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ARM64EC (and ARM64X) Explained
ARM64EC (and ARM64X) Explained Probably the most confused looks I get from other developers when I discuss Windows and ARM64 is when I used the term " ARM64EC ". They ask is the same thing as ARM64? Is it a different instruction set than ARM64? How can you tell if an application is or ARM64 ARM64EC?
Creating an autopilot in X-Plane using Python
Introduction Today’s post will take us in a slightly different direction than the last few. Today’s post will be about hooking up some Python code to the X-Plane flight simulator to enable development of an autopilot using PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controllers. I’ve been a fan of flight simulators for…
After 41 years, my first assembly program on my first computer, the Tomy Tutor
We got it in 1983, I think, so it only took me about 41 years to get around to it. This Tomy Tutor isn't a replacement system I secondarily ...
TCP connection timeout mystery
For over a year, I’ve been investigating a strange issue with the internet in my apartment. I’m posting the details here in case someone more knowledgeable than me can solve the mystery. I live in graduate student housing with internet provided by the university campus. Usually things work reasonably well, with one…
New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco
The recent announcement of the discovery of three new Aztec codices is covered here for the English-speaking public.
Hyprland Crash Course
For the past week I have been configuring hyprland and using it as my daily driver. Coming from major Desktop Environments like KDE or Gnome, this was definitely quite challanging, specially when implementing features that we take it for granted on these DEs, like screen sharing or screenshot annotating.
The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022)
A Hackernews comment introduces a new character
The Intel 8088 processor's instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the I...
Fundamentals of Object Storage in Elixir
I did a livestream where I talked about Object Storage. The how and why. The Bad Old Days. And also the neat and interesting stuff just beyond the basics. I figured I'd cover that in text as well.
Post-quantum cryptography is too damn big
Large-scale quantum computers are capable of breaking all of the common forms of asymmetric cryptography used on the Internet today. Luckily, they don’t exist yet. The Internet-wide transition to post-quantum cryptography began in 2022 when NIST announced their final candidates for key exchange and signatures in the…
VCard and RSS as an alternative to social media
Last year after talking for a while with someone during a conference they asked me for my LinkedIn to be able to connect with me, to which I answered I didn't have one.
EU Parliament commitee approves cash cap and ban on anonymous crypto payments
The majority of the EU Parliament's lead committees today approved far-reaching new anti-money laundering laws: Anonymous cash payments over €3,000 will be banned in commercial transactions. Cash payments over €10,000 will even be completely banned in business transactions. And anonymous payments in
Mozilla Drops Onerep After CEO Admits to Running People-Search Networks
The nonprofit organization that supports the Firefox web browser said today it is winding down its new partnership with Onerep , an identity protection service recently bundled with Firefox that offers to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites. The move comes just days after a report by KrebsOnSecurity…
Why is it so hard to build an airport?
Airports are a critical piece of modern infrastructure.
Algorithmic Mathematical Art (2004)
In the early 1990s, they were merely visualization aids in the study of mathematics. Gradually, the complexity and artistry of the images becomes an end itself.
DuckDB as the New jq
Recently, I’ve been interested in the DuckDB project (like a SQLite geared towards data applications). And one of the amazing features is that it has many data importers included without requiring extra dependencies. This means it can natively read and parse JSON as a database table, among many other formats.
Electronic project kits: hands on with a vintage 160-in-1 (2016)
In this day and age with the bewildering availability of electronics readily available, deciding on a project to embark on can be…
The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis
I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις…
Tiny Undervalued Hardware Companions
After playing/working with computers for more then 25 years I started to appreciate small but handy valuable stuff – like adapters or handlers or … yeah – all kind of stuff. With …
Is the Job Market Dying?
how tech makes hiring worse
Array Languages: R vs. APL (2023)
I’ve been learning at least one new programming language a month through Exercism which has been really fun and interesting. I frequently say that “every language you learn teaches you something about all the others you know” and with nearly a dozen under my belt so far I’m starting to worry about the combinatorics of…
The C++ Killers (Not You, Rust)
All the “C++ killers”, even these which I wholeheartedly love and respect like Rust, Julia, and D, help you write more features with fewer bugs, but they don't much help when you need to squeeze the very last FLOPS from the hardware you rent. As such, they don’t have a competitive advantage over C++. Or, for that…
Focus by Automation
I’ve invested leisure time to save time when I’m working hard, not to save keystrokes but to save mental energy for the project at hand.
Bug hunting in Btrfs
The other day I was implementing multi-threaded stat() calls in bfs . When I ran some benchmarks, I saw something that made my heart skip a beat:
Why does an extraneous build step make my Zig app 10x faster?
For the past few months, I’ve been curious about two technologies: the Zig programming language and Ethereum cryptocurrency. To learn more about both, I’ve been using Zig to write a bytecode interpreter for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Zig is a great language for performance optimization, as it gives you fine-grained…