An Extreme Antipattern for Programming Books (2023)
tl;dr: programming book authors: put all the code in the book! An extreme antipattern for a programming book is “download the author’s idiosyncratic library code from some random URL and figure out how to load it on your system”. No, all code used in the book should be printed in the book itself, so the […]
Notes on Text Editing
Notes on Text Editing nn Note: When I say chording here, I’m talking about using modifiers not chords like in steno or key-chord.el. n Modality and chording are not mutually exclusive. They both have a good use case and can be used together. Even if they don’t realize it, Emacs and Vim generally don’t exclusively […]
Wddbfs – Mount a SQLite database as a filesystem
17 Feb 2024 | Categories: hacks Often when I’m prototyping a project, I hesitate to use a sqlite database despite their many adavantages. It seems much easier to just dump a bunch of files in a directory and to rely on the universal support for the filesystem API to read/delete/update records. Part of this is […]
Pimp Your Board Games
Board gaming is such a lovely hobby to keep your mind and your company on edge. No bright blue screen or need for electricity only adds to that experience. But board games also allow you to give in to that creative urge: instead of playing with the flimsy cardboard components, why don’t you craft your […]
Ten Python datetime pitfalls, and what libraries are (not) doing about it
It’s no secret that the Python datetime library has its quirks. Not only are there probably more than you think; third-party libraries don’t address most of them! I created a new library to explore what a better datetime library could look like. 💬 Discuss this post on Reddit What’s a pitfall? # Two notes before […]
How Much Is One Terabyte of Data
It seems that one mile distance isn’t very long, and that a cubic mile isn’t that big if compared with the size of the earth. You may be surprised if I tell you the entire world’s population can fit into a cubic mile of space. The statement is not from me, Hendrik Willem van Loon, […]
Silent data corruptions at scale (2021)
Abstract:Silent Data Corruption (SDC) can have negative impact on large-scale infrastructure services. SDCs are not captured by error reporting mechanisms within a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and hence are not traceable at the hardware level. However, the data corruptions propagate across the stack and manifest as application-level problems. These types of errors can result in […]
Apple Watch Ultra 2 Hacked
The same thing happened to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6dazJk9AtU Date of Incident: February 6, 2024, at 18:36 CST Device: Apple Watch Series 9 Issue Description: I am writing to report a significant security concern that recently occurred with my Apple Watch Series 9. I experienced a disturbing incident where my device appeared to be remotely controlled by […]
The Layoff
Published on 02/17/2024, 2706 words, 10 minutes to read The Bay Bridge in San Francisco, California, USA. – Photo by Xe Iaso A dull thud hit James’ wrist. Again. And again. He slowly opened his eyes and took a look at his smartwatch. It was 08:30, and his watch was gleefully reminding him that he […]
What’s the fun in writing on the internet anymore?
You are reading some words on the internet. Think about all the things you could do with these words. You could copy and paste this article into ChatGPT and say, “Please rewrite and paraphrase this blog post in such a way as to keep its main points and observations, but substantively reconfigure the text to […]