Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
Applied Cartography
Peak Newsletter
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to...
5 months ago
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to admit this (I don't want more competition lol) but I think we're still probably a year or two away from Peak Newsletter. It's just a really good distribution mechanism for certain...
./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...
Computer Ads from...
Gould Electronic's PowerNode 6000
The Firebreathers from Gould blast the competition into oblivion.
4 months ago
The Firebreathers from Gould blast the competition into oblivion.
Old Vintage...
Ward Christensen dies
There was initially some issue verifying this, but there appears to be direct confirmation now that...
2 months ago
There was initially some issue verifying this, but there appears to be direct confirmation now that Ward Christensen passed away October 11 at the age of 78, co-founder of the pioneering Computerized Bulletin Board System in February 1978 with Randy Suess — now believed to be the...
Louwrentius
'A Moment Of Silence: OpenSolaris Is Dead'
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March...
over a year ago
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March 2010, but Oracle did not release anything. It is dead
silent around OpenSolaris.
On 12 July 2010, the OpenSolaris Government Board sent out an ultimatum
to Oracle: "please...
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…
watchTowr Labs -...
No Way, PHP Strikes Again! (CVE-2024-4577)
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by...
6 months ago
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by default”, and we were curious to say the least. XAMPP is a very popular way for administrators and developers to rapidly deploy Apache, PHP, and a bunch of other tools, and
Louwrentius
Why I Do Use ZFS as a File System for My NAS
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system...
over a year ago
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system for my 18 TB NAS.
You have to understand that at the time, I believe the arguments in the article were relevant, but much has changed since then, and I do believe this article is...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Intel Edison
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
6 months ago
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
anderegg.ca
The trouble with openness
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went...
3 weeks ago
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went anywhere, but I found it exciting at the time.
One piece that particularly spoke to me was the notion of including data in websites so that web scrapers could easily get at it....
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.
Avestura's Blog
Problems of C, and how Zig addresses them
What are the problems of C, and how Zig addresses them?
a year ago
What are the problems of C, and how Zig addresses them?
Old Vintage...
What the KIM-1 really needs is an LCD screen
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all...
a year ago
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all well and good, but the basic unit is still just six numeric LEDs for its display. Let's solve that problem.
Sure, you could hook up a serial terminal like the Silent 700 we used...
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...
Willem's Blog
My first weeks as dad
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent....
over a year ago
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent. Read along for my (biometric) findings and some practical tips.
./techtipsy
I finally found an use case for my Raspberry Pi Model B+
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer...
over a year ago
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer with a huge community using it for all sorts of projects.
I got my first Raspberry Pi, the Model B+,
during my first year at university, which was around the winter of...
Birchtree
The “Bluesky feels like early Twitter!” vibe
Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1...
3 weeks ago
Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1 million users a day for a bit last week. One sentiment I’m hearing a lot recently is that Bluely “feels like early Twitter,” which
Lighthouse Blog
How to manually add content to read it later
6 months ago
Good Enough
You Complete Me
When Good Enough was in its infancy as a truly American LLC (formed in Delaware and representing one...
2 weeks ago
When Good Enough was in its infancy as a truly American LLC (formed in Delaware and representing one or two people who were
only semi-serious about a business), it was fun to play around with building websites.
Shawn and I were truly just playing and exploring, more than anything...
Buck on Software
23 things you should know
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
over a year ago
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
Birchtree
Gemini 2.0: speed and deep research impress
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today...
a week ago
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality —
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
3 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Pentium as a Navajo weaving
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving...
3 months ago
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract
pattern.
Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely.
The design turned out to be an image of Intel's Pentium...
Old Vintage...
Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6 (and The Incredible KIMplement goes 1.0)
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've...
7 months ago
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've intermittently worked on for literally two decades. Now that I've finally shaken out more bugs, tuned it up and cleaned it off, it's time to let people play with the source...
Applied Cartography
Using Cursor to port Django tests to pytest
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using...
3 months ago
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using these tools (Supermaven is a pretty heavy part of my day-to-day work), but have found most tools quite bad by the metric of "do they make me more productive on Buttondown's code...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
over a year ago
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about some concrete things you can do. When I've built up the tech team at Better, I've intentionally optimized for fast iteration speed above almost everything else.
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
Home on Erik...
statself.com
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together:...
over a year ago
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together: it's a website where you can track any numerical data on the web. Want to know how many Twitter followers you have?
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Jonas Hietala
Vacation
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and...
over a year ago
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and not doing anything. Well, I did get my ass kicked in Terra Mystica and I played a bit of Minecraft, but still. We got some nice food and my in-laws and my parents were nice.
I’m...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Arduino Blog
This small device enables users to feel braille through haptics
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to...
7 months ago
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to text-to-speech (TTS) interfaces that read portions of the screen aloud. Dynamic braille displays also exist as a tactile means of communication, but their prices can get close to...
Arduino Blog
Magnus is an electromagnetic exoskeleton for your hands
One of the primary goals of wearable technology is to provide the user with capabilities and data...
5 months ago
One of the primary goals of wearable technology is to provide the user with capabilities and data that exceed their current abilities. And for motion, this has traditionally existed in the form of electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), where current is applied via electrodes to...
Notes on software...
Two books I recommend to developers
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think...
a year ago
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think are actually so worthwhile. This
list is down to two. I think that's a good thing actually.
These are the books I recommend to developers wanting to improve their
skills as...
Louwrentius
Benefits of hyper-threading on a Core 7i processor
I had some wave files that I wanted to encode to mp3. I wrote a small parallel
processing framework...
over a year ago
I had some wave files that I wanted to encode to mp3. I wrote a small parallel
processing framework for this job. It executes parallel jobs so I can benefit
from the 4 cores + 4 virtual cores of my new Core 7i 920 processor.
The framework is based on some shell scripts running...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Filters
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous...
a year ago
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous post: filtering dangerous particles and fumes.
This is mostly covered by the kit, but I was missing some parts from the print it forward and the kit didn’t include a HEPA...
Louwrentius
Lion's Disk Utility not compatible with CoreStorage and Filevault
My 1 TB hard drive of my 2011 27" iMac was partitioned with:
A bootable partition with Mac OS X...
over a year ago
My 1 TB hard drive of my 2011 27" iMac was partitioned with:
A bootable partition with Mac OS X Lion
Time machine partition (I use an external SSD as my main OS)
Bootcamp partition with windows
A data partition containg... data.
The problem is that CoreStorage is too new. Disk...
Louwrentius
71 TiB DIY NAS based on ZFS on Linux
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB...
over a year ago
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB NAS (17 TiB). With a storage capacity four times higher than the original and an incredible read (2.5 GB/s)/write (1.9 GB/s) performance, it's a worthy successor.
Purpose
The...
Christian Selig
Theming Apps on iOS is Hard
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with...
over a year ago
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with blue links to a light green background with green links) is a pretty common feature across a lot of apps. It’s one of the core features of the new “Twitter Blue” subscription,...
Willem's Blog
Harvesting boredom to let creativity flourish
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to...
over a year ago
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to the Internet using a smartphone.
./techtipsy
Anything's a portable speaker if you're brave enough
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a...
a year ago
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a speaker, a battery, put them together, and what you now have is a
portable speaker. Since I had access to both, I felt no need to buy a separate
portable speaker for use in social...
Jonas Hietala
Bullets and AI
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the...
over a year ago
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the collision detection problems and I’m now trying to make some sort of AI working for the ship. It’s a bit hard and time consuming and I don’t know how to make things good.
Maybe...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond
over a year ago
Good Enough
Lettini is Good Enough
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know...
a year ago
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know much about us. So we’re starting a new Q&A column to introduce ourselves, one-at-a-time, starting with our resident designer…
Who the hell do you think you are?
👋 Hello, I’m...
Arduino Blog
This smart spice box makes cooking a breeze
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and...
6 months ago
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and ingredients. Recipes are useful, but they aren’t very intuitive to those who are more comfortable with visual thinking. To help these people enjoy the cooking experience, Purdue...
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.
computers are bad
2023-10-15 go.com
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email...
a year ago
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email having a subject that made it sound like this post would
be about the classic strategy game Go. It is actually about a failed website.
I regret the error; the responsible people have...
Arduino Blog
A beautiful custom calculator built with IV-12 VFD tubes
Nixie tubes have been the go-to option for makers looking for retro display aesthetics for many...
6 months ago
Nixie tubes have been the go-to option for makers looking for retro display aesthetics for many years, because their distinct orange glow carries a lot of vintage appeal. But VFD (vacuum fluorescent display) tubes have been gaining in popularity recently and have different —...
Arduino Blog
How makers can use AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in...
6 months ago
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, with the combined market expected to reach $77 billion by 2025, from just $15.3 billion in 2020. For makers, AR and VR represent exciting opportunities to build new...
anderegg.ca
Maybe Bluesky has “won”
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X....
a month ago
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. I’ve seen a bunch of takes about this recently, but I keep seeing things I disagree with. I figure that’s a good enough excuse to write more about this...
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.
Louwrentius
Is the iPhone OS a threat to our freedom?
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full...
over a year ago
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full control over your device. You can only install or run
software that is approved by Apple.
This is something that is unprecedented. All major platforms, Windows, Linux,
Mac OS X do...
Azad's Blog
RealityCapture to Gaussian Splatting using PostShot
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import...
5 months ago
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import it into PostShot to train Gaussian Splats without using COLMAP. Video tutorial RealityCapture Import your images and align them. If you ever need help with tricky dataset, refer to...
Arduino Blog
This fake CRT TV works using lasers and UV magic
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media...
3 weeks ago
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media was made to suit them. Retro video game consoles in particular look best on CRT TVs. But those old TVs are getting hard to find and desirable models are now quite expensive. So,...
Home on Erik...
The mathematical principles of management
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's...
over a year ago
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's the lack of first principles thinking. Basically it's a ton of heuristics. And heuristics are great, but when you present heuristics as true objectives, it kind of clouds the...
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...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: Data General/One (and the worst LCD in the world)
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't...
8 months ago
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't collect interesting or unusual x86 laptops, like the Brother GeoBook NB-60 (I finally tracked down a mostly working NB-80C, the top of the line model, which will be the subject of a...
Jonas Hietala
Poking at Emacs
I’ve been a vim vim fan for a while now and with some recent configs I’m starting to feel pretty...
over a year ago
I’ve been a vim vim fan for a while now and with some recent configs I’m starting to feel pretty confident and happy with it. For those who don’t know it’s basically a text editor, like notepad, but with a lot of keycommands which allows you to edit code (and text in general)...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Goodbye Evernote, Hello Obsidian
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas,...
6 months ago
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas, researching technologies, managing my projects, and many other things. Writing is how I think through problems, and note-taking software makes all that thinking easy to search and...
latest projects -...
Smallest USB-C MIDI Synth
[Hardware] The smallest and silliest MIDI synth yet
a year ago
[Hardware] The smallest and silliest MIDI synth yet
Jonas Hietala
Computer upgrade
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some...
a year ago
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some pictures about the process.
It was time
I didn’t really want to do an upgrade right now, but I felt I had to do it.
Sometimes the lag had gotten very noticeable, for example when...
Jonas Hietala
Home office renovation
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I...
over a year ago
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I had to have a home office as I need to work remote. There simply isn’t any software development work for me here.
So the later part of 2018 and early 2019 we’ve renovated an old...
Jonas Hietala
February gets Themed: Rejection
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t...
over a year ago
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t follow suite! With valentine coming up I might just have found a pretty nice idea, just now, writing this…
Booyah!!
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!
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
Style over Substance
How I made HA-meural: a Meural Canvas integration for Home Assistant
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the...
over a year ago
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the Home Assistant home automation software that lets you control a NETGEAR Meural Canvas digital frame. It’s the result of a few months of work, lots of trial and error, and many...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
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!
Old Vintage...
Reversing the Web-@nywhere Watch: browse fragments of the Web on your wrist
In the halcyon days of analogue modems and POTS dialup Internet, when the only wireless connection...
11 months ago
In the halcyon days of analogue modems and POTS dialup Internet, when the only wireless connection in your house was between the cordless phone and the wall, anything having to do with the Web was best consumed in small bites (pun intended). If you wanted to take data with you,...
Home on Erik...
Developer experience as a competitive advantage
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd...
over a year ago
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd “advanced” consumer who builds stuff in my spare time. In the last 10 years, there has been an order of magnitude more products that cater directly to developers, through APIs, SDKs, and...
Computer Ads from...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Battling burnout
Mamma Mia! Here we go again…
Once again, I’m finding myself trying to recover from burnout, and...
a year ago
Mamma Mia! Here we go again…
Once again, I’m finding myself trying to recover from burnout, and after about a year I’m finally feeling more like myself.
Even though I’ve been here before, it’s a difficult thing to recognize and avoid, so I’m writing this to maybe help you or my...
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...
Jonas Hietala
2016 in Review
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in...
over a year ago
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in Netrunner.
Won a couple of smaller Netrunner tournaments.
Got Veronica to play Game of Thrones with us. She beat us and she loved it!
Programmed a little bit of Elixir and a tiny bit of front...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Sell
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
over a year ago
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
Notes on software...
Unit testing C code with gtest
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use...
over a year ago
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use Google's
gtest and
CMake for testing C code. This will serve as a
foundation for some upcoming posts/projects on programming Linux,
userland networking and interpreters.
test/CMakeLists.txt...
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...
Simply Explained
Analyzing Link Rot in My Newsletter (After 31 Editions)
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to...
a year ago
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to interesting articles related to science and technology. I thought it would be interesting to analyze how many of those links are still accessible, and how many have succumbed to link rot....
Jonas Hietala
Undo git reset --hard
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back...
over a year ago
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back a bit. What I didn’t realize then is that you throw away all the commits between now until <hash>. Not quite what was planned.
After a bit of panic I found the answer:
Find your...
Louwrentius
My Ceph test cluster based on Raspberry Pi's and HP MicroServers
Introduction
To learn more about Ceph, I've build myself a Ceph Cluster based on actual hardware. In...
over a year ago
Introduction
To learn more about Ceph, I've build myself a Ceph Cluster based on actual hardware. In this blogpost I'll discus the cluster in more detail and I've also included (fio) benchmark results.
This is my test Ceph cluster:
The cluster consists of the following...
Applied Cartography
Linear
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes...
5 days ago
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes I wanted to publish on our own experience of migrating from GitHub Issues to Linear, and some reflections on it as a product now that we've been using it for a few months.
One...
Simply Explained
HEIC to JPG: Build a Quick Action with Automator
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The...
over a year ago
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The High-Efficiency Image File Format saves a lot of storage space on your devices while still maintaining your photos' quality. However, it does become problematic if you want to share those files...
Home on Erik...
coin2dice
Here's a problem that I used to give to candidates. I stopped using it seriously a long time ago...
over a year ago
Here's a problem that I used to give to candidates. I stopped using it seriously a long time ago since I don't believe in puzzles, but I think it's kind of fun.
Let's say you have a function that simulates a random coin flip.
Willem's Blog
Increase traffic to your blog with a RSS feed
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value....
over a year ago
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value. Read about the "how" and "why" in this post.
Willem's Blog
Tablet as main computer
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share...
over a year ago
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share you my experience on using Surface Pro and iPad Pro to get my work done.
Vitalik Buterin's...
La votación mediante blockchain está sobrevalorada entre personas desinformadas pero subestimada...
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Machine, Platform, Crowd
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it...
over a year ago
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it mentions my blog – in particular the post When machine learning matters.
Ok, I lied a little bit. I didn't discover it serendipitously.
Applied Cartography
How shadcn/ui examples work
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a...
7 months ago
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a durable, non-trivial advantage.
Part of this thesis is that Really Good Docs Experiences, in addition to having great information architecture and strong writing/prose, should be thought...
Jonas Hietala
IDA Summer of Code 2014: Summary
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged...
over a year ago
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged commits
6790 lines added
2822 lines deleted
36 pull requests, 34 merged
12 pull requests directly fixing issues
rest either documentation or cleanup
1 RFC submitted...
Louwrentius
Building a RAID 6 array of mixed drives
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect...
over a year ago
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect movies in full DVD or HD quality and so I need some
storage.
I decided to build myself a NAS box based on Debian Etch. Samba is used to
allow clients to access the data. The machine...
Good Enough
Our ChatGPT Mission Statement
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission...
a year ago
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission statement for Good Enough.
The resulting mission statement was surprisingly good and I had some literal LOLs along the way.
Though I think we'll leave out the haiku.
You are an expert at...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple Python compiler: 1. hello, fibonacci
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since...
over a year ago
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since Python has a builtin parser
library and because a
number of CPython internals are exposed for extension
writers.
By the end of this post, in a few hundred lines of Python, we'll be able...
Arduino Blog
How to customize your Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards on the go
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage...
2 months ago
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage their IoT projects with ease. From tracking sensor data to automating smart devices, the cloud enables seamless connectivity. Complementing this, the Arduino IoT Remote mobile app...
Louwrentius
Using InfiniBand for cheap and fast point-to-point Networking
InfiniBand networking is quite awesome. It's mainly used for two reasons:
low latency
high...
over a year ago
InfiniBand networking is quite awesome. It's mainly used for two reasons:
low latency
high bandwidth
As a home user, I'm mainly interested in setting up a high bandwidth link between two servers.
I was using quad-port network cards with Linux Bonding, but this solution has some...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: MenuCity
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and...
over a year ago
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and constructive feedback guys, it’s like my food doing this (programming is my air and the fun is the water… err). Anyway here’s the postmortem of my latest, and greatest, game.
Let’s start...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for... chess
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some...
over a year ago
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some point. So why not combine the two? That's what I thought, and I ended up spending way too much time on it.
Notes on software...
An effective product manager
There are three specific activities I have loved in some product
managers I've worked with (and...
a year ago
There are three specific activities I have loved in some product
managers I've worked with (and missed in others).
tldr;
Talk with customers and prospects
Develop and share a vision
Evangelize
Talk with customers and prospects
As a product manager, your superpower over...
Jonas Hietala
A Christmas Game
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly...
over a year ago
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly one thing on my wishlist for this christmas for my little brother: Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Guess what? I got something from my wishlist!
This was our 5th or 6th game (or...
Posts on Made of...
New reptyr feature: TTY-stealing
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally...
over a year ago
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally didn’t know how to solve within the reptyr model. Most annoyingly, reptyr fundamentally only worked on single processes, and could not attach processes with children, making it...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Customizing Neovim
Scripting is configuration. Configuration is scripting.
TJ DeVries A different take on editing...
7 months ago
Scripting is configuration. Configuration is scripting.
TJ DeVries A different take on editing code
I’ve been using Neovim since it forked from Vim almost 8 years ago, and I used Vim many years before that.
I feel quite comfortable with Neovim, and I’ve gone down the...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbor methods and vector models – part 1
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do (approximate) nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Willem's Blog
And... there is light!
Discover how one cyclist's quest for the perfect lighting solution led to a custom installation of...
a year ago
Discover how one cyclist's quest for the perfect lighting solution led to a custom installation of dynamo powered lights, ensuring a bright and hassle-free ride on the darkest roads.
./techtipsy
What changing the CPU on a laptop looks like
This post illustrates something that is not common on modern laptops:
changing the...
over a year ago
This post illustrates something that is not common on modern laptops:
changing the CPU.
Background
One of the modifications that you can do to a ThinkPad T430 laptop is changing
the CPU to a more powerful quad core model. That’s exactly what I did back in 2017,
but due to the...
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Lobo MAX-80
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
9 months ago
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
./techtipsy
Dell Latitude 5411: the Linux compatibility sweet spot
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my...
a year ago
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my article on why I went back to a ThinkPad T430 in 2022.
Or that other time when I got a new HP laptop for testing and got so frustrated that I wrote about it.
Well, today I’m writing...
Neil Madden
XSS doesn’t have to be game over
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game...
over a year ago
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game over” event for defence: there is no effective way to recover if an attacker can inject code into your site. Brian Campbell refers to this as “XSS Nihilism”, which is a great...
Christian Selig
Instant Pan Gesture Interactions
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key...
a year ago
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key takeaways from the videos that one of the presenters, Chan Karunamuni, said is “Look for delays everywhere. Everything needs to respond instantly.” (6:28)
A really great example of...
./techtipsy
How to make digital copies of your old video tapes
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital copies of their contents.
To get started, you will need the following:
old video tapes that you want to make copies of (VHS and its variants)
a device that can read analog AV signals...
Posts on Made of...
Systems that defy detailed understanding
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be...
over a year ago
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be explained, if we’re willing to dig deep enough into the stack of abstractions our software is built atop. Some of the ensuing discussion on Twitter and elsewhere lead me to write...
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...
Arduino Blog
This frighteningly realistic animatronic head features expressive silicone skin
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of...
a week ago
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of ways. Some of that is utilitarian — your jaw muscles are good for chewing, after all. But a lot of it seems to be the result of evolution giving us fantastic non-verbal...
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...
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
Posts on Made of...
Some musings on ORMs
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application,...
over a year ago
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application, particularly a web-app, has a love/hate relationship with their ORM, or object-relational mapper.
On the one hand, ORMs are vastly more pleasant to work with than code that constructs...
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
over a year ago
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
Good Enough
TIL: Don’t forget your Web Manifest file
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective...
a year ago
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective expertise is in making products and services for the web. And like everyone else, our use of the web has shifted from our desktops and laptops to our phones.
As we’re creating and...
csvbase blog
My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
a year ago
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
Matt Mullenweg
Carmack & Rogan
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on...
3 weeks ago
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on YouTube again, which means the gems from the archives can now pop up. I was alerted to this conversation between Joe Rogan and John Carmack, and it’s pure gold. I know I’m five...
Notes on software...
Building a fast SCSS-like rule expander for CSS using fuzzy parsing
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available in print
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve...
over a year ago
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve undertaken.
My book ‘Why Cryptocurrencies?’ is released in print today! It’s my attempt to explain what cryptocurrencies are and what problems they solve, in a simple and...
Willem's Blog
Enter text without keys
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a...
over a year ago
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a mouse or keyboard!
Notes on software...
Thinking about functional programming
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial...
a year ago
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an
interesting
discussion
with Shriram
Krishnamurthi and other folks.
So here's a slightly more thought out exploration.
And just for backstory sake: I...
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!
Electronics etc…
Tesla’s FSD - First and Last Impressions
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach...
7 months ago
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach to Truckee (11 miles)
Test Ride 2: I-80 from Truckee to Blue Canyon (36 miles)
Test Ride 3: from West-Valley College to I-85 Entrance (1 mile)
Conclusion
Introduction
In the past...
Neil Madden
Multiple input MACs
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a...
over a year ago
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a single string, but multiple fields of data. For example, when creating an authenticated encryption mode by composing a cipher and a MAC (like AES-CBC and HMAC), you need to ensure the...
Engineers Need Art
Building Quarter-Cab - Phase I
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
7 months ago
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about Deterministic Simulation Testing?
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And...
4 months ago
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And even once you've found a bug, it can be
anywhere from simple to impossible to reproduce it. It's about as far
away as you can get from the ideal test environment: property...
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....
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 2
The VIC-20
a year ago
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.
./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...
Applied Cartography
Talking to customers
You say that these numbers mean dial it down. I say they mean dial it up. You haven't gotten...
2 months ago
You say that these numbers mean dial it down. I say they mean dial it up. You haven't gotten through. There are people you haven't persuaded yet. These number mean dial it up. Otherwise you're like the French radical, watching the crowd run by and saying, "There go my people. I...
Matt Blewitt
On That Okta LDAP Bug
A quick explanation of the Okta AD/LDAP DelAuth bug that was being shared around, and the importance...
a month ago
A quick explanation of the Okta AD/LDAP DelAuth bug that was being shared around, and the importance of sensible defaults.
lcamtuf’s thing
Deep dive: the (in)stability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
a month ago
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
./techtipsy
How to start your self-hosting adventure: a high-level overview
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in...
over a year ago
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in /r/homelab, storage measured in terabytes (or even petabytes) over
at /r/datahoarder, all the different services that people host over at
/r/selfhosted. This can be a bit...
Jonas Hietala
2011 in Review
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek...
over a year ago
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek Achievements
Wrote three games this year:
My Minions
Grand Thief Arto
Sat-E
Bought a new computer!
Bought a mechanical keyboard.
Bought custom Starcraft 2 keycaps for the...
Arduino Blog
Adding voice commands to a LEGO planetarium set with an Arduino Nano 33 IoT
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning...
4 months ago
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning and creative experiences, and for Electromaker’s Robin Mitchell, this was the LEGO planetarium set. With it, rotational input will cause the Earth and moon models to orbit around the...
Louwrentius
Linux: script that creates table of network interface properties
My server has 5 network interfaces and I wanted a quick overview of some properties. There may be an...
over a year ago
My server has 5 network interfaces and I wanted a quick overview of some properties. There may be an existing linux command for this but I couldn't find it so I quickly wrote my
own script (download).
This is the output:
The only requirement for this script is that you have...
Computer Ads from...
E-Z Tax
The Tax Break You've Been Looking for !
8 months ago
The Tax Break You've Been Looking for !
Home on Erik...
Being data driven
I picked up an issue of Foreign Affairs while flying back to NYC from SFO. It features this long...
over a year ago
I picked up an issue of Foreign Affairs while flying back to NYC from SFO. It features this long interview with U.S. General Stanley McChrystal and I thought it was pretty interesting how striking some of the similarities are between fighting in a war and developing software.
Willem's Blog
Developing a native iOS app
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with...
7 months ago
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with some help from AI? Read along to find out!
Willem's Blog
Repairing a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
over a year ago
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
Louwrentius
An affordable server platform based on server-grade hardware
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true...
over a year ago
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true server-grade harware when building a server, wether it's for home or business use.
This is why I want to introduce you to the Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard.
This motherboard costs...
Home on Erik...
Stuff that bothers me: “100x faster than Hadoop”
The simple way to get featured on big data blog these days seem to be
Build something that does 1...
over a year ago
The simple way to get featured on big data blog these days seem to be
Build something that does 1 thing super well but nothing else Benchmark it against Hadoop Publish stats showing that it's 100x faster than Hadoop $$$ Spark claims their 100x faster than Hadoop and there's a...
Louwrentius
The minimum requirements for a secure system
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off....
over a year ago
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off. However, little work seems to be getting done this way. So we
want to turn systems on and connect them to a network, or even (God forbid)
the internet.
The thing is this. A system...
computers are bad
2023-06-30 calling in the alarm
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But...
a year ago
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But here's something short while I'm temporarily back in the
warm embrace of 5G: more about burglar alarms. I recently gave a presentation
on this topic and I'll probably record it for...
Willem's Blog
Rolex DateJust 36
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like?...
over a year ago
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like? Keep reading!
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...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this series we'll write a rudimentary database from
scratch in Go. Project source code is available on
Github.
In this first post we'll build enough of a parser to...
Jonas Hietala
An Epic Start
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and...
over a year ago
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and went to the bathroom. After I was done, still pretty tired, I made a big mistake. I checked the current theme for Ludum Dare 29: Beneath the Surface and guess what? Now I wasn’t tired...
Matt Blewitt
Service Objects in Rails
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects,...
over a year ago
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects, in the context of Rails.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?
over a year ago
Engineers Need Art
Mooncraft 2000
A web-based game, Mooncraft 2000 is released.
over a year ago
A web-based game, Mooncraft 2000 is released.
Notes on software...
Zig, Rust, and other languages
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a...
9 months ago
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a fresh conversation on: automatic
memory management, the standard library, and explicit allocation.
Zig is not a mature language. But it has made enough useful choices
for a number...
Notes on software...
On NYC, Tokyo and Seoul
I’ve lived in NYC for the past year — moved here after years in Philly
and after growing up in a...
over a year ago
I’ve lived in NYC for the past year — moved here after years in Philly
and after growing up in a rural community a few hours west of
there. My wife is South Korean and last week concluded my second trip
to the suburbs of Seoul to visit her family. We finished up that trip
with a...
Louwrentius
overview of open-source load balancers
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview...
over a year ago
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview except from this website, although many of the listed projects seem dead.
I've made a selection of products that seem to be relevant. The biggest problem with open-source software...
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
over a year ago
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
Louwrentius
Understanding IOPS, latency and storage performance
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When...
over a year ago
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When most people think about storage performance, they think about throughput. But throughput is similar to the top speed of a car. In reality, you will almost never reach the top...
Jonas Hietala
A Four-Eyed Update
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my...
over a year ago
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my almost constant headaches which hampered me a lot actually. Luckily now I have joined the rank of cool.
I took home three frames I think and tried them out and I settled some I...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Guycot & Jarre
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
6 months ago
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
over a year ago
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
Jonas Hietala
Settled on an unoriginal idea
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
over a year ago
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
computers are bad
2024-05-15 catalina connections
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running...
7 months ago
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running partnership between Epson and Catalina: a query that will
return pages upon pages of people trying to use Epson printers with an old
version of MacOS.
When you think of a point of sale...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Active and influential NYC infrastructure people
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I...
a month ago
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I actually see them attend events) in the
NYC infrastructure scene (that I have a personal connection to).
If you're running a dinner or are just looking to meet interesting
people in...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 2022
In 2022 I finished 20
books
spanning 15,801 pages. 3 more than I read in 2021, but about twice
the...
a year ago
In 2022 I finished 20
books
spanning 15,801 pages. 3 more than I read in 2021, but about twice
the number of pages. 3 fiction and 17 non-fiction. Another ~30 started
but not finished.
I had a hard time reading books while I was trying to start my own
company. But I also...
detreville
Father's Day
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
a year ago
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
Yazin Alirhayim
Braindump
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any...
over a year ago
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any significance I get derailed, and fall into this spiral of thought where I reconsider whether what I’m about to do matters, why it would, and whether I could be doing something else that...
Good Enough
Yes, Facebook Is Terrible, but Also…
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good...
a year ago
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good and useful interactions, the algorithm brought me down, I didn’t have a lot of desire to keep up with old acquaintances, and hearing everyone’s political stance was not good for...
Louwrentius
1.0 GB/s using Linux software RAID
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I...
over a year ago
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I immediately performed some initial tests with software RAID 0. The results
are just astounding.
debian:~# dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
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...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 20 Timelapse
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I...
over a year ago
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I lost the first few hours as I forgot to turn it on…
Anyway here’s the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABVPlRaA5iI
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
axio.ms
MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building...
6 months ago
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building a simple desktop/GUI for it. I’d made a comment along the lines of “or, just run some old OS”, and it got me thinking about the original Macintosh.
The original Macintosh was...
Jonas Hietala
Life and Shields
Time is running out! At least the more technical parts are mostly done. The ships have an acceptable...
over a year ago
Time is running out! At least the more technical parts are mostly done. The ships have an acceptable AI, they have rechargeable shields and they can now even be killed. Currently the game is far too easy, but it’s starting to look a little cooler at least.
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...
Home on Erik...
The number of letters in the word for each number
Just for fun, I generated these graphs of the number of letters in the word for each number. I...
over a year ago
Just for fun, I generated these graphs of the number of letters in the word for each number. I really spent about 10 minutes on this (ok…possibly also another 40 minutes tweaking the plots):
More languages!
Simply Explained
How I Use Alfred to Search My Obsidian Notes Faster (with Spotlight!)
In this post, I’ll show you how I integrated Obsidian into Alfred so I can search my vault from...
a year ago
In this post, I’ll show you how I integrated Obsidian into Alfred so I can search my vault from anywhere on my Mac. I just open Alfred, type “note” followed by my query, and see my search results. Hit enter and the correct note opens in Obsidian. Easy and quick!
Jonas Hietala
ghc 8.8.3 cannot find cabal 3.0.0.0 packages
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system...
over a year ago
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system it suddenly stopped working. I installed my dependencies with cabal install xmonad, and checked that it’s installed under ~/.cabal:
$ ls .cabal/bin/
xmonad@
But still when I...
Arduino Blog
UNO Rev3 or UNO R4? Choosing the perfect Arduino for your project
The Arduino UNO is legendary among makers, and with the release of the UNO R4 in 2023, the family...
4 days ago
The Arduino UNO is legendary among makers, and with the release of the UNO R4 in 2023, the family gained a powerful new member. But with two incredible options, which UNO should you pick for your project? Here’s a breakdown of what makes each board shine, depending on your needs,...
Jonas Hietala
The 4-Hour Chef: Scrambled Eggs
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to...
over a year ago
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to make changes and start doing new things. I got introduced to Josh Waitzkin’s excellent The Art of Learning and the meta skill of learning has since then fascinated me. So when I got...
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
Computer Ads from...
MicroSpeed PC-TRAC
Let's Get Right To the Point
7 months ago
Let's Get Right To the Point
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Posts on Made of...
Efficiency trades off against resiliency
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from...
a year ago
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from a well-designed and well-run service, what CPU utilization should we hope to see, averaged over a day or two?
It’s a very general question, and it’s not clear it should have a...
Neil Madden
API Security in Action is published!
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is...
over a year ago
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is now finally published. PDF copies are available now, with printed copies shipping by the end of the month. Kindle/ePub take a little bit longer but should be out in a few weeks...
./techtipsy
Disk is OK
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of...
over a year ago
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of Midas.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that I use my hardware for things they were never meant to be used for.
Anyway, I have acquired two Seagate 4TB external hard drives for doing some...
computers are bad
2024-08-12 a pedantic review of the las vegas loop
Did you hear that Elon Musk dug a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention
Center?
I think it is pretty...
4 months ago
Did you hear that Elon Musk dug a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention
Center?
I think it is pretty universally known by now that the "Las Vegas Loop" is
impractical, poorly thought out, and generally an embarrassment to society and
industry. I will spare an accounting of the...
Simply Explained
How I Structure My ESPHome Config Files
I'm a big fan of ESPHome. I have 24 devices running it, and I only buy new IoT devices when I know...
over a year ago
I'm a big fan of ESPHome. I have 24 devices running it, and I only buy new IoT devices when I know they can run ESPHome.ESPHome is a modular firmware that you have to configure with YAML files. You define what components it should load and how it should talk to the hardware of...
Notes on software...
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #43: An awesome drone trial in central London, legalised e-scooters at last, and...
And yes, I am on Bluesky.
a month ago
And yes, I am on Bluesky.
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.1
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02,...
9 months ago
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02, R65C02 and 65816 processors that André and I maintain is now at version 2.4.1. This optionally expands the syntax from 2.4.0 and fixes some bugs primarily with relocatable .o65...
Jonas Hietala
Browse posts with telescope.nvim
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some...
7 months ago
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some time.
I use find files together with it’s cousin .oldfiles (find recently opened files) all the time for finding source code files, blog posts, and more.
But it’s naturally...
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...
Home on Erik...
Pinterest open sources Pinball
Pinterest just open sourced Pinball which seems like an interesting Luigi alternative. There's two...
over a year ago
Pinterest just open sourced Pinball which seems like an interesting Luigi alternative. There's two blog posts: Pinball: Building workflow management (from 2014) and Open-sourcing Pinball (from this week). The author has a comment in the comments thread on Hacker News:
Applied Cartography
Finding null JSON values in Postgres
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the...
7 months ago
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the Django ORM into
SQL to do weird things, the syntax strikes me as confusing and arcane. As such, when I need to do esoteric things it
takes me longer time than I'd like, and in hopes...
Old Vintage...
Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games...
5 months ago
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games to a more downmarket age. If you couldn't afford the real device, your alternative was these inexpensive, inadequate facsimiles faithful only to one's gauzy recollection. As their...
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also...
over a year ago
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also to our training time. I haven’t trained a lot lately so it feels good to do something again and training the kids is very rewarding. On Monday I have the next graph theory lecture...
Arduino Blog
This beautiful table creates art in the sand
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen...
4 months ago
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen gardens that rake themselves in intricate patterns. But most of the builds we’ve seen use a conventional cartesian CNC layout or polar layout. This table by Newsons Electronics takes...
Willem's Blog
WordPress: 10 tips to secure your website
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using...
over a year ago
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using this blog post.
Engineers Need Art
Move Fast and Abandon Things
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside...
3 months ago
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside and abandoned.
Arduino Blog
Improve indoor air quality with Arduino
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities...
7 months ago
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities and power plants churning clouds of poison into the atmosphere. And while all this is still important, and has massive consequences for our health, it’s all too easy to overlook...
Willem's Blog
Health and fitness data
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal...
11 months ago
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal well-being and fitness goals shape our relationship with technology and self-awareness.
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!
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
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...
Yazin Alirhayim
The Trouble With Optionality
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one...
over a year ago
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one morning thinking “Why, it appears I’ve spent the past several decades of my life optimizing for optionality. Perhaps I should figure out why?”.
Most don’t even recognize the term –...
Notes on software...
Implementing a simple jq clone in Go, and basics of Go memory profiling
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of...
over a year ago
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of each object it reads. It won't be able to
do filters, mapping, etc.
$ cat large-file.json | head -n2 | ./jqgo...
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2021 newsletter
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement...
over a year ago
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement learning.
Notes on software...
A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its...
5 months ago
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its long-term data structure durably
to disk before returning to a client. Granted, this is a bad idea! And
granted, a WAL is critical for durability by design in most
databases. But I...
Willem's Blog
Helping people with free software
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
over a year ago
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
Construction Physics
Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post,...
2 months ago
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss.
Home on Erik...
Simple sabotage for software
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out...
a year ago
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out various ways for infiltrators to ruin productivity of a company. Some of the advice is timeless, for instance the section about “General interference with Organizations and...
Louwrentius
Performance monitoring using dstat
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is...
over a year ago
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is currently happening on your Linux box.
Dstat allows you to monitor the system load, disk troughput, disk io, network
bandwith, and many more items.
Dstat is so valuable because it...
Matt Blewitt
7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep...
3 weeks ago
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep abreast of - new technologies, different ways of solving problems, not to mention all the research coming out of universities. In 2025, consider spending a week with each of these...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Laying off Pintos
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished...
over a year ago
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished up our lab series about pintos. The labs were among the best I’ve had yet and I learned a ton. We didn’t follow the official instructions but we had our own assigmnets....
Willem's Blog
Working with special hardware from China
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with...
over a year ago
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with an embedded printer!
Good Enough
The Element of Surprise
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is...
a year ago
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is best, but rather as a side effect of how we all happened to meet each other. We met remotely, we did not end up all moving into some commune, and so to work together we must work...
Arduino Blog
Adding proximity unlock to an old car with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically...
5 months ago
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically unlocks the doors when the driver approaches while carrying their key fob. When paired with a push-to-start ignition switch, the driver never has to take their keys out of their pocket....
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How will Ethereum's multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs?
a year ago
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...
Willem's Blog
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive...
over a year ago
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive iPhone.
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
Neil Madden
API Security in Action handed over to production
After a flurry of last-minute corrections and updates in response to review feedback, my book has...
over a year ago
After a flurry of last-minute corrections and updates in response to review feedback, my book has now been handed over to Manning’s production team. That means a few weeks of copy editing and graphics polish, then indexing and typesetting to produce the final version around...
Computer Ads from...
Mark Williams' C Programming System
What C did for Programming Mark Williams has done for C Programming
4 months ago
What C did for Programming Mark Williams has done for C Programming
./techtipsy
Your Wi-Fi might be terrible because of Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS)
For a few months, I had issues with my Wi-Fi network. The 2.4 GHz network would be fine, but the 5...
a month ago
For a few months, I had issues with my Wi-Fi network. The 2.4 GHz network would be fine, but the 5 GHz one would
suddenly stop working and completely disappear from the available Wi-Fi networks. OpenWRT upgrades also didn’t improve
the situation. This was very annoying.
After...
computers are bad
2023-03-24 docker
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a...
a year ago
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a lot of advantages. But I am supposedly a DevOps
professional, and so I will occasionally indulge in giving DevOps advice... or
at least opinions, which are sort of like advice but...
Neil Madden
Hybrid encryption and the KEM/DEM paradigm
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a...
over a year ago
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a message with a public key encryption algorithm like RSA. This is for many reasons, one of which being that it is incredibly slow. Instead you do what’s called hybrid encryption:...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The different types of ZK-EVMs
over a year ago
Neil Madden
SipHash-based encryption for constrained devices
I see a lot of attempts to define encryption schemes for constrained devices with short...
7 months ago
I see a lot of attempts to define encryption schemes for constrained devices with short authentication tags (e.g., 64 bits) using universal hashing. For example, there’s a proposal in CFRG at the moment for a version of AES-GCM with short tags for this kind of use-case. In my...
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
over a year ago
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 17 - an hour or two into it
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a...
over a year ago
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a massage course (which by the way was pretty darn good), and about halfway there this is what I’ve done:
Chockingly… ugly
All is not what meets the eye though, I’ve got the basics done...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
How I ship projects at big tech companies
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to...
a month ago
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to lead new ones when it’s important to get…
Notes on software...
Writing to be read
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails,...
over a year ago
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails, guides, etc. Each provides immense
value; a document may be the key to an important process. The goal is
to remove barriers -- to encourage understanding and correct
application of...
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...
Construction Physics
Will the China Cycle Come for Airbus and Boeing?
Noah Smith, author of the economics Substack Noahpinion, often refers to a common trajectory in...
2 months ago
Noah Smith, author of the economics Substack Noahpinion, often refers to a common trajectory in Chinese manufacturing as the “China Cycle”:
latest projects -...
LED Industrial Piercing
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
a year ago
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… Go
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by...
over a year ago
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by Christopher Clark and Amos Storkey was forwarded to me by Michael Eickenberg. It's about using convolutional neural networks to play Go.
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Louwrentius
Setting up a VPN with your iPhone using L2TP, IPSec and Linux
This blogpost discusses how to setup an IPSec-based VPN between your iPhone and a Linux server....
over a year ago
This blogpost discusses how to setup an IPSec-based VPN between your iPhone and a Linux server.
Updated 16 October 2012 - now compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
IMPORTANT! (update January 2013)
I find using OpenVPN with the new iOS OpenVPN client a way better solution. OpenVPN...
Home on Erik...
The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old...
over a year ago
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects, with help from the formidable GitPython project.
watchTowr Labs -...
Visionaries Have Democratised Remote Network Access - Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops...
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive...
a month ago
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive Artifact Generator). This time, it’s in Citrix’s “Virtual Apps and Desktops” offering.
This is a tech stack that enables end-users (and likely, your friendly neighbourhood...
Arduino Blog
Arduino and Truesense partner to bring UWB technology to millions
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB)...
a month ago
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, known for its innovative software and hardware solutions. This collaboration enhances our ecosystem of hardware products, software solutions, and cloud services,...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
2 months ago
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Home on Erik...
ML+Hadoop at NYC Predictive Analytics
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning...
over a year ago
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning algorithms using Hadoop to power music recommendations.
Great meetup, where we had two speakers, me and Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
Home on Erik...
Google diversity memo, global warming, Pascal's wager, and other stuff
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple...
over a year ago
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple of weeks ago. I think the case for any biological difference is pretty weak, and it bothers me when people refer to an “interest gap” as anything else than caused by the...
Simply Explained
Good Home Automation Should be Boring
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other...
over a year ago
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other people's setup for inspiration, and one thing struck me. Many people have cluttered dashboards and use Home Assistant to track just about any metric they can.That's quite different...
Buck on Software
Crypto and Chasing the Dragon
Marc and Ben’s midlife crisis and the Crypto Crusades
over a year ago
Marc and Ben’s midlife crisis and the Crypto Crusades
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Willem's Blog
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during...
over a year ago
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during the music festival.
Arduino Blog
Marble art madness from a marvelous machine
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all...
2 months ago
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all sorts of neat colors. That last characteristic makes them suitable for artwork, like orbicular pixels. In his most ambitious project to date, Engineezy took advantage of those...
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...
computers are bad
2024-10-26 buy payphones and retire
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress...
a month ago
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally
legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income
mostly for their promoters, can feel like a...
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...
Home on Erik...
Ping the world
I just pinged a few million random IP addresses from my apartment in NYC. Here's the result:
Some...
over a year ago
I just pinged a few million random IP addresses from my apartment in NYC. Here's the result:
Some notes:
What's going on with Sweden? Too much torrenting? Ireland is likewise super slow, but not Northern Ireland Eastern Ukraine is also super slow, maybe not surprising given...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
An approximate introduction to how zk-SNARKs are possible
over a year ago
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000...
10 months ago
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors.
Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to design the processor, but it was falling behind schedule.
The design team decided to automate chunks of the layout, developing "automatic...
detreville
🎼This Is the Worst Trip I’ve Ever Been On 🎶
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
7 months ago
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
Home on Erik...
Why conversion matters: a toy model
There are often close relationships between top level business metrics. For instance, it's well...
over a year ago
There are often close relationships between top level business metrics. For instance, it's well known that retention has a super strong impact on the valuation of a subscription business. Or that the % of occupied seats is super important for an airline.
Vitalik Buterin's...
La Guía Incompleta de los Rollups
over a year ago
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
2 weeks ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Neil Madden
A few clarifications about CVE-2022-21449
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating...
over a year ago
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating around on Reddit/Twitter etc: The bug only impacts Java 15 and above. The original advisory from Oracle incorrectly listed earlier versions (like 7, 8 and 11) as being impacted....
Simply Explained
Static webhosting benchmark: AWS, Google, Firebase, Netlify, GitHub & Cloudflare
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there...
over a year ago
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there isn't a CMS to hack. Once you build a static website, however, the question becomes: Where do I host?In other words: what is the fastest static website hosting provider in 2020?...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 15: Rebranding to Lighthouse and complete redesign
a year ago
Arduino Blog
This desk lamp automatically adjusts its brightness using AI on an Arduino UNO
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today,...
6 months ago
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today, you probably assume that they require a massive amount of processing power. And while that is often true, there are machine learning models that can run on the edge — including on...
Avestura's Blog
Oversimplified ideas of the great philosophers of all times
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
a year ago
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
over a year ago
computers are bad
2023-01-16 huff-duff
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an...
a year ago
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an extremely useful property of HF radio here is that HF
frequencies can reflect off of the upper layers of the atmosphere, causing them
to rebound towards earth at a range much further...
computers are bad
2023-01-29 the parallel port
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel...
a year ago
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel printer capture device.
This contains the line:
There are other projects out there, but when you google for terms such as
"parallel port to usb", they drown in a sea of "USB to...
Louwrentius
Why I believe the new Mac Pro won't be a great machine for gaming
In Accidental Tech Podcast episode 18 (love the show), I learned that John Siracusa was thinking...
over a year ago
In Accidental Tech Podcast episode 18 (love the show), I learned that John Siracusa was thinking about buying a new Mac Pro for gaming.
I believe that gaming on the new Mac Pro will be a mediocre experience.
Driver support: as John mentioned himself, the video cards are...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Major failure
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s...
9 months ago
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s first major failure.
I know I earlier described how the extruder starter skipping in a big way, but that was just some filament getting stuck in the extruder.
This time a part...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 16: Explore all available articles of a feed
3 months ago
Louwrentius
Recycle your old laptop display and turn it into a monitor
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just...
over a year ago
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just collecting dust on a shelf for many years. Although I didn't have any purpose for them anymore, I realised that the displays were still perfectly fine.
This is the display of my old 13"...
Willem's Blog
Tudor Black Bay 36 long-term review
For the past six months I have been wearing the same watch, every day and night. Read along to learn...
over a year ago
For the past six months I have been wearing the same watch, every day and night. Read along to learn what makes the Tudor Black Bay 36 the perfect every day watch.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
Louwrentius
Linux network interface bonding / trunking or how to get beyond 1 Gb/s
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP...
over a year ago
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP connection.
UPDATE July 2011
Due to hardware problems, I was not able to achieve transfer speeds
beyond 150 MB/s. By replacing a network card with one from another
vendor (HP...
./techtipsy
My server setups throughout the years
My self-hosting adventure started during my university days. Once I actually had money to buy myself...
over a year ago
My self-hosting adventure started during my university days. Once I actually had money to buy myself a decent used laptop
(ThinkPad T430) that had more than 3GB of RAM that my ThinkPad T60 had, I could use some of my older hardware as
testbeds for any of the stupid ideas that I...
Construction Physics
Born Sleeping
A personal post about the loss of our son
3 months ago
A personal post about the loss of our son
Notes on software...
Is it worth writing about?
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and...
over a year ago
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and sharing the learning
process.
Professionals seem naturally to imagine a high bar for what
is worth writing about.
I think that's misguided. This article is not criticism of folks...
Willem's Blog
Understanding the security concerns in shared hosting
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use...
over a year ago
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use security holes to hack your app, webshop or website!
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