Applied Cartography
Projects are things with steps
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked...
a month ago
Lots of kind words poured in as a response to My approach to GTD and PKM, and one question was asked so frequently that I decided to write about it.
Why is “Get mom a birthday present” a project and not a task?
GTD is very orthodox in what a “project” is: it’s anything that:
you...
computers are bad
2024-03-01 listening in on the neighborhood
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking...
9 months ago
Last week, someone leaked a spreadsheet of SoundThinking sensors to
Wired.
You are probably asking "What is SoundThinking," because the company rebranded
last year. They used to be called ShotSpotter, and their outdoor acoustic
gunfire detection system still goes by the...
Jonas Hietala
Up like a Sun, Down like a Pancake
I was looking forward to this weekend, for Ludum Dare and for me to finally make a game again. But...
over a year ago
I was looking forward to this weekend, for Ludum Dare and for me to finally make a game again. But it just don’t feel right to me. I’m not prepared, I feel a little bit stressed and I don’t really have faith in my game so I’m gonna step down this one as well. But it’s fine, Ludum...
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...
Louwrentius
Why the iPad will be a breakthrough in human computing
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to...
over a year ago
The fact is that computers aren't made for humans. Computers are just made,
and humans have to adjust to them.
The problem is that most people that are not into technology just don't
understand how computers work. Should I single click of double click? Click
left or right?
The...
Matt Mullenweg
Everyone’s An Owner
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day,...
2 months ago
Last Friday we said goodbye to 159 colleagues as part of our alignment offer. It was a tough day, there are a lot of close relationships within Automattic, and goodbyes are always hard. On Monday, I got to be Oprah for a few minutes. We had scheduled a town hall for leaders...
Posts on Made of...
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...
Willem's Blog
Building the blog... in style!
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
over a year ago
Find out if it is possible to turn a computer from the 90s into a modern development machine.
Willem's Blog
WordPress: 10 tips to secure your website
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using...
over a year ago
A lot of people use WordPress to manage their website. Prevent your site from being hacked using this blog post.
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...
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...
watchTowr Labs -...
Check Point - Wrong Check Point (CVE-2024-24919)
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and...
6 months ago
Gather round, gather round - it’s time for another blogpost tearing open an SSLVPN appliance and laying bare a recent in-the-wild exploited bug. This time, it is Check Point who is the focus of our penetrative gaze.
Check Point, for those unaware, is the vendor responsible for...
Posts on Made of...
Write testable code by writing generic code
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains...
over a year ago
Alex Gaynor recently asked this question in an IRC channel I hang out in (a channel which contains several software engineers nearly as obsessed with software testing as I am):
uhh, so I’m writing some code to handle an econnreset… how do I test this?
This is a good question!...
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Windows 2.0
Success and Litigation
a year ago
Construction Physics
The Influence of Bell Labs
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a...
a month ago
We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.
Home on Erik...
Plotting author statistics for Git repos using Git of Theseus
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I...
over a year ago
I spent a few days during the holidays fixing up a bunch of semi-dormant open source projects and I have a couple of blog posts in the pipeline about various updates. First up, I made a number of fixes to Git of Theseus which is a tool (written in Python) that generates...
Style over Substance
3D-printable Raleno 104 lightbox adapter for camera film scanning
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model...
over a year ago
My latest creation is a 3D-printed adapter for the Raleno PLV-S104 (Raleno 104) light. The model turns it into a lightbox that you can use for digital camera scanning of your negative film. It also contains a holder compatible with the Valoi 35mm/120 film carriers. Additionally,...
Good Enough
TIL: Turbo Stream and personalised content
Hotwire and Turbo are great for very quickly and easily adding real-time updating of webpages...
a year ago
Hotwire and Turbo are great for very quickly and easily adding real-time updating of webpages without requiring the browser to reload the whole page.
But if the information you want to stream back from your server to the client has anything specific to the current user — like...
Posts on Made of...
On git and usability
I’ve been helping a number of people get started working with git over the last couple of weeks, as...
over a year ago
I’ve been helping a number of people get started working with git over the last couple of weeks, as Ksplice has brought on some new interns, and we’ve had to get them up to speed on our internal git repositories. (As you might expect from a bunch of kernel hackers, we use git for...
Computer Ads from...
OS-9 Bonus Content
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
3 months ago
A detailed look at OS-9 for Tandy Color Computers
Louwrentius
The future of ZFS now that OpenSolaris is dead
With the probable loss of OpenSolaris, there may be another, maybe more
devastating loss.
The very...
over a year ago
With the probable loss of OpenSolaris, there may be another, maybe more
devastating loss.
The very popular and very advanced Zetabyte File System (ZFS)
The only open source platform that actively supports ZFS is FreeBSD. And they
just 'copied' the code from OpenSolaris. Are they...
Posts on Made of...
Transformers for software engineers
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model...
over a year ago
Ever since its introduction in the 2017 paper, Attention is All You Need, the Transformer model architecture has taken the deep-learning world by storm. Initially introduced for machine translation, it has become the tool of choice for a wide range of domains, including text,...
Jonas Hietala
A friendly game of Twilight Imperium
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago I played my first game of Twilight Imperium (Fourth Edition). It was fantastic.
We were six players, most had played the third edition before. As I was quite hyped before the game, I had read up on the rules, watched a let’s play or two and listened to a podcast...
./techtipsy
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar...
over a year ago
While listening to the SelfHosted podcast, one of the hosts brought up their peculiar living
arrangement multiple times. Essentially, he and his family are living in an RV that runs off of batteries, has solar
panels, utilizes Home Assistant for automation, supports multiple...
Home on Erik...
MLConf 2014
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a...
over a year ago
Just spent a day at MLConf where I was talking about how we do music recommendations. There was a whole range of great speakers (actually almost 2/3 women which was pretty cool in itself).
Here are my slides:
Arduino Blog
Ride safer with these DIY bicycle lights
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant...
5 months ago
Many people around the world live in cities designed for cars, with bicycle use being a distant afterthought. That makes cycling dangerous and lights can do a lot to make riding safer. That’s why Giovanni Aggiustatutto designed this DIY system that includes headlights, a...
Home on Erik...
Exploding offers are bullshit
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I...
over a year ago
I do a lot of recruiting and have given maybe 50 offers in my career. Although many companies do, I never put a deadline on any of them. Unfortunately, I've often ended up competing with other companies who do, and I feel really bad that this usually tricks younger developers...
Louwrentius
Why filtering DHCP traffic is not always possible with iptables
When configuring my new firewall using iptables, I noticed something very
peculiar. Even if all...
over a year ago
When configuring my new firewall using iptables, I noticed something very
peculiar. Even if all input, forward and output traffic was dropped, DHCP
traffic to and from my DHCP server was not blocked even if there were no
rules permitting this traffic.
I even flushed all rules,...
Style over Substance
DIY: Use an IKEA VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor in Home Assistant with ESPHome
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product...
over a year ago
IKEA has released some interesting new products lately, focused on air quality. In this product line, one unit that stands out is the VINDRIKTNING air quality sensor. This cheap (just €9,99) sensor measures the air quality in your home, using a simple traffic light scheme to...
Arduino Blog
Deploy your smart meeting room management system with Arduino GIGA
Managing shared spaces, especially meeting rooms, can be a headache in busy offices. At Arduino,...
3 days ago
Managing shared spaces, especially meeting rooms, can be a headache in busy offices. At Arduino, we’ve experienced it firsthand in our flexible and dynamic offices around the world – where colleagues could often be seen wandering around with their laptops, trying to find a quiet...
Neil Madden
Why the OAuth mTLS spec is more interesting than you might think
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the...
over a year ago
I was catching up on the always excellent Security. Cryptography. Whatever. podcast, and enjoyed the episode with Colm MacCárthaigh about a bunch of topics around TLS. It’s a great episode that touches a lot of subjects I’m interested in, so go ahead and listen to it if you...
Engineers Need Art
SystemSix
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an...
over a year ago
SystemSix is a desk calendar project that displays the weather forecast and phase of the moon on an e-ink display.
Neil Madden
Entity authentication with a KEM
In cryptography, the process of authenticating a user (or app/service) is known as entity...
a year ago
In cryptography, the process of authenticating a user (or app/service) is known as entity authentication or identification (to distinguish it from message authentication or data origin authentication). There are lots of ways to do this. In this post I’m going to talk about...
Home on Erik...
State drift
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion....
over a year ago
I generally haven't written much about software architecture. People make heuristics into religion. But here is something I thought about: how to build in self-correction into systems. This has been something just vaguely sitting in my head lacking a clear conceptual definition...
Ian's Blog
Pragmatically Generating a Self-Signed Certificate and Private Key using OpenSSL
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS...
over a year ago
Recently I found myself needing to generate a HTTPS Server Certificate and Private Key for an iOS app using OpenSSL, what surprised me was the total lack of documentation for OpenSSL.
While there is plenty of function documentation, what OpenSSL really lacks is examples of how it...
Posts on Made of...
reptyr: Changing a process's controlling terminal
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal,...
over a year ago
reptyr (announced recently on this blog) takes a process that is currently running in one terminal, and transplants it to a new terminal. reptyr comes from a proud family of similar hacks, and works in the same basic way: We use ptrace(2) to attach to a target process and force...
Louwrentius
Improving web application security by implementing database security
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement...
over a year ago
Security is about defense-in-depth. It bogles my mind why it is so difficult to implement defense-in-depth security in web applications. 99.9% of applications use a single database account, with root-like privileges. Easiest for the developer of course, and the database is just a...
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...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
5 months ago
GitButler is organizing the 2024 Git Merge conference, Sep 19/20 in Berlin!
Notes on software...
Studying foreign languages with inbox zero
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language...
over a year ago
The only time I've been able to seriously, rapidly improve my ability
to speak a foreign language was through intensive language courses in
college. I was forced to actively speak, read, and write Chinese for
6-8 hours a week (1-2 hours every day). Then study another 5-10 hours
a...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 2: The Surge
2 months ago
Arduino Blog
This automatic laser turret keeps the cats entertained for hours
Cats may be adorable, but they evolved to be predators. Unfortunately, responsible owners keep their...
2 months ago
Cats may be adorable, but they evolved to be predators. Unfortunately, responsible owners keep their cats indoors to avoid decimating the local wildlife population and that means Mr. Whiskers and Ms. Socks don’t get much opportunity to express their hunting urges. That’s why...
Posts on Made of...
Suggestion time: What should I blog about?
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron...
over a year ago
I haven’t been feeling very motivated to blog lately – I’ve missed the last two weeks of Iron Blogger, and I’m not totally enthusiastic about any of the items on my “to blog” list.
But, I do enjoy blogging when I actually get into posts, and I’d like to keep updating this blog....
computers are bad
2024-06-02 consumer electronics control
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less...
6 months ago
In a previous episode, I discussed audio
transports
and mention that they have become a much less important part of the modern home
theater landscape. One reason is the broad decline of the component system:
most consumers aren't buying a television, home theater receiver,...
Notes on software...
Go database driver overhead on insert-heavy workloads
The most popular SQLite and PostgreSQL database drivers in Go are
(roughly) 20-76% slower than...
a year ago
The most popular SQLite and PostgreSQL database drivers in Go are
(roughly) 20-76% slower than alternative Go drivers on insert-heavy
benchmarks of mine. So if you are bulk-inserting data with Go (and
potentially also bulk-retrieving data with Go), you may want to
consider the...
./techtipsy
How to start your self-hosting adventure: a high-level overview
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in...
over a year ago
Reddit is a great starting point for getting new ideas for your homelab: racks full of machines
in /r/homelab, storage measured in terabytes (or even petabytes) over
at /r/datahoarder, all the different services that people host over at
/r/selfhosted. This can be a bit...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
The Revenue-Evil Curve: a different way to think about prioritizing public goods funding
over a year ago
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...
Arduino Blog
Control your Raspberry Pi GPIOs with Arduino Cloud using Python | Part II
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs...
7 months ago
As a Python developer, you’re probably eager to control and monitor your Raspberry Pi GPIOs remotely. Well, you have landed in the right place. This article builds upon our previous introduction to “Visualize your Raspberry Pi data with Arduino Cloud | Part I.” Now, we’ll...
Jonas Hietala
addwatch: resource exhausted
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site:...
over a year ago
While tampering with Hakyll and running site preview I stumbled upon this error message:
site: addWatch: resource exhausted (No space left on device)
At first I tried to clear /tmp but, so clearly the device did have some space left. After a bit of googling I found a solution...
Louwrentius
Don't be afraid of RAID
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of...
over a year ago
Introduction
I sense this sentiment on the internet that RAID is dangerous, that the likelihood of your RAID array failing during a rebuild is almost a certainty, because hard drives have become so large.
I think nothing is further from the truth and I would like to dispel this...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Gitcoin Grants Round 6 Retrospective
over a year ago
Home on Erik...
Why software projects take longer than you think: a statistical model
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is...
over a year ago
Anyone who built software for a while knows that estimating how long something is going to take is hard. It's hard to come up with an unbiased estimate of how long something will take, when fundamentally the work in itself is about solving something.
./techtipsy
Why you might not want to publicly self-host a Wikipedia clone
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it...
a year ago
A while ago I wrote about how easy it is to download an archive of Wikipedia and host it anywhere
you want using Kiwix.
I’m still hosting Kiwix sites publicly, but here are a few things you might want
to consider before doing so yourself.
The spam
I have a specific e-mail address...
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...
Louwrentius
Improving iSCSI Native Multi Pathing Round Robin performance
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must...
over a year ago
10 Gb ethernet is still quite expensive. You not only need to buy appropriate NICS, but you must also upgrade your network hardware as well. You may even need to replace existing fiber optic cabling if it's not rated for 10 Gbit.
So I decided to still just go for plain old 1...
Louwrentius
Understanding the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Server Autoinstaller
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation...
over a year ago
Introduction
Ubuntu Server version 18.04 LTS uses the debian-installer (d-i) for the installation process. This includes support for 'preseeding' to create unattended (automated) installations of ubuntu.
the debian installer
With the introduction of Ubuntu Server 20.04 'Focal...
Arduino Blog
You can now work in collaboration in Arduino Cloud
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT...
3 months ago
In today’s busy world, getting students or engineers to work together is key to tackling complex IoT projects. Traditional code sharing and editing methods, like using offline IDEs or swapping files manually, often slow down projects and lead to mistakes. This can be a hassle and...
./techtipsy
About the time I used Google Drive as a CMS for a web app
Near the beginning of my software development career, I worked on a pretty
standard web application....
over a year ago
Near the beginning of my software development career, I worked on a pretty
standard web application. The project was not a commercial success, but it did
give me a good technical foundation that turned out to be very useful for my
career so far.
For those interested, the tech...
Louwrentius
Do not buy a hardware RAID controller for home use
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high...
over a year ago
Hardware RAID controllers are considered 'the best' solution for high
performance and high availability. However, this is not entirely true. Using a
hardware RAID controller might even endanger your precious data.
For enterprise environments, where performance is critical, it is...
Arduino Blog
Amassing a mobile Minion militia
Channeling his inner Gru, YouTuber Electo built a robotic minion army to terrorize and amuse the...
4 months ago
Channeling his inner Gru, YouTuber Electo built a robotic minion army to terrorize and amuse the public in local shopping malls. Building one minion robot is, in theory, pretty straightforward. That is especially true when, like these, that robot isn’t actually bipedal and...
Louwrentius
Monitoring HP MSA P2000 G3 I/O latency with Nagios
At work we have a couple of HP MSA P2000 G3 SANs. These are entry-level SANs that still seem to have...
over a year ago
At work we have a couple of HP MSA P2000 G3 SANs. These are entry-level SANs that still seem to have almost all features you might want from a SAN, except for official SSD-support.
It seems that the new MSA 2040 adds support for SSDs and also provides 4 GB cache per controller...
Lars Lofgren
The Billion-Dollar World of Parasite SEO: How to Cash In
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch...
a month ago
Parasite SEO is when a third-party company partners with an established domain, then posts a bunch of SEO content to make a bunch of money. Content often gets published in a subfolder or subdomain or the website. The goal is to leverage the domain’s trust with Google to get...
Vitalik Buterin's...
In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Creating configuration backups of HP procurve switches
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration...
over a year ago
I've created a tool called procurve-watch. It creates a backup of the running switch configuration through secure shell (using scp).
It also diffs backed up configurations against older versions, in order to keep track of changes. If you run the script from cron every hour or...
Home on Erik...
Nearest neighbors and vector models – part 2 – algorithms and data structures
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a...
over a year ago
This is a blog post rewritten from a presentation at NYC Machine Learning on Sep 17. It covers a library called Annoy that I have built that helps you do nearest neighbor queries in high dimensional spaces.
Notes on software...
Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL...
7 months ago
In this post we'll build a database in 400 lines of code with basic
support for five standard SQL transaction levels: Read Uncommitted,
Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Snapshot Isolation and
Serializable. We'll use multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and
optimistic...
Simply Explained
Good Home Automation Should be Boring
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other...
over a year ago
I'm a huge fan of Home Assistant to automate various things around the house. I often look at other people's setup for inspiration, and one thing struck me. Many people have cluttered dashboards and use Home Assistant to track just about any metric they can.That's quite different...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates December 15: Rebranding to Lighthouse and complete redesign
a year ago
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...
GitButler
The New Era of Town Hall Chat
We're moving from Slack to Discord so we can involve our community more. Here's how we did it and...
3 months ago
We're moving from Slack to Discord so we can involve our community more. Here's how we did it and more importantly, why.
Posts on Made of...
Conkeror
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension,...
over a year ago
I’ve recently switched to Conkeror as my primary browser. It started life as a Firefox extension, but nowadays it’s a standalone app built on top of Mozilla’s xulrunner, so it uses the Gecko rendering engine.
What it is, is an emacs implemented in Javascript, for the web. This...
Willem's Blog
Space travelling from El Teide
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a...
over a year ago
On Tenerife you'll find Teide, the world's second highest volcano with extra terestial views and a perfect altitude for stargazing.
Nabeel S. Qureshi
Notes on Karl Popper
A woven web of guesses
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
How do trusted setups work?
over a year ago
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...
Birchtree
Gemini 2.0: speed and deep research impress
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today...
a week ago
From The Keyword Google blog: Introducing Gemini 2.0: Our New AI Model for the Agentic Era
Today we’re excited to launch our next era of models built for this new agentic era: introducing Gemini 2.0, our most capable model yet. With new advances in multimodality —
Vitalik Buterin's...
Engineering Security Through Coordination Problems
over a year ago
Vitalik Buterin's...
收入-邪恶曲线：思考“公共物品融资优先”的另一种方式
over a year ago
Louwrentius
Personal Security: erase your computer or phone before repair
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have...
over a year ago
Computer nerds are self sufficient when it comes to fixing their computer. Non-computer experts have to find some other person with greater computer knowledge to repair their computer or phone. That person will then be able to access all data stored on their computer or phone.
By...
Avestura's Blog
Hiding a photo inside another photo
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
over a year ago
How to hide a small photo inside a larger photo?
Neil Madden
A few clarifications about CVE-2022-21449
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating...
over a year ago
Just a few quick notes/updates to correct some potentially inaccurate statements that are floating around on Reddit/Twitter etc: The bug only impacts Java 15 and above. The original advisory from Oracle incorrectly listed earlier versions (like 7, 8 and 11) as being impacted....
Notes on software...
How I run a software book club
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We...
6 months ago
I've been running software book clubs almost continuously since last
summer, about 12 months ago. We read through Designing Data-Intensive
Applications, Database
Internals,
Systems
Performance, and
we just started Understanding Software
Dynamics.
The DDIA discussions were...
./techtipsy
FOSDEM 2024: my experience, some notes and tech tips
I finally went to FOSDEM. I’m sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited
about the...
10 months ago
I finally went to FOSDEM. I’m sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited
about the whole experience.
I’ve split this post into three separate sections.
overall notes on the conference and the city
less technical, but sheds light on the FOSDEM experience
the...
Jonas Hietala
The Experimental Games
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and...
over a year ago
It’s been nine months since I started doing Experimental Games and I think it’s time to evaluate and maybe go in a new direction.
At first I had been stuck for ages with my never-ending projects and I had literally nothing to show for all my coding. Well now things have changed a...
Louwrentius
Mounting a file system or partition from a disk image
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know...
over a year ago
You cannot just make a disk copy with dd and then just mount it as a regular
disk. You must know where the partition starts on the disk. So first, you need
to get the partition table with sfdisk:
sfdisk -l -uS image_file.dd
The output is something like:
Disk...
Jonas Hietala
Postmortem: Beebop The Island Hopper
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop...
over a year ago
So I participated in the Ludum Dare for the first time and this is a postmortem of my game Beebop The Island Hopper for the theme Islands.
About Ludum Dare
Ludum Dare is a competition which runs maybe two times a year and the competition is 24 hours long with a specific theme....
Arduino Blog
Circuit Canvas can help you quickly create illustrated wiring diagrams
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit...
5 months ago
Good documentation is extremely useful when conceiving, building, or sharing electronic circuit designs, but traditional schematics and technical drawings are difficult for non-professionals to interpret and create. Makers can benefit from intuitive illustrations that look good...
Posts on Made of...
Software Engineers should keep lab notebooks
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike...
over a year ago
Software engineers, as a rule, suck at writing things down. Part of this is training – unlike chemists and biologists who are trailed to obsessively document everything they do in their lab notebooks, computer scientists are taught to document the end results of their work, but...
Christian Selig
Announcing Juno 2.0
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been...
7 months ago
Juno’s been a really fun project to build, and it’s been so great hearing how other people have been enjoying Juno since its launch, as well as providing awesome feedback and input to improve it.
Today I’m releasing Juno 2.0, which incorporates a ton of that community feedback,...
Neil Madden
Digital signatures and how to avoid them
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for...
3 months ago
Wikipedia’s definition of a digital signature is: A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature on a message gives a recipient confidence that the message came from a sender known to the...
Willem's Blog
Refining my tablet OS experience
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
over a year ago
Installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Surface Go 2 with LTE/4G to replace my iPad Pro as daily driver.
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...
Home on Erik...
The lane next to you is more likely to be slower than yours
Saw this link on Hacker News the other day: The Highway Lane Next to Yours Isn’t Really Moving Any...
over a year ago
Saw this link on Hacker News the other day: The Highway Lane Next to Yours Isn’t Really Moving Any Faster
The article describes a phenomenon unique to traffic where cars spread out when they go fast and get more compact when they go slow.
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...
Good Enough
Adding Social Preview Images To Our 11ty Blog
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of...
a year ago
Twitter X recently removed headlines and descriptions from link previews, in the name of “esthetics.” Inspired by Steph Ango, while we try not to run our business on the whims of a social media platform, this change did push us into making a change we’ve been meaning to for...
Arduino Blog
A new Plug and Make Kit challenge! A game of rhythm and creativity
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of...
a week ago
The Arduino Plug and Make Kit is all about unleashing creativity while simplifying the process of turning ideas into reality. It enables everyone to focus on the fun of creating with the power of the UNO R4 WiFi and a user-friendly, modular design – bypassing the complexities of...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Quick Garbled Circuits Primer
over a year ago
Applied Cartography
Grace notes
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking...
7 months ago
I'm not loving Unreasonable Hospitality, but it did supply me with a phrase that I've been looking for:
Eventually, that gesture became one of our steps of service. The host would ask guests, “How’d you get here tonight?” If they responded, “Oh, we drove,” he’d follow up with,...
Louwrentius
AI is critically important but not for you
Before Chat-GPT caused a sensation, big tech companies like Facebook and Apple were betting their...
7 months ago
Before Chat-GPT caused a sensation, big tech companies like Facebook and Apple were betting their future growth on virtual reality. But I'm convinced that virtual reality will never be a mainstream thing. If you ever used VR you know why:
A heavy thing on your head that messes up...
Notes on software...
First month on a database team
A little over a month ago, I joined EnterpriseDB on a
distributed Postgres product
(PGD). The...
9 months ago
A little over a month ago, I joined EnterpriseDB on a
distributed Postgres product
(PGD). The process of onboarding
myself has been pretty similar at each company in the last decade,
though I think I've gotten better at it. The process is of course
influenced by the team, and my...
Odds and Ends of...
Odds and Ends #46: The transformation of London's skyline, a big week for nuclear, and installing...
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
2 weeks ago
Plus how to avoid the road pricing landmine
Jonas Hietala
Resurrection
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not...
over a year ago
Aah what a nice summer!
It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not having to make lunch and dinner every day is such a relief, and if you do slip up food with grandma or Veronica’s parents is only a phone call away. I watched TV, played...
Applied Cartography
November, 2024
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved,...
2 weeks ago
Not a lot to share this month; it was a particularly busy time, between a mystery (and now solved, without fanfare or closure) cough and a dearth of time to write as I started to explore easing back into full-time work.
Still, some writing (and selfishly, I'm excited to end the...
Willem's Blog
Creating a minimal iPhone stand
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
over a year ago
Today I created a minimal iPhone stand from oak wood. I used a single piece of wood to get it done.
Engineers Need Art
Offline Advocate
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of...
a month ago
Digital hoarding as a check against the ephemeral nature of the internet ... and maybe some peace of mind.
Jonas Hietala
Poking at Emacs
I’ve been a vim vim fan for a while now and with some recent configs I’m starting to feel pretty...
over a year ago
I’ve been a vim vim fan for a while now and with some recent configs I’m starting to feel pretty confident and happy with it. For those who don’t know it’s basically a text editor, like notepad, but with a lot of keycommands which allows you to edit code (and text in general)...
Electronics etc…
Making Screenshots of Test Equipment Old and New
Introduction
Screenshot Capturing Interfaces
Hardware and Software Tools
Capturing GPIB data in Talk...
3 weeks ago
Introduction
Screenshot Capturing Interfaces
Hardware and Software Tools
Capturing GPIB data in Talk Only mode
TDS 540 Oscilloscope - GPIB - PCL Output
HP 54542A Oscilloscope - Parallel Port - PCL or HPGL Output
HP Inifinium 54825A Oscilloscope - Parallel Port - Encapsulated...
Louwrentius
This blog is now running on solar power
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which...
over a year ago
Introduction
This blog is now running on solar power.
I've put a solar panel on my balcony, which is connected to a solar charge controller. This device charges an old worn-out car battery and provides power to a Raspberry Pi ~~3b+~~ 4B, which in turn powers this (static)...
Applied Cartography
Notes on 'Founder Mode' / Lieutenancy
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom...
3 months ago
In Paul Graham’s latest essay, he writes:
The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could...
Computer Ads from...
Intel's Inboard 386/PC
Welcome to the 1990s.
2 months ago
Ken Shirriff's blog
The first microcomputer: The transfluxor-powered Arma Micro Computer from 1962
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from...
10 months ago
What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974?
Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)?
How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962.
The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized...
Arduino Blog
Simplifying IoT for smarter manufacturing: Join the chat with Arduino, AWS, and Atlas Machine
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes...
2 weeks ago
We all know that the future of manufacturing lies in IoT — yet the path to adoption can sometimes feel daunting. But what if you could simplify the process and start seeing results quickly? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in our upcoming Arduino Cloud Café webinar on...
computers are bad
2023-07-29 Free Public WiFi
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree...
a year ago
Remember Free Public WiFi?
Once, many years ago, I stayed on the 62nd floor of the Westin Peachtree Plaza
in Atlanta, Georgia. This was in the age when the price of a hotel room was
directly correlated with the price of the WiFi service, and as a high school
student I was not...
Arduino Blog
How to customize your Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards on the go
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage...
a month ago
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage their IoT projects with ease. From tracking sensor data to automating smart devices, the cloud enables seamless connectivity. Complementing this, the Arduino IoT Remote mobile app...
Home on Erik...
Why organizations fail
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core...
over a year ago
One of my favorite business hobbies is to reduce some nasty decision down to its absolute core objective, decide the most basic strategy, and then add more and more modifications as you have to confront the complexity of reality (yes I have very lame hobbies thanks I know).
Vitalik Buterin's...
Alternatives to selling at below-market-clearing prices for achieving fairness (or community...
over a year ago
Notes on software...
Learning a new codebase: hacking on nginx
I have never contributed to nginx. My C skills are 1/10. But
downloading the source, hacking it up,...
over a year ago
I have never contributed to nginx. My C skills are 1/10. But
downloading the source, hacking it up, compiling it, and running it
doesn't scare me. This post is to help you overcome your own fears
about doing so. Not necessarily because you should be running
out-of-tree diffs in...
Arduino Blog
Enjoy a perpetual solar eclipse with this machine
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A...
5 months ago
Total solar eclipses are rare — at least from the perspective of any specific point on the planet. A total eclipse will occur somewhere on Earth once every 18 months or so, but that is more likely to track across the middle of the Pacific Ocean than wherever you happen to be....
Jonas Hietala
2014 Read Books
In total I read 20 books, which is 33% less than last year.
Fiction
How to Be a Woman - Catilin...
over a year ago
In total I read 20 books, which is 33% less than last year.
Fiction
How to Be a Woman - Catilin Moran
Fun!
The Kill Room - Jeffery Deaver
A Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
Reread.
A Song of Ice and Fire: A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
Reread.
A...
Computer Ads from...
Sundial Systems' Relish
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
2 months ago
The Premier Workplace Shell Calendar, Phone Book, To Do List, and Program Runner, too
Simply Explained
How I Built an NFC Movie Library for my Kids
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to...
a year ago
When I was a kid, my sister and I had a tower of VHS tapes we watched endlessly. Fast-forward to today, and my children's movie collection is vastly different. It's completely digital and dispersed across services. I wanted to recreate the tangible magic of my childhood for them.
Home on Erik...
Domains for sale
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
over a year ago
Contact me at mail at erik bern dot com!
Willem's Blog
Tips for Long-Distance Cycling
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID...
a year ago
Embark on your own long-distance cycling adventure by learning from my post-COVID Fietselfstedentocht experience, packed with invaluable tips and tricks.
Willem's Blog
Programming on Apple Watch
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
over a year ago
Programming with VIM over SSH on Apple Watch using a bluetooth keyboard
Jonas Hietala
Stereotypes
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really...
over a year ago
I read a great essay or article about stereotypical programmers called The Little Printf. I really couldn’t do it justice so do yourself a favor and go read it. It touches on several types of programmers or rather traits of programmers I recognize in my surroundings and also...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 4: The Verge
2 months ago
Old Vintage...
Niklaus Wirth dies
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which...
11 months ago
Reported yesterday. The first computer program I remember in school was Apple Presents Apple, which was written in UCSD Pascal; the first actual compiler I ever used was Turbo Pascal 5.5 (purloined from a campus NetWare server), and the first actual compiler I ever used on the...
./techtipsy
btrbk is awesome
I like having a safety net whenever I’m doing something potentially destructive,
which is why I use...
over a year ago
I like having a safety net whenever I’m doing something potentially destructive,
which is why I use the btrfs file system for my operating system and my data.
Snapshots are one half of my “whoops, there goes all my work” strategy (backups
are the other half).
I’ve written about...
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.
Jonas Hietala
The games that make me who I am
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that...
over a year ago
I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn’t read fiction:
He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment
I don’t agree with this view and neither did he:
Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are...
Home on Erik...
Detecting corporate fraud using Benford's law
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a...
over a year ago
Note: This is a silly application. Don't take anything seriously.
Benford's law describes a phenomenon where numbers in any data series will exhibit patterns in their first digit. For instance, if you took a list of the 1,000 longest rivers of Mongolia, or the average daily...
Louwrentius
How to determine which process causes IO ?
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be...
over a year ago
There is a nifty little program called 'iotop'. Iotop is part of Debian or
Ubuntu and can be installed with a simple apt-get.
Once you have determined with 'top' that the system is waiting on IO-access,
It is nice to know
which process is responsibe for this IO. Therefore, you...
Computer Ads from...
Small Systems Engineering's PETSPEED
Fast Enough for the Human Race
5 months ago
Fast Enough for the Human Race
./techtipsy
Shrinkflation, SanDisk style
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that...
a year ago
2023-02-16 update: this post is not about the “GB vs GiB” issue, or the “lost disk space” that you
notice after formatting the device in an OS. Please read the article in full before
making inaccurate comments online.
For many years, I have used two SanDisk Ultra 16 GB USB flash...
Notes on software...
Finishing up a FreeBSD experiment
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and...
over a year ago
I've been using FreeBSD as my daily driver at work since
December. I've successfully done my job and I've learned a hell of a
lot forcing myself on CURRENT... But there's been a number of issues
with it that have made it difficult to keep using, so I replaced it
with Arch Linux...
Jonas Hietala
Weekend Tournaments
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament...
over a year ago
This weekend was filled by playing cards. On Saturday I hosted a small Game of Thrones tournament and on Sunday the local Netrunner community hosted a small summer kit tournament.
Game of Thrones
We’ve had a similar tournament once before when me and my girlfriend invited two of...
Christian Selig
Introducing Tiny Storage: a small, lightweight UserDefaults replacement
Hey I'm a developer not an artist
Following my last blog post about difficulties surrounding...
2 months ago
Hey I'm a developer not an artist
Following my last blog post about difficulties surrounding UserDefaults and edge cases that lead to data loss (give it a read if you haven’t, it’s an important precursor to this post!), I wanted to build something small and lightweight that...
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...
Applied Cartography
Gosling’s Old Rum
Virginia has draconian liquor laws, which means I have to get interesting bottles shipped from...
10 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...
Home on Erik...
Microsoft's new marketing strategy: give up
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to...
over a year ago
I think it's funny how MS at some point realized they are not the cool kids and there's no reason to appeal to that target audience. Their new marketing strategy finally admits what's been long known: the correlation between “business casual” and using Microsoft products:
Louwrentius
Building a RAID 6 array of mixed drives
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect...
over a year ago
To be honest, 4 TB of storage isn't really necessary for home usage.
However, I like to collect movies in full DVD or HD quality and so I need some
storage.
I decided to build myself a NAS box based on Debian Etch. Samba is used to
allow clients to access the data. The machine...
Notes on software...
What's the big deal about Deterministic Simulation Testing?
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And...
4 months ago
Bugs in distributed systems are hard to find, largely because systems
interact in chaotic ways. And even once you've found a bug, it can be
anywhere from simple to impossible to reproduce it. It's about as far
away as you can get from the ideal test environment: property...
Engineers Need Art
Apple Interview (1995)
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
over a year ago
Recalling my somewhat unusual interview with Apple back in 1995.
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...
Simply Explained
Smart lights behind a wall switch (Shelly + ESPHome)
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs...
over a year ago
Using smart light bulbs means you can no longer use your physical wall switches because the bulbs need constant power. I think that's pretty dumb. Using a physical switch can be way faster than using an app to control the lights.Here's how you can put a Shelly in between the...
Old Vintage...
Refurb weekend: the Symbolics MacIvory Lisp machine I have hated
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that...
2 months ago
Every collector has that machine, the machine they sunk so much time and, often, money into that they would have defenestrated it years ago except for all the aforementioned time and money. Yours truly is no exception.
a future article.) They existed in highly technical...
On Life and Lisp
AAA gaming on Asahi Linux
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which...
2 months ago
Gaming on Linux on M1 is here! We’re thrilled to release our Asahi
game playing toolkit, which integrates our Vulkan 1.3 drivers with x86
emulation and Windows compatibility. Plus a bonus: conformant OpenCL
3.0.
Asahi Linux now ships the only conformant OpenGL®,
OpenCL™,
and...
Vitalik Buterin's...
Analyzing Token Sale Models
over a year ago
./techtipsy
The little Wi-Fi AP that could
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short...
over a year ago
I have a bad habit of testing things whenever a “good” idea pops into my head. This is a short overview of one of them.
The Orange Pi Zero is a SBC (single board computer) that has a slow 32-bit ARM 4 core CPU, 512MB of RAM and no display output.
It’s actually quite OK for many...
Louwrentius
Fio-plot: creating nice charts from FIO storage benchmark data
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice...
over a year ago
New release of fio-plot
I've rewritten fio-plot, a tool that turns FIO benchmark data into nice charts. It allows you to create four types of graphs which will be discussed below.
The github project page explains how to run this tool.
Fio-plot also includes a benchmark script...
computers are bad
2024-01-31 multi-channel audio part 2
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple...
10 months ago
Last time, we left off at the fact that modern films are distributed with their
audio in multiple formats. Most of the time, there is a stereo version of the
audio, and a multi-channel version of the audio that is perhaps 5.1 or 7.1 and
compressed using one of several codecs that...
Arduino Blog
The end of Mbed marks a new beginning for Arduino
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially...
5 months ago
As you might have heard, on July 9th, Arm announced that the Mbed platform and OS are officially destined to reach end of life in July 2026, and therefore will no longer be maintained. The news has sent ripples through the embedded development community, particularly affecting...
Applied Cartography
Buttondown Analytics 3.0
Working on a new analytics engine — a scant eleven months after the previous 'new analytics...
10 months ago
Working on a new analytics engine — a scant eleven months after the previous 'new analytics engine'.
Calling this 3.0 is a bit of a misnomer: most of the code, design, and plumbing from the 2023 redesign is sticking around, just in a more modular format. The goal here is to...
computers are bad
2024-08-31 ipmi
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home,...
3 months ago
I am making steady progress towards moving the Computers Are Bad enterprise
cloud to its new home, here in New Mexico. One of the steps in this process is,
of course, purchasing a new server... the current Big Iron is getting rather
old (probably about a decade!) and here in...
Louwrentius
Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 on Debian howto
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed...
over a year ago
Get the 'open source' driver from www.highpoint-tech.com. (It's not open
source, it uses a closed binary driver.)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm
Install the kernel headers if you haven't already
- apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-6-k7
- extract the...
GitButler
Git Merge 2024 Talks are Up
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
a month ago
All the Git Merge 2024 talks are up on Youtube. Here is a quick summary of each one.
Louwrentius
The downside of 120 Mbit broadband internet
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of...
over a year ago
My Dutch ISP Ziggo provides internet access through DOCSIS cable modems. They are now capable of providging 120 Mbit downstream and 10 Mbit upstream, for an affordable price.
In a way this is mind boggling. Most people have 100 Mbit home networks that are not capable of handling...
Notes on software...
Coolest hard-tech companies in NYC 2021
For years I've kept a private list of really cool tech companies in
NYC. Now that I'm funemployed...
over a year ago
For years I've kept a private list of really cool tech companies in
NYC. Now that I'm funemployed it's the perfect time to publish. This
list is influenced by 1) my perception of the difficulty of the
engineering behind the product and 2) the company's educational and
OSS...
Matt Blewitt
Unreasonably Effective Patterns
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data...
over a year ago
Much of my current job is maintaining and enhancing control planes for Heroku’s managed data services. This post explores three patterns used to reduce operational burden and increase system safety and resiliency: state machines (and associated state-transition tables),...
Good Enough
How We Built Unique Social Preview Images for Pika
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find...
10 months ago
One of the goals of Pika,
the happy blogging software that we recently launched,
is to help you find your own place on the internet.
Along with a nice place on the internet, when you share links to your blog we want them to represent your internet home,
which you've likely taken...
Willem's Blog
Traffic shaping using iptables and tc
This month I responded to an automated alert indicating excessive bandwidth usage on a server,...
over a year ago
This month I responded to an automated alert indicating excessive bandwidth usage on a server, requiring me to apply traffic shaping to mitigate the traffic.
computers are bad
2024-02-25 a history of the tty
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator...
10 months ago
It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology.
From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there
must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.
I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal...
Willem's Blog
Computer says no
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the...
over a year ago
The weather app indicating rain caused an empty bike lane this morning, making me wonder about the power we put into these things.
Willem's Blog
Giving AI Training
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent...
a year ago
Explore the transformative power of AI in everyday work: Dive into firsthand insights from a recent AI training session that's reshaping professional landscapes.
computers are bad
2024-04-26 microsoft at work
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't
pay me enough to...
8 months ago
I haven't written anything for a bit. I'm not apologizing, because y'all don't
pay me enough to apologize, but I do feel a little bad. Part of it is just that
I've been busy, with work and travel and events. Part of it is that I've
embarked on a couple of writing projects only to...
csvbase blog
You can't just assume UTF-8
How to infer character encodings with statistics
7 months ago
How to infer character encodings with statistics
Matt Blewitt
Riding the Risk Railway
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is...
over a year ago
When building and operating a user-facing system, especially one that is open to the public, it is important to consider the riskiness of a user, which can also be characterised as trustworthiness. These will typically be negatively correlated, with low trust indicating high risk...
Birchtree
2 weeks to go and I don't think I'll have to eat that AirPod
Last month I made the courageous promise that I would eat an AirPod if a 9to5Mac writer's prediction...
5 days ago
Last month I made the courageous promise that I would eat an AirPod if a 9to5Mac writer's prediction that "[b]efore the end of the year, I have no doubt Apple’s AI features—especially what’s coming in 18.2—will become
On Life and Lisp
The Federation Fallacy
Throughout the free software community, an unbridled aura of justified mistrust fills the air:...
over a year ago
Throughout the free software community, an unbridled aura of justified mistrust fills the air: mistrust of large corporations, mistrust of governments, and of course, mistrust of proprietary software. Each mistrust is connected by a critical thread: centralisation.
Thus,...
Simply Explained
Home Energy Monitor: V2
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my...
over a year ago
My DIY home energy monitor has been running for almost a year now. It's been recording my electricity consumption every second and everything is neatly archived in my AWS account.Still, though, there is room for improvement. It's time to look back, evaluate & improve the design....
Louwrentius
Script that deletes old files to keep disk from filling up
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a...
over a year ago
When a disk has no free space left, all kinds of trouble can occur.
Therefore, I've created a script that monitors the used space of a volume
and deletes the oldest file if a certain threshold is reached.
The script will keep on deleting the oldest file present on disk until...
Home on Erik...
Books I read in 2015
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least...
over a year ago
Early last year when I left Spotify I decided to do more reading. I was planning to read at least one book per week and in particular I wanted to brush up on management, economics, and technology.
Odds and Ends of...
We need more than Westminster reporters to understand government
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
a week ago
Lobby correspondent hegemony is bad.
./techtipsy
Why I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012
This post is inspired by this article from the Low-tech Magazine.
I highly recommend giving that a...
over a year ago
This post is inspired by this article from the Low-tech Magazine.
I highly recommend giving that a read as well!
Over my lifetime, I’ve used a bunch of different computers, mainly due to new
ideas and requirements popping into my mind every time I’m content with my
current setup....
Old Vintage...
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 - finally
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 is the newest release of André Fachat's fast and portable two-pass 6502/65816...
a year ago
xa (xa65) 2.4.0 is the newest release of André Fachat's fast and portable two-pass 6502/65816 crossassembler; yours truly is the current maintainer and I just punched "live" on it tonight. It runs on Un*xy things and Windows (with Cygwin or msys2 or similar), and probably other...
Home on Erik...
Calculating cosine similarities using dimensionality reduction
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity...
over a year ago
This was posted on the Twitter Engineering blog a few days ago: Dimension Independent Similarity Computation (DISCO)
I just glanced at the paper, and there's some cool stuff going on from a theoretical perspective. What I'm curious about is why they didn't decide to use...
./techtipsy
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main...
over a year ago
Background
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad X230. It’s a small and good laptop that I’ve used as my main laptop and a server as well.
A couple of years ago I messed around with flashing alternative BIOS implementations on the X230, such
as the skulls project, which made installing...
Arduino Blog
An Arduino-powered robotic ukulele that plays itself
The ukulele has a bit of a reputation for being quaint, but it is a legitimate instrument like any...
4 months ago
The ukulele has a bit of a reputation for being quaint, but it is a legitimate instrument like any other and that means it takes a lot of practice to play competently. Zeroshot is too busy building cool stuff to bother with all of that, so he put his skills to use constructing...
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...
Willem's Blog
Using a budget Android as main smartphone
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive...
over a year ago
I switched to Android to find out how good a budget smartphone performs compared to an expensive iPhone.
Applied Cartography
11ty
.njk as the default templating language is an odd choice, and I find myself stubbing my toe on it a...
10 months ago
.njk as the default templating language is an odd choice, and I find myself stubbing my toe on it a good amount. Maybe that's a me thing!
It is extremely fast. This site has around 2300 pages; Eleventy is compiling it in around two seconds.
The extensibility ergonomics are...
Louwrentius
HP Proliant Microserver N40L is a great NAS or Router
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21:...
over a year ago
Update 2012-12-11: It seems that a new and faster version is on the horizon.
Update 2012-12-21: Yes, the new model G7 N54L is out.
Some products seem almost too good to be true and I think the HP Proliant Microserver N40L is one of them. If you are into the market for a very...
lcamtuf’s thing
A 15-minute intro to involute gears
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their...
a month ago
Involute gears are everywhere: toys, kitchen appliances, cars. But what's so special about their shape?
Applied Cartography
Shipping is capturing value
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a...
4 weeks ago
This great essay from Sean Goedecke went viral two weeks ago, drawing fury and fervor alike for a Moral Mazes-esque analysis of how engineers at large companies should think about shipping:
Shipping is a social construct within a company. Concretely, that means that a project is...
Computer Ads from...
MicroTimes Interviews the Head Honchos of Silicon Graphics (1989)
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
7 months ago
Ed McCracken and Jim Clark talk about their hardware and the future of 3D
Home on Erik...
Annoy
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm...
over a year ago
Annoy is a simple package to find approximate nearest neighbors (ANN) that I just put on Github. I'm not trying to compete with existing packages, but Annoy has a couple of features that makes it pretty useful.
Louwrentius
Creating storage benchmark charts with FIO and GNUplot
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform...
over a year ago
Edit 2019: I've made a new tool called 'fio-plot'to create various graphs.
I use FIO to perform storage IO performance benchmarks. FIO does provide a script called "fio_generate_plots" which generates PNG or JPG based charts based on the data generated by FIO. The charts are...
Neil Madden
A controversial opinion about REST API design
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice,...
a year ago
I was just reading yet another article on REST API design guidelines. Some of it is good advice, some of it I could quibble with. But several of the rules are about how to design the path hierarchy of your API: use plural nouns, don’t use nested sub-paths unnecessarily, etc. In...
Engineers Need Art
Experiments in Printmaking - Part 1
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
9 months ago
Trying some unconventional techniques to create a pop-art print of a Cherry Mash candy bar.
Home on Erik...
Mortality statistics and Sweden's "dry tinder" effect
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”....
over a year ago
We live in a year of about 350,000 amateur epidemiologists and I have no desire to join that “club”. But I read something about COVID-19 deaths that I thought was interesting and wanted to see if I could replicated it through data.
Notes on software...
Zig, Rust, and other languages
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a...
9 months ago
Having worked a bit in Zig, Rust, Go and now C, I think there are a
few common topics worth having a fresh conversation on: automatic
memory management, the standard library, and explicit allocation.
Zig is not a mature language. But it has made enough useful choices
for a number...
Louwrentius
'Linux RAID level and chunk size: the benchmarks'
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is...
over a year ago
Introduction
When configuring a Linux RAID array, the chunk size needs to get chosen. But
what is the chunk size?
When you write data to a RAID array that implements striping (level 0, 5, 6,
10 and so on), the chunk of data sent to the array is broken down in to
pieces, each part...
Jonas Hietala
The I'm Great quote
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though...
over a year ago
A new semester at the uni and so far it looks promising; I got a hold of some new books even though the bookstore had a snakelike queue similar to the Jörmungandr (the snake that encircled the earth in nordic mythology) and our new programming course started. This time it’s Ada’s...
./techtipsy
Good reads
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule,...
a year ago
This is an unsorted list of articles that I find to be good in one way
or another.
Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule
a must-read for anyone working in a software development team. Helps
express what most of us have felt at some point in our careers.
The case of the 500-mile...
Louwrentius
Cheap solution for putting an SSD in an iMac
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will...
over a year ago
If you want to order a new iMac with an SSD there are two problems:
An SSD of 256 gigabytes will cost you a lot: 600 euros.
The SSD is of medium quality, and does not justify the cost of 600 euros.
Here you can find information about the Toshiba SSD that Apple provides.
You can...
Good Enough
Season 1, Issue 3: Fool Me Three Times
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the...
over a year ago
This will be a short one. Barry’s summer vacation has started, and Shawn is deflated after the Warr…iors... sob… It’s just one game, right?
1. No One Likes a Giveaway
Who doesn’t love a good pickle?
Well that didn’t happen. There were no entries to last week’s giveaway. If you...
Construction Physics
How Good Are American Roads?
We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.
a month ago
We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.
seangoedecke.com RSS...
MCTS and LLMs: what's the big deal?
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree...
6 months ago
Everyone on the internet is recently very excited about large language models and Monte Carlo tree search. Going back months, the “Q*” leak…
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...
Willem's Blog
Updating Snake '97
This month I bit the bullet big time: I redesigned the game engine of the wildly popular Snake '97...
over a year ago
This month I bit the bullet big time: I redesigned the game engine of the wildly popular Snake '97 game. Read about the design challenges in this blog post.
Abort Retry Fail
The History of Lotus
The Hardest Working Software in the World
a year ago
The Hardest Working Software in the World
Simply Explained
HEIC to JPG: Build a Quick Action with Automator
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The...
over a year ago
With the release of iOS 11, Apple switched from JPG to HEIC to store your photos. The High-Efficiency Image File Format saves a lot of storage space on your devices while still maintaining your photos' quality. However, it does become problematic if you want to share those files...
Home on Erik...
The Filter Bubble is Silly and you Can't Guess What Happened Next
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here...
over a year ago
I'm at RecSys 2014, meeting a lot of people and hanging out at talks. Some of the discussions here was about the filter bubble which prompted me to formalize my own thoughts.
I firmly believe that it's the role of a system to respect the user's intent.
Willem's Blog
Go Viral on X
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
a month ago
Learn how to go viral on X using simple logic in creating engaging posts.
Louwrentius
The iPhone, iPad and iOS are powering a revolution
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people...
over a year ago
Most people just don't understand computers. Are these people dumb? Some may
be dumb, but the people who make them are maybe even dumber. Because they
can't seem to figure out how to create a computer that the majority of people
understand.
When the original macintosh arrived at...
latest projects -...
LED Matrix Earrings
[Hardware] Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow dot-matrix LED
10 months ago
[Hardware] Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow dot-matrix LED
Computer Ads from...
Plus Post: Rockwell AIM 65
The Company Rockwell International has been around for quite a while. Willard Rockwell started the...
7 months ago
The Company Rockwell International has been around for quite a while. Willard Rockwell started the company in 1919 to sell a newly designed truck axle bearing. Over the years, Rockwell acquired businesses in many different fields, including defense, industrial electronics,...
Jonas Hietala
Swelling with New Shiny Books
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course…...
over a year ago
So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course… So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!
First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed...
Ken Shirriff's blog
Wealth distribution in the United States
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United...
2 months ago
Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the
400 richest people in the United States.
This inspired me to
make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States.
It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph,
almost the entire US...
Odds and Ends of...
Four big US election takes: Yes, it was the woke stuff.
Plus how to know when the Democrats are taking their problems seriously, the one good thing Trump...
a month ago
Plus how to know when the Democrats are taking their problems seriously, the one good thing Trump might do, and why the polls were right
Notes on software...
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 2. user-defined functions and variables
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and...
over a year ago
Previously in compiler basics:
1. lisp to assembly
3. LLVM
4. LLVM conditionals and compiling fibonacci
5. LLVM system calls
6. an x86 upgrade
In this post we'll extend the compiler to support defining functions
and variables. Additionally, we'll require the...
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...
Posts on Made of...
A Cursed Bug
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language...
over a year ago
In my day job at Anthropic, we run relatively large distributed systems to train large language models. One of the joys of using a lot of computing resources, especially on somewhat niche software stacks, is that you spend a lot of time running into the long-tail of bugs which...
Notes on software...
In response to a frontend developer asking about database development
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
a year ago
This is an external post of mine. Click
here
if you are not redirected.
Applied Cartography
44%
If you spend enough time digesting hackneyed business or self-improvement advice, you've probably...
7 months ago
If you spend enough time digesting hackneyed business or self-improvement advice, you've probably seen someone wax poetic about the following image:
This is meant to be an illustration of the power of incrementalism (often referred to as kaizen when the writer is trying to be...
latest projects -...
Robot Slide Whistle Orchestrion
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
8 months ago
[Hardware] Army of Robot Slide Whistles
Louwrentius
I switched my blog from Blogofile to Pelican
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile...
over a year ago
This blog is a static website, which makes it fast, simple and secure. It was generated by Blogofile but I switched to Pelican.
Blogofile has seen almost no updates over the years and I consider the project dead. Realising that blogofile is dead, I decided to look around for...
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...
Home on Erik...
I don't want to learn your garbage query language
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language....
over a year ago
This is a bit of a rant but I really don't like software that invents its own query language. There's a trillion different ORMs out there. Another trillion databases with their own query language. Another trillion SaaS products where the only way to query is to learn some random...
csvbase blog
Caching secrets of the HTTP elders, part 1
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
8 months ago
ETags - an elegant weapon, for a more civilised age
Jonas Hietala
2016 Read Books
Yeah so I managed to not read a single fiction book this year. To compensate and make myself feel...
over a year ago
Yeah so I managed to not read a single fiction book this year. To compensate and make myself feel better I’ll add in some new mangas I’ve read, but I may may have missed some.
Fiction
Crickets
Non-Fiction
Getting to Yes
Relax into Stretch
Thinking, Fast and Slow
59 seconds
The...
Jonas Hietala
The Coinparty hackathon, take two
In December I declared that I would enter a Bitcoin Cash hackathon and I was excited to give my...
over a year ago
In December I declared that I would enter a Bitcoin Cash hackathon and I was excited to give my procrastination a kick in the balls. Unfortunately the hackathon was postponed to January just an hour later. Maybe the organizers didn’t think my project was exciting enough or...
Arduino Blog
Finally, you can DIY your own espresso machine
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the...
3 months ago
Caffeine lovers take their coffee very seriously and that is most apparent when you dive into the world of espresso machines. To satisfy enthusiasts, an espresso machine needs to provide precise control over temperature, pressure, and flow to enable the perfect pull. But if...
Construction Physics
How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was...
3 weeks ago
It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible.
Arduino Blog
Marble art madness from a marvelous machine
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all...
2 months ago
Marbles are underrated. They’re very round, roll well, tend to be pretty shiny, and come in all sorts of neat colors. That last characteristic makes them suitable for artwork, like orbicular pixels. In his most ambitious project to date, Engineezy took advantage of those...
./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...
Matt Mullenweg
CNBC on WP Engine
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP...
2 months ago
Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP Engine: Why WordPress [co-]founder Matt Mullenweg has gone ‘nuclear’ against tech investing giant Silver Lake.
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...
Ian's Blog
The Zune "HD"
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name,...
over a year ago
It is my joy and pleasure to present to you: the Zune "HD". The final device to wear the Zune name, released by Microsoft in October of 2009. A direct competitor to Apple's wildly successful iPod Touch, the Zune HD was the first Zune to feature a multi-touch display, full web...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
My 40-liter backpack travel guide
over a year ago
computers are bad
2024-05-25 grc spinrite
I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect
hard drives. I mean,...
7 months ago
I feel like I used to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with suspect
hard drives. I mean, like, back in high school. These days I almost never do,
or on the occasion that I have storage trouble, it's a drive that has
completely stopped responding at all and there's...
Posts on Made of...
Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had...
over a year ago
Back in January of 2012, Russ Cox posted an excellent blog post detailing how Google Code Search had worked, using a trigram index.
By that point, I’d already implemented early versions of my own livegrep source-code search engine, using a different indexing approach that I...
Old Vintage...
What the KIM-1 really needs is an LCD screen
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all...
a year ago
Giving the 1976 1K RAM, 1MHz 6502-based KIM-1 single-board computer bubble memory storage was all well and good, but the basic unit is still just six numeric LEDs for its display. Let's solve that problem.
Sure, you could hook up a serial terminal like the Silent 700 we used...
Jonas Hietala
Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax...
9 months ago
One of my favorite features in Neovim is the Tree-sitter integration.
It allows for fast syntax highlighting that works well even in an error state (often the case when you’re editing code), and it has additional semantics (you can differentiate between function parameters and...
Louwrentius
1.0 GB/s using Linux software RAID
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I...
over a year ago
I filled the Norco case with hardware. It is now up and running, based on
Debian Linux (Lenny).
I immediately performed some initial tests with software RAID 0. The results
are just astounding.
debian:~# dd if=/dev/md0 of=/dev/null bs=1M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0...
Vitalik Buterin's...
A Note on Metcalfe's Law, Externalities and Ecosystem Splits
over a year ago
Posts on Made of...
How I Write Tests
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe...
over a year ago
The longer I spend as a software engineer, the more obsessive I get about testing. I fully subscribe to the definition of legacy code as “code without an automated test suite.” I’m convinced that the best thing you can do to encourage fast progress in a test suite is to design...
Posts on Made of...
Check Plus: An EDSL for writing unit tests in C
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known...
over a year ago
Check is an excellent unit-testing framework for C code, used by a number of relatively well-known projects. It includes features such as running all tests in separate address spaces (using fork(2)), which means that the test suite can properly report segfaults or similar crashes...
Louwrentius
'Linux: using disk labels to counter storage device name changes'
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped...
over a year ago
My router decided to change the device name for some USB storage devices. So
/dev/sdc was swapped for /dev/sdd and vice versa. The result was some file
system corruption on /dev/sdc, because it was used on a remote system through
iSCSI, using a different file system from...
Jonas Hietala
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...
Louwrentius
FreeBSD 10.1 unattended install over PXE & HTTP (no NFS)
To gain some more experience with FreeBSD, I decided to make a PXE-based unattended installation of...
over a year ago
To gain some more experience with FreeBSD, I decided to make a PXE-based unattended installation of FreeBSD 10.1.
My goal is to set something up similar to Debian/Ubuntu + preseeding or Redhat/CentOS + kickstart.
Getting a PXE-based unattended installation of FreeBSD 10.1 was...
Lighthouse Blog
Lighthouse now integrates with mobile reader apps
5 months ago
Jonas Hietala
Finishing Stuff
I haven’t done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I’ve finished some school...
over a year ago
I haven’t done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I’ve finished some school stuff. We completed the assembly course labs, which were pretty fun actually, and I managed to finally complete the electronics course I’ve been holding off on for like forever… But...
Willem's Blog
Business in a bag
After much testing I have selected a bag and set of cases to fit my entire business, wherever I go.
over a year ago
After much testing I have selected a bag and set of cases to fit my entire business, wherever I go.
Jonas Hietala
I'm writing a book: Why Cryptocurrencies?
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I...
over a year ago
I decided to write a book. It’s called “Why Cryptocurrencies?” and I will be uploading chapters as I complete them. It’s available to read online for free. I’ve only uploaded the introductory parts but I’ve got a bunch more planned.
Why write a book you ask? Well, why not?
I...
On Life and Lisp
Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past...
over a year ago
We’re excited to announce our first Apple GPU driver release!
We’ve been working hard over the past two years to bring this new driver to everyone, and we’re really proud to finally be here. This is still an alpha driver, but it’s already good enough to run a smooth desktop...
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?
Jonas Hietala
We can build things!
Finally we have some sort of progress!
We can now build rooms and place and remove objects!
Yay!!...
over a year ago
Finally we have some sort of progress!
We can now build rooms and place and remove objects!
Yay!! But we still haven’t even begun with the game logic, resource management, the actual mining mechanic, multiple levels, actual tasks for our workers. But it’s something.
Posts on Made of...
A Brief Introduction to termios: termios(3) and stty
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part...
over a year ago
(This is part two of a multi-part introduction to termios and terminal emulation on UNIX. Read part 1 if you’re new here)
In this entry, we’ll look at the interfaces that are used to control the behavior of the “termios” box sitting between the master and slave pty. The behaviors...
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...
Vitalik Buterin's...
[Mirror] Central Planning as Overfitting
over a year ago
./techtipsy
How I blew up my backup server (Valve pls fix)
It all started with me getting a Steam Deck.
Background
After getting familiar with the Steam Deck...
a year ago
It all started with me getting a Steam Deck.
Background
After getting familiar with the Steam Deck and how the Proton compatibility layer works, I decided to write a
backup script that would back up everything in the home folder, excluding the Steam games themselves due to the...
Willem's Blog
Marathon
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
2 months ago
Read the story of how it feels to complete your first marathon.
Gwern.net Newsletter
May Gwern.net Newsletter
Link compilation newsletter with anime GAN updates, links on AI scaling, discussion of GPT-3, and 1...
over a year ago
Link compilation newsletter with anime GAN updates, links on AI scaling, discussion of GPT-3, and 1 book review.
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...
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...
Good Enough
TIL: Merge nested attributes in Rails permit params
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting...
a year ago
I am working on a new product that's a bit more complicated than our prior releases.
Getting refamiliarized with nested parameters in Rails has been interesting.
In this case imagine I have a discussion that, when creating it I also want to create the first comment.
The...
Arduino Blog
Boring rice cooker becomes uruchimai powerhouse
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable....
5 months ago
Rice cookers are staple appliances in about half of the world and basic models are very affordable. But those are simple machines that are about as “dumb” as electric kettles. The result is often rice that has been sitting in the warming stage for too long, making the bottom...
Matt Mullenweg
State of the Word Tokyo
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an...
6 days ago
It’s a dream come true being here in Tokyo for State of the Word 2024. We’re going to be in an amazing venue that looks over the city. Most of WordPress and Automattic’s senior leadership is here, and we’ll also have several hundred folks from the local community and press. We’ve...
Applied Cartography
Klarna: nineteen years, twenty billion kroner
I tend to ignore the entire genre of what we now refer to as BNPL businesses — Affirm, Afterpay...
3 weeks ago
I tend to ignore the entire genre of what we now refer to as BNPL businesses — Affirm, Afterpay (RIP), Klarna, et al — not for any particular sin I feel that they are committing, but because they in my mind are much less interesting companies with less volatile upside than the...
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.
Lars Lofgren
How Live Chat Tools Impact Conversions and Why I Launched a Bad Variant
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing...
over a year ago
Do those live chat tools actually help your business? Will they get you more customers by allowing your visitors to chat directly with your team? Like most tests, you can come up with theories that sound great for both sides. Pro Live Chat Theory: Having a live chat tool helps...
Posts on Made of...
A Very Subtle Bug
6.033, MIT’s class on computer systems, has as one of its catchphrases, “Complex systems fail for...
over a year ago
6.033, MIT’s class on computer systems, has as one of its catchphrases, “Complex systems fail for complex reasons”. As a class about designing and building complex systems, it’s a reminder that failure modes are subtle and often involve strange interactions between multiple parts...
Simply Explained
ESP32: Tips to increase battery life
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes...
over a year ago
Running an ESP32 on a battery is a tricky operation. The chip is a powerhouse, and with power comes great responsibility. In this post, I’ll outline how I got an ESP32 to run for over 15 weeks (and counting) on a single 1000mAh battery.
Home on Erik...
Deep learning for… chess (addendum)
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple...
over a year ago
My previous blog post about deep learning for chess blew up and made it to Hacker News and a couple of other places. One pretty amazing thing was that the Github repo got 150 stars overnight.
Push to Prod
How Would You Design Amazon S3?
One of my favorite system design questions from a few years ago and a fascinating thing I learned...
2 months ago
One of my favorite system design questions from a few years ago and a fascinating thing I learned while answering it.
watchTowr Labs -...
We Spent $20 To Achieve RCE And Accidentally Became The Admins Of .MOBI
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding...
3 months ago
Welcome back to another watchTowr Labs blog. Brace yourselves, this is one of our most astounding discoveries.
Summary
What started out as a bit of fun between colleagues while avoiding the Vegas heat and $20 bottles of water in our Black Hat hotel rooms - has now seemingly...
Jonas Hietala
Back to Training
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool;...
over a year ago
Five days of school now and things are starting to settle down a bit. The courses are pretty cool; we have linear algebra which is pretty interesting, we have a java course where we’re going to make a game (!) and one about structures and algorithms. Pretty promising but we’ll...
Jonas Hietala
March Theme: 10 seconds
Well well here’s something interesting. The Experimental Gameplay Project has given us a really...
over a year ago
Well well here’s something interesting. The Experimental Gameplay Project has given us a really interesting thing to focus on: Time. Like Braid, it’s time for us to make something interesting with time itself. 10 seconds is the constraint and that’s not a lot, but perhaps enough?
Louwrentius
Debian Linux Preseeding - an installation framework
Look Ma!
No hands!
just watching a system PXE-boot and install itself into a fully...
over a year ago
Look Ma!
No hands!
just watching a system PXE-boot and install itself into a fully operational
system is fun. PXE boot and preseeding is not enough however to accomplish
this.
By itself, preseeding only installs a basic operating system. Next, you need
to configure all sorts of...
Arduino Blog
How to customize your Arduino Cloud IoT dashboards on the go
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage...
2 months ago
The Arduino Cloud has long been a trusted platform for makers, engineers, and developers to manage their IoT projects with ease. From tracking sensor data to automating smart devices, the cloud enables seamless connectivity. Complementing this, the Arduino IoT Remote mobile app...
Arduino Blog
This machine automatically creates chain art
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the...
5 months ago
Art is very personal and we often consider the process of creation itself when evaluating the resulting piece. Does a sculpture have more artistic value when molded by human hands rather than a 3D printer? Most would say that it does. But what if the automation was, itself, part...
Louwrentius
'Tool of the month: iftop - advanced bandwidth monitoring'
The utility iftop allows you to monitor bandwidth usage. It is in some
sense similar to tools like...
over a year ago
The utility iftop allows you to monitor bandwidth usage. It is in some
sense similar to tools like iptraf, dstat and bwm-ng. Iftop is more special
than those. Because iftop lets you monitor the speed of individual TCP / UDP
connections. Basically, you will be able to determine...
Lighthouse Blog
Updates November 24: Content parsing improvements
a year ago
Computer Ads from...
American Heart Association
A PSA and an Ad
a month ago
Jonas Hietala
Slackware installation notes
It seems like it’s been a yearly recurrence reinstalling slackware from scratch. This time it...
over a year ago
It seems like it’s been a yearly recurrence reinstalling slackware from scratch. This time it happened during my vacation when I was mucking around with trying to compile erlang with wxWidgets support and somehow a make clean started to remove / and I only noticed it too late…...
Willem's Blog
Assembling a cargo bike
How hard can it be to assemble a cargo bike? This posts shares my experience with assembling the...
over a year ago
How hard can it be to assemble a cargo bike? This posts shares my experience with assembling the Babboe Big cargo bike.
Jonas Hietala
Why I don't rely on AI for programming (too much)
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting...
a month ago
I find that ai can help significantly with doing plumbing, but it has no problems with connecting the pipes wrong. I need to double and triple check the updated code - or fix the resulting errors when I don’t do that.
thih9 on Hacker News
I’ve been skeptical of the AI craze...
Louwrentius
Why security is all about defense in depth
Many people asume that if you regularly update your computer, you are safe from hackers. But nothing...
over a year ago
Many people asume that if you regularly update your computer, you are safe from hackers. But nothing could be further from the truth. Keeping your systems up-to-date only protects you against exploits for publicly known vulnerabilities.
Your systems are still not protected...
Computer Ads from...
Ampere WS-1
A cool Japanese clamtop
9 months ago
Simply Explained
Impact of Adblockers on Google Analytics (vs. Plausible)
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have...
over a year ago
Adblocker usage is quickly rising, with some estimates saying that almost 25% of internet users have one installed. Not only do they block advertisements, but also analytics scripts (like Google Analytics, Matomo, etc.)So that begs the question: what is the impact of these...
Louwrentius
Compatibility Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 and Samsung Spinpoint F1
There are some reports about incompatibility between RAID controllers and
Samsung Spinpoint F1...
over a year ago
There are some reports about incompatibility between RAID controllers and
Samsung Spinpoint F1 drives. I have no troubles with my 0.5 and 1.0 TB drives
from Samsung using mentioned controller. See below:
Controller 1: RocketRAID 232x SATA Controller
1/1/1 SAMSUNG HD103UJ...
Applied Cartography
My approach to GTD and PKM
One pernicious thing with writing about productivity and knowledge systems: you only change systems...
2 months ago
One pernicious thing with writing about productivity and knowledge systems: you only change systems that aren’t working, and you tend to write about things during times of change. So most writing about productivity systems stem from people whose systems have failed them.
It is...
Arduino Blog
Bringing Quake to Arduino: a game-changing project by Nicola Wrachien
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon...
2 months ago
Following up on his successful Doom port last year, engineer Nicola Wrachien – who works at Silicon Labs, a leader in secure, intelligent wireless technology for a more connected world and long-time Arduino partner – has now tackled an even bigger challenge: porting Quake, the...
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
Arduino Blog
This rolling ball game brings Skee-Ball-style fun from the arcade to your home
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be...
5 months ago
Ask your friends about their favorite games at the arcade and the most common answer will likely be Skee-Ball. But while many other popular arcade games have viable at-home alternatives, Skee-Ball doesn’t — at least not unless you’re willing to spend a serious amount of money....
Gwern.net Newsletter
November newsletter
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1...
over a year ago
November 2020 gwern.net newsletter with links on DL and genomics scaling, dark mode rewrite, 1 essay, and 1 opera review ('The Ring' cycle).
Home on Erik...
What is the right level of specialization? For data teams and anyone else.
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this...
over a year ago
This isn't as much of a blog post as an elaboration of a tweet I posted the other day:
I think this specialization of data teams into 99 different roles (data scientist, data engineer, analytics engineer, ML engineer etc) is generally a bad thing driven by the fact that tools are...
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