Writing
Long Story Short
Long Story Short, feels like in many ways a synthesis of everything Raphael and Lisa have been...
3rd Oct 2025
Long Story Short, feels like in many ways a synthesis of everything Raphael and Lisa have been trying to do and say, packaged in a slightly more mature and restrained way than the excesses of Bojack Horseman and their respective written fiction (everyone should read Someone Who...
Greater Still by...
Revisiting Borderless Payments
What’s old is new again. By Gaby Goldberg & Bridget Harris
6th Dec 2023
What’s old is new again. By Gaby Goldberg & Bridget Harris
Writing
Pattern Recognition
It was funny to read 2002-era reviews of this book, which universally bemoaned the "tres hip"-ness...
5th Apr 2023
It was funny to read 2002-era reviews of this book, which universally bemoaned the "tres hip"-ness of Gibson's brand deployments (iBooks! MUJI!)
as a flaw that would instantly date its relevance — and nary a mention of how grounded the book was in the September 11th attacks,...
Writing
Final Fantasy
The game certainly shows its age, I can tell you that much. (I played Dawn of Souls, which was the...
28th Dec 2007
The game certainly shows its age, I can tell you that much. (I played Dawn of Souls, which was the slightly easier remake, and even then it was a bit of a slog.) It’s short, though, and it’s I think worth playing for its place in the canon.
Home on Erik...
Blogroll
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is...
9th Jun 2017
Remember when everyone had a really ugly blog with a blogroll? Anyway, just think the word is funny.
I follow a few hundred blogs using Feedly and Reeder and have been reading a few hundred thousand blog posts over the last 10 years.
Neil Madden
Hybrid encryption and the KEM/DEM paradigm
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a...
22nd Jan 2021
If you know a bit about public key cryptography, you probably know that you don’t directly encrypt a message with a public key encryption algorithm like RSA. This is for many reasons, one of which being that it is incredibly slow. Instead you do what’s called hybrid encryption:...
Abishek Muthian
Weather, an argument against simulation hypothesis
As I am writing this, cyclone Fani with category 4 level winds 215 kph (130 mph) in the Bay of...
2nd May 2019
As I am writing this, cyclone Fani with category 4 level winds 215 kph (130 mph) in the Bay of Bengal is expected to make landfall in the state of Odisha, India by tomorrow. Over 800,00 evacuated, as 100 million people are expected to be affected by the cyclone.
Cyclone Fani is...
./techtipsy
Shrinkflation, SanDisk style
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that...
15th Feb 2023
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that you
notice after formatting the device in an OS. Please read the article in full before
making inaccurate comments online.
For many years, I have used two SanDisk Ultra 16 GB USB flash...
Fabien Sanglard
Let's compile Quake like it's 1997!
5th Feb 2026
Willem L. Middelkoop
Repairing a Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
This month Nintendo released the Switch with Zelda "Breath of the Wild". The new console received...
25th Mar 2017
This month Nintendo released the Switch with Zelda "Breath of the Wild". The new console received positive reviews. The new Zelda game is amazing and can be played on-the-go, thanks to the portability of the Nintendo Switch. But it its hardly the first Nintendo device that...
Applied Cartography
Agatha Christie’s Poirot
Delightful. I’d recommend pacing out your consumption a bit more than we did — like the books...
3rd Jan 2020
Delightful. I’d recommend pacing out your consumption a bit more than we did — like the books themselves, and perhaps like the format writ large, the formula wears a bit thin and obvious when you’re giving yourself ninety minutes of it each night — but Suchet’s acting is...
Louwrentius - Solar
Fio-plot: creating nice charts from FIO storage benchmark data
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice...
27th Nov 2019
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice charts. It allows you to create four types of graphs which will be discussed below.
The github project page explains how to run this tool.
Fio-plot also includes a benchmark script...
benn.substack
Should they buy…Allbirds?
Everyone pivots to the enterprise. Plus, Block becomes a box.
3rd Apr 2026
Everyone pivots to the enterprise. Plus, Block becomes a box.
Never Met a Science
Open Science and Its Enemies
Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”....
2nd Jun 2025
Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. Setting aside the absurdity of “restoring” something that never existed, what does that purport to mean?
Jonas Hietala
HandCash handles require trust and are insecure
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their...
22nd Sep 2018
The HandCash wallet has recently become a popular Bitcoin Cash wallet in large part thanks to their $handle concept. It’s basically a username you use instead of the normal Bitcoin Cash address, similar to how domain names abstract away IP addresses. For example instead of...
Applied Cartography
Slow Horses (Season 2)
Not as great as the first season; still tremendously entertaining television, with more than a few...
7th Jan 2024
Not as great as the first season; still tremendously entertaining television, with more than a few twists that I couldn't predict and an underlying thread of competence in set design, pacing, and acting that is hard to deny.
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.
13th Nov 2021
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Fabien Sanglard
Game Engine Black Book update
The Game Engine Black Books have been updated. Free pdfs, high-quality prints, and source code are...
17th May 2019
The Game Engine Black Books have been updated. Free pdfs, high-quality prints, and source code are available.
benn.substack
Will there ever be a worse time to start a startup?
Today's frontier is tomorrow's tech debt.
5th Dec 2025
Today's frontier is tomorrow's tech debt.
Applied Cartography
No Filter
A pleasant and uncontroversial read; it is not the exciting tell-all that Bad Blood or to a lesser...
3rd Oct 2020
A pleasant and uncontroversial read; it is not the exciting tell-all that Bad Blood or to a lesser extent Super Pumped was, but I think its lack of emphasis on drama gave it a more sober lens with which to view Instagram's transformation. Some scattered thoughts:
Christian Selig
Logging information from iOS Widgets
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home...
1st Dec 2020
Lately users have been emailing me with a few odd things happening with their Apollo iOS 14 home screen widgets, and some well-placed logs can really help with identifying what’s going wrong. iOS has a sophisticated built in logging mechanism, os_log, and now with SwiftLogger in...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering the 59-pound printer onboard the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission...
3rd Aug 2024
The Space Shuttle contained a bulky printer so the astronauts could
receive procedures, mission plans, weather reports, crew activity plans, and other documents.
Needed for the first Shuttle launch in 1981, this printer was designed in just 7 months, built around an Army...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Summer Tournament Linköping
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs...
18th Sep 2015
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs with Old Hollywood and The Universe of Tomorrow so a lot of new things were tried. I heard a rumor that a full playset of both Aesop’s Pawnshop and Wyldside were available so I...
Home on Erik...
Optimizing for iteration speed
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about...
6th Jul 2017
I've written before about the importance of iterating quickly but I didn't necessarily talk about some concrete things you can do. When I've built up the tech team at Better, I've intentionally optimized for fast iteration speed above almost everything else.
Jonas Hietala
Easy setup of a static site on Amazon S3 with SSL
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just...
3rd Apr 2019
I’ve been hosting my site on Amazon S3 for a while now but I never activated SSL for it. I just never got around to it, probably the usual procrastination.
When I had to setup a new site for another project I chose to host on Amazon as well. Although there are many other free...
Applied Cartography
STAR LINE
In retrospect, I think there are two really noteworthy things about Chance the Rapper's career:
14th Aug 2025
In retrospect, I think there are two really noteworthy things about Chance the Rapper's career:
Vitalik Buterin's...
Some personal user experiences
28th Feb 2023
Vitalik Buterin's...
Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins
25th May 2022
Louwrentius - Solar
Finding a good blu-ray player for Mac OS X
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these...
22nd Sep 2013
I find playing a Blu-ray movie on my Mac cumbersome. I've been using Plex, XBMC and VLC but these free open-source products are all a usability nightmare.
To play a Blu-ray movie, you have to perform these steps:
right-click on the BDMV file
choose 'show packet contents'
go to...
Abishek Muthian
Access Ring
Discover and invoke UI elements near your cursor, without precise mouse targeting.
A Logi Actions...
16th Apr 2026
Discover and invoke UI elements near your cursor, without precise mouse targeting.
A Logi Actions SDK plugin for MX Creative Console and Actions Ring.
Buttons, checkboxes, menus, tabs, dropdowns: tap to interact with whatever is nearby.
The problem with precise clicking
Every...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 4: Free newsletter to RSS tool
4th Nov 2024
Greater Still by...
Making the Internet Alive Again
The Internet is changing. Are we changing, too?
28th Feb 2024
The Internet is changing. Are we changing, too?
Yazin Alirhayim
Finding An Idea
The first step is finding an idea, one of the most intimidating parts of this whole process. In this...
25th Jun 2017
The first step is finding an idea, one of the most intimidating parts of this whole process. In this post, I describe how I go about tackling this
Abort Retry Fail
The Story of Creative Technology
The Sound Blaster
10th Aug 2025
Applied Cartography
Challengers
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just...
6th Dec 2025
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just kept it kicking around in my head—is David Foster Wallace’s justification for the emphasis on footnotes in Infinite Jest: that they’re meant to be a physical metaphor for the...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 29 Entry
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally...
25th Apr 2014
After months of procrastination it is time for me to enter Ludum Dare again!
I am totally unprepared, but I did setup a setup which actually compiles. I never got audio to run but hopefully I can manage something.
Repository: https://github.com/treeman/LD29. Going for C++ this...
Jonas Hietala
Christmas break
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and...
18th Dec 2010
So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and I really enjoy studying here. We had lisp the whole time which is a pretty sweet little language and if you haven’t, give it a shot. Then we had math and I do like math, although I...
./techtipsy
From building ships to shipping builds: how to succeed in making a career switch to software...
I have worked with a few software developers who made the switch to this industry in the middle of...
1st Jul 2025
I have worked with a few software developers who made the switch to this industry in the middle of their careers.
A major change like that can be scary and raise a lot of fears and doubts, but I can attest that this can work out well
with the right personality traits and a...
Tiny struggles
Learning can be a waste of time
Learning and studying isn’t universally a good thing.
I found that saying “sometimes spending some...
13th Nov 2021
Learning and studying isn’t universally a good thing.
I found that saying “sometimes spending some time studying and learning can be a waste of time” is very contentious. Especially in a quickly evolving tech environment.
If you stop learning and become rigid in your ways, you...
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 6. LLVM system calls
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
...
22nd Jun 2019
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
2. user-defined functions and variables
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the ulisp
compiler's LLVM backend to
support printing integers to...
Willem's Blog
Being a volunteer in Amsterdam-Zuidoost
About my work as volunteer in the local community center in Amsterdam Zuidoost
20th Nov 2016
About my work as volunteer in the local community center in Amsterdam Zuidoost
Home on Erik...
The hacker's guide to uncertainty estimates
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain...
8th Oct 2018
It started with a tweet:
New years resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain uncertainty estimates
— Erik Bernhardsson (@bernhardsson) January 7, 2018 Why? Because I've been sitting in 100,000,000 meetings where people endlessly debate whether the monthly number of...
Louwrentius - Solar
Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 on Debian howto
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed...
28th Sep 2008
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed binary driver.)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm
Install the kernel headers if you haven't already
- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-6-k7
- extract the...
Krebs on Security
FBI Seizes NetNut Proxy Platform, Popa Botnet
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said today it worked with industry partners to seize...
2nd Jul 2026
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said today it worked with industry partners to seize hundreds of domains associated with NetNut, a sprawling residential proxy service operated by the publicly-traded Israeli company Alarum Technologies [NASDAQ: ALAR]. The action comes...
Evan Hahn (dot com)
An ode to my favorite mobile game
I can’t stop telling my friends about Forward: Escape the Fold and now I’m telling you. I bought it...
4th Mar 2025
I can’t stop telling my friends about Forward: Escape the Fold and now I’m telling you. I bought it more than two years ago and it’s my favorite mobile game by a mile.
Forward describes itself as the “perfect bitesized roguelike dungeon crawler”. You control a character trying to...
Louwrentius - Solar
How to setup a local or private Ubuntu Mirror
Preface
In this article I provide instructions on how to setup a local Ubuntu mirror using...
18th Jan 2023
Preface
In this article I provide instructions on how to setup a local Ubuntu mirror using debmirror. To set expectations: the mirror will work as intended and distribute packages and updates, but a do-release upgrade from one major version of Ubuntu to the next won't...
Vitalik Buterin's...
La Guía Incompleta de los Rollups
5th Jan 2021
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...
2nd Sep 2024
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...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Outside the comfort zone: amateur acting
This month I made my debut as amateur actor. I am no Hollywood star, nor do I envy to become one....
17th Apr 2018
This month I made my debut as amateur actor. I am no Hollywood star, nor do I envy to become one. But I do like crazy experiments and operating outside of my comfort zone often leads to new and refreshing insights. I took part in an amateur drama play and - in the name of science...
latest projects -...
Fluid Simulation Pendant
[Hardware] Wearable real-time FLIP device
13th Jan 2025
[Hardware] Wearable real-time FLIP device
Louwrentius - Solar
Cannot access Windows guest within VMware Fusion when running vsphere client
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere...
17th Jun 2011
Currently, I am running VMware ESXi 4.1 on a test system. To manage ESXi, you need the VSphere client, which is only available for the Windows platform. Therefore, I run VMware Fusion on my Mac to be able to access VSphere and manage my ESXi host.
The trouble is that both ESXi...
Krebs on Security
Hackers Used Meta’s AI Support Bot to Seize Instagram Accounts
The Instagram accounts for the Obama White House and the Chief Master Sergeant of the U.S. Space...
1st Jun 2026
The Instagram accounts for the Obama White House and the Chief Master Sergeant of the U.S. Space Force were briefly defaced with pro-Iranian images and messages over the weekend, after instructions began circulating on Telegram showing how to trick Meta’s “AI support assistant”...
Jonas Hietala
Some VORON 0 mods
I recently completed my VORON 0 build and I was determined to leave it as-is for a while and to...
2nd May 2025
I recently completed my VORON 0 build and I was determined to leave it as-is for a while and to start modding my VORON Trident…
So before embarking om my larger Trident modding journey I decided to work on the VORON 0 just a little bit more.
HEPA filter
With the Nevermore Micro...
Eric Migicovsky's...
February Shenzhen Trip Update
It took me a few days to get back to normal after returning from my trip to Shenzhen last week....
3rd Mar 2025
It took me a few days to get back to normal after returning from my trip to Shenzhen last week. Overall, pretty decent trip - I met with 1…
Elevation Lab - Blog
NightStand at your local Apple Store
NightStands now come in some beautiful new colors & new packaging - you can find them in Apple...
26th Aug 2015
NightStands now come in some beautiful new colors & new packaging - you can find them in Apple Stores around the globe beginning today.
For any designer, to see something you made out in the wild is a special experience. So today is a real trip for our tiny little Portland...
MIT News - Civil and...
A faster way to solve complex planning problems
By eliminating redundant computations, a new data-driven method can streamline processes like...
16th Apr 2025
By eliminating redundant computations, a new data-driven method can streamline processes like scheduling trains, routing delivery drivers, or assigning airline crews.
Jonas Hietala
A Four-Eyed Update
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my...
21st Mar 2011
Wow it’s been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my almost constant headaches which hampered me a lot actually. Luckily now I have joined the rank of cool.
I took home three frames I think and tried them out and I settled some I...
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Fabric for AirTag
Having an AirTag fall out of our camera bag pocket that was then stolen, we wanted something...
19th Apr 2023
Having an AirTag fall out of our camera bag pocket that was then stolen, we wanted something better.
So we designed TagVault Fabric Mount for AirTag. It is ultra-flexible to move and flow with your fabric. Discreet, so it doesn't stand out to a would-be thief. And it's...
noahbuscher.com
Create a Markdown Portfolio with Next.js
So you've set out to create a new portfolio for yourself. You start gathering inspiration from...
7th Mar 2023
So you've set out to create a new portfolio for yourself. You start gathering inspiration from platforms like Godly and Minimal Gallery, draw some rectangles in Figma, and open your text editor. You pause. There's thousands of ways to build your website, how do you decide which...
Construction Physics
How Will the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Affect Housing Supply? Part III
This is my third and final essay looking at the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and how it’s...
2 weeks ago
This is my third and final essay looking at the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and how it’s likely to affect housing supply.
Writing
Agatha Christie’s Poirot
Delightful. I’d recommend pacing out your consumption a bit more than we did — like the books...
3rd Jan 2020
Delightful. I’d recommend pacing out your consumption a bit more than we did — like the books themselves, and perhaps like the format writ large, the formula wears a bit thin and obvious when you’re giving yourself ninety minutes of it each night — but Suchet’s acting is...
Writing
Mob Psycho 100 (Season 1)
It took me a little time to get keyed into the idiosyncratic humor & ethos of this show, but once I...
1st Oct 2022
It took me a little time to get keyed into the idiosyncratic humor & ethos of this show, but once I did I really did. It's very much a shonen, but a shonen in a way that feels more committed to deconstructing stereotypes than Ousama Ranking and with characters that are at least...
The Pragmatic...
New trend: extreme hours at AI startups
Pulling 80+ hour work weeks – including weekends – is becoming the norm across AI startups, and is...
14th Aug 2025
Pulling 80+ hour work weeks – including weekends – is becoming the norm across AI startups, and is unlikely to stop while AI is so hot.
Fabien Sanglard
How to build Doom3 on Mac OS X with XCode
More...
25th Nov 2011
Eric Migicovsky's...
My new podcast: Tick Talk + Core 2 Duo demo
I started a little podcast… And named it something ridiculous - Tick Talk w/ Eric Migicovsky !...
1st May 2025
I started a little podcast… And named it something ridiculous - Tick Talk w/ Eric Migicovsky ! We’ll see if that name sticks 😂. I set up a…
Jonas Hietala
Entering Pintos
First week of school is over and it’s been full throttle from the start, in a good way. We’re having...
3rd Sep 2012
First week of school is over and it’s been full throttle from the start, in a good way. We’re having four courses and for once I like them all. We have an interesting math course, a useful course “Software Development in Theory” (boring but useful) and a big project course where...
Butler's Log
Debugging Tauri in VS Code
If you're working on a Tauri app in VS Code and want to set breakpoints and use a debugger like a...
5th Dec 2023
If you're working on a Tauri app in VS Code and want to set breakpoints and use a debugger like a grown up, this is how to get it done.
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....
8th Feb 2024
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...
Notes on software...
SQLite has pretty limited builtin functions
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
21st Aug 2022
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Abort Retry Fail
SRI & ARC
The Dawn of the Information Age
27th Sep 2025
The Dawn of the Information Age
Nabeel S. Qureshi
On Reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
1.
18th Dec 2025
Jonas Hietala
A work week one bag travel
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
I’m lucky that I have a job...
10th Mar 2026
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
I’m lucky that I have a job where I can work remotely as it allows me to live in a small community where there are no tech jobs anywhere close.
It does require me to travel a few weeks per year to the office but...
Eric Migicovsky's...
Verge interview at CES 2013
2025 Note - probably the last video of me without a beard!
9th Jan 2013
2025 Note - probably the last video of me without a beard!
Ken Shirriff's blog
Standard cells: Looking at individual gates in the Pentium processor
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry...
7th Jul 2024
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993,
a chip
to "separate the really power-hungry folks from ordinary mortals."
The original Pentium was followed by the Pentium Pro, the Pentium II, and others, spawning a long-running brand of high-performance processors, Intel's...
Fabien Sanglard
Game Engine Black Book Postmortem
More...
7th Sep 2017
Buck on Software
Category velocity
People make decisions, not businesses.
15th Jun 2021
People make decisions, not businesses.
Willem L. Middelkoop
My first weeks as dad
Last Christmas my wife gave birth to our son, a little boy that would change everything! It's an...
23rd Jan 2019
Last Christmas my wife gave birth to our son, a little boy that would change everything! It's an incredible experience to become a parent, especially if it is your first kid. It introduces a whole new way of living, having to deal with regular feeding, caring and sleepless...
Applied Cartography
Cameraperson
Read review: Cameraperson
1st Jan 2026
Read review: Cameraperson
Home on Erik...
Miscellaneous unsolicited (and possibly biased) career advice
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of...
26th Sep 2019
No one asked for this, but I'm something like ~12 years into my career and have had my fair share of mistakes and luck so I thought I'd share some.
Honestly, I feel like I've mostly benefitted from luck.
Blog | Sam Curry
Hacking Millions of Modems (and Investigating Who Hacked My Modem)
3rd Jun 2024
Eric Migicovsky's...
What working on Pebble taught me about building hardware
Building hardware is fun but tough. We worked on Pebble for a full four years before we launched on...
19th Sep 2017
Building hardware is fun but tough. We worked on Pebble for a full four years before we launched on Kickstarter in 2012. We went on to sell…
Computer Ads from...
Huson Soft HuCAL
Hudson creates business software for everyone.
24th Jan 2024
Hudson creates business software for everyone.
Joey's Hoard of...
I Ditched the Algorithm for RSS—and You Should Too
<img src="/assets\images\blog_posts\2025_01_12-rss\banner.png" alt="An image of a banner cartoon of...
15th Jan 2025
<img src="/assets\images\blog_posts\2025_01_12-rss\banner.png" alt="An image of a banner cartoon of the topic at ...
Notes on software...
SQLite in Go, with and without cgo
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
12th May 2022
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Simply Explained
ESP-IDF: Storing AWS IoT certificates in the NVS partition (for OTA)
When using AWS IoT Core, most tutorials will tell you to include device certificates in your...
2nd Nov 2021
When using AWS IoT Core, most tutorials will tell you to include device certificates in your firmware. While that does work, it means you won't be able to run over-the-air updates.In this post, I'll show how to store AWS certificates in the NVS partition. This will make it...
matduggan.com
The AI Bubble Is Bursting
My surprisingly frustrating experience with Google force enabling Gemini AI on Workspaces.
20th Jan 2025
My surprisingly frustrating experience with Google force enabling Gemini AI on Workspaces.
Electronics etc…
$17 GM1312 Thermometer Review, Test, and Teardown
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few...
11th Feb 2023
Introduction
What is a thermocouple
The GM1213 Thermometer
A few tests
Internals
Conclusion
References
Introduction
I’ve been doing a bunch of measurements on oven-controlled oscillators lately,
including their temperature. There are multiple ways to measure...
Joel Gustafson
Repetition is the shadow of structure
2nd Nov 2019
Abishek Muthian
Butt Pomodoro - A butt triggered pomodoro timer
A need gap of Remind me to take break when working from home was recently posted. Forgetting to take...
10th Jul 2020
A need gap of Remind me to take break when working from home was recently posted. Forgetting to take regular breaks when immersed with work in front of a computer is a common problem, especially when working from home.
On the flip side, getting distracted from completing a task...
Tiny struggles
Escaping LLM piping mess with nifty engineering
In this post I’ll walk through how I upgraded a set of tangled Python notebooks—responsible for...
25th Jun 2025
In this post I’ll walk through how I upgraded a set of tangled Python notebooks—responsible for thousands of LLM calls—into a robust content-adaptation studio powered by:
an async FastAPI pipeline,
a disk-first Next.js frontend, and
a small suite of custom CLI...
Louwrentius - Solar
Understanding Storage Performance - IOPS and Latency
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want...
21st Mar 2020
Introduction
The goal of this blogpost is to help you better understand storage performance. I want to discuss some fundamentals that are true regardless of your particular needs.
This will help you better reason about storage and may provide a scaffolding for further learning....
Willem's Blog
Snake '97 High Scores
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was...
17th Apr 2022
Happily accepting the invitation to attend an exhibition of Snake 97 art works in Antwerp. This was totally WOW!
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
18th Feb 2021
Yazin Alirhayim
Do people in Bahrain buy online? The story of Canvas.bh
How I started a business to answer this simple question. The story of Canvas.bh
9th Sep 2014
How I started a business to answer this simple question. The story of Canvas.bh
anderegg.ca
YouTube is a mysterious monopoly
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro...
8th Sep 2025
Yesterday I saw this Bluesky post from Adrian Black. He runs Adrian’s Digital Basement, a retro computer repair channel I really enjoy. In the post, he points out a trend I didn’t know about: YouTube views seem to have fallen off a cliff recently.
Further down the thread, Jeff...
MIT News - Civil and...
Nitrous oxide, a product of fertilizer use, may harm some soil bacteria
While some N2O is produced naturally at the plant root, agricultural practices can increase its...
4th Mar 2026
While some N2O is produced naturally at the plant root, agricultural practices can increase its levels, to the detriment of some microbes that support plant growth.
Matt Blewitt
Embodiment
Since I was small, I’d lived my life through screens, one way or another. For the last...
15th May 2025
Since I was small, I’d lived my life through screens, one way or another. For the last quarter-century or so, I had been piloting the machine of flesh and sinew to keep my mind going, rarely engaging with the machine itself. This was a mistake.
Neil Madden
A controversial opinion about REST API design
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice,...
2nd Nov 2023
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice, some of it I could quibble with. But several of the rules are about how to design the path hierarchy of your API: use plural nouns, don’t use nested sub-paths unnecessarily, etc. In...
Willem's Blog
Hello, stranger
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one...
12th Oct 2023
"Discover the transformative power of simple conversations in our tech-dominated world, as one individual delves into the lost art of talking to strangers and the profound connections it can forge."
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
25th Jan 2021
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Does digital ID have risks even if it's ZK-wrapped?
28th Jun 2025
Himanshu Mishra |...
Python's easter eggs and hidden jokes
Just when you thought, Python could not be more fun. Read on GitHub...
8th May 2017
Just when you thought, Python could not be more fun. Read on GitHub https://github.com/OrkoHunter/python-easter-eggs 1. Hello World 2. The…
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
6th Apr 2021
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
Engineers Need Art
Building Quarter-Cab - Phase I
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
8th May 2024
Lets build a simple virtual pinball controller to bring more immersion to your game.
Computer Ads from...
Comics from 1984/04 Creative Computing Mag
Sorry for the delay. - JP
22nd Jan 2025
Sorry for the delay. - JP
Blog | Sam Curry
Exploiting Web3's Hidden Attack Surface: Universal XSS on Netlify's Next.js Library
21st Sep 2022
watchTowr Labs
SonicBoom, From Stolen Tokens to Remote Shells - SonicWall SMA (CVE-2023-44221, CVE-2024-38475)
Another day, another edge device being targeted - it’s a typical Thursday!
In today’s blog post,...
1st May 2025
Another day, another edge device being targeted - it’s a typical Thursday!
In today’s blog post, we’re excited to share our previously private analysis of the now exploited in-the-wild N-day vulnerabilities affecting SonicWall’s SMA100 appliance. Over the last few months, our...
Willem's Blog
Health and fitness data
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal...
15th Jan 2024
Exploring the balance between health data and intuition, this blog post delves into how personal well-being and fitness goals shape our relationship with technology and self-awareness.
./techtipsy
My experience with LLM-assisted tools in software development
It’s no secret that I was highly skeptical of LLM-s.
Cool, there is this new thing that can spit out...
8th Jun 2026
It’s no secret that I was highly skeptical of LLM-s.
Cool, there is this new thing that can spit out plausible text and create cheap-looking images and videos, resulting in
a lot of low-quality content being shared.
It was also a huge disappointment to see a human-written post...
Project Blog on...
Train Simulator Controller: Stepper Speedometer Begins
For quite a few years now, I have been an avid Train Simulator player, operating virtual trains from...
27th Jan 2023
For quite a few years now, I have been an avid Train Simulator player, operating virtual trains from the United States, the UK, and beyond. I’ve played Dovetail Games’ Train Simulator 2015 to 2022 and now “Train Simulator Classic”, FIFA-style annual upgrades that have...
./techtipsy
TOMO M4: probably the coolest power bank I've owned
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting...
3rd Mar 2023
A friend once showed me a power bank that was so cool that I had to get one
myself. Ended up getting two, and here’s why.
This post is not sponsored.
Removable batteries
Let’s start with the feature that I appreciate the most: removable batteries!
The TOMO M4 accepts up to 4...
Willem's Blog
Is the Apple Watch the modern tool watch?
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet...
1st Nov 2018
I tested the Apple Watch during my work in Frankfurt this week where I had to go inside an internet data centre.
Christian Selig
The Caldera: a sleek split and wireless keyboard
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically...
20th Jul 2024
I designed my own keyboard and it’s freely available! I’m calling it the Caldera, and it’s basically my dream wireless split keyboard.
I’ve been using it for months, and I love it.
Video overview
If you’re a visual person, I made a fun little video showcasing the...
Scott Kennedy
Why startup pivots are like build optimizations
22nd Jul 2025
Notes on software...
Notes from Neal Gabler's Walt Disney
Disney was a celebrity by his mid-30s, Disney the company was famous
by 1930s.
Even though...
18th Feb 2023
Disney was a celebrity by his mid-30s, Disney the company was famous
by 1930s.
Even though politically the 1930s was considered the decade of
Roosevelt (elected President in 1933), culturally the 1930s was
considered the decade of Mickey Mouse.
Almost every new...
computers are bad
2025-05-04 iBeacons
You know sometimes a technology just sort of... comes and goes? Without leaving
much of an...
4th May 2025
You know sometimes a technology just sort of... comes and goes? Without leaving
much of an impression? And then gets lodged in your brain for the next decade?
Let's talk about one of those: the iBeacon.
I think the reason that iBeacons loom so large in my memory is that...
Jonas Hietala
Faster than Light
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came...
12th Feb 2013
So I returned to Faster than Light again this weekend, this time for real. I bought it when it came out and I played it only in passing, but this weekend I played it a ton.
Aaahh a new beginning in FTL. Will it be death once more
I generally don’t like games where you have to...
Posts on Made of...
Design for Testability
When designing a new software project, one is often faced with a glut of choices about how to...
6th Mar 2016
When designing a new software project, one is often faced with a glut of choices about how to structure it. What should the core abstractions be? How should they interact with each other?
In this post, I want to argue for a design heuristic that I’ve found to be a useful guide to...
Willem L. Middelkoop
Backup Rotation Scheme
In today's digital age, safeguarding your data is paramount. Simply creating a copy of your files...
14th Dec 2023
In today's digital age, safeguarding your data is paramount. Simply creating a copy of your files may not be enough as they can get corrupted, overwritten or blocked by ransomware. Having multiple, time-rotated (and ideally, offsite) backups is a stronger defense. I created a new...
Applied Cartography
RSS in Next 14
We finished Buttondown’s migration from MDX to Markdoc last week. It went swimmingly, except for one...
1st Sep 2024
We finished Buttondown’s migration from MDX to Markdoc last week. It went swimmingly, except for one little hitch: our RSS feeds, which sat on top of getServerSideProps and read in the flat .mdoc files, threw 500s in Vercel. (They worked fine locally and in CI, but then those...
Writing
Fathom
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly...
1st Dec 2024
I'd been meaning to jot down some thoughts on Fathom for a while, and did not have a particularly good reason to do so until the news broke that Paul Jarvis was selling his share of the company to Jack Ellis, the technical co-founder. 1The blog post itself is a great example of...
Applied Cartography
2019
2019 was pretty great. here are the highlights:
25th Dec 2019
2019 was pretty great. here are the highlights:
Writing
Digital Minimalism
I find myself weirdly torn on this book.
3rd Dec 2020
I find myself weirdly torn on this book.
./techtipsy
Home is where the home server is
I moved recently, and so did my home server. You might have noticed it due to the downtime.
This...
15th May 2025
I moved recently, and so did my home server. You might have noticed it due to the downtime.
This time I have built a dedicated shelf for it, which allows for more flexibility and room for additional expensive
ideas.
The internet connection is a fiber line, which is fantastic for...
Applied Cartography
Mindwalk
Let us know how the water rises.
1st Apr 2026
Let us know how the water rises.
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy
23rd Mar 2021
Arduino Blog
This inexpensive adapter brings Apple Universal Control to vintage Macs
In the distant past of about two decades ago, one would need to use a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse)...
4th Aug 2025
In the distant past of about two decades ago, one would need to use a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch to control multiple computers with the same mouse and keyboard — and even then, it would take a button press to move from one to the other. Today, Apple’s Universal Control...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Review of Gitcoin Quadratic Funding Round 4
28th Jan 2020
Willem L. Middelkoop
Better Laptop
Consumer electronics often lock us into sealed hardware and forced upgrades, creating enormous...
9th Feb 2025
Consumer electronics often lock us into sealed hardware and forced upgrades, creating enormous e-waste. Framework challenges that norm by making laptops you can service, upgrade, and customise, which extends their lifespan and cuts down on unnecessary e-waste. My Framework 13...
Writing
Goodwill
Read essay: Goodwill
1st Sep 2025
Willem's Blog
Apple Watch as Phone
Embark on a digital detox journey as I swap my smartphone for an Apple Watch Ultra, exploring the...
9th Nov 2023
Embark on a digital detox journey as I swap my smartphone for an Apple Watch Ultra, exploring the liberating yet challenging world of wearable tech.
Writing
Expecting Better
Really good book, and one I would recommend to anyone thinking about family planning. Nothing coy or...
3rd Nov 2023
Really good book, and one I would recommend to anyone thinking about family planning. Nothing coy or clever to say; just thought it was solid, actionable, and sober without being a drag to read.
Posts on Made of...
Conkeror
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension,...
13th Mar 2008
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension, but nowadays it’s a standalone app built on top of Mozilla’s xulrunner, so it uses the Gecko rendering engine.
What it is, is an emacs implemented in Javascript, for the web. This...
Jonas Hietala
Why I still blog after 15 years
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Before you know it, your little babies have started school, you...
25th Sep 2024
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Before you know it, your little babies have started school, you celebrate the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park, and that little blog you started have now been going for 15 years.
15 years is a long time; longer than I’ve been waiting for Winds...
Pea Bee
#14: Extreme ironing
A couple of months back, I made a search engine to look for half loaves of bread in stores. I was...
3rd Jul 2022
A couple of months back, I made a search engine to look for half loaves of bread in stores. I was tired of wasting leftover bread and made this because, well I could. You can try it here: halfloafnear.me
Applied Cartography
Best of Enemies
Last year, I watched The War Room, the documentary following Bill Clinton's first campaign — a film...
1st Aug 2026
Last year, I watched The War Room, the documentary following Bill Clinton's first campaign — a film I am remiss for having never written about, because it was captivating, satisfying, and illuminating. And whether for good reasons or bad, it punctured most of my belief that the...
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...
12th Feb 2020
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.
Toni's Blog
On Design and Chemistry
How I transitioned from chemistry to design, and back again.
12th Sep 2024
How I transitioned from chemistry to design, and back again.
Applied Cartography
WandaVision
What to say about this show that isn’t damning with faint praise?
1st Mar 2021
What to say about this show that isn’t damning with faint praise?
Applied Cartography
May, 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I...
1st Jun 2026
There are two mental models about work and fatigue which, like my brief dalliance with Roshe Runs, I have loved and outgrown:
Alyssa Rosenzweig
Plan du réseau du métro de Toronto
La plus grande ville d’un pays bilingue mérite le transport en commun
bilingue. Vu l’intérêt...
10th Mar 2026
La plus grande ville d’un pays bilingue mérite le transport en commun
bilingue. Vu l’intérêt prolongé pour la francisation de la ville reine,
voici enfin un plan du réseau traduit.
Il y a plusieurs ans, un internaut traduisit le plan du réseau de
la Société de transport de...
Notes on software...
React without webpack: fast path to a working app from scratch
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
8th Jul 2021
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Never Met a Science
things will have to change
Social Science in the age of AI
15th Jan 2026
Social Science in the age of AI
heavymeta.org
Revisiting LLM Geolocation Two Years Later
In 2023 Bellingcat published “Can AI Chatbots Be Used for
Geolocation?”.
In that article, they...
21st Mar 2025
In 2023 Bellingcat published “Can AI Chatbots Be Used for
Geolocation?”.
In that article, they examine the ability of LLMs to geolocate photos. They gave
Microsoft Bing and Google Bard three photos of locations in Canada:
the Edmonton City Hall
Churchill Square, also in...
Applied Cartography
Two weeks of parenthood
We've had lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about...
6th Oct 2024
We've had lucy for two weeks, which qualifies us as experts, which means it is time to write about parenthood. (In all seriousness, consider the below descriptive and not prescriptive: mostly, it's a notepad filled with things that were remarkable or surprising or divergent from...
Arduino Blog
Zoo elephants get a musical toy to enrich their lives
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course,...
2nd Dec 2024
Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course, there is a lot to be said about the morality of keeping those animals in captivity. So, good zoos put a lot of effort into keeping their animals healthy and happy. For more...
Style over Substance
My grandfather’s Rolleiflex 2.8D twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family...
10th Oct 2020
One of the first vintage cameras I ever got was my dad’s old Polaroid SX-70. Like so many family cameras it had disappeared into a closet decades ago and was only found again recently. When he gave it to me, he told me there was another classic camera he wanted to give me – if...
computers are bad
2024-12-04 operators on the front
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the...
4th Dec 2024
At the very core of telephone history, there is the telephone operator. For a
lot of people, the vague understanding that an operator used to be involved is
the main thing they know about historic telephony. Of course, telephone
historians, as a group, tend to be much more...
Notes on software...
Surveying SQL parser libraries in a few high-level languages
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
11th Apr 2022
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Greater Still by...
Talking to the Protocol
An exploration into a new communication layer. By Gaby Goldberg & Sophie Fujiwara
5th Dec 2022
An exploration into a new communication layer. By Gaby Goldberg & Sophie Fujiwara
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
15th Mar 2022
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Offline command line translation with TranslateGemma + Ollama
I wrote a simple script that translates text at the command line, completely offline. Here’s an...
1st May 2026
I wrote a simple script that translates text at the command line, completely offline. Here’s an example of how it works on my computer:
echo '¿Cómo estás?' | translate
# => How are you?
It combines a few tools:
TranslateGemma, a special-purpose language model for...
Neil Madden
Towards a standard for bearer token URLs
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include...
20th Mar 2021
In XSS doesn’t have to be Game Over, and earlier when discussing Can you ever (safely) include credentials in a URL?, I raised the possibility of standardising a new URL scheme that safely allows encoding a bearer token into a URL. This makes it more convenient to use lots of...
./techtipsy
Meet the Garbage PC
This is the Garbage PC.
Not too long ago, I received a half-broken Dell Inspiron N5110, sporting 6...
2nd Feb 2026
This is the Garbage PC.
Not too long ago, I received a half-broken Dell Inspiron N5110, sporting 6 GB of RAM, a dual core Intel i3-2110M, and an
unsupported NVIDIA GPU of some sort.
One of the hinges was loose from the case because it was screwed into plastic (common issue for...
Notes on software...
A single-node Kubernetes cluster without virtualization or a container registry
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring...
25th Jul 2020
This post is a recipe for setting up a minimal Kubernetes cluster on
Fedora without requiring virtualization or a container registry. These
two features make the system cloud-agnostic and the cluster entirely
self-contained. The post will end with us running a simple Flask...
joshua stein
Subtext 4.0 Released
Subtext
4.0 has been released:
subtext-4.0.sit
(StuffIt 3 archive, includes
source code
and THINK C...
19th Feb 2024
Subtext
4.0 has been released:
subtext-4.0.sit
(StuffIt 3 archive, includes
source code
and THINK C 5 project file)
c33a6abe15e7f07159a18d936dce7c435d9619f80d6c53d1cdd26fabf06712f7
SHA1: 0f4bdcd08b57b568125d8ddcab5ad97f1f5dd586
ipdb-2023-11.db
(Free IP Geolocation...
Blog | Sam Curry
How I gained access to chef, docker, AWS, and MongoDB instances in a single request
3rd Aug 2017
Style over Substance
3D-printable Raleno 104 lightbox adapter for camera film scanning
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model...
11th Jul 2021
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model turns it into a lightbox that you can use for digital camera scanning of your negative film. It also contains a holder compatible with the Valoi 35mm/120 film carriers. Additionally,...
Software and Tech...
13th Year of Blogging
Of all the days to start a blog, I chose April Fools' Day. It wasn't intentional, maybe more of a...
1st Apr 2026
Of all the days to start a blog, I chose April Fools' Day. It wasn't intentional, maybe more of a reflection of my mindset. When I decide to do something, I shut off my brain and just do it. This was a commitment I made without thinking about the long-term effects.
I knew writing...
csvbase blog
Parquet: more than just "Turbo CSV"
Quicker, but also more convenient
3rd Apr 2023
Quicker, but also more convenient
Engineers Need Art
Experiments in Printmaking - Part 1
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
13th Mar 2024
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Pet for AirTag
Having pets that went missing before, AirTags are the perfect companion. We wanted a case that could...
22nd May 2021
Having pets that went missing before, AirTags are the perfect companion. We wanted a case that could take the abuse of an active full-size dog, fit nice on a cat, work with all pet collars, and be durable.
So we designed Tagvault Pet. It's waterproof, fits every collar, and is...
Matt Blewitt
Software Sprezzatura
Sprezzatura is “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says...
26th Jan 2020
Sprezzatura is “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”, coined by Castiglione in 1528’s The Book of the Courtier.
Writing
Rear Window
I'm not sure at what point it dawned on me that the setting & vantage of Rear Window was going to be...
1st Feb 2022
I'm not sure at what point it dawned on me that the setting & vantage of Rear Window was going to be a fixture of the entire film, and not just a cute way to stage the first fifteen minutes — but that realization, and everything therein (the vignettes of every other "screen"...
Neil Madden
From KEMs to protocols
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care...
8th Apr 2021
This is the third part of my series on Key Encapsulation Mechanisms (KEMs) and why you should care about them. Part 1 looked at what a KEM is and the KEM/DEM paradigm for constructing public key encryption schemes. Part 2 looked at cases where the basic KEM abstraction is not...
Lighthouse Blog
New feature: RSS feed export
2nd Dec 2024
Bryan Braun - Blog
Setting up your /now page with an RSS feed
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now...
2nd Nov 2024
I have a /now page, which I use to tell people what I’m up to these days.
I like the concept of “now pages” but I felt like it would be better if it had an RSS feed. The feed would give interested parties a way to subscribe to life changes.
The problem is that RSS feeds aren’t...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Intel's $475 million error: the silicon behind the Pentium division bug
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running...
28th Dec 2024
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line.
The Pentium had many improvements over the previous processor, the Intel 486, including a faster floating-point division algorithm.
A year later, Professor Nicely, a number...
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...
21st Oct 2012
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...
Writing
Happy Endings
This, to me, is the perfect sit-com. It’s that simple: for two seasons (skip the first season; you...
27th Nov 2017
This, to me, is the perfect sit-com. It’s that simple: for two seasons (skip the first season; you don’t need it and the show tries to be too conventional) it shits out an outrageous level of humor with a cast that has a perfect chemistry. There is a tiny bit of “aw, shucks”...
Jorge Arango
My Theme for 2026
I’m starting off 2026 with a post that likely won’t interest you at all. I’m only sharing it to 1)...
1st Jan 2026
I’m starting off 2026 with a post that likely won’t interest you at all. I’m only sharing it to 1) think it through and 2) make myself accountable. It’s inspired by this video:
Among other things, Pink suggests adopting a one-word theme for the year: “Not a sentence. Not a...
Writing
Challengers
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just...
6th Dec 2025
One of the things that may be apocryphal—because I’ve never bothered to actually look it up, just kept it kicking around in my head—is David Foster Wallace’s justification for the emphasis on footnotes in Infinite Jest: that they’re meant to be a physical metaphor for the...
Greater Still by...
Why is the Internet So Lonely?
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece called My Modern Friends and Me, as an ode to the...
27th Dec 2021
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece called My Modern Friends and Me, as an ode to the digital-turned-physical friends I had made throughout 2020.
Willem L. Middelkoop
Creating a minimal road bike
Over the past months I have worked on different bikes, leading to an accumulation of spare parts in...
17th Aug 2019
Over the past months I have worked on different bikes, leading to an accumulation of spare parts in my garage. I wondered how hard it would be to make a new bike using these spare parts. I decided to take advantage of this moment to refinish some parts, removing excessive decals...
Evan Hahn (dot com)
Notes from "On Writing Well"
I’ve been trying to improve my writing so I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
My main...
4th Jan 2026
I’ve been trying to improve my writing so I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
My main takeaways:
Clear thinking is a prerequisite for clear writing. How do you avoid cluttered writing? “The answer is to clear our heads of clutter. Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one...
Jorge Arango
After Forty Years, Still No Silver Bullet
Forty years ago, computer scientist Fred Brooks published a paper called No Silver Bullet: Essence...
10th Jul 2026
Forty years ago, computer scientist Fred Brooks published a paper called No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accident in Software Engineering. As its title implies, the paper argues there are no technological shortcuts to making software radically easier, simpler, or more reliable. You...
MIT News - Civil and...
How good old mud can lower building costs
Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. MIT researchers invented a way to make...
24th Jan 2025
Builders pour concrete into temporary molds called formwork. MIT researchers invented a way to make these structures out of on-site soil.
Krebs on Security
ShinyHunters Wage Broad Corporate Extortion Spree
A cybercriminal group that used voice phishing attacks to siphon more than a billion records from...
7th Oct 2025
A cybercriminal group that used voice phishing attacks to siphon more than a billion records from Salesforce customers earlier this year has launched a website that threatens to publish data stolen from dozens of Fortune 500 firms if they refuse to pay a ransom. The group also...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Why we prefer computers over consoles when introducing kids to gaming
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing...
8th Mar 2024
I grew up gaming on consoles like Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. I have a lot of fond memories playing games with my brothers on those devices.
But as my own kids have gotten older, my wife and I have decided to first introduce them to gaming with computers, instead of consoles.
The...
Simply Explained
Filtering spam on YouTube with TensorFlow & AI
My YouTube channel has been attracting a lot of spammers. They try to trick people by saying they...
6th Jul 2021
My YouTube channel has been attracting a lot of spammers. They try to trick people by saying they know how to profit from trading cryptocurrencies or that they can recover lost wallet keys.I've been marking these comments as spam, thinking that YouTube would learn to recognize...
Notes on software...
Confusion and disengagement in meetings
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks...
30th Nov 2019
The quickest way to cut through confusion or disagreement among
otherwise amiable and honest folks is to ask questions.
Ask early so you don't waste time. But it's not enough to just ask
clarifying questions because the answers won't always be clear.
Sounds like Human Interaction...
Notes on software...
My favorite software subreddits
Originally published on December 5, 2021.
If you are an experienced software developer whose only...
16th May 2023
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...
tim.sh
Why I created Ethereum Proof of Stake demo
Hi there!
2nd Nov 2024
benn.substack
The banality of surveillance
Do our dull lives become worth watching?
6th Mar 2026
Do our dull lives become worth watching?
Willem L. Middelkoop
Three tips to make a content strategy work
When you write for your blog or for your company's website, there are things you can consider to...
24th Mar 2021
When you write for your blog or for your company's website, there are things you can consider to maximise the discoverability, longevity and impact of your writing. Leverage the energy you put in into your words. Today I share with you three of my lessons learned while writing...
Posts on Made of...
amd64 and va_arg
A while back, I was poking around LLVM bugs, and discovered, to my surprise, that LLVM doesn’t...
4th Oct 2010
A while back, I was poking around LLVM bugs, and discovered, to my surprise, that LLVM doesn’t support the va_arg intrinsic, used by functions to accept multiple arguments, at all on amd64. It turns out that clang and llvm-gcc, the compilers that backend to LLVM, have their own...
Home on Erik...
Music recommendations using cover images (part 1)
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in...
1st Apr 2014
Scrolling through the Discover page on Spotify the other day it occurred to me that the album is in fact a fairly strong visual proxy for what kind of content you can expect from it. I started wondering if the album cover can in fact be used for recommendations.
MIT News - Civil and...
MIT engineers whip up a more breathable hydrogel
The new aerated material could enable longer-lasting bandages, implants, and wearable sensors.
8th Jul 2026
The new aerated material could enable longer-lasting bandages, implants, and wearable sensors.
Jonas Hietala
The great Hochstapler
Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.
I’m now a pretty...
19th Sep 2010
Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.
I’m now a pretty happy student at Linköpings university and I’m reading something similar to Computer Science or Computer engineering, but I guess it’ll become whatever you make it to be. For...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Epochs and slots all the way down: ways to give Ethereum users faster transaction confirmation times
30th Jun 2024
tim.sh
Deploying apps in Coolify, part 1
1st Oct 2025
Elevation Lab - Blog
Introducing TagVault Magnetic for AirTag
Wanting to easily, securely, and discretely keep an AirTag on our car, we designed...
28th Nov 2023
Wanting to easily, securely, and discretely keep an AirTag on our car, we designed the TagVault Magnetic Mount.
Testing many designs, we did not want to settle with anything that couldn't stand extreme vibration. So we gave our mount has an huge, thick Neodymium rare earth...
benn.substack
Something in the orange
A last exit.
3rd Oct 2025
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note On Charity Through Marginal Price Discrimination
11th Mar 2017
Birchtree
The “Bluesky feels like early Twitter!” vibe
Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1...
27th Nov 2024
Bluesky has the juice right now, and while it’s slowed down a bit this week, they were adding over 1 million users a day for a bit last week. One sentiment I’m hearing a lot recently is that Bluely “feels like early Twitter,” which
Notes on software...
How to get better at recursion
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For...
7th Mar 2021
tldr; reimplement standard library functions in your favorite
language without loops.
Background
For a few years after college I spent a lot of free time doing
projects in Standard ML and Scheme. As a result I got really
comfortable doing recursion. The two big reasons for this...
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