lcamtuf :verified: :verified: :verified:

Homepage: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx
Substack: https://lcamtuf.substack.com/archive
Book: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

Public Key

npub1ysw7nqfvcf6l7w6n828j8xnsjsxz2lcxmk3fu536ucm2z963mv3qhduzpe

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszg80fsykvya0l8dfn4rernfcfgrp90urdmg572gawvd4pzagakgspqqq3samnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwd4hk6mmnw3ezuurfde4sq85u3q

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1ysw7nqfvcf6l7w6n828j8xnsjsxz2lcxmk3fu536ucm2z963mv3qhduzpe

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-11-08 22:52:04 GMT

- reply

I have no idea about the origin of the photo or the make of that PC enclosure, but I don't think it's gen AI. It has EXIF with a date of 2022/05/25 and Pentax K-1 as the camera model. It appears to be a part of a series, now lost in the annals of stock photography?
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/583/260/724/708/566/original/1fe6223271fcd2ed.webp
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/583/269/019/482/844/original/76a8ede1f50a82d1.jpg

2026-10-24 19:02:52 GMT

Some of you really need grown-up hobbies, like depression or alcoholism

2026-10-23 01:52:34 GMT

To me, the most disheartening thing about AI is how quickly we're sliding into the slop culture. It's insidious: no one wants AI to ruin their hobby, but most people see it as a cool superpower that the technology allows them to imitate other people's skills - "see, I couldn't draw and now I can".
The net effect is that everything is getting ensloppified, even in the absence of economic incentives. Yeah, that includes Mastodon: I see AI-generated memes and blog posts every day. And the usual reaction is "what does it matter, it's a funny meme", but maybe it kinda does?

2026-10-20 19:43:48 GMT

The purpose of all modern cryptography is to conceal that D = 4

2026-10-08 23:07:01 GMT

- reply

Yeah, I honestly don't get upset at people looking for ghosts. I will dunk on them for using terrible heuristics / tools, though. Note that the AI "detector" in the second screenshot is obviously some vibecoded slop.

2026-10-08 22:09:10 GMT

Three "it's obviously AI, no way you could've affixed a sign to a tree" debunks so far. Keep them coming
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/407/566/784/382/038/original/9f69a6a66153e596.png
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/407/569/921/062/041/original/402613d40010d791.png
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/407/570/198/279/656/original/5156aaf65ea2d645.png

2026-08-30 17:54:14 GMT

And on the topic @npub1mgq…sjel is posting about, here's my old macro photo of an Ampex core memory module.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/117/185/734/035/082/148/original/00298f15959ff8cd.jpg

2026-07-11 15:15:35 GMT

I don't find it surprising that people send LLM-generated docs, publish LLM-generated blog posts, etc. Writing is a chore and there's this big button labeled "get it done".
But almost no one is forthcoming about it: maybe 1% of AI-generated text I see credits the tool? People deny it even when caught red-handed.
I suspect one reason is that they still want the credit for pressing the button. But another factor may be that they realize there's no moat. If person A can prompt for blog posts, so can person B and C and D... so you don't want others to get the same idea.

2026-05-04 16:14:48 GMT

The coreutils Rust rewrite story is pretty funny.
Coreutils are tools like rm, mv, mkdir, etc. Unlike binutils, this isn't a fertile ground for memory safety bugs. But, the rewrite was completed, and in the spirit of progress, Canonical decided to switch.
But do you know what coreutils are a fertile ground for? Race conditions around file creation, deletion, permission setting, and so on. The original code accounted for decades of hard-learned lessons in that space. The Rust rewrite did not:
https://seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q2/332
PS. I'm not dunking on Rust. It's just that... starting over from scratch has its hidden costs.

2026-04-16 22:26:21 GMT

The cat's out of the bag! My latest book, "The Secret Life of Circuits", is available in early access:
https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/blog/secret/
It's the reference I wish I had when I was starting out. Electrons to embedded systems, 290+ color illustrations and 420+ pages of well-explained theory.

2026-01-04 16:52:45 GMT

The plot of new Stack Exchange questions asked per month is pretty spectacular.
And while I don't doubt that LLMs player a role on the tail end (2023 onward), it was cooked long before.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/837/849/403/545/519/original/81aabde0f8b5efe1.png

2025-11-11 00:54:24 GMT

My favorite fact about recycling is that 100% recycled plastic is often worthless, so instead, you add 5% of recycled material to a vat and make 10,000 shampoo bottles out of that, and then you take 500 of these bottles and label them "100% recycled".
Which is not wrong and yet terribly wrong at the same time

2025-11-02 19:42:10 GMT

Things you can do with diodes: https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/blog/diodes/?m2

2025-10-26 13:59:41 GMT

I'm not sure if it's Amazon or if I just don't understand contemporary fashion
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/440/823/190/900/918/original/bc18a15e9149be1a.png

2025-10-23 14:46:43 GMT

Well, that's a new one: someone on HN just called me out on breaking my promise not to use "advanced math" because I used basic trigonometry and then asserted that a - b = a + (-b)
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/424/020/668/406/832/original/81f7708e21d25e96.png

2025-10-17 16:04:13 GMT

Content farm: "The 8 best AI image generators!"
Search engine: "Yeah, about that... we now prioritize recency"
Content farm: "The 8 best AI image generators in 2025!"
Search engine: "Sorry, your buddies already published that one"
Content farm:
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/390/352/571/869/532/original/e76c39453638efbd.png

2025-09-05 14:03:00 GMT

I've been writing articles about mathematics and I've come to realize they're a love letter to *not* teaching things the way they're taught in school.
A formula? I wanted to know the how and why! What did we try first, how did we come up with that? The teachers rarely knew.
( If you're curious, I have a sampling here: https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/algorithms-and-math-trivia )

2025-08-30 14:37:37 GMT

My position on the "doomsday" risk of superhuman AGI is that if IQ offered you a decisive advantage, the world would be run by nerds.
I think it's essentially a geek power fantasy. The returns on puzzle-solving skills rapidly diminish past some modest threshold.

2025-08-02 16:07:54 GMT

If you're feeling overwhelmed, remember that
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/960/030/490/338/698/original/4b9f72d13531993b.png

2025-07-08 17:27:33 GMT

I think there's room for a website that subjectively reviews popular computer algorithms. I don't care about big-O and other nonsense like that. Did you like the product? Were the assembly instructions easy to follow? Did you get help from your CS (computer science) representative?

2025-07-03 20:42:00 GMT

Woodworkers are the most welcoming community I know of. You're talking to a master craftsman but they're still excited to see your garden planter.
On the flip side, the worst are probably electronics & math folks on Stack Exchange & Reddit: "get better before you talk to us".
Working theory: toxicity grows in proportion to the distance to wood

2025-03-22 22:21:27 GMT

It bugs me that many things in electronics have a really simple and elegant mathematical basis, but they’re given as axioms.
One of the examples is the idea that reactance and resistance are “orthogonal” - that is, we calculate their combined effect with a formula like |Z| = sqrt(R² + X²). And that’s all cool and dandy, but… why?
“Because the waveforms are shifted by 90°” - OK… but why does this produce this effect?
So, I recently reworked this article to provide a simple, visual proof: https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/impedance-part-2-why-do-lcr-meters

2025-01-25 05:47:43 GMT

C IS LEGAL AGAIN
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/887/416/259/016/167/original/4ae52ca2fc101ee3.png