yomna

@rival-elf

phone radio security, art, abstract math, weird fashion :: advisory board member @eff.org :: she/her :: posts my own ::

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yomna@rival-elf· Jul 12

Newly launched digital Armenian jewelry library: ajf.foundation/en/digital, dedicated to preserving the history of Armenian jewelry craftsmanship

Decorate red hat (Fez) worn throughout the middle east and adjacent areas, with an unusually bejeweled tassel. Below sits a decorative cup of enamel and gold.

yomna@rival-elf· Jul 1

it's wild how one of the easiest ways to intuitively understand certain symmetry groups is just by looking at feet pics

Wikipedia screenshot of a page classifying types of 2D repeating patterns. There is a bunch of notation/images explaining them, but the clearest one(s) are of colored repeating clip art of feet.

yomna@rival-elf· Jun 10

guys they elongated hello kitty

Hello Kitty (the mascot) with her legs about 5 times as long as usual, looking freaky

yomna@rival-elf· May 13

I have long hair, and just used a carpet rake for the first time. Actual picture of my house right now

yomna@rival-elf· May 13

ah yes, the american classic, 'brown ball'

Screenshot of a tablecloth listing from amazon for a football themed tablecloth but is mislablled as brown ball and is embroidered with BB

yomna@rival-elf· Apr 27

This was in the 1970s

This made Okuda something of a rarity in Japanese music colleges at the time, where almost all students specialized in classical music. “Even my graduation thesis was on reggae. There was no one on the faculty with the background to advise my thesis, so in the end they got a specialist in baroque music to read it. The professor read it through and said, ‘Well, it seems to be put together well enough.’ And that was enough to allow me to graduate!”

yomna@rival-elf· Apr 18

this is literally insane, setting the IMSI on the SIM card to match the phone number. it dramatically lowers the barrier for dangerous real time location tracking attacks 🤦‍♀️ www.chosun.com/english/indu...

He explained that because LG Uplus set IMSI numbers to match phone numbers, hackers using simple IMSI catchers can collect IMSI (phone number) data from all nearby devices. This leaves LG Uplus subscribers exposed to targeted vishing and smishing attacks, and if hackers know a specific person’s phone number, they can even track their location.

yomna@rival-elf· Apr 12

there's actually a whole other cast of people in the original book

yomna@rival-elf· Apr 12

TIL the lambda was originally a lizard in the victorian manuscript the SICP cover is based on

Alchemist with a glowing lizard behind him

Original cover illustration of SICP where the alchemist has a glowing lambda behind them

yomna@rival-elf· Mar 27

when i saw the new jigglypuff plushie, all i could think of was this image from the forum for power grid operators

jigglypuff plush with giant, empty eyes. deeply ominous.

meme of squidward with large, empty, dead-inside eyes. text reads "please give me access to scada. i am normal and can be trusted with the power grid." scada is a software tool for operating power grid infrastructure.

yomna@rival-elf· Mar 19

Really insightful post by @senykamara.com on how STEM educations aren't preparing engineers for the reality many of them face: being expected to tackle issues that can't and shouldn't be reduced to simple engineering problems, but they keep trying to do it anyway.

So I think the problem with STEM education goes deeper than leaving gaps in your knowledge or leaving you indifferent to non-STEM fields. The deeper issue is that it reshapes your cognitive habits. It trains you to formalize, to reduce and to solve. And after years of this training, this becomes your default way to reason about every problem. Your brain learns to simplify and “flatten” problems before really understanding them.

For the STEM-minded, think of it this way. Every time you formalize a messy real-world problem you are projecting it down to a lower-dimensional space and stripping away dimensions so that you can make it tractable. This is a legitimate and powerful thing to do; it is how we model the world so that we can build bridges, design chips and prove theorems. But after years of this training, the projection step becomes invisible. It’s not a choice anymore, it’s a habit and you lose the ability to perceive all the dimensions of a problem because your have been trained to discard most of them.

It’s like studying the shadow of a three-dimensional object cast on a wall. The shadow is real, it has structure, it can be measured and and reasoned about rigorously. But there are a lot of things the shadow doesn’t capture and if all you’ve ever studied is shadows, you won’t even know to ask about them.

This might have been fine when computer scientists were mostly working on operating systems, databases, cryptography, networking etc. But those days are gone and we now work on technologies that interact with people, that impact people’s lives, jobs, educations, health etc. And these social problems are anything but well-posed! They are not clearly stated, they are very ambiguous and they don’t have unique solutions. They are messy, complex, fuzzy and contextual.

yomna@rival-elf· Mar 10

At a loss for words by this escalation of hatred by the US and Israel, especially after the recent large scale massacres by the Iranian gov. Have Iranians not suffered enough? To be mass murderered by their countrymen (~40k a few weeks ago), followed by a mass poisoning of 17 million?

Speaking about the effects on people of the US-Israeli strikes continuing around her she said, “This is no longer just a human rights violation. It is truly anti-human behaviour. If someone has a problem with the Islamic Republic government, that is one thing – but not with us, the people. You cannot attack water systems or refineries. Most of Tehran’s water comes from dams. If those become polluted, what happens then? The government has basically left people on their own.

yomna@rival-elf· Mar 9

Amazing image from the tee.fail talk at #rwc2026

A modified panel from the children's book Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel, featuring a character holding a box labeled "TDX". The text is altered to suggest using "side channels" to bypass a restriction on eating cookies. This edited version is commonly used as a meme to humorously illustrate finding workarounds for commitments or rules.

yomna@rival-elf· Feb 26

Two panel comic where first panel shows someone saying "Kids these days and their weird fashion" while looking at someone in a large, frilly dress. Second panel is a closeup with the person wearing the dress saying "Bitches I am tech lead with 23 years of experience."

yomna@rival-elf· Feb 23

tempted to respond with "Fine, thank you" whenever anyone says "howdy" to me

howdy
greeting salutation, originally a dialectal contraction of a phrase inquiring after someone's health, by 1570s as howedye (where it is contrasted with good-bye); modern spelling by 18c. A contraction of how do ye? (1560s), Huet dest þou? (mid-14c.). The form how dee do is attested from 1680s.

yomna@rival-elf· Jan 27

yomna@rival-elf· Dec 19

3 Doors Down supports this hypothesis

Lyrics from 3 Doors Down's Kryptonite: "I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind
I left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time"

yomna@rival-elf· Dec 4

tangentially related: this is almost the color of one of my favorite wedding dresses ever (katie shillingford's), but it might actually be too warm toned compared to the dress

woman wearing an unusual grey cool toned wedding dress

yomna@rival-elf· Nov 27

was struggling to come up with a consistent naming scheme for my tamagotchis, when I realized a perfect list of names already exists

Screenshot from the racket programming language documentation for pair accessor shorthands, listing: caar
cadr
cdar
cddr
caaar
caadr
cadar
caddr
cdaar
cdadr
cddar
cdddr
caaaar
caaadr
caadar
caaddr
cadaar

yomna@rival-elf· Nov 4

Update: this book arrived and it's so beautiful

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 29

I need to know the full story here

caption: the guy next to us on this flight straight up brought a plain dodecahedron as his personal item
image: a large "dodecahedron" sitting on a guy's lap on a plane

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 29

did not realize cryptography's Alice and Bob had so many counterparts now, including Heidi and Faythe

Trudy An intruder.
Victor[19] or Vanna[28] A verifier, who requires proof from the prover.
Walter A warden, who may guard Alice and Bob.
Wendy A whistleblower, who is an insider with privileged access capable of divulging information.
Interactive proof systems
For interactive proof systems there are other characters:

Arthur and Merlin Merlin provides answers, and Arthur asks questions.[29] Merlin has unbounded computational ability (like the wizard Merlin). In interactive proof systems, Merlin claims the truth of a statement, and Arthur (like King Arthur), questions him to verify the claim.
Paul and Carole Paul asks questions, and Carole provides answers. In the solution of the Twenty Questions problem,[30] Paul (standing in for Paul Erdős) asked questions and Carole (an anagram of "oracle") answered them. Paul and Carole were also used in combinatorial games, in the roles of pusher and chooser.[31]
Arthur and Bertha Arthur is the "left", "black", or "vertical" player, and Bertha is the "right", "white", or "horizontal" player in a combinatorial game. Additionally, Arthur, given the same outcome, prefers a game to take the fewest moves, while Bertha prefers a game to take the most moves.

Ivan An issuer, mentioned first by Ian Grigg in the context of Ricardian contracts.[18]
Judy A judge who may be called upon to resolve a potential dispute between participants. See Judge Judy.
Mallory[19][20][21] or (less commonly) Mallet[22][23][24][25] or Darth[26] A malicious attacker. Associated with Trudy, an intruder. Unlike the passive Eve, Mallory is an active attacker (often used in man-in-the-middle attacks), who can modify messages, substitute messages, or replay old messages. The difficulty of securing a system against a Mallory is much greater than against an Eve.
Michael or Mike Used as an alternative to the eavesdropper Eve, from microphone.
Niaj Used as an alternative to the eavesdropper Eve in several South Asian nations.[27]
Olivia An oracle, who responds to queries from other participants. Olivia often acts as a "black box" with some concealed state or information, or as a random oracle.
Oscar An opponent, similar to Mallory, but not necessarily malicious.
Peggy or Pat A prover, who interacts with the verifier to show that the intended transaction has actually taken place. Peggy is often found in zero-knowledge proofs.
Rupert A repudiator who appears for interactions that desire non-repudiation.
Sybil

Alice and Bob The original, generic characters. Generally, Alice and Bob want to exchange a message or cryptographic key.
Carol, Carlos or Charlie A generic third participant.
Chuck or Chad A third participant, usually of malicious intent.[15]
Craig A password cracker, often encountered in situations with stored passwords.
Dan, Dave or David A generic fourth participant.
Erin A generic fifth participant, but rarely used, as "E" is usually reserved for Eve.
Eve or Yves An eavesdropper, who is usually a passive attacker. While they can listen in on messages between Alice and Bob, they cannot modify them. In quantum cryptography, Eve may also represent the environment.[clarification needed]
Faythe A trusted advisor, courier or intermediary. Faythe is used infrequently, and is associated with faith and faithfulness. Faythe may be a repository of key service or courier of shared secrets.[citation needed]
Frank A generic sixth participant.
Grace A government representative. For example, Grace may try to force Alice or Bob to implement backdoors in their protocols. Grace may also deliberately weaken standards.[16]
Heidi A mischievous designer for cryptographic standards, but rarely used.[17]

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 26

interesting, my first time getting a pop-up from part of my linux system asking for donations

Title: Support GNOME
GNOME needs you help. Your donation will sustain our open source project for future generations.

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 25

i love these descriptions

My phone checking for e-mails over EDGE and irritating family members.

I've recorded this by accident. I left Ardour recording on my laptop via Zoom H2 and forgot about it. Meanwhile my cellphone must have communicated with the GSM network, and the Zoom H2 have captured the signal. Luckily no background noise is present. Enjoy

this annoying sample :)

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 25

I just can't get over how this track is literally about when your phone's 2G GSM signals would interfere with speakers, and they even sample the interference sound repeatedly: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpQS... (1/2)

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 24

Was bored while building mathlib and went to check out their github for open issues, and I've never seen a project with as many open pull requests (>2k) as mathlib4 ...

leanprover-community' mathlib4 projects as 2.1k pull requests

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 23

based license plate

Colorado plate that says "FSCK", short for the Linux command file system check

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 21

just backed the Atlas of Fourier Transforms on kickstarter! www.kickstarter.com/projects/hla...

Open book with complex geometric patterns that represent fourier transforms.

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 4

I've always wondered about the noticeable filler tracks on popular "chill" playlists, didn't realize music streaming platforms were putting them there intentionally

reddit screenshot from user "jdsamford" that says "Spotify talks about cracking down on “fake artists,” but Liz Pelly’s reporting shows they also add their own ghost artists to curated playlists. These aren’t real acts with fans, socials, or careers. They’re anonymous studio projects made to fill out lean-back playlists (chill, focus, etc.), which saves Spotify from paying higher royalties to recognizable artists. So yeah, they’re policing one kind of fraud while quietly benefiting from another."

yomna@rival-elf· Oct 3

reading DDR lore now, and there were two characters named Bus and Train??