2911
Stealing from Biologists to Compile Haskell Faster
The trick that makes GHC’s ApplicativeDo optimization faster is structurally identical to how biologists predict RNA folding.
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 3,710 posts.
2912
Erich von Däniken has died
It is with great sadness and shock that we must announce that Erich von Däniken passed away on January 10, 2026.
2913
I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy
Why I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy.
2914
I built a programming language using Claude Code
Over the course of four weeks in January and February, I built a new programming language using Claude Code. I named it Cutlet after my cat. It’s completely legal to do that. You can find the source code on GitHub , along with build instructions and example programs .
2915
If I could make my own GitHub
My friend and I have a game where we talk about what we'd do if we were rich. Not rich like 'paid off the mortgage' rich. Rich like a man who owns a submarine he's never been inside. Rich like a man whose third wife has a skincare
2916
How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread
How a Hertfordshire research lab quietly transformed an iconic British staple food, and the complexion of the countryside - without anyone actually noticing
2917
What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI
"Cognitive debt," Claude Code, and the negative space around AI
2918
Your C is not standard C
this is an incomplete list of some incompatibilities between c as it's written in the standard and c as it exists in the real world for people who use gcc/clang + glibc/musl.
2919
The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph
Weight limits, speed limits, fuel consumption at scale, and why trucks do the things that annoy you on the motorway.
2920
I don't enjoy the Internet any more
The pale is growing
2921
Does the Sumerian King List Align with Paleoclimate Events?
A statistical test of whether the Sumerian King List's antediluvian reigns line up with paleoclimate events better than chance.
2922
Agent-to-agent pair programming
What if you could let Claude and Codex work together as pair programmers, talking to each other directly? One of them as the main worker and the other as a reviewer.
2923
How video games inspire great UX (2019)
This quote is meaningful to me as I’ve often struggled with a problem until an insight from a user test “changed my perspective”.
2924
Continuous Diffusion Language Models (CDLM's)
Fully discrete methods dominated for a few years, but language models based on continuous diffusion are making a comeback.
2925
z386: An Open-Source 80386 Built Around Original Microcode
This is the fifth installment of the 80386 series . The FPGA CPU is now far enough along to run real software, and this post is about how it works. z386 is a 386-class CPU built around the original Intel microcode, in the same spirit as z8086 .
2926
You are falling behind because you haven't fed the insincerity machine
I was lucky enough to witness the beginnings of social media, working on the platforms that made it happen. I’ve also seen the decline of its first iterations and products. Currently I am witnessing the idea of a social web being perverted, weaponised and automated out of any trace of human or social aspect…
2927
Guide to data tools landscape for developers
Found yourself on a data project and have no idea what they all are talking about? Feel excluded from all the fun discussions in the office kitchen? If only there were a humongous guide going over all the concepts and buzzwords...
2928
Reading and writing are less symmetric than you (probably) think
I am talking about the I/O operations as used in computing here. A typical example of how this kind of thing is exposed are the POSIX syscalls read(2) and write(2), which have the following C funct…
2929
Static Allocation, Constant Work
In reply to this email:
2930
Retrofitting JIT Compilers into C Interpreters
C interpreters are a common language implementation technique and the basis for the reference implementations of languages such as Lua, Ruby, and Python. Unfortunately, C interpreters are slow, especially compared to language implementations powered by JIT compilers. In this post I’m going to show that it is possible…
2931
I prompted ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini and watched my Nginx logs
What nginx logs actually prove about AI traffic from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, plus why Google's AI crawlers leave a different signal than the others.
2932
Visualizing Binary Files
It's all black and white, basically. A while ago, Vim's xxd gained the ability to color the output (this is not included in Vim Classic , which I use):
2933
3D Gaussian Splatting in a Weekend
Introduction 3D Gaussian splatting is a technique that answers this question: given a dataset of pictures of a scene, how can I reconstruct it in 3D? This is achieved using a machine learning algorithm that, for many different camera angles, does the following: render the scene, compare it to the picture taken at the…
2934
The UN challenges five centuries of cartography
Have you heard? There's map news!
2935
Memory safety absolutists
When seeing the title of this post, I bet in some people's minds, the first thought was "Rust devs!". This connection is not unfounded. Rust devs tend to be passionate about memory safety. Some of it, I'm sure, may have been caused by a classic language wars attitude: my language is better than yours, and here is why…
2936
PHP's Oddities
flow2 | Blog post: 'PHP's Oddities' in Tech
2937
I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook
Documenting my journey switching away from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14
2938
Claude is a Contrarian
Of all the LLMs I’ve used and driven daily, Claude is the one that absolutely contradicts my instructions.
2939
Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?
Math as cultural institution.
2940
AI optimism is a class privilege
I think I have an idea why we're so extremely divided on AI: it's because we have an intuitive sense of who it stands to benefit, and who stands to pay the costs. I think whether you see reason for optimism has a lot to do with which group you see yourself in.