Nostr notes by jwz

"Door ajar" versus $100 billion valuation. Today I ...

2026-02-13T01:24:03Z

"Door ajar" versus $100 billion valuation.

Today I learned that you can DoS a Waymo by opening its door.

"The More You Know..."

Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open.
https://jwz.org/b/yk3Z

Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI ...

2026-01-29T19:11:40Z

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

RE: https://social.vmbrasseur.com/@vmbrasseur/115922995190919975 ...

2026-01-19T19:58:51Z

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

quoting
note1z8f…dmuu

Mozilla wants your input. Please provide it.

https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201

Here's mine.

#OpenSource #OpenWeb #Privacy #AI

Hey look, here's Kimberly Guilfoyle's ex-husband sucking ...

2026-01-17T20:50:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…hr54
_________________________

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.'"

Welp, after my spamnesty, including a restructuring of my ...

2026-01-17T06:16:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…p7y0
_________________________

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.

Let's say you run a nonprofit animal shelter. And for some ...

2026-01-16T20:43:05Z

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

Periodic reminder that Newsom sucks. Gavin Newsom comes out ...

2026-01-13T20:34:12Z

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

CA DROP is finally live. California residents can use new tool to ...

2026-01-13T20:01:05Z

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

fail2ban GC. Over the years I've accumulated thousands of ...

2026-01-08T08:30:45Z

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

Car Brain. There's a lot of stupid in the world, but ...

2026-01-06T20:20:30Z

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

I don't like to talk in absolutes about security, but... my ...

2026-01-01T03:24:02Z

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

What asshat decided that user name and password should now always ...

2025-12-24T20:49:25Z

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

Christmas Throwback: EXERCISE VAGUE JOY. It was ten years ago ...

2025-12-24T19:19:22Z

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

Unknown Xmas. https://jwz.org/b/yk02 ...

2025-12-24T11:57:20Z

Unknown Xmas.
https://jwz.org/b/yk02

Four way stop versus $100 billion valuation. It's on its ...

2025-12-21T23:40:56Z

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

So that's going well... ...

2025-12-20T23:09:50Z

So that's going well...

We used the term "chrome" in the source code to refer to ...

2025-12-19T09:47:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…2rnw
_________________________

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;
...

It has come to my attention that the artwork for the original ...

2025-12-17T00:01:43Z

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

This just in, I have been informed that my stance of, "no, I ...

2025-12-15T01:35:23Z

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".

Not that I have any interest in testing it, but I'm curious ...

2025-12-11T18:12:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…a6qz
_________________________

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?

Kohler's $600/month toilet camera uses your turds to train ...

2025-12-03T04:51:43Z

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

OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan ...

2025-11-26T19:29:48Z

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

The algorithm failed music. Music recommendation algorithms were ...

2025-11-11T21:36:10Z

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

Pi 4 SPI lossage. Dear Lazyweb, any idea why switching from a Pi ...

2025-11-05T07:47:15Z

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

Great news everybody, you can't block that new OpenAI Atlas ...

2025-10-25T00:54:36Z

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

There's an image going around that is the back of a $20 with ...

2025-10-23T19:05:33Z

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.

Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux redux. Nine months ...

2025-10-23T03:11:49Z

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

Absolutely chilling words that someone said to me today: "I ...

2025-10-12T10:26:04Z

Absolutely chilling words that someone said to me today:

"I have this new AI insulin pump..."

Every time I see someone saying, "Someone did an AI thing and ...

2025-10-12T09:10:48Z

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.

Perennial "Fuck the Blue Angels" post. (NOTE: If you are ...

2025-10-11T20:01:24Z

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

"Hey kids!" Drew Sheneman: https://jwz.org/b/ykvq ...

2025-09-21T19:07:53Z

"Hey kids!"

Drew Sheneman:
https://jwz.org/b/ykvq

Once again current events have forced me to confront the ...

2025-09-20T19:24:15Z

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.

As someone deeply embroiled in this so-called industry I am ...

2025-09-20T09:40:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…k2cw
_________________________

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.

Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released 30 years ago today. This ...

2025-09-18T20:12:23Z

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

1Password has been circling the drain at black-hole relativistic ...

2025-09-17T19:02:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…hjn7
_________________________

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

Animal shelter evacuated after FBI incinerates meth. Meth! ...

2025-09-14T20:30:58Z

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

Worst Kirk. The Nation goes hard: "It's a choice to write ...

2025-09-13T19:10:49Z

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

The "School Shooting Industry" According to the market ...

2025-09-09T03:15:57Z

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

Bobby Brainworms. Who wore this rotting skin-suit best, Edgar, ...

2025-09-04T22:38:12Z

Bobby Brainworms.

Who wore this rotting skin-suit best, Edgar, Dr. Channard or Dr. Pretorius?
https://jwz.org/b/ykuz

Welp. I now have proof that Facebook is using the same outbound ...

2025-08-30T19:27:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…d99d
_________________________

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.

It was hard to pick pull quotes from this because every paragraph ...

2025-08-28T06:54:48Z

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

The power we use and the power we give. Philip Bump: It is useful ...

2025-08-28T06:43:00Z

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

The Pigs Who Stare At Crosswalks. Florida Deploys Police To Stare ...

2025-08-26T17:37:52Z

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

This is great stuff! I'm happy to report that ...

2025-08-25T23:18:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…gcvt
_________________________

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.

Comparing how I got paid in 1995 to taking money in 202x from ...

2025-08-25T19:12:18Z

In reply to nevent1q…jpw4
_________________________

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

Well, she's funded by Jack Dorsey, who's deeply in bed ...

2025-08-25T18:59:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…y0eh
_________________________

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

I voted no, because regardless of its technical merits (narrator: ...

2025-08-25T18:49:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…f3wp
_________________________

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...

Getting absolutely reamed by AI scrapers again today, and it ...

2025-08-25T05:49:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…47zh
_________________________

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 DNA Lounge (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.

ICE Is Using So Much Tear Gas in Portland, a School Abandoned Its ...

2025-08-24T01:24:14Z

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

Just happened across a comment on my blog from 8 years ago that ...

2025-08-23T20:40:13Z

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.

Gonna need all nerds of conscience to declare a complete ...

2025-08-22T09:21:31Z

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

Noting a new batch of Chrome-impersonating bots trying to load ...

2025-08-20T19:36:25Z

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.

White Collar Crime Risk Zones ...

2025-08-17T21:31:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…fhq0
_________________________

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

We live in a fascist nation, what now? Chris Armitage: The ...

2025-08-15T20:43:51Z

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

I'm gonna need you to take some personal responsibility for ...

2025-08-12T18:41:51Z

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

Reddit will block the Internet Archive. Well that's going to ...

2025-08-12T17:24:24Z

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

Github is now a subsidiary of the MICROS~1 Spicy Autocomplete ...

2025-08-12T02:08:35Z

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-

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein today is Zero Cool Day ...

2025-08-10T18:27:26Z

DNA Lounge Update, Wherein today is Zero Cool Day
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/08/10.html?utm_source=sp_ma

A brief history of the FBI. It took a hundred years to create the ...

2025-08-09T21:28:22Z

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

The Mothership Vortex. Some time ago I hypothesized that all ...

2025-08-04T23:37:24Z

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

If you're in the US, don't expect to ever see a ...

2025-08-04T18:25:04Z

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

Ambient age verification. Newgrounds, a gaming forum, has some ...

2025-07-31T19:00:16Z

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

You should be using RSS. Molly White has a good intro: Far from ...

2025-07-31T18:43:20Z

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

Motherfucking Wind Farms. Samuel L. Jackson is a treasure. And ...

2025-07-30T20:27:22Z

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

8647. https://jwz.org/b/ykr8 ...

2025-07-30T00:31:28Z

8647.
https://jwz.org/b/ykr8

To get a RealID in CA I first had to make an appointment at the ...

2025-07-17T22:09:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…mfag
_________________________

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.

Secret Police need Secret Lawyers. Law and Order ICE: "In the ...

2025-07-16T18:28:58Z

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

L.A. activist indicted for giving face shields to anti-ICE ...

2025-07-08T23:22:16Z

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

You MUST listen to RFC 2119. Eric Bailey: It turns out you can ...

2025-07-02T18:58:55Z

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

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

2025-07-02T11:33:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…nc6r
_________________________

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

XScreenSaver 6.11 is out now. This is a Unix-only release -- this ...

2025-07-02T02:00:44Z

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

"stares in infosec" Yeah well, I think this is a "two ...

2025-06-27T08:22:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…ptus
_________________________

"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!

I honestly thought that "grab a screenshot" would be a ...

2025-06-26T20:34:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…ey5d
_________________________

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.

Some changes I made, with the goal of continuing to feed slop to ...

2025-06-25T20:59:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…thrw
_________________________

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.

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

2025-06-25T20:27:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…47zh
_________________________

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

Under Attack, Please Stand By. My server is getting absolutely ...

2025-06-25T17:45:24Z

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

Bezos moves wedding after threat of inflatable alligators. ...

2025-06-25T00:56:11Z

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

To dip my toes into the oncoming clusterpocalypse that is ...

2025-06-24T22:35:21Z

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

Always scrub your travel phone of JD Vance memes. Mads from ...

2025-06-24T18:46:11Z

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

FuckLAPD dot com: Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly ...

2025-06-24T18:15:21Z

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

A shocking discovery... this works, kinda: swayidle -w timeout 60 ...

2025-06-24T00:49:25Z

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

I hope they hold up some very small signs.

2025-06-13T00:45:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…9f7f
_________________________

I hope they hold up some very small signs.

New password manager just dropped. https://jwz.org/b/ykpO ...

2025-06-12T19:36:21Z

New password manager just dropped.
https://jwz.org/b/ykpO

Exterminate all rational AI scrapers, redux. Five month ago I ...

2025-06-11T09:13:22Z

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

Waymo is a Cop. Waymo Pauses Service in Downtown LA Neighborhood ...

2025-06-09T22:28:35Z

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-

It is odd that it takes so long. Perhaps that is your CPU coming ...

2025-06-04T18:40:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…fvtf
_________________________

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

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

2025-06-04T18:14:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…x3gv
_________________________

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

"Never ask me again" https://jwz.org/b/ykoj ...

2025-06-02T18:30:01Z

"Never ask me again"
https://jwz.org/b/ykoj

It is surprisingly hard to come up with an appetizing drink ...

2025-05-31T01:36:23Z

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

Nostr event nevent1qqs8e9t2xgrejcwt295e2t9hqg368c9fghwj4szpu82t9kytp8xtlgczyrlme6m9wkwm0zmz0e9x9z8atufpch4nry9ycuqxxlag2kwvdvgr27vnd3t

2025-05-28T18:29:50Z

Today in Landfill Capitalism. This is a fun tale of ...

2025-05-20T18:02:07Z

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

Oh yeah, while I was waiting at the Apple Store, I had to be in ...

2025-05-14T01:34:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…lzap
_________________________

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.

Another brilliant Apple design decision. Hey, you know those ...

2025-05-13T22:01:00Z

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

Mail de-badged. Fucking Apple. Anyone got a theory on why ...

2025-05-13T18:51:33Z

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

Oh, man, Time Machine's idea of how much space is ...

2025-05-08T00:17:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…xkdz
_________________________

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.

Phono jack electrical signaling is one of the oldest standards ...

2025-04-25T20:57:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…n4tw
_________________________

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.

Often I'll be scrolling through the Explore tab and there ...

2025-04-16T05:04:45Z

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.

No, that doesn't solve the accessibility and localization ...

2025-04-14T03:22:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…dscg
_________________________

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

Alas, this is impossible with XScreenSaver.

2025-04-14T01:03:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…trsq
_________________________

Alas, this is impossible with XScreenSaver.

"Ethical use of AI doesn't exi...." Silicon Valley ...

2025-04-13T20:08:06Z

"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