The DMZ

MechMK1

21:42

5

Q: Does open source "protestware" represent a security risk?

Since the beginning of the Ukraine-Russian war, a new kind of software was created, which is called "protestware". In the best case, the devs only add some (personal) statements about the war or uncensored information to the repositories or when starting the application. Since Github and other pl...

malware

The whole idea of "protestware" is so fucking retarded. Imagine you were a russian developer right now, okay? You've become a persona non grata in a ton of communities for no reason, because tons of people equate "being russian" with "being pro-war". Your economy is in shambles, all your saved money has become worthless overnight and some american guy just decides it'd be funny to delete all your files because "We have to protest!"

3

"Protestware" serves one and only one purpose: To satisfy the need of validation for the author.

No one in Ukraine is going to be helped. No one in Russia, who used to be pro-war before will think "Wow, they're right. I should protest against the war."

forest

Not only that, but it makes FOSS look bad.

MechMK1

Absolutely!

Because who knows what other retarded shit someone might think of next

forest

I mean, if you wanna hack someone then go ahead. But don't backdoor your fucking open source code.

MechMK1

For example, I just had a G R E A T idea!

Ever heard of "Shinigami Eyes"?

forest

No

MechMK1

21:48

It's a browser extension, which automatically labels twitter and reddit users as "good" or "bad" depending on community consensus

forest

github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/issues/11153

lol

MechMK1

It's the embodiment of the NPC meme, letting a machine tell you what to think of a person. Turn off your brain, just let the machine think for you.

@forest I honestly agree. Not for some ideological reason, but because it's fucking cringe.

Everything has to virtue signal these days

forest

Same.

> Notepad++ 8.3.2 (Declare variables, not war)

lel

MechMK1

Your text editor? Why it's the Save Ukraine Text Ediot now

My music player is the Stop Genital Mutilation player now

And of course, my video editor has become the pro choice editor

It's so fucking dumb

Name your versions after years, milestones, food, greek gods, whatever...

forest

I mean, to be fair... Vim always tells to help children in Uganda when you start it up...

MechMK1

21:51

But please stop fucking virtue signalling

forest

But that's not particularly controversial. And they've done it forever, and it's fairly subtle.

MechMK1

Not what I want out of a text editor

If I didn't give a shit about them before, vim certainly isn't going to make me.

But why I wanted to talk about Shinigami Eyes before

You could easily make a browser extension, which would read out your twitter session token, find out which twitter user you were, see if you were on the "bad" side and then wreck havoc on your twitter account

forest

In the end, it's just a title. What really matters is when people are getting fucked over by malware.

MechMK1

My stance is as follows: If I want political conversation, I'll find it among people. Products telling me to care about something will only cause me to care even less, just out of spite.

For example, when the first Raspberry Pis came out, there was a project of buying some Raspis and sending them to Africa, so that some kids had a way to learn computer education with them

Great project, I even donated for them

But they didn't pushed it into the actual product

When you launched your Pi, you didn't get a prompt to donate, nor was it hardcoded into the shell or such

And that's really what gets me: A product, in essence, should be devoid of any "message"

What I want from a hammer is for it to hammer nails into something, not to tell me who to vote for, what to eat, who's rights to care about.

forest

I think a message can sometimes be appropriate.

It depends on how aggressive, controversial, and in-your-face it is.

MechMK1

21:56

A company can make a message, yes.

But it should be independent of their product.

forest

"Notepad++ Boycott China" as a version and "help feed kids" in a help message aren't equivalent.

MechMK1

For example, Mozilla can make some campaign for clean drinking water in Africa. But it shouldn't be part of Firefox.

forest

Why not? If it's subtle and non-invasive.

I agree that it's not the "right place for it", but it seems harmless.

MechMK1

And while I generally agree with your argument, I think it just leads to "If this is okay, this should be okay too"

Remember: Everyone thinks that their cause is obviously good and non-controversial.

forest

I mean, maybe not for Mozilla because they're a huge team, but for a single-person project where they aren't speaking for anyone else who might disagree, I think it's fine.

@MechMK1 I'm anti-Israel. I think that cause is good. I don't think it's non-controversial. :P

MechMK1

21:58

For example, all pro-life folks think that their cause is obviously good. And all the pro-choice folks think that their cause is obviously good.

I'm anti-Israel too, and I'm just controversial by default

Because deep down, I'm just a huge cunt :D

forest

lol

MechMK1

But for example, let's say wanting to provide clean drinking water for impoverished countries is a "non-controversial" thing

Then other people would say stopping a civil war in said country should be non-controversial too

And if that is non-controversial, then other armed conflicts must be non-controversial too

forest

Even if it's controversial, it's not necessarily a bad thing as long as everyone on the project agrees.

MechMK1

It will inevitably end up in a "If X is fine, then my thing must be fine too" war

forest

The thing I dislike is when a big foundation with many developers tries to speak on behalf of all of them.

MechMK1

22:00

@forest Sure. Who am I to tell people what they can and can't do with their project.

You could make the "Save Ukraine Debugger" and I can't stop you

forest

So you're just saying that it's cringe?

MechMK1

I just think it's incredibly cringe

:D

forest

Ah. OK, I agree with that.

MechMK1

I like to think of my tools as completely agnostic and detached from the world as-is

My debugger doesn't care about which countries are at war with each other, and I think it shouldn't

I mean, the company I work for always makes their newsletters with sentences like "We here at company care about thing"

forest

Makes me think of C+=.

MechMK1

22:03

And I always think I'm part of this company, and I couldn't give less of a shit

C+=?

forest

C Plus Equality. I think 4chan made it.

MechMK1

Oh god

forest

It's a port of C as if it was made by a stereotypical "SJW".

MechMK1

OH GOD

It's glorious

the master branch is called "mistress"

forest

Wow

Is it on Github or did they not get it reinstated after it was removed?

MechMK1

22:05

> You should have received a copy of the FSF Feminist Software Foundation Public License
along with this program. If not, check your privilege.

github.com/TheFeministSoftwareFoundation/C-plus-Equality/blob/…

This is G O L D

forest

That's hilarious.

>inherpreter

> Instead of "running" a program, which implies thin privilege and pressure to "work out", programs are "given birth". After birth, a program rolls for a 40% chance of executing literally as the code is written, 40% of being "psychoanalytically incompatible", and 40% of executing by a metaphorical epistemology the order of the functions found in main().

Holy shit this is funnier than I remembered.

MechMK1

My sides just checked their privileges

> No class hierarchy or other stigmata of OOP (objectification-oriented programming). In fact, as an intersectional acknowledgement of Class Struggle our language will have no classes at all.

objectification-oriented programming

forest

This is so offensive but I can't stop laughing.

> Resource allocation is inversely proportional to privilege level.

MechMK1

I got yeeted off twitter again for using a bad word

forest

>using twitter

MechMK1

22:10

I don't have any other quasi-social circles

forest

>being social

How did they get back on GitHub anyway?

MechMK1

/g/ithub

:D

forest

:D:D:D

MechMK1

It's not like we retards don't have jobs :D

forest

sjacob.org/home/humour/PC-UNIX.html oh wow

MechMK1

22:13

Yeah, I already saw

forest

> There will no longer be a invidious distinction between "dumb" and "smart" terminals. All terminals are equally valuable and valued.

I... I actually saw someone trying to argue that "dumb terminal" was offensive...

MechMK1

> The "more" command reflects the materialistic philosophy of the Reagan era. System VI uses the environmentally preferable "less" command.

I mean, it's called dumb terminal, not retard terminal

You know what I find funny?

forest

@MechMK1 Apparently Google is trying to remove instances of terms like "dumb" and "sanity check" and "first-class method".

From their own codebase, that is. Twitter too, but they're closed source so it doesn't matter.

MechMK1

It's always people complaining that something is offensive for other people.

Like a white woman complaining that this is offensive for latinos, or whatever

It's never "this offends me", and if it is, my first instinct is to offend even more

forest

Yeah I've noticed that as well.

I mean, there are legitimate social grievances some people have. Even ESR recognizes that.

But a lot of complaints are... kind of unnecessary.

MechMK1

22:16

Yeah, but none of them have to do with words like "blacklist"

forest

There was even a security bug caused by a failed sec backport in Linux because of the removal of the term "slave" (or maybe it was "blacklist").

MechMK1

Ask any black guy in the US "What are the topics you care about?" and I swear out of 100 selected people, the word "blacklist" will not be in the top 50 for any of them.

forest

@MechMK1 And "blacklist" comes from "black book", which was a literal book that Kings would own. It never had anything to do with race in its entire history as a word.

MechMK1

Do you expect those people to know that?

forest

They do know that. They still don't care.

MechMK1

22:17

They cussed a guy out for using the word "niggardly"

forest

@MechMK1 It's going to be, I dunno.... not getting killed by cops when they're just walking down the street?

Things that actually matter, not words to describe databases.

MechMK1

Because it doesn't matter what words mean, it just matters what they feel.

forest

@MechMK1 I got banned once for using the word "snigger" (not on SE).

MechMK1

Naturally

forest

The scunthorp problem lives on.

MechMK1

22:18

I mean, I got yeeted off twitter for saying kike, so that's fair I guess :D

forest

wow

MechMK1

Or maybe cuck, but I think it was the other word :D

forest

Well, that is pretty offensive.

MechMK1

Funny thing is, it's towards a jew I know

Like, we constantly joke like this

forest

:^)

MechMK1

22:19

:P

:^)

forest

lmao you always bring out the worst in me. I've been trying to distance myself from chan culture, but...

It's so hard. It's almost like I should never have forgotten that I'm there forever.

MechMK1

I told you, I'm just a cunt deep down

Yeah, you might leave the board, but the board never leaves you.

Man, I really have to fix my ugly face some day

forest

And I was tame too. I was an /a/non most of the time.

Although I did have a guilty pleasure reading /pol/ for the laughs.

MechMK1

I just went to /k/ for keks

Go to /arg/ to argue AKs are better.
Go to /akg/ to argue ARs are better.

forest

/k/ has had some interesting history.

Like that one meet up, with the brownies.

MechMK1

22:22

I don't even know that story

Also you know what's funny?

forest

And everyone collectively threw up.

MechMK1

B R U H

:D

forest

yeah

MechMK1

>eating something someone else gave you

forest

Don't trust /k/.

MechMK1

22:23

Classic mistake

This is the third time now that I've been talking with a woman way out of my league for like every day since we met, then showing her a picture of me and getting ghosted/blocked immediately.

So it's not even my rampant autism holding me back, I'm just ugly as fuck :D

forest

I'm not ugly, but my personality is.

MechMK1

My whole package is shit, so at least there is some consistency

Physiognomy is real after all

But I don't mind all that much, not like I can really change who I am

forest

ouch

At least being a hacker you can screw over anyone who bullied you in school, I guess.

MechMK1

:D

I've already forgotten those people

I don't hold a grudge against anyone, at least not that I can think of

forest

I'm sure there are others who you can screw over for the lulz.

MechMK1

22:30

I already troll people just for the sake of it

forest

At the very least, go after feds and cops.

MechMK1

Meh, I just do my job (which I am actively procrastinating from right now) and float

forest

You're a pentester, right?

MechMK1

My plan is to wait until my mother dies (hopefully of old age) and then just yeet myself

Yeah :D

forest

dark

MechMK1

22:32

Meh, it is what it is

Everyone has to find something worth living for, right?

For some people it's their family, their loved ones, for others it's their passion

forest

Live to be a pain in the side to the woke.

MechMK1

I have neither

That's mostly what I do and what keeps me afloat

forest

As long as people are still getting triggered over words, you have a reason to live.

MechMK1

Have you happened to play Elden Ring perchance?

forest

No.

I don't really play games, except some retro games and Touhou, and a few CAVE games and VNs.

MechMK1

22:34

There's a character, called Fia, who basically offers you a hug.

When she hugged my character, I realized that I couldn't remember the last time someone hugged me, and that likely no one will ever want me to be physically close to them.

Had to stop the game and take a nap

forest

;_;

MechMK1

It also spawned the "maidenless" meme, which is pretty good :D

"You, however, are maidenless."

forest

kek

Is that a /v/ thing?

MechMK1

No, it literally is a line in the game

forest

The meme I mean.

MechMK1

22:37

I dunno where it originated from

So, it's actually quite a coincidence

There's the "no bitches?" meme, which was popular rightbefore the elden ring release

forest

I don't keep up with Twitter memes. I find Twitter to be distasteful.

MechMK1

And so after one character in Elden Ring early on mocks you for "being maidenless", it just got so funny :D

I'm so touch-deprived that I once flinched when a co-worker accidentally touched my arm

forest

That's a virtue in the era of COVID.

MechMK1

It was pre covid

I was still pretty new at the company back then

forest

ah

MechMK1

22:41

So late 2018 early 2019 I think

Man, that was awkward

forest

I flinch too, but that's because I'm paranoid.

MechMK1

I'm just not used to the sensation of another person touching me without them trying to harm me.

forest

Maybe you need to find a hooker to desensitize you.

MechMK1

I don't want that

Sexuality to me should be with someone you genuinely love

forest

A really, really poor prostitute then.

MechMK1

22:45

Eh

It's not the sex that I am lacking

It's the feeling of someone being happy that I exist

forest

Get a dog?

Or mail order bride from some crappy country.

MechMK1

I don't think a dog would be a good idea, at least not with me living in a city

I'll just do what I've always done: Just pretend everything is okay.

forest

Do you not have the kind of money to travel? You can meet a lot of people if you travel.

MechMK1

Too anxious to do that

It's not like my situation is hopeless

I'm just too dumb to use any of the ways out

Anyways, gotta finish my report now

Nice to talk to you again :D

forest

23:01

later o/

forest

23:19

Talk:Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques

== Merger Proposal == I would like to merge Covert cell and Sleeper cell into this article, which covers the subject in more detail, with the exception of the history in covert cell. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC) Personally, I feel that this article is probably already on the long side — as such, I think adding more detail to it is perhaps not the way to go. (Its only a guideline, but Wikipedia:Article length suggests that the article, at over 60 KB, "probably should be divided" as it is). I would suggest that this page serve as a central overview (which was previously...

This is hilarious.

belkarx

23:41

Wikipedia edit convos as a whole are extremely entertaining. My friend tried to change ONE WORD in the Ukraine-Russia conflict article and spawned >2000 words of argument. The debate was over whether or not Putin "falsely" accused Ukraine of neo-nazism (as it hadn't been explicitly proven false)

forest

lmao

I find it amusing that the controversial political articles have to add opinions like that.

belkarx

Ikr

forest

Isn't it better for an encyclopedia to just report that Putin made a claim?

belkarx

Well it's a community product and community's opinionated; separating that from its content is quite difficult

Also C+= was absolutely hilarious, thanks for the share

forest

@belkarx I've heard (but not verified) that studies have shown that Wikipedia is extremely accurate, but only for non-controversial issues.

belkarx

23:46

What defines controversial

forest

I mean, it's a policy for all pages about Nazis to use the word "murder" instead of "kill" or "execute".

@belkarx Many different deeply-held opinions, each held by a sizeable group of people and mutually exclusive.

belkarx

@forest huh interesting. Does it truly matter though

forest

@belkarx It makes things harder to read. For example they'll translate German text to something like "check this box to murder subject" on some form in the concentration camps. It should be quite obvious that the Germans did not use a word that would be translated to "murder".

I mean, even articles about serial killers usually only use the term murder when it relates to a conviction.

belkarx

Sigh. Trying to remain "politically correct" and please the minorities like ...

forest

Not please the minorities. The actual minorities tend not to care.

It's sensitive people trying to please themselves.

E.g. it's mostly white people who are upset at the word "black". Very few black people use the term "person of color".

belkarx

23:49

@forest Well that's the "intended" purpose. But yes you're absolutely correct, it's the outspoken "woke" ones that are being appeased

forest

It's a real problem because there are some serious social issues impacting minorities.

But they are being diluted by the influx of criticism against microaggressions and the like.

belkarx

Yup, the trivial issues are being focused on because the true changes require too much institutional change

forest

Because it's easier to say you made progress on 5 issues in a week than to spend 5 years making progress on 1 issue.

But it's better to get a law passed to make police responsible for their racist actions even if it takes 5 years than it is to change 5 instances of the word "master" in open source code.

belkarx

@forest Yup ... and unfortunately this mindset is being perpetuated everywhere. Do the simple things, leave the difficult ones up to the few that actually care, who will get insufficient recognition because quantity is "better" than quality

forest

And the worst part is just how partisan people are. Many people, if they read what I wrote, would assume that I must be a white supremacist or something (despite the fact that they don't know my race). "If you don't think that X is a good solution to Y, you must oppose people who want to solve Y!"

belkarx

23:54

I agree. Assumptions are so quickly made with no basis

And everyone that isn't liberal is a supremacist :D

forest

And everyone who isn't conservative is a commie.

belkarx

Exactly. What a fun world /s

Apparently people are more chill in Europe; being ultra-woke appears to be a pretty american thing (not that it doesn't happen in other places, but it's muuuch more common here). Granted, europe's got other societal issues and some parts are on the other end of the spectrum ... you really can't win

forest

Yeah, it's pretty uniquely American (and rather Americentric as well, given that people assume that "slave" refers exclusively to American slavery of Africans).

The worst I've seen was at the very start of the whole panic when someone argued that Python should remove the word "slave" because it "reminds us of our horrible racist history", as if slavery is either (1) exclusively American, or (2) mere history, as if there aren't millions of slaves living today.

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