Assorted things that bug me/freak me out as a geek

[azurelunatic]

Regular excess grooming. I'm clean and so are my clothes. I am wearing clothes. Clothing is often a valid life choice. The clothing has been selected to generally look at least vaguely like a trained professional and a grown-up, and not scrape, poke, or pinch any part of me. Unless something really epic is happening, this is about it. I don't generally care either way if someone else picks extra grooming above and beyond on a daily basis as one of their hobbies, I mean, some people juggle geese, but it's not one of mine because it's annoying.

People who don't want to learn. Learning things (even just passively) is a joy and basically my reason to exist. People who don't want to learn give me the screaming heebie-jeebies. (My ex River and I had an amazing row over the phrase "ignorance is bliss" until we figured out that his position on it was that learning is bliss and you can't have a learning state without having an ignorance to learn better from, and therefore ignorance is bliss because hey, more things to learn!)

Security by obscurity. This one is a religious issue with me. Since learning is so vital, and the people of my tribe learn recreationally (give me a juicy technical manual, a comfortable chair, and a relaxing beverage, and I am set for a few hours), it is never a safe bet to say that no one will stumble upon the thing you hope to keep obscure. One of the first principles of defense is that it helps to know what you are defending against. Security by obscurity leaves innocents unarmed against nefarious fuckbags. I have preached loudly about this on public transit, to the point of having complete strangers tell me to can it. Religious, I tell you.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

And to carry on from what vlion said, there is in fact a time and a place for knowing about a security hole and not telling people about it. That time and place is after discovering it, after telling the people responsible for fixing it about it, and before they fix it.

Notice how "fix it" is in this timeline.

The other thing is when those responsible for fixing it decide that a good fix is "Okay, so long as nobody knows about it, nobody will exploit it, right?" THIS IS NOT A GOOD FIX. THIS IS A VERY BAD FIX.

[pineapplechild]

What you and vlion say makes sense! I think I was mis-parsing it to say more about online pseudonyms then was intended, and I got confused.

[azurelunatic]

Ahhh. I suppose a pseudonym-equivalent would be:

"Hi, example. I have discovered that you are Jane Smith of the San Francisco Smiths, and you work for the Borg. I know this because of my learnings and also because you posted like fifteen links to your Amazon wishlist where it says that right there in public."

"HOSHIT DON'T TELL ANYONE OK!!?!?" *leaves it there* as opposed to "Oh. Shit. Thank you for pointing that out, and I appreciate you telling me and not spreading it around." *cleans up journal, cleans up Amazon account*

[pineapplechild]

Ahahahaha, yeah.

[krait]

You're not alone, anyway. My brain kept trying to parse it as some kind of "geek and proud"/"don't hide your fannishness" thing, and was a bit boggled at the idea that there existed a bus where this could come up as a topic! :D (I wanna ride that bus! We will call it the Meta Bus.)

[azurelunatic]

See, john was visiting San Francisco, and he is fannish, geeky, and knows the system of which I was speaking of oooooold.