Best of 2024

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2024. 198 posts.

Networking & Internet
7

It's always TCP_NODELAY

The first thing I check when debugging latency issues in distributed systems is whether TCP_NODELAY is enabled. And it’s not just me. Every distributed system builder I know has lost hours to latency issues quickly fixed by enabling this simple socket option, suggesting that the default behavior is wrong, and perhaps…

10

Is Tor still safe to use?

This blog post is a response to an investigative news report about a large-scale law-enforcement attack that managed to de-anonymize a user of an old version of the long-retired app Ricochet. This blog post aims to provide insight into what we know so far. Nothing that the Tor Project has learned about this incident…

23

The New Internet

Tailscale's CEO, Avery Pennarun, explores the future of the internet, discussing the evolution of networking, the issues with today's complex systems, and how Tailscale is simplifying connectivity for developers with a new, more efficient approach. Discover the vision for a New Internet.

30

HTTP: , FTP:, and Dict:?

I went for a spelunk through an ancient codebase a few weeks ago which contained a curious regex that I just couldn't grok. Copied to 📋⧉ {<((https?|ftp|dict|tel):[^\'">\s]+)>}i I'm familiar with HTTP and FTP. I worked in the mobile industry, so knew that tel:+44... could be used to launch a dialer. But DICT?!?!?! It…