Posts on Made of...
Indices point between elements
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a...
over a year ago
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a diagram of an array, the array indices, and the array elements, odds are good you’d produce a diagram something like this:
In this post, I want to persuade you to replace that image, or,...
Willem's Blog
Swimming and cycling with Apple Watch
This month I tested the newest watchOS while swimming and cycling.
over a year ago
This month I tested the newest watchOS while swimming and cycling.
./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...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 6 (End Sound)
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
8 months ago
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
Applied Cartography
You should use Helpscout
Was digging through old issues of the personal site and found this draft snippet:
I was evaluating...
10 months ago
Was digging through old issues of the personal site and found this draft snippet:
I was evaluating HelpScout as a potential first step in a series of many, many steps to onboard a dedicated support engineer for Buttondown, and it turns out that the process of adding custom...
Louwrentius
Raspberry Pi as a router using a single network interface
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run...
over a year ago
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run your own router at home, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B1 can be an excelent hardware choice:
it's fairly cheap
it's fast enough
it can saturate it's gigabit network port
it is...
Notes on software...
Running SQL Server in a container on Github Actions
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.
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...
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.
Arduino Blog
This giant animatronic LEGO minifig zombie is a delight
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough...
4 months ago
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough constraint to force people to consider their art and design choices. That’s exactly the kind of pressure that Wicked Makers’ Jaimie and Jay thrive under, leading them to build this...
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...
Abort Retry Fail
Unboxing New Old Stock Windows 3.11
A Photo Gallery
a year ago
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....
Louwrentius
ZFS RAIDZ expansion is awesome but has a small caveat
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The Github PR about this feature is rather stale and people are wondering what the status is and what the plans are. Meanwhile, FreeBSD has announced In February 2023 that they...
Home on Erik...
Fun with trigonometry: the world's most twisted coastline
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of...
over a year ago
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of Italy, the Mediterranean sea was to the east, because the house was situated on a long bay.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Printing & Tuning
It’s up and running, and now it’s finally printing time!
Less exciting—but necessary—tuning the...
a year ago
It’s up and running, and now it’s finally printing time!
Less exciting—but necessary—tuning the printer to make the prints better.
Filament shipment
Even though I’ve been building the printer for more than a month, I wasn’t ready for it being time for printing so soon.
I don’t...
Good Enough
Cosmic Maelstrom
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's...
a year ago
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's weird to be in this situation. Most of the Good Enough team are used to working on just one software at a time, focusing on steadily improving it. But right now we're doing the...
Willem's Blog
Computer says no
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the...
over a year ago
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the power we put into these things.
Jonas Hietala
ISOC update
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an...
over a year ago
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an update post of what I’ve done so far. I will write a more extensive summary post at the end of the project. I was planning on writing a weekly summary, but that ship sailed a long...
Matt Mullenweg
DrupalCon Singapore
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform...
a week ago
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform creators, developers, and supporters. Last year, I had the chance to share the stage with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and the conversation stuck with me. It highlighted the...
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
4 months ago
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
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.
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Opsbros
JSON and PowerShell
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will...
over a year ago
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will allow you to manipulate these objects efficiently.
Jonas Hietala
FTL got a new victim
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone...
over a year ago
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone you’d expect, it’s even someone who said: “What a bad game” when she saw me playing it. But nevertheless this Saturday she played it more than 2.5 hours!
I told Veronica I wanted...
Jonas Hietala
Minor site updates
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started...
over a year ago
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started looking at moving to Pygments as my highlighter. With some searching around I found a blog post about just that! That’s lucky because while I like Haskell, I’ve never really grocked it...
./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...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240102
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
11 months ago
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Notes on software...
Studying foreign languages with inbox zero
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language...
over a year ago
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language was through intensive language courses in
college. I was forced to actively speak, read, and write Chinese for
6-8 hours a week (1-2 hours every day). Then study another 5-10 hours
a...
Jonas Hietala
The Little Things in Life
It’s the little things in life that makes it extra special. Sometimes it’s the luxury of coffee...
over a year ago
It’s the little things in life that makes it extra special. Sometimes it’s the luxury of coffee together with the morning paper and other times it’s just a small simple smile from a random stranger, kid or dog. Today when I got this bad headache I got saved by a two hour nap and...
Notes on software...
Writing a web server from scratch: 1. HTTP and sockets
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd...
over a year ago
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd like to be able to render this page in a web browser. If
the server is hosted locally we may want to enter
localhost:9000/hello-world.html in the address bar, hit
enter, make a...
Notes on software...
Lessons learned streaming building a Scheme-like interpreter in Go
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like...
a year ago
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like language (minus macros and arrays and
tons of stuff).
I picked this simple topic because I wanted a low-stakes way to learn
what I did not know about making videos.
Here was the...
Matt Blewitt
Shunn
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts...
6 months ago
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts to publishers. It was created by author William Shunn and is widely used in the publishing industry. Here is a brief demonstration of a tool I wrote to facilitate generating...
Gwern.net Newsletter
September 2020 News
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no...
over a year ago
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no reviews.
./techtipsy
This site will be offline on 2022-08-17 between 18:00-19:00 EEST
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an...
over a year ago
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an opportunity to send a signal and test the capabilities of
my UPS.
I’ve prepared for this moment with my self-hosting setup, let’s see how well it
holds up. Hopefully better than...
Home on Erik...
Music recommendations using cover images (part 1)
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in...
over a year ago
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in fact a fairly strong visual proxy for what kind of content you can expect from it. I started wondering if the album cover can in fact be used for recommendations.
Simply Explained
How WebP Images Reduced My Bandwidth Usage by 50%
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP...
over a year ago
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP images to save bandwidth and make this site even faster to load! This simple change reduced my bandwidth usage by 50% and is still backwards compatible with old devices and...
anderegg.ca
Jet Lag: The Game: The Game
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next...
a month ago
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next season, and also a “home version” of the game. I’ve written about Jet Lag: The Game before, so you might want to start there if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
On the latest...
Willem's Blog
Designing my own watch
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical...
over a year ago
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical annual calendar designed to be understated and true to the metal.
Jonas Hietala
Doing some online Personality tests
For some reason I’ve done a couple of personality tests the last month, mostly to satisfy my own...
over a year ago
For some reason I’ve done a couple of personality tests the last month, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.
The Braverman Test
Inspired by Charles Poliquin’s visit on The Tim Ferriss Show I tried out the Braverman test to determine my neurotransmitter type. The point Charles...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
5 months ago
Arduino Blog
Can this tiny lawn mower robot cut it in the real world?
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down...
6 months ago
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down and consumer trust goes up. They work a bit like Roomba vacuums and pathfinding sophistication varies from one model to the next. But even the most basic models are still a lot...
Gwern.net Newsletter
August 2020 gwern.net newsletter
with an essay on sidenotes; links on human competence, efficient-computing/hardware-overhangs; no...
over a year ago
with an essay on sidenotes; links on human competence, efficient-computing/hardware-overhangs; no reviews.
Jonas Hietala
Calling closures in a Vec
In rust one might want to have a list of closures, for example as a list of callbacks.
let mut fs:...
over a year ago
In rust one might want to have a list of closures, for example as a list of callbacks.
let mut fs: Vec<||> = Vec::new();
fs.push(|| { println!("imma firing my lazer"); });
for f in fs.iter() {
f(); // error: expected function but found `&||`
};
Maybe if we borrow...
Jonas Hietala
October theme says: Numbers
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay...
over a year ago
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay Project theme which this month is numbers. What’s it gonna be? A sudoku game or something more… thrilling? I’ll see what I can do :)
Willem's Blog
Servicing a robot vacuum cleaner
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to...
over a year ago
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to learn how I did it.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
Electronics etc…
Setting Up a Symmetricom SyncServer S200 Network Time Protocol Server
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS...
5 months ago
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS Antenna!
The SyncServer S200 Outside and Inside
Installing the Missing BNC Connectors
Setting Up a SyncServer S200 from Scratch
Opening up the SyncServer S200
The SyncServer File...
Arduino Blog
You can now work in collaboration in Arduino Cloud
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT...
3 months ago
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT projects. Traditional code sharing and editing methods, like using offline IDEs or swapping files manually, often slow down projects and lead to mistakes. This can be a hassle and...
Push to Prod
Comprehension of Concurrency is a Lifelong Journey
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
5 months ago
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
Posts on Made of...
Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had...
over a year ago
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had worked, using a trigram index.
By that point, I’d already implemented early versions of my own livegrep source-code search engine, using a different indexing approach that I...
Willem's Blog
Back to the University
Join me on a special course exploring scientific programming, the perfect moment to learn Python...
a year ago
Join me on a special course exploring scientific programming, the perfect moment to learn Python with recent advancements in machine learning like ChatGPT!
Electronics etc…
HP 33120A Repair - Shutting Down the Eye of Sauron
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener...
a year ago
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener Replacement
Staring at the Eye of Sauron
FLIR IR Imaging
To Destroy a PCB in Order to Save It
Circuit Reconstruction
Success!
Trust but Verify
Conclusion
References
Introduction
When the...
Arduino Blog
This perplexing robotic performer operates under the control of three different Arduino boards
Every decade or two, humanity seems to develop a renewed interest in humanoid robots and their...
2 months ago
Every decade or two, humanity seems to develop a renewed interest in humanoid robots and their potential within our world. Because the practical applications are actually pretty limited (given the high cost), we inevitably begin to consider how those robots might function as...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Attach a running process to a new terminal
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an...
over a year ago
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don’t want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use...
Arduino Blog
Arduino CLI 1.0 is out!
We are excited to share some incredible news with you all! We recently released the Arduino CLI...
3 months ago
We are excited to share some incredible news with you all! We recently released the Arduino CLI version 1.0.0, marking a significant milestone for our software. This release is a big deal because it signifies the stabilization of the software API, bringing greater reliability and...
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!
Posts on Made of...
Tracking down a memory leak in Ruby's EventMachine
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services....
over a year ago
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services. Over the last several months, we’ve known that one such service suffered from a gradual memory leak, that would cause its memory usage to gradually balloon from a normal ~50MB to...
Willem's Blog
The value of notifications
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the...
over a year ago
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the time to set them up correctly, notifications can actually save you time!
Home on Erik...
How to set compensation using commonsense principles
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right...
over a year ago
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right is obviously extremely important. Compensation is what drives our entire economy, and you could look at the market for labor as one gigantic resource-allocating machine in the same...
Arduino Blog
The Club Master is a Nano RP2040 Connect-powered device that improves your golf swing
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even...
6 months ago
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even small deviations can be the difference between a hole-in-one and additional strokes. To improve his game, Concept Bytes has designed a small clip-on device called the “Club Master.”...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/2 keyboard layout
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my...
over a year ago
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my last update on the T-34 keyboard layout, and I’ve made some changes I’d like to document here.
As seen in the heatmap above, the layout seems quite decent. There’s still an issue...
Simply Explained
Filtering spam on YouTube with TensorFlow & AI
My YouTube channel has been attracting a lot of spammers. They try to trick people by saying they...
over a year ago
My YouTube channel has been attracting a lot of spammers. They try to trick people by saying they know how to profit from trading cryptocurrencies or that they can recover lost wallet keys.I've been marking these comments as spam, thinking that YouTube would learn to recognize...
Home on Erik...
I believe in the 10x engineer, but...
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be...
over a year ago
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be a 10x engineer if they do nothing for 364 days then convinces the team to change programming language to a 2x more productive language.
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Discover #Virgil: history comes to life with Arduino
We’re excited to introduce #Virgil, an innovative project that combines the power of Arduino...
2 months ago
We’re excited to introduce #Virgil, an innovative project that combines the power of Arduino technology with a passion for history, creating a groundbreaking interactive experience for museums. Using Arduino’s versatile and scalable ecosystem, #Virgil operates completely...
Notes on software...
In response to a frontend developer asking about database development
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: termios(3) and stty
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part...
over a year ago
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 if you’re new here)
In this entry, we’ll look at the interfaces that are used to control the behavior of the “termios” box sitting between the master and slave pty. The behaviors...
Vitalik Buterin's...
El recurso escaso más importante es la legitimidad
over a year ago
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.
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1985/12 Australian Personal Computer Mag
Some computer related levity from OZ
2 weeks ago
Some computer related levity from OZ
Home on Erik...
Detecting corporate fraud using Benford's law
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a...
over a year ago
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a phenomenon where numbers in any data series will exhibit patterns in their first digit. For instance, if you took a list of the 1,000 longest rivers of Mongolia, or the average daily...
Neil Madden
How do you use a bearer URL?
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to...
over a year ago
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to incorporate a bearer token (such as an OAuth access token) into a URL. That blog post concentrated on the technical details of how that would work and the security properties of the...
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
Postmortem: Balls
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one...
over a year ago
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one single game?! Well now I’m not counting the visual basic nightmare mastermind I made a long time ago but a real game. Whatever that means. I’ve had these monster-projects;
Point...
Louwrentius
Scrub your NAS hard drives regularly if you care about your data
Introduction
Lots of people run a NAS at home. Maybe it's a COTS device from one of the well-known...
over a year ago
Introduction
Lots of people run a NAS at home. Maybe it's a COTS device from one of the well-known vendors1, or it's a custom build solution (DIY2) based on hardware you bought and assembled yourself.
Buying or building a NAS is one thing, but operating it in a way that assures...
./techtipsy
About the time I used Google Drive as a CMS for a web app
Near the beginning of my software development career, I worked on a pretty
standard web application....
over a year ago
Near the beginning of my software development career, I worked on a pretty
standard web application. The project was not a commercial success, but it did
give me a good technical foundation that turned out to be very useful for my
career so far.
For those interested, the tech...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 24: Content parsing improvements
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Monty Hall
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they...
over a year ago
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they discussed the famous Monty Hall Problem. I’ve heard about it before
and I know the answer, but he mentioned a simulation of the problem and that sounded
cool so I made a simulation of...
Notes on software...
Exploring Postgres's arena allocator by writing an HTTP server from scratch
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a month ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 9: The Next Phase of Growth
over a year ago
./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...
Engineers Need Art
Soft Dorothy Software — Shareware Projects
Wherein I attempt to recover and restore old shareware code and program again like it's 1989.
3 months ago
Wherein I attempt to recover and restore old shareware code and program again like it's 1989.
Home on Erik...
Iterate or die
Here's a conclusion I've made building consumer products for many years: the speed at which a...
over a year ago
Here's a conclusion I've made building consumer products for many years: the speed at which a company innovates is limited by its iteration speed.
I don't even mean throughput here. I just mean the cycle time.
Notes on software...
Tail call elimination
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated...
over a year ago
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated in an interpreter, a compiler targeting
C++, and a compiler targeting LLVM IR.
Tail calls
A tail call is a function call made at the end of a block that
returns the value of the...
Willem's Blog
Scalable application design without magic
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I...
over a year ago
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I did this by leveraging the client's computing power having it handle most of the user interaction workload.
Electronics etc…
Increasing Frequency Counter Precision with Linear Regression
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Simply Explained
Retrospective: 4 years on YouTube
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate,...
over a year ago
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate, and set goals for the coming year. This year is no exception. January 13th, 2020, marks my fourth year on YouTube. Time to do a little retrospective.
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
Netrunner Spring Tournament
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very...
over a year ago
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very casual setting but there were also some guys who came from… Västerås I think, but I’m not sure. We managed to scrape together 9 people at least, and I didn’t notice anyone bringing...
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.
Jonas Hietala
2021 in review
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year...
over a year ago
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year I’ve done this kind of quick review… Time sure flies.
2021 Non-Geek Achievements
Started strength training using a strength coach from Kabuki.
I got inspired by the book Peak that...
Jonas Hietala
I Made It!
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a...
over a year ago
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a Ludum Dare! Not an easy feat and yet there are tons of games that look absolutely wonderful. I’m not there yet but now I have at least gotten back into game making again, long...
Louwrentius
Finding a good blu-ray player for Mac OS X
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these...
over a year ago
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these free open-source products are all a usability nightmare.
To play a Blu-ray movie, you have to perform these steps:
right-click on the BDMV file
choose 'show packet contents'
go to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
An approximate introduction to how zk-SNARKs are possible
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
Louwrentius
Parallel / distributed password cracking with John the Ripper and MPI
This article has been updated to reflect the changes for John version 1.7.8 as released in june...
over a year ago
This article has been updated to reflect the changes for John version 1.7.8 as released in june 2011.
The most important change is the fact that MPI support is now integrated in the jumbo patch.
The original John the Ripper off-line password cracker only uses a single processor...
Jonas Hietala
Rewriting my blog in Rust for fun and profit
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think...
over a year ago
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think I used Jekyll and also more dynamic pages with Mojolicious in Perl and Kohana in PHP, but I can’t be completely sure as the git history doesn’t go back that far.
But all good...
Jonas Hietala
Top ten activities that make me happy
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome....
over a year ago
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome. It’s no more than a year old and feels very fresh compared to the old one. It’s also larger with an extra room, dishwasher (!) and closer to the city centrum and everything is...
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
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Halo and more: exploring incremental verification and SNARKs without pairings
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
Willem's Blog
Climbing Mount Etna
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
over a year ago
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
Posts on Made of...
Reflections on software performance
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining...
over a year ago
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining characteristic: Livegrep, Taktician, and Sorbet (I discussed sorbet in particular last time, and livegrep in an earlier post). I’ve also done a lot of other performance work on the...
Willem's Blog
Different ways to visualise health
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
over a year ago
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Porting and hacking Llama2.c for fun and profit
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…
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...
Willem's Blog
Some thoughts on touch screen user interface design
I am working on a new app involving personal health that requires a natural intuitive interface that...
over a year ago
I am working on a new app involving personal health that requires a natural intuitive interface that works well on touch screens. It's good to check out some best practices for touch UI design
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...
Electronics etc…
Measuring the HP 11720A Pulse Modulator and Coax Cables
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse Modulator
Inside the HP 11720A
Measurement Setup for a Quick Testing Session
Pin Modulator Power Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Loss Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Power Measurements with...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
Jonas Hietala
2010 in review
I saw a post on briancarper where he reviews the past year and it sounds like a great idea...
over a year ago
I saw a post on briancarper where he reviews the past year and it sounds like a great idea actually.
2010 Geek Achievements
Wrote a few games earlier this year;
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
A Geek Valentine
Beebop The Island Hopper
Where’s Teddy?
Updated this site a...
Jonas Hietala
Slackware installation notes
It seems like it’s been a yearly recurrence reinstalling slackware from scratch. This time it...
over a year ago
It seems like it’s been a yearly recurrence reinstalling slackware from scratch. This time it happened during my vacation when I was mucking around with trying to compile erlang with wxWidgets support and somehow a make clean started to remove / and I only noticed it too late…...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
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...
Style over Substance
My Home Assistant setup (2023 edition)
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s...
a year ago
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s become such a hobby of mine that I’ve even started coding add-ons for it. While there are other popular automation platforms, Home Assistant’s versatility blows the rest out of the...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 2.0
Success and Litigation
a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Testing and feedback loops
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about...
over a year ago
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about testing and the purpose testing serves in software engineering, and to explore some of the suggestions of this model.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I think a lot about working in...
Willem's Blog
From tree to table
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
over a year ago
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
Home on Erik...
More Luigi!
Continuing in the same spirit of shameless self-promotion, here's some recent Luigi press:
Reddit...
over a year ago
Continuing in the same spirit of shameless self-promotion, here's some recent Luigi press:
Reddit thread A Guide to Python Frameworks for Hadoop (slides from the NYC Hadoop User Group) This presentation from the Open Analytics NYC meetup about how Foursquare uses Luigi Luigi...
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring day ham radio activation in Hiastinlahti, Finland
Hiastinlahti is a bay where river Iijoki flows into Bothnian Bay, the northernmost part of Gulf of...
a year ago
Hiastinlahti is a bay where river Iijoki flows into Bothnian Bay, the northernmost part of Gulf of Bothnia. This area is a Nature 2000 nature reserve area and good spot for bird watching. The area has a two kilometer long nature trail with fireplace, lean-to and toilet. From the...
./techtipsy
Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without...
over a year ago
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without issues
and as a testbed for playing around with MySQL.
I wanted it to be a useful device again, but had trouble finding an use case for it due to its hardware limitations.
After...
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.
Neil Madden
When a KEM is not enough
In my previous post, I described the KEM/DEM paradigm for hybrid encryption. The key encapsulation...
over a year ago
In my previous post, I described the KEM/DEM paradigm for hybrid encryption. The key encapsulation mechanism is given the recipient’s public key and outputs a fresh AES key and an encapsulation of that key that the recipient can decapsulate to recover the AES key. In this post I...
Posts on Made of...
Measuring Capacity Through Utilization
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts...
over a year ago
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts when thinking about instrumenting a system to understand its overall performance and capacity is what I call “time utilization”.
By this I mean: If you look at the behavior of a...
Construction Physics
The Influence of Bell Labs
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a...
a month ago
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.
Avestura's Blog
What is the type of Type?
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
over a year ago
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
Lighthouse Blog
What I want to achieve with Lighthouse
10 months ago
Arduino Blog
This UNO R4 WiFi-controlled device streamlines a restaurant’s online order system
Most successful restaurants operating today have to take advantage of online ordering, as a huge...
4 months ago
Most successful restaurants operating today have to take advantage of online ordering, as a huge chunk of customers have switched to takeout and delivery. But point-of-sale (POS) systems don’t always integrate well into a kitchen’s workflow and that can lead to missed orders —...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
7ème tour des subventions Gitcoin - Rétrospective
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
New benchmarks for approximate nearest neighbors
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy...
over a year ago
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy interests include approximate algorithms for nearest neighbors in high-dimensional spaces. The problem is simple. You have say 1M points in some high-dimensional space.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
The Grand Stand
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
a month ago
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
Vitalik Buterin's...
Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond
over a year ago
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...
Louwrentius
LFS - Linux Firewall Script released
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux...
over a year ago
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux Firewall Script.
I run a small Linux box as an internet router that doubles as a firewall. The
firewall is configured using iptables. In my opinion, iptables is not the
easiest tool to...
Home on Erik...
NYC Machine Learning meetup
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly....
over a year ago
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly. Unfortunately the quality isn't the best.
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
lcamtuf’s thing
Lies, damned lies, and photodiodes
Diffusion and drift currents: depending on what you're trying to do, photodiodes can be really fast...
a week ago
Diffusion and drift currents: depending on what you're trying to do, photodiodes can be really fast or infuriatingly slow.
Jonas Hietala
September theme: Failure
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon...
over a year ago
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon I hope and again I’m following Experimental Gameplay Project’s site.
Let’s rock!!
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 4
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
a year ago
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
Home on Erik...
We're hiring at Better
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the...
over a year ago
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the team here in NYC lately—the tech team has actually grown from 35 to 60 in just ~3 months.
./techtipsy
Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively...
a year ago
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while.
A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition.
During the Steam summer sale of 2023, I went...
Posts on Made of...
Why scons is cool
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not...
over a year ago
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that it’s a probably far better choice than make in many cases. The main exceptions would be cases where you need to integrate into legacy...
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
Posts on Made of...
Some notes on CVE-2010-3081 exploitability
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity...
over a year ago
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity when it was discovered an announced, due to allowing local privilege escalation against virtually all 64-bit Linux kernels in common use at the time.
While investigating...
Louwrentius
How to resolve extreme memory usage on Windows 2008 R2-based file servers
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on...
over a year ago
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on Windows 2008 R2. I've noticed extreme memory usage on the server. After a reboot, it slowly builds up until almost all RAM memory is consumed.
So I googled around and found this post...
./techtipsy
Running on fumes
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with...
over a year ago
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with this fun little bug:
0GB ought to be enough for anybody.
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON parser
Writing a JSON parser is one of the easiest ways to get familiar with
parsing techniques. The format...
over a year ago
Writing a JSON parser is one of the easiest ways to get familiar with
parsing techniques. The format is extremely simple. It's defined
recursively so you get a slight challenge compared to, say, parsing
Brainfuck; and you probably
already use JSON. Aside from that last point,...
Willem's Blog
Search like a pro: Google search operators
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter...
over a year ago
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter your search results.
Louwrentius
Determining smartphone market share using wireless sniffing
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most...
over a year ago
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most smartphones support wifi and most people don't bother disabling
wifi when they go outdoors1. If wifi is left on, it is possible to detect these
smartphones and track their movement. To...
computers are bad
2024-07-31 just disconnect the internet
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of...
4 months ago
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of their Windows install base with a poorly tested content
update. Rough day at the office, huh? There are lots of things you could say
about this, lots of reasons it happens this way,...
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...
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...
watchTowr Labs -...
Auth. Bypass In (Un)Limited Scenarios - Progress MOVEit Transfer (CVE-2024-5806)
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!-...
6 months ago
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne [def_not_phalanx@kernel.org] has joined #!hack (irc.efnet.nl)
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne changed the topic of #!hack to: mag1c sh0w
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Summer Tournament Linköping
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs...
over a year ago
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs with Old Hollywood and The Universe of Tomorrow so a lot of new things were tried. I heard a rumor that a full playset of both Aesop’s Pawnshop and Wyldside were available so I...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1986/06 Australian Personal Computer Mag
It’s that time of the month. This time let’s look at humor from down under. These comics are from...
8 months ago
It’s that time of the month. This time let’s look at humor from down under. These comics are from the June 1986 issue of Australian Computer magazine. Enjoy! What computer ads would you like to see in the future? Please comment below. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your...
Posts on Made of...
Towards solving Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey...
over a year ago
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey into interesting algorithms and high-performance parallel programming in Rust.
Backstory Starting around the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve gotten myself deeply nerdsniped...
Home on Erik...
When machine learning matters
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to...
over a year ago
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive.
Willem's Blog
Optimising images for the web and performance
Make your website faster by optimising the images. This posts explains how you can do this.
over a year ago
Make your website faster by optimising the images. This posts explains how you can do this.
Good Enough
TIL: Rails Testing
I had to figure out how to run browser-based tests in Rails again. In part that meant working around...
a year ago
I had to figure out how to run browser-based tests in Rails again. In part that meant working around my lack of Chrome. Rails System Tests with Safari.
I also had some problems with Rails Turbo Drive taking over EVERYTHING, which required me to figure out how to deal with a Rails...
Vitalik Buterin's...
My 40-liter backpack travel guide
over a year ago
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...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
My first shooter! It’s working (although a friend got a null pointer error) so I’m a little...
over a year ago
My first shooter! It’s working (although a friend got a null pointer error) so I’m a little happy.
The Time
I spent about 24 hours on this game. A whopping 30% was break time, mostly me eating, reading manga or playing games… This is proof of me being really lazy this month I...
Willem's Blog
Solo around the Markermeer (211KM)
This week I took my bike for a long distance (211)KM ride around the Dutch Markermeer, solo! Read...
over a year ago
This week I took my bike for a long distance (211)KM ride around the Dutch Markermeer, solo! Read along for practical tips for long distance cycling.
Home on Erik...
Luigi success
So Luigi, our open sourced workflow engine in Python, just recently passed 1,000 stars on Github,...
over a year ago
So Luigi, our open sourced workflow engine in Python, just recently passed 1,000 stars on Github, then shortly after passed mrjob as (I think) the most popular Python package to do Hadoop stuff. This is exciting!
Odds and Ends of...
Christmas Mailbag!
Is Elon Musk actually smart? Will HS2 ever be properly finished? Do I like Dominic Cummings? And...
3 days ago
Is Elon Musk actually smart? Will HS2 ever be properly finished? Do I like Dominic Cummings? And more!
Home on Erik...
Better precision and faster index building in Annoy
Sometimes you have these awesome insights. A few days ago I got an idea for how to improve index...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have these awesome insights. A few days ago I got an idea for how to improve index building in Annoy.
For anyone who isn't acquainted with Annoy – it's a C++ library with Python bindings that provides fast high-dimensional nearest neighbor search.
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/1 keyboard layout
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this...
over a year ago
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this particular version without any major changes for almost 3 months, so I’d say it’s a good improvement over the last revision.
There are two large changes from T-34/0: swapping o and...
Jonas Hietala
What's up
It’s been a while again since the last time we met mr. Blog. I’ve been busy with school and other...
over a year ago
It’s been a while again since the last time we met mr. Blog. I’ve been busy with school and other stuff. I’ve thought about you but I just never really picked up emacs to write to you. I know it’s my fault but I beg of your mercy mr. Blog. You know that I had laid off school for...
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
lcamtuf’s thing
Electric chainsaws and the gorge of misery
Lithium batteries are great -- so why do mid-size electric power tools suck in 2024?
4 months ago
Lithium batteries are great -- so why do mid-size electric power tools suck in 2024?
Arduino Blog
Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline...
3 months ago
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can...
Posts on Made of...
Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisible
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of...
a year ago
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of Expertise” by Gary Klein and Robert Hoffman. It’s excellent and I recommend you read it when you have a chance.
Klein and Hoffman discuss the ability of experts to “see what is not...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Sat-E
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The...
over a year ago
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The Good
Motivation
I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It’s super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My...
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...
./techtipsy
Steam local network game transfers are a game-changer
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have...
a year ago
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have a game downloaded on another PC and you’re both on the same local network, then Steam can download game data
from that PC, avoiding the need to download the game over public...
Jonas Hietala
Habits to start
I haven’t been feeling quite as forward or as energetic lately. There are no set plans, habits or...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling quite as forward or as energetic lately. There are no set plans, habits or goals for this spring and I don’t have a clear vision of what to do currently but it also feels… fine? Maybe I will cruise in a lower gear for a while and rev up when my mood...
Jonas Hietala
Resurrection
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not...
over a year ago
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not having to make lunch and dinner every day is such a relief, and if you do slip up food with grandma or Veronica’s parents is only a phone call away. I watched TV, played...
Home on Erik...
Slides from NYC Machine Learning talk
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of...
over a year ago
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of context (b) Slideshare seem to have problem converting some of the stuff.
Collaborative filtering at Spotify from Erik Bernhardsson
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…
Louwrentius
Got myself a Norco RPC-4020
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion....
over a year ago
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion. The current 6 TB RAID 6 storage server does not have any
room for expantion.
This Norco RPC-4020 case with 20 hot swap drive bays does however. Don't know
what to fill it with yet.
Jonas Hietala
Evolution of RTS games
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through the evolution of RTS game genre. I like RTS games and I’ve played them for as long as I can remember, from the classic Red Alert and Age of Empires to the newer Supreme Commander and...
Electronics etc…
$17 GM1312 Thermometer Review, Test, and Teardown
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few tests
Internals
Conclusion
References
Introduction
I’ve been doing a bunch of measurements on oven-controlled oscillators lately,
including their temperature. There are multiple ways to measure...
Arduino Blog
An ultra-affordable DIY underwater ROV
ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) let us explore bodies of water and it is hard not to be excited by...
7 months ago
ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) let us explore bodies of water and it is hard not to be excited by the possibilities. But traditional ROVs cost a lot of money and often require serious expertise to operate and maintain. Luckily there are affordable alternatives, such as this...
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...
Willem's Blog
Clouds below my floor
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
over a year ago
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
Buck on Software
Don't be foie gras
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
over a year ago
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
Posts on Made of...
My Apollo Bibliography
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become...
over a year ago
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a...
Posts on Made of...
Property-Based Testing Is Fuzzing
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code...
over a year ago
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code (“properties”), and then using automated tooling to generate test inputs (typically, randomly-generated inputs of an appropriate type), and observe whether the properties hold for...
Arduino Blog
Play rock-paper-scissors using a time-of-flight sensor and an Arduino UNO R4
Owing to its simplicity and fast-paced nature, rock-paper-scissors is a great game to play with...
5 months ago
Owing to its simplicity and fast-paced nature, rock-paper-scissors is a great game to play with friends, and when it comes to translating it into a digital format, many creative adaptations can be made. This version by madmcu forgoes the typical three-button input scheme in favor...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
over a year ago
Construction Physics
The Long Road to Fiber Optics
Over the past six decades, advances in computers and microprocessors have completely reshaped our...
3 months ago
Over the past six decades, advances in computers and microprocessors have completely reshaped our world.
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
over a year ago
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Arduino Blog
Explore underwater with this Arduino-controlled DIY ROV
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the...
4 months ago
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the ocean? But a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is the kind of robot you’d use for such an adventure, isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’ll find on the shelf at your local...
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...
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 !
Posts on Made of...
Confessions of a programmer: I hate code review
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work...
over a year ago
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work requires code review on most of our code, and as we bring on an army of interns for the summer, I've been responsible for reviewing lots of code. Additionally, about five months ago...
Notes on software...
Let's build a distributed Postgres proof of concept
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies...
over a year ago
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies that do a lot of work: a
PostgreSQL wire protocol
implementation, a storage
layer, a Raft implementation
for distributed consensus. And not
part of go.mod but still building on 3rd...
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
Listen to your body
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have...
over a year ago
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have stopped using bluetooth sensors all together.
Arduino Blog
Easily add Python-controlled GPIO pins to any computer
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of...
6 months ago
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of a button. Could you? Almost certainly not — at least not without additional hardware. Most modern computers don’t provide any interface for direct interaction with low-level...
./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...
Notes on software...
Extending gosql to supporting LIMIT and OFFSET
It's been a few months since I picked up
gosql and I wanted to use it to
prototype a SQL interface...
over a year ago
It's been a few months since I picked up
gosql and I wanted to use it to
prototype a SQL interface for data stored in S3. But one missing
critical feature in gosql is LIMIT and OFFSET support. This post walks
through the few key changes to gosql to support LIMIT and OFFSET.
You...
Arduino Blog
The end of Mbed marks a new beginning for Arduino
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially...
5 months ago
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially destined to reach end of life in July 2026, and therefore will no longer be maintained. The news has sent ripples through the embedded development community, particularly affecting...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #45: Deliverism, blasphemy and selfies from space
Plus the best Minecraft-themed political deepfake you'll see today
2 weeks ago
Plus the best Minecraft-themed political deepfake you'll see today
./techtipsy
My blog successfully survived a scheduled power outage
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage...
3 months ago
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage on 2024-09-13.
It was also Friday the 13th. I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious.
My setup usually consists of the home server, a Wifi AP/router combo box, a converter...
Louwrentius
An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at...
over a year ago
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
When I bought this drive, we were still in...
Home on Erik...
How to hire smarter than the market: a toy model
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable....
over a year ago
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable. It's not very important what those are, so let's just call them “thing A” and “thing B” for now.
Arduino Blog
This robotic kalimba plays melodies with an Arduino Nano
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each...
3 months ago
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each tuned for a specific note, and upon plucking or striking one, a pleasant xylophone-like sound can be heard. Taking inspiration from his mini kalimba, Axel from the YouTube channel...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 15: Rebranding to Lighthouse and complete redesign
a year ago
Louwrentius
I resurrected my Dutch movie review site from 2003
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the...
over a year ago
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the site and wrote the reviews. It never made any money. It cost me money to host, and it cost me a lot of time writing reviews, but I remember enjoying writing reviews about films I...
Vitalik Buterin's...
La Guía Incompleta de los Rollups
over a year ago
./techtipsy
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I...
a year ago
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I ended up being in Võrumaa,
and while driving I suddenly remembered a random fact that some people mentioned in a hackerspace Slack channel: there’s
a new museum around here!
The...
Lars Lofgren
My 7 Rules for A/B Testing That Triple Conversion Rates
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I...
over a year ago
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I double or triple conversion rates without caring how a test performs? I actually care about the whole SYSTEM of testing. All the pieces need to fit together just right. If not,...
Jonas Hietala
Drawing a self portrait
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m...
over a year ago
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m really slow so I stopped a bit before it really was finished.
Obviously I’d like it to be a bit better, but I’m still a little happy about the glasses and the eyebrows. The mouth...
Louwrentius
How to run victron veconfigure on a mac
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool....
9 months ago
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool. Unforntunately this is a Windows-only tool, but there is still a way for Apple users to run this tool without any problems.
Tip: if you've never worked with the Terminal app on MacOS, it...
Willem's Blog
Designing and implementing a (micro) payment system
Designing and implementing a micro payment system with an emphasis on simplicity. Read about how I...
over a year ago
Designing and implementing a micro payment system with an emphasis on simplicity. Read about how I did it in this post.
Posts on Made of...
Automounting sshfs
For some time now, many of us around MIT have noticed just how awesome sshfs is. It gives a totally...
over a year ago
For some time now, many of us around MIT have noticed just how awesome sshfs is. It gives a totally lightweight way to access the remote filesystem of any machine you have ssh to, without requiring any extra setup on the host. I’ve been running for at least a year now with my...
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
MenuCity: Level 0 Walkthrough
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive...
over a year ago
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive feedback! I’m so thrilled :) However, all isn’t blue skies and nice sunshine. A lot of times the first question is: How do you play it? or How do you get past the first level? I admit...
GitButler
Fixing up Git with Autosquash
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at...
9 months ago
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at git autosquash.
Louwrentius
A 12.48 inch (1304x984) three-color e-paper display by Waveshare
Introduction
Update September 2023: A small horizontal and large vertical row of pixels died. Demo...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update September 2023: A small horizontal and large vertical row of pixels died. Demo of defective display here.
I'm running a solar-powered blog and I wanted to add a low-power display to show the daily solar 'harvest'1 and maybe some additional information.
So I...
Applied Cartography
Vibes and years
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've...
10 months ago
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've been basically work off my gut + Feeling of the Day for the past few years, and that's getting a bit unsustainable
Buttondown's roadmapping has existed for the past three years in a...
Jonas Hietala
The ASIC pit of despair
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s...
over a year ago
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s hashrate were ASICs.
Recurring hard forks to brick ASICs is a very dangerous game and what better to illustrate this than with an xkcd-style plot?
You’re safe on the edges but how do...
Louwrentius
Rebooting results in degraded RAID array using Debian Lenny
As described earlier, I setup a RAID 6 array consisting of physical 1 TB disk
and 'virtual' 1 TB...
over a year ago
As described earlier, I setup a RAID 6 array consisting of physical 1 TB disk
and 'virtual' 1 TB disks that are in fact two 0.5 TB disks in RAID 0.
I wanted to upgrade to Lenny because the new kernel that ships with Lenny
supports growing a RAID 6 array. After installing Lenny...
Willem's Blog
No, I Won't Build That!
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I...
9 months ago
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I Won't Build That!"
anderegg.ca
Using WordPress is risky
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about WordPress. Stuff’s been happening in the...
a month ago
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about WordPress. Stuff’s been happening in the background, but I’ve been trying to ignore it. This morning I read a story that bothered me enough to require another round of therapy-by-blog-post.
First up, a couple of things that...
Posts on Made of...
Property Testing Like AFL
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same...
over a year ago
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same practice, or at least share a lot of commonality. In this followup post, I want to explore that idea a bit more: I’ll first detour into some of my frustrations and hesitations around...
watchTowr Labs -...
“To live is to fight, to fight is to live! - IBM ODM Remote Code Execution
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but...
10 months ago
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but there is one that we have not mentioned before, that is - quite frankly - the heavy-weight champion of the world in terms of applications for large enterprises. With over a hundred
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...
Willem's Blog
Using AI to generate code
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise...
a year ago
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise cloud performance in our fascinating exploration of GPT-4's transformative capabilities.
Jonas Hietala
2019 in Review
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on...
over a year ago
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on the past year, and see that I did indeed do some things, and to look ahead a little.
2019 Non-Geek Achievements
Played around with Isidor.
It’s hard to describe how happy a kid can...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 3
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
a year ago
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
watchTowr Labs -...
QNAP QTS - QNAPping At The Wheel (CVE-2024-27130 and friends)
Infosec is, at it’s heart, all about that data. Obtaining access to it (or disrupting access to it)...
7 months ago
Infosec is, at it’s heart, all about that data. Obtaining access to it (or disrupting access to it) is in every ransomware gang and APT group’s top-10 to-do-list items, and so it makes sense that our research voyage would, at some point, cross paths with products
computers are bad
2023-07-15 underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet...
a year ago
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit").
It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but,
you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for...
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...
A reawakening of systems programming meetups
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich...
5 months ago
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich Database
Meetup, Berlin
Systems Group, SF Distributed
Systems Meetup, NYC
Systems, Bengaluru
Systems, to name a few.
This post summarizes a bit of disappointing recent tech meetup
history,...
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine.
You ever end up doing something like this?
Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it.
Snapshots provide us...
Louwrentius
The impact of the MDADM bitmap on RAID performance
Introduction
I'm aware that most people with intensive storage workloads won't run those workloads...
over a year ago
Introduction
I'm aware that most people with intensive storage workloads won't run those workloads on hard drives anymore, that ship has sailed a long time ago. SSDs have taken their place (or 'the cloud').
For those few left who do use hard drives in Linux software RAID setups...
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Willem's Blog
Whoop strap review: 24/7 wearable sensor
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Starting a minimal Common Lisp project
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like...
over a year ago
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like what you'd expect. While
functional programming is all the rage in Scheme, Common Lisp was
"expressly designed to be a real-world engineering language rather
than a theoretically...
Home on Erik...
hdfs2cass
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra...
over a year ago
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra bulkloading. The nice thing is that it queries Cassandra for its topology and uses that to partition the data so that each reducer can upload data directly to a Cassandra node.
Electronics etc…
Teardown of the TM4313 GPS Disciplined Oscillator
Introduction
What is a GPSDO?
The TM4313 GPSDO
Power Consumption
Inside the TM4313
The TM4313...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a GPSDO?
The TM4313 GPSDO
Power Consumption
Inside the TM4313
The TM4313 Schematic
Frequency or Phase Lock Loop?
OCXO Temperature
The Curious Case of the MAX6192 Voltage Reference
The Discrete Tuning DAC
GPS Module
Microcontroller instead of NMEA Serial...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 4: Issue 4-evah
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious....
over a year ago
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious. Barry’s daughters all had marching band, and he chaperoned 4 the parades. His eldest daughter also went and got a boyfriend. Shawn’s been feeling a little under the weather, and his two...
Matt Blewitt
Modifying pg_dump To Exclude Event Triggers
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from...
5 months ago
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from dropping an extension. As this extension is part of contrib and normally installed by users, we can’t prevent them from dropping it normally. However, event triggers can only be created...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Revenue-Evil Curve: a different way to think about prioritizing public goods funding
over a year ago
Electronics etc…
Making Screenshots of Test Equipment Old and New
Introduction
Screenshot Capturing Interfaces
Hardware and Software Tools
Capturing GPIB data in Talk...
3 weeks ago
Introduction
Screenshot Capturing Interfaces
Hardware and Software Tools
Capturing GPIB data in Talk Only mode
TDS 540 Oscilloscope - GPIB - PCL Output
HP 54542A Oscilloscope - Parallel Port - PCL or HPGL Output
HP Inifinium 54825A Oscilloscope - Parallel Port - Encapsulated...
Jonas Hietala
Now we have a Forum
In a burst of random energy I made a forum for madeoftree. Well okay I just made an awesome style...
over a year ago
In a burst of random energy I made a forum for madeoftree. Well okay I just made an awesome style for the awesome phpBB - the forum itself was up and running in say 10min and the rest of the latest days has been all about customizing. Now it’s finally kinda complete so here it is...
Christian Selig
Announcing Juno 2.0
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been...
5 months ago
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been enjoying Juno since its launch, as well as providing awesome feedback and input to improve it.
Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback,...
./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...
Old Vintage...
So long, Z80
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s...
8 months ago
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s (PDF), announcing earlier this week that after June 14th you won't be able to buy them anymore (specifically the last-part-standing Z84C00 which comes in various speeds from 6-20 MHz)...
Jonas Hietala
Balls
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god...
over a year ago
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I’ll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I’m not sure it’s very addictive but it’s actually okay! =D
Balls is a game about… balls. Well...
Matt Mullenweg
Response to DHH
I’ve taken this post down. I’ve been attacked so much the past few days; the most vicious, personal,...
2 months ago
I’ve taken this post down. I’ve been attacked so much the past few days; the most vicious, personal, hateful words poisoned my brain, and the original version of this post was mean. I am so sorry. I shouldn’t let this stuff get to me, but it clearly did, and I took it out on DHH,...
Louwrentius
Affordable server with server-grade hardware part II
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I...
over a year ago
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I documented the reasons for choosing server-grade hardware already in an earlier post on this topic.
It is recommended to read the old post first. In this new post, I only show new...
Arduino Blog
Clone your IoT projects with Arduino Cloud Custom Templates
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the...
4 months ago
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the thrill of bringing a new IoT project to life. But we also understand the frustration of repetitive setup processes and the time sink of configuring the same elements over and over...
Computer Ads from...
MicroSpeed PC-TRAC
Let's Get Right To the Point
7 months ago
Let's Get Right To the Point
Applied Cartography
You gotta be able to taste the kool-aid
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b...
8 months ago
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b valuation:
Despite the skepticism surrounding Devin’s launch, the AI coding assistant has shown promising results. According to the SWE-Bench benchmark, which evaluates AI models on software...
Good Enough
That time Marvel secretly endorsed my podcast with “the greatest comic book cover of all time”
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a...
a year ago
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a record of this somewhere on the internet!” and I don’t have my own blog.
Years ago my friend and I ran a radio show called Gorilla Madness, which we also spun out into a podcast after...
Matt Mullenweg
GPL Clarification
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a...
a month ago
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro...
Home on Erik...
More recommender algorithms
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization...
over a year ago
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization algorithm we have used for a while assumes that we have user vectors $$ bf{a}_u $$ and item vectors $$ bf{b}_i $$ .
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...
Style over Substance
3D-printable Raleno 104 lightbox adapter for camera film scanning
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model...
over a year ago
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model turns it into a lightbox that you can use for digital camera scanning of your negative film. It also contains a holder compatible with the Valoi 35mm/120 film carriers. Additionally,...
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety: 2
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond...
over a year ago
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond security towards safety for our users.
Applied Cartography
Two weeks of parenthood
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about...
2 months ago
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about parenthood. (In all seriousness, consider the below descriptive and not prescriptive: mostly, it's a notepad filled with things that were remarkable or surprising or divergent from...
Willem's Blog
Using the reMarkable paper tablet
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet...
over a year ago
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet is therefore quite remarkable!
Notes on software...
The year in books: 11 to recommend in 2021
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction....
over a year ago
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction. Another 30 started but not finished.
Non-fiction
It seems I was pretty focused on business history books and history of
tech. The 8 non-fiction books I liked the most:
Designing...
Arduino Blog
A desktop-sized DIY vending machine for your room
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive...
5 months ago
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in most homes. But now you can experience vending bliss thanks to this miniature vending machine designed by m22pj, which you can craft yourself using an...
Jonas Hietala
Summer job at Configura
This is a wrap up of my 5 weeks at Configura as a summer internship. There were 6 interns and we had...
over a year ago
This is a wrap up of my 5 weeks at Configura as a summer internship. There were 6 interns and we had two teams doing different things. I worked with two other awesome guys and it was great!
The Premise
We had two assignments this summer. One was to create an optimized version of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 5: The Purge
a month ago
Home on Erik...
Giving more tools to software engineers: the reorganization of the factory
It's a popular attitude among developers to rant about our tools and how broken things are. Maybe...
over a year ago
It's a popular attitude among developers to rant about our tools and how broken things are. Maybe I'm an optimistic person, because my viewpoint is the complete opposite! I had my first job as a software engineer in 1999, and in the last two decades I've seen software engineering...
computers are bad
2024-01-21 multi-channel audio part 1
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of...
11 months ago
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of pieces of consumer audio reproduction equipment as "a stereo."
As you might imagine, this is a relatively modern phenomenon. While stereo
audio in concept dates to the late 19th...
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.
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
Home on Erik...
There is no magic trick
(Warning: super speculative, feel free to ignore)
As Yogi Berra said, “It's tough to make...
over a year ago
(Warning: super speculative, feel free to ignore)
As Yogi Berra said, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”. Unfortunately predicting is hard, and unsurprisingly people look for the Magic Trick™ that can resolve all the uncertainty.
Louwrentius
How to run Debian Linux on an Intel based Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy...
over a year ago
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy efficient. When idle, it uses around 20 watts. I'm using
one of the first Intel-based Minis with an Intel Core Duo chip, running at 1.6
Ghz.
I want to use this mini as an expensive router...
Posts on Made of...
Getting carried away with hack value
Recently, I’ve been working on some BarnOwl branches that move more of the core functionality of...
over a year ago
Recently, I’ve been working on some BarnOwl branches that move more of the core functionality of BarnOwl into perl code, instead of C (BarnOwl is written in an unholy mix of C and perl code that call each other back and forth obsessively).
Moving code into perl has many...
Construction Physics
What Learning by Doing Looks Like
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
a week ago
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 