Frank Hecker

Frank Hecker

@frankhecker.com

Retired resident of Howard County, Maryland, USA. Former Principal Sales Engineer at Infoblox, Inc. Staff writer for the Okazu yuri/GL/baihe news and review site. Author of the book That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura's Sweet Blue Flowers.

391 followers167 following913 posts

My personal takes on recent cybersecurity news: 1) 20-some years ago I was in charge of approving Certificate Authorities to go into the Mozilla root CA list. I'm glad I don't have that responsibility anymore. 2) I knew going with a static site generator for my personal website was the way to go.

Frank Hecker reposted

Why do so many academic histories, popular books and museum exhibits celebrate exceptional ‘kick ass’ women, while minimizing patriarchy? What went so terribly wrong in gender studies, and how can we study patriarchy with open-minded empiricism? www.ggd.world/publish/post...

I can attest to the fun of indexing. As part of a book project I did a 20-page index of the appearances & actions of 160+ characters in Takako Shimura's manga Sweet Blue Flowers. It was fun rereading the manga to create it. (And then a volunteer translated it into Japanese for the Japanese edition.)

Helen McCarthy@helenmccarthy51.bsky.social

How much do I love indexing? How weird is that? I've had so much fun with the index for my Miyazaki book that I just want to keep on tinkering and polishing. Why would I let #AI deprive me of that pleasure? #joyofcreating #allaboutDIY

Frank Hecker reposted

Thank you to new patron eden, who is helping us to keep content ad-free, and accessible to everyone. Two more monthly Ko-fi supporters or Patreon patrons will get us to this month's goal and a step closer to our annual goal.

Erica Friedman@okazu.yuricon.com

We are just *3* monthly Patreon patrons or Ko-fi Supporters away from hitting our monthly goal! Support Okazu for $5/month and help us give our guest reviewers a raise! Our annual goal sits there winking at me. I don't think we'll make it this year, but maybe early next with your help. ^_^

Frank Hecker reposted

On September 19, we held our first AGM. All four bylaw resolutions passed, and three new board members were elected. Thank you to all who voted and our 42 members who ran. Workers and communities belong on every company board. AGM replay: subvert.fm/agm Join the Subvert co-op: subvert.fm

Frank Hecker reposted

Today on Okazu – Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – October 10, 2026 2027 is going to bring Yuri fire in anime! We have new manga, new Baihe, Yuri VNs on consoles, and some great Yuri interviews this week in new from the global network. okazu.yuricon.com/2026/10/10/y...

Since they replied to one of my Math Academy posts to promote their own service (which I don't mind, incidentally), I took a look at @consiliae.bsky.social, another in a growing list of sites using MA-style principles (knowledge graph, spaced repetition, etc,) to teach math & other STEM subjects, 1/

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My personal wish: a service that goes beyond Math Academy to teach all the math and related topics I'd need to know to read and evaluate social science papers in areas like economic history, learning science, etc. Like the "I want to be a data analyst" goal but much more in-depth. 6/

Since they replied to one of my Math Academy posts to promote their own service (which I don't mind, incidentally), I took a look at @consiliae.bsky.social, another in a growing list of sites using MA-style principles (knowledge graph, spaced repetition, etc,) to teach math & other STEM subjects, 1/

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Overall impressions of @consiliae.bsky.social: another interesting entry in the field of Math Academy-inspired small-team efforts to support online STEM learning. (See also, e.g., PhysicsGraph, Nodeledge). Competitive pricing vs. Math Academy ($10/mo vs. $49/mo) but less math coverage as of now. 4/

Suggestion for @consiliae.bsky.social: Go harder on the idea of students studying for particular goals, & especially focus on areas not addressed by other services. E.g., prerequisite math for various non-STEM fields or occupational licenses (CPA, financial advisor, nurse/PA, personal investor). 5/

Since they replied to one of my Math Academy posts to promote their own service (which I don't mind, incidentally), I took a look at @consiliae.bsky.social, another in a growing list of sites using MA-style principles (knowledge graph, spaced repetition, etc,) to teach math & other STEM subjects, 1/

Initial feedback: Good: @consiliae.bsky.social identifies your goal(s) upfront, uses MA-style diagnostic testing to place you at the right place on the right path to achieve your goal, then makes that path through the knowledge graph visible to you. Initial "scan" to determine that is free. 2/

Less good: Some glitches in the scan and sign up process: 1) Making syntax error on a diagnostic response put me in a state where I couldn't correct but had to move on. 2) After sign up and completing email verification, my scan results did not show up. Had to refresh the signup page to see them. 3/

Remembering #Cohost, day 7: Besides the stories themselves, I'm interested in how the #yuri genre came to be & how it intersects with Japanese society & culture. Hence this, in which I try to summarize 100+ years of yuri & proto-yuri history in a few thousand words. frankhecker.com/2023/09/02/n...

Well, well, well. It's interesting to see my former employer, Infoblox, at #31 on the Fortune Future 120 list, "Companies ranked by vitality, or long-term growth potential", ahead of Anthropic, Anduril, and Tesla, to name but three much-hyped companies. fortune.com/ranking/futu...

fortune.comFortune Future 120 | 2026 | FortuneSince 2017, Boston Consulting Group and Fortune have partnered to identify firms with long-term growth potential, screening more than 3,000 companies every year for their capacity to generate growth f...

Pretty good for a 25-year-old company, especially given that Infoblox specializes in "Internet plumbing" (DNS, DHCP, and IP address management) that can seem as boring as real-life plumbing. But DNS in particular can be key to detecting security threats, for example: www.infoblox.com/blog/threat-...

infoblox.comIllegal Gambling Sites Reveal Three Types of CybercrimeCasino websites that look nearly identical disguise three major types of crime: money laundering, gambling scams, and a front for China-aligned APT malware C2.

Remembering #Cohost, day 6: You should write a book. Not because anyone will buy & read it (they won't), but because it's fun & you'll learn a lot. If you're too easily distracted to start writing a book, let alone finish it, here's my advice on how to do it anyway. frankhecker.com/2023/06/16/h...

I should add: my advice applies to creating any substantial work of art or otherwise---video games, albums of your music, useful computer applications, paintings, and so on. It's fun and satisfying to create something substantial that can live on after you, even if it never finds an audience.

Academia.edu has been sending me annoying emails from "Frank's copy" with text "Your copy, Frank" and no title or other information about the paper they're recommending to me. So I unsubscribed from almost all of the academia.edu email lists. Congratulations, that was a great marketing tactic!

Remembering #Cohost, day 5: I used to have a social media account with only 2 followers. It was great for posting off-the-cuff thoughts, some of which I later turned into posts, including this one on the ending of a film I love, Alice Wu's The Half of It. frankhecker.com/2023/06/09/t...

Remembering #Cohost, day 4: Now for something completely different, with an example of my obsession with log-normal and power law distributions and how small differences in people's talents and luck get magnified into large differences in people's success. frankhecker.com/2023/02/26/i...

Frank Hecker reposted

looking for a new place to read? hi 🤍 we’re Baiheverse, a small team who fell hard for Chinese #GL in English. everything here is officially licensed, and what you spend goes back to the people who made it. more about us: baiheverse.com/en/about?utm...

Remembering #Cohost, day 3: This was my contribution to helping rescue Yasujirō Ozu from the hands of critics who see him primarily as an auteur and formalist, neglecting the Ozu who created mass-market "home dramas", including one with significant queer subtext. frankhecker.com/2023/01/01/o...

Remembering #Cohost, day 2: Another one of my favorite posts rescued from Cohost and now on my website. This one is about the girls and young women who worked (and work) in textile mills and, like many of my Cohost posts, has a connection to the #yuri genre. frankhecker.com/2022/12/07/o... 1/

I should add that the comments on this post and others were also rescued from #Cohost. One of my favorite parts of the Cohost experience was getting thoughtful comments from people who followed me and whom I followed in turn, including in particular @mightfo.bsky.social. 2/2

While corporate anime and manga magazines keep going belly-up, independent sites keep plugging away producing great articles and reviews. Anime Herald turned 16 this year, Yatta-Tachi is 11 years old, and today marks the 10th anniversary of @animefeminist.com. 1/

Argh! And how could I forget (and this one is really inexcusable) that @okazu.yuricon.com turns 25 next year. (That's for. the Okazu blog, not the person---though I'm sure Erica wouldn't mind being 25 years old again!)

While corporate anime and manga magazines keep going belly-up, independent sites keep plugging away producing great articles and reviews. Anime Herald turned 16 this year, Yatta-Tachi is 11 years old, and today marks the 10th anniversary of @animefeminist.com. 1/

I believe this is the first article ever published on @animefeminist.com. Props to the site staff for maintaining consistent URLs that still work 10 years later, and don't get 404s or redirects to home pages (like lots of news/review sites). www.animefeminist.com/review-dream... 2/

animefeminist.comDREAM FESTIVAL! - Episode 1 - Anime FeministThe title sums up this show so well: enthusiastic, colourful, and pretty obviously silly. I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting to.

Remembering #Cohost: Today is the 2-year anniversary of the day that the most fun site I've ever written for stopped allowing people to post to it. In remembrance of it, for the next few days I'll be posting some of my favorite bits of writing I did on the site (now hosted on my own website). 1/

Unfortunately I don't have paper copies of the Netscape annual reports for 1996 on, and I can't find online copies of those either. If anyone has copies, I encourage you to scan them (I did mine at 600dpi) and upload them to the Internet Archive for posterity.

An excellent proposal, which gets at the key issues why other mechanisms (e.g., "source available" licenses) won't work. Also, supply chain risk is a major hot topic now, e.g., with government contractors, so I think the willingness to have a "supply chain" item in a budget is only getting greater.

Laurie Voss@seldo.com

I have been writing this post about the economics of open source, on and off, for 13 years. I wasn't expecting to end up at "Microsoft should send corporations a huge bill" but nothing else we've tried has worked. https://seldo.com/posts/nobody-pays-for-open-source-we-can-force-them-to/

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2) Worked at CollabNet with (the original) Sourcexchange service, found that companies were not willing to directly pay open source developers to write open source code for them.

3) Worked at Mozilla, realized its business model was a one-off thing not replicable elsewhere. (As an aside, I think Mozilla could have been more effective funding other open source projects and developers instead of pursuing overly-ambitious and ultimately doomed projects like the Firefox OS.)

An excellent proposal, which gets at the key issues why other mechanisms (e.g., "source available" licenses) won't work. Also, supply chain risk is a major hot topic now, e.g., with government contractors, so I think the willingness to have a "supply chain" item in a budget is only getting greater.

Laurie Voss@seldo.com

I have been writing this post about the economics of open source, on and off, for 13 years. I wasn't expecting to end up at "Microsoft should send corporations a huge bill" but nothing else we've tried has worked. https://seldo.com/posts/nobody-pays-for-open-source-we-can-force-them-to/

Note: I have experience with the alternatives mentioned and discarded: 1) Worked at Netscape, proposed a form of "source available" license for Netscape source, but Netscape went with the Netscape Public License, then the Mozilla Public License, then adding GPL/LGPL, due to developer preferences.

Frank Hecker reposted

Today on Okazu –Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 6 (作りたい女と食べたい女) Our four protagonists all take steps forward to be their authentic selves and eat delicious food along the way in this empowering tale of found family, queer joy and cooking. okazu.yuricon.com/2026/09/18/t...