abadidea

the hex is silent

professional source code complainer, Pwnie Awards 2014 Best Song, will decipher ancient writing systems for free

Access to Odin photos is a privilege contingent on not being the reason I’m regretting the internet today.

English: native; Nederlands: nog niet helemaal vloeiend; 中文：走马观花

Amsterdam

pronouns: she/her

Last Notes

2026-10-20 20:14:18 UTC

okay, I’m way too late to post xkcd “4” comic and still be funny, so instead I will have to write a serious post
Could this disturbingly severe mistake be because someone asked The Cat for a certificate? Hypothetically, yes. But there’s absolutely no reason to jump to that conclusion with self-righteous confidence when all serious infosec experts have been screaming for THIRTY YEARS that our programming languages are designed to maximize the probability of catastrophic mistakes in cryptographic code even when handled with care by experienced professionals.
Here’s what we know: several signing certificates from the same issuer with private keys that are, in their entirety, just a number below 256, all the way down to the comical “4, just 4, that’s not a typo, the private key is 4.” This strongly suggests a bug where the first byte of the intended key, treated as an array, was used rather than the whole key. A bug that’s absolutely, positively trivial to write in C and its descendants. I’ve seen proposals for how to gotcha yourself like this in Go as well.
I’m not saying The Cat isn’t involved, it could be. But you absolutely, positively do not have to ask a mischievous clawed agent for a random number for it to go this horribly wrong. We’ve always had the human strength within us to fuck up this bad all along
(And I do assume it’s a fuckup and not a backdoor, because there’s no reason to design a backdoor such that the next random enthusiast to run a sanity check script on public certificates will instantly spot it and start screaming)

2026-10-15 08:09:19 UTC

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"big dog, getting bigger" is a new, and much happier, Shortest Story

2026-10-13 10:32:27 UTC

Everyone, I have a suggestion: New Skill November.
#NewSkillNovember
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/433/132/901/646/098/original/a5232ad4dba88d85.jpg

2026-10-09 18:16:20 UTC

Me, about to miss a knockout rally threshold, out loud: “Oh, I’m dead — there’s no way I — unless — HOLY $&@# THAT WORKED?!”
#mariokart
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/412/316/568/060/215/original/1ee80c241fe5a93c.mp4

2026-10-01 09:51:31 UTC

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Diagnosis:
Weight: fine
Teeth: fine
Fur: perfect
Popularity with tourists outside the hotel, workers on smoke break, and ladies popping into the Aldi: sky high

2026-10-01 08:41:32 UTC

Good morning to a boy who has a routine checkup at the vet this autumn morning
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/364/757/990/907/116/original/6af4670d5dde1062.jpeg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/364/757/898/708/860/original/c114a6811e0ae1c6.jpeg

2026-09-19 09:29:12 UTC

A lot of foods in the Netherlands are a bit more expensive than their equivalents in the US (but generally a little higher quality and healthier). But ice cream? Ice cream is way cheaper.
I just got an eight-pack of small drumstick (cornetto) ice creams for €1.75, not even on sale. I just checked Wal-Mart's online store and their twelve-pack of the same thing is $7.12.
And Dutch ice cream is really, really good.

2026-09-10 17:33:05 UTC

Oh, right, new school year. University students: the secret to success is GO THE FUCK TO BED, GO THE FUCK TO CLASS, DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK and to get HELP AND SUPPORT from people who want you to succeed if you find yourself neglecting any of these, and there are many more such people than you may think!

2026-09-09 09:42:49 UTC

Found an American quarter in an old bag and vividly flashed back to the time in 2020 that I paid $36 for a collector's set of $20 worth of quarters from the Treasury gift shop because the laundry machine only took quarters, there was a national coin shortage due to the plague and nobody had any quarters, and the landlord was completely uninterested in fixing this by cycling the quarters back to the tenants in exchange for bills.
I rationed laundry for months like those quarters were made of gold. When I packed up to leave the United States, the movers stole the last handful and I let them have that win. And then I moved to a country where rental apartments have their own laundry hookups and became an emotionally fulfilled adult at last

2026-09-08 12:42:20 UTC

⚠️ There is a nationwide public transportation strike tomorrow, 9th September, in the Netherlands. ⚠️ This applies to intercity trains, to all local methods in Amsterdam, and probably also the local methods in other major cities. They are protesting social security cuts.
If you have a flight departing Schiphol tomorrow, go get a hotel near the airport ⚠️TONIGHT.⚠️
The only train in the country will be the one between the stations of Amsterdam Centraal, Schiphol Airport and Hoofddorp.
Kindly do not reply to me as if I am in charge of Dutch public transportation, I am in fact just a rando on the internet who thought you might like to know this before it's too late.
#netherlands #amsterdam #schiphol #travel

2025-09-15 11:02:28 UTC

Why Americans Don't Walk To School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lShDhGn5e5s
this neighborhood he filmed looks so much like America-as-I-know-her that it hurts. When I was a child, I lived in a housing development, a separate loop from the main road, nothing but houses on both sides for the whole loop. Sounds safe for kids, right? I was utterly forbidden from crossing the street ever, for any reason. In the three years I lived there, two children I knew were flattened by cars. One was in a wheelchair for years, the other had permanent brain damage. And we were lucky to have a sidewalk the whole length of the loop - which would quickly disappear beyond its edge; walking anywhere else was impossible, it was an island in a sea of high-speed roads.
The next development we lived in, the school had a street-by-street map of who was and wasn't allowed to walk to school. It was in theory a 15 minute walk, but we were forbidden because 10 of that would be on a highway with absolutely no accommodations for walking alongside it. There was a secret path through the woods that some kids used. There was a shopping center about as far in the other direction with, again, absolutely no way to walk there (and no busses). I grew up trapped in lonely fortresses in a sea of concrete, and I am still not used to the freedom I have in Europe to just... go places and do things.