@HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange

Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 31, 2026

Replying to @lindsey@recurse.social

@lindsey@recurse.social DEC called it the calling standard. And like most standards, there were some very creative interpretations, too.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 30, 2026

Replying to @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange

More details and a review of Albany's gonzo rainstorm: https://theeyewall.substack.com/p/recapping-an-impressive-northeast JFM: non-tropical

theeyewall.substack.com

Recapping an impressive Northeast rain, and looking ahead in the tropics

Double-digit rainfall near Albany, NY without a tropical system? Wild!

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 30, 2026

RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@eniko/117008034058808495 Or if you were programming a 32 KW PDP-11 the first time ‘round, ran off the end of the address space, and then had to learn about using overlays in the task builder (TLB, the RSX-11M/M+ linker). Other apps avoided TKB overlays by chaining among different apps, while apps directly chaining to apps is less commonly encountered nowadays. Mention of TKB to those of a certain experience has been known to cause twitching, too. If you’ve never before developed for a resource-limited system, such can be an interesting and different place.

Quoting

Eniko Fox @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place

RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@eniko/117007911912036302 anyway developing for DOS (or other vintage hardware) gives you interesting limitations and most of the aesthetic things people are digging about You Have Died came about as a result of those limitations. so i recommend giving it a try

Open quoted post

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 30, 2026

Replying to @jfmezei@cosocial.ca

@jfmezei@cosocial.ca I don’t know. None of the regional forecast info references TS Bertha.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 30, 2026

NWS Albany NY on the current flooding: “An additional 0.5"-2.0" of rainfall is possible in the Flood Watch area...and some localized amounts to 3" or so are possible along the east facing slopes of the eastern Catskills, southern Greens and Berkshires. Rainfall totals in the Capital Region/Saratoga Region, upper Mid Hudson Valley, northern Taconics, Helderbergs, and the eastern Catskills have received 4-11" of rainfall with 11.03" of rainfall in the NYS mesonet at Schodack and 10.69" at Kinderhook as of 2 pm. This rainfall has fallen in the last 24-30 hours. The Albany Airport has a rainfall total of 5.95" over the past 30 hours since 8 am yesterday until 2 pm, which is a very high amount for any rainfall event.”

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 25, 2026

Clarity in Technical Reporting (NASA SP-7010, 1964) A worthy document still, some sixty years onward. https://archive.org/details/ost-technical-writing-19640016507/mode/2up "FOREWORD With the sharp increase in recent years of the volume of technical reports in aerospace fields, it has become even more important for report authors to present their material clearly and concisely. This booklet, which offers commonsense suggestions for improving written and oral reports, is designed not only for prospective writers within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration but also for scientists and engineers among the agency's contractors who must report the results of their research. The history of this booklet is that of a publication that did not set out to be one, but that has been virtually forced into print by the demand of would-be readers. For a number of years prior to and since the initial printing, the author, a busy scientist at the Langley Research Center, has acted as counselor to fresh-out-of-college youngsters coming to work at the Center — guiding these inexperienced authors in the art of writing technical reports that measure up to Langley's exacting standards. In 1955, Dr. Katzoff, convinced of a widespread need for practical pointers on technical writing, put some of his thoughts on the subject on paper. Typed and duplicated in small numbers, this highly informal document was classed as a Langley internal paper. But publications, notably the best ones, have a life of their own quite separate from the intentions of their authors. Soon "Clarity in Technical Reporting^ began to earn a word-of-mouth reputation as a small classic. Several times copies became scarce, and were run off in small amounts, and became scarce once more. Meantime Langley, acting as a kind of seedbed for its rapidly expanding parent agency, sent many of its alumni to other NASA Research Centers, and thus treasured personal copies were carried to other locations, there to repeat similar cycles of modest reproduction and scarcity. When this curious spread of an elderly informal document was discovered, this Division concluded that so prized and useful a paper merited better treatment. In fairness to its author, now Senior Staff Scientist of the Langley Research Center, one should note that he had no intention of appearing in print as an authority on technical writing. Instead, this booklet should be read as what it is : counsel for those who may wish it from a man who has read — and written — many technical papers. Melvin S. Day, Director Scientific and Technical Information Division” Few people and few organizations still write this way, though. #technicalwriting #NASA #NASAhistory #techwriting

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 25, 2026

Replying to @grawity@social.treehouse.systems

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems You mean ffmpeg can’t already do that?

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 17, 2026

Replying to @Nick_Stevens_graphics@mastodon.art

@Nick_Stevens_graphics@mastodon.art The docking hatch is on the top of the LEM, not the side of the LEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposition%2C_docking%2C_and_extraction

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 17, 2026

LG displays reportedly download adware via Windows Update, per Gamers Nexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM Buy an LG display, connect it to Windows, get McAfee ads. Yay. More generally, vendor-provided storage and printer add-on “drivers” (on macOS, at least) have looked increasingly shady for a while, and some browsers and anti-malware apps have looked increasingly like surveillance engines. Of all of what we could be doing, the best and the brightest, this? 🤬

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 16, 2026

Replying to @grawity@social.treehouse.systems

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems In some sheds and garages with network wiring — and with occasional critters visiting — plenum-rated four-pair was less chewed than was the vinyl-wrapped non-plenum cabling. Which means a couple of subsequent cable re-run projects got plenum-rated wiring in not-plenum spaces. Whether the plenum-rated jacket doesn’t absorb critter grime, or it just tastes bad?

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 12, 2026

Reddit thread on IT management of Microsoft Windows, Azure, Entra ID… https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1uuas5j/it_admins_feel_overwhelmingly_sick_of_microsoft/ Selling into the C-suite worked for IBM aeons ago, until it didn’t. How long it’ll continue to work? IT history is littered with operating system vendors that derailed too, many having coasted on their installed base, and the wreckage wasn’t pretty. 📉 A very wise senior (AG) once commented that all companies either operate at the edge of the IT complexity they can manage, or past it. You don’t want dependencies on any companies past the their ability to manage that chaos, because their YOLO / Vibe / Vaya con Diós management strategy eventually and inevitably becomes your mess to to deal with.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 12, 2026

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/116903120796259321 The Amazon “top brands” checkbox provides something analogous, and with no browser extensions required.

Quoting

404 Media @404mediaco@mastodon.social

“I think people want control over what it is that they're seeing on the internet." https://www.404media.co/knockoff-browser-extension-hides-sketchy-brands-on-amazon/

Open quoted post

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 11, 2026

The Brave browser: Some cheery reading from Cambridge Analytics on the Brave browser, and on other “privacy-first” products and services: “Brendan Eich’s 2015 promise was seductive in its simplicity: a browser that blocks trackers, ads, and the entire apparatus of surveillance capitalism. Seven years later, Brave has attracted 60 million monthly active users with that vision. What those users largely don’t understand is that Brave replaced Google’s tracking with its own.” https://cambridgeanalytica.org/guides/the-privacy-illusion-how-brave-browser-built-its-own-surveillance-machine-50302/ Unrelated to the ad tracking, some years ago Brave was collecting (Brave cryptocurrency) donations on behalf of others, without prior permission or even knowledge of those it claimed to be collecting the donations for: https://www.theblock.co/article/5839/brave-browser-is-collecting-donations-on-your-behalf-did-you-know There was the affiliate-link interception scheme implemented by Brave, too. https://factually.co/fact-checks/technology/brave-2020-affiliate-link-practice-explained-company-response-eb778c Searches will find other privacy and policy discussions involving Brave. This whole Google and the Wannabes — great band name, that — is headed in the entirely wrong direction for my own privacy preferences, though. #privacy

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 08, 2026

Replying to @rachel@transitory.social

@rachel@transitory.social @hacks4pancakes@infosec.exchange The sludge is getting posted back-dated, too. 🤬

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jul 04, 2026

Politics: I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jun 30, 2026

Many somebodies will be polling for the “bit flip” at eighteen, of course. https://blog.vrypan.net/2026/06/29/260629-whats-wrong-with-eu-age-verification/

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Apr 18, 2026

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." ―God Entity to Bender, Futurama

Also the proximate cause of layoffs among more than a few IT groups.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Apr 16, 2026

This recall — for an oven that can delay its ignition and blow its own oven door open — reads like a cartoon.

Something which should have stayed in a cartoon, too.

@cpsc_bot@m.ai6yr.org

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jan 17, 2026

Replying to @postmodern@infosec.exchange

@postmodern There are sooooo very many badly named apps on UNIX and Linux, but each for reasons.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Dec 13, 2025

Replying to @grawity@social.treehouse.systems

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems This is why plugging covert channels in a secure server is impractical. Best bad option keeps the channel,bandwidth low.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Feb 05, 2023

Replying to @tomw@mastodon.social

@tomw@mastodon.social @ncweaver@thecooltable.wtf This is the foundation of modern censorship. Not of stopping the flow of information, but of making the information difficult to find, burying it in mundane or contested or conflicting information. Of flooding the search indices and resources.

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Stephen Hoffman @HoffmanLabs@infosec.exchange · Jan 24, 2023

Replying to @joelle@social.joelle.us

@joelle @hacks4pancakes Met one of those that required (mis)identifying pickup truck campers as buses.

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Stephen Hoffman

Posts

Recapping an impressive Northeast rain, and looking ahead in the tropics

Remote instance