Arvid Gerstmann

Arvid Gerstmann

@arvid.io

Principal Engineer/Architect with 10+ years experience | Rust 🦀 | C & C++| Embedded, Platform Engineering, High-Performance Systems | Working with Rust at Amazon Twitter: twitter.com/arvidgerstmann LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/arvidgerstmann Blog: arvid.io

460 followers457 following795 posts

My defect rate reflowing QFN ICs is really high. RP2040's are really popular among the non-professional crowd; yet, this thing is a 0.4 mm pitch IC that is impossible to solder by hand, and really hard to even solder with stencil and reflow oven. Are there affordable X-ray machines for inspection?

On AliExpress you can find a "dental x-ray machine" for less than 2 grand. I'm not sure whether it should be even legal for some random person to buy an x-ray machine.

Looking to move my private repositories off GitHub since it has been quite awful recently. Any good private git hosting platforms? GitLab is too expensive at $29/mo. SourceHut and Codeberg both prohibit all LLM generated code and ban you on violating their ToS. What's left?

Slowly moving over some critical tools in my toolkit to JBC. Today, my trusty Hakko soldering iron (which has the most annoying UX imaginable) is replaced by a JBC station powered by an AxxSolder.

If you've thought that C and C++ dialects are bad, start looking into IEC 61131-3 Structured Text. Every vendor has their own dialect that is not documented and even has different basic operations. A nightmare.

Quick question to all the folks that are currently predicting that AI is going to replace all programmers/humans, are you paying everything in Bitcoins? How's the NFT doing you bought a couple years ago? Oh, it depreciated by 1000%. Too bad. See you in a couple of years for the next hype cycle.

I ordered some electronics parts from China, for building a product that I'd sell in the EU. I paid more in tolls than for the actual parts. Thank you @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu for nothing. I hope you're happy that everything you've been doing recently is killing small businesses.

I have been quite the detractor of AI. However, recent models have seriously improved coding abilities. I have to admit, with some careful prompting and controlling the output, it's definitely a useful tool. So great for refactoring or large, boring, repetitive code changes.

My girlfriend took out the warm wool blanket this morning because she is cold. Mind you, it's summer and we have 22°C in our rooms. I'm but build for warm climates. In like rain and 18 degrees.

Building macOS applications using Rust, instead of Objective-C or Swift, using the system AppKit APIs is surprisingly nice. I'd even say, it's almost nicer than using Swift. I did not expect that.

I consider myself lucky to have three IMAX cinemas nearby. One of which is the biggest IMAX screen in the world (815m²). All of which also have the 1.43:1 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, all also have a digital projector. Definitely will need to visit the IMAX in London at least once in my lifetime.

WIRED@wired.com

Over the last several years, the Imax format has taken on a few different forms—but only a few dozen theaters are capable of screening it in its full glory.

LaTeX is actually pretty usable if you use Claude to convert your @typst.app documents to LaTeX instead of actually writing them yourself. (I needed LaTeX for a specific use case, I usually have replaced every use case of LaTeX with Typst.)

What's your tool of choice for cutting large stencils to size? I usually use a pair of shears for sheet metal but the cuts never come out that great. Any tips?

Even after all these years, the Rust borrow checker still manages to amaze me at times. I needed to bubble a lifetime of a raw pointer (!!) through references a few layers, and I added lifetime annotations, entirely assuming this would still fail. Surprisingly, it just worked. I am flabbergasted.

Rust almost made me hate C++. It's such an awfully designed language with so much baggage and issues that will never be fixed. And I say that as someone who was at some point exclusively writing C++, writing papers for inclusion into the C++ standard and speaking at C++ conferences.

I wonder why so many programming languages do not have a do while loop construct. It's slightly less often used, but makes code so much more readable when you need it.

Arvid Gerstmann reposted

Chat Control 1.0 passed despite a majority voting against it (314:276), ushering in suspicionless mass scanning of your private communications until 2028. Regrettably, Roberta Metsola's brazen and undemocratic actions jeopardise the legitimacy of the EU. The battle against Chat Control 2.0 begins!

Moving another two Google account to @proton.me. Todays EU decision made me want to move all private communication to be fully end-to-end encrypted. The development in this world is deeply concerning.

German politics below 👇. Ignore if not interested. Thank you! Hallo 👋 Gegen die Hitzewelle braucht es konsequenten Klimaschutz. Deshalb fordert Fridays for Future: Lobbyministerin Reiche entlassen. Jetzt unterzeichnen ✍️ weact.campact.de/petitions/hi...

weact.campact.deDie Hitze hat Gründe.Hallo 👋 Kannst Du mir kurz helfen? Gegen die Hitzewelle braucht es konsequenten Klimaschutz. Deshalb fordert Fridays for Future: Lobbyministerin Reiche entlassen. Jetzt unterzeichnen ✍️

I did a successful transplantation of a brand new battery into an old MacBook Pro from 2017. Restored it to it's old glory. Works like new. Pretty happy with the results. Saved my girlfriend a good thousand bucks by not having to buy a new MacBook Pro.

More renders? More renders! I tweaked the shaders a bit more, after taking some reference pictures from various manufactured PCBs under my microscope and trying to replicate that as best as possible. What do you think?

A portable monitor really is a great addition to the mobile setup. It makes so many things much more bearable while not at a proper desk. A 1440p screen configured as 100% (even if a little small for coding work) is perfect for doing work that would otherwise not work well on a laptop (e.g ECAD).

I'm "[I] remember when cyber was a verb, and what it meant when a stranger in an AOL chatroom asked if you wanted to" years-old.

Andrew Nesbitt@andrewnez.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

The Infosec Phrasebook https://nesbitt.io/2026/06/01/the-infosec-phrasebook.html

I took the 3D models from ECAD and put them into #Blender. I've tried two different techniques to represent the layers of the PCB: 1. Using the exported geometry (tracks, vias, silk, etc.) 2. Using textures exported and combined in a shader. Which of the two images do you prefer?

I took the 3D models from ECAD and put them into #Blender. I've tried two different techniques to represent the layers of the PCB: 1. Using the exported geometry (tracks, vias, silk, etc.) 2. Using textures exported and combined in a shader. Which of the two images do you prefer?

Arvid Gerstmann reposted

For all the recent supply chain security attacks, I find it fascinating that C++’s standard package manager hasn’t been attacked. Tells you a lot that nobody is criticizing C++’s security right now!

We're currently getting a new heat pump. And right at the entrance of the utilities room in the basement a thick 6 AWG wire is sticking out of the wall. I bet you it's live. If someone walks into that, they're toast.

Have the folks who are telling everyone that you can vibe code anything in a few hours these days actually tried vibe coding anything beyond a hello world? AI is still dumb as a nail.

Yeah, no, it was an absolute brilliant idea to write the Windows start menu in React and NodeJS. I totally wanted to have my start menu not accessible. /s

"A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people carrying razors." — Waldi Ravens (Seen on the C documentation of the Avro C library)

Actually, humanity deserves to go extinct. I'm slowly losing all hope.

John Bull@garius.eurosky.social

Like, I'm not joking. Just three companies: Unilever, Henkel and Walter Rau are responsible for the near-extinction of Blue Whales and a whole bunch of other species. They directly harvested or bought 85% of all whale oil in the 1930s. Almost all of it to make margarine. The rest for soap.