Applied Cartography
Fathom
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly...
2 weeks ago
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly good reason to do so until the news broke that Paul Jarvis was selling his share of the company to Jack Ellis, the technical co-founder. [1]
Anyway, the two thoughts:
I think Fathom...
Willem's Blog
Fietselfstedentocht 2017
Cycling the 235KM long Fietselfstedentocht through Friesland
over a year ago
Cycling the 235KM long Fietselfstedentocht through Friesland
Simply Explained
Integrate Home Assistant with Apple Reminders
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos....
over a year ago
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos. This is trickier as it sounds, because Reminders has no API that can be accessed from Home Assistant. Here's how I worked around that problem with a script, input text helper and...
Jonas Hietala
How I did the layout for my self-published book
This is a rundown of how I typeset and laid out my self-published book for the web version, the EPUB...
10 months ago
This is a rundown of how I typeset and laid out my self-published book for the web version, the EPUB version, and the printed version.
I was planning to include many more details, but the project took a lot longer than planned so I’ve forgotten some things.
Web page
I started...
Applied Cartography
11ty
.njk as the default templating language is an odd choice, and I find myself stubbing my toe on it a...
10 months ago
.njk as the default templating language is an odd choice, and I find myself stubbing my toe on it a good amount. Maybe that's a me thing!
It is extremely fast. This site has around 2300 pages; Eleventy is compiling it in around two seconds.
The extensibility ergonomics are...
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
over a year ago
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Garbled Circuits Primer
over a year ago
Old Vintage...
Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games...
5 months ago
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games to a more downmarket age. If you couldn't afford the real device, your alternative was these inexpensive, inadequate facsimiles faithful only to one's gauzy recollection. As their...
Louwrentius
Corsair CM PSU-750HX seems ok
I had to replace my Coolermaster PSU and after some searching on the interweb,
I chose the Corsair...
over a year ago
I had to replace my Coolermaster PSU and after some searching on the interweb,
I chose the Corsair CMPSU-750HX. One of the reasons is that Corsair states
that this PSU can withstand 50 degree Celcius in continuous operation on full
load.
The package is very, clean, with all the...
Louwrentius
Firewire: the forgotten security risk
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not...
over a year ago
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not that prevalent, cheap computers lack Firewire, but they often
have a PCMCIA slot.
The thing is this: Firewire allows direct access to all RAM of your computer.
An attacker...
Jonas Hietala
Installing Krita on Slackware 14.1
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for...
over a year ago
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for linux.
removepkg calligra
Install some dependencies from Slackbuilds.
gsl
libgexiv2
libpqxx
pstoedit
Get Krita.
The original guide recommends building in ~/kde4 but I moved i to...
Applied Cartography
Letters to a Young Bartender
Every straight white male is forced, character-creation-screen-style, to choose one overtly...
2 weeks ago
Every straight white male is forced, character-creation-screen-style, to choose one overtly consumptive hobby that in some small part defines their twenties and – God willing — their enduring adulthood. Some choose sourdough; many choose barbecue; I chose mixology.
(A...
Applied Cartography
The taste of beer
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
There’s a...
6 months ago
Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.
There’s a relatively famous line from Bezos, circulated first at YC in ’08 and then more recently by the folks at Acquired (a great pod!):
Jeff uses this analogy for AWS. He talks about...
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?
Jonas Hietala
Zucchini Crabcakes
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only...
over a year ago
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only supposed to be an appetizer:
Crabcakes: Surprisingly delicious. Both me and Veronica gives them a 7.
Zucchini: While I thought they passed Veronica said “Zucchini is not my thing” and...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 20 Timelapse
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I...
over a year ago
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I lost the first few hours as I forgot to turn it on…
Anyway here’s the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABVPlRaA5iI
Style over Substance
How to use a Phase One H20 digital back on a medium format Hasselblad V camera (500EL/M)
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my...
over a year ago
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my Hasselblad 500EL/M medium format camera. Or, simply put, I bought an expensive old gadget for my even older analog camera, making it a digital camera. A gadget that was released in the...
computers are bad
2023-09-03 plastic money
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in...
a year ago
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our
modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the
balance tracking and authorization decisions happen...
./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...
Posts on Made of...
Testing and feedback loops
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about...
over a year ago
Testing and feedback loops This post tries to set out one mental model I have for thinking about testing and the purpose testing serves in software engineering, and to explore some of the suggestions of this model.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I think a lot about working in...
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.
Willem's Blog
Your own addressbook and calendar cloud
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data...
over a year ago
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data and share it between your devices.
Buck on Software
Winds of Change
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
6 months ago
Software is maybe, just maybe about to get exciting
Jonas Hietala
A small LED Cube
As a follow up of my hobby project goals this autumn I have now completed the smallest goal there. I...
over a year ago
As a follow up of my hobby project goals this autumn I have now completed the smallest goal there. I got started a little with soldering by constructing a small 3x3x3 LED cube.
Although extremely hard to see in this picture it actually worked without a hitch! It’s not the...
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
computers are bad
2024-04-05 the life of one earth station
Sometimes, when I am feeling down, I read about failed satellite TV (STV)
services. Don't we all?...
8 months ago
Sometimes, when I am feeling down, I read about failed satellite TV (STV)
services. Don't we all? As a result, I've periodically come across a company
called AlphaStar Television Network. PrimeStar may have had a rough life, but
AlphaStar barely had one at all: it launched in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
10 months ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Zk-SNARKs: Under the Hood
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old...
over a year ago
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects, with help from the formidable GitPython project.
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
Louwrentius
Lion's FileVault does not support Bootcamp and external boot disks
Read the comments as they may provide useful information for your particular situation
I boot my...
over a year ago
Read the comments as they may provide useful information for your particular situation
I boot my iMac from an external FW800 SSD. I found out that it is impossible to
encrypt this disk using the new FileVault as part of Lion.
Furthermore, I also found out that if you have a disk...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Cloud is now natively supported on tablets
We’re excited to announce the release of IoT Remote v3.0.0, featuring a native tablet version...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce the release of IoT Remote v3.0.0, featuring a native tablet version (available for both Android and iOS platforms) optimized for unlocking the full potential of larger screen sizes. What is the Arduino IoT Remote app? The Arduino IoT Remote app allows...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Indie Rails
Chatted with Jess and Jeremy about a whole slew of things, from pricing strategy to terrifying and...
2 months ago
Chatted with Jess and Jeremy about a whole slew of things, from pricing strategy to terrifying and arcane differences between various Markdown parsers (including why I hate Slack.) They were particularly kind and gracious given that the amount of production-quality Rails I've...
Arduino Blog
Storing ephemeral micropoetry on RFID cards for bite-sized readings
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of...
3 months ago
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of poetry from cover-to-cover over the course of a few sessions, the majority of people seem to prefer enjoying poetry in occasional little chunks. And unlike the epic poems of Greek...
Opsbros
Pro-tip for Baristas
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup,...
over a year ago
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup, you've definitely come across the issue that when it's 'overfilled' it will overflow when the lid is put back on. There is a
Applied Cartography
Globals in Histoire
Histoire, like so many other tools in the Vue ecosystem, is a bit of a neglected younger sibling to...
9 months ago
Histoire, like so many other tools in the Vue ecosystem, is a bit of a neglected younger sibling to Storybook — a little bit uglier, with worse documentation and a couple rough edges, but much more tightly integrated with Vue and Vite. [1]
One thing that was not particularly...
Louwrentius
Blu Ray is dead
HD-DVD may be dead, but Blu Ray is just as dead. The whole concept of optical
media is dead....
over a year ago
HD-DVD may be dead, but Blu Ray is just as dead. The whole concept of optical
media is dead. Honestly, who is still burning CD's or DVD's nowadays? (If you
are, why for Christ sake? I can't think of a single good reason) And at 10
euros ($100) for a single Blu Ray disk, you must...
Home on Erik...
Pinterest open sources Pinball
Pinterest just open sourced Pinball which seems like an interesting Luigi alternative. There's two...
over a year ago
Pinterest just open sourced Pinball which seems like an interesting Luigi alternative. There's two blog posts: Pinball: Building workflow management (from 2014) and Open-sourcing Pinball (from this week). The author has a comment in the comments thread on Hacker News:
Christian Selig
Apollo for Reddit 1.9
Apollo 1.9’s a massive update to Apollo that’s taken months and months to complete, but I’m really...
over a year ago
Apollo 1.9’s a massive update to Apollo that’s taken months and months to complete, but I’m really happy with the result, and it brings together a ton of ideas from the community to make Apollo even nicer to use. The update includes a variety of features around crossposts, flair,...
Louwrentius
Configuring, attacking and securing VRRP on Linux
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple...
over a year ago
The VRRP or Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol helps you create a reliable network by using multiple routers in an active/passive configuration. If the primary router fails, the backup router takes over almost seamlessly.
This is how VRRP works:
Clients connect to a virtual...
Posts on Made of...
Three kinds of memory leaks
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can...
over a year ago
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can immediately identify this as a likely symptom of a memory leak.
But when we say “memory leak”, what do we actually mean? In my experience, apparent memory leaks divide into three broad...
Willem's Blog
Hello, stranger
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one...
a year ago
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one individual delves into the lost art of talking to strangers and the profound connections it can forge."
Louwrentius
Laptop or netbook as router?
If you want a router for distribution of internet to your computers at home,
there are several...
over a year ago
If you want a router for distribution of internet to your computers at home,
there are several options.
buy some embedded device from Linksys, Draytek, Asus, 3com, ZyXtel or
netgear
This type of hardware is cheap, economical, and gets you up and running in a
few minutes. The...
GitButler
Why GitHub Actually Won
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
3 months ago
How GitHub _actually_ became the dominant force it is today, from one of it's cofounders.
Louwrentius
Visual representation of hard drives and their temperature
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where...
over a year ago
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where they are located in the chassis. My Norco 4020 case
has twenty drives in RAID 6, plus two operating system drives in RAID 1. I
wrote a script that shows me the temperature of each...
./techtipsy
This site will be offline on 2022-08-17 between 18:00-19:00 EEST
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an...
over a year ago
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an opportunity to send a signal and test the capabilities of
my UPS.
I’ve prepared for this moment with my self-hosting setup, let’s see how well it
holds up. Hopefully better than...
Simply Explained
EZStore: a tiny serverless datastore for IoT data (DynamoDB + Lambda)
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but...
over a year ago
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but flexible data store. I just want to push data to an API and query and visualize it later on.There are many solutions for this, but most are expensive or very limited. So I set out to...
Willem's Blog
Saving a MacBook Air with exploded battery
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
over a year ago
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Wealth distribution in the United States
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United...
2 months ago
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United States.
This inspired me to
make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States.
It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph,
almost the entire US...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Sell
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
over a year ago
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
Christian Selig
Announcing Apollo: a new Reddit app for iPhone
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called...
over a year ago
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called Apollo and it’s a new Reddit app for iPhone.
I’ve been a Reddit user for about four years now, and the site is a constant source of interesting discussion, hilarity and news for me...
Computer Ads from...
Electronic Protection Devices' Electro-Clamp line
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
9 months ago
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
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...
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...
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...
Arduino Blog
5 ways to use Arduino with kids
One of the great things about making is that it really is for everyone — every budget, every skill...
7 months ago
One of the great things about making is that it really is for everyone — every budget, every skill level, and every age group. Children are one of the groups that can benefit the most from Arduino. Getting exposed to making and home automation from an early age can be enormously...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 4 (Pet Sounds)
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
computers are bad
2023-10-22 cooler screens
Audible even over the squeal of an HVAC blower with a suffering belt, the whine
of small, high...
a year ago
Audible even over the squeal of an HVAC blower with a suffering belt, the whine
of small, high velocity fans pervades the grocery side of this Walgreens. Were
they always this loud? I'm not sure; some of the fans sound distinctly
unhealthy. Still, it's a familiar kind of noise to...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Home on Erik...
Microsoft's new marketing strategy: give up
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to...
over a year ago
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to appeal to that target audience. Their new marketing strategy finally admits what's been long known: the correlation between “business casual” and using Microsoft products:
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 22 Here I Come
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on...
over a year ago
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on studying for it, I am now ready to declare my entry into Ludum Dare 22! I’ve been away far too long, with my entries for the 17th and the 20th dare being almost a century away, the...
Computer Ads from...
T/Maker: Tiny Software Company Takes on the Giants (Interview)
An interesting look at a company with less than 20 employees playing with the big boys
2 months ago
An interesting look at a company with less than 20 employees playing with the big boys
Old Vintage...
Scenes from the Solbourne Computer corporate video, March 1992
Solbourne Computer, which for a number of years was probably Sun's most significant early competitor...
a year ago
Solbourne Computer, which for a number of years was probably Sun's most significant early competitor in SPARC-based systems. Solbourne was the first to market in 1989 with multiprocessing SPARC servers based on their custom circuit-switched 108MB/s KBus interconnect, running a...
Arduino Blog
Assess your aquarium’s health with an AI-enabled ultrasonic sensor
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can...
7 months ago
Below the surface of any body of water, harmful amounts of toxic gases and contaminates can accumulate, which leads to a loss in fish and plant populations if not fixed quickly. But because most water testing, especially in aquariums, is done primarily on the surface, vital...
Notes on software...
Writing a web server from scratch: 1. HTTP and sockets
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd...
over a year ago
Say we have some HTML:
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello world!</h1>
</body>
</html>
And say we'd like to be able to render this page in a web browser. If
the server is hosted locally we may want to enter
localhost:9000/hello-world.html in the address bar, hit
enter, make a...
Good Enough
Lettini is Good Enough
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know...
a year ago
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know much about us. So we’re starting a new Q&A column to introduce ourselves, one-at-a-time, starting with our resident designer…
Who the hell do you think you are?
👋 Hello, I’m...
Notes on software...
Deploying FreeBSD on Linode unattended in minutes
I became a FreeBSD user over 2 years ago when I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about. I swapped...
over a year ago
I became a FreeBSD user over 2 years ago when I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about. I swapped my y410p dual-booting Windows / Ubuntu
with FreeBSD running Gnome 3. I learned a lot during the transition
and came to appreciate FreeBSD as a user. I soon began running...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Intel Edison
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
6 months ago
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
Willem's Blog
Migrating to the Cloud
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of...
over a year ago
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of cables, cabinets and bandwidth!
Arduino Blog
7 powerful ways to integrate Collaborative Coding into education with the Arduino Cloud
Collaborative coding in education can be a game-changer for students, providing them with real-world...
2 months ago
Collaborative coding in education can be a game-changer for students, providing them with real-world skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. With the new collaborating coding feature of the Arduino Cloud, students can collaborate in real time on coding projects,...
Louwrentius
Installation of ZFS on Linux hangs on Debian Wheezy
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to...
over a year ago
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to compile the ZFS for Linux kernel module. I've installed apt-get install build-essential but that wasn't enough.
The apt-get install debian-zfs command would just hang.
I noticed a...
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...
Yazin Alirhayim
Part 1: Will greater access to capital spark Bahrain’s economy?
Today, I was on a panel discussing lending and access to capital (not a wooden panel, mind you — but...
over a year ago
Today, I was on a panel discussing lending and access to capital (not a wooden panel, mind you — but a panel of speakers. Now that I think about it, we may have been sitting on wooden panel flooring).
At any rate, the discussion covered alot of ground, all as part of the larger...
Applied Cartography
Things take time
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi...
7 months ago
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD — was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of...
Notes on software...
Obsession
In your professional and personal life, I don't believe there is a stronger motivation than having...
4 months ago
In your professional and personal life, I don't believe there is a stronger motivation than having something in mind and the desire to do it. Yet the natural way to deal with a desire to do something is to justify why it's not possible.
"I want to read more books but nobody reads...
Good Enough
TIL: JavaScript Turbo Stream Requests
I am working on search for Album Whale and I was very confused when my JavaScript fetch requests...
a year ago
I am working on search for Album Whale and I was very confused when my JavaScript fetch requests were not resulting in turbo_stream rendering getting displayed on my page. I checked my logs to see if the render was happening. I looked for missing <%= tags. Debugged and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
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...
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
4 months ago
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
Willem's Blog
Designing an interface for a food ordering page
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need...
over a year ago
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need to be accommodated on a very small screen.
Push to Prod
Best Questions and Answers to the “Terrifying Netflix Concurrency Bug” Post
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so...
3 weeks ago
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so complicated? Plus many others.
Arduino Blog
A new Plug and Make Kit challenge! A game of rhythm and creativity
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of...
a week ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of turning ideas into reality. It enables everyone to focus on the fun of creating with the power of the UNO R4 WiFi and a user-friendly, modular design – bypassing the complexities of...
Jonas Hietala
Tufte style sidenotes and marginnotes in Pollen
When evaluating Pollen I complained about markdown/pandoc’s lack of sidenote handling. I have solved...
over a year ago
When evaluating Pollen I complained about markdown/pandoc’s lack of sidenote handling. I have solved it for Pollen but felt it deserved it’s own post.
A caveat: I generated Tufte CSS style sidenotes and marginnotes which made it more complex than if I had simply generated...
Louwrentius
Improving web application security by implementing database security
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement...
over a year ago
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement defense-in-depth security in web applications. 99.9% of applications use a single database account, with root-like privileges. Easiest for the developer of course, and the database is just a...
Louwrentius
'Tool of the month: iftop - advanced bandwidth monitoring'
The utility iftop allows you to monitor bandwidth usage. It is in some
sense similar to tools like...
over a year ago
The utility iftop allows you to monitor bandwidth usage. It is in some
sense similar to tools like iptraf, dstat and bwm-ng. Iftop is more special
than those. Because iftop lets you monitor the speed of individual TCP / UDP
connections. Basically, you will be able to determine...
Arduino Blog
This miniature monorail stays upright with the help of gyro stabilization
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is...
3 months ago
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is actually a very wide beam. The car’s load tires (often literal truck or trailer tires) roll on top of that beam and guide tires clamp the sides of the beam, preventing the car from...
Arduino Blog
Finally, you can DIY your own espresso machine
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the...
3 months ago
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the world of espresso machines. To satisfy enthusiasts, an espresso machine needs to provide precise control over temperature, pressure, and flow to enable the perfect pull. But if...
Lighthouse Blog
What I want to achieve with Lighthouse
10 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...
Home on Erik...
Recurrent Neural Networks for Collaborative Filtering
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering....
over a year ago
I’ve been spending quite some time lately playing around with RNN’s for collaborative filtering. RNN’s are models that predict a sequence of something. The beauty is that this something can be anything really – as long as you can design an output gate with a proper loss function,...
Arduino Blog
Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May!
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino...
7 months ago
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
On Life and Lisp
Growing up Alyssa
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky...
a year ago
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky ones.
After four painful years, I was fortunate enough to access gender-affirming health care. First testosterone blockers. Later estrogen, the stuff my peers soaked in for years while I...
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.
Willem's Blog
Scalable application design without magic
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I...
over a year ago
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I did this by leveraging the client's computing power having it handle most of the user interaction workload.
Jonas Hietala
New Year, New Theme: 100 Things
Happy New Year, Everyone! 2009 was great in many ways; I drove a submarine (yeah quite literally), I...
over a year ago
Happy New Year, Everyone! 2009 was great in many ways; I drove a submarine (yeah quite literally), I released 6 experimental games and recently I discovered the completely amazing game Evil Genius but lets try to make 2010 even better!
So let’s forget our small mishaps (yes I’m...
Jonas Hietala
Back to lazy.nvim
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim...
6 months ago
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim again.
This is a short post to explain why—at this point in time—the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.
Problems with rocks.nvim
Too many weird issues.
I had quite a few...
Arduino Blog
Introducing Arduino cores with ZephyrOS (beta): take your embedded development to the next level
Last July, when we announced the beginning of the transition from Mbed to Zephyr, we promised to...
2 weeks ago
Last July, when we announced the beginning of the transition from Mbed to Zephyr, we promised to release the first beta by the end of 2024. Today, we are excited to announce the first release of Arduino cores with ZephyrOS in beta! ZephyrOS is an open-source, real-time operating...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Iron Blogger: Blogging for Beer
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while....
over a year ago
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while. The reason is that I’ve recently started an ongoing event with a whole bunch of friends around here to encourage us to blog more.
Like so many good ideas, it all started with a...
Opsbros
Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a...
over a year ago
The Tasmota Quad Switch Breakout is designed to make connecting a custom quad light switch to a Wemos D1 mini running Tasmota super super easy.
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...
Louwrentius
Determining smartphone market share using wireless sniffing
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most...
over a year ago
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most smartphones support wifi and most people don't bother disabling
wifi when they go outdoors1. If wifi is left on, it is possible to detect these
smartphones and track their movement. To...
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...
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...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240102
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
11 months ago
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Louwrentius
'Linux: monitor a directory for files'
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The...
over a year ago
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The inotifywait comand line utility can be used in shell scripts to monitor
directories for new files. It can also be used to monitor files for changes.
Inotifywait must be installed and is...
Home on Erik...
What is your motivation?
I've been trying to learn Clojure. I keep telling people I meet that I really want to learn Clojure,...
over a year ago
I've been trying to learn Clojure. I keep telling people I meet that I really want to learn Clojure, but still every night I can't get myself to spend time with it. It's unclear if I really want to learn Clojure or just want to have learned Clojure?
Jonas Hietala
The Top Idea
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple...
over a year ago
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple lua, later perl, which announced when a new day9 episode has come. Later I expanded it to search for new manga episodes, but now it’s broken and unfinished.
In an attempt to learn...
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
./techtipsy
Tiered storage: use the right tool for the job
Hard drives are still the default choice for many homelab and data hoarding
enthusiasts. They still...
a year ago
Hard drives are still the default choice for many homelab and data hoarding
enthusiasts. They still hold the gigabytes per dollar advantage over SSD-s (for now),
and if you buy the big external drives and take the drives out of the enclosures,
you can get a pretty good...
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...
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
computers are bad
2023-03-13 the door close button
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been...
a year ago
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been the case that you get what you pay for and Computers
Are Bad is nothing if not affordable. Still, this is a topic on which I am
moderately passionate and so I can probably stretch...
Notes on software...
Writing to be read
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails,...
over a year ago
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails, guides, etc. Each provides immense
value; a document may be the key to an important process. The goal is
to remove barriers -- to encourage understanding and correct
application of...
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:...
Jonas Hietala
August theme: Bare Minimum
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next...
over a year ago
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next game. This could really be anything, from graphics to user interaction… But I’ve got an idea. It’ll be a real challange for me to make but hopefully I’ll have a game in a few weeks...
Jonas Hietala
Pushing toward Git
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository...
over a year ago
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository deleted, never became anything
Available on Github
It’s nothing special really, if you want take a look at the code and help me improve it.
Good Enough
Yes, Facebook Is Terrible, but Also…
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good...
a year ago
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good and useful interactions, the algorithm brought me down, I didn’t have a lot of desire to keep up with old acquaintances, and hearing everyone’s political stance was not good for...
Matt Blewitt
Lua: The Little Language That Could
Lua is probably my favourite “little language” - a language designed to have low cognitive load, and...
a year ago
Lua is probably my favourite “little language” - a language designed to have low cognitive load, and be easy to learn and use. It’s embedded in a lot of software, such as Redis, NGINX via OpenResty and Wireshark. It’s also used as a scripting language in games such as World of...
Posts on Made of...
Navigating the Linux Kernel
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way...
over a year ago
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way around the Linux kernel. I’m not sure I have much in the way of systematic advice for tracking down the answers to questions about the Linux kernel, but thinking about what I do when...
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...
./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...
Lighthouse Blog
How to manage content subscriptions
6 months ago
Simply Explained
I Built a CO2 Sensor and It Terrifies Me
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is...
over a year ago
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is equally important for our health and even our cognitive performance.In this blog post we'll look at a DIY CO2 sensor: how it runs ESPHome, how it integrates with Home Assistant, how it...
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...
Arduino Blog
Synjets provide non-contact haptic feedback
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with...
7 months ago
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with opportunity for germ transmission. In 2019, most people didn’t think twice about touching a gas pump handle or an ATM touchscreen, but it quickly became apparent that such contact presents...
./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...
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...
Applied Cartography
PSA: mess around with Kolo
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with...
9 months ago
I had bookmarked Kolo many months ago to try out and finally got a chance to integrate it with Buttondown — a process that I expected to take a couple hours on a lazy Sunday and in fact took ten minutes and three lines of code.
If you have a Django app, I think you should drop...
Good Enough
Cool Songs Don’t Die
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing...
a year ago
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing 22 years ago and ran for 5 seasons and was a pretty big hit and launched the careers of two bonafide movie stars and featured a cast of very well known supporting actors. So yeah,...
Arduino Blog
Adding voice commands to a LEGO planetarium set with an Arduino Nano 33 IoT
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning...
4 months ago
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning and creative experiences, and for Electromaker’s Robin Mitchell, this was the LEGO planetarium set. With it, rotational input will cause the Earth and moon models to orbit around the...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 4: Free newsletter to RSS tool
a month ago
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...
Good Enough
Let's talk about conversations
If you subscribe to our newsletter — which you do, right? — then you'll know that recently we've...
9 months ago
If you subscribe to our newsletter — which you do, right? — then you'll know that recently we've been thinking about conversations.
We're a small group making fun software for people, and we like to have conversations with those people; the lovely folks who like our take on...
Neil Madden
API Security in Action is published!
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is...
over a year ago
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is now finally published. PDF copies are available now, with printed copies shipping by the end of the month. Kindle/ePub take a little bit longer but should be out in a few weeks...
computers are bad
2023-08-19 meanwhile elsewhere
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard...
a year ago
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard time getting to it. Instead I did the yard work, edited
and uploaded a YouTube video, and then spewed out a Cohost thread as long as a
blog post. So in lieu of your regularly...
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....
Arduino Blog
Arduino IDE 2.3.3: discover new support for shared spaces and more!
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This...
2 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino IDE 2.3.3 is now live! What’s in the new version This new release is packed with improvements, including one feature we’re particularly proud of: support for shared spaces in Arduino Cloud. If you have a Cloud Business plan or School...
Home on Erik...
Calculating cosine similarities using dimensionality reduction
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity...
over a year ago
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity Computation (DISCO)
I just glanced at the paper, and there's some cool stuff going on from a theoretical perspective. What I'm curious about is why they didn't decide to use...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
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!
computers are bad
2023-07-15 underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet...
a year ago
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit").
It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but,
you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for...
Matt Blewitt
Unreasonably Effective Patterns
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data...
over a year ago
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data services. This post explores three patterns used to reduce operational burden and increase system safety and resiliency: state machines (and associated state-transition tables),...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × People & Blogs
There are few pleasures greater than getting to be profiled for an interview series that you've been...
2 months ago
There are few pleasures greater than getting to be profiled for an interview series that you've been reading for months, and last week I got to do exactly that.
To browse Manu's site — not just this interview series — feels a bit like walking on a quiet beach in autumn: there's a...
Louwrentius
Belkin Gigabit USB 2.0 adapter works perfectly with Linux
My ISP upgraded my internet connection speed to a whopping 120 Mbit. I am
using a mac mini as my...
over a year ago
My ISP upgraded my internet connection speed to a whopping 120 Mbit. I am
using a mac mini as my internet router. As you may be aware, the mini has
only one network interface, so I added a second interface using a USB to
ethernet adapter. This adapter was limited to 100 Mbit, so...
Arduino Blog
A pair of Arduino UNO R4 boards power this Tron-inspired, decked-out shop room
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop...
6 months ago
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop renovation project where he is rearranging tools, tidying up various spaces, and even creating a dedicated “clean” room for his collection of 3D printers/electronics work. With its...
Notes on software...
Parser generators vs. handwritten parsers: surveying major language implementations in 2021
Developers often think parser generators are the sole legit way to
build programming language...
over a year ago
Developers often think parser generators are the sole legit way to
build programming language frontends, possibly because compiler
courses in university teach lex/yacc variants. But do any modern
programming languages actually use parser generators anymore?
To find out, this post...
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.
computers are bad
2023-06-02 the reinvention of owens lake
Programming note: In an effort to introduce an exciting new social aspect to
Computers Are Bad (a...
a year ago
Programming note: In an effort to introduce an exciting new social aspect to
Computers Are Bad (a functional necessity to appease early-stage investor
demands for "engagement")¸ I am launching a Matrix room for CAB readers.
You can join it! Do whatever you do to join rooms in...
Louwrentius
Ubuntu and full disk encryption (FDE)
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create...
over a year ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create an encrypted disk volume based on LUKS. This is different
from the option within the Ubuntu installation to encrypt home directories. To
be able to install Ubuntu and use full disk...
Arduino Blog
DexteriSync lets you walk a mile in the gloves of a user with manual disability
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with...
a month ago
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with disabilities that affect their perception and fine motor skills. A young person without disabilities, for example, may feel that jars are easy to open, while an elderly person with reduced...
Louwrentius
'Linux: using disk labels to counter storage device name changes'
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped...
over a year ago
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped for /dev/sdd and vice versa. The result was some file
system corruption on /dev/sdc, because it was used on a remote system through
iSCSI, using a different file system from...
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
./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...
Louwrentius
Recycle your old laptop display and turn it into a monitor
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just...
over a year ago
During a cleaning spree I decided that it was time to recycle two old laptops that were just collecting dust on a shelf for many years. Although I didn't have any purpose for them anymore, I realised that the displays were still perfectly fine.
This is the display of my old 13"...
Arduino Blog
What if robots could communicate with humans by emitting scents?
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and...
5 months ago
Almost all human-robot interaction (HRI) approaches today rely on three senses: hearing, sight, and touch. Your robot vacuum might beep at you, or play recorded or synthesized speech. An LED on its enclosure might blink to red to signify a problem. And cutting-edge humanoid...
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
Home on Erik...
Momentum strategies
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday...
over a year ago
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday night. Basically I wanted to know whether momentum strategies work well for international stock indexes. I spent a bit of time putting together a strategy that buys the stock index if...
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 9: Feed finding
3 months ago
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Home on Erik...
Luigi: complex pipelines of tasks in Python
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps...
over a year ago
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs, handle dependency resolution, and create visualizations to help manage multiple workflows. It also comes with Hadoop support built in...
Arduino Blog
Project Hub’s new featured pages are your gateway to inspiration!
Arduino’s Project Hub is more than just a platform; it’s a vibrant community where members share...
6 months ago
Arduino’s Project Hub is more than just a platform; it’s a vibrant community where members share their ideas and achievements, contributing to our knowledge base and inspiring everyone to make, learn, and try something new. With close to 5,400 projects, including tutorials,...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: termios(3) and stty
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part...
over a year ago
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 if you’re new here)
In this entry, we’ll look at the interfaces that are used to control the behavior of the “termios” box sitting between the master and slave pty. The behaviors...
Jonas Hietala
Drawing a self portrait
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m...
over a year ago
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m really slow so I stopped a bit before it really was finished.
Obviously I’d like it to be a bit better, but I’m still a little happy about the glasses and the eyebrows. The mouth...
Louwrentius
The security risk of vendor-supplied default SSL certificates
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as...
over a year ago
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as those 'snake oil' certificates (they are called snake oil
certificates for a reason). In practice, I often encounter usage of such
certificates. People may seem to think that as long...
Jonas Hietala
Notifications with xmonad/irssi/urxvt
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I...
over a year ago
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I have not had notifications enabled, so I can see from the statusbar whenever someone messages me. As I’ve never been very active this has been fine, but now I figured it’s time to fix...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Halo and more: exploring incremental verification and SNARKs without pairings
over a year ago
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...
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 6 (End Sound)
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
8 months ago
This post wraps up the sound work on Teacher's Pet.
Arduino Blog
Reimagining the chicken coop with predator detection, Wi-Fi control, and more
The traditional backyard chicken coop is a very simple structure that typically consists of a...
4 months ago
The traditional backyard chicken coop is a very simple structure that typically consists of a nesting area, an egg-retrieval panel, and a way to provide food and water as needed. Realizing that some aspects of raising chickens are too labor-intensive, the Coders Cafe crew decided...
Jonas Hietala
Robot Project Start
So it has begun, the long road until christmas when we’re supposed to have a working warrior robot....
over a year ago
So it has begun, the long road until christmas when we’re supposed to have a working warrior robot. We’re gonna do battle with infrared lasers instead of axes but it might be fun anyway. Luckily for me I’m responsible for software and nothing harder than that! w00p!
We could...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Convex and Concave Dispositions
over a year ago
On Life and Lisp
Hilariously Fast Volume Computation with the Divergence Theorem
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a...
over a year ago
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a simple, closed, triangulated 3D mesh. This assumption is a consequence of the divergence theorem. Further extensions may generalise to other meshes as well, although that is presently...
Louwrentius
How to build an energy efficient computer for home use
In short:
Buy whatever you fucking want.
Turn the fucking thing off when you're not using...
over a year ago
In short:
Buy whatever you fucking want.
Turn the fucking thing off when you're not using it.
Long:
People are spending a lot of time building an energy efficient home computer,
that can act as an HTPC, NAS, or whatever. It must consume as little power as
possible, because it it...
Jonas Hietala
The I'm Great quote
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though...
over a year ago
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though the bookstore had a snakelike queue similar to the Jörmungandr (the snake that encircled the earth in nordic mythology) and our new programming course started. This time it’s Ada’s...
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.
Willem's Blog
Increase traffic to your blog with a RSS feed
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value....
over a year ago
Using NodeJS I added RSS feeds to my blog as support for feeds can still provide you with value. Read about the "how" and "why" in this post.
Louwrentius
Release of PPSS - the Parallel Processing Shell Script
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use...
over a year ago
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use of the current multi-core CPUs. It will detect the number
of available CPUs and start a thread for each CPU core.
This script is build with the goal to be very easy to use. Also,...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
computers are bad
2023-04-20 different kinds of differential
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by...
a year ago
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a
halt." Of course the headline doesn't actually say this, but it does seem
to imply that there has been some kind of failure of...
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
over a year ago
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Notes on software...
Speeding up Go's builtin JSON encoder up to 55% for large arrays of objects
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.
Matt Mullenweg
I Voted!
It was a huge pain in the butt, because my mail-in ballot didn’t register properly, but I found a...
a month ago
It was a huge pain in the butt, because my mail-in ballot didn’t register properly, but I found a last-minute flight to Houston and this morning walked over to Congregation Emanu El and voted. It is our most sacred duty as a citizen. I encourage every American to vote.
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
8 months ago
Home on Erik...
Domains for sale
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
over a year ago
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
Jonas Hietala
Minecraft Server Hosting
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring...
over a year ago
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring is just what I need. Sometimes I can challange myself to build cool complex stuff and I’m even an avid follower of Doc’M and Etho and the other mindcrackers over at the youtube....
Louwrentius
Understanding IOPS, latency and storage performance
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When...
over a year ago
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When most people think about storage performance, they think about throughput. But throughput is similar to the top speed of a car. In reality, you will almost never reach the top...
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...
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Louwrentius
The future of ZFS now that OpenSolaris is dead
With the probable loss of OpenSolaris, there may be another, maybe more
devastating loss.
The very...
over a year ago
With the probable loss of OpenSolaris, there may be another, maybe more
devastating loss.
The very popular and very advanced Zetabyte File System (ZFS)
The only open source platform that actively supports ZFS is FreeBSD. And they
just 'copied' the code from OpenSolaris. Are they...
Jonas Hietala
Generating ideas
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up...
over a year ago
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up with 50 ideas using my own idea generation technique.
I used a sort of “notes in the basket” approach where you placed some notes with words in a basket and randomly drew two and...
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
Posts on Made of...
Measuring Capacity Through Utilization
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts...
over a year ago
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts when thinking about instrumenting a system to understand its overall performance and capacity is what I call “time utilization”.
By this I mean: If you look at the behavior of a...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: A Geek Valentine
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little...
over a year ago
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little programming urge again… This time it’s not Haskell or a new experimental game that’s luring me on, no this time it’s me longing to create this fantastic awesome epic RTS game. Sadly it’s a...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
over a year ago
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about some concrete things you can do. When I've built up the tech team at Better, I've intentionally optimized for fast iteration speed above almost everything else.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
Good Enough
Pika: Start Your Happy Blog
Have you thought about starting or restarting a blogging habit? Have you wanted to write on the...
10 months ago
Have you thought about starting or restarting a blogging habit? Have you wanted to write on the internet, but at your own place and at your own address rather than on a social network? Have you been overwhelmed by the online writing options that you’ve found? Well, have we got...
Simply Explained
How WebP Images Reduced My Bandwidth Usage by 50%
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP...
over a year ago
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP images to save bandwidth and make this site even faster to load! This simple change reduced my bandwidth usage by 50% and is still backwards compatible with old devices and...
Home on Erik...
Plotting author statistics for Git repos using Git of Theseus
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I...
over a year ago
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I have a couple of blog posts in the pipeline about various updates. First up, I made a number of fixes to Git of Theseus which is a tool (written in Python) that generates...
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 3: Cosmic Maelstrom
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say...
a year ago
1. Team Full
It's exciting times over here at Good Enough HQ!
(There is no Good Enough HQ. I'd say it's in the cloud, but even clouds are now looked down upon as dirtyish things that should not be enjoyed. And not because of air pollution per se, though perhaps because of...
anderegg.ca
Jet Lag: The Game: The Game
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next...
a month ago
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next season, and also a “home version” of the game. I’ve written about Jet Lag: The Game before, so you might want to start there if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
On the latest...
Simply Explained
Secure Home Assistant Access with Cloudflare and Ubiquiti Dream Machine
I've become increasingly reliant on Home Assistant to automate various tasks around the house. But...
over a year ago
I've become increasingly reliant on Home Assistant to automate various tasks around the house. But how do you safely expose your instance to the internet for remote access?You want to be able to log in from a remote location, but how to keep others out? This post will show how...
Arduino Blog
This frighteningly realistic animatronic head features expressive silicone skin
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of...
a week ago
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of ways. Some of that is utilitarian — your jaw muscles are good for chewing, after all. But a lot of it seems to be the result of evolution giving us fantastic non-verbal...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Moving beyond coin voting governance
over a year ago
Avestura's Blog
How optimistic or pessimistic are the Kurzgesagt videos?
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
a year ago
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/0 keyboard layout
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While...
over a year ago
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While there are more changes I’d like to try, I’m quite pleased with these changes so I figured I might as well immortalize them before I explore further. (And I do have a bunch of big...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Lobo MAX-80
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
9 months ago
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
somenice
Generative 3D Modeling
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as...
5 days ago
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as reviews had been quite favourable with results creating 3D models with “AI”. The website describes the technology as unified Structured LATent (SLAT) representation and there is a...
Arduino Blog
This Halo helmet features an adjustable-transparency RGB-backlit visor
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the...
3 weeks ago
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the Needler. But the armor, such as the Spartan armor worn by Master Chief, is arguably the most recognizable. The helmets are especially cool, and LeMaster Tech put his own unique spin...
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
Louwrentius
Linux Iptables Firewall Script released on Google code
I have released LIFS, the Linux Iptables Firewall Script. This script allows you to setup a firewall...
over a year ago
I have released LIFS, the Linux Iptables Firewall Script. This script allows you to setup a firewall within minutes. It is easy to use, yet very powerful. It uses Iptables and even improves upon some limitations of Iptables.
Every person who has to maintain some kind of...
Louwrentius
Script that shows smart values of all disks'
Please use this tool on github instead of this ancient script.
So you have a Linux system with a lot...
over a year ago
Please use this tool on github instead of this ancient script.
So you have a Linux system with a lot of hard drives. If you want to quickly check on some key SMART values to determine the health of individual disks, you might be interested in this script.
I wrote a small Python...
Computer Ads from...
Creative Computing Magazine Interviews Clive Sinclair (1980)
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
2 weeks ago
This British inventor speaking about his ZX-80 computer system
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
5 months ago
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
Arduino Blog
Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline...
3 months ago
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Reading Notes on “Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp”
by Josef Czapski
over a year ago
anderegg.ca
The “Home Alone” / “NiGHTS into Dreams” connection
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one...
2 weeks ago
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one of my favourites from the Saturn lineup, and it also had a free Christmas version.
In it, there’s a song I really love that plays on the level select screen called Gate of Your...
computers are bad
2024-07-31 just disconnect the internet
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of...
4 months ago
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of their Windows install base with a poorly tested content
update. Rough day at the office, huh? There are lots of things you could say
about this, lots of reasons it happens this way,...
Arduino Blog
Why do OTA updates matter in IoT?
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a...
6 months ago
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a box inside a wall, and everything seems to be working like a charm. But then, you spot a bug in the firmware. The thought of pulling the hardware back out sends shivers down your...
Home on Erik...
Spotify's Discovery page
The Discovery page, the new start page in Spotify, is finally out to a fairly significant percentage...
over a year ago
The Discovery page, the new start page in Spotify, is finally out to a fairly significant percentage of all users. Really happy since we have worked on it for the past six months. Here's a screen shot:
./techtipsy
My attempt at archiving nfscars.net
Background
My mother once had a laptop: the Compaq Armada 1592DT. It came with Windows ME which...
over a year ago
Background
My mother once had a laptop: the Compaq Armada 1592DT. It came with Windows ME which later got “upgraded” to Windows 98 SE
after I managed to completely screw up the OS, a whopping 96MB of RAM and a hard drive that probably wasn’t much larger
than 1-3GB. It wasn’t...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Central Planning as Overfitting
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto"
5 months ago
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the Topic of the March 2024 Plus Post
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
9 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
over a year ago
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace!
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier...
2 months ago
We’re excited to announce that Arduino Cloud is now available in AWS Marketplace, making it easier than ever for developers and businesses worldwide to integrate our powerful IoT platform into their AWS infrastructure. This development is particularly relevant for those in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In-person meatspace protocol to prove unconditional possession of a private key
over a year ago
Simply Explained
Monitoring my 3D printer with a Pi Zero, Home Assistant and TinyCore Linux
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception:...
over a year ago
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception: my trusty 3D printer. It's a super reliable Prusa i3 MK3, but it lacks an internet connection.So I decided to use a Pi Zero to keep track of my 3D prints and send the progress to...
Louwrentius
Recovering a lost partition using gpart
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups....
over a year ago
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups. I was asked to perform some data recovery on a hard
drive of an old computer, which still contained important documents and
photo's.
The first thing I did was to make a disk image...
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about key-value databases like FoundationDB and RocksDB?
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document...
over a year ago
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document databases like MongoDB and Elasticsearch. You
probably know Redis too.
But you're hearing more and more about embedded key-value stores like
RocksDB,
LevelDB,
PebbleDB, and so on....
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
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...
Avestura's Blog
What is the type of Type?
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
over a year ago
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
Good Enough
Why We're Writing Blog Software
We’re seven months into our Cosmic Maelstrom
and we have started writing blogging software.
What the...
a year ago
We’re seven months into our Cosmic Maelstrom
and we have started writing blogging software.
What the why?!
First, let me say that, yes, I do realize there are probably 100s of blog software options out there.
In terms of static-site generators (SSGs) alone, there are probably...
Home on Erik...
I already found the best gifs
Just search for “hackers gif“.
There you go. Fun for your work emails for the next 500 years. From...
over a year ago
Just search for “hackers gif“.
There you go. Fun for your work emails for the next 500 years. From the awesome movie Hackers. That movie together with The Warriors convinced me that I wanted to live in NYC when I was like… 14 years old.
Louwrentius
The iPad will be the death of Flash
So Apple finally released their tablet computer: the iPad. One of the most
debated drawbacks is that...
over a year ago
So Apple finally released their tablet computer: the iPad. One of the most
debated drawbacks is that it lacks support for Adobe Flash. The iPhone does
not support Flash either, and since the iPad is based on the iPhone OS, this
should not come as a surprise.
Now many people see...
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.
Notes on software...
Exploring PL/pgSQL part two: implementing a Forth-like interpreter
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I...
over a year ago
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I walked through the basics of PL/pgSQL, the embedded procedural
language inside of PostgreSQL. It covered simple functions, recursions
and parsing. But there was something very...
Good Enough
Good Enough Marketing: The Preparation
We have a couple of exciting projects—Guestbook! Yay.Boo!—that we want to share with the world. But...
a year ago
We have a couple of exciting projects—Guestbook! Yay.Boo!—that we want to share with the world. But that’s a difficult task for us because, honestly, we’re terrible not good at self-promotion. We’d rather spend time making things than talking about the things we’ve made.
We’d...
Simply Explained
ESP32: Keep WiFi connection alive with a FreeRTOS task
I have a few ESP32's running in my house. A few of them are running 24/7 and require an always-on...
over a year ago
I have a few ESP32's running in my house. A few of them are running 24/7 and require an always-on WiFi connection. That's been quite tricky to implement. I used to include various checks throughout my code, but that's not scalable.What I need is something running in the...
Matt Blewitt
Riding the Risk Railway
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is...
over a year ago
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is important to consider the riskiness of a user, which can also be characterised as trustworthiness. These will typically be negatively correlated, with low trust indicating high risk...
Engineers Need Art
Adam74
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
over a year ago
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
Louwrentius
Linux Mac Mini - temperature monitoring with lm-sensors
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using...
over a year ago
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using Debian Lenny, out of the box, lm-sensors is not working. No sensors can
be found. This is how temperature monitoring and fan speed monitoring can be
made to work:
modprobe applesmc
If...
anderegg.ca
Using WordPress is risky
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about WordPress. Stuff’s been happening in the...
a month ago
It’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote about WordPress. Stuff’s been happening in the background, but I’ve been trying to ignore it. This morning I read a story that bothered me enough to require another round of therapy-by-blog-post.
First up, a couple of things that...
Arduino Blog
This perplexing robotic performer operates under the control of three different Arduino boards
Every decade or two, humanity seems to develop a renewed interest in humanoid robots and their...
2 months ago
Every decade or two, humanity seems to develop a renewed interest in humanoid robots and their potential within our world. Because the practical applications are actually pretty limited (given the high cost), we inevitably begin to consider how those robots might function as...
watchTowr Labs -...
Veeam Backup & Response - RCE With Auth, But Mostly Without Auth (CVE-2024-40711)
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup &...
3 months ago
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup & Replication’. Unfortunately, so is every ransomware operator, given it's somewhat 'privileged position' in the storage world of most enterprise's networks. There's no point deploying...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Posts on Made of...
Distributed cloud builds for everyone
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous....
over a year ago
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous. All the major cloud providers offer generous free tiers, and services like GitHub Actions offer free compute resources to open-source repositories. So why do so many developers...
Computer Ads from...
MicroSpeed PC-TRAC
Let's Get Right To the Point
7 months ago
Let's Get Right To the Point
Arduino Blog
KiPneu makes soft robotic biomimetics accessible to STEAM students
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of...
5 months ago
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of humanity’s greatest assets. But systems reliant on soft tissue, such as an octopus’s tentacles, have been notoriously difficult to reproduce in the robotics world. To give STEAM...
Arduino Blog
Using Arduino UNO to sync a visual neuroscience lab
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and...
2 months ago
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and monitoring neural activity in the presence of sensory stimuli, to help scientists study how neurons encode and respond, for example, to specific visual inputs. One of the biggest technical...
Louwrentius
Benchmarking storage with Fio and generating charts of the results
Introduction
Fio is a widely-used tool for performing storage benchmarks. Fio offers a lot of...
over a year ago
Introduction
Fio is a widely-used tool for performing storage benchmarks. Fio offers a lot of options to create a storage benchmark that would best reflect your needs. Fio allows you to assess if your storage solution is up to its task and how much headroom it has.
Fio outputs...
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...
Good Enough
The Space Between Us
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical...
a year ago
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical office. I've been working remotely for more than ten years, and overall I really like it. I love the flexibility it affords, being more present with our families, and that my...
Posts on Made of...
BlackHat/DEFCON 2011 talk: Breaking out of KVM
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the...
over a year ago
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the KVM Kernel Virtual Machine on Linux.
Virtunoid: Breaking out of KVM from Nelson Elhage [Edited 2011-08-11] The code is now available. It should be fairly well-commented, and...
Willem's Blog
Three tips to make a content strategy work
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or...
over a year ago
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or company.
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:
Jonas Hietala
ghc 8.8.3 cannot find cabal 3.0.0.0 packages
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system...
over a year ago
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system it suddenly stopped working. I installed my dependencies with cabal install xmonad, and checked that it’s installed under ~/.cabal:
$ ls .cabal/bin/
xmonad@
But still when I...
Electronics etc…
Tektronix TDS 684B Oscilloscope Button Swap
Introduction
Removing the panels
Swapping a Rotary Encoder
Putting it all back together
End...
8 months ago
Introduction
Removing the panels
Swapping a Rotary Encoder
Putting it all back together
End Result
Introduction
I recently bought a TDS 684B for cheap at a government auction. With 1 GHz BW
and 5 Gsps sample rate, it can be used for those cases where my 350 MHz/2Gsps
Siglent...
watchTowr Labs -...
“To live is to fight, to fight is to live! - IBM ODM Remote Code Execution
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but...
10 months ago
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but there is one that we have not mentioned before, that is - quite frankly - the heavy-weight champion of the world in terms of applications for large enterprises. With over a hundred
Home on Erik...
Building a data team at a mid-stage startup: a short story
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a...
over a year ago
I guess I should really call this a parable.
The backdrop is: you have been brought in to grow a tiny data team (~4 people) at a mid-stage startup (~$10M annual revenue), although this story could take place at many different types of companies.
Computer Ads from...
Lintek Computer Accessories' Paper Tamer
Restore Order (to your printer)
8 months ago
Restore Order (to your printer)
Louwrentius
ZFS RAIDZ expansion is awesome but has a small caveat
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The Github PR about this feature is rather stale and people are wondering what the status is and what the plans are. Meanwhile, FreeBSD has announced In February 2023 that they...
Good Enough
Strong Prototypes, Weakly Held
Excuse any obtuse thoughts that make their way into this writing. I sat down to type with My Life in...
a year ago
Excuse any obtuse thoughts that make their way into this writing. I sat down to type with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne as my soundtrack. This is an album I've never listened to before, and apparently I'm supposed to love it or hate it. Mostly the...
Willem's Blog
Building a professional 72TB NAS
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read...
over a year ago
This month I installed a professional HPE ProLiant DL380p server in a datacenter in Amsterdam, read this post to see how this was done!
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Programming
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many...
over a year ago
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many things I’d like to do and even if it’s not possible to do them all at once it didn’t stop me from thinking of them. One minute it’s that and the other it’s something completely...
./techtipsy
This page looks better in the app
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing...
over a year ago
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing their frontend for the mobile-first era. It has taken a lot of time and effort from many people.
Countless challenges, arguments, testing.
The release is near. You’re probably a bit...
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.
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 15: Rebranding to Lighthouse and complete redesign
a year ago
Posts on Made of...
My Apollo Bibliography
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become...
over a year ago
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a...
./techtipsy
Good reads
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule,...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
a must-read for anyone working in a software development team. Helps
express what most of us have felt at some point in our careers.
The case of the 500-mile...
Computer Ads from...
Bible Research Systems' THE WORD Processor
For Those Who Seek.
5 months ago
watchTowr Labs -...
We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding...
3 months ago
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding discoveries.
Summary
What started out as a bit of fun between colleagues while avoiding the Vegas heat and $20 bottles of water in our Black Hat hotel rooms - has now seemingly...
Applied Cartography
Bluesky is good
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for...
a week ago
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for the dubious title of "Twitter's successor" and landed on Bluesky as being my favorite, perhaps less out of its ostensible inherent virtues and more out of the size of its...
On Life and Lisp
Clip control on the Apple GPU
Neverball rendered on the Apple M1 GPU with an open source OpenGL driver
After a year in...
over a year ago
Neverball rendered on the Apple M1 GPU with an open source OpenGL driver
After a year in development, the open source “Asahi” driver for the Apple GPU is running real games. There’s more to do, but Neverball is already playable (and a lot of fun!).
Neverball uses legacy “fixed...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis
over a year ago
Notes on software...
HTML event handler attributes: down the rabbit hole
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.
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
Jonas Hietala
Competition Feedback
The voting is over and I got a few ratings I want to comment on. You can view all ratings and...
over a year ago
The voting is over and I got a few ratings I want to comment on. You can view all ratings and comments here.
They’re all from 1 to 5.
Innovation: 3.75
Fun: 3.29
Theme: 3.17
Graphics: 2.54
Audio: 2.14
Humor: 2.54
that ugly.
Overall: 3.13
something playable out of this.
Community:...
Jonas Hietala
The ASIC pit of despair
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s...
over a year ago
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s hashrate were ASICs.
Recurring hard forks to brick ASICs is a very dangerous game and what better to illustrate this than with an xkcd-style plot?
You’re safe on the edges but how do...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should Ethereum be okay with enshrining more things in the protocol?
a year ago
Arduino Blog
Easy and fun block-based coding with the Alvik robot is here, now Chromebook compatible!
At Arduino, we believe coding should be accessible to everyone – including the youngest learners....
a month ago
At Arduino, we believe coding should be accessible to everyone – including the youngest learners. With this in mind, we’re thrilled to announce that the Arduino Alvik robot now officially supports block-based coding! Coding has never been easier thanks to Alvik’s seamless...
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…
Vitalik Buterin's...
7ème tour des subventions Gitcoin - Rétrospective
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Using iSCSI with time machine and Super Duper
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super...
over a year ago
In the past, as a Mac user, I've used separate external drives for Time Machine backups and Super Duper clones but I'm not happy with that. External hard drives make noise and create clutter.
I'd like to move away all my storage from my living room (or home office) and put it in...
Home on Erik...
MLConf 2014
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a...
over a year ago
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a whole range of great speakers (actually almost 2/3 women which was pretty cool in itself).
Here are my slides:
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Guycot & Jarre
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
6 months ago
Early repeating handguns, or another unnecessary excursion into the bowels of history.
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 