varx @varx@infosec.exchange

Entertaining story about doing physical security awareness training and screwing it up: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/6/ (transcript: https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/6/)

I really appreciate the balance that NearlyFreeSpeech.net takes in this blog post on "free speech" and what it actually means for their service:

https://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2021/01/19/free-speech-in-2021/

Yes, they'll host content from racists, but they won't give special assistance, and they'll absolutely turn people in to the authorities if they cross the line into illegality.

This is a rare stance to take these days, and I bet it gets them shit from "both sides". (It's also more than I'd personally have patience for!)

I recently backed up and restored my main home server so I could reinstall it, and ran into an issue with the user and group IDs having changed -- which made restoring more complicated.

A writeup on the small script I wrote to fix the situation: https://www.brainonfire.net/blog/2020/12/27/rsync-auto-mapping/

Of note: It was very, very useful to have backed up /etc/passwd and /etc/group along with the user data!

Github has reinstated youtube-dl and is committing to « review Section 1201-related accusations and allow code repository owners to dispute those accusations before taking down their code »:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-after-riaas-abuse-dmca

...oh shit, right, I should start by *interviewing myself*.

If I had a well-defined problem I could just beat with code until it stopped moving, this would all be a lot easier.

Trying to build software for humans is like trying to balance a stick balanced on a stick balanced on a stick balanced on my hand. -.-

Is there a term for the combination of yak-shaving and coder's block?

I keep wanting to work on my app but I can't make the network view until I build the gossip protocol ...until I *specify* the gossip protocol ...until I have key trust worked out ...until I have the threat model defined ...until I do some user-needs interviews ...until I figure out who I need to interview (i.e. who all this is for.)

I've heard that donations don't go towards Firefox development, but rather are distributed to initiatives that Mozilla funds, internal or external. Which makes me a little confused about what they want and need, along with some other mixed signals.

I'd really rather it went towards reducing their reliance on Google.

But... I don't know if this is true.

Apparently I made a big enough donation to Mozilla last year that I am now on their "personally handled donors" list or something.

A few weeks ago I was invited to an unrecorded, invite-only conference call on Mozilla's future or something (which I had to miss, and may not have been interactive?) and today I've been asked if I want to schedule a 15 minute call to share my thoughts on how Mozilla has done this year.

I should probably do it, if only to clarify where the money *actually goes*.