6061
A Quick Comparison of Nim vs. Rust
Arthur’s thoughts on coding, software engineering, and other interesting things.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 6,985 posts.
6062
Use fast data algorithms (2021)
As an engineer who primarily works with data and databases I spend a lot of time moving data around, hashing it, compressing it, decompressing it and generally trying to shovel it between VMs and blob stores over TLS. I am constantly surprised by how many systems only support slow, inefficient, and expensive ways of…
6063
A rich new JavaScript code editor spreading to several Microsoft web sites
I noticed yesterday that some C#, JavaScript and CSS files I had sitting in ...
6064
JavaScript is Not Web Assembly
Writing and Stuff from Isaac Z. Schlueter
6065
Literate SQL
Complex queries are hard to read. Literate SQL is about writing queries that are as easy to read as a good novel.
6066
Scaling Postgres with Read Replicas and Using WAL to Counter Stale Reads
Scaling out operation with read replicas and avoiding the downside of stale reads by observing replication progress.
6067
Objectivist C
Although academic computer scientists have generally dismissed Objectivist-C, it has a zealous following among self-taught programmers and college sophomores.
6068
Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web
(Short form article, Short lecture , Long lecture , demo of a fraction of the idea of a distributed website (or paste this link in maelstrom ))
6069
Raspberry Pi – UASP, Trim, and Boot Performance via USB
In the past few weeks, I reviewed USB drive performance on the Raspberry Pi 4, and the importance of UASP support for USB drive performance. Both posts generated great discussion, and there were three things I wanted to cover in this follow-up, namely: Which drives support UASP Real-world performance benchmarks TRIM…
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Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums (2020)
Don't Contribute Anything Relevant in Web Forums Like Reddit
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SQLite performance tuning: concurrent reads, multiple GBs and 100k SELECTs/s
SQLite is an embedded SQL database. It’s extremely easy to setup, buildable as a single C file with libraries existing for basically all common programming languages. It doesn’t need any server setup or configuration since the SQL logic is run in the host process, and the database consists of only
6073
Lisping at JPL Revisited
It has been over 20 years since I wrote " Lisping at JPL ", half memoir and half geeky screed (and all of it half-baked) about how an obscur...
6074
Roman Egypt was a strange province
Bret Devereaux (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry)2022219 points53 commentscited by 3History & Retro Computing details
Welcome back! We are back from our November hiatus and thus back to regular weekly posts! This week we’re going to answer the runner-up question in the last ACOUP Senate poll (polls in which …
6075
The most important thing to understand about queues (2016)
You only need to learn a little bit of queueing theory before you start getting that ecstatic “everything is connected!” high that good math always evokes. So many damn things follow th…
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6077
An Introduction to Cache-Oblivious Data Structures
If you read my recent post about Postgres you may have noted that Postgres operates primarily with fixed-size blocks of memory called “pages.” By default, Postgres pages are 8KB. This number is tuned to match operating system page sizes which are tuned to match hardware cache sizes. If you were to run Postgres on…
6078
Microsoft makes 5 times more income from Android than from Windows Phone
Microsoft gets $5 for every HTC phone running Android, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who released a big report on Microsoft this morning. Microsoft is getting that money thanks to a p…
6079
Extramaze: Using Racket, PostgreSQL, AWS, but no ads or JavaScript (2018)
Update: Due to lack of interest/use, in June 2021 this site was shut down and user data (emails, names, search alerts) deleted from all systems and backups. For Extramaze LLC I'm using Racket in a commercial project -- a search engine with email alerts fo...
6080
Mapping the internet with Hilbert curves
The internet is big. Really big . You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think the /22 you got as a LIR was big, but that’s just peanuts to the internet.
6081
Asm.js: The JavaScript Compile Target
Like many developers I’ve been excited by the promise of Asm.js . Reading the recent news that Asm.js is now in Firefox nightly is what got my interest going. There’s also been a massive surge in interest after Mozilla and Epic announced ( mirror ) that they had ported Unreal Engine 3 to Asm.js – and that it ran…
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6083
A look at the die of the 8086 processor
The Intel 8086 microprocessor was introduced 42 years ago this month, 1 so I made some high-res die photos of the chip to celebrate. The ...
6084
The Paywalled Garden: iOS is Adware (2020)
Over the years, Apple has built up a portfolio of services and add-ons that you pay for. Starting with AppleCare extended warranties and…
6085
What is a black start of the power grid?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] November 1965 saw one of the most widespread power outages in North American history. On the freezing cold evening of the 9th, the grid was operating at maximum capacity as people tried to stay warm when a misconfigured relay tr
6086
ldd arbitrary code execution (2009)
The `ldd` utility is more vulnerable than you think. It's frequently used by programmers and system administrators to determine the dynamic library dependencies of executables. Sounds pretty innocent, right? Wrong! In this article I am going to show you how to create an executable that runs arbitrary code if it's...
6087
Using SQL to find my best photo of a pelican according to Apple Photos
According to the Apple Photos internal SQLite database, this is the most aesthetically pleasing photograph I have ever taken of a pelican: Here’s the SQL query that found me my …
6088
Getting syntax highlighting wrong
Applying human ergonomics and design principles to syntax highlighting
6089
Apple in China: who holds the keys?
Last week Apple made an announcement describing changes to the iCloud service for users residing in mainland China. Beginning on February 28th, all users who have specified China as their country/r…
6090
The sixtyforgan: Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb
The sixtyforgan is a Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb, featuring the keyboard layout of a chromatic button accordion.