Posts on Made of...
Record/Replay testing in Sorbet
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the...
over a year ago
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the Sorbet project at Stripe to build a gradual static typechecking system for Ruby, with the aim of enhancing productivity on Stripe’s millions of lines of Ruby, and eventually producing a...
Notes on software...
Effective unemployment and social media
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your...
a month ago
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything
except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are
looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or...
lcamtuf’s thing
The marvelous disappearing capacitor
The performance of photodiode amplifiers can be improved in a clever way.
2 weeks ago
The performance of photodiode amplifiers can be improved in a clever way.
Jonas Hietala
The Decline of FPS Games
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time...
over a year ago
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it’s what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can’t say I truly...
Home on Erik...
Subway waiting math
Why does it suck to wait for things? In a previous post I analyzed a NYC subway dataset and found...
over a year ago
Why does it suck to wait for things? In a previous post I analyzed a NYC subway dataset and found that at some point, quite early, it's worth just giving up.
This isn't a proof that the subway doesn't run on time – in fact it might actually proves that the subway runs really...
Willem's Blog
Building the blog... in style!
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
over a year ago
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
Louwrentius
The Raspberry Pi 5 is no match for a tini-mini-micro PC
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable...
6 months ago
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable computer. An ideal home server. Until the Pi 4, the Pi was not that capable, and only with the relatively recent Pi 5 (fall 2023) do I feel the Pi is OK performance wise, although...
Home on Erik...
HubSpot's Picture Shows how to Maintain Monocultures in the 21st Century
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome...
over a year ago
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome Presentation Shows how to Create a 21st Century Culture”.
Just FYI: You're not different. You're a bunch of white hipsters aged 25-30 dressed up in the same theme.
Arduino Blog
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,...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Reading Notes on “Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp”
by Josef Czapski
over a year ago
Louwrentius
'Secure programming: how to implement user account management'
Most web applications work like this:
The application uses a single database account to perform all...
over a year ago
Most web applications work like this:
The application uses a single database account to perform all actions. Users
are just some records in a table. Account privileges and roles are part of
this table, or separate tables.
This implies that all security must be designed and build...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again
12 months ago
axio.ms
32-bit hat, with LEDs
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat,...
over a year ago
Built in November 2015 (now-traditional multi-year writeup delay applied)
A hat, bejewelled with 38 RGB LEDs
Is this thing on..? It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these.
So, the hat. It’s been on the writeup pile for almost 6 years, nagging away. Finally...
Simply Explained
Good Home Automation Should be Boring
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other...
over a year ago
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other people's setup for inspiration, and one thing struck me. Many people have cluttered dashboards and use Home Assistant to track just about any metric they can.That's quite different...
Neil Madden
Parse, don’t type-check
There’s a fantastic article from last year titled Parse, don’t validate. I’d highly recommend it to...
over a year ago
There’s a fantastic article from last year titled Parse, don’t validate. I’d highly recommend it to any programmer (along with the more recent follow up Names are not type safety). The basic idea is that there are two ways to check that some input to a function is valid: A...
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
a week ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Degen communism: the only correct political ideology
8 months ago
Louwrentius
How to run victron veconfigure on a mac
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool....
9 months ago
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool. Unforntunately this is a Windows-only tool, but there is still a way for Apple users to run this tool without any problems.
Tip: if you've never worked with the Terminal app on MacOS, it...
Willem's Blog
Outside the comfort zone: amateur acting
This month I strapped myself with sensors during a little experiment outside my comfort zone: I...
over a year ago
This month I strapped myself with sensors during a little experiment outside my comfort zone: I debuted as amateur actor!
Jonas Hietala
No game this month
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack...
over a year ago
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack inspiration and then it’s really hard to do something. Instead I’ve been thinking of something I could do that would make me wanna code like really bad again. I’m thinking of...
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 —
Louwrentius
Scanning many hosts in parallel with Nmap using PPSS
Scanning a large number of hosts using Nmap often takes a lot of time. During
this time, no output...
over a year ago
Scanning a large number of hosts using Nmap often takes a lot of time. During
this time, no output is written to a file or disk. Only when Nmap is finished,
is all output written to the output file. Often, I want to start processing
results of hosts that have already been...
watchTowr Labs -...
Check Point - Wrong Check Point (CVE-2024-24919)
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and...
6 months ago
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and laying bare a recent in-the-wild exploited bug. This time, it is Check Point who is the focus of our penetrative gaze.
Check Point, for those unaware, is the vendor responsible for...
Notes on software...
btest: a language agnostic test runner
btest is a minimal,
language-agnostic test runner originally written for testing
compilers. Brian,...
over a year ago
btest is a minimal,
language-agnostic test runner originally written for testing
compilers. Brian, an ex- co-worker from Linode, wrote the first
implementation in Crystal (a compiled
language clone of Ruby) for testing
bshift, a compiler
project. The tool accomplished exactly...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
Computer Ads from...
Ampere WS-1
A cool Japanese clamtop
9 months ago
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...
GitButler
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source...
3 months ago
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source ecosystem.
Home on Erik...
More MCMC – Analyzing a small dataset with 1-5 ratings
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome...
over a year ago
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome website I encountered is Usability Hub which lets you run 5 second tests. Users see your site for 5 seconds and you can ask them free-form questions afterwards.
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that...
2 months ago
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago except for all the aforementioned time and money. Yours truly is no exception.
a future article.) They existed in highly technical...
Louwrentius
Smoking coolermaster Silent Pro M 600W TN6M50
So I was just messing around on my work station, when suddenly I smelled the
smell any person...
over a year ago
So I was just messing around on my work station, when suddenly I smelled the
smell any person familiar with electronics fears. The smell of some electrical
component burning.
The whole upper floor smelled like something was smoldering. So I shut down
both my storage servers....
Applied Cartography
Grace notes
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking...
7 months ago
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking for:
Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service. The host would ask guests, “How’d you get here tonight?” If they responded, “Oh, we drove,” he’d follow up with,...
Notes on software...
Languages you can run in the browser, part 1: Python, JavaScript, SQLite
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Home on Erik...
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:
Notes on software...
RFCs and asynchronous-first culture
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't...
over a year ago
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't communicate well enough, even with folks I
had a good connection with. It took me a number of mistaken deliveries
to get the message.
Sketches and mockups
Designers solve this by...
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.
Notes on software...
Interpreting TypeScript
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript...
over a year ago
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript makes much of its functionality
available programmatically. In this post we'll use the TypeScript
compiler API to build an interpreter. We'll build off of a...
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Jonas Hietala
Ugly and Slow Progress
Ludum Dare is coming along… Slowly. The rust on me is probably so brown it’s nearly black. But I...
over a year ago
Ludum Dare is coming along… Slowly. The rust on me is probably so brown it’s nearly black. But I have an idea and it might be good, all I need to do is execute it. Right?
Programmer graphics coming to take you away!
Anyway it’s going to be a risk-like game with a twist: you can...
Electronics etc…
Measuring the HP 11720A Pulse Modulator and Coax Cables
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse Modulator
Inside the HP 11720A
Measurement Setup for a Quick Testing Session
Pin Modulator Power Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Loss Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Power Measurements with...
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.
Louwrentius
I made my blog solar-powered, then things escalated
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing...
a year ago
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing the same thing (but better)1. The answer was 'yes', but only through spring and summer.
I live in an apartment complex in The Netherlands and my balcony is facing west. This...
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...
Applied Cartography
Consider the data product
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is...
2 months ago
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is evergreen:
It’s much easier to sell an add-on to an existing ecosystem like a WordPress plugin, a Shopify app, a Heroku add-on – they’re usually small things to build, relatively...
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...
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...
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...
Simply Explained
Smart lights behind a wall switch (Shelly + ESPHome)
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs...
over a year ago
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs need constant power. I think that's pretty dumb. Using a physical switch can be way faster than using an app to control the lights.Here's how you can put a Shelly in between the...
Willem's Blog
The day I killed my LAN
I killed my office LAN and went 4G only. Saves a lot of clutter, energy and money.
over a year ago
I killed my office LAN and went 4G only. Saves a lot of clutter, energy and money.
Jonas Hietala
Jonas IceCream Stand
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream...
over a year ago
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream Stand
Instructions
It should be pretty self-explanatory, it’s a very simply tycoon game.
Credits
Music:
Eric Maskol
Steve Chatterton
Sound effects:
freesound
Rest:
Me
Louwrentius
HighPoint RocketRAID and staggered spinup with Samsung F1
I have experienced problems using a HighPoint RocketRaid 2320 and 2340 when
they are using...
over a year ago
I have experienced problems using a HighPoint RocketRaid 2320 and 2340 when
they are using 'staggered spinup' in combination with Samsung Spinpoint F1, 1
(one) terrabyte disks.
The problem is that the F1 disks spinup very slowly and often seem to 'hang'
while making ticking...
Style over Substance
Using the EZCOO / AVStar HAE118 HDMI2.1 Audio Extractor for PS5/Xbox audio
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out...
a year ago
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out of this console meant we also had to buy a new TV, as our old TV was not 4K-compatible and did not support HDMI2.1, the new A/V standard required to support all of the PS5’s...
Vitalik Buterin's...
An incomplete guide to stealth addresses
a year ago
Applied Cartography
How Buttondown uses HAProxy
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the...
3 months ago
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the author-facing app, the subscriber-facing app, and the marketing site all under a single domain. Most technical decisions are reversible with sufficient grit and dedication; this one...
Applied Cartography
Shipping is capturing value
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a...
4 weeks ago
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a Moral Mazes-esque analysis of how engineers at large companies should think about shipping:
Shipping is a social construct within a company. Concretely, that means that a project is...
Posts on Made of...
Confessions of a programmer: I hate code review
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work...
over a year ago
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work requires code review on most of our code, and as we bring on an army of interns for the summer, I've been responsible for reviewing lots of code. Additionally, about five months ago...
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
over a year ago
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
Opsbros
Nokia 5110 - Back from the dead. Part 1: Nostalgia
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and...
over a year ago
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
Notes on software...
Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL...
7 months ago
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL transaction levels: Read Uncommitted,
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Snapshot Isolation and
Serializable. We'll use multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and
optimistic...
Jonas Hietala
Reinstalling Slackware
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important...
over a year ago
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important steps I made. I did not document the steps in detail, and some are very specific for my setup. But maybe it can be useful for someone, or myself.
Basic steps
Make slackware usb...
Louwrentius
Unattended automatic installation of Linux nvidia binary driver
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver....
over a year ago
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver. This is a manual proces by default. However, it can be
done fully automatic:
prerequisite: install xserver-xorg-dev package or similar xorg development
package.
sh NVIDIA-.run -q...
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...
Louwrentius
Setting up a Squid proxy with Clamav anti-virus using c-icap
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer...
over a year ago
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer presenting a different set of challenges, requiring different skill sets and technology. So every layer will increase the time and effort to compromise your environment.
A...
Style over Substance
3D-printable Raleno 104 lightbox adapter for camera film scanning
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model...
over a year ago
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model turns it into a lightbox that you can use for digital camera scanning of your negative film. It also contains a holder compatible with the Valoi 35mm/120 film carriers. Additionally,...
Arduino Blog
Exploring Alvik: 3 fun and creative projects with Arduino’s educational robot platform
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we...
4 days ago
Alvik is cute, it’s smart, it’s fun… so what can it actually do? To answer this question, we decided to have fun and put the robot to the test with some of the most creative people we know – our own team! A dozen Arduino employees volunteered for a dedicated Make Tank session...
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...
Birchtree
I’m Knee-Deep in Turkey
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her...
2 weeks ago
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her new Flight Simulator obsession, we go on a tangent about PC gaming, Chris (who says he’s an iPad guy) brings another Mac to talk about, and I had the gang look
Neil Madden
How do you use a bearer URL?
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to...
over a year ago
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to incorporate a bearer token (such as an OAuth access token) into a URL. That blog post concentrated on the technical details of how that would work and the security properties of the...
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!
Applied Cartography
Why can't you just...?
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long,...
7 months ago
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long, detailed explanation of why shipping this sort of thing is hard:
Designing a consent experience for the enterprise admin and enterprise end user
Creating a special "read only" object...
Home on Erik...
New approximate nearest neighbor benchmarks
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm...
over a year ago
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm the author of Annoy, a library with 3,500+ stars on Github as of today. It offers fast approximate search for nearest neighbors with the additional benefit that you can load data...
./techtipsy
TOMO M4: probably the coolest power bank I've owned
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting...
a year ago
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting two, and here’s why.
This post is not sponsored.
Removable batteries
Let’s start with the feature that I appreciate the most: removable batteries!
The TOMO M4 accepts up to 4...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Building LLM-driven agents
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just...
a year ago
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just ask it. Writing out a single prompt…
Home on Erik...
Fermat's principle
I was browsing around on the Internet and the physics geek in me started reading about Fermat's...
over a year ago
I was browsing around on the Internet and the physics geek in me started reading about Fermat's principle. And suddenly something came back to me that I've been trying to suppress for many years – how I never understood why there's anything fundamental about the principal of...
Arduino Blog
Machine-to-machine communication is easier than ever: Opta now supports OPC UA
OPC Unified Architecture – OPC UA in short – is a cross-platform, open-source machine-to-machine...
a month ago
OPC Unified Architecture – OPC UA in short – is a cross-platform, open-source machine-to-machine communication protocol for industrial automation. It was developed by the Open Platform Communications (OPC) Foundation and is defined in detail in the IEC 62541 standard. With the...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
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...
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...
Jonas Hietala
fish_update_completions in Slackware 14.1
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically...
over a year ago
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically generate completions by parsing the installed man pages by running fish_update_completions.
Unfortunately this is what I got:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File...
computers are bad
2024-10-12 commercial HF radio
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio...
2 months ago
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio spectrum between 3 and 30 MHz. The label now seems
anachronistic, as HF is among the lowest ranges of radio frequencies that see
regular use. This setting of the goalposts in the early...
Arduino Blog
The web-based Arduino Lab for MicroPython Editor is out! With Chromebook support to code Alvik and...
We’re excited to announce the release of the web-based version of the Arduino Lab for MicroPython...
a month ago
We’re excited to announce the release of the web-based version of the Arduino Lab for MicroPython Editor. This lightweight platform makes it even easier to code with MicroPython using Arduino hardware such as Alvik, Nano ESP32, Nano RP2040 Connect, Nano 33 BLE Sense – and more!...
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...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Quantum Software Systems Ltd's QNX
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
8 months ago
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Exploring Elliptic Curve Pairings
over a year ago
Lars Lofgren
The Billion-Dollar World of Parasite SEO: How to Cash In
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch...
a month ago
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch of SEO content to make a bunch of money. Content often gets published in a subfolder or subdomain or the website. The goal is to leverage the domain’s trust with Google to get...
Posts on Made of...
CVE-2007-4573: The Anatomy of a Kernel Exploit
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It...
over a year ago
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It was a local privilege-escalation vulnerability on all x86_64 kernels prior to v2.6.22.7. It’s very simple to understand with a little bit of background, and the exploit is...
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...
Louwrentius
An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at...
over a year ago
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
When I bought this drive, we were still in...
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
3 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
seangoedecke.com RSS...
I don't know how to build software and you don't either
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it...
a month ago
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it better to have that dictated by some…
./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,...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Jonas Hietala
Exploring the Gleam FFI
My brain is a curious thing.
I’m on a business trip right now and I’ve set aside time to finish some...
11 months ago
My brain is a curious thing.
I’m on a business trip right now and I’ve set aside time to finish some important todos I want and need to get done.
But instead of focusing on them, I started playing around with Gleam—a young and interesting programming language.
My (current)...
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)...
Old Vintage...
When the Power Macintosh ran NetWare (featuring Wormhole and Cyberpunk)
This entry and the software we'll demonstrate is in large part thanks to an anonymous Apple...
12 months ago
This entry and the software we'll demonstrate is in large part thanks to an anonymous Apple developer who was part of the NetWare team. Thank you!
the network operating system of the 1990s. Nothing was quite like it. Until Windows NT muscled in on its action near the end of the...
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
Home on Erik...
Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence...
over a year ago
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence in my ability to assess people. Let me just throw a couple of algorithm questions at a candidate and then I'll tell you if they are good or not!
Arduino Blog
This device prevents garage door security breaches
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house....
2 months ago
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely...
Matt Mullenweg
Inc Hit Piece
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a...
3 days ago
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a feature piece I was excited because though Inc wasn’t a magazine I have read much since I was a teenager, David seemed like a legit journalist who usually writes for better publications...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
./techtipsy
Trying out VR on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU
You may know that I really like small, efficient APU-based builds.
At this point in time, they’re so...
over a year ago
You may know that I really like small, efficient APU-based builds.
At this point in time, they’re so close to being a viable mainstream option for
gaming, especially the Ryzen 6000-series mobile APU-s. Forza Horizon 5, at
1080p high settings? Yes, they’re that good.
I don’t have...
Electronics etc…
The HP 423A and a Beginner’s Deep Dive into RF Crystal Detectors
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
October 2020 news
October 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling, Euclid; further site reorganization &...
over a year ago
October 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling, Euclid; further site reorganization & improvement.
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 2. system calls
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e...
over a year ago
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e to
support the exit and write Linux system calls, or syscalls. A syscall
is a function handled by the kernel that allows the process to
interact with data outside of its memory....
Louwrentius
Solaris is an obsolete platform
Assuming that the rumor is true and OpenSolaris will be slain by Oracle, we
must conclude that the...
over a year ago
Assuming that the rumor is true and OpenSolaris will be slain by Oracle, we
must conclude that the Solaris operating system is obsolete. Solaris can be
considered legacy. Sun was a hardware shop and to sell their hardware, they
needed a great operating system.
Sun had a great...
Jonas Hietala
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small...
over a year ago
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small shooter.
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afro
Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen?
Instruction
W: up
Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc...
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240102
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
11 months ago
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Notes on software...
Controlled HTML select element in React has weird default UX
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Home on Erik...
Google diversity memo, global warming, Pascal's wager, and other stuff
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple...
over a year ago
There's about 765 million blog posts about the diversity “memo” that leaked out of Google a couple of weeks ago. I think the case for any biological difference is pretty weak, and it bothers me when people refer to an “interest gap” as anything else than caused by the...
Willem's Blog
How to use rsync to make backups
In this post I'll explain how to use rsync to transfer files to another computer system in an...
over a year ago
In this post I'll explain how to use rsync to transfer files to another computer system in an efficient manner, suitable to be used in a backup script.
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
Matt Mullenweg
Carmack & Rogan
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on...
3 weeks ago
I guess something has changed with the Joe Rogan / Spotify deal and now all the old episodes are on YouTube again, which means the gems from the archives can now pop up. I was alerted to this conversation between Joe Rogan and John Carmack, and it’s pure gold. I know I’m five...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Porting and hacking Llama2.c for fun and profit
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is basically a simple one-file C…
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...
Old Vintage...
With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone's a WiiN-er (except Data General)
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the...
7 months ago
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone with a day job in public health for almost two decades, it's always been a buzzword in certain corners of IT with enough money sloshing around...
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...
Posts on Made of...
A brief look at Linux's security record
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a...
over a year ago
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a look at a handful of the high-profile privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux from the last few years. So, here's a summary of the ones I picked out. There are also a large...
Arduino Blog
Is there an online Arduino IDE?
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code...
2 months ago
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code and creating projects ranging from remote-controlled cars to soil moisture monitoring. No wonder it’s been downloaded over 24 million times this year, so far! Now if you’ve ever...
Jonas Hietala
Doing Stuff
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left...
over a year ago
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left the standard math course behind a bit. Actually more than a bit but hopefully I’ll correct things later.
No my life is going along just fine, it almost feels like my life is runing...
Christian Selig
Autonomous Standing Desk and Chair Review
Autonomous was nice enough to send me one of both their Smart Desk Pro standing desks and ErgoChair...
a year ago
Autonomous was nice enough to send me one of both their Smart Desk Pro standing desks and ErgoChair Pro chairs in exchange for posting about them on Twitter, and I wanted to cover them in more detail on my blog as well so I could give my full thoughts on them for anyone in the...
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
Home on Erik...
Storm in the stratosphere: how the cloud will be reshuffled
Here's a theory I have about cloud vendors (AWS, Azure, GCP):
Cloud vendors1 will increasingly...
over a year ago
Here's a theory I have about cloud vendors (AWS, Azure, GCP):
Cloud vendors1 will increasingly focus on the lowest layers in the stack: basically leasing capacity in their data centers through an API. Other pure-software providers will build all the stuff on top of it.
Willem's Blog
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during...
over a year ago
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during the music festival.
lcamtuf’s thing
Building a phosphorescence detector
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in...
3 weeks ago
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in the wild.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
What kind of work I want
This article is to help recruiters, hiring managers and myself have a better idea of the kind of...
over a year ago
This article is to help recruiters, hiring managers and myself have a better idea of the kind of places I’d like to work. The short version…
Vitalik Buterin's...
Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people
over a year ago
latest projects -...
LED Industrial Piercing
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
a year ago
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
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.
Notes on software...
dsq: Commandline tool for running SQL queries against JSON, CSV, Excel, Parquet, and more.
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
Tracking down a faulty Storage Array Controller with ZFS
One day, I lost two virtual machines on our DR environment after a storage vMotion.
Further...
over a year ago
One day, I lost two virtual machines on our DR environment after a storage vMotion.
Further investigation uncovered that any storage vMotion of a virtual machine residing on our DR storage array would corrupt the virtual machine's disks.
I could easily restore the affected...
Good Enough
Bad Ideas Are Fun
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that...
a year ago
Once I was complaining to Arun about how hard it is to come up with ideas, and he pointed out that coming up with ideas is actually very easy––what makes it hard is that we’re aiming for good ideas.
The next time you're coming up with ideas, tell yourself, Forget about good...
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...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 2.0
Success and Litigation
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
February gets Themed: Rejection
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t...
over a year ago
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t follow suite! With valentine coming up I might just have found a pretty nice idea, just now, writing this…
Booyah!!
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors...
9 months ago
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors whenever I see them — which is why this morning I installed Zed, which makes its bones on performance (yay!) and teams functionality (irrelevant for my use cases, but seems...
Matt Blewitt
Control Loops and Rice Cookers
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my...
over a year ago
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my regular diet, and it completely removes the stress of preparing rice. They also operate on a simple principle that can help us operate cloud infrastructure – the control loop.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 2
The VIC-20
a year ago
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...
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.
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...
anderegg.ca
Playing with the Bluesky firehose
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver...
3 weeks ago
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver a JSON based firehose of atproto data. Here’s an overview of the simple project I built with that data.
I was inspired by a post from Simon Willison where he showed off a tool for...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1985/12 Australian Personal Computer Mag
Some computer related levity from OZ
2 weeks ago
Some computer related levity from OZ
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:...
Louwrentius
Debian Lenny and Dell S300 H200 and H700 RAID controllers
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these...
over a year ago
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these controllers. However, which controllers are supported is
not clear. Also, we may have to wait for quite some time before squeeze will
be released.
Just a quick note: it seems that the...
Home on Erik...
What is the right level of specialization? For data teams and anyone else.
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this...
over a year ago
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this specialization of data teams into 99 different roles (data scientist, data engineer, analytics engineer, ML engineer etc) is generally a bad thing driven by the fact that tools are...
lcamtuf’s thing
The serious science of trolling LLMs
The internet's oldest pastime finally has a purpose -- and it's more serious than AI companies would...
5 months ago
The internet's oldest pastime finally has a purpose -- and it's more serious than AI companies would like to admit.
Willem's Blog
From tree to table
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
over a year ago
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
Good Enough
All About CSS: Alphabetize, Normalize, and Dark-mode-itize
Hello reader, I’m Matthew, the newest member of Good Enough (LLC). The rest of the team are avid...
a year ago
Hello reader, I’m Matthew, the newest member of Good Enough (LLC). The rest of the team are avid writers and sharers… I’m not. But they keep chanting “One of us. One of us.” so I suppose you’ll see me around here sometimes.
For my inaugural post, I thought I’d quickly share what...
Lars Lofgren
What Happened After I Outed a Reddit Mod for Affiliate Spam
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate...
3 months ago
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry. The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention. Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become....
computers are bad
2024-06-02 consumer electronics control
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less...
6 months ago
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less important part of the modern home
theater landscape. One reason is the broad decline of the component system:
most consumers aren't buying a television, home theater receiver,...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Major failure
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s...
9 months ago
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s first major failure.
I know I earlier described how the extruder starter skipping in a big way, but that was just some filament getting stuck in the extruder.
This time a part...
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled Spin Meister helps spin up the perfect pizza
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher...
6 months ago
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher heat that many find more preferable than a conventional kitchen oven. But even a nice gas-powered pizza oven like the Ooni Koda 12 will have some hot spots and cold spots. To get an...
Ian's Blog
GitHub Notification Emails Hijacked to Send Malware
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are...
3 months ago
As an open source developer I frequently get emails from GitHub, most of these emails are notifications sent on behalf of GitHub users to let me know that somebody has interacted with something and requires my attention. Perhaps somebody has created a new issue on one of my...
computers are bad
2023-09-10 the Essex GWEN site
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML...
a year ago
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email
and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead
(the link is at the top of the email).
In the aftermath of...
Engineers Need Art
Same Stop
Marvelling at the full circle life seems to have taken after retirement.
a year ago
Marvelling at the full circle life seems to have taken after retirement.
Jonas Hietala
Understanding the Computer
When I discovered programming it felt like a whole new world opened up for me with endless...
over a year ago
When I discovered programming it felt like a whole new world opened up for me with endless possibilities. It granted unlimited power and I could create virtually anything and it explained so much to me - how did a program work? How could you make a game or a website? But there...
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin's security isn't binary
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s...
over a year ago
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s security isn’t binary. In fact security in general isn’t black and white. It’s a trade-off being secure enough for your threat model vs the cost and feasibility of your...
Jonas Hietala
Computer upgrade
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some...
a year ago
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some pictures about the process.
It was time
I didn’t really want to do an upgrade right now, but I felt I had to do it.
Sometimes the lag had gotten very noticeable, for example when...
Computer Ads from...
ProHance Technologies' Power Mouse
Even A Totally Souped up PC Is A Dog Without PowerMouse
3 months ago
Even A Totally Souped up PC Is A Dog Without PowerMouse
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...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Spring Tournament
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very...
over a year ago
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very casual setting but there were also some guys who came from… Västerås I think, but I’m not sure. We managed to scrape together 9 people at least, and I didn’t notice anyone bringing...
computers are bad
2023-10-09 prolific counterfeiting
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices...
a year ago
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices (essentially GPS trackers with i/o) from a fairly reputable
Chinese manufacturer. The device is endlessly configurable and so, like you see
with a lot of radios, it has a UART for...
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal iPhone stand
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
over a year ago
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
Jonas Hietala
Building the GH60
I’ve finally completed my first custom made keyboard. I’m still missing stabilizers and some smaller...
over a year ago
I’ve finally completed my first custom made keyboard. I’m still missing stabilizers and some smaller screws to hold it all together but I’ve been using it the last days and I thought I’d share.
The hardware
Several years ago I joined the geekhack forum and I joined in a few group...
Old Vintage...
The unreleased Commodore HHC-4's secret identity
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one...
a month ago
Once upon a time (and that time was Winter CES 1983), Commodore announced what was to be their one and only handheld computer, the Commodore HHC-4. It was never released and never seen again, at least not in that form. But it turns out that not only did the HHC-4 actually exist,...
Home on Erik...
The relationship between commit size and commit message size
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's...
over a year ago
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's my rationale:
When I update one line of code I feel like I have to put in a long explanation about its side effects, why it's fully backwards compatible, and why it fixes some...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
./techtipsy
So you want to migrate to Kubernetes: observations from a software developer
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common...
2 months ago
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common justifications include better scalability, cost savings, standardization and being super modern and stuff. It’s
the future!
In my personal experience, Kubernetes is far from the...
Jonas Hietala
Blogging in Djot instead of Markdown
What if we weren’t chained to the past? What if we tried to create a light markup syntax that keeps...
10 months ago
What if we weren’t chained to the past? What if we tried to create a light markup syntax that keeps what is good about Markdown, while revising some of the features that have led to bloat and complexity in the CommonMark spec?
John Macfarlane, Beyond Markdown
I recently...
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.
./techtipsy
I have a 'Dall UD19PB ThundeRbglt Dock': my experience with the HP Elitebook 845 G9
I’ve decided to give a new laptop a test drive, mainly because I had the
opportunity at work, and...
over a year ago
I’ve decided to give a new laptop a test drive, mainly because I had the
opportunity at work, and also out of morbid curiosity.
It’s the HP Elitebook 845 G9, and it has pretty good specifications:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800U
RAM: 2x16GB DDR5
Storage: 512GB KIOXIA NVMe SSD...
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
Matt Blewitt
7 Languages in 7 Weeks for 2025
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a...
3 weeks ago
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a hands on tour of Ruby, Clojure, Haskell, Io, Scala, Erlang and Prolog. Ruby achieved critical mass, to some degree so did Scala, with the others being popular within their specific...
Push to Prod
One Key Aspect of Optimizing Computational Throughput
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or...
3 months ago
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or processes.
Applied Cartography
Postgres batch enqueuing in ten lines of Django
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count =...
a year ago
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count = queryset.count()
if count == 0:
time.sleep(10)
return
with transaction.atomic():
batch = list(
queryset.select_for_update(of=("self",),...
Home on Erik...
Luigi conquering the world
I keep forgetting to buy a costume for Halloween every year, so this year I prepared and got myself...
over a year ago
I keep forgetting to buy a costume for Halloween every year, so this year I prepared and got myself a Luigi costume a month in advance. Only to realize I was going to be out of town the whole weekend.
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine.
You ever end up doing something like this?
Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it.
Snapshots provide us...
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.
Arduino Blog
This disturbing Halloween doll was brought to life with Bottango
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near...
a month ago
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near the top of the list. That extends beyond store-bought costumes and decorations to DIY projects. If you want an excuse to make something impractical, Halloween can provide that. And...
Arduino Blog
GLEWBOT scales buildings like a gecko to inspect wall tiles
A great deal of building maintenance expenses are the result of simple inaccessibility. Cleaning the...
7 months ago
A great deal of building maintenance expenses are the result of simple inaccessibility. Cleaning the windows are your house is a trivial chore, but cleaning the windows on a skyscraper is serious undertaking that needs specialized equipment and training. To make exterior wall...
Arduino Blog
This desk lamp automatically adjusts its brightness using AI on an Arduino UNO
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today,...
6 months ago
When you hear about all of the amazing things being accomplished with artificial intelligence today, you probably assume that they require a massive amount of processing power. And while that is often true, there are machine learning models that can run on the edge — including on...
Willem's Blog
Protecting VMware ESXi
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to...
over a year ago
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to improve security of the management console using NGINX and a firewall
Home on Erik...
Scala Data Pipelines for Music Recommendations
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
over a year ago
Chris Johnson‘s presentation from Data Day Texas:
Birchtree
Yet more YouTube videos I've enjoyed recently
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair...
a week ago
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair will be very compelling.
I'm not a big fan of most Apple TV+ shows, but Severance was lovely and I can't wait
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
GitButler
Stacked Branches with GitButler
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
2 weeks ago
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
Notes on software...
Reviewing the Surface Book 2
The first few paragraphs cover what I was looking for and what I
considered. Then the review.
Why...
over a year ago
The first few paragraphs cover what I was looking for and what I
considered. Then the review.
Why the Surface Book 2
I used a Macbook throughout my professional career until I had the
choice a few years ago when I started my current job. Here, I ran
Gentoo, then FreeBSD, then...
Jonas Hietala
Rising from the Dead, it's Ludum Dare
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not...
over a year ago
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not making games or blogging. But I have revived! I scrambled to push my new website live because today it’s Ludum Dare time! The theme is “Evolution” and it’s the 24th time for Ludum Dare...
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
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...
Jonas Hietala
Black and White
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a...
over a year ago
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn’t come out nearly as good as I expected it too.
Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this...
Posts on Made of...
Some notes on CVE-2010-3081 exploitability
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity...
over a year ago
Most of you reading this blog probably remember CVE-2010-3081. The bug got an awful lot of publicity when it was discovered an announced, due to allowing local privilege escalation against virtually all 64-bit Linux kernels in common use at the time.
While investigating...
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.1
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02,...
9 months ago
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02, R65C02 and 65816 processors that André and I maintain is now at version 2.4.1. This optionally expands the syntax from 2.4.0 and fixes some bugs primarily with relocatable .o65...
Jonas Hietala
FTL got a new victim
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone...
over a year ago
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone you’d expect, it’s even someone who said: “What a bad game” when she saw me playing it. But nevertheless this Saturday she played it more than 2.5 hours!
I told Veronica I wanted...
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!
Notes on software...
Writing a storage engine for Postgres: an in-memory Table Access Method
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This...
a year ago
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This is a feature MySQL has supported for a long time. There are at
least 8 different built-in
engines you can pick from. MyRocks, MySQL on
RocksDB, is another popular third-party...
Jonas Hietala
Beginning Programming
I read a wonderful post, 3 Things I hate about “beginner” programming books, which I couldn’t agree...
over a year ago
I read a wonderful post, 3 Things I hate about “beginner” programming books, which I couldn’t agree more with. Basically he has these points:
Too long
Too many examples like “Hello World!”
No answers to exercises.
Nr 1 is a pretty curious one. Even though I think a book is good,...
Notes on software...
One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Study Hacking
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my...
over a year ago
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my part.
But the past is the past and this week I’m going to be study focused. Not that I need to study, but I really need to rework my study technique. I’ve been going on like a classical...
Neil Madden
Galois/Counter Mode and random nonces
It turns out you can encrypt more than 2^32 messages with AES-GCM with a random nonce under certain...
7 months ago
It turns out you can encrypt more than 2^32 messages with AES-GCM with a random nonce under certain conditions. It’s still not a good idea, but you can just about do it. #cryptography
Home on Erik...
Exploding offers are bullshit
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I...
over a year ago
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers...
Willem's Blog
Servicing a robot vacuum cleaner
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to...
over a year ago
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to learn how I did it.
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.
./techtipsy
DIY cloud gaming: NVIDIA and Moonlight
As you might have read from my previous post on this topic, I
have a pretty neat “cloud” gaming...
over a year ago
As you might have read from my previous post on this topic, I
have a pretty neat “cloud” gaming setup running. I have one powerful desktop PC, one virtual machine with a GPU attached
to it, and client machines that can be used to stream games from. To keep things simple (and...
Matt Blewitt
Death, and Utsuge
This post discusses topics some may wish to avoid: terminal illness, hospice care, death, and...
a month ago
This post discusses topics some may wish to avoid: terminal illness, hospice care, death, and Japanese visual novels.
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
2 weeks ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part 3: Into the Weeds
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
Jonas Hietala
Offset coordinates in Krita with Xinerama
I recently bought an Intuos Manga drawing tablet recently, because I got this fix idea that I want...
over a year ago
I recently bought an Intuos Manga drawing tablet recently, because I got this fix idea that I want to learn how to draw. And what better way to do it than with a drawing tablet, while satisfying my need for new things?
With little experience I boldly set forth and I found a...
Jonas Hietala
My Dream Game: The RTS
Even if there are a million great games there’s one that has a very special place in my heart:...
over a year ago
Even if there are a million great games there’s one that has a very special place in my heart: Supreme Commander. It’s not the game I’ve played the most and there might even be games which are better and more fun but supcom was the game that introduced me to competitive gaming...
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Home on Erik...
A neat little trick with time decay
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have...
over a year ago
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have recursive chains of jobs. For instance, say you want to keep track of a popularity score. You calculate today's output by reading yesterday's output, discounting it by $$ exp(-lambda...
Willem's Blog
The Ultimate Freedom Bike
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and...
over a year ago
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and wherever you please!
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation...
6 months ago
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system.
Aerospace computers are an interesting but mostly neglected area of computer hardware, so I'm always delighted to
examine one up close.
In an era when most computers were large...
Willem's Blog
Hospitalised with MCADD
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a...
over a year ago
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a dangerous situation if you're diagnosed with MCADD.
./techtipsy
What I've learned running Linux and Windows off of USB flash drives
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of...
2 weeks ago
I’ve recently made an effort to reduce the amount of tech stuff that I own. Lack of space, lack of time and the guilt
of storing perfectly functional hardware unused in a box were the main motivators.
This has resulted in experiments with my assortment of USB flash storage that...
Engineers Need Art
Tom Dowdy
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in...
over a year ago
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in Lawrence, Kansas.
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wiring
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that...
a year ago
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that I’ve been dreading: the wiring.
It’s scary because I really have no clue what I’m doing, and mistakes can be very costly and time-consuming.
I’ve taken my time to double- and...
Buck on Software
Explaining the growth software sell-off
The terminal value double whammy of rising interest rates
over a year ago
The terminal value double whammy of rising interest rates
Posts on Made of...
Running Tensorflow on AWS GPUs
I’ve been spending some time learning deep learning and tensorflow recently, and as part of that...
over a year ago
I’ve been spending some time learning deep learning and tensorflow recently, and as part of that project I wanted to be able to train models using GPUs on EC2. This post contains some notes on what it took to get that working. As many people have commented, the environment setup...
Matt Mullenweg
Automattic Alignment
Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Since I last blogged here, WP Engine...
2 months ago
Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Since I last blogged here, WP Engine filed a meritless lawsuit and Automattic responded, and there’s been a hurricane of public activity and press. Inside of Automattic, there’s been a parallel debate and process....
Willem's Blog
Apple Watch as Phone
Embark on a digital detox journey as I swap my smartphone for an Apple Watch Ultra, exploring the...
a year ago
Embark on a digital detox journey as I swap my smartphone for an Apple Watch Ultra, exploring the liberating yet challenging world of wearable tech.
Ian's Blog
What the heck is OCSP?
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web...
over a year ago
The online certificate status protocol, or OCSP for short, is a way for TLS clients (like your web browser) to check if a certificate has been revoked or not.
Certificate Revocation?
With asymmetrical encryption, your encryption is only as good as long as your private key remains...
Posts on Made of...
Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisible
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of...
a year ago
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of Expertise” by Gary Klein and Robert Hoffman. It’s excellent and I recommend you read it when you have a chance.
Klein and Hoffman discuss the ability of experts to “see what is not...
Willem's Blog
Climbing Mount Etna
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
over a year ago
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
Willem's Blog
Some thoughts on touch screen user interface design
I am working on a new app involving personal health that requires a natural intuitive interface that...
over a year ago
I am working on a new app involving personal health that requires a natural intuitive interface that works well on touch screens. It's good to check out some best practices for touch UI design
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON library from scratch: a tour through modern C++
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is...
over a year ago
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is cheap. std::shared_ptr
means I don't have to manage any memory; no
more new/delete! (But try as I might to
understand std::unique_ptr, I'm just not there yet.)
The syntax has also...
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…
Willem's Blog
Giving AI Training
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent...
a year ago
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent AI training session that's reshaping professional landscapes.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Binius: highly efficient proofs over binary fields
7 months ago
Louwrentius
Improving iSCSI Native Multi Pathing Round Robin performance
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must...
over a year ago
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must also upgrade your network hardware as well. You may even need to replace existing fiber optic cabling if it's not rated for 10 Gbit.
So I decided to still just go for plain old 1...
Avestura's Blog
How to change visibility in massive GitHub organizations like EpicGames?
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
over a year ago
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
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...
Posts on Made of...
Lab Notebooking for the Software Engineer
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition to just documenting things after the fact. Today, I’m going to share the techniques that I’ve found useful to try to get in the habit of lab-notebooking my work, even though I...
Arduino Blog
Can remote co-presence keep distant human connections alive?
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social...
5 months ago
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social interaction to maintain good mental health. Sadly, many of us spend our lives physically separated from our loved ones by great distances or inopportune circumstances. That’s why a team...
Buck on Software
Vertical Aggregation
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
over a year ago
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
Willem's Blog
One year on the ultimate commuter bike
Answering questions from one of the most popular posts of last year, I am reviewing my commuter bike...
over a year ago
Answering questions from one of the most popular posts of last year, I am reviewing my commuter bike after one year of extensive use through winter and summer.
./techtipsy
How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very...
6 months ago
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very reliable piece of hardware, especially for a printer.
Then came Windows 10. The printer would not work out of the box with it and
the official drivers got stuck during installation....
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
Arduino Blog
Make your scary Halloween pumpkin smart with the Plug and Make Kit!
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more...
2 months ago
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more fun and interactive. All you have to do is take the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and Modulino nodes included in your Plug and Make Kit to create an awesome jack-o’-lantern that will light up...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets
over a year ago
Engineers Need Art
Experiments in Printmaking - Part 1
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
9 months ago
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
Posts on Made of...
Computers can be understood
Introduction This post attempts to describe a mindset I’ve come to realize I bring to essentially...
over a year ago
Introduction This post attempts to describe a mindset I’ve come to realize I bring to essentially all of my work with software. I attempt to articulate this mindset, some of its implications and strengths, and some of the ways in which it’s lead me astray.
Software can be...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Blockchain for beginners
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making...
over a year ago
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making distributed crypto-currencies like Bitcoin…
Style over Substance
M4 Hex Socket Thumbscrew Knob Caps
For the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself how to use Fusion 360, a free online cloud-based...
over a year ago
For the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself how to use Fusion 360, a free online cloud-based CAD/CAM program that lets you create your own 3D designs. The best way to learn how to use a new program is to build something you actually need. And my latest design is a work in...
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home...
a year ago
It’s been a while since I last wrote about my ThinkPad T430 that was tasked with being a home server.
After doing some experiments with my setup a couple of times, it is once again the main server for all my self-hosting
needs. However, this time I have made some...
GitButler
Fearless Rebasing
GitButler now supports first class conflicts, which makes rebasing much less annoying. What is...
2 months ago
GitButler now supports first class conflicts, which makes rebasing much less annoying. What is "fearless rebasing"?
Willem's Blog
The best bike computer app: Cyclemeter
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a...
over a year ago
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a steer mounted display.
Posts on Made of...
Disable Transparent Hugepages
tl;dr “Transparent Hugepages” is a Linux kernel feature intended to improve performance by making...
over a year ago
tl;dr “Transparent Hugepages” is a Linux kernel feature intended to improve performance by making more efficient use of your processor’s memory-mapping hardware. It is enabled ("enabled=always") by default in most Linux distributions.
Transparent Hugepages gives some applications...
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.
Jonas Hietala
The Coinparty hackathon, take two
In December I declared that I would enter a Bitcoin Cash hackathon and I was excited to give my...
over a year ago
In December I declared that I would enter a Bitcoin Cash hackathon and I was excited to give my procrastination a kick in the balls. Unfortunately the hackathon was postponed to January just an hour later. Maybe the organizers didn’t think my project was exciting enough or...
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:...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
2 months ago
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Engineers Need Art
Move Fast and Abandon Things
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside...
3 months ago
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside and abandoned.
Matt Mullenweg
UH Magazine, Revisiting My Alma Mater
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political...
a week ago
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Franisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Acing the design interview
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work...
over a year ago
If you haven’t designed an actual system before, design interviews can be tough. Knowing how to work with a particular web service or…
Matt Blewitt
Building a PostgreSQL Extension, Line by Line
I’ve been working on a particular problem - how to offer logical replication for a very large number...
6 months ago
I’ve been working on a particular problem - how to offer logical replication for a very large number of Postgres databases, where I don’t have the ability (or capacity) to liaise with the users of the databases one-to-one. In order to mitigate some of the limitations, I wanted to...
Good Enough
TIL: Overriding Permalink Generation in FriendlyId
FriendlyId is a helpful Ruby gem that streamlines
creating permalinks and slugs for Rails...
3 months ago
FriendlyId is a helpful Ruby gem that streamlines
creating permalinks and slugs for Rails applications. In Pika we're using it to help with
generating permalinks for blog posts and pages as well as slugs for tags. When a customer
wrote in with a request to modify the behavior of...
computers are bad
2024-09-08 private lines
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs)....
3 months ago
I have been meaning, for some time, to write about common carrier switching
arrangements (CCSAs). These could be considered an early form of products like
"virtual private ethernet:" a private telephone network that was served by the
same switching machines that handled the...
Willem's Blog
iPad Pro as primary computer
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
over a year ago
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
Louwrentius
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for home usage
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you...
over a year ago
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you run RAID 5 you're told that you are a crazy person.
Using RAID 5 is portrayed as an unreasonable risk to the availability of your data. It is suggested that it is likely that you...
./techtipsy
Database optimization adventures on low-end hardware
I used to work on a short-term project a while ago where the goal was to visualize some metrics that...
over a year ago
I used to work on a short-term project a while ago where the goal was to visualize some metrics that were collected from
a pretty fancy smart home setup. This data included power usage of various sections of the building, temperature
sensors, water usage levels and more. The data...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Smartwatches vs Mechanical watches
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
over a year ago
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge
2 months ago
Home on Erik...
Data architecture vs backend architecture
A modern tech stack typically involves at least a frontend and backend but relatively quickly also...
over a year ago
A modern tech stack typically involves at least a frontend and backend but relatively quickly also grows to include a data platform. This typically grows out of the need for ad-hoc analysis and reporting but possibly evolves into a whole oil refinery of cronjobs, dashboards, bulk...
Simply Explained
My Sixth Year as YouTube Creator (statistics + retrospective)
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most...
over a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most successful year on YouTube so far, and I'd like to share some statistics and thoughts. I will also go over how my email newsletter is doing and where I'm headed. And finally, I'll set...
Style over Substance
Create a Hue-compatible DIY LED light sculpture
Learn how to create your own Hue compatible LED light sculpture, inspired by by the REFLEKTION art,...
over a year ago
Learn how to create your own Hue compatible LED light sculpture, inspired by by the REFLEKTION art, using cheap LED strips and DIY parts you can order online.
The post Create a Hue-compatible DIY LED light sculpture appeared first on Style over Substance.
Jonas Hietala
Gruvbox Syntax Highlighting for Pandoc
Edit: I have updated the highlighting again so the inline code used as examples have changed. I...
over a year ago
Edit: I have updated the highlighting again so the inline code used as examples have changed. I guess I should’ve used images to record the look.
Recently when I reinstalled Slackware I decided to restyle my workspace as well. I settled on gruvbox with neovim and using the...
Electronics etc…
Increasing Frequency Counter Precision with Linear Regression
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
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...
axio.ms
A small ode to the CRT
Built October 2018
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes. As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at...
over a year ago
Built October 2018
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes. As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at 50Hz, or made a loud whistle at 15.625KHz (back when I could still hear it). CRTs just seemed crude, “electro-brutalist” contraptions from the valve era. They were heavy, and...
Posts on Made of...
New reptyr feature: TTY-stealing
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally...
over a year ago
Ever since I wrote reptyr, I’ve been frustrated by a number of issues in reptyr that I fundamentally didn’t know how to solve within the reptyr model. Most annoyingly, reptyr fundamentally only worked on single processes, and could not attach processes with children, making it...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 3
over a year ago
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Writing good technical explanations
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and...
over a year ago
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and many thousands of books, talks and blog…
Notes on software...
Writing a simple Python compiler: 1. hello, fibonacci
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since...
over a year ago
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since Python has a builtin parser
library and because a
number of CPython internals are exposed for extension
writers.
By the end of this post, in a few hundred lines of Python, we'll be able...
Louwrentius
Got myself a Norco RPC-4020
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion....
over a year ago
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion. The current 6 TB RAID 6 storage server does not have any
room for expantion.
This Norco RPC-4020 case with 20 hot swap drive bays does however. Don't know
what to fill it with yet.
Home on Erik...
Business secrets from terrible people
I get bored reading management books very easily and lately I've been reading about a wide range of...
over a year ago
I get bored reading management books very easily and lately I've been reading about a wide range of almost arbitrary topics. One of the lenses I tend to read through is to see different management styles in different environments.
Arduino Blog
Explore e-paper technology with Nano Matter and the new EPDK-Matter from Pervasive Displays
We’re excited to share that Pervasive Displays has just launched the E-Paper Development Kit for...
a week ago
We’re excited to share that Pervasive Displays has just launched the E-Paper Development Kit for Matter! This groundbreaking, self-contained kit is designed to revolutionize how smart home devices use e-paper displays, enhancing user experience while driving down energy...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
May Updates + New Essay On Moral AI
A few months back, I read a tweet from Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) which stuck in my...
a year ago
A few months back, I read a tweet from Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) which stuck in my mind: “the long term goal is to build AGI that loves people the way parents love their children”.
Style over Substance
DIY: Use an IKEA VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor in Home Assistant with ESPHome
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product...
over a year ago
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product line, one unit that stands out is the VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor. This cheap (just €9,99) sensor measures the air quality in your home, using a simple traffic light scheme to...
Jonas Hietala
Rewriting my Neovim config in Lua
This screenshot betrays just how much productive time was wasted setting this up.
I’ve got tons of...
a year ago
This screenshot betrays just how much productive time was wasted setting this up.
I’ve got tons of things to do; clean the bathrooms, prototype an idea for a SaaS and ponder world peace.
So naturally the procrastination took over and I rewrote my Neovim configuration in...
Applied Cartography
Finding null JSON values in Postgres
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the...
7 months ago
Postgres' JSONB functionality is fast and useful but when I find myself dropping down from the Django ORM into
SQL to do weird things, the syntax strikes me as confusing and arcane. As such, when I need to do esoteric things it
takes me longer time than I'd like, and in hopes...
Arduino Blog
ardEEG is an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi shield for measuring biosignals
The secrets to most of the mind’s mysteries may still elude us, but we’ve made a tremendous amount...
7 months ago
The secrets to most of the mind’s mysteries may still elude us, but we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in reading signals produced by the brain. We may not understand exactly what is going on, but we can see the result and utilize it. And now you can start...
Neil Madden
Some incomplete thoughts about Gödel
I saw another article on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems linked from Reddit today. It’s a topic I’ve...
over a year ago
I saw another article on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems linked from Reddit today. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for some time. Although many articles do a decent job in giving an idea of what the big deal is (and this one is pretty good), they can sometimes give a...
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...
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