A new chapter begins for EV batteries with the expiry of key LFP patents
The expiry of key patents for LFP battery chemistry in 2022 transformed the EV industry. With technology now freely accessible, global battery strategies are shifting as former IP barriers fall. An LFP battery is a type of lithium-ion battery that uses lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) as the cathode material. LFP’s appeal in the EV sector […]
PicoIDE – An open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator
An open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator PicoIDE is a device that emulates IDE/ATAPI devices developed by Ian Scott, creator of PicoGUS. Fully open source firmware and hardware Emulates ATAPI CD-ROM and IDE fixed hard drives .bin/.cue or .iso image support for CD-ROM .img/.hda/.vhd/.hdf for HDD Built-in CD audio output on 3.5″ jack and MPC-2 header Supports […]
Britney Spears’ Guide to Semiconductor Physics
Splung.com Physics is a website for students of physics with sections on: mechanics, optics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, nuclear physics and cosmology. The site also uses Flash for demonstrations. I am looking to expand this site by concentrating on the interactive components. If you are passionate about physics and would like to collaborate in this […]
How Your Brain Creates ‘Aha’ Moments and Why They Stick
Here are three words: pine, crab, sauce. There’s a fourth word that combines with each of the others to create another common word. What is it? When the answer finally comes to you, it’ll likely feel instantaneous. You might even say “Aha!” This kind of sudden realization is known as insight, and a research team […]
The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition (2023)
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Dave Thomas and Andrew Hunt was given to me as a gift after an internship. The book gave me invaluable advice as I started out in my career as a professional software engineer. Re-reading it a decade later, I thought the general advice still held up well, […]
I have recordings proving Coinbase knew about breach 4 months before disclosure
The Call That Changed Everything On January 7, 2025, at 5:02 PM, I received an email with a subject line that immediately caught my attention: “Order N54HJG3V: Withdrawal of 2.93 ETH initiated. A representative will be in touch shortly before we mark the payment completed” Minutes later, my phone rang. The caller ID showed 1-805-885-0141. […]
Linux mode setting, from the comfort of OCaml
Linux provides the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) API to let applications query and configure display settings. It’s used by Wayland compositors and other programs that need to configure the hardware directly. I found the C API a little verbose and hard to follow so I made libdrm-ocaml, which lets us run commands interactively in a […]
Tracking users with favicons, even in incognito mode
Supercookie uses favicons to assign a unique identifier to website visitors.Unlike traditional tracking methods, this ID can be stored almost persistently and cannot be easily cleared by the user. The tracking method works even in the browser’s incognito mode and is not cleared by flushing the cache, closing the browser or restarting the operating system, […]
The fate of “small” open source
By far the most popular npm package I’ve ever written is blob-util, which is ~10 years old and still gets 5+ million weekly downloads. It’s a small collection of utilities for working with Blobs in JavaScript. I wrote it because I found that PouchDB users were endlessly confused about how to work with Blobs and […]
What if you don’t need MCP at all?
2025-11-02 One chonky MCP server After months of agentic coding frenzy, Twitter is still ablaze with discussions about MCP servers. I previously did some very light benchmarking to see if Bash tools or MCP servers are better suited for a specific task. The TL;DR: both can be efficient if you take care. Unfortunately, many of […]