I found an 8 years old bug in Xorg
Let me set the right expectations first. This bug I found is actually not that complicated, it’s very straightforward once you see what’s going on. But I still think the process it took me to uncover this bug could be interesting. It’s also kind of interesting that a simple bug stayed undiscovered for so long. […]
The Origin of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
Abstract:Jupiter’s Grat Red Spot (GRS) is the largest and longest-lived vortex of all solar system planets but its lifetime is debated and its formation mechanism remains hidden. G. D. Cassini discovered in 1665 the presence of a dark oval at the GRS latitude, known as the “Permanent Spot” (PS) that was observed until 1713. We […]
Llama.ttf: A font which is also an LLM
llama.ttf is a font file which is also a large language model and an inference engine for that model. Ehm, what? llama.ttf is a font file which is also a large language model and an inference engine for that model. Why? How? The font shaping engine Harfbuzz, used in applications such as Firefox and Chrome, […]
A Study Says Warp Drives Might Be Real–and We’ll Find Them with Lasers
If humanity ever wants to escape the solar system, we’re going to need a faster-than-light engine. Enter: the warp drive. While such a drive pushes the limits of known physics, a new study ponders whether we could detect gravitational waves produced from collapsing warp drives using laser-based detectors, such as LIGO or even the upcoming […]
Character Tiling
Introduction Recently I have been writing some routines for a PC game that is 2D and needs some backgrounds on which to play. I had only done some space games on PC before, which cunningly only need a starfield backdrop. I used a photo I took of the Milky Way on a clear night from […]
My weekend project turned into a 3 year journey
Hello everyone! My name is Anthony 👋 I’m creating an app that started as a simple note-taking tool but has now grown into a full-fledged project way beyond what I could have imagined. Let me tell you how what began as a weekend project ended up taking over my life without me realizing it! Spoiler […]
Fresh water on Earth emerged 500M years earlier than previously thought
New Curtin-led research has found evidence that fresh water on Earth, which is essential for life, appeared about four billion years ago – five hundred million years earlier than previously thought. Lead author Dr Hamed Gamaleldien, Adjunct Research Fellow in Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and an Assistant Professor at Khalifa University, UAE, […]
Never* Use Datagrams
Click-bait title, but hear me out. TCP vs UDP So you’re reading this blog over the internet. I would wager you do a lot of things over the internet. If you’ve built an application on the internet, you’ve undoubtedly had to decide whether to use TCP or UDP. Maybe you’re trying to make, oh I […]
BeyondCorp
Abstract Virtually every company today uses firewalls to enforce perimeter security. However, this security model is problematic because, when that perimeter is breached, an attacker has relatively easy access to a company’s privileged intranet. As companies adopt mobile and cloud technologies, the perimeter is becoming increasingly difficult to enforce. Google is taking a different approach […]
Remembering the LAN (2020)
A memory and a dream. How it was I started programming in the 1990s living above my parent’s medical practice. We had 15 PCs for the business, and one for me. The standard OS was MS-DOS. The network started off using IPX over coax to a Novell Netware server, the fanciest software we ever owned. […]