@axbom Agreed. I have been using https://kill-the-newsletter.com to convert email newsletters to RSS feeds.
Daniel Berman
Network System Administrator | Sec+ | I help companies ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their data. Solving problems since 2009.
I have a profound fascination with technology, encompassing its practical applications and ethical considerations. This intrigue is complemented by a passion for exploration and a strong sense of responsibility towards both the environment and society at large.
My interests include in alphabetical order but not neccessarily passion,
#Computers, #CulturalExploration, #Cybersecurity, #DroneFlying, #Emacs, #HamRadio #Geocaching, #GlobalTravel, #Hiking, #Linux, #Lisp, #NetworkAdmin, #Photography, #Privacy, #ScienceFiction, #Stargazing, #SustainableLiving, #Sysadmin, #TechnologyEthics
Originally joined mastodon.social September 2018
Daniel Berman boosted:
is it still doomscrolling when there’s real doom out there or is it just regular scrolling
@DrPen @smallcircles Check out @keepassxc. Handles Passwords and/or OTP MFA Tokens and/or Passkeys using an offline vault that can be synchronized as desired via file sync options.
Daniel Berman boosted:
RSS never tracked you.
Email never throttled you.
Blogs never begged for dopamine.
The old web wasn’t perfect.
But it was yours.
Daniel Berman boosted:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert A. Heinlein
🚨 𝗡𝗜𝗦𝗧 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿: Protecting Your Small Business from Phishing Risks
Join NIST on Aug 14 @ 11 AM PT for a free webinar on recognizing, preventing, and responding to phishing attacks. Learn real-world examples, low-cost protections, and get free training resources.
🔗 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿: https://nist.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_KHr1zWkiT-azgzEEeAtvjw#/registration
#Cybersecurity #SmallBusiness #Phishing #NIST #SMBsecurity
@yaelwrites Maybe it’s time to break this into phases or levels?
Level 1 - Easily searchable sites.
Level 2 - Sites that are collecting data and potentially feeding the level 1 sites and/or selling to others orgs that may not be info vendors.
IMHO Level 2 is valuable to catalog even if they aren’t immediately searchable for a whole host of reasons.
Daniel Berman boosted:
Daily reminder that what you post on social media and your political power are two separate things. Silence on a topic on social media is not endorsement. Posting on social media is a minimally effective political act.
Daniel Berman boosted:
I recently came across writer Wendell Berry’s checklist in his 1987 essay Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer[a] referenced by Jason Kottke[b] and Ted Gioia[c]. Berry outlined criteria describing what it would take for him to use new technology in his work. I’ve personally bought and used computers since 1982, but the list still resonated with me. I’ve taken the liberty of rewriting and adding to his insights, making a list for the 2020s that makes sense to me.
[This is a draft for a blog post.]
As should be expected, many of these questions do not have a strict yes-or-no answer. They do, however, encourage reflection and consideration around each topic area – which is what moral reasoning is all about.
Desirable characteristics of new technology:
1. Considering all manners of cost, new tech should be less costly than the task or phenomenon it replaces.
2. The output and work of new tech should be clearly and demonstrably better than what it replaces.
3. New tech should use less energy than what it replaces, or clearly boost impaired physical or mental capacity in service of wellbeing.
4. Information about the waste produced and natural resources consumed by new technology must be made available explicitly and in an accessible format. This includes the complete value chain of production.
5. New tech should be repairable by most people with access to tools, or repairable at a reasonable distance from home–by a tradesperson–at an affordable price.
6. New tech should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, which includes family and community relationships.
7. New tech should never explicitly replace human beings – its purpose is to support human beings in accomplishing humanity-desirable goals.
8. New tech should not require surveillance-like or privacy-invasive features to work. Any such features should be off by default and clearly apparent and understood by anyone using–or being subjected to–the technology.
9. People must be provided a clear and accessible path to objecting to new technology and not have it forced upon them–whether it’s as users, as subjects of use or as involuntary contributors.
10. All new technology must be accompanied with clear instructions on its intended use and how to achieve defined outcomes.
11. It must be possible for makers of new technology to be held accountable when use of the technology according to accompanying instructions causes measurable harm to humans, other sentient beings or the environment.
12. The making, maintenance and operations of technology should never require or amplify suffering.
It's hard to make an exhaustive list and I always feel like I must have missed something critical. But let's start here, and I'm always open to input. I can definitely see myself using these criteria in teaching, and as a framework for running workshops.
---
[a] Wendell Berry's original essay as a scanned PDF: Why I am not going to buy a computer – containing responses and Berry's reply to the responses. https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/berry-computer.pdf
[b] Kottke's post Nine Rules for Evaluating New Technology, found via @tante. https://kottke.org/25/05/nine-rules-for-evaluating-new-technology
[c] Gioia’s walkthrough of the nine rules. https://www.honest-broker.com/p/9-rules-for-new-technology
[This is a draft for a blog post.]
As should be expected, many of these questions do not have a strict yes-or-no answer. They do, however, encourage reflection and consideration around each topic area – which is what moral reasoning is all about.
Desirable characteristics of new technology:
1. Considering all manners of cost, new tech should be less costly than the task or phenomenon it replaces.
2. The output and work of new tech should be clearly and demonstrably better than what it replaces.
3. New tech should use less energy than what it replaces, or clearly boost impaired physical or mental capacity in service of wellbeing.
4. Information about the waste produced and natural resources consumed by new technology must be made available explicitly and in an accessible format. This includes the complete value chain of production.
5. New tech should be repairable by most people with access to tools, or repairable at a reasonable distance from home–by a tradesperson–at an affordable price.
6. New tech should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, which includes family and community relationships.
7. New tech should never explicitly replace human beings – its purpose is to support human beings in accomplishing humanity-desirable goals.
8. New tech should not require surveillance-like or privacy-invasive features to work. Any such features should be off by default and clearly apparent and understood by anyone using–or being subjected to–the technology.
9. People must be provided a clear and accessible path to objecting to new technology and not have it forced upon them–whether it’s as users, as subjects of use or as involuntary contributors.
10. All new technology must be accompanied with clear instructions on its intended use and how to achieve defined outcomes.
11. It must be possible for makers of new technology to be held accountable when use of the technology according to accompanying instructions causes measurable harm to humans, other sentient beings or the environment.
12. The making, maintenance and operations of technology should never require or amplify suffering.
It's hard to make an exhaustive list and I always feel like I must have missed something critical. But let's start here, and I'm always open to input. I can definitely see myself using these criteria in teaching, and as a framework for running workshops.
---
[a] Wendell Berry's original essay as a scanned PDF: Why I am not going to buy a computer – containing responses and Berry's reply to the responses. https://classes.matthewjbrown.net/teaching-files/philtech/berry-computer.pdf
[b] Kottke's post Nine Rules for Evaluating New Technology, found via @tante. https://kottke.org/25/05/nine-rules-for-evaluating-new-technology
[c] Gioia’s walkthrough of the nine rules. https://www.honest-broker.com/p/9-rules-for-new-technology
Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-machine-rogue-communication-devices-found-chinese-inverters-2025-05-14/
Daniel Berman boosted:
If you store things on someone else's computer, you lose those things if they decide to turn off, or stop you from accessing, their computer.
That's as true in the fediverse as it is anywhere else.
That's not a failing, that's reality.
Take backups. Store them in multiple locations. Test them (as best you can).
Think carefully before storing your only copy of something you care about on someone else's computer.
Daniel Berman boosted:
Check out my latest article: You Are Still Vulnerable to Password Attacks When Using Passkeys
@grayface_ghost I find it intriguing that throughout history, across continents, cultures, ethical and religious belief systems that you consistently find an expectation of responsibility of the wealthy to the rest of the community or group. It’s almost universal.
Do you have a data management strategy with an annual inventory and assessment? Here’s a nice one pager from The National Cybersecurity Society to get you started.
https://nationalcybersecuritysociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Data-Map2-web-resources.pdf
Daniel Berman boosted:
When I was a PhD student, I attended a talk by the late Robin Milner where he said two things that have stuck with me.
The first, I repeat quite often. He argued that credit for an invention did not belong to the first person to invent something but to the first person to explain it well enough that no one needed to invent it again. His first historical example was Leibniz publishing calculus and then Newton claiming he invented it first: it didn’t matter if he did or not, he failed to explain it to anyone and so the fact that Leibniz needed to independently invent it was Newton’s failure.
The second thing, which is a lot more relevant now than at the time, was that AI should stand for Augmented Intelligence not Artificial Intelligence if you want to build things that are actually useful. Striving to replace human intelligence is not a useful pursuit because there is an abundant supply of humans and you can improve the supply of intelligent humans by removing food poverty, improving access to education, and eliminating other barriers that prevent vast numbers of intelligent humans from being able to devote time to using their intelligence. The valuable tools are ones that do things humans are bad at. Pocket calculators changed the world because being able to add ten-digit numbers together orders of magnitude faster allowed humans to use their intelligence for things that were not the tedious, repetitive, tasks (and get higher accuracy for those tasks). If you want to change the world, build tools that allow humans to do more by offloading things humans are bad at and allowing them to spend more time on things humans are good at.
🔐 Tired of trying to remember complicated passwords—or worse, reusing the same one everywhere? In my latest blog post, I break down practical strategies for building smarter, safer password habits that actually work in real life.
👉 Read now: https://www.danielcberman.com/smart-password-habits.html
#CyberSecurity #PasswordTips #DigitalSafety #InfoSec #CyberHygiene
@jwildeboer So what are the likely next steps? Is this a civil or criminal matter at this point?
@kasperd @NebulaTide @stefano I have taken to asking competing sales people about weaknesses in the other person’s products and then cross-check. The people who actually know their products, know their market and what they are up against.
@3TomatoesShort Amazing step forward. I hope have a plan for fire suppression.
@neurovagrant Building draft templates for repeat support desk emails.
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