Good Evening, “RISC-V” was a 12-year, 17-day sociological study conducted by University of California, Berkeley. We are now complete with our study. Thank you for your time.
Rachel Barker
@rachelplusplus.me.uk
Software witch, environmentalist, and amateur musician. This is my non-worksona side, where I like to do things from scratch to learn how they work then tell the world about it. Blogs at https://www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/
Reverse engineering a binary with partial RTTI really gives a similar high to deduction games like type help, TR-49, roottrees,... "I know you have to exist, but *where are you*" at a base class' constructor/vtable/default-implementation functions. Such a high when you end up finding it!
i think my favorite xml crime was seeing <keyvaluepair><key>burp</key><value>fart</value></keyvaluepair>. like the platonic ideal of the overflowing tupperware cabinet in the "there has to be a better way!" commercial
I've been working on improving my website a bunch recently, and wrote up a second round of things I did. Featuring: HTTP caching, precompression tweaks, and a teaser of one of my current larger projects! www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/08...
Tidying up my website, part 2 - Rachel++
rachelplusplus.me.uk
Here comes the S̶u̶n̶ Moon 🌑 On 12 August, a total solar eclipse was visible across parts of Europe, while much of the continent experienced a partial eclipse. From space, MTG-I1 recorded the Moon’s shadow moving across Earth: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 📹ESA/Eumetsat
Curious how we've been improving Rust at Hexcat? Starting with June, our monthly updates are now publicly available on our website: hexcat.nl/updates/ #rustlang
Hexcat
Rust compiler engineering
hexcat.nl
Went to water my plants after the eclipse, and look who I caught trying to eat my turnips!
new blog post: self-hosting in the era of LLMs and cheap compute in general, about the kind of crap traffic i see day to day, as well as a more modern nuisance: claude code blog.xkeeper.net/the-cutting-...
Self-hosting in the era of LLMs and cheap compute – Xkeeper's blog
blog.xkeeper.net
Oh hell yeah, some of the Youtube ethnomusicologists I follow made something I've been wondering if they'd do for a while: A rendition of the opening of the Odyssey which is as historically accurate as possible given our current knowledge of ancient Greek music www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY4I...
The Odyssey's Opening - Ancient Greek Music feat. polýMATHY
YouTube video by Farya Faraji & World Musicians
youtube.com
There will always be people who appreciate what YOU make, it just might take them a while to find you.
Haus of Decline@hausofdecline.bsky.social · 4w ago
I did the thing I've been meaning to do for years, finally got the right push to do it: www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/07...
Moving off Github - Rachel++
rachelplusplus.me.uk
today I learned that before steel was invented, the most common way to light a fire was with flint and pyrite, which is why it's called that
I finally sent off something that has been hanging over my head for literal months. Really, really glad to be done with it, and looking forward to having all of that mental space back
Today I re-discovered Sudokuvania. It's... pretty much what you'd expect from the name: half a dozen Sudoku variants in a trenchcoat, and they're progressively unlocked as you go so that it isn't overwhelming at the start. sudokupad.app/6u61fsw0di?s... and an FAQ: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Sudokuvania: Digits of Despair by Skeptical Mario (Sven's SudokuPad v0.611.0)
sudokupad.app
playing with video processing again here's some birds leaving trails in the sky, processed from youtu.be/daFe_ygulPY
Today is a good day to remember that authoritarianism is not inevitable, overthrowing fascists is possible, and good things can still happen. www.pbs.org/newshour/wor...
Tens of thousands march in the first Budapest Pride since Viktor Orbán was voted out
Saturday's Pride march came a little more than a year after Orbán's nationalist-populist government passed legislation and a constitutional amendment to outlaw the event, drawing criticism from human ...
pbs.org
Someone made the mistake of getting me a UV laser engraving machine. ... (It was me.)
I've been improving my image compression project on and off for the last six months or so. Today I got it to basically where I want it feature-wise, so I've put out an alpha release and written a quick little blog post about it: www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/06...
Tinyavif v2.0 alpha - Rachel++
I've put out a preview of the next version of tinyavif. It's basically feature-complete to what I want v2.0 to be, and I've run some quick correctness tests, so it's ready for experimental use.
rachelplusplus.me.uk
Video compression test files are funny because they're *enormous*. Today I found the good stuff (4K @ 50fps, 12-bit HDR, not chroma subsampled), and even with lossless compression it comes in about 42GB *per minute*
I'm happy to see that AV2 has been released! Very proud of having played a part in making this happen! av2.aomedia.org
AV2 Specification
av2.aomedia.org
New blog post: I spent a couple of days tidying up my website, and managed to reduce the amount of CSS I serve by a factor of 4, while making things prettier! www.rachelplusplus.me.uk/blog/2026/05...
Tidying up my website - Rachel++
Rewriting my HTML+CSS to be simpler and prettier
rachelplusplus.me.uk
Beautiful day to be outside! (🎵 The Sherbourne Waltz, an old Morris dancing tune, on a Framus 7/20E concert zither)
The RAS calls for artificial light at night to be legally recognised as pollution, under the UK's Environment Act. This would provide a policy framework for regulating the increasing problem of light pollution, which harms people, animals and views of the night sky. 🔭🧪
Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 3mo ago🚨 Call for action 🚨 The RAS is demanding urgent action to address the damage light pollution is doing to astronomy, human health, biodiversity and the natural environment. It follows a conference we hosted last year, where evidence was presented about the impacts of artificial light at night.💡🌃 ⤵️
knocked on my fucking ass browsing Tower Records in Shibuya and SEEING MY DAMN ART ON THE SHELF
okay so this whole, solving a linear system thing is, kind of a deep rabbit hole isn't it
