MAKE / BREAK
a zine, not a feed
every other week · hands-on · no fillerest. 2026

MAKE / BREAK

Put the phone down. Go make the machine misbehave.

Every other week I put out one thing to build or break — a little synth in Pure Data, a bug and exactly how I found it, thirty-odd lines of assembly painting your screen colours it has no business displaying. It's all right here on the site, free — you'll have something running before you reach the bottom of the page. No feed, no filler, no "🧵 a thread on why this changes everything." Just the good bit of computers, for once.

▚ Go on then, start at #00 Show me the issues

// every issue, three things

this week in securityThe stuff that matters, minus the jargon — and what to actually do about it.
beginner's cornerOne tip that makes you genuinely harder to hack. Start from zero.
the projectOne thing to build or break, with your own hands, by the last line.

// issues so far

00
A screen that breathes
Build a colour-cycling plasma in ~30 lines — then drag it around live.
make
01
Fold the light
Turn the plasma into a kaleidoscope. One line does the whole trick.
make
02
Recon that isn't a checklist
How real bug-hunting starts: by looking, not by running ten tools.
break
03
Make Pure Data scream
A sequencer that plays itself and never repeats. Hear it, then build it.
make

Read issue #00 free →  ·  browse all issues  ·  New one every other week, all free. Want them delivered?

// the whole idea, in one screen

~/manifesto — cat why.txt

You were promised a computer. You got a slot machine.

The feed's whole job is to keep your thumb moving and your hands empty — and lately half of what slides past is machine-made mush: posts nobody wrote, pictures nobody drew, made to be forgotten a second later. Junk food that snacks on you.

And no — before you sigh — this isn't an anti-AI rant. I lean on the stuff daily to skip the boring bits and build stranger things with the hours I claw back, and I automate half my recon with it. The line I care about isn't AI or no-AI. It's this:

Same lump of silicon: in the maker's hand it's a workshop, in the consumer's hand it's a doomscrolling distraction.

So MAKE / BREAK is me stubbornly staying on the workshop side of that line, out loud, every other week — and dragging a few mates back over with me. Pull up a chair. Bring your own tea.

> reboot --into curiosity

// yes, an actual human wrote this. at 1am. that's sort of the whole point.

— the Norfolk Hacker

// two moves, one habit

MAKE

build something real
  • 01Generative & "acid" visuals — kaleidoscopes, colour-cycling, music-reactive patterns in the Llamasoft lineage
  • 02Sound from scratch — Pure Data patches, synthesis chains, algorithmic sequencers
  • 03Bare metal — assembly demos, tiny OSes, FreeRTOS on real boards
  • 04Tools you actually use, wired up with AI as a power tool — not a crutch

BREAK

take something apart
  • 01Recon that finds real attack surface — the boring 90% nobody teaches
  • 02Bug classes broken down from disclosed reports — IDOR, SSRF, auth bypass, chains
  • 03Automating the hunt — agentic pipelines, and an honest read on what actually works
  • 04Reverse engineering — pulling a binary apart to see how it really thinks

// optional: have it come to you

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