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Experiments in Constraint-Based Graphic Design
Basalt is system for graphic design that allows a designer to think in terms of relationships between objects, and it makes it easy to build and reuse abstractions.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 809 posts.
392
When His SR-71 Blackbird Disintegrated, This Pilot Free Fell from Space
During the early days of testing for the legendary SR-71 Blackbird there were some harrowing mishaps, the details of which have rarely come to light. On January 25, 1966, test pilot Bill Weaver and Lockheed flight test reconnaissance and navigation systems specialist Jim Zwayer experienced their plane vanishing around…
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Project Silica proof-of-concept stores movie on quartz glass
Microsoft and Warner Brothers collaborate to store and retrieve the 1978 'Superman' movie on a piece of glass roughly the size of a drink coaster.
395
What to Know Before Debating Type Systems (2008)
I was asked by someone to put this old piece of writing of mine somewhere more permanent, so here it is. A few comments off the top: This isn’t new. I wrote it years ago. Yes, I’m a b…
396
Clojure’s Approach to Identity and State (2008)
Many people come to Clojure from an imperative language and find themselves out of their element when faced with Clojure’s approach to doing things, while others are coming from a more functional background and assume that once they leave Clojure’s functional subset, they will be faced with the same story re: state as…
397
Post-mortem and remediations for the Matrix.org security breach
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
398
Racket-On-Chez Status: January 2019
posted by Matthew Flatt For background information about Racket on Chez Scheme (a.k.a. Racket CS), see the original announcement, last January's report, and the report at Scheme Workshop 2018. Racket on Chez Scheme is done in a useful sense. All...
399
The Principles of Versioning in Go
This blog post is about how we added package versioning to Go, in the form of Go modules, and the reasons we made the choices we did. It is adapted and updated from a talk I gave at GopherCon Singapore in 2018 .
400
Solving the Rubik’s cube with a robot hand
We’ve trained a pair of neural networks to solve the Rubik’s Cube with a human-like robot hand. The neural networks are trained entirely in simulation, using the same reinforcement learning code as OpenAI Five paired with a new technique called Automatic Domain Randomization (ADR). The system can handle situations it…
401
The Path to Dijkstra’s Handwriting (2013)
How I used Edsger W. Dijkstra's handwriting as a model to improve mine.
402
Everything Is Correlated
Anthology of sociology, statistical, or psychological papers discussing the observation that all real-world variables have non-zero correlations and the implications for statistical theory such as ‘null hypothesis testing’.
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Visual Studio online available for public preview
GitHub Codespaces gets you up and coding faster with fully configured, secure cloud development environments native to GitHub.
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I do not use a debugger (2016)
I learned to program with BASIC back when I was twelve. I would write elaborate programs and run them. Invariably, they would surprise me by failing to do what I expect. I would struggle for a time, but I'd eventually give up and just accept that whatever "bugs" I had created were there to stay. … Continue reading I…
405
The Road to Valhalla
The goal of Project Valhalla is to bring more flexible flattened data types to JVM-based languages, to bring the programming model back in line with the performance characteristics of modern hardware. The core feature is inline classes (known previously as value types ), but such a fundamental perturbation of the JVM…
406
Time Travel (2006)
Last time we talked about free will, superintelligent predictors, and Dr. Evil planning to destroy the earth from his moon base. Today I'd like to talk about a more down-to-earth topic: time travel. The first point I have to make is one that Carl Sagan made: we're all time travelers—at the rate of one second per…
407
Google HTML/CSS style guide suggests omitting head and body tags
Style guides for Google-originated open-source projects
408
Rust in Production (2018)
How Mozilla’s new language dramatically improved our server-side performance
409
Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.1
Note: Read about past updates to this technology in other blog posts about Intelligent Tracking Prevention, and the Storage Access API.
410
Modchips of the State
Collection of my projects and hacks.
411
Announcing unlimited free private repos
Today we’re announcing two major updates to make GitHub more accessible to developers.
412
We Stood Up to a Patent Troll and Won
We don’t plan to settle, and if brought into such litigation again in the future, we think we have a pretty good blueprint for how to respond.
413
WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
Hi, Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly.
414
Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default
It’s been several weeks since I was promoted to Senior Vice President of Firefox, responsible for overall Firefox product and web platform development. A
415
Apple’s New Mac Pro to Be Made in Texas
As part of its commitment to US economic growth, Apple today confirmed that its newly redesigned Mac Pro will be manufactured in Austin, Texas.
416
Adblocking: How about Nah?
For more than a decade, consumer rights groups (including EFF) worked with technologists and companies to try to standardize Do Not Track, a flag that browsers could send to online companies signaling that their users did not want their browsing activity tracked. Despite long hours and backing from...
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Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
We've passed a milestone in Google's evolution from search engine to walled-garden. In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based
420
Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M
The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software — blender.org