Happy Mother’s Day to anyone who’s ever been Mom!
In March, Waltz came under scrutiny after he put together a Signal chat and mistakenly included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, disclosing discussions with top national security officials about plans for a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Part of being a security adviser is being, you know, competent at security.
Down the liminal line.
The new office’s view is quite nice.
My camera can’t capture the glowing orangey-pinks and violets of these flowering bushes on the sidewalk.
Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users:
This is utterly despicable. “Scientists” perform human research on unconsenting persons, and reported that they successfully persuaded some people to change their views by lying to them with AIs.
Did they contact all those people later to explain that they’d been lied to? Or are they still wandering around with their changed opinions, persuading their friends, and voting?
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Screenshot your LinkedIn app home screen.
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Make a web page with that background.
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Add a link at the top to display the QR code of your choice.
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Add a link to that on your home screen.
Voila. Now you can make anyone at any tech conference open the QR code of your choosing. “Hey, let’s be buddies!”
Sharon Osbourne calls for Irish band’s U.S. visas to be revoked after Coachella show - pennlive.com
“At a time when the world is experiencing significant unrest, music should serve as an escape, not a stage for political discourse.”
This is the stupidest possible take on music and art. Her husband sang “War Pigs”.
California is now 4th-largest economy in world, surpassing Japan
Some Americans constantly talk about how much CA supposedly sucks and is on the edge of collapse. My favorite criticism is that “no one wants to live there because it’s so expensive”, although the fundamentals of capitalism explain that it’s so expensive because so many people want to live there.
Meanwhile, back in reality…
Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move - ServeTheHome
Summary: Synology wants to force users to buy Synology-branded HDs in even their consumer NASes. If they do this, I’ll never buy another NAS from them, ever.
Imagine Toyota requiring you to use Toyota gasoline. No way, no how.
How to bypass Credit Karma's 2FA
Locked out of your Credit Karma account’s 2FA? No problem! Here’s how I can log into mine:
- Log in with my username and password.
- Try the 2FA challenge once and let it fail.
- Navigate to accounts.creditkarma.com
Ta-da! I’m in. I reported this a month ago but they haven’t acknowledged it as an issue yet. If I stumbled across this, you can bet the bad guys are already using it.
Street art in Berlin.
The afternoon’s adventure: Traveler’s Notebook aficionado nerdery.
![Photo of a page in a notebook: “- Went to a nearby stationery store to get a Traveler’s Notebook stamp” And a red stamp saying “Luiban Berlin, Germany \[…\] Official Partner Shop Visit Pass”](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/763/2025/image-20250416-143601-53ed421d.jpg)
This is what a dare looks like.
My wife and I went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
My god.
My god.
It’s never been so hard to make myself stay and learn about something important.
2025-03-17: I report a critical vulnerability (trivial, complete 2FA bypass) to a well-known company’s security email alias. No reply.
2025-04-07: I report it again to their bug bounty program.
2025-04-09: They close it as a duplicate.
Their bug bounty program says, basically, “we never disclose reports. Don’t discuss them with anyone.”
23 days into this episode, I’m starting to weigh the responsible thing to do here.
cormiertyshawn895/PixelPerfect:
Pixel Perfect lets you increase the text size of iPhone and iPad apps on Mac. Say goodbye to small and blurry text, and enjoy pixel-perfect graphics, all rendered at 100% native resolution.
I just learned about this nifty little MIT-licensed tool that makes iPhone apps running on Macs render text at the correct size. It makes those apps so much more pleasant!
I am not thrilled with the price of new video games. Don’t take this to mean that.
But in 1982, the Atari 2600 game “E.T.” went for about $120 in 2025 USD. I promise you that any modern AAA game is much more fun.
I’d started a new job a month before April Fools. I got to the office very early and then had the idea to put a piece of tape over everyone’s optical mouse laser. I scurried around and got everyone except the office manager, including myself. Then I left.
When I returned to the office, people stifled giggles and watched me go to my desk. I sat down, wiggled my mouse, and said, “Hey, what’s wrong with my computer?” My coworkers started laughing and came over to show me how I’d been “tricked.”
The office manager arrived a little later. I watched with my new chums as she came in, sat down, and started working without any incident. Someone popped their head into her office to ask if her computer was working, and she laughed and said of course it was. I sowed the seeds of discord: “She must’ve done it!”
And that’s how the whole office blamed the office manager for my April Fools joke. I was quite pleased about that.