Mastodawn

Dan Ports

@dan@discuss.systems

3.8K Followers

528 Following

10.5K Posts

Distributed systems, operating systems, networking research.

Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research; affiliate faculty, University of Washington.

But realistically: mainly cat photos, food and wine, and bad jokes.

I also administer https://discuss.systems/

web	https://drkp.net/

Dan Ports 27m ago

The Needling 1h ago

Prime Day Deals on Billionaire Hair Loss Treatments: https://theneedling.com/2025/06/03/prime-day-deals-on-billionaire-hair-loss-treatments/

Dan Ports 44m ago

Pixel and Miso have negotiated a sharing agreement for the warmest point in our house.

#cats #catsofmastodon

Dan Ports 1h ago

Please wish Minion, our fluffiest and most neurotic cat, a happy birthday.

He is 9 years old today. (But still acts like a baby.)

#cats #catsofmastodon

Dan Ports 4h ago

Whodathunk that the AI trained to emulate Nazis on a Nazi website owned by a Nazi who is determined to spread Nazi propaganda would end up sounding like a Nazi?

Dan Ports 7h ago

One of my colleagues AI-generated this image of me and... checks out, I guess?

Dan Ports 22h ago

Jesse Harris 1d ago

Super blursed switch. 10/100, but supports up to 55W PoE per port. There's a mechanical switch in the front to put each PoE port on a separate hard-coded VLAN. The power cord is built in. And it has a pair of uplink ports but no way to configure LACP.

Weird free item from Amazon Vine.

Dan Ports 1d ago

mx alex tax1a - 2020 (5)Apr 16

Italic is not the slant, it is the letter shape. True cursed font knowledge begins with CMU Serif Upright Italic.

Dan Ports 1d ago

Jessica Whatsername 1d ago

cyclotrons have cool magnets

Dan Ports 1d ago

Mark Ingalls 1d ago

Geology museums are neat because they're just an institutionalized version of "come check out this neat rock I found."

Dan Ports 1d ago

Filippo Valsorda

Operating a Certificate Transparency log is now within reach of many organizations.

I wrote up the requirements: essentially one small server process, a couple people, and the capacity to host 3-5 TB of static files. https://words.filippo.io/run-sunlight/

I'd love to chat with anyone who's considering running one!

You Should Run a Certificate Transparency Log

Maybe you, yes you, should run a Certificate Transparency log. It’s cheaper, easier, and more important than ever.

×

hackcon day 2:

a third toothbrush has arrived.

I have added it to the tracking card, watching its rssi

and then there were four

... and now there are five.

and ive had to switch to apex charts, because the built in HA ones dont handle 5 items on one chart well in the legend

@Viss Are attendees practicing good dental hygiene? We expect a full report.

Fritz Adalis Feb 13

@Sempf @Viss
Can it tell who has [picard voice] the gum disease GINGIVITIS?

Apicultor 🐝Feb 13

@FritzAdalis I HEARD HIS VOICE 🥹

synthBirba Feb 13

@Viss I'm following this story more than Italians are following Sanremo now

Xavier «X» Santolaria

@Viss When do I know whey they brush their teeth? Because truth to be told, this is the most important intel you want to get

Xavier «X» Santolaria

@Viss The early birds brush their teeth!

ClickyMcTicker Feb 13

@0x58 @Viss either they brushed in three seconds or they had a different mode they were in prior. I’m hoping it’s the latter.

@ClickyMcTicker @0x58 i think whats happening is that whenever they click through the menu, it squirts btle out, and i guess its so that if they have the mobile app open, the app can track what the user is doing? i dunno. its wild.

@Viss
Actually bought an Oral-b IO toothbrush recently... Thankfully you can use it just fine without ever installing the app and connecting it to your phone, otherwise wouldn't have bought it. After all, it's a frigging electric toothbrush and has absolutely no reason to connect to anything other than power for charging. The silly trend of making everything "smart" and slapping "AI" on the packaging is seriously annoying.

@caranea im not sure this has anything to do with its app, necessarily, because its the toothbrush itself thats spraying btle everywhere

@Viss
Hm. Will have a peek later. My understanding was that it at least shouldn't communicate a status if it was never activated in the first place.

@caranea i dont think there are three people at a security con brushing their teeth during presentations

@Viss
That would be quite something... 😂
Should have been clearer. Meant that in terms of tracking and communicating the past and current status if it was never connected to anything. Assumption is that the folx at the conference use it with the app when brushing their teeth, so the toothbrush is looking out for the connection. This last part would likely not be 24/7, but only when it is activated (tilt sensor, so being jostled in a backpack is enough for it to think you're picking it up to brush your teeth).

@caranea im guessing folks just have these things in their backpacks and theyre getting jostled and buttons are getting pressed

@Viss
Tested it last evening. Indeed it tries to connect any time the brush turns on (just the display, no need for the motor etc.). The tilt sensor actually seems to become more sensitive with the Bluetooth function turned on, leading to even slight jostling activating the brush, no button press necessary. You can deactivate Bluetooth on the brush though, which saves battery and stops the silliness (obviously not an option if you install and use the app).

@caranea heh, so yeah, we were assuming correctly. toothbrushes in backpacks just kicking around squirting btle all over the place.

the crowd really liked it though, i added several slides about WTF TOOTHBRUSHES to the end of my deck