18 June 2024

50 links · Tuesday

The Essence of Lagrange Multipliers

In which we attempt to better understand the classic multivariable calculus optimization problem.

Fast Crimes at Lambda School

Two days after his company's downfall, Austen Allred wrote: I wish people could see how ugly it is to be envious, and how obvious it is to those around you when that's what's happening. There's no much uglier than trying to tear someone down because they ach…

April is the Cruelest Month

This has been a difficult post to write. I’ve written and rewritten it over the last few weeks, but I never liked how it came out. This is an attempt to correct that. It is always challenging…

wtb: Progressive SPAs

I've been using React a long time at this point, and it's by far my favorite approach to building a UI - interactive or not. Most of that time has been spent at Sentry, but whenever I start a new project, I still reach for React. I want to talk a little about …

Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2

Since writing about Mac external displays in 2016, not much has changed. LG, Dell, Samsung, and other display makers have either never catered for the specs many Mac designers and developers want, or they’ve reluctantly produced products that have been short-l…

listening to your friends' jams with last.fm

Quite a while ago, I wrote some Spotify code that would find places when my Discover Weekly playlist would intersect with those of my friends and coworkers. This was fun. Every once in a while, I talked about other things that might be fun, along those lines. …

Grow a Pair

I recently needed to merge a code change. I wasn’t a code owner of the specific repo, so I put my merge request in front of the code owners. It was a small lexical change, based on the curren…

Minimize all windows on Mac OS

AppleScript to quickly minimize every window on my macOS. This is not hiding the windows, but minimizing them on the dock.

Technical Inspection

The CEO needs to increase company margins. He turns to the engineering leadership team to help. Engineering leadership puts together a sound plan. First the objective to “Increase Company Margins” is decomposed into a collection of eng-level goals like “Reduce…

Essential, open source Mac apps

These are the apps I install on every new Mac, and this post serves as my personal reference list (as with many other posts on this blog). It's likely that Rectangle will be replaced by the built-in window tiling functionality in the upcoming Sequoia release, …

There's something rotten in the kingdom of Wordpress

Like many in web development, Wordpress has been a semi-regular feature in my professional life and, for most of it, my impression was that it suffered from the usual infighting and mismanagement you see in free or open source software, but that it was otherwi…

My Experience With LineageOS

Don’t take this post seriously, this is just me being goofy and having fun. Some Background Recently, I embarked on a mini project. It started with my boss giving me her old OnePlus 8. Conveniently, the very next day the battery in my iPhone 11 Pro Max decided…

Latency, Tail Latency and Response time in distributed systems

Response time is a metric that shows how fast software responds. This is the time between request was sent and the time response was received. The questions arise right from the start: a sorting of 100 000 elements naturally requires more time than of 100. How…

Of Rats and Ratchets

This is going to be related to software engineering, pinky promise!

A Vision For Roadway Infrastructure

Explore the future of roadway infrastructure, envisioning smarter and safer roads as well as more efficient and pleasurable driving experiences for all.

Making Friends

There's a pattern for people who want to make friends but are unable to. The thing they have in common is they have unusual views on a lot of mainstream things and therefore don't talk about them. The problem with having unusual views is that people think you'…

Cyber Scarecrow

An app for scaring away malware

Chat Control Must Be Stopped – Now!

With its legislative proposal known as “Chat Control,” the EU Commission is trying to establish an unprecedented mass-surveillance apparatus of Orwellian proportions in the European Union. If EU citizens don’t stand up for privacy now, it may be too late.

Chat control: incompatible with fundamental rights

The EU Commission has presented a draft regulation that is to lay down rules for preventing and combating sexual violence against children (Chat Control Regulation). The planned regulation raises such significant fundamental rights concerns that the GFF is joi…

Health Checks in Your OpenAPI Specs

Adding health checks to your ASP.NET Core projects is simple and easy, but how do you get them exposed in your OpenAPI specification? Let me show you how!

Process Monitor v4.0 and Sysmon 1.3.3 for Linux

Learn about the latest updates to Process Monitor v4.0 and Sysmon 1.3.3 for Linux

Understanding open source LLMs

Do you think you can run any Large Language Model (LLM) on your machine?

GitHub - nicanorflavier/spf-dkim-dmarc-simplified: Email security is a key part of internet communication. But what are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and how do they work? This guide will explain it all in simple terms to make these concepts clearer.

Email security is a key part of internet communication. But what are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and how do they work? This guide will explain it all in simple terms to make these concepts clearer. - nic...

j3s.sh

Stop Using Fandom 2024-06-16 fandom is a wiki website (allegedly) if you are unfortunate enough to browse a fandom wiki without an ad blocker, you will experience what i like to call "attention assault" upon opening a fandom page (for m…

Council to greenlight Chat Control - Take action now!

The Belgian EU Council presidency seems set to have bulk Chat Control searches of our private communications greenlighted by EU governments on Wednesday 19 June. This confirms concerns that the proponents of Chat Control intend to exploit the period shortly af…