Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Factory tour of an LED factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwpbDuHWXjs (CW: flashing lights at some points)

This is *particularly* useful for catching cases where a company does something that could *technically* be defended as accomplishing the stated purpose, but it is deliberately inefficient to serve an ulterior motive.

It catches it because even a defensible action would be very far from the optimal solution, but that only becomes visible if you start reasoning from the optimal solution instead of the other way around.

Handy way to determine if some behaviour from a company is deliberately malicious or not, while minimizing personal bias:

Think of what they would optimally do if they *were* malicious, and of what they would do if they *weren't* malicious and genuinely had the claimed intentions.

Whatever they are actually doing, which of the two answers is it closer to?

"The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure"

So what you're saying, Mr. Judge, if I am getting this correctly, is that... there was no damage, as was expected? Yes?

Funny how a bit of framing changes the implied meaning, isn't it?

Wow. Got a letter from the landlord; they are doing the scheduled window frame repainting in the block now, but they've received complaints from some residents that the new color is unpleasant. So they're changing the color to a more neutral color in the middle of the painting round, and repainting them in gray instead???

What is this, a landlord listening to feedback?!

The common understanding of "two-factor authentication" (something you know and something you have) is terrible, because it relies on classification that is really hard to do. Do you *have* a 2FA app or do you *know the key* to a 2FA app?

A much better model is "a factor is a separate environment that would need to be compromised independently", because it can be reasoned about and directly reflects the actual thing that needs to happen to bypass it.

This means that a 2FA app on a phone and a password manager on a PC are two factors; two devices that need to be separately compromised. A 2FA utility *in* the password manager is *not* two factors, because compromising the computer is enough to bypass both. Biometric+password *is* two factors, because compromising the computer does not get you biometric data, unless it's actively stored on there.

And yes, this is something that non-security-specialized folks can understand too, if you use slightly different wording ("hack two different devices instead of one" for example).

(They also said something to the effect of "we welcome the presence of new providers, as long as they have a sound business plan", which suggests that they are very well aware of what shit this company was trying to pull)

A rental electric moped company declared that they would stop providing service here in Den Bosch, and then asked the municipality for a subsidy to remain here.

The municipality of Den Bosch seems to have told them to piss off. "They are a commercial provider, so this is not an option." Excellent.