7711
Das Blinkenlights
Note there is a RP2040 version of this now available Das Blinkenlights (mit RP2040!)
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,204 posts.
7712
The Illustrated Guide to a PhD
There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure .
7713
Why I Chose Common Lisp
After ~7 years, I was done with Clojure . I was writing a some CLI apps , and I hated how long they took to start up. The community at large seemed not to care about this problem, except for the babashka folks. However, I spent long, hard hours banging my head against native-image and it just wasn't working out. It…
7714
IP addresses through 2024
Time for another annual roundup from the world of IP addresses. Let’s see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet and look at how IP address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself.
7715
Why the weak nuclear force is short range
The “range” of a force is a measure of the distance across which it can easily be effective. Some forces, including electric and magnetic forces and gravity, are long-range, able to cau…
7716
Stop Trying to Schedule a Call with Me
Stop Trying To Schedule A Call With Me - The harassment by SaaS
7717
What it's like working for American companies as an Australian
My experience working across timezones for Americans
7718
Homomorphic encryption in iOS 18
A mathematical miracle enables Apple's servers to process your photos while never knowing anything about them
7719
Nix – Death by a Thousand Cuts
thoughts, talks, docs and unpopular opinions
7720
De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge
This is the story of a commercially unavailable stereo pair of thebi-amped Marshall Uxbridge, with custom-built replacement electronics:active filters feedin...
7721
The Chaos (1922)
This is a classic English poem containing about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation. Will Snellen wrote a PDF version using the phonetic alphabet . You can hear some of it pronounced mostly correctly in videos here:
7722
Be Aware of the Makefile Effect
Update 2024-01-12 : Ken Shirriff has an an excellent blog post on why “cargo cult” is a poor term of art.
7723
FreeBSD Suspend/Resume
I have been using FreeBSD on the desktops/laptops since about 20 years now and I have described all that I configured in the FreeBSD Desktop series. About 1 year ago I shared a video on YouTube and…
7724
A couple CSS tricks for HTML Dialog elements
You can use CSS to add some simple functionality to HTML <dialog> elements!
7725
Very Wrong Math
The difference between misinformation and disinformation is the difference between ignorance and malice. Trolling is somewhat different, incorporating an element of provocation and narcissism. But what the hell is this?
7726
Portals and Quake
Ever wanted to know how exactly did Quake’s precomputed visibility work? I did, so I wrote vis.py , a reimplementation of their algorithm in Python. This guide has all the information you need to understand vis , the tool used by Quake, Half-Life and Source Engine games.
7727
Building Bauble
I made something that I think is pretty neat, and I want to tell you about it. This is a little hot air balloon made out of alternating layers of brass and bronze that stack together with these angled facets: It’s 3D printed, sort of, but it really is solid metal – it’s not a metallic filament. It’s made by “lost wax…
7728
How we used GPT-4o for image detection with 350 similar illustrations
The Attic is a running catalog of Olup's side projects, sketches, and weekend rabbit holes.
7729
Getting silly with C, part (void*)2
They won't be able to find bugs in your code if they can't figure out how it works.
7730
Railroad Tycoon II
Like a lot of boys, I grew up loving trains. And like a lot of men, I retain my fascination for them today.
7731
Formal Methods: Just Good Engineering Practice? (2024)
Earlier this week, I did the keynote at TLA+ conf 2024 ( watch the video or check out the slides ). My message in the keynote was something I have believed to be true for a long time: formal methods are an important part of good software engineering practice. If you’re a software engineer, especially one working on…
7732
I've acquired a new superpower
Yesterday, I was browsing Reddit. Midway through my feed, I stumbled upon a video from a German TV show, where a 9-year-old girl demonstrated her ability to…
7733
Who Can Understand the Proof? A Window on Formalized Mathematics
Stephen Wolfram discusses understanding proofs discovered using automated theorem proving. Based on Wolfram’s proof of the simplest axioms of logic of Boolean algebra.
7734
Decentralized Syndication – The Missing Internet Protocol
The Internet is decentralized by design. It came into being not at once, but in parts. New protocols were added on top of previous ones, but one crucial protocol is still missing.
7735
How outdated information hides in LLM token generation probabilities
Random tech notes
7736
Narcolepsy is weird but I didn't notice
There are certain kinds of experiences that most human beings know very little about because a) they are rare, b) they can only be felt from the "inside", i.e., by the people who have them, and c) not all of those people choose to, or are good at, writing
7737
A three month review of kagi search and the orion web browser (2024)
There's a new web search in town! I spent the start of 2024 kicking the tires on Kagi's paid search and their Orion web browser.
7738
Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
[You can follow me on social media: @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social and see my publications etc., at https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks ]
7739
Celebrating the timeless allure of Tintin's aesthetics
The Adventures of Tintin officially entered the public domain in 2025. We now all own the alluring aesthetics of this timeless classic.
7740