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The time I yoga-balled an Apple store employee
My personal website and blog
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,824 posts.
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Homebrew Hercules Graphics Card
After viewing our CGA Redux livestream a friendly tinkerer named Arek contacted me if I was interested in a homebrew Hercules Graphics Card PCB that he designed. Naturally I said yes and assembled the card, playing beta tester for his design. It will probably be open sourced eventually, but is not yet available. So…
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Batch size one billion: SQLite insert speedups, from the useful to the absurd
A little-discussed method enables inserting rows with bound data into SQLite faster than any existing technique. This novel method is then discovered to have a drawback that makes it generally unusable. The rest of this article explores how to get the best insert performance out of SQLite generally; what's in your…
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Playing with genetic algorithms in Python
Edit: This post made it to the front page of Hacker News! You can find the discussion here.
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Creatively Misusing TLA+
Five not-quite-normal uses
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A Test Suite for the Intel 8088
In a previous article, I revealed one of the secrets to MartyPC 's accuracy, hardware validation . To summarize, it is a method of using a m...
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The Changing "Guarantees" Given by Python's Global Interpreter Lock
A look into the implementation details of CPython's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) and how they changed between Python 3.9 and the current development branch that will become Python 3.13.
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Is it legal to mix cash in a jar? How is Bitcoin mixing any different?
Chris Blec asks the following question: Source: Twitter Chris's premise is that it is "not illegal" for him to get together with a bunch of ...
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I'm moving my projects off GitHub
It's time for me to leave GitHub behind and move to another forge. I'm not necessarily advocating for anyone else to do the same, but if my reasons resonate with you then you may want to consider it. I also don't expect this post to... matter, if that makes sense [1] . I'm not a major open-source maintainer or…
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Aerobic exercise is good for the brain; easy wins for behaviour change
mood, memory, education; five easy wins for behaviour change
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SVB was particularly poorly run
Banks manage their liquidity through their asset composition and choice of liabilities. Badly run banks have volatile liabilities and assets.
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Makefiles for web work
A set of recipes for using Makefiles for web development.
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Space travel via tether between asteroids
I wish I knew if my math was correct...
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Formalising a new proof that the square root of two is irrational
Recently, somebody shared on Twitter a new proof of the irrationality of √2. Its claimed advantage is that “it requires no knowledge of mathematics above the definition of what it means for a number to be irrational, and can be written almost in one line.” These claims are dubious: the usual proof, which I’ve…
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Bootstrapping self awareness in GPT-4: Towards recursive self inquiry
Or, Look Ma – I Made GPT-4 Self Aware!
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Replacing Pandas with Polars
I remember those days, oh so long ago, it seems like another lifetime. I haven’t used Pandas in many a year, decades, or whatever. We’ve all been there, done that. Pandas I mean. I would dare say it’s a rite of passage for most data folk. For those using Python, it’s probably one of the […]
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Is the Intel N100 a better option than high-end ARM RK3588 boards at the moment?
The Intel N100 (and N200) seem to be Intel's attempt at trying to muscle into the market that high-end ARM SoCs look to have cornered. With the Rockchip
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OpenAI Begins Tackling ChatGPT Data Leak Vulnerability
OpenAI seems to have implemented some mitigation steps for a well-known data exfiltration vulnerability in ChatGPT. Attackers can use image markdown rendering …
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Trying every combination to flash my Asus motherboard's BIOS
tl;dr: Use an old-fashioned USB 2.0 flash drive, format it FAT32, download the firmware, make sure it's named correctly, and use the motherboard's 'BIOS Flashback' option after powering off the computer. This past week, I devoted far too much time to the task of updating my brand new motherboard's BIOS. It started…
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Poor schemas, poor cataloguing: why music tagging sucks
One of the things that frustrates me with having a local music library is the tedium of tagging. While there are tools (like beets or MusicBrainz Picard) to make it easier, I feel there are fundamental issues with the design… Continue reading →
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Building a Database in the 2020s (2022)
Building a database in the 2020s
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The washing machine in my ear, and an empty boat
Over a period of about six months in 2022, I was nearing the brink of insanity; I would go to bed every single evening and hear a washing machine running in a neighbouring apartment.
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How to Do a TypeScript Conversion
Addressing a very common question: do-it-as-you-go or follow the dependency graph?
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Building a ChatGPT-enhanced Python REPL
In this blog I share my experience in building a Python REPL augmented with ChatGPT. I explore how the application is built, and speculate on software engineering patterns and paradigms that might emerge in systems built on Large Language Models (LLMs). GEPL - Generate, Evaluate, Print, Loop Link to this section…
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Michael F. Flynn has died
Hello family, friends and fans of Michael F. Flynn. It is with sorrow and regret that I inform you that my father passed away yesterday,...
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Combine GPTs with private knowledge for actually useful AIs
Custom GPTs by OpenAI are practically free new hires. But as as new hires go, most are not very useful.