1111
Plans you're not supposed to talk about
When does talking about a plan ruin it? Marriage, CO2, religion, self-promotion, edgelords, and Chinese medicine.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 49,177 posts.
1112
Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help
I complained about this on the socials , but I didn’t get it all out of my system. So now I write a blog post. I’ve never liked the philosophy of “put an icon…
1113
Write more "useless" software
After my last blog post about Hurl, someone asked me, and I quote: "... why?" The simple answer is "for the joke." But the longer answer is that useless software [1] is a fantastic way to explore and experience the joy of computing. Play is an important part of exploration and joy.
1114
Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
Last week, I started working on a new side-project. It’s a standard React app partly made up of run-of-the-mill CRUD views—a perfect fit for LLM-assisted programming. I reasoned that if I could get an LLM to quickly write the boring code for me, I’d have more time to focus on the interesting problems I wanted to solve.
1115
Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end
In 2020, Apple released the M1 with a custom GPU. We got to work reverse-engineering the hardware and porting Linux. Today, you can run Linux on a range of M1 and M2 Macs, with almost all hardware working: wireless, audio, and full graphics acceleration.
1116
No Graphics API
A deep dive into graphics APIs, shader languages and GPU architecture, exploring a simpler design for modern hardware. By Sebastian Aaltonen.
1117
CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised
Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.
1118
Cutting your salary by 40%
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I need to get paid far far less than I’m worth?” Me neither. And yet some companies not only pay less, they’re proud of it. Allow me to explain—
1119
The Bitcoin whitepaper is hidden in every copy of macOS
I just discovered that every copy of macOS ships with a hidden PDF of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper. But why?
1120
Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down
When I moved to a new apartment with my family, the cable company we were used to wasn't available. We had to settle for Dish Network. I wasn't too happy about making that switch, but something on the
1121
MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5
This all started from a conversation about the RP2040 MCU, and building a simple desktop/GUI for it. I’d made a comment along the lines of “or, just run some old OS”, and it got me thinking about the original Macintosh .
1122
America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
On April 2nd, 2025, our president announced major new taxes on imports from foreign countries (“tariffs”), ranging from 10% to 49%. The stated goal is to bring manufacturing back to the United States and to “make America wealthy again”. These tariffs will not work. In fact, they may even do the opp
1123
Don't use third party auth to sign in
If a website offers you to sign-in using Google (or any third-party service, say Facebook, Github, etc.), don’t use that feature.
1124
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Just don’t
Sometimes it’s wrong to begin a phrase with the word “just”. I offer as evidence two such situations. I think there’s a common thread to be drawn.
1126
Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
I retired a year and a half ago after having worked for twenty-six years as a programmer for Apple. I’m not sure which would have been more surprising: if I had continued programming in my spare time after I had retired or if I never programmed again.
1127
"Pwned Passwords" V2 With Half a Billion Passwords
Last August, I launched a little feature within Have I Been Pwned [https://haveibeenpwned.com/] (HIBP) I called Pwned Passwords [https://www.troyhunt.com/introducing-306-million-freely-downloadable-pwned-passwords/]. This was a list of 320 million passwords from a range of different data breaches which organisations…
1128
Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the i…
1129
I switched to Android after 7 years of iOS
Monday of last week I was all excited. I had just gotten the green light to start prototyping a new Progressive Web App for a client I've been working with.
1130
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The Depression Thing
the depression thing: a neat story about depression and mental health. By Zach Holman.
1132
Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over
We’re witnessing the death of hosting in America. The share of adults who say they regularly have friends over has declined 70 percent since 1975
1133
Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt
Let engineers learn cloud without jeopardizing their personal well-being.
1134
FUSE for macOS is no longer open source
And what that means for the rest of us.
1135
ChatGPT can now call Wolfram Alpha
Wolfram plugin gives computationally accurate answers to ChatGPT queries using Wolfram's data knowledgebase and language. Custom visualizations are given as well. Stephen Wolfram explains how it works.
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WeWTF
I’ve started nine firms and I’m, generously, 3-4-2 (win-lose-tie). In retrospect, and I think about this a lot, the only reliable forward-looking indicator of our firm’s success or failure was … timing. Specifically, the part of the economic cycle at founding. The firms we started in recessions had an easier time…
1138
Root shell on a credit card terminal
In this project, I started to reverse engineer payment card terminals because they seemed to be an interesting target for security research, given the high stakes involved. Although I initially didn’t know much about this industry, I did expect a ton of security features and a very security-hardened device. And to…
1139
The <output> Tag
Make your dynamic content accessible by default with the HTML tag that time forgot.
1140
Bored People Quit
Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It's written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don't ha