Hi! I’m Amos, better known as @fasterthanlime.
I make articles and videos about how computers work. My content is long-form, didactic and exploratory — and often an excuse to teach Rust!
I also co-host Self-Directed Research with James.
You can read more about me, if you insist.
Recent articles View all
Impromptu disaster recovery
40 min
Background
im-promp-tu (
im-ˈpräm(p)-(ˌ)tü)
made, done, or formed on or as if on the spur of the moment: improvised
composed or uttered without previous preparation: extemporaneous
On March 18th, 2025, I thought I would look into self-hosted project management solutions — something kanban-y, but.. better?
This one does not spark joy.
The case for sans-io
26 min
exclusive
The most popular option to decompress ZIP files from the Rust programming language is a crate simply named zip — At the time of this writing, it has 48 million downloads. It’s fully-featured, supporting various compression methods, encryption, and even supports writing zip files.
However, that’s not the crate everyone uses to read ZIP files. Some applications benefit from using asynchronous I/O, especially if they decompress archives that they download from the network.
Catching up with async Rust
20 min
exclusive
In December 2023, a minor miracle happened: async fn in traits shipped.
As of Rust 1.39, we already had free-standing async functions:
pub async fn read_hosts() -> eyre::Result<Vec<u8>> {
// etc.
}
…and async functions in impl blocks:
impl HostReader {
pub async fn read_hosts(&self) -> eyre::Result<Vec<u8>> {
// etc.
}
}
Highlighted code in slides
15 min
exclusive
I have obsessed about this long enough, I think it’s only fair I (and you!) get some content out of it.
When I started writing this article, I was working on my P99 CONF slides. Those slides happen to include some bits of code. And because I’m a perfectionist, I would like this code to be syntax highlighted, like this:
let addr: SocketAddr = config.address.parse()?;
let ln = TcpListener::bind(&addr).await?;
info!("🦊 {}", config.base_url);
ktls now under the rustls org
3 min
What’s a ktls
I started work on ktls and ktls-sys, a pair of crates exposing Kernel TLS offload to Rust, about two years ago.
kTLS lets the kernel (and, in turn, any network interface that supports it) take care of encryption, framing, etc., for the entire duration of a TLS connection… as soon as you have a TLS connection.
For the handshake itself (hellos, change cipher, encrypted extensions, certificate verification, etc.), you still have to use a userland TLS implementation.
State of the fasterthanlime 2024
17 min
It’s time for some personal and professional news!
TL;DR: I started a podcast with James, I’m stable on antidepressants, I’m giving a P99 CONF about my Rust/io_uring/HTTP work, I’m trying on “they/them” as pronouns, I’m open-sourcing merde_json, rubicon and others, I got a divorce in 2023, I found a new business model.
Now that we’re on the same page: let’s unpack this a bit!
Face cams: the missing guide
1 hour 11 min
I try to avoid doing “meta” / “behind the scenes” stuff, because I usually feel like it has to be “earned”. How many YouTube channels are channels about making YouTube videos? Too many.
Regardless, because I’ve had the opportunity to make my own mistakes now for a few years (I started doing the video thing in earnest in 2019), and because I’ve recently made a few leaps in quality-of-life re: shooting and editing video, I thought I’d publish a few notes, if only for reference for my future self.
Just paying Figma $15/month because nothing else fucking works
24 min
My family wasn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination, but I was raised to avoid spending money whenever possible.
I was also taught “it’s a poor craftsman that blames their tools”, which apparently means “take responsibility for your fuckups”, but, to young-me, definitely sounded more like “you don’t deserve nice things”.
I was also taught from an early age that I was born a sinner, incapable of doing good by myself, and that all the earthly things were temptations, sent by the devil to corrupt me (further I guess?) but also temporary, and that I shouldn’t attach myself.
Latest series View all
Building a Rust service with Nix
3 hours 1 min
complete
I often give bits and pieces of advice on how to build Rust stuff the comfy way. But it can be hard to see how everything comes together, especially when it comes to, say, deploying a web service in production.
So, let’s start from the very beginning (setting up a Linux VM), and march together towards the objective: a production-grade Rust web service, built with Nix.
Advent of Code 2022
3 hours 12 min
complete
Let’s use the Advent of Code 2022, a series of programming challenges of increasing difficulty, to learn more about the Rust programming language.
Updating fasterthanli.me for 2022
57 min
complete
In 2020, I switched from a static site generator to something homemade.
And, as tradition commands, I did a whole write-up about it.
Since writing articles and making videos is now my full-time
occupation, I took some time
to upgrade futile, my server software, to the latest and greatest the
Rust ecosystem has to offer.
Don't shell out!
1 hour 40 min
complete
In this series, I change a critical component of this website’s asset pipeline from “just calling a bunch of external tools” to statically linking with everything I need to process assets. It involves autoconf, CMake, Meson, CI, pkg-config, and some code crimes.
Ever wonder who's behind all this content?