Birchtree
Squashing links on social media
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are...
2 weeks ago
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly
Willem's Blog
Removing paint from a bike frame
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal,...
over a year ago
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal, raw aluminium look.
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...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Karl Popper
A woven web of guesses
over a year ago
Odds and Ends of...
I'm pro-assisted dying in principle, but I'm not sure about the proposed law
Is no law better than a bad law?
a month ago
Is no law better than a bad law?
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Arduino Blog
Hey Google! Meet Arduino Cloud
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now interact with your devices, simply through your Google Home Assistant: use voice commands, the Google Home app, or create new routines integrating Arduino solutions. This new...
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...
Home on Erik...
hdfs2cass
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra...
over a year ago
Just open sourced hdfs2cass which is a Hadoop job (written in Java) to do efficient Cassandra bulkloading. The nice thing is that it queries Cassandra for its topology and uses that to partition the data so that each reducer can upload data directly to a Cassandra node.
Jonas Hietala
Browse posts with telescope.nvim
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some...
7 months ago
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some time.
I use find files together with it’s cousin .oldfiles (find recently opened files) all the time for finding source code files, blog posts, and more.
But it’s naturally...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Building LLM-driven agents
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just...
a year ago
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just ask it. Writing out a single prompt…
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 2: Just the Two of Us
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing...
over a year ago
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing anything. Take it away, fellas…
1. Still Positive
Did you know that once you acquire COVID-19 your PCR test can be positive for up to 90 days? Did you know that the at-home tests...
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...
detreville
But why "detreville"?
(But why not?)
a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again
12 months ago
Christian Selig
Using PHPickerViewController Images in a Memory-Efficient Way
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers...
over a year ago
PHPickerViewController is (in my opinion) one of the more exciting parts of iOS 14. We developers now have a fully-fledged photo picker that we can just use, rather than having to spend a bunch of our time creating our own (much like SFSafariViewController did for developers and...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 1. lisp to assembly
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM...
over a year ago
Next in compiler basics:
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll write a simple compiler in Javascript (on Node)
without any third-party libraries....
computers are bad
2023-02-07 secret government telephone numbers
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be...
a year ago
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be clear, the "secret" here was a joke and these buttons are in fact well
documented. The buttons I was talking about were the AUTOVON call precedence
buttons, used for a five-level...
Jonas Hietala
My first rust Contribution
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How...
over a year ago
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How shall I push my changes? How do I handle git? What should I do?
I was the same and I actually dreaded my awesome summer job, just a little bit, because now I’m supposed to...
Home on Erik...
New approximate nearest neighbor benchmarks
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm...
over a year ago
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm the author of Annoy, a library with 3,500+ stars on Github as of today. It offers fast approximate search for nearest neighbors with the additional benefit that you can load data...
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...
Christian Selig
Introducing Tiny Storage: a small, lightweight UserDefaults replacement
Hey I'm a developer not an artist
Following my last blog post about difficulties surrounding...
2 months ago
Hey I'm a developer not an artist
Following my last blog post about difficulties surrounding UserDefaults and edge cases that lead to data loss (give it a read if you haven’t, it’s an important precursor to this post!), I wanted to build something small and lightweight that...
Simply Explained
Retrospective: 4 years on YouTube
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate,...
over a year ago
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate, and set goals for the coming year. This year is no exception. January 13th, 2020, marks my fourth year on YouTube. Time to do a little retrospective.
Home on Erik...
I believe in the 10x engineer, but...
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be...
over a year ago
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be a 10x engineer if they do nothing for 364 days then convinces the team to change programming language to a 2x more productive language.
Computer Ads from...
Page 6 Magazine Interviews the Godfather of Adventure Games, Scott Adams
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
4 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
Arduino Blog
Arduino’s Alvik Robot shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025 in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, and Digital...
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025,...
a month ago
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025, this time in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, or Digital Device category with our Alvik robot! This recognition highlights our dedication to innovation, inclusivity, and the advancement of...
Home on Erik...
Conversion rates – you are (most likely) computing them wrong
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and divide them with the total number of users. Done. Except… it's a lot more complicated when you have any sort of significant time lag.
Good Enough
How We Built Unique Social Preview Images for Pika
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find...
10 months ago
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find your own place on the internet.
Along with a nice place on the internet, when you share links to your blog we want them to represent your internet home,
which you've likely taken...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Slackware
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
a year ago
The Oldest Surviving Linux Distribution
Arduino Blog
Monitoring the weather with an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010-based station
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to...
7 months ago
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to analyze how the local climate changes over time. This project by Hackster.io user Pradeep explores how he was able to design a simple station outdoors that could communicate with a...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34 keyboard layout
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with...
over a year ago
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with much fewer keys, like the 36-key Gergoplex and the 44-key Kyria. I may write another post about the reasons why, but long story short I started getting pain in my thumbs, fingers,...
Jonas Hietala
My Dream Game: The Tycoon
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my...
over a year ago
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my favorite but I’ve played 2v2 with some friends and I actually played the campaign a bit and it was pretty fun! Usually I never play the campaign on RTS games but this one I liked....
computers are bad
2023-11-19 Centrex
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened...
a year ago
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened to "PBX" in today's world where the "automatic" is
implied. (Relatively) modern small and medium business PABXs of the type I like
to collect are largely solid-state devices that...
Posts on Made of...
Lab Notebooking for the Software Engineer
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I wrote that software engineers should keep lab notebooks as they work, in addition to just documenting things after the fact. Today, I’m going to share the techniques that I’ve found useful to try to get in the habit of lab-notebooking my work, even though I...
Louwrentius
Achieving 220 MB/s network file transfers using Linux Bonding
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers....
over a year ago
I wrote an article about the subject of getting beyond the limits of gigabit network file transfers. My solution is to use multiple gigabit network cards and use Linux interface bonding to create virtual 2 gigabit network interfaces. The solution is to use mode 0 or round robin...
Louwrentius
8 TB RAID 6 Linux software RAID using EXT4
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID...
over a year ago
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 (16x poorten)
PSU: CooMas Silent Pro M 600W ATX2 (definitely not overkill)
HD: Samsung 1 TB SAT2 HD103UJ (10x)
OS: Debian Lenny with custom kernel (backported)
FS: EXT4
RAID...
Home on Erik...
3D
Andy Sloane decided to call my 2D visualization and raise it to 3D.
(Looks a little weird in the...
over a year ago
Andy Sloane decided to call my 2D visualization and raise it to 3D.
(Looks a little weird in the iframe but check out the link). It's based on a LDA model with 200 topics, so the artists tend to stick to clusters where each cluster is a topic.
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Next in database basics:
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this series we'll write a rudimentary database from
scratch in Go. Project source code is available on
Github.
In this first post we'll build enough of a parser to...
Willem's Blog
Wearing two watches
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
over a year ago
Why you should wear two watches, don't choose between a mechanical watch and a smartwatch!
Jonas Hietala
Vacation
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and...
over a year ago
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and not doing anything. Well, I did get my ass kicked in Terra Mystica and I played a bit of Minecraft, but still. We got some nice food and my in-laws and my parents were nice.
I’m...
Engineers Need Art
Move Fast and Abandon Things
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside...
3 months ago
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside and abandoned.
Old Vintage...
Thou shalt follow these Vintage Computing Commandments
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote...
10 months ago
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote and release smoke. This is sometimes very hard to judge without a load, but they should be somewhere in the ballpark, verily, and you should get in the habit of checking any new...
Notes on software...
Enumerating and analyzing 40+ non-V8 JavaScript implementations
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by...
over a year ago
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by extension) Microsoft Edge, Node.js,
etc. Safari's JavaScriptCore and Firefox's SpiderMonkey are also
contenders for extremely mainstream implementations.
But what else is out there? What if...
Matt Mullenweg
UH Magazine, Revisiting My Alma Mater
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political...
a week ago
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Franisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University...
Notes on software...
Windows
It has been six years since I last used Windows for any remotely
serious software development. I've...
over a year ago
It has been six years since I last used Windows for any remotely
serious software development. I've used Ubuntu, Arch, or FreeBSD
since. But eventually I spent so much time working around common
workplace tasks that I decided to put Windows 10 Pro on my work
laptop.
Windows...
./techtipsy
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in...
a year ago
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no
expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and
start working on...
Ian's Blog
Why my Apps Aren't Available on Apple Vision Pro
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring...
4 months ago
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring why the apps aren't available on Apple's new Vision Pro headset. While I have briefly discussed this over on my Mastodon, I figured it might be worthwhile putting things down with...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
Home on Erik...
More Luigi alternatives
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a...
over a year ago
The workflow engine battle has intensified with some more interesting entries lately! Here are a couple I encountered in the last few days. I love that at least two of them are direct references to Luigi!
Home on Erik...
Language pitch
Here's a fun analysis that I did of the pitch (aka. frequency) of various languages. Certain...
over a year ago
Here's a fun analysis that I did of the pitch (aka. frequency) of various languages. Certain languages are simply pronounced with lower or higher pitch. Whether this is a feature of the language or more a cultural thing is a good question, but there are some substantial...
Willem's Blog
No, I Won't Build That!
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I...
9 months ago
Discover how saying 'no' can lead to more innovative and meaningful work in this blog post: "No, I Won't Build That!"
Louwrentius
Is storage really that cheap?
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box,...
over a year ago
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box, which is already 50% full. However, although it is to
some degree fault-tollerant by using RAID 6, one mistake or catastrophic
hardware faillure and all data is lost.
And that's...
Ian's Blog
Having a Website Used to Be Fun
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that...
a month ago
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that thought alone makes me feel old, but going back through the old snapshots of my websites made me feel a profound feeling of longing for a time when having a website used to be a novel...
Push to Prod
When Things Are Slow, Look for Queues
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of...
4 months ago
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of the most common situations.
Louwrentius
Understanding Storage Performance - IOPS and Latency
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want...
over a year ago
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want to discuss some fundamentals that are true regardless of your particular needs.
This will help you better reason about storage and may provide a scaffolding for further learning....
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
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
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Changing a process's controlling terminal
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal,...
over a year ago
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal, and transplants it to a new terminal. reptyr comes from a proud family of similar hacks, and works in the same basic way: We use ptrace(2) to attach to a target process and force...
Louwrentius
Eztables: simple yet powerful firewall configuration for Linux
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on...
over a year ago
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on Linux may be interested in this project.
It doesn't matter if you need to protect a laptop, server or want to setup a network firewall. Eztables supports it all.
If you're not afraid...
Home on Erik...
The hacker's guide to uncertainty estimates
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain...
over a year ago
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain uncertainty estimates
— Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) January 7, 2018 Why? Because I've been sitting in 100,000,000 meetings where people endlessly debate whether the monthly number of...
Electronics etc…
HP 8656A Signal Generator Schematics
Agilent has made the 8656A Signal Generator Operating & Service Manual
available as a PDF, but the...
10 months ago
Agilent has made the 8656A Signal Generator Operating & Service Manual
available as a PDF, but the schematics of chapter 8 are all spread over 3 or 4 pages, which makes
them hard to follow.
I spent a good evening extracting the schematics pages, cutting-and-pasting
them together...
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...
Push to Prod
When Overwhelmed, Make a List of Questions
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
4 months ago
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
Louwrentius
The kind of sound you never want to hear from your computer
The sounds of hard drives that have perished
These sounds are only frightening or scary if you...
over a year ago
The sounds of hard drives that have perished
These sounds are only frightening or scary if you imagine your precious data
only exists on that failing drive. If you make consistent and frequent backups
and/or you run a fault-tolerant RAID flavour, it is but a nuisance.
./techtipsy
No HDMI port on the ThinkPad T430? No problem!
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is...
5 months ago
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is pretty much obsolete at this point
mini DisplayPort connector on the laptop itself
DVI or DisplayPort on a dock
The mini DisplayPort port has annoyed me for as long as I’ve had this...
Computer Ads from...
ProHance Technologies' Power Mouse
Even A Totally Souped up PC Is A Dog Without PowerMouse
3 months ago
Even A Totally Souped up PC Is A Dog Without PowerMouse
./techtipsy
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main...
over a year ago
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main laptop and a server as well.
A couple of years ago I messed around with flashing alternative BIOS implementations on the X230, such
as the skulls project, which made installing...
Computer Ads from...
EPYX's Pitstop
Where Winning is the Pits.
6 months ago
Where Winning is the Pits.
Jonas Hietala
October theme says: Numbers
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay...
over a year ago
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay Project theme which this month is numbers. What’s it gonna be? A sudoku game or something more… thrilling? I’ll see what I can do :)
Jonas Hietala
Undo git reset --hard
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back...
over a year ago
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back a bit. What I didn’t realize then is that you throw away all the commits between now until <hash>. Not quite what was planned.
After a bit of panic I found the answer:
Find your...
Jonas Hietala
A *
After a few hours of coding I’ve made a little, little, bit of progress but it took a lot longer...
over a year ago
After a few hours of coding I’ve made a little, little, bit of progress but it took a lot longer than I would have liked.
I’ve basically managed to make a world and some tiles in the world and we have a worker who can move around on the tiles and he can’t move on all...
Willem's Blog
Lessons from a takeaway plastic bag
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of...
over a year ago
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of change.
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...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination
over a year ago
Louwrentius
My solar-powered blog is now on Lithium Iron Phosphate
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi -...
a year ago
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi - escalated into a full-blown off-grid solar setup, large enough to power the computer I use at the moment to write this update1. In this update, I want to discuss my battery...
Computer Ads from...
The Grand Stand
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
a month ago
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
Jonas Hietala
Ores
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added...
over a year ago
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added some ores which makes the game look a bit less boring. I realize I’ve spent all my time on these little things and I still don’t have a game! But it doesn’t matter, maybe I can...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Build start
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was...
a year ago
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was suddenly very important that I got myself a 3D printer.
Maybe it was an important insight, but it maybe it was only a fix idea I got that somehow became this all-import...
Willem's Blog
Realtime service uptime monitoring
Downtime happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, just make sure that you set yourself up to...
over a year ago
Downtime happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, just make sure that you set yourself up to discover problems as soon as possible! Know about problems before your customers do!
Yazin Alirhayim
Part 2: Will greater access to capital spark Bahrain’s economy?
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access...
over a year ago
👉 If you haven’t read Part 1, do that first.
In the last post, I discussed the question of access to capital and why’s important to verify that we do in fact have a problem before we attempt to “solve” it.
Now, we’re going to talk about the method for measuring the extent of...
Louwrentius
WFS - WAN Failover Script now available
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you...
over a year ago
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you have any use for it: I put it on a Google code project.
WFS tests the availability of your primary WAN connection and switches to your
secondary / backup connection when a failure is...
Louwrentius
RAID array size and rebuild speed
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and...
over a year ago
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and thus data loss. During this rebuild time, you are
vulnerable. The longer it takes to rebuild your array, the longer you are
vulnerable. Especially during a disk-intensive period,...
Willem's Blog
Batavus Champion bike from 1978
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
over a year ago
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
./techtipsy
They make USB-C cables with displays now!
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted...
6 months ago
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted USB-C port. This meant that I had a valid reason to get
a few extra because I didn’t yet have a stockpile of good USB-C cables.
That’s when I found out that there exist cables that...
Jonas Hietala
An intriguing new puzzle
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix...
over a year ago
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix between Rubik’s cube and sudoku. I enjoy puzzles like those and I really enjoyed this one too - it took me a while to beat it but I just love the feeling when you do. If you like...
Home on Erik...
Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson
I was featured in Peadar Coyle's interview series interviewing various “data scientists” – which is...
over a year ago
I was featured in Peadar Coyle's interview series interviewing various “data scientists” – which is kind of arguable since (a) all the other ppl in that series are much cooler than me (b) I'm not really a data scientist.
Good Enough
TIL: Deploying a Sinatra app to Render.com
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me,...
a year ago
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me, so I figured I’d write down what worked in the end.
First, a Gemfile:
# Gemfile
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'sinatra-contrib'
gem 'puma'
* I’m pretty sure...
Posts on Made of...
Using wpa_supplicant on Debian/Ubuntu
I’ve been using wpa_supplicant to manage wifi on my Ubuntu laptop for a while, and have found that...
over a year ago
I’ve been using wpa_supplicant to manage wifi on my Ubuntu laptop for a while, and have found that it’s pretty close to what I want for managing wireless — closer than anything else I’ve found, at least. I figured I should document my setup and experiences.
Some Background You...
Good Enough
Our Favorite Video Games Right Now
While everyone at Good Enough is their own kind of nerd, thank you very much, as builders of the web...
a year ago
While everyone at Good Enough is their own kind of nerd, thank you very much, as builders of the web you probably expect that we also play video games. And we do! Well, collectively we do, but not to an unhealthy degree. Usually.
I asked the team to share with me what their...
Matt Blewitt
7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep...
3 weeks ago
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep abreast of - new technologies, different ways of solving problems, not to mention all the research coming out of universities. In 2025, consider spending a week with each of these...
Home on Erik...
Miscellaneous unsolicited (and possibly biased) career advice
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of...
over a year ago
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I'd share some.
Honestly, I feel like I've mostly benefitted from luck.
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to hobby CNC
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
3 months ago
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
Matt Mullenweg
Everyone’s An Owner
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day,...
2 months ago
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders...
Arduino Blog
Improve indoor air quality with Arduino
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities...
7 months ago
When we think about air quality and pollution, it’s easy to conjure up images of smog-filled cities and power plants churning clouds of poison into the atmosphere. And while all this is still important, and has massive consequences for our health, it’s all too easy to overlook...
Arduino Blog
Save money by making your own MKR WiFi 1010-powered smart thermostat
Go browse your favorite store for a smart thermostat and take a look at the prices. They aren’t...
5 months ago
Go browse your favorite store for a smart thermostat and take a look at the prices. They aren’t cheap and the more affordable models tend to lock you into proprietary ecosystems. But a decent smart thermostat can save you money on energy costs, so you might want to consider this...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Slackware update
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my...
over a year ago
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my installation and I decided to go through with a larger reinstallation once more. This is a log of some things I did differently.
Kernel
Before installing the kernel it’s nice to...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
Christian Selig
Table of Contents Selector View
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS...
over a year ago
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS version (that seems to be a weird trend in my recent programming, despite me loving built-in components). Here’s some details about it! It’s also available as a library on GitHub...
Willem's Blog
Offline Music
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to...
over a year ago
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to lossless audio files; there is some reason to this madness however!
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...
Posts on Made of...
New Blog Location
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of...
over a year ago
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of scripts.mit.edu. In the process of converting everything over and setting up Wordpress I’ve decided I hate it, but hopefully I hate it less than I hate Blogger. We’ll see.
I’ve also...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #44: The New Statesman still needs fixing
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
3 weeks ago
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
Yazin Alirhayim
The best bank in Bahrain … is Meem
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking...
over a year ago
Yes, that’s right. The best bank in Bahrain is … Meem. This nomination will be especially shocking to those of you that read my last post that ripped the Meem app to shreds.
Criteria for ‘best bank’
My criteria for “best bank” isn’t the best user experience or customer support....
watchTowr Labs -...
Pots and Pans, AKA an SSLVPN - Palo Alto PAN-OS CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been...
a month ago
It'll be no surprise that 2024, 2023, 2022, and every other year of humanities' existence has been tough for SSLVPN appliances.
Anyhow, there are new vulnerabilities (well, two of them) that are being exploited in the Palo Alto Networks firewall and SSLVPN offering, and as ever,...
Applied Cartography
Typesafe routes in Vue
I watched Gary Bernhardt's talk on static routing back a few years ago and — I'm not sure if I would...
6 months ago
I watched Gary Bernhardt's talk on static routing back a few years ago and — I'm not sure if I would call it formative, but it stuck in my craw as a platonic ideal of sorts, as something I couldn't really justify adopting within Buttondown but really wanted.
I built out and...
Odds and Ends of...
Nobody knows what the National Data Library is (not even the government)
A policy wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
a month ago
A policy wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
Jonas Hietala
Minor site updates
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started...
over a year ago
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started looking at moving to Pygments as my highlighter. With some searching around I found a blog post about just that! That’s lucky because while I like Haskell, I’ve never really grocked it...
Good Enough
TIL: Turbo Stream and personalised content
Hotwire and Turbo are great for very quickly and easily adding real-time updating of webpages...
a year ago
Hotwire and Turbo are great for very quickly and easily adding real-time updating of webpages without requiring the browser to reload the whole page.
But if the information you want to stream back from your server to the client has anything specific to the current user — like...
Notes on software...
Delightful, production-grade replication for Postgres
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
4 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Social Share Images in Twitter/X
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and...
a month ago
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Apple Messages for months.
And it made me sad.
But in the past few months we got it fixed.
And that made me very happy!
We really love our Pika social share images.
They are...
Jonas Hietala
Picking up rust by writing a QR code generator
I wanted to pick up rust again after having used it many years ago. After around 5 years or so I...
over a year ago
I wanted to pick up rust again after having used it many years ago. After around 5 years or so I didn’t really know where to start?
Approaches to picking up a language
When learning, or as in this case re-learning, a programming language there are different approaches. For...
./techtipsy
My blog successfully survived a scheduled power outage
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage...
3 months ago
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage on 2024-09-13.
It was also Friday the 13th. I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious.
My setup usually consists of the home server, a Wifi AP/router combo box, a converter...
Jonas Hietala
The Little Things in Life
It’s the little things in life that makes it extra special. Sometimes it’s the luxury of coffee...
over a year ago
It’s the little things in life that makes it extra special. Sometimes it’s the luxury of coffee together with the morning paper and other times it’s just a small simple smile from a random stranger, kid or dog. Today when I got this bad headache I got saved by a two hour nap and...
Computer Ads from...
Gould Electronic's PowerNode 6000
The Firebreathers from Gould blast the competition into oblivion.
4 months ago
The Firebreathers from Gould blast the competition into oblivion.
Applied Cartography
Migrating someone who's on Stripe Connect Express
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author...
11 months ago
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author has full agency over their account and is the merchant of record;
they can revoke OAuth access from Substack (or whomever) at any time;
Substack continues to take that 10% as an...
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,...
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
Notes on software...
Errors and Zig
At TigerBeetle these last few weeks I've been doing a mix of
documenting client libraries, writing...
a year ago
At TigerBeetle these last few weeks I've been doing a mix of
documenting client libraries, writing sample code for client
libraries, and writing integration tests against the sample code.
The client library documentation is generated with a Zig script. The
sample code is...
Home on Erik...
Where do locals go in NYC?
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious...
over a year ago
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious about the larger patterns around this, so I spent some time looking at data. The thing I wanted to understand is: what areas are dominated by tourists?
Notes on software...
Standard ML in 2020
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML#...
over a year ago
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML# and
SML/NJ
are the most prominent. Discussion on the future direction of Standard
ML remains healthy as
well.
And somehow OCaml's lesser known cousin still beats out OCaml...
Willem's Blog
Clouds below my floor
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
over a year ago
Building a little datacenter in my basement utilising a very fast internet connection.
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Reflections on Palantir
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
2 months ago
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Matt Mullenweg
Age-gating
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and...
3 weeks ago
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer. See also: Australia’s...
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...
Jonas Hietala
2014 in Review
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a...
over a year ago
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a turn in IMPA and solved a bunch of problems.
Completed a doctorand course about algorithmic problem solving.
Finished my 4 first years in University.
Became a contributor to rust and...
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
over a year ago
People make decisions, not businesses.
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.
Willem's Blog
Harvesting boredom to let creativity flourish
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to...
over a year ago
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to the Internet using a smartphone.
Jonas Hietala
Design for Hackers
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific...
over a year ago
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific thing. It happened again yesterday (or was it the day before I don’t know) when I saw this post on hackernews.
It’s a book this time, again, but this is something a little different -...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 2. system calls
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e...
over a year ago
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e to
support the exit and write Linux system calls, or syscalls. A syscall
is a function handled by the kernel that allows the process to
interact with data outside of its memory....
Vitalik Buterin's...
Engineering Security Through Coordination Problems
over a year ago
Engineers Need Art
Same Stop
Marvelling at the full circle life seems to have taken after retirement.
a year ago
Marvelling at the full circle life seems to have taken after retirement.
Simply Explained
MAX17043: Battery Monitoring Done Right (Arduino & ESP32)
Building a battery-powered IoT device? Then you'll want to monitor the battery's percentage. Here's...
over a year ago
Building a battery-powered IoT device? Then you'll want to monitor the battery's percentage. Here's how to do it properly.
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:...
./techtipsy
The optimization treadmill: why I keep changing my computing setup all the time
I have a bad habit of changing my computing setups all the time. I tend to see new gear, then I...
a year ago
I have a bad habit of changing my computing setups all the time. I tend to see new gear, then I get
some new ideas, and then I obsessively think about it for weeks and months until I just buy it.
And then the cycle repeats.
I’ve had time to think about why that keeps happening...
Home on Erik...
Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence...
over a year ago
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence in my ability to assess people. Let me just throw a couple of algorithm questions at a candidate and then I'll tell you if they are good or not!
Buck on Software
Vertical Aggregation
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
over a year ago
I’ve written in the past that I think returns for SaaS won’t be as attractive over the next decade.
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...
Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto"
5 months ago
Notes on software...
What makes a great technical blog
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely...
8 months ago
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely about non-corporate tech blogs. So this post is
too. I'll have to make another list for favorite corporate tech blogs.
In short, they:
Tackle hard and confusing topics
Show working...
Odds and Ends of...
Why we need seven bins
It's time for some #binchat
6 days ago
It's time for some #binchat
Home on Erik...
Leaving Spotify
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an...
over a year ago
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an amazing experience.
I joined Spotify in Stockholm in 2008, mainly because a bunch of friends from programming competitions had joined already.
Louwrentius
Google DNS - what to think of it?
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get...
over a year ago
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get information about users.
However, their privacy statement tells us that no personal identifiable
information is stored for longer than 48 hours. The permanent logs do not
contain such...
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!
Posts on Made of...
A brief look at Linux's security record
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a...
over a year ago
After the fuss of the last two weeks because of CVE-2010-3081 and CVE-2010-3301, I decided to take a look at a handful of the high-profile privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux from the last few years. So, here's a summary of the ones I picked out. There are also a large...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Epochs and slots all the way down: ways to give Ethereum users faster transaction confirmation times
5 months ago
Home on Erik...
How to build up a data team (everything I ever learned about recruiting)
During my time at Spotify, I've reviewed thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of people....
over a year ago
During my time at Spotify, I've reviewed thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of people. Lots of them were rejected but lots of them also got offers. Finally, I've also had my share of offers rejected by the candidate.
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
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...
Home on Erik...
HubSpot's Picture Shows how to Maintain Monocultures in the 21st Century
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome...
over a year ago
I thought this article about the company culture at HubSpot is kind of funny. “HubSpot's Awesome Presentation Shows how to Create a 21st Century Culture”.
Just FYI: You're not different. You're a bunch of white hipsters aged 25-30 dressed up in the same theme.
Jonas Hietala
Home office renovation
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I...
over a year ago
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I had to have a home office as I need to work remote. There simply isn’t any software development work for me here.
So the later part of 2018 and early 2019 we’ve renovated an old...
Arduino Blog
Turning a desk mat into a MIDI drum kit
Playing drums is a lot of fun, but drum sets are very big and very loud. They also aren’t cheap....
a month ago
Playing drums is a lot of fun, but drum sets are very big and very loud. They also aren’t cheap. Those factors keep them from being an option for many people who would otherwise be interested. Conventional electronic drum sets are much quieter and a bit more compact, but they...
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...
Home on Erik...
Pareto efficency
Pareto efficiency is a useful concept I like to think about. It often comes up when you compare...
over a year ago
Pareto efficiency is a useful concept I like to think about. It often comes up when you compare items on multiple dimensions. Say you want to buy a new TV. To simplify it let's assume you only care about two factors: price and quality.
Jonas Hietala
2013 Read Books
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet...
over a year ago
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet Deluxe - Jens Lapidius
Escape from camp 14 - Blaine Harden
Wonderful. A great book.
Edge - Jeffery Deaver
Dollar - Lee Child
Gisslan - Lee Child
Bränd - Lee Child
Besökaren - Lee...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why sharding is great: demystifying the technical properties
over a year ago
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
Vitalik Buterin's...
Glue and coprocessor architectures
3 months ago
Louwrentius
'lm-sensors: hardware monitoring with the w83627ehf module'
I have two systems that use the w83627ehf driver for hardware monitoring.
However, if this driver is...
over a year ago
I have two systems that use the w83627ehf driver for hardware monitoring.
However, if this driver is installed with a regular modprobe like:
modprobe w83627ehf
The result will be:
FATAL: Error inserting w83627ehf
(/lib/modules/2.6.28-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/hwmon/w83627ehf.ko):...
Arduino Blog
This smart spice box makes cooking a breeze
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and...
6 months ago
Many people shy away from cooking because they’re overwhelmed by all of the different steps and ingredients. Recipes are useful, but they aren’t very intuitive to those who are more comfortable with visual thinking. To help these people enjoy the cooking experience, Purdue...
Azad's Blog
RealityCapture to Gaussian Splatting using PostShot
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import...
5 months ago
TLDR: Tutorial on using RealityCapture to align an image dataset, export the alignment, and import it into PostShot to train Gaussian Splats without using COLMAP. Video tutorial RealityCapture Import your images and align them. If you ever need help with tricky dataset, refer to...
Good Enough
Having Trouble Getting Started? Pair Up!
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on...
a year ago
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force.
Sir Isaac Newton
I often find that just getting started is the hardest part of doing something. This is especially true when the project is large or...
Applied Cartography
Why your marketing site should be separate
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we...
3 months ago
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we serve buttondown.com both as a marketing site (public-facing, Next/Vercel, largely just content pushed by non-developers) and an author-facing app (behind a login, Django/Heroku/Vue)...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: Signaling and Job Control
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read...
over a year ago
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 or part 2 if you’re new here)
For my final entry on termios, I will be looking at job control in the shell (i.e. backgrounding and foreground jobs) and the very closely related...
Willem's Blog
Wearing WHOOP 4.0
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror...
over a year ago
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror - it's so powerful, that I don't take mine off!
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 4. a database/sql driver
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
3. indexes
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to implement the database/sql driver interface. This will
allow us to interact with gosql the same way we would...
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
Buying a new computer
*** Desktop or Laptop ***
When deciding on which computer to buy, the first decision you have to...
over a year ago
*** Desktop or Laptop ***
When deciding on which computer to buy, the first decision you have to make is about whether to go for a desktop or a laptop. There was a time that many believed that the desktop would become a niche product. Most people want a laptop because they can...
Arduino Blog
Vintage rotary phone becomes stylish kitchen timer
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three...
6 months ago
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three minutes, knead the dough for 15 minutes, bake for 30 minutes, and so on. A timer is a necessity for cooking and baking, but there is no reason you need to use your phone or a...
Simply Explained
Year in review: 2022
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my...
a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my YouTube channel and newsletter, but there are personal reflections in here as well. Last year was an off year for me, and I'm gearing up to make up for lost time in 2023.
Simply Explained
Smart lights behind a wall switch (Shelly + ESPHome)
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs...
over a year ago
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs need constant power. I think that's pretty dumb. Using a physical switch can be way faster than using an app to control the lights.Here's how you can put a Shelly in between the...
Arduino Blog
Making a car more secure with the Arduino Nicla Vision
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa...
4 months ago
Shortly after attending a recent tinyML workshop in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Joao Vitor Freitas da Costa was looking for a way to incorporate some of the technologies and techniques he learned into a useful project. Given that he lives in an area which experiences elevated levels of...
Arduino Blog
Simplifying IoT for smarter manufacturing: Join the chat with Arduino, AWS, and Atlas Machine
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes...
2 weeks ago
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes feel daunting. But what if you could simplify the process and start seeing results quickly? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming Arduino Cloud Café webinar on...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What in the Ethereum application ecosystem excites me
over a year ago
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #47: I think this YouTube video just changed my life
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
a week ago
Plus vertical farming, the Russia/EU border, and more on why the Lobby is bad.
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Louwrentius
An affordable server platform based on server-grade hardware
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true...
over a year ago
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true server-grade harware when building a server, wether it's for home or business use.
This is why I want to introduce you to the Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard.
This motherboard costs...
Jonas Hietala
Being Productive
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all...
over a year ago
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all going so fast, week after week is disappearing and I don’t know where they go but I know that I’m at least not wasting them like I did most of last year!
Last year I managed school...
computers are bad
2023-03-24 docker
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a...
a year ago
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a lot of advantages. But I am supposedly a DevOps
professional, and so I will occasionally indulge in giving DevOps advice... or
at least opinions, which are sort of like advice but...
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
Matt Blewitt
7 Languages in 7 Weeks for 2025
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a...
3 weeks ago
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a hands on tour of Ruby, Clojure, Haskell, Io, Scala, Erlang and Prolog. Ruby achieved critical mass, to some degree so did Scala, with the others being popular within their specific...
Applied Cartography
Auth.js + Square
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the...
7 months ago
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the periphery of your understanding, and a Third South project has led me to spin up a small Next project using Bun [1] and Auth.js (nee next-auth), which has been quite bad and I...
Willem's Blog
Riding with a power meter on your bike
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road...
over a year ago
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road bike.
Willem's Blog
Impact of training
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and...
a year ago
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and data analysis on my performance in the Fietselfstedentocht 2023.
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...
Notes on software...
Walking through a basic Racket web service
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme...
over a year ago
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme R5RS is three years younger. It is
as concise and expressive as Python but with much more reasonable
syntax and semantics. Racket is also faster in many cases due in part
to:
JIT...
Home on Erik...
The hardest challenge about becoming a manager
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I...
over a year ago
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I became a manager back in 2009. Being a developer is fun. You have this very tangible way to measure yourself.
Neil Madden
Multiple input MACs
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a...
over a year ago
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a single string, but multiple fields of data. For example, when creating an authenticated encryption mode by composing a cipher and a MAC (like AES-CBC and HMAC), you need to ensure the...
Applied Cartography
Against Against Innovation Tokens
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote...
5 months ago
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote Against Innovation Tokens yesterday:
In 2015, Dan McKinley laid out a model for software teams selecting technologies. He proposed that each team have a limited supply of “innovation...
Willem's Blog
Visiting an international hackers conference
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security...
over a year ago
This month I attended Global AppSec Amsterdam, an international conference for hackers and security specialists. Read along for some of the highlights.
Avestura's Blog
An opinion on what's a good general-purpose programming language
What features should a programming language have to be ideal, in my opinion?
over a year ago
What features should a programming language have to be ideal, in my opinion?
Home on Erik...
Installing TensorFlow on AWS
Curious about Google's newly released TensorFlow? I don't have a beefy GPU machine, so I spent some...
over a year ago
Curious about Google's newly released TensorFlow? I don't have a beefy GPU machine, so I spent some time getting it to run on EC2. The steps on how to reproduce it are pretty brutal and I wouldn't recommend going through it unless you want to waste five hours of your live.
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...
Home on Erik...
A neat little trick with time decay
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have...
over a year ago
Something that pops up pretty frequently is to implement time decay, especially where you have recursive chains of jobs. For instance, say you want to keep track of a popularity score. You calculate today's output by reading yesterday's output, discounting it by $$ exp(-lambda...
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...
Good Enough
Our ChatGPT Mission Statement
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission...
a year ago
What follows is an edited transcript of my interaction with ChatGPT to help craft a mission statement for Good Enough.
The resulting mission statement was surprisingly good and I had some literal LOLs along the way.
Though I think we'll leave out the haiku.
You are an expert at...
Home on Erik...
What can startups learn from Koch Industries?
I recently finished the excellent book Kochland. This isn't my first interest in Koch—I read The...
over a year ago
I recently finished the excellent book Kochland. This isn't my first interest in Koch—I read The Science of Success by Charles Koch himself a couple of years ago.
Charles Koch inherited a tiny company in 1967 and turned it into one of the world's largest ones.
Jonas Hietala
Autumn 2016 Goals Retrospective
Earlier this year I set out some goals I wanted to accomplish this autumn. I accomplished a few...
over a year ago
Earlier this year I set out some goals I wanted to accomplish this autumn. I accomplished a few things and I failed others.
Exercise and Health
Eat more strict LCHF for 1 month ok
Train BJJ or MMA for 1 month ok
2 months of lifting at the gym ok
Powerlifting
100 kg deadlift 5x5...
Home on Erik...
When machine learning matters
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to...
over a year ago
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive.
Lighthouse Blog
What I want to achieve with Lighthouse
10 months ago
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
Willem's Blog
Climbing Mount Etna
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
over a year ago
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
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...
Notes on software...
Interview With Phil of DataStation
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Home on Erik...
Model benchmarks
A lot of people have asked me what models we use for recommendations at Spotify so I wanted to share...
over a year ago
A lot of people have asked me what models we use for recommendations at Spotify so I wanted to share some insights. Here's benchmarks for some models. Note that we don't use all of them in production.
Arduino Blog
Making fire detection more accurate with ML sensor fusion
The mere presence of a flame in a controlled environment, such as a candle, is perfectly acceptable,...
4 months ago
The mere presence of a flame in a controlled environment, such as a candle, is perfectly acceptable, but when tasked with determining if there is cause for alarm solely using vision data, embedded AI models can struggle with false positives. Solomon Githu’s project aims to lower...
Jonas Hietala
The Arty Timeline
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty...
over a year ago
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty cool so here they are:
And now I’m off with New World Order and (for once) I’ve got a really really good idea!
Willem's Blog
Creating the ultimate commuter bike
Creating the ultimate commuter bike by upgrading the Sensa Cintura belt drive bike.
over a year ago
Creating the ultimate commuter bike by upgrading the Sensa Cintura belt drive bike.
Christian Selig
First on New Blog
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will...
a year ago
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will remove.
This goat’s name is apparently Gubgub, and very cute.
Jonas Hietala
Black and White
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a...
over a year ago
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn’t come out nearly as good as I expected it too.
Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this...
Home on Erik...
Exploding offers are bullshit
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I...
over a year ago
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers...
Notes on software...
Administering Kubernetes is hard
Kubernetes is easy to use after some exposure; it's pretty convenient
too. But it is super hard to...
over a year ago
Kubernetes is easy to use after some exposure; it's pretty convenient
too. But it is super hard to set up.
eksctl is a good tool for folks who don't want to
spend hours/days/weeks debugging VPC configuration in 1000s of lines
of CloudFormation. None of the other tools seem to be...
Jonas Hietala
New Computer!
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s...
over a year ago
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s awesome (as all new computers are).
The specs:
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550Ti OC 1GB
CPU: Intel core i5 2500K
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS-9900NT
Motherboard: MSI P67A-C45 REV B3
Ram:...
./techtipsy
Accidentally turning the ASRock DeskMini X300 into a semi-passively cooled PC
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one...
over a year ago
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one interesting thing. At least it was
interesting to me.
Background
I had one goal: to try to see if I could turn it into a semi-passive PC by only
turning the fan on when the PC was...
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
over a year ago
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
Jonas Hietala
A Four-Eyed Update
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my...
over a year ago
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my almost constant headaches which hampered me a lot actually. Luckily now I have joined the rank of cool.
I took home three frames I think and tried them out and I settled some I...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
Jonas Hietala
MenuCity
This game is called MenuCity and it’s a numbers game. Well that’s the theme anyway. The game pretty...
over a year ago
This game is called MenuCity and it’s a numbers game. Well that’s the theme anyway. The game pretty much held to what I planned for - except that it deviated from the theme -again- a bit.
My game is very reminiscent of the old calculator classic Block Dude made by Brandon...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
Arduino Blog
Web Serial Camera stream with Arduino
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage...
4 months ago
Hey there, fellow tech enthusiasts! Ever wondered how you could effortlessly stream camera footage from your Arduino boards directly to your web browser? Wonder no more! Arduino’s Web Serial Camera demo shows how to bring your camera projects to life. Stream images from your...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 2
The VIC-20
a year ago
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...
Louwrentius
Setup a VPN on your iPhone with OpenVPN and Linux
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered...
over a year ago
⚠️ 🚨 Update 2024 🚨⚠️
I'm not using OpenVPN anymore for my VPN needs and this article is considered unmaintained.
It's stronly recommended not to use this tutorial and find up-to-date documentation.
I also have no plans to update this blogpost in the future.
[Update 2018]
This...
Simply Explained
Building a killer NAS with an old Rackable Server
Like many others, I'm generating a lot of digital data. Constantly taking photos, writing scripts,...
over a year ago
Like many others, I'm generating a lot of digital data. Constantly taking photos, writing scripts, taking notes, coding projects, and making videos. I'm storing all these files on Google Drive, which has been very reliable but also a bit risky. What if Google closes my account?...
Good Enough
TIL: Rails has_one Nested Attributes Tweaking
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things...
a year ago
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things caught me off guard.
has_one Nested Form Sending id Attribute
In this case I have a nested form that is in a has_one relationship with the parent model.
I think this is a common thing...
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Applied Cartography
Using Cursor to port Django tests to pytest
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using...
3 months ago
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using these tools (Supermaven is a pretty heavy part of my day-to-day work), but have found most tools quite bad by the metric of "do they make me more productive on Buttondown's code...
Louwrentius
RAID 5 vs. RAID 6 or do you care about your data?
Storage is cheap. Lots of storage with 10+ hard drives is still cheap. Running
10 drives increases...
over a year ago
Storage is cheap. Lots of storage with 10+ hard drives is still cheap. Running
10 drives increases the risk of a drive failure tenfold. So often RAID 5 is
used to keep your data up and running if one single disks fails.
But disks are so cheap and storage arrays are getting so...
Matt Mullenweg
Michael Palmisano on Collier
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on...
a month ago
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on YouTube, and one of my favorite genres of videos is genius musicians breaking down the incredible musical stuff Jacob is doing. (He even has his own instrument now.) This reaction...
Matt Mullenweg
State of the Word Tokyo
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an...
6 days ago
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an amazing venue that looks over the city. Most of WordPress and Automattic’s senior leadership is here, and we’ll also have several hundred folks from the local community and press. We’ve...
Louwrentius
Linux network interface bonding / trunking or how to get beyond 1 Gb/s
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP...
over a year ago
This article discusses Linux bonding and how to achieve 2 Gb/s transfer speeds
with a single TCP/UDP connection.
UPDATE July 2011
Due to hardware problems, I was not able to achieve transfer speeds
beyond 150 MB/s. By replacing a network card with one from another
vendor (HP...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
detreville
Father's Day
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
a year ago
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
computers are bad
2023-06-12 radio on the tv
Like many people in my generation, my memories of youth are heavily defined by
cable television. I...
a year ago
Like many people in my generation, my memories of youth are heavily defined by
cable television. I was fortunate enough to have a premium cable package in
my childhood home, Comcast's early digital service based on Motorola equipment.
It included a perk that fascinated me but...
Odds and Ends of...
We need more than Westminster reporters to understand government
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
a week ago
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
Electronics etc…
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Introduction
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Frequency/Phase Movement Analysis by...
11 months ago
Introduction
Hideo Okawara’s Mixed Signal Lecture Series
Frequency/Phase Movement Analysis by Orthogonal Demodulation
Misc
Introduction
While researching a DSP related topic, Google dug up an excellent article,
written by Hideo Okawara, that is just one part of a series of ~53. I...
Good Enough
Actual Customer Support Is Remarkable
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built...
a year ago
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built software on the Internet and in the app stores.
Our motivation with Good Enough is to try to put together a few products that feel just right to the folks using them.
The things we...
Willem's Blog
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during...
over a year ago
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during the music festival.
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring ham radio activation of Korkattivuori (Mt. Korkatti)
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature...
a year ago
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature reserve area near town Haapavesi (pop. 6588) in Finland. The nature reserve area consist of short family friendly hiking path of approximately 1.5km. One end of the path has parking...
Push to Prod
How Would You Design Amazon S3?
One of my favorite system design questions from a few years ago and a fascinating thing I learned...
2 months ago
One of my favorite system design questions from a few years ago and a fascinating thing I learned while answering it.
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
./techtipsy
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet...
over a year ago
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet and got myself an ASRock DeskMini X300 bare-bones kit.
This is a fantastic little desktop PC kit that is very small, quiet and can
still be configured to have ridiculous amounts of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 5 Retrospective
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Why I don't rely on AI for programming (too much)
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting...
a month ago
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that.
thih9 on Hacker News
I’ve been skeptical of the AI craze...
Jonas Hietala
Where's Teddy?
So I did this course Game Design and what’s a course on Game Design without a game? Well, here it...
over a year ago
So I did this course Game Design and what’s a course on Game Design without a game? Well, here it is. Made in about seven days (more likely eight) and I thought it became quite cool.
Where’s Teddy?
How to Play
Your mission is to find teddy and his teddybear friends. The...
Applied Cartography
You gotta be able to taste the kool-aid
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b...
8 months ago
Cognition, a six-month-old startup in the AI coding space just raised $175m at a $2b valuation:
Despite the skepticism surrounding Devin’s launch, the AI coding assistant has shown promising results. According to the SWE-Bench benchmark, which evaluates AI models on software...
Jonas Hietala
Extracting schedule information from timeedit
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved...
over a year ago
At LIU we use timeedit to track our schedules. Recently they updated their interface and improved some parts. It’s now possible to create a prenumeration of a collection of courses exported as csv which can then be imported to other calendar apps. But they also started to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
An Incomplete Guide to Rollups
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Keeping a technical edge
Someone emailed me in response to Two years as an independent technologist, in which I wrote:
I miss...
3 months ago
Someone emailed me in response to Two years as an independent technologist, in which I wrote:
I miss of being at a large company, which is dealing with deeply cutting-edge technical problems, but my ability to analyze information, make decisions, and perform at a high-level has...
Posts on Made of...
Git in pictures
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way...
over a year ago
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way in which it makes the backend model that is being used to store data the most important element of the tool, and that experts use it by having the complete model in their head,...
computers are bad
2024-03-09 the purple streetscape
Across the United States, streets are taking on a strange hue at night. Purple.
Purple streetlights...
9 months ago
Across the United States, streets are taking on a strange hue at night. Purple.
Purple streetlights have been reported in Tampa, Vancouver, Wichita, Boston.
They're certainly in evidence here in Albuquerque, where Coal through downtown
has turned almost entirely to mood lighting....
seangoedecke.com RSS...
I don't know how to build software and you don't either
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it...
a month ago
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it better to have that dictated by some…
Arduino Blog
Patrol the pool with this Arduino Nano-powered DIY RC submarine
There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other...
4 months ago
There is something inherently intriguing about submarines that doesn’t seem to apply to other vehicles. Maybe that reflects our natural fears and phobias, or maybe it is a result of our curiosity about the mysterious depths. Maybe it is simply that most of us will never get the...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
9 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the dominance of the x86 architecture that continues to the present.1
One...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exit games for EVM validiums: the return of Plasma
a year ago
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day: Scrolling in GNU screen'
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can...
over a year ago
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can be
changed in the .screenrc file in your home directory. The following example
sets the scroll back buffer to 5K lines.
defscrollback 5000
Set the scroll back buffer on the fly with:
First...
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...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Abort Retry Fail
Unboxing New Old Stock Windows 3.11
A Photo Gallery
a year ago
anderegg.ca
Maybe Bluesky has “won”
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X....
a month ago
November has sucked so far. One upside of the terrible nonsense is that more people are fleeing X. Many are choosing Bluesky. I’ve seen a bunch of takes about this recently, but I keep seeing things I disagree with. I figure that’s a good enough excuse to write more about this...
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...
Jonas Hietala
2017 in Review
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got...
over a year ago
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got a child in October! It really alters your perspectives and other things suddenly feel a little less important and of course there’s less time to do other stuff.
A little late and...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Sat-E
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The...
over a year ago
This is my postmortem for my Ludum Dare 22 entry, Sat-E. You can find the timelapse over here.
The Good
Motivation
I was really motivated for this dare and it showed in the game and outside it. It’s super hard to make a game in only 48 hours but this time it went pretty well. My...
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...
Louwrentius
Cannot access Windows guest within VMware Fusion when running vsphere client
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere...
over a year ago
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere client, which is only available for the Windows platform. Therefore, I run VMware Fusion on my Mac to be able to access VSphere and manage my ESXi host.
The trouble is that both ESXi...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
5 months ago
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
./techtipsy
Disk is OK
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of...
over a year ago
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of Midas.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that I use my hardware for things they were never meant to be used for.
Anyway, I have acquired two Seagate 4TB external hard drives for doing some...
Arduino Blog
A desktop-sized DIY vending machine for your room
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive...
5 months ago
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in most homes. But now you can experience vending bliss thanks to this miniature vending machine designed by m22pj, which you can craft yourself using an...
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...
Willem's Blog
The best bike computer app: Cyclemeter
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a...
over a year ago
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a steer mounted display.
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.
./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...
Electronics etc…
Cable Length Measurement with an HP 8007B Pulse Generator
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
Buck on Software
Thoughts on SaaS and other things
Welcome to Buck on Software!
over a year ago
Welcome to Buck on Software!
anderegg.ca
How decentralized is Bluesky really?
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into...
4 weeks ago
Here’s an excellent article from Christine Lemmer-Webber that takes a deeper technical look into some of the criticisms I had in my previous piece.
The article is long, but very much worth a read. From the conclusion:
Bluesky is built by good people who care, and it is providing...
Yazin Alirhayim
How do you know that an API does what it says it does?
Having been in fintech for a while, I’ve noticed something in common between the many new startups...
over a year ago
Having been in fintech for a while, I’ve noticed something in common between the many new startups that come and go. They all require access to personal information.
A specific example that comes to mind is the Plaid-like solution we developed while working on amal. We’d ask...
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
2 weeks ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Jonas Hietala
HandCash handles require trust and are insecure
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their...
over a year ago
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their $handle concept. It’s basically a username you use instead of the normal Bitcoin Cash address, similar to how domain names abstract away IP addresses. For example instead of...
Jonas Hietala
Establishing Habits with Habitica
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I...
over a year ago
I have used Habitica the last 18 months to organize my habits and things I want to get done. I believe it all started with an amazing book called The Power of Habit which describes the amazing benefits habits can give, both in the context of your own life but also in business....
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...
Applied Cartography
A good H1
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we...
3 weeks ago
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we arrived at our current iteration, which is the anodyne yet pointed Email for you. Yes, you.
Historically, we've called Buttondown a 'newsletter tool' — the h1 before this was 'The...
Willem's Blog
Repairing a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
over a year ago
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
Jonas Hietala
November Theme: Art Game
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t...
over a year ago
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t been “my” themes: I’ve been following their lead and their themes and this month is no exception. This months’ apparently a big theme - Art. It’s even a collaboration with a big...
Home on Erik...
Machine, Platform, Crowd
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it...
over a year ago
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it mentions my blog – in particular the post When machine learning matters.
Ok, I lied a little bit. I didn't discover it serendipitously.
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