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Why modern software is slow
I apologize for this title because there are many things that can make modern software slow. Blindly applying one explanation without a bit of investigation is the software equivalent of a cargo cu…
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Yep, I created the new Avatar font
Fonts designed by John Roshell in sunny Southern California
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In MySQL, use “utf8mb4” instead of “utf8” (2016)
Today’s bug: I tried to store a UTF-8 string in a MariaDB “utf8”-encoded database, and Rails raised a bizarre error:
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SMS phishing is way too easy
Impersonating someone in SMS texts is way too easy, we must change this to prevent social engineering fraud.
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Ken Thompson really did launch his "trusting trust" trojan attack in real life
Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust" compiler Trojan attack was not just a thought experiment. In fact, Usenet poster Jay Ashworth stated that, from personal communications, Thompson really did launch this attack in real life and successfully compromised the Unix Support Group at Bell Labs. Recently, I've rediscovered this…
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If Looks Could Kill
by Leonard Tramiel At one of the many computer trade shows over the years I had a really funny interaction with Bill Gates. I was doing demo...
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Donald Knuth on work habits, problem solving, and happiness (2020)
Recently, I came across a few old and new interviews of Donald Knuth (sources: (i) Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth , (ii) Interviews conducted by Lex Fridman Part 1 and Part 2 ), where he sheds light on his work habits, how he approaches problems, and his philosophy towards happiness. I really enjoyed reading…
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Mastodon.technology Shutdown
Dear mastodon.technology community,
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Git Notes
the short of it is: they’re cool for appending notes from automated systems (like ticket or build systems) but not really for having interactive conversations with other developers (at least not yet)
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The Illustrated Stable Diffusion
Translations: Chinese, Vietnamese. (V2 Nov 2022: Updated images for more precise description of forward diffusion. A few more images in this version) AI image generation is the most recent AI capability blowing people’s minds (mine included). The ability to create striking visuals from text descriptions has a magical…
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Twenty years of Valgrind
It has been twenty years since Valgrind 1.0 was released.
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AWS and Blockchain
This week saw the cancellation of the Australian Stock Exchange’s long-running effort to build a blockchain-based trading system. Which, oddly, has me thinking of 2016, when AWS decided not to make a strategic investment in blockchain, with my input a contributing factor. It felt like a good story while it was…
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An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation
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Your compliance obligations under the UK’s Online Safety Bill
L ast month I wrote a post about the UK’s “world-leading” vision for age-gating the open web. It got a bit of attention . That post, sadly, encompassed only one aspect of your compliance obligations under the Online Safety Bill . In this post, I’m going to tell you about the rest.
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Please stop disabling zoom
I’m a frontend developer, consultant, accessibility auditor, blogger, teacher, and book author from Austria.
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Five origami books by Shuzo Fujimoto are now public domain
Shuzo Fujimoto’s five self-published books: Solid Origami, Invitation to Creative Playing with Origami, and Twist Origami 1-3 Yesterday, during an online event dedicated to Shuzo Fujimoto, I was happy to announce that his children, Hitoshi Fujimoto and Shumi Okada, being his heirs, have agreed to release his five…
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You can now ask Google to remove your phone number, email or address from search
Google said this week it is expanding the types of data people can ask to have removed from search results, to include personal contact information like your phone number, email address or physical address. The move comes just months after Google rolled out a new policy enabling people under the age of 18 (or a…
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The most satisfying checkbox
The Art of Game Feel (a.k.a Juice) in Product Design
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I'm an addict
I like watching videos. A lot in fact. Today, I've spent over 6 hours watching youtube videos, an hour of reading through comments[1] on hacker news, 3 hours...
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Don't Waste the Good Days
If you’re feeling creative, do the errands tomorrow. If you’re fit and healthy, take a day to go surfing. When inspiration strikes, write it down. The calendar belongs to everyone else.…
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Disputing a Parking Fine with ChatGPT
A use case for ChatGPT
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Maybe you should do less 'work'
Working in tech, I've observed developers who work as hard as possible when they don't need to. I’m here today to tell you that it's a bad idea and you shouldn't do it.
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