"The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library" -- #MayaAngelou #quotes #books

We definitely need to start bringing our children up like this again. Some of my fondest childhood memories are in the library.

@bookstodon

Next week, France is forced yet again to reduce output and in some cases completely shut down nuclear reactors as the high temperatures heats up the cooling water they take from rivers beyond acceptable limits. This is the new normal now and will only get worse over the following years as we collectively ignore #ClimateChange

People of the Fediverse, stop everything. This is some true shit happening here: Two-Factor Authentication, a thread:

In French, the word for "factor" is "facteur". But it has another meaning: mailman. Yes, the one who delivers letters in your physical mailbox. For this reason, there is a funny meme in French where 2FA is in fact your mailman coming in and confirming that it's you.

That piece of shit Orban banned pride. This is what it looked like as a result. Fuck him.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/28/europe/budapest-pride-intl

#hungary #magyarorszag #pride

Every article on AI:

"AI is revolutionizing workflows, it's power is undeniable"

The same article, two paragraphs later

"... it doesn't actually work, it makes things worse in every possible way, customers hate it, workers hate it, it's destroying the environment"

Concluding paragraph

"So the power of AI is changing the world for the better."

You know back in my day, we had static analysis tooling that would give you exactly this kind of feedback, except it was correct. Now we have shit which only looks at the vibes of the source text and does no semantic analysis whatsoever, so of course it's just fucking wrong

Some random rambling about a Windows / AMD software bug:

Ever since I built my new PC, I always had the issue that sometimes at midnight, a blank "AMDAutoUpdate.exe" cmd window would open and do absolutely nothing. (See picture 1)

Googling it, I found a lot of people complaining about it. The exe is part of AMDs "Ryzen Master" utility that my motherboards "GCC" tool installed for me. The commonly accepted solution is to just disable the auto update service through the windows task scheduler. But that sounded too easy for me, tonight I actually went through the efforts of finding the root cause.

My first thought was: What is so broken about my hardware / setup that this random tool is just broken, it surely can't just be broken for everyone... right?

Right?....

Well... The tool in question is written in .net, this is very good because

A) .net is easy to decompile / reverse

B) I have written .net code a few years ago

So I went ahead and reversed what the tool does (or at least, what it is supposed to do).

The tool will attempt to download the file "VersionInfo.xml" from some URL that's stored within it's .exe.config file. Looking into that, hilariously enough there are two URLs, one being labeled "Production", the other being labeled "Develpment" (not a typo on my end), you can guess which of the two is commented out :P. However, this does not appear to be the issue, since both files appear to be the same in practice, let's dig deeper.

I noticed the downloaded file ends up being 0kb, so obviously something went wrong.

For downloading they use the "WebClient" class, they set a completion callback in which they call a different method to parse the file and display update option based on it's content. They also wrap the whole "WebClient" invocation into a try/except block, but since no error is being logged, it doesn't seem there is an exception happening. (See picture 2)

However, I noticed the callback is being fired with an object of the type "AsyncCompletedEventArgs" and looking at the documentation, this object has an "error" property that they unfortunately do not check for, nor log. Instead, if there is an error, the program will simply try to open the 0kb xml, fail and deadlock forever, with absolutely nothing being done in the background.

Using a .NET debugger, I was able to retrieve the error:

ERROR: The request was cancelled: A protected SSL/TLS channel could not be created

Long story short, it turns out that WebClient by default sends a TLS 1.0 request to the server and the server at some point was updated to only support TLS 1.2 and 1.3.

This also means, it is in fact, BROKEN FOR EVERYONE. IN PRODUCTION. FOR POSSIBLY YEARS...

Using a .net recompiler (man .net really has some fancy tooling...), I was able to add the line
ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = (SecurityProtocolType.Tls11 | SecurityProtocolType.Tls12);
which fixes the issue and I'm probably the first person in probably years to see the proper "update available" dialog (see picture 3), lmao.

So who's to blame here?
AMD? Microsoft?

I really don't know why this .net API doesn't try newer TLS versions if the older fail and instead requires an explicit flag to be set. On the other hand, AMDs tool is really shitty, doesn't do proper error checking and I would argue this cmd window should never open to begin with, which it wouldn't if they configured the task correctly.

De AI ChatBot.....

IKEA knows it's customer base well :blobhaj_flag_transgender:

From 1967 to 1972, the Apollo Program successfully launched 12 Saturn V rockets without loosing even one. The first one made it into orbit, and the third took Astronauts around the Moon.

Since 2023, SpaceX launched four Starships that did not have the capability to reach orbit, and blew up five Starships during or before launch.

Starship is designed to fly to Mars by 2022. What a farce.

#SpaceX #astronomy #space

Somebody on the internet is very good at subtle humor.

#StarTrekTNG
#Humor

"When the author of a book states that all sales of those books will contribute to an anti-trans fund, the only way we can choose not to participate is by not selling the books any longer. "

- #SanFrancisco bookstore #Booksmith on why they've stopped selling titles by #transphobic author #JKRowling.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-pop-culture/san-francisco-bookstore-stops-selling-jk-rowling-titles-due-harry-pott-rcna215255

📢 We've sat down with our artist @dopatwo and created a sticker pack for @signalapp. Now you can send cute elephants to your friends, and promote the #fediverse at the same time. We ❤️ Signal, too!

https://signal.art/addstickers/#pack_id=43a9c3e16e24b2f182e2d3e03a7e1338&pack_key=87a129905fbe7371568eef6485f93a81b7569a963bf711063bf804123a075083

@root42 those look like historic area codes, and I'm not sure they're even real. The 08 prefix suggests somewhere in the south, but I don't think 088 was ever used. This doesn't seem to be any of the real German cities of Schönau, none of which have a cathedral.

I gave up air travel nine years ago, and I wrote about it in this new essay on Substack.

Give it a read and a share. I think I've managed not to sound too self-righteous ;)

'What I’ve realised is that flying isn’t just a seriously carbon-intensive mode of transport, It’s a story we’re sold about what it means to live well.'

https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/p/grounded-what-i-gained-by-giving-up-air-travel

#Environment #Scotland #Writing #Books #Climate #Sustainable #Article #Writingcommunity

I kinda hoped that when a US president went to The Hague it would be sort of different circumstances.

Wednesday, it's Captain!

(see https://mathstodon.xyz/@Scmbradley/114676343373917170, https://infosec.exchange/@isotopp/114680337675015896, now posted from a proper computer with a keyboard and edit tools instead of a cellphone, and on an actual Wednesday)

⚡ Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are ready to mine areas along their borders with Russia in a bid to create a “new Iron Curtain” in Europe. They have previously announced their withdrawal from Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines, — The Telegraph

Military planners are already working out which areas of Europe’s forests and lakes will be strewn with devices loaded with explosives and shrapnel if Putin concentrates his forces against the alliance.