jwz

I write screen savers and sell beer. Impresario of DNA Lounge, the world's greatest nightclub. Also wrote your parents' web browser and stuff.

jwz.org: https://www.jwz.org/
@dnalounge: https://sfba.social/@dnalounge
@dnapizza: https://sfba.social/@dnapizza

Public Key

npub1l77wket4nkmckcn7ff3g3l2lzgw9avcepfx8qp3hl2z4nnrtzq6shhcjyv

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0l08tv46emdutvfly5c5gl403y8z7kvvs5nrsqcml4p2ee343qdgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsfhhftt

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1l77wket4nkmckcn7ff3g3l2lzgw9avcepfx8qp3hl2z4nnrtzq6shhcjyv

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-01-29 19:11:40 GMT

Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Mozilla is cooked.
https://jwz.org/b/yk2n
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/979/970/103/391/439/original/223466dd4fb8679d.png

2026-01-19 19:58:51 GMT

RE: https://social.vmbrasseur.com/@vmbrasseur/115922995190919975
Mozilla wants your input. Here's mine:
Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:
1: Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2: Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3: There is no 3.
Mozilla should have NOTHING to do with AI. Nobody wants it. Stop forcing AI into every corner of every project because your VC-brained management have completely lost the plot.
https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201
#note1z8f…dmuu

2026-01-17 20:50:43 GMT

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Hey look, here's Kimberly Guilfoyle's ex-husband sucking Ben Shapiro's dick: https://www.commondreams.org/gavin-newsom-shapiro-ice
"Newsom then boasted that there have been 'over 10,000' deportations he’s cooperated with since he became governor of California. 'California has cooperated with more ICE transfers, probably, than any other state in the country,' he continued. 'I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that.'"

2026-01-17 06:16:22 GMT

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Welp, after my spamnesty, including a restructuring of my fail2ban jails and drastic reduction in the number of regexps being processed, performance was pretty good for a while. But in the last 8 days I've already put a 30 day ban on over *1.6 million* IPs that hit the honeypot. And now fail2ban is using a bunch of CPU again. fail2ban.sqlite3 is 2.5G.
We used to be an internet.

2026-01-16 20:43:05 GMT

Let's say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some reason, some people feel you should be seeing hockey-stick growth, but the donations aren't covering it.
So you decide to start up a side-line of selling kittens for meat.
Then you will inevitably have someone stroking their chin and saying, "Yes, yes, but how could they afford to stay open if they weren't selling kitten deli slices?"
Some might say - maybe you aren't an animal shelter any more. Some might say.
https://jwz.org/b/yk2A
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/906/719/589/871/262/original/84ace6b05038f757.png

2026-01-13 20:34:12 GMT

Periodic reminder that Newsom sucks.
Gavin Newsom comes out swinging against California billionaire tax:
In interviews with Politico and the New York Times, [Kimberly Guilfoyle's ex-husband] described his office's efforts to kill the proposed billionaire tax and told the Times he would "do what I have to do to protect [rich people's yacht money]". As a direct-to-voters ballot initiative, Newsom would not have the power to veto the tax if the proposal passed...
https://jwz.org/b/yk10
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/889/697/696/347/129/original/45d9295ea0558ad7.png

2026-01-13 20:01:05 GMT

CA DROP is finally live.
California residents can use new tool to demand brokers delete their personal data: While state residents have had the right to demand that a company stop collecting and selling their data since 2020, doing so required a...
https://jwz.org/b/yk1v
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/889/567/444/019/056/original/560160b573cd01b2.png

2026-01-08 08:30:45 GMT

fail2ban GC.
Over the years I've accumulated thousands of fail2ban regexps. It's a performance impact. Is there some way to figure out which ones have not been hit in a while, to remove?
https://jwz.org/b/yk1e

2026-01-06 20:20:30 GMT

Car Brain.
There's a lot of stupid in the world, but here's some more. For those of you not in San Francisco: we have an old freeway running right past the ocean. It is falling into the ocean, and for decades had been closed like 20% of the time as...
https://jwz.org/b/yk1T
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/850/007/623/509/112/original/019128c3891e60e8.png

2026-01-01 03:24:02 GMT

I don't like to talk in absolutes about security, but... my headphones are 100% immune from the latest exploit, via this One Weird Trick!
Now hear me out...
I call it "eargapping". I learned about it in my Intro to Antique Coding class.
https://jwz.org/b/yk1K
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/817/699/203/253/411/original/adf3075466109ee2.png

2025-12-24 20:49:25 GMT

What asshat decided that user name and password should now always be on separate pages? How does this make anything better? Fuck you.

2025-12-24 19:19:22 GMT

Christmas Throwback: EXERCISE VAGUE JOY.
It was ten years ago today that I decorated the Christmas tree in my building's heavily-surveilled lobby. Simpler times.
Happy Surveillmas!
https://jwz.org/b/yk07
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/776/160/180/574/544/original/62d6f65ad6142494.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/776/160/365/261/425/original/1e877801ba7c36c6.jpg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/776/160/551/206/821/original/68d325529810aec8.jpg

2025-12-24 11:57:20 GMT

Unknown Xmas.
https://jwz.org/b/yk02
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/774/420/889/203/331/original/6fa916dc95d2397b.mp4

2025-12-21 23:40:56 GMT

Four way stop versus $100 billion valuation.
It's on its back, baking in the hot sun, but you're not helping, Leon. Why is that?
Also, all the headlines say variants of "Waymo halts service during massive S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams" but what they fail to mention is that it took nearly six hours of these traffic jams before Waymo *finally* decided that the press they were getting was bad enough that they should do the most obvious thing in the world.
https://jwz.org/b/yk0t
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/760/198/854/551/005/original/09ec5aa0103a9970.png

2025-12-20 23:09:50 GMT

So that's going well...
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/754/413/711/863/158/original/7f3281c9d990a7f7.jpeg

2025-12-19 09:47:21 GMT

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We used the term "chrome" in the source code to refer to everything in the window that was outside of the HTML area (menubars, toolbars, scrollbars, etc.) all the way back in version 0.x of Netscape in 1994.
struct _Chrome {
MWContextType type;
Bool show_button_bar;
Bool show_url_bar;
...

2025-12-17 00:01:43 GMT

It has come to my attention that the artwork for the original mozilla.org "dinosaur" logo is not widely available online. So, here it is.
As I explained in some detail in my 2016 article "They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo", I commissioned this artwork from Shepard Fairey to use as the branding of the newly-founded mozilla.org and our open source release of the Netscape source code, which eventually became Firefox. This happened in March 1998...
https://jwz.org/b/yk0j
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/731/968/948/823/708/original/4517399db9902e0c.png

2025-12-15 01:35:23 GMT

This just in, I have been informed that my stance of, "no, I am not interested in hearing your anecdote about how the Plagiarism Machine saved you some time once" means that I "live in a bubble".

2025-12-11 18:12:22 GMT

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Not that I have any interest in testing it, but I'm curious about the "electrocuted as soon as you touch it" part. I assume that means the tower dumps a bunch of juice between you and ground, but if it was that easy, wouldn't there be a constant lightshow of arcs around its base as twigs, leaves, pigeons and squirrels got vaporized?

2025-12-03 04:51:43 GMT

Kohler's $600/month toilet camera uses your turds to train AI.
Kohler Can Access Data and Pictures from Toilet Camera It Describes as "End-to-End Encrypted": But emails exchanged with Kohler's privacy contact clarified that the other "end" that can...
https://jwz.org/b/ykx8
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/653/836/954/527/145/original/5418f988a873427c.png

2025-11-26 19:29:48 GMT

OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide.
Ghouls gonna ghoul: Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen's suicide and...
https://jwz.org/b/ykxy
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/617/653/550/404/032/original/a5d9bf9197792738.png

2025-11-11 21:36:10 GMT

The algorithm failed music.
Music recommendation algorithms were supposed to help us cut through the noise, but they just served us up slop. Spotify leadership didn't see themselves as a music company, but as a time filler. The employee explained...
https://jwz.org/b/ykxT
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/533/215/820/692/251/original/a3dd9285ebfdeb28.png

2025-11-05 07:47:15 GMT

Pi 4 SPI lossage.
Dear Lazyweb, any idea why switching from a Pi 3b to a Pi 4b made my MAX7219 start behaving like this? If I switch back, it's behaves properly. Same CF card, so no software differences.
https://jwz.org/b/ykxE
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/495/982/463/409/928/original/52e213c0e933de72.png

2025-10-25 00:54:36 GMT

Great news everybody, you can't block that new OpenAI Atlas browser because it uses an identical user agent to Chrome.

2025-10-23 19:05:33 GMT

There's an image going around that is the back of a $20 with the demolition in progress, and every time I see it my finger hovers over the share button, then I think, "there's like a 90% chance that this is 'AI' crud and not a Photoshop" and I die a little inside and do not share.
This is what they have stolen from us.

2025-10-23 03:11:49 GMT

Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux redux.
Nine months ago I added an infinite-nonsense honeypot to poison LLM scrapers.
Today, it comprises 69% of URLs served.
Normally it feeds junk after a few seconds delay, but in "high-load mode" it bans IPs. That mode starts when the free-worker count is low, and ends when it has been calm for 15 min.
This month it has been in high-load mode 50% of the time.
https://jwz.org/b/ykwy

2025-10-12 10:26:04 GMT

Absolutely chilling words that someone said to me today:
"I have this new AI insulin pump..."

2025-10-12 09:10:48 GMT

Every time I see someone saying, "Someone did an AI thing and it found an obscure bug, kinda cool!" what I hear is, "Say what you want about Dr. Mengele, but his twin experiments did generate some useful data!"
Yes this is a subtwit. You know who you are.

2025-10-11 20:01:24 GMT

Perennial "Fuck the Blue Angels" post.
(NOTE: If you are about to "Well Actually" at me about this in some way, please be advised that I do not give the slightest shit.)
https://jwz.org/b/ykwb
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/357/313/105/883/560/original/28a71fa3fcf2b8e8.png

2025-09-21 19:07:53 GMT

"Hey kids!"
Drew Sheneman:
https://jwz.org/b/ykvq
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/243/856/197/647/749/original/a9dc0eb1f2f4127c.gif

2025-09-20 19:24:15 GMT

Once again current events have forced me to confront the difficult fact that Larry Ellison and John McAfee are actually two entirely different people and only one of them is dead.

2025-09-20 09:40:35 GMT

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As someone deeply embroiled in this so-called industry I am always shocked when someone else becomes SHOCKED, SHOCKED to discover that the entire business model of TicketBastard and AEG/AXS is scalping, literally nothing but scalping, that's their whole fucking deal. That's the entire business. Scalping their own tickets.

2025-09-18 20:12:23 GMT

Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released 30 years ago today.
This version introduced a number of new features:
• Plugins! This was the first time a web page could make sound, via RealAudio.
• Incremental display of progressive JPEGs on slow dialup connections.
• Animated GIFs that were actually useful.
• HTML frames.
• JavaScript! That wasn't my fault, but you still have my apologies.
• And of course my baby, the first release of Netscape Mail and News:
https://jwz.org/b/ykvY
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/227/121/623/225/710/original/3defe0933a26a1c8.png

2025-09-17 19:02:16 GMT

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1Password has been circling the drain at black-hole relativistic velocities for years. I broke up with them 2 years ago and have no regrets: https://jwz.org/b/ykHP

2025-09-14 20:30:58 GMT

Animal shelter evacuated after FBI incinerates meth.
Meth! It's got what lungs crave!
The incinerator is usually used by animal control officers to dispose of euthanised animals, but local authorities said it can also be used by law enforcement to burn seized narcotics.
https://jwz.org/b/ykvO
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/204/545/445/201/785/original/00860b82a66b5188.png

2025-09-13 19:10:49 GMT

Worst Kirk.
The Nation goes hard: "It's a choice to write an obituary that begins 'Joseph Goebbels was a gifted marketer and loving father to six children.'"
Charlie Kirk's Legacy Deserves No Mourning:
https://jwz.org/b/ykvK
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/198/567/934/638/807/original/0aaecf306ba52307.png

2025-09-09 03:15:57 GMT

The "School Shooting Industry"
According to the market research firm Omdia, the school security industry is now worth as much as $4 billion, and it's projected to keep growing. "The school safety and security industry has grown rapidly over the past...
https://jwz.org/b/yku9
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/172/164/022/560/486/original/d62ea40dfdd6a663.png

2025-09-04 22:38:12 GMT

Bobby Brainworms.
Who wore this rotting skin-suit best, Edgar, Dr. Channard or Dr. Pretorius?
https://jwz.org/b/ykuz
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/148/422/575/080/888/original/8d7049cded8e65ed.png

2025-08-30 19:27:56 GMT

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Welp. I now have proof that Facebook is using the same outbound IP addresses for both A) scraping web sites for "AI" training and B) fetching images from my site when I use the official API to post to Instagram.
This means that I can either defend myself from injuriously voracious AI scrapers, or have a functional business Instagram account, but not both.
Not just the same subnets. The same IPs.

2025-08-28 06:54:48 GMT

It was hard to pick pull quotes from this because every paragraph is perfect:
Anthony Moser: I am a hater, and I will not be polite. The machine is disgusting and we should break it. The people who build it are vapid shit-eating cannibals glorifying ignorance. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.
https://jwz.org/b/ykuI
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/105/076/891/320/444/original/4434940531b858d5.png

2025-08-28 06:43:00 GMT

The power we use and the power we give.
Philip Bump: It is useful and important to look at this question not through the lens of persuasion but the lens of power. Your engagement and your work, not unlike your vote, is a form of power, something you...
https://jwz.org/b/ykuG
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/105/030/486/774/858/original/c66509be71fd62e5.png

2025-08-26 17:37:52 GMT

The Pigs Who Stare At Crosswalks.
Florida Deploys Police To Stare At Crosswalks, Stop Them From Being Painted Rainbow Colors: Earlier this week, officers painted the rainbow stripes into stark black and white. Citizens repainted them. Road crews...
https://jwz.org/b/ykuE
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/096/280/852/289/474/original/315e562c43458498.png

2025-08-25 23:18:00 GMT

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This is great stuff!
I'm happy to report that XScreenSaver's UTF-8 parser already seems to replace the problematic codes you've identified with 0xFFFD. At least according to my self-tests: https://github.com/Mathiasb17/xscreensaver/blob/82348d51320b89281407e1cb0e18ce0022189144/utils/utf8wc.c#L564
The one exception being \000 simply truncating the text, because, well, it's C.

2025-08-25 19:12:18 GMT

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Comparing how I got paid in 1995 to taking money in 202x from *literal Fascists* is deeply disingenuous.

2025-08-25 18:59:38 GMT

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Well, she's funded by Jack Dorsey, who's deeply in bed with Saudi Prince Bonesaw, for a start.
If you support Blue Sky, you support Dorsey, Musk, Trump and the rest of the fascists, TESCREAL lunatics and cryptogrifters. They are all the same fuckin' octopus. https://jwz.org/b/ykgp

2025-08-25 18:49:57 GMT

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I voted no, because regardless of its technical merits (narrator: it had none) ATproto is fruit of the poisonous tree. It is hopelessly tainted. Anything you write will give it oxygen.
Apropos of nothing, how's ReiserFS going? Still popular? Still winning on its technical merits? [ taps headset ] I'm being told...

2025-08-25 05:49:43 GMT

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Getting absolutely reamed by AI scrapers again today, and it seemed like my mitigations were failing. Why weren't these being blocked?
Oh. Because I had Facebook's subnets on the fail2ban whitelist, so that people sharing @npub1ac8…fc7j links on the Zuckerweb got link previews.
Welp. You can't whitelist "facebookexternalhit" (the link preview bot) without also whitelisting "meta-externalagent" (the AI scraper, which seems to ignore robots.txt).
I guess link previews are gonna be a casualty.

2025-08-24 01:24:14 GMT

ICE Is Using So Much Tear Gas in Portland, a School Abandoned Its Campus.
ICE! It's got what lungs crave: An ICE facility in South Portland has resurfaced as a hotbed where activists have been clashing with federal enforcement officers for months....
https://jwz.org/b/ykt5
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/081/127/791/619/197/original/48c275903f1728ce.png

2025-08-23 20:40:13 GMT

Just happened across a comment on my blog from 8 years ago that has aged like fine milk:
"There are no Nazis getting popular votes right now. Hyperbole is not a good way to reason about the world."
Thanks, past "Well Actually" guy, you have always improved The Discourse.

2025-08-22 09:21:31 GMT

Gonna need all nerds of conscience to declare a complete moratorium on using 0xDEADBEEF in favor of 0xACAB8647, which has identical endianness and visual-repetition properties.
2896922183 is, while not greater than, superior to 3735928559.
https://jwz.org/b/yktu

2025-08-20 19:36:25 GMT

Noting a new batch of Chrome-impersonating bots trying to load the entire srcset property as if it were a URL. So much blocking. Blockety blockety block.

2025-08-17 21:31:00 GMT

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White Collar Crime Risk Zones https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com/#9q8yyzf

2025-08-15 20:43:51 GMT

We live in a fascist nation, what now?
Chris Armitage: The statistics are brutal. Fascist takeovers prevented after winning power democratically: zero. Average length of fascist rule once established: 31 years. Fascist regimes removed by voting: zero....
https://jwz.org/b/yktU
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/034/726/791/223/326/original/3da7766227b3859a.png

2025-08-12 18:41:51 GMT

I'm gonna need you to take some personal responsibility for that data center.
The UK National Drought Group offers this helpful advice: How to save water at home: ...
https://jwz.org/b/yktI
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/017/260/159/058/933/original/7592dfa0905fb8e9.png

2025-08-12 17:24:24 GMT

Reddit will block the Internet Archive.
Well that's going to go well for everybody. Reddit says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, so it's going to start blocking the Internet Archive from...
https://jwz.org/b/yktA
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/016/955/537/206/998/original/261389c63ca6e3e0.png

2025-08-12 02:08:35 GMT

Github is now a subsidiary of the MICROS~1 Spicy Autocomplete division, so I guess it's time to re-up my "LOL Github" I-told-you-so post from 2018, since in those intervening 7 years you have all learned nothing.
Anyway, good luck with that! I hope your migrations go really well.
https://jwz.org/b/yks-
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/013/354/404/682/426/original/9165e40dffeefa4a.png

2025-08-10 18:27:26 GMT

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein today is Zero Cool Day
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/08/10.html?utm_source=sp_ma
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/005/878/826/256/609/original/ce8dee94aa3ec50b.png

2025-08-09 21:28:22 GMT

A brief history of the FBI.
It took a hundred years to create the Bureau as we knew it. And it took one dinner at the White House to destroy it. The purge comes on the heels of a "strategy session" about how to deal with the Epstein fallout that took...
https://jwz.org/b/yks0
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/000/928/000/113/825/original/c96b9b6f63b03faf.png

2025-08-04 23:37:24 GMT

The Mothership Vortex.
Some time ago I hypothesized that all Democratic Senators are using the same text-spam contractor, and wondered whether there was some way to block the entire network. This resulted in many, many replies from people incorrecting me and each other with their zero-information theories.
Well, I was right. They are all using the same contractor. But the reality is even more horrible than you probably imagined.
https://jwz.org/b/ykse
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/973/123/783/413/535/original/8207571bf7527fe2.png

2025-08-04 18:25:04 GMT

If you're in the US, don't expect to ever see a non-stadium live show by a foreign band ever again, for this amongst other, more obvious reasons:
https://apnews.com/article/state-department-visa-bond-d532b186abf6e39c621d1bd0995d7509

2025-07-31 19:00:16 GMT

Ambient age verification.
Newgrounds, a gaming forum, has some clever ways for non-intrusively complying with the shambling disaster that is the "UK Online Safety Act". For years, I've been doing something similar to this when generating internal...
https://jwz.org/b/yksP
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/949/384/795/399/869/original/d0a2fd46147c0bb5.png

2025-07-31 18:43:20 GMT

You should be using RSS.
Molly White has a good intro: Far from being the new hotness attracting glitzy feature stories in tech media or billions in venture funding, RSS has been around for 25 years. [...] Many, if not most, websites publish an RSS...
https://jwz.org/b/yksN
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/949/318/227/329/437/original/924d048f72cc2c63.png

2025-07-30 20:27:22 GMT

Motherfucking Wind Farms.
Samuel L. Jackson is a treasure. And every copy of this video hosted elsewhere bleeps it, because we live in a world of cowards.
https://jwz.org/b/yksB
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/944/064/993/434/267/original/4919fc3361a433de.png

2025-07-30 00:31:28 GMT

8647.
https://jwz.org/b/ykr8
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2025-07-17 22:09:28 GMT

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To get a RealID in CA I first had to make an appointment at the Social Security Administration to request a re-print of my *physical social security card*, because I have literally never before in my life had to show that to anyone and last saw mine some time in the 1970s. It took two weeks to arrive.
Security is On The March.

2025-07-16 18:28:58 GMT

Secret Police need Secret Lawyers.
Law and Order ICE: "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The secret police who throw suspects into unmarked vans, and the secret attorneys who deport them to third world concentration camps. These are their stories."
ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court:
https://jwz.org/b/ykrQ
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/864/327/091/015/869/original/fe21ffe7c5a2dc66.png

2025-07-08 23:22:16 GMT

L.A. activist indicted for giving face shields to anti-ICE protesters.
Alejandro Orellana, a 29-year-old member of the Boyle Heights-based community organization Centro CSO, faces charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting civil disorder: According...
https://jwz.org/b/ykq4
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/820/181/877/436/377/original/7aa0cf3979df5a0a.png

2025-07-02 18:58:55 GMT

You MUST listen to RFC 2119.
Eric Bailey: It turns out you can just pay people to do things. I found a voice actor and hired them with the task of "Reading this very dry technical document in the most over-the-top sarcastic, passive-aggressive,...
https://jwz.org/b/ykqi
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/785/172/528/884/507/original/278156561d4f2905.png

2025-07-02 11:33:02 GMT

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The iOS version is still XScreenSaver, so... no.

2025-07-02 02:00:44 GMT

XScreenSaver 6.11 is out now. This is a Unix-only release -- this version contains preliminary support for Wayland.
This is maybe not entirely ready for prime time, but I figured I'd get it out there so that some people who actually understand Wayland can poke at it...
https://jwz.org/b/ykqg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/781/168/836/985/468/original/0b1b6f2a275adb8a.png

2025-06-27 08:22:33 GMT

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"stares in infosec"
Yeah well, I think this is a "two kinds of people" situation.
1: The computer is a tool that I own. It is a force amplifier of my will. When I say, "Give me a void* to the frame buffer", that's just *table stakes*. It does that, or it does not *belong* to me.
2: You own nothing, computers are appliances for access to corporate services. You must be prevented from exploiting their full capabilities at all costs. It's for your own good: you might do something illegal!

2025-06-26 20:34:13 GMT

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I honestly thought that "grab a screenshot" would be a straightforward and non-controversial thing. I mean how could it not be?
But you kick over any Wayland rock, and this is the kind of absolutely bugfuck insanity you find underneath.

2025-06-25 20:59:27 GMT

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Some changes I made, with the goal of continuing to feed slop to AI bots as much as practical:
• Ban IP for 30 days if hitting the honeypot more than 20x/hour.
• But if the load is high, ban on the first hit.
• Rewrote a couple of scripts from Perl to PHP so they can run inside of php-fpm.

2025-06-25 20:27:40 GMT

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This is not how I wanted to be spending my day.

2025-06-25 17:45:24 GMT

Under Attack, Please Stand By.
My server is getting absolutely obliterated by AI scrapers today. Load is 140+ and I just manually banned 58,000 IP addresses.
Top ten user agents: ...
https://jwz.org/b/ykqJ
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/745/247/247/408/039/original/e7d4a7861ef20ec7.png

2025-06-25 00:56:11 GMT

Bezos moves wedding after threat of inflatable alligators.
Protesters in Venice are claiming an "enormous victory" after US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wedding guests were forced to "run away" from the city centre, moving their main...
https://jwz.org/b/ykqG
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/741/278/819/942/176/original/35c944a0642a514f.png

2025-06-24 22:35:21 GMT

To dip my toes into the oncoming clusterpocalypse that is Wayland, I thought I'd try something "simple"... Let's see if there's some way to make XScreenSaver hacks able to grab and manipulate screenshots under XWayland. Here is what I have learned so far:
https://jwz.org/b/ykqC
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/740/725/084/427/956/original/17ab4b8c3a9f8270.png

2025-06-24 18:46:11 GMT

Always scrub your travel phone of JD Vance memes.
Mads from Tromsø reacts strongly to the treatment he received at American border control on his way into the United States: They threatened me with a minimum fine of $5,000 or five years in prison if...
https://jwz.org/b/ykp8
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/739/823/923/204/115/original/bb1ea705efad2f10.png

2025-06-24 18:15:21 GMT

FuckLAPD dot com:
Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops: "We deserve to know who is shooting us in the face even when they have their badge covered up," McDonald told me when I asked if the site was made in response to police...
https://jwz.org/b/ykp6
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/739/702/658/993/099/original/1dd42c73870aeee7.png

2025-06-24 00:49:25 GMT

A shocking discovery... this works, kinda:
swayidle -w timeout 60 "/usr/libexec/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-gfx &" resume "killall xscreensaver-gfx" &
That will give you a minimally-functional screen saver under Wayland + XWayland...
https://jwz.org/b/ykpz
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/735/589/929/575/464/original/895ea7882f01f99d.png

2025-06-13 00:45:57 GMT

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I hope they hold up some very small signs.

2025-06-12 19:36:21 GMT

New password manager just dropped.
https://jwz.org/b/ykpO
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/672/073/502/815/714/original/65ec31f7e6324b81.png

2025-06-11 09:13:22 GMT

Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux.
Five month ago I added an infinite-nonsense honeypot to poison LLM scrapers.
Today, it comprises 25% of my total URLs served.
https://jwz.org/b/ykpL

2025-06-09 22:28:35 GMT

Waymo is a Cop.
Waymo Pauses Service in Downtown LA Neighborhood Where They're Getting Lit on Fire: The fact that Waymos need to use video cameras that are constantly recording their surroundings in order to function means that police have begun to...
https://jwz.org/b/yko-
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/655/763/782/043/341/original/891722ede9d88f98.png

2025-06-04 18:40:29 GMT

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It is odd that it takes so long. Perhaps that is your CPU coming out of sleep, or a drive waking up.

2025-06-04 18:14:03 GMT

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https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#typeahead

2025-06-02 18:30:01 GMT

"Never ask me again"
https://jwz.org/b/ykoj
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/615/189/532/747/342/original/6c7e543e5149a041.png

2025-05-31 01:36:23 GMT

It is surprisingly hard to come up with an appetizing drink special name based on a joke about ketamine-induced bladder disease.

2025-05-28 18:29:50 GMT

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/586/876/900/988/524/original/c5afaf7b6b2cd9d1.png

2025-05-20 18:02:07 GMT

Today in Landfill Capitalism.
This is a fun tale of largely-unsuccessful reverse engineering of a bricked and abandoned rental bike, but who could have predicted this nightmare except everybody.
https://jwz.org/b/ykoM
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/541/469/837/462/406/original/e5cd40f0a3fb7669.png

2025-05-14 01:34:11 GMT

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Oh yeah, while I was waiting at the Apple Store, I had to be in the same room where one of the Apple Schmucks was demoing "Apple Intelligence" to the captive audience of people just wanting to get their screens fixed. His big pitch was, "Hey Siri, write a resignation letter as a poem in the style of Robert Frost." It was excruciating.

2025-05-13 22:01:00 GMT

Another brilliant Apple design decision.
Hey, you know those giant glass stairs in the Apple Store? So sleek, so Apple... So cracked. Every one of them.
They should have put a screen protector on these. I don't think AppleCare is gonna cover this.
https://jwz.org/b/yknh
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/502/772/952/219/882/original/3ad4312f642d0954.png

2025-05-13 18:51:33 GMT

Mail de-badged.
Fucking Apple. Anyone got a theory on why Mail.app suddenly won't show me an unread badge in the Dock icon any more? No matter what I set "Dock unread count" to, nothing shows up. And, when I quit and restart, "Dock unread count"...
https://jwz.org/b/yknf
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/502/028/047/549/819/original/2f713ca99e9dc635.png

2025-05-08 00:17:01 GMT

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Oh, man, Time Machine's idea of how much space is "enough" is bonkers, especially if APFS is in use. The tl;dr version is that sometimes the easiest way to make a backup complete (when there is clearly enough room but it's complaining anyway) is to reformat the TM drive and start over with a fresh backup. You lose all the history, though.

2025-04-25 20:57:45 GMT

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Phono jack electrical signaling is one of the oldest standards still in use -- basically as old as electrical transmission itself. With a physical adapter that you can still buy today for pennies, you could plug contemporary headphones into a telephone switchboard from 1870 and it would *just work*.
It is a god damned war crime that Apple took this away from us. I will die on this hill.

2025-04-16 05:04:45 GMT

Often I'll be scrolling through the Explore tab and there will be some cringingly banal headline like "5 Great Tips For Salad!" and 100% of the time it is Pinboard.
"Pinboard, The Supermarket Checkout Line of the Fediverse"™
The sad thing here is that the reason I'm seeing it is that people are reading it. WTAF.

2025-04-14 03:22:11 GMT

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No, that doesn't solve the accessibility and localization problems most people actually want to solve: https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/toolkits.html

2025-04-14 01:03:55 GMT

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Alas, this is impossible with XScreenSaver.

2025-04-13 20:08:06 GMT

"Ethical use of AI doesn't exi...."
Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons hacked to imitate Musk, Zuckerberg:
""It's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And I just want to assure you, you don't need to worry because there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.""
https://jwz.org/b/ykmc
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/332/459/677/394/463/original/cf48f18acd5137fa.png

2025-04-09 18:39:46 GMT

MANLY TARIFFS.
WHEN YOU SIT BEHIND A SCREEN ALL DAY, IT MAKES YOU A WOMAN. STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THIS. IF YOU'RE OUT WORKING, BUILDING ROBOTS, YOU ARE AROUND OTHER GUYS. YOU'RE NOT AROUND HR L̽͋AD̷ͭIE̾̊ͩS̼͛ A͍͛N̦̾D LAW̱Y̙E̸̯ͧR̴̝S̠̿...
https://jwz.org/b/ykmG
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/309/463/157/430/418/original/7f57f315b5a26a73.png