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Software Defectrums: The End of an Era?

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What I mean by "Defectrums" Throughout this article I use the term Defectrums as an umbrella for every category of software error. That includes logic errors, runtime errors, dependency and supply-chain vulnerabilities, security vulnerabilities, and specification misalignment, where the software does exactly what it was told to do, just not what it was meant to do. If a category matters to you that I have not listed, mentally add it; the argument that follows applies to all of them. Software is deterministic, people are not Start with a deceptively simple observation: software is deterministic. When code executes, it behaves identically every single time. Take a routine that branches on a person's recorded sex: if the value is M it follows the male branch, every single time; if it is F it follows the female branch, every single time. No exceptions, ever. But watch what happens the moment someone arrives whose record is neither M nor F . The machine does not improv...
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How to install Plex on a Synology NAS

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  Introduction In my Ubuntu Plex guide , I documented each action from first principles and kept the write-up beginner-friendly on purpose. I am taking the same approach here. The Ubuntu guide and this Synology walkthrough point to the same broad destination, but they take different roads. On Synology, Plex is still (almost) the same Plex, but the OS expects you to think in terms of Package Center , Shared Folders , system internal users , and DSM-controlled permissions rather than package repositories and cron jobs. I have a Plex Pass, and certain functionality — such as remote streaming and hardware transcoding — requires this type of licence. After July 1, 2026 the price of a Lifetime Plex Pass is increasing. This guide is narrated on the assumption that you have one. Prerequisites and Assumptions You should have a Synology NAS running DSM and an administrator account. Plex's own NAS guidance states that not every NAS is supported and that CPU power is often the biggest li...
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The Zero-Day Exploit Clock Is Ticking

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The Zero-Day Exploit Clock Is Ticking A Personal Introduction The notion of breaking into a system and making it do something its developers never intended has existed since the early days of computing. My own introduction to computing came through hacking into games — disabling or increasing the number of lives to compensate for my slow reflexes. Using TD (Turbo Debugger, from Borland — shipped alongside Turbo Assembler and Turbo C/C++), I would painstakingly try to identify the memory location that held the lives counter. Once found, one could either alter the value directly or place a NOP (No Operation) over the conditional jump. It was a task that required patience, determination, and, many times, reams of sprocketed continuous-feed paper annotated to help decipher what the code did. Discoveries were rarely kept to oneself. You shared them with others on BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems), the dial-up communities that served as gathering places for the technically curious long befor...
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When Your CPU Dies: My Journey with a Defective Intel Core i7-13700K

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Introduction My perfectly stable homelab server gradually descended into chaos — random crashes, segfaults, system hangs — and how months of troubleshooting, community support, and hardware swaps eventually led to one conclusion: the CPU itself was defective from the factory . If you're experiencing unexplained instability on an Intel 13th or 14th Gen system, this story might save you months of frustration. Quick Symptom Checklist If you're seeing multiple of these symptoms, you may be affected: Random segfaults in unrelated applications System instability appearing after months of stability Crashes or hangs under light load or while idle VMs freezing while still marked as "running" Issues persisting despite PSU, RAM, or OS checks or changes The Setup In November 2022 , I built a homelab server with the following components: Component Model CPU Intel Core i7-13700K (Raptor Lake) ...
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