Vitalik Buterin's...
Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Writing Home Assistant automations using Genservers in Elixir
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its...
2 months ago
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its beginner friendly and feature rich UI,
support for a ton of different devices and integrations,
and there’s a bunch of ways to create automations.
But there’s no engine for writing...
Posts on Made of...
BlackHat/DEFCON 2011 talk: Breaking out of KVM
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the...
over a year ago
I’ve posted the final slides from my talk this year at DEFCON and Black Hat, on breaking out of the KVM Kernel Virtual Machine on Linux.
Virtunoid: Breaking out of KVM from Nelson Elhage [Edited 2011-08-11] The code is now available. It should be fairly well-commented, and...
Jonas Hietala
My MCU movie ranking
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge...
over a year ago
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge MCU fan before doing the same re-watch for Infinity War, but after that I became one.
For fun I tried to rank the movies as I saw them, this is some sort of accounting my rankings...
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Notes on software...
Notes on running Electron
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Arduino Blog
Track the location history of your devices in Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether...
7 months ago
Asset tracking has become increasingly crucial across various industries and applications. Whether you’re a logistics company monitoring your fleet, a conservation organization tracking wildlife, or an individual passionate about outdoor adventures, the ability to track and...
computers are bad
2024-03-09 the purple streetscape
Across the United States, streets are taking on a strange hue at night. Purple.
Purple streetlights...
10 months ago
Across the United States, streets are taking on a strange hue at night. Purple.
Purple streetlights have been reported in Tampa, Vancouver, Wichita, Boston.
They're certainly in evidence here in Albuquerque, where Coal through downtown
has turned almost entirely to mood lighting....
Good Enough
How We Built Unique Social Preview Images for Pika
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find...
10 months ago
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find your own place on the internet.
Along with a nice place on the internet, when you share links to your blog we want them to represent your internet home,
which you've likely taken...
Avestura's Blog
How to change visibility in massive GitHub organizations like EpicGames?
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
over a year ago
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
Applied Cartography
Order, Tailwind, DRY
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating...
2 weeks ago
(Order in the CSS rule sense, not the metaphysical sense.)
The time has come to begin exfiltrating some higher-traffic, higher-leverage parts of Buttondown's admin UI away from the autogenerated Django admin and into some more bespoke components.
Take, for instance, this rather...
Willem's Blog
The best bike computer app: Cyclemeter
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a...
over a year ago
Collect advanced bike ride data using your smartphone connected to external Bluetooth sensors and a steer mounted display.
Applied Cartography
Notes from April
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past...
8 months ago
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past two years as an independent technologist.
On the media side of things: brief words on Murderville (meh), The Parallax View (incredible), This is Personal (meh), Cribsheet...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Filters
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous...
a year ago
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous post: filtering dangerous particles and fumes.
This is mostly covered by the kit, but I was missing some parts from the print it forward and the kit didn’t include a HEPA...
Applied Cartography
Vibes and years
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've...
10 months ago
XH asks:
How do indie developers/small teams keep track of and prioritize long-term roadmaps?
I've been basically work off my gut + Feeling of the Day for the past few years, and that's getting a bit unsustainable
Buttondown's roadmapping has existed for the past three years in a...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 16: Explore all available articles of a feed
3 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Coconut Cauliflower Curry Mash
It’s time for lesson 3. I made the mistake of not planning for something to augment the mash with,...
over a year ago
It’s time for lesson 3. I made the mistake of not planning for something to augment the mash with, but a simple salad had to do:
It was okay. Girlfriend gave it 5/10 and I gave it a 6/10, a higher rating would be possible if there was something else to eat it with.
Willem's Blog
Using the reMarkable paper tablet
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet...
over a year ago
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet is therefore quite remarkable!
Computer Ads from...
Dipco's Easy Reader
"Sight for Sore Eyes"
2 months ago
Matt Mullenweg
Age-gating
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and...
a month ago
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer. See also: Australia’s...
./techtipsy
Oversimplified guide into snapshots on the btrfs filesystem
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files...
over a year ago
Friday afternoon. You’re trying out a script that you wrote to mass-rename and
move some files around. You finish the script and test it out.
Oops.
All the files now have all the wrong names, and some have been randomly moved
10 folders deep. It’s a mess.
And you didn’t make a...
Louwrentius
Is the iPhone OS a threat to our freedom?
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full...
over a year ago
There is one fundamental flaw with both the iPhone and the iPad. As a user,
you do not have full control over your device. You can only install or run
software that is approved by Apple.
This is something that is unprecedented. All major platforms, Windows, Linux,
Mac OS X do...
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Intel Edison
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
6 months ago
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
Arduino Blog
Get notified of impending floods with this Arduino Nano 33 IoT-based display
As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric...
2 months ago
As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric rivers have only intensified, and with them, large amounts of flooding that pose serious risks to life and property. Jude Pullen and Pete Milne, therefore, have responded by creating a...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Wrap-up
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to...
10 months ago
It’s finally done™.
I’ve built a VORON that prints reliably and I’ve modded it enough to be able to leave it alone for a while, so I think it’s time to wrap up this build series with a little retrospective.
Building the printer was really fun and rewarding
I’ve always seen...
Jonas Hietala
Language spec in code blocks
Even though I just recently restyled the blog and wasn’t going to touch it, there was one thing I...
a year ago
Even though I just recently restyled the blog and wasn’t going to touch it, there was one thing I wanted to add, but it felt a little bothersome so I skipped it.
It was to display the highlighted language in code blocks:
The code spec displays what programming language the code...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Build start
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was...
a year ago
The end goal, as rendered by Autodesk’s online viewer
I’m not sure where it came from, but it was suddenly very important that I got myself a 3D printer.
Maybe it was an important insight, but it maybe it was only a fix idea I got that somehow became this all-import...
Louwrentius
The iPhone, iPad and iOS are powering a revolution
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people...
over a year ago
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people who make them are maybe even dumber. Because they
can't seem to figure out how to create a computer that the majority of people
understand.
When the original macintosh arrived at...
./techtipsy
DIY cloud gaming setup with VFIO, Parsec and AMD
This is a follow-up to my previous post where I covered
the VFIO setup in general. For many people...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up to my previous post where I covered
the VFIO setup in general. For many people that would have been good enough, but my goal with this setup was to have a
powerful gaming setup that I could access from my living room PC with 20 meters of Ethernet cables...
Louwrentius
Performance monitoring using dstat
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is...
over a year ago
I'd like to introduce the utility 'dstat'. Dstat provides detailed statistics
about what is currently happening on your Linux box.
Dstat allows you to monitor the system load, disk troughput, disk io, network
bandwith, and many more items.
Dstat is so valuable because it...
Louwrentius
Apple is killing off the optical drive just like the floppy disk
With the release of the new MacBook Air we are one step closer to killing off
the cd-rom and the...
over a year ago
With the release of the new MacBook Air we are one step closer to killing off
the cd-rom and the dvd. As with the previous MacBook Air, this device has no
optical drive. And that is a good thing. People do not need an optical drive.
You have the network and you have USB disks....
Notes on software...
The limitations of LLMs, or why are we doing RAG?
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
6 months ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Arduino Blog
Monitoring the weather with an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010-based station
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to...
8 months ago
Being able to monitor the weather in real-time is great for education, research, or simply to analyze how the local climate changes over time. This project by Hackster.io user Pradeep explores how he was able to design a simple station outdoors that could communicate with a...
Posts on Made of...
Why scons is cool
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not...
over a year ago
I’ve recently started playing with scons a little for some small personal projects. It’s not perfect, but I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that it’s a probably far better choice than make in many cases. The main exceptions would be cases where you need to integrate into legacy...
./techtipsy
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in...
a year ago
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no
expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and
start working on...
Willem's Blog
Impact of training
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and...
a year ago
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and data analysis on my performance in the Fietselfstedentocht 2023.
./techtipsy
How to start your self-hosting adventure: a high-level overview
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in...
over a year ago
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in /r/homelab, storage measured in terabytes (or even petabytes) over
at /r/datahoarder, all the different services that people host over at
/r/selfhosted. This can be a bit...
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
Simply Explained
Building Air Quality Sensor: Luftdaten + Home Assistant
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the...
over a year ago
Luftdaten (now Sensor Community) is a global sensor network that measures air quality around the world. Best of all: it's open-source and anyone can build a sensor.I was very curious to see the air quality in my neighborhood, so I decided to build myself a sensor. And of course,...
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.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry...
6 months ago
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals."
The original Pentium was followed by the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, and others, spawning a long-running brand of high-performance processors, Intel's...
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.
Simply Explained
ESP32: Tips to increase battery life
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes...
over a year ago
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes great responsibility. In this post, I’ll outline how I got an ESP32 to run for over 15 weeks (and counting) on a single 1000mAh battery.
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 2. system calls
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e...
over a year ago
Previously in emulator basics:
1. a stack and register machine
In this post we'll extend x86e to
support the exit and write Linux system calls, or syscalls. A syscall
is a function handled by the kernel that allows the process to
interact with data outside of its memory....
Posts on Made of...
Implementing a declarative mini-language in the C preprocessor
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time,...
over a year ago
Last time, I announced Check Plus, a declarative language for defining Check tests in C. This time, I want to talk about the tricks I used to implement a declarative minilanguage using the C preprocessor (and some GCC extensions).
The Problem We want to write some toplevel...
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 1. a stack and register machine
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating...
over a year ago
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
2. system calls
In this post we'll create a small virtual machine in JavaScript and
use it to run a simple C program compiled...
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...
3 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...
Jonas Hietala
Balls
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god...
over a year ago
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I’ll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I’m not sure it’s very addictive but it’s actually okay! =D
Balls is a game about… balls. Well...
computers are bad
2024-01-16 the tacnet tracker
Previously on Deep Space Nine, I wrote that "the mid-2000s were an unsettled
time in mobile...
11 months ago
Previously on Deep Space Nine, I wrote that "the mid-2000s were an unsettled
time in mobile computing."
Today, I want to share a little example. Over the last few weeks, for various
personal reasons, I have been doing a lot of reading about embedded operating
systems and ISAs for...
Jonas Hietala
Grand Thief Arto
Here’s me and Li’s game for our school course. The game isn’t tweaked too much but it’s a game with...
over a year ago
Here’s me and Li’s game for our school course. The game isn’t tweaked too much but it’s a game with some fairly cool ideas.
Grand Thief Arto
Instructions
Your goal is to collect loot until you can escape through the entry point when you’ve collected enough to complete the...
Arduino Blog
Slot machine game harnesses the beauty of Nixie tubes
Everyone loves the look of Nixie tubes, with their glowing orange characters made of curvy filament....
2 months ago
Everyone loves the look of Nixie tubes, with their glowing orange characters made of curvy filament. But we usually only see makers using Nixie tubes for one purpose: clocks. That’s unfortunate, because they have a lot more potential, as illustrated by Bob Cascisa’s Nixie tube...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
3 months ago
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
Willem's Blog
Offline Music
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to...
over a year ago
People sometimes act suprised when I tell them about my music hobby, manually converting CD's to lossless audio files; there is some reason to this madness however!
computers are bad
2024-07-31 just disconnect the internet
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of...
5 months ago
So, let's say that a security vendor, we'll call them ClownStrike, accidentally
takes down most of their Windows install base with a poorly tested content
update. Rough day at the office, huh? There are lots of things you could say
about this, lots of reasons it happens this way,...
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: Signaling and Job Control
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read...
over a year ago
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 or part 2 if you’re new here)
For my final entry on termios, I will be looking at job control in the shell (i.e. backgrounding and foreground jobs) and the very closely related...
computers are bad
2023-08-07 STIRred AND SHAKEN
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps...
a year ago
In a couple of days, I pack up my bags to head for DEFCON. In a rare moment of
pre-planning, perhaps spurred by boredom, I looked through the schedule to see
what's in store in the world of telephony. There is a workshop on SS7, of
course [1], plenty of content on cellular, but...
Notes on software...
Tail call elimination
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated...
over a year ago
In this post we'll explore what tail calls are, why they are useful,
and how they can be eliminated in an interpreter, a compiler targeting
C++, and a compiler targeting LLVM IR.
Tail calls
A tail call is a function call made at the end of a block that
returns the value of the...
Posts on Made of...
CVE-2010-4258: Turning denial-of-service into privilege escalation
Dan Rosenberg recently released a privilege escalation bug for Linux, based on three different...
over a year ago
Dan Rosenberg recently released a privilege escalation bug for Linux, based on three different kernel vulnerabilities I reported recently. This post is about CVE-2010-4258, the most interesting of them, and, as Dan writes, the reason he wrote the exploit in the first place. In...
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...
Home on Erik...
Running Theano on EC2
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning...
over a year ago
Inspired by Sander Dieleman's internship at Spotify, I've been playing around with deep learning using Theano. Theano is this Python package that lets you define symbolic expressions (cool), does automatic differentiation (really cool), and compiles it down into bytecode to run...
Home on Erik...
Installing TensorFlow on AWS
Curious about Google's newly released TensorFlow? I don't have a beefy GPU machine, so I spent some...
over a year ago
Curious about Google's newly released TensorFlow? I don't have a beefy GPU machine, so I spent some time getting it to run on EC2. The steps on how to reproduce it are pretty brutal and I wouldn't recommend going through it unless you want to waste five hours of your live.
Style over Substance
DIY: Use an IKEA VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor in Home Assistant with ESPHome
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product...
over a year ago
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product line, one unit that stands out is the VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor. This cheap (just €9,99) sensor measures the air quality in your home, using a simple traffic light scheme to...
Computer Ads from...
The Grand Stand
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
a month ago
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
Louwrentius
overview of open-source load balancers
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview...
over a year ago
I was looking at open-source load balancing software and it seems that there isn't a nice overview except from this website, although many of the listed projects seem dead.
I've made a selection of products that seem to be relevant. The biggest problem with open-source software...
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,...
Jonas Hietala
Game Design Analysis: World of Goo
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is the second essay for the course Game Design and this thime I will be analysing the game World of Goo a bit.
The first level
The game is very simple. You begin with a structure and a few Goo balls, the charming balls bobbing around there, which you can drag...
Jonas Hietala
5 Years at Linköping's University
I recently finished my master’s degree (civilingenjör or civil engineering) at Linköping’s...
over a year ago
I recently finished my master’s degree (civilingenjör or civil engineering) at Linköping’s University. At first it felt like 5 years would be an eternity, but in hindsight it was over in a flash. my gut feeling is that I haven’t learnt or done anything of note, except you know...
Notes on software...
Is it worth writing about?
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and...
over a year ago
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and sharing the learning
process.
Professionals seem naturally to imagine a high bar for what
is worth writing about.
I think that's misguided. This article is not criticism of folks...
Jonas Hietala
The current Cybershard layout
This is the keyboard layout I’m using for my custom keyboard that I generated, printed, and...
a month ago
This is the keyboard layout I’m using for my custom keyboard that I generated, printed, and hand-wired.
It’s a minimalistic keyboard of 35 keys and features an integrated trackball on the right-hand side.
The keyboard layout started out as a direct copy of the T-34 keyboard...
Willem's Blog
The birth of a child
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor...
over a year ago
Witnessing the birth of a child changes a man, for science and curiosity I wore a biometric sensor capturing the impact of birth on yours truly.
Christian Selig
A free, 3D printable Meta Quest 3 stand
People were really kind and seemed to enjoy my 3D printable Apple Vision Pro stand, a stand I...
8 months ago
People were really kind and seemed to enjoy my 3D printable Apple Vision Pro stand, a stand I designed in Fusion 360 with the goal of being visually appealing and compact as it stored the headset vertically so it wouldn’t take up too much space on your desk.
Turns out there were...
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....
5 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...
Notes on software...
Interview With Phil of DataStation
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external interview. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
over a year ago
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
./techtipsy
Disabling the crappy Broadcom Bluetooth adapter in your ThinkPad T430 running Linux
You’ve disabled the boneheaded Lenovo WiFi adapter whitelist using a tool like
1vyrain, installed a...
over a year ago
You’ve disabled the boneheaded Lenovo WiFi adapter whitelist using a tool like
1vyrain, installed a better adapter like the
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260,
and found that Bluetooth is not working as intended on your ThinkPad T430
running Linux?
Here’s a guide on what you can...
computers are bad
2024-10-19 land art and isolation
Prescript: I originally started writing this with the intent to send it out to
my supporter's...
2 months ago
Prescript: I originally started writing this with the intent to send it out to
my supporter's newsletter, EYES ONLY, but it
got to be long and took basically all day so I feel like it deserves wider
circulation. You will have to tolerate that it begins in the more
conversational...
Louwrentius
Lustre and the risk of Serious Data Loss
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was...
over a year ago
Personally I have a weakness for big-ass storage. Say 'petabyte' and I'm
interested. So I was thinking about how you would setup a large, scalable
storage infrastructure. How should such a thing work?
Very simple: you should be able just to add hosts with some bad-ass huge...
Home on Erik...
Welcome Echo Nest!
In case you missed it, we just acquired a company called Echo Nest in Boston. These people have been...
over a year ago
In case you missed it, we just acquired a company called Echo Nest in Boston. These people have been obsessed with understanding music for the past 8 years since it was founded by Brian Whitman and Tristan Jehan out of MIT Medialab.
Arduino Blog
Arduino and Truesense partner to bring UWB technology to millions
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB)...
2 months ago
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, known for its innovative software and hardware solutions. This collaboration enhances our ecosystem of hardware products, software solutions, and cloud services,...
GitButler
The Future of Open Source
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating...
5 months ago
A GitHub founder's musings on the past, present and future of large groups of people collaborating on software in awesome ways.
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240102
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
a year ago
Some stats, updates, and whatnot
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Action Text Images in Atom Feeds
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed...
7 months ago
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed readers.
In fact, they weren't displaying in my own feed reader, which routes through Feedly.
I was sad.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this.
Compared our feed with a lot of atom...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Should there be demand-based recurring fees on ENS domains?
over a year ago
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.
./techtipsy
The hidden media play/pause/stop keys on the Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
ThinkPad keyboards were once well known for their great layouts, feel and
functionality. This...
8 months ago
ThinkPad keyboards were once well known for their great layouts, feel and
functionality. This included the media playback control keys.
On the ThinkPad T430, the new chiclet keyboard layout moved the media keys to
the function row. Still there, but less convenient to access.
The...
Willem's Blog
Linking Lemmid Store with kitchens
Designing backend servers to connect with external services is challenging as you need to take into...
over a year ago
Designing backend servers to connect with external services is challenging as you need to take into account unreliability and unpredictability.
Notes on software...
Writing a document database from scratch in Go: Lucene-like filters and indexes
In this post we'll write a rudimentary document database from scratch
in Go. In less than 500 lines...
over a year ago
In this post we'll write a rudimentary document database from scratch
in Go. In less than 500 lines of code we'll be able to support the
following interactions, inspired by Elasticsearch:
$ curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"name": "Kevin", "age": "45"}'...
Louwrentius
ZFS on Linux: monitor cache hit ratio
I'm performing some FIO random read 4k I/O benchmarks on a ZFS file system. So since I didn't trust...
over a year ago
I'm performing some FIO random read 4k I/O benchmarks on a ZFS file system. So since I didn't trust the numbers I got, I wanted to know how many of the IOPs I got were due to cache hits rather than disk hits.
This is why I wrote a small shell script called archhitratio.
Sample...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Deeper dive on cross-L2 reading for wallets and other use cases
a year ago
Louwrentius
Improving iSCSI Native Multi Pathing Round Robin performance
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must...
over a year ago
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must also upgrade your network hardware as well. You may even need to replace existing fiber optic cabling if it's not rated for 10 Gbit.
So I decided to still just go for plain old 1...
Louwrentius
Understanding the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server Autoinstaller
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation...
over a year ago
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation process. This includes support for 'preseeding' to create unattended (automated) installations of ubuntu.
the debian installer
With the introduction of Ubuntu Server 20.04 'Focal...
Jonas Hietala
My book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is done
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later...
over a year ago
My first commit on my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is from Dec 19, 2018, and now about 17 months later and 1006 more commits I’m finally done!
Well, I’m done with the online version at least. I still plan to create an e-book, a PDF and a paperback and who knows how long that will...
Ian's Blog
Securing Your GitHub Account
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account...
over a year ago
Let's talk about some of the simple & practical steps you can take to improve your GitHub account security.
There's plenty of good reasons why you should try to keep any online account safe, but I feel that GitHub deserves special attention among developers. With automation...
Notes on software...
Let's build a distributed Postgres proof of concept
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies...
over a year ago
What is CockroachDB under the hood? Take a look at
its go.mod
and notice a number of dependencies that do a lot of work: a
PostgreSQL wire protocol
implementation, a storage
layer, a Raft implementation
for distributed consensus. And not
part of go.mod but still building on 3rd...
Louwrentius
IKEA $50 VINDSTYRKA vs. $290 Dylos air quality monitor
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with...
a year ago
This is a brief article in which I compare the IKEA VINDSTYRKA $50 air quality monitor (PM2.5) with a $290 air quality monitor made by Dylos to see if it's any good.
Context
If you care about indoor air quality, you may already own a CO2 to determine if it's time to ventilate...
Jonas Hietala
The first (worst) post
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog...
over a year ago
Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here’s where I’ll outline what the blog will be about and maybe, if I’m dedicated, it won’t die before Christmas you think.
And sure, you’re right. I will run away to the corner in about two and a half months crying I never...
Willem's Blog
Syncing files seamlessly between smartphone and tablet
In order to optimise my workflow, I was looking for a way to seamlessly access the same files on...
over a year ago
In order to optimise my workflow, I was looking for a way to seamlessly access the same files on both my computer and smartphone. Read along to find out how I did it.
./techtipsy
Testing GPU passthrough on AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU
Introduction
Before we jump into all the nitty-gritty details, I’d like to go over what we are...
over a year ago
Introduction
Before we jump into all the nitty-gritty details, I’d like to go over what we are dealing with here since these topics
may be unfamiliar to you. VFIO is quite a niche topic and not everyone knows about it.
GPU passthrough: the process of allowing a VM...
Neil Madden
Regular JSON
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows...
a year ago
For better or worse, depending on your perspective, JSON has become a dominant data format and shows no signs of being replaced any time soon. There are good reasons for that: on the face of it, it provides a very simple format with just enough features to cover a lot of...
Opsbros
Saibah Securitah
It's always okay to buy the domain for the meme!
over a year ago
It's always okay to buy the domain for the meme!
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that...
2 months ago
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago except for all the aforementioned time and money. Yours truly is no exception.
a future article.) They existed in highly technical...
./techtipsy
I finally found an use case for my Raspberry Pi Model B+
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer...
over a year ago
You have probably heard about the Raspberry Pi. It’s a nice little affordable
single-board computer with a huge community using it for all sorts of projects.
I got my first Raspberry Pi, the Model B+,
during my first year at university, which was around the winter of...
Christian Selig
Introducing Juno for Apple Vision Pro
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little...
11 months ago
YouTube is probably one of the parts of the internet I consume the most, so I was more than a little sad when YouTube announced that they don’t have plans to build a visionOS app, and disabled the option to load the iPad app. This leaves you with Safari, and the website is okay,...
Matt Mullenweg
UH Magazine, Revisiting My Alma Mater
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political...
2 weeks ago
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Franisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University...
Louwrentius
Things you should consider when building a ZFS NAS
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many...
over a year ago
ZFS is a modern file system designed by Sun Microsystems, targeted at enterprise environments. Many features of ZFS also appeal to home NAS builders and with good reason. But not all features are relevant or necessary for home use.
I believe that most home users building their...
Willem's Blog
Supernova E3 Pro 2 dynamo powered headlight
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Consider the data product
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is...
2 months ago
The advice might seem dated these days, but I think the stair step approach to bootstrapping is evergreen:
It’s much easier to sell an add-on to an existing ecosystem like a WordPress plugin, a Shopify app, a Heroku add-on – they’re usually small things to build, relatively...
Notes on software...
Interpreting TypeScript
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript...
over a year ago
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript makes much of its functionality
available programmatically. In this post we'll use the TypeScript
compiler API to build an interpreter. We'll build off of a...
Notes on software...
Writing a SQL database from scratch in Go: 3. indexes
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions...
over a year ago
Previously in database basics:
1. SELECT, INSERT, CREATE and a REPL
2. binary expressions and WHERE filters
4. a database/sql driver
In this post, we extend gosql
to support indexes. We focus on the addition of PRIMARY
KEY constraints on table creation and some easy...
Arduino Blog
RIoT Secure joins Arduino’s SIPP as Gold Partner
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership...
7 months ago
We are excited to announce that RIoT Secure has joined Arduino’s System Integrators Partnership Program at the Gold level. Founded in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden, RIoT Secure is at the forefront of IoT security, especially in regards to resource-constrained microcontrollers,...
Arduino Blog
This disturbing Halloween doll was brought to life with Bottango
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near...
2 months ago
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near the top of the list. That extends beyond store-bought costumes and decorations to DIY projects. If you want an excuse to make something impractical, Halloween can provide that. And...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Capability makes your life simpler
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less...
5 months ago
If you can tolerate discomfort, then you can camp much lighter. Camping lighter means you spend less time and energy packing, setting-up, tearing down, and unpacking. The same goes for travel. Fewer clothes and shoes means less luggage to carry, manage, and lose. You can board...
Louwrentius
HP Proliant Microserver Gen10 as router or NAS
Introduction
In the summer of 2017, HP released the Proliant Microserver Gen10. This machine...
over a year ago
Introduction
In the summer of 2017, HP released the Proliant Microserver Gen10. This machine replaces the older Gen8 model.
For hobbyists, the Microserver always has been an interesting device for a custom home NAS build or as a router.
Let's find out if this is still the case....
Arduino Blog
Self-leveling workbench can travel without trouble
An actually level workbench is critical for many different jobs, such as pouring resin or...
6 months ago
An actually level workbench is critical for many different jobs, such as pouring resin or calibrating sensors. But it is difficult enough to level a stationary workbench and that becomes a nightmare for a workbench that needs to roll around a shop on casters, as shop floors...
Notes on software...
Learning a new codebase: hacking on nginx
I have never contributed to nginx. My C skills are 1/10. But
downloading the source, hacking it up,...
over a year ago
I have never contributed to nginx. My C skills are 1/10. But
downloading the source, hacking it up, compiling it, and running it
doesn't scare me. This post is to help you overcome your own fears
about doing so. Not necessarily because you should be running
out-of-tree diffs in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets
over a year ago
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...
Louwrentius
'lm-sensors: hardware monitoring with the w83627ehf module'
I have two systems that use the w83627ehf driver for hardware monitoring.
However, if this driver is...
over a year ago
I have two systems that use the w83627ehf driver for hardware monitoring.
However, if this driver is installed with a regular modprobe like:
modprobe w83627ehf
The result will be:
FATAL: Error inserting w83627ehf
(/lib/modules/2.6.28-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/hwmon/w83627ehf.ko):...
Applied Cartography
Using Cursor to port Django tests to pytest
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using...
4 months ago
When it comes to AI tooling, I am equal parts optimist and cynic. I have no moral qualm with using these tools (Supermaven is a pretty heavy part of my day-to-day work), but have found most tools quite bad by the metric of "do they make me more productive on Buttondown's code...
Jonas Hietala
Doing Stuff
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left...
over a year ago
The school and my life is trotting along. I’m handling the extra course fine, but instead I’ve left the standard math course behind a bit. Actually more than a bit but hopefully I’ll correct things later.
No my life is going along just fine, it almost feels like my life is runing...
Notes on software...
Be someone who does things
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to...
3 months ago
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to follow that up by saying that the only thing more important
than wanting to do something is to actually do something.
The most valuable trait you can develop for yourself is to...
Computer Ads from...
Mark Williams' C Programming System
What C did for Programming Mark Williams has done for C Programming
4 months ago
What C did for Programming Mark Williams has done for C Programming
Ken Shirriff's blog
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from...
10 months ago
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974?
Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)?
How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962.
The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized...
Home on Erik...
What I have been working on: Modal
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you...
over a year ago
Long story short: I'm working on a super cool tool called Modal. Please check it out — it lets you run things in the cloud without having to think about infrastructure. Scaling out, scheduling, containerization, using GPUs, setting up webhooks, and all kinds of other stuff.
Good Enough
Cosmic Maelstrom
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's...
a year ago
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's weird to be in this situation. Most of the Good Enough team are used to working on just one software at a time, focusing on steadily improving it. But right now we're doing the...
Home on Erik...
Domains for sale
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
over a year ago
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
Home on Erik...
ML at Twitter
I recently came across this paper describing how they do ML at Twitter.
TL;DR Their approach is...
over a year ago
I recently came across this paper describing how they do ML at Twitter.
TL;DR Their approach is pretty interesting. Everything is a Pig workflow and then they do everything as UDF's.
This approach seems pretty interesting.
Arduino Blog
Create your own affordable Arduino-powered smart glasses
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the...
8 months ago
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the world isn’t ready yet.” Now that more than a decade has passed, the world may finally be ready — especially with the omission of controversial features like video recording. If...
Jonas Hietala
Sat-E
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme...
over a year ago
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme this time around was Alone and the game I came up with is about a lonely satellite in space, kinda like Wall-E.
Sat-E
Instructions
Collect junk and other items for you to buy...
Louwrentius
Cheap solution for putting an SSD in an iMac
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will...
over a year ago
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will cost you a lot: 600 euros.
The SSD is of medium quality, and does not justify the cost of 600 euros.
Here you can find information about the Toshiba SSD that Apple provides.
You can...
Louwrentius
An affordable server platform based on server-grade hardware
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true...
over a year ago
Updated post (June 2014) found HERE
There are some reasons why you should consider buying true server-grade harware when building a server, wether it's for home or business use.
This is why I want to introduce you to the Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard.
This motherboard costs...
anderegg.ca
The “Home Alone” / “NiGHTS into Dreams” connection
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one...
4 weeks ago
NiGHTS into Dreams is one of those games I tend to think about when Christmas rolls around. It’s one of my favourites from the Saturn lineup, and it also had a free Christmas version.
In it, there’s a song I really love that plays on the level select screen called Gate of Your...
Christian Selig
Table of Contents Selector View
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS...
over a year ago
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS version (that seems to be a weird trend in my recent programming, despite me loving built-in components). Here’s some details about it! It’s also available as a library on GitHub...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism
over a year ago
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #44: The New Statesman still needs fixing
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
a month ago
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
Computer Ads from...
Page 6 Magazine Interviews the Godfather of Adventure Games, Scott Adams
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
5 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
Good Enough
TIL: Managing Raspberry Pi software with a bit less pain
For the printer project I'm working on, most of the software behind it runs "in the cloud", but...
a year ago
For the printer project I'm working on, most of the software behind it runs "in the cloud", but there's some software that needs to run beside each printer, to check for new things to print and manage the process of downloading and sending those things to the printer component...
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...
a month 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...
Jonas Hietala
Site restyle and update
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s...
over a year ago
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s free and there’s a section Typography in ten minutes if you want the important bits.
He makes a pretty good case for why it matters when he points out the...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Christian Selig
Theming Apps on iOS is Hard
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with...
over a year ago
Theming apps (the ability to change up the color scheme for an app from say, a white background with blue links to a light green background with green links) is a pretty common feature across a lot of apps. It’s one of the core features of the new “Twitter Blue” subscription,...
Willem's Blog
For the love of mini
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love...
over a year ago
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love of mini!
Style over Substance
Our favorite places to eat and drinks during our Portugal vacation
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a...
7 months ago
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a short city trip a few years earlier, and that experience was so good we knew we had to return. This time, we decided to take a full three weeks and see the sights. We were...
./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...
4 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...
Louwrentius
HP Proliant Microserver N40L is a great NAS or Router
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21:...
over a year ago
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21: Yes, the new model G7 N54L is out.
Some products seem almost too good to be true and I think the HP Proliant Microserver N40L is one of them. If you are into the market for a very...
Posts on Made of...
Suggestion time: What should I blog about?
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron Blogger, and I’m not totally enthusiastic about any of the items on my “to blog” list.
But, I do enjoy blogging when I actually get into posts, and I’d like to keep updating this blog....
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Pentium as a Navajo weaving
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving...
4 months ago
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract
pattern.
Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely.
The design turned out to be an image of Intel's Pentium...
Home on Erik...
Luigi success
So Luigi, our open sourced workflow engine in Python, just recently passed 1,000 stars on Github,...
over a year ago
So Luigi, our open sourced workflow engine in Python, just recently passed 1,000 stars on Github, then shortly after passed mrjob as (I think) the most popular Python package to do Hadoop stuff. This is exciting!
Willem's Blog
Protecting VMware ESXi
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to...
over a year ago
In response to a possible security breach on a VMware ESXi host machine, I search for a way to improve security of the management console using NGINX and a firewall
Willem's Blog
Beast of the Green Hell
Blog post about an amazing AMG Circuit day at the race track of Zolder, Belgium.
over a year ago
Blog post about an amazing AMG Circuit day at the race track of Zolder, Belgium.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 1.0
Vaporware
a year ago
Opsbros
The Bindicator
So I made this project for my dad for Fathers Day a couple of years ago, and thought i'd share it....
over a year ago
So I made this project for my dad for Fathers Day a couple of years ago, and thought i'd share it. The one shown is the Rev-1 design which is far from perfect, in fact it has several major issues I will discuss below, however it definitely works,
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...
Notes on software...
A reawakening of systems programming meetups
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich...
6 months ago
This year has seen a resurgence in really high quality systems
programming meetups. Munich Database
Meetup, Berlin
Systems Group, SF Distributed
Systems Meetup, NYC
Systems, Bengaluru
Systems, to name a few.
This post summarizes a bit of disappointing recent tech meetup
history,...
Arduino Blog
Arduino Nicla Sense Env: adding advanced environmental sensing to a broad range of applications
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of...
2 months ago
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Nicla Sense Env: the latest addition to our portfolio of system-on-modules and sensor nodes, empowering innovators with the tools to unlock new possibilities. This tiny yet powerful sensor node is designed to elevate your environmental...
Home on Erik...
Functional programming is the libertarianism of software engineering
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts...
over a year ago
This is a pretty dumb post, in which I argue that functional programming has a lot of the bad parts of libertarianism and a lot of the good parts:
Both ideologies strive to eliminate [the] state.
Louwrentius
1.0 GB/s using Linux software RAID
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I...
over a year ago
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I immediately performed some initial tests with software RAID 0. The results
are just astounding.
debian:~# dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0...
Ian's Blog
All About Apache Cassandra: Snapshots
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a...
over a year ago
The concept of a "Snapshot"
In computing, a snapshot is a point-in-time copy of data or state of a machine.
You ever end up doing something like this?
Each one of these files is a snapshot, as it's a copy of your essay at the point-in-time when you saved it.
Snapshots provide us...
Home on Erik...
Conversion rates – you are (most likely) computing them wrong
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and divide them with the total number of users. Done. Except… it's a lot more complicated when you have any sort of significant time lag.
Willem's Blog
Influencing purchase behaviour
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance,...
over a year ago
For my work I am continuously looking into scientific sources to improve e-commerce performance, conversion rates and online revenue. Use this useful report to apply behavioural sciences principles to your advantage.
computers are bad
2023-12-23 ITT Technical Institute
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is...
a year ago
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is a bit of an odd one. For the greatest
part of the 20th century, telephony in the United States was largely a monopoly
of AT&T and its many affiliates. This wasn't always the case,...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
MCTS and LLMs: what's the big deal?
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree...
6 months ago
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree search. Going back months, the “Q*” leak…
computers are bad
2023-03-13 the door close button
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been...
a year ago
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been the case that you get what you pay for and Computers
Are Bad is nothing if not affordable. Still, this is a topic on which I am
moderately passionate and so I can probably stretch...
./techtipsy
How to build a fleet of networked offsite backups using Linux, WireGuard and rsync
Just like most people out there, I have some files that are irreplaceable, such as cat pictures.
At...
3 weeks ago
Just like most people out there, I have some files that are irreplaceable, such as cat pictures.
At one point I had a few single-board computers sitting idle, namely
the Orange Pi Zero and
the LattePanda V1, and a few
1TB SSD-s.
I hate idle hardware, so I did the most sensible...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse-engineering an analog Bendix air data computer: part 4, the Mach section
MathJax = {
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fontCache:...
10 months ago
MathJax = {
tex: {
inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['\\(', '\\)']]
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In the 1950s, many fighter...
Old Vintage...
MacLynx beta 5: UTF-8, pull-down menus and more dialogue boxes, oh my!
I've been working off and on doing further Mac-ification to my updated fork of MacLynx, the System...
a year ago
I've been working off and on doing further Mac-ification to my updated fork of MacLynx, the System 7-compatible port of the venerable text browser Lynx for classic 68K Macintoshes (and Power Macs) running A/UX 3.x or System 7.x and later. There's still more to do, but a lot has...
Posts on Made of...
Design for Testability
When designing a new software project, one is often faced with a glut of choices about how to...
over a year ago
When designing a new software project, one is often faced with a glut of choices about how to structure it. What should the core abstractions be? How should they interact with each other?
In this post, I want to argue for a design heuristic that I’ve found to be a useful guide to...
Christian Selig
Autonomous Standing Desk and Chair Review
Autonomous was nice enough to send me one of both their Smart Desk Pro standing desks and ErgoChair...
a year ago
Autonomous was nice enough to send me one of both their Smart Desk Pro standing desks and ErgoChair Pro chairs in exchange for posting about them on Twitter, and I wanted to cover them in more detail on my blog as well so I could give my full thoughts on them for anyone in the...
Jonas Hietala
ISOC update
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an...
over a year ago
I have now worked a bit more than 3 weeks out of my 4 weeks of IDA Summer of Code and this is an update post of what I’ve done so far. I will write a more extensive summary post at the end of the project. I was planning on writing a weekly summary, but that ship sailed a long...
Louwrentius
Scanning many hosts in parallel with Nmap using PPSS
Scanning a large number of hosts using Nmap often takes a lot of time. During
this time, no output...
over a year ago
Scanning a large number of hosts using Nmap often takes a lot of time. During
this time, no output is written to a file or disk. Only when Nmap is finished,
is all output written to the output file. Often, I want to start processing
results of hosts that have already been...
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...
Jonas Hietala
MenuCity
This game is called MenuCity and it’s a numbers game. Well that’s the theme anyway. The game pretty...
over a year ago
This game is called MenuCity and it’s a numbers game. Well that’s the theme anyway. The game pretty much held to what I planned for - except that it deviated from the theme -again- a bit.
My game is very reminiscent of the old calculator classic Block Dude made by Brandon...
lcamtuf’s thing
Choosing an op-amp for your project
Just say no to LM741.
2 days ago
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.
Home on Erik...
When machine learning matters
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to...
over a year ago
I joined Spotify in 2008 to focus on machine learning and music recommendations. It's easy to forget, but Spotify's key differentiator back then was the low-latency playback. People would say that it felt like they had the music on their own hard drive.
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...
Old Vintage...
Virtualizing the 6502 on a 6502 with 6o6 (and The Incredible KIMplement goes 1.0)
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've...
8 months ago
Okay, promises, promises. Here's the first of my bucket list projects I'm completing which I've intermittently worked on for literally two decades. Now that I've finally shaken out more bugs, tuned it up and cleaned it off, it's time to let people play with the source...
./techtipsy
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I...
a year ago
While on vacation I went on a small road-trip across Estonia. During the second half of the trip I ended up being in Võrumaa,
and while driving I suddenly remembered a random fact that some people mentioned in a hackerspace Slack channel: there’s
a new museum around here!
The...
Louwrentius
The downside of 120 Mbit broadband internet
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of...
over a year ago
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of providging 120 Mbit downstream and 10 Mbit upstream, for an affordable price.
In a way this is mind boggling. Most people have 100 Mbit home networks that are not capable of handling...
Notes on software...
What makes a great technical blog
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely...
9 months ago
I want to explain why the blogs in My favorite technical
blogs are my favorite. That
page is solely about non-corporate tech blogs. So this post is
too. I'll have to make another list for favorite corporate tech blogs.
In short, they:
Tackle hard and confusing topics
Show working...
Yazin Alirhayim
Tracking where a WhatsApp user came from
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their...
over a year ago
At Amal, we have an AI chat bot that works over WhatsApp — allowing our customers to speak to their bank account, asking questions like “What’s my balance” and “How much have I spent on Uber’s this month?”.
A problem we faced really early on when connecting to WhatsApp was that...
Jonas Hietala
Motivation is Valuable
It’s funny how motivation can play such a huge role with my productivity. I’m currently having two...
over a year ago
It’s funny how motivation can play such a huge role with my productivity. I’m currently having two math courses; one mandatory about analysis in multiple variables and vector analysis and one voluntary about advanced linear algebra. I don’t like the analysis course, didn’t like...
Arduino Blog
Adding proximity unlock to an old car with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically...
5 months ago
A lot of newer cars have a really nifty feature called “proximity unlock,” which automatically unlocks the doors when the driver approaches while carrying their key fob. When paired with a push-to-start ignition switch, the driver never has to take their keys out of their pocket....
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled machine dispenses the perfect bowl of cereal
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal?...
8 months ago
Breakfast cereal is controversial. Milk or cereal first? Best cereal to milk ratio? Favorite cereal? Most attractive mascot? The opportunities for debate never end. But we can all agree that consistency is key when it comes to the milk:cereal ratio — nobody changes that up from...
computers are bad
2023-09-10 the Essex GWEN site
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML...
a year ago
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email
and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead
(the link is at the top of the email).
In the aftermath of...
./techtipsy
How to make digital copies of your old video tapes
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is a short overview of one way to take your old video tapes and make digital copies of their contents.
To get started, you will need the following:
old video tapes that you want to make copies of (VHS and its variants)
a device that can read analog AV signals...
./techtipsy
Anything's a portable speaker if you're brave enough
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a...
over a year ago
I hate buying things that are single-purpose, which is why I ended up with this
setup.
Take a speaker, a battery, put them together, and what you now have is a
portable speaker. Since I had access to both, I felt no need to buy a separate
portable speaker for use in social...
Good Enough
Grassroots
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends,...
8 months ago
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends, shouting on socials, and sharing links to our stuff with your favorite influencers–all of these things will help Good Enough succeed and continue making amazing stuff!
As we’ve been...
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
over a year ago
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
Posts on Made of...
Write testable code by writing generic code
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains...
over a year ago
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains several software engineers nearly as obsessed with software testing as I am):
uhh, so I’m writing some code to handle an econnreset… how do I test this?
This is a good question!...
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.
Jonas Hietala
Early Christmas Present
School is almost over and it’s almost time to travel back up to Övertorneå. This year me and...
over a year ago
School is almost over and it’s almost time to travel back up to Övertorneå. This year me and Veronica opened our Christmas presents a bit early - we’re impatient like that.
I got one of the best presents yet I think! A Raspberry Pi!
Just look at this bad boy!
She got some...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Building LLM-driven agents
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just...
a year ago
If you want a large language model like GPT-3 to perform a task for you, the simplest way is to just ask it. Writing out a single prompt…
Jonas Hietala
Favourite Programming Language
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a...
over a year ago
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a post which claimes my favourite language is not good enough! But he’s correct of course, there is no one language to rule them all. You should always choose the mest language for the...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of GM-NAA I/O and SHARE
The Birth of Computer Operating Systems
a year ago
The Birth of Computer Operating Systems
./techtipsy
Strangling your service with a Kubernetes misconfiguration
This is a quick story about a fun discovery that I made a while ago.
For legal reasons, all of this...
over a year ago
This is a quick story about a fun discovery that I made a while ago.
For legal reasons, all of this is made up and no such service ever existed.
Once upon a time, we had this Java service that handled all the backend
work that you’d expect to occur for a product with a web...
Willem's Blog
Riding with a power meter on your bike
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road...
over a year ago
In this post I describe my experience with installing the 4iiii Precision Powermeter on my road bike.
Louwrentius
'A Moment Of Silence: OpenSolaris Is Dead'
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March...
over a year ago
The last release of OpenSolaris dates back to July 2009. The next release was
scheduled for March 2010, but Oracle did not release anything. It is dead
silent around OpenSolaris.
On 12 July 2010, the OpenSolaris Government Board sent out an ultimatum
to Oracle: "please...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
May Updates + New Essay On Moral AI
A few months back, I read a tweet from Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) which stuck in my...
a year ago
A few months back, I read a tweet from Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist) which stuck in my mind: “the long term goal is to build AGI that loves people the way parents love their children”.
Louwrentius
Google DNS - what to think of it?
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get...
over a year ago
Google now provide an open DNS service. At first I was scared that they use
their service to get information about users.
However, their privacy statement tells us that no personal identifiable
information is stored for longer than 48 hours. The permanent logs do not
contain such...
Arduino Blog
This UNO R4 WiFi-controlled device streamlines a restaurant’s online order system
Most successful restaurants operating today have to take advantage of online ordering, as a huge...
4 months ago
Most successful restaurants operating today have to take advantage of online ordering, as a huge chunk of customers have switched to takeout and delivery. But point-of-sale (POS) systems don’t always integrate well into a kitchen’s workflow and that can lead to missed orders —...
somenice
Generative 3D Modeling
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as...
2 weeks ago
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as reviews had been quite favourable with results creating 3D models with “AI”. The website describes the technology as unified Structured LATent (SLAT) representation and there is a...
Home on Erik...
Why I went into the mortgage industry
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same...
over a year ago
I just realized last Thursday that I have spent two full years at Better, incidentally on the same day as we announced a $15M round led by Kleiner Perkins. So it was a good point to reflect a bit and think back – what the F led me to abandon my role managing the machine learning...
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: the dark side of cloud hosting
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The...
over a year ago
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The Linode Manager is the environment where you control your virtual private servers and where you pay for services. This is the environment that got compromised.
Linode uses Adobe's...
Electronics etc…
Setting Up a Symmetricom SyncServer S200 Network Time Protocol Server
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS...
5 months ago
Introduction
What was the SyncServer S200 Supposed to be Used For?
IMPORTANT: Use the Right GPS Antenna!
The SyncServer S200 Outside and Inside
Installing the Missing BNC Connectors
Setting Up a SyncServer S200 from Scratch
Opening up the SyncServer S200
The SyncServer File...
Gwern.net Newsletter
Jan 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
over a year ago
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
Simply Explained
Home Energy Monitor: V2
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my...
over a year ago
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my electricity consumption every second and everything is neatly archived in my AWS account.Still, though, there is room for improvement. It's time to look back, evaluate & improve the design....
Simply Explained
Analyzing Link Rot in My Newsletter (After 31 Editions)
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to...
a year ago
I've been writing a monthly newsletter for the past 2.5 years. In every edition, I link to interesting articles related to science and technology. I thought it would be interesting to analyze how many of those links are still accessible, and how many have succumbed to link rot....
Lars Lofgren
What Happened After I Outed a Reddit Mod for Affiliate Spam
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate...
3 months ago
I recently broke down how Reddit mods and users are abusing Google search rankings with affiliate spam. It’s reddit marketing gone awry. The post blew up and got a decent amount of attention. Then I got a front row seat to how deep of a spam filled porta-potty Reddit has become....
Home on Erik...
statself.com
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together:...
over a year ago
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together: it's a website where you can track any numerical data on the web. Want to know how many Twitter followers you have?
Applied Cartography
Weird test: internal link checking
I wrote last month about using weird tests. Here's another example: checking for broken internal...
8 months ago
I wrote last month about using weird tests. Here's another example: checking for broken internal links in our upcoming docsite redesign!
const extractInternalLinks = (content: string): string[] => {
// Check for internal links only, in the form of [text](/path).
const...
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.
Birchtree
My default apps of 2024
Last year I was the 27th of four hundred and freaking eight people to write about their default...
a week 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
Arduino Blog
Exercise while you game with this interactive treadmill add-on
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of...
4 months ago
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of virtual reality headsets, gaming is still done with relatively limited movement unless one has access to an expensive VR walking/running setup. As an effort to get more physical...
Christian Selig
Choosing a travel pack is hard
I love the “carry-on only” traveling style, it’s cheaper and you don’t have to worry about airlines...
8 months ago
I love the “carry-on only” traveling style, it’s cheaper and you don’t have to worry about airlines losing your stuff. Outside of requiring a bit more planning, what’s not to love?
Turns out this is a beloved product category with a passionate community behind it, and as a result...
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.
2 weeks ago
At one point in my life, I penned an epic, 110-page opus on hobby manufacturing.
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
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...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
6 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Settled on an unoriginal idea
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
over a year ago
I think I’ve decided what to do. Some very slight progress has been made.
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...
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...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
Willem's Blog
Traffic shaping using iptables and tc
This month I responded to an automated alert indicating excessive bandwidth usage on a server,...
over a year ago
This month I responded to an automated alert indicating excessive bandwidth usage on a server, requiring me to apply traffic shaping to mitigate the traffic.
Louwrentius
The impact of the MDADM bitmap on RAID performance
Introduction
I'm aware that most people with intensive storage workloads won't run those workloads...
over a year ago
Introduction
I'm aware that most people with intensive storage workloads won't run those workloads on hard drives anymore, that ship has sailed a long time ago. SSDs have taken their place (or 'the cloud').
For those few left who do use hard drives in Linux software RAID setups...
Posts on Made of...
Property-Based Testing Is Fuzzing
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code...
over a year ago
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code (“properties”), and then using automated tooling to generate test inputs (typically, randomly-generated inputs of an appropriate type), and observe whether the properties hold for...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?
over a year ago
computers are bad
2023-07-29 Free Public WiFi
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree...
a year ago
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was
directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school
student I was not...
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
anderegg.ca
The trouble with openness
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went...
a month ago
Back in the early 2000s, there was this nebulous idea called the semantic web. It never really went anywhere, but I found it exciting at the time.
One piece that particularly spoke to me was the notion of including data in websites so that web scrapers could easily get at it....
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...
Simply Explained
My Sixth Year as YouTube Creator (statistics + retrospective)
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most...
over a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most successful year on YouTube so far, and I'd like to share some statistics and thoughts. I will also go over how my email newsletter is doing and where I'm headed. And finally, I'll set...
Louwrentius
'Linux: obtain motherboard model / type and vendor'
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode |...
over a year ago
If you want to know what motherboard is installed in a system, use the tool
dmidecode:
dmidecode | grep -e "Manufacturer|Product" | head -n 4 | tail -n 2
The result might be something like:
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Product Name: P5Q-EM DO
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop...
over a year ago
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.
About Ludum Dare
Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme....
Neil Madden
XSS doesn’t have to be game over
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game...
over a year ago
There’s a persistent belief among web security people that cross-site scripting (XSS) is a “game over” event for defence: there is no effective way to recover if an attacker can inject code into your site. Brian Campbell refers to this as “XSS Nihilism”, which is a great...
./techtipsy
I encourage you to write a blog
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90...
4 months ago
It’s been over 4 years since my first post on this blog.
During those 4 years I’ve written over 90 posts, received over 1 million clicks,
a dozen legitimate reader e-mails and thousands of spam e-mails.
And I love it!
I’ve found that writing can be very fulfilling and I encourage...
Notes on software...
Container scheduling strategies for integration testing 14 different databases in Github Actions
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.
Home on Erik...
I believe in the 10x engineer, but...
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be...
over a year ago
The easiest way to be a 10x engineer is to make 10 other engineers 2x more efficient. Someone can be a 10x engineer if they do nothing for 364 days then convinces the team to change programming language to a 2x more productive language.
Notes on software...
SMTP protocol basics from scratch in Go: receiving email from Gmail
I've never run my own mail server before. Before today I had no clue
how email worked under the hood...
over a year ago
I've never run my own mail server before. Before today I had no clue
how email worked under the hood other than the very few times I've set
up mail clients.
I've heard no few times how hard it is to send mail from a
self-hosted server (because of spam filters). But how hard can...
computers are bad
2023-01-29 the parallel port
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel...
a year ago
A few days ago, on a certain orange website, I came across an article about an
improvised parallel printer capture device.
This contains the line:
There are other projects out there, but when you google for terms such as
"parallel port to usb", they drown in a sea of "USB to...
Willem's Blog
CAPTCHA Alternative
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where...
over a year ago
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where I outline how I protect web forms against malicious actors and spammers.
Home on Erik...
Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is...
over a year ago
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is hard. It's hard to come up with an unbiased estimate of how long something will take, when fundamentally the work in itself is about solving something.
Arduino Blog
How makers can use AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in...
6 months ago
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, with the combined market expected to reach $77 billion by 2025, from just $15.3 billion in 2020. For makers, AR and VR represent exciting opportunities to build new...
Louwrentius
ZFS: resilver performance of various RAID schemas
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures...
over a year ago
When building your own DIY home NAS, it is important that you simulate and test drive failures before you put your important data on it. It makes sense to know what to do in case a drive needs to be replaced. I also recommend putting a substantial amount of data on your NAS and...
Christian Selig
Qi2 is kinda underwhelming
Using MagSafe for portable battery packs has so many niceties versus Qi1:
Increased communication...
8 months ago
Using MagSafe for portable battery packs has so many niceties versus Qi1:
Increased communication with the device, allowing for better efficiency due to better thermal management and charging
Easily view the charge percentage of the external battery when first attaching it, and...
Arduino Blog
“Catch me if you can!” — How Alvik learns to dodge trouble with AI, featuring Roni Bandini
Have you ever discovered a cool piece of tech buried in your drawer and thought, “This could make...
3 months ago
Have you ever discovered a cool piece of tech buried in your drawer and thought, “This could make for an awesome project”? That’s exactly what happened to Roni Bandini, maker, writer, electronics artist – and Arduino Alvik Star! Bandini began coding at 10 years old, and has...
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
11 months ago
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from [REDACTED], a site on which I am very prone to judging a book by its cover; every month I'll end up purchasing a bottle of something purely because it looks interesting and I can...
Lars Lofgren
The Stupidity of Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of...
2 months ago
Site reputation abuse is when a third-party abuses the reputation of a domain to rank a bunch of pages in Google. The SEO community refers to this type of thing as parasite SEO. Google has gone so far as to publish an official policy (documented here) on how this isn’t allowed:...
Posts on Made of...
Conkeror
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension,...
over a year ago
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension, but nowadays it’s a standalone app built on top of Mozilla’s xulrunner, so it uses the Gecko rendering engine.
What it is, is an emacs implemented in Javascript, for the web. This...
watchTowr Labs
Hop-Skip-FortiJump-FortiJump-Higher - Fortinet FortiManager CVE-2024-47575
It’s been a tricky time for Fortinet (and their customers) lately - arguably, even more so than...
a month ago
It’s been a tricky time for Fortinet (and their customers) lately - arguably, even more so than usual. Adding to the steady flow of vulnerabilities in appliances recently was a nasty CVSS 9.8 vulnerability in FortiManager, their tool for central management of FortiGate...
Computer Ads from...
Creative Computer Publishes Interview with the Guy Behind the Death Star Trench Run (1978)
An Interview With Star Wars Animator Larry Cuba
8 months ago
An Interview With Star Wars Animator Larry Cuba
Jonas Hietala
I, Robot
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process...
over a year ago
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process went smooth and our group was amazing. The design and building of the robot went well even though in hindsight I would’ve changed a lot of stuff. The ending competition didn’t go...
Arduino Blog
Kick off the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with these Formula 1-inspired Arduino projects
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the...
7 months ago
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the season. While most fans can’t participate directly — except as spectators — they can celebrate their passion through DIY projects. That’s why we’ve scoured the community to find the...
Arduino Blog
Improve laser engraving speeds with an Arduino-controlled turntable
Engraving items with a laser-based system at home is amazingly convenient for one-off parts, but...
6 months ago
Engraving items with a laser-based system at home is amazingly convenient for one-off parts, but what happens when the production volume needs to increase? For element14 Presents host Clem Mayer, this usually meant preparing many uniform pieces of engraving stock, opening the...
Home on Erik...
Some more font links
My blog post about fonts generated lots of traffic – it landed on Hacker News, took down my site...
over a year ago
My blog post about fonts generated lots of traffic – it landed on Hacker News, took down my site while I was sleeping, and then obviously vanished from HN before I woke up. But it also got retweeted by a ton of people.
Jonas Hietala
Drawing a self portrait
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m...
over a year ago
Drawing is hard. I’d like to improve though. Here’s a self portrait I tried to draw in Krita. I’m really slow so I stopped a bit before it really was finished.
Obviously I’d like it to be a bit better, but I’m still a little happy about the glasses and the eyebrows. The mouth...
Notes on software...
Thinking about functional programming
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial...
a year ago
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an
interesting
discussion
with Shriram
Krishnamurthi and other folks.
So here's a slightly more thought out exploration.
And just for backstory sake: I...
Matt Blewitt
Movement for Engineers
Until we get get to be chromed-up cyborgs, we’re stuck with our meat bodies, and like many things,...
a year ago
Until we get get to be chromed-up cyborgs, we’re stuck with our meat bodies, and like many things, they need regular maintenance. Here is a brief introduction to keeping your body moving as someone who spends a lot of time sitting down.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission...
5 months ago
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans, and other documents.
Needed for the first Shuttle launch in 1981, this printer was designed in just 7 months, built around an Army...
computers are bad
2023-05-07 electrical characteristics of telephone lines
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring...
a year ago
Let's take a break from our boring topic of regional history to focus instead
on an even more boring topic: implementation details of telephone lines.
The conventional "copper pair" analog telephone line is fading away. The FCC
has begun to authorize abandonment of copper outside...
Arduino Blog
This robotic kalimba plays melodies with an Arduino Nano
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each...
3 months ago
With roots in Africa, the kalimba is a type of hand piano featuring an array of keys that are each tuned for a specific note, and upon plucking or striking one, a pleasant xylophone-like sound can be heard. Taking inspiration from his mini kalimba, Axel from the YouTube channel...
Jonas Hietala
Evolution of RTS games
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through...
over a year ago
Introduction
This is an essay for the course Game Design and I’m going to give you a ride through the evolution of RTS game genre. I like RTS games and I’ve played them for as long as I can remember, from the classic Red Alert and Age of Empires to the newer Supreme Commander and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review: museums of the future, Dubai and Tokyo
5 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Done this, done that. What now?
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and...
over a year ago
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I’m liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book...
Home on Erik...
On the Equifax breach and how to really prevent identity theft
A funny thing about being a foreigner is how you realize people take broken things for granted. I'm...
over a year ago
A funny thing about being a foreigner is how you realize people take broken things for granted. I'm going to go out on a limb here claiming that the US has a pretty dumb banking system.
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
Notes on software...
Zig, Rust, and other languages
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a...
9 months ago
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a fresh conversation on: automatic
memory management, the standard library, and explicit allocation.
Zig is not a mature language. But it has made enough useful choices
for a number...
Jonas Hietala
Writing a Pollen lexer in Pygments
After writing a few blog posts about Pollen I started getting annoyed that I didn’t have syntax...
over a year ago
After writing a few blog posts about Pollen I started getting annoyed that I didn’t have syntax highlighting for the code snippets. So I did a bit of fooling around with Pygments, and it turns out writing a custom lexer isn’t that unreasonable, so here’s how I did it.
Pollen...
Willem's Blog
Off the grid: Working on 100% renewable energy
Learning from powering my personal devices using nothing but self generated electricity using a...
over a year ago
Learning from powering my personal devices using nothing but self generated electricity using a solar panel and power banks.
Louwrentius
Thunderbolt, a cheap high-speed storage interconnect?
Intel and Apple released Thunderbolt a high-speed (10 Gigabit/s) interface, that seems to replace...
over a year ago
Intel and Apple released Thunderbolt a high-speed (10 Gigabit/s) interface, that seems to replace both USB and Firewire. It is mainly targeted at end-user systems allowing to connect peripherals with just a single cable to a computer. Thunderbolt devices, like external hard...
Christian Selig
Instant Pan Gesture Interactions
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key...
a year ago
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key takeaways from the videos that one of the presenters, Chan Karunamuni, said is “Look for delays everywhere. Everything needs to respond instantly.” (6:28)
A really great example of...
Willem's Blog
Escaping the flat tires
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some...
over a year ago
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some time, but alas - here it is!
Electronics etc…
Increasing Frequency Counter Precision with Linear Regression
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring ham radio activation of Korkattivuori (Mt. Korkatti)
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature...
a year ago
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature reserve area near town Haapavesi (pop. 6588) in Finland. The nature reserve area consist of short family friendly hiking path of approximately 1.5km. One end of the path has parking...
Louwrentius
Secure caching DNS server on Linux with DJBDNS
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon"....
over a year ago
The most commonly used DNS server software is ISC BIND, the "Berkeley Internet
Name Daemon". However, this software has a bad security track record and is in
my opinion a pain to configure.
Mr. D.J. Bernstein developed "djbdns", which comes with a guarantee: if anyone
finds a...
Jonas Hietala
The End of the Tunnel
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from...
over a year ago
Lately I’ve been feeling like there’s been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from the last time.
One course about data structure and algorithms (super fun to be honest) has wrapped up. We thought we were ahead with the assignments but in the end it got very...
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
a month ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000...
11 months ago
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel's most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors.
Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to design the processor, but it was falling behind schedule.
The design team decided to automate chunks of the layout, developing "automatic...
Louwrentius
Why the iPad will be a breakthrough in human computing
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to...
over a year ago
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to adjust to them.
The problem is that most people that are not into technology just don't
understand how computers work. Should I single click of double click? Click
left or right?
The...
On Life and Lisp
The first conformant M1 GPU driver
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the...
a year ago
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #46: The transformation of London's skyline, a big week for nuclear, and installing...
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
a month ago
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
4 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
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.
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...
a month ago
There's very little written about natural phosphorescence. Let's design a device that can spot it in the wild.
./techtipsy
Surviving the front page of HackerNews on a 50 Mbps uplink
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the...
over a year ago
Around a month ago I shared my blog post
on HackerNews. I guess I lucked out with the choice of the topic, because it
brought out a lot of enthusiasts who shared their own experiences with older
machinery that still works in 2022. I really appreciate the feedback and...
computers are bad
2024-09-14 the national warning system
Previously on Deep Space Nine, we discussed the extensive and variable products
that AT&T and...
3 months ago
Previously on Deep Space Nine, we discussed the extensive and variable products
that AT&T and telephone operating companies sold as private
lines. One of the
interesting properties of private line systems is that they can be ordered as
four-wire. Internally, the telephone network...
Matt Blewitt
Shunn
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts...
7 months ago
The Shunn manuscript format is a set of guidelines for writers to follow when submitting manuscripts to publishers. It was created by author William Shunn and is widely used in the publishing industry. Here is a brief demonstration of a tool I wrote to facilitate generating...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis
over a year ago
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...
Willem's Blog
Health and fitness data
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal...
11 months ago
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal well-being and fitness goals shape our relationship with technology and self-awareness.
Good Enough
TIL: Listen for JavaScript events only once!
A common thing I find myself doing in Javascript is adding some event driven behavior that I only...
a year ago
A common thing I find myself doing in Javascript is adding some event driven behavior that I only want to happen once. Let’s say I have a big button that starts the process of lowering a certain spy into a pool of certain doom — I don’t want a second button press to awkwardly...