Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that deals with the development of intelligent machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation. AI systems are designed to learn from data, identify patterns, and make predictions or decisions based on that data. AI has the potential to transform many aspects of our lives, from healthcare and transportation to education and entertainment. It has the potential to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as climate change, poverty, and disease. However, it also raises ethical and philosophical questions, such as the impact of AI on jobs, privacy, and autonomy.

I have been using Magisk since almost 12 years now when I first started rooting and unlocking my bootloaders and using/creating my custom ROMs. Magisk allowed for managing root access to applications, install modules that allowed for functionality that is not available otherwise, access the android application’s process space using Zygisk, lsposed and associated modules, etc. Without Magisk, if one had unlocked bootloader and rooted his/her device, it would be a nightmare to manage root access and host load of applications will start failing because of the “compromised security”.

I have been hosting my website on the hosting platform since the last 17+ years. It has been quite a journey and I learnt a lot of things about networking, hosting, website management, content creation, etc. It was ofcourse a Wordpress (WP) site. On the side, I had phpbb (forums), GedView, etc. The website helps me keep my thoughts in control and provides me a platform to voice my opinions, ideas, views, etc. on various topics. I can go back and read the posts/blogs to sketch and retrace information as needed. So the blog/posts help me organize and keep a record of my braindump. The blogs/posts are more or less static and do not change much. So having a heavy WP install and maintaing it is a resource intensive work. Regular updates, security patches, etc. are also a pain to maintain.

OpenWrt is a great router firmware with lots of features, flexibility and security updates. It is basically a small Linux distribution and does a smart job at adding enhancements to any “supported” router. One can read more about it here.

I have been using Google Wifi for a while now and it has been a great experience. It has an amazing HW (4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM). Google SW can be controlled using Google Home but privacy, DNS, parental controls, firewall, ad-blocking and other features are either not supported or are not as good as I would like them to be. And also my version of the Wifi AC-1304 does not receive any new features.

India has been suffering from terrorists attacks since the last 1400 years! This terrorism is based on religion and the religious principles embibed in the religious book. In the latest spate of attacks, on 22nd April 2025, terrorists opened fire on a group of tourists killing at least 28 peiple and injuring more than 20 others. These tourists were asked their names, religion and checked for circumcision before being killed. Partial details of the attack is captured in Wiki.

Rust has been gaining a lot of positive attention in the developer community due to very many positive things. You can read more on Stackoverflow (https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/01/20/what-is-rust-and-why-is-it-so-popular/) so I will avoid repetition on this blog.

Rust has fantastic support for basic str primitive (https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/primitive.str.html) but there are typical things that are very hard to get a grip on when one jumps to Rust as a C/C++ developer. I was doing some exercisim.io for Rust and came across a nice exercise where a primitive str is passed to a function which is expected to return a Rust String with the contents reversed i.e. drawer as an input is reversed into reward as an out.

This is the first quest where you are told to write code in JavaScript. It is a very easy challenge to clear and tests the basics of conditional statements. The problem is that after breaking away from the Prague Apartment (Quest 2), you are being followed by adversaries. Luckily you get your hands on a self-driving car and you can break-in into the self-driving module and write your own code to get it to move faster than the pursuers. You are also helped by data points which are collected from satellites and sent to you for use. You can use JavaScript to write the code and get away from the pursuers.

Quest 2 is even easier than Quest 1 (if you have studied logic gates). Basically, the idea is to go through the circuit given and arrive at the code which will provide for a 1 on the final output. The combination of gates that are TRUE needs to be mentioned in CTF{}. The rest of the gates can be ignored.

There is a very simple way to solve it. We do a reverse traversal from the final gate to the input gates. The idea is to basically have the final value as true and then look at the gates input. Determine the input values so that the final value is true. Do the reverse traversal in an iterative fashion until one reaches the inputs defined.