RSS Bilingual Reader

While testing my gopher client, I noticed something interesting: All downloads froze at 13 kilobytes. Sometimes this was barely noticeable, other times it would stall for a good second or so. Networks operate on small chunks of data called packets . This allows resources to be shared between computers: Instead of waiting for someone else's download to finish before loading a website, your web traffic can be sent in between the other user's packets. There's still some waiting involved, but it's o...

While gopher is usually seen as a proto-web, it's really closer to FTP. It has no markup format, no links and no URLs. Files are arranged in a hierarchically, and can be in any format. This rigid structure allows clients to get creative with how it's displayed ... which is why I'm extremely disappointed that everyone renders gopher menus like shitty websites: You see all that text mixed into the menu? Those are informational selectors: a non-standard feature that's often used to recreate hyperte...

It has recently come to my attention that people need a thousand lines of C code to read my website. This is unacceptable. For simpler clients, my server supports gopher: /* HTML tags, keywords, commands */ h-n {color: #F27;} /* Values */ h-v {color: #B8F;} /* CSS selectors, attribute/varable names, file names */ h-s {color: #AEE;} /* Comments */ h-c {color: #777;} h-e {color: #F6F;} # telnet maurycyz.com 70 /about.txt --------------------[ About this site: ]--------------------- Publication dat...

The Sony FD-30A has a very weird display: On the surface, it looks like a normal CRT, except it's impossibly thin: the whole device is just under 4 cm thick. To do this, the tube is mounted sideways, and the phosphor is viewed from the back. Unfortunately, this rather unique display is completely useless: There are no analog TV stations on my continent... at least not with that attitude. To get started, I grabbed my favorite 8-bit microcontroller , the AVR128DA23 . (soon to be unaffordable due t...

Modern browsers are hugely complex: Chromium (the open source portion of google chrome) currently has 49 millions lines of code, making it bigger then any other program on my machine. ... but how much of that is needed if I just want to visit websites instead of running multi-gigabyte Javascript abominations that just happen to render to the browser? My goal is to to read all the blogs on my link list : The pages have to be rendered (no printing HTML) and links must work. Let's start by trying t...

This is a small javascript snippet that removes most annoying website elements: /* HTML tags, keywords, commands */ h-n {color: #F27;} /* Values */ h-v {color: #B8F;} /* CSS selectors, attribute/varable names, file names */ h-s {color: #AEE;} /* Comments */ h-c {color: #777;} function cleanup (node) { var style = getComputedStyle ( node ); // Bad styles var bad = ( a ) => ([ "fixed" , "sticky" , "hidden" , "clip" ]. includes ( a )); // Removes "dick bars" and the such if ( bad ( style . posit...

Ok, the title is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there's very little thought put into files in most languages. It always feels a bit out of place... except in C. In fact, what you get is usually a worse version of C. In C, files can be accessed in the same way as memory: /* HTML tags, keywords, commands */ h-n {color: #F27;} /* Values */ h-v {color: #B8F;} /* CSS selectors, attribute/varable names, file names */ h-s {color: #AEE;} /* Comments */ h-c {color: #777;} h-e {color: #F6F;} #include <sys/...

I get it : Large Language Models are interesting... but you really should not give "Agentic AI" access to your computer, accounts or wallet. To do away with the hype: Open Claw, Antigravity and Claude Code are just LLMs with shell access, and at it's core, an LLM is a weighted random number generator. You have no idea what it is going to do : It could post your credit card number on social media. This isn't a theoretical concern. There are multiple cases of LLMs wiping peoples computers [1] [2] ...

Just a heads up: this post is incomplete. However, it may be a while before I am able to finish it. I am publishing it early in hopes that you will still find it somewhat interesting. I've recently acquired this tiny contamination monitor: Just 4 cm wide! It's more sensitive then a Ludlum 44-9 despite being smaller then it's pancake style G-M tube. After removing four hex screws , the AlphaHound easily comes apart: Oooo This is very nice: Many similarly sized devices are difficult or impossible ...

One of the great things about web pages is that they are long-lived and mutable . There's no need to aim for perfection on the first draft: A page can continue to be improved for years after its original publication. However, this mutability comes at a cost: DO NOT POWER [IT] DOWN!! — The first web server. Servers are just computers: If they ever break or are turned off, the web site vanishes off the internet. h-n {color: #F27; font-family: monospace;} h-v {color: #B8F; font-family: monosp...

In principle, a static site generator is a good idea: They automatically populate your homepage, index pages and RSS feeds, making it impossible to forget anything. Unlike a CMS like Wordpress, they don't add runtime cost or security vulnerabilities: They run once to generate your site and are never exposed to the internet. However, they all put weird restrictions on how you structure your site: Nearly all of them require you to write in Markdown , which is common, but poorly specified and diffi...

I recently wrote an essay on why you should set up a personal website rather then using social media. Doing so lets you own your space on the internet, customize it and free your readers from constant advertising and algorithmic feeds designed to keep you stuck doomscrolling all day. Despite how much time we spend using it , creating something for the intenet is seen as arcane wizardy by most people. This is a fairly accessable guide to getting started. You'll need a text editor (any will do) an...

0.55 arcseconds/pixel. Image is 27' wide. North is right (mirrored). Color: 27 minutes (319 * 4 seconds) through thin clouds Equipment: C9.25, 0.63 reducer, ASI533 MC (IMX533 sensor), EQ6-R mount. Resolution: 5 arcsec FWHM I just can't seem to take a good picture of this region. This one has: Messed up backfocus and collimation Bad seeing, made worse by looking over the roof of my house Every *single* 5-second frame was ruined by clouds. I coudn't see Polaris so mount alignment was done based on...

W riting something down forces you to fully understand it. When the idea is on paper, you can see all the missing assumptions and leaps in logic. It's common to start writing, do some research and find out that your original point was wrong . This is a good thing. You are now less wrong then you were before, and have something you can share so that we can all be less wrong. Even if you don't learn anything new in the process , we don't find our interests and hobbies by magic: We read about them ...