6481
Computer Science by Mail
Hypothetically, how would you teach Computer Science or programming to someone who has no access to a computer, and with whom your only communication is books and postal mail?
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 6,985 posts.
6482
Python on Wheels
A quick overview into wheel based Python deployments.
6483
Falsehoods programmers believe about undefined behavior
All kinds of reasonable-sounding beliefs about undefined behavior are wrong. Let's go through them.
6484
Java Is Unsound: The Industry Perspective
Discussing a recent academic finding on Java and Scala, from industry's perspective.
6485
S32 Unix Clock
I've been thinking I should do more "short form" blogging. Something between microblogging and regular blogging. This is me doing that!
6486
Anthropic installed a spyware bridge on my machine?
Anthropic's Claude Desktop silently installs a Native Messaging bridge into seven Chromium browsers, including browsers Anthropic's own documentation says it does not support, and browsers the user has not even installed.
6487
The Quest for Very Wide Outlines
Brute force, gaussian blur, and Jump Flood Algorithm based outline approaches tested and compared.
6488
6489
Finding Love Optimally
Like many in operations research, my research interests often creep over into my everyday life. Since I work on scheduling issues, I get particularly concerned with everyday scheduling, to the consternation of my friends and family (“We should have left six minutes ago: transportation is now on the critical path!”)…
6490
Why Adventure Games Suck (1989)
Ron Gilbert's often incoherent and bitter ramblings about the Game Industry
6491
Why and how to avoid hamburger menus
The issues of this pattern are now widely recognized, but what’s the real solution?
6492
6493
PAGNIs: Probably Are Gonna Need Its (2021)
Luke Page has a great post up with his list of YAGNI exceptions. YAGNI—You Ain’t Gonna Need It—is a rule that says you shouldn’t add a feature just because it …
6494
SELECT wat FROM sql
Thanks to Nikhil Benesch, Justin Jaffray and several decades of "wouldn't it be nice if..." for contributions.
6495
Long Names are Long
One smart thing Google does is rigorous code reviews. Every change, before you can land it, gets reviewed in at least two ways. First, someone on the team does a normal review to make sure the code does what it’s supposed to.
6496
The Last Ridge Racer
Well, this is a bit of a roller coaster tale that I’ve been meaning to share for a while. Before we start, let’s take a trip into the history books to set the scene. In October 1993, Na…
6497
6498
PUT or POST: The REST of the Story
Web service designers have tried for some time now to correlate CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update and Delete) semantics with the Representational State Transfer (REST) verbs defined by the HTTP specif…
6499
What Have We Learned from the PDP-11?
This post is a slightly edited version of my November presentation to the San Francisco chapter of Papers We Love.
6500
How I work with Postgres – psql, My PostgreSQL Admin
On at least a weekly basis and not uncommonly multiple times in a single week I get this question: @neilmiddleton I’ve been hunting for a nice PG interface that works within other things. PGAdmin kinda works, except the SQL editor is a piece of shit Sometimes it leans more to, what is the Sequel Pro equivilant for…
6501
Knuth's 'Earthshaking Announcement' due tomorrow
(I'm still looking for the catchiest way to appreciate the number MMXXVI. Exercise 7.2.1.6–122 gives 1234+.5*6+789 and -1+2345*6/7+8+9 and 1+(2/3)*45*67.8-9 ; other suggestions are welcome. The most elegant that I've seen so far is a beauty that was suggested independently by Arnaud Lefebvre and by Evangelos…
6502
6503
How to Ace Calculus: The Art of Doing Well in Technical Courses
Tangent Troubles Calculus is easy. Or at least, it can be. The key is how you digest the material. Here’s an example: when you’re first ... Read more
6504
How Tokyo built its way to abundant housing
Tokyo has rightly been getting some plaudits for housebuilding of late, and this post brings together some stats that illustrate just how impressive its record is. First, some definitions and conte…
6505
What “Worse is Better vs The Right Thing” is really about
I thought about this one for a couple of years, then wrote it up, and left it untouched for another couple of years.
6506
How Browsers Store Your Passwords (and Why You Shouldn't Let Them)
Introduction In a previous post , I introduced a Twitter bot called dumpmon which monitors paste sites for account dumps, configuration fi...
6507
6508
Hacking Team: a zero-day market case study
This article documents Hacking Team’s third-party acquisition of zero-day (0day) vulnerabilities and exploits. The recent compromise of Hacking Team’s email archive offers one of the first public case studies of the market for 0days. Because of its secretive nature, this market has been the source of endless debates…
6509
Elements of Modern C++ Style
“C++11 feels like a new language.” – Bjarne Stroustrup The C++11 standard offers many useful new features. This page focuses specifically and only on those features that make C++11 really feel like…
6510
A Rant About “Technology” (2005)
Ursula K. Le Guin on the presence of technology in her work