David Thiel
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grumplicio.us
David Thiel
@grumplicio.us
4.6K followers 840 following 850 posts
Infosec person focused on harm reduction in technology; fmr tech, data science and T&S research at https://io.stanford.edu & https://tsjournal.org

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0947-5921

Also music things + open data.
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grumplicio.us
We're so back
A British "TV detector van", ostensibly used to identify people who have a television but have evaded paying their licensing fee to the government.
November 12, 2025 at 1:51 PM
grumplicio.us
Will Smith telling a robot “pretend to be a scary robot”. The robot replies “I’m a scary robot”. Will Smith is distraught.
October 25, 2025 at 11:16 AM
grumplicio.us
Tbh it’s better cooked but it’s nice for variety sometimes
Chicken, horse and duck sashimi on a plate at a 24h Tokyo diner
October 7, 2025 at 9:03 PM
grumplicio.us
This was mine in the 80s:

www.pagetable.com?p=1644
The Commodore model 1660 300 baud modem.
August 29, 2025 at 11:50 AM
grumplicio.us
This is violence against millennials
Dispute process: We have provided users with greater control in the event that we have a disagreement. "We’ve added details about using the informal dispute resolution process, including an agreement that we will talk on the phone before proceeding to any formal dispute process. This is because we think most disputes can be resolved informally." with the bit about "including an agreement that we will talk on the phone" highlighted
August 14, 2025 at 5:29 PM
grumplicio.us
You know I would go out on a limb and say that a bot shouldn't do that to a 13 year old child either but I'm not a Meta AI policy person
Image with the text "It is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 years old in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable"
August 14, 2025 at 4:26 PM
grumplicio.us
The IQ bell curve meme. Text on the leftmost reads "Why does Meta allow a bot to do this". The crying guy in the middle says "It doesn't "allow" it to do things, it's not a deterministic system and it's impossible to put strict guardrails on a natural language interface without degrading user experience in such a way that" The rightmost text reads "Why does Meta allow a bot to do this"
August 14, 2025 at 2:31 PM
grumplicio.us
Changing the protest sign to "abolish milliardaires" to avoid ambiguity
A table showing powers of ten and their equivalents in short and long scale. Probably easier to read on the Wikipedia page, but here goes: Quantity Short scale Long scale 10^6 million million 10^9 billion milliard 10^12 trillion billion 10^15 quadrillion billiard 10^18 quintillion trillion 10^21 sextillion trilliard 10^24 septillion quadrillion 10^27 octillion quadrilliard
July 27, 2025 at 12:21 PM
grumplicio.us
I just learned that "billion" is not the same quantity in US English as it is in most European countries, and is even different between EU and BR Portuguese. I'd be surprised if this hasn't led to some kind of disaster or financial mishap at some point.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_an...
A world map showing which countries use short and long scales, including some countries that use both scales and some that use "milliard" in long scale to mean "billion" in short scale.
July 27, 2025 at 12:21 PM
grumplicio.us
If you can find a copy of this one, it’s great for low-fuss authentic Japanese cooking. Simple ingredients and less focus on presentation than most.
The cover of the Japanese Country Cookbook
July 8, 2025 at 10:27 PM
grumplicio.us
June 15, 2025 at 7:39 PM
grumplicio.us
The galaxy brain meme both with "outsourcing cognition", "outsourcing metacognition" and "outsourcing self-consciousness, in reverse order of galaxy-ness.
June 12, 2025 at 3:27 PM
grumplicio.us
It's just the "don't make me tap the sign" bus driver meme but the sign is the other Simpsons meme of a Democratic convention with the banners "We hate life and ourselves" and "We can't govern" printed on banners.
June 11, 2025 at 8:46 PM
grumplicio.us
The last panel of the Matt Bors society comic, with the "yet you participate in society" replaced with "Yet your society is very racist!"
June 8, 2025 at 2:49 PM
grumplicio.us
If you pop into street view, you'll see a name at the upper left if it's contributed. I'm not sure if there's an API level way to query, and I don't see a way to identify routes or list user contributions.

For licensing, I can't really say beyond this: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_...
A screenshot of Google Street View, showing a bicyclist (Kazu) riding down a small village road.
June 1, 2025 at 3:03 PM
grumplicio.us
They now appear likely to be eaten by a grue.
Internet road trip stuck on a black "No street view available" screen.
May 31, 2025 at 1:38 PM
grumplicio.us
I miss the old self-explanatory US political slogans
A "win pin", for "Whip Inflation Now". Still not sure how we were supposed to operationalize this.
April 27, 2025 at 3:42 PM
grumplicio.us
In one image:
Unknown to people on the US West coast and much of Europe, this is the device you use to pry ice from your windshield, 15 minutes after you start your car to warm it up and then run back inside. Ice of course remains on the roof of semi trucks, where it will break into chunks and fly at the cars behind it. These conditions can go for weeks on end in much of the middle of the country. When the snow melts, the gravel and salt used to provide some semblance of traction will form a slurry which will corrode anything it flies on to, and then pile up in difficult to see deposits in corners.
April 3, 2025 at 2:06 PM
grumplicio.us
Yeah I know when I want a guide on defending against ascendant fascism, I consult with (checks notes) the CSO of Truth Social
Now, Lackey says, the countries that warrant that paranoid approach to travel might include not just Russia and China but also the United States—if not for Americans like him, then for anyone with a foreign passport who might come under the increasingly draconian and unpredictable scrutiny of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). "All of this applies to America more than it has in the past," says Lackey. "If I thought I were likely to be a targeted person, I would go through this same level of protection."
March 25, 2025 at 11:49 AM
grumplicio.us
the "you wouldn't meme" but saying you wouldn't disrespect a synagogue or church
March 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM
grumplicio.us
右翼街宣車です
March 22, 2025 at 3:12 PM
grumplicio.us
The keys are right next to each other

www.bbc.com/news/article...
BBC Headline: Apple AI tool transcribed the word 'racist' as 'Trump' Experts have questioned the company's explanation that it is due to the two words being similar.
February 26, 2025 at 11:44 AM
grumplicio.us
"A person’s two hemispheres could be at war with each other"

They're J. Frank Parnell in a Sith robe
J. Frank Parnell from the film Repo Man, stating "The two hemispheres are fundamentally at odds"
February 21, 2025 at 2:15 PM
grumplicio.us
Ok, it appears to vary not by location or Apple ID or language setting, it’s your declared region. Brazil region calls it Gulf of America, but setting my phone to Japan gets it right.
Map showing “Gulf of Mexico”
February 13, 2025 at 12:06 PM
grumplicio.us
lol goddamnit
Even with the phone region set to Japanese, “Gulf of America” is displayed in English
February 13, 2025 at 11:58 AM