Alex Vranas @Alex@vran.as
Admin
#Netsec Professional. Whitehat #Hacker. #Demoscene spectator. Nerd.
I'm a fan of #Linux, #FOSS, #Decentralization (not Crypto), Crypto (as in #Cryptography), and #Socialism. Always #Antifascist & #Antiwar.
Seattle, WA
Joined Feb 2021
About to leave for a trip to Europe!
March 24 - March 27: Munich, Germany
March 27 - March 28: Stuttgart, Germany
March 28 - April 1: Saarbrücken, Germany (#RevisionParty2024)
April 1 - April 3: Paris, France
April 3 - April 6: London, England
April 6 - April 10: Dublin, Ireland
A genre tag cloud based on my listening history. Not sure how Ohio made the cut.
Alex Vranas
boosted
📝: The internet isn't dying, it's changing #Tech #SocialMedia #Blogging #Mastodon https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/the-internet-isnt-dying-its-changing/
Hot take: Material Design is terrible and bootstrapping your FOSS app with it just makes your app worse.
Why are people talking about Facebook being down on Super Tuesday like it's a bad thing? I'm more upset that it came back up.
It's official. I'll be in Europe for 2+ weeks starting in late March, and I'll be in Saarbrücken for #RevisionParty2024!
Flying to Munich, then making my way by train to Stuttgart, Saarbrücken, Paris, and London, then flying to Dublin for a few days before my flight home.
Alex Vranas
boosted
i havent used CalyxOS in a long time but i am very impressed with this on the Pixel Tablet
the setup process was outstanding and allowed me to install exactly what i need. no cloud account bullshit, just the good stuff
the default behavior of @signalapp on @calyxos via @fdroidorg makes it so the tablet is the primary signal device, ideal for use with a Google Voice number or compartmentalizing your Signal number on a dedicated, torified device
simply outstanding. blog post review in the works
YouTube just hit me with a copyright block on my only pubic video. :(
It was a potato-quality Japanese music video I found on a p2p network that pulled in 90,000 views since I uploaded it 17 years ago.
Sony waited until after they uploaded an official HD version of the same video, so I guess I forgive them.
The track slaps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ20Tgq3jk4
Stability AI just screwed up and published their latest project with an MIT license instead of the proprietary license they wanted. They just tried to pull a switcharoo a day later.
If anyone is interested in teaching a lesson to a company that doesn't respect intellectual property, consider forking their repo before this commit to set the precedent that this is FOSS whether they like it or not: https://github.com/Stability-AI/StableCascade/commit/209a52600f35dfe2a205daef54c0ff4068e86bc7
Alex Vranas
boosted
The three million toothbrush botnet story isn’t true.
Here’s the original source of the story: https://archive.is/2024.01.30-203406/https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/wirtschaft/kriminalitaet-die-zahnbuersten-greifen-an-das-sind-die-aktuellen-cybergefahren-und-so-koennen-sie-sich-schuetzen-ld.2569480
It’s simply a made up example. It doesn’t exist. It starts talking about NoName Ddosia, too, which also isn’t toothbrushes.
Alex Vranas
boosted
AnyDesk was popped, with 170,000 advertised users.
They claim their install base is secure, but that the code signing cert was stolen. From the changelog, its clear that they knew this on January 29th but didn't announce until the end of the day on a Friday. Not cool.
Based upon their actions so far, I would recommend all enterprises kill AnyDesk across their fleet using EDR or other means for now until we know more.
https://anydesk.com/en/public-statement
https://anydesk.com/en/changelog/windows
Exploring music by @gribbles. Good background music to focus to. Enjoying the tracks "What are the media" and "Jetty".
Just followed every artist on the @radiofreefedi rotational. Looking forward to discovering lots of new music.
I really hate Microsoft products. Thankfully I only have to deal with them at work, and not all the time.
Answer: It discreetly opens a "create share link" dialog in another part of the program (where I can't see it), and DOES NOT COPY ANYTHING TO THE CLIPBOARD.
To a casual user, it appears successful though.
And that's how I pasted a malicous spam link I was reporting earlier into a Teams chat when I was trying to share a SharePoint file from another chat...
You try to share a link to a SharePoint item from a Teams chat, and there's this button. Take a guess what it does. Remember, this is a Microsoft product.
Question for everyone who uses cutesy misspelled words and text art in your alt tags: do you know what alt tags are for?
Because people with screen readers don't want to hear the sounds that "chooooooooooonker" or ":-(" make.
Alex Vranas
boosted
Remember how my previous employer denied my WFH request so that I could flee the state of Ohio to take care of my trans kid while still working for a company I loved?
I just heard they did it to someone else today.
When you insist people come in to an office a few days a week because you want a "hybrid culture" not a "remote culture" and then tell them to just fuck off when all they want to do is get their kid somewhere safe that makes you an absolutely shitty person.
I'm done hiding who it was.
The company is #OverDrive, based in Cleveland. They make ebook lending software for your local library called #Libby. They say they care about their LGBTQIA+ employees and families but that is clearly a lie.
Ohio lawmakers are turning my home state into absolute garbage and companies like this one are playing along.
Tell your local library to #DropLibby
[Edit, since this is doing numbers: The reason my request was denied a little over a year ago, despite me explaining in detail why, was because they "want a hybrid culture, not a remote culture." (a quote from a senior leader to my face)
In both 2020 and 2021 while the whole company was working remotely I won two annual employee excellence awards for my work on their Security team, while the company had record growth.
Meanwhile, one of my teammates moved out of state to be closer to family and continued to work remotely.]
#Trans #TransRights #Ebooks #Libraries #Bookstodon
Found the article. Seems like I was off on the cost ($64k, not six-figures), but here's the whole thing if you want to die inside: https://cointelegraph.com/news/mysterious-bitcoiner-spends-64k-inscribe-9mb-of-data-on-bitcoin
There is something so incredibly funny to me about watching a journalist that specializes in Cryptocurrency encountering a 9MB blob of encrypted data, and marveling over the fact that a language model couldn't magically break the cypher.
And then to tell the world that this is how he tried to decrypt data, with zero awareness that they're saying something devastatingly stupid to anyone who actually understands the topic.
And cryptography is literally the backbone of the tech he covers...
Admin
#Netsec Professional. Whitehat #Hacker. #Demoscene spectator. Nerd.
I'm a fan of #Linux, #FOSS, #Decentralization (not Crypto), Crypto (as in #Cryptography), and #Socialism. Always #Antifascist & #Antiwar.
Seattle, WA
Joined Feb 2021
