programmeruser2

Anti-hype LLM reading list

Goals: Add links that are reasonable and good explanations of how stuff works. No hype and no vendor content if possible. Practical first-hand accounts of models in prod eagerly sought.

Foundational Concepts

Pre-Transformer Models

macOS Internals

Understand your Mac and iPhone more deeply by tracing the evolution of Mac OS X from prelease to Swift. John Siracusa delivers the details.

Starting Points

How to use this gist

You've got two main options:

Pwntools Cheatsheet

Program Interaction
Environment and Contexts
Logging and Output
Encoding, Packing and Utility
Assembly and Shellcraft
ELFs, Strings and Symbols
Return Oriented Programming
SROP and Sigreturn Frames

Negative Python user experience on Debian/Ubuntu

The user experience of Python on a minimal Debian or Ubuntu installation is bad. Core features like virtual environments, pip bootstrapping, and the ssl module are either missing or do not work like designed and documented. Some Python core developers including me are worried and consider Debian/Ubuntu's packaging harmful for Python's reputation and branding. Users don't get what they expect.

Reproducer

The problems can be easily reproduced with official Debian and Ubuntu containers in Docker or Podman. Debian Stable (Debian 10 Buster) comes with Python 3.7.3. Ubuntu Focal (20.04 LTS) has Python 3.8.5.

Run Debian container

Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything!

Hence, if you are interested in existing applications to "just work" without the need for adjustments, then you may be better off avoiding Wayland.

Wayland solves no issues I have but breaks almost everything I need. Even the most basic, most simple things (like xkill) - in this case with no obvious replacement. And usually it stays broken, because the Wayland folks mostly seem to care about Automotive, Gnome, maybe KDE - and alienating everyone else (e.g., people using just an X11 window manager or something like GNUstep) in the process.

The Wayland project seems to operate like they were starting a greenfield project, whereas at the same time they try to position Wayland as "the X11 successor", which would clearly require a lot of thought about not breaking, or at least providing a smooth upgrade path for, existing software.

In fact, it is merely an incompatible alternative, and not e

	#!/usr/bin/env python3

	import sys
	import signal

	from types import FrameType
	from typing import Union

	def sighandler(signum: int, frame: Union[FrameType, None]) -> signal.Handlers:
	sys.stdout.write("\r")

	# Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger
	use_debug false

	use_bpm 139
	use_sample_defaults amp: 0.5

	use_synth :blade
	use_synth_defaults release: 0.5

	sample :drum_cymbal_closed

	export DISPLAY=$(powershell.exe -Command '(Get-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily IPv4 \| Where-Object {$_.AddressState -eq "Preferred" -and ($_.InterfaceAlias -eq "Wi-Fi" -or $_.InterfaceAlias -eq "Ethernet")}).IPAddress' \| sed 's/.$//'):0.0
	export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

	const decodeJwt = token => token.split('.').map((item,index) => index==2?item:JSON.parse(atob(item)));
	const encodeJwt = segments => segments.map((item,index)=>index==2?item:btoa(JSON.stringify(item))).join('.');