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David Buchanan

@retr0.id

reverse engineering, cryptography, exploits, hardware, file formats, and generally giving computers a hard time Fedi: @retr0id@retr0.id Macroblog: https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/

created April 27, 2023

50,126 followers 552 following 27,866 posts

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Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

the fun thing about recommendations is that you don't have to follow them

1/9/2025, 5:01:44 PM | 9 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I've been doing some investigation, and I found that there's an underground network of pipes covering my whole neighbourhood. everything's connected, and it goes all the way to the top.

1/9/2025, 3:25:58 PM | 17 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

people don't like my posts. here's why that's everyone else's problem ๐Ÿงต (1/?)

1/9/2025, 1:12:34 PM | 141 3 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

it's ok if you base64 it twice

1/9/2025, 3:27:24 AM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

If you think this doesn't look like direct AI output, you need to update your priors

1/9/2025, 1:26:39 AM | 9 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

1/9/2025, 1:07:45 AM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

blue hair, blue tie, hiding in your A-I

1/9/2025, 12:58:26 AM | 8 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

truly incomprehensible

1/9/2025, 12:50:27 AM | 49 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

AI has brought about incredible advances in the field of spam

1/9/2025, 12:48:40 AM | 155 10 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

astronaut pointing gun meme: wait, it's all ffmpeg? always has been
31/8/2025, 11:54:07 PM | 67 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

my meme answer would be nixos+sway

31/8/2025, 11:43:17 PM | 27 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

kinda has no buttons these days

31/8/2025, 11:37:31 PM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

If I had unlimited free time I'd write makemkv-but-FOSS

31/8/2025, 11:32:04 PM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

fedora+gnome

31/8/2025, 11:30:14 PM | 24 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I missed that!

31/8/2025, 8:37:22 PM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I'm glad my AI detector is still working, handwriting looked a little too uniform, plus repeated "them."

31/8/2025, 8:22:30 PM | 16 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

nice, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for

31/8/2025, 1:35:38 PM | 5 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

I understand the concept of political lobbying, but not the specifics of how it actually works. Is there like, a step-by-step guide to lobbying?

31/8/2025, 1:28:53 PM | 42 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

this one's easy

31/8/2025, 12:31:08 PM | 8 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

this is fascinating since I'd assume cache line size was fully transparent to software aside from microbenchmarks

31/8/2025, 11:37:31 AM | 5 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

Tegra X1 has OSS dram init, if that helps? github.com/CTCaer/miner...

31/8/2025, 11:17:35 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

TIL HTML forms can have a mailto URI as the action

30/8/2025, 8:11:38 PM | 151 4 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

you'd need a way to calibrate it for the viewer too, since I'm sure our eyes all have a different amount of persistence

30/8/2025, 5:58:35 PM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

your eyes have motion blur too

30/8/2025, 5:41:42 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

You could also remove the gaps by implementing motion blur

30/8/2025, 4:56:08 PM | 35 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

image
30/8/2025, 2:07:48 AM | 20 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

mediocre photographers do not have this problem

30/8/2025, 1:15:51 AM | 0 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

The last time this happened (which was yesterday, btw) this was also my conclusion

30/8/2025, 1:11:37 AM | 11 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

yikes

30/8/2025, 1:08:24 AM | 10 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I will probably break the db schema massively and then use the import feature for migration lol

30/8/2025, 12:32:42 AM | 7 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

hm why not rsky?

30/8/2025, 12:30:47 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

that would be the goal

30/8/2025, 12:30:12 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I'm not aware of any migration tools that don't migrate preferences

30/8/2025, 12:29:45 AM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

It does now

30/8/2025, 12:26:21 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

yes!

30/8/2025, 12:13:50 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

w3c son or ietf daughter

30/8/2025, 12:09:24 AM | 136 12 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

what if I made millipds daily-driveable. main blockers on that are a) repo imports b) oauth sync1.1 also needs doing but that's less critical, for now

29/8/2025, 11:51:10 PM | 34 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

you need at least enough storage to make backups of all your existing storage

29/8/2025, 11:21:01 PM | 5 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

they're split over multiple files

29/8/2025, 11:10:13 PM | 0 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

don't even try me, you'll hit session expiry you got no credential, while my client's confidential

29/8/2025, 10:24:56 PM | 128 5 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture daniel ๐Ÿซ  (@dholms.xyz) reposted

datatracker.ietf.org/doc/bofreq-n... ๐Ÿ‘€๐Ÿ‘€

29/8/2025, 8:21:07 PM | 116 28 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I'm calling slop

29/8/2025, 10:02:18 PM | 18 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

The "Steps to Validate" in the readme are just "look at the logs", if this is legit then I'd expect a demonstration of some concrete impact

29/8/2025, 10:00:32 PM | 19 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

Has anyone validated this? It's conceptually plausible but the readme has ChatGPT tells

29/8/2025, 9:58:55 PM | 30 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

[accidentally entering a rap battle] I uh, I got flows like oauth

29/8/2025, 9:38:10 PM | 565 76 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

github.com/felixonmars/...

29/8/2025, 9:24:16 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I'd say more likely a "feature" of a VPS admin panel

29/8/2025, 9:22:29 PM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I did finish some version of it but I don't think I ever made it accept arbitrary payloads. demo: qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom 'https://pbs'.'twimg'.'com/media/FslP9twWwAYMGGs?format=png&name=large'

29/8/2025, 8:53:40 PM | 41 2 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

going through my unpublished github repos, so much cool stuff that I never quite finished lol

tweetstrap: make bootable tweets, by embedding GRUB in a PNG.
29/8/2025, 8:51:42 PM | 95 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

it's so hard to find not-gaming hardware in general

29/8/2025, 8:42:59 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

hmmm

union jack flag above the text
29/8/2025, 6:33:40 PM | 100 6 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I don't think that's true

29/8/2025, 3:45:26 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

it'd take them a long time to re-bootstrap silicon manufacturing to the densities where inference is viable

29/8/2025, 1:43:19 PM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

Citizen, you are being redirected to another webpage. Please do not resist.

29/8/2025, 12:36:58 PM | 149 16 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

I wish I had the confidence of a mediocre photographer who watermarks all their pics

29/8/2025, 11:27:00 AM | 150 6 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I'm not so sure, I think the decisions are made based on the abstract - which probably sounded reasonable.

29/8/2025, 11:06:41 AM | 0 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

in my posting chamber

29/8/2025, 1:33:45 AM | 45 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

although my version was different so I'm just going to post it anyway

29/8/2025, 1:33:20 AM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

damn it happened again (I searched for something and you already posted it)

29/8/2025, 1:29:32 AM | 4 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture Bailey Townsend ๐Ÿฆ€ (@baileytownsend.dev) reposted

Someone write me a hefty check and you'll see some wild atproto applications. Do I know how they would be profitable? No Would there be some crazy good atproto apps and tools for the community and you'll see the atproto developers working them get paid? Hell yes you would

28/8/2025, 8:44:49 PM | 77 7 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

His brazen-ness suggests that the AI might actually have tricked *him* into thinking he had a viable project.

28/8/2025, 7:42:09 PM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I suspect this one will just be an indefinite "I'm cleaning the code up for release, it'll be ready soon"

28/8/2025, 6:54:26 PM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

and an even clearer smoking-gun github.com/poppopjmp/Le...

28/8/2025, 6:51:58 PM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

"Jailbreaking the Hivemind Finding and Exploiting Kernel Vulnerabilities in the eBPF Subsystem", same author. github repo has no code, but even the readme has commits redacting obvious AI slop github.com/poppopjmp/Le...

28/8/2025, 6:48:55 PM | 8 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

Not one talk, but two!

28/8/2025, 6:40:38 PM | 4 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

Like a sort of creaking/ticking, occasionally? Mine do this too, I thought it could be loose housing or something but I haven't been able to track it down.

28/8/2025, 4:46:06 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

Mine broke in the same place! I had them taped together for years and the tape kept falling off, and eventually I superglued it and it held.

28/8/2025, 4:43:52 PM | 0 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

this is the main way my todo list gets shorter tbh

28/8/2025, 4:18:07 PM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I saw that one post and I was so confused about what the art-definition of tangent might be

28/8/2025, 4:09:44 PM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

probably so they could watch serious people from serious companies talking about it

28/8/2025, 11:17:51 AM | 4 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I need this

28/8/2025, 10:56:33 AM | 10 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

The bandwidth was definitely a leap but I don't know any hard numbers for latency, now I'm curious

28/8/2025, 1:17:31 AM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

doing what with them, specifically?

28/8/2025, 1:09:01 AM | 0 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

a fun graph www.researchgate.net/figure/Scali...

28/8/2025, 1:04:03 AM | 35 2 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

random-computed-gotos could be similar although I imagine it's still bounded by memory latency, so the pipeline stalls don't count for much.

28/8/2025, 1:03:39 AM | 15 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

which computational benchmark has improved the *least* in the last few decades? the best (worst?) I can come up with is probably pointer-chasing though a random larger-than-cache array, which is basically a measure of memory latency rather than anything else.

28/8/2025, 1:03:39 AM | 55 2 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

how does something explode more than once

27/8/2025, 3:36:58 PM | 4 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

github.com/mary-ext/atp...

27/8/2025, 12:39:40 PM | 7 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

we will model the end user as a frictionless sphere, in a vacuum

27/8/2025, 11:36:54 AM | 341 27 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

is this not functionally equivalent to patrolling the park

27/8/2025, 9:11:13 AM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

time for wednesday!

27/8/2025, 9:08:59 AM | 3 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

they teach us spelling while we're still young and impressionable so that nobody questions why everything's spelt so stupid

27/8/2025, 9:08:49 AM | 171 9 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

don't forget GenuineIotel

27/8/2025, 1:06:16 AM | 11 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

sounds like a moderation nightmare lol

26/8/2025, 7:17:13 PM | 4 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I don't use them conversationally, I tend to go back and edit my initial input if I need to guide the response in some way - which doesn't entirely avoid it but I think it helps, and gets more useful output in general.

26/8/2025, 7:07:18 PM | 6 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

there will probably be an exportV2 at some point

26/8/2025, 5:46:33 PM | 7 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

yeah

request review from copilot
26/8/2025, 3:22:36 PM | 13 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

if I had a pantry, I'd walk into it every time like "this is my personal 7-Eleven"

26/8/2025, 10:19:42 AM | 84 2 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

> enough to help power a desalination plant Wait this doesn't make sense. Osmotic power generation involves mixing salt water and fresh water. How can you possibly end up performing a positive amount of desalination overall?

25/8/2025, 11:05:27 PM | 2 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

sorry to be that guy but jsfuck is distinct from brainfuck

25/8/2025, 8:21:27 PM | 49 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

the surface of a river, with swirls of white foam on the surface. possibly caused by pollution, but it looks nice. it's very blue.
25/8/2025, 7:46:44 PM | 33 3 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

I recommend wearing them on your feet

25/8/2025, 6:28:13 PM | 7 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

if only there were ways to modify the behaviour of software without access to the source code

25/8/2025, 6:11:45 PM | 20 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

calisthenics parks are just playgrounds for adults

25/8/2025, 2:29:11 PM | 74 2 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

ironic because once you install windows it's kinda microsoft's computer now and you just get to borrow it sometimes

25/8/2025, 8:18:17 AM | 10 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

or vice versa

25/8/2025, 1:25:00 AM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

~all problems can be solved via composition of existing solutions, LLMs are good at retrieving/porting those existing solutions

25/8/2025, 12:32:27 AM | 3 1 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

$current_discourse aside, it's neat that we can argue with each other via our protocols of choice

25/8/2025, 12:22:29 AM | 71 0 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id)

when it comes to cross-protocol flame wars, the real winner is bridgy

25/8/2025, 12:21:33 AM | 132 5 | View on Bluesky | view

Profile picture David Buchanan (@retr0.id) reply parent

LLMs

24/8/2025, 11:52:55 PM | 1 0 | View on Bluesky | view