Louwrentius
Building a RAID 6 array of mixed drives
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect...
over a year ago
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect movies in full DVD or HD quality and so I need some
storage.
I decided to build myself a NAS box based on Debian Etch. Samba is used to
allow clients to access the data. The machine...
Notes on software...
Let's build a distributed Postgres proof of concept
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies...
over a year ago
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies that do a lot of work: a
PostgreSQL wire protocol
implementation, a storage
layer, a Raft implementation
for distributed consensus. And not
part of go.mod but still building on 3rd...
Louwrentius
Using ncat to provide SSL-support to non-ssl capable software
Sometimes, people are using software that does not support encrypted
connections using SSL. To...
over a year ago
Sometimes, people are using software that does not support encrypted
connections using SSL. To provide SSL-support to such a client, ncat can be
used. Ncat is part of nmap, the famous port-scanner.
The main principle is that the non-ssl capable software does not connect to
the...
Willem's Blog
Six months with MCADD
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of...
over a year ago
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of being a parent with some thoughts and tips.
Applied Cartography
Au revoir, Invoke
It's not quite interesting or noteworthy enough to warrant a full-on essay, but yesterday we...
7 months ago
It's not quite interesting or noteworthy enough to warrant a full-on essay, but yesterday we unshipped the last remaining Invoke commands and ported them over to just.
I think Invoke is a good, cool project, and I wish it well. If you're at the precise intersection of "you have...
Style over Substance
Our favorite places to eat and drinks during our Portugal vacation
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a...
7 months ago
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a short city trip a few years earlier, and that experience was so good we knew we had to return. This time, we decided to take a full three weeks and see the sights. We were...
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
Home on Erik...
HubSpot's Picture Shows how to Maintain Monocultures in the 21st Century
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome...
over a year ago
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome Presentation Shows how to Create a 21st Century Culture”.
Just FYI: You're not different. You're a bunch of white hipsters aged 25-30 dressed up in the same theme.
Arduino Blog
Adding real-time local voice controls to a SMARS Quad Mod robot with an Arduino RP2040 Connect
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools...
3 months ago
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools for learning more about how electronics, mechanics, and software can combine to perform useful tasks in the physical world. And in his latest project, Edge Impulse’s senior...
Louwrentius
Script that deletes old files to keep disk from filling up
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a...
over a year ago
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a script that monitors the used space of a volume
and deletes the oldest file if a certain threshold is reached.
The script will keep on deleting the oldest file present on disk until...
Posts on Made of...
Exploiting misuse of Python's "pickle"
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which...
over a year ago
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which provides for efficient binary serialization and loading of Python datatypes. Hopefully, you’re also familiar with the warning printed prominently near the start of pickle’s...
Buck on Software
23 things you should know
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
over a year ago
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
over a year ago
People make decisions, not businesses.
Home on Erik...
Optimizing things: everything is a proxy for a proxy for a proxy
Say you build a machine learning model, like a movie recommender system. You need to optimize for...
over a year ago
Say you build a machine learning model, like a movie recommender system. You need to optimize for something. You have 1-5 stars as ratings so let's optimize for mean squared error. Great.
Then let's say you build a new model.
Home on Erik...
NoDoc
We had an unconference at Spotify last Thursday and I added a semi-trolling semi-serious topic about...
over a year ago
We had an unconference at Spotify last Thursday and I added a semi-trolling semi-serious topic about abolishing documentation. Or NoDoc, as I'm going to call this movement. This was meant to be mostly a thought experiment, but I don't see it as complete madness.
axio.ms
Internet of kitchen lighting, with OSC
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say...
over a year ago
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say that I wrote a useful little bit of software and built up a crappy hack to demonstrate it but, secretly, the crappy hack came first and I’ve retroactively found something vaguely...
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...
Opsbros
The past lives again!
I found a GameBoy Camera for my GBC and thought it'd be a good idea to extract the photos from eons...
over a year ago
I found a GameBoy Camera for my GBC and thought it'd be a good idea to extract the photos from eons ago and bring them to the era of the internet.
Willem's Blog
Developing a native iOS app
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with...
7 months ago
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with some help from AI? Read along to find out!
Vitalik Buterin's...
Coordination, Good and Bad
over a year ago
lcamtuf’s thing
How do wood finishes hold up?
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
3 months ago
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
Jonas Hietala
December Theme: New World Order
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of...
over a year ago
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of this year but that’s something we can’t accept! I’ve done my game and I didn’t force myself out from the Haskell world just to do nuthin so here’s a new little theme for me :)
What...
Jonas Hietala
5 Years at Linköping's University
I recently finished my master’s degree (civilingenjör or civil engineering) at Linköping’s...
over a year ago
I recently finished my master’s degree (civilingenjör or civil engineering) at Linköping’s University. At first it felt like 5 years would be an eternity, but in hindsight it was over in a flash. my gut feeling is that I haven’t learnt or done anything of note, except you know...
Jonas Hietala
Doing Stuff
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left...
over a year ago
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left the standard math course behind a bit. Actually more than a bit but hopefully I’ll correct things later.
No my life is going along just fine, it almost feels like my life is runing...
Home on Erik...
Luigi talk tomorrow
At NYC Data Science meetup! Unfortunately the space is full but the talk will be livestreamed –...
over a year ago
At NYC Data Science meetup! Unfortunately the space is full but the talk will be livestreamed – check out the meetup web page for a link tomorrow.
Notes on software...
Generating a REST API from a database
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a...
over a year ago
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a database
schema from PostgreSQL or MySQL and generates an entire Go API with
CRUD operations, pagination, filtering, and authentication.
But more than just generating code like
xo/xo or...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission...
4 months ago
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans, and other documents.
Needed for the first Shuttle launch in 1981, this printer was designed in just 7 months, built around an Army...
Arduino Blog
Web Serial Camera stream with Arduino
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage...
4 months ago
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage from your Arduino boards directly to your web browser? Wonder no more! Arduino’s Web Serial Camera demo shows how to bring your camera projects to life. Stream images from your...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Engineering Security Through Coordination Problems
over a year ago
GitButler
The Birth of THE MERGE
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our...
7 months ago
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our community is, product feature ideas, and how much Kiril loves food. As we shifted toward the topic of conferences, the idea of hosting our own event emerged. Wouldn’t it be fun
Posts on Made of...
A brief look at Linux's security record
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a...
over a year ago
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a look at a handful of the high-profile privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux from the last few years. So, here's a summary of the ones I picked out. There are also a large...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
Old Vintage...
The spawn of AtariLab and the Universal Lab Interface
We were a Commodore 64/128 household growing up, and Apple IIe systems at school, but that doesn't...
a year ago
We were a Commodore 64/128 household growing up, and Apple IIe systems at school, but that doesn't mean I was unaware of Atari 8-bits. There was a family at church who had an 800XL and later a 130XE — and a stack of COMPUTE!'s I used to read through for hours — and it was...
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Good Enough
Bad Ideas Are Fun
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that...
a year ago
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that coming up with ideas is actually very easy––what makes it hard is that we’re aiming for good ideas.
The next time you're coming up with ideas, tell yourself, Forget about good...
Jonas Hietala
Writing lessons learned after writing a book
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for...
a year ago
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for writing a book was to improve my writing ability.
Maybe I could’ve practiced on the blog instead, but putting things on paper gave it some added weight I don’t think I would’ve gotten...
Opsbros
Docker and CumulusMX
I wanted to find out if I could successfully redeploy my Weather Station monitoring software into a...
over a year ago
I wanted to find out if I could successfully redeploy my Weather Station monitoring software into a Docker container. Let's battle the elements together...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 2. system calls
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e...
over a year ago
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e to
support the exit and write Linux system calls, or syscalls. A syscall
is a function handled by the kernel that allows the process to
interact with data outside of its memory....
Christian Selig
Juno 1.1
If you’re new, Juno is a visionOS app for YouTube!
Juno’s initial launch blew my socks off. It was...
10 months ago
If you’re new, Juno is a visionOS app for YouTube!
Juno’s initial launch blew my socks off. It was such a cool feeling to release an app on day one of the Apple Vision Pro’s launch, and having people be so excited about it and have such great feedback made it that much better....
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
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.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 5: motor/tachometers
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears...
10 months ago
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears and cams for its mathematics. It was a key part of military planes such as the F-101 and the F-111 fighters,
computing
airspeed, Mach number, and other "air data".
The rotating...
Matt Mullenweg
CNBC on WP Engine
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP...
2 months ago
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP Engine: Why WordPress [co-]founder Matt Mullenweg has gone ‘nuclear’ against tech investing giant Silver Lake.
Push to Prod
Best Questions and Answers to the “Terrifying Netflix Concurrency Bug” Post
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so...
3 weeks ago
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so complicated? Plus many others.
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Don't overload Ethereum's consensus
a year ago
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.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 98
Echoes of an Explosion
a year ago
Louwrentius
Recycle your old laptop display and turn it into a monitor
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just...
over a year ago
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just collecting dust on a shelf for many years. Although I didn't have any purpose for them anymore, I realised that the displays were still perfectly fine.
This is the display of my old 13"...
Matt Mullenweg
Michael Palmisano on Collier
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on...
a month ago
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on YouTube, and one of my favorite genres of videos is genius musicians breaking down the incredible musical stuff Jacob is doing. (He even has his own instrument now.) This reaction...
Louwrentius
Fio-plot: creating nice charts from FIO storage benchmark data
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice...
over a year ago
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice charts. It allows you to create four types of graphs which will be discussed below.
The github project page explains how to run this tool.
Fio-plot also includes a benchmark script...
computers are bad
2024-01-06 usb on the go
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption...
11 months ago
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption until some years later; for most of the '90s RS-232-ish
serial and its
awkward sibling the parallel port
were the norm for external peripheral. It's sort of surprising that USB...
Electronics etc…
Increasing Frequency Counter Precision with Linear Regression
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Home on Erik...
Luigi: complex pipelines of tasks in Python
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps...
over a year ago
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs, handle dependency resolution, and create visualizations to help manage multiple workflows. It also comes with Hadoop support built in...
Arduino Blog
Assess your aquarium’s health with an AI-enabled ultrasonic sensor
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can...
7 months ago
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital...
Applied Cartography
Use Rails
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part...
7 months ago
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part answer:
Use what you're familiar with. If there's something that you've spent a good amount of time using, stick with that one.
Rails. People are usually surprised when I say this...
Construction Physics
What Learning by Doing Looks Like
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
a week ago
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
Willem's Blog
Riding with a power meter on your bike
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road...
over a year ago
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road bike.
Bryan Braun - Blog
The flood of AI website builders
There are so many of them.
instead of markdown to enable lazy-loading -->
How good...
7 months ago
There are so many of them.
instead of markdown to enable lazy-loading -->
How good are these site builders? I don’t know.
Are you worried about job security? I have two thoughts…
1. We’ve seen this before
Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow… all these tools...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a...
2 months ago
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orientation and direction.
In a normal aircraft, the artificial horizon shows the orientation in two axes (pitch and roll), but the F-4...
Notes on software...
The limitations of LLMs, or why are we doing RAG?
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
6 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Computer Ads from...
VenturCom's VENIX
Mixing REAL Time With REAL UNIX Is Not Magic...It Is Technology.
10 months ago
Mixing REAL Time With REAL UNIX Is Not Magic...It Is Technology.
Notes on software...
A minimal RocksDB example with Zig
I mostly programmed in Go the last few years. So every time I
wanted an embedded key-value database,...
over a year ago
I mostly programmed in Go the last few years. So every time I
wanted an embedded key-value database, I reached for Cockroach's
Pebble.
Pebble is great for Go programming but Go does not embed well into
other languages. Pebble was inspired by
RocksDB (and its...
Arduino Blog
5 ways to use Arduino with kids
One of the great things about making is that it really is for everyone — every budget, every skill...
7 months ago
One of the great things about making is that it really is for everyone — every budget, every skill level, and every age group. Children are one of the groups that can benefit the most from Arduino. Getting exposed to making and home automation from an early age can be enormously...
Notes on software...
Writing to be read
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails,...
over a year ago
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails, guides, etc. Each provides immense
value; a document may be the key to an important process. The goal is
to remove barriers -- to encourage understanding and correct
application of...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
MCTS and LLMs: what's the big deal?
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree...
6 months ago
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree search. Going back months, the “Q*” leak…
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
watchTowr Labs -...
“To live is to fight, to fight is to live! - IBM ODM Remote Code Execution
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but...
10 months ago
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but there is one that we have not mentioned before, that is - quite frankly - the heavy-weight champion of the world in terms of applications for large enterprises. With over a hundred
Willem's Blog
Why Apple Silicon is a big deal
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
over a year ago
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
Gwern.net Newsletter
Jan 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
over a year ago
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
Applied Cartography
Migrating to Django 5
The total LOC delta to migrate Buttondown from Django 4 to Django 5 was +143, -150. (I was...
2 months ago
The total LOC delta to migrate Buttondown from Django 4 to Django 5 was +143, -150. (I was incentivized to do so because our search right now is quite slow, and the lowest hanging piece of fruit is to move some of the tsvector generation out of band, and I'd rather do that using...
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.
GitButler
Stacked Branches with GitButler
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
2 weeks ago
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
Jonas Hietala
Goals for Autumn 2016
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read...
over a year ago
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read the book 59 seconds which among other things presented a way of structuring goals I will try out. In short you should divide your main goal into 5 subgoals with a date of completion,...
Home on Erik...
A neat little trick with time decay
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have...
over a year ago
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have recursive chains of jobs. For instance, say you want to keep track of a popularity score. You calculate today's output by reading yesterday's output, discounting it by $$ exp(-lambda...
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
Optical vs chest strap heart rate monitors
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness...
over a year ago
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers
Louwrentius
Cryptocurrencies are detrimental to society
Want to listen to this article?
audio element.
Introduction
How would you explain the inner...
over a year ago
Want to listen to this article?
audio element.
Introduction
How would you explain the inner workings of bitcoin to a person in simple, understandable terms?
source
This explanation seems perfect to me because it illustrates some seriously problematic aspects of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis
over a year ago
GitButler
Git Merge 2024 Talks are Up
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
a month ago
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
Jonas Hietala
Eduroam for wicd in Linkoping's University
So we have eduroam at our University and unsurprisingly wicd is not on their official support list...
over a year ago
So we have eduroam at our University and unsurprisingly wicd is not on their official support list but with some googling the wonderful Arch Wiki had the answer. Well, almost.
Save the following as /etc/wicd/encryption/templates/ttls-80211:
name = TTLS for Wireless
author =...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should Ethereum be okay with enshrining more things in the protocol?
a year ago
Arduino Blog
Let’s play at the Maker Faire Rome 2024!
We are excited to be back at Maker Faire Rome as a Gold Sponsor of the 12th edition (October 25-27,...
2 months ago
We are excited to be back at Maker Faire Rome as a Gold Sponsor of the 12th edition (October 25-27, 2024), with some exciting experiences lined up for all makers, innovators, and creators who attend! Learn by playing at our booth Visit us at the fair for a playful, interactive...
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Jonas Hietala
The eBook for 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is now available for free
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years...
10 months ago
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years since the web version was done, and 3 since the physical copy was available…
Which can hardly be called a success.
Things happened, so let’s do a quick retrospective to, maybe, learn...
Jonas Hietala
Migrating to rocks.nvim
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At...
6 months ago
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At times I’m deeply in love and spend all my time caressing the config—like how in September I did a complete rewrite in Lua—while other times I’m busy with other love interests and...
Louwrentius
Using iSCSI with time machine and Super Duper
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super...
over a year ago
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super Duper clones but I'm not happy with that. External hard drives make noise and create clutter.
I'd like to move away all my storage from my living room (or home office) and put it in...
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Action Text Images in Atom Feeds
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed...
7 months ago
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed readers.
In fact, they weren't displaying in my own feed reader, which routes through Feedly.
I was sad.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this.
Compared our feed with a lot of atom...
Arduino Blog
Galco goes Platinum! Welcome our newest SIPP
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce...
7 months ago
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce distributor that specializes in providing a wide range of industrial and commercial electrical and electronic products, focusing on maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). Known for...
Home on Erik...
When machine learning matters
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to...
over a year ago
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive.
Jonas Hietala
10 Games in 10 Languages
For school we have this programming course for Java. It isn’t anything special really and it would...
over a year ago
For school we have this programming course for Java. It isn’t anything special really and it would be really boring if I don’t like to program, it almost is anyway, if it weren’t for the fact that we’re to create a game! Just any game will do and we’re in a group of two and we...
Arduino Blog
Is there an online Arduino IDE?
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code...
2 months ago
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code and creating projects ranging from remote-controlled cars to soil moisture monitoring. No wonder it’s been downloaded over 24 million times this year, so far! Now if you’ve ever...
Louwrentius
Achieving 2.3 GB/s with 16 x 4 TB drives
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost...
over a year ago
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost finished, it's now down to adding disk drives. I'm using the HGST 4 TB 7200 RPM drive for this build (SKU 0S03356) (review).
I have not bought all drives at once, but slowly adding...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Central Planning as Overfitting
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Wordpress tricks: Disabling editing shortcuts
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t...
over a year ago
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t edit text in anything that doesn’t have decent emacs keybindings.
Fortunately, on Linux, at least, GTK provides basic emacs keybindings if you add
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs" to...
computers are bad
2023-02-13 my homelab
I have always found the term "homelab" a little confusing. It's a bit like the
residential version...
a year ago
I have always found the term "homelab" a little confusing. It's a bit like the
residential version of "on-premises cloud," in that it seems to presuppose that
a lab is the normal place that you find computer equipment. Of course I get
that "homelab" is usually used by those who...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Sat-E
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The...
over a year ago
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The Good
Motivation
I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It’s super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My...
Computer Ads from...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
Buck on Software
The Software Slog
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
a year ago
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
Computer Ads from...
Apple IIe and IIc Design Manager Peter Quinn Interviewed by BYTE's Gregg Williams
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of the Apple IIe and IIc.
9 months ago
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of the Apple IIe and IIc.
Jonas Hietala
Going down
Ah my first game was so painless so I thought I could do any game I could imagine! Shooters, and...
over a year ago
Ah my first game was so painless so I thought I could do any game I could imagine! Shooters, and mario bros kinda stuff. Well now I’m not so upbeat anymore, I’ve worked on this game for 7 days now and it’s not playable at all. With seven days I don’t mean a week, I’ve had a big...
Willem's Blog
Multi-Window support in your iPad app
Take advantage of the improved support for multiple windows on iPadOS by implementing new UI...
over a year ago
Take advantage of the improved support for multiple windows on iPadOS by implementing new UI concepts enabling different use cases for your app.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Making Ethereum alignment legible
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: A Geek Valentine
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little...
over a year ago
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little programming urge again… This time it’s not Haskell or a new experimental game that’s luring me on, no this time it’s me longing to create this fantastic awesome epic RTS game. Sadly it’s a...
Arduino Blog
Giving a teenage pet turtle a synthetic pizza-ordering voice
If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of...
3 months ago
If B. F. Skinner’s famous research proved anything, it is that virtually all animals are capable of some degree of training. Training is really just taking advantage of an animal’s natural inclination to adapt for survival, which is something all living organisms do. With that in...
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!!
Computer Ads from...
ViaGrafix Computer Training Videos
Learn...by Simply Watching TV
a month ago
Learn...by Simply Watching TV
Arduino Blog
A drone remote designed to enhance magic shows
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed...
7 months ago
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities. That is the idea behind Peter...
Jonas Hietala
Why make games
Why did I start making games? Because I like to play them of course. Think of all the fantastic...
over a year ago
Why did I start making games? Because I like to play them of course. Think of all the fantastic games; Super Mario, Lemmings, Tetris, GTA, The Sims, Counterstrike, Theme Hospital, SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon… Damn - when you count them like this you’ll see how many great...
Notes on software...
A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its...
5 months ago
A database does not need a write-ahead log (WAL) to achieve
durability. A database can write its long-term data structure durably
to disk before returning to a client. Granted, this is a bad idea! And
granted, a WAL is critical for durability by design in most
databases. But I...
Jonas Hietala
Ores
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added...
over a year ago
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added some ores which makes the game look a bit less boring. I realize I’ve spent all my time on these little things and I still don’t have a game! But it doesn’t matter, maybe I can...
Jonas Hietala
ISOC update
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an...
over a year ago
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an update post of what I’ve done so far. I will write a more extensive summary post at the end of the project. I was planning on writing a weekly summary, but that ship sailed a long...
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...
./techtipsy
Tech tip: eliminate HDD humming noise
Anyone that has bought themselves external WD drives from the Elements/My Book/Easystore series are...
over a year ago
Anyone that has bought themselves external WD drives from the Elements/My Book/Easystore series are probably familiar
with the acoustic characteristics of the drives. The drives have a loud hum caused
by WD running the drives at 7200rpm while claiming the drives to be...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Puzzles
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a...
a year ago
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a way I don’t like — but one habit I’ve retained is solving puzzles.
Simply Explained
My Sixth Year as YouTube Creator (statistics + retrospective)
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most...
over a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most successful year on YouTube so far, and I'd like to share some statistics and thoughts. I will also go over how my email newsletter is doing and where I'm headed. And finally, I'll set...
Louwrentius
Things you should consider when building a ZFS NAS
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many...
over a year ago
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many features of ZFS also appeal to home NAS builders and with good reason. But not all features are relevant or necessary for home use.
I believe that most home users building their...
Simply Explained
ESP32: Tips to increase battery life
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes...
over a year ago
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes great responsibility. In this post, I’ll outline how I got an ESP32 to run for over 15 weeks (and counting) on a single 1000mAh battery.
Jonas Hietala
Site restyle and update
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s...
over a year ago
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s free and there’s a section Typography in ten minutes if you want the important bits.
He makes a pretty good case for why it matters when he points out the...
Posts on Made of...
autocutsel
As most of you probably know, X has several different mechanisms for copy-paste, used by different...
over a year ago
As most of you probably know, X has several different mechanisms for copy-paste, used by different applications in different ways. I know some people who use them deliberately, juggling two pieces of text in different clipboards at once, but for me, it’s always just been...
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals Update
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing...
over a year ago
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing intensity. They were mostly thoughts about not having accomplished anything and that the future looks bleak and meaningless and it’s not worth to do anything. As usual they are...
Good Enough
Good Enough, A Serious Business
Hello reader, my name is Shawn, and I'm one of the co-founders of Good Enough. I'd like to tell you...
a year ago
Hello reader, my name is Shawn, and I'm one of the co-founders of Good Enough. I'd like to tell you a bit about how Good Enough came to be and what we plan on doing here.
Barry and I started working together again in early 2022. By “work,” I mean that I’d show up on Slack for a...
Computer Ads from...
Electronic Protection Devices' Electro-Clamp line
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
9 months ago
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
Opsbros
Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a...
over a year ago
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a Wemos D1 mini running Tasmota super super easy.
Simply Explained
Shelly 2.5: Flash ESPHome Over The Air!
It's no secret that I'm a fan of Shelly products to automate various devices in my house. They're...
over a year ago
It's no secret that I'm a fan of Shelly products to automate various devices in my house. They're well built, tiny and rock solid, and best of all: compatible with ESPHome.I flashed ESPHome onto all my Shelly 1's, but for some reason, I have issues with my Shelly 2.5 devices......
Computer Ads from...
Two Interviews with Ken Kaplan, One of the Creators of OS-9
Two interview from two different time periods
3 months ago
Two interview from two different time periods
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Git in pictures
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way...
over a year ago
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way in which it makes the backend model that is being used to store data the most important element of the tool, and that experts use it by having the complete model in their head,...
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,...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Quantum Software Systems Ltd's QNX
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
8 months ago
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
10 months ago
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from [REDACTED], a site on which I am very prone to judging a book by its cover; every month I'll end up purchasing a bottle of something purely because it looks interesting and I can...
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,...
GitButler
Fixing up Git with Autosquash
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at...
9 months ago
How can you amend a series of commits automatically to keep a clean history? Let's take a look at git autosquash.
Jonas Hietala
I, Robot
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process...
over a year ago
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process went smooth and our group was amazing. The design and building of the robot went well even though in hindsight I would’ve changed a lot of stuff. The ending competition didn’t go...
computers are bad
2024-09-08 private lines
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs)....
3 months ago
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs). These could be considered an early form of products like
"virtual private ethernet:" a private telephone network that was served by the
same switching machines that handled the...
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...
Home on Erik...
It's called Berkson's paradox!
As noted by multiple tweets, my previous post describes a phenomenon denoted Berkson's...
over a year ago
As noted by multiple tweets, my previous post describes a phenomenon denoted Berkson's paradox.
Here's another example: Why Are Handsome Men Such Jerks?
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also...
over a year ago
I have a lot of things I want to do. Right now I want to go to the kids training tomorrow and also to our training time. I haven’t trained a lot lately so it feels good to do something again and training the kids is very rewarding. On Monday I have the next graph theory lecture...
computers are bad
2024-11-09 iron mountain atomic storage
I have quipped before about "underground datacenters," and how they never
succeed. During the late...
a month ago
I have quipped before about "underground datacenters," and how they never
succeed. During the late decades of the Cold War and even into the '00s, the
military and (to a lesser extent) the telecommunications industry parted ways
with a great number of underground facilities....
Jonas Hietala
2017 in Review
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got...
over a year ago
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got a child in October! It really alters your perspectives and other things suddenly feel a little less important and of course there’s less time to do other stuff.
A little late and...
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
watchTowr Labs -...
Hop-Skip-FortiJump-FortiJump-Higher - Fortinet FortiManager CVE-2024-47575
It’s been a tricky time for Fortinet (and their customers) lately - arguably, even more so than...
a month ago
It’s been a tricky time for Fortinet (and their customers) lately - arguably, even more so than usual. Adding to the steady flow of vulnerabilities in appliances recently was a nasty CVSS 9.8 vulnerability in FortiManager, their tool for central management of FortiGate...
Louwrentius
Linux on Mac Mini - boot after power failure
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a...
over a year ago
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a power failure has occurred.
User chirhoxi on the ubuntu forum found out how this can be achieved:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1209576
Basically you need one of these...
On Life and Lisp
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
a year ago
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
Jonas Hietala
Preventing Firefox from creating Desktop directories
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found...
over a year ago
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found how to turn it off.
Edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs...
Home on Erik...
ML at Twitter
I recently came across this paper describing how they do ML at Twitter.
TL;DR Their approach is...
over a year ago
I recently came across this paper describing how they do ML at Twitter.
TL;DR Their approach is pretty interesting. Everything is a Pig workflow and then they do everything as UDF's.
This approach seems pretty interesting.
Buck on Software
Model transitions: A framework for value creation
And a quick and dirty look at SPLK, NTNX, and GWRE
over a year ago
And a quick and dirty look at SPLK, NTNX, and GWRE
Matt Blewitt
Logical Replication Guardrails
I’ve been working with logical replication in PostgreSQL recently, and I wanted to share a few...
6 months ago
I’ve been working with logical replication in PostgreSQL recently, and I wanted to share a few thoughts on how to implement some guardrails to make things easier on operators.
Jonas Hietala
I Made It!
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a...
over a year ago
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a Ludum Dare! Not an easy feat and yet there are tons of games that look absolutely wonderful. I’m not there yet but now I have at least gotten back into game making again, long...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 1. lisp to assembly
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM...
over a year ago
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll write a simple compiler in Javascript (on Node)
without any third-party libraries....
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...
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
Louwrentius
24 TB based on Norco RPC-4020 and Linux Software RAID
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical...
over a year ago
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical controller,
providing 28 TB of storage: Take a look here
The main difference is that this person uses 1.5 TB disk, thus achieving more
storage.
Notes on software...
The year in books: 11 to recommend in 2021
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction....
over a year ago
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction. Another 30 started but not finished.
Non-fiction
It seems I was pretty focused on business history books and history of
tech. The 8 non-fiction books I liked the most:
Designing...
Louwrentius
Systemd Forward Secure Sealing of system logs makes little sense
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into...
over a year ago
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into most mainstream Linux distributions. I'm a bit troubled by one of it's features.
I'd like to discuss the Forward Secure Sealing (FSS) feature for log files that is part of systemd....
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
On Life and Lisp
Software freedom isn't about licenses -- it's about power.
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When...
over a year ago
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When the free software movement was founded thirty years ago, these restrictive licenses were the primary user-hostile power dynamic, so permissive and copyleft licenses emerged as...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbor methods and vector models – part 1
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do (approximate) nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
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...
watchTowr Labs -...
IBM QRadar - When The Attacker Controls Your Security Stack (CVE-2022-26377)
Welcome to April 2024.
A depressing year so far - we've seen critical vulnerabilities across a wide...
8 months ago
Welcome to April 2024.
A depressing year so far - we've seen critical vulnerabilities across a wide range of enterprise software stacks.
In addition, we've seen surreptitious and patient threat actors light our industry on fire with slowly introduced backdoors in the XZ...
Jonas Hietala
Autocomplete with nvim-cmp
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I...
7 months ago
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I must assume most programmers—use all the time.
It’s not as crucial for writing blog posts as when you’re coding but it’s still easy to come up with examples of how autocomplete...
Birchtree
I’m Knee-Deep in Turkey
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her...
2 weeks ago
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her new Flight Simulator obsession, we go on a tangent about PC gaming, Chris (who says he’s an iPad guy) brings another Mac to talk about, and I had the gang look
Neil Madden
Entity authentication with a KEM
In cryptography, the process of authenticating a user (or app/service) is known as entity...
a year ago
In cryptography, the process of authenticating a user (or app/service) is known as entity authentication or identification (to distinguish it from message authentication or data origin authentication). There are lots of ways to do this. In this post I’m going to talk about...
Style over Substance
Buienalarm / Buienradar Apple Watch complication using Home Assistant
Living in the Netherlands, one of the things I really miss on my Apple Watch is a Buienradar...
over a year ago
Living in the Netherlands, one of the things I really miss on my Apple Watch is a Buienradar complication. Buienradar, Dutch for rain radar, is a popular site here that uses weather radar images to predict if it’s going to rain in the next few hours. For many people living here,...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 4: Free newsletter to RSS tool
a month ago
Home on Erik...
Everything I learned about technical debt
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover...
over a year ago
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover that. Instead, I will talk a little bit about technical debt.
The concept of technical debt always resonated with me, partly because I always like the analogy with “real” debt.
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: Signaling and Job Control
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read...
over a year ago
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 or part 2 if you’re new here)
For my final entry on termios, I will be looking at job control in the shell (i.e. backgrounding and foreground jobs) and the very closely related...
Louwrentius
20 disk 18 TB RAID 6 storage based on Debian Linux
This system is no longer operational and has been decomissioned (2017)
This is my NAS storage server...
over a year ago
This system is no longer operational and has been decomissioned (2017)
This is my NAS storage server based on Debian Linux. It uses software RAID and 20 one
terrabyte hard drives. It provides a total usable storage capacity of 18 terrabytes in a single RAID 6 array.
One of the...
On Life and Lisp
Hilariously Fast Volume Computation with the Divergence Theorem
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a...
over a year ago
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a simple, closed, triangulated 3D mesh. This assumption is a consequence of the divergence theorem. Further extensions may generalise to other meshes as well, although that is presently...
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
./techtipsy
What running out of SATA ports looks like
One day I stumbled upon a Craft Computing video
about his new server build, and on the parts list...
over a year ago
One day I stumbled upon a Craft Computing video
about his new server build, and on the parts list was a Sedna PCI Express 2x SATA adapter card:
There are different designs out there, including a 4x SATA card, which is bonkers.
Anyway, I thought that I might as well give this a...
./techtipsy
Good reads
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule,...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
a must-read for anyone working in a software development team. Helps
express what most of us have felt at some point in our careers.
The case of the 500-mile...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 3: Fool Me Three Times
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the...
over a year ago
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the Warr…iors... sob… It’s just one game, right?
1. No One Likes a Giveaway
Who doesn’t love a good pickle?
Well that didn’t happen. There were no entries to last week’s giveaway. If you...
Louwrentius
ZFS on Linux: monitor cache hit ratio
I'm performing some FIO random read 4k I/O benchmarks on a ZFS file system. So since I didn't trust...
over a year ago
I'm performing some FIO random read 4k I/O benchmarks on a ZFS file system. So since I didn't trust the numbers I got, I wanted to know how many of the IOPs I got were due to cache hits rather than disk hits.
This is why I wrote a small shell script called archhitratio.
Sample...
computers are bad
2023-09-03 plastic money
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in...
a year ago
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our
modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the
balance tracking and authorization decisions happen...
Arduino Blog
Track the location history of your devices in Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether...
6 months ago
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether you’re a logistics company monitoring your fleet, a conservation organization tracking wildlife, or an individual passionate about outdoor adventures, the ability to track and...
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...
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...
Home on Erik...
We're hiring at Better
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the...
over a year ago
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the team here in NYC lately—the tech team has actually grown from 35 to 60 in just ~3 months.
Willem's Blog
Business in a bag
After much testing I have selected a bag and set of cases to fit my entire business, wherever I go.
over a year ago
After much testing I have selected a bag and set of cases to fit my entire business, wherever I go.
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Drawing
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a...
over a year ago
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a time, so now I’m going to try something new here. In the beginning of every week I’ll declare something I’ll be focusing on and then that’s the only thing I should focus on on my...
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 3: Cosmic Maelstrom
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say...
a year ago
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say it's in the cloud, but even clouds are now looked down upon as dirtyish things that should not be enjoyed. And not because of air pollution per se, though perhaps because of...
Good Enough
Jelly was #1 on Hacker News
Yesterday, Lettini took a chance and posted about Jelly on Hacker News, a discussion site notorious...
a month ago
Yesterday, Lettini took a chance and posted about Jelly on Hacker News, a discussion site notorious for it's mercurial population of tech-maybe-too-saavy experts. Jelly is a tough sell for some of them, those with the technical skill to pipe email at a low level through...
Willem's Blog
Migrating to the Cloud
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of...
over a year ago
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of cables, cabinets and bandwidth!
Louwrentius
Redhat explains why chroot is not a security feature
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but...
over a year ago
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but it isn't magic security pixie dust. Running an application from within a chrooted jail or just on a well-configured system would result in the same level of security.
Josh...
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.
Home on Erik...
hdfs2cass
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra...
over a year ago
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra bulkloading. The nice thing is that it queries Cassandra for its topology and uses that to partition the data so that each reducer can upload data directly to a Cassandra node.
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
Applied Cartography
You need to be frictionlog-maxxing
Lots of people have spent the past few days discussing the perceived increase in difficulty in...
7 months ago
Lots of people have spent the past few days discussing the perceived increase in difficulty in getting an entry-level programming job relative to the halcyon ZIRP days of yesteryear. I am sympathetic to new grads running into this; I am dismayed that when I ask some [1] of them...
Louwrentius
Is storage really that cheap?
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box,...
over a year ago
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box, which is already 50% full. However, although it is to
some degree fault-tollerant by using RAID 6, one mistake or catastrophic
hardware faillure and all data is lost.
And that's...
Home on Erik...
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by opportunity cost
Hanlon's razor is a classic aphorism I'm sure you have heard before: Never attribute to malice that...
over a year ago
Hanlon's razor is a classic aphorism I'm sure you have heard before: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I've found that neither malice nor stupidity is the most common reason when you don't understand why something is in a certain way.
Home on Erik...
What's up with music recommendations?
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are...
over a year ago
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are behind recommendations for music and movies.
Of course, every media type is different. For instance, there's fundamental reasons why latent factor models works really well for...
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...
computers are bad
2023-11-19 Centrex
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened...
a year ago
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened to "PBX" in today's world where the "automatic" is
implied. (Relatively) modern small and medium business PABXs of the type I like
to collect are largely solid-state devices that...
Old Vintage...
Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games...
5 months ago
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games to a more downmarket age. If you couldn't afford the real device, your alternative was these inexpensive, inadequate facsimiles faithful only to one's gauzy recollection. As their...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop...
over a year ago
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.
About Ludum Dare
Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme....
Posts on Made of...
Why scons is cool
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not...
over a year ago
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that it’s a probably far better choice than make in many cases. The main exceptions would be cases where you need to integrate into legacy...
Jonas Hietala
A small LED Cube
As a follow up of my hobby project goals this autumn I have now completed the smallest goal there. I...
over a year ago
As a follow up of my hobby project goals this autumn I have now completed the smallest goal there. I got started a little with soldering by constructing a small 3x3x3 LED cube.
Although extremely hard to see in this picture it actually worked without a hitch! It’s not the...
Home on Erik...
Software Engineers and Automation
Every once in a while when talking to smart people the topic of automation comes up. Technology has...
over a year ago
Every once in a while when talking to smart people the topic of automation comes up. Technology has made lots of occupations redundant, so what's next?
Switchboard operator, a long time ago
What about software engineers?
Notes on software...
How do databases execute expressions?
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not...
a year ago
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not seem practical in life as a
developer. For example, every database with a query language is also a
programming language implementation of some caliber. That doesn't
include all...
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
GitButler
The New Era of Town Hall Chat
We're moving from Slack to Discord so we can involve our community more. Here's how we did it and...
3 months ago
We're moving from Slack to Discord so we can involve our community more. Here's how we did it and more importantly, why.
Arduino Blog
A DIY bottle-labeling machine perfect for homebrewers
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires...
6 months ago
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires regulated gas and large refrigeration space. A keg is also more difficult to transport and overkill if you just want to bring a few beers to a friend’s backyard BBQ. For those reasons,...
Jonas Hietala
HandCash handles require trust and are insecure
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their...
over a year ago
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their $handle concept. It’s basically a username you use instead of the normal Bitcoin Cash address, similar to how domain names abstract away IP addresses. For example instead of...
axio.ms
Colourclock
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed...
over a year ago
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed April-August 2014, project completed August 2014, installed in spare room in 2016, written up in March 2018 (jeeez…)
Acrylic, LEDs, ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller.
...
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.
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
Birchtree
AI, self-driving, and evolving your opinions on new tech over time
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can...
2 weeks ago
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms....
Neil Madden
Is Datalog a good language for authorization?
Datalog is a logic programming language, based on Prolog, which is seeing something of a resurgence...
over a year ago
Datalog is a logic programming language, based on Prolog, which is seeing something of a resurgence in interest in recent years. In particular, several recent approaches to authorization (working out who can do what) have used Datalog as the logical basis for access control...
Good Enough
You Complete Me
When Good Enough was in its infancy as a truly American LLC (formed in Delaware and representing one...
2 weeks ago
When Good Enough was in its infancy as a truly American LLC (formed in Delaware and representing one or two people who were
only semi-serious about a business), it was fun to play around with building websites.
Shawn and I were truly just playing and exploring, more than anything...
Christian Selig
My little Apple Vision Pro stand
I want somewhere to put my Vision Pro when not in use. Many people use the original box, and there’s...
10 months ago
I want somewhere to put my Vision Pro when not in use. Many people use the original box, and there’s beautiful stands that exist out there, but I was looking for something more compact and vertical so it would take up less room on my desk.
So I opened Fusion 360 (which I am still...
Louwrentius
Unattended automatic installation of Linux nvidia binary driver
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver....
over a year ago
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver. This is a manual proces by default. However, it can be
done fully automatic:
prerequisite: install xserver-xorg-dev package or similar xorg development
package.
sh NVIDIA-.run -q...
Notes on software...
Writing a web server from scratch: 1. HTTP and sockets
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd...
over a year ago
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd like to be able to render this page in a web browser. If
the server is hosted locally we may want to enter
localhost:9000/hello-world.html in the address bar, hit
enter, make a...
Posts on Made of...
My Apollo Bibliography
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become...
over a year ago
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a...
Home on Erik...
statself.com
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together:...
over a year ago
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together: it's a website where you can track any numerical data on the web. Want to know how many Twitter followers you have?
Louwrentius
Please use ZFS with ECC Memory
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a...
over a year ago
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a NAS. I would argue that if you do not use ECC memory, it's reasonable to also forgo on ZFS altogether and use any (legacy) file system that suits your needs.
Why ZFS?
Many people...
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
Jonas Hietala
addwatch: resource exhausted
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site:...
over a year ago
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site: addWatch: resource exhausted (No space left on device)
At first I tried to clear /tmp but, so clearly the device did have some space left. After a bit of googling I found a solution...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Val Town
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If...
a month ago
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If you haven't used Val, well, watch the stream — think live, zero-deploy code snippets that can be arbitrarily extended and executed.)
Reflecting on the experience, the most exciting...
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...
Posts on Made of...
Using X forwarding with screen by proxying $DISPLAY
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a...
over a year ago
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a long-running session going on a server somewhere, and log in and resume my session without losing any state.
I also love X-forwarding. I love being able to log into a remote server...
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
Good Enough
Cool Songs Don’t Die
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing...
a year ago
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing 22 years ago and ran for 5 seasons and was a pretty big hit and launched the careers of two bonafide movie stars and featured a cast of very well known supporting actors. So yeah,...
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!
Jonas Hietala
Generating ideas
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up...
over a year ago
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up with 50 ideas using my own idea generation technique.
I used a sort of “notes in the basket” approach where you placed some notes with words in a basket and randomly drew two and...
Louwrentius
'Gzip with parallel compression support: pigz'
The speed at which files are compressed with gzip is currently almost always
determined by the speed...
over a year ago
The speed at which files are compressed with gzip is currently almost always
determined by the speed of the CPU. However, standard unix gzip is single-
threaded and only uses a single CPU (core).
However, the maintainer of the zlib library has released 'pigz' or 'pig-zee'
whichs...
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Noise
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of...
9 months ago
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of how cool the printer is.
But there’s one thing that sucks: it’s damn loud.
I knew that it wouldn’t be silent, but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of noise.
Silent controller...
Ian's Blog
Mourning the Loss of Cohost
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting...
3 months ago
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting down, with the site going read-only on October 1st 2024. This news was deeply upsetting to receive, as Cohost filled a space left by other social media websites when they stopped...
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: the dark side of cloud hosting
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The...
over a year ago
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The Linode Manager is the environment where you control your virtual private servers and where you pay for services. This is the environment that got compromised.
Linode uses Adobe's...
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...
somenice
Generative 3D Modeling
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as...
5 days ago
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as reviews had been quite favourable with results creating 3D models with “AI”. The website describes the technology as unified Structured LATent (SLAT) representation and there is a...
./techtipsy
ASRock X570M Pro4 motherboard overview
Not too long ago, I had the goal of consolidating all my computing needs onto a
single desktop PC....
over a year ago
Not too long ago, I had the goal of consolidating all my computing needs onto a
single desktop PC. That meant moving from an mITX-based build to something that
had a bit more expandability. Since I already had a
Fractal Meshify C Mini,
I decided to go for an mATX motherboard. And...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
9 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the dominance of the x86 architecture that continues to the present.1
One...
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Protected Apple Distribution Certificates Using a YubiKey
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning...
a year ago
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning certificate issued to you by Apple for signing your release artifacts before you distribute them.
Protecting that signing key is important, as Apple must blindly trust any binaries...
Construction Physics
The Influence of Bell Labs
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a...
a month ago
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.
Applied Cartography
PSA: mess around with Kolo
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with...
9 months ago
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with Buttondown — a process that I expected to take a couple hours on a lazy Sunday and in fact took ten minutes and three lines of code.
If you have a Django app, I think you should drop...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day for every Linux or Unix user: brace expantion'
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know...
over a year ago
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know about.
Try this:
touch foobar.conf
Now try this:
cp foobar.conf{,.bak}
It is equivalent to:
cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak
This is also the easiest way to create sequences. Do not use...
Arduino Blog
Introducing Opta Expansions: scalable simplicity!
Last year, we launched the Arduino Pro Opta: it was an instant success with our community, and...
7 months ago
Last year, we launched the Arduino Pro Opta: it was an instant success with our community, and allowed us to reach PLC engineers with a new solution specifically designed for their needs. To further expand Opta’s capabilities, today the Arduino ecosystem welcomes various...
Engineers Need Art
Experiments in Printmaking - Part 1
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
9 months ago
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
Yazin Alirhayim
The Trouble With Optionality
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one...
over a year ago
Optionality’s one of those things you don’t really think about. People don’t generally wake up one morning thinking “Why, it appears I’ve spent the past several decades of my life optimizing for optionality. Perhaps I should figure out why?”.
Most don’t even recognize the term –...
Notes on software...
My favorite software subreddits
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only...
a year ago
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only exposure to
reddit is dank memes, proggit or even
language-specific subreddits like
/r/python, you're missing out.
What follows are my favorite subreddits in tech. My criteria is...
Avestura's Blog
An opinion on what's a good general-purpose programming language
What features should a programming language have to be ideal, in my opinion?
over a year ago
What features should a programming language have to be ideal, in my opinion?
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day: Scrolling in GNU screen'
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can...
over a year ago
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can be
changed in the .screenrc file in your home directory. The following example
sets the scroll back buffer to 5K lines.
defscrollback 5000
Set the scroll back buffer on the fly with:
First...
Good Enough
How We Built Unique Social Preview Images for Pika
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find...
10 months ago
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find your own place on the internet.
Along with a nice place on the internet, when you share links to your blog we want them to represent your internet home,
which you've likely taken...
Simply Explained
ESP32 Cam: cropping images on device
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640...
over a year ago
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640 sensor has a max resolution of 1600x1200, but sometimes you don't need the entire image.In this post I'll show how to crop the images on the ESP32 itself, before sending it of to...
Louwrentius
I made my blog solar-powered, then things escalated
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing...
a year ago
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing the same thing (but better)1. The answer was 'yes', but only through spring and summer.
I live in an apartment complex in The Netherlands and my balcony is facing west. This...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Notes on Blockchain Governance
over a year ago
csvbase blog
Parquet: more than just "Turbo CSV"
Quicker, but also more convenient
a year ago
Quicker, but also more convenient
Willem's Blog
The Ultimate Freedom Bike
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and...
over a year ago
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and wherever you please!
Engineers Need Art
Stereographer
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
4 months ago
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Attach a running process to a new terminal
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an...
over a year ago
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don’t want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Base Layers And Functionality Escape Velocity
over a year ago
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...
Good Enough
That time Marvel secretly endorsed my podcast with “the greatest comic book cover of all time”
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a...
a year ago
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a record of this somewhere on the internet!” and I don’t have my own blog.
Years ago my friend and I ran a radio show called Gorilla Madness, which we also spun out into a podcast after...
Louwrentius
Eztables: simple yet powerful firewall configuration for Linux
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on...
over a year ago
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on Linux may be interested in this project.
It doesn't matter if you need to protect a laptop, server or want to setup a network firewall. Eztables supports it all.
If you're not afraid...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Avoiding worry driven development
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a...
over a year ago
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a lack of technical skill. Engineers…
Jonas Hietala
Zucchini Crabcakes
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only...
over a year ago
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only supposed to be an appetizer:
Crabcakes: Surprisingly delicious. Both me and Veronica gives them a 7.
Zucchini: While I thought they passed Veronica said “Zucchini is not my thing” and...
Avestura's Blog
How optimistic or pessimistic are the Kurzgesagt videos?
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
a year ago
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
Willem's Blog
Tudor Black Bay 36 long-term review
For the past six months I have been wearing the same watch, every day and night. Read along to learn...
over a year ago
For the past six months I have been wearing the same watch, every day and night. Read along to learn what makes the Tudor Black Bay 36 the perfect every day watch.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Wealth distribution in the United States
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United...
2 months ago
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United States.
This inspired me to
make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States.
It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph,
almost the entire US...
GitButler
GitButler for Windows
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
8 months ago
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
Notes on software...
Confusion and disengagement in meetings
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks...
over a year ago
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks is to ask questions.
Ask early so you don't waste time. But it's not enough to just ask
clarifying questions because the answers won't always be clear.
Sounds like Human Interaction...
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...
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
over a year ago
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Arduino Blog
Arduino IDE 2.3.3: discover new support for shared spaces and more!
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This...
2 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This new release is packed with improvements, including one feature we’re particularly proud of: support for shared spaces in Arduino Cloud. If you have a Cloud Business plan or School...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 1. a stack and register machine
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating...
over a year ago
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
2. system calls
In this post we'll create a small virtual machine in JavaScript and
use it to run a simple C program compiled...
Home on Erik...
How to set compensation using commonsense principles
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right...
over a year ago
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right is obviously extremely important. Compensation is what drives our entire economy, and you could look at the market for labor as one gigantic resource-allocating machine in the same...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How will Ethereum's multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs?
a year ago
Applied Cartography
Fathom
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly...
2 weeks ago
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly good reason to do so until the news broke that Paul Jarvis was selling his share of the company to Jack Ellis, the technical co-founder. [1]
Anyway, the two thoughts:
I think Fathom...
Lighthouse Blog
Overview of the reading view
6 months ago
Arduino Blog
Vintage rotary phone becomes stylish kitchen timer
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three...
6 months ago
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three minutes, knead the dough for 15 minutes, bake for 30 minutes, and so on. A timer is a necessity for cooking and baking, but there is no reason you need to use your phone or a...
Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Posts on Made of...
Fun with the preprocessor: CONFIG_IA32_EMULATION hacks in Linux
About two months ago, Linux saw CVE-2010-0307, which was a trival denial-of-service attack that...
over a year ago
About two months ago, Linux saw CVE-2010-0307, which was a trival denial-of-service attack that could crash essentially any 64-bit Linux machine with 32-bit compatibility enabled. LWN has an excellent writeup of the bug, which turns out to be a subtle error related to the details...
Notes on software...
Enumerating and analyzing 40+ non-V8 JavaScript implementations
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by...
over a year ago
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by extension) Microsoft Edge, Node.js,
etc. Safari's JavaScriptCore and Firefox's SpiderMonkey are also
contenders for extremely mainstream implementations.
But what else is out there? What if...
./techtipsy
How to take down production with a single Helm command
You’re Cletus Kubernetus: a software developer, and a proud Fedora Linux
user.1
You know Kubernetes,...
8 months ago
You’re Cletus Kubernetus: a software developer, and a proud Fedora Linux
user.1
You know Kubernetes, especially after the time you migrated some services to it.
Everything is calm.
Your pods are running. Your service is up. Business as usual.
You release some minor changes to...
Neil Madden
API Security in Action is published!
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is...
over a year ago
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is now finally published. PDF copies are available now, with printed copies shipping by the end of the month. Kindle/ePub take a little bit longer but should be out in a few weeks...
Opsbros
Nokia 5110 - Back from the dead. Part 1: Nostalgia
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and...
over a year ago
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal Lua implementation with a virtual machine from scratch in Rust
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from...
over a year ago
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from scratch. It will be able to run the
following program (among others):
function fib(n)
if n < 2 then
return n;
end
local n1 = fib(n-1);
local n2 = fib(n-2);
...
Willem's Blog
Scalable application design without magic
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I...
over a year ago
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I did this by leveraging the client's computing power having it handle most of the user interaction workload.
Posts on Made of...
Lab Notebooking for the Software Engineer
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition to just documenting things after the fact. Today, I’m going to share the techniques that I’ve found useful to try to get in the habit of lab-notebooking my work, even though I...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
3 months ago
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
Electronics etc…
Guide Technology GT300 Frequency Standard Teardown
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
8 months ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
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:...
Jonas Hietala
rustc: error while loading shared libraries: librustc_driver
I had installed and used rust already but today I fired it up and received:
rustc...
over a year ago
I had installed and used rust already but today I fired it up and received:
rustc --version
rustc: error while loading shared libraries: librustc_driver-7e44814b.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I’ve seen this before… I thought modifying...
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
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