The Curious Engineer

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Cyrus's Internet Journal

blog.cyrusroshan.com

A personal blog on tech, strategy, and life.

Software / engineering practiceEngineering management / careersEssays / personal

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44 from 18 Dec 2015 to 24 Sep 2025
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2025 2

  1. Documenting my open-market Job Search
  2. Documenting my open-market Job SearchSome personal news: I've accepted an offer to join Ramp as a Staff Software Engineer. It seems like a wonderful fit, and I'm very excited to start at the end of the month. If you're a senior engineer who hasn't done an open-market search in nearly a decade, this

2024 4

  1. Building a Network Stack for our Browser Extension
  2. a networking stack for our browser extension (2024)
  3. How do you get a bimodal distribution from a uniform distribution function?
  4. How do you get a bimodal distribution from a uniform distribution function?Given a uniformly distributed random-number-generating function, f(), how can you transform it into a function with a bimodal distribution, g()? A histogram of a normal distribution. Randomly sampled values are evenly weighte

2023 4

  1. My first month as an Engineer doing Product Management
  2. My first month as an Engineer doing Product ManagementAuthor's note: this stream-of-consciousness journal entry has not been through the editing cycle I try to apply to posts. That said, it's been a useful reference to at least one early-career PM, so I've made it public. I hope you find it helpful.
  3. Query your Gmail account by hand using IMAP
  4. Query your Gmail account by hand using IMAPHave you ever wondered how mail clients work under the hood? Most mail clients fetch your mail with a protocol called called IMAP, and it's surprisingly human-readable. Here's how it looks: Three examples of how you might use the IMAP FETCH query to see the

2022 8

  1. You don't have to upgrade your cloud VM's RAM
  2. You don't have to upgrade your cloud VM's RAMThis post is about saving money on hobby projects, by scraping the bottom of the barrel with what your cloud provider offers. Most cloud providers have a free tier of hosting, with low RAM. For example, Fly.io currently offers 3x instances of a shared-1-c
  3. Onboarding Quickly
  4. Onboarding QuicklyOf all the skills to learn on the job, onboarding quickly is possibly the most underrated. You only onboard to a job once, that initial momentum sets up the rest of your experience. But people learn from experience, and it's not often that you switch to a new job. Luckily, in colle
  5. Explaining the copy-paste magic trick
  6. a copy-paste magic trick (2022)
  7. Patching dependencies is easier than forking
  8. Patching dependencies is easier than forkingOftentimes, it feels like we overengineer the solutions we build. Patching packages never feels this way. When I use patch-tool, it's often the best solution. It may not be the best long-term solution, but it's so darn fast. And at a startup, speed of deve

2021 8

  1. To my teachers
  2. To my teachersDo you know how some kids want to be teachers when they grow up? Do you know why? I do. When I was in fifth grade, I was shy, short, and quiet. I had skipped two grades, and so I was two years younger than the other students. My parents had moved five times (Vermont, Pennsylvania, Indi
  3. Introducing Portal Windows
  4. Introducing Portal Windows(This post originally published on Tandem's blog) What’s the piece of technology that reduced your headache the most in the last year? For me, it’d be Portal Windows. It's a library we made at Tandem that lets you render and position native windows as simply as you render a
  5. Why I don't feel like writing.
  6. Why I don't feel like writing.I don't know. Maybe it's because I've got lots of things to do. Maybe that's just something I tell myself when I procrastinate work that seems hard. Why is writing hard? Because it's vulnerable? Or because vulnerable work is held close-to-heart, and the standards are hi
  7. Bypassing hotspot limits on iOS
  8. a userspace bypass for native iOS hotspot limits (2021)

2020 8

  1. The harmful assumptions we make about tasks
  2. The harmful assumptions we make about tasksMost task managers make two assumptions. Do you make them too? A task manager needs to remember all of your tasks (Would you buy a task manager that lost data?) All tasks can use a similar creation workflow (You hit the 'create issue' button, and fill in so
  3. Two cable SSH: the fastest Raspberry Pi setup
  4. Two cable SSH: the fastest Raspberry Pi setupFiddling with monitors is annoying. This method lets you get an SSH connection to your Pi without having to connect it to a monitor, find an external keyboard, or manually type in your wifi password. Simple and portable enough that you could do the entire
  5. My home infrastructure setup with Ansible
  6. My home infrastructure setup with AnsibleHaving a home server has many benefits: Spotify-connected speakers 🔈 wifi printing 🖨 automated laptop backups over wifi 💿 and more! 😱 And you might find this useful, when you have: unused speakers
  7. Why I built the wrong blog publishing workflow
  8. Why I built the wrong blog publishing workflowI used to find writing for a public audience to be a taxing process. I wasn't sure why, but I thought it might be because my workflow was bad. To tackle that, I built a small project. I hoped it'd be an end to my writing troubles. This post goes over how

2016 6

  1. Building an electronic banjo out of paper plates
  2. diy electronic banjo (2016)
  3. Making a 3d scanner for under $20
  4. Making a 3d scanner for under $20At this Spring's HackPrinceton, my friend AK and I built a fast and efficient 3d scanner out of spare parts. I think it's very cool. The final product. The slower the motors run, the more accurate the scan. Both the project submission and the source code are online.
  5. A hardware hacker's kit
  6. A hardware hacker's kitSo you're a beginner to either hackathons or hardware hacking, and you're not sure what to bring? Well, at HackDFW, we've got a pretty solid hardware setup, so you should have everything you need. At hackathons that aren't as focused on hardware though, here's an example list

2015 4

  1. An intro to hackathons
  2. An intro to hackathonsThis isn't just for people who haven't gone to hackathons before, but also for people who went to one and had an underwhelming experience. Hackathons are all different, so don't let one bad experience shy you away from them. What are they? So you're going to a hackathon. You've
  3. The importance of examples
  4. The importance of examplesHere's my first post on here. I wrote it before I ended up setting up my blog. I figured I had to start writing blog posts some point, and by writing my ideas on things as I encountered them, I'd remember my ideas better. Inspiration: I started writing this after looking at