2791
Writing an LLM from scratch, part 13 – attention heads are dumb
A pause to take stock: realising that attention heads are simpler than I thought explained why we do the calculations we do.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,109 posts.
2792
How the US built 5k ships in WWII
Among the most impressive manufacturing achievements of the US during WWII was the number of ships it produced.
2793
Stability by Design
I think I figured out what’s stressing me out about programming in dynamically typed languages: It’s about always being unsure if using a library in a particular way is going to work and if minor version upgrades aren’t going to break your code.
2794
How to start a school with your friends
We've taught over 100 classes to over 1000 students 🤓
2795
From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
The one email I ever got from Steve Jobs, and it said …
2796
Static as a Server
You wouldn't download a site.
2797
Reservoir Sampling
Choosing fairly when you don't know how many you're choosing from.
2798
2799
2800
Microservices are a tax your startup probably can't afford
Why splitting your codebase too early can quietly destroy your team’s velocity — and what to do instead.
2801
2802
Using NASA’s SMAP satellite to detect L-band interference
It was launched to measure moisture. Now it’s ghost-trailing jammers across an electronic battlefield.
2803
Absolute Zero Reasoner
Current reasoning models trained with Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) often rely on manually curated datasets, raising scalability concerns and potentially limiting future AI growth beyond human-defined tasks. To address this, we propose the Absolute Zero paradigm, where a single model…
2804
Pakistani firm shipped fentanyl analogs, scams to us
A Texas firm recently charged with conspiring to distribute synthetic opioids in the United States is at the center of a vast network of companies in the U.S. and Pakistan whose employees are accused of using online ads to scam westerners seeking help with trademarks, book writing, mobile app development and logo…
2805
Mac Themes Garden
A website for old Macintosh themes and some background.
2806
2807
Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools
And yet it does. Are we ready to deal?
2808
My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
It began with a spark—a dormant passion reignited after many years away from motorcycling. Life had steered me in different directions, away from the saddle, but something deep inside pulled me back to the thrill and freedom that only riding offers. Returning to motorcycling after such an extended hiatus was daunting…
2809
So Much Blood
but how much exactly?
2810
Internet Roadtrip: Vote to steer
Let's take a streetview roadtrip
2811
Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market
Looking back on the last four years, what worked, what didn't.
2812
TeleMessage, used by Trump officials, can access plaintext chat logs
💡Update May 18, 2025: I described TeleMessage's trivial vulnerability in an article for WIRED: How the knock-off Signal app used by Trump officials got hacked in 20 minutes Update May 19, 2025: Uh oh: DDoSecrets publishes 410 GB of heap dumps, hacked from TeleMessage's archive server Update
2813
When Abandoned Mines Collapse
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In December of 2024, a huge sinkhole opened up on I-80 near Wharton, New Jersey, creating massive traffic delays as crews worked to figure out what happened and get it fixed. Since then, it happened again in February 2025 and th
2814
Is Planet Nine Alone in the Outer System?
Planet 9 might be our Ultima Thule . Hell would certainly be freezing over at 700 AU. Whether this tentative observation is Planet 9 or not, it is still an interesting observation and an example, I think, of proof that AIs will not do all our science for us. (At least not LLMs).
2815
Getting things “done” in large tech companies
What does it mean to get things done? In the abstract, you can complete a mathematical proof or a problem set, but the real world is much fuzzier. Suppose I…
2816
The Turkish İ Problem and Why You Should Care (2012)
Take a look at the following code.
2817
2818
Pixels in Islamic Art: Square Kufic Calligraphy (2020)
When I was a little kid whenever we drove by mosques, I would be intrigued by the complex motifs they’re decorated by. I always tried to figure out the pattern; to me it was just a pattern, I never…
2819
Replacing Kubernetes with systemd (2024)
In this post I go through the journey of overusing Kubernetes and how systemd can actually do most of what I use it for.
2820
Possibly a Serious Possibility
How 'lurking weasel' phrases skewed Cold War intelligence