What does “asm.js optimizations” mean?
The Microsoft Chakra team has announced on the IE blog that asm.js optimizations are In Development . We at Mozilla are very excited for IE to join Firefox in providing predictable, top-tier performance on asm.js code and from my discussions with the Chakra team, I expect this will be the case.
Writing Friendlier Clojure
I love the Clojure language, but I don’t think there’s any use pretending that the combination of expressiveness, power, and repl-driven development can result in some staggeringly dense code. Everyone that writes Clojure is guilty of this at one time or another; you start with the core of your function, evaluate it…
LLVM OpenMP Support
OpenMP support in Clang compiler is completed! Every pragma and clause from 3.1 version of the standard is supported in full, including combined directives (like ‘#pragma omp parallel for’ and ‘#pragma omp parallel sections’).
LeakCanary: Detect all Android memory leaks
The Corner is Square's technical blog covering software engineering, APIs, data, open source and more.
Open-sourcing Pinterest MySQL management tools
Building the platform where people around the world come to search, save and shop
Tools for debugging, testing and using HTTP/2
With CloudFlare's release of HTTP/2 for all our customers the web suddenly has a lot of HTTP/2 connections. To get the most out of HTTP/2 you'll want to be using an up to date web browser (all the major browsers support HTTP/2).
F*dging up a Racket
Source code can be found at: https://github.com/dyoo/brainfudge . The latest version of this document lives in http://hashcollision.org/brainfudge .
Wikipedia is significantly amplifying the impact of Open Access publications
When you edit Wikipedia to include a claim, you are required to substantiate that edit by referencing a reliable source. According to a recent study, the single biggest predictor of a journal’s appearance in Wikipedia is its impact factor. One of the exciting findings, writes Eamon Duede, is that it appears Wikipedia…
Rethinking office space
Today we’re submitting a plan to redevelop four sites to the Mountain View City Council.
Grepping logs is still terrible
The other day, I wrote a controversial piece about why grepping logs is terrible , the reactions were interesting. I've got some great feedback (thanks!), and there were a lot of hostility too. I've been called incompetent, lazy, stupid and a systemd-fanboy and various other things. By people who didn't read past the…
GNU make insanity: finding the value of the -j parameter
The other day at work a colleague posed the seemingly innocent question "Can I find out the value of the GNU make -j parameter inside a Ma...
Research links creativity and inability to filter irrelevant sensory information
Research links creativity with inability to filter irrelevant sensory information
Practicing Programming (2005)
Practicing Programming Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants™ Back in October I wrote an essay in which I compared programming to other professions. In it, I made the unsubstantiated claim that programming is unusual, in that most programmers don't practice their craft -- at least, not in any disciplined
Building Better Node.js Applications with RethinkDB
We've been using RethinkDB in production for almost a year. RethinkDB is an open-source database designed to make it dramatically easier to build and scale real-time apps. Last week, the 2.0 release of RethinkDB landed and it was given a shiny "Production Ready" badge. After five years of development, RethinkDB is…
The convergence of compilers, build systems and package managers
Abstract. The traditional abstraction barriers between compiler, build system and package manager are increasingly ill-suited for IDEs, parallel build systems, and modern source code organization. Recent compilers like go and rustc are equipped with a fully-fledged build systems; semantic build systems like Bazel and…
Software has its own Gresham's Law
I recently found myself reading a few of Gregor Hohpe's blog posts and came across Design Patterns: More Than Meets The Eye . In it, Hohpe repeats a message that needs to be repeated every so often even now, twenty years after the publication of the GoF book: software patterns are fundamentally about human…
Medication errors found in half of surgeries
The first study to measure the incidence of medication errors and adverse drug events during the perioperative period has found that some sort of mistake or adverse event occurred in every second operation and in 5 percent of observed drug administrations, according to information gathered from 275 operations at…
Elite scientists are more likely to have a hobby in the arts and crafts
Highly-accomplished scientists are more likely to have an artsy hobby than the average scientist. And Nobel prize winners are even more likely.
Physics in Metal Music
Metal bands aren't afraid to tackle serious topics in their lyrics. Here, we look at metal songs that deal with concepts in theoretical physics and cosmology.
Let’s encrypt automation on Debian
NOTE: This article is old, this hack is no longer necessary, as Debian includes dehydrated that makes all the work. Free SSL certificates for everyone! the https://letsencrypt.org/ initiative backed by Akamai, Cisco, Mozilla and EFF, is going to offer free certificates. On this post I am going to explain how I have…
Wrapper Types in Rust: Choosing Your Guarantees
This post is now a part of the official rust book In my previous post I talked a bit about why the RWlock pattern is important for accessing data, …