i am just one person and while i can stay engaged and up to date, i can't solve all the horrors of this world. however, i can help my neighbor. i can do harm reduction. i can share what i have and if i don't have what you're looking for i probably know someone who does. mutual aid is satisfying like a community care jigsaw puzzle. it reminds me that the small connections matter and that there are caring people everywhere, often right down the street. and i've accidentally made lifelong friends in the process.
Things are honestly looking very bleak and precarious for a lot of people. Federal money for a lot of charities that keep people fed and housed might be drying up soon, so I'll echo deardoveswings and taterhole in that contributing/volunteering for local mutual aid would be a great move by everyone. Contrary to the ruling ideology of the western world, love and survival go hand-in-hand. So lets love, and lets survive.
If you or someone you know has internet access, do a search for "mutual aid [city, state, etc.]" There should be some good resources depending on the location, and they're often community-run and very helpful. Also, if you're reading this and looking to help in general, finding your local mutual aid group is a great way to support your community through donations or volunteer work! There can be questionable practices with large companies and how they handle donations/finances, so participating in something smaller can have a larger impact at your local level.
If you want to reverse engineer or disassemble programs, magic bytes can teach you a ton about what a file looks like when in a certain format.
https://www.netspi.com/blog/technical/web-application-penetration-testing/magic-bytes-identifying-common-file-formats-at-a-glance/
