dch @[email protected]

Doctor day again. Getting stabbed, bled, and zapped in the pursuit of a variety of diagnoses, all downstream issues of a single #COVID bout in Jan 2022.

BTW you can avoid my 46 months of hell just by:

- masking up
- staying vaccinated
- washing your hands
- ventilate enclosed spaces regularly
- and reminding others to do this
Such a small price to pay

#CovidIsNotOver

On that note #Aranet CO2 sensors are reduced for a further week https://aranet.com/en/home/products/aranet4-home/ I highly recommend them

Some days you think I'll just fix a bug.

And then you're knee-deep in yaml-powered tool written in python, suddenly falling through a hidden trapdoor into a shell script that uses sed and grep to parse the yaml configs, and you land on a bed of ancient monkey skulls.

At least you hope they're monkey skulls, because the inference could be its other devs who never made it back, and this sed/grep monstrosity is looking for something that was assumed to be on a single line, but doesn't have to be, because ... yaml is not an ini file.

The monkey skulls suddenly collapse into dust, and while you sneeze, you disturb a previously hidden nest of snakes (the python, you remember), which rises up to bite you on the arse. At least, its pretty close to your arse.

The only thing you can think of is to run screaming down random corridors looking for an exit, only to find that the config files that should be in /usr/local/etc are in fact in /etc/ and they point you to an escape route, even if its poorly documented, but its across a shoddy rope bridge over /var/lib/ and there are raging crocodiles below you. Skimming these files that don't respect hier(7) at all, you realise there's no choice - it's the bridge, and the crocs, and you'll need to move, fast.

Grabbing a fraying cord on the rope bridge, you struggle across as fast as you can. Of course, it pulls loose, and you swing wildly down towards the crocodiles. There's no way out now, but suddenly you realise -- /run/ isn't safe, but there's /var/run/ where this stuff should be, and at the last second, you swing over the crocs, into a hidden cave of the ancients.

There is a scroll, and it tells you how to get out. There are only two words:

#RUN #BSD

On #gravy #trains.

I imagine a 20 tonne side loading coal wagon but filled with delicious gravy. And then I imagine 80 more of them. They come past my door where I have a wall of mashed potato and a giant crane with a gravy bucket on it to pour over my mashed spuds. I also have a ball pool but it’s full of peas instead and my entire front yard is laden with delicious slices of roast NZ lamb.

That’s my idea of a gravy train and nobody gonna stop me.

#3GoodThings I helped a fellow FreeBSD person get a new port in.

I saw deer sprinting through the forest.

Spent another great day with my family, and marvelled at how my kids are growing up. They’re doing just fine.

Laughs and fun and helping. What more can you ask for from a day?

About 5 years ago my Dad and I drove down to where I grew up. He built that house from scratch, and it’s still standing today 60 years later.

I wish I’d gone into building than tech these days.

AI/LM has fucked everything worthwhile that I enjoyed about tech.

During the day, I watch people slop up regexes and yolo them to production.

No learning, no skill. No craft, no mastery.

What’s the point anymore? What will I have to show my kids, and maybe their grandkids?

A house of cards, built on stolen IP, and a planet unfit for human habitation, the destruction of millions of species and a priceless jewel in our incredible galaxy

#infosec #apocalypse AI identified, and LLM developed, both the original reported vulnerability *and* subsequently used to develop a full RCE.

- https://nicholas.carlini.com/
- https://blog.calif.io/p/mad-bugs-claude-wrote-a-full-freebsd

The bar to convert a published vuln into an exploit is getting very low.

I encourage you to read the security researcher’s site, & the exploit developer’s one.

Finally, imagine what a nation-state could do with tooling not limited by normal budget, token, and context.

We live in interesting times.

Český Krumlov in South Bohemia, lovely as always. And less than 3h from home in Vienna, I can’t believe it’s been 26 years since I was last here! I’ll definitely sneak down in here over summer for a break.