We face an important choice in our lives as technophiles, hackers, geeks: the choice between proprietary software and free/open source software. What platforms we choose to use are important. We have a choice between Windows, OS X, and Linux (not to mention the several less popular choices). We choo...

window.HELP_IMPROVE_VIDEOJS = false; After my blog post emphasizing the importance of taking control of your privacy, I’ve decided to make a few more posts going over detailed instructions on how to actually do so. Today we have a video that goes over the process of installing Arch Linux with full d...

Today marks one year since the initial commit of Sway. Over the year since, we’ve written 1,823 commits by 54 authors, totalling 16,601 lines of C (and 1,866 lines of header files). This was written over the course of 515 pull requests and 300 issues. Today, most i3 features are supported. In fact, ...

Today marks one year since the initial commit of Sway. Over the year since, we’ve written 1,823 commits by 54 authors, totalling 16,601 lines of C (and 1,866 lines of header files). This was written over the course of 515 pull requests and 300 issues. Today, most i3 features are supported. In fact, ...

One of the comforts I’ve grown used to in higher level languages when testing my code is mocking. The idea is that in order to test some code in isolation, you should “mock” the behavior of things it depends on. Let’s see a (contrived) example: int read_to_end(FILE *f, char *buf) { int r = 0, l; whi...

One of the comforts I’ve grown used to in higher level languages when testing my code is mocking. The idea is that in order to test some code in isolation, you should “mock” the behavior of things it depends on. Let’s see a (contrived) example:int read_to_end(FILE *f, char *buf) { int r = 0, l; whil...

Privacy is my hobby, and should be a hobby of every technically competent American. Within the eyes of the law I have a right to secure the privacy of my information. At least that’s the current law - many officials are trying to subvert that right. I figure that we’d better exercise that right whil...

Privacy is my hobby, and should be a hobby of every technically competent American. Within the eyes of the law I have a right to secure the privacy of my information. At least that’s the current law - many officials are trying to subvert that right. I figure that we’d better exercise that right whil...

table { border-spacing: 0; width: 100%; } th, td { border-bottom: 1px solid black; } I was recently chatting with a new contributor to Sway who is using the project as a means of learning C, and he had some questions about what void** meant when he found some in the code. It became apparent that thi...

table { border-spacing: 0; width: 100%; } th, td { border-bottom: 1px solid black; } I was recently chatting with a new contributor to Sway who is using the project as a means of learning C, and he had some questions about what void** meant when he found some in the code. It became apparent that thi...

Today we look back to the life of Mozilla, a company that was best known for creating the Firefox web browser. I remember a company that made the web better and more open by providing a browser that was faster and more customizable than anyone had ever seen, and by making that browser free and open ...

Today we look back to the life of Mozilla, a company that was best known for creating the Firefox web browser. I remember a company that made the web better and more open by providing a browser that was faster and more customizable than anyone had ever seen, and by making that browser free and open ...

Since the previous State of Sway, we have accomplished quite a bit. We are now shipping versioned releases of sway, which include support for window borders, input device configuration, more new features, and many bug fixes and stability improvements. I’m also happy to say that Sway 0.5 has landed i...

Since the previous State of Sway, we have accomplished quite a bit. We are now shipping versioned releases of sway, which include support for window borders, input device configuration, more new features, and many bug fixes and stability improvements. I’m also happy to say that Sway 0.5 has landed i...

This is in response to How to write a bloom filter in C++, which has good intentions, but is ultimately a less than ideal bloom filter implementation. I put together a better one in C in a few minutes, and I’ll explain the advantages of it. The important differences are: You bring your own hashing f...

This is in response to How to write a bloom filter in C++, which has good intentions, but is ultimately a less than ideal bloom filter implementation. I put together a better one in C in a few minutes, and I’ll explain the advantages of it.The important differences are:You bring your own hashing fun...

A lot of people have come to hate email, and not without good reason. I don’t hate using email, and I attribute this to better email habits. Unfortunately, most email clients these days lead users into bad habits that probably contribute to the sad state of email in 2016. The biggest problem with em...

A lot of people have come to hate email, and not without good reason. I don’t hate using email, and I attribute this to better email habits. Unfortunately, most email clients these days lead users into bad habits that probably contribute to the sad state of email in 2016. The biggest problem with em...

I bought a DEC VT220 terminal a while ago, and put it next to my desk at work. I use it to read emails on mutt now, and it’s actually quite pleasant. There was some setup involved in making it as comfortable as possible, though. Here’s the terminal up close: Hardware First, I have several pieces of ...

I bought a DEC VT220 terminal a while ago, and put it next to my desk at work. I use it to read emails on mutt now, and it’s actually quite pleasant. There was some setup involved in making it as comfortable as possible, though. My desk at workHere’s the terminal up close: The terminal itselfHardwar...

I wrote sway’s initial commit 4 months ago, on August 4th. At the time of writing, there are now 1,070 commits from 29 different authors, totalling 10,682 lines of C (and 1,176 lines of header files). This has been done over the course of 256 pull requests and 118 issues. Of the 73 i3 features we’re...

I wrote sway’s initial commit 4 months ago, on August 4th. At the time of writing, there are now 1,070 commits from 29 different authors, totalling 10,682 lines of C (and 1,176 lines of header files). This has been done over the course of 256 pull requests and 118 issues. Of the 73 i3 features we’re...

Tor is a project that improves your privacy online by encrypting and bouncing your connection through several nodes before leaving for the outside world. It makes it much more difficult for someone spying on you to know who you’re talking to online and what you’re saying to them. Many people use it ...

Tor is a project that improves your privacy online by encrypting and bouncing your connection through several nodes before leaving for the outside world. It makes it much more difficult for someone spying on you to know who you’re talking to online and what you’re saying to them. Many people use it ...

I’ve noticed that more and more projects are using things like Slack as the chat medium for their open source projects. In the past couple of days alone, I’ve been directed to Slack for Babel and Bootstrap. I’d like to try and curb this phenomenon before it takes off any more. Problems with Slack Sl...

I’ve noticed that more and more projects are using things like Slack as the chat medium for their open source projects. In the past couple of days alone, I’ve been directed to Slack for Babel and Bootstrap. I’d like to try and curb this phenomenon before it takes off any more.Problems with SlackSlac...

React.js and the Flux are shaping up to be some of the most important tools for web development in the coming years. The MVC model was strong on the server when we decided to take the frontend seriously, and it was shoehorned into the frontend since we didn’t know any better. React and Flux challeng...

React.js and the Flux are shaping up to be some of the most important tools for web development in the coming years. The MVC model was strong on the server when we decided to take the frontend seriously, and it was shoehorned into the frontend since we didn’t know any better. React and Flux challeng...

I’ve taken a liking to a video game called osu! over the past few months. It’s a rhythm game where you use move your mouse to circles that appear with the beat, and click (or press a key) at the right time. It looks something like this: The key of this game is that the “beatmaps” (a song plus notes ...

I found myself in need of a simple tool for deploying a project on every git commit, but I didn’t have a build server set up. This led to Hooks - a very simple tool that allows you to run arbitrary commands when Github’s hooks execute. The configuration is very simple. In /etc/hooks.conf, write: [tr...