So my local library's makerspace offered a free event where they brought in a bunch of old tower computers, printers, game consoles, etc., - laid out a bunch of iFixit toolkits - and let everyone (kids and adults alike) take everything apart!!!

One kid was hesitant because they didn't want to break anything and the library staff were like, none of it works. We're recycling and throwing everything out afterwards! Go hog wild, you won't get in trouble! You're meant to break it and take it apart!

The kid was absolutely enthusiastic and went to town!

I got to be a kid again and go into detail about all the computer parts and what each of the hardware did. It was awesome watching my children and other kids and adults interact, share tools, show off what they found.

I spoke with the organizer afterwards and asked if this was a regular thing and he said that he didn't have enough old equipment to make it regular. I laughed and said all of my friends have CLOSETS FULL OF THIS STUFF and the idea of giving it to a bunch of kids and adults to play with would bring joy and meaning to their life, lol!

I gave him the time to meet up with @fxbghackers and told him to make a community announcement about needing old electronics for donation to take apart and he'd get truck loads.

Just another way community helps each other out. This is post scarcity education.

#solarPunk #mutualAid #community #library #makerSpace

AI is an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.

Blockchain was an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.

Pursuit of endless growth is pursuit of a cancer.

Moore's Law is dead and we have reached a happy plateau. We dont need more computing power. We can do so much now. If you need something to chew on, work on making it more efficient. Make the code smaller and faster and lighter.

And less of a power draw.

#AI #Blockchain #SolarPunk

I am a hacker god.

I got the 2008 Windows game Spore to run on my Ubuntu desktop.

Downloaded the Windows version of it via Linux Steam (its on sale for $5), used Steam's Proton compatibility layer, and attempted to run it.

Got 1004 and 2000 errors.

Went into ProtonDB and noticed folks running Ubuntu having the same errors but no solution.

Ran down a solution for another game from three years ago posted on Reddit. It involved editing the systems Windows registry (IN LINUX!!!) which amounts to a text file in linux. Tweaked the old solution to match today's environment (the file paths were off).

AND IT WORKED!!!

Need to go add the solution to ProtonDB now.

Put yourself in Jia Tan's shoes, the malicious contributor to the xz backdoor...

It's been, what, two... three?... years since you started this campaign. You've had the entire support of your team and of your chain of command.

Your coders created a complex and sublime backdoor. A secure! backdoor that only you and your team could connect to. Heck it can even be deleted remotely. This is clean code. A responsible hack that doesn't open up the backdoor for others to hijack.

You spend years on your long con - your social engineering skills are at the top of the game. You've ingratiated yourself painstakingly into multiple teams. Finally it all pays off and you're ready to go!

You succeed multiple times in getting your backdoor inserted in all the major Linux distributions!!! Now its just a matter of weeks before it makes it to production and stable releases!

This is the culmination of years of labor and planning and of a massive team and budget.

You did good.

This will get you promoted. Esteemed by your colleagues and leadership alike. Your spouse and kids will understsnd why you haven't been at home lately and why you've spent all those late nights at the office.

It's finally going to pay off.

But what's this?! Some rando poking around in their box running a pre-release unstable version of linux has found everything?!?! It's all being ripped down?! And on a Friday before a western holiday weekend?!?!

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!!!

Three years for nothing!!! My wife is going to leave me! I missed my kid's recital for this!!! They'll hate me because I told them it was worth it. Daddy will be able to play with you again once Daddy finishes this last bit of work. But it was all for nothing!!!

Leadership took a big risk on me and my team but I kept assuring them it would pay off!

It would be one thing if another nation state found it and stopped it. But one random dude poking his nose where it shouldn't belong?! Ohhh fuck, I'm going to be fired. We're going to lose our budget. My team is going to be fired. I've let down everyone that ever believed in me and supported me and relied on me!

Oh fuck!!!

#xz #backdoor #xzBackDoor #cve #cve20243094 #infosec #hacking #FOSS

Make no mistake, the massive layoffs are intentional SHORT TERM sabotage by business decision makers with the goal of LONG TERM benefits for them.

They're trying to drive down the costs of labor. Specifically, they're firing everyone so that we'll accept lower wages upon rehire.

In #infosec, this will backfire on them.

By firing everyone, the level of security technical debt will increase that they'll have to hire everyone AND THEN SOME back at even higher rates.

So. Neat. Fucking great.

In the mean time, research how to create unions. Start doing so. Tech folks and infosec are not used to needing collective bargaining. You need it now.

Learn about the concepts of Economic Leverage and how it works as an individual contributor and when that fails how Collective Leverage works. The whole "if you fire that one person, we all quit" sort of thing works.

You all hack systems every day. You all study Social Engineering and combat it every day.

Hack the labor market. Socially engineer our mutual protection.

#mutualAid #collectiveBargaining #UnionStrong