I got it in my head that the factory BIOS on my venerable Lenovo X201 was too old, so I decided to replace it with a Coreboot BIOS. [1] Since I was going to all the trouble to hook my finicky Pomona clip to my Raspberry Pi, I also decided …
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Function Calls Considered Expensive
When I wrote both of my blog posts on increasing performance through code profiling, I linked to a blog post that measured function call overhead from Python 3.5 to 3.8. That post was enlightening, but it was written in 2020 and significant effort has gone into improving CPython …
read moreHow To Buy A Replacement Laptop Battery
When I first started using my current laptop, the battery would last forever - six to eight hours on a single charge; now I'm lucky if I get two hours of YouTube if I turn my screen brightness all the way down. At some point last week the power of capitalism …
read moreLiving With Calyx Internet: 60(ish) Days In
Restoring My Headlights...Again
One of my low beams burned out around the start of the month; since I am incapable of doing anything without spiraling I decided to replace all my high beam and low beam bulbs at the same time (major thanks to Rock Auto, I bought four new bulbs for what …
read moreMy Little Profiler Part 2: Profile Harder
A year or so ago I optimized a library I wrote - I made it faster but couldn't make a dent in memory-efficiency. A week or so back I got some free time on my hands and decided to try squeezing some more blood out of that stone while also working …
read moreMicrocorruption: Lagos
The Scenario
Once again I found myself somewhere far too hot, facing off against a product I'm sure the Lockitall devs put a lot of effort into even though it never seems to come through in the finished product. This time my opponent was revision c.04 of the Lockitall …
Microcorruption: Bangalore
The Scenario
I got to relax and celebrate escaping Putin's clutches once again while on my way to India, but once I touched down in India it was time for business. I found myself staring down revision e.01 of the Lockitall LockIT Pro, equipped with a LockIT Pro HSM-2 …
Microcorruption: Vladivostok
The Scenario
On the plane from Algeria, I thought I'd have to do some Mission Impossible secret squirrel shit to reenter Russia after my last visit but it was surprisingly uneventful; I suppose Putin had more important matters to focus on. Nevertheless, after preparing myself I confronted my next opponent …