Arduino Blog
You can now work in collaboration in Arduino Cloud
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT...
3 months ago
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT projects. Traditional code sharing and editing methods, like using offline IDEs or swapping files manually, often slow down projects and lead to mistakes. This can be a hassle and...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Major failure
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s...
9 months ago
The left POM nut got ground down, making the bed fall down.
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s first major failure.
I know I earlier described how the extruder starter skipping in a big way, but that was just some filament getting stuck in the extruder.
This time a part...
Engineers Need Art
Virtual Pinhead
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual...
8 months ago
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual pinball cabinet.
Jonas Hietala
2020 in review
And so 2020 has come to an end. On a global scale it’s been quite a horrible year, and for me...
over a year ago
And so 2020 has come to an end. On a global scale it’s been quite a horrible year, and for me personally it’s been both good and bad. Luckily we haven’t been directly affected by COVID too much, but it’s still been very disruptive. Either way as I’ve done for years now it always...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Drawing
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a...
over a year ago
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a time, so now I’m going to try something new here. In the beginning of every week I’ll declare something I’ll be focusing on and then that’s the only thing I should focus on on my...
Avestura's Blog
How optimistic or pessimistic are the Kurzgesagt videos?
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
a year ago
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
Louwrentius
Linux on Mac Mini - boot after power failure
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a...
over a year ago
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a power failure has occurred.
User chirhoxi on the ubuntu forum found out how this can be achieved:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1209576
Basically you need one of these...
On Life and Lisp
AAA gaming on Asahi Linux
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which...
2 months ago
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which integrates our Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86
emulation and Windows compatibility. Plus a bonus: conformant OpenCL
3.0.
Asahi Linux now ships the only conformant OpenGL®,
OpenCL™,
and...
Louwrentius
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for home usage
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you...
over a year ago
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you run RAID 5 you're told that you are a crazy person.
Using RAID 5 is portrayed as an unreasonable risk to the availability of your data. It is suggested that it is likely that you...
Louwrentius
Linux: get a list of al disks and their size
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk...
over a year ago
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk /dev/md1: 2015 MB
Disk /dev/md5: 18002.2 GB
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sde: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.1...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The near and mid-term future of improving the Ethereum network's permissionlessness and...
7 months ago
Louwrentius
Personal Security: erase your computer or phone before repair
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have...
over a year ago
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have to find some other person with greater computer knowledge to repair their computer or phone. That person will then be able to access all data stored on their computer or phone.
By...
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...
Willem's Blog
Refining my tablet OS experience
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
over a year ago
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
Simply Explained
Static webhosting benchmark: AWS, Google, Firebase, Netlify, GitHub & Cloudflare
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there...
over a year ago
Static websites are still a hot topic. They are fast, and they're incredibly secure because there isn't a CMS to hack. Once you build a static website, however, the question becomes: Where do I host?In other words: what is the fastest static website hosting provider in 2020?...
Louwrentius
Setting up a Squid proxy with Clamav anti-virus using c-icap
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer...
over a year ago
Security is all about a defence-in-depth strategy. Create multiple layers of defence. Every layer presenting a different set of challenges, requiring different skill sets and technology. So every layer will increase the time and effort to compromise your environment.
A...
Jonas Hietala
Bullets and AI
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the...
over a year ago
The game is still far from being an actual game but some progress has been made. I fixed most of the collision detection problems and I’m now trying to make some sort of AI working for the ship. It’s a bit hard and time consuming and I don’t know how to make things good.
Maybe...
Jonas Hietala
Monaco What's Yours is Mine
I’ve been waiting for soon to be three years for Monaco What’s Yours is Mine, and today I was...
over a year ago
I’ve been waiting for soon to be three years for Monaco What’s Yours is Mine, and today I was granted an early christmas present - I was given a beta key! w00p!!
I was planning on studying and sending some emails to some companies… But who knows what I’ll end up doing?
Tomorrow...
Notes on software...
How I run a software book club
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We...
6 months ago
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We read through Designing Data-Intensive
Applications, Database
Internals,
Systems
Performance, and
we just started Understanding Software
Dynamics.
The DDIA discussions were...
Louwrentius
I made my blog solar-powered, then things escalated
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing...
a year ago
In 2020 I wondered if I could run my blog on solar power, being inspired by Low-tech Magazine, doing the same thing (but better)1. The answer was 'yes', but only through spring and summer.
I live in an apartment complex in The Netherlands and my balcony is facing west. This...
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 days ago
Building an intuition about energy
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
Home on Erik...
Stuff that bothers me: “100x faster than Hadoop”
The simple way to get featured on big data blog these days seem to be
Build something that does 1...
over a year ago
The simple way to get featured on big data blog these days seem to be
Build something that does 1 thing super well but nothing else Benchmark it against Hadoop Publish stats showing that it's 100x faster than Hadoop $$$ Spark claims their 100x faster than Hadoop and there's a...
Notes on software...
My favorite software subreddits
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only...
a year ago
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only exposure to
reddit is dank memes, proggit or even
language-specific subreddits like
/r/python, you're missing out.
What follows are my favorite subreddits in tech. My criteria is...
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
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...
Arduino Blog
Control your Raspberry Pi GPIOs with Arduino Cloud using Python | Part II
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs...
7 months ago
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs remotely. Well, you have landed in the right place. This article builds upon our previous introduction to “Visualize your Raspberry Pi data with Arduino Cloud | Part I.” Now, we’ll...
Computer Ads from...
Lintek Computer Accessories' Paper Tamer
Restore Order (to your printer)
8 months ago
Restore Order (to your printer)
Home on Erik...
Detecting corporate fraud using Benford's law
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a...
over a year ago
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a phenomenon where numbers in any data series will exhibit patterns in their first digit. For instance, if you took a list of the 1,000 longest rivers of Mongolia, or the average daily...
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...
axio.ms
Colourclock
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed...
over a year ago
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed April-August 2014, project completed August 2014, installed in spare room in 2016, written up in March 2018 (jeeez…)
Acrylic, LEDs, ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller.
...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
Birchtree
AI, self-driving, and evolving your opinions on new tech over time
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can...
2 weeks ago
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms....
Matt Blewitt
Software Sprezzatura
Sprezzatura is “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says...
over a year ago
Sprezzatura is “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”, coined by Castiglione in 1528’s The Book of the Courtier.
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!
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1982/02 Creative Computing Mag
Time for some humor
6 months ago
Louwrentius
I switched my blog from Blogofile to Pelican
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile...
over a year ago
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile but I switched to Pelican.
Blogofile has seen almost no updates over the years and I consider the project dead. Realising that blogofile is dead, I decided to look around for...
Electronics etc…
Fake Parallel Printer - A Parallel Port Traffic Capturing Tool
Introduction
What Is Out There?
The Parallel Printer Port
Fake Printer Top Level Design Choices
Fake...
a year ago
Introduction
What Is Out There?
The Parallel Printer Port
Fake Printer Top Level Design Choices
Fake Printer HW Details
PCB Revision 1
PCB Revision 2
Firmware
Building a Fake Printer Tool Yourself
Programming the Raspberry Pico
Fake Printer as a USB Serial Device on your...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Education at Bett 2025: Shaping the future of K-12 and HE
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from...
5 days ago
Mark your calendars… Arduino Education is coming to Bett UK 2025! Taking place for three days from January 22nd-24th at the ExCeL exhibition center in London, Bett is the ultimate global event for educational innovation. We are attending the stand with our partner CreativeHut...
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?
Good Enough
Issue 0: Collector's Item
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s...
over a year ago
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s item in your hands: the very first Good Enough Newsletter. This is the beginning of what we (Barry Hess & Shawn Liu) hope to be a years-long series of communiqués with our rabid...
Home on Erik...
Fun with trigonometry: the world's most twisted coastline
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of...
over a year ago
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of Italy, the Mediterranean sea was to the east, because the house was situated on a long bay.
Notes on software...
How to get better at recursion
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For...
over a year ago
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For a few years after college I spent a lot of free time doing
projects in Standard ML and Scheme. As a result I got really
comfortable doing recursion. The two big reasons for this...
Willem's Blog
Developing a native iOS app
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with...
7 months ago
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with some help from AI? Read along to find out!
Willem's Blog
Using Google Free Android
Using a Google Free Android phone is uncommon these days, yet I decided to try the Volla Phone to...
over a year ago
Using a Google Free Android phone is uncommon these days, yet I decided to try the Volla Phone to experience its freedom and privacy.
Louwrentius
Lion's Disk Utility not compatible with CoreStorage and Filevault
My 1 TB hard drive of my 2011 27" iMac was partitioned with:
A bootable partition with Mac OS X...
over a year ago
My 1 TB hard drive of my 2011 27" iMac was partitioned with:
A bootable partition with Mac OS X Lion
Time machine partition (I use an external SSD as my main OS)
Bootcamp partition with windows
A data partition containg... data.
The problem is that CoreStorage is too new. Disk...
Avestura's Blog
Understanding zero-knowledge proofs
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
over a year ago
What are zero-knowledge proofs, really?
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...
Posts on Made of...
Using X forwarding with screen by proxying $DISPLAY
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a...
over a year ago
If you’re reading this blog, I probably don’t have to explain why I love GNU screen. I can keep a long-running session going on a server somewhere, and log in and resume my session without losing any state.
I also love X-forwarding. I love being able to log into a remote server...
Jonas Hietala
Fun or Frustration? Ludum Dare 33
One of my goals this year was to participate in a Ludum Dare. I have cleared up my schedule,...
over a year ago
One of my goals this year was to participate in a Ludum Dare. I have cleared up my schedule, negotiated with my better half and everything is set up for epicness.
At first the idea was to make a game in rust, even tough I basically haven’t used it in almost a year, but when I...
Jonas Hietala
February gets Themed: Rejection
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t...
over a year ago
The Experimental Gameplay Project has announced their next theme - and shame on me if I wouldn’t follow suite! With valentine coming up I might just have found a pretty nice idea, just now, writing this…
Booyah!!
Posts on Made of...
Record/Replay testing in Sorbet
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the...
over a year ago
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the Sorbet project at Stripe to build a gradual static typechecking system for Ruby, with the aim of enhancing productivity on Stripe’s millions of lines of Ruby, and eventually producing a...
Notes on software...
SQLite in Go, with and without cgo
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over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Posts on Made of...
Towards solving Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey...
over a year ago
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey into interesting algorithms and high-performance parallel programming in Rust.
Backstory Starting around the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve gotten myself deeply nerdsniped...
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
Matt Mullenweg
WPAI
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some...
a week ago
Very excited to share that we’ve acquired WPAI and the team is joining Automattic. They have some very cool products including CodeWP, AgentWP, and WP.chat.
Jonas Hietala
Reinstalling Slackware
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important...
over a year ago
So I reinstalled slackware on my machine and decided to take some rough notes of the most important steps I made. I did not document the steps in detail, and some are very specific for my setup. But maybe it can be useful for someone, or myself.
Basic steps
Make slackware usb...
Style over Substance
Using the EZCOO / AVStar HAE118 HDMI2.1 Audio Extractor for PS5/Xbox audio
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out...
a year ago
Back in 2021, we bought a PlayStation 5 (PS5) as our main living room console. Making the most out of this console meant we also had to buy a new TV, as our old TV was not 4K-compatible and did not support HDMI2.1, the new A/V standard required to support all of the PS5’s...
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!"
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...
Willem's Blog
Building a product platform
Leverage platform capabilities to quickly launch new products, designing for reusability,...
over a year ago
Leverage platform capabilities to quickly launch new products, designing for reusability, flexibility and extensibility.
Notes on software...
Languages you can run in the browser, part 1: Python, JavaScript, SQLite
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here
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over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Doing Stuff
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left...
over a year ago
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left the standard math course behind a bit. Actually more than a bit but hopefully I’ll correct things later.
No my life is going along just fine, it almost feels like my life is runing...
computers are bad
2023-10-09 prolific counterfeiting
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices...
a year ago
I'm working on a side project right now, one of several, which involves
telematics devices (essentially GPS trackers with i/o) from a fairly reputable
Chinese manufacturer. The device is endlessly configurable and so, like you see
with a lot of radios, it has a UART for...
Applied Cartography
PSA: mess around with Keystatic
We've been using Keystatic in Buttondown for around six months now: we migrated most of the content...
9 months ago
We've been using Keystatic in Buttondown for around six months now: we migrated most of the content on the marketing site (which is backed by Next) from MDX onto Keystatic, and were so happy with the experience that the upcoming rebuild of the docs site will be featuring...
Old Vintage...
Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games...
5 months ago
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games to a more downmarket age. If you couldn't afford the real device, your alternative was these inexpensive, inadequate facsimiles faithful only to one's gauzy recollection. As their...
Matt Blewitt
Control Loops and Rice Cookers
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my...
over a year ago
Rice cookers are fascinating machines. I’ve owned one for years, as rice is a significant part of my regular diet, and it completely removes the stress of preparing rice. They also operate on a simple principle that can help us operate cloud infrastructure – the control loop.
Good Enough
TIL: Use touch-action: manipulation; to avoid double-tap-to-zoom
Recently we built and launched A Good Enough Guestbook, a place where you can send us doodles and...
a year ago
Recently we built and launched A Good Enough Guestbook, a place where you can send us doodles and they’ll print out on our little printer. It’s quite lovely and fun, and you should send us a doodle. We might also have more in store for these printers in the future.
In the...
Notes on software...
In response to a frontend developer asking about database development
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a year ago
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here
if you are not redirected.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this...
a year ago
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generation circuitry inside the Intel 386 processor.
Earlier processors such as the 8086 (1978) were simpler, using two clock phases internally.
The...
Louwrentius
Lustre and the risk of Serious Data Loss
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was...
over a year ago
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was thinking about how you would setup a large, scalable
storage infrastructure. How should such a thing work?
Very simple: you should be able just to add hosts with some bad-ass huge...
Jordan’s Substack
Coming soon
This is Jordan’s Substack.
a month ago
This is Jordan’s Substack.
Matt Blewitt
Modifying pg_dump To Exclude Event Triggers
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from...
5 months ago
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from dropping an extension. As this extension is part of contrib and normally installed by users, we can’t prevent them from dropping it normally. However, event triggers can only be created...
Jonas Hietala
No game this month
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack...
over a year ago
Well here I am in the end of the month - without a game. It’s a failure I know but once again I lack inspiration and then it’s really hard to do something. Instead I’ve been thinking of something I could do that would make me wanna code like really bad again. I’m thinking of...
Notes on software...
Implementing zip archiving in Golang: unzipping
All code for this post is available on Github.
Let's take a look at how zip files work. Take a small...
over a year ago
All code for this post is available on Github.
Let's take a look at how zip files work. Take a small file for example:
$ cat hello.text
Hello!
Let's zip it up.
$ zip test.zip hello.text
adding: hello.text (stored 0%)
$ ls -lah test.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil phil 177 Nov 23 23:04...
Jonas Hietala
I, Robot
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process...
over a year ago
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process went smooth and our group was amazing. The design and building of the robot went well even though in hindsight I would’ve changed a lot of stuff. The ending competition didn’t go...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
5 months ago
GitButler
Stacked Branches with GitButler
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
2 weeks ago
GitButler can now manage dependent branches that are stacked, including managing stacked GitHub PRs.
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...
Posts on Made of...
Write testable code by writing generic code
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains...
over a year ago
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains several software engineers nearly as obsessed with software testing as I am):
uhh, so I’m writing some code to handle an econnreset… how do I test this?
This is a good question!...
Posts on Made of...
Iron Blogger: Blogging for Beer
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while....
over a year ago
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while. The reason is that I’ve recently started an ongoing event with a whole bunch of friends around here to encourage us to blog more.
Like so many good ideas, it all started with a...
Abort Retry Fail
The Birth of Windows Gaming
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
a year ago
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
Posts on Made of...
Reflections on software performance
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining...
over a year ago
At this point in my career, I’ve worked on at least three projects where performance was a defining characteristic: Livegrep, Taktician, and Sorbet (I discussed sorbet in particular last time, and livegrep in an earlier post). I’ve also done a lot of other performance work on the...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside an IBM/Motorola mainframe controller chip from 1981
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit.1
But before I discuss the chip,...
5 months ago
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit.1
But before I discuss the chip, I need to give some background on mainframes.
(I didn't completely analyze the chip, so don't expect a nice narrative or solid conclusions.)
Die photo of the Motorola/IBM SC81150...
Old Vintage...
Adding a cooling fan to the Commodore 128DCR
Call it a "refurb weekend sequel" to our previous work on my beloved Commodore 128DCR. It's been a...
a year ago
Call it a "refurb weekend sequel" to our previous work on my beloved Commodore 128DCR. It's been a hot, horrid summer in Floodgap Very Sub-Orbital Headquarters and I was somewhat concerned about the heat in the house computer lab even with the A/C cranked up to "Vegas weekend for...
Jonas Hietala
Food vacation in Japan
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of...
over a year ago
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures, but I ended up sending a bunch back home as a ways of keeping my family up to date. When I look back most of them are about food… So I’ll turn this into a post about the...
Posts on Made of...
Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had...
over a year ago
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had worked, using a trigram index.
By that point, I’d already implemented early versions of my own livegrep source-code search engine, using a different indexing approach that I...
Applied Cartography
Are monopolies bad, actually?
One of the more interesting theses advanced by Zero to One [1] is that monopolies are good to the...
9 months ago
One of the more interesting theses advanced by Zero to One [1] is that monopolies are good to the extent that they afford companies the agency and comfort to engage in long-term activities:
Monopolists can think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In...
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...
Arduino Blog
How to use vintage LED bubble displays with your Arduino
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or...
a month ago
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or OLED screen. But though those are affordable and work really well, they may not provide the vibe you’re looking for. If you want a more vintage look, Vaclav Krejci has a great...
Home on Erik...
Benchmark of Approximate Nearest Neighbor libraries
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you...
over a year ago
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you have a high (1-1000) dimensional space with points in it, and you want to find the nearest neighbors to some point.
Arduino Blog
Clone your IoT projects with Arduino Cloud Custom Templates
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the...
4 months ago
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the thrill of bringing a new IoT project to life. But we also understand the frustration of repetitive setup processes and the time sink of configuring the same elements over and over...
csvbase blog
Parquet: more than just "Turbo CSV"
Quicker, but also more convenient
a year ago
Quicker, but also more convenient
Style over Substance
How I made HA-meural: a Meural Canvas integration for Home Assistant
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the...
over a year ago
One of my 2020 lockdown projects I’m extremely proud of is HA-meural – a custom integration for the Home Assistant home automation software that lets you control a NETGEAR Meural Canvas digital frame. It’s the result of a few months of work, lots of trial and error, and many...
Applied Cartography
November, 2024
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved,...
2 weeks ago
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved, without fanfare or closure) cough and a dearth of time to write as I started to explore easing back into full-time work.
Still, some writing (and selfishly, I'm excited to end the...
Louwrentius
Fio-plot: creating nice charts from FIO storage benchmark data
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice...
over a year ago
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice charts. It allows you to create four types of graphs which will be discussed below.
The github project page explains how to run this tool.
Fio-plot also includes a benchmark script...
GitButler
GitButler 0.13 - "Lucky Baseball"
It has been 4 months since our last minor release. In that time, we have done 27 patch releases,...
2 months ago
It has been 4 months since our last minor release. In that time, we have done 27 patch releases, adding lots of small features, bug fixes, performance improvements and experiments.
Last week we released GitButler 0.13, which is our first release with our new Fearless Rebasing...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the
compiler's LLVM backend to
support compiling conditionals such that we can support...
./techtipsy
I tried out the CyberPower UT650EG UPS
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out...
over a year ago
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out one UPS that was recommended on the basis of it being much
more power efficient compared to the APC UPS that I previously ran.
That UPS? CyberPower UT650EG.
Why switch out a...
Opsbros
WetSocks Revival
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do...
over a year ago
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do to get WetSocks Windows 98 tray weather app working again.
Jonas Hietala
2016 Read Books
Yeah so I managed to not read a single fiction book this year. To compensate and make myself feel...
over a year ago
Yeah so I managed to not read a single fiction book this year. To compensate and make myself feel better I’ll add in some new mangas I’ve read, but I may may have missed some.
Fiction
Crickets
Non-Fiction
Getting to Yes
Relax into Stretch
Thinking, Fast and Slow
59 seconds
The...
Willem's Blog
Designing an interface for a food ordering page
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need...
over a year ago
Designing a food ordering page is surprisingly challenging because of the many variables that need to be accommodated on a very small screen.
Good Enough
Lettini is Good Enough
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know...
a year ago
We put a lot of ourselves into our work, and it occurs to us that you, dear reader, might not know much about us. So we’re starting a new Q&A column to introduce ourselves, one-at-a-time, starting with our resident designer…
Who the hell do you think you are?
👋 Hello, I’m...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1986/06 Australian Personal Computer Mag
It’s that time of the month. This time let’s look at humor from down under. These comics are from...
8 months ago
It’s that time of the month. This time let’s look at humor from down under. These comics are from the June 1986 issue of Australian Computer magazine. Enjoy! What computer ads would you like to see in the future? Please comment below. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Films + Books, Q1 2023
What I watched and read
a year ago
Electronics etc…
Setting Up a Symmetricom SyncServer S200 Network Time Protocol Server
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS...
5 months ago
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS Antenna!
The SyncServer S200 Outside and Inside
Installing the Missing BNC Connectors
Setting Up a SyncServer S200 from Scratch
Opening up the SyncServer S200
The SyncServer File...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the...
10 months ago
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the 1970s.
This article provides an introductory guide to reverse-engineering CMOS circuits, using this chip as an
example.
Although the chip looks like a tangle of lines at first,
its large...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Computer Ads from...
Electronic Protection Devices' Electro-Clamp line
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
9 months ago
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
watchTowr Labs -...
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire - Mitel MiCollab CVE-2024-35286, CVE-2024-41713 And An 0day
It is not just APTs that like to target telephone systems, but ourselves at watchTowr too.
We can't...
2 weeks ago
It is not just APTs that like to target telephone systems, but ourselves at watchTowr too.
We can't overstate the consequences of an attacker crossing the boundary from the 'computer system' to the 'telephone system'. We've seen attackers realise this in 2024,
Christian Selig
Theming Apps on iOS is Hard
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with...
over a year ago
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with blue links to a light green background with green links) is a pretty common feature across a lot of apps. It’s one of the core features of the new “Twitter Blue” subscription,...
Louwrentius
Systemd Forward Secure Sealing of system logs makes little sense
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into...
over a year ago
Systemd is a more modern replacement of sysvinit and its in the process of being integrated into most mainstream Linux distributions. I'm a bit troubled by one of it's features.
I'd like to discuss the Forward Secure Sealing (FSS) feature for log files that is part of systemd....
Old Vintage...
So long, Z80
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s...
8 months ago
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s (PDF), announcing earlier this week that after June 14th you won't be able to buy them anymore (specifically the last-part-standing Z84C00 which comes in various speeds from 6-20 MHz)...
Computer Ads from...
MicroTimes Interviews the Head Honchos of Silicon Graphics (1989)
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
7 months ago
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
Vitalik Buterin's...
7ème tour des subventions Gitcoin - Rétrospective
over a year ago
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....
Louwrentius
The sorry state of CoW file systems
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks...
over a year ago
I'd like to argue that both ZFS and BTRFS both are incomplete file systems with their own drawbacks and that it may still be a long way off before we have something truly great.
Both ZFS and BTRFS are two heroic feats of engineering, created by people who are probably ten times...
lcamtuf’s thing
The serious science of trolling LLMs
The internet's oldest pastime finally has a purpose -- and it's more serious than AI companies would...
5 months ago
The internet's oldest pastime finally has a purpose -- and it's more serious than AI companies would like to admit.
Louwrentius
Script that shows smart values of all disks'
Please use this tool on github instead of this ancient script.
So you have a Linux system with a lot...
over a year ago
Please use this tool on github instead of this ancient script.
So you have a Linux system with a lot of hard drives. If you want to quickly check on some key SMART values to determine the health of individual disks, you might be interested in this script.
I wrote a small Python...
Arduino Blog
A new Plug and Make Kit challenge! A game of rhythm and creativity
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of...
a week ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of turning ideas into reality. It enables everyone to focus on the fun of creating with the power of the UNO R4 WiFi and a user-friendly, modular design – bypassing the complexities of...
Computer Ads from...
Sundial Systems' Relish
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
2 months ago
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
Louwrentius
Convert dos file to linux format wit vim
If you have some file that has been saved on a (Win)do(w)s host you may notice
that all lines end...
over a year ago
If you have some file that has been saved on a (Win)do(w)s host you may notice
that all lines end with ^M.
To fix this, you can use the tool dos2unix. If however this tool is not at
your disposal, you may have a problem. If vim is available, you do not have a
problem:
The trick...
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
Louwrentius
Installation of ZFS on Linux hangs on Debian Wheezy
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to...
over a year ago
This article is no longer relevant.
After a fresh net-install of Debian Wheezy, I was unable to compile the ZFS for Linux kernel module. I've installed apt-get install build-essential but that wasn't enough.
The apt-get install debian-zfs command would just hang.
I noticed a...
Jonas Hietala
The current T-34 keyboard layout
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is...
over a year ago
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is constantly changing it’s been difficult to piece together how the layout currently looks like, so this post tries to show how the layout looks right now in it’s entirety.
If you want to...
Louwrentius
Difference of behavior in SATA Solid State Drives
Introduction
Update: I've noticed some strange behavior of SSDs when benchmarking them with FIO....
over a year ago
Introduction
Update: I've noticed some strange behavior of SSDs when benchmarking them with FIO. After further investigation and additional testing, I've found the reason for the strange patterns in the graphs.
The 'strange' test results are due to the fact that they were...
Applied Cartography
Letters to a Young Bartender
Every straight white male is forced, character-creation-screen-style, to choose one overtly...
2 weeks ago
Every straight white male is forced, character-creation-screen-style, to choose one overtly consumptive hobby that in some small part defines their twenties and – God willing — their enduring adulthood. Some choose sourdough; many choose barbecue; I chose mixology.
(A...
computers are bad
2024-03-17 wilhelm haller and photocopier accounting
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first...
9 months ago
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first practical method of mass-duplicating text. After
various other projects, he applied his press to the production of the Bible,
yielding over one hundred copies of a text that...
computers are bad
2024-05-06 matrix
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running...
7 months ago
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running for the Governing Board, and a bit about why. For those
of you who are not, I hope you will forgive the intrusion. Maybe you'll find my
opinions on the topic interesting anyway.
I...
Home on Erik...
More recommender algorithms
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization...
over a year ago
I wanted to share some more insight into the algorithms we use at Spotify. One matrix factorization algorithm we have used for a while assumes that we have user vectors $$ bf{a}_u $$ and item vectors $$ bf{b}_i $$ .
Construction Physics
What Learning by Doing Looks Like
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
a week ago
The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits
Jonas Hietala
IDA Summer of Code 2014
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in...
over a year ago
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in a project of their choice and if selected they get paid to work on it for 4 weeks during the summer. In return the university get to show off the students and their projects in...
Willem's Blog
Servicing a robot vacuum cleaner
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to...
over a year ago
This week it was time for some maintenance on my iRobot Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. Read along to learn how I did it.
Jonas Hietala
fish_update_completions in Slackware 14.1
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically...
over a year ago
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically generate completions by parsing the installed man pages by running fish_update_completions.
Unfortunately this is what I got:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File...
Arduino Blog
DexteriSync lets you walk a mile in the gloves of a user with manual disability
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with...
a month ago
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with disabilities that affect their perception and fine motor skills. A young person without disabilities, for example, may feel that jars are easy to open, while an elderly person with reduced...
Notes on software...
Building a fast SCSS-like rule expander for CSS using fuzzy parsing
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 29 Entry
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally...
over a year ago
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally unprepared, but I did setup a setup which actually compiles. I never got audio to run but hopefully I can manage something.
Repository: https://github.com/treeman/LD29. Going for C++ this...
Home on Erik...
Momentum strategies
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday...
over a year ago
Haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a quick hack I threw together in Python on a Sunday night. Basically I wanted to know whether momentum strategies work well for international stock indexes. I spent a bit of time putting together a strategy that buys the stock index if...
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
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...
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...
Jonas Hietala
August theme: Bare Minimum
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next...
over a year ago
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next game. This could really be anything, from graphics to user interaction… But I’ve got an idea. It’ll be a real challange for me to make but hopefully I’ll have a game in a few weeks...
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
over a year ago
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
watchTowr Labs -...
Veeam Backup & Response - RCE With Auth, But Mostly Without Auth (CVE-2024-40711)
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup &...
3 months ago
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup & Replication’. Unfortunately, so is every ransomware operator, given it's somewhat 'privileged position' in the storage world of most enterprise's networks. There's no point deploying...
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
Willem's Blog
Optical vs chest strap heart rate monitors
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness...
over a year ago
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers
Simply Explained
Retrospective: My Fifth Year on YouTube
For the past 4 years, I have made a habit of reflecting on the previous year and set goals for the...
over a year ago
For the past 4 years, I have made a habit of reflecting on the previous year and set goals for the new year. This year is no exception, but now I try to set better goals while reflecting on some personal things in life.
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
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...
Willem's Blog
From tree to table
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
over a year ago
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
Applied Cartography
How shadcn/ui examples work
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a...
7 months ago
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a durable, non-trivial advantage.
Part of this thesis is that Really Good Docs Experiences, in addition to having great information architecture and strong writing/prose, should be thought...
Willem's Blog
Smartwatches vs Mechanical watches
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
over a year ago
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
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
Cool URLs Don’t Die
If you've been reading our newsletter (and you should be reading our newsletter) you will have seen...
a year ago
If you've been reading our newsletter (and you should be reading our newsletter) you will have seen that I've been building some printers.
This is actually the resurrection of a project I began in 2012 with the help of some colleagues, and while I've been updating it, it's been...
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin Cash needs a Specification
I’m not a Bitcoin developer, I’m just some guy looking in from the outside. Lately there’s been a...
over a year ago
I’m not a Bitcoin developer, I’m just some guy looking in from the outside. Lately there’s been a bunch of heated debates between the different Bitcoin Cash developer teams. Something that stood out from all the noise was problems with communications and a lack of specification...
Notes on software...
Thinking about functional programming
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial...
a year ago
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an
interesting
discussion
with Shriram
Krishnamurthi and other folks.
So here's a slightly more thought out exploration.
And just for backstory sake: I...
Home on Erik...
The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old...
over a year ago
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects, with help from the formidable GitPython project.
Jonas Hietala
The 4-Hour Chef: Scrambled Eggs
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to...
over a year ago
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to make changes and start doing new things. I got introduced to Josh Waitzkin’s excellent The Art of Learning and the meta skill of learning has since then fascinated me. So when I got...
Louwrentius
How to compile HAProxy from source and setup a basic configuration
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic...
over a year ago
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic to louwrentius.com across two different web servers.
I run HAProxy on a VPS based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Let's dive right in.
First, we need to download the source. Don't copy/pased...
axio.ms
Axio.ms site refresh
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4...
over a year ago
This is the obligatory “first post on new platform” post, coupled with a bit of “first post in 4 years, I’m still alive”.
The original axio.ms site was a very HTML1.0 affair and while this was kind of intentional-tongue-in-cheek-chic, it was also a PITA to update. It wasn’t...
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...
Jonas Hietala
The killer features of the Steam Deck
In the beginning of the year I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck for...
a year ago
In the beginning of the year I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck for myself.
There were two main reasons I decided to buy it:
burnout and depression by picking up gaming again.
And boy did it deliver.
The Deck is probably the most impressive thing I can...
lcamtuf’s thing
Building a phosphorescence detector
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in...
3 weeks ago
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in the wild.
Applied Cartography
buttondown.com/alternatives
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools...
a week ago
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools to be. There is a ton of room in these markets for healthy and friendly competition — and no need at all for winner-take-all or monopolist attitudes.
First off — credit where it's...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
3 months ago
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
./techtipsy
How I blew up my backup server (Valve pls fix)
It all started with me getting a Steam Deck.
Background
After getting familiar with the Steam Deck...
a year ago
It all started with me getting a Steam Deck.
Background
After getting familiar with the Steam Deck and how the Proton compatibility layer works, I decided to write a
backup script that would back up everything in the home folder, excluding the Steam games themselves due to the...
latest projects -...
Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
8 months ago
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
Opsbros
Pro-tip for Baristas
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup,...
over a year ago
If you've ever filled one of those 'Cheeki' coffee cups, or virtually any other reusable coffee cup, you've definitely come across the issue that when it's 'overfilled' it will overflow when the lid is put back on. There is a
Good Enough
TIL: Don’t forget your Web Manifest file
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective...
a year ago
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective expertise is in making products and services for the web. And like everyone else, our use of the web has shifted from our desktops and laptops to our phones.
As we’re creating and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Some reflections on the Bitcoin block size war
6 months ago
Notes on software...
Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL...
7 months ago
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL transaction levels: Read Uncommitted,
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Snapshot Isolation and
Serializable. We'll use multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and
optimistic...
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...
Posts on Made of...
What's with ML software and pickles?
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but...
a year ago
I have spent many years as an software engineer who was a total outsider to machine-learning, but with some curiosity and occasional peripheral interactions with it. During this time, a recurring theme for me was horror (and, to be honest, disdain) every time I encountered the...
Willem's Blog
Tablet as Tool
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and...
a year ago
Discover the hidden advantages of the iPad Pro in this insightful blog post, offering tips and personal experiences to help you maximise the tablet's potential and redefine your workflow.
Jonas Hietala
Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax...
9 months ago
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax highlighting that works well even in an error state (often the case when you’re editing code), and it has additional semantics (you can differentiate between function parameters and...
Louwrentius
Understanding Ceph: open-source scalable storage
Introduction
In this blog post I will try to explain why I believe Ceph is such an interesting...
over a year ago
Introduction
In this blog post I will try to explain why I believe Ceph is such an interesting storage solution. After you finished reading this blog post you should have a good high-level overview of Ceph.
I've written this blog post purely because I'm a storage enthusiast and I...
Applied Cartography
Vibes and years
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've...
10 months ago
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've been basically work off my gut + Feeling of the Day for the past few years, and that's getting a bit unsustainable
Buttondown's roadmapping has existed for the past three years in a...
Construction Physics
How Good Are American Roads?
We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.
a month ago
We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.
Louwrentius
Migration from blogger to blogofile and disqus is complete
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running...
over a year ago
As stated in my previous post, I migrated all posts from blogger.com to my own host running blogofile.
At the time of my previous post, I was not able to restore all comments made on my old blog. Thanks to some help
from disqcus I fixed an error on my behalf and all old comments...
Posts on Made of...
Security doesn't respect abstraction boundaries
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a...
over a year ago
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a set of useful, easily-described behaviors out of a complex system, we can build other systems on top of those pieces, without having to understand to worry about the full complexity...
Christian Selig
More Efficient/Faster Average Color of Image
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of...
over a year ago
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of why you might want this!
Finding the average color of an image is a nice trick to have in your toolbelt for spicing up views. For instance on iOS, it’s used by Apple to make their...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database, take two: Zig and RocksDB
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project...
over a year ago
For my second project while learning Zig, I decided to port an
old, minimal SQL database project from Go to Zig.
In this post, in ~1700 lines of code (yes, I'm sorry it's bigger than
my usual), we'll create a basic embedded SQL database in Zig on top of
RocksDB. Other than the...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Protected Apple Distribution Certificates Using a YubiKey
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning...
a year ago
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning certificate issued to you by Apple for signing your release artifacts before you distribute them.
Protecting that signing key is important, as Apple must blindly trust any binaries...
computers are bad
2023-06-07 something up there - nasa and uaps
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I...
a year ago
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I am
not addressing the recent claims by David Grusch. This is for a couple of
reasons. First, I am skeptical of Grusch. He is not the first seemingly
well-positioned former...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge
2 months ago
Arduino Blog
Ride safer with these DIY bicycle lights
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant...
5 months ago
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant afterthought. That makes cycling dangerous and lights can do a lot to make riding safer. That’s why Giovanni Aggiustatutto designed this DIY system that includes headlights, a...
Arduino Blog
Galco goes Platinum! Welcome our newest SIPP
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce...
7 months ago
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce distributor that specializes in providing a wide range of industrial and commercial electrical and electronic products, focusing on maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). Known for...
Home on Erik...
Better precision and faster index building in Annoy
Sometimes you have these awesome insights. A few days ago I got an idea for how to improve index...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have these awesome insights. A few days ago I got an idea for how to improve index building in Annoy.
For anyone who isn't acquainted with Annoy – it's a C++ library with Python bindings that provides fast high-dimensional nearest neighbor search.
Odds and Ends of...
WATCH: Were the US election polls right?
My conversation with polling guru Mark Pack
a month ago
My conversation with polling guru Mark Pack
Home on Erik...
Books I read in 2015
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least...
over a year ago
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least one book per week and in particular I wanted to brush up on management, economics, and technology.
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Spring Tournament
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very...
over a year ago
There was another, smaller, netrunner tournament about a week ago. I was looking forward to a very casual setting but there were also some guys who came from… Västerås I think, but I’m not sure. We managed to scrape together 9 people at least, and I didn’t notice anyone bringing...
Arduino Blog
A stroopwafel doneness detection device
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a...
5 months ago
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Netherlands and you order a hot drink, you’ll likely be given a sweet treat as well. That is a stroopwafel, a crispy little waffle-syrup sandwich that the Dutch like to rest on top of their drink so that the rising heat will soften the pastry....
Louwrentius
Linux Mac Mini - temperature monitoring with lm-sensors
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using...
over a year ago
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using Debian Lenny, out of the box, lm-sensors is not working. No sensors can
be found. This is how temperature monitoring and fan speed monitoring can be
made to work:
modprobe applesmc
If...
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
a week ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
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...
Jonas Hietala
OP_RETURN based tokens are fundamentally flawed
Two new Bitcoin Cash token solutions have recently been suggested:
Simple Ledger Protocol: A token...
over a year ago
Two new Bitcoin Cash token solutions have recently been suggested:
Simple Ledger Protocol: A token system for Bitcoin Cash
Introducing Colored Coins: a Bitcoin Cash token implementation
Both are improvements over Tokeda as they allow permissionless transfers. However all commit...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do layer 2s really differ from execution sharding?
7 months ago
computers are bad
2024-11-09 iron mountain atomic storage
I have quipped before about "underground datacenters," and how they never
succeed. During the late...
a month ago
I have quipped before about "underground datacenters," and how they never
succeed. During the late decades of the Cold War and even into the '00s, the
military and (to a lesser extent) the telecommunications industry parted ways
with a great number of underground facilities....
Willem's Blog
The value of notifications
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the...
over a year ago
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the time to set them up correctly, notifications can actually save you time!
Willem's Blog
Migrating to the Cloud
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of...
over a year ago
Helping a customer clear its on-premise data room and migrate to the cloud: an adventure full of cables, cabinets and bandwidth!
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
5 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a...
2 months ago
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orientation and direction.
In a normal aircraft, the artificial horizon shows the orientation in two axes (pitch and roll), but the F-4...
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
over a year ago
People make decisions, not businesses.
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
Posts on Made of...
How is duct tape like the force?
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con...
over a year ago
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con again, I needed to do something in terms of costuming, and I wanted it to be something unique – I wasn’t going to come anywhere near as epic as some of the costumes people pull...
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
over a year ago
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Willem's Blog
Data versus Feeling
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to...
4 days ago
Do you rely on data or on your feeling when running a Marathon? I decided to run two marathons to find out the differences!
Arduino Blog
Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May!
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino...
7 months ago
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino...
Gwern.net Newsletter
July 2020 gwern.net newsletter
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
over a year ago
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: More mods
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and...
9 months ago
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and personalize it.
There a tons of mods you can do, and while I’ve done a few there are lots more that I’d like to do some day.
It’s a wonderful feeling to augment the printer with...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 4 (Pet Sounds)
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should Ethereum be okay with enshrining more things in the protocol?
a year ago
./techtipsy
techtipsy, now hosted on k-space!
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn,...
a year ago
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia.
If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, you might be wondering why I made that move, especially since I was
quite proud of hosting my website over a residential...
Lighthouse Blog
What I want to achieve with Lighthouse
10 months ago
Notes on software...
Metaprogramming in Zig and parsing CSS
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it....
a year ago
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it. What's the difference between
@typeInfo and @TypeOf? I ignored this aspect of Zig until a
problem came up at work where reflection
made sense.
The situation was parsing and storing...
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Accelerated Video Encoding with Intel Arc on Redhat Linux
I've been wanting hardware-accelerated video encoding on my Linux machine for quite a while now, but...
a month ago
I've been wanting hardware-accelerated video encoding on my Linux machine for quite a while now, but ask anybody who's used a Linux machine and they'll tell you of the horrors of Nvidia or AMD drivers.
Intel, on the other hand, seems to be taking things in a much different, much...
Gwern.net Newsletter
October 2020 news
October 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling, Euclid; further site reorganization &...
over a year ago
October 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling, Euclid; further site reorganization & improvement.
computers are bad
2024-02-25 a history of the tty
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator...
10 months ago
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there
must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal...
Engineers Need Art
Kim-1 User Manual
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
a year ago
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
Willem's Blog
Art of visualisation
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to...
over a year ago
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to help a professional food photographer.
GitButler
The Birth of THE MERGE
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our...
7 months ago
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our community is, product feature ideas, and how much Kiril loves food. As we shifted toward the topic of conferences, the idea of hosting our own event emerged. Wouldn’t it be fun
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Action Text Images in Atom Feeds
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed...
7 months ago
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed readers.
In fact, they weren't displaying in my own feed reader, which routes through Feedly.
I was sad.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this.
Compared our feed with a lot of atom...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 98
Echoes of an Explosion
a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Conkeror
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension,...
over a year ago
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension, but nowadays it’s a standalone app built on top of Mozilla’s xulrunner, so it uses the Gecko rendering engine.
What it is, is an emacs implemented in Javascript, for the web. This...
Arduino Blog
Shop vac becomes a Roomba on steroids
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and...
7 months ago
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and sweep your own floors, you have a little maid robot to do the job for you. But these devices have very little power and capacity, which makes them useless for anything other than...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/1 keyboard layout
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this...
over a year ago
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this particular version without any major changes for almost 3 months, so I’d say it’s a good improvement over the last revision.
There are two large changes from T-34/0: swapping o and...
./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...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a ferroelectric RAM chip
Ferroelectric memory (FRAM) is an interesting storage technique that stores bits in a special...
3 months ago
Ferroelectric memory (FRAM) is an interesting storage technique that stores bits in a special "ferroelectric" material.
Ferroelectric memory is nonvolatile like flash memory, able to hold its data for decades.
But, unlike flash, ferroelectric memory can write data...
Home on Erik...
Music recommendations using cover images (part 1)
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in...
over a year ago
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in fact a fairly strong visual proxy for what kind of content you can expect from it. I started wondering if the album cover can in fact be used for recommendations.
Home on Erik...
Everything I learned about technical debt
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover...
over a year ago
I just made it to Sweden suffering from jet lag induced insomnia, but this blog post will not cover that. Instead, I will talk a little bit about technical debt.
The concept of technical debt always resonated with me, partly because I always like the analogy with “real” debt.
Christian Selig
Instant Pan Gesture Interactions
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key...
a year ago
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key takeaways from the videos that one of the presenters, Chan Karunamuni, said is “Look for delays everywhere. Everything needs to respond instantly.” (6:28)
A really great example of...
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
Louwrentius
ZFS RAIDZ expansion is awesome but has a small caveat
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update April 2023:
It has been fairly quiet since the announcement of this feature.
The Github PR about this feature is rather stale and people are wondering what the status is and what the plans are. Meanwhile, FreeBSD has announced In February 2023 that they...
Arduino Blog
Track the location history of your devices in Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether...
6 months ago
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether you’re a logistics company monitoring your fleet, a conservation organization tracking wildlife, or an individual passionate about outdoor adventures, the ability to track and...
Matt Blewitt
So, You Want To Build A DBaaS
So you’ve made the decision to build a Database-as-a-Service product (or something similar). As a...
a year ago
So you’ve made the decision to build a Database-as-a-Service product (or something similar). As a result, you are making state and coordination your problem. Here are some things I’ve learned to keep in mind as you embark on this project, in no particular order (other than the...
Neil Madden
Regular JSON
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows...
a year ago
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows no signs of being replaced any time soon. There are good reasons for that: on the face of it, it provides a very simple format with just enough features to cover a lot of...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Intel Edison
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
6 months ago
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
On Life and Lisp
Conformant OpenGL 4.6 on the M1
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full...
10 months ago
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full OpenGL® 4.6 and OpenGL® ES 3.2! Install Fedora for the latest
M1/M2-series drivers.
Already installed? Just dnf –refresh
upgrade.
Unlike the vendor’s non-conformant 4.1 drivers, our...
Vitalik Buterin's...
DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Enjoy a perpetual solar eclipse with this machine
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A...
5 months ago
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A total eclipse will occur somewhere on Earth once every 18 months or so, but that is more likely to track across the middle of the Pacific Ocean than wherever you happen to be....
Electronics etc…
Increasing Frequency Counter Precision with Linear Regression
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Louwrentius
The downside of 120 Mbit broadband internet
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of...
over a year ago
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of providging 120 Mbit downstream and 10 Mbit upstream, for an affordable price.
In a way this is mind boggling. Most people have 100 Mbit home networks that are not capable of handling...
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...
detreville
🎼This Is the Worst Trip I’ve Ever Been On 🎶
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
7 months ago
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
Matt Mullenweg
GPL Clarification
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a...
a month ago
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo. During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro...
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about key-value databases like FoundationDB and RocksDB?
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document...
over a year ago
Let's assume you're familiar with basic SQL databases like PostgreSQL
and MySQL, and document databases like MongoDB and Elasticsearch. You
probably know Redis too.
But you're hearing more and more about embedded key-value stores like
RocksDB,
LevelDB,
PebbleDB, and so on....
./techtipsy
Trying out VR on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU
You may know that I really like small, efficient APU-based builds.
At this point in time, they’re so...
over a year ago
You may know that I really like small, efficient APU-based builds.
At this point in time, they’re so close to being a viable mainstream option for
gaming, especially the Ryzen 6000-series mobile APU-s. Forza Horizon 5, at
1080p high settings? Yes, they’re that good.
I don’t have...
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,...
Engineers Need Art
Adam74
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
over a year ago
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
Christian Selig
Juno for YouTube has been removed from the App Store
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store...
2 months ago
For those not aware, a few months ago after reaching out to me, YouTube contacted the App Store stating that Juno does not adhere to YouTube guidelines and modifies the website in a way they don’t approve of, and alludes to their trademarks and iconography.
I don’t personally...
Jonas Hietala
Going to University
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of...
over a year ago
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I’m sorry. It’s not as hard as I had imagined, and I don’t have that much in school but there’s still a lot that’s going on. For example now how to make...
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
lcamtuf’s thing
Dispatches from the farm upstate
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
4 months ago
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
Notes on software...
AOT-compilation of Javascript with V8
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed...
over a year ago
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed programming languages have implementations that
compile to native binaries:
Python: Cython
Common Lisp: SBCL
Scheme: Chicken Scheme
The benefits of compiling dynamically typed...
Louwrentius
Performance monitoring using dstat
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is...
over a year ago
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is currently happening on your Linux box.
Dstat allows you to monitor the system load, disk troughput, disk io, network
bandwith, and many more items.
Dstat is so valuable because it...
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.
computers are bad
2023-11-25 the curse of docker
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza...
a year ago
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza there could be. In that spirit, I thought I would write
something quick and oddly professional: I'm going to complain about Docker.
Packaging software is one of those fundamental...
Louwrentius
Redhat explains why chroot is not a security feature
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but...
over a year ago
I came across this Redhat security blog post that explains why the chroot command has it's uses, but it isn't magic security pixie dust. Running an application from within a chrooted jail or just on a well-configured system would result in the same level of security.
Josh...
csvbase blog
How does it know I want csv? — An HTTP trick
Forgotten parts of RFC2616
a year ago
Forgotten parts of RFC2616
Louwrentius
What home NAS builders should understand about silent data corruption
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come...
over a year ago
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come up:
Unrecoverable read errors (UREs) or what old people like me call 'bad sectors'
Silent data corruption (data corruption unnoticed by the storage layers)
I get a strong impression...
Home on Erik...
The eigenvector of "Why we moved from language X to language Y"
I was reading yet another blog post titled “Why our team moved from <language X> to <language Y>” (I...
over a year ago
I was reading yet another blog post titled “Why our team moved from <language X> to <language Y>” (I forgot which one) and I started wondering if you can generalize it a bit. Is it possible to generate a N * N contingency table of moving from language X to language Y?
Arduino Blog
3D printing an affordable robot arm
If you have an interest in robotics, then a robot arm is a great educational tool to start your...
5 months ago
If you have an interest in robotics, then a robot arm is a great educational tool to start your journey. But professional robot arms are expensive and the DIY route is more informative anyway. That’s especially true if you take the time to design the arm yourself, as did Oliver...
Jonas Hietala
Monty Hall
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they...
over a year ago
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they discussed the famous Monty Hall Problem. I’ve heard about it before
and I know the answer, but he mentioned a simulation of the problem and that sounded
cool so I made a simulation of...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 2. user-defined functions and variables
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the compiler to support defining functions
and variables. Additionally, we'll require the...
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:...
Computer Ads from...
Huson Soft HuCAL
Hudson creates business software for everyone.
11 months ago
Hudson creates business software for everyone.
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...
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.
Notes on software...
Writing a storage engine for Postgres: an in-memory Table Access Method
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This...
a year ago
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This is a feature MySQL has supported for a long time. There are at
least 8 different built-in
engines you can pick from. MyRocks, MySQL on
RocksDB, is another popular third-party...
Style over Substance
My Home Assistant setup (2023 edition)
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s...
a year ago
For the past few years, I have been running Home Assistant to make my apartment a smart home. It’s become such a hobby of mine that I’ve even started coding add-ons for it. While there are other popular automation platforms, Home Assistant’s versatility blows the rest out of the...
Jonas Hietala
2019 in Review
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on...
over a year ago
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on the past year, and see that I did indeed do some things, and to look ahead a little.
2019 Non-Geek Achievements
Played around with Isidor.
It’s hard to describe how happy a kid can...
computers are bad
2023-07-10 the tragedy of beatrice foods
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are...
a year ago
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are conspiracy theories, of course, and there are people
who insist on their version of events so incessantly that details of dates and
places can become heated arguments. There is also...
Jonas Hietala
Recent experiences with Netrunner tournaments
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three...
over a year ago
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three tournaments during February - March. After each of these tournaments I started a writeup of them but they fell off my mind a bit but consider this my break with my blogging...
Computer Ads from...
MacWorld Interviews Apple CEO John Sculley (1987)
They discuss the future of Apple, personal computing, and the Mac II
a month ago
They discuss the future of Apple, personal computing, and the Mac II
./techtipsy
Oversimplified guide into snapshots on the btrfs filesystem
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files...
over a year ago
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files around. You finish the script and test it out.
Oops.
All the files now have all the wrong names, and some have been randomly moved
10 folders deep. It’s a mess.
And you didn’t make a...
Christian Selig
Introducing Juno for Apple Vision Pro
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little...
10 months ago
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little sad when YouTube announced that they don’t have plans to build a visionOS app, and disabled the option to load the iPad app. This leaves you with Safari, and the website is okay,...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Bugger
It’s time for the follow up on my latest game Bugger.
Wow it seems like forever since I begun this...
over a year ago
It’s time for the follow up on my latest game Bugger.
Wow it seems like forever since I begun this monthly game business, but it’s only been two months since I first thought about this and here I am having finished my third game. I’ve really come a long way, in the beginning I...
Posts on Made of...
Software Engineers should keep lab notebooks
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike...
over a year ago
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but...
Louwrentius
My 71 TiB ZFS NAS after 10 years and zero drive failures
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going...
3 months ago
My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going strong.
Although now on its second motherboard and power supply, the system has yet to experience a single drive failure (knock on wood).
Zero drive failures in ten years, how is that...
Jonas Hietala
The first (worst) post
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog...
over a year ago
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog will be about and maybe, if I’m dedicated, it won’t die before Christmas you think.
And sure, you’re right. I will run away to the corner in about two and a half months crying I never...
./techtipsy
Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 (AMD): it doesn't suck under Linux
I’ve had the opportunity to try out another new laptop at work. I’ve used a brand new laptop...
8 months ago
I’ve had the opportunity to try out another new laptop at work. I’ve used a brand new laptop recently, and it was horrible.
But this time I’m pleasantly surprised.
The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 has great specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U (8 cores, 16 threads, up to 5.1 GHz)
GPU:...
Louwrentius
Script that deletes old files to keep disk from filling up
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a...
over a year ago
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a script that monitors the used space of a volume
and deletes the oldest file if a certain threshold is reached.
The script will keep on deleting the oldest file present on disk until...
anderegg.ca
My 2024 Upgradies Picks
The latest instalment of The Upgradies is coming soon from our friends at the Upgrade podcast. I...
3 weeks ago
The latest instalment of The Upgradies is coming soon from our friends at the Upgrade podcast. I submitted my recommendations earlier today, and thought it would be fun to share my picks.
Best Overall iOS App
Bear
I once again don’t have a new app for this category, but Bear has...
Electronics etc…
An In-Depth Look at the ICE-V Wireless FPGA Development Board
Introduction
The ICE-V Wireless FPGA Board
Preloading the PSRAM with User Data
The Overall Boot...
a year ago
Introduction
The ICE-V Wireless FPGA Board
Preloading the PSRAM with User Data
The Overall Boot Process
UART Console
Getting Started with the ICE-V Wireless Board for Real
Reinstalling or Modifying the ESP32C3 Firmware
The RISC-V Example FPGA Design
Compiling the RISC-V Example...
Arduino Blog
Speed up your project’s compile time by up to 50% in Arduino Cloud!
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or...
a week ago
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or experimenting with new ideas. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce a game-changing update to the Cloud Editor Builder — the engine behind compiling your sketches in Arduino Cloud. This...
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