1
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 15 posts.
2
Entropy Attacks
The conventional wisdom is that hashing more entropy sources can't hurt: if H is any modern cryptographic hash function then H(x,y,z) is at least as good a random number as H(x,y), no matter how awful z is. So we pile one source on top of another, hashing them all together and hoping that at least one of them is good.
3
Numbering should start at zero (1982)
To denote the subsequence of natural numbers 2, 3, ..., 12 without the pernicious three dots, four conventions are open to us
4
Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
Craig Gidney's computer science blog
5
Nearly all binary searches and mergesorts are broken (2006)
Posted by Joshua Bloch, Software EngineerI remember vividly Jon Bentley's first Algorithms lecture at CMU, where he asked all of us incoming Ph.D. ...
6
Bloom Filters by Example
A Bloom filter is a data structure designed to tell you, rapidly and memory-efficiently, whether an element is present in a set.
7
Introduction to Digital Filters (2024)
INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL FILTERS WITH AUDIO APPLICATIONS
8
There's Math.random(), and then there's Math.random() (2015)
V8’s Math.random implementation now uses an algorithm called xorshift128+, improving the randomness compared to the old MWC1616 implementation.
9
Gemini with Deep Think achieves gold-medal standard at the IMO
The International Mathematical Olympiad (“IMO”) is the world’s most prestigious competition for young mathematicians, and has been held annually since 1959. Each country taking part is represented by six elite, pre-university mathematicians who compete to solve six exceptionally difficult problems in algebra…
10
Why are QR Codes with capital letters smaller than QR codes with lower case?
Take a look at these two QR codes. Scan them if you like, I promise there's nothing dodgy in them. Left is upper-case HTTPS://EDENT.TEL/ and right is lower-case https://edent.tel/ You can clearly see that the one on the left is a "smaller" QR as it has fewer bits of data in it. Both go to the same URl, the only…
11
BusyBeaver(6) Is Quite Large
For overdetermined reasons, I’ve lately found the world an increasingly terrifying and depressing place. It’s gotten harder and harder to concentrate on research, or even popular scienc…
12
Everything is correlated (2014–23)
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’.
13
The Missing 11th of the Month (2015)
Personal website of David R Hagen, scientific software engineer
14
Infinite Grid of Resistors
There is a well-known puzzle based on the premise of an �infinite� grid of resistors connecting adjacent nodes of a square lattice. A small portion of such a grid is illustrated below.
15
The inspection paradox is everywhere (2015)
I have updated this article with new data, better code, and friendlier data visualization. You can read the new version here . Th...