Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one
- Personal Site
- https://kylerank.in
- Personal Bibliography
- https://kylerank.in/writing.html
Admin
Technical author, FOSS advocate, public speaker, Linux security & infrastructure geek, author of The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course, Linux Hardening in Hostile Networks and many other books, ex-Linux Journal columnist.
Joined Apr 2019
Kyle Rankin
boosted
I am intending to start posting my experiences and findings in first stabilizing, then scaling Infosec.exchange, along with where I see it going in the near/medium term.
I have quite a lot left to sort through and clean up. I should be at the point of circling back to the many (MANY!) people who kindly offered assistance.
Between work and home life and stamping out fires, I haven’t been able to spend the time yet to engage with those volunteers like I wanted. I did, however, manage to appoint an absolutely stellar moderation team. We have been going through a steep learning curve and appreciate your patience and grace as we get our legs under us. I expect we will need to expand that team, particularly to cover different times of day and languages other than English.
Also, I am overwhelmed by the generosity of the community. Three weeks ago, this website had 180 active users. As of this morning, there are 17,053. Very fortunately, I far overspec’d the server, but that was quickly overwhelmed as the site went through cuts cosmic inflationary period. I took some pretty aggressive but expensive steps to get things back to stable, and from a member perspective, that wasn’t the first experience I wanted people to have of mastodon or the fediverse. My intention, after I am able to sleep for a week, is to, with the help of some smart people I’ll be tapping, to consolidate and optimize (cost, performance, and scalability) the environment. In the mean time, Hetzner stock (if there is such a thing) might be a good investment.
It’s been quite interesting to watch the dynamics of the community. While we’ve grown nearly 100 fold in 2 weeks, I have been contacted by people letting me know they’re leaving because $X person is now on the instance, or that the timeline is too busy, or that there are too many 🐈 pics, and so on. For them, the small homey feel of the site was lost. I’ve been thinking about spinning up some parallel instances on the same infrastructure with moderated signups and possibly max numbers of active accounts.
The reason I started the DefSec podcast, I care about the security community deeply and that is why I set up this instance. I am not a celebrity or thought leader or a terribly important person in the scheme of things, and I am not doing this for fame, money, etc. I am fortunate enough to have a well paying job. I am doing this because I want us to be successful against the baddies. At the same time, members of the security community face many challenges like burn out, isolation, and it can be hard to find people who can relate to what we’re going through. My hope is that this place is helpful in some small way.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the community: my intention after I assess whether this is a flash in the pan, is to set up a non-profit foundation to oversee this instance. Assuming we don’t collapse back to 180 active accounts, I want this place to survive me. I want it to be trustworthy and transparent and reliable.
It’s been a busy two weeks. Thank you all for your patience and support. You are the best and I believe in you 
Kyle Rankin
boosted
I've now hit the halfway point in #weaving this fabric for a tote bag. When I get to this point I add a series of colored stripes. This does two things:
* Adds a little surprise when someone looks at the bottom of the tote
* (More importantly) Marks the center line for the fabric so I have reference points to mirror the measurements on the second half, and also assists me when sewing up the tote later.
I finished #weaving the center pattern for this side of the tote bag. It will run horizontally across the center of the tote and the brown toned pattern above and below will act like a background.
Update: I slept on it and woke up early to try out a tan background with a different foreground pattern. I think this is the one. #weaving
Kyle Rankin
boosted
Remember, kids, the most powerful privacy control is to not collect the data in the first place.
I'm not entirely sure about this transition to white background and purple foreground. It seems almost too stark a contrast. I'm going to sleep on it but I might take this out and use a tan background instead.
I added a fourth color and a new pattern to my fabric. It's starting to get... complicated... #weaving
Kyle Rankin
boosted
I don’t know if this will help anyone, but:
Mastodon: Help for the Frustrated User!
https://youtu.be/EQLfMLtqWEw
Found out from my local yarn store that a regional yarn store had new-in-box electronic #knitting machines on sale incredibly cheap. Unfortunately (fortunately?) they had sold out by the time I called them. Not that I had the space for one, but it seemed too good to pass up.
Kyle Rankin
boosted
As requested, I have migrated my infosec Mastodon account importable lists here: https://tisiphone.net/2022/11/10/infosec-mastodon-lists/
I hope this helps, pals! I will try to keep them as up to date as I can.
I came to my office to find that after 29 hours the articulated cobra was done printing! Here it is with support material removed. #3dprinting
Kyle Rankin
boosted
I suppose I should do an #introduction - I''m Jorge and I'm an open source community manager, I'm a bit of a cloud nerd. In the past I've worked on Kubernetes and Ubuntu, these days doing cloudcustodian.io.
Looking forward to hanging out with ya'll!
I like to talk about #linux #kubernetes #f1 #destiny2
While it took a few weeks to work up the nerve, here is proof that we actually do use the Rep weave rug I made for the front entry way. #weaving
Tech bro? No that don't make me
See what I want sign up to it swiftly
Felt it in my hips so I swiped back from the app of Twits
Then I tapped for the app, make me wanna do posts for it
Pin them like a intro post should be pinned
Came to my timeline then I found all my friends
Don't know how you do the voodoo that you do
Can post from a shell? Well, makes me wanna toot toot toot
Apologies Salt-n-Pepa
(Hey yeah, I wanna toot, baby)
Ooh, how you doing, baby?
No, not you, you, the #federated one, yeah
What's your name?
Mastodon? That sounds sexy
Uh, here I go, here I go, here I go again
Geeks, what's my weakness? (FOSS!)
OK then, chillin, browsin, minding my business
Yo Musk, I looked around and I couldn't believe this
I swear, I stared, my tab my witness
The server had it going on with something kinda, uh
Federated, moderated,
I'm not shy, so I asked for the instance
I brought an #antique mechanical #calculator (Monroe LN-160X) to my local Linux Users' Group last night for show and tell. But even better, someone else brought their #Curta Type I! I had never seen, much less used one in person before. Everything about them, the look, the feel, the form factor, is fantastic.
I'm #weaving fabric for another tote bag using the krokbragd technique. What I like about this technique is that it allows for a level of improvisation you typically don't get with most weaving.
For instance, I decided this pattern in brown tones will be a bit too bland for the full side of the tote, so I'm going to improvise a banded purple diamond pattern around the middle of the tote to spice things up.
Kyle Rankin
boosted
- Personal Site
- https://kylerank.in
- Personal Bibliography
- https://kylerank.in/writing.html
Admin
Technical author, FOSS advocate, public speaker, Linux security & infrastructure geek, author of The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course, Linux Hardening in Hostile Networks and many other books, ex-Linux Journal columnist.
Joined Apr 2019
