./techtipsy
The Fedora Linux starter pack: everything you need for a smooth experience
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh,...
2 months ago
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh, big deal!
It’s stable in day-to-day use, ships with up-to-date software, and the software selection is adequate out of the box.
It also ships with a fresh Linux kernel version1,...
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...
Engineers Need Art
Jigsaw Puzzle
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big...
over a year ago
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big jigsaw puzzle.
Arduino Blog
Simplifying IoT for smarter manufacturing: Join the chat with Arduino, AWS, and Atlas Machine
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes...
2 weeks ago
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes feel daunting. But what if you could simplify the process and start seeing results quickly? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming Arduino Cloud Café webinar on...
Notes on software...
Controlled HTML select element in React has weird default UX
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Arduino Blog
Turn your old Android smartphone into an Arduino screen with the RemoteXY app
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for...
5 days ago
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for mistakes. But most projects require some “auxiliary” hardware — components that you use to interact with the Arduino or to help it do the job you’re asking of it. Buttons and displays...
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety
We need to move beyond mere security and towards safety for our customers and our users. This is how...
over a year ago
We need to move beyond mere security and towards safety for our customers and our users. This is how we can do that.
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #44: The New Statesman still needs fixing
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
3 weeks ago
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
Posts on Made of...
Advent of Code in C++ Template Metaprogramming
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of...
a year ago
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of Code I could do purely in compile-time C++ metaprogramming.
As of this writing, I’ve done two days, and I’m not sure I’ll make it any further. However, that’s one more day than I...
Willem's Blog
Escaping the flat tires
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some...
over a year ago
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some time, but alas - here it is!
Louwrentius
Please use ZFS with ECC Memory
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a...
over a year ago
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a NAS. I would argue that if you do not use ECC memory, it's reasonable to also forgo on ZFS altogether and use any (legacy) file system that suits your needs.
Why ZFS?
Many people...
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
Willem's Blog
One year of cycling
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
over a year ago
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
Notes on software...
Lessons learned streaming building a Scheme-like interpreter in Go
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like...
a year ago
I wanted to practice making coding videos so I did a four-part
series
on writing a basic Scheme-like language (minus macros and arrays and
tons of stuff).
I picked this simple topic because I wanted a low-stakes way to learn
what I did not know about making videos.
Here was the...
Matt Mullenweg
State of the Word Tokyo
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an...
6 days ago
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an amazing venue that looks over the city. Most of WordPress and Automattic’s senior leadership is here, and we’ll also have several hundred folks from the local community and press. We’ve...
Applied Cartography
You should build this:
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that...
2 months ago
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios
If you’re a regular user of the terminal on a UNIX system, there are probably a large number of...
over a year ago
If you’re a regular user of the terminal on a UNIX system, there are probably a large number of behaviors you take mostly for granted without really thinking about them. If you press ^C or ^Z it kills or stops the foreground program – unless it’s something like emacs or vim, in...
Good Enough
The Space Between Us
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical...
a year ago
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical office. I've been working remotely for more than ten years, and overall I really like it. I love the flexibility it affords, being more present with our families, and that my...
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!
Louwrentius
'Linux: show graphical layout of disk temperatures'
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a...
over a year ago
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a small
script. The output of this script looks like this:
This output is tailored to the exact disk lay-out of my storage
server. However, it is also usable for other servers. You have to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Notes on Blockchain Governance
over a year ago
Matt Blewitt
7 Languages in 7 Weeks for 2025
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a...
3 weeks ago
It’s been over 14 years since the original 7 Languages in 7 Weeks was first published, giving a hands on tour of Ruby, Clojure, Haskell, Io, Scala, Erlang and Prolog. Ruby achieved critical mass, to some degree so did Scala, with the others being popular within their specific...
Buck on Software
The Software Slog
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
a year ago
As a newly minted high school grad I had a brief stint as a wildland firefighter.
On Life and Lisp
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
a year ago
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
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....
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Zk-SNARKs: Under the Hood
over a year ago
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...
Notes on software...
Benchmarking esbuild, swc, tsc, and babel for React/JSX projects
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
Did you know that RDP is as insecure as telnet?
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts....
over a year ago
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts. It is easy to pick on Microsoft and I do respect what
they have accomplished, however, it may not come as a surprise that they did
it all wrong with RDP in terms of security.
By...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What I would love to see in a wallet
2 weeks ago
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON library from scratch: a tour through modern C++
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is...
over a year ago
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is cheap. std::shared_ptr
means I don't have to manage any memory; no
more new/delete! (But try as I might to
understand std::unique_ptr, I'm just not there yet.)
The syntax has also...
./techtipsy
Dell Latitude 5411: the Linux compatibility sweet spot
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my...
a year ago
Oh boy, here I go testing a new laptop again!
Well, it was new back in 2020.
You might remember my article on why I went back to a ThinkPad T430 in 2022.
Or that other time when I got a new HP laptop for testing and got so frustrated that I wrote about it.
Well, today I’m writing...
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...
Willem's Blog
Supernova E3 Pro 2 dynamo powered headlight
over a year ago
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 3.1
A Highly Portable Future
a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 1 Should Be Innovative in the Short Term but Less in the Long Term
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… Go
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by...
over a year ago
This is the last post about deep learning for chess/go/whatever. But this really cool paper by Christopher Clark and Amos Storkey was forwarded to me by Michael Eickenberg. It's about using convolutional neural networks to play Go.
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Val Town
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If...
a month ago
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If you haven't used Val, well, watch the stream — think live, zero-deploy code snippets that can be arbitrarily extended and executed.)
Reflecting on the experience, the most exciting...
Posts on Made of...
Indices point between elements
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a...
over a year ago
If you’re familiar with nearly any mainstream programming language, and I asked you to draw a diagram of an array, the array indices, and the array elements, odds are good you’d produce a diagram something like this:
In this post, I want to persuade you to replace that image, or,...
Applied Cartography
Postgres batch enqueuing in ten lines of Django
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count =...
a year ago
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count = queryset.count()
if count == 0:
time.sleep(10)
return
with transaction.atomic():
batch = list(
queryset.select_for_update(of=("self",),...
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.
Home on Erik...
Mortality statistics and Sweden's "dry tinder" effect
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”....
over a year ago
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”. But I read something about COVID-19 deaths that I thought was interesting and wanted to see if I could replicated it through data.
computers are bad
2024-01-21 multi-channel audio part 1
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of...
11 months ago
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of pieces of consumer audio reproduction equipment as "a stereo."
As you might imagine, this is a relatively modern phenomenon. While stereo
audio in concept dates to the late 19th...
Arduino Blog
This giant animatronic LEGO minifig zombie is a delight
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough...
4 months ago
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough constraint to force people to consider their art and design choices. That’s exactly the kind of pressure that Wicked Makers’ Jaimie and Jay thrive under, leading them to build this...
Gwern.net Newsletter
December newsletter
December 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI and technology; major new site feature:...
over a year ago
December 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI and technology; major new site feature: fully-generalized recursive popups.
Notes on software...
How to recommend books, or, stop recommending SICP
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance...
over a year ago
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance for bad writing and bad editing. I write
this post both to discourage thoughtless recommendations and to
encourage the receivers of bad recommendations.
For software developers,...
Jonas Hietala
IDA Summer of Code 2014: Summary
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged...
over a year ago
This is a wrap-up post of my entry to IDA Summer of Code this year.
Quick stats
65 merged commits
6790 lines added
2822 lines deleted
36 pull requests, 34 merged
12 pull requests directly fixing issues
rest either documentation or cleanup
1 RFC submitted...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 17 - an hour or two into it
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a...
over a year ago
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a massage course (which by the way was pretty darn good), and about halfway there this is what I’ve done:
Chockingly… ugly
All is not what meets the eye though, I’ve got the basics done...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Setting up your /now page with an RSS feed
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now...
a month ago
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now pages” but I felt like it would be better if it had an RSS feed. The feed would give interested parties a way to subscribe to life changes.
The problem is that RSS feeds aren’t...
Good Enough
Grassroots
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends,...
8 months ago
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends, shouting on socials, and sharing links to our stuff with your favorite influencers–all of these things will help Good Enough succeed and continue making amazing stuff!
As we’ve been...
GitButler
GitButler is now Fair Source
GitButler is now officially one of the first members of the Fair Source movement, helping to shift...
4 months ago
GitButler is now officially one of the first members of the Fair Source movement, helping to shift closed source to publicly available software by default.
Willem's Blog
Rolex DateJust 36
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like?...
over a year ago
Celebrating a major milestone, I treated myself to a Rolex DateJust 36. Want to know what it's like? Keep reading!
./techtipsy
My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
It turns out that you can’t trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec.
I have a Catit...
a year ago
It turns out that you can’t trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec.
I have a Catit Flower Fountain
for my two adorable cats. The idea of a water fountain for cats may sound odd,
but having one really helps with cats staying hydrated and that alone avoids all
sorts...
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.1
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02,...
9 months ago
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02, R65C02 and 65816 processors that André and I maintain is now at version 2.4.1. This optionally expands the syntax from 2.4.0 and fixes some bugs primarily with relocatable .o65...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day for every Linux or Unix user: brace expantion'
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know...
over a year ago
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know about.
Try this:
touch foobar.conf
Now try this:
cp foobar.conf{,.bak}
It is equivalent to:
cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak
This is also the easiest way to create sequences. Do not use...
Neil Madden
Galois/Counter Mode and random nonces
It turns out you can encrypt more than 2^32 messages with AES-GCM with a random nonce under certain...
7 months ago
It turns out you can encrypt more than 2^32 messages with AES-GCM with a random nonce under certain conditions. It’s still not a good idea, but you can just about do it. #cryptography
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
computers are bad
2024-05-25 grc spinrite
I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect
hard drives. I mean,...
7 months ago
I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect
hard drives. I mean, like, back in high school. These days I almost never do,
or on the occasion that I have storage trouble, it's a drive that has
completely stopped responding at all and there's...
Home on Erik...
Running Theano on EC2
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning...
over a year ago
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning using Theano. Theano is this Python package that lets you define symbolic expressions (cool), does automatic differentiation (really cool), and compiles it down into bytecode to run...
Electronics etc…
Remote Controlling an HP 1670G Logic Analyzer with a Linux PC X Server
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the...
12 months ago
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the logic analyzer
Allow the logic analyzer to access your Ubuntu X server
Configure the X-window Settings on the logic analyzer
Install and declare the HP logic analyzer font...
computers are bad
2023-01-16 huff-duff
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an...
a year ago
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an extremely useful property of HF radio here is that HF
frequencies can reflect off of the upper layers of the atmosphere, causing them
to rebound towards earth at a range much further...
Christian Selig
Curing Mac mini M4 fomo with 3D printing
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve...
a month ago
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve found the new, tinier Mac mini to be absolutely adorable. But you might also be like me that you either already have an awesome M1 Mac mini that you have no real reason to replace,...
Jonas Hietala
Minecraft Server Hosting
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring...
over a year ago
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring is just what I need. Sometimes I can challange myself to build cool complex stuff and I’m even an avid follower of Doc’M and Etho and the other mindcrackers over at the youtube....
Willem's Blog
Using AI to generate code
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise...
a year ago
Discover how AI-generated code can revolutionise your software development process and optimise cloud performance in our fascinating exploration of GPT-4's transformative capabilities.
Computer Ads from...
The Grand Stand
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
a month ago
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
Jonas Hietala
Christmas break
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and...
over a year ago
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and I really enjoy studying here. We had lisp the whole time which is a pretty sweet little language and if you haven’t, give it a shot. Then we had math and I do like math, although I...
computers are bad
2023-04-30 los alamos - compound to county pt II
Where we left off, Los Alamos had become a county, but the town itself
continued to be directly...
a year ago
Where we left off, Los Alamos had become a county, but the town itself
continued to be directly administered by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
The Atomic Energy Communities Act (AECA) mandated the AEC to dispose of the
towns it owned by transferring the property to private...
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...
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Jonas Hietala
Being Productive
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all...
over a year ago
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all going so fast, week after week is disappearing and I don’t know where they go but I know that I’m at least not wasting them like I did most of last year!
Last year I managed school...
Ian's Blog
Learn how Windows builds its store of trusted root CA certificates
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It...
over a year ago
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It might surprise you, and it certainly did for me, but out-of-the-box Windows doesn't come with a set of root CA certificates sufficient for web browsing.
You can see this for...
Jonas Hietala
Site restyle and update
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s...
over a year ago
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s free and there’s a section Typography in ten minutes if you want the important bits.
He makes a pretty good case for why it matters when he points out the...
Posts on Made of...
Efficiency trades off against resiliency
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from...
a year ago
What’s the “right” level of CPU utilization for a server? If you look at a monitoring dashboard from a well-designed and well-run service, what CPU utilization should we hope to see, averaged over a day or two?
It’s a very general question, and it’s not clear it should have a...
Jonas Hietala
Goals for Autumn 2016
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read...
over a year ago
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read the book 59 seconds which among other things presented a way of structuring goals I will try out. In short you should divide your main goal into 5 subgoals with a date of completion,...
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.
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 08: YouTube support
a year ago
Louwrentius
Storage and I/O: reads vs. writes
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie...
over a year ago
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie about completing a write operation, but it can never lie about completing a read operation. Therefore read and writes have different characteristics. This is what I've learned.
About...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1982/02 Creative Computing Mag
Time for some humor
6 months ago
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...
Applied Cartography
A good H1
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we...
3 weeks ago
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we arrived at our current iteration, which is the anodyne yet pointed Email for you. Yes, you.
Historically, we've called Buttondown a 'newsletter tool' — the h1 before this was 'The...
Notes on software...
Generating a REST API from a database
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a...
over a year ago
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a database
schema from PostgreSQL or MySQL and generates an entire Go API with
CRUD operations, pagination, filtering, and authentication.
But more than just generating code like
xo/xo or...
Jonas Hietala
Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available in print
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve...
over a year ago
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve undertaken.
My book ‘Why Cryptocurrencies?’ is released in print today! It’s my attempt to explain what cryptocurrencies are and what problems they solve, in a simple and...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Advice That Actually Worked For Me
My contribution to the 'productivity advice' genre.
over a year ago
My contribution to the 'productivity advice' genre.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability
over a year ago
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...
Neil Madden
I still don’t really get “hash shucking”
If you want to learn how to store passwords securely, you could do a lot worse than looking at the...
a year ago
If you want to learn how to store passwords securely, you could do a lot worse than looking at the OWASP Password Storage Cheat Sheet. These cheat sheets are generally pretty good, and the password storage one is particularly good. The editors do a great job of keeping it up to...
Birchtree
Yet more YouTube videos I've enjoyed recently
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair...
a week ago
I guess this is a series now…
Do you have a chair where "half dirty" clothes go? If so, this chair will be very compelling.
I'm not a big fan of most Apple TV+ shows, but Severance was lovely and I can't wait
watchTowr Labs -...
Palo Alto - Putting The Protecc In GlobalProtect (CVE-2024-3400)
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by...
8 months ago
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by now-familiar news—a nation-state was exploiting a “sophisticated” vulnerability for full compromise in yet another enterprise-grade SSLVPN device.
We’ve seen all the commentary around the...
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...
Versioning dotfiles in git
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines...
over a year ago
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines for some time. I experimented with keeping all of ~ in subversion for a while, but it never worked out well for me.
I’ve finally settled on a solution that I like using git, and so...
Applied Cartography
Fathom
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly...
2 weeks ago
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly good reason to do so until the news broke that Paul Jarvis was selling his share of the company to Jack Ellis, the technical co-founder. [1]
Anyway, the two thoughts:
I think Fathom...
Home on Erik...
NYC Machine Learning meetup
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly....
over a year ago
From the NYC Machine Learning talk I had last week:
Haven't looked at it yet except briefly. Unfortunately the quality isn't the best.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 4
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
Dipco's Easy Reader
"Sight for Sore Eyes"
a month ago
Arduino Blog
Giving Billy Bass the arti-fish-al intelligence he always deserved
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of...
3 months ago
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of the century, you would have undoubtedly come across a Big Mouth Billy Bass. That’s an animatronic fish that wiggles on a plaque while older, very licensable hit songs play. But...
axio.ms
MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building...
6 months ago
A microcontroller Macintosh
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building a simple desktop/GUI for it. I’d made a comment along the lines of “or, just run some old OS”, and it got me thinking about the original Macintosh.
The original Macintosh was...
Arduino Blog
This small device enables users to feel braille through haptics
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to...
7 months ago
For the visually impaired community, most of their interactions on mobile phones are confined to text-to-speech (TTS) interfaces that read portions of the screen aloud. Dynamic braille displays also exist as a tactile means of communication, but their prices can get close to...
./techtipsy
The IPv6 situation on Docker is good now!
Good news, everyone! Doing IPv6 networking stuff on Docker is actually good now!
I’ve recently...
2 days ago
Good news, everyone! Doing IPv6 networking stuff on Docker is actually good now!
I’ve recently started reworking my home server setup to be more IPv6 compatible, and as part of that I learned that
during
the summer of 2024 Docker shipped an update that eliminated a
lot of the...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Talking to memory: Inside the Intel 8088 processor's bus interface state machine
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
7 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the success of the x86 architecture.
The designers of the IBM PC selected...
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...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Winter Kit Tournament Linköping
After quite the hiatus from Netrunner I had a chance to join a tournament here in Linköping with 14...
over a year ago
After quite the hiatus from Netrunner I had a chance to join a tournament here in Linköping with 14 participants. The number of players has grown a lot since the previous tournament which is really great.
As I really wanted to win the wonderful Day Job playmat I went with two of...
./techtipsy
I looked at this site on the Wayback Machine
Yesterday was election day in Estonia and the results are in, which is why
I remembered that one...
a year ago
Yesterday was election day in Estonia and the results are in, which is why
I remembered that one time I looked at my website on the Wayback Machine.
This domain used to point to a Wordpress site that hosted
content for a candidate in the local elections,
at least around...
computers are bad
2023-01-29 the parallel port
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel...
a year ago
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel printer capture device.
This contains the line:
There are other projects out there, but when you google for terms such as
"parallel port to usb", they drown in a sea of "USB to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Don't overload Ethereum's consensus
a year ago
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Sell
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
over a year ago
Sales at a startup is counter-intuitive.
Matt Mullenweg
On with Theo / T3.gg
On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled...
2 months ago
On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled This might be the end of WordPress. It was very harsh. In that video you’ll hear him say about me, “he’s a chronic hater” (7:55), “seems like he’s been a pretty petty bastard for a...
Willem's Blog
Harvesting boredom to let creativity flourish
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to...
over a year ago
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to the Internet using a smartphone.
latest projects -...
Hand-cranked Flux Capacitor
[Concept] Control the flow of time
a year ago
[Concept] Control the flow of time
Computer Ads from...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
watchTowr Labs -...
We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding...
3 months ago
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding discoveries.
Summary
What started out as a bit of fun between colleagues while avoiding the Vegas heat and $20 bottles of water in our Black Hat hotel rooms - has now seemingly...
Louwrentius
24 TB based on Norco RPC-4020 and Linux Software RAID
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical...
over a year ago
Just a quick link:
Some person build basically the same setup, including identical controller,
providing 28 TB of storage: Take a look here
The main difference is that this person uses 1.5 TB disk, thus achieving more
storage.
Posts on Made of...
Tracking down a memory leak in Ruby's EventMachine
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services....
over a year ago
At Stripe, we rely heavily on ruby and EventMachine to power various internal and external services. Over the last several months, we’ve known that one such service suffered from a gradual memory leak, that would cause its memory usage to gradually balloon from a normal ~50MB to...
Jonas Hietala
Habits to start
I haven’t been feeling quite as forward or as energetic lately. There are no set plans, habits or...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling quite as forward or as energetic lately. There are no set plans, habits or goals for this spring and I don’t have a clear vision of what to do currently but it also feels… fine? Maybe I will cruise in a lower gear for a while and rev up when my mood...
Jonas Hietala
A Week of Headache
This was supposed to be a productive week with lots and lots of Perl and Ada but instead I’ve had...
over a year ago
This was supposed to be a productive week with lots and lots of Perl and Ada but instead I’ve had this big headache all week, and some the week before and it’s gotten pretty bad so I can’t really concentrate on anything really. The electronics assignment was a bitch and it took a...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge
2 months ago
Notes on software...
Intercepting and modifying Linux system calls with ptrace
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest....
a year ago
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest. Fault
injection
is a formal-sounding term that just means: trying to explicitly
trigger errors in the hopes of discovering bad logic, typically
during automated tests.
Jepsen
and ChaosMonkey...
Christian Selig
Choosing a travel pack is hard
I love the “carry-on only” traveling style, it’s cheaper and you don’t have to worry about airlines...
7 months ago
I love the “carry-on only” traveling style, it’s cheaper and you don’t have to worry about airlines losing your stuff. Outside of requiring a bit more planning, what’s not to love?
Turns out this is a beloved product category with a passionate community behind it, and as a result...
Simply Explained
Preventing Cumulative Layout Shifts with lazy loaded images (Eleventy + markdown-it)
There's nothing more annoying than a website shifting down just as you're about to click on a button...
over a year ago
There's nothing more annoying than a website shifting down just as you're about to click on a button or link. This is called a layout shift, and Google has declared war on them. They've added layout shifts to the Core Web Vitals, and if your website has a lot of them, it will get...
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1983/08 Today Mag
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today...
9 months ago
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today magazine. Enjoy! What computer ads would you like to see in the future? Please comment below. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends and relatives. Thank you.
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Encapsulated vs systemic complexity in protocol design
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Design for Hackers
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific...
over a year ago
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific thing. It happened again yesterday (or was it the day before I don’t know) when I saw this post on hackernews.
It’s a book this time, again, but this is something a little different -...
Jonas Hietala
Swelling with New Shiny Books
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course…...
over a year ago
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course… So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!
First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed...
Notes on software...
Is it worth writing about?
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and...
over a year ago
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and sharing the learning
process.
Professionals seem naturally to imagine a high bar for what
is worth writing about.
I think that's misguided. This article is not criticism of folks...
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...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go...
11 hours ago
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on…
Willem's Blog
iPad Pro next to my primary machine
Using iPad Pro with Apple Pencil next to my computer to form a create powerhouse
over a year ago
Using iPad Pro with Apple Pencil next to my computer to form a create powerhouse
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1985/12 Australian Personal Computer Mag
Some computer related levity from OZ
2 weeks ago
Some computer related levity from OZ
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
over a year ago
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
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.
Abort Retry Fail
Unboxing New Old Stock Windows 3.11
A Photo Gallery
a year ago
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
detreville
The IBM 701
"IBM's first computer"
a year ago
Willem's Blog
Cleaning a vintage watch
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old...
over a year ago
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old beauty underneath layers of dirt!
Posts on Made of...
How I Write Tests
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe...
over a year ago
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe to the definition of legacy code as “code without an automated test suite.” I’m convinced that the best thing you can do to encourage fast progress in a test suite is to design...
Jonas Hietala
Bitcoin's security isn't binary
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s...
over a year ago
I’d like to address a misconception that’s at the core in many Bitcoin discussions lately: Bitcoin’s security isn’t binary. In fact security in general isn’t black and white. It’s a trade-off being secure enough for your threat model vs the cost and feasibility of your...
Notes on software...
A paper reading club at work; databases and distributed systems research
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems...
8 months ago
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems research. I posted in a general channel about
the premise and asked if anyone was interested. I clarified the
intended topic and that discussions would be asynchronous over email,
run...
Arduino Blog
Use sound to trigger your camera’s flash with this DIY device
In the world of photography, the exposure triangle is immutable. To get a properly exposed photo...
2 months ago
In the world of photography, the exposure triangle is immutable. To get a properly exposed photo (not too bright or too dark), you need a balance of aperture size (how much light gets in), shutter speed (how long the light gets in), and ISO (sensitivity to light at the expense of...
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
./techtipsy
Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without...
over a year ago
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without issues
and as a testbed for playing around with MySQL.
I wanted it to be a useful device again, but had trouble finding an use case for it due to its hardware limitations.
After...
Jonas Hietala
I Made It!
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a...
over a year ago
It’s been over a year, but I haven’t lost (most) my touch yet! For the second time I’ve completed a Ludum Dare! Not an easy feat and yet there are tons of games that look absolutely wonderful. I’m not there yet but now I have at least gotten back into game making again, long...
Good Enough
That time Marvel secretly endorsed my podcast with “the greatest comic book cover of all time”
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a...
a year ago
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a record of this somewhere on the internet!” and I don’t have my own blog.
Years ago my friend and I ran a radio show called Gorilla Madness, which we also spun out into a podcast after...
Style over Substance
Peak Design quick-connect Leash and Cuff straps
My camera collection has been growing steadily over the years, but it’s been expanding even faster...
over a year ago
My camera collection has been growing steadily over the years, but it’s been expanding even faster during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Online shopping therapy keeps me sane while I’m cooped up at home, and with easy access to eBay and other auction sites my GAS – photographers...
Louwrentius
'Zabbix Security: client-server communication seems insecure'
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring...
over a year ago
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring hosts, Zabbix provides an agent that can be
installed on the hosts that must be monitored.
Based on the supplied documentation and some remarks on the internets,
the 'security' of...
Home on Erik...
Headcount goals, feature factories, and when to hire those mythical 10x people
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the...
over a year ago
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the high end to get people. I thought this made more sense: they cost a bit more money to hire, but output usually more than compensates for it.
Odds and Ends of...
WATCH: Talking trains with Jonn Elledge!
The new Overground names, why the north always loses out, and more!
3 weeks ago
The new Overground names, why the north always loses out, and more!
Vitalik Buterin's...
Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again
12 months ago
Christian Selig
Trials and Tribulations of Making an Interruptable Custom View Controller Transition on iOS
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one,...
over a year ago
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one, with that power comes a great deal of complexity. It can be tricky, and I’m having one of those days where it’s getting the better of me and I just cannot get it to do what I want...
Jonas Hietala
Robot Project Start
So it has begun, the long road until christmas when we’re supposed to have a working warrior robot....
over a year ago
So it has begun, the long road until christmas when we’re supposed to have a working warrior robot. We’re gonna do battle with infrared lasers instead of axes but it might be fun anyway. Luckily for me I’m responsible for software and nothing harder than that! w00p!
We could...
Notes on software...
Starting a minimal Common Lisp project
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like...
over a year ago
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like what you'd expect. While
functional programming is all the rage in Scheme, Common Lisp was
"expressly designed to be a real-world engineering language rather
than a theoretically...
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled Spin Meister helps spin up the perfect pizza
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher...
5 months ago
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher heat that many find more preferable than a conventional kitchen oven. But even a nice gas-powered pizza oven like the Ooni Koda 12 will have some hot spots and cold spots. To get an...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
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...
Arduino Blog
Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline...
3 months ago
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can...
Posts on Made of...
A Go/C Polyglot
Writing a Go/C polyglot Someone on a Slack I’m on recently raised the question of how you might...
over a year ago
Writing a Go/C polyglot Someone on a Slack I’m on recently raised the question of how you might write a source file that’s both valid C and Go, commenting that it wasn’t immediately obvious if this was even possible. I got nerdsniped, and succeeded in producing one, which you can...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Working with special hardware from China
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with...
over a year ago
This month I reversed engineered my way into developing software for a Chinese Android device with an embedded printer!
Notes on software...
Writing an efficient object previewer for JavaScript
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.
Engineers Need Art
Mooncraft 2000
A web-based game, Mooncraft 2000 is released.
over a year ago
A web-based game, Mooncraft 2000 is released.
Birchtree
I’m Not a Panda Person
Niléane has a new webcam, Chris is downing in keyboards, and everyone installs some web-ass web...
2 days ago
Niléane has a new webcam, Chris is downing in keyboards, and everyone installs some web-ass web apps.
Watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app!
Matt Mullenweg
Disrupt Interview
On Wednesday I had a great chat with Connie Loizos, the editor in chief of TechCrunch, you can view...
a month ago
On Wednesday I had a great chat with Connie Loizos, the editor in chief of TechCrunch, you can view the video here: Then yesterday Automattic filed its legal responses to the spurious lawfare from WP Engine, Silver Lake, and Quinn Emanuel. It’s a bit long, but if you have time...
Home on Erik...
The mathematical principles of management
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's...
over a year ago
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's the lack of first principles thinking. Basically it's a ton of heuristics. And heuristics are great, but when you present heuristics as true objectives, it kind of clouds the...
Jonas Hietala
5 Kup
After a season with very bad attendence, I blame school and lack of motivation, I still went to...
over a year ago
After a season with very bad attendence, I blame school and lack of motivation, I still went to grading. I slept well but I was super stressed all weekend so I had to constantly run to the bathroom and I couldn’t eat lunch or breakfast properly, and I don’t usually get...
Willem's Blog
Cyber security: 5 easy tips to protect your server against hackers
These 5 practical cyber security measures will improve the safety of server, website and data.
over a year ago
These 5 practical cyber security measures will improve the safety of server, website and data.
Notes on software...
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for...
over a year ago
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for linux/AMD64. The approach will be slightly more
so based on observation than by following a spec; a great way
to quickly become familiar with a topic, and a bad way to...
Notes on software...
Favorite compiler and interpreter resources
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
seangoedecke.com RSS...
I don't know how to build software and you don't either
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it...
a month ago
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it better to have that dictated by some…
Posts on Made of...
Dear Twitter: Stop screwing over your developers.
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online...
over a year ago
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online communities, and is a surprisingly effective way to spread news and information to lots of people online. One of the things that I’ve loved about Twitter is their API, and how open and...
Arduino Blog
This automatic laser turret keeps the cats entertained for hours
Cats may be adorable, but they evolved to be predators. Unfortunately, responsible owners keep their...
2 months ago
Cats may be adorable, but they evolved to be predators. Unfortunately, responsible owners keep their cats indoors to avoid decimating the local wildlife population and that means Mr. Whiskers and Ms. Socks don’t get much opportunity to express their hunting urges. That’s why...
On Life and Lisp
Vulkan 1.3 on the M1 in 1 month
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the...
6 months ago
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the M1! The new “Honeykrisp” driver is
the first conformant
Vulkan® for Apple hardware on any operating system, implementing the
full 1.3 spec without “portability”...
Jonas Hietala
2021 in review
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year...
over a year ago
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year I’ve done this kind of quick review… Time sure flies.
2021 Non-Geek Achievements
Started strength training using a strength coach from Kabuki.
I got inspired by the book Peak that...
Computer Ads from...
Creative Computer Publishes Interview with the Guy Behind the Death Star Trench Run (1978)
An Interview With Star Wars Animator Larry Cuba
8 months ago
An Interview With Star Wars Animator Larry Cuba
Buck on Software
23 things you should know
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
over a year ago
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
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...
Arduino Blog
This 3D-printed robotic arm can be built with just a few inexpensive components
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts,...
2 months ago
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts, such as actuators, only increases that feeling of inaccessibility. But as FABRI Creator shows in their most recent video, you can build a useful robotic arm with just a handful of...
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
Neil Madden
Hybrid encryption and the KEM/DEM paradigm
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a...
over a year ago
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a message with a public key encryption algorithm like RSA. This is for many reasons, one of which being that it is incredibly slow. Instead you do what’s called hybrid encryption:...
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
10 months ago
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from [REDACTED], a site on which I am very prone to judging a book by its cover; every month I'll end up purchasing a bottle of something purely because it looks interesting and I can...
Louwrentius
The 'hidden' cost of using ZFS for your home NAS
Introduction
Update December 2023:
In June, it was announced that iXsystems would sponsor...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update December 2023:
In June, it was announced that iXsystems would sponsor implementing the VDEV expansion feature. A new pr has been created for this effort. The feature was merged into the code base, but may not be available to the general public before the end...
./techtipsy
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in...
a year ago
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no
expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and
start working on...
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...
Jonas Hietala
2015 in Review
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
2015 Geek Achievements
Finished my university...
over a year ago
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
2015 Geek Achievements
Finished my university studies and got a Master in Computer Science.
Discovered a new boardgame love: Android Netrunner.
Finished top 4 in my first Netrunner Store Championship.
Won a small local Netrunner...
./techtipsy
You can use almost anything as a key file for your encrypted storage device
Imagine that you have an unencrypted drive containing your private data and one day it starts...
a month ago
Imagine that you have an unencrypted drive containing your private data and one day it starts throwing a bunch of
errors. You have backups of the data so you’ve got that part covered, but would you feel comfortable sending the drive
in to be warrantied? You have no control over...
Posts on Made of...
My Apollo Bibliography
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become...
over a year ago
Over the last few years — perhaps not that unusually among the nerds I know — I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the Apollo program (and early space program more generally), and been reading my way through a growing number of books and documentaries written about it. At a...
Louwrentius
'Improved' image gallery for Blogofile
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports...
over a year ago
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports a small image gallery that has been written to illustrate how to create your own 'controllers' or Blogofile plugins.
My Python skills are horrible buy I managed to improve a bit...
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
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...
Old Vintage...
Pretty pictures, bootable floppy disks, and the first Canon Cat demo?
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to...
5 months ago
Now that our 1987 Canon Cat is refurbished and ready to go another nine innings or so, it's time to get into the operating system and pull some tricks.
from our historical discussion of the Canon Cat, the Cat was designed by Jef Raskin as a sophisticated user-centric computer...
On Life and Lisp
Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past...
over a year ago
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past two years to bring this new driver to everyone, and we’re really proud to finally be here. This is still an alpha driver, but it’s already good enough to run a smooth desktop...
Style over Substance
CANARY Corrugated Cardboard Cutter
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases...
over a year ago
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases ever. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, we all started shopping online a lot more. The number of cardboard boxes in our house basically quadrupled overnight and cutting them down to size...
Arduino Blog
A DIY weather display with dedicated outdoor sensor station
Weather stations are popular projects in the maker community because they’re useful and usually...
6 months ago
Weather stations are popular projects in the maker community because they’re useful and usually quite affordable to construct. But most that we see are really weather information displays that gather data through the internet from stations in the region. That data is fairly...
Jonas Hietala
The eBook for 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is now available for free
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years...
10 months ago
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years since the web version was done, and 3 since the physical copy was available…
Which can hardly be called a success.
Things happened, so let’s do a quick retrospective to, maybe, learn...
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.
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...
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors...
9 months ago
I was late to the VS Code zeitgeist, and as penitence I try to go out of my way to try new editors whenever I see them — which is why this morning I installed Zed, which makes its bones on performance (yay!) and teams functionality (irrelevant for my use cases, but seems...
Applied Cartography
Is cool enough?
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL...
9 months ago
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL manipulation. They look like great libraries, and a prior version of me would have taken a brief set of cursory
glances at the hodgepodge of janky URL manipulation code that I wrote for...
Willem's Blog
Saving a MacBook Air with exploded battery
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
over a year ago
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
Notes on software...
A Programmer-Friendly I/O Abstraction Over io_uring and kqueue
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.
Lars Lofgren
CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had...
2 months ago
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had agreements with CNN and USA Today? And that Forbes Marketplace was stuffing those sites full of affiliate content just like it is with Forbes? And what if Forbes Marketplace went to...
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.
anderegg.ca
The trouble with openness
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went...
3 weeks ago
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went anywhere, but I found it exciting at the time.
One piece that particularly spoke to me was the notion of including data in websites so that web scrapers could easily get at it....
Push to Prod
One Key Aspect of Optimizing Computational Throughput
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or...
3 months ago
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or processes.
Jonas Hietala
Rising from the Dead, it's Ludum Dare
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not...
over a year ago
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not making games or blogging. But I have revived! I scrambled to push my new website live because today it’s Ludum Dare time! The theme is “Evolution” and it’s the 24th time for Ludum Dare...
computers are bad
2023-04-20 different kinds of differential
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by...
a year ago
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a
halt." Of course the headline doesn't actually say this, but it does seem
to imply that there has been some kind of failure of...
computers are bad
2023-10-03 overheard overhead
Let's talk about overhead paging. The concept goes by various names: paging,
public address, even...
a year ago
Let's talk about overhead paging. The concept goes by various names: paging,
public address, even intercom, although the accuracy of the latter term can be
questionable. It's probably one of the aspects of business telephone systems
that gets the most public attention, on account...
Posts on Made of...
Two kinds of testing
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to...
over a year ago
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are (at least) two major ideas and goals that people have when they test or talk about testing. This post aims to outline what I see as these two schools,...
Home on Erik...
Simple sabotage for software
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out...
a year ago
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out various ways for infiltrators to ruin productivity of a company. Some of the advice is timeless, for instance the section about “General interference with Organizations and...
Jonas Hietala
It's Time for More School
Today it’s finally starting again and it’s off with a flying start. We have 11 lectures this first...
over a year ago
Today it’s finally starting again and it’s off with a flying start. We have 11 lectures this first week and an absolutely smacked schedule. If that wasn’t enough I also have a mentor time to prepare for and I need to start Taekwon-do again.
On another note Ḯ’m currently plowing...
Louwrentius
The security risk of vendor-supplied default SSL certificates
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as...
over a year ago
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as those 'snake oil' certificates (they are called snake oil
certificates for a reason). In practice, I often encounter usage of such
certificates. People may seem to think that as long...
Avestura's Blog
Using Tor outside of the Tor Browser
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like...
over a year ago
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like Telegram...
Louwrentius
Determining smartphone market share using wireless sniffing
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most...
over a year ago
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most smartphones support wifi and most people don't bother disabling
wifi when they go outdoors1. If wifi is left on, it is possible to detect these
smartphones and track their movement. To...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Philosophy of Blockchain Validation
over a year ago
Ken Shirriff's blog
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from...
10 months ago
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974?
Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)?
How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962.
The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized...
Arduino Blog
Check out these Arduino-powered research projects from CHI 2024
Held in Hawaii this year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted its annual conference...
6 months ago
Held in Hawaii this year, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) hosted its annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) that focuses on the latest developments in human-computer interaction. Students from universities all across the world attended the...
anderegg.ca
Playing with the Bluesky firehose
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver...
3 weeks ago
Over the weekend I started playing around with Jetstream, a project from the Bluesky team to deliver a JSON based firehose of atproto data. Here’s an overview of the simple project I built with that data.
I was inspired by a post from Simon Willison where he showed off a tool for...
computers are bad
2023-07-29 Free Public WiFi
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree...
a year ago
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was
directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school
student I was not...
Style over Substance
Review of the 2-dial TTArtisan Light Meter
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter...
over a year ago
My latest purchase for my analog cameras is the TTArtisan light meter, a hotshoe-mounted meter accessory. The market for these shoe-mounted light meters for vintage cameras has become weirdly competitive. They fit on top of a mechanical camera and provide you with the right...
Jonas Hietala
Friend of the Tree
I just noticed I was recognized as a friend of the tree in a weekly meeting by the rust team. It...
over a year ago
I just noticed I was recognized as a friend of the tree in a weekly meeting by the rust team. It came during my documentation sprint during IDA Summer of Code and I discovered it now, only two and a half month later. Still a very pleasant surprise!
Willem's Blog
Rescuing photos from a crashed iMac
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
over a year ago
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
watchTowr Labs -...
Fortinet FortiGate CVE-2024-23113 - A Super Complex Vulnerability In A Super Secure Appliance In...
Today we'd like to share a recent journey into (yet another) SSLVPN appliance vulnerability - a...
2 months ago
Today we'd like to share a recent journey into (yet another) SSLVPN appliance vulnerability - a Format String vulnerability, unusually, in Fortinet's FortiGate devices.
It affected (before patching) all currently-maintained branches, and recently was highlighted by CISA as...
Applied Cartography
Why can't you just...?
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long,...
7 months ago
Buried in a snarky thread about why Google Calendar doesn’t support calendar syncing is a long, detailed explanation of why shipping this sort of thing is hard:
Designing a consent experience for the enterprise admin and enterprise end user
Creating a special "read only" object...
Willem's Blog
Helping people with free software
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
over a year ago
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
Louwrentius
Do not buy a hardware RAID controller for home use
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high...
over a year ago
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high availability. However, this is not entirely true. Using a
hardware RAID controller might even endanger your precious data.
For enterprise environments, where performance is critical, it is...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?
8 months ago
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!
Jonas Hietala
Fixing Problems
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a...
over a year ago
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a nice thread with a great answer. I solved it by forcefully patching libflashplayer.so
perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' libflashplayer.so
Worked perfectly!
I fixed the...
Louwrentius
Firewire: the forgotten security risk
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not...
over a year ago
The battle between Firewire and USB has been won by USB, but Firewire is still
arround. It is not that prevalent, cheap computers lack Firewire, but they often
have a PCMCIA slot.
The thing is this: Firewire allows direct access to all RAM of your computer.
An attacker...
Arduino Blog
Meet Mr. Wallplate, an animatronic wall plate that speaks to you
Interactive robots always bring an element of intrigue, and even more so when they feature unusual...
7 months ago
Interactive robots always bring an element of intrigue, and even more so when they feature unusual parts and techniques to perform their actions. Mr. Wallplate, affectionately named by Tony K on Instructables, is one such robot that is contained within an electrical wall plate...
On Life and Lisp
Growing up Alyssa
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky...
a year ago
When I was 10, I came out as transgender. I was a girl and I knew it.
I was one of the lucky ones.
After four painful years, I was fortunate enough to access gender-affirming health care. First testosterone blockers. Later estrogen, the stuff my peers soaked in for years while I...
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...
Applied Cartography
Auth.js + Square
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the...
7 months ago
Internal tools and small, well-scoped projects are a great avenue to tinker with technologies on the periphery of your understanding, and a Third South project has led me to spin up a small Next project using Bun [1] and Auth.js (nee next-auth), which has been quite bad and I...
./techtipsy
The hidden media play/pause/stop keys on the Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
ThinkPad keyboards were once well known for their great layouts, feel and
functionality. This...
7 months ago
ThinkPad keyboards were once well known for their great layouts, feel and
functionality. This included the media playback control keys.
On the ThinkPad T430, the new chiclet keyboard layout moved the media keys to
the function row. Still there, but less convenient to access.
The...
Simply Explained
Shelly 2.5 + ESPHome: potential fire hazard + fix
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin...
over a year ago
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin will be short-circuited and cause the unit to heat up significantly, creating a potential fire hazard!
GitButler
Git Merge 2024 Talks are Up
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
a month ago
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
Home on Erik...
How to hire smarter than the market: a toy model
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable....
over a year ago
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable. It's not very important what those are, so let's just call them “thing A” and “thing B” for now.
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Blogroll
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is...
over a year ago
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is funny.
I follow a few hundred blogs using Feedly and Reeder and have been reading a few hundred thousand blog posts over the last 10 years.
somenice
RGB Input Range Sliders
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range...
4 months ago
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range type sliders to control the color of an LED.Each color channel change triggers an update to read the value, convert it to a hex code (eg. #FF0000), update the output element value,...
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
computers are bad
2023-09-10 the Essex GWEN site
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML...
a year ago
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email
and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead
(the link is at the top of the email).
In the aftermath of...
Jonas Hietala
Bugger
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the...
over a year ago
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the bugs. As a programmer the fight with those nasty bugs are a daily occurrence and now I’ve brought you a chance to kill those nasties too!
The gameplay wasn’t what I was planning on -...
computers are bad
2023-03-13 the door close button
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been...
a year ago
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been the case that you get what you pay for and Computers
Are Bad is nothing if not affordable. Still, this is a topic on which I am
moderately passionate and so I can probably stretch...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of GM-NAA I/O and SHARE
The Birth of Computer Operating Systems
a year ago
The Birth of Computer Operating Systems
Willem's Blog
Vision Pro
My thoughts on using Vision Pro to get some real work done, exploring what Spatial Computing means...
10 months ago
My thoughts on using Vision Pro to get some real work done, exploring what Spatial Computing means and how it can be useful.
Jonas Hietala
November Theme: Art Game
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t...
over a year ago
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t been “my” themes: I’ve been following their lead and their themes and this month is no exception. This months’ apparently a big theme - Art. It’s even a collaboration with a big...
somenice
Painting of Russet Lake
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the...
3 months ago
Summer in Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, is a breathtaking experience, where the natural world is alive with vibrant colours and serene beauty. One of the most stunning scenes unfolds at Russet Lake, where the iconic Fissile Mountain is mirrored perfectly in the...
Arduino Blog
Receive an alert when your device goes offline in Arduino Cloud
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations....
a month ago
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations. Suddenly, one of the sensors goes offline, but you don’t notice until hours later. The result? A gap in your data and a missed opportunity to take corrective action. This is a common...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Antenna diodes in the Pentium processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures...
4 weeks ago
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where
signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason.
Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of...
Good Enough
Thoughts On Thoughts
It’s time for a revolution. Too long have we, collectively and individually, been tyrannized by our...
a year ago
It’s time for a revolution. Too long have we, collectively and individually, been tyrannized by our thoughts and what we believe about them.
Or perhaps we can think of this as an intervention. This post is the circle of friends gathered to help us stop hitting ourselves in the...
Notes on software...
Surveying SQL parser libraries in a few high-level languages
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
Autocomplete with nvim-cmp
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I...
7 months ago
Autocomplete tags in the frontmatter.
Autocompletion is an absurdly powerful feature that I—and I must assume most programmers—use all the time.
It’s not as crucial for writing blog posts as when you’re coding but it’s still easy to come up with examples of how autocomplete...
Home on Erik...
New benchmarks for approximate nearest neighbors
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy...
over a year ago
UPDATE(2018-06-17): There are is a later blog post with newer benchmarks!
One of my super nerdy interests include approximate algorithms for nearest neighbors in high-dimensional spaces. The problem is simple. You have say 1M points in some high-dimensional space.
Old Vintage...
Niklaus Wirth dies
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which...
11 months ago
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which was written in UCSD Pascal; the first actual compiler I ever used was Turbo Pascal 5.5 (purloined from a campus NetWare server), and the first actual compiler I ever used on the...
Jonas Hietala
Black and White
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a...
over a year ago
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn’t come out nearly as good as I expected it too.
Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Grifters, believers, grinders, and coasters
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out...
2 weeks ago
Why do engineers get mad at each other so often? I think a lot of programmer arguments bottom out in a cultural clash between different…
Louwrentius
Why I Do Use ZFS as a File System for My NAS
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system...
over a year ago
On February 2011, I posted an article about my motivations why I did not use ZFS as a file system for my 18 TB NAS.
You have to understand that at the time, I believe the arguments in the article were relevant, but much has changed since then, and I do believe this article is...
Notes on software...
Writing to be read
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails,...
over a year ago
There is a common struggle in the writing and maintenance of
documentation, checklists, emails, guides, etc. Each provides immense
value; a document may be the key to an important process. The goal is
to remove barriers -- to encourage understanding and correct
application of...
Lighthouse Blog
How to rate content and find it again
6 months ago
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #46: The transformation of London's skyline, a big week for nuclear, and installing...
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
2 weeks ago
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
Louwrentius
71 TiB DIY NAS based on ZFS on Linux
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB...
over a year ago
This is my new 71 TiB DIY NAS. This server is the successor to my six year old, twenty drive 18 TB NAS (17 TiB). With a storage capacity four times higher than the original and an incredible read (2.5 GB/s)/write (1.9 GB/s) performance, it's a worthy successor.
Purpose
The...
Applied Cartography
Shipping is capturing value
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a...
4 weeks ago
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a Moral Mazes-esque analysis of how engineers at large companies should think about shipping:
Shipping is a social construct within a company. Concretely, that means that a project is...
csvbase blog
I didn't write any Javascript, and other shortcuts
Getting it done by not doing a lot of it
a year ago
Getting it done by not doing a lot of it
Willem's Blog
I see dead people
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old...
3 months ago
This may be Apple Vision Pro's killer feature, enabling you to see dead people: augmenting old photos into lifelike representations.
Arduino Blog
Synjets provide non-contact haptic feedback
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with...
7 months ago
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with opportunity for germ transmission. In 2019, most people didn’t think twice about touching a gas pump handle or an ATM touchscreen, but it quickly became apparent that such contact presents...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside a vintage aerospace navigation computer of uncertain purpose
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation...
6 months ago
I recently obtained an aerospace computer from the early 1970s, apparently part of a navigation system.
Aerospace computers are an interesting but mostly neglected area of computer hardware, so I'm always delighted to
examine one up close.
In an era when most computers were large...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note on Metcalfe's Law, Externalities and Ecosystem Splits
over a year ago
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Here's how AI can REDUCE health misinformation
How the government can build a bullshit detector
2 months ago
How the government can build a bullshit detector
Notes on software...
Exploring PL/pgSQL part two: implementing a Forth-like interpreter
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I...
over a year ago
Previously in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Strings, arrays, recursion and parsing JSON
In my last post
I walked through the basics of PL/pgSQL, the embedded procedural
language inside of PostgreSQL. It covered simple functions, recursions
and parsing. But there was something very...
Jonas Hietala
Favourite Programming Language
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a...
over a year ago
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a post which claimes my favourite language is not good enough! But he’s correct of course, there is no one language to rule them all. You should always choose the mest language for the...
Engineers Need Art
Op-Amp Helper PCB
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
a year ago
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
Simply Explained
Secure Home Assistant Access with Cloudflare and Ubiquiti Dream Machine
I've become increasingly reliant on Home Assistant to automate various tasks around the house. But...
over a year ago
I've become increasingly reliant on Home Assistant to automate various tasks around the house. But how do you safely expose your instance to the internet for remote access?You want to be able to log in from a remote location, but how to keep others out? This post will show how...
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Bryan Braun - Blog
One Million Checkboxes and the fear of viral success
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If...
4 months ago
When Nolen Royalty’s One Million Checkboxes site went viral, several people sent me links to it.
If you haven't heard of One Million Checkboxes, see the Wikipedia article for more details.
I loved everything about One Million Checkboxes. It was simple but strangely compelling....
Willem's Blog
Solo around the Markermeer (211KM)
This week I took my bike for a long distance (211)KM ride around the Dutch Markermeer, solo! Read...
over a year ago
This week I took my bike for a long distance (211)KM ride around the Dutch Markermeer, solo! Read along for practical tips for long distance cycling.
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...
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...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 9: Feed finding
3 months ago
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
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...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 95
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
a year ago
The Dawn of Microsoft's Golden Age
Good Enough
My Tears of the Kingdom Addiction
I don’t know how big my internet social bubble really is, but it feels like everyone in the world...
a year ago
I don’t know how big my internet social bubble really is, but it feels like everyone in the world that bubble has been playing a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lately. Me included! It’s amazing, and I’m thoroughly engrossed—I think I’ve stayed up playing until...
Jonas Hietala
Calling closures in a Vec
In rust one might want to have a list of closures, for example as a list of callbacks.
let mut fs:...
over a year ago
In rust one might want to have a list of closures, for example as a list of callbacks.
let mut fs: Vec<||> = Vec::new();
fs.push(|| { println!("imma firing my lazer"); });
for f in fs.iter() {
f(); // error: expected function but found `&||`
};
Maybe if we borrow...
Notes on software...
Be someone who does things
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to...
3 months ago
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to follow that up by saying that the only thing more important
than wanting to do something is to actually do something.
The most valuable trait you can develop for yourself is to...
Electronics etc…
Tesla’s FSD - First and Last Impressions
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach...
7 months ago
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach to Truckee (11 miles)
Test Ride 2: I-80 from Truckee to Blue Canyon (36 miles)
Test Ride 3: from West-Valley College to I-85 Entrance (1 mile)
Conclusion
Introduction
In the past...
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