1951
Clever code is probably the worst code you could write (2023)
And clear, readable code is probably the hardest code to write
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,433 posts.
1952
On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (1988)
The second part of this talk pursues some of the scientific and educational consequences of the assumption that computers represent a radical novelty. In order to give this assumption clear contents, we have to be much more precise as to what we mean in this context by the adjective "radical". We shall do so in the…
1953
The problem with OpenTelemetry
I regularly complain about OpenTelemetry, so with an aim to be a less useless contributor, today I'm putting pen to paper. If you're an implementer, I ask you to read this and take away the personal bias you might have towards your work, and instead look objectively at the feedback being given.
1954
Microwave spontaneously turned on by its LED display
My microwave oven started to malfunction at around five years old. It started to randomly power on the lamp, fan, and turntable. It progressively got worse over several weeks until it was mostly stuck on. The microwave oven is not usable when this happens: It behaves as if the door were open, causing the control panel…
1955
I no longer maintain my Emacs projects on Sourcehut
I am switching away from SourceHut because it no longer fits my workflow.
1956
Post-quantum cryptography is too damn big
Large-scale quantum computers are capable of breaking all of the common forms of asymmetric cryptography used on the Internet today. Luckily, they don’t exist yet. The Internet-wide transition to post-quantum cryptography began in 2022 when NIST announced their final candidates for key exchange and signatures in the…
1957
Immediate Mode GUI Programming
Articles and programs by Elias Naur
1958
C++ left arrow operator (2016)
Sometimes you have a pointer to a class, and you want to invoke a method. You can use the -> operator for that.
1959
Back to the future: Are hackers the future of amateur radio?
Last fall, under the aegis of Ham Radio Village , I was awarded a grant to take my one-day Tech class on the road. Ham Radio Village believes that more people in technical fields should have amateur radio licenses and that amateur radio is underrepresented in the hacker, STEM/STEAM, and maker communities. Currently…
1960
UI = f(statesⁿ)
“UI is a function of state” is a pretty popular saying in the front-end world. In context (pun intended), that’s typically referring to application or component state. I thought I’d pull that thread a little further and explore all the states that can effect the UI layer…
1961
1962
Storing Times for Human Events
I’ve worked on various event websites in the past, and one of the unintuitively difficult problems that inevitably comes up is the best way to store the time that an …
1963
Optimizing Guile Scheme
Guile is a rather niche language that I love dearly. Guile is a Scheme dialect that features an advanced optimizing bytecode compiler, a JIT compiler, and a modest set of developer tools for inspecting and debugging. Through my time spent developing Chickadee , a game programming library, I have gotten quite familiar…
1964
Curl removes experimental HTTP back end in Rust
The ride is coming to an end. The experiment is done. We tried, but we admit defeat. Four years ago we started adding support for an alternative HTTP backend in curl. It would use a library written in rust, called hyper. The idea was to introduce an alternative implementation of HTTP internals that you could ……
1965
What I've Learned in the Past Year Spent Building an AI Video Editor
Lessons from An Unexpected Year in AI
1966
Apple II graphics: More than you wanted to know
The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe ca...
1967
GPU compute in the browser at the speed of native: WebGPU marching cubes
WebGPU is a powerful GPU-API for the web, providing support for advanced low-overhead rendering pipelines and GPU compute pipelines. WebGPU’s support for GPU compute shaders and storage buffers are a key distinction from WebGL, which lacks these features, and make it possible to bring powerful GPU-parallel…
1968
1969
Tales from the Far Side
Sean Kleefeld's daily thoughts about comics and the comic industry.
1970
1971
The Vision Pro is a flop
The product’s failure should further dispel the myth of tech inevitability
1972
Thoughts on tech employment
The Washington Post writes The U.S. economy is booming. So why are tech companies laying off workers? This article has some good data, but I think misses the point with sub-heads like “Shine has co…
1973
A skeptic's first contact with Kubernetes
Key concepts & much deserved YAML ranting
1974
What made Dostoevsky's work immortal
How Dostoevsky’s Crafted Timeless Art
1975
Systemd through the eyes of a musl distribution maintainer
Welcome back to FOSS Fridays! This week, I’m covering a real pickle. I’m acutely aware of the flames this blog post will inspire, but I feel it is important to write nevertheless. I volunteer my ti…
1976
Working Title (Insurance)
Title insurance is grossly overpriced relative to actual risks involved. Why is that?
1977
The Disappointing Tea.xyz
I got a pull request from "tea.xyz" related individual and unraveled a mess of a disappointing project.
1978
Publishing AI Slop Is a Choice
Link to: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/google-ai-overview-search.html
1979
Power of small optimizations
In this post, I will talk about the importance of small optimizations that can provide a lot of performance improvements.
1980
