@andrewg@mastodon.ie

Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Aug 04, 2026

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117039455695536520 Crack down on prediction markets, full stop.

Quoting

Ars Technica @arstechnica@mastodon.social

Senators demand crackdown on wildfire "prediction markets" Fire experts warn such markets could incentivize arson. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/senators-demand-crackdown-on-wildfire-prediction-markets/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 26, 2026

The illusion of choice.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 16, 2026

“I asked a few AI researchers whether they could name any other real-world software that scales so poorly. None of them could think of any. Even outside the world of software, it’s hard to find a comparable example, given that economy of scale is the principle that has made light bulbs, cars, and clothing so affordable. By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/generative-ai-engineering-disaster/687901/

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 15, 2026

I’m sick and tired of so-called “experts” telling me that I can’t fart myself into orbit. The sky is the limit, if we have the will to overcome. 🚀

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 11, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

Swiping has one valid use only - scrolling. Anything else is a dangerous and inaccessible complication of something that should be intuitive. In particular, swiping should NEVER be used to trigger a permanent state change. #firefox #ios

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 11, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

Swipe gestures are deeply user hostile. Got a hand tremor? Fuck you. Over 70? Fuck you. Forgot which swipe direction is which? Fuck you. Got a rugged case that prevents you swiping up from the very edge of the screen? Haha, fuck you. #firefox #ios

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jul 11, 2026

Deeply irritated this morning by #firefox on #ios. I accidentally closed a tab by swiping it very slightly. I can’t reopen the closed tab, and I can’t even see what it was. Three UX failures in one thumb twitch. Now I have an unscratchable itch in the back of my mind that I may have deleted something important and I HATE IT. Swipe gestures are a UX disaster. An analogue minefield of digital traps, hair thin distinctions and accessibility barriers.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Jun 01, 2026

Replying to @astro_jcm@mastodon.online

@astro_jcm@mastodon.online same here, I’m always getting turned around in the southern hemisphere. My mental map of Cape Town is pretty good at this point, but is consistently oriented south up.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 16, 2026

Replying to @Beggarmidas@mastodon.social

@Beggarmidas@mastodon.social the difference is that when china and russia do it, nobody else takes them seriously. Now do fuck off, there’s a good chap.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 16, 2026

“Criticism of Russia is not treated as hatred towards Russians. Opposition to American wars is not automatically framed as hostility towards Americans as a people. Protest against the Chinese government is not assumed to be anti-Chinese racism.

Only when it comes to Israel does this distinction repeatedly collapse.

That collapse carries consequences.“
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/5/16/britain-is-losing-the-ability-to-tell-anti-semitism-from-dissent

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 15, 2026

RE: @brian_greenberg@infosec.exchange

This tracks. In most modern companies the choice is between using Microsoft’s pile of shit, Google’s pile of shit, or Amazon’s pile of shit. They’re each shit in different ways and to different degrees, and you often don’t have a choice anyway because they’re transient dependencies via other vendors.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 15, 2026

If you categorise people by their actions, that category can easily become a group identity, and group identities are forever. Once an action becomes a badge of identity, all hope for growth and change is lost, perhaps for generations.

Call out offences individually. Call out offenders by name, not collectively. Otherwise you risk compressing the snowflakes into ice.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 15, 2026

“The Silk Road Café is located in the Chester Beatty library at Dublin Castle. It has been in business since 2001 and was gearing up for the celebration of its 25-year anniversary in mid-July when it was informed it would have to close for security reasons.

Abraham Phelan, the owner of the café, told The Journal he now has to let all his staff go. There are between 20 and 25 staff members employed at the café, a number of whom have been working there for over 20 years.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/silk-road-cafe-dublin-castle-closure-7037559-May2026/

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 15, 2026

“If there is a conflict between two groups, rather than adjudicating it, making a call, we say: all right, we need to add a process in to fix this conflict. This results in a sort of procedure fetish, where the process is kind of the end that people care about, rather than stepping back and saying, well, what are we trying to actually do here.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/metrolink-conference-engineers-infrastructure-ireland-7039886-May2026/

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 11, 2026

Replying to @djmitche@fosstodon.org

@djmitche@fosstodon.org @mhoye@cosocial.ca I never understood the attraction of the Ask Jeeves style of “full sentence search engine query”. I always give google keywords to search for, and cringe when watching others uselessly type out “what is the…” before every search. I wonder is this two sides of the same coin?

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 06, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems a solution to that issue would be to calculate the prefixes in some way that is infeasible for an attacker to precompute, but trivial to check by the client after the fact. Say, by using a merkle tree with inclusion proofs. But now we're getting into the realm of certificate transparency.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 06, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems The sweet spot of prefix length is also an open question. There are 6.3M primary keys in the live SKS dataset, and a similar number of subkeys. To have a reasonable anonymity cohort of >1k you would have to have a prefix length of <16 bits. But it's trivial to mass-generate hash collisions for prefixes that short, so we're also opening the temptation of a vandalism attack.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 06, 2026

Replying to @grawity@social.treehouse.systems

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems I didn't say it was a smart idea, I just think we live in stupid times. ;-) I'm worried more about load on the server than any real privacy risk. Each prefix download object will have to be encrypted in real time (unless we want to double our disk usage by precomputing them).

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 06, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems I've opened a ticket for this to be discussed after the WG adopts the draft. I have in the meantime thought of one concrete downside, which is that AI scrapers might try to enumerate the prefix space. The near-certainty of obtaining multiple GB of useless garbage has not stopped them doing equally stupid things elsewhere, which is why I think it is a reasonable concern. But not necessarily a fatal one. Thanks for the suggestion! ❤️ https://gitlab.com/andrewgdotcom/draft-gallagher-openpgp-hkp/-/work_items/51

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 04, 2026

RE: @jalefkowit@vmst.io

Smart appliances were a mistake

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · May 03, 2026

Replying to @ronanmcd@mastodon.green

@ronanmcd@mastodon.green wait until you find out about New College Oxford

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 29, 2026

Replying to @ber@social.tchncs.de

@ber@social.tchncs.de @GnuPG@mstdn.social @rob@social.afront.org Thanks! I'll point the lurkers to the mailing list for my full response, which I agree is better in long form: https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2026-April/068288.html The tl;dr though is simple: the burning issue is a power struggle between a collective governance model (#OpenPGP) and a BDFL governance model (#LibrePGP). There isn't room for both. And while we can all try to be more civil, calling out bad behaviour will always have the appearance of incivility.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 28, 2026

Replying to @GnuPG@mstdn.social

@GnuPG@mstdn.social @rob@social.afront.org @ber@social.tchncs.de Hi, Bernhard. It’s been three years since the schism, so I don’t think “jumping to conclusions” is what I’m doing here. I’m not sure how many times we have to go around the same circle before deciding that there really is no more information to be had and the obvious conclusions are almost certainly the right ones. I’ve held on for longer than almost anyone (except it seems yourself). Aren’t you as exhausted as I am? Can’t we just stop?

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 27, 2026

Westenberg is on fire tonight:

“Every war feels necessary. Every panic feels justified. Every empire feels eternal and every new God feels true. Every resource looks infinite right up until it isn’t. Every revolution feels pure for about eighteen months. Every Cassandra looks hysterical.

Every mistake of the past was made by people who were certain they weren't making it.”
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-loop-everything-has-happened-before-and-everything-will-happen-again/

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@hpk@chaos.social private chat groups are where it’s at now - but I’m sure you”re well aware 😜 But the price is that it requires active engagement, not just passive consumption, and we’ve trained my generation out of the habit.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @hpk@chaos.social

@hpk@chaos.social facebook was already “social media for old people” long before I left. And I think the younger generations are less likely to go on traditional big social media in the first place, because they’ve grown up understanding that it’s toxic. But they just moved to different social media like snapchat and now tiktok, which aren’t necessarily better, just different…

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@rob@social.afront.org and thank you ❤️

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @rob@social.afront.org

@rob@social.afront.org I have real friends today that I would never have had without social media, and a massive long tail of acquaintance and interaction that has been (and continues to be) wonderful and uplifting. The comparatively safer corners of the internet (like this one) have value, but they sometimes feel like those small gated towns in the zombie apocalypse shows. Staying inside them means safety, but also withdrawal. Our failure to protect more makes our own survival feel hollow and small.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @davey_cakes@mastodon.ie

@davey_cakes@mastodon.ie recommender algorithms are the closest approximation to paperclip maximisers that human beings have created in all of history. They’re insanely powerful, deeply stupid, and free of most of the physical and legal constraints that make the previous best approximation (casinos) look like baby toys.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @hpk@chaos.social

@hpk@chaos.social I definitely don’t see any social media as an approximation of reality. But in the days when “everyone” was on the same one or two social networks, social media at least overlapped with reality to a significant extent. You are one of the vanishingly small number of people I know in both fedi and the physical world, and that’s because we share an *even smaller* subculture! 🤣 I wouldn’t give that up for all the money in the world. But I miss my other social circles…

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Five(ish) years ago I deleted twitter, abandoned facebook, and uninstalled instagram from my phone. My mental health is better, but I’ve effectively lost touch with *a lot* of extended family and friends. Fedi is great, but it’s an exclusive subculture, even less representative of “real life” than the networks it replaced.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @hko@floss.social

@hko@floss.social @giacomo “more or less” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. See for example https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url1=draft-koch-librepgp-04&url2=draft-koch-librepgp-05&difftype=--html which (belatedly) notes that GnuPG’s ed448 keys have *for years* been using a different wire format from ed25519, without any visible discussion anywhere.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @yannseznec@assemblag.es

@yannseznec@assemblag.es is that a Poppy reference? 😜

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@aspensmonster@tenforward.social @petelawler@mastodon.social @hko@floss.social the differences between rfc9580 and “librepgp” can then be interpreted by asking “how easy would it be to implement this in the gnupg codebase without breaking it?”.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @aspensmonster@tenforward.social

@aspensmonster@tenforward.social @petelawler@mastodon.social @hko@floss.social many of us suspect that the root of the problem is the age of gnupg’s codebase, which bakes in a lot of assumptions and premature optimisations, and which doesn’t have any unit tests or continuous integration. It’s a codebase that few outsiders understand and which few insiders are confident about making major changes to.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@giacomo @hko@floss.social The articles linked to by the relevant section of the archwiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=GnuPG&oldid=860217#OpenPGP_compatibility) are a good place to start when researching the reasons behind the disagreement.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @giacomo@snac.tesio.it

@giacomo @hko@floss.social GnuPG is not proprietary, of course. But the “librepgp” formats that it promotes as an alternative to OpenPGP are “proprietary” in the sense that they are the work of a single person, who happens to be the GnuPG project lead, and have been rushed into production against the advice of nearly every other openpgp implementer.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @serebit@floss.social

@serebit @dvzrv @freepg you should talk to @wiktor 😂

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @letoams@defcon.social

@letoams @dvzrv @freepg @hko on linux maybe, but not on windows...

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 21, 2026

RE: @delta@chaos.social

I noticed this failure happen in real time, and I remembered reading about the new multiple relays feature. I went to delta.chat and followed the instructions to set up two extra (random) relays by scanning their QR setup codes, and set one of them as my new default. Everything magically worked again (though I had to long-press and manually resend the last couple of messages).

It takes a lot of effort to make complex things look effortless. Many kudos to everyone who worked on this feature! ❤️

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @agx@ruhr.social

@agx @claudi I have a few, but my everyday one is a 4nfc. Haven’t tried the usb-c variant yet, but the build quality on the usb-a variants is top notch, fully-moulded.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @agx@ruhr.social

@agx not an exact feature match, but I’ve had a great experience so far with with my yubikeys

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 10, 2026

Replying to @iuvi@mastodon.social

@iuvi @wiktor @vanitasvitae @daniel the "Kyber" encryption algorithm you mention is a gnupg-specific extension that is unlikely to be implemented by anyone else. All the non-gnupg implementations (including Thunderbird and Proton) will be using the PQ algorithms from the IETF PQC draft that Wiktor linked above. This will cause a lot of pain in the coming years, unfortunately...

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @mwichary@mastodon.online

@mwichary compared to modern optical mice, no. But compared with the ball mice of the time, absolutely. The main advantage was that they didn’t need cleaning (aside from the occasional wipe down) and didn’t degrade as badly over time.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@mwichary and the underside is even more insane than the top… did you get a photo of it?

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 09, 2026

Replying to @mwichary@mastodon.online

@mwichary if I had a pound for every time someone in our university computer labs grabbed one of these mice the wrong way round and momentarily thought they were having a stroke… 😂 ah good times

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 07, 2026

Replying to @andrewg@mastodon.ie

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems I'm going to have to sit with this idea for the rest of the evening, because it's either genius or insanity, or possibly both

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 07, 2026

Replying to @grawity@social.treehouse.systems

@grawity@social.treehouse.systems wat

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 05, 2026

“I let this thing into my brain, and now it is always there. For any new potential project, there is a voice in my head telling me how much easier it would be to let the model do it...
Feeling this for myself has only reinforced my belief that these models constitute an addictive substance. They alter cognition in ways deleterious to human prosperity. In other words, for as much output as they provide, they take something important from us.”
https://taggart-tech.com/reckoning/

taggart-tech.com

I used AI. It worked. I hated it.

I used Claude Code to build a tool I needed. It worked great, but I was miserable. I need to reckon with what it means.

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Andrew Gallagher @andrewg@mastodon.ie · Apr 01, 2026

Replying to @andymcmillan@xoxo.zone

@andymcmillan@xoxo.zone I didn’t know her, but I knew so many people who did that I felt her presence by proxy. I’m so sorry. ❤️

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Andrew Gallagher

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I used AI. It worked. I hated it.

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