Raspberry Pi microSD follow-up, SD Association fools me twice?
/ Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, \ \ prepare to die. (Klingon Proverb) / -------------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || || (Excerpt from Ansible for DevOps, chapter 12.) The fallout from this year's microSD card performance comparison has turned into quite a…
Machine learning systems are stuck in a rut
Machine learning systems are stuck in a rut Barham & Isard, HotOS’19 In this paper we argue that systems for numerical computing are stuck in a local basin of performance and programmabil…
Race Condition vs. Data Race (2011)
It’s terribly punny/dorky of me, but reading your post it just occurred to me one could start a blog called “Race Condition” about being a person of color and being a computer scientist.
Why airplane windows have round corners (2016)
It's to prevent them from killing you
How Bad Is Your Colormap? (2014)
What this function does is to give you a lumninance-correct grayscale version of any matplotlib colormap. I've found this useful for quickly checking how my plots might appear if printed in black and white, but I think it's probably even more useful for stoking the flame of the internet's general rant against jet .
AIs Named by AIs
Neural networks can be good at naming things, I’ve discovered. Recently I’ve been experimenting with a neural network called GPT-2, which OpenAI trained on a huge chunk of the internet. Thanks to a colab notebook implementation by Max Woolf, I’m able to fine-tune it on specific lists of data -
Ways to break your systems code using volatile (2010)
Regarding the example #5, I must be confused about the definition of a sequence point because the resulting assembly output seems to be non-ANSI C:
Where do individual contributors go once they peak?
On why senior individual-contributor designers shouldn't have to move into management to grow—and how the industry can build a real IC leadership track.
“It's done in hardware so it's cheap” (2012)
This is one of these things that look very obvious to me, to the point where it seems not worth discussing. However, I've heard the idea that "hardware magically makes things cheap" from several PhDs over the years. So apparently, if you aren't into hardware, it's not obvious at all.
DNS Security: Threat Modeling DNSSEC, DoT, and DoH
There's been a lot of talk about DNS-over-HTTPS aka DoH lately, primarily due to Mozilla's and Google's respective plans to move forward with enabling it in their browsers. There's also a lot of misunderstanding and conflation of speculated plans for world domination with practical benefits of the technology; it…
Writing a Book with Unix
Developer and Author from Austin, TX.
An Introduction to CubeSats
An introduction that answers the questions what are cubesats, why they are so popular, what are their main subststems, and how does thier future look?
Generalized Knights
Knights in chess move in an L-shape: 2 squares in one direction and 1 square perpendicular. But what if it didn't have to be like that?
GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening, But They’re Almost Done
This is week "1111111111" in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week "0000000000". How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we've seen so far!
Pico-8 Virtual Fantasy Console is an idealized constrained modern day game maker
I love everything about PICO-8. It's a fantasy gaming console that wants you - ...
At Dynamicland, the Building Is the Computer
Dynamicland is a non-profit that resides somewhere between an academic research lab and a Silicon Valley startup, between physical and digital, and between computing’s distant past and its future.
Git-subtrac: all your Git submodules in one place
Long ago, I wrote git-subtree to work around some of my annoyances with git submodules. I've learned a lot since then, and the development e...
Linux Pressure Stall Information (PSI) by Example
[Discuss this article and read other’s comments on the subject on this thread on Hacker News.] The three fundamental building blocks of computers, CPU, I/O and RAM can come under pressure due to co…
What’s Wrong with Bayes
My problem is not just with the methods—although I do have problems with the method—but also with the ideology.
How not to get a $30k bill from Firebase
the secret is in the architecture
Powering a Mainframe
The last few days have been eventful. I was contacted by the datacenter that the mainframe's cage is now ready for moving in, and the power ...
Cross the world four times
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.