It is difficult to argue that the current, wide popular 8-hour workday in cognitive-demanding jobs is in any way efficient. It is bad both for employees and employers. Quoting the…
Category: IT
Setup OpenWRT on Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to avoid data trackers
I am definitely not an expert in networking, so take all of this with some salt. Still, I found it valuable to have my home internet powered by open source…
A fix for broken (physical) buttons and dead touch area on Android phones
My old Android smartphone fell too many times and had its physical buttons (back, home, recent apps) not working, which was problematic to do anything. You can go back with…
FOSS Android Apps and my quest for going Google free on OnePlus 6
A while ago I decided I did not want to be a product anymore, and start paying for services. I started by breaking free from all the free-but-commercial company services…
A setup for remote piano lesson over Zoom
First create a new sink: pactl load-module module-null-sink sink_name=zoom_input sink_properties=device.description=zoom_input then remap into a Zoom monitor source that Zoom will allow selection of: pactl load-module module-remap-source master=zoom_input.monitor source_name=zoom_mic source_properties=device.description=”zoom_mic”
FEniCS differences between Function, TrialFunction and TestFunction
The FEniCS project allows for simple solution of partial differential equations. However, getting started from examples is so quick, it is easy to miss how the inner-workings of it behave.…
Troubleshooting the installation of IRAF on Ubuntu
So, found myself installing IRAF on a friend’s laptop running Ubuntu. There are some decent tutorials online about the general steps: for example, this one, and the official one. However,…
Install Windows 7 on a modern, Intel 8th generation computer
I spent a good week trying to get Windows 7 to work on a modern laptop, having an Intel i3 8th generation CPU and other recent components, such as a…
Endless Christmas X-MAS CTF Writeup
This is a writeup for the Endless Christmas challenge, md5 hash 866c92038d6e9fc47db4424f71f6167a (download binary). It appeared in the X-MAS CTF, and it’s a Reverse challenge. Using afl with Radare we…
On knowing when to stop in software development
One of the very few things I learnt in art class is what the role of Jackson Pollock was in his art. Because, we were asked, what is the role…
Tasks un-owned are task that go forgotten
If you are a tech company, and your people commit code, then you probably have some code review policy. And if you do not, you definitely should: you want to…
A/B testing on WordPress: a framework for developers and tutorial
Some months ago, I changed one link in the menu in my website postpaycounter.com. After that, it looked to me more people were purchasing products, i.e. the conversion rate had…
Numpy histogram density does not sum to 1
During a Computational Vision lab, while comparing histograms, I stumbled upon a peculiar behavior. The histograms pairwise kernel matrix – which is just a fancy name for the matrix holding…
The one time pad and the many time pad vulnerability
The scope of this article is to present the one time pad cipher method and its biggest vulnerability: that of the many time pad. The one time pad: what it…
Getting started with Binary reverse engineering: an example
For a challenge in a university security class, I was given this file to crack: reverse1. I started with reverse0, which was considerably easier than the second one. In this post I…
Does C++ delete operator really free memory?
Well, I have been wondering about this for quite a while now, and I have tried to run some tests to better understand what’s going on under the hood. The…
Tips and advice on being a freelance in Information Technology
What follows is Javier Silva’s interview to me. The interview is mostly focused on how what it is like to be a freelance in the IT field and how to…
bbPress – Anonymous Subscriptions
This add-on plugin for bbPress will allow anonymous users to subscribe to topics and get email notifications when a new reply is posted. The notification email includes an unsubscribe link.…
A method for calculating pattern relevance in a text
This article aims at presenting a method for computing the relevance of a given string (pattern) in a text. This algorithm is at the core of my WordPress plugin Smart…
New System76 Lemur 2016 review (6th gen Intel core)
On December 2016 I purchased the System76 6th gen Lemur. These are more of impressions than a real review, but may be helpful if you’re interested in buying a new laptop and…