Louwrentius
Script that deletes old files to keep disk from filling up
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a...
over a year ago
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a script that monitors the used space of a volume
and deletes the oldest file if a certain threshold is reached.
The script will keep on deleting the oldest file present on disk until...
Push to Prod
When Things Are Slow, Look for Queues
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of...
4 months ago
When your system is slower than desired, queues are often heavily involved. Here's an overview of the most common situations.
Willem's Blog
Programming on Apple Watch
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
over a year ago
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
anderegg.ca
Anzu Castle Gracula
Turns out you can release a QBasic game on Steam if it’s packaged correctly. Beside being a nerdy...
a month ago
Turns out you can release a QBasic game on Steam if it’s packaged correctly. Beside being a nerdy oddity, this game is extremely well made and quite fun! Lots of Castlevania II vibes going on here. Check out Anzu Castle Gracula on Steam, or give it a shot on Itch.io.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond
over a year ago
./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...
7 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guides tend to get out of date really easily, but if you know your way around Linux and the command line, then you can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...
Arduino Blog
Circuit Canvas can help you quickly create illustrated wiring diagrams
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit...
5 months ago
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit designs, but traditional schematics and technical drawings are difficult for non-professionals to interpret and create. Makers can benefit from intuitive illustrations that look good...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Filters
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous...
a year ago
I can print, but the printer is missing a very important thing that I alluded to in the previous post: filtering dangerous particles and fumes.
This is mostly covered by the kit, but I was missing some parts from the print it forward and the kit didn’t include a HEPA...
Good Enough
Yes, Facebook Is Terrible, but Also…
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good...
a year ago
I’m not on Facebook.
It was eight or ten years ago when I left for good.
While there were some good and useful interactions, the algorithm brought me down, I didn’t have a lot of desire to keep up with old acquaintances, and hearing everyone’s political stance was not good for...
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
Neil Madden
Newsletter
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably...
11 months ago
Happy new year! I’m hoping to write a few posts on here over the next few weeks, but probably exploring a few topics around AI and philosophy. If you’d prefer some more technical content around security and cryptography, then take a look at the newsletter I put out for my...
Home on Erik...
Welcome Echo Nest!
In case you missed it, we just acquired a company called Echo Nest in Boston. These people have been...
over a year ago
In case you missed it, we just acquired a company called Echo Nest in Boston. These people have been obsessed with understanding music for the past 8 years since it was founded by Brian Whitman and Tristan Jehan out of MIT Medialab.
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Karl Popper
A woven web of guesses
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
More MCMC – Analyzing a small dataset with 1-5 ratings
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome...
over a year ago
I've been obsessed with how to iterate quickly based on small scale feedback lately. One awesome website I encountered is Usability Hub which lets you run 5 second tests. Users see your site for 5 seconds and you can ask them free-form questions afterwards.
Arduino Blog
Move Mario remotely with this online N64 controller system
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console....
a week ago
For obvious reasons, video game console controls provide input commands directly to the console. Modern consoles may do so wirelessly, but the effect is the same: direct input. But what if you connected a “controller” to the internet? Then you could play from anywhere and that is...
Willem's Blog
The day I sold my car
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if...
over a year ago
This week I sold my car, I now no longer own one. I look back at my years of owning a sports car, if you're looking for a reason to buy one you should check this out.
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do layer 2s really differ from execution sharding?
7 months ago
Louwrentius
Why I still won't switch to Linux and keep my Mac
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to...
over a year ago
The current state of Linux is amazing. If we take a look at, for example,
Ubuntu Linux, we have to admit that the Linux desktop is really becoming a
nice, user-friendly environment. I'm truly starting to like what I see. I
considered whiping Mac OS X from my macbook, but there...
computers are bad
2023-12-05 vhf omnidirectional range
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a...
a year ago
The term "VHF omnidirectional range" can at first be confusing, because it
includes "range"---a measurement that the technology does not provide. The
answer to this conundrum is, as is so often the case, history. The "range"
refers not to the radio equipment but to the space...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
The Serendipity Machine
Notes on Using Twitter
11 months ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
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...
Jonas Hietala
Writing lessons learned after writing a book
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for...
a year ago
A good writer isn’t born; a good writer is created
It may sound dumb, but one of my reasons for writing a book was to improve my writing ability.
Maybe I could’ve practiced on the blog instead, but putting things on paper gave it some added weight I don’t think I would’ve gotten...
watchTowr Labs -...
No Way, PHP Strikes Again! (CVE-2024-4577)
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by...
6 months ago
Orange Tsai tweeted a few hours ago about “One of [his] PHP vulnerabilities, which affects XAMPP by default”, and we were curious to say the least. XAMPP is a very popular way for administrators and developers to rapidly deploy Apache, PHP, and a bunch of other tools, and
Arduino Blog
Exercise while you game with this interactive treadmill add-on
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of...
3 months ago
Motion-based controls for games have been around for decades, but even with the latest generation of virtual reality headsets, gaming is still done with relatively limited movement unless one has access to an expensive VR walking/running setup. As an effort to get more physical...
Arduino Blog
Ride safer with these DIY bicycle lights
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant...
5 months ago
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant afterthought. That makes cycling dangerous and lights can do a lot to make riding safer. That’s why Giovanni Aggiustatutto designed this DIY system that includes headlights, a...
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...
Home on Erik...
statself.com
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together:...
over a year ago
Btw I just put something up online that I spent a couple of evenings in my couch putting together: it's a website where you can track any numerical data on the web. Want to know how many Twitter followers you have?
Arduino Blog
How makers can use AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in...
6 months ago
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are both currently experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, with the combined market expected to reach $77 billion by 2025, from just $15.3 billion in 2020. For makers, AR and VR represent exciting opportunities to build new...
Notes on software...
SQLite in Go, with and without cgo
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.
Jonas Hietala
Regex substitution with unicode in Haskell
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t...
over a year ago
While remaking the site I noticed my automatic embedding of bare youtube links sometimes didn’t work. The culprit was unicode in the document which the regex library couldn’t handle.
Apparently while this would be supported by default by almost all modern languages it’s not the...
Willem's Blog
iPad Pro as primary computer
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
over a year ago
Is the time right to use an iPad as primary development platform to get some real work done?
Louwrentius
How to compile HAProxy from source and setup a basic configuration
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic...
over a year ago
To learn more about HAProxy I decided to compile it from source and use it to load-balance traffic to louwrentius.com across two different web servers.
I run HAProxy on a VPS based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Let's dive right in.
First, we need to download the source. Don't copy/pased...
Arduino Blog
Innovative new tactile sensor helps assess fine motor skills
Fine motor skills correlate strongly with cognition and the accurate assessment of an individual’s...
7 months ago
Fine motor skills correlate strongly with cognition and the accurate assessment of an individual’s motor skills can be critical in diagnosing and treating a variety of conditions. But objective evaluation has been a challenge, as suitable sensors weren’t available. To help...
Electronics etc…
An In-Depth Look at the ICE-V Wireless FPGA Development Board
Introduction
The ICE-V Wireless FPGA Board
Preloading the PSRAM with User Data
The Overall Boot...
a year ago
Introduction
The ICE-V Wireless FPGA Board
Preloading the PSRAM with User Data
The Overall Boot Process
UART Console
Getting Started with the ICE-V Wireless Board for Real
Reinstalling or Modifying the ESP32C3 Firmware
The RISC-V Example FPGA Design
Compiling the RISC-V Example...
Good Enough
Actual Customer Support Is Remarkable
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built...
a year ago
What a sad thing to write.
We believe in good software around here.
There is a lot of poorly built software on the Internet and in the app stores.
Our motivation with Good Enough is to try to put together a few products that feel just right to the folks using them.
The things we...
Jonas Hietala
My Dream Game: The Tycoon
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my...
over a year ago
I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 a little this christmas. It wasn’t dead serious 1v1 which really is my favorite but I’ve played 2v2 with some friends and I actually played the campaign a bit and it was pretty fun! Usually I never play the campaign on RTS games but this one I liked....
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...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 4: Free newsletter to RSS tool
a month ago
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 !
Old Vintage...
Programming the Convergent WorkSlate's spreadsheet microcassette future
In this particular future, we will all use handheld spreadsheets stored on microcassettes, talking...
3 months ago
In this particular future, we will all use handheld spreadsheets stored on microcassettes, talking to each other via speakerphone, and probably listening to Devo and New Order a lot. (Though that part isn't too different from my actual present.)
a computer whose manufacturer...
Notes on software...
Is it worth writing about?
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and...
over a year ago
You acquire a skill or experience through time and effort,
then downplay the impact of writing and sharing the learning
process.
Professionals seem naturally to imagine a high bar for what
is worth writing about.
I think that's misguided. This article is not criticism of folks...
Louwrentius
Storage and I/O: reads vs. writes
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie...
over a year ago
There is a fundamental difference between a read operation and a write operation. Storage can lie about completing a write operation, but it can never lie about completing a read operation. Therefore read and writes have different characteristics. This is what I've learned.
About...
Notes on software...
Benchmarking esbuild, swc, tsc, and babel for React/JSX projects
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Home on Erik...
There is no magic trick
(Warning: super speculative, feel free to ignore)
As Yogi Berra said, “It's tough to make...
over a year ago
(Warning: super speculative, feel free to ignore)
As Yogi Berra said, “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”. Unfortunately predicting is hard, and unsurprisingly people look for the Magic Trick™ that can resolve all the uncertainty.
Arduino Blog
Massive tentacle robot draws massive attention at EMF Camp
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control...
6 months ago
Most of the robots we feature only require a single Arduino board, because one Arduino can control several motors and monitor a bunch of sensors. But what if the robot is enormous and the motors are far apart? James Bruton found himself in that situation when he constructed this...
Home on Erik...
Luigi: complex pipelines of tasks in Python
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps...
over a year ago
I'm shamelessly promoting my first major open source project. Luigi is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs, handle dependency resolution, and create visualizations to help manage multiple workflows. It also comes with Hadoop support built in...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Unusual Git IDs
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with...
a month ago
You can search Github for unusual commit IDs:
There are over 2k commits starting with 0000000!
While looking for commits like these, I started to become suspicious that people were intentionally modifying their commits IDs to be unusual:
A commit ID of eeeeeee, with a message...
somenice
Matter as a Smart home standard
Matter is the name of the smart home standard that promises to bridge IOT devices and different home...
8 months ago
Matter is the name of the smart home standard that promises to bridge IOT devices and different home eco-systems. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Homekit, Samsung SmartThings, etc. To prevent 6+ flavours of smart lightbulbs working with 6+ different apps, a standard needed to be...
computers are bad
2023-06-07 something up there - nasa and uaps
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I...
a year ago
A brief note on Grusch
First, a disclaimer of sorts: I am posting another article on UAPs, yet I am
not addressing the recent claims by David Grusch. This is for a couple of
reasons. First, I am skeptical of Grusch. He is not the first seemingly
well-positioned former...
Louwrentius
Core i7 920 @ 3,6 Ghz is a true beast!
Even today, Core 2 Duo processors clocked at 2 ghz are no slugs. However, the
Core i7 920 is of a...
over a year ago
Even today, Core 2 Duo processors clocked at 2 ghz are no slugs. However, the
Core i7 920 is of a different kind. First, it is not only clocked at a higher
speed (default 2,8 Ghz), it is also a quad-core processor. Thanks to the re-
introduction of hyperthreading, this processor...
Construction Physics
How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly...
a month ago
I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,...
Jonas Hietala
An update on my book 'Why Cryptocurrencies?'
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to...
over a year ago
Five months ago I gloriously declared that “my book was done”. Since then I’ve been working hard to finish the book.
Sorry that’s a bit of a lie, I’ve had a nice long vacation where I didn’t work on the book and I’m also on part-time parental leave. And believe me there’s not a...
Louwrentius
'Secure programming: how to implement user account management'
Most web applications work like this:
The application uses a single database account to perform all...
over a year ago
Most web applications work like this:
The application uses a single database account to perform all actions. Users
are just some records in a table. Account privileges and roles are part of
this table, or separate tables.
This implies that all security must be designed and build...
Jonas Hietala
Friend of the Tree
I just noticed I was recognized as a friend of the tree in a weekly meeting by the rust team. It...
over a year ago
I just noticed I was recognized as a friend of the tree in a weekly meeting by the rust team. It came during my documentation sprint during IDA Summer of Code and I discovered it now, only two and a half month later. Still a very pleasant surprise!
Computer Ads from...
Salamander Software's Franklin's Tomb
My name is Diamond, Dan Diamond. I'm a private cop.
9 months ago
My name is Diamond, Dan Diamond. I'm a private cop.
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?
Willem's Blog
Repairing a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
over a year ago
Reparing an old Nintendo Gameboy Advance to play classic Zelda again.
Good Enough
Having Trouble Getting Started? Pair Up!
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on...
a year ago
A body at rest tends to stay at rest, and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted on by a net external force.
Sir Isaac Newton
I often find that just getting started is the hardest part of doing something. This is especially true when the project is large or...
Push to Prod
Making an AB Test Allocator 20x Faster Using Non-blocking IO
Many moons ago, I inherited a cross-company AB test and had to figure out how to allocate it...
a month ago
Many moons ago, I inherited a cross-company AB test and had to figure out how to allocate it effectively.
Notes on software...
1 million page views
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since...
3 weeks ago
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently
passed 1M page views. And since Murat
wrote
about his 1M page view accomplishment at the time, I felt compelled to
now too.
I started regularly blogging in 2018. For some reason I decided to
write a blog post...
Louwrentius
Debian Lenny and Dell S300 H200 and H700 RAID controllers
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these...
over a year ago
update november 2010: it is reported in the comments that the next release
will support these controllers. However, which controllers are supported is
not clear. Also, we may have to wait for quite some time before squeeze will
be released.
Just a quick note: it seems that the...
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Microsoft Encarta
Searchable Human Knowledge
a year ago
Searchable Human Knowledge
Applied Cartography
Notes on Zed, revisited
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a...
2 months ago
A little over six months ago, I wrote Notes on Zed. My conclusion at that time was that Zed made a lot of great choices and felt really good to use, but lacked parity with VS Code's feature/ecosystem to its detriment.
Six months later, I spent a few days using it as my daily...
Louwrentius
Switching away from Debian to Ubuntu LTS
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years....
over a year ago
Over the last couple of years, Debian Linux has released new stable versions about every two years. This pace is great for progress, but there is a serious problem. This problem is related to their support for older Debian stable versions.
If you read the quote below from the...
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...
Louwrentius
Why the iPad will be a breakthrough in human computing
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to...
over a year ago
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to adjust to them.
The problem is that most people that are not into technology just don't
understand how computers work. Should I single click of double click? Click
left or right?
The...
Computer Ads from...
Sundial Systems' Relish
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
2 months ago
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
Posts on Made of...
6.170, CVS, and SVN
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but...
over a year ago
I’m taking 6.170 Lab in Software Engineering this semester. The course sucks in various ways, but one of the most egregious, in my opinion, is that they force you to use CVS for your version control. Problem sets are distributed by the TAs importing them into your repository, and...
latest projects -...
Portable Probability Panel
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
5 months ago
[Misc] Laser-cut Galton board
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
Matt Blewitt
Point and Call
It’s 2AM. You’re paged to respond to a failing set of components that you are the Subject Matter...
over a year ago
It’s 2AM. You’re paged to respond to a failing set of components that you are the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for. Sleepy, you load up the playbook for when the SplineReticulatorBlocked alert has gone off, and start executing. The Incident Commander (IC) is vaguely aware of what...
computers are bad
2023-03-13 the door close button
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been...
a year ago
This will probably be a short one, and I know I haven't written for a while,
but it has always been the case that you get what you pay for and Computers
Are Bad is nothing if not affordable. Still, this is a topic on which I am
moderately passionate and so I can probably stretch...
Arduino Blog
Kickstart your tech journey, with the new Arduino Plug and Make Kit!
Hey, creating an IoT device shouldn’t be rocket science. We believe technology is for everyone....
5 months ago
Hey, creating an IoT device shouldn’t be rocket science. We believe technology is for everyone. That’s why we’ve developed the whole new, beginner-friendly Plug and Make Kit – the easiest way to get started with Arduino! Inside the box, you’ll find everything you need to create...
./techtipsy
I tried out the CyberPower UT650EG UPS
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out...
over a year ago
After some spicy feedback to my post where a ThinkPad T430 acted as a server,
I decided to try out one UPS that was recommended on the basis of it being much
more power efficient compared to the APC UPS that I previously ran.
That UPS? CyberPower UT650EG.
Why switch out a...
Arduino Blog
This disturbing Halloween doll was brought to life with Bottango
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near...
a month ago
Halloween is popular for a lot of reasons and it is safe to say that “creative expression” is near the top of the list. That extends beyond store-bought costumes and decorations to DIY projects. If you want an excuse to make something impractical, Halloween can provide that. And...
./techtipsy
ThinkPad T40: it can still run modern Linux, for now
I recently busted out my old ThinkPad T40, the last of the OG IBM ThinkPads.
I picked it up some...
7 months ago
I recently busted out my old ThinkPad T40, the last of the OG IBM ThinkPads.
I picked it up some time around my university days because I liked collecting
ThinkPads at the time, and it was a nice complement to my existing ThinkPad T60
and T430.
The battery is dead, but everything...
./techtipsy
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet...
over a year ago
I wasn’t happy with my “one machine that does it all”
setup, which is why I finally bit the bullet and got myself an ASRock DeskMini X300 bare-bones kit.
This is a fantastic little desktop PC kit that is very small, quiet and can
still be configured to have ridiculous amounts of...
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON library from scratch: a tour through modern C++
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is...
over a year ago
Modern C++ has a lot of cool features. Move semantics means passing
around structs in functions is cheap. std::shared_ptr
means I don't have to manage any memory; no
more new/delete! (But try as I might to
understand std::unique_ptr, I'm just not there yet.)
The syntax has also...
Good Enough
TIL: Blocking Password App Autocomplete on Form Fields
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username...
a year ago
I wanted to disable password managers, particularly 1Password, from interacting with a username field in Contact Me. It was pretty simple in the end:
<%= form.text_field :username, "data-lpignore": true, "data-1p-ignore": true %>
Reference: 1Password, Lastpass.
Notes on software...
Enumerating and analyzing 40+ non-V8 JavaScript implementations
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by...
over a year ago
V8 is, I'm sure, the most used implementation of JavaScript
today. Used in Chrome, (and by extension) Microsoft Edge, Node.js,
etc. Safari's JavaScriptCore and Firefox's SpiderMonkey are also
contenders for extremely mainstream implementations.
But what else is out there? What if...
computers are bad
2023-10-15 go.com
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email...
a year ago
Correction: a technical defect in my Enterprise Content Management System
resulted in the email having a subject that made it sound like this post would
be about the classic strategy game Go. It is actually about a failed website.
I regret the error; the responsible people have...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins
over a year ago
./techtipsy
Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively...
a year ago
I’ve decided to intentionally take more time to play video games this year,
since it’s a relatively healthy way to escape from the real world once in a while.
A friend recommended one game in particular: Control: Ultimate Edition.
During the Steam summer sale of 2023, I went...
axio.ms
Internet of kitchen lighting, with OSC
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say...
over a year ago
This project was completed in June 2015. Wow, is it 2017 already?
In this post, I’d like to say that I wrote a useful little bit of software and built up a crappy hack to demonstrate it but, secretly, the crappy hack came first and I’ve retroactively found something vaguely...
Arduino Blog
A drone remote designed to enhance magic shows
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed...
7 months ago
Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities. That is the idea behind Peter...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Wealth distribution in the United States
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United...
2 months ago
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United States.
This inspired me to
make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States.
It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph,
almost the entire US...
Willem's Blog
My first weeks as dad
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent....
over a year ago
Last Christmas my wife gave birth of our son. It's a life changing experience to become a parent. Read along for my (biometric) findings and some practical tips.
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....
10 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...
Style over Substance
Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post...
over a year ago
How I modified an Instax Wide instant camera to mount a Mamiya Press medium format lens
The post Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 to Mamiya Press mount mod appeared first on Style over Substance.
Jonas Hietala
Site restyle and update
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s...
over a year ago
I’m not sure how I got started but I recently read an excellent book about typography: Butterick’s Practical Typography. It’s free and there’s a section Typography in ten minutes if you want the important bits.
He makes a pretty good case for why it matters when he points out the...
Home on Erik...
It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans
Writing code for a computer is hard enough. You take something big and fuzzy, some large vague...
2 months ago
Writing code for a computer is hard enough. You take something big and fuzzy, some large vague business outcome you want to achive. Then you break it down recursively and think about all the cases until you have clear logical statements a computer can follow.
Arduino Blog
DIY ECU controls Honda Insight’s Kubota diesel engine
The Honda Insight was the first hybrid car released in North America and Honda put serious effort...
6 months ago
The Honda Insight was the first hybrid car released in North America and Honda put serious effort into making it as efficient as was practical at the time. That meant aerodynamic streamlining, which is why the first-generation Insight had very distinct covers over the rear...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
How LLMs work
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is...
a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with the excellent llama2.c repository, which is basically a simple one-file C…
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.
Louwrentius
Laptop or netbook as router?
If you want a router for distribution of internet to your computers at home,
there are several...
over a year ago
If you want a router for distribution of internet to your computers at home,
there are several options.
buy some embedded device from Linksys, Draytek, Asus, 3com, ZyXtel or
netgear
This type of hardware is cheap, economical, and gets you up and running in a
few minutes. The...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Don't overload Ethereum's consensus
a year ago
Willem's Blog
Cleaning a vintage watch
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old...
over a year ago
This week I cleaned an automatic vintage watch and fitted it to with a new strap, rediscovering old beauty underneath layers of dirt!
Push to Prod
Comprehension of Concurrency is a Lifelong Journey
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
5 months ago
Accept that your understanding is imperfect. There is comfort in letting go.
Applied Cartography
buttondown.com/alternatives
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools...
a week ago
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools to be. There is a ton of room in these markets for healthy and friendly competition — and no need at all for winner-take-all or monopolist attitudes.
First off — credit where it's...
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 –...
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...
5 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...
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...
watchTowr Labs -...
IBM QRadar - When The Attacker Controls Your Security Stack (CVE-2022-26377)
Welcome to April 2024.
A depressing year so far - we've seen critical vulnerabilities across a wide...
8 months ago
Welcome to April 2024.
A depressing year so far - we've seen critical vulnerabilities across a wide range of enterprise software stacks.
In addition, we've seen surreptitious and patient threat actors light our industry on fire with slowly introduced backdoors in the XZ...
Louwrentius
Which file system for a large storage array under Linux?
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a...
over a year ago
There are many file systems available under Linux, however only a few of them
can be used for a large storage array.
I am assuming that you want to create a single file system. I don't care if
you use LVM or other layers beneath, this is about which file system to use.
I will...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Pushing toward Git
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository...
over a year ago
The time has come; it’s time for me to move my source out in the open for the first time.
Repository deleted, never became anything
Available on Github
It’s nothing special really, if you want take a look at the code and help me improve it.
Arduino Blog
This device prevents garage door security breaches
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house....
2 months ago
Your automatic garage door is almost certainly the most vulnerable access point in your house. Traditional systems are notorious for their susceptibility to replay attacks, but even more sophisticated modern garage door openers and those that lack remote functionality entirely...
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...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Multidimensional gas pricing
7 months ago
lcamtuf’s thing
The untimely demise of an image upscaler
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
3 months ago
ML-based image enhancement models are great. Unfortunately, some of them are great only once.
./techtipsy
You can use almost anything as a key file for your encrypted storage device
Imagine that you have an unencrypted drive containing your private data and one day it starts...
a month ago
Imagine that you have an unencrypted drive containing your private data and one day it starts throwing a bunch of
errors. You have backups of the data so you’ve got that part covered, but would you feel comfortable sending the drive
in to be warrantied? You have no control over...
Louwrentius
ZFS: Performance and capacity impact of ashift=9 on 4K sector drives
Update 2014-8-23: I was testing with ashift for my new NAS. The ashift=9 write performance...
over a year ago
Update 2014-8-23: I was testing with ashift for my new NAS. The ashift=9 write performance deteriorated from 1.1 GB/s to 830 MB/s with just 16 TB of data on the pool. Also I noticed that resilvering was very slow. This is why I decided to abandon my 24 drive RAIDZ3...
Arduino Blog
Exploring fungal intelligence with biohybrid robots powered by Arduino
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking...
a month ago
At Cornell University, Dr. Anand Kumar Mishra and his team have been conducting groundbreaking research that brings together the fields of robotics, biology, and engineering. Their recent experiments, published in Science, explore how fungal mycelia can be used to control robots....
Louwrentius
'Linux: unattended installation with Debian preseeding'
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This...
over a year ago
Debian Linux provides a mechanism to install the operating
system without user intervention. This mechanism is called 'preseeding' and is
similar to Red Hat Kick Start and Sun Solaris Jump Start.
The basic idea is that the installer is fed a recipe, according to which the
system...
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...
GitButler
GitButler for Windows
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
8 months ago
The GitButler client is now available natively on Windows.
Matt Blewitt
Death, and Utsuge
This post discusses topics some may wish to avoid: terminal illness, hospice care, death, and...
a month ago
This post discusses topics some may wish to avoid: terminal illness, hospice care, death, and Japanese visual novels.
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1983/08 Today Mag
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today...
9 months ago
Time for some levity. The following comics were all found in the August 1983 issue of Today magazine. Enjoy! What computer ads would you like to see in the future? Please comment below. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends and relatives. Thank you.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
over a year ago
Computer Ads from...
Lintek Computer Accessories' Paper Tamer
Restore Order (to your printer)
8 months ago
Restore Order (to your printer)
Willem's Blog
Using the reMarkable paper tablet
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet...
over a year ago
The paper-like display makes you forget about reMarkable's digital innards, working with this tablet is therefore quite remarkable!
Jonas Hietala
8-puzzle in rust
I think rust is one of the most interesting upcoming programming languages out there. So I wrote a...
over a year ago
I think rust is one of the most interesting upcoming programming languages out there. So I wrote a solution to the 8-puzzle (see the 15-puzzle) using A*. It also has a breadth first search for solutions on a specific distance away from the goal.
The solution is not by any means a...
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Engineers Need Art
Jigsaw Puzzle
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big...
over a year ago
Those of us who fiddled while Apple Computer burned. Well, actually some of us put together a big jigsaw puzzle.
Willem's Blog
Designing a multi dimensional capacity queue
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is...
over a year ago
Dealing with a capacity queue is challenging, but if you take the time to model it right it is possible to create a performant and reliable system.
./techtipsy
I've reached the self-hosting endgame
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim...
over a year ago
Setup
After I had a perfectly functional, quiet and performant server up and running, I fell
victim to my imagination and completely changed my self-hosting setup. Again.
Here it is, in all its glory:
Well, at least that’s what’s on the table.
This machine is a true all-in-one:...
latest projects -...
LED Matrix Earrings
[Hardware] Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow dot-matrix LED
10 months ago
[Hardware] Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow dot-matrix LED
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.
Posts on Made of...
Property-Based Testing Is Fuzzing
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code...
over a year ago
“Property-based testing” refers to the idea of writing statements that should be true of your code (“properties”), and then using automated tooling to generate test inputs (typically, randomly-generated inputs of an appropriate type), and observe whether the properties hold for...
Notes on software...
Thinking about functional programming
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial...
a year ago
Someone on Discord asked about how to learn functional programming.
The question and my initial tweet on the subject prompted an
interesting
discussion
with Shriram
Krishnamurthi and other folks.
So here's a slightly more thought out exploration.
And just for backstory sake: I...
./techtipsy
Things I've learned during my self-hosting adventure
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the...
over a year ago
This is a list of lessons that I’ve learned while playing around with my computer setup during the last 6-7 years or so.
USB connected storage is a bad idea when you are using BTRFS.
USB connected storage is still a bad idea when you are using ZFS, but it is at least much more...
Neil Madden
Machine Learning and the triumph of GOFAI
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I...
5 months ago
I’ve been slowly reading Brian Cantwell Smith’s “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence” recently. I haven’t finished reading it yet, and like much of BCS’s writing, it’ll probably take me 3 or 4 read-throughs to really understand it, but there’s one point that I want to pick up...
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...
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!
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...
Louwrentius
My solar-powered blog is now on Lithium Iron Phosphate
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi -...
a year ago
In my last blog post I discussed how a small solar project - to power this blog on a Raspberry Pi - escalated into a full-blown off-grid solar setup, large enough to power the computer I use at the moment to write this update1. In this update, I want to discuss my battery...
./techtipsy
Why you might not want to publicly self-host a Wikipedia clone
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it...
a year ago
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it anywhere
you want using Kiwix.
I’m still hosting Kiwix sites publicly, but here are a few things you might want
to consider before doing so yourself.
The spam
I have a specific e-mail address...
./techtipsy
Running my ThinkPad T430 with an eGPU in 2024
I probably shouldn’t have written down my notes on the eGPU setup I had years ago.
I’d be lying if I...
4 months ago
I probably shouldn’t have written down my notes on the eGPU setup I had years ago.
I’d be lying if I wasn’t considering remaking this setup with everything I’ve learned 6 years later.
Oops.
I got access to an allegedly-faulty AMD Radeon RX 480 and an NVIDIA GTX 1650 for free...
Louwrentius
Linux: get a list of al disks and their size
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk...
over a year ago
To get a list of all disk drives of a Linux system, such as this:
Disk /dev/md0: 58.0 GB
Disk /dev/md1: 2015 MB
Disk /dev/md5: 18002.2 GB
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sde: 1000.1 GB
Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.1...
Odds and Ends of...
Nobody knows what the National Data Library is (not even the government)
A policy wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
a month ago
A policy wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
Louwrentius
'Improved' image gallery for Blogofile
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports...
over a year ago
This blog is just static HTML pages that are generated using Blogofile. The Blogofile website sports a small image gallery that has been written to illustrate how to create your own 'controllers' or Blogofile plugins.
My Python skills are horrible buy I managed to improve a bit...
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...
a month 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...
Christian Selig
Smart Open Xcode
If you’re like me, you often have multiple versions of Xcode installed. One or two beta versions, a...
a year ago
If you’re like me, you often have multiple versions of Xcode installed. One or two beta versions, a stable version, and maybe another version in case the most recent stable version has something weird about it.
I also really like mapping my Caps Lock key to something more useful,...
Good Enough
TIL: Deploying a Sinatra app to Render.com
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me,...
a year ago
This morning I wanted to deploy a simple Sinatra app to Render.com.
It wasn’t super obvious to me, so I figured I’d write down what worked in the end.
First, a Gemfile:
# Gemfile
source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'sinatra'
gem 'sinatra-contrib'
gem 'puma'
* I’m pretty sure...
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...
Old Vintage...
Teaching Apple Cyberdog 1.0 new tricks (featuring OpenDoc)
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball...
a year ago
this cyberdog (image credit).
that cyberdog, though this is one of my favourite weirdo pinball machines.
that cyberdog.
our PowerBook Duo 2300 rehabilitated, guess what we're gonna look at?
Internet document?
Thus was the nucleus of Cyberdog (named for the famous New...
Arduino Blog
Two NEW Arduino Plug and Make Kit projects recreate iconic vintage games
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix...
3 months ago
The Plug and Make Kit is a toolbox you can use for infinite ideas. So what happens if you ask a mix of Arduino designers, engineers, and managers to sit down and brainstorm new ideas to have fun with it? Well, at least one of them is guaranteed to come up with an adorable,...
Jonas Hietala
The Arty Timeline
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty...
over a year ago
While working on Jonas IceCream Stand I took a screenshot every day and I thought they looked pretty cool so here they are:
And now I’m off with New World Order and (for once) I’ve got a really really good idea!
Simply Explained
Home Energy Monitor: V2
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my...
over a year ago
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my electricity consumption every second and everything is neatly archived in my AWS account.Still, though, there is room for improvement. It's time to look back, evaluate & improve the design....
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
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.
Willem's Blog
Do amazing things with a focused mind
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof...
over a year ago
Read about my experience during the workshop I got as a birth day present involving the Wim Hof Method.
./techtipsy
My very first career day
This post is a short overview of my experience at
a career day in Valga, Estonia, hosted with the...
10 months ago
This post is a short overview of my experience at
a career day in Valga, Estonia, hosted with the help of GreenDice.
I’ve never spoken at a career day before nor attended one as a student, which is why I instantly agreed to going to one
when GreenDice reached out to me.
Why? I...
Applied Cartography
You should build this:
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that...
2 months ago
A prior iteration of this site had a page called "Project ideas" that listed a bunch of things that I'd like to build. This was a good idea and useful in its own right (I got a few people to build companies and projects based on them, and it was a useful avenue by which folks...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 1 Should Be Innovative in the Short Term but Less in the Long Term
over 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...
Make small changes and solve the problems you have
Two frustrating things that can happen in an organization are 1) big
changes and 2) changes that...
over a year ago
Two frustrating things that can happen in an organization are 1) big
changes and 2) changes that aren’t clearly associated with a known
problem. It’s even worse in that order.
These situations tend to happen when a problem remain unaddressed for
too long. These situations tend to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Hard Forks, Soft Forks, Defaults and Coercion
over a year ago
computers are bad
2023-02-17 something up there pt II
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of...
a year ago
As we discussed previously,
the search for UAP is often contextualized in terms of the events of 2017:
the public revelation of the AATIP and alien-hunting efforts by Robert Bigelow
and Tom DeLonge. While widely publicized, these programs seem to have lead to
very little. I...
Louwrentius
Affordable server with server-grade hardware part II
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I...
over a year ago
If you want to build a home server, it may be advised to actually use server-grade components. I documented the reasons for choosing server-grade hardware already in an earlier post on this topic.
It is recommended to read the old post first. In this new post, I only show new...
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
10 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
Louwrentius
This blog is now running on solar power
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which...
over a year ago
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which is connected to a solar charge controller. This device charges an old worn-out car battery and provides power to a Raspberry Pi ~~3b+~~ 4B, which in turn powers this (static)...
Home on Erik...
State drift
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion....
over a year ago
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion. But here is something I thought about: how to build in self-correction into systems. This has been something just vaguely sitting in my head lacking a clear conceptual definition...
Jonas Hietala
Why is my file so huge?
My latest game was absolutely huge! And I’m not talking about the music (which was pretty huge too -...
over a year ago
My latest game was absolutely huge! And I’m not talking about the music (which was pretty huge too - roughly 20mb) but the little .exe file.
It was 14,6mb!!
Now every way you look at it, that’s incredibly huge. It’s like comparing an ant to a human. Normally the little ant is the...
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
Jonas Hietala
November Theme: Art Game
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t...
over a year ago
Back over at The Experimental Gameplay Project a new theme has come up. My last three themes haven’t been “my” themes: I’ve been following their lead and their themes and this month is no exception. This months’ apparently a big theme - Art. It’s even a collaboration with a big...
Applied Cartography
Always use an enum for your status field
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now...
3 months ago
When I was first starting my career at Amazon — even more bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked than I am now — I was thrilled by the concept of an "architecture review", and by extension the concept of a "Principal Engineer" (Amazon's term for a staff-level engineer, someone beyond...
Notes on software...
Intercepting and modifying Linux system calls with ptrace
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest....
a year ago
How software fails is interesting. But real-world errors can be
infrequent to manifest. Fault
injection
is a formal-sounding term that just means: trying to explicitly
trigger errors in the hopes of discovering bad logic, typically
during automated tests.
Jepsen
and ChaosMonkey...
Posts on Made of...
Measuring Capacity Through Utilization
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts...
over a year ago
(This post is cross-posted from Honeycomb’s instrumentation series).
One of my favorite concepts when thinking about instrumenting a system to understand its overall performance and capacity is what I call “time utilization”.
By this I mean: If you look at the behavior of a...
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Posts on Made of...
Property Testing Like AFL
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same...
over a year ago
In my last last post, I argued that property-based testing and fuzzing are essentially the same practice, or at least share a lot of commonality. In this followup post, I want to explore that idea a bit more: I’ll first detour into some of my frustrations and hesitations around...
Jonas Hietala
Microfeatures in my blog
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and...
5 months ago
xkcd: Nerd sniping
A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites, and together with the related Hacker News discussion I got nerd sniped.
(I spent more time than I care to admit implementing new and exciting microfeatures for...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 22 Here I Come
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on...
over a year ago
The time has finally come. After more than three hours of exam writing, and almost double spent on studying for it, I am now ready to declare my entry into Ludum Dare 22! I’ve been away far too long, with my entries for the 17th and the 20th dare being almost a century away, the...
Notes on software...
Metaprogramming in Zig and parsing CSS
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it....
a year ago
I knew Zig supported some sort of reflection on types. But I had been
confused about how to use it. What's the difference between
@typeInfo and @TypeOf? I ignored this aspect of Zig until a
problem came up at work where reflection
made sense.
The situation was parsing and storing...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Attach a running process to a new terminal
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an...
over a year ago
Over the last week, I’ve written a nifty tool that I call reptyr. reptyr is a utility for taking an existing running program and attaching it to a new terminal. Started a long-running process over ssh, but have to leave and don’t want to interrupt it? Just start a screen, use...
Willem's Blog
Batavus Champion bike from 1978
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
over a year ago
Restore the retro glory of an old bike from the 70s using the internet.
Simply Explained
EZStore: a tiny serverless datastore for IoT data (DynamoDB + Lambda)
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but...
over a year ago
I've been working on a few IoT projects recently, and while prototyping, I need a simple but flexible data store. I just want to push data to an API and query and visualize it later on.There are many solutions for this, but most are expensive or very limited. So I set out to...
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part 3: Into the Weeds
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Swelling with New Shiny Books
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course…...
over a year ago
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course… So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!
First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed...
Jonas Hietala
2019 in Review
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on...
over a year ago
As is tradition a quick rundown of the year is due. It’s been good to do as it makes me reflect on the past year, and see that I did indeed do some things, and to look ahead a little.
2019 Non-Geek Achievements
Played around with Isidor.
It’s hard to describe how happy a kid can...
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...
Construction Physics
Why the U.S. Can’t Build Icebreaking Ships
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post,...
2 months ago
I want to say thank you to all the people who sent condolences following last week’s post, especially those who shared their own stories of loss.
Willem's Blog
Born with MCADD
Our son was diagnosed with MCADD days after he was born. We experienced a metabolic crisis but were...
over a year ago
Our son was diagnosed with MCADD days after he was born. We experienced a metabolic crisis but were lucky to be just in time!
Jordan’s Substack
On Building Git for Lawyers
Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of...
a month ago
Over this past weekend, Twitter discovered the problem that I have dedicated the past four years of my life to solving. Why don't lawyers and other non-coders use git?
Computer Ads from...
Applied Analytics' MicroSPEED
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
6 months ago
Test-Fly A $20 Million Jet On An Apple? Yes. With MicroSPEED
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...
computers are bad
2023-09-10 the Essex GWEN site
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML...
a year ago
Programming note: this post is in color. I will not debase myself to the
level of sending HTML email, so if you receive Computers Are Bad by email
and want the benefit of the pictures, consider reading this online instead
(the link is at the top of the email).
In the aftermath of...
Jonas Hietala
Hard Work
I’ve spent literally the whole day coding and it feels like I’ve only done a small parts of the...
over a year ago
I’ve spent literally the whole day coding and it feels like I’ve only done a small parts of the actual game mechanics… I know this isn’t going to end well.
I can allow myself a small pause I feel…
Not sure where this is going to end, but I’m having a blast anyway!
Jonas Hietala
Soda
These quotes are from hacker news and I found them all too funny.
It’s hard for me to understand the...
over a year ago
These quotes are from hacker news and I found them all too funny.
It’s hard for me to understand the whole soda phenomenon in Canada and the US. Is it as addictive as cigarettes? Does it make you crave for more? Or it simply tastes so good that you can’t get enough of it? Why not...
computers are bad
2024-07-20 minuteman missile communications
A programming note: I am looking at making some changes to how I host things
like Computers Are Bad...
5 months ago
A programming note: I am looking at making some changes to how I host things
like Computers Are Bad and wikimap that are going to
involve a lot more recurring expense. For that and other reasons, I want to see
if y'all would be willing to throw some money my way. If everyone...
Notes on software...
A paper reading club at work; databases and distributed systems research
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems...
8 months ago
I started a paper reading club this week at work, focused on databases
and distributed systems research. I posted in a general channel about
the premise and asked if anyone was interested. I clarified the
intended topic and that discussions would be asynchronous over email,
run...
Willem's Blog
Something the smartwatch will never have: patina
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
over a year ago
Patina is often neglected when comparing smartwatches with regular watches.
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
Jonas Hietala
Notifications with xmonad/irssi/urxvt
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I...
over a year ago
So I’ve been idling on irc for years now and I’ve been using irssi for that, which works fine. I have not had notifications enabled, so I can see from the statusbar whenever someone messages me. As I’ve never been very active this has been fine, but now I figured it’s time to fix...
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,...
Posts on Made of...
The architecture of declarative configuration management
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing...
over a year ago
With the ongoing move towards “infrastructure-as-code” and similar notions, there’s been an ongoing increase in the number and popularity of declarative configuration management tools. This post attempts to lay out my mental model of the conceptual architecture and internal...
Notes on software...
Be someone who does things
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to...
3 months ago
I wrote last
month that
what you want to do is one of the most useful motivations in life. I
want to follow that up by saying that the only thing more important
than wanting to do something is to actually do something.
The most valuable trait you can develop for yourself is to...
Computer Ads from...
MicroTimes Interviews the Head Honchos of Silicon Graphics (1989)
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
7 months ago
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
Notes on software...
Finishing up a FreeBSD experiment
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and...
over a year ago
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and I've learned a hell of a
lot forcing myself on CURRENT... But there's been a number of issues
with it that have made it difficult to keep using, so I replaced it
with Arch Linux...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Puzzles
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a...
a year ago
1. I mostly don’t play chess anymore — it’s too addictive, and tends to take over your brain in a way I don’t like — but one habit I’ve retained is solving puzzles.
On Life and Lisp
Hilariously Fast Volume Computation with the Divergence Theorem
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a...
over a year ago
(No, there won’t be jokes.)
The following presents a fast algorithm for volume computation of a simple, closed, triangulated 3D mesh. This assumption is a consequence of the divergence theorem. Further extensions may generalise to other meshes as well, although that is presently...
Jordan’s Substack
Coming soon
This is Jordan’s Substack.
a month ago
This is Jordan’s Substack.
Posts on Made of...
Getting carried away with hack value
Recently, I’ve been working on some BarnOwl branches that move more of the core functionality of...
over a year ago
Recently, I’ve been working on some BarnOwl branches that move more of the core functionality of BarnOwl into perl code, instead of C (BarnOwl is written in an unholy mix of C and perl code that call each other back and forth obsessively).
Moving code into perl has many...
Jonas Hietala
2016 in Review
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in...
over a year ago
See the previous reviews.
2016 Geek Achievements
Placed 2nd in Linköping’s Regional in Netrunner.
Won a couple of smaller Netrunner tournaments.
Got Veronica to play Game of Thrones with us. She beat us and she loved it!
Programmed a little bit of Elixir and a tiny bit of front...
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...
a week 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...
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal iPhone stand
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
over a year ago
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
Notes on software...
Compiling dynamic programming languages
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied...
over a year ago
It can be difficult to disassociate the idea that dynamically typed
programming languages are tied to byte-code interpreters (e.g. YARV
Ruby, CPython, V8, Zend Engine, etc.). But for many languages, a
compiled implementation also exists. Cython, Chicken Scheme and SBCL
are good...
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...
Computer Ads from...
Oberon International' Omni-Reader
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
5 days ago
Audio Engineers announce a revolution in taking words from page to your computer
Jonas Hietala
Sat-E
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme...
over a year ago
So I entered Ludum Dare 22 this weekend as a preamble for tomorrow’s linear algebra exam. The theme this time around was Alone and the game I came up with is about a lonely satellite in space, kinda like Wall-E.
Sat-E
Instructions
Collect junk and other items for you to buy...
Louwrentius
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...
Jonas Hietala
Let's build a VORON: Bed & electronics
I’ve made a lot of progress on my VORON.
Electronics and other stuff are installed to the degree...
a year ago
I’ve made a lot of progress on my VORON.
Electronics and other stuff are installed to the degree that I’ve begun wiring, but I’m going to separate the wiring into it’s own post.
This will be a short post about bed preparation and installing electronics components.
Feedback from...
Old Vintage...
What the KIM-1 really needs is an LCD screen
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all...
a year ago
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all well and good, but the basic unit is still just six numeric LEDs for its display. Let's solve that problem.
Sure, you could hook up a serial terminal like the Silent 700 we used...
Jonas Hietala
New Computer!
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s...
over a year ago
I briefly mentioned my new computer in the last post and I thought I’d make a post about it, as it’s awesome (as all new computers are).
The specs:
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550Ti OC 1GB
CPU: Intel core i5 2500K
CPU cooler: Zalman CNPS-9900NT
Motherboard: MSI P67A-C45 REV B3
Ram:...
Willem's Blog
Wearing WHOOP 4.0
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror...
over a year ago
Use WHOOP to see the impact your choices have on your body, think of it as a special kind of mirror - it's so powerful, that I don't take mine off!
Louwrentius
Creating storage benchmark charts with FIO and GNUplot
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform...
over a year ago
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform storage IO performance benchmarks. FIO does provide a script called "fio_generate_plots" which generates PNG or JPG based charts based on the data generated by FIO. The charts are...
computers are bad
2023-03-24 docker
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a...
a year ago
Lately I tend to stick to topics that are historic by at least twenty years,
and that does have a lot of advantages. But I am supposedly a DevOps
professional, and so I will occasionally indulge in giving DevOps advice... or
at least opinions, which are sort of like advice but...
computers are bad
2023-11-04 nuclear safety
Nuclear weapons are complex in many ways. The basic problem of achieving
criticality is difficult on...
a year ago
Nuclear weapons are complex in many ways. The basic problem of achieving
criticality is difficult on its own, but deploying nuclear weapons as
operational military assets involves yet more challenges. Nuclear weapons must
be safe and reliable, even with the rough handling and...
Arduino Blog
The end of Mbed marks a new beginning for Arduino
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially...
5 months ago
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially destined to reach end of life in July 2026, and therefore will no longer be maintained. The news has sent ripples through the embedded development community, particularly affecting...
Willem's Blog
Flying in a C47-A (DC-3) classic plane
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received,...
over a year ago
Flying in a C47-A Skytrain over The Netherlands is one magnificent birthday gift I received, experiencing aviation history unlike anything else!
Applied Cartography
How Buttondown uses HAProxy
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the...
3 months ago
There are few technical decisions I regret more with Buttondown than the decision to combine the author-facing app, the subscriber-facing app, and the marketing site all under a single domain. Most technical decisions are reversible with sufficient grit and dedication; this one...
Engineers Need Art
Tom Dowdy
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in...
over a year ago
Tom Dowdy was a software engineer at Apple back in 1995 when I was still writing Macintosh games in Lawrence, Kansas.
Jonas Hietala
October theme says: Numbers
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay...
over a year ago
New month and a new theme. As with the two previous games I’m following The Experimental Gameplay Project theme which this month is numbers. What’s it gonna be? A sudoku game or something more… thrilling? I’ll see what I can do :)
Arduino Blog
Adding voice commands to a LEGO planetarium set with an Arduino Nano 33 IoT
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning...
4 months ago
From Mindstorms to Technic, LEGO has produced a wide variety of sets that give users new learning and creative experiences, and for Electromaker’s Robin Mitchell, this was the LEGO planetarium set. With it, rotational input will cause the Earth and moon models to orbit around the...
Good Enough
Fixing Things
In 2009 I started doing something called "business travel." I bought a piece of dependable luggage:...
a year ago
In 2009 I started doing something called "business travel." I bought a piece of dependable luggage: the Travelpro WalkAbout Lite 2 22" Rollaboard Suiter. The reality was that this wasn't proper business travel. First, it'd only be two or three round-trip flights a year. Second,...
Azad's Blog
Simulating + Streaming a 4k, 90hz, ultrawide, HDR PC monitor to Apple Vision Pro
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are...
3 months ago
VR headsets can be pretty awesome at simulating monitors of any size and shape. Most VR headsets are also capable of outputting at a high refresh rate (60hz, 90hz, 120hz, or even 144hz). Some headsets (like Apple Vision Pro) can also output in HDR! The beauty of it all is that in...
Applied Cartography
Why should a company?
For a long time, my goal with Buttondown was largely around failure avoidance: "I want to get my...
9 months ago
For a long time, my goal with Buttondown was largely around failure avoidance: "I want to get my first paying customer so I know it's not a fake product"; "I want to hit a thousand dollars in revenue so I know it's not just friends humoring me"; "I want to make $10K/mo or else I...
./techtipsy
Accidentally turning the ASRock DeskMini X300 into a semi-passively cooled PC
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one...
over a year ago
After playing around with fan curves on my ASRock DeskMini X300
based home server, I noticed one interesting thing. At least it was
interesting to me.
Background
I had one goal: to try to see if I could turn it into a semi-passive PC by only
turning the fan on when the PC was...
Home on Erik...
2D embedding of 5k artists = WIN
I'm at KDD in Chicago for a few days. We have a Spotify booth tomorrow, and I wanted to put together...
over a year ago
I'm at KDD in Chicago for a few days. We have a Spotify booth tomorrow, and I wanted to put together some cool graphics to show. I've been thinking about doing a 2D embedding of the top artists forever since I read about t-SNE and other papers so this was a perfect opportunity to...
Louwrentius
How traffic shaping can dramatically improve internet responsiveness
At work, access to the internet is provided by a 10 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up ADSL-connection. As we are...
over a year ago
At work, access to the internet is provided by a 10 Mbit down / 1 Mbit up ADSL-connection. As we are a mid-size company, bandwidth is clearly a severe constraint. But it was not our biggest problem. Even simple web-browsing was very slow.
As I was setting up a monitoring...
Louwrentius
Experiences running ZFS on Ubuntu Linux 12.04
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start...
over a year ago
I really like ZFS because with current data sets, I do believe that data corruption may start becoming an issue. The thing is that the license under which ZFS is released does not permit it to be used in the Linux kernel. That's quite unfortunate, but there is hope. There is a...
Willem's Blog
For the love of mini
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love...
over a year ago
The iPhone Mini has intangible greatness that most folks don't know about: read along for the love of mini!
Posts on Made of...
Exploiting misuse of Python's "pickle"
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which...
over a year ago
If you program in Python, you’re probably familiar with the pickle serialization library, which provides for efficient binary serialization and loading of Python datatypes. Hopefully, you’re also familiar with the warning printed prominently near the start of pickle’s...
Neil Madden
Book review: The Joy of Cryptography
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography....
a year ago
Mike Rosulek, Oregon State University. Draft of January 3, 2021. Online: The Joy of Cryptography. This is a freely-available book covering introductory material on cryptography. It’s suitable for anyone with undergraduate-level computer science knowledge. As is often the case in...
Arduino Blog
Arduino partners with RS/OKdo strategically to further expand the China Market
Arduino is excited to announce a strategic new partnership with RS/OKdo, a prominent leader in the...
a month ago
Arduino is excited to announce a strategic new partnership with RS/OKdo, a prominent leader in the distribution of industrial and electronic equipment. This collaboration marks a significant step forward in bringing Arduino’s technology closer to China’s thriving maker community...
Home on Erik...
New approximate nearest neighbor benchmarks
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm...
over a year ago
As some of you may know, one of my side interests is approximate nearest neighbor algorithms. I'm the author of Annoy, a library with 3,500+ stars on Github as of today. It offers fast approximate search for nearest neighbors with the additional benefit that you can load data...
./techtipsy
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main...
over a year ago
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main laptop and a server as well.
A couple of years ago I messed around with flashing alternative BIOS implementations on the X230, such
as the skulls project, which made installing...
Posts on Made of...
Test suites as classifiers
Suppose we have some codebase we’re considering applying some patch to, and which has a robust and...
over a year ago
Suppose we have some codebase we’re considering applying some patch to, and which has a robust and maintained test suite.
Considering the patch, we may ask, is this patch acceptable to apply and deploy. By this we mean to ask if the patch breaks any important functionality,...
./techtipsy
techtipsy, now hosted on k-space!
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn,...
a year ago
This site is now hosted on infrastructure provided by k-space, a friendly hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia.
If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, you might be wondering why I made that move, especially since I was
quite proud of hosting my website over a residential...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
watchTowr Labs -...
Auth. Bypass In (Un)Limited Scenarios - Progress MOVEit Transfer (CVE-2024-5806)
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!-...
6 months ago
In the early hours of a day in a month in 2024, watchTowr Labs was sent a chat log:
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne [def_not_phalanx@kernel.org] has joined #!hack (irc.efnet.nl)
13:37 -!- dav1d_bl41ne changed the topic of #!hack to: mag1c sh0w
Engineers Need Art
Adam74
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
over a year ago
The Adam74 is a small ASCII-based terminal designed for the 8-bit hobbyist.
Good Enough
Cosmic Maelstrom
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's...
a year ago
As Barry wrote in his recent blogpost, we're busy building prototypes here at Good Enough.
It's weird to be in this situation. Most of the Good Enough team are used to working on just one software at a time, focusing on steadily improving it. But right now we're doing the...
Jonas Hietala
rustc: error while loading shared libraries: librustc_driver
I had installed and used rust already but today I fired it up and received:
rustc...
over a year ago
I had installed and used rust already but today I fired it up and received:
rustc --version
rustc: error while loading shared libraries: librustc_driver-7e44814b.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I’ve seen this before… I thought modifying...
Neil Madden
A few programming language features I’d like to see
I enjoyed Hillel Wayne’s recent newsletter about microfeatures they’d like to see in programming...
a year ago
I enjoyed Hillel Wayne’s recent newsletter about microfeatures they’d like to see in programming languages. A “microfeature” is essentially a small convenience that makes programming in that language a bit easier without fundamentally changing it. I love this idea. I’m partial to...
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...
Louwrentius
What home NAS builders should understand about silent data corruption
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come...
over a year ago
Introduction
When it comes to dealing with storage in a DIY NAS context, two important topics come up:
Unrecoverable read errors (UREs) or what old people like me call 'bad sectors'
Silent data corruption (data corruption unnoticed by the storage layers)
I get a strong impression...
Home on Erik...
Snakebite
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie....
over a year ago
Just promoting Spotify stuff here: check out the Snakebite repo on Github, written by Wouter de Bie. It's a super fast tool to access HDFS over CLI/Python, by accessing the namenode directly over sockets/protobuf.
Spotify's developer blog features a nice blog post outlining what...
Home on Erik...
Benchmark of Approximate Nearest Neighbor libraries
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you...
over a year ago
Annoy is a library written by me that supports fast approximate nearest neighbor queries. Say you have a high (1-1000) dimensional space with points in it, and you want to find the nearest neighbors to some point.
Ken Shirriff's blog
Antenna diodes in the Pentium processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures...
4 weeks ago
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where
signal lines were connected to the silicon substrate for no apparent reason.
Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of...
Willem's Blog
CAPTCHA Alternative
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where...
over a year ago
If you're looking for a user-friendly alternative for CAPTCHA's you should check this post out where I outline how I protect web forms against malicious actors and spammers.
Jonas Hietala
We moved away from the city
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never...
over a year ago
When me and my girlfriend Veronica moved to Linköping to study at the University the plan was never to stay there permanently. We just moved there to study but the longterm plan, if you can have one at that stage, was always to move back to the north of Sweden where we came...
Computer Ads from...
Two Interviews with Ken Kaplan, One of the Creators of OS-9
Two interview from two different time periods
4 months ago
Two interview from two different time periods
Matt Mullenweg
Age-gating
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and...
3 weeks ago
I’m not opposed to age-gating at all, I think it’s appropriate in many situations and useful, and democratic societies can decide their own rules there. But it should be handled and authenticated as low-level as possible, at the operating system layer. See also: Australia’s...
Posts on Made of...
Record/Replay testing in Sorbet
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the...
over a year ago
In 2017 and 2018, I (along with Paul Tarjan and Dmitry Petrashko) was a founding member of the Sorbet project at Stripe to build a gradual static typechecking system for Ruby, with the aim of enhancing productivity on Stripe’s millions of lines of Ruby, and eventually producing a...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 17: Content classification and summary
a year ago
Simply Explained
Howto Virtualize Unraid on a Proxmox host
Here's how to run Unraid as a virtual machine under Proxmox. This is useful when you're already...
over a year ago
Here's how to run Unraid as a virtual machine under Proxmox. This is useful when you're already using Proxmox and if you want to use Unraid as a NAS.
Posts on Made of...
Three kinds of memory leaks
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can...
over a year ago
So, you’ve got a program that’s using more and more over time as it runs. Probably you can immediately identify this as a likely symptom of a memory leak.
But when we say “memory leak”, what do we actually mean? In my experience, apparent memory leaks divide into three broad...
Arduino Blog
This frighteningly realistic animatronic head features expressive silicone skin
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of...
a week ago
The human face is remarkably complex, with 43 different muscles contorting the skin in all kinds of ways. Some of that is utilitarian — your jaw muscles are good for chewing, after all. But a lot of it seems to be the result of evolution giving us fantastic non-verbal...
Notes on software...
Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL...
7 months ago
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL transaction levels: Read Uncommitted,
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Snapshot Isolation and
Serializable. We'll use multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and
optimistic...
Willem's Blog
The joy of a simple laptop
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the...
over a year ago
This week I tested the Surface Laptop Go with Windows 10 and quite frankly was amazed by the experience!
Matt Mullenweg
Rhino Dehorning
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles,...
2 months ago
Yesterday in the African bush was great, I saw giraffes, zebras, warthogs, leopard turtles, elephants. Today wasn’t great: I witnessed a rhino shot with a tranquilizer from a helicopter, then it was held down, had its horns cut off, and then shaved down. I have some photos and...
Old Vintage...
The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately...
a year ago
Most of my systems are microcomputers (and commensurately sized), though I do have some moderately larger beasts: you've met homer, my 1987 HP 9000/350 rack system, and Floodgap is powered by uppsala, a 2U-in-a-tower IBM POWER6 520 running AIX. But my first "large" machine, and...
Notes on software...
Effective unemployment and social media
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your...
a month ago
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much
rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything
except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are
looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or...
Arduino Blog
Controlling a drum machine with the Arduino Opta
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an...
6 months ago
Makers have long asked the question “why bother with an expensive PLC when I can just use an Arduino?” The answer comes down to the priorities and needs of industrial clients. In a factory automation setting, the client will prioritize durability, reliability, and serviceability...
./techtipsy
Recovering a password-protected ThinkPad T60
A couple of years ago, I worked on a ThinkPad T60. That ThinkPad had been in use
by a family member...
over a year ago
A couple of years ago, I worked on a ThinkPad T60. That ThinkPad had been in use
by a family member before that, and I started its cleanup by disassembling the
whole machine and making sure that it was pristine. However, once I put it all
back together, I saw that it was password...
Jonas Hietala
Food vacation in Japan
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of...
over a year ago
Me and my friend spent 2 weeks in Japan and had a great time. I wasn’t planning on taking a lot of pictures, but I ended up sending a bunch back home as a ways of keeping my family up to date. When I look back most of them are about food… So I’ll turn this into a post about the...
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
a week ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Vitalik Buterin's...
What else could memecoins be?
8 months ago
Louwrentius
1.0 GB/s using Linux software RAID
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I...
over a year ago
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I immediately performed some initial tests with software RAID 0. The results
are just astounding.
debian:~# dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0...
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,...
./techtipsy
Cool links
This is an unsorted list of links that I find to be cool.
slow roads
sit back, relax and let the AI...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of links that I find to be cool.
slow roads
sit back, relax and let the AI do all the driving
or don’t, I’m not your dad
Matt Mullenweg
Everyone’s An Owner
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day,...
2 months ago
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Video Games are the Future of Education
The things you learn by yourself stick; the things that are “taught” to you do not stick.
over a year ago
The things you learn by yourself stick; the things that are “taught” to you do not stick.
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...
computers are bad
2024-08-31 ipmi
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home,...
3 months ago
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home, here in New Mexico. One of the steps in this process is,
of course, purchasing a new server... the current Big Iron is getting rather
old (probably about a decade!) and here in...
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...
Posts on Made of...
Using Haskell's 'newtype' in C
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple...
over a year ago
A common problem in software engineering is avoiding confusion and errors when dealing with multiple types of data that share the same representation. Classic examples include differentiating between measurements stored in different units, distinguishing between a string of HTML...
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Objects, Inc's Layout
Build Programs Without Programming
10 months ago
Build Programs Without Programming
Lighthouse Blog
Deep dive into finding RSS feeds
2 weeks ago
Arduino Blog
This Halo helmet features an adjustable-transparency RGB-backlit visor
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the...
3 weeks ago
The Halo franchise is full of iconic designs, from vehicles like the Warthog to weapons like the Needler. But the armor, such as the Spartan armor worn by Master Chief, is arguably the most recognizable. The helmets are especially cool, and LeMaster Tech put his own unique spin...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows NT 3.1
A Highly Portable Future
a year ago
Jonas Hietala
How I did the layout for my self-published book
This is a rundown of how I typeset and laid out my self-published book for the web version, the EPUB...
10 months ago
This is a rundown of how I typeset and laid out my self-published book for the web version, the EPUB version, and the printed version.
I was planning to include many more details, but the project took a lot longer than planned so I’ve forgotten some things.
Web page
I started...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing over multinomial distributions
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 +...
over a year ago
Sometimes you have to maximize some function $$ f(w_1, w_2, ldots, w_n) $$ where $$ w_1 + w_2 + ldots + w_n = 1 $$ and $$ 0 le w_i le 1 $$ . Usually, $$ f $$ is concave and differentiable, so there's one unique global maximum and you can solve it by applying gradient ascent.
Matt Mullenweg
Where is Lee Wittlinger?
Lee controls the board of WP Engine. The board is why WP Engine hasn’t done a trademark deal for...
2 months ago
Lee controls the board of WP Engine. The board is why WP Engine hasn’t done a trademark deal for their use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. You hide behind lawyers and corporate PR when you’re wrong, not when you’re right. I’m replying on Twitter, I’m commenting on...
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