Home on Erik...
Luigi: complex pipelines of tasks in Python
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps...
over a year ago
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs, handle dependency resolution, and create visualizations to help manage multiple workflows. It also comes with Hadoop support built in...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop...
over a year ago
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.
About Ludum Dare
Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme....
Opsbros
WetSocks Revival
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do...
over a year ago
How to get a broken METAR/TAF Toolbar application working again; the fun way! Seeing what we can do to get WetSocks Windows 98 tray weather app working again.
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...
over a year ago
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...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
5 months ago
Jonas Hietala
FTL got a new victim
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone...
over a year ago
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone you’d expect, it’s even someone who said: “What a bad game” when she saw me playing it. But nevertheless this Saturday she played it more than 2.5 hours!
I told Veronica I wanted...
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
over a year ago
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
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...
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...
computers are bad
2024-02-25 a history of the tty
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator...
10 months ago
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there
must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal...
Willem's Blog
Riding with Omata One
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely...
over a year ago
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely special: it indicates your speed, distance, ascent and time ridden using mechanical hands!
Home on Erik...
More Luigi: Presentation from OSCON
I was in Portland, OR for a few days hanging out at OSCON. Was fun. I also talked a bit about...
over a year ago
I was in Portland, OR for a few days hanging out at OSCON. Was fun. I also talked a bit about Luigi:
Next week I'm presenting at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup together with Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
Louwrentius
Cannot access Windows guest within VMware Fusion when running vsphere client
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere...
over a year ago
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere client, which is only available for the Windows platform. Therefore, I run VMware Fusion on my Mac to be able to access VSphere and manage my ESXi host.
The trouble is that both ESXi...
./techtipsy
I tried out the CyberPower UT650EG UPS
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out...
over a year ago
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out one UPS that was recommended on the basis of it being much
more power efficient compared to the APC UPS that I previously ran.
That UPS? CyberPower UT650EG.
Why switch out a...
Notes on software...
A database without dynamic memory allocation
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Willem's Blog
Monolithic vs Microservices software architecture
This week I flew to Gothenburg to talk about enterprise software architecture, read along to learn...
over a year ago
This week I flew to Gothenburg to talk about enterprise software architecture, read along to learn about choosing the right architecture for your app development
Computer Ads from...
American Heart Association
A PSA and an Ad
a month ago
Louwrentius
Secure caching DNS server on Linux with DJBDNS
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon"....
over a year ago
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon". However, this software has a bad security track record and is in
my opinion a pain to configure.
Mr. D.J. Bernstein developed "djbdns", which comes with a guarantee: if anyone
finds a...
Lars Lofgren
What Happened After I Outed a Reddit Mod for Affiliate Spam
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate...
3 months ago
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry. The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention. Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become....
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...
computers are bad
2024-04-26 microsoft at work
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't
pay me enough to...
8 months ago
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't
pay me enough to apologize, but I do feel a little bad. Part of it is just that
I've been busy, with work and travel and events. Part of it is that I've
embarked on a couple of writing projects only to...
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...
latest projects -...
Motorised Camera Slider
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
5 months ago
[Hardware] Simple smooth motor mod
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
Jonas Hietala
Mailto: links with FastMail in Firefox
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications....
over a year ago
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications. The problem is that you can’t input custom urls and some email providers, like hotmail or fastmail, aren’t supported. I managed to fix it with the plugin MailtoWebmails. It annoys me...
Engineers Need Art
Stereographer
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
4 months ago
Experimenting in stereo photography and I write an app to create old-fashioned stereoscopic cards.
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Rockwell AIM 65
The Company Rockwell International has been around for quite a while. Willard Rockwell started the...
7 months ago
The Company Rockwell International has been around for quite a while. Willard Rockwell started the company in 1919 to sell a newly designed truck axle bearing. Over the years, Rockwell acquired businesses in many different fields, including defense, industrial electronics,...
Home on Erik...
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives....
over a year ago
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I've suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I'm stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Louwrentius
How to run Debian Linux on an Intel based Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy...
over a year ago
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy efficient. When idle, it uses around 20 watts. I'm using
one of the first Intel-based Minis with an Intel Core Duo chip, running at 1.6
Ghz.
I want to use this mini as an expensive router...
Jonas Hietala
We moved away from the city
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never...
over a year ago
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never to stay there permanently. We just moved there to study but the longterm plan, if you can have one at that stage, was always to move back to the north of Sweden where we came...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Programming
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many...
over a year ago
These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many things I’d like to do and even if it’s not possible to do them all at once it didn’t stop me from thinking of them. One minute it’s that and the other it’s something completely...
Willem's Blog
Understanding the security concerns in shared hosting
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use...
over a year ago
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use security holes to hack your app, webshop or website!
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...
Computer Ads from...
Bible Research Systems' THE WORD Processor
For Those Who Seek.
5 months ago
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...
Jonas Hietala
2013 Read Books
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet...
over a year ago
I actually read more books in 2013 than in 2012.
In a somewhat unorganized list:
Fiction
Livet Deluxe - Jens Lapidius
Escape from camp 14 - Blaine Harden
Wonderful. A great book.
Edge - Jeffery Deaver
Dollar - Lee Child
Gisslan - Lee Child
Bränd - Lee Child
Besökaren - Lee...
Louwrentius
An ode to the 10,000 RPM Western Digital (Veloci)Raptor
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at...
over a year ago
Introduction
Back in 2004, I visited a now bankrupt Dutch computer store called MyCom1, located at the Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. I was there to buy a Western Digital Raptor model WD740, with 74 GB of capacity, running at 10,000 RPM.
When I bought this drive, we were still in...
lcamtuf’s thing
How do wood finishes hold up?
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
3 months ago
A quick 18-month experiment to shed light on traditional woodworking lore.
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 2s as cultural extensions of Ethereum
6 months ago
Matt Blewitt
Leadership Power Tools: SQL and Statistics
A common pattern I’ve seen over the years have been folks in engineering leadership positions that...
2 weeks ago
A common pattern I’ve seen over the years have been folks in engineering leadership positions that are not super comfortable with extracting and interpreting data from stores, be it databases, CSV files in an object store, or even just a spreadsheet. We’re going to cover SQL &...
Jonas Hietala
2010 in review
I saw a post on briancarper where he reviews the past year and it sounds like a great idea...
over a year ago
I saw a post on briancarper where he reviews the past year and it sounds like a great idea actually.
2010 Geek Achievements
Wrote a few games earlier this year;
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
A Geek Valentine
Beebop The Island Hopper
Where’s Teddy?
Updated this site a...
./techtipsy
Things I've learned during my self-hosting adventure
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the...
over a year ago
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the last 6-7 years or so.
USB connected storage is a bad idea when you are using BTRFS.
USB connected storage is still a bad idea when you are using ZFS, but it is at least much more...
Willem's Blog
Scalable application design without magic
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I...
over a year ago
I needed to design a scalable backend infrastructure that could handle lots of concurrent users. I did this by leveraging the client's computing power having it handle most of the user interaction workload.
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Filters
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous...
a year ago
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous post: filtering dangerous particles and fumes.
This is mostly covered by the kit, but I was missing some parts from the print it forward and the kit didn’t include a HEPA...
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine.
You ever end up doing something like this?
Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it.
Snapshots provide us...
Willem's Blog
Listen to your body
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have...
over a year ago
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have stopped using bluetooth sensors all together.
./techtipsy
Testing a cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD adapter on my ThinkPad T430
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2...
over a year ago
I stumbled upon this post in /r/thinkpad,
which got my attention. It showcases an ExpressCard to M.2 NGFF adapter that
they purchased from AliExpress. The adapter has a similar purpose to the one
designed by thinkmods.store, with the added bonus
that it could fit longer NVMe...
Home on Erik...
What is the right level of specialization? For data teams and anyone else.
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this...
over a year ago
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this specialization of data teams into 99 different roles (data scientist, data engineer, analytics engineer, ML engineer etc) is generally a bad thing driven by the fact that tools are...
Jonas Hietala
The first (worst) post
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog...
over a year ago
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog will be about and maybe, if I’m dedicated, it won’t die before Christmas you think.
And sure, you’re right. I will run away to the corner in about two and a half months crying I never...
Louwrentius
Convert dos file to linux format wit vim
If you have some file that has been saved on a (Win)do(w)s host you may notice
that all lines end...
over a year ago
If you have some file that has been saved on a (Win)do(w)s host you may notice
that all lines end with ^M.
To fix this, you can use the tool dos2unix. If however this tool is not at
your disposal, you may have a problem. If vim is available, you do not have a
problem:
The trick...
Louwrentius
Google DNS - what to think of it?
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get...
over a year ago
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get information about users.
However, their privacy statement tells us that no personal identifiable
information is stored for longer than 48 hours. The permanent logs do not
contain such...
Ian's Blog
Hardware-Protected Apple Distribution Certificates Using a YubiKey
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning...
a year ago
iOS and macOS developers will be familiar with the dreaded distribution certificate, a codesigning certificate issued to you by Apple for signing your release artifacts before you distribute them.
Protecting that signing key is important, as Apple must blindly trust any binaries...
Jonas Hietala
The End of the Tunnel
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from...
over a year ago
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from the last time.
One course about data structure and algorithms (super fun to be honest) has wrapped up. We thought we were ahead with the assignments but in the end it got very...
Neil Madden
A few clarifications about CVE-2022-21449
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating...
over a year ago
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating around on Reddit/Twitter etc: The bug only impacts Java 15 and above. The original advisory from Oracle incorrectly listed earlier versions (like 7, 8 and 11) as being impacted....
Louwrentius
Linux: get a list of al disks and their size
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk...
over a year ago
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk /dev/md1: 2015 MB
Disk /dev/md5: 18002.2 GB
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sde: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.1...
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...
Home on Erik...
Are data sets the new server rooms?
This blog post Data sets are the new server rooms makes the point that a bunch of companies raise a...
over a year ago
This blog post Data sets are the new server rooms makes the point that a bunch of companies raise a ton of money to go get really proprietary awesome data as a competitive moat. Because once you have the data, you can build a better product, and no one can copy it (at least not...
Home on Erik...
Developer experience as a competitive advantage
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd...
over a year ago
I spent a ton of time looking at different software providers, both as a CTO, and as a nerd “advanced” consumer who builds stuff in my spare time. In the last 10 years, there has been an order of magnitude more products that cater directly to developers, through APIs, SDKs, and...
Home on Erik...
Where do locals go in NYC?
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious...
over a year ago
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious about the larger patterns around this, so I spent some time looking at data. The thing I wanted to understand is: what areas are dominated by tourists?
Applied Cartography
Peak Newsletter
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to...
5 months ago
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to admit this (I don't want more competition lol) but I think we're still probably a year or two away from Peak Newsletter. It's just a really good distribution mechanism for certain...
Azad's Blog
Apple Vision Pro—A Revolution for Home Video Formats
Apple has always been at the forefront of home video with Apple TV (the device), iTunes Movies,...
3 months ago
Apple has always been at the forefront of home video with Apple TV (the device), iTunes Movies, Spatial Audio, and the vivid displays of iPhones, iPads, and Mac displays. With Apple Vision Pro, Apple is once again pushing the boundaries of the movie watching experience by...
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...
Arduino Blog
This device prevents garage door security breaches
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house....
2 months ago
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely...
Louwrentius
'Linux: monitor a directory for files'
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The...
over a year ago
Inotify is a mechanism in the Linux kernel that reports when a file system
event occurs.
The inotifywait comand line utility can be used in shell scripts to monitor
directories for new files. It can also be used to monitor files for changes.
Inotifywait must be installed and is...
Applied Cartography
Hidden settings are for cowards
At Stripe, we had two abstractions for branching logic in production: flags, which were meant to be...
2 weeks ago
At Stripe, we had two abstractions for branching logic in production: flags, which were meant to be explicitly temporal (temporarily split-testing traffic; rolling out a new feature or code path; exposing a specific path for a cohort of users during a closed beta) and gates,...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: A Geek Valentine
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little...
over a year ago
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little programming urge again… This time it’s not Haskell or a new experimental game that’s luring me on, no this time it’s me longing to create this fantastic awesome epic RTS game. Sadly it’s a...
Computer Ads from...
Electronic Protection Devices' Electro-Clamp line
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
9 months ago
The Underrated Virtues of Plain Vanilla
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...
Home on Erik...
Microsoft's new marketing strategy: give up
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to...
over a year ago
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to appeal to that target audience. Their new marketing strategy finally admits what's been long known: the correlation between “business casual” and using Microsoft products:
Birchtree
I’m Knee-Deep in Turkey
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her...
2 weeks ago
Another week, another fantastically fun episode of Comfort Zone! This week Niléane talked about her new Flight Simulator obsession, we go on a tangent about PC gaming, Chris (who says he’s an iPad guy) brings another Mac to talk about, and I had the gang look
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...
Arduino Blog
BrainPatch.AI: How a British neurotech startup built a working prototype fast, using Arduino Nano 33...
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and...
3 months ago
The field of neurotechnology has been advancing rapidly in recent years, opening up to safe and effective non-invasive interfaces that can deliver tiny milliamp currents to the right stimulation location on the head, neck or body. One example of the new players in this field is...
csvbase blog
Take the tools out of 'Data', but don't take the data out of the tools
Using dataframes to write smaller, faster programs
a year ago
Using dataframes to write smaller, faster programs
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. an x86 upgrade
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
This post upgrades the ulisp x86 backend from using a limited set of
registers (with no spilling...
Jonas Hietala
Slackware update
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my...
over a year ago
The last time I (re)installed Slackware I documented what I did. Somehow I managed to really bork my installation and I decided to go through with a larger reinstallation once more. This is a log of some things I did differently.
Kernel
Before installing the kernel it’s nice to...
Neil Madden
Book review: The Joy of Cryptography
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography....
a year ago
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography. This is a freely-available book covering introductory material on cryptography. It’s suitable for anyone with undergraduate-level computer science knowledge. As is often the case in...
Ian's Blog
The Zune "HD"
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name,...
over a year ago
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name, released by Microsoft in October of 2009. A direct competitor to Apple's wildly successful iPod Touch, the Zune HD was the first Zune to feature a multi-touch display, full web...
Style over Substance
Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post...
over a year ago
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod appeared first on Style over Substance.
Louwrentius
Is there an easy and secure way to transfer files?
Many organisations just assume that the local physical network is trusted. That their network...
over a year ago
Many organisations just assume that the local physical network is trusted. That their network equipment is physically secure and that it is impossible for an attacker to get on the wire and start eavesdropping on network traffic.
Many organisations do not seem too concerned about...
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Christian Selig
More Efficient/Faster Average Color of Image
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of...
over a year ago
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of why you might want this!
Finding the average color of an image is a nice trick to have in your toolbelt for spicing up views. For instance on iOS, it’s used by Apple to make their...
Posts on Made of...
Wordpress tricks: Disabling editing shortcuts
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t...
over a year ago
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t edit text in anything that doesn’t have decent emacs keybindings.
Fortunately, on Linux, at least, GTK provides basic emacs keybindings if you add
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs" to...
./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...
Willem's Blog
Six months with MCADD
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of...
over a year ago
It's six months since our son was born with MCADD, a good moment to reflect upon the experience of being a parent with some thoughts and tips.
Jonas Hietala
An intriguing new puzzle
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix...
over a year ago
Here’s another game made for the experimental gameplay project:
Slidoku which is a sort of mix between Rubik’s cube and sudoku. I enjoy puzzles like those and I really enjoyed this one too - it took me a while to beat it but I just love the feeling when you do. If you like...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
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.
Arduino Blog
This fake CRT TV works using lasers and UV magic
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media...
3 weeks ago
Until the 21st century, cathode-ray tube (CRT) TVs were pretty much the only option. As such, media was made to suit them. Retro video game consoles in particular look best on CRT TVs. But those old TVs are getting hard to find and desirable models are now quite expensive. So,...
Home on Erik...
Luigi talk tomorrow
At NYC Data Science meetup! Unfortunately the space is full but the talk will be livestreamed –...
over a year ago
At NYC Data Science meetup! Unfortunately the space is full but the talk will be livestreamed – check out the meetup web page for a link tomorrow.
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
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,...
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
Jonas Hietala
A Vacation Filled with Obsession
A nice thing about school are the nice long vacations. Directly after my last exam we went north to...
over a year ago
A nice thing about school are the nice long vacations. Directly after my last exam we went north to our dear home village Övertorneå and spent two weeks celebrating Christmas and New Years Eve. What did we do? I practiced some obsessive behavior with Power Grid and Minecraft (and...
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...
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...
Arduino Blog
Clone your IoT projects with Arduino Cloud Custom Templates
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the...
4 months ago
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the thrill of bringing a new IoT project to life. But we also understand the frustration of repetitive setup processes and the time sink of configuring the same elements over and over...
Notes on software...
A single-node Kubernetes cluster without virtualization or a container registry
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring...
over a year ago
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring virtualization or a container registry. These
two features make the system cloud-agnostic and the cluster entirely
self-contained. The post will end with us running a simple Flask...
computers are bad
2024-07-31 just disconnect the internet
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of...
4 months ago
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of their Windows install base with a poorly tested content
update. Rough day at the office, huh? There are lots of things you could say
about this, lots of reasons it happens this way,...
Good Enough
Issue 0: Collector's Item
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s...
over a year ago
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s item in your hands: the very first Good Enough Newsletter. This is the beginning of what we (Barry Hess & Shawn Liu) hope to be a years-long series of communiqués with our rabid...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 1: The Loneliest Number
1. Confirmed Positive
After two years of running from reality, it has finally happened for my...
over a year ago
1. Confirmed Positive
After two years of running from reality, it has finally happened for my family. I have tested positive for SARS Coronavirus-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. For this honor, I would like to thank our society’s collective tiring of virus mitigation. It truly...
Notes on software...
What makes a great technical blog
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely...
8 months ago
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely about non-corporate tech blogs. So this post is
too. I'll have to make another list for favorite corporate tech blogs.
In short, they:
Tackle hard and confusing topics
Show working...
Louwrentius
LFS - Linux Firewall Script released
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux...
over a year ago
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux Firewall Script.
I run a small Linux box as an internet router that doubles as a firewall. The
firewall is configured using iptables. In my opinion, iptables is not the
easiest tool to...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Lobo MAX-80
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
9 months ago
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
Arduino Blog
This unique wall sconce welcomes you home with warm light
Have you ever walked through your front door after a long day of work and realized that your home...
a week ago
Have you ever walked through your front door after a long day of work and realized that your home just isn’t as inviting as it seems like it should be? While it may not work miracles, some nice and welcoming lighting can make a big difference. That’s why Lauren Palazzi made this...
Notes on software...
How to get better at recursion
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For...
over a year ago
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For a few years after college I spent a lot of free time doing
projects in Standard ML and Scheme. As a result I got really
comfortable doing recursion. The two big reasons for this...
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...
Push to Prod
When Overwhelmed, Make a List of Questions
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
4 months ago
In my first big project at Netflix, I learned this disturbingly simple problem-solving technique.
Jonas Hietala
fish_update_completions in Slackware 14.1
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically...
over a year ago
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically generate completions by parsing the installed man pages by running fish_update_completions.
Unfortunately this is what I got:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Gasprice Market Analysis
over a year ago
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...
over a year ago
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...
./techtipsy
Tech tip: eliminate HDD humming noise
Anyone that has bought themselves external WD drives from the Elements/My Book/Easystore series are...
over a year ago
Anyone that has bought themselves external WD drives from the Elements/My Book/Easystore series are probably familiar
with the acoustic characteristics of the drives. The drives have a loud hum caused
by WD running the drives at 7200rpm while claiming the drives to be...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Encapsulated vs systemic complexity in protocol design
over a year ago
Louwrentius
RAID array size and rebuild speed
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and...
over a year ago
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and thus data loss. During this rebuild time, you are
vulnerable. The longer it takes to rebuild your array, the longer you are
vulnerable. Especially during a disk-intensive period,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
Matt Mullenweg
Michael Palmisano on Collier
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on...
a month ago
I’ve been obsessed with Jacob Collier since I first saw his Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing cover on YouTube, and one of my favorite genres of videos is genius musicians breaking down the incredible musical stuff Jacob is doing. (He even has his own instrument now.) This reaction...
Willem's Blog
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive...
over a year ago
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive iPhone.
Computer Ads from...
Apple IIe and IIc Design Manager Peter Quinn Interviewed by BYTE's Gregg Williams
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of the Apple IIe and IIc.
9 months ago
A behind-the-scenes look at the development of the Apple IIe and IIc.
Willem's Blog
From tree to table
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
over a year ago
Creating a night stand from a raw slab of chestnut wood.
Posts on Made of...
Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had...
over a year ago
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had worked, using a trigram index.
By that point, I’d already implemented early versions of my own livegrep source-code search engine, using a different indexing approach that I...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Widening the horizon
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in...
over a year ago
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in making games lately and I’ve been doing different things, just to get my ideas and my motivation up. As I said in an earlier post I wanted a break from Experimental Games and I...
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
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.
Notes on software...
Finding memory leaks in Postgres C code
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
9 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Home on Erik...
3D in D3
I have spent some time lately with D3. It's a lot of fun to build interactive graphs. See for...
over a year ago
I have spent some time lately with D3. It's a lot of fun to build interactive graphs. See for instance this demo (will provide a longer writeup soon).
D3 doesn't have support for 3D but you can do projections into 2D pretty easily.
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Summer Tournament Linköping
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs...
over a year ago
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs with Old Hollywood and The Universe of Tomorrow so a lot of new things were tried. I heard a rumor that a full playset of both Aesop’s Pawnshop and Wyldside were available so I...
Computer Ads from...
Salamander Software's Franklin's Tomb
My name is Diamond, Dan Diamond. I'm a private cop.
9 months ago
My name is Diamond, Dan Diamond. I'm a private cop.
Jonas Hietala
Hearthstone on Wine
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play...
over a year ago
I like Hearthstone and recently the next expansion Goblins vs Gnomes so I wanted to install and play it. It didn’t work in vanilla wine, with a “time out error”, but I found a bug report which makes it work. Here’s a short summary:
Get wine source from git. My version was...
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
Home on Erik...
Modeling conversion rates using Weibull and gamma distributions
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this...
over a year ago
This is a blog post originally featured on the Better engineering blog. If you want to link to this article or share it, please go to the original post URL! Separately, I'm sorry it's been so long with no posts on this blog.
Birchtree
Squashing links on social media
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are...
2 weeks ago
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly
Avestura's Blog
Creating a Git commit: The Hard Way
Let's create a Git commit using Git's low-level (plumbing) commands
3 months ago
Let's create a Git commit using Git's low-level (plumbing) commands
watchTowr Labs -...
Auth. Bypass In (Un)Limited Scenarios - Progress MOVEit Transfer (CVE-2024-5806)
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!-...
5 months ago
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne [def_not_phalanx@kernel.org] has joined #!hack (irc.efnet.nl)
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne changed the topic of #!hack to: mag1c sh0w
Vitalik Buterin's...
Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized...
4 months ago
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab...
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...
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
Willem's Blog
Computer says no
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the...
over a year ago
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the power we put into these things.
./techtipsy
Tech rants: PC-s use way too much power in 2021
Welcome to 2021. We have:
supply chain issues
no reasonably priced GPU-s
consumer-grade CPU-s with...
over a year ago
Welcome to 2021. We have:
supply chain issues
no reasonably priced GPU-s
consumer-grade CPU-s with peak power consumption at 296W
GPU-s that consume 350-400W of power under normal use
At the same time, we have made great leaps in CPU/GPU architectures and chip manufacturing...
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
Louwrentius
Migrated this blog from blogger.com to blogofile
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to...
over a year ago
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to have more control over my content and the layout.
I had many issues with the blogger blog post editor, resulting in ugly posts with too much white space, strange fonts and fonts...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering a three-axis attitude indicator from the F-4 fighter plane
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a...
2 months ago
We recently received an attitude indicator for the F-4 fighter plane, an instrument that
uses a rotating ball to show the aircraft's orientation and direction.
In a normal aircraft, the artificial horizon shows the orientation in two axes (pitch and roll), but the F-4...
Louwrentius
Finding a good blu-ray player for Mac OS X
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these...
over a year ago
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these free open-source products are all a usability nightmare.
To play a Blu-ray movie, you have to perform these steps:
right-click on the BDMV file
choose 'show packet contents'
go to...
Notes on software...
Transparency and communication on small teams
I saw a post on
dev.to
that talks about dysfunctional teams. This is a response that...
over a year ago
I saw a post on
dev.to
that talks about dysfunctional teams. This is a response that focuses
specifically on how to prevent burnout from overworking. This is aimed
at senior/lead engineers and engineering/project managers -- because
everyone in a leadership role is responsible...
Home on Erik...
Model benchmarks
A lot of people have asked me what models we use for recommendations at Spotify so I wanted to share...
over a year ago
A lot of people have asked me what models we use for recommendations at Spotify so I wanted to share some insights. Here's benchmarks for some models. Note that we don't use all of them in production.
Applied Cartography
Order, Tailwind, DRY
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating...
4 days ago
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating some higher-traffic, higher-leverage parts of Buttondown's admin UI away from the autogenerated Django admin and into some more bespoke components.
Take, for instance, this rather...
Jonas Hietala
An Elixir based payment processor for the Coinparty hackathon
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good...
over a year ago
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore how to program against Bitcoin Cash, and it gives me an excuse to build something real with Phoenix and Elixir. (While an event like this might help combat...
Louwrentius
'A Moment Of Silence: OpenSolaris Is Dead'
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March...
over a year ago
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March 2010, but Oracle did not release anything. It is dead
silent around OpenSolaris.
On 12 July 2010, the OpenSolaris Government Board sent out an ultimatum
to Oracle: "please...
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...
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...
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...
Lars Lofgren
The Stupidity of Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of...
a month ago
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of pages in Google. The SEO community refers to this type of thing as parasite SEO. Google has gone so far as to publish an official policy (documented here) on how this isn’t allowed:...
Willem's Blog
Inspiration from a child
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
over a year ago
Explore the world together with your kids and reap the rewards of adventure and fun!
computers are bad
2024-10-26 buy payphones and retire
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress...
a month ago
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally
legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income
mostly for their promoters, can feel like a...
Willem's Blog
Whoop strap review: 24/7 wearable sensor
over a year ago
Christian Selig
Announcing Apollo: a new Reddit app for iPhone
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called...
over a year ago
I’m really excited to unveil a project I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It’s called Apollo and it’s a new Reddit app for iPhone.
I’ve been a Reddit user for about four years now, and the site is a constant source of interesting discussion, hilarity and news for me...
Notes on software...
Implementing the Raft distributed consensus protocol in Go
As part of bringing myself up-to-speed after joining TigerBeetle, I
wanted some background on how...
a year ago
As part of bringing myself up-to-speed after joining TigerBeetle, I
wanted some background on how distributed consensus and replicated state
machines protocols work. TigerBeetle uses Viewstamped
Replication. But I
wanted to understand all popular protocols and I decided to start...
Engineers Need Art
Adam74
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
over a year ago
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
Old Vintage...
Thou shalt follow these Vintage Computing Commandments
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote...
10 months ago
Thou shalt check voltage and polarity on new-to-thee power supplies, or thy machines shall be smote and release smoke. This is sometimes very hard to judge without a load, but they should be somewhere in the ballpark, verily, and you should get in the habit of checking any new...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wiring
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that...
a year ago
Dread it. Run from it. Wiring arrives all the same.
It’s time for the part of my VORON build that I’ve been dreading: the wiring.
It’s scary because I really have no clue what I’m doing, and mistakes can be very costly and time-consuming.
I’ve taken my time to double- and...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
2 months ago
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Posts on Made of...
Three kinds of memory leaks
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can...
over a year ago
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can immediately identify this as a likely symptom of a memory leak.
But when we say “memory leak”, what do we actually mean? In my experience, apparent memory leaks divide into three broad...
Christian Selig
The Case for Getting Rid of TestFlight Review
I tweeted today about how I think TestFlight review should become a thing of the past and many...
over a year ago
I tweeted today about how I think TestFlight review should become a thing of the past and many developers seemed to agree, but some had questions so I wanted to expand on my thoughts a little.
TestFlight’s awesome. But like App Store submissions, TestFlight betas also require a...
Jonas Hietala
Going into Being Busy mode
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or...
over a year ago
I’m in the civil service atm and, sadly, we’re going to be extremely busy the coming… two months or something? So I can’t promise a game the next two months. Kinda beats the point of this site doesn’t it? I’m really sorry and that’s all I can say really…
Hopefully I’ll get a week...
Louwrentius
An affordable server platform based on server-grade hardware
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true...
over a year ago
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true server-grade harware when building a server, wether it's for home or business use.
This is why I want to introduce you to the Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard.
This motherboard costs...
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part II: Thank Goodness It's FRI-day
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Posts on Made of...
Using Haskell's 'newtype' in C
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple...
over a year ago
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple types of data that share the same representation. Classic examples include differentiating between measurements stored in different units, distinguishing between a string of HTML...
Willem's Blog
Refining my tablet OS experience
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
over a year ago
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
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.
Good Enough
Cool Songs Don’t Die
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing...
a year ago
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of Alias. Yes, that Alias – the one that began airing 22 years ago and ran for 5 seasons and was a pretty big hit and launched the careers of two bonafide movie stars and featured a cast of very well known supporting actors. So yeah,...
Home on Erik...
Approximate nearest news
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm...
over a year ago
As you may know, one of my (very geeky) interests is Approximate nearest neigbor methods, and I'm the author of a Python package called Annoy.
I've also built a benchmark suite called ann-benchmarks to compare different packages.
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
Migrating to rocks.nvim
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At...
6 months ago
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At times I’m deeply in love and spend all my time caressing the config—like how in September I did a complete rewrite in Lua—while other times I’m busy with other love interests and...
./techtipsy
The minimum viable fan control script
I’ve always been a fan of tinkering with cooling setups on my computers.
I’ve even went as far as...
over a year ago
I’ve always been a fan of tinkering with cooling setups on my computers.
I’ve even went as far as writing crappy
solutions to make up for
deficiencies on the hardware level. After years of dumb experiments I’ve seen
how little you can get away with in cooling and how to run your...
./techtipsy
OpenWRT, ISP modem and dynamic IP addresses: how to fix connectivity issues without rebooting your...
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem...
7 months ago
My current ISP provides an internet connection over a
copper wire. To use it,
I have a crappy modem (Technicolor CGA2121, DOCSIS 3.0). It’s running in bridge
mode,
meaning that all it does is convert the signal running over the coax cable
into plain old Ethernet.
My main...
Simply Explained
MAX17043: Battery Monitoring Done Right (Arduino & ESP32)
Building a battery-powered IoT device? Then you'll want to monitor the battery's percentage. Here's...
over a year ago
Building a battery-powered IoT device? Then you'll want to monitor the battery's percentage. Here's how to do it properly.
Matt Mullenweg
CNBC on WP Engine
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP...
2 months ago
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP Engine: Why WordPress [co-]founder Matt Mullenweg has gone ‘nuclear’ against tech investing giant Silver Lake.
Notes on software...
Generating a full-stack application from a database
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated...
over a year ago
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated REST API (in Go).
The UI has full support for login, viewing (and filtering), editing,
and creating database entities.
PostgreSQL, SQLite and MySQL are supported.
How to use?
The...
Louwrentius
8 TB RAID 6 Linux software RAID using EXT4
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID...
over a year ago
Mobo: Asus P5Q-EM DO ( 6x sata)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E7400
RAM: 4 GB
Controller; HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 (16x poorten)
PSU: CooMas Silent Pro M 600W ATX2 (definitely not overkill)
HD: Samsung 1 TB SAT2 HD103UJ (10x)
OS: Debian Lenny with custom kernel (backported)
FS: EXT4
RAID...
Simply Explained
Smart lights behind a wall switch (Shelly + ESPHome)
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs...
over a year ago
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs need constant power. I think that's pretty dumb. Using a physical switch can be way faster than using an app to control the lights.Here's how you can put a Shelly in between the...
./techtipsy
I finally found an use case for my Raspberry Pi Model B+
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer...
over a year ago
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer with a huge community using it for all sorts of projects.
I got my first Raspberry Pi, the Model B+,
during my first year at university, which was around the winter of...
Jonas Hietala
Jonas IceCream Stand
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream...
over a year ago
Ahoy there! This time I’ll take you along for a ride with an arty Tycoon game.
Jonas IceCream Stand
Instructions
It should be pretty self-explanatory, it’s a very simply tycoon game.
Credits
Music:
Eric Maskol
Steve Chatterton
Sound effects:
freesound
Rest:
Me
lcamtuf’s thing
Analog filters, part 2: let it ring
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key...
2 months ago
A continuation of the gentle intro to analog signal filtering. In today's episode: the Sallen-Key topology.
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
Arduino Blog
Expanding possibilities: Blues Wireless amplifies Opta’s connectivity
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino...
7 months ago
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino Opta, unveiled this week at the Automate Show in Chicago. The expansion module is an affordable solution to enhance connectivity options for Arduino Opta micro PLCs, and marks a...
Home on Erik...
Books I read in 2015
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least...
over a year ago
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least one book per week and in particular I wanted to brush up on management, economics, and technology.
Louwrentius
A practical understanding of lead acid batteries
Introduction
The goal of this article is to give you a practical understanding Lead Acid batteries....
over a year ago
Introduction
The goal of this article is to give you a practical understanding Lead Acid batteries. We won't address the underlying chemistry, we'll treat them as a black-box and we will discover their characteristics and how to keep them healthy.
Disclaimer
I'm an amateur. I...
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...
Gwern.net Newsletter
February 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
links on AI scaling, semaglutide, and ethicist ethics
over a year ago
links on AI scaling, semaglutide, and ethicist ethics
Louwrentius
Debian Lenny and Dell R410 network card not supported
For those who are running Debian Lenny and want to order the new Dell R410
server, beware!
There is...
over a year ago
For those who are running Debian Lenny and want to order the new Dell R410
server, beware!
There is no safe solution to get Debian Lenny working with the on-board
Broadcom network cards. A fairly recent kernel is required. Basically, you
will have to install back-ported kernels,...
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...
computers are bad
2023-08-07 STIRred AND SHAKEN
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps...
a year ago
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps spurred by boredom, I looked through the schedule to see
what's in store in the world of telephony. There is a workshop on SS7, of
course [1], plenty of content on cellular, but...
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
Jonas Hietala
Printing Hextraction for my kids
A session of Hextraction, a 3D printed board game.
I did it.
I made something actually useful with...
10 months ago
A session of Hextraction, a 3D printed board game.
I did it.
I made something actually useful with my 3D printer instead of just tinkering with it.
I printed Hextraction, a very cool 3D printed board game for my kids—and they love it.
Hextraction is a gamified marble run, where...
Jonas Hietala
Why I still blog after 15 years
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Before you know it, your little babies have started school, you...
2 months ago
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Before you know it, your little babies have started school, you celebrate the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park, and that little blog you started have now been going for 15 years.
15 years is a long time; longer than I’ve been waiting for Winds...
Neil Madden
Making things
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar...
over a year ago
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar donated by a neighbour). It’s a bit clunky in places — “rustic” shall we say? But I probably enjoyed making this, over a few weeks of lunchtimes and evenings, more than anything I’ve...
Computer Ads from...
Applied Analytics' MicroSPEED
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
6 months ago
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
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...
over a year ago
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet data centre.
Arduino Blog
Play rock-paper-scissors using a time-of-flight sensor and an Arduino UNO R4
Owing to its simplicity and fast-paced nature, rock-paper-scissors is a great game to play with...
5 months ago
Owing to its simplicity and fast-paced nature, rock-paper-scissors is a great game to play with friends, and when it comes to translating it into a digital format, many creative adaptations can be made. This version by madmcu forgoes the typical three-button input scheme in favor...
Willem's Blog
Why Apple Silicon is a big deal
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
over a year ago
Never have I been so blown away as by the new MacBook Air with M1 processor. It is a big deal.
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 1. a stack and register machine
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating...
over a year ago
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
2. system calls
In this post we'll create a small virtual machine in JavaScript and
use it to run a simple C program compiled...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Degen communism: the only correct political ideology
8 months ago
Arduino Blog
Is there an online Arduino IDE?
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code...
2 months ago
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code and creating projects ranging from remote-controlled cars to soil moisture monitoring. No wonder it’s been downloaded over 24 million times this year, so far! Now if you’ve ever...
./techtipsy
Why you might not want to publicly self-host a Wikipedia clone
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it...
a year ago
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it anywhere
you want using Kiwix.
I’m still hosting Kiwix sites publicly, but here are a few things you might want
to consider before doing so yourself.
The spam
I have a specific e-mail address...
Home on Erik...
The power of ensembles
From my presentation at MLConf, one of the points I think is worth stressing again is how extremely...
over a year ago
From my presentation at MLConf, one of the points I think is worth stressing again is how extremely well combining different algorithms works.
In this case, we're training machine learning algorithms on different data sets (playlists, play counts, sessions) and different...
Arduino Blog
This beautiful table creates art in the sand
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen...
4 months ago
Kinetic sand art tables are pretty hot right now, because they look really cool. They’re like zen gardens that rake themselves in intricate patterns. But most of the builds we’ve seen use a conventional cartesian CNC layout or polar layout. This table by Newsons Electronics takes...
Louwrentius
Is the iPhone OS a threat to our freedom?
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full...
over a year ago
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full control over your device. You can only install or run
software that is approved by Apple.
This is something that is unprecedented. All major platforms, Windows, Linux,
Mac OS X do...
lcamtuf’s thing
Deep dive: the (in)stability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
a month ago
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
./techtipsy
Oversimplified guide into snapshots on the btrfs filesystem
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files...
over a year ago
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files around. You finish the script and test it out.
Oops.
All the files now have all the wrong names, and some have been randomly moved
10 folders deep. It’s a mess.
And you didn’t make a...
Posts on Made of...
Towards solving Ultimate Tic Tac Toe
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey...
over a year ago
Summary: Read about my efforts to solve the game of Ultimate Tic Tac Toe. It’s been a fun journey into interesting algorithms and high-performance parallel programming in Rust.
Backstory Starting around the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, I’ve gotten myself deeply nerdsniped...
Birchtree
All the games I played in 2024, reviewed
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies...
5 days ago
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies of the year post with something similar for games. I’m not going to rank these, but I’ll give a few words on each one
Good Enough
Having Trouble Getting Started? Pair Up!
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on...
a year ago
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force.
Sir Isaac Newton
I often find that just getting started is the hardest part of doing something. This is especially true when the project is large or...
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
over a year ago
People make decisions, not businesses.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Coordination, Good and Bad
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Delightful, production-grade replication for Postgres
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
4 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Quantum Software Systems Ltd's QNX
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
8 months ago
Operating Systems Come in Many Flavors But QNX Can Take the Heat
Jonas Hietala
The current T-34 keyboard layout
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is...
over a year ago
I’ve been documenting my own keyboard layout in a series for a while now. But as the layout is constantly changing it’s been difficult to piece together how the layout currently looks like, so this post tries to show how the layout looks right now in it’s entirety.
If you want to...
./techtipsy
Back to roots
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet...
6 months ago
This blog is running on a home server again.
I have once again gained access to a competent internet connection1, and
I think I have figured out the IPv6 setup as well2, leading to this change.
The IP address is dynamic, there are occasional power outages and I might just
mess up...
Louwrentius
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for home usage
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you...
over a year ago
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you run RAID 5 you're told that you are a crazy person.
Using RAID 5 is portrayed as an unreasonable risk to the availability of your data. It is suggested that it is likely that you...
Avestura's Blog
Versioning microservices in GitLab monorepos and polyrepos
What are some possible options to version projects for a microservices project in Gitlab?
over a year ago
What are some possible options to version projects for a microservices project in Gitlab?
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
8 months ago
Notes on software...
Implementing a simple jq clone in Go, and basics of Go memory profiling
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of...
over a year ago
In this post we'll build a basic jq clone in Go. It will only be able
to pull a single path out of each object it reads. It won't be able to
do filters, mapping, etc.
$ cat large-file.json | head -n2 | ./jqgo...
Notes on software...
Standard ML in 2020
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML#...
over a year ago
Incredibly, Standard ML implementations are still actively
developed. MLton, Poly/ML,
MLKit,
SML# and
SML/NJ
are the most prominent. Discussion on the future direction of Standard
ML remains healthy as
well.
And somehow OCaml's lesser known cousin still beats out OCaml...
Jonas Hietala
Rewriting my blog in Rust for fun and profit
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think...
over a year ago
Background
I’ve used Hakyll as my static site generator for around 9 years now. Before that I think I used Jekyll and also more dynamic pages with Mojolicious in Perl and Kohana in PHP, but I can’t be completely sure as the git history doesn’t go back that far.
But all good...
Willem's Blog
For the love of mini
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love...
over a year ago
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love of mini!
Neil Madden
Some incomplete thoughts about Gödel
I saw another article on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems linked from Reddit today. It’s a topic I’ve...
over a year ago
I saw another article on Gödel’s incompleteness theorems linked from Reddit today. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for some time. Although many articles do a decent job in giving an idea of what the big deal is (and this one is pretty good), they can sometimes give a...
Home on Erik...
Interview with a Data Scientist: Erik Bernhardsson
I was featured in Peadar Coyle's interview series interviewing various “data scientists” – which is...
over a year ago
I was featured in Peadar Coyle's interview series interviewing various “data scientists” – which is kind of arguable since (a) all the other ppl in that series are much cooler than me (b) I'm not really a data scientist.
Arduino Blog
Enjoy a perpetual solar eclipse with this machine
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A...
5 months ago
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A total eclipse will occur somewhere on Earth once every 18 months or so, but that is more likely to track across the middle of the Pacific Ocean than wherever you happen to be....
Posts on Made of...
Write testable code by writing generic code
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains...
over a year ago
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains several software engineers nearly as obsessed with software testing as I am):
uhh, so I’m writing some code to handle an econnreset… how do I test this?
This is a good question!...
./techtipsy
Surviving the front page of HackerNews on a 50 Mbps uplink
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the...
over a year ago
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the topic, because it
brought out a lot of enthusiasts who shared their own experiences with older
machinery that still works in 2022. I really appreciate the feedback and...
watchTowr Labs -...
QNAP QTS - QNAPping At The Wheel (CVE-2024-27130 and friends)
Infosec is, at it’s heart, all about that data. Obtaining access to it (or disrupting access to it)...
7 months ago
Infosec is, at it’s heart, all about that data. Obtaining access to it (or disrupting access to it) is in every ransomware gang and APT group’s top-10 to-do-list items, and so it makes sense that our research voyage would, at some point, cross paths with products
Louwrentius
WFS - WAN Failover Script now available
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you...
over a year ago
Since I could not find a WAN failover script for Linux to my likening, I wrote
one myself. If you have any use for it: I put it on a Google code project.
WFS tests the availability of your primary WAN connection and switches to your
secondary / backup connection when a failure is...
Neil Madden
API Security in Action is published!
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is...
over a year ago
I wasn’t expecting it so quickly, so it caught me a little off guard, but API Security in Action is now finally published. PDF copies are available now, with printed copies shipping by the end of the month. Kindle/ePub take a little bit longer but should be out in a few weeks...
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...
./techtipsy
I've reached the self-hosting endgame
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim...
over a year ago
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim to my imagination and completely changed my self-hosting setup. Again.
Here it is, in all its glory:
Well, at least that’s what’s on the table.
This machine is a true all-in-one:...
Home on Erik...
What's Erik up to?
I joined Better in early 2015 because I thought the team was crazy enough to actually change one of...
over a year ago
I joined Better in early 2015 because I thought the team was crazy enough to actually change one of the largest industries in the US. For six years, I ran the tech team, hiring 300+ people, probably doing 2,000+ interviews, and according to GitHub I added 646,941 lines of code...
Home on Erik...
Machine, Platform, Crowd
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it...
over a year ago
I just bought Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future and discovered that it mentions my blog – in particular the post When machine learning matters.
Ok, I lied a little bit. I didn't discover it serendipitously.
Notes on software...
HTML event handler attributes: down the rabbit hole
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Engineers Need Art
Building Quarter-Cab - Phase I
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
7 months ago
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside an IBM/Motorola mainframe controller chip from 1981
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit.1
But before I discuss the chip,...
5 months ago
In this article, I look inside a chip in the IBM 3274 Control Unit.1
But before I discuss the chip, I need to give some background on mainframes.
(I didn't completely analyze the chip, so don't expect a nice narrative or solid conclusions.)
Die photo of the Motorola/IBM SC81150...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Zucchini Crabcakes
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only...
over a year ago
With a tiny bit more planning I made a dinner out the lessons 4 and 5 as the crabcakes were only supposed to be an appetizer:
Crabcakes: Surprisingly delicious. Both me and Veronica gives them a 7.
Zucchini: While I thought they passed Veronica said “Zucchini is not my thing” and...
Jonas Hietala
Minor site updates
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started...
over a year ago
As it happens I got a little tired of the syntax highlighter Pandoc uses so on a whim I started looking at moving to Pygments as my highlighter. With some searching around I found a blog post about just that! That’s lucky because while I like Haskell, I’ve never really grocked it...
Home on Erik...
The Filter Bubble is Silly and you Can't Guess What Happened Next
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here...
over a year ago
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here was about the filter bubble which prompted me to formalize my own thoughts.
I firmly believe that it's the role of a system to respect the user's intent.
Matt Blewitt
Movement for Engineers
Until we get get to be chromed-up cyborgs, we’re stuck with our meat bodies, and like many things,...
a year ago
Until we get get to be chromed-up cyborgs, we’re stuck with our meat bodies, and like many things, they need regular maintenance. Here is a brief introduction to keeping your body moving as someone who spends a lot of time sitting down.
computers are bad
2023-06-07 something up there - nasa and uaps
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I...
a year ago
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I am
not addressing the recent claims by David Grusch. This is for a couple of
reasons. First, I am skeptical of Grusch. He is not the first seemingly
well-positioned former...
Good Enough
TIL: JavaScript Turbo Stream Requests
I am working on search for Album Whale and I was very confused when my JavaScript fetch requests...
a year ago
I am working on search for Album Whale and I was very confused when my JavaScript fetch requests were not resulting in turbo_stream rendering getting displayed on my page. I checked my logs to see if the render was happening. I looked for missing <%= tags. Debugged and...
Matt Mullenweg
Rhino Dehorning
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles,...
2 months ago
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles, elephants. Today wasn’t great: I witnessed a rhino shot with a tranquilizer from a helicopter, then it was held down, had its horns cut off, and then shaved down. I have some photos and...
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...
Applied Cartography
Au revoir, Invoke
It's not quite interesting or noteworthy enough to warrant a full-on essay, but yesterday we...
7 months ago
It's not quite interesting or noteworthy enough to warrant a full-on essay, but yesterday we unshipped the last remaining Invoke commands and ported them over to just.
I think Invoke is a good, cool project, and I wish it well. If you're at the precise intersection of "you have...
Jonas Hietala
Done this, done that. What now?
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and...
over a year ago
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I’m liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book...
Arduino Blog
Adding real-time local voice controls to a SMARS Quad Mod robot with an Arduino RP2040 Connect
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools...
3 months ago
Robotics kits like the Screwless/Screwed Modular Assemblable Robotic System (SMARS) are great tools for learning more about how electronics, mechanics, and software can combine to perform useful tasks in the physical world. And in his latest project, Edge Impulse’s senior...
Posts on Made of...
Distributed cloud builds for everyone
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous....
over a year ago
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous. All the major cloud providers offer generous free tiers, and services like GitHub Actions offer free compute resources to open-source repositories. So why do so many developers...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
3 months ago
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
Good Enough
All About CSS: Alphabetize, Normalize, and Dark-mode-itize
Hello reader, I’m Matthew, the newest member of Good Enough (LLC). The rest of the team are avid...
a year ago
Hello reader, I’m Matthew, the newest member of Good Enough (LLC). The rest of the team are avid writers and sharers… I’m not. But they keep chanting “One of us. One of us.” so I suppose you’ll see me around here sometimes.
For my inaugural post, I thought I’d quickly share what...
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 - finally
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 is the newest release of André Fachat's fast and portable two-pass 6502/65816...
a year ago
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 is the newest release of André Fachat's fast and portable two-pass 6502/65816 crossassembler; yours truly is the current maintainer and I just punched "live" on it tonight. It runs on Un*xy things and Windows (with Cygwin or msys2 or similar), and probably other...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: Signaling and Job Control
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read...
over a year ago
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 or part 2 if you’re new here)
For my final entry on termios, I will be looking at job control in the shell (i.e. backgrounding and foreground jobs) and the very closely related...
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Arduino Blog
Magnus is an electromagnetic exoskeleton for your hands
One of the primary goals of wearable technology is to provide the user with capabilities and data...
5 months ago
One of the primary goals of wearable technology is to provide the user with capabilities and data that exceed their current abilities. And for motion, this has traditionally existed in the form of electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), where current is applied via electrodes to...
Avestura's Blog
How to change visibility in massive GitHub organizations like EpicGames?
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
over a year ago
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
Matt Blewitt
7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep...
3 weeks ago
I’ve been running databases-as-a-service for a long time, and there are always new things to keep abreast of - new technologies, different ways of solving problems, not to mention all the research coming out of universities. In 2025, consider spending a week with each of these...
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...
11 months ago
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...
Louwrentius
Eztables: simple yet powerful firewall configuration for Linux
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on...
over a year ago
I've created and released Eztables on Github. Anyone who ever has a need to setup a firewall on Linux may be interested in this project.
It doesn't matter if you need to protect a laptop, server or want to setup a network firewall. Eztables supports it all.
If you're not afraid...
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...
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
Opsbros
Nix Windows Feedback
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
over a year ago
There turns out to be a far easier way to disable the 'Win+F' Windows Feedback app.
Jonas Hietala
Beginning Programming
I read a wonderful post, 3 Things I hate about “beginner” programming books, which I couldn’t agree...
over a year ago
I read a wonderful post, 3 Things I hate about “beginner” programming books, which I couldn’t agree more with. Basically he has these points:
Too long
Too many examples like “Hello World!”
No answers to exercises.
Nr 1 is a pretty curious one. Even though I think a book is good,...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbor methods and vector models – part 1
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning last week. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do (approximate) nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
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...
Simply Explained
How WebP Images Reduced My Bandwidth Usage by 50%
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP...
over a year ago
Last year I migrated this website from Jekyll to Eleventy. This year, I’m finally implementing WebP images to save bandwidth and make this site even faster to load! This simple change reduced my bandwidth usage by 50% and is still backwards compatible with old devices and...
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
Arduino Blog
Exploring fungal intelligence with biohybrid robots powered by Arduino
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking...
a month ago
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking research that brings together the fields of robotics, biology, and engineering. Their recent experiments, published in Science, explore how fungal mycelia can be used to control robots....
Louwrentius
Why the iPad will be a breakthrough in human computing
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to...
over a year ago
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to adjust to them.
The problem is that most people that are not into technology just don't
understand how computers work. Should I single click of double click? Click
left or right?
The...
Home on Erik...
The half-life of code & the ship of Theseus
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old...
over a year ago
As a project evolves, does the new code just add on top of the old code? Or does it replace the old code slowly over time? In order to understand this, I built a little thing to analyze Git projects, with help from the formidable GitPython project.
Willem's Blog
Go Viral on X
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
a month ago
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
Posts on Made of...
Navigating the Linux Kernel
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way...
over a year ago
In response to my query last time, ezyang asked for any tips or tricks I have for finding my way around the Linux kernel. I’m not sure I have much in the way of systematic advice for tracking down the answers to questions about the Linux kernel, but thinking about what I do when...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 5 Retrospective
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Debian Lenny and Dell S300 H200 and H700 RAID controllers
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these...
over a year ago
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these controllers. However, which controllers are supported is
not clear. Also, we may have to wait for quite some time before squeeze will
be released.
Just a quick note: it seems that the...
Louwrentius
Setting up a Jabber instant messaging server |_http-title: Site doesn't have a title (text/html;...
I wanted to see how dificult it is to setup an instant messaging server based on open source...
over a year ago
I wanted to see how dificult it is to setup an instant messaging server based on open source software. Now I know that it is very easy, unless you are stubborn and do things your own way. In this example, I'm setting up a small IM server that is only for internal company use, but...
Applied Cartography
Migrating someone who's on Stripe Connect Express
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author...
11 months ago
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author has full agency over their account and is the merchant of record;
they can revoke OAuth access from Substack (or whomever) at any time;
Substack continues to take that 10% as an...
Good Enough
How We Built Quack (Beta)
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any...
a year ago
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any Markdown text. This software is completely front-end based, and for me personally it was a bit of a challenging puzzle to implement. Thankfully we have genius hackers like Arun...
Jonas Hietala
The Decline of FPS Games
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time...
over a year ago
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it’s what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can’t say I truly...
csvbase blog
My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
a year ago
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
Home on Erik...
Annoy – now without Boost dependencies and with Python 3 Support
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high...
over a year ago
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high dimensional spaces. Spotify uses it a lot to find similar items. First, matrix factorization gives a low dimensional representation of each item (artist/album/track/user) so that every item...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Against overuse of the Gini coefficient
over a year ago
Opsbros
Nokia 5110 - Back from the dead. Part 1: Nostalgia
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and...
over a year ago
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
2 months ago
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
10 months ago
Louwrentius
Linux Mac Mini - temperature monitoring with lm-sensors
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using...
over a year ago
This post is about getting temperature monitoring to work with a Mac Mini
running Linux.
Using Debian Lenny, out of the box, lm-sensors is not working. No sensors can
be found. This is how temperature monitoring and fan speed monitoring can be
made to work:
modprobe applesmc
If...
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 