computers are bad
2024-03-27 telephone cables
So let's say you're working on a household project and need around a dozen
telephone cables---the...
9 months ago
So let's say you're working on a household project and need around a dozen
telephone cables---the ordinary kind that you would use between your telephone
and the wall. It is, of course, more cost effective to buy bulk cable, or
simply a long cable, and cut it to length and attach...
Willem's Blog
Abandoning my own tablet OS
After a year of experimenting with Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 I have returned to iPad Pro...
over a year ago
After a year of experimenting with Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 I have returned to iPad Pro and the Mac.
Odds and Ends of...
WATCH: Talking trains with Jonn Elledge!
The new Overground names, why the north always loses out, and more!
3 weeks ago
The new Overground names, why the north always loses out, and more!
Louwrentius
Configuring, attacking and securing VRRP on Linux
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple...
over a year ago
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple routers in an active/passive configuration. If the primary router fails, the backup router takes over almost seamlessly.
This is how VRRP works:
Clients connect to a virtual...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Val Town
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If...
a month ago
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If you haven't used Val, well, watch the stream — think live, zero-deploy code snippets that can be arbitrarily extended and executed.)
Reflecting on the experience, the most exciting...
Neil Madden
Towards a standard for bearer token URLs
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include...
over a year ago
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include credentials in a URL?, I raised the possibility of standardising a new URL scheme that safely allows encoding a bearer token into a URL. This makes it more convenient to use lots of...
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...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Links #10
How to Get on a Podcast - This is a short and invaluable post for anyone who wants to be a podcast...
4 months ago
How to Get on a Podcast - This is a short and invaluable post for anyone who wants to be a podcast guest. It puts you in the shoes of a podcaster, showing you what they need, and how you can be a “sure thing” for them. As usual, there are no short cuts. You gotta do the work!
A...
Jonas Hietala
We moved away from the city
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never...
over a year ago
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never to stay there permanently. We just moved there to study but the longterm plan, if you can have one at that stage, was always to move back to the north of Sweden where we came...
Home on Erik...
Black Box Machine Learning in the Cloud
There's a bunch of companies working on machine learning as a service. Some old companies like...
over a year ago
There's a bunch of companies working on machine learning as a service. Some old companies like Google, but now also Amazon and Microsoft.
Then there's a ton of startups: PredictionIO ($2.7M funding), BigML ($1.6M funding), Clarifai, etc, etc.
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
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
Home on Erik...
MCMC for marketing data
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some...
over a year ago
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some simple uncertainty estimates. I have data like this:
<th> Total spend </th> <th> Transactions </th> Channel A <td> 2292.
Electronics etc…
Installing Linux GPIB Drivers for the Agilent 82357B
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the...
a year ago
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the Agilent 82357B GPIB Driver on an Ubuntu Linux Distribution
References
Introduction
I’ve started to grow a collection of older test equipment from the eighties, the
nineties, and the...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Sell
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
over a year ago
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
Posts on Made of...
Check Plus: An EDSL for writing unit tests in C
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known...
over a year ago
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known projects. It includes features such as running all tests in separate address spaces (using fork(2)), which means that the test suite can properly report segfaults or similar crashes...
Arduino Blog
Can remote co-presence keep distant human connections alive?
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social...
5 months ago
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social interaction to maintain good mental health. Sadly, many of us spend our lives physically separated from our loved ones by great distances or inopportune circumstances. That’s why a team...
GitButler
Why GitHub Actually Won
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
3 months ago
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
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...
Ian's Blog
Having a Website Used to Be Fun
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that...
a month ago
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that thought alone makes me feel old, but going back through the old snapshots of my websites made me feel a profound feeling of longing for a time when having a website used to be a novel...
Jonas Hietala
Beebop The Island Hopper
It’s here! The stuff of dreams, an entry for the epic Ludum Dare 17 has been made! For those who...
over a year ago
It’s here! The stuff of dreams, an entry for the epic Ludum Dare 17 has been made! For those who don’t know it’s a 48 hour game making competition which actually is pretty silly. Even more silly is my two hours of commitment yesterday but late this night at about 03:05 I am now,...
Home on Erik...
Why organizations fail
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core...
over a year ago
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core objective, decide the most basic strategy, and then add more and more modifications as you have to confront the complexity of reality (yes I have very lame hobbies thanks I know).
Jonas Hietala
The Top Idea
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple...
over a year ago
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple lua, later perl, which announced when a new day9 episode has come. Later I expanded it to search for new manga episodes, but now it’s broken and unfinished.
In an attempt to learn...
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?
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
Old Vintage...
Finally, an MOS 7600/7601 Video Game Array data sheet
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS...
a year ago
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS Technology's dedicated "Pong-on-a-chip" (from the company that brought you my favourite CPU, the MOS 6502) that's actually a rather sophisticated microcontroller for the era. I own...
Neil Madden
Regular JSON
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows...
a year ago
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows no signs of being replaced any time soon. There are good reasons for that: on the face of it, it provides a very simple format with just enough features to cover a lot of...
Louwrentius
Benchmarking a 1.44 MB floppy drive
I've used fio - a storage benchmarking tool - to benchmark a 1.44 MB floppy drive to gauge its...
over a year ago
I've used fio - a storage benchmarking tool - to benchmark a 1.44 MB floppy drive to gauge its random I/O performance. I have no real reason for doing this. I just thought it was funny.
I've run a benchmark against the floppy drives for different queue depths. The results are...
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
4 months ago
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
Opsbros
Docker and CumulusMX
I wanted to find out if I could successfully redeploy my Weather Station monitoring software into a...
over a year ago
I wanted to find out if I could successfully redeploy my Weather Station monitoring software into a Docker container. Let's battle the elements together...
Louwrentius
Why I still won't switch to Linux and keep my Mac
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to...
over a year ago
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to admit that the Linux desktop is really becoming a
nice, user-friendly environment. I'm truly starting to like what I see. I
considered whiping Mac OS X from my macbook, but there...
Notes on software...
dsq: Commandline tool for running SQL queries against JSON, CSV, Excel, Parquet, and more.
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...
What MongoDB got Right
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the...
over a year ago
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the mockery is out-of-date or rooted in misunderstandings, much of it is well-deserved, and it’s difficult to disagree that much of MongoDB’s engineering is incredibly simplistic,...
Applied Cartography
Mass renaming files in fish on macOS
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install...
a year ago
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install rename
rename "s/.mdx/.md/" **.md
Notes on software...
Finding memory leaks in Postgres C code
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
9 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part I: Proofs with Polynomials
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Storing ephemeral micropoetry on RFID cards for bite-sized readings
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of...
3 months ago
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of poetry from cover-to-cover over the course of a few sessions, the majority of people seem to prefer enjoying poetry in occasional little chunks. And unlike the epic poems of Greek...
Notes on software...
Reviewing the Surface Book 2
The first few paragraphs cover what I was looking for and what I
considered. Then the review.
Why...
over a year ago
The first few paragraphs cover what I was looking for and what I
considered. Then the review.
Why the Surface Book 2
I used a Macbook throughout my professional career until I had the
choice a few years ago when I started my current job. Here, I ran
Gentoo, then FreeBSD, then...
Home on Erik...
Snakebite
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie....
over a year ago
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie. It's a super fast tool to access HDFS over CLI/Python, by accessing the namenode directly over sockets/protobuf.
Spotify's developer blog features a nice blog post outlining what...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 2. user-defined functions and variables
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the compiler to support defining functions
and variables. Additionally, we'll require the...
Louwrentius
'Linux RAID level and chunk size: the benchmarks'
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is...
over a year ago
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is the chunk size?
When you write data to a RAID array that implements striping (level 0, 5, 6,
10 and so on), the chunk of data sent to the array is broken down in to
pieces, each part...
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...
Computer Ads from...
Applied Analytics' MicroSPEED
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
6 months ago
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
Home on Erik...
Scala Data Pipelines for Music Recommendations
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
over a year ago
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
Louwrentius
Statistics showing relevance of caching proxy
In this day and age of dynamic web content, how relevant can a caching proxy server be? I believe...
over a year ago
In this day and age of dynamic web content, how relevant can a caching proxy server be? I believe that the answer could be: quite!
I have installed a caching proxy server based on Squid, which is now used within my company. It also does content scanning using squidclamav and...
Lighthouse Blog
Deep dive into finding RSS feeds
2 weeks ago
Arduino Blog
Finally, you can DIY your own espresso machine
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the...
3 months ago
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the world of espresso machines. To satisfy enthusiasts, an espresso machine needs to provide precise control over temperature, pressure, and flow to enable the perfect pull. But if...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Fixing Problems
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a...
over a year ago
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a nice thread with a great answer. I solved it by forcefully patching libflashplayer.so
perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' libflashplayer.so
Worked perfectly!
I fixed the...
computers are bad
2023-07-10 the tragedy of beatrice foods
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are...
a year ago
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are conspiracy theories, of course, and there are people
who insist on their version of events so incessantly that details of dates and
places can become heated arguments. There is also...
Jonas Hietala
Starcraft 2 Keycaps
When I ordered this computer I was compelled, utterly compelled to buy a mechanical keyboard. Sure...
over a year ago
When I ordered this computer I was compelled, utterly compelled to buy a mechanical keyboard. Sure they cost almost 10x as much as a “regular” one and they didn’t even have these funky multimedia keys, what gives? Did I loose my insanity? It was supposed to give a great typing...
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.
Posts on Made of...
amd64 and va_arg
A while back, I was poking around LLVM bugs, and discovered, to my surprise, that LLVM doesn’t...
over a year ago
A while back, I was poking around LLVM bugs, and discovered, to my surprise, that LLVM doesn’t support the va_arg intrinsic, used by functions to accept multiple arguments, at all on amd64. It turns out that clang and llvm-gcc, the compilers that backend to LLVM, have their own...
Computer Ads from...
Ampere WS-1
A cool Japanese clamtop
9 months ago
Notes on software...
Delightful, production-grade replication for Postgres
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
4 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Arduino Blog
Light up the holiday season, with a new Plug and Make Kit tutorial!
Looking for a fun and creative way to brighten up the holiday season? With the Arduino Plug and Make...
2 weeks ago
Looking for a fun and creative way to brighten up the holiday season? With the Arduino Plug and Make Kit, you can build an interactive LED light installation that reacts when someone walks by – perfect for spreading cheer and adding a high-tech twist to your decorations. This...
Louwrentius
Shunit2, unit testing for shell scripts
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts...
over a year ago
This may be of interest to people who are as stupid as I am and write
elaborate shell scripts instead of using a proper scripting language such as
Python or Ruby. No I am deliberately not mentioning Perl here.
Anyway, testing is always an issue. With PPSS, I encountered many...
Posts on Made of...
Testing and feedback loops
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about...
over a year ago
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about testing and the purpose testing serves in software engineering, and to explore some of the suggestions of this model.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I think a lot about working in...
Posts on Made of...
Followup to "A Very Subtle Bug"
After my previous post got posted to reddit, there was a bunch of interesting discussion there about...
over a year ago
After my previous post got posted to reddit, there was a bunch of interesting discussion there about some details I’d handwaved over. This is a quick followup on some the investigation that various people carried out, and the conclusions they reached.
In the reddit thread,...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Minor site updates
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started...
over a year ago
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started looking at moving to Pygments as my highlighter. With some searching around I found a blog post about just that! That’s lucky because while I like Haskell, I’ve never really grocked it...
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...
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
Louwrentius
overview of open-source load balancers
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview...
over a year ago
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview except from this website, although many of the listed projects seem dead.
I've made a selection of products that seem to be relevant. The biggest problem with open-source software...
Jonas Hietala
Preventing Firefox from creating Desktop directories
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found...
over a year ago
With a fresh firefox installation I found that it kept creating a ~/Desktop directory. But I found how to turn it off.
Edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs...
Louwrentius
Linux: script that creates table of network interface properties
My server has 5 network interfaces and I wanted a quick overview of some properties. There may be an...
over a year ago
My server has 5 network interfaces and I wanted a quick overview of some properties. There may be an existing linux command for this but I couldn't find it so I quickly wrote my
own script (download).
This is the output:
The only requirement for this script is that you have...
Notes on software...
Writing to be read
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails,...
over a year ago
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails, guides, etc. Each provides immense
value; a document may be the key to an important process. The goal is
to remove barriers -- to encourage understanding and correct
application of...
Home on Erik...
Predicting solar eclipses with Python
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute...
8 months ago
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute eclipses in Python. It turns out, ignoring some minor coordinate system head-banging, I was able to get something half-decent working in a couple of hours.
Willem's Blog
Cash is king, or is it?
Is the time right to ditch the wallet?
over a year ago
Is the time right to ditch the wallet?
computers are bad
2024-11-23 cablesoft
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful...
4 weeks ago
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful teletext services in the UK and Europe. "Teletext" is
sometimes a confusing term because of its apparent relation to telecom-industry
technologies like the teletypewriter and...
Louwrentius
Firewire: the forgotten security risk
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not...
over a year ago
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not that prevalent, cheap computers lack Firewire, but they often
have a PCMCIA slot.
The thing is this: Firewire allows direct access to all RAM of your computer.
An attacker...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Don't overload Ethereum's consensus
a year ago
Notes on software...
What makes a great technical blog
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely...
8 months ago
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely about non-corporate tech blogs. So this post is
too. I'll have to make another list for favorite corporate tech blogs.
In short, they:
Tackle hard and confusing topics
Show working...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 2s as cultural extensions of Ethereum
6 months ago
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 -...
Jonas Hietala
No game this month
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack...
over a year ago
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack inspiration and then it’s really hard to do something. Instead I’ve been thinking of something I could do that would make me wanna code like really bad again. I’m thinking of...
Home on Erik...
Why I went into the mortgage industry
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same...
over a year ago
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same day as we announced a $15M round led by Kleiner Perkins. So it was a good point to reflect a bit and think back – what the F led me to abandon my role managing the machine learning...
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Jonas Hietala
Undo git reset --hard
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back...
over a year ago
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back a bit. What I didn’t realize then is that you throw away all the commits between now until <hash>. Not quite what was planned.
After a bit of panic I found the answer:
Find your...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of the IBM 5100
IBM's First Personal Computer
a year ago
IBM's First Personal Computer
Louwrentius
My home network setup based on managed switches and VLANs
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet...
over a year ago
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet and my living room. The bottom floor contains a bedroom with all my servers and networking gear.
So this is my setup (click for a bigger version):
I like to run my own router but...
Louwrentius
Debian Lenny and Dell R410 network card not supported
For those who are running Debian Lenny and want to order the new Dell R410
server, beware!
There is...
over a year ago
For those who are running Debian Lenny and want to order the new Dell R410
server, beware!
There is no safe solution to get Debian Lenny working with the on-board
Broadcom network cards. A fairly recent kernel is required. Basically, you
will have to install back-ported kernels,...
Notes on software...
A minimal REST API in Java
There's a style of Java that is a joy to write. This post will cover
how to set up a basic...
over a year ago
There's a style of Java that is a joy to write. This post will cover
how to set up a basic PostgreSQL-integrated REST API using
Jersey and
JOOQ in a style not dissimilar to Flask and
SQLAlchemy in Python.
In particular, we'll try to avoid as much runtime
reflection/class-loading...
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.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry...
5 months ago
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals."
The original Pentium was followed by the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, and others, spawning a long-running brand of high-performance processors, Intel's...
Posts on Made of...
Advent of Code in C++ Template Metaprogramming
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of...
a year ago
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of Code I could do purely in compile-time C++ metaprogramming.
As of this writing, I’ve done two days, and I’m not sure I’ll make it any further. However, that’s one more day than I...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
Posts on Made of...
Write testable code by writing generic code
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains...
over a year ago
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains several software engineers nearly as obsessed with software testing as I am):
uhh, so I’m writing some code to handle an econnreset… how do I test this?
This is a good question!...
Home on Erik...
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives....
over a year ago
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I've suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I'm stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Arduino Blog
KiPneu makes soft robotic biomimetics accessible to STEAM students
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of...
5 months ago
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of humanity’s greatest assets. But systems reliant on soft tissue, such as an octopus’s tentacles, have been notoriously difficult to reproduce in the robotics world. To give STEAM...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Vitalik Buterin's...
7ème tour des subventions Gitcoin - Rétrospective
over a year ago
computers are bad
2023-07-15 underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet...
a year ago
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit").
It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but,
you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 2. system calls
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e...
over a year ago
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e to
support the exit and write Linux system calls, or syscalls. A syscall
is a function handled by the kernel that allows the process to
interact with data outside of its memory....
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wrap-up
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to...
9 months ago
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to leave it alone for a while, so I think it’s time to wrap up this build series with a little retrospective.
Building the printer was really fun and rewarding
I’ve always seen...
Applied Cartography
How shadcn/ui examples work
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a...
7 months ago
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a durable, non-trivial advantage.
Part of this thesis is that Really Good Docs Experiences, in addition to having great information architecture and strong writing/prose, should be thought...
Louwrentius
The Raspberry Pi 5 is no match for a tini-mini-micro PC
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable...
6 months ago
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable computer. An ideal home server. Until the Pi 4, the Pi was not that capable, and only with the relatively recent Pi 5 (fall 2023) do I feel the Pi is OK performance wise, although...
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...
Avestura's Blog
Understanding zero-knowledge proofs
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
over a year ago
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
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.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Updating my blog: a quick GPT chatbot coding experiment
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. LLVM system calls
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the ulisp
compiler's LLVM backend to
support printing integers to...
Engineers Need Art
Kim-1 User Manual
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
a year ago
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
./techtipsy
Testing GPU passthrough on AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU
Introduction
Before we jump into all the nitty-gritty details, I’d like to go over what we are...
over a year ago
Introduction
Before we jump into all the nitty-gritty details, I’d like to go over what we are dealing with here since these topics
may be unfamiliar to you. VFIO is quite a niche topic and not everyone knows about it.
GPU passthrough: the process of allowing a VM...
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety: 2
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond...
over a year ago
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond security towards safety for our users.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 2: The Surge
2 months ago
Arduino Blog
Speed up your project’s compile time by up to 50% in Arduino Cloud!
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or...
a week ago
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or experimenting with new ideas. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce a game-changing update to the Cloud Editor Builder — the engine behind compiling your sketches in Arduino Cloud. This...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Slackware
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
a year ago
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
Arduino Blog
Turn your old Android smartphone into an Arduino screen with the RemoteXY app
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for...
5 days ago
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for mistakes. But most projects require some “auxiliary” hardware — components that you use to interact with the Arduino or to help it do the job you’re asking of it. Buttons and displays...
Computer Ads from...
IBM RISC System/6000 Family
Just when PowerSeeker thought they had nowhere to go...
7 months ago
Just when PowerSeeker thought they had nowhere to go...
Arduino Blog
Simplifying IoT for smarter manufacturing: Join the chat with Arduino, AWS, and Atlas Machine
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes...
2 weeks ago
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes feel daunting. But what if you could simplify the process and start seeing results quickly? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming Arduino Cloud Café webinar on...
Willem's Blog
CAPTCHA Alternative
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where...
over a year ago
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where I outline how I protect web forms against malicious actors and spammers.
Good Enough
Asking the Right Question
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've...
a year ago
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've spread the word enough that there's now a steady stream of new users coming in each day. So, what's next?
Portrait of the author pondering
My first impulse was to answer this...
Construction Physics
Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz?
Here’s an idea you see spreading across the internet every so often: that all semiconductor and...
a month ago
Here’s an idea you see spreading across the internet every so often: that all semiconductor and solar PV manufacturing depends on extremely pure quartz from the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
Applied Cartography
Weird test: internal link checking
I wrote last month about using weird tests. Here's another example: checking for broken internal...
8 months ago
I wrote last month about using weird tests. Here's another example: checking for broken internal links in our upcoming docsite redesign!
const extractInternalLinks = (content: string): string[] => {
// Check for internal links only, in the form of [text](/path).
const...
Arduino Blog
Marble art madness from a marvelous machine
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all...
2 months ago
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all sorts of neat colors. That last characteristic makes them suitable for artwork, like orbicular pixels. In his most ambitious project to date, Engineezy took advantage of those...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Willem's Blog
Three tips to make a content strategy work
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or...
over a year ago
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or company.
Arduino Blog
This belt grinder uses an Arduino Opta micro PLC
A mainstay in most machine shops, the belt grinder assists in greatly increasing the speed at which...
2 months ago
A mainstay in most machine shops, the belt grinder assists in greatly increasing the speed at which parts can be ground down in a safer, more controlled manner compared to an angle grinder. As an effort to build a tool like this one for the first time, Julien Alexandre chose to...
Lighthouse Blog
How to stay on top of (new) content
6 months ago
Home on Erik...
More Luigi alternatives
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a...
over a year ago
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a couple I encountered in the last few days. I love that at least two of them are direct references to Luigi!
Computer Ads from...
Ergotron's MacTilt
MacTilt is the Solution
3 weeks ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should Ethereum be okay with enshrining more things in the protocol?
a year ago
Louwrentius
The kind of sound you never want to hear from your computer
The sounds of hard drives that have perished
These sounds are only frightening or scary if you...
over a year ago
The sounds of hard drives that have perished
These sounds are only frightening or scary if you imagine your precious data
only exists on that failing drive. If you make consistent and frequent backups
and/or you run a fault-tolerant RAID flavour, it is but a nuisance.
Willem's Blog
Batavus Champion bike from 1978
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
over a year ago
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
Arduino Blog
Adding proximity unlock to an old car with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically...
5 months ago
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically unlocks the doors when the driver approaches while carrying their key fob. When paired with a push-to-start ignition switch, the driver never has to take their keys out of their pocket....
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
5 months ago
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
Willem's Blog
Designing a multi dimensional capacity queue
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is...
over a year ago
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is possible to create a performant and reliable system.
Odds and Ends of...
Important information if you used my Bluesky MP follows bot
Please read this immediately.
2 weeks ago
Please read this immediately.
Matt Mullenweg
Kindness and Techcrunch Disrupt
Back in June I recorded an episode with Jaclyn Lindsey on the Why Kindness podcast, for their...
a month ago
Back in June I recorded an episode with Jaclyn Lindsey on the Why Kindness podcast, for their awesome non-profit kindness.org. You can listen to it through Pocket Casts here: This is kind of funny because I’m obviously in the midst of the big battle with Silver Lake and WP...
Notes on software...
Exploring a Postgres query plan
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into...
a year ago
I learned this week that you can intercept and redirect Postgres query
execution. You can hook into the execution layer so you're given a
query plan and you get to decide what to do with it. What rows to
return, if any, and where they come from.
That's very interesting. So I...
Home on Erik...
Looking for smart people
I haven't mentioned what I'm currently up to. Earlier this year I left Spotify to join a small...
over a year ago
I haven't mentioned what I'm currently up to. Earlier this year I left Spotify to join a small startup called Better. We're going after one of the biggest industries in the world that also turns out to be completely broken.
Posts on Made of...
Lightweight Linux Kernel Development with KVM
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and...
over a year ago
I don’t do a ton of Linux kernel development these days, but I’ve done a fair bit in the past, and picked up a number of useful techniques for doing kernel development in a relatively painless fashion. This blog post is a writeup of the tools and techniques I use when developing...
Christian Selig
Using PHPickerViewController Images in a Memory-Efficient Way
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers...
over a year ago
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers now have a fully-fledged photo picker that we can just use, rather than having to spend a bunch of our time creating our own (much like SFSafariViewController did for developers and...
Louwrentius
How to compile HAProxy from source and setup a basic configuration
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic...
over a year ago
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic to louwrentius.com across two different web servers.
I run HAProxy on a VPS based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Let's dive right in.
First, we need to download the source. Don't copy/pased...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: Canon Cat
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend and it's time for a little deferred maintenance, especially on...
6 months ago
It's the Memorial Day holiday weekend and it's time for a little deferred maintenance, especially on those machines I intend to work on more in the near future. So we'll start with one that's widely considered to be a remarkable cul-de-sac in computing history: the Canon...
./techtipsy
ASRock X570M Pro4 motherboard overview
Not too long ago, I had the goal of consolidating all my computing needs onto a
single desktop PC....
over a year ago
Not too long ago, I had the goal of consolidating all my computing needs onto a
single desktop PC. That meant moving from an mITX-based build to something that
had a bit more expandability. Since I already had a
Fractal Meshify C Mini,
I decided to go for an mATX motherboard. And...
latest projects -...
Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
8 months ago
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed, revisited
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a...
2 months ago
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a lot of great choices and felt really good to use, but lacked parity with VS Code's feature/ecosystem to its detriment.
Six months later, I spent a few days using it as my daily...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
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...
Arduino Blog
Bringing Quake to Arduino: a game-changing project by Nicola Wrachien
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon...
2 months ago
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon Labs, a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world and long-time Arduino partner – has now tackled an even bigger challenge: porting Quake, the...
Old Vintage...
After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor...
9 months ago
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor isn't a replacement system I secondarily acquired, nor is it a Ship of Theseus Frankenstein rebuild. This is my actual first computer, in its original case, on its original...
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.
Home on Erik...
The relationship between commit size and commit message size
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's...
over a year ago
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's my rationale:
When I update one line of code I feel like I have to put in a long explanation about its side effects, why it's fully backwards compatible, and why it fixes some...
Willem's Blog
Around town in an electric car
For one week I drove the electric Smart EQ fortwo in and around town. I found out what it's like to...
over a year ago
For one week I drove the electric Smart EQ fortwo in and around town. I found out what it's like to drive electrically: fun!
Arduino Blog
Is there an online Arduino IDE?
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code...
2 months ago
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code and creating projects ranging from remote-controlled cars to soil moisture monitoring. No wonder it’s been downloaded over 24 million times this year, so far! Now if you’ve ever...
Jonas Hietala
My MCU movie ranking
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge...
over a year ago
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge MCU fan before doing the same re-watch for Infinity War, but after that I became one.
For fun I tried to rank the movies as I saw them, this is some sort of accounting my rankings...
Opsbros
Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a...
over a year ago
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a Wemos D1 mini running Tasmota super super easy.
Gwern.net Newsletter
May 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
links on AI hardware, diffusion models, optogenetics, brain scanning.
over a year ago
links on AI hardware, diffusion models, optogenetics, brain scanning.
Willem's Blog
Whoop strap review: 24/7 wearable sensor
over a year ago
somenice
Russet Lake Early Summer
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was...
3 months ago
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was still a bit of ice on the lake and the mountain tops are covered with snow. The painting is framed in western red cedar. Russet Lake Early Summer by Andrew SmithAcrylic on canvas10...
Louwrentius
My 71 TiB ZFS NAS after 10 years and zero drive failures
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going...
3 months ago
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going strong.
Although now on its second motherboard and power supply, the system has yet to experience a single drive failure (knock on wood).
Zero drive failures in ten years, how is that...
Arduino Blog
This Kenyan engineer modernizes vintage cars with a custom ECU and EFI upgrades
The automotive industry’s switch from carburetion to fuel injection was one of the most effective...
2 months ago
The automotive industry’s switch from carburetion to fuel injection was one of the most effective advancements of the 20th century. Electronic fuel injection allows for precise control over an internal combustion engine’s air-fuel mixture, which dramatically improves fuel...
Notes on software...
Interpreting TypeScript
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript...
over a year ago
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript makes much of its functionality
available programmatically. In this post we'll use the TypeScript
compiler API to build an interpreter. We'll build off of a...
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Social Share Images in Twitter/X
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and...
a month ago
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Apple Messages for months.
And it made me sad.
But in the past few months we got it fixed.
And that made me very happy!
We really love our Pika social share images.
They are...
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
Arduino Blog
Make your scary Halloween pumpkin smart with the Plug and Make Kit!
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more...
2 months ago
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more fun and interactive. All you have to do is take the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and Modulino nodes included in your Plug and Make Kit to create an awesome jack-o’-lantern that will light up...
Good Enough
How We Built Unique Social Preview Images for Pika
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find...
10 months ago
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find your own place on the internet.
Along with a nice place on the internet, when you share links to your blog we want them to represent your internet home,
which you've likely taken...
Louwrentius
I resurrected my Dutch movie review site from 2003
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the...
over a year ago
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the site and wrote the reviews. It never made any money. It cost me money to host, and it cost me a lot of time writing reviews, but I remember enjoying writing reviews about films I...
Willem's Blog
Wearing WHOOP 4.0
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror...
over a year ago
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror - it's so powerful, that I don't take mine off!
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about Deterministic Simulation Testing?
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And...
4 months ago
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And even once you've found a bug, it can be
anywhere from simple to impossible to reproduce it. It's about as far
away as you can get from the ideal test environment: property...
Willem's Blog
Optical vs chest strap heart rate monitors
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness...
over a year ago
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers
Louwrentius
Creating storage benchmark charts with FIO and GNUplot
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform...
over a year ago
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform storage IO performance benchmarks. FIO does provide a script called "fio_generate_plots" which generates PNG or JPG based charts based on the data generated by FIO. The charts are...
Opsbros
WetSocks Revival
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do...
over a year ago
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do to get WetSocks Windows 98 tray weather app working again.
Willem's Blog
Lunch by plane
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
over a year ago
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
computers are bad
2024-01-06 usb on the go
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption...
11 months ago
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption until some years later; for most of the '90s RS-232-ish
serial and its
awkward sibling the parallel port
were the norm for external peripheral. It's sort of surprising that USB...
Electronics etc…
$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...
Lighthouse Blog
How to manually add content to read it later
6 months ago
Louwrentius
Cheap solution for putting an SSD in an iMac
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will...
over a year ago
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will cost you a lot: 600 euros.
The SSD is of medium quality, and does not justify the cost of 600 euros.
Here you can find information about the Toshiba SSD that Apple provides.
You can...
Arduino Blog
A riddle wrapped in an enigma… made easy, with Arduino Plug and Make Kit
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit was designed to open up infinite possibilities, breaking down the idea...
a month ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit was designed to open up infinite possibilities, breaking down the idea that technology is a “black box” reserved for experts. With its snap-together system, this kit gives everyone – beginners and seasoned makers alike – the power to create and...
Construction Physics
Do U.S. Ports Need More Automation?
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily...
2 months ago
On October 1st, 47,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), primarily dockworkers on East and Gulf Coast ports, went on strike after failing to agree contract terms with USMX, an alliance of port operators and employers.
Style over Substance
Leitz Summicron 50mm f/2 rigid (type 2) lens
My newest lens acquisition wasn’t actually originally on my wishlist. I already had a 50mm Summicron...
over a year ago
My newest lens acquisition wasn’t actually originally on my wishlist. I already had a 50mm Summicron lens, though that was the first generation collapsible model known as a Type 1. This lens has lived on my Leica M3 permanently for the past few years, and I have enjoyed the hell...
Louwrentius
Speeding up Linux MDADM RAID array rebuild time using bitmaps
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a...
over a year ago
Update 2020: Please beware of the impact of random write I/O performance.
Please note that with a modern Linux distribution, bitmaps are enabled by default. They will not help speed up a rebuild after a failed drive. But it will help resync an array that got out-of-sync due to...
Notes on software...
Exploring Postgres's arena allocator by writing an HTTP server from scratch
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a month ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
New Year, New Theme: 100 Things
Happy New Year, Everyone! 2009 was great in many ways; I drove a submarine (yeah quite literally), I...
over a year ago
Happy New Year, Everyone! 2009 was great in many ways; I drove a submarine (yeah quite literally), I released 6 experimental games and recently I discovered the completely amazing game Evil Genius but lets try to make 2010 even better!
So let’s forget our small mishaps (yes I’m...
Jonas Hietala
CS:GO AWP Nerf
When this man opens his mouth, truth comes out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsFnJYJ2buU
If I...
over a year ago
When this man opens his mouth, truth comes out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsFnJYJ2buU
If I ever make a game and I want someone to balance it and I had the money, I would hire Thorin.
Jonas Hietala
The T-34 keyboard layout
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with...
over a year ago
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with much fewer keys, like the 36-key Gergoplex and the 44-key Kyria. I may write another post about the reasons why, but long story short I started getting pain in my thumbs, fingers,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Some ways to use ZK-SNARKs for privacy
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
over a year ago
Simply Explained
How I Built an NFC Movie Library for my Kids
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to...
a year ago
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to today, and my children's movie collection is vastly different. It's completely digital and dispersed across services. I wanted to recreate the tangible magic of my childhood for them.
Applied Cartography
Tailwind black magic: swallowing all pointer events
I wrote two days ago about a real and useful application of Tailwind black magic; here's...
8 months ago
I wrote two days ago about a real and useful application of Tailwind black magic; here's another.
Buttondown has a dropzone component lets folks drag-and-drop items or click on it to get a file-picker. It's used for importing images, archives, CSVs, the works: because it's so...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping 20241208
Corrections, stats, and an update
2 weeks ago
Corrections, stats, and an update
Posts on Made of...
Suggestion time: What should I blog about?
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron Blogger, and I’m not totally enthusiastic about any of the items on my “to blog” list.
But, I do enjoy blogging when I actually get into posts, and I’d like to keep updating this blog....
Arduino Blog
This ‘smocking display’ adds data physicalization to clothing
Elastic use in the textile industry is relatively recent. So, what did garment makers do before...
5 months ago
Elastic use in the textile industry is relatively recent. So, what did garment makers do before elastic came along? They relied on smocking, which is a technique for bunching up fabric so that it can stretch to better fit the form of a body. Now a team of computer science...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Monty Hall
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they...
over a year ago
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they discussed the famous Monty Hall Problem. I’ve heard about it before
and I know the answer, but he mentioned a simulation of the problem and that sounded
cool so I made a simulation of...
Buck on Software
Thinking incrementally about SaaS
An overview of the key output of the growth software machine
over a year ago
An overview of the key output of the growth software machine
Louwrentius
How to resolve extreme memory usage on Windows 2008 R2-based file servers
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on...
over a year ago
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on Windows 2008 R2. I've noticed extreme memory usage on the server. After a reboot, it slowly builds up until almost all RAM memory is consumed.
So I googled around and found this post...
Willem's Blog
Programming on Apple Watch
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
over a year ago
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
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...
Arduino Blog
Massive tentacle robot draws massive attention at EMF Camp
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control...
6 months ago
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control several motors and monitor a bunch of sensors. But what if the robot is enormous and the motors are far apart? James Bruton found himself in that situation when he constructed this...
Computer Ads from...
Creative Computing Magazine Interviews Clive Sinclair (1980)
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
2 weeks ago
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. an x86 upgrade
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
This post upgrades the ulisp x86 backend from using a limited set of
registers (with no spilling...
axio.ms
MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building...
6 months ago
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building a simple desktop/GUI for it. I’d made a comment along the lines of “or, just run some old OS”, and it got me thinking about the original Macintosh.
The original Macintosh was...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Drawing
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a...
over a year ago
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a time, so now I’m going to try something new here. In the beginning of every week I’ll declare something I’ll be focusing on and then that’s the only thing I should focus on on my...
Arduino Blog
This portable Starmap could be your guide to the cosmos
Estimates vary, but there are generally a few thousand stars bright enough to see in the sky on a...
6 months ago
Estimates vary, but there are generally a few thousand stars bright enough to see in the sky on a clear, moonless, cloudless night away from city lights. You might be able to identify a couple of them, along with a handful of constellations. But what about the rest? If they...
Jonas Hietala
Settled on an unoriginal idea
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
over a year ago
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
Applied Cartography
Postgres batch enqueuing in ten lines of Django
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count =...
a year ago
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count = queryset.count()
if count == 0:
time.sleep(10)
return
with transaction.atomic():
batch = list(
queryset.select_for_update(of=("self",),...
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
a week ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Notes on software...
Generating a full-stack application from a database
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated...
over a year ago
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated REST API (in Go).
The UI has full support for login, viewing (and filtering), editing,
and creating database entities.
PostgreSQL, SQLite and MySQL are supported.
How to use?
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
8 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Finishing Stuff
I haven’t done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I’ve finished some school...
over a year ago
I haven’t done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I’ve finished some school stuff. We completed the assembly course labs, which were pretty fun actually, and I managed to finally complete the electronics course I’ve been holding off on for like forever… But...
Jonas Hietala
Incomplete game coming up
Man I’m far too much of a perfectionist, with this mentality I’ll never get anything done -...
over a year ago
Man I’m far too much of a perfectionist, with this mentality I’ll never get anything done - seriously. I spent far too many hours, even days, figuring out in my mind how the game should be and I started off going for nothing less than just that. But it turned out to be a lot...
Jonas Hietala
A Simple Thought
I wrote that we where doing some microprogramming, making the processor work etc. We had a lab about...
over a year ago
I wrote that we where doing some microprogramming, making the processor work etc. We had a lab about that yesterday and I was very, very nervous. The preparations weren’t that hard, but they where very bothersome. Converting the instructions to binary/hex by hand is never nice....
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals Update
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing...
over a year ago
During my vacation I suddenly got a bunch of “life crisis” type thoughts in an almost panic inducing intensity. They were mostly thoughts about not having accomplished anything and that the future looks bleak and meaningless and it’s not worth to do anything. As usual they are...
Louwrentius
Affordable server with server-grade hardware part II
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I...
over a year ago
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I documented the reasons for choosing server-grade hardware already in an earlier post on this topic.
It is recommended to read the old post first. In this new post, I only show new...
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,...
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
over a year ago
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
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!
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
3 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
Louwrentius
'Gzip with parallel compression support: pigz'
The speed at which files are compressed with gzip is currently almost always
determined by the speed...
over a year ago
The speed at which files are compressed with gzip is currently almost always
determined by the speed of the CPU. However, standard unix gzip is single-
threaded and only uses a single CPU (core).
However, the maintainer of the zlib library has released 'pigz' or 'pig-zee'
whichs...
Willem's Blog
Working Offline First
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise...
a year ago
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise your workflow – join my cloud-free adventure today!
Jonas Hietala
First impressions of Pollen
After having consumed Practical Typography I took a look at the library he wrote to create books for...
over a year ago
After having consumed Practical Typography I took a look at the library he wrote to create books for the web called Pollen written in Racket. I’ve only used it a little but I feel I can give my first impressions of it.
What I like
The first thing I really like is Pollen enables...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Major failure
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s...
9 months ago
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s first major failure.
I know I earlier described how the extruder starter skipping in a big way, but that was just some filament getting stuck in the extruder.
This time a part...
Arduino Blog
This Flip-Pelt wearable concept enables ultra-fast thermal feedback in VR
Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on...
a month ago
Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on your arm? Or the cold of chilly water? Engineers around the world have been trying to make that happen, but there is a big problem: temperature changes are slow. The immersive...
Opsbros
JSON and PowerShell
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will...
over a year ago
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will allow you to manipulate these objects efficiently.
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...
Willem's Blog
Lessons from a takeaway plastic bag
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of...
over a year ago
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of change.
Posts on Made of...
Versioning dotfiles in git
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines...
over a year ago
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines for some time. I experimented with keeping all of ~ in subversion for a while, but it never worked out well for me.
I’ve finally settled on a solution that I like using git, and so...
Notes on software...
1 million page views
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since...
3 weeks ago
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since Murat
wrote
about his 1M page view accomplishment at the time, I felt compelled to
now too.
I started regularly blogging in 2018. For some reason I decided to
write a blog post...
Home on Erik...
More recommender algorithms
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization...
over a year ago
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization algorithm we have used for a while assumes that we have user vectors $$ bf{a}_u $$ and item vectors $$ bf{b}_i $$ .
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal Lua implementation with a virtual machine from scratch in Rust
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from...
over a year ago
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from scratch. It will be able to run the
following program (among others):
function fib(n)
if n < 2 then
return n;
end
local n1 = fib(n-1);
local n2 = fib(n-2);
...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
Birchtree
How Flight Simulator helped my flying anxiety (members post)
It turns out video games really can impact how you view the world.
2 weeks ago
It turns out video games really can impact how you view the world.
./techtipsy
Shrinkflation, SanDisk style
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that...
a year ago
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that you
notice after formatting the device in an OS. Please read the article in full before
making inaccurate comments online.
For many years, I have used two SanDisk Ultra 16 GB USB flash...
Willem's Blog
Replacing a Shimano shift cable
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and...
over a year ago
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and needed replacement. Read my blog post to learn how to do this yourself.
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Puzzles
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a...
a year ago
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a way I don’t like — but one habit I’ve retained is solving puzzles.
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Study Hacking
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my...
over a year ago
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my part.
But the past is the past and this week I’m going to be study focused. Not that I need to study, but I really need to rework my study technique. I’ve been going on like a classical...
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...
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
Arduino Blog
Why do OTA updates matter in IoT?
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a...
6 months ago
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a box inside a wall, and everything seems to be working like a charm. But then, you spot a bug in the firmware. The thought of pulling the hardware back out sends shivers down your...
Louwrentius
Achieving 220 MB/s network file transfers using Linux Bonding
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers....
over a year ago
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers. My solution is to use multiple gigabit network cards and use Linux interface bonding to create virtual 2 gigabit network interfaces. The solution is to use mode 0 or round robin...
Arduino Blog
This disturbing Halloween doll was brought to life with Bottango
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near...
a month ago
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near the top of the list. That extends beyond store-bought costumes and decorations to DIY projects. If you want an excuse to make something impractical, Halloween can provide that. And...
Louwrentius
Script that shows ETA of RAID rebuild / reshape
I made a small script that converts the output of cat /proc/mdstat to an
actual date and time...
over a year ago
I made a small script that converts the output of cat /proc/mdstat to an
actual date and time telling you when the RAID rebuild / reshape is finished.
This is the link to the correct version of the script.
Example:
debian:~# ./raid-rebuild-eta.sh
Estimated time of finishing...
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,...
Arduino Blog
A DIY bottle-labeling machine perfect for homebrewers
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires...
6 months ago
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires regulated gas and large refrigeration space. A keg is also more difficult to transport and overkill if you just want to bring a few beers to a friend’s backyard BBQ. For those reasons,...
Matt Mullenweg
Inc Hit Piece
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a...
3 days 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...
Home on Erik...
NYC Machine Learning meetup
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly....
over a year ago
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly. Unfortunately the quality isn't the best.
Buck on Software
Crypto and Chasing the Dragon
Marc and Ben’s midlife crisis and the Crypto Crusades
over a year ago
Marc and Ben’s midlife crisis and the Crypto Crusades
Jordan’s Substack
Coming soon
This is Jordan’s Substack.
a month ago
This is Jordan’s Substack.
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled machine dispenses the perfect bowl of cereal
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal?...
7 months ago
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal? Most attractive mascot? The opportunities for debate never end. But we can all agree that consistency is key when it comes to the milk:cereal ratio — nobody changes that up from...
Louwrentius
Recovering a lost partition using gpart
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups....
over a year ago
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups. I was asked to perform some data recovery on a hard
drive of an old computer, which still contained important documents and
photo's.
The first thing I did was to make a disk image...
Neil Madden
CVE-2022-21449: Psychic Signatures in Java
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to...
over a year ago
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to get out of trouble by showing an identity card which is actually completely blank. Of course, this being Doctor Who, the card is really made out of a special “psychic paper“, which...
./techtipsy
The Fedora Linux starter pack: everything you need for a smooth experience
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh,...
2 months ago
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh, big deal!
It’s stable in day-to-day use, ships with up-to-date software, and the software selection is adequate out of the box.
It also ships with a fresh Linux kernel version1,...
Good Enough
Grassroots
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends,...
8 months ago
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends, shouting on socials, and sharing links to our stuff with your favorite influencers–all of these things will help Good Enough succeed and continue making amazing stuff!
As we’ve been...
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.
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner ID draft Örebro
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what...
over a year ago
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what happened. Disclaimer: My memory is a little bit fuzzy and the events may or may not correspond to what actually happened.
The draft
The idea was to randomly sort all entrants and...
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.
Posts on Made of...
Lab Notebooking for the Software Engineer
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition to just documenting things after the fact. Today, I’m going to share the techniques that I’ve found useful to try to get in the habit of lab-notebooking my work, even though I...
computers are bad
2024-05-06 matrix
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running...
7 months ago
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running for the Governing Board, and a bit about why. For those
of you who are not, I hope you will forgive the intrusion. Maybe you'll find my
opinions on the topic interesting anyway.
I...
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
Style over Substance
Shooting the Ligero 3D-printed Mamiya Press camera by MaxWanderlush
Last year I started shooting my first 3D-printed camera, a Goodman Zone. It was soon followed by the...
over a year ago
Last year I started shooting my first 3D-printed camera, a Goodman Zone. It was soon followed by the panoramic pinhole Goodman Scura and the MPWide, a modified Fuji Instax Wide 300. The MPWide is a mod by the talented Mario, otherwise known as MaxWanderlush. He has been releasing...
Christian Selig
Announcing Juno 2.0
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been...
7 months ago
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been enjoying Juno since its launch, as well as providing awesome feedback and input to improve it.
Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback,...
Willem's Blog
Off the grid: Working on 100% renewable energy
Learning from powering my personal devices using nothing but self generated electricity using a...
over a year ago
Learning from powering my personal devices using nothing but self generated electricity using a solar panel and power banks.
Willem's Blog
Data versus Feeling
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to...
4 days ago
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to find out the differences!
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal in-memory storage engine for MySQL/MariaDB
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and...
11 months ago
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and MariaDB are mostly the same (more on that later), I focused
on MariaDB specifically this week.
Before last week I had never built MySQL/MariaDB before. The first day
of this hack week,...
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...
Arduino Blog
This DIY guitar transmitter sends digital audio to the amp
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer....
4 months ago
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer. But that cable can become tangled or get in the way, which is a problem for some of the more animated musicians out there. Wireless transmitters exist for them to express themselves...
Christian Selig
Logging information from iOS Widgets
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home...
over a year ago
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home screen widgets, and some well-placed logs can really help with identifying what’s going wrong. iOS has a sophisticated built in logging mechanism, os_log, and now with SwiftLogger in...
Arduino Blog
Assess your aquarium’s health with an AI-enabled ultrasonic sensor
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can...
7 months ago
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital...
Louwrentius
Tunneling Elixir cluster network traffic over Wireguard
Introduction
The other day I was supporting a customer with an Elixir-based platform that would make...
a year ago
Introduction
The other day I was supporting a customer with an Elixir-based platform that would make use of Elixir libcluster, so messages on one host can be passed to other hosts. This can - for example - enable live updates for all users, even if they are not communicating with...
Birchtree
I’m Knee-Deep in Turkey
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her...
2 weeks ago
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her new Flight Simulator obsession, we go on a tangent about PC gaming, Chris (who says he’s an iPad guy) brings another Mac to talk about, and I had the gang look
Arduino Blog
The new Auxivo EduExo Pro helps students with exoskeleton research
Emerging technologies initially develop at a slow pace and that is due in large part to the lack of...
5 months ago
Emerging technologies initially develop at a slow pace and that is due in large part to the lack of resources available to students. Complex technology is built on existing knowledge and higher education students need the tools to gain hands-on experience. To help educate the...
lcamtuf’s thing
The untimely demise of an image upscaler
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
3 months ago
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
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,...
Louwrentius
Howto get the hard disk size under Linux?
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2>...
over a year ago
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2> /dev/null | grep Disk | grep -v identifier
Disk /dev/sda: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB, 1000123400192...
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...
latest projects -...
Motorised Camera Slider
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
5 months ago
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
Arduino Blog
Shop vac becomes a Roomba on steroids
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and...
7 months ago
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and sweep your own floors, you have a little maid robot to do the job for you. But these devices have very little power and capacity, which makes them useless for anything other than...
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 -...
Jonas Hietala
A Week of Headache
This was supposed to be a productive week with lots and lots of Perl and Ada but instead I’ve had...
over a year ago
This was supposed to be a productive week with lots and lots of Perl and Ada but instead I’ve had this big headache all week, and some the week before and it’s gotten pretty bad so I can’t really concentrate on anything really. The electronics assignment was a bitch and it took a...
computers are bad
2024-06-02 consumer electronics control
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less...
6 months ago
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less important part of the modern home
theater landscape. One reason is the broad decline of the component system:
most consumers aren't buying a television, home theater receiver,...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Sat-E
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The...
over a year ago
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The Good
Motivation
I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It’s super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My...
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
Vitalik Buterin's...
Moving beyond coin voting governance
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to support binary expressions and very simple filtering on SELECT
results via WHERE. We'll introduce a general mechanism...
Applied Cartography
Peak Newsletter
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to...
5 months ago
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to admit this (I don't want more competition lol) but I think we're still probably a year or two away from Peak Newsletter. It's just a really good distribution mechanism for certain...
./techtipsy
What I've learned running Linux and Windows off of USB flash drives
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of...
2 weeks ago
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of time and the guilt
of storing perfectly functional hardware unused in a box were the main motivators.
This has resulted in experiments with my assortment of USB flash storage that...
Jonas Hietala
How I made a kick-ass cover for my self-published book
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all,...
over a year ago
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all, we judge the book by the cover.
And I did it the universally recommended way:
I hired a designer.
Simple, right?
But real talk; it’s not exactly that simple and I did a bunch of...
Notes on software...
Unit testing C code with gtest
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use...
over a year ago
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use Google's
gtest and
CMake for testing C code. This will serve as a
foundation for some upcoming posts/projects on programming Linux,
userland networking and interpreters.
test/CMakeLists.txt...
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...
3 weeks 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...
Notes on software...
Interview with the D Language Blog: BSDScheme
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.
Jonas Hietala
The Experimental Games
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and...
over a year ago
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and maybe go in a new direction.
At first I had been stuck for ages with my never-ending projects and I had literally nothing to show for all my coding. Well now things have changed a...
Home on Erik...
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Here's how AI can REDUCE health misinformation
How the government can build a bullshit detector
2 months ago
How the government can build a bullshit detector
GitButler
Git Merge 2024 Talks are Up
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
a month ago
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
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