General computing

The Gemini protocol has been around for over five years, but the world-wide web remains broken. This articles reviews what's changed for the better over the last five years -- and what hasn't.

Categories: general computing, retrocomputing

You'd think you could improve the cooling of a laptop by fitting extra fans under its air intakes. Seems not.

Categories: electronics, general computing

Despite eBay's claim, it isn't now free to sell for private sellers. Here's why.

Categories: general computing

For too long, mega-corporations have been able to avoid liability for defective software. But will upcoming changes to the law adversely affect those who distribute open-source software free-of-charge?

Categories: general computing, security

As the Microsoft Windows user experience continues to worsen, what should Linux advocates do?

Categories: general computing, Linux

Lineage OS is based on the Android Open-Source Project, whose primary maintainer is Google. To what extent can it be considered Google-free?

Categories: general computing, degoogling

Will my Gentoo journey be coming to an end after the first month?

Categories: general computing, Linux

Even seasoned Linux developers speak of Gentoo in hushed tones. It's not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. But how stout-hearted must you be, for Gentoo to be appropriate?

Categories: general computing, Linux

Is it safe to sell a used hard drive without securely erasing all the data? And is it even possible to erase all the data, even if we want to?

Categories: general computing, security

Artix is a low-resource Linux that can be configured to run well on old, low-powered computer hardware. In this article, I describe my first attempts at setting it up.

Categories: general computing, Linux

Is it possible to live without Google and the like, and still use modern, portable computing devices? I still don't know.

Categories: general computing, degoogling

Most image editing applications provide a 'saturation' adjustment; some provide adjustments of 'brilliance', 'chroma', and other things. This article explains what these terms actually mean.

Categories: general computing

Darktable isn't supposed to be an alternative to Adobe Lightroom, but many people hope to use it as one. After all, Darktable's (free) pricing is very appealing. Here are my views on whether a move to Darktable makes sense.

Categories: general computing, Linux

Does controlling web search rankings amount to censorship? Does it matter if it does?

Categories: general computing, law

The advantages and disadvantages of Samsung DeX on an Android cellphone, compared with a desktop or laptop computer.

Categories: general computing

Audiobook supplier Audible has recently caused controversy by changing its long-standing one-click, no-questions-asked returns policy. Why? And who stands to gain and lose from this change? What are the broader implications?

Categories: general computing

'Spy pixels' or 'tracking pixels' are surprisingly prevalent in email messages -- they are found, it seems, in perhaps 70% of all such communications. Is this cause for concern? How much personal data are they brokering?

Categories: general computing

Back in the 70s, desktop computers booted to BASIC. In this article, I describe my efforts to implement a BASIC programming environment on the SparkFun Pro Micro, a small Arduino-like 8-bit microcontroller.

Categories: general computing, retrocomputing, Arduino

In the last few years there has been a revival of interest in 8-bit microcomputers from the 70s and 80s. Many of these were based on the Zilog Z80, and many ran CP/M. This article about getting started with CP/M using an emulator on Linux.

Categories: general computing, retrocomputing, Z80

A small step in the right direction, or political correctness gone mad?

Categories: general computing

The modern World-Wide Web is broken. Is Gemini the repair?

Categories: general computing, retrocomputing

The ease of installation and use of modern desktop Linux distributions comes at a price. I review a couple of low-complexity alternatives to mainstream Linux distributions: Alpine and Devuan.

Categories: general computing, Linux

Why do so many IT professionals like to tinker with vintage computers and software?

Categories: general computing, retrocomputing

The Hamming bound is an important metric in the evaluation of information coding schemes. It sets an upper limit on the number of distinct codewords that an error-correcting block code can provide, for a given block length. The Hamming bound is a benchmark for the evaluation of error correction schemes used in digital data storage and communication -- a scheme that meets the Hamming bound is described as perfect. In this article I try to describe, from first principles, how the Hamming bound is calculated.

Categories: mathematics, general computing

This article describes how to do arithmetic in a small finite (prime) field. Being able to do this is essential for the implementation of cryptography, among other things. The arithmetic isn't particularly difficult -- particularly if we use software that specifically supports such operations. However, it's illustrative to do it manually, at least for a small field. I will demonstrate simple arithmetic in the field GF(5), by solving a quadratic equation.

Categories: mathematics, general computing

How a non-existent English village ended up on maps, and the implications this has for how we handle information.

Categories: general computing