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PaperclipPerfector  12hr ago (text post)   422 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 5, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Two fun stories from tech this past week:

Story 1

The rsync developer picked up vibecoding recently, which resulted in him publishing a busted release that started breaking people's backups, which caused a nuclear level of backlash. The rsync dev responded by posting this wall of text which insists that no, vibecoding is actually the future, chuds.

The most amusing part is this is not some cooked zoomer who picked up Claude last week and deluded himself into thinking he was now a real coder. This guy is the founding author of the project, and has been its primary maintainer for 30 years.

Story 2

Zcash is a cryptocurrency which advertises itself as a privacy coin. As all good cyberpunks do, Zcash has a centralised, legally-incorporated foundation elaborating their trademark policy as well as a wealth of resources about 1023s, bylaws, IRS compliance, and pretty much anything else that would brighten the day of a young cyberpunk.

But don't worry, it gets better when you dig into the details: "Privacy coins aren’t all the same — and Zcash takes a unique stance among them. Unlike [redacted], which enforces full anonymity by default, Zcash gives users a choice." A unique stance indeed! This stance has been pioneered elsewhere by Telegram, which famously features end-to-end encrypted chats that a user can opt into (and if they don't, well, the messages are unencrypted by default just like on every other platform, and Telegram and anyone capable of arm-twisting Telegram can read them). I'll note that as a frequent user of Telegram for over a decade myself, I have never once had someone initiate a secret chat with me, which just goes to show that all true cyberpunks love mass surveillance, and will choose it whenever they are given a choice. Like Telegram, most users of Zcash choose not to make their activity private. Of course, even if you opt into the shielded pool -- a respectable choice! -- make sure you do so carefully, because there are definitely not guns pre-pointed at your foot C++ style.

But all of that is old news! Today, the price of Zcash wrt the dollar crashed nearly 60% on the news of a new critical vulnerability discovered by a random person deciding to point Claude at the code base (not the Mythos version; just the regular version accessible to anyone). The vulnerability allows unlimited coins to be printed in the shielded pool where nobody can see them. Some foolish conspiracy theorists have put forth the hypothesis that backdoor money-printing may, in fact, have been a feature, not a bug, but fortunately, top men are on the case to discredit such harebrained nonsense.

What's especially baffling about Zcash is that despite its impeccable reputation, Wikipedia notes its adoption among darknet cryptocurrency markets is less than 1%.

Story 1

I don't have the time for this, but has anyone looked into the bugs introduced to see if they were bugs a human wouldn't have introduced or would have caught in code review? Or, failing that, if they should have been caught in testing? I wouldn't be surprised if the testing story on a project like this is not very good, and the fact that the author is flaunting his CS PhD makes me positively suspect it.

fortunately, top men are on the case to discredit such harebrained nonsense.

"Jews developed this so it's a honeypot" is indeed nonsense even if it really is a honeypot.

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