10921
Static Type Checking in Common Lisp
There is a misconception that Lisp is a dynamically typed language and doesn’t offer compile-time type checking. Lisp being the…
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 11,903 posts.
10922
Fooling around with encrypted reasoning blobs
Update August 11, 2026: A group of researchers from all over Europe were inspired by this post, and actually turned it into a real working attack! Check out their writeup and paper here. This is a …
10923
The Hyperloop was always a scam
It's time to be honest about Musk's vacuum tube to nowhere
10924
10925
Introducing dumb-init, an init system for Docker containers
Introducing dumb-init, an init system for Docker containers Chris K., Software Engineer Jan 6, 2016 At Yelp we use Docker containers everywhere: we run tests in them, build tools around...
10926
Let's discuss the source for the GPLed parts of Tesla cars
It has been many years since we started working with Tesla to help them resolve their ongoing GPL violations. However, Tesla has still not provided the necessary source code for their cars (a benefit of ownership enshrined in the GPL, which Tesla chooses to use) and the incomplete versions of source they have released…
10927
Comparing City Street Orientations
This post is adapted from this research paper that you can read/cite for more info. It analyzes and visualizes 100 cities around the world.
10928
Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible
CockroachDB is PostgreSQL compatible in order to be accessible to an ecosystem of drivers, existing code, and developer knowledge.
10929
N-Wheeled Cars
Douglas Self,
10930
Dear Apple: Please set iMessage free
Normally I avoid complaining about Apple because (a) there are plenty of other people carrying that flag, and (b) I honestly like Apple and own numerous lovely iProducts. I’m even using one t…
10931
How Algolia Built Their Realtime Search as a Service
Algolia started out as a mobile SDK for apps that wanted better offline search. After customers starting asking for a hosted search product, they quic
10932
Common Lisp: The Untold Story
A version of the paper below was published in Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Lisp , edited by Charlotte Herzeel, the conference record of Lisp50 @ OOPSLA’08 (Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 2008). That collection is available through the ACM Digital Library .
10933
Eugene Kaspersky: What Wired Is Not Telling You
This is a very unusual post. It’s not about cyber-crime, malware, our latest business achievements or my latest long journey around the globe. It’s about truth and facts, and the importance of not hiding certain facts while revealing others. For sure I was surprised to read such an article from a journalist who, up…
10934
300k USD Donation Pledged by Mitchell Hashimoto
The donation is structured in two 150k USD payments, one due right away, the second one year from now.
10935
10936
Lovelace's Leap
There's a great deal said about Ada, Countess of Lovelace that I find misguided. And, worse, the real intellectual triumph of Lovelace is ...
10937
The Ambiguity of Open and H.264 vs. VP8
Google has recently announced their intention to remove the H.264 video codec from its Chrome browser. This decision has been smeared as an evil campaign for controlling video on the web, akin to not-invented-here syndrome. It’s also been lauded as the push that the web needs to remain open and free. Mostly, it’s been…
10938
The GitHub Arctic Code Vault
Our mission is to preserve open source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to last a thousand years.
10939
10940
The joys of maintenance programming (2011)
In the old days when I started programming, green programmers trying to build their skills and get experience started out doing maintenance programming. Only the old hands got to write new code. The newbies cut their teeth debugging and fixing musty old code that still worked for the business. I’ve done my share of…
10941
IPv6-only subnets and EC2 instances
In June 2021, we announced our continued commitment and innovation towards the enablement of IPv6 on AWS. Today, we take a monumental step forward with the ability to create an IPv6-only architecture on AWS. With this launch, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) now allows you to create IPv6-only subnets in your…
10942
TIS-100: the Programming Game You Never Asked For
You know what’s universally regarded as un-fun by most programmers? Writing assembly language code. As Steve McConnell said back in 1994: Programmers working with high-level languages achieve better productivity and quality than those working with lower-level languages. Languages such as C++, Java, Smalltalk, and…
10943
Letting neural networks be weird
Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error the algorithm has to figure out how to…
10944
Jesse Schell’s mindblowing talk on the future of games
Hi, I'm Kevin Fox. I've been blogging at Fury.com since 1998. I can be reached at .
10945
A case for ending lockdown
Introduction [DISCLAIMER: The original author is a layperson without medical/scientific credentials and this post represents a best-effort attempt to synthesize relevant research and unpack the policy implications of the “lockdown” approach as compared with the proposed alternative.] [Note: See the very last section…
10946
Turning an iPad Pro into a classic Macintosh
I’ve started work on the next in my 1-bit Woodblocks series: “Tekagami” (Ito Shinsui’s “Hand Mirror”). So it’s a good time to talk about how I turned an iPad...
10947
10948
“Safe C++ Subset” Is Vapourware
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
10949
10950
What's worked in Computer Science: 1999 vs. 2015 (2015)
In 1999, Butler Lampson gave a talk about the past and future of “computer systems research” . Here are his opinions from 1999 on "what worked".