Recent content in Home on manta.black
Given the influx of LLM agent tooling, blog posts, guides, research, and explosion of takes, I wanted to capture my perspective of what I have been reading, seeing, and some experiments that I have been dabbling in or on. I do not proclaim to be an expert in the space, and I am writing this by hand to stretch my mind, and I hope that what I compile and share becomes valuable to some person or…
Trading Learned Embeddings for Determinism and Speed in YAMS # 
 YAMS started with a goal, experiment with a local memory system that was cli first, that reduced the amount of tokens it took models to find materials for a task. Then it evolved into a learning endeavor as I attempted to ship a working hybrid search engine that is fast enough to run locally, predictable enough to tune , and work…
It’s been about seven months since I last posted here (about YAMS), so I wanted to share a quick recap of what I’ve been up to. If you measure that gap in AI progress, we’ve seen an incredible acceleration in both performance and the pace of advancement. 
 In the time that I’ve been absent, I’ve been working on pushing YAMS forward. I’ve learned a lot of…
My Resource Collection # 
 A curated collection of technical resources, updated semi-regularly. 

 Table of Contents # 
 
 Networking 

 
 TCP/IP 
 
 
 
 Systems 

 
 eBPF 
 
 Tools 
 
 Learning Resources 
 
 Research 
 
 Community Resources 
 
 
 
 Mobile 
 
 

 Networking #…
YAMS (Yet Another Memory System) started as a practical need: I wanted a dead-simple way to store and retrieve files, snippets, and research for LLM-driven workflows — without losing context between sessions. What I use daily is now ready to share. 
 Note : YAMS is v0.7.x - experimental software under active development, not yet production-ready. 
 Updated docs (2025-10-13): 
 
…
So I wanted to post a follow-up to my previous introduction to the umbrix 
 platform, where I was using DSPy for entity extraction in cyber threat intelligence. If you missed that, you can find it here 
. This recap comes a week after I launched the platform. 
 Two days into getting Umbrix running optimally, I started running into many problems. I have been extracting a significant…
Over the past month, I’ve been working on a project for the Google ADK agent 
 hackathon. This post provides an overview of my current multi-agent system, used for threat intelligence gathering, processing, and analysis. 
 The motivation for Umbrix 
 emerged when I was using a small language model to find A LOT of pcaps. I was attempting to seed the model with instructions on how…
Abbreviations Used # 
 
 IMSI: International mobile subscriber identity 
 RAN: Radio area network 
 NGAP: Next-Generation Application Protocol 
 GTP-U: GPRS tunneling protocol user plane 
 
 I found it convenient to document and order 5G network attacks that I have come across in my ongoing research. I am writing this post as both a reference and a tool to focus on the…
I have used FreeBSD as a server on and off for a couple years. After recently corrupting a research server running Ubuntu server, I found it imperative to migrate back to FreeBSD, setup ZFS snapshots and segment hosted services using the systems native hypervisor to improve my systems recoverability. If you have not checked out sanoid 
, I would highly recommend it. This post has been…
Disclaimer: This post is being actively updated. Updates are tracked at the bottom of this post 
 Disclaimer: Much of the information is compiled from my learning and online sources. Please be sure to double-check claims and references if you plan to use them. 

 Table of Contents # 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Advanced Threats 
 
 Active Research 
 
 References…
slides 
 - video presentation 
 

 Table of Contents # 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Mitigations and Trends 
 
 Trends in Security Software 
 
 In-Network Security 
 
 Reflections 
 
 

 Introduction # 
 This presentation attempts to provide a quick and simple introduction to the next generation of technologies that will help…
Deconstructing Firewalls # 
 Disclaimer: This post is being actively updated. Please check back for additional links 
 slides 
 - video presentation 
 

 Table of Contents # 
 
 What is a firewall 
 
 Firewall Architectures 
 
 Newer Technology 
 
 Takeaways 
 
 
 This presentation provides a general overview of the past…
I spent the better part of my Friday night reinstalling my NAS server for homelab purposes. Through this experience, I found I wanted to capture what I learned and where I found answers for archiving purposes. I found many answers online that either didn’t work for me or called for a different type of implementation. I link some notable guides and threads in the reference section below.…
At the conclusion of BSides Charlotte 2019, I realized that I would need to provide a bit more information in regards to the content that was covered in my slides especially for those who were unable to attend. The purpose of this post is to highlight those ideas relative to the presentation and to get any feedback from those interested in this the area of Research. 

 How can one give an…
The beginning of a journey. I hope to document findings, ideas and notes for archival purpose weekly on Friday.