Viewing profile — davidsong

Thanks. I'm downloading all these now and will do a proper pass and compare outputs for correctness once complete :)

The proper way to work with Claude or Codex is, IMO, to load up the context with a discussion about what you're doing and why. You go back and forth, pushing back on its opinions a…

I didn't actually read any code. I generated spec documents using Claude, then later on used Codex to generate from the spec docs. Are the specs tainted? If someone else independen…

Yeah the main things are DoS attacks and path traversal issues. I intentionally guarded against these with resource limits and checks, but I can't guarantee that it's safe. I mean,…

Thanks! I guess you could save the state to a file on SIGINT, flush what's been written and pick it back up again if the state file exists when you restart, and use the CRCs of the…

I compressed thousands of files, went through libarchive's and Sembiance's test data at least for the decompressor side. I recompressed the files, and round-tripped them against 7z…

I generally don't anyway. Since the WTFPL came out I've been licensing under that with a warranty clause (don't blame me). My main goal here was an experiment to see how far I coul…

Well, it is every version of RAR. Documenting the quirks of rar 1.4, 1.5, 2.0, 2.9, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 7.0, multiple compression strategies, PPMd, RARVM, compression levels, encrypt…

I spent a fortnight using Claude to create specs for every version of RAR, then another using gpt-5.5 to write compressors in Rust. It's not fast and it's not pretty, but it works.…

This is about gut bacteria and debunks the practice of vaginal seeding. I remember my friend and father of five crudely telling an expectant mother that "first comes the poo, then …

Thanks for doing this. It's a pretty big file, so I compressed it down to 11mb: https://www.docdroid.net/A5g0tzk/les-animaux-compressed.pdf

When I was six I learned that variables are little boxes, strings are made of bunting and there was some kind of octopus called INKEY$ that grabbed keys from the keyboard. I think …

Theft is illegally depriving someone of something. Burglary includes an unlawful entry component.

Where would you point the upstream? Doesn't it just push the problem up one server?

I once dropped my work laptop and snapped the plastic housing on the charger plug. I only discussed it verbally with my manager and said that I, as a consultant, would replace it a…

Also dodgy files can contain multiple exploits, potentially for different platforms. Problem here from the malicious actor's point of view is that each vector for attack is also a …

Or put it anywhere a vulnerable PDF viewer or OS might stumble upon, where an overzealous scanner has write access to, or where some snitch might grab a copy from and blacklist you…

Well yes, and in this case we're talking files that contain an exploit for a version of Acrobat from 2006 or so and an infection vector that only works on Windows XP, and connects …

There are several ebooks that have been uploaded to libgen that contain PDF exploits, and from what I understand there's no way to remove them. The way that their library database …

Entertaining? This is deadly serious. I think you might need extra diversity training.

A little over two more orders of magnitude price increase before the next two halfenings and it's guaranteed to cause a world energy crisis.

It's nice to believe and even nicer to talk about, and that's what's important when it comes to writing fuzzy, warm feeling fluff.

Call me a tinfoil hatter but I've always assumed that the likes of Cloudflare, knowingly or not, are a key part of the Internet surveillance state. It would be relatively easy for …

Is it that because you don't use drugs, the people who do use them tend not to discuss them with you? I was just joking with a colleague about trying the gas and air when his wife …