“Silicon Valley Is Turning into Its Own Worst Fear” Ted Chiang (2017)
Because corporations lack insight, we expect the government to provide oversight in the form of regulation, but the internet is almost entirely unregulated. Back in 1996, John Perry Barlow published a manifesto saying that the government had no jurisdiction over cyberspace, and in the intervening two decades that notion has served as an axiom to […]
Show HN: Open-source private home security camera system (end-to-end encryption)
Privastead is a privacy-preserving home security camera solution that uses end-to-end encryption. It has three key benefits: End-to-end encryption using the OpenMLS implementation of the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol. Software-only solution that works with existing IP cameras with minimal trust assumptions about the IP camera. Rust implementation (camera hub, MLS code for the mobile […]
The reproducibility crisis and other problems in science – John Ioannidis
AMD Disables Zen 4’s Loop Buffer
A loop buffer sits at a CPU’s frontend, where it holds a small number of previously fetched instructions. Small loops can be contained within the loop buffer, after which they can be executed with some frontend stages shut off. That saves power, and can improve performance by bypassing any limitations present in prior frontend stages. […]
You must read at least one book to ride
Two things are true. The first is going to sound bad in a culture where engineers are encouraged to apologize for existing while it is totally acceptable for a grifter that can’t code to insist that they’re a “thought leader”. It is that, in my immediate professional environment, I am consistently acknowledged to be one […]
How Honeycrisp Apples Went from Marvel to Mediocre
It was a chilly Saturday morning in October, and at my local grocery store, shoppers were browsing the apple selection: piles of Gala, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Snapdragon, and Honeycrisp beckoned. I lingered over the organic Honeycrisps, pausing to look at the $3.99-per-pound price tag, before filling my produce bag with several conventional Galas, […]
Square Roots and Maxima
Previous post A few days ago, I saw this short YouTube video from Grant Sanderson at 3Blue1Brown: [embedded content] The gist of the video is that if you have three independent random variables, X 1, X 2, and X 3, that are all uniformly distributed between 0 and 1, then P[max(X 1,X 2)≤x]=P[X 3≤x]=x 2 […]
Interview of Robert Shingledecker, Tiny Core Linux and DSL Developer (2009)
DistroWatch Weekly DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 295, 23 March 2009 Welcome to this year’s 12th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! This week we interview Robert Shingledecker, a former Damn Small Linux developer and now founder of Tiny Core Linux, a new mini-distribution and probably the smallest desktop live CD ever created. In the news, Ubuntu’s upcoming release, […]
Modern Mathematics (Pre-Print) Cutting-edge math for today’s coder
If you purchase the eBook, you will be entitled to receive periodic updates as errata are fixed, for no additional charge. If you purchase a paper book, it will be shipped as soon as it comes into stock. If you purchase the combo, the paper book will be shipped when it is published. The purpose […]
Accessing a DRM Framebuffer to display an image
When doing bring-ups on embedded devices a useful way to test if a display interface is working is this command: Apalis iMX6 $ dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fb0 This shows random data on the display and a lot of gray, red, blue, and green dots appear. This doesn’t tell us if everything is working as expected because […]