💾 Archived View for dece.space › notes › 20210527.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 03:00:04. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-07-16)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hey! The capsule has been quiet for a while because of work, so here are some news.
I took a position of “security engineer” we might say, 2 months ago. In Paris, great colleagues, great pay, and some pwestiige as the company has quite the reputation and publishes some good stuff. Back in university, this would be my dream job, but people evolve and it turns out it is surprisingly hard to have a technically interesting position in infosec without having to collaborate with state entities. Can't tell much more but that really sucks.
So I quit last friday. Unsure what to do now, if I can't see myself working there, maybe I should just start doing something else.
Just as I left the building last Tuesday to do the last paperwork, I met this small funny-looking dude, who come towards me I quickly guessed for some money. I… I'm not sure I understood everything, he was a “clown for hire” (wearing a red round nose as we spoke), looking for money to buy some clown makeup, but also worked as an osteopath for stars?
At one point he greeted a guy passing by, saying to me he was the cousin of Vincent Cassel. I thought he was just flexing and making up acquaintances, but he seemed to know a lot of specific information about some people. For example he knew exactly where lived Pierre-Jean Chalençon, an eccentric rich dude organising clandestine dinners for other toffs during the lockdown, and I knew this information to be correct because I went there a month ago to attend a protest where we've been all fined 135€ for demanding courteously about having some lobsters and champagne.
Well, not all, I corrected myself: journalists could get away before they gave us fines by presenting their press card. “Oh if you need one, I can get you one!” oh yeah? I got the feeling he was serious.
As he was calling me Keanu Reeves, he proceeded to ask me to fix his “Internet Download Manager” to download stuff. “I'm sure you can crack it!”. What? Turns out it's some kind of downloader for Windows that I thought were extinct by now. I take his mail and assure him I'll look into it. Now that's cyberpunk shit, beggars asking you for keygens. During the evening I tried to crack the software but got bored quickly so I sent him a mail with a crack I verified, along with instructions, but haven't heard back since.
I could write a few pages about this conversation because I left out a lot of fun stuff but let's leave it there 😄
You may have heard about the Freenode drama, or you can read up a résumé on Ars Technica below. This is sad, I spent a lot of time on Freenode and we lost a 9 years old channel we loved. I support the move to Libera 100%. On the bright side, the hellfire in #freenode-policy-feedback made me laugh to tears.
Late in the night in #fsf, the crown prince was answering questions, and some people including myself asked him if he could give us the Freenode Ltd contract details, or at least tell us why it is not possible. Shortly after my server got k-lined, well…
I know that in such situations we should attribute terrible decisions to incompetence rather than malicious intent, but the new staff has been acting so blatantly idiotic that it's really hard to not doubt that the end goal is to just crash Freenode into the ground. What saddens me the most is that crypto-fascists are having a blast about this situation, even integrating the staff. Hope sponsors will pull the plug quickly enough.
So, cheers to the Libera staff! Closing this with the best policy feedback:
pissnet | I am the bringer of piss
Freenode IRC staff resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s “crown prince”
I have a cool Gemini terminal browser to show you soon, hope you'll like it!
See you soon 💫