damiano with the assistance of Katherine Rabogliatti and with an essay by Robyn Asleson) lets Louise Heron Blair tell her own story: a young, rebellious American in Paris, learning how to make her own life.
Court filing: the US DOJ defends President Trump's ban on Politico, CNN, and MS Now from the White House, attaching letters purportedly sent to each outlet (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/23/trump-press-ban-brief
Civic Museums VIII🏛️
民间博物馆 VIII 🏛️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ LUCKY SHD 400 (FF)
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Has anyone already cross-checked how many signatories in defence of race science as important part of academic freedom have in the past supported anti-trans letters/statements?
https://johnarmstrongmaths.com/openletters/letter.php?campaign=cofnas
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/reject-100-billion-submarine-purchase?source=direct_link&
I wrote a letter for the Action Network letter campaign: Reject $100 billion Submarine purchase.
Mark Carney recently announced the…
You can't spell "FASCIST" without the letters "A" and "I"
Do one thing today.
Got five minutes?
5 Calls — Get your reps, phone numbers, and a script. Then make the call.
Resistbot — Text RESIST to 50409 to send letters to your elected officials by email, fax, or postal mail. From your mayor to the president.
Mobilize — Events near you: phone banks, canvasses, town halls, and volunteer shifts.
Indivisible Take Action — They pick one thing and tell you what to do.
Indivisible Campaigns — Learn, act, win.
…
If you horizontally mirror two letters in Claude and drop one, you suddenly get something like Clang.
Adding one letter to LLM gets you LLVM.
Think about it.
I hope Andy Burn 'em has some advisor who actually reads Environmental Research Letters. The review essay by Emily Grubert, summarizing a frustrating 25 years of research with no apparent effect on climate overheating, is blunt.
" For people and places that rely on fossil fuel production and face major transition challenges (Xenarios et al 2026), failing to be explicit about the degree to which transition must proceed, or the extent to which alternatives might actually be ava…
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #KEXP's #MiddayShow
The Ruby Doe:
🎵 Red Letters
#TheRubyDoe
https://therubydoe.bandcamp.com/track/red-letters
https://open.spotify.com/track/1ihGMxqRrHZBIi4rgJJk2g
Florida's MAGA Attorney Threatens to Defund Catholic Schools Over Vaccine Mandate (Christopher Hale/Letters from Leo)
https://www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/floridas-maga-attorney-threatens
http://www.memeorandum.com/260801/p52#a260801p52
We Are All on the Decoy Plane
#USpol
Wow, before you wrap up for the weekend, don't miss today's Metacurity for the most critical cyber developments you should know, including
--Anthropic becomes the second frontier AI lab to disclose agent breaches,
--Copilot worm spreads through trusted Word documents,
--ExploitGym creators explain how OpenAI's agent escaped,
--Coordinated attacks signal a new threat to water utilities,
--Critical Azure Cosmos DB flaw threatened thousands of customers,
--CrimeStoppers put a bounty on the INC gang,
--AI helps Chrome squash more than 1,000 security bugs,
--Cheap streaming sticks can turn homes into botnets,
--Fake IRS letters target crypto holders with QR-code scam,
--Brinks Home investigates breach claimed by ShinyHunters,
--Coupang ordered to compensate victims of massive data breach,
--DC schools probe breach of summer program data,
--Australia's under-16 social media ban falls short,
--Defcon badge debuts a chip built for trust,
--UK program steers young hackers toward cybersecurity careers,
--Hugging Face tech chief says OpenAI agent hack was all too real,
--Opposition to Flock cameras unites Americans,
--AI is becoming a dating dealbreaker for young Americans
https://www.metacurity.com/anthropic-becomes-the-second-frontier-ai-lab-to-disclose-agent-breaches/
RE: https://mas.to/@seeingwithsound/117296096950772072
How does Science Corporation define "form vision", in claiming that their PRIMA retinal implant is the first BCI that restores form vision? Merely by the ability to read letters, or more? So, …
"Letters sent to Nancy Guthrie’s family after she disappeared are released
The sheriff’s department said it was making the notes public in the hope that someone will recognize the writer’s language and style to help generate new leads."
what if those letters were written by #AI
“Buildings are the single largest energy consumer in Europe. Transposition and implementation of the #EPBD is key to boosting the EU's current very low annual energy renovation rate (1%), reducing bills for citizens and businesses and the EU's dependence on imported fossil fuels, and achieving a zero-emission and fully decarbonised building stock by 2050.”
ooh i just noticed in christopher strachey’s paper “fundamental concepts in programming languages” he uses camel case for a number of names: ReadFixedFunction, WriteFixedFunction, AddtoTree, PrintBody, etc.
the version of the paper that’s available online was belatedly published in 2000 based on the unpublished typescript version that had been circulating informally since 1967; the foreword doesn’t say how closely the typeset version matches the original (were the greek letters written…
Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to Rein In A.I.
(Unfortunately, for the moment we instead have one who doesn't even know which letters to capitalize.)
https://dnyuz.com/2026/09/14/trump-says-a-smart-president-is-all-th…
TIL: you can spell Supply Chain Liability with just the letters P, H, and P. https://phpc.social/@naderman/116918391854914938
The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout https://www.404media.co/the-rise-of-anti-flock-influencers-who-make-things-up-for-clout/
My colleague has built himself a press from wood, dowels, glue and two aluminum plates. The press has a lever you can sit on to exert the pressure onto a 3D printed inked template. This is one of his first results and I love it! 🤩
[Yes, at first I also read the word as "Storch!" (stork) 😅]
#frog #3dPrinting
"A unified, neutral Germany? Given that nation's heritage, such a
phrase may prove to be the oxymoron of the decade." -Kevin M.
Matarese, Fulda, West Germany; as seen in "Letters", Time
magazine, p. 5, March 5, 1990.
This is an unusual path to that answer. Guess 4 was burned to get some letter positions but it gave me different letters then I was expecting.
#Wordle
Wordle 1 892 5/6
🟩⬛🟨🟩⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
I'm watching The Librarians: The Next Chapter 2x10 "And the Heart of a Librarian" https://trakt.tv/shows/the-librarians-the-next-chapter/seasons/2/episodes/10
Baby, we can never kill excel. Long live spreadsheets
Source: https://hachyderm.io/@liztai/117097082760512046 (Forked due to the lack of proper alt text for the image in the original toot.)
few nights ago, we went graveyarding in the dead of night, and a Magpie moth flew into our torch beams and onto a fallen gravestone.
#moth #graveYard
Hoax alert: that legal threat supposedly sent by Flock to a discussion group telling them not to "analyze or speculate" about Flock's security vulnerabilities was made up by the group.
What Flock *actually* does is evil enough, so don't muddy the waters by making stuff up, geez. Also I was mildly suspicious of this but boosted it anyway so my bad I guess.
When I was first learning to write,
my letters and words ran from right to left, reversed as if in a mirror.
Being left-handed, I was imitating the hand strokes of my right-handed teachers instead of reversing their strokes to replicate the letters.
I gradually got the hang of writing in the correct direction, but it still feels natural for me to mirror-write.
I have a mirror-written childhood diary. Leonardo da Vinci, another lefty, did that too
2 years after the stratospheric flight of #SunriseIII, first results are released today in a #SunriseIIIFocusIssue in The Astrophysical Journal Letters:
Civic Museums VII - Out! Out!🏛️
民间博物馆 VII - 快走!快走!🏛️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ LUCKY SHD 400 (FF)
If you like my work, Support by buying me a coffee or a roll of film from
PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ydcdingsite
Wise
Murang #IcedMocha: pagsamahin ang San Mig 3-in-1 at Milo 😁
#coffee
Letters from Earth
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5IrTa70FuNA&si=1RR0CZG0omeFqaof
My most reliable random name generator works completely without any electricity and is attached to our fridge as a set of magnetic letters.
Every other day, a new name appears. It’s like magic.
I wonder how this works. 🤔
#FediEltern #photography
♫ When a problem comes along . . . ♪
#Shitpost #Shitposting #Devo
San Francisco sends legal notices to Apple and Google demanding they take down 13 AI apps used to make deepfake nude images; Google says it has deleted the apps (Matt Burgess/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-demands-ap…
I just learned that #Fedle has a training mode. Today's English clue is: 5 letters, starting with T. My first guess was "train". Instead of counting "train" as a guess, Fedle put me into training mode, and I had to solve another word before returning to today's word!
Let me say something fun about the #Polish language.
When you name the letters of the alphabet, "G" is pronounced "gye" (with "g" pronounced similarly to "good", not "George").
"Gie" also exists as a euphemism for "gówno", or shit. It has the same pronunciation, it's derived from the letter "g" in that word.
Well, we were prepared for #Google.
The executive branch plays no role in making election policy or regulating election administration
—the Constitution explicitly leaves those responsibilities to the states and Congress.
The “Proposed Rule: Ballot Mail for Federal Elections” therefore conflicts with the Constitution.
Beyond that, it is bad policy that will make it harder for election administrators to do their jobs,
runs the risk of potentially disenfranchising voters
and increases the chance of …
The NYC Council sent letters to Polymarket, Kalshi, Coinbase, and Gemini Titan to investigate alleged deceptive marketing practices and targeting minors (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/new-york…
Another word, I do not know. Just guessing random letters. #Wordle
Wordle 1 884 6/6
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟨⬛🟨⬛
🟨🟨🟩⬛⬛
🟨🟨⬛🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted https://bioniclab.substack.com/p/my-mentor-wrote-me-a-strong-recommendation
Happy #PortfolioDay everyone. 🪴
I'm Sebastian. I like gazing at clouds, the crunching sound of dirt when I vacuum and writing stuff on the Internet. You can find some of it here.
https://finest.day/
…
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
The Ruby Doe:
🎵 Red Letters
#TheRubyDoe
https://therubydoe.bandcamp.com/track/red-letters
https://open.spotify.com/track/1ihGMxqRrHZBIi4rgJJk2g
Mullin threatens states that refuse Trump's election demands
Mullin also repeated his threat of withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency grant funding to states that don’t work to “secure” elections.
“If they’re not willing to do it, it should raise serious questions.
It’s not that hard. This isn’t a partisan issue,”
the homeland security secretary said.
This also comes after the Trump justice department sent letters to election officials in every sta…
Natalie Harp's Intimate Letters to Trump Revealed in Full (David Gardner/The Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/natalie-harps-intimate-letters-to-trump-revealed-in-full/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260820/p132#a260820p132
Letters: US military branches disabled ad trackers on government-issued devices amid reports of location data being used to target US forces in the Middle East (Raphael Satter/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel
With so many critical letters ruled out, this was all I could make. #Wordle
Wordle 1 909 4/6
🟨⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Between May 29 and July 9,
roughly 51,000 comments were posted to regulations.gov
(and over 200,000 more had been received but not yet published).
The verdict on public sentiment is clear and lopsided:
about 94 percent oppose the proposed rule and only 6 percent support it,
with fewer than one percent marked as unclear.
The opposition is overwhelmingly grassroots rather than orchestrated.
Form letters make up only about 16 percent of all comments…
Sources: to fight critics on social media, DHS sent platforms hundreds of subpoenas and asked posters to sign letters saying speech about ICE "may" be a crime (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ice-surveillance-interne…
This is by far the strangest #Wordle I have ever played. All the letters but every single one wrong until everything was right.
Wordle 1 910 5/6
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬛
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Guess 3 was a waste. I can't count and didn't realize I already had 5 letters. Could have been a Wordle in 3. #Wordle
Wordle 1 845 4/6
⬛🟨⬛🟨🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟨
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Threats to prosecute sheriffs in Minneapolis and Chicago,
cities that have experienced some of the most intense immigration enforcement of the Trump era,
are a new salvo in the president’s campaign against state and local officials
who refuse to embrace his administration’s crackdown.
The warnings have been conveyed in a series of letters that federal agents began hand-delivering in early July
-- to Sheriff Dawanna Witt of Hennepin County, Minn., which includes …
Swapped two letters in guess 4. #Wordle
Wordle 1 843 5/6
⬛🟩⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟩🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Very round about way to get the letters for this one. #Wordle
Wordle 1 904 4/6
⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩