Nicholas Weaver
Lecturer, Computer Science, UC Davis
Researcher, Computer Security, ICSI
Chief Mad Scientest, Skerry Technologies
Digital, Explainable, and (usually) Adversarial Systems
- The airplane that I (and I would suspect @nuclearanthro.bsky.social ) would take as a bribe
- Me, last year www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/
- the most common job category in the layoffs at Microsoft HQ this week? Software engineering. new w/@brodyford.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
- At at Berkeley I’d be football coach for 1/10th the salary
- Need a test image for some image processing exercises. The classic "lena" image is good in many ways (lots of patterns etc) but is, umm, of questionable heritage. Fortunately, there is "Ethically Sourced Lena": mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/
- For those who thought testing in production was not crazy enough, lets test tweaking LLM prompts in production!
- This is great. Everyone in the House has to put their name next to a yes or no on impeachment (even if by proxy) and I look forward to every D who votes to table (ie kill) the resolution today explaining to the electorate over the next 18 months why they shouldn't be primaried
- [Not loaded yet]
- For fucks sake the near as much half-billion-dollar bribe from Qatar has even pissed off Laura Fucking Loomer. Bribery, plain and simple. And keep bringing it up.
- 1 year ago ~to the day~
- I called my congressman today, impeach, impeach, impeach. And if you don't, don't be surprised if you get primaried, people are MAD.
- And if you don't vote yes, be prepared to be primaried. And good riddance.
- Trump's administration straight up neo-Nazi coded their "antisemitism" executive order as 14/88 on page 88/47: I seriously doubt it was not deliberate. I REALLY want a reporter to get the ADL on record about what they think about this...
- For those not getting the reference, 14/88 is the number 1 bit of Neo-nazi numerology. Neo-nazis will literally tattoo it on themselves because a swastika would frighten normal people: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourtee...
- [Not loaded yet]
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourtee... 14/88 is the NUMBER ONE bit of neo-nazi numerology, the sort of thing skinheads tattoo on themselves to not frighten the normies with a swastika.
- Entirely because the Trump administration is a bunch of antisemitic shitbags using "countering antisemitism" as an excuse to target universities.
- okay why did this give me chills youtu.be/Ox8ZLF6cGM0?...
- [Not loaded yet]
- And thank GOD they are bringing back the John Williams theme...
- Yeup, it tracks: theonion.com/gavin-newsom...
- I just called my congressman. Impeach, Impeach, Impeach NOW. Hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from individuals and a hostile foreign country in gross violation of the law and constitution. And you want to make impeachment happen, talk about it! And voters are PISSED.
[Not loaded yet]- Hey, it takes talent to rebrand, decide the rebrand was awful, and rerebrand to the old brand now that people forgot about the oldbrand. Its like New Coke on crystal meth. You can't buy that. OK, you can, its about $50M/yr...
- [Not loaded yet]
- I prefer "the death smog seeping into the kitchens on the coal-ships"
- [Not loaded yet]
- "You have 20 minutes" and each word is either out of modern context (fog == death smog, mud == horseshit) or obscure period context (Lincoln's inn, etc), and you have to read forward to go back to get context, so "read sentence" is not how you can comprehend it anyway.
- In forgiveness, reading Bleak House is not reading current English, but 175 year old British, with a huge amount of cultural baggage in it. EG, in 1850 how many students are supposed to know that "fog" is really deadly smog fueled by coal-burning fireplaces?
- Also very interesting that the last but one plane was given to Erdoğan as a bribe, err, "gift to Turkey as a Presidential Transport Plane" Glad to see Qatar is keeping up the tradition.
- [Not loaded yet]
- Yeup, the coolest bug ever. The second coolest being the "GUNMAN project" (NSA name, not the Soviet name) for the soviet bugging of typewriters. media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/13/...
- [Not loaded yet]
- Yeup. EG, for war in the pacific, Nimitz's Gray Book is now digitized: www.ibiblio.org/anrs/grayboo...
- [Not loaded yet]
- [Not loaded yet]
- emacs is the one true editor as God intended.
- Oh FUCK ME. Github Classroom allowed some student to upload/replace the starter code. HOW?!?!?
- Anyone have contacts at Github, I NEED to know how this happened?
- Yes, dropping tariffs on China back down are good... But they could do whatever in a couple of months, so if you have something with a 90 day + lead time, are you feeling lucky?
- [Not loaded yet]
- Not a good one. For IDE its VSCode or JetBrains Crack, with ssh-based remote development for the *nix boxes in my life.
- @noahshachtman.bsky.social Please can you get someone at Rolling Stone to get the Anti-Defamation League on record (even if its "we refuse to comment") on the blatant neo-Nazi numerology in EO 14188? Start by asking what they would think about 14/88 before you get to the EO numbering...
- Are we SURE this is the Onion and not the Washington Post? I can't tell with Gavin these days....
- Gavin Newsom Sits Down For Podcast With Serial Killer Who Targets Homeless — theonion.com/gavin-newsom...
- [Not loaded yet]
- [Not loaded yet]
- Thanks. That will be an order to watch for...
- [Not loaded yet]
- The desire by Wall Street to fleece the public knows no bounds.
- [Not loaded yet]
- Is this a federal case so I can look up the docket since I don't have a law365 subscription?
- Q&A from a talk I gave last week. Q: "What do you think is the biggest threat in cybersecurity right now? Is it post-quantum computing? Is it AI?" A: Fascism. It's fascism.
- And #2: A refusal to use password managers and security keys.
- [Not loaded yet]
- I'm HOPING my current assignment for programming has that inadvertantly. There is a LOT of shitty old C++ code out there, and I'm requiring the students to use agressively MODERN C++ instead...
- I don't force them to DO any (other more important programming assigments) but I was giving my lectures monday and today on the Unix command line and why it is so great to be able to do "for every computer in your fleet do this!"
- This is such insane and illegal bullshit from the administration who released a neo-nazi coded executive order on “countering antisemitism”
- [Not loaded yet]
- Yeup: EO 14188 (14/88) on page 8847 (88/47). So 14 world/Heil Hitler, on page Heil Hitler/Trump 47
- [Not loaded yet]
- [Not loaded yet]
- Seriously: EO 14188 (14/88) on page 8847 (88/47) on the federal register. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...
- Hey, they literally did the "countering antisemitism" EO as EO 14/88 on page 88/47 of the federal register.
- [Not loaded yet]
- [Not loaded yet]
- No because there is still latency and limited additional capacity for prebuying
- It shouldn't be "foes", it should be "delusional lunatics".
- The mRNA/nanoparticle platform has saved over 20 million lives during Covid, is being used to treat cancer, rare diseases (via genome editing) and autoimmune diseases, no less many other infectious diseases w/o a vaccine. Now it's under siege. A1, NYT gift link www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/u...
- [Not loaded yet]
- It takes 40 days for a container from China to get to the US, and then subsequent supply chain gaps beyond that.
- [Not loaded yet]
- There's that, we are STILL looking at a 1 month major economic disruption as the bolus of stupidity works through the system.
- And don't forget the uncertanty tax. This is a massive reprieve for stuff already ordered, but going forward how does a business know that Trump is not going to push the tariff button again in 90 days, or even less!
- [Not loaded yet]
- AND this is still just "temporary" until the mad king's whims kick in again. Short term it is a huge relief except for not touching the $200 minimum. Long term it does nothing to make the US a viable partner or place to do business.
- At the same time, however, this is unfortunately still very for this country. Long term, unless Trump is removed ASAP, the long term future of this country is totally destroyed. But it is only short term pain that could get Republicans to go along with impeachment.
- This will relieve some of the short term pain but have little effect on the long term prospects. Because this is just a "90 day pause" before who knows what Trump does. You gamble on the whims of the mad king if you are planning beyond the end of the day horizon.
- [Not loaded yet]
- This is actually a big deal for me, I've put a project on hold because $200 to get a package is a killer and the Chinese supply chain on electronics really is so much better than the US...
- [Not loaded yet]
- And the thing is its just "90 days" before Trump goes crazy again and presses the Tariff button. Short term, a lot of goods previously ordered but sitting at ports/customs will be processed, but long term how can a business operate in this environment?
