Jim Lippard

@lippard

I like infosec (esp. threat intelligence), history and philosophy of science and technology, skepticism. (started compsci but phil BA; phil MA to ABD; did later human/social dimensions of sci/tech; career infosec) Mastodon:

1993 Siguiendo1577 Seguidores12.946 Publicaciones

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Jim Lippard@lippard· 26d

The one I could never find despite thinking I should be able to find it was this one; I'm guessing the pattern of dark rock is hidden in shadow on StreetView.

Rock in the Grand Canyon with light and dark patterns, dark could be Vishnu schist and light could be Zoroaster granite if I'm not mistaken.

Jim Lippard@lippard· 26d

My favorite one that was really hard to find but very satisfying to find was this photo of a bighorn sheep on a rock (photo from Julie R):

Bighorn sheep on a large rock in the Grand Canyon.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jul 12

34 years before Jim Bell's Assassination Politics.

Claire Willett post about Agatha Christie book The Pale Horse from 1961.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 29

whippets are dogs.

box of "whip-it!" N2O cream chargers, box of 24

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 19

CSI just had its 50th anniversary conference in Buffalo. Most of the old-timers are unfortunately gone, but Bill Nye, Michael Mann, Peter Hotez, Mary Roach, and many others were there on stage. Carson was a CSICOP and Randi supporter but wasn't a CSICOP Fellow. Took this photo at JREF HQ in 2009.

Personal note from Johnny Carson to James Randi about seeing John Edward on Larry King, saying "on the gullibility scale, Larry is second only to Montel Williams".

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 19

My infosec one is much lower, which is a little surprising since I have some publications and there was a time in the 90s when I got quoted in publications a fair amount. Misses the last 11 years of my career at a much more globally well-known Fortune 100 company.

42 strength / top 95%: Claude Opus 4.8 says information security professional with experience in network security and infrastructure, having worked at companies including Global Crossing.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 19

Surprisingly high weight compared to other more prominent people I've seen posting their results.

GPT-5.5 says: American eskeptic, writer, and Internet security professional known for work with the Phoenix Skeptics and skepticism publications. 728 strength / top 4%

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 17

Repo Man (1984) "corn flakes" and "yellow sliced peaches"

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 14

Believers' perceptions of skeptics.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 13

Slide.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 13

Slide

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

1982 ExxonMobil memo accurately predicting CO2 emissions and potentially catastrophic events.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

Recently deceased prominent skeptics.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

Bem photo from when Hyman was reviewer for DARPA remote viewing program.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

Martin Gardner and Randi in the middle.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

Some historical photos from early CSICOP. BF Skinner and Sagan in lower left.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

Poster on how the main promoter of the Varginha UFO case, the "Brazilian Roswell," changed his mind.

From ufology to skepticism - a case for reason and intellectual virtues

Jim Lippard@lippard· Jun 12

A poster on how bogus "learning styles" pseudoscience is prevalent in US universities.

Half of higher educational institutions in the US endorse the debunked theory of learning styles.

Jim Lippard@lippard· May 22

Before Yahoo and Google was Yongle.

Jim Lippard@lippard· May 17

Here's Claude on Gemini's review of rsync-client (which I fed into an existing conversation of Claude's review of the same code). The existing error message text also was fine and didn't require any adjustment.

Recommendation
Don't apply any of Gemini's suggested fixes. This assessment shows the danger of trusting AI security reviews without verification:

Claim 1: Confidently described code paths that don't exist
Claim 3: Suggested a "fix" that would reintroduce a known bug you'd already addressed in this conversation
Claim 4: Pattern of hallucinating syntax errors
Claim 5: Suggested a "fix" that would weaken security

The earlier Gemini review of rrsync did find one real critical bug (the glob/brace expansion bypass), but this review of rsync-client.pl appears to be mostly confabulation with technical-sounding but incorrect reasoning.
Your code is correct as-is. The only thing I'd consider is making the error message for permission mismatches clearer that special bits would also cause failure (which is intentional), but that's purely cosmetic.

Jim Lippard@lippard· Apr 17

Seems implausible in its absoluteness; should we also say Phineas Gage's violent behavior was not caused by his brain injury or "Mr. Oft"'s compulsions were not caused by his brain tumor? I think it is almost certainly false that no DV is caused by mental illness, directly or indirectly.