Boring Python: dependency management (2022)
*This post has been significantly updated since it was originally written. The most recent update was in September 2026; a …
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,208 posts.
*This post has been significantly updated since it was originally written. The most recent update was in September 2026; a …
This is a set of notes on the Quinn Emanuel report on Cruise's handling of the 2023-10-02 accident where a Cruise autonomous vehicle (AV) hit a pedestrian, stopped, and then started moving again with the pedestrian stuck under the bottom of the AV, dragging the pedestrian 20 feet. After seeing some comments about this…
This is a blog post aimed at people who want to do important work or make meaningful contributions to work, but feel they aren’t that smart and don’t have any talent. Thanks for reading Adaobi’s Newsletter!
2023 seems to have been the year where I "made the rounds" of a number of major Lisps. There were several elements that lead to this. Firstly must have been my exposure to Elixir in 2022, which introduced me to the idea of debugging live systems and "staying in your program". Secondly must have been my chief complaint…
The Apple Vision Pro is missing some important apps, and it seems likely that Apple’s App Store policies played a part. Might the company respond by doubling down with Disney?
Achieving Data Freedom Through Open Source and Rust
Learn how to add type safety to object IDs in a TypeScript codebase using template literal types.
It's well known that syscalls are expensive. And that software mitigations against CPU bugs (such as Meltdown) even have made them more expensive. But how expensive are they really? To begin to answer this question I wrote a small micro-benchmark in order to measure the minimal costs of a syscall …
At first sight, the idea of 1,216-page two-volume work on keyboards for $150 might seem like a heavy lift. But it was years in the making.
Jakob Nielsen has worked in user experience since 1983. Much changed, including moving from academia to practice but the mission remains!
Sometimes, improving your application CSS just takes a one-line upgrade or enhancement! Learn about 12 properties to start incorporating into your projects, and enjoy reducing technical debt, removing JavaScript, and scoring easy wins for user experience.
The lofty theory and the sordid reality of "perf".
Over the past couple months I’ve discovered a couple of handy tricks for working with GDB breakpoints. I figured these out on my own, and I’ve not seen either discussed elsewhere, so I really ought to share them.
Spam on GitHub is getting out of control and affecting 10,000's of users daily. GitHub is seemly doing nothing about it, here is the proof.
Dwarf Fortress art.
Years ago I spent some time analyzing Candle-Flicker LEDs that contain an integrated circuit to mimic the flickering nature of real candles. Artificial candles have evolved quite a bit since then, …
Installation artwork by Vitling
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being…
A Cautionary Tale about Too Much Siloing and Not Enough Trust
I've been self-hosting for over a decade. It's freeing because I own my data, and do not depend on any platform other than my cloud host, which I can easily switch off. Self-hosting gives much insight into what it takes to run a cloud service. Anyone
How great would it be if the solution to most errors you face were in the first place you looked? That’s what the Arch Wiki has been for me: a massive wealth of information and troubleshooting resources to help me navigate the various configuration and installation issues I’ve encountered. Some people claim Arch Linux…
Before the Internet, if we wanted to read up-to-the-minute news or weather, we had Teletext. It is a low-bandwidth text standard that used to be sent via the hidden black border on TV signals.
The other day I rode on a Class 800 train in the UK. This is the “Intercity Express” train designed to replace the venerable HST (Intercity 125 with Mark 3 coaches, a train of which I have many memories and which I will dearly miss).
History of checkboxes and radio buttons in user interfaces
There's a class of comment you often see when someone makes a popular thread on Mastodon/Twitter/Threads/etc., that you also see on videos that's basically "Why make a Twitter thread? This would be better as a blog post" or "Why make a video? This would be better as a blog post". But, these comments are often stronger…
Bad managers and CRE bagholders lost, competent employees and internet-savvy teams won ...arbitrary authoritarian control over your work-life is so 1900s
I often drive between Boston and New Haven. While on the road, I find myself pondering a simple question: If my only goal is to arrive as fast as possible, how fast should I drive? Ignoring things …
My own concatenative programming language