Using the right tool for the job

One of the most important choices you’ll make for the software you write is what you write it in, what frameworks you use, the design methodologies to subscribe to, and so on. This choice doesn’t seem to get the respect it’s due. These are some of the only choices you’ll make that you cannot change. Or, at least, these choices are among the most difficult ones to change.

People often question why TrueCraft is written in C# next to projects like Sway in C, alongside KnightOS in Assembly or sr.ht in Python. It would certainly be easier from the outset if I made every project in a...

What motivates the authors of the software you use?

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 choose between Android or iOS. We choose hardware that requires nonfree drivers or ones that don’t. We choose to store our data in someone else’s cloud or in our own. How do we make the right choice?

I think it’s important to consider the basic motivations behind the software you choose to use. Why did the author write it? What...

2016-08-24

slcon3 preliminary schedule now published. If you want to attend please register before: 2016-09-01.

[VIDEO] Arch Linux with full disk encryption in (about) 15 minutes

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 disk encryption.

This is my first go at publishing videos on my blog, so please provide some feedback in the comments of this article. I’d prefer to use my blog instead of YouTube for publishing technical videos, since it’s all open source, ad-free, and DRM-free. Let me know if you’d like to see more content like this on my blog and which...

Teaching Ozlo about Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is all the rage these days. Ozlo, your friendly AI sidekick, would be remiss if he didn’t help you catch them all!

Thanks to Ozlo’s unique, knowledge-based approach to the world, we were able to teach him about Pokémon in just under a week, including how to find PokéStops and Pokémon Gyms near places you might be going. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of Ozlo’s inner workings, what goes into teaching him a completely new concept, and why his ability to learn quickly matters.

The process involves three high-level steps:

Sway 0.9 & One year of Sway

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, as of last week, all of the features from the i3 configuration I used before I started working on Sway are now supported by Sway. Today, Sway looks like this (click to expand):

For those who are new to the project, Sway is an i3-compatible Wayland compositor. That is, your existing i3 configuration file will work as-is...

Using -Wl,--wrap for mocking in C

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;
    while (!feof(f)) {
        l = fread(buf, 1, 256, f);
        r += l;
        buf += l;
    }
...


						
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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of privacy

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 while we have it, so that we know how to keep exercising it once it’s illegal and all the information about it dries up.

One particularly annoying coworker often brings up, “what do you have to hide?” Though it would defeat the purpose to explain what I’m hiding, let’s assume that what I’m hiding...

Understanding pointers

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 this guy only has a basic grasp on pointers at this point in his learning curve, and I figured it was time for another blog post - so today, I’ll explain pointers.

To understand pointers, you must first understand how memory works. Your RAM is basically a flat array of octets. Your compiler describes every data structure you use as a series of octets. For the context...

Meet Ozlo

Two days ago, a project I’ve been working on for a little over two years was unveiled to the world. Meet Ozlo, your friendly AI sidekick!

First things first: if you haven’t signed up yet, hit up this link which includes a VIP code to fast-track you into our invite-only app.

A lot has been said about Ozlo already: Charles Jolley (co-founder), John Lilly (investor), Lloyd Hilaiel (friend & colleague), Todd Agulnick (friend & colleague) and even Buzzfeed! Here’s my perspective…

It didn’t take me very long since I first heard the idea for a better mobile search experience from Mike 1 and Charles to stop what I was doing and...