#I'm interested in computery things!

[mwydyn]

One thing I found a bit annoying is people can really shit on online geology degrees

And I understand! It's not ideal! It's normally a hands-on course and field trips are an important element of it and yeah my online course does do field trips but they're not mandatory and can be quite difficult to get to. They're spread all across the country in quite remote places so if you're relying on public transport it can be very expensive and take more hours to get to than the actual trip lasts

But when people are shitting on these courses they aren't acknowledging that you could follow up with a in-person masters

or go into a more computer side of it like GIS or environmental data science

and these benefit from an earth science degree!

so just like

You still actually have some pretty good options but there's this assumption that if you're doing geology it's because you want to handle the rocks and work with rocks and be on site all day even though those jobs are actually quite shit in the beginning because you can work 12 hour days in random places

so it's just people got oh no this is stupid you should never do this but I'm going to ignore all the things this could actually help you with

[starlikeswomen]

LOOKING 4 ROBLOX CODERS!!!!!!

tumblr TWEAKED the first time i tried to post this so lets try now

HI CHAT!!!!

i have been. a little busy lately. very passionately working on a little project of mine!!! BUT!!! i unfortunately cannot do it all on my own.. i am. um. very dumb when it comes to computery... programming stuff..... SO!!! we are looking for some. people to help with that!!! yes

(if u guys want more bluudud posts share thsi bc the more work taken off my shoulders for this game the more work i can put into art hehe)

WHOSE OUR TEaM??!??!????!

@ssmallbox , @comicfizz , @underterminator and @astrxl-angel (as well as one other builder but they weren't here when I drew this)

we may also be taking extra music/building help but that is not as needed rn

HOWEVER!!! as you may notice. none of us know how to do the actual!! programmy stuff. THATS WHERE YOU (hopefully) COME IN!!!!!

WHAT IS URGE?

URGE (Otherwise known as Untitled Roblox Game/Experience) is a character driven, turn based RPG that sees you taking the perspective of a girl named Quyen Minh, as she travels through Robloxia looking for her lost brother. (As well as possibly getting caught up in stopping an evil scheme, or two.)

OBVIOUSLY kudos to games like block tales, forsaken and undertale for inspiration, although this is sort of supposed to be a love letter to the genre of rpgs in general. rpgs!!! my favorite genre!!!!

WHAT WOULD I BE DOING??!??!?

making the game work!!! hopefully there will be a small team of coders that can get things all sorted out umm. I'm not really sure what is needed so! things will be more thoroughly discussed when we actually. get ppl on. yeah

HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED???!??!/?!?

PLEASE!!! even if you are not a coder/programmer who can help but are interested in this idea anyhow, SHARE THIS POST!!!! the more inquiry we get THE BETTA!!!!

thank u for reading

[ms-demeanor]

sorry if you've answered this before, and i hope you don't mind me asking, how do you know so much about computers and what seems to me like everything in the world? how did you become so knowledgeable? it's amazing

i just know a little about a lot of things and I probably have a fair number of things that I've dug into more than most people and less than people who actually focus on that stuff! It's kind of an illusion!

I do know a lot about computers and that's because I've worked at a computer company for 12 years and have been deep into a computery subculture for about 20 years - I do genuinely know a lot about consumer computers. That I'll own and that's experience.

I know a fair amount about literature because I've got a degree in it!

I know a fair amount about journalism because I've got most of a degree in it and I worked with journalists for a long time!

I know a fair amount about nutrition because I've got most of a degree in it and because I've been focused on reading a lot about nutrition for more than a decade because of my own food issues!

But mostly I'm just someone who falls down rabbitholes and has a decent ability to recall what I find when I run down them.

Also I get curious about things and will just go. Experience them.

Like at some point i came across a site for people who own and use RealDolls and I got interested in learning more. The site required an application because they didn't want people just trolling so I applied and I ended up reading through the whole site and reading the magazines they sent out for years after because it was just interesting. The way these guys bought clothes or compared repair techniques and cleaning techniques, the way they constructed identities for their dolls - it was all interesting! So now I know about the proper way to store a RealDoll and how their skeletons are put together and the best way to prevent rips or clean inserts.

Now imagine that with everything.

I got interested in quack medicine so I ended up reading the entire back catalogs of quackwatch and science-based medicine.

I got interested in the history of aspartame as a scare-word and I ended up reading a couple of books, SEVERAL entire blogs with decades-long runs, purchasing a military magazine from the 90s, and submitting a FOIA request.

But, like. I don't own a RealDoll or work in that industry. I am not a medical professional. I am not a chemist who works with aspartame. So I get these weird little collections of information where I know what *seems* like a lot to someone who hasn't looked into it but I know a lot less than someone who has taken the time to actually dedicate themselves to that topic.

And sometimes it's a years-long dive and sometimes it's a months-long dive and sometimes it's a few hours of me digging online until I feel satisfied with what I've learned and I never come back to it, but I've got three more talking points than your average joe at a party would.

(Also though I've attended various colleges at various levels for ten-ish years now and I've taken probably more college-level classes on a lot of subjects than most people have because I've now spent several years just kind of kicking around at community colleges and deciding that a cartooning class sounds fun or that a mesoamerican art class fills certain transfer requirements or that I might as well brush up on spanish, french, and german. Access to low-cost college classes in california is a big part of this, and having the time and money to take classes while i'm working is something that I've been very lucky with)

I've also worked pretty much continuously since I was 18, sometimes holding multiple jobs at once, and I know a lot of interesting people who do a lot of interesting things and I ask them about their interesting experiences and if they offer me a chance to go do cool shit with them, like launch a high altitude balloon or blow up some dynamite that's about to expire or join a band, I do it!

I was also one of those kids who had no friends and spent too much time at the library so I'd do things like read through medical textbooks or pull a book of home chemical formulas out of the trash and read it or take it into my head that I was going to read all of Shakespeare before I got to high school so I was a really annoying twelve-year-old and that kind of thing never really let up.

I don't know! I don't think it's that unusual and I think most people do this kind of thing I just happen to have less focus than a lot of people and talk a lot more.

[disgruntleddemon]

It's better world Emma-May time! (although this design is also my design for her in cannon lol)

she's def a character i'm still very uncertain on. she has even less to go by than Tate, which is saying something! literally all we know is her name, that she left Fiddleford at some point, and a drawing of a picture of her.

i've decided to have her work making arcade games. partly cause i wanted her to also do something computery, and partly cause i thought it'd be funny if she worked for the same company that made fight fighters. i gotta figure out more personality, but i do picture her smart and funny. curious enough to go against her better judgement sometimes, and lots of random little talents.

i also like the hc that her family used to be cihpertologists. i'm going w the idea that her family left when she was too young to really remember any of it. she know of it, and how it affected her family, but doesn't rly have any memories of it.

anyways, i am once again letting the characters be a little ooc. there isn't rly a way to make Emma in character, but, Fiddleford and Ford will be a little bit, cause they end up deciding to tell her everything. or at least a summery.

basically, now that Ford and Fiddleford are officially together, it means Ford actually has to make the trip to palo alto w Fidds to meet Emma and Tate. tbh, this probably would have happened regardless, with McGucket living w Ford, but all the same lol.

obviously, they are ridiculously stressed. and with the fact they'd like Tate to be able to stay in gf sometimes, they realize they Emma deserves to be in the loop. especially cause she'd probably find out eventually anyway, they might as well get a chance to explain themselves first.

suffice to say they're not exactly making the best impression lol. and she's, very reasonably, pissed. but despite herself, she is kind of fascinated by Ford having dealt with Bill. the world's most bizarre case of 6 degrees of separation.

i think she can't help but be interested in the supernatural stuff. i kinda picture a gag where literally everyone handles the supernatural better than Fiddleford hjkjhjk. she moves closer to gf at some point, so i kinda need a reason for her to do so.

that being said, at least for awhile, she doesn't want Tate going. the Tate situation is kind of all over the place for awhile. mostly until Emma is certain he'll be safe and taken care of in gravity falls. at first, Fiddleford has to make visits to californa, then she makes a few visits to gf with tate, then she lets Tate stay without also going, and eventually, she ends up moving closer.

anyway, up until this point there's a running gag of Fiddleford insisting it was a society, not a cult. unfortunately, it's hard to argue w Emma on this one lmao.

Fiddleford fucked off to the middle of no where, started getting more distant, randomly dropped off the face of the earth and stopped contacting his family, and is now finally trying to fix things. suffice to say he really has to prove he's committed to actually doing so.

as for Ford, his social bumbling actually helped him out in his first meeting. yes, he's tripping over his words and clearly anxious out of his mind, but he's obviously trying so so hard lol. i think him and Em would have been friends in better circumstances. she can't help but find him endearing, even if she thinks he's a dumbass.

i'd like for her to at least be on neutral terms with everyone so she can pop in for an adventure here and there, but i also thinks she deserves to be pissed, and make things harder for Fiddleford. local man actually has to face consequences instead of escaping to a literal cult he started, y'know?

[bauhausdog]

★re-introducing myself: ★

hi, im bauhausdog, im a queer furry artist, i make cute cozy drawings and i'm also a producer. i'm on bluesky, soundcloud and on tiktok (@housebausdog) as well! im disabled, agender and mlm.

★ reasons to follow me ★: - i have stan twitter humor - i do cute mlm art

★ my interests / things i like★: - music (charli xcx, lady gaga, pc music, and a bunch of french house) - groovy crunchy computery aesthetics (vaporwave, webcore, punk, 1 bit, techcore etc.) - steven universe - ena - minecraft

my commissions are open btw!

[samflir]

What makes a good boot sequence?

A while ago, I had my first truly viral post on Mastodon. It was this:

You might've seen it. It got almost four hundred boosts and reached beyond Mastodon to reddit and even 4chan. I even saw an edit with a spinning frog on the left screen. I knew the post would go down well with tech.lgbt but I never expected it to blow up the way it did.

I tried my best to express succinctly exactly what it is I miss about BIOS motherboards in the age of UEFI in this picture. I think looking at a logo and spinner/loading bar is boring compared to seeing a bunch of status messages scroll up the screen indicating hardware being activated, services being started up and tasks being run. It takes the soul out of a computer when it hides its computeriness.

I think a lot of people misunderstood my post as expressing a practical preference over an aesthetic one, and there was at least a few thinking this was a Linux fanboy post, which it certainly is not. So here's the long version of a meme I made lol.

Stages

I remember using two family desktop computers before moving over a family laptop. One ran Windows XP and the other ran Windows 7. Both were of the BIOS era, which meant that when booting, they displayed some status information in white on black with a blinking cursor before loading the operating system. On the XP machine, I spent longer in this liminal space because it dual-booted. I needed to select Windows XP from a list of Linux distros when booting it.

I've always liked this. Even as a very little kid I had some sense that what I was seeing was a look back into the history of computing. It felt like a look "behind the scenes" of the main GUI-based operating system into something more primitive. This made computers even more interesting than they already were, to me.

Sequences

The way old computers booted was appealing to my love of all kinds of fixed, repeating sequences. I never skip the intros to TV shows and I get annoyed when my local cinema forgets to show the BBFC ratings card immediately before the film, even though doing so is totally pointless and it's kinda strange that they do that in the first place. Can you tell I'm autistic?

Booting the windows 7 computer would involve this sequence of distinct stages: BIOS white text -> Windows 7 logo with "starting windows" below in the wrong aspect ratio -> switch to correct resolution with loading spinner on the screen -> login screen.

Skipping any would feel wrong to me because it's missing a step in one of those fixed sequences I love so much. And every computer that doesn't start with BIOS diagnostic messages is sadly missing that step to my brain, and feels off.

Low-level magic

I am extremely curious about how things work and always have been, so little reminders when using a computer that it has all sorts of complex inner workings and background processes going on are very interesting to me, so I prefer boot sequences that expose the low-level magic going on and build up to the GUI. Starting in the GUI immediately presents it as fundamental, as if it's not just a pile of abstractions on top of one another. It feels deceptive.

There may actually be some educational and practical value in computers booting in verbose mode by default. Kids using computers for the first time get to see that there's a lot more to their computer than the parts they interact with (sparking curiosity!), and if a boot fails, technicians are better able to diagnose the problem over a phone call with a non-technical person.

Absolute boot sequence perfection

There's still one last thing missing from my family computer's boot sequence, and that's a brief flicker of garbage on screen as VRAM is cleared out. Can't have everything I guess. Slo-mo example from The 8-Bit Guy here:

[jadetheblade4]

Click for Palestine and other causes here:

Help Dr. Smedar Shabat and her family out of Gaza:

Warning about a certain type of ad from a certain type of app:

HELLO NEW AND OLDCOMERS until my sideblog gets unshadowbanned (or maybe this is permenant sigh), I will be blogging here!! Please follow this account as well if you are following @silly-billy-inc !!!!

☆ For those that don't know me, Hi!! My name is Swirly/Jade/Billy and I'm just a lil' lady doing her best hehe. I'm cupioromantic objectum lesbian 🤯🤯🤯 and I use any pronouns!! I'm also 18!! What the freak!! I am but freshly born!! current interest is Dog Man, but I also like a bunch of other things (duh) like uhh InvestiGators and Robot Dreams and Doraemon and Madoka Magica and Beastars and object shows and a bunch of other stuff that I'll list later if I can remember augh...

☆ I also selfship with Dippy from Dog Man and my computery oc Arcaea they are my girlfriends my wives my everything I love them so much and give them a thousand kisses every day!!! I don't mind doubles just don't be rude dude ^_^

☆ Y'know the drill, dni pedos, terfs, anti-lgbtq+, zoophiles, zionists, etc. I will block you if you pose any red flags for me.

☆ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me if I'm posting or reblogging harmful stuff, I'm a human just like you and make mistakes and I don't know everything in the whole wide universe to keep myself in check. Don't be afraid to reach out and inform me about this and that, I'm pretty much an open book and will correct my mistakes!!

Here are some lovely links:

☆ Lemon Demon Oc Masterpost

☆ Dog Man: Rewritten Official Blog

☆ Dog Man Emo Au (not set in the subculture)

☆ Jade's Guide To Making Homemade Buttons

☆ My Side Blog (currently shadowbanned, may she rest in peace...)

☆ My Twitarrrrr

☆ MY ARTFIGHT ACCOUNT FRESHLY MADE WOOAOAUAUAUA

☆ My strawpage!!!

☆ My Spontaneous Bluesky

Uhhh i think thats it have a great day!!!

[fictitious-symbiosis]

F/O SPOTLIGHT FRIDAY

TODAY'S F/O: CALCULESTER

Calculester is the sweetest sweetest computery guy ever, hailing from the Monster Prom series of games!

I had played the original Monster Prom years ago, and did enjoy the game, but never got too into it. That was until I heard there was DLC to date this robotic guy, and from then it was love at first sight. He just looks so dreamy 💚 And that's before I've even gotten into his personality!

What I love the most about him is his personality. At the time I met him, I struggling with severe morality OCD. And Calculester was very similar in that regard, valuing morality above all else, but still learning what did and didn't fit into his moral code as I was relearning my own. Knowing he was going through such a similar journey to me was a huge comfort, and once we found each other and were together it became a journey we could take in tandem.

The only downside? Sometimes, when one of us gets into a spiral trying to work out the "right" thing, we can easily bring the other one down with us... Its times like this we are both grateful for our other friends, who can give us a new perspective outside of our own.

Calculester also has a passionate hobby for gardening. I've never been one for gardening myself, not being that good at looking after living things - but since he is, I get to check out all his beautiful plants without having to worry about them dying from my negligence. To get me to feel involved, though, he has a pitcher plant that he helps me care for - He picked it out after I shared how much I like the carnivorous plants, and I love feeding it bugs!

His love for plants means he can also help me lorecraft for Pikmin, one of my favourite things ever! He's gotten into the game too, interested particularly in the Pikmin as well as the various flora in the game. Anytime we play together, he's always thinking aloud to himself about where the puants are growing and such.

I know that Calculester loves me just the same as I love him. We like to be silly and goofy together, we share a sense of humour, and we both feel our attractions can be unorthodox. I don't entirely understand my sexuality and think it's possible I'm on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums, and he feels similarly, not knowing if the attraction he experiences is the same as what biological beings experience. But that means its just another thing we get to explore together, and we get to define our own version of love that is just for us. It doesn't matter how we compare to other people - just how much joy we get from being in each others company, and that we can share anything and everything with each other. That is something that nobody can take away, because its just for us.

Anyway, that's just a little peek into the relationship I have with Calculester, my most dearly beloved! We're always on the same page and exploring life at the same pace, and I'm sure we'll be bringing each other joy for a long time to come. I love you Calculester!

[p1ckthep01son]

EVERYONE INTERESTED IN THE GUY RIPLEY:

i'm going to make a post when i get home tonight but i am mostly looking for video editors, musicians (mainly guitar, piano, or computery electronic stuff), people with dcd knowledge/lore or experience (if you were there in 2008 i would love your input/stories!), digital artists, and people interested in participating in a potential twitch stream watch party! mutuals, followers, or strangers, everybody is welcome! i will share moee details when i sit down and draft things up. note that i'm still in the planning stages so this project is far from complete, this is more of an interest check to see what a team of creators might look like for me!

[gilearstimboards]

i did wonder how you felt about mcyt boards

generally, we separate the characters played in the videos from the real life people, even if there is somewhat less separation between them than there is for actors and characters in tv shows for example

like, my favourite is mumbo jumbo from hermitcraft, irl he does a lot of sports like mountain biking and stuff, while his character on hermitcraft seems a lot less physically active, and the man himself seems to play more into his nerdier, redstoney, computery side than he does irl so there is some measurable distinction between cc (content creator) and c (character)

there's also some hermitcraft people on tumblr, such as smallishbeans, pearlescentmoon and maybe gem? not sure, but i'm sure they'd really enjoy seeing stimboards you made for them bc pearl especially seems quite interested in the fanwork

sorry if thats information you already knew, i hope this helps in figuring out whether you'd be comfortable doing further hermitcraft boards (i have avoided requesting any for the same reason, but autism took over in this case lmao)

hi gilear, hope you're having a good day

This is all great information that I did not know (I do not watch minecraft youtubers, I used to watch DanTDM when I was younger - but not anymore).

It's a complex issue, but at the end of the day if the creators themselves enjoy and are aware of the fanwork, I am comfortable. I try to come at it from the angle of: how would I feel if a stranger made this about me?

If a stranger: used details from my personal life, headcanoned a sexuality, headcanoned an agere dynamic etc onto me it would make me extremely uncomfortable.

If a stranger: took a character and used details I of my character (even if they overlapped with ir me), headcanoned ideas for me. That would be fine, as there's a degree of separation there. They would only be using aspects of me I deem okay to put out there into the world to be played around with - if I put myself into the character.

I hope that makes some sense as to what my perspective is regarding these things.

My stance on mcyt characters therefore is that if the creator is happy with fanwork, and there is a level of degree of separation (the creator does have divergences from their character, even if small) then I think it's okay. Again, I'm not a mcyt or celebrity, so I do not know what it's like. However, I would hate to make content that would make a creator uncomfortable even if they will never see it.

If the fanwork is liked however, I would be happy to.

However even with characters, just because the line is blurred with mcyt I will not be doing sexuality headcanons or agere headcanons associated with it (unless somehow the creator specifically says that's okay for their character).

I hope that clears things up. :)

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[dihalect]

i've mentioned doing computery linguisticsy stuff with homestuck before. which i'm still very interested in, because a) i love homestuck and b) that's a million+ words ripe fot the parsing (if we include the epilogues and/or the games).

anyway. there's this thing called doc2vec, where you take a document and represent it as a vector on a plot. (google-images 'doc2vec' and you'll see some examples.) i would LOVE to do that with each character's dialogue. like, compiling every line a given character has said into one big doc, and turning that into a vector. which is actually fairly easy once you've got the necessary tools.

the most common usage of doc2vec is to compare documents to each other. so the most obvious application for these vectors would be to compare characters. like maybe comparing/contrasting the dialogue of the strilondes, the crockbert-claire-harlishes, trolls vs their dancestors, dersites vs prospitians... endless possibilities.

you could also separate this dialogue by act/epilogue to visualize how a character's dialogue changes over time. (could also do this with the prose/narration, actually.) or, as i'm particularly interested in, you could compare the dialogue of splinters, or alternate versions of a given character. like lil hal vs dirk, or vriska vs (vriska), davesprite vs dave.... i'd LOVE to see how combo characters (lord english, davepetasprite, tavrisprite, doc scratch, etc) compare to their constituent characters.

[lesbian-janai]

i just watched the mlp movie trailer and now I'm mad because the anthro pirate birdy is voiced by zoe saldana and im probably going to watch it just for that

[resurrectedteleport]

Wow! I would like to be as smart as an computer

Actually, we already have a computer…

Great! Great news

Now before we begin our journey

I just need some information from you

What's your name?

Where do you live?

What do you like to eat?

I live in my house

Spaghetti!

Well my name is-

Great news!

Now just a few more questions, and we will be on our way

Wait a second

What's your favorite color?

(Stop talking)

Do you like cows or goats milk?

(Be quiet)

Do you have brown hair?

What is your blood type?

Are you a-

Shut up!

Don't touch meEEeEeEeeEe!

(Is it better?)

(that fucks! 10/10)

[[ scary glitch interlude ]]

W-welcome! to my digital home Everything made out of numbers and code Wow, we're all computery! Oh yeah! wow, wow, wow This is a computer I don't get it How can it be If I'm sitting at home when I'm inside the screen? But you're not you! You're your digital you! Virtually real, but controlled by real you But if he's not quite real, then I'm not real, too! And your not real you is inside your real you! Oh, wow, how amazing and interesting, too But in this digital world, what can we do?

:)

...what can we do?! Hey, good question! Well, it's up to you In the digital world, there's only three things to do-

[yokonami]

Ahoy! Hope you have an amazing start to your week :)) Also, (if you have the time) could you tell me a bit about yourself? - Secret Santa 🎅🌻 (i have a terrible memory so if i've already sent one today i'm sorry)

Haha you’re good, this is the only message I’ve gotten today :) Well as you can probably guess, I might like Day6 a bit~~ I only got into them this May, but I fell so hard and so fast I like immediately bought both of the first albums (on Amazon so I’d get them faster) and also pre-ordered Sunrise as soon as it was available. My bias was originally Dowoon, since drums are my favorite instrument (and have been since I was in middle school), but then I was watching the Pocket Lives and Wonpil smiled at me and my whole world was shook........... so now I’m a Pil stan 😅Though i do feel a special connection to Jae since 1) he’s only 2 months older than me 2) my irl best friend is named Jay and she loves penguins

Besides them, my top 3 groups are f(x) (Amber is my UB), Astro (I have an Astro blog if you’re interested!) and SHINee (I got to see them in Dallas I’m so #blessed). 

Outside of Kpop I graduated college a couple years ago with degrees in graphic design, german language, and computer science ^^ So I like arty things and computery things (hence the Every Day6 graphic I made)

(you said tell me a little bit and I wrote a novel;;;;;; haha) How about you?? :D Interests, hobbies, other groups you stan, story of how you got into Day6? (also who’s your bias 👀👀)