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Systems ideas that sound good but almost never work
Some engineering patterns that sound good but almost never work as intended
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 776 posts.
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Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC
Book review of the autobiography of Morris Chang.
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App Should Have Been a Website (and Probably Your Game Too)
Discover why native apps are becoming obsolete in today's web-first world. Learn how web apps, including web games, are revolutionizing industries and how platforms like Rogue Engine are leading the charge.
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Most people don't care about quality
My friend, the photographer Paul Clarke has an uncanny eye for detail. Every single shot he publishes is beautiful - they capture life in a way that I don't have the language to describe. I'm quite content to point my phone at someone, use the default settings, and grab a snap. My photos lack composition, clarity…
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OpenAI’s board, paraphrased: ‘All we need is unimaginable sums of money’
OpenAI is to this decade’s generative-AI revolution what Netscape was to the 1990s’ internet revolution.
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Stripe V2
Stripe’s API got a new major version, and no one noticed.
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Notes on China
Deeply researched interviews
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Intel's $475M error: the silicon behind the Pentium division bug
In 1993, Intel released the high-performance Pentium processor, the start of the long-running Pentium line. The Pentium had many improvement...
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Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s
Google search results are becoming annoying to use and Open AI is about to eat Google's lunch.
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The Nvidia Way
Tae Kim's terrific new book on the story of Nvidia and Jensen Huang
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Why OpenAI's Structure Must Evolve to Advance Our Mission
A stronger non-profit supported by the for-profit’s success.
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Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory
a perfectly miserable son of a gun builds Silicon Valley
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Why are cancer guidelines stuck in PDFs?
How Machine-Readable Clinical Guidelines Can Help Standardize Cancer Care
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Xerox to acquire Lexmark
Your resource for Xerox news on our products, business solutions, citizenship, company information via news releases, videos and more
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Long Term Software Development
Recently the Dutch Electoral Board (where I am also a very part time advisor) invited me to do a talk reflecting on their open source Abacus vote tabulation software. Much software is now provided as a service, and is typically deployed continuously (CD, continuous deployment), surrounded by enough automated testing…
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The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack
[This post is about the day that Glitch failed, and how that failure created the opportunity to make Slack. We're sharing it here (out of chronological order) to mark 12 years since the famous pivot.] “We have to shut down the game.” Stewart Butterfield said. I looked at him
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The Ugly Truth About Spotify Is Finally Revealed
A year-long investigation by an indie journalist is a call to action
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Welcome to LLMflation - LLM inference cost is going down fast ⬇️
For LLM of equivalent performance, the inference cost is decreasing by 10x every year. What cost $60/million tokens in 2021 costs $.06/million tokens today.
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Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
I recently built a website that breaks down the cost of a UK electricity bill. It's interactive, and I'd recommend visiting it before reading this post. Check it out here: electricitybills.uk Here are three interesting things about the data. #1: The wholesale power cost is only one third of
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Matt Mullenweg temporarily shuts down some Wordpress.org functions
In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered: New account registration…
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A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles
Understanding the safety impact of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) is crucial for their widespread adoption, yet robust real-world evaluation remains a critical area of development. By leveraging insurance industry third-party auto liability claims, we analyze the Waymo ADS performance across 25.3 million fully…
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Doctors Without Borders declares the war in Gaza as genocide
Amid continued attacks, siege, and blockade, Israel is destroying conditions of life in Gaza.
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Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app
Operating a business is risky: you can't ever be sure how many customers you'll have, or what they'll show up looking for. If you guess wrong, you'll either have too few workers to serve the crowd, or you'll pay workers to stand around and wait for customers. This is true even when your "business" is a "hospital."
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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag
My camera bag with $10k of gear was stolen from my car. When I saw the broken glass and empty backseat, I immediately pulled up FindMy to track the thief - only to find that its last location was my office 3 months ago... because I hadn't changed the AirTag's battery. It was a terrible feeling on top of a worse one. T
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Grammarly acquires Coda
We’re excited to announce that Grammarly is acquiring Coda. Here’s a look at Coda’s next chapter.
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ISO 8583: The language of credit cards
Discover the inner workings of ISO 8583, the global standard for credit card transaction messaging. Learn how it powers payment processing across networks and explore its structure, fields, and real-world applications.
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After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code
And by "all," I mean everything: core product, failed pivots, miscellaneous
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Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo
こんにちは(Konnichiwa) and hello, Japan! We're thrilled to announce that Waymo, in partnership with Nihon Kotsu and GO, will bring our autonomous vehicles to Tokyo for our first international road trip. There, our Driver will learn and adapt to left-hand traffic and new driving nuances associated with operating in one of…
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Quick takes on the recent OpenAI public incident write-up
OpenAI recently published a public writeup for an incident they had on December 11, and there are lots of good details in here! Here are some of my off-the-cuff observations: Saturation With thousa…