Greetings, my fellow Hackers and Hackresses!

Your opinions on this?

Well, if there's a way forward, that is a very good first step. It's not a silver bullet, but it's ambitious enough to actually make people talk to each other again, and address how to move forward.

It almost sounds like they hired someone just to help fix this mess (and might have actually found someone reasonable). I would take that alone as a potentially positive sign, but at this point in time only time will tell if this actually ends up being positive.

@M'vy Yeah, I see it as a step in the right direction. I hope SE, Inc. sees this as the beginning of a lot of work, and not as "Well, good thing we solved that problem"

@ConorMancone Yes, I'm 100% sure they hired someone to fix this

Especially someone who is not involved with SE

@MechMK1 Next month we'll discover that post was created by an AI chatbot and the profile image is computer generated

@ConorMancone Dear miss Dietrich. The trophy did not fit in the suitcase, because it was too big. To which noun does the second "it" refer?

@MechMK1 lol! Great idea. What does it say though that I can't answer that question?

Obligatory XKCD

@ConorMancone Conor, I think we should get tested.

You don't trust me?

I just want to be sure.

lol

Good ol' xkcd

And you know, the funniest thing is that even though xkcd seems like it should be all-uppercase, it's not

It does have some great classics

I actually never noticed that it is all caps

(at least in this case)

xkcd is, on their own website, all lowercase

Randall stated that all uppercase is also accepted, and - I quote - "Xkcd is frowned upon"

Oh, you mean the actual name. I was totally on the wrong page

Oh yeah, I always did all caps without noticing the difference. TIL

Yeah, because everybody always asks "What does xkcd mean?"

And it means nothing

No, I'm only neutral good! /despair

That's great though - I really enjoy the simplicity and general applicability of the D&D style alignment system

The alignment system, funnily enough, is more important as a meme now than it is in DnD 5e

Back in like 2e it was really important, and there were tons of things you could not or could only do if you had a specific alignment

Meanwhile other games have such alignment things to more or less give hints about how a character sees the world, and to inform the GM roughly how a character would react to a situation

Like, a Neutral Good character would probably not try to extort a ransom for the king's daughter, but a chaotic neutral character might

You know, I think "Man-in-the-Middle" is a really sexist term to use. It implies that it is only men who perform malicious activities. Likewise, Person-in-the-Middle is problematic, as it excludes those who do not identify as a person, or as only one person. I therefore suggest the more inclusive term "Entity-in-the-Middle".

Human-in-the-Middle?

Or does some not identify as human?

@MechMK1 That's existentialism, what about things that do not defines themselves as entities? I, for one, do not want to anger Cthulhu and its kind, even if that sounds racist.

And the one that shall not be named is known to intercept and alter dreams.

Attack from the Middle

Not to be confused by Sauron war plans, which were Attacks from Middle Earth

@M'vy But that could be confused with Meet-in-the-Middle, which is another (cryptographic) attack.

Well, no one things that shall or shan't be named aren't perfect.

What's the stupid strikethough code in SE chat again?

this

that's three dashes yeah

You will strike three time, not two nor four.

I do too much slack

@M'vy sometimes the MitM is started by a bot... but I don't care, I don't consider MitM sexist at all...

I just feel bad for everyone who is getting left out at the ends...

Yes, that's not inclusive.

What about the attack "One-that-shall-or-shall-not-be-named-and-others-in-the-Middle-targeting-the-ones-at-the-Ends" ?

but it really needs to be inclusive? it's terminology! there are exceptions to every rule, but we care about the rules, not the exceptions. tech does not care if a man, a woman, or a dog is conducting the attack, as the entity is not important, but the attack

But SO's management said to be inclusive and gender neutral respectful... What shall we do?

fussing too much on it damages the cases where racism, sexism and so are really ocuring... it's the complaint fatigue... people complain all day long about details, and when something really important happens, it gets lost in the noise

@A.Hersean it's REALLY disrespectiful to use MitM when a woman is conducting the attack? really? I am attacking a woman by using MitM when it technically should be WitM?

I am attacked when my toddler calls me mommy when he was supposed to say daddy?

I hope nobody here seriously considered to replace MitM by something else. It was tongue-in-cheek humour.

I don't think is just a joke... after people blacklisting slave (is blacklisting still an allowed term?) on some documentation, I don't doubt...

Though there's no real debate here, because everybody knows that the Man in the Middle is named Eve, a genderless black hoodie laid in shadows, spying on Alice and Bob, who are two circles on a map.

Not so! I have a textbook that identifies he/she/it as "Mallory"

Clearly there's more to the story than first supposed

Mallory is malicious attacker, Eve evasdrops... Alice and Bob talks to each other... See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characters

That's interesting. I never knew there were more than three characters.

Though I notice it skips Bruce Schneier (see Bruce Schneier fact #18: schneierfacts.com/facts/18)

Wait are people now saying that MiTM is sexist?

Is that what I'm reading?

MechMK1 was joking

We all hope

I hope lol

There are more important things to be mad about