Best of 2018

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2018. 248 posts.

Science & Space
9

Why does a spray bottle work?

Exploring a simple machine I took apart a simple spray bottle to see how it kept fluid flowing only in one direction from the reservoir to the nozzle. It does so with simple check valves made of two pieces of plastic, a spring, and a small sphere. It’s a simple way to solve a tricky problem. A simple spray bottle One…

27

Hennessy and Patterson win Turing Award

Hennessy and Patterson pioneered a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures that has had enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. Their reduced instruction set computer (RISC) approach has led to lasting and repeatable principles that generations of architects…