20851
Blackmail fail
In which the author receives surprising offers from kind strangers
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 49,240 posts.
20852
Node.js: Some quick optimization advice
#NodeJS : A quick optimization advice Can you spot the difference between these two files : that can explain a 50% performance gain : If you don’t, it’s normal, you try to read the code …
20853
20854
C++ 11 Approved
[Update: “C++11” is now the confirmed name — Geneva informs me that they plan to have it published in a matter of weeks, and then we’ll have ISO/IEC 14882:2011(E) Programmin…
20855
20856
An introduction to data processing on the Linux command line
This article will provide the reader with a brief overview for a number of different Linux commands. A special emphasis will be placed on explaining how each command can be used in the context of performing data science tasks. The goal will be to convince the reader that each of these commands can be extremely useful…
20857
The Curse of Culture
It is very fair to say that Apple is threatened by the potential rise of AI. Google, though, is also threatened by its inability to own customers’ attention. The solution for both companies m…
20858
20859
Shenzhen trip report – visiting the world's manufacturing ecosystem
Last year, a group of Media Lab students visited Shenzhen with, bunnie, an old friend and my hardware guru....
20860
20861
A 45 year engineer clears up electric sauna ventilation
Malcolm has analyzed the Finnish 1992 sauna ventilation study profile to improve sauna ventilation in his own backyard sauna.
20862
I collect and read old computer manuals
It’s my ritual: every time I enter a secondhand bookshop, I go straight to the Sciences section and search for old computer …
20863
What Kagglers Are Using for Text Classification
With the problem of Image Classification is more or less solved by Deep learning, Text Classification is the next new developing theme in deep learning. For those who don’t know, Text classification is a common task in natural language processing, which transforms a sequence of text of indefinite length into a…
20864
Some thoughts on Spectre and Meltdown
The story of these attacks starts in late 2004. I had submitted my doctoral thesis and had a few months before flying back to Oxford for my defense, so I turned to some light reading: Intel's latest "Optimization Manual", full of tips on how to write faster code. (Eking out every last nanosecond of performance has…
20865
Who has the fastest F1 website (2021)
Deep-diving on the load performance of F1 websites.
20866
20867
Demoralize Your Teams Quickly and Efficiently with Micromanagement (2010)
Apparently I’ve earned the dubious distinction of having become an expert in project failure. I’ve always had an interest in project failure—Jenny and I have been doing our “Why Projects Fa…
20868
If you succeed you will fail
If you succeed, you will fail. Something said at a client engagement I was at some time ago. I figure enough time has passed that it is worth sharing this story. One of the early engagements was to …
20869
A 48Khz digital music player for the Commodore 64
Move over, Sennheiser. Make yourself scarce, Bose. Here comes the ultimate Hi-Fi solution for your living room: The Commodore 64! I s it sa...
20870
How to run for Florida Office
Hey All, This year I ran for Florida House of Representatives District 49 (Orlando). I lost, but I got 31% of the vote and I only spent $3000. My opponent got 69% of the vote and spent $100,000. I've been asked about this on Reddit, so I'm going to make a detailed post about how
20871
Startup Idea: User Retention as a Service
An in-depth blog post talking user retention and lifecycle email marketing for startups.
20872
I built a mmWave material classification radar (2025)
Software is now a commodity thanks to Claude Code. So the next step is obviously hardware. I spent the last 6 months on building a hardware startup, which was fucking hard.
20873
How Slide Rules Work
The survival of our species owes much to our brain, specifically, its ability to observe, analyse, and plan. Planting crops and storing grains for the winter were some of the earliest uses of these abilities. Measuring and calculating are foundational elements of observation, analysis, and planning. Computation, upon…
20874
The “Bug-O” Notation
What is the 🐞(n) of your API?
20875
Python, C, Assembly – Faster Cosine Similarity
From pure Python to AVX-512 assembly, optimizing cosine similarity reveals a 2,500x speedup through SIMD, FP16, and VNNI instructions on modern Intel CPUs.
20876
How to waste time and overcomplicate things
This post ended up being fairly popular on Hacker News and sparked conversations about project management and development in the IT industry. You can find the post here .
20877
On the Closing of Living Computers: Museum+Labs
As you might have heard, Living Computers: Museum+Labs has shut down; its doors will remain closed for at least the next twelve to eighteen ...
20878
Win16 Retro Development
Several months ago I had a go at producing a high resolution 256-color driver for Windows 3.1. The effort was successful but is not yet complete. Along the way I re-learned many things I had forgotten, and learned several new ones. This blog entry is based on notes I made during development.
20879
If 1+x is 1, how much is 1-x?
► Versión en Español (The title should be "if (= (+ 1 x) 1), how much is (- 1 x)?", but ...) Toy floating point Mathematically, if we...
20880
Investigating a vanishing BIOS on the Fujitsu Lifebook AH532
A few months ago, I got given a laptop with a very interesting condition. The BIOS setup menu was supposedly inaccessible, and nothing apart from the default boot option works. Time to investigate to see what is actually happening and what we can do about it.