The way computer security works in 2026:

1. queers go to congress and demonstrate multiple serious exploits against actual security software. the maintainers deny there’s a problem. nobody pays attention except other queers at congress

2. OpenAI finds a bug which could, hypothetically, in a very difficult-to-orchestrate attack and in the absence of already-existing mitigations, have a security implication. the entire industry has an overnight meltdown. coverage on national news stations worldwide. meanwhile, nobody is provably able to actually make it work as an exploit

Today I saw one of the weirdest and coolest sea slugs I've ever seen and it was in New Hampshire. This is Elysia chlorotica, a slug that eats algae and steals its chloroplasts to use for photosynthesis. Yes, this slug is solar powered!

#seaslugs #underwaterphotography #macro #om1 #NewEngland 🦑 📷

Still remember the first time I listened to this epic track by Daniel Myer aka Architect some twenty years ago... glitchy, heavy, trancy, melancholic, fantastic sound design, build up and layered production...

(If you're not too keen on the more glitchy parts, skip the intro to 3:07)

Architect — St. Vodka (2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ct1nbUyKi8

#Music4Coding #Architect #IDM

Wolves roam into Finnish villages after Google destroys 1,300 acres of forest for AI data centers — forest where wolf packs used to live is now an expanse of mud https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/wolves-roam-into-finnish-villages-after-google-destroys-1-300-acres-of-forest-for-ai-data-centers-forest-where-wolf-packs-used-to-live-are-now-an-expanse-of-mud

Wanted: The Kraftwerk-inspired Thermian leader's voice from Galaxy Quest for GPS navigation guidance. How to make that happen on iOS?

(A recent update of @organicmaps somehow reset the voice to some 1990s default voice config and it very much reminded me of that character... :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIWPKy98pKw

We are in a very dangerous time, when "AI" security companies are competing to prove that their technology will provide returns on investment. The industry has always been broken. There has always been an incentive to inflate the importance of vulnerabilities, but there was always a risk of burning hard earned trust. In the end, a lot of folks decided it wasn't worth it.

But "AI" companies haven't worked to earn that trust. They have something to prove, right now, or they don't exist. So now everything is critical, "impossible to find without AI," and so on. Blah2shell sells, and now everyone wants their little vuln labeled that way regardless of the complexity or risk.

Burning trust in security is the absolute worst thing you can possibly do in terms of tech. I'm worried about where things are going right now.

There have always been more bugs than we can fix. We've had to triage. If we break that, we flood maintainers until they burn out. Our job is not to fix everything. It's to filter information for the people who do.

But right now I'm reading vuln reports that aren't distinguishing between a 100% reliable and trivial exploit like log4shell and complex memory corruption bugs that are incredibly noisy and basically impossible to exploit with ASLR. ASLR is like 25 years old. You have to do better than a simple buffer overflow now to get a shell.

But people have shit to sell, so we have more noise. Again, "we've put the attenuator on the wrong side of the equation."

Getting ready for creating a larger contact print of this image tonight... Just some more fine tuning of the talus fields needed...

#Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Darkroom #PrintMaking

Software is a false messiah.

Tools amplify human intentions. They cannot improve them.

Software is an artifact. Technology is not its artifacts.

Technology is the extension and refinement of the methods used by human beings—biological agents—to increase their influence over their environment, primarily the natural world. Technology is know-how.

The problem with human society is not know-how. The problem is morality, or a distinct lack thereof.

6/ nice sunset views by Bubb's Creek on the way to Vidette meadow after east Vidette

Btw. Here's the trailer for this unforgettable movie. As usual, it doesn't do any justice to the highly relevant, powerful message & life story told, but it gives a glimpse of the stunning filming and locations... Go watch it (and sob!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJXmdY4lVR0

(Btw. This is NOT a movie about nostalgia or religion, as the trailer might wrongly imply. The character is religious, even very much so, but that is not the point of the story...)

#AHiddenLife #TerrenceMalick #Trailer

Btw. Here's the trailer for this unforgettable movie. As usual, it doesn't do any justice to the highly relevant, powerful message & life story told, but it gives a glimpse of the stunning filming and locations... Go watch it (and sob!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJXmdY4lVR0

(Btw. This is NOT a movie about nostalgia or religion, as the trailer might wrongly imply. The character is religious, even very much so, but that is not the point of the story...)

#AHiddenLife #TerrenceMalick #Trailer

PPWR update from the EU Council:

Simplification: Council agrees negotiating stance to cut red tape for small packaging producers
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2026/10/21/simplification-council-agrees-negotiating-stance-to-cut-red-tape-for-small-packaging-producers/

tl;dr The Council agrees with the urgent need for simplification and removing the EPR duties, albeit with different conditions than what parliament voted for a day prior (instead of max. company size and annual turnover, the Council proposes to use packaging volume as limit — fair enough and no difference to most micro biz).

The Council's position is: "[...]that producers of packaging and packaging of packaged products established in the EU may be exempted from the obligation to appoint an authorised representative in another member state if they make available on the market of that member state a quantity of packaging below 1 tonne per calendar year. The mandate also contains a safeguard clause in case a producer is found in breach with EPR obligations."

Although great news, I'm not sure about the timeline for next steps towards an actual change of law. The press release only states:

"The presidency will enter negotiations with the European Parliament on this file as soon as possible with a view to reaching a quick agreement."

"[...]the objective of concluding work on all simplification packages by the end of 2027."

I'm very much hoping that the EPR parts will be dealt with on a much shorter time horizon — most of the impacted businesses will likely NOT survive another 14 months (until end of next year)...

Still, one small win at a time! 🙌

#PPWR #EU #Regulation

From Oculus/ModRetro to Anduril & co. Boys with toys continue being living proof of the primitive worldview formed from watching too much idiotic Hollywood sci-fi. But they're all so very good at exploiting the huge appetite and openings for defense funding and government contracts in the current ethics-free and testosterone soaked, dripping/tripping environment of the US admin...

Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear
https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/22/ben-lamm-raises-200m-for-warhound-to-engineer-war-dogs-and-arm-them-with-anduril-gear/

Related, some very good & entertaining commentary about Colossus Biotech (who're key part of Warhound) and their "de-extinction" & cloning business model:
https://arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolves-remain-very-extinct

Ps. Considering the $100k-200k price tag for a trained security dog aimed at VIPs, one can just imagine the profits to be made for weaponized dogs...

A Hidden Life (2023)

(One of several ~500 years old and still functional grain mills used as one of the film locations for the eponymous, beautifully shot and incredibly touching movie by Terrence Malick, which also is highly relevant to our current moment in time, about standing up for personal ethics and peaceful coexistence in a society which has given up on either...)

#Photography #BlackAndWhite #NoirCountry #Alps #History #WaterMill #FilmLocation

PPWR update from the EU Council:

Simplification: Council agrees negotiating stance to cut red tape for small packaging producers
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/press/press-releases/2026/10/21/simplification-council-agrees-negotiating-stance-to-cut-red-tape-for-small-packaging-producers/

tl;dr The Council agrees with the urgent need for simplification and removing the EPR duties, albeit with different conditions than what parliament voted for a day prior (instead of max. company size and annual turnover, the Council proposes to use packaging volume as limit — fair enough and no difference to most micro biz).

The Council's position is: "[...]that producers of packaging and packaging of packaged products established in the EU may be exempted from the obligation to appoint an authorised representative in another member state if they make available on the market of that member state a quantity of packaging below 1 tonne per calendar year. The mandate also contains a safeguard clause in case a producer is found in breach with EPR obligations."

Although great news, I'm not sure about the timeline for next steps towards an actual change of law. The press release only states:

"The presidency will enter negotiations with the European Parliament on this file as soon as possible with a view to reaching a quick agreement."

"[...]the objective of concluding work on all simplification packages by the end of 2027."

I'm very much hoping that the EPR parts will be dealt with on a much shorter time horizon — most of the impacted businesses will likely NOT survive another 14 months (until end of next year)...

Still, one small win at a time! 🙌

#PPWR #EU #Regulation

Nowadays, the internet sometimes feels like a once well-to-do neighbourhood that became a slum after an industrial park & motorway were built through it. And I'm the lifelong resident who refuses to leave, unable to accept that the decaying, now unsafe area will never regain its former grandeur.

@jirirbr I'm not opposed to the intent behind the regulation(s) itself, but they are designed & implemented by people with increasingly questionable motives and lack of considerations, empathy and/or research who is actually being impacted by these rules. If the responsible people cannot even see or understand the problem nor have any interest in fixing it, then they're simply the wrong people to be in these positions of responsibility & power over millions of lives. So yes, unless we're managing to change this attitude, we will be royally fucked...

For the PPWR most people cannot fathom the decision making process used nor the seeming lack of understanding the importance for differentiation and/or gradation when designing a regulation with such major burdens. The insistence to apply the same rules for people using a handful of kilograms of packaging per year (if at all) vs. tens/hundreds of tons per year is nothing but unfair. For there to be no consideration for minimum quota, graded costs or for some countries to not even wanting to debate this as a real issue is more than worrisome... It's also a huge political gamble, potentially destroying the livelihoods of thousands of SMEs

cc/ @EUCommission

#PPWR #EU #Regulation

Stock market crashes after news that a third GPS satellite has been destroyed by cascading satellite debris.

#2050BreakingNews

RE: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@Cormac_McGinley/117483741977156552

Biological landfill. This is close to the picture we should have more often in mind when thinking about the long-arc future of our being & doing here, the relationships and struggles we engage in on this planet... Consider the trillions of lives lived before, after and in parallel to us, whose raw materials are we all consume, share, recycle and transform over and over again, even if separated by aeons...

#Fossils #Geology #Biology #Time

RE: https://mastodon.social/@BjornW/117479108053805974

You want to avoid another #PHP2Shell in the future? We're close to the end of the year, so in many companies NOW is the right time to talk to your boss or take action yourself and OPEN YOUR FUCKING WALLET (if you can afford it) and donate to the #FOSS projects that you or your company rely upon. Come up with a list of projects, libraries and tools you use (or make money with) and send some goddamn cash to these people.