1681
The Olivetti Company
Beautiful machines from a beautiful country
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,706 posts.
1682
Assorted less(1) tips
In a recent discussion on Reddit I shared a number of tips about the common utility less(1) that others found helpful so I figured I'd aggregate some of those tips here.
1683
Preserving Fisher-Price Pixter
Dmitry.GR: Fisher-Price Pixter: From unknown and obscure to fully documented, emulated, and preserved
1684
Write up of my homebrew CPU build
The blog of an engineer from Canada
1685
Why didn't AI “join the workforce” in 2025?
Exactly one year ago, Sam Altman made a bold prediction: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ ... Read more
1686
.NET (OK, C#) finally gets union types
In this post I discuss the support for union types released in .NET 11, how they're implemented, the choices made, and how to create your own
1687
News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development
On Thursday, three of the lead Raspberry Pi engineers hosted an AMA on the r/engineering subreddit. Raspberry Pi 6 One of the most interesting tidbits was on the Pi 6. Looking back at previous launches: 2012: Raspberry Pi 2015: Raspberry Pi 2 (+3 years) 2016: Raspberry Pi 3 (+1 year) 2019: Raspberry Pi 4 (+3 years)…
1688
When I reject AI code even if it works
AI can make implementation cheap while making review and judgment more expensive.
1689
The percentage of Show HN posts is increasing, but their scores are decreasing
Recently, I felt like I was seeing more "Show HN" stories, and many of which were generated with LLMs. So I analyzed the data to see if that was true. Also I included the average score per month to see if people enjoy seeing them (because I don't :P).
1690
A Kantian Critique of "Sorry" by Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber's "Sorry" is a song about regret, asking for forgiveness, and wanting another chance after having hurt someone. But philosophically speaking, what exactly makes an apology morally meaningful?
1691
A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting
I have come to suspect that to most people thinking is painful. Some of us are addicted to thinking. Some of us find it a necessity. Johnny ...
1692
The value of not getting to the point (2015)
I read somewhere recently, I forget where, that the purpose of people getting together for a conversation over a beer or coffee or lunch or dinner is that it the food and drink spare us from the burden of needing to have something to say throughout the whole conversation.
1693
Repair a ship’s hull still in the river in -50˚C (2022)
Despite these hard times, we continue our work saving the world from all manner of cyber-maliciousness. We adapt; we carry on. Meanwhile, I hope my travel notes and photos will bring a little cheeriness to all who view them – because there’s hardly a better way to do that than with the beauty of nature
1694
Buttered Crumpet, a custom typeface for Wallace and Gromit
I was thrilled to be selected to design a custom typeface for Wallace & Gromit – Aardman’s most beloved and recognisable characters.
1695
The Dark Night of Mathematics
What are we really doing?
1696
AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons
The balance of software copyright protection and openness has always been fraught with minutiae and detail that bores all but the most nerdy of pedants. Yet, through much effort and 40 years of debate we had reached an equilibrium. Now AI has thrown that out the window.
1697
Stop Killing Games
The "Stop Killing Games" movement is making progress with the advancement of California AB 1921, a bill designed to stop developers from permanently bricking games when they shut down their servers. If you're a gamer who has watched a $70 purchase turn into a useless desktop icon overnight, you're entirely justified…
1698
I Miss Terry Pratchett
On reading Terry Pratchett at sixteen, in the back of a French classroom, and a sentence that has been kicking over the furniture in my head ever since.
1699
AI's economics don't make sense
If you liked this piece, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter that’s usually anywhere from 5,000 to 18,000 words, including vast, detailed analyses of NVIDIA, Anthropic and OpenAI’s finances,
1700
You can't trust the internet anymore
I like things that are strange and a bit obscure. It’s a habit of mine, and a lot of this blog is to document things I haven’t heard of before, because I wan...
1701
Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)
macOS Internals Deep Dive Building a Development Kernel Collection Configuring our Mac to boot the Development Kernel Collection Putting our machine to work! When did Apple grace us with this feature? Undoing our work for OS updates Closing Thoughts
1702
Running My Own XMPP Server
Notes from setting up Prosody in Docker for federated messaging, with file sharing, voice calls, and end-to-end encryption.
1703
Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
The recent end-of-financial-year sales were rather interesting – I found myself spending a lot more time browsing AliExpress than I did Amazon or eBay this year which is something I wouldn…
1704
The LLMentalist Effect (2023)
The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour
1705
The asteroid currently hitting front end web development
A lot of the educators I admire in the frontend web space seem to be either bowing out or dialing back their efforts: Axel Rauschmayer, Salma Alam-Naylor, Josh…
1706
What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I'm mostly using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.
1707
For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day
For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day. In 2026, the music is out of phase with the work.
1708
1709
OTel isn’t going well
For years now one of the most reliable complaints I hear when I try to drag a team off their vendor specific SDK and onto OpenTelemetry is some variation of: "why does it seem like this isn't done yet?" Vendor SDKs for observability are, to put it charitably, idiot-
1710
The reverts will continue until morale improves
Many readers will be aware that an unusually high number of features have been reverted from the PostgreSQL 19 branch after the beta period began. Having some reverts is not unusual, maybe one per cycle could be expected. But this time around, about 8 to 10 significant features, depending on how you count, have been…