BlogDB

Using less memory to look up IP addresses in Mess With DNS

I’ve been having problems for the last 3 years or so where Mess With DNS periodically runs out of memory and gets OOM killed. This hasn’t been a big priority for me: usually it just goes down for a...

2024 dbt Labs Coalesce Conference

I traveled for much of the last two months and during that time I went to four conferences. I usually like to write about them when they are happening but I wasn’t able to manage it, so I’m offerin...

Who is a terrorist?

Using Nix to Fuzz Test a PDF Parser (Part Two)

This is the second half of a post about using Nix to automate a fuzz testing workflow. At this point, I can run honggfuzz against pdftotext, but it takes a bit of manual effort to get things starte...

Quantum Computing – An Update

In March 2022 I wrote a description of the Quantum Technology Ecosystem. I thought this would be a good time to check in on the progress of building a quantum computer and explain more of the basic...

An experiment in fighting spam on public forms using “proof of work”

Spam is everywhere. If you have an email account, a mailbox, a website with comments, a cellphone, a social media account, a public form, etc. We all know it, it is a plague. Over the years, there ...

Who Is Signal For?

The impossibility of migrating its message history raises one question.

Exposure to Art: a MTA Case Study

Many corporations and agencies allocate a certain amount of their budget towards the creation of public artwork. For instance, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has funded near...

The Worst Travelcard Of All Time

I wanted foreign currency at a reasonable exchange rate. Such a simple request was beyond the abilities of the Post Office.

Six Dumb Misconceptions About The Economy (that the Politicians Want You To Believe)

Well, it looks like we’re here in another US election year already.  As Advanced Mustachians, we already know that the ongoing battle of Harris vs. Trump should not be consuming much of our time.  ...

Gender Journey

In which a time of gender questioning is succinctly summarized.

Bye-Bye WordPress

No more Wordpress on this site!

How Saboteurs Threaten Innovation–and What to Do About It

This article first appeared in First Round Review. “Only the Paranoid Survive” Andy Grove – Intel CEO 1987-1998 I just had an urgent “can we meet today?” coffee with Rohan, an ex-student. His three...

Linkfest #25: The "Third Thumb", Prairie Strips, and Science Proves People Love Spoilers

Hello folks! It’s time for my latest “Linkfest” — i.e. "the opposite of doomscrolling”, in which I ceaselessly roam the Internet’s Plutonian shores to find the subtlest gems of science, culture and...

Some notes on upgrading Hugo

Warning: this is a post about very boring yakshaving, probably only of interest to people who are trying to upgrade Hugo from a very old version to a new version. But what are blogs for if not docu...

Chromium’s influence on Chromium alternatives

I don’t think most people realize how Firefox and Safari depend on Google for more than “just” revenue from default search engine deals and prototyping new web platform features.Off the top of my h...

I asked ChatGPT to psychoanalyse me

Update (July 2025): Important Context on AI, Mental Health, and Accessibility This post describes a personal experiment from 2024. I’ve noticed this post has been getting more traffic recently, and...

What Does Product Market Fit Sound Like? This.

I got a call from an ex-student asking me “how do you know when you found product market fit?” There’s been lots of words written about it, but no actual recordings of the moment. I remembered I ha...

👻 Sandboxels v1.10.1 - Creepy Crawlies - OUT NOW 🕸️

The scariest Sandboxels update of all time is here, including Spiders, Webs, Souls, Candy Corn, and more! This is just one of the many Halloween events happening around R74n this month.

Block abusive IPs based on 404 error rate using HAProxy

I’ve been using HAProxy for a very long time. In most cases, I work on stuff where HAProxy configuration fits into the fire-and-forget category, with occasional tweaks to ACLs, redirections, and th...