Most cited

Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 637 posts.

Any topic
2014
124

The Emacs Problem (2005)

The Emacs Problem Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants™ Charles G. pointed out in an email discussion recently: Lisp still doesn't seem like the right language for doing text manipulation, and nothing I've seen from the Emacs libraries is making me think any differently. It sure beats the hell out of Java

126

Warrant Canary Frequently Asked Questions

What is a warrant canary? A warrant canary is a colloquial term for a regularly published statement that a service provider has not received legal process that it would be prohibited from saying it had received. Once a service provider does receive legal process, the speech prohibition goes into...

130

Minimum Viable Block Chain

Block chain is agnostic of any 'currency' and it can (and will) be adapted to power many other use cases. This is a ground up explanation of why the particular pieces (digital signatures, proof-of-work, transaction blocks) are needed, and how they all come together to form the minimum viable block chain with all of…

131

Rust for functional programmers

This post follows up on OCaml for Haskellers from Edward Z. Yang (2010) and my own Haskell for OCaml programmers from earlier this year. Note The latest version of this document can be found online at https://dr-knz.net/rust-for-functional-programmers.html. Alternate formats: Source, PDF. Prologue Rust for C…

132

No, don't enable revocation checking

Revocation checking is in the news again because of a large number of revocations resulting from precautionary rotations for servers affected by the OpenSSL heartbeat bug. However, revocation checking is a complex topic and there's a fair amount of misinformation around. In short, it doesn't work and you are no more…

140

The PHP Singularity

Look at this incredible thing Ian Baker created. Look at it! What you’re seeing is not Photoshopped. This is an actual photo of a real world, honest to God double-clawed hammer. Such a thing exists. Isn’t that amazing? And also, perhaps, a little disturbing? That wondrous hammer

148

Dijkstra on Haskell and Java (2001)

In 2001, Edsger W. Dijkstra wrote a letter to the Budget Council of The University of Texas. A PDF is available here , I’ve typed it up so that everyone can read it. Sadly, the curriculum was changed to Java . Relatedly, the algorithmic language Scheme was replaced by Python in MIT’s The Structure and Interpretation…