• 7 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • Not fishy at all! It’s like a lockpicking fan asking about locksport.

    If you’re looking for examples, GitHub has a lot of CVE proof-of-concepts and there are lots of payload git repos across git hosts in general, but if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop “Steal all credentials,” or “Work on all OSes/architectures just by switching the compile target,” then you’ll have a harder time. (A do-one-thing-well approach is more maintainable after all.)

    If you want to make something yourself that still tries to pull off the take-as-much-as-you-can, you should just search up how different apps store data and whether it’s easy to grab. Like, where browsers store their cookies, or the implications of X11’s security model (Linux-specific), or where Windows/Windows apps’ credentials and hashes are stored. Of course, there’s only much a payload can do without a vulnerability exploit to partner with (e.g. Is privilege escalated? Are we still in userland? is this just a run-of-the-mill Trojan?).

    Apologies if my answer is too general.






  • Specifically, it refers to a deep understanding.

    [A critic] notes that [the coiner’s] first intensional definition is simply “to drink”, but that this is only a metaphor “much as English ‘I see’ often means the same as ‘I understand’”. (from Wikipedia)

    When you claim to “grok” some knowledge or technique, you are asserting that you have not merely learned it in a detached instrumental way but that it has become part of you, part of your identity. For example, to say that you “know” Lisp is simply to assert that you can code in it if necessary – but to say you “grok” Lisp is to claim that you have deeply entered the world-view and spirit of the language, with the implication that it has transformed your view of programming. Contrast zen, which is a similar supernatural understanding experienced as a single brief flash. (The Jargon File; also quoted on Wikipedia)






  • Lots of good answers here but I’ll toss in my own “figure out what you need” experience from my first firewall funtime. (Disclaimer: I used nftables – it should be similar to ufw in terms of defaults though).

    • Right off the bat, everything unneeded was blocked. I “needed” no configuration, except for maybe…
    • Whatever CUPS runs on (when I use it)
    • Sometimes I ran python -m http.server – I unblocked port 8000 for personal use.
    • I chose to unblock port 53 (DNS). I wanted to connect to another computer via hostname IIRC (e.g. connecting to raspberry-pi.local. I might be misremembering this though).
    • At one point I played with NGINX – that’s port 80 (HTTP) and port 443 (HTTPS).
    • SSH was already permitted (port 22 – you need root access to enable traffic through ports below 1024 anyway so this wasn’t an issue for running typical apps)

    I didn’t use WireShark back then, really. I think I just ran something like

    sudo lsof -nP -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN
    

    which showed me a bunch of port traffic (mostly just harmless language servers).

    You don’t have to dive to deep into all the “egress” and “ingress” and whatnot unless you’re doing something special. Or your software uses a weird port. (LocalSend lol)


  • Obligatory Linux comment (Lemmy moment):

    Windows is used often for its compatibility and defaultness but Linux is interesting in the sense that everything is patchable, everything is tinkerable and configurable. The low resistance to tinkering makes lots of Linux users tinkerers – including tinkering via code.

    I’m not saying wipe your hard drive or even dual-boot. Maybe an older computer or VM could help, depending on what you have. But just in the past week I’ve screwed around in low-to-medium-difficulty Linux projects that configured my lockscreen with C, that implemented mildly usable desktop GUIs with TypeScript, among others – just not-too-committal stuff that has a return value I literally see every time I lock my computer.

    Windows equivalent projects can be harsher on the beginning-to-intermediate curve (back when I first tried out Linux Mint, I’d been struggling to make a bookmark inspector in Visual Studio – ended up Pythoning it instead) – not to say that Windows fun is by any means out-of-reach.


  • My friends Leetcoded and Codeforced quite a lot. Advent of Code is up there too, with the interesting caveat that Advent of Code also teaches you refactoring (due to the two-part nature of every problem).

    However, when I was younger I had contempt for the whiteboard-problem-esque appearances of these, but everyone is different.

    If you look hard enough there is always a project at medium difficulty – not way too hard, like a huge project you feel won’t give you returns – not way too easy, like some cowsay clone. Ever tried making a blog? You can host for free on most Git pages implementations (codeberg, github, gitlab…).

    As for programming books, consider trying security books like Art of Exploitation – in the same strain, CTFs can use a decent amount of code, and they’re fun in terms of raw problem-solving. I started with the Bandit wargame, which does Linux problem solving from any machine that has SSH.

    I’m not by any means a l33t hax3r but I found them pretty fun in my learning journey.



  • According to tab autocomplete…

    $ git
    zsh: do you wish to see all 141 possibilities (141 lines)?
    

    But what about the sub options?

    $ git clone https://github.com/git/git
    $ cd git/builtin
    # looking through source, options seem to be declared by OPT
    # except for if statements, OPT_END, bug checks, etc.
    $ grep -R OPT_ | grep --invert-match --count -E \
    "OPT_END|BUG_ON_OPT|if |PARSE_OPT|;$|struct|#define"
    1517
    

    Maybe 1500 or so?

    edit: Indeed, maybe this number is too low. git show has a huge amount of possibilities on its own, though some may be duplicates and rewords of others.

    $ git show --
    zsh: do you wish to see all 489 possibilities (163 lines)?
    $ man git-show | col -b | grep -E "^       -" --count
    98
    

    An attempt at naively parsing the manpages gives a larger number.

    $ man $(find /usr/share/man -name "git*") \
    | col -b | grep -E "^       -" -c 
    1849
    

    Numbers all over the place. I dunno.


  • Huh, TIL.

    To be fair, git switch was also derived from the features of git checkout in >2.23, but like git restore, the manual page warns that behavior may change, and neither are in my muscle memory (lmao).

    I’ll probably keep using checkout since it takes less kb in my head. Besides, we still have to use checkout for checking out a previous commit, even if I learn the more ergonomically appropriate switch and restore. No deprecation here so…

    edit: maybe I got that java 8 mindset

    edit 2: Correction – git switch --detach checks out previous commits. Git checkout may only be there for old scripts’ sake, since all of its features have been split off into those two new functions… so there’s nothing really keeping me from switch.


  • It probably is, but I think their main point is the protest against the age-old delineation into “GUI vs CLI” camps. I’m not saying that you’re elitist, even if your statement might be interpreted as such (it’s hard to communicate tone online but the quotations around “their workflow” could appear mocking), but regarding the structure of your statement, I had a “Windows users are all button-presser noobs” phase and would’ve typed something similar about the Git CLI if time was decently rewound (sans the kindness of a “use what you like” statement). They could be interpreting your statement as a propagation of the anti-GUI stereotyping.

    Evidently they prefer GUI but can effectively use the CLI – no one disagrees that the CLI is more functional.


  • I definitely agree. Back then, the bad stuff was often more… innocent, grassroots-ish? (With exceptions.) Like, if you stumbled on a cartel beheading then no one was trying to sell anything to you.

    Nowadays it’s markedly more corporate – there is ad revenue in constructing an extremist pipeline, and anyone can see how content has sprung up to assume that vacuum. (Try opening a private browser tab and watching only Ben Shapiro videos. The algorithm will eventually point you to Trump conspiracy videos with AI voiceovers. Last time I did this was before Cambridge Analytica changed their name to Emerdata though so I’m not sure if it’s the same.)

    One thing: you mentioned that there was a pipeline in “‘fun’ kids content”. I’ve only seen stuff like that directed at early, questioning teens (the Discord offensive-jokester type) – does this “‘fun’ kids content” thing target even younger ages now? Because I’ve yet to hear of that.


  • You prevent them from waking up earlier, huh? Youngsters definitely have infinite energy at the odder times. I sure did my fair share of waking up early to increase the fraction of the day I gamed for.

    This is a pretty convincing stance in favor of timers, actually. The idea of transferring video-watching from the iPad to the television is a friendly way to prevent an unchecked iPad-kid situation. My opinion shifted a little. :P

    Do you have timers on the iPad for any mobile games, or just YouTube?


  • Your stance on the age-inappropriate reminds me of what @southsamurai commented! I’ve definitely seen a lot of “Don’t protect your child too hard by concealing the inappropriate from them” lately. I wonder how many modern parents are shifting to that ideal.

    “Kids respond well to being treated seriously.” (from Vox, “Why safe playgrounds aren’t great for kids”, 3:17)

    You mention that there are some cases where parental controls would help, but you also mentioned that, (1) regarding inapproriacy, you shouldn’t baby children and (2) regarding screen time, BananaKing’s take is the best route. Doesn’t that cover both aspects of where parental controls would be used? What cases would you say parental controls would help with?


  • Someone downvoted but I want to hear your differing stance so I upvoted. (Come on fellow lemmings ` . ` let’s melting-pot a little!)

    Anyway – your belief is interesting, though I feel like I might disagree! Seems similar to @Contramuffin’s upbringing, but more extreme.

    How would you train them beforehand? Or would you just drop them into the archetypal sink-or-swim? Don’t you think the kid would feel lonely, say, if they stumbled on a jumpscare video and got the heebie-jeebies but you didn’t help? Everyone makes mistakes. And outside of scarring – what if your kid turns into one of those YouTube Kids jockeys?

    Is your hypothetical “Tough shit, deal with it and get stronger” approach similar to how you were raised?


  • Click to view diffs is super ergonomic; on the other hand, I actually have a story about the Git CLI trumping the GUI (spoiler: reflog).

    In high school we had gotten the funding to build a robot, and one of the adults in charge – guy was brilliant – was using GitHub Desktop to conduct a feature merge with the student who served as team lead. The thing was, he was used to older codebases, so all of his experience was with CVS instead of Git – so when the two slightly messed up the git merge, they discussed recloning everything instead of wasting time plumbing the error (relevant xkcd).

    That was one of the earliest times I had the cajones to walk up to a superior and say “No, you’re doing this totally wrong. You don’t have to do that.”

    He looked at me and nodded. “What would you do instead?”

    “Reflog.”

    “Reflog? I’ve never heard of it before. Can you show us?”

    I hopped onto the laptop and clicked around GitHub Desktop, but couldn’t manage to find any buttons related to reflog… so I went straight to cmd.exe instead.

    git reflog
    git reset --hard "HEAD@{7}"
    

    “Done. We can continue rebasing.”

    And after that, the advisor complimented me for using the command line tool!

    “Lots of GUI apps are just limited frontends to the real meat and potatoes, the command line. Nice job!”

    I felt like a wizard! And so I became the team’s Git-inator.

    edit: pruned story