2311
We chose Java for our high-frequency trading application
In the world of High-Frequency Trading, automated applications process hundreds of millions of market signals every day and send back…
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,389 posts.
2312
Geeking Out with UEFI
Some people may think some of my past posts get into the weeds, exploring the technical depths of Windows Autopilot, Intune, Windows 10, ConfigMgr, etc. But I would say those generally only g…
2313
Four features that justify a new Unix shell
On a lobste.rs thread about the rationale for the Fennel language, I posted this summary of why Oil exists:
2314
Logs, Tails, Long Tails (2013)
Learn the shape of the logs of probability distributions, and you’ll be able to guess how they behave.
2315
Fast UTF-8 validation
One of the most common "data type" in programming is the text string. When programmers think of a string, they imagine that they are dealing with a list or an array of characters. It is often a "good enough" approximation, but reality is more complex. The characters must be encoded into bits in some way. Most ……
2316
The surprising impact of medium-size texts on PostgreSQL performance
Why TOAST is the best thing since sliced bread
2317
Galileo's Ground Segment Problem
The European Global Navigation Satellite System Galileo has recently been suffering from frequent "almost disruptions", most likely partially due to Corona, and possibly also due to Brexit, but in any case due to some historical stinginess. Before I explain what is going on, I should hasten to say that most days of…
2318
How Does a C Debugger Work? (2014)
Debugging, GNU± Linux and WebHosting and ... and ...
2319
So you want to build an embedded Linux system?
(Heads up — this article was published in October 2020. Much of the general discussion is still relevant, but many of these SoCs are getting quite long in the tooth, and some of the software issues mentioned here have been addressed)
2320
2321
LDM: My Favorite ARM Instruction
LDM—or load multiple —is my favorite assembly instruction of the ARM instruction set. Here’s why.
2322
Oldschool Gaming on FreeBSD
When was the last time you played a computer game? I really like one of Benjamin Franklin quotes – “We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.̶…
2323
A Review of Consensus Protocols
The consensus problem is a fundamental problem in multi-agent systems which requires a group of processes (or agents) to reliably and timely agree on a single data value. Although extensively discussed in the context of distributed computing it’s not exclusive to this field, also being present in our society in a…
2324
14,000x Speedup (2015)
In my job as a scientific software developer, I tend to write a lot of code. And most people who haven’t been through a Computer Science degree tend to think that CS is “just” about slinging code at the screen and then running it. I have a good working relationship with many of my colleagues and co-workers with other…
2325
Microsoft is not rebasing Windows to Linux
The choice will not really be Windows or Linux, it will be whether you boot Hyper-V or KVM first, and Windows and Ubuntu stacks will be tuned to run well on the other.
2326
2327
There are only four billion floats, so test them all (2014)
A few months ago I saw a blog post touting fancy new SSE3 functions for implementing vector floor, ceil, and round functions. There was the inevitable proud proclaiming of impressive performance an…
2328
Loading CSV File at the Speed Limit of the NVMe Storage
I plan to write a series of articles to discuss some simple but not embarrassingly parallel algorithms. These will have practical usages and would most likely be on many-core CPUs or CUDA GPUs. Today’s is the first one to discuss a parallel algorithm implementation for CSV file parser.
2329
Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?
The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and I retain a lot of fondness for these tiny, cheap, severely-compromised machines. I just backed the ZX Spectrum Next kickstarter, for instance. But after I left university and got a job, I bought myself my first proper computer:…
2330
Raspberry Pi 4: Hardware accelerated video decoding (GPU) in Chromium
Following these steps, you will add hardware acceleration decoding capabilities to the Chromium web browser. This is an extension to the tutorial about DRM for Chromium on the Raspberry Pi. Videos from Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, Youtube, etc. can be decoded using the Raspberry Pi GPU.
2331
Crouching T2, Hidden Danger
Let’s talk about that thing nobody’s talking about. Let’s talk about a vulnerability that’s exposing 2018-2020 Macs while most are declining to act nor report about the matter. Oh, and did I mention it’s unpatchable?
2332
2333
Unlocking eBPF power
Spiral journey over kubernetes, cloud and devops world.
2334
2335
Windows Timer Resolution: The Great Rule Change
The behavior of the Windows scheduler changed significantly in Windows 10 2004 (aka, the April 2020 version of Windows), in a way that will break a few applications, and there appears to have been …
2336
Running a Unix-like OS on a home-built CPU with a home-built C compiler
[Thanks for many comments and votes on Hacker News! ] It’s been two years since I started working as a software engineer. I sometimes tell my colleagues about a student project I did in my junior year of university, and it’s so well-received that I’m writing this post. 1 Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever…
2337
Fibers, Oh My
Fibers, Oh My! # Written by Dale Weiler, last updated Oct 5th, 2020 Twitter GitHub It’s been brought to the attention of many people in the game development industry that you can use fibers to parallelize your engines and games. This one presentation in particular: Parallelizing the Naughty Dog engine using fibers has…
2338
It Is Never a Compiler Bug Until It Is
Last week I was trying to add some testing code to libsecp256k1 and I was pulling out my hair trying to get it to work. No amount of printf was working to illuminate what I was doing wrong. Finally, out of desperation, I thought I would do a quick check to see if there are any compiler bugs related to memcmp , and lo…
2339
APFS changes in Big Sur: how Time Machine backs up to APFS
APFS adds 6 volume roles, including one which supports Time Machine backups. And per-file encryption is coming.
2340
Durability: NVMe Disks
Durability is the guarantee that data can be accessed after a failure. It seems like this should be very simple: either your system provides durable data storage, or it does not. However, durability is not a binary yes/no property, and instead should be defined as the kinds of failures you want your data to survive…