On a flight back to New York I read Level 3’s assessment of the latest round of the Netflix vs Internet Provider debacle. The summarized version is that basically Netflix is slow because Verizon refuses to add capacity to peer with Level 3. Fixing the situation would cost Verizon
The “ hacking ” we'll be talking about in this document is exploratory programming in an open-source environment. If you think “ hacking ” has anything to do with computer crime or security breaking and came here to learn that, you can go away now. There's nothing for you here.
Note The latest version of this document can be found online at https://dr-knz.net/categories-from-scratch.html. Alternate formats: Source, PDF. Prologue The concept of category from mathematics happens to be useful to computer programmers in many ways. Unfortunately, all “good” explanations of categories so far have…
I think this might be my last blog entry on the subject of building SBCL for a while.
This blog post is meant to help my friends get started in reading my other blog posts, that is, this post is a crash course on the notation ...
Upon hearing the word 'bootloader', many people cower in fear. It seems like a scary low-level thing that's very easy to mess up. To dispel some of this fear, I'm going to walk through making a super simple bootloader/OS, assuming only a basic level of familiarity with assembly language and how computers work.
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
In Chapter 9 of Types and Programming Languages , Pierce presents his exposition of the Simply typed Lambda-Calculus. It is a truly awesome chapter - each subsection in succession constructs a rich and very well detailed system of computation and Pierce is a master of precision, guiding the reader through the maze of…
I'm on the road with very limited internet connectivity so I can't do the homework I normally would before posting this, so it's possible th...
Have you ever opened a core dump with gdb, tried to print a C++ std::vector element, and got the following?
Introduction Link to heading Several months ago, I promised to write an updated version of my old post, “The State of Statistics in Julia”, that would describe how Julia’s support for statistical computing has evolved since December 2012. I’ve kept putting off writing that post for several reasons, but the most…
There’s a lot written about what you should do when you raise money, but there hasn’t been as much written about the common mistakes founders make. Here is a list of mistakes I often see: •...
Overview of how to handle errors in the current version of the Rust programming language.
We now know a lot about the security of the Rapiscan 522 B x-ray system used to scan carry-on baggage in airports worldwide. Billy Rios, director of threat intelligence at Qualys, got himself one and analyzed it. And he presented his results at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit this week. It’s worse than you might…
Mapping the walkable surfaces on the island of The Witness as a step toward bulletproofing the player movement code.
I found a bug that allowed me to find anyone with a Google+ account's login email address. This could be used to target specific people for spear phishing.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. At 33 years old, I knew I’d probably be older than the vast majority of the 400+ people attending Y Combinator’s first YC Hacks hackathon. But other than that, I didn’t have many expectations. YC Hacks was my first real hackathon. Many years ago, I went to the …
Back to: The myth of heroism | Forward to: A footnote about the publishing industry
According to a 2011 study on the subject, around 80% of us still eat lunch at our desks. I quit eating lunch at my desk and not only has it been incredibly enjoyable, I’m much more productive…
Software engineer, Free, Open Source Software Consultant, Innovator, Fedora & Debian Developer
When you have to traverse some sort of a nested data structure (say, a binary tree), one approach is to create a stack that remembers where in the tree you are. Another, much more elegant approach, is to write the function recursively. A recursive function employs the machine stack used to implicitly implement…
