Entering 2025, I decided to spend some time exploring the topic of agents.
I started reading Anthropic’s Building effective agents,
followed by Chip Huyen’s AI Engineering.
I kicked off a major workstream at work on using agents, and I also decided to do a personal experiment of sorts.
This is a general commentary on building that project.
What I wanted to build was a simple chat interface where I could write prompts, select models,
and have the model use tools as appropriate.
My side goal was to build this using Cursor and generally avoid writing code directly as much
as possible, but I found that generally slower than writing code in emacs while relying
on 4o-mini to provide working examples to pull from.
Since IPv6 is gaining momentum, and is generally operating alongside other protocols, it has become important to define the operating modes that may exist in any IPv6 environment. This allows for consistent communication and understanding of a fundamental part of operating a production network. Most of this hard work has been done by the IETF, and 99% of those definitions as can be referenced by engineers and architects when creating designs, proposals, and documentation, can be found in one really well crafted RFC.
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names (identification strings) assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols.[1] The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.
I occasionally receive emails asking me to look at the writer's new language/library/tool. Sometimes it's in an area I know well, like formal methods. Other...
I grew up in the world of BBSes, Usenet, and, to some extent, UUCP before that. This was fun – a world wide network all built up by volunteers sharing. Since we are all carrying supercomputers around now with massive idle storage and bandwidth, let's think about how we can recreate some of that fun, independent data sharing with modern web technologies, specifically Websockets and WebRTC. All you need is the computer that you already have with you.
The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself, and have been termed the "Unix philosophy."
The 'Unix Way' Has a Right Way That's Almost a Lost Way
As I study tech sector innovations, I see signs that the old traditions are fading. I'm not one to sanctify tradition for tradition's sake, but I see merit in maintaining a traditional approach to computing tasks that encourages shrewdness. To illustrate what I mean, these are some ways we are straying from the Unix way, and my view on why we should return to the path.
In mathematical logic and logic programming, a Horn clause is a logical formula of a particular rule-like form that gives it useful properties for use in logic programming, formal specification, universal algebra and model theory. Horn clauses are named for the logician Alfred Horn, who first pointed out their significance in 1951.[1]
IPCM: Solving Dynamic IPFS Content with Blockchain Smart Contracts
Over the past few years, IPFS has become the default file network for offchain storage. When you combine immutable files with an immutable blockchain ledger, you get a powerful combination. While immutability is key to IPFS, it has also become one of its downsides. There are many crypto and blockchain
If you have been in the blockchain and crypto space, then there is a chance you've heard of IPFS and how it's used for offchain storage. In many ways, it's a perfect pairing: content on IPFS gets a hash that can be verified, it works as an address, and referencing