Willem's Blog
Updating Snake '97
This month I bit the bullet big time: I redesigned the game engine of the wildly popular Snake '97...
over a year ago
This month I bit the bullet big time: I redesigned the game engine of the wildly popular Snake '97 game. Read about the design challenges in this blog post.
Posts on Made of...
Configuring dnsmasq with VMware Workstation
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux...
over a year ago
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux distribution, and use them heavily for all kinds of kernel testing and development.
This post is a quick writeup of my networking setup with VMware Workstation, using dnsmasq to assign...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace!
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier...
3 months ago
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier than ever for developers and businesses worldwide to integrate our powerful IoT platform into their AWS infrastructure. This development is particularly relevant for those in...
latest projects -...
Analemmagraph
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
a year ago
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
Posts on Made of...
Property Testing Like AFL
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same...
over a year ago
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same practice, or at least share a lot of commonality. In this followup post, I want to explore that idea a bit more: I’ll first detour into some of my frustrations and hesitations around...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of the IBM 5100
IBM's First Personal Computer
a year ago
IBM's First Personal Computer
Arduino Blog
This desk lamp automatically adjusts its brightness using AI on an Arduino UNO
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today,...
7 months ago
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today, you probably assume that they require a massive amount of processing power. And while that is often true, there are machine learning models that can run on the edge — including on...
Posts on Made of...
BlackHat/DEFCON 2011 talk: Breaking out of KVM
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the...
over a year ago
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the KVM Kernel Virtual Machine on Linux.
Virtunoid: Breaking out of KVM from Nelson Elhage [Edited 2011-08-11] The code is now available. It should be fairly well-commented, and...
Arduino Blog
Agitating homemade PCBs with ease
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need...
3 months ago
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need to turn to chemical etching. Use one of several different techniques to mask the blank PCB’s copper that you want to keep, then toss the whole thing into a bath to dissolve away the...
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...
Willem's Blog
Realtime human pose recognition through computer vision
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose...
over a year ago
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose detection using PoseNet.
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home...
a year ago
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home server.
After doing some experiments with my setup a couple of times, it is once again the main server for all my self-hosting
needs. However, this time I have made some...
Old Vintage...
The Hall SC-VGA-2 video processor, the Atari ST and NeXTSTEP: more tales of the unscreenshotable
A periodic fascination on this blog is figuring out better ways to get better screenshots of our...
a month ago
A periodic fascination on this blog is figuring out better ways to get better screenshots of our classic systems, which often hail from the Wild Wild West/East in terms of video standards (read all entries in this series). Naturally the best way is a bitwise direct grab of the...
GitButler
The Future of Open Source
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating...
4 months ago
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating on software in awesome ways.
Arduino Blog
Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized...
4 months ago
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab...
Louwrentius
Release of PPSS - the Parallel Processing Shell Script
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use...
over a year ago
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use of the current multi-core CPUs. It will detect the number
of available CPUs and start a thread for each CPU core.
This script is build with the goal to be very easy to use. Also,...
Home on Erik...
Plotting author statistics for Git repos using Git of Theseus
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I...
over a year ago
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I have a couple of blog posts in the pipeline about various updates. First up, I made a number of fixes to Git of Theseus which is a tool (written in Python) that generates...
Jonas Hietala
Going into Being Busy mode
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or...
over a year ago
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or something? So I can’t promise a game the next two months. Kinda beats the point of this site doesn’t it? I’m really sorry and that’s all I can say really…
Hopefully I’ll get a week...
Birchtree
I’m Not a Panda Person
Niléane has a new webcam, Chris is downing in keyboards, and everyone installs some web-ass web...
a week ago
Niléane has a new webcam, Chris is downing in keyboards, and everyone installs some web-ass web apps.
Watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app!
Jonas Hietala
Design for Hackers
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific...
over a year ago
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific thing. It happened again yesterday (or was it the day before I don’t know) when I saw this post on hackernews.
It’s a book this time, again, but this is something a little different -...
Birchtree
My default apps of 2024
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default...
a week ago
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default apps, and I though it would be fun to turn this into a tradition and revisit the list to see if anything has changed since last year.
✨ next to each change
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.
Posts on Made of...
Some opinionated thoughts on SQL databases
People who work with me tend to realize that I have Opinions about databases, and SQL databases in...
over a year ago
People who work with me tend to realize that I have Opinions about databases, and SQL databases in particular. Last week, I wrote about a Postgres debugging story and tweeted about AWS’ policy ban on internal use of SQL databases, and had occasion to discuss and debate some of...
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...
Opsbros
Nix Windows Feedback
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
over a year ago
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
Louwrentius
How to run Debian Linux on an Intel based Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy...
over a year ago
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy efficient. When idle, it uses around 20 watts. I'm using
one of the first Intel-based Minis with an Intel Core Duo chip, running at 1.6
Ghz.
I want to use this mini as an expensive router...
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
Simply Explained
How WebP Images Reduced My Bandwidth Usage by 50%
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP...
over a year ago
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP images to save bandwidth and make this site even faster to load! This simple change reduced my bandwidth usage by 50% and is still backwards compatible with old devices and...
Jonas Hietala
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 =...
Notes on software...
Compiling dynamic programming languages
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied...
over a year ago
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied to byte-code interpreters (e.g. YARV
Ruby, CPython, V8, Zend Engine, etc.). But for many languages, a
compiled implementation also exists. Cython, Chicken Scheme and SBCL
are good...
Simply Explained
Retrospective: My Fifth Year on YouTube
For the past 4 years, I have made a habit of reflecting on the previous year and set goals for the...
over a year ago
For the past 4 years, I have made a habit of reflecting on the previous year and set goals for the new year. This year is no exception, but now I try to set better goals while reflecting on some personal things in life.
Neil Madden
XSS doesn’t have to be game over
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game...
over a year ago
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game over” event for defence: there is no effective way to recover if an attacker can inject code into your site. Brian Campbell refers to this as “XSS Nihilism”, which is a great...
Arduino Blog
Exploring Alvik: 3 fun and creative projects with Arduino’s educational robot platform
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we...
2 weeks ago
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we decided to have fun and put the robot to the test with some of the most creative people we know – our own team! A dozen Arduino employees volunteered for a dedicated Make Tank session...
Jonas Hietala
FTL got a new victim
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone...
over a year ago
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone you’d expect, it’s even someone who said: “What a bad game” when she saw me playing it. But nevertheless this Saturday she played it more than 2.5 hours!
I told Veronica I wanted...
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Convex and Concave Dispositions
over a year ago
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...
Yazin Alirhayim
The best bank in Bahrain … is Meem
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking...
over a year ago
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking to those of you that read my last post that ripped the Meem app to shreds.
Criteria for ‘best bank’
My criteria for “best bank” isn’t the best user experience or customer support....
Louwrentius
Understanding Windows KMS and MAK volume license activation
Introduction
If you have to administer a large number of PCs running Windows, you will end up...
over a year ago
Introduction
If you have to administer a large number of PCs running Windows, you will end up creating an automated deployment platform for your Windows clients. You may implement something like Windows Deployment Services.
I used WDS to create a fully automated installation of...
Arduino Blog
This DIY smart chicken coop features AI-based predator detection
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get...
2 months ago
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get rid of pests in the yard. But, like all animals, they require care. Most importantly, you’ll need to ensure that they have regular food and water, and you’ll need to protect them...
Willem's Blog
Dig for dummies
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network...
over a year ago
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network problems, IP-addresses, hostnames, mail servers and related info.
Posts on Made of...
wpa_supplicant: GUI and wpa_action
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on...
over a year ago
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on the subject. (Actually, I pretty much made both of them while reading documentation in order to write it, and have been lame about writing them up).
Using wpa_gui It turns out that...
Matt Blewitt
Corporate Legibility for Software Engineers
Corporate legibility is the art of making tasks, and their outcomes, easier to understand for those...
over a year ago
Corporate legibility is the art of making tasks, and their outcomes, easier to understand for those not directly involved. I’ll help you understand why this is an important thing to be aware of and how to use it to help your career.
Louwrentius
Script that shows relevant disk information
I wrote a small Python script called 'showdisks' that displays relevant information about any...
over a year ago
I wrote a small Python script called 'showdisks' that displays relevant information about any physical storage devices supported by hdparm.
Information such as model and capacity are shown, but also controller and device path.
This script only requires python and hdparm.
I hope...
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Neil Madden
Macaroon access tokens for OAuth: Part 2 – transactional auth
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a...
over a year ago
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a lightweight and easy-to-deploy alternative to proof of possession (PoP) schemes for securing tokens in browser-based apps. The same techniques can be adapted to secure tokens in...
Jonas Hietala
Soda
These quotes are from hacker news and I found them all too funny.
It’s hard for me to understand the...
over a year ago
These quotes are from hacker news and I found them all too funny.
It’s hard for me to understand the whole soda phenomenon in Canada and the US. Is it as addictive as cigarettes? Does it make you crave for more? Or it simply tastes so good that you can’t get enough of it? Why not...
Arduino Blog
Hey Google! Meet Arduino Cloud
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now interact with your devices, simply through your Google Home Assistant: use voice commands, the Google Home app, or create new routines integrating Arduino solutions. This new...
Louwrentius
Fully unattended deployment of Windows clients using limited resources
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution...
over a year ago
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution that automate this task. It's just waiting a lot and pressing a button now and then. But installing the operating system itself is only the beginning. Once installed, you need to...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 4: Issue 4-evah
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious....
over a year ago
0. It’s Been a Long Time
Sorry 4 the silence these past weeks. Life happened fast and furious. Barry’s daughters all had marching band, and he chaperoned 4 the parades. His eldest daughter also went and got a boyfriend. Shawn’s been feeling a little under the weather, and his two...
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.
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
Jonas Hietala
A type checking error in Elixir 1.18
Although I’m a big Elixir fan, the lack of static typing has always been my biggest annoyance (and...
4 days ago
Although I’m a big Elixir fan, the lack of static typing has always been my biggest annoyance (and why I think Gleam is so cool).
I think static typing helps catch bugs earlier and in an automated way, leading to less buggy software and saves time in the long run.
To my great joy...
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...
Notes on software...
Is it worth writing about?
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and...
over a year ago
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and sharing the learning
process.
Professionals seem naturally to imagine a high bar for what
is worth writing about.
I think that's misguided. This article is not criticism of folks...
Louwrentius
Smoking coolermaster Silent Pro M 600W TN6M50
So I was just messing around on my work station, when suddenly I smelled the
smell any person...
over a year ago
So I was just messing around on my work station, when suddenly I smelled the
smell any person familiar with electronics fears. The smell of some electrical
component burning.
The whole upper floor smelled like something was smoldering. So I shut down
both my storage servers....
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.
Computer Ads from...
Creative Computing Magazine Interviews Clive Sinclair (1980)
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
3 weeks ago
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
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.
Louwrentius
Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 on Debian howto
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed...
over a year ago
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed binary driver.)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm
Install the kernel headers if you haven't already
- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-6-k7
- extract the...
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...
3 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 a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 3. LLVM
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the
compiler to emit LLVM
IR as an option instead of...
Willem's Blog
Whoop strap review: 24/7 wearable sensor
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Governance, Part 2: Plutocracy Is Still Bad
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Finding near-duplicates with Jaccard similarity and MinHash
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are...
6 months ago
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are approximately the same as each other. For instance, we may have crawled the web over some period of time, and expect to have fetched the “same page” several times, but to see slight...
Home on Erik...
Slides from NYC Machine Learning talk
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of...
over a year ago
Slides from the talk. Slightly edited because (a) some of the slides make little sense taken out of context (b) Slideshare seem to have problem converting some of the stuff.
Collaborative filtering at Spotify from Erik Bernhardsson
Jonas Hietala
Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available in print
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve...
over a year ago
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve undertaken.
My book ‘Why Cryptocurrencies?’ is released in print today! It’s my attempt to explain what cryptocurrencies are and what problems they solve, in a simple and...
Louwrentius
Creating configuration backups of HP procurve switches
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration...
over a year ago
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration through secure shell (using scp).
It also diffs backed up configurations against older versions, in order to keep track of changes. If you run the script from cron every hour or...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Capability makes your life simpler
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less...
5 months ago
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less time and energy packing, setting-up, tearing down, and unpacking. The same goes for travel. Fewer clothes and shoes means less luggage to carry, manage, and lose. You can board...
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about key-value databases like FoundationDB and RocksDB?
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document...
over a year ago
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document databases like MongoDB and Elasticsearch. You
probably know Redis too.
But you're hearing more and more about embedded key-value stores like
RocksDB,
LevelDB,
PebbleDB, and so on....
Arduino Blog
Venderoo is an Arduino Mega-powered DIY vending machine
For now-college student Joel Grayson, making something that combined his interests in mechanics,...
3 months ago
For now-college student Joel Grayson, making something that combined his interests in mechanics, electronics, and programming while being simultaneously useful to those around him was a longtime goal. His recent Venderoo project is exactly that, as the creatively named vending...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: PowerBook Duo 2300c
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my...
a year ago
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my favourite PowerBook 1400: the metal hinges are starting to tear out of their attachment points in the plastic back of the display, and naturally it's the one with all the upgrades in...
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
September 2020 News
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no...
over a year ago
September 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DRL and AI scaling, psychiatric disorders; no reviews.
Applied Cartography
Two weeks of parenthood
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about...
2 months ago
We've had Lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about parenthood. (In all seriousness, consider the below descriptive and not prescriptive: mostly, it's a notepad filled with things that were remarkable or surprising or divergent from...
Odds and Ends of...
We need more than Westminster reporters to understand government
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
3 weeks ago
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
Willem's Blog
Free from the iCloud: Escaping Apple Photos
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read...
over a year ago
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read along to find out what software I use and how to make it play nice with your devices.
Home on Erik...
Delivering Music Recommendations
I've turned into a lazy bastard and I'm just posting presentations on this blog, but here's one from...
over a year ago
I've turned into a lazy bastard and I'm just posting presentations on this blog, but here's one from Rohan Singh at Spotify talking about the backend infrastructure of the Discover page.
computers are bad
2024-05-15 catalina connections
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running...
7 months ago
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running partnership between Epson and Catalina: a query that will
return pages upon pages of people trying to use Epson printers with an old
version of MacOS.
When you think of a point of sale...
Arduino Blog
Circuit Canvas can help you quickly create illustrated wiring diagrams
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit...
5 months ago
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit designs, but traditional schematics and technical drawings are difficult for non-professionals to interpret and create. Makers can benefit from intuitive illustrations that look good...
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
over a year ago
People make decisions, not businesses.
Arduino Blog
Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May!
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino...
7 months ago
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino...
Good Enough
TIL: Use randomness to prevent email trimming
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of...
a year ago
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of the emails we send with our new app because they were too similar to the other emails in the conversation thread.
They’re similar because that’s just the link to get back into the...
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...
Christian Selig
Server side Live Activities guide
iOS 17.2 gained the capability to start Live Activities from a server, which is pretty cool and...
3 months ago
iOS 17.2 gained the capability to start Live Activities from a server, which is pretty cool and handy! I’ve been playing around with it a bit and found some parts a bit confusing, so I thought I’d do a little write up for future me as well as anyone else who could benefit!
(For...
Posts on Made of...
CVE-2010-4258: Turning denial-of-service into privilege escalation
Dan Rosenberg recently released a privilege escalation bug for Linux, based on three different...
over a year ago
Dan Rosenberg recently released a privilege escalation bug for Linux, based on three different kernel vulnerabilities I reported recently. This post is about CVE-2010-4258, the most interesting of them, and, as Dan writes, the reason he wrote the exploit in the first place. In...
Simply Explained
Securely access home network with Cloudflare Tunnel and WARP
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to...
over a year ago
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to strengthen the security of my Home Assistant instance. Until now, I have been using Cloudflare's CDN to connect to my HA instance, but that required opening ports on my router and...
Computer Ads from...
Two Interviews with Ken Kaplan, One of the Creators of OS-9
Two interview from two different time periods
4 months ago
Two interview from two different time periods
Engineers Need Art
Jigsaw Puzzle
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big...
over a year ago
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big jigsaw puzzle.
Posts on Made of...
CVE-2007-4573: The Anatomy of a Kernel Exploit
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It...
over a year ago
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It was a local privilege-escalation vulnerability on all x86_64 kernels prior to v2.6.22.7. It’s very simple to understand with a little bit of background, and the exploit is...
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...
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Posts on Made of...
Implementing a declarative mini-language in the C preprocessor
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time,...
over a year ago
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time, I want to talk about the tricks I used to implement a declarative minilanguage using the C preprocessor (and some GCC extensions).
The Problem We want to write some toplevel...
Matt Mullenweg
Automattic Alignment
Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Since I last blogged here, WP Engine...
3 months ago
Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Since I last blogged here, WP Engine filed a meritless lawsuit and Automattic responded, and there’s been a hurricane of public activity and press. Inside of Automattic, there’s been a parallel debate and process....
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...
6 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...
Odds and Ends of...
How I learned to stop worrying and love the military industrial complex
Whether Trump wins or loses today, Europe should tool up and prepare to fight.
a month ago
Whether Trump wins or loses today, Europe should tool up and prepare to fight.
Bryan Braun - Blog
One Million Checkboxes and the fear of viral success
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If...
4 months ago
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If you haven't heard of One Million Checkboxes, see the Wikipedia article for more details.
I loved everything about One Million Checkboxes. It was simple but strangely compelling....
Arduino Blog
How to use vintage LED bubble displays with your Arduino
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or...
a month ago
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or OLED screen. But though those are affordable and work really well, they may not provide the vibe you’re looking for. If you want a more vintage look, Vaclav Krejci has a great...
Home on Erik...
Annoy – now without Boost dependencies and with Python 3 Support
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high...
over a year ago
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high dimensional spaces. Spotify uses it a lot to find similar items. First, matrix factorization gives a low dimensional representation of each item (artist/album/track/user) so that every item...
Arduino Blog
Check out these Arduino-powered research projects from CHI 2024
Held in Hawaii this year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted its annual conference...
7 months ago
Held in Hawaii this year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted its annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) that focuses on the latest developments in human-computer interaction. Students from universities all across the world attended the...
Electronics etc…
Remote Controlling an HP 1670G Logic Analyzer with a Linux PC X Server
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the...
a year ago
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the logic analyzer
Allow the logic analyzer to access your Ubuntu X server
Configure the X-window Settings on the logic analyzer
Install and declare the HP logic analyzer font...
Old Vintage...
The unreleased Commodore HHC-4's secret identity
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one...
2 months ago
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one and only handheld computer, the Commodore HHC-4. It was never released and never seen again, at least not in that form. But it turns out that not only did the HHC-4 actually exist,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Multidimensional gas pricing
7 months ago
Ken Shirriff's blog
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from...
10 months ago
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974?
Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)?
How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962.
The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized...
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
Season 1, Issue 2: Just the Two of Us
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing...
over a year ago
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing anything. Take it away, fellas…
1. Still Positive
Did you know that once you acquire COVID-19 your PCR test can be positive for up to 90 days? Did you know that the at-home tests...
Arduino Blog
Turning a desk mat into a MIDI drum kit
Playing drums is a lot of fun, but drum sets are very big and very loud. They also aren’t cheap....
a month ago
Playing drums is a lot of fun, but drum sets are very big and very loud. They also aren’t cheap. Those factors keep them from being an option for many people who would otherwise be interested. Conventional electronic drum sets are much quieter and a bit more compact, but they...
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors...
9 months ago
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors whenever I see them — which is why this morning I installed Zed, which makes its bones on performance (yay!) and teams functionality (irrelevant for my use cases, but seems...
Willem's Blog
Talking tablets: what makes a great tablet?
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be...
over a year ago
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be your main computer?
Home on Erik...
Annoy 1.10 released, with Hamming distance and Windows support
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to...
over a year ago
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to adjust to having a toddler, partly because the hunt for clicks has caused such a high bar for me that I feel like I have to post something Pulitzer-worthy.
Notes on software...
Parser generators vs. handwritten parsers: surveying major language implementations in 2021
Developers often think parser generators are the sole legit way to
build programming language...
over a year ago
Developers often think parser generators are the sole legit way to
build programming language frontends, possibly because compiler
courses in university teach lex/yacc variants. But do any modern
programming languages actually use parser generators anymore?
To find out, this post...
Posts on Made of...
Software Engineers should keep lab notebooks
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike...
over a year ago
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but...
Computer Ads from...
MicroTimes Interviews the Head Honchos of Silicon Graphics (1989)
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
7 months ago
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/0 keyboard layout
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While...
over a year ago
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While there are more changes I’d like to try, I’m quite pleased with these changes so I figured I might as well immortalize them before I explore further. (And I do have a bunch of big...
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...
Louwrentius
LFS - Linux Firewall Script released
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux...
over a year ago
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux Firewall Script.
I run a small Linux box as an internet router that doubles as a firewall. The
firewall is configured using iptables. In my opinion, iptables is not the
easiest tool to...
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...
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
a month ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 3
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
a year ago
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
Simply Explained
Building Air Quality Sensor: Luftdaten + Home Assistant
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the...
over a year ago
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the world. Best of all: it's open-source and anyone can build a sensor.I was very curious to see the air quality in my neighborhood, so I decided to build myself a sensor. And of course,...
Louwrentius
Why the iPad will be a breakthrough in human computing
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to...
over a year ago
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to adjust to them.
The problem is that most people that are not into technology just don't
understand how computers work. Should I single click of double click? Click
left or right?
The...
GitButler
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source...
4 months ago
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source ecosystem.
Home on Erik...
The eigenvector of "Why we moved from language X to language Y"
I was reading yet another blog post titled “Why our team moved from <language X> to <language Y>” (I...
over a year ago
I was reading yet another blog post titled “Why our team moved from <language X> to <language Y>” (I forgot which one) and I started wondering if you can generalize it a bit. Is it possible to generate a N * N contingency table of moving from language X to language Y?
./techtipsy
The IPv6 situation on Docker is good now!
Good news, everyone! Doing IPv6 networking stuff on Docker is actually good now!
I’ve recently...
a week ago
Good news, everyone! Doing IPv6 networking stuff on Docker is actually good now!
I’ve recently started reworking my home server setup to be more IPv6 compatible, and as part of that I learned that
during
the summer of 2024 Docker shipped an update that eliminated a
lot of the...
Jonas Hietala
8-puzzle in rust
I think rust is one of the most interesting upcoming programming languages out there. So I wrote a...
over a year ago
I think rust is one of the most interesting upcoming programming languages out there. So I wrote a solution to the 8-puzzle (see the 15-puzzle) using A*. It also has a breadth first search for solutions on a specific distance away from the goal.
The solution is not by any means a...
Notes on software...
Be someone who does things
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to...
3 months ago
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to follow that up by saying that the only thing more important
than wanting to do something is to actually do something.
The most valuable trait you can develop for yourself is to...
Jonas Hietala
My Minions
So I think I made it! It became a pretty different game from what I set out to create, but I’m glad...
over a year ago
So I think I made it! It became a pretty different game from what I set out to create, but I’m glad with how it turned out.
My Minions
Instructions
Build a pathway and then place objects or release minions on it, everything must be on a path. Place musical objects or make the...
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
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...
Notes on software...
Make small changes and solve the problems you have
Two frustrating things that can happen in an organization are 1) big
changes and 2) changes that...
over a year ago
Two frustrating things that can happen in an organization are 1) big
changes and 2) changes that aren’t clearly associated with a known
problem. It’s even worse in that order.
These situations tend to happen when a problem remain unaddressed for
too long. These situations tend to...
Arduino Blog
Two NEW Arduino Plug and Make Kit projects recreate iconic vintage games
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix...
3 months ago
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix of Arduino designers, engineers, and managers to sit down and brainstorm new ideas to have fun with it? Well, at least one of them is guaranteed to come up with an adorable,...
csvbase blog
My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
a year ago
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
Notes on software...
Practical? Common Lisp on the JVM: A quick intro to ABCL for modern web apps
In a ridiculous attempt to prove an internet
wrong about the
practicality of Lisp (Common Lisp...
over a year ago
In a ridiculous attempt to prove an internet
wrong about the
practicality of Lisp (Common Lisp specifically), I tried to get a
simple (but realistic) web app running. After four days and a patch
to ABCL I got something
working.
The code I had in mind would look something like...
Odds and Ends of...
I'm pro-assisted dying in principle, but I'm not sure about the proposed law
Is no law better than a bad law?
a month ago
Is no law better than a bad law?
Simply Explained
Home Energy Monitor: V2
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my...
over a year ago
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my electricity consumption every second and everything is neatly archived in my AWS account.Still, though, there is room for improvement. It's time to look back, evaluate & improve the design....
Posts on Made of...
Running Tensorflow on AWS GPUs
I’ve been spending some time learning deep learning and tensorflow recently, and as part of that...
over a year ago
I’ve been spending some time learning deep learning and tensorflow recently, and as part of that project I wanted to be able to train models using GPUs on EC2. This post contains some notes on what it took to get that working. As many people have commented, the environment setup...
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...
Willem's Blog
Your own addressbook and calendar cloud
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data...
over a year ago
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data and share it between your devices.
Style over Substance
My Home Assistant setup (2023 edition)
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s...
a year ago
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s become such a hobby of mine that I’ve even started coding add-ons for it. While there are other popular automation platforms, Home Assistant’s versatility blows the rest out of the...
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.
Louwrentius
Linux network interface bonding / trunking or how to get beyond 1 Gb/s
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP...
over a year ago
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP connection.
UPDATE July 2011
Due to hardware problems, I was not able to achieve transfer speeds
beyond 150 MB/s. By replacing a network card with one from another
vendor (HP...
Arduino Blog
Arduino’s Alvik Robot shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025 in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, and Digital...
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025,...
a month ago
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025, this time in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, or Digital Device category with our Alvik robot! This recognition highlights our dedication to innovation, inclusivity, and the advancement of...
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
6 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
Electronics etc…
$17 GM1312 Thermometer Review, Test, and Teardown
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few tests
Internals
Conclusion
References
Introduction
I’ve been doing a bunch of measurements on oven-controlled oscillators lately,
including their temperature. There are multiple ways to measure...
./techtipsy
Running my ThinkPad T430 with an eGPU in 2024
I probably shouldn’t have written down my notes on the eGPU setup I had years ago.
I’d be lying if I...
4 months ago
I probably shouldn’t have written down my notes on the eGPU setup I had years ago.
I’d be lying if I wasn’t considering remaking this setup with everything I’ve learned 6 years later.
Oops.
I got access to an allegedly-faulty AMD Radeon RX 480 and an NVIDIA GTX 1650 for free...
Willem's Blog
Cutting Cloud Costs
Facing sky-high cloud costs, I found software optimisation vital. Discover how I saved 90% on cloud...
a year ago
Facing sky-high cloud costs, I found software optimisation vital. Discover how I saved 90% on cloud expenses!
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
Good Enough
You Complete Me
When Good Enough was in its infancy as a truly American LLC (formed in Delaware and representing one...
a month 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...
Yazin Alirhayim
Tracking where a WhatsApp user came from
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their...
over a year ago
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their bank account, asking questions like “What’s my balance” and “How much have I spent on Uber’s this month?”.
A problem we faced really early on when connecting to WhatsApp was that...
Gwern.net Newsletter
November newsletter
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1...
over a year ago
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1 essay, and 1 opera review ('The Ring' cycle).
Christian Selig
Curing Mac mini M4 fomo with 3D printing
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve...
a month ago
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve found the new, tinier Mac mini to be absolutely adorable. But you might also be like me that you either already have an awesome M1 Mac mini that you have no real reason to replace,...
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',...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Why we prefer computers over consoles when introducing kids to gaming
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing...
10 months ago
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing games with my brothers on those devices.
But as my own kids have gotten older, my wife and I have decided to first introduce them to gaming with computers, instead of consoles.
The...
Notes on software...
SMTP protocol basics from scratch in Go: receiving email from Gmail
I've never run my own mail server before. Before today I had no clue
how email worked under the hood...
over a year ago
I've never run my own mail server before. Before today I had no clue
how email worked under the hood other than the very few times I've set
up mail clients.
I've heard no few times how hard it is to send mail from a
self-hosted server (because of spam filters). But how hard can...
Computer Ads from...
Black Friday - Happy Birthday sale
Let's mix things up!
a month ago
somenice
CBC Spark with Nora Young
Really upset to recently learn that Spark with Nora Young has been cancelled by the CBC, ending in...
6 months ago
Really upset to recently learn that Spark with Nora Young has been cancelled by the CBC, ending in June 2024. (Announcement episode) One of the most intelligent, progressive technology-in-society news shows in Canada or anywhere for that matter. Perhaps that it’s medium is radio...
Willem's Blog
iPad Pro next to my primary machine
Using iPad Pro with Apple Pencil next to my computer to form a create powerhouse
over a year ago
Using iPad Pro with Apple Pencil next to my computer to form a create powerhouse
Matt Blewitt
Table Stakes
This is a short post on what I see are table stakes for any new user-facing service, security-wise....
over a year ago
This is a short post on what I see are table stakes for any new user-facing service, security-wise. Mostly focused on user-focused, rather than intra-service, considerations.
Notes on software...
Running SQL Server in a container on Github Actions
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Posts on Made of...
Efficiency trades off against resiliency
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from...
a year ago
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from a well-designed and well-run service, what CPU utilization should we hope to see, averaged over a day or two?
It’s a very general question, and it’s not clear it should have a...
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...
Louwrentius
Improving web application security by implementing database security
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement...
over a year ago
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement defense-in-depth security in web applications. 99.9% of applications use a single database account, with root-like privileges. Easiest for the developer of course, and the database is just a...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Acing the design interview
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work...
over a year ago
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work with a particular web service or…
Jonas Hietala
Resurrection
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not...
over a year ago
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not having to make lunch and dinner every day is such a relief, and if you do slip up food with grandma or Veronica’s parents is only a phone call away. I watched TV, played...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy
over a year ago
Opsbros
The Bindicator
So I made this project for my dad for Fathers Day a couple of years ago, and thought i'd share it....
over a year ago
So I made this project for my dad for Fathers Day a couple of years ago, and thought i'd share it. The one shown is the Rev-1 design which is far from perfect, in fact it has several major issues I will discuss below, however it definitely works,
Willem's Blog
The joy of a simple laptop
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the...
over a year ago
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the experience!
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1982/02 Creative Computing Mag
Time for some humor
7 months ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
My 40-liter backpack travel guide
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
3 weeks ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 1 (Teacher's Pet)
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
The first in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Willem's Blog
Giving AI Training
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent...
a year ago
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent AI training session that's reshaping professional landscapes.
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Willem's Blog
No, I Won't Build That!
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I...
10 months ago
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I Won't Build That!"
Lars Lofgren
My 7 Rules for A/B Testing That Triple Conversion Rates
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I...
over a year ago
I really don’t care how any given A/B test turns out. That’s right. Not one bit. But wait, how do I double or triple conversion rates without caring how a test performs? I actually care about the whole SYSTEM of testing. All the pieces need to fit together just right. If not,...
Arduino Blog
It’s silver, it’s green, it’s the Batteryrunner! An Arduino-powered, fully custom electric car
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully...
a month ago
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully electric, Arduino-powered car that’s as innovative as it is sustainable. Called the Batteryrunner, this vehicle is designed with a focus on environmental impact, simplicity, and custom...
Matt Mullenweg
Rhino Dehorning
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles,...
2 months ago
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles, elephants. Today wasn’t great: I witnessed a rhino shot with a tranquilizer from a helicopter, then it was held down, had its horns cut off, and then shaved down. I have some photos and...
Jonas Hietala
Trying and returning the Eight Sleep Pod 4
I recently bought the Eight Sleep Pod 4—a smart mattress cover that tracks your heart rate, HRV,...
3 months ago
I recently bought the Eight Sleep Pod 4—a smart mattress cover that tracks your heart rate, HRV, snoring, and cools or warms the mattress during the night.
There’s a lot to like about the mattress but in the end I opted to return it.
This post describes my experience with the Pod...
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…
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the Topic of the March 2024 Plus Post
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
9 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Style over Substance
Guy’s Cool Tools
This is a placeholder post! I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and have loved their...
over a year ago
This is a placeholder post! I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and have loved their recommendations for years. So much, so that I even started a Pinterest board filled with my own recommendations. But after a few years of running into the limitations of the form, I...
Electronics etc…
Cable Length Measurement with an HP 8007B Pulse Generator
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',...
Jonas Hietala
Bugger
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the...
over a year ago
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the bugs. As a programmer the fight with those nasty bugs are a daily occurrence and now I’ve brought you a chance to kill those nasties too!
The gameplay wasn’t what I was planning on -...
./techtipsy
OpenWRT, ISP modem and dynamic IP addresses: how to fix connectivity issues without rebooting your...
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem...
7 months ago
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem (Technicolor CGA2121, DOCSIS 3.0). It’s running in bridge
mode,
meaning that all it does is convert the signal running over the coax cable
into plain old Ethernet.
My main...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 9: The Next Phase of Growth
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Using AI to generate code
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise...
a year ago
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise cloud performance in our fascinating exploration of GPT-4's transformative capabilities.
axio.ms
32-bit hat, with LEDs
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat,...
over a year ago
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat, bejewelled with 38 RGB LEDs
Is this thing on..? It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these.
So, the hat. It’s been on the writeup pile for almost 6 years, nagging away. Finally...
GitButler
Fearless Rebasing
GitButler now supports first class conflicts, which makes rebasing much less annoying. What is...
2 months ago
GitButler now supports first class conflicts, which makes rebasing much less annoying. What is "fearless rebasing"?
Computer Ads from...
Lintek Computer Accessories' Paper Tamer
Restore Order (to your printer)
8 months ago
Restore Order (to your printer)
Willem's Blog
Optimising images for the web and performance
Make your website faster by optimising the images. This posts explains how you can do this.
over a year ago
Make your website faster by optimising the images. This posts explains how you can do this.
computers are bad
2023-08-07 STIRred AND SHAKEN
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps...
a year ago
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps spurred by boredom, I looked through the schedule to see
what's in store in the world of telephony. There is a workshop on SS7, of
course [1], plenty of content on cellular, but...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
Jonas Hietala
A Four-Eyed Update
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my...
over a year ago
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my almost constant headaches which hampered me a lot actually. Luckily now I have joined the rank of cool.
I took home three frames I think and tried them out and I settled some I...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
9 months ago
Birchtree
Apple’s 2024 report card: iPhone 📱
This is the first in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s 2024 across their major product lines. I...
a week ago
This is the first in a series of posts reviewing Apple’s 2024 across their major product lines. I did this last year and you can read last year’s iPhone report card here.
iPhone 16 Pro
I really, really liked the 15 Pro lineup, and I would
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
11 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...
Opsbros
Artemis 1 Countdown
I've been following the Artemis 1 Launch Schedule quite closely on a few forums and discussing it...
over a year ago
I've been following the Artemis 1 Launch Schedule quite closely on a few forums and discussing it with serveral people, and I had been regularly posting updated DateandTime countdown links for the revised launch attempts. With the schedule chnages and scrubs that have happened...
Applied Cartography
Order, Tailwind, DRY
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating...
2 weeks ago
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating some higher-traffic, higher-leverage parts of Buttondown's admin UI away from the autogenerated Django admin and into some more bespoke components.
Take, for instance, this rather...
Lighthouse Blog
How to stay on top of (new) content
7 months ago
Louwrentius
Difference of behavior in SATA Solid State Drives
Introduction
Update: I've noticed some strange behavior of SSDs when benchmarking them with FIO....
over a year ago
Introduction
Update: I've noticed some strange behavior of SSDs when benchmarking them with FIO. After further investigation and additional testing, I've found the reason for the strange patterns in the graphs.
The 'strange' test results are due to the fact that they were...
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...
Jonas Hietala
An Epic Start
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and...
over a year ago
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and went to the bathroom. After I was done, still pretty tired, I made a big mistake. I checked the current theme for Ludum Dare 29: Beneath the Surface and guess what? Now I wasn’t tired...
Electronics etc…
The HP 423A and a Beginner’s Deep Dive into RF Crystal Detectors
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',...
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...
3 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....
Louwrentius
Neato XV-15 / XV-11 Robotic Vacuum cleaner review
Update 18 February 2012
There is one problem. When the robot is not connected to the charger, the...
over a year ago
Update 18 February 2012
There is one problem. When the robot is not connected to the charger, the batteries are depleted very fast. Even if the batteries are not entirely depleted and the robot can still display the menu, the clock loses it's time. Every time the robot gets a too...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond
over 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.
Arduino Blog
Clone your IoT projects with Arduino Cloud Custom Templates
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the...
5 months ago
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the thrill of bringing a new IoT project to life. But we also understand the frustration of repetitive setup processes and the time sink of configuring the same elements over and over...
Notes on software...
A reawakening of systems programming meetups
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich...
6 months ago
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich Database
Meetup, Berlin
Systems Group, SF Distributed
Systems Meetup, NYC
Systems, Bengaluru
Systems, to name a few.
This post summarizes a bit of disappointing recent tech meetup
history,...
Home on Erik...
MLConf 2014
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a...
over a year ago
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a whole range of great speakers (actually almost 2/3 women which was pretty cool in itself).
Here are my slides:
Louwrentius
Ubuntu and full disk encryption (FDE)
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create...
over a year ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create an encrypted disk volume based on LUKS. This is different
from the option within the Ubuntu installation to encrypt home directories. To
be able to install Ubuntu and use full disk...
Notes on software...
AOT-compilation of Javascript with V8
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed...
over a year ago
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed programming languages have implementations that
compile to native binaries:
Python: Cython
Common Lisp: SBCL
Scheme: Chicken Scheme
The benefits of compiling dynamically typed...
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?
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...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
Notes on software...
A database without dynamic memory allocation
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Willem's Blog
Riding with Omata One
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely...
over a year ago
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely special: it indicates your speed, distance, ascent and time ridden using mechanical hands!
./techtipsy
Disk is OK
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of...
over a year ago
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of Midas.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that I use my hardware for things they were never meant to be used for.
Anyway, I have acquired two Seagate 4TB external hard drives for doing some...
Willem's Blog
Is the Apple Watch the modern tool watch?
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet...
over a year ago
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet data centre.
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Arduino Blog
Using Arduino UNO to sync a visual neuroscience lab
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and...
2 months ago
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and monitoring neural activity in the presence of sensory stimuli, to help scientists study how neurons encode and respond, for example, to specific visual inputs. One of the biggest technical...
Willem's Blog
Harvesting boredom to let creativity flourish
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to...
over a year ago
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to the Internet using a smartphone.
Arduino Blog
CapibaraZero: a student’s journey in reinventing hacking tools with Arduino
Inventive, open-source, and cost-effective – these words perfectly describe CapibaraZero, a...
a month ago
Inventive, open-source, and cost-effective – these words perfectly describe CapibaraZero, a multifunctional security and hacking tool developed by young innovator Andrea Canale. Inspired by the popular Flipper Zero, a portable device used to interact with digital systems, Canale...
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
somenice
Generative 3D Modeling
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as...
2 weeks 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...
Notes on software...
Metaprogramming in Zig and parsing CSS
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it....
a year ago
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it. What's the difference between
@typeInfo and @TypeOf? I ignored this aspect of Zig until a
problem came up at work where reflection
made sense.
The situation was parsing and storing...
Simply Explained
Retrospective: 4 years on YouTube
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate,...
over a year ago
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate, and set goals for the coming year. This year is no exception. January 13th, 2020, marks my fourth year on YouTube. Time to do a little retrospective.
Arduino Blog
Meet the CapibaraZero, a multifunctional security and hacking tool based on the Nano ESP32
In recent years, tools such as the FlipperZero have become quite popular amongst hobbyists and...
a month ago
In recent years, tools such as the FlipperZero have become quite popular amongst hobbyists and security professionals alike for their small size and wide array of hacking tools. Inspired by the functionality of the FlipperZero, Project Hub user ‘andreockx’ created a similar...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 20 Timelapse
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I...
over a year ago
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I lost the first few hours as I forgot to turn it on…
Anyway here’s the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABVPlRaA5iI
anderegg.ca
Jet Lag: The Game: The Game
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next...
a month ago
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next season, and also a “home version” of the game. I’ve written about Jet Lag: The Game before, so you might want to start there if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
On the latest...
Applied Cartography
Why can't you just...?
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long,...
7 months ago
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long, detailed explanation of why shipping this sort of thing is hard:
Designing a consent experience for the enterprise admin and enterprise end user
Creating a special "read only" object...
Simply Explained
Integrate Home Assistant with Apple Reminders
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos....
over a year ago
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos. This is trickier as it sounds, because Reminders has no API that can be accessed from Home Assistant. Here's how I worked around that problem with a script, input text helper and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Travel time ~= 750 * distance ^ 0.6
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...
4 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...
Old Vintage...
The Living Computers Museum finally isn't
First off, apologies for a quiet month as I've been dealing with family matters which hopefully are...
6 months ago
First off, apologies for a quiet month as I've been dealing with family matters which hopefully are now on a better footing (more articles are in the hopper). Unfortunately, the same apparently can't be said for the once-great Living Computers Museum + Labs in Seattle,...
Louwrentius
'Linux: obtain motherboard model / type and vendor'
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode |...
over a year ago
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode | grep -e "Manufacturer|Product" | head -n 4 | tail -n 2
The result might be something like:
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Product Name: P5Q-EM DO
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer...
Matt Blewitt
Service Objects in Rails
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects,...
over a year ago
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects, in the context of Rails.
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...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Matt Mullenweg
Everyone’s An Owner
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day,...
2 months ago
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders...
somenice
Painting of Russet Lake
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the...
4 months ago
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the natural world is alive with vibrant colours and serene beauty. One of the most stunning scenes unfolds at Russet Lake, where the iconic Fissile Mountain is mirrored perfectly in the...
Azad's Blog
RealityCapture to Gaussian Splatting using PostShot
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import...
5 months ago
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import it into PostShot to train Gaussian Splats without using COLMAP. Video tutorial RealityCapture Import your images and align them. If you ever need help with tricky dataset, refer to...
Louwrentius
Secure caching DNS server on Linux with DJBDNS
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon"....
over a year ago
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon". However, this software has a bad security track record and is in
my opinion a pain to configure.
Mr. D.J. Bernstein developed "djbdns", which comes with a guarantee: if anyone
finds a...
Willem's Blog
Building a product platform
Leverage platform capabilities to quickly launch new products, designing for reusability,...
over a year ago
Leverage platform capabilities to quickly launch new products, designing for reusability, flexibility and extensibility.
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #45: Deliverism, blasphemy and selfies from space
Plus the best Minecraft-themed political deepfake you'll see today
a month ago
Plus the best Minecraft-themed political deepfake you'll see today
Posts on Made of...
Towards solving Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey...
over a year ago
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey into interesting algorithms and high-performance parallel programming in Rust.
Backstory Starting around the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve gotten myself deeply nerdsniped...
Willem's Blog
Measuring cholesterol levels in blood
This week I had my blood examined to measure my cholesterol levels, taking a lipid profile. Know...
over a year ago
This week I had my blood examined to measure my cholesterol levels, taking a lipid profile. Know your LDL, HDL and Triglycerides numbers with a simple test.
Ken Shirriff's blog
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...
Jonas Hietala
Sat-E
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme...
over a year ago
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme this time around was Alone and the game I came up with is about a lonely satellite in space, kinda like Wall-E.
Sat-E
Instructions
Collect junk and other items for you to buy...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Building LLM-driven agents
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just...
a year ago
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just ask it. Writing out a single prompt…
Arduino Blog
Bringing Quake to Arduino: a game-changing project by Nicola Wrachien
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon...
3 months ago
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon Labs, a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world and long-time Arduino partner – has now tackled an even bigger challenge: porting Quake, the...
Arduino Blog
Making a car more secure with the Arduino Nicla Vision
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa...
5 months ago
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa was looking for a way to incorporate some of the technologies and techniques he learned into a useful project. Given that he lives in an area which experiences elevated levels of...
Jonas Hietala
I beat FTL on Hard with all ships in the game
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games...
a year ago
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games again.
So I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck (and like any self-serving gentleman I took care to pitch it as being for my kids) and I started loading it up...
Matt Blewitt
Tools for a Culture of Writing
One of the hardest things we do, as humans, is try and communicate what is going on in our minds to...
over a year ago
One of the hardest things we do, as humans, is try and communicate what is going on in our minds to each other. With significant room for misunderstanding, biases, assumptions and cultural differences, communicating with other engineers (or to stakeholders) appears fraught....
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
2 months ago
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
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.
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part 3: Into the Weeds
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
State drift
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion....
over a year ago
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion. But here is something I thought about: how to build in self-correction into systems. This has been something just vaguely sitting in my head lacking a clear conceptual definition...
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
11 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Bed & electronics
I’ve made a lot of progress on my VORON.
Electronics and other stuff are installed to the degree...
a year ago
I’ve made a lot of progress on my VORON.
Electronics and other stuff are installed to the degree that I’ve begun wiring, but I’m going to separate the wiring into it’s own post.
This will be a short post about bed preparation and installing electronics components.
Feedback from...
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...
Matt Mullenweg
Inc Hit Piece
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a...
2 weeks ago
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a feature piece I was excited because though Inc wasn’t a magazine I have read much since I was a teenager, David seemed like a legit journalist who usually writes for better publications...
Arduino Blog
Boring rice cooker becomes uruchimai powerhouse
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable....
5 months ago
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable. But those are simple machines that are about as “dumb” as electric kettles. The result is often rice that has been sitting in the warming stage for too long, making the bottom...
Arduino Blog
Kick off the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with these Formula 1-inspired Arduino projects
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the...
7 months ago
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the season. While most fans can’t participate directly — except as spectators — they can celebrate their passion through DIY projects. That’s why we’ve scoured the community to find the...
./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...
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
Home on Erik...
NYC subway math
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the...
over a year ago
Apparently MTA (the company running the NYC subway) has a real-time API. My fascination for the subway takes autistic proportions and so obviously I had to analyze some of the data. The documentation is somewhat terrible, but here's some relevant code for how to use the API:
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?
Posts on Made of...
Indices point between elements
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a...
over a year ago
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a diagram of an array, the array indices, and the array elements, odds are good you’d produce a diagram something like this:
In this post, I want to persuade you to replace that image, or,...
Jonas Hietala
Pushing toward Git
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository...
over a year ago
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository deleted, never became anything
Available on Github
It’s nothing special really, if you want take a look at the code and help me improve it.
Willem's Blog
Hello, stranger
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one...
a year ago
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one individual delves into the lost art of talking to strangers and the profound connections it can forge."
Jonas Hietala
(Fake) Bittman Chinese Chicken
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on...
over a year ago
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on multiple fronts: chicken wings instead of chicken breasts, mushroom soy instead of tamarin, roman salad instead of baby bok choi (where the heck do you find that…) and I even...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: MenuCity
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and...
over a year ago
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and constructive feedback guys, it’s like my food doing this (programming is my air and the fun is the water… err). Anyway here’s the postmortem of my latest, and greatest, game.
Let’s start...
Home on Erik...
How to hire smarter than the market: a toy model
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable....
over a year ago
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable. It's not very important what those are, so let's just call them “thing A” and “thing B” for now.
Willem's Blog
Working with special hardware from China
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with...
over a year ago
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with an embedded printer!
Jonas Hietala
Printing Hextraction for my kids
A session of Hextraction, a 3D printed board game.
I did it.
I made something actually useful with...
10 months ago
A session of Hextraction, a 3D printed board game.
I did it.
I made something actually useful with my 3D printer instead of just tinkering with it.
I printed Hextraction, a very cool 3D printed board game for my kids—and they love it.
Hextraction is a gamified marble run, where...
Home on Erik...
New benchmarks for approximate nearest neighbors
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy...
over a year ago
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy interests include approximate algorithms for nearest neighbors in high-dimensional spaces. The problem is simple. You have say 1M points in some high-dimensional space.
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
Good Enough
TIL: Merge nested attributes in Rails permit params
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting...
a year ago
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting refamiliarized with nested parameters in Rails has been interesting.
In this case imagine I have a discussion that, when creating it I also want to create the first comment.
The...
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...
Louwrentius
Understanding the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server Autoinstaller
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation...
over a year ago
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation process. This includes support for 'preseeding' to create unattended (automated) installations of ubuntu.
the debian installer
With the introduction of Ubuntu Server 20.04 'Focal...
Willem's Blog
Cleaning a vintage watch
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old...
over a year ago
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old beauty underneath layers of dirt!
Louwrentius
Performance monitoring using dstat
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is...
over a year ago
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is currently happening on your Linux box.
Dstat allows you to monitor the system load, disk troughput, disk io, network
bandwith, and many more items.
Dstat is so valuable because it...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
Matt Mullenweg
Response to DHH
I’ve taken this post down. I’ve been attacked so much the past few days; the most vicious, personal,...
2 months ago
I’ve taken this post down. I’ve been attacked so much the past few days; the most vicious, personal, hateful words poisoned my brain, and the original version of this post was mean. I am so sorry. I shouldn’t let this stuff get to me, but it clearly did, and I took it out on DHH,...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for... chess
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some...
over a year ago
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some point. So why not combine the two? That's what I thought, and I ended up spending way too much time on it.
Louwrentius
Do not buy a hardware RAID controller for home use
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high...
over a year ago
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high availability. However, this is not entirely true. Using a
hardware RAID controller might even endanger your precious data.
For enterprise environments, where performance is critical, it is...
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...
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