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...
Bryan Braun - Blog
One Million Checkboxes and the fear of viral success
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If...
4 months ago
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If you haven't heard of One Million Checkboxes, see the Wikipedia article for more details.
I loved everything about One Million Checkboxes. It was simple but strangely compelling....
Matt Blewitt
Riding the Risk Railway
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is...
over a year ago
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is important to consider the riskiness of a user, which can also be characterised as trustworthiness. These will typically be negatively correlated, with low trust indicating high risk...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 4
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
What if robots could communicate with humans by emitting scents?
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and...
5 months ago
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and touch. Your robot vacuum might beep at you, or play recorded or synthesized speech. An LED on its enclosure might blink to red to signify a problem. And cutting-edge humanoid...
Louwrentius
My home lab server with 20 cores / 40 threads and 128 GB memory
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this...
over a year ago
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this moment, it's replaced by a cluster of four 1L PCs which use about a third of the idle power usage and boot within 20 seconds. The single-core performance of these low-power 1L PCs...
Posts on Made of...
Conkeror
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension,...
over a year ago
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension, but nowadays it’s a standalone app built on top of Mozilla’s xulrunner, so it uses the Gecko rendering engine.
What it is, is an emacs implemented in Javascript, for the web. This...
Louwrentius
Automated install of Debian Linux based on PXE net booting
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two...
over a year ago
Every honest and good system administrator is continue bussy with automating
his work. For two reasons:
Repeating the same task over and over again is friggin boring. A system
administrator has better things to do, such as drinking coffee.
Humans make mistakes, especially if...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?
a year ago
Electronics etc…
Guide Technology GT300 Frequency Standard Teardown
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
8 months ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Willem's Blog
Wearing two watches
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
over a year ago
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
Louwrentius
Migration from blogger to blogofile and disqus is complete
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running...
over a year ago
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running blogofile.
At the time of my previous post, I was not able to restore all comments made on my old blog. Thanks to some help
from disqcus I fixed an error on my behalf and all old comments...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day for every Linux or Unix user: brace expantion'
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know...
over a year ago
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know about.
Try this:
touch foobar.conf
Now try this:
cp foobar.conf{,.bak}
It is equivalent to:
cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak
This is also the easiest way to create sequences. Do not use...
Arduino Blog
Venderoo is an Arduino Mega-powered DIY vending machine
For now-college student Joel Grayson, making something that combined his interests in mechanics,...
2 months ago
For now-college student Joel Grayson, making something that combined his interests in mechanics, electronics, and programming while being simultaneously useful to those around him was a longtime goal. His recent Venderoo project is exactly that, as the creatively named vending...
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...
Simply Explained
Securely access home network with Cloudflare Tunnel and WARP
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to...
over a year ago
When Cloudflare announced that their Tunnel service would become free, I saw an opportunity to strengthen the security of my Home Assistant instance. Until now, I have been using Cloudflare's CDN to connect to my HA instance, but that required opening ports on my router and...
computers are bad
2024-02-11 the top of the DNS hierarchy
In the past (in fact two years ago, proof I have been doing this for a while
now!) I wrote
about
the...
10 months ago
In the past (in fact two years ago, proof I have been doing this for a while
now!) I wrote
about
the "inconvenient truth" that structural aspects of the Internet make truly
decentralized systems infeasible, due to the lack of a means to perform
broadcast discovery. As a result,...
Louwrentius
The iPad will be the death of Flash
So Apple finally released their tablet computer: the iPad. One of the most
debated drawbacks is that...
over a year ago
So Apple finally released their tablet computer: the iPad. One of the most
debated drawbacks is that it lacks support for Adobe Flash. The iPhone does
not support Flash either, and since the iPad is based on the iPhone OS, this
should not come as a surprise.
Now many people see...
Willem's Blog
Why Apple Silicon is a big deal
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
over a year ago
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
Ian's Blog
Securing Your GitHub Account
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account...
over a year ago
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account security.
There's plenty of good reasons why you should try to keep any online account safe, but I feel that GitHub deserves special attention among developers. With automation...
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...
Simply Explained
Analyzing Link Rot in My Newsletter (After 31 Editions)
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to...
a year ago
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to interesting articles related to science and technology. I thought it would be interesting to analyze how many of those links are still accessible, and how many have succumbed to link rot....
Push to Prod
When Things Are Slow, Look for Queues
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of...
4 months ago
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of the most common situations.
Notes on software...
The case for comments in code
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose...
over a year ago
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose and would often duplicate in
English what the code clearly indicated. I knew that "commenting is
good" but as a beginner I had no further insight.
Over time with the help of books...
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!
Louwrentius
Lustre and the risk of Serious Data Loss
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was...
over a year ago
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was thinking about how you would setup a large, scalable
storage infrastructure. How should such a thing work?
Very simple: you should be able just to add hosts with some bad-ass huge...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 4
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
a year ago
The Amiga, The Decline, The Fall
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Toolhead
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt...
a year ago
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt are installed
Tap is installed
The toolhead with Stealthburner + Clockwork 2 is also installed
Purple means Pretty.
I’ve run into a few problems on the way that I’ll try to...
Jonas Hietala
Speeding Ahead
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this...
over a year ago
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this year. Firstly we have a math analysis course in multiple variables which is ok. I’m not a fan of the previous analysis courses but maybe this will be a bit different. We’re...
Gwern.net Newsletter
August 2020 gwern.net newsletter
with an essay on sidenotes; links on human competence, efficient-computing/hardware-overhangs; no...
over a year ago
with an essay on sidenotes; links on human competence, efficient-computing/hardware-overhangs; no reviews.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 3.1
A Highly Portable Future
a year ago
Willem's Blog
Rescuing photos from a crashed iMac
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
over a year ago
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
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...
Notes on software...
Book Review: ANSI Common Lisp
Score: 4.5 / 5
Paul Graham and his editor(s) are excellent. His prose is light and
easy to follow....
over a year ago
Score: 4.5 / 5
Paul Graham and his editor(s) are excellent. His prose is light and
easy to follow. The only awkward component of the book's organization
is that he tends to use a concept one section before explicitly
introducing and defining that concept. I'm not sure yet if this...
Old Vintage...
The Fossil Wrist PDA becomes a tiny Gopher client (with Overbite Palm 0.3)
I don't always often wear watches. But when I do, I prefer Palm PDAs. Wired to my wrist.
all...
a year ago
I don't always often wear watches. But when I do, I prefer Palm PDAs. Wired to my wrist.
all about Palm devices on the Internet.
It turns out there's a reason for that, and we're going to patch the operating system so we can make the Fossil Wrist PDA into what may be the...
Louwrentius
Ubuntu and full disk encryption (FDE)
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create...
over a year ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create an encrypted disk volume based on LUKS. This is different
from the option within the Ubuntu installation to encrypt home directories. To
be able to install Ubuntu and use full disk...
Jonas Hietala
Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax...
9 months ago
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax highlighting that works well even in an error state (often the case when you’re editing code), and it has additional semantics (you can differentiate between function parameters and...
Home on Erik...
Vote for our SXSW panel!
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and...
over a year ago
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/24504
Algorithmic Music Discovery at Spotify
****Spotify crunches hundreds of billions of streams to analyze user's music taste and provide...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 4. a database/sql driver
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to implement the database/sql driver interface. This will
allow us to interact with gosql the same way we would...
Computer Ads from...
MacWorld Interviews Apple CEO John Sculley (1987)
They discuss the future of Apple, personal computing, and the Mac II
a month ago
They discuss the future of Apple, personal computing, and the Mac II
computers are bad
2023-02-14 something up there pt I
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by North American air defense. Little is yet known about some
of these objects, but it is clearly one of the more dramatic UFO turns in
recent memory. Some of the mystery is simply...
computers are bad
2023-12-05 vhf omnidirectional range
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a...
a year ago
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a measurement that the technology does not provide. The
answer to this conundrum is, as is so often the case, history. The "range"
refers not to the radio equipment but to the space...
Louwrentius
Linux RAID 6 performance using software RAID
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1...
over a year ago
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1 TB disks. This gives me raw device read speeds
of 850 MB/s and write speeds of 300 MB/s. I think this is exactly
what should be expected, but boy it is damn fast. Especially the...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 22 Here I Come
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on...
over a year ago
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on studying for it, I am now ready to declare my entry into Ludum Dare 22! I’ve been away far too long, with my entries for the 17th and the 20th dare being almost a century away, the...
Jonas Hietala
August theme: Bare Minimum
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next...
over a year ago
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next game. This could really be anything, from graphics to user interaction… But I’ve got an idea. It’ll be a real challange for me to make but hopefully I’ll have a game in a few weeks...
Christian Selig
The Caldera: a sleek split and wireless keyboard
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically...
5 months ago
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically my dream wireless split keyboard.
I’ve been using it for months, and I love it.
Video overview
If you’re a visual person, I made a fun little video showcasing the...
Buck on Software
Don't be foie gras
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
over a year ago
If 2016-2020 was the golden unicorn age of SaaS, 2021 nearly hurtled us into the foie gras* era.
axio.ms
Pickle plus mains
Back in February 2014, it was a cold (but dry) winter’s night and we decided to warm our hearts with...
over a year ago
Back in February 2014, it was a cold (but dry) winter’s night and we decided to warm our hearts with some science.
Our experiment was to observe the conduction of electricity through a pickle, using salt ions. We connected a pickle to the mains supply. Pickles have a strong...
Louwrentius
Most Technical debt is just bullshit
Introduction
I made an offhand remark about technical debt to a friend and he interrupted me,...
over a year ago
Introduction
I made an offhand remark about technical debt to a friend and he interrupted me, saying: "technical debt is just bullshit". In his experience, people talking about technical debt were mostly trying to:
cover up bad code
cover up unfinished work
source1
Calling...
./techtipsy
Tech rants: PC-s use way too much power in 2021
Welcome to 2021. We have:
supply chain issues
no reasonably priced GPU-s
consumer-grade CPU-s with...
over a year ago
Welcome to 2021. We have:
supply chain issues
no reasonably priced GPU-s
consumer-grade CPU-s with peak power consumption at 296W
GPU-s that consume 350-400W of power under normal use
At the same time, we have made great leaps in CPU/GPU architectures and chip manufacturing...
Louwrentius
The minimum requirements for a secure system
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off....
over a year ago
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off. However, little work seems to be getting done this way. So we
want to turn systems on and connect them to a network, or even (God forbid)
the internet.
The thing is this. A system...
Gwern.net Newsletter
May Gwern.net Newsletter
Link compilation newsletter with anime GAN updates, links on AI scaling, discussion of GPT-3, and 1...
over a year ago
Link compilation newsletter with anime GAN updates, links on AI scaling, discussion of GPT-3, and 1 book review.
axio.ms
Classical virtualisation rules applied to RISC-style atomics
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable...
over a year ago
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures”, giving a set of characteristics for correct full-machine virtualisation.
Today, these characteristics remain very useful. Computer architects will...
Louwrentius
ZFS performance on HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 G1610T
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your...
over a year ago
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your own ZFS-based NAS. The benchmarks I've performed seem to confirm this.
The Microserver Gen8 has nice features such as:
iLO (KVM over IP with dedicated network interface)
support...
Home on Erik...
Modeling conversion rates using Weibull and gamma distributions
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this...
over a year ago
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this article or share it, please go to the original post URL! Separately, I'm sorry it's been so long with no posts on this blog.
Simply Explained
Tracking gas usage with ESPHome, Home Assistant, and TCRT5000
In 2019, I built an energy monitor to keep track of our electricity consumption. Then, in 2021, Home...
over a year ago
In 2019, I built an energy monitor to keep track of our electricity consumption. Then, in 2021, Home Assistant added an Energy Management feature that keeps track of electricity and gas usage. So naturally, I had to make my gas meter smart as well.
Old Vintage...
An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at...
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than...
9 months ago
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), Apple sales databases, two online services — the maligned Mac Prodigy client,...
Applied Cartography
Vibes and years
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've...
10 months ago
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've been basically work off my gut + Feeling of the Day for the past few years, and that's getting a bit unsustainable
Buttondown's roadmapping has existed for the past three years in a...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
How I ship projects at big tech companies
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to...
a month ago
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to lead new ones when it’s important to get…
Birchtree
Squashing links on social media
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are...
2 weeks ago
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly
Notes on software...
Tail call elimination
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated...
over a year ago
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated in an interpreter, a compiler targeting
C++, and a compiler targeting LLVM IR.
Tail calls
A tail call is a function call made at the end of a block that
returns the value of the...
Louwrentius
Finding a good blu-ray player for Mac OS X
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these...
over a year ago
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these free open-source products are all a usability nightmare.
To play a Blu-ray movie, you have to perform these steps:
right-click on the BDMV file
choose 'show packet contents'
go to...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Summer Tournament Linköping
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs...
over a year ago
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs with Old Hollywood and The Universe of Tomorrow so a lot of new things were tried. I heard a rumor that a full playset of both Aesop’s Pawnshop and Wyldside were available so I...
somenice
RGB Input Range Sliders
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range...
4 months ago
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range type sliders to control the color of an LED.Each color channel change triggers an update to read the value, convert it to a hex code (eg. #FF0000), update the output element value,...
Louwrentius
'Linux: show graphical layout of disk temperatures'
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a...
over a year ago
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a small
script. The output of this script looks like this:
This output is tailored to the exact disk lay-out of my storage
server. However, it is also usable for other servers. You have to...
Neil Madden
Hybrid encryption and the KEM/DEM paradigm
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a...
over a year ago
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a message with a public key encryption algorithm like RSA. This is for many reasons, one of which being that it is incredibly slow. Instead you do what’s called hybrid encryption:...
./techtipsy
Cool links
This is an unsorted list of links that I find to be cool.
slow roads
sit back, relax and let the AI...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of links that I find to be cool.
slow roads
sit back, relax and let the AI do all the driving
or don’t, I’m not your dad
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...
Jonas Hietala
Laying off Pintos
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished...
over a year ago
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished up our lab series about pintos. The labs were among the best I’ve had yet and I learned a ton. We didn’t follow the official instructions but we had our own assigmnets....
Avestura's Blog
Problems of C, and how Zig addresses them
What are the problems of C, and how Zig addresses them?
a year ago
What are the problems of C, and how Zig addresses them?
Style over Substance
Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post...
over a year ago
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod appeared first on Style over Substance.
Home on Erik...
Mortality statistics and Sweden's "dry tinder" effect
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”....
over a year ago
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”. But I read something about COVID-19 deaths that I thought was interesting and wanted to see if I could replicated it through data.
Applied Cartography
Use Rails
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part...
7 months ago
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part answer:
Use what you're familiar with. If there's something that you've spent a good amount of time using, stick with that one.
Rails. People are usually surprised when I say this...
./techtipsy
techtipsy, now hosted on k-space!
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn,...
a year ago
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia.
If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, you might be wondering why I made that move, especially since I was
quite proud of hosting my website over a residential...
Construction Physics
How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was...
3 weeks ago
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible.
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...
Willem's Blog
Enter text without keys
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a...
over a year ago
Worn on your fingers, the Tap Strap recognises tapping and moving to control and type without a mouse or keyboard!
Applied Cartography
Git one-liner: get the earliest commit from X hours ago
I wanted to get a commit that was temporally some distance back as part of my experimentation with...
7 months ago
I wanted to get a commit that was temporally some distance back as part of my experimentation with git cliff. This took some time to do, but here's what I ended up with:
git log --since="72 hours ago" --until="now" --reverse --pretty=format:"%h" | head -1
Nothing particularly...
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...
Arduino Blog
Easily add Python-controlled GPIO pins to any computer
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of...
6 months ago
Let’s say that, hypothetically, you wanted to use your computer to blink an LED or read the state of a button. Could you? Almost certainly not — at least not without additional hardware. Most modern computers don’t provide any interface for direct interaction with low-level...
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...
Notes on software...
Exploring PL/pgSQL part two: implementing a Forth-like interpreter
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I...
over a year ago
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I walked through the basics of PL/pgSQL, the embedded procedural
language inside of PostgreSQL. It covered simple functions, recursions
and parsing. But there was something very...
detreville
Newsletter 1: What's next?
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
a year ago
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
Home on Erik...
Approximate nearest news
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm...
over a year ago
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm the author of a Python package called Annoy.
I've also built a benchmark suite called ann-benchmarks to compare different packages.
Matt Mullenweg
WPAI
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some...
a week ago
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat.
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...
Willem's Blog
Visiting an international hackers conference
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security...
over a year ago
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security specialists. Read along for some of the highlights.
Jonas Hietala
A simple timeline using CSS flexbox
As I added a /now page to the site I also decided to refresh my /about page and I figured it would...
3 months ago
As I added a /now page to the site I also decided to refresh my /about page and I figured it would be neat to have timeline element where I could list some of the larger events in my life.
To my surprise it wasn’t too difficult to create one that looks pretty clean—the flexbox...
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.
./techtipsy
How to fix ZFS pool not importing at boot
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything...
over a year ago
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything seems to work correctly, but
after restarting your machine, the ZFS pool is not visible. You can still import your pool manually using
zpool import poolname or zpool import -a.
In...
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.
Posts on Made of...
Implementing a declarative mini-language in the C preprocessor
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time,...
over a year ago
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time, I want to talk about the tricks I used to implement a declarative minilanguage using the C preprocessor (and some GCC extensions).
The Problem We want to write some toplevel...
Posts on Made of...
Security doesn't respect abstraction boundaries
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a...
over a year ago
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a set of useful, easily-described behaviors out of a complex system, we can build other systems on top of those pieces, without having to understand to worry about the full complexity...
./techtipsy
HoloISO: the unofficial Steam Deck experience on your PC
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam...
over a year ago
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam Deck, the
Linux-based handheld gaming PC built by Valve. Yes, you heard that right: not
Windows, but Linux.
I’ve had my fair share of attempts at gaming on Linux. When it works,...
Arduino Blog
RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership...
6 months ago
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program at the Gold level. Founded in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden, RIoT Secure is at the forefront of IoT security, especially in regards to resource-constrained microcontrollers,...
Louwrentius
Linux: get a list of al disks and their size
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk...
over a year ago
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk /dev/md1: 2015 MB
Disk /dev/md5: 18002.2 GB
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sde: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.1...
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...
Style over Substance
My grandfather’s Rolleiflex 2.8D twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family...
over a year ago
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family cameras it had disappeared into a closet decades ago and was only found again recently. When he gave it to me, he told me there was another classic camera he wanted to give me – if...
Home on Erik...
Missing the point about microservices: it's about testing and deploying independently
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the...
over a year ago
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the term microservices. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe because the term is hopelessly ill-defined, maybe because it's gotten picked up by the hype train.
Good Enough
TIL: Rails has_one Nested Attributes Tweaking
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things...
a year ago
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things caught me off guard.
has_one Nested Form Sending id Attribute
In this case I have a nested form that is in a has_one relationship with the parent model.
I think this is a common thing...
Notes on software...
Confusion and disengagement in meetings
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks...
over a year ago
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks is to ask questions.
Ask early so you don't waste time. But it's not enough to just ask
clarifying questions because the answers won't always be clear.
Sounds like Human Interaction...
./techtipsy
I encourage you to write a blog
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90...
3 months ago
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90 posts, received over 1 million clicks,
a dozen legitimate reader e-mails and thousands of spam e-mails.
And I love it!
I’ve found that writing can be very fulfilling and I encourage...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 5: motor/tachometers
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears...
10 months ago
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears and cams for its mathematics. It was a key part of military planes such as the F-101 and the F-111 fighters,
computing
airspeed, Mach number, and other "air data".
The rotating...
Posts on Made of...
Two Perspectives on the End-to-End Principle
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read...
over a year ago
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read numerous classic papers of systems design. I enjoyed and learned a great deal from many of these papers, but one that paper that has stuck with me in particular was Saltzer et al’s...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Sell
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
over a year ago
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
Willem's Blog
Collecting health data with Biostrap
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
over a year ago
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Notes on software...
How I run a software book club
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We...
6 months ago
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We read through Designing Data-Intensive
Applications, Database
Internals,
Systems
Performance, and
we just started Understanding Software
Dynamics.
The DDIA discussions were...
Willem's Blog
Commuter bike checkup
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to...
over a year ago
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to have a look at the bike after 21.000KM!
Birchtree
My default apps of 2024
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default...
5 hours ago
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default apps, and I though it would be fun to turn this into a tradition and revisit the list to see if anything has changed since last year.
✨ next to each change
Arduino Blog
Introducing Arduino Academy: your path to becoming an Arduino-Certified Engineer begins!
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy,...
a month ago
Want to upgrade your skills and become a certified Arduino engineer? Welcome to the Arduino Academy, the go-to platform for hands-on, interactive learning designed to prepare you for the future of technology. Whether you’re just starting or looking to advance your career, the...
Louwrentius
Why I do not use ZFS as a file system for my NAS
Many people have asked me why I do not use ZFS for my NAS storage box. This is a good question and I...
over a year ago
Many people have asked me why I do not use ZFS for my NAS storage box. This is a good question and I have multpile reasons why I do not use ZFS and probably never will.
** A lot has changed since this article was first published. I do now recommend using ZFS. I've also based my...
Louwrentius
Secure caching DNS server on Linux with DJBDNS
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon"....
over a year ago
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon". However, this software has a bad security track record and is in
my opinion a pain to configure.
Mr. D.J. Bernstein developed "djbdns", which comes with a guarantee: if anyone
finds a...
Computer Ads from...
1988 Interview Between Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and MicroTimes
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
6 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
Willem's Blog
Wearing Grand Seiko
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship,...
over a year ago
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship, innovation and practicality.
./techtipsy
I looked at this site on the Wayback Machine
Yesterday was election day in Estonia and the results are in, which is why
I remembered that one...
a year ago
Yesterday was election day in Estonia and the results are in, which is why
I remembered that one time I looked at my website on the Wayback Machine.
This domain used to point to a Wordpress site that hosted
content for a candidate in the local elections,
at least around...
Posts on Made of...
Dear Twitter: Stop screwing over your developers.
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online...
over a year ago
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online communities, and is a surprisingly effective way to spread news and information to lots of people online. One of the things that I’ve loved about Twitter is their API, and how open and...
Louwrentius
Personal Security: erase your computer or phone before repair
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have...
over a year ago
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have to find some other person with greater computer knowledge to repair their computer or phone. That person will then be able to access all data stored on their computer or phone.
By...
./techtipsy
Stupid project ideas: the War Machine
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such...
over a year ago
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such as:
unboxing and deploying petabytes of storage
7 gamers, 1 CPU
building sleeper PC-s
testing sketchy CPU-s
opening up a 100TB SSD
I have the ideas, but not the budget of LinusTechTips, so...
Applied Cartography
Linear
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes...
5 days ago
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes I wanted to publish on our own experience of migrating from GitHub Issues to Linear, and some reflections on it as a product now that we've been using it for a few months.
One...
Jonas Hietala
Going into Being Busy mode
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or...
over a year ago
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or something? So I can’t promise a game the next two months. Kinda beats the point of this site doesn’t it? I’m really sorry and that’s all I can say really…
Hopefully I’ll get a week...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
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.
Simply Explained
Static webhosting benchmark: AWS, Google, Firebase, Netlify, GitHub & Cloudflare
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there...
over a year ago
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there isn't a CMS to hack. Once you build a static website, however, the question becomes: Where do I host?In other words: what is the fastest static website hosting provider in 2020?...
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the Topic of the March 2024 Plus Post
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
9 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Arduino Blog
3D printing an affordable robot arm
If you have an interest in robotics, then a robot arm is a great educational tool to start your...
5 months ago
If you have an interest in robotics, then a robot arm is a great educational tool to start your journey. But professional robot arms are expensive and the DIY route is more informative anyway. That’s especially true if you take the time to design the arm yourself, as did Oliver...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: PowerBook Duo 2300c
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my...
a year ago
Jerry Seinfeld had one.
many other TV shows and even movies, most notoriously Hackers:
my favourite PowerBook 1400: the metal hinges are starting to tear out of their attachment points in the plastic back of the display, and naturally it's the one with all the upgrades in...
Willem's Blog
Fighting backscatter spam at server level
Deal with backscatter spam by implementing a stringent SMTP delivery policy at MTA level.
over a year ago
Deal with backscatter spam by implementing a stringent SMTP delivery policy at MTA level.
Home on Erik...
ML+Hadoop at NYC Predictive Analytics
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning...
over a year ago
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning algorithms using Hadoop to power music recommendations.
Great meetup, where we had two speakers, me and Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
./techtipsy
My self-hosting setup has an UPS now, here's my experience with it
I changed my setup again.
I’m now the proud owner of an APC Smart-UPS 750.
Why? Because I got it as...
over a year ago
I changed my setup again.
I’m now the proud owner of an APC Smart-UPS 750.
Why? Because I got it as a gift, and I have never actually had an UPS before, so
it makes for a good introduction to this world.
Overview
My setup is quite basic: everything that I have on my table...
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,...
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Governance, Part 2: Plutocracy Is Still Bad
over a year ago
csvbase blog
Caching secrets of the HTTP elders, part 1
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
8 months ago
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
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...
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);
...
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
Louwrentius
Benchmarking cheap SSDs for fun, no profit (be warned)
The price of Solid-state drives (SSDs) has dropped significantly over the last few years. It's now...
a year ago
The price of Solid-state drives (SSDs) has dropped significantly over the last few years. It's now possible to buy a 1TB solid-state drive for less than €60. However, at such low price points, there is a catch.
Although cheap SSDs do perform fine regarding reads, sustained write...
Simply Explained
Multitasking on ESP32 with Arduino and FreeRTOS
By now, it's no secret that the ESP32 is my go-to chip for making IoT devices. They're small,...
over a year ago
By now, it's no secret that the ESP32 is my go-to chip for making IoT devices. They're small, powerful, have a ton of onboard features, and they're relatively easy to program.However, when using it together with Arduino, all your code runs on a single core. That seems a bit...
Birchtree
AI, self-driving, and evolving your opinions on new tech over time
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can...
2 weeks ago
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms....
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
February 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
links on AI scaling, semaglutide, and ethicist ethics
over a year ago
links on AI scaling, semaglutide, and ethicist ethics
Azad's Blog
Simulating + Streaming a 4k, 90hz, ultrawide, HDR PC monitor to Apple Vision Pro
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are...
3 months ago
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are also capable of outputting at a high refresh rate (60hz, 90hz, 120hz, or even 144hz). Some headsets (like Apple Vision Pro) can also output in HDR! The beauty of it all is that in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
over a year ago
Buck on Software
Winds of Change
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
6 months ago
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
Willem's Blog
The birth of a child
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor...
over a year ago
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor capturing the impact of birth on yours truly.
Christian Selig
First on New Blog
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will...
a year ago
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will remove.
This goat’s name is apparently Gubgub, and very cute.
Louwrentius
Setup a VPN on your iPhone with OpenVPN and Linux
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered...
over a year ago
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered unmaintained.
It's stronly recommended not to use this tutorial and find up-to-date documentation.
I also have no plans to update this blogpost in the future.
[Update 2018]
This...
Willem's Blog
Designing my own watch
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical...
over a year ago
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical annual calendar designed to be understated and true to the metal.
Gwern.net Newsletter
July 2020 gwern.net newsletter
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
over a year ago
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
Notes on software...
A minimal RocksDB example with Zig
I mostly programmed in Go the last few years. So every time I
wanted an embedded key-value database,...
over a year ago
I mostly programmed in Go the last few years. So every time I
wanted an embedded key-value database, I reached for Cockroach's
Pebble.
Pebble is great for Go programming but Go does not embed well into
other languages. Pebble was inspired by
RocksDB (and its...
Louwrentius
Additional proof that Apple is ditching the optical drive
I'm a strong advocate of killing the optical drive. As of 2011, there is no need for it anymore....
over a year ago
I'm a strong advocate of killing the optical drive. As of 2011, there is no need for it anymore. Laptops could get lighter, smaller or have more room for additional battery capacity if the optical drive would no longer be present.
In my life, I never see people use the optical...
Lighthouse Blog
How to combine multiple RSS feeds in one view
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 -...
Willem's Blog
Tablet as Tool
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and...
a year ago
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and personal experiences to help you maximise the tablet's potential and redefine your workflow.
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for... chess
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some...
over a year ago
I've been meaning to learn Theano for a while and I've also wanted to build a chess AI at some point. So why not combine the two? That's what I thought, and I ended up spending way too much time on it.
Louwrentius
Benchmark results of Random I/O performance of different RAID levels
Introduction
I have performed some benchmarks to determine how different RAID levels perform when...
over a year ago
Introduction
I have performed some benchmarks to determine how different RAID levels perform when handling a 100% random workload of 4K requests. This is a worst-case scenario for almost every storage subsystem. Normal day-to-day workloads may not be that harsh in a real-life...
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
Jonas Hietala
2023 in review
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not...
11 months ago
This is my yearly review #14.
Amazing that I’ve kept up with this for 14 years.
Even though it’s not anything advanced, I really like looking back at the year to see what has happened.
Maybe it’s a very light version of a reverse bucket list, and I can see that it provides some...
Jonas Hietala
2018 in review
A new year and a lingering feeling of not having done enough during the year. A fast review of the...
over a year ago
A new year and a lingering feeling of not having done enough during the year. A fast review of the year usually makes me feel better.
2018 non-geek achievements
Was on parental leave for about 7 months.
It was great although I’ve been crawling up the walls a little the last...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 4 (Pet Sounds)
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go...
20 hours ago
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on…
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
Home on Erik...
Ratio metrics
We run a ton of A/B tests at Spotify and we look at a ton of metrics. Defining metrics is a little...
over a year ago
We run a ton of A/B tests at Spotify and we look at a ton of metrics. Defining metrics is a little bit of an art form. Ideally you want to define success metrics before you run a test to avoid cherry picking metrics.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion
over a year ago
./techtipsy
OpenWRT, ISP modem and dynamic IP addresses: how to fix connectivity issues without rebooting your...
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem...
7 months ago
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem (Technicolor CGA2121, DOCSIS 3.0). It’s running in bridge
mode,
meaning that all it does is convert the signal running over the coax cable
into plain old Ethernet.
My main...
Willem's Blog
Realtime human pose recognition through computer vision
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose...
over a year ago
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose detection using PoseNet.
somenice
Gold and Ghosts
In the autumn of 1892, two miners, Earl and Edward, found themselves high in the Pacific Northwest...
a month ago
In the autumn of 1892, two miners, Earl and Edward, found themselves high in the Pacific Northwest mountains, searching for a legend as old as the hills: the lost crate of gold. The tale of “Shining Creek Gold” was whispered in every saloon from Seattle to San Francisco, a cache...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Nicla Sense Env: adding advanced environmental sensing to a broad range of applications
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of...
2 months ago
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of system-on-modules and sensor nodes, empowering innovators with the tools to unlock new possibilities. This tiny yet powerful sensor node is designed to elevate your environmental...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 11 to recommend in 2021
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction....
over a year ago
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction. Another 30 started but not finished.
Non-fiction
It seems I was pretty focused on business history books and history of
tech. The 8 non-fiction books I liked the most:
Designing...
Arduino Blog
It’s silver, it’s green, it’s the Batteryrunner! An Arduino-powered, fully custom electric car
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully...
3 weeks ago
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully electric, Arduino-powered car that’s as innovative as it is sustainable. Called the Batteryrunner, this vehicle is designed with a focus on environmental impact, simplicity, and custom...
Neil Madden
A few programming language features I’d like to see
I enjoyed Hillel Wayne’s recent newsletter about microfeatures they’d like to see in programming...
a year ago
I enjoyed Hillel Wayne’s recent newsletter about microfeatures they’d like to see in programming languages. A “microfeature” is essentially a small convenience that makes programming in that language a bit easier without fundamentally changing it. I love this idea. I’m partial to...
Lighthouse Blog
Rules improvement: filter based on content
a week ago
Computer Ads from...
Oberon International' Omni-Reader
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
5 days ago
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
./techtipsy
Overcoming hardware limitations: the time-to-sleep script
As some of you might own, I’m still rocking a ThinkPad T430, a laptop model
originally released in...
over a year ago
As some of you might own, I’m still rocking a ThinkPad T430, a laptop model
originally released in 2012.
It’s not the fastest laptop out there, but it is plenty fast for a number of
tasks, even most software development work.
I also try to keep my machines up to date and properly...
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
Willem's Blog
Rescuing files from a broken harddisk
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe...
over a year ago
Yesterday I helped a young woman with her broken computer containing precious photos, could I safe them?
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1983/08 Today Mag
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today...
9 months ago
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today magazine. Enjoy! What computer ads would you like to see in the future? Please comment below. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends and relatives. Thank you.
Computer Ads from...
Ergotron's MacTilt
MacTilt is the Solution
3 weeks ago
Style over Substance
Review of the 2-dial TTArtisan Light Meter
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter...
over a year ago
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter accessory. The market for these shoe-mounted light meters for vintage cameras has become weirdly competitive. They fit on top of a mechanical camera and provide you with the right...
Jonas Hietala
Balls
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god...
over a year ago
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I’ll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I’m not sure it’s very addictive but it’s actually okay! =D
Balls is a game about… balls. Well...
Willem's Blog
Removing paint from a bike frame
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal,...
over a year ago
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal, raw aluminium look.
Posts on Made of...
The architecture of declarative configuration management
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing...
over a year ago
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal...
Willem's Blog
Building a professional 72TB NAS
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read...
over a year ago
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read this post to see how this was done!
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.
Matt Blewitt
Unreasonably Effective Patterns
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data...
over a year ago
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data services. This post explores three patterns used to reduce operational burden and increase system safety and resiliency: state machines (and associated state-transition tables),...
Notes on software...
Implementing a simple jq clone in Go, and basics of Go memory profiling
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of...
over a year ago
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of each object it reads. It won't be able to
do filters, mapping, etc.
$ cat large-file.json | head -n2 | ./jqgo...
latest projects -...
Motorised Camera Slider
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
5 months ago
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
Posts on Made of...
Configuring dnsmasq with VMware Workstation
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux...
over a year ago
I love VMware workstation. I keep VMs around for basically every version of every major Linux distribution, and use them heavily for all kinds of kernel testing and development.
This post is a quick writeup of my networking setup with VMware Workstation, using dnsmasq to assign...
Arduino Blog
Easy and fun block-based coding with the Alvik robot is here, now Chromebook compatible!
At Arduino, we believe coding should be accessible to everyone – including the youngest learners....
a month ago
At Arduino, we believe coding should be accessible to everyone – including the youngest learners. With this in mind, we’re thrilled to announce that the Arduino Alvik robot now officially supports block-based coding! Coding has never been easier thanks to Alvik’s seamless...
Lars Lofgren
The Stupidity of Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of...
a month ago
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of pages in Google. The SEO community refers to this type of thing as parasite SEO. Google has gone so far as to publish an official policy (documented here) on how this isn’t allowed:...
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...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 9: Feed finding
3 months ago
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
This fake CRT TV works using lasers and UV magic
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media...
3 weeks ago
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media was made to suit them. Retro video game consoles in particular look best on CRT TVs. But those old TVs are getting hard to find and desirable models are now quite expensive. So,...
Notes on software...
How to recommend books, or, stop recommending SICP
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance...
over a year ago
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance for bad writing and bad editing. I write
this post both to discourage thoughtless recommendations and to
encourage the receivers of bad recommendations.
For software developers,...
Louwrentius
Release of PPSS - the Parallel Processing Shell Script
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use...
over a year ago
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use of the current multi-core CPUs. It will detect the number
of available CPUs and start a thread for each CPU core.
This script is build with the goal to be very easy to use. Also,...
Louwrentius
A 12.48 inch (1304x984) three-color e-paper display by Waveshare
Introduction
Update September 2023: A small horizontal and large vertical row of pixels died. Demo...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update September 2023: A small horizontal and large vertical row of pixels died. Demo of defective display here.
I'm running a solar-powered blog and I wanted to add a low-power display to show the daily solar 'harvest'1 and maybe some additional information.
So I...
Computer Ads from...
Bomb Squad Peripherals' BLOWGUN
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
6 months ago
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
Home on Erik...
Optimizing over multinomial distributions
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 +...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 + ldots + w_n = 1 $$ and $$ 0 le w_i le 1 $$ . Usually, $$ f $$ is concave and differentiable, so there's one unique global maximum and you can solve it by applying gradient ascent.
Old Vintage...
One-parting some Commodore 64 utilities for fun and profit
I've got a few retrocomputing bucket list items I'm slowly working down, and a couple of them...
a month ago
I've got a few retrocomputing bucket list items I'm slowly working down, and a couple of them involve some little Commodore 64 games I've had kicking around on the backburner. However, every game needs media assets, and while there are many great tools for doing art on your...
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Notes on software...
How do databases execute expressions?
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not...
a year ago
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not seem practical in life as a
developer. For example, every database with a query language is also a
programming language implementation of some caliber. That doesn't
include all...
Posts on Made of...
On git and usability
I’ve been helping a number of people get started working with git over the last couple of weeks, as...
over a year ago
I’ve been helping a number of people get started working with git over the last couple of weeks, as Ksplice has brought on some new interns, and we’ve had to get them up to speed on our internal git repositories. (As you might expect from a bunch of kernel hackers, we use git for...
Arduino Blog
This robotic kalimba plays melodies with an Arduino Nano
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each...
3 months ago
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each tuned for a specific note, and upon plucking or striking one, a pleasant xylophone-like sound can be heard. Taking inspiration from his mini kalimba, Axel from the YouTube channel...
Willem's Blog
Dig for dummies
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network...
over a year ago
Learn how to use the dig command to query domain name servers to find the source of network problems, IP-addresses, hostnames, mail servers and related info.
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #47: I think this YouTube video just changed my life
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
a week ago
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
Home on Erik...
New benchmarks for approximate nearest neighbors
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy...
over a year ago
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy interests include approximate algorithms for nearest neighbors in high-dimensional spaces. The problem is simple. You have say 1M points in some high-dimensional space.
Arduino Blog
This giant animatronic LEGO minifig zombie is a delight
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough...
4 months ago
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough constraint to force people to consider their art and design choices. That’s exactly the kind of pressure that Wicked Makers’ Jaimie and Jay thrive under, leading them to build this...
Style over Substance
How I made HA-meural: a Meural Canvas integration for Home Assistant
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the...
over a year ago
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the Home Assistant home automation software that lets you control a NETGEAR Meural Canvas digital frame. It’s the result of a few months of work, lots of trial and error, and many...
Avestura's Blog
Explaining The Postgres Meme
Have you seen this legendary SQL iceberg meme? Let's talk about it while wearing our PostgreSQL hat!
a year ago
Have you seen this legendary SQL iceberg meme? Let's talk about it while wearing our PostgreSQL hat!
Arduino Blog
Zoo elephants get a musical toy to enrich their lives
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course,...
2 weeks ago
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course, there is a lot to be said about the morality of keeping those animals in captivity. So, good zoos put a lot of effort into keeping their animals healthy and happy. For more...
Arduino Blog
Use sound to trigger your camera’s flash with this DIY device
In the world of photography, the exposure triangle is immutable. To get a properly exposed photo...
2 months ago
In the world of photography, the exposure triangle is immutable. To get a properly exposed photo (not too bright or too dark), you need a balance of aperture size (how much light gets in), shutter speed (how long the light gets in), and ISO (sensitivity to light at the expense of...
Willem's Blog
Designing an interface for a food ordering page
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need...
over a year ago
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need to be accommodated on a very small screen.
Computer Ads from...
MicroTimes Interviews the Head Honchos of Silicon Graphics (1989)
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
7 months ago
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
over a year ago
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
watchTowr Labs -...
Visionaries Have Democratised Remote Network Access - Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops...
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive...
a month ago
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive Artifact Generator). This time, it’s in Citrix’s “Virtual Apps and Desktops” offering.
This is a tech stack that enables end-users (and likely, your friendly neighbourhood...
Louwrentius
The sorry state of CoW file systems
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks...
over a year ago
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks and that it may still be a long way off before we have something truly great.
Both ZFS and BTRFS are two heroic feats of engineering, created by people who are probably ten times...
Arduino Blog
Top Arduino Cloud IoT dashboard ideas with the new Image widget
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens...
2 months ago
Recently, we announced the exciting new Image widget for Arduino Cloud. This powerful feature opens up a world of possibilities for enhancing your IoT dashboards. But the true potential of the Image widget lies in the applications that you create. Today, we’re excited to dive...
Home on Erik...
MLConf 2014
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a...
over a year ago
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a whole range of great speakers (actually almost 2/3 women which was pretty cool in itself).
Here are my slides:
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 6 (End Sound)
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
8 months ago
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 2s as cultural extensions of Ethereum
6 months ago
Louwrentius
Raspberry Pi as a router using a single network interface
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run...
over a year ago
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run your own router at home, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B1 can be an excelent hardware choice:
it's fairly cheap
it's fast enough
it can saturate it's gigabit network port
it is...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 1
Chuck Peddle, the 6502, MOS, and the PET
a year ago
Chuck Peddle, the 6502, MOS, and the PET
Willem's Blog
Talking tablets: what makes a great tablet?
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be...
over a year ago
Over the past few weeks I worked with Microsoft Surface Pro X to see if it is any good, can it be your main computer?
Neil Madden
A controversial opinion about REST API design
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice,...
a year ago
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice, some of it I could quibble with. But several of the rules are about how to design the path hierarchy of your API: use plural nouns, don’t use nested sub-paths unnecessarily, etc. In...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?
8 months ago
Home on Erik...
Presentations about Spotify music recommendations
A couple of people in my old team have been around talking about how Spotify does music...
over a year ago
A couple of people in my old team have been around talking about how Spotify does music recommendations and put together some quite good presentations.
First one is Neville Li's presentation about Scala Data Pipelines @ Spotify:
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...
Good Enough
TIL: System Colors are supported in CSS, but they’re unreliable
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up...
a year ago
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up with ideas that we think would work really well as a native desktop or mobile application. Still, we prototype those ideas on the web first.
Recently, I wanted to try and make one...
Willem's Blog
Increase traffic to your blog with a RSS feed
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value....
over a year ago
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value. Read about the "how" and "why" in this post.
axio.ms
Axio.ms site refresh
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4...
over a year ago
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4 years, I’m still alive”.
The original axio.ms site was a very HTML1.0 affair and while this was kind of intentional-tongue-in-cheek-chic, it was also a PITA to update. It wasn’t...
Home on Erik...
Dollar cost averaging
(I accidentally published an unfinished draft of this post a few days ago – sorry about...
over a year ago
(I accidentally published an unfinished draft of this post a few days ago – sorry about that).
There's a lot of sources preaching the benefits of dollar cost averaging, or the practice of investing a fixed amount of money regularly.
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Home on Erik...
Software infrastructure 2.0: a wishlist
Software infrastructure (by which I include everything ending with *aaS, or anything remotely...
over a year ago
Software infrastructure (by which I include everything ending with *aaS, or anything remotely similar to it) is an exciting field, in particular because (despite what the neo-luddites may say) it keeps getting better every year! I love working with something that moves so...
Arduino Blog
This machine automatically creates chain art
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the...
5 months ago
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the resulting piece. Does a sculpture have more artistic value when molded by human hands rather than a 3D printer? Most would say that it does. But what if the automation was, itself, part...
Push to Prod
How We Built a Self-Healing System to Survive a Terrifying Concurrency Bug At Netflix
Our CPUs were dying, the bug was temporarily un-fixable, and we had no viable path forward. Here's...
3 months ago
Our CPUs were dying, the bug was temporarily un-fixable, and we had no viable path forward. Here's how we managed to survive.
Posts on Made of...
Two kinds of testing
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to...
over a year ago
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are (at least) two major ideas and goals that people have when they test or talk about testing. This post aims to outline what I see as these two schools,...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it’s haunted
In mid-2022 I bought a new domain name.
The name was musicbox.fun. I got it for a side-project, an...
a month ago
In mid-2022 I bought a new domain name.
The name was musicbox.fun. I got it for a side-project, an interactive online music box that I had built and hosted at musicboxfun.com. The new name was shorter and more quirky. I felt lucky to have grabbed it.
Unfortunately, musicbox.fun...
./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,...
Style over Substance
Using the Olympus XA as an everyday carry camera
The Olympus XA has been my EDC camera this year and I gotta say – it’s a ton of fun. The concept of...
over a year ago
The Olympus XA has been my EDC camera this year and I gotta say – it’s a ton of fun. The concept of EDC – Every Day Carry – is that a piece of equipment should be light and compact enough to have with you every day, yet still versatile enough to be useful in […]
The post Using...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The...
4 months ago
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The Minuteman III missile is currently the only US land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with
400 missiles ready for launch, spread across five central states.1
The missile...
Arduino Blog
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...
Applied Cartography
Why your marketing site should be separate
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we...
3 months ago
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we serve buttondown.com both as a marketing site (public-facing, Next/Vercel, largely just content pushed by non-developers) and an author-facing app (behind a login, Django/Heroku/Vue)...
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...
Notes on software...
SQLite in Go, with and without cgo
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Vitalik Buterin's...
An approximate introduction to how zk-SNARKs are possible
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
I beat FTL on Hard with all ships in the game
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games...
a year ago
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games again.
So I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck (and like any self-serving gentleman I took care to pitch it as being for my kids) and I started loading it up...
Posts on Made of...
Wordpress tricks: Disabling editing shortcuts
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t...
over a year ago
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t edit text in anything that doesn’t have decent emacs keybindings.
Fortunately, on Linux, at least, GTK provides basic emacs keybindings if you add
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs" to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part I: Proofs with Polynomials
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should there be demand-based recurring fees on ENS domains?
over a year ago
computers are bad
2024-03-17 wilhelm haller and photocopier accounting
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first...
9 months ago
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first practical method of mass-duplicating text. After
various other projects, he applied his press to the production of the Bible,
yielding over one hundred copies of a text that...
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
10 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Unusual Git IDs
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with...
a month ago
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with 0000000!
While looking for commits like these, I started to become suspicious that people were intentionally modifying their commits IDs to be unusual:
A commit ID of eeeeeee, with a message...
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...
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!
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission...
4 months ago
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans, and other documents.
Needed for the first Shuttle launch in 1981, this printer was designed in just 7 months, built around an Army...
./techtipsy
Anything's a portable speaker if you're brave enough
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a...
a year ago
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a speaker, a battery, put them together, and what you now have is a
portable speaker. Since I had access to both, I felt no need to buy a separate
portable speaker for use in social...
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: thoughts about cloud security
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of...
over a year ago
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of existing users regarding the Linode management console.
Resetting passwords is not something you do when under a simple attack such as a DDOS attack. Such a measure is only taken...
Applied Cartography
Using Cursor to port Django tests to pytest
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using...
3 months ago
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using these tools (Supermaven is a pretty heavy part of my day-to-day work), but have found most tools quite bad by the metric of "do they make me more productive on Buttondown's code...
Posts on Made of...
Reader/reader blocking in reader/writer locks
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition...
over a year ago
Abstract In writer-priority reader/writer locks, as soon as a single writer enters the acquisition queue, all future accesses block behind any in-flight reads. Thus, if any readers hold the lock for extended periods of time, this can lead to extreme pauses and loss of throughput...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Talking to memory: Inside the Intel 8088 processor's bus interface state machine
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
7 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the success of the x86 architecture.
The designers of the IBM PC selected...
Jonas Hietala
New Computer!
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s...
over a year ago
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s awesome (as all new computers are).
The specs:
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550Ti OC 1GB
CPU: Intel core i5 2500K
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS-9900NT
Motherboard: MSI P67A-C45 REV B3
Ram:...
Home on Erik...
Momentum and mean reversion might just be volatility bias
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at...
over a year ago
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at historical performance for mutual funds, they find strong support for momentum and mean reversion. Picking the best or the worst fund over the previous five years gives great returns...
lcamtuf’s thing
How do wood finishes hold up?
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
3 months ago
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
Birchtree
Gemini 2.0: speed and deep research impress
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today...
a week ago
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality —
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: termios(3) and stty
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part...
over a year ago
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 if you’re new here)
In this entry, we’ll look at the interfaces that are used to control the behavior of the “termios” box sitting between the master and slave pty. The behaviors...
csvbase blog
DuckDB isn't just fast
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
6 months ago
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
Home on Erik...
Building a data team at a mid-stage startup: a short story
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a...
over a year ago
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a tiny data team (~4 people) at a mid-stage startup (~$10M annual revenue), although this story could take place at many different types of companies.
Arduino Blog
This miniature monorail stays upright with the help of gyro stabilization
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is...
3 months ago
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is actually a very wide beam. The car’s load tires (often literal truck or trailer tires) roll on top of that beam and guide tires clamp the sides of the beam, preventing the car from...
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.
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...
Posts on Made of...
A Very Subtle Bug
6.033, MIT’s class on computer systems, has as one of its catchphrases, “Complex systems fail for...
over a year ago
6.033, MIT’s class on computer systems, has as one of its catchphrases, “Complex systems fail for complex reasons”. As a class about designing and building complex systems, it’s a reminder that failure modes are subtle and often involve strange interactions between multiple parts...
Neil Madden
Machine Learning and the triumph of GOFAI
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I...
5 months ago
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I haven’t finished reading it yet, and like much of BCS’s writing, it’ll probably take me 3 or 4 read-throughs to really understand it, but there’s one point that I want to pick up...
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...
Louwrentius
Some pretty NAS case designs
If you are planning on building your own NAS box, I have some suggestions
regarding the case.
In my...
over a year ago
If you are planning on building your own NAS box, I have some suggestions
regarding the case.
In my opinion, most computer case designers have absolutely no taste.
Antec and Lian Li do create nice cases, but not that spectacular. And Lian Li is
just very expensive. A fairly new...
Notes on software...
Finishing up a FreeBSD experiment
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and...
over a year ago
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and I've learned a hell of a
lot forcing myself on CURRENT... But there's been a number of issues
with it that have made it difficult to keep using, so I replaced it
with Arch Linux...
Arduino Blog
DIY submersible pump controller helps retrieve well water
It might surprise our urban-dwelling readers, but wells are still very common in rural areas where...
6 months ago
It might surprise our urban-dwelling readers, but wells are still very common in rural areas where it is difficult or prohibitively expensive to run utilities. The CDC reports that more than 15 million households rely on groundwater and wells — and that’s just in the United...
Jonas Hietala
Moving to FastMail
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some...
over a year ago
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some reason I settled on eumx which I used since then. Yesterday I got an email saying the recurring billing could not be renewed as I had my old credit card registered and it got me...
anderegg.ca
Maybe Bluesky has “won”
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X....
a month ago
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. I’ve seen a bunch of takes about this recently, but I keep seeing things I disagree with. I figure that’s a good enough excuse to write more about this...
watchTowr Labs -...
Cleo Harmony, VLTrader, and LexiCom - RCE via Arbitrary File Write (CVE-2024-50623)
We were having a nice uneventful week at watchTowr, when we got news of some ransomware operators...
a week ago
We were having a nice uneventful week at watchTowr, when we got news of some ransomware operators using a zero-day exploit in Cleo MFT software - namely, LexiCom, VLTransfer, and Harmony - applications that many large enterprises rely on to share files securely.
Cleo have a...
Home on Erik...
Bagging as a regularizer
One thing I encountered today was a trick using bagging as a way to go beyond a point estimate and...
over a year ago
One thing I encountered today was a trick using bagging as a way to go beyond a point estimate and get an approximation for the full distribution. This can then be used to penalize predictions with larger uncertainty, which helps reducing false positives.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Some reflections on the Bitcoin block size war
6 months ago
Notes on software...
A paper reading club at work; databases and distributed systems research
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems...
8 months ago
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems research. I posted in a general channel about
the premise and asked if anyone was interested. I clarified the
intended topic and that discussions would be asynchronous over email,
run...
Jonas Hietala
Back to lazy.nvim
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim...
6 months ago
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim again.
This is a short post to explain why—at this point in time—the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.
Problems with rocks.nvim
Too many weird issues.
I had quite a few...
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.
computers are bad
2023-07-29 Free Public WiFi
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree...
a year ago
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was
directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school
student I was not...
Lars Lofgren
How Live Chat Tools Impact Conversions and Why I Launched a Bad Variant
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing...
over a year ago
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing your visitors to chat directly with your team? Like most tests, you can come up with theories that sound great for both sides. Pro Live Chat Theory: Having a live chat tool helps...
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...
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