Now Mission

Chill War

(1) Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) / X

Exactly. Regime change was a hope only, and not super realistic given the realities on the ground.

The real purpose of the war for the US was to degrade Iran’s capability for creating a nuclear weapon. They were getting close to that and now they are probably 6-10 years away again. That was the real mission and it is complete. That is why the effort is being wound down.

War won, war lost, whatever. That’s a pointless discussion mostly related to clueless commentators bloviating. Was the mission achieved? And the answer is that it was. For now.

Neolang

Chill Killin' It

I had created two languages from scratch by the time I was 15. One kind of sucked. That was my first attempt.

But the second one was well thought out and pretty cohesive; it could’ve been used by actual humans. Hell, it was used by me. I kept my class notes in it for over a year. Turns out, though, teachers get upset when you hand in a notebook in a language ain’t nobody ever seen before and only one person in the world can read. Heh.

I’m pretty proud of that. Not annoying my instructors, but rather creating my own language de novo with very few outside resources. Just my own big fuckin’ brain and the will to do it.

Girl Riot

Chill Evil

I miss the 1990s when feminism and everyone assumed women of any adult age possessed agency, judgement, discernment and weren’t in fact doomed to be little children until they were 40 or 50 or eternally, which seems to be the consensus modern feminism is moving toward.

Basically, I miss Riot Grrrl. That was when we truly were attempting equality without coercing us all to incorrectly believe and say that women and men are exactly the same. We were all striving toward something together, instead of fighting each other over scraps.

There was no gender war then. Nothing was perfect, but men and women genuinely seemed to enjoy being around each other then in a way that just does not happen now. Gen Z is terrified of everything, including the opposite sex. It’s all so bizarre to someone from the 90s.

Some things are better now, for sure. But men and women got along better then, by far.

All Kindsa Wrong

Chill Amusing, Annoying, Tech

This is an actual question on the official study guide of a cert (CISM) I am studying for. And it is egregiously, laughably wrong in every aspect. (The bolded answer is what it thinks is correct.)

1) “IP Security v6” is not a real protocol name. There is nothing called that anywhere in my field. There is IPSec, which applies to both IPv4 and IPv6.

2) The explanation about source and destination IPs being inside the encrypted portion is false in general. Too detailed to go into here, but it just does not work like that at all.

3) MITM resistance in IPsec comes from authenticated key exchange and integrity, not from hiding IP addresses.

4) Even good ol’ IPsec does not prevent MITM in all deployment types. Pre-shared keys, for example, are vulnerable such that an MITM attacker can obtain an OTP and log in as the remote user. Also, pretty-common NULL-authenticated IPsec completely does not protect against MITM and should be treated like plaintext traffic in almost all cases.

That question is just wrong in fifty-eleven different ways. Amazing that is on a study guide. But networking is usually the worst area on anything like this as no one knows what the hell they are talking about ever in that field (see the clownishly asinine NAT ISN’T A FIREWALL AND OFFERS NO SECURITY bullshit the Hacker News-type doofs always spout).

Chill Links

Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website.

A Super El Niño is coming. Here’s how a hotter ocean could change the weather near you.

The vibe coding bubble is going to leave a lot of broken apps behind.

Bluesky users are mastering the fine art of blaming everything on “vibe coding”.

Want to know capitalism’s endgame? Just look at private equity – it has captured our everyday lives.

How our digital devices are putting our right to privacy at risk.

Why Japan has such good railways.

Anthropic’s New Product Aims to Handle the Hard Part of Building AI Agents.

The Age-Old Urge to Destroy Technology.

Market Fit

Chill Amusing, Annoying

Got in a little trouble at work because I refused to let the marketing department make any changes to the technical documents and info I send to customers.

But I don’t care. Nope, not gonna do it, never gonna happen.

Bisc

Chill Amusing, Annoying, Clowns

Every political side has quite a few absolutely tardbiscuit beliefs that they just cannot give up.

The left:

1) Binary sex isn’t real.
2) No evolution occurred above the neck.
3) Humans are a blank slate (and all related to that).

The right:

1) Climate change isn’t real.
2) Vaccines don’t work.
3) Markets automatically solve everything.

No side has any monopoly on truth or thinking coherently. Which is why I have no side.