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Replacing Python: candidates
This post evaluates the programming languages ATS, C#, Go, Haskell, OCaml, Python and Rust to try to decide which would be the best language in which …
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 426 posts.
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An Intuitive (and Short) Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem
Bayes’ theorem was the subject of a detailed article. The essay is good, but over 15,000 words long — here’s the condensed version for Bayesian newcomers like…
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World
The animated ASCII globe surrounded by its own source code. An quine in 1024 bytes of JavaScript.
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Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire
Back to: Trust Me (I'm a kettle) | Forward to: Over-Extended Metaphor for the day
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Why Asm.js Bothers Me
Please note that this post expresses my personal opinion and mine alone, not those of my employer or my teammates.
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How to Hire
After startups raise money, their next biggest problem becomes hiring. It turns out it’s both really hard and really important to hire good people; in fact, it’s probably the most important thing...
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The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet
The new Snowden revelations are explosive. Basically, the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet. They’re doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics. It’s joint reporting between the Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica. I have been working with Glenn Greenwald on the Snowden documents, and I have…
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The Pull Request Hack
After writing about Open Source And Responsibility , I’d like to share a small collaboration hack I came up with last year. Here it is:
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The network is reliable
I’ve been discussing Jepsen and partition tolerance with Peter Bailis over the past few weeks, and I’m honored to present this post as a collaboration between the two of us. We’d also like to extend our sincere appreciation to everyone who contributed their research and experience to this piece.
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Tiny, cheap, and dangerous: Inside a fake iPhone charger
Thoughts on the death of Ma Ailun According to reports , a woman in China was tragically electrocuted using her iPhone while it was char...
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Dual N-Back Meta-analysis
Does DNB increase IQ? What factors affect the studies? Probably not: gains are driven by studies with weakest methodology like apathetic control groups.
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The Last Psychiatrist: The Dove Sketches Beauty Scam
"Dude, are you doing the Dove ad now ? That was so April 15th...?" Yes, I realize I missed the meme train, but it's better to be right than part of the debate, especially when there is no debate, this is all a short con inside a 50+ year long con. Remember House Of Games ? "It's called a confidence game. Why, because…
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Parsing expressions by precedence climbing
I've written previously about the problem recursive descent parsers have with expressions, especially when the language has multiple levels of operator precedence.
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Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell
I have heard the following from a bunch of people, one of whom was me six months ago: “I keep on reading all these posts by really smart people who identify as Reactionaries, and I don’…
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Hubble
If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be?
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Jepsen: On the perils of network partitions
This article is part of Jepsen , a series on network partitions. We’re going to learn about distributed consensus, discuss the CAP theorem’s implications, and demonstrate how different databases behave under partition.
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Quote Origin: Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives
Question for Quote Investigator: While watching a cable news channel I heard a commentator present a quotation that he credited to Winston Churchill. When I searched the web I found many different versions:
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Language Log: Shakespeare used <B><I>they</I></B> with singular antecedents so there
Not happy that I cite Sean Lennon as a source of evidence concerning the way they can be used in modern English? Feeling that only something 400 years older would really convince you that it's OK. Has Coby Lubliner got news for you! Coby writes from Berkeley to point out the following lines from Shakespeare's A Comedy…
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The Last Psychiatrist: Luxury Branding The Future Leaders Of The World
This is a brilliant campaign, for technical and artistic reasons. What is the brand that it conveys? Heirloom quality .
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Hyphens and dashes
Butterick’s Practical Typography
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DWIM
1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, the result intended when bogus input was provided.
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An Engineer’s guide to Stock Options
There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt when it comes to stock options, and I'd like to try and clear some of that up today. As an engineer, you may be more interested in getting on with your job than compensation. However, if you're working at
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The microhydro plant
setting up a microhydro installation
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How to Convince Investors
August 2013 When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back. The right way to lift heavy things is to let your legs do the work. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake when trying to convince investors. They try to convince with their pitch. Most would be…