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Strong_password Rubygem hijacked
I recently updated minor and patch versions of the gems our Rails app uses. We want to keep dependencies fresh, bugs fixed, security vulnerabilities addressed while maintaining a high chance ...
The death watch for the X Window System has probably started
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
Running an eInk Display with Elixir, Scenic and Nerves
So I've been curious about what kinds of displays you can connect to the Pi-series single board computers for a while. I happened to accidentally order a few. Among others an eInk display. I ordered the PaPiRus ePaper. It ended up being dead on arrival and then out of stock so I received an Inky to replace it. Fair…
English speakers should learn math instead of a second language
An old joke goes: Q: What do you call someone who knows three languages? A: Trilingual Q: What do you call someone who knows two languages? A: Bilingual Q: What do you call someone who knows just o…
How to write idempotent Bash scripts
This blog post shows tips and tricks to write resilient and idempotent bash scripts.
Personal Kanban 101
Despite our best intentions, life has a way of becoming complicated. People, tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, and even recreation all compete for our attention. The human brain however, simply does not respond well to the stress of juggling multiple priorities. That’s where Personal Kanban can help.
“Essentials of Garbage Collectors” full course is now available
Course overview Memory leaks and dangling pointers are the main issues of the manual memory management. You delete a parent node in a linked list, forgetting to delete all its children first -- and your
A Ring of Controversy Around a Black Hole Photo
[Note Added: Thanks to some great comments I’ve received, I’m continuing to add clarifying remarks to this post. You’ll find them in green.] It’s been a couple of months si…
Cryptography Dispatches: Hello World, and OpenPGP Is Broken
This is the inaugural issue of Cryptography Dispatches, meant to be quick, frequent and lightly edited discussions of cryptographic topics. Longer form can be found at blog.filippo.io. If you are not reading this in your email client, you can subscribe here .
The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
The zero-sum bias occurs when people mistakenly expect gains and losses to be directly balanced in a situation where they’re not, especially in terms of one party benefiting directly at the expense of others. For example, the zero-sum bias can cause someone to think that a resource they’re interested in is limited…
Speedy Desktop Apps with GTK and Rust
The web platform is the delivery mechanism of choice for a ton of software these days, either through the web browser itself or through Electron, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for a good old fashioned straight-up desktop application in the picture.
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
Epistemic spot checks typically consist of references from a book, selected by my interest level, checked against either the book’s source or my own research. This one is a little different t…
So you think you know C? (2016)
It's a C test. If you think you know C, take this test. It only has 5 questions.
Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?
Exercise in pointing out the obvious: Greenland has been, is, and will be indefinitely, a white elephant. Denmark turned down 100m USD from the USA in 1946; I discuss how this was a bad idea—America got what it needed anyway while Denmark kept control of a loser.
FreeBSD – A lesson in poor defaults
This page lists some of the changes I make to a vanilla install of FreeBSD for security hardening. Some changes to increase network performance or make things a bit more sane are also included. It only covers basic changes that a sysadmin can make to a running system.
How much free time do you have?
I made a quick tool (for no real reason) to calculate and visualize 'free time' based on the selection of criteria shown below. Replace my responses with yours, and hit 'run' to see how much free time you have.
How to design a proper USB-C™ power sink (hint, not the way Raspberry Pi 4 did it)
This issue came up recently for a high profile new gadget that has made the transition from Micro-USB to USB-C in its latest version, the…
Run Your Own Website
I go back and forth on running my own website. I love [working](Re Introducing First Crack.txt) [on](First Crack Release Notes 0619.txt) [First Crack](/projects.html#firstCrack), but that work can become trying. I have little time for [projects](/projects.html), and the more I spend coding, the less I [read](My…
Clojure and Deps.edn: A basic guide
After a rather long break from programming and Clojure I decided give them another go. When it comes to managing Clojure projects, Leiningen is de-facto standard tool. Recently, Clojure CLI tools are becoming more and more popular, though. Switching to yet-another-build-tool doesn't have any pragmatic value, but it's…
Raspberry Pi 4 not working with some chargers
The new pi has been released and it has a USB Type-C connector for power however people are finding some chargers are not working with it (notably macbook chargers). Some have speculated that this is due to a manufacturer limitation on the power supplies however it is actually due to the incorrect detection circuitry…
Go compiler internals: Adding a new statement to Go
Updated (2023-05-08): the Go compiler keeps evolving and it takes time to keep up with changes. While the general gist of this post remains true and it's worth reading to understand how the compiler works on a high level, the details of the modifications are slightly different now.
When zebra mussels colonized Lake Erie, it began to recover
There are many ways we can talk about the deeper roots of the crisis of our time, setting out from many different vantage points; as Charles Fort pointed out, one measures a circle, beginning anywh…
Assholes: A Probing Examination
It's better to have a hole in your team than an asshole