If you missed the overview post, you can see it here. This one is about managing immutable and append-only files on *BSD, Linux, and macOS. Immutable and Append-Only Files BSD-derived operating systems (including macOS) and Linux both support the concept of files being made immutable, so that neither their contents nor attributes can be changed. They also both support files being made append-only, so that the existing contents cannot be changed except by adding more data to the end. They do it in slightly different ways. ...

I’ve been using and administering OpenBSD systems since 1999 (OpenBSD 2.5). During that time, I’ve written numerous scripts to make things easier, more automated, or more secure, or sometimes just to improve my understanding of how things work. When I started managing my home systems, I ran several Internet-exposed services on my home network (DNS, mail, web, SSH). I used djbdns, qmail, and Apache httpd at the start before switching to nsd/unbound for DNS and postfix for mail, and finally to OpenSMTPD for mail. When I got tired of excessive inbound traffic I moved my authoritative DNS to a provider while keeping an internal zone and resolvers, set up two cloud servers for mail and my public webserver. My home network became a hardened, minimal-exposure architecture that only allows Wireguard from expected sources and mail (after mutual TLS authentication with certificates) while continuing to run internal services. ...

 Scott Shapiro's 2023 book's aim is to answer three questions: (1) why is the Internet (still) so insecure? (2) how do hackers do what they do? and (3) what can be done about it? He recounts some historical events, the "five extraordinary hacks" of the subtitle, to tell the story, and introduces the terms "upcode" and "downcode" as the core concepts in his framework for understanding--where "downcode" means actual, implemented computer code and "upcode" means the social, political, and institutional forces providing incentives and governance.  This is essentially a simplified version of Lawrence Lessig's four forces of law, social norms, markets, and code spelled out in his 1999 book, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, and also reminded me of the framework in Bruce Schneier's 2012 book, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive, where the four forces are moral pressures (internalized incentives), social pressures (social/cultural incentives from other people), institutional guidelines and rules (formal rules, regulations, and laws), and security systems (locks, police, firewalls, fraud detection, etc. -- actual operational controls which may be implemented physically, in code, or by policies and practices). For Shapiro, Lessig's first three forces are "upcode" and only code is "downcode," and Schneier's first three forces and parts of his fourth are "upcode." ...

  Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2026. Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of An American Myth (2021)Ted Chiang, Exhalation (2019)Laura K. Field, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (2025)Kerry Howley, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State (2023)Christopher Mathias, To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical RightMatthew Rose, A World After Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right (2021)Scott J. Shapiro, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks (2023)Top for 2026 published in 2026: Mathias; other top reads for the year: Howley, Chiang, Rose, Burrough et al, Field A few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2027: Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975)G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (2014)(Previously: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.) 

   Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2025. Adam Becker, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of HumanityRutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History (2019)Samuel D. Brunson, Between the Temple and the Tax Collector: The Intersection of Mormonism and the StateKate Conger and Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter (2024)Mark Jonathan Davis, Grateful: 25 Years of Music, Movies, and Medical Emergencies with Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine, Part One: Stranger in a Strange LoungeRenée DiResta, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality (2024)Cory Doctorow, Picks and Shovels: A Martin Hench NovelErle Stanley Gardner (Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, eds), The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner (1981)Brooke Harrington, Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism (2024)Gabriel Kennedy, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson (2024)Thomas Levenson, So Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs--and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious DiseaseMary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human AnatomyOliver Sacks, The Island of the Colorblind (1996)Oliver Sacks, The Mind's Eye (2010)Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (1988, 2009 edition)Quinn Slobodian, Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far RightDana Stevens, Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century (2023)Katherine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American DemocracySpencer Sunshine, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege (2024)Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed AmericaMark S. Weiner, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom (2013)Tim Weiner, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st CenturyLawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost IdealismTop for 2025 published in 2025: Tanenhaus, Levenson, Roach, Weiner, Davis, Wynn-Williams, Becker, Doctorow; other top reads for the year: Sheehan, M. Weiner, Sacks A few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2026: Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1975)G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (2014)(Previously: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)  ...

 I just came across this comment I wrote a decade ago on a post that Steve Novella wrote on his blog, and I think it's pretty good, but it generated zero comment and no upvotes or downvotes. I just came across it again while looking for old comments I made about Al Seckel, who is in the news again for his role in attempting to scrub negative information about Jeffrey Epstein from the Internet. ...

 Another case of conservative animal abuse, via libraryjayne on Threads, Illinois state representative Mike Bost (R-Murphysboro): The earliest episode dates back to 1986, when a neighborhood beagle named Rusty bit Bost's 4-year-old daughter. The report filed by animal control officials indicates that the girl provoked the attack by chasing the dog. She ultimately had to get 19 stitches on her face. ...

 If your reasons for voting for Donald Trump for president included that you wanted to cause unnecessary death and suffering and reduce to the standing and trustworthiness of the United States with the rest of the world then congratulations, you've been given what you wanted. If not, maybe you should engage in some reflection on what you've helped to bring about. On Bluesky, doctor Atul Gawande, author of the excellent book Being Mortal (which I read in 2019) and The Checklist Manifesto (which was well-reviewed but I have not read), who was USAID Assistant Administrator for Public Health from 2022 to 2025, wrote the following posts: ...

  Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2024. James Bamford, Spy Fail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence (2023)Benjamin Breen, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold War and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic ScienceJennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)Bryan Burrough, Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmond Safra (1992)Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990, 2010 foreword)Rich Cohen, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (2012)Daniel C. Dennett, I've Been Thinking (2023)Cory Doctorow, The Bezzle (fiction)Edward Dolnick, Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2002)Jon Friedman & John Meehan, House of Cards: Inside the Troubled Empire of American Express (1992)Beverly Gage, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century (2022)John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990sMasha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017)Martin Kihn, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time (2005)Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2020)Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (2017)Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over AmericaMilton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 (1955)Michael Warren Lucas, git commit murder (2017, fiction)Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the DifferenceCraig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (2006)Ryan J. Reilly, Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System (2023)Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, Volume 2 (2016)Zoë Schiffer, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's TwitterMatt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of LibertarianismTop for 2024 published in 2024: Doctorow, Breen, Ganz; other top reads for the year: Gage, Dennett, Kinzer (2020), Cohen, Gessen, Rodda A few non-books of relevance for 2025: What the Southern Baptists used to believe, but no longer do: https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/resolution-on-moral-character-of-public-officials/Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism," New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995Dorothy Thompson, "Who Goes Nazi," Harper's Magazine, August 1941 (but contrast with Mayer 1955 and Gessen 2017 above) A few planned or already (or still) in-progress reads for 2024: G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (2006)Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (2014)Mark S. Weiner, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom (2013)(Previously: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.) 

 Per Stephanie Kirchgaessner in The Guardian, 14 October 2024: Douglas Hamlin, who was appointed to lead the NRA this summer in the wake of a long-running corruption scandal at the gun rights group, was involved decades ago in the sadistic killing of a fraternity house cat named BK, according to several local media reports at the time. ...