SMOF News, volume 5, issue 9

Oct. 29th, 2025 06:59 pm
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
[personal profile] petrea_mitchell
Does it seem quaint that the most lasting issue of the 2023 Hugo drama is just trying to get the trophies repaired and distributed?

For that matter, does it seem quaint that two years ago, some people were scared that the Chinese government might disappear them at the airport over their social media posts?

Bundle of Holding: Tentacles 7

Oct. 29th, 2025 02:14 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The seventh all-new library of Sanity-shattering tabletop roleplaying ebooks inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

Bundle of Holding: Tentacles 7
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Encampment, which was brilliant, and intense.

So intense that I had to decompress with a brief Dick Francis binge: Driving Force (1992) - a bit subpar I thought, slow start, massively convoluted plot; Wild Horses (1994) - the one involving a paraphilia I actually did a post here on back when, and making of a movie; Twice Shy (1981) which has a lot of v retro though presumably at the time cutting-edge computer nerdery involving programs on cassette tapes.

On the go

Have started - this was while I was out and about in the world last week - Peter Parker's Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1960–1967 (Some Men in London #2) (2024), since I was recording a podcast last week with the author and he assured me it was somewhat less of a downer than the previous, 1950s, volume. I think it may be a dipper-in over some while.

Still dipping in to Readers' Liberation - liked the first chapter, which is about what readers bring to the book, the second seems a bit heavier going.

Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974) - perhaps not quite as good as Slow Days, Fast Company, but it was her first published work.

Up next

No idea: have just sent off for The Scribbler Annual but no idea when it's likely to arrive.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


What dark purpose compels a girl and her android companion to wander post-apocalyptic Japan?

Touring After the Apocalypse, volume 6 by Sakae Saito
[syndicated profile] bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

Signal has just rolled out its quantum-safe cryptographic implementation.

Ars Technica has a really good article with details:

Ultimately, the architects settled on a creative solution. Rather than bolt KEM onto the existing double ratchet, they allowed it to remain more or less the same as it had been. Then they used the new quantum-safe ratchet to implement a parallel secure messaging system.

Now, when the protocol encrypts a message, it sources encryption keys from both the classic Double Ratchet and the new ratchet. It then mixes the two keys together (using a cryptographic key derivation function) to get a new encryption key that has all of the security of the classical Double Ratchet but now has quantum security, too.

The Signal engineers have given this third ratchet the formal name: Sparse Post Quantum Ratchet, or SPQR for short. The third ratchet was designed in collaboration with PQShield, AIST, and New York University. The developers presented the erasure-code-based chunking and the high-level Triple Ratchet design at the Eurocrypt 2025 conference. At the Usenix 25 conference, they discussed the six options they considered for adding quantum-safe forward secrecy and post-compromise security and why SPQR and one other stood out. Presentations at the NIST PQC Standardization Conference and the Cryptographic Applications Workshop explain the details of chunking, the design challenges, and how the protocol had to be adapted to use the standardized ML-KEM.

Jacomme further observed:

The final thing interesting for the triple ratchet is that it nicely combines the best of both worlds. Between two users, you have a classical DH-based ratchet going on one side, and fully independently, a KEM-based ratchet is going on. Then, whenever you need to encrypt something, you get a key from both, and mix it up to get the actual encryption key. So, even if one ratchet is fully broken, be it because there is now a quantum computer, or because somebody manages to break either elliptic curves or ML-KEM, or because the implementation of one is flawed, or…, the Signal message will still be protected by the second ratchet. In a sense, this update can be seen, of course simplifying, as doubling the security of the ratchet part of Signal, and is a cool thing even for people that don’t care about quantum computers.

Also read this post on X.

(no subject)

Oct. 29th, 2025 09:06 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] rachelmanija and [personal profile] watersword!

Dept. of Sometimes You Win

Oct. 28th, 2025 09:50 pm
kaffy_r: Chan, Binnie and Han of SKZ bouncing (3racha bouncing)
[personal profile] kaffy_r
Hey Guys, Guess What? C'mon Guess!

Nah, you don't have to guess. 

Remember back when I was having fun with the American medical system, which appeared bound and determined to prevent me from having access to Brexpiprazole*, aka Rexulti for less than $400 per month. I told you about my favorite superhero-who-should-have-a-nobel-prize-for-awesomeness, Nicki who practically turned herself inside out to get me the meds without breaking my bank. 

Back on Sept. 2, I told y'all about that. I haven't updated you about what's happened since then. And up until yesterday, any news I could have told you was simply "nothing has worked, and I'm too exhausted to die on this fucking hill." First because neither link that Nicki gave me resulted in any help. And then the original superhero in my life, Bob, found a better link for one of the organizations that Nicki hoped might help. And sure enough, both he and Nicki were right about that organization; I just might be eligible a program that would provide me Rexulti for zip, zilch, nada until the end of the year, and then could do the same for next year as long as I applied again. 

So I put together the application, and marched it to Nicki; she filled in the shrink's part of the application and faxed it off (faxes! Modernity!) to the organization. 

I had a little frisson of hope when the organization texted me to let me know indirectly that my application had been received. But when I saw the envelope in our post box Friday, I had a bad feeling. Sure enough, they rejected me, saying, "your diagnosis doesn't meet our requirements". I read it and said the whole not-dying-on-this-fucking-hill bit. But the look Bob gave me made me reluctantly (and irritably) decide I'd leave a message to Nicki in her voice mail very early Monday morning, basically to say that this had happened, and why, and should I set up an appointment with my shrink to figure something else to prescribe me. Part of me - a very small part of me, mind - remembered something else, something just enough to ensure I made the call; that Medicare had used the same excuse reason when it initially refused to cover it, so who knew, maybe the same thing could happen in this case.

Didn't hear from Nicki Monday, but was gearing up to call her and actually talk to her rather than leave a message today, when she called. She'd apparently called around 8:30 a.m. but I was fast asleep. She got my voice mail, and redid the application, using a different diagnosis code. She told me she sent it at 4 p.m. Monday, and at 2 a.m. Tuesday the organization left an email telling her that the decision had been reversed, and I had been accepted into the program. 

Reversed. 

Accepted. 

She was so happy for me!

This evening, I got a text letting me know that my 2025 supply had been shipped. That fast. 

I shouldn't have to be celebrating like a mad thing because Nicki the superhero who deserves a Nobel Prize for Awesomeness once again proved that she should wear the damn cape and is probably capable of flying if told that would help one of her boss's patients. 

I shouldn't have to depend on the kindness of strangers to keep my sanity. 

Fucking American "health" system. 

And I'm still celebrating like the mad thing I would surely be without this med. And I'm going to be happy about it. 

* Hey, I can now say and spell the generic name!


when to hang up the phone

Oct. 28th, 2025 04:08 pm
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[personal profile] calimac
We have a landline, which means we get a lot of junk and spam calls despite being on the Do Not Call registry.

This is not a reason to give up the landline, because I get junk calls on my cell phone too. Most of the latter are in Chinese and appear to be live persons. The last one to call when I had the phone on called three times before registering - whether understanding my English or not - my saying "You have the wrong number" and hanging up.

Many of the junk calls on the landline used to be live persons. I had good luck squashing them by telling political callers that we have a rule in this household: we don't vote for any candidate who calls us more than once. Another oddity was one caller who asked to speak to the homeowner. "They're not here," I said; "they're never here." "I don't understand," said the caller. I replied, "Have you ever heard of ... rentals?" And then hung up. But a lot of callers, whether live or recorded, are from police charities or "the department of medicare" or something, so I just say, whether live or recorded, "Wrong number" and hang up.

What I really hate is live callers who begin by giving their name but then saying, "How are you today?" This is a fine piece of social lubrication to begin a mutually-agreed upon business conversation between two people who each know why the other is there. It is not a good way to begin one where the party being asked is completely ignorant of who the caller is or what they want. I usually say something like "That's a strange question to call somebody up in order to ask them." Then they usually hang up.

However, I'm expanding my rules for hanging up immediately without saying anything.

I'd noticed that calls that turned out to be boiler-room salespeople always began with, after you picked up and said "Hello?" a little boing sound. I think this was to notify the boiler room switching equipment, which probably calls many numbers at once, that here was a live one, before transferring to a person, which always took a few seconds. So now when I hear that sound, I instantly hang up.

But now I'm getting a lot of calls without the boing in which the response to my saying "Hello?" is for the caller also to say "Hello?" Before I established that these were all recorded, I figured it was a boiler-room who had just been switched onto the line and who said this to verify they had a caller. So I would say, "No, you called me. The way this works is, I say hello, and then you tell me who you are and what you want." Then there follows a pause while the computer tries to figure out what kind of response this is. Then they give a name and launch into the prerecorded spiel.

So my new rule is: If the response to my saying "Hello?" is to also say "Hello?" I will hang up immediately. I may trip up some live callers with bad connections this way, but they'll probably call back, like that Chinese-speaker did. I just don't want to waste any more phone etiquette lessons on robots.
oursin: Illustration from medieval manuscript of the female physician Trotula of Salerno holding up a urine flask (trotula)
[personal profile] oursin

Not sure these links are particularly appropriate, but maybe so.

Well, I do remember her saying she scarcely noticed The Change, though she did nuance that statement by adding that she had so much else going on at the time (eldercare and other stuff) she didn't have time to notice:

Yet more on monetising the menopause: Menopause getting you down? Don’t worry, the wellness industry has a very pricey solution for you.

I am probably being horribly cynical, but when somebody goes for a home birth after a first high risk experience of parturition, one does wonder if some kind of wellness woowoo was in the mix (“She had read or heard somewhere that there was less chance of bleeding at home and that is why she wanted a home birth.”)? but this is a dreadful story: 'Gross failure’ led to deaths of mother and baby in Prestwich home birth.

This is also a really grim story about reproductive politics in Brazil: Two More Weeks: The Brutality Behind Brazil’s Reproductive Politics:

In complicated childbirth scenarios, when the life of the pregnant person and the fetus are in conflict, therapeutic abortion has historically been considered the last resort. But in Brazil, since the nineteenth century, this solution has been replaced by the cesarean operation. This was not based on medical reasons. Cesarean sections, up until the early twentieth century, were rudimentary procedures, almost always fatal to the birthing person. What motivated its adoption in Brazil was based on different logics: religious, legal, and moral. The cesarean became an acceptable alternative to abortion because it allowed the fetus to be born, even if the birthing parent died. The nineteenth-century theological and medical debates that gave rise to this sacrificial logic still shape birth in Brazil.

Synchrony between 'Catholic and fundamentalist Evangelical actors... promoting cesarean as a morally acceptable alternative to abortion' in present day.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


How could a man die in front of Atocha Chief of Police Loren Hawn when that man died twenty years before?

Days of Atonement by Walter Jon Williams
[syndicated profile] bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

Good Wall Street Journal article on criminal gangs that scam people out of their credit card information:

Your highway toll payment is now past due, one text warns. You have U.S. Postal Service fees to pay, another threatens. You owe the New York City Department of Finance for unpaid traffic violations.

The texts are ploys to get unsuspecting victims to fork over their credit-card details. The gangs behind the scams take advantage of this information to buy iPhones, gift cards, clothing and cosmetics.

Criminal organizations operating out of China, which investigators blame for the toll and postage messages, have used them to make more than $1 billion over the last three years, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

[…]

Making the fraud possible: an ingenious trick allowing criminals to install stolen card numbers in Google and Apple Wallets in Asia, then share the cards with the people in the U.S. making purchases half a world away.

Dept. of Memes

Oct. 27th, 2025 01:41 pm
kaffy_r: Second shot of Ateez members (Eight Makes One Team)
[personal profile] kaffy_r
Music Meme FTW

I have an unfinished meme exercise sometime in the past, possibly about four years ago. But I'm not going to go back to that one, why do that when I can try another one and only get halfway through it? This one's about music, and that feels like one I actually might get through. It's worth a try at least. Many thanks to 
[personal profile] shipperslist  for the list of music-related questions. Let's see how this turns out. 

1. A song that you discovered this month: Since I already talked about RM's "Tokyo" a few days ago, I'm going give you a solo piece by Yeosang, a member of the eight-man KPop group Ateez. He's one of the members who I've discovered well after becoming fond of some of his group mates. He's a lead dancer, what's known as a sub-vocalist - he has a nice deep voice - and a "visual," which is a thing I understand, but which isn't one of my favorite bits of KPop culture. (Yes I enjoy them being pretty, but I don't like the idea of "pretty face" being an official position especially since the members of any idol group have to be good at everything. Everything.) 

This song is full of near-operatic symphonic swagger. I'd like it even if it was all in Korean because of how it's put together, and how well Yeosang and his dance crew use it in this music video. The English subtitles give me a little more of a hint about what the song means to him, and that's another reason I like it. 











Mute Things spoiler discussion space

Oct. 27th, 2025 04:24 pm
[syndicated profile] lois_mcmaster_bujold_feed
As per my usual custom, I am here providing a space for readers who have finished the story to talk with each other about it, without worrying about spoiling others.

The announcement post with more information is immediately prior to this one, click back or here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

The updated Bujold reading-order guide is back a few posts further, or here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...




Enjoy! L.

posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on October, 27

Bundle of Holding: Cthulhu Reborn

Oct. 27th, 2025 03:19 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Nearly two dozen Mythos investigations in many eras from the open-license Cthulhu Eternal tabletop roleplaying game line produced by Cthulhu Reborn.

Compatible with your favorite Lovecraftian percentile-based systems)

Bundle of Holding: Cthulhu Reborn

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