Home on Erik...
Data architecture vs backend architecture
A modern tech stack typically involves at least a frontend and backend but relatively quickly also...
over a year ago
A modern tech stack typically involves at least a frontend and backend but relatively quickly also grows to include a data platform. This typically grows out of the need for ad-hoc analysis and reporting but possibly evolves into a whole oil refinery of cronjobs, dashboards, bulk...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 3 (Cut & Paste)
Sound code is added in this third in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Sound code is added in this third in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Louwrentius
Why you should not use IPsec for VPN connectivity
IPsec is a well-known and widely-used VPN solution. It seems that it's not widely known that Niels...
over a year ago
IPsec is a well-known and widely-used VPN solution. It seems that it's not widely known that Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier performed a detailed security analysis of IPsec and that the results were not very positive.
We strongly discourage the use of IPsec in its current form...
latest projects -...
Motorised Camera Slider
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
5 months ago
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
On Life and Lisp
Fun and Games with Exposure Notifications
Exposure Notifications is a protocol developed by Apple and Google for facilitating COVID-19 contact...
over a year ago
Exposure Notifications is a protocol developed by Apple and Google for facilitating COVID-19 contact tracing on mobile phones by exchanging codes with nearby phones over Bluetooth, implemented within the Android and iOS operating systems, now available here in Toronto.
Wait –...
Home on Erik...
2D embedding of 5k artists = WIN
I'm at KDD in Chicago for a few days. We have a Spotify booth tomorrow, and I wanted to put together...
over a year ago
I'm at KDD in Chicago for a few days. We have a Spotify booth tomorrow, and I wanted to put together some cool graphics to show. I've been thinking about doing a 2D embedding of the top artists forever since I read about t-SNE and other papers so this was a perfect opportunity to...
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2020 gwern.net newsletter
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
over a year ago
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
Home on Erik...
Momentum strategies
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday...
over a year ago
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday night. Basically I wanted to know whether momentum strategies work well for international stock indexes. I spent a bit of time putting together a strategy that buys the stock index if...
Old Vintage...
Pretty pictures, bootable floppy disks, and the first Canon Cat demo?
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to...
5 months ago
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to get into the operating system and pull some tricks.
from our historical discussion of the Canon Cat, the Cat was designed by Jef Raskin as a sophisticated user-centric computer...
Willem's Blog
Space travelling from El Teide
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a...
over a year ago
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a perfect altitude for stargazing.
Jonas Hietala
Motivation is Valuable
It’s funny how motivation can play such a huge role with my productivity. I’m currently having two...
over a year ago
It’s funny how motivation can play such a huge role with my productivity. I’m currently having two math courses; one mandatory about analysis in multiple variables and vector analysis and one voluntary about advanced linear algebra. I don’t like the analysis course, didn’t like...
Arduino Blog
Adding proximity unlock to an old car with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically...
5 months ago
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically unlocks the doors when the driver approaches while carrying their key fob. When paired with a push-to-start ignition switch, the driver never has to take their keys out of their pocket....
Louwrentius
Distributed Parallel Processing Shell Script (PPSS) released
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script...
over a year ago
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script (PPSS). PPSS is a bash script that allows you to
run commands in parallel. It is written to make use of current multi-core
CPUs.
The new distributed version of PPSS allows you to...
Applied Cartography
Tailwind black magic: styling paragraphs within tables
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's...
8 months ago
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's typography plugin — which makes it really easy to author beautiful docs in plaintext.
We ran into one small issue, which is that the Markdoc renderer likes to place paragraph tags in table...
Louwrentius
Is there an easy and secure way to transfer files?
Many organisations just assume that the local physical network is trusted. That their network...
over a year ago
Many organisations just assume that the local physical network is trusted. That their network equipment is physically secure and that it is impossible for an attacker to get on the wire and start eavesdropping on network traffic.
Many organisations do not seem too concerned about...
computers are bad
2023-04-10 solving problems with chatgpt
One of the foundational goals of computer technology, at least as understood by
popular culture, is...
a year ago
One of the foundational goals of computer technology, at least as understood by
popular culture, is to automate away our jobs. When your job is (put simply) to
get computers to work correctly, there's sort of an irony to this view of
things. Still, just within the span of my...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Multidimensional gas pricing
7 months ago
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database, take two: Zig and RocksDB
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project...
over a year ago
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project from Go to Zig.
In this post, in ~1700 lines of code (yes, I'm sorry it's bigger than
my usual), we'll create a basic embedded SQL database in Zig on top of
RocksDB. Other than the...
Louwrentius
How to escape file names in bash shell scripts
After fighting with Bash for quite some time, I found out that the following
code provides a nice...
over a year ago
After fighting with Bash for quite some time, I found out that the following
code provides a nice basis for escaping special characters. Ofcource it is not
complete, but the most important characters are filtered.
If anybody has a better solution, please let me know. It works and...
On Life and Lisp
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
a year ago
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
Posts on Made of...
What MongoDB got Right
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the...
over a year ago
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the mockery is out-of-date or rooted in misunderstandings, much of it is well-deserved, and it’s difficult to disagree that much of MongoDB’s engineering is incredibly simplistic,...
GitButler
The Future of Open Source
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating...
4 months ago
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating on software in awesome ways.
Notes on software...
The case for comments in code
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose...
over a year ago
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose and would often duplicate in
English what the code clearly indicated. I knew that "commenting is
good" but as a beginner I had no further insight.
Over time with the help of books...
Notes on software...
Delightful, production-grade replication for Postgres
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
4 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner ID draft Örebro
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what...
over a year ago
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what happened. Disclaimer: My memory is a little bit fuzzy and the events may or may not correspond to what actually happened.
The draft
The idea was to randomly sort all entrants and...
Gwern.net Newsletter
November newsletter
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1...
over a year ago
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1 essay, and 1 opera review ('The Ring' cycle).
Jonas Hietala
Bullets and AI
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the...
over a year ago
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the collision detection problems and I’m now trying to make some sort of AI working for the ship. It’s a bit hard and time consuming and I don’t know how to make things good.
Maybe...
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the April 2004 Plus Post Topic
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
8 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Style over Substance
How to use a Phase One H20 digital back on a medium format Hasselblad V camera (500EL/M)
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my...
over a year ago
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my Hasselblad 500EL/M medium format camera. Or, simply put, I bought an expensive old gadget for my even older analog camera, making it a digital camera. A gadget that was released in the...
Old Vintage...
Commodore does the iPad "crush" concept right ... in 1985
I get what Apple was trying to say with their infamous Crush ad, even though they made it a little...
6 months ago
I get what Apple was trying to say with their infamous Crush ad, even though they made it a little weird. They should have simply done what Commodore did for the C128 — ironically, competing with the Apple IIc. Notice the emphasis on audio and sound, plus the Commodore 64 perched...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple Python compiler: 1. hello, fibonacci
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since...
over a year ago
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since Python has a builtin parser
library and because a
number of CPython internals are exposed for extension
writers.
By the end of this post, in a few hundred lines of Python, we'll be able...
Willem's Blog
Hospitalised with MCADD
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a...
over a year ago
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a dangerous situation if you're diagnosed with MCADD.
Jonas Hietala
Easy setup of a static site on Amazon S3 with SSL
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just...
over a year ago
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just never got around to it, probably the usual procrastination.
When I had to setup a new site for another project I chose to host on Amazon as well. Although there are many other free...
Louwrentius
ZFS: resilver performance of various RAID schemas
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures...
over a year ago
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures before you put your important data on it. It makes sense to know what to do in case a drive needs to be replaced. I also recommend putting a substantial amount of data on your NAS and...
Home on Erik...
Snakebite
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie....
over a year ago
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie. It's a super fast tool to access HDFS over CLI/Python, by accessing the namenode directly over sockets/protobuf.
Spotify's developer blog features a nice blog post outlining what...
Arduino Blog
ardEEG is an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi shield for measuring biosignals
The secrets to most of the mind’s mysteries may still elude us, but we’ve made a tremendous amount...
7 months ago
The secrets to most of the mind’s mysteries may still elude us, but we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in reading signals produced by the brain. We may not understand exactly what is going on, but we can see the result and utilize it. And now you can start...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day: Scrolling in GNU screen'
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can...
over a year ago
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can be
changed in the .screenrc file in your home directory. The following example
sets the scroll back buffer to 5K lines.
defscrollback 5000
Set the scroll back buffer on the fly with:
First...
Simply Explained
Migrating This Blog From Jekyll to Eleventy
Jekyll has been powering this site for many years now. It replaced my WordPress setup, and I haven't...
over a year ago
Jekyll has been powering this site for many years now. It replaced my WordPress setup, and I haven't looked back. Over the last few months, I have become fed up with Jekyll. It's slowing me down. Time to replace it with something new and shiny!
Matt Mullenweg
Falling Snow
The talented Felix Arntz has given an incredible Christmas gift to the WordPress community with his...
4 days ago
The talented Felix Arntz has given an incredible Christmas gift to the WordPress community with his fast, light, and accessible Snow Fall plugin, which is live on this site and you can install on yours. I hope everyone is having a happy holidays! Search for “snow fall” in your...
Simply Explained
How I Structure My ESPHome Config Files
I'm a big fan of ESPHome. I have 24 devices running it, and I only buy new IoT devices when I know...
over a year ago
I'm a big fan of ESPHome. I have 24 devices running it, and I only buy new IoT devices when I know they can run ESPHome.ESPHome is a modular firmware that you have to configure with YAML files. You define what components it should load and how it should talk to the hardware of...
Arduino Blog
Alumnus Software joins Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program
We are thrilled to announce that Alumnus Software, based in India and the United States, has joined...
a month ago
We are thrilled to announce that Alumnus Software, based in India and the United States, has joined our System Integrators Partnership Program (SIPP) at the Gold level. With over 20 years of expertise in embedded software, IoT applications, and Edge AI development, Alumnus has a...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Glue and coprocessor architectures
3 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Widening the horizon
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in...
over a year ago
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in making games lately and I’ve been doing different things, just to get my ideas and my motivation up. As I said in an earlier post I wanted a break from Experimental Games and I...
Birchtree
My favorite (and least favorite) movies of 2024
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to...
a week ago
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to make what is my current top 10 (plus honorable mentions & worst movies). As we get to the end of the year and you might have some
Arduino Blog
A pair of Arduino UNO R4 boards power this Tron-inspired, decked-out shop room
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop...
6 months ago
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop renovation project where he is rearranging tools, tidying up various spaces, and even creating a dedicated “clean” room for his collection of 3D printers/electronics work. With its...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
Home on Erik...
Running Theano on EC2
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning...
over a year ago
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning using Theano. Theano is this Python package that lets you define symbolic expressions (cool), does automatic differentiation (really cool), and compiles it down into bytecode to run...
Arduino Blog
This smart spice box makes cooking a breeze
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and...
6 months ago
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and ingredients. Recipes are useful, but they aren’t very intuitive to those who are more comfortable with visual thinking. To help these people enjoy the cooking experience, Purdue...
Jonas Hietala
The eBook for 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is now available for free
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years...
10 months ago
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years since the web version was done, and 3 since the physical copy was available…
Which can hardly be called a success.
Things happened, so let’s do a quick retrospective to, maybe, learn...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 3. indexes
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
4. a database/sql driver
In this post, we extend gosql
to support indexes. We focus on the addition of PRIMARY
KEY constraints on table creation and some easy...
Simply Explained
Securely access home network with Cloudflare Tunnel and WARP
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to...
over a year ago
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to strengthen the security of my Home Assistant instance. Until now, I have been using Cloudflare's CDN to connect to my HA instance, but that required opening ports on my router and...
Willem's Blog
Riding with a power meter on your bike
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road...
over a year ago
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road bike.
Posts on Made of...
Configuring dnsmasq with VMware Workstation
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux...
over a year ago
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux distribution, and use them heavily for all kinds of kernel testing and development.
This post is a quick writeup of my networking setup with VMware Workstation, using dnsmasq to assign...
Willem's Blog
Realtime human pose recognition through computer vision
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose...
over a year ago
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose detection using PoseNet.
Arduino Blog
Hey Google! Meet Arduino Cloud
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now interact with your devices, simply through your Google Home Assistant: use voice commands, the Google Home app, or create new routines integrating Arduino solutions. This new...
Home on Erik...
Meta-blogging
(This is not a very relevant/useful post for regular readers – feel free to skip. I thought I would...
over a year ago
(This is not a very relevant/useful post for regular readers – feel free to skip. I thought I would share it so people can find it on Google.)
My blog blew up twice in a week earlier this year when I landed on Hacker News.
Posts on Made of...
Some notes on CVE-2010-3081 exploitability
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity...
over a year ago
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity when it was discovered an announced, due to allowing local privilege escalation against virtually all 64-bit Linux kernels in common use at the time.
While investigating...
./techtipsy
My very first career day
This post is a short overview of my experience at
a career day in Valga, Estonia, hosted with the...
10 months ago
This post is a short overview of my experience at
a career day in Valga, Estonia, hosted with the help of GreenDice.
I’ve never spoken at a career day before nor attended one as a student, which is why I instantly agreed to going to one
when GreenDice reached out to me.
Why? I...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
2 months ago
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should Ethereum be okay with enshrining more things in the protocol?
a year ago
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… Go
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by...
over a year ago
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by Christopher Clark and Amos Storkey was forwarded to me by Michael Eickenberg. It's about using convolutional neural networks to play Go.
Jonas Hietala
The Decline of FPS Games
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time...
over a year ago
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it’s what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can’t say I truly...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Additional proof that Apple is ditching the optical drive
I'm a strong advocate of killing the optical drive. As of 2011, there is no need for it anymore....
over a year ago
I'm a strong advocate of killing the optical drive. As of 2011, there is no need for it anymore. Laptops could get lighter, smaller or have more room for additional battery capacity if the optical drive would no longer be present.
In my life, I never see people use the optical...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 4: Issue 4-evah
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious....
over a year ago
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious. Barry’s daughters all had marching band, and he chaperoned 4 the parades. His eldest daughter also went and got a boyfriend. Shawn’s been feeling a little under the weather, and his two...
Posts on Made of...
Some musings on ORMs
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application,...
over a year ago
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application, particularly a web-app, has a love/hate relationship with their ORM, or object-relational mapper.
On the one hand, ORMs are vastly more pleasant to work with than code that constructs...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 95
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
a year ago
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
Good Enough
Strong Prototypes, Weakly Held
Excuse any obtuse thoughts that make their way into this writing. I sat down to type with My Life in...
a year ago
Excuse any obtuse thoughts that make their way into this writing. I sat down to type with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne as my soundtrack. This is an album I've never listened to before, and apparently I'm supposed to love it or hate it. Mostly the...
Good Enough
Asking the Right Question
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've...
a year ago
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've spread the word enough that there's now a steady stream of new users coming in each day. So, what's next?
Portrait of the author pondering
My first impulse was to answer this...
Home on Erik...
Detecting corporate fraud using Benford's law
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a...
over a year ago
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a phenomenon where numbers in any data series will exhibit patterns in their first digit. For instance, if you took a list of the 1,000 longest rivers of Mongolia, or the average daily...
Old Vintage...
An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at...
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than...
9 months ago
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), Apple sales databases, two online services — the maligned Mac Prodigy client,...
Birchtree
Matt is a Mean Guy (hey!)
Matt felt like bringing an intentionally controversial topic, Niléane refuses to admit she's created...
a week ago
Matt felt like bringing an intentionally controversial topic, Niléane refuses to admit she's created a sticky note-based task manager, and everyone gives the iPad some much needed love.
Or watch it on YouTube.
Weekly Topics
Raycast
CleanShot X
Final Cut Pro
Google...
Louwrentius
Systemd Forward Secure Sealing of system logs makes little sense
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into...
over a year ago
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into most mainstream Linux distributions. I'm a bit troubled by one of it's features.
I'd like to discuss the Forward Secure Sealing (FSS) feature for log files that is part of systemd....
Electronics etc…
ThinMachine - a $25 Thin Client MacOS Time Machine Appliance
The instructions below set up Time Machine using the Apple File Protocol
(AFP). After publishing...
a year ago
The instructions below set up Time Machine using the Apple File Protocol
(AFP). After publishing this blog post, I’ve been told that this is now
deprecated and that Samba should be used instead. I’ll update this blog
post in the near future.
Introduction
The HP t520 Thin...
Good Enough
TIL: Managing Raspberry Pi software with a bit less pain
For the printer project I'm working on, most of the software behind it runs "in the cloud", but...
a year ago
For the printer project I'm working on, most of the software behind it runs "in the cloud", but there's some software that needs to run beside each printer, to check for new things to print and manage the process of downloading and sending those things to the printer component...
Applied Cartography
PSA: mess around with Keystatic
We've been using Keystatic in Buttondown for around six months now: we migrated most of the content...
9 months ago
We've been using Keystatic in Buttondown for around six months now: we migrated most of the content on the marketing site (which is backed by Next) from MDX onto Keystatic, and were so happy with the experience that the upcoming rebuild of the docs site will be featuring...
Louwrentius
Scrub your NAS hard drives regularly if you care about your data
Introduction
Lots of people run a NAS at home. Maybe it's a COTS device from one of the well-known...
over a year ago
Introduction
Lots of people run a NAS at home. Maybe it's a COTS device from one of the well-known vendors1, or it's a custom build solution (DIY2) based on hardware you bought and assembled yourself.
Buying or building a NAS is one thing, but operating it in a way that assures...
Louwrentius
HP Proliant Microserver Gen10 as router or NAS
Introduction
In the summer of 2017, HP released the Proliant Microserver Gen10. This machine...
over a year ago
Introduction
In the summer of 2017, HP released the Proliant Microserver Gen10. This machine replaces the older Gen8 model.
For hobbyists, the Microserver always has been an interesting device for a custom home NAS build or as a router.
Let's find out if this is still the case....
Louwrentius
Linux Mac Mini - temperature monitoring with lm-sensors
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using...
over a year ago
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using Debian Lenny, out of the box, lm-sensors is not working. No sensors can
be found. This is how temperature monitoring and fan speed monitoring can be
made to work:
modprobe applesmc
If...
csvbase blog
DuckDB isn't just fast
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
6 months ago
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Acing the design interview
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work...
over a year ago
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work with a particular web service or…
Old Vintage...
The unreleased Commodore HHC-4's secret identity
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one...
a month ago
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one and only handheld computer, the Commodore HHC-4. It was never released and never seen again, at least not in that form. But it turns out that not only did the HHC-4 actually exist,...
Posts on Made of...
Some Android reverse-engineering tools
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I...
over a year ago
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I created a couple of useful tools that I figure are worth sharing.
I’ve been using dedexer instead of baksmali, honestly mainly because the former’s output has fewer blank lines and so...
Louwrentius
'Zabbix Security: client-server communication seems insecure'
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring...
over a year ago
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring hosts, Zabbix provides an agent that can be
installed on the hosts that must be monitored.
Based on the supplied documentation and some remarks on the internets,
the 'security' of...
./techtipsy
The IKEA-powered homelab on a wall
I recently learned about the IKEA SKÅDIS series, which is a
pegboard that supports a variety of...
a year ago
I recently learned about the IKEA SKÅDIS series, which is a
pegboard that supports a variety of extras. During my self-hosting journey having to figure out the best
place for putting all my compute stuff to has always been at the back of my mind, especially due to limited...
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
lcamtuf’s thing
Analog filters, part 2: let it ring
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key...
2 months ago
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key topology.
Buck on Software
The Software Slog
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
a year ago
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
Willem's Blog
Commuting by bike
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal...
over a year ago
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal bike.
Old Vintage...
Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6 (and The Incredible KIMplement goes 1.0)
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've...
7 months ago
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've intermittently worked on for literally two decades. Now that I've finally shaken out more bugs, tuned it up and cleaned it off, it's time to let people play with the source...
Notes on software...
Building a fast SCSS-like rule expander for CSS using fuzzy parsing
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
A Christmas Game
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly...
over a year ago
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly one thing on my wishlist for this christmas for my little brother: Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Guess what? I got something from my wishlist!
This was our 5th or 6th game (or...
Arduino Blog
BrainPatch.AI: How a British neurotech startup built a working prototype fast, using Arduino Nano 33...
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and...
3 months ago
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and effective non-invasive interfaces that can deliver tiny milliamp currents to the right stimulation location on the head, neck or body. One example of the new players in this field is...
Notes on software...
Errors and Zig
At TigerBeetle these last few weeks I've been doing a mix of
documenting client libraries, writing...
a year ago
At TigerBeetle these last few weeks I've been doing a mix of
documenting client libraries, writing sample code for client
libraries, and writing integration tests against the sample code.
The client library documentation is generated with a Zig script. The
sample code is...
Arduino Blog
This DIY smart chicken coop features AI-based predator detection
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get...
a month ago
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get rid of pests in the yard. But, like all animals, they require care. Most importantly, you’ll need to ensure that they have regular food and water, and you’ll need to protect them...
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
Computer Ads from...
Oberon International' Omni-Reader
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
5 days ago
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
Jonas Hietala
Stereotypes
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really...
over a year ago
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really couldn’t do it justice so do yourself a favor and go read it. It touches on several types of programmers or rather traits of programmers I recognize in my surroundings and also...
watchTowr Labs -...
Pots and Pans, AKA an SSLVPN - Palo Alto PAN-OS CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been...
a month ago
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been tough for SSLVPN appliances.
Anyhow, there are new vulnerabilities (well, two of them) that are being exploited in the Palo Alto Networks firewall and SSLVPN offering, and as ever,...
./techtipsy
Recovering a password-protected ThinkPad T60
A couple of years ago, I worked on a ThinkPad T60. That ThinkPad had been in use
by a family member...
over a year ago
A couple of years ago, I worked on a ThinkPad T60. That ThinkPad had been in use
by a family member before that, and I started its cleanup by disassembling the
whole machine and making sure that it was pristine. However, once I put it all
back together, I saw that it was password...
Louwrentius
Switching away from Debian to Ubuntu LTS
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years....
over a year ago
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years. This pace is great for progress, but there is a serious problem. This problem is related to their support for older Debian stable versions.
If you read the quote below from the...
Electronics etc…
Guide Technology GT300 Frequency Standard Teardown
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
8 months ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Arduino Blog
Reduce power consumption in IoT and wearable devices, with Arduino’s new power management library!
Developing energy-efficient IoT and wearable devices is complex and time-consuming, yet it is...
2 months ago
Developing energy-efficient IoT and wearable devices is complex and time-consuming, yet it is essential for creating high-quality products that stand out in today’s market. A key part in this process is optimizing power consumption without sacrificing performance or...
Jonas Hietala
Drawing a self portrait
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m...
over a year ago
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m really slow so I stopped a bit before it really was finished.
Obviously I’d like it to be a bit better, but I’m still a little happy about the glasses and the eyebrows. The mouth...
Home on Erik...
Miscellaneous unsolicited (and possibly biased) career advice
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of...
over a year ago
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I'd share some.
Honestly, I feel like I've mostly benefitted from luck.
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Central Planning as Overfitting
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Some opinionated thoughts on SQL databases
People who work with me tend to realize that I have Opinions about databases, and SQL databases in...
over a year ago
People who work with me tend to realize that I have Opinions about databases, and SQL databases in particular. Last week, I wrote about a Postgres debugging story and tweeted about AWS’ policy ban on internal use of SQL databases, and had occasion to discuss and debate some of...
watchTowr Labs -...
Auth. Bypass In (Un)Limited Scenarios - Progress MOVEit Transfer (CVE-2024-5806)
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!-...
6 months ago
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne [def_not_phalanx@kernel.org] has joined #!hack (irc.efnet.nl)
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne changed the topic of #!hack to: mag1c sh0w
Arduino Blog
Repurposing an automatic train control unit as a car speedometer
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to...
3 months ago
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to posted speed limits and maintain their lanes. But trains have been doing the same thing for a long time — well before machine learning and computer vision became ubiquitous. How did...
Jonas Hietala
Weekend Tournaments
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament...
over a year ago
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament and on Sunday the local Netrunner community hosted a small summer kit tournament.
Game of Thrones
We’ve had a similar tournament once before when me and my girlfriend invited two of...
Jonas Hietala
Monty Hall
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they...
over a year ago
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they discussed the famous Monty Hall Problem. I’ve heard about it before
and I know the answer, but he mentioned a simulation of the problem and that sounded
cool so I made a simulation of...
Old Vintage...
MacLynx beta 5: UTF-8, pull-down menus and more dialogue boxes, oh my!
I've been working off and on doing further Mac-ification to my updated fork of MacLynx, the System...
a year ago
I've been working off and on doing further Mac-ification to my updated fork of MacLynx, the System 7-compatible port of the venerable text browser Lynx for classic 68K Macintoshes (and Power Macs) running A/UX 3.x or System 7.x and later. There's still more to do, but a lot has...
Willem's Blog
I see dead people
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old...
3 months ago
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old photos into lifelike representations.
Opsbros
Saibah Securitah
It's always okay to buy the domain for the meme!
over a year ago
It's always okay to buy the domain for the meme!
Jonas Hietala
Offset coordinates in Krita with Xinerama
I recently bought an Intuos Manga drawing tablet recently, because I got this fix idea that I want...
over a year ago
I recently bought an Intuos Manga drawing tablet recently, because I got this fix idea that I want to learn how to draw. And what better way to do it than with a drawing tablet, while satisfying my need for new things?
With little experience I boldly set forth and I found a...
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Arduino Blog
Build Button Clash in minutes: a new fun game with Plug and Make Kit
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about turning creative sparks into reality in mere minutes....
2 weeks ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about turning creative sparks into reality in mere minutes. With its intuitive, snap-together design, even the wildest ideas become achievable – fast, fun, and frustration-free. That’s exactly what Julián Caro Linares, Arduino’s Product...
./techtipsy
Self-hosting Wikipedia using Kiwix
Do you have a need to host Wikipedia on your computer?
Or a StackExchange site, like Super...
over a year ago
Do you have a need to host Wikipedia on your computer?
Or a StackExchange site, like Super User?
It’s easier than you think!
Step 1: download stuff!
The Kiwix project provides ZIM files for many popular websites, including Wikipedia.
These files can be downloaded over at Kiwix...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day for every Linux or Unix user: brace expantion'
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know...
over a year ago
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know about.
Try this:
touch foobar.conf
Now try this:
cp foobar.conf{,.bak}
It is equivalent to:
cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak
This is also the easiest way to create sequences. Do not use...
Matt Blewitt
7 Languages in 7 Weeks for 2025
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a...
3 weeks ago
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a hands on tour of Ruby, Clojure, Haskell, Io, Scala, Erlang and Prolog. Ruby achieved critical mass, to some degree so did Scala, with the others being popular within their specific...
Arduino Blog
Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline...
3 months ago
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Guycot & Jarre
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
6 months ago
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
Louwrentius
Is storage really that cheap?
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box,...
over a year ago
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box, which is already 50% full. However, although it is to
some degree fault-tollerant by using RAID 6, one mistake or catastrophic
hardware faillure and all data is lost.
And that's...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 08: YouTube support
a year ago
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 3
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
a year ago
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Lobo MAX-80
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
9 months ago
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
Jonas Hietala
Failed mime type for Krita
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open)...
over a year ago
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open) a file and gave the error:
Could not find mime type "application/x-krita"
Turns out if you reinstall the package shared-mime-info which comes natively with Slackware the...
computers are bad
2023-01-29 the parallel port
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel...
a year ago
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel printer capture device.
This contains the line:
There are other projects out there, but when you google for terms such as
"parallel port to usb", they drown in a sea of "USB to...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Attach a running process to a new terminal
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an...
over a year ago
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don’t want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use...
Jonas Hietala
2021 in review
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year...
over a year ago
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year I’ve done this kind of quick review… Time sure flies.
2021 Non-Geek Achievements
Started strength training using a strength coach from Kabuki.
I got inspired by the book Peak that...
Notes on software...
A Programmer-Friendly I/O Abstraction Over io_uring and kqueue
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
latest projects -...
Simsim Pendant
[Concept] Mercurial Medallion
9 months ago
[Concept] Mercurial Medallion
Jonas Hietala
Swelling with New Shiny Books
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course…...
over a year ago
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course… So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!
First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed...
./techtipsy
Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 (AMD): it doesn't suck under Linux
I’ve had the opportunity to try out another new laptop at work. I’ve used a brand new laptop...
8 months ago
I’ve had the opportunity to try out another new laptop at work. I’ve used a brand new laptop recently, and it was horrible.
But this time I’m pleasantly surprised.
The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 has great specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U (8 cores, 16 threads, up to 5.1 GHz)
GPU:...
Christian Selig
Beware UserDefaults: a tale of hard to find bugs, and lost data
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of...
2 months ago
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of pain in both support emails and actually tracking it down, so I want to make others aware of it so they don’t similarly burned.
Brief intro
For the uninitiated, UserDefaults (née...
Jonas Hietala
Resurrection
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not...
over a year ago
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not having to make lunch and dinner every day is such a relief, and if you do slip up food with grandma or Veronica’s parents is only a phone call away. I watched TV, played...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Going to University
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of...
over a year ago
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I’m sorry. It’s not as hard as I had imagined, and I don’t have that much in school but there’s still a lot that’s going on. For example now how to make...
computers are bad
2024-08-31 ipmi
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home,...
3 months ago
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home, here in New Mexico. One of the steps in this process is,
of course, purchasing a new server... the current Big Iron is getting rather
old (probably about a decade!) and here in...
computers are bad
2024-07-31 just disconnect the internet
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of...
4 months ago
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of their Windows install base with a poorly tested content
update. Rough day at the office, huh? There are lots of things you could say
about this, lots of reasons it happens this way,...
Louwrentius
Achieving 2.3 GB/s with 16 x 4 TB drives
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost...
over a year ago
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost finished, it's now down to adding disk drives. I'm using the HGST 4 TB 7200 RPM drive for this build (SKU 0S03356) (review).
I have not bought all drives at once, but slowly adding...
Good Enough
The Element of Surprise
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is...
a year ago
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is best, but rather as a side effect of how we all happened to meet each other. We met remotely, we did not end up all moving into some commune, and so to work together we must work...
Willem's Blog
Offline Music
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to...
over a year ago
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to lossless audio files; there is some reason to this madness however!
Jonas Hietala
Good and Bad Programmers
Every now and day blog posts about what it takes to be a good programmer or how you figure out if...
over a year ago
Every now and day blog posts about what it takes to be a good programmer or how you figure out if someone is a bad programmer arrives. There’s always talk about how you find the good programmers in interviews and the topic is always hot in schools and universities.
Today I read...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Val Town
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If...
a month ago
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If you haven't used Val, well, watch the stream — think live, zero-deploy code snippets that can be arbitrarily extended and executed.)
Reflecting on the experience, the most exciting...
Louwrentius
Automated install of Debian Linux based on PXE net booting
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two...
over a year ago
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two reasons:
Repeating the same task over and over again is friggin boring. A system
administrator has better things to do, such as drinking coffee.
Humans make mistakes, especially if...
Applied Cartography
Order, Tailwind, DRY
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating...
4 days ago
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating some higher-traffic, higher-leverage parts of Buttondown's admin UI away from the autogenerated Django admin and into some more bespoke components.
Take, for instance, this rather...
Home on Erik...
Where do locals go in NYC?
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious...
over a year ago
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious about the larger patterns around this, so I spent some time looking at data. The thing I wanted to understand is: what areas are dominated by tourists?
Neil Madden
How do you use a bearer URL?
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to...
over a year ago
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to incorporate a bearer token (such as an OAuth access token) into a URL. That blog post concentrated on the technical details of how that would work and the security properties of the...
Opsbros
JSON and PowerShell
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will...
over a year ago
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will allow you to manipulate these objects efficiently.
Louwrentius
Migration from blogger to blogofile and disqus is complete
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running...
over a year ago
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running blogofile.
At the time of my previous post, I was not able to restore all comments made on my old blog. Thanks to some help
from disqcus I fixed an error on my behalf and all old comments...
Arduino Blog
An Arduino-powered robotic ukulele that plays itself
The ukulele has a bit of a reputation for being quaint, but it is a legitimate instrument like any...
4 months ago
The ukulele has a bit of a reputation for being quaint, but it is a legitimate instrument like any other and that means it takes a lot of practice to play competently. Zeroshot is too busy building cool stuff to bother with all of that, so he put his skills to use constructing...
csvbase blog
My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
a year ago
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
Christian Selig
Using PHPickerViewController Images in a Memory-Efficient Way
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers...
over a year ago
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers now have a fully-fledged photo picker that we can just use, rather than having to spend a bunch of our time creating our own (much like SFSafariViewController did for developers and...
Home on Erik...
Modeling conversion rates using Weibull and gamma distributions
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this...
over a year ago
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this article or share it, please go to the original post URL! Separately, I'm sorry it's been so long with no posts on this blog.
Birchtree
Somehow, more YouTube gems
Yup, we’re doing this again because you all seem to like them an honestly I kinda like making them...
2 days ago
Yup, we’re doing this again because you all seem to like them an honestly I kinda like making them 😊
I love Answer in Progress, especially Sabrina’s videos, and she gets about as obsessed with anything she’s ever looked at in this episode (and
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Lotus
The Hardest Working Software in the World
a year ago
The Hardest Working Software in the World
Odds and Ends of...
Christmas Mailbag - Questions Wanted!
Ask me stuff!
a week ago
Avestura's Blog
Explaining The Postgres Meme
Have you seen this legendary SQL iceberg meme? Let's talk about it while wearing our PostgreSQL hat!
a year ago
Have you seen this legendary SQL iceberg meme? Let's talk about it while wearing our PostgreSQL hat!
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
Construction Physics
The Influence of Bell Labs
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a...
a month ago
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.
Construction Physics
Do U.S. Ports Need More Automation?
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily...
2 months ago
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily dockworkers on East and Gulf Coast ports, went on strike after failing to agree contract terms with USMX, an alliance of port operators and employers.
Willem's Blog
Enter text without keys
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a...
over a year ago
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a mouse or keyboard!
Willem's Blog
Rolex DateJust 36
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like?...
over a year ago
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like? Keep reading!
Jonas Hietala
My book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is done
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later...
over a year ago
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later and 1006 more commits I’m finally done!
Well, I’m done with the online version at least. I still plan to create an e-book, a PDF and a paperback and who knows how long that will...
Arduino Blog
Exercise while you game with this interactive treadmill add-on
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of...
3 months ago
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of virtual reality headsets, gaming is still done with relatively limited movement unless one has access to an expensive VR walking/running setup. As an effort to get more physical...
Good Enough
TIL: Turbo Frames
DoEvery.Day calendar navigation was broken. We built it using Turbo Rails as it was being developed....
a year ago
DoEvery.Day calendar navigation was broken. We built it using Turbo Rails as it was being developed. As we have updated libraries, including Rails, the API has changed. In order to get the calendar navigation working again, I had to pull out some old hacks that made use of...
Arduino Blog
It’s silver, it’s green, it’s the Batteryrunner! An Arduino-powered, fully custom electric car
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully...
3 weeks ago
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully electric, Arduino-powered car that’s as innovative as it is sustainable. Called the Batteryrunner, this vehicle is designed with a focus on environmental impact, simplicity, and custom...
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the Topic of the February 2024 Plus Post
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
10 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Louwrentius
My 71 TiB ZFS NAS after 10 years and zero drive failures
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going...
3 months ago
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going strong.
Although now on its second motherboard and power supply, the system has yet to experience a single drive failure (knock on wood).
Zero drive failures in ten years, how is that...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 1
Chuck Peddle, the 6502, MOS, and the PET
a year ago
Chuck Peddle, the 6502, MOS, and the PET
Construction Physics
Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post,...
2 months ago
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss.
./techtipsy
Anything's a portable speaker if you're brave enough
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a...
a year ago
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a speaker, a battery, put them together, and what you now have is a
portable speaker. Since I had access to both, I felt no need to buy a separate
portable speaker for use in social...
Simply Explained
ESP32 Cam: cropping images on device
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640...
over a year ago
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640 sensor has a max resolution of 1600x1200, but sometimes you don't need the entire image.In this post I'll show how to crop the images on the ESP32 itself, before sending it of to...
Notes on software...
Extending gosql to supporting LIMIT and OFFSET
It's been a few months since I picked up
gosql and I wanted to use it to
prototype a SQL interface...
over a year ago
It's been a few months since I picked up
gosql and I wanted to use it to
prototype a SQL interface for data stored in S3. But one missing
critical feature in gosql is LIMIT and OFFSET support. This post walks
through the few key changes to gosql to support LIMIT and OFFSET.
You...
computers are bad
2024-09-08 private lines
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs)....
3 months ago
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs). These could be considered an early form of products like
"virtual private ethernet:" a private telephone network that was served by the
same switching machines that handled the...
Arduino Blog
Expanding possibilities: Blues Wireless amplifies Opta’s connectivity
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino...
7 months ago
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino Opta, unveiled this week at the Automate Show in Chicago. The expansion module is an affordable solution to enhance connectivity options for Arduino Opta micro PLCs, and marks a...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Video Games are the Future of Education
The things you learn by yourself stick; the things that are “taught” to you do not stick.
over a year ago
The things you learn by yourself stick; the things that are “taught” to you do not stick.
computers are bad
2024-06-02 consumer electronics control
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less...
6 months ago
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less important part of the modern home
theater landscape. One reason is the broad decline of the component system:
most consumers aren't buying a television, home theater receiver,...
Arduino Blog
This device prevents garage door security breaches
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house....
2 months ago
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again
12 months ago
computers are bad
2023-09-03 plastic money
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in...
a year ago
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our
modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the
balance tracking and authorization decisions happen...
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: the dark side of cloud hosting
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The...
over a year ago
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The Linode Manager is the environment where you control your virtual private servers and where you pay for services. This is the environment that got compromised.
Linode uses Adobe's...
Jonas Hietala
My MCU movie ranking
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge...
over a year ago
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge MCU fan before doing the same re-watch for Infinity War, but after that I became one.
For fun I tried to rank the movies as I saw them, this is some sort of accounting my rankings...
computers are bad
2024-08-19 mining for meteors
Billboards
Route 66 is often viewed through the lens of its billboards. The Jack Rabbit
Trading...
4 months ago
Billboards
Route 66 is often viewed through the lens of its billboards. The Jack Rabbit
Trading Post, a small store a few miles out of Joseph City, would hardly be
remembered were it not for its billboards spanning four states. The tradition
of far-advance billboards is still...
Willem's Blog
The best keyboard for iPad
While everybody is raving about the Magic Keyboard there is something to be said for the...
over a year ago
While everybody is raving about the Magic Keyboard there is something to be said for the "mouse-less" Smart Keyboard Folio. Read along for a detailed analyses based on actual iPad use.
Home on Erik...
Why organizations fail
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core...
over a year ago
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core objective, decide the most basic strategy, and then add more and more modifications as you have to confront the complexity of reality (yes I have very lame hobbies thanks I know).
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Acing the coding challenge
How do you write a successful coding challenge? Unlike some nightmare whiteboard interview...
over a year ago
How do you write a successful coding challenge? Unlike some nightmare whiteboard interview scenarios, typically a coding challenge is not a…
Louwrentius
Compiling Multicore PAR2 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin
If you want to compile PAR2 with multicore support on Linux, it may not work right away from source....
over a year ago
If you want to compile PAR2 with multicore support on Linux, it may not work right away from source. I used this version of PAR2 with multicore support.
Update 2015: the original link is dead, I foud a copy of the source and put it on my own site here for you to download.
First,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 3
over a year ago
On Life and Lisp
Vulkan 1.3 on the M1 in 1 month
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the...
6 months ago
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the M1! The new “Honeykrisp” driver is
the first conformant
Vulkan® for Apple hardware on any operating system, implementing the
full 1.3 spec without “portability”...
Louwrentius
The sorry state of CoW file systems
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks...
over a year ago
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks and that it may still be a long way off before we have something truly great.
Both ZFS and BTRFS are two heroic feats of engineering, created by people who are probably ten times...
Louwrentius
I switched my blog from Blogofile to Pelican
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile...
over a year ago
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile but I switched to Pelican.
Blogofile has seen almost no updates over the years and I consider the project dead. Realising that blogofile is dead, I decided to look around for...
Jonas Hietala
Writing lessons learned after writing a book
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for...
a year ago
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for writing a book was to improve my writing ability.
Maybe I could’ve practiced on the blog instead, but putting things on paper gave it some added weight I don’t think I would’ve gotten...
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin's security isn't binary
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s...
over a year ago
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s security isn’t binary. In fact security in general isn’t black and white. It’s a trade-off being secure enough for your threat model vs the cost and feasibility of your...
./techtipsy
HoloISO: the unofficial Steam Deck experience on your PC
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam...
over a year ago
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam Deck, the
Linux-based handheld gaming PC built by Valve. Yes, you heard that right: not
Windows, but Linux.
I’ve had my fair share of attempts at gaming on Linux. When it works,...
Home on Erik...
Scala Data Pipelines for Music Recommendations
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
over a year ago
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Jordan’s Substack
On Building Git for Lawyers
Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of...
a month ago
Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of my life to solving. Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git?
Notes on software...
Enumerating and analyzing 40+ non-V8 JavaScript implementations
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by...
over a year ago
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by extension) Microsoft Edge, Node.js,
etc. Safari's JavaScriptCore and Firefox's SpiderMonkey are also
contenders for extremely mainstream implementations.
But what else is out there? What if...
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
10 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
Arduino Blog
This beautiful table creates art in the sand
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen...
4 months ago
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen gardens that rake themselves in intricate patterns. But most of the builds we’ve seen use a conventional cartesian CNC layout or polar layout. This table by Newsons Electronics takes...
Willem's Blog
Health and fitness data
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal...
11 months ago
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal well-being and fitness goals shape our relationship with technology and self-awareness.
./techtipsy
How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very...
6 months ago
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very reliable piece of hardware, especially for a printer.
Then came Windows 10. The printer would not work out of the box with it and
the official drivers got stuck during installation....
Posts on Made of...
A brief look at Linux's security record
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a...
over a year ago
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a look at a handful of the high-profile privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux from the last few years. So, here's a summary of the ones I picked out. There are also a large...
Notes on software...
1 million page views
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since...
3 weeks ago
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since Murat
wrote
about his 1M page view accomplishment at the time, I felt compelled to
now too.
I started regularly blogging in 2018. For some reason I decided to
write a blog post...
Notes on software...
Book Review: ANSI Common Lisp
Score: 4.5 / 5
Paul Graham and his editor(s) are excellent. His prose is light and
easy to follow....
over a year ago
Score: 4.5 / 5
Paul Graham and his editor(s) are excellent. His prose is light and
easy to follow. The only awkward component of the book's organization
is that he tends to use a concept one section before explicitly
introducing and defining that concept. I'm not sure yet if this...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 3: pressure transducers
MathJax = {
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},
svg: {
fontCache:...
11 months ago
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
},
svg: {
fontCache: 'global'
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chtml: { displayAlign: 'left' }
};
MathJax.Hub.Config({
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.MathJax {font-size: 1em !important}
The Bendix Central Air...
Willem's Blog
Search like a pro: Google search operators
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter...
over a year ago
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter your search results.
Vitalik Buterin's...
In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism
over a year ago
Louwrentius
The iPhone, iPad and iOS are powering a revolution
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people...
over a year ago
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people who make them are maybe even dumber. Because they
can't seem to figure out how to create a computer that the majority of people
understand.
When the original macintosh arrived at...
Arduino Blog
Can this tiny lawn mower robot cut it in the real world?
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down...
6 months ago
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down and consumer trust goes up. They work a bit like Roomba vacuums and pathfinding sophistication varies from one model to the next. But even the most basic models are still a lot...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Patrol the pool with this Arduino Nano-powered DIY RC submarine
There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other...
4 months ago
There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other vehicles. Maybe that reflects our natural fears and phobias, or maybe it is a result of our curiosity about the mysterious depths. Maybe it is simply that most of us will never get the...
Christian Selig
Announcing Apollo: a new Reddit app for iPhone
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called...
over a year ago
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called Apollo and it’s a new Reddit app for iPhone.
I’ve been a Reddit user for about four years now, and the site is a constant source of interesting discussion, hilarity and news for me...
Posts on Made of...
Lightweight Linux Kernel Development with KVM
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and...
over a year ago
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and picked up a number of useful techniques for doing kernel development in a relatively painless fashion. This blog post is a writeup of the tools and techniques I use when developing...
Notes on software...
Intercepting and modifying Linux system calls with ptrace
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest....
a year ago
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest. Fault
injection
is a formal-sounding term that just means: trying to explicitly
trigger errors in the hopes of discovering bad logic, typically
during automated tests.
Jepsen
and ChaosMonkey...
Jonas Hietala
How I made a kick-ass cover for my self-published book
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all,...
over a year ago
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all, we judge the book by the cover.
And I did it the universally recommended way:
I hired a designer.
Simple, right?
But real talk; it’s not exactly that simple and I did a bunch of...
Posts on Made of...
Reader/reader blocking in reader/writer locks
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition...
over a year ago
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition queue, all future accesses block behind any in-flight reads. Thus, if any readers hold the lock for extended periods of time, this can lead to extreme pauses and loss of throughput...
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home...
a year ago
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home server.
After doing some experiments with my setup a couple of times, it is once again the main server for all my self-hosting
needs. However, this time I have made some...
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
5 months ago
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
Good Enough
TIL: Use touch-action: manipulation; to avoid double-tap-to-zoom
Recently we built and launched A Good Enough Guestbook, a place where you can send us doodles and...
a year ago
Recently we built and launched A Good Enough Guestbook, a place where you can send us doodles and they’ll print out on our little printer. It’s quite lovely and fun, and you should send us a doodle. We might also have more in store for these printers in the future.
In the...
Louwrentius
How to run Debian Linux on an Intel based Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy...
over a year ago
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy efficient. When idle, it uses around 20 watts. I'm using
one of the first Intel-based Minis with an Intel Core Duo chip, running at 1.6
Ghz.
I want to use this mini as an expensive router...
Louwrentius
Setting up a Jabber instant messaging server |_http-title: Site doesn't have a title (text/html;...
I wanted to see how dificult it is to setup an instant messaging server based on open source...
over a year ago
I wanted to see how dificult it is to setup an instant messaging server based on open source software. Now I know that it is very easy, unless you are stubborn and do things your own way. In this example, I'm setting up a small IM server that is only for internal company use, but...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 98
Echoes of an Explosion
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Programming
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many...
over a year ago
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many things I’d like to do and even if it’s not possible to do them all at once it didn’t stop me from thinking of them. One minute it’s that and the other it’s something completely...
Arduino Blog
Move Mario remotely with this online N64 controller system
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console....
a week ago
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console. Modern consoles may do so wirelessly, but the effect is the same: direct input. But what if you connected a “controller” to the internet? Then you could play from anywhere and that is...
Willem's Blog
One year of cycling
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
over a year ago
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/1 keyboard layout
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this...
over a year ago
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this particular version without any major changes for almost 3 months, so I’d say it’s a good improvement over the last revision.
There are two large changes from T-34/0: swapping o and...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Building LLM-driven agents
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just...
a year ago
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just ask it. Writing out a single prompt…
Louwrentius
Shunit2, unit testing for shell scripts
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts...
over a year ago
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts instead of using a proper scripting language such as
Python or Ruby. No I am deliberately not mentioning Perl here.
Anyway, testing is always an issue. With PPSS, I encountered many...
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Louwrentius
Wake On Lan not working with realtek r8168 card
After messing around with different kernels on Debian Lenny, I noticed that my
system did no longer...
over a year ago
After messing around with different kernels on Debian Lenny, I noticed that my
system did no longer respond to WOL packets. The system is using an on-board
Realtek R8168 chip which supports wake on lan.
After searching and reading i found the problem. The system is using an...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – epilogue – curse of dimensionality
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most...
over a year ago
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most of the interesting parts, but there are still some topics left to be discussed. To go back and read the meaty stuff, check out
Louwrentius
Compatibility Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 and Samsung Spinpoint F1
There are some reports about incompatibility between RAID controllers and
Samsung Spinpoint F1...
over a year ago
There are some reports about incompatibility between RAID controllers and
Samsung Spinpoint F1 drives. I have no troubles with my 0.5 and 1.0 TB drives
from Samsung using mentioned controller. See below:
Controller 1: RocketRAID 232x SATA Controller
1/1/1 SAMSUNG HD103UJ...
Louwrentius
Benchmarking cheap SSDs for fun, no profit (be warned)
The price of Solid-state drives (SSDs) has dropped significantly over the last few years. It's now...
a year ago
The price of Solid-state drives (SSDs) has dropped significantly over the last few years. It's now possible to buy a 1TB solid-state drive for less than €60. However, at such low price points, there is a catch.
Although cheap SSDs do perform fine regarding reads, sustained write...
Vitalik Buterin's...
On Nathan Schneider on the limits of cryptoeconomics
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Belkin Gigabit USB 2.0 adapter works perfectly with Linux
My ISP upgraded my internet connection speed to a whopping 120 Mbit. I am
using a mac mini as my...
over a year ago
My ISP upgraded my internet connection speed to a whopping 120 Mbit. I am
using a mac mini as my internet router. As you may be aware, the mini has
only one network interface, so I added a second interface using a USB to
ethernet adapter. This adapter was limited to 100 Mbit, so...
Simply Explained
How I Built an NFC Movie Library for my Kids
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to...
a year ago
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to today, and my children's movie collection is vastly different. It's completely digital and dispersed across services. I wanted to recreate the tangible magic of my childhood for them.
Ian's Blog
GitHub Notification Emails Hijacked to Send Malware
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are...
3 months ago
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are notifications sent on behalf of GitHub users to let me know that somebody has interacted with something and requires my attention. Perhaps somebody has created a new issue on one of my...
Arduino Blog
Slot machine game harnesses the beauty of Nixie tubes
Everyone loves the look of Nixie tubes, with their glowing orange characters made of curvy filament....
2 months ago
Everyone loves the look of Nixie tubes, with their glowing orange characters made of curvy filament. But we usually only see makers using Nixie tubes for one purpose: clocks. That’s unfortunate, because they have a lot more potential, as illustrated by Bob Cascisa’s Nixie tube...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis
over a year ago
Nabeel S. Qureshi
The Serendipity Machine
Notes on Using Twitter
11 months ago
Style over Substance
Adding night shading to a Home Assistant mini-graph-card chart
One of my favorite Lovelace interface cards for Home Assistant is the mini-graph-card by kalkih....
over a year ago
One of my favorite Lovelace interface cards for Home Assistant is the mini-graph-card by kalkih. It’s the card running most of the graphs in our smart home‘s dashboard. Surprisingly, mini-graph card is actually not included in Home Assistant by default – honestly, it should be,...
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
Jonas Hietala
2022 in review
A bit late, but it’s time for my yearly review. It’s something I like doing for myself and it’s nice...
a year ago
A bit late, but it’s time for my yearly review. It’s something I like doing for myself and it’s nice to see that despite a tough year I’ve done some good things.
2022 Non-Geek Achievements
We got our third child!
This time we got a girl to complement our two boys, and I love them...
computers are bad
2023-06-30 calling in the alarm
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But...
a year ago
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But here's something short while I'm temporarily back in the
warm embrace of 5G: more about burglar alarms. I recently gave a presentation
on this topic and I'll probably record it for...
Applied Cartography
Two weeks of parenthood
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about...
2 months ago
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about parenthood. (In all seriousness, consider the below descriptive and not prescriptive: mostly, it's a notepad filled with things that were remarkable or surprising or divergent from...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Tips for Long-Distance Cycling
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID...
a year ago
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID Fietselfstedentocht experience, packed with invaluable tips and tricks.
Christian Selig
Trials and Tribulations of Making an Interruptable Custom View Controller Transition on iOS
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one,...
over a year ago
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one, with that power comes a great deal of complexity. It can be tricky, and I’m having one of those days where it’s getting the better of me and I just cannot get it to do what I want...
Christian Selig
The Caldera: a sleek split and wireless keyboard
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically...
5 months ago
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically my dream wireless split keyboard.
I’ve been using it for months, and I love it.
Video overview
If you’re a visual person, I made a fun little video showcasing the...
Jonas Hietala
Customizing Neovim
Scripting is configuration. Configuration is scripting.
TJ DeVries A different take on editing...
7 months ago
Scripting is configuration. Configuration is scripting.
TJ DeVries A different take on editing code
I’ve been using Neovim since it forked from Vim almost 8 years ago, and I used Vim many years before that.
I feel quite comfortable with Neovim, and I’ve gone down the...
Applied Cartography
Auth.js + Square
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the...
7 months ago
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the periphery of your understanding, and a Third South project has led me to spin up a small Next project using Bun [1] and Auth.js (nee next-auth), which has been quite bad and I...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Keep incidents boring
The internet is full of exciting incident war stories. Tough engineering problems, solved under...
over a year ago
The internet is full of exciting incident war stories. Tough engineering problems, solved under pressure by sleep-deprived developers. In an…
Jonas Hietala
Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax...
9 months ago
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax highlighting that works well even in an error state (often the case when you’re editing code), and it has additional semantics (you can differentiate between function parameters and...
Louwrentius
Compiling Ceph on the Raspberry Pi 3B+ (armhf) using Clang/LLVM
UPDATE 2019 / 2020
There are official ARM64 binaries of Ceph that you can run on a 64-bit version of...
over a year ago
UPDATE 2019 / 2020
There are official ARM64 binaries of Ceph that you can run on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu 18.04.
Important: I consider this page obsolete. I will keep it up for transparency's sake
Introduction
In this blog post I'll show you how to compile Ceph Luminous for...
Old Vintage...
The Living Computers Museum finally isn't
First off, apologies for a quiet month as I've been dealing with family matters which hopefully are...
5 months ago
First off, apologies for a quiet month as I've been dealing with family matters which hopefully are now on a better footing (more articles are in the hopper). Unfortunately, the same apparently can't be said for the once-great Living Computers Museum + Labs in Seattle,...
Notes on software...
How do databases execute expressions?
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not...
a year ago
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not seem practical in life as a
developer. For example, every database with a query language is also a
programming language implementation of some caliber. That doesn't
include all...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/2 keyboard layout
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my...
over a year ago
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my last update on the T-34 keyboard layout, and I’ve made some changes I’d like to document here.
As seen in the heatmap above, the layout seems quite decent. There’s still an issue...
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Style over Substance
How to build your own Goodman ZONE camera, part 2
The Goodman ZONE is a medium-format 3D-printed film camera designed by Dora Goodman as part of her...
over a year ago
The Goodman ZONE is a medium-format 3D-printed film camera designed by Dora Goodman as part of her range of open-source camera models, using the existing Mamiya Press lens series for glass and the Mamiya RB67 backs to hold film. She sells pre-printed kits that contain all the...
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
a month ago
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
Jonas Hietala
Plans for Summer of Code
My first summer job is now over, and after a weekend of rest, it is now time to plan for my second...
over a year ago
My first summer job is now over, and after a weekend of rest, it is now time to plan for my second summer job: IDA Summer of Code.
I will work a month, or 4 weeks, with contributing to rust! The only issue is, I have no idea where to start. I didn’t have a strict plan or a vision...
Louwrentius
Linux Iptables Firewall Script released on Google code
I have released LIFS, the Linux Iptables Firewall Script. This script allows you to setup a firewall...
over a year ago
I have released LIFS, the Linux Iptables Firewall Script. This script allows you to setup a firewall within minutes. It is easy to use, yet very powerful. It uses Iptables and even improves upon some limitations of Iptables.
Every person who has to maintain some kind of...
./techtipsy
So you need some tech tips...
I’m an experienced software developer located in Estonia 🇪🇪🇪🇺 .
I don’t simply get things done,...
over a year ago
I’m an experienced software developer located in Estonia 🇪🇪🇪🇺 .
I don’t simply get things done, I get them done done.
Here’s what I bring to the table:
software development skillset
building useful solutions
monitoring, observability
incident response
I know how to use...
Home on Erik...
Calculating cosine similarities using dimensionality reduction
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity...
over a year ago
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity Computation (DISCO)
I just glanced at the paper, and there's some cool stuff going on from a theoretical perspective. What I'm curious about is why they didn't decide to use...
Applied Cartography
Is cool enough?
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL...
9 months ago
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL manipulation. They look like great libraries, and a prior version of me would have taken a brief set of cursory
glances at the hodgepodge of janky URL manipulation code that I wrote for...
Jonas Hietala
Moving to FastMail
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some...
over a year ago
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some reason I settled on eumx which I used since then. Yesterday I got an email saying the recurring billing could not be renewed as I had my old credit card registered and it got me...
Simply Explained
Building Air Quality Sensor: Luftdaten + Home Assistant
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the...
over a year ago
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the world. Best of all: it's open-source and anyone can build a sensor.I was very curious to see the air quality in my neighborhood, so I decided to build myself a sensor. And of course,...
Louwrentius
Why I still won't switch to Linux and keep my Mac
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to...
over a year ago
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to admit that the Linux desktop is really becoming a
nice, user-friendly environment. I'm truly starting to like what I see. I
considered whiping Mac OS X from my macbook, but there...
Notes on software...
A reawakening of systems programming meetups
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich...
5 months ago
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich Database
Meetup, Berlin
Systems Group, SF Distributed
Systems Meetup, NYC
Systems, Bengaluru
Systems, to name a few.
This post summarizes a bit of disappointing recent tech meetup
history,...
./techtipsy
Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively...
a year ago
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while.
A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition.
During the Steam summer sale of 2023, I went...
Louwrentius
Creating configuration backups of HP procurve switches
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration...
over a year ago
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration through secure shell (using scp).
It also diffs backed up configurations against older versions, in order to keep track of changes. If you run the script from cron every hour or...
Willem's Blog
Backup Rotation Scheme
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync,...
a year ago
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync, creating and maintaining multiple recovery points from your backups.
Good Enough
Cosmic Maelstrom
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's...
a year ago
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's weird to be in this situation. Most of the Good Enough team are used to working on just one software at a time, focusing on steadily improving it. But right now we're doing the...
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.1
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02,...
9 months ago
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02, R65C02 and 65816 processors that André and I maintain is now at version 2.4.1. This optionally expands the syntax from 2.4.0 and fixes some bugs primarily with relocatable .o65...
Willem's Blog
Abandoning my own tablet OS
After a year of experimenting with Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 I have returned to iPad Pro...
over a year ago
After a year of experimenting with Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 I have returned to iPad Pro and the Mac.
Arduino Blog
Team Ikaro scores success with the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect!
Team Ikaro is a vibrant group of high school students from the Pacinotti Archimede Institute in...
3 months ago
Team Ikaro is a vibrant group of high school students from the Pacinotti Archimede Institute in Rome, sharing a strong passion for electronics and turning heads in the world of robotics! Specializing in Soccer Lightweight games (where robot-soccer players compete to score goals...
Jonas Hietala
Dijkstra's Algorithm
For rust, I’m updating the documentation for the standard library and specifically with the...
over a year ago
For rust, I’m updating the documentation for the standard library and specifically with the collections. For the priority queue I had the idea to use Dijkstra’s algorithm as a fun example. That idea was well received and that example is now live.
At first I wanted to use A* to...
Jonas Hietala
Ores
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added...
over a year ago
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added some ores which makes the game look a bit less boring. I realize I’ve spent all my time on these little things and I still don’t have a game! But it doesn’t matter, maybe I can...
GitButler
GitButler 0.12 - "Stingy Baker"
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
6 months ago
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
./techtipsy
The minimum viable fan control script
I’ve always been a fan of tinkering with cooling setups on my computers.
I’ve even went as far as...
over a year ago
I’ve always been a fan of tinkering with cooling setups on my computers.
I’ve even went as far as writing crappy
solutions to make up for
deficiencies on the hardware level. After years of dumb experiments I’ve seen
how little you can get away with in cooling and how to run your...
computers are bad
2023-10-03 overheard overhead
Let's talk about overhead paging. The concept goes by various names: paging,
public address, even...
a year ago
Let's talk about overhead paging. The concept goes by various names: paging,
public address, even intercom, although the accuracy of the latter term can be
questionable. It's probably one of the aspects of business telephone systems
that gets the most public attention, on account...
computers are bad
2023-01-16 huff-duff
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an...
a year ago
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an extremely useful property of HF radio here is that HF
frequencies can reflect off of the upper layers of the atmosphere, causing them
to rebound towards earth at a range much further...
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