TPU, Loom, CF, Unregistry, Xfce, Open World, Croc

1. Google's TPU AI architecture deep dive (@ henryhmko.github.io) - Yes, as expected, state of the art and complex. I especially loved the things around the OCS and its 3D torus typologies allowing wraparound.

2. Java Project Loom (Virtual Thread) - (@ Wikipedia) - Studied the project, interesting concept, and quite a logical one, where that's necessary.

3. Cloudflare got a packet and a few followers (@ blog.cloudflare.com) - Mitigating 7.3 Tbps DDoS. Nice!

4. Unregistry (for Docker) (@ GitHub) - This is great! I often wonder why people want everything to be cloud-hosted, even if you would run your own cloud, it's still often partially outsourced for many key parts. If you run your own system, it and all key processes should work, even if you unplug the network. Well, here's one cute solution for that. I've personally used building containers locally on the server(s), but as the post says, it's really wasteful in resource usage terms. Especially when the containers currently are mostly the same. If the build process would be different for separate environments it would of course change some key aspects. Yet it depends on the scale, if I want to keep it that way. With a few systems, it's nice that those are independent. But when the scale grows the inefficiency and overhead gets relatively worse and worse. With the current setup, the build just runs on idle priority and that's totally fine. But that's only because I know there are plenty of idle resources to be used for tasks. Someone said that installing the build... No, I use a two-phase build, so the project is being built in a temporary build container, which then creates the final container. I don't install anything specific for that on the system, it's all in the dockerbuild file. Secondary question is also infrastructure and networking, does the source need to have a fat pipe or not? That's why everything is configured and decided case by case. In some cases it's great, in some cases it's not. Like in this case, I actually like that the referenced docker images (layers) are downloaded directly from the cloud, instead of me needing to download and then push the stuff to my local (dislocated) from the actual host system (in many cases, but not always). But this Unregistry is a great option & solution, when it's needed.

5. Xfce (@ Wikipedia) - Interesting performance note. If I minimize the window(s) GPU resources are released, but if window(s) are "open" but behind something, even if completely covered or a full-screen window would be covering those, the GPU resources are still being held. That's a valid point for the "minimize windows" function to be used for unnecessary window(s). Depending on the system that doesn't matter, but with the current setup I can manage to fill the GPU VRAM completely, and it causes visible frame rate drops.

6. Bert's post about Open World (@ berthub.eu) - But actually it's an excellent collection about software development, service design, and information security, and of course user experience statements... Of course nothing new, but a good collection.

7. Croc v10.2.2 (@ GitHub) - Now finally includes options like --local and the --ip parameter actually allows using DNS names. Awesome. Now the stuff I've complained about has been fixed, and it's trivial to use croc to transfer files between systems directly. Without using multicast or relay. Perfection. Minor things, but now the program is "directly usable" without providing users additional powershell helper scripts to configure the (confusing) parameters. With older versions you had to do a DNS lookup and provide IP on the command-line as well as intentionally define an invalid relay address so no remote relay would be guaranteed. Of course, one option was just to compress and encrypt the files and launching a python one-liner HTTP server... But I like croc much more, for obvious reasons.

8. Something different? Checked out: Saildrone's Voyager capabilities. Interesting surveillance drone vessel [Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV)] and seems to be very well suited for the Baltic Sea.

2026-07-19