Mastodawn

brokengoose

@brokengoose@infosec.exchange

109 Followers

213 Following

221 Posts

I try to make things break less. Sometimes, I succeed.

he/him/whatever

brokengoose 18h ago

I cleaned out my contacts a few days ago. It's a bittersweet feeling, but also a relief.

I've been keeping and automatically transferring contacts from phone to phone since Apple introduced iSync in 2003. As I've moved and changed jobs over the years, I accumulated contact information for a lot of great people.

But I'm an introvert. People are exhausting. There were dozens of people in the list who I remembered fondly, but last spoke to decades ago. And every time I saw their names, I felt a little bit guilty for not reaching out. So, I decided to remove everyone I haven't spoken to since I worked with them.

With a smaller, more manageable list, it's less stress whenever I look up a number. Though, in a sort of contradictory way, I hope that they find me and reach out again someday.

brokengoose 19h ago

Uncle Duke 19h ago

every sunday harry liked to come to the park with a big bag of werther’s and feed the old men

brokengoose 1d ago

Hadas Weiss 1d ago

peter thiel when asked if humanity should be wiped out

brokengoose 1d ago

If all you have is an insanely expensive, rapidly depreciating hammer, everything had better be a nail or you'll never hit quarterly shareholder expectations.

brokengoose 1d ago

I recently saw a tourism ad from #Quebec #Canada that nearly made me cry. A visitor is checking in at a hotel. When the clerk asks where he’s traveling from, he looks ashamed and whispers “I’m American”. The clerk presses a button under the desk, which I initially thought was a panic button. Instead it unlocks a panel allowing her to come out from behind the desk, and she gives the guy a big hug. I nearly lost it. I wish I could move to Canada. This meant a lot to me.❤️

brokengoose 1d ago

Lauren Weinstein 1d ago

I just read through a new, detailed, seemingly statistical rigorous academic study researching why people don't use AI. Its conclusions on this question are not unreasonable, and while I don't agree with all of them, there are salient points.

I am not going to give this study any direct oxygen by linking to it or naming it specifically. Because in my personal view, its entire purpose is nightmarish.

The ultimate focus is obviously on one key aspect, what do the Big Tech Billionaires need to do to suck EVERYONE into using these horrible systems. The entire study -- again, in my opinion -- is an effort to create a roadmap for Big Tech to "adjust" what they're doing to undermine the concerns non-users of the tech have, and seduce them into becoming addicted users instead.

There was no sense that not using generative AI is a valid choice, rather it's seen as an aberration that needs to be eliminated.

I found the entire study to be both interesting and disgusting.

L

brokengoose 1d ago

Dave Spector 1d ago

Passive voice blunts any message this article was trying to send:

“Openly racist rhetoric has become normalized at the highest levels of American politics.”

Normalized by whom, exactly? Space aliens? The tooth fairy? ZOMBIES???

Active voice would tell the reader the truth. The truth matters. If you care about living in a decent world, knowing the truth demands that you act —

“The GOP has normalized openly racist rhetoric at the highest levels of American politics.”
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/28/zohran-mamdani-islamic-attacks-maga-trump-racism

Attacks on Muslims flood mainstream after Mamdani win

Openly racist rhetoric has become normalized at the highest levels of American politics.

Axios

brokengoose 1d ago

Reg Braithwaite 🍓1d ago

Just for 💩 and 🤭

brokengoose 2d ago

Violet Blue 2d ago

San Francisco #Trans March photos by me, 2018/2019.

Happy #Pride everyone. Stay defiant, stay strong.

brokengoose 2d ago

Kevin Beaumont 2d ago

Ultra spicy post claiming to be from UK retailer employee (M&S or Co-op) about their experience with TCS on their security incident. https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1ll1l6c/scattered_spider_tcs_blame_avoidance/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

×

Just a simple #Fact for #Today and, in fact, any other day. 🤣

#Memes #Microsoft #MicrosoftTeams #Windows

Tuchowski 5d ago

@paulfoerster 😂👍🏾

HP - Morepower 5d ago

@paulfoerster Mi tu😋

rANDOM ❄️ iNDUSTRIES 5d ago

@paulfoerster whats your alternative ?

@random_industries Quitting the job. 😝

Paul Armstrong 5d ago

@paulfoerster The thing that amazes me about Teams is that it's where information goes to die.

It's just too damn easy to lose stuff in Teams. Even conversations that we were only typing in a few minutes before somehow become challenging to find. I really don't know how they managed to make the UI so damn bad.

@psa It’s not only the UI. It starts with its launch. Selecting launch at login and start in the background will make it not throw its window in your face. That’s good. But it will hide in such a way that it doesn’t even have a Systray icon.

And as I said, that’s only starting. I could write books about its flaws by now. Everybody I know hates it.

Paul Armstrong 5d ago

@paulfoerster Oh yeah, I had issues with "restarting" it not having the intended effect. Until I realised that in order to actually shut it down, there's a background process that needs killing via task manager.

And the crashes, mostly partial so it's not clear that it's crashed until someone says they can no longer hear you.

The ability to lose info is just the one that bites me hard pretty much every day.

@psa Had a meeting today. I was confused by all those too many windows in addition to the ones I need for work.

éric 🚲 🇪🇺

@psa @paulfoerster
I don't know what OS you're using but, on Linux, Teams is the only tool I use that consistently crashes my window manager. I absolutely hate having to use it. I have to make sure all other applications have saved everything etc.

It's marginally better via a browser but only just and, even then, only if I turn off any ad blockers... why that should matter, I don't know, especially given that we're actually paying for the privilege.

Paul Armstrong 4d ago

@ericsfraga @paulfoerster I use it on Windows, not by choice.

How on earth does it bring down a window manager? That does seem likely to be a window manager bug though, it should be bullet proof.

A lot of Microsoft stuff doesn't work with even light forms of privacy protection. We've had a number of issues with Microsoft sites around Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection, for instance.

éric 🚲 🇪🇺

@psa @paulfoerster
> How on earth does it bring down a window manager? That does seem
> likely to be a window manager bug though, it should be bullet proof.

Apologies, I was sloppy. What happens is that the video driver for X segfaults which, of course, kills the WM and all applications. Of course, you could argue that the video driver should also be bullet proof but... nvidia.

éric 🚲 🇪🇺

@paulfoerster @psa
I don't think you could design a worse interface and UX if you tried.

@ericsfraga @psa Well, in fact, you can. I’ve seen even worse than that in my decades spent in IT. But yes, this sets the bar pretty low.

éric 🚲 🇪🇺

@paulfoerster @psa
Yeah, I'm sure. But I remember, back in the 80s, talking to MS employees about their exciting "usability" labs ...

Sigh.

@ericsfraga @psa I remember that too. I guess they closed them in the 90s and fired the employees due to doing nothing productive. 🤣

Paul Armstrong 4d ago

@paulfoerster @ericsfraga Indeed, there are plenty of worse examples. <cough>Cherwell.</cough>

i_give_u_worms 4d ago

@psa @paulfoerster it's like an alien space person got to look at browser tabs and got the shit beat out of them before they got back to the mothership to report on the innovation they were trying to steal that actually works

i_give_u_worms 4d ago

@psa @paulfoerster don't tell them exactly what's wrong they don't deserve help, the disease is obviously coming from inside the product, they tried to steal from and disrupt too many things at once

@i_give_u_worms @psa Whoever wrote Teams must have one beer too much. 🤣

i_give_u_worms 4d ago

@paulfoerster @psa
embrace
extend
extinguish

surveil
steal
sabotage

@i_give_u_worms @psa I‘ll quit my job in about seven years. That’ll do. 🤣

🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦5d ago

@paulfoerster I like Teams. I worked on a multistate team that all used RHEL. We had to communicate by phone, email, and pidgeon chat. Then a (limited) version of Teams came out for Linux. It made a world of difference, including letting us work from home.

@Methylcobalamin Then you’re the second person I know who likes it. 🤣 My boss does too…

🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🐧 🥦4d ago

@paulfoerster lol

KickDownCH 4d ago

@paulfoerster Wobei es heute eher Exchange ist, das wieder mal Probleme macht

Massimiliano Siddi 4d ago

@paulfoerster I‘m also quite annoyed sometimes by teams. It‘s our company‘s telephone software. And Cory Doctorow‘s “enshittification” can also be observed in teams. Every update has virtually written “fuck you, customer!” over it.

I'm not a big fan of Teams, but I still think #Zoom is the worst of all =)

But I'll keep the picture and replace Teams with other awful products (#Jira comes to mind) xD

The1goit 4d ago

@paulfoerster replace "me" with "any sane human being" and the meme would still work.

Montegasppα Cacilhας Ⓐ♾️🇵🇸4d ago

@paulfoerster Know that feeling…

HoracioDos 4d ago

@paulfoerster Embrace what you cannot change, you must. MS Teams, ever present for you, it will be.

Murdoc Addams 🧛🏻

@horaciodos @paulfoerster
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas

HoracioDos 4d ago

@murdoc @paulfoerster
Rage, rage against the muting of the mic
Join, join each meeting of the night.
Green-lit my status stays; through every endless thread,
defiant, in MS Teams we fight!

Michael Vilain 4d ago

@paulfoerster Back when I was still looking for a job, recruiters wanted my LinkEdIn and Voip IDs. After using Teams briefly while at Intel, I can concur with this assessment.

Leo 🇲🇽4d ago

@eco_amandine Tengo curiosidad... Yo aborrezco Teams por cómo es Microsoft Teams, ese odio no se extiende a todas las plataformas de videoconferencia...

¿Ustedes también? ¿O su odio es generalizado hacia las videoconferencias?

Amandine 4d ago

@leoperbo @paulfoerster odio Teams. Tolero Zoom y voy a tener que usar Moodle posiblemente. Luego te cuento 😏

Leo 🇲🇽4d ago

@eco_amandine yo amo Moodle, jejeje. Recuerda que tengo una instancia de Moodle selfhosteada, por si quieres tener un espacio de experimentación 😉

@leoperbo @eco_amandine No soy fan de las vídeo conferencias pero si hay que hacerlo #Bigbluebutton es mi opción favorita

Leo 🇲🇽4d ago

@chiwy @eco_amandine !esa misma estoy adoptando y me está fascinando!

Amandine 4d ago

@leoperbo me encantaria probar! Solo he usado Moodle en el telefono como estudiante y puede que me toque de profe. Ahora voy a tener Linux Mint basado en Debian.

Leo 🇲🇽4d ago

@eco_amandine Avísame y con gusto te abro una cuenta y te asigno un curso con permisos de docente

ISAÍAS H GALEANO

@leoperbo @eco_amandine sería posible probarlot ambién?

Leo 🇲🇽4d ago

@jaguarunileiro @eco_amandine Sí, claro. Dejen preparo un formulario para gestionar sus cuentas.

Amandine 4d ago

@leoperbo gracias 😊 @jaguarunileiro

@leoperbo @paulfoerster @eco_amandine no me simpatizan en general, si las organizo yo, uso Jitsi

@paulfoerster Just asked my company if I do get an additional 16 GB of RAM to run teams beside my IDE.

Sadly they said no.

GarretSidzaka 4d ago

@paulfoerster @nixCraft
Now that my PTO started I just uninstalled it

I can always reinstall some other day.... Or not 😁

@GarretSidzaka @nixCraft I can’t. It’s on my work computer. 😔 Lucky you. 🤣

GarretSidzaka 4d ago

@paulfoerster @nixCraft the joke is on me, I was talking about my cellphone teams. I don't open that laptop ever on vacation

@GarretSidzaka @nixCraft We can’t use Teams on the (work) cell phone. There are licensing restrictions and other requirements. But we have to use it on our work computers.

Privately? Never! Same for Windows in general. 🤣

Allan Chow 4d ago

@paulfoerster oh I'm stealing this one

@grumpasaurus You can’t. I already did. 😝

I found it somewhere on the web. Source unknown.

Plum Blossom 4d ago

@paulfoerster you don’t like spyware for genocide???

@paulfoerster
Yes, thanks for posting a photo of me!

@loudfpv Is this yours? Well, sorry for shamelessly posting it, but it‘s just too good to be held back.

@paulfoerster
no not mine lol, I meant that it's me in the bottom left picture 🤣

@paulfoerster How many customers did Microsoft lose when they closed the church of Skype?

I still can't believe Yahoo Messenger was shut down it was a great msging service + was the last man standing that could manage video (MPEG1 even!) over an extremely low-bandwidth-intermittent connection. YM was an astonishingly good product - so rare to see things like this from a Silicon Valley company.

@nom I don’t know, but I know that I don’t like Skype either. I just don’t hate it as much as I hate Teams, though.

I don’t know Yahoo messenger.