19801
Explaining explaining: a quick guide on explanatory writing
Hot takes and cold truths on software, startups, and the lies we tell ourselves.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 49,235 posts.
19802
How the .NET Foundation kerfuffle became a brouhaha
After I wrote most of this blog post the night of October, 5th 2021 I wasn't sure I would post it. After the events of the last 36 hours, I felt I needed to capture my experience on my website where it can only be edited by me. After reading this, I hope you will have a clear set of datapoints from my point of view…
19803
19804
A partially-automated medium-throughput homemade cider press with lasers
Most people who know me well know I really like apples. I'm a big fan for a lot of reasons- taste, texture, the fact that they're a symbol of my favorite season, the sheer quantity of accessible food that can grow on a single tree, et cetera. Last year, I decided I wanted to make some homemade apple cider. I bought a…
19805
19806
Why I'm donating $150/month (10% of my income) to the musl Libc project (2019)
One year ago, I quit my day job to work on Zig full time . Since then, the project has seen a steady growth in funding. Thanks to the people donating, Zig is on track to become fully sustainable before my savings run out.
19807
A lesser known mechanism for alcohol tolerance
People who drink a lot of alcohol have a high alcohol tolerance. By this, I mean two things:
19808
Thoughts on chess improvement, after gaining 600 points in 6 months
I played chess briefly with my friends in high school, where I had a rating of around 1100 online. I gave up the game for about 10 years, then picked it back up again recently, in May. I’ve tried a ton of different approaches in the past 6 months, switching things up whenever I stopped seeing results. I’ve improved…
19809
Faster Python with Guido van Rossum
Making the Python interpreter faster
19810
Hello IPv6: a minimal tutorial for IPv4 users
A short IPv6 tutorial, explaining the basics, primarily for home and small networks.
19811
Bitcoin is a Ponzi
that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. However,
19812
19813
Facebook Political Problems
Facebook’s political problems stem directly from its size and drive for growth; they are societal issues, not antitrust ones.
19814
Gentle Introduction to Realtime Fluid Simulation for Programmers and Artists
A simple intuitive breakdown of fluid simulation for programmers and technical artists. Instead of complicated mathematical expressions, I…
19815
The Insane Innovation of TI Calculator Hobbyists
In the mid-to-late 2000s, you either knew, or were, that kid in grade school. You know. The one who could put games on your graphing calculator. You may be surprised to learn that some of these people didn’t exist totally in a vaccuum. There was in fact a thriving scene of hackers who had bent these calculators to…
19816
Terraform vs. AWS CloudFormation
Several years ago I actually cared about the differences between AWS CloudFormation and Terraform. Namely, that Terraform did not provide…
19817
19818
The Skill of Org Design
Building effective organisations is a remarkably useful, if rare, skill. This is what it looks like, what it consists of, and how to tell if someone has it.
19819
A catalog of wealth-creation mechanisms (2009)
One of the guest lecturers aboard the ship [1] (Donald Gibbs, of Pearl-Harbor conspiracy-theory infamy) gave a very interesting talk a few ...
19820
How to replace estimations and guesses with a Monte Carlo simulation
Hot takes and cold truths on software, startups, and the lies we tell ourselves.
19821
Don't write bugs
“If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to start with.” —Edsger Dijkstra, Turing Award Lecture (1972)
19822
A USB Fan Controller that now works under Linux
Relying on the built-in motherboard headers on server grade motherboards to reliably control fans with Linux has been a crapshoot since forever. I'm pleased to report that last summer the Corsair Commander Pro received native Linux kernel driver support in the 5.9 release.
19823
Conterintuitive facts in mathematics, CS, and physics
It is possible to compute over encrypted data without access to the secret key: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
19824
Cryptocurrencies’ Carbon Footprint Underestimated
Back in April I wrote Cryptocurrency's Carbon Footprint about the catastrophic carbon emissions of Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies such as B...
19825
19826
My Logging Best Practices (2020)
If you are a backend developer like me, logging is the window to your application. Unlike in the frontend, there’s not much to see except of your log messages. Here are some of my personal guidelines I use when I write logs.
19827
Startup Ideas
Proposals for new technologies, businesses, startups, satirical or serious.
19828
Open Source Tax Software
Filing taxes in America sucks. Your options are to do it by hand, pay someone like Intuit, or if you are below a certain income threshold get some tax software for free. The kicker is that free tax software is from Intuit who will try very hard to make sure that you either don’t find it in the first place, or try to…
19829
Curiosity Is Better Than Being Smart?
Are you smart? Are you curious? Which one is better? Well, in this post, you will see why curiosity is better than being smart.
19830
What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp?
Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don’t yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to…