Jonas Hietala
The T-34/0 keyboard layout
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While...
5th Sep 2021
This is an update to the T-34 keyboard layout I’ve been using for a solid number of weeks. While there are more changes I’d like to try, I’m quite pleased with these changes so I figured I might as well immortalize them before I explore further. (And I do have a bunch of big...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Updating Snake '97
Few years ago my brother threw a beer on my iPhone in an Amsterdam bar. The poor thing didn't like...
20th Feb 2018
Few years ago my brother threw a beer on my iPhone in an Amsterdam bar. The poor thing didn't like the Dutch brew as much as I do: it died. While waiting for a new phone to arrive, I used an old one that couldn't do anything but texting, calling and... Snake! The idea for Snake...
Willem's Blog
Inspiration from a child
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
29th Sep 2021
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
The Pragmatic...
The Pulse: AI load breaks GitHub – why not other vendors?
GitHub’s leadership blames the 3.5x increase in service load as the cause of degradation – or it...
7th May 2026
GitHub’s leadership blames the 3.5x increase in service load as the cause of degradation – or it might be self-inflicted.
Simply Explained
HEIC to JPG: Build a Quick Action with Automator
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The...
8th Jul 2020
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The High-Efficiency Image File Format saves a lot of storage space on your devices while still maintaining your photos' quality. However, it does become problematic if you want to share those files...
./techtipsy
So you want to migrate to Kubernetes: observations from a software developer
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common...
1st Oct 2024
Kubernetes: everyone wants to do it, regardless of their scale and business objectives.1
Common justifications include better scalability, cost savings, standardization and being super modern and stuff. It’s
the future!
In my personal experience, Kubernetes is far from the...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Monolithic vs Microservices software architecture
This week I flew to Gothenburg to meet people from a large international shipping company, talking...
2nd Mar 2020
This week I flew to Gothenburg to meet people from a large international shipping company, talking about the development of enterprise level software. During the meeting there were various experts in the room, one of them asked me on choosing the right software architecture (for...
Computer Ads from...
Discwasher SpikeMaster
Meet the Mighty SpikeMaster, Protector of Computers.
1st Feb 2025
Meet the Mighty SpikeMaster, Protector of Computers.
Abishek Muthian
Meta is holding my Facebook Page hostage
I have been trying to delete my Meta/Facebook account for past several months in vain because I...
29th Dec 2021
I have been trying to delete my Meta/Facebook account for past several months in vain because I couldn't download a copy of my Facebook Page before I delete my account.
Facebook provides 'Request a download' feature for downloading a copy of the the Page. It worked fine for pages...
Electronics etc…
HP 33120A Repair - Shutting Down the Eye of Sauron
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener...
2nd Jan 2023
Introduction
Opening Up an HP 33120A
A Walk Through the Block Diagram
Bug Hunting
Zener Replacement
Staring at the Eye of Sauron
FLIR IR Imaging
To Destroy a PCB in Order to Save It
Circuit Reconstruction
Success!
Trust but Verify
Conclusion
References
Introduction
When the...
Never Met a Science
Seeing Like a Newsfeed
Machine Learning Through Machine Poetry
5th Aug 2024
Machine Learning Through Machine Poetry
Louwrentius - Solar
Raspberry Pi as a router using a single network interface
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run...
29th Sep 2021
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run your own router at home, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B1 can be an excelent hardware choice:
it's fairly cheap
it's fast enough
it can saturate it's gigabit network port
it is...
Louwrentius - Solar
Achieving 2.3 GB/s with 16 x 4 TB drives
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost...
12th Jul 2014
I'm in the process of building a new storage server to replace my 18 TB NAS.
The server is almost finished, it's now down to adding disk drives. I'm using the HGST 4 TB 7200 RPM drive for this build (SKU 0S03356) (review).
I have not bought all drives at once, but slowly adding...
Avestura's Blog
Hiding a photo inside another photo
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
28th Apr 2022
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
Applied Cartography
Chinatown
Well, that was probably the most depressing final sequence I can remember in a film (especially one...
4th Aug 2022
Well, that was probably the most depressing final sequence I can remember in a film (especially one so devoted to realism, or at least its brand of plausibility.)
Jonas Hietala
Recent experiences with Netrunner tournaments
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three...
31st Mar 2016
After a bit of a hiatus after the Winter Kit Tournament the 16th January I participated in three tournaments during February - March. After each of these tournaments I started a writeup of them but they fell off my mind a bit but consider this my break with my blogging...
Yazin Alirhayim
The Trouble With Optionality
What if amassing options to no end isn't the optimal choice beyond early childhood? I explore the...
3rd Nov 2020
What if amassing options to no end isn't the optimal choice beyond early childhood? I explore the topic of optionality, why it's bad and what to do about it
Avestura's Blog
Oversimplified ideas of the great philosophers of all times
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
23rd Mar 2023
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
Construction Physics
How Will the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Affect Housing Supply? Part III
This is my third and final essay looking at the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and how it’s...
2 weeks ago
This is my third and final essay looking at the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and how it’s likely to affect housing supply.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
22nd Nov 2019
Neil Madden
CVE-2022-21449: Psychic Signatures in Java
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to...
19th Apr 2022
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to get out of trouble by showing an identity card which is actually completely blank. Of course, this being Doctor Who, the card is really made out of a special “psychic paper“, which...
Willem's Blog
Hello, stranger
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one...
12th Oct 2023
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one individual delves into the lost art of talking to strangers and the profound connections it can forge."
Yazin Alirhayim
Braindump
Sometimes, getting it all down on paper helps me think through things. This is that, a complete...
21st Oct 2020
Sometimes, getting it all down on paper helps me think through things. This is that, a complete brain dump.
anderegg.ca
An infuriating goodbye to Photoshop
I’ve been using Photoshop since the mid-90s. First at school, with Photoshop 3, then through work. I...
12th Jul 2026
I’ve been using Photoshop since the mid-90s. First at school, with Photoshop 3, then through work. I bought my first boxed copy of CS2 in 2005, then upgraded to CS5 in 2010. I subscribed to Photoshop Creative Cloud on day one. Today, I uninstalled it. I hope I never have to use...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?
12th Jun 2022
computers are bad
IrDA
Light: it's the radiation we can see. The communications potential of light is
obvious, and indeed,...
11th Apr 2026
Light: it's the radiation we can see. The communications potential of light is
obvious, and indeed, many of the earliest forms of long-distance communication
relied on it: signal fires, semaphore, heliographs. You could say that we still
make extensive use of light for...
Tiny struggles
How to transcribe long audios fast with open source (colab included)
In this post I will give you code that you can run yourself in Colab (or on your own machine with a...
14th Oct 2024
In this post I will give you code that you can run yourself in Colab (or on your own machine with a GPU), that will allow you to very quickly transcribe long audios in many languages.
The setup uses the whisper model from huggingface, Google Drive and Colab.
I used it to...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Whoop strap review: 24/7 wearable sensor
The past months I have been wearing the WHOOP Strap 3.0, a wearable sensor that collects health and...
30th Dec 2019
The past months I have been wearing the WHOOP Strap 3.0, a wearable sensor that collects health and fitness data. It's different compared to most other fitness bands as it was designed with professional athletes in mind. It is focussed on daily strain, recovery and sleep. Read...
Electronics etc…
$17 GM1312 Thermometer Review, Test, and Teardown
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few...
11th Feb 2023
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few tests
Internals
Conclusion
References
Introduction
I’ve been doing a bunch of measurements on oven-controlled oscillators lately,
including their temperature. There are multiple ways to measure...
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
6th Apr 2021
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
./techtipsy
HoloISO: the unofficial Steam Deck experience on your PC
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam...
1st Dec 2022
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam Deck, the
Linux-based handheld gaming PC built by Valve. Yes, you heard that right: not
Windows, but Linux.
I’ve had my fair share of attempts at gaming on Linux. When it works,...
Jonas Hietala
I'll only buy devices with GrapheneOS
Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS — I say that’s freedom
Calvin...
28th Aug 2025
Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS — I say that’s freedom
Calvin Wankhede
We’re in a dark time period right now.
Authoritarianism is on the rise throughout the globe.
Governments wants to monitor your social media accounts so they can make you disappear if...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is "pro-crypto"
17th Jul 2024
Jorge Arango
Traction Heroes Ep. 24: Listening
A few weeks ago, I did something bad. Every day, I take a long walk while listening to podcasts on...
1st Dec 2025
A few weeks ago, I did something bad. Every day, I take a long walk while listening to podcasts on my Apple Watch. The app I use developed a bug after a recent update: whenever I paused, it would lose its place in the show. As you may imagine, this was annoying, so I avoided...
Push to Prod
Comprehension of Concurrency is a Lifelong Journey
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
23rd Jul 2024
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
detreville
🎼This Is the Worst Trip I’ve Ever Been On 🎶
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
9th May 2024
(A Lengthy Vacation Post-Mortem)
Ian's Blog
Mourning the Loss of Cohost
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting...
11th Sep 2024
The staff running Cohost have announced (archived) that at the end of 2024 Cohost will be shutting down, with the site going read-only on October 1st 2024. This news was deeply upsetting to receive, as Cohost filled a space left by other social media websites when they stopped...
Notes on software...
The impact of management teams as a decision-making group, in startups and enterprise
Ambitious companies form management teams at every level above you,
sometimes including you....
11th Nov 2020
Ambitious companies form management teams at every level above you,
sometimes including you. Management teams meet periodically and have
private chat rooms. They discuss customers, product and organizational
direction. Sometimes discussions are well documented and...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Computer says no
This morning I enjoyed my bike ride on a nearly empty bicycle lane, picture perfect rays of sunlight...
10th Sep 2022
This morning I enjoyed my bike ride on a nearly empty bicycle lane, picture perfect rays of sunlight illuminated the dew above the fields around me. Where were all the other cyclists? I suspect it has something to do with popular weather apps. It strikes me how great the control...
./techtipsy
Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana
This post isn’t a detailed line-by-line tutorial on how to set up each individual piece of the setup...
2nd May 2024
This post isn’t a detailed line-by-line tutorial on how to set up each individual piece of the setup as those types of
guides tend to get out of date really easily, but if you know your way around Linux and the command line, then you can
definitely replicate this setup on your...
Himanshu Mishra |...
Letters
What did you do?? I have developed a habbit of writing letters to friends and family for the past...
7th Apr 2019
What did you do?? I have developed a habbit of writing letters to friends and family for the past few years. Today, I made some of them…
Electronics etc…
The Scenic Route to Repairing a Self-Destructing SRS DG535 Digital Delay Generator
Introduction
The Stanford Research Systems DG535
Who Uses a Pulse Delay Generator?
Inside the...
24th Dec 2025
Introduction
The Stanford Research Systems DG535
Who Uses a Pulse Delay Generator?
Inside the DG535
The Annoying Mechanical Design of the DG535
It’s Always the Power Supply
Power Architecture of the DG535
The How, Why, and Please Don’t of Current Boost Resistor Circuits
Root...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination
11th Mar 2017
Alyssa Rosenzweig
Hilariously Fast Volume Computation with the Divergence Theorem
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of...
16th Feb 2018
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a
simple, closed, triangulated 3D mesh. This assumption is a consequence
of the divergence theorem. Further extensions may generalise to other
meshes as well, although that is presently...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
23rd Feb 2022
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
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...
14th Jul 2024
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...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
How To Understand Things
The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking...
2nd Jul 2020
The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking...
Matt Mullenweg
USA 250
This auspicious 250th Independence Day, I find myself thinking of what Om wrote in iAMerican when he...
5th Jul 2026
This auspicious 250th Independence Day, I find myself thinking of what Om wrote in iAMerican when he became a US citizen in 2013. On a globe, America is a landmass, a country. In an immigrant’s heart it is a belief that future is almost always better. It may not be perfect and it...
Open for Business
Ecclesiology, Doctrine, Ecumenism: A Few Difficult Questions
I am provoked by an internet presence that goes by “Redeemed Zoomer,” presumably a 20-something...
6th Aug 2026
I am provoked by an internet presence that goes by “Redeemed Zoomer,” presumably a 20-something young man holding theologically conservative views, and similar views on Christian ethics, who is Reformed.
Construction Physics
Should US homebuilders emulate Sweden?
A common sentiment I see with folks interested in improving US homebuilding is that we should try...
1st Jan 2026
A common sentiment I see with folks interested in improving US homebuilding is that we should try and emulate Sweden.
Willem's Blog
Outside the comfort zone: amateur acting
This month I strapped myself with sensors during a little experiment outside my comfort zone: I...
17th Apr 2018
This month I strapped myself with sensors during a little experiment outside my comfort zone: I debuted as amateur actor!
Notes on software...
Confusion and disengagement in meetings
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks...
30th Nov 2019
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks is to ask questions.
Ask early so you don't waste time. But it's not enough to just ask
clarifying questions because the answers won't always be clear.
Sounds like Human Interaction...
Jonas Hietala
I'll give up Neovim when you pry it from my cold, dead hands
I recently came upon a horror story where a developer was forced to switch editor from Neovim to...
18th Feb 2025
I recently came upon a horror story where a developer was forced to switch editor from Neovim to Cursor
and I felt I had to write a little to cleanse myself of the disgust I felt.
Two different ways of approaching an editor
I think that there’s two opposing ways of thinking about...
Avestura's Blog
A Software Engineer's Take on The Political Spectrum
You heard about the left-wing and right-wing politics. But how is that related to software?
16th Sep 2025
You heard about the left-wing and right-wing politics. But how is that related to software?
MIT News - Civil and...
MIT School of Engineering faculty receive awards in winter 2026
Faculty members and researchers were honored in recognition of their scholarship, service, and...
7th May 2026
Faculty members and researchers were honored in recognition of their scholarship, service, and overall excellence.
Computer Ads from...
Ann Arbor Software's Textra Word Processing
The shortest distance between your thoughts and the printed word.
2nd Jul 2025
The shortest distance between your thoughts and the printed word.
Odds and Ends of...
Reels are destroying our brains and I hate them
It's time for a new moral panic
2nd May 2025
It's time for a new moral panic
Applied Cartography
Varieties of Disturbance
My review of Break it Down, a much earlier entry in Lydia Davis' ouevre, last year was a bit of...
1st Mar 2023
My review of Break it Down, a much earlier entry in Lydia Davis' ouevre, last year was a bit of damning with faint praise:
Alyssa Rosenzweig
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
22nd Aug 2023
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...
tim.sh
Self-hosting 101: Server and Tailscale
8th Sep 2025
anderegg.ca
YouTube is a mysterious monopoly
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro...
8th Sep 2025
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro computer repair channel I really enjoy. In the post, he points out a trend I didn’t know about: YouTube views seem to have fallen off a cliff recently.
Further down the thread, Jeff...
Abishek Muthian
On Apple slowing down its phones
Build world’s best smartphone CPU & release a CPU governor to slow it down via software update...
22nd Dec 2017
Build world’s best smartphone CPU & release a CPU governor to slow it down via software update 😑
This isn’t an isolated incident, Li-ion batteries have been plaguing the tech industry. While other parts of the smartphone like displays, compute power, data transfer, storage...
anderegg.ca
Algorithms are breaking how we think
Today, Alec Watson posted a video titled “Algorithms are breaking how we think” on his YouTube...
23rd Feb 2025
Today, Alec Watson posted a video titled “Algorithms are breaking how we think” on his YouTube channel, Technology Connections. The whole thing is excellent and very well argued. The main thrust is: people seem increasingly less mindful about the stuff they engage with. Watson...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Designing a multi dimensional capacity queue
This month I needed to create additional dimensions to a capacity queue mechanism. The food ordering...
1st Dec 2020
This month I needed to create additional dimensions to a capacity queue mechanism. The food ordering app that I created needed to be able to restrict capacity based on the number of orders, the contents in individual orders and the dispatch type (takeaway/delivery). Read along to...
Willem L. Middelkoop
From tree to table
Right next to the house were I was born there was this chestnut tree, sadly it died one and a half...
22nd Oct 2017
Right next to the house were I was born there was this chestnut tree, sadly it died one and a half year ago. When it was taken down, my brother saved me a slab of wood. I intended to create something from it, a nice "do it yourself" adventure, worthy of a blog post!
The chestnut...
Can We Still Govern?
Who's Threatening Who?
The Trump administration says immigration enforcement are being assaulted; the details tell a...
4th Nov 2025
The Trump administration says immigration enforcement are being assaulted; the details tell a different story
videah's blog
Plex Might Be Indavertently Bottlenecking You
Plex has this Relay feature that basically
pipes your traffic through their servers if direct access...
12th May 2025
Plex has this Relay feature that basically
pipes your traffic through their servers if direct access isn't possible for whatever reason, bypassing NAT and
presumably cutting down on their support tickets.
For free users the relay is capped at a measly 1 Mbps and the [ever-growing...
Jonas Hietala
IDA Summer of Code 2014
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in...
11th Jun 2014
IDA Summer of Code is Linköping University’s response to Google Summer of Code. Students can send in a project of their choice and if selected they get paid to work on it for 4 weeks during the summer. In return the university get to show off the students and their projects in...
Blog | Sam Curry
Hacking Millions of Modems (and Investigating Who Hacked My Modem)
3rd Jun 2024
Willem L. Middelkoop
Realtime service uptime monitoring
Downtime happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, just make sure that you set yourself up to...
1st Feb 2021
Downtime happens and it is nothing to be ashamed of, just make sure that you set yourself up to discover problems as soon as possible! You can use realtime uptime monitoring to automatically keep an eye on your servers and services. Read along to find out how.
Uptime, downtime...
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Offline command line translation with TranslateGemma + Ollama
I wrote a simple script that translates text at the command line, completely offline. Here’s an...
1st May 2026
I wrote a simple script that translates text at the command line, completely offline. Here’s an example of how it works on my computer:
echo '¿Cómo estás?' | translate
# => How are you?
It combines a few tools:
TranslateGemma, a special-purpose language model for...
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
9th Oct 2020
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Louwrentius - Solar
My home lab server with 20 cores / 40 threads and 128 GB memory
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this...
12th Aug 2019
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this moment, it's replaced by a cluster of four 1L PCs which use about a third of the idle power usage and boot within 20 seconds. The single-core performance of these low-power 1L PCs...
The Pragmatic...
How software engineering is changing: an essay challenge
The pace of change in software engineering is only accelerating, especially since January of this...
2 weeks ago
The pace of change in software engineering is only accelerating, especially since January of this year. This is all to do with the industry-wide adoption of LLMs, AI tooling, and AI infrastructure. At The Pragmatic Engineer, we always want to capture as much of what’s going on
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
19th Nov 2024
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
12th Feb 2013
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
On Life and Lisp
Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end
In 2020, Apple released the M1 with a custom GPU. We got to work
reverse-engineering the hardware...
26th Aug 2025
In 2020, Apple released the M1 with a custom GPU. We got to work
reverse-engineering the hardware and porting Linux. Today, you can run
Linux on a range of M1 and M2 Macs, with almost all hardware working:
wireless, audio, and full graphics acceleration.
Our story begins in...
Birchtree
Quick Subtitles 1.6 (benchmark history, more stats, and more)
Quick Subtitles has yet another update out now, which brings a few new features to the mix.
UI...
3rd Jan 2026
Quick Subtitles has yet another update out now, which brings a few new features to the mix.
UI tweaks
First up is a slightly refreshed UI. This is mostly a new coat of paint across the interface. The iPhone UI home page, for example, now uses all the available space
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal in-memory storage engine for MySQL/MariaDB
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and...
9th Jan 2024
I spent a week
looking at MySQL/MariaDB internals along with ~80 other devs. Although
MySQL and MariaDB are mostly the same (more on that later), I focused
on MariaDB specifically this week.
Before last week I had never built MySQL/MariaDB before. The first day
of this hack week,...
computers are bad
LotusNotes
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly
in the early days of...
14th Mar 2026
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly
in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and
fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories
serving military contracts. Of course, the...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
10th Sep 2024
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
Louwrentius - Solar
Compiling Ceph on the Raspberry Pi 3B+ (armhf) using Clang/LLVM
UPDATE 2019 / 2020
There are official ARM64 binaries of Ceph that you can run on a 64-bit version of...
10th Nov 2018
UPDATE 2019 / 2020
There are official ARM64 binaries of Ceph that you can run on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu 18.04.
Important: I consider this page obsolete. I will keep it up for transparency's sake
Introduction
In this blog post I'll show you how to compile Ceph Luminous for...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Logic Programming Associates 386-PROLOG
Yes, it's here! LPA 386-PROLOG is now available in a version for Windows!
1st Jul 2026
Yes, it's here! LPA 386-PROLOG is now available in a version for Windows!
Tiny struggles
Two worlds: idea people and developers
I recently attended a startup weekend and was surprised by the backgrounds of the other...
29th Apr 2023
I recently attended a startup weekend and was surprised by the backgrounds of the other attendees.
As a software engineer myself, I expected to see mostly engineers, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, I found myself surrounded by people with a diverse range of backgrounds and...
Open for Business
Silence Isn't Violence
The last decade, we’ve been told we have to speak — and speak loudly — or we’re the bad guys. And,...
2 weeks ago
The last decade, we’ve been told we have to speak — and speak loudly — or we’re the bad guys. And, of course, say what the mob says or we’re still the bad guys. But silence is often more profound.
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring ham radio activation of Korkattivuori (Mt. Korkatti)
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature...
16th Apr 2023
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature reserve area near town Haapavesi (pop. 6588) in Finland. The nature reserve area consist of short family friendly hiking path of approximately 1.5km. One end of the path has parking...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Gasprice Market Analysis
14th Dec 2017
Willem's Blog
Programming on Apple Watch
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
15th Feb 2017
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
computers are bad
2023-02-07 secret government telephone numbers
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be...
7th Feb 2023
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be clear, the "secret" here was a joke and these buttons are in fact well
documented. The buttons I was talking about were the AUTOVON call precedence
buttons, used for a five-level...
Toni's Blog
Homage to My Last Name
How I build my custom error page with Next.js & Tailwind
25th Oct 2024
How I build my custom error page with Next.js & Tailwind
Willem's Blog
Three tips to make a content strategy work
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or...
24th Mar 2021
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or company.
Jonas Hietala
My first netrunner store championship
My girlfriend has told me I get these narrow interests where I pour all my energy and thoughts into...
24th Feb 2015
My girlfriend has told me I get these narrow interests where I pour all my energy and thoughts into and about 1,5 months ago I discovered Netrunner, a very awesome card game. Check out this how to play or team covenant’s channel if you want to know more.
So this Sunday I went to...
Yazin Alirhayim
Building a mobile app in 1 day: Thunoob
Is it even possible to make an app in just 1 day? Well, let's find out!
1st Dec 2025
Is it even possible to make an app in just 1 day? Well, let's find out!
Elevation Lab - Blog
Factory Raw: Limited Run Finish
Straight from our CNC mills - machining marks and all. These raw ElevationDock 3's have a bright,...
16th Dec 2015
Straight from our CNC mills - machining marks and all. These raw ElevationDock 3's have a bright, gorgeous, utilitarian look. You can see exactly how they were 5-axis milled, held, and hand deburred. They look cool on a desk and are popular around our office (mostly with machined...
eieio.games
Marc Andreessen Egg Game
Marc Andreessen Egg Game
Marc Andreessen Egg Game is a game about doodling on eggs to make them look...
7th May 2026
Marc Andreessen Egg Game
Marc Andreessen Egg Game is a game about doodling on eggs to make them look like Marc Andreessen.
Read the full post on my blog!
Here's a raw link, if you need it:
https://eieio.games/blog/marc-andreessen-egg-game
Louwrentius - Solar
How to run victron veconfigure on a mac
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool....
4th Mar 2024
Introduction
Victron Multiplus-II inverter/charges are configured with the veconfigure1 tool. Unforntunately this is a Windows-only tool, but there is still a way for Apple users to run this tool without any problems.
Tip: if you've never worked with the Terminal app on MacOS, it...
watchTowr Labs
Do Smart People Ever Say They’re Smart? (SmarterTools SmarterMail Pre-Auth RCE CVE-2025-52691)
Welcome to 2026!
While we are all waiting for the scheduled SSLVPN ITW exploitation programming that...
8th Jan 2026
Welcome to 2026!
While we are all waiting for the scheduled SSLVPN ITW exploitation programming that occurs every January, we’re back from Christmas and idle hands, idle minds, yada yada.
In December, we were alerted to a vulnerability in SmarterTools’ SmarterMail solution,...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
What Makes Art Great?
Some notes toward an answer
3rd May 2026
Some notes toward an answer
Posts on Made of...
Exploiting misuse of Python's "pickle"
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which...
20th Mar 2011
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which provides for efficient binary serialization and loading of Python datatypes. Hopefully, you’re also familiar with the warning printed prominently near the start of pickle’s...
Home on Erik...
Plotting author statistics for Git repos using Git of Theseus
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I...
3rd Jan 2018
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I have a couple of blog posts in the pipeline about various updates. First up, I made a number of fixes to Git of Theseus which is a tool (written in Python) that generates...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Memory access is O(N^[1/3])
5th Oct 2025
sibervepunk
Anatomy of a change
Exactly a year ago today, I changed something about myself that had been part of my life for ten...
9th Apr 2026
Exactly a year ago today, I changed something about myself that had been part of my life for ten years.
What that "thing" is won’t be mentioned here, so as not to take the subject out of context, but I can tell you a few things about it.
Because it had persisted for a decade, it...
Eric Migicovsky's...
Pebble Round 2 - The Most Stylish Pebble Ever
We’ve finally gotten around to it The entire Pebble relaunch would not be complete without...
2nd Jan 2026
We’ve finally gotten around to it The entire Pebble relaunch would not be complete without revisiting one of our most iconic watches from…
matduggan.com
Making RSS More Fun
I wrote a browser extension to try and make finding random, independent websites more fun.
2nd Dec 2025
I wrote a browser extension to try and make finding random, independent websites more fun.
Vitalik Buterin's...
What do I think about biometric proof of personhood?
24th Jul 2023
Writing
Mob Psycho 100 (Season 1)
It took me a little time to get keyed into the idiosyncratic humor & ethos of this show, but once I...
1st Oct 2022
It took me a little time to get keyed into the idiosyncratic humor & ethos of this show, but once I did I really did. It's very much a shonen, but a shonen in a way that feels more committed to deconstructing stereotypes than Ousama Ranking and with characters that are at least...
eieio.games
Legibility of Effort
Legibility of Effort
LLMs have broken legibility of effort - our ability to tell, at a glance,...
22nd Jun 2026
Legibility of Effort
LLMs have broken legibility of effort - our ability to tell, at a glance, whether something took a human real work. What happens next?
Read the full post on my blog!
Here's a raw link, if you need it:
https://eieio.games/blog/legibility-of-effort
The Pragmatic...
New trend: extreme hours at AI startups
Pulling 80+ hour work weeks – including weekends – is becoming the norm across AI startups, and is...
14th Aug 2025
Pulling 80+ hour work weeks – including weekends – is becoming the norm across AI startups, and is unlikely to stop while AI is so hot.
./techtipsy
Oops, I accidentally built a Steam Machine
I like the Steam Deck. It’s what convinced me that gaming on Linux is actually viable
now.
But after...
1st Dec 2025
I like the Steam Deck. It’s what convinced me that gaming on Linux is actually viable
now.
But after playing through games like God of War Ragnarök1, I felt like I needed an upgrade. I love playing with the
Steam Deck, but what I love more is playing without having to worry about...
Eric Migicovsky's...
Success and Failure at Pebble
I’ve been giving a talk on the importance of learning from failure to every YC batch for last few...
11th Apr 2022
I’ve been giving a talk on the importance of learning from failure to every YC batch for last few years. I wrote this post in 2017 but never…
Posts on Made of...
CVE-2007-4573: The Anatomy of a Kernel Exploit
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It...
5th Feb 2010
CVE-2007-4573 is two years old at this point, but it remains one of my favorite vulnerabilities. It was a local privilege-escalation vulnerability on all x86_64 kernels prior to v2.6.22.7. It’s very simple to understand with a little bit of background, and the exploit is...
Electronics etc…
Polyphase Channelizers with Frequency Offset - a Bluetooth LE Example
Introduction
A Bluetooth LE Trace as Example
Input Complex Heterodyne
Derivation of Post-Decimation...
5th Mar 2026
Introduction
A Bluetooth LE Trace as Example
Input Complex Heterodyne
Derivation of Post-Decimation Offset Correction
Simplifying for the Half-Bin Offset Case
The Odd Case of an Odd Number of Channels
Reducing the Number of Phase Adjustment...
./techtipsy
Steam Deck: I like it
I got a Steam Deck.
Only took me a year or so of contemplating getting
one, and trying out HoloISO,...
2nd Jun 2024
I got a Steam Deck.
Only took me a year or so of contemplating getting
one, and trying out HoloISO, the unofficial SteamOS installer
finally convinced me to get one.1
It took another year to actually get down to writing down my thoughts on it.
This post is written from the...
Willem L. Middelkoop
For the love of mini
People regulary ask me why I have a small smartphone, a modern iPhone 13 Mini. Often I simply reply...
8th Dec 2021
People regulary ask me why I have a small smartphone, a modern iPhone 13 Mini. Often I simply reply that I like it. The smaller size offers more than just an easier fit in your pocket. I have come to appreciate its intangible greatness, read along for the love of mini!
iPhone...
Willem's Blog
Commuting by bike
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal...
1st Dec 2017
One week on the VanMoof Electrified S E-bike testing it for commuting and comparing it to a normal bike.
Jonas Hietala
My Dream Game: The Tycoon
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my...
5th Jan 2011
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my favorite but I’ve played 2v2 with some friends and I actually played the campaign a bit and it was pretty fun! Usually I never play the campaign on RTS games but this one I liked....
Himanshu Mishra |...
PEP8Speaks - Now helping 5,000 open source projects write neat and clean Python
What is this project? 🐍 PEP8Speaks = PEP 8 + Speaks GitHub:...
5th Apr 2020
What is this project? 🐍 PEP8Speaks = PEP 8 + Speaks GitHub: https://github.com/OrkoHunter/pep8speaks PEP 8 is Python's recommended coding…
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Notes from "The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast"
In The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast, author Andrew Blum gives a high-level...
25th Jul 2025
In The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast, author Andrew Blum gives a high-level overview of global weather forecasting. What complexity hides behind the simple interfaces of our daily weather apps?
Three main points stuck out to me:
“The weather machine has to be a...
Freewheeling Apps
2026-05-24
What is text?
This blog post reminds me of the time 10 years ago when I tried to do away with...
24th May 2026
What is text?
This blog post reminds me of the time 10 years ago when I tried to do away with Linux's desktop environment because it seemed overly complex and hard to wrap my head around. I had a lot of trouble running wifi without the desktop environment, and it left me quite...
axio.ms
Classical virtualisation rules applied to RISC-style atomics
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable...
15th May 2022
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures”, giving a set of characteristics for correct full-machine virtualisation.
Today, these characteristics remain very useful. Computer architects will...
Matt Mullenweg
Berkshire Hathaway Meeting
I’ve checked off a bucket list item: I’m attending a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. It’s...
2nd May 2025
I’ve checked off a bucket list item: I’m attending a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. It’s really an event! Thousands flock to Omaha, Nebraska, for the legendary Q&A sessions with Warren Buffett and shareholder deals. They’ve made it quite the circus, with every Berkshire...
Arduino Blog
A desktop-sized DIY vending machine for your room
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive...
2nd Jul 2024
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in most homes. But now you can experience vending bliss thanks to this miniature vending machine designed by m22pj, which you can craft yourself using an...
Simply Explained
How I Use Alfred to Search My Obsidian Notes Faster (with Spotlight!)
In this post, I’ll show you how I integrated Obsidian into Alfred so I can search my vault from...
22nd Mar 2023
In this post, I’ll show you how I integrated Obsidian into Alfred so I can search my vault from anywhere on my Mac. I just open Alfred, type “note” followed by my query, and see my search results. Hit enter and the correct note opens in Obsidian. Easy and quick!
computers are bad
2025-05-04 iBeacons
You know sometimes a technology just sort of... comes and goes? Without leaving
much of an...
4th May 2025
You know sometimes a technology just sort of... comes and goes? Without leaving
much of an impression? And then gets lodged in your brain for the next decade?
Let's talk about one of those: the iBeacon.
I think the reason that iBeacons loom so large in my memory is that...
Writing
The Album
I would forgive the simplicity of the bubblegum or the datedness of the production or the very short...
4th Aug 2021
I would forgive the simplicity of the bubblegum or the datedness of the production or the very short runtime if any of these songs were bops but...they weren't? It just wasn't a very fu album.
Abort Retry Fail
The Birth of Windows Gaming
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
2nd Sep 2023
Software is a fluid that expands to fill its container
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing NightPad Wireless Charger
NightPad has no LEDs, so it won't light up your room. This was a frustration we had with other...
19th Jul 2018
NightPad has no LEDs, so it won't light up your room. This was a frustration we had with other wireless chargers - which I covered with electrical tape. So in designing this one, the first thing we did was remove the light.
NightPad charges iPhone 50% faster than standard Qi...
Comments for Lars...
The Sleazy World of Reddit Marketing, Everything is Fake
I’m going to show you how to cash grab as a Reddit moderator. 5 minutes of work, then thousands of...
21st Aug 2024
I’m going to show you how to cash grab as a Reddit moderator. 5 minutes of work, then thousands of dollars per month for doing nothing. Maybe tens of thousands. With a 100% real example. I’ve edited nothing. When you’re a Reddit mod, you have a TON of power in that subreddit. You...
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Anecdotally, programmers dislike "reduce"
In short: from my experience, people like map and filter, but not reduce.
I use functions like map...
5 days ago
In short: from my experience, people like map and filter, but not reduce.
I use functions like map and filter all the time. When I put that code up for review, my peers rarely complain. I get plenty of feedback about other decisions, but not about my use of map and filter.
I...
Project Blog on...
Train Simulator Controller: CAN Controller, Part 1
I’m building a physical cab dashboard to control Train Simulator, from master controller to an AWS...
22nd Jun 2023
I’m building a physical cab dashboard to control Train Simulator, from master controller to an AWS sunflower to a speedometer, and everything in between. The engineer or hobbyist interested in getting this project ready expediently would probably find their favorite...
Home on Erik...
We're hiring at Better
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the...
9th Dec 2019
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the team here in NYC lately—the tech team has actually grown from 35 to 60 in just ~3 months.
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol
14th Sep 2017
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
12th Feb 2020
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
computers are bad
2024-01-06 usb on the go
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption...
6th Jan 2024
USB, the Universal Serial Bus, was first released in 1996. It did not achieve
widespread adoption until some years later; for most of the '90s RS-232-ish
serial and its
awkward sibling the parallel port
were the norm for external peripheral. It's sort of surprising that USB...
Engineers Need Art
Tom Dowdy
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in...
3rd Apr 2022
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in Lawrence, Kansas.
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...
18th Sep 2019
We need to move beyond mere security and towards safety for our customers and our users. This is how we can do that.
Louwrentius - Solar
'Linux RAID level and chunk size: the benchmarks'
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is...
23rd May 2010
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is the chunk size?
When you write data to a RAID array that implements striping (level 0, 5, 6,
10 and so on), the chunk of data sent to the array is broken down in to
pieces, each part...
anderegg.ca
Bubbles.town
I mostly use my web stats service because I get a lizard-brain kick from watching numbers go up, but...
9th Aug 2026
I mostly use my web stats service because I get a lizard-brain kick from watching numbers go up, but it also provides some fun insights. For example, it’s how I found out about bubbles.town.
At first I thought this might be a Mastodon instance. I get a lot of referral traffic...
Applied Cartography
May, 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I...
1st Jun 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I have loved and outgrown:
Birchtree
1Password with an unbelievable own goal
Andrew Lilley Brinker: 1Password Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe
Omarchy is a Linux...
2 weeks ago
Andrew Lilley Brinker: 1Password Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe
Omarchy is a Linux distribution created and controlled by David Heinemeier Hansson, usually known as DHH. DHH is the founder and CTO of 37signals (formerly Basecamp) and creator of Ruby on Rails.
In the last...
Blog | Sam Curry
Cracking my windshield and earning $10,000 on the Tesla Bug Bounty Program
14th Jul 2019
joshua stein
BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory 1.3 Released
BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory
1.3 has been released:
wifi_da-1.3.sit
(StuffIt 3...
13th Jan 2025
BlueSCSI Wi-Fi Desk Accessory
1.3 has been released:
wifi_da-1.3.sit
(StuffIt 3 archive)
40b49ef83b6512bde571171aa42e90419a8577efa895cfaeb19bf18a0c82d4de
SHA1: b8fa941eb104c0f925436cc8fbc3018a3ded5b96
This update brings internationalization support for Macs running...
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....
13th Jan 2020
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.
Pea Bee
#14: Extreme ironing
A couple of months back, I made a search engine to look for half loaves of bread in stores. I was...
3rd Jul 2022
A couple of months back, I made a search engine to look for half loaves of bread in stores. I was tired of wasting leftover bread and made this because, well I could. You can try it here: halfloafnear.me
Can We Still Govern?
Understanding Mamdani's Vision
His inauguration speech challenges the the left to govern
2nd Jan 2026
His inauguration speech challenges the the left to govern
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Universal for AirTag
We wanted an ultra-secure AirTag case that could be mounted to anything. Easy to change AirTags...
13th Nov 2024
We wanted an ultra-secure AirTag case that could be mounted to anything. Easy to change AirTags battery. Waterproof. Robust. And discreet.
So we designed TagVault Universal Mount for AirTag.
It has mounting holes for screws, rivets, and slots for zip ties. Or just epoxy it down....
Electronics etc…
A Galois Field Arithmetic Primer
Introduction
A Galois Field Introduction by Example
Base Galois Fields
A Real World Example of a...
14th Jun 2026
Introduction
A Galois Field Introduction by Example
Base Galois Fields
A Real World Example of a Base Galois Field
GF(2)
Extended Galois Fields
Extended Galois Field Addition
Extended Galois Field Multiplication
A Field Defining Irreducible Polynomial
A Primitive Polynomial
From...
On Life and Lisp
Passing the reins on Panfrost
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild...
10th Apr 2023
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild ride.
In 2017, I began work on the chai driver for Mali T (Midgard). chai would later be merged into Lyude Paul’s and Connor Abbott’s BiOpenly project for Mali G (Bifrost) to form...
anderegg.ca
The “Home Alone” / “NiGHTS into Dreams” connection
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one...
6th Dec 2024
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one of my favourites from the Saturn lineup, and it also had a free Christmas version.
In it, there’s a song I really love that plays on the level select screen called Gate of Your...
Never Met a Science
Open Science and Its Enemies
Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”....
2nd Jun 2025
Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. Setting aside the absurdity of “restoring” something that never existed, what does that purport to mean?
Willem L. Middelkoop
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
Last weekend me and my brother went to Rock Werchter, a multi-day, music festival in Belgium. Over...
9th Jul 2018
Last weekend me and my brother went to Rock Werchter, a multi-day, music festival in Belgium. Over 140 thousand visitors enjoy world famous artists like Pearl Jam, Nick Cave, Artic Monkeys, Noel Gallagher, The Killers and the Queens of the Stone Age. This year I didn't drink...
Vitalik Buterin's...
On Nathan Schneider on the limits of cryptoeconomics
26th Sep 2021
./techtipsy
Anything's a portable speaker if you're brave enough
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a...
2nd Jan 2023
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a speaker, a battery, put them together, and what you now have is a
portable speaker. Since I had access to both, I felt no need to buy a separate
portable speaker for use in social...
Jonas Hietala
Home office renovation
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I...
1st Mar 2019
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I had to have a home office as I need to work remote. There simply isn’t any software development work for me here.
So the later part of 2018 and early 2019 we’ve renovated an old...
Fabien Sanglard
Revisiting the Businesscard Raytracer
1st May 2020
Jonas Hietala
Planning my Kubernetes homelab
The Kubernetes iceberg.
If I’d have to describe my homelab setup via analogy I guess it would be...
5th May 2026
The Kubernetes iceberg.
If I’d have to describe my homelab setup via analogy I guess it would be similar to me on a unicycle carrying plates with both of my hands, or maybe a leaking barrel with water that I try to patch up with silver tape.
I’ve also been Kubernetes-curious so...
Home on Erik...
Annoying blog post
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which...
11th Nov 2014
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which is an open source C++/Python library for Approximate Nearest Neighbor search.
I set up Travis-CI integration and spent some time on one of the issues that multiple people had...
Posts on Made of...
Implementing a declarative mini-language in the C preprocessor
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time,...
4th Jul 2010
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time, I want to talk about the tricks I used to implement a declarative minilanguage using the C preprocessor (and some GCC extensions).
The Problem We want to write some toplevel...
Neil Madden
Macaroon access tokens for OAuth: Part 2 – transactional auth
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a...
9th Sep 2020
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a lightweight and easy-to-deploy alternative to proof of possession (PoP) schemes for securing tokens in browser-based apps. The same techniques can be adapted to secure tokens in...
Jonas Hietala
Vacation
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and...
14th Aug 2014
Finally back from a 2 week vacation up at Övertorneå. It’s been pretty great to be taken care of and not doing anything. Well, I did get my ass kicked in Terra Mystica and I played a bit of Minecraft, but still. We got some nice food and my in-laws and my parents were nice.
I’m...
Arduino Blog
Making a photo enlarger more efficient with precisely controlled LEDs
In photography, an enlarger is a piece of equipment that projects a smaller image onto a...
2nd Mar 2025
In photography, an enlarger is a piece of equipment that projects a smaller image onto a photosensitive material below using a strong light source and a negative to produce a much larger print. And while these have historically relied on single-color incandescent bulbs, such as...
Greater Still by...
Enjoying the Journey
Reflections on training for a marathon and a lesson from my late Uncle Murray
1st Jan 2024
Reflections on training for a marathon and a lesson from my late Uncle Murray
Louwrentius - Solar
Fully unattended deployment of Windows clients using limited resources
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution...
7th Jul 2012
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution that automate this task. It's just waiting a lot and pressing a button now and then. But installing the operating system itself is only the beginning. Once installed, you need to...
Fabien Sanglard
dEngine Source Code Released
More...
28th Apr 2011
Construction Physics
How Long Does It Take to Plan a Bridge?
Many folks, including me, have observed that it seems to take much longer to build infrastructure in...
4th Jun 2026
Many folks, including me, have observed that it seems to take much longer to build infrastructure in the US than it used to.
Evan Hahn (dot com)
"Sixteenth of a year", a 1.8 KiB art piece
As I write this, we’re about 7 sixteenths through 2026, and it’s about 14 sixteenths through the...
3rd Jun 2026
As I write this, we’re about 7 sixteenths through 2026, and it’s about 14 sixteenths through the day.
For the sixteenth issue of the Taper online magazine, I split time into sixteenths to think about its passage in a different way.
The code, which had to be under 2048 bytes,...
Applied Cartography
The Song of Achilles
I think I was spoiled by having read Circe first, which seemed like an utter improvement on its...
1st Jul 2020
I think I was spoiled by having read Circe first, which seemed like an utter improvement on its predecessor. This book was good, and gave a depth and heft to the Iliad that pleased me — with Patroclus and Achilles' relationship being the apex — but the second act of the book...
Jonas Hietala
Domains, certificates, and DNS
Accessing services via raw IP addresses isn’t that swell; I’m no Rain Man.
It’s time to set up...
6th Aug 2026
Accessing services via raw IP addresses isn’t that swell; I’m no Rain Man.
It’s time to set up subdomains for my hietala.xyz domain for internal use.
We’ll use the Gateway API to set up routes, cert-manager to give us https without self-signed browser warnings, and ExternalDNS to...
Fabien Sanglard
These are called opportunities
12th Nov 2020
Simply Explained
ESP32 Cam: cropping images on device
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640...
23rd Feb 2021
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640 sensor has a max resolution of 1600x1200, but sometimes you don't need the entire image.In this post I'll show how to crop the images on the ESP32 itself, before sending it of to...
Elevation Lab - Blog
Jet Black - New Experimental finish
::Update:: - The manufacturing fallout from making these fingerprint-loving docks was too high, even...
6th Oct 2016
::Update:: - The manufacturing fallout from making these fingerprint-loving docks was too high, even after a dozen process revisions, so we're not continuing making these after our second run. Recommend going with the Matte Black finish, it's super beautiful with all color...
Simply Explained
Why I don't take sponsorships
Last year I made that video in response to a sponsorship offer that I got from various VPN...
20th May 2020
Last year I made that video in response to a sponsorship offer that I got from various VPN providers. They all told me the same thing: our service is the best way to protect your privacy, and we were hoping you could convey this message in one of your videos.So I decided to do...
Project Blog on...
Train Simulator Controller: Stepper Speedometer Begins
For quite a few years now, I have been an avid Train Simulator player, operating virtual trains from...
27th Jan 2023
For quite a few years now, I have been an avid Train Simulator player, operating virtual trains from the United States, the UK, and beyond. I’ve played Dovetail Games’ Train Simulator 2015 to 2022 and now “Train Simulator Classic”, FIFA-style annual upgrades that have...
Willem's Blog
Is the Apple Watch the modern tool watch?
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet...
1st Nov 2018
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet data centre.
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...
1st Oct 2015
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.
Notes on software...
AOT-compilation of Javascript with V8
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed...
26th Feb 2019
tldr; I'm working on a AOT-compiled Javascript implementation called
jsc.
Many dynamically typed programming languages have implementations that
compile to native binaries:
Python: Cython
Common Lisp: SBCL
Scheme: Chicken Scheme
The benefits of compiling dynamically typed...
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
10th Jan 2017
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Posts on Made of...
Property-Based Testing Is Fuzzing
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code...
3rd Oct 2017
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code (“properties”), and then using automated tooling to generate test inputs (typically, randomly-generated inputs of an appropriate type), and observe whether the properties hold for...
The Pragmatic...
The Pulse: a new trend, smart model routing
Are there any ‘intelligent’ router solutions out there which select the right model for the right...
2nd Jul 2026
Are there any ‘intelligent’ router solutions out there which select the right model for the right task? I looked into it, and there are a few options.
Applied Cartography
Content debt
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis,...
4th Jul 2024
There’s a nascent trend of releasing ostensibly-private material (changelogs, public wikis, handbooks, etc.) to the public as a bit of a marketing push. This is essentially a form of debt, to the extent that you’re taking a lump-sum payment now in exchange for the implicit cost...
./techtipsy
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G: first impressions on Fedora 34
Introduction
I’ve covered my self-hosting setup in a previous post. It has been a couple of
months...
7th Aug 2021
Introduction
I’ve covered my self-hosting setup in a previous post. It has been a couple of
months and the setup has mostly been fine. Sure, the power usage was pretty big under load, and yes, my internet did cut
out every time I turned the VM on with all the services starting,...
Simply Explained
I Built a CO2 Sensor and It Terrifies Me
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is...
3rd Oct 2021
Governments are pushing CO2 sensors to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, but proper ventilation is equally important for our health and even our cognitive performance.In this blog post we'll look at a DIY CO2 sensor: how it runs ESPHome, how it integrates with Home Assistant, how it...
Willem's Blog
Fietselfstedentocht 2017
Cycling the 235KM long Fietselfstedentocht through Friesland
29th Jun 2017
Cycling the 235KM long Fietselfstedentocht through Friesland
Greater Still by...
Integrate
Are we building apps or infrastructure? ...Yes
25th Apr 2024
Are we building apps or infrastructure? ...Yes
detreville
I invent a new kind of magnet, sort of...
It's SO new, it has ZERO external magnetic field!
29th Aug 2025
It's SO new, it has ZERO external magnetic field!
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
1st Nov 2024
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
Tiny struggles
Creating a Robotics Experimentation Environment: My Experience and Practical Lessons
Part 1 of a series on practical robotics experimentation
As part of my journey into robotics, I...
13th Aug 2025
Part 1 of a series on practical robotics experimentation
As part of my journey into robotics, I found myself facing a classic problem: I wanted to experiment with different learning approaches for robotic manipulation, but I needed a flexible playground where I could quickly test...
Krebs on Security
How AI Assistants are Moving the Security Goalposts
AI-based assistants or “agents” — autonomous programs that have access to the user’s computer,...
8th Mar 2026
AI-based assistants or “agents” — autonomous programs that have access to the user’s computer, files, online services and can automate virtually any task — are growing in popularity with developers and IT workers. But as so many eyebrow-raising headlines over the past few weeks...
heavymeta.org
CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike...
28th Jul 2024
Just after midnight Eastern Time on July 19, 2024, the enterprise cybersecurity
company CrowdStrike YOLOed a software update to millions of Windows machines. Or
as they put it:
On July 19, 2024 at 04:09 UTC, as part of ongoing operations, CrowdStrike
released a sensor...
Notes on software...
Compiling dynamic programming languages
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied...
2nd Sep 2018
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied to byte-code interpreters (e.g. YARV
Ruby, CPython, V8, Zend Engine, etc.). But for many languages, a
compiled implementation also exists. Cython, Chicken Scheme and SBCL
are good...
Computer Ads from...
Dipco's Easy Reader
"Sight for Sore Eyes"
1st Nov 2024
benn.substack
So that's what alignment means
Another thought experiment comes roaring to life.
14th Aug 2026
Another thought experiment comes roaring to life.
watchTowr Labs
Visionaries Have Democratised Remote Network Access - Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops...
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive...
12th Nov 2024
Well, we’re back again, with yet another fresh-off-the-press bug chain (and associated Interactive Artifact Generator). This time, it’s in Citrix’s “Virtual Apps and Desktops” offering.
This is a tech stack that enables end-users (and likely, your friendly neighbourhood...
Computer Ads from...
NeXTWorld Interviews Bud Tribble (1994)
They discuss NeXT's OpenStep, open standards, and more.
1st Feb 2026
They discuss NeXT's OpenStep, open standards, and more.
Jonas Hietala
Slackware update
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my...
2nd Aug 2015
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my installation and I decided to go through with a larger reinstallation once more. This is a log of some things I did differently.
Kernel
Before installing the kernel it’s nice to...
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