my housemate's TV has a very good, well-designed IP service discovery mechanism that i've never seen before:

instead of relying on potentially unreliable information like the netmask to determine the broadcast address, it simply replaces random octets of the address with "255", then sends UDP packets to that address.

so for example, if its IP address is 1.2.3.4, it'll send packets to 1.2.3.255 and 1.2.255.255.

i see nothing that can go wrong with this approach! well, aside from the fact that the addresses 1.2.3.255 and 1.2.255.255 are not on our network, so it's actually sending these discovery packets to random Internet hosts...

this KDE security advisory (from 2020) is hilarious: https://kde.org/info/security/advisory-20201002-1.txt

Workaround: stop kdeconnectd. but, you can't do that because it's started from dbus, so it's literally impossible to stop. the only solution is to remove the package, but good luck doing that when it's part of your OS's KDE metapackage.

what is this super important daemon that must be running 100% of the time and cannot be stopped or removed? well, it lets you control your desktop PC from your phone. something which i'm sure at least 0.001% of KDE users have ever done, or ever will do...

what the fuck are you doing, software developers.

#linux #kde #security

very unimpressed with OpenBSD ypldap, and it's possible i'm missing something, but i'm not sure what.

the problem: when YP is enabled in /etc/master.passwd and /etc/group, all name service lookups hang forever if the YP server (ypldap) isn't available. ypldap requires DNS to work. DNS is provided on localhost by named. but named can't start without ypldap, because it will hang forever trying to look up the user/group it's meant to run as.

so as a result, nothing ever starts and the entire system is unresponsive.

what i want is, if ypldap can't establish a connection to the LDAP server, it simply returns no data.

what am i missing here?

i want to use 1x UK 240V 13A mains socket to power 3x Raspberry Pi 4B via USB-C. for... reasons, this seems to be a lot more difficult than you might expect.

has anyone done this, and if so, can you tell me about the solution you used that you know works well in practice?

#rpi #raspberrypi

was unsure about these "push-in" rack nuts but after trying them, they are a lot easier to install and remove than traditional cage nuts, even if they're about 10x more expensive (£2.11 for 4, so still not very much), and they seem pretty secure.

i think i'll buy these from now on.

https://www.kenable.co.uk/networking/network-cabinets/cabinet-accessories/quick-push-fit-m6-cage-nuts-for-network-data-cabinet-rack-mount-4-pack-010821

MikroTik forum post from April: "PPPoE service hacked?": https://forum.mikrotik.com/t/pppoe-service-hacked-27-27-of-april-2026/270154

is this related to the vulnerability that may or may not exist in PPPoE that may or may not have been patched today?

who the fucks knows, because the vendor won't tell us.

#mikrotik #routeros

RouterOS 7.23.2 release notes:

!) fixed a service security issue, home user with default config not affected, but we recommend the upgrade for all users regardless;

so... we fixed a security vulnerability, but we're not going to tell you what it is, so you have no idea how urgent this update is or how exposed you are or if you're even affected at all.

thanks, i guess?

(rumour has it this is a memory disclosure or potential RCE in pptp/l2tp/ppoe...)

#mikrotik #routeros #networking #security

looking for a database of DNS IOCs, e.g. "if a client queries for domain <X>, it's probably compromised by <Y>". does this exist?

#dns #infosec

someone on a forum i read is defending HOAs: “they help maintain property value and stop your neighbours covering their house in pornographic vinyl wrap”.

what do they imagine non-HOA neighbourhoods actually look like??

it’s freebsd day. going to the freebsd pride march. gonna tell all my friends im freebsd

bsdcan day two, the first talk is about how we should move all the freebsd.org infrastructure to the cloud

“Also, everyone in Newfoundland are weredogs.”

i enjoy this use of “are” and would like to see it more often. i wonder if it’s common in Canada?

"check out this new zine! it's got a new version of cURL and it supports DECnet Phase V now!"

remember when millennials were kids and the only way we could run computer programmes was to type in a programme listing from a magazine?

a modest proposal: all open source software should be distributed this way.

on to the next #bsdcan summit talk, this one is ALSO about LLMs...

@stefano if i move to the Snac instance, will i be able to include basic formatting (Markdown or w/e) in my posts? not being able to do this on Mastodon is super annoying.

he just pronounced #include as "pound include", clearly demonic

i think i've said before that LLMs are clearly useful, for some value of utility, if you ignore all the negative externalities. so considered entirely in isolation, there's nothing particularly wrong with having a talk about how LLMs work or what they do.

the problem is this sort of talk only considers the "good" parts and is basically a subsidised[0] advert for LLMs. it's not "neutral" to just provide the facts when you very specifically select which facts you want to provide.

[0] assuming no one paid the other for this; i didn't see any disclosures, so i assume that's the case.

oh this dude literally works for Anthropic, wtf

the first talk at the bsdcan dev summit is about LLMs...