I don't enjoy computers. There was a time when I did, long ago, but every day it feels like some part of me is being eaten away by all these devices in my home and in my pockets or purses.

Going bike-riding or hiking or whatever is only a temporary reprieve, like a bit of stretching that only provides brief relief from the pain of a much deeper and irreversible problem with one's spine. The feeling always comes back.

It's a pain that consumes everything, even FOSS. I can browse lists of "awesome" software, cool little TUI apps you can fetch and compile, but peppered among them are terminal interfaces to ChatGPT, or text-based cryptocurrency tickers. Whether it's a tech-specific Mastodon instance or not, someone in your neighbourhood is all-in on Bitcoin or is still rambling about NFTs or is tooting about all the cool people they met at some AI conference organized by LinkedIn or whatever. Every Caturday, some assholes pollute the hashtag with generated cat images.

It's all chronic pain now. Even seeing people post about indications of the AI bubble popping soon, or how inept Google's search products are is a dull ache. Articles of how LLMs are so dangerous that they're even causing a CEO to go nuts is a maddening throb. "De-googling" your life but being forced to log in every day for work or school is being forced to walk on your injury. It will never heal.

It's a privilege to run away, to even have the knowledge to bail out, make your own web site, run your own server, install an alternative OS on your phone, install and daily drive Linux on your PC, and stick exclusively to FOSS. Almost no one on Earth has that capacity. Most everyone is just trying to survive. Most everyone's computing experience will only ever be through a little slab of glass that fits in one hand using apps published by entities with unfathomable command of wealth and power. How can it be their fault that they're not on Debian?

I'm tired. I'm tired, and angry, and I've been tired and angry for what feels like decades now.

Microsoft have hidden a vulnerability in M365 Copilot from customers.

Copilot allowed access to enterprise files without generating access logs, MS patched it but didn’t issue a CVE or tell anyone about it.

https://pistachioapp.com/blog/copilot-broke-your-audit-log

New security risk unlocked, eSIMs edition, and especially the kind you pick up prepping for an international trip. The article goes hard on the China angle, and for sure: who knew Irish eSIM brand Holafly would connect to networks owned by state-owned enterprise China Mobile? The installer runs from their servers, and wherever the phone is, it even has a public IP address in China.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/travel-esims-secretly-route-traffic-over-chinese-and-undisclosed-networks-study-619659

EDIT: I originally wrote that Holafly was a subsidiary of China Mobile, which is not what the paper states.

I thought I had a good awareness of the sort of terrible and terrifying things you could put in an email address, until I did this quiz. It turns out, not so much (for modern stuff).

https://e-mail.wtf/

Disclaimer: crawling horrors are within. Technically legal crawling horrors, no less, always the best sorts.

(The quiz cares specifically about syntactic validity, which tripped me up on one question.)

the cows said they were lonely so i had to make some companions for them

#pixelart #ドット絵

i saw so many good posts with this format that had to do myself as well

#pixelart #ドット絵