gavinj.net

Thoughts on technology, infrastructure, and AI

On the Grid: BSides Canberra 2026

September 26, 2026 • security, bsides, canberra

Three days at BSides Canberra 2026: AI-driven vulnerability research, a no-AI CTF, a Tron-themed Black Bag challenge, and a proud dad moment at the soldering iron.

Where ZFS Fits in Enterprise Infrastructure

September 22, 2026 • zfs, storage, infrastructure

ZFS from its Solaris roots to enterprise storage today: pools, hardware choices, recovery and repository replication, with a Proxmox breakout and a practical ZFS cheat sheet.

When Your AI Assistant Forgets Who You Are

September 20, 2026 • ai, hermes, agents

Meta's new Muse agent is built around a curated long-term memory, and every major AI vendor is racing to solve the same problem. Meanwhile my own assistants still get sudden dementia every few days. A look at how agent memory actually works, from Hermes internals to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Apple and xAI's Grok Bot.

Flipper Zero with Momentum: A Review Before BSides Canberra

September 18, 2026 • security, flipper-zero, momentum

Getting ready for BSides Canberra with the original Flipper Zero: my experience with Momentum, RF remotes, NFC, USB tools and the iOS app, plus Wi-Fi, Ethernet and the upcoming Flipper One.

Heretic Models: An Uncomfortable Rabbit Hole on a DGX Spark

September 16, 2026 • ai, llm, local-ai

A DGX Spark with 128GB of unified memory let me explore much larger local models. Then I discovered Heretic variants, and a hardware experiment became a rather uncomfortable lesson in how AI refusals work, how easily they can be changed, and what that means for the rest of us.

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Hacking This BYD Was Too Easy
Four Corners finds a passwordless way into the BYD Shark 6, then remotely plays with its lights, locks, wipers, speakers and microphone. Damn it—this was going to be my next car.
neat-annotations: Hand-drawn CSS annotations
Hand-drawn arrows and handwritten callouts for the web, all in one CSS file. No JavaScript, no build step—just a little personality for your page.
Telstra Outage: The Night a Network Decided the Year Was 2006
One bad GPS clock, one NTP timing loop, and Telstra's network thought it was 2006. Certs, DNS, time—the sysadmin trifecta strikes again, with time taking the lead.
Bonsai 2 27B
Another model for the local-AI shortlist: PrismML says ternary weights shrink Qwen3.8 27B to 5.9 GB while retaining 98.2% of its benchmark score.
My AI Agent That Loves to Talk to Scammers
Scammers have AI callers now, so Paul Nevin built an AI honeypot to keep them talking and map their playbook. Some things never change—only the tools.
fugleramme: E-Ink Bird Frame for Raspberry Pi
A Raspberry Pi identifies garden birds by sound using local AI, then displays them on e-ink as hand-cut 19th-century illustrations. Delightful.
Ubuntu 26.10 Completes Transition to Rust-Based Coreutils
Ubuntu 26.10 finishes replacing GNU coreutils with memory-safe Rust uutils—including cp, mv, and rm. A quiet, drop-in security upgrade.
Alternatives to MinIO for Single-Node Local S3
MinIO's licensing and stewardship upheaval has kicked off the hunt for a replacement. This practical bake-off puts SeaweedFS and S3Proxy near the front.
Tesla says it will finally unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 1
After years of delays, Tesla says the second-generation Roadster will finally be unveiled on October 1. Flying cars! The future envisaged in my youth is finally arriving ...
Oracle layoffs: Employees receive the 6am job cuts email from "Oracle leadership" again
Oracle has started another round of job cuts, and once again the news arrived as a 6am email from "Oracle leadership". My heart goes out to the affected employees - a 6am email is a very cold way to part ways. I wrote about this pattern back in March in AI Layoffs in Australia and the Contractor Anxiety They Create, and nothing about it has become more humane since.