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Whatever happened to programming?
I’ve been posting much longer articles than I meant to, so today’s will be short. [Later: but, as it turns out, not as short as I intended.] When I was fourteen, I wrote space-invader …
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,466 posts.
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Flightcaster (YC S09) and the Future of Asymmetric Intelligence as a Product
When John Paulson bet against the real estate markets, he knew something that other people didn’t. By applying his models against purchased real estate databases, he perceived an opportunity where others saw folly. Fifteen billion in profit later, people are understandably a bit curious as to how he pulled it off…
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How To: Read more books
I’ve read a hundred books a year for the past couple years. Last time I mentioned this, a couple people asked how I could read so many books. Do I read unusually quickly? Do I spend an unusual amount of time reading? I did a simple calculation: The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV. If the average…
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How I Made $6K With My eBook
For those that don’t know, I’ve written an ebook a couple months ago and decided to sell it online, as an experiment. It did pretty well. My expectations were very low and it was the first time I tried selling something online, so it ended up being a big success for me.
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Web Inspector Vs. Firebug
If you ever tweet about being unhappy with the WebKit Web Inspector , someone from the WebKit team will inevitably take notice and ask you why. I might reply, “Because it’s not Firebug!” Firefox could almost have it all with Firebug, but Firefox’s main problem is that it’s not WebKit.
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Return-Oriented Programming without Returns (on the x86)
We show that on the x86 it is possible to mount a return-oriented programming attack without using any return instructions. Our new attack instead makes use of certain instruction sequences that behave like a return; we show that these sequences occur with sufficient frequency in large Linux libraries to allow…
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Patriot Act Renewed Without Any New Civil Liberties Protections
Yesterday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to renew three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, after the Senate abandoned the PATRIOT reform effort and approved the extension by a voice vote on Wednesday night. Disappointingly, the government's dangerously...
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It's not bad to leave your laptop plugged in
Never leave the machine plugged in all the time. Laptops are meant to be portable. Using it as a desktop that never runs on the battery will destroy your battery life.
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Pull the plug. Your battery will thank you
One question that I have been asked frequently is “do laptop batteries fade faster if they are continuously plugged in?” A reader asked thi...