Reverse Debugging

Not all debuggers are created equal. Some allow reverse debugging, some do not.

gdb does

pdb does not

pdb is a forward only debugger. Once a statement runs, its side-effects (e.g. variable changes, I/O etc.) are permanent unless you restart.

History of .NET Core

The evolution of ideas is something very interesting. In this respect, the evolution of ideas within .NET Core is worth reflecting on. This article from June 2019 mentions Maestro, which deals with one specific challenge in the development of .NET Core.

The Debugger Class in .NET

The Debugger class in System.Diagnostics is implemented in Debugger.cs.  Its purpose is to allow communication with the debugger.

This is the class that lets you do a "hard debug" but typing Debugger.Break(), which signals a breakpoint to an attached debugger.

Debugger.Launch() is similarly aggresive. It launches and attaches to a debugger to the process.

Python Debugging: "SSL Certificate Verification Failed"

Ever seen this:

RuntimeError: Failed to fetch (insert_dataset_of_choice) data: SSL Certificate Verification Failed

This may happen in code that was previoulsy working. It can be caused by outdated or missing CA certificates. 

AI - New Ideas Every Day

There are literally new ideas every day in AI. Every day.

New commercial R&D, published and waiting to be read, every day.

GitHub's Agentic Workflows in the Crosshairs of GitLost

Noma Security has publicised GitLost, a technique to get GitHub Agentic Workflows to spill private repository data.

The exploit is aimed at organizations with both public and private GitHub repositories, and relies on prompt injection.

Specifically, it uses indirect prompt injection  where malicious instructions are injected into seemingly regular requests.

GitHub's Agentic Workflows introduce LLMs into GitHub Actions, which is how the exploit is enabled.

Anthropic's Interpretability Research

This is journalled here. The goal is to understand how LLMs actually work internally.