quartz/content/Updates/2024/mar.md
2024-04-04 17:10:03 -05:00

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title draft tags date lastmod
03/24 - Summary of Changes false
#update
2024-03-01 2024-03-31

Housekeeping

Howdy, y'all. I've now been maintaining this garden for about 6 months, and I've definitely found a rhythm!

Trump v. Anderson got a decision, and it's about what I expected. I'm not a Supreme Court scholar (I just moonlight as a reactionary haha), so here's someone who is to explain the catastropic effects. Unfortunately on Substack, Steve Vladeck's One First: The Shoddy Politics of Trump v. Anderson

Turns out liblzma and xz had a backdoor from xz-utils (affected versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1) that took years to set up. The circumstances that allowed it to go unnoticed are a product of problems with open-source culture that I don't feel qualified to write on. Technical write-up by a Gentoo dev is here.

  • When the backdoor got discovered, I was on a weekend trip to LA. The scramble to find ssh keys and downgrade my servers' xz packages was pretty funny. Imagine someone back from a night out, somewhat inebriated, and rummaging through laundry in their hotel room for a Yubikey to ssh into the servers from their phone.

I'm also trying to improve my writing style, because I struggle with conveying high-tech, informed entertainment for all audiences. Suggestions appreciated, so please consider my more verbose opinions on tech in this garden a continuing work-in-progress until I find a voice I'm happy with.

Pages

Status Updates

  • Fixed the license on the repo, it mistakenly identified my written content as MIT-licensed.
  • Added RSS feeds to the homepage's metadata, which should allow better integration with auto-discovery tools such as RSS Is Dead.