Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org
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- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
Nick
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#coffee timer set for 4:00am. Tomorrow is #electionday in most of the US and my shift starts at 5:00. If you are eligible to #vote tomorrow, please do! #election2024
Nick
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Google kills “Web Integrity” DRM for the web, still wants an Android version
Web Integrity pivots to Android, could permanently kill YouTube Vanced-style apps.
@rebeccawatson I look forward to your new, lucrative career as a "No Breathing" YouTube influencer. Just think of all the toxins you could avoid inhaling by not breathing!
Nick
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I always find it funny when getting into arguments with libertarians and they're like "The profit motive is great. See? Look at my phone" and my response is "Dude... I've written some of the code that's running on your phone, and I did it for free. It's a device built on open standards and the unpaid labour of 100,000 unpaid nerds. You are not making the argument that you think you're making".
Nick
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Enhanced rock weathering (#ERW) seems like a promising way to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. However, this paper says that to remove 1 billion tonne of CO₂ per year requires land area larger than the entire United States.
Nick
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Nick
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For the people at #WikimediaCommons who might be checking the permissions for the stuff I upload there: I intend to upload most of my scientific animations on Commons and release them into the #publicdomain
My username there is https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Berto, so I will use that account to upload them.
Nick
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I have a really weird #ICanHazPDF request. I remember a #MathOverflow question about the classification of #manifolds in which a paper (apparently unpublished) was linked from the author's website. I think it was by either Manolescu or Nicolaescu and it was a very nice, short survey of the current state of the classification. I thought I had a copy of this, but I can't find it or the original MathOverflow question. I've tried DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Google, and Bing to no avail. It's not this (https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~hatcher/Papers/3Msurvey.pdf) by Allen Hatcher. Did I hallucinate this survey article?
Nick
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People have been asking why space is dark despite being filled with stars for so long that this question has a special name – Olbers’ paradox.
Astronomers believe that in the distant future, the universe will go dark, inhabited by only stellar remnants like white dwarfs and black holes.
For now, we really do live in a very special time in the universe’s life, when we’re able to see a complex night sky filled with light and dark.
https://theconversation.com/why-is-space-so-dark-even-though-the-universe-is-filled-with-stars-205810
#space #science
Nick
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When I was a child in the 80s, the night sky was filled with of stars. And those stars inspired us to imagine other worlds & ask really big questions.
Decades later, the night sky looks like a much lonelier place. Light pollution is increasing & I fear we may lose the ability to be awed by looking up & recognizing our place in the universe.
I don’t know about others, but I sure miss the stars. Image: Luke Stackpoole via Unsplash
@g I've always been curious whether systems with a TPM/secure enclave can use that to store a private key for use in machine-to-machine cryptographic challenge-response-type authentication. In that case, though the machine "knows" the private key in some sense, it is incapable of divulging it, making it more akin to the "something you have" or "something you are" of more traditional MFA. But I don't know enough about such things to know if this is actually possible in practice. Surely it's not a novel idea.
@dangoodin To my (largely untrained) eyes, some big red flags seem to be
1. They didn't have an intrusion detection system that flagged this (it seems like a new IP/host accessing a service account from likely a new subnet would be notable) and it sounds like they only found out once their customers notified them.
2. Relying on password-based authentication rather than key/certificate-based authentication for remote access to a service account without strong compensating controls (like limiting it to specific hosts)
3. Once they knew their customer had been breached they couldn't just look at the access logs for the affected account and verify in short order that there were hosts for which they couldn't account.
But I'm curious what those with more knowledge think on those points.
@dangoodin Yeah, if your system fails and your solution is "well, we'll just make sure no one ever makes a mistake again" that...isn't really a solution at all.
I mean, I know that they did make other changes, but trying to focus on the poor judgement of the individual just to me betrays the wrong mindset.
Nick
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Thought Blast from my (mod) vantage point to mark a year since The Surge.
1. Sane people would have ran. Glad we didn't.
2. Before the surge our server was mostly people here for the principle of the thing. Today we have people here for the nature of the thing as well, which is kinda cool.
3. Not replacing Twitter outright with everyone moving to Fedi (yet) is probably for the best. Volunteer networks need to grow slow if at all. Replacing Twitter means inheriting problems. /1
@arstechnica I love that this article actually *links to a #mastodon thread* because of the great input from the many #infosec folks here!
Nick
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Today marks one year since I walked away from 360,000 followers on that other site joined this incredible community here!
That was easily one of the most positive moves I've ever made, and I frankly haven't looked back. Thank you to @jerry and everyone else who keeps this place humming. Come to think of it, it's time to renew our annual support!
Nick
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No, Okta, senior management, not an errant employee, caused you to get hacked
If a transgression by a single employee breaches your network, you're doing it wrong.
Nick
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Whatever is going badly in your life, just know, it could be worse. Forbes Magazine could feature you on their cover for example.
Nick
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@ricardoharvin Would I prefer if they included alt-text in their posts? Yes. However, just as one would guess for a news outlet, the image is generally (perhaps always?) the first image in the article linked, which often conveys little information other than flavor and is always captioned and uses alt-text in the article page, so, as omitted alt-text on mastodon goes, this is one of the least impactful cases. But more saliently, as most of the press refuses to leave Twitter, which is at this point actively stoking hate against many groups, I think that's the far more impactful aspect for inclusivity in the larger picture.
@arstechnica @dangoodin @JenLucPiquant
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
