Vitalik Buterin's...
Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed people but underrated among informed people
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Understanding the Computer
When I discovered programming it felt like a whole new world opened up for me with endless...
over a year ago
When I discovered programming it felt like a whole new world opened up for me with endless possibilities. It granted unlimited power and I could create virtually anything and it explained so much to me - how did a program work? How could you make a game or a website? But there...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?
9 months ago
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...
Electronics etc…
Symbolic Reference and Hardware Models in Python
The Traditional Hardware Design and Verification Flow
An Image Downscaler as Example Design
The...
a week ago
The Traditional Hardware Design and Verification Flow
An Image Downscaler as Example Design
The Reference Model
The Micro-Architecture Model
Comparing the results
Conversion to Hardware
Combining symbolic models with random input generation
Specification changes
Things to...
Style over Substance
My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar...
over a year ago
Cheaper than a tank of gas, smaller than a Leica, 6x6 medium format negs - tons of fun. This Nettar folding camera sure is bang for buck!
The post My new purchase: a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16 appeared first on Style over Substance.
Jonas Hietala
2017 in Review
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got...
over a year ago
In contrast to previous years I haven’t kept up with the blog. For good reason I’d say since we got a child in October! It really alters your perspectives and other things suddenly feel a little less important and of course there’s less time to do other stuff.
A little late and...
Arduino Blog
Project Hub’s new featured pages are your gateway to inspiration!
Arduino’s Project Hub is more than just a platform; it’s a vibrant community where members share...
6 months ago
Arduino’s Project Hub is more than just a platform; it’s a vibrant community where members share their ideas and achievements, contributing to our knowledge base and inspiring everyone to make, learn, and try something new. With close to 5,400 projects, including tutorials,...
Louwrentius
Monitor power usage with your UPS
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how...
over a year ago
If a system is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), it is
possible to determine how much power it consumes. For this purpose, I wrote a
small script:
Host:~# ./ups.sh
UPS model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LCD
APC model: Back-UPS RS 1200 LC
Capacity: 720 Watt
Load: 18...
Arduino Blog
Enhance your IoT dashboards with Arduino Cloud’s new Image widget
At Arduino, we’re constantly working to improve your IoT management experience. Today, we’re excited...
4 months ago
At Arduino, we’re constantly working to improve your IoT management experience. Today, we’re excited to announce a new feature for Arduino Cloud that will allow you to enhance your IoT dashboards: the Image widget. The new Image widget The Image widget is a simple yet powerful...
Applied Cartography
buttondown.com/alternatives
Some kind words from Chris Krycho on Buttondown's Alternatives page:
This is how I want all my tools...
2 weeks 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...
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Karl Popper
A woven web of guesses
over a year ago
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...
Applied Cartography
Tailwind black magic: swallowing all pointer events
I wrote two days ago about a real and useful application of Tailwind black magic; here's...
9 months ago
I wrote two days ago about a real and useful application of Tailwind black magic; here's another.
Buttondown has a dropzone component lets folks drag-and-drop items or click on it to get a file-picker. It's used for importing images, archives, CSVs, the works: because it's so...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The different types of ZK-EVMs
over a year ago
Arduino Blog
These Shattered Space helmet replicas stay video game accurate using an Arduino Nano
Starfield, a game set in the vast expanse of our galaxy, is receiving a new expansion called...
3 months ago
Starfield, a game set in the vast expanse of our galaxy, is receiving a new expansion called “Shattered Space” in which players can don novel weapons and gear to take on the latest challenge. As part of its release, the expansion’s publisher Bethesda reached out to cosplayer...
./techtipsy
Steam local network game transfers are a game-changer
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have...
a year ago
Steam recently launched a new feature: local network game transfers.
The idea is simple: if you have a game downloaded on another PC and you’re both on the same local network, then Steam can download game data
from that PC, avoiding the need to download the game over public...
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 20 Timelapse
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I...
over a year ago
So this time I managed to compose a timelapse of my weekend and the making of My Minions. Sadly I lost the first few hours as I forgot to turn it on…
Anyway here’s the result:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABVPlRaA5iI
Arduino Blog
Technology meets creativity in two interactive art student projects
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and...
2 months ago
Art and engineering are not separate concepts. There is a great deal of overlap between the two and many modern disciplines increasingly blur those lines. Mónica Riki is an “electronic artist and creative coder” who embodies that idea: you might remember her and her incredible...
Applied Cartography
Why your marketing site should be separate
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we...
3 months ago
In Notes on buttondown.com and How Buttondown uses HAProxy, I outlined the slightly kludgy way we serve buttondown.com both as a marketing site (public-facing, Next/Vercel, largely just content pushed by non-developers) and an author-facing app (behind a login, Django/Heroku/Vue)...
Vitalik Buterin's...
The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications
11 months ago
Posts on Made of...
Two kinds of testing
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to...
over a year ago
While talking about thinking about tests and testing in software engineering recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are (at least) two major ideas and goals that people have when they test or talk about testing. This post aims to outline what I see as these two schools,...
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...
Jonas Hietala
Groar
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
So I actually finished Ludum Dare 33. I can’t believe how hard it was...
over a year ago
Download
Linux 64bit
Windows
So I actually finished Ludum Dare 33. I can’t believe how hard it was to actually make something! It continues to amaze me what fantastic stuff everyone manage to make in just 48 hours. This is what I came up with for the theme You are the Monster....
axio.ms
A small ode to the CRT
Built October 2018
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes. As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at...
over a year ago
Built October 2018
I used to hate Cathode Ray Tubes. As a kid in Europe, everything flickered at 50Hz, or made a loud whistle at 15.625KHz (back when I could still hear it). CRTs just seemed crude, “electro-brutalist” contraptions from the valve era. They were heavy, and...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the...
11 months ago
I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet1 chip, probably designed in the 1970s.
This article provides an introductory guide to reverse-engineering CMOS circuits, using this chip as an
example.
Although the chip looks like a tangle of lines at first,
its large...
Louwrentius
Making cowpatty recognize a four-way handshake
I was unable to get cowpatty working with a packet capture that actually
contains a four-way...
over a year ago
I was unable to get cowpatty working with a packet capture that actually
contains a four-way handshake of a WPA session.
I got it working like this:
First, download cowpatty 4.6 right here, within the source directory of
cowpatty.
Extract cowpatty and apply this patch using these...
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.
On Life and Lisp
Conformant OpenGL 4.6 on the M1
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full...
10 months ago
For years, the M1 has only supported OpenGL 4.1. That changes today –
with our release of full OpenGL® 4.6 and OpenGL® ES 3.2! Install Fedora for the latest
M1/M2-series drivers.
Already installed? Just dnf –refresh
upgrade.
Unlike the vendor’s non-conformant 4.1 drivers, our...
Notes on software...
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for...
over a year ago
In this post we'll stumble toward a working emulator for a barebones C
program compiled for linux/AMD64. The approach will be slightly more
so based on observation than by following a spec; a great way
to quickly become familiar with a topic, and a bad way to...
axio.ms
Colourclock
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed...
over a year ago
Original concept circa 2008, revisited 2012, hardware designed Feb 2014, firmware designed April-August 2014, project completed August 2014, installed in spare room in 2016, written up in March 2018 (jeeez…)
Acrylic, LEDs, ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller.
...
On Life and Lisp
Vulkan 1.3 on the M1 in 1 month
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the...
7 months ago
u{text-decoration-thickness:0.09em;text-decoration-color:skyblue}
Finally, conformant Vulkan for the M1! The new “Honeykrisp” driver is
the first conformant
Vulkan® for Apple hardware on any operating system, implementing the
full 1.3 spec without “portability”...
Posts on Made of...
Some musings on ORMs
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application,...
over a year ago
I’m pretty sure every developer who has ever worked with a modern database-backed application, particularly a web-app, has a love/hate relationship with their ORM, or object-relational mapper.
On the one hand, ORMs are vastly more pleasant to work with than code that constructs...
Applied Cartography
Notes from April
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past...
8 months ago
Welcome to spring, bona fide and humid. Lots of writing this month:
I wrote about spending the past two years as an independent technologist.
On the media side of things: brief words on Murderville (meh), The Parallax View (incredible), This is Personal (meh), Cribsheet...
Jonas Hietala
Netrunner Summer Tournament Linköping
There was another Netrunner tournament this Sunday with 8 entrants. We had two new legal data packs...
over a year ago
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...
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...
Good Enough
Issue 0: Collector's Item
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s...
over a year ago
1. Oh, hello.
We didn’t see you there. How are you doing?
You’ve somehow ended up with a collector’s item in your hands: the very first Good Enough Newsletter. This is the beginning of what we (Barry Hess & Shawn Liu) hope to be a years-long series of communiqués with our rabid...
Jonas Hietala
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afros
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small...
over a year ago
Aaah feels good having a game ready after the last month’s failure! This time it’s a small shooter.
The Chronicles of Bim: The 100 Fake Afro
Bullet masher - can you keep up with 100 enemies at the screen?
Instruction
W: up
Credits
Music: The Last Prophecy - Matthew Le Blanc...
Arduino Blog
Vintage rotary phone becomes stylish kitchen timer
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three...
7 months ago
It seems like everything that happens in a kitchen requires exact timing. Whisk the batter for three minutes, knead the dough for 15 minutes, bake for 30 minutes, and so on. A timer is a necessity for cooking and baking, but there is no reason you need to use your phone or a...
Home on Erik...
Ping the world
I just pinged a few million random IP addresses from my apartment in NYC. Here's the result:
Some...
over a year ago
I just pinged a few million random IP addresses from my apartment in NYC. Here's the result:
Some notes:
What's going on with Sweden? Too much torrenting? Ireland is likewise super slow, but not Northern Ireland Eastern Ukraine is also super slow, maybe not surprising given...
Applied Cartography
Postgres batch enqueuing in ten lines of Django
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count =...
a year ago
It hasn't failed me yet:
BATCH_SIZE = 100
def batch_proess(queryset) -> None:
count = queryset.count()
if count == 0:
time.sleep(10)
return
with transaction.atomic():
batch = list(
queryset.select_for_update(of=("self",),...
Arduino Blog
Kick off the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with these Formula 1-inspired Arduino projects
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the...
7 months ago
The Monaco Grand Prix is just days away and will likely be one of the most exciting races of the season. While most fans can’t participate directly — except as spectators — they can celebrate their passion through DIY projects. That’s why we’ve scoured the community to find the...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to hobby CNC
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
3 months ago
In which the author tilts at windmills for a brief while.
Louwrentius
I resurrected my Dutch movie review site from 2003
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the...
over a year ago
Introduction
Between 2003 and 2006, I ran a Dutch movie review site called moevie.nl.1
I built the site and wrote the reviews. It never made any money. It cost me money to host, and it cost me a lot of time writing reviews, but I remember enjoying writing reviews about films I...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Glue work considered harmful
“Glue work” is an concept Tanya Reilly came up with in 2019. The idea is that there’s a large amount...
2 weeks ago
“Glue work” is an concept Tanya Reilly came up with in 2019. The idea is that there’s a large amount of unglamorous work that every team…
Posts on Made of...
Finding near-duplicates with Jaccard similarity and MinHash
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are...
6 months ago
Suppose we have a large collection of documents, and we wish you identify which documents are approximately the same as each other. For instance, we may have crawled the web over some period of time, and expect to have fetched the “same page” several times, but to see slight...
Jonas Hietala
The eBook for 'Why Cryptocurrencies?' is now available for free
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years...
10 months ago
The eBook for my book Why Cryptocurrencies? is now available for free.
It’s been almost 4 years since the web version was done, and 3 since the physical copy was available…
Which can hardly be called a success.
Things happened, so let’s do a quick retrospective to, maybe, learn...
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal road bike
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
over a year ago
I wondered how hard it would be to make a bike from spare parts I had in my garage
Push to Prod
Best Questions and Answers to the “Terrifying Netflix Concurrency Bug” Post
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so...
a month ago
Why couldn't we roll back? Weren't we concerned about costs? Why is operating Netflix so complicated? Plus many others.
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...
Arduino Blog
Meet Real Robot One V2: A mini DIY industrial robot arm
Started in 2022 as an exploration of what’s possible in the field of DIY robotics, Pavel Surynek’s...
5 months ago
Started in 2022 as an exploration of what’s possible in the field of DIY robotics, Pavel Surynek’s Real Robot One (RR1) project is a fully-featured 6+1-axis robot arm based on 3D-printed parts and widely available electronics. The initial release was constructed with PETG...
Louwrentius
A practical understanding of lead acid batteries
Introduction
The goal of this article is to give you a practical understanding Lead Acid batteries....
over a year ago
Introduction
The goal of this article is to give you a practical understanding Lead Acid batteries. We won't address the underlying chemistry, we'll treat them as a black-box and we will discover their characteristics and how to keep them healthy.
Disclaimer
I'm an amateur. I...
Vitalik Buterin's...
DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
New Blog Location
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of...
over a year ago
I finally got fed up with Blogger, and am moving this blog to live on Wordpress hosted off of scripts.mit.edu. In the process of converting everything over and setting up Wordpress I’ve decided I hate it, but hopefully I hate it less than I hate Blogger. We’ll see.
I’ve also...
Jonas Hietala
The T-34/2 keyboard layout
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my...
over a year ago
The T-34/2 layout.
QMK Heatmap Generator, with all layers and combos.
It’s been 6 months since my last update on the T-34 keyboard layout, and I’ve made some changes I’d like to document here.
As seen in the heatmap above, the layout seems quite decent. There’s still an issue...
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...
Louwrentius
Migrated this blog from blogger.com to blogofile
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to...
over a year ago
Until now, I was hosting my blog on Google's blogger. I switched to using Blogofile. I wanted to have more control over my content and the layout.
I had many issues with the blogger blog post editor, resulting in ugly posts with too much white space, strange fonts and fonts...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Layer 1 Should Be Innovative in the Short Term but Less in the Long Term
over a year ago
Neil Madden
On PBKDF2 iterations
There has been a lot of discussion recently around the LastPass breach, especially with regards to...
a year ago
There has been a lot of discussion recently around the LastPass breach, especially with regards to the number of PBKDF2 iterations applied to the master password to derive the vault encryption key. Other people have already dissected this particular breach, but I want to more...
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!
Neil Madden
The square roots of all evil
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all...
a month ago
Every programmer knows Donald Knuth’s famous quote that “premature optimization is the root of all evil”, from his 1974 Turing Award lecture (pdf). A fuller quotation of the surrounding context gives a rounder view: I am sorry to say that many people nowadays are condemning...
Arduino Blog
Arduino’s Alvik Robot shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025 in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, and Digital...
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025,...
a month ago
We’re thrilled to announce that Arduino Education has been shortlisted for the Bett Awards 2025, this time in the AV, VR/AR, Robotics, or Digital Device category with our Alvik robot! This recognition highlights our dedication to innovation, inclusivity, and the advancement of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
An Incomplete Guide to Rollups
over a year ago
somenice
Russet Lake Early Summer
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was...
3 months ago
An early canvas of Fissile mountain reflected in Russet Lake. This time early summer when there was still a bit of ice on the lake and the mountain tops are covered with snow. The painting is framed in western red cedar. Russet Lake Early Summer by Andrew SmithAcrylic on canvas10...
Posts on Made of...
Versioning dotfiles in git
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines...
over a year ago
I’ve been looking for a good solution for versioning and synchronizing my dotfiles between machines for some time. I experimented with keeping all of ~ in subversion for a while, but it never worked out well for me.
I’ve finally settled on a solution that I like using git, and so...
Jonas Hietala
December Theme: New World Order
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of...
over a year ago
The The Experimental Gameplay Project drives on with the Art Game theme which will last the rest of this year but that’s something we can’t accept! I’ve done my game and I didn’t force myself out from the Haskell world just to do nuthin so here’s a new little theme for me :)
What...
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...
Willem's Blog
Designing my own watch
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical...
over a year ago
Last month I received my custom made wristwatch from Switzerland, it is a minimalistic mechanical annual calendar designed to be understated and true to the metal.
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 :)
Willem's Blog
The Problem With Bitcoin
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
3 weeks ago
Some thoughts on the long term viability of Bitcoin's rising value.
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: Signaling and Job Control
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read...
over a year ago
(This is part three of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 or part 2 if you’re new here)
For my final entry on termios, I will be looking at job control in the shell (i.e. backgrounding and foreground jobs) and the very closely related...
Jonas Hietala
A Simple Thought
I wrote that we where doing some microprogramming, making the processor work etc. We had a lab about...
over a year ago
I wrote that we where doing some microprogramming, making the processor work etc. We had a lab about that yesterday and I was very, very nervous. The preparations weren’t that hard, but they where very bothersome. Converting the instructions to binary/hex by hand is never nice....
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Red Hat
The Billion Dollar Open Source Company
a year ago
The Billion Dollar Open Source Company
Jonas Hietala
My MCU movie ranking
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge...
over a year ago
I did the MCU Movie Re-Watch again this year in preparation for Avengers: Endgame. I wasn’t a huge MCU fan before doing the same re-watch for Infinity War, but after that I became one.
For fun I tried to rank the movies as I saw them, this is some sort of accounting my rankings...
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...
Home on Erik...
What's up with music recommendations?
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are...
over a year ago
I just answered a Quora question about what, if any, are the differences in the algorithms that are behind recommendations for music and movies.
Of course, every media type is different. For instance, there's fundamental reasons why latent factor models works really well for...
Notes on software...
How to recommend books, or, stop recommending SICP
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance...
over a year ago
Many "must-read" books are not well-written. I try to read a
lot, but I
still have a low tolerance for bad writing and bad editing. I write
this post both to discourage thoughtless recommendations and to
encourage the receivers of bad recommendations.
For software developers,...
Matt Blewitt
Long Distance Relationships
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through...
2 months ago
I’ve been managing a fully remote, fully distributed team, covering timezones from UTC-8 through UTC+10, for the last couple of years. Through that time, I’ve learned a lot on organising work, interpersonal relationships, and ultimately how to overcome a lack of promximity to my...
Posts on Made of...
Confessions of a programmer: I hate code review
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work...
over a year ago
Most of the projects I've been working on today have fairly strict code review policies. My work requires code review on most of our code, and as we bring on an army of interns for the summer, I've been responsible for reviewing lots of code. Additionally, about five months ago...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the Intel 386 processor die: the clock circuit
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this...
a year ago
Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip.
In this blog post, I'll examine the clock-generation circuitry inside the Intel 386 processor.
Earlier processors such as the 8086 (1978) were simpler, using two clock phases internally.
The...
Arduino Blog
Can this tiny lawn mower robot cut it in the real world?
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down...
6 months ago
We’re finally starting to see robotic lawn mowers gain a little bit of traction as prices come down and consumer trust goes up. They work a bit like Roomba vacuums and pathfinding sophistication varies from one model to the next. But even the most basic models are still a lot...
computers are bad
2024-09-14 the national warning system
Previously on Deep Space Nine, we discussed the extensive and variable products
that AT&T and...
3 months ago
Previously on Deep Space Nine, we discussed the extensive and variable products
that AT&T and telephone operating companies sold as private
lines. One of the
interesting properties of private line systems is that they can be ordered as
four-wire. Internally, the telephone network...
somenice
RGB Input Range Sliders
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range...
5 months ago
R0 G20 B0 A fun little challenge to myself this week was putting together these HTML input range type sliders to control the color of an LED.Each color channel change triggers an update to read the value, convert it to a hex code (eg. #FF0000), update the output element value,...
Applied Cartography
Peak Newsletter
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to...
5 months ago
A handful of folks sent me this quip from Nate Silver a few days ago:
Slightly against interest to admit this (I don't want more competition lol) but I think we're still probably a year or two away from Peak Newsletter. It's just a really good distribution mechanism for certain...
Louwrentius
LFS - Linux Firewall Script released
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux...
over a year ago
I started a small new Google project for a new script I wrote called LFS.
It stands for Linux Firewall Script.
I run a small Linux box as an internet router that doubles as a firewall. The
firewall is configured using iptables. In my opinion, iptables is not the
easiest tool to...
Arduino Blog
Improve laser engraving speeds with an Arduino-controlled turntable
Engraving items with a laser-based system at home is amazingly convenient for one-off parts, but...
6 months ago
Engraving items with a laser-based system at home is amazingly convenient for one-off parts, but what happens when the production volume needs to increase? For element14 Presents host Clem Mayer, this usually meant preparing many uniform pieces of engraving stock, opening the...
Louwrentius
How to escape file names in bash shell scripts
After fighting with Bash for quite some time, I found out that the following
code provides a nice...
over a year ago
After fighting with Bash for quite some time, I found out that the following
code provides a nice basis for escaping special characters. Ofcource it is not
complete, but the most important characters are filtered.
If anybody has a better solution, please let me know. It works and...
Engineers Need Art
Virtual Pinhead
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual...
9 months ago
Discovering virtual pinball, a hobbyist community devoted to it, and building a full-size virtual pinball cabinet.
Arduino Blog
On-body LEDs help this guitar rock harder
You don’t go to watch a band play live for the audio quality — most venues are atrocious in that...
7 months ago
You don’t go to watch a band play live for the audio quality — most venues are atrocious in that regard. No, you go to enjoy the show as a whole and that includes the visuals. The more a band can do to make the performance look exciting, the more you’re going to enjoy it. […]
The...
Notes on software...
io_uring basics: Writing a file to disk
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that...
a year ago
King and I wrote a blog
post
about building an event-driven cross-platform IO library that used
io_uring on Linux. We sketched out how it works at a high level but I
hadn't yet internalized how you actually code with io_uring. So I
strapped myself down this week and wrote...
./techtipsy
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in...
a year ago
k-space is a hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia, and they organized
a hackathon recently. Unlike in most hackathons, in this one you could whatever you like with no
expectations about building a business or coming up with an MVP, just come on down to the space and
start working on...
watchTowr Labs
Palo Alto - Putting The Protecc In GlobalProtect (CVE-2024-3400)
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by...
8 months ago
Welcome to April 2024, again. We’re back, again.
Over the weekend, we were all greeted by now-familiar news—a nation-state was exploiting a “sophisticated” vulnerability for full compromise in yet another enterprise-grade SSLVPN device.
We’ve seen all the commentary around the...
On Life and Lisp
The Apple GPU and the Impossible Bug
In late 2020, Apple debuted the M1 with Apple’s GPU architecture, AGX, rumoured to be derived from...
over a year ago
In late 2020, Apple debuted the M1 with Apple’s GPU architecture, AGX, rumoured to be derived from Imagination’s PowerVR series. Since then, we’ve been reverse-engineering AGX and building open source graphics drivers. Last January, I rendered a triangle with my own code, but...
Home on Erik...
Books I consumed in 2017
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a...
over a year ago
Turns out having a toddler isn't super compatible with reading. I used to read ~100 books/year as a teenager, but it has slowly deteriorated to maybe 20-30 books, at most. And I don't even finish all of them because life is too short!
Good Enough
Season 3, Issue 2: Britney Coltrane
1. I ❤️HR
The past two weeks Barry and Lettini have been building our next little project, and I...
a year ago
1. I ❤️HR
The past two weeks Barry and Lettini have been building our next little project, and I tried to deal with the company-side of work: setting up payroll, health insurance, and making sure we’re compliant (hello, bureaucracy!). Back in the day when Danny and I started...
Jonas Hietala
I beat FTL on Hard with all ships in the game
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games...
a year ago
For 2023 I wanted to do something different than usual—I wanted to start playing computer games again.
So I gave myself a late Christmas gift and bought a Steam Deck (and like any self-serving gentleman I took care to pitch it as being for my kids) and I started loading it up...
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....
Avestura's Blog
How to change visibility in massive GitHub organizations like EpicGames?
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
over a year ago
How to publicize and un-publicize your visibility in massive GitHub orgs?
Good Enough
TIL: Fixing Broken Action Text Images in Atom Feeds
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed...
7 months ago
For a while now we've seen that images in our Pika atom feeds were not displaying in some feed readers.
In fact, they weren't displaying in my own feed reader, which routes through Feedly.
I was sad.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this.
Compared our feed with a lot of atom...
Willem's Blog
Different ways to visualise health
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
over a year ago
To better understand how to visualise health I looked at different health/fitness apps and games.
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part II: Thank Goodness It's FRI-day
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Mass renaming files in fish on macOS
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install...
a year ago
One of many two-liners to come as I migrate things from the old site onto Obsidian:
brew install rename
rename "s/.mdx/.md/" **.md
computers are bad
2023-07-10 the tragedy of beatrice foods
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are...
a year ago
Occasionally, research into the history of telephony takes you into some
strange places. There are conspiracy theories, of course, and there are people
who insist on their version of events so incessantly that details of dates and
places can become heated arguments. There is also...
Gwern.net Newsletter
Jan 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
over a year ago
January 2021 gwern.net newsletter with links on AI scaling up and down.
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: Data General/One (and the worst LCD in the world)
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't...
9 months ago
I mentioned earlier that while I prefer specializing in non-x86 laptops, that doesn't mean I don't collect interesting or unusual x86 laptops, like the Brother GeoBook NB-60 (I finally tracked down a mostly working NB-80C, the top of the line model, which will be the subject of a...
Computer Ads from...
Ergotron's MacTilt
MacTilt is the Solution
a month ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy
over a year ago
Matt Blewitt
Building a PostgreSQL Extension, Line by Line
I’ve been working on a particular problem - how to offer logical replication for a very large number...
6 months ago
I’ve been working on a particular problem - how to offer logical replication for a very large number of Postgres databases, where I don’t have the ability (or capacity) to liaise with the users of the databases one-to-one. In order to mitigate some of the limitations, I wanted to...
Arduino Blog
A pair of Arduino UNO R4 boards power this Tron-inspired, decked-out shop room
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop...
6 months ago
Bob Clagett of the “I Like to Make Stuff” YouTube channel has recently undertaken an extensive shop renovation project where he is rearranging tools, tidying up various spaces, and even creating a dedicated “clean” room for his collection of 3D printers/electronics work. With its...
Home on Erik...
We are still early with the cloud: why software development is overdue for a change
This is is in many respects a successor to a blog post I wrote last year about what I want from...
over a year ago
This is is in many respects a successor to a blog post I wrote last year about what I want from software infrastructure, but the ideas morphed in my head into something sort of wider.
On Life and Lisp
OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux
Upgrade your Asahi Linux systems, because your graphics drivers are getting a big boost:...
a year ago
Upgrade your Asahi Linux systems, because your graphics drivers are getting a big boost: leapfrogging from OpenGL 2.1 over OpenGL 3.0 up to OpenGL 3.1! Similarly, the OpenGL ES 2.0 support is bumping up to OpenGL ES 3.0. That means more playable games and more functioning...
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...
./techtipsy
Stupid project ideas: the War Machine
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such...
over a year ago
LinusTechTips has some pretty great videos about building
insane PC and server setups, such as:
unboxing and deploying petabytes of storage
7 gamers, 1 CPU
building sleeper PC-s
testing sketchy CPU-s
opening up a 100TB SSD
I have the ideas, but not the budget of LinusTechTips, so...
Gwern.net Newsletter
March 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
over a year ago
2 major new site features: 'popins' and recursive Wikipedia popups
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...
Arduino Blog
This miniature monorail stays upright with the help of gyro stabilization
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is...
4 months ago
Most monorail systems, like the kind at Disney and in Las Vegas, stay upright because the “rail” is actually a very wide beam. The car’s load tires (often literal truck or trailer tires) roll on top of that beam and guide tires clamp the sides of the beam, preventing the car from...
Notes on software...
How do databases execute expressions?
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not...
a year ago
Databases are fun. They sit at the confluence of Computer
Science topics that might otherwise not seem practical in life as a
developer. For example, every database with a query language is also a
programming language implementation of some caliber. That doesn't
include all...
Jonas Hietala
Going to University
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of...
over a year ago
I mentioned in the last post that I’m going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I’m sorry. It’s not as hard as I had imagined, and I don’t have that much in school but there’s still a lot that’s going on. For example now how to make...
Jonas Hietala
Giving the blog a facelift
When I rewrote the blog in Rust I tried not to touch any of the styling, but some things annoyed...
a year ago
When I rewrote the blog in Rust I tried not to touch any of the styling, but some things annoyed me:
It wasn’t pretty (even ugly in some parts).
No dark mode support.
Some elements were broken, for instance images or code blocks overlapping the header when it was floating to the...
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Avoiding worry driven development
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a...
over a year ago
Sofware dysfunction is more often motivated by anxiety, fear, worry and embarassment than it is by a lack of technical skill. Engineers…
./techtipsy
The absolute state of Bluetooth audio in 2022
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your...
over a year ago
I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones. They’re good for consuming content.
Audio calls with your colleagues? Forget about it.
This is the setup I have to go with, and it has all to do with how Bluetooth
works. Your options with Bluetooth headsets are the following:
high quality...
Lighthouse Blog
How to manually add content to read it later
7 months ago
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: the dark side of cloud hosting
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The...
over a year ago
Linode has released an update about the security incident first reported
on April 12, 2013.
The Linode Manager is the environment where you control your virtual private servers and where you pay for services. This is the environment that got compromised.
Linode uses Adobe's...
Arduino Blog
This autonomous go-kart only needs a camera to navigate a workshop circuit
Autonomous vehicles, and self-driving cars in particular, are probably one of the most enticing...
a week ago
Autonomous vehicles, and self-driving cars in particular, are probably one of the most enticing technologies of the 21st century. But despite a great deal of R&D and even more speculation, we have yet to see a self-driving car that can actually operate on real public roads...
./techtipsy
ThinkPad as a server: third time's the charm
This is a follow-up to my two previous attempts on this topic:
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable...
2 months ago
This is a follow-up to my two previous attempts on this topic:
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
Since then, I’ve had quite a few changes to my home server setup:
I put my home server stuff on an IKEA pegboard
I tried the...
Jonas Hietala
Browse posts with telescope.nvim
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some...
8 months ago
I’ve used telescope.nvim's find files with
require("telescope.builtin").find_files for quite some time.
I use find files together with it’s cousin .oldfiles (find recently opened files) all the time for finding source code files, blog posts, and more.
But it’s naturally...
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...
Unit testing C code with gtest
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use...
over a year ago
This post covers building and testing a minimal, but still useful, C
project. We'll use Google's
gtest and
CMake for testing C code. This will serve as a
foundation for some upcoming posts/projects on programming Linux,
userland networking and interpreters.
test/CMakeLists.txt...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #43: An awesome drone trial in central London, legalised e-scooters at last, and...
And yes, I am on Bluesky.
a month ago
And yes, I am on Bluesky.
Good Enough
Thoughts On Thoughts
It’s time for a revolution. Too long have we, collectively and individually, been tyrannized by our...
a year ago
It’s time for a revolution. Too long have we, collectively and individually, been tyrannized by our thoughts and what we believe about them.
Or perhaps we can think of this as an intervention. This post is the circle of friends gathered to help us stop hitting ourselves in the...
Jonas Hietala
Top ten activities that make me happy
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome....
over a year ago
Recently we finally moved out of our old apartment and into a new larger apartment and it’s awesome. It’s no more than a year old and feels very fresh compared to the old one. It’s also larger with an extra room, dishwasher (!) and closer to the city centrum and everything is...
Good Enough
How We Built Quack (Beta)
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any...
a year ago
We recently launched Quack, a simple utility for you to share a beautifully rendered version of any Markdown text. This software is completely front-end based, and for me personally it was a bit of a challenging puzzle to implement. Thankfully we have genius hackers like Arun...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Inside the guidance system and computer of the Minuteman III nuclear missile
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The...
4 months ago
The Minuteman missile was introduced in 1962 as a key part of America's nuclear deterrent.
The Minuteman III missile is currently the only US land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with
400 missiles ready for launch, spread across five central states.1
The missile...
Jonas Hietala
Ores
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added...
over a year ago
Now we can build rooms, we can place objects and the worker will do things for us. Now I’ve added some ores which makes the game look a bit less boring. I realize I’ve spent all my time on these little things and I still don’t have a game! But it doesn’t matter, maybe I can...
Willem's Blog
Art of visualisation
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to...
over a year ago
You learn from experts if you have the privilege to work with them, this month I had a chance to help a professional food photographer.
Good Enough
Grassroots
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends,...
8 months ago
TLDNR: If you have an interest in Good Enough succeeding, we need your help! Telling friends, shouting on socials, and sharing links to our stuff with your favorite influencers–all of these things will help Good Enough succeed and continue making amazing stuff!
As we’ve been...
lcamtuf’s thing
The secret lives of snowblowers
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than...
4 months ago
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than it seems.
./techtipsy
Disk is OK
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of...
over a year ago
Maybe I am unlucky with computer hardware.
Maybe I have the opposite of the golden touch of Midas.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that I use my hardware for things they were never meant to be used for.
Anyway, I have acquired two Seagate 4TB external hard drives for doing some...
Notes on software...
Interview with the D Language Blog: BSDScheme
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
over a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Louwrentius
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Garbled Circuits Primer
over a year ago
./techtipsy
How I treat my urge to hoard data
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized...
over a year ago
The tagline for /r/datahoarder reads:
“It’s A Digital Disease!”. I agree.
At some point I realized that the pursuit to hoard all the things will just keep
on consuming more and more of my time and money. Storage is cheap up until to a
point, once you find yourself tracking hard...
Engineers Need Art
Kim-1 User Manual
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
a year ago
For sale: a few KIM-1 User Manuals I printed up.
Applied Cartography
How shadcn/ui examples work
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a...
7 months ago
I’m increasingly convinced that for developer-first tools, a really good docs experience is a durable, non-trivial advantage.
Part of this thesis is that Really Good Docs Experiences, in addition to having great information architecture and strong writing/prose, should be thought...
Notes on software...
General book recommendations
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.
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...
a month ago
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
Electronics etc…
Measuring the HP 11720A Pulse Modulator and Coax Cables
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a pulse modulator and what are they used for?
The HP 11720A Pulse Modulator
Inside the HP 11720A
Measurement Setup for a Quick Testing Session
Pin Modulator Power Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Loss Measurements with HP 432A
Cable Power Measurements with...
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...
Posts on Made of...
Some Android reverse-engineering tools
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I...
over a year ago
I’ve spent a lot of time this last week staring at decompiled Dalvik assembly. In the process, I created a couple of useful tools that I figure are worth sharing.
I’ve been using dedexer instead of baksmali, honestly mainly because the former’s output has fewer blank lines and so...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 2: The Surge
2 months ago
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...
Opsbros
IBM M13 Trackpoint USB Converter
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked...
over a year ago
Me, never not on the lookout for an opportunity to design something, whether needed or not, worked with @micon to design a module that could fit snugly in the keyboard, and provide a USB-C interface directly into the Keyboard/Mouse module.
csvbase blog
DuckDB isn't just fast
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
7 months ago
A whistlestop tour of the cool bits of DuckDB
computers are bad
2023-07-15 underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet...
a year ago
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am
bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit").
It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but,
you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Epochs and slots all the way down: ways to give Ethereum users faster transaction confirmation times
6 months ago
Odds and Ends of...
WATCH: Were the US election polls right?
My conversation with polling guru Mark Pack
a month ago
My conversation with polling guru Mark Pack
Notes on software...
Leaders, you need to share organization success stories more frequently
This post goes out to anyone who leads a team: managers, directors,
VPs, executives. You need to...
over a year ago
This post goes out to anyone who leads a team: managers, directors,
VPs, executives. You need to share organization success stories with
your organization on a regular and frequent basis. Talk about sales
wins, talk about new services released, talk about the positive impact
of a...
computers are bad
2024-06-08 dmv.org
The majority of US states have something called a "Department of Motor
Vehicles," or DMV. Actually,...
6 months ago
The majority of US states have something called a "Department of Motor
Vehicles," or DMV. Actually, the universality of the term "DMV" seems to be
overstated. A more general term is "motor vehicle administrator," used for
example by the American Association of Motor Vehicle...
Jonas Hietala
Being Productive
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all...
over a year ago
School’s been going on now for… Is it a month and a half maybe? I don’t know really but it’s all going so fast, week after week is disappearing and I don’t know where they go but I know that I’m at least not wasting them like I did most of last year!
Last year I managed school...
Bryan Braun - Blog
Made in 2024
Here are some things I made in 2024:
Music Box Fun: Advanced Editing (a new major feature):
...
2 days ago
Here are some things I made in 2024:
Music Box Fun: Advanced Editing (a new major feature):
Adds multiple-note selection for bulk operations on notes (like deletion, copy/paste, nudging and dragging)
Also includes a “space editor” for arbitrarily adding/removing space...
Jonas Hietala
Widening the horizon
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in...
over a year ago
This is a game making site but where are the games? What gives?
I’ve been slightly less motivated in making games lately and I’ve been doing different things, just to get my ideas and my motivation up. As I said in an earlier post I wanted a break from Experimental Games and I...
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...
Old Vintage...
After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor...
9 months ago
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor isn't a replacement system I secondarily acquired, nor is it a Ship of Theseus Frankenstein rebuild. This is my actual first computer, in its original case, on its original...
Louwrentius
ZFS performance on HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 G1610T
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your...
over a year ago
I think the HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 is a very interesting little box if you want to build your own ZFS-based NAS. The benchmarks I've performed seem to confirm this.
The Microserver Gen8 has nice features such as:
iLO (KVM over IP with dedicated network interface)
support...
Jonas Hietala
The ASIC pit of despair
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s...
over a year ago
Monero has once again changed the POW to brick ASICs following confirmation that 85% of Monero’s hashrate were ASICs.
Recurring hard forks to brick ASICs is a very dangerous game and what better to illustrate this than with an xkcd-style plot?
You’re safe on the edges but how do...
Jonas Hietala
Done this, done that. What now?
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and...
over a year ago
Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn’t quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I’m liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book...
computers are bad
2023-01-16 huff-duff
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an...
a year ago
We've talked a fair amount about HF radio recently, in the context of OTH
radar. Recall that an extremely useful property of HF radio here is that HF
frequencies can reflect off of the upper layers of the atmosphere, causing them
to rebound towards earth at a range much further...
Vitalik Buterin's...
How will Ethereum's multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs?
a year ago
Neil Madden
Making things
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar...
over a year ago
I made my daughter a toy tree house thing for Christmas out of old firewood (and a slice of cedar donated by a neighbour). It’s a bit clunky in places — “rustic” shall we say? But I probably enjoyed making this, over a few weeks of lunchtimes and evenings, more than anything I’ve...
Notes on software...
The year in books: 20 to recommend in 2020
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17...
over a year ago
This year I finished 47 books, up from last year but not a personal
best. The breakdown was 17 non-fiction and 30 fiction. Another 20-30
remain started but unfinished this year.
Non-fiction
The 8 non-fiction books I most recommend are:
Fashionapolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and...
Posts on Made of...
The Window Manager I Want
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window...
over a year ago
Since I first discovered ratpoison in 2005 or so, I've basically exclusively used tiling window managers, going through, over the years, StumpWM, Ion 3, and finally XMonad. They've all had various strengths and weaknesses, but I've never been totally happy with any of them. This...
Simply Explained
My Sixth Year as YouTube Creator (statistics + retrospective)
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most...
over a year ago
Every new year I reflect on the previous year and set new goals. Last year has been my most successful year on YouTube so far, and I'd like to share some statistics and thoughts. I will also go over how my email newsletter is doing and where I'm headed. And finally, I'll set...
Engineers Need Art
VPX Scripting - Part 2 (Linting)
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
8 months ago
The second in a series of posts about scripting Visual Pinball tables.
computers are bad
2024-11-23 cablesoft
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful...
a month ago
As an American, I often feel an intense jealousy of Ceefax, one of several
commercially successful teletext services in the UK and Europe. "Teletext" is
sometimes a confusing term because of its apparent relation to telecom-industry
technologies like the teletypewriter and...
Arduino Blog
This DIY smart chicken coop features AI-based predator detection
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get...
2 months ago
Raising chickens can be a very rewarding endeavor, as they can provide fresh daily eggs and help get rid of pests in the yard. But, like all animals, they require care. Most importantly, you’ll need to ensure that they have regular food and water, and you’ll need to protect them...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #49: How bat protection regulations broke Britain's planning system
Plus how Europe isn't *all bad* at growth, why every Netflix film is forgettable, and why you should...
4 days ago
Plus how Europe isn't *all bad* at growth, why every Netflix film is forgettable, and why you should visit Jimmy Carter's hometown.
Matt Blewitt
Regular Restarts Are Good, Actually
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on...
a month ago
Anecdotally, one of the more maligned features of the Heroku platform are the 24-hour limits on compute units, known as “dynos”. This is actually a good thing, but very misunderstood.
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...
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...
a month 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...
Louwrentius
Linux on Mac Mini - boot after power failure
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a...
over a year ago
When using a Mac Mini as a server or router, it is very nice if the machine
automatically boots if a power failure has occurred.
User chirhoxi on the ubuntu forum found out how this can be achieved:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1209576
Basically you need one of these...
Posts on Made of...
What MongoDB got Right
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the...
over a year ago
MongoDB is perhaps the most-widely-mocked piece of software out there right now.
While some of the mockery is out-of-date or rooted in misunderstandings, much of it is well-deserved, and it’s difficult to disagree that much of MongoDB’s engineering is incredibly simplistic,...
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...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #48: The most important week of Labour government so far?
Plus a British tech unicorn, a nuclear energy ticking time bomb and... New Zealand's weird...
a week ago
Plus a British tech unicorn, a nuclear energy ticking time bomb and... New Zealand's weird Parliament.
./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...
./techtipsy
This site will be offline on 2022-08-17 between 18:00-19:00 EEST
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an...
over a year ago
There really isn’t much to say here, nor is there a rational reason behind this.
I just see it as an opportunity to send a signal and test the capabilities of
my UPS.
I’ve prepared for this moment with my self-hosting setup, let’s see how well it
holds up. Hopefully better than...
Posts on Made of...
Security doesn't respect abstraction boundaries
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a...
over a year ago
The fundamental tool of any engineering discipline is the notion of abstraction. If we can build a set of useful, easily-described behaviors out of a complex system, we can build other systems on top of those pieces, without having to understand to worry about the full complexity...
Birchtree
Grading my 2024 Apple predictions
First off, merry Christmas!
I closed out last year with a series of posts reviewing Apple’s main...
a week ago
First off, merry Christmas!
I closed out last year with a series of posts reviewing Apple’s main product lines, iPhones, iPads, Macs, Watches, and the soon-to-be-released Vision Pro. I’ll be doing that again over the last few days of the year, but in the interest of
Opsbros
Volumer
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
over a year ago
I've always wanted a good USB volume control, so I decided to design one.
Notes on software...
Writing an x86 emulator from scratch in JavaScript: 1. a stack and register machine
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating...
over a year ago
Better yet, take a look at this post walking through emulating x86 ELF binaries in Go:
Emulating linux/AMD64 userland: interpreting an ELF binary
2. system calls
In this post we'll create a small virtual machine in JavaScript and
use it to run a simple C program compiled...
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.1
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02,...
10 months ago
A quick one: xa (xa65), André Fachat's compatible fast two-pass cross-assembler for 6502, 65C02, R65C02 and 65816 processors that André and I maintain is now at version 2.4.1. This optionally expands the syntax from 2.4.0 and fixes some bugs primarily with relocatable .o65...
Lars Lofgren
CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had...
3 months ago
What if I told you that Forbes Marketplace, the affiliate company operating on Forbes.com ALSO had agreements with CNN and USA Today? And that Forbes Marketplace was stuffing those sites full of affiliate content just like it is with Forbes? And what if Forbes Marketplace went to...
Jonas Hietala
I, Robot
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process...
over a year ago
Here are the results of the big robot construction course we had before christmas! The whole process went smooth and our group was amazing. The design and building of the robot went well even though in hindsight I would’ve changed a lot of stuff. The ending competition didn’t go...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge
2 months ago
Notes on software...
Writing a simple JSON path parser
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return...
over a year ago
Let's say we want to implement a simple list filtering language so
we can enter a.b = 12 and return only results in a
list where the a column is an object that contains a
field b that is set to the value 12. What would a
filter(jsonPath, equals, listOfObjects) function...
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...
9 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...
Christian Selig
More Efficient/Faster Average Color of Image
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of...
over a year ago
Skip to the ‘Juicy Code 🧃’ section if you just want the code and don’t care about the preamble of why you might want this!
Finding the average color of an image is a nice trick to have in your toolbelt for spicing up views. For instance on iOS, it’s used by Apple to make their...
GitButler
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source...
4 months ago
GitButler is joining the Open Source Pledge to help move towards a more sustainable open source ecosystem.
Old Vintage...
Ward Christensen dies
There was initially some issue verifying this, but there appears to be direct confirmation now that...
2 months ago
There was initially some issue verifying this, but there appears to be direct confirmation now that Ward Christensen passed away October 11 at the age of 78, co-founder of the pioneering Computerized Bulletin Board System in February 1978 with Randy Suess — now believed to be the...
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
11 months ago
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from [REDACTED], a site on which I am very prone to judging a book by its cover; every month I'll end up purchasing a bottle of something purely because it looks interesting and I can...
Simply Explained
Tuya IR Hub: control Daikin AC (Home Assistant + ESPHome)
The release of ESPHome v1.15 brought better support for infrared climate control. This was enough to...
over a year ago
The release of ESPHome v1.15 brought better support for infrared climate control. This was enough to finally make my YTF IR Hub useable. Here's how I flashed ESPHome onto it and how I configured it for my Daikin AC and Home Assistant.
Jonas Hietala
Ludum Dare 17 - an hour or two into it
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a...
over a year ago
I decided to participate in the Ludum Dare this time, even though I’ve spent the whole day on a massage course (which by the way was pretty darn good), and about halfway there this is what I’ve done:
Chockingly… ugly
All is not what meets the eye though, I’ve got the basics done...
Home on Erik...
Learning from users faster using machine learning
I had an interesting idea a few weeks ago, best explained through an example. Let's say you're...
over a year ago
I had an interesting idea a few weeks ago, best explained through an example. Let's say you're running an e-commerce site (I kind of do) and you want to optimize the number of purchases.
Let's also say we try to learn as much as we can from users, both using A/B tests but also...
Matt Blewitt
Everything I Know About Operations, I Learned From NHS 111
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context...
over a year ago
Ever heard someone say “It’s only software/money/<trivial thing>, not life or death”, in the context of incidents at your company? Although mostly true, I want to talk about a time in my career when sometimes, just sometimes, it was the latter, and how it shaped my approach to...
Computer Ads from...
The Grand Stand
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
a month ago
Joystick Stabilizer Support & Score Enhancer
Jonas Hietala
The Top Idea
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple...
over a year ago
Recently I’ve been having a dozen ideas and projects I’ve been poking around with:
I wrote a simple lua, later perl, which announced when a new day9 episode has come. Later I expanded it to search for new manga episodes, but now it’s broken and unfinished.
In an attempt to learn...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – epilogue – curse of dimensionality
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most...
over a year ago
This is another post based on my talk at NYC Machine Learning. The previous two parts covered most of the interesting parts, but there are still some topics left to be discussed. To go back and read the meaty stuff, check out
Old Vintage...
A mostly merry Southern Hemisphere Commodore Christmas
A merry Christmas and happy holidays from the Southern Hemisphere, where it's my year to be with my...
a week ago
A merry Christmas and happy holidays from the Southern Hemisphere, where it's my year to be with my wife's family in regional New South Wales, Australia. A friend of the family had an "old Commodore" in their house and asked if I wanted it. Stupid question, yeah?
The...
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...
over a year ago
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...
Jonas Hietala
Installing Krita on Slackware 14.1
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for...
over a year ago
This is a guide on how to build Krita on Slackware 14.1. This is based on this guide for linux.
removepkg calligra
Install some dependencies from Slackbuilds.
gsl
libgexiv2
libpqxx
pstoedit
Get Krita.
The original guide recommends building in ~/kde4 but I moved i to...
Applied Cartography
Migrating someone who's on Stripe Connect Express
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author...
11 months ago
Most Stripe accounts on Substack are “Standard Connect”, which essentially means that:
the author has full agency over their account and is the merchant of record;
they can revoke OAuth access from Substack (or whomever) at any time;
Substack continues to take that 10% as an...
Willem's Blog
Enjoy a festival without alcohol
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during...
over a year ago
This year I didn't drink alcohol during Rock Werchter, leading to interesting observations during the music festival.
Matt Mullenweg
Welcoming Harper
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah...
a month ago
As announced by Automattic and covered by TechCrunch, I want to take a moment to welcome Elijah Potter and Harper to join Automattic. Harper is a super-fast (way faster than LanguageTool and Grammarly), local English grammar checker. The technology is nascent, but I’m very...
Applied Cartography
Things take time
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi...
8 months ago
Things take time.
Nintendo fairly famously was born in 1889, and the modern incarnation — Yamamuchi Nintendo & Co., LTD — was established nearly fifty years later, in 1933. They spent forty years selling playing cards, then another decade operating merely as a distributor of...
Louwrentius
The 'hidden' cost of using ZFS for your home NAS
Introduction
Update December 2023:
In June, it was announced that iXsystems would sponsor...
over a year ago
Introduction
Update December 2023:
In June, it was announced that iXsystems would sponsor implementing the VDEV expansion feature. A new pr has been created for this effort. The feature was merged into the code base, but may not be available to the general public before the end...
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...
computers are bad
2023-09-03 plastic money
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in...
a year ago
You will sometimes hear someone say, in a loose conceptual sense, that credit
cards have money in them. Of course we know that that isn't the case; our
modern plastic card payment network relies on online transactions where the
balance tracking and authorization decisions happen...
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.
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
Jonas Hietala
Design for Hackers
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific...
over a year ago
I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific thing. It happened again yesterday (or was it the day before I don’t know) when I saw this post on hackernews.
It’s a book this time, again, but this is something a little different -...
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....
Simply Explained
Make Your Garage Door Opener Smart: Shelly 1, ESPHome and Home Assistant
I've been adding more and more devices to my smart home lately, so naturally, my garage door opener...
over a year ago
I've been adding more and more devices to my smart home lately, so naturally, my garage door opener had to follow. But instead of swapping it out for a new unit, I used a Shelly 1 and a cheap door contact sensor to make it smart for less than $20!It runs ESPHome (open-source, no...
Home on Erik...
Annoy – now without Boost dependencies and with Python 3 Support
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high...
over a year ago
Annoy is a C++/Python package I built for fast approximate nearest neighbor search in high dimensional spaces. Spotify uses it a lot to find similar items. First, matrix factorization gives a low dimensional representation of each item (artist/album/track/user) so that every item...
lcamtuf’s thing
RAM: the forgotten history
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working...
2 months ago
We owe computers not to Charles Babbage, but to the invention of electronically-controlled working memory.
Gwern.net Newsletter
April 2021 newsletter
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement...
over a year ago
with links on AI scaling, particular new East Asian record-breaking work & deep reinforcement learning.
./techtipsy
Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without...
over a year ago
The Orange Pi Zero is one hell of an SBC. It has served as
a Wi-Fi access point for months without issues
and as a testbed for playing around with MySQL.
I wanted it to be a useful device again, but had trouble finding an use case for it due to its hardware limitations.
After...
Louwrentius
RAID 5 is perfectly fine for home usage
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you...
over a year ago
RAID 5 gets a lot of flak these days. You either run RAID 1, RAID 10 or you use RAID 6, but if you run RAID 5 you're told that you are a crazy person.
Using RAID 5 is portrayed as an unreasonable risk to the availability of your data. It is suggested that it is likely that you...
Notes on software...
RFCs and asynchronous-first culture
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't...
over a year ago
I hated writing documentation before working on features. But after a
while I realized I couldn't communicate well enough, even with folks I
had a good connection with. It took me a number of mistaken deliveries
to get the message.
Sketches and mockups
Designers solve this by...
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...
5 months ago
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...
Christian Selig
Curing Mac mini M4 fomo with 3D printing
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve...
a month ago
Spoiler: 3D printed! The colored ports really sell the effect
If you’re anything like me, you’ve found the new, tinier Mac mini to be absolutely adorable. But you might also be like me that you either already have an awesome M1 Mac mini that you have no real reason to replace,...
Old Vintage...
So long, Z80
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s...
8 months ago
You can still buy 6502s from Western Design Center and others, but Zilog's getting out of Z80s (PDF), announcing earlier this week that after June 14th you won't be able to buy them anymore (specifically the last-part-standing Z84C00 which comes in various speeds from 6-20 MHz)...
Louwrentius
Howto get the hard disk size under Linux?
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2>...
over a year ago
A: There is no single tool for this job, but it seems that Fdisk is just fine:
server:~# fdisk -l 2> /dev/null | grep Disk | grep -v identifier
Disk /dev/sda: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.0 GB, 500028145664 bytes
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.1 GB, 1000123400192...
Notes on software...
On NYC, Tokyo and Seoul
I’ve lived in NYC for the past year — moved here after years in Philly
and after growing up in a...
over a year ago
I’ve lived in NYC for the past year — moved here after years in Philly
and after growing up in a rural community a few hours west of
there. My wife is South Korean and last week concluded my second trip
to the suburbs of Seoul to visit her family. We finished up that trip
with a...
Louwrentius
Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) released.
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash...
over a year ago
The Bash Shell Function Library (BSFL) is a small Bash script that acts as a
library for bash scripts. It provides a couple of functions that makes the
lives of most people using shell scripts a bit easier.
The purpose of this library is to provide pre-build functions for...
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...
Electronics etc…
Teardown of the TM4313 GPS Disciplined Oscillator
Introduction
What is a GPSDO?
The TM4313 GPSDO
Power Consumption
Inside the TM4313
The TM4313...
a year ago
Introduction
What is a GPSDO?
The TM4313 GPSDO
Power Consumption
Inside the TM4313
The TM4313 Schematic
Frequency or Phase Lock Loop?
OCXO Temperature
The Curious Case of the MAX6192 Voltage Reference
The Discrete Tuning DAC
GPS Module
Microcontroller instead of NMEA Serial...
Jonas Hietala
Coconut Cauliflower Curry Mash
It’s time for lesson 3. I made the mistake of not planning for something to augment the mash with,...
over a year ago
It’s time for lesson 3. I made the mistake of not planning for something to augment the mash with, but a simple salad had to do:
It was okay. Girlfriend gave it 5/10 and I gave it a 6/10, a higher rating would be possible if there was something else to eat it with.
Willem's Blog
Three tips to make a content strategy work
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or...
over a year ago
Consider these three things to maximise the effect of the words you write for your website, blog or company.
Matt Mullenweg
Inc Hit Piece
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a...
2 weeks ago
When Inc Magazine reached out to have David H. Freedman (website powered by WordPress) write a feature piece I was excited because though Inc wasn’t a magazine I have read much since I was a teenager, David seemed like a legit journalist who usually writes for better publications...
Arduino Blog
Receive an alert when your device goes offline in Arduino Cloud
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations....
a month ago
You’re managing a network of IoT sensors that monitor air quality across multiple locations. Suddenly, one of the sensors goes offline, but you don’t notice until hours later. The result? A gap in your data and a missed opportunity to take corrective action. This is a common...
Willem's Blog
Removing paint from a bike frame
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal,...
over a year ago
Using dichloromethane and sanding paper I removed the paint from my bike frame to create a minimal, raw aluminium look.
Willem's Blog
Collecting health data with Biostrap
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
over a year ago
Wearing a clinical-grade PPG sensor for a month to collect advanced biometrics from my wrist.
Arduino Blog
Meet the CapibaraZero, a multifunctional security and hacking tool based on the Nano ESP32
In recent years, tools such as the FlipperZero have become quite popular amongst hobbyists and...
a month ago
In recent years, tools such as the FlipperZero have become quite popular amongst hobbyists and security professionals alike for their small size and wide array of hacking tools. Inspired by the functionality of the FlipperZero, Project Hub user ‘andreockx’ created a similar...
Willem's Blog
Working Offline First
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise...
a year ago
Dive into a digital blast from the past and learn how a 15-year-old ThinkPad X200 can revolutionise your workflow – join my cloud-free adventure today!
lcamtuf’s thing
Random objects: Intel Edison
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
6 months ago
A glimpse of the missteps of x86 in the embedded world.
Arduino Blog
Synjets provide non-contact haptic feedback
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with...
7 months ago
If the COVID pandemic showed us anything, it is that our public spaces are overflowing with opportunity for germ transmission. In 2019, most people didn’t think twice about touching a gas pump handle or an ATM touchscreen, but it quickly became apparent that such contact presents...
Good Enough
Asking the Right Question
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've...
a year ago
Lately I've been pondering the future for Album Whale. It does what we'd like it to do, and we've spread the word enough that there's now a steady stream of new users coming in each day. So, what's next?
Portrait of the author pondering
My first impulse was to answer this...
Jonas Hietala
MenuCity: Level 0 Walkthrough
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive...
over a year ago
It hasn’t even been a week since I released my latest game MenyCity and already so much positive feedback! I’m so thrilled :) However, all isn’t blue skies and nice sunshine. A lot of times the first question is: How do you play it? or How do you get past the first level? I admit...
Home on Erik...
Presentations about Spotify music recommendations
A couple of people in my old team have been around talking about how Spotify does music...
over a year ago
A couple of people in my old team have been around talking about how Spotify does music recommendations and put together some quite good presentations.
First one is Neville Li's presentation about Scala Data Pipelines @ Spotify:
Louwrentius
My home network setup based on managed switches and VLANs
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet...
over a year ago
My home networking setup
I live in a two story apartment, with on the top floor my utilities closet and my living room. The bottom floor contains a bedroom with all my servers and networking gear.
So this is my setup (click for a bigger version):
I like to run my own router but...
Applied Cartography
Tailwind black magic: styling paragraphs within tables
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's...
9 months ago
The new version of the Buttondown docs site is all in on Keystatic, Markdoc, and Tailwind's typography plugin — which makes it really easy to author beautiful docs in plaintext.
We ran into one small issue, which is that the Markdoc renderer likes to place paragraph tags in table...
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...
Willem's Blog
Smartwatches vs Mechanical watches
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
over a year ago
Why I still wear a mechanical watch and why smartwatches have potential.
latest projects -...
3D Model Viewer Improvements
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
a year ago
[Software] Unlocking the embedded gimbals
Home on Erik...
Conversion rates – you are (most likely) computing them wrong
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to compute conversion rate? Take the total number of users that converted and divide them with the total number of users. Done. Except… it's a lot more complicated when you have any sort of significant time lag.
watchTowr Labs
“To live is to fight, to fight is to live! - IBM ODM Remote Code Execution
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but...
10 months ago
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed some of the big players in the enterprise software space, but there is one that we have not mentioned before, that is - quite frankly - the heavy-weight champion of the world in terms of applications for large enterprises. With over a hundred
Old Vintage...
An Apple district manager's Macintosh Portable in 1989-91 (featuring GEIS AppleLink and a look at...
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than...
10 months ago
a late prototype Macintosh Portable. But it turns out it's not merely notable for what it is than what it has on it: a beta version of System 6.0.6 (the doomed release that Apple pulled due to bugs), Apple sales databases, two online services — the maligned Mac Prodigy client,...
Christian Selig
Table of Contents Selector View
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS...
over a year ago
I wrote a new little view for a future version of Apollo that makes some changes to the default iOS version (that seems to be a weird trend in my recent programming, despite me loving built-in components). Here’s some details about it! It’s also available as a library on GitHub...
Arduino Blog
Arduino and Truesense partner to bring UWB technology to millions
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB)...
2 months ago
We are excited to announce our latest partnership with Truesense, a leader in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, known for its innovative software and hardware solutions. This collaboration enhances our ecosystem of hardware products, software solutions, and cloud services,...
Applied Cartography
Applied Cartography × People & Blogs
There are few pleasures greater than getting to be profiled for an interview series that you've been...
2 months ago
There are few pleasures greater than getting to be profiled for an interview series that you've been reading for months, and last week I got to do exactly that.
To browse Manu's site — not just this interview series — feels a bit like walking on a quiet beach in autumn: there's a...
Old Vintage...
So thieves broke into your storage unit - again
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All...
2 months ago
If you've been wondering why entries have been a little slow lately, let me tell you a story.
All collectors tend to be a bit obsessive by nature, and us classic computer nerds probably pick up more hardware than we can (or should) store in our residence — especially if the...
Jonas Hietala
Minecraft Server Hosting
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring...
over a year ago
I play the phenomena that is Minecraft on and off. Sometimes the laid back building or the exploring is just what I need. Sometimes I can challange myself to build cool complex stuff and I’m even an avid follower of Doc’M and Etho and the other mindcrackers over at the youtube....
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...
Home on Erik...
Luigi Presentation @ NYC Data Science, Dec 16, 2014
More Luigi presentations!
over a year ago
More Luigi presentations!
Vitalik Buterin's...
STARKs, Part 3: Into the Weeds
over a year ago
latest projects -...
Hand-cranked Flux Capacitor
[Concept] Control the flow of time
a year ago
[Concept] Control the flow of time
Computer Ads from...
1988 Interview Between Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and MicroTimes
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
6 months ago
Scott McNealy talks about Sun Microsystems, RISC, UNIX, and NeXT
Notes on software...
Confusion is a muse
Some of the most interesting technical blog posts I read come from,
and a common reason for posts I...
6 months ago
Some of the most interesting technical blog posts I read come from,
and a common reason for posts I write is, confusion. You're at work
and you start asking questions that are difficult to answer. You spend
a few hours or a day trying to get to the bottom of things.
If you ask a...
Push to Prod
One Key Aspect of Optimizing Computational Throughput
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or...
3 months ago
When optimizing throughput, think carefully about how many CPUs you have when adding threads or processes.
Louwrentius
Linode hacked: thoughts about cloud security
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of...
over a year ago
I bought a Linode VPS for private usage just after the report that Linode had reset all passwords of existing users regarding the Linode management console.
Resetting passwords is not something you do when under a simple attack such as a DDOS attack. Such a measure is only taken...
Arduino Blog
Agitating homemade PCBs with ease
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need...
3 months ago
If you want to make PCBs at home and you don’t happen to own a CNC mill, then you’ll probably need to turn to chemical etching. Use one of several different techniques to mask the blank PCB’s copper that you want to keep, then toss the whole thing into a bath to dissolve away the...
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...
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.
Louwrentius
Thunderbolt, a cheap high-speed storage interconnect?
Intel and Apple released Thunderbolt a high-speed (10 Gigabit/s) interface, that seems to replace...
over a year ago
Intel and Apple released Thunderbolt a high-speed (10 Gigabit/s) interface, that seems to replace both USB and Firewire. It is mainly targeted at end-user systems allowing to connect peripherals with just a single cable to a computer. Thunderbolt devices, like external hard...
Arduino Blog
Hey Google! Meet Arduino Cloud
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now interact with your devices, simply through your Google Home Assistant: use voice commands, the Google Home app, or create new routines integrating Arduino solutions. This new...
Construction Physics
Energy Cheat Sheet
Building an intuition about energy
2 weeks ago
Building an intuition about energy
Vitalik Buterin's...
Why sharding is great: demystifying the technical properties
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
Disable Transparent Hugepages
tl;dr “Transparent Hugepages” is a Linux kernel feature intended to improve performance by making...
over a year ago
tl;dr “Transparent Hugepages” is a Linux kernel feature intended to improve performance by making more efficient use of your processor’s memory-mapping hardware. It is enabled ("enabled=always") by default in most Linux distributions.
Transparent Hugepages gives some applications...
Computer Ads from...
Bomb Squad Peripherals' BLOWGUN
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
6 months ago
It Could Have Been a Lot Worse - His Data is BLOWGUN Protected!
Vitalik Buterin's...
Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell
4 months ago
Opsbros
JSON and PowerShell
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will...
over a year ago
Working with Object-based arrays in PowerShell can be a challenge; but here's a trick that will allow you to manipulate these objects efficiently.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
Why some engineers get trusted with high-impact work
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go...
a week ago
It’s fun and rewarding to work on critical tasks. But there’s only so much important work to go around. Worse still, the chances to work on…
Home on Erik...
I'm looking for data engineers
I'm interrupting the regular programming for a quick announcement: we're looking for data engineers...
over a year ago
I'm interrupting the regular programming for a quick announcement: we're looking for data engineers at Better. You would be the first one to join and would work a lot directly with me.
Some fun things you could work on (these are all projects I'm working on right now):
Arduino Blog
You can now run Arduino and MicroPython side-by-side on multi-core microcontrollers
We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature that we have been working on in collaboration with...
7 months ago
We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature that we have been working on in collaboration with the MicroPython team! Starting with the upcoming release (v1.23), MicroPython will offer support for Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) on multi-core microcontrollers, based on the...
Applied Cartography
Linear
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes...
2 weeks ago
I invited nickd to join our Linear instance yesterday, which reminded me that I had a slew of notes I wanted to publish on our own experience of migrating from GitHub Issues to Linear, and some reflections on it as a product now that we've been using it for a few months.
One...
Louwrentius
Did you know that RDP is as insecure as telnet?
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts....
over a year ago
Microsoft developed the remote desktop protocol in order to allow remote GUI-
based access to hosts. It is easy to pick on Microsoft and I do respect what
they have accomplished, however, it may not come as a surprise that they did
it all wrong with RDP in terms of security.
By...
Home on Erik...
MCMC for marketing data
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some...
over a year ago
The other day I was looking at marketing spend broken down by channel and wanted to compute some simple uncertainty estimates. I have data like this:
<th> Total spend </th> <th> Transactions </th> Channel A <td> 2292.
Posts on Made of...
Two Perspectives on the End-to-End Principle
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read...
over a year ago
Back when I was an undergraduate, as part of a class called “Computer Systems Engineering”, we read numerous classic papers of systems design. I enjoyed and learned a great deal from many of these papers, but one that paper that has stuck with me in particular was Saltzer et al’s...
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...
Avestura's Blog
Oversimplified ideas of the great philosophers of all times
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
a year ago
Ideas of the great philosophers of all times explained in a few lines
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