OH8HUB’s Substack
Eliminating Radio Interference from Apple charger
Apple's product design teams should do a better job eliminating unwanted radio frequency emissions...
a year ago
Apple's product design teams should do a better job eliminating unwanted radio frequency emissions from their product!
./techtipsy
They make USB-C cables with displays now!
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted...
6 months ago
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted USB-C port. This meant that I had a valid reason to get
a few extra because I didn’t yet have a stockpile of good USB-C cables.
That’s when I found out that there exist cables that...
Jonas Hietala
Giving the blog a facelift
When I rewrote the blog in Rust I tried not to touch any of the styling, but some things annoyed...
a year ago
When I rewrote the blog in Rust I tried not to touch any of the styling, but some things annoyed me:
It wasn’t pretty (even ugly in some parts).
No dark mode support.
Some elements were broken, for instance images or code blocks overlapping the header when it was floating to the...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/2 keyboard layout
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my...
over a year ago
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my last update on the T-34 keyboard layout, and I’ve made some changes I’d like to document here.
As seen in the heatmap above, the layout seems quite decent. There’s still an issue...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion
over a year ago
Electronics etc…
Installing Linux GPIB Drivers for the Agilent 82357B
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the...
a year ago
Introduction
Other Installation Instructions
Agilent 82357B Initialization Process
Installing the Agilent 82357B GPIB Driver on an Ubuntu Linux Distribution
References
Introduction
I’ve started to grow a collection of older test equipment from the eighties, the
nineties, and the...
Old Vintage...
With PowerPC, Windows CE and the WiiN-PAD slate, everyone's a WiiN-er (except Data General)
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the...
7 months ago
Telemedicine (and mobile health generally) accumulated a hunk of public mindshare during the pandemic emergency, but speaking as someone with a day job in public health for almost two decades, it's always been a buzzword in certain corners of IT with enough money sloshing around...
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
over a year ago
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
Vitalik Buterin's...
La Guía Incompleta de los Rollups
over a year ago
Willem's Blog
Replacing a Shimano shift cable
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and...
over a year ago
After some adventure with our cargo bike, the Shimano Nexus 7-speed shifter cable got damaged and needed replacement. Read my blog post to learn how to do this yourself.
./techtipsy
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main...
over a year ago
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main laptop and a server as well.
A couple of years ago I messed around with flashing alternative BIOS implementations on the X230, such
as the skulls project, which made installing...
./techtipsy
HoloISO: the unofficial Steam Deck experience on your PC
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam...
over a year ago
If you have spent any time in gaming hardware circles, then you’ve probably
heard about the Steam Deck, the
Linux-based handheld gaming PC built by Valve. Yes, you heard that right: not
Windows, but Linux.
I’ve had my fair share of attempts at gaming on Linux. When it works,...
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...
On Life and Lisp
Software freedom isn't about licenses -- it's about power.
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When...
over a year ago
A restrictive end-user license agreement is one way a company can exert power over the user. When the free software movement was founded thirty years ago, these restrictive licenses were the primary user-hostile power dynamic, so permissive and copyleft licenses emerged as...
Electronics etc…
The HP 423A and a Beginner’s Deep Dive into RF Crystal Detectors
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Jonas Hietala
Computer upgrade
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some...
a year ago
After 5 years or so I’ve made a large upgrade to my desktop, and this post contains details and some pictures about the process.
It was time
I didn’t really want to do an upgrade right now, but I felt I had to do it.
Sometimes the lag had gotten very noticeable, for example when...
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...
Posts on Made of...
Computers can be understood
Introduction This post attempts to describe a mindset I’ve come to realize I bring to essentially...
over a year ago
Introduction This post attempts to describe a mindset I’ve come to realize I bring to essentially all of my work with software. I attempt to articulate this mindset, some of its implications and strengths, and some of the ways in which it’s lead me astray.
Software can be...
Home on Erik...
Music recommendations using cover images (part 1)
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in...
over a year ago
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in fact a fairly strong visual proxy for what kind of content you can expect from it. I started wondering if the album cover can in fact be used for recommendations.
Willem's Blog
Do amazing things with a focused mind
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof...
over a year ago
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof Method.
lcamtuf’s thing
Weekend projects: getting silly with C
C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.
5 months ago
C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.
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...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
over a year ago
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about some concrete things you can do. When I've built up the tech team at Better, I've intentionally optimized for fast iteration speed above almost everything else.
Willem's Blog
MUSE in Carré
MUSE's legendary rock fused with Amsterdam's Royal Theatre Carré for an unforgettable, electrifying...
over a year ago
MUSE's legendary rock fused with Amsterdam's Royal Theatre Carré for an unforgettable, electrifying experience - read about my experience!
Home on Erik...
Meta-blogging
(This is not a very relevant/useful post for regular readers – feel free to skip. I thought I would...
over a year ago
(This is not a very relevant/useful post for regular readers – feel free to skip. I thought I would share it so people can find it on Google.)
My blog blew up twice in a week earlier this year when I landed on Hacker News.
Willem's Blog
Art of visualisation
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to...
over a year ago
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to help a professional food photographer.
Louwrentius
RAID 5 vs. RAID 6 or do you care about your data?
Storage is cheap. Lots of storage with 10+ hard drives is still cheap. Running
10 drives increases...
over a year ago
Storage is cheap. Lots of storage with 10+ hard drives is still cheap. Running
10 drives increases the risk of a drive failure tenfold. So often RAID 5 is
used to keep your data up and running if one single disks fails.
But disks are so cheap and storage arrays are getting so...
Jonas Hietala
Speeding Ahead
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this...
over a year ago
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this year. Firstly we have a math analysis course in multiple variables which is ok. I’m not a fan of the previous analysis courses but maybe this will be a bit different. We’re...
Yazin Alirhayim
How do you know that an API does what it says it does?
Having been in fintech for a while, I’ve noticed something in common between the many new startups...
over a year ago
Having been in fintech for a while, I’ve noticed something in common between the many new startups that come and go. They all require access to personal information.
A specific example that comes to mind is the Plaid-like solution we developed while working on amal. We’d ask...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Porting and hacking Llama2.c for fun and profit
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is basically a simple one-file C…
Jonas Hietala
September theme: Failure
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon...
over a year ago
I’m out of the busy mode and here’s the new theme! I’ve got an idea and I’ll be beginning very soon I hope and again I’m following Experimental Gameplay Project’s site.
Let’s rock!!
./techtipsy
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet...
over a year ago
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet and got myself an ASRock DeskMini X300 bare-bones kit.
This is a fantastic little desktop PC kit that is very small, quiet and can
still be configured to have ridiculous amounts of...
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety
We need to move beyond mere security and towards safety for our customers and our users. This is how...
over a year ago
We need to move beyond mere security and towards safety for our customers and our users. This is how we can do that.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why sharding is great: demystifying the technical properties
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Having a safe CEX: proof of solvency and beyond
over a year ago
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
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a year ago
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Willem's Blog
Removing paint from a bike frame
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal,...
over a year ago
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal, raw aluminium look.
Arduino Blog
Agitating homemade PCBs with ease
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need...
3 months ago
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need to turn to chemical etching. Use one of several different techniques to mask the blank PCB’s copper that you want to keep, then toss the whole thing into a bath to dissolve away the...
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.
Jonas Hietala
My first netrunner store championship
My girlfriend has told me I get these narrow interests where I pour all my energy and thoughts into...
over a year ago
My girlfriend has told me I get these narrow interests where I pour all my energy and thoughts into and about 1,5 months ago I discovered Netrunner, a very awesome card game. Check out this how to play or team covenant’s channel if you want to know more.
So this Sunday I went to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Bir Proof of Stake Tasarım Felsefesi
over a year ago
Push to Prod
4 Ways To Say No, Elegantly and Effectively
In my early days at Netflix, my inability to say no led me into unpleasant terrain. Here's how I...
3 months ago
In my early days at Netflix, my inability to say no led me into unpleasant terrain. Here's how I evolved to navigate these situations more fluidly.
Ken Shirriff's blog
The transparent chip inside a vintage Hewlett-Packard floppy drive
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface...
a year ago
While repairing an eight-inch HP floppy drive, we found that the problem was a broken interface chip.
Since the chip was bad, I decapped it and took photos.
This chip is very unusual: instead of a silicon substrate, the chip is formed on
a base of sapphire, with silicon and metal...
./techtipsy
The best laptop is the one somebody else had
In 2011, I was finishing 9th grade. As a gift, I got to choose a laptop in the
400 EUR range. I...
a month ago
In 2011, I was finishing 9th grade. As a gift, I got to choose a laptop in the
400 EUR range. I ended up picking
an ASUS Eee PC 1201PN. It was new and the
first computer in my life that was 100% mine, but awfully slow for a lot of tasks.
It was so slow that I ended up giving...
./techtipsy
How to copy media off of an iPhone the hard way (using Linux)
I helped a family member upgrade to a newer iPhone and make some room so that the internal storage...
3 months ago
I helped a family member upgrade to a newer iPhone and make some room so that the internal storage does not run out.
They had Nextcloud installed on the current phone, but due to limitations of the Nextcloud iOS
app, the backups only take place if the app itself is open, meaning...
Notes on software...
Finding memory leaks in Postgres C code
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9 months ago
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Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Louwrentius
Do not buy a hardware RAID controller for home use
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high...
over a year ago
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high availability. However, this is not entirely true. Using a
hardware RAID controller might even endanger your precious data.
For enterprise environments, where performance is critical, it is...
Home on Erik...
Leaving Spotify
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an...
over a year ago
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an amazing experience.
I joined Spotify in Stockholm in 2008, mainly because a bunch of friends from programming competitions had joined already.
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
5 months ago
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
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
It’s silver, it’s green, it’s the Batteryrunner! An Arduino-powered, fully custom electric car
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully...
3 weeks ago
Inventor Charly Bosch and his daughter Leonie have crafted something truly remarkable: a fully electric, Arduino-powered car that’s as innovative as it is sustainable. Called the Batteryrunner, this vehicle is designed with a focus on environmental impact, simplicity, and custom...
Neil Madden
How do you use a bearer URL?
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to...
over a year ago
In “Towards a standard for bearer token URLs”, I described a URL scheme that can be safely used to incorporate a bearer token (such as an OAuth access token) into a URL. That blog post concentrated on the technical details of how that would work and the security properties of the...
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
5 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner ID draft Örebro
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what...
over a year ago
I entered an ID draft tournament in Netrunner hosted in Örebro and this is a brief overview of what happened. Disclaimer: My memory is a little bit fuzzy and the events may or may not correspond to what actually happened.
The draft
The idea was to randomly sort all entrants and...
Birchtree
My favorite (and least favorite) movies of 2024
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to...
a week ago
I’ve watched 48 new release movies in 2024, and with just a few weeks left in the year, I wanted to make what is my current top 10 (plus honorable mentions & worst movies). As we get to the end of the year and you might have some
latest projects -...
Analemmagraph
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
a year ago
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
Louwrentius
The security risk of vendor-supplied default SSL certificates
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as...
over a year ago
Often, software comes supplied with some default SSL certificate, for testing
purposes, such as those 'snake oil' certificates (they are called snake oil
certificates for a reason). In practice, I often encounter usage of such
certificates. People may seem to think that as long...
Birchtree
2 weeks to go and I don't think I'll have to eat that AirPod
Last month I made the courageous promise that I would eat an AirPod if a 9to5Mac writer's prediction...
5 days ago
Last month I made the courageous promise that I would eat an AirPod if a 9to5Mac writer's prediction that "[b]efore the end of the year, I have no doubt Apple’s AI features—especially what’s coming in 18.2—will become
Louwrentius
Improving web application security by implementing database security
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement...
over a year ago
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement defense-in-depth security in web applications. 99.9% of applications use a single database account, with root-like privileges. Easiest for the developer of course, and the database is just a...
Louwrentius
How traffic shaping can dramatically improve internet responsiveness
At work, access to the internet is provided by a 10 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up ADSL-connection. As we are...
over a year ago
At work, access to the internet is provided by a 10 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up ADSL-connection. As we are a mid-size company, bandwidth is clearly a severe constraint. But it was not our biggest problem. Even simple web-browsing was very slow.
As I was setting up a monitoring...
Willem's Blog
Cleaning a vintage watch
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old...
over a year ago
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old beauty underneath layers of dirt!
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety: 2
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond...
over a year ago
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond security towards safety for our users.
Applied Cartography
Is cool enough?
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL...
9 months ago
Via HN I ran into not one but two extremely neat
and pleasant-looking libraries for URL manipulation. They look like great libraries, and a prior version of me would have taken a brief set of cursory
glances at the hodgepodge of janky URL manipulation code that I wrote for...
./techtipsy
How I fixed one hardware issue with another one
I happen to run on an ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
motherboard that used to run fine, but ever...
over a year ago
I happen to run on an ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
motherboard that used to run fine, but ever since I installed one UEFI update, it has had this one annoying issue:
whenever you reboot, it gets stuck at POST. Cold boots work fine and the shutdown-and-push-the-power-button...
Christian Selig
Beware UserDefaults: a tale of hard to find bugs, and lost data
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of...
2 months ago
Excuse the alarmist title, but I think it’s justified, as it’s an issue that’s caused me a ton of pain in both support emails and actually tracking it down, so I want to make others aware of it so they don’t similarly burned.
Brief intro
For the uninitiated, UserDefaults (née...
Jonas Hietala
Laying off Pintos
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished...
over a year ago
Exam period is here which means all courses should be wrapping up and a week or so ago we finished up our lab series about pintos. The labs were among the best I’ve had yet and I learned a ton. We didn’t follow the official instructions but we had our own assigmnets....
Jonas Hietala
The 4-Hour Chef: Scrambled Eggs
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to...
over a year ago
I’ve been listening to The Tim Ferriss Show a while now and he and his guests often inspire me to make changes and start doing new things. I got introduced to Josh Waitzkin’s excellent The Art of Learning and the meta skill of learning has since then fascinated me. So when I got...
Jonas Hietala
Moving to FastMail
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some...
over a year ago
About two years ago after Lavabit’s shutdown I searched for a replacement email provider. For some reason I settled on eumx which I used since then. Yesterday I got an email saying the recurring billing could not be renewed as I had my old credit card registered and it got me...
Notes on software...
Container scheduling strategies for integration testing 14 different databases in Github Actions
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over a year ago
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Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Changing a process's controlling terminal
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal,...
over a year ago
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal, and transplants it to a new terminal. reptyr comes from a proud family of similar hacks, and works in the same basic way: We use ptrace(2) to attach to a target process and force...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of OS/2
Getting a Divorce
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
The Arty Timeline
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty...
over a year ago
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty cool so here they are:
And now I’m off with New World Order and (for once) I’ve got a really really good idea!
Louwrentius
Raspberry Pi as a router using a single network interface
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run...
over a year ago
Introduction
Disclaimer: this article is intended for consumers and hobbyists.
If you want to run your own router at home, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B1 can be an excelent hardware choice:
it's fairly cheap
it's fast enough
it can saturate it's gigabit network port
it is...
Simply Explained
Serverless Anagram Solver with Cloudflare R2 and Pages
Six years ago, I reworked my anagram solver so it would run on top of AWS Lambda and DynamoDB....
over a year ago
Six years ago, I reworked my anagram solver so it would run on top of AWS Lambda and DynamoDB. However, this year I realized I didn't need server-side code or a database at all. I could make it completely static by pre-computing anagram solutions.
Notes on software...
HTML event handler attributes: down the rabbit hole
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over a year ago
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Old Vintage...
Two tiny 65816 DTV consoles
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games...
5 months ago
The 21st century direct-to-TV game console: a dirt-cheap toy dragging poor ports of cherished games to a more downmarket age. If you couldn't afford the real device, your alternative was these inexpensive, inadequate facsimiles faithful only to one's gauzy recollection. As their...
Birchtree
My default apps of 2024
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default...
5 hours ago
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default apps, and I though it would be fun to turn this into a tradition and revisit the list to see if anything has changed since last year.
✨ next to each change
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 3
Windows becomes competitive
a year ago
Windows becomes competitive
Willem's Blog
Free from the iCloud: Escaping Apple Photos
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read...
over a year ago
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read along to find out what software I use and how to make it play nice with your devices.
Bryan Braun - Blog
Goodbye Evernote, Hello Obsidian
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas,...
6 months ago
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas, researching technologies, managing my projects, and many other things. Writing is how I think through problems, and note-taking software makes all that thinking easy to search and...
Home on Erik...
Software infrastructure 2.0: a wishlist
Software infrastructure (by which I include everything ending with *aaS, or anything remotely...
over a year ago
Software infrastructure (by which I include everything ending with *aaS, or anything remotely similar to it) is an exciting field, in particular because (despite what the neo-luddites may say) it keeps getting better every year! I love working with something that moves so...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Writing good technical explanations
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and...
over a year ago
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and many thousands of books, talks and blog…
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
Notes on software...
My favorite software subreddits
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only...
a year ago
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only exposure to
reddit is dank memes, proggit or even
language-specific subreddits like
/r/python, you're missing out.
What follows are my favorite subreddits in tech. My criteria is...
Old Vintage...
The Hall SC-VGA-2 video processor, the Atari ST and NeXTSTEP: more tales of the unscreenshotable
A periodic fascination on this blog is figuring out better ways to get better screenshots of our...
3 weeks ago
A periodic fascination on this blog is figuring out better ways to get better screenshots of our classic systems, which often hail from the Wild Wild West/East in terms of video standards (read all entries in this series). Naturally the best way is a bitwise direct grab of the...
Electronics etc…
Remote Controlling an HP 1670G Logic Analyzer with a Linux PC X Server
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the...
12 months ago
Introduction
Reserving a fixed IP address for the logic analyzer
Assign the chosen IP address to the logic analyzer
Allow the logic analyzer to access your Ubuntu X server
Configure the X-window Settings on the logic analyzer
Install and declare the HP logic analyzer font...
Louwrentius
Did you know that RDP is as insecure as telnet?
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts....
over a year ago
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts. It is easy to pick on Microsoft and I do respect what
they have accomplished, however, it may not come as a surprise that they did
it all wrong with RDP in terms of security.
By...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Unusual Git IDs
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with...
a month ago
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with 0000000!
While looking for commits like these, I started to become suspicious that people were intentionally modifying their commits IDs to be unusual:
A commit ID of eeeeeee, with a message...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
How I ship projects at big tech companies
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to...
a month ago
I have shipped a lot of different projects over the last ~10 years in tech. I often get tapped to lead new ones when it’s important to get…
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/1 keyboard layout
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this...
over a year ago
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this particular version without any major changes for almost 3 months, so I’d say it’s a good improvement over the last revision.
There are two large changes from T-34/0: swapping o and...
Willem's Blog
Repairing a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
over a year ago
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
Jonas Hietala
My first rust Contribution
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How...
over a year ago
The problem with open-source for most people isn’t writing code, but it’s all the other things.
How shall I push my changes? How do I handle git? What should I do?
I was the same and I actually dreaded my awesome summer job, just a little bit, because now I’m supposed to...
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...
Home on Erik...
Top posts
These are some blog posts which have gotten a disproportionate amount of traffic (10,000+ page...
over a year ago
These are some blog posts which have gotten a disproportionate amount of traffic (10,000+ page views):
2024 It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans 2023 Simple sabotage for software 2022 We are still early with the cloud: why...
Jonas Hietala
Rising from the Dead, it's Ludum Dare
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not...
over a year ago
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not making games or blogging. But I have revived! I scrambled to push my new website live because today it’s Ludum Dare time! The theme is “Evolution” and it’s the 24th time for Ludum Dare...
Engineers Need Art
Casady & Greene
Remembering Casady & Greene and the excitement (and closing) of an era of Macintosh software...
3 months ago
Remembering Casady & Greene and the excitement (and closing) of an era of Macintosh software publishing.
./techtipsy
Fairphone 5: my heavily biased overview after 58 days of use (and counting)
After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself
a Fairphone 5. The...
9 months ago
After months of contemplating I finally pulled the trigger and got myself
a Fairphone 5. The fact
that iPhone X stopped receiving major iOS updates certainly helped make that decision.
“But why? My Xiaomi/Oneplus/Samsung/other glued-together device is like so much cheaper and...
Jonas Hietala
Easy setup of a static site on Amazon S3 with SSL
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just...
over a year ago
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just never got around to it, probably the usual procrastination.
When I had to setup a new site for another project I chose to host on Amazon as well. Although there are many other free...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
3. indexes
4. a database/sql driver
In this post, we'll extend gosql
to support binary expressions and very simple filtering on SELECT
results via WHERE. We'll introduce a general mechanism...
Willem's Blog
Smartwatches vs Mechanical watches
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
over a year ago
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
./techtipsy
Cool projects
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of projects that really cool and neat.
Chromebook cluster
someone took some old Chromebooks, stripped them down and built a cluster. I love this kind of jank!
Willem's Blog
Wearing Grand Seiko
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship,...
over a year ago
I am glad I took the opportunity to wear a Grand Seiko, learning first hand about its craftsmanship, innovation and practicality.
Good Enough
TIL: Use randomness to prevent email trimming
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of...
a year ago
With conversation threading (which almost everyone has enabled), Gmail was trimming the bottom of the emails we send with our new app because they were too similar to the other emails in the conversation thread.
They’re similar because that’s just the link to get back into the...
Applied Cartography
A good H1
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we...
3 weeks ago
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we arrived at our current iteration, which is the anodyne yet pointed Email for you. Yes, you.
Historically, we've called Buttondown a 'newsletter tool' — the h1 before this was 'The...
Odds and Ends of...
Christmas Mailbag!
Is Elon Musk actually smart? Will HS2 ever be properly finished? Do I like Dominic Cummings? And...
3 days ago
Is Elon Musk actually smart? Will HS2 ever be properly finished? Do I like Dominic Cummings? And more!
./techtipsy
My blog successfully survived a scheduled power outage
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage...
3 months ago
I had the opportunity to test the resiliency of my home server setup due to a scheduled power outage on 2024-09-13.
It was also Friday the 13th. I’m not superstitious, but I’m a little stitious.
My setup usually consists of the home server, a Wifi AP/router combo box, a converter...
Home on Erik...
Tumblr's awesome project names
Not sure how I managed to miss this, but I'm watching this Tumblr presentation and they talk about...
over a year ago
Not sure how I managed to miss this, but I'm watching this Tumblr presentation and they talk about their projects named after Arrested Development topics: Gob, Parmesan, Buster, Jetpants, Oscar, George and Motherboy.
Still, the best software project name is probably still Apple's...
Electronics etc…
Symmetricom 58532A GPS Antenna Supply Voltage Mod
The Symmatricom 58532A
Opening up the 58532A
Voltage Regulation
Result
What about the other 58532A...
9 months ago
The Symmatricom 58532A
Opening up the 58532A
Voltage Regulation
Result
What about the other 58532A variant?
References
The Symmatricom 58532A
As part of a package deal, I got my hands on a Symmetricom 58532A L1
GPS antenna.
Microchip, which acquired Symmetricom in 2013, doesn’t...
Willem's Blog
Working Offline First
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise...
a year ago
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise your workflow – join my cloud-free adventure today!
Notes on software...
Writing a minimal Lua implementation with a virtual machine from scratch in Rust
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from...
over a year ago
By the end of this guide we'll have a minimal, working implementation
of a small part of Lua from scratch. It will be able to run the
following program (among others):
function fib(n)
if n < 2 then
return n;
end
local n1 = fib(n-1);
local n2 = fib(n-2);
...
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...
Willem's Blog
WordPress: 10 tips to secure your website
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using...
over a year ago
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using this blog post.
Notes on software...
Two books I recommend to developers
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think...
a year ago
Originally published on February 1, 2021. The original version
included two books I don't think are actually so worthwhile. This
list is down to two. I think that's a good thing actually.
These are the books I recommend to developers wanting to improve their
skills as...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's...
9 months ago
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor.
IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history,
leading to the dominance of the x86 architecture that continues to the present.1
One...
Louwrentius
Which file system for a large storage array under Linux?
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a...
over a year ago
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a large storage array.
I am assuming that you want to create a single file system. I don't care if
you use LVM or other layers beneath, this is about which file system to use.
I will...
Notes on software...
Delightful, production-grade replication for Postgres
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
4 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Good Enough
TIL: Blocking Password App Autocomplete on Form Fields
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username...
a year ago
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username field in Contact Me. It was pretty simple in the end:
<%= form.text_field :username, "data-lpignore": true, "data-1p-ignore": true %>
Reference: 1Password, Lastpass.
Notes on software...
Walking through a basic Racket web service
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme...
over a year ago
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme R5RS is three years younger. It is
as concise and expressive as Python but with much more reasonable
syntax and semantics. Racket is also faster in many cases due in part
to:
JIT...
csvbase blog
Client libraries are better when they have no API
fsspec is secretly everywhere, and boss
8 months ago
fsspec is secretly everywhere, and boss
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...
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...
Computer Ads from...
Ampere WS-1
A cool Japanese clamtop
9 months ago
Lighthouse Blog
How to rate content and find it again
6 months ago
Louwrentius
'Linux: show graphical layout of disk temperatures'
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a...
over a year ago
graphic, representation
To get a visual representation of hard drive temperatures, I wrote a small
script. The output of this script looks like this:
This output is tailored to the exact disk lay-out of my storage
server. However, it is also usable for other servers. You have to...
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...
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...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Christian Selig
Waterfield's weirdly compact Apple Vision Pro Case
Disclosure: Waterfield sent this in exchange for a review. Yeah, that probably colors something on a...
8 months ago
Disclosure: Waterfield sent this in exchange for a review. Yeah, that probably colors something on a deep-down, subconscious level, but I won’t say anything that I don’t truly believe.
Unlike a phone or laptop, the Vision Pro is one of those products that is particularly tricky...
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
a month ago
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
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.
Applied Cartography
Use Rails
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part...
7 months ago
I have a good number of people ask me what software stack they should use. I always have a two-part answer:
Use what you're familiar with. If there's something that you've spent a good amount of time using, stick with that one.
Rails. People are usually surprised when I say this...
axio.ms
Classical virtualisation rules applied to RISC-style atomics
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable...
over a year ago
In 1974, Gerald Popek and Robert Goldberg published a paper, “Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures”, giving a set of characteristics for correct full-machine virtualisation.
Today, these characteristics remain very useful. Computer architects will...
Applied Cartography
How Buttondown uses HAProxy
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the...
3 months ago
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the author-facing app, the subscriber-facing app, and the marketing site all under a single domain. Most technical decisions are reversible with sufficient grit and dedication; this one...
./techtipsy
My attempt at archiving nfscars.net
Background
My mother once had a laptop: the Compaq Armada 1592DT. It came with Windows ME which...
over a year ago
Background
My mother once had a laptop: the Compaq Armada 1592DT. It came with Windows ME which later got “upgraded” to Windows 98 SE
after I managed to completely screw up the OS, a whopping 96MB of RAM and a hard drive that probably wasn’t much larger
than 1-3GB. It wasn’t...
Lars Lofgren
Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host
Are you sick of Forbes appearing in search results? For topics that Forbes doesn’t have any...
3 months ago
Are you sick of Forbes appearing in search results? For topics that Forbes doesn’t have any expertise in? Here’s the organic rankings for “best pet insurance”: Forbes ranks #2. Not sure a business website knows how pet insurance actually works. But okay. They also have the #1...
Avestura's Blog
How optimistic or pessimistic are the Kurzgesagt videos?
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
a year ago
A sentiment analysis on the last 20 videos of Kurzgesagt.
Willem's Blog
Realtime human pose recognition through computer vision
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose...
over a year ago
For an exciting new project I have been experimenting with TensorFlow, enabling realtime pose detection using PoseNet.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should there be demand-based recurring fees on ENS domains?
over a year ago
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...
Arduino Blog
The new Auxivo EduExo Pro helps students with exoskeleton research
Emerging technologies initially develop at a slow pace and that is due in large part to the lack of...
5 months ago
Emerging technologies initially develop at a slow pace and that is due in large part to the lack of resources available to students. Complex technology is built on existing knowledge and higher education students need the tools to gain hands-on experience. To help educate the...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
over a year ago
somenice
CBC Spark with Nora Young
Really upset to recently learn that Spark with Nora Young has been cancelled by the CBC, ending in...
6 months ago
Really upset to recently learn that Spark with Nora Young has been cancelled by the CBC, ending in June 2024. (Announcement episode) One of the most intelligent, progressive technology-in-society news shows in Canada or anywhere for that matter. Perhaps that it’s medium is radio...
On Life and Lisp
Clip control on the Apple GPU
Neverball rendered on the Apple M1 GPU with an open source OpenGL driver
After a year in...
over a year ago
Neverball rendered on the Apple M1 GPU with an open source OpenGL driver
After a year in development, the open source “Asahi” driver for the Apple GPU is running real games. There’s more to do, but Neverball is already playable (and a lot of fun!).
Neverball uses legacy “fixed...
Jonas Hietala
Bugger
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the...
over a year ago
Ahhh… Finally another game! Theme of this beauty is Failure and your mission here is to avoid the bugs. As a programmer the fight with those nasty bugs are a daily occurrence and now I’ve brought you a chance to kill those nasties too!
The gameplay wasn’t what I was planning on -...
detreville
This is "detreville"
It's my name, and the name of my Substack too. That's one less thing for everyone to remember.
a year ago
It's my name, and the name of my Substack too. That's one less thing for everyone to remember.
Willem's Blog
The value of notifications
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the...
over a year ago
It's easy to dismiss your phone's notifications as something that disturbs you, but if you take the time to set them up correctly, notifications can actually save you time!
Jonas Hietala
Undo git reset --hard
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back...
over a year ago
I purposefully and more or less idiotically executed git reset --hard <hash> in hopes of going back a bit. What I didn’t realize then is that you throw away all the commits between now until <hash>. Not quite what was planned.
After a bit of panic I found the answer:
Find your...
Louwrentius
The Raspberry Pi 5 is no match for a tini-mini-micro PC
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable...
6 months ago
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable computer. An ideal home server. Until the Pi 4, the Pi was not that capable, and only with the relatively recent Pi 5 (fall 2023) do I feel the Pi is OK performance wise, although...
Louwrentius
Is storage really that cheap?
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box,...
over a year ago
Nowadays you can buy a 1 TB harddrive for less than 100 euro's . So I build
myself a 4 TB NAS box, which is already 50% full. However, although it is to
some degree fault-tollerant by using RAID 6, one mistake or catastrophic
hardware faillure and all data is lost.
And that's...
Jonas Hietala
On The Decline of FPS Games
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS...
over a year ago
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS Games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
Oh How true!
Louwrentius
'Zabbix Security: client-server communication seems insecure'
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring...
over a year ago
Zabbix is a populair tool for monitoring servers, services and network
equipment. For monitoring hosts, Zabbix provides an agent that can be
installed on the hosts that must be monitored.
Based on the supplied documentation and some remarks on the internets,
the 'security' of...
Louwrentius
Visual representation of hard drives and their temperature
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where...
over a year ago
If you build a NAS with many drives, it may be of interest to you which
drives get hot and where they are located in the chassis. My Norco 4020 case
has twenty drives in RAID 6, plus two operating system drives in RAID 1. I
wrote a script that shows me the temperature of each...
Gwern.net Newsletter
May 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
links on AI hardware, diffusion models, optogenetics, brain scanning.
over a year ago
links on AI hardware, diffusion models, optogenetics, brain scanning.
Applied Cartography
Grace notes
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking...
7 months ago
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking for:
Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service. The host would ask guests, “How’d you get here tonight?” If they responded, “Oh, we drove,” he’d follow up with,...
Computer Ads from...
Suture Software's Bludgeons 'n' Braggarts
We very simply give you what you've been asking for -- we give you BLOOD
9 months ago
We very simply give you what you've been asking for -- we give you BLOOD
Notes on software...
Confusion and disengagement in meetings
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks...
over a year ago
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks is to ask questions.
Ask early so you don't waste time. But it's not enough to just ask
clarifying questions because the answers won't always be clear.
Sounds like Human Interaction...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Bugger
It’s time for the follow up on my latest game Bugger.
Wow it seems like forever since I begun this...
over a year ago
It’s time for the follow up on my latest game Bugger.
Wow it seems like forever since I begun this monthly game business, but it’s only been two months since I first thought about this and here I am having finished my third game. I’ve really come a long way, in the beginning I...
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 days ago
Building an intuition about energy
Matt Mullenweg
RIP Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is...
a month ago
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is amazing. I feel so lucky to have met him in 2012 when I was much earlier in my career, and he didn’t have any reason to give me time, but he treated everyone as if they were...
Louwrentius
My home lab server with 20 cores / 40 threads and 128 GB memory
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this...
over a year ago
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this moment, it's replaced by a cluster of four 1L PCs which use about a third of the idle power usage and boot within 20 seconds. The single-core performance of these low-power 1L PCs...
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
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.
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – epilogue – curse of dimensionality
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most...
over a year ago
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most of the interesting parts, but there are still some topics left to be discussed. To go back and read the meaty stuff, check out
Ken Shirriff's blog
Interesting double-poly latches inside AMD's vintage LANCE Ethernet chip
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an...
11 months ago
I've studied a lot of chips from the 1970s and 1980s, so I usually know what to expect.
But an Ethernet chip from 1982 had something new: a strange layer of yellow wiring on the die.
After some study, I learned that the yellow wiring is a second layer of resistive polysilicon,...
Arduino Blog
Transform trash into treasure with the DIY Bottle Plotter
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline...
3 months ago
Manufacturers put a lot of effort into their packaging (there is an entire engineering discipline just for that) and some of it can be quite beautiful. But it usually still ends up in the landfill or, at best, in a recycling center. However, if you’re the type of person who can...
Posts on Made of...
Software Engineers should keep lab notebooks
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike...
over a year ago
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Dawn of Hybrid Layer 2 Protocols
over a year ago
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
Op-Amp Helper PCB
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
a year ago
A PCB for breadboards to make working with op-amps easier.
Arduino Blog
This DIY guitar transmitter sends digital audio to the amp
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer....
4 months ago
When on stage, most guitarists will simply run a long cable from their guitar to the amp or mixer. But that cable can become tangled or get in the way, which is a problem for some of the more animated musicians out there. Wireless transmitters exist for them to express themselves...
./techtipsy
I held a talk about my self-hosting adventure!
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up...
a year ago
There are two reasons why I haven’t written much lately, and one of them is that I was cooking up a
talk about self-hosting, more specifically my own self-hosting adventure (the other one is the Steam Deck, more about
that in the future).
The talk took place on May 25th 2023 at...
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
Compiling Handbrake CLI on Debian Lenny
In this post I will show you how to compile Handbrake for Debian Lenny. Please
note that although...
over a year ago
In this post I will show you how to compile Handbrake for Debian Lenny. Please
note that although the Handbrake GUI version does compile on Lenny, it crashes
with a segmentation fault like this:
Gtk: gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -5
and height...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
Arduino Blog
Bringing Quake to Arduino: a game-changing project by Nicola Wrachien
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon...
2 months ago
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon Labs, a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world and long-time Arduino partner – has now tackled an even bigger challenge: porting Quake, the...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Attach a running process to a new terminal
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an...
over a year ago
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don’t want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use...
./techtipsy
Turning leftover PC parts into a decent gaming PC
Introduction
About a year ago, I bought an used PC based off of
a Lenovo Erazer X510. It had a...
over a year ago
Introduction
About a year ago, I bought an used PC based off of
a Lenovo Erazer X510. It had a dual-core Intel Pentium
G3220 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a crappy Codegen 400W power supply and a 60GB SSD. I added an Nvidia GTX 1050 and just like
that, a budget gaming PC was born. My...
lcamtuf’s thing
Building a phosphorescence detector
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in...
3 weeks ago
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in the wild.
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...
4 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...
./techtipsy
The Fedora Linux starter pack: everything you need for a smooth experience
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh,...
2 months ago
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh, big deal!
It’s stable in day-to-day use, ships with up-to-date software, and the software selection is adequate out of the box.
It also ships with a fresh Linux kernel version1,...
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.
Louwrentius
Experiences running ZFS on Ubuntu Linux 12.04
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start...
over a year ago
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start becoming an issue. The thing is that the license under which ZFS is released does not permit it to be used in the Linux kernel. That's quite unfortunate, but there is hope. There is a...
Home on Erik...
The hardest challenge about becoming a manager
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I...
over a year ago
Note: this post is full of pseudo-psychology and highly speculative content. Like most fun stuff!
I became a manager back in 2009. Being a developer is fun. You have this very tangible way to measure yourself.
computers are bad
2023-12-05 vhf omnidirectional range
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a...
a year ago
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a measurement that the technology does not provide. The
answer to this conundrum is, as is so often the case, history. The "range"
refers not to the radio equipment but to the space...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: Data General/One (and the worst LCD in the world)
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't...
8 months ago
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't collect interesting or unusual x86 laptops, like the Brother GeoBook NB-60 (I finally tracked down a mostly working NB-80C, the top of the line model, which will be the subject of a...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to resin casting
At one point in my life, I penned an epic, 110-page opus on hobby manufacturing.
yesterday
At one point in my life, I penned an epic, 110-page opus on hobby manufacturing.
Style over Substance
My grandfather’s Rolleiflex 2.8D twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family...
over a year ago
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family cameras it had disappeared into a closet decades ago and was only found again recently. When he gave it to me, he told me there was another classic camera he wanted to give me – if...
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
Good Enough
Cool URLs Don’t Die
If you've been reading our newsletter (and you should be reading our newsletter) you will have seen...
a year ago
If you've been reading our newsletter (and you should be reading our newsletter) you will have seen that I've been building some printers.
This is actually the resurrection of a project I began in 2012 with the help of some colleagues, and while I've been updating it, it's been...
Notes on software...
How I run a software book club
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We...
6 months ago
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We read through Designing Data-Intensive
Applications, Database
Internals,
Systems
Performance, and
we just started Understanding Software
Dynamics.
The DDIA discussions were...
Jonas Hietala
Design for Hackers has arrived!
Design for Hackers
It’s here! After about a month of waiting I’ve finally gotten the book that will...
over a year ago
Design for Hackers
It’s here! After about a month of waiting I’ve finally gotten the book that will make me a design god! Or at least make me aware of something called design. Joking aside I’m really terrible at design and making things look good. Admittedly my programming art...
Willem's Blog
Climbing Mount Etna
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
over a year ago
Climbing Mount Etna, an active volcano on Sicily Italy.
Notes on software...
Exploring Postgres's arena allocator by writing an HTTP server from scratch
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a month ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Jonas Hietala
fish_update_completions in Slackware 14.1
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically...
over a year ago
I’ve been trying out fish shell lately. A cool feature with fish is that it can automatically generate completions by parsing the installed man pages by running fish_update_completions.
Unfortunately this is what I got:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File...
Arduino Blog
Harness the power and connectivity of your Arduino UNO R4 WiFi with this IoT lamp
It can be tough to get started with building an Internet of Things (IoT) project from the ground-up,...
7 months ago
It can be tough to get started with building an Internet of Things (IoT) project from the ground-up, as getting connected, serving a webpage, and managing other devices can all be a challenge to a beginner. This is why the YouTuber known as “Mario’s Ideas” made an end-to-end...
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
2023-02-07 secret government telephone numbers
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be...
a year ago
Very nearly a year ago, I wrote a popular article about secret military
telephone
buttons.
To be clear, the "secret" here was a joke and these buttons are in fact well
documented. The buttons I was talking about were the AUTOVON call precedence
buttons, used for a five-level...
./techtipsy
This page looks better in the app
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing...
over a year ago
You’re a web developer at a social media company that has recently made a big push for
modernizing their frontend for the mobile-first era. It has taken a lot of time and effort from many people.
Countless challenges, arguments, testing.
The release is near. You’re probably a bit...
./techtipsy
No HDMI port on the ThinkPad T430? No problem!
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is...
5 months ago
The ThinkPad T430 has a few options for running it with an external display:
VGA port, which is pretty much obsolete at this point
mini DisplayPort connector on the laptop itself
DVI or DisplayPort on a dock
The mini DisplayPort port has annoyed me for as long as I’ve had this...
Matt Blewitt
Service Objects in Rails
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects,...
over a year ago
Let’s kick off 2016 with a whistle-stop tour of one of my favourite
OO approaches, Service Objects, in the context of Rails.
Vitalik Buterin's...
DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters
over a year ago
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.
detreville
Newsletter 1: What's next?
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
a year ago
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
Louwrentius
Release of PPSS - the Parallel Processing Shell Script
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use...
over a year ago
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use of the current multi-core CPUs. It will detect the number
of available CPUs and start a thread for each CPU core.
This script is build with the goal to be very easy to use. Also,...
Home on Erik...
Annoying blog post
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which...
over a year ago
I spent a couple of hours this weekend going through some pull requests and issues to Annoy, which is an open source C++/Python library for Approximate Nearest Neighbor search.
I set up Travis-CI integration and spent some time on one of the issues that multiple people had...
computers are bad
2023-08-19 meanwhile elsewhere
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard...
a year ago
I had meant to write something today, but I'm just getting over a case of the
COVID and had a hard time getting to it. Instead I did the yard work, edited
and uploaded a YouTube video, and then spewed out a Cohost thread as long as a
blog post. So in lieu of your regularly...
Notes on software...
Interpreting Go
After spending some time at work on tooling for keeping documentation
in sync with Go struct...
over a year ago
After spending some time at work on tooling for keeping documentation
in sync with Go struct definitions I had enough exposure to Go's
built-in parsing package that next steps were clear: write an
interpreter. It's a great way to get more comfortable with a
language's
AST.
In...
Applied Cartography
Bluesky is good
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for...
a week ago
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for the dubious title of "Twitter's successor" and landed on Bluesky as being my favorite, perhaps less out of its ostensible inherent virtues and more out of the size of its...
Jonas Hietala
Goals for Autumn 2016
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read...
over a year ago
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read the book 59 seconds which among other things presented a way of structuring goals I will try out. In short you should divide your main goal into 5 subgoals with a date of completion,...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
Posts on Made of...
Performance engineering, profilers, and seeing the invisible
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of...
a year ago
I was recently introduced to the paper “Seeing the Invisible: Perceptual-Cognitive Aspects of Expertise” by Gary Klein and Robert Hoffman. It’s excellent and I recommend you read it when you have a chance.
Klein and Hoffman discuss the ability of experts to “see what is not...
Simply Explained
Make Your Garage Door Opener Smart: Shelly 1, ESPHome and Home Assistant
I've been adding more and more devices to my smart home lately, so naturally, my garage door opener...
over a year ago
I've been adding more and more devices to my smart home lately, so naturally, my garage door opener had to follow. But instead of swapping it out for a new unit, I used a Shelly 1 and a cheap door contact sensor to make it smart for less than $20!It runs ESPHome (open-source, no...
Posts on Made of...
Some musings on ORMs
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application,...
over a year ago
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application, particularly a web-app, has a love/hate relationship with their ORM, or object-relational mapper.
On the one hand, ORMs are vastly more pleasant to work with than code that constructs...
latest projects -...
LED Industrial Piercing
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
a year ago
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
Old Vintage...
An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at...
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than...
9 months ago
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), Apple sales databases, two online services — the maligned Mac Prodigy client,...
Willem's Blog
Helping people with free software
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
over a year ago
This week I helped a man with repairing and reinstalling his computer with Debian GNU/Linux.
Good Enough
TIL: Victory Symbol
We noticed that the victory symbol at the bottom of our homepage looked different in Chrome than...
a year ago
We noticed that the victory symbol at the bottom of our homepage looked different in Chrome than Safari––it was playing smart and rendered the unicode character as an emoji. Lettini found a fix though! Append this string of code to the symbol: ︎.
So ✌︎ renders...
Good Enough
How We Made A Good Enough Zine
We made a zine!
The first issue was released in August, and I finished the second issue just last...
a year ago
We made a zine!
The first issue was released in August, and I finished the second issue just last week. Right now, a hundred copies are on their way from the printer to me (update: they've just arrived!). Today I'd like to share the story of how this zine came about.
(Sorry for...
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,...
Notes on software...
Why (and how) to read books
The last time I read for fun was in elementary school. Since college I
knew I must read more, but I...
over a year ago
The last time I read for fun was in elementary school. Since college I
knew I must read more, but I never forced myself to build the
habit. Then three years ago I spent time around my brother and a
coworker who were avid readers. This "peer pressure" helped me get
started.
Since...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism
over a year ago
watchTowr Labs -...
We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding...
3 months ago
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding discoveries.
Summary
What started out as a bit of fun between colleagues while avoiding the Vegas heat and $20 bottles of water in our Black Hat hotel rooms - has now seemingly...
Arduino Blog
Zoo elephants get a musical toy to enrich their lives
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course,...
2 weeks ago
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course, there is a lot to be said about the morality of keeping those animals in captivity. So, good zoos put a lot of effort into keeping their animals healthy and happy. For more...
Azad's Blog
Traveling with Apple Vision Pro
The Vision Pro has quickly become an essential item that I take onto every flight. It’s a fantastic...
2 months ago
The Vision Pro has quickly become an essential item that I take onto every flight. It’s a fantastic device to travel with—Be it by train or by plane, it offers an unparalleled opportunity to selectively tune out your environment and sink into an engaging activity like watching a...
Louwrentius
My solar-powered blog is now on Lithium Iron Phosphate
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi -...
a year ago
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi - escalated into a full-blown off-grid solar setup, large enough to power the computer I use at the moment to write this update1. In this update, I want to discuss my battery...
Notes on software...
Make your own way
Over the years, I have repeatedly felt like I missed the timing for a
meetup or an IRC group or...
12 months ago
Over the years, I have repeatedly felt like I missed the timing for a
meetup or an IRC group or social media in general. I'd go to a meetup
every so often but I'd never make a meaningful connection with people,
whereas everyone else knew each other. I'd join an IRC group and...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Drawing
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a...
over a year ago
In my last post I wrote about some ideas and projects I have and how it’s a little bit too much at a time, so now I’m going to try something new here. In the beginning of every week I’ll declare something I’ll be focusing on and then that’s the only thing I should focus on on my...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON path parser
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return...
over a year ago
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return only results in a
list where the a column is an object that contains a
field b that is set to the value 12. What would a
filter(jsonPath, equals, listOfObjects) function...
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
Back to Training
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool;...
over a year ago
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool; we have linear algebra which is pretty interesting, we have a java course where we’re going to make a game (!) and one about structures and algorithms. Pretty promising but we’ll...
Jonas Hietala
How I made a kick-ass cover for my self-published book
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all,...
over a year ago
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all, we judge the book by the cover.
And I did it the universally recommended way:
I hired a designer.
Simple, right?
But real talk; it’s not exactly that simple and I did a bunch of...
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...
Style over Substance
How to use a Phase One H20 digital back on a medium format Hasselblad V camera (500EL/M)
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my...
over a year ago
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my Hasselblad 500EL/M medium format camera. Or, simply put, I bought an expensive old gadget for my even older analog camera, making it a digital camera. A gadget that was released in the...
Louwrentius
Building a RAID 6 array of mixed drives
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect...
over a year ago
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect movies in full DVD or HD quality and so I need some
storage.
I decided to build myself a NAS box based on Debian Etch. Samba is used to
allow clients to access the data. The machine...
Jonas Hietala
Beebop The Island Hopper
It’s here! The stuff of dreams, an entry for the epic Ludum Dare 17 has been made! For those who...
over a year ago
It’s here! The stuff of dreams, an entry for the epic Ludum Dare 17 has been made! For those who don’t know it’s a 48 hour game making competition which actually is pretty silly. Even more silly is my two hours of commitment yesterday but late this night at about 03:05 I am now,...
Matt Blewitt
What Is a Senior Engineer, Anyway?
I’ve been having a bunch of conversations with my team about our career ladder, and what it means to...
a month ago
I’ve been having a bunch of conversations with my team about our career ladder, and what it means to be “senior” in a software engineering context. It’s a little different in every company, but here is my view.
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240102
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
11 months ago
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Birchtree
The future simply has more computers (members post)
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers...
5 days ago
Glasses and headsets and computers, oh my! Why the future continues to be all about adding computers to our lives, not replacing anything.
Willem's Blog
Your own addressbook and calendar cloud
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data...
over a year ago
You can setup a CardDAV/CalDAV server to manage your own contacts, addressbook, agenda and task data and share it between your devices.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering the barrel shifter circuit on the Intel 386 processor die
The Intel 386 processor (1985) was a large step from the 286 processor, moving x86 to a 32-bit...
a year ago
The Intel 386 processor (1985) was a large step from the 286 processor, moving x86 to a 32-bit architecture.
The 386 also dramatically improved the performance of shift and rotate operations by adding a
"barrel shifter", a circuit that can shift by multiple bits in one step.
The...
Electronics etc…
Measuring the HP 11720A Pulse Modulator and Coax Cables
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse Modulator
Inside the HP 11720A
Measurement Setup for a Quick Testing Session
Pin Modulator Power Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Loss Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Power Measurements with...
Ian's Blog
Having a Website Used to Be Fun
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that...
a month ago
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that thought alone makes me feel old, but going back through the old snapshots of my websites made me feel a profound feeling of longing for a time when having a website used to be a novel...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the...
10 months ago
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the 1970s.
This article provides an introductory guide to reverse-engineering CMOS circuits, using this chip as an
example.
Although the chip looks like a tangle of lines at first,
its large...
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
Jonas Hietala
2022 in review
A bit late, but it’s time for my yearly review. It’s something I like doing for myself and it’s nice...
a year ago
A bit late, but it’s time for my yearly review. It’s something I like doing for myself and it’s nice to see that despite a tough year I’ve done some good things.
2022 Non-Geek Achievements
We got our third child!
This time we got a girl to complement our two boys, and I love them...
Avestura's Blog
What is the type of Type?
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
over a year ago
Should type of `Type` be also `Type`? Or is there an alternative?
Good Enough
TIL: Rails has_one Nested Attributes Tweaking
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things...
a year ago
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things caught me off guard.
has_one Nested Form Sending id Attribute
In this case I have a nested form that is in a has_one relationship with the parent model.
I think this is a common thing...
On Life and Lisp
Vulkan 1.3 on the M1 in 1 month
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the...
6 months ago
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the M1! The new “Honeykrisp” driver is
the first conformant
Vulkan® for Apple hardware on any operating system, implementing the
full 1.3 spec without “portability”...
Applied Cartography
Bozos
Kevin Twohy has a list of heuristics for new projects/clients, and my favorite is simple:
No Bozos....
a month ago
Kevin Twohy has a list of heuristics for new projects/clients, and my favorite is simple:
No Bozos. Simple policy. No exceptions. You know it when you see it.
Every founder has a story about the time that they ignored the red flags and bent over backwards for a particularly...
Posts on Made of...
wpa_supplicant: GUI and wpa_action
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on...
over a year ago
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on the subject. (Actually, I pretty much made both of them while reading documentation in order to write it, and have been lame about writing them up).
Using wpa_gui It turns out that...
Home on Erik...
Books I consumed in 2017
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a...
over a year ago
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a teenager, but it has slowly deteriorated to maybe 20-30 books, at most. And I don't even finish all of them because life is too short!
Neil Madden
CVE-2022-21449: Psychic Signatures in Java
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to...
over a year ago
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to get out of trouble by showing an identity card which is actually completely blank. Of course, this being Doctor Who, the card is really made out of a special “psychic paper“, which...
Jonas Hietala
Back to lazy.nvim
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim...
6 months ago
Around a month ago I had an affair with rocks.nvim.
It was fun, but I’m back together with lazy.nvim again.
This is a short post to explain why—at this point in time—the grass wasn’t greener on the other side.
Problems with rocks.nvim
Too many weird issues.
I had quite a few...
Notes on software...
Exploring PL/pgSQL: Strings, arrays, recursion, and parsing JSON
Next in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Implementing a Forth-like interpreter
PostgreSQL comes with a...
over a year ago
Next in exploring PL/pgSQL:
Implementing a Forth-like interpreter
PostgreSQL comes with a builtin imperative programming language called
PL/pgSQL. I used to think this language was scary because it has a bit
more adornment than your usual language does. But looking deeper,...
Matt Mullenweg
My Freedom of Speech
WP Engine has filed hundreds pages of legal documents seeking an injunction against me and...
2 months ago
WP Engine has filed hundreds pages of legal documents seeking an injunction against me and Automattic. They say this is about community or some nonsense, but if you look at the core, what they’re trying to do is ask a judge to curtail my First Amendment rights. The First...
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...
Louwrentius
Unattended automatic installation of Linux nvidia binary driver
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver....
over a year ago
As part of an unattended installation, it was necessary to install a binary
nvidia graphics driver. This is a manual proces by default. However, it can be
done fully automatic:
prerequisite: install xserver-xorg-dev package or similar xorg development
package.
sh NVIDIA-.run -q...
Simply Explained
Tracking gas usage with ESPHome, Home Assistant, and TCRT5000
In 2019, I built an energy monitor to keep track of our electricity consumption. Then, in 2021, Home...
over a year ago
In 2019, I built an energy monitor to keep track of our electricity consumption. Then, in 2021, Home Assistant added an Energy Management feature that keeps track of electricity and gas usage. So naturally, I had to make my gas meter smart as well.
Arduino Blog
Can this tiny lawn mower robot cut it in the real world?
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down...
6 months ago
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down and consumer trust goes up. They work a bit like Roomba vacuums and pathfinding sophistication varies from one model to the next. But even the most basic models are still a lot...
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...
Louwrentius
ZFS performance on HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 G1610T
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your...
over a year ago
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your own ZFS-based NAS. The benchmarks I've performed seem to confirm this.
The Microserver Gen8 has nice features such as:
iLO (KVM over IP with dedicated network interface)
support...
Home on Erik...
Headcount goals, feature factories, and when to hire those mythical 10x people
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the...
over a year ago
When I started building up a tech team for Better, I made a very conscious decision to pay at the high end to get people. I thought this made more sense: they cost a bit more money to hire, but output usually more than compensates for it.
Simply Explained
Shelly 2.5 + ESPHome: potential fire hazard + fix
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin...
over a year ago
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin will be short-circuited and cause the unit to heat up significantly, creating a potential fire hazard!
Matt Mullenweg
Observer Article
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More...
a month ago
Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly writes for the Observer, WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Is ‘More Energized’ Than Ever Amid WP Engine Battle.
Jonas Hietala
The I'm Great quote
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though...
over a year ago
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though the bookstore had a snakelike queue similar to the Jörmungandr (the snake that encircled the earth in nordic mythology) and our new programming course started. This time it’s Ada’s...
Computer Ads from...
OS-9 Bonus Content
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
3 months ago
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
Jonas Hietala
A friendly game of Twilight Imperium
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We were six players, most had played the third edition before. As I was quite hyped before the game, I had read up on the rules, watched a let’s play or two and listened to a podcast...
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...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
Electronics etc…
Cable Length Measurement with an HP 8007B Pulse Generator
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Notes on software...
Controlled HTML select element in React has weird default UX
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Arduino Blog
This Halo helmet features an adjustable-transparency RGB-backlit visor
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the...
3 weeks ago
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the Needler. But the armor, such as the Spartan armor worn by Master Chief, is arguably the most recognizable. The helmets are especially cool, and LeMaster Tech put his own unique spin...
Home on Erik...
We're hiring at Better
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the...
over a year ago
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the team here in NYC lately—the tech team has actually grown from 35 to 60 in just ~3 months.
Matt Mullenweg
Welcoming Harper
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah...
a month ago
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah Potter and Harper to join Automattic. Harper is a super-fast (way faster than LanguageTool and Grammarly), local English grammar checker. The technology is nascent, but I’m very...
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...
Home on Erik...
Blogroll
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is...
over a year ago
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is funny.
I follow a few hundred blogs using Feedly and Reeder and have been reading a few hundred thousand blog posts over the last 10 years.
Home on Erik...
The mathematical principles of management
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's...
over a year ago
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's the lack of first principles thinking. Basically it's a ton of heuristics. And heuristics are great, but when you present heuristics as true objectives, it kind of clouds the...
Jonas Hietala
Up like a Sun, Down like a Pancake
I was looking forward to this weekend, for Ludum Dare and for me to finally make a game again. But...
over a year ago
I was looking forward to this weekend, for Ludum Dare and for me to finally make a game again. But it just don’t feel right to me. I’m not prepared, I feel a little bit stressed and I don’t really have faith in my game so I’m gonna step down this one as well. But it’s fine, Ludum...
Computer Ads from...
Ergotron's MacTilt
MacTilt is the Solution
3 weeks ago
Good Enough
The Space Between Us
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical...
a year ago
Good Enough is a fully-remote team, and I think it's safe to say that we'll never have a physical office. I've been working remotely for more than ten years, and overall I really like it. I love the flexibility it affords, being more present with our families, and that my...
Jonas Hietala
The Top Idea
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple...
over a year ago
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple lua, later perl, which announced when a new day9 episode has come. Later I expanded it to search for new manga episodes, but now it’s broken and unfinished.
In an attempt to learn...
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