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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,470 posts.
From math to machine: translating a function to machine code
In this post I'm going to explore how a mathematical concept can be redefined in progressively more computer-oriented terms, all the way from high level languages down to machine code, ready for direct execution by a computer. To that end, I'm going to define the same logic in several different but related formats:
Do we need a new heading element in HTML?
There's a proposal to add a new <h> element to the HTML spec . It solves a fairly common use-case. Take this HTML snippet:
My Interview at Uber
A little less than a year ago I had the “pleasure” to interview at Uber. I didn’t know much about the company at the time, other than that they were big. I was looking for work already and Uber’s…
How copying an int made my code 11 times faster
I have moved off Medium to a personal blog. Click here for the updated post.
Adventures in /usr/bin and the likes
Digging up some useful and not so popular commands in Linux
The Great Moon Hoax
On August 25, 1835 the <i>New York Sun</i> announced the discovery of life on the moon. It explained that the discovery had been made by the famous British astronomer Sir John Herschel, who had invented a new telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle. Over the course of the next week the <i>Sun</i>…
Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber
As most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like. It's a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story that deserves to be told while it is still fresh in
Personal thoughts about Pyston's outcome
I try to not read HN/Reddit too much about Pyston, since while there are certainly some smart and reasonable people on there, there also seem to be quite a few people with axes to grind (*cough cou…
Getting started with vim
Luca Pette's website
Geek Career Paths
Suppose you’re doing technology, and like doing technology, and your career’s going well, and you find yourself wondering what you’re going to be doing in twenty years. I’ve been down several of the roads you might decide to take, and it occurs to me that talking them over might amuse and inform.
$5 Showdown: Linode vs. DigitalOcean vs. Amazon Lightsail vs. Vultr
Updated on March 6th, 2017 since Vultr has updated their $5 offering. The data tables have been updated and the applicable sections have updates near the end of the section.
The idea maze of personal logging (2016)
In another post, I laid out my reasons for building a personal logging system. Here, I’ll go into the strategy and tactics issues.
Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More
In April of 1988, Brian Moriarty of Infocom flew from the East Coast to the West to attend the twelfth West Coast Computer Faire and the first ever Computer Game Developers Conference. Hard-pressed from below by the slowing sales of their text adventures and from above by parent company Activision’s ever more…
What makes the perfect office?
In 1923, the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, was commissioned by a French industrialist to design some homes for workers in his factory near Bordeaux. Le Corbusier duly delivered brigh…
ICANN has taken my site hostage
This is an short story on how ICANN acts like mafia and has taken my site Nomad List hostage for 2 days now. Here’s how my site used to look: Here’s how it has…
Map showing the homeland of every character in Homer’s Iliad
This is a map showing where all of the characters originated in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. I know Greece is small by today’s standards, but it was surprising
Dynamic Programming in Python: Bayesian Blocks (2012)
Of all the programming styles I have learned, dynamic programming is perhaps the most beautiful. It can take problems that, at first glance, look ugly and intractable, and solve the problem with clean, concise code. Where a simplistic algorithm might accomplish something by brute force, dynamic programming steps back…
Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back!
When you’re trying to get people to switch from a competitor to your product, you need to understand barriers to entry, and you need to understand them a lot better than you think, or people …
YC Annual Letter 2017
Dear YC Community: In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress. Our mission is to enable the most...