Simson Garfinkel

EMACS TURNS 50!

www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/20/1...

After 20 years of maintaining this vital community asset, I am seeking a qualified individual, group, or institution to take over and support DigitalCorpora. osdfir.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...

I can get bulk_extractor on windows code signed for $120/year. Would this help anybody? github.com/simsong/bulk...

David Pollak shows how Spice Labs, Inc.'s tool creates CBOMs automatically for doing a post-quantum cryptography audit. youtu.be/kvzw-49tpPs Full list of file types supported at: github.com/spice-labs-i...

The Census will be a battleground for the future of politics and much more, and tech scholar extraordinaire danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social has a new book coming out about it. This will surely be essential reading. I've pre-ordered my copy: www.danah.org/data-are-mad...

In 1983, Thomas C. Schelling argued that it would be cheaper for the world to accommodate global climate change than to try to prevent it. Richard Tol published an article about it. "The neglected contributions of Thomas C. Schelling to the economics of climate change" arxiv.org/abs/2607.04322

In Memoriam: Richard E. Stearns (1936-2026) Stearns was one of the fathers of computational complexity theory.  cacm.acm.org/news/in-memo...

The U.S. Census Bureau plans to eliminate questions about race and ethnicity on the 2030 Census, according to a leaked draft rule that has received little attention. www.citylandnyc.org/ny-elections...

AI can write a patch in seconds. A human maintainer still has to decide whether to accept it. That gap is the open source story of the next five years. New ACM TechBrief 🧵 dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

@acmpolicy.bsky.social has published a new TechBrief on Open Source Software and the impact of AI. AI makes submitting code cheap, while reviewing it remains human and slow, and the same models that patch vulnerabilities can also find them for attackers.  dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

Samuel Tunick faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search last year. He called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy,” in an interview with The New York Times about the incident.

I reviewed @tomlevenson.bsky.social's book A Pox on Fools. databasenation.substack.com/p/a-pox-on-f...

bulk_extractor 2.2.0 is out! This release fixes CVE-2026-24857 and adds a standalone 64-bit Windows executable, Windows raw-device input, runtime scanner plug-ins, improved Wi-Fi PCAP preservation, and extensive reliability improvements. github.com/simsong/bulk... #DFIR #DigitalForensics #OpenSource

#bulk_extractor beta 2.2.0 has been published on github. This version closes more than 100 open issues and improves reliability and performance. Thanks to Codex and Copilot for all of their help. Please give this release a try! #DFIR github.com/simsong/bulk...

Great article in @technologyreview.com about what is happening to the @schmidtsciences.bsky.social #AI2050 program and the impact of big tech and government cuts on academic AI researchers. www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/10/1...

All the scammers want to migrate to Signal to send me a private message. So annoying.

I am looking for help to test bulk_extractor release 2.2.0. The new release closes over 83 open issues and resolves CVE-2026-24857. Most of the work was done by AI with my guidance. The progress has been phenomenal. #DFIR Here's what's been fixed: github.com/simsong/bulk...

Is anyone in my network an expert on exhibit design for science museums?

In other news news.cornell.edu/stories/2026... with @johnabowd.bsky.social and a bunch of other folks incl. @simson.net #privacy

Every time I post my novel outside Bluesky I have to mention that "Cover and story are not AI," and that they're made by us, humans, Niko, the cover artist, and/or me, the author and cover creator. I have to constantly remind some readers that my novels are human-made. What an era. #booksky #books

I reviewed The Shockwave Rider, a classic sci-fi novel from the early 1970s that could have been written yesterday open.substack.com/pub/database...

I gave my agent its own GitHub account. open.substack.com/pub/database...

Poor Xanna. Or is this actually biographical Sara? saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/life-as-a-...

Dictionaries in #Python remember their insertion order, but equality ignores the ordering: d1 = {'a':10, 'b':20, 'c':30} d2 = {'b':20, 'c':30, 'a':10} d1 == d2 # True!

There's a fun article in today's Data Colada blog that discusses the many places metadata is stored on MacOS and Microsoft Excel, and why this is all relevant in the Francesca v. Harvard lawsuit on data falsification. datacolada.org/136 Also some side comments on @benedelman.org

What a great way to start the morning with an email from Sara. Or Xanna. Or whomever… Summer in #Seattle open.substack.com/pub/saraabra...

I can't believe that "Xanna" is posting this stuff in her "novel." These people are actually identifiable. But it's kind of fun. saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/youre-real...

I can't believe that "Xanna" is posting this stuff in her "novel." These people are actually identifiable. But it's kind of fun. saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/youre-real...

Our intern Sunny Bell just put out her first article on the Sabinok Substack! It's about AI in PropTech - Property Technology. Check it out! sabinok.substack.com/p/five-start...

New book about an old program — ELIZA! (Which you can run on your macbook today!) www.science.org/eprint/VIKBJ...

Great article in Foreign Policy Journal about the potential impact of the U.S. Department of Commerce's decision to prohibit noise infusion as a privacy protection method. www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2026/06/14/t...

www.npr.org/2026/06/12/n...

My press release came out! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

The Park Service has created a public comment form regarding President Trump's proposed arch. For those interested, submit your feedback! parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm....

ACM has published a Tech Brief on Agentic AI dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

I would love a Garfinkel scientist get together! It would be my dream to coauthor a paper together: Garfinkel, Garfinkel, Garfinkel, Garfinkel & Garfinkel

Sex, drugs, paganism and runaways in 1990s Seattle. Sara has posted the next installment of her novel on Substack! saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/i-was-stil...

I am so tired of reading posts that start "Someone..."

I am so tired of reading posts that start "Someone..."

Richard A. Tapia (1939-2026) joined his two passions in a lecture, “Math at Top Speed: Exploring and Breaking Myths in the Drag Racing Folklore,” delivered at universities and mathematics-awareness events for decades. cacm.acm.org/news/in-memo...

It’s always a good day to get into nature.

Really enjoyed this account of the NeXT years by Geoffrey Cain. We were part of this era, and I am positive my family never really believed (or understood) me when I said our work was part of creating the world wide web. Now they can read all about it. 🤣 bookshop.org/p/books/stev...

There is now a "kudoboard" to Celebrate the life and work of Peter G. Neumann (PGN): www.kudoboard.com/boards/i46gO...

"Style is everything." (Best quote I wrote down from BasisTech's Demo Day.)