I like slim and stupid servers, where each endpoint wraps a very dumb DB query. Dumb queries are fast. Fast queries make websites smooth and snappy. Keep those click/render loops sacred. Sweep complexity under a task table.
Published: 17-03-2025 20:33 | Author: Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article
The conventional wisdom is that hashing more entropy sources can't hurt: if H is any modern cryptographic hash function then H(x,y,z) is at least as good a random number as H(x,y), no matter how awful z is. So we pile one source on top of another, hashing them all together and hoping that at least one of them is good.
Designing new map styles for FlightAware
Designing a cheap two-port vector network analyzer with good measurement accuracy.
If you’re a developer rocking an Apple Silicon Mac and writing in Zig, congratulations - you’ve chosen the scenic route through the desert of profiling tools. It’s just you, your code, and a tumbleweed named Apple Instruments. But don’t worry - we’ll try to find some oases. Okay, it’s not that bad, but we’re far away…
A story of writing Clojure’s println alternative that works inside threading-first/last macros
This is a brief continuation of a previous post ( Repo ), which introduced such visualization for collatz sequences based on Langton’s Ant .
Years ago I spent a lot of time reviewing coding challenges. The challenge itself was very straightforward — building a CLI tool that hit an API and allowed the…
A perspective on continual learning, motivating our paper on sparse memory finetuning
This post is about the reason I will probably never try to warn any organisation in Belgium about any vulnerability again. Recently I have been dealing with an attempt at coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) with an organisation in Belgium. This post is not about that, because I’m not allowed to write about it…
In some ways, that's because C is a lower-level language, closer to assembly; it just gives you what the underlying machine gives you.
Transit time of 6,600 years; that long ago, around 4,600 BCE, the state of human civilization was devoid of technology. Hard to imagine what would happen back home on Earth during a journey of that length.
If you've ever tried to write a computer program, you'll know the dread of a syntax error. An errant space and your code won't compile. Miss a semi-colon and the world collapses. Don't close your brackets and watch how the computer recoils in distress. The modern web isn't like that. You can make your HTML as…
I wrote about the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs five years ago during the early days of this blog. The conquistadors have since remained a fascination of mine, but I haven’t had a chance to go bac…
The history of technology is full of innovators who got their start creating with their hands. Steve Jobs cites a calligraphy class at Reed
I recently had an engaging conversation with Alex ( @veqq ) from the Lobsters community about computing, mathematics and a range of related topics. Our conversation was later published on the community website as Lobsters Interview with Susam .
I have gotten a significant amount of response on the Quake 2 extension mechanism. I do read everything that comes my way (I can't respond to all of it, though), and I have learned a few things from the mail.
Friendly Attributes pattern enables writing human-friendly attributes with compact and flexible syntax.
What if, rather than banning advertising outright, we taxed it instead?
Windows 7 ESU extended support for all Windows 7 users out there!
The what is connected to the when.
Looking at old applications, we always wonder who in their right mind thought of building them so badly. But every repository has its story and every effort has noble origins. I encountered such an ap
If I could offer you a single piece of career advice, it’s this: avoid negativity echo chambers.
Solving LinkedIn Queens in the LogicT monad
The barn swallow’s flight, the mocking bird’s song, the cardinal’s color, and the hummingbird’s character.
Po-Shen Loh explains why Euler's number e is natural using only precalculus: one exponential curve has tangent slope 1 at the y-axis, which leads to the compound interest limit.
