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24-core CPU and I can’t type an email – part two
In my last post I promised to give more details about some rabbit holes that I went down during the investigation, including page tables, locks, WMI, and a vmmap bug. Those details are here, along …
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How I slashed a SQL query's runtime with two Unix commands
I was trying to run a simple join query on MariaDB (MySQL) and its performance was horrendous. Here’s how I cut down the query’s run time from over 380 hours to under 12 hours by executing part of it with two simple Unix commands.
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The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)
25 recent entries The horn of the Robert Smalls A difficulty in race-switching the Dukes of Hazzard On futile explanations Richard Blair Race-switching The Dukes of Hazzard Greek plural Erbaut Improved English-language month names I fix a thirty-year-old mistake Minced oaths? On the monobosom Partly about pie More…
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Autopsy of a deep learning paper
Introduction I read a lot of deep learning papers, typically a few/week. I've read probably several thousands of papers. My general problem with papers in machine learning or deep learning is that often they sit
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What Is Systems Programming, Really?
I have a gripe with the phrase
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Self-Crashing Cars
This article is geared towards people with a STEM background. For something shorter try this article in The Weekly Standard. Também disponível em português aqui . 💃🏽
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“It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission”
Grace Hopper? Cardinal Barberini? Earl of Peterborough? David Hernandez? Helen Pajama? St. Benedict? Anonymous?
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Why Love Generative Art?
Over the last 50 years, our world has turned digital at breakneck speed. No art form has captured this transitional time period - our time period - better than generative art. Generative art takes full advantage of everything that computing has to offer, producing elegant and compelling artworks tha
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How to become a dramatically better programmer
In our first week, we were told that the RC faculty wanted to do one thing above else – to remove any obstacles in the way of us becoming dramatically better programmers .
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Mathematics I Use (2012)
An explanation of the forms of mathematics I use on a daily basis as a working software engineer.
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The hacker's guide to uncertainty estimates
I made a New Year's resolution: every plot I make during 2018 will contain uncertainty estimates. Nine months in and I have learned a lot, so I put together a summary of some of the most useful methods.
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‘Jackpotting’ Attacks Hit U.S. ATMs
ATM “ jackpotting ” — a sophisticated crime in which thieves install malicious software and/or hardware at ATMs that forces the machines to spit out huge volumes of cash on demand — has long been a threat for banks in Europe and Asia, yet these attacks somehow have eluded U.S. ATM operators. But all that changed this…
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Computer science as a lost art (2015)
An old friend of mine asked me this in email last night...
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Ten Years' Worth of Learning About Pricing
Discover proven SaaS pricing frameworks from 10 years of startup investing. Learn 3 key strategies and 4 components to optimize your revenue model.
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Compiler bug? Linker bug? Windows Kernel bug
See the end of the post for an October 2018 bug fix update, or read the whole story: Flaky failures are the worst. In this particular investigation, which spanned twenty months, we suspected hardwa…
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Tensorflow 2.0: models migration and new design
Tensorflow 2.0 will be a major milestone for the most popular machine learning framework: lots of changes are coming, and all with the aim of making ML accessible to everyone. These changes, however, require for the old users to completely re-learn how to use the framework: this article describes all the (known)…
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Google bug bounty for security exploit that influences search results
Short version: For the $12 cost of a domain, I was able to rank in Google search results against Amazon, Walmart etc. for high value money terms in the US. The…
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Deep reinforcement learning doesn't work yet
June 24, 2018 note: If you want to cite an example from the post, please cite the paper which that example came from. If you want to cite the post as a whole, you can use the following BibTeX:
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A Virtual Machine
Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.
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So You Want to Compete with Steam
I get a lot of pitches for "Steam competitors." 99% of them are doomed to failure, but the vast majority are doomed before they even start.
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XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available
-> Updated June 22, 2018 – Three 16GB/FHD configs added to the line up in the US -> Updated Jan 26, 2018 – Added list of countries that offer the XPS 13 developer edition offline.…
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A collection of things that are Turing-complete by accident (2013)
A list of things that were not supposed to be Turing-complete, but are.
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Why Isn't Debugging Treated as a First-Class Activity?
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.