CircuitSeuss

> The app knowing I took a screenshot feels adjacent to me to a keylogger.

To my knowledge, this is a misunderstanding. The app does not know that you are taking a screenshot, rather iOS knows you are taking a screenshot (as it must) and is excluding an element on display that has been designated by the developer as sensitive information. This is the same technology that prevents you from accidentally screenshotting your password manager; the developer has simply performed a nifty trick to display a small icon behind where the “follow” button would otherwise be displayed.

There are plenty of instances where this sort of thing can be annoying, such as when you try to screenshot a streaming service app and DRM enforcement leaves you with a blank screenshot, but IMO this particular instance is actually very tasteful; seeing “follow” on every screenshotted post is just useless noise, but a small unobtrusive platform icon is a useful reminder that the post came from Bluesky and not another very visually similar service like X(cancel) or Mastodon.

Irl network security has its similarities

Vet /screen everyone. Cross check personal references, have an onboarding period before introducing new members to anything sensitive, do background checks if you’re concerned about it. There are already experienced community leaders and activists in your network; ask them how they establish trust. Teach people to think more critically about how and why they trust information and people. Make vetting part of recruitment and onboarding processes, and make recruitment work a self sustaining perpetual process with a team of people to support it. After you establish trust, use it. Ask around for feedback about new members.

Accept that you aren't going to always outsmart infiltrators and guard your information silos accordingly. Have processes for auditing threats, removing members. Avoid creating large group chats or exposing names/ contacts without consent. Keep working groups small, and don’t include people who aren’t actively participating. Use encryption, use pseudonyms. Use the basic tools available (Signal, GrapheneOS, Tails, Tor, etc). Don’t retain things like chat history or files you don't need. Give people basic training on social engineering techniques, cyber security (or honestly just how to use a computer 101), operational security, and how to recruit.

Ultimately, retain a good legal defense. You probably aren't doing anything illegal anyway, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good lawyer and a plan… legal ground is shifting, and you will never have more resources than a motivated agency task force. Get a dash camera, and non-evil doorbell camera. Have a group of friends who will check in on you regularly. If you are discussing illegal shit, don’t do it around people or devices you don’t completely trust. Retain plausible deniability.

Compliant Technologies’ founder and CEO Jeffrey Niklaus is pretty much exactly the colorful Hollywood arms dealer you would expect to be selling the government taser gloves.

20 year Army retiree who deployed in an impressive number of US imperialist campaigns [1], real life Black Hawk Down pilot [2] and self described “prodigal son”[3].

He claims to be a staunch christian, and has spoken at numerous baptist and “christ-centric” churches and christian organizations. [4]

He is also involved with ILEETA [5], a law enforcement training organization and lobby group which hosting a law enforcement industry conference, and has drawn criticism for promoting racist and militant material [6]. This relationship might be how Niklaus secured a no-bid $20M contract [Parent], but that could also he attributed to DoD contracting connections post service.

His personal opinions don't disappoint either… “These people, whether it’s Antifa, whether it’s Black Lives Matter, whether it’s MS13— which is— these are all become the major muscle movements of activity [sic] to help create that narrative for mostly peaceful protests… and they become the henchmen of people trying to shape the narrative.” — Jeffrey Niklaus speaking on conspiracist prepper youtube channel Survival Dispatch [7] He has also interviewed with self-professed right wing conspiracy theorist Sarah Westall [8].

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[1] https://www.complianttechnologies.net/jeff-niklaus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)

[3] https://archive.ph/WIVY8

[4] 2014 Orange County California Government Leaders Prayer Breakfast, hosted by the Christian Businessmen Connection. https://youtu.be/JnnJH9IzRU0 2014 at the “non-denominational Christ-centered” WellingtonChurch(.org) https://youtu.be/Z5k-j6oA0yY Calvary Baptist https://www.calvarybaptistjs.org/messages/beyond-blackhawk-d...

[5] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7jVm1WyAHwE

[6] https://apnews.com/article/police-guide-calls-blm-terrorist-... https://archive.org/details/understanding-antifa-and-urban-g...

[7] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6TV-fmnOmzI

[8] https://sarahwestall.com/shows/military-ops-in-us-afghanista... https://sarahwestall.com/articles/i-am-a-conspiracy-theorist...

Compliant Technologies claims over 700 law enforcement customers.

The company also produces shock collars[2] and e-vests “effective for prisoner transport and bring[ing] subjects into compliance during acts of aggression or attempted escape”[3], as well as a portable directional light and sound weapon [4].

[2] https://www.complianttechnologies.net/e-band-restrictor [3] https://www.complianttechnologies.net/e-vest [4] https://www.complianttechnologies.net/shields

According to the patent [1] The glove emits “210-380 volts, 0.5-1.5 amperes, charge levels of 84-125 microcoulombs, pulse durations between 105-115 microseconds and pulsed electric current at the rate of about 30 pulses per second.”

Edit: Current generation specs are listed here [2].

[1] US12326321B2 “Glove adapted to dispense pulsed electric current to a human's skin “ filed by Jeffery Niklaus’s under his company FAR EAST-WEST TRADING COMPANY, LLC along with a co-register Zhiyong Jiang. https://patents.google.com/patent/US12326321B2/en.

[2] https://www.complianttechnologies.net/the-glove

Eagerly waiting to learn in six months that the Trump family has been quietly buying up patents for individual formulations for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Manufactured demand is the best!

*for legal reasons, this is conjecture.

The product:

https://www.complianttechnologies.net/the-glove

> may cause or contribute to death or serious injury.

- product fact sheet.

Alternatively, the tech never commoditizes because of the scale of power dynamics at play, and we’re stuck with a few increasingly more wealthy and powerful corporations.

I would encourage you to add arrows to your signs/ stickers pointing out the cameras. More impactful when people see (and are unconsensually recorded by) the device first hand.

Good work!

Why not?

There have been quite a few copyright cases alleging this behavior that LLMs are not substantially transformative[1]. Note that cases have largely been ruled in the favor of the AI companies, with courts ruling that model output is “substantially transformative” of training material (although what is currently legally permissible may not be what we feel is socially permissible or ethical). The the fact that these allegations continue to be made, and the fact that AI companies seem to be trying to cover their asses by disallowing prompts which would be likely to create content highly similar to that of copyrighted training material [2] might be enough to at least warrant some consideration that Godier is being honest here.

Not that this would absolve Godier (quite the opposite in my mind- low effort ai workflows produce slop, and he chose this intentionally), but perhaps some of the onerousness here also falls on the AI companies pillaging of work.

[1] https://copyrightalliance.org/ai-copyright-lawsuit-developme... E.g. https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec20...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/chatgpt-stops-cloning-fam...

If you needed another reason to hate low effort vibe coding…

“It became clear to me that the web app I had launched using Claude was strikingly similar to his open source project, even reproducing a bug he had later fixed.”

At what point do we confront the reality that premier AI models are blatant copyright violation machines through and through?

> This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking.

Less bad is still bad.

Normalizing a gated, state controlled internet is bad.

Another state requires identity verification and monitoring in order to use a computer…

It’s definitely happening.

https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories?f%...

Don’t mistake prepositioning for “not happening.” As you said: “cyber cold war” means there are a lot of incentives not to reveal capabilities or trigger escalation from your adversaries. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa...

Although, that is changing as we continue to escalate. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/cisa-fbi-epa-and-us-go...

If you’re not convinced the threat is real and the cyber warfare is happening, I highly recommend checking out Nocole Perleoth’s To Catch a Thief. S1E7 is especially relevent: Everything Everywhere All at Once. https://www.rubrik.com/lp/to-catch-a-thief-podcast

Absolutely! But I don't think that’s the most plausible answer here.

Or maybe… Things are really fucked right now.

I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though.

I would speculate that the answer is simplier:

DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act.

Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3].

The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad. If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us.

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[1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a “fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system... As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway. https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec... https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-ci...

[3] e.g. disrupting Venezuelan or Iranian civilian infrastructure. Would you feel okay about developing the capability to cause a nuclear meltdown in Iran? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-carac... https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...

I exclusively default to homebrew when looking for software now. If it’s not available on homebrew I prefer manual install from git > the developer’s website > going to the app store.

Apparently Anthropic is moving that way: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/anthropic-confirms-plans-...

A lot of this will come from co-optimizing hardware and low level machine code for this specific use case… something apple is coincidently very good at.

Apple has worked very hard to make unified memory a feasible approach, and the benefits of that are pretty clear in apple silicon- that efficiency not only results in power and therefore thermal gains, but also in a significantly faster full loop per process: or a faster time to token. This is why even their single core mobile chips in the budget line Neo out perform PC processors with several times more threads and RAM[1]. Turns out, unified memory lets you have a whole lot more control over things like RAM bussing and core use for specific workflows.

Speculatively, a unified memory approach could also allow you to more easily integrate things like ReRAM to solve the current memory swapping bottleneck.

Let’s say a friend of mine works hardware at apple and works on exactly this… on device processing is the future I’m betting on.

[1] https://youtu.be/x26A28DoT-w?t=605

If regex were default…

> The over-priced neighborhood is perversely desirable when pricing is the only legal means of discrimination in an increasingly dysfunctional society.

Excellent explanation of why, despite the hollowed out middle class, we see a surge of developer housing marketed to those who wish to retain the pretense of class status.

As enshittification continues to accelerate, terms of service/ privacy policies are going from comically draconian to completely insane attempts to preempt both consumer rights and common sense.

For now at least, we can still find the last few “dumb” models that simply function at appliances without all the bloatware, but that’s little solace. In another ten years, I suspect we may be left with little option but to refurbish old (proprietary!) appliances as best we can.

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but there ought to be a market opening for simple, durable, easily repairable appliances? Where is the competition?

So what you’re saying is… the social media platforms/ tech sector needs to take basic measures to make their platforms less exploitative for all users regardless of age? I’m sold. What sort of incentives do you think would be the most effective motivation for platforms here?

What if… we all just agree age verification is bad for everyone and move on?

If that were true, wouldn’t we be better served by auditing the finances of these universities and imposing caps on university profits based on operating expenses?

Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace.

Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations.

We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our well educated school teachers are paid nearly nothing. Both are needed (although I would argue teachers more so). This is not fundamentally an issue of failing educational institutions (although they may well be lacking), but an issue of societal incentives. The welder is paid by the oil corporation; the teacher by a dwindling percentage of your tax dollars.

We are living in the information age yet we have a crisis of education. We desperately a solution that increases both educational access and quality for everyone regardless of their career path. We need more, better, cheaper education. We need more incentives for an educated populace. This does not achieve that: in fact it aggravates the issue.

I think it’s important to understand that while this is a win, it’s only a small step.

> Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops, not only its own network of authorized dealers.

In practice, this means Deere will now operate similar to auto manufacturers. They will make their proprietary scanning equipment, software, and manuals available… for a few-thousand-dollar/ month subscription.

You have options as to where you can replace the physical components… but still need to pay a subscription fee in order to use your vehicle’s full feature set or get access to the data you collected but don’t actually own. Your vehicle’s firmware is still locked.

They will make their parts available… but not necessarily to a common standard (we could have used a common bolt size or hose line, or specced a commonly available alternator, but we decided not to), making it prohibitively costly for third party manufacturers to compete on aftermarket parts, and keeping genuine part costs high.

You can (legally) work on the machine yourself… but work done without a licensed mechanic will likely void your warranty, or prevent you from using necessary software features.

Your local mechanic can now repair your equipment… but in order to do that work they may have to invest in not only scanners and software, but an odd handful of unique task-specific or custom tools in order to complete the repair.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a win. It’s high time that the FTC addressed Deere’s blatantly anti-competitive behavior. However, this isn’t a silver bullet that will save farmers from the rising tide of extractive capitalism, or isolate their tractors from nation state cyber threats.