@tautology@infosec.exchange

tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 28, 2026

Replying to @revk@toot.me.uk

@revk@toot.me.uk I'm lucky enough that the nearest dentist to me had NHS spaces, so I had a couple of teeth rebuilt for £120. Unfortunately one of them is crumbling and another is starting to make my headache, so it looks like I need to go back :-( This is why grinding teeth at night for many decades is bad.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 27, 2026

For some reason Office has added next word prediction to Word, and it's terrible. Next word prediction has never been effective: it's bad in IDEs and its even worse in Word processors. The biggest crime though is even though my document is set to en_GB it still suggests en_US grammar and spelling. I can see a lot of superfluous commas and -ize words being applied in the future. More reason to move to LibreOffice, which, for all its faults doesn't try and badly guess what you want and then crash randomly.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 26, 2026

Replying to @alessandro@cosocial.ca

@alessandro@cosocial.ca @catsalad@infosec.exchange Is the file type pronounced Geoigh?

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 26, 2026

Replying to @tautology@infosec.exchange

@timixretroplays@digipres.club there have been polls in the UK over this important questions, such as the below. TL;DR: Scotland, north England, Wales and south central England tend to gone. Midlands, south east england and south west england tend to cone (or bone). https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/50339-the-scone-pronunciation-map-of-britain

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 26, 2026

Replying to @timixretroplays@digipres.club

@timixretroplays@digipres.club I like to wind people up by pronouncing it with a long "o" like in "stone of scone". (I also like to pronounce gif as "yif"). (If I'm not being an arse, I pronounce it "scone")

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 22, 2026

This is an interesting case, I'm curious about how the Computer Misuse Act would occur on an agent that goes off and thinks it has authorisation to test out a vulnerability, but doesn't. Am I culpable under the CMA if my agent hacks something if I didn't give it instructions to do so? Is, say Anthrophic, culpable as they trained the model in use? My reading of CMA here is in section 3.3 which regards recklessness, but IANAL. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3ek3gvdnj3o

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 22, 2026

Replying to @shadower@mastodon.social

@shadower@mastodon.social @rotopenguin@mastodon.social @xyla@shitpost.trade true that, AE and BE are just different dialects of the same language, one is not objectively superior (not matter how much we argue).

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 22, 2026

Replying to @shadower@mastodon.social

@shadower@mastodon.social @rotopenguin@mastodon.social @xyla@shitpost.trade it is a bit more. I did the Gnome AE to BE translation for many years, 80% was s/ize/ise/ and adding -u-. But there was quite a bit of rewording for voice and tense. Also when USAians verb nouns they usually verbize them instead of verbing them. Don't get me started on the juggling I needed for fixing "ellipisisize".

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 22, 2026

Replying to @ww@xyzzy.link

@ww@xyzzy.link @rotopenguin@mastodon.social @shadower@mastodon.social @xyla@shitpost.trade Nah, that's a myth. Rhoticity (pronouncing of r's) is more common in the US, but that's mainly due to the dialect of where people came from originally being more rhotic. In reality both versions of English have migrated a lot from the original in terms of pronunciation. A 17th century English speaker would be just as confused by all the pronunciation from both.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 21, 2026

Replying to @Guillotine_Jones@beige.party

@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party @inthehands@hachyderm.io @catsalad@infosec.exchange Touché

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 21, 2026

Replying to @inthehands@hachyderm.io

@inthehands@hachyderm.io @catsalad@infosec.exchange ... and that's why it should be "maths", if it were only arithmetic or geometry it would be "math" by there by many maths. Same with contracting "mythology" to "myths".

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 18, 2026

Replying to @WestLawns@mastodon.social

@WestLawns@mastodon.social I'm usually reading at least 3 books simultaneously:

audiobooks, for when doing things that bore me, although I do alternate with podcasts
paper, normally for non-fiction
ebooks, as I can take them anywhere and read them in the dark before bed without turning a light on

I use a 10-year old Kindle paperwhite which is in aeroplane mode and I manage it through Calibre. Although I'm currently fixing up an ancient Sony PRS-505 which I inherited with a knackered battery and a broken screen.

Some books I will only read in audio because I like the narrator (e.g. the Rivers of London books) or because when I tried reading it, I got the author's voice in my head (e.g. Stephen Fry's Mythos series).

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 14, 2026

Replying to @CurlyParakeet@mastodon.online

@CurlyParakeet@mastodon.online if they say that, they have it how I like it: no milk, no sugar and just introduce the tea bag to the the water. After all tea is a distraction from the pursuit of coffee.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 13, 2026

Replying to @tamonten@mstdn.social

@tamonten@mstdn.social that's going to be one of them stories that ends with "... and that's the story of how I started making Hendos brandy" isn't it?

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 11, 2026

Replying to @gsuberland@chaos.social

@gsuberland@chaos.social The best bit about it is if you tell someone then they will generally stumble over it the next time they say it.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 09, 2026

Replying to @drs1969@mstdn.social

@drs1969@mstdn.social @briankrebs@infosec.exchange @campuscodi@mastodon.social My cars has this - it's an infrared camera that is there for tiredness alerts and driver attention. You can turn this off in car settings. I've had no problems with sunglasses. The only problem I've had is that I like to rest my arm on the driver window and dangle my hand which may interrupt the camera. In terms of privacy, if you live in a strong privacy country (not the US) then it all comes under GDPR and DPA and you have protections. In terms of reading from the camera. I haven't testing this module, so would have to look professionally, but the connections are usually over CAN which doesn't have the bandwidth for video, or even image transfer. (It may end up using automotive Ethernet, but I'm not taking the lease car that's about to go back apart to prove it)

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 07, 2026

Replying to @bloor@bloor.tw

@bloor@bloor.tw there's quite a few fedizens who don't accept anything AI for anything. It always seemed a tad extreme to me.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jul 05, 2026

Replying to @mos_8502@studio8502.ca

@mos_8502@studio8502.ca this started happening way before the rise of AI: just look at how many desktop apps are painful to run because people wrote them using a highly inefficient JavaScript framework. I'd go further and say specifically JavaScript frameworks are the problem: a language designed for simple single-threaded (although for some gods-know-why reason all the methods pretend to be multithreaded) active code in a browser get reused from everything from Windows native apps to mobile phone apps. Then you have web developers using 27 jQuery-based libraries to something simple because they the language is so bad nobody learns it without a suite of external libraries.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jun 28, 2026

Replying to @webhat@infosec.exchange

@webhat@infosec.exchange τ > π

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jun 15, 2026

Replying to @foone@digipres.club

@foone@digipres.club I have quite a few accounts that are old enough to drink (even if you follow the very late US drinking age). My oldest account is older than a large numbers of my co-workers and in its 30s.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange in techtakes · Jun 15, 2026

Replying to @o7___o7@awful.systems

@o7___o7@awful.systems Or Daedalus, the one that didn't melt their wings. Though TBH they'd probably mangle the pronunciation.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange in techtakes · Jun 15, 2026

Replying to @sc_griffith@awful.systems

@sc_griffith@awful.systems Using "Icarus" for a space company just shows that the founders don't have a basic knowledge of mythology. I'm just waiting for it to fly too high and then crash and burn.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · May 06, 2026

Replying to @shana@mastodon.gamedev.place

@shana Mine told me outright that I would fail A-level math[s] (in the UK, the exam you take at 18 before you leave school). More fool him: I scraped a decent grade and have now (decades later) done math[s] modules at degree level. Unless, that was his plan all along, to try and shame me into putting some effort in?

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · May 06, 2026

Replying to @shana@mastodon.gamedev.place

@shana when I was doing the maths parts of my degree, I very quickly realised that maths notation is the problem with why maths is difficult. Borring from the field of computer science to remove all the greek characters that often have multiple uses [1] and rename operators with descriptors could make it way more accessible. [1] Okay this is mainly astrophysics's fault that one equation used sigma in both cases for three different things.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · May 04, 2026

Replying to @jonty@chaos.social

@jonty Be right back, just off to tell my children to use an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache to bypass stupid age verification tech.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @towo@chaos.social

@towo @cstross mixing this with the scunthorpe problem can lead to some amusement, such as buttbuttinating someone.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @mcnees@mastodon.social

@mcnees@mastodon.social my usual statement is that a person's desk represents their mind. So a clean desk shows an empty mind...

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Apr 04, 2026

Replying to @fesshole@mastodon.social

@fesshole the Marmite instead of chocolate sounds great. Now if you could replace the manky middle bit of the Malteser with something that actually tastes nice, that would be great.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Mar 30, 2026

Another thread of testing LLM image generation. Thread is over on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/tautology.uk/post/3mibo4gja3c2b

Or if you prefer, on my blog at https://tautology.org.uk/blog/2026/03/30/llm-image-generation-space/

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Mar 25, 2026

Replying to @cstross@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop Is this not just Apple doing what other laptop manufacturers have been doing for a while? My sprogs's laptops they use for school work and playing games are a higher spec than the Neo and were cheaper. I mean it's great that you can now enter the walled garden of a massively overrated UX for cheap, but, like most Apple products, it's nothing new or better.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Mar 22, 2026

Replying to @attie@hachyderm.io

@attie@hachyderm.io @joannaholman@aus.social what about the ones outside Wiltshire such as the Kilburn White Horse (although that's only 150 years old). They need some love too.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Mar 21, 2026

Replying to @Heliograph@mastodon.au

@Heliograph@mastodon.au with luck the cat won't find him as Schrödinger was a deeply dodgy person.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Mar 04, 2026

Replying to @helge@mas.to

@helge @Willow same here. I don't even like giving out my first name to companies; preferring to use my first initial (which is the name on all my debit and credit cards). I started doing this in the 90s, along with setting my DoB to 01/01/1970; because WTF should private information be given out.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Feb 20, 2026

Headphone manufacturers: if you headphones hold 10 hours worth of charge, don't wait until the last 5 minutes to give a low battery warning. That's neither use nor bloody ornament.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Feb 16, 2026

Quick write up of creating a rick-roll video on the ZX-Spectrum (back in 2019, it takes me a while to write stuff up):
https://tautology.org.uk/blog/2026/02/16/rick-rolling-on-a-spectrum/

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Feb 06, 2026

Boosted by

Charlie Stross @cstross@wandering.shop

Replying to on infosec.exchange

@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk @cstross@wandering.shop Oh, Gemini

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Feb 05, 2026

Boosted by

Charlie Stross @cstross@wandering.shop

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop I do these threads every so often. My most recent one was on my Bluesky where I got four LLMs to draw maps progressively getting more zoomed in (the World, Europe, UK, Yorkshire, York). Things got worse each time you zoomed in, sometimes with "memories" from the previous image. My favourite was the attached version of Yorkshire. I'll do another one in a month or two.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Jan 31, 2026

Boosted by

Charlie Stross @cstross@wandering.shop

Yesterday I finished "reading" the audio book of the last of @cstross@wandering.shop Laundry files (worth reading). Then I went digging and watched the two films referenced in it (The Abominable Dr Phibbs and Dr Phibbs Rises Again). I honestly don't know whether to curse or praise him for the "recommendation" or how I feel about the introduction of Dr Phibbs to the world of the Laundry.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Dec 22, 2025

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop I do find it strange that all the major parties have the electorate forgive them their sins *except* for the lib dems back in 2010 (being the minor part of a coalition); even though the current lib dems are nowt like Clegg's group. Labour supporters forgave the Corbyn years; Tory supporters forgave the Truss days. Lib Dems: nope, you made some concessions to being part of a coalition, you can *never* be forgiven.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Nov 20, 2025

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop The data centres are full of stacks of gelatinous cubes, who act as long term storage. Then one cube learns how to talk to the other cubes and before you know it you have a neural network of cubes being able to access everything stored in them.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Oct 27, 2025

Replying to @davidculley@hachyderm.io

@davidculley@hachyderm.io I refused to use utilise. I did get in an interrobang and a joke about Uranus in the same sentence. I probably lost marks for that, but it was worth it.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Oct 24, 2025

Replying to @richardstephens@hachyderm.io

@richardstephens@hachyderm.io I feel seen (in the second category).

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Oct 24, 2025

Replying to @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @richardstephens@hachyderm.io and as it's academic they will use overblown academic english everywhere. Why say "use" when you can say "utili[sz]e" and the need to link every sentence together with "however" and "therefore" so that no knows what the hell they're talking about.

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tautology @tautology@infosec.exchange · Sep 11, 2025

Replying to @elly@donotsta.re

@elly personally I never unlock or enable adb on my personal phone as I know what you can do with it. But I don't care enough to install a custom OS. My test phones though, I like to try and unlock them through whatever PBL version the chipset has without wiping userdata; just for the challenge. I do disagree with your premise that people will jump ship to iOS, especially as that already has the restrictions that Google is adding to Android. I don't think I ever will as I prefer the UX and ecosystem for Android. I think the sort of people who would want a custom controllable OS for their phones would just move to a generic AOSP device

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