Everybody shut up and look at this dhole

Bluesky Social

Dholes! (@dholeposting.bsky.social)

Me, at an interview a few years ago: Interviewer: "What do you know about zero-knowledge proofs?" Me: "I have zero knowledge on this matter. Not sure if I can prove it." (I didn't get the job. Maybe I should've asked for a witness.)

I genuinely do not understand people who have deep fried opinions about Signal needing a goddamn phone number in 2025. Many privacy nerds were outraged when you needed to give out a phone number *to other people* in order to talk with them. I was one of those nerds. They fixed that with the usernames rollout. As a mobile phone app, Signal uses your phone number to bootstrap your enrollment into the protocol. This is literally the path of least resistance as an SMS replacement app, for most users. If you want to know whether Signal can obtain enough metadata to target users that have enrolled, the answer is complicated. The way profiles are encrypted, and how sealed sender works, makes any targeting seem infeasible. (Your profile key rotates, at mininum, when you block someone.) Signal currently does not have IP addresses, etc. stored. If this changes in the future, it will not be retroactive. If you're worried about that, Molly boasts Tor support. Maybe that's fine. I haven't audited Molly, and won't.

Sometimes, I wish I was a better writer. Not a more technically capable one. A better one. A technically adept writer can hammer out essays, blog posts, etc. rapidly, with little guidance or support, and without requiring much editing. I've kind of got that one down (insofar as I only use conversational English where I can help it). Being technically proficient is useful, but on a totally different axis. My limited talent with words shows whenever I have to tackle any topic with extreme emotional weight--be it a blog post, or a private chat with another person in our community. And, as if some cruel joke, then I play a game like Deltarune which uses music to perfectly set the mood in ways that words alone would fail. In reflection, I think my problem is I only know how to speak to the rational part of the human psyche. But I don't know how to comfort, inspire, or motivate in the same way that artists do. Heh.

Hot take: ISO standards do not meaningfully matter to me, because an extremely impoverished, unbanked person cannot freely access their contents from a library computer. Therefore, I go out of my way to avoid referring to them or relying on them in anyway.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/1kw821x/kindness_can_be_shown_in_many_ways/muh6pfn/?context=2 I left this comment on a popular Reddit thread, but thought folks here might also find it relatable. > The first time I flew first class (which was due to the kindness of another technologist who wanted to help me land a job by flying me to DEFCON), the way the other passengers treated the flight attendants disgusted me so much that I felt guilty sharing space with them. I tried to be kind and respectful in spite of the jerks, but it never sat right with me. > A few months later, another friend pointed out to me, if I hadn't been there, they would have had to deal with yet another rude, dehumanizing customer. It helps a bit. > "It costs nothing to be kind" misses the point, I think. > "Being unkind makes everyone poorer" is closer to the truth.

Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI It's becoming increasingly apparent that one of the reasons why tech companies are so enthusiastic about shoving AI into every product and service is that they fundamentally do not understand why people dislike AI. I will elaborate. I was recently made aware of the Jetbrains developer ecosystem survey, which included a lot of questions about AI. After I answered some of them negatively (and possibly…

Dhole Moments

Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI - Dhole Moments

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that one of the reasons why tech companies are so enthusiastic about shoving AI into every product and se...