Lance R. Vick

@lrvick
1.7K Followers
279 Following
1.1K Posts

FOSS || GTFO

* Security Engineer
* Cypherpunk
* Founder of #! (hashbang.sh), stagex.tools
* Co-founder of Distrust.co, Caution.co
* Church Of Cryptography Priest

#infosec #security #opensource #foss #sysadmin #cryptoanarchy #cypherpunk #embedded #puzzles #privacy #locksport #programming #linux #homelab

OpenPGPopenpgp4fpr:6B61ECD76088748C70590D55E90A401336C8AAA9
Matrix@lrvick:matrix.org
Resumehttps://lance.dev
Communityhttps://hashbang.sh
Show threadLance R. VickMay 20
I met one single Qubes user. I think we are friends now.
Lance R. VickMay 18

At the biggest Linux conference in the country right now.

Still not seen a single Linux laptop other than at the Framework booth, and the one in front of me I am using to type this.

That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about US tech culture.

Lance R. VickApr 9
It is interesting that seemingly every single one of the security celebs advocating we abandon the PGP Web of Trust that signs most of the binaries that run the internet, has a centralized trust system to sell you.
Lance R. VickApr 9
Twitter is now so useless that even the EFF, who remain willing to be on Tiktok and Facebook still, can't deal with it anymore: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eff-leaving-x
EFF is Leaving X

After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X. This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lance R. VickApr 7
TechloreApr 7

This is still the Metaverse website, even after announcing Horizon Worlds will be shutting down soon.

Meta didn't need the metaverse to succeed, they needed it to exist long enough to collect your data and keep investors distracted.

Show threadLance R. VickApr 3

@xyhhx

I think the author of the post below is regularly and confidently wrong on every topic I have ever seen him write on.

We have argued for many years as I try to dissuade people from his batshit security advice.

Imagine how annoyed I was to have to admit I agree with almost every word he had to say on LLMs after being on your side just 3 months ago.

https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/

My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

My smartest friends have bananas arguments about LLM coding.

Fly
Show threadLance R. VickApr 3

@xyhhx In short, unless you are writing machine code yourself, you are already letting a machine write the actual code that executes on your CPU for you.

LLMs are emerging as just a smarter compiler that go up one more layer on the language stack, but at this stage just as in 1972 all the machine generated output still requires very careful manual review, so it is better we let them write in human-readable programming languages instead of directly writing machine code (which they could do).

Show threadLance R. VickApr 3

@xyhhx In 1972 compilers were controversial because most wrote lovingly crafted assembly by hand and the compilers could never optimize as well as a human.

Until they could.

The people that still rejected compilers and insisted that assembly should be written by hand were phased out of the workforce, and now we all use compilers to write assembly for us and focus on higher level problems.

Same story all over again.

Show threadLance R. VickApr 3
@xyhhx Don't use compilers. Write machine the x86_64 machine code yourself.
Show threadLance R. VickMar 30

@amandaianthe Thanks for sharing.

With the exceptions of Firefox, Bluesky, and Odysee all the other software recommendations under "easier moves" undermine user freedom and privacy IMO.

In general all centralized or proprietary software is positioned to abuse users now or in the future and there are always plenty of alternatives.

On the "independent" side:

Brave -> Firefox
Mistral/GreenPT -> oLMO+crush
Patreon -> Liberapay
Kagi -> mwmbl

Also typo: Mastadon -> Mastodon