Ghidra Zero to Hero: A Practitioner’s Guide to the NSA’s Reverse Engineering Framework
Manny FernandezObjective: Get Ghidra installed correctly, analyze your first stripped binary end to end, and automate the boring parts with the...
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Homebrew Under the Hood: File Structure, Environment Variables and the Plumbing Behind brew
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: map every directory Homebrew writes to, show which environment variables steer it, and trace a brew install...
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Homebrew Is Not Just for Linux Utilities
Manny FernandezTurning brew into the control plane for your entire Mac: desktop apps, fonts, services, App Store installs, and a replayable...
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Quick Tip: Renaming your zsh prompt on your macOS
Manny FernandezQuick-Tip The default macOS zsh prompt prints your username, your hostname, the current folder, and a percent sign. On a...
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Txt2Task – Import a ASCII list of tasks into Apple Reminders
Manny FernandezExecutive summary. After Apple significantly upgraded Reminders, I finally made the jump from OmniFocus. What I did not want to...
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SSH Is More Than a Terminal: 15 Things OpenSSH Does on macOS and Linux
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: Show practitioners how much more OpenSSH does than open a remote shell. File transfer, port forwarding, SOCKS...
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What is on my Mac: the apps I actually use
Manny FernandezPeople ask what I run day to day as a Systems Engineer and content creator. No sponsored picks here. This...
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FortiGate Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF): Configuration, When to Use It, and How to Troubleshoot It
Manny FernandezIn this post 1. Executive Summary 2. How RPF Works on a FortiGate 3. Prerequisites and Architecture 4. When to...
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FortiGate IP-in-IP Tunnels: Configuring, Interoperating, and Knowing When to Use ipip-tunnel
Manny FernandezThe 20-byte tunnel nobody talks about: config system ipip-tunnel from RFC to working overlay Executive Summary Objective: Build, verify, and...
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The vi Cheat Sheet (2026 Edition): From Survival Keys to Power Moves
Manny FernandezIn this guide Executive Summary Prerequisites: Which vi Do You Actually Have? The Mental Model: vi Modes Opening, Saving, and...
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Sublime Text Quick Tip: Removing Empty Lines in Sublime Text: Regex, Selections, and a One-Key Plugin
Manny FernandezObjective: Strip blank and whitespace-only lines out of config dumps, log exports, and pasted CLI output in Sublime Text, either...
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Linux Permissions Deep Dive: rwx, Octal, Special Bits, ACLs, and Capabilities
Manny FernandezIn this guide Executive Summary Prerequisites and Architecture How the Kernel Decides: The Access Check Reading ls -l Like a...
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Linux User and Group Management and Permissions: The Practitioner’s Guide
Manny FernandezObjective: Build, manage, and audit Linux identities and file access the right way, from /etc/passwd to default ACLs, with every...
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grep vs. egrep vs. fgrep: One Engine, Three Personalities
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary If you typed egrep out of muscle memory and got a warning back, this post is for you....
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FortiGate l2forward: Bridging Non-IP Frames in Transparent Mode (and Why It Does Nothing in NAT Mode)
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary set l2forward is one of those FortiGate interface options that looks harmless, rarely shows up in the GUI,...
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Autoruns vs. Process Explorer vs. Process Monitor: When to Use Each, When Not To, and Whether They Are Still Alive
Manny FernandezObjective: Pick the right Sysinternals tool in the first minute of a Windows investigation instead of the fifth. Audience: SOC...
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RFC 1918 Private Address Space: The Practitioner’s Guide
Manny FernandezEvery network engineer has typed 192.168.1.1 into a browser, and almost nobody has read the short document that makes that...
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macOS XProtect: How Apple’s Built-In Malware Defense Actually Works
Manny FernandezThree engines, two bundle locations, two update pipelines, and the commands to verify all of it Objective Understand every moving...
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Reading a Packet Capture to Troubleshoot Slow Application Performance
Manny FernandezExecutive Summary Objective: Turn "the app is slow" into a measured answer. Every slow transaction breaks down into network delay...
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macGREP, a grep building app for your macOS
Manny FernandezI have been playing with all forms of grep and decided to create an app that will assist in building...
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