moth.monster blog

by default, CircuitPython exposes both a USB filesystem and serial console that can reprogram the device. and while these are wonderful for prototyping, if left exposed in a finished device; someone could use them to get up to mischief!

what happened to the self checkout machine, anyways?

Browsers Hate This: One Quick Trick To Make My Theme Stop Flickering!

coffee cake is like if a cinnamon roll got turned into a cake. it doesn't have any coffee in it, but you probably already knew that.

content warning: child sexual abuse, and how it relates to AI.

a few days ago, i got this email claiming to be from SendGrid. but why would SendGrid suddenly start emailing me again when i haven't used their service in years?

To start with, let us imagine a man.

a fresh loaf of bread is a pleasure to have, especially when shared with others. this recipe makes two somewhat small sized boules, each one being the perfect size to share over a meal.

it's been over a year since i last wrote about porn ID laws on this blog. have things changed since then?

the HTC Vive VR headset is almost a decade old at this point, but i still have one and bothered to try using it again recently.

how do we prove that anyone else is thinking?

doesn't it feel like everything "AI" is boring now?

i don't like how everything these days has to be some kind of service.

unfortunately, there is no obvious straightforward way to change the icon shown on the boot splash screen. but we can still change it, if we're fine with doing a little hackery.

for as long as HTML has existed, nerds have fought over the question of if it is a "programming language" or not.

a common complaint people make about current large language models is that they lie. can't we just make them tell the truth instead?

everyone these days talks about having a VPS as if it is the first step required to host anything.

that's the part that matters, right?

to help you hopefully make a better decision on which one to buy, here's a rundown of all the important features, which ones are compatible with what devices, and which one to buy for which reasons.

i'm not a huge fan of embed cards, all things considered.

i've started to appreciate not having everything on a computer lately.

printers suck, and most of them just seem to be getting worse.

go to Google today, and you'll be given a giant box of AI-generated lies, a page full of ads, and finally one or two "articles" of meaningless SEO sludge. if you try to look up anything remotely related to a product, you'll get nothing but results trying…

copyright is a bloated and terrible mess of legal bullshit.

you might not have heard of the term "anti-feature" before, but with how technology has been developing lately, i think everyone ought to know about them.

for a long while, i've always wanted a small tablet with keyboard and stylus that runs Linux proper.

every time you start it up, the thing is seemingly slower, caused by the ever-increasing quantity of ads that the manufacturer has shoved in. what gives?

a lot of politicians sure have been weirdly obsessed with pornography lately, haven't they?

have you seen the state of for-profit social media lately?

when picking a Creative Commons license, did you ever stop to think about what NonCommercial even means?

if you're transgender, one of the inevitable parts of transitioning is changing your name. unfortunately, this process is way more confusing than it ought to be.

what is alt text anyways, and why is it so important?

it is becoming increasingly common nowadays for governments to implement poorly-conceived policies requiring websites to obtain a copy of the user's government-provided ID card in order to access them, if the content contained is of a pornographic or othe…

i'm not someone to care much about search engine optimization. despite my lack of caring, however, some of my blog posts happen to do quite well when it comes to search engine rankings. so why does this happy accident happen?

the true make-or-break moment for a social network is not getting users, it's knowing how to get rid of them.

…and it turns out it never even mattered.

have you bought a microwave recently?

it is commonly held by those with spiritual beliefs, that somehow, in some way, the universe was created.

on August 22, 2022, Lidl UK announced a recall on four varieties of children's snack foods branded with Paw Patrol characters, because they contained a link to a pornographic website on their packaging.

there seems to be confusion and disagreement when it comes to the future of the Web. i think that the core of this issue is that there are two Webs in our modern world, and their needs are opposed to one another.

the global system of capitalism is, in many ways, much like a theoretical AGI. it exists with one terminal goal; to produce as much money as possible.

age gates are a very useful way to prevent problems from links to unexpected parts of your website without stopping users from seeing the content if they want to see it.

have you ever heard about illegal numbers?

i believe that everyone should have a website. not only that, but i believe anyone can make one.

a simple - if somewhat opinionated - way to back up data automatically on Linux

when computers are storing text, they store that text as sequences of numbers.

i've seen lots of people confused about how private the fediverse is, especially when it comes to things like direct messages.

in your mind, you probably have an idea of what a computer is. you can imagine what they look like, how they act, and all that. but if you had to put it in the simplest of words, how would you do that?

if you've been on the internet lately, especially around techy folks, you've probably heard a good bit about the Fediverse by now. or perhaps you haven't heard of the Fediverse at all, but you've heard a lot about Mastodon.

on december 25th, 2022, a hacker uploaded a package to PyPI called "torchtriton". this package was basically just a copy of a package of the same name hosted on PyTorch's own package index, except it had a couple of basic credential stealers added as well.