Notes on software...
Effective unemployment and social media
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your...
a month ago
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything
except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are
looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or...
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...
Louwrentius
Why Debian/Ubuntu Linux is to be preferred
There are many Linux distributions around. However, I always come back to just
one: Debian. The...
over a year ago
There are many Linux distributions around. However, I always come back to just
one: Debian. The reason why so many people use Debian is the same reason I
like it so much: software management. With good old apt-get or the new
aptitude, software is installed within minutes. Due to...
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Willem's Blog
The birth of a child
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor...
over a year ago
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor capturing the impact of birth on yours truly.
Louwrentius
Using InfiniBand for cheap and fast point-to-point Networking
InfiniBand networking is quite awesome. It's mainly used for two reasons:
low latency
high...
over a year ago
InfiniBand networking is quite awesome. It's mainly used for two reasons:
low latency
high bandwidth
As a home user, I'm mainly interested in setting up a high bandwidth link between two servers.
I was using quad-port network cards with Linux Bonding, but this solution has some...
Arduino Blog
Seaside Sweeper keeps beaches pristine
Without anyone caring for them, beaches quickly become trash-covered swaths of disappointment. That...
7 months ago
Without anyone caring for them, beaches quickly become trash-covered swaths of disappointment. That care is necessary to maintain the beautiful sandy havens that we all want to enjoy, but it requires a lot of labor. A capstone team of students from the University of Colorado...
Louwrentius
Benchmarking a 1.44 MB floppy drive
I've used fio - a storage benchmarking tool - to benchmark a 1.44 MB floppy drive to gauge its...
over a year ago
I've used fio - a storage benchmarking tool - to benchmark a 1.44 MB floppy drive to gauge its random I/O performance. I have no real reason for doing this. I just thought it was funny.
I've run a benchmark against the floppy drives for different queue depths. The results are...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for... chess
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some...
over a year ago
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some point. So why not combine the two? That's what I thought, and I ended up spending way too much time on it.
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:
Applied Cartography
Notes from May
Lots of writing this month:
Why you should use Rails
A reminder that things take time
How...
6 months ago
Lots of writing this month:
Why you should use Rails
A reminder that things take time
How shadcn/ui's previews work
Why I hate that 1.01% meme
A lovely term, 'grace note'
Au revoir, invoke!
A quick check-in on 11ty
A rant/snippet for auth.js
The first edition of what will be a...
Louwrentius
Affordable server with server-grade hardware part II
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I...
over a year ago
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I documented the reasons for choosing server-grade hardware already in an earlier post on this topic.
It is recommended to read the old post first. In this new post, I only show new...
Willem's Blog
Building the blog... in style!
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
over a year ago
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
Lighthouse Blog
Introducing Lighthouse - The RSS reader, newsletter reader, and read-it-later app to fight content...
8 months ago
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Advice That Actually Worked For Me
My contribution to the 'productivity advice' genre.
over a year ago
My contribution to the 'productivity advice' genre.
Bryan Braun - Blog
Setting up your /now page with an RSS feed
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now...
a month ago
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now pages” but I felt like it would be better if it had an RSS feed. The feed would give interested parties a way to subscribe to life changes.
The problem is that RSS feeds aren’t...
Posts on Made of...
How is duct tape like the force?
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con...
over a year ago
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con again, I needed to do something in terms of costuming, and I wanted it to be something unique – I wasn’t going to come anywhere near as epic as some of the costumes people pull...
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
2 weeks ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Louwrentius
An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at...
over a year ago
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
When I bought this drive, we were still in...
Jordan’s Substack
Coming soon
This is Jordan’s Substack.
a month ago
This is Jordan’s Substack.
Birchtree
The future simply has more computers (members post)
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers...
5 days ago
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers to our lives, not replacing anything.
./techtipsy
techtipsy, now hosted on k-space!
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn,...
a year ago
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia.
If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, you might be wondering why I made that move, especially since I was
quite proud of hosting my website over a residential...
Good Enough
Bad Ideas Are Fun
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that...
a year ago
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that coming up with ideas is actually very easy––what makes it hard is that we’re aiming for good ideas.
The next time you're coming up with ideas, tell yourself, Forget about good...
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
3 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: third time's the charm
This is a follow-up to my two previous attempts on this topic:
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable...
2 months ago
This is a follow-up to my two previous attempts on this topic:
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
Since then, I’ve had quite a few changes to my home server setup:
I put my home server stuff on an IKEA pegboard
I tried the...
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.
csvbase blog
Being on The Semantic Web is easy, and, frankly, well worth the bother
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
4 months ago
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
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...
Arduino Blog
This giant animatronic LEGO minifig zombie is a delight
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough...
4 months ago
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough constraint to force people to consider their art and design choices. That’s exactly the kind of pressure that Wicked Makers’ Jaimie and Jay thrive under, leading them to build this...
Christian Selig
Recreating Apple's beautiful visionOS search bar
Many of Apple’s own visionOS apps, like Music, Safari, and Apple TV, have a handy search bar front...
9 months ago
Many of Apple’s own visionOS apps, like Music, Safari, and Apple TV, have a handy search bar front and center on the window so you can easily search through your content. Oddly, as of visionOS 1.1, replicating this visually as a developer using SwiftUI or UIKit is not...
Jonas Hietala
Site restyle and update
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s...
over a year ago
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s free and there’s a section Typography in ten minutes if you want the important bits.
He makes a pretty good case for why it matters when he points out the...
Applied Cartography
Git one-liner: get the earliest commit from X hours ago
I wanted to get a commit that was temporally some distance back as part of my experimentation with...
7 months ago
I wanted to get a commit that was temporally some distance back as part of my experimentation with git cliff. This took some time to do, but here's what I ended up with:
git log --since="72 hours ago" --until="now" --reverse --pretty=format:"%h" | head -1
Nothing particularly...
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...
computers are bad
2023-08-19 meanwhile elsewhere
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard...
a year ago
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard time getting to it. Instead I did the yard work, edited
and uploaded a YouTube video, and then spewed out a Cohost thread as long as a
blog post. So in lieu of your regularly...
Old Vintage...
Cracking DesignWare's The Grammar Examiner on the C64
It's been awhile since I've stripped the copy protection off a Commodore 64 software package. This...
a year ago
It's been awhile since I've stripped the copy protection off a Commodore 64 software package. This weekend I had a reason to.
The Grammar Examiner from 1984, something like a mashup between a board game and Strunk and White's Elements of Style, where you get to edit a fictional...
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
6 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
./techtipsy
No HDMI port on the ThinkPad T430? No problem!
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is...
5 months ago
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is pretty much obsolete at this point
mini DisplayPort connector on the laptop itself
DVI or DisplayPort on a dock
The mini DisplayPort port has annoyed me for as long as I’ve had this...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
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...
./techtipsy
btrbk is awesome
I like having a safety net whenever I’m doing something potentially destructive,
which is why I use...
over a year ago
I like having a safety net whenever I’m doing something potentially destructive,
which is why I use the btrfs file system for my operating system and my data.
Snapshots are one half of my “whoops, there goes all my work” strategy (backups
are the other half).
I’ve written about...
Yazin Alirhayim
Braindump
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any...
over a year ago
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any significance I get derailed, and fall into this spiral of thought where I reconsider whether what I’m about to do matters, why it would, and whether I could be doing something else that...
Old Vintage...
After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor...
9 months ago
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor isn't a replacement system I secondarily acquired, nor is it a Ship of Theseus Frankenstein rebuild. This is my actual first computer, in its original case, on its original...
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 days ago
Building an intuition about energy
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets
over a year ago
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 98
Echoes of an Explosion
a year ago
seangoedecke.com RSS...
From hours to seconds: AI tools to detect animal calls
If you’re currently spending time listening to long audio recordings of birdcalls or animal noises,...
8 months ago
If you’re currently spending time listening to long audio recordings of birdcalls or animal noises, it’s likely that the last four years of…
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...
Arduino Blog
Arduino and Truesense partner to bring UWB technology to millions
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB)...
a month ago
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, known for its innovative software and hardware solutions. This collaboration enhances our ecosystem of hardware products, software solutions, and cloud services,...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Reflections on Palantir
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
2 months ago
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
Home on Erik...
My issue with GPU-accelerated deep learning
I've been spending several hundred bucks renting GPU instances on AWS over the last year. The...
over a year ago
I've been spending several hundred bucks renting GPU instances on AWS over the last year. The speedup from a GPU is awesome and hard to deny. GPUs have taken over the field. Maybe following the footsteps of Bitcoin mining there's some research on using FPGA (I know very little...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
over a year ago
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
Vitalik Buterin's...
Deeper dive on cross-L2 reading for wallets and other use cases
a year ago
computers are bad
2023-07-29 Free Public WiFi
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree...
a year ago
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was
directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school
student I was not...
./techtipsy
Surviving the front page of HackerNews on a 50 Mbps uplink
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the...
over a year ago
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the topic, because it
brought out a lot of enthusiasts who shared their own experiences with older
machinery that still works in 2022. I really appreciate the feedback and...
Jonas Hietala
An intriguing new puzzle
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix...
over a year ago
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix between Rubik’s cube and sudoku. I enjoy puzzles like those and I really enjoyed this one too - it took me a while to beat it but I just love the feeling when you do. If you like...
Willem's Blog
iPad Pro as primary computer
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
over a year ago
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
Jonas Hietala
December Theme: New World Order
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of...
over a year ago
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of this year but that’s something we can’t accept! I’ve done my game and I didn’t force myself out from the Haskell world just to do nuthin so here’s a new little theme for me :)
What...
Jonas Hietala
Rising from the Dead, it's Ludum Dare
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not...
over a year ago
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not making games or blogging. But I have revived! I scrambled to push my new website live because today it’s Ludum Dare time! The theme is “Evolution” and it’s the 24th time for Ludum Dare...
Home on Erik...
Developer experience as a competitive advantage
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd...
over a year ago
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd “advanced” consumer who builds stuff in my spare time. In the last 10 years, there has been an order of magnitude more products that cater directly to developers, through APIs, SDKs, and...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 2.0
Success and Litigation
a year ago
Christian Selig
Server side Live Activities guide
iOS 17.2 gained the capability to start Live Activities from a server, which is pretty cool and...
3 months ago
iOS 17.2 gained the capability to start Live Activities from a server, which is pretty cool and handy! I’ve been playing around with it a bit and found some parts a bit confusing, so I thought I’d do a little write up for future me as well as anyone else who could benefit!
(For...
Louwrentius
Parallel / distributed password cracking with John the Ripper and MPI
This article has been updated to reflect the changes for John version 1.7.8 as released in june...
over a year ago
This article has been updated to reflect the changes for John version 1.7.8 as released in june 2011.
The most important change is the fact that MPI support is now integrated in the jumbo patch.
The original John the Ripper off-line password cracker only uses a single processor...
Jonas Hietala
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small...
over a year ago
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small shooter.
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afro
Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen?
Instruction
W: up
Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc...
Notes on software...
Active and influential NYC infrastructure people
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I...
a month ago
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I actually see them attend events) in the
NYC infrastructure scene (that I have a personal connection to).
If you're running a dinner or are just looking to meet interesting
people in...
./techtipsy
Stupid project ideas: the War Machine
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such...
over a year ago
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such as:
unboxing and deploying petabytes of storage
7 gamers, 1 CPU
building sleeper PC-s
testing sketchy CPU-s
opening up a 100TB SSD
I have the ideas, but not the budget of LinusTechTips, so...
computers are bad
2024-10-12 commercial HF radio
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio...
2 months ago
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio spectrum between 3 and 30 MHz. The label now seems
anachronistic, as HF is among the lowest ranges of radio frequencies that see
regular use. This setting of the goalposts in the early...
Applied Cartography
How Buttondown uses HAProxy
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the...
3 months ago
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the author-facing app, the subscriber-facing app, and the marketing site all under a single domain. Most technical decisions are reversible with sufficient grit and dedication; this one...
Ian's Blog
Why my Apps Aren't Available on Apple Vision Pro
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring...
4 months ago
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring why the apps aren't available on Apple's new Vision Pro headset. While I have briefly discussed this over on my Mastodon, I figured it might be worthwhile putting things down with...
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.
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,...
csvbase blog
Caching secrets of the HTTP elders, part 1
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
8 months ago
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
Willem's Blog
Repairing a Giro AEON bicycle helmet
Try fixing your Giro bicycle helmet? I went through some trouble to do it! Read along to find out...
over a year ago
Try fixing your Giro bicycle helmet? I went through some trouble to do it! Read along to find out how.
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Louwrentius
'Improved' image gallery for Blogofile
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports...
over a year ago
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports a small image gallery that has been written to illustrate how to create your own 'controllers' or Blogofile plugins.
My Python skills are horrible buy I managed to improve a bit...
Notes on software...
Obsession
In your professional and personal life, I don't believe there is a stronger motivation than having...
4 months ago
In your professional and personal life, I don't believe there is a stronger motivation than having something in mind and the desire to do it. Yet the natural way to deal with a desire to do something is to justify why it's not possible.
"I want to read more books but nobody reads...
./techtipsy
Steam local network game transfers are a game-changer
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have...
a year ago
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have a game downloaded on another PC and you’re both on the same local network, then Steam can download game data
from that PC, avoiding the need to download the game over public...
Good Enough
TIL: Use randomness to prevent email trimming
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of...
a year ago
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of the emails we send with our new app because they were too similar to the other emails in the conversation thread.
They’re similar because that’s just the link to get back into the...
Yazin Alirhayim
Part 2: Will greater access to capital spark Bahrain’s economy?
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access...
over a year ago
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access to capital and why’s important to verify that we do in fact have a problem before we attempt to “solve” it.
Now, we’re going to talk about the method for measuring the extent of...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
I don't know how to build software and you don't either
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it...
a month ago
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it better to have that dictated by some…
Jonas Hietala
Life and Shields
Time is running out! At least the more technical parts are mostly done. The ships have an acceptable...
over a year ago
Time is running out! At least the more technical parts are mostly done. The ships have an acceptable AI, they have rechargeable shields and they can now even be killed. Currently the game is far too easy, but it’s starting to look a little cooler at least.
./techtipsy
The little Wi-Fi AP that could
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short...
over a year ago
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short overview of one of them.
The Orange Pi Zero is a SBC (single board computer) that has a slow 32-bit ARM 4 core CPU, 512MB of RAM and no display output.
It’s actually quite OK for many...
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...
Louwrentius
Linux RAID 6 performance using software RAID
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1...
over a year ago
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1 TB disks. This gives me raw device read speeds
of 850 MB/s and write speeds of 300 MB/s. I think this is exactly
what should be expected, but boy it is damn fast. Especially the...
computers are bad
2024-01-16 the tacnet tracker
Previously on Deep Space Nine, I wrote that "the mid-2000s were an unsettled
time in mobile...
11 months ago
Previously on Deep Space Nine, I wrote that "the mid-2000s were an unsettled
time in mobile computing."
Today, I want to share a little example. Over the last few weeks, for various
personal reasons, I have been doing a lot of reading about embedded operating
systems and ISAs for...
Willem's Blog
From tree to table
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
over a year ago
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
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...
Posts on Made of...
Using Haskell's 'newtype' in C
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple...
over a year ago
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple types of data that share the same representation. Classic examples include differentiating between measurements stored in different units, distinguishing between a string of HTML...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 2 (Linting)
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Willem's Blog
Designing my own watch
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical...
over a year ago
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical annual calendar designed to be understated and true to the metal.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Binius: highly efficient proofs over binary fields
7 months ago
Notes on software...
Exploring Postgres's arena allocator by writing an HTTP server from scratch
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a month ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Odds and Ends of...
I'm pro-assisted dying in principle, but I'm not sure about the proposed law
Is no law better than a bad law?
a month ago
Is no law better than a bad law?
Arduino Blog
KiPneu makes soft robotic biomimetics accessible to STEAM students
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of...
5 months ago
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of humanity’s greatest assets. But systems reliant on soft tissue, such as an octopus’s tentacles, have been notoriously difficult to reproduce in the robotics world. To give STEAM...
Computer Ads from...
Bomb Squad Peripherals' BLOWGUN
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
6 months ago
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
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).
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that...
2 months ago
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago except for all the aforementioned time and money. Yours truly is no exception.
a future article.) They existed in highly technical...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
Arduino Blog
Assess your aquarium’s health with an AI-enabled ultrasonic sensor
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can...
7 months ago
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital...
Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation...
6 months ago
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system.
Aerospace computers are an interesting but mostly neglected area of computer hardware, so I'm always delighted to
examine one up close.
In an era when most computers were large...
Willem's Blog
Inspiration from a child
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
over a year ago
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
Computer Ads from...
Ampere WS-1
A cool Japanese clamtop
9 months ago
Applied Cartography
MD5-based uniqueness constraints in Django
Yesterday, I was trying to set a unique constraint for comments in Buttondown to prevent accidental...
3 months ago
Yesterday, I was trying to set a unique constraint for comments in Buttondown to prevent accidental double-commenting, and I ran into a problem that I hadn't seen before:
index row size 2816 exceeds btree version 4 maximum 2704 for index...
computers are bad
2023-06-12 radio on the tv
Like many people in my generation, my memories of youth are heavily defined by
cable television. I...
a year ago
Like many people in my generation, my memories of youth are heavily defined by
cable television. I was fortunate enough to have a premium cable package in
my childhood home, Comcast's early digital service based on Motorola equipment.
It included a perk that fascinated me but...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 3: Fool Me Three Times
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the...
over a year ago
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the Warr…iors... sob… It’s just one game, right?
1. No One Likes a Giveaway
Who doesn’t love a good pickle?
Well that didn’t happen. There were no entries to last week’s giveaway. If you...
Lars Lofgren
The Stupidity of Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of...
a month ago
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of pages in Google. The SEO community refers to this type of thing as parasite SEO. Google has gone so far as to publish an official policy (documented here) on how this isn’t allowed:...
Willem's Blog
Swimming and cycling with Apple Watch
This month I tested the newest watchOS while swimming and cycling.
over a year ago
This month I tested the newest watchOS while swimming and cycling.
Notes on software...
A paper reading club at work; databases and distributed systems research
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems...
8 months ago
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems research. I posted in a general channel about
the premise and asked if anyone was interested. I clarified the
intended topic and that discussions would be asynchronous over email,
run...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON library from scratch: a tour through modern C++
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is...
over a year ago
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is cheap. std::shared_ptr
means I don't have to manage any memory; no
more new/delete! (But try as I might to
understand std::unique_ptr, I'm just not there yet.)
The syntax has also...
./techtipsy
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in...
a year ago
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no
expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and
start working on...
Old Vintage...
With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone's a WiiN-er (except Data General)
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the...
7 months ago
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone with a day job in public health for almost two decades, it's always been a buzzword in certain corners of IT with enough money sloshing around...
Louwrentius
Setup a VPN on your iPhone with OpenVPN and Linux
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered...
over a year ago
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered unmaintained.
It's stronly recommended not to use this tutorial and find up-to-date documentation.
I also have no plans to update this blogpost in the future.
[Update 2018]
This...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Links #11
Here are some more links to things that I keep thinking about. I shared a bit more detail on these...
2 weeks ago
Here are some more links to things that I keep thinking about. I shared a bit more detail on these ones than I usually do—there were so many good quotes to include. Enjoy!
Selfishness & Therapy Culture
Earlier this year, there was a post in the New York Times called “Sometimes,...
Louwrentius
ZFS performance on HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 G1610T
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your...
over a year ago
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your own ZFS-based NAS. The benchmarks I've performed seem to confirm this.
The Microserver Gen8 has nice features such as:
iLO (KVM over IP with dedicated network interface)
support...
Simply Explained
Shelly 2.5 + ESPHome: potential fire hazard + fix
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin...
over a year ago
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin will be short-circuited and cause the unit to heat up significantly, creating a potential fire hazard!
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.
Jonas Hietala
Moving private repositories to Bitbucket
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of...
over a year ago
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of courseand they even gave me a free students account and I still host all my public repositories there. Still, Bitbucket has unlimited free private repositories for up to 5 users...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 3. LLVM
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the
compiler to emit LLVM
IR as an option instead of...
Posts on Made of...
New reptyr feature: TTY-stealing
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally...
over a year ago
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally didn’t know how to solve within the reptyr model. Most annoyingly, reptyr fundamentally only worked on single processes, and could not attach processes with children, making it...
Arduino Blog
RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership...
6 months ago
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program at the Gold level. Founded in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden, RIoT Secure is at the forefront of IoT security, especially in regards to resource-constrained microcontrollers,...
Jonas Hietala
Entering Pintos
First week of school is over and it’s been full throttle from the start, in a good way. We’re having...
over a year ago
First week of school is over and it’s been full throttle from the start, in a good way. We’re having four courses and for once I like them all. We have an interesting math course, a useful course “Software Development in Theory” (boring but useful) and a big project course where...
Style over Substance
CANARY Corrugated Cardboard Cutter
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases...
over a year ago
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases ever. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, we all started shopping online a lot more. The number of cardboard boxes in our house basically quadrupled overnight and cutting them down to size...
Matt Blewitt
Point and Call
It’s 2AM. You’re paged to respond to a failing set of components that you are the Subject Matter...
over a year ago
It’s 2AM. You’re paged to respond to a failing set of components that you are the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for. Sleepy, you load up the playbook for when the SplineReticulatorBlocked alert has gone off, and start executing. The Incident Commander (IC) is vaguely aware of what...
Notes on software...
Exploring PL/pgSQL: Strings, arrays, recursion, and parsing JSON
Next in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Implementing a Forth-like interpreter
PostgreSQL comes with a...
over a year ago
Next in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Implementing a Forth-like interpreter
PostgreSQL comes with a builtin imperative programming language called
PL/pgSQL. I used to think this language was scary because it has a bit
more adornment than your usual language does. But looking deeper,...
Arduino Blog
DexteriSync lets you walk a mile in the gloves of a user with manual disability
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with...
a month ago
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with disabilities that affect their perception and fine motor skills. A young person without disabilities, for example, may feel that jars are easy to open, while an elderly person with reduced...
GitButler
GitButler for Windows
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
8 months ago
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
Applied Cartography
Notes from April
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past...
7 months ago
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past two years as an independent technologist.
On the media side of things: brief words on Murderville (meh), The Parallax View (incredible), This is Personal (meh), Cribsheet...
Posts on Made of...
Check Plus: An EDSL for writing unit tests in C
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known...
over a year ago
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known projects. It includes features such as running all tests in separate address spaces (using fork(2)), which means that the test suite can properly report segfaults or similar crashes...
Applied Cartography
PSA: mess around with Kolo
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with...
9 months ago
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with Buttondown — a process that I expected to take a couple hours on a lazy Sunday and in fact took ten minutes and three lines of code.
If you have a Django app, I think you should drop...
Ian's Blog
Mourning the Loss of Cohost
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting...
3 months ago
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting down, with the site going read-only on October 1st 2024. This news was deeply upsetting to receive, as Cohost filled a space left by other social media websites when they stopped...
Engineers Need Art
Stereographer
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
4 months ago
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
Willem's Blog
The value of notifications
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the...
over a year ago
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the time to set them up correctly, notifications can actually save you time!
Louwrentius
Why VMware vSphere replication is changing the game
If you are running a serious VMware environment, chances are you do have a SAN. Often with smaller...
over a year ago
If you are running a serious VMware environment, chances are you do have a SAN. Often with smaller setups, many people do employ multiple VMware hosts, but the SAN is a single point of failure.
SANs are often fully redundant devices, with redundant PSUs, storage controllers,...
Jonas Hietala
A simple timeline using CSS flexbox
As I added a /now page to the site I also decided to refresh my /about page and I figured it would...
3 months ago
As I added a /now page to the site I also decided to refresh my /about page and I figured it would be neat to have timeline element where I could list some of the larger events in my life.
To my surprise it wasn’t too difficult to create one that looks pretty clean—the flexbox...
Home on Erik...
ML+Hadoop at NYC Predictive Analytics
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning...
over a year ago
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning algorithms using Hadoop to power music recommendations.
Great meetup, where we had two speakers, me and Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
Home on Erik...
More recommender algorithms
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization...
over a year ago
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization algorithm we have used for a while assumes that we have user vectors $$ bf{a}_u $$ and item vectors $$ bf{b}_i $$ .
Willem's Blog
The Ultimate Freedom Bike
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and...
over a year ago
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and wherever you please!
Jonas Hietala
ISOC update
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an...
over a year ago
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an update post of what I’ve done so far. I will write a more extensive summary post at the end of the project. I was planning on writing a weekly summary, but that ship sailed a long...
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...
Willem's Blog
Wearing two watches
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
over a year ago
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
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...
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...
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
computers are bad
2023-10-15 go.com
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email...
a year ago
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email having a subject that made it sound like this post would
be about the classic strategy game Go. It is actually about a failed website.
I regret the error; the responsible people have...
Matt Blewitt
So, You Want To Build A DBaaS Part 2: Technical Bits
In my first post in this pseudo-series, we covered more of the theory and organisational practices...
a year ago
In my first post in this pseudo-series, we covered more of the theory and organisational practices around building and operating a database-as-a-service platform. In this post, I’ll cover some of the more technical aspects of this that I think are worth considering, drawn from my...
Home on Erik...
How to build up a data team (everything I ever learned about recruiting)
During my time at Spotify, I've reviewed thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of people....
over a year ago
During my time at Spotify, I've reviewed thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of people. Lots of them were rejected but lots of them also got offers. Finally, I've also had my share of offers rejected by the candidate.
Arduino Blog
This small device enables users to feel braille through haptics
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to...
7 months ago
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to text-to-speech (TTS) interfaces that read portions of the screen aloud. Dynamic braille displays also exist as a tactile means of communication, but their prices can get close to...
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
Ride safer with these DIY bicycle lights
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant...
5 months ago
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant afterthought. That makes cycling dangerous and lights can do a lot to make riding safer. That’s why Giovanni Aggiustatutto designed this DIY system that includes headlights, a...
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Posts on Made of...
What's with ML software and pickles?
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but...
a year ago
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but with some curiosity and occasional peripheral interactions with it. During this time, a recurring theme for me was horror (and, to be honest, disdain) every time I encountered the...
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.
Applied Cartography
Notes on ActivityPub
By far the single most-fruitful tactic has been "just look at raw GET responses from Mastodon and...
7 months ago
By far the single most-fruitful tactic has been "just look at raw GET responses from Mastodon and see what things are shaped like." I know that "ActivityPub is under-specified" is a bit of a meme, but it's wild how little prior art there is.
Something that gives distinctly bad...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 11 to recommend in 2021
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction....
over a year ago
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction. Another 30 started but not finished.
Non-fiction
It seems I was pretty focused on business history books and history of
tech. The 8 non-fiction books I liked the most:
Designing...
./techtipsy
Life is maintenance, maintenance is life
Over my relatively short career (6+ years), I’ve noticed a change in the way I approach building...
a year ago
Over my relatively short career (6+ years), I’ve noticed a change in the way I approach building things.
When I was still an inexperienced junior developer who barely survived operating in a Linux
environment and saw backend development as a black box, I was happy to get...
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…
Matt Mullenweg
Welcoming Harper
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah...
a month ago
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah Potter and Harper to join Automattic. Harper is a super-fast (way faster than LanguageTool and Grammarly), local English grammar checker. The technology is nascent, but I’m very...
axio.ms
Mac SE/30 odyssey
I’ve always wanted an Apple Macintosh SE/30. Released in 1989, they look quite a lot like the other...
over a year ago
I’ve always wanted an Apple Macintosh SE/30. Released in 1989, they look quite a lot like the other members of the original “compact Mac” series, but pack in a ton of interesting features that the other compact Macs don’t have.
This is the story of my journey to getting to the...
Posts on Made of...
Stripe's monorepo developer environment
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed...
7 months ago
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed to many generations of Stripe’s developer environment – the tools that engineers used daily to write and test code. I think Stripe did a pretty good job designing and building that...
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...
Posts on Made of...
The architecture of declarative configuration management
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing...
over a year ago
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal...
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....
Home on Erik...
Giving more tools to software engineers: the reorganization of the factory
It's a popular attitude among developers to rant about our tools and how broken things are. Maybe...
over a year ago
It's a popular attitude among developers to rant about our tools and how broken things are. Maybe I'm an optimistic person, because my viewpoint is the complete opposite! I had my first job as a software engineer in 1999, and in the last two decades I've seen software engineering...
Home on Erik...
Annoying blog post
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which...
over a year ago
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which is an open source C++/Python library for Approximate Nearest Neighbor search.
I set up Travis-CI integration and spent some time on one of the issues that multiple people had...
GitButler
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source...
3 months ago
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source ecosystem.
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2021 newsletter
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement...
over a year ago
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement learning.
./techtipsy
FOSDEM 2024: my experience, some notes and tech tips
I finally went to FOSDEM. I’m sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited
about the...
10 months ago
I finally went to FOSDEM. I’m sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited
about the whole experience.
I’ve split this post into three separate sections.
overall notes on the conference and the city
less technical, but sheds light on the FOSDEM experience
the...
Matt Mullenweg
Cloudflare Stories
There are two great Cloudflare-related stories published this weekend. The first is Steven Levy’s...
2 months ago
There are two great Cloudflare-related stories published this weekend. The first is Steven Levy’s incredible story about Tim Jenkin, who created a secure communication protocol for the African National Congress to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa. Cloudflare’s CTO,...
Arduino Blog
Exploring Alvik: 3 fun and creative projects with Arduino’s educational robot platform
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we...
4 days ago
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we decided to have fun and put the robot to the test with some of the most creative people we know – our own team! A dozen Arduino employees volunteered for a dedicated Make Tank session...
Louwrentius
FFmpeg performance on a Core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz
The system i'm running is a Core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz.
I am transcoding a DVD (Grave Of The Fire Flies)...
over a year ago
The system i'm running is a Core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz.
I am transcoding a DVD (Grave Of The Fire Flies) to iPod format (640x480
x264).
Thread support is enabled, to FFmpeg uses about 250% CPU. That's 2.5 of the 4
cores available. If possible, I would have liked to see it use all four...
Notes on software...
First few hurdles writing a Scheme interpreter
I started working on BSDScheme last October, inspired to get back
into language implementation after...
over a year ago
I started working on BSDScheme last October, inspired to get back
into language implementation after my coworker built bshift, a
compiler for a C-like language. BSDScheme is an interpreter for a
(currently small subset of) Scheme written in D. It implements a few
substantial...
Home on Erik...
Building a data team at a mid-stage startup: a short story
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a...
over a year ago
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a tiny data team (~4 people) at a mid-stage startup (~$10M annual revenue), although this story could take place at many different types of companies.
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Louwrentius
How to compile HAProxy from source and setup a basic configuration
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic...
over a year ago
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic to louwrentius.com across two different web servers.
I run HAProxy on a VPS based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Let's dive right in.
First, we need to download the source. Don't copy/pased...
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should there be demand-based recurring fees on ENS domains?
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Keeping a technical edge
Someone emailed me in response to Two years as an independent technologist, in which I wrote:
I miss...
3 months ago
Someone emailed me in response to Two years as an independent technologist, in which I wrote:
I miss of being at a large company, which is dealing with deeply cutting-edge technical problems, but my ability to analyze information, make decisions, and perform at a high-level has...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Education at Bett 2025: Shaping the future of K-12 and HE
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from...
5 days ago
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from January 22nd-24th at the ExCeL exhibition center in London, Bett is the ultimate global event for educational innovation. We are attending the stand with our partner CreativeHut...
Computer Ads from...
Page 6 Magazine Interviews the Godfather of Adventure Games, Scott Adams
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
4 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
Jonas Hietala
Eduroam for wicd in Linkoping's University
So we have eduroam at our University and unsurprisingly wicd is not on their official support list...
over a year ago
So we have eduroam at our University and unsurprisingly wicd is not on their official support list but with some googling the wonderful Arch Wiki had the answer. Well, almost.
Save the following as /etc/wicd/encryption/templates/ttls-80211:
name = TTLS for Wireless
author =...
Gwern.net Newsletter
June gwern.net newsletter
June 2020 gwern.net newsletter with 3 new pages/essays, and links on CRISPR, population screening,...
over a year ago
June 2020 gwern.net newsletter with 3 new pages/essays, and links on CRISPR, population screening, AI scaling, politics, and technological unemployment.
Louwrentius
Monitoring HP MSA P2000 G3 I/O latency with Nagios
At work we have a couple of HP MSA P2000 G3 SANs. These are entry-level SANs that still seem to have...
over a year ago
At work we have a couple of HP MSA P2000 G3 SANs. These are entry-level SANs that still seem to have almost all features you might want from a SAN, except for official SSD-support.
It seems that the new MSA 2040 adds support for SSDs and also provides 4 GB cache per controller...
Neil Madden
Macaroon access tokens for OAuth: Part 2 – transactional auth
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a...
over a year ago
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a lightweight and easy-to-deploy alternative to proof of possession (PoP) schemes for securing tokens in browser-based apps. The same techniques can be adapted to secure tokens in...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the
compiler's LLVM backend to
support compiling conditionals such that we can support...
Opsbros
The past lives again!
I found a GameBoy Camera for my GBC and thought it'd be a good idea to extract the photos from eons...
over a year ago
I found a GameBoy Camera for my GBC and thought it'd be a good idea to extract the photos from eons ago and bring them to the era of the internet.
Home on Erik...
Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is...
over a year ago
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is hard. It's hard to come up with an unbiased estimate of how long something will take, when fundamentally the work in itself is about solving something.
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...
Home on Erik...
Everything I learned about technical debt
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover...
over a year ago
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover that. Instead, I will talk a little bit about technical debt.
The concept of technical debt always resonated with me, partly because I always like the analogy with “real” debt.
Jonas Hietala
My first theme: Addictive Gaming
In true experimental spirit I’ll now announce the theme for my first game: Addictive Gaming. I won’t...
over a year ago
In true experimental spirit I’ll now announce the theme for my first game: Addictive Gaming. I won’t be following the lead from the Experimental Gameplay Project’s site but I will follow their three laws (7 days, alone, themes).
Puh… my first game! Wish me luck =)
On Life and Lisp
Passing the reins on Panfrost
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild...
a year ago
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild ride.
In 2017, I began work on the chai driver for Mali T (Midgard). chai would later be merged into Lyude Paul’s and Connor Abbott’s BiOpenly project for Mali G (Bifrost) to form...
Posts on Made of...
Reflections on software performance
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining...
over a year ago
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining characteristic: Livegrep, Taktician, and Sorbet (I discussed sorbet in particular last time, and livegrep in an earlier post). I’ve also done a lot of other performance work on the...
Arduino Blog
Web Serial Camera stream with Arduino
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage...
4 months ago
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage from your Arduino boards directly to your web browser? Wonder no more! Arduino’s Web Serial Camera demo shows how to bring your camera projects to life. Stream images from your...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 7 Retrospective
over a year ago
./techtipsy
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I...
a year ago
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I ended up being in Võrumaa,
and while driving I suddenly remembered a random fact that some people mentioned in a hackerspace Slack channel: there’s
a new museum around here!
The...
Arduino Blog
Boring rice cooker becomes uruchimai powerhouse
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable....
5 months ago
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable. But those are simple machines that are about as “dumb” as electric kettles. The result is often rice that has been sitting in the warming stage for too long, making the bottom...
Posts on Made of...
Graceful behavior at capacity
Suppose we’ve got a service. We’ll gloss over the details for now, but let’s stipulate that it...
a year ago
Suppose we’ve got a service. We’ll gloss over the details for now, but let’s stipulate that it accepts requests from the outside world, and takes some action in response. Maybe those requests are HTTP requests, or RPCs, or just incoming packets to be routed at the network layer....
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also...
over a year ago
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also to our training time. I haven’t trained a lot lately so it feels good to do something again and training the kids is very rewarding. On Monday I have the next graph theory lecture...
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...
Yazin Alirhayim
Serializing and deserializing a Cookie Jar
I was recently working on a way to serialize and deserialize a Faraday connection that uses...
over a year ago
I was recently working on a way to serialize and deserialize a Faraday connection that uses HTTP::CookieJar to manage persistent cookies across requests.
I needed to do this because I wanted a way to “freeze” an HTTP connection instance, and later “thaw” it to resume the...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1982/02 Creative Computing Mag
Time for some humor
6 months ago
Opsbros
Pro-tip for Baristas
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup,...
over a year ago
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup, you've definitely come across the issue that when it's 'overfilled' it will overflow when the lid is put back on. There is a
Arduino Blog
Track the location history of your devices in Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether...
6 months ago
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether you’re a logistics company monitoring your fleet, a conservation organization tracking wildlife, or an individual passionate about outdoor adventures, the ability to track and...
Home on Erik...
On the Equifax breach and how to really prevent identity theft
A funny thing about being a foreigner is how you realize people take broken things for granted. I'm...
over a year ago
A funny thing about being a foreigner is how you realize people take broken things for granted. I'm going to go out on a limb here claiming that the US has a pretty dumb banking system.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
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...
Home on Erik...
I believe in the 10x engineer, but...
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be...
over a year ago
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be a 10x engineer if they do nothing for 364 days then convinces the team to change programming language to a 2x more productive language.
Matt Mullenweg
WPAI
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some...
a week ago
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat.
Louwrentius
Got myself a Norco RPC-4020
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion....
over a year ago
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion. The current 6 TB RAID 6 storage server does not have any
room for expantion.
This Norco RPC-4020 case with 20 hot swap drive bays does however. Don't know
what to fill it with yet.
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Home on Erik...
Missing the point about microservices: it's about testing and deploying independently
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the...
over a year ago
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the term microservices. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe because the term is hopelessly ill-defined, maybe because it's gotten picked up by the hype train.
Louwrentius
HP Procurve "auto DoS" feature causing network problems
A feature on more recent HP Procurve models (18xx series, such as 1810G etc.)
is called "Auto DoS"....
over a year ago
A feature on more recent HP Procurve models (18xx series, such as 1810G etc.)
is called "Auto DoS". You can find it in the section "Security" and then
"Advanced security".
If you enable the Auto DoS feature, traffic is blocked based on one of these
conditions:
the source port...
./techtipsy
Accidentally turning the ASRock DeskMini X300 into a semi-passively cooled PC
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one...
over a year ago
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one interesting thing. At least it was
interesting to me.
Background
I had one goal: to try to see if I could turn it into a semi-passive PC by only
turning the fan on when the PC was...
Odds and Ends of...
Here's how AI can REDUCE health misinformation
How the government can build a bullshit detector
2 months ago
How the government can build a bullshit detector
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
over a year ago
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
./techtipsy
Back to roots
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet...
6 months ago
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet connection1, and
I think I have figured out the IPv6 setup as well2, leading to this change.
The IP address is dynamic, there are occasional power outages and I might just
mess up...
Abort Retry Fail
The Birth of Windows Gaming
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
a year ago
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to support binary expressions and very simple filtering on SELECT
results via WHERE. We'll introduce a general mechanism...
Electronics etc…
Setting Up a Symmetricom SyncServer S200 Network Time Protocol Server
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS...
5 months ago
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS Antenna!
The SyncServer S200 Outside and Inside
Installing the Missing BNC Connectors
Setting Up a SyncServer S200 from Scratch
Opening up the SyncServer S200
The SyncServer File...
Computer Ads from...
Electronic Protection Devices' Electro-Clamp line
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
9 months ago
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
Yazin Alirhayim
The best bank in Bahrain … is Meem
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking...
over a year ago
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking to those of you that read my last post that ripped the Meem app to shreds.
Criteria for ‘best bank’
My criteria for “best bank” isn’t the best user experience or customer support....
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Optimism retro funding round 1
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Favorite compiler and interpreter resources
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
Setting up a Squid proxy with Clamav anti-virus using c-icap
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer...
over a year ago
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer presenting a different set of challenges, requiring different skill sets and technology. So every layer will increase the time and effort to compromise your environment.
A...
Old Vintage...
The spawn of AtariLab and the Universal Lab Interface
We were a Commodore 64/128 household growing up, and Apple IIe systems at school, but that doesn't...
a year ago
We were a Commodore 64/128 household growing up, and Apple IIe systems at school, but that doesn't mean I was unaware of Atari 8-bits. There was a family at church who had an 800XL and later a 130XE — and a stack of COMPUTE!'s I used to read through for hours — and it was...
Willem's Blog
Around town in an electric car
For one week I drove the electric Smart EQ fortwo in and around town. I found out what it's like to...
over a year ago
For one week I drove the electric Smart EQ fortwo in and around town. I found out what it's like to drive electrically: fun!
Arduino Blog
This DIY guitar transmitter sends digital audio to the amp
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer....
4 months ago
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer. But that cable can become tangled or get in the way, which is a problem for some of the more animated musicians out there. Wireless transmitters exist for them to express themselves...
Louwrentius
Do not buy a hardware RAID controller for home use
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high...
over a year ago
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high availability. However, this is not entirely true. Using a
hardware RAID controller might even endanger your precious data.
For enterprise environments, where performance is critical, it is...
Electronics etc…
Fake Parallel Printer - A Parallel Port Traffic Capturing Tool
Introduction
What Is Out There?
The Parallel Printer Port
Fake Printer Top Level Design Choices
Fake...
a year ago
Introduction
What Is Out There?
The Parallel Printer Port
Fake Printer Top Level Design Choices
Fake Printer HW Details
PCB Revision 1
PCB Revision 2
Firmware
Building a Fake Printer Tool Yourself
Programming the Raspberry Pico
Fake Printer as a USB Serial Device on your...
Arduino Blog
Making fire detection more accurate with ML sensor fusion
The mere presence of a flame in a controlled environment, such as a candle, is perfectly acceptable,...
4 months ago
The mere presence of a flame in a controlled environment, such as a candle, is perfectly acceptable, but when tasked with determining if there is cause for alarm solely using vision data, embedded AI models can struggle with false positives. Solomon Githu’s project aims to lower...
Louwrentius
IKEA $50 VINDSTYRKA vs. $290 Dylos air quality monitor
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with...
a year ago
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with a $290 air quality monitor made by Dylos to see if it's any good.
Context
If you care about indoor air quality, you may already own a CO2 to determine if it's time to ventilate...
anderegg.ca
My 2024 Upgradies Picks
The latest instalment of The Upgradies is coming soon from our friends at the Upgrade podcast. I...
3 weeks ago
The latest instalment of The Upgradies is coming soon from our friends at the Upgrade podcast. I submitted my recommendations earlier today, and thought it would be fun to share my picks.
Best Overall iOS App
Bear
I once again don’t have a new app for this category, but Bear has...
Buck on Software
Vertical Aggregation
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
over a year ago
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
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 –...
Jonas Hietala
2019 in Review
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on...
over a year ago
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on the past year, and see that I did indeed do some things, and to look ahead a little.
2019 Non-Geek Achievements
Played around with Isidor.
It’s hard to describe how happy a kid can...
Arduino Blog
Why do OTA updates matter in IoT?
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a...
6 months ago
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a box inside a wall, and everything seems to be working like a charm. But then, you spot a bug in the firmware. The thought of pulling the hardware back out sends shivers down your...
Good Enough
Jelly was #1 on Hacker News
Yesterday, Lettini took a chance and posted about Jelly on Hacker News, a discussion site notorious...
a month ago
Yesterday, Lettini took a chance and posted about Jelly on Hacker News, a discussion site notorious for it's mercurial population of tech-maybe-too-saavy experts. Jelly is a tough sell for some of them, those with the technical skill to pipe email at a low level through...
csvbase blog
How does it know I want csv? — An HTTP trick
Forgotten parts of RFC2616
a year ago
Forgotten parts of RFC2616
Good Enough
Our ChatGPT Mission Statement
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission...
a year ago
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission statement for Good Enough.
The resulting mission statement was surprisingly good and I had some literal LOLs along the way.
Though I think we'll leave out the haiku.
You are an expert at...
Arduino Blog
Top Arduino Cloud IoT dashboard ideas with the new Image widget
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens...
2 months ago
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens up a world of possibilities for enhancing your IoT dashboards. But the true potential of the Image widget lies in the applications that you create. Today, we’re excited to dive...
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…
Jonas Hietala
Food vacation in Japan
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of...
over a year ago
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures, but I ended up sending a bunch back home as a ways of keeping my family up to date. When I look back most of them are about food… So I’ll turn this into a post about the...
Home on Erik...
Music recommendations using cover images (part 1)
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in...
over a year ago
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in fact a fairly strong visual proxy for what kind of content you can expect from it. I started wondering if the album cover can in fact be used for recommendations.
Notes on software...
Lessons learned streaming building a Scheme-like interpreter in Go
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like...
a year ago
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like language (minus macros and arrays and
tons of stuff).
I picked this simple topic because I wanted a low-stakes way to learn
what I did not know about making videos.
Here was the...
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
over a year ago
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
./techtipsy
This page looks better in the app
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing...
over a year ago
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing their frontend for the mobile-first era. It has taken a lot of time and effort from many people.
Countless challenges, arguments, testing.
The release is near. You’re probably a bit...
Willem's Blog
Batavus Champion bike from 1978
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
over a year ago
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
Louwrentius
Speeding up Linux MDADM RAID array rebuild time using bitmaps
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a...
over a year ago
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a modern Linux distribution, bitmaps are enabled by default. They will not help speed up a rebuild after a failed drive. But it will help resync an array that got out-of-sync due to...
Home on Erik...
Norvig's claim that programming competitions correlate negatively with being good on the job
I saw a bunch of tweets over the weekend about Peter Norvig claiming there's a negative correlation...
over a year ago
I saw a bunch of tweets over the weekend about Peter Norvig claiming there's a negative correlation between being good at programming competitions and being good at the job. There were some decent Hacker News comments on it.
Posts on Made of...
Security doesn't respect abstraction boundaries
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a...
over a year ago
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a set of useful, easily-described behaviors out of a complex system, we can build other systems on top of those pieces, without having to understand to worry about the full complexity...
./techtipsy
Running on fumes
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with...
over a year ago
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with this fun little bug:
0GB ought to be enough for anybody.
./techtipsy
I've reached the self-hosting endgame
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim...
over a year ago
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim to my imagination and completely changed my self-hosting setup. Again.
Here it is, in all its glory:
Well, at least that’s what’s on the table.
This machine is a true all-in-one:...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Toolhead
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt...
a year ago
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt are installed
Tap is installed
The toolhead with Stealthburner + Clockwork 2 is also installed
Purple means Pretty.
I’ve run into a few problems on the way that I’ll try to...
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...
Notes on software...
A single-node Kubernetes cluster without virtualization or a container registry
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring...
over a year ago
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring virtualization or a container registry. These
two features make the system cloud-agnostic and the cluster entirely
self-contained. The post will end with us running a simple Flask...
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
a week ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Willem's Blog
Minimalistic road bike with Gates carbon drive
For the past few months I have been riding the Schindelhauer Siegfried Road bike with the Gates CDX...
over a year ago
For the past few months I have been riding the Schindelhauer Siegfried Road bike with the Gates CDX Carbon Drive, read about this beautiful minimal bike in this post.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Avoiding worry driven development
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a...
over a year ago
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a lack of technical skill. Engineers…
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
Simply Explained
ESP-IDF: Storing AWS IoT certificates in the NVS partition (for OTA)
When using AWS IoT Core, most tutorials will tell you to include device certificates in your...
over a year ago
When using AWS IoT Core, most tutorials will tell you to include device certificates in your firmware. While that does work, it means you won't be able to run over-the-air updates.In this post, I'll show how to store AWS certificates in the NVS partition. This will make it...
Ian's Blog
Learn how Windows builds its store of trusted root CA certificates
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It...
over a year ago
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It might surprise you, and it certainly did for me, but out-of-the-box Windows doesn't come with a set of root CA certificates sufficient for web browsing.
You can see this for...
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.
Applied Cartography
You need to be frictionlog-maxxing
Lots of people have spent the past few days discussing the perceived increase in difficulty in...
7 months ago
Lots of people have spent the past few days discussing the perceived increase in difficulty in getting an entry-level programming job relative to the halcyon ZIRP days of yesteryear. I am sympathetic to new grads running into this; I am dismayed that when I ask some [1] of them...
Jonas Hietala
My Minions
So I think I made it! It became a pretty different game from what I set out to create, but I’m glad...
over a year ago
So I think I made it! It became a pretty different game from what I set out to create, but I’m glad with how it turned out.
My Minions
Instructions
Build a pathway and then place objects or release minions on it, everything must be on a path. Place musical objects or make the...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Breaking the rule of three
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision...
over a year ago
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision on how your game should be (which is always grand). For me making Balls, Black and White and Jonas IceCream Stand where truly stressful, MenuCity and Bugger not so much but...
Arduino Blog
Easily add Python-controlled GPIO pins to any computer
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of...
6 months ago
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of a button. Could you? Almost certainly not — at least not without additional hardware. Most modern computers don’t provide any interface for direct interaction with low-level...
Louwrentius
'Linux: obtain motherboard model / type and vendor'
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode |...
over a year ago
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode | grep -e "Manufacturer|Product" | head -n 4 | tail -n 2
The result might be something like:
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Product Name: P5Q-EM DO
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer...
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
4 months ago
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
computers are bad
2023-06-02 the reinvention of owens lake
Programming note: In an effort to introduce an exciting new social aspect to
Computers Are Bad (a...
a year ago
Programming note: In an effort to introduce an exciting new social aspect to
Computers Are Bad (a functional necessity to appease early-stage investor
demands for "engagement")¸ I am launching a Matrix room for CAB readers.
You can join it! Do whatever you do to join rooms in...
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
Louwrentius
Linux: get a list of al disks and their size
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk...
over a year ago
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk /dev/md1: 2015 MB
Disk /dev/md5: 18002.2 GB
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sde: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.1...
Home on Erik...
Waiting time, load factor, and queueing theory: why you need to cut your systems a bit of slack
I've been reading up on operations research lately, including queueing theory. It started out as a...
over a year ago
I've been reading up on operations research lately, including queueing theory. It started out as a way to understand the very complex mortgage process (I work at a mortgage startup) but it's turned into my little hammer and now I see nails everywhere.
Computer Ads from...
Black Friday - Happy Birthday sale
Let's mix things up!
3 weeks ago
Matt Blewitt
What Is a Senior Engineer, Anyway?
I’ve been having a bunch of conversations with my team about our career ladder, and what it means to...
a month ago
I’ve been having a bunch of conversations with my team about our career ladder, and what it means to be “senior” in a software engineering context. It’s a little different in every company, but here is my view.
Construction Physics
How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was...
3 weeks ago
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Two interesting XOR circuits inside the Intel 386 processor
Intel's 386 processor (1985) was an important advance in the x86 architecture, not only moving to a...
a year ago
Intel's 386 processor (1985) was an important advance in the x86 architecture, not only moving to a 32-bit processor but also switching to a CMOS implementation.
I've been reverse-engineering parts of the 386 chip and came across two interesting and completely different
circuits...
Home on Erik...
Predicting solar eclipses with Python
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute...
8 months ago
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute eclipses in Python. It turns out, ignoring some minor coordinate system head-banging, I was able to get something half-decent working in a couple of hours.
./techtipsy
The absolute state of Bluetooth audio in 2022
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your...
over a year ago
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your colleagues? Forget about it.
This is the setup I have to go with, and it has all to do with how Bluetooth
works. Your options with Bluetooth headsets are the following:
high quality...
Arduino Blog
How to use vintage LED bubble displays with your Arduino
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or...
a month ago
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or OLED screen. But though those are affordable and work really well, they may not provide the vibe you’re looking for. If you want a more vintage look, Vaclav Krejci has a great...
Willem's Blog
Cutting Cloud Costs
Facing sky-high cloud costs, I found software optimisation vital. Discover how I saved 90% on cloud...
a year ago
Facing sky-high cloud costs, I found software optimisation vital. Discover how I saved 90% on cloud expenses!
Notes on software...
Interview With Phil of DataStation
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Lindhska Store Championship Örebro
After the awesomeness during the previous store championship, I decided to go to the store...
over a year ago
After the awesomeness during the previous store championship, I decided to go to the store championship at Lindhska Bokhandel in Örebro.
I brought a modified version of the same corp I used the last time, a Blue Sun kill deck and a new runner with Leela Patel. See the links for...
Louwrentius
71 TiB DIY NAS based on ZFS on Linux
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB...
over a year ago
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB NAS (17 TiB). With a storage capacity four times higher than the original and an incredible read (2.5 GB/s)/write (1.9 GB/s) performance, it's a worthy successor.
Purpose
The...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 1. a stack and register machine
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating...
over a year ago
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
2. system calls
In this post we'll create a small virtual machine in JavaScript and
use it to run a simple C program compiled...
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...
Yazin Alirhayim
The Trouble With Optionality
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one...
over a year ago
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one morning thinking “Why, it appears I’ve spent the past several decades of my life optimizing for optionality. Perhaps I should figure out why?”.
Most don’t even recognize the term –...
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