Mastodawn

We all know about Ea-Nasir, the trader from Ur who received a complaint letter about his copper around 1750 BCE.

But I just learned about Aššur-taklāku, who lived in Old Assyrian Kültepe about a hundred years prior.

He was accused of having collaborated with the prince of a different city state and thrown in prison. After he got out, he found out that 200 articles of clothing in his house had been eaten by moths.

I don't know what the takeaway from this is, other than that clothes moths suck. They were a pain in the ass 4000 years ago and they still are today

pgs 1d ago

Al Sweigart 2d ago

People keep laughing at me behind my back about the lengths I go to for privacy and security online. They tell each other that the amount of inconvenience I accept is unreasonable for their day to day lives.

I know this because their email password is qwerty123.

pgs 1d ago

Al Sweigart 2d ago

One thing I have trouble communicating about AI-generated code is that I always hit a wall that sometimes, as dev with 20+ years experience, I can get a workaround after several tries. But people take this as a victory for AI. How do I convey that 80% isn't good enough, or even worse than nothing? It's like flying a plane with 80% of its parts working, or knowing how to do 80% of a heart transplant surgery.

pgs 1d ago

Al Sweigart 2d ago

I have never found an instance of "when am I ever going to need to know this?" that couldn't be responded to with, "When people try to scam you by exploiting your ignorance." Math? Statistics? Historical events? The legal system? Cleaning products? Basic biology? Foreign language? Kitchen appliances? Cosmic background radiation? The amount of modern life that is spent on avoiding scams is incredible.

pgs 1d ago

Dan Lew 2d ago

Everyone's obsessed about how many Xs (1x? 10X? .4X?) they can get out of an AI engineer, but by far the biggest impact devs can make to a timeline is by adjusting requirements to make a feature easier or even skipping facets altogether.

AFAIK, AI never says "what you're asking for is ridiculous."

pgs 2d ago

Micah Lee 3d ago

I just added a copy of my slides for my "We are currently clean on OPSEC" DEFCON talk here, in case you're interested https://micahflee.com/we-are-currently-clean-on-opsec-the-signalgate-saga/

"We are currently clean on OPSEC": The Signalgate Saga

I just gave my first solo main stage DEFCON talk, about Signalgate, and I think it was a resounding success! The room was packed – apparently people were waiting outside to get in. I got tons of positive feedback, and no negative feedback (though, someone told me a boomer sitting next

micahflee

pgs 3d ago

Chris Hallbeck 4d ago

Before you ask me for advice, you should know that I just realized that the word passport comes from a document that lets you pass through a port.

pgs 3d ago

XKCD Bot 4d ago

Historians: Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record.
https://xkcd.com/3127/

- Hey, what…

- Look, who’s back!

- But – Fnyrxotl, is that you?

- Yep. I just got an hour off, but I have to go back to lab soon. The retransform will take some days.

- What have they done to you?

- I told you, I was on a special mission, checking out that planet.

- What for?

- There’s a planet not far from us, lots of water, pretty warm, everything, but there’s still a species dominating the surface. I was to find out, how we can get rid of them. So the lab guys gave me a harmless and cute appearance. Nobody down there suspected me being a spy. Everybody underestimated me. But I couldn’t write from there. Everything classified.

- Lovely! Somehting interesting?

- Nah, not really.

- But could you inspect military facilities then?

- No, but there is no need. The idiots are doing the job themselves, getting their world ready for a takeover. When we return in, say, 10 years, maybe faster, there’s no one left.

- Okay, you can show me around then.

- Love to! But I got to go now. You know, for the retransform.

- Of course. Get your ears back! I like your old look better.

- So do I. See you.

- Bye!

#microfiction
#scifi

pgs 3d ago