Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 496 posts.
July 2009 One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more. There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional…
As of 2022 I use a Thinkpad x200 computer, which has a free initialization program (called Libreboot when it was installed, but now called GNU Boot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux). It was not sold that way by Lenovo, however; small businesses buy them used, recondition them, and install the free…
There’s a great MSR demo from 2012 that shows the effect of latency on the experience of using a tablet . If you don’t want to watch the three minute video, they basically created a device which could simulate arbitrary latencies down to a fraction of a millisecond. At 100ms (1/10th of a second), which is typical of…
In this article I examine human- and machine aspects of typing latency (“typing lag”) and present experimental data on latency of popular text / code editors. The article is inspired by my work on implementing “zero-latency typing” in IntelliJ IDEA.
Precision colors for machines and people
Software to warm up your computer display at night, to match your indoor lighting.
In this article I will introduce a new command line search tool, ripgrep , that combines the usability of The Silver Searcher (an ack clone) with the raw performance of GNU grep. ripgrep is fast, cross platform (with binaries available for Linux, Mac and Windows) and written in Rust .
This page offers a better way to create a strong, yet easy to remember, passphrase for use with encryption and security programs. Weak passwords and passphrases are one of the most common flaws in computer security. Take a few minutes and learn how to do it right. The information presented here can be used by anyone…
Some of Stephen Wolfram’s “productivity hacks” to make his days and projects more productive. Daily life, desk environment, outside the office, presentation setup, filesystem organization, Wolfram Notebook systems, databases, personal analytics.
July 2010 I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is more important than I'd thought. I knew it was a good time to have ideas. Now I'd go further: now I'd say it's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower. Everyone who's worked on difficult…
If you have heard of Zig before, you may know it as a promising new programming language which is ambitiously trying to overthrow C as the de-facto systems language. But did you know that it also can straight up compile C code?
A Python programmer handed her ~/.gitconfig to Master Git. Among the many lines were the following:
Elastic tabstops - a better way to indent and align code
I want to take a moment to elaborate on what makes a well formed commit message. I think the best practices for commit message formatting is one of the little details that makes Git great. Understandably, some of the first commits to rails.git have messages of the really-long-line variety, and I want to expand on why…
Are you falling victim to the peeking problem? Learn how to design and run an experiment properly.
I'm trying to combine WebKit and Node.js into a new kind of terminal, with an emphasis on rich display and web/network orientation.
Quick introduction to git internals for people who are not scared by words like Directed Acyclic Graph .
In a Twitter discussion last week on ransomware attacks, KrebsOnSecurity noted that virtually all ransomware strains have a built-in failsafe designed to cover the backsides of the malware purveyors: They simply will not install on a Microsoft Windows computer that already has one of many types of virtual keyboards…
an interactive comic on the art & science of memory
Welcome to the world of Git. I hope this document will help to advance your understanding of this powerful content tracking system, and reveal a bit of the simplicity underlying it — however dizzying its array of options may seem from the outside.
Someone : Did you hear that Facebook/Google uses a giant monorepo? WTF! Me : Yeah! It's really convenient, don't you think? Someone : That's THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I've ever heard. Don't FB and Google know what a terrible idea it is to put all your code in a single repo? Me : I think engineers at FB and Google are…
A couple days ago, I saw a post about polyphasic sleep on LifeHack.org . Since then I’ve been emailed about this topic as well, probably because I’ve written previously about becoming an early riser .
A couple of moments ago, I finished reading the article by Rob O'Leary about the pervasive data collection done by Visual Studio Code. Whilst Visual Studio Code is "open-source" (as per the OSD) the value-add which transforms the editor into anything of value ("what people actually refer
First off, I'm calling for a moratorium on Simpsons references until the writers over there are Done, and gets things funny . Secondly, is it possible to cluster DGTSers? Can they recognize each others' brilliance and form into a sort of hive mind, or do they end up abrading one another with slight differences?…
As a computer professional, you've probably done some typing over the years. A lot of typing. And your hands don't always love you for it. If you are concerned about catching the carpal tunnel syndrome, you should be looking into Dvorak keyboards. They have been designed to minimize the finger movement for the most…
A cursory review of all the non-metasearch, indexing search engines I have been able to find.
Efficient memorization using the spacing effect: literature review of widespread applicability, tips on use & what it’s good for.
Ollama gained traction by being the first easy llama.cpp wrapper, then spent years dodging attribution, misleading users, and pivoting to cloud, all while riding VC money earned on someone else's engine. Here's the full history, and why the alternatives are better.
