Charles Fulton

@mackensen@higheredweb.social
113 Followers
111 Following
1.4K Posts
Web developer, Amtrak zealot, and occasional B-movie reviewer. He/him.
Bloghttps://blog.goodbyeplease.com
Photoshttps://galleries.goodbyeplease.com
Twitterhttps://twitter.com/mackensen
Blueskyhttps://bsky.app/profile/mackensen.bsky.social
Show threadCharles Fulton41m ago
@ennenine None of these. Movies are sorted by title, collections and shows (basically anything in a box) are stored separately, off-shelf.
Show threadCharles Fulton4h ago
When I was here in 2019 I learned about some genuinely useful things like EventBridge and CDK. This time around the schedule (and vendors) are AI-heavy to the point of parody. Really curious what this will look like in three years.
Charles Fulton5h ago
Dunno who at AWS Summit decided that lunch couldn't be served until after a 90-minute keynote, but that sure is a choice.
Charles Fulton5h ago
TIL I learned about icanhazip.com, which returns your current public IP in a text-friendly format, so it works great with cURL.
Show threadCharles Fulton6h ago
@jon maybe the dogs also work for the railroad?
Charles Fulton1d ago
Michael Lucas 1d ago

WeTransfer just changed their ToS to allow them to train AI on any files you transfer through them.

Don't use there service, especially for work that you don't have the right to relicense to them (e.g., commercial work that's exactly the most likely to create the huge files WeTransfer specializes in).

(ETA: this is already going boom so I'm muting it.)

https://wetransfer.com/explore/legal/terms

WeTransfer - Send Large Files & Share Photos Online - Up to 2GB Free

WeTransfer is the simplest way to send your files around the world

WeTransfer - Send Large Files & Share Photos Online - Up to 2GB Free
Show threadCharles Fulton2d ago
I really do appreciate all the thoughtful, helpful replies here :)
Charles Fulton2d ago
Listen perl folks, I just want to know how to iterate a hash reference, and it took three searches and six StackOverflow discussions for someone to say "oh yeah, you put a % in front of the variable."
Charles Fulton2d ago
Adam Kent2d ago
Fun* thing I just noticed, the bulleted list markers in the Qantas "you got breached" email? 717kB PNG file.
Charles Fulton2d ago

Went down to New Hope for the first time today. It's touristy, but there are some fun things. MagiKava (https://www.magikava.com) is an instant recommend for tea and/or witchcraft.

I took a few photos, and I'm really pleased with how this one came out of the Bucks County Playhouse. It's in an old mill on Aquetong Creek, and I didn't realize until now how clear the reflection is.

Gallery: https://galleries.goodbyeplease.com/album/Albums-New-Hope.html

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Adam Kent2d ago
Fun* thing I just noticed, the bulleted list markers in the Qantas "you got breached" email? 717kB PNG file.
Show threadtjhowse2d ago
@akent Fuckin' rofl.
Show threadGeorge Haritonidis2d ago
@akent yep, it’s a big-ass PNG, that’s for sure. https://ecm.loyalty.qantas.com/imgproxy/img/3004766859/bull.png
Show threadRet2d ago
@georgeharito @akent also some amusing URL enumeration fun to be had with those URLs... The image name doesn't matter, just the ID.
Show threadNegative12DollarBill2d ago
@ret @georgeharito @akent
We need to check out all the other image URLs between 0000000001 and 3004766859 to see what they are.
Show threadRet2d ago

@negative12dollarbill @georgeharito @akent if somebody engaged in that it would be entirely embarked upon under their own volition. My indication of the potential for URL enumeration is not a suggestion to exploit such a vulnerability should it exist.

uwu.

Forced browsing | OWASP Foundation

Forced browsing on the main website for The OWASP Foundation. OWASP is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve the security of software.

Show threadcamwilson2d ago
@akent lmaoo
Show threadThe Sizzle by Cam Wilson2d ago
@akent I put several of these in each edition
Show threadJames Morris2d ago
@akent They are good at computer.
Show threadeggs2d ago
@akent Equal parts lmao and witaf
Show threadMike Lynch 2d ago
@akent bull dot png, emphasis on the bull
Show threadstibbons2d ago
@akent
Tired: ul
Wired: table
Show threadsen2d ago
@akent @lyndaljane I’ve just imagined explaining to my three decades younger self that we’ll regularly not care about sending an email that link to files that we would only be able to fit two of on a floppy, and they’re just the list element dingbats.
Show threadStephen Collins2d ago
@akent @daedalus clearly basic HTML is beyond their ken.
Show threadibk2d ago
@akent I did wonder how they got them to look so smooth.
Show threadDeborah Pickett2d ago
@akent You discovered the black hole that is sucking up all the entropy of the universe. Nice find! Don't get too close to the event horizon.
Show threadRobin Frousheger2d ago
@akent remember when tracking elements used to be a 1x1px gif?
Show threadLapo Luchini2d ago
@akent How did they manage to fail to compress an image that looks so easily compress-able? 🤣
Show thread HyperSoop 2d ago
@akent That's 717 kB wasted. Literally a single unicode character would have sufficed here
Show threadJos Geluk2d ago
@akent what information is in there, did you look? (Beside the 144 pixels)
Show threadAdam Kent2d ago

@josgeluk It's 1024x1024 8 bit RGBA so more than 144 pixels... but good question -- there is also a bunch of metadata that looks like signing keys or something: https://pastebin.com/raw/WUgadPyf

Check the png here direct if you like: https://ecm.loyalty.qantas.com/imgproxy/img/3004766859/bull.png

I smell some "vibe" coding.

Show threadDuale "Wale" Siad2d ago
@akent @josgeluk The fact that they (may) have used ChatGPT to generate a bullet point is nothing short of crazy.
Show threadOzzelot2d ago
@wale @akent @josgeluk It has made me groan loudly.
Show threadarmselig2d ago
@akent The image has been optimised for future Retina displays and Safari.
Show threadJustin Scholz2d ago
@akent @bert_hubert things that would have never 🥁 🥁 flown 🥁 🥁 20 years ago due to internet bandwidth constraints :)
Show threadJP2d ago
@akent and it appears to have OpenAI/GPT-4o fingerprint info in the metadata. As well as TruePic Lens things. Bizarre.
Show threadAdam Kent2d ago
@daedalus I also just found this too. I smell some vibe coding.
Show threadCarsten Raddatz2d ago
Of course! Why waste an opportunity to track mail openings when reaching out to your audience could go unmeasured instead?
But yeah, this is absurd, given less than one hundred bytes of SVG would to, if going fancy, or a simple or something.
Show threadBart-Jan Vrielink2d ago
@akent they saved 2 bytes by shortening the name to bull.png.
Show threadJordan Biserkov2d ago
@bartjan @akent 4 bytes, if you know what I mean ;-)
Show threadsotolf2d ago
@akent That's two times pokémon red, for a dot..
Show threadJulian Foad2d ago
@akent There must be a name for this stupid kind of data bloat. Using pictures as a substitute for text. Using HTML in email. Reminiscent of how MS Word stretches a hundred word "text" document to a megabyte of file size by attaching unwanted repetetive metadata like "spacing-adjustment=-0.0; colour-scheme=microsoft" to every actual word of text (paraphrased; have blissfully avoided touching Microsoft stuff for years and hate it when people occasionally inveigle me to do so).
Show threadsvenk2d ago

@julian @akent "there must be a name" -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat#Types_of_bloat -> "This section needs expansion with: more on the topic: these are not the only forms of bloat. You can help by adding to it. (July 2024)"

We should come up with a name 😂. Because of citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/

Software bloat - Wikipedia

Show threadSimon Hewison2d ago
@akent Is there some silly steganography going on with almost but not quite shades of black in there?
You have to try really hard to create a png that badly compressed.
Show threadWill Richardson2d ago
@akent chuck loading=lazy on those bad boys and you've got scroll tracking
Show threadGrumble 🇺🇸 🇺🇦2d ago
@akent This is a company who takes "control your supply chain" seriously.
Show threadChristof Damian 💙💛2d ago
@akent
That would nearly fill an Amiga floppy disk!
Show threadVelvet (P R O U T)2d ago
@akent How. Why. What. The fuck?!
Show threadabadidea2d ago
@akent @GossiTheDog did they go out of their way to reduce the png compression to the lowest possible setting
Show threadstib2d ago
@akent
But they'll charge you $15 if your carry-on is 500g over. The cheek of it.
Show threadEd2d ago
@akent please say its a different PNG for each item as well?
Show threadSnuffleupadon2d ago

@akent while the png is oversized this is a fairly relevant way to code emails (although I agree with other commenters I would have used • myself.) Email clients are very inconsistent in rendering and lists are one of the things that has historically been a pain to get right across clients. The mantra in the email world has long been, "code it like it's 1999." It's been very slowly getting better as older clients roll off but I don't think it's ever going to be on-par with the state of the art Web HTML.

I just wanted to dispel some of the commentary here in the replies because it's clear most people here haven't coded many emails and are making assumptions about it.