Notes on software...
The year in books: 20 to recommend in 2020
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17...
over a year ago
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17 non-fiction and 30 fiction. Another 20-30
remain started but unfinished this year.
Non-fiction
The 8 non-fiction books I most recommend are:
Fashionapolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and...
Louwrentius
Setting up a VPN with your iPhone using L2TP, IPSec and Linux
This blogpost discusses how to setup an IPSec-based VPN between your iPhone and a Linux server....
over a year ago
This blogpost discusses how to setup an IPSec-based VPN between your iPhone and a Linux server.
Updated 16 October 2012 - now compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
IMPORTANT! (update January 2013)
I find using OpenVPN with the new iOS OpenVPN client a way better solution. OpenVPN...
Posts on Made of...
Git in pictures
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way...
over a year ago
In my previous blog post, I discussed how git is distinctive among version control system in the way in which it makes the backend model that is being used to store data the most important element of the tool, and that experts use it by having the complete model in their head,...
Willem's Blog
Understanding the security concerns in shared hosting
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use...
over a year ago
People pay me to hack them, provided I'll explain how I did it. Read along to learn how hackers use security holes to hack your app, webshop or website!
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 2: Just the Two of Us
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing...
over a year ago
0. Everyone Likes a Giveaway
Stick around to hear how you can win a fabulous prize by hardly doing anything. Take it away, fellas…
1. Still Positive
Did you know that once you acquire COVID-19 your PCR test can be positive for up to 90 days? Did you know that the at-home tests...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Changing a process's controlling terminal
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal,...
over a year ago
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal, and transplants it to a new terminal. reptyr comes from a proud family of similar hacks, and works in the same basic way: We use ptrace(2) to attach to a target process and force...
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...
Posts on Made of...
A week with the iPhone
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about...
over a year ago
I’ve had a new iPhone for about a week now, so I figure it’s time to write up some thoughts about it.
First, the little things. It is, in typical Apple fashion, an incredibly slick piece of work. Scrolling and zooming images or webpages is simple, easy, and, well, just fun to do...
Arduino Blog
This nature-inspired display reacts to ambient sounds
We all need ways to calm down and relax, and few things are as effective as nature itself. Taking...
2 weeks ago
We all need ways to calm down and relax, and few things are as effective as nature itself. Taking inspiration from organic patterns and smooth, flowing waves, dzeng on Instructables has built an LED wall light that responds in real-time to the sounds within a room. The project...
Notes on software...
How do databases execute expressions?
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not...
a year ago
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not seem practical in life as a
developer. For example, every database with a query language is also a
programming language implementation of some caliber. That doesn't
include all...
Yazin Alirhayim
The Meem app: it sucks
If you’re a “digital only” bank like Meem, the app your customers use is all they see: it’s like a...
over a year ago
If you’re a “digital only” bank like Meem, the app your customers use is all they see: it’s like a virtual 🏦 branch.
That’s fitting, because you know what my impression of meem is as a user? When I open up their app, it feels like walking into a crowded butcher shop, with...
Ian's Blog
Why my Apps Aren't Available on Apple Vision Pro
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring...
5 months ago
Recently I have received some questions from users of both TLS Inspector and DNS Inspector enquiring why the apps aren't available on Apple's new Vision Pro headset. While I have briefly discussed this over on my Mastodon, I figured it might be worthwhile putting things down with...
Louwrentius
AI is critically important but not for you
Before Chat-GPT caused a sensation, big tech companies like Facebook and Apple were betting their...
7 months ago
Before Chat-GPT caused a sensation, big tech companies like Facebook and Apple were betting their future growth on virtual reality. But I'm convinced that virtual reality will never be a mainstream thing. If you ever used VR you know why:
A heavy thing on your head that messes up...
Style over Substance
Our favorite places to eat and drinks during our Portugal vacation
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a...
7 months ago
In the summer of 2023, we went on an amazing trip through Portugal. We’d already visited Lisbon on a short city trip a few years earlier, and that experience was so good we knew we had to return. This time, we decided to take a full three weeks and see the sights. We were...
Home on Erik...
Predicting solar eclipses with Python
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute...
9 months ago
As I am en route to see my first total solar eclipse, I was curious how hard it would be to compute eclipses in Python. It turns out, ignoring some minor coordinate system head-banging, I was able to get something half-decent working in a couple of hours.
Jonas Hietala
An Elixir based payment processor for the Coinparty hackathon
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good...
over a year ago
Bitcoin Unlimited is hosting a Bitcoin Cash hackathon this December and it seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore how to program against Bitcoin Cash, and it gives me an excuse to build something real with Phoenix and Elixir. (While an event like this might help combat...
Notes on software...
Zig, Rust, and other languages
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a...
9 months ago
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a fresh conversation on: automatic
memory management, the standard library, and explicit allocation.
Zig is not a mature language. But it has made enough useful choices
for a number...
./techtipsy
The Fedora Linux starter pack: everything you need for a smooth experience
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh,...
2 months ago
I like Fedora Linux.
It’s the Linux distro that stopped my habit of distro-hopping. Big
deal? Ooh, big deal!
It’s stable in day-to-day use, ships with up-to-date software, and the software selection is adequate out of the box.
It also ships with a fresh Linux kernel version1,...
Posts on Made of...
Dear Twitter: Stop screwing over your developers.
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online...
over a year ago
I really like Twitter. I think it’s a great, fun, service, that helps enable interesting online communities, and is a surprisingly effective way to spread news and information to lots of people online. One of the things that I’ve loved about Twitter is their API, and how open and...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day: Scrolling in GNU screen'
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can...
over a year ago
Just the answer:
By default, on Debian, the scroll back buffer is about 1K lines. This can be
changed in the .screenrc file in your home directory. The following example
sets the scroll back buffer to 5K lines.
defscrollback 5000
Set the scroll back buffer on the fly with:
First...
Arduino Blog
Why do OTA updates matter in IoT?
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a...
6 months ago
Imagine you’ve just installed your state-of-the-art lighting control system, perfectly hidden in a box inside a wall, and everything seems to be working like a charm. But then, you spot a bug in the firmware. The thought of pulling the hardware back out sends shivers down your...
Louwrentius
Don't be afraid of RAID
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of...
over a year ago
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of your RAID array failing during a rebuild is almost a certainty, because hard drives have become so large.
I think nothing is further from the truth and I would like to dispel this...
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.
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2020 gwern.net newsletter
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
over a year ago
This is the April 2020 edition of the gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2020 (archives).
seangoedecke.com RSS...
From hours to seconds: AI tools to detect animal calls
If you’re currently spending time listening to long audio recordings of birdcalls or animal noises,...
8 months ago
If you’re currently spending time listening to long audio recordings of birdcalls or animal noises, it’s likely that the last four years of…
computers are bad
2023-06-30 calling in the alarm
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But...
a year ago
I currently find myself on vacation in the Canadian Rockies, where internet is
hard to come by. But here's something short while I'm temporarily back in the
warm embrace of 5G: more about burglar alarms. I recently gave a presentation
on this topic and I'll probably record it for...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Noise
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of...
10 months ago
The build is going well and the printer is printing tons of random stuff and I’m generally in awe of how cool the printer is.
But there’s one thing that sucks: it’s damn loud.
I knew that it wouldn’t be silent, but I wasn’t prepared for this kind of noise.
Silent controller...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 29 Entry
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally...
over a year ago
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally unprepared, but I did setup a setup which actually compiles. I never got audio to run but hopefully I can manage something.
Repository: https://github.com/treeman/LD29. Going for C++ this...
Computer Ads from...
Sundial Systems' Relish
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
3 months ago
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
9 months ago
Posts on Made of...
DEF CON
I’m sitting in the airport in Las Vegas on the way back from DEF CON 15. It’s the first time I’ve...
over a year ago
I’m sitting in the airport in Las Vegas on the way back from DEF CON 15. It’s the first time I’ve been at the con, and it wasn’t really what I expected. Frankly, I walked away feeling kinda underwhelmed.
Very few of the talks were as technical as I was hoping – they were almost...
Birchtree
All the games I played in 2024, reviewed
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies...
2 weeks ago
I love movies, but I really love games as well, so I figured I may as well follow up my 2024 movies of the year post with something similar for games. I’m not going to rank these, but I’ll give a few words on each one
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
a week ago
Building an intuition about energy
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...
Jonas Hietala
Fixing Problems
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a...
over a year ago
Today I have fixed two large annoyances I’ve had!
I fixed the blue people on youtube bug
I found a nice thread with a great answer. I solved it by forcefully patching libflashplayer.so
perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' libflashplayer.so
Worked perfectly!
I fixed the...
Arduino Blog
DexteriSync lets you walk a mile in the gloves of a user with manual disability
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with...
a month ago
Good designers prioritize the user experience — particularly the experience of users with disabilities that affect their perception and fine motor skills. A young person without disabilities, for example, may feel that jars are easy to open, while an elderly person with reduced...
Engineers Need Art
Move Fast and Abandon Things
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside...
3 months ago
For every shareware game I released in the 1990's, another four were partially written but put aside and abandoned.
Good Enough
TIL: Rails has_one Nested Attributes Tweaking
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things...
a year ago
In a project I'm working on right now I've been using a Rails nested form and a couple of things caught me off guard.
has_one Nested Form Sending id Attribute
In this case I have a nested form that is in a has_one relationship with the parent model.
I think this is a common thing...
Posts on Made of...
Two kinds of testing
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to...
over a year ago
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are (at least) two major ideas and goals that people have when they test or talk about testing. This post aims to outline what I see as these two schools,...
Good Enough
Good Enough Marketing: The Preparation
We have a couple of exciting projects—Guestbook! Yay.Boo!—that we want to share with the world. But...
a year ago
We have a couple of exciting projects—Guestbook! Yay.Boo!—that we want to share with the world. But that’s a difficult task for us because, honestly, we’re terrible not good at self-promotion. We’d rather spend time making things than talking about the things we’ve made.
We’d...
Louwrentius
Understanding Storage Performance - IOPS and Latency
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want...
over a year ago
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want to discuss some fundamentals that are true regardless of your particular needs.
This will help you better reason about storage and may provide a scaffolding for further learning....
Arduino Blog
Can this tiny lawn mower robot cut it in the real world?
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down...
6 months ago
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down and consumer trust goes up. They work a bit like Roomba vacuums and pathfinding sophistication varies from one model to the next. But even the most basic models are still a lot...
Arduino Blog
This portable Starmap could be your guide to the cosmos
Estimates vary, but there are generally a few thousand stars bright enough to see in the sky on a...
6 months ago
Estimates vary, but there are generally a few thousand stars bright enough to see in the sky on a clear, moonless, cloudless night away from city lights. You might be able to identify a couple of them, along with a handful of constellations. But what about the rest? If they...
Computer Ads from...
T/Maker: Tiny Software Company Takes on the Giants (Interview)
An interesting look at a company with less than 20 employees playing with the big boys
2 months ago
An interesting look at a company with less than 20 employees playing with the big boys
Notes on software...
Surveying SQL parser libraries in a few high-level languages
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.
Applied Cartography
Against Against Innovation Tokens
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote...
6 months ago
Glyph (whose writing and contributions to the Python ecosystem I am deeply grateful for) wrote Against Innovation Tokens yesterday:
In 2015, Dan McKinley laid out a model for software teams selecting technologies. He proposed that each team have a limited supply of “innovation...
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...
Arduino Blog
Create your own affordable Arduino-powered smart glasses
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the...
8 months ago
When Google Glass launched in 2013, the public opinion seemed to be “interesting technology, but the world isn’t ready yet.” Now that more than a decade has passed, the world may finally be ready — especially with the omission of controversial features like video recording. If...
Old Vintage...
Cracking DesignWare's The Grammar Examiner on the C64
It's been awhile since I've stripped the copy protection off a Commodore 64 software package. This...
a year ago
It's been awhile since I've stripped the copy protection off a Commodore 64 software package. This weekend I had a reason to.
The Grammar Examiner from 1984, something like a mashup between a board game and Strunk and White's Elements of Style, where you get to edit a fictional...
Arduino Blog
Kick off the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with these Formula 1-inspired Arduino projects
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the...
7 months ago
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the season. While most fans can’t participate directly — except as spectators — they can celebrate their passion through DIY projects. That’s why we’ve scoured the community to find the...
Louwrentius
'Tip of the day for every Linux or Unix user: brace expantion'
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know...
over a year ago
Searching the web I discovered some really nice feature of the unix shell,
which I didn't know about.
Try this:
touch foobar.conf
Now try this:
cp foobar.conf{,.bak}
It is equivalent to:
cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak
This is also the easiest way to create sequences. Do not use...
Notes on software...
Unit testing C code with gtest
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use...
over a year ago
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use Google's
gtest and
CMake for testing C code. This will serve as a
foundation for some upcoming posts/projects on programming Linux,
userland networking and interpreters.
test/CMakeLists.txt...
watchTowr Labs
“To live is to fight, to fight is to live! - IBM ODM Remote Code Execution
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but...
10 months ago
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but there is one that we have not mentioned before, that is - quite frankly - the heavy-weight champion of the world in terms of applications for large enterprises. With over a hundred
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to hobby CNC
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
3 months ago
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
Jonas Hietala
Favourite Programming Language
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a...
over a year ago
All the programmers love to promote their favourite language, or to hate on others. Now I read a post which claimes my favourite language is not good enough! But he’s correct of course, there is no one language to rule them all. You should always choose the mest language for the...
Jonas Hietala
Long Term Goals (part 2)
A few minutes after I wrote about my long term goals, in the shower, I realize I forgot a few major...
over a year ago
A few minutes after I wrote about my long term goals, in the shower, I realize I forgot a few major goals I have:
Write my own Programming Language
Why? Because it sounds fun and epic as hell.
Write a Book
So I like books and I like to collect them and I have my whole bookcase...
Notes on software...
First month on a database team
A little over a month ago, I joined EnterpriseDB on a
distributed Postgres product
(PGD). The...
9 months ago
A little over a month ago, I joined EnterpriseDB on a
distributed Postgres product
(PGD). The process of onboarding
myself has been pretty similar at each company in the last decade,
though I think I've gotten better at it. The process is of course
influenced by the team, and my...
Willem's Blog
Escaping the flat tires
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some...
over a year ago
Finding the answer to the question how resilient a puncture-proof tire really is took me quite some time, but alas - here it is!
./techtipsy
They make USB-C cables with displays now!
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted...
7 months ago
I’ve reached a point in my setup where most of the devices that I use are
based around the coveted USB-C port. This meant that I had a valid reason to get
a few extra because I didn’t yet have a stockpile of good USB-C cables.
That’s when I found out that there exist cables that...
Jonas Hietala
Focusing Attention: Study Hacking
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my...
over a year ago
A week of drawing is over, but I didn’t draw that much. It was a little bit of a fail from my part.
But the past is the past and this week I’m going to be study focused. Not that I need to study, but I really need to rework my study technique. I’ve been going on like a classical...
computers are bad
2024-11-23 cablesoft
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful...
a month ago
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful teletext services in the UK and Europe. "Teletext" is
sometimes a confusing term because of its apparent relation to telecom-industry
technologies like the teletypewriter and...
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...
lcamtuf’s thing
Electric chainsaws and the gorge of misery
Lithium batteries are great -- so why do mid-size electric power tools suck in 2024?
4 months ago
Lithium batteries are great -- so why do mid-size electric power tools suck in 2024?
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
Notes on software...
An intuition for distributed consensus in OLTP systems
Distributed consensus in transactional databases (e.g. etcd or
Cockroach) is a big deal these days....
11 months ago
Distributed consensus in transactional databases (e.g. etcd or
Cockroach) is a big deal these days. Most often under the hood are
variations of log-based Paxos-like algorithms such as MultiPaxos,
Viewstamped Replication, or Raft. While there are new variations that
come out each...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Moving beyond coin voting governance
over a year ago
computers are bad
2024-03-27 telephone cables
So let's say you're working on a household project and need around a dozen
telephone cables---the...
9 months ago
So let's say you're working on a household project and need around a dozen
telephone cables---the ordinary kind that you would use between your telephone
and the wall. It is, of course, more cost effective to buy bulk cable, or
simply a long cable, and cut it to length and attach...
Home on Erik...
Fun with trigonometry: the world's most twisted coastline
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of...
over a year ago
I just spent a few days in Italy, on the Ligurian coast. Even though we were on the west side of Italy, the Mediterranean sea was to the east, because the house was situated on a long bay.
computers are bad
2023-02-14 something up there pt I
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks, there has been an astounding increase in the number of
objects shot down by North American air defense. Little is yet known about some
of these objects, but it is clearly one of the more dramatic UFO turns in
recent memory. Some of the mystery is simply...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
computers are bad
2023-04-20 different kinds of differential
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by...
a year ago
On the front page of HN today was an [article with a confusing headline],
"Farmers 'crippled' by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a
halt." Of course the headline doesn't actually say this, but it does seem
to imply that there has been some kind of failure of...
Jonas Hietala
Battling burnout
Mamma Mia! Here we go again…
Once again, I’m finding myself trying to recover from burnout, and...
a year ago
Mamma Mia! Here we go again…
Once again, I’m finding myself trying to recover from burnout, and after about a year I’m finally feeling more like myself.
Even though I’ve been here before, it’s a difficult thing to recognize and avoid, so I’m writing this to maybe help you or my...
Good Enough
PEOs are Good Enough (for us)
Hi, I’m Patrick. Good Enough brought me on as a part-time Operations Manager who basically does all...
a year ago
Hi, I’m Patrick. Good Enough brought me on as a part-time Operations Manager who basically does all the things that Shawn and Barry don’t want to do! My first task was to set up payroll for Good Enough’s three employees, something we thought would maybe be worth talking about!
If...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from...
10 months ago
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974?
Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)?
How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962.
The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized...
Louwrentius
Recovering a lost partition using gpart
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups....
over a year ago
Even today people do not understand how important it is for the safety of your
data to make backups. I was asked to perform some data recovery on a hard
drive of an old computer, which still contained important documents and
photo's.
The first thing I did was to make a disk image...
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...
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.
Applied Cartography
Bluesky is good
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for...
3 weeks ago
Three months ago, I wrote Bluesky et al, in which I walked through the various platforms vying for the dubious title of "Twitter's successor" and landed on Bluesky as being my favorite, perhaps less out of its ostensible inherent virtues and more out of the size of its...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why Proof of Stake (Nov 2020)
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Willem's Blog
One year of cycling
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
over a year ago
GPS recording an entire year of bike rides using Garmin and Strava.
Old Vintage...
The Fossil Wrist PDA becomes a tiny Gopher client (with Overbite Palm 0.3)
I don't always often wear watches. But when I do, I prefer Palm PDAs. Wired to my wrist.
all...
a year ago
I don't always often wear watches. But when I do, I prefer Palm PDAs. Wired to my wrist.
all about Palm devices on the Internet.
It turns out there's a reason for that, and we're going to patch the operating system so we can make the Fossil Wrist PDA into what may be the...
Matt Mullenweg
RIP Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is...
a month ago
Quincy Jones had such an impact on the culture that it’s impossible to summarize. His discography is amazing. I feel so lucky to have met him in 2012 when I was much earlier in my career, and he didn’t have any reason to give me time, but he treated everyone as if they were...
Arduino Blog
Is there an online Arduino IDE?
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code...
2 months ago
Since the inception of Arduino, the Arduino IDE has been a go-to tool for people learning to code and creating projects ranging from remote-controlled cars to soil moisture monitoring. No wonder it’s been downloaded over 24 million times this year, so far! Now if you’ve ever...
computers are bad
2024-12-04 operators on the front
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the...
a month ago
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the vague understanding that an operator used to be involved is
the main thing they know about historic telephony. Of course, telephone
historians, as a group, tend to be much more...
Arduino Blog
Reimagining the chicken coop with predator detection, Wi-Fi control, and more
The traditional backyard chicken coop is a very simple structure that typically consists of a...
4 months ago
The traditional backyard chicken coop is a very simple structure that typically consists of a nesting area, an egg-retrieval panel, and a way to provide food and water as needed. Realizing that some aspects of raising chickens are too labor-intensive, the Coders Cafe crew decided...
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...
3 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.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Engineers Need Art
Soft Dorothy Software — Shareware Projects
Wherein I attempt to recover and restore old shareware code and program again like it's 1989.
4 months ago
Wherein I attempt to recover and restore old shareware code and program again like it's 1989.
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...
computers are bad
2024-01-21 multi-channel audio part 1
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of...
11 months ago
Stereophonic or two-channel audio is so ubiquitous today that we tend to refer
to all kinds of pieces of consumer audio reproduction equipment as "a stereo."
As you might imagine, this is a relatively modern phenomenon. While stereo
audio in concept dates to the late 19th...
./techtipsy
Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana
This post isn’t a detailed line-by-line tutorial on how to set up each individual piece of the setup...
8 months ago
This post isn’t a detailed line-by-line tutorial on how to set up each individual piece of the setup as those types of
guides tend to get out of date really easily, but if you know your way around Linux and the command line, then you can
definitely replicate this setup on your...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the mechanical Bendix Air Data Computer, part 5: motor/tachometers
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears...
10 months ago
The Bendix Central Air Data Computer (CADC) is an electromechanical analog computer that uses
gears and cams for its mathematics. It was a key part of military planes such as the F-101 and the F-111 fighters,
computing
airspeed, Mach number, and other "air data".
The rotating...
Ken Shirriff's blog
The Pentium as a Navajo weaving
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving...
4 months ago
Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract
pattern.
Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely.
The design turned out to be an image of Intel's Pentium...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do layer 2s really differ from execution sharding?
7 months ago
Neil Madden
Macaroon access tokens for OAuth: Part 2 – transactional auth
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a...
over a year ago
In part 1, I showed how Macaroon access tokens in ForgeRock Access Management 7.0 can be used as a lightweight and easy-to-deploy alternative to proof of possession (PoP) schemes for securing tokens in browser-based apps. The same techniques can be adapted to secure tokens in...
computers are bad
2024-12-11 travelers information stations
Histories of radio broadcasting often make a particular focus on the most
powerful stations. For...
3 weeks ago
Histories of radio broadcasting often make a particular focus on the most
powerful stations. For historic reasons, WBCT of Grand Rapids, Michigan
broadcasts FM at 320¸000 watts. Many AM stations are licensed to operate at
50,000 watts, but this modern license limit represented a...
Jonas Hietala
2012 Read Books
I read a post, sadly lost the link, where the author had recorded all books she had read during the...
over a year ago
I read a post, sadly lost the link, where the author had recorded all books she had read during the year and I thought it’d be pretty fun to do. So here goes, in a mostly ordered list.
The Art of Learning - Josh Waitzkin
Världens Whiskey
More of a reference book.
Linear Algebra...
Computer Ads from...
Suture Software's Bludgeons 'n' Braggarts
We very simply give you what you've been asking for -- we give you BLOOD
10 months ago
We very simply give you what you've been asking for -- we give you BLOOD
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
Jonas Hietala
2021 in review
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year...
over a year ago
A new year is always a good time to review the past year. Funny how this is already the 12th year I’ve done this kind of quick review… Time sure flies.
2021 Non-Geek Achievements
Started strength training using a strength coach from Kabuki.
I got inspired by the book Peak that...
Home on Erik...
Mortality statistics and Sweden's "dry tinder" effect
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”....
over a year ago
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”. But I read something about COVID-19 deaths that I thought was interesting and wanted to see if I could replicated it through data.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Exit games for EVM validiums: the return of Plasma
a year ago
./techtipsy
How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very...
6 months ago
A family member has a Canon PIXMA MP250 printer, originally released in 2009.
It has been a very reliable piece of hardware, especially for a printer.
Then came Windows 10. The printer would not work out of the box with it and
the official drivers got stuck during installation....
computers are bad
2024-12-21 something over New Jersey
There were thousands of reports: strange aircraft, floating through the sky. A
retrospective sum of...
a week ago
There were thousands of reports: strange aircraft, floating through the sky. A
retrospective sum of press accounts finds that some 100,000 people were
reported to have witnessed aerial intruders. Despite the scant details
associated with most reports, an eager press repeated the...
Jonas Hietala
Why I don't rely on AI for programming (too much)
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting...
2 months ago
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that.
thih9 on Hacker News
I’ve been skeptical of the AI craze...
Willem's Blog
Lessons from a takeaway plastic bag
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of...
over a year ago
How we're tricked into repeated purchases replacing perfectly fine products just for the sake of change.
Notes on software...
io_uring basics: Writing a file to disk
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that...
a year ago
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that used
io_uring on Linux. We sketched out how it works at a high level but I
hadn't yet internalized how you actually code with io_uring. So I
strapped myself down this week and wrote...
detreville
Father's Day
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
a year ago
(First posted on Father's Day, 2022.)
Posts on Made of...
Some thoughts on Quora
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation,...
over a year ago
With the announcement this week that Quora had taken $11 million in VC at an $86 million valuation, there’s been an awful lot of attention on Quora. I’ve had an account there and wanted to write up some of my initial thoughts.
If you haven’t heard about Quora, it’s yet another...
lcamtuf’s thing
The 8-bit (MCU) manifesto
Eight-bit microcontrollers aren't relics; they are a design philosophy. You might want to use them...
6 months ago
Eight-bit microcontrollers aren't relics; they are a design philosophy. You might want to use them more.
Willem's Blog
Write your own words
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for...
a month ago
Why not to use AI for writing - a blog post on the underestimated long term costs of AI tools for human creativity.
Louwrentius
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...
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...
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.
detreville
The IBM 701
"IBM's first computer"
a year ago
Home on Erik...
What's up with music recommendations?
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are...
over a year ago
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are behind recommendations for music and movies.
Of course, every media type is different. For instance, there's fundamental reasons why latent factor models works really well for...
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...
Applied Cartography
Projects are things with steps
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked...
2 months ago
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked so frequently that I decided to write about it.
Why is “Get mom a birthday present” a project and not a task?
GTD is very orthodox in what a “project” is: it’s anything that:
you...
Opsbros
WiFi Binary Clock
Who doesn't love a classic Binary Clock? I remember getting one of these when I was in my 20's from...
over a year ago
Who doesn't love a classic Binary Clock? I remember getting one of these when I was in my 20's from ThinkGeek, and it was pride of place on my desk. LED's are a thing of beauty.
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 4 (Pet Sounds)
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Teacher's Pet gets new sounds in this post in a series about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Arduino Blog
This ‘smocking display’ adds data physicalization to clothing
Elastic use in the textile industry is relatively recent. So, what did garment makers do before...
5 months ago
Elastic use in the textile industry is relatively recent. So, what did garment makers do before elastic came along? They relied on smocking, which is a technique for bunching up fabric so that it can stretch to better fit the form of a body. Now a team of computer science...
axio.ms
Mac SE/30 odyssey
I’ve always wanted an Apple Macintosh SE/30. Released in 1989, they look quite a lot like the other...
over a year ago
I’ve always wanted an Apple Macintosh SE/30. Released in 1989, they look quite a lot like the other members of the original “compact Mac” series, but pack in a ton of interesting features that the other compact Macs don’t have.
This is the story of my journey to getting to the...
Notes on software...
Writing a storage engine for Postgres: an in-memory Table Access Method
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This...
a year ago
With Postgres 12,
released in 2019, it became possible to swap out Postgres's storage
engine.
This is a feature MySQL has supported for a long time. There are at
least 8 different built-in
engines you can pick from. MyRocks, MySQL on
RocksDB, is another popular third-party...
Electronics etc…
Measuring the HP 11720A Pulse Modulator and Coax Cables
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse Modulator
Inside the HP 11720A
Measurement Setup for a Quick Testing Session
Pin Modulator Power Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Loss Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Power Measurements with...
Arduino Blog
How to use vintage LED bubble displays with your Arduino
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or...
a month ago
If you want to add a display to your Arduino project, the easiest solution will likely be an LCD or OLED screen. But though those are affordable and work really well, they may not provide the vibe you’re looking for. If you want a more vintage look, Vaclav Krejci has a great...
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
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...
computers are bad
2024-03-17 wilhelm haller and photocopier accounting
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first...
9 months ago
In the 1450s, German inventor Johannes Gutenburg designed the movable-type
printing press, the first practical method of mass-duplicating text. After
various other projects, he applied his press to the production of the Bible,
yielding over one hundred copies of a text that...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Jonas IceCream Stand
Ah my latest game Jonas IceCream Stand is finished and up and running and I’m really proud of it!...
over a year ago
Ah my latest game Jonas IceCream Stand is finished and up and running and I’m really proud of it! And thanks for the feedback guys, it’s always welcome.
I spent almost exactly fifty hours on this game and that’s by far the most I’ve spent on a 7day project. To be honest it’s...
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...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside an unusual 7400-series chip implemented with a gate array
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple...
9 months ago
When I look inside a chip from the popular 7400 series, I know what to expect: a fairly simple die,
implemented in a straightforward, cost-effective way.
However, when I looked inside a military-grade chip built by Integrated Device Technology (IDT)4
I found a very unexpected...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34 keyboard layout
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with...
over a year ago
A couple of months ago I started looking into ergonomical keyboards; mainly split keyboards with much fewer keys, like the 36-key Gergoplex and the 44-key Kyria. I may write another post about the reasons why, but long story short I started getting pain in my thumbs, fingers,...
Posts on Made of...
Advent of Code in C++ Template Metaprogramming
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of...
a year ago
This December, the imp of the perverse struck me, and I decided to see how many days of Advent of Code I could do purely in compile-time C++ metaprogramming.
As of this writing, I’ve done two days, and I’m not sure I’ll make it any further. However, that’s one more day than I...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Encapsulated vs systemic complexity in protocol design
over a year ago
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...
anderegg.ca
Jet Lag: The Game: The Game
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next...
a month ago
Some fun news today from the creators of Jet Lag: The Game. They officially announced the next season, and also a “home version” of the game. I’ve written about Jet Lag: The Game before, so you might want to start there if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
On the latest...
Louwrentius
RAID array size and rebuild speed
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and...
over a year ago
When a disk fails of a RAID 5 array, you are no longer protected against
(another) disk failure and thus data loss. During this rebuild time, you are
vulnerable. The longer it takes to rebuild your array, the longer you are
vulnerable. Especially during a disk-intensive period,...
Willem's Blog
Impact of training
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and...
a year ago
Join me on an intriguing journey as I explore the transformative impact of effective training and data analysis on my performance in the Fietselfstedentocht 2023.
Neil Madden
Multiple input MACs
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a...
over a year ago
When working with Message Authentication Codes (MACs), you often need to authenticate not just a single string, but multiple fields of data. For example, when creating an authenticated encryption mode by composing a cipher and a MAC (like AES-CBC and HMAC), you need to ensure the...
computers are bad
2023-11-19 Centrex
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened...
a year ago
I have always been fascinated by the PABX - the private automatic branch
exchange, often shortened to "PBX" in today's world where the "automatic" is
implied. (Relatively) modern small and medium business PABXs of the type I like
to collect are largely solid-state devices that...
Jonas Hietala
Migrating to rocks.nvim
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At...
7 months ago
My relationship with my Neovim config is best described as an On-again, off-again relationship.
At times I’m deeply in love and spend all my time caressing the config—like how in September I did a complete rewrite in Lua—while other times I’m busy with other love interests and...
Applied Cartography
A good H1
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we...
a month ago
Buttondown was kindly featured in H1 Gallery last week, and Ryan asked me to opine a bit on how we arrived at our current iteration, which is the anodyne yet pointed Email for you. Yes, you.
Historically, we've called Buttondown a 'newsletter tool' — the h1 before this was 'The...
Notes on software...
Notes on running Electron
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
Why you should not use IPsec for VPN connectivity
IPsec is a well-known and widely-used VPN solution. It seems that it's not widely known that Niels...
over a year ago
IPsec is a well-known and widely-used VPN solution. It seems that it's not widely known that Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier performed a detailed security analysis of IPsec and that the results were not very positive.
We strongly discourage the use of IPsec in its current form...
lcamtuf’s thing
Weekend projects: getting silly with C
C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.
6 months ago
C is beautiful yet full of horrors. Here's to uncovering its hidden depths.
Arduino Blog
Repurposing an automatic train control unit as a car speedometer
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to...
3 months ago
We’re just now getting semi-autonomous self-driving capabilities in cars, which let them adhere to posted speed limits and maintain their lanes. But trains have been doing the same thing for a long time — well before machine learning and computer vision became ubiquitous. How did...
Home on Erik...
Conversion rates – you are (most likely) computing them wrong
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and divide them with the total number of users. Done. Except… it's a lot more complicated when you have any sort of significant time lag.
Arduino Blog
Finally, you can DIY your own espresso machine
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the...
3 months ago
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the world of espresso machines. To satisfy enthusiasts, an espresso machine needs to provide precise control over temperature, pressure, and flow to enable the perfect pull. But if...
Willem's Blog
Moving to the countryside
Join me on a journey from the bustle of Amsterdam to the tranquility of Noord-Limburg's countryside.
over a year ago
Join me on a journey from the bustle of Amsterdam to the tranquility of Noord-Limburg's countryside.
Willem's Blog
Hospitalised with MCADD
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a...
over a year ago
This week our son was hospitalised because a regular illness caused him to keep vomiting, a dangerous situation if you're diagnosed with MCADD.
lcamtuf’s thing
The marvelous disappearing capacitor
The performance of photodiode amplifiers can be improved in a clever way.
3 weeks ago
The performance of photodiode amplifiers can be improved in a clever way.
Abort Retry Fail
Unboxing New Old Stock Windows 3.11
A Photo Gallery
a year ago
Arduino Blog
KiPneu makes soft robotic biomimetics accessible to STEAM students
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of...
5 months ago
Biomimicry, which is a method for developing new technology inspired by nature, has been one of humanity’s greatest assets. But systems reliant on soft tissue, such as an octopus’s tentacles, have been notoriously difficult to reproduce in the robotics world. To give STEAM...
Notes on software...
Interpreting TypeScript
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript...
over a year ago
In addition to providing a static type system and compiler for a
superset of JavaScript, TypeScript makes much of its functionality
available programmatically. In this post we'll use the TypeScript
compiler API to build an interpreter. We'll build off of a...
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
Home on Erik...
The mathematical principles of management
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's...
over a year ago
I've read about 100 management books by now but if there's something that always bothered me it's the lack of first principles thinking. Basically it's a ton of heuristics. And heuristics are great, but when you present heuristics as true objectives, it kind of clouds the...
Simply Explained
Good Home Automation Should be Boring
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other...
over a year ago
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other people's setup for inspiration, and one thing struck me. Many people have cluttered dashboards and use Home Assistant to track just about any metric they can.That's quite different...
Posts on Made of...
wpa_supplicant: GUI and wpa_action
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on...
over a year ago
I’ve made two new interesting discoveries about wpa_supplicant since writing my last blog post on the subject. (Actually, I pretty much made both of them while reading documentation in order to write it, and have been lame about writing them up).
Using wpa_gui It turns out that...
Louwrentius
Migrated this blog from blogger.com to blogofile
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to...
over a year ago
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to have more control over my content and the layout.
I had many issues with the blogger blog post editor, resulting in ugly posts with too much white space, strange fonts and fonts...
computers are bad
2024-07-13 the contemporary carphone
Cathode Ray Dude, in one of his
many excellent "Quick Start" videos, made an interesting observation...
5 months ago
Cathode Ray Dude, in one of his
many excellent "Quick Start" videos, made an interesting observation that
has stuck in my brain: sophisticated computer users, nerds if you will, have
a tendency to completely ignore things that they know are worthless. He was
referring to the...
Arduino Blog
Speed up your project’s compile time by up to 50% in Arduino Cloud!
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or...
2 weeks ago
At Arduino, we know how precious your time is when you’re building your next big project or experimenting with new ideas. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce a game-changing update to the Cloud Editor Builder — the engine behind compiling your sketches in Arduino Cloud. This...
Louwrentius
My experiences with DFS replication on Windows 2008 R2
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS...
over a year ago
If you are considering implementing DFS replication, consider using Windows 2012 R2 because DFS replication has been massively improved. It supports larger data sets and performance has dramatically been improved over Windows 2008 R2.
I've implemented DFS replication to keep two...
Applied Cartography
44%
If you spend enough time digesting hackneyed business or self-improvement advice, you've probably...
7 months ago
If you spend enough time digesting hackneyed business or self-improvement advice, you've probably seen someone wax poetic about the following image:
This is meant to be an illustration of the power of incrementalism (often referred to as kaizen when the writer is trying to be...
Home on Erik...
In defense of false positives (why you can't fail with A/B tests)
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the...
over a year ago
Many years ago, I used to think that A/B tests were foolproof and all you need to do is compare the metrics for the two groups. The group with the highest conversion rate wins, right?
computers are bad
2023-11-25 the curse of docker
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza...
a year ago
I'm heading to Las Vegas for re:invent soon, perhaps the most boring type of
industry extravaganza there could be. In that spirit, I thought I would write
something quick and oddly professional: I'm going to complain about Docker.
Packaging software is one of those fundamental...
Home on Erik...
The power of ensembles
From my presentation at MLConf, one of the points I think is worth stressing again is how extremely...
over a year ago
From my presentation at MLConf, one of the points I think is worth stressing again is how extremely well combining different algorithms works.
In this case, we're training machine learning algorithms on different data sets (playlists, play counts, sessions) and different...
Lars Lofgren
Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host
Are you sick of Forbes appearing in search results? For topics that Forbes doesn’t have any...
3 months ago
Are you sick of Forbes appearing in search results? For topics that Forbes doesn’t have any expertise in? Here’s the organic rankings for “best pet insurance”: Forbes ranks #2. Not sure a business website knows how pet insurance actually works. But okay. They also have the #1...
Jonas Hietala
August theme: Bare Minimum
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next...
over a year ago
This time I’ll be following my inspiring site and declare Bare Minimum as the theme for my next game. This could really be anything, from graphics to user interaction… But I’ve got an idea. It’ll be a real challange for me to make but hopefully I’ll have a game in a few weeks...
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...
Willem's Blog
Listen to your body
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have...
over a year ago
Using health data gathered by sensors and wearables I learned to listen to my body. Now I have stopped using bluetooth sensors all together.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Writing good technical explanations
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and...
over a year ago
Software engineering is mainly learning. There is a great demand for technical explanations, and many thousands of books, talks and blog…
Vitalik Buterin's...
What kind of layer 3s make sense?
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Electronics etc…
Zephyr Ravenna Control Board Replacement
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing...
7 months ago
Blog post that probably has an audience of one, myself.
Introduction
Zephyr Ravenna - Confusing Information
Two PCBs - Control Board & Switch Assembly
Switch of the Breaker!!!
Glass Canopy Removal
Duct Cover Removal
Swapping the Control...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Home on Erik...
Buffet lines are terrible, but let's try to improve them using computer simulations
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives....
over a year ago
My company has a buffet every Friday, and the lines grow to epic proportions when the food arrives. I've suspected for years that the “classic” buffet line system is a deeply flawed and inefficient method, and every time I'm stuck in the line has made me more convinced.
Arduino Blog
ThermoGrasp brings thermal feedback to virtual reality
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The...
3 months ago
Imagine playing Half-Life: Alyx and feeling the gun heat up in your hand as you take down The Combine. Or operating a robot through augmented reality and feeling coldness on your fingers when you get close to exceeding the robot’s limits. A prototype device called ThermoGrasp...
Arduino Blog
This Flip-Pelt wearable concept enables ultra-fast thermal feedback in VR
Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on...
a month ago
Wouldn’t it be great if, while playing a virtual reality game, you could feel the heat of a fire on your arm? Or the cold of chilly water? Engineers around the world have been trying to make that happen, but there is a big problem: temperature changes are slow. The immersive...
Louwrentius
The iPhone, iPad and iOS are powering a revolution
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people...
over a year ago
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people who make them are maybe even dumber. Because they
can't seem to figure out how to create a computer that the majority of people
understand.
When the original macintosh arrived at...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Weekend Tournaments
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament...
over a year ago
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament and on Sunday the local Netrunner community hosted a small summer kit tournament.
Game of Thrones
We’ve had a similar tournament once before when me and my girlfriend invited two of...
Notes on software...
My favorite software subreddits
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only...
a year ago
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only exposure to
reddit is dank memes, proggit or even
language-specific subreddits like
/r/python, you're missing out.
What follows are my favorite subreddits in tech. My criteria is...
computers are bad
2023-12-23 ITT Technical Institute
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is...
a year ago
Programming note/shameless plug: I am finally on Mastodon.
The history of the telephone industry is a bit of an odd one. For the greatest
part of the 20th century, telephony in the United States was largely a monopoly
of AT&T and its many affiliates. This wasn't always the case,...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: A Geek Valentine
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little...
over a year ago
Ah man the mush in my brain is finally letting go and I’m starting to feel this tiny little programming urge again… This time it’s not Haskell or a new experimental game that’s luring me on, no this time it’s me longing to create this fantastic awesome epic RTS game. Sadly it’s a...
anderegg.ca
Trying out GoodLinks
The weeks leading up to the holidays have been hectic. I’m behind on “internet stuff” since entering...
a week ago
The weeks leading up to the holidays have been hectic. I’m behind on “internet stuff” since entering Christmas-mode, and have been looking for a better way to capture things I want to look at later. I’ve had this issue before, but solved it in an ad-hoc way. Previously I’d made...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Goodbye Evernote, Hello Obsidian
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas,...
6 months ago
I use note-taking software every day. I use it for journaling, blogging, capturing ideas, researching technologies, managing my projects, and many other things. Writing is how I think through problems, and note-taking software makes all that thinking easy to search and...
Posts on Made of...
Building LLVM in 90 seconds using Amazon Lambda
Last week, Frederic Cambus wrote about building LLVM quickly on some very large machines,...
over a year ago
Last week, Frederic Cambus wrote about building LLVM quickly on some very large machines, culminating in a 2m37s build on a 160-core ARM machine.
I don’t have a giant ARM behemoth, but I have been working on a tool I call Llama, which lets you offload computational work –...
Vitalik Buterin's...
El recurso escaso más importante es la legitimidad
over a year ago
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring ham radio activation of Korkattivuori (Mt. Korkatti)
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature...
a year ago
Korkattivuori (“Mount Korkatti”, 186m above sea level) is a small hill and Natura 2000 nature reserve area near town Haapavesi (pop. 6588) in Finland. The nature reserve area consist of short family friendly hiking path of approximately 1.5km. One end of the path has parking...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates September 16: Explore all available articles of a feed
3 months ago
Home on Erik...
Wikiphilia
I've been obsessed with Wikipedia for the past ten years. Occasionally I find some good articles...
over a year ago
I've been obsessed with Wikipedia for the past ten years. Occasionally I find some good articles worth sharing and that's why I created the wikiphilia Twitter handle. Just a long stream of stuff that for one reason or another may be interesting.
Computer Ads from...
OS-9 Bonus Content
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
4 months ago
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
Matt Blewitt
Modifying pg_dump To Exclude Event Triggers
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from...
6 months ago
At $WORK, we have a case where we have implemented an event trigger to prevent customers from dropping an extension. As this extension is part of contrib and normally installed by users, we can’t prevent them from dropping it normally. However, event triggers can only be created...
Jonas Hietala
Installing Krita on Slackware 14.1
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for...
over a year ago
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for linux.
removepkg calligra
Install some dependencies from Slackbuilds.
gsl
libgexiv2
libpqxx
pstoedit
Get Krita.
The original guide recommends building in ~/kde4 but I moved i to...
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Social Share Images in Twitter/X
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and...
a month ago
I have an admission to make.
Social share images for Pika were broken on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and Apple Messages for months.
And it made me sad.
But in the past few months we got it fixed.
And that made me very happy!
We really love our Pika social share images.
They are...
Louwrentius
Got myself a Norco RPC-4020
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion....
over a year ago
I've got this fetish for storage. So I bought a case that gives me some room
for future expantion. The current 6 TB RAID 6 storage server does not have any
room for expantion.
This Norco RPC-4020 case with 20 hot swap drive bays does however. Don't know
what to fill it with yet.
Notes on software...
Why (and how) to read books
The last time I read for fun was in elementary school. Since college I
knew I must read more, but I...
over a year ago
The last time I read for fun was in elementary school. Since college I
knew I must read more, but I never forced myself to build the
habit. Then three years ago I spent time around my brother and a
coworker who were avid readers. This "peer pressure" helped me get
started.
Since...
Louwrentius
Understanding IOPS, latency and storage performance
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When...
over a year ago
Update 2020: I've written another blogpost about this topic, including some benchmark examples.
When most people think about storage performance, they think about throughput. But throughput is similar to the top speed of a car. In reality, you will almost never reach the top...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Breaking the rule of three
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision...
over a year ago
It’s pretty darn stressful making a game in a week, especially when you have this big great vision on how your game should be (which is always grand). For me making Balls, Black and White and Jonas IceCream Stand where truly stressful, MenuCity and Bugger not so much but...
Jonas Hietala
Making a Game Again?
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my...
over a year ago
I’ve gotta do a lab today at school, tomorrow I need to do the exam I missed when I had my glasses-missing headaches and I’m going to Ikea and some other shops for, you guessed it, shopping! Sure it’s fun and sure I need to do these things but the only thing on my mind now is...
Arduino Blog
Adjusting office chair height with simple voice commands
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized...
4 months ago
A month ago, ElectronicLab modified his office chair with an electric car jack, giving it motorized height adjustment. That worked well, but required that he push buttons to raise or lower the seat. Pushing those buttons is a hassle when one’s hands are full, so ElectronicLab...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: MenuCity
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and...
over a year ago
Good times, good times. MenuCity has been out a while and thanks for all the positive and constructive feedback guys, it’s like my food doing this (programming is my air and the fun is the water… err). Anyway here’s the postmortem of my latest, and greatest, game.
Let’s start...
Abort Retry Fail
Housekeeping for 20240309
Super quick updates
9 months ago
./techtipsy
Database optimization adventures on low-end hardware
I used to work on a short-term project a while ago where the goal was to visualize some metrics that...
over a year ago
I used to work on a short-term project a while ago where the goal was to visualize some metrics that were collected from
a pretty fancy smart home setup. This data included power usage of various sections of the building, temperature
sensors, water usage levels and more. The data...
Arduino Blog
Axiom is Arduino’s newest Gold Integration Partner!
Digital manufacturing consultancy and solutions provider, Axiom Manufacturing Systems, based in the...
6 months ago
Digital manufacturing consultancy and solutions provider, Axiom Manufacturing Systems, based in the United States, has recently joined our System Integrators Partnership Program. As Gold-level partners, Axiom will supercharge their mission – to empower manufacturers to rapidly...
Jonas Hietala
Mailto: links with FastMail in Firefox
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications....
over a year ago
You can change the application to handle mailto: links in Firefox in Preferences -> Applications. The problem is that you can’t input custom urls and some email providers, like hotmail or fastmail, aren’t supported. I managed to fix it with the plugin MailtoWebmails. It annoys me...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 3 (Cut & Paste)
Sound code is added in this third in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
Sound code is added in this third in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
Applied Cartography
How Buttondown uses HAProxy
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the...
4 months ago
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the author-facing app, the subscriber-facing app, and the marketing site all under a single domain. Most technical decisions are reversible with sufficient grit and dedication; this one...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 24: Content parsing improvements
a year ago
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...
Home on Erik...
The relationship between commit size and commit message size
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's...
over a year ago
Wow I guess it was more than a year ago that I tweeted this. Crazy how time flies by. Anyway, here's my rationale:
When I update one line of code I feel like I have to put in a long explanation about its side effects, why it's fully backwards compatible, and why it fixes some...
Jonas Hietala
The ASIC pit of despair
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s...
over a year ago
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s hashrate were ASICs.
Recurring hard forks to brick ASICs is a very dangerous game and what better to illustrate this than with an xkcd-style plot?
You’re safe on the edges but how do...
Arduino Blog
A gamified approach to therapy and motor skills testing
For children who experience certain developmental delays, specific types of physical therapies are...
6 months ago
For children who experience certain developmental delays, specific types of physical therapies are often employed to assist them in improving their balance and motor skills/coordination. Ivan Hernandez, Juan Diego Zambrano, and Abdelrahman Farag were looking for a way to quantify...
Arduino Blog
Galco goes Platinum! Welcome our newest SIPP
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce...
8 months ago
Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Madison Heights, Michigan, Galco is a leading e-commerce distributor that specializes in providing a wide range of industrial and commercial electrical and electronic products, focusing on maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). Known for...
Jonas Hietala
Ores
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added...
over a year ago
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added some ores which makes the game look a bit less boring. I realize I’ve spent all my time on these little things and I still don’t have a game! But it doesn’t matter, maybe I can...
Good Enough
That time Marvel secretly endorsed my podcast with “the greatest comic book cover of all time”
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a...
a year ago
This is a blog post that has nothing to do with Good Enough, but I was told “There needs to be a record of this somewhere on the internet!” and I don’t have my own blog.
Years ago my friend and I ran a radio show called Gorilla Madness, which we also spun out into a podcast after...
Louwrentius
The minimum requirements for a secure system
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off....
over a year ago
The most secure server system is a system that is not connected to a network
and turned off. However, little work seems to be getting done this way. So we
want to turn systems on and connect them to a network, or even (God forbid)
the internet.
The thing is this. A system...
Simply Explained
Retrospective: 4 years on YouTube
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate,...
over a year ago
Every year I sit down and take a look at how my YouTube channel has been doing. I reflect, evaluate, and set goals for the coming year. This year is no exception. January 13th, 2020, marks my fourth year on YouTube. Time to do a little retrospective.
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Computer Ads from...
Vote for the Topic of the February 2024 Plus Post
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
11 months ago
If you are a paid subscriber, voting is open for one week
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 5: The Purge
2 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Speeding Ahead
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this...
over a year ago
Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this year. Firstly we have a math analysis course in multiple variables which is ok. I’m not a fan of the previous analysis courses but maybe this will be a bit different. We’re...
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
2 months ago
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this...
a year ago
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generation circuitry inside the Intel 386 processor.
Earlier processors such as the 8086 (1978) were simpler, using two clock phases internally.
The...
Notes on software...
Responsibility and ownership
Responsibility is only possible by granting ownership and setting
expectations. If you don't turn...
over a year ago
Responsibility is only possible by granting ownership and setting
expectations. If you don't turn over ownership, don't expect folks to
take responsibility. When you grant ownership and set expectations,
you'll be astounded what folks will accomplish without you.
I am astounded.
Willem's Blog
Refining my tablet OS experience
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
over a year ago
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
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.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Multidimensional gas pricing
7 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Writing Home Assistant automations using Genservers in Elixir
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its...
2 months ago
I’ve been a fan of Home Assistant a while now;
it’s a great platform for home automation with its beginner friendly and feature rich UI,
support for a ton of different devices and integrations,
and there’s a bunch of ways to create automations.
But there’s no engine for writing...
Jonas Hietala
Why make games
Why did I start making games? Because I like to play them of course. Think of all the fantastic...
over a year ago
Why did I start making games? Because I like to play them of course. Think of all the fantastic games; Super Mario, Lemmings, Tetris, GTA, The Sims, Counterstrike, Theme Hospital, SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon… Damn - when you count them like this you’ll see how many great...
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,...
somenice
Generative 3D Modeling
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as...
2 weeks ago
Recently Microsoft released the open 3D generation software Trellis. I decided to try a few tests as reviews had been quite favourable with results creating 3D models with “AI”. The website describes the technology as unified Structured LATent (SLAT) representation and there is a...
Jonas Hietala
How I made a kick-ass cover for my self-published book
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all,...
over a year ago
If you want to publish a book, one of the most important things to consider is the cover—after all, we judge the book by the cover.
And I did it the universally recommended way:
I hired a designer.
Simple, right?
But real talk; it’s not exactly that simple and I did a bunch of...
Notes on software...
Make your own way
Over the years, I have repeatedly felt like I missed the timing for a
meetup or an IRC group or...
a year ago
Over the years, I have repeatedly felt like I missed the timing for a
meetup or an IRC group or social media in general. I'd go to a meetup
every so often but I'd never make a meaningful connection with people,
whereas everyone else knew each other. I'd join an IRC group and...
Arduino Blog
Get notified of impending floods with this Arduino Nano 33 IoT-based display
As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric...
2 months ago
As climate change continues to worsen, events such as heavy rains, hurricanes, and atmospheric rivers have only intensified, and with them, large amounts of flooding that pose serious risks to life and property. Jude Pullen and Pete Milne, therefore, have responded by creating a...
Jonas Hietala
Rising from the Dead, it's Ludum Dare
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not...
over a year ago
I’ve been a long time gone, been busy with school then having summer vacation and generally not making games or blogging. But I have revived! I scrambled to push my new website live because today it’s Ludum Dare time! The theme is “Evolution” and it’s the 24th time for Ludum Dare...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 5: Promotes Regularity
Good Enough is taking a summer pause! We each have travel plans lined up for the summer. We each...
over a year ago
Good Enough is taking a summer pause! We each have travel plans lined up for the summer. We each have at least two children in our homes, begging for attention. And we each truly appreciate extended breaks as a means of reinvigorating ourselves to the ever important task of...
Home on Erik...
Dollar cost averaging
(I accidentally published an unfinished draft of this post a few days ago – sorry about...
over a year ago
(I accidentally published an unfinished draft of this post a few days ago – sorry about that).
There's a lot of sources preaching the benefits of dollar cost averaging, or the practice of investing a fixed amount of money regularly.
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
Jonas Hietala
Home office renovation
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I...
over a year ago
When we moved back to our childhood community and bought a house I had one pretty big requirement: I had to have a home office as I need to work remote. There simply isn’t any software development work for me here.
So the later part of 2018 and early 2019 we’ve renovated an old...
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...
Willem's Blog
Rescuing photos from a crashed iMac
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
over a year ago
This week I attempted to recover two decades of personal photo history from a crashed iMac.
Odds and Ends of...
Why we need seven bins
It's time for some #binchat
2 weeks ago
It's time for some #binchat
Louwrentius
Linux RAID 6 performance using software RAID
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1...
over a year ago
So after toying around with RAID 0 just for fun, time to get serious. I
created a RAID 6 of 10 x 1 TB disks. This gives me raw device read speeds
of 850 MB/s and write speeds of 300 MB/s. I think this is exactly
what should be expected, but boy it is damn fast. Especially the...
./techtipsy
How to fix ZFS pool not importing at boot
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything...
over a year ago
Issue description
You are running a Linux-based machine with an install of ZFS on Linux. Everything seems to work correctly, but
after restarting your machine, the ZFS pool is not visible. You can still import your pool manually using
zpool import poolname or zpool import -a.
In...
OH8HUB’s Substack
Spring day ham radio activation in Hiastinlahti, Finland
Hiastinlahti is a bay where river Iijoki flows into Bothnian Bay, the northernmost part of Gulf of...
a year ago
Hiastinlahti is a bay where river Iijoki flows into Bothnian Bay, the northernmost part of Gulf of Bothnia. This area is a Nature 2000 nature reserve area and good spot for bird watching. The area has a two kilometer long nature trail with fireplace, lean-to and toilet. From the...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of the IBM 5100
IBM's First Personal Computer
a year ago
IBM's First Personal Computer
Lighthouse Blog
Rules improvement: filter based on content
3 weeks ago
Louwrentius
Distributed Parallel Processing Shell Script (PPSS) released
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script...
over a year ago
I'd like to announce the release of the distributed version of the Parallel
Processing Shell Script (PPSS). PPSS is a bash script that allows you to
run commands in parallel. It is written to make use of current multi-core
CPUs.
The new distributed version of PPSS allows you to...
Arduino Blog
This giant animatronic LEGO minifig zombie is a delight
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough...
5 months ago
LEGO’s minifigs are the perfect canvas for creativity, as their simple plastic forms provide enough constraint to force people to consider their art and design choices. That’s exactly the kind of pressure that Wicked Makers’ Jaimie and Jay thrive under, leading them to build this...
Jonas Hietala
Balls
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god...
over a year ago
Here’s my first ever experimental game! The theme was Addictive Gaming. My first thought was oh god I’ll be making another tetris clone but the end result turned out a bit different. I’m not sure it’s very addictive but it’s actually okay! =D
Balls is a game about… balls. Well...
Jonas Hietala
Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available in print
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve...
over a year ago
Today is a big milestone for me, as this marks a big milestone in the biggest personal project I’ve undertaken.
My book ‘Why Cryptocurrencies?’ is released in print today! It’s my attempt to explain what cryptocurrencies are and what problems they solve, in a simple and...
Home on Erik...
Delivering Music Recommendations
I've turned into a lazy bastard and I'm just posting presentations on this blog, but here's one from...
over a year ago
I've turned into a lazy bastard and I'm just posting presentations on this blog, but here's one from Rohan Singh at Spotify talking about the backend infrastructure of the Discover page.
Jonas Hietala
Top ten activities that make me happy
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome....
over a year ago
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome. It’s no more than a year old and feels very fresh compared to the old one. It’s also larger with an extra room, dishwasher (!) and closer to the city centrum and everything is...
Home on Erik...
What's Erik up to?
I joined Better in early 2015 because I thought the team was crazy enough to actually change one of...
over a year ago
I joined Better in early 2015 because I thought the team was crazy enough to actually change one of the largest industries in the US. For six years, I ran the tech team, hiring 300+ people, probably doing 2,000+ interviews, and according to GitHub I added 646,941 lines of code...
Computer Ads from...
E-Z Tax
The Tax Break You've Been Looking for !
8 months ago
The Tax Break You've Been Looking for !
Willem's Blog
Optical vs chest strap heart rate monitors
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness...
over a year ago
Understanding the differences in common HR monitors used in wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers
Ian's Blog
Having a Website Used to Be Fun
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that...
2 months ago
According to the Wayback Machine, I launched my website over a decade ago, in 2013. Just that thought alone makes me feel old, but going back through the old snapshots of my websites made me feel a profound feeling of longing for a time when having a website used to be a novel...
Christian Selig
Announcing Juno 2.0
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been...
6 months ago
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been enjoying Juno since its launch, as well as providing awesome feedback and input to improve it.
Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback,...
Willem's Blog
Different ways to visualise health
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
over a year ago
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
./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...
Louwrentius
'Linux: using disk labels to counter storage device name changes'
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped...
over a year ago
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped for /dev/sdd and vice versa. The result was some file
system corruption on /dev/sdc, because it was used on a remote system through
iSCSI, using a different file system from...
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...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Blockchain for beginners
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making...
over a year ago
Introduction This is a guide for developers who kinda sorta know what blockchains are for (making distributed crypto-currencies like Bitcoin…
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...
7 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...
Notes on software...
Generating a REST API from a database
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a...
over a year ago
I recently published an alpha version of a code generation tool,
DBCore, that reads a database
schema from PostgreSQL or MySQL and generates an entire Go API with
CRUD operations, pagination, filtering, and authentication.
But more than just generating code like
xo/xo or...
Willem's Blog
Free from the iCloud: Escaping Apple Photos
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read...
over a year ago
Recently I freed myself from Apple Photos, using free software to manage my photo library. Read along to find out what software I use and how to make it play nice with your devices.
Simply Explained
ESP32 Cam: cropping images on device
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640...
over a year ago
The ESP32 camera is the cheapest microcontroller with a built-in camera that you can buy. The OV2640 sensor has a max resolution of 1600x1200, but sometimes you don't need the entire image.In this post I'll show how to crop the images on the ESP32 itself, before sending it of to...
Jonas Hietala
It's Time for More School
Today it’s finally starting again and it’s off with a flying start. We have 11 lectures this first...
over a year ago
Today it’s finally starting again and it’s off with a flying start. We have 11 lectures this first week and an absolutely smacked schedule. If that wasn’t enough I also have a mentor time to prepare for and I need to start Taekwon-do again.
On another note Ḯ’m currently plowing...
Simply Explained
Shelly 2.5 + ESPHome: potential fire hazard + fix
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin...
over a year ago
If you have flashed your Shelly 2.5 with ESPHome, make sure to configure GPIO16. Otherwise, the pin will be short-circuited and cause the unit to heat up significantly, creating a potential fire hazard!
Christian Selig
Logging information from iOS Widgets
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home...
over a year ago
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home screen widgets, and some well-placed logs can really help with identifying what’s going wrong. iOS has a sophisticated built in logging mechanism, os_log, and now with SwiftLogger in...
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
over a year ago
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Notes on software...
Building a fast SCSS-like rule expander for CSS using fuzzy 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.
Arduino Blog
Turn your old Android smartphone into an Arduino screen with the RemoteXY app
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for...
2 weeks ago
Each component you add to your Arduino project increases its complexity and the opportunity for mistakes. But most projects require some “auxiliary” hardware — components that you use to interact with the Arduino or to help it do the job you’re asking of it. Buttons and displays...
Jonas Hietala
Back to Training
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool;...
over a year ago
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool; we have linear algebra which is pretty interesting, we have a java course where we’re going to make a game (!) and one about structures and algorithms. Pretty promising but we’ll...
Jonas Hietala
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...
Posts on Made of...
How is duct tape like the force?
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con...
over a year ago
I’m at Dragon*Con this weekend, my second time here now. I decided that if I was going to Dragon*Con again, I needed to do something in terms of costuming, and I wanted it to be something unique – I wasn’t going to come anywhere near as epic as some of the costumes people pull...
Lars Lofgren
The Billion-Dollar World of Parasite SEO: How to Cash In
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch...
2 months ago
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch of SEO content to make a bunch of money. Content often gets published in a subfolder or subdomain or the website. The goal is to leverage the domain’s trust with Google to get...
Jonas Hietala
ghc 8.8.3 cannot find cabal 3.0.0.0 packages
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system...
over a year ago
I’ve been using cabal to manage my Haskell dependencies for years, but when I last updated my system it suddenly stopped working. I installed my dependencies with cabal install xmonad, and checked that it’s installed under ~/.cabal:
$ ls .cabal/bin/
xmonad@
But still when I...
Louwrentius
Tunneling Elixir cluster network traffic over Wireguard
Introduction
The other day I was supporting a customer with an Elixir-based platform that would make...
a year ago
Introduction
The other day I was supporting a customer with an Elixir-based platform that would make use of Elixir libcluster, so messages on one host can be passed to other hosts. This can - for example - enable live updates for all users, even if they are not communicating with...
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...
Willem's Blog
Cyber security: 5 easy tips to protect your server against hackers
These 5 practical cyber security measures will improve the safety of server, website and data.
over a year ago
These 5 practical cyber security measures will improve the safety of server, website and data.
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