Andrew Lilley Brinker
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alilleybrinker.com
Andrew Lilley Brinker
@alilleybrinker.com
1.6K followers 300 following 5.2K posts
A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE THREADS, ALL ALIKE

Writing on alilleybrinker.com and elsewhere.

Principal Engineer doing CVE and OSS security at MITRE. Opinions are my own.
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alilleybrinker.com
I wrote this about memory safety, but it applies here too.
Segment of "Memory Safety for Skeptics," written by me and published in the ACM Queue. It reads as follows: "Get good" is not a strategy There is a common reply in conversations about memory safety, coming from the most hardcore skeptics: Programmers should just write better code. They argue, explicitly or implicitly, that programmers who benefit from the guardrails of memory safety are bad programmers, and that real programmers are sufficiently skilled that they do not need a machine double-checking their work. Let's be clear: This is anti-intellectual nonsense—macho self-aggrandizement masquerading as a serious technical argument. You should not take it seriously and should consider someone advancing this argument as fundamentally unserious and to be ignored. There is no step function in quality of work in the history of human achievement that happened because people one day woke up and decided to be better at their jobs. Improvements in productivity or quality or reductions in error and harm happen because of the invention of new techniques, processes, and tools.
January 8, 2026 at 9:21 PM
alilleybrinker.com
It’s finished
The game completion screen from Hollow Knight: Silksong, shown at the completion of Act 3. Shows 100% completion and a total time of 56 hours, 52 minutes.
January 5, 2026 at 3:03 AM
alilleybrinker.com
A real New Yorker
Paul Giamatti from the movie Big Fat Liar, with blue skin
December 31, 2025 at 8:15 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Guess I shouldn’t workshop my bio in the Bluesky editor lol
Screenshot of a recent post of mine, showing two labels from Hailey’s labeler, saying “Changed profile 5+ times yesterday” and “Profile changes often: more than 3 days in the last 30 days.” The content of the actual post is not relevant.
December 31, 2025 at 7:00 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Not our fault the AI industry went Full Greendale on their logos
Flag of Greendale Community College from the show "Community," with a blue background, "GREENDALE" at the top, then a pink circle with six arrows equally spread out from the center of it, making the implied image of an anus, with the words "E PLURIBUS ANUS" around them.
December 30, 2025 at 6:48 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Oh so you want TINY cars?! Is this the future you want?!
Shot from The Simpsons showing a very tall man in a very small car
December 25, 2025 at 1:33 AM
alilleybrinker.com
"I was harassed for my beliefs"
"Goose chase" meme showing a goose, looking suspicious, asking "what beliefs," then chasing a person in jeans and a puffy jacket, with the goose reiterating "what beliefs?!?!"
December 11, 2025 at 5:03 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Here's what it looks like for me, though I don't have Berkeley Mono so the font is different.
Screenshot of David Crespo's Ghostty configuration deployed on my local Ghostty installation. Shows a black background and reasonably bright color scheme.
December 5, 2025 at 5:41 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Configuring Ghostty is easy. Here's mine: gist.github.com/alilleybrink...
Screenshot of my Ghostty terminal, showing the Catppuccin Latte theme, and with a local checkout of the Hipcheck Git repository.
December 5, 2025 at 5:36 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Unsurprising result for me here; I'm usually the "link guy" in any discussion or meeting. What can I say? I love to read!
Screenshot of my Anisota 2025 Harvest analysis of my Bluesky and broader atproto activity, showing the "Link Sharing" section results. These results show I shared 631 total links (94% above average), 558 unique links (96% above average), across 251 unique domains (427% above average), and across 610 posts containing links (93% above average).
December 1, 2025 at 8:24 PM
alilleybrinker.com
The post in question.
Post on Lobste.rs from Armin Ronacher, in a discussion about the article "In praise of dhh" (itself a condemnation of him). The transcript is: Other commenter: Is there an acceptable way to criticize Framework for giving money and press to racists, or is it categorically unacceptable in your opinion? Armin: If you strongly object to Framework supporting DHH, the clearest way to express that is by choosing not to buy their products. The line gets crossed when that personal stance turns into pressure on others to adopt the same position (eg: Framework or other Framework customers). People will weigh DHH's s actions differently, and not everyone will share the same priorities, particularly in the context of Omarchy or Rails. I also disagree with some of DHH’s behavior, but not to the point where I can’t recognize the positive contributions of his. Other commenter: money and press to racists Armin: I personally don't think what DHH expresses amounts to racism even though I strongly disagree with a lot of it. It seems more like he's longing for a world with stronger cultural cohesion, which clearly implies less migration. I can see that many people share that idea, and I think it can be held without being inherently racist. It's a tension we see elsewhere too: for example, Israel's struggle to remain both a democracy and a distinctly Jewish state. You can call that racist, but it’s also about preserving a particular cultural identity build on a shared history. If someone wants to build a community of like-minded people, there's always a line between inclusion and cohesion. That tension exists in countries just as it does in spaces like this one here, which carefully curates who participates. My reading of DHH's stance (eg: like his London Post essay) is that he’s applying that idea of cultural integrity to nations. Again, I don't agree with it, but I also don’t think it's racist. It's simply a vision of society that clashes with larger scale migration.
November 26, 2025 at 4:09 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Better
Very simplified version of the earlier code, showing better use of the question mark operator, the unwrap_or_default method, and the filter_map method.
November 25, 2025 at 12:02 AM
alilleybrinker.com
Writing the Good Code today
Screenshot of Rust language code showing a large number of nested maps. This is basically a result of a lot of nested Vec types full of Options.
November 24, 2025 at 7:25 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Tatel's dissent is good, but it's a dissent.
Screenshot of the opening of Judge Tatel's dissent. "TATEL, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part: I agree with my colleagues about everything except what matters most: their conclusion. I agree that whether individuals are subject to court-martial jurisdiction turns on their military status and that the unifying pattern in Supreme Court precedent “is that the persons found to be properly within ‘the land and naval Forces’ had a formal relationship with the military that included an obligation to obey military orders.” Majority Op. at 13. I also agree with Judge Rao that we owe Congress no deference in interpreting the scope of the Make Rules Clause. That said, I disagree that the type of order to which Larrabee is potentially subject—a recall order summoning him from civilian life to take up arms—is like any other military order. By treating it as such, the court extends court-martial jurisdiction not only to the Fleet Marine Corps Reserve, but also to roughly two million military retirees. Because this dramatic expansion of court-martial jurisdiction is beyond what the Constitution allows and case law supports, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the court’s opinion."
November 24, 2025 at 7:03 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Meme of a man with two blades attached to his forearms, crossing his arms and looking somber. The text below reads “Master forgive me, but I’ll have to go all out… Just this once”
November 1, 2025 at 1:51 PM
alilleybrinker.com
This but it's Diet Cokes for @bcantrill.bsky.social
October 31, 2025 at 8:30 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Variant of the Dril "spend less on candles" exchange which reads: Tweet from Dril: "Food $200, Data $150, Rent $800, Watches $1.3 million, Utility $150. someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying. Craig, replying: "spend less on watches" Dril, replying: "no"
October 30, 2025 at 9:05 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Not too far off
Shot from the show 30 Rock showing Tracy Jordan being interviewed by Larry King on CNN, when Tracy just happened to be on-air for an interview when the Japanese markets opened way down. The situation has escalated, with Tracy remaining on-air, leading Larry to summarize the current situation with the line, "If you're just joining us, we're with Tracy Jordan, who is giving guitar icon Peter Frampton enigmatic clues about a secret treasure."
October 28, 2025 at 9:41 PM
alilleybrinker.com
There's a horrific ignorance of knowing Teddy only as the meme of a Rough Rider and not for the Square Deal or his strong opposition to the unchecked power of corporations and the very wealthy.
A screenshot of text from Teddy Roosevelt's collected letters and papers, from a letter written by Roosevelt and sent to Mr. G. A. Davidson, an auditor for Shipments-Associated Oil Company, which reads: "The attacks by these great corporations on the Administration's actions have been given a wide circulation throughout the country, in the newspapers and otherwise by those writers and speakers who, consciously or unconsciously, act as the representatives of predatory wealth — of the wealth accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wageworkers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition, and to defrauding the public by stock jobbing and the manipulation of securities. Certain wealthy men of this stamp, whose conduct should be abhorrent to every man of ordinarily decent conscience, and who commit the hideous wrong of teaching our young men that phenomenal business success must ordinarily be based on dishonesty, have during the last few months made it apparent that they have banded together to work for a reaction. Their endeavor is to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, to prevent any additional legislation which would check and restrain them, and to secure if possible a freedom from all restraint which will permit every unscrupulous wrongdoer to do what he wishes unchecked provided he has enough money. The only way to counteract the movement in which these men are engaged is to make clear to the public just what they have done in the past and just what they are seeking to accomplish in the present."
October 27, 2025 at 8:55 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Ed Zitron
Mac from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia saying "I'm playing both sides so that I always come out on top."
October 27, 2025 at 2:41 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Huh, neat
Results of my own Prism political quiz, showing the following results: - Government: 100% unitary democracy - Economy: 100% social democracy - Society: 50% progressivism, 50% social justice - Religion: 100% atheist - Security: 50% humanist, 50% procedural - Foreign Policy: 100% internationalist
October 24, 2025 at 8:52 PM
alilleybrinker.com
The goal of the health system is to keep people healthy.
Norman Rockwell image of working-class white man in a blue flannel and brown bomber jacket standing up and speaking among a crowd of other people.
October 24, 2025 at 2:51 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Point 13 in "How Complex Systems Fail" is "human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing."

AWS brain drain directly and predictably leads to more frequent and severe outages.

how.complexsystems.fail
Screenshot of Point 13 from "How Complex Systems Fail," which reads: " Human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing Complex systems require substantial human expertise in their operation and management. This expertise changes in character as technology changes but it also changes because of the need to replace experts who leave. In every case, training and refinement of skill and expertise is one part of the function of the system itself. At any moment, therefore, a given complex system will contain practitioners and trainees with varying degrees of expertise. Critical issues related to expertise arise from (1) the need to use scarce expertise as a resource for the most difficult or demanding production needs and (2) the need to develop expertise for future use." The phrase "the need to replace experts who leave" is highlighted.
October 23, 2025 at 3:30 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Tweet from Dril which reads: "the jduge orders me to take off my anonymous v mask & im wearing the joker makeup underneath it. everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit"
October 22, 2025 at 6:20 PM
alilleybrinker.com
Visiting diplomat on Parks and Recreation, played by Fred Armisen, saying "believe it or not, straight to jail".
October 3, 2025 at 8:33 PM