Hello!

My name is Benjamin (often 'bdunahu'), and this is my personal site!

I obtained my masters at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I studied computer science. I now do security scanning on Linux-based operating systems. I am part of the umass webring.

Naturally the blog I maintain here is a little ranty, particularly about new software and technology.

I don't mind real humans contacting me:

• Email: bdunahu @ this domain
• IRC: @ bdunahu @ libera.chat
• matrix: @bdunahu:tchncs.de
• signal: bdunahu.29

If you want to send an encryped email:

• curl -sL https://operationnull.com/assets/bdunahu.pub | gpg --import
• fingerprint 5550 5CA6 9DE5 D342 7F31 F9AE 5F86 6C65 2A34 C996

• My Vision of a Superhero: Obstructing LLMs - August 20, 2026
• LLMs nullified every grammar class I ever took in just 4 years - July 19, 2026
• Local LLMs as the glue for complex Emacs functions - April 05, 2026
• Verifying Github Actions Artifacts is not Easy - April 05, 2026
• Notes on Github Actions, Reproduciblity, and Trusting Trust - March 10, 2026

I recently did some independent work at the UMass Plasma lab related to a specialized python asyncio profiler, similar to the Coz profiler, but for the asyncio event loop. It was a great learning experience!

I previously worked on my own C compiler after working on a from-scratch compiler in coursework. I used this second compiler to learn the basics of guile scheme. This website is written in scheme; and my computing environments are similarly configured using GuixSD. I started contributing patches and packages. I have a little experience with Arch (Parabola) and Debian in maintaining this server. Someday, I may host my web, mail, IRC bouncer, etc. with scheme and Guix too, but that requires downtime and a lot of work on top of the work already put in.

I write, sometimes technical papers for research and classwork, but also enjoy creative writing. I try to practice the fiction genre and freewrite daily.

I also read a lot of Sword and Sorcery. My favorite series is the Morlock Ambrosius series by James Enge, but I also recommend the Moorcock's Elric Saga, Sam Syke's Bring Down Heaven, and some others not listed.