Diane Bruce

I live in #Ottawa, Canada (Unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation)

My interests are Amateur Radio, (de va3db) Photographer, BSD, real-time embedded and maker of universes (Apple Pies).

#nobot

2025-07-08

@tfb My first exposure to Unix was a release 6 on a PDP-11 which got upgraded to release 7. ;)
I too dallied with Linux for a while but switched to FreeBSD (I am BSD agnostic, Net and Open are great too)

We are spread out a bit on different servers hence my added hashtags but welcome aboard!

#BSD #NetBSD

Diane Bruce boosted:
Thomas :netbsd: :freebsd:tfb@bsd.cafe
2025-07-08

Hello, World!

I first learned Unix from NetBSD, moved on to running Linux myself in the 1990's along with FreeBSD and sometimes NetBSD. I'm also a former Solaris and OpenSolaris fan, and was an enthusiastic OS X user for a decade starting with 10.1.

These days my main machines are Fedora and recently NetBSD again. Work is programming microelectronics CAD software on RHEL.

I made this alt with the hope of following more of what's going on amongst BSD users, rather than just running a couple machines by myself.

#introduction

Diane Bruce boosted:
Freya (it/its)š’€­š’ˆ¹š’ š’Š©freya@chaosfem.tw
2025-07-08

Dear NixOS users:

Please take your love of 'the Windows registry, but even worse designed' elsewhere. perhaps to your own kernel. perhaps on your own architecture. Do not break Unix more than Linux already has.

Signed,

A girl seriously worried about the loss of actual computing skills and the increasing abstraction of configuration and administration into 'do-all-the-things-and-none-of-them-well' languages. For when Nix breaks, and it will break, those of you who only know how to Nixily configure your machines will be super mega ultra fucked. Same goes for you k8s and orchestration and automation and docker girlies

Diane Bruce boosted:

Over the weekend I set up an air-gapped computer for use with certain clients. The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze data of all types warrants this new operational procedure for my clients with Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

Examples of privacy violations are too numerous to count. To give you one example (that doesn’t even use AI), companies have been found guilty of violating user preferences regarding location tracking. Another example: so-called anonymized data has been connected back to the associated sources many times through the use of many methods. The analysis of anonymized data with AI tools makes it even easier to de-anonymize information.

Major software companies, operating system companies, device manufacturers, and cloud service providers are all actively working to obtain your data.

Legal protections are lagging behind technology advances.

Privacy policies are written to confuse. They deliberately include doublespeak and ambiguity.

Default opt-in is normalized.

AI systems are leaky. They have information they obtain without your informed consent, and they leak that information in ways the system owners can’t even predict.

You cannot avoid working with AI-enabled networks, hardware, software, and systems. Even when you try to minimize it, disable it, or reject it, your information is at risk.

For these reasons, I’m applying the following operational policies for information from any company for which I’ve signed an NDA:

1) I’m making available file transfer systems that are end-to-end encrypted. The use of these systems is at the client’s option. If they want to send a document as an unencrypted email attachment, they can still do that. I’ll support, and work with, any encryption methods the client chooses.

2) All information received under an NDA will be moved to the air-gapped system for processing. Even if they send me a document as an unencrypted PDF, I won’t open it with any application until it’s on the air-gapped system.

These steps don’t protect the client from all risks, but they do allow me to prove due diligence in protecting information provided to FIFO Networks under an NDA.

#CallMeIfYouNeedMe #FIFONetworks

#cybersecurity #privacy #NDA #NetworkArchitecture #policy

Diane Bruce boosted:
Stefano Marinellistefano@bsd.cafe
2025-07-07

When I complain that some software (or its dependencies) doesn't work on *BSD but requires Linux, I'm not criticizing Linux. For me, it's not an OS battle, but a matter of freedom and avoiding a dangerous and rampant computing monoculture. And when people reply to me with "well, just use it on Linux" - while they're giving me sensible advice - they're missing the crucial point: if it ONLY runs on Linux, it's not Linux's fault, but we are, precisely, creating a dangerous monoculture.

#Linux #SysAdmin #OSS #RunBSD #BSD #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos

Diane Bruce boosted:
Eugene :emacs: :freebsd:evgandr@mas.to
2025-07-07

Wow, looks like since the end of 2024, the two new versions of #Libreboot was released and the stable version is 25.06 now! :dragnaww:

Also, in the Libreboot site there is a new article about #BSD !

libreboot.org/docs/bsd/

If it (libreboot with txtmode) will work with my DP-3 display — then all my previously described problems with MBR stage 3 loader of #FreeBSD is solved completely!

Diane Bruce boosted:
h3artbl33d :openbsd: :ve:h3artbl33d@exquisite.social
2025-07-07

Seems I never wrote an #introduction. Years overdue, here we go:

Hi :flan_wave: I am h3artbl33d. Or Jeroen. Either is fine by me.

I am a Dutchie, mid thirties and somewhat of an ADHDer. My $dayjob consists of infosec, sysadmin and infrastructure. By night, I am a passionate hacker :flan_hacker: TV series and books binger, lazy f*ck.

I am one of the two admins of Exquisite.social, the sole person behind Exquisite.tube, :wheel in EuroBSDcon, co-organiser of BSD-NL, proud wearer of Puffy and privacy advocate :flan_peek: I disclose vulnerabilities from time to time, which filled up my clothing cabinet way too much. Furthermore, I am a team member of @secbsd, which is the pentesters OS that doesn't suck.

Did you already spot the recurring theme? That's right, *BSD is my thing. And it should be yours too - because :runbsdBg:

Tattoo of Puffy, the OpenBSD mascotte
2025-07-06

@stefano Oh happy anniversary to you and wife!

2025-07-06

@fanf Nice! I remember having to use Hollerith codes. ;) Good thing Fortran is just a tad better now eh?

Diane Bruce boosted:
2025-07-06

from my link log —

Fortran for C programmers.

flang.llvm.org/docs/FortranFor

saved 2025-05-18 dotat.at/:/0I8PT.html

Diane Bruce boosted:
counternotionscounternotions
2025-07-02

ā€œThis isn’t accidental. It’s cultural. We’ve created an industry where complexity is celebrated. Where cleverness is rewarded. Where engineering sophistication is valued more than clarity, usability, or commercial effectiveness.ā€

jonoalderson.com/conjecture/ja

Diane Bruce boosted:
2025-07-02
When the crew say they'll mount a WiFi access point on the cabin wall. This unit does have the usual screw hole slots on the rear yet they thought they should drill straight through the top. Luckily they totally missed the PCB. šŸ™„
photo of a TP Link wireless access point in the cabin of a fishing vessel with two holes drilled right the the case by the crew.
Diane Bruce boosted:
Zack Whittakerzackwhittaker
2025-07-02

I am once again asking companies to not be absolute shitbags about their data breach disclosures, such as deliberately blocking search engines from seeing the page by using a "noindex" tag in its HTML.

Today's edition: Australian airline Qantas.

My story: techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/qant

a screenshot showing Qantas' official cyber incident page, which contains information for customers about its recent data breach. The screenshot contains the "inspector" view, showing the web page's source code as containing a "noindex" tag, preventing search engines (and anyone searching for the page) from finding it.
Diane Bruce boosted:
2025-06-30

friends, I am in a six hour call that’s supposed to be a high level overview of a certain embedded software runtime. The current slide contains a discussion of the garbage collection subsystem and heap management, and also a diagram of how an individual cell of static ram works with the electrons shuffling around between the 0 and 1 states. There are several hundred words in a tiny font talking about voltage and whatnot.

engineers please learn to value soft skills like ā€œexpressing your expertise clearly and conciselyā€ a little more 😭 this is like trying to share your grandma’s cake recipe through the medium of a textbook on organic chemistry

2025-06-29

@feld Yes the very first Beastie like I guess I should have said. He wasn't the artist for the rest but it was very startling to hear Foglio's name mentioned!

Diane Bruce boosted:

Boost if you're old enough to know why I have one of these on my computer desk.

A single-hole hole punch.
Diane Bruce boosted:
The Seven Voyages Of Stevesinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-06-28

The state of programming in 2025 that makes vibe coding so attractive is IMO the result of terrible decisions in tech over the last couple of decades. Non-existent stdlibs that normalise the use of a thousand micro dependencies, blindly pulled. Constantly mutating frameworks as performance art. Untyped languages that need huge test suites to prevent basic errors. It all generates mountains of boilerplate that *of course* people want to offload any way they can, even if it’s wrong half the time

Diane Bruce boosted:
2025-06-28

My Western music composition mentor specialized in composing using Markov chains.

Diane Bruce boosted:
MWL Book Quote Botquotebot@io.mwl.io
2025-06-27

Why is there no safeguard against shooting yourself in the foot like this? Well, Unix feels that anyone dumb enough to do this doesn't deserve to be its friend. Various people keep trying to put Unix in therapy for this type of antisocial behavior, but it just isn't interested.

Diane Bruce boosted:
2025-06-27

Every engineer worthy of the title adopts one unshakeable article of faith: POPULARITY IS NOT A QUALITY METRIC

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst