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The Blue Collar Jobs of Philip Glass
I praise his work as a composer—but also as plumber, taxi driver, steel mill worker, and in other trades
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,205 posts.
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What I Learned Writing an Album in Just Intonation
Just intonation (JI) today falls under the umbrella of microtonal music, because it involves playing "between the notes" of the 12-tone scale we're used to. As I type microtonal , my spellchecker decorates it with a sad squiggle, confirming I've drifted (again) into a topic that's not even in its dictionary. But JI is…
9123
The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
The ideas behind Product Market Fit (PMF) were first articulated by Marc Andreessen in a detailed blog post around 2007 [https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html].
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What you learn by making a new programming language
Every software engineer uses a programming language, usually multiple. Few of us make programming languages. This makes sense, because the work we need to get done can typically be done just fine in the languages that exist. Those already have people making them better. Let's focus on the task at hand.
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I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)
JD Stillwater, Science Ambassador's blog.
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Emacs: Contextual Interfaces in Casual Calc
A compelling idea in the Transient UI package is the ability to craft interfaces where commands specific to a context can be discovered and used. Such contextual interfaces enable a user to...
9127
Using a list to manage executive function
I use a fairly well-developed todo list system to manage my workload during the day. Some of the details are unusual, so I thought it would be worth sharing.
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The new PostgreSQL 17 make dist
When the PostgreSQL project makes a release, the primary artifact of that is the publication of a source code tarball. That represents the output of all the work that went into the creation of the PostgreSQL software up to the point of the release. The source tarball is then used downstream by packagers to make binary…
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Hacking the largest airline and hotel rewards platform (2023)
Between March 2023 and May 2023, we identified multiple security vulnerabilities within points.com, the backend provider for a significant portion of airline and hotel rewards programs. These vulnerabilities would have enabled an attacker to access sensitive customer account information, including names, billing…
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0xCAFEBABE & 0xFEEDFACE (2003)
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 0xCAFEBABE & 0xFEEDFACE Recently, the origin of the magic numbers of 0xCAFEBABE and 0xFEEDFACE came up in an email conversation between a number of ex-NeXT folks. Specifically, someone asked what the origin of the two magic numbers were in the context of mach-o file formats and why had Java…
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SQL Injection Isn't Dead: Smuggling Queries at the Protocol Level
PDF slides from a presentation by Paul Gerste at DEF CON 32. It turns out some databases have vulnerabilities in their binary protocols that can be exploited by carefully crafted …
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Quote-unquote "macros"
You’ve probably seen this Python 101 thing before: @memoized def fib(n): if n <= 1: return n return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2) Leaving aside the absurdity of computing Fibonacci numbers recursively, it’s a common first introduction to Python decorators and higher-order functions. fib is just a function, and memoized…
9134
There Is No Antimemetics Division (2018)
An important announcement There Is No Antimemetics Division has been picked up for publication by Penguin Random House! Find out more here. Everything below is for the original self-published version of the story only. An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring p...
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Approximating sum types in Python with Pydantic
TL;DR: You can use Pydantic’s support for tagged unions to approximate sum types in Python; go right to Sum types in Python (and onwards) to see how it’s done.
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Okay, I Like WezTerm
A guide to configuring WezTerm using its Lua API. Focuses on appearance, keybindings, multiplexing, workspace navigation, and status bar (powerline) setup.
9137
Go is my hammer, and everything is a nail
Always choose the right tool for the job? Nah. I use Go basically everywhere, which either makes me insightful or stupid. Decide for yourself! :D
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How good can you be at Codenames without knowing any words?
About eight years ago, I was playing a game of Codenames where the game state was such that our team would almost certainly lose if we didn't correctly guess all of our remaining words on our turn. From the given clue, we were unable to do this. Although the game is meant to be a word guessing game based on word…
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How to avoid losing items? Holding pens
When we are interrupted or need to hastily respond to a new demand, we often make quick decisions about where to place physical items. We always place them in locations which make sense given our current state of mind, but often that state of mind is fleeting, and so we forget where we put our things.
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Generating Simpson's Paradox with Z3
I’ve been reading Pearl’s Causal Inference in Statistics , and one of the exercises poses this problem:
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Introduction to Golang Preemption Mechanisms
A short explanation of what is preemption and how it works
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Building data infrastructure that will last
As a consultant, I have been called in to review and, in many cases, replace dozens of half-finished, abandoned, and sometimes forgotten data infrastructure projects.
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OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20
OpenStreetMap at 20
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I Created 175 Fonts Using Rust
How I used my own Rust tool to ship 175 quality pixel fonts.
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The Shameful Defenestration of Tim
On Tim Peters' recent suspension as a Python core developer
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Stapler: I remade a 32 year old classic Macintosh app
The latest version of this app is now available as a free download on the Mac App Store.More info on my apps website at: gingerbeardman.com/apps/stapler/
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How the SNES Graphics System Works
Last week's article discussed how the Super Nintendo's Video system feeds the TV's CRT. Today I'll summarize what I understand of the hardware generating these graphics.
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Hal Hickel on Creating Tarkin
Back in 2020, Hal Hickel answered a Quora question with great detail about how we created Grand Moff Tarkin for "Rogue One" (2016), and in t...