Best of 2020

‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang

Australian Strategic Policy Institute2020255 points106 commentscited by 11Society, Policy & Culture details

‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang. What’s the problem? The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs…

What the heck happened with .org?

Mozilla Blog2020255 points101 commentsSociety, Policy & Culture details

If you are following the tech news, you might have seen the announcement that ICANN withheld consent for the change of control of the Public Interest Regis

Build versus Buy

Will Larson2020255 points92 commentsTech Industry & Business details

A few years ago I was working on a contract negotiation with Splunk, and we kept running into what felt like a pretty unreasonable pricing structure. They wanted some number of millions of dollars for a three year license, which felt like a high price to pay for roughly thirty-two ascii characters in a particular…

What happens when you update your DNS

Julia Evans2020255 points85 commentsNetworking & Internet details

What happens when you update your DNS?

Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

This post has been a long time in coming. I stopped reading HN over a month ago, so I’ve had some time to cool off. I’ve been struggling to put my thoughts into words, and so this pos…

Apple Fitness+

Apple Newsroom2020254 points348 commentsTech Industry & Business details

Apple today unveiled Fitness+, the first fitness experience built for Apple Watch, arriving later this year.

Amnesty International India Halts Its Work in India Due to Government Reprisal

Most book clubs are doing it wrong (2017)

James Somers2020254 points151 commentsLife, Learning & Writing details

The standard way to run a book club is to have everybody finish the book before meeting to talk about it. You have one meeting per book. The discussion goes on for one or two hours before it runs out of gas, and then the group picks the next book, and you agree to meet in another month or six weeks.

The Hard Part of Learning a Language

Hillel Wayne2020254 points136 commentsLife, Learning & Writing details

I want to do $THING. Normally I do my hacking in Python, which is okay but has lots of frustrations. My friends tell me $LANGUAGE is better for doing $THING. After going through the online tutorial, I can see why. Maybe I’ll try $LANGUAGE for this project! Just a few things I need to figure out first: How do I install…

Telegram, Apple, Belarus, and Conflating ‘Irrelevance’ with ‘Inconvenience’

John Gruber2020254 points136 commentsTech Industry & Business details

I’ve said it before and will adamantly say it again: it is *prima facie* wrong that one of the rules of the App Store is that an app is not allowed to explain the rules of the App Store.

Netflix's Metaflow: Reproducible machine learning pipelines

Cortex Blog2020254 points101 commentsAI & Machine Learning details

A complete guide to building end-to-end machine learning pipelines, from training to deployment, with Metaflow and Cortex

Demoscene, the secret behind Finnish game industry

Jani Penttinen2020254 points63 commentsGames & Graphics details

This is my story as a game developer. It is also a story of how the Finnish game industry came to be.

The FBI Is Breaking into Encrypted Devices – We’re Suing

ACLU2020254 points62 commentsSecurity & Privacy details

We can't let the FBI keep the public in the dark about its ability to gain access to information stored on our personal mobile devices.

Must ride mule to and from work location

Deep South Ventures2020254 points55 commentsStartups details

“David, this one, tell me about it …” He’d let me look at his domain name portfolio. Not names he owned and parked, but domains he owned & developed. This was another early project of his – a job board solely focused on the ranching industry. All aspects – cattle, outfitters, dude/guest, hunting, and even ... Read more

The cost to train an AI system is improving at 50x the pace of Moore’s Law

Top games from the JS13K 2020 competition

The GitHub Blog2020254 points34 commentsGames & Graphics details

The ninth annual js13kGames competition wrapped up last weekend with over 220 games submitted. All created in a month and in less than 13kB of JavaScript. For anyone not in…

Always Review Your Dependencies, AGPL Edition

Andrew Ayer2020253 points228 commentsOpen Source details

Before adding a dependency to one of my software projects, I do some basic vetting of the dependency. Among the things I check are:

Is Hacker News Bullshit?

Excavations2020253 points154 commentscited by 3Society, Policy & Culture details

The future of online media

PinePhone – KDE Community edition

KDE2020253 points152 commentsOpen Source details

Analyzing the compromised DLL file that started the Solorigate attack

Microsoft2020253 points143 commentsSecurity & Privacy details

We, along with the security industry and our partners, continue to investigate the extent of the Solorigate attack. While investigations are underway, we want to provide the defender community with intel to understand the scope and impact, remediation guidance, and detections and protections we have built as a result.

Flowcharts of programming language constructs

Progsbase Blog2020253 points85 commentsSoftware Engineering details

This article contains the flow-charts of many common programming language constructs that involve distinct combinations of gotos. The goto (or jump) is a basic building block of control flow, therefore most control flow constructs can be modelled using it.

The Road to the JIT

Erlang/OTP Blog2020253 points54 commentsProgramming Languages details

The official home of the Erlang Programming Language

Crafting Interpreters: Superclasses

Bob Nystrom2020253 points46 commentsProgramming Languages details

You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.

How I helped fix Canadaʼs Covid Alert app

Sean Coates2020253 points45 commentsSoftware Engineering details

On July 31st , Canada’s COVID Alert app was made available for general use, though it does not have support for actually reporting a diagnosis in most provinces, yet.

Bevy 0.2

Bevy2020253 points43 commentsGames & Graphics details

A month after the initial Bevy release, and thanks to 87 contributors, 174 pull requests, and our generous sponsors, I'm happy to announce the Bevy 0.…

Flutter and Dart, or how to quickly build a mobile app without losing your hair

Altkom Software Blog2020252 points174 commentsSoftware Engineering details

Oprogramowanie dla banków, ubezpieczycieli i firm leasingowych: procesy kredytowe, obsługa polis, bankowość mobilna i dane. 20+ lat, 500+ projektów.

The Heart of RISC-V Development Is Unmatched

SiFive Blog2020252 points171 commentsHardware & Electronics details

Today, SiFive introduces the new HiFive platform for professional RISC-V developers, the HiFive Unmatched! The HiFive Unmatched enables developers to create the RISC-V-based software they need for RISC-V platforms. From real-time operating systems to custom Linux distributions, and the compilers, libraries, and…

The Hertz Story Isn’t What You Think

A 60 GHz phased array for $10

In 2018, I gave an talk at Hackaday Supercon that was basically Phased Arrays 101. You can watch it at the bottom of this post.

I sold my side-project for $30k

It started out as a Medium post, turned into a software product, and eventually got acquired for…