./techtipsy
How to make digital copies of your old video tapes
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital copies of their contents.
To get started, you will need the following:
old video tapes that you want to make copies of (VHS and its variants)
a device that can read analog AV signals...
Buck on Software
The Software Slog
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
a year ago
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
Jonas Hietala
Regex substitution with unicode in Haskell
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t...
over a year ago
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t work. The culprit was unicode in the document which the regex library couldn’t handle.
Apparently while this would be supported by default by almost all modern languages it’s not the...
./techtipsy
The little Wi-Fi AP that could
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short...
over a year ago
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short overview of one of them.
The Orange Pi Zero is a SBC (single board computer) that has a slow 32-bit ARM 4 core CPU, 512MB of RAM and no display output.
It’s actually quite OK for many...
Louwrentius
How to build an energy efficient computer for home use
In short:
Buy whatever you fucking want.
Turn the fucking thing off when you're not using...
over a year ago
In short:
Buy whatever you fucking want.
Turn the fucking thing off when you're not using it.
Long:
People are spending a lot of time building an energy efficient home computer,
that can act as an HTPC, NAS, or whatever. It must consume as little power as
possible, because it it...
Jonas Hietala
The Experimental Games
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and...
over a year ago
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and maybe go in a new direction.
At first I had been stuck for ages with my never-ending projects and I had literally nothing to show for all my coding. Well now things have changed a...
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.
Home on Erik...
Google diversity memo, global warming, Pascal's wager, and other stuff
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple...
over a year ago
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple of weeks ago. I think the case for any biological difference is pretty weak, and it bothers me when people refer to an “interest gap” as anything else than caused by the...
Jonas Hietala
Recent experiences with Netrunner tournaments
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three...
over a year ago
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three tournaments during February - March. After each of these tournaments I started a writeup of them but they fell off my mind a bit but consider this my break with my blogging...
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Odds and Ends of...
I'm pro-assisted dying in principle, but I'm not sure about the proposed law
Is no law better than a bad law?
a month ago
Is no law better than a bad law?
csvbase blog
There are 665 open licences, most are pretty rubbish
you are in a maze of twisty licences, all alike
3 months ago
you are in a maze of twisty licences, all alike
Willem's Blog
Hospitalised with MCADD
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a...
over a year ago
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a dangerous situation if you're diagnosed with MCADD.
./techtipsy
DIY cloud gaming: NVIDIA and Moonlight
As you might have read from my previous post on this topic, I
have a pretty neat “cloud” gaming...
over a year ago
As you might have read from my previous post on this topic, I
have a pretty neat “cloud” gaming setup running. I have one powerful desktop PC, one virtual machine with a GPU attached
to it, and client machines that can be used to stream games from. To keep things simple (and...
computers are bad
2023-10-09 prolific counterfeiting
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices...
a year ago
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices (essentially GPS trackers with i/o) from a fairly reputable
Chinese manufacturer. The device is endlessly configurable and so, like you see
with a lot of radios, it has a UART for...
Computer Ads from...
American Heart Association
A PSA and an Ad
a month ago
watchTowr Labs -...
No Way, PHP Strikes Again! (CVE-2024-4577)
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by...
6 months ago
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by default”, and we were curious to say the least. XAMPP is a very popular way for administrators and developers to rapidly deploy Apache, PHP, and a bunch of other tools, and
Home on Erik...
More Luigi!
Elias Freider just talked about Luigi at PyData 2013:
The presentation above is much better than one...
over a year ago
Elias Freider just talked about Luigi at PyData 2013:
The presentation above is much better than one I put together a few weeks ago. In case anyone is interested I'll include it too:
Good Enough
How We Made A Good Enough Zine
We made a zine!
The first issue was released in August, and I finished the second issue just last...
a year ago
We made a zine!
The first issue was released in August, and I finished the second issue just last week. Right now, a hundred copies are on their way from the printer to me (update: they've just arrived!). Today I'd like to share the story of how this zine came about.
(Sorry for...
Christian Selig
Juno 1.1
If you’re new, Juno is a visionOS app for YouTube!
Juno’s initial launch blew my socks off. It was...
10 months ago
If you’re new, Juno is a visionOS app for YouTube!
Juno’s initial launch blew my socks off. It was such a cool feeling to release an app on day one of the Apple Vision Pro’s launch, and having people be so excited about it and have such great feedback made it that much better....
Old Vintage...
With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone's a WiiN-er (except Data General)
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the...
7 months ago
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone with a day job in public health for almost two decades, it's always been a buzzword in certain corners of IT with enough money sloshing around...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Convex and Concave Dispositions
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Learning from users faster using machine learning
I had an interesting idea a few weeks ago, best explained through an example. Let's say you're...
over a year ago
I had an interesting idea a few weeks ago, best explained through an example. Let's say you're running an e-commerce site (I kind of do) and you want to optimize the number of purchases.
Let's also say we try to learn as much as we can from users, both using A/B tests but also...
Good Enough
TIL: Turbo Stream broadcasting needs default_url_options to be set
We've been using Turbo Streams in some of our recent prototypes, which makes it really easy and fun...
a year ago
We've been using Turbo Streams in some of our recent prototypes, which makes it really easy and fun to get responsive and fun interactions set up. However, we kept having issues with images sent in a turbo stream response.
If the response was delivered by a normal controller...
./techtipsy
Fairphone 5: my heavily biased overview after 58 days of use (and counting)
After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself
a Fairphone 5. The...
9 months ago
After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself
a Fairphone 5. The fact
that iPhone X stopped receiving major iOS updates certainly helped make that decision.
“But why? My Xiaomi/Oneplus/Samsung/other glued-together device is like so much cheaper and...
Matt Mullenweg
Observer Article
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More...
a month ago
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More Energized’ Than Ever Amid WP Engine Battle.
Yazin Alirhayim
Tracking where a WhatsApp user came from
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their...
over a year ago
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their bank account, asking questions like “What’s my balance” and “How much have I spent on Uber’s this month?”.
A problem we faced really early on when connecting to WhatsApp was that...
Jonas Hietala
2014 Read Books
In total I read 20 books, which is 33% less than last year.
Fiction
How to Be a Woman - Catilin...
over a year ago
In total I read 20 books, which is 33% less than last year.
Fiction
How to Be a Woman - Catilin Moran
Fun!
The Kill Room - Jeffery Deaver
A Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
Reread.
A Song of Ice and Fire: A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
Reread.
A...
Arduino Blog
You can now run Arduino and MicroPython side-by-side on multi-core microcontrollers
We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature that we have been working on in collaboration with...
6 months ago
We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature that we have been working on in collaboration with the MicroPython team! Starting with the upcoming release (v1.23), MicroPython will offer support for Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) on multi-core microcontrollers, based on the...
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...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 1. lisp to assembly
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM...
over a year ago
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll write a simple compiler in Javascript (on Node)
without any third-party libraries....
Simply Explained
Securely access home network with Cloudflare Tunnel and WARP
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to...
over a year ago
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to strengthen the security of my Home Assistant instance. Until now, I have been using Cloudflare's CDN to connect to my HA instance, but that required opening ports on my router and...
Notes on software...
Thinking about functional programming
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial...
a year ago
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an
interesting
discussion
with Shriram
Krishnamurthi and other folks.
So here's a slightly more thought out exploration.
And just for backstory sake: I...
Arduino Blog
Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized...
4 months ago
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab...
Good Enough
The Element of Surprise
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is...
a year ago
Good Enough happens to be a remote team. This isn't from some strongly-held belief that remote is best, but rather as a side effect of how we all happened to meet each other. We met remotely, we did not end up all moving into some commune, and so to work together we must work...
Jonas Hietala
Stereotypes
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really...
over a year ago
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really couldn’t do it justice so do yourself a favor and go read it. It touches on several types of programmers or rather traits of programmers I recognize in my surroundings and also...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Trying and returning the Eight Sleep Pod 4
I recently bought the Eight Sleep Pod 4—a smart mattress cover that tracks your heart rate, HRV,...
2 months ago
I recently bought the Eight Sleep Pod 4—a smart mattress cover that tracks your heart rate, HRV, snoring, and cools or warms the mattress during the night.
There’s a lot to like about the mattress but in the end I opted to return it.
This post describes my experience with the Pod...
Applied Cartography
Linear
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes...
5 days ago
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes I wanted to publish on our own experience of migrating from GitHub Issues to Linear, and some reflections on it as a product now that we've been using it for a few months.
One...
Arduino Blog
Two NEW Arduino Plug and Make Kit projects recreate iconic vintage games
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix...
3 months ago
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix of Arduino designers, engineers, and managers to sit down and brainstorm new ideas to have fun with it? Well, at least one of them is guaranteed to come up with an adorable,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 7 Retrospective
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Removing paint from a bike frame
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal,...
over a year ago
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal, raw aluminium look.
./techtipsy
Strangling your service with a Kubernetes misconfiguration
This is a quick story about a fun discovery that I made a while ago.
For legal reasons, all of this...
over a year ago
This is a quick story about a fun discovery that I made a while ago.
For legal reasons, all of this is made up and no such service ever existed.
Once upon a time, we had this Java service that handled all the backend
work that you’d expect to occur for a product with a web...
Vitalik Buterin's...
El recurso escaso más importante es la legitimidad
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
HubSpot's Picture Shows how to Maintain Monocultures in the 21st Century
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome...
over a year ago
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome Presentation Shows how to Create a 21st Century Culture”.
Just FYI: You're not different. You're a bunch of white hipsters aged 25-30 dressed up in the same theme.
Electronics etc…
Symmetricom 58532A GPS Antenna Supply Voltage Mod
The Symmatricom 58532A
Opening up the 58532A
Voltage Regulation
Result
What about the other 58532A...
9 months ago
The Symmatricom 58532A
Opening up the 58532A
Voltage Regulation
Result
What about the other 58532A variant?
References
The Symmatricom 58532A
As part of a package deal, I got my hands on a Symmetricom 58532A L1
GPS antenna.
Microchip, which acquired Symmetricom in 2013, doesn’t...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why sharding is great: demystifying the technical properties
over a year ago
Louwrentius
'Syslog: the hidden security risk'
People sometimes forget that there are also a number of UDP-based services
that may pose a threat to...
over a year ago
People sometimes forget that there are also a number of UDP-based services
that may pose a threat to the security of your systems. SNMP is a well-known
service, notorious for being configured with a default password (or community
string).
But there is another service that is...
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...
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
10 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
computers are bad
2023-05-07 electrical characteristics of telephone lines
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring...
a year ago
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring topic: implementation details of telephone lines.
The conventional "copper pair" analog telephone line is fading away. The FCC
has begun to authorize abandonment of copper outside...
./techtipsy
Why you might not want to publicly self-host a Wikipedia clone
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it...
a year ago
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it anywhere
you want using Kiwix.
I’m still hosting Kiwix sites publicly, but here are a few things you might want
to consider before doing so yourself.
The spam
I have a specific e-mail address...
Willem's Blog
Riding with a power meter on your bike
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road...
over a year ago
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road bike.
Home on Erik...
Conversion rates – you are (most likely) computing them wrong
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and divide them with the total number of users. Done. Except… it's a lot more complicated when you have any sort of significant time lag.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
./techtipsy
Oversimplified guide into snapshots on the btrfs filesystem
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files...
over a year ago
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files around. You finish the script and test it out.
Oops.
All the files now have all the wrong names, and some have been randomly moved
10 folders deep. It’s a mess.
And you didn’t make a...
Willem's Blog
How to use rsync to make backups
In this post I'll explain how to use rsync to transfer files to another computer system in an...
over a year ago
In this post I'll explain how to use rsync to transfer files to another computer system in an efficient manner, suitable to be used in a backup script.
detreville
The IBM 701
"IBM's first computer"
a year ago
Louwrentius
Howto get the hard disk size under Linux?
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2>...
over a year ago
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2> /dev/null | grep Disk | grep -v identifier
Disk /dev/sda: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB, 1000123400192...
Louwrentius
Distributed Parallel Processing Shell Script (PPSS) released
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script...
over a year ago
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script (PPSS). PPSS is a bash script that allows you to
run commands in parallel. It is written to make use of current multi-core
CPUs.
The new distributed version of PPSS allows you to...
Willem's Blog
Tablet as main computer
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share...
over a year ago
I have been using a tablet as my main computer for quite some time now. In this blog post I share you my experience on using Surface Pro and iPad Pro to get my work done.
Arduino Blog
Improve indoor air quality with Arduino
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities...
7 months ago
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities and power plants churning clouds of poison into the atmosphere. And while all this is still important, and has massive consequences for our health, it’s all too easy to overlook...
Christian Selig
Qi2 is kinda underwhelming
Using MagSafe for portable battery packs has so many niceties versus Qi1:
Increased communication...
8 months ago
Using MagSafe for portable battery packs has so many niceties versus Qi1:
Increased communication with the device, allowing for better efficiency due to better thermal management and charging
Easily view the charge percentage of the external battery when first attaching it, and...
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...
Arduino Blog
Create your own affordable Arduino-powered smart glasses
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the...
7 months ago
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the world isn’t ready yet.” Now that more than a decade has passed, the world may finally be ready — especially with the omission of controversial features like video recording. If...
Jonas Hietala
Done this, done that. What now?
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and...
over a year ago
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I’m liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
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?
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!
Jonas Hietala
Establishing Habits with Habitica
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I...
over a year ago
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I believe it all started with an amazing book called The Power of Habit which describes the amazing benefits habits can give, both in the context of your own life but also in business....
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
5 months ago
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
Jonas Hietala
ghc 8.8.3 cannot find cabal 3.0.0.0 packages
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system...
over a year ago
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system it suddenly stopped working. I installed my dependencies with cabal install xmonad, and checked that it’s installed under ~/.cabal:
$ ls .cabal/bin/
xmonad@
But still when I...
Home on Erik...
Toxic meeting culture
I spent six years at a company that went from 50 people to 1500 and one contributing factor leading...
over a year ago
I spent six years at a company that went from 50 people to 1500 and one contributing factor leading to my departure was that I went from a “maker” to a person stuck in meetings every day.
Notes on software...
Responsibility and ownership
Responsibility is only possible by granting ownership and setting
expectations. If you don't turn...
over a year ago
Responsibility is only possible by granting ownership and setting
expectations. If you don't turn over ownership, don't expect folks to
take responsibility. When you grant ownership and set expectations,
you'll be astounded what folks will accomplish without you.
I am astounded.
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin Cash needs a Specification
I’m not a Bitcoin developer, I’m just some guy looking in from the outside. Lately there’s been a...
over a year ago
I’m not a Bitcoin developer, I’m just some guy looking in from the outside. Lately there’s been a bunch of heated debates between the different Bitcoin Cash developer teams. Something that stood out from all the noise was problems with communications and a lack of specification...
./techtipsy
Shrinkflation, SanDisk style
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that...
a year ago
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that you
notice after formatting the device in an OS. Please read the article in full before
making inaccurate comments online.
For many years, I have used two SanDisk Ultra 16 GB USB flash...
Arduino Blog
Does your sample contain DNA or RNA? DIYNAFLUOR can tell you on a budget
Lab equipment is — traditionally at least — tremendously expensive. While there are understandable...
3 days ago
Lab equipment is — traditionally at least — tremendously expensive. While there are understandable reasons for those costs, they are prohibitive to anyone operating outside of a university or corporate lab. But as the “citizen science” movement has grown, we’ve seen more and more...
Louwrentius
Improving web application security by implementing database security
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement...
over a year ago
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement defense-in-depth security in web applications. 99.9% of applications use a single database account, with root-like privileges. Easiest for the developer of course, and the database is just a...
latest projects -...
Smallest USB-C MIDI Synth
[Hardware] The smallest and silliest MIDI synth yet
a year ago
[Hardware] The smallest and silliest MIDI synth yet
Jonas Hietala
How I made a kick-ass cover for my self-published book
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all,...
over a year ago
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all, we judge the book by the cover.
And I did it the universally recommended way:
I hired a designer.
Simple, right?
But real talk; it’s not exactly that simple and I did a bunch of...
Jonas Hietala
Computer upgrade
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some...
a year ago
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some pictures about the process.
It was time
I didn’t really want to do an upgrade right now, but I felt I had to do it.
Sometimes the lag had gotten very noticeable, for example when...
Notes on software...
Zig, Rust, and other languages
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a...
9 months ago
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a fresh conversation on: automatic
memory management, the standard library, and explicit allocation.
Zig is not a mature language. But it has made enough useful choices
for a number...
Gwern.net Newsletter
November newsletter
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1...
over a year ago
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1 essay, and 1 opera review ('The Ring' cycle).
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!
Willem's Blog
Batavus Champion bike from 1978
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
over a year ago
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wiring
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that...
a year ago
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that I’ve been dreading: the wiring.
It’s scary because I really have no clue what I’m doing, and mistakes can be very costly and time-consuming.
I’ve taken my time to double- and...
Notes on software...
SQLite in Go, with and without cgo
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.
Arduino Blog
Top Arduino Cloud IoT dashboard ideas with the new Image widget
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens...
2 months ago
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens up a world of possibilities for enhancing your IoT dashboards. But the true potential of the Image widget lies in the applications that you create. Today, we’re excited to dive...
Posts on Made of...
Dear Twitter: Stop screwing over your developers.
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online...
over a year ago
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online communities, and is a surprisingly effective way to spread news and information to lots of people online. One of the things that I’ve loved about Twitter is their API, and how open and...
Louwrentius
I made my blog solar-powered, then things escalated
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing...
a year ago
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing the same thing (but better)1. The answer was 'yes', but only through spring and summer.
I live in an apartment complex in The Netherlands and my balcony is facing west. This...
Style over Substance
CANARY Corrugated Cardboard Cutter
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases...
over a year ago
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases ever. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, we all started shopping online a lot more. The number of cardboard boxes in our house basically quadrupled overnight and cutting them down to size...
Jonas Hietala
Breaking the rule of three
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision...
over a year ago
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision on how your game should be (which is always grand). For me making Balls, Black and White and Jonas IceCream Stand where truly stressful, MenuCity and Bugger not so much but...
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...
I'm featured in Mashable
This article from today in Mashable describes some of the fun stuff I get to work with:
Erik...
over a year ago
This article from today in Mashable describes some of the fun stuff I get to work with:
Erik Bernhardsson is technical lead at Spotify, where he helped to build a music recommendation system based on large-scale machine learning algorithms, mainly matrix factorization of big...
Old Vintage...
One-parting some Commodore 64 utilities for fun and profit
I've got a few retrocomputing bucket list items I'm slowly working down, and a couple of them...
a month ago
I've got a few retrocomputing bucket list items I'm slowly working down, and a couple of them involve some little Commodore 64 games I've had kicking around on the backburner. However, every game needs media assets, and while there are many great tools for doing art on your...
Jonas Hietala
No game this month
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack...
over a year ago
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack inspiration and then it’s really hard to do something. Instead I’ve been thinking of something I could do that would make me wanna code like really bad again. I’m thinking of...
Jonas Hietala
Dbot
So I made a small irc bot in 294 characters in code-golfing language #1: Perl.
Usage
perl...
over a year ago
So I made a small irc bot in 294 characters in code-golfing language #1: Perl.
Usage
perl Dbot
Commands
.name - Echo the bots name
.hello - Output “hello world!”
.src - Dump the source code
Code
use IO::Socket;$s=IO::Socket::INET->new("158.38.8.251:6667");sub o{print$s...
Willem's Blog
Working with special hardware from China
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with...
over a year ago
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with an embedded printer!
./techtipsy
What running out of SATA ports looks like
One day I stumbled upon a Craft Computing video
about his new server build, and on the parts list...
over a year ago
One day I stumbled upon a Craft Computing video
about his new server build, and on the parts list was a Sedna PCI Express 2x SATA adapter card:
There are different designs out there, including a 4x SATA card, which is bonkers.
Anyway, I thought that I might as well give this a...
Home on Erik...
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives....
over a year ago
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I've suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I'm stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Vitalik Buterin's...
An incomplete guide to stealth addresses
a year ago
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
Christian Selig
The Caldera: a sleek split and wireless keyboard
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically...
5 months ago
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically my dream wireless split keyboard.
I’ve been using it for months, and I love it.
Video overview
If you’re a visual person, I made a fun little video showcasing the...
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Protected Apple Distribution Certificates Using a YubiKey
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning...
a year ago
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning certificate issued to you by Apple for signing your release artifacts before you distribute them.
Protecting that signing key is important, as Apple must blindly trust any binaries...
computers are bad
2024-10-12 commercial HF radio
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio...
2 months ago
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio spectrum between 3 and 30 MHz. The label now seems
anachronistic, as HF is among the lowest ranges of radio frequencies that see
regular use. This setting of the goalposts in the early...
Arduino Blog
ThermoGrasp brings thermal feedback to virtual reality
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The...
2 months ago
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The Combine. Or operating a robot through augmented reality and feeling coldness on your fingers when you get close to exceeding the robot’s limits. A prototype device called ThermoGrasp...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
My first rust Contribution
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How...
over a year ago
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How shall I push my changes? How do I handle git? What should I do?
I was the same and I actually dreaded my awesome summer job, just a little bit, because now I’m supposed to...
Computer Ads from...
Page 6 Magazine Interviews the Godfather of Adventure Games, Scott Adams
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
4 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
GitButler
GitButler 0.12 - "Stingy Baker"
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
6 months ago
New GitButler release is out! Undo anything, modify your commits with ease, new AI stuff and more!
Matt Mullenweg
Welcoming Harper
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah...
a month ago
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah Potter and Harper to join Automattic. Harper is a super-fast (way faster than LanguageTool and Grammarly), local English grammar checker. The technology is nascent, but I’m very...
Arduino Blog
Arduino IDE 2.3.3: discover new support for shared spaces and more!
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This...
2 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This new release is packed with improvements, including one feature we’re particularly proud of: support for shared spaces in Arduino Cloud. If you have a Cloud Business plan or School...
Buck on Software
Winds of Change
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
6 months ago
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
Louwrentius
Redhat explains why chroot is not a security feature
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but...
over a year ago
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but it isn't magic security pixie dust. Running an application from within a chrooted jail or just on a well-configured system would result in the same level of security.
Josh...
Engineers Need Art
Stereographer
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
4 months ago
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
Christian Selig
Theming Apps on iOS is Hard
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with...
over a year ago
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with blue links to a light green background with green links) is a pretty common feature across a lot of apps. It’s one of the core features of the new “Twitter Blue” subscription,...
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
Notes on software...
Favorite compiler and interpreter resources
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
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,...
Home on Erik...
Annoying blog post
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which...
over a year ago
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which is an open source C++/Python library for Approximate Nearest Neighbor search.
I set up Travis-CI integration and spent some time on one of the issues that multiple people had...
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?
Arduino Blog
Vintage rotary phone becomes stylish kitchen timer
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three...
6 months ago
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three minutes, knead the dough for 15 minutes, bake for 30 minutes, and so on. A timer is a necessity for cooking and baking, but there is no reason you need to use your phone or a...
Christian Selig
More Efficient/Faster Average Color of Image
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of...
over a year ago
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of why you might want this!
Finding the average color of an image is a nice trick to have in your toolbelt for spicing up views. For instance on iOS, it’s used by Apple to make their...
Applied Cartography
Why your marketing site should be separate
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we...
3 months ago
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we serve buttondown.com both as a marketing site (public-facing, Next/Vercel, largely just content pushed by non-developers) and an author-facing app (behind a login, Django/Heroku/Vue)...
Arduino Blog
It’s silver, it’s green, it’s the Batteryrunner! An Arduino-powered, fully custom electric car
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully...
3 weeks ago
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully electric, Arduino-powered car that’s as innovative as it is sustainable. Called the Batteryrunner, this vehicle is designed with a focus on environmental impact, simplicity, and custom...
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
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...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation...
6 months ago
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system.
Aerospace computers are an interesting but mostly neglected area of computer hardware, so I'm always delighted to
examine one up close.
In an era when most computers were large...
Posts on Made of...
Lightweight Linux Kernel Development with KVM
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and...
over a year ago
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and picked up a number of useful techniques for doing kernel development in a relatively painless fashion. This blog post is a writeup of the tools and techniques I use when developing...
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Good Enough
TIL: Easily Support Gravatars in Rails
We’re building some software where we’d like to display avatars for email contacts
even if they...
10 months ago
We’re building some software where we’d like to display avatars for email contacts
even if they aren’t users of our software.
While Gravatar is a relic of Web 2.0,
we’ve found that there are still a significant number of people who have their
email addresses in that...
Arduino Blog
Simplifying IoT for smarter manufacturing: Join the chat with Arduino, AWS, and Atlas Machine
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes...
2 weeks ago
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes feel daunting. But what if you could simplify the process and start seeing results quickly? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming Arduino Cloud Café webinar on...
Jonas Hietala
2023 in review
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not...
11 months ago
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not anything advanced, I really like looking back at the year to see what has happened.
Maybe it’s a very light version of a reverse bucket list, and I can see that it provides some...
Willem's Blog
Data versus Feeling
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to...
4 days ago
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to find out the differences!
./techtipsy
LattePanda V1 - my experience with a Raspberry Pi alternative
As with many homelab experiments around 2022/2023, it all started with Raspberry Pi-s
being either...
a year ago
As with many homelab experiments around 2022/2023, it all started with Raspberry Pi-s
being either out of stock or absurdly overpriced.
I once noticed a listing for a LattePanda V1 on a local auction site.
The price was reasonable at 45 EUR, and after I looked at the...
Simply Explained
Howto Virtualize Unraid on a Proxmox host
Here's how to run Unraid as a virtual machine under Proxmox. This is useful when you're already...
over a year ago
Here's how to run Unraid as a virtual machine under Proxmox. This is useful when you're already using Proxmox and if you want to use Unraid as a NAS.
Home on Erik...
Software Engineers and Automation
Every once in a while when talking to smart people the topic of automation comes up. Technology has...
over a year ago
Every once in a while when talking to smart people the topic of automation comes up. Technology has made lots of occupations redundant, so what's next?
Switchboard operator, a long time ago
What about software engineers?
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.
Avestura's Blog
Hiding a photo inside another photo
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
over a year ago
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. an x86 upgrade
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
This post upgrades the ulisp x86 backend from using a limited set of
registers (with no spilling...
computers are bad
2023-11-25 the curse of docker
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza...
a year ago
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza there could be. In that spirit, I thought I would write
something quick and oddly professional: I'm going to complain about Docker.
Packaging software is one of those fundamental...
lcamtuf’s thing
Analog filters, part 2: let it ring
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key...
2 months ago
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key topology.
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...
Arduino Blog
Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May!
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino...
7 months ago
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino...
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal in-memory storage engine for MySQL/MariaDB
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and...
11 months ago
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and MariaDB are mostly the same (more on that later), I focused
on MariaDB specifically this week.
Before last week I had never built MySQL/MariaDB before. The first day
of this hack week,...
Applied Cartography
MD5-based uniqueness constraints in Django
Yesterday, I was trying to set a unique constraint for comments in Buttondown to prevent accidental...
3 months ago
Yesterday, I was trying to set a unique constraint for comments in Buttondown to prevent accidental double-commenting, and I ran into a problem that I hadn't seen before:
index row size 2816 exceeds btree version 4 maximum 2704 for index...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 2: Just the Two of Us
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing...
over a year ago
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing anything. Take it away, fellas…
1. Still Positive
Did you know that once you acquire COVID-19 your PCR test can be positive for up to 90 days? Did you know that the at-home tests...
Posts on Made of...
Versioning dotfiles in git
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines...
over a year ago
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines for some time. I experimented with keeping all of ~ in subversion for a while, but it never worked out well for me.
I’ve finally settled on a solution that I like using git, and so...
Louwrentius
WFS - WAN Failover Script now available
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you...
over a year ago
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you have any use for it: I put it on a Google code project.
WFS tests the availability of your primary WAN connection and switches to your
secondary / backup connection when a failure is...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Garbled Circuits Primer
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Adding proximity unlock to an old car with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically...
5 months ago
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically unlocks the doors when the driver approaches while carrying their key fob. When paired with a push-to-start ignition switch, the driver never has to take their keys out of their pocket....
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...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Black and White
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not...
over a year ago
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not suck. My spirit wasn’t high, just check this post and this but now when it’s done it’s like night and day, or like black and white! I’m damn happy I got it done!! Aah I’ll try to...
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
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...
./techtipsy
How I ended up working as a software developer
I’ve officially worked as a software developer since August 2016, and by now I
have a fair share of...
4 months ago
I’ve officially worked as a software developer since August 2016, and by now I
have a fair share of stories to tell from those years. But those are stories for
another time.
Today I’d like to focus on where it all got started.
The early days
I never considered myself good with...
Jonas Hietala
Death to the Forum
Well it was fun while it lasted, but now it’s gone and it’ll stay gone for a long time I think. It...
over a year ago
Well it was fun while it lasted, but now it’s gone and it’ll stay gone for a long time I think. It was mainly a test to see if I could do it and I’m really proud of my styling of it but it’s deader than in a grave, which isn’t really surprising, and it bothered me that I didn’t...
anderegg.ca
Playing with the Bluesky firehose
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver...
3 weeks ago
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver a JSON based firehose of atproto data. Here’s an overview of the simple project I built with that data.
I was inspired by a post from Simon Willison where he showed off a tool for...
Notes on software...
Effective unemployment and social media
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your...
a month ago
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything
except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are
looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or...
Notes on software...
Build a serverless ACID database with this one neat trick (atomic PutIfAbsent)
Delta Lake is an open protocol for serverless ACID databases. Due to
its simplicity, scalability,...
2 months ago
Delta Lake is an open protocol for serverless ACID databases. Due to
its simplicity, scalability, and the number of open-source
implementations, it's quickly becoming the DuckDB of serverless
transactional databases for analytics workloads. Iceberg is a
contender too, and is...
computers are bad
2024-09-08 private lines
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs)....
3 months ago
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs). These could be considered an early form of products like
"virtual private ethernet:" a private telephone network that was served by the
same switching machines that handled the...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: More mods
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and...
9 months ago
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and personalize it.
There a tons of mods you can do, and while I’ve done a few there are lots more that I’d like to do some day.
It’s a wonderful feeling to augment the printer with...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?
a year ago
./techtipsy
I encourage you to write a blog
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90...
3 months ago
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90 posts, received over 1 million clicks,
a dozen legitimate reader e-mails and thousands of spam e-mails.
And I love it!
I’ve found that writing can be very fulfilling and I encourage...
Old Vintage...
Pretty pictures, bootable floppy disks, and the first Canon Cat demo?
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to...
5 months ago
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to get into the operating system and pull some tricks.
from our historical discussion of the Canon Cat, the Cat was designed by Jef Raskin as a sophisticated user-centric computer...
Old Vintage...
When the Power Macintosh ran NetWare (featuring Wormhole and Cyberpunk)
This entry and the software we'll demonstrate is in large part thanks to an anonymous Apple...
12 months ago
This entry and the software we'll demonstrate is in large part thanks to an anonymous Apple developer who was part of the NetWare team. Thank you!
the network operating system of the 1990s. Nothing was quite like it. Until Windows NT muscled in on its action near the end of the...
Simply Explained
Tuya IR Hub: control Daikin AC (Home Assistant + ESPHome)
The release of ESPHome v1.15 brought better support for infrared climate control. This was enough to...
over a year ago
The release of ESPHome v1.15 brought better support for infrared climate control. This was enough to finally make my YTF IR Hub useable. Here's how I flashed ESPHome onto it and how I configured it for my Daikin AC and Home Assistant.
Notes on software...
Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL...
7 months ago
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL transaction levels: Read Uncommitted,
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Snapshot Isolation and
Serializable. We'll use multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and
optimistic...
Jonas Hietala
Moving private repositories to Bitbucket
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of...
over a year ago
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of courseand they even gave me a free students account and I still host all my public repositories there. Still, Bitbucket has unlimited free private repositories for up to 5 users...
Notes on software...
What makes a great technical blog
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely...
8 months ago
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely about non-corporate tech blogs. So this post is
too. I'll have to make another list for favorite corporate tech blogs.
In short, they:
Tackle hard and confusing topics
Show working...
Louwrentius
Creating storage benchmark charts with FIO and GNUplot
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform...
over a year ago
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform storage IO performance benchmarks. FIO does provide a script called "fio_generate_plots" which generates PNG or JPG based charts based on the data generated by FIO. The charts are...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
Jonas Hietala
We can build things!
Finally we have some sort of progress!
We can now build rooms and place and remove objects!
Yay!!...
over a year ago
Finally we have some sort of progress!
We can now build rooms and place and remove objects!
Yay!! But we still haven’t even begun with the game logic, resource management, the actual mining mechanic, multiple levels, actual tasks for our workers. But it’s something.
Home on Erik...
Books I consumed in 2017
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a...
over a year ago
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a teenager, but it has slowly deteriorated to maybe 20-30 books, at most. And I don't even finish all of them because life is too short!
Louwrentius
Don't use cloud services if you care about secrecy of your data
When you use cloud services, you are storing your data on other people's hard drives.
The moment you...
over a year ago
When you use cloud services, you are storing your data on other people's hard drives.
The moment you put your data within a cloud service, that data is no longer under your control. You don't know who will access that data. Secrecy is lost.
Instead of using services like Gmail...
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring ham radio activation of Korkattivuori (Mt. Korkatti)
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature...
a year ago
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature reserve area near town Haapavesi (pop. 6588) in Finland. The nature reserve area consist of short family friendly hiking path of approximately 1.5km. One end of the path has parking...
Jonas Hietala
Autocomplete with nvim-cmp
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I...
7 months ago
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I must assume most programmers—use all the time.
It’s not as crucial for writing blog posts as when you’re coding but it’s still easy to come up with examples of how autocomplete...
Willem's Blog
Measuring cholesterol levels in blood
This week I had my blood examined to measure my cholesterol levels, taking a lipid profile. Know...
over a year ago
This week I had my blood examined to measure my cholesterol levels, taking a lipid profile. Know your LDL, HDL and Triglycerides numbers with a simple test.
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
9 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the dominance of the x86 architecture that continues to the present.1
One...
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...
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...
Louwrentius
Script that shows relevant disk information
I wrote a small Python script called 'showdisks' that displays relevant information about any...
over a year ago
I wrote a small Python script called 'showdisks' that displays relevant information about any physical storage devices supported by hdparm.
Information such as model and capacity are shown, but also controller and device path.
This script only requires python and hdparm.
I hope...
Matt Blewitt
Service Objects in Rails
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects,...
over a year ago
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects, in the context of Rails.
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!
Jonas Hietala
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small...
over a year ago
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small shooter.
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afro
Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen?
Instruction
W: up
Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc...
Old Vintage...
Composite and hard reset mods for the Tandyvision One
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my...
2 weeks ago
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my literal first game console: the Tandyvision One, Tandy Radio Shack's label variant of the Mattel Intellivision Master Component.
The Mattel Intellivision proper originally hails...
Arduino Blog
Using Arduino with gaming
It’s not surprising that the Arduino community is packed to the brim with examples of gaming-related...
a month ago
It’s not surprising that the Arduino community is packed to the brim with examples of gaming-related projects. Both activities tend to attract people with a love for problem-solving, technology, and getting immersed in one challenging activity for hours at a time. The result is...
Notes on software...
Go database driver overhead on insert-heavy workloads
The most popular SQLite and PostgreSQL database drivers in Go are
(roughly) 20-76% slower than...
a year ago
The most popular SQLite and PostgreSQL database drivers in Go are
(roughly) 20-76% slower than alternative Go drivers on insert-heavy
benchmarks of mine. So if you are bulk-inserting data with Go (and
potentially also bulk-retrieving data with Go), you may want to
consider the...
Vitalik Buterin's...
DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters
over a year ago
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 2: Britney Coltrane
1. I ❤️HR
The past two weeks Barry and Lettini have been building our next little project, and I...
a year ago
1. I ❤️HR
The past two weeks Barry and Lettini have been building our next little project, and I tried to deal with the company-side of work: setting up payroll, health insurance, and making sure we’re compliant (hello, bureaucracy!). Back in the day when Danny and I started...
Applied Cartography
Auth.js + Square
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the...
7 months ago
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the periphery of your understanding, and a Third South project has led me to spin up a small Next project using Bun [1] and Auth.js (nee next-auth), which has been quite bad and I...
Jonas Hietala
Extracting schedule information from timeedit
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved...
over a year ago
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved some parts. It’s now possible to create a prenumeration of a collection of courses exported as csv which can then be imported to other calendar apps. But they also started to...
Louwrentius
Experiences running ZFS on Ubuntu Linux 12.04
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start...
over a year ago
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start becoming an issue. The thing is that the license under which ZFS is released does not permit it to be used in the Linux kernel. That's quite unfortunate, but there is hope. There is a...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Failed mime type for Krita
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open)...
over a year ago
I thought Krita worked fine… Until I tried to save. Krita crashed whenever I tried to save (or open) a file and gave the error:
Could not find mime type "application/x-krita"
Turns out if you reinstall the package shared-mime-info which comes natively with Slackware the...
Home on Erik...
I'm looking for data engineers
I'm interrupting the regular programming for a quick announcement: we're looking for data engineers...
over a year ago
I'm interrupting the regular programming for a quick announcement: we're looking for data engineers at Better. You would be the first one to join and would work a lot directly with me.
Some fun things you could work on (these are all projects I'm working on right now):
csvbase blog
Being on The Semantic Web is easy, and, frankly, well worth the bother
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
4 months ago
Web 3.0 was not about the blockchain, thank god
Arduino Blog
Arduino and Truesense partner to bring UWB technology to millions
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB)...
a month ago
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, known for its innovative software and hardware solutions. This collaboration enhances our ecosystem of hardware products, software solutions, and cloud services,...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the
compiler's LLVM backend to
support compiling conditionals such that we can support...
computers are bad
2024-02-11 the top of the DNS hierarchy
In the past (in fact two years ago, proof I have been doing this for a while
now!) I wrote
about
the...
10 months ago
In the past (in fact two years ago, proof I have been doing this for a while
now!) I wrote
about
the "inconvenient truth" that structural aspects of the Internet make truly
decentralized systems infeasible, due to the lack of a means to perform
broadcast discovery. As a result,...
Willem's Blog
Free from the iCloud: Escaping Apple Photos
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read...
over a year ago
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read along to find out what software I use and how to make it play nice with your devices.
Jonas Hietala
Back to Training
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool;...
over a year ago
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool; we have linear algebra which is pretty interesting, we have a java course where we’re going to make a game (!) and one about structures and algorithms. Pretty promising but we’ll...
Applied Cartography
Notes from April
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past...
7 months ago
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past two years as an independent technologist.
On the media side of things: brief words on Murderville (meh), The Parallax View (incredible), This is Personal (meh), Cribsheet...
Neil Madden
Machine Learning and the triumph of GOFAI
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I...
5 months ago
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I haven’t finished reading it yet, and like much of BCS’s writing, it’ll probably take me 3 or 4 read-throughs to really understand it, but there’s one point that I want to pick up...
Jonas Hietala
Writing lessons learned after writing a book
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for...
a year ago
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for writing a book was to improve my writing ability.
Maybe I could’ve practiced on the blog instead, but putting things on paper gave it some added weight I don’t think I would’ve gotten...
Willem's Blog
Commuting by bike
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal...
over a year ago
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal bike.
Posts on Made of...
Write yourself an strace in 70 lines of code
Basically anyone who’s used Linux for any amount of time eventually comes to know and love the...
over a year ago
Basically anyone who’s used Linux for any amount of time eventually comes to know and love the strace command. strace is the system-call tracer, which traces the calls that a program makes into the kernel in order to interact with the outside world. If you’re not already familiar...
Louwrentius
Benchmarking storage with Fio and generating charts of the results
Introduction
Fio is a widely-used tool for performing storage benchmarks. Fio offers a lot of...
over a year ago
Introduction
Fio is a widely-used tool for performing storage benchmarks. Fio offers a lot of options to create a storage benchmark that would best reflect your needs. Fio allows you to assess if your storage solution is up to its task and how much headroom it has.
Fio outputs...
Jonas Hietala
Default audio card in linux
There are a bunch of posts about making your audio work by default in Linux but none that just...
over a year ago
There are a bunch of posts about making your audio work by default in Linux but none that just worked for me.
I had three separate problems:
Getting sound
Playing sound from multiple sources at the same time
Audio card getting different numbers on reboot
Getting sound
Here I...
Engineers Need Art
Virtual Pinhead
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual...
8 months ago
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual pinball cabinet.
Notes on software...
The impact of management teams as a decision-making group, in startups and enterprise
Ambitious companies form management teams at every level above you,
sometimes including you....
over a year ago
Ambitious companies form management teams at every level above you,
sometimes including you. Management teams meet periodically and have
private chat rooms. They discuss customers, product and organizational
direction. Sometimes discussions are well documented and...
Notes on software...
Two books I recommend to developers
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think...
a year ago
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think are actually so worthwhile. This
list is down to two. I think that's a good thing actually.
These are the books I recommend to developers wanting to improve their
skills as...
Ian's Blog
Pragmatically Generating a Self-Signed Certificate and Private Key using OpenSSL
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS...
over a year ago
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS app using OpenSSL, what surprised me was the total lack of documentation for OpenSSL.
While there is plenty of function documentation, what OpenSSL really lacks is examples of how it...
Buck on Software
23 things you should know
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
over a year ago
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
Christian Selig
Curing Mac mini M4 fomo with 3D printing
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve...
a month ago
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve found the new, tinier Mac mini to be absolutely adorable. But you might also be like me that you either already have an awesome M1 Mac mini that you have no real reason to replace,...
Notes on software...
Implementing a simple jq clone in Go, and basics of Go memory profiling
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of...
over a year ago
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of each object it reads. It won't be able to
do filters, mapping, etc.
$ cat large-file.json | head -n2 | ./jqgo...
Jonas Hietala
Jonas IceCream Stand
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream...
over a year ago
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream Stand
Instructions
It should be pretty self-explanatory, it’s a very simply tycoon game.
Credits
Music:
Eric Maskol
Steve Chatterton
Sound effects:
freesound
Rest:
Me
Willem's Blog
Using Google Free Android
Using a Google Free Android phone is uncommon these days, yet I decided to try the Volla Phone to...
over a year ago
Using a Google Free Android phone is uncommon these days, yet I decided to try the Volla Phone to experience its freedom and privacy.
./techtipsy
I tried out the CyberPower UT650EG UPS
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out...
over a year ago
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out one UPS that was recommended on the basis of it being much
more power efficient compared to the APC UPS that I previously ran.
That UPS? CyberPower UT650EG.
Why switch out a...
Jonas Hietala
My Dream Game: The RTS
Even if there are a million great games there’s one that has a very special place in my heart:...
over a year ago
Even if there are a million great games there’s one that has a very special place in my heart: Supreme Commander. It’s not the game I’ve played the most and there might even be games which are better and more fun but supcom was the game that introduced me to competitive gaming...
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
Home on Erik...
Subway waiting math
Why does it suck to wait for things? In a previous post I analyzed a NYC subway dataset and found...
over a year ago
Why does it suck to wait for things? In a previous post I analyzed a NYC subway dataset and found that at some point, quite early, it's worth just giving up.
This isn't a proof that the subway doesn't run on time – in fact it might actually proves that the subway runs really...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Talking to ChatGPT costs 5ml of water, not 500ml
There’s a common claim on the internet that ChatGPT consumes half a litre of water for every 5-50...
a month ago
There’s a common claim on the internet that ChatGPT consumes half a litre of water for every 5-50 responses. Here are some randomly-chosen…
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin's security isn't binary
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s...
over a year ago
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s security isn’t binary. In fact security in general isn’t black and white. It’s a trade-off being secure enough for your threat model vs the cost and feasibility of your...
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...
Notes on software...
A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its...
5 months ago
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its long-term data structure durably
to disk before returning to a client. Granted, this is a bad idea! And
granted, a WAL is critical for durability by design in most
databases. But I...
Jonas Hietala
addwatch: resource exhausted
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site:...
over a year ago
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site: addWatch: resource exhausted (No space left on device)
At first I tried to clear /tmp but, so clearly the device did have some space left. After a bit of googling I found a solution...
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.
Notes on software...
Implementing the Raft distributed consensus protocol in Go
As part of bringing myself up-to-speed after joining TigerBeetle, I
wanted some background on how...
a year ago
As part of bringing myself up-to-speed after joining TigerBeetle, I
wanted some background on how distributed consensus and replicated state
machines protocols work. TigerBeetle uses Viewstamped
Replication. But I
wanted to understand all popular protocols and I decided to start...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… Go
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by...
over a year ago
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by Christopher Clark and Amos Storkey was forwarded to me by Michael Eickenberg. It's about using convolutional neural networks to play Go.
Matt Mullenweg
Rhino Dehorning
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles,...
2 months ago
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles, elephants. Today wasn’t great: I witnessed a rhino shot with a tranquilizer from a helicopter, then it was held down, had its horns cut off, and then shaved down. I have some photos and...
Jonas Hietala
Going to University
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of...
over a year ago
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I’m sorry. It’s not as hard as I had imagined, and I don’t have that much in school but there’s still a lot that’s going on. For example now how to make...
Home on Erik...
Running Theano on EC2
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning...
over a year ago
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning using Theano. Theano is this Python package that lets you define symbolic expressions (cool), does automatic differentiation (really cool), and compiles it down into bytecode to run...
Louwrentius
My Ceph test cluster based on Raspberry Pi's and HP MicroServers
Introduction
To learn more about Ceph, I've build myself a Ceph Cluster based on actual hardware. In...
over a year ago
Introduction
To learn more about Ceph, I've build myself a Ceph Cluster based on actual hardware. In this blogpost I'll discus the cluster in more detail and I've also included (fio) benchmark results.
This is my test Ceph cluster:
The cluster consists of the following...
Louwrentius
Blu Ray is dead
HD-DVD may be dead, but Blu Ray is just as dead. The whole concept of optical
media is dead....
over a year ago
HD-DVD may be dead, but Blu Ray is just as dead. The whole concept of optical
media is dead. Honestly, who is still burning CD's or DVD's nowadays? (If you
are, why for Christ sake? I can't think of a single good reason) And at 10
euros ($100) for a single Blu Ray disk, you must...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What I would love to see in a wallet
2 weeks ago
Simply Explained
Serverless Anagram Solver with Cloudflare R2 and Pages
Six years ago, I reworked my anagram solver so it would run on top of AWS Lambda and DynamoDB....
over a year ago
Six years ago, I reworked my anagram solver so it would run on top of AWS Lambda and DynamoDB. However, this year I realized I didn't need server-side code or a database at all. I could make it completely static by pre-computing anagram solutions.
Jonas Hietala
The End of the Tunnel
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from...
over a year ago
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from the last time.
One course about data structure and algorithms (super fun to be honest) has wrapped up. We thought we were ahead with the assignments but in the end it got very...
Willem's Blog
Designing a multi dimensional capacity queue
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is...
over a year ago
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is possible to create a performant and reliable system.
./techtipsy
Back to roots
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet...
6 months ago
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet connection1, and
I think I have figured out the IPv6 setup as well2, leading to this change.
The IP address is dynamic, there are occasional power outages and I might just
mess up...
./techtipsy
Overcoming hardware limitations: the time-to-sleep script
As some of you might own, I’m still rocking a ThinkPad T430, a laptop model
originally released in...
over a year ago
As some of you might own, I’m still rocking a ThinkPad T430, a laptop model
originally released in 2012.
It’s not the fastest laptop out there, but it is plenty fast for a number of
tasks, even most software development work.
I also try to keep my machines up to date and properly...
Arduino Blog
A gamified approach to therapy and motor skills testing
For children who experience certain developmental delays, specific types of physical therapies are...
6 months ago
For children who experience certain developmental delays, specific types of physical therapies are often employed to assist them in improving their balance and motor skills/coordination. Ivan Hernandez, Juan Diego Zambrano, and Abdelrahman Farag were looking for a way to quantify...
somenice
RGB Input Range Sliders
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range...
4 months ago
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range type sliders to control the color of an LED.Each color channel change triggers an update to read the value, convert it to a hex code (eg. #FF0000), update the output element value,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
La votación mediante blockchain está sobrevalorada entre personas desinformadas pero subestimada...
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Impact of training
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and...
a year ago
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and data analysis on my performance in the Fietselfstedentocht 2023.
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...
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.
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...
Louwrentius
'Linux: monitor a directory for files'
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The...
over a year ago
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The inotifywait comand line utility can be used in shell scripts to monitor
directories for new files. It can also be used to monitor files for changes.
Inotifywait must be installed and is...
Vitalik Buterin's...
On Medium-of-Exchange Token Valuations
over a year ago
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.
./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...
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...
Home on Erik...
Snakebite
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie....
over a year ago
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie. It's a super fast tool to access HDFS over CLI/Python, by accessing the namenode directly over sockets/protobuf.
Spotify's developer blog features a nice blog post outlining what...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto"
5 months ago
Willem's Blog
Escaping the flat tires
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some...
over a year ago
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some time, but alas - here it is!
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
Arduino Blog
This fake CRT TV works using lasers and UV magic
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media...
3 weeks ago
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media was made to suit them. Retro video game consoles in particular look best on CRT TVs. But those old TVs are getting hard to find and desirable models are now quite expensive. So,...
Home on Erik...
3D in D3
I have spent some time lately with D3. It's a lot of fun to build interactive graphs. See for...
over a year ago
I have spent some time lately with D3. It's a lot of fun to build interactive graphs. See for instance this demo (will provide a longer writeup soon).
D3 doesn't have support for 3D but you can do projections into 2D pretty easily.
computers are bad
2024-07-13 the contemporary carphone
Cathode Ray Dude, in one of his
many excellent "Quick Start" videos, made an interesting observation...
5 months ago
Cathode Ray Dude, in one of his
many excellent "Quick Start" videos, made an interesting observation that
has stuck in my brain: sophisticated computer users, nerds if you will, have
a tendency to completely ignore things that they know are worthless. He was
referring to the...
Arduino Blog
Expanding possibilities: Blues Wireless amplifies Opta’s connectivity
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino...
7 months ago
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino Opta, unveiled this week at the Automate Show in Chicago. The expansion module is an affordable solution to enhance connectivity options for Arduino Opta micro PLCs, and marks a...
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,...
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals Update
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing...
over a year ago
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing intensity. They were mostly thoughts about not having accomplished anything and that the future looks bleak and meaningless and it’s not worth to do anything. As usual they are...
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...
Home on Erik...
Developer experience as a competitive advantage
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd...
over a year ago
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd “advanced” consumer who builds stuff in my spare time. In the last 10 years, there has been an order of magnitude more products that cater directly to developers, through APIs, SDKs, and...
Louwrentius
Eztables: simple yet powerful firewall configuration for Linux
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on...
over a year ago
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on Linux may be interested in this project.
It doesn't matter if you need to protect a laptop, server or want to setup a network firewall. Eztables supports it all.
If you're not afraid...
Posts on Made of...
Why node.js is cool (it's not about performance)
For the past N months, it seems like there is no new technology stack that is either hotter or more...
over a year ago
For the past N months, it seems like there is no new technology stack that is either hotter or more controversial than node.js. node.js is cancer! node.js cures cancer! node.js is bad ass rock star tech!. I myself have given node.js a lot of shit, often involving the phrase...
Arduino Blog
Introducing Arduino Academy: your path to becoming an Arduino-Certified Engineer begins!
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy,...
a month ago
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy, the go-to platform for hands-on, interactive learning designed to prepare you for the future of technology. Whether you’re just starting or looking to advance your career, the...
./techtipsy
This page looks better in the app
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing...
over a year ago
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing their frontend for the mobile-first era. It has taken a lot of time and effort from many people.
Countless challenges, arguments, testing.
The release is near. You’re probably a bit...
Arduino Blog
Giving a teenage pet turtle a synthetic pizza-ordering voice
If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of...
3 months ago
If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of some degree of training. Training is really just taking advantage of an animal’s natural inclination to adapt for survival, which is something all living organisms do. With that in...
Old Vintage...
The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately...
a year ago
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately larger beasts: you've met homer, my 1987 HP 9000/350 rack system, and Floodgap is powered by uppsala, a 2U-in-a-tower IBM POWER6 520 running AIX. But my first "large" machine, and...
On Life and Lisp
Software freedom isn't about licenses -- it's about power.
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When...
over a year ago
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When the free software movement was founded thirty years ago, these restrictive licenses were the primary user-hostile power dynamic, so permissive and copyleft licenses emerged as...
Computer Ads from...
VenturCom's VENIX
Mixing REAL Time With REAL UNIX Is Not Magic...It Is Technology.
10 months ago
Mixing REAL Time With REAL UNIX Is Not Magic...It Is Technology.
Louwrentius
The minimum requirements for a secure system
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off....
over a year ago
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off. However, little work seems to be getting done this way. So we
want to turn systems on and connect them to a network, or even (God forbid)
the internet.
The thing is this. A system...
somenice
Matter as a Smart home standard
Matter is the name of the smart home standard that promises to bridge IOT devices and different home...
8 months ago
Matter is the name of the smart home standard that promises to bridge IOT devices and different home eco-systems. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Homekit, Samsung SmartThings, etc. To prevent 6+ flavours of smart lightbulbs working with 6+ different apps, a standard needed to be...
Jonas Hietala
Why is my file so huge?
My latest game was absolutely huge! And I’m not talking about the music (which was pretty huge too -...
over a year ago
My latest game was absolutely huge! And I’m not talking about the music (which was pretty huge too - roughly 20mb) but the little .exe file.
It was 14,6mb!!
Now every way you look at it, that’s incredibly huge. It’s like comparing an ant to a human. Normally the little ant is the...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database, take two: Zig and RocksDB
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project...
over a year ago
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project from Go to Zig.
In this post, in ~1700 lines of code (yes, I'm sorry it's bigger than
my usual), we'll create a basic embedded SQL database in Zig on top of
RocksDB. Other than the...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Receive an alert when your device goes offline in Arduino Cloud
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations....
a month ago
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations. Suddenly, one of the sensors goes offline, but you don’t notice until hours later. The result? A gap in your data and a missed opportunity to take corrective action. This is a common...
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.
Jonas Hietala
Geekhack Toxic
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it...
over a year ago
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it be?
With a crummy mobile phone photo I give you my TOXIC keycaps mounted on my trusty old das keyboard:
Woooo
If only my GH60 could arrive some time this decade…
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
IDA Summer of Code 2014: Summary
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged...
over a year ago
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged commits
6790 lines added
2822 lines deleted
36 pull requests, 34 merged
12 pull requests directly fixing issues
rest either documentation or cleanup
1 RFC submitted...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Jonas IceCream Stand
Ah my latest game Jonas IceCream Stand is finished and up and running and I’m really proud of it!...
over a year ago
Ah my latest game Jonas IceCream Stand is finished and up and running and I’m really proud of it! And thanks for the feedback guys, it’s always welcome.
I spent almost exactly fifty hours on this game and that’s by far the most I’ve spent on a 7day project. To be honest it’s...
Arduino Blog
Exploring fungal intelligence with biohybrid robots powered by Arduino
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking...
a month ago
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking research that brings together the fields of robotics, biology, and engineering. Their recent experiments, published in Science, explore how fungal mycelia can be used to control robots....
Arduino Blog
This Kenyan engineer modernizes vintage cars with a custom ECU and EFI upgrades
The automotive industry’s switch from carburetion to fuel injection was one of the most effective...
2 months ago
The automotive industry’s switch from carburetion to fuel injection was one of the most effective advancements of the 20th century. Electronic fuel injection allows for precise control over an internal combustion engine’s air-fuel mixture, which dramatically improves fuel...
Posts on Made of...
Stripe's monorepo developer environment
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed...
7 months ago
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed to many generations of Stripe’s developer environment – the tools that engineers used daily to write and test code. I think Stripe did a pretty good job designing and building that...
Louwrentius
Visual representation of hard drives and their temperature
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where...
over a year ago
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where they are located in the chassis. My Norco 4020 case
has twenty drives in RAID 6, plus two operating system drives in RAID 1. I
wrote a script that shows me the temperature of each...