@aelaraji@aelaraji.com And I read the following funny response to that:

Bluesky: Users verify their age by adding a payment method or uploading a photo ID.

Mastodon: Users verify their age by posting pictures of the vintage computer equipment in their homes.

https://beige.party/@maxleibman/114848276288629121

😏

ROFL 🤣 I’ve just read from someone on the Fedi, that Bluesky has started asking people for ID

[47°09′14″S, 126°43′59″W] Raw reading: 0x68752981, offset +/-3

TKey: The Next Generation
Not speaking for my employer, just as an interested developer in an
interesting open source project.

As you might have noticed, the platform repo of the Tillitis TKey has
some alpha tags for the next generation, Castor:

https://github.com/tillitis/tillitis-key1/tags

An alpha tag means that all planned features for the platform are in
place, but there’s not yet a complete audit and a lot of testing … ⌘ Read more

[47°09′09″S, 126°43′30″W] Reading: 0.61 Sv

[47°09′35″S, 126°43′36″W] Reading: 1.44000 PPM

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, it’s not a strong sandbox in jenny’s case, it could still read my SSH private key (in case of an exploit of some sort). But I still like it.

I think my main takeaway is this: Knowing that technologies like Landlock/pledge/unveil exist and knowing that they are very easy to use, will probably nudge me into writing software differently in the future.

jenny was never meant to be sandboxed, so it can’t make great use of it. Future software might be different.

(And this is finally a strong argument for static linking.)

Another example:

$ setpriv \
    --landlock-access fs \
    --landlock-rule path-beneath:execute,read-file:/bin/ls-static \
    --landlock-rule path-beneath:read-dir:/tmp \
    /bin/ls-static /tmp/tmp/xorg.atom

The first argument --landlock-access fs says that nothing is allowed.

--landlock-rule path-beneath:execute,read-file:/bin/ls-static says that reading and executing that file is allowed. It’s a statically linked ls program (not GNU ls).

--landlock-rule path-beneath:read-dir:/tmp says that reading the /tmp directory and everything below it is allowed.

The output of the ls-static program is this line:

─rw─r──r────x 3000 200 07-12 09:19 22'491 │ /tmp/tmp/xorg.atom

It was able to read the directory, see the file, do stat() on it and everything, the little x indicates that getting xattrs also worked.

3000 and 200 are user name and group name – they are shown as numeric, because the program does not have access to /etc/passwd and /etc/group.

Adding --landlock-rule path-beneath:read-file:/etc/passwd, for example, allows resolving users and yields this:

─rw─r──r────x cathy 200 07-12 09:19 22'491 │ /tmp/tmp/xorg.atom

CPU Kernel Mode - Computerphile ⌘ Read more

[47°09′50″S, 126°43′12″W] Reading: 1.94 Sv

[47°09′53″S, 126°43′13″W] Reading: 0.99 Sv

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, this really could use a proper definition or a “manifest”. 😅 Many of these ideas are not very wide spread. And I haven’t come across similar projects in all these years.

Let’s take the farbfeld image format as an example again. I think this captures the “spirit” quite well, because this isn’t even about code.

This is the entire farbfeld spec:

farbfeld is a lossless image format which is easy to parse, pipe and compress. It has the following format:

╔════════╤═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Bytes  │ Description                                             ║
╠════════╪═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ 8      │ "farbfeld" magic value                                  ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (width)                      ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ 4      │ 32-Bit BE unsigned integer (height)                     ║
╟────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╢
║ [2222] │ 4x16-Bit BE unsigned integers [RGBA] / pixel, row-major ║
╚════════╧═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

The RGB-data should be sRGB for best interoperability and not alpha-premultiplied.

(Now, I don’t know if your screen reader can work with this. Let me know if it doesn’t.)

I think these are some of the properties worth mentioning:

• The spec is extremely short. You can read this in under a minute and fully understand it. That alone is gold.
  
• There are no “knobs”: It’s just a single version, it’s not like there’s also an 8-bit color depth version and one for 16-bit and one for extra large images and one that supports layers and so on. This makes it much easier to implement a fully compliant program.
  
• Despite being so simple, it’s useful. I’ve used it in various programs, like my window manager, my status bars, some toy programs like “tuxeyes” (an Xeyes variant), or Advent of Code.
  
• The format does not include compression because it doesn’t need to. Just use something like bzip2 to get file sizes similar to PNG.
  
• It doesn’t cover every use case under the sun, but it does cover the most important ones (imho). They have discussed using something other than RGBA and decided it’s not worth the trouble.
  
• They refrained from adding extra baggage like metadata. It would have needlessly complicated things.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah that’s why I’m striking this conversation with you 😅 Not only do I respect your opinion quite highly 🤣 But like you say (and I’ve read their philipshpy) it can be a bit “elitism” for sure. I’m genuinely interested in what we think of as software that “doesn’t suck”. Tb be honest I haven’t really put thought to paper myself, but I reckon if I did, I’d have some opinions/ideas…

@eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club This was an interesting read for sure! 👍 I don’t think it had anything I hadn’t already considered in terms of the ethical/moral points of view. I’m not sure where I stand myself either to be honest. I’ve forced myself to get familiar with the ecosystem and tooling, because in my line of work as a tech lead (staff engineer in sre) you don’t want to be that one guy that ya know 😉 Ethically/Morally though, I’m definitely with the sentiment of this post 😅 Much like the whole Crypto hype yaers back (if y’all remember?!) this is also one of the most energy hungry pieces of “tech” (if you can call it that?) in a while. Then there’s these other issues “stealing people’s work”, “reliance is causing humans to become cognitively weak and neural connections to shrink”, to name a few…

[47°09′47″S, 126°43′12″W] Raw reading: 0x686A9D81, offset +/-5

[47°09′32″S, 126°43′31″W] Raw reading: 0x686A1EF1, offset +/-1

World Foundation Models - Computerphile ⌘ Read more

** Om nom nom LLMs, in which I respond to Simon Willison’s analogy **
I am hesitant to wade into the tumultuous waters that are the discourse around generative AI and LLMs, but this morning I came across a thing that so thoroughly melted my brain I feel uncontrollably compelled to respond.

This morning, at evidently 4:10 AM (no mention of timezone), Simon Willison shared the following blog post, quoted here in full:

Quitting programming as … ⌘ Read more

Why I’m still a minimalist after 14 years ⌘ Read more

[47°09′35″S, 126°43′25″W] Reading: 0.83 Sv

[47°09′52″S, 126°43′06″W] Raw reading: 0x6864BCD1, offset +/-4

[47°09′57″S, 126°43′52″W] Raw reading: 0x68643031, offset +/-2

[47°09′51″S, 126°43′21″W] Reading: 1.91000 PPM

[47°09′46″S, 126°43′48″W] Reading: 0.18 Sv

Vimconf 2025 Small Tickets ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I like the last two, on the first three you sent. I looked up “Canarvon Gorge”, and read more about it. Thanks for introducing me to it!

[47°09′37″S, 126°43′07″W] Reading: 1.99000 PPM

[47°09′48″S, 126°43′55″W] Raw reading: 0x685EEA31, offset +/-5

[47°09′49″S, 126°43′48″W] Reading: 0.74 Sv

[47°09′30″S, 126°43′18″W] Reading: 1.61000 PPM

Thanks @bender@twtxt.net! Yeah, so super cute. I couldn’t pet them, though. Despite very curious, they were also very restless.

I persuaded my dad to check out the fireflies with me tonight. He only wanted to go for a short trip, so we came just across a couple hundred of them. Otherwise, the thousands mark would have been exceeded in no time. He was super glad I talked him into that. :-)

It was also my first time to see them over the meadows. Those numbers don’t compare to the ones inside the forest, no question, but we probably saw 60 or so. Haven’t come across them there before, I only heard and read about that.

Note to future-Lyse next year: Leaving at 21:45 seems like a good time. We left earlier and had to wait just a few more minutes for them to come out in masses.

Too bad it’s impossible to share photos or videos. My camera isn’t made for that at all, not even close.

Reinforcement Learning - Computerphile ⌘ Read more

[47°09′21″S, 126°43′14″W] Reading: 1.25000 PPM

[47°09′17″S, 126°43′30″W] Raw reading: 0x685AF5B2, offset +/-3

[47°09′35″S, 126°43′09″W] Raw reading: 0x685A4CF2, offset +/-4

Read Lukas 1, the announciation and birth of the prophet John the Baptist. bible.com

[47°09′23″S, 126°43′34″W] Reading: 1.72 Sv

** Of fairies, compost, and computers **
Lately I’ve buried myself in reading fiction. Stand outs from among the crowd are, of course, Middlemarch but also a lot of sort of scholarly fairy fiction; works that follow the scholastic adventures of studious professorial types in vaugely magical settings. Namely Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries’, Heather Fawcett and The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow.

I’ve also been working on a handful of personal utility programs. I … ⌘ Read more

** My measurer **
My dad is an electrical engineer and physicist. Measuring things is a core part of his professional life, and something he seems to spend a lot of time doing around the house. This is all to say my dad is relatively expert in the ways of measuring things so I think it’s hilarious that he calls absolutely anything he is using to measure anything else“my measurer.” Measuring tape, oscilloscope, scale, volt meter, bubble level, table spoons, whatever. They’re all“my measurer.” ⌘ Read more

[47°09′47″S, 126°43′52″W] Reading: 1.68 Sv

** growing good **

“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot, Middlemarch ⌘ Read more

Unless your Terms of use update email looks and reads the same as the one I got yesterday from mastodon.social, I don’t wanna know about it, nor do I agree to it.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Ooh, I’ve got to bookmark that page. 😃

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I wish I had the luxury of not reading that junk. 😅 But instead, I have a Mutt hotkey that pipes an HTML mail through elinks … Bah.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de > That guy over there in the corner…

I’m literally sitting in a corner chuckles. I rarely get any emails nowadays. But if I do and it is not plain-text, then my Mutt gets to bark at it and I, just… won’t read it. 🤷🏽‍♂️

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah. :-( But hey, there are at least six of us using mail as it should be™. :-)

I sent the dealer an e-mail about that with all sorts of other issues as well. Let’s see if they fix anything of that some day. Or yet just even read it.

It all started in New York in the early 1980s. Click, now 85, and his friends were sitting at the long bar of the New York Athletic club reading magazine articles about boxing, fencing, judo and wrestling. “One of my mates said, ‘Dude, we don’t do any of those things.’” They had to face it. They were dull. They decided to embrace their dullness.

As a joke, they started The Dull Men’s Club, which involved some very silly, dull activities. They chartered a tour bus but didn’t go anywhere. “We toured the bus. We walked around the outside of the bus a few times. And the driver explained the tyre pressures and turned on the windscreen wipers.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/09/meet-the-members-of-the-dull-mens-club-some-of-them-would-bore-the-ears-off-you

OpenBSD has the wonderful pledge() and unveil() syscalls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXO6nelFt-E

Not only are they super useful (the program itself can drop privileges – like, it can initialize itself, read some files, whatever, and then tell the kernel that it will never do anything like that again; if it does, e.g. by being exploited through a bug, it gets killed by the kernel), but they are also extremely easy to use.

Imagine a server program with a connected socket in file descriptor 0. Before reading any data from the client, the program can do this:

unveil("/var/www/whatever", "r");
unveil(NULL, NULL);
pledge("stdio rpath", NULL);

Done. It’s now limited to reading files from that directory, communicating with the existing socket, stuff like that. But it cannot ever read any other files or exec() into something else.

I can’t wait for the day when we have something like this on Linux. There have been some attempts, but it’s not that easy. And it’s certainly not mainstream, yet.

I need to have a closer look at Linux’s Landlock soon (“soon”), but this is considerably more complicated than pledge()/unveil():

https://landlock.io/

@bender@twtxt.net Both Gopher and Mastodon are a way for me to “babble”. 😅 I basically shut down Gopher in favor of Mastodon/Fedi last year. But the Fediverse doesn’t really work for me. It’s too focused on people (I prefer topics) and I dislike the addictive nature of likes and boosts (I’m not disciplined enough to ignore them). Self-hosting some Fedi thing is also out of the question (the minimalistic daemons don’t really support following hashtags, which is a must-have for me).

I’ll probably keep reading Fedi stuff, I just won’t post that much, I think.

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, it’s difficult, you often don’t get what you’d expect. They also make heavy use of 3rd party libraries. IIUC, for random numbers, they refer to this library. I’ve read many times that the Rust stdlib is intentionally minimalistic (to make it easier to maintain and port and all that).

I’m struggling with this, using 3rd party libs for so many things isn’t really my cup of tea. I’ll probably make my own tiny little “standard library”. It’s silly, but I don’t see any other options. 🤷

[47°09′13″S, 126°43′20″W] Raw reading: 0x684880B1, offset +/-1

Raducanu sees off Bucsa ‘in style’ to win Queen’s opener
Watch the moment Emma Raducanu defeats Spaniard Cristina to advance into the second round of the Women’s Singles at Queen’s. ⌘ Read more

Why We’re Moving on From Nix
Comments ⌘ Read more

Amoklauf in Graz: Weitere Frau im Spital verstorben ⌘ Read more

My Journey to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2024: A Story of Volunteering and Growth
My name is Oscar Ayra and I am from Lima, Peru. In 2024, I had the privilege of being part of the volunteer team at Kubernetes Community Days (KCD) Lima. It was an enriching experience where… ⌘ Read more

Sizewell C pledged to lower bills but will take at least 10 years
Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade. ⌘ Read more

Amoklauf beispiellos für Österreich
Nach einer bisher für das Land beispiellosen Amoktat, bei der es am Dienstag in einer Grazer Schule mindestens zehn Todesopfer gab, ist in Österreich eine dreitägige Staatstrauer ausgerufen worden. Wie am Nachmittag bei einer Pressekonferenz bekanntgegeben wurde, handelt es sich beim Täter um einen 21-jährigen ehemaligen Schüler der Grazer Schule. Neben den Toten gibt es nach Angaben von Innenminister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) zwölf Verletzte, manche davon schwer. ⌘ Read more

Newbie No More: Lessons from My First KubeCon + CloudNativeCon as a Speaker
Introduction April in London has never felt so electric. From the first footstep in the ExCeL halls to the hallway conversations, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 was a whirlwind of new ideas, familiar faces, and those… ⌘ Read more

Greta Thunberg deported, Israel says, after Gaza aid boat intercepted
The activists’ yacht, which was trying to carry aid to Gaza, was intercepted by Israeli forces in the early hours of Monday. ⌘ Read more

CVE-2025-47934 - Spoofing OpenPGP.js signature verification
Comments ⌘ Read more

Passing of Jean-Raymond Abrial
Jean-Raymond Abrial, father (in particular!) of the Z notation, but also of the B method, and then Event-B, passed away on May 26. I was surprised to see that this piece of news, which may be of some interest to formal method folks, doesn’t seem to be very well known (there’s not much material on the web).

Here are some links (on LinkedIn, sorry):
[by Bertrand Meyer](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bertrandmeyer_i-am-saddened-to-report-from-todays-print-activity-7335684948974034944-SJf1? … ⌘ Read more

UK sanctions far-right Israeli ministers for ‘inciting violence’ against Palestinians
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will both face a travel ban, the UK says. ⌘ Read more

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps
Comments ⌘ Read more

**PM denies bowing to political pressure over winter fuel **
Sir Keir Starmer says his decision to give more pensioners the payment was the result of an improving economy. ⌘ Read more

A tale of two Claudes
Two interactions with Claude: one good, and one bad

Comments ⌘ Read more

[$] Improving iov_iter
The iov_iter interface is used to
describe and iterate through buffers in the kernel. David Howells led a combined storage and
filesystem session at
the 2025 Linux Storage,
Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF) to discuss ways
to improve iov_iter. His topic\
proposal listed a few different ideas including replacing some
iov_iter types and possibly allowing mixed types in chains of … ⌘ Read more

Auto-Pentest-GPT-AI: LLM Powered Pentesting for your software
Comments ⌘ Read more

Sizewell C pledged to lower bills but will take at least 10 years
Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade. ⌘ Read more

News from WWDC25: WebKit in Safari 26 beta
Comments ⌘ Read more

**Foreign Office staff told to consider resigning if they disagree over Gaza **
More than 300 Foreign Office staff had raised concerns about potential UK “complicity” in Israel’s conduct in Gaza. ⌘ Read more

Julcher und Perner als VfGH-Mitglieder angelobt ⌘ Read more

No blank cheque for Sizewell C nuclear project, says PM
Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade. ⌘ Read more

Neue Spiele: Dune Awakening schlägt GTA-Möchtegern-Klon
Zwei Neuveröffentlichungen mit sehr unterschiedlichen Reaktionen der Community: Ab sofort sind Dune Awakening und Mindseye erhältlich. ( Dune Awakening, Steam)

Image

A history of the Internet, part 2: The high-tech gold rush begins
Comments ⌘ Read more

Neom: Brücke über das Rote Meer zu The Line geplant
Saudi-Arabien und die Halbinsel Sinai sollen mit einer 20 km langen Brücke verbunden werden. Das Megaprojekt Neom würde damit eine Bahnverbindung bekommen. ( Infrastruktur, Energie & Klima)

Image

IBM is now detailing what its first quantum compute system will look like
Comments ⌘ Read more

UK firms hold off on hiring as job vacancies fall
The employment market is “weakening” official figures suggest, as cautious businesses delay recruitment. ⌘ Read more

[$] An end to uniprocessor configurations
The Linux kernel famously scales from the smallest of systems to massive
servers with thousands of CPUs. It was not always that way, though; the
initial version of the kernel could only manage a single processor. That
limitation was lifted, obviously, but single-processor machines have always
been treated specially in the scheduler. That longstanding situation may
soon come to an end, though, if this patch\
series from Ingo M … ⌘ Read more

Studie: Sport ist nach wie vor eine Männerdomäne ⌘ Read more

Huawei-Gründer: US-Chip-Handelskrieg für China “kein Grund zur Sorge”
Ren Zhengfei ruft dazu auf, hart zu arbeiten, um den Rückstand gegenüber den USA aufzuholen. Huawei liege nur noch um eine Chipgeneration hinter den USA. ( Huawei, Prozessor)

Image

Breaking: Australia sanctions against two far-right Israeli ministers over Gaza comments
Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia will join the UK, Canada and New Zealand in sanctioning Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over comments they have made about Gaza. ⌘ Read more

Apple just Sherlocked Docker
Comments ⌘ Read more

Weltbank senkt wegen Zöllen Konjunkturprognosen ⌘ Read more

Quarkdown - Markdown with superpowers
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Griechische Justiz geht gegen extrem Rechte im Parlament vor ⌘ Read more

No blank cheque for Sizewell C nuclear project, says PM
Sir Keir Starmer says the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk coastline will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade. ⌘ Read more

**PM denies bowing to political pressure over winter fuel **
Sir Keir Starmer says his decision to give more pensioners the payment was the result of an improving economy. ⌘ Read more

UK sanctions far-right Israeli ministers over Gaza comments
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will both face a travel ban, the UK says. ⌘ Read more

Kommission legt 18. Sanktionspaket gegen Russland vor ⌘ Read more

Emperor penguin populations shrinks by almost a quarter
Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming melts their icy habitat, researchers say. ⌘ Read more

California governor says Trump ‘deranged’ as thousands more troops sent to LA
Protests against immigration raids by the Trump administration spring up in at least nine other US cities. ⌘ Read more

Anzeige: Fahrradtrainer bei Amazon mit 34 Prozent Rabatt im Angebot
Bei Amazon gibt es derzeit ein attraktives Angebot zu einem Fahrradergometer von Tretmann. Es ist mit 34 Prozent Rabatt erhältlich. ( Sport, Amazon)

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TV presenter David Bull named new Reform chairman
The TalkTV host replaces Zia Yusuf, who quit last week after clashing with Reform UK colleagues. ⌘ Read more

How do I perform partial acceptance of Copilot recommendations? ⌘ Read more

Bellingham joins Dortmund for initial £27m on five-year deal
Jobe Bellingham joins Borussia Dortmund from Sunderland on a five-year contract. ⌘ Read more

20 Years of the Open Invention Network
The Open Invention Network (OIN) is celebrating
its 20th anniversary.

The central feature of the OIN community is a patent cross-license
that covers core Open Source functionality and expands in parallel
with the growth of Open Source technology. As growth in Open Source
has accelerated, OIN has proactively expanded the scope of the OIN
license’s benefit by including more than 4,500 software components … ⌘ Read more

Merz: Vorgehen von UniCredit bei Commerzbank inakzeptabel ⌘ Read more

Anzeige: USB-SSD-Stick mit 1 TByte günstig wie nie
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Amoklauf in Graz: ORF ändert Programm ⌘ Read more

Bellingham joins Dortmund for initial £27m on five-year deal
Jobe Bellingham joins Borussia Dortmund from Sunderland on a five-year contract. ⌘ Read more

Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (python-django), Fedora (krb5), Mageia (cockpit, golang, kernel, and kernel-linus), SUSE (augeas, go1.23, go1.24, iputils, libwebp, transfig, and xen), and Ubuntu (amd64-microcode, apport, linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-raspi, systemd, and tomcat). ⌘ Read more