Most cited

Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 475 posts.

Any topic
2020
216

Whose Computer Is It?

Patrick Wardle highlighted a tweet by Maxwell (" Some Apple apps bypass some network extensions and VPN Apps. Maps for example can directly access the internet bypassing any NEFilterDataProvider or NEAppProxyProviders you have running "), sparking an extensive HN discussion on Apple's ham-fisted tactics (not unlike…

217

Unifying the Technical Interview

Aisha’s hands rattle you. They float gently in front of her shoulders, wrists cocked back. One sways cheerfully as she banters with the hiring manager—her lacquered nails a cyan mosaic over ochre palms. They flit, then hover momentarily as the two women arrange lunch. When the door closes, Aisha slaps her fingertips…

218

8086 Microcode Disassembled

Recently I realised that, as part of his 8086 reverse-engineering series, Ken Shirriff had posted online a high resolution photograph of the 8086 die with the metal layer removed . This was something I have been looking for for some time, in order to extract and disassemble the 8086 microcode. I had previously found…

232

Bye, Amazon

May 1 st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.

234

Old CSS, New CSS

I first got into web design/development in the late 90s, and only as I type this sentence do I realize how long ago that was. And boy, it was horrendous. I mean, being able to make stuff and put it online where other people could see it was pretty slick, but we did not have very much to work with. I’ve been taking for…

235

The Polygons of Another World

There is a playful way to study the architecture of computers of the past. Find a piece of software you know well and try to find out how it was ported to these machine you don't. A good choice would be DOOM. id Software's 1994 mega-hit has been ported to everything. It is designed around a core with no layering…