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Against software development
Just so, generic code is replaced by its concrete instances, which are faster and easier to comprehend (at first).
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Doing Windows, Part 5: A Second Try
The beginning of serious work on the operating system that would come to be known as OS/2 left Microsoft’s team of Windows developers on decidedly uncertain ground. As OS/2 ramped up, Windows ramped down in proportion, until by the middle of 1986 Tandy Trower had just a few programmers remaining on his team. What had…
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Millitext – A subpixel text encoding font
Pixels of LCD monitors are usually composed of three stripes of the colors red, green, and blue. Tech enthusiast Matt Sarnoff used this property to his advantage when inventing [a subpixel text encoding font](http://www.msarnoff.org/millitext/). Its glyphs are comprised of colored strips only one pixel wide. But when…
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An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)
Customer service has improved little in the last fourty years. This story demonstrates the high standards that once existed in one of our leading Department Stores.
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Writing a Game Boy emulator
I've always wanted to write an emulator from scratch, but I've held off for a long time because it's probably the most advanced programming project I've ever wanted to do.
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DNSFS – Store files in others' DNS resolver caches
A while ago I did a blog post about how long DNS resolvers hold results in cache for, using RIPE Atlas probes testing against their default resolvers (in a lot of cases, the DNS cache on their modem/router).
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Demand for Ruby on Rails is Still Huge
TL;DR Looking at job postings, Rails is more popular than Django, Laravel or Express. By a lot. If you specifically measure startup cities…
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Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery
Since 2014 this blog has extensively covered the wireless networks built by high-frequency trading (HFT) firms or network providers to reduce latencies between the different exchanges around the wo…
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When FFI Function Calls Beat Native C
Over on GitHub, David Yu has an interesting performance benchmark for function calls of various Foreign Function Interfaces ( FFI ):
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Tech’s Two Philosophies
Google and Facebook represent one philosophy, and Microsoft and Apple represent another; tech needs both, but ultimately platforms are more important than aggregators.
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Qualcomm, National Security, and Patents
The Trump administration blocked Broadcom’s acquisition of Qualcomm, and I think it was the right move. Understanding why means understanding Qualcomm and Broadcom’s plan for the compan…
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How to send local files to Chromecast with Python
How to stream local files using Python and 11 lines of code.
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Compiler basics: Lisp to Assembly
Writing a lisp compiler from scratch in JavaScript: 1. lisp to assembly
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The Practice is not the Performance: Why project-based learning fails
Why project-based learning fails to build programming skill, and what works instead: break skills into parts and drill them with fast feedback.
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Using USB-VGA dongles as SDR transmitter
Yesterday, during OsmoDevCon 2018, Steve Markgraf released osmo-fl2k, a new Osmocom member project which enables the use of FL2000 USB-VGA adapters as ultra-low-cost SDR transmitters. How does it wor
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Impatience: The Pitfall of Every Ambitious Person
Big splashes don’t happen. Overnight success doesn’t exist. We have to remind ourselves of that whenever we show impatience.
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What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009)
For most Americans, the only image they have of passenger rail systems, and subways in particular, are Amtrak, the New York Metro, the San Francisco BART, and maybe some of that sorry crap in Chicago.
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Evolving Floorplans
Evolving Floorplans - 2017.
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Lost in Math
Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book Lost in Math should be starting to appear in bookstores around now. It’s very good and you should get a copy. I hope that the book will receive a lot of a…
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Xerox Alto zero-day: cracking disk password protection on a 45 year old system
We've been archiving a bunch of old Xerox Alto disk packs from the 1970s. A few of them turned out to be password-protected, so I needed ...
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Google's CardDAV server isn't standards compliant (2014)
For fruux , we’ve decided to implement syncing with Google Contacts some time ago, allowing people to do bi-directional sync between their fruux and Google Contacts address book.
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My Parents Give Me $28k a Year
Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts. “What do you mean? Of course.” “Really?” “If that’s what they w…