1081
Addressing the adding situation
We learn why adding on x86 isn't as obvious as you might think
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 14,537 posts.
1082
Advent of Compiler Optimisations 2025
Announcing AoCO 2025 - daily December posts about compiler optimisations
1083
Rootless Pings in Rust
Sending a ping by creating an ICMP socket normally requires root: you can’t create a raw socket to send ICMP packets without it. The ping command line tool works without root however, how is that possible? It turns out you can create a UDP socket with a protocol flag, which allows you to send the ping rootless. I…
1084
Constructing the Word's First JPEG XL MD5 Hash Quine
A walk through of building an image that displays its own MD5 Hash
1085
1086
Response to "Ruby Is Not a Serious Programming Language"
[5 min read] The question Sheon Han poses — “Is Ruby a serious programming language?” — says a lot about what someone thinks programming is supposed to fee...
1087
Why xor eax, eax?
Why do compilers love xor-ing registers so much?
1088
Idempotency keys for exactly-once processing
In distributed systems, there’s a common understanding that it is not possible to guarantee exactly-once delivery of messages. What is possible though is exactly-once processing. By adding a unique …
1089
Stacked Diffs with git rebase —onto
Using git `rebase --onto` workflow to work with stacked diffs
1090
Windows drive letters are not limited to A-Z
If you want €:\, you can have it, sort of
1091
The CRDT Dictionary: A Field Guide to Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types
A comprehensive guide to CRDTs and their tradeoffs, from counters to sequences. Written in the spirit of the Typeclassopedia, exploring how different CRDTs solve the distributed consensus puzzle.
1092
A first look at Django's new background tasks
Django 6.0 introduces a built-in background tasks framework in `django.tasks`. But don't expect to phase out Celery, Huey or other preferred solutions just yet.
1093
How good engineers write bad code at big companies
Every couple of years somebody notices that large tech companies sometimes produce surprisingly sloppy code. If you haven’t worked at a big company, it might be…
1094
The unexpected effectiveness of one-shot decompilation with Claude
A deep dive into how a 'one-shot' Claude headless loop (paired with scoring, defensive tooling, and a simple bash driver) massively accelerates matching decompilation of Snowboard Kids 2 on the Nintendo 64.
1095
So you wanna build a local RAG?
How to build a RAG system that's fully self-hosted.
1096
Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to (2016)
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
1097
The Math of Why You Can't Focus at Work
Interruptions, recovery time, and task size: three numbers that determine if you'll get real work done. Interactive visualizations show the math behind bad days.
1098
Replacing My Window Manager with Google Chrome
A lesson in X11, networking, and design.
1099
1100
A Look at Rust from 2012
Recently I was scrolling through brson’s Rust quote database and stumbled upon a link to the official Rust tutorial from the very beginning of 2013. It says Rust 0.6 in the corner, but it lists many things that were removed in 0.6, so it’s likely closer to 0.5. I heard tales of old Rust before, but not of how the…
1101
Python is not a great language for data science
It may be a good language for data science, but it’s not a great one.
1102
Isn't WSL2 just a VM?
My take on Windows NT subsystems and the thin line between VMs and subsystems.
1103
The Bitter Lesson of LLM Extensions
From ChatGPT Plugins to Agent Skills, a look at how we've been trying (and failing) to extend LLMs for the last three years.
1104
Fifty Shades of OOP
This post talks about the many different aspects under the umbrella term OOP
1105
Quake Engine Indicators
I was working on a bug in Chocolate Quake netcode. The issue was an edge case where starting two clients on the same machine resulted in the second one zombifying the first one. When the bug occurred there was no disconnection but the client could no longer move. Instead the screen would show an "indicator" looking…
1106
Build a Compiler in Five Projects
Class website here: https://kmicinski.com/cis531-f25
1107
Several core problems with Rust
I used to call myself a Rust hater, but really I was doing it just to compensate for the perceivable fanboyism e.g. Rust tops on stackoverflow surveys as most-loved language. There are many reasons to hate C++, and I hate C++ too. Lots of people were waiting for a better programming language, but got Rust instead.
1108
We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed bugs
How quarterly fixit weeks help teams tackle small annoyances that never bubble up to the priority list.
1109
Editing Code in Emacs
When you write code, you want to focus on the code, not on the text of the code. This means a) you have to have a good text editing setup, and b) you need to have a muscle-memory level instinct for using that setup. The second comes with practice and with consistency (i.e. not changing your config too much too…
1110