Posts by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
(DIR) Post #AuE6H5uQgTDFMWRRKK by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-05-18T18:07:55Z
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I wrote in my journal yesterday and decided to do a bit in cursive instead of block print letters. It was a little difficult to get back into it and the word "sure" in cursive looked wrong no matter how many times I rewrote it.But I remember how, apparently. Still, it is obvious why "handwriting" was my worst subject in elementary school.Edit: and this is from a person who was proficient with Palm's "Graffiti" -- I just quit using those skills. I can't even remember why I stopped. I think it was too hard to read my own writing.I had a friend who wrote in block print tiny-caps and his handwriting was pristine. I wanted to be more like him.
(DIR) Post #AudARnra6dezR1JZjs by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-05-30T20:22:20Z
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@TonyStark @ienvision Look at the resistance to wearing masks during a pandemic. That's crazy! It's a bare minimum of human compassion toward others but it was a bridge too far for so many USians.
(DIR) Post #AufO2andKJyTLyGE3k by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-05-31T22:04:44Z
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One thing that bugs me about writing short stories I'm really proud of is that, if I ever want to have them published anywhere or even accepted for most contests, then I can never, ever share them online."I like this this so much that I can never show it to anyone."That's how it feels.#Writing
(DIR) Post #AujoMYPVIIYTAwzcuW by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-03T01:22:05Z
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If I read an article about a science thing and it says the exciting, controversial, paradigm shifting paper was published in ArXiv, I immediately stop reading the article. And I pronounce it "ark-siv" which I'm sure they'd hate.
(DIR) Post #AujrpsPQJmpLSdd4EK by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-05-31T23:38:09Z
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In the backstory bible for the world in which most of my stories take place, I have a thing called "The Blight". It is an agent of Oblivion and serves to bring all of reality back to absolute zero, no heat, no light, no movement, no time. It undoes creation.But I'm left unable to name its opposite. What do you call everywhere, everywhen, every thought, every color, infinitely bright and hot, teeming with immortal life?What's the opposite of a naked singularity?Ubiquity?Omnilarity?What do you call the thing that starts The Big Bang?What is the first tick of forward in time called?I don't even know what hashtags to put on this but it's appreciate any suggestions for terms to use. I know you must pass through The Gleam to find it but The Gleam is not of it. The Gleam is the shining world while what lies beyond is blazing.
(DIR) Post #AujrpuOmv7VVdFLaW8 by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-02T16:37:18Z
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@NateBarham Well I'm sure it has many names. The Song is another good one. I'm not musically inclined but I have thought about reality as music in the past, how much of what our species does would be noise and discord among the harmony.
(DIR) Post #AusR3MknrKayzyTbDE by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-07T05:12:09Z
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I have ADHD and Autism so my brain's reward mechanism is fundamentally broken.I spent 30+ years dealing with undiagnosed gender dysphoria and eating things that were bad for me but tasted so good was my escape. I've got the obesity to prove it.Food was a reliable way for me to get a boost, to feel good. But Wegovy took that away from me and it made me mad at first.I didn't even know I had an eating disorder until Wegovy cured it. Suddenly, my primary dopamine source just wasn't hitting like it used to and it felt weird and wrong.Even after I started to transition, food was still my primary way to get a boost. It's actually embarrassing how often I think about food and the effect it has on me.But then I was prescribed Wegovy because I was prediabetic. And it turned off the switch.It was like a magic trick.Insurance covered it for $25 / month.And for nine months, food was no longer my illicit lover.I lost 40 pounds like it was nothing.Then my insurance stopped covering it.It would be $1,600 / month.So I stopped taking it. I had to.Now I'm on Vyvanse which is for ADHD but, at higher doses, also can help with binge eating disorder. I'm not at the target dose yet.I've gained back all of the weight I lost.The "food noise" thoughts aren't as intense, but once I start eating, it is hard to stop. Just thinking about eating can get me going so I try not to.I mean, I had a prescription medication that fixed it, that completely eliminated the problem.Cured it.But now I can't have it because insurance changed its fucking mind about covering it.Now their guidelines say that under no circumstances other than a full-blown diabetes diagnosis will they cover any of the GLP-1 drugs. And even when they do, they will only cover the ones explicitly approved for diabetes: Ozympic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro.It just doesn't seem right. It stopped the problem that is pushing me toward diabetes but I can't have it until I already have diabetes.I hate this about myself. I've accepted that I'm bisexual, that I'm transgender, that I have ADHD, that I'm on the autism spectrum.But this having a binge eating disorder still feels like a personal failing, a moral failing, like I should have done something differently, like it is my fault.I hate it about myself. I hate that I have the dumbeset eating disorder. I tell myself, "Just stop eating, idiot" but it's not that easy. I wish it was. It should be. It isn't. Why isn't it that easy?This is a fucking addiction and that's stupid. Addicted to food? Right. Aren't we all addicted to food because if we don't eat, we die? Duh.It's so dumb. But here it is.#BingeEatingDisorder #EatingDisorder
(DIR) Post #AvCmxDEZosqlhynQvo by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-16T20:04:52Z
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This is a question for amateur authors out there.How do you keep writing when nobody else cares?If that's enough for you to understand what I'm asking, then you don't need to read anything else.For anyone who wants to understand where I'm coming from, keep reading and it's likely to be long and most of y'all will peace out. I've been writing creative weird fiction since high school, thirty-five years ago, largely inspired by a childhood spent watching black and white creature features and other cheesy but incredibly earnest horror, sci-fi, and fantasy films and reading Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Steven King, and, eventually Lovecraft and Derleth.But I was also heavily inspired by James Joyce. Reading "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in English class was honestly life-changing. That's how I wanted to write. Joyce, along with Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", and Conrad Aiken's "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" were my goalposts.So that's how I write, what I aspire to be.I'm not.I will never be.I'm not a great writer, merely adequate.Further, I do not have a novel in me, just short stories and the occasional poem.Nobody cares about those today unless you are a name or have a collection to sell.genAI scraping the web to mulch its growth means I don't even feel comfortable sharing much of my work online.I enter contests and I do not win.I have no "fan base" nor even peers who look forward to what I have next. Nobody asks, nobody cares.My wife has never understood my stories but strongly encourages me to keep writing.So. How do I keep writing when nobody cares but me, when nobody else cares?I mean, I have other things to do. I have other responsibilities. I have a real job. I have mental health issues.I could just stop writing forever and nobody would stop me.I write, but not as often as I would like.I often wonder what the point even is.I want to share; I want to make connections. I want to find my people.But I haven't.Maybe never will.Edit: added hashtags #Writing #WritingAdvice #Writer #Writers #WritersOfMastodon
(DIR) Post #AvDQ1BgFR0cKGCcqm0 by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-17T01:15:18Z
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@cy My mom has a copy of the novel I wrote in high school / college. It's terrible. Nobody else will read it. But it made her proud. I think my problem is a lack of self-worth from the PTSD my mom's abusive second husband gave me from ages 10 through 22.I didn't think I deserve my own writing. It has to be for someone else or it isn't worth doing. I'm not worth it.That gives me something to talk to my therapist about. I do write about the monster, the outcast finding its way home or, more often, almost finding its way home.Waterborne are my stand-ins, descendants of nymphs, merfolk, and elementals too alien to be human and too human to return to the sea, never fitting in or finding a home, except, occasionally, in their dreams.
(DIR) Post #AvMeilJ9zl6CzT8cQi by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-21T19:11:29Z
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Billionaire Telegram founder leaves his $14 billion fortune to the 100+ children he’s fathered—which means $132 million for each lucky Gen Alpha kid | FortuneIs this white supremacy?
(DIR) Post #AvZsCjjSsdu0chMnfE by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-06-28T04:01:56Z
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Thinking back to when the company I worked for started migrating to Ethernet in the late 1990s. The lady who ran the mainframe terminals talked about switching from SNA over Token Ring to 3270 emulators over Ethernet but she pronounced it "Either" instead of "Ether".EithernetAlso, the team securing the fancy new Ethernet was called "TCP/IP Security". By the time I joined the team a couple years later, it was called "Network Security".#Eithernet
(DIR) Post #AwVVTL9wEDNfG4ppqq by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-07-25T23:33:14Z
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@futurebird only because of the Cephalotes porrasi with the flat head.
(DIR) Post #Awe0vI2wEwTFYXrmaW by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-07-29T23:04:45Z
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As someone who is neurodivergent, hearing "the cruelty is the point" didn't quite make sense. I didn't understand why they were so inconsistent.I had to think of it a little differently."They will choose whatever interpretation of the rules hurts the 'other', every time."That's it. That's the only thing that matters. It's more important that any other factor.
(DIR) Post #AxTT2QRW7wUTP1VgXY by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-08-23T19:05:44Z
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@elementals I haven't had a haircut since approximately 2010.
(DIR) Post #AzqqqzrebumvhLYwWu by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-11-03T00:18:03Z
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@futurebird they want to use the stolen artistic labor of millions of pieces of art created by real people like themselves without compensation or even attribution to prop up their own art? If they don't know how these LLMs are built, they should be educated. If they do know and are still enthusiastic about using them for their own gain, then they need to think about why they find it okay. Those things were fed every bit of publicly available art, music, literature, video, and photograph their crawlers could find ignoring copyrights, trademarks, and any other existing legal agreements or understanding. These companies went out of their way to violate every trust and bypass every filter to steal as much creative content as they could find. Using their tools justifies their theft. They hate human creativity so much they want to eliminate it and replace it with a regurgitation engine. They hate it so much they want to control it completely. You can finally produce that script because the tools are "free". Free to you because someone else paid the price.
(DIR) Post #B05sDV7CTPhu4D6ZaS by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-11-08T07:11:28Z
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@CatEveryHour looks like a Blankman costume.
(DIR) Post #B09Cpyd9lV7tAXYYIS by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-11-11T20:49:15Z
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@wolf480pl @phnt @sjvn @lanodan You have to really know your environment to know what mitigations and compensating controls you have. You need to know where your sensitive data is. You need to understand how you manage access and identity.Even a company with just a single website has to think about those things.My honest advice for any small company with a cyber presence would be to ask around and contract with a reputable firm that could help you create customized policies and procedures and then pay to be pen tested and audited against them at least once a year. If it's written down and agreed upon, you've already saved so much time trying to figure it out in the fly and prevented a great deal of finger pointing and blame. That and keep accurate network diagrams.
(DIR) Post #B0BWNoVoB9D74tt4Uq by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-11-12T23:37:33Z
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@futurebird you still get a dopamine hit even if you lose because before you know for sure your brain is thinking about it pretty hard. If you know the math, is your brain immune to it?
(DIR) Post #B0uNJ4OPGbLMPhJx8i by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-12-04T14:57:55Z
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@futurebird Many of the creators I like are on Nebula.If you like science docs, you can get Curiosity Stream.If you want to watch the original source of all the Brennan Lee Mulligan clips you see, you can get Dropout.Support your local PBS and get to stream it using PBS PassportLike movies? The Criterion ChannelShudderNone of these are free, but they aren't that expensive; PBS Passport can be as low as $5.00 a month, for example, and you get to watch Henry Louis Gates, Jr. make celebrities squirm on "Finding Your Roots"!Bonus: none of them are massive, shitty companies run by sociopathic assholes (as far as I know).#Streaming #StreamingWars #StreamingAlternatives #NebulaTV #CuriosityStream #DropoutTV #PBS #PBSPassport #TheCriterionChannel #Shudder
(DIR) Post #B1MpqBsUhATYKMqymm by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-12-18T04:33:46Z
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@dsalo @propublicaguild @ProPublica everything about generative AI is exploitative and grossly anti-human, pro-oligarchy trash. There is nothing good or positive about how these systems were trained or how they are run. To even consider using them is obscene and offensive to actual writers and journalists. I can understand corporations that focus on shareholder value over everything else salivating at the prospect of firing all the creative talent and replacing them with regurgitation engines. I thought ProPublica was better than that. I thought they cared about actual human beings over short term monetary gain. I was fucking chumped again. Maybe there are no "good" corporations.Do the right thing.Do the right thing and brag about it. Be the company that loudly, proudly, blatantly values human-driven content over shoveling out mass-produced slop.Put that on the homepage, next to every by line.Be the bastion you say you are.