Jonas Hietala
The T-34/1 keyboard layout
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this...
15th Dec 2021
This is the revision of the T-34 keyboard layout that I use as my primary driver. I’ve used this particular version without any major changes for almost 3 months, so I’d say it’s a good improvement over the last revision.
There are two large changes from T-34/0: swapping o and...
Fabien Sanglard
Doom iPhone code review
I took some time away from programming something I hope will become a really good shmup and read the...
1st Feb 2010
I took some time away from programming something I hope will become a really good shmup and read the source code of Doom for iPhone. I was very interested in finding out how a pixel oriented engine made the transition to openGL. Here are my notes, as usual I got a bit carried...
lcamtuf’s thing
The 8-bit (MCU) manifesto
Eight-bit microcontrollers aren't relics; they are a design philosophy. You might want to use them...
12th Jun 2024
Eight-bit microcontrollers aren't relics; they are a design philosophy. You might want to use them more.
Abishek Muthian
Raspberry pi3 vs iPad2 for personal computing
I blew my personal computer and before I could build a new one I needed a temporary machine which...
24th Mar 2017
I blew my personal computer and before I could build a new one I needed a temporary machine which could perform some of my routine tasks like browsing, social network, word processing, programming, gaming, videos, music & ocassional heavy computation.
Though I would be needing a...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Tablet as main computer
For the past few weeks I have been using the Microsoft Surface Pro as my main computer. It's a...
6th Mar 2018
For the past few weeks I have been using the Microsoft Surface Pro as my main computer. It's a modern tablet computer that can be used as laptop with the type cover. With the Surface Pen, it's a versatile PC that works in a lot of different ways. Time to find out if it's any good...
Style over Substance
CANARY Corrugated Cardboard Cutter
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases...
15th Nov 2022
The CANARY corrugated cardboard cutter is definitely in my top 10 list of most useful purchases ever. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, we all started shopping online a lot more. The number of cardboard boxes in our house basically quadrupled overnight and cutting them down to size...
Tiny struggles
How to transcribe long audios fast with open source (colab included)
In this post I will give you code that you can run yourself in Colab (or on your own machine with a...
14th Oct 2024
In this post I will give you code that you can run yourself in Colab (or on your own machine with a GPU), that will allow you to very quickly transcribe long audios in many languages.
The setup uses the whisper model from huggingface, Google Drive and Colab.
I used it to...
Open for Business
DeltaForce 65: Das Wilde Keyboard
One of my all time favorite brands is Metadot’s Das Keyboard. They typically don’t include all the...
18th Dec 2025
One of my all time favorite brands is Metadot’s Das Keyboard. They typically don’t include all the bells and whistles, but they are built so well. But what if a Das Keyboard had all the current extras?
Vitalik Buterin's...
My self-sovereign / local / private / secure LLM setup, April 2026
2nd Apr 2026
Willem's Blog
Backup Rotation Scheme
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync,...
14th Dec 2023
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync, creating and maintaining multiple recovery points from your backups.
computers are bad
telephones caught in between
During the heyday of AT&T, it was often said that the telephone system was the
largest machine ever...
2nd Aug 2026
During the heyday of AT&T, it was often said that the telephone system was the
largest machine ever built. The "hello machine" certainly was vast, but whether
or not you consider it to be a single machine raises challenging questions of
definition. The Internet, I think we can...
joshua stein
Installing OpenBSD on the Pomera DM250{,XY?}
These are some notes for getting OpenBSD-current running on the Japanese-model
Pomera DM250, DM250X,...
9th Apr 2026
These are some notes for getting OpenBSD-current running on the Japanese-model
Pomera DM250, DM250X, and DM250XY.
Table of Contents
Top
Throat-clearing
Making a backup
Some DM250 hardware notes
Making an OpenBSD installation SD card
Installing...
Never Met a Science
Does Social Media Cause Anything?
Yes.
3rd Jul 2024
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
8th Dec 2024
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
eieio.games
yt-browse: a powerful youtube search TUI
yt-browse: a powerful youtube search TUI
I made a TUI for searching a specific youtube channel. I...
4th Mar 2026
yt-browse: a powerful youtube search TUI
I made a TUI for searching a specific youtube channel. I think it's much nicer than the experience of searching a channel on youtube's website.
Read the full post on my blog!
Here's a raw link, if you need it:
...
Daniel De Laney
Atomic Design in 1998
When you hear “atomic design,” you probably think of Brad Frost. Interestingly, he was not the first...
8th Feb 2018
When you hear “atomic design,” you probably think of Brad Frost. Interestingly, he was not the first person to develop that method of delivering design as components, or even the terminology.
Brad published his atomic design article in 2013. While digging through the archives at...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
13th May 2022
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Louwrentius - Solar
The Raspberry Pi 5 is no match for a tini-mini-micro PC
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable...
16th Jun 2024
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable computer. An ideal home server. Until the Pi 4, the Pi was not that capable, and only with the relatively recent Pi 5 (fall 2023) do I feel the Pi is OK performance wise, although...
Butler's Log
GitButler 0.19 - "Commander Keen"
GitButler 0.19 is out, now shipping with a CLI, improved diffing, improved agentic help and more!
5th Feb 2026
GitButler 0.19 is out, now shipping with a CLI, improved diffing, improved agentic help and more!
Neil Madden
Java’s SSLContext protocol name is a footgun
This should be old news, but I keep seeing the same mistake crop up, so I thought I’d blog about it...
23rd Jun 2026
This should be old news, but I keep seeing the same mistake crop up, so I thought I’d blog about it and spread awareness. In Java, if you want to configure TLS you generally start with an SSLContext. And you get an instance of this class by calling the static method...
Yazin Alirhayim
Building a mobile app in 1 day: Thunoob
Is it even possible to make an app in just 1 day? Well, let's find out!
1st Dec 2025
Is it even possible to make an app in just 1 day? Well, let's find out!
Louwrentius - Solar
Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 on Debian howto
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed...
28th Sep 2008
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed binary driver.)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm
Install the kernel headers if you haven't already
- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-6-k7
- extract the...
Applied Cartography
Chinatown
Well, that was probably the most depressing final sequence I can remember in a film (especially one...
4th Aug 2022
Well, that was probably the most depressing final sequence I can remember in a film (especially one so devoted to realism, or at least its brand of plausibility.)
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Pentium contains a complicated circuit to multiply by three
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running...
2nd Mar 2025
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line.
I've been examining the Pentium's circuitry in detail and I came across a circuit to multiply by three, a complex circuit with thousands of
transistors. Why does the...
Blog | Sam Curry
Exploiting Directory Traversal to View Customer Credit Card Information on Yahoo's Small...
10th Nov 2017
Christian Selig
Instant Pan Gesture Interactions
Apple has a really awesome WWDC 2018 video called Designing Fluid Interfaces, and one of the key...
13th May 2023
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...
Matt Blewitt
Thoughts on User Safety: 2
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond...
23rd Oct 2019
Following up from last time, let’s explore the internal and insider fronts when moving beyond security towards safety for our users.
Abort Retry Fail
Matrox
Graphics for Professionals
24th Jul 2026
Graphics for Professionals
Daniel De Laney
I built a timer I can’t fail to set
Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I...
2nd Dec 2025
Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I have.
Sure, I was doing a lot of stuff. But I wasn’t pausing to ask whether I was doing the right stuff. Or whether my approach was working. Or if I was spending the right amount of...
Simply Explained
EZStore: a tiny serverless datastore for IoT data (DynamoDB + Lambda)
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but...
4th Jan 2022
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but flexible data store. I just want to push data to an API and query and visualize it later on.There are many solutions for this, but most are expensive or very limited. So I set out to...
benn.substack
The banality of surveillance
Do our dull lives become worth watching?
6th Mar 2026
Do our dull lives become worth watching?
axio.ms
Pickle plus mains
Back in February 2014, it was a cold (but dry) winter’s night and we decided to warm our hearts with...
17th Mar 2018
Back in February 2014, it was a cold (but dry) winter’s night and we decided to warm our hearts with some science.
Our experiment was to observe the conduction of electricity through a pickle, using salt ions. We connected a pickle to the mains supply. Pickles have a strong...
Applied Cartography
So We Read On
Well, if it's not biography; and it's not literary criticism; and it's not scholarship... what is...
8th Aug 2023
Well, if it's not biography; and it's not literary criticism; and it's not scholarship... what is it? And the answer appears to be poorly structured, rambling, fandom.
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...
7th Jul 2024
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...
Construction Physics
Reading List 05/02/2026
Chilling effects in the build-to-rent sector, how fast could robot manufacturing scale up, PJM’s new...
2nd May 2026
Chilling effects in the build-to-rent sector, how fast could robot manufacturing scale up, PJM’s new interconnection queue, the backlash against battery storage, and more.
Willem L. Middelkoop
Creating a minimal road bike
Over the past months I have worked on different bikes, leading to an accumulation of spare parts in...
17th Aug 2019
Over the past months I have worked on different bikes, leading to an accumulation of spare parts in my garage. I wondered how hard it would be to make a new bike using these spare parts. I decided to take advantage of this moment to refinish some parts, removing excessive decals...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Multi-Window support in your iPad app
Last month Apple released iPadOS, the first dedicated operating system for iPad. It differs from iOS...
6th Oct 2019
Last month Apple released iPadOS, the first dedicated operating system for iPad. It differs from iOS with its support for the larger iPad screen, including multi / split screen windows. I develop apps and it was time to take advantage of these new possibilities that iPadOS...
Odds and Ends of...
Hitting pause for a month!
A brief programming note.
1st Jan 2026
A brief programming note.
Matt Blewitt
Long Distance Relationships
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through...
12th Oct 2024
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through UTC+10, for the last couple of years. Through that time, I’ve learned a lot on organising work, interpersonal relationships, and ultimately how to overcome a lack of promximity to my...
Butler's Log
The Birth of THE MERGE
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our...
24th May 2024
Sitting at lunch one day, the GitButler team were having our usual conversations of how awesome our community is, product feature ideas, and how much Kiril loves food. As we shifted toward the topic of conferences, the idea of hosting our own event emerged. Wouldn’t it be fun to...
Himanshu Mishra |...
Design of Public Posts: Twitter vs Facebook
What design tells you about the company’s values Both Facebook and Twitter allow posts to be...
1st Feb 2018
What design tells you about the company’s values Both Facebook and Twitter allow posts to be publicly accessible by people who have not…
Yazin Alirhayim
Transparency, the cure to newspaperpreneurs
We've all seen it: front page headlines of "visionaries" gazing into the abyss .. every sentence...
2nd May 2015
We've all seen it: front page headlines of "visionaries" gazing into the abyss .. every sentence attesting to the incredible success that he/she's been able to conjure in the face adversity.
Comments for Lars...
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...
9th Sep 2024
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....
Willem L. Middelkoop
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
Every now and then, I switch phones to keep track of mobile developments. As professional app and...
8th Oct 2018
Every now and then, I switch phones to keep track of mobile developments. As professional app and web developer, I need to know how different devices work in real life. This time I used a budget Android smartphone, making me curious how it would compare to an expensive iPhone....
Computer Ads from...
Comics from July 1977 Issue of ROM Magazine
Those were the early days.
7th May 2026
Those were the early days.
computers are bad
2025-01-05 pairs not taken
So we all know about twisted-pair ethernet, huh? I get a little frustrated with
a lot of histories...
5th Jan 2025
So we all know about twisted-pair ethernet, huh? I get a little frustrated with
a lot of histories of the topic, like the recent neil breen^w^wserial port
video, because they often fail to
address some obvious questions about the origin of twisted-pair network
cabling. Well, I...
anderegg.ca
Apple and the AI divide
This morning I read a 404 Media article about Instagram showing people ads with AI-generated images...
7th Jan 2025
This morning I read a 404 Media article about Instagram showing people ads with AI-generated images of themselves. I thought this take from Sam Biddle was very good:
Never in my career have I seen such a giant gulf between What Companies Think Is the Most Important Thing in the...
Blog | Sam Curry
We Hacked Apple for 3 Months: Here’s What We Found
7th Oct 2020
Krebs on Security
Alleged Jabber Zeus Coder ‘MrICQ’ in U.S. Custody
A Ukrainian man indicted in 2012 for conspiring with a prolific hacking group to steal tens of...
2nd Nov 2025
A Ukrainian man indicted in 2012 for conspiring with a prolific hacking group to steal tens of millions of dollars from U.S. businesses was arrested in Italy and is now in custody in the United States, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
Sources close to the investigation say Yuriy...
Vitalik Buterin's...
On Medium-of-Exchange Token Valuations
17th Oct 2017
matduggan.com
GitHub Copilot for Vim Review
My review of GitHub Copilot for Vim
1st May 2025
My review of GitHub Copilot for Vim
Push to Prod
Why Do My AI Code Reviews Take So Many Iterations?
Human understanding is still the bottleneck
18th Aug 2026
Human understanding is still the bottleneck
Neil Madden
Is Datalog a good language for authorization?
Datalog is a logic programming language, based on Prolog, which is seeing something of a resurgence...
19th Feb 2022
Datalog is a logic programming language, based on Prolog, which is seeing something of a resurgence in interest in recent years. In particular, several recent approaches to authorization (working out who can do what) have used Datalog as the logical basis for access control...
Willem L. Middelkoop
iPad Pro as primary computer
The lack of physical clutter, distracting branding, or blinking LED's makes the iPad Pro a textbook...
14th Aug 2016
The lack of physical clutter, distracting branding, or blinking LED's makes the iPad Pro a textbook example of minimal design. My despiction of distraction explains my interest in using the iPad Pro as only computer to test if it is up to the task. Is Apple's latest effort on iOS...
Writing
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're...
9th Jan 2025
You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm...
tim.sh
Would you like a drainer served at the very top of DuckDuckGo?
Probably no, right?
That would be very dangerous, especially if the phishing website serving it is...
16th Jun 2026
Probably no, right?
That would be very dangerous, especially if the phishing website serving it is an exact copy of the thing you was looking for.
Well that's what happened to me!
TL;DR
I found a fake tronscan blockchain explorer duplicate on the #1 position in the
Electronics etc…
Analyzing the Monoprice Blackbird HDCP 2.2 to 1.4 Down Converter
Introduction
Some Words about HDCP
Inside the Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro
The Test
Digging Deeper:...
26th Nov 2023
Introduction
Some Words about HDCP
Inside the Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro
The Test
Digging Deeper: UART Transactions
Decoding HDCP I2C Transactions
The Legality of It All
References
Footnotes
Introduction
I got my hands on a
Monoprice Blackbird 4K Pro HDCP 2.2 to 1.4...
Applied Cartography
Varieties of Disturbance
My review of Break it Down, a much earlier entry in Lydia Davis' ouevre, last year was a bit of...
1st Mar 2023
My review of Break it Down, a much earlier entry in Lydia Davis' ouevre, last year was a bit of damning with faint praise:
anderegg.ca
YouTube is a mysterious monopoly
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro...
8th Sep 2025
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro computer repair channel I really enjoy. In the post, he points out a trend I didn’t know about: YouTube views seem to have fallen off a cliff recently.
Further down the thread, Jeff...
Louwrentius - Solar
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...
3rd Jul 2010
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...
Fabien Sanglard
Carving the Super Nintendo Video System
29th Jul 2024
Azad's Blog
What I learned while gaming at 480 FPS
It’s clear that with display technologies, we’ve hit a point of diminishing returns with packing...
12th May 2025
It’s clear that with display technologies, we’ve hit a point of diminishing returns with packing pixels more densly. However, there is room for rendering frames faster and faster. Having listened to Digital Foundry’s John Linneman talk so highlighy about playing games in 480hz on...
Applied Cartography
Ori and the Blind Forest
It is incorrect to describe this game as a melange of celeste and gris because of course
this game...
5th May 2023
It is incorrect to describe this game as a melange of celeste and gris because of course
this game predates both of them. But that is where my mind went — this sort of "emotional platformer" —
and this game is terrific, ten hours of beauty and challenge and fun and very sweet...
Home on Erik...
Missing the point about microservices: it's about testing and deploying independently
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the...
4th Jun 2018
Ok, so I have to first preface this whole blog post by a few things:
I really struggle with the term microservices. I can't put my finger on exactly why. Maybe because the term is hopelessly ill-defined, maybe because it's gotten picked up by the hype train.
Birchtree
No more new apps (in August)
It turns out that I have a lot of software ideas in my head. Given my penchant over the years to...
1st Aug 2026
It turns out that I have a lot of software ideas in my head. Given my penchant over the years to have more side projects than most people can imagine keeping up with, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise.
I've got 8 apps on the
Louwrentius - Solar
Personal Security: erase your computer or phone before repair
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have...
4th Nov 2012
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have to find some other person with greater computer knowledge to repair their computer or phone. That person will then be able to access all data stored on their computer or phone.
By...
Eric Migicovsky's...
What working on Pebble taught me about building hardware
Building hardware is fun but tough. We worked on Pebble for a full four years before we launched on...
19th Sep 2017
Building hardware is fun but tough. We worked on Pebble for a full four years before we launched on Kickstarter in 2012. We went on to sell…
Odds and Ends of...
I went on an Amazon propaganda tour
In which I'm forced to confront a contradictions in my values
1st Jul 2026
In which I'm forced to confront a contradictions in my values
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
3rd Dec 2024
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...
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
8th Apr 2021
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...
Jonas Hietala
Super ultrawide Niri
A Niri workspace with 7 visible columns.
After having used practically the same xmonad...
a week ago
A Niri workspace with 7 visible columns.
After having used practically the same xmonad configuration for a decade and a half I’ve now modernized my setup with the scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor Niri.
It’s been a bit of a struggle to unlearn my old workflow but I’m really...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Being a volunteer in Amsterdam-Zuidoost
After realising how lucky I am as an healthy, well educated, young man with a solid income, I wanted...
20th Nov 2016
After realising how lucky I am as an healthy, well educated, young man with a solid income, I wanted to do something for other people as volunteer. It just so happens to be that two years ago I received a flyer in my mailbox from the local community center: they were looking for...
Open for Business
On The Contrary: “Hook” Is A Great Film
Hook, the absolutely star-studded film directed by Stephen Spielberg, has received mixed reviews...
7th Jan 2026
Hook, the absolutely star-studded film directed by Stephen Spielberg, has received mixed reviews from critics since its release in 1991. I still can’t figure out why. One could have given the Academy Award for Best Actor to Dustin Hoffman, and Best Supporting Actor to Robin...
Home on Erik...
Detecting corporate fraud using Benford's law
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a...
7th Oct 2014
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a phenomenon where numbers in any data series will exhibit patterns in their first digit. For instance, if you took a list of the 1,000 longest rivers of Mongolia, or the average daily...
computers are bad
megawatts by microwave
In 1914 the Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation,
investigated the...
4th Jul 2026
In 1914 the Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation,
investigated the possibilities of developing the Columbia River. Thousands of
arid but potentially fertile acres needed only water to become the Imperial
Valley of the Northwest. Locked in the mountain...
computers are bad
2024-03-01 listening in on the neighborhood
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking...
1st Mar 2024
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking "What is SoundThinking," because the company rebranded
last year. They used to be called ShotSpotter, and their outdoor acoustic
gunfire detection system still goes by the...
Jorge Arango
Humanities Crash Course Week 5: Eudaemonia
In week 5 of my humanities crash course, I read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Poetics. I also...
2nd Feb 2025
In week 5 of my humanities crash course, I read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Poetics. I also listened to more Bach, looked at Italian Baroque sculpture, and watched a classic – if somewhat boring – movie. Getting through it despite the difficulties was part of the...
Construction Physics
Should US homebuilders emulate Sweden?
A common sentiment I see with folks interested in improving US homebuilding is that we should try...
1st Jan 2026
A common sentiment I see with folks interested in improving US homebuilding is that we should try and emulate Sweden.
Willem L. Middelkoop
One year of cycling
One year ago I started recording all my bike rides, including commutes, short grocery trips and long...
30th Dec 2016
One year ago I started recording all my bike rides, including commutes, short grocery trips and long Gran Fondos. I equipped my bicycles with Garmin Edge computers that recorded location (GPS), speed, cadence and my heart rate. I covered more than 7683 kilometers during 320 hours...
Abishek Muthian
India income tax e-filing utility for Linux
India has made a major overhaul to it's Income Tax filing website and with it its offline e-filing...
1st Oct 2021
India has made a major overhaul to it's Income Tax filing website and with it its offline e-filing utilities which are now available only for Windows and Mac.
Earlier the utility was in Java and was available for linux. Now it's been replaced with electron wrapper over the...
Simone Salis
Every Enemy Wears Your Face
The enemy in your head is usually wearing your face. On projection, the villains we invent, and the...
28th May 2026
The enemy in your head is usually wearing your face. On projection, the villains we invent, and the chair we can't see ourselves sitting in.
Louwrentius - Solar
My home lab server with 20 cores / 40 threads and 128 GB memory
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this...
12th Aug 2019
Update fall 2024
I have decided to decomission this machine and it is no longer in use.
As of this moment, it's replaced by a cluster of four 1L PCs which use about a third of the idle power usage and boot within 20 seconds. The single-core performance of these low-power 1L PCs...
Applied Cartography
Vertigo
I’m surprised that this movie is held in such high esteem relative to other Hitchcock films. I liked...
4th Jun 2022
I’m surprised that this movie is held in such high esteem relative to other Hitchcock films. I liked it, and I thought there were very good parts of it, and I thought it was better than Haley did. But it didn’t strike me as one of his best films beyond the dolly shot which is now...
Blog | Sam Curry
Hacking Starbucks and Accessing Nearly 100 Million Customer Records
20th Jun 2020
Willem's Blog
Commuter bike checkup
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to...
9th Jan 2021
This week my trustworthy commuter bike started making strange squeaking noises when braking, time to have a look at the bike after 21.000KM!
Willem's Blog
Improve your sleep by blocking light
I have been wearing a sleep mask in bed, blocking all light. It has been amazing for my sleep's...
23rd Jan 2020
I have been wearing a sleep mask in bed, blocking all light. It has been amazing for my sleep's quality. Read along for my findings!
./techtipsy
Trying out open weights LLM-s on hardware that I can actually afford
Seize the means of code production!
2 weeks ago
Seize the means of code production!
Posts on Made of...
The ITTAGE indirect branch predictor
While investigating the performance of the new Python 3.14 tail-calling interpreter, I learned (via...
4th Jul 2025
While investigating the performance of the new Python 3.14 tail-calling interpreter, I learned (via this very informative comment from Sam Gross) new (to me) piece of performance trivia: Modern CPUs mostly no longer struggle to predict the bytecode-dispatch indirect jump inside a...
Neil Madden
Book review: The Joy of Cryptography
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography....
16th Feb 2023
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography. This is a freely-available book covering introductory material on cryptography. It’s suitable for anyone with undergraduate-level computer science knowledge. As is often the case in...
Louwrentius - Solar
Core i7 920 @ 3,6 Ghz is a true beast!
Even today, Core 2 Duo processors clocked at 2 ghz are no slugs. However, the
Core i7 920 is of a...
4th Mar 2009
Even today, Core 2 Duo processors clocked at 2 ghz are no slugs. However, the
Core i7 920 is of a different kind. First, it is not only clocked at a higher
speed (default 2,8 Ghz), it is also a quad-core processor. Thanks to the re-
introduction of hyperthreading, this processor...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?
28th Mar 2024
Home on Erik...
We're hiring at Better
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the...
9th Dec 2019
Just a quick note that my team is always hiring at Better. A lot of new people have been joining the team here in NYC lately—the tech team has actually grown from 35 to 60 in just ~3 months.
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
14th Mar 2022
Willem's Blog
Monolithic vs Microservices software architecture
This week I flew to Gothenburg to talk about enterprise software architecture, read along to learn...
2nd Mar 2020
This week I flew to Gothenburg to talk about enterprise software architecture, read along to learn about choosing the right architecture for your app development
Willem L. Middelkoop
No, I Won't Build That!
If you're an accomplished developer (as in: you've actually created things in the past), you may...
4th Mar 2024
If you're an accomplished developer (as in: you've actually created things in the past), you may recognise this scenario: people reaching out to you, asking you to build something specific. "Can you build X for me?" A fellow technician once urged me to refuse more often: be proud...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Apple Watch as Phone
Imagine a week without your smartphone, replaced solely by the sleek simplicity of a smartwatch....
9th Nov 2023
Imagine a week without your smartphone, replaced solely by the sleek simplicity of a smartwatch. This week I did this, leaving my smartphone behind and letting an Apple Watch take the helm. Many hail this as a liberating escape from our attention-seeking digital sidekicks, but...
Louwrentius - Solar
'Linux RAID level and chunk size: the benchmarks'
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is...
23rd May 2010
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is the chunk size?
When you write data to a RAID array that implements striping (level 0, 5, 6,
10 and so on), the chunk of data sent to the array is broken down in to
pieces, each part...
Gwern.net Newsletter
July 2020 gwern.net newsletter
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
20th Aug 2020
Links on the Uighurs, authoritarianism, negative emissions, AI overhang; 1 movie & 2 anime reviews
Willem L. Middelkoop
Innovation Is Software
In August my computer setup changed more than it had in years. And yet the lesson of the month was...
3 weeks ago
In August my computer setup changed more than it had in years. And yet the lesson of the month was the opposite of new hardware: the existing gear has stretch, innovation is software. This post is about one brain, the machine in the homelab where my files and my agents live, the...
Fabien Sanglard
Wolfenstein 3D for iPhone code review
For once, developers were able to read the source code of an id software product just a few days...
9th May 2009
For once, developers were able to read the source code of an id software product just a few days after its release. I spent a week in my spare time reading the internal of the Wolfenstein 3D for iPhone engine. It is by far the cleanest and easiest id source code release to date.
matduggan.com
OTel Isn't Going Well (And I Made A Spreadsheet About It)
For years now one of the most reliable complaints I hear when I try to drag a team off their vendor...
12th Aug 2026
For years now one of the most reliable complaints I hear when I try to drag a team off their vendor specific SDK and onto OpenTelemetry is some variation of: "why does it seem like this isn't done yet?"
Vendor SDKs for observability are, to put
Home on Erik...
Wikiphilia
I've been obsessed with Wikipedia for the past ten years. Occasionally I find some good articles...
2nd Jun 2013
I've been obsessed with Wikipedia for the past ten years. Occasionally I find some good articles worth sharing and that's why I created the wikiphilia Twitter handle. Just a long stream of stuff that for one reason or another may be interesting.
Never Met a Science
The Discipline and the Discipline
at the intersection of art and social science
a week ago
at the intersection of art and social science
Louwrentius - Solar
Why I still won't switch to Linux and keep my Mac
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to...
1st Feb 2009
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to admit that the Linux desktop is really becoming a
nice, user-friendly environment. I'm truly starting to like what I see. I
considered whiping Mac OS X from my macbook, but there...
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...
22nd Aug 2023
Conformant OpenGL® ES 3.1 drivers are now available for M1- and
M2-family GPUs. That means the drivers are compatible with any OpenGL ES
3.1 application. Interested? Just install Linux!
For existing Asahi Linux users,
upgrade your system with dnf
upgrade (Fedora) or pacman
-Syu...
Home on Erik...
Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence...
2nd May 2018
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence in my ability to assess people. Let me just throw a couple of algorithm questions at a candidate and then I'll tell you if they are good or not!
Software and Tech...
The web is changing, and we are not going back
Whenever I saw someone type a natural language query into Google, it made me cringe. "It's not a...
1st Jun 2026
Whenever I saw someone type a natural language query into Google, it made me cringe. "It's not a person," I would say. "Type like you're talking to a machine." This was especially true for programmers and it was before AI took over everything.
Instead of "how do I write a...
Neil Madden
CVE-2022-21449: Psychic Signatures in Java
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to...
19th Apr 2022
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to get out of trouble by showing an identity card which is actually completely blank. Of course, this being Doctor Who, the card is really made out of a special “psychic paper“, which...
Avestura's Blog
A Software Engineer's Take on The Political Spectrum
You heard about the left-wing and right-wing politics. But how is that related to software?
16th Sep 2025
You heard about the left-wing and right-wing politics. But how is that related to software?
Simone Salis
The Postcard and the Thing Itself (On Falling in Love with Ideas)
My meditation teacher said something that stopped me cold: “We fall in love with the idea of a...
28th Oct 2025
My meditation teacher said something that stopped me cold: “We fall in love with the idea of a person, and then we fight so hard to keep it alive.”
Home on Erik...
Momentum and mean reversion might just be volatility bias
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at...
13th Jan 2013
The Economist just published an article called The best, the worst and the ugly. By looking at historical performance for mutual funds, they find strong support for momentum and mean reversion. Picking the best or the worst fund over the previous five years gives great returns...
Posts on Made of...
Finding near-duplicates with Jaccard similarity and MinHash
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are...
3rd Jul 2024
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are approximately the same as each other. For instance, we may have crawled the web over some period of time, and expect to have fetched the “same page” several times, but to see slight...
Applied Cartography
The Godfather
It has taken me far too long to watch The Godfather, and having finished it I find myself
slightly...
6th Feb 2023
It has taken me far too long to watch The Godfather, and having finished it I find myself
slightly deflated — because it is a tremendous movie, worthy of its status in both the American
and cinematic anons, and every line and meme which has etched itself into the collective...
The New Oil
Hooked 2.0: How Scams are Evolving & How to Avoid Them
2nd Mar 2025
Can We Still Govern?
The reasons Trump gives for attacking Iran
It does not add up to much
1st Mar 2026
It does not add up to much
Old Vintage...
They call it Mister Pibb (again)
As Pibb is the official beverage of Old Vintage Computing Research, no doubt to the profound chagrin...
2nd Nov 2025
As Pibb is the official beverage of Old Vintage Computing Research, no doubt to the profound chagrin of the Coca-Cola Company, I feel compelled to offer a public service announcement.
Old and busted:
inconsistent on their own brand name) is back and Pibb Xtra, the face of...
On Life and Lisp
Passing the reins on Panfrost
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild...
10th Apr 2023
Today is my last day at Collabora and my last day leading the Panfrost driver.
It’s been a wild ride.
In 2017, I began work on the chai driver for Mali T (Midgard). chai would later be merged into Lyude Paul’s and Connor Abbott’s BiOpenly project for Mali G (Bifrost) to form...
Writing
Omoiyari
Inconsequential and pleasant!
1st Mar 2021
Inconsequential and pleasant!
Project Blog on...
Train Simulator Controller: CAN Controller, Part 2
I’m building a physical cab dashboard to control Train Simulator, and to tie it all together as...
4th Jan 2024
I’m building a physical cab dashboard to control Train Simulator, and to tie it all together as robustly as possible, I am use CAN. This protocol is designed to rapidly share small updates around a network in an electrically noise environment, and in a previous post, I detailed...
Scott Kennedy
The worst take in tech: new grad hiring
11th Jun 2026
Abishek Muthian
Could we be living in the virtual reality as a punishment ?
Well, come-on you should know upfront that I’m not going to be writing about some ground breaking...
31st Jul 2016
Well, come-on you should know upfront that I’m not going to be writing about some ground breaking research I conduct at my basement laboratory resulting in conclusive proof of Brain in a vat , if so I would rather be writing a Nobel prize acceptance speech.
Now you could ask me,...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
30th Jan 2024
Fabien Sanglard
Street Fighter 2: Sound System Internals
15th Jan 2022
Bryan Braun - Blog
The flood of AI website builders
There are so many of them.
instead of markdown to enable lazy-loading -->
How good...
27th Apr 2024
There are so many of them.
instead of markdown to enable lazy-loading -->
How good are these site builders? I don’t know.
Are you worried about job security? I have two thoughts…
1. We’ve seen this before
Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow… all these tools...
Louwrentius - Solar
Statistics showing relevance of caching proxy
In this day and age of dynamic web content, how relevant can a caching proxy server be? I believe...
18th Dec 2012
In this day and age of dynamic web content, how relevant can a caching proxy server be? I believe that the answer could be: quite!
I have installed a caching proxy server based on Squid, which is now used within my company. It also does content scanning using squidclamav and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Exploring Elliptic Curve Pairings
14th Jan 2017
Fabien Sanglard
Following Street Fighter 2 paper trails
22nd Dec 2021
The Pragmatic...
Is the “AI developer”a threat to jobs – or a marketing stunt?
One startup released “the first AI software engineer,” while another aims to build a “superhuman...
1st May 2024
One startup released “the first AI software engineer,” while another aims to build a “superhuman software engineer.” As intimidating as these sound: what if it’s more marketing than reality?
Writing
The Godfather
It has taken me far too long to watch The Godfather, and having finished it I find myself
slightly...
6th Feb 2023
It has taken me far too long to watch The Godfather, and having finished it I find myself
slightly deflated — because it is a tremendous movie, worthy of its status in both the American
and cinematic anons, and every line and meme which has etched itself into the collective...
Home on Erik...
Annoy 1.10 released, with Hamming distance and Windows support
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to...
26th Nov 2017
I've been a bit bad at posting things with a regular cadence lately, partly because I'm trying to adjust to having a toddler, partly because the hunt for clicks has caused such a high bar for me that I feel like I have to post something Pulitzer-worthy.
Willem's Blog
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during...
9th Jul 2018
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during the music festival.
Can We Still Govern?
Remembering the Origins of Birthright Citizenship
Administrative Burdens Were Long Used to Restrict Internal Migration
2nd Apr 2026
Administrative Burdens Were Long Used to Restrict Internal Migration
Kent de Bruin
Driverless Pizzas
How self-driving vehicles and algorithms will change cities
21st Apr 2019
How self-driving vehicles and algorithms will change cities
somenice
CircuitPython in 2025
This post is a wishlist for CircuitPython in 2025. Each year Adafruit asks the community to...
5th Jan 2025
This post is a wishlist for CircuitPython in 2025. Each year Adafruit asks the community to contribute their thoughts or requests for the open source microcontroller language as outlined on the Adafruit blog. In 2025 I would like a library for working with vectors, similar to...
Tiny struggles
My release checklist for chrome extensions
Many products can be updated very quickly. You spot a bug, you push a fix in next 5 minutes, sadly...
9th Jul 2022
Many products can be updated very quickly. You spot a bug, you push a fix in next 5 minutes, sadly for chrome extensions it’s not like that.
When you update a chrome extension in the chrome web store you submit a package that then goes through a lengthy review. It can take...
computers are bad
2024-12-04 operators on the front
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the...
4th Dec 2024
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the vague understanding that an operator used to be involved is
the main thing they know about historic telephony. Of course, telephone
historians, as a group, tend to be much more...
Writing
London Match
A satisfying but non-revelatory ending to the trilogy started by Berlin Game and Mexico Set, whose...
6th Mar 2024
A satisfying but non-revelatory ending to the trilogy started by Berlin Game and Mexico Set, whose lack of true satisfaction in its ending both feels earned (in the sense that one of the main messages of these books has been the lack of clean breaks and endings in the conflicts...
Old Vintage...
So long, Z80
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s...
20th Apr 2024
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s (PDF), announcing earlier this week that after June 14th you won't be able to buy them anymore (specifically the last-part-standing Z84C00 which comes in various speeds from 6-20 MHz)...
Jonas Hietala
Notifications with xmonad/irssi/urxvt
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I...
3rd Jul 2014
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I have not had notifications enabled, so I can see from the statusbar whenever someone messages me. As I’ve never been very active this has been fine, but now I figured it’s time to fix...
Christian Selig
Trials and Tribulations of Making an Interruptable Custom View Controller Transition on iOS
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one,...
19th Feb 2021
I think it’s safe to say while the iOS custom view controller transition API is a very powerful one, with that power comes a great deal of complexity. It can be tricky, and I’m having one of those days where it’s getting the better of me and I just cannot get it to do what I want...
Home on Erik...
How to hire smarter than the market: a toy model
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable....
13th Jan 2020
Let's consider a toy model where you're hiring for two things and that those are equally valuable. It's not very important what those are, so let's just call them “thing A” and “thing B” for now.
latest projects -...
Precision Clock Mk IV
[Hardware] GPS synchronised, millisecond precision, automatic timezones and more!
31st May 2025
[Hardware] GPS synchronised, millisecond precision, automatic timezones and more!
Matt Mullenweg
D’Angelo & Diane
Just last night I was re-watching Annie Hall to remember and honor Diane Keaton, and now the news...
15th Oct 2025
Just last night I was re-watching Annie Hall to remember and honor Diane Keaton, and now the news that D’Angelo had passed. I’m writing this listening to Voodoo, one of the great albums of all time. That CD in my beater car in Houston was on constant rotation, the richness of the...
Jonas Hietala
Good and Bad Programmers
Every now and day blog posts about what it takes to be a good programmer or how you figure out if...
8th Nov 2012
Every now and day blog posts about what it takes to be a good programmer or how you figure out if someone is a bad programmer arrives. There’s always talk about how you find the good programmers in interviews and the topic is always hot in schools and universities.
Today I read...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
5th Oct 2024
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Jonas Hietala
Automating the Hue Tap Dial Switch in Elixir via MQTT
I recently bought a couple of Hue Tap Dial switches for our house to enhance our smart home.
We have...
1st Sep 2025
I recently bought a couple of Hue Tap Dial switches for our house to enhance our smart home.
We have quite a few smart lights and I figured the tap dial—with it’s multiple buttons and rotary dial—would be a good fit.
Since I’ve been moving away from standard Home Assistant...
Fabien Sanglard
Apple iPhone Tech Talk 2009 tricks and treats
Today I took a day off from work to attend the iPhone Apple Tech Talk 2009 in Toronto. I learned a...
3rd Dec 2009
Today I took a day off from work to attend the iPhone Apple Tech Talk 2009 in Toronto. I learned a few cool things and though I should share it with the two lost developers that may stumble on this page. I haven't had time to test and verify all of this so as usual: Do your own...
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Strap Compact for AirTag
We wanted a strap mount that was secure, rugged, ultra-compact, and super easier to assemble. So we...
12th Mar 2025
We wanted a strap mount that was secure, rugged, ultra-compact, and super easier to assemble. So we designed TagVault Strap Compact.
Fully waterproof with a hidden inner gasket.
It's ultra low-profile.
Perfect for backpacks.
Also really great for cameras.
Also available...
Willem's Blog
Developing a native iOS app
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with...
10th May 2024
How hard can it be to build your own cycling and running workout tracker app using native code with some help from AI? Read along to find out!
Applied Cartography
Slow Horses (Season 2)
Not as great as the first season; still tremendously entertaining television, with more than a few...
7th Jan 2024
Not as great as the first season; still tremendously entertaining television, with more than a few twists that I couldn't predict and an underlying thread of competence in set design, pacing, and acting that is hard to deny.
Applied Cartography
Across the Spiderverse
It is very gratifying for me to see all the praise for this movie, some of it feeling overdue from...
7th Jun 2023
It is very gratifying for me to see all the praise for this movie, some of it feeling overdue from the somehow-underappreciated
Into the Spiderverse. And, to be sure, the praise is earned: this is "what if the first movie, but more" in the best way
possible.
I thought the former,...
Louwrentius - Solar
Release of PPSS - the Parallel Processing Shell Script
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use...
3rd Jan 2009
PPSS is a shell script that processess files or other items in parallel. It is
designed to make use of the current multi-core CPUs. It will detect the number
of available CPUs and start a thread for each CPU core.
This script is build with the goal to be very easy to use. Also,...
Alyssa Rosenzweig
Fun and Games with Exposure Notifications
Exposure
Notifications is a protocol developed by Apple and Google for
facilitating COVID-19 contact...
7th Sep 2020
Exposure
Notifications is a protocol developed by Apple and Google for
facilitating COVID-19 contact tracing on mobile phones by
exchanging codes with nearby phones over Bluetooth,
implemented within the Android and iOS operating systems, now available
here in Toronto.
Wait –...
Jonas Hietala
Moving private repositories to Bitbucket
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of...
10th Oct 2012
Long overdue, I recently moved my private repositories from Github to Bitbucket. Github is great of courseand they even gave me a free students account and I still host all my public repositories there. Still, Bitbucket has unlimited free private repositories for up to 5 users...
MIT News - Civil and...
How good old mud can lower building costs
Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. MIT researchers invented a way to make...
24th Jan 2025
Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. MIT researchers invented a way to make these structures out of on-site soil.
Old Vintage...
John C. Dvorak has died
Reports coming in of the death of John C. Dvorak, apparently passed away on Monday (July 20th) from...
23rd Jul 2026
Reports coming in of the death of John C. Dvorak, apparently passed away on Monday (July 20th) from complications of heart bypass surgery. Dvorak started in wine and moved to silicon as an early columnist at InfoWorld, one of the pillar references for this particular blog because...
Style over Substance
How to use a Phase One H20 digital back on a medium format Hasselblad V camera (500EL/M)
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my...
1st Jan 2021
My newest purchase was a bit of a gamble. I bought a $500 Phase One H20 digital back for my Hasselblad 500EL/M medium format camera. Or, simply put, I bought an expensive old gadget for my even older analog camera, making it a digital camera. A gadget that was released in the...
Style over Substance
Guy’s Cool Tools
This is a placeholder post! I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and have loved their...
16th Jul 2022
This is a placeholder post! I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site and have loved their recommendations for years. So much, so that I even started a Pinterest board filled with my own recommendations. But after a few years of running into the limitations of the form, I...
Niklas Oberhuber’s...
Prisoner’s Chessboard Puzzle
3 weeks ago
computers are bad
avalanche technology
One of the downsides of having written here for six years now is that my messy,
ever-growing text...
a week ago
One of the downsides of having written here for six years now is that my messy,
ever-growing text file of topics for future articles contains a bunch of ideas
that have been there for about six years. Part of the problem is that I just
have to scroll so far up to even see them...
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
19th Oct 2024
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
Daniel De Laney
I made my screen blurry to get more done
Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I...
19th Nov 2025
Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I have.
The problem, counterintuitively, was lack of interruption. I never paused to ask whether I was doing the right thing. Or whether my approach was working. Or if I was spending...
anderegg.ca
AI and software security: the slop is now signal
No matter how you feel about AI, it’s changing the world of software. The “T” in ChatGPT was...
10th May 2026
No matter how you feel about AI, it’s changing the world of software. The “T” in ChatGPT was invented to improve language translation, and large language models (LLMs) are very good at this. Interestingly, translating between French and Japanese is effectively the same as...
./techtipsy
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G: first impressions on Fedora 34
Introduction
I’ve covered my self-hosting setup in a previous post. It has been a couple of
months...
7th Aug 2021
Introduction
I’ve covered my self-hosting setup in a previous post. It has been a couple of
months and the setup has mostly been fine. Sure, the power usage was pretty big under load, and yes, my internet did cut
out every time I turned the VM on with all the services starting,...
Writing
The MANIAC
One third of the way through The MANIAC, I found myself wondering why this book was not more...
2nd Nov 2024
One third of the way through The MANIAC, I found myself wondering why this book was not more popular: it seemed to be a perfect storm of formalism and postmodernism (it being told in a fugue-like oral history), scientistic reckoning (suddenly in vogue thanks to oppenheimer),...
Kent de Bruin
Great Tools Disappear
The best designed products get out of the way and let you focus on the work instead of the tool
18th Sep 2025
The best designed products get out of the way and let you focus on the work instead of the tool
Home on Erik...
Leaving Spotify
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an...
11th Feb 2015
Febrary 6 was my last day at Spotify. In total I spent more than six years at Spotify and it was an amazing experience.
I joined Spotify in Stockholm in 2008, mainly because a bunch of friends from programming competitions had joined already.
Krebs on Security
Canvas Breach Disrupts Schools & Colleges Nationwide
An ongoing data extortion attack targeting the widely-used education technology platform Canvas...
8th May 2026
An ongoing data extortion attack targeting the widely-used education technology platform Canvas disrupted classes and coursework at school districts and universities across the United States today, after a cybercrime group defaced the service’s login page with a ransom demand...
Jorge Arango
Don’t Let the Drawings Distract You: AI is Not About the Output
Last week, I spoke with a business leader who’s excited about AI. But as we talked, it became clear...
1st Apr 2025
Last week, I spoke with a business leader who’s excited about AI. But as we talked, it became clear that there’s a wide gulf between enthusiasm and creating value for a particular business.
Most people’s impression of AI is based on limited use and media hype. Take the recent...
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
31st Dec 2007
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
Birchtree
+ The only thing of value I can provide
There is one main type of value I can bring to this blog. If I lose that, what am I even doing?
2nd Nov 2025
There is one main type of value I can bring to this blog. If I lose that, what am I even doing?
computers are bad
extremely low frequencies
The submarine is a surprisingly ancient technology—at least in its early,
primitive forms. The idea...
9th May 2026
The submarine is a surprisingly ancient technology—at least in its early,
primitive forms. The idea is quite simple, that a well-enough-sealed boat ought
to be able to submerge and resurface. It's the practicalities that make the
whole thing difficult. It is generally considered...
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Social Share Images in Twitter/X
I have an admission to make. Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and...
12th Nov 2024
I have an admission to make. Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Apple Messages for months. And it made me sad.
But in the past few months we got it fixed. And that made me very happy!
We really love our Pika social share images. They are pretty....
Applied Cartography
Trials of Mana
Oh, this game should have been catnip for me! I love ARPGs. I have been waiting literally 15 years...
1st Jun 2021
Oh, this game should have been catnip for me! I love ARPGs. I have been waiting literally 15 years to play this game. I wanted something pleasant and smooth brain to hack away with in the late evenings.
Jonas Hietala
2015 Read Books
I didn’t read a lot of books in 2015, but the books I did read were pretty damn good.
Fiction
A Song...
1st Jan 2016
I didn’t read a lot of books in 2015, but the books I did read were pretty damn good.
Fiction
A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons - George R.R. Martin
Reread.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - Gearge R.R. Martin
The Skin Collector - Jeffery Deaver
Best Served Cold - Joe...
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Notes from "Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy"
I just finished Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy, a profile of the Tor Project. I...
8th Nov 2025
I just finished Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy, a profile of the Tor Project. I thought it was an approachable overview of Tor and its history. If you’re interested, the book is free! Or you can read my chapter-by-chapter notes below.
Chapter 1: Privacy...
Software and Tech...
Amazon Basics, but for intellectual property.
Amazon has been accused several times for ripping off merchants on its platform. And every single...
6th Jul 2026
Amazon has been accused several times for ripping off merchants on its platform. And every single time they denied any wrongdoing.
A merchant, or anyone really, can create a product (or source it from China), then resell it on amazon. Amazon is the service provider, and hosts...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON 0
About 1.5 years ago I ventured into 3D printing by building a VORON Trident.
It was a very fun...
25th Mar 2025
About 1.5 years ago I ventured into 3D printing by building a VORON Trident.
It was a very fun project and I’ve even used the printer quite a bit.
Naturally, I had to build another one and this time I opted for the cute VORON 0.
Why another printer?
I really like my VORON Trident...
Applied Cartography
The Boys in the Boat
A friend of mine who's in finance told me that the book is a cult favorite in his office, as most of...
14th Jan 2019
A friend of mine who's in finance told me that the book is a cult favorite in his office, as most of them did crew in college.
There's gotta be a word for the narrative neatness that this book employs. Of course the UW folks are the young upstarts — of course they are portrayed...
Notes on software...
A minimal distributed key-value database with Hashicorp's Raft library
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure...
17th Sep 2022
When I wrote the "build a distributed PostgreSQL proof of
concept" post I first had to figure out
how to use Hashicorp's Raft
implementation.
There weren't any examples I could find in the Hashicorp repo
itself. And the only example I could find was Philip O'Toole's
hraftd. It's...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
6th Jul 2017
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.
joshua stein
Wallops 2.0 Released
Another large update to my
Wallops IRC client
is available:
wallops-2.0.sit (StuffIt 3 archive,...
12th Sep 2024
Another large update to my
Wallops IRC client
is available:
wallops-2.0.sit (StuffIt 3 archive, includes
source code and THINK C 5 project file)
532f6c72eadbb9e7ce74dded1bfcd71369a61d818f7c77160bb8a66d6f1ccf9c
SHA1: c375a24e00900378e84745c1e11d3d6976ef749c
This release features...
Louwrentius - Solar
Fully unattended deployment of Windows clients using limited resources
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution...
7th Jul 2012
Introduction
Anyone who ever installed Windows on a computer by hand must have wished for a solution that automate this task. It's just waiting a lot and pressing a button now and then. But installing the operating system itself is only the beginning. Once installed, you need to...
Willem L. Middelkoop
The day I killed my LAN
Today I called my provider to quit my office's ADSL internet subscription, I don't need it anymore....
30th Jul 2017
Today I called my provider to quit my office's ADSL internet subscription, I don't need it anymore. I have turned off my local area network and switched my workflow onto mobile internet only. The simplicity and savings actually surprised me so much, that I made blog post for it....
Willem L. Middelkoop
When the Going Gets Tough
Yesterday I finished the Leiden Marathon, it was the hardest 42K I ever completed due to the...
11th May 2025
Yesterday I finished the Leiden Marathon, it was the hardest 42K I ever completed due to the temperature. Sunny with a clear sky, temperatures climbed to 25°C. Several runners collapsed from heat exhaustion, and one even required resuscitation. When you push your limits,...
Louwrentius - Solar
The 'hidden' cost of using ZFS for your home NAS
Introduction
Update December 2023:
In June, it was announced that iXsystems would sponsor...
2nd Jan 2016
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...
Electronics etc…
Notes about Basic Polyphase Decimation Filters
Introduction
Decimation with FIR Anti-Aliasing Filter
Naive Hardware Implementation
Reduce number of...
25th Jan 2026
Introduction
Decimation with FIR Anti-Aliasing Filter
Naive Hardware Implementation
Reduce number of calculations - Move decimator before multiplier
Polyphase decomposition of the original filter
The Noble Identity for Decimation
Re-using Common Hardware in the Fast Clock...
Eric Migicovsky's...
Core 2 Duo - Beta Test Signup!
My personal Core 2 Duo, featuring irek’s beautiful Brutal watchface Hopefully you have...
11th Jun 2025
My personal Core 2 Duo, featuring irek’s beautiful Brutal watchface Hopefully you have pre-ordered a Core 2 Duo watch - if not, you…
Abishek Muthian
Major disaster has struck the computing industry.
TL;DR your computers are going to get slow because of patches aimed at fixing unprecedented...
4th Jan 2018
TL;DR your computers are going to get slow because of patches aimed at fixing unprecedented vulnerabilities in the CPU.
For the rest (simplified),
Modern computational security relies on maintaining the sanctum of memory, i.e keeping secure memory (say your passwords) out of...
Christian Selig
I have thoughts on the iPhone Air
Hard to believe, but it’s been over 9 months since the current crop of iPhones came out, and I...
7th Jul 2026
Hard to believe, but it’s been over 9 months since the current crop of iPhones came out, and I elected to grab the (apparently not super popular) iPhone Air, a new model of iPhone introduced for the first time. Rumor season for the new iPhones is in full swing, so it seemed like...
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Fabric for AirTag
Having an AirTag fall out of our camera bag pocket that was then stolen, we wanted something...
19th Apr 2023
Having an AirTag fall out of our camera bag pocket that was then stolen, we wanted something better.
So we designed TagVault Fabric Mount for AirTag. It is ultra-flexible to move and flow with your fabric. Discreet, so it doesn't stand out to a would-be thief. And it's...
Neil Madden
A look at CloudFlare’s AI-coded OAuth library
I decided today to take a look at CloudFlare’s new OAuth provider library, which they apparently...
6th Jun 2025
I decided today to take a look at CloudFlare’s new OAuth provider library, which they apparently coded almost entirely with Anthropic’s Claude LLM: This library (including the schema documentation) was largely written with the help of Claude, the AI model by Anthropic. Claude’s...
Louwrentius - Solar
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...
6th Nov 2010
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...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Vibe Coding
Grossing over $48K a month, the flight simulator game by Pieter Levels spurred a whole flurry of...
14th Apr 2025
Grossing over $48K a month, the flight simulator game by Pieter Levels spurred a whole flurry of innovation. Without detailed knowledge of 3D game engine technology, he 'vibe coded' his game using AI. Critics of his work pointed at security and scalability issues, while...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Counting Agentic Traffic
This month I brought Lemmid Count back: the website statistics of my platform, rebuilt from scratch...
6th Jul 2026
This month I brought Lemmid Count back: the website statistics of my platform, rebuilt from scratch without AWStats and without a database. Its party piece is the dimension every other analytics tool throws away: the bots. In the agentic era the question "what did AI agents read...
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