Mark Dowd

@mdowd.bsky.social

Internet hacker

Brief announcement: Launching Unprompted.au later this year in Sydney — a new conference focused on offensive and defensive security research using AI, and on how AI is reshaping the field. Sister conference to Unprompted. More updates coming soon

In all my years in cybersecurity, I don't recall ever attending a talk given by someone with a scouse accent, which is an outrage. I have a presentation coming up this week, maybe if I do some practice I can correct this

Old school programming: I'm going to design a cool game but it's gotta fit in 64k New school programming: I'm going to design a cool game but it's gotta fit in 64k tokens

Vibe coding is rather convenient, but I think one downside of allowing coders to fast track making stuff is missing out on some potentially interesting discoveries had you taken the time to learn the technology. Similar to fuzzing vs manual auditing

People like to keep their friends close and their enemies closer. So I guess my advice is to observe the relative distance someone is keeping you at, and if it's closer than other people, you should destroy them.

My ancestors originally came to Australia as convicts, eventually getting their freedom. Since then, we mostly haven't reoffended. The system works! Happy Australia Day!

In the business world, we should rename short term contracts to quests. It sounds way cooler. "What do you do for work?" "I'm currently on a quest to streamline logistics for a big importer"