This website is supposed to be part portfolio, part rambling space. A place where I'll try show my skills and projects, and also brag about them as much as possible. Because it's my website right? I'm allowed to do that!
Visit alinpanaitiu.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jul 2021 – Dec 2025
Life, Learning & Writing 2Hardware & Electronics 2Software Engineering 1
If you had the choice to sculpt a leg chair out of wood or write a full-fledged audio engine, complete with kernel drivers and whatnot, inside an app for controlling monitor brightness, what wou… Wait, no, that's not a question, you would do the leg chair for sure. There's no way that other thing makes sense.
When M1 Macs were launched, a new GPU with iOS-like architecture started driving the external monitors. This meant that the old method for controlling monitors using DDC wouldn't work anymore. Apps like Lunar and MonitorControl had to find other ways to change the brightness of the monitors.
You know what they say in the world of products: fast, cheap, good; pick two. That's exactly my experience when trying to find the most suitable wood finish for my hand carved wooden spoons and cups. I got tired of trying to find something food-safe, without chemical smells and that doesn't take ages to cure. So I…
An investigation into why the new MacBook Pro XDR display is capped at 500 nits, despite being advertised as '1000 nits sustained brightness'.