now that i am... writing my own agentic LLM framework thing... because if you're going to have a shitposting IRC bot you may as well go completely overkill, i have Opinions on the state of the world.

openclaw, especially, seems to be hot garbage, actually, because i was able to teach my LLM (which i trained from scratch on the highest quality artisanal IRC logs, 2003 to present, so i can assure you it is not a very good LLM) to use tools in the context of my own framework quite easily.

So, I recently saw some quiet discussion about a paper where researchers reverse-engineered and disclosed some attacks against PhotoDNA, the very-super-duper-secret algorithm used by tech megacorps to scan for illegal images.

They didn't make any code public, and so... I did: https://github.com/ArcaneNibble/open-alleged-photodna

A _complete_ reverse-engineering and commented Python reimplementation of the algorithm from publicly-leaked binaries.

This means that studying the algorithm and any potential flaws is now much more accessible.

This took only about two days (once I knew that there even _was_ a leaked binary to compare against), which just goes to again show that security through obscurity never works.

🔁 encouraged

Okay this just came up on Bluesky and it's hilarious and I kind of like it.

• Use AGPL with a narrow CLA that allows the project maintainer to redistribute as proprietary without modification or derivative work rights (this is key, it's what prevents the rug-pull/enshittification).
• Add premium features to the (AGPL) codebase, gated behind license checks on licenses signed with a private key
• Sell corporate customers non AGPL build+licenses for the premium stuff
• Everyone else can just patch one line of code to use the premium features under AGPL.

This is quite literally an "extract money from corporations with dumb lawyers" hack. The AGPL already allows anyone to run the code without modifying it, they gain absolutely nothing from paying, legally speaking. But since those customers are allergic to the AGPL, it works in practice.

I'd be on board with this kind of setup.

I propose replacing calories with watt-hours.

- Almost same value (1 kilocalorie / Calorie is ~1.1 watt-hours)
- more intuitive for people who use electricity
- never the confusion between calories (science), Calories (food, which is technically kilocalories), kilocalories, and 'kilo Calories' (which is technically megacalories)
- you get to feel more like a robot with your 2.5kwh power consumption a day which may feel like validation to some creatures on this fediverse
- become powered by cake