Metacrap
Version 1.1, May 18 2001. Changed section orders for better organization. (Thanks, Raffi). Clarified "metrics" in 2.6 (Thanks, Andy).
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 6,981 posts.
Version 1.1, May 18 2001. Changed section orders for better organization. (Thanks, Raffi). Clarified "metrics" in 2.6 (Thanks, Andy).
Back in 1998, I wrote: Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can’t break. In 2004, Cory Doctorow called this Schneier’s law: …what I think of as Schneier’s Law: “any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can’t think of how to…
Brian Wigginton
[Conflict of interest notice: I’ve volunteered for both private and public charities, but more often private. I received a small amount of money for work done for a private charity ten years …
All hotels in Mallorca. The best selection of Mallorca hotels with reviews and maps. Book in advance and save.
deltaDistX = sqrt(1 + (rayDirY * rayDirY) / (rayDirX * rayDirX)) deltaDistY = sqrt(1 + (rayDirX * rayDirX) / (rayDirY * rayDirY))
I think some people thought I was joking earlier today when I said that we have our own compiler, Wasabi, for FogBugz. Yes, Wasabi is real. Because FogBugz is sold to customers who run it on their …
Eric Lippert notes the perils of programming in C++: I often think of C++ as my own personal Pit of Despair Programming Language. Unmanaged C++ makes it so easy to fall into traps. Think buffer overruns, memory leaks, double frees, mismatch between allocator and deallocator, using freed memory, umpteen dozen
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking. The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challeng…
[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of Display Processors , Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward…
The rants and raves of Simon Wardley on Evolution, Technology, Economics and Business
I was curious how well the predictions of the most widely cited AI skeptic I've seen (Ed Zitron) have done, so I looked at how his predictions panned out. To disclose my own biases, I've never had a particularly strong pro or anti AI progress position. For example, in 2022, I did a comprehensive look at predictions…
Every ops team has some manual procedures that they haven’t gotten around to automating yet. Toil can never be totally eliminated. Very often, the biggest toil center for a team at a growing …
"So, how much experience do you have with Big Data and Hadoop?" they asked me. I told them that I use Hadoop all the time, but rarely for jobs larger than a few TB. I'm basically a big data neophite - I know the concepts, I've written code, but never at scale.
If you ever connected to the Internet before the 2000s, you probably remember how it sounded. But what do these sounds mean?
This article is now available in Japanese: 紙と鉛筆でビットコインをマイニング:1日に0.67ハッシュ and Russian: Майним Bitcoin с помощью бумаги и ручки . I decided...
You've finished this book and have decided to continue with programming. Maybe it will be a career for you, or maybe it will be a hobby. You'll need some advice to make sure you continue on the right path and get the most enjoyment out of your newly chosen activity.
Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel...
On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled " A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet " for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.
You might know that I've posted funny emails I've received on my blog several times in the past. The kind of emails people send me when they experience problems with some device they own (like a car) and they contact me because my email address happens to be visible somewhere. People sometimes say I should … Continue…
September 2013 Most startups that raise money do it more than once. A typical trajectory might be (1) to get started with a few tens of thousands from something like Y Combinator or individual angels, then (2) raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company, and then (3) once the company is clearly…