Willem's Blog
Collecting health data with Biostrap
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
over a year ago
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
Arduino Blog
Make your scary Halloween pumpkin smart with the Plug and Make Kit!
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more...
2 months ago
With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve got the perfect project to make your decorations more fun and interactive. All you have to do is take the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and Modulino nodes included in your Plug and Make Kit to create an awesome jack-o’-lantern that will light up...
Jonas Hietala
On The Decline of FPS Games
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS...
over a year ago
Mr. Eriksson just sent me this link as a fitting video on my post on The Decline of FPS Games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU
Oh How true!
Arduino Blog
Can remote co-presence keep distant human connections alive?
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social...
5 months ago
The pandemic made a lot of things obvious, not the least of which is that humans need social interaction to maintain good mental health. Sadly, many of us spend our lives physically separated from our loved ones by great distances or inopportune circumstances. That’s why a team...
Arduino Blog
A drone remote designed to enhance magic shows
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed...
7 months ago
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities. That is the idea behind Peter...
computers are bad
2024-04-05 the life of one earth station
Sometimes, when I am feeling down, I read about failed satellite TV (STV)
services. Don't we all?...
8 months ago
Sometimes, when I am feeling down, I read about failed satellite TV (STV)
services. Don't we all? As a result, I've periodically come across a company
called AlphaStar Television Network. PrimeStar may have had a rough life, but
AlphaStar barely had one at all: it launched in...
Matt Blewitt
Long Distance Relationships
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through...
2 months ago
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...
axio.ms
Internet of kitchen lighting, with OSC
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say...
over a year ago
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say that I wrote a useful little bit of software and built up a crappy hack to demonstrate it but, secretly, the crappy hack came first and I’ve retroactively found something vaguely...
Notes on software...
The case for comments in code
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose...
over a year ago
When I first started programming, especially when asked for code
samples, my comments lacked purpose and would often duplicate in
English what the code clearly indicated. I knew that "commenting is
good" but as a beginner I had no further insight.
Over time with the help of books...
Notes on software...
Analyzing large JSON files via partial JSON parsing
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.
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: thoughts about cloud security
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of...
over a year ago
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of existing users regarding the Linode management console.
Resetting passwords is not something you do when under a simple attack such as a DDOS attack. Such a measure is only taken...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
I don't know how to build software and you don't either
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it...
a month ago
Are microservices better than monoliths? Should teams set their own technical direction, or is it better to have that dictated by some…
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. an x86 upgrade
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
This post upgrades the ulisp x86 backend from using a limited set of
registers (with no spilling...
Neil Madden
A controversial opinion about REST API design
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice,...
a year ago
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice, some of it I could quibble with. But several of the rules are about how to design the path hierarchy of your API: use plural nouns, don’t use nested sub-paths unnecessarily, etc. In...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Notes on Blockchain Governance
over a year ago
Bryan Braun - Blog
Links #11
Here are some more links to things that I keep thinking about. I shared a bit more detail on these...
2 weeks ago
Here are some more links to things that I keep thinking about. I shared a bit more detail on these ones than I usually do—there were so many good quotes to include. Enjoy!
Selfishness & Therapy Culture
Earlier this year, there was a post in the New York Times called “Sometimes,...
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Good Enough
Actual Customer Support Is Remarkable
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built...
a year ago
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built software on the Internet and in the app stores.
Our motivation with Good Enough is to try to put together a few products that feel just right to the folks using them.
The things we...
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...
Old Vintage...
Composite and hard reset mods for the Tandyvision One
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my...
2 weeks ago
I still have my literal first home computer (the Tomy Tutor), and it so happens I also have my literal first game console: the Tandyvision One, Tandy Radio Shack's label variant of the Mattel Intellivision Master Component.
The Mattel Intellivision proper originally hails...
Vitalik Buterin's...
An incomplete guide to stealth addresses
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Embedding youtube videos with Hakyll
A while ago a made a timelapse of my entry to Ludum Dare. This is how I parse and embed videos using...
over a year ago
A while ago a made a timelapse of my entry to Ludum Dare. This is how I parse and embed videos using Hakyll.
I don’t want to remember any special syntax for embedding, I don’t want to bother (remember?) to use something like {% youtube: <link> %} or whatever syntax we might find...
Louwrentius
The Raspberry Pi 5 is no match for a tini-mini-micro PC
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable...
6 months ago
I've always been fond of the idea of the Raspberry Pi. An energy efficient, small, cheap but capable computer. An ideal home server. Until the Pi 4, the Pi was not that capable, and only with the relatively recent Pi 5 (fall 2023) do I feel the Pi is OK performance wise, although...
Louwrentius
Please use ZFS with ECC Memory
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a...
over a year ago
In this blogpost I argue why it's strongly recommended to use ZFS with ECC memory when building a NAS. I would argue that if you do not use ECC memory, it's reasonable to also forgo on ZFS altogether and use any (legacy) file system that suits your needs.
Why ZFS?
Many people...
Louwrentius
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for home usage
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you...
over a year ago
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you run RAID 5 you're told that you are a crazy person.
Using RAID 5 is portrayed as an unreasonable risk to the availability of your data. It is suggested that it is likely that you...
Willem's Blog
Building the blog... in style!
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
over a year ago
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
Louwrentius
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...
over a year ago
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...
Buck on Software
23 things you should know
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
over a year ago
1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring
Willem's Blog
Lunch by plane
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
over a year ago
This week I went out for lunch by plane from Hilversum to Texel with a good buddy of mine.
Posts on Made of...
Distributed cloud builds for everyone
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous....
over a year ago
CPU cycles are cheaper than they have ever been, and cloud computing has never been more ubiquitous. All the major cloud providers offer generous free tiers, and services like GitHub Actions offer free compute resources to open-source repositories. So why do so many developers...
Willem's Blog
Wearing WHOOP 4.0
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror...
over a year ago
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror - it's so powerful, that I don't take mine off!
Arduino Blog
This 3D-printed robotic arm can be built with just a few inexpensive components
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts,...
2 months ago
Robotics is already an intimidating field, thanks to the complexity involved. And the cost of parts, such as actuators, only increases that feeling of inaccessibility. But as FABRI Creator shows in their most recent video, you can build a useful robotic arm with just a handful of...
Posts on Made of...
Property Testing Like AFL
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same...
over a year ago
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same practice, or at least share a lot of commonality. In this followup post, I want to explore that idea a bit more: I’ll first detour into some of my frustrations and hesitations around...
Odds and Ends of...
We need more than Westminster reporters to understand government
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
a week ago
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
Willem's Blog
Space travelling from El Teide
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a...
over a year ago
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a perfect altitude for stargazing.
lcamtuf’s thing
The secret lives of snowblowers
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than...
4 months ago
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than it seems.
Arduino Blog
Giving Billy Bass the arti-fish-al intelligence he always deserved
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of...
3 months ago
If you were unlucky enough to visit a big box retail store or goofy uncle’s home around the turn of the century, you would have undoubtedly come across a Big Mouth Billy Bass. That’s an animatronic fish that wiggles on a plaque while older, very licensable hit songs play. But...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Black and White
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not...
over a year ago
All this time working on my latest game I thought it sucked and I was trying hard to make it to not suck. My spirit wasn’t high, just check this post and this but now when it’s done it’s like night and day, or like black and white! I’m damn happy I got it done!! Aah I’ll try to...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 2 (Linting)
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Home on Erik...
Benchmark of Approximate Nearest Neighbor libraries
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you...
over a year ago
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you have a high (1-1000) dimensional space with points in it, and you want to find the nearest neighbors to some point.
Simply Explained
Integrate Home Assistant with Apple Reminders
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos....
over a year ago
I recently integrated Home Assistant with Apple Reminders so that automations can create new todos. This is trickier as it sounds, because Reminders has no API that can be accessed from Home Assistant. Here's how I worked around that problem with a script, input text helper and...
Willem's Blog
Saving a MacBook Air with exploded battery
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
over a year ago
Saving a MacBook Air with a swollen battery pack.
Arduino Blog
Does your sample contain DNA or RNA? DIYNAFLUOR can tell you on a budget
Lab equipment is — traditionally at least — tremendously expensive. While there are understandable...
3 days ago
Lab equipment is — traditionally at least — tremendously expensive. While there are understandable reasons for those costs, they are prohibitive to anyone operating outside of a university or corporate lab. But as the “citizen science” movement has grown, we’ve seen more and more...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 4
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
A DIY bottle-labeling machine perfect for homebrewers
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires...
6 months ago
While it is certainly possible (and common) to put homebrewed beer into kegs, that requires regulated gas and large refrigeration space. A keg is also more difficult to transport and overkill if you just want to bring a few beers to a friend’s backyard BBQ. For those reasons,...
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...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
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.
Good Enough
TIL: Easily Support Gravatars in Rails
We’re building some software where we’d like to display avatars for email contacts
even if they...
10 months ago
We’re building some software where we’d like to display avatars for email contacts
even if they aren’t users of our software.
While Gravatar is a relic of Web 2.0,
we’ve found that there are still a significant number of people who have their
email addresses in that...
Home on Erik...
Where do locals go in NYC?
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious...
over a year ago
One obvious thing to anyone living in NYC is how tourists cluster in certain areas. I was curious about the larger patterns around this, so I spent some time looking at data. The thing I wanted to understand is: what areas are dominated by tourists?
./techtipsy
LattePanda V1 - my experience with a Raspberry Pi alternative
As with many homelab experiments around 2022/2023, it all started with Raspberry Pi-s
being either...
a year ago
As with many homelab experiments around 2022/2023, it all started with Raspberry Pi-s
being either out of stock or absurdly overpriced.
I once noticed a listing for a LattePanda V1 on a local auction site.
The price was reasonable at 45 EUR, and after I looked at the...
watchTowr Labs -...
Palo Alto - Putting The Protecc In GlobalProtect (CVE-2024-3400)
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by...
8 months ago
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by now-familiar news—a nation-state was exploiting a “sophisticated” vulnerability for full compromise in yet another enterprise-grade SSLVPN device.
We’ve seen all the commentary around the...
Arduino Blog
Clone your IoT projects with Arduino Cloud Custom Templates
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the...
4 months ago
Whether you are an IoT enthusiast, an enterprise developer or a high school teacher, we all know the thrill of bringing a new IoT project to life. But we also understand the frustration of repetitive setup processes and the time sink of configuring the same elements over and over...
Home on Erik...
I already found the best gifs
Just search for “hackers gif“.
There you go. Fun for your work emails for the next 500 years. From...
over a year ago
Just search for “hackers gif“.
There you go. Fun for your work emails for the next 500 years. From the awesome movie Hackers. That movie together with The Warriors convinced me that I wanted to live in NYC when I was like… 14 years old.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Antenna diodes in the Pentium processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures...
4 weeks ago
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where
signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason.
Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of...
detreville
Newsletter 1: What's next?
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
a year ago
This is the first in a series of newsletters covering this blog
Jonas Hietala
Stereotypes
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really...
over a year ago
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really couldn’t do it justice so do yourself a favor and go read it. It touches on several types of programmers or rather traits of programmers I recognize in my surroundings and also...
Jonas Hietala
The Decline of FPS Games
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time...
over a year ago
I read an article about the decline of FPS games and it made me think a bit. When was the last time I actually enjoyed an FPS game? I installed old Deus Ex a while ago but it’s what 12 years old? Team Fortress was okay, the one or two times I tried it, but I can’t say I truly...
Willem's Blog
The Ultimate Freedom Bike
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and...
over a year ago
With the Brompton foldable bike you find yourself a very versatile companion to go whenever and wherever you please!
Simply Explained
Monitoring my 3D printer with a Pi Zero, Home Assistant and TinyCore Linux
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception:...
over a year ago
Many devices in my home have become "smart" over the last couple of months, with one big exception: my trusty 3D printer. It's a super reliable Prusa i3 MK3, but it lacks an internet connection.So I decided to use a Pi Zero to keep track of my 3D prints and send the progress to...
Jonas Hietala
Food vacation in Japan
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of...
over a year ago
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures, but I ended up sending a bunch back home as a ways of keeping my family up to date. When I look back most of them are about food… So I’ll turn this into a post about the...
Good Enough
TIL: Don’t forget your Web Manifest file
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective...
a year ago
We’re primarily a web shop. We’re dipping our toes into mobile app development, but our collective expertise is in making products and services for the web. And like everyone else, our use of the web has shifted from our desktops and laptops to our phones.
As we’re creating and...
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
Arduino Blog
This Arduino-controlled Spin Meister helps spin up the perfect pizza
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher...
6 months ago
Dedicated pizza ovens are all the rage right now, as they provide a better-distributed and higher heat that many find more preferable than a conventional kitchen oven. But even a nice gas-powered pizza oven like the Ooni Koda 12 will have some hot spots and cold spots. To get an...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 11 to recommend in 2021
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction....
over a year ago
Last year (2021) I finished 17 books, a five year low. But that's ok!
4 fiction and 13 non-fiction. Another 30 started but not finished.
Non-fiction
It seems I was pretty focused on business history books and history of
tech. The 8 non-fiction books I liked the most:
Designing...
Jonas Hietala
2016 in Review
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in...
over a year ago
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in Netrunner.
Won a couple of smaller Netrunner tournaments.
Got Veronica to play Game of Thrones with us. She beat us and she loved it!
Programmed a little bit of Elixir and a tiny bit of front...
Electronics etc…
Tesla’s FSD - First and Last Impressions
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach...
7 months ago
TLDR: It’s a useless technology demo.
Introduction
Rules of Engagement
Test Ride 1: from Kings Beach to Truckee (11 miles)
Test Ride 2: I-80 from Truckee to Blue Canyon (36 miles)
Test Ride 3: from West-Valley College to I-85 Entrance (1 mile)
Conclusion
Introduction
In the past...
Posts on Made of...
Measuring Capacity Through Utilization
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts...
over a year ago
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts when thinking about instrumenting a system to understand its overall performance and capacity is what I call “time utilization”.
By this I mean: If you look at the behavior of a...
Home on Erik...
Top posts
These are some blog posts which have gotten a disproportionate amount of traffic (10,000+ page...
over a year ago
These are some blog posts which have gotten a disproportionate amount of traffic (10,000+ page views):
2024 It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans 2023 Simple sabotage for software 2022 We are still early with the cloud: why...
Willem's Blog
Riding with Omata One
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely...
over a year ago
If you're looking for an alternative for common cycling computers, the Omata One is something truely special: it indicates your speed, distance, ascent and time ridden using mechanical hands!
Louwrentius
Debian Linux Preseeding - an installation framework
Look Ma!
No hands!
just watching a system PXE-boot and install itself into a fully...
over a year ago
Look Ma!
No hands!
just watching a system PXE-boot and install itself into a fully operational
system is fun. PXE boot and preseeding is not enough however to accomplish
this.
By itself, preseeding only installs a basic operating system. Next, you need
to configure all sorts of...
Applied Cartography
Incumbency
Andrew Rea with an interesting and increasingly familiar take about how AI will disrupt...
5 months ago
Andrew Rea with an interesting and increasingly familiar take about how AI will disrupt software-focused private equity:
Distribution and brand moats can protect your legacy products for a while (esp in enterprise) but eventually you get lapped by competitors with better...
Willem's Blog
Harvesting boredom to let creativity flourish
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to...
over a year ago
What does it mean for my state of mind and creativity if I am no longer be constantly connected to the Internet using a smartphone.
Ian's Blog
Learn how Windows builds its store of trusted root CA certificates
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It...
over a year ago
Today I learned something fascinating about how Windows deals with trusted root CA certificates. It might surprise you, and it certainly did for me, but out-of-the-box Windows doesn't come with a set of root CA certificates sufficient for web browsing.
You can see this for...
Home on Erik...
MCMC for marketing data
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some...
over a year ago
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some simple uncertainty estimates. I have data like this:
<th> Total spend </th> <th> Transactions </th> Channel A <td> 2292.
computers are bad
2024-10-12 commercial HF radio
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio...
2 months ago
According to a traditional system of classification, "high frequency" or HF
refers to the radio spectrum between 3 and 30 MHz. The label now seems
anachronistic, as HF is among the lowest ranges of radio frequencies that see
regular use. This setting of the goalposts in the early...
latest projects -...
Badge
[Hardware] A RISC-V LED matrix
a year ago
[Hardware] A RISC-V LED matrix
Simply Explained
Year in review: 2022
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my...
a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. I'm focusing primarily on my YouTube channel and newsletter, but there are personal reflections in here as well. Last year was an off year for me, and I'm gearing up to make up for lost time in 2023.
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
Applied Cartography
You should build this:
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that...
2 months ago
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks...
latest projects -...
Analemmagraph
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
a year ago
[Concept] Video of a day, one year in every frame
Notes on software...
Active and influential NYC infrastructure people
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I...
a month ago
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or
expertise) and active folks (I actually see them attend events) in the
NYC infrastructure scene (that I have a personal connection to).
If you're running a dinner or are just looking to meet interesting
people in...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Revenue-Evil Curve: a different way to think about prioritizing public goods funding
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Effective unemployment and social media
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your...
a month ago
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything
except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are
looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or...
Christian Selig
First on New Blog
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will...
a year ago
Converted the blog over to a new Hugo theme! Hopefully everything here sorta works. Test post will remove.
This goat’s name is apparently Gubgub, and very cute.
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × Val Town
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If...
a month ago
Had a blast live-coding some experimentations with Steve and Shovel yesterday using Val Town. (If you haven't used Val, well, watch the stream — think live, zero-deploy code snippets that can be arbitrarily extended and executed.)
Reflecting on the experience, the most exciting...
./techtipsy
I've reached the self-hosting endgame
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim...
over a year ago
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim to my imagination and completely changed my self-hosting setup. Again.
Here it is, in all its glory:
Well, at least that’s what’s on the table.
This machine is a true all-in-one:...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Sidechains vs Plasma vs Sharding
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Geekhack Toxic
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it...
over a year ago
I came back to Linköping yesterday and I had a package waiting for me to pick it up. What could it be?
With a crummy mobile phone photo I give you my TOXIC keycaps mounted on my trusty old das keyboard:
Woooo
If only my GH60 could arrive some time this decade…
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Porting and hacking Llama2.c for fun and profit
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is basically a simple one-file C…
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Willem's Blog
Cash is king, or is it?
Is the time right to ditch the wallet?
over a year ago
Is the time right to ditch the wallet?
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...
Posts on Made of...
Versioning dotfiles in git
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines...
over a year ago
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines for some time. I experimented with keeping all of ~ in subversion for a while, but it never worked out well for me.
I’ve finally settled on a solution that I like using git, and so...
./techtipsy
Running on fumes
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with...
over a year ago
After a run-of-the-mill Windows BSOD, I was redirected to the UEFI
settings and was presented with this fun little bug:
0GB ought to be enough for anybody.
Jonas Hietala
An Epic Start
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and...
over a year ago
Oh what a mistake. I woke up at 05.00 when my girlfriend woke up, she’s working early today, and went to the bathroom. After I was done, still pretty tired, I made a big mistake. I checked the current theme for Ludum Dare 29: Beneath the Surface and guess what? Now I wasn’t tired...
Notes on software...
Generating a full-stack application from a database
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated...
over a year ago
DBCore can now generate a TypeScript/React CRUD
UI that is automatically hooked up to the generated REST API (in Go).
The UI has full support for login, viewing (and filtering), editing,
and creating database entities.
PostgreSQL, SQLite and MySQL are supported.
How to use?
The...
./techtipsy
How I fixed one hardware issue with another one
I happen to run on an ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
motherboard that used to run fine, but ever...
over a year ago
I happen to run on an ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
motherboard that used to run fine, but ever since I installed one UEFI update, it has had this one annoying issue:
whenever you reboot, it gets stuck at POST. Cold boots work fine and the shutdown-and-push-the-power-button...
Notes on software...
The world of PostgreSQL wire compatibility
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.
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...
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...
Applied Cartography
Migrating to Django 5
The total LOC delta to migrate Buttondown from Django 4 to Django 5 was +143, -150. (I was...
2 months ago
The total LOC delta to migrate Buttondown from Django 4 to Django 5 was +143, -150. (I was incentivized to do so because our search right now is quite slow, and the lowest hanging piece of fruit is to move some of the tsvector generation out of band, and I'd rather do that using...
Louwrentius
Did you know that RDP is as insecure as telnet?
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts....
over a year ago
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts. It is easy to pick on Microsoft and I do respect what
they have accomplished, however, it may not come as a surprise that they did
it all wrong with RDP in terms of security.
By...
Home on Erik...
Antipodes
I was playing around with D3 last night and built a silly visualization of antipodes and how our...
over a year ago
I was playing around with D3 last night and built a silly visualization of antipodes and how our intuitive understanding of the world sometimes doesn't make sense. Check out the visualization at bl.ocks.org!
Basically the idea is if you fly from Beijing to Buenos Aires then you...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Avoiding worry driven development
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a...
over a year ago
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a lack of technical skill. Engineers…
Jonas Hietala
2011 in Review
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek...
over a year ago
It’s time to wrap up the year that’s been. Be warned for slight ego boosting here.
2011 Geek Achievements
Wrote three games this year:
My Minions
Grand Thief Arto
Sat-E
Bought a new computer!
Bought a mechanical keyboard.
Bought custom Starcraft 2 keycaps for the...
Electronics etc…
The HP 423A and a Beginner’s Deep Dive into RF Crystal Detectors
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [...
a year ago
MathJax.Hub.Config({
jax: ["input/TeX", "output/HTML-CSS"],
tex2jax: {
inlineMath: [ ['$', '$'], ["\\(", "\\)"] ],
displayMath: [ ['$$', '$$'], ["\\[", "\\]"] ],
processEscapes: true,
skipTags: ['script', 'noscript', 'style', 'textarea', 'pre',...
Home on Erik...
It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans
Writing code for a computer is hard enough. You take something big and fuzzy, some large vague...
2 months ago
Writing code for a computer is hard enough. You take something big and fuzzy, some large vague business outcome you want to achive. Then you break it down recursively and think about all the cases until you have clear logical statements a computer can follow.
Posts on Made of...
Iron Blogger: Blogging for Beer
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while....
over a year ago
So, you may have noticed that I suddenly started updating this blog for the first time in a while. The reason is that I’ve recently started an ongoing event with a whole bunch of friends around here to encourage us to blog more.
Like so many good ideas, it all started with a...
Arduino Blog
Arduino’s Alvik Robot shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025 in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, and Digital...
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025,...
a month ago
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025, this time in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, or Digital Device category with our Alvik robot! This recognition highlights our dedication to innovation, inclusivity, and the advancement of...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Epochs and slots all the way down: ways to give Ethereum users faster transaction confirmation times
5 months ago
./techtipsy
Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without...
over a year ago
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without issues
and as a testbed for playing around with MySQL.
I wanted it to be a useful device again, but had trouble finding an use case for it due to its hardware limitations.
After...
Home on Erik...
How to set compensation using commonsense principles
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right...
over a year ago
Compensation has always been one of the most confusing parts of management to me. Getting it right is obviously extremely important. Compensation is what drives our entire economy, and you could look at the market for labor as one gigantic resource-allocating machine in the same...
Applied Cartography
November, 2024
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved,...
2 weeks ago
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved, without fanfare or closure) cough and a dearth of time to write as I started to explore easing back into full-time work.
Still, some writing (and selfishly, I'm excited to end the...
Jonas Hietala
October theme says: Numbers
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay...
over a year ago
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay Project theme which this month is numbers. What’s it gonna be? A sudoku game or something more… thrilling? I’ll see what I can do :)
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
5 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024 Talks are Up
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
a month ago
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
Applied Cartography
VC does not guarantee PMF
Two companies that I started following (with no small amount of envy) back in 2021:
Hype (fka Pico)...
a month ago
Two companies that I started following (with no small amount of envy) back in 2021:
Hype (fka Pico) sold to an MMA-themed holdco earlier this year. Raised a $4.5m seed from Stripe and Bloomberg Beta and a $10m Series A; crossed the finish line at $200K ARR after eight years.
Stir...
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 days ago
Building an intuition about energy
Arduino Blog
Save 20% on Arduino Cloud Maker Plan this May!
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino...
7 months ago
Enhance your IoT projects with our special offer! Get 20% off a yearly subscription to the Arduino Cloud Maker Plan using code CLOUD20MAY. Valid until the end of May, this deal saves you $14.38, reducing the price from $71.88 to $57.50. Benefits of the Maker Plan: What is Arduino...
Jonas Hietala
Rewriting my Neovim config in Lua
This screenshot betrays just how much productive time was wasted setting this up.
I’ve got tons of...
a year ago
This screenshot betrays just how much productive time was wasted setting this up.
I’ve got tons of things to do; clean the bathrooms, prototype an idea for a SaaS and ponder world peace.
So naturally the procrastination took over and I rewrote my Neovim configuration in...
csvbase blog
My favourite API is a zipfile on the European Central Bank's website
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
a year ago
Simple data pipeline powertools: sqlite, pandas, gnuplot and friends
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Home on Erik...
Calculating cosine similarities using dimensionality reduction
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity...
over a year ago
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity Computation (DISCO)
I just glanced at the paper, and there's some cool stuff going on from a theoretical perspective. What I'm curious about is why they didn't decide to use...
Jonas Hietala
Christmas break
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and...
over a year ago
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and I really enjoy studying here. We had lisp the whole time which is a pretty sweet little language and if you haven’t, give it a shot. Then we had math and I do like math, although I...
Posts on Made of...
Wordpress tricks: Disabling editing shortcuts
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t...
over a year ago
One of the major reasons I can’t stand webapps is because I’m a serious emacs junkie, and I can’t edit text in anything that doesn’t have decent emacs keybindings.
Fortunately, on Linux, at least, GTK provides basic emacs keybindings if you add
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs" to...
Notes on software...
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for...
over a year ago
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for linux/AMD64. The approach will be slightly more
so based on observation than by following a spec; a great way
to quickly become familiar with a topic, and a bad way to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
What kind of layer 3s make sense?
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Pytest: test for print statements
Inspired by Adam Johnson's test for pending migrations, and of course in conversation with my own...
5 months ago
Inspired by Adam Johnson's test for pending migrations, and of course in conversation with my own love of weird tests, I offer a similar concept: a test for finding stray print statements in your codebase, with a ratchet array for stuff to ignore.
import glob
PATH =...
Christian Selig
Smart Open Xcode
If you’re like me, you often have multiple versions of Xcode installed. One or two beta versions, a...
a year ago
If you’re like me, you often have multiple versions of Xcode installed. One or two beta versions, a stable version, and maybe another version in case the most recent stable version has something weird about it.
I also really like mapping my Caps Lock key to something more useful,...
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...
Jonas Hietala
A Geek Valentine
Yes! I made it! It’s 22:22 on the very last day of February and I’ve been programming virtually...
over a year ago
Yes! I made it! It’s 22:22 on the very last day of February and I’ve been programming virtually non-stop for the past two days, my brain feels like mashed potatoes.
A Geek Valentine
Controls
Use spacebar to:
Build the time machine
Buy and place traps (Just face an empty square...
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!
3 weeks ago
Plus Channel Tunnel news, a NIMBY assault on an excellent pub, and more!
computers are bad
2024-10-26 buy payphones and retire
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress...
a month ago
PAYPHONES at High Volume
Existing sites! Earn BIG $$. Money Back Guarantee!
Dropshipping AliExpress watches, AI-generated SEO spam websites... marginally
legal and ethical passive income schemes, that serve to generate that income
mostly for their promoters, can feel like a...
Good Enough
TIL: System Colors are supported in CSS, but they’re unreliable
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up...
a year ago
I’ve said this before: We’re primarily a web shop here at Good Enough, but occasionally we come up with ideas that we think would work really well as a native desktop or mobile application. Still, we prototype those ideas on the web first.
Recently, I wanted to try and make one...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Garbled Circuits Primer
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
ML+Hadoop at NYC Predictive Analytics
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning...
over a year ago
I was just at the NYC Predictive Analytics meetup talking about how we build machine learning algorithms using Hadoop to power music recommendations.
Great meetup, where we had two speakers, me and Blake Shaw from Foursquare.
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/2 keyboard layout
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my...
over a year ago
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my last update on the T-34 keyboard layout, and I’ve made some changes I’d like to document here.
As seen in the heatmap above, the layout seems quite decent. There’s still an issue...
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Jonas Hietala
Generating ideas
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up...
over a year ago
So I got a fairly fun assignment from the game design course I’m taking for once. I should come up with 50 ideas using my own idea generation technique.
I used a sort of “notes in the basket” approach where you placed some notes with words in a basket and randomly drew two and...
Jonas Hietala
2018 in review
A new year and a lingering feeling of not having done enough during the year. A fast review of the...
over a year ago
A new year and a lingering feeling of not having done enough during the year. A fast review of the year usually makes me feel better.
2018 non-geek achievements
Was on parental leave for about 7 months.
It was great although I’ve been crawling up the walls a little the last...
./techtipsy
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet...
over a year ago
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet and got myself an ASRock DeskMini X300 bare-bones kit.
This is a fantastic little desktop PC kit that is very small, quiet and can
still be configured to have ridiculous amounts of...
Jonas Hietala
Black and White
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a...
over a year ago
Here it is at last! Boasting a unoriginal name, themed Bare Minimum. My thoughts where to create a game where graphics where included into the gameplay but sadly it didn’t come out nearly as good as I expected it too.
Yes I know there are a lot of things bad and wrong with this...
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...
Lighthouse Blog
Introducing Lighthouse - The RSS reader, newsletter reader, and read-it-later app to fight content...
8 months ago
Azad's Blog
Simulating + Streaming a 4k, 90hz, ultrawide, HDR PC monitor to Apple Vision Pro
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are...
3 months ago
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are also capable of outputting at a high refresh rate (60hz, 90hz, 120hz, or even 144hz). Some headsets (like Apple Vision Pro) can also output in HDR! The beauty of it all is that in...
Louwrentius
How to run Debian Linux on an Intel based Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy...
over a year ago
The Mac Mini is just a gorgeous device. It is beautiful, small, silent,
powerfull yet energy efficient. When idle, it uses around 20 watts. I'm using
one of the first Intel-based Minis with an Intel Core Duo chip, running at 1.6
Ghz.
I want to use this mini as an expensive router...
Christian Selig
Trials and tribulations of 360° video in Juno
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is...
10 months ago
In building Juno, a visionOS app for YouTube, a question that’s come up from users a few times is whether it supports 360° and 180° videos (for the unfamiliar, it’s an immersive video format that fully surrounds you). The short answer is no, it’s sort of a niche feature without...
Home on Erik...
State drift
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion....
over a year ago
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion. But here is something I thought about: how to build in self-correction into systems. This has been something just vaguely sitting in my head lacking a clear conceptual definition...
Computer Ads from...
UNIX Review Magazine Interviews Larry Tesler
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
3 months ago
They discuss Tesler's involvement with Xerox, Apple and office automation with Unix.
Computer Ads from...
Two Interviews with Ken Kaplan, One of the Creators of OS-9
Two interview from two different time periods
4 months ago
Two interview from two different time periods
Jonas Hietala
FTL got a new victim
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone...
over a year ago
Faster than Light the great game I lost a ton of time on, has found a new victim. It’s not someone you’d expect, it’s even someone who said: “What a bad game” when she saw me playing it. But nevertheless this Saturday she played it more than 2.5 hours!
I told Veronica I wanted...
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed, revisited
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a...
2 months ago
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a lot of great choices and felt really good to use, but lacked parity with VS Code's feature/ecosystem to its detriment.
Six months later, I spent a few days using it as my daily...
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...
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”.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Commodore, Part 3
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
a year ago
Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
Opsbros
Nokia 5110 - Back from the dead. Part 1: Nostalgia
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and...
over a year ago
I loved my Nokia 5110 and I wonder if it was possible to breathe new life into this long-shelved and still-memed mobile phone. As it turns out, not only is it possible, but it's going to be a lot easier than I anticipated.
Old Vintage...
Finally, an MOS 7600/7601 Video Game Array data sheet
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS...
a year ago
A quick one. Many of you are aware of my rather abnormal fascination with the MOS 7600/7601, MOS Technology's dedicated "Pong-on-a-chip" (from the company that brought you my favourite CPU, the MOS 6502) that's actually a rather sophisticated microcontroller for the era. I own...
Home on Erik...
The software engineering rule of 3
Here's a dumb extremely accurate rule I'm postulating* for software engineering projects: *you need...
over a year ago
Here's a dumb extremely accurate rule I'm postulating* for software engineering projects: *you need at least 3 examples before you solve the right problem*.
This is what I've noticed:
Don't factor out shared code between two classes.
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 1: Whale, Hello There!
Dear friends, we have not been good at writing this newsletter regularly. But writing is hard work,...
a year ago
Dear friends, we have not been good at writing this newsletter regularly. But writing is hard work, and there’s only so much time we have, and there was the winter break and Shawn kept getting sick—we have many excuses, how much time do you have?
Gosh, since July of last year?...
Willem's Blog
Backup Rotation Scheme
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync,...
a year ago
Learn about the rsync-backup-rotator tool that helps you automatically rotate backups using rsync, creating and maintaining multiple recovery points from your backups.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Limits to Blockchain Scalability
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
σ-driven project management: when is the optimal time to give up?
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as...
over a year ago
Hi! It's your friendly project management theorician. You might remember me from blog posts such as Why software projects take longer than you think, which is a blog post I wrote a long time ago positing that software projects completion time follow a log-normal distribution.
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...
Applied Cartography
Grace notes
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking...
7 months ago
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking for:
Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service. The host would ask guests, “How’d you get here tonight?” If they responded, “Oh, we drove,” he’d follow up with,...
Good Enough
TIL: Blocking Password App Autocomplete on Form Fields
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username...
a year ago
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username field in Contact Me. It was pretty simple in the end:
<%= form.text_field :username, "data-lpignore": true, "data-1p-ignore": true %>
Reference: 1Password, Lastpass.
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
2 months ago
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
Notes on software...
Writing a Jinja-inspired template library in Python
In this post we'll build a minimal text templating library in Python
inspired by Jinja. It will be...
over a year ago
In this post we'll build a minimal text templating library in Python
inspired by Jinja. It will be able to display variables and iterate
over arrays.
By the end of this article, with around 300 lines of code, we'll be
able to create this program:
from pytemplate import...
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
Home on Erik...
Simple sabotage for software
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out...
a year ago
CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out various ways for infiltrators to ruin productivity of a company. Some of the advice is timeless, for instance the section about “General interference with Organizations and...
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 4: Cosmic Staggering Tortoises
1. Weekly Studio Update
Hello. We're going to try doing this newsletter thing regularly. The...
a year ago
1. Weekly Studio Update
Hello. We're going to try doing this newsletter thing regularly. The ambitious goal is to write you a lovely letter every week. Aim for the moon, right? But wait, if you aim for the moon, how in this physical world can you possibly hit a star by...
latest projects -...
POV Candle
[Hardware] Tiny volumetric display
a year ago
[Hardware] Tiny volumetric display
Notes on software...
Starting a minimal Common Lisp project
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like...
over a year ago
If you've only vaguely heard of Lisp before or studied Scheme in
school, Common Lisp is nothing like what you'd expect. While
functional programming is all the rage in Scheme, Common Lisp was
"expressly designed to be a real-world engineering language rather
than a theoretically...
Odds and Ends of...
Keir Starmer needs to prepare for a world without America
Today's empires, tomorrow's ashes.
a month ago
Today's empires, tomorrow's ashes.
Birchtree
Squashing links on social media
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are...
2 weeks ago
Anil Dash: “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram — meaning Facebook, Instagram’s increasingly-overbearing owner — tightly
lcamtuf’s thing
Shining light on photodiodes
Photodiodes are incredibly versatile, but commonly misused and misunderstood.
2 months ago
Photodiodes are incredibly versatile, but commonly misused and misunderstood.
Jonas Hietala
My first theme: Addictive Gaming
In true experimental spirit I’ll now announce the theme for my first game: Addictive Gaming. I won’t...
over a year ago
In true experimental spirit I’ll now announce the theme for my first game: Addictive Gaming. I won’t be following the lead from the Experimental Gameplay Project’s site but I will follow their three laws (7 days, alone, themes).
Puh… my first game! Wish me luck =)
Arduino Blog
Explore underwater with this Arduino-controlled DIY ROV
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the...
4 months ago
Who doesn’t want to explore underwater? To take a journey beneath the surface of a lake or even the ocean? But a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is the kind of robot you’d use for such an adventure, isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’ll find on the shelf at your local...
latest projects -...
Light comms on the 003
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
4 months ago
[Hardware] Tiny terrahertz transmissions
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
Birchtree
I don’t care about bad or missing features that I don’t use
Sometimes I’ll talk about something I like online and people will express shock that I can use a...
2 weeks ago
Sometimes I’ll talk about something I like online and people will express shock that I can use a product that has such a clear downside. I’ve gotten people ask how I can use Things since it doesn’t have shared task lists. More recently I
Birchtree
AI, self-driving, and evolving your opinions on new tech over time
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can...
2 weeks ago
Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism
The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms....
Arduino Blog
Marble art madness from a marvelous machine
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all...
2 months ago
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all sorts of neat colors. That last characteristic makes them suitable for artwork, like orbicular pixels. In his most ambitious project to date, Engineezy took advantage of those...
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...
Posts on Made of...
Automounting sshfs
For some time now, many of us around MIT have noticed just how awesome sshfs is. It gives a totally...
over a year ago
For some time now, many of us around MIT have noticed just how awesome sshfs is. It gives a totally lightweight way to access the remote filesystem of any machine you have ssh to, without requiring any extra setup on the host. I’ve been running for at least a year now with my...
Posts on Made of...
Using wpa_supplicant on Debian/Ubuntu
I’ve been using wpa_supplicant to manage wifi on my Ubuntu laptop for a while, and have found that...
over a year ago
I’ve been using wpa_supplicant to manage wifi on my Ubuntu laptop for a while, and have found that it’s pretty close to what I want for managing wireless — closer than anything else I’ve found, at least. I figured I should document my setup and experiences.
Some Background You...
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.
Jonas Hietala
Microfeatures in my blog
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and...
5 months ago
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites, and together with the related Hacker News discussion I got nerd sniped.
(I spent more time than I care to admit implementing new and exciting microfeatures for...
computers are bad
2024-08-19 mining for meteors
Billboards
Route 66 is often viewed through the lens of its billboards. The Jack Rabbit
Trading...
4 months ago
Billboards
Route 66 is often viewed through the lens of its billboards. The Jack Rabbit
Trading Post, a small store a few miles out of Joseph City, would hardly be
remembered were it not for its billboards spanning four states. The tradition
of far-advance billboards is still...
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...
a week 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...
Notes on software...
Eight years of organizing tech meetups
This is a collection of random personal experiences. So if you don't
want to read everything, feel...
a year ago
This is a collection of random personal experiences. So if you don't
want to read everything, feel free to skip to the end for takeaways.
I write because I'd like to see more high-quality meetups. And maybe
my little bit of experience will help someone out.
2015: Philadelphia
I...
watchTowr Labs -...
Check Point - Wrong Check Point (CVE-2024-24919)
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and...
6 months ago
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and laying bare a recent in-the-wild exploited bug. This time, it is Check Point who is the focus of our penetrative gaze.
Check Point, for those unaware, is the vendor responsible for...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
What kind of work I want
This article is to help recruiters, hiring managers and myself have a better idea of the kind of...
over a year ago
This article is to help recruiters, hiring managers and myself have a better idea of the kind of places I’d like to work. The short version…
Jonas Hietala
Plans for Summer of Code
My first summer job is now over, and after a weekend of rest, it is now time to plan for my second...
over a year ago
My first summer job is now over, and after a weekend of rest, it is now time to plan for my second summer job: IDA Summer of Code.
I will work a month, or 4 weeks, with contributing to rust! The only issue is, I have no idea where to start. I didn’t have a strict plan or a vision...
watchTowr Labs -...
Veeam Backup & Response - RCE With Auth, But Mostly Without Auth (CVE-2024-40711)
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup &...
3 months ago
Every sysadmin is familiar with Veeam’s enterprise-oriented backup solution, ‘Veeam Backup & Replication’. Unfortunately, so is every ransomware operator, given it's somewhat 'privileged position' in the storage world of most enterprise's networks. There's no point deploying...
Jonas Hietala
(Fake) Bittman Chinese Chicken
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on...
over a year ago
Lesson 6! I went to Cervera and bought a holder to allow me to steam chicken.
I broke the recipe on multiple fronts: chicken wings instead of chicken breasts, mushroom soy instead of tamarin, roman salad instead of baby bok choi (where the heck do you find that…) and I even...
Avestura's Blog
Using Tor outside of the Tor Browser
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like...
over a year ago
This post shows how to run Tor with a simple PowerShell script and use it in other apps like Telegram...
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
Posts on Made of...
Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had...
over a year ago
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had worked, using a trigram index.
By that point, I’d already implemented early versions of my own livegrep source-code search engine, using a different indexing approach that I...
Jonas Hietala
Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax...
9 months ago
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax highlighting that works well even in an error state (often the case when you’re editing code), and it has additional semantics (you can differentiate between function parameters and...
Louwrentius
Ubuntu and full disk encryption (FDE)
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create...
over a year ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. As part of a regular Debian installation, you
can choose to create an encrypted disk volume based on LUKS. This is different
from the option within the Ubuntu installation to encrypt home directories. To
be able to install Ubuntu and use full disk...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Lobo MAX-80
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
9 months ago
The Computer Tandy Should Have Built (at least according to the ad).
Arduino Blog
Expanding possibilities: Blues Wireless amplifies Opta’s connectivity
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino...
7 months ago
Blues Wireless and Arduino have joined forces to create the game-changing Blues Wireless for Arduino Opta, unveiled this week at the Automate Show in Chicago. The expansion module is an affordable solution to enhance connectivity options for Arduino Opta micro PLCs, and marks a...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?
over a year ago
Louwrentius
How to resolve extreme memory usage on Windows 2008 R2-based file servers
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on...
over a year ago
I'm responsible for a file server with about 5 terrabytes of data. The file server is based on Windows 2008 R2. I've noticed extreme memory usage on the server. After a reboot, it slowly builds up until almost all RAM memory is consumed.
So I googled around and found this post...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: More mods
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and...
9 months ago
The printer is done, but I feel one of the best part of a VORON printer is the ability to modify and personalize it.
There a tons of mods you can do, and while I’ve done a few there are lots more that I’d like to do some day.
It’s a wonderful feeling to augment the printer with...
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.
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....
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...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 5 (DOF)
Some light Visual Pinball debugging and the world of DOF. New to DOF? Read on.
8 months ago
Some light Visual Pinball debugging and the world of DOF. New to DOF? Read on.
Louwrentius
Why security is all about defense in depth
Many people asume that if you regularly update your computer, you are safe from hackers. But nothing...
over a year ago
Many people asume that if you regularly update your computer, you are safe from hackers. But nothing could be further from the truth. Keeping your systems up-to-date only protects you against exploits for publicly known vulnerabilities.
Your systems are still not protected...
Buck on Software
Model transitions: A framework for value creation
And a quick and dirty look at SPLK, NTNX, and GWRE
over a year ago
And a quick and dirty look at SPLK, NTNX, and GWRE
Louwrentius
Determining smartphone market share using wireless sniffing
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most...
over a year ago
I started a project to see if I could track smartphone users by sniffing for
wifi-clients. Most smartphones support wifi and most people don't bother disabling
wifi when they go outdoors1. If wifi is left on, it is possible to detect these
smartphones and track their movement. To...
Arduino Blog
This DIY smart chicken coop features AI-based predator detection
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get...
a month ago
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get rid of pests in the yard. But, like all animals, they require care. Most importantly, you’ll need to ensure that they have regular food and water, and you’ll need to protect them...
Jonas Hietala
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small...
over a year ago
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small shooter.
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afro
Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen?
Instruction
W: up
Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc...
Louwrentius
Configuring SCST iSCSI target on Debian Linux (Wheezy)
My goal is to export ZFS zvol volumes through iSCSI to other machines. The platform I'm using is...
over a year ago
My goal is to export ZFS zvol volumes through iSCSI to other machines. The platform I'm using is Debian Wheezy.
There are three iSCSI target solutions available for Linux:
LIO
IET
SCST
I've briefly played with LIO but the targetcli tool is interactive only. If you want to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The bulldozer vs vetocracy political axis
over a year ago
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...
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...
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.
Christian Selig
More Efficient/Faster Average Color of Image
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of...
over a year ago
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of why you might want this!
Finding the average color of an image is a nice trick to have in your toolbelt for spicing up views. For instance on iOS, it’s used by Apple to make their...
Arduino Blog
Using Arduino UNO to sync a visual neuroscience lab
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and...
2 months ago
Common research methods to study the visual system in the laboratory include recording and monitoring neural activity in the presence of sensory stimuli, to help scientists study how neurons encode and respond, for example, to specific visual inputs. One of the biggest technical...
Notes on software...
Walking through a basic Racket web service
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme...
over a year ago
Racket is an impressive language and ecosystem. Compared to Python,
Racket (an evolution of Scheme R5RS is three years younger. It is
as concise and expressive as Python but with much more reasonable
syntax and semantics. Racket is also faster in many cases due in part
to:
JIT...
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....
Simply Explained
How I Built an NFC Movie Library for my Kids
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to...
a year ago
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to today, and my children's movie collection is vastly different. It's completely digital and dispersed across services. I wanted to recreate the tangible magic of my childhood for them.
Louwrentius
I resurrected my Dutch movie review site from 2003
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the...
over a year ago
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the site and wrote the reviews. It never made any money. It cost me money to host, and it cost me a lot of time writing reviews, but I remember enjoying writing reviews about films I...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
2 months ago
Git Merge 2024 has wrapped and we all had a heck of a good time. Here's the overview.
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240701
Another correction
5 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Toolhead
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt...
a year ago
Since the last update I’ve made some good progress:
All the motors are installed
The x-axis and belt are installed
Tap is installed
The toolhead with Stealthburner + Clockwork 2 is also installed
Purple means Pretty.
I’ve run into a few problems on the way that I’ll try to...
Jonas Hietala
Incomplete game coming up
Man I’m far too much of a perfectionist, with this mentality I’ll never get anything done -...
over a year ago
Man I’m far too much of a perfectionist, with this mentality I’ll never get anything done - seriously. I spent far too many hours, even days, figuring out in my mind how the game should be and I started off going for nothing less than just that. But it turned out to be a lot...
Arduino Blog
Move Mario remotely with this online N64 controller system
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console....
a week ago
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console. Modern consoles may do so wirelessly, but the effect is the same: direct input. But what if you connected a “controller” to the internet? Then you could play from anywhere and that is...
latest projects -...
LED Industrial Piercing
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
a year ago
[Hardware] Illuminated circuit inside a hypodermic
Good Enough
How We Built Quack (Beta)
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any...
a year ago
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any Markdown text. This software is completely front-end based, and for me personally it was a bit of a challenging puzzle to implement. Thankfully we have genius hackers like Arun...
Willem's Blog
Flying in a C47-A (DC-3) classic plane
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received,...
over a year ago
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received, experiencing aviation history unlike anything else!
Notes on software...
1 million page views
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since...
3 weeks ago
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since Murat
wrote
about his 1M page view accomplishment at the time, I felt compelled to
now too.
I started regularly blogging in 2018. For some reason I decided to
write a blog post...
Willem's Blog
Search like a pro: Google search operators
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter...
over a year ago
Read along for a comprehensive list of advanced Google search operators that allow you to filter your search results.
Louwrentius
PPSS version 2.30 now operates asynchronous
If you background a bash or shell process, how do you determine if it has
finished? Since inter...
over a year ago
If you background a bash or shell process, how do you determine if it has
finished? Since inter process communication is not possible using shell
scripts, people often refer to while loops or other polling mechanisms to
determine if some process has stopped.
However, the one...
Louwrentius
My home network setup based on managed switches and VLANs
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet...
over a year ago
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet and my living room. The bottom floor contains a bedroom with all my servers and networking gear.
So this is my setup (click for a bigger version):
I like to run my own router but...
computers are bad
2024-05-06 matrix
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running...
7 months ago
For those of you who are members of the Matrix project, I wanted to let you
know that I am running for the Governing Board, and a bit about why. For those
of you who are not, I hope you will forgive the intrusion. Maybe you'll find my
opinions on the topic interesting anyway.
I...
./techtipsy
Zimaboard: the closest thing to my dream home server setup
I stumbled upon this Hardware Haven video about the Zimaboard recently.
I liked it a lot.
I finally...
a year ago
I stumbled upon this Hardware Haven video about the Zimaboard recently.
I liked it a lot.
I finally bought one.
In short, Zimaboard is a small single-board computer that is relatively affordable and comes
with an interesting selection of ports, which includes an exposed PCI...
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...
Arduino Blog
A miniature Vegas Sphere is the perfect nightlight
Sphere in Las Vegas is inarguably one of the most notable architectural achievements of the...
4 months ago
Sphere in Las Vegas is inarguably one of the most notable architectural achievements of the 21st century so far. Gaudy? Maybe. Controversial? Definitely. Interesting? Absolutely — no one can debate that with a straight face. When 15-year-old Ben Kennedy’s bedroom nightlight...
computers are bad
2023-07-15 underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet...
a year ago
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit").
It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but,
you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple Python compiler: 1. hello, fibonacci
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since...
over a year ago
In this post we'll write a Python to C compiler in Python. This is
especially easy to do since Python has a builtin parser
library and because a
number of CPython internals are exposed for extension
writers.
By the end of this post, in a few hundred lines of Python, we'll be able...
Home on Erik...
Are data sets the new server rooms?
This blog post Data sets are the new server rooms makes the point that a bunch of companies raise a...
over a year ago
This blog post Data sets are the new server rooms makes the point that a bunch of companies raise a ton of money to go get really proprietary awesome data as a competitive moat. Because once you have the data, you can build a better product, and no one can copy it (at least not...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Coordination, Good and Bad
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Stripe's monorepo developer environment
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed...
7 months ago
I worked at Stripe for about seven years, from 2012 to 2019. Over that time, I used and contributed to many generations of Stripe’s developer environment – the tools that engineers used daily to write and test code. I think Stripe did a pretty good job designing and building that...
lcamtuf’s thing
Deep dive: the (in)stability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
a month ago
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
Willem's Blog
WordPress: 10 tips to secure your website
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using...
over a year ago
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using this blog post.
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2021 newsletter
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement...
over a year ago
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement learning.
Notes on software...
Build a serverless ACID database with this one neat trick (atomic PutIfAbsent)
Delta Lake is an open protocol for serverless ACID databases. Due to
its simplicity, scalability,...
2 months ago
Delta Lake is an open protocol for serverless ACID databases. Due to
its simplicity, scalability, and the number of open-source
implementations, it's quickly becoming the DuckDB of serverless
transactional databases for analytics workloads. Iceberg is a
contender too, and is...
watchTowr Labs -...
Cleo Harmony, VLTrader, and LexiCom - RCE via Arbitrary File Write (CVE-2024-50623)
We were having a nice uneventful week at watchTowr, when we got news of some ransomware operators...
a week ago
We were having a nice uneventful week at watchTowr, when we got news of some ransomware operators using a zero-day exploit in Cleo MFT software - namely, LexiCom, VLTransfer, and Harmony - applications that many large enterprises rely on to share files securely.
Cleo have a...
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
lcamtuf’s thing
Dispatches from the farm upstate
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
4 months ago
Middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.
./techtipsy
How to take down production with a single Helm command
You’re Cletus Kubernetus: a software developer, and a proud Fedora Linux
user.1
You know Kubernetes,...
8 months ago
You’re Cletus Kubernetus: a software developer, and a proud Fedora Linux
user.1
You know Kubernetes, especially after the time you migrated some services to it.
Everything is calm.
Your pods are running. Your service is up. Business as usual.
You release some minor changes to...
./techtipsy
TOMO M4: probably the coolest power bank I've owned
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting...
a year ago
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting two, and here’s why.
This post is not sponsored.
Removable batteries
Let’s start with the feature that I appreciate the most: removable batteries!
The TOMO M4 accepts up to 4...
Jonas Hietala
Goals for Autumn 2016
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read...
over a year ago
Every once and a while I like to redo my priorities and set new goals for myself.
I recently read the book 59 seconds which among other things presented a way of structuring goals I will try out. In short you should divide your main goal into 5 subgoals with a date of completion,...
Arduino Blog
Why is STEAM education important for kids? 6 activity tips
School’s out for summer – at least for most of us. While the majority of children (and teachers!)...
5 months ago
School’s out for summer – at least for most of us. While the majority of children (and teachers!) will probably be breathing a huge sigh of relief, parents face a new challenge: how to keep kids engaged during the long break. Of course, downtime is important, but there are also...
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.
computers are bad
2024-05-15 catalina connections
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running...
7 months ago
Some things have been made nearly impossible to search for. Say, for example,
the long-running partnership between Epson and Catalina: a query that will
return pages upon pages of people trying to use Epson printers with an old
version of MacOS.
When you think of a point of sale...
./techtipsy
I have a 'Dall UD19PB ThundeRbglt Dock': my experience with the HP Elitebook 845 G9
I’ve decided to give a new laptop a test drive, mainly because I had the
opportunity at work, and...
over a year ago
I’ve decided to give a new laptop a test drive, mainly because I had the
opportunity at work, and also out of morbid curiosity.
It’s the HP Elitebook 845 G9, and it has pretty good specifications:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800U
RAM: 2x16GB DDR5
Storage: 512GB KIOXIA NVMe SSD...
./techtipsy
Disk is OK
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of...
over a year ago
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of Midas.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that I use my hardware for things they were never meant to be used for.
Anyway, I have acquired two Seagate 4TB external hard drives for doing some...
Arduino Blog
Storing ephemeral micropoetry on RFID cards for bite-sized readings
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of...
3 months ago
Most people don’t consume poetry in the same way that they do novels. Instead of reading a book of poetry from cover-to-cover over the course of a few sessions, the majority of people seem to prefer enjoying poetry in occasional little chunks. And unlike the epic poems of Greek...
Home on Erik...
Fermat's principle
I was browsing around on the Internet and the physics geek in me started reading about Fermat's...
over a year ago
I was browsing around on the Internet and the physics geek in me started reading about Fermat's principle. And suddenly something came back to me that I've been trying to suppress for many years – how I never understood why there's anything fundamental about the principal of...
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.
Arduino Blog
Shop vac becomes a Roomba on steroids
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and...
7 months ago
A robotic vacuum, such as a Roomba, offers a lot of convenience. Instead of having to vacuum and sweep your own floors, you have a little maid robot to do the job for you. But these devices have very little power and capacity, which makes them useless for anything other than...
Good Enough
TIL: Deploying a Sinatra app to Render.com
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me,...
a year ago
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me, so I figured I’d write down what worked in the end.
First, a Gemfile:
# Gemfile
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'sinatra-contrib'
gem 'puma'
* I’m pretty sure...
Arduino Blog
A desktop-sized DIY vending machine for your room
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive...
5 months ago
Have you ever wanted your very own vending machine? If so, you likely found that they’re expensive and too bulky to fit in most homes. But now you can experience vending bliss thanks to this miniature vending machine designed by m22pj, which you can craft yourself using an...
./techtipsy
Life is maintenance, maintenance is life
Over my relatively short career (6+ years), I’ve noticed a change in the way I approach building...
a year ago
Over my relatively short career (6+ years), I’ve noticed a change in the way I approach building things.
When I was still an inexperienced junior developer who barely survived operating in a Linux
environment and saw backend development as a black box, I was happy to get...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Monty Hall
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they...
over a year ago
I’m currently reading The Drunkard’s Walk, a well written book about probabilities.
There they discussed the famous Monty Hall Problem. I’ve heard about it before
and I know the answer, but he mentioned a simulation of the problem and that sounded
cool so I made a simulation of...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #42: An Elizabeth Line extension, some mad planning law nonsense, and the world's most...
Your regular round-up of interesting links
a month ago
Your regular round-up of interesting links
Vitalik Buterin's...
7ème tour des subventions Gitcoin - Rétrospective
over a year ago
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 98
Echoes of an Explosion
a year ago
Old Vintage...
Niklaus Wirth dies
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which...
11 months ago
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which was written in UCSD Pascal; the first actual compiler I ever used was Turbo Pascal 5.5 (purloined from a campus NetWare server), and the first actual compiler I ever used on the...
Louwrentius
Getting the Sitecom AC600 Wi-Fi adapter running on Linux
TL;DR Yes it works with some modifications of the driver source.
A USB Wi-Fi adapter I used with a...
over a year ago
TL;DR Yes it works with some modifications of the driver source.
A USB Wi-Fi adapter I used with a Raspberry Pi broke as I dropped it on the floor, so I had to replace it. I just went to a local shop and bought the Sitecom AC600 adapter as that's what they had available (with...
Posts on Made of...
Why the Sorbet typechecker is fast
This is the second in an indefinite series of posts about things that I think went well in the...
over a year ago
This is the second in an indefinite series of posts about things that I think went well in the Sorbet project. The previous one covered our testing approach.
Sorbet is fast. Numerous of our early users commented specifically on how fast it was, and how much they appreciated this...
Style over Substance
M4 Hex Socket Thumbscrew Knob Caps
For the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself how to use Fusion 360, a free online cloud-based...
over a year ago
For the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself how to use Fusion 360, a free online cloud-based CAD/CAM program that lets you create your own 3D designs. The best way to learn how to use a new program is to build something you actually need. And my latest design is a work in...
Arduino Blog
This device prevents garage door security breaches
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house....
2 months ago
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely...
Home on Erik...
Vote for our SXSW panel!
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and...
over a year ago
If you have a few minutes, you should check out mine and Chris Johnson‘s panel proposal. Go here and vote: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/24504
Algorithmic Music Discovery at Spotify
****Spotify crunches hundreds of billions of streams to analyze user's music taste and provide...
Jonas Hietala
2014 in Review
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a...
over a year ago
Previous reviews: 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
2014 Geek Achievements
Solved 73 UVa problems.
Won a turn in IMPA and solved a bunch of problems.
Completed a doctorand course about algorithmic problem solving.
Finished my 4 first years in University.
Became a contributor to rust and...
Louwrentius
How to compile HAProxy from source and setup a basic configuration
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic...
over a year ago
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic to louwrentius.com across two different web servers.
I run HAProxy on a VPS based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Let's dive right in.
First, we need to download the source. Don't copy/pased...
Notes on software...
Running SQL Server in a container on 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.
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...
3 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...