Honestly can't say I'm surprised, Tesla trying to invent a better battery cell? The whole thing was stupid from the beginning, even they had limited use for them, only one model, one model that's a failure. I suppose they thought that others would be interested, but changing any industry is hard, especially when the benefits are iffy at best.
Not working as they cancelled my shift, but honestly I was likely to do that as the forecast became clear, the original low was 16Β°F, its currently 19Β° feels like 4Β°, and my normal load time is about one hour ago. Yeah, while I might do some work #today , no package route for me, no way I'm trying to work for 6+ hours in this nonsense. And to think the high yesterday was in the 60's, maybe higher, typical St Louis winter.
Not sure what I'll do with m'self, cleaned out the closet finally yesterday, most of Vik's ( @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe ) clothes are boxed up to donate with the exception of a few things that I added to my wardrobe and a few special items to sell. Fri? Sat? Whichever, I finalized the conversion project of his 401K to an inherited IRA in my main account. Bills were paid yesterday, including county, well, property tax, for some reason they're showing me as not owing any personal property tax for some reason, I do need to sort that out.
I will be continuing to clean out my emails, we're under 1K messages and started at over 2K, mostly stuff that should've been deleted, but I was being lazy. Need to do some last comic and book pulls, and then figure out who to sell most of the collection to. Have lots of stuff to pack and send, but its cold, so that'll prolly wait until I man up and go outside. Will prolly move my car back to its usual spot in front of the gate, moved it so the room mate could get his truck out now that its running again, he blew up the transmission and had to install a new one which took 6 weeks or so, unusually fast for him, as he was doing other work at the same time, plus he's not as good as he thinks he is on repair work.
Anyone know a good charity in #STL to donate clothing too? Lots of men's clothes, but I also have a fair number of totes in the shed of women's clothing and shoes that should still be in good shape.
Three of the game stores in Olympia have no LFG board. Two have Discords, whoopty-shit. The fourth game store has no Discord, no web site, and should not be taken seriously. All are D&D temples and treat me like a blasphemer. "We don't serve your kind here."
Does anybody out there play anything other than D&D? For fucks sake tell me I have not wasted years of my life on game systems that I can never play with another human.
Images Of National Parks Replaced With Trumpβs Face On Annual Passes
The Interior Department announced plans to replace a picturesque image of Glacier National Park on the 2026 βAmerica the Beautifulβ pass with President Trumpβs face, prompting a lawsuit from an environmental group. What do you think? The post Images Of National Parks Replaced With Trumpβs Face On Annual Passes appeared first onβ¦ #theonion theonion.com/images-of-nationaβ¦
Democrats in Iowa tomorrow are seeking to defend a seat in the state Senate to keep the GOP from regaining a supermajority. Without that supermajority, the Senate can no longer confirm the governor's nominees on party-line votes.
On the heels of their sweeping wins in November, Democrats have opportunities to gain further ground in December runoffs and special elections. Theyβre hoping for upsets in conservative territory, from... Read More
Max Neubauer has lived in the Grand Strand for nearly ten years and wanted to book a staycation with his wife for a weekend getaway. However, he was shocked to find out some hotels turn away locals.
The shift from customers to consumers has changed the way businesses approach relationships. Gone are the days of personalized service and value. Instead, we're now treated as data points, exploited for profit.
Well, as I've said, I read a lot over at FiM Fiction, so I figured why not talk about some of the stuff I'm currently reading, ie what's been updated recently in my tracking.
First off, I finished both Phoenix Beyond the Veil and its unfinshed cancelled sequel. I give that a B-, and that's prolly being a bit generous, the further you get into it, the worse it gets, mostly a matter of rushing and most characters other than Sunset becoming background characters. I like the story, and I like the ideas, but it really should be stretched out so the story can breathe, there's prolly two books worth of content in there. Still, I don't regret reading it.
Blooming Days, still not sure what to make of this, its an AU where Luna was never banished, Twilight is her student, Sunset is Celestia's, there's a bit of a rivalry between them. As the story has moved along, Starlight Glimmer is now a student of both, and yes her village existed in this one too. Discord recently dropped some knowledge of how the world is cyclic, it resets and strong souls return unchanged. I think I'm still reading it because I like AU's like this where you don't quite know what's coming.
The Stone Slab Witch, another Sunset/Harry Potter crossover, but this one has some unique elements, like Canterlot High used to exist as a Muggle private school, run by Celestia Austreaus a pure blood in one of the oldest if not oldest families. During the Wizarding Wars they protected wizards and witches born of Muggles, and Voldomort killed her sister Luna. When Sunset arrives, the school is in the process of being torn down, as Celestia left the wizarding world long ago with no one knowing where she went, although she did send Minerva a letter saying her daughter will be arriving on this day. Just started this, and while it has its writing problems, its looking like a very unique variation on a somewhat common theme, jury's out on this one for now.
Harry Potter and the Luna Princess, boy, what to say about this... I think his solutions in the quest for the cup are a bit too violent, but there's so many interesting author choices here. Harry meets Luna in one of his dreams where he sees Voldemort kill a muggle, and because her student. The EQG setting exists here, its a high school in California, and they weren't aware there was a wizarding world. This leads to multiple threads going on, Harry helping the house elves get recognized as a non-human magical race both helps his friend and sets the stage for Equestria introducing itself to the wizarding world, while he takes part in the trials. Training for them has mostly been handled by Luna, Tempest Shadow and Moondancer with ruling Princess Twilight Sparkle's approval. Yep, there's another unique thing, its set later in the MLP:FiM series than usual. Just what ponies Harry interacts with sets this apart of other stories of its ilk, and there's so much more going on in here, definitely one of the most interesting of these type of crossover stories.
I think I'll stop here, there's so many more that I'm reading and have been recently updated, but this is long enough, no?
2,205 likes, 84 comments - gandernewsroom on December 22, 2025: "Michiganders can still speak up on the proposed Saline Township data center.
Public comments on a proposed wetlands permit are open through Dec. 28. βπ»βπ½βπΏ
Check out the link in bio.
A couple decades ago, I wrote a short paper that described how the basic approaches of cryptography and computer security lead to an efficient and practical privilege escalation attack against master-keyed mechanical lock, which I published in IEEE Security and Privacy (a nerdy computing technical journal).
Unexpectedly, my paper got some press attention. @jswatz_tx found it and wrote a short piece in the NY Times.
And then locksmiths freaked out. I mean completely lost it. They were very upset, not so much that a very common lock design had a basic security flaw, but that an "outsider" found it and had the poor moral character to make it public.
I started getting weird death threats. They doxed me ("let's see what kind of lock the bastard has on HIS house")
A trade publication called The National Locksmith ran monthly guest editorials in which prominent members of that profession were invited to denounce me. My favorite quote, from a locksmith named Billy Edwards, who had written a book on master keying, and who took my paper rather personally.
I should point out that master keying was about a century old at the time, and while the mechanical details weren't secret, locksmiths tended to regard the inner workings of locks as "restricted knowledge", rather like a medieval trade guild. I didn't understand this.
What took me by surprise was how different the physical security wold's attitude was compared with that of my community, where the ethics of discussion of vulnerabilities has long been essentially settled in favor of openness.
Essentially, their argument was that this would be a huge pain and expense to fix, and so we are all better off just keeping it on the down low. And that kind of worked, for about a hundred years, until more open communities - like computer security research - started looking seriously at locks (as both metaphors and as interesting mechanisms in their own right).
I see their point, even if I personally reject it. But in the age of the Internet, you just can't keep this kind of stuff secret.
Anyway, my intent in looking at locks and publishing my paper wasn't to disrupt the lock industry. I believed, as I still do, that mechanical locks and physical security have quite a bit to teach computing, but also that the abstract techniques of cryptography and computer security can illuminate weaknesses that are hard to see when looking at systems in strictly mechanical terms.
My attack is intuitive and obvious to cryptographers, but rather subtle without our field's tools.
I never did reach a truce with the locksmiths. A couple years later, I met Billy Edwards, the author of that editorial denouncing me, at a trade show, and when he learned who I was he refused to shake my hand and asked me to leave him alone.
I wish he had seen things differently, but I can respect that he was coming from a place of genuine concern, even if I think his approach was wrong.
To this day, I worry that I'm pretty screwed if I get locked out of my house.
NB: While I never intended to piss off locksmiths with my master keying paper, I did write a followup a couple years later about safes and safecracking, partly out of spite.
TL;dr: We can learn a lot from safes and safe locks, and the frameworks of cryptography and computer security are applicable there, too. The fact that our learning about this subject makes people in that industry upset is just a bonus.
I wrote that paper after I had moved from AT&T Labs to U. Penn. The Penn locksmith went totally apoplectic, and wrote regular angry letters to the dean and to the head of campus security warning about what an irresponsible, dangerous menace I am. But for whatever reason, his efforts were unsuccessful in getting me fired; the administration just forwarded me his letters, which I taped to the door of my office.
It occurs to me that people outside the security field might find it odd that we openly publish stuff like this. Why help people who might use the knowledge to do bad things?
There are a number of reasons. The first is that only through open discussion are we able to identify and fix problems. Another, which is what motivated my work, is educational: you can't learn to defend systems unless you understand how they are attacked.
So while openly publishing offensive security techniques might indeed help criminals, that harm is outweighed by significant benefits. Every properly trained computer science student should understand how to exploit vulnerabilities. Because the attackers DEFINITELY understand it.
The bottom line here is that while being the subject of attack by a deranged internet mob is never fun, sometimes it's the cost of doing business for doing interesting work.
And for those who yell at me for posting black and white photos or not putting content warnings on discussions of current events or not using enough hashtags or whatever, don't bother. I've stared down angry locksmiths and come out the other side.
you know, it's probably your work and similar that led to a more open world of locksmithing where you have people like The Lockpicking Lawyer doing full teardowns of fancy locks on their site, where locksport continues to be a popular (if somewhat niche) pastime, and where - one hopes - physical locks continue to evolve more securely.
So anyhow, thank you for publishing that paper. The people who got pissed off were just coming from an older way of thinking about things.
@me I'm not sure what the reason is (though I like to believe I was part of it), but I definitely agree that we're in a much better place today -with open discussion of physical security and an active community probing it and publishing about it - than we were 25 years ago.
There are so many locksmiths and lock manufacturers that hate folks like LPL, McNally, & locksports in general because they often reveal how much of it is an extremely false sense of security - the number of designs that are trivial to bypass or get in to is way too high, and many lock manufacturers just haven't bothered to make their stuff more secure.
A lot of thieves who bother with lockpicking and bypassing already knew a lot of the stuff locksports are sharing with the broader public. They already knew that you can comb open certain lock designs, smack certain padlocks to force the spring latch to release, bump-key a deadbolt to get in without obvious damage...
IDK it just seems like locksmiths and lock makers rely heavily on security-by-obscurity and all that does is leave the honest folks in the dark about how secure a lock truly isz meanwhile the dishonest figured out which locks can be easily gotten in to long ago & figure that out well before anyone publicly shares that knowledge.
designs that are trivial to bypass or get in to is way too high, and many lock manufacturers just haven't bothered to make their stuff more secure
I believe this is another important aspect of, and reason for, bringing responsible disclosure, or any disclosure at all, to the realm of physical security.
How do locksmiths expect the general security baseline to improve, if not by putting economical pressure on manufacturers? Build shitty locks, people eventually can realize they're flawed, so they can choose to not buy 'em anymore.
And don't anyone dare arguing "well, everyone should pay a licensed professional to choose each and every lock that is moderately important" β that's some secret guild level choke-hold of the commoners, by literal gatekeeping. :)
Endangering practically everyone long-term, while impotently and ineffectively imploring manufacturers to build better locks, isn't a gloriously effective prospect.
The locksmiths need to stay in more, and enjoy a few fun YouTube videos from the LockPickingLawyer, who has not only picked every lock in sight on camera, and insulted nearly all of them, he has, or used to have, a side hustle selling the kit he uses.
@steter He still does, Covert Instruments. Recently got the Covert Companion Pro, which is basically an entire field kit in the form of a leatherman tool :)
I'm sure someone else in one of these comments has mentioned this, but there's a guy on YouTube going by the name Lock Picking Lawyer and he does videos on how to pick locks all the time, showing vulnerabilities in his videos. He even sells lock picking tools.
Also, I think you did the right thing. For what it's worth.
What's really funny to me is this 1853 book that Ches and I quoted in the first edition of "Firewalls", about whether it's proper to discuss vulnerabilities in locks.
When in College, a R.A. who had once been in the RCMP would use his master key indiscriminately. To counter him, people learned to drill a hole in the bolt just the right size to fit a coat hanger in to block the bold from being retracted. They called it Mounty Proofing.
I don't suppose anyone is flying from #Miami to the Northwest (#Portland) in the next few weeks who would be willing to meet and escort a street #dog for us... Feel free to boost this unlikely request. That's the only place they can be sent at this time of year from #Aruba, apparently.
I have used Cronometer and like it. It lets you track LOTS of stuff. Not sure whether it has whatever you specifically need for your mom. No idea about the privacy policies.
"This is how censorship actually works in large institutions. Itβs not a guy in a uniform stamping βREJECTEDβ on your script. Itβs a thousand small calculations, made by dozens of people, about whatβs worth pursuing and what isnβt. Itβs a producer deciding not to pitch an investigation because she knows itβll never get approved."
It's obeying in advance. It's corporate capitulation. We must punish it whenever/however we can.
Elections have been floated as part of a peace or ceasefire deal that Ukraine has been discussing with the U.S., but voting in the occupied territories complicates the process.
Average income per person is an extremely misleading metric in that context. At the beginning of the 20th century, the average "effective income" of a person was much lower as it is now, as there was usually 1 working person per couple, where now you have 2.
MOUNT POCONO, PAβDelivering a highly anticipated speech about the state of the economy, President Donald Trump doubled down this week on his claim that groceries were a hoax perpetrated by Democrats.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •Unexpectedly, my paper got some press attention. @jswatz_tx found it and wrote a short piece in the NY Times.
And then locksmiths freaked out. I mean completely lost it. They were very upset, not so much that a very common lock design had a basic security flaw, but that an "outsider" found it and had the poor moral character to make it public.
I started getting weird death threats. They doxed me ("let's see what kind of lock the bastard has on HIS house")
2/
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •A trade publication called The National Locksmith ran monthly guest editorials in which prominent members of that profession were invited to denounce me. My favorite quote, from a locksmith named Billy Edwards, who had written a book on master keying, and who took my paper rather personally.
3/
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •I should point out that master keying was about a century old at the time, and while the mechanical details weren't secret, locksmiths tended to regard the inner workings of locks as "restricted knowledge", rather like a medieval trade guild. I didn't understand this.
What took me by surprise was how different the physical security wold's attitude was compared with that of my community, where the ethics of discussion of vulnerabilities has long been essentially settled in favor of openness.
4/
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •Essentially, their argument was that this would be a huge pain and expense to fix, and so we are all better off just keeping it on the down low. And that kind of worked, for about a hundred years, until more open communities - like computer security research - started looking seriously at locks (as both metaphors and as interesting mechanisms in their own right).
I see their point, even if I personally reject it. But in the age of the Internet, you just can't keep this kind of stuff secret.
5/
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •Anyway, my intent in looking at locks and publishing my paper wasn't to disrupt the lock industry. I believed, as I still do, that mechanical locks and physical security have quite a bit to teach computing, but also that the abstract techniques of cryptography and computer security can illuminate weaknesses that are hard to see when looking at systems in strictly mechanical terms.
My attack is intuitive and obvious to cryptographers, but rather subtle without our field's tools.
6/
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •I never did reach a truce with the locksmiths. A couple years later, I met Billy Edwards, the author of that editorial denouncing me, at a trade show, and when he learned who I was he refused to shake my hand and asked me to leave him alone.
I wish he had seen things differently, but I can respect that he was coming from a place of genuine concern, even if I think his approach was wrong.
To this day, I worry that I'm pretty screwed if I get locked out of my house.
7/7
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •NB: While I never intended to piss off locksmiths with my master keying paper, I did write a followup a couple years later about safes and safecracking, partly out of spite.
mattblaze.org/papers/safelocksβ¦
TL;dr: We can learn a lot from safes and safe locks, and the frameworks of cryptography and computer security are applicable there, too. The fact that our learning about this subject makes people in that industry upset is just a bonus.
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •It occurs to me that people outside the security field might find it odd that we openly publish stuff like this. Why help people who might use the knowledge to do bad things?
There are a number of reasons. The first is that only through open discussion are we able to identify and fix problems. Another, which is what motivated my work, is educational: you can't learn to defend systems unless you understand how they are attacked.
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •reshared this
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •The bottom line here is that while being the subject of attack by a deranged internet mob is never fun, sometimes it's the cost of doing business for doing interesting work.
And for those who yell at me for posting black and white photos or not putting content warnings on discussions of current events or not using enough hashtags or whatever, don't bother. I've stared down angry locksmiths and come out the other side.
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •I've gotten a few replies asking me if I regret publishing this or would do anything differently.
No. I'm proud of this work. I think it has value. I would do nothing differently. I am, evidently, remorseless and incorrigible.
Compassionate Crab reshared this.
Mike Ely
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •you know, it's probably your work and similar that led to a more open world of locksmithing where you have people like The Lockpicking Lawyer doing full teardowns of fancy locks on their site, where locksport continues to be a popular (if somewhat niche) pastime, and where - one hopes - physical locks continue to evolve more securely.
So anyhow, thank you for publishing that paper. The people who got pissed off were just coming from an older way of thinking about things.
Matt Blaze
in reply to Mike Ely • • •Senil
in reply to Mike Ely • • •There are so many locksmiths and lock manufacturers that hate folks like LPL, McNally, & locksports in general because they often reveal how much of it is an extremely false sense of security - the number of designs that are trivial to bypass or get in to is way too high, and many lock manufacturers just haven't bothered to make their stuff more secure.
A lot of thieves who bother with lockpicking and bypassing already knew a lot of the stuff locksports are sharing with the broader public. They already knew that you can comb open certain lock designs, smack certain padlocks to force the spring latch to release, bump-key a deadbolt to get in without obvious damage...
IDK it just seems like locksmiths and lock makers rely heavily on security-by-obscurity and all that does is leave the honest folks in the dark about how secure a lock truly isz meanwhile the dishonest figured out which locks can be easily gotten in to long ago & figure that out well before anyone publicly shares that knowledge.
Gyroplast
in reply to Senil • • •@senil
I believe this is another important aspect of, and reason for, bringing responsible disclosure, or any disclosure at all, to the realm of physical security.
How do locksmiths expect the general security baseline to improve, if not by putting economical pressure on manufacturers? Build shitty locks, people eventually can realize they're flawed, so they can choose to not buy 'em anymore.
And don't anyone dare arguing "well, everyone should pay a licensed professional to choose each and every lock that is moderately important" β that's some secret guild level choke-hold of the commoners, by literal gatekeeping. :)
Endangering practically everyone long-term, while impotently and ineffectively imploring manufacturers to build better locks, isn't a gloriously effective prospect.
Thank you for that paper, @mattblaze !
Steve's Place
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •The locksmiths need to stay in more, and enjoy a few fun YouTube videos from the LockPickingLawyer, who has not only picked every lock in sight on camera, and insulted nearly all of them, he has, or used to have, a side hustle selling the kit he uses.
This cat will not get back into the bag.
youtube.com/@lockpickinglawyerβ¦
LockPickingLawyer
YouTubeTechokami
in reply to Steve's Place • • •Maria Langer | πππ΅π₯οΈ
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •I'm sure someone else in one of these comments has mentioned this, but there's a guy on YouTube going by the name Lock Picking Lawyer and he does videos on how to pick locks all the time, showing vulnerabilities in his videos. He even sells lock picking tools.
Also, I think you did the right thing. For what it's worth.
Maria Langer | πππ΅π₯οΈ
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •Steve Bellovin
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •don albertson
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •The Sleight Doctor ππ
in reply to Matt Blaze • • •