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akersten

10,907 karma · joined August 25, 2014

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akersten··on The 'else' keyword is probably a literal translation from German (2020)
> I can't use "else" as a conjunction in normal speech, only in computer programs.

sure you can. who's going to stop you?

akersten··on GitLab Security Incident: Attempted Exploitation of CVE-2026-97229
> If you use our alpinelinux/gitlab container image, pull alpinelinux/gitlab:19.3.6 again. The image published on October 27 contains Ruby 3.3.13. Any 19.3.6 image you pulled before October 27, and all older tags, are vulnerable.

shouldn't they tag a new version instead of re-releasing a fixed 19.3.6, if earlier 19.3.6 are vulnerable?

akersten··on MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch
Do you really think Apple would make a product advertising a touch screen where you aren't able to actually touch buttons on the screen?

The marketing material shows a person playing a virtual piano with their fingers..

akersten··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
I'm not sure what the point being made is. No one is forcing anyone to come up with anti-LLM scripts...?
akersten··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
Well, the very coarse filters that are tripping on this are before the model even loads the text into VRAM, so hopefully it is less sickening to you to know that it's very likely a "if str.contains(`suicide`) { refuseAndSuggestHotline(); }" is thinking about your message on the CPU instead of a chain of `fuzzyWeightAddMulX` commands on the GPU.
akersten··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
> we really need browser developers to shut this shit down. Why are you even able to silently run all of these commands on my computer

???

This is a very strange understanding of the purpose of a browser you've installed on your computer does. It requests resources from other places and displays & runs those resources on your computer. Where else would they run? Or are you saying you don't actually want your browser to do what you've instructed it to do ("navigate to example.com and run it").

Or you only want to run certain pieces of what's delivered? (You have the power, and should exercise it, to do so, with ad blockers, script blockers, etc.)

akersten··on The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Screen
They don't, if GP's does the FCC would be very interested in knowing his location
akersten··on The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Screen
probably un learn it, it's cap
akersten··on Potential third critical PHP CVE
Color me unconvinced that the dev team that sat on the 2024 security audit leading to today's CVE successfully explored the ramifications of a new memory bug in an hour
akersten··on Potential third critical PHP CVE
I read their quip about mitigation as more of a defeatist "this is fine" meme than actual advice that it's a nothingburger, but I'm pretty cynical on PHP as a whole. We'll have to wait and see if today's a hat trick day or just a double header.
akersten··on PHP 8.2.35
People keep defending PHP (as they have been for ages) saying things like "oh, it could happen to any platform, this one's just so popular so the odds are higher" but then you take a peek at the diff for this fix and realize that nothing has changed since Fractal of Bad Design was published a decade ago. PHP is a scourge and unfortunately a still too popular one. The best time to realize the only safe option is to stop using it was in 2010, the 2nd best time is now ..
akersten··on PHP 8.2.35
https://fedi.katze.sh/@elise/117479383739450605

¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

akersten··on PHP 8.2.35
No way to prevent this, says only language where this regularly happens
akersten··on Ask HN: How to deal with shipping AI-written code you don't understand?
> You want no CVEs, make software engineering into a real gate-kept engineering professions with accountability chains, government regulations, formal education, etc.

This will not only not prevent CVEs, it will also make everything a giant pain in the ass

akersten··on RuneScape Bench: MMOs for Agents [video]
> in a video game instead of real life.

Yeah, that's the argument. I'm kind of getting at something deeper though, like when you say this:

> At the same time it's a pretty unfair game if it has no indication you're walking into a PVP area other than scenery objects nobody pays attention to

Unfair by a comparison to contemporary game design practices maybe, but my point is that it was more fun before (and paying attention to scenery is a valuable lesson to learn as well).

Anyway the point isn't that I think Scamming is Good, Actually. The point is that Modern Game Design is Boring, and bringing back some of the discovered elements of gameplay rather than having everything explained in a dialog box or bright yellow safety paint would serve the industry well.

akersten··on RuneScape Bench: MMOs for Agents [video]
The author did a great job capturing the essence of what made RS such a great game, and the soul that Jagex has totally lost over the years with updates to make the game a softer place.

This formative moment could never happen today, because the wilderness is behind 3 confirmation screens instead of just being something you get to discover in the game:

> You have to know that [items] are worth something in order to not get taken advantage of. And it goes to kind of extreme levels too because not only will people, try to give you a bad price, but the game is just really well known for the scamming and the lying and stealing your password. And it's really the wild west out there.

> And so, and really this is true. My very first memory of the very first time that I entered the world of RuneScape, I was asking somebody for help. I said like I was trying to make bread and I was like, "Where can I find a mill so I can make some bread?" And a guy was like, "Follow me. I'm going to show you." And I followed him like into these woods. And you know, you can imagine he turned around. He started to attack me. And I realized what was happening. I was probably 11 years old. I realized what was happening. And I made a break for it. I ran back south for cover and I got away. I didn't die. And I remember like, you know, closing the game.

> I think that my parents hadn't been home, so I had time to think about this. And I was like, that was the coolest thing that's ever happened to me. And I think that this is kind of the beauty and the magic of this game is that it's a little bit of like a rough and tumble world where you have to look out for yourself. And as a kid, it's like that's actually really great practice to be out in the world with real people and have to understand what's going on and learn things like, oh yeah, if somebody offers you a really great deal, maybe be careful.

Cheers to this kind of game design. Wish we'd see it again some day.

akersten··on British Airways: Filming Crew W Meta Glasses Could Get Your Tickets Cancelled
Interesting that the title chooses to editorialize and call out the glasses specifically then. Kind of enragement bait imo
akersten··on British Airways: Filming Crew W Meta Glasses Could Get Your Tickets Cancelled
What about filming them with a regular smartphone?
akersten··on Each step of decoding a PNG (2022)
I clicked "Show metadata chunks" and I don't understand the Critical vs Ancillary distinction. The Gamma, Color Space Information, Physical Dimensions, and Background Color sections all have a lowercase letter for their header. Aren't those critical to displaying the image properly? Meanwhile the Trailer IEND has an uppercase letter, indicating the zero-length outro byte is somehow more essential than all the color info?

Same question for safe/unsafe to copy. "Do programs that modify the PNG data need to understand this chunk?" Somehow, they need to understand the Last Modification Date before modifying the image, but no, they don't need to understand the Physical Dimensions(?)

akersten··on Claude reveals ECDSA curve origins
At minimum we don't have access to "Claude thoughts" like the ones the article highlighted, right? That's part of the hidden reasoning?
akersten··on Passkeys are a trap
What baby? Oh boy, a new authentication method just as secure as my unique per-site random password that I keep in my password manager already anyway, except I also completely lose access to it if I ever get locked out of my Google devices. The future is truly revolutionary.
akersten··on Photopea creator weighs in on Photosuite project
what is the difference between "ripoff" and "fairly feature-comparable alternative"?
akersten··on Our approach to EU text provenance rules
Of course, the implication by comparison to the building code example, that text absent some homeopathic suggestion of provenance causes harm, is absurd at best.

Sent from my iPhone (harm prevention watermark)

akersten··on Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel
> perhaps c should get a __UNSAFE { } block,

I think the convention for this is at the filesystem level and most programmers use the `.c` suffix to indicate it

akersten··on America.gov goes crazy on "play Minecraft"
"How do I replace my social security card" with the guy metal detecting the beach, ostensibly searching for it, is pretty great too.
akersten··on LinkedIn Larpmaxxing
Xcancel before it got cancelled and I doubt anyone would have paid for it anyway
akersten··on Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows AI vision, surging costs
If my ridiculous $100+/m subscription to the single dumb pipe that has a government-endorsed monopoly in my area is anything to go by, they're extracting plenty of value from this customer at least.
akersten··on Plan mode is dead
It's useful because it let's me see the decisions the model will make before it wastes a ton of time implementing them. The model is smarter now but that doesn't solve for underspecification if it guesses my intent wrong
akersten··on Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats
If your core service is getting more expensive to provide and competitors are busy eating your margins, why let someone else taste your secret sauce and only get paid for the tokens, when you can keep the good stuff (bio capability) for yourself, and net both the profit and the fame?
akersten··on Raspberry Pi blocks changing RAM chips
> When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.

They don't need the resellers help for that! I've already been burned twice thinking "I'll use a raspberry pi for this small project" and having it die within a month because reliably reading/writing to an SD card is hard or something.

Between the notorious unreliability, crazy price hikes, trademark or whatever disputes, and this anti consumer ewaste generating policy, I can't think of any reason I'd ever patronize them again.. my only regret is it took me two purchases to learn this lesson!

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