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ambrown.bsky.social
I'm trying to get as good at writing as I am at hacking so that I can write about hacking.
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The cool thing about Noise shows is you can go up on stage and just start fighting the band and breaking all their stuff and no one in the crowd knows if that is supposed to be happening.

If you've ever wondered what it's like waiting to get a drink at a metal show in Seattle, it's exactly this image.

oh you're hacker? name three unreleased 0days

Modern encryption algorithms like AES-256 are so good that that if you applied all the computers on earth to randomly guessing and checking the encryption key to an encrypted file, it would take longer than the heat death of the universe to have any meaningful chance of finding the right key.

I like that after people discovered neurotransmitters, they effortlessly switched the language of 4 humours theory to be more modern It sounds more scientific to say "oh no I have too little dopamine" just like 2,400 years ago it sounded more scientific to say "oh no I have too much yellow bile"

"The devil and the Devil", on a theme by Eric Hoffer: katabas.is/posts/the-de...

What I'm listening to this week: Pulp, Dover, and Mazzy Star (plus a brief defense of piracy) open.substack.com/pub/aaronmbr...

Everything is terrible, but at least the peregrine falcon cameras from the Hawk and Owl Trust are back. Bath: hawkandowltrust.org/live-cameras... Norwich: hawkandowltrust.org/live-cameras...

It is genuinely your moral duty, if you’re in the sciences, to violate the terms of your contact and take as much of the research home with you as you can. Today, tomorrow, every day your lab’s still open.

I'm at a fucking incredible metal show with a lame pit. Yet another disappointment in this modern hellscape we live in

Alright @fleerultra.bsky.social seriously just let me know where to send the check. Absolutely disgusting complicity from these hacks.

More hard-hitting reporting from my hometown newspaper. I will never go back to the Tri-Cities, but I will also never unsubscribe.

I gave a talk at DEFCON a few years ago about homoglyphs (aka homographs) or look-alike Unicode characters. As censorship starts mass searching for unfavored terms, you may want to familiarize yourself with them as a way to opt specific posts out of search algorithms: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec1O...

I just got presented with this ad and am now fully convinced that I'm in act 1 of a survival horror game. PLUVICTO: It's not what you expected. *Muffled scream off-screen as one of the PLUVICTO zombies "takes action".*

More people need to understand that the billionaire class's ideal goal is not to treat you like gig workers (casualize your work and force you into precarity). Ultimately, they want to treat you like the horses that pulled carriages (make you entirely redundant and send you to the glue factory).

My favorite genres are: 5) Something went Wrong and now we have to have a Murder about it 4) We're all going to be dead soon but first, science! 3) A cat wanders about while people act foolish 2) Someone goes to the seaside to brood and discovers The Horrors 1) We don't talk about The Event

I just found out that Dover's _I Was Dead for 7 Weeks in the City of Angels_ is not available on any "legal" streaming service. Piracy remains undefeated as a moral imperative to preserve important cultural artifacts.

On the one hand, I and all of my loved ones are at serious risk of dying under a new American Fascism. On the other hand, I complimented the bartender on her rad face study doodles and she when I left she asked if I wanted to keep them. Impossible to say if life is good or bad.

first date idea we collect mysterious artifacts

"Aesthetically, the average of crap is crap. AIs are a median-locator trained over a large body of mostly uninteresting stuff. [...] To fascists it represents the final triumph of surface-level appearances over human meaning." aaronmbrown.substack.com/p/ai-art-and... by @ambrown.bsky.social

I wrote about Elon Musk's interns and the affliction of "Programmer Brain". katabas.is/posts/elon-m... Also available on my newsletter for those of you who prefer that Substack life: aaronmbrown.substack.com

I don't think my conference talk about homophone attacks against screen readers has been cited anywhere. I've been told by several people that it made them better at securing their blind and low vision users. Uncited research has real world impact. Small, in my case, but real and important.

Some big personal news. I just got a text notification that I've been invited to pretty exclusive club. And as soon as I figure out what the fuck it is, I'm going to the big time, baby!

Did you know that MxPx did a cover of "Linda Linda" by the Blue Hearts? Because I fucking didn't. Also, my favorite local Spokane punk band covered "Psycho Killer" and that video alone is worth the price of admission (free) to my newsletter. aaronmbrown.substack.com/p/what-im-li...

One of the most tedious of the many conservative dipshits that infest my hometown wants to end COVID vaccination in the county and has hosted a slew of conspiracymongers to sew medical misinformation. All while six local workers have contracted bird flu. www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/a...

REVEALED: we identified the operator of an overtly racist X account, "GlomarResponder," as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.

I try not to write about security here, but this is a serious threat to national infrastructure and the individual security of the data of literally billions of people (anyone who does business with a US entity or an entity of any of our allies).