Mateusz

Efficiently Generating a Number in a Range

You never thought about your random number generator. It just worked and you never noticed it to be off - except maybe for it’s slow performance. Meanwhile this posts proves that there are people that are thinking about this like it’s the basis of computing. Going over every little detail from correctness (!) and speed, and still one upping each-other on their implementation. The absolute madness to actually observe that doing the fast and simple…

int random_var = rand() % range;

…is biased is beyond me, but it’s so obviously wrong, I’m embarrassed not noticing it earlier. Overall a good read and some easy algorithms to maybe take with you on an embedded journey.

Performance Speed Limits

More of a source of knowledge rather than a blog post to read but interesting nonetheless. Going from the simplest statement.

CPU can execute only a maximum number of operations per cycle

And ending up in memory bandwidth, data dependency chains, reorder buffer size and imperfections in the physical scheduler of the CPU. Reading even a third shows sheer complexity and at the same time explains why you can’t no longer say that some CPU is faster in every way compared to another. Seeing that even the CPUs that we assume are “toys” are actually faster than supercomputers were in the 1995 is staggering. That might me taken as an achievement but it’s actually a sad thing that computers that simulated nuclear reactions in 1995 can now fit in your pocket and still take a couple of seconds to send more then a kilobyte of text.

GPS

Do you know where on the planet earth you’re situated at this given moment? Probably yes… In the odd case that the answer is no, you can pin point your location using GPS. But how does it even work, you just enabled something and you can in real-time monitor street turns as they pass you, but how? This blog post - although long - gives the best explanation through trying to develop such a system from the ground up. The interactivity provided is stunning and I dread every time I look at it because it had to take a long time to make. I adore how some thing in this are posing a big problem - like clock sync - but in the end it just all nicely collapses into a plain and simple thing. It’s like this wants to be created, like a math equation that is just waiting to be discovered.

Antoni

Live long, wisely and happily

A healthy body makes a healthy brain. That’s why health intelligence is probably the most important of them all. It is a basis on which every human being should focus, because it leverages every other aspect of our lives.

But what is it?… Health intelligence is a consciousness of our own bodies, being able to understand why we are stressed, why something causes us pain. It is knowledge about ourselves, our correct heart rate, blood sugar levels, hunger and other desires. Simply put it is self-understanding, so we are able to reason about our current condition and make it fit our lifestyle.

I am really enticed by this idea and want to focus more on this subject in the upcoming year. I highly encourage you to give it a try, you are just one click away!

Make others happy now

Inside us lives indisputable desire to connect to each other. After all, that is who we are, social primates. As the study suggests, fulfilling the inner need to relate to other human being has even greater scope than it is currently established.

The study Happiness comes from trying to make others feel good, rather than oneself shows, that given a task to make ourself happy versus making someone else happy, participants felt better after the latter.

“It was found that the basic psychological need for relatedness — the need to feel connected to others — mediated the effect of the other-focused activity in all five studies. In other words, feeling a greater connection to others explained why doing something for another person tended to leave participants happier than doing something for themselves.”

Is relatedness the next Bitcoin?

Unlearn perfectionism

Perfect is the enemy of good. There has never been even one single perfect thing. Why then so many times I become so fixated on over-polishing the outcome. Why I fear creating something below my standards.

Perfectionism can every effectively hold us down, it is a cause for many common problems.

• Procrastination comes from this inner unpleasant feeling that we don’t know how to do it correctly.
• Impostor syndrome is this gut feeling that we know than something could have been done better
• Burnout is when you rich a tipping point in your negative feelings

How can we unlearn it ? Let’s chase excellence.

Pursuing > Achieving Better > Perfect

Chase the feeling and the change, try to grasp it, acknowledge. It is harder than you think.

Antoni’s summary

Your inner self is the most important basis, but the outer world is what gives life a flavour. Pursue better. extra