21511
Modern email can be built from borrowed parts
Let's design the successor to email on top of HTTP, fixing the design flaws SMTP has been dragging along for 40 years. Piece by piece. The goal is…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 49,242 posts.
21512
Are Designers Crazy?
...or do I just need new glasses? I'm not a graphic designer. I find it hard to get into the mindset of excellence through beauty. I understand user flow, interactions, happy paths, delighting the user, humane design, and so on - but when it comes to the art of making something look nice I'm all at sea. I understand…
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Code != computer science
The Google informs me that Ryan Carson got his degree at Colorado State University.
21516
Spoofing the Samsung Smart TV Internet Check
So it looks like Samsung is offline this morning . This shouldn't bother me - I don't work for them and their network isn't my problem. However it turns out that my Samsung Smart TV thinks there's no internet if there's no www.samsung.com :( - using tcpdump I started looking at what the TV was trying to contact when I…
21517
A simulation of me: fine-tuning an LLM on 240k text messages
Armed with a download of my 240,000 text message and Whatsapp history, I was able to fine-tune an LLM to create convincing conversations.
21518
Skynet won and destroyed humanity
For a very long time, it appeared obvious to outside observers of the time flow that Skynet would never win the war, and never annihilate humanity.
21519
What cold showers and exercise have in common (2014)
Can cold showers, winter plunges, and brisk walks in the chilly outdoors provide some of the same benefits as intense exercise—including weight loss and increased energy levels? Such a link …
21520
How long does it take to create a new habit? (2015)
How long it really takes to create a new habit, not 21 days.
21521
Japanese symbols that speak without words
I look at the Japanese symbols that carry meaning entirely on their own.
21522
Removing Next.js Got My Blog to 100 on Every Lighthouse Category
My blog just scored a perfect 100 on every Lighthouse category. I love blogging. I wanted to build a blog that’s light, fast, free of clutter, able to run multiple blogs, and fully accessible on top of that. And finally, at long last, I’ve more or less pulled it off. It was quite a tedious proces...
21523
The Dying Art of Mental Math Tricks
Mathematics, applications of mathematics to life in general, and my life as a mathematician.
21524
Julia as a CLI Calculator
I have been using the Julia REPL as my day-to-day calculator on the command line for more than a year now. I am surprised that I haven’t seen more posts talking about how powerful and extensible the language is for simple numerical calculations and scripting In fact, the Julia REPL is much more than a simple…
21525
28h Days: year 1 update
It’s been a little over a year since I started living 28h days . I figured it might be a good idea to write an yearly update, and doing it at the beginning of the year feels appropriate, so here we are.
21526
Hard disk LEDs and noisy machines
The little annoyances that alerted us developers of performance problems
21527
Statically-typed error handling in Python using Mypy
mypy assisted error handling, exception mechanisms in other languages, fun with pattern matching and type variance
21528
Modern Linux in an ancient PC
What is the oldest x86 processor that is still supported by a modern Linux kernel in present time? I asked the above quiz question during the Geekcamp tech conference in Nov 2017 during my emcee role. The theoretical answer as you can glean from the title of this post is the 486 which was first released in 1989. I…
21529
So you want to compete with Roblox
My inbox is stuffed with pitches from start-ups wanting to compete with Roblox, that plucky Lego-ish multiplayer game-creation platform currently valued at 41 billion dollars. They shouldn't try, but here's how to maybe not fail if they insist anyways.
21530
2026 is an exciting year for the Rust compiler (and me)
Matyáš Racek's blog
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OCaml: what you gain
Way back in June, in Replacing Python: second round, I wrote: The big surprise for me in these tests was how little you lose going from Python to …
21534
The Design of Software is a Thing Apart
Why code can't replace design docs: three examples (testing, coupling, intent) of design information that cannot be recovered from code alone.
21535
Meetings are forcing functions
A recurring meeting serves as a powerful forcing function for long-running projects.
21536
The TSA's Selective Laptop Ban
Last Monday, the TSA announced a peculiar new security measure to take effect within 96 hours. Passengers flying into the US on foreign airlines from eight Muslim countries would be prohibited from carrying aboard any electronics larger than a smartphone. They would have to be checked and put into the cargo hold. And…
21537
What senior engineers do: fix knowledge holes
I had a bad week a few weeks back, and got together with a friend and former colleague. We started trading war stories. He mentioned one time when he was working for a company which had both a desktop client and a server component. The communication between the two pieces of the system was completely, utterly…
21538
Rapid DHCP: Or, how do Macs get on the network so fast? (2011)
One of life's minor annoyances is having to wait on my devices to connect to the network after I wake them from sleep. All too often, I'll open the lid on my …
21539
What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
Starlink is a point of departure to consider the costs of the unrelenting drive toward artificial illumination, a technological development most of us now take for granted.
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