7741
A SQL Heuristic: ORs Are Expensive
But this is slow! With 1,000,000 applications and 1000 users uniformly distributed on both columns, it takes over 100ms. 1
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 80,829 posts.
7742
Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%
Loneliness increases death risk by 32% but we know how to fix it. Real solutions that cut loneliness in half, from mindfulness to community…
7743
A simple habit that saves my evenings
As a software engineer, I often work on big tasks that require hours of continuous and focused work. However, we have plenty of meetings, colleagues asking us something in Slack, and lunch breaks. Add a colleague who comes to you and calls you for a cup of coffee if you work from the office. And usually, we don’t…
7744
To AI or not to AI
A two-week experiment building an app with full AI assistance, exploring both the promise and frustrations of LLM-based development workflows.
7745
What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?
Running around in the woods, firing small plastic pellets at other people, in pursuit of a contrived-to-be-fun mission, turns out to be, well, fun.
7746
90%
AI is writing 90% of the code I was in charge of
7747
Optimizing a 6502 image decoder, from 70 minutes to 1 minute
A little walkthrough on an image decoder algorithm's high-level optimization, in order to make more digestable for a 6502 processor.
7748
What is “good taste” in software engineering?
Technical taste is different from technical skill. You can be technically strong but have bad taste, or technically weak with good taste. Like taste in general…
7749
Zero ASIC releases Wildebeest, the highest performance FPGA synthesis tool
Democratizing silicon
7750
F-Droid and Google’s developer registration decree
For the past 15 years, F-Droid has provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world to find and install free and open source apps. When co...
7751
Primer on FedEx's Distribution Network (2024)
With a map!
7752
Go ahead, write the “stupid” code
When I finished school in 2010 (yep, along time ago now), I wanted to go try and make it as a musician. I figured if punk bands could just learn on the job, I could too. But my mum insisted that I needed to do something, just in case. So I went down to the local TAFE (this is like a trade school in Australia, though…
7753
We bought the whole GPU, so we're damn well going to use the whole GPU
Benjamin Spector* , Jordan Juravsky* , Stuart Sul* , Dylan Lim , Owen Dugan , Simran Arora , Chris Ré
7754
VMScape and why Xen dodged it
ETH Zürich’s new VMScape attack hit KVM and VMware, but Xen’s microkernel-like design kept it out of reach.
7755
Testing “Exotic” P2P VPN
My standard "everyday" solution when it comes to connecting computers into a single network is Wireguard. Wireguard is good, supports p2p, and generally has no downsides.
7756
The Weird Concept of Branchless Programming
Read THE WEIRD CONCEPT OF BRANCHLESS PROGRAMMING on sanixdk.xyz
7757
Why I'm not rushing to take sides in the RubyGems fiasco
We are in the midst of a Ruby drama for the ages. I'm sure a bunch of people figured we were all too old for this shit, but apparently we are not. This debate…
7758
The AI coding trap
If you ever watch someone “coding”, you might see them spending far more time staring into space than typing on their keyboard.
7759
What’s New in PostgreSQL 18 – a Developer’s Perspective
PostgreSQL 18 features that change how application developers write and ship code.
7760
When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”
Last month I have been on a multi-day hike with my dad. Each of us took many pictures, and when we came back we put them all in a shared folder. We both have Android phones, and the naming scheme used for our pictures was the same: IMG_YYYYMMDD_HHmmss followed maybe by some other numbers and then a .jpg . Here YYYY…
7761
Failing to Understand the Exponential, Again
Posts and writings by Julian Schrittwieser
7762
Beyond OpenMP in C++ and Rust: Taskflow, Rayon, Fork Union
Most C++ and Rust thread pools run 10x slower than OpenMP on fork-join workloads. Fork Union closes the gap to 20% with 300 lines, dodging mutexes and CAS.
7763
Solar panels + cold = A potential problem
You purchased a new Delta Pro and looked up the specifications - Delta Pro can take up to 1600w/150v/15a of solar input. Then you buy four EcoFlow 400w Rigid solar panels to plug them in series.
7764
The (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
Like you, I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about AI. Like you, I keep getting dragged into discussions of AI. Unlike you‡, I spent the summer writing a book about why I'm sick of writing about AI⹋, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish in 2026.
7765
High-power microwave defeats drone swarm
Epirus announced today the results of an August 26 demonstration of the company’s Leonidas high-power microwave (HPM) system that delivers weaponized…
7766
We reverse-engineered Flash Attention 4
Asynchrony, fast approximate exponents, and 10x more efficient softmax.
7767
Code Mode: the better way to use MCP
It turns out we've all been using MCP wrong. Most agents today use MCP by exposing the "tools" directly to the LLM. We tried something different: Convert the MCP tools into a TypeScript API, and then ask an LLM to write code that calls that API. The results are striking.
7768
NSPM-7 labels common beliefs as terrorism 'indicators'
New directive targets “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalism” opinions
7769
LLM Observability in the Wild – Why OpenTelemetry Should Be the Standard
LLM Observability breaks in wild today as new libraries like OpenInference don't adhere to OpenTelemetry standards leading to silos and suboptimal performance for users who want to tie LLM observability with rest of their observability stack
7770
Greenland is a beautiful nightmare
Greenland is a complicated topic here in Denmark. The former colony that is still treated a bit like a colony is something that inspires a lot of emotions. Greenland has been subjected to a lot of unethical experiments by Denmark, from taking their kids to wild experiments in criminal justice.