Best of 2017

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2017. 2,470 posts.

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1113

Memories of Kurt Gödel

[This memoir essay appeared in the magazine Science 82 in April 1982, and in my 1982 book Infinity and the Mind. It’s based on the “Conversations With Godel” documented in my previous post. Some of the photos are from a recent trip through the West, others from the 1970s.] [This is a cropped version of

1114

Matrices from a geometric perspective

Graphics is all about geometry. In particular, there are points that have a certain color, and the pattern of colors gives you a certain picture. You can change the way the points are distributed by applying certain transformations like translation (movement), rotation and scaling. While most people familiar with the…

1134

Compiler Optimizations are Awesome

Another reason for optimizing compilers: It allows us to write simple and obvious code expecting that the compiler will do the optimization. This both reduces the initial defect count and makes the code more maintainable in the long-run. Note that these are also often the simplest optimizations (e.g. a calculation…