1471
How to ask for help from people who don't know you
Pradyumna's site
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,178 posts.
1472
This blog is written in en-GB
Someone left a comment on my blog recently asking if I'd mind making my language more inclusive. They didn't get some of the cultural references I'd used and suggested it would be easier if I used tropes which were more globally known. Here's the thing. No. All my blog posts start with a simple declaration: Copied…
1473
The great blogging collapse: What happened to 100 successful blogs?
A 4-year study of 100 successful blogs reveals how Google's updates and AI transformed blogging. See which sites survived and which disappeared.
1474
The fall of the theorem economy
How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it
1475
1476
Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van
A free browser game that teaches real Vim motions. The van is your cursor, the town is your text. Serve every customer under par.
1477
What to learn to be a graphics programmer
I get asked fairly often what people need to know to be hireable as a graphics programmer. I figured it was time to make a page to link instead of re-typing it each time. We are in a strange time w…
1478
1479
Most arguments are about ego, not ideas
I am a software engineer, and I used to enjoy arguing with people for technical correctness. Code reviews, design meetings, mailing-list threads, dinner tables. If someone was wrong, I wanted them to know it, and I wanted them to know exactly why. I collected counterarguments the way I collected patches. I believed…
1480
A retrospective of my time on the internet
A thorough retrospective of my time on the internet.
1481
Frog-derived gut bacterium eradicates tumors in mice
A single intravenous dose of Ewingella americana achieved complete tumor elimination in 100% of treated animals, with no detectable toxicity—outperforming chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
1482
Why jet engines aren't made in China
What China’s jet engine program tells us about the limits of industrial policy
1483
Superpowers 6
I'm Jesse. I make stuff. Software, hardware. Very occasionally, trouble.
1484
Drone Physics
Equations governing dynamics and control of a multirotor UAV
1485
I built a mmWave material classification radar (2025)
Software is now a commodity thanks to Claude Code. So the next step is obviously hardware. I spent the last 6 months on building a hardware startup, which was fucking hard.
1486
We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works
What we lose when we no longer have to learn how our computers work.
1487
Claude Code is steganographically marking requests
I inspected Claude Code for privacy reasons and found hidden system prompt markers based on API base URL and timezone.
1488
Have you restarted your computer this week?
There’s something about restarting my Mac on a …
1489
Parse, Don't Validate – In a Language That Doesn't Want You To
Applying Alexis King's parse-don't-validate principle in TypeScript, where the type system fights back just enough to be annoying.
1490
Exploring PDP-1 Lisp (1960)
Introduction to Lisp programming on a PDP-1, with a hands-on practical focus
1491
A native graphical shell for SSH
Marcus Lewis
1492
Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
Microsoft is losing Builders fast. They're switching to MacOS and Linux. The biggest pull keeping people on Windows, outside of shear inertia, is content creation and gaming. However, even these are falling to Linux.
1493
WATaBoy: JIT-Ing Game Boy Instructions to WASM Beats a Native Interpreter
A Game Boy emulator runs faster than a native interpreter by dynamically recompiling SM83 to WebAssembly, effectively making JIT possible on iOS.
1494
Building Principia for Windows XP
Back in the day when Principia originally released for Windows in 2014, the game would run on versions as far back as Windows XP. Given that Principia 1.4 was released while Windows XP still had mainstream support, this of course made sense at the time, and there was no real reason not to support it given that the…
1495
What happens when you run a CUDA kernel?
Tracing one vector-add kernel from nvcc all the way down to the warps that execute it.
1496
Rebuilding the Computer Room
We traded the physical boundaries of dedicated rooms for the convenience of our always-on digital lives -- but recently I've been building those walls back up.
1497
Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
In 2022, I wrote about the damning fall of events tech company Pollen. The short of it: Pollen seemed to have pulled off the improbable feat of building a business in the notoriously low margin industry of events, surviving Covid-19, and building a solid software engineering organization. In April
1498
My favorite keyboards
When I started using computers, we had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum at home and a nano-reseau of Thomson MO5 s at elementary school. I distinctly remember how unpleasant it was to type with them. These must have been the worst keyboards I ever used [1] . Ever since, I have paid close attention to the keyboards I use. Here…
1499
Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech
Lots of US states, European countries, and Australia have introduced "age verification" regulations. They present it as the classic "save the children" talking ...
1500
HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No – 88
How hiring is becoming a luck filter.