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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 49,201 posts.
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USB for Software Developers: An introduction to writing userspace USB drivers
A basic introduction to USB for people that don't need to know what happens on the wire
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What Color Is Your Function?
I don’t know about you, but nothing gets me going in the morning quite like a good old fashioned programming language rant. It stirs the blood to see someone skewer one of those “blub” languages the plebians use, muddling through their day with it between furtive visits to StackOverflow.
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Let's stop counting centuries
One-indexing problems in everyday life
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Simply explained: How does GPT work?
By now, you have probably heard of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or any of the alternatives GPT-3, GPT-4, Microsoft’s Bing Chat, Facebook’s LLaMa or even Google’s Bard. They are artificial intelligence programs that can participate in a conversation. Impressively smart, they can easily be mistaken for humans, and are skilled in a…
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Why are browsers so slow?
I understand why rendering a complicated layout may be slow. Or why executing a complicated script may be slow
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Slop Terrifies Me
What if this is as good as software is ever going to be? What if AI stops getting better and what if people stop caring?
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Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s
During an online wasp identification course I participated in several weeks ago, there was a fun discussion about whether commercially-produced figs contained fig wasps (Agaonidae, in the Chalcidoidea). Opinions varied, plus some asserted, as do many internet pages, that even if wasps were once insi
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49% of workers, forced to change passwords, reuse same one with minor change
A new survey has revealed some alarming news about the way users are choosing their passwords in their homes and workplace.
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Who Hacked Ashley Madison?
AshleyMadison.com , a site that helps married people cheat and whose slogan is “Life is Short, have an Affair,” recently put up a half million (Canadian) dollar bounty for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the Impact Team — the name chosen by the hacker(s) who recently leaked data on more than 30…
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AI coding
In my old age I’ve mostly given up trying to convince anyone of anything. Most people do not care to find the truth, they care about what pumps their bags. Some people go as far as to believe that perception is reality and that truth is a construction. I hope there’s a special place in hell for those people.
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I bought netflix.soy
An exploration into top level domains. How I ended up buying netflix.soy and domains from facebook, microsoft and google.
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Mental Wealth
TL;DR • When it comes to mental health, our society approaches it like we did with physical health 50 years ago. We only think about it when something goes wrong. • To the wider public, mental heal…
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The Illustrated Guide to a PhD
There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure .
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Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
Looking at the site earlier today I suddenly noticed a couple of links to sites that I would never ever think of endorsing through my blog.
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Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad
Today Apple announced a version 4 their iPhone OS. It seems to answer most of the open issues relating to the platform. All sounded good.
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But good sir, what is electricity?
A quick look at the physics of conductors, insulators, and electric charges.
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A free shipping mystery
If you've ever purchased a physical good on the internet, you know that shipping is a big deal. And all online shop owners know that providing competitive shipping is a key part of their success. It is indeed one of Amazon's greatest strengths and they are famous for offering free shipping to their Amazon Prime…
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What makes you senior
The one skill that separates senior engineers from everyone else isn’t technical. It’s the ability to take ambiguous problems and make them concrete.Retry
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What Did Ada Lovelace’s Program Actually Do?
In 1843, Ada Lovelace published the first nontrivial program. How did it work?
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Over the past 21 months I’ve written a code editor from the ground up
Over the past 21 months I’ve written a code editor from the ground up, including: a fast (~120fps) canvas-based editor component; multi-language syntax highlighting with Tree-sitter; snippets; a file browser; find-and-replace with regex and JavaScript expression support; and two completely new features: AST mode and…
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Linus Torvalds: Pearls before swine
My life isn't glamorous. I know that comes as a big shock to everybody, since geeks in general are seen as the crème de la crème of society,...
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