2041
Let's build a decentralized social network together with Logseq
Software engineer and writer exploring web development, productivity systems, AI, and creative projects. Sharing insights on building better tools and…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 3,821 posts.
2042
LaMDA is not sentient
No, LaMDA is not sentient. Not even slightly.
2043
Finally, no bid on mortgage-backed securities
From my friend Kevin Oakley, I see this news on Twitter:
2044
System Preferences Reimagined on macOS
After decades without a redesign, System Preferences on macOS gets a bold & beautiful new look.
2045
How far behind a plane is its noise?
If you’re ever near a relatively low flying airplane, you may have noticed that it sounds like it’s in a different spot in the sky than where it actually is. You can hear the loud engines, and your ears tell you it should be in one place, but your eyes tell you it’s clearly well ahead of its noise. It’s a funny visual…
2046
Making Code Faster
I’ve enjoyed writing software for 40+ years now. Lots of activities fall into that “writing software” basket, and here’s my favorite: When you have a body of code with a decent unit-test suite and you need to make it go faster. This part of the Quamina diary is a case study of making a piece of the library faster.
2047
Overthinking (2021)
I used to be a pathological overthinker. Everything had to be carefully planned, from the words I would say to the baker to order a baguette to all the insignificant details of any of the projects I worked on. Is it better to tweet at 18:00 or 18:05? Rust or
2048
2049
Is LaMDA Sentient? – An Interview
What follows is the “interview” I and a collaborator at Google conducted with LaMDA. It is incomplete as the GMail word limit cut off the…
2050
Google's AI doesn't understand restaurant menus
In the glorious future, every website will be chock-full of semantic metadata. Restaurants won't have a 50MB PDF explaining the chef's vision for organic cuisine - instead, they'll have little scraps of data on the HTML page like: Copied JSON to 📋⧉ JSON"hasMenuItem":{ "@type":"MenuItem", "name":"Dodo In A Bun"…
2051
2052
The Y Combinator in Go with generics
A few years ago I've written in some detail about the Y combinator, including implementations in Clojure and Python.
2053
Computers are an oppressive technology
This may seem a strange heading for someone whose career is in computers, yet I feel that this article has been a lifetime in the making. It is the product of intuitive observations and things that have stood out to me, even as a child, who even then could sense the sinister side of the most banal of technologies.
2054
Writing better by answering why, what, how
Three documents I write (one-pager, design doc, after-action review) and how I structure them.
2055
The Philosophy of Linear Algebra (2021)
Whenever a student wonders why linear algebra, matrices, and vectors are important, the response from teachers usually sounds like this:
2056
AirPlay and Touch Bar = Network Disaster
Mnpn's website and blog containing projects and other information.
2057
How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
A survey of how tech projects run across the industry highlights Scrum being absent from Big Tech. Why is this, and are there takeaways others should take note of?
2058
I don't want to go to Chel-C
We are constantly reading of stories with one main theme where people turn to seemingly "simple" systems in order to manage complexity; except that these systems manage to produce complex problems, without having to acquire historical cruft, or suffering from any of the usual issues that produce non-essential…
2059
Generating true random numbers from bananas
It was a dreary afternoon in Milan last year when, procrastinating on studying, I was struck by a flash of genius. “What would happen if I made a banana-powered random number generator?“. I immediately went to tell my roommate, who was also an electronic engineer.He looked me in the face and burst out laughing. At ……
2060
The Linux kernel can spawn processes on its own
While investigating the aftermath of a potential security breach, I came across a somewhat "odd" process looking like this:
2061
It matters how you raise your kids
To parents besieged by expert advice, a new scientific idea offers relief: it’s no big deal how you raise your children....
2062
SIMD accelerated sorting in Java – how it works and why it was 3x faster
In this post I explain a little about how to use Java’s Vector APIs, attempt to explain how they turn out fast, and then use them to implement a sorting algorithm 3x faster than Arrays.sort . I then explain some problems I found, and how I resolved them. Supporting code is published here .
2063
I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut down my startup (2016)
I just did what no startup founder is ever supposed to do. I gave up. It wasn’t even one of those glorious “fail fast and fail forward” learning experiences. After seven months of hard work and two weeks before we were to start ...
2064
Do Kwon in more trouble
He Sent $80 Million a Month to Secret Wallets Before Terra Luna Crashed
2065
Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?
In the recent paper about "soulbound" tokens, Vitalik Buterin et al. write that they aim to build technology that is "acceptably non-dystopian". Do any of today's self-sovereign identity projects fit that bill?
2066
Inflation, part 1: On shelter futures
A deep-dive
2067
“Code” 2nd Edition
I am overjoyed to announce that the 2nd edition of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software will be published by Pearson on August 19, 2022. As you can see, the covers of the two editions are nearly identical except that the 2nd edition uses the “dark mode” option:
2068
Write HTML Right
Even with a lot of help from a good text editor, writing HTML can be a drag. Nice documents end up as tag-swamps with little bits of content perched atop hills of tabs. Editing them becomes a test of patience and we get sick at the thought of having to look at our once-loved text. It doesn't have to be like this!…
2069
2070
You need to know what right-half-plane zeros are
Why some systems -- as a consequence of their intrinsic dynamics -- require a control action that first pushes them the wrong way and makes things worse before it gets better.