cat /dev/brain

A lot of people asked me about my OBS setup. So I'm releasing a few details here. Feel free to ask questions in case I forgot anything. Recording on a laptop Yes, I'm recording my videos on a laptop. Initially, I tried a 5 year old X1 Yoga running Linux. While this works okay-ish, once I used a dual camera setup, my recordings sometimes had very low frames per second and other weird effects. Using the cheapest MacBook Pro 2019 model (the 1.4 GHz variant with 8 GB RAM), recording works after a reboot and closing all other programs, even when running two OBS instances at once. Since upgrading to a MacBook Pro 2020 (2 GHz, 16 GB RAM) all these issues are gone. Always make a couple of test recordings that last longer than a minute to see if your laptop can handle the load. I had to re-record one of my talks that I recorded on the X1 Yoga because 5 frames per second and lagging audio didn't make me happy ;) Smartphone camera Webcams suck. Even the one in my MacBook Pro 2020. If

Water, electricity, transportation—all of them are critical infrastructures. In Germany, everything classified as part of a critical infrastructure has to conform to security and safety guidelines. I had some nightmares^Wexperiences with these in the past. And I decided to only work on projects classified as critical infrastructure if I could do defensive research, despite being a mostly offensive security researcher. This blog post outlines why offensive critical infrastructure research is a bad idea, and is also a long rant about an article that will be released in a German magazine on December 19th. Sorry for ranting!!!!1!11 Critical infrastructure security Critical infrastructure is regulated and has to follow various certifications. Disclaimer, I'm not an expert on this. However, certifications are both good and bad: Everything classified as critical infrastructure has to pass various tests, ensuring it is safe and secure. Such tests are limited in scope and prevent the abilit

What to expect from supervising students So far, I supervised approximately 30 B.Sc./M.Sc. students. My supervision style might not work for everyone—but it turned out to work quite well for the average chaotic nerd with an interest in IT security. When deciding to supervise a thesis, many people think this could be a great workforce in accelerating their PhD. I didn't have that illusion, as my M.Sc. thesis co-supervisor told me that he had a ratio of 1/3 of the students actually helping him with research, and the others just being more supervision overhead than what they got in return. Depending on your research topic this ratio is quite accurate. In fact, not supervising theses, working on your own whenever possible, and carefully selecting with whom you're going to collaborate might be the better career advice for finishing your PhD within a short time. Nonetheless, being a good thesis supervisor can be very rewarding and you will learn a lot. While most think a PhD is