Notices by niconiconi (niconiconi@cybre.space)

1970: We'll have flying cats.

2010: Cat litter box with DRM!

#TIL There are "smart" cat litter box with DRM. :blobcattilt: :blobcattilt: :blobcattilt: And some hackers in the cat community have written a FOSS firmware for these litter boxes to solve the problem... Welcome to the future!

https://jorgelo.co/the-future-a-cat-litter-and-drm-6dbda26428f8

BassoonTracker - Amiga music tracker in JavaScript - by Steffest https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/

#retrocomputing

Wired, 1993: Rebels with a Cause - Your Privacy. "On the cover were Eric Hughes, Tim May, John Gilmore, holding up an American flag, faces hidden behind white mask, their PGP fingerprints written on the foreheads. Gilmore even sporting an newly-founded EFF T-shirt. (from Thomas Rid, CS Monitor)"

Wired, 2019: YOU'RE IN PRIVATE MODE. To continue using a private window, sign in or subscribe. The title of the article being denied reads "It's Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser. Ad trackers are out of control".

The service manuals of old professional equipment are truly amazing, the schematics are shown in three different abstraction levels, every single connection is shown, waveforms at 100 different test points are drawn, every single component is listed, with step-by-step test and calibration guidelines. You can almost remove everything from the board and put it back together with a service manual.

Something that today's consumers can only dream of...

#retrocomputing #crt

Vulnerabilities found in GE anesthesia machines https://www.zdnet.com/article/vulnerabilities-found-in-ge-anesthesia-machines/

Now this is as #cyberpunk as Ghost in the Shell...

Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly? https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11533/why-did-moving-the-mouse-cursor-cause-windows-95-to-run-more-quickly

"large applications that could take an hour to install could be reduced to 15 minutes with suitable mouse input."

#retrocomputing

@halcy A Markov chatbot in my IRC channel has once said, "I know nothing. I can only process files."

As decentralized, self-hosted services continued to spread within the FOSS community, it poses a major threat of information and history preservation. Once the owner of a self-hosted service ever became incapacitated or dead unexpectedly (bus factor = 1), the service may go offline permanently within 1 month (unlike centralized one, which may give you 5 years). If you are self-hosting data or services, you should make an admin succession plan. Shamir's Secret-Sharing Scheme is a good solution.

@lain https://twitter.com/abyukyo/status/1006175136163115008