10741
Breaking computers taught me to build them
My 12-year journey in software: how breaking computers taught me to build them.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 80,853 posts.
10742
Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"
Since the early days of automatic computing we have had people that have felt it as a shortcoming that programming required the care and accuracy that is characteristic for the use of any formal symbolism. They blamed the mechanical slave for its strict obedience with which it carried out its given instructions, even…
10743
I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad
If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives …
10744
The reality of working in tech: We're not hired to write code (2023)
"So, is everyone losing their minds yet?" My ex-coworker asked me over yahoo messenger. He quit after getting enraged by new work policies that specifically targeted him. I looked up from my screen,
10745
Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
A Bed Assembly Drama
10746
Restructuring Announcement
Earlier today, CEO Matt Mullenweg shared with Automattic employees the following message.
10747
Why I don't discuss politics with friends
March 2025
10748
When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI
One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar.
10749
PaperBench
We introduce PaperBench, a benchmark evaluating the ability of AI agents to replicate state-of-the-art AI research.
10750
Hacking the call records of millions of Americans
Imagine if anyone could punch in a phone number from the largest U.S. cell carrier and instantly retrieve a list of its recent incoming calls—complete with timestamps—without compromising the device, guessing a password, or alerting the user. Now imagine that number belongs to a journalist, a police officer, a…
10751
Matrix.org Will Migrate to MAS
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
10752
Sailing from Berkeley to Hawaii in a 19ft Sailboat
As a consulting exploration geologist, my work life tends to consist of periods of intense work punctuated by periods of intense unemployment. True to form, I completed my last work assignment on July 8th and I found myself with a month and a half of enforced leisure before my next gig. Since the coming job was…
10753
Animals Made from 13 Circles (2016)
Dori | Art Director, Designer, Artist
10754
Porting Tailscale to Plan 9
Securely connect to anything on the internet with Tailscale. Built on WireGuard®️, Tailscale enables you to make finely configurable connections, secured end-to-end according to zero trust principles, between any resources on any infrastructure.
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10756
How Google built its Gemini robotics models
Robots powered by Gemini Robotics models can learn complex actions like preparing salads and even folding an origami fox.
10757
Sports supplement creatine makes no difference to muscle gains, trial finds
People hoping to build muscle with the support of a creatine supplement might be disappointed by new research that shows it has little to no effect when taken at the recommended level.
10758
A steam locomotive from 1993 broke my yarn test
Yarn tests fail consistently at the 27-second mark. The usual suspects are swiftly eliminated to no avail. A deep dive is taken to comb through traces, only to be derailed into an unexpected crash investigation.
10759
Cell Phone OPSEC for Border Crossings
I have heard stories of more aggressive interrogation of electronic devices at US border crossings. I know a lot about securing computers, but very little about securing phones. Are there easy ways to delete data—files, photos, etc.—on phones so it can’t be recovered? Does resetting a phone to factory defaults erase…
10760
Where does air pollution come from?
A breakdown of the sources of many air pollutants that damage our health and ecosystems.
10761
Simulated Economy Tutorial
Concept Motivation Imagine an open world RPG where your actions affect the price of goods, the markets reacting to anything the player may do (burn down wheat fields, cost of food increases; kill the merchants, prices differentiate between cities; sell the many swords you’ve collected on your adventures, tank the…
10762
The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it
Learn why Linux binary compatibility breaks when shipping software and what developers can do to fix real-world build and deployment issues.
10763
Testing DVD-R and CD-R 25 years later: optical disks from Japan
As it turns out, “thrift shopping” in Japan via the internet can be both very enjoyable as well as very dangerous. In this series of posts, I’ve been examining various optical med…
10764
Dave Täht has died
It is with heavy hearts that we report that Dave Täht has passed away.
10765
The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst
Upon reflection, Myst has long been more analogous to a graph than a traditional linear game, owing to the relative freedom it affords players. This is…
10766
Why F#?
If someone had told me a few months ago I’d be playing with .NET again after a 15+ years hiatus I probably would have laughed at this.1 Early on in my career I played with .NET and Java, and even though .NET had done some things better than Java (as it had the opportunity to learn from some early Java mistakes), I…
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Why Does Claude Speak Byzantine Music Notation?
A Caesar cipher is a reasonable transformation for a transformer to learn in its weights, given that a specific cipher offset occurs often enough in its training data. There will be some hidden representation of the input tokens' spelling, and this representation could be used to shift letters onto other letters in…
10769
CERN scientists find evidence of quantum entanglement in sheep
Update: did you enjoy our April Fool’s day story? While sheep do roam the CERN site and exhibit interesting flocking behaviour, no evidence has been found of their quantum entanglement (yet). However, CERN is participating in the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology . You can see the list of public…
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