June’s Web Discoveries
Here’s a collection of intriguing links I stumbled upon online, perfect for a quick browse.
60kHz・There’s a radio station in Colorado that broadcasts the time. It’s WWVB, the station that the National Institute of Standards and Technology uses to broadcast the current time, tuned to the 60 kHz frequency. Day and night, this station diligently continues broadcasting.
Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code — inside the Copilot+ Recall disaster・Stealing everything you’ve ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC is now possible with two lines of code — inside the Copilot+ Recall disaster
Lessons learned from 6 months of operating a teensy-tiny news archive・The best websites are home-cooked meals. Andrew’s Selkouutiset Archive was birthed after I realized there was no obvious way to fetch the previous articles of the “Easy Finnish” daily news broadcast. This annoyed me as a student of the language. “Here we have a stream”, I thought, “of high-quality, human-written, interesting practice material, and no easy way to access it!” So I went out of my way to create such a way, and me and my language skills have been profiting off of it ever since.
Making USB devices - end to end guide to your first gadgett・Introduction to implementing USB devices. Minimal overview of hardware and software with an example with STM32 microcontroller. Also contains an index to very detailed guides for more information.
Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it・Don’t fall for these texts from scammers trying to crack into your stolen phone.
Managing My Motivation, as a Solo Dev・One of the biggest sticking points of being a solo dev is maintaining motivation. I’ve been keeping a journal entry about how to hack my motivation, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the things that have worked. Convert external sources to motivation I’ve always known that I’m more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated, so I have a couple systems that help to give me bursts of external motivation. For example, the Money Bots, which pop up every time someone subscribes.
The Backrooms of the Internet Archive - Internet Archive Blogs・Like many bits of Internet Culture, this simple image of an empty series of rooms represents a deep-repressed or recently-remembered memory of a common Internet Legend, or it’s just a shot of nothing. If the answer is that it’s a shot of nothing, let’s get you up to speed.
Ship something every day・I don’t feel particularly qualified to give advice (I blame imposter syndrome), but I do have one tip to share that I think has been useful for me. It applies both to professional software dev and personal projects.
Sending Emails to my 3-year-old・In 2020 just in between two lockdowns, my wife gave birth to our son Linus. I’m not going to describe in detail how my life was changed that day (because other bloggers do this better) but for me his birth sparked a whole lot of new feelings and plans for our future.
MPA Archive・Crawls a Multi-Page Application to a zip file, serve the Multi-Page Application from the zip file. A MPA archiver. Could be used as a Site Generator
Engage your audience by getting to the point, using story structure, and forcing specificity・I came across this recent video from Vicky Zhao last week and loved her brief summary of how she grew in her ability to clearly articulate ideas on the spot by getting to the point, using story str…
Group chats rule the world・Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed,…
The Time I Built an ROV to Solve Missing Person Cases - Part 1 - The Anttidote・I didn’t know it back then but it all started while I was reading Hacker News in February 2019 and stumbled upon a story called “The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans”. The real life events behind the story are unbelievably tragic but how the case was solved was remarkable. How the perseverance of a single guy led to him solving the case and by doing so, he was able to bring much relief to the families of the victims. Reading the story got me thinking how I could do this kind of thing myself.
H.264 is magic・A high level walkthrough of the basics of video compression techniques used in MPEG, AVC/H.264, codecs.
The Architecture Behind A One-Person Tech Startup・As grandiose as the title of this article might sound, I should clarify we’re talking about a low-stress, one-person company that I run from my flat here in Germany.
Do not try to be the smartest in the room; try to be the kindest.・In business, being a nice person in the room can be more impactful than being the smartest. I share my insights on empathy, respect, and active listening as key skills for successful meetings and creating a positive team environment.
Simple sabotage for software・How to sabotage software productivity, in the style of CIA
Experts vs. Imitators・Learn how to spot the difference between and expert and an imitator with 5 key tells.
On being laid off & unplanned entrepreneurship・it’s weird to look back; I sometimes get confused on how I got here. Most folks dream of being entrepreneur; “a path that seemed inevitable“, they say. None of that shit applies to me. I’m only here cause I kept getting laid off and that nonsense infuriated me. I treated my first layoff … Read more
The Demise of the Mildly Dynamic Website・Early websites. In the beginning, website HTML was crafted by hand. Your average personal — or corporate — website might consist of hand-edited HTML subsequently uploaded, probably via FTP, to a web server which knew only how to serve static files.
Nobody Knows What’s Going On・A major online publication once reported in a profile on me that I had retired at 33. A few old friends and acquaintances reached out to congratulate me on my financial independence. I think it was an honest mistake on
What happens to our breath when we type, tap, scroll・Do you have screen apnea? Former Microsoft executive Linda Stone coined this term around 2007 after noticing she’d developed an unhealthy habit while answering emails: She held her breath. On this episode, she tells host Manoush Zomorodi how she tested her friends and colleagues for screen apnea and what she has done since.Then, Manoush talks to the bestselling author of Breath, science writer James Nestor, who explains how shallow breathing impacts our physical and mental health. He takes us through a simple exercise to reset our breath and relieve screen time stress.
I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again・The recent innovations in the AI space, most notably those such as GPT-4, obviously have far-reaching implications for society, ranging from the utopian eliminating of drudgery, to the dystopian damage to the livelihood of artists in a capitalist society, to existential threats to humanity itself.
A Rant about Front-end Developmentt・I am a front-end developer who is FED up about front-end development. If you write front-end, this isn’t about you personally. It’s about how your choices make me angry. Also this is about how my choices have made me angry. Also this is mostly just about choices, the technologies are incidental.
The time I spent three months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixed it in 1 line of code・I originally told the story over on the other site, but I thought I’d share it here. With a bonus! I was working on a hardware accessory for the OG iPad. The accessory connected to the iPad over USB and provided MIDI in/out and audio in/out appropriate for a musician trying to lay down some tracks in Garage Band.
Carabiner Collection・The site contains over 430 carabiners displayed with photos, with many more in processing.
OWASP Juice Shop - Hacking A Modern Web Application・In this article, we’re going to look at web application security, and attack OWASP Juice Shop using XSS.
Web Check・All-in-one OSINT tool, for quickly checking a websites data
The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt・Culture is increasingly mediated through algorithms. These algorithms have splintered the organization of culture, a result of states and tech companies vying for influence over mass audiences. One byproduct of this splintering is a shift from imperfect but broad cultural narratives to a proliferation of niche groups, who are defined by ideology or aesthetics instead of nationality or geography.
I am using AI to automatically drop hats outside my window onto New Yorkers・I am a simple midwesterner living in the middle of New York City. I put my shoes on one at a time, I apologize when I bump into people on the street, and I use AI inference to drop hats on heads when they stand outside my apartment. Like anybody else
Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites・In this post, I talk about pleasant but seemingly minor features in personal sites
Formal Methods - Just Good Engineering Practice?・If you’re a software engineer, especially one working on large-scale systems, distributed systems, or critical low-level system, and are not using formal methods as part of your approach, you’re probably wasting time and money.
Open Source Railway Designer・An open source web application for railway infrastructure design, capacity analysis, timetabling and more!
Local, first, forever・We explore how to build local-first sync on top of simple file storage
Resilient Sync for Local First・Resilient sync for local-first apps by using existing technologies such as file systems
1-click Exploit in South Korea’s biggest mobile chat app・Stealing another KakaoTalk user’s chat messages with a simple 1-click exploit.
One Million Checkboxes・checking a box checks it for everyone!
6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex・I used to be good at spinning stories. Give me a half-baked startup idea, a semi-charismatic founder and a fistful of VC dollars, and I could write a…
A Bunch of Programming Advice I’d Give To Myself 15 Years Ago・I finally have the feeling that I’m a decent programmer, so I thought it would be fun to write some advice with the idea of “what would have gotten me to this point faster?” I’m not claiming this is great advice for everyone, just that it would have been good advice for me.
The Economics of Writing Technical Books・Yes, you can make money writing books. But never do it for that.
How I overcame my addiction to sugar・I remember my breakfast as a kid. It was as sugary as it gets, with cereal and milk or a good marmalade toast and a chocolate shake to start my day. I remember the highs and lows of my energy levels throughout the day or how I would look in the mirror and wonder why I grew as a chubby kid instead of thinner and stronger like some friends.