Best of 2009

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2009. 498 posts.

Software Engineering
31

Self-Enforcing Protocols

There are several ways two people can divide a piece of cake in half. One way is to find someone impartial to do it for them. This works, but it requires another person. Another way is for one person to divide the piece, and the other person to complain (to the police, a judge, or his parents) if he doesn’t think it’s…

41

Fun With HTTP Headers

Like any good web developer, I have a tendency to poke around at people’s web sites to see if I can figure out how they’re implemented. After poking at enough sites, I started noticing that people were putting some weird and interesting stuff in their HTTP headers. So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to actually go…

44

My Git Workflow

Lately I’ve been acting as the unofficial Git consultant for Skribit , usually in response to @Stammy saying something on Twitter along the lines of “Hey, git just did something totally nonintuitive and now I can’t figure out what to do next.” I’ve been using Git long enough to know the answer, usually, or at least to…

56

An almost perfect real-world hack

Almost immediately after we bought our house I received a letter in the mail. The local school district was appealing the tax assessment of my house. The issue in question was the value of my property in 2002 (don’t ask, it’s a long story, and a silly law). My property tax is some percentage of the 2002 value of my…