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Installing OpenBSD on Linveo KVM VPS 2024-10-21 I recently came across an amazing deal for a VPS on Linveo. For just $15 a year they provide: AMD KVM 1GB 1024 MB RAM 1 CPU Core 25 GB NVMe SSD 2000 GB Bandwidth It’s a pretty great deal and I suggest you look more into it if you’re interested! But this post is more focused on setting up OpenBSD via the custom ISO option in the KVM dashboard. Linveo already provides several Linux OS options, along with FreeBSD by default (which is great!). Since there is no OpenBSD template we need to do things manually. Getting Started Once you have your initial VPS up and running, login to the main dashboard and navigate to the Media tab. Under CD/DVD-ROM you’ll want to click “Custom CD/DVD” and enter the direct link to the install76.iso: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.6/amd64/install76.iso The "Media" tab of the Linveo Dashboard. Use the official ISO link and set the Boot Order to CD/DVD. Select “Insert”, then set your Boot Order to CD/DVD and click “Apply”. Once complete, Restart your server. Installing via VNC With the server rebooting, jump over to Options and click on “Browser VNC” to launch the web-based VNC client. From here we will boot into the OpenBSD installer and get things going! Follow the installer as you normally would when installing OpenBSD (if you’re unsure, I have a step-by-step walkthrough) until you reach the IPv4 selection. At this point you will want to input your servers IPv4 and IPv6 IPs found under your Network section of your dashboard. Next you will want to set the IPv6 route to first default listed option (not “none”). After that is complete, choose cd0 for your install media (don’t worry about http yet). Continue with the rest of the install (make users if desired, etc) until it tells you to reboot the machine. Go back to the Linveo Dashboard, switch your Boot Order back to “Harddrive” and reboot the machine directly. Booting into OpenBSD Load into the VNC client again. If you did everything correctly you should be greeted with the OpenBSD login prompt. There are a few tweaks we still need to make, so login as the root user. Remember how we installed our sets directly from the cd0? We’ll want to change that. Since we are running OpenBSD “virtually” through KVM, our target network interface will be vio0. Edit the /etc/hostname.vio0 file and add the following: dhcp !route add default <your_gateway_ip> The <your_gateway_ip> can be found under the Network tab of your dashboard. The next file we need to tweak is /etc/resolv.conf. Add the following to it: nameserver 8.8.8.8 nameserver 1.1.1.1 These nameservers are based on your selected IPs under the Resolvers section of Network in the Linveo dashboard. Change these as you see fit, so long as they match what you place in the resolve.conf file. Finally, the last file we need to edit is /etc/pf.conf. Like the others, add the following: pass out proto { tcp, udp } from any to any port 53 Final Stretch Now just reboot the server. Log back in as your desired user and everything should be working as expected! You can perform a simple test to check: ping openbsd.org This should work - meaning your network is up and running! Now you’re free to enjoy the beauty that is OpenBSD.
Vertical Tabs in Safari 2024-09-26 I use Firefox as my main browser (specifically the Nightly build) which has vertical tabs built-in. There are instances where I need to use Safari, such as debugging or testing iOS devices, and in those instances I prefer to have a similar experience to that of Firefox. Luckily, Apple has finally made it fairly straight forward to do so. Click the Sidebar icon in the top left of the Safari browser Right click and group your current tab(s) (I normally name mine something uninspired like “My Tabs” or simply “Tabs”) For an extra “clean look”, remove the horizontal tabs by right clicking the top bar, selected Customize Toolbar and dragging the tabs out When everything is set properly, you’ll have something that looks like this: One minor drawback is not having access to a direct URL input, since we have removed the horizontal tab bar altogether. Using a set of curated bookmarks could help avoid the need for direct input, along with setting our new tab page to DuckDuckGo or any other search engine.
Build and Deploy Websites Automatically with Git 2024-09-20 I recently began the process of setting up my self-hosted1 cgit server as my main code forge. Updating repos via cgit on NearlyFreeSpeech on its own has been simple enough, but it lacked the “wow-factor” of having some sort of automated build process. I looked into a bunch of different tools that I could add to my workflow and automate deploying changes. The problem was they all seemed to be fairly bloated or overly complex for my needs. Then I realized I could simply use post-receive hooks which were already built-in to git! You can’t get more simple than that… So I thought it would be best to document my full process. These notes are more for my future self when I inevitably forget this, but hopefully others can benefit from it! Before We Begin This “tutorial” assumes that you already have a git server setup. It shouldn’t matter what kind of forge you’re using, so long as you have access to the hooks/ directory and have the ability to write a custom post-receive script. For my purposes I will be running standard git via the web through cgit, hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech (FreeBSD based). Overview Here is a quick rundown of what we plan to do: Write a custom post-receive script in the repo of our choice Build and deploy our project when a remote push to master is made Nothing crazy. Once you get the hang of things it’s really simple. Prepping Our Servers Before we get into the nitty-gritty, there are a few items we need to take care of first: Your main git repo needs ssh access to your web hosting (deploy) server. Make sure to add your public key and run a connection test first (before running the post-receive hook) in order to approve the “fingerprinting”. You will need to git clone your main git repo in a private/admin area of your deploy server. In the examples below, mine is cloned under /home/private/_deploys Once you do both of those tasks, continue with the rest of the article! The post-receive Script I will be using my own personal website as the main project for this example. My site is built with wruby, so the build instructions are specific to that generator. If you use Jekyll or something similar, you will need to tweak those commands for your own purposes. Head into your main git repo (not the cloned one on your deploy server), navigate under the hooks/ directory and create a new file named post-receive containing the following: #!/bin/bash # Get the branch that was pushed while read oldrev newrev ref do branch=$(echo $ref | cut -d/ -f3) if [ "$branch" == "master" ]; then echo "Deploying..." # Build on the remote server ssh user@deployserver.net << EOF set -e # Stop on any error cd /home/private/_deploys/btxx.org git pull origin master gem install 'kramdown:2.4.0' 'rss:0.3.0' make build rsync -a build/* ~/public/btxx.org/ EOF echo "Build synced to the deployment server." echo "Deployment complete." fi done Let’s break everything down. First we check if the branch being pushed to the remote server is master. Only if this is true do we proceed. (Feel free to change this if you prefer something like production or deploy) if [ "$branch" == "master" ]; then Then we ssh into the server (ie. deployserver.net) which will perform the build commands and also host these built files. ssh user@deployserver.net << EOF Setting set -e ensures that the script stops if any errors are triggered. set -e # Stop on any error Next, we navigate into the previously mentioned “private” directory, pull the latest changes from master, and run the required build commands (in this case installing gems and running make build) cd /home/private/_deploys/btxx.org git pull origin master gem install 'kramdown:2.4.0' 'rss:0.3.0' make build Finally, rsync is run to copy just the build directory to our public-facing site directory. rsync -a build/* ~/public/btxx.org/ With that saved and finished, be sure to give this file proper permissions: chmod +x post-receive That’s all there is to it! Time to Test! Now make changes to your main git project and push those up into master. You should see the post-receive commands printing out into your terminal successfully. Now check out your website to see the changes. Good stuff. Still Using sourcehut My go-to code forge was previously handled through sourcehut, which will now be used for mirroring my repos and handling mailing lists (since I don’t feel like hosting something like that myself - yet!). This switch over was nothing against sourcehut itself but more of a “I want to control all aspects of my projects” mentality. I hope this was helpful and please feel free to reach out with suggestions or improvements! By self-hosted I mean a NearlyFreeSpeech instance ↩
Burning & Playing PS2 Games without a Modded Console 2024-09-02 Important: I do not support pirating or obtaining illegal copies of video games. This process should only be used to copy your existing PS2 games for backup, in case of accidental damage to the original disc. Requirements Note: This tutorial is tailored towards macOS users, but most things should work similar on Windows or Linux. You will need: An official PS2 game disc (the one you wish to copy) A PS2 Slim console An Apple device with a optical DVD drive (or a portable USB DVD drive) Some time and a coffee! (or tea) Create an ISO Image of Your PS2 Disc: Insert your PS2 disc into your optical drive. Open Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) In Disk Utility, select your PS2 disc from the sidebar Click on the File menu, then select New Image > Image from [Disc Name] Choose a destination to save the ISO file and select the format as DVD/CD Master Name your file and click Save. Disk Utility will create a .cdr file, which is essentially an ISO file Before we move on, we will need to convert that newly created cdr file into ISO. Navigate to the directory where the .cdr file is located and use the hdiutil command to convert the .cdr file to an ISO file: hdiutil convert yourfile.cdr -format UDTO -o yourfile.iso You’ll end up with a file named yourfile.iso.cdr. Rename it by removing the .cdr extension to make it an .iso file: mv yourfile.iso.cdr yourfile.iso Done and done. Getting Started For Mac and Linux users, you will need to install Wine in order to run the patcher: # macOS brew install wine-stable # Linux (Debian) apt install wine Clone & Run the Patcher Clone the FreeDVDBoot ESR Patcher: git clone https://git.sr.ht/~bt/fdvdb-esr Navigate to the cloned project folder: cd /path/to/fdvdb-esr The run the executable: wine FDVDB_ESR_Patcher.exe Now you need to select your previously cloned ISO file, use the default Payload setting and then click Patch!. After a few seconds your file should be patched. Burning Our ISO to DVD It’s time for the main event! Insert a blank DVD-R into your disc drive and mount it. Then right click on your patched ISO file and run “Burn Disk Image to Disc...". From here, you want to make sure you select the slowest write speed and enable verification. Once the file is written to the disc and verified (verification might fail - it is safe to ignore) you can remove the disc from the drive. Before Playing the Game Make sure you change the PS2 disc speed from Standard to Fast in the main “Browser” setting before you put the game into your console. After that, enjoy playing your cloned PS2 game!
“This Key is Useless Now. Discard?” 2024-08-28 The title of this article probably triggers nostalgic memories for old school Resident Evil veterans like myself. My personal favourite in the series (not that anyone asked) was the original, 1998 version of Resident Evil 2 (RE2). I believe that game stands the test of time and is very close to a masterpiece. The recent remake lost a lot of the charm and nuance that made the original so great, which is why I consistently fire up the PS1 version on my PS2 Slim. Resident Evil 2 (PS1) running on my PS2, hooked up to my Toshiba CRT TV. But the point of this post isn’t to gush over RE2. Instead I would like to discuss how well RE2 handled its interface and user experience across multiple in-game systems. HUD? What HUD? Just like the first Resident Evil that came before it, RE2 has no in-game HUD (heads-up display) to speak of. It’s just your playable character and the environment. No ammo-counters. No health bars. No “quest” markers. Nothing. This is how the game looks while you play. Zero HUD elements. The game does provide you with an inventory system, which holds your core items, weapons and notes you find along your journey. Opening up this sub-menu allows you to heal, reload weapons, combine objects or puzzle items, or read through previously collected documents. Not only is this more immersive (HUDs don’t exist for us in the real world, we need to look through our packs as well…) it also gets out of the way. The main inventory screen. Shows everything you need to know, only when you need it. (I can hear this screenshot...) I don’t need a visual element in the bottom corner showing me a list of “items” I can cycle through. I don’t want an ammo counter cluttering up my screen with information I only need to see in combat or while manually reloading. If those are pieces of information I need, I’ll explicitly open and look for it. Don’t make assumptions about what is important to me on screen. Capcom took this concept of less visual clutter even further in regards to maps and the character health status. Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads Mini-Maps A great deal of newer games come pre-packaged with a mini-map on the main interface. In certain instances this works just fine, but most are 100% UI clutter. Something to add to the screen. I can only assume some devs believe it is “helpful”. Most times it’s simply a distraction. Thank goodness most games allow you to disable them. As for RE2, you collect maps throughout your adventure and, just like most other systems in the game, you need to consciously open the map menu to view them. You know, just like in real life. This creates a higher tension as well, since you need to constantly reference your map (on initial playthroughs) to figure out where the heck to go. You feel the pressure of someone frantically pulling out a physical map and scanning their surroundings. It also helps the player build a mental model in their head, thus providing even more of that sweet, sweet immersion. The map of the Raccoon City Police Station. No Pain, No Gain The game doesn’t display any health bar or player status information. In order to view your current status (symbolized by “Fine”, “Caution” or “Danger”) you need to open your inventory screen. From here you can heal yourself (if needed) and see the status type change in real-time. The "condition" health status. This is fine. But that isn’t the only way to visually see your current status. Here’s a scenario: you’re traveling down a hallway, turn a corner and run right into the arms of a zombie. She takes a couple good bites out of your neck before you push her aside. You unload some handgun rounds into her and down she goes. As you run over her body she reaches out and chomps on your leg as a final “goodbye”. You break free and move along but notice something different in your character’s movement - they’re holding their stomach and limping. Here we can see the character "Hunk" holding his stomach and limping, indicating an injury without the need for a custom HUD element. If this was your first time playing, most players would instinctively open the inventory menu, where their characters health is displayed, and (in this instance) be greeted with a “Caution” status. This is another example of subtle UX design. I don’t need to know the health status of my character until an action is required (in this example: healing). The health system is out of the way but not hidden. This keeps the focus on immersion, not baby-sitting the game’s interface. A Key to Every Lock Hey! This section is in reference to the title of the article. We made it! …But yes, discarding keys in RE2 is a subtle example of fantastic user experience. As a player, I know for certain this key is no longer needed. I can safely discard it and free up precious space from my inventory. There is also a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of “I’ve completed a task” or an internal checkbox being ticked. Progress has been made! Don’t overlook how powerful of a interaction this little text prompt is. Ask any veteran of the series and they will tell you this prompt is almost euphoric. The game's prompt asking if you'd like to discard a useless key. Perfection. Inspiring Greatness RE2 is certainly not the first or last game to implement these “minimal” game systems. A more “modern” example is Dead Space (DS), along with its very faithful remake. In DS the character’s health is displayed directly on the character model itself, and a similar inventory screen is used to manage items. An ammo-counter is visible but only when the player aims their weapon. Pretty great stuff and another masterpiece of survival horror. In Dead Space, the character's health bar is set as part of their spacesuit. The Point I guess my main takeaway is that designers and developers should try their best to keep user experience intuitive. I know that sounds extremely generic but it is a lot more complex than one might think. Try to be as direct as possible while remaining subtle. It’s a delicate balance but experiences like RE2 show us it is attainable. I’d love to talk more, but I have another play-through of RE2 to complete…
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When I first started writing professionally, for the Atlantic’s website, I taught myself “reporting” with a simple self-made curriculum unfolding over six or seven articles. The first two pieces I wrote from my head, with reference to things I already knew or to books I’d read. For the third, I layered in firsthand experience, when […]
.title {text-wrap:balance;} #content > p:first-child {text-wrap:balance;} If Git had a nemesis, it’d be large files. Large files bloat Git’s storage, slow down git clone, and wreak havoc on Git forges. In 2015, GitHub released Git LFS—a Git extension that hacked around problems with large files. But Git LFS added new complications and storage costs. Meanwhile, the Git project has been quietly working on large files. And while LFS ain’t dead yet, the latest Git release shows the path towards a future where LFS is, finally, obsolete. What you can do today: replace Git LFS with Git partial clone Git LFS works by storing large files outside your repo. When you clone a project via LFS, you get the repo’s history and small files, but skip large files. Instead, Git LFS downloads only the large files you need for your working copy. In 2017, the Git project introduced partial clones that provide the same benefits as Git LFS: Partial clone allows us to avoid downloading [large binary assets] in advance during clone and fetch operations and thereby reduce download times and disk usage. – Partial Clone Design Notes, git-scm.com Git’s partial clone and LFS both make for: Small checkouts – On clone, you get the latest copy of big files instead of every copy. Fast clones – Because you avoid downloading large files, each clone is fast. Quick setup – Unlike shallow clones, you get the entire history of the project—you can get to work right away. What is a partial clone? A Git partial clone is a clone with a --filter. For example, to avoid downloading files bigger than 100KB, you’d use: git clone --filter='blobs:size=100k' <repo> Later, Git will lazily download any files over 100KB you need for your checkout. By default, if I git clone a repo with many revisions of a noisome 25 MB PNG file, then cloning is slow and the checkout is obnoxiously large: $ time git clone https://github.com/thcipriani/noise-over-git Cloning into '/tmp/noise-over-git'... ... Receiving objects: 100% (153/153), 1.19 GiB real 3m49.052s Almost four minutes to check out a single 25MB file! $ du --max-depth=0 --human-readable noise-over-git/. 1.3G noise-over-git/. $ ^ 🤬 And 50 revisions of that single 25MB file eat 1.3GB of space. But a partial clone side-steps these problems: $ git config --global alias.pclone 'clone --filter=blob:limit=100k' $ time git pclone https://github.com/thcipriani/noise-over-git Cloning into '/tmp/noise-over-git'... ... Receiving objects: 100% (1/1), 24.03 MiB real 0m6.132s $ du --max-depth=0 --human-readable noise-over-git/. 49M noise-over-git/ $ ^ 😻 (the same size as a git lfs checkout) My filter made cloning 97% faster (3m 49s → 6s), and it reduced my checkout size by 96% (1.3GB → 49M)! But there are still some caveats here. If you run a command that needs data you filtered out, Git will need to make a trip to the server to get it. So, commands like git diff, git blame, and git checkout will require a trip to your Git host to run. But, for large files, this is the same behavior as Git LFS. Plus, I can’t remember the last time I ran git blame on a PNG 🙃. Why go to the trouble? What’s wrong with Git LFS? Git LFS foists Git’s problems with large files onto users. And the problems are significant: 🖕 High vendor lock-in – When GitHub wrote Git LFS, the other large file systems—Git Fat, Git Annex, and Git Media—were agnostic about the server-side. But GitHub locked users to their proprietary server implementation and charged folks to use it.1 💸 Costly – GitHub won because it let users host repositories for free. But Git LFS started as a paid product. Nowadays, there’s a free tier, but you’re dependent on the whims of GitHub to set pricing. Today, a 50GB repo on GitHub will cost $40/year for storage. In contrast, storing 50GB on Amazon’s S3 standard storage is $13/year. 😰 Hard to undo – Once you’ve moved to Git LFS, it’s impossible to undo the move without rewriting history. 🌀 Ongoing set-up costs – All your collaborators need to install Git LFS. Without Git LFS installed, your collaborators will get confusing, metadata-filled text files instead of the large files they expect. The future: Git large object promisors Large files create problems for Git forges, too. GitHub and GitLab put limits on file size2 because big files cost more money to host. Git LFS keeps server-side costs low by offloading large files to CDNs. But the Git project has a new solution. Earlier this year, Git merged a new feature: large object promisers. Large object promisors aim to provide the same server-side benefits as LFS, minus the hassle to users. This effort aims to especially improve things on the server side, and especially for large blobs that are already compressed in a binary format. This effort aims to provide an alternative to Git LFS – Large Object Promisors, git-scm.com What is a large object promisor? Large object promisors are special Git remotes that only house large files. In the bright, shiny future, large object promisors will work like this: You push a large file to your Git host. In the background, your Git host offloads that large file to a large object promisor. When you clone, the Git host tells your Git client about the promisor. Your client will clone from the Git host, and automagically nab large files from the promisor remote. But we’re still a ways off from that bright, shiny future. Git large object promisors are still a work in progress. Pieces of large object promisors merged to Git in March of 2025. But there’s more to do and open questions yet to answer. And so, for today, you’re stuck with Git LFS for giant files. But once large object promisors see broad adoption, maybe GitHub will let you push files bigger than 100MB. The future of large files in Git is Git. The Git project is thinking hard about large files, so you don’t have to. Today, we’re stuck with Git LFS. But soon, the only obstacle for large files in Git will be your half-remembered, ominous hunch that it’s a bad idea to stow your MP3 library in Git. Edited by Refactoring English Later, other Git forges made their own LFS servers. Today, you can push to multiple Git forges or use an LFS transfer agent, but all this makes set up harder for contributors. You’re pretty much locked-in unless you put in extra effort to get unlocked.↩︎ File size limits: 100MB for GitHub, 100MB for GitLab.com↩︎
Conrad Irwin has an article on the Zed blog “Why LLMs Can't Really Build Software”. He says it boils down to: the distinguishing factor of effective engineers is their ability to build and maintain clear mental models We do this by: Building a mental model of what you want to do Building a mental model of what the code does Reducing the difference between the two It’s kind of an interesting observation about how we (as humans) problem solve vs. how we use LLMs to problem solve: With LLMs, you stuff more and more information into context until it (hopefully) has enough to generate a solution. With your brain, you tweak, revise, or simplify your mental model more and more until the solution presents itself. One adds information — complexity you might even say — to solve a problem. The other eliminates it. You know what that sort of makes me think of? NPM driven development. Solving problems with LLMs is like solving front-end problems with NPM: the “solution” comes through installing more and more things — adding more and more context, i.e. more and more packages. LLM: Problem? Add more context. NPM: Problem? There’s a package for that. Contrast that with a solution that comes through simplification. You don’t add more context. You simplify your mental model so you need less to solve a problem — if you solve it at all, perhaps you eliminate the problem entirely! Rather than install another package to fix what ails you, you simplify your mental model which often eliminates the problem you had in the first place; thus eliminating the need to solve any problem at all, or to add any additional context or complexity (or dependency). As I’m typing this, I’m thinking of that image of the evolution of the Raptor engine, where it evolved in simplicity: This stands in contrast to my working with LLMs, which often wants more and more context from me to get to a generative solution: I know, I know. There’s probably a false equivalence here. This entire post started as a note and I just kept going. This post itself needs further thought and simplification. But that’ll have to come in a subsequent post, otherwise this never gets published lol. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
Measuring, analyzing, and optimizing loops using Linux perf, Top-Down Microarchitectural Analysis, and the CPU’s micro-op cache
You can just change things! That's the power of open source. But for a lot of people, it might seem like a theoretical power. Can you really change, say, Chrome? Well, yes! We've made a micro fork of Chromium for Omarchy (our new 37signals Linux distribution). Just to add one feature needed for live theming. And now it's released as a package anyone can install on any flavor of Arch using the AUR (Arch User Repository). We got it all done in just four days. From idea, to solicitation, to successful patch, to release, to incorporation. And now it'll be part of the next release of Omarchy. There are no speed limits in open source. Nobody to ask for permission. You have the code, so you can make the change. All you need is skill and will (and maybe, if you need someone else to do it for you, a $5,000 incentive 😄).
