Assay https://theassay.pages.dev/ Notes on systems that reported success and were wrong, written while fixing them. en Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:26:40 +0000 The detector found nothing, and reported a clean run https://theassay.pages.dev/a-detector-that-found-nothing https://theassay.pages.dev/a-detector-that-found-nothing Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A face detector returned 46 faces across 40 photographs and exited 0. At the threshold I had chosen it found nothing at all in eighty photographs of people. On failure modes where an empty result is indistinguishable from a correct one. Reported: faces found: 46 across 40 photos True: 0 of 80 photographs of people, at the threshold I had chosen. My messages were on my own disk and I could not read them https://theassay.pages.dev/signal-desktop-locked-me-out https://theassay.pages.dev/signal-desktop-locked-me-out Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Signal Desktop was deregistered by the server, which cleared its credentials and made every network screen useless. The official fix, relinking, wipes the local database. How the three layers of encryption fit together, the CBC padding detail that silently truncates files, and why a count of missing files was not information. Reported: nine files missing True: No pictures lost. Nine long messages shortened.