But good sir, what is electricity?
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges. A recurring theme of this Substack are my attempts to build out an accessible curriculum for hobby electronics. The target audience are folks who are no longer content with dumbed-down analogies, but who aren’t keen on academic textbooks brimming with obtuse jargon and […]
Electronic devices used for car thefts set to be banned
Getty Images Simon Jones & Emma Rossiter BBC News 23 February 2025 Sophisticated electronic devices used by criminals to steal cars are set to be banned under new laws in England and Wales. More than 700,000 vehicles were broken into last year – often with the help of high-tech electronic devices, including so-called signal jammers, […]
Lambda Calculus and Lisp, part 1
The first of a series of envisioned blog posts on lambda calculus, and Lisp. It’s unclear exactly where to start: there is a whole heap of interesting issues, both theoretical and in terms of concrete implementations, which tangle and interconnect. A particular application of lambda calculus is a very salient part of my “day job” […]
Half-Life
Around twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you told them that videogames would end up at the Smithsonian, but the Half-Life team really did want to make games that were more than just throwaway toys. The rule against cinematics — which made our jobs much harder and also ended up leaving a lot […]
Ways to annoy your senior engineer
In my 15 years of working hands-on as an engineer, I’ve collaborated with all kinds of people from various functions. Most interactions were great—people were smart and a pleasure to work with. But sometimes, they’d do things that would consistently grind my gears. A while ago, I decided to share what annoys me on LinkedIn, […]
Electronics Teardown: Stelo 2-Week Continuous Glucose Monitor (2024)
Electronics Teardown: Stelo CGM | Andy Kong Published October 6, 2024 Hello everyone, Hope everything is well in your life. I’m working on my implants talk for Hackaday Supercon (more info here). As part of my research, I tried out the Stelo CGM by Dexcom, this is (I think) the first over-the-counter continuous glucose monitor. […]
‘Amateur and dangerous’: Historians weigh in on viral AI history videos
3 days ago Yasmin Rufo Entertainment reporter timetravellerpov Imagine waking up in Rome 2,000 years ago, on the Nile in ancient Egypt or on the streets of London during the Black Death in the 1300s – complete with realistic sights, sounds and daily struggles. In recent weeks, AI-generated videos showing the points of view of […]
Clang Static Analyzer and the Z3 constraint solver
Frederic Cambus June 21, 2022 [LLVM] [Compilers] [Toolchains] As far as static analyzers are concerned, one of the most important point to consider is filtering out false positives as much as possible, in order for the reports to be actionable. This is an area on which Coverity did an excellent job, and likely a major […]
Digital Services Playbook
PLAY 1 Understand what people need We must begin digital projects by exploring and pinpointing the needs of the people who will use the service, and the ways the service will fit into their lives. Whether the users are members of the public or government employees, policy makers must include real people in their design […]
Python’s official documentation contains textbook example of insecure code (XSS)
From: Georgi Guninski Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 11:46:54 +0200 Python’s official documentation contains textbook example of insecure code (XSS) Date: 2025-02-18 Author: Georgi Guninski From the official Python 3.12 documentation on the CGI module [1] === form = cgi.FieldStorage() if “name” not in form or “addr” not in form: print(“Error”) print(“Please fill in the […]