Jonas Hietala
Done this, done that. What now?
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and...
over a year ago
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I’m liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Balls
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one...
over a year ago
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one single game?! Well now I’m not counting the visual basic nightmare mastermind I made a long time ago but a real game. Whatever that means. I’ve had these monster-projects;
Point...
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...
Louwrentius
Example of a home networking setup with VLANs
Updated October 24, 2012, see below.
This post is a description of my home network setup based on...
over a year ago
Updated October 24, 2012, see below.
This post is a description of my home network setup based on gigabit ethernet. I did a non-standard trick with VLANs that may also be of interest to other people. I'm going to start with a diagram of the network. Just take a look (click to...
Matt Mullenweg
Everyone’s An Owner
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day,...
2 months ago
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders...
Louwrentius
My home network setup based on managed switches and VLANs
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet...
over a year ago
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet and my living room. The bottom floor contains a bedroom with all my servers and networking gear.
So this is my setup (click for a bigger version):
I like to run my own router but...
Home on Erik...
I'm featured in Mashable
This article from today in Mashable describes some of the fun stuff I get to work with:
Erik...
over a year ago
This article from today in Mashable describes some of the fun stuff I get to work with:
Erik Bernhardsson is technical lead at Spotify, where he helped to build a music recommendation system based on large-scale machine learning algorithms, mainly matrix factorization of big...
Good Enough
Why We Built Quack (Beta)
Today we're launching a tiny beta tool called Quack. It is a simple utility for you to share a...
a year ago
Today we're launching a tiny beta tool called Quack. It is a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any markdown text. Type away in our simple editor. When you're done writing, click Share to grab the link for sending to others. There are no servers in...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
How LLMs work
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is basically a simple one-file C…
Jonas Hietala
Preventing Firefox from creating Desktop directories
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found...
over a year ago
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found how to turn it off.
Edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs...
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
Virtual Pinhead
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual...
8 months ago
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual pinball cabinet.
Posts on Made of...
How I Write Tests
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe...
over a year ago
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe to the definition of legacy code as “code without an automated test suite.” I’m convinced that the best thing you can do to encourage fast progress in a test suite is to design...
Push to Prod
One Key Aspect of Optimizing Computational Throughput
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or...
3 months ago
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or processes.
Louwrentius
Creating configuration backups of HP procurve switches
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration...
over a year ago
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration through secure shell (using scp).
It also diffs backed up configurations against older versions, in order to keep track of changes. If you run the script from cron every hour or...
Jonas Hietala
Rewriting my blog in Rust for fun and profit
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think...
over a year ago
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think I used Jekyll and also more dynamic pages with Mojolicious in Perl and Kohana in PHP, but I can’t be completely sure as the git history doesn’t go back that far.
But all good...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 6 Retrospective
over a year ago
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
Good Enough
Good Enough, A Serious Business
Hello reader, my name is Shawn, and I'm one of the co-founders of Good Enough. I'd like to tell you...
a year ago
Hello reader, my name is Shawn, and I'm one of the co-founders of Good Enough. I'd like to tell you a bit about how Good Enough came to be and what we plan on doing here.
Barry and I started working together again in early 2022. By “work,” I mean that I’d show up on Slack for a...
Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Willem's Blog
Wearing WHOOP 4.0
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror...
over a year ago
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror - it's so powerful, that I don't take mine off!
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
A pair of Arduino UNO R4 boards power this Tron-inspired, decked-out shop room
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop...
6 months ago
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop renovation project where he is rearranging tools, tidying up various spaces, and even creating a dedicated “clean” room for his collection of 3D printers/electronics work. With its...
axio.ms
Axio.ms site refresh
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4...
over a year ago
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4 years, I’m still alive”.
The original axio.ms site was a very HTML1.0 affair and while this was kind of intentional-tongue-in-cheek-chic, it was also a PITA to update. It wasn’t...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Favourite Programming Language
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a...
over a year ago
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a post which claimes my favourite language is not good enough! But he’s correct of course, there is no one language to rule them all. You should always choose the mest language for the...
Avestura's Blog
Understanding zero-knowledge proofs
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
over a year ago
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
Avestura's Blog
Using Tor outside of the Tor Browser
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like...
over a year ago
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like Telegram...
Notes on software...
Compiling dynamic programming languages
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied...
over a year ago
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied to byte-code interpreters (e.g. YARV
Ruby, CPython, V8, Zend Engine, etc.). But for many languages, a
compiled implementation also exists. Cython, Chicken Scheme and SBCL
are good...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What kind of layer 3s make sense?
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Reader/reader blocking in reader/writer locks
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition...
over a year ago
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition queue, all future accesses block behind any in-flight reads. Thus, if any readers hold the lock for extended periods of time, this can lead to extreme pauses and loss of throughput...
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...
computers are bad
2023-02-07 secret government telephone numbers
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be...
a year ago
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be clear, the "secret" here was a joke and these buttons are in fact well
documented. The buttons I was talking about were the AUTOVON call precedence
buttons, used for a five-level...
Applied Cartography
Notebook as marketing primitive
Earlier this week, I stumbled upon this brilliant marketing-slash-documentation idea from...
2 months ago
Earlier this week, I stumbled upon this brilliant marketing-slash-documentation idea from SingleStore — notebooks as a first-party page! There are a handful of nice things about this idea:
Very easy to fan out. You're not going to really run out of sample notebooks from which you...
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.
Willem's Blog
Dig for dummies
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network...
over a year ago
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network problems, IP-addresses, hostnames, mail servers and related info.
Home on Erik...
More Luigi!
Elias Freider just talked about Luigi at PyData 2013:
The presentation above is much better than one...
over a year ago
Elias Freider just talked about Luigi at PyData 2013:
The presentation above is much better than one I put together a few weeks ago. In case anyone is interested I'll include it too:
Louwrentius
Things you should consider when building a ZFS NAS
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many...
over a year ago
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many features of ZFS also appeal to home NAS builders and with good reason. But not all features are relevant or necessary for home use.
I believe that most home users building their...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wrap-up
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to...
9 months ago
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to leave it alone for a while, so I think it’s time to wrap up this build series with a little retrospective.
Building the printer was really fun and rewarding
I’ve always seen...
Old Vintage...
The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately...
a year ago
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately larger beasts: you've met homer, my 1987 HP 9000/350 rack system, and Floodgap is powered by uppsala, a 2U-in-a-tower IBM POWER6 520 running AIX. But my first "large" machine, and...
Notes on software...
Confusion is a muse
Some of the most interesting technical blog posts I read come from,
and a common reason for posts I...
6 months ago
Some of the most interesting technical blog posts I read come from,
and a common reason for posts I write is, confusion. You're at work
and you start asking questions that are difficult to answer. You spend
a few hours or a day trying to get to the bottom of things.
If you ask a...
Matt Mullenweg
On with Theo / T3.gg
On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled...
2 months ago
On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled This might be the end of WordPress. It was very harsh. In that video you’ll hear him say about me, “he’s a chronic hater” (7:55), “seems like he’s been a pretty petty bastard for a...
Posts on Made of...
My Apollo Bibliography
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become...
over a year ago
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a...
Home on Erik...
Recurrent Neural Networks for Collaborative Filtering
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering....
over a year ago
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering. RNN’s are models that predict a sequence of something. The beauty is that this something can be anything really – as long as you can design an output gate with a proper loss function,...
latest projects -...
Motorised Camera Slider
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
5 months ago
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
Buck on Software
Don't be foie gras
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
over a year ago
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
Willem's Blog
Visiting an international hackers conference
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security...
over a year ago
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security specialists. Read along for some of the highlights.
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
Extracting schedule information from timeedit
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved...
over a year ago
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved some parts. It’s now possible to create a prenumeration of a collection of courses exported as csv which can then be imported to other calendar apps. But they also started to...
Computer Ads from...
Ergotron's MacTilt
MacTilt is the Solution
3 weeks ago
Lars Lofgren
What Happened After I Outed a Reddit Mod for Affiliate Spam
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate...
3 months ago
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry. The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention. Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become....
./techtipsy
Testing a cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD adapter on my ThinkPad T430
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2...
over a year ago
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2 NGFF adapter that
they purchased from AliExpress. The adapter has a similar purpose to the one
designed by thinkmods.store, with the added bonus
that it could fit longer NVMe...
Jonas Hietala
The Decline of FPS Games
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time...
over a year ago
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it’s what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can’t say I truly...
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: thoughts about cloud security
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of...
over a year ago
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of existing users regarding the Linode management console.
Resetting passwords is not something you do when under a simple attack such as a DDOS attack. Such a measure is only taken...
Posts on Made of...
Suggestion time: What should I blog about?
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron Blogger, and I’m not totally enthusiastic about any of the items on my “to blog” list.
But, I do enjoy blogging when I actually get into posts, and I’d like to keep updating this blog....
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Louwrentius
'Linux: monitor a directory for files'
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The...
over a year ago
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The inotifywait comand line utility can be used in shell scripts to monitor
directories for new files. It can also be used to monitor files for changes.
Inotifywait must be installed and is...
Engineers Need Art
Experiments in Printmaking - Part 1
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
9 months ago
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
Jonas Hietala
Microfeatures in my blog
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and...
5 months ago
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites, and together with the related Hacker News discussion I got nerd sniped.
(I spent more time than I care to admit implementing new and exciting microfeatures for...
Willem's Blog
Do amazing things with a focused mind
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof...
over a year ago
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof Method.
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled Spin Meister helps spin up the perfect pizza
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher...
6 months ago
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher heat that many find more preferable than a conventional kitchen oven. But even a nice gas-powered pizza oven like the Ooni Koda 12 will have some hot spots and cold spots. To get an...
Home on Erik...
Benchmarking nearest neighbor libraries in Python
Radim Rehurek has put together an excellent summary of approximate nearest neighbor libraries in...
over a year ago
Radim Rehurek has put together an excellent summary of approximate nearest neighbor libraries in Python. This is exciting, because one of the libraries he's covering, annoy, was built by me.
After introducing the problem, he goes through the list of contestants and sticks with...
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
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.
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Reflections on Palantir
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
2 months ago
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
Push to Prod
When Overwhelmed, Make a List of Questions
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
4 months ago
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
Arduino Blog
Discover the new Arduino UNO SPE Shield: the quick and easy way to advanced connectivity
Arduino and Microchip are excited to open electronica – the “world’s leading trade fair and...
a month ago
Arduino and Microchip are excited to open electronica – the “world’s leading trade fair and conference for electronics” – by introducing the Arduino UNO SPE Shield, a powerful ally to bring advanced connectivity to new and existing projects, with Single-Pair Ethernet (SPE) and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
5 Kup
After a season with very bad attendence, I blame school and lack of motivation, I still went to...
over a year ago
After a season with very bad attendence, I blame school and lack of motivation, I still went to grading. I slept well but I was super stressed all weekend so I had to constantly run to the bathroom and I couldn’t eat lunch or breakfast properly, and I don’t usually get...
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.
Willem's Blog
Flying in a C47-A (DC-3) classic plane
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received,...
over a year ago
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received, experiencing aviation history unlike anything else!
Applied Cartography
Stripe Sessions 2024
Stripe held the keynote for Sessions, their annual WWDC/re:invent-esque conference, this morning. I...
8 months ago
Stripe held the keynote for Sessions, their annual WWDC/re:invent-esque conference, this morning. I wanted to jot down some thoughts while they’re still fresh. (I think the changelog is the best way to poke around both the changes I’m writing about and the ones that I...
Jonas Hietala
An Elixir based payment processor for the Coinparty hackathon
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good...
over a year ago
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore how to program against Bitcoin Cash, and it gives me an excuse to build something real with Phoenix and Elixir. (While an event like this might help combat...
Jonas Hietala
The current T-34 keyboard layout
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is...
over a year ago
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is constantly changing it’s been difficult to piece together how the layout currently looks like, so this post tries to show how the layout looks right now in it’s entirety.
If you want to...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: PowerBook Duo 2300c
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my...
a year ago
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my favourite PowerBook 1400: the metal hinges are starting to tear out of their attachment points in the plastic back of the display, and naturally it's the one with all the upgrades in...
Jonas Hietala
Slackware update
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my...
over a year ago
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my installation and I decided to go through with a larger reinstallation once more. This is a log of some things I did differently.
Kernel
Before installing the kernel it’s nice to...
Willem's Blog
Lunch by plane
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
over a year ago
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
Home on Erik...
Antipodes
I was playing around with D3 last night and built a silly visualization of antipodes and how our...
over a year ago
I was playing around with D3 last night and built a silly visualization of antipodes and how our intuitive understanding of the world sometimes doesn't make sense. Check out the visualization at bl.ocks.org!
Basically the idea is if you fly from Beijing to Buenos Aires then you...
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!
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
computers are bad
2023-09-10 the Essex GWEN site
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML...
a year ago
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email
and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead
(the link is at the top of the email).
In the aftermath of...
Arduino Blog
Giving Billy Bass the arti-fish-al intelligence he always deserved
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of...
3 months ago
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of the century, you would have undoubtedly come across a Big Mouth Billy Bass. That’s an animatronic fish that wiggles on a plaque while older, very licensable hit songs play. But...
Louwrentius
Why filtering DHCP traffic is not always possible with iptables
When configuring my new firewall using iptables, I noticed something very
peculiar. Even if all...
over a year ago
When configuring my new firewall using iptables, I noticed something very
peculiar. Even if all input, forward and output traffic was dropped, DHCP
traffic to and from my DHCP server was not blocked even if there were no
rules permitting this traffic.
I even flushed all rules,...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 3: pressure transducers
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
},
svg: {
fontCache:...
11 months ago
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
},
svg: {
fontCache: 'global'
},
chtml: { displayAlign: 'left' }
};
MathJax.Hub.Config({
"HTML-CSS": { scale: 175}
});
.MathJax {font-size: 1em !important}
The Bendix Central Air...
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
2 months ago
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
Posts on Made of...
Advent of Code in C++ Template Metaprogramming
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of...
a year ago
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of Code I could do purely in compile-time C++ metaprogramming.
As of this writing, I’ve done two days, and I’m not sure I’ll make it any further. However, that’s one more day than I...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
Posts on Made of...
Write yourself an strace in 70 lines of code
Basically anyone who’s used Linux for any amount of time eventually comes to know and love the...
over a year ago
Basically anyone who’s used Linux for any amount of time eventually comes to know and love the strace command. strace is the system-call tracer, which traces the calls that a program makes into the kernel in order to interact with the outside world. If you’re not already familiar...
Willem's Blog
The best bike computer app: Cyclemeter
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a...
over a year ago
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a steer mounted display.
./techtipsy
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet...
over a year ago
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet and got myself an ASRock DeskMini X300 bare-bones kit.
This is a fantastic little desktop PC kit that is very small, quiet and can
still be configured to have ridiculous amounts of...
Jonas Hietala
We moved away from the city
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never...
over a year ago
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never to stay there permanently. We just moved there to study but the longterm plan, if you can have one at that stage, was always to move back to the north of Sweden where we came...
Yazin Alirhayim
The Meem app: it sucks
If you’re a “digital only” bank like Meem, the app your customers use is all they see: it’s like a...
over a year ago
If you’re a “digital only” bank like Meem, the app your customers use is all they see: it’s like a virtual 🏦 branch.
That’s fitting, because you know what my impression of meem is as a user? When I open up their app, it feels like walking into a crowded butcher shop, with...
computers are bad
2023-05-07 electrical characteristics of telephone lines
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring...
a year ago
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring topic: implementation details of telephone lines.
The conventional "copper pair" analog telephone line is fading away. The FCC
has begun to authorize abandonment of copper outside...
csvbase blog
Parquet: more than just "Turbo CSV"
Quicker, but also more convenient
a year ago
Quicker, but also more convenient
Arduino Blog
Repurposing an automatic train control unit as a car speedometer
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to...
3 months ago
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to posted speed limits and maintain their lanes. But trains have been doing the same thing for a long time — well before machine learning and computer vision became ubiquitous. How did...
Jonas Hietala
Tufte style sidenotes and marginnotes in Pollen
When evaluating Pollen I complained about markdown/pandoc’s lack of sidenote handling. I have solved...
over a year ago
When evaluating Pollen I complained about markdown/pandoc’s lack of sidenote handling. I have solved it for Pollen but felt it deserved it’s own post.
A caveat: I generated Tufte CSS style sidenotes and marginnotes which made it more complex than if I had simply generated...
Louwrentius
Which file system for a large storage array under Linux?
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a...
over a year ago
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a large storage array.
I am assuming that you want to create a single file system. I don't care if
you use LVM or other layers beneath, this is about which file system to use.
I will...
Louwrentius
Achieving 220 MB/s network file transfers using Linux Bonding
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers....
over a year ago
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers. My solution is to use multiple gigabit network cards and use Linux interface bonding to create virtual 2 gigabit network interfaces. The solution is to use mode 0 or round robin...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 95
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
a year ago
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
Posts on Made of...
Why scons is cool
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not...
over a year ago
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that it’s a probably far better choice than make in many cases. The main exceptions would be cases where you need to integrate into legacy...
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...
Posts on Made of...
New Blog Location
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of...
over a year ago
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of scripts.mit.edu. In the process of converting everything over and setting up Wordpress I’ve decided I hate it, but hopefully I hate it less than I hate Blogger. We’ll see.
I’ve also...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 20 to recommend in 2020
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17...
over a year ago
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17 non-fiction and 30 fiction. Another 20-30
remain started but unfinished this year.
Non-fiction
The 8 non-fiction books I most recommend are:
Fashionapolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON path parser
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return...
over a year ago
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return only results in a
list where the a column is an object that contains a
field b that is set to the value 12. What would a
filter(jsonPath, equals, listOfObjects) function...
Ian's Blog
Securing Your GitHub Account
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account...
over a year ago
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account security.
There's plenty of good reasons why you should try to keep any online account safe, but I feel that GitHub deserves special attention among developers. With automation...
Home on Erik...
Miscellaneous unsolicited (and possibly biased) career advice
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of...
over a year ago
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I'd share some.
Honestly, I feel like I've mostly benefitted from luck.
Jonas Hietala
My first rust Contribution
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How...
over a year ago
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How shall I push my changes? How do I handle git? What should I do?
I was the same and I actually dreaded my awesome summer job, just a little bit, because now I’m supposed to...
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
Birchtree
All the games I played in 2024, reviewed
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies...
5 days ago
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies of the year post with something similar for games. I’m not going to rank these, but I’ll give a few words on each one
computers are bad
2023-06-07 something up there - nasa and uaps
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I...
a year ago
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I am
not addressing the recent claims by David Grusch. This is for a couple of
reasons. First, I am skeptical of Grusch. He is not the first seemingly
well-positioned former...
Christian Selig
First on New Blog
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will...
a year ago
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will remove.
This goat’s name is apparently Gubgub, and very cute.
Willem's Blog
I see dead people
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old...
3 months ago
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old photos into lifelike representations.
Jonas Hietala
(Fake) Bittman Chinese Chicken
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on...
over a year ago
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on multiple fronts: chicken wings instead of chicken breasts, mushroom soy instead of tamarin, roman salad instead of baby bok choi (where the heck do you find that…) and I even...
Neil Madden
Book review: The Joy of Cryptography
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography....
a year ago
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography. This is a freely-available book covering introductory material on cryptography. It’s suitable for anyone with undergraduate-level computer science knowledge. As is often the case in...
Notes on software...
Let's build a distributed Postgres proof of concept
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies...
over a year ago
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies that do a lot of work: a
PostgreSQL wire protocol
implementation, a storage
layer, a Raft implementation
for distributed consensus. And not
part of go.mod but still building on 3rd...
Arduino Blog
Explore underwater with this Arduino-controlled DIY ROV
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the...
4 months ago
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the ocean? But a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is the kind of robot you’d use for such an adventure, isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’ll find on the shelf at your local...
Arduino Blog
Machine-to-machine communication is easier than ever: Opta now supports OPC UA
OPC Unified Architecture – OPC UA in short – is a cross-platform, open-source machine-to-machine...
a month ago
OPC Unified Architecture – OPC UA in short – is a cross-platform, open-source machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation. It was developed by the Open Platform Communications (OPC) Foundation and is defined in detail in the IEC 62541 standard. With the...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go...
20 hours ago
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on…
Home on Erik...
Blogroll
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is...
over a year ago
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is funny.
I follow a few hundred blogs using Feedly and Reeder and have been reading a few hundred thousand blog posts over the last 10 years.
Lars Lofgren
My 7 Rules for A/B Testing That Triple Conversion Rates
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I...
over a year ago
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I double or triple conversion rates without caring how a test performs? I actually care about the whole SYSTEM of testing. All the pieces need to fit together just right. If not,...
Louwrentius
Ubuntu and full disk encryption (FDE)
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create...
over a year ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create an encrypted disk volume based on LUKS. This is different
from the option within the Ubuntu installation to encrypt home directories. To
be able to install Ubuntu and use full disk...
Louwrentius
24 TB based on Norco RPC-4020 and Linux Software RAID
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical...
over a year ago
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical controller,
providing 28 TB of storage: Take a look here
The main difference is that this person uses 1.5 TB disk, thus achieving more
storage.
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Noise
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of...
9 months ago
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of how cool the printer is.
But there’s one thing that sucks: it’s damn loud.
I knew that it wouldn’t be silent, but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of noise.
Silent controller...
Jonas Hietala
Gruvbox Syntax Highlighting for Pandoc
Edit: I have updated the highlighting again so the inline code used as examples have changed. I...
over a year ago
Edit: I have updated the highlighting again so the inline code used as examples have changed. I guess I should’ve used images to record the look.
Recently when I reinstalled Slackware I decided to restyle my workspace as well. I settled on gruvbox with neovim and using the...
Style over Substance
My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar...
over a year ago
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar folding camera sure is bang for buck!
The post My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16 appeared first on Style over Substance.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Revenue-Evil Curve: a different way to think about prioritizing public goods funding
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Tips for Long-Distance Cycling
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID...
a year ago
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID Fietselfstedentocht experience, packed with invaluable tips and tricks.
Louwrentius
The ZFS Event Daemon on Linux
If something goes wrong with my zpool, I'd like to be notified by email. On Linux using MDADM, the...
over a year ago
If something goes wrong with my zpool, I'd like to be notified by email. On Linux using MDADM, the MDADM daemon took care of that.
With the release of ZoL 0.6.3, a brand new 'ZFS Event Daemon' or ZED has been introduced.
I could not find much information about it, so consider...
Willem's Blog
Go Viral on X
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
a month ago
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
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...
Jonas Hietala
Easy setup of a static site on Amazon S3 with SSL
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just...
over a year ago
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just never got around to it, probably the usual procrastination.
When I had to setup a new site for another project I chose to host on Amazon as well. Although there are many other free...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
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...
Simply Explained
Year in review: 2022
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my...
a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my YouTube channel and newsletter, but there are personal reflections in here as well. Last year was an off year for me, and I'm gearing up to make up for lost time in 2023.
./techtipsy
So you want to migrate to Kubernetes: observations from a software developer
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common...
2 months ago
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common justifications include better scalability, cost savings, standardization and being super modern and stuff. It’s
the future!
In my personal experience, Kubernetes is far from the...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Slackware
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
a year ago
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
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...
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...
Home on Erik...
MLConf 2014
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a...
over a year ago
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a whole range of great speakers (actually almost 2/3 women which was pretty cool in itself).
Here are my slides:
Neil Madden
Towards a standard for bearer token URLs
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include...
over a year ago
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include credentials in a URL?, I raised the possibility of standardising a new URL scheme that safely allows encoding a bearer token into a URL. This makes it more convenient to use lots of...
Ian's Blog
What the heck is OCSP?
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web...
over a year ago
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web browser) to check if a certificate has been revoked or not.
Certificate Revocation?
With asymmetrical encryption, your encryption is only as good as long as your private key remains...
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.
Matt Mullenweg
Age-gating
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and...
3 weeks ago
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer. See also: Australia’s...
./techtipsy
What I've learned running Linux and Windows off of USB flash drives
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of...
2 weeks ago
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of time and the guilt
of storing perfectly functional hardware unused in a box were the main motivators.
This has resulted in experiments with my assortment of USB flash storage that...
Jonas Hietala
November Theme: Art Game
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t...
over a year ago
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t been “my” themes: I’ve been following their lead and their themes and this month is no exception. This months’ apparently a big theme - Art. It’s even a collaboration with a big...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 4
Taking the Server Market
a year ago
Louwrentius
Storage and I/O: reads vs. writes
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie...
over a year ago
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie about completing a write operation, but it can never lie about completing a read operation. Therefore read and writes have different characteristics. This is what I've learned.
About...
Applied Cartography
Mass renaming files in fish on macOS
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install...
a year ago
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install rename
rename "s/.mdx/.md/" **.md
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.
latest projects -...
Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
8 months ago
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
Willem's Blog
Talking tablets: what makes a great tablet?
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be...
over a year ago
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be your main computer?
Willem's Blog
Rescuing files from a broken harddisk
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe...
over a year ago
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe them?
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Christian Selig
Beware UserDefaults: a tale of hard to find bugs, and lost data
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of...
2 months ago
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of pain in both support emails and actually tracking it down, so I want to make others aware of it so they don’t similarly burned.
Brief intro
For the uninitiated, UserDefaults (née...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
Applied Cartography
Notes on buttondown.com
We spent $85,000 for buttondown.com in April; this was the biggest capital expenditure I've ever...
3 months ago
We spent $85,000 for buttondown.com in April; this was the biggest capital expenditure I've ever made, and though it was coming from cash flow generated by Buttondown rather than my own checking account it was by rough estimation the largest non-house purchase I've ever made.
As...
Home on Erik...
More Luigi alternatives
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a...
over a year ago
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a couple I encountered in the last few days. I love that at least two of them are direct references to Luigi!
Jonas Hietala
Geekhack Toxic
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it...
over a year ago
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it be?
With a crummy mobile phone photo I give you my TOXIC keycaps mounted on my trusty old das keyboard:
Woooo
If only my GH60 could arrive some time this decade…
On Life and Lisp
Software freedom isn't about licenses -- it's about power.
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When...
over a year ago
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When the free software movement was founded thirty years ago, these restrictive licenses were the primary user-hostile power dynamic, so permissive and copyleft licenses emerged as...
Simply Explained
ESP32: Tips to increase battery life
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes...
over a year ago
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes great responsibility. In this post, I’ll outline how I got an ESP32 to run for over 15 weeks (and counting) on a single 1000mAh battery.
Louwrentius
Determining smartphone market share using wireless sniffing
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most...
over a year ago
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most smartphones support wifi and most people don't bother disabling
wifi when they go outdoors1. If wifi is left on, it is possible to detect these
smartphones and track their movement. To...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
Arduino Blog
Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace!
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier...
2 months ago
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier than ever for developers and businesses worldwide to integrate our powerful IoT platform into their AWS infrastructure. This development is particularly relevant for those in...
Willem's Blog
Commuter bike checkup
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to...
over a year ago
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to have a look at the bike after 21.000KM!
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination
over a year ago
./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...
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
over a year ago
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
On Life and Lisp
Growing up Alyssa
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky...
a year ago
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky ones.
After four painful years, I was fortunate enough to access gender-affirming health care. First testosterone blockers. Later estrogen, the stuff my peers soaked in for years while I...
Jonas Hietala
Going down
Ah my first game was so painless so I thought I could do any game I could imagine! Shooters, and...
over a year ago
Ah my first game was so painless so I thought I could do any game I could imagine! Shooters, and mario bros kinda stuff. Well now I’m not so upbeat anymore, I’ve worked on this game for 7 days now and it’s not playable at all. With seven days I don’t mean a week, I’ve had a big...
Posts on Made of...
Fun with the preprocessor: CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION hacks in Linux
About two months ago, Linux saw CVE-2010-0307, which was a trival denial-of-service attack that...
over a year ago
About two months ago, Linux saw CVE-2010-0307, which was a trival denial-of-service attack that could crash essentially any 64-bit Linux machine with 32-bit compatibility enabled. LWN has an excellent writeup of the bug, which turns out to be a subtle error related to the details...
Construction Physics
Do U.S. Ports Need More Automation?
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily...
2 months ago
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily dockworkers on East and Gulf Coast ports, went on strike after failing to agree contract terms with USMX, an alliance of port operators and employers.
GitButler
GitButler 0.12 - "Stingy Baker"
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
6 months ago
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
Electronics etc…
HP 33120A Repair - Shutting Down the Eye of Sauron
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener...
a year ago
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener Replacement
Staring at the Eye of Sauron
FLIR IR Imaging
To Destroy a PCB in Order to Save It
Circuit Reconstruction
Success!
Trust but Verify
Conclusion
References
Introduction
When the...
Home on Erik...
The hacker's guide to uncertainty estimates
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain...
over a year ago
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain uncertainty estimates
— Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) January 7, 2018 Why? Because I've been sitting in 100,000,000 meetings where people endlessly debate whether the monthly number of...
Louwrentius
Don't be afraid of RAID
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of...
over a year ago
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of your RAID array failing during a rebuild is almost a certainty, because hard drives have become so large.
I think nothing is further from the truth and I would like to dispel this...
computers are bad
2023-11-04 nuclear safety
Nuclear weapons are complex in many ways. The basic problem of achieving
criticality is difficult on...
a year ago
Nuclear weapons are complex in many ways. The basic problem of achieving
criticality is difficult on its own, but deploying nuclear weapons as
operational military assets involves yet more challenges. Nuclear weapons must
be safe and reliable, even with the rough handling and...
Electronics etc…
HP 8656A Signal Generator Schematics
Agilent has made the 8656A Signal Generator Operating & Service Manual
available as a PDF, but the...
10 months ago
Agilent has made the 8656A Signal Generator Operating & Service Manual
available as a PDF, but the schematics of chapter 8 are all spread over 3 or 4 pages, which makes
them hard to follow.
I spent a good evening extracting the schematics pages, cutting-and-pasting
them together...
computers are bad
2023-11-25 the curse of docker
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza...
a year ago
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza there could be. In that spirit, I thought I would write
something quick and oddly professional: I'm going to complain about Docker.
Packaging software is one of those fundamental...
GitButler
Fixing up Git with Autosquash
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at...
9 months ago
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at git autosquash.
Louwrentius
Understanding the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server Autoinstaller
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation...
over a year ago
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation process. This includes support for 'preseeding' to create unattended (automated) installations of ubuntu.
the debian installer
With the introduction of Ubuntu Server 20.04 'Focal...
Jonas Hietala
Establishing Habits with Habitica
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I...
over a year ago
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I believe it all started with an amazing book called The Power of Habit which describes the amazing benefits habits can give, both in the context of your own life but also in business....
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Some pretty NAS case designs
If you are planning on building your own NAS box, I have some suggestions
regarding the case.
In my...
over a year ago
If you are planning on building your own NAS box, I have some suggestions
regarding the case.
In my opinion, most computer case designers have absolutely no taste.
Antec and Lian Li do create nice cases, but not that spectacular. And Lian Li is
just very expensive. A fairly new...
Arduino Blog
Massive tentacle robot draws massive attention at EMF Camp
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control...
6 months ago
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control several motors and monitor a bunch of sensors. But what if the robot is enormous and the motors are far apart? James Bruton found himself in that situation when he constructed this...
Neil Madden
I still don’t really get “hash shucking”
If you want to learn how to store passwords securely, you could do a lot worse than looking at the...
a year ago
If you want to learn how to store passwords securely, you could do a lot worse than looking at the OWASP Password Storage Cheat Sheet. These cheat sheets are generally pretty good, and the password storage one is particularly good. The editors do a great job of keeping it up to...
Posts on Made of...
BlackHat/DEFCON 2011 talk: Breaking out of KVM
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the...
over a year ago
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the KVM Kernel Virtual Machine on Linux.
Virtunoid: Breaking out of KVM from Nelson Elhage [Edited 2011-08-11] The code is now available. It should be fairly well-commented, and...
GitButler
Why GitHub Actually Won
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
3 months ago
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The near and mid-term future of improving the Ethereum network's permissionlessness and...
7 months ago
Willem's Blog
Fixed Gear Gran Fondo
Taking a fixed gear road bike for a gran fondo! Let some of my fun be of inspiration to you!
over a year ago
Taking a fixed gear road bike for a gran fondo! Let some of my fun be of inspiration to you!
./techtipsy
How to fix ZFS pool not importing at boot
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything...
over a year ago
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything seems to work correctly, but
after restarting your machine, the ZFS pool is not visible. You can still import your pool manually using
zpool import poolname or zpool import -a.
In...
Old Vintage...
Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball...
a year ago
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball machines.
that cyberdog.
our PowerBook Duo 2300 rehabilitated, guess what we're gonna look at?
Internet document?
Thus was the nucleus of Cyberdog (named for the famous New...
./techtipsy
I encourage you to write a blog
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90...
3 months ago
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90 posts, received over 1 million clicks,
a dozen legitimate reader e-mails and thousands of spam e-mails.
And I love it!
I’ve found that writing can be very fulfilling and I encourage...
Arduino Blog
Adding real-time local voice controls to a SMARS Quad Mod robot with an Arduino RP2040 Connect
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools...
4 months ago
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools for learning more about how electronics, mechanics, and software can combine to perform useful tasks in the physical world. And in his latest project, Edge Impulse’s senior...
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.
Christian Selig
A free, 3D printable Meta Quest 3 stand
People were really kind and seemed to enjoy my 3D printable Apple Vision Pro stand, a stand I...
8 months ago
People were really kind and seemed to enjoy my 3D printable Apple Vision Pro stand, a stand I designed in Fusion 360 with the goal of being visually appealing and compact as it stored the headset vertically so it wouldn’t take up too much space on your desk.
Turns out there were...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Meta's two assets
(Epistemic disclaimer: there are few Extremely Big Tech Companies to whom I feel apathy more vividly...
a month ago
(Epistemic disclaimer: there are few Extremely Big Tech Companies to whom I feel apathy more vividly than Meta. I had a Facebook account in high school and college and got rid of it at some point post-graduation, though I'd be hard-pressed to tell you when exactly that was.)
It...
Home on Erik...
Vote for our SXSW panel!
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and...
over a year ago
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/24504
Algorithmic Music Discovery at Spotify
****Spotify crunches hundreds of billions of streams to analyze user's music taste and provide...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 5: The Purge
a month ago
Home on Erik...
What's up with music recommendations?
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are...
over a year ago
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are behind recommendations for music and movies.
Of course, every media type is different. For instance, there's fundamental reasons why latent factor models works really well for...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Capability makes your life simpler
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less...
4 months ago
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less time and energy packing, setting-up, tearing down, and unpacking. The same goes for travel. Fewer clothes and shoes means less luggage to carry, manage, and lose. You can board...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a...
2 months ago
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orientation and direction.
In a normal aircraft, the artificial horizon shows the orientation in two axes (pitch and roll), but the F-4...
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.
Old Vintage...
CAP-X and COMP-X: how the Tandy Pocket Computers got a sucky Japanese assembler
I grew up primarily with the Commodore 64, where if you wanted to do anything really cool and...
10 months ago
I grew up primarily with the Commodore 64, where if you wanted to do anything really cool and useful, you had to do it in 6502 assembly language. Today I still write 6502 assembly, plus some Power ISA and even a little TMS9900. I like assembly languages and how in control of the...
Willem's Blog
Back to the University
Join me on a special course exploring scientific programming, the perfect moment to learn Python...
a year ago
Join me on a special course exploring scientific programming, the perfect moment to learn Python with recent advancements in machine learning like ChatGPT!
Lighthouse Blog
Introducing Lighthouse - The RSS reader, newsletter reader, and read-it-later app to fight content...
8 months ago
Simply Explained
EZStore: a tiny serverless datastore for IoT data (DynamoDB + Lambda)
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but...
over a year ago
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but flexible data store. I just want to push data to an API and query and visualize it later on.There are many solutions for this, but most are expensive or very limited. So I set out to...
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
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home...
a year ago
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home server.
After doing some experiments with my setup a couple of times, it is once again the main server for all my self-hosting
needs. However, this time I have made some...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 4
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
a year ago
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
Applied Cartography
You should build this:
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that...
2 months ago
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 4: The Verge
2 months ago
anderegg.ca
How decentralized is Bluesky really?
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into...
4 weeks ago
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into some of the criticisms I had in my previous piece.
The article is long, but very much worth a read. From the conclusion:
Bluesky is built by good people who care, and it is providing...
./techtipsy
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main...
over a year ago
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main laptop and a server as well.
A couple of years ago I messed around with flashing alternative BIOS implementations on the X230, such
as the skulls project, which made installing...
Old Vintage...
Composite and hard reset mods for the Tandyvision One
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my...
2 weeks ago
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my literal first game console: the Tandyvision One, Tandy Radio Shack's label variant of the Mattel Intellivision Master Component.
The Mattel Intellivision proper originally hails...
Jonas Hietala
March Theme: 10 seconds
Well well here’s something interesting. The Experimental Gameplay Project has given us a really...
over a year ago
Well well here’s something interesting. The Experimental Gameplay Project has given us a really interesting thing to focus on: Time. Like Braid, it’s time for us to make something interesting with time itself. 10 seconds is the constraint and that’s not a lot, but perhaps enough?
Applied Cartography
Things take time
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi...
7 months ago
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD — was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of...
Louwrentius
Automated install of Debian Linux based on PXE net booting
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two...
over a year ago
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two reasons:
Repeating the same task over and over again is friggin boring. A system
administrator has better things to do, such as drinking coffee.
Humans make mistakes, especially if...
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,...
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #44: The New Statesman still needs fixing
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
3 weeks ago
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
Arduino Blog
Control your Raspberry Pi GPIOs with Arduino Cloud using Python | Part II
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs...
7 months ago
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs remotely. Well, you have landed in the right place. This article builds upon our previous introduction to “Visualize your Raspberry Pi data with Arduino Cloud | Part I.” Now, we’ll...
Applied Cartography
Buttondown Analytics 3.0
Working on a new analytics engine — a scant eleven months after the previous 'new analytics...
10 months ago
Working on a new analytics engine — a scant eleven months after the previous 'new analytics engine'.
Calling this 3.0 is a bit of a misnomer: most of the code, design, and plumbing from the 2023 redesign is sticking around, just in a more modular format. The goal here is to...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Software
The build continues, now in a little more familiar territory.
Firmware flashing
To flash the...
a year ago
The build continues, now in a little more familiar territory.
Firmware flashing
To flash the firmware I had to order a microSD card reader.
With that on hand the flashing wasn’t difficult. The VORON docs walks you through the installation very well.
Mainsail
I chose to install...
Posts on Made of...
Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisible
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of...
a year ago
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of Expertise” by Gary Klein and Robert Hoffman. It’s excellent and I recommend you read it when you have a chance.
Klein and Hoffman discuss the ability of experts to “see what is not...
Buck on Software
The Software Slog
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
a year ago
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
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...
axio.ms
Internet of kitchen lighting, with OSC
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say...
over a year ago
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say that I wrote a useful little bit of software and built up a crappy hack to demonstrate it but, secretly, the crappy hack came first and I’ve retroactively found something vaguely...
Home on Erik...
Annoy 1.10 released, with Hamming distance and Windows support
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to...
over a year ago
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to adjust to having a toddler, partly because the hunt for clicks has caused such a high bar for me that I feel like I have to post something Pulitzer-worthy.
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
Willem's Blog
Something the smartwatch will never have: patina
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
over a year ago
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
Jonas Hietala
2014 in Review
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a...
over a year ago
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a turn in IMPA and solved a bunch of problems.
Completed a doctorand course about algorithmic problem solving.
Finished my 4 first years in University.
Became a contributor to rust and...
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to resin casting
At one point in my life, I penned an epic, 110-page opus on hobby manufacturing.
yesterday
At one point in my life, I penned an epic, 110-page opus on hobby manufacturing.
Willem's Blog
Offline Music
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to...
over a year ago
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to lossless audio files; there is some reason to this madness however!
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 08: YouTube support
a year ago
Louwrentius
Neato XV-15 / XV-11 Robotic Vacuum cleaner review
Update 18 February 2012
There is one problem. When the robot is not connected to the charger, the...
over a year ago
Update 18 February 2012
There is one problem. When the robot is not connected to the charger, the batteries are depleted very fast. Even if the batteries are not entirely depleted and the robot can still display the menu, the clock loses it's time. Every time the robot gets a too...
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…
Applied Cartography
Why your marketing site should be separate
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we...
3 months ago
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we serve buttondown.com both as a marketing site (public-facing, Next/Vercel, largely just content pushed by non-developers) and an author-facing app (behind a login, Django/Heroku/Vue)...
./techtipsy
How to build a fleet of networked offsite backups using Linux, WireGuard and rsync
Just like most people out there, I have some files that are irreplaceable, such as cat pictures.
At...
a week ago
Just like most people out there, I have some files that are irreplaceable, such as cat pictures.
At one point I had a few single-board computers sitting idle, namely
the Orange Pi Zero and
the LattePanda V1, and a few
1TB SSD-s.
I hate idle hardware, so I did the most sensible...
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
Home on Erik...
The Filter Bubble is Silly and you Can't Guess What Happened Next
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here...
over a year ago
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here was about the filter bubble which prompted me to formalize my own thoughts.
I firmly believe that it's the role of a system to respect the user's intent.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Governance, Part 2: Plutocracy Is Still Bad
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
The Club Master is a Nano RP2040 Connect-powered device that improves your golf swing
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even...
6 months ago
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even small deviations can be the difference between a hole-in-one and additional strokes. To improve his game, Concept Bytes has designed a small clip-on device called the “Club Master.”...
Arduino Blog
Arduino’s Alvik Robot shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025 in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, and Digital...
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025,...
a month ago
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025, this time in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, or Digital Device category with our Alvik robot! This recognition highlights our dedication to innovation, inclusivity, and the advancement of...
Computer Ads from...
Maxell's MF 2-DD Floppies
The Gold Standard
3 weeks ago
Jonas Hietala
I beat FTL on Hard with all ships in the game
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games...
a year ago
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games again.
So I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck (and like any self-serving gentleman I took care to pitch it as being for my kids) and I started loading it up...
Jonas Hietala
Grand Thief Arto
Here’s me and Li’s game for our school course. The game isn’t tweaked too much but it’s a game with...
over a year ago
Here’s me and Li’s game for our school course. The game isn’t tweaked too much but it’s a game with some fairly cool ideas.
Grand Thief Arto
Instructions
Your goal is to collect loot until you can escape through the entry point when you’ve collected enough to complete the...
computers are bad
2023-04-20 different kinds of differential
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by...
a year ago
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a
halt." Of course the headline doesn't actually say this, but it does seem
to imply that there has been some kind of failure of...
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...
5 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...
Posts on Made of...
Using X forwarding with screen by proxying $DISPLAY
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a...
over a year ago
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a long-running session going on a server somewhere, and log in and resume my session without losing any state.
I also love X-forwarding. I love being able to log into a remote server...
Arduino Blog
Turn your old Android smartphone into an Arduino screen with the RemoteXY app
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for...
5 days ago
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for mistakes. But most projects require some “auxiliary” hardware — components that you use to interact with the Arduino or to help it do the job you’re asking of it. Buttons and displays...
Arduino Blog
Alumnus Software joins Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program
We are thrilled to announce that Alumnus Software, based in India and the United States, has joined...
a month ago
We are thrilled to announce that Alumnus Software, based in India and the United States, has joined our System Integrators Partnership Program (SIPP) at the Gold level. With over 20 years of expertise in embedded software, IoT applications, and Edge AI development, Alumnus has a...
csvbase blog
I didn't write any Javascript, and other shortcuts
Getting it done by not doing a lot of it
a year ago
Getting it done by not doing a lot of it
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...
Home on Erik...
Snakebite
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie....
over a year ago
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie. It's a super fast tool to access HDFS over CLI/Python, by accessing the namenode directly over sockets/protobuf.
Spotify's developer blog features a nice blog post outlining what...
Home on Erik...
Analyzing 50k fonts using deep neural networks
For some reason I decided one night I wanted to get a bunch of fonts. A lot of them. An hour later I...
over a year ago
For some reason I decided one night I wanted to get a bunch of fonts. A lot of them. An hour later I had a bunch of scrapy scripts pulling down fonts and a few days later I had more than 50k fonts on my computer.
Arduino Blog
This robotic kalimba plays melodies with an Arduino Nano
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each...
3 months ago
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each tuned for a specific note, and upon plucking or striking one, a pleasant xylophone-like sound can be heard. Taking inspiration from his mini kalimba, Axel from the YouTube channel...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Arduino Blog
Introducing Arduino Academy: your path to becoming an Arduino-Certified Engineer begins!
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy,...
a month ago
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy, the go-to platform for hands-on, interactive learning designed to prepare you for the future of technology. Whether you’re just starting or looking to advance your career, the...
Jonas Hietala
Getting the book into my hands
Around a month ago I placed an order for a reference copy of my upcoming book Why Cryptocurrencies?....
over a year ago
Around a month ago I placed an order for a reference copy of my upcoming book Why Cryptocurrencies?. I took the cheapest shipping option at IngramSpark, without tracking and, apparently, without customs declarations as it got stuck in customs for several weeks.
But it’s here...
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...
Lars Lofgren
How Live Chat Tools Impact Conversions and Why I Launched a Bad Variant
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing...
over a year ago
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing your visitors to chat directly with your team? Like most tests, you can come up with theories that sound great for both sides. Pro Live Chat Theory: Having a live chat tool helps...
./techtipsy
So you need some tech tips...
I’m an experienced software developer located in Estonia 🇪🇪🇪🇺 .
I don’t simply get things done,...
over a year ago
I’m an experienced software developer located in Estonia 🇪🇪🇪🇺 .
I don’t simply get things done, I get them done done.
Here’s what I bring to the table:
software development skillset
building useful solutions
monitoring, observability
incident response
I know how to use...
computers are bad
2024-03-01 listening in on the neighborhood
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking...
9 months ago
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking "What is SoundThinking," because the company rebranded
last year. They used to be called ShotSpotter, and their outdoor acoustic
gunfire detection system still goes by the...
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...
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
Neil Madden
Making things
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar...
over a year ago
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar donated by a neighbour). It’s a bit clunky in places — “rustic” shall we say? But I probably enjoyed making this, over a few weeks of lunchtimes and evenings, more than anything I’ve...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering an analog Bendix air data computer: part 4, the Mach section
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
},
svg: {
fontCache:...
10 months ago
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
},
svg: {
fontCache: 'global'
},
chtml: { displayAlign: 'left' }
};
MathJax.Hub.Config({
"HTML-CSS": { scale: 175}
});
.MathJax {font-size: 1em !important}
In the 1950s, many fighter...
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...
Notes on software...
Exploring a Postgres query plan
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into...
a year ago
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into the execution layer so you're given a
query plan and you get to decide what to do with it. What rows to
return, if any, and where they come from.
That's very interesting. So I...
Home on Erik...
Exploding offers are bullshit
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I...
over a year ago
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios
If you’re a regular user of the terminal on a UNIX system, there are probably a large number of...
over a year ago
If you’re a regular user of the terminal on a UNIX system, there are probably a large number of behaviors you take mostly for granted without really thinking about them. If you press ^C or ^Z it kills or stops the foreground program – unless it’s something like emacs or vim, in...
Posts on Made of...
Confessions of a programmer: I hate code review
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work...
over a year ago
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work requires code review on most of our code, and as we bring on an army of interns for the summer, I've been responsible for reviewing lots of code. Additionally, about five months ago...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
3 months ago
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
Notes on software...
Bootloader basics
I spent a few days playing around with bootloaders for the first
time. This post builds up to a text...
over a year ago
I spent a few days playing around with bootloaders for the first
time. This post builds up to a text editor with a few keyboard
shortcuts. I'll be giving a virtual talk based on this work at Hacker
Nights on Jan 27.
There are a definitely bugs. But it's hard to find...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Zk-SNARKs: Under the Hood
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
Louwrentius
What home NAS builders should understand about silent data corruption
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come...
over a year ago
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come up:
Unrecoverable read errors (UREs) or what old people like me call 'bad sectors'
Silent data corruption (data corruption unnoticed by the storage layers)
I get a strong impression...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
The Serendipity Machine
Notes on Using Twitter
11 months ago
Home on Erik...
3D
Andy Sloane decided to call my 2D visualization and raise it to 3D.
(Looks a little weird in the...
over a year ago
Andy Sloane decided to call my 2D visualization and raise it to 3D.
(Looks a little weird in the iframe but check out the link). It's based on a LDA model with 200 topics, so the artists tend to stick to clusters where each cluster is a topic.
Christian Selig
Introducing Juno for Apple Vision Pro
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little...
10 months ago
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little sad when YouTube announced that they don’t have plans to build a visionOS app, and disabled the option to load the iPad app. This leaves you with Safari, and the website is okay,...
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal road bike
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
over a year ago
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
Arduino Blog
Arduino Nicla Sense Env: adding advanced environmental sensing to a broad range of applications
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of...
2 months ago
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of system-on-modules and sensor nodes, empowering innovators with the tools to unlock new possibilities. This tiny yet powerful sensor node is designed to elevate your environmental...
On Life and Lisp
The Apple GPU and the Impossible Bug
In late 2020, Apple debuted the M1 with Apple’s GPU architecture, AGX, rumoured to be derived from...
over a year ago
In late 2020, Apple debuted the M1 with Apple’s GPU architecture, AGX, rumoured to be derived from Imagination’s PowerVR series. Since then, we’ve been reverse-engineering AGX and building open source graphics drivers. Last January, I rendered a triangle with my own code, but...
Neil Madden
Parse, don’t type-check
There’s a fantastic article from last year titled Parse, don’t validate. I’d highly recommend it to...
over a year ago
There’s a fantastic article from last year titled Parse, don’t validate. I’d highly recommend it to any programmer (along with the more recent follow up Names are not type safety). The basic idea is that there are two ways to check that some input to a function is valid: A...
lcamtuf’s thing
Dispatches from the farm upstate
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
4 months ago
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
Jonas Hietala
Building my ultimate keyboard
The Cybershard keyboard.
What comes to mind when you see the description “the ultimate...
3 weeks ago
The Cybershard keyboard.
What comes to mind when you see the description “the ultimate keyboard”?
There are many keyboards in this world; here are some that might fit the “ultimate” moniker:
Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate mechanical keyboard
DataHand
Ergodox EZ
Glove80
Happy...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Why we prefer computers over consoles when introducing kids to gaming
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing...
9 months ago
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing games with my brothers on those devices.
But as my own kids have gotten older, my wife and I have decided to first introduce them to gaming with computers, instead of consoles.
The...
Jonas Hietala
2013 Read Books
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet...
over a year ago
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet Deluxe - Jens Lapidius
Escape from camp 14 - Blaine Harden
Wonderful. A great book.
Edge - Jeffery Deaver
Dollar - Lee Child
Gisslan - Lee Child
Bränd - Lee Child
Besökaren - Lee...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside an unusual 7400-series chip implemented with a gate array
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple...
9 months ago
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple die,
implemented in a straightforward, cost-effective way.
However, when I looked inside a military-grade chip built by Integrated Device Technology (IDT)4
I found a very unexpected...
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 