Louwrentius
Got myself a Norco RPC-4020
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion....
over a year ago
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion. The current 6 TB RAID 6 storage server does not have any
room for expantion.
This Norco RPC-4020 case with 20 hot swap drive bays does however. Don't know
what to fill it with yet.
Louwrentius
LFS - Linux Firewall Script released
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux...
over a year ago
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux Firewall Script.
I run a small Linux box as an internet router that doubles as a firewall. The
firewall is configured using iptables. In my opinion, iptables is not the
easiest tool to...
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
Notes on software...
Administering Kubernetes is hard
Kubernetes is easy to use after some exposure; it's pretty convenient
too. But it is super hard to...
over a year ago
Kubernetes is easy to use after some exposure; it's pretty convenient
too. But it is super hard to set up.
eksctl is a good tool for folks who don't want to
spend hours/days/weeks debugging VPC configuration in 1000s of lines
of CloudFormation. None of the other tools seem to be...
Simply Explained
Monitoring my 3D printer with a Pi Zero, Home Assistant and TinyCore Linux
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception:...
over a year ago
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception: my trusty 3D printer. It's a super reliable Prusa i3 MK3, but it lacks an internet connection.So I decided to use a Pi Zero to keep track of my 3D prints and send the progress to...
Notes on software...
RFCs and asynchronous-first culture
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't...
over a year ago
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't communicate well enough, even with folks I
had a good connection with. It took me a number of mistaken deliveries
to get the message.
Sketches and mockups
Designers solve this by...
Louwrentius
Why Debian/Ubuntu Linux is to be preferred
There are many Linux distributions around. However, I always come back to just
one: Debian. The...
over a year ago
There are many Linux distributions around. However, I always come back to just
one: Debian. The reason why so many people use Debian is the same reason I
like it so much: software management. With good old apt-get or the new
aptitude, software is installed within minutes. Due to...
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...
Willem's Blog
The joy of a simple laptop
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the...
over a year ago
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the experience!
Applied Cartography
Things take time
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi...
7 months ago
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD — was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of...
Notes on software...
Studying foreign languages with inbox zero
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language...
over a year ago
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language was through intensive language courses in
college. I was forced to actively speak, read, and write Chinese for
6-8 hours a week (1-2 hours every day). Then study another 5-10 hours
a...
Simply Explained
I Built a CO2 Sensor and It Terrifies Me
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is...
over a year ago
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is equally important for our health and even our cognitive performance.In this blog post we'll look at a DIY CO2 sensor: how it runs ESPHome, how it integrates with Home Assistant, how it...
Posts on Made of...
Two Perspectives on the End-to-End Principle
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read...
over a year ago
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read numerous classic papers of systems design. I enjoyed and learned a great deal from many of these papers, but one that paper that has stuck with me in particular was Saltzer et al’s...
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...
Arduino Blog
BrainPatch.AI: How a British neurotech startup built a working prototype fast, using Arduino Nano 33...
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and...
3 months ago
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and effective non-invasive interfaces that can deliver tiny milliamp currents to the right stimulation location on the head, neck or body. One example of the new players in this field is...
Home on Erik...
Norvig's claim that programming competitions correlate negatively with being good on the job
I saw a bunch of tweets over the weekend about Peter Norvig claiming there's a negative correlation...
over a year ago
I saw a bunch of tweets over the weekend about Peter Norvig claiming there's a negative correlation between being good at programming competitions and being good at the job. There were some decent Hacker News comments on it.
Arduino Blog
Shop vac becomes a Roomba on steroids
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and...
7 months ago
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and sweep your own floors, you have a little maid robot to do the job for you. But these devices have very little power and capacity, which makes them useless for anything other than...
Home on Erik...
Waiting time, load factor, and queueing theory: why you need to cut your systems a bit of slack
I've been reading up on operations research lately, including queueing theory. It started out as a...
over a year ago
I've been reading up on operations research lately, including queueing theory. It started out as a way to understand the very complex mortgage process (I work at a mortgage startup) but it's turned into my little hammer and now I see nails everywhere.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a ferroelectric RAM chip
Ferroelectric memory (FRAM) is an interesting storage technique that stores bits in a special...
3 months ago
Ferroelectric memory (FRAM) is an interesting storage technique that stores bits in a special "ferroelectric" material.
Ferroelectric memory is nonvolatile like flash memory, able to hold its data for decades.
But, unlike flash, ferroelectric memory can write data...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Capability makes your life simpler
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less...
4 months ago
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less time and energy packing, setting-up, tearing down, and unpacking. The same goes for travel. Fewer clothes and shoes means less luggage to carry, manage, and lose. You can board...
Notes on software...
How to recommend books, or, stop recommending SICP
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance...
over a year ago
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance for bad writing and bad editing. I write
this post both to discourage thoughtless recommendations and to
encourage the receivers of bad recommendations.
For software developers,...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing over multinomial distributions
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 +...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 + ldots + w_n = 1 $$ and $$ 0 le w_i le 1 $$ . Usually, $$ f $$ is concave and differentiable, so there's one unique global maximum and you can solve it by applying gradient ascent.
Jonas Hietala
A Christmas Game
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly...
over a year ago
I’m going through a bit of a boardgame stint, as I usually do during christmas time. I had exactly one thing on my wishlist for this christmas for my little brother: Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries. Guess what? I got something from my wishlist!
This was our 5th or 6th game (or...
Willem's Blog
Protecting VMware ESXi
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to...
over a year ago
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to improve security of the management console using NGINX and a firewall
Home on Erik...
Why organizations fail
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core...
over a year ago
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core objective, decide the most basic strategy, and then add more and more modifications as you have to confront the complexity of reality (yes I have very lame hobbies thanks I know).
Jonas Hietala
Groar
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
So I actually finished Ludum Dare 33. I can’t believe how hard it was...
over a year ago
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
So I actually finished Ludum Dare 33. I can’t believe how hard it was to actually make something! It continues to amaze me what fantastic stuff everyone manage to make in just 48 hours. This is what I came up with for the theme You are the Monster....
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
Arduino Blog
The Club Master is a Nano RP2040 Connect-powered device that improves your golf swing
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even...
6 months ago
When playing golf, few things are as important as using the correct form when swinging, since even small deviations can be the difference between a hole-in-one and additional strokes. To improve his game, Concept Bytes has designed a small clip-on device called the “Club Master.”...
Posts on Made of...
How I Write Tests
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe...
over a year ago
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe to the definition of legacy code as “code without an automated test suite.” I’m convinced that the best thing you can do to encourage fast progress in a test suite is to design...
computers are bad
2023-08-07 STIRred AND SHAKEN
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps...
a year ago
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps spurred by boredom, I looked through the schedule to see
what's in store in the world of telephony. There is a workshop on SS7, of
course [1], plenty of content on cellular, but...
Jonas Hietala
Laying off Pintos
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished...
over a year ago
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished up our lab series about pintos. The labs were among the best I’ve had yet and I learned a ton. We didn’t follow the official instructions but we had our own assigmnets....
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this series we'll write a rudimentary database from
scratch in Go. Project source code is available on
Github.
In this first post we'll build enough of a parser to...
Jonas Hietala
Starcraft 2 Keycaps
When I ordered this computer I was compelled, utterly compelled to buy a mechanical keyboard. Sure...
over a year ago
When I ordered this computer I was compelled, utterly compelled to buy a mechanical keyboard. Sure they cost almost 10x as much as a “regular” one and they didn’t even have these funky multimedia keys, what gives? Did I loose my insanity? It was supposed to give a great typing...
Style over Substance
Peak Design quick-connect Leash and Cuff straps
My camera collection has been growing steadily over the years, but it’s been expanding even faster...
over a year ago
My camera collection has been growing steadily over the years, but it’s been expanding even faster during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Online shopping therapy keeps me sane while I’m cooped up at home, and with easy access to eBay and other auction sites my GAS – photographers...
Posts on Made of...
Test suites as classifiers
Suppose we have some codebase we’re considering applying some patch to, and which has a robust and...
over a year ago
Suppose we have some codebase we’re considering applying some patch to, and which has a robust and maintained test suite.
Considering the patch, we may ask, is this patch acceptable to apply and deploy. By this we mean to ask if the patch breaks any important functionality,...
Louwrentius
Benchmark results of Random I/O performance of different RAID levels
Introduction
I have performed some benchmarks to determine how different RAID levels perform when...
over a year ago
Introduction
I have performed some benchmarks to determine how different RAID levels perform when handling a 100% random workload of 4K requests. This is a worst-case scenario for almost every storage subsystem. Normal day-to-day workloads may not be that harsh in a real-life...
computers are bad
2023-02-14 something up there pt I
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by North American air defense. Little is yet known about some
of these objects, but it is clearly one of the more dramatic UFO turns in
recent memory. Some of the mystery is simply...
Arduino Blog
“Catch me if you can!” — How Alvik learns to dodge trouble with AI, featuring Roni Bandini
Have you ever discovered a cool piece of tech buried in your drawer and thought, “This could make...
3 months ago
Have you ever discovered a cool piece of tech buried in your drawer and thought, “This could make for an awesome project”? That’s exactly what happened to Roni Bandini, maker, writer, electronics artist – and Arduino Alvik Star! Bandini began coding at 10 years old, and has...
Louwrentius
Script that shows ETA of RAID rebuild / reshape
I made a small script that converts the output of cat /proc/mdstat to an
actual date and time...
over a year ago
I made a small script that converts the output of cat /proc/mdstat to an
actual date and time telling you when the RAID rebuild / reshape is finished.
This is the link to the correct version of the script.
Example:
debian:~# ./raid-rebuild-eta.sh
Estimated time of finishing...
Louwrentius
IKEA $50 VINDSTYRKA vs. $290 Dylos air quality monitor
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with...
a year ago
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with a $290 air quality monitor made by Dylos to see if it's any good.
Context
If you care about indoor air quality, you may already own a CO2 to determine if it's time to ventilate...
./techtipsy
How to fix ZFS pool not importing at boot
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything...
over a year ago
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything seems to work correctly, but
after restarting your machine, the ZFS pool is not visible. You can still import your pool manually using
zpool import poolname or zpool import -a.
In...
./techtipsy
Stupid project ideas: the War Machine
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such...
over a year ago
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such as:
unboxing and deploying petabytes of storage
7 gamers, 1 CPU
building sleeper PC-s
testing sketchy CPU-s
opening up a 100TB SSD
I have the ideas, but not the budget of LinusTechTips, so...
Neil Madden
SipHash-based encryption for constrained devices
I see a lot of attempts to define encryption schemes for constrained devices with short...
7 months ago
I see a lot of attempts to define encryption schemes for constrained devices with short authentication tags (e.g., 64 bits) using universal hashing. For example, there’s a proposal in CFRG at the moment for a version of AES-GCM with short tags for this kind of use-case. In my...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out...
2 weeks ago
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out in a cultural clash between different…
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.
computers are bad
2024-10-19 land art and isolation
Prescript: I originally started writing this with the intent to send it out to
my supporter's...
2 months ago
Prescript: I originally started writing this with the intent to send it out to
my supporter's newsletter, EYES ONLY, but it
got to be long and took basically all day so I feel like it deserves wider
circulation. You will have to tolerate that it begins in the more
conversational...
Notes on software...
Favorite compiler and interpreter resources
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
HP Procurve "auto DoS" feature causing network problems
A feature on more recent HP Procurve models (18xx series, such as 1810G etc.)
is called "Auto DoS"....
over a year ago
A feature on more recent HP Procurve models (18xx series, such as 1810G etc.)
is called "Auto DoS". You can find it in the section "Security" and then
"Advanced security".
If you enable the Auto DoS feature, traffic is blocked based on one of these
conditions:
the source port...
Vitalik Buterin's...
My 40-liter backpack travel guide
over a year ago
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.
./techtipsy
Oops, I published my drafts!
Those of you who follow my blog using the RSS feed might have seen that new, incomplete posts popped...
10 months ago
Those of you who follow my blog using the RSS feed might have seen that new, incomplete posts popped up around the time
I published my FOSDEM 2024 post.
Oops.
I recently tried looking for an alternative to writing blog posts in IntelliJ and out of all the options I stuck...
Style over Substance
Create a Hue-compatible DIY LED light sculpture
Learn how to create your own Hue compatible LED light sculpture, inspired by by the REFLEKTION art,...
over a year ago
Learn how to create your own Hue compatible LED light sculpture, inspired by by the REFLEKTION art, using cheap LED strips and DIY parts you can order online.
The post Create a Hue-compatible DIY LED light sculpture appeared first on Style over Substance.
Vitalik Buterin's...
What kind of layer 3s make sense?
over a year ago
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.
Applied Cartography
You gotta be able to taste the kool-aid
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b...
8 months ago
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b valuation:
Despite the skepticism surrounding Devin’s launch, the AI coding assistant has shown promising results. According to the SWE-Bench benchmark, which evaluates AI models on software...
Arduino Blog
Speed up your project’s compile time by up to 50% in Arduino Cloud!
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or...
a week ago
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or experimenting with new ideas. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce a game-changing update to the Cloud Editor Builder — the engine behind compiling your sketches in Arduino Cloud. This...
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 22 Timelapse
Here’s the timelapse for my entry to Ludum Dare 22,...
over a year ago
Here’s the timelapse for my entry to Ludum Dare 22, Sat-E.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKDyhxCVm0
This time I managed to record one screen every minute, which is very suboptimal to say the least but I slowed it down a bit so you can at least see something being done there.
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 01: UX improvements
a year ago
Louwrentius
Switching away from Debian to Ubuntu LTS
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years....
over a year ago
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years. This pace is great for progress, but there is a serious problem. This problem is related to their support for older Debian stable versions.
If you read the quote below from 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.
Arduino Blog
Build Button Clash in minutes: a new fun game with Plug and Make Kit
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about turning creative sparks into reality in mere minutes....
2 weeks ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about turning creative sparks into reality in mere minutes. With its intuitive, snap-together design, even the wildest ideas become achievable – fast, fun, and frustration-free. That’s exactly what Julián Caro Linares, Arduino’s Product...
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
June gwern.net newsletter
June 2020 gwern.net newsletter with 3 new pages/essays, and links on CRISPR, population screening,...
over a year ago
June 2020 gwern.net newsletter with 3 new pages/essays, and links on CRISPR, population screening, AI scaling, politics, and technological unemployment.
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that...
2 months ago
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago except for all the aforementioned time and money. Yours truly is no exception.
a future article.) They existed in highly technical...
Ian's Blog
The Zune "HD"
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name,...
over a year ago
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name, released by Microsoft in October of 2009. A direct competitor to Apple's wildly successful iPod Touch, the Zune HD was the first Zune to feature a multi-touch display, full web...
Willem's Blog
Tablet as Tool
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and...
a year ago
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and personal experiences to help you maximise the tablet's potential and redefine your workflow.
Jonas Hietala
Hard Work
I’ve spent literally the whole day coding and it feels like I’ve only done a small parts of the...
over a year ago
I’ve spent literally the whole day coding and it feels like I’ve only done a small parts of the actual game mechanics… I know this isn’t going to end well.
I can allow myself a small pause I feel…
Not sure where this is going to end, but I’m having a blast anyway!
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine.
You ever end up doing something like this?
Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it.
Snapshots provide us...
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...
Good Enough
Say hello to Jelly: the simplest way to jam on email as a team
Dear readers, we need to apologize. We know some of you have noticed that Good Enough has gotten...
5 months ago
Dear readers, we need to apologize. We know some of you have noticed that Good Enough has gotten much quieter this year than last, across this blog, our newsletter, and socials. We’ve been heads down for the last few months on something new, but we’re now ready to come back up...
Home on Erik...
ML+Hadoop at NYC Predictive Analytics
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning...
over a year ago
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning algorithms using Hadoop to power music recommendations.
Great meetup, where we had two speakers, me and Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
Posts on Made of...
Systems that defy detailed understanding
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be...
over a year ago
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be explained, if we’re willing to dig deep enough into the stack of abstractions our software is built atop. Some of the ensuing discussion on Twitter and elsewhere lead me to write...
Home on Erik...
Blogroll
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is...
over a year ago
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is funny.
I follow a few hundred blogs using Feedly and Reeder and have been reading a few hundred thousand blog posts over the last 10 years.
Jonas Hietala
Food vacation in Japan
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of...
over a year ago
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures, but I ended up sending a bunch back home as a ways of keeping my family up to date. When I look back most of them are about food… So I’ll turn this into a post about the...
./techtipsy
Testing a cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD adapter on my ThinkPad T430
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2...
over a year ago
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2 NGFF adapter that
they purchased from AliExpress. The adapter has a similar purpose to the one
designed by thinkmods.store, with the added bonus
that it could fit longer NVMe...
Jonas Hietala
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…
Matt Blewitt
Leadership Power Tools: SQL and Statistics
A common pattern I’ve seen over the years have been folks in engineering leadership positions that...
2 weeks ago
A common pattern I’ve seen over the years have been folks in engineering leadership positions that are not super comfortable with extracting and interpreting data from stores, be it databases, CSV files in an object store, or even just a spreadsheet. We’re going to cover SQL &...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
5 months ago
Birchtree
Squashing links on social media
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are...
2 weeks ago
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly
Good Enough
Actual Customer Support Is Remarkable
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built...
a year ago
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built software on the Internet and in the app stores.
Our motivation with Good Enough is to try to put together a few products that feel just right to the folks using them.
The things we...
Posts on Made of...
The architecture of declarative configuration management
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing...
over a year ago
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal...
Buck on Software
Explaining the growth software sell-off
The terminal value double whammy of rising interest rates
over a year ago
The terminal value double whammy of rising interest rates
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
TIL: Don’t forget your Web Manifest file
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective...
a year ago
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective expertise is in making products and services for the web. And like everyone else, our use of the web has shifted from our desktops and laptops to our phones.
As we’re creating and...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
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...
Applied Cartography
Finding null JSON values in Postgres
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the...
7 months ago
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the Django ORM into
SQL to do weird things, the syntax strikes me as confusing and arcane. As such, when I need to do esoteric things it
takes me longer time than I'd like, and in hopes...
lcamtuf’s thing
The untimely demise of an image upscaler
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
3 months ago
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
Arduino Blog
This small device enables users to feel braille through haptics
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to...
7 months ago
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to text-to-speech (TTS) interfaces that read portions of the screen aloud. Dynamic braille displays also exist as a tactile means of communication, but their prices can get close to...
Matt Mullenweg
DrupalCon Singapore
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform...
a week ago
This week, DrupalCon Singapore is bringing together an incredible community of Drupal platform creators, developers, and supporters. Last year, I had the chance to share the stage with Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, and the conversation stuck with me. It highlighted the...
Willem's Blog
Your own addressbook and calendar cloud
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data...
over a year ago
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data and share it between your devices.
./techtipsy
How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very...
6 months ago
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very reliable piece of hardware, especially for a printer.
Then came Windows 10. The printer would not work out of the box with it and
the official drivers got stuck during installation....
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 6: The Splurge
a month ago
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
Notes on software...
In response to a frontend developer asking about database development
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Applied Cartography
The taste of beer
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
There’s a...
6 months ago
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
There’s a relatively famous line from Bezos, circulated first at YC in ’08 and then more recently by the folks at Acquired (a great pod!):
Jeff uses this analogy for AWS. He talks about...
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...
Notes on software...
AOT-compilation of Javascript with V8
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed...
over a year ago
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed programming languages have implementations that
compile to native binaries:
Python: Cython
Common Lisp: SBCL
Scheme: Chicken Scheme
The benefits of compiling dynamically typed...
Arduino Blog
Storing ephemeral micropoetry on RFID cards for bite-sized readings
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of...
3 months ago
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of poetry from cover-to-cover over the course of a few sessions, the majority of people seem to prefer enjoying poetry in occasional little chunks. And unlike the epic poems of Greek...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What I would love to see in a wallet
2 weeks ago
Arduino Blog
What if robots could communicate with humans by emitting scents?
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and...
5 months ago
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and touch. Your robot vacuum might beep at you, or play recorded or synthesized speech. An LED on its enclosure might blink to red to signify a problem. And cutting-edge humanoid...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 4
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
a year ago
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
Louwrentius
Configuring, attacking and securing VRRP on Linux
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple...
over a year ago
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple routers in an active/passive configuration. If the primary router fails, the backup router takes over almost seamlessly.
This is how VRRP works:
Clients connect to a virtual...
Buck on Software
The Wrong Bet
The next decade in SaaS won't look like the last
over a year ago
The next decade in SaaS won't look like the last
Good Enough
TIL: Deploying a Sinatra app to Render.com
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me,...
a year ago
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me, so I figured I’d write down what worked in the end.
First, a Gemfile:
# Gemfile
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'sinatra-contrib'
gem 'puma'
* I’m pretty sure...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
Good Enough
TIL: Blocking Password App Autocomplete on Form Fields
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username...
a year ago
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username field in Contact Me. It was pretty simple in the end:
<%= form.text_field :username, "data-lpignore": true, "data-1p-ignore": true %>
Reference: 1Password, Lastpass.
Arduino Blog
Reduce power consumption in IoT and wearable devices, with Arduino’s new power management library!
Developing energy-efficient IoT and wearable devices is complex and time-consuming, yet it is...
2 months ago
Developing energy-efficient IoT and wearable devices is complex and time-consuming, yet it is essential for creating high-quality products that stand out in today’s market. A key part in this process is optimizing power consumption without sacrificing performance or...
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...
Louwrentius
'Zabbix Security: client-server communication seems insecure'
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring...
over a year ago
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring hosts, Zabbix provides an agent that can be
installed on the hosts that must be monitored.
Based on the supplied documentation and some remarks on the internets,
the 'security' of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Optimism retro funding round 1
over a year ago
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...
Construction Physics
How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was...
3 weeks ago
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible.
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Study Hacking
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my...
over a year ago
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my part.
But the past is the past and this week I’m going to be study focused. Not that I need to study, but I really need to rework my study technique. I’ve been going on like a classical...
Good Enough
Why We're Writing Blog Software
We’re seven months into our Cosmic Maelstrom
and we have started writing blogging software.
What the...
a year ago
We’re seven months into our Cosmic Maelstrom
and we have started writing blogging software.
What the why?!
First, let me say that, yes, I do realize there are probably 100s of blog software options out there.
In terms of static-site generators (SSGs) alone, there are probably...
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...
Arduino Blog
Bringing Quake to Arduino: a game-changing project by Nicola Wrachien
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon...
2 months ago
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon Labs, a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world and long-time Arduino partner – has now tackled an even bigger challenge: porting Quake, the...
./techtipsy
Dell Latitude 5411: the Linux compatibility sweet spot
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my...
a year ago
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my article on why I went back to a ThinkPad T430 in 2022.
Or that other time when I got a new HP laptop for testing and got so frustrated that I wrote about it.
Well, today I’m writing...
Willem's Blog
Working Offline First
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise...
a year ago
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise your workflow – join my cloud-free adventure today!
./techtipsy
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?
I’m a man of many ideas. It’s a shame that most of them are quite stupid.
This is one of them, but...
over a year ago
I’m a man of many ideas. It’s a shame that most of them are quite stupid.
This is one of them, but at least it makes for a fun experiment.
Intro
After adding an UPS to accompany my server,
my setup was as complete as it could reasonably be. The server is low power,
but packs...
Jonas Hietala
2011 in Review
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek...
over a year ago
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek Achievements
Wrote three games this year:
My Minions
Grand Thief Arto
Sat-E
Bought a new computer!
Bought a mechanical keyboard.
Bought custom Starcraft 2 keycaps for the...
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
5 months ago
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
Ian's Blog
What the heck is OCSP?
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web...
over a year ago
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web browser) to check if a certificate has been revoked or not.
Certificate Revocation?
With asymmetrical encryption, your encryption is only as good as long as your private key remains...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Keep incidents boring
The internet is full of exciting incident war stories. Tough engineering problems, solved under...
over a year ago
The internet is full of exciting incident war stories. Tough engineering problems, solved under pressure by sleep-deprived developers. In an…
Willem's Blog
WordPress: 10 tips to secure your website
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using...
over a year ago
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using this blog post.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Slackware
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
a year ago
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against overuse of the Gini coefficient
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Designing an interface for a food ordering page
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need...
over a year ago
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need to be accommodated on a very small screen.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside an unusual 7400-series chip implemented with a gate array
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple...
9 months ago
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple die,
implemented in a straightforward, cost-effective way.
However, when I looked inside a military-grade chip built by Integrated Device Technology (IDT)4
I found a very unexpected...
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
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)...
Applied Cartography
Hidden settings are for cowards
At Stripe, we had two abstractions for branching logic in production: flags, which were meant to be...
2 weeks ago
At Stripe, we had two abstractions for branching logic in production: flags, which were meant to be explicitly temporal (temporarily split-testing traffic; rolling out a new feature or code path; exposing a specific path for a cohort of users during a closed beta) and gates,...
Louwrentius
Shunit2, unit testing for shell scripts
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts...
over a year ago
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts instead of using a proper scripting language such as
Python or Ruby. No I am deliberately not mentioning Perl here.
Anyway, testing is always an issue. With PPSS, I encountered many...
Birchtree
My favorite (and least favorite) movies of 2024
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to...
a week ago
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to make what is my current top 10 (plus honorable mentions & worst movies). As we get to the end of the year and you might have some
Neil Madden
A few clarifications about CVE-2022-21449
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating...
over a year ago
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating around on Reddit/Twitter etc: The bug only impacts Java 15 and above. The original advisory from Oracle incorrectly listed earlier versions (like 7, 8 and 11) as being impacted....
Posts on Made of...
Property Testing Like AFL
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same...
over a year ago
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same practice, or at least share a lot of commonality. In this followup post, I want to explore that idea a bit more: I’ll first detour into some of my frustrations and hesitations around...
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):
Notes on software...
Exploring a Postgres query plan
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into...
a year ago
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into the execution layer so you're given a
query plan and you get to decide what to do with it. What rows to
return, if any, and where they come from.
That's very interesting. So I...
Matt Mullenweg
Bezos at Dealbook
It looks like the Dealbook Summit had a number of great interviews this year, major props to Andrew...
2 weeks ago
It looks like the Dealbook Summit had a number of great interviews this year, major props to Andrew Ross Sorkin, but this one with Jeff Bezos was particularly good.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
over a year ago
Style over Substance
3D-printable Raleno 104 lightbox adapter for camera film scanning
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model...
over a year ago
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model turns it into a lightbox that you can use for digital camera scanning of your negative film. It also contains a holder compatible with the Valoi 35mm/120 film carriers. Additionally,...
Arduino Blog
Using Arduino UNO to sync a visual neuroscience lab
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and...
2 months ago
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and monitoring neural activity in the presence of sensory stimuli, to help scientists study how neurons encode and respond, for example, to specific visual inputs. One of the biggest technical...
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
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
computers are bad
2024-02-25 a history of the tty
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator...
10 months ago
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there
must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal...
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.
Birchtree
The future simply has more computers (members post)
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers...
5 days ago
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers to our lives, not replacing anything.
Posts on Made of...
Tracking down a memory leak in Ruby's EventMachine
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services....
over a year ago
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services. Over the last several months, we’ve known that one such service suffered from a gradual memory leak, that would cause its memory usage to gradually balloon from a normal ~50MB to...
Willem's Blog
Rescuing files from a broken harddisk
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe...
over a year ago
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe them?
Jonas Hietala
MenuCity: Level 0 Walkthrough
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive...
over a year ago
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive feedback! I’m so thrilled :) However, all isn’t blue skies and nice sunshine. A lot of times the first question is: How do you play it? or How do you get past the first level? I admit...
Electronics etc…
Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter
Introduction
Some Words about HDCP
Inside the Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro
The Test
Digging Deeper:...
a year ago
Introduction
Some Words about HDCP
Inside the Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro
The Test
Digging Deeper: UART Transactions
Decoding HDCP I2C Transactions
The Legality of It All
References
Footnotes
Introduction
I got my hands on a
Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDCP 2.2 to 1.4...
Willem's Blog
Rolex DateJust 36
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like?...
over a year ago
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like? Keep reading!
Arduino Blog
This beautiful table creates art in the sand
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen...
4 months ago
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen gardens that rake themselves in intricate patterns. But most of the builds we’ve seen use a conventional cartesian CNC layout or polar layout. This table by Newsons Electronics takes...
Arduino Blog
Making a car more secure with the Arduino Nicla Vision
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa...
4 months ago
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa was looking for a way to incorporate some of the technologies and techniques he learned into a useful project. Given that he lives in an area which experiences elevated levels of...
Yazin Alirhayim
Serializing and deserializing a Cookie Jar
I was recently working on a way to serialize and deserialize a Faraday connection that uses...
over a year ago
I was recently working on a way to serialize and deserialize a Faraday connection that uses HTTP::CookieJar to manage persistent cookies across requests.
I needed to do this because I wanted a way to “freeze” an HTTP connection instance, and later “thaw” it to resume the...
Matt Blewitt
Shunn
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts...
6 months ago
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts to publishers. It was created by author William Shunn and is widely used in the publishing industry. Here is a brief demonstration of a tool I wrote to facilitate generating...
GitButler
GitButler 0.13 - "Lucky Baseball"
It has been 4 months since our last minor release. In that time, we have done 27 patch releases,...
2 months ago
It has been 4 months since our last minor release. In that time, we have done 27 patch releases, adding lots of small features, bug fixes, performance improvements and experiments.
Last week we released GitButler 0.13, which is our first release with our new Fearless Rebasing...
Arduino Blog
Monitoring the weather with an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010-based station
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to...
7 months ago
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to analyze how the local climate changes over time. This project by Hackster.io user Pradeep explores how he was able to design a simple station outdoors that could communicate with a...
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Multidimensional gas pricing
7 months ago
Posts on Made of...
Finding near-duplicates with Jaccard similarity and MinHash
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are...
5 months ago
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are approximately the same as each other. For instance, we may have crawled the web over some period of time, and expect to have fetched the “same page” several times, but to see slight...
Good Enough
Issue 0: Collector's Item
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s...
over a year ago
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s item in your hands: the very first Good Enough Newsletter. This is the beginning of what we (Barry Hess & Shawn Liu) hope to be a years-long series of communiqués with our rabid...
computers are bad
2023-12-23 ITT Technical Institute
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is...
a year ago
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is a bit of an odd one. For the greatest
part of the 20th century, telephony in the United States was largely a monopoly
of AT&T and its many affiliates. This wasn't always the case,...
Avestura's Blog
Versioning microservices in GitLab monorepos and polyrepos
What are some possible options to version projects for a microservices project in Gitlab?
over a year ago
What are some possible options to version projects for a microservices project in Gitlab?
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...
computers are bad
2024-12-11 travelers information stations
Histories of radio broadcasting often make a particular focus on the most
powerful stations. For...
a week ago
Histories of radio broadcasting often make a particular focus on the most
powerful stations. For historic reasons, WBCT of Grand Rapids, Michigan
broadcasts FM at 320¸000 watts. Many AM stations are licensed to operate at
50,000 watts, but this modern license limit represented a...
./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...
Jonas Hietala
Hearthstone on Wine
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play...
over a year ago
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play it. It didn’t work in vanilla wine, with a “time out error”, but I found a bug report which makes it work. Here’s a short summary:
Get wine source from git. My version was...
Arduino Blog
How to customize your Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards on the go
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage...
2 months ago
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage their IoT projects with ease. From tracking sensor data to automating smart devices, the cloud enables seamless connectivity. Complementing this, the Arduino IoT Remote mobile app...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Winter Kit Tournament Linköping
After quite the hiatus from Netrunner I had a chance to join a tournament here in Linköping with 14...
over a year ago
After quite the hiatus from Netrunner I had a chance to join a tournament here in Linköping with 14 participants. The number of players has grown a lot since the previous tournament which is really great.
As I really wanted to win the wonderful Day Job playmat I went with two of...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #47: I think this YouTube video just changed my life
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
a week ago
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
Christian Selig
Juno for YouTube has been removed from the App Store
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store...
2 months ago
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store stating that Juno does not adhere to YouTube guidelines and modifies the website in a way they don’t approve of, and alludes to their trademarks and iconography.
I don’t personally...
Matt Blewitt
Riding the Risk Railway
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is...
over a year ago
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is important to consider the riskiness of a user, which can also be characterised as trustworthiness. These will typically be negatively correlated, with low trust indicating high risk...
Notes on software...
Notes from Neal Gabler's Walt Disney
Disney was a celebrity by his mid-30s, Disney the company was famous
by 1930s.
Even though...
a year ago
Disney was a celebrity by his mid-30s, Disney the company was famous
by 1930s.
Even though politically the 1930s was considered the decade of
Roosevelt (elected President in 1933), culturally the 1930s was
considered the decade of Mickey Mouse.
Almost every new...
Jonas Hietala
A friendly game of Twilight Imperium
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We were six players, most had played the third edition before. As I was quite hyped before the game, I had read up on the rules, watched a let’s play or two and listened to a podcast...
Computer Ads from...
Maxell's MF 2-DD Floppies
The Gold Standard
3 weeks ago
Arduino Blog
The end of Mbed marks a new beginning for Arduino
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially...
5 months ago
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially destined to reach end of life in July 2026, and therefore will no longer be maintained. The news has sent ripples through the embedded development community, particularly affecting...
Home on Erik...
More Luigi alternatives
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a...
over a year ago
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a couple I encountered in the last few days. I love that at least two of them are direct references to Luigi!
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Smaller fixes
I’ve been busy.
Busy printing stuff.
Which is awesome, because one big worry I had was if I’d...
10 months ago
I’ve been busy.
Busy printing stuff.
Which is awesome, because one big worry I had was if I’d actually use the printer or just end up modding and tweaking it until the end of time.
But of course, I’ve been slowly working through my large mods-I-want list.
My initial plan was to...
Willem's Blog
Google Analytics vs AWStats
Comparing Google Analytics with AWStats to find out where they differ and which is better.
over a year ago
Comparing Google Analytics with AWStats to find out where they differ and which is better.
Notes on software...
Walking through a basic Racket web service
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme...
over a year ago
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme R5RS is three years younger. It is
as concise and expressive as Python but with much more reasonable
syntax and semantics. Racket is also faster in many cases due in part
to:
JIT...
./techtipsy
VR, VFIO and how latency ruined everything
I’ve been running my all-in-one
PC for a while now. It was my desktop, my NAS and my gaming...
over a year ago
I’ve been running my all-in-one
PC for a while now. It was my desktop, my NAS and my gaming PC.
However, during the next couple of months I kept hitting small bumps along the
road. Most of these were quite straightforward to fix, but there is one that
finally convinced me to go...
Style over Substance
My Home Assistant setup (2023 edition)
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s...
a year ago
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s become such a hobby of mine that I’ve even started coding add-ons for it. While there are other popular automation platforms, Home Assistant’s versatility blows the rest out of the...
./techtipsy
This site will be offline on 2022-08-17 between 18:00-19:00 EEST
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an...
over a year ago
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an opportunity to send a signal and test the capabilities of
my UPS.
I’ve prepared for this moment with my self-hosting setup, let’s see how well it
holds up. Hopefully better than...
Old Vintage...
Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball...
a year ago
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball machines.
that cyberdog.
our PowerBook Duo 2300 rehabilitated, guess what we're gonna look at?
Internet document?
Thus was the nucleus of Cyberdog (named for the famous New...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000...
10 months ago
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors.
Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to design the processor, but it was falling behind schedule.
The design team decided to automate chunks of the layout, developing "automatic...
Jonas Hietala
My book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is done
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later...
over a year ago
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later and 1006 more commits I’m finally done!
Well, I’m done with the online version at least. I still plan to create an e-book, a PDF and a paperback and who knows how long that will...
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
2 weeks ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Jonas Hietala
The great Hochstapler
Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.
I’m now a pretty...
over a year ago
Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.
I’m now a pretty happy student at Linköpings university and I’m reading something similar to Computer Science or Computer engineering, but I guess it’ll become whatever you make it to be. For...
Lars Lofgren
CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had...
2 months ago
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had agreements with CNN and USA Today? And that Forbes Marketplace was stuffing those sites full of affiliate content just like it is with Forbes? And what if Forbes Marketplace went to...
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!
Birchtree
My default apps of 2024
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default...
5 hours ago
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default apps, and I though it would be fun to turn this into a tradition and revisit the list to see if anything has changed since last year.
✨ next to each change
computers are bad
2023-04-10 solving problems with chatgpt
One of the foundational goals of computer technology, at least as understood by
popular culture, is...
a year ago
One of the foundational goals of computer technology, at least as understood by
popular culture, is to automate away our jobs. When your job is (put simply) to
get computers to work correctly, there's sort of an irony to this view of
things. Still, just within the span of my...
Louwrentius
Why I Do Use ZFS as a File System for My NAS
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system...
over a year ago
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system for my 18 TB NAS.
You have to understand that at the time, I believe the arguments in the article were relevant, but much has changed since then, and I do believe this article is...
Arduino Blog
On-body LEDs help this guitar rock harder
You don’t go to watch a band play live for the audio quality — most venues are atrocious in that...
6 months ago
You don’t go to watch a band play live for the audio quality — most venues are atrocious in that regard. No, you go to enjoy the show as a whole and that includes the visuals. The more a band can do to make the performance look exciting, the more you’re going to enjoy it. […]
The...
./techtipsy
The absolute state of Bluetooth audio in 2022
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your...
over a year ago
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your colleagues? Forget about it.
This is the setup I have to go with, and it has all to do with how Bluetooth
works. Your options with Bluetooth headsets are the following:
high quality...
Applied Cartography
Tailwind black magic: styling paragraphs within tables
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's...
8 months ago
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's typography plugin — which makes it really easy to author beautiful docs in plaintext.
We ran into one small issue, which is that the Markdoc renderer likes to place paragraph tags in table...
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!
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...
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...
Louwrentius
ZFS: resilver performance of various RAID schemas
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures...
over a year ago
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures before you put your important data on it. It makes sense to know what to do in case a drive needs to be replaced. I also recommend putting a substantial amount of data on your NAS and...
Louwrentius
Understanding Ceph: open-source scalable storage
Introduction
In this blog post I will try to explain why I believe Ceph is such an interesting...
over a year ago
Introduction
In this blog post I will try to explain why I believe Ceph is such an interesting storage solution. After you finished reading this blog post you should have a good high-level overview of Ceph.
I've written this blog post purely because I'm a storage enthusiast and I...
Jonas Hietala
Competition Feedback
The voting is over and I got a few ratings I want to comment on. You can view all ratings and...
over a year ago
The voting is over and I got a few ratings I want to comment on. You can view all ratings and comments here.
They’re all from 1 to 5.
Innovation: 3.75
Fun: 3.29
Theme: 3.17
Graphics: 2.54
Audio: 2.14
Humor: 2.54
that ugly.
Overall: 3.13
something playable out of this.
Community:...
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...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
2 months ago
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 20 to recommend in 2020
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17...
over a year ago
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17 non-fiction and 30 fiction. Another 20-30
remain started but unfinished this year.
Non-fiction
The 8 non-fiction books I most recommend are:
Fashionapolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and...
Louwrentius
Setting up a Squid proxy with Clamav anti-virus using c-icap
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer...
over a year ago
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer presenting a different set of challenges, requiring different skill sets and technology. So every layer will increase the time and effort to compromise your environment.
A...
Willem's Blog
Listen to your body
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have...
over a year ago
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have stopped using bluetooth sensors all together.
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,...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Build start
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was...
a year ago
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was suddenly very important that I got myself a 3D printer.
Maybe it was an important insight, but it maybe it was only a fix idea I got that somehow became this all-import...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Setting up your /now page with an RSS feed
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now...
a month ago
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now pages” but I felt like it would be better if it had an RSS feed. The feed would give interested parties a way to subscribe to life changes.
The problem is that RSS feeds aren’t...
csvbase blog
Caching secrets of the HTTP elders, part 1
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
8 months ago
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
Louwrentius
Why I believe the new Mac Pro won't be a great machine for gaming
In Accidental Tech Podcast episode 18 (love the show), I learned that John Siracusa was thinking...
over a year ago
In Accidental Tech Podcast episode 18 (love the show), I learned that John Siracusa was thinking about buying a new Mac Pro for gaming.
I believe that gaming on the new Mac Pro will be a mediocre experience.
Driver support: as John mentioned himself, the video cards are...
Posts on Made of...
Security doesn't respect abstraction boundaries
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a...
over a year ago
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a set of useful, easily-described behaviors out of a complex system, we can build other systems on top of those pieces, without having to understand to worry about the full complexity...
axio.ms
32-bit hat, with LEDs
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat,...
over a year ago
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat, bejewelled with 38 RGB LEDs
Is this thing on..? It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these.
So, the hat. It’s been on the writeup pile for almost 6 years, nagging away. Finally...
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...
Home on Erik...
Momentum and mean reversion might just be volatility bias
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at...
over a year ago
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at historical performance for mutual funds, they find strong support for momentum and mean reversion. Picking the best or the worst fund over the previous five years gives great returns...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 1 (Teacher's Pet)
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
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...
./techtipsy
Self-hosting Wikipedia using Kiwix
Do you have a need to host Wikipedia on your computer?
Or a StackExchange site, like Super...
over a year ago
Do you have a need to host Wikipedia on your computer?
Or a StackExchange site, like Super User?
It’s easier than you think!
Step 1: download stuff!
The Kiwix project provides ZIM files for many popular websites, including Wikipedia.
These files can be downloaded over at Kiwix...
Louwrentius
My home lab server with 20 cores / 40 threads and 128 GB memory
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this...
over a year ago
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this moment, it's replaced by a cluster of four 1L PCs which use about a third of the idle power usage and boot within 20 seconds. The single-core performance of these low-power 1L PCs...
Jonas Hietala
Evolution of RTS games
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through the evolution of RTS game genre. I like RTS games and I’ve played them for as long as I can remember, from the classic Red Alert and Age of Empires to the newer Supreme Commander and...
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
over a year ago
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
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...
Arduino Blog
Massive tentacle robot draws massive attention at EMF Camp
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control...
6 months ago
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control several motors and monitor a bunch of sensors. But what if the robot is enormous and the motors are far apart? James Bruton found himself in that situation when he constructed this...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Acing the coding challenge
How do you write a successful coding challenge? Unlike some nightmare whiteboard interview...
over a year ago
How do you write a successful coding challenge? Unlike some nightmare whiteboard interview scenarios, typically a coding challenge is not a…
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The...
4 months ago
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The Minuteman III missile is currently the only US land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with
400 missiles ready for launch, spread across five central states.1
The missile...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
Jonas Hietala
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....
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...
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...
Willem's Blog
Offline Music
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to...
over a year ago
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to lossless audio files; there is some reason to this madness however!
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this...
a year ago
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generation circuitry inside the Intel 386 processor.
Earlier processors such as the 8086 (1978) were simpler, using two clock phases internally.
The...
Louwrentius
Tracking down a faulty Storage Array Controller with ZFS
One day, I lost two virtual machines on our DR environment after a storage vMotion.
Further...
over a year ago
One day, I lost two virtual machines on our DR environment after a storage vMotion.
Further investigation uncovered that any storage vMotion of a virtual machine residing on our DR storage array would corrupt the virtual machine's disks.
I could easily restore the affected...
Opsbros
Debug Header
After watching a livestream by UnexpectedMaker struggling to put probe pins on his Stepper Motor...
over a year ago
After watching a livestream by UnexpectedMaker struggling to put probe pins on his Stepper Motor driver connected to a Raspberry Pi, I thought a breakout header might help; so I whipped up this little board.
Notes on software...
Controlled HTML select element in React has weird default UX
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.
./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...
Jonas Hietala
February gets Themed: Rejection
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t...
over a year ago
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t follow suite! With valentine coming up I might just have found a pretty nice idea, just now, writing this…
Booyah!!
Home on Erik...
Recurrent Neural Networks for Collaborative Filtering
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering....
over a year ago
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering. RNN’s are models that predict a sequence of something. The beauty is that this something can be anything really – as long as you can design an output gate with a proper loss function,...
detreville
This is "detreville"
It's my name, and the name of my Substack too. That's one less thing for everyone to remember.
a year ago
It's my name, and the name of my Substack too. That's one less thing for everyone to remember.
csvbase blog
From Shell to Excel - with a little bit of HTTPS
Write once, read everywhere
4 months ago
Write once, read everywhere
Style over Substance
Using the EZCOO / AVStar HAE118 HDMI2.1 Audio Extractor for PS5/Xbox audio
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out...
a year ago
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out of this console meant we also had to buy a new TV, as our old TV was not 4K-compatible and did not support HDMI2.1, the new A/V standard required to support all of the PS5’s...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
Computer Ads from...
Two Interviews with Ken Kaplan, One of the Creators of OS-9
Two interview from two different time periods
4 months ago
Two interview from two different time periods
Jonas Hietala
IDA Summer of Code 2014
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in...
over a year ago
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in a project of their choice and if selected they get paid to work on it for 4 weeks during the summer. In return the university get to show off the students and their projects in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Cantor was Wrong: debunking the infinite set hierarchy
over a year ago
lcamtuf’s thing
RAM: the forgotten history
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working...
2 months ago
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working memory.
Louwrentius
What home NAS builders should understand about silent data corruption
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come...
over a year ago
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come up:
Unrecoverable read errors (UREs) or what old people like me call 'bad sectors'
Silent data corruption (data corruption unnoticed by the storage layers)
I get a strong impression...
Notes on software...
Standard ML in 2020
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML#...
over a year ago
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML# and
SML/NJ
are the most prominent. Discussion on the future direction of Standard
ML remains healthy as
well.
And somehow OCaml's lesser known cousin still beats out OCaml...
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
a month ago
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
Good Enough
How We Built Quack (Beta)
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any...
a year ago
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any Markdown text. This software is completely front-end based, and for me personally it was a bit of a challenging puzzle to implement. Thankfully we have genius hackers like Arun...
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals (part 2)
A few minutes after I wrote about my long term goals, in the shower, I realize I forgot a few major...
over a year ago
A few minutes after I wrote about my long term goals, in the shower, I realize I forgot a few major goals I have:
Write my own Programming Language
Why? Because it sounds fun and epic as hell.
Write a Book
So I like books and I like to collect them and I have my whole bookcase...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
Arduino Blog
This Strandbeest-style coffee table can deliver drinks
More than 30 years ago, Dutch artist Theo Jansen began astounding the world with his Strandbeesten...
3 months ago
More than 30 years ago, Dutch artist Theo Jansen began astounding the world with his Strandbeesten walking sculptures. Even after decades, they have an almost mythical allure thanks to the incredibly fluid way in which they walk. They’re clearly constructs, but with gaits that...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 4
Taking the Server Market
a year ago
Willem's Blog
Backup Rotation Scheme
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync,...
a year ago
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync, creating and maintaining multiple recovery points from your backups.
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal iPhone stand
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
over a year ago
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
Yazin Alirhayim
Braindump
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any...
over a year ago
Been having a hard time lately focusing.
It’s like whenever I start doing anything of any significance I get derailed, and fall into this spiral of thought where I reconsider whether what I’m about to do matters, why it would, and whether I could be doing something else that...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 08: YouTube support
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Doing some online Personality tests
For some reason I’ve done a couple of personality tests the last month, mostly to satisfy my own...
over a year ago
For some reason I’ve done a couple of personality tests the last month, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.
The Braverman Test
Inspired by Charles Poliquin’s visit on The Tim Ferriss Show I tried out the Braverman test to determine my neurotransmitter type. The point Charles...
Home on Erik...
Predicting solar eclipses with Python
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute...
8 months ago
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute eclipses in Python. It turns out, ignoring some minor coordinate system head-banging, I was able to get something half-decent working in a couple of hours.
Neil Madden
On PBKDF2 iterations
There has been a lot of discussion recently around the LastPass breach, especially with regards to...
a year ago
There has been a lot of discussion recently around the LastPass breach, especially with regards to the number of PBKDF2 iterations applied to the master password to derive the vault encryption key. Other people have already dissected this particular breach, but I want to more...
Arduino Blog
Synjets provide non-contact haptic feedback
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with...
7 months ago
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with opportunity for germ transmission. In 2019, most people didn’t think twice about touching a gas pump handle or an ATM touchscreen, but it quickly became apparent that such contact presents...
Willem's Blog
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive...
over a year ago
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive iPhone.
Matt Blewitt
Sensibly Default
There are two programming principles that I hold dear to my heart: the principle of least surprise...
2 months ago
There are two programming principles that I hold dear to my heart: the principle of least surprise and provide sensible defaults. I’ve recently been working within the GraphQL ecosystem, and the number of violations of both here has frustrated me. This will be a little bit ranty.
Computer Ads from...
Flash Sale and a Slight Change to Subscriptions
Time for a little business
3 months ago
Time for a little business
computers are bad
2023-01-29 the parallel port
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel...
a year ago
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel printer capture device.
This contains the line:
There are other projects out there, but when you google for terms such as
"parallel port to usb", they drown in a sea of "USB to...
anderegg.ca
How decentralized is Bluesky really?
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into...
4 weeks ago
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into some of the criticisms I had in my previous piece.
The article is long, but very much worth a read. From the conclusion:
Bluesky is built by good people who care, and it is providing...
Yazin Alirhayim
Part 2: Will greater access to capital spark Bahrain’s economy?
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access...
over a year ago
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access to capital and why’s important to verify that we do in fact have a problem before we attempt to “solve” it.
Now, we’re going to talk about the method for measuring the extent of...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Balls
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one...
over a year ago
So it’s been what? Two, three years since I discovered the art of programming and I haven’t made one single game?! Well now I’m not counting the visual basic nightmare mastermind I made a long time ago but a real game. Whatever that means. I’ve had these monster-projects;
Point...
Jonas Hietala
Reinstalling Slackware
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important...
over a year ago
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important steps I made. I did not document the steps in detail, and some are very specific for my setup. But maybe it can be useful for someone, or myself.
Basic steps
Make slackware usb...
Style over Substance
My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar...
over a year ago
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar folding camera sure is bang for buck!
The post My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16 appeared first on Style over Substance.
./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...
Posts on Made of...
Followup to "A Very Subtle Bug"
After my previous post got posted to reddit, there was a bunch of interesting discussion there about...
over a year ago
After my previous post got posted to reddit, there was a bunch of interesting discussion there about some details I’d handwaved over. This is a quick followup on some the investigation that various people carried out, and the conclusions they reached.
In the reddit thread,...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 95
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
a year ago
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
./techtipsy
I held a talk about my self-hosting adventure!
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up...
a year ago
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up a
talk about self-hosting, more specifically my own self-hosting adventure (the other one is the Steam Deck, more about
that in the future).
The talk took place on May 25th 2023 at...