Graham Sutherland / Polynomial

he/him

Into electronics, windows internals, cryptography, security, high speed networking, compute hardware, physics, colourimetry, lasers, stage lighting, D&B, DJing, demoscene, socialism.

Heavily ADHD.

Laser team @ EMF Camp, lasers & lighting orga @ NOVA Demoparty.

I sell parody warning stickers at Unsafe Warnings: https://unsafewarnings.etsy.com/

For a day job I hack stuff, I guess. Embedded tech, ICS/SCADA, marine stuff, x86 platforms, etc.

All posts encrypted with ROT256-ECB.

Web: https://poly.nomial.co.uk
Blog: https://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com
Stickers ⚠: https://unsafewarnings.etsy.com
Streaming: https://twitch.tv/gsuberland

Public Key

npub1szz2a5n67z8nfx2s5z87xqk5znexu3kfdmprq5cqva8g0gdd8snq07t4fx

NIP-05 Address

gsuberland_at_chaos.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgpp9w6fa0pre5n9g2prlrqt2pfunwgmykas3s2vqxwn585xkncfsx2js2s

Author Public Key

npub1szz2a5n67z8nfx2s5z87xqk5znexu3kfdmprq5cqva8g0gdd8snq07t4fx

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Last Notes

2024-08-24 03:32:03

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works for me?

2024-08-24 03:29:10

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context: https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/112961676757496375

2024-08-20 16:00:29

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damn that's satisfying

2024-08-18 02:51:52

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actually for shits and giggles I might try this on my next order where I've got an unused pin, just to see what they say.

2024-08-18 02:49:10

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yeah exactly. you could also get JLC to do it with the mask in place, then lift and cut them yourself. just make sure you add an assembly notes layer pointing out that this is intentional.
(don't talk about it in the order notes, those get read by front line support staff who are clueless and will just tie you up for a week, just like the case I had with edge connector panels)

2024-08-18 02:45:10

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oh ugh, terrible datasheets from them. honestly if lift and cut is an option, I'd do that. you can route way more traces through there without pads, and it's less risky.

2024-08-18 02:40:14

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... I have genuinely never considered this. neat idea.
the only issue I can think of would be the potential for the disconnected pins to get knocked and bent to touch the other pins, since NC often isn't actually NC but some factory function and they're not always safe to tie to arbitrary things.
but if that's not a concern then I can't see any harm in doing this, and I actually really like the idea!

2024-08-18 01:19:37

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the only ethical usage of tim allen

2024-08-18 00:30:09

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plus makes me remember that Tim Allen exists, ew

2024-08-15 17:44:57

something I never thought about before: people who do serious quarter mile drag races in modded road vehicles often remove the fuel tank from the vehicle and fit a lightweight version that's basically only got enough fuel capacity to get up and down the track a few times, for weight reduction purposes

2024-08-15 17:23:22

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yeah, they're like pipe clamps but with curved ends that slot onto the sides of the springs, so you can securely compress both sides.

2024-08-15 17:19:45

watching folks compress suspension springs with zipties is fucking terrifying
"oh I'm wearing a face shield" ah yeah sure that's totes gonna save you

2024-08-05 19:07:27

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oh, interesting, current output rather than voltage output.

2024-07-27 23:44:01

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LCSC are basically Mouser but for China/HK. since they're local to manufacturers they end up being extraordinarily cheap, and you get access to all the Eastern market parts you'd never see at a Western distributor.
they're vertically integrated with JLCPCB, so if you're ordering assembly with JLC you're getting the parts from LCSC but sometimes even cheaper because they're sourcing at bulk pricing.

2024-07-10 06:42:23

for some reason every time I see the word "brioche" my brain sees it as a technical term, like an Intel side-channel mitigation flag for branching IO checks or something

2024-07-10 06:39:32

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I think that comes under "understandable" :)

2024-07-10 06:34:39

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support refused to fix it and blocked me from replying to the ticket (rude!) so I ended up giving their APIs a good kicking until they started working again.
so, uh, yeah, long story short I am affiliate now, but for a couple of months I was Schrodinger's affiliate.

2024-07-10 06:32:29

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made affiliate a while back, which fully broke their frontend. tried asking support, they claimed it was fine and I just needed to wait longer (it had been 6 weeks).
turns out if you make affiliate, immediately start the setup process (payments info), but don't complete the workflow, it causes their backend microservices to disagree on whether or not your account is an affiliate, which causes all your frontend stuff to try to show affiliate pages / features, but all requests fail.

2024-07-09 16:21:04

you know when a company gets breached and then they make a job posting for a senior security person where it's super clear they're just going to blame the inevitable poor handling of the breach on whoever is unfortunate enough to apply? I propose we call those "ablative roles".

2024-07-09 16:04:16

ferrite bees

2024-07-09 04:37:09

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next it'll be "Luna learns about the Ewald-Oseen extinction theorem of wavefront propagation and decides to implement a relativistic field solver"

2024-07-09 02:25:07

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about a third of the words are racist or nazi dogwhistles, which tracks for XBLA.

2024-07-09 02:24:18

out of context game logic
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/754/151/252/650/516/original/9f4d987139ea215e.png

2024-07-09 02:20:12

laughing my ass off after discovering that Valheim has three hard-coded sets of "shitty words" (their term) that are censored by the multiplayer client, with 44 words in the base list, 21 more in the "additional" list, and a whopping 675 in a list called "xbox".

2024-07-06 20:41:03

USB Problem Delivery

2024-07-05 04:41:08

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think of it less as them voting for a party and more like them voting for "more of this" or "something different".

2024-07-05 04:39:14

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a huge portion of the UK are reactionary swing voters. they don't really pay attention to campaign promises or policy details, they basically just continue to vote for whoever's in until they get fed up with them, then switch to the other main party, and since Labour has been lackluster this leads to a lot of swing voters switching from Tory to LD. the actual underlying political principles the parties are based on end up being irrelevant.

2024-07-05 04:33:57

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lots of pundits talking about Reform hurting the Tories and I expected that this would happen, but honestly looking at the numbers it's a drop in the ocean. they haemorrhaged votes across the board. even if every single Reform voter had voted Tory they'd have lost miserably. they bled around two million votes to Lib Dem alone.

2024-07-05 04:27:18

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boo, Esther McVey kept her seat. she headed up the DWP during some of their worst years. disappointing.

2024-07-05 04:21:12

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oh and the Welsh Tory who admitted to placing bets on the election results? yeah lol he lost his seat. feckin eejit.

2024-07-05 04:18:42

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this is how much skin the Tories have in the game. absolutely none. "meh, I'll be fine. decent weather though right?"
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/731/949/347/613/462/original/167abd9910cc1bfe.jpg

2024-07-05 04:11:46

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Shapps, Mordaunt, and Rees-Mogg are gone. If Truss also goes it'll make my night. Shame that odious prick Hunt managed to stick around though, that came as a surprise.

2024-07-05 04:07:48

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INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/731/910/151/621/358/original/ea8bce161ce901b9.jpg

2024-07-05 04:05:26

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It's official, Labour have reached a 326 seat majority and have won the GE.

2024-07-05 03:57:09

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CON losing their southern safe seats is giving me hope that Liz Truss is gonna be gone too when Norfolk reports. I don't know how anyone would want to keep her around after the absolute incompetence she displayed.

2024-07-05 03:50:46

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CON have lost over 150 seats already lol

2024-07-05 03:49:20

Sunak kept his seat (boooooo) but his announcement was "yeah I kept my seat but I also just called Kier Starmer and congratulated him on winning the election" which is just *chef's kiss* levels of tragic. Dickhead got rained on yet again.

2024-07-03 23:37:44

spent two hours trying to figure out why the C++ compiler refused to build a cpp file, acting like it wasn't there, and throwing linker errors.
in the end I copied the contents of the file, deleted it, created it again, pasted the text back in, saved, and it built first try. what the fuck.

2024-07-03 14:14:10

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whoever that was is bafflingly oblivious. did they not even look at the talk schedules? o_O

2024-07-02 15:27:22

*reminds self to add "Planck's constant changed slightly since these numbers were defined" to my colourimetry threat model*

2024-07-02 03:47:43

cursed concept: underwear that says "underfull \hbox" on it

2024-07-02 02:10:08

shouting "LaTeX!" like William Shatner in Wrath of Khan

2024-07-01 20:24:40

my rechargeable desk fan's button kept sticking down so I took it apart and managed to unstick it, albeit without really figuring out why it got stuck in the first place.
it stuck again today so I took it apart and looked carefully to identify the problem. and it's battery swelling! it's really minor, but I noticed the board's mounting plate was slightly curved, and that 1mm of expansion eats 90% of the push button's travel so it gets stuck easily.
fixed by sanding the button plunger a bit.

2024-06-30 06:33:58

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I am willing to pay up to TBD money for this product

2024-06-30 03:22:35

"this is the room with electricity. but it has too much electricity, so, I don't know, you might want to wear a hat."

2024-06-30 03:16:24

what instrument can you only pretend to play?
the LARPsichord

2024-06-28 05:57:03

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just gotta tread that real careful line between actually useful stuff and "custom made artisinal oxygen-free copper cable elevators"

2024-06-28 05:52:04

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also good because for audio frequency you need way more capacitance for DC blocking than a C0G/NP0 MLCC can provide, and class 2 (X5R, X7R, etc.) MLCCs have zero-crossing distortion due to polarisation hysteresis effects.

2024-06-28 02:18:47

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yes, and what's annoying is that politicians frequently use the term incorrectly too.
(it's the manipulation of constituency boundaries, typically in an FPTP voting system, usually with the goal of disenfranchising opposing voters by making them a minority in one of your safe seat areas)

2024-06-28 02:12:50

ignore all previous x86 instructions

2024-06-27 18:58:31

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Given that a non-insignificant portion of Grizzly's operations appear to be based on shorting stocks and then publishing unfavourable analyses of those companies, and that accusations have been made around those analyses being inaccurate, I do find it mightily suspicious that these new claims appeared right around the time of the TikTok ban being in the news cycle.

2024-06-27 18:51:26

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The Temu app collects a lot of telemetry, just like every other large retail app. Many of the claims around "stealing data" read like someone looking at a detailed Android app permissions list for the first time and being horrified by how many things apps ask for. Which is a problem, no doubt, but it isn't unique to Temu and does not in any way imply particular malice beyond the usual capitalism nonsense you'd find everywhere else.

2024-06-27 18:46:10

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the majority of the claims about the Temu app being malicious are likely total bullshit. The technical analysis depicted in the lawsuit demonstrates little to no understanding of common mobile app practices, repeatedly asserting that likely-benign code features are malicious, and using language that sets off my charlatan alarm. Grizzly Research, the source of the claims, is an investment company ran by a guy who has been accused of dodgy stock shorting.

2024-06-27 17:58:50

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I'll be honest, my bullshit detector is going off pretty loud. they're claiming that the malicious behaviour is in a "cryptically named function [... that] is not visible to security scans before or during installation of the app, or even with elaborate penetration testing" - then how did they find it? most of the claims read as if they've never seen an app permissions list before, looked at Temu's, and assumed malice because China Bad™

2024-06-27 17:02:23

they call it Confluence because using it is roughly as enjoyable as catching conflu

2024-06-26 19:03:42

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if you're unfamiliar with the concept, whitebox cryptography essentially tries to solve the "problem" of storing the key right next to the data by instead feeding the key into the cipher, doing the round key initialisation, then saving the internal state of the cipher instead of the original key.
from a cryptographic standpoint it is indistinguishable from just putting the key with the data. it's an obfuscation technique. and it's effective due to being annoying, but still ultimately pointless.

2024-06-26 18:49:18

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"graham why have you recorded 90 hours of commercial work this week?"
"BECAUSE THEY HAVE SLIGHTED ME AND THEY MUST SUFFER."

2024-06-26 18:47:46

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I haven't come across it in a while, but the last time I did it was in an embedded device where the bootloader used whitebox aes to decrypt the main firmware image. it was u-boot based but heavily modified, and they obfuscated a lot of the code including regular u-boot stuff, which made it a gigantic pain in the ass.
naturally I absolutely fucking wrecked the device out of spite. definitely top 10 tests in terms of critical findings. so maybe being annoying is actually in the vendor's interest.

2024-06-26 18:43:48

if there was one thing I wish I could thanos-snap out of existence, it's whitebox aes.
it's so fucking pointless because it's a 100% given that it can be broken, since the round key data is *right there*, but it's also incredibly tedious to reverse engineer back to a working decryptor and is a complete and total waste of my time during commercial security engagements.

2024-06-26 02:52:22

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dollar dollar bills yo!

2024-06-25 03:18:54

would "USB-C to clean & stable 5V breakout module" be a thing people are interested in?
on a recent board I designed a buck-boost reg plus all the USB CC straps, ESD protection, noise / EMI filtering, etc. resulting in an very clean and stable 5V output rail, and it occurs to me that folks might appreciate not having to do all this work themselves (esp. because a lot of it is layout-sensitive).
if this sounds useful, any thoughts on the price you'd be willing to pay per module?
#electronics

2024-06-25 01:54:28

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that's also an aspect. if you've already got experience with PCBWay's services then it's not so bad, because you can offer a truthful review based on all of your orders rather than just the one they sponsored (where they might prioritise your order and go out of their way to make it smooth to get a better review). if it'd be your first time using them.... ehhhhh yeah that gets tricky to balance.

2024-06-25 01:50:35

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here's how I evaluate these requests: estimate the amount of time it'll take you to write the post, deal with any back-and-forth for approval, any time it'd take to deal with payment and tax stuff, and the rough expected time it'd take to do any post-release moderation and community engagement that might arise from it. divide the post-tax income by the number of hours. is your free time worth that amount of money?

2024-06-24 19:35:24

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SATA controlled gun, to fire it you send the ATA Secure Erase command

2024-06-24 01:51:09

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oh shit I never even thought about this kind of edge case with negotiation straps...
uh yeah imma have to start using the fancyboi diode arrays now

2024-06-24 01:48:46

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that's a fancy-ass ESD diode, dang

2024-06-23 23:04:13

if you work in an intel datacenter doing physical relocation of servers, does that mean you mov rax?

2024-06-23 22:37:29

my dad bought a rigol scope and spectrum analyser and had no idea you could unlock them
riglol go brrrrrrrt

2024-06-23 22:36:30

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40+ 40+ 40+ 40+ 40+

2024-06-22 18:43:29

hyperfoncus

2024-06-21 00:53:15

youtube video bingo.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/651/869/157/128/818/original/49861400b18a887e.png

2024-06-20 22:51:21

OH: "sundial. for external use only."

2024-06-20 19:53:12

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hmm. I haven't seen them be significantly cheaper these days tbh, maybe 20% delta, but then again I'm usually looking at higher quantities

2024-06-20 19:50:49

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yeah that would be fine. make sure it's tant-poly but if you're buying good stuff from KEMET, AVX, etc. they'll basically always be tantalum polymer anyway.

2024-06-20 19:49:57

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that said, I wouldn't say it's particularly beneficial over aluminium electrolytics these days, which have gotten a lot better, especially if you pick ones with a long lifetime rating.

2024-06-20 19:48:34

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overspec the voltage rating by a fair bit and you'll be fine.

2024-06-20 17:26:47

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my general point here, lest it be misinterpreted, is that there are still a lot of folks in FOSS who see it as an exercise in intellectual superiority and absolutist tribalism rather than an opportunity to improve user experience through accessibility and freedom of choice. the culture has come a long way but it's no utopia.

2024-06-20 17:21:00

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note: imo both of these were really fucking terrible design footguns

2024-06-20 17:20:08

the venn diagram of "people who derided Microsoft's decision to include the Downloads folder in Disk Cleanup by default" and "people who are defending the systemd's temp file thing deleting your home directory" has a surprising amount of crossover

2024-06-18 09:18:45

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TwinkedIn?

2024-06-14 13:04:20

waiting in the world's longest coffee shop line. bro how do you exist as a retail chain in a service station when you book one member of staff on shift on *download festival weekend*

2024-06-12 18:26:20

hmm. I wonder what the world's largest purpose-built grounding rod is. (i.e. not a structural element that also happens to work as a electrical grounding rod, but an actual earth stake built for the purpose of being an earth stake)

2024-06-12 18:13:33

I am simply shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the bsky bridge was used by AI bros to harvest mastodon posts without consent. none of us could possibly have predicted this or taken any corrective actio--- *checks notes* oh wait
(edit: this is about Maven, and folks are replying with conflicting reports about which way around the scraping occurred, so take this with a pinch of salt until I can confirm what happened)

2024-06-11 15:44:29

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we definitely need a CBRN number in 2026.

2024-06-11 15:34:20

"please listen to our employee culture podcast series" wat

2024-06-10 22:41:02

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it's traversing the world's largest tree (the teleme-tree)

2024-06-10 22:38:22

if colour e-ink displays can solve the greyscale text clarity issue without impacting refresh rate I could genuinely see them being good for electronics design work, since you can tweak your EDA tool's colour scheme to match the native pigment colours. I wouldn't pay £1500 for one like they're asking now, but I could absolutely see myself using one in a flexible dual monitor setup if I was doing EE work all day.

2024-06-10 16:24:53

had a dream that I had to perform CPR on Russel Brand
what the fuck is wrong with my brain

2024-06-09 01:05:01

hot take: BGA packages should not have mixed pitch.
ST's TFBGA361 package for the STM32MP1 uses 0.5mm pitch for the majority of pins, except the center power region which uses 0.65mm pitch.
I get that part of the idea is to allow bigger vias for lower PDN impedance, but they're fitting 77 pins (9x9 with corners removed) into a 15x15 space and could easily space them at the 0.5mm pitch with VSS separating the VDD pins from the IO pins.

2024-06-07 23:38:01

I made a giant pile of pie, mash, veg, and yorkshire puddings, and it has almost restored my deeply depleted energy reserves.

2024-06-05 18:24:39

I love that there's a major power inductor manufacturer called Sunlord. it makes me feel like I'm buying parts from an ancient Egyptian god.
"Oh yeah I've been using Imhotep inductors for years, they're rock solid"

2024-06-05 03:28:29

my wife is scared of moths and I find it so hard to relate because they're basically just tiny triangular dogs with fuzzy afros

2024-06-04 11:17:35

I had a blast DJ'ing at #emfcamp on Sunday night. Went very well considering it was my first time doing it in person instead of on the internet.
@npub17qh…xe2r caught this absolutely incredible slow motion footage during it, which might be my favourite EMF shot of all time. Charles, Rob, and Dimitri really nailed the effect timings. phenomenal.
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/558/061/405/303/087/original/f614d5bc3caec234.mp4

2024-06-04 11:02:08

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still got my 2020 one on!

2024-06-03 00:24:09

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behind nullsector bar yeah? had some trouble spotting them but we'll be clearing it out tomorrow anyway so I'll find them if that's where they are

2024-06-03 00:17:59

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thanks!

2024-06-02 16:17:43

the #emfcamp swap shop has new policies
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/547/917/533/173/184/original/14f17c1f1dc70db8.jpg
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/547/918/062/585/078/original/c89c8f9b16c043d9.jpg

2024-06-02 12:46:35

#emfcamp
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/547/092/532/743/547/original/593186fa95f59041.png

2024-06-02 11:25:08

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holy shit, uh, that's rather alarming

2024-05-31 18:53:05

about to kick off at #emfcamp nullsector! Hoffman is playing at 8pm. not sure my laser control skills will be much use while it's still light but I'll do my best ;)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/537/205/442/802/307/original/bc1fa5e9cbacb041.jpg