2491
Learning about distributed systems: where to start? (2020)
This is definitely not a "learn distributed systems in 21 days" post. I recommend a principled, from the foundations-up, studying of distrib...
2492
The Emacs Window Management Almanac
Window management in Emacs gets a bad rap. Some of this is deserved, but mostly this is a consequence of combining a very flexible and granular layout system with rather coarse controls. This leaves the door open to creating and using tools for handling windows that employ and provide better metaphors and affordances…
2493
Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model
We identified how millions of concepts are represented inside Claude Sonnet, the first detailed look inside a production-grade language model.
2494
Squatting in Spain: Understanding Spain's "okupas" problem
With the rise of 'okupación' in Spain, property owners and individuals alike are seeking to navigate the legal landscape and social implications of squatting.
2495
2496
MKBHDs for Everything
Marques Brownlee has tremendous power because he can go direct to consumers; that is possible in media, and AI will make it possible everywhere.
2497
Don't let dicts spoil your code
I restricted the use of dicts in my code to make it easier to follow and maintain. Here's my explanation of the benefits and advice on what you can use instead. Bonus point: what to do with all the legacy code when there's no time to eradicate all the dicts.
2498
2499
We have surpassed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries that sustain human life (2023)
The planetary boundaries framework highlights the rising risks from human pressure on nine critical global processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth
2500
Why my apps will soon be gone from the Google Play Store
The first real money I ever made from game development was on Android. It was in 2013, when Android was still the underdog compared to the iPhone, and was being touted as a great platform for developers. I’d taken two weeks to build Patchy, a retro arcade game revamped for touch controls, and published it on the…
2501
The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing
AI phishing is all over the headlines and that’s not going to change. Learn about the capabilities of the dark side of gen ai, and how to defend against it.
2502
Dear AWS, please let me be a cloud engineer again
I’m an AWS Serverless Hero, principal engineer at an AWS centric logistics company, and I build and maintain the AWS News Feed. It’s fair to say that I am very interested in everything AWS does. Bu…
2503
Do you need Redis? PostgreSQL does queuing, locking, and pub/sub (2021)
It's a common architecture to have PostgreSQL and Redis serve as the backbone of your app, but PostgreSQL may be capable of everything you use Redis for.
2504
Reading "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp"
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987. Why did I read such an...
2505
Raspberry Pi CM5 is a faster, drop-in upgrade
The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 is smaller than a credit card, and I already have it gaming in 4K with an eGPU, running a Kubernetes cluster, and I even upgraded my NEC Commercial display from a CM4 to CM5, just swapping the Compute Modules! The Compute Module 4 was hard to get for years. It launched right after the…
2506
2507
A bird's eye view of Polars
Read how Polars executes your query from planning, optimizing to execution.
2508
How to delete your data from data brokers
Digital safety is public safety. We're building the knowledge, standards, and tools people need to face online harm — together.
2509
Poisoning the Day
The fatalist's guide to productivity, or how to get through the day before it gets to you.
2510
Warm Handoffs
Warm Handoffs are a procedure I’ve implemented with several teams and organizations to improve communication and collaboration in Slack. As organizations grow and ownership shifts and splits as teams are formed and re-formed, Slack channels proliferate, and it gets harder for folks across an org to know the…
2511
Building rqlite 9.0: Cutting disk usage by half
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source, distributed relational database written in Go. It is built on the Raft consensus protocol and uses SQLite as its storage engine. Development of 9.0 has begun and aims to reduce disk usage by approximately 50%. This goal will be achieved through a high-level design overhaul…
2512
Zed Decoded: Rope and SumTree
From the Zed Blog: In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten asks the founders — Nathan, Max, Antonio — about the data structures at the heart of Zed: Rope and SumTree.
2513
Energy-Harvesting Electronic Holiday Card 2024
We're delighted to share our electronic creation with you this holiday season, six long years after the previous one. The theme this time around is "powered by the holiday spirit", and it's an exercise in energy harvesting.
2514
A new rare high-rank elliptic curve, and an orchard of Diophantine equations
I got an email the other day from mathematician Bogdan Grechuk, whose book Polynomial Diophantine Equations: A Systematic Approach ( was recently released. This is to my mind a rather remarkable bo…
2515
I'm not a fan of strlcpy(3)
strlcpy(3) is an OpenBSD function which is often hailed as a safer replacement for strcpy(3) and/or strncpy(3) . One of the obvious issues with strlcpy is that it's not safe if src isn't null-terminated. However, that's not the reason I don't like strlcpy. In fact despite knowing this, I used to think it was an okay…
2516
All I want for Christmas is a negative leap second
I just want to see it. Just once. I want to watch that earthquake ripple through all of global electronic timekeeping. I want to see which organisations make it to January morning with nothing on fire. You know what a leap second is. The short version is that planet Earth ...
2517
AI hallucinations: Why LLMs make things up (and how to fix it)
Nine Technical Strategies for Reducing Hallucination
2518
Covid-19 Intranasal Vaccine
A next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic.
2519
De-googling, so far
Over the past few years, I have tried to gradually reduce or eliminate my use of Google products and services. It has been difficult to ditch Google’s products in some categories, and in some others, it has been nigh impossible. Here, I list the services I have tried to find alternatives for, discuss the ease (or lack…
2520
State of Python 3.13 performance: Free-threading
Python 3.13 is out and it's time to run some benchmarks to see how well it performs with the new free-threaded mode.