4441
Improving the security of your SSH private key files
Update (July 2015): This post is now rather outdated, and the procedure for modifying your private key files is no longer recommended. A better solution is to use ssh-keygen -o .
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 6,985 posts.
4442
Zig's New Async I/O
In celebration of the std.Io introduction patchset landing today , here is the text version of a short, interactive demo I gave at Zigtoberfest 2025 .
4443
Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress. Particularly in my independent life, it really can be that black and white - if I can't work, it costs me money. Plus, I want to be happy
4444
Apple now censoring dictionaries in the App Store
Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.
4445
RCE in Visual Studio Code's Remote WSL for Fun and Negative Profit
The Visual Studio Code server in Windows Subsystem for Linux uses a local WebSocket WebSocket connection to communicate with the Remote WSL extension. JavaScript in websites can connect to this server and execute arbitrary commands on the target system. Assigned CVE-2021-43907 and zero bounty. I paid 5 USD for the EC2…
4446
Roguelike Tutorial in Rust (2019)
This tutorial is free and open source, and all code uses the MIT license - so you are free to do with it as you like. My hope is that you will enjoy the tutorial, and make great games!
4447
Living with HTTPS
( These are my notes from the first half of my talk at HOPE9 last weekend. I write notes like these not as a script, but so that I have at least some words ready in my head when I'm speaking. They are more conversational and less organised than a usual blog post, so please forgive me the rough edges. )
4448
A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
I've never been plagued by the big existential questions. You know, like What's my purpose? or What does it all mean?
4449
A conversation with a newspaper owner raided by cops
Eric Meyer says his paper had been investigating the police chief prior to the raids on his office and home.
4450
Complexity Has to Live Somewhere
We try to get rid of the complexity, control it, and seek simplicity. I think framing things that way is misguided. Complexity has to live somewhere. Embrace it
4451
4452
How to Learn Nix
It's like a Let's Play, but for obscure software documentation. I tried to learn Nix, and it was pretty hard. I kept a diary of every command I tried, every wrong assumption that I made, and every realization that I had along the way.
4453
4454
Color blindness
Color blindness is an inaccurate term. Most color-blind people can see color, they just don't see the same colors as everyone else. There ha...
4455
Jupyter, Mathematica, and the Future of the Research Paper
Economist. Policy Entrepreneur. Geek. Co-recipient of the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. University Professor at NYU. Focused on urbanization; cooperation at scale of millions and billions; science; technology; economic development; long-term growth; code as language.
4456
A/B test of banner ads vs. traffic
9 months of daily A/B-testing of Google AdSense banner ads on Gwern.net indicates banner ads decrease total traffic substantially, possibly due to spillover effects in reader engagement and resharing.
4457
Apple and Facebook
Apple and Facebook seem like they are in conflict, but have often been each other’s best partners.
4458
Neural network training makes beautiful fractals
This blog is intended to be a place to share ideas and results that are too weird, incomplete, or off-topic to turn into an academic paper, but that I think may be important. Let me know what you think! Contact links to the left.
4459
Deconstructing the Water Effect in Super Mario Sunshine
Note: The demos below require WebGL2 support . If you are running a browser without WebGL 2 support, user “petercooper” on Hacker News has helpfully recorded a video and GIFs and for me.
4460
Modern Alternatives to PGP
Did your last Yubikey just break? Perhaps you forgot an offline backup password. Maybe you’re just tired of living like a spy and never using smartphones. Whatever it is, you’re here, and you’re finally ready to give up on PGP. That’s great! We’re here to help! No one was sending you encrypted emails anyway, so that’s…
4461
4462
“Design Patterns” Aren't (2002)
The "design patterns" movement in software claims to have been inspired by the works of architect Christopher Alexander. But an examination of Alexander's books reveals that he was actually talking about something much more interesting.
4463
Perfect email regex finally found
Finding the best regular expression for validating e-mail addresses
4464
Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt
Anthropic publish most of the system prompts for their chat models as part of their release notes. They recently shared the new prompts for both Claude Opus 4 and Claude …
4465
Psychic Signatures in Java
The long-running BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who has a recurring plot device where the Doctor manages to get out of trouble by showing an identity card which is actually completely blank. Of course, thi…
4466
4467
Programmers At Work: Bill Gates (1986)
As chief executive officer of Microsoft, William H. (Bill) Gates is considered one of the driving forces behind today’s personal computing and office automation industry. Gates started his ca…
4468
Missouri governor’s office responsible for teacher data leak
Missouri Governor Mike Parson made headlines last year when he vowed to criminally prosecute a journalist for reporting a security flaw in a state website that exposed personal information of more than 100,000 teachers. But Missouri prosecutors now say they will not pursue charges following revelations that the data…
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4470
Why Mozilla Matters
[This is an extended essay on the news out of Norway yesterday. See the closing for encouragement toward Opera and its fans, whatever the open source projects they choose to join, from me on behalf of Mozilla. /be]