31
The x86 architecture is the weirdo, part 2
It does everything differently, because of course it does.
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Visit devblogs.microsoft.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Mar 2019 – Nov 2026
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32
DirectX Adopting SPIR-V as the Interchange Format of the Future
Today the Direct3D and HLSL teams are excited to share some insight into the next big step for GPU programmability. Once Shader Model 7 is released,
33
Windows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older one
A very primitive version of recovery.
34
The mysterious second parameter to the x86 ENTER instruction
For an ABI that probably nobody uses.
35
DLL that was not present in memory despite not being formally unloaded
Figuring out how it went missing.
36
37
The case of the UI thread that hung in a kernel call
I did tell you not to do that.
38
39
Hardware Intrinsics in .NET 8
.NET 8 includes significant improvements to the Hardware Intrinsics feature.
40
Did the Windows 95 setup team forget that MS-DOS can do graphics?
Oh look what you just made there.
41
A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)
Another rogue patcher.
42
Why is Windows still tinkering with critical sections? – The Old New Thing
The critical section may be an old dog, but it's still learning new tricks.
43
The x86 architecture is the weirdo (2004)
So unlike all the others, yet people think it's the normal one.
44
How did MS-DOS decide on two seconds to keep the floppy disk cache valid?
A stopwatch and a race against time.
45
The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction
Didn't even make it out of the gate.
46
A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS
Ways of dealing with the fractured address space.
47
How do I delete bytes from the beginning of a file? (2010)
It's easy to append bytes to the end of a file: Just open it for writing, seek to the end, and start writing. It's also easy to delete bytes from the end
48
What happens when you shift a register by more than the register size?
A comparative study of processor architectures.
49
Undefined behavior can result in time travel (2014)
The rules of logic no longer apply when you cross the line.
50
Performance Improvements in .NET 5
Explore many performance improvements, big and small, that have gone into the .NET 5 runtime and core libraries to make apps and services leaner and faster.
51
Announcing WSL 2
WSL 2 is a new architecture that allows for dramatic file system performance and full system call compatibility in WSL using a Linux kernel.
52
What was the role of MS-DOS in Windows 95?
It acted as the 16-bit legacy device driver layer.
53
Why isn't my time zone highlighted on the world map?
In the original release of Windows 95, you could change your time zone by clicking on the map, and the time zone you selected would highlight. Similarly,
54
AF_UNIX comes to Windows
Introduction: Beginning in Insider Build 17063, you’ll be able to use the unix socket (AF_UNIX) address family on Windows to communicate between Win32
55
It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway
Not every code injection bug is a security hole.
56
The largest Git repo on the planet
It’s been 3 months since I first wrote about our efforts to scale Git to extremely large projects and teams with an effort we called “Git Virtual File System”. As a reminder, GVFS, together with a set of enhancements to Git, enables Git to scale to VERY large repos by virtualizing both the .git folder […]
57
An amusing story about a practical use of the null garbage collector
The computer itself ceases to exist.