Mastodawn

In 2017 Margaret Hamilton was inducted into the Computer History Museum's Hall of Fellows. On that occasion I was privileged to accompany her on a private, docent-guided tour of the Museum's public display.

She looked about the same as she does in these pictures from the 1960s, albeit a little grayer; a bright, diminutive grandma.

But she was very humble and human. At one point we rounded a corner into the Apollo section. Prominently in the front of the exhibit was a reproduction of your left-hand photo. Upon seeing it, Margaret stopped and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! Is that me?"

Steve Bellovin 2h ago

For those who keep suggesting the 25th Amendment: it can't save us. Impeachment and conviction, in fact, is easier.
The 25th Amendment requires the assent of the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet, a cabinet selected for loyalty to Trump. But suppose you get that. Trump will then assert that he is fit, in which case it takes a ⅔ vote in both houses of Congress (plus the VP and the cabinet) to block him. By contrast, impeachment takes only a majority of the House and ⅔ of the Senate—fewer member of Congress, and no involvement by the Vice President or the cabinet.
(There may also be an ambiguity in the text. It says "when the President transmits… his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office". Who is acting as president during those four days? If it's Trump, can he fire enough "disloyal" cabinet members to block a majority?)

Steve Bellovin 2h ago

Urban Dinosaurs 3h ago

The prize, though, is a great horned owl with a back story. Two owlets were found on the ground after a bad storm that mostly destroyed the nest. A wildlife rehabber pronounced them healthy, so someone climbed the tree and installed a basket as a replacement nest, and put the chicks in it—and at least one adult rejoined them.
3/3

#birds #wildlifePhotography #birdsforbecsnan

Steve Bellovin 3h ago

Urban Dinosaurs 3h ago

Soaring, I saw an osprey and a juvenile bald eagle. There was also a red-shouldered hawk that perched very close a a red-headed woodpecker—only the third I've ever seen—on trees. Those were especially cool, because I saw them on my way out of the park. 2/3

#birds #wildlifePhotography #birdsforbecsnan

Steve Bellovin 3h ago

Urban Dinosaurs 3h ago

An excellent afternoon in Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, VA—a place I'd go more often if it weren't for the @#$%^ bridge I have to use.
In the water: an American coot, a pair of hooded mergansers, a fish crow in between a wood duck couple, and a group of green-winged teals. 1/3
#birds #wildlifePhotography #birdsforbecsnan

Steve Bellovin 12h ago

2xfo 13h ago

RE: https://todon.nl/@burnoutqueen/116357673658618918

Fascism doesn't make the trains run on time, it makes people REPORT that the trains come on time

Steve Bellovin 1d ago

George Conway 1d ago

ht: @stephenking

Steve Bellovin 1d ago

A local pizza place has followed up their "Happy Passover" email with a "Happy Easter" email. (I don't recall any for, say, Eid or Diwali…) The subject line in the Easter email included a dove with an olive branch—fair enough—and a slice of pizza. They knew better than to include a pizza emoji in the Passover email, but it contained a chick emerging from an egg, which makes no traditional or theological sense. OK, there's no proper matzoh emoji, and their pizza has far better than matzoh-like crust, but perhaps four wine cup emojis?

Steve Bellovin 1d ago

George Conway 1d ago

It is impressive and telling that this post, which contains no specificity, identifies a future event with sufficient specificity that readers can readily recognize what that event will be.

RE: https://www.threads.com/@ronaldfilipkowski/post/DWu4h54kUOa

Ron Filipkowski (@ronaldfilipkowski) on Threads

Whether it happens 6 hours from now, 6 days from now, 6 weeks from now, 6 months from now, or 6 years from now, it will be one of the largest worldwide celebrations in the history of the human race.

Threads

Steve Bellovin 1d ago

k3ym𖺀 Mar 26

In today's episode of "Can It Run Doom": DNS fucking TXT records.

Some absolute madlad (cough Adam Rice cough) compressed the entire shareware DOOM WAD, split it into around 1,964 chunks, shoved them into Cloudflare TXT records, and wrote a PowerShell script that reassembles and runs the whole goddamn game from DNS queries alone. Nothing touches disk. The DLLs are in DNS. THE FUCKING DLLS ARE IN DNS.

RFC 1035 was written in 1987. Those engineers are spinning in their graves fast enough to generate municipal power.

Bonus: this is a fully functional globally-distributed covert data exfil channel that your NGFW will never fucking see if you're not doing deep DNS inspection. Sleep well.

blog: https://blog.rice.is/post/doom-over-dns/

repo: https://github.com/resumex/doom-over-dns

Also lmao @ every blue team that has never once looked at their DNS query volume. How's that DLP policy working out for you.

It was always DNS.

#infosec #dns #doom #itisalwaysdns

Home Page	https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/
Pronouns	He/Him
Photography-only account	@urbandinosaurs
License	All of my photos available via a Creative Commons BY-NC license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/