24 september 2026
Thursday, September 24th, 2026
Yesterday, I woke up to my MacBook being completely wiped. I documented the saga on my Mastodon.
It turned out to be my fault, as my ex-partner had her account still on my laptop that I forgot about, and she says that while she was trying to remove my device off of her iCloud, the wipe happened.
I am surprised that Apple had no record of this. You'd think that once they ran the serial number of the device, they could have seen a wipe happened, but no. It turns out if there are multiple iCloud accounts on an Apple device, one can wipe it without the other receiving any notification.
But that's okay. I only lost a couple untracked/uncommitted web projects, like a new Hugo theme. And I lost one SSH key but I have multiple others saved on my Homelab that I was able to transfer over. The biggest loss was probably my Gemini certificates lol, but I've already recovered my BBS account. Everything else is online or a git repository. I also took the efforts to make much more comprehensive and redundant backups, too.
The biggest drawback is that I'm now on MacOS 27 Golden Gate instead of Sequoia, lol. I'm joking, the cosmetic changes are worse, but if you turn off all the transparency and have a black wallpaper you don't really notice.
Anyways, if that was the end of it I wouldn't be writing this. Unfortunately, something else weird happened today.
I am almost always on omg.lol's IRC. I love the community and having a place to socialize after deleting Discord. Here are the logs in question:
\#general (+Cnt) @ irc\_social\_lol - 478 users
MOTD Updated! Type \`/motd\` or \`/quote motd\` to read the latest news. | Welcome to \#general,
the open topic channel | Try /LIST to find other channels | (ββΏβ)β₯
05:36 brennan.day (brennan) lol 7 of my blog posts are now on google scholar for some reason
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?
hl=en&as\_sdt=0,5&q=site:brennan.day&btnG=
05:44 lachesis brennan: rogue scholar turned google scholar
05:46 \* Connection to server lost (ping timeout)
05:46 \* Connection to server restored
06:02 brennan.day (brennan) https://boards.4chan.org/pol/
06:05 neatnik uhh
06:06 lachesis christ that board is radioactive
06:06 lachesis well always has been but i've never looked much and if i have it's morbid
curiosity
06:13 robb (robb) Why even waste time looking at 4chan? Why link it?
\[2\] \[+\]
06:14 \* Connection to server lost (Connection reset by peer (os error 54))
06:14 \* Connection to server restored
06:17 brennan.day (brennan) test
06:17 brennan.day (brennan) i did not write that out nor did i send that message
06:17 skippy too shitty; won't click.
06:17 \* brennan has userhost ~u@0abnutqfasesc.omg and real name 'Brennan'
As you can see by the connection resets, my Internet is awful sometimes. I was waiting for a webpage to load, knowing Halloy would be disconnected and reconnected, but then I checked Halloy and there was a message from me that I have zero recollection of.
Now, I'm not one that is afraid of getting egg on my face. If I accidentally pasted a link to /pol/ into chat, I'd apologize and I'd own it. I mean, honestly I visited weird websites all the time. But I didn't.
The lovely sysadmin Adam checked the IP logs, and thankfully it turned out the message was sent from my IP. This rules out a rogue hacker stealing my IRC credentials.
But then... what did happen?
I checked everything. I used curl and other terminal commands to parse every webpage I had opened for a link to /pol/ to see if I had accidentally copypasted a link. I was searching up stuff related to the Tumbler Ridge terrorist attack and the racist backlash/review bombing Maitreyi Ramakrishnan has been getting just for identifying as a Tamil Eelam woman. And you'd think "oh, okay, that explains that then." But it doesn't. Despite the topics, there was still no links to /pol/.
And, really, that makes sense. Who the fuck still uses 4chan still? Let alone /pol/. It's such old news. And the link itself is so weird, because it explicitly links to the board subdomain, but not to a specific thread.
It's baffling, but I don't think I'm compromised. Since omg.lol's IRC uses SASL and the IP was identical to mine, an attacker would either have to go to great lengths to spoof my address or have a RAT installed on this MacBook which, may I remind you, was totally wiped yesterday.
I don't have Halloy or IRC on any other device, I just changed my IRC password. I don't have a bouncer.
Now, I am directly port forwarding my IP address, and even though I checked inbound/outbound records and found nothing, there could be something nefarious going on.
But again, I really doubt it. Sure, 4chan is cringe but it's a far more harmless link than to something *actually illegal or specific. Maybe you could interpret it as a warning shot, or something deliberately doing something benign to fuck with me in a subtle way. And I think because I don't have 100% certainty, it's those possibilities that drive me the most crazy.
Anyways, all of this is to say that you should not DM or private message me anything sensitive or personal. Do not click any links I send you. Probably nothing is going on, and I'm just an idiot, but I am also aware that I've been actively protesting against fascism, and that's gotten hundreds of thousands of views on Twitter by people who think I'm a puritanical SJW clown.
I am unafraid and will not stop. I will annoyingly persist. I shall not go gently into that good night.