Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 370 posts.
Building CockroachDB on top of RocksDB
CockroachDB uses RocksDB for its storage engine because of RocksDB's rich feature set, which is necessary for a complex product like a distributed SQL database.
SIMD Instructions Considered Harmful (2017)
In the process of writing a short introduction to RISC-V, we compared RISC-V vector code to SIMD. We were struck by the insidiousness of the SIMD instruction extensions of ARM, MIPS, and x86. We de…
Dear Search Guard Users
We’ve filed a lawsuit against the makers of Search Guard. Here is what we know, the actions we’re taking, and potential impact to Search Guard users.
Swift UTF-8 String
Swift 5 switches the preferred encoding of strings from UTF-16 to UTF-8 while preserving efficient Objective-C-interoperability. Because the String type abstracts away these low-level concerns, no source-code changes from developers should be necessary*, but it’s worth highlighting some of the benefits this move gives…
Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Dive into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance
It's time to shed light on the technical methods and business practices behind third-party tracking. For journalists, policy makers, and concerned consumers, this paper will demystify the fundamentals of third-party tracking, explain the scope of the problem, and suggest ways for users and legislation to fight back…
Jepsen: YugaByte DB 1.3.1
2019-09-05: YugaByte’s blog post states YugaByte DB “passes Jepsen tests”. We feel obligated to state that YugaByte DB’s Jepsen test suite does not pass, though it may in the future. Race conditions in YugaByte DB’s schema system can cause correctness errors. For example, inserting rows into a freshly-created table…
End-User Programming
A vision for empowered computing that reaches back forty years. Our research lab examines why it has been so hard to achieve.
Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI
Microsoft is investing $1 billion in OpenAI to support us building artificial general intelligence (AGI) with widely distributed economic benefits. We’re partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI. We’ll jointly develop new Azure AI supercomputing…
New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking
Today, the Norwegian Consumer Council has filed a complaint against Google. Based on new research Google is accused of using deceptive design and misleading information, which results in users accepting to be constantly tracked
China's New Cybersecurity Program: No Place to Hide
Chinese distributors can help foreign companies reach customers without setting up a business in China. The wrong agreement can leave a supplier locked into years of poor sales, trademark disputes, or regulatory problems. Here are ten issues we address before a client signs.
Winning the Blackbird Battle
We’re happy to report that on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion affirming a lower court decision dismissing the case brought by Blackbird Tech. This is the last step in the process, we’ve won.
Use mmap with care
When we implemented the git portion of Sublime Merge , we chose to use mmap for reading git object files. This turned out to be considerably more difficult than we had first thought. Using mmap in desktop applications has some serious caveats, and here's why:
Hey advertisers, track this
If it feels like the ads chasing you across the internet know you a little too well, it’s because they do (unless you’re an avid user of ad blockers, i
Square’s Growth Framework for Engineers and Engineering Managers
A system for leveling up at Square
How I Almost Destroyed a £50M War Plane and the Normalisation of Deviance (2016)
‘RECOVER!’ came the shout from the back seat of my Tornado GR4 combat jet but it wasn’t necessary - I had already started…
Technical Details on the Recent Firefox Add-On Outage
Recently, Firefox had an incident in which most add-ons stopped working. This was due to an error on our end: we let one of the certificates used to sign add-ons ...
When it comes to privacy, default settings matter
What if I told you that on nearly every single website you visit, data about you was transmitted to dozens or even hundreds of companies, all so that the w
DTrace on Windows
Introducing DTrace on Windows 10
Amazon Braket – Get Started with Quantum Computing
Nearly a decade ago I wrote about the Quantum Compute Cloud on April Fool’s Day. The future has arrived and you now have the opportunity to write quantum algorithms and to run them on actual quantum computers. Here’s what we are announcing today: Amazon Braket – A fully managed service that allows scientists…
The not so hidden cost of sharing code between iOS and Android
Dash knows your context, your team, and your work, so your team can stay organized, easily find and share knowledge, and keep projects secure, all from one place.
Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon's Competitive Advantage
Jeff Bezos's six-page memos are legendary in the startup world for good reason: clear writing and clear thinking go hand in hand.
Firefox to Discontinue Sideloaded Extensions
To give users more control over their extensions, support for sideloaded extensions will be phased out starting with Firefox 73.
The New York Times course to teach its reporters data skills is now open-source
And how your reporters can learn to love spreadsheets, too