tag: systems
2026-06-04
TigerStyle — Software Engineering Methodology for Safer, Faster Code
TigerBeetle's methodology built on three values: Safety (explicit limits, zero deps, assertions), Performance (primary colors, zero-copy), and Experience (simplicity, naming conventions).You Don't Love systemd Timers Enough
A case for systemd timers over traditional cron — persistent scheduling, calendar expressions, wake-on-timer, randomized delays, and built-in journal logging solve cron's pain points.Serving files over HTTP three ways: synchronous, epoll, and io_uring
A tour of Linux I/O methods through an HTTP file server — synchronous thread-per-request, epoll, and io_uring implementations in C, comparing their syscalls, concurrency models, and disk I/O capabilities.Cassandra Crossing 667/ In morte del sistema operativo
Italian newsletter essay arguing that Android and Windows are becoming active AI-driven control tools rather than passive executors — operating systems executing commands influenced by external factors the user doesn't perceive, enabling pervasive individual tecnocontrol.Cray XD1
Wikipedia article about the Cray XD1 — a cluster-based supercomputer introduced by Cray Inc. in 2006, using AMD Opteron processors and ATI/AMD Radeon graphics processors for GPGPU computing, designed as a cost-effective alternative to traditional supercomputers.ChiWriter
Wikipedia article about ChiWriter — a scientific WYSIWYG word processor for MS-DOS created by Cay Horstmann in 1986, one of the first capable of writing mathematical formulas on IBM PC XT, discontinued in 1996 and placed in the public domain.Cap'n Proto — Insanely Fast Data Interchange and RPC
Binary data format and capability-based RPC system, up to infinity times faster than Protocol Buffers with zero encoding/decoding step.bootc — Transactional OS Updates via OCI Container Images
Linux Foundation project applying Docker's layer model to bootable host systems, using OCI containers as transport for base OS updates powered by ostree.A blueprint for formal verification of Apple corecrypto
Apple Security Engineering publishes their formal verification approach for ML-KEM and ML-DSA in corecrypto — combining Isabelle, SAW, and Cryptol to prove functional correctness of C and ARM64 assembly implementations against FIPS 203/204 specifications, with 50,000+ proof steps.2026-05-28
The true reason C++ always wins
LaurieWired explores Richard Gabriel's "Worse Is Better" essay, how "New Jersey" thinking beats competitors, and how Bjarne Stroustrup's early decisions made C++ win while cleaner designs faded.2026-05-18
PSOS — The Foundations of a Provably Secure Operating System (1979)
Richard Feiertag & Peter Neumann (SRI International). PSOS designed with formal techniques (HDM) — formally stated requirements, formal specifications for each module, formal proofs that specifications satisfy requirements and programs are consistent. Capabilities as protection mechanism for all objects, hierarchical development, SPECIfication and Assertion Language (SPECIAL)2026-05-15
OxCaml — Jane Street's Experimental OCaml Branch with Locality and Uniqueness
OxCaml adds opt-in control over performance-critical parts of OCaml programs through locality (exclave_ stack_ for stack-bound allocations), uniqueness, and capabilities. Every valid OCaml program is valid OxCaml. Maintained by Jane StreetDesigning an FPGA Calculator from Scratch — 10-Chapter Series
Scientific BCD calculator with custom CPU on Altera Cyclone II FPGA. 10-chapter series covering numerical algorithms (CORDIC, logarithms), 12-bit instruction set, Harvard memory model, microcode, Python assembler, Qt desktop prototype, and physical board with 3D-printed enclosure. Perfect decimal accuracy, no floating-point errorsReimplementing the Space Protocol Stack from Scratch in OCaml
Thomas Gazagnaire details reimplementing the full CCSDS protocol stack from scratch in OCaml — from radio framing through Bundle Protocol and BPSec security extensions. Built on MirageOS libraries, used by Borealis project running in orbitO(x)Caml in Space — Pure-OCaml CCSDS Protocol Stack in Low Earth Orbit
Borealis project running pure-OCaml CCSDS protocol stack on DPhi Space's ClusterGate-2 satellite. Features BPSec encryption, post-quantum OTAR key rotation (ML-DSA-65), OxCaml with exclave_ stack_ for 3x p99.9 latency improvement. Built by Parsimoni from MirageOS libraries2026-05-14
Nibble
Nibble — C-like systems programming language written in 3000 lines of C. Demonstrates LLVM IR generation without malloc or external dependencies. Supports defer, recursion, structs, pointers, type checking, GLSL-like operatorsMyths About /dev/urandom — Classic Essay (2014)
Authoritative essay debunking the myth that /dev/random is safer than /dev/urandom. Both use the same CSPRNG, /dev/random just blocks. Linux 4.8+ made them equivalent for /dev/urandom. Quote: "Use urandom. Use urandom. Use urandom."Fragnesia — Linux LPE via ESP/XFRM
Universal Linux local privilege escalation exploit discovered by V12 Security. Abuses logic bug in ESP-in-TCP ULP to write arbitrary bytes into kernel page cache of read-only files. One-line exploit, affects all dirtyfrag kernels before May 13 2026 patchCS61 — Pipes, Forks, and Zombies (Harvard)
Harvard CS61 lecture notes covering Unix pipes (McIlroy's garden hose metaphor, SIGPIPE behavior), implementing waitpid via pipes, process hierarchy, and zombie/orphan process management in init2026-05-13
Solid Rocket Booster Design and Testing
Nakka Rocketry — comprehensive guide to solid rocket motor design, testing, and analysis. Includes motor cases, nozzles, propellants, ignition, thrust curves, and test stand data2026-05-12
The Foreman
Open-source lifecycle management platform for physical and virtual servers. Provisioning, configuration management, monitoring. Puppet, Ansible, Salt, Chef integration. REST API, plugins, web UIpgrwl
Cloud-native continuous backup for PostgreSQL in a single binary — WAL streaming, scheduled base backups, optional S3/SFTP storage backend, compression, encryption, retention, restore command. Implements streaming replication protocol directly, no external schedulers or extra servicesexample42
Open-source configuration management, monitoring, and automation tools. Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack modules. Monitoring (Munin, Prometheus), log management, IT automation. Core42, UAA, Smart42 productsCrossplane
Open-source Kubernetes control plane for building, publishing and using APIs. Use your own API providers, extend to match your infrastructure, CRDs, no vendor lock-inChef Infra
Chef Infra — configuration management platform for automating cloud infrastructure. Policy-driven, idempotent, Ruby-based DSL. Chef Infra Server, Workstation, InSpec for compliance, Chef Automate for analytics2026-05-11
CLR
Checker for Lifetimes and other Refinement types for Zig. Transpiles AIR to Zig source performing static compile-time analysis — checks use-before-assign, use-after-free, double-free, stack pointer escapes, non-nullness assertions, tagged union violations, fieldParentPtr misuse. MIT license2026-05-08
Copy Fail 2: Electric Boogaloo
Linux kernel LPE via ESP-in-UDP receive — same Copy Fail primitive (CVE-2026-31431) but in the xfrm subsystem. AEAD decrypt in-place over splice'd page-cache pages, ~22s to root via single-byte page-cache writes to /etc/passwd2026-05-05
Redis Array Type: Short Story of a Long Development
Salvatore Sanfilippo details the 4-month development of Redis's new Array data type — from specification to implementation with AI-assisted auto-coding, sparse/dense representation, ARGREP, and the role of GPT 5.x in system programming2026-04-28
C3
A systems programming language based on C syntax, designed as a safer and simpler alternative to C.2026-04-27
The West Forgot How to Make Things
Essay on industrial decline and the loss of manufacturing capability in Western nations.Does cooling the NAND chips on an SSD negatively affect its reliability?
Stack Exchange discussion debunking the myth that NAND chips need to be warm, citing research showing low-temperature writes can reduce data retention due to controller drift, not cell degradation.Your Gen 5 SSD is probably throttling right now, and you have no idea
PCIe 5.0 SSDs can silently throttle to 50% performance due to multi-stage thermal management, making active cooling essential for sustained speeds.The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max
Greg Kroah-Hartman's "gkh_clanker_t1000" AI fuzzing bot runs on a Framework Desktop with AMD Ryzen AI Max to uncover Linux kernel bugs locally.2026-04-24
Framework Laptop 13 Pro and highlights from the Framework Next Gen event
Framework announces the Laptop 13 Pro and shares highlights from its Next Gen event, focusing on repairable modular hardware and product updates.Canonical releases Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Resolute Raccoon
Canonical announces Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Resolute Raccoon, covering the new long-term support release and its platform updates.2026-04-23
Driving into the Unknown: Investigating and Addressing Security Breaches in Vehicle Infotainment Systems
Research paper analyzing security vulnerabilities and breach patterns in modern vehicle infotainment systems.2026-04-21
Forking Bahamut for Azzurra IRC: IPv6 and SSL in 2002
Marcello Barnaba’s retrospective on forking the Bahamut IRC daemon for Azzurra in 2002, adding IPv6, SSL, cloaking, and other infrastructure work for a large IRC network.2026-04-17
Zig 0.16.0 Release Notes
2026-04-16
Internet Protocol Version 8 (IPv8)
Jamie Thain’s Internet-Draft proposing IPv8, a managed network protocol suite that unifies addressing, routing, authentication, DNS, telemetry, and update workflows.2026-04-13
SplitBody muscle stimulation
LaurieWired discusses the SplitBody paper, where electrical stimulation moves the arm to reduce cognitive load during multitasking, and reflects on possible uses for training and performance.Music is not Turing complete
Emanuele Rodola shares a Lean4 proof that music is not Turing complete, joking that infinite symbolic playback is eventually periodic.Air Powered Segment Display
Video about a 3D-printed microfluidic, air-powered segment display and the hardware ideas behind it.2026-04-10
Artemis II Wallpapers
NASA wallpaper collection for Artemis II, featuring downloadable mobile backgrounds from the Moon mission.2026-04-08
Your RAM Has a 60 Year Old Design Flaw. I Bypassed It.
LaurieWired video about the Tailslayer research project, which uses hedged reads and channel scrambling offsets to reduce p99.99 RAM latency across Intel, AMD, Graviton, DDR4, DDR5, x86, and ARM systems.Tailslayer
C++ library and research project for reducing p99.99 RAM latency using hedged reads and channel scrambling offsets, associated with LaurieWired’s RAM design flaw video.Doom over DNS
Open-source project demonstrating Doom running over DNS.Chandra photo gallery
NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory photo gallery with astronomical images, discoveries, and featured observations.Boeing 787 Dreamliner software bug
Engadget article about a software bug in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that could affect the aircraft's operation and require routine power cycling.2026-04-07
Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K Moon footage
Tom's Hardware article about NASA's Artemis II mission using laser communications to transmit live 4K footage from the Moon, advancing beyond Apollo-era S-band radio.2026-04-01
RF Studio — Arena Physica publication
RF Studio — publication and project page from Arena Physica describing RF Studio, a toolkit and research effort for radio‑frequency experimentation, measurement workflows and reproducible RF system design.LTSP — Linux Terminal Server Project
LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) — open‑source framework for deploying thin‑client Linux desktops from a central server; commonly used in schools, labs, and resource‑constrained environments.Redis — HyperLogLog (antirez)
antirez's classic post introducing the HyperLogLog data structure in Redis: algorithm overview, implementation notes, API (PFADD / PFCOUNT / PFMERGE), and performance/precision tradeoffs.2026-03-31
ebpf.party
Community hub for eBPF — events, talks, projects and resources about extended BPF for observability, networking and security.eBPF.io — resources for eBPF
Community portal for eBPF: documentation, tutorials, projects and ecosystem resources for extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) technology used in observability, networking and security tooling.2026-03-30
PHOBOS — VANTA OS (mystyy01/PHOBOS)
PHOBOS (VANTA OS) is a small, hobbyist bare‑metal operating system project: custom bootloader and kernel written from scratch (C + assembly), kernel modules in a homegrown language, and minimal tooling for x86/x64 targets. Good reference for low‑level OS experimentation and teaching.2026-03-26
ntop — ntopng, nDPI and network visibility tooling
ntop provides a suite of open-source and commercial tools (ntopng, nDPI, nProbe, n2disk) for real‑time network traffic monitoring, flow analytics, deep packet inspection and threat detection across large-scale and distributed environments.2026-03-25
x86-64 Playground
A browser-based x86-64 assembly editor and GDB-like debugger — write, compile, and step through assembly and static ELF binaries entirely in the client sandbox.2026-03-23
Version 10.0.0 Released
The KiCad Development Team announces KiCad 10.0.0, a major release with new features, usability improvements, importer support, and hundreds of bug fixes.dineug/erd-editor
Open-source Entity-Relationship Diagram Editor with PWA offline support, real-time collaboration, end-to-end encryption, and local-first autosave.2026-03-20
userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records
Merged systemd PR adding a birthDate field to userdb JSON records for age-verification-related use cases, with admin-only modification and broad discussion around privacy, policy, and portability.2026-03-18
rlsw - raylib software renderer backend
"Announcing rlsw, the new raylib software renderer backend. No GPU required."2026-03-17
Open EU Foundry Status Granted to Innovative Chiplet Facility
The European Commission grants Open EU Foundry status to a new innovative chiplet facility, strengthening Europe's semiconductor and hardware ecosystem.2026-03-16
PLFM RADAR
Open-source, low-cost 10.5 GHz PLFM phased array RADAR systemCisco ExaNIC Software
Drivers, utilities and development libraries for Exablaze ultra-low-latency network cards (ExaNIC X25, ExaNIC X100, ExaNIC X10, ExaNIC X40, ExaNIC X2, ExaNIC X4, ExaNIC V5P, ExaNIC V9P, ExaNIC GM, and ExaNIC HPT).2026-03-12
Why do CPUs have multiple cache levels?
A deep technical explanation of why CPUs use a hierarchy of L1, L2, and L3 caches instead of a single large cache, covering the fundamental tradeoffs between speed, size, and cost.2026-03-10
A Tutorial on the FAT File System
A clear, worked-through tutorial on the 16-bit FAT file system — boot block layout, the File Allocation Table, root directory structure, and step-by-step examples of parsing real disk images.2026-03-09
x86CSS — a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator
A fully functional x86 CPU emulator implemented entirely in CSS, with no JavaScript — abusing CSS counters, selectors, and checkbox hacks to execute real x86 instructions.2026-03-05