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New York Times Election Day Crossword (2009)
I recently read a book called Pretty Girl In Crimson Rose (8) [1] , an autobiography interweaved with interesting stories about crosswords. ...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 80,908 posts.
18842
ML From Scratch, Part 1: Linear Regression
To kick off this series, will start with something simple yet foundational: linear regression via ordinary least squares. While not particularly exciting, linear regression finds widespread use both as a standalone learning algorithm and as a building block in more advanced learning algorithms.
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Latest update to my friend's 19 year side project
I've made a lot of progress recently focusing on refining my procedural planets and atmospheres. Added into the mix are multi-core particle...
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18846
Jepsen: VoltDB 6.3
In the last Jepsen post, we found that RethinkDB could lose data when a network partition occurred during cluster reconfiguration. In this analysis, we’ll show that although VoltDB 6.3 claims strict serializability, internal optimizations and bugs lead to stale reads, dirty reads, and even lost updates; fixes are now…
18847
A History of Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) still feel a bit like magic to me. Of course, I understand the general machinery enough to know that they aren’t, but the gap between my outdated knowledge of the field and the state-of-the-art feels especially large right now. Things are moving fast. So six months ago, I decided to close…
18848
Free Programming Ebooks
Since this post got quite popular I decided to incorporate some of the excellent suggestions posted in the comments, so this list now has more than …
18849
Pretty maps in Python
Benchmarks & Tips for Big Data, Hadoop, AWS, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Spark, Python & More...
18850
Should I buy ECC memory? (2015)
Jeff Atwood, perhaps the most widely read programming blogger, has a post that makes a case against using ECC memory . My read is that his major points are:
18851
Over-reliance on CGI in movies
On the digital void that is modern cinema
18852
DeepMind releases Lyria 2 music generation model
Google has long collaborated with musicians, producers, and artists in the research and development of music AI tools. Ever since launching the Magenta project, in 2016, we’ve been exploring how AI can enhance creativity — sparking inspiration, facilitating exploration and enabling new forms of expression, always…
18853
Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT
On February 13, 2026, alongside the previously announced retirement of GPT‑5 (Instant, Thinking, and Pro), we will retire GPT‑4o, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini from ChatGPT. In the API, there are no changes at this time.
18854
We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
( This is the text of a talk I delivered at the Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day in Stuttgart on Friday November 10th, 2023. Note: early draft, contains some typos, I'll fix them next week when I get home. )
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Shamelessness as a strategy (2019)
I’ve enjoyed playing a game called Avalon recently. I won’t go too far into the rules, but it’s a hidden role game in the vein of Secret Hitler or Werewolf, where one team is “good”, trying to uncover who among them is “evil”, before the evil team wins.
18857
Browsers are the most likely disruptor of the mobile duopoly
Under regulatory pressure, mobile OSes are opening up and adding features that will allow PWAs to disrupt app stores ... Yet with shockingly few exceptions, coverage accepts that the solution to crummy, extractive native app stores will be other native app stores. ... The press fails to mention the web as a sustitute…
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Why old games never die, but new ones do
It’s well known that video games today are disposable pieces of slop. Modern multiplayer games tend to fall into one of two categories: they’re abandoned after a while and the servers a…
18860
I downloaded all 1.6M posts on Bluesky
I downloaded all the posts on Bluesky as of 2023-05-01. Then I did some data analysis on the 1680399 posts from 45457 accounts.
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The Ingredients of a Productive Monorepo
So! Suppose you’re an intrepid engineer in a nascent Developer Productivity team. Your engineering organization has decided that it wants to move towards a monorepo . You’ve heard the stories told of Google, Meta, Uber - each a large technology company with developer productivity organizations consisting of hundreds…
18863
Apple and a hacker's future
I was happy for years in Apple’s walled garden; with AI, however, their protections feel like limitations.
18864
Big Tech are supposed to be the plumbers, not patricians of internet discourse
When tech companies take it upon themselves to arbitrate what is or isn't misinformation they think they're the patricians of internet discourse. The reality is they're the plumbing. Meanwhile, most of the mainstream media coverage around the pandemic can be classified into five logical fallacies.
18865
Intel x86 documentation has more pages than the 6502 has transistors
Microprocessors have become immensely more complex thanks to Moore's Law, but one thing that has been lost is the ability to fully understan...
18866
TypeScript is surprisingly ok for compilers
There are two main historical trends when choosing an implementation language for something compiler-shaped.
18867
OKRs Are Bullshit
It's a new year, time for a new rant! And yes, before you ask, the post title is deliberately provocative. You might say this is my ploy to get more paid subscribers, because only paid subscribers can leave comments and I expect that the title alone will make many of you want to comment. 😝
18868
Off
Part of it was the lack of surprises, which isn’t Apple’s fault. All of the product upgrades, while nice, were incremental and predictable. None of the pricing was a surprise. In fact, the only unexpected product announcement is the zombie iPad 2 sticking around for another year, shamelessly at the same price as last…
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Taylor Farms: How One Company's Reach Became a National Risk
Our report examines how Taylor Farms became one of the largest produce suppliers in the U.S. and what its power means for food safety, farmers, and workers.
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Software engineers should be a little bit cynical
A lot of my readers call me a cynic when I say things like “you should do things that make your manager happy” or “big tech companies get to decide what…