Monthly Archives: January 2026

Article note: "Slopaganda" is a natural phrase I'm hoping catches.

Article note: Paraphrasing the cleverest shit-talkers in the thread, this negotiation requires two socks, two pairs of googly eyes, and one dude in a K-hole talking to himself. But seriously, this kind of shell game shuffling debt around to stay ahead of bullshit would get scrutiny from a non-complicit SEC.

Article note: Seems like a microcosm of the whole AI industry. The corruption detection AI is simply a tool of corruption operated by its vendor.

Article note: Neat. I've been off XFCE as my default environment for almost a decade because of creeping GTK misfeatures, but they've always had a good design philosophy, and this xfwl4 project seems to be in keeping.

Article note: "Unlike traditional Temporary Flight Restrictions, the NOTAM does not provide geographic coordinates, activation times, or public notification when the restriction is in effect near a specific location. Instead, the restricted airspace moves with DHS assets, meaning the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE or other DHS units operate." "In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius." Oh boy, secret laws where you can't know if you are in violation until confronted, against documenting the behavior of state actors. Full fascism.

Article note: Mmmyep. Bitlocker with a Microsoft account is barely more than theater, it manages to keep most of the fragility and overhead of a sophisticated encryption system, but - having done the recovery flow for someone's machine that b0rked - even without the power of state threats, it's not that hard to shake the retained keys out of Microsoft. Fun that non-nerds are starting to learn about bullshit vendor-bypassable security that the cypherpunks have been screaming about for 35 years due to (this is a euphemism I find myself using uncomfortably often of late) "the geopolitical situation."

Article note: I'm old enough to remember in the post-9/11 era when we were rushing into the existence of DHS (legislated in 2002, established in 2003 - it's not old) and the criticism from either wing warned about the creation of a giant, unaccountable, inevitably overreaching monster due to a poorly considered knee-jerk reaction to one incident. Oh look, an overreaching, unaccountable monster. Let's learn and fucking dismantle it.

Article note: Several of the prominent hobbyist electronics folks appear to be vigorously crybullying each other. This is not fabulous.

Article note: It certainly seems to be a "The capitalists are ripping apart working systems so the number keeps going up" situation. I think the most shocking bit is how uncorrelated with distance or difficulty it all is, I regularly have stuff get from China to a nearby sorting center faster than it gets from the sorting center to me, and see large fragile items like TVs that seem to be being sold for less than I'd expect shipping to cost... but also have letters take months, or packages disappear.

Article note: Majestic.