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Some small suggestions for the Intel instruction set
Programmers trying to make crypto run fast often say things like "Why can't the CPU designer just add a 128-bit multiplication instruction?" Sometimes these questions turn into academic papers analyzing the cycle counts that would be obtained from various instruction-set extensions. What's missing from most of these…
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Chrome Bugs Allow Sites to Listen to Your Private Conversations
New bugs in Google Chrome, allow malicious sites to activate your microphone, and listen in on anything said around your computer, even after you’ve left those sites.
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Inclusiveness at Mozilla
I am deeply honored and humbled by the CEO role. I’m also grateful for the messages of support. At the same time, I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla. I hope to lay those concerns to rest, first by making a set of commitments to you. More…
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Delegative Democracy – a scalable voting model
In between representative democracy , where voters elect politicians to make decisions on their behalf, and direct democracy , where voters directly decide the issues, lies a third model that deserves more consideration. In this model, people have the choice of either voting directly on a decision, as in direct…
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Virtual reality affects men and women differently
Last week, I wrote a provocative opinion piece for Quartz called “Is the Oculus Rift sexist?” I’m reposting it on my blog for posterity, but also because I want to address some of the critiques that I received. First, the piece itself:
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TCP/IP over audio
We present a simple to use implementation of networking across ultrasonic frequencies, by making use of Gnuradio and a microphone and speakers. This allows you to use TCP/IP , UDP across an audio link.
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An Opinionated Treatise on Cosmos, a New Programming Language
Alright, guys. Today I want to talk about programming. It is interesting to note that I have solved it. Yes, I solved it. Here are my…
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Why the Z-80's data pins are scrambled
If you look closely at the datasheet for a Z-80 chip, you'll notice the data pins are in a random-looking order. The address pins (A) are ni...
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Programming in Elixir with the Phoenix Framework
Elixir is hip . I want to be hip. So I've been giving Elixir a try over the last week. So far I'm very pleased with it overall and look forward to learning it more in-depth.
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Why CoffeeScript Isn't the Answer
CoffeeScript is an open source project that provides a new syntax for JavaScript. I have to say that I have a lot of respect for CoffeeScript and it got a lot of things right. The “golden rule” of CoffeeScript is “It’s just JavaScript” . That means there is a straightforward equivalent to every line of CoffeeScript…
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Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians
I find it absurd that Google+ doesn't recognize certain names. The latest outrage was when they rejected Elaine Yellow Horse . It was only a...
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Git add -p
The Pragmatic Programmer advocates you should know your editor inside and out. So why don't you know your version control system just as well? Discover git add "patch mode" and learn how to make more concisely crafted commits leading to a cleaner git history and more friends.
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Things that make Go fast
Anthony Starks has remixed my original Google Present based slides using his fantastic Deck presentation tool. You can check out his remix over on his blog, mindchunk.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/remixing-with-deck .
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Bitcoin transaction malleability: looking at the bytes
"Malleability" of Bitcoin transactions has recently become a major issue. This article looks at how transactions are modified, at the byte...
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Your next conference should have real-time captioning
I was one of the organizers of !!Con, a free conference about the joy, excitement and surprise of programming that happened two weeks ago in New York.
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Downloading All of Hacker News Posts and Comments
Shital Shah's personal website and blog. Research Engineer at Microsoft Research with interests in deep learning and reinforcement learning. Created AirSim, TensorWatch, archai, most recently worked on training Phi series of LLM models.
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An alternative Haskell home page
The web site has since been through various iterations and changes, therefore I include some screenshots below for posterity (because my design is much more beautiful than what is now online ;-).
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Hyperlocal Mesh Networks
The NY Times has a post up this morning about a neighborhood in Brooklyn called Red Hook where they have built a hyperlocal mesh network to service the entire neighborhood, from housing projects to townhouses. Red Hook is a cool place. We were there last night to sample Hometown Bar-B-Que‘s massive beef ribs and a […]
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Apache Spark: The Next Big Data Thing?
Apache Spark is generating quite some buzz right now. Databricks, the company founded to support Spark raised $14M from Andreessen Horowitz, Cloudera has decided to fully support Spark, and others chime in that it's the next big thing. So I thought it's high time I took a look to get an understanding what the whole…
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On Google's Acquisition of Nest
Google’s Nest acquisition has very little to do with selling thermostats and smoke detectors in particular. Instead, it’s about Google having the ability to do consumer hardware right, in general.
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The best Postgres feature you're not using – CTEs aka WITH clauses
SQL by default isn’t typically friendly to dive into, and especially so if you’re reading someone else’s already created queries. For some reason most people throw out principles we follow in other languages such as commenting and composability just for SQL. I was recently reminded of a key feature in Postgres that…
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Evolutionary algorithms and analog electronic circuits
I've been working for a while on a program that automatically generates analog electronic circuits using evolutionary algorithms. It's still very much a work in progress, but I've used it to generate some useful circuits. Current workings of the program is as follows: Programmer decides a goal function, possible…
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The Rise of Thin, Mini and Insert Skimmers
Like most electronic gadgets these days, ATM skimmers are getting smaller and thinner, with extended battery life. Here’s a look at several miniaturized fraud devices that were pulled from compromised cash machines at various ATMs in Europe so far this year.