Old 386 and 486 code was really easy. I also got lost around the Pentium era as well. At the time, it was getting really hacky to work through extended and expanded memory while also learning to work with 32bit registers.

At the time, correctly or not, I just felt I was learning to navigate a bunch of architecture bandaids and not anything that was going to be static for the next few years. I just kinda put it aside, TBH.

ASM is still useful for MCUs at times and developing that feels like the good ol days…

You can generally cross compile across architectures, but there can be instruction or build nuances that can cause hiccups. Also, you need to build everything against the target architecture as well, not just the kernel.

I taught myself QuickBasic as it was the only thing I knew that was related to copying C64 BASIC out of magazines. (QBasic was packaged with DOS 3.11 I think and I was able to get a full copy of QuickBasic somehow. That was about +30 years ago? Dunno. I was about 12 at the time.) I didn’t know what other languages were out there besides TurboPascal. I did learn simple Pascal, but that was a short chapter.

I actually met someone else in the area that was learning to code, and of course, we wanted to write a game. The only way to code for a mouse at the time was to write an INT33 handler, so it kicked off our interest in asm. (I still use asm for MCU stuff on occasion, but it’s limited.) I quickly diverged into writing some really nifty… eh… “boot sector code” so that kicked off my career in security.

And yeah, it’s the same phenomenon for me: I just think in terms of bits and bytes getting shifted around and I still refuse to believe in “magic”. (Slight jab at Rust coders there, but in good fun.)

Fast forward to today, I train “kids” fresh out of college as part of my job now. The first thing I do is start giving them weird tasks that require they actually understand how something like an fopen() actually works.

(Funny story. I refused to “show my work” in math class for simple f(x) problems as I viewed it as unoptimized code. Lulz. I was such an autistic dork.)

That, 200%!

When I started in computers, years ago, I transitioned from QuickBasic directly into assembly. Ever since then, I can kinda “read the Matrix” (Blond, Brunette, Redhead…) and forget about how confusing a raw binary or how a mess of a dmp looks to someone else. (To me, I really just see patterns and nothing massively complicated.)

“It’s just data.” - You would be surprised how fuzzy that statement is for some people. It’s almost exactly like telling someone who doesn’t speak any English that “the sky is blue”. It’s totally cool though! Learning about the internals of any computer is really just a very long chain of “aha moments” as many concepts aren’t intuitive.

I would look into something like Doppler instead of Vault. (I don’t trust any company acquired by IBM. They have been aquiring and enshittifying companies before there was even a name for it.)

Look into how any different solutions need their keys presented. Dumping the creds in ENV is generally fine since the keys will need to be stored and used somehow. You might need a dedicated user account to manage keys in its home folder.

This is actually a host security problem, not generally a key storage problem per se. Regardless of how you have a vault setup, my approach here is to create a single host that acts as a gateway for the rest of the credentials. (This applies to if keys are stored in “the cloud” or in a local database somewhere.)

Since you are going to using a Pi, you should focus on that being a restricted host: Only run your chosen vault solution on it. Period. Secure and patch it to the best of your ability and use very specific host firewall rules for minimum connectivity. Ie: Have one user for ssh in and limit another user account to managing vault, preferably without needing any kind of elevated access. This is actually a perfect use case for SELinux since you can put in some decent restrictions on the host for a single app (and it’s supporting apps…)

If you are paranoid enough to run a HIDS, you can turn on all the events for any type of root account actions. In theory once the host is configured, you shouldn’t need root again until you start performing patches.

I dump memory more often than you would think. It’s usually not obfuscated or encrypted in any meaningful way even though it is fairly trivial to do so.

It’s good practice to scour through any bloatware installed on windows laptops. Since bloatware is generally written by the lowest bidder, you can find all kinds of keys and phone-home urls (sometimes with all the parameters) and other weird things. Just fire up a decent hex editor and search for strings in the dump file. You don’t need to know jack about reverse engineering either.

I can’t tell if that is an attempt at an insult or what? The speed at which you charged forward with a logical fallacy is amazing though: Because I called out your account as narrow minded, I would have supported/ignored sexual abuse by priests in the 50’s? Lulzwut?

Is that whole account dedicated to trashing Wikipedia? Holy fuck some people need a life.

That’s what you just got shown: Shove the configgy bits into Git.

You will likely have to find the configs you want to save first.

“the gays” in Russia:

Sorry if it sounded like my rant was directed at you as it absolutely wasn’t. Your comment triggered me, because I absolutely fully agreed with yours as well. ;)

setenforce 0 is much cleaner, I have found.

Its just complex

When a security mechanism becomes more complex to manage than what it is supposed to protect, it becomes a vulnerability itself.

If you had a minimal system that you built from the ground up yourself and wanted to only have that system function in very specific ways, SELinux would be perfect. I would go so far as to say it would be nearing perfection in some ways.

Sorry, but in the real world, ain’t nobody got time for that shit. If you use auto configuration tools or pre-canned configs for SELinux on a system you are unfamiliar with, it’s more likely to cause application issues, create security gaps and will likely be shut off by a Jr. admin who really has no fucking clue what he is doing anyway.

It’s just easier to keep your system patched and ensure basic network security practices anyway.

It’s not impossible to manage these days. In the early days it was, but most everything is automagic now. If I am not mistaken, SELinux can be enabled to ‘log only’ which would give you data better handled by a HIPS anyway. (Don’t quote me on that.)

“I was training my AI on porn.” Problem solved.

I’m ok with this. Standards need to be developed years in advance for proper adoption. Without them, we can get weird arbitrary tech barriers… Like 640k RAM for example.

“Political headwinds” is putting it mildly.

The newest and biggest ThreadRipper, AMD 7900XTX with a 4090 on reserve. +256GB ram (or maximum supported), 2TB M.2 primary drive, with 32TB M.2 expansion cards. 4x Universal Audio Apollo Twin X Duo Gen 2 audio interfaces with 5 Yamaha NS10m’s and a Yamaha DXS15mk2. Dual 100gig fiber connections are a must. Dual 55" Odyssey Arc Gen2’s, because why not.

(Speakers and audio interfaces are a requirement and considered part of the PC, for me, for music stuffs.)

With money as no object, you should be able to afford proper cooling for everything.

Both Buddhism and Taoism have some really good aspects. I would say they are philosophies and not religions and probably not in the context of a “faith” for this post. (If someone else wants to consider Buddhism a religion, you go right ahead. I won’t argue but assume I silently disagree.)

I am absolutely atheist, but still having some guiding principles is still important. If a concept sounds good and seems like it has good intentions I’ll just add it to my collection, discarding any pointless rituals or “magic”.

Doing good things makes me feel good and I like feeling good. I say that it’s ok borrow from any ideology that has well intentioned principles.

I’ll add the disclaimer that the term “good” is subjective and I still had to learn what “good” means to me over the years. Buddhism and Taoism have always been aligned with the way I perceive life and are decent enough to extrapolate what the word “good” should mean.

Am I dual faith? No. If we ever get in a deep discussion about core ideals, there are going to be similar concepts I share with many religions, though.