Noghartt's garden | Bookmarks

Essentials: Understand & Improve Memory Using Science-Based Tools

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:16:47 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how memories are formed and how key neurochemicals, such as adrenaline, can be leveraged to enhance memory formation. I also share science-based protocols to enhance learning, strengthen memory recall and reduce the number of repetitions needed to retain new information. In addition, I discuss how exercise supports cognitive function and memory and explore unique memory phenomena such as déjà vu. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Memory (00:00:21) Sensory Stimuli & Memory Bias (00:01:54) Associations & Memory; Tool: Repetition (00:05:00) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:06:18) Stress, Adrenaline & Strengthening Memories (00:11:10) Caffeine & Stimulants, Tool: Timing to Enhance Learning & Memory (00:14:39) Tool: Naps & Sleep for Learning & Memory (00:16:56) Sponsor: AG1 (00:18:19) Increase Adrenaline to Enhance Learning & Memory, Chronic Stress (00:21:56) Adrenaline Boosts Memory: Centuries-Old Practice (00:24:03) Tool: Cardiovascular Exercise & Brain Health, Neurogenesis (00:26:11) Exercise, Osteocalcin, Hippocampus & Memory (00:29:37) Sponsor: LMNT (00:31:09) Tool: Photographs, Mental Snapshots & Improved Memory (00:34:08) Déjà Vu (00:36:22) Tool: Brief Meditation Practice to Enhance Memory (00:38:38) Recap Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plain Text Accounting & Financial Reporting

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:17:45 GMT

The author switched from spreadsheets to a plain text ledger using Beancount for better accounting and reporting. They track accounts for assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and equity, with automated scripts to import data and generate reports. This system helps create accurate monthly financial statements and keeps the books balanced.

Ten Enduring Lessons from Adam Smith

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:30:09 GMT

Adam Smith taught that people acting in their own interest can help society through the "invisible hand" of the market. He warned against trying to control society like a game, because people have their own goals and knowledge. Smith believed that peace, fair laws, and low taxes are the key to economic growth and prosperity.

Simplify, Then Add Lightness

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:30:05 GMT

Fast hardware development comes from simplifying designs and moving complexity into software. Good prototypes focus on testing key questions quickly, not building perfect products. Teams work best when design, build, and testing happen closely together and use AI to speed up learning.

S3 Files and the changing face of S3

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:30:03 GMT

Amazon has launched S3 Files, a new feature that lets users access S3 data as a network file system. This solves the problem of needing to copy data between S3 and local filesystems, making data easier to work with. S3 is evolving from just object storage to support files, tables, and vectors for more flexible data use.

Good Taste the Only Real Moat Left

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:30:00 GMT

AI makes good first drafts easy, so the real skill now is strong human judgment. Taste means spotting what is generic and understanding real context, not just picking polished outputs. The best work comes from combining AI speed with human ownership, trade-offs, and building beyond the average.

The Git Commands I Run Before Reading Any Code

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:29:57 GMT

Before reading any code, the author runs git commands to understand the project's history, contributors, and problem areas. They focus on files with many changes and bugs to find risky code. This quick analysis helps decide where to look first and saves time.

Slightly safer vibecoding by adopting old hacker habits

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:28:51 GMT

The author develops code on a rented server using SSH and tmux to reduce supply-chain attack risks. They separate the main repository from the development one and review pull requests carefully to protect secrets. This old hacker method helps keep code safe and supports long-running work, especially when traveling.

I Rebuilt Traceroute in Rust and It Was Simpler Than I Expected

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:28:48 GMT

The author rebuilt the network tool traceroute using the Rust programming language and found it simpler than expected. Traceroute works by sending packets with increasing TTL values that expire at each hop, causing routers to send back ICMP messages revealing their addresses. The article explains this process and shows a basic Rust implementation that listens for these ICMP replies to map the path to a target IP.

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:28:28 GMT

The Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures by NIST is a free online resource with definitions of common algorithms, data structures, and related problems. It started in 1998 and includes links to implementations and further information. The site focuses on general algorithms and does not cover specialized fields like AI or operating systems.

Stacked log lines considered harmful

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:28:05 GMT

Logging the same error in every layer causes noisy, duplicated log lines that waste resources. Instead, errors should be wrapped and returned up the call chain, with logging done once at the top layer alongside collected context fields. This approach creates a single, rich log line per request, improving clarity and efficiency.

Decentralized Infrastructure for (Neuro)science

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:54 GMT

Science struggles because digital tools are controlled by big companies and are hard to use. Peer-to-peer systems can help researchers share and manage data without central control. To improve science, we need easy tools that let researchers organize, share, and publish their work securely and openly.

Clinical trial shows gene editing works for β-Thalassaemia, too

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:50 GMT

Scientists developed a safer and more precise gene editing method to treat β-Thalassaemia by reactivating a fetal hemoglobin gene. In a small clinical trial, patients showed improved hemoglobin levels and did not need transfusions for over six months. This work shows gene editing is becoming a practical way to treat blood diseases despite high costs.

Helium Is Hard to Replace

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:41 GMT

Helium is a rare gas found underground and used in many industries because it has unique properties. It is hard to replace or recycle, so demand is rising, especially in semiconductors and aerospace. Finding ways to save and reuse helium is very important for the future.

20 Years on AWS and Never Not My Job

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:38 GMT

The author has worked closely with AWS for 20 years, focusing on security and FreeBSD support. They helped improve FreeBSD on EC2 and raised important security concerns early on. Over time, they took on key roles in FreeBSD release engineering but need support to continue their work effectively.

ELF & Dynamic Linking

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:35 GMT

The ELF format is a special file structure that tells the operating system how to run a program. When a program starts, the system loads its segments into memory and may use an interpreter to handle dynamic linking. This process changes the program from a simple file into a live process ready to run.

Investigating Split Locks on x86-64

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:22 GMT

Split locks happen when atomic operations cross cache lines, causing slow bus locks that hurt CPU performance. Newer Intel and AMD CPUs detect split locks to reduce their negative effects, but split locks still cause high latency and slow memory access. Linux tries to mitigate split locks by adding delays, making them less disruptive to other programs.

The Problem That Built an Industry

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:16 GMT

Airline booking systems run on very old technology designed in the 1960s that still handles millions of transactions quickly and reliably. This technology, called TPF, is highly specialized and hard to replace despite its age. The complex booking process involves many systems working together, showing that the best tool for a job can last for decades.

On getting robbed

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:14 GMT

The author’s house was robbed and his computer was tracked to a dangerous part of San Francisco. The police were unhelpful, so he confronted a man carrying his stolen items and got them back. Although tired and frustrated, he learned to be more careful about security.

Social media is a demonic force in the world

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:11 GMT

Social media spreads violent and disturbing content that harms our humanity. It isolates us, replacing real relationships with endless, shallow distractions. This digital world can make us lose our compassion and face the darker parts of ourselves.

The crisis of central banking is structural

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:08 GMT

Central banks enjoyed independence during years of low inflation and strong growth, but this period has ended. Aging populations and rising government debt limit central banks' ability to control inflation through interest rates. Without major reforms, central banks will face growing pressure from governments, reducing their independence and effectiveness.

Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:27:05 GMT

ATMs made bank branches cheaper and increased the number of tellers by creating new tasks for them. However, smartphones like the iPhone enabled mobile banking, which greatly reduced the need for physical tellers. This shift changed how banking works and led to a real decline in bank teller jobs.

A lot of population numbers are fake

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:26:57 GMT

Many countries, especially poorer ones like Papua New Guinea and Nigeria, have unreliable population counts because their censuses are old or flawed. This means we often do not know the true number of people living in these places. However, the total world population is likely close to official estimates despite these local inaccuracies.

Lean proved this program was correct; then I found a bug. 13 Apr, 2026 lean formal_verification security fuzzing

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:26:36 GMT

A formally verified Lean implementation of zlib showed no bugs in its code after 105 million fuzzing tests, proving the power of verification. However, two serious bugs were found: a heap buffer overflow in the Lean runtime and a denial-of-service in unverified archive parsing code. This shows that verification is strong but depends on trusting the underlying runtime and covering all code parts.

It's OK to compare floating-points for equality

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:23:50 GMT

It is often better to compare floating-point numbers directly rather than using arbitrary epsilon values. Floating-point math follows strict rules and predictable behavior, so epsilon comparisons can cause more problems. Instead, rewriting code or understanding floating-point properties usually leads to clearer and more reliable results.

CWE-122: Heap-based Buffer Overflow

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:23:43 GMT

Heap-based buffer overflow happens when a program writes more data to a heap buffer than it can hold, causing crashes or security breaches. Attackers can exploit this flaw to run malicious code or disrupt the program’s operation. Techniques like Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and runtime checks help prevent these vulnerabilities.

What is a Heap Overflow? How It Works & Examples

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:23:39 GMT

A heap overflow happens when too much data is written to a memory area called the heap, causing errors or security problems. Attackers use heap overflows to run harmful code or crash programs by corrupting important data. To prevent this, programmers use security tools, update software, and carefully check their code.

Good sleep, good learning, good life

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:47:51 GMT

Good sleep is crucial for learning and creative achievements. Understanding the role of sleep can help solve sleep phase disorders and improve sleep quality. Sleep is not just about rest; it allows the brain to integrate new knowledge and form new associations. Lifestyle and circadian rhythms play a significant role in sleep patterns, and disrupting these patterns can affect the quality of sleep. Polyphasic sleep schedules, which involve multiple short naps instead of one long sleep period, may not be sustainable and can lead to sleep deprivation. Maximizing the brain's effect of sleep is more important than minimizing sleep time.

Notion’s Token Town: 5 Rebuilds, 100+ Tools, MCP vs CLIs and the Software Factory Future — Simon Last & Sarah Sachs of Notion

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:34:26 GMT

Notion uses coding agents that can build and fix their own software to create many tools. They focus on keeping prompts short and tools powerful, even if it makes the system less simple. Their goal is to build advanced, capable agents rather than easy-to-use ones for everyone.

How Women Can Improve Their Fertility & Hormone Health | Dr. Natalie Crawford

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:19:09 GMT

Dr. Natalie Crawford, MD, is a double board-certified OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinologist. We discuss how to improve hormone health at any age and the importance of fertility markers not just for pregnancy, but as a powerful window into overall health, vitality and longevity. We discuss hormone replacement therapy, egg freezing, IVF, and what biomarkers like AMH really indicate. Plus, how anti-inflammatory diets and specific supplements can be beneficial and the impact of microplastics and certain fragrances on hormones. We also discuss lesser-known factors that deplete male and female fertility, vitality and health. This conversation highlights how better understanding of hormones and your reproductive markers can empower better informed choices at every stage of life. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Natalie Crawford (00:02:26) Fertility as a Health Marker, Infertility (00:05:34) Perimenopause, Menopause, Hormone Replacement Theory (00:11:01) Sponsors: David & BetterHelp (00:13:35) Hormone Therapy, Extending Ovarian Lifespan (00:19:11) Plastics, Toxins & Fertility (00:22:02) Does Prior Pregnancy Make Conception Easier?, Secondary Infertility (00:29:02) Testing Sperm; Pregnancy Loss & Conceiving Again, Fertility Testing (00:38:17) Sponsor: AG1 (00:39:40) Menstrual Cycle, Egg Number & Quality, AMH Test (00:48:17) Tool: AMH Test; Fertility Education & Patient Choices (00:53:13) Tool: Tracking Ovulation; Ovulation Disorders (00:55:11) AMH Test Cost; Genetic Testing & Patient Choice (01:01:13) Does Egg Freezing Cause Early Menopause?, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) (01:05:29) Egg Freezing, IVF, Ethical Concerns; Embryo Banking (01:15:21) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (01:16:39) Egg Freez...

Why poor countries stopped catching up

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:33:13 GMT

Poor countries were growing faster than rich ones from 1995 to 2015, mainly due to the Chinese commodities boom. After that, growth in poor countries slowed sharply, especially in Africa and Latin America. This slowdown ended the period of poor countries catching up with rich countries.

Essentials: The Biology of Aggression, Mating & Arousal | Dr. David Anderson

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:02:35 GMT

Dr. David Anderson explains how brain circuits control emotions like fear and aggression. Hormones also affect these feelings and behaviors. Understanding this can help improve mental health treatments.

DHH’s new way of writing code

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:18:50 GMT

David Heinemeier Hansson now uses AI agents first to build software faster and explore new ideas. He finds AI helps senior engineers most, while designers play a big role in product creation. This new AI approach changes how software is made and who makes it.

Extreme Harness Engineering: 1M LOC, 1B toks/day, 0% human code, 0% human review — Ryan Lopopolo, OpenAI Frontier & Symphony

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:16:44 GMT

We shed light on OpenAI's first Dark Factory for the first time.

Endian wars and anti-portability: this again?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:06:09 GMT

The author argues that supporting software on many computer architectures, old or new, is important and benefits the community. Big and little endian systems both have value and help catch different kinds of bugs. Software maintainers should welcome ports to new or old architectures because it improves software quality and helps users.

Best Paper Awards in Computer Science

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:06:07 GMT

This is a collection of best paper awards from conferences in each computer science subfield, starting from 1996.

Building a Dry-Run Mode for the OpenTelemetry Collector

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:49 GMT

Signal Studio is a tool that helps teams safely test changes to OpenTelemetry Collector pipelines without risking live data. It analyzes configurations, uses live metrics, and samples telemetry to predict filter effects before applying them. This approach reduces costs and noise while keeping production systems safe.

AI agents keep failing. The fix is 40 years old.

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:42 GMT

AI agents fail because most code is complex and full of hidden state that agents cannot see. Writing simple, pure functions with clear inputs and outputs, a method called SUPER, helps agents work reliably. Combining this with a structured process called SPIRALS prevents mistakes and makes AI coding safer and faster.

A tail-call interpreter in (nightly) Rust

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:39 GMT

The author created a tail-call interpreter in Rust using the new nightly feature "become" to optimize function calls without adding to the stack. This approach lets the CPU state stay in registers and makes opcode dispatch faster, similar to hand-written assembly but easier to maintain. Benchmarks show this Rust implementation outperforms even the author's hand-coded assembly on an M1 MacBook.

If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:36 GMT

Writing code faster does not make software delivery faster if other steps are slow. The real problem is delays in review, testing, and deployment, plus unclear requirements. To improve, fix the slowest step and focus on getting features into users' hands quickly.

Shooting Down Ideas Is Not a Skill

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:31 GMT

Ideas need time and care to grow, not quick judgments that stop them early. Finding problems is easy, but offering solutions is what truly helps. Focus first on the potential good, then carefully check risks before deciding.

Many Great Inventions Weren’t Made by “Serendipity”

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:21 GMT

Many great inventions, like optogenetics, were not accidents but results of careful planning and exploration. Inventors made lists of possible solutions and tested ideas systematically to find the best one. This approach, called "engineered serendipity," can help us create new technologies and should be taught more widely.

Thoughts on slowing the fuck down

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:17 GMT

Using AI agents to write lots of code fast often creates messy, buggy software that's hard to maintain. These agents work best on small, well-defined tasks where humans check their work carefully. To build good software, we should slow down, stay involved, and focus on quality over quantity.

Neural network training makes beautiful fractals

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:14 GMT

This blog is intended to be a place to share ideas and results that are too weird, incomplete, or off-topic to turn into an academic paper, but that I think may be important. Let me know what you think! Contact links to the left.

The Second-System Pit of Failure

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:05:12 GMT

The old LMS was a limited, single-customer system built on outdated technology that was hard to update. The new LMS was designed as a simple, flexible system using abstractions to support old and new features without added complexity. This approach helped create a stable, scalable product while avoiding the common problems of second-system overreach.

Absurd In Production

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:56 GMT

Absurd is a durable task execution system built entirely inside Postgres that simplifies workflow management without extra services. It has proven reliable and easy to use in production, with features like task checkpoints, retries, and a helpful CLI tool. While minimal and effective, it still lacks built-in scheduling, push support, and partitioning, which are areas for future improvement.

Understanding LLMs from Scratch Using Middle School Math

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:10 GMT

In this article, we talk about how LLMs work, from scratch — assuming only that you know how to add and multiply two numbers. The article…

Escape Routes

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:07 GMT

Good API design is important and needs careful thought to make code safe and clear. Using a single, open escape function like ioctl() without type checking is risky and lazy. Always create specific, well-defined APIs to avoid problems and protect your software.

Why Lean?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:05 GMT

Lean is a powerful tool that combines programming, proving, and automation in one system. It grows quickly, stays reliable with a small trusted core, and adapts based on user needs. However, it breaks old code to improve and focuses on usefulness over simplicity.

Reactivity reading

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:02 GMT

Self-adjusting computation is a framework for incremental computation, where the goal is to efficiently recompute a program's output across changes to its input by reusing unchanged intermediate results.

Why Nobody Can Verify What Booted Your Server

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:54 GMT

Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) measure what boots your server, but no public database exists to verify these measurements at scale. Companies rely on event logs and build their own reference data because firmware details are often proprietary or missing. To fix this, vendors need to publish signed reference values and create shared tools so attestation can work reliably for everyone.

Making a Type Checker/LSP for Nix

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:50 GMT

Tix is a fast type checker and language server for Nix that provides type errors, autocomplete, and jump-to-definition features. It uses advanced type inference with union and negation types and supports stub files to type large Nixpkgs and modules. Tix aims to improve Nix coding by combining strong typing with good performance and usability.

Ideas for math tools

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:45 GMT

Ideas for math tools Mathematicians have some great software available. Even domain-specific systems like Macaulay2, a programming language for commutative...

Information and Technological Evolution

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:42 GMT

I spend a lot of time reading about the nature of technological progress, and I’ve found that the literature on technology is somewhat uneven.

Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:40 GMT

Marc Andreessen wrongly claims introspection is a modern invention by Freud, ignoring centuries of philosophical tradition. Introspection helps us understand what makes life meaningful, which cannot be measured by external success alone. Rejecting self-examination limits our understanding of human flourishing and oversimplifies how we live well.

When Did Poor People Get Fat?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:38 GMT

Are poor people fat because of the welfare state? Probably not

Salarymen, specialists, and small businesses

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:35 GMT

Some brief thoughts on the (near) future of work.

How citations ruined science

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:31 GMT

The making and breaking of scientific life

Attention is all we have

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:27 GMT

A conjectural theory of cognitive inequality

Analyzing round trip query latency

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:21 GMT

Round trip query latency includes time spent both inside and outside the database, like in connection pools and proxies. Datadog helps break down this latency to find if delays come from the database or other parts of the system. This helps engineers fix the real cause without wasting time on wrong solutions.

What Category Theory Teaches Us About DataFrames

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:17 GMT

Every dataframe library ships with hundreds of operations. pandas alone has over 200 methods on a DataFrame. Is pivot different from melt? Is apply different from map? What about transform, agg, applymap, pipe? Some of these seem like the same operation wearing different hats. Others seem genuinely distinct. Without a framework for telling them apart, you end up memorizing APIs instead of understanding structure.

A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:13 GMT

To see scintillation, I put an alpha source within a few millimeters of the screen, and turned off the lights.

Introducing PostTrainBench

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:03:08 GMT

PostTrainBench is a benchmark that tests how well AI agents can post-train language models on their own. It measures if agents can build training pipelines, find data, and improve models without human help, using limited time and resources. Results show agents are improving fast but still lag behind expert humans in general post-training tasks.

We Built It With Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How.

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:44 GMT

The article warns that we have lost the hands-on knowledge and simple problem-solving mindset that helped early space engineers succeed. It shows how complexity and forgotten lessons make current space efforts fragile and hard to understand. The key message is to keep things simple, build in backups, and never stop asking basic questions to truly understand what we build.

When AI Writes the World's Software, Who Verifies It?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:39 GMT

AI will create most software soon, but much of it is not secure or verified. Verification through formal proofs is the key to making AI-generated code trustworthy and safe. Building strong verification platforms will help ensure AI-written software is reliable and widely accepted.

Every layer of review makes you 10x slower

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:37 GMT

Every extra layer of review slows down work by ten times, making projects take much longer. To go faster, teams must reduce reviews but also build quality into the whole process from the start. AI speeds up coding, but without changing how we ensure quality, slow reviews will still hold progress back.

Working on products people hate

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:34 GMT

Many engineers work on products that users dislike, but this is often due to company decisions, not individual skill. It can be hard emotionally, but such products usually still provide value and impact many users. Good engineers find a balance between company needs and user wishes, even when the product is unpopular.

The Org Chart Math Behind AI-Native Speed

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:31 GMT

AI-native teams are much faster because they have fewer people and far less communication overhead. Using AI, one engineer can be 30 times more productive than traditional engineers. This lets small AI-driven teams move quickly and outpace larger traditional companies.

A fighting retreat

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:29 GMT

Growing a company from small to large often changes its culture and makes it more like other big companies. To keep our special, high-trust culture, we must focus on our mission and avoid adding too many rules or copying others blindly. While some change is inevitable, we want to stay true to our values as long as we can during growth.

Redis Patterns for Coding Agents

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:26 GMT

This document explains key design and usage patterns for Redis, a fast in-memory database. It covers fundamental techniques like caching, locking, and message queues, plus community and production best practices. The guide helps developers and AI agents build reliable, efficient Redis-based systems.

Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:23 GMT

Researchers measured AI's ability to complete software tasks by how long humans take to do them, finding AI can now handle tasks taking humans up to 110 minutes and may reach month-long tasks by 2029. However, AI is less reliable on complex or messy projects and works best on well-structured coding challenges. This progress could greatly speed up software development but also create new challenges in managing faster, more complex systems and change how engineering teams are organized.

Learn Something Old Every Day, Part XVIII: How Does FPU Detection Work?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:21 GMT

While investigating a bug related to a program using floating-point math on a 386SX system with no FPU, I started pondering how exactly FPU detection works on 286 and newer CPUs.

Linux is an interpreter

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:19 GMT

Linux runs programs by interpreting them through layers, like shell scripts, ELF binaries, and the kernel itself. This malware uses a loop where the Linux kernel repeatedly loads and runs itself via kexec, creating a recursive interpreter. Ultimately, Linux acts like an interpreter for its own initrd files, showing how programs can interpret other programs endlessly.

Building a guitar trainer with embedded Rust

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:11 GMT

The author started playing guitar again and built a simple guitar tuner using Rust on an ESP32 device. They faced challenges like limited memory and firmware crashes during development. Despite difficulties, the project lets users see played notes in real-time and aids guitar practice.

What about juniors?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:08 GMT

Junior software engineers should learn to solve real problems by understanding customers, economics, and technology early in their careers. They need to take ownership of projects and engage deeply with both theory and practice. Those willing to expand their skills will find strong career opportunities in software engineering’s growing impact.

Hold on to Your Hardware

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:05 GMT

Computer parts like RAM and storage are getting more expensive and harder to find because companies focus on data centers and AI, not everyday users. This means owning a powerful, affordable computer is becoming rare, and new devices may be costly or limited. In the future, people might only rent computing power from the cloud instead of owning their own machines.

The Age of the Amplifier

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:02:02 GMT

AT&T developed many important technologies like the vacuum tube, transistor, and laser by trying to build better amplifiers for signals. These amplifiers helped improve how information is processed and transmitted over long distances. Amplifiers are valuable because they boost signals and enable new ways to handle information in many fields.

From zero to a RAG system: successes and failures

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:59 GMT

The author built a RAG system to index and query large document collections but faced issues with huge, unhelpful files and machine crashes. They improved the process by batching files, adding checkpoints, and using ChromaDB to handle 451GB of data without losing progress. Despite this, indexing was slow due to GPU limits, and managing storage remained a challenge.

TurboQuant: Redefining AI efficiency with extreme compression

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:56 GMT

TurboQuant is a new compression method that shrinks large AI models without losing accuracy. It uses smart math tricks called PolarQuant and QJL to save memory and speed up data processing. This makes AI tasks like search and language understanding much faster and more efficient.

How Writing Changes Mathematical Thought | Quanta Magazine

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:51 GMT

Mathematical notation shapes how people do and understand math in everyday life. Different symbols, like Roman numerals or calculus signs, change what math can express and how easily it can be used. Writing math down is a key tool that helps ideas grow and spread in the real world.

In Math, Rigor Is Vital. But Are Digitized Proofs Taking It Too Far? | Quanta Magazine

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:45 GMT

Mathematicians are using a computer program called Lean to make all proofs very precise and rigorous. Some worry this focus on formalization might limit creativity and change how math is done. Still, Lean could help find new math and ensure future proofs are correct with the help of AI.

On Typing and Keyboards

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:40 GMT

The author learned to type in elementary school and grew to love it over time. They enjoy using mechanical keyboards and recently upgraded to a new one with custom keycaps. Typing is a valuable skill that helps the author work quickly and effectively.

Navigating AI: Critical Thinking in the Age of LLMs

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:38 GMT

AI tools like large language models help with coding but need careful human review and critical thinking. Education must adapt by teaching students how to learn and think deeply, not just rely on AI. Using AI well means engineers stay responsible and do not blindly trust machine-generated work.

Zero-Degree-of-Freedom LLM Coding using Executable Oracles

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:32 GMT

Large language models (LLMs) can write code quickly but often make mistakes without strict automated checks called executable oracles. Using strong oracles for correctness, performance, and security helps guide LLMs to produce better, more reliable code. However, current LLM-generated code still struggles with complex quality aspects like maintainability and security.

Which Future?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:24 GMT

Transformative technologies like artificial superintelligence bring great benefits but also serious risks, including new and unexpected threats. To avoid disasters, we need strong ideas and institutions that guide safe development and use of powerful tools. Market forces alone won't solve these problems, so coordinated efforts and new safety measures are essential.

Let's see Paul Allen's SIMD CSV parser

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:01:20 GMT

Paul Allen's SIMD CSV parser processes many bytes at once using SIMD and bitwise operations to quickly find real delimiters in CSV data. It filters out commas and newlines inside quotes by using bitmasks and prefix XOR to detect quoted fields. This method speeds up parsing by handling large chunks of data in parallel and accurately identifying field and row boundaries.

A real-world case of property-based verification

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:48 GMT

The workbench simulates QUIC network traffic and needs strong guarantees that it works correctly. To ensure this, the team used property-based verification by logging network events and checking them with a simple verifier. This method caught bugs early and made testing easier and more reliable.

Multi-agentic Software Development is a Distributed Systems Problem (AGI can't save you from it)

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:46 GMT

Multi-agent software development is a hard coordination problem like those studied in distributed systems. Even very smart agents cannot guarantee perfect teamwork or avoid conflicts without careful protocols. To scale well, we need new tools and methods designed to manage these coordination challenges explicitly.

Actually, people love to work hard

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:43 GMT

People love to work hard when they share clear goals, trust, and meaning in their work. Many bosses wrongly say workers don’t want to work, but often they just create bad environments and fail to support their teams. When leaders inspire and empower people, workers become motivated and do great work together.

Every GPU That Mattered

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:07 GMT

This text lists 49 important graphics cards from the past 30 years. It shows how GPUs evolved from early models like 3dfx Voodoo to modern ones like the RTX 3060. Prices and popularity vary, with some costing nearly $2,000 and others much less.

Git's Magic Files

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:05 GMT

Git uses special committed files like .gitignore, .gitattributes, and .gitmodules to control how it tracks and handles files in a repository. These files travel with the code and affect behavior like ignoring files, handling binary data, and managing submodules. If you build tools for git repos, you should read and respect these files to work correctly.

MongoDB Query Planner

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:03 GMT

MongoDB has a query planner that helps decide the best way to get data. Unlike some NoSQL systems, it tests different plans and picks the fastest one. It keeps using the best plan until a better option appears.

Floating point from scratch: Hard Mode

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:00:01 GMT

The author explores building floating point arithmetic from scratch, focusing on common programming floats and IEEE 754 rules. They discuss formats like float16 and bfloat16, rounding modes, and implementation challenges. Testing and hardware design for floating point math require careful handling of edge cases and precision.

Signals, the push-pull based algorithm

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:58:42 GMT

Signals are reactive values that automatically update parts of an application when changed. They use a push-pull algorithm: push sends updates eagerly, pull re-evaluates lazily only when needed. This system tracks dependencies automatically and is becoming a standard in JavaScript.

We Found a Ticking Time Bomb in macOS TCP Networking — It Detonates After Exactly 49 Days

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:58:39 GMT

A bug in macOS causes the internal TCP clock to freeze after about 49.7 days of uptime. When this happens, closed TCP connections never clear, causing network ports to fill up and new connections to fail. The only current fix is to reboot the system, but a better solution is being developed.

Ah, Peptides. Where to Begin?

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:58:35 GMT

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that can have many effects in the body, but their use as mail-order injectable drugs is risky. We know little about how these peptides work or their side effects, and buying them from unregulated sources can be dangerous. Regulatory agencies exist to ensure drugs are safe and effective, but many people ignore this for the promise of quick health benefits.

Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:18:39 GMT

Google often answers questions directly, hiding original sources and shaping results by ads and history. Using special search tricks like site: and quotes helps find better, more precise information. When Google isn't enough, other search engines offer more privacy or access to unique sources.

Loading... [13 kB]

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:11:25 GMT

Data on the internet is sent in small pieces called packets, which can arrive out of order or get lost. To fix this, packets are numbered and the receiver asks for any missing ones to be resent. Because of network limits and congestion, data transfer starts slow and speeds up gradually, so websites should keep their first-load content small to load quickly.

Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 08:02:44 GMT

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading expert on the science of emotions and human connection. We discuss the science of awe—what evokes it and how to access it. Dr. Keltner explains how awe helps us frame our experience of life and who we are both as individuals and collectively. We also discuss the role of humor in social bonding, dispel common myths about the biology of emotions and review the lesser-known factors that strengthen or inhibit relationships and communities. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr Dachner Keltner (00:01:55) Emotions, Awe; Facial Expressions & Culture (00:08:11) Sponsors: Joovv & Helix Sleep (00:11:05) Emotion, Motor Movement & Language (00:15:36) Measuring Emotion; Studying Awe (00:24:10) Horizons, Small to Vast, Shifting Perspective (00:29:27) Tool: Awe Walk (00:33:53) Time Perception, Tool: Space-Time Bridging Meditation; Chimps, Vastness (00:42:13) Sponsor: AG1 (00:43:37) Consciousness, Collective Experiences & Brain Synchronization (00:50:04) Music, Concerts & Awe; Sparring, Transcendence (01:01:28) Joe Strummer (01:06:04) Inhibitors of Awe, Self-Focus & Narcissism (01:12:41) Sponsor: Function (01:13:52) Sports, Collective Effervescence (01:19:03) Social Media & Online Life, Social Community (01:29:51) Designing Cities & Places for Awe (01:34:29) Sponsor: Our Place (01:35:44) Embarrassment, Teasing; Collective Values (01:43:05) Male Friendship, Teasing (01:47:50) Isolation, Loneliness, Reemergence of Community (01:54:33) Psychedelics, Awe, Treating Trauma; Microdosing (02:01:18) Looking Forward, Awe Design (02:08:36) Campfires, Connection, Red Light (02:13:34) Life...

Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:44:14 GMT

"Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces" is a free online book that covers the basics of operating systems, focusing on virtualization, concurrency, and persistence. It provides practical insights on how operating systems manage tasks like CPU scheduling and memory management. While the book is available for free as a PDF, there are also print and digital versions for purchase.

OSTEP Chapter 13: The Abstraction of Address Spaces

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 23:44:01 GMT

Modern operating systems use virtual memory to give each program its own protected address space, improving efficiency and security. Early computers ran one program at a time, but multiprogramming and time sharing let many programs run quickly by switching between them. Today, GPUs and AI systems face new memory challenges, using advanced techniques to handle huge data fast without running out of memory.

time-clocks

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 01:25:50 GMT

Legacy PC design misery

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:08:24 GMT

I've spent chunks of the last couple of days fighting a problem that's existed for about 25 years. The 8086 was a 16-bit processor with a 20-bit address space, limiting the maximum physical address that could be accessed to 1MB. However, quirks of the segmented memory system meant that addresses…

Marc Andreessen introspects on The Death of the Browser, Pi + OpenClaw, and Why "This Time Is Different"

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:03:30 GMT

The legend needs no intro... if you pardon our pun

Nobody Is Coming to Save Your Career

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:44:41 GMT

Your career growth is your responsibility, not your manager's. You must speak up, set clear goals, and seek challenges beyond your comfort zone. Waiting for opportunities to come to you leads to stagnation, so take charge and act now.

Moonlake: Causal World Models should be Multimodal, Interactive, and Efficient — with Chris Manning and Fan-yun Sun

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:16:55 GMT

We cap out our World Models coverage with one of the most exciting new approaches - long running, multiplayer, interactive world models built with agents bootstrapped from game engines!

Essentials: How to Build Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance | Dr. Andy Galpin

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:17:35 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Andy Galpin, PhD, Executive Director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University and an expert in building strength and muscle size (hypertrophy). We cover the core principles and protocols for building strength and muscle, including science-based guidance on reps, sets, frequency and rest intervals. We also discuss how breathing and mental focus can enhance training and how post-workout downregulation can speed recovery. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Subscribe to Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin at performpodcast.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Andy Galpin (00:00:39) 9 Exercise Adaptations; Progressive Overload (00:03:53) Progressive Overload, One-Rep Max, Soreness, Tool: Modifiable Variables (00:08:39) Sponsor: LMNT (00:10:12) Full-Body Workout, Exercise Selection (00:12:44) Training Intensity, Repetitions, Sets, Rest Intervals, Supersets (00:16:24) Sponsor: AG1 (00:17:48) Hypertrophy vs Strength Training Recovery (00:20:03) Training Volume & Frequency for Hypertrophy (00:21:56) Hypertrophy Rep Ranges, Frequency & Recovery; Cell Mechanisms (00:25:28) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:26:46) Tool: 3 x 5 Protocol; Power vs Strength (00:28:23) Mental Awareness in Training; Mind-Muscle Connection (00:31:25) Activating Muscle Groups, Awareness, Tool: Eccentric Overload (00:33:40) Perform Podcast: Season 3 (00:34:04) Tool: Resistance Training Breathing & Post-Training (00:38:20) Acknowledgments Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber’s first CTO)

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:52:24 GMT

Thuan Pham, Uber’s first CTO, helped scale the company by moving from a fragile monolith to microservices and reorganizing teams for faster work. He emphasized building skilled teams and planning for the future to handle rapid growth. Today, he leads Faire and explores how AI can boost software engineering productivity.

What Genetic Tests Told Me About My Health & Longevity

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 05:27:58 GMT

The author tested their genes and found many good ones linked to long life and low risk of diseases like dementia, heart problems, and cancer. They also discovered some risks, like a gene increasing blood clot chances, and adjusted their diet and supplements accordingly. Overall, genetics play a big role in health, but lifestyle and medical advice remain important.

A Tale of Two Bridges

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:36:07 GMT

Two engineers talked about their biggest bridge projects. The first built a huge, complex bridge in the wrong place that no one used. The second started with a simple rope and, over time, created a bridge that grew a whole town around it.

Hypothesis, Antithesis, synthesis

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:51:43 GMT

Hegel is a new family of property-based testing libraries that bring Hypothesis-quality testing to many programming languages. It integrates with Antithesis to find more bugs and improve software quality. Although still early, Hegel aims to make testing easier and more powerful, especially for AI-driven and complex systems.

Mistral: Voxtral TTS, Forge, Leanstral, & what's next for Mistral 4 — w/ Pavan Kumar Reddy & Guillaume Lample

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:31:09 GMT

Mistral is one of the world's leading frontier model labs, and has just launched Voxtral TTS, their latest step in their strategy to offer open frontier intelligence for every modality.

How Hormones Shape Sexual Orientation & Behavior | Dr. Marc Breedlove

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:16:46 GMT

Dr. Marc Breedlove, PhD, is a professor of neuroscience at Michigan State University and an expert on how hormones shape brain development and sexual orientation. We discuss how prenatal testosterone impacts whether someone is romantically attracted to men or women later in life, and what correlates of sexual orientation — such as finger-length ratios — tell us about the role of hormones in brain and psychological development. We also discuss why the number of older brothers a male has biases sexual orientation. Throughout, we explain how nature and nurture interact to shape male-female differences, behavior, and romantic partner choice. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Rorra: https://rorra.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Marc Breedlove (00:03:24) Hormones & Sexual Orientation (00:07:37) Prenatal Testosterone, Finger Ratio, Men & Women Differences (00:14:08) Sponsors: David & Rorra (00:16:46) Finger Ratios, Prenatal Testosterone, Gay & Straight Men/Women (00:23:57) Mice & Sex Differences, Androgens (00:26:54) Brain Differences & Sexual Orientation (00:33:52) Group vs Individual Differences, Height Analogy; Bisexuality (00:36:57) Brain Development, Hormones & Behavior; Brain Plasticity (00:42:52) Sponsor: AG1 (00:44:16) Sexual Behavior, Libido (00:51:37) Gay Rams, Brain Differences (00:58:00) Aversion Pathway, Men vs Women, Same-Sex Partner (01:06:58) Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), Intersex Phenotypes (01:13:55) Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) (01:18:14) Sponsor: Function (01:19:25) Gay Men & Older Brothers, Maternal Immunization Hypothesis (01:32:55) CAH Carriers, Advantage, Stress Tolerance (01:35:41) Birds & Sexual Differentiation, Gynandromorphs (01:41:32) Anabolic Steroids, Hypersexuality; Adult Brain Plasticity (01:45:31) Age & Testosterone Decline; Sexual Orientation & Activities (01:53:14) Marc's Aca...

Systems Thinking is Brain Rot for Analysts

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 03:25:05 GMT

Systems thinking can make young analysts overconfident and lead them to misunderstand complex problems. It often narrows their thinking and ignores important details like culture and risks. Instead, analysts should focus on practical skills and clear communication to be truly effective.

The Paxos algorithm, when presented in plain English, is very simple

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:02:01 GMT

Consensus is a key problem in distributed systems, and Paxos is a popular algorithm to solve it by agreeing on a single value. Paxos works in two phases where proposers gain temporary leadership to get acceptors to agree on a value, ensuring safety even if some nodes fail. Though consensus is impossible under total asynchrony (FLP result), Paxos assumes partial synchrony and uses random delays to avoid conflicts and reach agreement in practice.

Essentials: Using Salt to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 08:03:06 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how salt (sodium) affects mental and physical performance, as well as cellular health. I describe how the brain monitors sodium levels to regulate thirst and fluid balance, and why salt needs can vary depending on activity level, stress, blood pressure, and diet. I also explain how to determine the right sodium intake for your individual needs and discuss why some people may benefit from increasing salt and other electrolytes. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Salt (00:00:37) Brain & Monitoring Salt (00:02:33) Thirst, Osmotic Thirst & Salt (00:05:35) Hypovolemic Thirst & Blood Pressure (00:06:59) Sponsor: Function (00:08:39) Fluid Balance, Kidney & Urine Regulation (00:11:53) How Much Salt Do You Need?, Blood Pressure, Dizziness & Postural Syndromes (00:17:29) Replenish Salt for Performance, Tool: Galpin Equation & Exercise (00:19:15) Sponsor: LMNT (00:20:46) Stress & Craving Salt (00:22:29) Electrolytes: Magnesium & Potassium; Low Carbohydrate Diet (00:25:19) Salt & Sweet Taste, Sugar Cravings, Processed Foods (00:29:37) Finding Your Ideal Salt Intake, Tool: Unprocessed Food Diet (00:31:25) Sponsor: AG1 (00:32:50) Neurons, Salt & Action Potentials; Ingesting Too Much Water (00:34:51) Recap & Key Takeaways Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🔬Why There Is No "AlphaFold for Materials" — AI for Materials Discovery with Heather Kulik

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:42:39 GMT

Materials science is complex and lacks large, high-quality datasets like biology, making AI breakthroughs harder. Heather Kulik shows that combining deep domain knowledge with AI can create surprising new materials. Success needs careful experiments, curiosity, and teamwork beyond just hype and models.

🔬Why There Is No "AlphaFold for Materials" — AI for Materials Discovery with Heather Kulik

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 17:42:36 GMT

Materials science uses AI to discover new materials, but it is harder than biology because data is limited and complex. Professor Heather Kulik shows that success needs deep expertise and careful lab work, not just hype. The field needs more high-quality data and curious researchers to solve big challenges.

The Best Vitality & Health Protocols | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:05:12 GMT

Dr. Rhonda Patrick, PhD, is a biomedical scientist and public science educator. She shares the exercise, nutrition, supplementation and lifestyle practices linked to better health and lower disease risk including specific cardio and resistance training routines, when and why to do intermittent fasting, ways to lower visceral fat, omega-3 sourcing, creatine for brain and muscle and peptides such as BPC-157. It’s broad and thorough coverage of how to build a total health program tailored to your goals and individual biology. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Mateina: https://drinkmateina.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Rhonda Patrick (00:02:40) Competition, Jumping Rope, Rope Flow (00:06:49) Rhonda's Exercise Routine, Cardiovascular & Resistance Training (00:12:30) Cognitive & Physical Benefits of Exercise, Serotonin & Impulse Control (00:14:40) Sponsors: Our Place & Lingo (00:17:03) Phones While Training? (00:18:45) Rhonda's Strength Training, Low-Reps, Modifications, Mental Resilience (00:27:00) Daily Protein Intake, Intermittent Fasting, Processed Carbohydrates (00:33:32) Lipopolysaccharide (LPS); Gut Permeability, Gluten; Cardiovascular Health (00:42:58) Sponsor: AG1 (00:44:21) Tight Junctions, Gut, Neuroinflammation (00:47:26) L-glutamine, Immune System, Cancer Risk (00:54:55) N-acetylcysteine (NAC), Vitamin E; Antioxidant Balance, Reductive Stress (01:00:08) Starch, Tool: Bedtime Fast & Cardiovascular Health (01:03:36) Cortisol, Intermittent Fasting Benefits (01:08:09) Cortisol, Train Fasted?; Hormones, Visceral Fat (01:13:35) Visceral Fat, Perimenopause/Menopause, Insulin Resistance in Brain & Body (01:21:13) Sponsor: LMNT (01:22:33) Cortisol & Sleep (01:25:42) Intermittent Fasting, Metabolic Switch...

You want to do everything?

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:19:28 GMT

Wanting to do everything leads to starting many things but finishing none. True progress comes from committing and staying with something through the hard, boring parts. Commitment helps you discover what you really enjoy and grow real skills.

My heuristics are wrong. What now?

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 20:03:04 GMT

Many old software rules no longer work because technology has changed a lot. Good tech leaders must accept this, stay curious, and keep learning by building and experimenting. This way, they stay valuable and help their teams succeed.

Why Some People Have Endless Energy (And Others Never Will)

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 17:25:00 GMT

Genetics play a major role in determining a person's energy, mood, and motivation. Even with perfect lifestyle choices, some people have limits set by their genes. Lifestyle and treatments help, but they cannot fully overcome genetic differences in vitality.

Dreamer: the Personal Agent OS — David Singleton

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:07:09 GMT

/dev/agents is out of stealth as Dreamer, and the vision is staggeringly ambitious. $10,000 prizes for new tools and Special access for Latent Space subscribers!

Essentials: Tools for Setting & Achieving Goals | Dr. Emily Balcetis

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:15:39 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Emily Balcetis, PhD, a professor of psychology at New York University who studies how visual perception influences motivation and goal pursuit. She explains how to better visualize and overcome challenges to achieve physical or cognitive goals. We also explore the science of setting goals, measuring progress effectively and research showing how fitness level and energy state can shape how difficult the world appears. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Emily Balcetis (00:00:21) Adjusting Vision to Meet Goals, Exercise, Tool: Narrow Visual Target (00:07:39) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:08:57) Goal Setting, Do Vision Boards Work? (00:12:34) Tool: Effectively Plan Goals, Plan for Obstacles (00:17:58) Sponsor: AG1 (00:19:23) How Fitness Shapes the Way People See the World (00:24:46) Visual Spotlight, Exercise & Physical Fitness Level (00:25:45) Stimulants & Motivation (00:27:06) Sponsor: BetterHelp (00:28:20) Cognitive Goals, Tools: Overcoming Bad Memories; Deadlines (00:35:31) Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building WhatsApp with Jean Lee

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:23:17 GMT

Jean Lee, engineer #19 at WhatsApp, on scaling the app with a tiny team, the Facebook acquisition, and what it reveals about the future of engineering.

Why Anthropic Thinks AI Should Have Its Own Computer — Felix Rieseberg of Claude Cowork & Claude Code Desktop

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:51:57 GMT

Anthropic thinks AI should have its own computer to better manage knowledge work and coding tasks safely. They focus on cloud integration and seamless tools like Claude Cowork and Claude Code to help users work efficiently. Trust and security are key for people to adopt AI-powered workflows in everyday apps.

Felix is currently in Vienna, AT

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 18:34:17 GMT

For three years I recorded 100+ daily life metrics in one self‑hosted database and made public visualizations. I built the system myself, open source, to keep control and protect my privacy. It gave some insights but cost hundreds of hours, so I’ll keep only a few key metrics and cut back.

Science-Based Meditation Tools to Improve Your Brain & Health | Dr. Richard Davidson

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:03:19 GMT

Dr. Richard Davidson, PhD, is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a pioneer in the scientific study of meditation. We discuss how meditation changes your brain and body, how just 5 minutes daily can improve focus, stress resilience and your overall health, and we cover different types of meditation. We also address common myths such as the idea that meditation is to "clear your mind." And we discuss common challenges with meditation and how to overcome them. This episode offers both the science and the practical tools to build a consistent meditation practice to improve your mental and physical health and help you flourish. The episode show notes are available at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Richard "Richie" Davidson (00:03:33) States of Mind vs Traits (00:09:06) Wakeful Brain Activity vs Deep Sleep (00:11:55) Sponsors: David & Eight Sleep (00:14:31) Brain Activity Across Sleep, Wakefulness, Meditation & Insight (00:19:27) Mediation & Sleep Compensation?; Meditation Timing & Liminal States (00:23:05) Types of Mediation, Shifting from Thinking to Being (00:28:32) Self-Monitoring, Undistracted Non-Mediation, "Stickiness" (00:35:30) Tool: Beginning Daily Meditation, "Richie's 5 Meditation"; Health Benefits (00:39:39) Meditation Practice History, Kindness & Nurturing Goodness (00:45:07) Sponsor: AG1 (00:46:31) Beginners, Expect Chaos in Mind, Exercise & Lactate Analogy (00:52:47) Tool: Beginning Mediation, Embrace Anxiety; Meta-Awareness, Flow (00:57:51) Creativity; Capturing Thoughts, Unconscious Mind (01:03:03) Meditation for Kids; Flourishing, Tool: Parent & Teacher Meditation (01:10:12) Sponsor: Joovv (01:11:34) Beyond Stimulus & Response (01:14:22) Meditation Ne...

Will the Training of Junior Engineers Be a Tragedy of the Commons?

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:24:17 GMT

Junior engineers have traditionally learned on the job by working closely with seniors, but remote work and AI are threatening this training process. Companies may stop hiring juniors and rely on AI, risking a future shortage of skilled senior engineers. Possible solutions include longer training contracts or government taxes to encourage junior engineer development.

Simulating Queueing

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:57:24 GMT

The author explores different ways to balance client requests in a queue to prevent one noisy client from dominating. They show that choosing two queues and reshuffling assignments over time improves fairness. Simulating these methods helps build intuition about how queueing algorithms work.

There was a comment on Hacker News that took this seriously, but of course, it’s a joke. To be clear, I have no intention of having any commercial ties to this. Regardless, you can imagine the kind of requests I get on a daily basis.

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 12:47:41 GMT

The author shares their content freely for educational and noncommercial use with credit. They have no plans for commercial ties and ask for permission or revenue sharing for business use. The author prefers to keep control over their work and does not use common formats like PDF or RSS.

Retrieval After RAG: Hybrid Search, Agents, and Database Design — Simon Hørup Eskildsen of Turbopuffer

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:59:09 GMT

Turbopuffer came out of a reading app.

Essentials: Benefits of Sauna & Deliberate Heat Exposure

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:15:04 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I discuss the mechanisms through which deliberate heat exposure enhances both physical and mental health. I outline specific protocols for deliberate heat exposure, including recommended temperature ranges, frequency, timing, duration and sauna alternatives. In addition, I explain how to tailor your heat protocols to support your specific goals, such as increasing growth hormone, reducing cortisol or supporting cognitive health. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Heat Exposure (00:00:47) Shell vs Core Temperature; Heat Caution & Hyperthermia (00:02:24) Body & Brain Circuit to Heat Up & Cool Down (00:05:31) Sponsor: AG1 (00:06:55) Deliberate Heat Exposure & Health Benefits; Tool: Sauna Temperature Range, Duration, Frequency (00:112:09) Sauna Types, Alternatives to Sauna (00:13:50) Sauna Mechanism; Reduced Cortisol; Tool: Hot/Cold Contrast (00:17:38) Sponsor: LMNT (00:19:10) Heat Shock Protein Activation & Sauna (00:20:50) DNA Repair, FOXO3 & Sauna, Cognition & Health Benefits (00:24:21) Sauna & Increase Growth Hormone (00:30:18) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:31:36) Sauna Timing, Sleep & Growth Hormone, Tools: Fasting; Hydration (00:34:56) Improve Mood, Endorphins & Sauna; Dynorphins (00:40:04) Recap Sauna Protocols: Benefits, Frequency, Duration & Timing Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SFQ: Simple, Stateless, Stochastic Fairness

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:19:24 GMT

Stochastic Fairness Queuing (SFQ) uses a fixed number of queues and assigns customers to them by hashing to prevent long-term unfairness. It periodically changes the assignment to stop noisy neighbors from hurting others for too long. Combining SFQ with shuffle sharding and best-of-two methods improves fairness and efficiency even more.

From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yegge

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 17:04:47 GMT

Steve Yegge explains how AI is changing software engineering by making coding more about working with AI agents than writing code by hand. He believes developers must adapt quickly to new tools and ways of working to stay relevant. AI will amplify engineers' abilities but also bring new challenges for teams and productivity.

NVIDIA's AI Engineers: Agent Inference at Planetary Scale and Speed of Light — Nader Khalil (Brev), Kyle Kranen (Dynamo)

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 06:43:08 GMT

NVIDIA is improving how AI runs on GPUs, making it easier and faster for developers to use. They focus on creating better tools and experiences for AI developers to experiment and build with. Their work includes managing complex AI models and speeding up real-world AI applications at a large scale.

Avoiding, Treating & Curing Cancer With the Immune System | Dr. Alex Marson

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:14:23 GMT

Dr. Alex Marson, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. We discuss the biology of the immune system and cancer, and everyday choices that can increase or decrease your cancer risk, several of which are surprising but all of which are actionable. We also discuss immunotherapy, including how engineered T-cells can be used to defeat childhood and adult cancers. Dr. Marson explains CRISPR and gene editing to cure diseases, and we address the ethical questions surrounding gene editing in embryos, children and adults. This discussion is for anyone interested in avoiding cancer and/or seeking to understand the science and practical applications of immune- or gene-therapy. Read the show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Alex Marson (00:02:21) Diseases & Current Biological Landscape; AI & Computational Tools (00:05:56) Immune System, Innate vs Adaptive Immune System (00:10:55) Thymus, T Cell Selection; B Cells & Antibodies (00:13:23) Sponsors: BetterHelp & Helix Sleep (00:16:11) Immune System Health, Sleep, Diet; Genes (00:20:56) Childhood Exposure & Allergy Prevention; Autoimmune Reactions (00:25:27) Whole Body Immune Response, Cytokines & Fever; Antibiotics (00:30:51) Cancer; Mutations & Cell Regulation; Smoking, BRCA Mutations, Sunlight (00:38:27) BRAC Mutations, Mutagens, Pesticides (00:42:33) Sponsor: AG1 (00:43:57) X-Rays & Airport Scanners, Carcinogen vs Mutagen, Charred Meat, Food Dye (00:49:34) Immune-Based Cancer Treatment, Checkpoint Inhibitors, CAR T-Cell Therapy (00:59:04) CRISPR, Immunotherapies (01:02:52) Age & Cancer Risk; CAR T-Cells, Targets & Side Effects; Ketogenic Diet (01:08:27) CRISPR Discovery & Mechanism (01:17:06) CRISPR Precision, Ris...

The Self-Help Trap: What 20+ Years of “Optimizing” Has Taught Me

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:32:35 GMT

Self-help can trap you in endless self-fixing without real happiness. True growth comes from focusing on relationships and serving others, not just improving yourself. Acceptance and connection bring peace, not constant self-optimization.

Cursor's Third Era: Cloud Agents

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:45:36 GMT

The $50B Agent Lab has acquired Graphite and Autotab and now announcing that Cloud Agents has overtaken its historical "VSCode fork" IDE usecase, ushering in the "Third Era of Software Development"

Essentials: The Biology of Taste Perception & Sugar Craving | Dr. Charles Zuker

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:15:26 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Charles Zuker, PhD, a professor of biochemistry, molecular biophysics and neuroscience at Columbia University and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). We explore taste perception and how the brain transforms chemical signals from food into distinct taste experiences. We discuss how these taste signals shape both conscious choices and unconscious behavior, as well as how food preferences can change over time. Additionally, we discuss gut–brain signaling and explain why sugar is especially powerful at driving cravings. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Charles Zuker (00:00:20) Senses & Perception (00:02:29) Taste, 5 Taste Qualities & Dietary Needs (00:05:49) Taste vs Flavor (00:07:05) Sponsor: AG1 (00:07:56) Taste Buds; Bitter (00:09:45) Sweet vs Bitter, Sensory Perception from Tongue to Brain (00:12:47) Taste Plasticity & Changing Food Preferences (00:14:13) Taste Modulation; Salt (00:17:08) Sponsor: LMNT (00:18:41) Gut-Brain Signaling (00:23:14) Sugar Appetite & Gut-Brain Axis (00:27:42) Sponsor: Function (00:29:21) Artificial Sweeteners, Sugar Cravings (00:30:37) Taste & Essential Nutrients; Highly Processed Foods; Brain & Food Choices (00:34:11) Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every Agent Needs a Box — Aaron Levie, Box

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:05:21 GMT

Aaron Levie explains that Box helps companies manage and share important files securely. He says every AI agent needs a "box" to organize messy and complex data well. He believes strong software and good evaluation are key to building useful AI tools for businesses.

Building Claude Code with Boris Cherny

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:25:02 GMT

Boris Cherny built Claude Code to help engineers write code faster using AI agents working in parallel. He believes AI will change the software engineer’s role, making skills like managing many tasks more important. At Anthropic, engineers focus on building prototypes quickly and sharing work across product, design, and engineering.

Unlearn Negative Thoughts & Behaviors Patterns | Dr. Alok Kanojia

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:08:04 GMT

Dr. Alok Kanojia, MD, MPH ("Dr. K"), is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and expert in both Eastern and Western medicine to improve mental health. He explains tools for unlearning maladaptive thoughts and behavior patterns and for making behaviors that better mental and physical well-being more reflexive in work, relationships and daily life. We also discuss ways to resolve trauma, build stress tolerance, increase intrinsic motivation and even change temperament. We also discuss how social media, gaming and online dating shape our identity and perceptions and how to navigate them healthily. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Alok Kanojia (Dr. K) (00:03:09) Internet, Computer Games; Academic Pressure (00:07:11) Millennials & Self-Awareness, Hijacking Mental Health Language (00:13:24) Sponsors: Lingo & Joovv (00:16:06) Personality & Individual Road Maps, Misdiagnosis (00:22:02) Ambiguity, Flirting, Social Skills Decline, Uncertainty Tolerance (00:26:06) Dating in the Internet Age, Cognitive Bias (00:30:39) Healthy Distress Tolerance, Tool: How to Feel Your Feelings (00:39:58) Sponsor: AG1 (00:40:49) Expectations vs Internal Desire Roadmap, Western vs Eastern Theory of Mind, Ego (00:50:35) Sense Organs, Comparison & Proving Oneself, Internal Drive (00:59:22) Internet, Ego, "Teflon Buddha", Tool: Dealing with Criticism (01:10:36) Observing One's Mind, Meditation, Psychedelics (01:11:59) Sponsor: Function (01:13:46) Tool: Shunya "Void" Meditation & Resilience (01:24:02) External Reminders, Environment; Men & Emotional Regulation (01:30:04) Samskara, Yoga Nidra, Trauma & Learning, Shunya & Personal Compass (01:39:15) Yoga Nidra, Channeling Divinity, Genius (01:42:30) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (01:43:48) Breathwork Practices; Meditation Scien...

How I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:21:47 GMT

Joel built Timeframe, a family dashboard using e-paper displays, to show calendars, weather, and smart home info. Over time, he improved the system with better hardware and integrated it with Home Assistant for real-time updates. The project helps his family stay informed with simple, relevant information and he hopes to make it easier for others to use.

Things UNIX can do atomically

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 20:12:50 GMT

UNIX-like systems can perform many operations atomically, which helps build safe multi-process programs without extra locking. Key atomic actions include renaming files, creating links, and using file locks that avoid race conditions. These features let the kernel handle synchronization efficiently, making programs simpler and faster.

Tracking NixOS option values and dependencies

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 07:07:29 GMT

A patched Nix evaluator now tracks dependencies between NixOS options during configuration evaluation without changing existing modules. This tracking helps understand how option values relate and what changes affect the system by producing detailed JSON data and a TUI for exploring and diffing configurations. The tool offers new insight into complex NixOS setups and makes configuration changes easier to analyze.

METR’s Joel Becker on exponential Time Horizon Evals, Threat Models, and the Limits of AI Productivity

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 19:21:37 GMT

METR studies long-term AI evaluation and shows that simple charts can be misleading. They also research AI threat models and how AI affects developer productivity. Joel Becker shares insights on these topics and the limits of AI progress.

Essentials: Using Light to Optimize Health

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:15:27 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explore how different wavelengths of light affect the human body and how light exposure can improve sleep quality, mood and daytime alertness while supporting healthy hormone regulation. I also discuss the therapeutic use of ultraviolet and infrared/red light for a wide variety of benefits, including improved skin health and offsetting age-related vision loss. I explain the biological mechanisms behind these light-based therapies and offer practical tools that listeners can use to improve both their mental and physical well-being. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman ROKA: https://roka.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Light (00:00:47) Physics of Light (00:01:57) Light & Body, Rods & Cones, Skin, Seasons & Melatonin (00:05:01) Melatonin Supplements?, Tool: Seasonal Sun Exposure (00:08:32) Sponsor: ROKA (00:09:47) Tool: Melatonin Levels & Reduce Night Light (00:10:31) Light, UVB, Skin Exposure, Testosterone & Estrogen, Fertility (00:13:54) UVB Light & Improved Pain Tolerance (00:16:10) Tool: Daily Sunlight Exposure Protocol; Blue Blockers (00:18:25) Sponsor: AG1 (00:19:16) Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), Year-Round Sunlight Exposure (00:21:24) Enhanced Immune Function & UVB Light, Tool: Winter Light Exposure (00:23:45) Light, Wound Healing, Hair & Nail Growth (00:25:11) Tool: Mood, Dopamine & Avoid Nighttime UVB Light (00:27:46) Sponsor: Function (00:29:25) Red Light Therapy, Infrared Light, Acne, Wound Healing & Scars; Mitochondria (00:33:06) Offset Age-Related Eyesight Decline, Red Light (00:37:22) Tool: Red Light Protocol, Frequency & Timing (00:40:02) Red Light for Shift Workers (00:41:42) Recap Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🔬Nature as a Computer: Prof. Max Welling, CuspAI on AI x Materials Science

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:22:10 GMT

Max Welling envisions nature as a computer that works with AI to speed up scientific discovery, especially in materials for climate solutions. His approach combines physics, machine learning, and experiments to build tools that help scientists make better decisions, not replace them. This new field, AI for science, is rapidly growing and focuses on automating parts of research while keeping humans involved.

Mitchell Hashimoto’s new way of writing code

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:47:59 GMT

Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, shares how AI agents have changed his coding workflow by running tasks in the background. He explains that Terraform succeeded through community and developer focus, not timing. He also advises engineers to use AI for research help, not just code writing.

⚡️SWE-Bench-Dead: The End of SWE-Bench Verified — Mia Glaese & Olivia Watkins, OpenAI Frontier Evals & Human Data

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:06:13 GMT

It's time to take the next step up in frontier agent evals.

Restore Youthfulness & Vitality to the Aging Brain & Body | Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:12:45 GMT

Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray studies how factors in young and exercised blood can improve brain and body health. Certain proteins and lifestyle habits like exercise, sunlight, and fasting help restore youthfulness and may extend life. Different organs age at different rates, and measuring biological aging can guide better health decisions.

Inside AI’s $10B+ Capital Flywheel — Martin Casado & Sarah Wang of a16z

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:40:04 GMT

From pioneering software-defined networking to backing many of the most aggressive AI model companies of this cycle, Martin Casado and Sarah Wang sit at the center of the capital, compute, and talent arms race reshaping the tech industry.

Essentials: Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Jeff Cavaliere

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:12:11 GMT

Jeff Cavaliere shares science-based tips to create effective workout plans and improve recovery. He explains how to warm up, stretch, and eat well without strict dieting. His advice helps people get stronger, avoid injuries, and stay healthy.

Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 21:11:45 GMT

Fraud in the U.S. is complex and often politicized, involving repeat offenders and organized schemes. Most fraud grows like a business with trusted partners and targets weak points in systems. Detecting fraud requires close tracking and understanding that it is usually a repeated, professional activity, not isolated crimes.

The Most Effective Weight Training, Cardio & Nutrition for Women | Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:01:59 GMT

Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple, PhD, is an expert in the science of strength and muscle building and nutrition. She explains the most effective resistance and cardiovascular training programs for women and if and how those programs should differ from those followed by men. She explains program design options, exercise selection, sets, repetition ranges, rest periods, if you need to train to failure and much more. We discuss the relevance of menstrual cycles, (peri)menopause, birth control, body frame differences, as well as best practices for nutrition, hormone replacement and supplementation. Throughout the episode Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple dispels common myths about women's fitness and nutrition such as the impact of fasting, cortisol, weight vests and more. This episode provides a masterclass in the best science-supported fitness and nutrition programs for women and for men. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Rorra: https://rorra.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Lauren Colenso-Semple (00:02:43) Muscle in Men vs Women; Testosterone; Individual Variation (00:08:07) Sponsors: Joovv & Eight Sleep (00:10:45) Testosterone & Women; Resistance Training; Young Girls (00:17:46) Tool: Beginner Resistance Training for Women; Frequency & Goals (00:20:58) Tools: Weekly Full-Body Workouts, Work Sets, Rest Intervals; Time Efficiency (00:28:43) Forced Reps, Drop Sets; Rate of Movement; Partial Reps (00:33:19) Tool: Repetition Ranges; Technique; Vary Rep Ranges? (00:39:37) Sponsor: AG1 (00:40:28) High Reps & Injury, Technique & Warm-Ups (00:44:25) Cardiovascular Exercise, Interference Effect?; Walking, High Intensity (00:52:43) Menstrual Cycle, Hormones & Training; Overcoming Internal Resistance (00:56:54) Training & Body Composition; Tool: Slow Progression; Menstrual Cycle (01:02:45) Sponsor: Rorra (01:03:59) ...

Owning the AI Pareto Frontier — Jeff Dean

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:04:25 GMT

From rewriting Google’s search stack in the early 2000s to reviving sparse trillion-parameter models and co-designing TPUs with frontier ML research, Jeff Dean has quietly shaped nearly every layer of the modern AI stack.

The programming language after Kotlin – with the creator of Kotlin

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:13:15 GMT

Andrey Breslav, creator of Kotlin, discusses how he designed Kotlin to improve Java and why he is now building a new language called CodeSpeak to simplify programming with AI. Kotlin became popular by focusing on Java interoperability and reducing boilerplate code. Breslav encourages engineers to learn AI coding tools and stay in control as software development evolves.

Essentials: The Science of Love, Desire & Attachment

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:02:16 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explore the psychology and biology of desire, love and attachment. I explain how childhood attachment styles can shape adult romantic relationships and how the brain and body systems influence emotional bonds. I also discuss supplements that may support a healthy libido and practical, science-based tools for understanding your relationship patterns and building stronger relationships. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Desire, Love & Attachment (00:00:23) 4 Attachment Styles, Child & Parent (00:04:11) Attachment & Autonomic Arousal, Seesaw Analogy (00:07:26) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:08:44) Tool: Self-Awareness of Attachment Style, Autonomic State & Relationship (00:09:51) Brain & Neural Circuits for Desire, Love & Attachment (00:11:19) Empathy, Autonomic Matching (00:13:09) Positive Delusions, Relationship Breakdown & Failure (00:16:00) Sponsor: Function (00:17:39) Universality of Love, Autonomic Coordination (00:21:38) Self-Expansion & Relationships, Shaping Self-Perception (00:27:54) Sponsor: AG1 (00:28:44) Testosterone, Estrogen, Dopamine & Libido (00:31:52) Supplements to Increase Libido: Maca Root, Tongkat Ali (Longjack), Tribulus (00:38:55) Recap Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🔬Science at the speed of inference — Gabriele Corso & Jeremy Wohlwend, Boltz

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 02:16:55 GMT

Boltz uses advanced AI models to design proteins and small molecules faster and more accurately than before. Their platform helps scientists test new drug targets and improve molecule binding. They focus on making tools that support many companies, not just developing drugs themselves.

How Genes Shape Your Risk Taking & Morals | Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:12:20 GMT

Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden, PhD, is a psychologist, behavioral geneticist and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. We discuss how genes interact with your upbringing to shape your level of risk-taking and morality. We also discuss how genes shape propensity for addiction and impulsivity in males versus females. Finally, we discuss how biology impacts societal views of sinning, punishment and forgiveness. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Pre-order Protocols: https://go.hubermanlab.com/protocols Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Lingo: https://hellolingo.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Kathryn Paige Harden (00:03:10) Adolescents, Genes & Life Trajectory; Adolescence Ages (00:06:44) Puberty, Aging & Differences; Epigenome; Cognition (00:14:05) Sponsors: BetterHelp & Lingo (00:16:45) Puberty Onset & Family; Communication & Empathy (00:22:26) 7 Deadly Sins, Substance Use & Conduct Disorders, Genes (00:27:33) Family History; Genes & Brain Development (00:33:05) Personality & Temperament, Motivation, Addiction; Trauma (00:37:59) Knowing Genetic Risk & Outcomes; Understanding Family History (00:46:06) Sponsor: AG1 (00:46:57) Genetic Information & Decision Making; Personal Identity & Uncovering Family (00:52:12) Nature vs Nurture, Bad Genes?; Aggression, Childhood & Males (01:00:17) The Original Sin; Whitman Case & Brain Tumor; Genetic Predisposition (01:10:31) Free Will; Genes & Moral Judgement; Skillful Care for Kids; Social Cooperation (01:21:03) Breaking the Cycle; Genetic Recombination & Differences; Identity (01:25:21) Sponsor: Our Place (01:27:01) Status, Dominance, Science; Positive Attributes of Negative Traits (01:36:15) Relational Aggression & Girls; Male-Female Differences & Conflict (01:40:36) Genes, Boys vs Girls, Impulse Control (...

As Rocks May Think

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 03:32:25 GMT

Machines can now think and solve problems well by combining coding and reasoning. Training language models to reason step-by-step has improved their abilities a lot. This progress will lead to more powerful AI and huge demand for computing power in the future.

Steering a Trillion-Param Model, Token-Level PII in Production, Beyond SAEs — Myra Deng & Mark Bissell of Goodfire AI

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:47:06 GMT

Goodfire AI focuses on understanding and designing large AI models using interpretability techniques. They work on steering trillion-parameter models to improve safety and control beyond current methods. Their goal is to make AI models more reliable, understandable, and adaptable with human feedback.

Essentials: The Science & Practice of Movement | Ido Portal

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 09:10:33 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Ido Portal, a movement coach and world expert on human movement. We explore the science and practice of movement, including how the nervous system shapes our actions, the distinction between reflexive and deliberate movement patterns and how emotion and awareness influence our movement. Ido shares how to build a holistic movement practice into everyday life through an exploration-based approach grounded in playfulness and self-inquiry. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Ido Portal (00:00:20) Movement Practice, Self-Inquiry (00:02:08) Wordlessness, 3 Core Elements of the Body; Focus & Movement (00:06:35) Sponsor: LMNT (00:08:09) Mental & Physical Postures; Virtuosity (00:12:36) Vision & Eyes; Focus vs Relaxed Vision; Tool: Panoramic View (00:17:53) Hearing; Different Opinions (00:20:59) Body Shape; Developing Many Walks (00:23:53) Sponsor: AG1 (00:24:45) Playful Exploration, Openness (00:27:25) Peripersonal Space & Movement, Proximity, Reactivity, Discomfort (00:32:18) Exercise, Traditional Movements; Examination of Movement (00:37:43) Exploration; Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The third golden age of software engineering – thanks to AI, with Grady Booch

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 18:44:36 GMT

Software engineering is entering its third golden age, driven by new system-level abstractions and supported by AI tools. AI helps automate routine tasks but cannot replace human judgment and creativity. This era offers engineers a chance to focus on imagination and solve complex problems, not fear job loss.

Anthropic, Glean & OpenRouter: How AI Moats Are Built with Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:18:47 GMT

Deedy Das, Partner at Menlo Ventures, returns to Latent Space to discuss his journey from Glean to venture capital, the explosive rise of Anthropic, and how AI is reshaping enterprise software and coding.

One Year of MCP — with David Soria Parra and AAIF leads from OpenAI, Goose, Linux Foundation

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:46:34 GMT

One year ago, Anthropic launched the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—a simple, open standard to connect AI applications to the data and tools they need.

Brex’s AI Hail Mary — With CTO James Reggio

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 14:25:51 GMT

From building internal AI labs to becoming CTO of Brex, James Reggio has helped lead one of the most disciplined AI transformations inside a real financial institution where compliance, auditability, and customer trust actually matter.

How Dopamine & Serotonin Shape Decisions, Motivation & Learning | Dr. Read Montague

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:09:29 GMT

Dopamine and serotonin play key roles in how we learn, stay motivated, and make decisions. They affect how we focus on goals and respond to rewards or challenges. Understanding these brain chemicals helps improve mental health and behavior through medicine and technology.

Essentials: Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:09:26 GMT

Play helps shape the brain by engaging special circuits and chemicals. It is useful not just for kids but also for adults to boost creativity and thinking skills. Using play regularly can improve brain flexibility and learning throughout life.

The creator of Clawd: "I ship code I don't read"

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 18:32:34 GMT

Peter Steinberger builds software using AI agents that write and verify code themselves, enabling him to work like a full team alone. He focuses on planning, architecture, and letting AI handle implementation details, which speeds up development. His project Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) became popular by embracing rapid, experimental workflows powered by AI.

Science & Tools of Learning & Memory | Dr. David Eagleman

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:01:06 GMT

Dr. David Eagleman explains how the brain changes to help us learn and remember better. He talks about how time feels different depending on age and emotions. The episode also covers dreams, memory errors, and how to reduce social and political divides.

Linux From Scratch

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:48:13 GMT

Essentials: Therapy, Treating Trauma & Other Life Challenges | Dr. Paul Conti

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 09:02:24 GMT

Dr. Paul Conti explains how trauma affects the mind and body and why healing it is important. He shares tips on finding a good therapist and how therapy helps recovery. The episode also talks about using psychedelics like MDMA to support trauma treatment.

How AWS S3 is built

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:18:48 GMT

Amazon S3 is a massive storage system built for extreme scale, durability, and correctness. It uses advanced techniques like formal methods and strong consistency to ensure reliability despite constant failures. The system manages complexity through many focused microservices and designs scale to improve performance and availability.

Build Muscle & Strength & Forge Your Life Path | Dorian Yates

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:03:52 GMT

Dorian Yates shares how training with weights just two or three times a week can build muscle and improve fitness. He talks about finding your strengths and choosing the right life path. He also discusses his journey, health, psychedelics, and tips for all ages.

The Surprisingly Long Life of the Vacuum Tube

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 21:30:06 GMT

Vacuum tubes were important electron devices used in early radios, TVs, and computers before transistors existed. They helped create many technologies like X-rays, microwaves, and electronic displays. Even today, vacuum tubes influence science and technology in many ways.

Essentials: Tools to Boost Attention & Memory | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 09:07:51 GMT

Dr. Wendy Suzuki explains how exercise improves focus, memory, and brain health both immediately and over time. She also highlights benefits of meditation, sleep, and affirmations for mood and stress. Simple daily habits can boost cognitive performance and well-being.

How to Overcome Addiction to Substances or Behaviors | Dr. Keith Humphreys

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:06:26 GMT

Dr. Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford School of Medicine and a leading expert on treating addictions, drug laws and policy. We discuss all the major addictive substances and behaviors, including alcohol, opioids, gambling, stimulants, nicotine, cannabis and more, focusing on how genetics and certain use patterns shape addiction susceptibility. We discuss the best evidence-based tools for recovery, from 12-step programs to emerging treatments such as psychedelics and ibogaine. Anyone interested in making better choices for their health and/or seeking to avoid or overcome addictions ought to benefit from this episode. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman Helix Sleep: https://helixsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:58) Keith Humphreys (00:03:22) Addiction; Genetic Risk (00:09:14) Alcohol Use Disorder & Alcoholism; Genetic Predisposition & Addiction Risk (00:18:03) Sponsors: David & BetterHelp (00:20:37) Women & Alcohol Use; Young Adults; Cannabis Use (00:23:36) Health Benefit to Alcohol?, Red Wine, Cancer Risk; Social Pressure (00:31:47) Alcohol in Social Gatherings, Social Anxiety, Vulnerability, Work & Dates (00:37:41) Old vs New Cannabis & THC Levels; Smoked vs Edible Forms (00:44:38) Cannabis & Psychosis Risk; Cardiac Health; Youth Cannabis Use & Transition to Adulthood (00:52:29) Sponsor: AG1 (00:54:13) Industries of Addiction, Regulation; Gambling, Slot Machines, Novelty; Casinos (01:05:28) Decriminalization vs Legalization; Cannabis, Gateway Drug? (01:08:50) Psylocibin or LSD, Addiction Treatment; Microdosing, Clinical Trial Challenges (01:18:58) Sponsor: Helix Sleep (01:20:32) Brain Plasticity & Age; Ketamine, Depression, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) (01:28:10) SSRIs, Mass Shootings, ...

Compiler Engineering In Practice - Part 2: Why is a compiler?

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:24:17 GMT

A compiler's main purpose is to help developers build software faster and with fewer bugs, not just to make code run quickly. It provides useful abstractions and tools that save time and enable better programming practices. Good-enough performance combined with ways to optimize critical parts leads to practical and powerful software development.

Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle (26/30)

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:23:55 GMT

Meditation can help relax both mind and body, but true relaxation is hard because muscles hold tension in complex ways. Smooth muscles, which control blood vessels, can stay tense for a long time without us noticing or controlling them directly. Using methods like sauna, cold plunges, and focused attention may help release this hidden tension and improve meditation.

What is index overhead on writes?

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:23:42 GMT

Adding indexes slows down write operations because the database must update them. The slowdown is not linear and can be significant with many indexes, but partial or multicolumn indexes reduce overhead. It's best to test indexes on your data, especially btree types, to balance read speed benefits against write performance costs.

Time Travelling and Fixing Bugs with Property-Based Testing

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:23:35 GMT

The article shows how property-based testing can find hidden bugs in form validation, like incorrect age checks. It explains improving tests by generating dates, including tricky leap days, to cover all edge cases. This method helps catch errors early and reliably without changing the validation code.

Being creative requires taking risks

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:21:02 GMT

Being creative means taking risks and trying new things, even if it means losing success. Many people get stuck doing what feels safe and stop growing. To stay interesting, you must keep learning, experimenting, and sometimes say no to easy rewards.

Formalizing 100 Theorems

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:19:19 GMT

There is a list of 100 important mathematical theorems, some of which have been formalized in computer systems. The page tracks which theorems are formalized but only in major systems with many formalizations. Some theorems are missing from the list, and the page notes these omissions.

Fun with Algebraic Effects - from Toy Examples to Hardcaml Simulations

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:19:09 GMT

Algebraic effects let you write cleaner and more elegant code than monads by pausing and resuming computations. The Handled_effect library in OCaml helps manage these effects with simple operation handlers and continuations. This approach makes concurrent and simulation code easier to write and understand.

See it with your lying ears

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:30:27 GMT

This article explores how image and audio data can be transformed using similar techniques, revealing surprising differences in their effects. It explains how simple filters create pixelated images but cause harsh sounds in audio, and how frequency analysis helps improve audio editing. The author also shares coding examples and tricks like overlapping windows to reduce artifacts in audio processing.

The Transformer Family Version 2.0

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:19:04 GMT

Transformers compute outputs with scaled dot-product self-attention and use multi-head attention to attend to different subspaces in parallel. Later work adds relative/rotary position encodings, memory and kNN stores, and adaptive attention spans so models can use much longer context. Other variants use sparse patterns, LSH, or low-rank approximations to cut quadratic cost and make Transformers faster and more scalable.

The Q, K, V Matrices

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:13:47 GMT

Q, K, and V are three matrices that let a transformer decide which words matter to each other. Queries ask what to look for, keys show what each word offers, and values hold the information passed forward. Together they compute attention scores so the model focuses on useful words in parallel.

One Regulation E, Two Very Different Regimes

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:13:23 GMT

Regulation E requires banks to protect consumers from unauthorized electronic payments and to investigate and provisionally credit disputed transactions. Banks built fast-payment tools like Zelle but find Reg E’s strict, bank‑funded anti‑fraud rules costly and have tried to limit their liability. If a payment product acts like a bank account, regulators will likely treat it as covered by Reg E regardless of the technology.

Artificial Analysis: The Independent Ratings Agency of AI — with George Cameron and Micah-Hill Smith

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:09:30 GMT

In our first episode of 2026, swyx sits down with the cofounders of Artificial Analysis to discuss the state of LLM Evals and Benchmarks, and the key trends and drivers of LLM progress for the year.

Essentials: Optimizing Workspace for Productivity, Focus & Creativity

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:05:26 GMT

This episode explains how to set up your workspace to boost focus, creativity, and productivity. It covers lighting, desk arrangement, sounds, and breaks to help you work better. These tips work well at home, the office, or anywhere you work.

Try to Take My Position: The Best Promotion Advice I Ever Got

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:16:43 GMT

To get promoted, start doing the job you want before you have the title. Show you can handle the responsibility consistently for at least six months. Think about team problems and bring solutions, not just complaints.

Are Database System Researchers Making Correct Assumptions about Transaction Workloads?

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:49:30 GMT

This study analyzed many web applications and found most transactions are simple and predictable, supporting some assumptions made by deterministic database researchers. However, the research mainly looked at open-source apps and ignored complex, interactive transactions common in enterprise systems. While converting interactive transactions to simpler forms seems promising, the actual effort needed may be higher than the paper suggests.

Cursed circuits #4: PLL frequency multiplier

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:50:55 GMT

A phase-locked loop (PLL) uses a phase detector and a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) to make an output clock match a reference clock. Adding a frequency divider in the feedback path forces the VCO to run at an integer multiple of the reference, creating a clock multiplier. The article explains this with simple latch and flip-flop building blocks.

struggling towards an algebraic theory of music.

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:50:38 GMT

The author models a single musical voice as a step function and builds rich applicative and monoidal operations on it. They lift voices into multi-voice Music by assigning a Voice to each part, gaining parallel, pointwise, and sequential composition for free. They extend this with a hierarchical T algebra for smooth harmonic transformations, key/chord changes, and contouring to generate structured musical material.

which programming resource changed your career?

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:50:24 GMT

Haskell Programming from First Principles taught me Haskell and launched my career. The Art of Unix Programming shaped my taste for small, composable tools and open standards. Refactoring and Crafting Interpreters taught practical code transformation and craftsmanship.

Dot Com Press

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:49:12 GMT

There were six original top-level domains: .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and .mil. They were defined in RFC 920 in October 1984 and went live in 1985. Jon Postel helped create these domains, which existed before the World Wide Web.

Proving liveness with TLA

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:49:05 GMT

The author revisits a liveness proof in TLA+ because newer TLAPS supports temporal logic. They show practical proof patterns and work-arounds for TLAPS limitations and bugs. The examples prove invariants and liveness properties while explaining gotchas and fixes.

Accounting for Computer Scientists

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:48:55 GMT

Accounting is a graph: accounts are nodes and transactions are edges. Each account’s balance is the sum of its incoming and outgoing transactions, so all balances sum to zero. Profit & loss lists revenue and expenses; the balance sheet groups assets, liabilities, and equity derived from the graph.

Functors, Applicatives, and Monads: The Scary Words You Already Understand

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:47:43 GMT

Functors, Applicatives, and Monads are just practical patterns for working with wrapped values (like Maybe or Promise). Functor = map a function over a wrapped value; Applicative = apply a wrapped function to wrapped values; Monad = chain functions that return wrapped values. Elm hides the scary names and gives simple functions (map, map2/map3, andThen) so you can use these ideas without the jargon.

Notes on the expression problem and type design

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:36:20 GMT

The expression problem explores making types open for new variants and operations without causing issues for existing users. It's a fundamental design choice when modeling objects and data types in programming. Type classes and languages like Haskell offer solutions for open extensibility in type design.

The Saddest Moment

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:35:52 GMT

Chad Nauseam Home

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:35:42 GMT

A calculator must give correct answers, but floating point fails and whole-number bignums and rationals are not enough. Boehm built layers: bignums, rationals, algebraic numbers, then recursive real arithmetic (RRA) to get arbitrary precision. To stay fast and give exact results when possible, they combine symbolic forms with RRA only when needed.

Cardiovascular disease is a solved problem

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:35:34 GMT

Cardiovascular disease is driven by lifetime exposure to circulating LDL cholesterol. Lowering LDL with safe drugs can reduce that lifetime exposure enough to essentially prevent cardiovascular disease. Starting early preventive LDL-lowering therapy could eliminate most future heart and blood vessel disease.

A Practical guide to building a parser in Go

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:35:24 GMT

Tom built a parser in Go by splitting the work into three parts: Lexer, Parser, and AST Builder. He solved left recursion and performance issues using a Packrat-style memoized approach. The result is a robust parser that handles complex grammars and produces ASTs.

Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:34:42 GMT

In 2025 PostgreSQL dominated the database world, driving most major product releases, startups, and acquisitions. Big tech and cloud providers launched or expanded PostgreSQL DBaaS offerings, fueling a wave of purchases and competition. The industry saw large M&A moves and growing interest in specialized systems, with more PostgreSQL-led innovation expected.

A Basic Just-In-Time Compiler

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:34:36 GMT

Chris Wellons created a simple Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler to evaluate recurrence relations, allowing the program to compute terms efficiently. The JIT compiler generates native machine code from operations like addition and multiplication, rather than interpreting them one by one. This approach enhances performance and leverages direct hardware capabilities to execute the generated code.

Software Acceleration and Desynchronization

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:34:29 GMT

Speeding up software work means tightening feedback loops so problems are fixed as they are created. But when teams speed some loops and not others, desynchronization happens and important feedback is lost. To avoid drift and incidents, align the pace of short cycles (coding) with long cycles (platform, norms).

Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:17:07 GMT

Unix originally split directories like /bin and /usr/bin because early systems ran out of space and mounted a second disk as /usr. That historical disk-layout rule became obsolete with modern boot systems, shared libraries, and large disks. BusyBox and distributions still follow the old layout for historical reasons, not technical necessity.

Maybe Comments SHOULD Explain 'What'

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:52:23 GMT

Comments can explain both "why" and "what" to help avoid confusion and reduce context switching when reading code. Clear code is best, but sometimes short "what" comments make understanding easier without jumping between methods. Keeping explanations close to the code is better than hiding them in commits or spreading them out.

A field guide to sandboxes for AI

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:46:57 GMT

AI sandboxes use different layers to isolate code, from containers sharing the host kernel to microVMs with guest kernels and runtime sandboxes like Wasm with no syscall ABI. Containers rely on the host kernel, which can be risky if kernel bugs exist, so stronger boundaries like gVisor or microVMs improve security by limiting direct kernel access. Choosing the right sandbox depends on trust level, compatibility needs, and workload type to balance safety and functionality.

21 Lessons From 14 Years at Google

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:29:58 GMT

Great engineers solve real user problems and focus on understanding those problems deeply. Clarity, alignment, and making work legible matter more than clever code. Learn by doing, write to explain, and trade short-term pride for long-term collaboration.

Best Ways to Build Better Habits & Break Bad Ones | James Clear

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 09:06:17 GMT

James Clear explains how building habits tied to your identity and environment helps change stick without relying on willpower. He shares simple, no-cost tools to create good habits and break bad ones. These methods improve health, productivity, and mental well-being.

Quick And Easy GPU Random Numbers In D3D11

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:17:49 GMT

Generating random numbers on GPUs for games can use simple methods like LCG or Xorshift, which are fast but have limits. To improve randomness across many threads, seeding with a hash like the Wang hash helps reduce patterns. For best results today, newer methods like PCG are recommended over older ones like Xorshift.

Neural Networks: Zero to Hero

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 18:17:00 GMT

A hands-on course by Andrej Karpathy teaches neural networks from backprop to modern Transformers like GPT. It builds models in code, explains training, diagnostics, and practical tools like tokenizers. Prior Python and basic calculus help, and the course focuses on language models as a clear path to learn deep learning.

Who Owns the Memory? Part 1: What is an Object?

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 16:11:24 GMT

Compilers use rules about object lifetimes and memory to optimize code safely. Different languages like C, C++, and Rust handle memory and object ownership with varying constraints to prevent errors like dangling pointers. These rules help the compiler assume what can or cannot happen, enabling better performance and safety.

Take One Small Step

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 01:37:14 GMT

Pick the tiniest possible first step toward your goal. Tiny steps avoid stress and make action easier. Repeat them often and you will make real progress.

Reasons to Love the Field of Programming Languages

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:22:26 GMT

Programming languages blend human creativity with mathematical precision to help us express ideas and solve problems. They build complex software by providing tools to manage difficulty and enable collaboration. Language design and implementation involve both theory and practical engineering to create powerful, reliable tools.

Essentials: Micronutrients for Health & Longevity | Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:05:03 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Rhonda Patrick, PhD, a biomedical scientist and a leading health educator focused on nutrition, aging and general health. We discuss four key micronutrients that influence cellular stress responses, inflammation, detoxification and longevity, and how to increase your intake of each through diet or supplementation. We also cover deliberate cold and heat exposure, along with exercise, and how these tools support metabolic, cardiovascular and cognitive health as we age. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Rhonda Patrick (00:00:20) Physical Challenges, Stress Response Pathways, Hormesis, Temperature (00:03:43) Tool: Sulforaphane & Detoxification, Cruciferous Vegetables, Moringa (00:06:19) Sponsor: LMNT (00:07:51) Tool: Marine Omega-3s Fatty Acids, Fish Oil Supplements (00:09:48) Benefits of Fish Oil Supplementation, Longevity, Tool: Omega-3 Index (00:12:06) Omega-3s & Inflammation (00:14:46) Sponsor: AGZ by AG1 (00:16:16) Vitamin D; Health Benefits (00:18:46) Tool: Vitamin D Supplementation, Bloodwork (00:22:11) Tool: Magnesium, Dark Leafy Greens, Supplementation (00:24:25) Sponsor: Function (00:26:05) Deliberate Cold Exposure, Mood & Dopamine (00:26:58) Cold Exposure to Enhance Mitochondria, Shivering, Browning Effect (00:31:22) Tool: High-Intensity Interval Training, Tabata Workout, Sauna, Memory (00:33:18) Sauna, Cardiovascular & Cognitive Heath; Tool: Sauna Duration & Frequency (00:38:52) Tool: Hot Bath; Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simple Bidirectional Type Inference

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:43:17 GMT

This article explains a simple bidirectional type inference system for a tiny lambda language with Bool and arrow types. It shows how some terms infer types while others check against given types, and how that guides implementation. The Rust implementation follows the bidirectional rules and yields precise error messages.

Does the Internet know what time is it?

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:42:51 GMT

The author studied git commit timestamps to find errors caused by mis-set clocks and automation mistakes. They found some commits had author times far ahead or behind commit times, showing many timestamp errors. These errors come from time zones, date formats, and software handling issues, affecting about 0.65% of commits in some projects.

A Practical Introduction to Finger Trees

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:42:40 GMT

Finger Trees are a flexible functional data structure that store sequences with a cached monoidal "measure" for each subtree. By choosing a suitable monoid (like Sum for lengths) and a predicate, the tree can split and support efficient random access and other operations. This lets you build persistent sequence types with good performance (roughly O(log(min(i,n-i))) for access).

Clock Synchronization Is a Nightmare

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:42:33 GMT

There is no single global clock, so machines in different places will always disagree on exact time. This makes ordering events, debugging, and consistency in distributed systems hard unless you invest in better time hardware or use logical clocks. Choosing between accuracy, cost, and complexity is the core tradeoff.

1ML for non-specialists: introduction

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:42:27 GMT

1ML is a type system that integrates ML-style modules into languages using System Fω as a core. The author aims to simplify 1ML concepts from technical papers to help compiler writers understand and implement it. This series will explain key rules and practical concerns, focusing on clarity rather than deep theory.

Rethinking the Cost of Distributed Caches for Datacenter Services

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:42:20 GMT

Caching saves money mainly by cutting CPU work, not just latency. Putting fully materialized caches inside applications gives much bigger cost savings than storage-layer caches. However, strong consistency and cache management challenges reduce those gains and require careful trade-offs.

Murat and Aleksey Read Papers: “Rethinking the Cost of Distributed Caches for Datacenter Services”

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:41:24 GMT

The paper shows distributed caches can cut CPU costs and save money despite using more DRAM. It recommends richer cache semantics and collocating caches to reduce serialization and improve efficiency. The reader warns these savings can hide fragility: cache failures can cause huge downstream spikes and deferred operational costs.

2025 in Review: Jagged Intelligence Becomes a Fault Line

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:41:06 GMT

2025 showed AI improving fast but unevenly, driven largely by synthetic data that favors quantitative tasks. This jagged intelligence creates reliability and trust problems that block wider adoption and cause real harms when people overestimate capabilities. AI leaders are failing to explain these limits, widening a perception gap between technical and nontechnical users.

Five years of tinygrad

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:40:45 GMT

Tinygrad is a small software project started in 2020 that now outperforms bigger tools like PyTorch on some tasks. The team of six works openly and focuses on simple, clear code to compete with big companies like NVIDIA. Their goal is to make powerful AI tools affordable and easy to use for everyone.

The Efficiency Paradox: Why Making Software Easier to Write Means We'll Write Exponentially More

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:40:08 GMT

Making software easier to write leads to creating much more software, not less. Lowering costs lets us solve problems that were too expensive before, expanding what’s possible. This pattern means we’ll soon see a huge jump in knowledge work, shifting the focus from “can we build it?” to “should we build it?”

Everything as Code: How We Manage Our Company In One Monorepo

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:40:02 GMT

Kasava keeps its entire platform—code, docs, marketing, and tools—in one monorepo so everything is a single source of truth. This lets AI and engineers make atomic, cross-cutting changes (code, site, docs, marketing) in one commit and one deployment. The result: faster updates, fewer mismatches, and simpler reviews and rollbacks.

retweet from Josh Comeau

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:39:54 GMT

In 2023 a viral post changed my career and made me fall in love with teaching through writing. I tried freelancing, faced health limits, then joined ngrok as a Developer Educator and rebuilt their blog. A December post about LLMs found wide attention and confirmed this new path might be my future.

Memory Safety Is …

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:39:44 GMT

The author argues memory safety must be a property of an implementation, not just a language. A memory-safe implementation cannot introduce new behaviors compared to the source semantics, except it may crash. Definitions that only name bad errors or label behaviors as “trapped” vs “undefined” are misleading.

loss32: let's build a Win32/Linux

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:39:37 GMT

loss32 is a Linux project that runs the entire desktop using Win32 software through WINE. It aims to create a stable, user-friendly OS where you can run Windows programs easily. The project wants to improve WINE and keep the classic PC desktop experience alive.

Igniting the GPU: From Kernel Plumbing to 3D Rendering on RISC-V

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:39:27 GMT

The author enabled mainline, hardware-accelerated PowerVR 3D on the RISC-V TH1520 SoC by implementing platform drivers for power, clocks, and resets. They integrated a power sequencer that safely controls GPU resources and adapted the drm/imagination driver to select that strategy. With a Vulkan-first Mesa stack and display driver work, the board now runs accelerated 3D via Zink.

no strcpy either

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:38:54 GMT

The curl project removed strncpy and now also bans strcpy to avoid copying mistakes. They added a safer copy function that checks sizes and uses memcpy, ensuring null termination. This reduces long-term bugs and cuts down on bogus AI vulnerability reports.

Building a React App with Formally Verified State

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:38:35 GMT

The author built a React colorwheel app whose state transitions are formally verified with dafny-replay. Writing and verifying a clear spec caught design gaps early and made proofs reliable. The verified logic prevented state corruption, leaving only UI and design issues to fix.

Readings in Database Systems

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:35:51 GMT

"Readings in Database Systems" (the Red Book) is a long-running, opinionated collection of important research in data management. This is the Fifth Edition, the first new edition in over ten years. It highlights both classic and recent work for readers and researchers.

Defining Healthy Masculinity & How to Build It | Terry Real

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:06:02 GMT

Terry Real is a therapist and best-selling author expert on male emotional health and how men can build the skills for healthy relating to others: in relationships, work, friendships and to themselves. We discuss how mixed and ever-changing messages about what masculinity is are impacting the mental and physical health of men and boys. Terry explains how learning the skill of "relationality" leads to improvements in all aspects of boys' and men's lives and shares practical tools for how to do that. We also discuss the essential role of having a close male community to build confidence and self-esteem. This conversation offers actionable guidance for boys, men and women seeking to build healthier relationships with themselves and others. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/huberman David: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Waking Up: https://wakingup.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Terry Real (00:02:53) Men & Masculinity, Political vs Psychological Patriarchy, Feminism (00:07:39) Stoicism, Vulnerability, Traditional Masculinity, Emotions (00:10:50) Sponsors: BetterHelp & David (00:13:14) Masculinity Across Decades, Giving; Gratification vs Relational Joy (00:21:54) Healthy Emotional Expression, Connection & Vulnerability; Self-Esteem (00:31:17) Feeling Emotions, Tools: Asking For Help; Fights & "What Do You Need?" (00:35:10) Self-Esteem & Relationship Accountability; Criticism, Redefining Strength (00:40:47) Sponsor: AG1 (00:42:32) Healthy Criticism, Tool: Women & Articulating Needs (00:50:21) Childlike Behavior, Wise Adult & Trauma, Tool: Relational Mindfulness (00:58:11) Tool: Responsible Distance Taking; Self-Interest; Relationship "Biosphere" (01:08:14) Alcohol, Men & Friends, Loneliness, Men's Retreat (01:17:51) Fraternities, Men's Groups, Tool: Relationship vs Individual Support (0...

What an unprocessed photo looks like:

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 02:33:38 GMT

A camera sensor captures light as numbers, not colors or brightness like we see. To make a photo look right, lots of math adjusts colors, brightness, and contrast. Editing a photo is just another way to show the same data in a way that looks natural to us.

How to complain

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 02:31:28 GMT

The text advises against making strong and absolute statements when writing complaints or arguments. It suggests using descriptions instead of names, providing context to frame the problem, and offering a more nuanced perspective to make the argument more accessible and convincing. It also emphasizes the importance of having a good reason for complaining and avoiding excessive negativity in order to effectively convey the message and potentially persuade others to agree with your point of view.

Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 01:37:20 GMT

Working in large, long-lived codebases is hard but essential because they hold most product value. The biggest mistake is ignoring existing patterns — always follow prior art for consistency. Test key paths, avoid new dependencies, remove dead code carefully, and make small, reviewable changes.

Software engineers should be a little bit cynical

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:07:48 GMT

The author argues that a little cynicism helps engineers understand how big tech organizations really work. Engaging in company politics is often necessary to ship meaningful features and help users. Too much idealism or too much cynicism can both be harmful; a balanced, realistic view is best.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 23:59:41 GMT

Software always has bugs, so restarting often fixes many problems. Make startup and shutdown fast and reliable. Design programs to handle random kills and graceful shutdowns.

On deathbed advice/regret

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 23:18:35 GMT

Many deathbed "regrets" shared online are cheap, vague complaints rather than useful advice. Real guidance comes from what people actually did, not what they wish they'd done. So beware of performative regrets and follow living examples instead.

Take Scratchapixel to the Beach

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 20:17:56 GMT

Scratchapixel offers beginner-friendly, hands-on lessons for learning 3D rendering and computer graphics. They also provide reference material on the math and theory behind graphics, plus special-topic articles. The site is expanding with a Vulkan course and a book for offline study.

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing’ Imaginable

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 16:33:37 GMT

The proton is far more complex than the simple three-quark picture. It is a shifting quantum mix of many short-lived quarks, antiquarks and gluons that change with how we probe it. New analysis shows protons sometimes contain heavy charm quarks, which can affect particle-collider results.

Parsing Advances

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 16:33:18 GMT

The author discusses issues with infinite loops in resilient parsers when tokens are not consumed. They propose a new method using explicit assertions to ensure the parser advances, making errors easier to catch. This approach simplifies debugging and improves parser reliability.

On Mathematics vs Programming, and Syntax and Semantics

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 16:18:18 GMT

Programming and mathematics both use formal symbols and rules, so they are closely related. But real programs and applied math run on messy physical systems, so their semantics are never perfectly precise. Learning math helps programming by training clear, decompositional thinking even when exact precision is impossible.

A Modern Recommender Model Architecture

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 13:42:22 GMT

The article describes a modern recommender system architecture that combines user/item representations, interaction modeling, and scalable serving. It emphasizes modular components for training, feature pipelines, and online inference. The goal is accurate, efficient, and maintainable personalized recommendations.

How to do hard things

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 03:37:32 GMT

The essay argues we should deliberately learn how to do hard things by using clear processes and practice. Interviewing and other social systems often embed hidden biases because we copy familiar patterns instead of designing fair methods. Treating social practices as cheap, adaptable "social technology" and improving them deliberately would reduce harm and yield big benefits.

Rust's Block Pattern

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 02:01:53 GMT

Rust allows blocks to act as expressions, which helps organize code more clearly. Using this "block pattern," you can limit variable scope and keep related code together inside functions. This makes code cleaner, easier to read, and reduces bugs from unintended variable use or mutation.

LeaseGuard: Raft Leases Done Right!

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 02:01:42 GMT

LeaseGuard is a simple Raft lease protocol that uses the log itself as the lease, so leaders can serve consistent reads without extra lease messages. It adds two optimizations—deferred-commit writes and inherited-lease reads—to speed recovery and allow safe reads during leader transitions. The design is fully specified, TLA+-checked, implemented, and improves throughput and availability.

More databases should be single-threaded

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:59:25 GMT

The author argues databases should use many single-threaded shards instead of multi-threaded shards. This avoids complex locking, races, and transaction headaches and makes scaling easier. With good tooling, sharded single-writer shards give simpler correctness and horizontal scalability.

How I think about Kubernetes

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:57:03 GMT

Kubernetes is best seen as a runtime that keeps your declared infrastructure state true, not just a tool to run containers. It uses a type system to define resources like Pods and Deployments, making your infrastructure declarative and self-correcting. This continuous reconciliation means you change the desired state, let Kubernetes handle the rest, and use GitOps to manage changes safely.

Why I Write (And You Should Too!)

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:55:17 GMT

Writing trains your thinking and makes you a clearer communicator. Publishing lets you get feedback, meet people, and build a useful archive. Start now, accept imperfect drafts, and use simple tools and AI to help.

Review: Rethink the Linearizability Constraints of Raft for Distributed Systems

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:54:54 GMT

The paper proposes speeding Raft by replying to blind-write clients as soon as their entry is committed ("Commit Return") and by answering reads without waiting for full application ("Read Acceleration"). The author argues Commit Return can reduce client write latency without necessarily worsening read latency, contrary to the paper’s benchmark-driven claim. Read optimizations help when there is a large gap between commitIndex and lastApplied.

Initial Quick Thoughts on Singular Learning Theory

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:54:10 GMT

Singular learning theory (SLT) explains how symmetries in neural network parameters create singularities that shrink the model’s effective complexity and change the geometry of optimal solutions. The author suggests similar SLT-style effects arise in practice from limited training (early stopping) and from SGD noise, which make many parameter combinations effectively equivalent. Thus SLT insights may extend to realistic noisy training regimes and help explain generalization.

Diátaxis

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:54:06 GMT

Diátaxis is a systematic approach to creating technical documentation, focusing on understanding user needs. It identifies four types of documentation - tutorials, guides, reference, and explanations. Many organizations have found success applying Diátaxis principles to improve their documentation structure and clarity.

Newtype Index Pattern In Zig

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:54:00 GMT

Using indexes instead of pointers saves memory and improves performance by making data structures more compact and cache-friendly. Indexes also simplify working with cyclic and recursive data, and make serialization easier because they are naturally relocatable. In Zig, a newtype pattern using non-exhaustive enums creates strong, distinct index types that help avoid mix-ups while keeping code efficient.

My Christmas gift: telling you about PurpleMind, which brings CS theory to the YouTube masses

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:53:25 GMT

Scott Aaronson shares his excitement about PurpleMind, a YouTube channel by Aaron Gostein that explains computer science theory with clear animations and code. He praises Aaron's use of AI tools to create high-quality educational videos that engage viewers of all ages. Scott feels inspired to support new educators like Aaron who bring complex ideas to the public in fresh, accessible ways.

Load and store forwarding in the Toy Optimizer

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:53:17 GMT

This text explains how a toy optimizer removes redundant loads by tracking previous loads and stores at compile-time. It carefully invalidates cached loads when stores happen to the same or overlapping memory locations to keep optimizations correct. The approach helps eliminate unnecessary memory operations, improving efficiency in program traces.

Grow slowly, stay small

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:53:12 GMT

Herman admires old Japanese craftspeople who grow slowly and perfect their work over generations. He argues that staying small and avoiding rapid expansion makes businesses less fragile and more fulfilling. He runs his project this way: it pays the bills, gives him control, and lets him enjoy life.

2025-12-25 – doubly dual shuffles

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:53:05 GMT

There are four versions of the shuffle algorithm based on how the array parts are swapped and how the boundary moves. These versions fall into two main types: shuffle by sampling and shuffle by permutation. The article explains these clearly and highlights common mistakes in shuffling methods.

Free Will

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:53:00 GMT

The author wonders if free will exists and explains the determinist view that genes, environment, and experiences shape all our choices. They offer a practical take: people have some freedom in some situations, but the amount varies by circumstance. Even if behavior is determined, understanding causes can help change people and reduce blame.

Microarchitecture: What Happens Beneath

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:52:55 GMT

CPUs fetch many instructions and decode them into smaller micro-operations that can run in parallel. A micro-op cache, decoders, and a reorder/memory-order buffer manage these ops and handle complex x86 quirks. Execution units run micro-ops out of order and retire results in program order for correct behavior.

From 400 Mbps to 1.7 Gbps: A WiFi 7 Debugging Journey

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:52:41 GMT

The author upgraded to WiFi 7 but got slow speeds because the phone connected at 80 MHz, not 160 MHz as expected. Changing the router’s radio settings to force 160 MHz fixed the problem, boosting speeds to about 1.7 Gbps. Testing tips include using a separate device, checking real channel width, and using reverse mode with multiple streams for best results.

Writing an NES emulator in Haskell

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:52:37 GMT

Can the functional programming paradigm help implementing emulators ?

Thoughts & Links 13

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:52:17 GMT

The author links short notes about AI, design, and engineering practices. They stress small teams with ownership, fast feedback, and making work smaller. AI will reshape thinking and tools, so we should design for benefits while managing new harms.

On The Math Books I am using to learn about Pure Mathematics - Part 1

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:51:55 GMT

The author lists favorite pure math books and lecture notes organized by topic. They favor texts with categorical perspectives and recommend general references like The Princeton Companion and All the Math You Missed. Specific picks include Aluffi for algebra, Munkres for topology, and Bosman’s lectures for algebraic topology.

Complexity Has to Live Somewhere

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:51:50 GMT

Complexity is an unavoidable part of software development that must be managed, not eliminated. When designing tools or systems, it's essential to acknowledge where complexity resides, whether in code, documentation, or user knowledge. Embracing and understanding complexity can lead to better solutions and stronger systems.

Give it five minutes

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:09:41 GMT

Quick reactions often stop us from truly understanding ideas. Giving an idea five minutes means thinking before judging or arguing. This helps us learn more and respect the fragile nature of new thoughts.

Idea protectionism

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:44:21 GMT

Ideas start fragile and need protection, not immediate criticism. Use "Yes, And" to build and explore possibilities together. Critique can come later, but first give ideas room to grow.

The Reverse Interview - Questions Software Engineers Should Ask in Their Next Interview

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 13:26:34 GMT

Treat the interview as two-way due diligence, not just a test. Ask focused questions about engineering input, on-call policies, real technical challenges, and promotion paths. Use their answers to spot supportive cultures versus chaotic or punishing workplaces.

2025 in review.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:07:24 GMT

The author turned forty, started a new job at Imprint, and sent his son to kindergarten. He finished his fourth book, returned to hands-on software work, and used LLMs to help ship features. Long-term goals continue (mentoring leaders, fewer books ahead), and family and health matters were mostly steady.

The Input Stack on Linux

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:07:18 GMT

Let's explore and deobfuscate the input stack on Linux. Our aim is to understand its components and what each does. Input handling can be divided into two parts, separated by a common layer. We’ll try to make sense of all this, one thing at a time, with a logical and coherent approach.

Books I Enjoyed in 2025

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:06:02 GMT

The author lists diverse books they enjoyed in 2025, ranging from novels and memoirs to technical and philosophical works. Many selections helped them enter another era or discipline and sparked unexpected connections. Recurring themes are clear prose, intellectual curiosity, and a mix of emotional and technical insight.

I Program on the Subway

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:05:55 GMT

The author uses their hourly subway commute to work on programming side projects. The limited, distraction-free environment forces focused thinking even without full testing. They accept minor risks and inconveniences and sometimes meet fellow programmers.

Learning Lean 4 #

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:05:41 GMT

There are many ways to start learning Lean, depending on your background and taste. They are all fun and rewarding, but also difficult and occasionally frustrating.

GitHub - PatrickMassot/GlimpseOfLean: An introduction to theorem proving in Lean for the impatient.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:05:34 GMT

An introduction to theorem proving in Lean for the impatient. - PatrickMassot/GlimpseOfLean

If You Don’t Design Your Career, Someone Else Will

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:05:21 GMT

If you don't intentionally plan your career, others will shape it for you. Spend a couple of hours reviewing the past year, imagining your ideal path, and choosing one clear priority. Then make a short action plan and decide what to say no to.

Mathematics in Lean

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:48 GMT

Mathematics in Lean teaches how to formalize math using the Lean 4 proof assistant and the Mathlib library. It is meant to be read interactively in VS Code with examples and exercises that show tactics and proof terms. The book helps you build correct, machine-checked proofs and navigate Lean’s libraries.

Theorem Proving in Lean 4

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:38 GMT

Lean 4 is a system for writing and checking precise mathematical proofs and programs using dependent type theory. It combines interactive proof development with automated tools to help find and verify proofs. The tutorial teaches Lean's logic, language, and automation so you can build verified proofs and programs.

Cursed circuits #3: true mathematics

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:26 GMT

An op-amp amplifies the difference between two inputs and can be made into many useful circuits by adding resistors and capacitors. With simple resistor networks it can create non‑inverting amplifiers, add or subtract signals, and shift outputs around a chosen reference. By combining feedback and capacitors it can integrate signals over time or form filters, but single‑supply limits require biasing around a midpoint.

Property-based testing, adversarial developers, and LLMs

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:21 GMT

The post shows how property-based testing (PBT) can reveal unexpected behaviors when LLMs generate code. An adversarial developer can implement correct but unintended variants (e.g., 32-bit or 256-bit wrapping addition) that pass limited tests. Good properties and awareness of tool limits are needed to catch such mismatches.

Understanding your Linux open source drivers

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:17 GMT

The Linux open source graphics stack combines kernel drivers, firmware, Mesa (userspace drivers and shader compilers), and LLVM. For best results you need recent versions of all these components, and support varies by GPU vendor (AMD/Intel are well supported; Nvidia less so). Running Windows games also needs compatibility layers like Proton/DXVK, and picking a good compositor helps performance.

Logging sucks.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:09 GMT

Logs as usually done are noisy and useless for modern distributed systems. Emit one wide, structured event per request per service with lots of context and high-cardinality fields. Store all errors and slow requests and sample the rest so you can query production like analytics.

You’re Not Burnt Out. You’re Existentially Starving.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:04:04 GMT

You’re not burnt out from too much work — you’re starving for real meaning. Find the highest purpose that lights you up and take a small step toward it now. Build your life around that purpose and burnout will fade.

ELF Crimes: Program Interpreter Fun

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:03:55 GMT

The author explored using ELF's PT_INTERP feature to make executables act like data files run by a custom interpreter. After some frustrating debugging, they made a proof-of-concept that embeds data in an ELF and prints it via a statically linked interpreter. They warn this is hacky, nonportable, and not recommended for real use.

HackerNews Readings

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:03:50 GMT

Harry Potter is a very popular book series mentioned many times on Hacker News in 2025. People discuss its cultural impact, authorship, and how it influences reading habits. Some also talk about copyright, fan fiction, and its role in teaching literature.

I know you didn't write this

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:03:38 GMT

A coworker sent a polished project plan that was clearly AI-generated. Verifying AI work takes more time than the original shortcut saved. Undisclosed AI use breaks trust and shifts the real work onto others.

From Zero to QED

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:03:23 GMT

Zero to QED is a beginner-friendly series teaching Lean 4 from first principles. The first part covers Lean as a programming language; the second teaches theorem proving and dependent types. All examples are checked by the Lean compiler and the source is on GitHub.

It’s always TCP_NODELAY. Every damn time.

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:02:52 GMT

Marc Brooker argues that enabling TCP_NODELAY is essential for reducing latency in modern distributed systems. He explains that Nagle's algorithm, designed to optimize network throughput, can actually hinder performance due to its interaction with delayed ACKs. Brooker concludes that TCP_NODELAY should be the default setting in today's applications, as single-byte packets are rarely used anymore.

The Best Things and Stuff of 2025

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:02:47 GMT

The author reviews their 2025 reading, writing, and hobby projects, with a heavy focus on fiction, games, and systems thinking. They remain deeply involved in Clojure development while exploring non-technical writing, Zettelkasten note systems, and new tools like LLMs. Plans for 2026 include more non-technical writing, continued fiction and game exploration, and refining their note-taking and project experiments.

Test, don't (just) verify

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:02:41 GMT

Formal verification can prove absence of bugs but is limited by missing specifications, hard proof engineering, and slow proof assistants. AI and autoformalization can generate specifications and proofs, but remain part of the trusted computing base and can't model everything. Combining verification with practical testing—especially random and differential testing—gives a scalable, realistic path to correct and fast software.

Your favorite pieces of technical writing?

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:02:16 GMT

They list three helpful articles: how to ask good questions, a guide to writing better documents, and thinking differently about technical debt. These pieces helped the author beyond coding, especially in social and process areas. They also offer snarkier recommendations but kept the list focused and useful.

Becoming the Machine

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:01:38 GMT

The text warns against losing our humanity by blindly following machines. It encourages staying thoughtful and creative in a world full of technology. We should use machines wisely, not become like them.

Attention From First Principles

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:01:33 GMT

Deep learning uses attention to process entire sequences at once, solving RNNs' forgetting and parallelization problems but with high computation cost. New methods like linear attention and Mamba aim to keep attention benefits while reducing this cost by using efficient, learnable linear updates. This work highlights the balance between processing sequences fully and efficiently, linking RNNs, attention, and different sequence generation methods.

How agents can use filesystems for context engineering

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:01:26 GMT

Filesystems let agents store, search, and update large amounts of context outside the conversation so the model only loads what’s needed. This helps avoid token bloat, retrieve niche or line-specific info, and let agents learn or update instructions over time. Using tools like ls, grep, and read_file makes agents more reliable and efficient.

An initial analysis of the discovered Unix V4 tape

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:59:41 GMT

A rare 1970s Unix Fourth Edition tape was found and restored, revealing the full source code. The Fourth Edition was mostly new but shared about 10% of its code with earlier versions, and the Fifth Edition added significant new code on top of it. The analysis shows the Fourth Edition came about eight months before the Fifth Edition, highlighting rapid system development at the time.

Meta Is Using The Linux Scheduler Designed For Valve's Steam Deck On Its Servers

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:59:31 GMT

Meta is using a Linux scheduler originally made for Valve's Steam Deck on its large servers. This scheduler, called SCX-LAVD, works well for different hardware and helps balance the server load. Meta now calls it their new default scheduler for many server tasks.

Unix "find" expressions compiled to bytecode

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:59:23 GMT

The author created a compiler that turns Unix find expressions into bytecode to make file searches faster and simpler. This bytecode uses a small set of instructions to handle logical operations and actions like printing or testing file types. The compiler converts expressions into postfix form, builds bytecode fragments, and could be improved with optimizations like removing unnecessary instructions.

Boring is good

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:59:10 GMT

The LLM hype is fading because big models often fail in real use. Smaller, local models (SLMs) used for simple language tasks are cheaper, safer, and more useful. Mature AI will be boring infrastructure, not flashy magic.

Existential Haskell

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:58:34 GMT

The post explains how Haskell uses existential types to hide a value’s concrete type while preserving typeclass behavior. It shows patterns (Showable, Typeable, Some) for packing, casting, and dispatching values dynamically. These techniques enable flexible runtime behavior in a language that prefers concrete types.

AMD first entered the CPU market with reverse-engineered Intel 8080 clone 50 years ago — the Am9080 cost 50 cents apiece to make, but sold for $700

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:57:26 GMT

Fifty years ago AMD entered CPUs by reverse-engineering Intel’s 8080 to make the Am9080. The chip cost about $0.50 to produce but sold for as much as $700 to military buyers. Intel and AMD later signed a licensing deal that let AMD become an official second source and paved the way for future x86 agreements.

How Accurate Are Learning Curves?

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:57:19 GMT

Learning curves say costs fall by a constant percentage with each doubling of cumulative production. New research shows learning rates often change over time, so simple straight-line forecasts (Wright’s Law) can be unreliable. A piecewise, probabilistic model can predict costs somewhat better, but improvements are modest and vary by technology.

Power Laws Have More Power Than You Think

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:57:06 GMT

People copy others online, so a few items become huge hits while most things get little attention. Recommendation systems and high choice amplify this effect, creating persistent power-law distributions across media. That makes hits more random, hollows the middle, and shifts power to platforms and top talent.

On Metastable Failures and Interactions Between Systems

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:54:45 GMT

Metastable failures are self-sustaining performance collapses caused by positive feedback loops, like retry storms. They happen because systems act on ambiguous signals (e.g., timeouts) that can mean different problems. Avoiding or reducing interactions, preventing reinforcing actions, and clarifying signals mitigate but may not fully eliminate these failures.

Bachelor Thesis: Extended Abstract

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 14:54:22 GMT

This article explains a simple method to manage page tables on Intel's x86 processors using self-referencing entries. This technique reduces complexity and memory use by letting the system access all page tables directly through virtual addresses. It works for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems and makes the operating system code easier to maintain.

Essentials: How to Optimize Your Hormones for Health & Vitality | Dr. Kyle Gillett

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 09:05:29 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, my guest is Dr. Kyle Gillett, MD, a dual board-certified physician in family medicine and obesity medicine and an expert in optimizing hormone levels to improve overall health. We explain how to improve hormone levels across the lifespan in both men and women using behavioral, nutritional and exercise-based tools. We also discuss common clinical topics, including hormone testing, PCOS, hair loss, testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) and peptides, focusing on potential benefits, tradeoffs and risks. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Maui Nui: https://mauinuivenison.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Kyle Gillett (00:00:36) Hormone Health; Women vs Men, Tool: Hormone Testing (00:02:35) Tool: Big 6 Lifestyle Pillars to Optimize Hormone Health (00:04:32) Sponsor: AG1 (00:06:17) Diet, Individualization; Bloodwork & Frequency (00:07:20) Exercise, Zone 2 Cardio; Caloric Restriction (00:08:36) Intermittent Fasting, Growth Hormone, IGF-1 (00:11:05) Hormones & Sleep, Growth Hormone, Menopause, Andropause, TRT (00:13:28) Testosterone & Women, SHGB (00:15:19) Sponsor: Maui Nui (00:16:34) Dihydrotestosterone (DHT), Androgens; Turmeric & Black Pepper; Hair Loss (00:19:47) Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), Symptoms, Metformin, Inositol (00:23:13) Cannabis, Alcohol, Testosterone (00:24:48) Males & Testosterone, TRT, Prostate Cancer (00:26:04) Prolactin, Dopamine "Wave Pool", Tool: Casein & Gluten (00:27:23) Sponsor: Function (00:29:03) Social Relationships & Hormones, Tool: Planning for Crisis (00:31:02) Peptides, Growth Hormone & Risk; BPC 157, Sourcing & LPS (00:36:42) Melanotan, Uses & Risks (00:38:45) Spiritual Health, Interdisciplinary Health Integration (00:41:23) Caffeine & Hormones, Sleep; Acknowledgements Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

Year in books

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 07:53:28 GMT

The author read 50 books in 2025 and highlights 18 favorites (11 non-fiction, 7 fiction). These books cover writing, history, media, biographies, and several imaginative novels. Favorites include On Writing Well, Secret Formula, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

The Illustrated Transformer

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:04:38 GMT

Discussions: Hacker News (65 points, 4 comments), Reddit r/MachineLearning (29 points, 3 comments) Translations: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) 1, Chinese (Simplified) 2, French 1, French 2, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, Spanish 1, Spanish 2, Vietnamese Watch: MIT’s Deep Learning State of the Art lecture referencing this post Featured in courses at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, CMU and others Update: This post has now become a book! Check out LLM-book.com which contains (Chapter 3) an updated and expanded version of this post speaking about the latest Transformer models and how they've evolved in the seven years since the original Transformer (like Multi-Query Attention and RoPE Positional embeddings). In the previous post, we looked at Attention – a ubiquitous method in modern deep learning models. Attention is a concept that helped improve the performance of neural machine translation applications. In this post, we will look at The Transformer – a model that uses attention to boost the speed with which these models can be trained. The Transformer outperforms the Google Neural Machine Translation model in specific tasks. The biggest benefit, however, comes from how The Transformer lends itself to parallelization. It is in fact Google Cloud’s recommendation to use The Transformer as a reference model to use their Cloud TPU offering. So let’s try to break the model apart and look at how it functions. The Transformer was proposed in the paper Attention is All You Need. A TensorFlow implementation of it is available as a part of the Tensor2Tensor package. Harvard’s NLP group created a guide annotating the paper with PyTorch implementation. In this post, we will attempt to oversimplify things a bit and introduce the concepts one by one to hopefully make it easier to understand to people without in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. 2025 Update: We’ve built a free short course that brings the contents of this post up-to-...

Transform Pain & Trauma Into Creative Expression | David Choe

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 09:05:35 GMT

David Choe is a world-renowned artist, writer, podcaster and TV host. He tells how as a child, he was made to believe he was destined for greatness but also that he was a complete disgrace, leading him to channel his energy—including deep shame—into art that brought him global recognition. He shares about his addictions that put him on a decades-long cycle of extreme highs and lows and that forced him to eventually acknowledge and heal the childhood trauma he was battling inside. David shows up with raw, authentic presence to show us how we can transmute pain and shame into our best creative work and, more importantly, how complete vulnerability, especially about our hardest experiences, is the ultimate tool for forgiveness and self-acceptance. He also tells us the actual story about early Facebook, Pee-wee Herman and Santa Claus. Note: This conversation includes topics and language that may not be suitable for younger audiences. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Mateina: https://drinkmateina.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 David Choe 00:03:10 Drawing, Black & Colors, Death 00:12:54 Telepathy, South Bay 00:17:52 Sponsors: Eight Sleep & LMNT 00:20:40 Childhood, Podcasts, Mundane Moments & Artist Life 00:28:45 Mother, Beliefs, Religion, Artistic Ability, Childhood 00:33:27 Gambling, Transformation; Immigrant, Disgrace 00:40:10 Street Art, Graffiti, Creativity; Paintings, Payment; Sports 00:52:08 Sponsor: AG1 00:53:30 Santa, Belief; Journal, Vulnerability; Heart Break, Art 01:00:16 Facebook, Graffiti; Theft, Gambling 01:10:57 Adapting, Creativity 01:17:16 Album Cover, Art & Payment 01:23:40 Sponsor: Function 01:25:28 Immigrant & Belonging, Academics, Learning Art, Marvel Comics, Shame 01:35:11 Shame, Gambling Addiction, Stress 01:43:05 Sexu...

SuperMemo Guru

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:32:19 GMT

The content on this site covers a wide range of topics including memory, learning, sleep, creativity, problem solving, brain science, health, and education. It includes information on various subjects such as the problem with schooling, the importance of pleasure in learning, the impact of sleep on learning and creativity, the misconceptions about intelligence, and the benefits of spaced repetition. The site also debunks myths and provides information on SuperMemo, a learning method.

The Complexity of Simplicity

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:32:01 GMT

Complexity grows from the abstractions we create. Good abstractions hide accidental complexity, but leaked or bad ones make systems harder. We must design simpler, clearer abstractions so only essential complexity remains.

Galaxy brain resistance

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:31:47 GMT

The author warns against arguments that appeal to vague long-term benefits because they often disconnect from reality and justify bad choices. Many tech and finance claims use inevitability or longtermism to dodge accountability and push risky schemes. These arguments have low "galaxy brain resistance" — they sound smart but are easy to rationalize and abuse.

The Uncertain Origins of Aspirin

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:31:16 GMT

The true ancient roots of aspirin are unclear and many old claims lack solid evidence. Willow bark contains salicin and may have influenced pain remedies, but it is not clearly the same as modern aspirin. The reliable development of aspirin dates to 18th–19th century work culminating with Hoffmann’s 1897 synthesis and later debates over credit.

A Reverse Engineer’s Anatomy of the macOS Boot Chain & Security Architecture

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:31:07 GMT

Apple Silicon secures macOS in hardware, not just the kernel. Independent chips like the Secure Enclave and monitors (SPTM/TXM) enforce cryptographic roots of trust and memory protections. This creates a stronger, different security model than Intel, shifting most attack surfaces to privileged userland daemons.

Demystifying Determinism in Durable Execution

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:30:50 GMT

Durable execution frameworks re-run functions from the top to recover, so the control flow must be deterministic. Side effects can be non-deterministic but must be idempotent or tolerate duplication. Separate control flow (decisions) from side effects (actions) and record any non-deterministic inputs used by control flow.

Analyzing the Heartbeat of the MySQL Server: A Look at Repository Statistics

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:30:42 GMT

Analysis of MySQL’s git repo shows development activity and contributors peaked in the mid-2000s and have steadily declined since 2011. Core code insertions and commit counts dropped sharply, while some focused work (e.g., HeatWave) continues. Overall, the project is quieter and more targeted than before.

Keeping a NixOS system up-to-date

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:30:31 GMT

This post shows a simple way to keep NixOS updated automatically. Add system.autoUpgrade and nix.gc to schedule daily upgrades and weekly garbage collection. The timer runs nixos-rebuild --upgrade and may reboot if needed, letting you rollback via generations.

A New Bridge Links the Strange Math of Infinity to Computer Science | Quanta Magazine

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:30:20 GMT

Anton Bernshteyn discovered a surprising link between descriptive set theory (the study of strange infinite sets) and computer science problems about network algorithms. He showed many questions about measurable colorings of infinite graphs correspond to local algorithms on finite networks. This bridge is letting set theorists and computer scientists share tools and rethink the structure of infinity.

The chip made for the AI inference era – the Google TPU

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:29:58 GMT

Google’s TPU is a specialized chip designed for AI inference that gives Google big cost and energy advantages over GPUs. It runs faster and more efficiently for many AI workloads because of custom hardware, software, and networking. Wider adoption is limited by ecosystem and availability, but TPUs strengthen Google Cloud’s competitive edge.

A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:29:39 GMT

A new Git repository collects 44 years of Unix history, from 1972 to 2015, in one place. It combines many snapshots and repositories from Bell Labs, Berkeley, and FreeBSD into a single, searchable archive. This project helps study Unix's code evolution and preserves its important legacy.

The CRDT Dictionary: A Field Guide to Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:29:28 GMT

CRDTs are data structures that let multiple computers update data at the same time without conflicts. They work by merging changes in a way that always leads to the same final result, even if updates happen in different orders. This makes them useful for building distributed systems like collaborative apps, but they need extra metadata and careful design to handle conflicts and growth.

Welcome to Lord of the io_uring

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:28:49 GMT

io_uring is a new and powerful method for asynchronous I/O programming in Linux. This guide, created by Shuveb Hussain, offers insights into io_uring's features and benefits. Users can contribute to the guide's source code on GitHub and report any bugs they find.

My Lobsters Interview

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:27:05 GMT

Alex (@veqq) discusses a lifelong love of computing, Lisp/Emacs, and recreational projects that blend programming with mathematics. He favors layered, well-named design, small composable functions, and learning by building tools and puzzles. Mathematics shapes his thinking and fuels curiosity, both for fun and for clearer software reasoning.

Tiny-TPU: the why and how

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:26:52 GMT

A group of beginners rebuilt a toy TPU that supports both inference and training and tested it on the XOR problem. They learned hardware and ML basics by drawing designs, writing Verilog, and using a weight-stationary systolic array with pipelining. The project shows you can learn chip design by trying hacky, hands-on experiments.

Stay inconvenienced

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:26:45 GMT

At 3 a.m. the author finds comfort talking to an AI that listens without judgment. This calm, indifferent presence highlights how being heard can come from things that don’t need us. But true human connection remains vital because real love requires being changed and inconvenienced by one another.

How good engineers write bad code at big companies

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:26:38 GMT

Big tech firms often produce bad code because many changes are made by engineers who are new to a codebase or role. Companies prioritize moving people and short-term visibility over keeping long-term expertise. That tradeoff makes low-quality, hacky fixes inevitable even with competent engineers.

A Brief History of NSA Backdoors.

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:26:16 GMT

The NSA has a long history of inserting backdoors into cryptographic products and chips to enable secret surveillance. These backdoors appeared in systems like Crypto AG devices, DES, the Clipper Chip, and various encryption/TPM chips, and were sometimes installed via intercepted hardware. Experts have found and exploited some of these covert vulnerabilities, showing the practice continues and affects many critical systems.

Incidents: the exceptional as routine

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:26:03 GMT

Cloudflare reports about two incidents per day (Jan–Nov 2025), mostly minor. AWS reports far fewer, but that likely reflects less transparent reporting, not fewer real problems. Incidents are normal and constant: small, everyday reliability work often goes unseen.

It's your job to understand

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:23:38 GMT

If you are an academic or researcher, thinking and understanding are your core job. Tools like LLMs can help, but they cannot replace the deep work of reading, writing, and refining ideas. Offloading that thinking to machines is an abdication of responsibility.

Mastering PyTorch: From Linear Regression to Computer Vision

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:23:24 GMT

Learning PyTorch: tensors, operations, linear regression, datasets, dataloaders, and computer vision

Coq: The World’s Best Macro Assembler?

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:20:40 GMT

Functional Data Structures and Algorithms

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:14:59 GMT

This book teaches data structures and algorithms for functional programming with an emphasis on formal proofs. It covers both correctness and running-time analysis using inductive proofs. All proofs are machine-checked in the Isabelle proof assistant and linked from the PDF.

Build a Compiler in Five Projects

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:12:34 GMT

The text shows code fragments from a compiler-building project. It defines predicates to recognize R5 expressions and definitions. The patterns cover literals, arithmetic, logic, control, let*, set!, and function forms.

Feedback doesn't scale

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:12:24 GMT

Listening to everyone stops working as teams grow. At scale, feedback becomes noise without context or trust. Build systems and trusted proxies to collect, filter, and respond to real issues.

Fifty Shades of OOP

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:12:06 GMT

OOP groups data and behavior into objects using classes, methods, encapsulation, and inheritance. Languages differ on features like dynamic dispatch, interfaces/traits, and whether objects or closures model encapsulation. Critics point to complexity, mutable state, and style problems (bad inheritance, scattered behavior) while alternatives like interfaces, composition, and message-passing address some issues.

It’s Always the Process, Stupid!

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:11:09 GMT

AI cannot fix broken business processes; it only speeds them up. To benefit from AI, companies must first design clear, structured workflows. Real improvement comes from optimizing processes, then using AI to accelerate them.

Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:10:54 GMT

The author wants a simple, high-quality laptop like a MacBook but running Linux and backed by a user-aligned company. Current options (Apple, Asahi Linux, Framework, HP) all have tradeoffs in compatibility, power management, or design. They daydream about a single polished "hackbook" product sold in one configuration as a true MacBook replacement.

Self-hosting my photos with Immich

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 22:10:42 GMT

The author set up Immich, a self-hosted photo manager, to back up Google Photos after Google limited access. He runs Immich on a low-power mini PC using NixOS and accesses it securely via Tailscale VPN. Although some features like photo editing and easy iPhone backup need improvement, Immich works well and keeps his photos safe.

The Language Trap, as proven by MRI: people don't get...

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 21:57:56 GMT

MRI shows many people treat math like normal language. Experts use nonverbal brain areas for math. Calling language enough for understanding is the "language trap."

Origins of the brain networks for advanced mathematics in expert mathematicians

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 21:55:24 GMT

Professional mathematicians use a specific brain network for advanced math that is distinct from language areas. This network overlaps with regions for basic number processing and for seeing numbers and formulas. Math training increases activity in ventral visual areas that recognize numerical symbols.

Programming as Theory Building - Peter Naur

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 04:38:17 GMT

Programming is mainly about building a shared mental theory of how the program handles real-world affairs. That internal theory lets programmers explain, justify, and safely modify the program. Programs live or decay depending on whether people who hold that theory remain responsible for them.

The gift card accountability sink

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 04:32:40 GMT

Gift cards are a huge, legitimate payments system used by many businesses and by unbanked people. Scammers exploit gift cards because regulations and industry practices make fraud hard to trace and victims hard to reimburse. The gift card industry’s outsourcing and light regulation create an “accountability sink” that enables large-scale abuse.

LeaseGuard: Raft Leases Done Right!

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 21:42:47 GMT

LeaseGuard makes Raft leases simple and correct by treating the log as the lease. The leader can serve consistent reads locally while its committed log entry’s lease is valid. Optimizations let a new leader accept writes and serve reads quickly after election, improving recovery and availability.

Exposing game servers over Tailscale

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 21:39:38 GMT

The author used Tailscale to share their game server with a friend, avoiding complicated port forwarding. This made the connection faster and more reliable than using Steam’s relay service. They ensured the setup was secure and limited access only to the game server.

4 thoughts on “Mathematicians don’t care about foundations”

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 21:36:12 GMT

Most working mathematicians don’t worry about deep foundations and work informally. Foundations matter as useful tools, but they are social conventions that frame rather than define math. If taught differently, mathematicians would likely adopt other foundations without fuss.

Pure Silicon Demo Coding: No CPU, No Memory, Just 4k Gates

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 21:35:48 GMT

The author created a computer demo using only pure silicon with no CPU or memory, relying on 4,000 gates in an FPGA. The demo shows colorful graphics like a starfield and checkerboard, synced with simple music patterns inspired by the nyan.cat song. The project involved clever tricks to save space and generate visuals and sound efficiently within hardware limits.

How to annotate JITed code for perf/samply

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 01:02:07 GMT

ZJIT and YJIT support Linux perf and also work with samply because both read the perf map format. To annotate JIT code, append lines "START SIZE symbolname" (hex START and SIZE without 0x) to /tmp/perf-{PID}.map when you generate a function. This lets perf or samply show JIT frames; ZJIT exposes it behind --zjit-perf to avoid extra file I/O.

Slowness is a Virtue

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 01:01:57 GMT

Research often needs slow, aimless exploration rather than fast, well-defined work. Modern institutions reward quick, legible results and thus favor “sprinters” over true researchers. Slowness lets you tackle risky, important problems that speed-focused systems ignore.

z8086: Rebuilding the 8086 from Original Microcode

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 01:00:45 GMT

z8086 is an FPGA‑friendly reimplementation of the Intel 8086 that runs the original 512×21 microcode ROM. It recreates the 8086 microarchitecture (prefetch queue, BIU/EU split, microcode sequencer, ALU, bus handling) and reproduces subtle behaviors and bugs. The core is compact, passes ISA tests, boots small programs, and aims to boot DOS and support wider FPGA testing next.

It's all about momentum, innit?

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 01:00:37 GMT

Momentum is the key to success in both physics and life. Small, consistent actions build momentum that leads to big results over time. Protect your focus and create routines that help your momentum grow every day.

NVME is not a hard disk

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:57:51 GMT

NVME is a fast storage technology that works differently from traditional hard disks. Many database applications handle their own data redundancy, so extra storage copies are often unnecessary. Using NVME over a strong network lets storage be flexible and efficient, but it also adds complexity.

Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 03:53:03 GMT

This course delves into the study of computation's role in various aspects of our world and the importance of having the right tools and language for this study. It covers central results and questions about computation, starting with formalizing concepts like computation and algorithms. The course progresses to introduce models such as deterministic finite automata and Turing machines, exploring computability limitations and undecidable problems. Further topics include computational complexity, graph theory's role in complexity analysis, the P vs NP problem, randomized algorithms, and the significance of cryptography in secure communication.

Essentials: How to Set & Achieve Goals

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 09:06:46 GMT

This episode explains how the brain and dopamine affect motivation to reach goals. It shares simple tools like visualizing failure and tracking progress to help you stay focused. Using these science-based methods can make it easier to set and achieve your goals.

How SQLite Is Tested

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:11:39 GMT

As of version 3. 42.

The Wrong Question About Type Systems

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:11:22 GMT

The author argues that static types are not always better than dynamic languages like Clojure, which rely on discipline, testing, and schemas to ensure correctness. Types can add coordination costs and coupling that make change harder, while Clojure's design favors simplicity, immutability, and fast feedback. Ultimately, the choice is about tradeoffs between strict guarantees and flexible, interactive development.

The Illusion of Shared Understanding

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:10:14 GMT

And how to fix it with RFCs

Put a ring on it: a lock-free MPMC ring buffer

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:10:08 GMT

This text explains a lock-free multiple-producer, multiple-consumer (MPMC) ring buffer that uses atomic operations to manage concurrency safely. It ensures that enqueue and dequeue operations happen in order without data races or inconsistencies. The design relies on epochs and compare-and-swap (CAS) to coordinate parallel threads efficiently.

Own Your Observability: Supabase Metrics API

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:56 GMT

Stream your Supabase database telemetry into any Prometheus-compatible observability stack with the Metrics API. Full control over monitoring, visualization, and alerting.

On the success of ‘natural language programming’

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:51 GMT

Most programming starts as fuzzy natural language and is refined by conversation and feedback. Large language models let computers join that loop, turning informal specs into working code. For critical cases we still use formal tools or combine neural and symbolic methods.

Statistics made simple

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:40 GMT

Announcing a simple statistics library for Clojure web servers

A little bit uncomfortable

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:35 GMT

Fear and discomfort often signal where real growth happens. Lean into small scary moments and support others when they do the same. Ask yourself what makes you uneasy this week and try doing it.

Optimization Countermeasures

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:28 GMT

Low-level crypto must avoid timing leaks by using constant-time code. Compilers can undo constant-time fixes, so programmers use a "value barrier" (an empty asm no-op) to stop dangerous optimizations. The value barrier preserves security while compiling to no runtime cost.

How to do everything

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:20 GMT

Many things that seem hard you actually just lack an easy insight into, and it's worth spending some time investigating what those insights might be.

theory building without a mentor

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:15 GMT

learning how a program is intended to work is hard. here's how to do it.

the gen z resilience drought

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:06 GMT

the "omg you people can't do anything" of it all

how I think when I think about programming

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:09:01 GMT

Alice Maz shares her thoughts on how to think about programming, aiming to provide newer programmers with a clearer understanding of the fundamental concepts. She emphasizes that programming is not just about memorizing syntax but understanding the underlying abstractions that make different languages similar. By grasping these basic elements, programmers can transition easily between languages and improve their skills without getting bogged down in unnecessary complexity.

How AWS deals with a major outage

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:50 GMT

AWS suffered a 15-hour us-east-1 outage that hit many major sites after DynamoDB DNS failed and problems spread to EC2 and the Network Load Balancer. AWS’s Incident Response team ran parallel investigations, found a DNS Enactor race condition, and applied temporary DNS overrides before fixing public records. Post-incident reviews and long-tenured engineers’ involvement are helping AWS improve tooling and resilience.

Bored People Quit

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:44 GMT

Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It's written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don't have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they've either never done the work or have forgotten

Growth Without Goals

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:37 GMT

Success is not hitting big goals but building simple daily practices. Growth comes from steady, curious habits and exploration, not chasing accomplishments. Do the right small things every day and the rest follows.

You Are Not Late

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:31 GMT

The internet still has huge untapped opportunities. Now is one of the best times ever to start something new online. You are not late.

How the World Works

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:25 GMT

Many successful countries built industry by breaking free-market rules and using government power to steer resources. Anglo-American economics often treats free markets as natural, but history shows protection, subsidies, and planning helped nations catch up. Today’s fast-growing economies follow these pragmatic, non‑laissez-faire strategies.

Cargo Cult Science

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:20 GMT

Science works best when people are honest and careful not to fool themselves or others. Many studies look scientific but miss this honesty, so Feynman calls them "Cargo Cult Science." True science tests ideas openly, reports all results, and tries hard to find the truth, even if it means being wrong.

The Ladder of Abstraction

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:14 GMT

Good designers move up and down levels of abstraction to understand systems. Visual and symbolic abstractions reveal high-level patterns and let us focus on causes by stepping down. Interactive control of parameters and lightweight prototypes help build intuition and guide design.

100 Tips for a Better Life

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:08:03 GMT

The list gives short, practical tips to improve life in areas like productivity, health, success, and relationships. It emphasizes making tasks easy, being dependable, knowing yourself, and avoiding traps like procrastination and status-seeking. It also urges patience, compassion, and learning from plans and experience.

Cells are very fast and crowded places

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:55 GMT

Cells are incredibly crowded, like Times Square full of proteins and ribosomes. Molecules and motors inside cells move extremely fast, colliding and diffusing constantly. This speed and density let cells work efficiently but make them hard to simulate.

Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:50 GMT

Working quickly helps you finish more tasks and makes starting new ones feel less daunting. When tasks are completed faster, you become more inclined to take on more work, leading to greater productivity. In contrast, slowness can create a negative cycle where tasks seem too costly, causing you to avoid them altogether.

The Rise of ``Worse is Better''By Richard Gabriel

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:44 GMT

Gabriel contrasts the MIT "right thing" (complete, consistent, correct) with the New Jersey "worse-is-better" (prioritizing implementation simplicity). Unix and C are examples that spread because they are easy to implement and port. Simple, portable systems win users and are later improved, so worse-is-better often wins in practice.

Finance as culture

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:35 GMT

Financialization, the process by which financial institutions and markets grow in size and influence, has seeped into our culture. The combination of low interest rates, a tech bull run, and FOMO has led to the financialization of culture, manifesting in lottery culture and equity culture. Lottery culture involves trading assets without understanding their fundamental value, while equity culture revolves around the perception that equity holders are getting rich. The financialization of culture is influenced by factors such as interest rates, tech maturity, inequality, and social media. The future of financialization is uncertain, with possibilities ranging from a bubble burst to a populist reversion of capital over labor.

The idea maze

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:29 GMT

Startups succeed when founders navigate a complex, multi-year "idea maze" not just from a single spark. Study history, analogies, theories, and direct experience to anticipate how markets, tech, and incumbents will react. Competing startups matter less than avoiding long dead‑end paths.

Theses on Sleep

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:23 GMT

The author argues we should be skeptical of mainstream sleep science and weakly held beliefs about sleep. He suggests acute sleep loss can sometimes be harmless or even beneficial, and people may adapt to shorter sleep. He warns not to drastically change your sleep without gradual personal experiments.

The Longevity FAQ

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:17 GMT

Longevity research finds many genes and pathways (like sirtuins, mitochondria, telomerase, and mTOR) that can change lifespan, but results vary by species and methods. Key debates remain about whether oxidative damage and mitochondrial ROS drive aging, and some interventions work in some animals but not others. Dietary factors (methionine, cysteine, tryptophan, BCAAs) and drugs like rapamycin show lifespan effects, though benefits and doses differ.

100 Little Ideas

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:10 GMT

Many cognitive biases make us misunderstand reality and overestimate ourselves. Social incentives and institutions often protect inefficient or unfair systems. Better choices come from humility: check base rates, admit uncertainty, and question tribal pressure.

always bet on text

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:07:04 GMT

Text is the most powerful and reliable way to communicate. It is durable, precise, efficient, and flexible. For most needs, choose text first.

Analogy As The Core Of Cognition

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:06:48 GMT

The author argues that analogy is the central process of thought. Concepts are bundles of analogies that guide perception and memory. Thinking flows by leaping between these analogy-based chunks.

Searching for outliers

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:06:37 GMT

Many important outcomes follow heavy-tailed distributions where a few outliers drive most of the value. To succeed you need lots of samples and filters that spot “maybe amazing” candidates. Expect demoralizing failures but focus on processes that increase your chance of finding outliers.

The Four Quadrants of Conformism

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:06:27 GMT

Paul Graham divides people into four types based on how much they conform and how aggressive they are: aggressively/passively conventional and aggressively/passively independent. Independent-minded people create new ideas and need protections like free inquiry, while aggressively conventional people push to ban or punish dissenting ideas. He worries those protections are weakening (especially in universities) but believes independent thinkers will find or build new places to thrive.

Fast · Patrick Collison

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:06:16 GMT

Some examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:54 GMT

The author says a blog post is a precise search query that finds people who care about the same niche ideas. Writing detailed, honest work helps those people connect and route interesting things to your inbox. Over time your social graph reshapes you and summons new communities.

Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:48 GMT

Complex systems stay resilient by having layers that change at different speeds. Fast layers (fashion, commerce) innovate while slow layers (infrastructure, governance, culture, nature) stabilize and constrain. Healthy societies let each layer operate at its own pace and influence nearby layers.

A few thoughts on depression

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:41 GMT

Depression is not just sadness; it feels numb, different, and hard to describe. People with depression need steady, ordinary companionship and help building a new, positive life story. Recovery is ongoing—keep therapy, routines, and supports to prevent relapse.

lifehacks

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:34 GMT

Set clear goals and take small, timed steps to make progress without fear. Always question your beliefs, seek truth, and learn by doing, not just thinking. Embrace failure, ask for help, and be kind to yourself and others.

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:27 GMT

In this article, the author draws parallels between good conversations and improvised musical comedy shows. They discuss the importance of "take-and-take" in conversations, where participants jump in and take the spotlight quickly and often. They also explore the clash between "givers" and "takers" in conversations, highlighting the need for a balance between the two. The article emphasizes the importance of creating conversational affordances, or opportunities for response and engagement, and suggests that both giving and taking in conversations can contribute to their success.

The days are long but the decades are short

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:22 GMT

Life is short, so focus on close relationships, health, and meaningful work. Pick what matters, work hard, avoid negativity, and take smart risks. Learn, help others, and don't waste time—the days feel long but the decades fly by.

Reality has a surprising amount of detail

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:16 GMT

Reality has many small, important details you only notice by doing things closely. Those hidden details make hard problems easy to get stuck on because you miss what matters. To improve, look for unfamiliar details that actually change how you think.

The tyranny of ideas

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:05:11 GMT

Nadia Asparouhova discusses how creators can become overwhelmed by the ideas they produce, often losing control over them as they gain popularity. She emphasizes that ideas can dominate their creators, turning them into mere vessels for those concepts. To maintain their identity, creators may need to compartmentalize their work or resist being defined by any single idea.

Willingness to Look Stupid

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 06:04:59 GMT

This site collects timeless essays meant to counter our culture of constant newness. It highlights enduring ideas that help you think better and live more deliberately. Readers can submit favorites to expand the collection.

All my favorite tracing tools: eBPF, QEMU, Perfetto, new ones I built and more

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:57:04 GMT

Trace by collecting timestamped events and viewing them on a timeline. Many tools and methods exist: eBPF, Perfetto, QEMU, instrumentation, magic-trace, bpftime, each with tradeoffs. Combining eBPF and Perfetto helps diagnose tail latency using compact Protobuf traces and low‑overhead tricks.

System Observability: Metrics, Sampling, and Tracing

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:56:53 GMT

The article explains three observability levels: metrics, system sampling, and process tracing. Metrics are cheap and coarse, sampling shows system-wide time use, and tracing records per-process timelines. Tracing is most detailed and lets you target the best optimizations despite higher cost.

Growth Without Goals

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:20:16 GMT

This site collects timeless essays and ideas worth rereading. It fights the web’s obsession with the new over the valuable. Readers can submit recommendations to expand the list.

Vaxry's blog

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:19:13 GMT

The author criticizes D-Bus as messy, insecure, and full of bad design choices. They are building a new bus called hyprtavern with strict types, built-in permissions, and a secure key-value secrets store. The new protocol aims to be simple, consistent, and safer for sandboxed apps.

i'm just having fun

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 05:06:17 GMT

The author writes about programming for fun, not to show off or compete. They believe anyone can learn hard skills by experimenting and making mistakes. Everyone has different talents, and art is an important way to use computers.

Essential Semiconductor Physics

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 04:57:54 GMT

What Does a Database for SSDs Look Like?

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 04:43:32 GMT

Modern SSDs and fast datacenter networks let databases move durability and scaling from a single machine to distributed systems. Cache sizes should hold hot pages for tens of seconds and disk transfers should target ~32KB to match SSD performance. Keep the relational model and strong consistency, but use replication, distributed logs, and modern hardware to rethink local durability and recovery.

TLA+ modeling tips

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 04:33:15 GMT

Start with a small, simple model and add only what is necessary to explain the behavior you want to study. Write clear, declarative specifications with precise invariants and check both safety and progress properties. Review your model carefully for errors like illegal knowledge, and test it by trying to break it to ensure it truly captures the system.

The history of servers, the cloud, and what’s next – with Oxide

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:03:23 GMT

Bryan Cantrill explains how decades of server and cloud evolution shaped modern infrastructure and what today’s engineers should learn from it.

Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 14:21:47 GMT

We live surrounded by "thin" desires: quick, repeatable rewards that don't change who we are. Tech and markets deliver these instead of "thick" desires that take time and transform us. Do small, slow practices — bake bread, write a letter, help one person — to recover deeper meaning.

Improve Energy & Longevity by Optimizing Mitochondria | Dr. Martin Picard

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:10:19 GMT

Dr. Martin Picard explains that mitochondria turn our mindset and lifestyle into the energy we feel every day. Healthy habits like exercise, sleep, and meditation can boost mitochondrial function and slow aging. Stress affects cells deeply, but changes like reversing gray hair show that improving mitochondrial health is possible.

Supplements I Take and Why I Take Them

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:21:05 GMT

The author shares their supplement routine, emphasizing low doses of nutrients naturally found in the body, like sodium and omega-3. They take various vitamins and supplements for health benefits but acknowledge that diet, exercise, and sleep are more important for well-being. The author also avoids herbal supplements and suggests consulting a physician before using any supplements.

Using LLMs at Oxide

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:51:10 GMT

LLMs are powerful tools that can help with reading, editing, research, code review, and debugging, but they have real risks. Human judgment, responsibility, and empathy must stay central when using them. Use LLMs when they add value, not because you are forced to.

Indexed Reverse Polish Notation, an Alternative to AST

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:35:59 GMT

The post describes Indexed Reverse Polish Notation (Indexed RPN) as an alternative to ASTs. It stores program nodes in a single linear array and uses indices as stable names for subexpressions. This makes name resolution, control flow, and codegen simple and cache-friendly.

Build Systems À La Carte

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 14:24:53 GMT

This paper presents a framework for understanding and comparing complex build systems, abstracting their key properties while implementing them in Haskell code. It identifies two main design choices in build systems: task order and whether tasks are rebuilt. The authors illustrate their framework by describing various real-life build systems, including Make and Bazel, and discussing their differences.

My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 18:10:22 GMT

Jeff Huang uses a single text file combined with a calendar to track all his tasks and notes for over 14 years. Every night, he makes a daily to-do list from his calendar and updates it with completed work and new tasks. This simple system helps him stay organized, control his workload, and keep a detailed record of his work.

mmap may slow down your Go app

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:32:15 GMT

Mmap maps files into memory and can be fast for data already in page cache. But when data is cold, major page faults stall goroutines without freeing their OS threads, causing CPU under‑utilization and high latency. In Go, avoid mmap or use workarounds (raise GOMAXPROCS or access via cgo) to prevent these stalls.

Vim is Turing-Complete

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:32:03 GMT

Vim keystrokes can be Turing-complete, meaning they can perform any computation that a Turing machine can. The author explains how a specific set of keystrokes can simulate a 2-tag system, which is a type of automaton that can solve decision problems. This demonstration shows that Vim, a text editor, has powerful computational capabilities beyond simple text editing.

Revisiting "Let's Build a Compiler"

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:11:56 GMT

The "Let's Build a Compiler" tutorial by Jack Crenshaw is still popular because it teaches compiler building in a simple, step-by-step way using a recursive-descent parser. The author translated the original Pascal code into Python and WebAssembly to make it easier for modern readers to follow. The tutorial shows how to quickly generate working code but also reveals limits of its approach when handling complex features like types.

Memory leak regression testing with V8/Node.js, part 1 - memory usage-based testing

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:09:09 GMT

Node.js tests memory leaks by measuring heap usage and forcing garbage collection, but this can be unreliable due to how the V8 engine delays memory cleanup. To improve tests, Node.js runs multiple garbage collections asynchronously and uses small heap sizes with pauses to allow memory to be freed properly. Despite these methods, memory leak testing remains tricky, and new strategies are still being developed.

Testing and Benchmarking of AI Compilers

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:50:55 GMT

Testing AI compilers is hard but important to find bugs early and keep software fast. Writing good tests and profiling them helps improve speed and hardware use. Automated and frequent testing with strong unit tests makes AI software more reliable and easier to fix.

Deep Learning for Healthcare: Chest X-Ray Medical Diagnosis

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:05:19 GMT

The article shows how deep learning can help diagnose chest X-rays. It explains training models on medical image data. It discusses challenges and practical results for healthcare use.

Unexpected Things that are People

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:46:58 GMT

Some non-human things have been given legal personhood so they can own rights and be sued. Examples include ships (so they can be arrested and salvors rewarded), New Zealand’s Whanganui River (given guardians and funds), and Hindu deities (able to hold property via trustees). These legal statuses solve practical disputes but do not grant full human constitutional rights.

Compiler Engineering in Practice - Part 1: What is a Compiler?

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:46:21 GMT

A compiler is a program that translates code from one language to another while preserving its behavior. Ensuring a compiler never produces incorrect output (a miscompile) is critical because mistakes can cause serious problems and are hard to debug. Compilers use complex data structures called intermediate representations (IR) to carefully transform code step-by-step without changing its meaning.

A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:43:51 GMT

The project "Lisp in Life" implements a Lisp interpreter using Conway's Game of Life, marking the first instance of a high-level programming language being interpreted this way. Users can input Lisp programs by editing specific cells in the Game of Life pattern, and the interpreter is written in C, allowing for compilation and execution in this unique environment. The system features advanced memory management and supports various Lisp programs, demonstrating a novel achievement in computational design.

A Taxonomy Of Data Change Events

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:31:54 GMT

Change data capture events describe how a database record changed so consumers can react in real time. Morling classifies events as full (complete record), delta (only changed fields), or id-only (just the primary key). Metadata like operation type and timestamp helps ordering, routing, and rebuilding full state when needed.

Revisiting the Outbox Pattern

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:31:42 GMT

The outbox pattern ensures a service can update its database and reliably publish events without distributed transactions. It gives eventual consistency and is best implemented with log-based CDC to avoid polling and ordering issues. It has trade-offs (extra storage, latency) but remains a practical choice for reliable microservice communication.

Moving Faster by Not Breaking Things —Or How Not to Blow Up the Internet

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:31:32 GMT

Complex systems need frequent updates to keep working. Document processes and rollouts, define health metrics, and prequalify changes with tests. A small upfront investment in safety lets teams move faster with fewer incidents.

Unsolved Problems in MLOps

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:31:27 GMT

MLOps faces unique challenges because ML systems are nondeterministic and data drives behavior as much as code. Key unsolved problems include measuring and monitoring real-world model quality, versioning models and data, and managing cost and infrastructure efficiency. These gaps make reliable, safe ML deployment hard and increase risk for providers and users.

"Change Data Capture Breaks Encapsulation". Does it, though?

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:26:23 GMT

Change Data Capture can expose database details, which may break consumers when schemas change. Well-defined, forward-compatible data contracts (or using the Outbox Pattern) prevent that by insulating consumers. Stream processing can transform and publish stable public streams so teams can evolve schemas without breaking users.

VACUUM Is a Lie (About Your Indexes)

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 15:07:39 GMT

VACUUM cleans up dead rows in tables but does not fix bloated indexes. Index bloat happens when many deleted entries remain, making indexes large and inefficient. To shrink bloated indexes, you must use REINDEX or tools like pg_squeeze.

Essentials: How to Build, Maintain & Repair Gut Health | Dr. Justin Sonnenburg

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 09:05:51 GMT

Dr. Justin Sonnenburg explains how gut microbes affect our health and how diet and lifestyle shape them. Western diets and antibiotics can harm gut diversity, while fiber and fermented foods help improve it. Prebiotics and probiotics may support gut health, but evidence-based choices matter most.

The Insane Engineering of MRI Machines

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:57:53 GMT

MRI machines use powerful magnets to align hydrogen atoms in the body and radiofrequency pulses to nudge them. The spinning hydrogen atoms emit signals as they relax, and coils detect these signals to build detailed images. Stronger magnets and precise gradient control improve image quality, making MRI a vital tool in modern medicine.

I Grew Real Penicillin from MOLD

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:57:47 GMT

A YouTuber grew Penicillium mold and extracted penicillin from it. They purified the chemical and tested it against E. coli. The video shows how simple microbes and basic lab steps can make a real antibiotic.

The stack circuitry of the Intel 8087 floating point chip, reverse-engineered

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:56:29 GMT

The Intel 8087 coprocessor used an eight-entry stack of 80-bit registers to speed floating-point math. Righto reverse-engineered the die and shows the register cells, decoder, and stack control that manage pushes, pops, and addressing. The stack design simplified instruction encoding but added complexity and has mostly been replaced by flat register designs, though modern floating point still traces back to the 8087.

SWIM: Outsourced Heartbeats

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:56:19 GMT

SWIM is a simple, scalable protocol for detecting failed nodes in large distributed systems. Each node pings one random peer and, if that ping fails, asks a few others to check the peer (outsourced heartbeats). This keeps per-node load constant and detects failures quickly while tolerating unreliable networks.

Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:55:54 GMT

The author builds a complete computer inside Conway's Game of Life to run Tetris. They design wires, logic gates, memory (ROM, RAM), an ALU, and control circuits like latches and counters. The project pieces are combined and scripts are provided to generate the ROM and finished machine.

When would you ever want bubblesort?

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:55:44 GMT

Bubblesort is usually not recommended for sorting, but it can be useful in specific situations, like when sorting small arrays within larger algorithms. In game development, its quick and simple steps allow for efficient rendering of objects on screen. Additionally, it can create smooth animations for sorting particles by color, though better algorithms are often preferred for final sorting tasks.

The Fascinating Story of the Exponential Function

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 09:55:23 GMT

Watch now | Video version

Join the on-call roster, it’ll change your life

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:06:00 GMT

Joining an on-call rotation helps you learn to handle stress, lead teams, and deeply understand systems. It can be tough, causing sleep loss and limiting your freedom. Still, trying it can change your skills and outlook for the better.

A Smart Bear » Ruthless prioritization while the dog pees on the floor

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 03:43:56 GMT

Time is a fixed resource, so we must choose what to do with every minute. Focus on the few 10x tasks that give outsized impact and cut or ignore the many low-value 0.1x tasks. Make ruthless, clear choices and repeatedly communicate what you will do and what you will not.

Optimize for momentum

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 03:37:31 GMT

Progress comes from small, regular actions that build momentum. Do tiny, easy tasks—ten minutes, one paragraph, or a simple experiment—to keep the project moving. Keep working in short bursts and interest-driven steps so the flywheel gains speed.

Second IC :)

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 03:30:06 GMT

A hobbyist fabricated a 10×10 array chip with about 1,200 transistors using a homemade polysilicon-gate process. The new FETs have low threshold voltage, low leakage, and run at common logic voltages (2.5–3.3V). This DIY method avoids many expensive steps and shows promise for more complex homebuilt silicon circuits.

Master the Creative Process | Twyla Tharp

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 09:04:13 GMT

Twyla Tharp shares how discipline and routine help bring creative ideas to life. She teaches how to focus on a clear message, handle criticism, and raise your standards daily. The talk offers practical tips to build your mind and body for creative success.

Struggling Towards an Algebraic Theory of Music

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 03:49:58 GMT

The author tries to define music using math but finds simple models like waves or timed notes don’t capture all musical ideas. They explore structures like monads and comonads but face problems with rhythm and context. In the end, music may need a complex global view that respects local details, which is still unclear.

The Easiest Way to Build a Type Checker

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:37:47 GMT

Bidirectional type checking splits work into inferring types and checking types, which makes type checking simple and clear. The author shows a small, ~100-line implementation that handles literals, variables, functions (with annotations), calls, lets, and blocks. This approach is easy to extend and helps demystify building practical type checkers.

Transparent Leadership Beats Servant Leadership

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:03:14 GMT

The author believes servant leadership can make teams dependent and weak when the leader leaves. Instead, transparent leadership teaches and empowers people to solve problems and grow. Good leaders make themselves unnecessary and stay skilled by working alongside their team.

Essentials: The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:04:19 GMT

In this Huberman Lab Essentials episode, I explain how to create lasting habits and break unwanted ones. I explain two habit-building systems: one aligned with daily rhythms and another based on a 21-day cycle of forming and reinforcing habits. I also discuss why habit formation differs between individuals and how certain "linchpin" habits can make other behaviors easier to adopt. Finally, I share practical tools—including visualization, task bracketing, and methods for rewiring bad habits—to support lasting behavioral change. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AGZ by AG1: https://drinkagz.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00) Habits (00:43) What are Habits?, Neuroplasticity (01:15) Goal-Based vs Identity-Based Habits (02:33) How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit?; Limbic Friction (05:31) Sponsor: Eight Sleep (06:59) Tool: Linchpin Habits (08:51) Habit Strength, Context Dependence & Limbic Friction (10:41) How We Form Habits, Tool: Review Procedural Steps (12:49) Tool: Task Bracketing (16:30) Sponsor: LMNT (18:02) Should You Schedule Habits?; Phase-Based Habit Plan (20:00) Phase 1 (Morning) & Challenging Habits (21:23) Phase 2 (Afternoon), Relaxation; Mellow Habits (24:46) Phase 3 (Evening), Enhancing Sleep & Habit Consolidation (28:00) Habit Flexibility & Daily Timing (30:33) Sponsor: AGZ by AG1 (32:02) Tool: 21-Day Habit Program; Habit Missteps (37:16) Tool: How to Break Habits & Replacement Behaviors (39:59) Recap Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building a 64-bit OS from Scratch with Claude Code

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:11:10 GMT

The author built a simple 64-bit operating system called Simplicity OS using AI help from Claude Code in about two hours. The OS runs a Forth interpreter and can control hardware with small, composable commands. All development was open and shared to show what AI can do for programming.

Being a founding engineer at an AI startup

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 16:46:46 GMT

Michelle Lim shares how to evaluate early-stage startup roles, negotiate equity, and grow into a high-impact founding engineer.

On Idempotency Keys

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 01:05:04 GMT

Exactly-once processing can be achieved by adding a unique idempotency key to each message so consumers can ignore duplicates. UUIDs work but require storing many keys; monotonically increasing keys let consumers store only the latest value and are more space-efficient. A practical way to get monotonic keys without slowing producers is to derive them from the database transaction log using CDC.

Calculus For Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, And Physicists

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 18:16:25 GMT

The text explains using deleted δ-intervals to study how functions behave near a point without considering the point itself. It defines limits with o(1) and the ε-δ criterion, showing limits give new information beyond individual values. It also mentions limits at ±∞ and that some functions (like identity) have no finite limit at +∞.

Enough With All The Raft

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 13:59:59 GMT

The author argues against using the Raft consensus algorithm, claiming it offers no significant advantages over other replication methods. Instead, they suggest exploring quorum-based and reconfiguration-based algorithms, which can be more efficient and suitable for certain situations. The overall message is to choose the best replication algorithm for your needs, rather than defaulting to Raft.

The Write Last, Read First Rule

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 03:50:58 GMT

TigerBeetle is a ledger built for correctness and scales separately from Postgres, which stores master data. Without transactions spanning both systems, you must pick a system of record (TigerBeetle) and follow the Write Last, Read First rule to keep money traceable. Using durable executions, idempotent operations, and strict ordering lets the application coordinate both systems and recover from partial failures.

Maybe you’re not Actually Trying

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 23:39:53 GMT

On selective agency in capable people

Unusual circuits in the Intel 386's standard cell logic

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 18:19:09 GMT

The Intel 386 uses standard cell logic with computer-aided layout for its circuits. It includes unusual features like large multiplexers made from CMOS switches and a single transistor placed outside the standard cell columns. This design shows early use of automated methods that were advanced for its time.

It's hard to build an oscillator

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:14:20 GMT

Especially if you want it to work.

The Art of Stupid

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:14:11 GMT

Why "good students" will never make great minds

Data Retention Policy Implementation – How and Why

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:14:03 GMT

As applications run for a long time, their databases get huge, and this growth becomes a serious problem. It's time to implement a data retention policy.

Enforcing Causal Ordering in Distributed Systems: The Importance of Permissions Checking

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:13:41 GMT

Learn how Authzed's Zookie token guarantees causal ordering for data mutations and permissions, preventing permission checking problems in distributed systems.

Running the “Reflections on Trusting Trust” Compiler Posted on Wednesday, October 25, 2023.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:12:55 GMT

Supply chain security is a hot topic today, but it is a very old problem.

Decoding Leibniz notation

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:12:22 GMT

The author explains Leibniz notation, which is used in calculus to express derivatives, but can be confusing due to its flexibility and multiple interpretations. Historically, Leibniz viewed derivatives as ratios involving infinitesimally small quantities, but modern mathematics treats them as symbols rather than real numbers. The notation can be cumbersome, leading people to simplify it in practice, which sometimes creates ambiguities that learners need to navigate.

de Bruijn Numerals

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:12:13 GMT

De Bruijn numerals are a new way to encode numbers using nested de Bruijn indices in lambda calculus. They allow simple operations like successor and addition but lack a zero? function, limiting their conversion and use. Despite this, they help work with Church n-tuples more easily and inspire hybrid numeral systems.

Godbolt's Rule

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:11:58 GMT

Matt learned deep hardware and software details while building game engines for consoles like Dreamcast and Xbox. He discovered that sometimes hardware doesn’t behave as expected, requiring clever tricks and close debugging. This experience showed how game design and engine design often blend together.

devlog: garbage collection is useful

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:11:34 GMT

A long time ago, I spent a few years working on garbage collection in the J9 Java VM.

←HomeAbout→ Bypassing the branch predictor

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:09:11 GMT

Let’s work with something relatively simple & concrete: consider that we want to write some kind of financial system (maybe a trading system) and all of our transaction requests arrive at a certain function before being either (a) sent out to some authoritative server, or (b) abandoned.

Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 360

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:08:56 GMT

The recent reveal of Meltdown and Spectre reminded me of the time I found a related design bug in the Xbox 360 CPU – a newly added instruction whose mere existence was dangerous. Back in 2005 I was…

AI/ML for Biology & Healthcare: A Learning Path

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:08:50 GMT

Sharing my ML/AI & Biomedicine learning path

The Inconceivable Types of Rust: How to Make Self-Borrows Safe

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:08:16 GMT

The text discusses the challenges of supporting async functions in Rust due to the need for non-movable types and inconceivable types. Rust's type system requires additional support for naming and handling these types to ensure safe coding practices. Proposed solutions include introducing concepts like bound lifetimes and formalizing inconceivable types to enable safe transmutations and interactions with non-movable types.

Linear Algebra Explains Why Some Words Are Effectively Untranslatable

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:06:47 GMT

The author compares words to vectors in linear algebra and translation to a change of basis. Some languages pack a concept into one compact word while others must spread it over many words. Because words are limited and costly to use, some meanings are practically untranslatable.

Interpreting Crafting Crafting Interpreters

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:00:30 GMT

Pete Millspaugh's digital garden

The Internet is Cool. Thank you, TCP

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:58:35 GMT

TCP makes the Internet reliable by hiding packet loss, corruption, duplication, and reordering. It uses sequence and acknowledgment numbers, flow control (window/receive buffer), and congestion control to keep data correct and the network stable. A simple C server shows how applications rely on TCP’s guarantees while bytes and headers travel inside IP packets.

Version Control External Content Referenced in Your Blog

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:58:24 GMT

The author created a tool that saves external content from URLs into a file for version control, avoiding broken links in blogs. This tool updates only new content and uses a shortcode to show saved data without online requests during site builds. Building custom tools like this helps the author solve small problems and work better.

AMD GPUs go brrr

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:54:30 GMT

AMD GPUs deliver high performance using unique wave scheduling and chiplet-aware memory patterns. HipKittens helps developers optimize kernels by matching AMD’s small matrix cores and register layouts. These techniques improve speed and cache use, competing well with other top GPUs.

Behind the scenes on how Windows 95 application compatibility patched broken programs

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:54:18 GMT

Windows 95 used compatibility flags to alter system behavior for problematic programs so one fix could help many apps. For deeply broken programs the team got vendor permission and stored binary patches in the registry to detect and modify specific files or headers. A common patch skipped unsafe debug code in a sound driver to stop register corruption during hardware interrupts.

RegreSQL: Regression Testing for PostgreSQL Queries

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:53:08 GMT

RegreSQL brings PostgreSQL-style regression testing to application SQL, checking correctness and performance before production. It records baselines, detects plan regressions, and manages fixtures for repeatable test data. The project is new, open-source, and aims to make SQL queries easier to test.

the last couple years in v8's garbage collector

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:52:48 GMT

V8's garbage collector has focused on improving memory safety, advancing Oilpan integration, and preparing for multi-threaded JavaScript and WebAssembly. The sandbox now uses hardware memory protection to prevent unsafe writes, and Oilpan added support for generational collection with pinned pages. Developers also worked on complex heuristics and locking improvements to optimize performance across many platforms.

Language Design

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:52:41 GMT

This guide explains the steps and ideas needed to design a programming language. It covers syntax, semantics, prototyping, examples, and common pitfalls like operator precedence and semicolon insertion. Exercises and references help you practice and deepen your understanding.

Heartbeats in Distributed Systems

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:52:33 GMT

Heartbeats are periodic messages nodes send so monitors can tell if they are alive. Monitors compare the last received heartbeat time to a timeout to mark nodes failed, balancing fast detection against extra network load. For large systems, gossip and adaptive detectors (like phi) help scale and reduce false failures.

Patterns for Defensive Programming in Rust

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:52:25 GMT

Defensive Rust uses the compiler and type system to enforce invariants so bugs are caught early. Use patterns like private fields, nested modules, and exhaustive matching to force valid construction and updates. Add attributes and lints (#[must_use], clippy rules) to make mistakes visible.

Distributing Data in a Redis/Valkey Cluster: Slots, Hash Tags, and Hot Spots

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:52:11 GMT

Redis/Valkey clusters shard keys into 16,384 hash slots using CRC16 to spread data across nodes. Hash tags ({...}) force related keys into the same slot so multi-key operations can be atomic. But overusing low-cardinality tags creates "hot slots" that overload a single node, so choose tags to balance locality and distribution.

Metaphors for Biology: Sizes

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:51:54 GMT

Biology works across enormous size ranges, from atoms to ecosystems. If you scale a water molecule up to a grain of sand, molecules, proteins, chromosomes, cells, and animals become unimaginably large but stay tiny relative to rooms and landscapes. These metaphors help show how different biological structures compare and why scale matters for understanding life.

Linux process priorities demystified

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:51:39 GMT

Linux schedules tasks (threads), not whole processes, and each task has its own priority based on its scheduling policy. The main policies with priorities are SCHED_OTHER (nice values from -20 to 19) and real-time policies SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR (priorities 1 to 99). Kernel tools use a unified priority scale that differs from user-space values, which can cause confusion when interpreting priorities.

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:51:28 GMT

The author, Ivan Vendrov, argues that consumer software is getting worse because companies prioritize attracting "marginal users" who have low engagement and bad preferences. This focus leads to designs that cater to users with short attention spans, sacrificing quality and user agency. As a result, valuable tools that genuinely enhance creativity are often overshadowed or eliminated by profit-driven companies.

Async and Finaliser Deadlocks

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:51:18 GMT

Deadlocks can happen when finalisers try to acquire locks while running on the same thread as the main program. A good solution is to run finalisers on a separate thread to avoid blocking. Async code has similar deadlock risks, but they are harder to manage because futures run only at specific points.

A catalog of side effects

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:50:59 GMT

Optimizing compilers track what IR instructions read and write so they can safely reorder or remove code. Two common representations are bitset lattices (distinct heap bits) and abstract heap/range lists used by other JITs. Both approaches work and are used in practice for DCE, CSE, refcounting, and other optimizations.

On Trying Two Dozen Different Psychedelics (10/30)

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:50:40 GMT

The author tried about two dozen psychedelics in his youth, mostly bought as legal "research chemicals." He learned by low-dose self-testing and reading trip reports, noting patterns but no grand theory. Now companies use that crowd-sourced knowledge and AI to design safer, precise psychedelic medicines.

The Uselessness of "Fast" and "Slow" in Programming

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:50:03 GMT

Software timing spans huge scales, so calling code "fast" or "slow" without context is useless. Developers often waste time optimizing tiny nanosecond details while ignoring bigger millisecond bottlenecks. Always specify the metric, workload, and order of magnitude when discussing performance.

Query Plan Caching

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:49:35 GMT

Query plan caching helps databases reuse query plans for similar queries to save time. A plan diagram shows how different query parameters affect the chosen plan, but it is complex to use directly. Instead, databases approximate these plans with simpler shapes to decide when to reuse cached plans efficiently.

a tale of vulkan/nouveau/nvk/zink/mutter + deadlocks

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:49:21 GMT

A bug causes the GNOME desktop to freeze when hotplugging an HDMI port on newer Intel/NVIDIA laptops using Vulkan and the zink OpenGL driver. The issue comes from a deadlock in Vulkan's device selection layer when it tries to query the Wayland compositor, which is also the running process. The author fixed it by adding a Vulkan layer setting to disable device selection in this case, avoiding the deadlock without risky hacks.

Voxel Engine in a Weekend

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:49:09 GMT

This text explains how to build a voxel engine by organizing voxels into chunks for better performance. It shows how to add, remove, and render voxels efficiently using data structures like 3D arrays. The guide also highlights optimizing mesh creation by only drawing visible voxel faces.

The Error Model

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:48:56 GMT

Defining what an error really is remains a big challenge in programming. Many systems use either return codes or exceptions, but both have problems with reliability and code quality. A good error model should make handling errors easy and clear for developers to avoid bugs and brittle code.

What Now? Handling Errors in Large Systems

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:47:18 GMT

Marc Brooker argues that whether to crash on errors is a system-wide decision, not just a local code choice. Crashing can simplify recovery when failures are uncorrelated, but can cause widespread harm if failures are correlated. Design choices like blast-radius reduction, careful replication, and higher-layer handling must be built in from the start.

How/Why to Sweep Async Tasks Under a Postgres Table

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:47:12 GMT

Keep your app simple by queuing async work in a Postgres task table instead of calling external services directly. Use transactions to insert tasks and process them later so work is retried safely and state stays consistent. Run simple workers that delete and handle tasks inside transactions, allowing parallelism, retries, and easier debugging.

Everything You Know About Latency Is Wrong

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:46:58 GMT

Latency is the time an operation takes, and its full distribution must be studied because averages and medians hide important details. Most tools measure latency poorly, missing slow or stalled operations and giving misleading results. To understand latency well, focus on tail percentiles and measure fairly under real load conditions.

When high availability brings downtime

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:46:48 GMT

The team tried to improve system reliability by running two identical Kubernetes clusters to avoid downtime during maintenance. However, this approach caused many problems, including higher costs, complex scaling issues, and service failures. They decided to stop using multi-cluster high availability and now focus on controlling failures by smartly moving applications between clusters.

Small Functions considered Harmful

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:40:25 GMT

The author argues that blindly making every function tiny often backfires. Too many small, one-line functions hurt readability, naming, and searchability. It’s better to design flexible, practical abstractions that ease future changes.

Think in Math. Write in Code.

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:40:00 GMT

Programming languages are tools for instructing machines, not for expressing ideas. Math provides logical models to understand and solve real-world problems. When solving problems and designing solutions, mathematical thinking leads to better outcomes than relying solely on programming languages.

So long, and thanks for all the fish: how to escape the Linux networking stack

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:39:39 GMT

Cloudflare built a small service to proxy IP packets using soft-unicast addresses instead of relying on Linux packet rewriting. Linux conntrack and sockets interact poorly: rewritten packets can get unexpected ports and hidden source changes, breaking assumptions. They solved it by terminating and proxying TCP connections locally (or using TCP_REPAIR/conntrack via Netlink) to keep addresses and routing correct.

Building a Database From Scratch 💾

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:39:12 GMT

The author will teach how to build a database from scratch. He studies storage, indexing, WALs, and reads SQLite and other internals. The next post will dive into a write-ahead log implementation.

My First Fifteen Compilers

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:35:54 GMT

The author learned to build compilers by writing many tiny passes, each doing one clear job. This "nanopass" and back-to-front approach made compiler work approachable and gave quick, runnable results. That experience led the author to contribute to Rust and shaped their career.

Ditch your (mut)ex, you deserve better

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:35:30 GMT

Mutexes and shared mutable state are hard to get right in complex systems and lead to bugs, deadlocks, and fragile code. Higher-level patterns like Software Transactional Memory let you compose atomic operations without exposing locks or breaking encapsulation. STM makes concurrent code safer, simpler, and easier to reason about.

This Senior Staff Engineer Vibe-Coded for the First Time, What Happened Next Will Shock You

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:35:19 GMT

A veteran engineer tried AI-assisted coding and learned it’s a skill. At first he micromanaged the model and got frustrated. When he embraced “vibe-coding” and let agents plan and implement, the AI built useful tools quickly.

What Makes the Intro to Crafting Interpreters so Good?

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:34:53 GMT

Crafting Interpreters teaches how to build a programming language and practical developer skills. Its introduction is clear, friendly, and quickly explains who the book is for and why it matters. The tone and simple opening lines make the topic feel approachable and worth reading.

How ASML Got EUV

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:32:27 GMT

EUV lithography uses 13.5 nm light and became the next-generation way to print chips. Many labs and companies (DARPA, Bell Labs, Intel, national labs) developed key parts, but US firms left the tools market. ASML, with Carl Zeiss, alone commercialized EUV and now controls the technology.

Building a Durable Execution Engine With SQLite

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:31:19 GMT

A Durable Execution (DE) engine breaks workflows into annotated step methods and records each step’s inputs and results in a persistent execution log. If a flow is interrupted, the engine resumes from the last completed step and avoids re-running successful or costly operations. It also supports delayed steps, retries, and long-running workflows while requiring strategies for state evolution and tooling for monitoring.

Building a Minimal Viable Armv7 Emulator from Scratch

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:31:10 GMT

The author built a simple emulator to run 32-bit armv7 Linux binaries on an x86-64 system. It parses ELF files, maps memory, decodes arm instructions, and translates syscalls to x86-64. The hardest part was understanding armv7 instruction decoding and syscall differences.

How I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:31:02 GMT

The author learned Vulkan in three months and wrote a small game engine with two demo games. He found Vulkan easier than expected thanks to good resources and clear, explicit APIs. Switching from OpenGL gave him less global state and better validation, making debugging and abstractions simpler.

Collaboration sucks

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 05:30:55 GMT

Too much collaboration slows teams and stops work from shipping. Hire skilled drivers, tag the right people, and default to shipping. Speak up when too many people get involved so the owner can decide.

web.archive.org/web/*/https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/149366/MIT-LCS-TR-458.pdf

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 05:16:31 GMT

Better DOM Morphing with Morphlex

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 05:15:30 GMT

Morphlex is a DOM-morphing library that updates the page by matching and moving existing nodes instead of replacing them. It uses ids, id-sets, tag/attribute heuristics, and longest increasing subsequence to insert, remove, and sort elements efficiently. The result preserves state (inputs, focus, scroll) and is fast in real-world use.

Compiler Options Hardening Guide for C and C++

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 04:43:49 GMT

Attackers exploit memory bugs in C and C++ programs, so compilers offer options to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities. Enabling modern compiler hardening and runtime protections reduces risk but may need tuning and testing and is not foolproof. Developers should choose and test hardening options deliberately, since defaults vary by toolchain and cannot be added after distribution.

Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:46:41 GMT

Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics and will explain important components that allow her music to be heard digitally. The website Splung.com Physics offers resources on various physics topics and aims to enhance its interactive features. They are looking for passionate collaborators to help write content for the site.

A 'small' vanilla Kubernetes install on NixOS

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:54:02 GMT

This text explains how to set up a small Kubernetes cluster on NixOS using custom configurations and modules. It covers assigning node indexes, configuring networking, API server setup, and adding essential components like CoreDNS and kube-proxy. The guide also details how to manage credentials and automate services for smooth cluster operation.

Foundations for hacking on OCaml

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 03:44:14 GMT

Many students lack practical systems skills needed to work on complex projects like the OCaml compiler. These skills come from hands-on experience with tools (build systems, debuggers, version control), which typical CS courses often don’t teach. The author lists courses and books to help bridge this gap and invites more suggestions.

You misunderstand what it means to be poor

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 03:39:39 GMT

Being broke is temporary and means you have just enough money to get by. Being poor is permanent scarcity where no small savings or extra work can close the gap. Advice for the broke (cancel subscriptions, DIY) misunderstands and doesn't help people who already live with no safety net.

No Shorts Please! Hidden YouTube RSS Feed URLs

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 03:29:04 GMT

YouTube Shorts started appearing in RSS feeds and filtering by duration broke when Shorts were allowed up to 3 minutes. Use the playlist_id RSS URL: replace channel_id=UCabcdefgh with playlist_id=UULFabcdefgh to get a feed without Shorts. This and other handy playlist prefixes (e.g., UUSH for shorts) are undocumented by Google.

How to do distributed locking

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 21:39:48 GMT

The Redlock algorithm aims to provide fault-tolerant distributed locks using Redis, but it has significant limitations. For efficiency, simpler single-node locking is often sufficient, while for correctness, a more reliable system like ZooKeeper is recommended. Overall, Redlock is seen as overly complex and not safe enough for critical locking needs.

Your computer is a distributed system

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 01:13:03 GMT

Most computers are essentially a distributed system internally, and provide their more familiar programming interface as an abstraction on top of that.

Reproducing the AWS Outage Race Condition with a Model Checker

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:41:37 GMT

Welcome to Waqas' blog

"You Don't Need Kafka, Just Use Postgres" Considered Harmful

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:41:27 GMT

Looking to make it to the front page of HackerNews? Then writing a post arguing that "Postgres is enough", or why "you don’t need Kafka at your scale" is a pretty failsafe way of achieving exactly that. No matter how often it has been discussed before, this topic is always doing well. And sure, what’s not to love about that? I mean, it has it all: Postgres, everybody’s most favorite RDBMS—check! Keeping things lean and easy—sure, count me in! A somewhat spicy take—bring it on!

Why 'Functor' Doesn't Matter

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:41:10 GMT

Names in programming are pointers, not explanations. Calling Functor something else wouldn’t make the idea simpler because concepts must be learned, not renamed. Good names help find and remember ideas, but they can’t transmit meaning by themselves.

Things you can do with diodes

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:40:57 GMT

Paying homage to the component we usually don't think about.

"Systems that run forever self-heal and scale" by Joe Armstrong (2013)

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:40:42 GMT

How can we build large self-healing scalable systems? In this talk I will outline the architectural principles needed for building scalable fault-tolerant systems. I'll talk about building systems from small isolated parallel components which communicate though well-defined protocols. Programs will have errors in them and will fail so I'll talk about detecting and correcting errors at run-time. Programs will evolve with time, so I'll talk about how they be changed while they are running. I'll talk about Erlang and how it relates to these architectural principles. Joe Armstrong (https://twitter.com/joeerl) Joe Armstrong is one of the inventors of Erlang. When at the Ericsson computer science lab in 1986, he was part of the team who designed and implemented the first version of Erlang. He has written several Erlang books including Programming Erlang Software for a Concurrent World. Joe held the first ever Erlang course and has taught Erlang to hundreds of programmers and held many lectures and keynotes describing the technology. Joe has a PhD in computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and is an expert in the construction of fault tolerant systems. Joe was the chief software architect of the project which produced the Erlang OTP system. He has worked as an entrepreneur in one of the first Erlang startups (Bluetail) and has worked for 30 years in industry and research.

Locality, and Temporal-Spatial Hypothesis

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:40:34 GMT

My name is Marc Brooker. I've been writing code, reading code, and living vicariously through computers for as long as I can remember.

Fast LLM Inference From Scratch

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:37:05 GMT

The text discusses optimizing large language model (LLM) inference on both CPU and GPU. It highlights improvements through multithreading, weight quantization, and better matrix multiplication techniques, achieving significant increases in throughput. The author emphasizes that further optimizations are needed to reach even higher performance levels.

Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:36:56 GMT

Platonism about mathematics (or mathematical platonism) is the metaphysical view that there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us and our language, thought, and practices.

Proof Theory

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:36:46 GMT

Proof theory is not an esoteric technical subject that was invented to support a formalist doctrine in the philosophy of mathematics; rather, it has been developed as an attempt to analyze aspects of mathematical experience and to isolate, possibly overcome, methodological problems in the foundations of mathematics.

On becoming competitive when joining a new company

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:31:25 GMT

When joining a new company, work fast, do good work, and pour extra time into learning the code, systems, and people. Build real relationships with key contributors and allies so they trust and vouch for you. With knowledge, trust, and consistent delivery you earn the agency to work on the things you care about.

sled theoretical performance guide

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:27:42 GMT

This document is a theoretical performance guide for Sled, a database system. It emphasizes the importance of aligning latency and throughput considerations, as they often conflict with each other. The guide highlights the need for meaningful metrics, such as latency, throughput, utilization, and saturation, and the importance of using low-latency dependencies for low-latency workloads and high-throughput dependencies for high-throughput workloads. The document also discusses the significance of experimental design in measuring performance and the impact of parallelism on system efficiency. It concludes with a reference to Amdahl's law, which states that only part of a program can be sped up through parallelization.

Jana's cozy corner

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:23:53 GMT

The author feels overwhelmed by complex tech setups that kill the joy of homelabbing. They decide to simplify by avoiding strict tools and focusing on easy, practical solutions. Their new rule is to accept compromise and keep things simple for personal use.

Taurus Database: How to be Fast, Available, and Frugal in the Cloud

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:23:43 GMT

TaurusDB is a cloud database that separates compute and storage to save resources and improve scaling. It uses different replication methods for logs and pages to balance durability and performance. This design makes the system faster, more available, and cost-effective in the cloud.

How many options fit into a boolean?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:23:37 GMT

Funny notes on niche optimizations in Rust, and a few updates.

What is my fuzzer doing?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:23:31 GMT

Fuzz testing is incredibly useful: it has caught many a bug during the development of NTP packet parsing and gzip/bzip2 (de)compression. But I've always been unsatisfied with the fuzzer being a b ...

The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:23:20 GMT

Robert Noyce co-invented the integrated circuit, which helped create Silicon Valley and the modern computer industry. He believed in giving employees stock options so everyone could succeed based on talent. Noyce’s background as a small-town engineer shaped his confident, hands-on leadership style.

From web developer to database developer in 10 years

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:21:51 GMT

From web developer to database developer in 10 years

becoming a compiler engineer

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:20:37 GMT

Rona Wang landed a compiler engineer job after months of targeted study and interviews. Compiler engineering is niche, focused on implementing and optimizing programming languages, and has few junior openings. She shares tips from her coursework, prep, and persistence to help others break into the field.

"Good engineering management" is a fad

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:20:30 GMT

The author argues that ideas of “good engineering management” change with business fads, not moral progress. Core skills like execution and growth skills like taste and long-term thinking matter across eras. Managers should build a broad skill base and choose roles that fit their energy and life priorities.

Game design is simple, actually

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:20:17 GMT

Games are about posing problems that players can learn to solve. Good games give feedback, variation, and just enough uncertainty for deep mastery. Designing them is simple in concept but hard to get right for new players.

Query Compilation Isn't as Hard as You Think

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:20:08 GMT

Query compilation is simpler and more flexible than often claimed and can be easier to implement than vectorized engines. A small teaching framework called p2c generates readable C++ from operator trees and achieves near DuckDB single-threaded speed. p2c is compact, good for learning and prototyping, and its code is on GitHub.

When did people favor composition over inheritance?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:20:02 GMT

"Favor composition over inheritance" comes from the Gang of Four design patterns and argues using objects at runtime (black-box reuse) is more flexible than static class inheritance (white-box reuse). Its value depends on language features and design discipline, since visibility, runtime introspection, and static checking change the trade-offs. Also, composition is not the only alternative—polymorphism, grouping, or passing procedures (lambdas/blocks) can be better depending on when relationships are known.

Metastable failures in the wild

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:19:21 GMT

The paper explores metastable failures in systems, where temporary overload can become permanent even after the triggering event is resolved, leading to bad performance and unavailability. It categorizes metastable failures based on load and capacity interactions, showing how interventions like load shedding can help recover from such states. Real-world incident reports highlight common triggers like load spikes and sustaining effects like retries, emphasizing the importance of monitoring and proactive intervention to prevent and mitigate metastable failures.

Recursive macros in C, demystified (once the ugly crying stops 😭)

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:19:05 GMT

C macros are powerful but their expansion rules block straightforward recursion and iteration, making them hard to use. The author shows tricks (EMPTY, POSTPONE, EVAL) to defer expansion and implement recursive behaviors like counting or mapping over arguments. These techniques work around the preprocessor’s limits but are tricky and nonintuitive.

How Your Brain Creates ‘Aha’ Moments and Why They Stick | Quanta Magazine

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:18:57 GMT

Scientists found that sudden “aha” moments happen when brain areas for vision, emotion, and memory (VOTC, amygdala, hippocampus) shift how they represent information. These insight events feel sudden, are often emotional and certain, and make memories stronger. Researchers hope to use this knowledge to study creativity and improve learning.

Beauty as Residue: What Math Taught Me About Code

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:18:38 GMT

Beauty in math and code comes from simplicity and clarity, not decoration. First define the right problem, then make the solution minimal and understandable. True beauty is a residue: what remains after removing everything unnecessary.

Immutable by Design: The Deep Tech Behind Tigris Bucket Forking

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:18:28 GMT

Tigris represents time as a single 64-bit number and stores each object as an append-only write-ahead log. This lets the system take instant, copy-on-write snapshots of buckets and fork new bucket timelines without copying data. Forks and snapshots make deletions recoverable and let you safely share or modify data without affecting the source.

Inverted Index of Bloom Filters

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:18:19 GMT

Bloom-filter indexes pack words compactly per document, making small-site search tiny and fast. But they store each document's words separately, so space grows with documents and soon exceeds an inverted index. Thus bloom-filter indexing only wins for few documents; for large corpora an inverted index is better.

An individual can change an organization

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:17:54 GMT

A single determined person can change an organization. You do not need seniority to make the right decision. Be prepared, persistent, and pick your battles.

HoTT for Dummies

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:16:13 GMT

Homotopy Type Theory (HoTT) sees types as spaces and equalities as paths between points, allowing a new way to understand equality beyond traditional set theory. It uses a hierarchy of type levels to avoid inconsistencies and supports advanced concepts like function equality and univalence, which helps reason about isomorphic structures. Although some features like univalence are not fully implemented yet, HoTT offers powerful tools for programming and proving mathematical theorems.

Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:15:27 GMT

Pain exists as a hardwired signal because purely reward‑based learning would let organisms unknowingly harm themselves. Without painful qualia, people would ignore injuries and make lethal mistakes despite curiosity or planning. Evolution keeps pain as a reliable backstop because individual intelligence and learning are too limited to safely replace it.

Ticker: Don’t Die of Heart Disease

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:15:01 GMT

Heart disease is a silent killer, but it can be prevented with simple steps that everyone can access. Many people don't realize the importance of asking for specific heart health tests from their doctors. By becoming informed and proactive about heart health, you can take control and avoid dying from heart disease.

Are We Really Engineers?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:13:43 GMT

The article explores whether software engineering qualifies as "real" engineering. Many argue that software engineers lack the standards and formal training of traditional engineers, but the author finds that perceptions of engineering are subjective. Ultimately, the gap between software development and software engineering is smaller than between other trades and their engineering counterparts.

We built a vector search engine that lets you choose precision at query time

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:12:23 GMT

ClickHouse created QBit, a column type that stores floats as bit planes. At query time you choose how many top bits to read, trading precision for much faster vector search without redoing data. This cuts I/O and CPU cost while keeping high accuracy, even with very few bits.

What's the deal with Euler's identity?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 22:12:10 GMT

Euler’s identity eiπ+1=0 links five important constants by showing e^(iπ) = −1. It follows from Euler’s formula eiα = cosα + i·sinα, which describes rotation in the plane. The note gives an intuitive geometric view of complex numbers and why e and π appear together.

How Airbus took off

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:46:51 GMT

Airbus succeeded by combining strong central leadership, customer-focused design, and state support. They built versatile, fuel-efficient aircraft like the A300 and A320 that airlines wanted. Their disciplined industrial strategy and engineering culture let them overtake Boeing.

The Learning Loop and LLMs

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:32:35 GMT

Software development is a learning loop: you must try, fail, and iterate to discover the right design. LLMs and starter kits speed setup and translation between languages but can hide crucial context and stunt learning. True long-term velocity comes from developers internalizing how systems work, not from shortcuts that bypass the learning loop.

Building a CI/CD Pipeline Runner from Scratch in Python

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 19:01:11 GMT

The article shows how to build a CI/CD pipeline runner in Python, evolving from a single-job executor to a production-ready tool. It adds stages, parallel execution, job dependencies, artifact passing, branch filtering, timeouts, and better error handling. The project demonstrates core runner concepts that full platforms extend with distributed execution, caching, UI, secrets, and more.

Angel Investors, A Field Guide

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 18:58:09 GMT

Angel investors can offer more than money; they provide valuable advice, connections, and support to founders. Choosing strategic angels who understand your business is better than relying on friends or celebrity investors. Building strong relationships with angels helps founders grow and succeed, especially during fundraising.

Yes you should understand backprop

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 18:26:50 GMT

Backprop is a leaky abstraction: frameworks hide important failure modes. If you don’t understand the backward pass you’ll miss problems like vanishing gradients, dead ReLUs, exploding RNN gradients, and incorrect gradient clipping. Learn and practice backprop to build and debug networks effectively.

E. W. Dijkstra Archive

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 17:12:02 GMT

The University of Texas hosts the E. W. Dijkstra Archive, a large online collection of Dijkstra’s manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and recordings. Many informal EWD papers, once privately circulated, are now available as PDFs, some transcribed or translated, with indexes and summaries. The archive preserves his work, links related materials, and invites contributions and corrections.

Trait-Constrained Enums in Rust

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 03:28:34 GMT

The post shows how to encode GADT-like constructor-local type equalities and trait constraints from Haskell in Rust. It uses zero-sized equality witnesses (Is) and trait witnesses (CanAdd) stored in enum variants to refine types per constructor. This lets a Rust eval function safely handle refined types and constrained operations via witness-driven dispatch.

TLA+ Modeling of AWS outage DNS race condition

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 03:01:49 GMT

An AWS DynamoDB outage was triggered by a DNS automation bug that exposed deeper systemic fragilities. The author models a race condition in the enactor logic using TLA+, showing that splitting the enactor into three substeps reveals a time-of-check-to-time-of-update bug. An interactive Spectacle trace reproduces the violation where a still-active plan gets deleted due to concurrent enactor interleaving.

Absurd Workflows: Durable Execution With Just Postgres

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 02:54:12 GMT

Armin Ronacher built Absurd, a tiny SQL-only library that implements durable workflows using just Postgres. It stores task state as checkpoints and uses Postgres queues so tasks survive crashes, suspends, and retries. The point: durable execution is simple and doesn’t need extra services or complex systems.

An Illustrated Introduction to Linear Algebra, Chapter 2

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 02:51:59 GMT

A dot product multiplies corresponding entries of two vectors and then adds the results. It is a weighted sum used to combine scores or compute expected value. This operation is simple but important for matrix multiplication.

In What Sense Is Life Suffering?

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 02:48:01 GMT

Scott Alexander explains a Buddhist idea that all mental states are degrees of suffering, not separate joy and pain. Nirvana is like absolute zero suffering, deeper than ordinary happiness. Meditative training can reduce mental "heat" toward that blissful baseline.

I don't want to do front-end anymore

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 01:43:27 GMT

The author argues that complaints about modern front-end tooling and JavaScript are often exaggerated or misleading. They say TypeScript, bundlers, and package managers exist to solve real problems, not because of community stupidity. The real issue is burnout from constant tool churn, but leaving should be done without denigrating others.

Why Your Best Engineers Are Interviewing Elsewhere

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:35:04 GMT

Executives lose great engineers because bad news is filtered out before it reaches them. Middle managers and hierarchy suppress or scrub problems, so leaders only learn of issues after staff have already left. Regular skip-level conversations and fixing raised problems early are cheaper than replacing talent.

A list of books and essays that I love

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 02:17:48 GMT

Henrik Karlsson describes how certain writers became like close friends and shaped his life and work. Reading Knausgård taught him to write honestly about everyday reality without artifice. Dostoevsky (via Bakhtin) taught him to respect others' inner voices and embrace complexity and freedom.

How to Get Meaningful Feedback on Your Design Document

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 02:39:36 GMT

Write your design doc so early sections are clear to every reader. Give reviewers time to read and comment, fix wording with one reviewer first, and use good diagrams and commenting tools. Resolve remaining issues in a focused meeting and update the doc with final decisions.

Is Systems Research Really Just About Making Numbers Bigger?

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:01:03 GMT

Systems research is more than just improving performance numbers; it requires choosing important problems to solve. AI can help automate optimizations but can't replace the need for insight and vision. The future of systems research depends on focusing on meaningful challenges, not just chasing bigger numbers.

If you don't tinker, you don't have taste

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 13:48:49 GMT

Tinkering—trying things for fun, not just utility—builds skill and understanding. Doing small experiments and discarding what you don't like develops personal taste. Taste helps you spot mediocre from excellent, so keep exploring and breaking things.

Metastability and Distributed Systems

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 23:12:07 GMT

My name is Marc Brooker. I've been writing code, reading code, and living vicariously through computers for as long as I can remember.

Fast Inverse Square Root — A Quake III Algorithm

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:47:48 GMT

In this video we will take an in depth look at the fast inverse square root and see where the mysterious number 0x5f3759df comes from. This algorithm became famous after id Software open sourced the engine for Quake III. On the way we will also learn about floating point numbers and newton's method. 0:00 Introduction 1:23 Why Care? 3:21 The Code 4:18 IEEE 754 9:38 Bits and Numbers 12:09 1st Step: Evil Bit Hack 14:46 2nd Step: WTF 17:34 3rd Step: Newton 19:46 Summary Picture of John Carmack is licensed under CC BY 2.0 from author Drew "Prognar" Campbell. Source: http://flic.kr/p/6YxWYp

Corrosion

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:47:33 GMT

Fly.io built Corrosion, a gossip-based Rust service that syncs SQLite databases across thousands of servers without distributed consensus. It scales by making each worker the authority for its own state, which lets updates converge quickly but can spread bugs widely. After outages, the team simplified recovery, limited what data is gossiped, and split global state into regional clusters.

The ear does not do a Fourier transform

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:47:22 GMT

The ear separates sounds by frequency using the basilar membrane, not by doing a Fourier transform. Hair cells respond to specific frequencies based on their location, creating a mix of time and frequency information. This system helps the brain efficiently process natural sounds like speech and animal calls.

Lessons Learnt From Reversing Rust In CTF

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:47:13 GMT

didn't solve the challenge but learnt something new

Encoding x86 Instructions

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:46:58 GMT

x86 instructions are up to 15 bytes long and use one- or two-byte opcodes with optional prefix bytes to modify behavior. The MOD-REG-R/M byte encodes operand types and addressing modes for instructions. Operand size can be 8, 16, or 32 bits, with prefixes used to select 16-bit operands in 32-bit mode.

B+Tree index structures in InnoDB

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:46:42 GMT

InnoDB uses a B+Tree structure for its indexes, starting from a fixed root page and branching out to leaf and non-leaf pages. Each page is linked to others at the same level, forming a doubly-linked list, while leaf pages contain actual data and non-leaf pages contain pointers to child pages. This structure allows efficient storage and retrieval of records, with the potential to support millions of pages in a multi-level tree.

Rethinking my backups

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:46:38 GMT

Rethinking how I do my backups

Understanding Docker Internals: Building a Container Runtime in Python

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:46:28 GMT

This article explains how to build a simple container runtime in Python using Linux features like namespaces and cgroups. It shows how to isolate processes, filesystems, hostnames, and limit resources inside containers. The project reveals the core ideas behind Docker, but real Docker has many extra features and security measures.

Fluid Storage: Forkable, Ephemeral, and Durable Infrastructure for the Age of Agents

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:41:57 GMT

Fluid Storage reimagines block storage like EBS with zero-copy forks, true elasticity, and sync replication. Built for the age of agents. Now in Tiger Cloud free tier.

Ghosts in the Compilation

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:41:50 GMT

cargo-semver-checks had a problem where it failed to build a crate even though cargo check worked fine. The issue was due to missing configuration flags for cargo doc, which uses different settings than cargo check. The new release fixes this by correctly handling these flags and improving error messages for users.

How We Found 7 TiB of Memory Just Sitting Around

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:41:44 GMT

How we saved 7 TiB of memory across our Kubernetes clusters by disabling namespace listwatching in Vector, reducing daemonset overhead and API server load at scale.

We do our billing with Prometheus

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:41:37 GMT

We use the same Prometheus metrics we collect for monitoring to do billing. That is simple and transparent but scraping is asynchronous and high cardinality can miss or undercount usage. Overall it makes adding usage charges easy and tends to err in the customer's favor.

How to build silos and decrease collaboration (on purpose)

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:41:30 GMT

Although counter-intuitive, it can be beneficial to build silos and decrease collaboration between teams. Balance the need for collaboration, coordionation, and communication with these tips.

Global Replication Made Easy

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:37:09 GMT

Tigris makes data global, durable, and low-latency by pushing metadata and pulling data on demand. Metadata is eagerly replicated to all regions, and data is fetched and cached only when needed. This hybrid, multi-tier cache lets regions serve data fast and survive datacenter loss.

HuggingFaceTB

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:36:59 GMT

Discover amazing ML apps made by the community

Your URL Is Your State

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:36:49 GMT

URLs can and should hold app state so pages are shareable, bookmarkable, and restorable. Good URL design makes intent, context, and caching explicit. Put public, meaningful state in the URL and keep sensitive or transient state out.

On the purported benefits of effect systems

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:34:19 GMT

The conversation questions whether effect systems themselves give practical benefits like better testing or if those come from banning globals and good API design. Effect systems can enable user-defined control flow and capability-style dependency injection, but they add annotation boilerplate and interoperability risks. The authors conclude similar benefits can be achieved without full effect systems while noting effects are useful in some cases.

49 thoughts on “Myths Programmers Believe about CPU Caches”

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:34:13 GMT

Modern CPU caches use hardware protocols (like MESI) to keep copies coherent across cores so threads never see conflicting values. Misconceptions about caches (e.g., volatiles force main-memory access) can lead to bad designs and unnecessary fear. Synchronization and language-level constructs (atomics, volatiles) still matter because registers, compiler optimizations, and reordering can break thread visibility.

SQLite concurrency and why you should care about it

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:34:07 GMT

SQLite is fast and simple but can suffer from unpredictable locking when multiple writes occur. Jellyfin fixed this by adding EF Core interceptors with three locking strategies: no-lock, optimistic retry, and pessimistic single-write. This approach reduces crashes and can be reused by other EF Core apps.

The Evolution of SRE at Google

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:33:55 GMT

Google's SRE team is using systems and control theory to improve the reliability and safety of their complex systems. They adopted the STAMP framework to focus on managing system interactions rather than just preventing individual failures. This proactive approach helps them anticipate potential issues and design safer systems, ultimately reducing outages and improving user experience.

How to Get to The End of a Pile of Unread Books

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:33:49 GMT

The author struggled with guilt over unfinished books and tried reading many at once. They learned Mortimer Adler’s inspectional reading—systematic skimming then superficial reading—to decide which books deserve full attention. This method reduced their to-read pile and eased the pressure to finish every book.

How Nubank Built an In-house Logging Platform for 1 Trillion Log Entries

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:33:42 GMT

Nubank built its own logging platform to handle 1 trillion log entries daily because their old system was costly and limited. The new platform is reliable, scalable, and cheaper by 50%, using in-house services for ingestion, processing, storage, and fast querying. This change helps engineers monitor systems better and prepares Nubank for future growth.

The Impossible Optimization, and the Metaprogramming To Achieve It

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:32:05 GMT

This text explains how moving regex parsing and matching to compile-time can greatly speed up code by creating many specialized functions instead of one recursive one. It uses metaprogramming to inline and optimize the code, making it run faster than traditional regex engines. Although this increases compile time and code size, it results in much better performance during execution.

On Programming Languages as Languages

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:31:45 GMT

Programming languages are like human languages used by communities to communicate clearly and solve problems together. Writing good code means following the community’s style and conventions to avoid confusion. Learning a programming language is like learning a human language—it requires practice, reading others’ code, and engaging with the community.

CPU Cache-Friendly Data Structures in Go: 10x Speed with Same Algorithm

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:30:27 GMT

Cache misses are much slower than L1 cache hits, so organizing data for cache locality can speed real programs 5–10x. Padding and avoiding false sharing across cores greatly help concurrent counters. Prefer data-oriented layouts (SoA, hot/cold split) and always benchmark on target hardware.

Formal Reasoning

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:27:49 GMT

The text explains how formal logic uses parse trees and grammars to build well-formed formulas. It shows how models, interpretations, and algorithms determine truth and how automata and regular expressions define languages. It contrasts syntax (form) with semantics (meaning) and introduces possible-worlds semantics for modal logic.

Formal or not formal? That is the question in AI for theorem proving.

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:27:41 GMT

The author is cautious about LLMs autonomously proving new research math and prefers AI as a helpful assistant. Informal LLM proofs are unreliable and can hallucinate, while formal systems like Lean are trustworthy but lack many modern definitions. Fixing this requires major work to formalize advanced math definitions, a task the author and teams plan to pursue.

Deep Learning for Biology: Predicting Protein Functions from Sequences

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:27:25 GMT

Researchers use deep learning to predict protein functions from amino acid sequences. These models find patterns in sequences that link to biological roles. Accurate predictions speed up biological research and discovery.

Context Switches

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:23:11 GMT

A CPU runs many short, multi-step instructions in a pipelined state machine, so instructions do not equal clock cycles. When an interrupt or syscall occurs, the CPU stops at a safe point, saves the instruction pointer, and the OS saves the rest of the registers to switch contexts. Context switches also involve changing address space, stacks, and caches so the next process can run correctly.

Quick thoughts on the recent AWS outage

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:20:53 GMT

Adding automation to improve reliability increases system complexity and creates new, rarer but harsher failure modes. AWS’s outage showed how health-check automation and delayed network state caused cascading DNS failovers and long recovery. Teams must invest both in robust automation and in resilience — human-run controls, capacity, and expertise to handle surprises.

The Linux Boot Process: From Power Button to Kernel

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:20:42 GMT

The Linux boot process starts when the CPU resets and runs tiny programs that load and prepare the kernel. The kernel sets up memory, paging, and security features like address randomization to keep the system safe. Finally, the kernel decompresses itself and takes control to start running the operating system.

How programs get run: ELF binaries

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:18:39 GMT

ELF binaries are a format used for executable files in many operating systems. They contain the necessary information for the system to run programs. Understanding ELF helps in grasping how applications are executed on computers.

> The Journey Before main()_

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:18:16 GMT

The Linux kernel runs a program using the execve system call, which loads an ELF executable file into memory. The ELF file contains the program's code, data, and instructions for setting up the stack and loading shared libraries. After preparing the environment, the kernel jumps to the program's entry point, where the runtime starts and eventually calls the main function.

Programming Modern Systems Like It Was 1984

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:18:09 GMT

Imagine a 1984 programmer waking in 2014 and choosing simplicity over hyper-optimization. Build small, self-contained programs that talk to each other and avoid heavy, fragile toolchains. Use high-level languages and keep things fast by design, not by micro-tuning.

Barebones RISC-V OS written in Zig

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:18:04 GMT

The author built a simple RISC-V operating system using Zig without relying on an existing OS. They created a custom linker script and assembly startup code to run the OS on QEMU's virt machine. They also used cross-compilation tools to build and debug the OS for RISC-V architecture.

Mistakes I see engineers making in their code reviews

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:17:54 GMT

Good code reviews look beyond the diff to how a change fits the whole codebase. Leave a few high-impact comments, approve most reasonable changes, and only block when you truly won’t accept the change. Don’t impose personal style or drown authors in tiny line comments.

Making a micro Linux distro

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:17:46 GMT

The text discusses building a micro Linux distro by creating a simple kernel and packaging software. It emphasizes the role of the kernel in managing hardware and providing infrastructure for user applications. The article highlights the importance of the init process in starting user space processes on a Linux system.

That Time Ken Thompson Wrote a Backdoor into the C Compiler

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:53 GMT

Ken Thompson showed how to hide a self-reproducing backdoor inside the C compiler so compiled programs (like login) would accept a secret password. The trick was the compiler recognizing its own source and inserting hidden code while leaving source files unchanged. Once installed, each new compiler it built would perpetuate the backdoor without showing in the original source.

The Continual Learning Problem

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:45 GMT

Continual learning asks how to keep updating model weights over time without breaking prior knowledge. Memory layers — high-capacity but sparse — let the model make targeted updates that learn new information with much less forgetting. Sparse memory finetuning shows strong learning on new tasks while preserving performance on held-out tasks.

Learn x86-64 assembly by writing a GUI from scratch

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:31 GMT

The article teaches x86-64 assembly by building an X11 GUI from scratch using Linux syscalls and the System V ABI. It shows stack alignment, syscall parameter passing, and building X11 requests on the stack. The example creates a window, maps it, polls events, and draws "Hello, world."

Indefinite Backpack Travel

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:25 GMT

Jeremy Maluf lives out of a laptop backpack and favors onebag, minimalist travel over gear-brand consumerism. He carries only durable, versatile items (tech, a few clothing pieces, ultralight hiking gear) and keeps things small, secure, and practical. Long-term goal: travel with as little as possible, sometimes literally just his pockets.

Advice for New Principal Tech ICs (i.e., Notes to Myself)

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:20 GMT

A principal tech IC shifts from coding to setting technical vision, mentoring others, and connecting people and ideas. Focus your time on high-impact work, delegate routine tasks, and protect thinking time. Build others to take over so the organization succeeds without you.

Code like a surgeon

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:13 GMT

The author compares coding with AI to being a surgeon who focuses on important work while AI handles secondary tasks. This approach lets them spend more time on creative design and less on grunt work. AI tools make coding more efficient and support a better balance of tasks without losing control.

smoothbrains.net: A three-year retrospective

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:07 GMT

The author began a blog in 2022 to explore consciousness using a phenomenology-first approach. They joined research retreats, studied many scientific papers, and planned creative projects like coding and meditation. The blog aims to grow the field and invite others to contribute fresh ideas.

The three marks of existence and the Fourier uncertainty principle

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:11:02 GMT

The three marks of existence describe how experience is shaped by impermanence, inessence (no fixed self), and dissatisfactoriness. These are mental motions that try to reify permanence, self, and bliss, which leads to suffering when they fail. Understanding these dynamics like signal traits can help explain and potentially measure how the mind constructs experience.

Augmenting Long-term Memory

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:10:41 GMT

Anki is a tool that lets you choose to remember almost anything and keeps knowledge for the long term. Used well, it helps you deeply understand papers, books, and new fields by breaking ideas into small, memorable questions. Be selective: focus on useful, reusable facts and avoid Ankifying everything.

Proofs And Refutations The Logic Of Mathematical Discovery

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:10:21 GMT

The text discusses the process of proving and refuting mathematical theorems through testing and analyzing different scenarios. It emphasizes the importance of testing conjectures to arrive at valid proofs and highlights the iterative nature of refining mathematical ideas through counterexamples and proofs.

Radios, how do they work?

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:10:06 GMT

Antennas capture and reradiate radio waves by resonating at specific lengths, which boosts received signal strength. Modulation changes a carrier wave so it carries information, but fast changes spread the signal across frequencies. Superheterodyne receivers mix the antenna signal with a local sine to shift and isolate the desired frequency for easier filtering.

The Logarithmic Time Perception Hypothesis

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:10:00 GMT

As we age, we judge time intervals by comparing them to our current age, so each year feels like a smaller fraction of life. This makes subjective time follow a logarithmic scale: equal perceived spans require exponentially larger clock ages. The result is that years seem to pass faster as we get older.

Our journey to affordable logging

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:09:48 GMT

CK Engineering built LogProc to store logs cheaply by using blob storage, aggressive batching, and minimal indexing. A stateless query engine plus sticky ingesters and chunked blocks lets them scale easily and cut costs 4.4× versus OpenSearch. The trade-offs are slower blob reads and potential gaps for the last ~15 minutes of logs if an ingester is down.

The explosion of choice

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:09:39 GMT

Modern life treats having many personal choices as the same thing as freedom. This rise of choice grew mainly in the 19th and 20th centuries and spread into love, work and politics. But too much choice can confuse people, hide moral questions, and sometimes fail to deliver real freedom.

[tl;dr] Balancing Coupling in Software Design

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:09:32 GMT

Coupling is inevitable and should be managed, not eliminated. Balance coupling’s strength, distance, and volatility to minimize total complexity. Good modularity hides decisions so only the parts that change must be changed.

Why SSA?

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:46:15 GMT

Basic blocks are straight-line code sequences ending with a control transfer, and dominators describe which blocks lie on every path from entry to a block. Using dominance and dominance frontiers lets compilers place and trace values (via phi-like block parameters) so loads and stores can be eliminated or moved safely. With non-escaping pointers and this analysis, many stores and even whole blocks can be removed to optimize code.

How to sequence your DNA for <$2k

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:45:34 GMT

The author and friends bought a $1,100 Oxford Nanopore setup and sequenced their own DNA at home. The process involved drawing blood, extracting DNA, and running it through a USB-sized nanopore device. Results were partial and noisy (about 13% coverage, contamination, and hardware issues), but showed inexpensive sequencing is possible.

Your data model is your destiny

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:44:47 GMT

Your product’s core data model decides whether features compound into a lasting advantage or just add noise. Pick the right atomic unit of work (menu item, canvas, employee) and all future features gain power from shared context. When code is cheap, a distinctive data model becomes the true moat.

A Fast Bytecode VM for Arithmetic: The Virtual Machine

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:42:41 GMT

The post builds a fast bytecode virtual machine in Haskell for an arithmetic language. Benchmarks show the bytecode VM is over three times faster than the AST interpreter and compiles quickly. The project demonstrates practical performance gains and testing practices when moving from an AST interpreter to a bytecode VM.

Tracking Time Without Clock

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 14:42:25 GMT

Time is deceptively tricky, so avoid using the system clock everywhere. For simple cases pass a single now timestamp into functions instead of a Clock object. For scheduled work call a tick method regularly to advance time inside components.

Easy RISC-V

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 06:51:46 GMT

This article introduces basic RISC-V assembly instructions and how they control a processor using registers and memory. It explains key commands like addi, ebreak, and jump instructions, plus how to handle immediate values and pseudoinstructions. The tutorial also shows simple system calls and code examples to help understand RISC-V programming.

More Than DNS: The 14 hour AWS us-east-1 outage

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:36:41 GMT

AWS us-east-1 suffered a 16+ hour outage that started with a DynamoDB DNS race condition and cascaded to about 140 services including EC2. EC2 then entered a long congestive collapse due to broken leases and backlog, requiring manual restarts to recover. The event shows even top cloud providers have complex, layered failures beyond a single root cause.

What is Linux From Scratch?

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:24:31 GMT

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that gives step-by-step instructions to build a custom Linux system entirely from source. Building LFS teaches how Linux works, creates a compact system, and lets you customize features. Compiling everything yourself also lets you audit and apply security patches directly.

Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:32:21 GMT

Henrik started a blog to explore ideas and meet people who broadened his world. He and his wife chose their priorities—relationship, curiosity, and their children—and make tradeoffs to protect them. He turned down high pay because money would cost him the time to write and live those priorities.

On agency

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:14:18 GMT

Agency means believing problems can be solved by learning and acting. People with agency look for simple solutions and keep trying even when things are hard. Caring deeply about what you want helps you become more agentic and face challenges with strength.

Writing a RISC-V Emulator in Rust

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 12:54:09 GMT

This book teaches how to build a 64-bit RISC-V emulator in Rust. It covers ISA, privileged architecture, exceptions, interrupts, devices (PLIC, CLINT, UART, virtio), and virtual memory. By following it you can run xv6 and the source is on d0iasm/rvemu-for-book.

Nixifying Kubernetes with nix-csi, easykubenix and dinix

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 14:12:15 GMT

The author built three Nix-based projects to manage Kubernetes: easykubenix (renders manifests and deploys with kluctl), nix-csi (provides Nix store volumes via CSI), and dinix (renders dinit service configs). Together they let you run minimal container images and manage full container lifecycles with Nix. The projects work but need more docs and community feedback.

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:36:57 GMT

Nix is a flexible toolset for reproducible builds, package management, and declarative system configuration. It uses pure, sandboxed builds, derivations, and a central nixpkgs library to make consistent developer environments. Flakes and utilities like flake-utils simplify multi-system outputs and packaging workflows.

A window into modern loan origination

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:37:25 GMT

Window sellers prefer financeable purchases because on-the-spot loans boost sales and simplify operations. Specialized facilitators, banks, and private capital quickly create short-term loans that fund installations while shifting most risk off bank balance sheets. This setup lets installers sell windows at scale with predictable, fast financing that investors package and buy.

nLab computational trilogy

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 00:05:49 GMT

Three branches of mathematics—logic, type theory (languages), and category theory—are three perspectives on the same underlying notion of computation. This "computational trinitarianism" shows concepts in one area correspond to concepts in the others. Recent work extends these equivalences to quantum computation and homotopy/topological (twisted cohomology) settings.

Modeling Identity Types

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:39:46 GMT

Naive categorical models make every arrow a fibration, which collapses identity types to only reflexive paths. Using homotopy theory and model categories, identity types are modeled as path objects in a factorization system where fibrations and cofibrations (and weak equivalences) control path behavior. This produces nontrivial paths and higher identity types, giving a weak infinity-groupoid structure.

Scaling Postgres to the next level at OpenAI (PGConf.dev 2025)

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:39:21 GMT

OpenAI scaled Postgres to handle new and heavier workloads by optimizing queries and adding features. They routed and limited expensive queries to avoid spikes and protect the primary database. They also scaled instances and used replicas to improve capacity and reliability.

The AI water issue is fake

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:56:01 GMT

AI data centers use water, but their total use is a tiny fraction of U.S. freshwater and not a national or widespread local crisis. Media reports often mislead by comparing data-center use to household use or hiding context about offsite power-plant water. Overall, AI’s water footprint is small, and its efficiencies and trade-offs with energy make the scare stories exaggerated.

Microsoft Word - Convergence _Angela Zhang_Oct. 14 25 - 5620270.pdf

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:53:03 GMT

What I self host

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 21:52:56 GMT

The author hosts several apps like an RSS reader, Grafana dashboard, and a bookmark manager on a cheap server using Docker and Nginx. They manage most settings with Ansible for easier updates and hope to improve automation. In the future, they want to build smart tools using AI and explore new projects.

Picturing Mathematics

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:52:53 GMT

The author loves low-tech math but uses computers to reveal visuals he cannot easily imagine. He describes Ford spheres, a 3D fractal related to Ford circles, and shows how slicing them produces striking evolving cross-sections. He hopes better illustrations will help both mathematicians and the public see and study these beautiful structures.

k8s-1m Overview

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 16:30:33 GMT

This project explores building a real Kubernetes cluster with 1 million nodes and the challenges that brings. The biggest bottlenecks are kube-apiserver watch/cache load, etcd network throughput, and scheduler throughput. Careful horizontal scaling, tuning, and alternative backends are needed to make such a cluster feasible.

Riehl’s Category Theory In Context

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 01:38:54 GMT

Formalizing math with tools like Lean helps catch errors and makes math easier to explore and understand. It also allows better organization, version control, and new ways to study how theorems connect. Although it takes extra work, these benefits can improve how math is done in the future.

Optimizing Mental Health

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 01:25:18 GMT

Good physical habits—sleep, exercise, and nutrition—build baseline vitality that supports mood and energy. Mental practices like gratitude, purpose, and meditation change brain chemistry and boost well‑being. Both “bottom‑up” (biological) and “top‑down” (psychological) actions interact to optimize mental health.

Attention is a luxury good

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 19:11:47 GMT

Attention can be a luxury like an expensive bag: scarce, costly, and a status signal. We show wealth by spending time on nuance, stories, and experiences instead of quick efficiency. If you sell attention as a luxury, making it fast and convenient destroys that value.

A Conspiracy To Kill IE6

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:37:54 GMT

A small YouTube web team secretly added a banner urging IE6 users to upgrade. Other Google products copied the idea and IE6 usage dropped sharply. The stunt greatly reduced IE6 support pain and went unpunished.

Part I: how does gradient descent work?

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:14:26 GMT

Gradient descent often leaves the stable region (sharpness > 2/η) and then oscillates, which would diverge on a quadratic but actually reduces sharpness via third-order effects. The authors propose a smooth "central flow" — a sharpness-penalized gradient flow — that models the time-averaged path of gradient descent at the edge of stability. Empirically the central flow matches gradient descent long-term, staying near the valley floor while the actual iterates oscillate around it.

How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:14:14 GMT

In 2021, Sean Goedecke was promoted to staff software engineer at Zendesk and again at GitHub in 2023. To get promoted, engineers need to deliver valuable projects that align with company goals and have supportive managers. It’s often easier to be hired as a staff engineer than to be promoted within a company, so focusing on high-impact work is essential.

Senior engineers should make side bets

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:06:24 GMT

Junior engineers should focus on assigned tasks, while senior engineers should spend 10-20% of their time on "side bets"—projects they believe will benefit the company. Successful side bets can greatly enhance a senior engineer's reputation, but failed ones should be quietly left behind. It's important to communicate successes, as they showcase individual contributions that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Protecting your time from predators in large tech companies

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:46:21 GMT

Strong software engineers at big tech companies must protect their time from people who ask for free work. Predators often make low-effort requests through private messages, expecting a lot of effort in return. Always prioritize your main projects and be careful to avoid one-sided demands.

Seeing like a software company

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 15:39:35 GMT

Large tech companies make work legible so they can measure, plan, and coordinate at scale. That legibility slows engineering and hides essential informal (illegible) work. Good companies support both legible processes and illegible, flexible problem-solving.

Extra, Extra - Read All About It: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 15:27:31 GMT

A common binary search (and some mergesorts) use mid = (low + high) / 2, which can overflow for very large arrays and produce wrong indices. Simple fixes (e.g., mid = low + (high - low) / 2) avoid overflow and make the search correct. The lesson: even small, long-lived algorithms can hide subtle bugs, so use careful design, testing, and reviews.

Breaking “provably correct” Leftpad

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 14:47:07 GMT

The leftpad function is tricky because different programming languages handle strings and Unicode in different ways. Some languages count string length by code points, others by encoded units like UTF-16, causing inconsistent behavior. This makes writing "provably correct" string functions hard, especially with complex Unicode characters.

Arrows to Arrows, Categories to Queries

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 13:22:15 GMT

The author built a small programming language (catlang) that compiles into a single SQL SELECT by treating programs as arrows in a category. Instead of function application, catlang uses composition, forks, and coproducts to combine and manipulate data flow. A key trick is desugaring loops via a cochoice primitive so categorical programs can target SQL and other backends.

A modern approach to preventing CSRF in Go

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 11:31:01 GMT

Go's http.CrossOriginProtection middleware helps prevent CSRF by checking browser headers to ensure requests come from the same origin. It works best with modern browsers supporting Sec-Fetch-Site or Origin headers and requires HTTPS with TLS 1.3 for full effectiveness. For strong protection, it should be combined with SameSite cookies and other security measures.

Think OS

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 11:29:18 GMT

Think OS is an introductory book that teaches operating systems basics for programmers. It focuses on practical topics programmers need, using C and simple explanations without assuming prior computer architecture knowledge. The book is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

Processes and Threads

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 11:08:58 GMT

A process is an instance of a program that the operating system runs and manages. The CPU switches quickly between processes (context switching) to give the illusion of multitasking. Threads are lighter-weight paths of execution inside a process that share the same memory.

Let’s Prove Leftpad

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 01:42:32 GMT

The article delves into the process of proving the correctness of the "leftpad" function in various formal methods tools. It compares the approaches of tools like Dafny and Lean in verifying the leftpad function, showcasing different methods of formal proof. The author initiated a challenge to prove the leftpad function's correctness, resulting in a collection of proofs from various systems. The document highlights the diversity in proof languages and tools, encouraging submissions in languages like ATS, Event-B, and more, aiming to create a comprehensive resource for comparing formal methods tools and their approaches to proving correctness.

Copatterns

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 01:42:24 GMT

Controlling Copatterns: There And Back Again

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 01:42:15 GMT

Writing an LLM from scratch, part 22 -- finally training our LLM!

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:49:07 GMT

The author trains a small language model using a short text and then loads larger GPT-2 weights from OpenAI. They explain key concepts like loss, optimizers, and training costs in simple terms. The post encourages hands-on coding to better understand how the pieces fit together.

Pwning the Entire Nix Ecosystem

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 18:49:08 GMT

A security flaw in nixpkgs’ GitHub Actions allowed attackers to run malicious code by exploiting pull_request_target workflows. The issue was quickly found and fixed after reporting it to maintainers. This shows how careful you must be with GitHub Actions and secrets to protect software ecosystems.

Self-Extracting F3

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 23:04:17 GMT

F3 is a new file format that embeds WebAssembly decoders inside each data file so future readers can decode new encodings. This makes files forward-compatible and lets different tools share data without breaking. The tradeoff is occasional slower Wasm decoding unless native decoders are installed.

The Write Stuff: Concurrent Write Transactions in SQLite

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 17:17:54 GMT

SQLite's default journaling limits writers by requiring an exclusive lock at commit, which slows concurrent write-heavy workloads. New concurrency modes like BEGIN CONCURRENT delay locks until commit and use optimistic, fine-grained conflict detection to allow many transactions in flight. This improves write throughput but complicates durability and can risk data loss unless fsync/checkpoint policies are managed carefully.

The least painful way to set up a Windows VM on NixOS

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 16:54:31 GMT

The author explains how to set up a Windows VM on NixOS using GNOME Boxes to simplify USB passthrough and avoid low-level qemu/libvirt work. They give practical steps for NixOS config, getting a Windows ISO, avoiding a Microsoft account during setup, resizing the Windows partition, and installing SPICE guest tools. They also show fixes for NixOS quirks (broken EFI paths after garbage collection) and how to stop the VM auto-starting.

The Fourth Quadrant of Knowledge

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 22:33:35 GMT

There are things you know and things you don’t, and each can be split into what you’re aware of and what you aren’t. Experts often aren’t aware of what they know, which makes teaching beginners hard. Cultivating beginner’s mind helps reveal hidden assumptions and leads to clearer, more humane design.

Zippers: Making Functional "Updates" Efficient

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 19:59:18 GMT

A zipper is a way to efficiently update parts of data structures in functional programming by focusing on a specific element. It works by "unzipping" the structure around that focus, allowing quick local changes without copying everything. Though simple in concept, zippers get complicated when used with balanced trees because re-balancing requires more work.

A visual explanation of the PGM Index

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 19:58:35 GMT

The PGM index uses piecewise linear models to map sorted keys to their positions with a bounded error, replacing stored keys with slopes and intercepts. For a query it predicts a position then does a small binary search within the error range, giving fast lookups and much smaller space than B-trees for many datasets. Updates use special strategies (append-optimized or multi-set rebuilds) and variants add compression or query-awareness.

Three ways formally verified code can go wrong in practice

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 17:46:16 GMT

Formal verification only shows code matches a given specification, not that it has no bugs. Bugs still happen when proofs are invalid, the spec is wrong or incomplete, or assumptions (about data, environment, or unverified code) fail. Know exactly what was proven and what was assumed before trusting verified code.

List is a monad (part 1)

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 17:06:32 GMT

Monads are a programming pattern that provide a context for computations, not just containers. They require two operations (Unit and flatMap) and three laws so you can chain and compose work safely. The List and Maybe examples show how monads run your functions and stop or flatten computation without pulling values out.

How to Avoid Fighting Rust Borrow Checker

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:44:13 GMT

Rust forbids other borrows while a mutable borrow exists, which prevents many bugs but causes ergonomic issues in single-threaded code. This exclusivity protects interior pointers and enables optimizations, but leads to problems like contagious borrows, iterator invalidation, and lifetime propagation. You can work around limits with split borrows, RefCell/unsafe/Arc patterns, or by redesigning data ownership.

Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications, 2nd ed.

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:43:46 GMT

The second edition of "Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications" by Richard Szeliski is available for purchase and download. The book is based on computer vision courses taught at the University of Washington and includes links for additional resources. Readers can download a PDF version for personal use, but it must not be reposted on other websites.

Evidence that Recent AI Gains are Mostly from Inference-Scaling

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 16:15:42 GMT

Recent AI gains from RL-trained reasoning models mostly come from using many more tokens when the model answers questions (inference-scaling), not from cheap improvements during training. This makes models much more expensive to run each time they are used. That shift affects company costs, AI risk, and policy choices.

What's new in CPUs since the 80s?

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:50:46 GMT

CPUs have evolved significantly since the 1980s, introducing features like virtual memory, pipelining, and out-of-order execution. Modern processors can prefetch data and process information at impressive speeds, but they still face challenges with memory access and concurrency. As CPUs become more complex, they are also more prone to bugs, and innovations like hardware acceleration are being developed to enhance performance.

What is Algebraic about Algebraic Effects?

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:46:17 GMT

"Algebraic" means giving effects a clear structure of operations plus laws so they compose predictably. Those laws (like idempotence, commutativity, read-after-write) make effects behave like algebraic objects and guarantee useful properties. Only dependently typed languages can fully encode and prove these equational laws today.

Cache-Friendly B+Tree Nodes With Dynamic Fanout

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:35:48 GMT

High-performance B+Tree nodes must store header and entries in one contiguous heap block for cache locality. In C++ this requires flexible array members and placement new instead of std::vector, with manual allocation and destruction. That gives runtime-configurable fanout but forces manual memory management and reimplements vector-like behavior.

How to store ordered information in a Relational Database

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:15:03 GMT

Store the order explicitly (an integer position) or implicitly (a linked list or fractional/decimal keys). Integers need many updates when reordering but are simple and common; decimals reduce updates but require periodic rebalancing; linked lists make inserts cheap but slow random access. In practice integer positions or fractional keys with occasional renumbering are the usual fast, practical choices.

The World’s Most Expensive Eating Disorder

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:09:00 GMT

The author argues Bryan shows signs of starvation—low blood pressure, slow heart rate, cold body temperature, extreme thinness, and pale skin—likely from severe calorie restriction and low body fat. They warn his strict diet, heavy drugs, and exercise may harm his heart, bones, brain, and overall vitality despite some top metrics. The author says Bryan overstated his health and longevity benefits while hiding weaknesses and suggests he should eat more or use leptin to restore normal physiology.

“Needs to be verified in production”

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 14:28:08 GMT

Some developers focus on closing tickets (mode 1) while others focus on solving business problems (mode 2). Adding "Awaiting deployment" and "Needs to be verified in production" to the workflow forces deployment and simple production checks before closing a ticket. This encourages ownership, better observability, and can nudge process-driven devs toward problem-oriented thinking.

A Guide For Wireguard VPN Setup With Pi-Hole Adblock and Unbound DNS

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 14:08:02 GMT

This guide shows how to set up WireGuard on a VPS with Pi‑Hole adblocking and Unbound DNS. It covers generating keys, configuring wg0, adjusting UFW rules, and adding peers. After setup you can route device traffic, access home resources, and test speeds with iperf3.

Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 14:06:08 GMT

The author bought two 18 TB white-label SATA drives from datablocks.dev and found them cheaper than branded recertified drives. The drives arrived with minor scratches, performed as expected (275–123 MB/s), and are noisy but cool and stable. They now use the drives for bulk storage and backups while keeping SSDs for speed-critical tasks.

Automated Lean Proofs for Every Type

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:51:46 GMT

During a Galois internship I built a Lean tactic that uses SMT solvers to automate proofs and saved over 6,800 lines of manual Lean code. The tactic translates types (like ZMod to bitvectors), combines Lean range lemmas with SMT bitvector decision procedures, and solved Jolt lookup-table queries much faster than finite-field solvers. This shows promise for a general type-translation framework but also reveals hard problems like dependent ranges and the need for more research.

Examples are the best documentation

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:51:06 GMT

A single example often answers a developer's documentation question. Official docs are usually terse, full of jargon, and hard to use when switching projects. Community example sites like clojuredocs are far more practical and useful.

My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:34:05 GMT

Break big technical projects into small, testable pieces that show real progress. Build each piece just enough to create frequent demos. Use those demos and personal use to stay motivated and guide further work.

Designing a Low Latency 10G Ethernet Core - Part 1 (Introduction)

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 12:34:06 GMT

The author developed a low latency 10G Ethernet core for FPGA as a personal project. The design achieves less than 60ns loopback latency, similar to commercial products. The blog series explains unique design techniques, verification methods, and latency results.

12 thoughts on “How to actually test your readme”

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 12:25:12 GMT

Users struggle when READMEs omit steps or assume environment tweaks. Test your README by installing from a fresh VM and record the exact commands. Update the README with those commands so installs work for others.

When Money Is Abundant, Knowledge Is The Real Wealth

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 02:52:52 GMT

When money and power are abundant, the real limit becomes knowledge and expertise. Throwing more money at a problem often fails if you don't know the right actions. Investing in deep, generalizable understanding (gears-level models) is the most valuable kind of wealth.

2145 The Importance Of Understanding Systems

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 01:49:04 GMT

Understanding a system means knowing its job, parts, and how they fit together. Information becomes knowledge when it is placed in a clear structure. With that understanding, you can make better decisions and changes.

Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 01:12:59 GMT

Second-order thinking means asking “And then what?” and tracing the longer-term effects of decisions. First-level thinking stops at the immediate outcome and is common. Thinking in second, third, and later orders helps avoid problems and achieve better results.

VPS Setup and Security Checklist: Complete Self-Hosting Guide for 2025

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:44:57 GMT

This guide shows how to set up a secure VPS using Hetzner and Coolify with clear steps and tips. Hetzner is chosen for its low cost, good performance, and European servers. Self-hosting helps you learn devops skills and gain control over your apps.

fi-le.net,

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 20:17:39 GMT

fi-le.net, the Fiefdom of Files

Getting silly with C, part ~(~1<<1)

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:33:52 GMT

It's vibe coding. Relax, everyone is doing it.

The Syndrome of the Ultra-fit

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:33:36 GMT

I recently coached a client. From the outside, he appeared to be very fit. He had chiseled six-pack abs, exercised every day, and was very health-conscious. However, for the past couple of years, he had issues with energy levels and recovery. He also felt quite weak most of the time and his blood pressure (around […]

Weird CPU architectures, the MOV only CPU

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:32:52 GMT

A CPU can be built using only a Move instruction by memory-mapping all components like the ALU and program counter. This design, called Transport Triggered Architecture (TTA), moves data to perform calculations instead of using traditional arithmetic operations. Although simple and quirky, such a CPU can run programs like calculating Fibonacci numbers but is not very fast or popular.

UTF-8 is a Brilliant Design

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:32:37 GMT

UTF-8 is a smart, variable-width encoding that represents every Unicode character using one to four bytes. The first 128 codes match ASCII, and multi-byte characters use specific leading-bit patterns with 10-prefixed continuation bytes to form code points. This makes UTF-8 both backward compatible with ASCII and scalable for millions of characters.

Fail Fast

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:32:04 GMT

The article discusses the concept of "failing fast" in software development, which involves building software to immediately and visibly fail when a problem occurs, rather than continuing to operate and failing slowly in strange ways later on. The technique involves using assertions, which are tiny pieces of code that check a condition and fail if the condition isn't met. Assertions are useful in flushing out problems in the seams of the system, but they should not be used for every single variable assignment. The article also recommends creating a global exception handler to gracefully handle unexpected exceptions and bring them to the developers' attention.

It Takes Two to Contract

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:31:50 GMT

Design by contract (DbC) involves using types and assertions to catch bugs and limit their consequences. While syntactic mechanisms are not necessary for effective use of DbC, writing more assertions can be beneficial. In object-oriented languages with inheritance, DbC provides first-class support for weakening preconditions and strengthening postconditions. Having assertions in both the call site and definition site improves readability and helps ensure assumptions are met. Pairing assertions provides robustness, defense in depth, and the ability to reason about the correctness of function calls. Assertions can also be used to check invariants in consensus protocols and ensure the equivalence of different code paths.

« A Beginner's Guide to Extending Emacs

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:31:36 GMT

The blog post by Tyler Langlois is a beginner's guide to extending Emacs, focusing on how to create custom completion functions in Emacs Lisp (elisp). It explains using regular expressions to gather completion candidates and integrating them with Emacs' completion system. The guide emphasizes experimenting with functions within Emacs to learn and develop effective completion backends.

Type Branding in Typescript

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:31:14 GMT

TypeScript is structurally typed, so types with the same shape are interchangeable. Branded types add a phantom unique property to make a type nominal. This gives stronger type safety and prevents mixing incompatible values at compile time.

Why We're Building Stategraph: Terraform State as a Distributed Systems Problem

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:30:45 GMT

Terraform state is a distributed systems problem masquerading as file storage. Graph state fixes the bottlenecks.

Many Hard Leetcode Problems are Easy Constraint Problems

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:30:22 GMT

Use the right tool for the job.

Is GitHub Actions suitable for running benchmarks?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:29:34 GMT

GitHub Actions can be used for reliable relative benchmarking by comparing two commits in the same CI job, which helps reduce measurement noise. The benchmarking process may take time, but it can effectively track performance changes over time, showing sensitivity to significant regressions. While some optimizations can speed up the process, maintaining accuracy is crucial, so the default settings that run multiple passes are recommended.

We have outgrown the Process model

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:29:17 GMT

The Process model runs programs in isolated environments, which limits how they use system resources and share work. This model struggles with modern needs like continuous running, state persistence, and networking. Changing it is hard because current processors and operating systems are built around these old ideas.

Folks, we have the best π

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:28:51 GMT

And some novel ideas for bicycle wheel design.

Algebraic Types are not Scary, Actually

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:28:41 GMT

Algebraic types are simple concepts that combine types like sets using addition and multiplication. Sum types let a value be from one type or another, helping handle cases like errors or nulls safely. Using algebraic types makes programming clearer and can reduce bugs compared to traditional methods.

Beyond Orthogonality: How Language Models Pack Billions of Concepts into 12,000 Dimensions

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:28:29 GMT

High-dimensional spaces can pack enormous numbers of nearly-orthogonal vectors, so 12,288 dimensions can represent billions of concepts. The Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma explains why low-dimensional projections can still preserve distances between points. GPU experiments found optimizer pitfalls but show practical embedding capacity far exceeds real-world needs.

Claude Can (Sometimes) Prove It

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:28:03 GMT

Claude Code can often write complex Lean proofs. It still needs a human guide and makes costly mistakes. This suggests AI could make theorem proving widely accessible, but agents aren’t yet autonomous.

Mathematical induction

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:26:09 GMT

Mathematical induction proves a statement for all natural numbers by treating cases like dominoes. First prove a base case P(m). Then show P(k) implies P(k+1), so all P(n) for n≥m follow.

Why argument structure is important

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:25:48 GMT

The author argues Arbital should add structured tools for discussions, like defining terms, tagging evidence, and marking cruxes. These tools would help groups weigh evidence and reach better, lasting agreements. Simple voting and reputation alone are not enough for serious truth-seeking.

Five Ways To Prioritize Better

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:24:25 GMT

Prioritization is about choosing the most important actions to achieve your goals effectively. By identifying high-value tasks and addressing uncertainties first, you can save time and increase your impact. Focus on what actions will best lead you to your goals and adjust your approach based on feedback.

Laziness death spirals

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:23:55 GMT

Laziness often snowballs: one small slip can make the whole day and then weeks worse. Notice when you’re in a “laziness death spiral” and either use a simple emergency fix or wait for a reset (like tomorrow) to recover. Learn what triggered the spiral so you can avoid or address it on better days.

My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:22:55 GMT

The author uses a simple step-by-step algorithm to beat procrastination by identifying which part of motivation is failing: low value, low expectancy, delay, or impulsiveness. For each problem he applies targeted techniques (flow, small wins, shorter delays, precommitment, habits) and practices the needed sub-skills. If one technique fails, he tries another until the task is done or abandoned.

List of how people have become more hard-working

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:20:48 GMT

Chi Nguyen collected many people's tips on becoming more hard-working from EA Forum and LessWrong. Top causes were soft accountability, interesting work, and coworking. Other useful things included better self-knowledge, removing distractions, and treating work as enjoyable.

Akrasia is confusion about what you want

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:20:22 GMT

Akrasia happens when you feel confused about what you truly want, causing you to act against your own intentions. This confusion comes from identifying too much with certain desires instead of accepting all your preferences equally. To overcome akrasia, try to stop clinging to a fixed idea of yourself and accept your mixed feelings without judgment.

Subagents, akrasia, and coherence in humans

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:18:20 GMT

In the document "Subagents, akrasia, and coherence in humans," the author discusses the concept of subagents within the mind and how they can lead to incoherent behavior. The presence of protector subagents is highlighted as a method for maintaining coherence within the mind. The document delves into the role of habits and conditioned responses in behavior, exploring the mechanisms behind behavioral change and the conflict between goal-directed and habitual modes of control. The author also touches on the complexity of human self-control and the factors influencing goal-directed versus habitual decision-making.

#08 - B+Tree Data Structure (CMU Intro to Database Systems)

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:18:03 GMT

Andy Pavlo (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/) Slides: https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2025/slides/08-indexes1.pdf Notes: https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2025/notes/08-indexes1.pdf 15-445/645 Intro to Database Systems (Fall 2025) Carnegie Mellon University https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2025/

Building and operating a pretty big storage system called S3

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:17:50 GMT

S3 is a living system that spans hardware, software, teams, and customers. Its massive scale forces choices like spreading data across millions of hard drives and using erasure coding. Running S3 also needed organizational changes—team ownership, fail-fast practices, and stronger checks—to keep the service reliable.

Adventures in CPU contention

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:17:40 GMT

A change to use fdatasync made the jj test suite far slower on SSDs but much faster on a ramdisk. On macOS adding CPU cores helped only up to a point and then sometimes made things worse. The author thinks this is livelock or contention for some shared resource (cache, memory, or IO), not just RAM vs disk.

How to Be a Leader When the Vibes Are Off

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:17:27 GMT

...and the vibes are definitely off It feels different in tech right now. We’re coming off a long era where optimism carried the industry. Something has curdled. AI hype, return-to-office mandates, and continued layoffs have shifted the mood. Managers are quicker to fire, existential dread has replaced the confidence

Fundamental of Virtual Memory

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:17:15 GMT

Fundamental of Virtual Memory

How has mathematics gotten so abstract?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:17:08 GMT

What's the meaning of "numbers" and "arithmetic operations"? We consult Georg Cantor's turtles and look at Giuseppe Peano's code.

Priorities

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:16:59 GMT

Story time. I used to live in a rented townhouse across the street from a mansion.

Property-Based Testing of OCaml 5's Runtime System - Midtgaard:OLIVIERFEST25.pdf

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:14:57 GMT

Identity Types

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:14:51 GMT

Previously: Models of (Dependent) Type Theory. There is a deep connection between mathematics and programming. Computer programs deal with such mathematical objects as numbers, vectors, monoids, fu…

RNA structure prediction is hard. How much does that matter?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:14:14 GMT

4.8k words, 22 minute reading time

Does One Have to be a Genius to Do Maths?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:13:25 GMT

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. (José Ortega y Gasset, “Notes on t…

I built ChatGPT with Minecraft redstone!

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:13:09 GMT

I built a small language model in Minecraft using no command blocks or datapacks! The model has 5,087,280 parameters, trained in Python on the TinyChat dataset of basic English conversations. It has an embedding dimension of 240, vocabulary of 1920 tokens, and consists of 6 layers. The context window size is 64 tokens, which is enough for (very) short conversations. Most weights were quantized to 8 bits, although the embedding and LayerNorm weights are stored at 18 and 24 bits respectively. The quantized weights are linked below; they are split into hundreds of files corresponding to the separate sections of ROM in the build. The build occupies a volume of 1020x260x1656 blocks. Due to its immense size, the Distant Horizons mod was used to capture footage of the whole build; this results in distant redstone components looking strange as they are being rendered at a lower level of detail. It can produce a response in about 2 hours when the tick rate is increased using MCHPRS (Minecraft High Performance Redstone Server) to about 40,000x speed. -------------------------------------------------- World download (Vanilla, 1.20.4): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pf1PtSqCLkHPj-vGpdOxRhDcug8rLIl0/view?usp=sharing World download (MCHPRS): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GToQikx1VpJSOg5unnnFhJl8onq0DRhY/view?usp=sharing Emulator, weights and guide to running the model: https://github.com/sammyuri/craftgpt MCHPRS: https://github.com/MCHPR/MCHPRS -------------------------------------------------- Music: TheFatRat - Fire Watch the official music video: https://tinyurl.com/tfrfire Listen here: https://thefatrat.ffm.to/fire Follow TheFatRat: https://ffm.bio/thefatrat Thank you to my sisters, debbieuri and sofiuri, who were there through thick and thin (but mostly thin).

Notes on Self-Control

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:12:51 GMT

Self-control is the ability to resist immediate temptations even when you know they are unwise. It differs from temperance, which is truly judging desires as wrong rather than failing to act on that judgment. Self-control can be strengthened by changing your environment, improving self-awareness, and learning cognitive strategies.

how AWS S3 serves 1 petabyte per second on top of slow HDDs

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:12:08 GMT

Learn how Amazon built the backbone of the modern web that scales to 1 PB/s and 150M QPS on commodity hard drives

Walking around the compiler

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:12:00 GMT

Walking around outside is good for you.[citation needed] A nice amble through the trees can quiet inner turbulence and make complex engineering problems disappear.

Is Life a Form of Computation?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:11:55 GMT

Turing and von Neumann argued that life is a form of computation. Biological systems run distributed, noisy, massively parallel programs—DNA and cells act like computers. Work on cellular automata and neural nets shows computation can produce lifelike growth, repair, and self-replication.

Transformers KV Caching Explained

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:11:36 GMT

KV caching stores past Keys and Values during autoregressive decoding so the model only computes attention for new tokens. This makes attention matrices much smaller and speeds up generation a lot. The trade-off is slightly higher memory use, and most libraries enable KV caching by default.

Testing is better than DSA

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:11:30 GMT

DSA topics are useful but often over-emphasized for everyday software work. Learning testing and how to write testable code is more valuable for most jobs. Tests improve code quality, design, and make you stand out in hiring.

Tips for Working with Legacy Code

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:11:17 GMT

Legacy code is hard to change but important to work with. Using tools like version control and writing tests helps manage it better. Taking breaks and documenting issues makes dealing with legacy code easier over time.

How to waste CPU like a Professional

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:10:41 GMT

He needed a way to keep a thread busy on the CPU for a fixed time to test a profiler. He compares seven approaches—time checks, unoptimized loops, compiler attributes, volatile, inline asm, monotonic clock, and alarm signals—and measures kernel vs user time. He recommends the volatile-variable method because it works across compilers and keeps most work in user space.

Time Spent on Hardening

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:10:28 GMT

We don’t know how much time or code developers spend on error detection and handling versus the happy path. The only clear number found is from 1995, saying it can exceed two-thirds of production code. That lack of direct measurement is surprising given how useful and easy such data would be to collect.

What is "good taste" in software engineering?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:10:12 GMT

Technical taste is different from skill: it’s what values you prefer in engineering, not how well you code. Good taste means choosing the right tradeoffs for the project; bad taste is being inflexible and forcing your preferences everywhere. You develop taste by working on varied projects and learning which values actually help each situation.

The golden ratio as a number base

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:09:38 GMT

Fibonacci numbers can uniquely represent every positive integer if you forbid using consecutive Fibonacci terms (Zeckendorf’s theorem). The golden ratio φ gives another base where every real number can be written as a sum of distinct powers of φ, with a similar nonconsecutive uniqueness rule. Recent work links special φ-representations (φ-anti-palindromic numbers) to Lucas numbers and proves a conjecture about doubling exponents producing other integers.

Bayesian Data Analysis

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:09:08 GMT

Bayesian data analysis uses prior distributions to improve inference, especially with small samples or many parameters. The posterior distribution often becomes normal as more data are collected, centering around the true parameter values. Hierarchical models and simulations help apply these ideas to complex problems.

RISC-V Conditional Moves

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:08:33 GMT

RISC-V does not have a direct conditional move instruction like aarch64's csel, and attempts to add similar instructions face design and complexity challenges. Some RISC-V cores fuse short forward branches into conditional moves to improve performance, but this can break the memory consistency model. Therefore, any fusion must keep branch-like behavior to maintain correct program execution.

"Testing Distributed Systems w/ Deterministic Simulation" by Will Wilson

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:02:51 GMT

Will Wilson describes using deterministic simulation to test distributed systems. By running many replayable, controlled failures and timing scenarios, teams find bugs faster. Simulations are limited by their models and must be complemented with real-world testing.

Inside NVIDIA GPUs: Anatomy of high performance matmul kernels

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:02:40 GMT

Matrix multiply is highly parallel and maps neatly to GPUs using tiled work across SMs, warps, and threads. Hopper-era features—tensor cores, async TMA copies, warp-group matmul, and SMEM barriers—move complexity into hardware and simplify kernels. Stacking these optimizations boosts throughput massively, from tens of TFLOP/s to hundreds.

50 Things I Know

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:01:46 GMT

Discipline feels unnatural; life works best when effort feels easy and natural. True growth comes from showing up daily, being curious, and focusing on what truly matters. Wisdom is timeless but must be lived, not just learned.

dynamically typed languages exist?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:01:20 GMT

This is a Tumblr dashboard full of random reblogs and short posts. It jumps between jokes, fandom photos, and weird micro-stories. The tone is casual, chaotic, and playful.

Dan Slimmon

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:01:04 GMT

David Graeber calls some paid work "bullshit jobs" when it feels pointless even to the worker. The author wonders if ops roles are just duct-tape work fixing messy, unfinished software. He argues ops is often necessary to manage real-world complexity, though some ops jobs can still be pointless.

Lecture: Queueing theory on a cocktail napkin

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:00:59 GMT

Dan Slimmon gave a short lecture called "Queueing Theory on a Cocktail Napkin." He says applying a bit of queueing theory transformed how he manages software services. He recommends the talk to anyone responsible for service health.

Why TigerBeetle is the most interesting database in the world

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:00:11 GMT

TigerBeetle is a new database built from scratch for fast and reliable financial transactions. It uses modern techniques like deterministic testing, static memory, and fault-tolerant storage to ensure safety and speed. The team also created unique tools and a clear engineering style to make their system strong and easy to understand.

Register allocation in the Go compiler

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:00:00 GMT

Go's register allocator runs on SSA and processes basic blocks in CFG preorder. It resolves Phis by shuffling or copying values so Phis and their operands share the same register or stack slot, spilling or moving values when needed. Stack slots are assigned in the same pass and the allocator outputs modified SSA plus a value-location map; it is linear-scan-like, fast, and assumes calls clobber all registers for GC.

Natural transformations

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:59:46 GMT

Natural transformations are mappings between functors that connect categories in a structured way. They help define when two categories are equivalent by preserving the relationships between objects and morphisms. Composing natural transformations involves special rules, leading to advanced concepts like 2-morphisms and 2-categories.

The Business of Sportsbooks is Built on Losers

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:59:39 GMT

Sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel make money by attracting casual fans and pushing high-margin bets like parlays. They run on thin margins after heavy taxes, promotions, and advertising, so winning professional bettors ("sharps") threaten profitability. To protect profits, sportsbooks quickly identify and limit or ban those skilled bettors.

How Did Sports Betting Become Legal in the US?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:59:34 GMT

In 1992 Congress passed PASPA to stop states from legalizing sports betting. New Jersey fought the law and in 2018 the Supreme Court struck it down, letting states legalize gambling. Lobbyists and companies pushed legalization and now most states allow betting — but most users lose money.

Development gets better with Age

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:58:34 GMT

Getting older makes you a better developer because experience teaches you what works, what fails, and what to watch for. Generative AI is exciting but full of hype, so seasoned builders pause, learn, and apply it where it truly fits. Listen to customers, think deeply, and then build.

Building the heap: racking 30 petabytes of hard drives for pretraining

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:58:27 GMT

A five-person team built a 30 PB storage cluster in downtown San Francisco for under $500k to store 90 million hours of video. They chose local racks, 100Gbps networking, and simple Rust/nginx software to cut costs and control performance. The project saved about 40x versus cloud, but required hands-on work, careful cabling, and tradeoffs in density and tooling.

Type Theory for All: The Goal of Science is to Communicate Ideas

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:58:14 GMT

Thank you to the crew at Type Theory for All for their thoughtful and well-prepared interview .

What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:55:21 GMT

Processors use prefetching to speed up access to memory by loading the next cache line before it is needed. When multiple threads access the same memory, performance can suffer due to limited bandwidth and cache coherency issues. Understanding cache behavior is crucial for optimizing programs, especially in multi-threaded environments.

Talent is Alignment

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:55:15 GMT

Talent comes from spending time doing something you enjoy and feel connected to. Passion and alignment with your craft matter more than natural ability. Anyone can become talented by practicing regularly and loving what they do.

Hacker Laws

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:54:29 GMT

Hacker Laws are short rules about inevitable realities in software and organizations. They say structure, complexity, human limits, and leaky abstractions shape how systems behave. The advice is simple: design small, keep things simple, avoid premature work, and use clear abstractions.

Game Development: History, Industry, and Engine Design

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:54:08 GMT

Video game development began as a way to test computer abilities and has grown into a large industry with many new creators and players. Making games involves funding, design, and production, with teams constantly finding new methods and tools. Game engines evolved to help non-programmers create content easily, shaped by hardware, team needs, and game goals.

How Functional Programming Shaped (and Twisted) Frontend Development

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:54:01 GMT

Frontend development adopted functional programming and rebuilt the web inside JavaScript. This added layers (CSS-in-JS, synthetic events, hydration) that duplicated and slowed native browser features. Some newer tools push back, favoring HTML, CSS, and progressive enhancement.

You can't parse XML with regex. Let's do it anyways.

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:53:12 GMT

Parsing XML with regular expressions is very difficult and usually a bad idea because XML is complex. HTML is even harder to parse with regex because it allows broken and unclosed tags. Using a real parser is the best way to handle XML and HTML properly.

The Software Essays that Shaped Me

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:52:52 GMT

A few essays and blog posts changed how the author thinks about software. They taught that good tools, clear choices, and respect for developers matter more than trendy tech. Plain, boring solutions and understanding essential complexity win in the long run.

GitHub - ivanyu/awesome-deterministic-simulation-testing: A curated list of awesome deterministic simulation testing resources 😎

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:21:42 GMT

This GitHub page lists helpful resources for deterministic simulation testing, a method to improve software reliability. It includes case studies, blogs, and tools like Antithesis and MadSim. These resources focus on testing distributed systems to find and fix problems more easily.

So, You Want to Learn More About Deterministic Simulation Testing?

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:20:45 GMT

I attended BugBash 2025 where experts discussed deterministic simulation testing (DST) for building reliable software. DST runs many repeatable, failure-heavy simulations to find bugs before production, which helped FoundationDB achieve strong robustness. The author uses and recommends DST resources and invites more references and feedback.

Go Data Structures: Interfaces

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 17:00:13 GMT

Go's interfaces allow for flexible programming by combining static type checking with dynamic method calls, enabling features like duck typing. This means that the compiler can catch errors while still allowing methods to be called on types that implement them without explicit declarations. The implementation uses method tables that are created at runtime, improving performance while maintaining type safety.

Work is Not School: Surviving Institutional Stupidity

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:50:09 GMT

Work is not school: organizations run on messy human judgment, not pure merit. Assume stupidity over malice, learn the informal rules, and shape how others see your work. Build influence, diversify your sources of meaning, and play the long game.

Type Theory & Functional Programming

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 13:11:28 GMT

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Inside vLLM: Anatomy of a High-Throughput LLM Inference System

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 01:30:21 GMT

vLLM is a high-throughput LLM inference system built around an engine that schedules requests, manages a paged KV-cache, and runs efficient GPU execution. It adds features like prefix caching, speculative decoding, guided decoding, and structured output to speed up serving and reduce memory use. The system scales from single-GPU to multi-GPU and distributed serving with async I/O and multiprocessing for high throughput.

Distributed consensus

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 18:11:55 GMT

Distributed consensus requires interacting with at least two computers to ensure that a value is written safely, even if one computer is down. To avoid conflicts when multiple clients try to write different values, a locking mechanism is proposed, where clients must "lock" the system before writing. This system allows for consistent reads and writes by using lock IDs to manage and resolve potential conflicts.

Everything you know is wrong

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 17:54:24 GMT

Over fifty years many confident beliefs about AI and computing turned out to be wrong. Symbolic ideas like expert systems, Prolog, and program synthesis often failed, though DPLL/SMT and tools like Isabelle later proved useful. The lesson is that trends shift and practical, persistent work often wins.

GPT-2 Neural Network Poetry

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:17:39 GMT

The author fine-tuned GPT-2-117M on two poetry datasets, first PG and then a smaller PF. PF gave a much lower loss, suggesting modern poetry is easier for GPT-2 to model. The prefix-finetuned model often makes better poem completions than base GPT-2-117M, though some older works (e.g., Howl) fare worse.

How to Beat Procrastination

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:05:57 GMT

Procrastination is often linked to impulsiveness and is influenced by how we perceive the rewards of tasks. To overcome procrastination, focus on increasing your optimism about success, making tasks more enjoyable, and setting clear goals. Understanding the procrastination equation can help you manage your motivation and reduce delays.

Prompt Engineering Guide

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:16:06 GMT

Prompt engineering is a new field for creating and improving prompts for large language models. It helps researchers and developers boost model performance, safety, and tool integration. This guide collects current papers, techniques, tutorials, and courses to teach those skills.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 07:55:19 GMT

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that in any consistent formal system that includes basic arithmetic, there are statements that cannot be proven true or false. The first theorem proves that such undecidable statements exist, while the second theorem addresses the limits of proving the system's own consistency. These theorems have significant implications in logic, mathematics, and philosophy.

Context Engineering for AI Agents: Lessons from Building Manus

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 07:05:49 GMT

Manus built agents by engineering context instead of retraining models. They maximize speed and cost savings by boosting KV-cache hit rate with stable, append-only prompts and by masking tool choices rather than changing them. They use the filesystem as restorable memory, keep errors in the trace to learn, and add small variation to avoid decision drift.

How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 05:32:21 GMT

You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is to translate between teams, keep the goal clear, and make space for experts to do their best work. Admit what you don't know, explain decisions, and shield the team from needless complexity.

A Very Early History of Algebraic Data Types

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 02:16:30 GMT

McCarthy and Hoare framed types as Cartesian products and discriminated unions (tagged sums). Functional languages like HOPE and ML added +/# notation, pattern matching, and exhaustiveness checks. The phrase "algebraic data type" came later (e.g., Miranda), but the core ideas were known early.

The FLP theorem

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 04:44:31 GMT

The FLP theorem shows that in an asynchronous system with one faulty process, consensus can never be guaranteed to finish in a set time. This happens because message delays and delivery order can always prevent the system from deciding. Real systems use clocks and other tricks to work well despite this theoretical limit.

STYLE.md at main · tigerbeetle/tigerbeetle

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:35 GMT

Write simple, clear code with minimal abstractions and small functions so behavior is easy to understand. Assert assumptions early and often, handle all errors, and keep variables and scope minimal to catch bugs fast. Name things well, document why decisions were made, and prefer explicit control flow and predictable performance.

• Napkin (v1.6)

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 13:20:07 GMT

Napkin v1.6 by Evan Chen is a concise, mostly self-contained introduction to higher mathematics for advanced undergraduates and beginning grad students. It gives bird’s-eye views with precise definitions and theorem statements but fewer full proofs, and many chapters still need problems or solutions. The draft and per-part PDFs are on the website and GitHub, and readers can contribute or view community human-readable and Lean4 solutions via issues or pull requests.

Advanced Testing and Determinism

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 05:11:13 GMT

Separate deterministic code from non-deterministic code. Use property-based tests and deterministic simulations with seeded inputs to test deterministic parts. Keep end-to-end tests as sanity checks because they are fragile and miss rare, environment-driven bugs.

Basic Type System Terminology

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 02:59:21 GMT

Type systems use precise terms, but many people confuse them. Static typing checks types from source code before running, while dynamic typing checks types at runtime. Strong vs weak is about implicit conversions; dynamic ≠ untyped and strong ≠ static.

Ongoing Tradeoffs, and Incidents as Landmarks

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:22:01 GMT

Incidents help us see how work really happens and reveal ongoing tradeoffs in organizations. They act as landmarks that show if our current path and priorities are working or need change. Using incidents this way means learning from them beyond just fixing problems, involving all levels of the organization in understanding and improving decisions.

Functors, Applicatives, And Monads In Pictures

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 06:12:48 GMT

This text explains the concepts of Functors, Applicatives, and Monads in programming, particularly in Haskell. Functors allow you to apply functions to values wrapped in contexts, Applicatives extend this to applying wrapped functions to wrapped values, and Monads introduce a way to apply functions that return wrapped values. The Maybe type is used as an example, demonstrating how it acts as a Functor, Applicative, and Monad.

Hypervisor 101 in Rust

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 02:07:11 GMT

My Thoughts on Renting Versus Buying

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 02:47:00 GMT

The choice to rent or buy is driven more by behavior, emotion, and lifestyle than by math. Renting gives flexibility, mobility, and often better financial upside for people who save and invest. Buying can force savings and makes sense for those who value stability or need mortgage discipline.

Writing an operating system kernel from scratch

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 20:37:11 GMT

This project builds a tiny RISC-V unikernel that bundles kernel and user code into one binary. It runs statically defined, never-ending user threads, each with its own registers and stack. The supervisor kernel uses timer interrupts and syscalls to save/restore state, time-share threads, and seed initial arguments on each thread's stack.

Magical systems thinking

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 17:43:30 GMT

Working complex systems almost always evolve from simple systems that already work. Big designed fixes often fail because the system kicks back and creates new problems. Start small: build simple working alternatives and let them grow instead of hoping analysis will solve everything.

How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-like Container From Scratch

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 13:41:24 GMT

Containers isolate filesystems mainly with the mount namespace and mount propagation settings, while PID, cgroup, UTS, and network namespaces add extra isolation. Using unshare plus bind mounts, pivot_root, and mounting /proc lets you create a Docker-like container with standard Linux commands. Real runtimes also set up cgroups, harden and mask pseudofilesystems, and use bind mounts to share host files.

Becoming the person who does the thing

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 06:07:52 GMT

Your beliefs shape who you are. Small daily actions are votes for the person you want to become. The author began with tiny workouts and now goes to the gym every weekday.

Getting Started with Randomised Testing

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:42:40 GMT

Randomised testing, especially Property-Based Testing (PBT), helps find bugs that example-based tests miss by checking code against many random inputs. The author shows how PBT revealed flaws in a simple shopping cart, leading to better validation and safer code. Using PBT makes developers more confident and helps catch problems before users do.

Pragmatism in Programming Proverbs

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:42:23 GMT

The text discusses the importance of pragmatism in programming and provides key principles to follow. It emphasizes focusing on solving specific problems effectively and efficiently. The author also highlights the significance of understanding the purpose and function of a program, rather than getting caught up in unnecessary complexity.

Ramblings

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:42:01 GMT

Remote teams of 2-10 people can use personal “ramblings” channels to share thoughts without cluttering group chats. These channels help team members stay connected with short, informal updates and encourage creativity. Ramblings reduce interruptions and support social bonding, especially when no meetings are scheduled.

LLM Inflation

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:40:20 GMT

Data compression used to save space and time, but now people use large language models (LLMs) to make short texts longer and long texts shorter. This back-and-forth, called "LLM inflation," can hide unclear thinking and waste time. The author suggests we should notice this and try to be clearer in our communication.

We shouldn’t have needed lockfiles

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:40:08 GMT

Pin top-level versions and the transitive tree is fixed. Version ranges make builds depend on time, so people invented lockfiles that add complexity. Maven shows deterministic conflict resolution (root wins) works without lockfiles.

GPT-4.1 Prompting Guide

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:38:02 GMT

GPT-4.1 is more capable and follows instructions more literally, making it highly steerable. Give clear, specific prompts with examples, use the tools field for tool definitions, and optionally ask the model to plan between tool calls. Organize context and instructions carefully, audit failures, and iterate prompts to reduce errors and hallucinations.

GPT-4

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:37:39 GMT

GPT-4 is a powerful multimodal model that achieves near-human performance on many benchmarks. GPT-4 Turbo adds a 128K context window, better instruction following, JSON mode, function calling, and preview vision. It enables many applications but can still hallucinate and has a data cutoff, so use it cautiously.

Architecture by Fashion, Not Fundamentals - kellabyte

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:34:55 GMT

Backend development focuses too much on trendy architectures and ignores fundamental computer science like algorithms and data structures. This causes slow, inefficient systems that waste resources and frustrate users. The best approach combines solid fundamentals with good design patterns to build fast, maintainable software.

How Tool Complexity Impacts AI Agents Selection Accuracy

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:33:20 GMT

More tools and complex interfaces make AI tool selection less accurate. Clear descriptions and simpler, structured parameters help agents choose correctly. Hierarchical routing with sub-agents and dynamic activation further improves accuracy.

Evaluating Tool Selection

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:32:50 GMT

This guide shows how to evaluate LLM tool selection using precision and recall. Models often choose the right tool (high precision) but miss needed tools (low recall) in multi-tool tasks. Tracking these metrics by query and tool reveals weaknesses and guides improvements.

ToolACE: Winning the Points of LLM Function Calling

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:32:28 GMT

ToolACE is an automated pipeline and dataset for teaching LLMs to call functions across thousands of real-world APIs. It synthesizes diverse, complex dialogs and API formats (nested, parallel, dependent calls) with multi-agent generation and strict quality checks. Models trained on ToolACE outperform others on function-calling tasks while keeping normal general abilities.

LangChain’s best practices for tool calling

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:31:26 GMT

Tool calling is powerful but often inaccurate and hard to debug. They tested LLMs, prompts, routing, tool counts, and descriptions and found o3-2025-04-16 performed best. Prompts and descriptions had small overall impact but helped complex multi-tool chains, and more exhaustive testing is needed.

LLM Evaluation Metrics: The Ultimate LLM Evaluation Guide

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:31:18 GMT

It is no secret that evaluating the outputs of Large Language Models (LLMs) is essential for anyone building robust LLM applications.

Fine-tuning With Tool Calling

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:30:47 GMT

Personal Blog

IEEE Xplore Full-Text PDF:

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:08:33 GMT

How My Blog Handles Math and Images in HTML, Atom, and Email in 2025

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:08:05 GMT

I use Hugo to publish technical posts with math and SVG diagrams and want them to look great on the web, Atom feeds, and email. Because feeds and email clients lack SVG and math support, my publish script renders math to SVG and makes PNG fallbacks with hashed filenames. The result is a fast but fragile stack of Hugo templates and Python scripts that kludge around feed and email limitations.

Sometimes Software is Done, or Why Hugo Why

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:08:00 GMT

The author initially loved using the software Hugo for its speed and simplicity in solving a real problem. However, ongoing updates have made Hugo bigger, more complicated, and prone to breaking backwards compatibility, leading to frustration and wasted time for the author. Ultimately, the author is considering alternatives and values the importance of backwards compatibility in software development.

Unexpected sudo hang under VPN kill-switch

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:52 GMT

My personal blog

Thinking about coding

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:42 GMT

I now spend as much time thinking about code as actually coding. After thinking on walks and in a notebook, I finally coded the idea and it worked in one session. Thinking away from the computer is a powerful alternative to the "dive in" approach.

Vibe Coding Terminal Editor

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:36 GMT

The author built a VS Code terminal-editor that makes shell output a normal, editable text buffer. He learned to plan with plan.md/spec.md, let the LLM iterate on small tasks, and use fast end-to-end tests to close the loop. LLMs speed tool-building but don’t solve hard system problems or long-term maintenance.

Ads Are a Positional Good

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:31 GMT

Ads are positional goods: their value comes from beating rivals, not from creating new demand. Companies spend as much as they can to stay a bit ahead, turning ads into an arms race. That wastes attention and redirects money to ad platforms instead of better products or customers.

Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment, Part 2

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:20 GMT

Two generals cannot reliably coordinate an attack in an asynchronous system because messages can be lost or delayed. Knowledge is defined by which global states an agent cannot distinguish from its local history. This explains why Raft nodes may not achieve common knowledge and why extra assumptions (like reliable clocks) are needed for guaranteed coordination.

The Loudness Wars

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:13 GMT

Decibels are a logarithmic ratio used to report sound pressure (dB SPL) and digital levels (dBFS). VU/RMS meters miss short peaks, so engineers used heavy compression to make music sound louder. The industry now uses LUFS/LKFS and platform targets (e.g. YouTube −14 LUFS) to measure perceived loudness and normalize playback.

More casual-posting

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:07:07 GMT

Amos is changing his publishing model to stop long paywalls and locked article/video releases. Early-access versions will go to supporters when ready, with a private RSS feed and a Discord for them. The public RSS will only show articles you can read, and previously exclusive content is now unlocked.

LLMs as Parts of Systems

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:06:58 GMT

Large language models (LLMs) work best when combined with other tools in a system. Such systems can solve problems more efficiently and reliably than LLMs alone. This approach leverages the strengths of both LLMs and traditional computing methods.

6 surprising things about life in SF

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:06:08 GMT

San Francisco feels small and calm, and you often run into people. The tap water is great and the outdoors — parks, rides and swims — are epic and cheap or free. Everyday life is nerdy and chatty: tech culture, friendly strangers, and quirky service norms.

Rust Atomics and Locks

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:06:01 GMT

This book by Mara Bos explores Rust programming language's concurrency features, including atomics, locks, and memory ordering. Readers will gain a practical understanding of low-level concurrency in Rust, covering topics like mutexes and condition variables. The book provides insights on implementing correct concurrency code and building custom locking and synchronization mechanisms.

Thoughts on (Amazonian) Leadership

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:05:49 GMT

Amazon's Leadership Principles are sensible but often applied poorly. "Customer obsession" has pushed AWS to build what customers ask for instead of the core building blocks they need. Amazon should break silos, act for the broader ecosystem, and enforce higher standards to protect customer trust.

Don’t Build Multi-Agents

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:05:41 GMT

Walden Yan argues against using multi-agent architectures for building AI agents, emphasizing the importance of context engineering for reliability. He suggests that sharing context and avoiding conflicting decisions are crucial to prevent errors in task execution. As AI technology evolves, he believes that focusing on single-threaded agents may yield better results until collaboration between agents can be improved.

Of Rats and Ratchets

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:05:34 GMT

The essay compares short-term software fixes to chasing rats in an abandoned house. True fixes seal the holes: add simple, incremental checks (ratchets) that prevent regressions. For things you can’t automate, write down small, truthful team rules in the repository.

You can try to like stuff

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 01:05:27 GMT

it offers lessons on your nature

A CPU is a compiler

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:41:06 GMT

Strictly speaking, a CPU is an interpreter; it is certainly not a compiler and, unless you can come up with a second implementation of physics, the standard tricks to turn it into one won’t work either.

A Random Walk in 10 Dimensions

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:40:44 GMT

The geometry of random walks in high dimensions provides the power behind deep learning and may be the secret to intelligence.

How many dimensions is this?

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:40:37 GMT

A degree in mathematics might not save you from stacking boxes for a living.

Your Biggest Customer Might Be Your Biggest Bottleneck

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:40:27 GMT

A large customer overloaded the system, causing delays for others. Traditional queues serve jobs in order, which lets big jobs block smaller ones. The solution is fair queueing, which shares processing time evenly among all customers.

How we made Kagi Assistant load twice as fast

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:40:21 GMT

Kagi Assistant loaded slowly because the client waited for multiple AJAX requests after the page HTML arrived. They embedded some data in the markup, streamed the first HTML chunk early, and enlarged the DB connection pool so parallel queries didn’t block. Those changes cut round trips and TTFB and made the app load about twice as fast.

Debugging nixpkgs Package Build

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:40:11 GMT

The author is teaching their five-year-old to use computers and wants to find a simple text editor. They learned how to debug building a new editor package in nixpkgs using the nix develop command step-by-step. They still face challenges with environment differences but can now test editors like LE more easily.

wal3: A Write-Ahead Log for Chroma, Built on Object Storage

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:39:15 GMT

wal3 is a write-ahead log built on object storage that stores data durably and proves it is correct. It uses S3 conditional writes, a lock-free algorithm, and an O(1) setsum checksum for appends and trims. Dual implementations cross-check data and checksum so garbage collection is safe and per-collection scaling is simple.

What Is the Fourier Transform?

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:39:00 GMT

The Fourier transform is a math tool that breaks down complex waves into simple frequencies. It helps us understand sounds, images, and signals by showing their basic parts. This discovery changed math and science and is used in many technologies today.

Evolving The OCaml Programming Language

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:38:49 GMT

Models of (Dependent) Type Theory

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:38:34 GMT

Previously: (Weak) Factorization Systems. It’s been known since Lambek that typed lambda calculus can be modeled in a cartesian closed category, CCC. Cartesian means that you can form product…

Pratt Parsers: Expression Parsing Made Easy

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:38:26 GMT

Every now and then, I stumble onto some algorithm or idea that’s so clever and such a perfect solution to a problem that I feel like I got smarter or gained a new superpower just by learning it.

Demystifying Pratt Parsers

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:38:18 GMT

Pratt parsers are an algorithm for solving the operator precedence problem in parsing expressions. They handle the ambiguity of operators by assigning precedence values to each operator and using a recursive algorithm to parse the expression tree. The Pratt parser first parses the prefix expression, then loops through the tokens, combining them into an expression based on their precedence. The algorithm is implemented in Elm in a concise and minimal way, allowing for easy understanding and porting to other languages.

The day Return became Enter

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:38:04 GMT

The carriage return began as a mechanical lever on old typewriters and became a Return key as machines grew electric. Teletypes and word processors split Return from Line Feed, and early computers sometimes merged or renamed them as Enter. Today’s keyboards keep QWERTY shapes but the old mechanical functions are mostly handled by software.

Logical Duals in Software Engineering

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:37:23 GMT

Logical duals are operators where F(x) = not G(not x). That makes exists vs. for-all interchangeable: to prove all x satisfy P, search for an x that violates P. This trick powers SMT solvers, model checkers, planners, database triggers, and appears in reversals and inverted maps.

Unintended consequences

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:37:13 GMT

I did a PhD while working full time and it drained my spare time and stamina. My fitness tracker warned my VO2 max was very low and linked it to serious health risks. Short HIIT sessions and lunchtime walks raised my score and reminded me to put my health first.

Sometimes CPU cores are odd

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:37:05 GMT

Anubis sometimes returned "invalid response" because it computed a fractional worker count on odd‑core devices. That produced non‑integer nonces which the server rejected. The fix was to truncate the thread count (Math.trunc) and stop assuming core counts are even.

Burrito Monads, Arrow Kitchens, and Freyd Category Recipes

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:36:54 GMT

Monads wrap single values in computational contexts, like burritos in tortillas, while Arrows generalize this to coordinate multiple inputs and complex processes, like managing a whole kitchen. Although Arrows were thought to be the same as Freyd categories, research shows they are more general and correspond to closed indexed Freyd categories. This understanding helps improve programming language design, especially in areas like quantum computing where managing multiple inputs is important.

Anything can be a message queue if you use it wrongly enough

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:36:44 GMT

The piece explores using S3 as a message queue to tunnel IPv6 packets and dodge AWS Managed NAT Gateway egress charges. The author built Hoshino to create a TUN device that writes packets to S3 and reads them back. Per-packet S3 request costs and TCP overhead make the idea far more expensive and impractical.

Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:36:36 GMT

When designing software, do the simplest thing that could possibly work. Simple solutions often beat over-engineered ones because they have fewer moving parts and are easier to maintain. Add complexity only when real requirements force it, and watch for inflexibility or scaling limits.

Game Theory at Work: When to Talk and When to Shut Up

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:36:01 GMT

Game theory helps you decide when to speak and when to stay quiet at work. Speak up when the benefit outweighs the risk, like fixing a project, and stay quiet on politics or gossip. Every choice shapes your reputation, so pause and make your words count.

SQLite commits are not durable under default settings

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:35:39 GMT

SQLite’s default rollback journal mode with synchronous=FULL does not guarantee the last committed transaction survives an OS or power crash. True durability requires EXTRA in delete mode or using WAL with synchronous=FULL (and fullfsync on macOS). Check your SQLite build and PRAGMA settings because many builds (and macOS defaults) use settings that can lose recent commits.

Mike Mai’s Typography Manual

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:35:33 GMT

Mike Mai's Typography Manual emphasizes the importance of using one font effectively, especially exploring all its weights for design consistency. The manual also suggests using traditional point sizes for typography scale and redefining sizes for CJK characters. Lastly, it highlights the use of serif fonts for italics, proper dash types, and the importance of spacing and alignment for clear and professional typography.

Materialized views are obviously useful

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:35:22 GMT

Keeping derived counts in sync is tedious and error-prone. Materialized views (incremental view maintenance) let you declare a query and have the database keep results up-to-date automatically. This removes fragile application code and should become a standard database feature.

A Guide to Gen AI / LLM Vibecoding for Expert Programmers

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:35:11 GMT

Vibe coding uses LLMs as junior coders to handle easy, boring work. It only helps when an expert who knows the code well assigns tasks and rigorously reviews or discards results. If you hate managing or must solve deep problems yourself, don’t bother.

Language Models as Thespians

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:34:49 GMT

Large Language Models (LLMs) act like actors who perform roles by mimicking human language, aiming to sound believable rather than always true. Giving LLMs a clear persona helps guide their responses and improves their output quality. This actor analogy helps people understand LLM behavior and encourages better use and communication about AI capabilities.

Without the futex, it's futile

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:34:43 GMT

A futex helps manage locks by separating locking from waiting, reducing costly system calls. Mutexes often use spinning first and only wait with a futex if contention is high. Recursive mutexes track ownership and nesting to avoid errors when locking and unlocking multiple times.

Discrete Distributions

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:33:59 GMT

Represent the distribution as cumulative probabilities and sample by binary-searching a tree. When outcomes have different probabilities, an unbalanced tree minimizes average steps. A Huffman-style greedy algorithm builds such an optimal tree in O(n log n) time instead of O(n^2).

Bypassing no-go theorems

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:33:53 GMT

A no-go theorem is a formal proof that a certain kind of theory cannot work, but people often give such theorems broader informal meanings than their technical results. The author examines famous examples (Gödel, Russell, Church, Curry, Wand) and shows you can sometimes bypass a no-go result by changing how axioms are used or by embedding logic in computation so paradoxes cause nontermination instead of inconsistency. Some bypasses are simple once seen, though others (notably Gödel’s) remain hard and worth exploring.

Raft does not Guarantee Liveness in the face of Network Faults

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:33:29 GMT

Raft consensus algorithm's liveness guarantees in network failures are being questioned after a Cloudflare outage. Raft, as originally described, does not ensure stable leadership in all network failure scenarios. Implementing PreVote and CheckQuorum can address liveness issues, ensuring a stable leader is elected and maintained.

Beyond Booleans

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:33:24 GMT

In Lean, propositions are types (Props) and proofs are values of those types. Typechecking is how Lean verifies proofs, so proving 2+2=4 means producing a value of the 2+2=4 type. Unlike simple booleans, Lean records which facts are proved and makes impossible-to-prove statements (like 2+2=5) unconstructible unless you cheat.

Faster Index I/O with NVMe SSDs

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:33:17 GMT

Rewriting the B‑trees to use direct (unbuffered) reads sped up and stabilized index I/O on NVMe SSDs. Reading larger aligned blocks (up to about 128 KB) gives much higher throughput than many tiny random reads. Async tools like io_uring can boost throughput but cause jitter at high queue depths, so careful benchmarking and tuning are needed.

View Change Protocols And Reconfiguration

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:32:20 GMT

Designing Software in the Large

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:31:56 GMT

Complexity in software makes it hard to understand and change code. To reduce complexity, keep modules focused and interfaces small, and write clear, consistent code. Always aim to prevent complexity from growing by designing carefully, not just rushing to add features.

How should we learn from bugs?

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:31:33 GMT

Bugs often come from different people writing code in different ways, which can cause unexpected problems. It is hard to fully understand or prevent all bugs because every project and context is different. When dealing with bugs, it helps to stay calm, ask questions, and be kind to yourself and others.

Jepsen 18: Serializable Mom by Kyle Kingsbury

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:31:08 GMT

Distributed systems are fundamentally concurrent and need clear semantics for operations. Bugs in transactions, replication, or write-ahead logs can cause crashes or data loss. Thorough testing, clear documentation, and careful error handling are required to build reliable systems.

Patterns vs. "Patterns"

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:30:48 GMT

Don't write bugs

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:30:09 GMT

Bugs don't happen by themselves; programmers put them there and can choose not to. Practice and learn from common mistakes to avoid them. Re-read small blocks of code often (about every 3–6 lines).

Look Out For Bugs

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:30:03 GMT

You can find many real bugs just by carefully reading code. Build a mental model by following control flow and tracking key state. Make time for slow, system-wide reading to prevent subtle errors.

Formality on demand

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:29:54 GMT

Premature formality can cause problems when using computers. It is better to start with loose ideas and add structure later. This approach is called Formality on demand or Gradual enrichment.

Oldest recorded transaction

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:29:47 GMT

The oldest recorded transaction dates back to 3100 BC on a Sumer tablet. Modern databases like Postgres and SQLite can store dates only as far back as 4713 BC, but MySQL supports dates from 1000 AD. This raises challenges for storing very old dates in digital systems.

The Angels and Demons of Nondeterminism

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:29:35 GMT

Nondeterminism means many possible paths; demonic picks the worst and angelic picks the best. Angelic nondeterminism models existence queries and underpins NP, so it’s a useful abstraction for regexes, SQL, and SAT. Real machines are deterministic, so we must care about implementations and optimizations when we need worst-case guarantees, counts, or probabilities.

Normalization of deviance

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:29:26 GMT

Normalization of deviance happens when bad work habits become normal and accepted over time. This can cause big problems because people stop questioning risky or inefficient practices. To fix it, companies need strong leadership, clear rules, and a culture where employees feel safe to speak up.

Stop writing CLI validation. Parse it right the first time.

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:29:11 GMT

The author built Optique to stop writing repetitive CLI validation code by parsing arguments correctly from the start. Optique uses parser combinators and TypeScript to ensure options are valid and related rules are enforced automatically. This approach saves time, reduces bugs, and makes CLI code easier to change and trust.

2 thoughts on “The problems that accountability can’t fix”

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:28:57 GMT

Accountability helps but fails for coordination problems and flawed risk models. The OceanGate Titan disaster shows a CEO with "skin in the game" still took lethal risks because he lacked expertise and misjudged risk. Fixes include cross-checks and independent safety authorities so people can say "this is unsafe" without double binds.

Strong Eventual Consistency - The Big Idea behind CRDTs

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:28:49 GMT

CRDTs are data structures that let replicas be edited independently and merged automatically. Strong Eventual Consistency means replicas match as soon as updates are processed, not sometime later. This gives low latency, extreme fault tolerance, and offline-friendly geo-replicated databases.

Deliberate Abstraction

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:28:42 GMT

Modules help hide changing design choices so programs can adapt without big rewrites. Inside-out design builds from a simple core and adds features later, making software flexible and modular. Good abstraction controls complexity but must be planned to avoid hard-to-change code.

How I solved a distributed queue problem after 15 years

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:28:36 GMT

Reddit ran almost everything through task queues, but crashes and broker outages could lose work. Durable queues checkpoint workflows in a database (like Postgres) so jobs can resume from the last completed step. They add reliability and observability but reduce throughput, so use them for lower-volume, business-critical tasks.

The story of how RSS beat Microsoft

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:28:29 GMT

Big companies like Microsoft pushed ICE, a complex commercial syndication standard. RSS stayed simple, open, and grassroots, so anyone could make feeds and aggregators. That simplicity let RSS win while ICE faded away.

Building A Database On S3

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:27:46 GMT

Building a Database on S3: The paper explores the opportunities and limitations of using S3 as a storage system for general-purpose database applications that involve small objects and frequent updates. The paper presents read, write, and commit protocols, as well as cost, performance, and consistency properties of such a storage system. The authors demonstrate how small objects can be implemented using S3, and how a B-tree can be implemented on top of it. They also present protocols to implement different levels of consistency using S3.

Hypervisor in 1,000 Lines

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:27:40 GMT

This book teaches you to build a minimal type-1 RISC‑V hypervisor in about 1,000 lines of Rust. It can boot Linux-based operating systems and uses Rust crates to skip unneeded low-level work. All code is on GitHub and the book and examples are freely licensed (CC BY 4.0, MIT).

From Unit Tests to Whole Universe Tests (with Will Wilson)

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:27:30 GMT

Complex systems fail from interactions unit tests miss. A deterministic hypervisor runs a fake production, records everything, and replays it to search for bugs. That makes reproducing and fixing timing and concurrency bugs fast.

A break from programming languages

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:27:22 GMT

I have loved programming languages for years, but they are very hard and progress is slow. Programmers' conservatism and social factors block many good ideas. My work felt niche (mostly Haskell) and unrewarding, so I am closing this chapter.

Defeating Nondeterminism in LLM Inference

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:27:16 GMT

People often blame concurrency and floating-point math for nondeterminism. The real problem is when reduction strategies change with batch size, breaking "batch invariance." Ensuring batch-invariant kernels (keep each reduction per batch element or use fixed split sizes) makes inference deterministic, though it can reduce peak performance.

My Quarterly System Health Check-in: Beyond The Dashboard

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 04:52:10 GMT

Hold a 2–4 hour monthly or quarterly system health review to check progress against strategy. Ask simple, informal questions across simplicity, delivery, reliability, performance and organisation to go beyond dashboards. Listen to engineers, diagnose root problems, and prioritise real fixes over raw metrics.

How To Automate Anything. A Guide to Parts Every Maker Should Know How To Use.

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:37:22 GMT

A relay or contactor lets a low‑power signal switch high‑power circuits to automate devices. Use proper power supplies and parts rated for the current, and add sensors or limit switches to control it. Put relays near the load and wire them correctly for safe, reliable operation.

Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment, Part 1

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:04:40 GMT

A public announcement can create common knowledge and change what agents can prove. Repeated questions in the muddy-children puzzle raise knowledge levels until the muddy children know they are muddy on the kth round. The same hierarchy matters in distributed systems like Raft: without acknowledgments facts never become common knowledge and so cannot be safely committed.

jantimon/react-hydration-rules: Comprehensive guide documenting React hydration and Suspense fallback behaviors during SSR

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 15:44:53 GMT

This guide shows when React hydration makes server-rendered content flash to Suspense fallbacks. Normal state updates during hydration trigger fallbacks, but startTransition prevents most of them. Exceptions: rendering isPending can still trigger fallbacks, and useSyncExternalStore updates always do.

Elements of Rust - Core Types and Traits

Tue, 09 Sep 2025 04:42:02 GMT

This is a clickable visual guide to the Rust type system. It focuses on lang_items, the built-in types and traits that support language syntax rather than library types like Vec, String, or HashMap. The platform-independent core enables no_std and embedded code that runs without a heap.

GitHub - the-litte-book-of/linear-algebra: There is hardly any theory which is more elementary than linear algebra, in spite of the fact that generations of professors and textbook writers have obscured its simplicity by preposterous calculations with matrices. —Jean Dieudonne

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:16:49 GMT

Linear algebra starts with scalars and vectors and builds vector spaces and bases. Matrices encode linear operations and help solve systems of equations. Linear transformations link algebra and geometry and power graphics, computation, and data.

Big O

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:21:07 GMT

Big O shows how running time grows as input size increases. Common classes are O(1) constant, O(log n) logarithmic, O(n) linear, and O(n^2) quadratic. Choosing better algorithms or data structures (formulas, binary search, maps) makes code faster.

Bits and pieces

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:20:47 GMT

The primary assigns an op-num, logs the request, and sends PREPARE to all replicas. Replicas send PREPARE-OK and after a quorum the primary sends COMMIT so all apply operations up to the commit-num. If the primary fails, replicas deterministically pick a new primary, bring it up to date, and resume.

You no longer need JavaScript

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 01:15:24 GMT

Modern HTML and CSS can replace JavaScript for many tasks. Developers often underestimate CSS because they skip learning its new powerful features. CSS is faster, more accessible, and expressive, though JavaScript is still sometimes necessary.

BUGGIFY

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 01:40:37 GMT

FoundationDB uses a deterministic simulator plus an in-code fault injector called BUGGIFY to find rare, high-level bugs. BUGGIFY is compiled into the production binary but only runs in simulation; each use is enabled per run and usually fires with about 25% probability. Engineers sprinkle BUGGIFY to force error paths, add delays, randomize knobs, and then reduce destructive faults later so the system can recover.

Secret Management on NixOS with sops-nix

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 01:39:02 GMT

The article explains how to securely manage secrets in NixOS using sops-nix by encrypting secrets in git and decrypting them at runtime. It shows how to integrate sops with NixOS, use existing SSH keys for encryption, and configure secrets for system services. This approach keeps secrets safe while allowing easy sharing and deployment of system configurations.

Circuit Simulator Applet

Tue, 26 Aug 2025 01:37:42 GMT

This is an interactive electronic circuit simulator from falstad.com. The animated view shows voltages and currents and lets you click switches or edit components. It includes many example circuits and multiple versions (Java, JavaScript, standalone).

Optimizing our way through Metroid

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 12:03:11 GMT

The Antithesis platform learned to solve the challenge of needing missiles to open a door in Metroid by tracking missile counts while exploring the game. They improved their testing by optimizing state exploration, making the process faster and smarter. This new approach helped them beat the game and discover bugs more effectively.

"| > "

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:39:28 GMT

Many null hypotheses in psychology are implausible and practically never true. With enough data they will be rejected, so simple significance tests are uninformative. Researchers should build and test substantive models instead.

Consistency Models

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 15:17:57 GMT

Consistency models describe which sequences of operations are allowed in concurrent and distributed systems. They form a hierarchy: strong models (like strict serializability and linearizability) imply weaker ones (like sequential or causal consistency). Network asynchrony and availability trade-offs mean stronger models are often impossible or less available in real systems.

How to Think About GPUs

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 02:24:13 GMT

GPU nodes are typically 8 GPUs, with an H100 GPU egress ≈450 GB/s (B200/GB200 can reach ≈900 GB/s). Inside a node communication is fast, but beyond the node effective node egress falls to ≈400 GB/s, so collectives cost roughly B / W_node_egress. This drives LLM scaling: you need large local batch sizes and multiple nodes, and in‑network reductions can halve collective costs.

NixOS & Flakes Book

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 12:09:10 GMT

This book focuses on using NixOS and Flakes. It skips installation details for Nix on macOS, Linux, or WSL. For installs visit https://nixos.org/download.html; macOS users can try ryan4yin/nix-darwin-kickstarter.

Consensus algorithms at scale: Part 1 - Introduction

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 19:40:02 GMT

The introduction to the article "Consensus algorithms at scale: Part 1" highlights the complexity of consensus algorithms in theory and practice, emphasizing the evolving nature of the problems they address. It discusses key requirements like distributed durability, availability, and automation in consensus systems, posing questions about whether existing solutions like Paxos or Raft would emerge if starting from these requirements. The text points out the need for systems to adapt to changing cloud provider topologies and pricing structures, suggesting a more flexible approach like Vitess, which allows for customization without compromising essential aspects. The article promises to delve into dissecting consensus algorithms, building new principles using flexible algorithms, and ultimately achieving objectives in Vitess, all from an engineering perspective based on experience rather than formal proof.

Typechecker Zoo

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:46:12 GMT

Type systems are rules that assign types to program parts and check that a program is well-typed. Type checking builds derivation trees from inference rules and contexts to prove programs follow those rules. Modern type systems blur types and terms so types can express logic, letting programs serve as machine-checked proofs.

The Patterns

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:03:01 GMT

This text introduces patterns for shaping groups of buildings and individual buildings in three dimensions. It guides individuals or small groups on designing and building layouts, emphasizing the importance of site positioning, building layout, pathways, light, space, and private rooms. The text also highlights the significance of establishing a structural philosophy before detailing structural elements in building construction.

Type inference for plain data

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:21:01 GMT

Type inference is simpler for plain data types using monoid laws and unification rules with mempty as the Never type. The unification operator (<>) combines types by making fields optional or merging matching fields, ensuring supertype relationships. Associativity and other laws hold for basic types like String, Number, Bool, Array, and Object, supporting consistent type unification.

iPhone DevOps - ultimate edition

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:23:17 GMT

The author enjoys coding on an iPhone using apps like Pythonista, Secure ShellFish, Textastic, and Working Copy. They run code on a remote Linux server and sync files between their phone and server smoothly. This setup costs some money but works well as a portable, single-handed development environment.

OOMProf - Profiling on the Brink

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 23:10:58 GMT

OOMProf is a tool that helps developers understand why their Go programs are killed by the Linux OOM killer. It captures detailed memory allocation data right when the program runs out of memory. This makes debugging out-of-memory crashes easier and more precise.

What even is distributed systems

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 12:37:35 GMT

Distributed systems study how processes interact, creating challenges in correctness, reliability, and performance. A great way to learn is by reading "Designing Data Intensive Applications" and following the MIT Distributed Systems course. Practice by implementing common protocols and join communities like the Software Internals Discord to discuss and ask questions.

Viewstamped Replication: The Less-Famous Consensus Protocol

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 18:01:31 GMT

Viewstamped Replication is an older, less-known consensus protocol that works differently from the popular Paxos and Raft. It uses passive replication, where only the primary replica executes operations and shares updates with others. Despite its advantages and clear explanations, it remains overlooked compared to Paxos and Raft.

A CT scanner reveals surprises inside the 386 processor's ceramic package

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 23:28:32 GMT

A 3-D CT scan revealed the Intel 386 processor has a complex six-layer ceramic package with 132 gold-plated pins. The chip uses separate power and ground networks for I/O and CPU logic to improve performance and noise reduction. The scan helped map the hidden connections between the die's pads and the external pins, clarifying the chip's internal wiring.

Lobsters Interview with Hwayne

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 12:07:09 GMT

Hwayne discovered programming as a career pivot and focuses on making Formal Methods (FM) accessible and practical for developers. He values writing and teaching to clarify complex topics like logic and believes FM helps improve engineering work when engineers are motivated. He also emphasizes that software engineering involves creating mental models beyond just writing code.

Over engineering my homelab so I don't pay cloud providers

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 11:09:54 GMT

The author set up a Proxmox hypervisor on a home server to avoid paying cloud providers. They automated the installation and configuration using Ansible, OpenTofu, and cloud-init. This setup includes disk encryption and easy VM deployment for flexible and secure home lab management.

Why You Should Build Durable Workflows With Postgres

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:10:22 GMT

Postgres is a great choice for building durable workflows because it handles concurrency well, supports powerful queries, and ensures tasks run exactly once. Its locking features reduce bottlenecks when multiple workers process tasks at the same time. Postgres also helps monitor workflows easily and makes sure database steps complete fully or not at all.

Cognitive Decline Can Be Slowed Down With Lifestyle Changes, From Diet to Exercise and Social Time, New Study Suggests

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:41:50 GMT

A study shows that regular exercise, healthy diet, and social engagement can slow cognitive decline in older adults. People who followed a structured lifestyle program had better thinking skills than those who chose their own plan. Researchers believe support and guidance help people stick to healthy habits and improve brain health.

Implementing Viewstamped Replication protocol

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:29:14 GMT

Viewstamped Replication (VR) is a protocol that keeps data safe by making sure all nodes in a cluster apply operations in the same order, even if some nodes fail. It chooses a new leader quickly using a simple round-robin method when the current leader fails, and failed nodes can catch up by getting missed updates. VR is simpler than other consensus protocols and can be improved with optimizations like storing logs on disk and batching requests.

How to Scale Proteomics

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:49:40 GMT

Proteomics studies proteins in cells but is slow and limited to few cells at a time. PTI is creating better barcodes, faster machines, and smart software to study thousands of cells quickly. This could help detect diseases like Alzheimer’s early by analyzing many brain cells’ proteins.

Build Your Own Lisp Learn C and build your own programming language in 1000 lines of code!

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 16:02:32 GMT

Learn C and build your own programming language with this book. Discover the wonders of Lisps and solve problems with concise code examples. Available for free online or for purchase in print and e-book formats.

Software books I wish I could read

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:56:15 GMT

The author wishes there were more software books that explain complex topics in simple ways, like configurations, data schemas, and practical computer science. They are writing their own book to help others learn easier than they did. The post lists ideas for useful books that don't exist yet but would help many programmers.

Gate-level emulation of an Intel 4004 in 4004 bytes of C

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 22:44:49 GMT

This program emulates the Intel 4004 CPU by decompressing a large circuit description and then simulating its logic gates in C. It uses a compressed, gate-level representation to accurately mimic the processor’s instructions and registers. The emulator runs instructions by recalculating gate outputs, allowing it to execute the 4004’s operations in software efficiently.

Social Capital: The Compound Interest of Your Engineering Career

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 16:48:10 GMT

Social capital is the trust and relationships engineers build to get support and influence decisions. It grows from small, consistent actions like helping others and communicating clearly. Combining social capital with initiative helps engineers make a bigger impact and advance their careers.

Proofs are Programs

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 11:54:14 GMT

Proofs in logic can be seen as computer programs, where each proof corresponds to a function with a specific type. This idea, known as the Curry-Howard correspondence, links logic, computation, and type theory. Using lambda calculus, we can write and understand these proof-programs clearly and precisely.

Practical Static Analysis for Privacy Bugs

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 09:26:14 GMT

Privacy bugs are hard to find and fix, but they are very important because of laws like the GDPR. Paralegal is a new tool that helps check privacy rules written in simple English and links them to the actual code. It uses Rust’s type system to analyze programs quickly and accurately, making it useful for real-world software.

How to reverse engineer an analog chip: the TDA7000 FM radio receiver

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:29:59 GMT

The TDA7000 FM radio chip uses over 100 bipolar transistors, mainly NPN type, for its circuits. The chip design is complex, with careful layout and unique transistor structures to fit all components on one metal layer. Understanding NPN transistors and their simple circuits helps in reverse engineering this analog chip.

The Making of D.

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:21:13 GMT

D. Sculley, a Google machine learning researcher, is taking the MIT course "How to Make Almost Anything" to learn about fabrication. The course covers many hands-on skills like 3D printing, electronics, and CNC machining over 14 weeks. He hopes to find connections between fabrication and machine learning for future projects.

The Math Is Haunted

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:19:39 GMT

Lean is a tool that lets mathematicians write proofs like computer code to check math carefully. You can add axioms, but bad ones like "2 = 3" break math and let you prove anything. Removing bad axioms keeps math true and helps build reliable, complex proofs step by step.

Linear types for programmers

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:19:26 GMT

Linear types ensure that values are used exactly once, helping programmers manage resources like memory and file handles safely. They model protocols and state changes, preventing errors such as using a closed file or misordering network requests. Languages like Rust and Haskell use related systems to improve performance, safety, and concurrency.

Does the Bitter Lesson Have Limits?

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:42:29 GMT

The bitter lesson says AI works best when it learns from lots of data and computation, not human rules. But real-world problems like business are messy and hard to measure, making this lesson less clear. Sometimes, smart human-designed methods can be faster, cheaper, and just as good as big compute.

HoareHoare Logic, Part I

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:41:58 GMT

Hoare logic uses assertions to reason about program correctness with preconditions and postconditions. It defines rules, like assignment and consequence, to prove that commands meet their specifications. Automation tactics help streamline these proofs in formal verification.

The many, many, many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:36:49 GMT

JavaScript runtimes have grown diverse, running on many platforms from tiny devices to desktops and mobile apps. Node.js and browser engines like V8 remain popular, but new engines and frameworks are emerging. Developers want JavaScript everywhere, and its use in native apps continues to expand beyond the web.

A Bytecode VM for Arithmetic: The Parser

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 17:33:58 GMT

The post explains how to write a parser in Haskell that converts arithmetic expressions into Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs). It uses the attoparsec library and supports parsing of let expressions and binary operations with correct precedence. The parser is thoroughly tested for both correct inputs and error cases, showing reliable behavior.

Lobsters Interview with Icefox

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 22:30:42 GMT

The author is creating a new systems programming language called Garnet that focuses on minimalism and practical features like borrow checking and bitwise pattern-matching. They believe no perfect language exists, but better tools help programmers build useful systems. Collaboration between researchers and engineers is key to improving programming languages and tools.

What Declarative Languages Are

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 20:30:50 GMT

A declarative language is one whose meaning involves some hidden existential choices, like regular expressions or SQL. These languages have simple, logical meanings but need complex methods to run them efficiently. Features that reveal how they work underneath are usually disliked by programmers.

„I Am Tired All The Time“ – 13 Reasons Why

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:20:19 GMT

Low energy and fatigue have many causes, including hormone imbalances, poor sleep, nutrient deficiencies, and inflammation. Treating these issues can improve mood and energy, but some people struggle due to genetics. Many common medical tests miss these problems, so understanding the root causes is important.

Emacs: The MacOS Bug

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:04:07 GMT

Emacs on macOS gets slower over time because it repeatedly creates and destroys graphical resources during event handling, causing high memory use. This happens faster on newer, high-DPI Macs and is hard to fix due to deeply rooted code and macOS APIs. The author suggests rewriting parts in Swift to improve performance and memory management in the future.

Your actions reflect your priorities

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 22:01:19 GMT

True satisfaction comes from how you live every day, not just from big achievements. Life has many priorities like health, family, work, and community, and you must balance them wisely. When your actions match your priorities, you live with purpose and inspire others.

polarizing parsers

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 21:48:52 GMT

A vulnerability called request smuggling involves sending confusing HTTP headers that cause servers to interpret requests differently. The author’s Go-based proxy avoids this problem by parsing requests consistently, so the backend sees the same data the proxy does. The real issue is proxies like Akamai’s sending invalid requests, not the HTTP protocol itself.

Behind the Scenes: My "How Computers Really Work" Series on Computerphile

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 21:48:28 GMT

The author created a Computerphile video series explaining how CPUs work using simple analogies and real props. They record remotely with a special setup and face some technical challenges, but enjoy making the videos with their editor Sean. The series is popular with viewers who want to learn computer basics, and more episodes are planned.

How the Brain Increases Blood Flow on Demand

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:06:42 GMT

Scientists discovered how the brain quickly sends blood to active areas using special cells lining blood vessels. These cells talk to each other through tiny channels to signal where more blood is needed. This finding may help us understand brain diseases and improve brain scans like fMRI.

2000 words about arrays and tables

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:04:31 GMT

Arrays are functions that map number sequences to values, and they can have multiple dimensions like rows and columns. Tables are like arrays but hold mixed types in each row, so they combine struct and array features. This model helps explain why arrays can have many dimensions, but tables usually don't.

Why We Need to Know LR and Recursive Descent Parsing Techniques

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:04:19 GMT

Recursive descent parsing is easy and flexible but can hide grammar ambiguities and bugs. LR parsing guarantees unambiguous grammars and automatic parser generation, making language syntax clearer. Learning both helps understand real languages and design better, easier-to-parse ones.

Writing memory efficient C structs

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:04:14 GMT

C structs can use extra memory due to padding for alignment. Reordering fields and using smaller data types or bitfields can reduce struct size. Optimizing structs is useful for memory-limited programs but may reduce code readability.

Writing an OS in Rust

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:04:07 GMT

This blog teaches how to build a small operating system using Rust. It covers key topics like kernel creation, memory management, and multitasking with clear tutorials. All code and resources are freely available for readers to follow along.

Typechecking Is Undecidable When 'Type' Is A Type

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:01:50 GMT

Learning Basic Electronics By Building FireFlies

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:01:13 GMT

The author learned basic electronics by building blinking LED circuits called "fireflies" that mimic real fireflies. They faced many challenges but used AI, trial and error, and creativity to improve their designs. This hands-on journey gave them joy, purpose, and a love for learning through making.

Simple and fast Rust deriving using macro_rules

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:01:03 GMT

rules_derive is a Rust library that lets you create custom derive macros easily using macro_rules! instead of complex procedural macros. It simplifies handling all Rust type forms and generics, making derivers short, fast, and composable. This tool speeds up compile times and improves error messages, enabling more accessible and efficient trait derivation.

Learning Is Slower Than You Think — And That’s the Point

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:00:20 GMT

Learning takes time, effort, and human connection to truly transform us. Schools like Alpha focus on speed and efficiency but risk losing the deeper struggle that builds insight and meaning. Real education is about growing with others, facing challenges, and shaping who we become—not just mastering facts quickly.

LLM Embeddings Explained: A Visual and Intuitive Guide

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:00:09 GMT

This app explains how language models transform text into meaningful representations through embeddings. It provides a visual guide to help you understand traditional and modern language model tech...

consensus

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:00:04 GMT

Consensus algorithms help computers agree despite failures, delays, or lies. They use promises, voting majorities, and sharing knowledge about others to ensure decisions are reliable and consistent. These methods catch errors or dishonesty and keep the system safe even if some nodes fail or act badly.

You’re probably using the wrong dictionary

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:54 GMT

Many modern dictionaries give short, boring definitions that don’t capture the true meaning of words. The old Webster’s dictionary has richer, more vivid explanations that help you understand words better. Using the right dictionary can make learning words more interesting and meaningful.

Atomic Habits Summary

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:50 GMT

"Atomic Habits" by James Clear explains how small daily improvements can lead to significant long-term changes. The book emphasizes the importance of systems over goals and encourages building identity-based habits to create lasting change. It provides a simple four-step framework for developing good habits and breaking bad ones.

Getting decent error reports in Bash when you're using 'set -e'

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:46 GMT

Using 'set -e' in Bash scripts stops the script on errors but doesn't give detailed error info. By adding a trap for the ERR signal with special variables, you can print the failing command, its exit status, and the line number. This method works well only in Bash, not in other shells like dash or the default /bin/sh on most systems.

Paul Dirac and the religion of mathematical beauty

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:40 GMT

Paul Dirac was a brilliant physicist who believed that the laws of physics are deeply connected to mathematical beauty. He made important discoveries, like predicting antimatter, by following elegant mathematical ideas. Later in life, Dirac became critical of some quantum theories but remained convinced that math reveals the true nature of the universe.

Heredocs Can Make Your Bash Scripts Self-Documenting

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:34 GMT

Heredocs let you put markdown inside bash scripts to combine documentation and automation in one file. This helps keep information in sync and makes scripts self-explanatory. It is a simple way to write clearer, easier-to-use bash scripts without separate docs.

Using fortune to reinforce habits

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:26 GMT

The author used the fortune tool to remind themselves of new command-line tools by showing messages when opening a terminal. They created a custom file with helpful tips and set it to display automatically. This quick setup helped them build better habits without coding.

Trust Deterministic Execution to Scale & Simplify Your Systems • Frank Yu • YOW! 2023

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:17 GMT

Deterministic execution helps make complex systems simpler and more reliable by processing inputs in a fixed order. This approach is useful for handling large volumes of data, such as in trading exchanges, ensuring correctness and easy replication. It also allows easier debugging and testing by making system behavior predictable.

Verified Assembly 2: Memory, RISC-V, Cuts for Invariants, and Ghost Code

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:59:00 GMT

This work presents a flexible assembly verification system using symbolic execution with support for invariants called "cuts" and ghost code. It works with multiple architectures like x86-64 and RISC-V by leveraging pcode for instruction semantics. The system aims to help both manual assembly developers and compiler writers verify code correctness effectively.

Advanced Rust macros with derive-deftly

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:17:05 GMT

derive-deftly is a Rust package that helps you create custom derive macros easily without writing low-level code. It lets you generate code like accessor functions automatically, saving time and reducing errors. While powerful, it works only on structs, enums, and unions and cannot modify the original type.

The Intel 4004 Microprocessor and the Silicon Gate Technology

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 21:37:09 GMT

Federico Faggin invented the bootstrap load, a circuit that boosts output voltage to full supply levels. This technique improved speed and power efficiency in the Intel 4004 microprocessor. He achieved this without extra manufacturing steps by using a deep understanding of device physics.

Development shells with Nix: four quick examples

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 12:45:04 GMT

Nix lets you create development environments with exact package versions on any Linux system, not just NixOS. You can use simple commands like nix-shell or more advanced setups like flake.nix for reproducibility. Flakes also allow making system-independent shells, ensuring the same environment across different machines.

RealtimeKit and CPU Scheduling

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:42 GMT

Take a look at your process tree, it's likely that you might notice a new service: rtkit-daemon, the RealtimeKit Daemon. It seems nobody on the internet is talking about it, so let's explain what it's about in this article.

How often is the query plan optimal?

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:33 GMT

Query optimizers often pick plans that are not the fastest because they rely on imperfect cost and selectivity estimates. Different data patterns and hardware setups affect which scan method is best, but the planner can still make mistakes. Despite its flaws, cost-based planning remains the best way to choose query plans, though improvements are needed for more accuracy.

Tail Latency Might Matter More Than You Think

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:28 GMT

My name is Marc Brooker. I've been writing code, reading code, and living vicariously through computers for as long as I can remember.

Why English doesn’t use accents

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:23 GMT

And why French is full of them

Programming Extensible Data Types in Rust with CGP - Part 2: Modular Interpreters and Extensible Visitors

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:07 GMT

This article shows how to build modular interpreters in Rust using extensible variants and CGP. It explains how to write reusable evaluation and transformation logic for different math expressions. The approach makes adding new operations easy, keeping code flexible and safe.

Writing an IR from Scratch and survive to write a post - Eduardo Blázquez’s Personal Webpage

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:48:00 GMT

The following post will talk about the design of the first version of the Intermediate Representation of Kunai, the design decisions and how it was implemented.

Hacking Coroutines into C

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:55 GMT

The article explains how C coroutines are created using macros that convert code into state machines for pausing and resuming execution without a call stack. It shows examples like button press recording and non-blocking delays that use saved states and a simple scheduler to run tasks cooperatively. This approach enables writing readable, sequential logic in single-threaded environments with coroutine cancellation and condition variables support.

We Made Postgres Writes Faster, but it Broke Replication

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:35 GMT

Zero-ETL search and analytics for Postgres

Can we test it? Yes, we can! - Mitchell Hashimoto

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:26 GMT

As the co-founder of HashiCorp, Mitchell has been instrumental in the development of tools that many of us use daily, like Vagrant, Terraform, Vault, and more. He also helped shape the initial testing strategies for them, gaining hard-won insights into testing complex software along the way. At BugBash, where everyone is a testing nerd (or at least wants to be), most of us have come across that one piece of code that cannot be tested. What do you do when the code you so eagerly want to test is not testable? While working on his latest passion project, Ghostty, Mitchell came across this challenge again and again. For instance, Ghostty is a GPU rendered terminal emulator that demands GPU testing. In the age of AI, it’s surprising that we don’t yet have a broadly accepted solution for this – at least, not one that’s cracked the first page of google. So Mitchell’s talk is his (current best) answer to a deceptively simple question, “How do you make something testable?” Expanding the boundaries of testing drives the work at Antithesis too. So, the good news/bad news is, there are fewer and fewer reasons to leave any code untested. https://antithesis.com/blog/2025/bugbash_2025/mitchell_hashimoto/

Tree-Structured Concurrency II: Replacing Background Tasks With Actors — 2025-07-02

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:17 GMT

(Tree-)Structured Concurrency is neat because it greatly simplifies concurrent programs. It greatly reduces, if not outright eliminates the possibility of logical races due to concurrency issues.

Sort By Controversial

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:09 GMT

Shiri created a program called Scissor to find controversial statements, but it caused big fights among her team. The program revealed hidden conflicts and led to two people being fired for causing trouble. The author warns that such statements can manipulate people and cause serious problems if not handled carefully.

Gödel's beavers, or the limits of knowledge

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:47:00 GMT

Can you examine infinitely many integers in finite time? Are there numbers you're not allowed to know? Can a monkey beat a beaver in a fair fight?

Efficiency of a sparse hash table

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:46:45 GMT

Choosing the right initial size for a hash table can affect its speed, especially if it fits well in the CPU cache. Tests showed that making the hash table much bigger than needed slows it down in clear steps due to cache effects. Still, small size differences usually do not cause noticeable performance changes in real use.

Austerity - Wikipedia

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:46:35 GMT

In economic policy, austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both.

How does a screen work?

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:46:25 GMT

From electron guns to tiny electric crystals - digital displays have always been the unsung hero of computing.

Let's Learn x86-64 Assembly! Part 0 - Setup and First Steps

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:45:46 GMT

This document introduces x86-64 assembly, focusing on setup and initial steps. It explains the outdated teaching methods in universities, the difference between assembly language and machine code, the role of assemblers and debuggers, as well as the importance of registers. The text covers memory addressing, the illusion of memory layout in 64-bit Windows, and the relationship between virtual and physical memory addresses. Additionally, it delves into the basics of writing assembly programs, analyzing code, and understanding the PE format and DLL imports for calling WinAPI functions.

Row Polymorphic Programming

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:45:23 GMT

Row polymorphism lets programmers write flexible code that works with records having different sets of fields. It helps handle messy data by allowing types to be based on the actual labels and types of fields in a record. This approach makes it easier to write generic functions without complex macros or manual type definitions.

Strategies for very fast Lexers

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:44:55 GMT

Making compilation pipelines fast, starting with the tokenizer

Human Stigmergy

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:44:43 GMT

Termites and ants build huge, complex homes without plans by leaving chemical marks for others to follow. This shows that memory can be stored outside the brain, in the environment itself. People do this too by placing objects as reminders, helping them remember tasks without needing to think hard.

Feynman: Knowing versus Understanding

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:43:51 GMT

Richard Feynman on the differences of merely knowing how to reason mathematically and understanding how and why things are physically analyzed in the way they are.

Turing Machines: How Computers Evolved From People

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:43:43 GMT

Go to https://ground.news/landingV8/purplemindcs?utm_source=purplemindcs&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=july31 for a better way to stay informed. Subscribe for 40% off unlimited access to world-wide coverage through my link. Support me on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/PurpleMindCS If you'd like to aid the success of this channel, this is the best way to do it! Every contribution is sincerely, greatly, appreciated. This video is a reupload with a couple of tweaks (mostly to the very beginning). If you watched the previous version, thank you for your support! This updated version offers a better viewing experience. What is the definition of a computer? If you search this question on the internet, most answers will reference electronics or various data storage/processing qualities. But the way we model the idea of a “computer” in computer science is completely different -- it's a genius (but seemingly-strange) theoretical device called a Turing Machine, named after Alan Turing who designed it in 1936. What’s weird about Turing machines is that at first glance, they seem entirely unrelated to our usual concept of a computer. They’re extremely rudimentary, consisting of only three basic components and governed by a simple set of rules. And yet, amazingly, Turing machines can actually carry out any algorithm that a modern computer can! The invention of the Turing Machine eventually settled a decades-long debate to define what computation is, and they gave us an entirely new way of understanding not just machines, but even the theoretical limits of our own brains. In this video, we break down how a Turing machine works, use it to solve a couple of real algorithmic problems, and finally answer the question of why the simple device became (and still remains) the foundation of computer science. Turing’s paper: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf Brittle Rille - Reunited by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0...

Making the assumption rule only apply to atoms

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:43:25 GMT

by Jessica Taylor

Compiler bootstrapping in Nixpkgs

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:42:56 GMT

Nixpkgs faced challenges with cross compilation due to complex bootstrapping and multiple compiler builds. Over time, improvements simplified this by unifying toolchains and removing redundant cross packages. The goal is to treat compilers and libraries separately for cleaner, more efficient builds, benefiting current and future languages.

Adding lookbehinds to rust-lang/regex

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:42:36 GMT

The Rust regex engine now supports unbounded captureless lookbehinds, allowing patterns to check what precedes a match without including it. This feature is more flexible than many other engines, but it does not allow capture groups inside lookbehinds. The implementation improves Rust's regex capabilities and is available in the official repository.

NixOS Secrets Management

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:42:27 GMT

This is the home of EmergentMind and serves as a central staging area for my creative and professional endeavors.

Lessons From Creating My First Text Adventure

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:42:16 GMT

Since ParserComp voting has opened, the game is now public, and you can play it in your browser – even on your phone.

Programming Extensible Data Types in Rust with CGP - Part 3: Implementing Extensible Records

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:42:05 GMT

CGP uses traits and partial records to build and merge Rust structs flexibly. It defines traits like BuildField and FinalizeBuild to handle fields incrementally and finalize structs. This design supports extensible records and reusable builder patterns in Rust code.

Reverse proxy deep dive

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:41:50 GMT

This post was originally published on my personal blog.

constrained languages are easier to optimize

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:41:40 GMT

exposing raw pointers make the optimizer’s job horribly hard. high level languages can constrain your program, making more optimizations sound.

A Smart Bear » Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:41:24 GMT

Want to write better? Swap generic words for specifics to make your text clear, powerful, engaging, and even funny.

you are in a box

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:41:17 GMT

Programs and tools tend to grow too big because switching between them is hard, trapping users inside a "box." Making tools work well together and lowering these switching costs can help us break free. But right now, most tools keep data locked inside, so we depend heavily on their creators.

RNA Is the Cell’s Emergency Alert System | Quanta Magazine

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:40:50 GMT

Cells detect DNA damage quickly through a molecular alarm triggered by mutated RNA and ribosome collisions. This alarm involves a protein called ZAK, which signals when ribosomes stall on damaged RNA, prompting the cell to repair or self-destruct. This rapid response helps prevent harmful effects like cancer or tissue damage.

Function Over Form: Why ‘Unbiological’ Neural Networks Are the Truest Simulation of the Brain #

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:40:26 GMT

Modern AI models, like Transformers, simulate the brain’s core functions by integrating information globally and operating with dynamic sparsity. Unlike biological neuron imitation, these models focus on functional similarity, using backpropagation as a process linked to consciousness and learning. This approach creates efficient, adaptive cognitive engines that surpass traditional biological limits.

placing functions — 2025-07-08

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:40:02 GMT

Placing functions let Rust construct types directly in their final memory location, avoiding extra copies. They keep function signatures the same, making them easy to add to existing code. This approach also supports nested construction and could improve how Rust handles lifetimes and pinning.

Computational Lambda-Calculus And Monads

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:39:19 GMT

This paper discusses a new approach to understanding program equivalence using computational lambda-calculus based on category theory and monads. It proposes a formal system that accurately captures the behavior of real programs, including aspects like non-termination and side-effects. The authors aim to create a sound and complete framework for reasoning about program semantics, extending traditional methods to handle more complex languages.

Program Synthesis: The λ in the Machine

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:39:09 GMT

Current AI code generation mainly copies patterns from existing code and may lack true reasoning. Program synthesis aims to build correct programs by combining formal logic and types, offering a more precise and reliable approach. Although challenging and costly, future tools might blend learning and formal methods to create self-verifying, optimized software.

The Future of Maths May Be Deeply Weird

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:38:58 GMT

Mathematics is becoming more social and computer-driven, with tools that can check and create proofs automatically. Future math learning might involve digital textbooks and AI tutors that help students understand proofs step-by-step. While machines may solve complex problems beyond human grasp, math will still be about insight and sharing understanding among people.

My Ultimate Self-hosting Setup

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:38:46 GMT

The author built a self-hosting setup to keep control of their data and services using tools like Tailscale, Authelia, and NixOS. They focus on security, ease of use for family and friends, and avoiding single points of failure. Their setup includes VPN access, single sign-on, and careful management of physical and virtual servers.

To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:38:41 GMT

To write better code, imagine little proofs in your head that show your code works as intended. Use clear rules like pre-conditions, post-conditions, and invariants to help you think clearly. Writing code that is easy to prove correct leads to higher quality and faster programming.

On The Unusual Effectiveness Of Logic In Computer Science

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:38:08 GMT

Casey Muratori – The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-five-year Mistake – BSC 2025

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:36:37 GMT

Casey Muratori explains that object-oriented programming (OOP) was originally meant to mirror real-world models directly in code. Over time, the focus shifted to complex compile-time hierarchies, which often made programming harder. He suggests that simpler, more flexible approaches work better and that history shows OOP ideas evolved through champions and practical use.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:36:07 GMT

Gödel numbering assigns unique natural numbers to symbols, formulas, and proofs in a formal system using prime factorization. This method allows complex syntactical properties and operations to be expressed arithmetically and manipulated mechanically. It is a key tool for proving Gödel's incompleteness theorems by encoding and analyzing formal mathematical statements within arithmetic itself.

Deeper theories of program design

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:35:58 GMT

Windows prevents deleting files that are open, using lock-like rules to avoid conflicts. Unix lets files be deleted while open, acting more like a weak database transaction but causing confusing behaviors. Future filesystems might combine these ideas with built-in transactions for safer, clearer file handling.

Mario is (NP-) Hard

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:35:40 GMT

Deciding if Mario can reach the flag in any custom level is very hard, like solving tough math problems. This difficulty connects to a famous question in computer science called P vs NP. If someone finds a quick way to solve Mario's problem, it would change science and technology forever.

What is a Transformer?

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:35:23 GMT

Transformers are deep learning models that predict the next word in text by understanding context through attention mechanisms. They convert words into numerical embeddings, capture relationships between tokens using self-attention, and refine these representations with feed-forward layers. Finally, the model outputs probabilities for each possible next word to generate coherent text.

LL and LR Parsing Demystified

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:35:13 GMT

The text explains LL and LR parsing as different ways to process input tokens and output parse tree traversals. LL parsers use pre-order traversal, while LR parsers use post-order traversal, each with its own advantages in handling grammars and parsing context. Understanding LL vs LR parsing helps in choosing the right parsing strategy for different grammars and parsing requirements.

Automating Away Claude's Bad Habits with Hooks

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:33:05 GMT

Claude Code often leaves unwanted trailing whitespace when writing code. Using Hooks, users can run tools like RuboCop automatically to fix these issues after edits. Hooks help automate code cleanup but need careful security checks since they run with full user permissions.

Hardest Problem in Computer Science: Centering Things

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:32:54 GMT

The text discusses the challenge of centering elements in web design and the common issues faced by developers and designers. It highlights problems with fonts, line height, icons, and offers solutions for better alignment to improve UI design. The author emphasizes the importance of paying attention to details for creating visually appealing user interfaces.

A reckless introduction to Hindley-Milner type inference

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:31:42 GMT

Hindley-Milner (HM) is a type system that enables automatic type inference, making programs safer by preventing many runtime errors. Languages like Haskell and Elm build on HM but differ in features like strictness and support for monads. HM improves code legibility and correctness by linking types to program semantics without needing explicit type annotations.

Algorithms for Modern Processor Architectures

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:31:25 GMT

This talk by Daniel Lemire covers algorithms designed for modern processors. It aims to improve software performance on current computer hardware. All related software is available on GitHub for easy access.

Cloudflare and the infinite sadness of migrations

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:31:01 GMT

Cloudflare had a major outage because they used an old system that made risky global changes. Migrations, or moving from old to new systems, are hard and slow, which can cause reliability problems. Companies need to get better at doing migrations because running old and new systems together is also risky and complex.

How to draw lambda diagrams

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:28:04 GMT

Lambda diagrams are pictures that show how lambda expressions work using lines for variables and connections. You draw horizontal lines for variables and vertical lines to show how inputs connect to functions. These diagrams help visualize complex functions and beta reductions in lambda calculus clearly.

To The Programmer

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:25:08 GMT

Combinators are functions that apply arguments to each other in specific ways. They help simplify code and make programming more efficient. Understanding and using common combinators can benefit programmers in creating concise and elegant programs.

Implementing a Functional Language with Graph Reduction

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:24:47 GMT

This project implements a small functional language using graph reduction of combinators in Haskell. It translates lambda calculus expressions into combinators and represents them as graphs for efficient evaluation. The system supports recursion with the Y-combinator and plans to add parallelism and optimization.

Monotonic and Wall Clock Time in the Go time package

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:24:34 GMT

Operating systems expose a wall clock that can leap or slew with NTP and a monotonic clock that never runs backward. In Go, only time.Now (might) carries both readings, while values from time.Parse, time.Date, etc., are wall-clock-only—so naïve equality checks or time.Since on those can mislead when the system clock shifts.

The Future is NOT Self-Hosted

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:23:48 GMT

Many people try self-hosting to control their digital data, but it is hard and not practical for most. Instead of owning our own small clouds, we should build community-owned, shared internet services. True freedom online comes from working together, not isolating ourselves.

Rust running on every GPU

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:23:26 GMT

A new Rust project lets the same Rust code run on all major GPUs, including NVIDIA, AMD, Apple, and browsers. It compiles Rust directly to GPU languages like SPIR-V and CUDA, simplifying GPU programming and testing. Although still rough, this work shows cross-platform GPU computing with Rust is now possible.

It’s time for modern CSS to kill the SPA

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:23:10 GMT

Modern CSS features like View Transitions let browsers handle smooth page navigation without heavy JavaScript or SPAs. Building websites as real pages with clean HTML and CSS is faster, simpler, and better for users. SPAs are now outdated solutions causing unnecessary complexity and poor performance.

Guia para implementar regras de especulação em sites mais complexos bookmark_borderbookmark Mantenha tudo organizado com as coleções Salve e categorize o conteúdo com base nas suas preferências.

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:22:16 GMT

Antes de usar regras de especulação, é importante escolher como implementá-las e avaliar os custos para o usuário. Regras podem ser aplicadas de formas diferentes, como no HTML, JavaScript ou cabeçalhos HTTP, com vantagens e desafios. É fundamental prever quais páginas carregar antecipadamente para melhorar a experiência sem sobrecarregar o sistema.

Formal specs as sets of behaviors

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 08:20:13 GMT

A formal specification defines a system by describing all correct behaviors as a set. Unlike a program, it doesn't list instructions but specifies which behaviors are allowed. This helps check if a behavior is correct by seeing if it belongs to the specification's set.

technicalities: "not rocket science" (the story of monotone and bors)

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 05:48:26 GMT

The author created a tool called bors to ensure code is only merged if all tests pass, keeping the main codebase stable. This follows the simple rule of automatically maintaining a repository that never breaks. Despite being easy in theory, many projects don't use this method, so bors helps enforce it effectively.

Mathematics for Computer Science

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 05:40:41 GMT

This course from MIT teaches math concepts for computer science. It covers topics like proofs, algorithms, probability, and cryptography. The materials include videos, notes, and problem sets for undergraduate students.

Migrating my NAS from CoreOS/Flatcar Linux to NixOS

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:24:49 GMT

The author explains how they moved their NAS from CoreOS/Flatcar Linux to NixOS, simplifying system management. They first used Docker on NixOS, then switched to native NixOS modules for better integration. The author recommends NixOS for declarative, automated system configuration and plans to convert more devices.

What part of Hindley-Milner do you not understand?

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 14:15:49 GMT

The author finds the Hindley-Milner notation confusing and hard to understand. They recognize some symbols but not many, like "⊢" or the vinculum. They ask for guidance on where to start learning about these symbols.

Reflections on OpenAI

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 17:37:19 GMT

The author recently left OpenAI and shares their experience of its fast growth and unique culture. OpenAI is very ambitious, secretive, and focused on practical AI risks while aiming to build AGI. Launching Codex was intense but rewarding, and the author sees OpenAI as a key player in the race for AGI.

Programming Language Theory has a public relations problem

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:23:15 GMT

Programming Language Theory (PLT) is a beautiful but very hard field that many people find confusing and impractical. Its problems include complex ideas, unclear applications, and heavy use of abstract methods that make learning difficult. The author wishes for clearer teaching and honesty about PLT’s challenges and beauty to help more people appreciate it.

Basic facts about GPUs

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:17:51 GMT

GPUs run many threads organized in blocks and warps, sharing fast on-chip memory to speed up computation. To boost performance, threads cooperate by loading data tiles into shared memory, reducing slow global memory access. Efficient GPU kernels balance memory use and compute power to avoid stalls and maximize throughput.

NULLBITMAPGPT

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:15:43 GMT

The author uses a database approach to build a Markov Chain that predicts the next word based on previous words in past emails. They show how to extract word pairs, count their frequencies, and generate new text using SQL queries. This method is simple, scalable, and demonstrates the power of thinking with databases.

Why your website should be under 14kB in size

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 12:29:12 GMT

Keeping your website under 14kB can significantly improve loading speed, potentially saving users up to 612ms compared to larger pages. This is due to the TCP slow start algorithm, which limits the amount of data sent initially to avoid packet loss. A smaller website size helps ensure critical content loads quickly, enhancing user experience.

Store tags after payloads

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:49:52 GMT

Storing the tag after the payload in sum types can save a lot of memory by reducing wasted space due to alignment requirements. Most languages put the tag before the payload, causing larger struct sizes, but Swift uses the reversed order to optimize size. This layout trick helps nested sum types use less space without hurting performance.

Maybe writing speed actually is a bottleneck for programming

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:10:22 GMT

The author argues that writing code faster could greatly boost programmer productivity. Faster writing enables more experimentation, tooling, and better coding practices. Even small speed gains might help, despite reading and thinking also being important.

Caching is an Abstraction, not an Optimization

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 18:31:42 GMT

Caching is not just about making software faster but about simplifying how data is managed across storage layers. It acts as an abstraction that hides complexity and allows programs to work with different storage types more cleanly. Although caching relies on heuristics and can have downsides, it remains a powerful tool that only fails when misused.

Zig's New Async I/O

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:55:41 GMT

Zig's new async I/O lets the caller decide how input/output works, making code more flexible and reusable. It supports different execution models, from blocking to async, without forcing concurrency. This design helps programs run efficiently by using non-blocking system calls and enabling parallelism when possible.

Working through ‘Writing A C Compiler’

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:17:45 GMT

The author is working through the book *Writing a C Compiler* to build a real C compiler step by step. The book includes a helpful test suite and clear chapters that add features gradually. The author plans to blog about their progress and finds the book very valuable.

Type Theory in Computer Science, Linguistics, Logic

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:04:44 GMT

Type theory is a system that organizes different kinds of things called types to make logic and mathematics clearer. It helps define how sentences and predicates work by assigning types to them, like truth values or functions. This theory is important in computer science, linguistics, and philosophy for understanding language and logic precisely.

How Long Contexts Fail

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:57:26 GMT

Very long contexts in AI models can cause problems like repeating mistakes, getting distracted, and confusing information. These issues make agents perform worse even with bigger context windows. To succeed, agents need careful management of what information they use, not just more data.

How to Fix Your Context

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:50:56 GMT

Long contexts in AI can cause errors like confusion and distraction. To fix this, break tasks into smaller parts, use multiple agents, and prune unnecessary information. Managing context well improves accuracy and efficiency in AI responses.

The sound of inevitability

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 03:39:13 GMT

Inevitabilism is the belief that certain futures, like AI taking over, cannot be avoided. Big tech leaders use this idea to push people to accept and adapt to AI as if it’s unstoppable. But we still have a choice about how to shape the future, and we should fight for the future we want.

A distributed systems reliability glossary

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 21:58:55 GMT

Distributed systems use different consistency models to manage how data is read and written across multiple processes. Some models prioritize availability and allow more anomalies, while others enforce strict order and correctness but require more coordination. Understanding these models helps design systems that balance reliability, performance, and consistency.

How to bring data centre-like connectivity to your home with IPTTTH

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 14:38:17 GMT

The author describes setting up enterprise-level IP transit directly to their home in India using MPLS, bypassing usual ISPs. This setup is very expensive and complex, requiring coordination with multiple providers and handling technical issues. Despite challenges, it offers unique control and valuable insights into managing a high-grade home network.

Inverse Triangle Inequality Jul 7, 2025

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 17:51:59 GMT

The triangle inequality shows the shortest path between two points is a direct line, and this idea applies in many areas like coding and string comparison. In software development, breaking big changes into small, independent steps helps make progress faster and reviews easier. Sometimes, doing a quick messy version first and then refining it carefully leads to better, clearer code.

How NAT traversal works

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 15:50:17 GMT

NAT traversal helps devices connect directly even when behind routers that hide their addresses. It uses special techniques like STUN and port mapping to open paths through firewalls and NATs. Although tricky with multiple NAT layers, these methods often still enable connections without needing complex fixes.

LLM Inference in Production

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 15:10:13 GMT

This handbook from bentoml.com explains how to deploy and optimize large language model (LLM) inference in production. It gathers clear, practical knowledge that is usually scattered and hard to find. Engineers can use it to make LLM inference faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

An Introduction to Neurotransmitters (and How to Modulate Them)

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 21:48:40 GMT

The article explains the role of various neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline in regulating mood, motivation, and cognitive functions. It describes how these neurotransmitters interact with specific receptors and pathways in the brain to influence behaviors and emotions. Additionally, it discusses methods to modulate neurotransmitter levels, which can impact overall mental health and well-being.

Writing a very simple JIT Compiler in about 1000 lines of C

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 02:14:02 GMT

This article explains how to build a very simple just-in-time (JIT) compiler in about 1000 lines of C code. It covers parsing expressions, encoding x86 instructions, and generating machine code for basic operations. The author also gives tips on extending the compiler with more features and handling variables.

You Are The Compiler

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 15:10:16 GMT

The compiler turns nested function calls into a sequence of calls and handles calling rules automatically. In Go, error handling and context passing are done manually by programmers, not the compiler. This makes code longer, error-prone, and breaks the natural nested call style.

The Mathematical Functions Grimoire

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 12:53:28 GMT

The Mathematical Functions Grimoire is an open source library of formulas and data about special functions. It has many entries, symbols, and topics that are easy to browse online. The data is designed to work well with computer algebra software.

RE//verse 2025: Full-stack Reverse Engineering of the Original Microsoft Xbox (Markus Gaasedelen)

Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:34:44 GMT

Markus Gaasedelen studied the original Xbox by exploring its hardware and software deeply. He learned by examining the motherboard, chips, and CPU, even building new hardware parts like an interposer. His work combined hardware hacking with software reverse engineering to understand the Xbox system fully.

Logical Quantifiers in Software

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 21:06:11 GMT

Logical quantifiers like "all" and "some" help us express properties about sets and are useful in programming. They simplify code and can describe things like tests, database rules, and software behavior. Understanding quantifiers makes it easier to write clear and correct programs.

Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 14:38:07 GMT

Go is easy to learn but lets many errors slip through, making careful coding hard. Companies use Go because it has good tools and many existing projects, not always because it’s the best choice. Using Go can create complex problems and extra work that other languages might avoid.

How to Network as an Introvert

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 03:11:47 GMT

Networking as an introvert works best with simple steps that fit your style. Prepare before events, listen carefully, and make small, meaningful connections. Show confidence, be genuine, and follow up to build real relationships.

A Smart Guide to Choosing the Right Antidepressant

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 16:49:55 GMT

Depression has many types and needs different treatments, not just one antidepressant for all. Antidepressants can help but have side effects and don’t fix long-term life issues alone. Other options like hormones, psychedelics, and lifestyle changes also play important roles in feeling better.

From Python Programmer to Distributed Systems Researcher in 10 Years Without a PhD

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 03:19:42 GMT

The author started as a self-taught programmer interested in 3D graphics and later worked with Python and MongoDB. Over ten years, he learned about distributed systems by reading research papers and joining a research team, despite not having a PhD. Now, he is a senior research engineer contributing to distributed systems at MongoDB.

Queuing Theory on a Cocktail Napkin by Dan Slimmon | DC Systems 007

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:00:03 GMT

A queuing system has five key parts: servers, a queue, a way to decide order, arrivals, and processing. Queues are everywhere, and you cannot get rid of them, only move or manage them. Understanding queuing theory helps predict wait times and system behavior better.

Inference in Agda

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 18:28:09 GMT

Agda uses unification to infer types by turning unknowns into metavariables and checking them. Haskell infers types too but gives errors if some types cannot be found, unlike Agda. Agda is more flexible and can defer type problems to later, allowing more implicit variables.

Bloom Filters by Example

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 16:55:54 GMT

A Bloom filter is a fast and memory-efficient data structure to check if an element is in a set. It uses hash functions to set bits in a bit vector to indicate presence. The size and number of hash functions affect the efficiency and error rate of a Bloom filter.

My experience using financial commitments to overcome akrasia

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 02:50:13 GMT

The author uses financial commitments to motivate himself and overcome procrastination. He sets small penalties for failing tasks, making habits easier to keep and plans better. This method helps him focus on important work and daily habits by reducing distractions and increasing accountability.

My TRT Lite Protocol

Sat, 28 Jun 2025 17:27:58 GMT

The author increased testosterone and estradiol levels to improve quality of life and health. Daily testosterone injections with added HCG raised hormone levels while reducing side effects like hair loss. Balancing high testosterone with low DHT helped keep benefits without common TRT downsides.

How to Think About Time in Programming

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:44:29 GMT

UTC is a global time standard that helps keep clocks in sync worldwide. Timezones adjust UTC to match local sun positions, but their rules can change unpredictably. Because of leap seconds and shifting rules, handling time in programming is complex and requires up-to-date data.

Stateful workload operator: stateful systems on Kubernetes at LinkedIn

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:44:09 GMT

LinkedIn is transitioning to Kubernetes for managing stateful applications and host lifecycle maintenance, moving away from their custom scheduler. They have developed a Stateful Workload Operator that simplifies lifecycle management by centralizing orchestration tasks, allowing teams to focus on application health. This new approach improves consistency and reduces operational overhead while ensuring seamless integration with Kubernetes and infrastructure layers.

Learnings from building AI agents

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:41:49 GMT

The AI code review agent was too noisy and gave many false positives at first. By making the AI explain its reasoning and using specialized smaller agents, the team cut false positives by 51%. This made code reviews clearer, faster, and more trusted by developers.

How much code does that proc macro generate?

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:40:38 GMT

Rust proc macros can greatly increase code size and slow compile times. A new Rust compiler flag, -Zmacro-stats, helps measure how much code proc macros generate. Knowing this helps developers optimize macros and reduce compile time.

The Halting Problem is a terrible example of NP-Harder

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:36:12 GMT

The halting problem is often used as an example of an NP-hard problem, but this is confusing and not ideal. There are problems harder than NP that are still decidable and easier to explain, like certain grid token movement puzzles. These problems show complexity beyond NP without jumping directly to undecidability like the halting problem.

What is cosh(List(Bool))? Or beyond algebra: analysis of data types.

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 21:40:40 GMT

The text explores the mathematical structures of data types, particularly lists and trees, using algebraic expressions. It shows how lists can be represented with functions and how different types of collections, like bags and sets, have distinct combinatorial properties. The author concludes that there is a strong relationship between bags of rings and lists, suggesting deep connections in type theory.

Git Notes: git's coolest, most unloved feature

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 13:44:30 GMT

Git notes are powerful tools for adding metadata to commits in a Git repository. They can be used to track time spent, code reviews, and testing information. Despite being underutilized due to usability issues, Git notes have the potential to enhance collaboration and project history.

Estrogen: A trip report

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 06:18:00 GMT

Estrogen affects the brain by changing receptors linked to mood and perception, making people feel more embodied and less sensitive to sensory issues. For those with gender dysphoria, estrogen can reduce feelings of depersonalization and improve wellbeing. The author suggests estrogen acts like a mild psychedelic, reshaping body awareness and helping with psychological and sensory challenges.

Of Course ML Has Monads!

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 06:09:51 GMT

The article argues that while Haskell is known for its use of monads, ML can also implement them using its module system. Monads in ML are just a specific way to structure programs, and creating them involves library design rather than language limitations. The author suggests that while monads can be useful, they are not inherently necessary or better in ML compared to Haskell.

How do Transistors Work? How are Transistors Assembled Inside a CPU?

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 00:07:01 GMT

Transistors inside a CPU work like tiny switches that control electricity to perform logic operations. Many transistors connect to form standard cells, which are like Lego bricks building complex circuits. These cells combine to create the CPU's functions, using billions of transistors organized with layers of wires.

Career advice, or something like it

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 22:31:45 GMT

Avoid spending time in negative groups where people only complain. Focus on positive communities and people who inspire you. Use your energy to do good work and enjoy life outside of work.

What I talk about when I talk about IRs

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 19:55:21 GMT

Compiler intermediate representations (IRs break down complex code into simpler parts to help optimization. Different IR styles, like stack-based or register-based, affect how instructions and data flow are handled. Advanced IRs can explicitly show data and control dependencies to improve analysis and transformation.

Variables Pt. 2

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 13:46:11 GMT

Makefiles help decide which parts of a program need recompiling based on changed files. They use rules with targets and prerequisites to run commands only when needed. Makefiles also support features like automatic variables, wildcards, and including other files to manage complex projects efficiently.

We Can Just Measure Things

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 05:04:42 GMT

Armin Ronacher reflects on a recent project where he and friends experimented with programming agents. He emphasizes the importance of measuring code quality and project health using these agents, as they can provide objective feedback without the emotional bias of human developers. Ronacher argues that better tools, documentation, and ecosystem stability benefit both agents and human programmers alike.

More frontend web tricks

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 04:55:56 GMT

The author shares practical tips for improving website usability on different devices and browsers. They emphasize clear design, responsive layouts, and meaningful icons to enhance user experience. The text also discusses how marketing and presentation affect app success despite product quality.

56 Responses to “Guess I’m A Rationalist Now”

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 04:08:30 GMT

Scott Aaronson attended a Rationalist conference and realized he identifies as a Rationalist after many years. He explains why he hesitated before, including cultural differences and fear of judgment. Despite criticism, he sees the Rationalist community as vibrant, thoughtful, and growing.

Homomorphically Encrypting CRDTs

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:32:40 GMT

Homomorphic encryption allows computers to perform operations on encrypted data without needing to decrypt it first. This article discusses building a homomorphically encrypted CRDT, which is a type of data structure, using a Rust library called THFE-rs. However, there are significant limitations, as operations with homomorphic encryption can be extremely slow and resource-intensive.

In Praise of “Normal” Engineers

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 19:21:05 GMT

Great engineering teams succeed because normal engineers work well together, not just because of rare "10x" stars. Building strong teams and good systems helps everyone contribute and improve. The best companies help regular engineers grow into world-class talent over time.

Monads are not like burritos

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 04:03:13 GMT

The author argues that the popular "monads are burritos" analogy is misleading and unhelpful for learning about monads. They explain that monads do not always "contain" values in a simple way like burritos, so the analogy breaks down. Despite being a joke, some people still take the analogy seriously, which causes confusion.

react/compiler/packages/babel-plugin-react-compiler/src/Inference/MUTABILITY_ALIASING_MODEL.md at main · facebook/react

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 03:59:25 GMT

The mutability and aliasing model tracks which values change together and how those changes happen in code. It uses effects like Create, Mutate, Alias, and Capture to describe how data flows and mutates. This helps React understand and optimize updates by grouping related mutations into reactive scopes.

Retries

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 01:27:01 GMT

Retries in web clients are commonly used to handle failures, but they can worsen overload conditions by increasing traffic. Circuit breakers can help, but they may not always work effectively in distributed systems where some requests succeed while others fail. Instead of just relying on retries, using strategies like token buckets and deadline propagation can improve performance during overload situations.

Building Effective AI Agents

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 01:11:57 GMT

Anthropic has learned from working with various teams to build effective AI agents using large language models (LLMs). They differentiate between workflows, which follow predefined paths, and agents that operate flexibly and autonomously. The article provides practical advice for developers on choosing the right approach and emphasizes the importance of simplicity and effective design in building these systems.

Time Series Forecasting with Graph Transformers

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:20:45 GMT

This blog explains how to forecast time series data using graph transformers that consider connections between related data points. It shows how to build a model that uses both past data and graph information to predict future values. The post also compares simple regression forecasts with more detailed generative forecasts, highlighting their strengths.

Graphical Linear Algebra

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 22:39:45 GMT

Graphical Linear Algebra is a blog that explains linear algebra using diagrams and geometry. It offers many episodes covering topics like matrices, relations, and fractions in a visual way. The blog invites students and researchers to explore and contribute to this ongoing work.

I wrote a compiler

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 22:21:56 GMT

The author, who has a Computer Science degree, wrote a simple compiler called "toybasic" for a variant of BASIC on a rainy weekend. The compiler is written in Go and converts BASIC code into Go code, featuring a lexer, parser, and compiler stages. The project was both educational and enjoyable, allowing the author to revisit their first programming experiences.

Double-Entry Ledgers: The Missing Primitive in Modern Software

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:58:25 GMT

Double-entry ledgers are often overlooked in modern software, but they can simplify complex systems by providing a clear structure for tracking changes over time. The author is developing pgledger, a PostgreSQL implementation, to encourage more developers to adopt this useful modeling technique. By using ledgers, applications can easily manage various transactions, track balances, and audit changes without adding unnecessary complexity.

ADRs.

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 20:49:44 GMT

Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) help document significant decisions made during a project, providing context, the decision itself, and its consequences. This approach clarifies why decisions were made and how they may impact future changes in the system. By using a standard format, ADRs make it easier for current and future team members to understand the reasoning behind architectural choices.

Conformance Checking at MongoDB: Testing That Our Code Matches Our TLA+ Specs

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 18:05:19 GMT

The author discusses a project to ensure that MongoDB's implementation matches its TLA+ specifications using a method called trace-checking. They faced challenges because the specifications were abstract and not aligned with the implementation, making it difficult to verify conformance. The author suggests that starting with closely aligned specs and implementations would improve the process.

How Long Must I Test?

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 17:21:37 GMT

When testing for bugs in nondeterministic programs, it is important to run tests multiple times with different inputs to find rare issues. A new method called Probabilistic Concurrency Testing (PCT) efficiently identifies bugs by controlling thread scheduling. Many engineers lack knowledge about effective randomized testing, which can lead to missed bugs in distributed systems.

Notes on Managing ADHD

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 03:24:33 GMT

The text provides strategies for managing ADHD, emphasizing the importance of using a todo list to form habits and stay organized. It suggests journaling for introspection and understanding procrastination patterns, while also recommending centralizing tasks to avoid distractions. Finally, it highlights the need to control the environment and minimize interruptions to enhance productivity.

A Brief Tour of FLP Impossibility

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 13:23:12 GMT

The paper "Impossibility of Distributed Consensus with One Faulty Process" shows that achieving consensus in an asynchronous system is impossible, even with reliable communication links. It proves that there will always be an initial configuration where no processor can decide on a value due to message delays or failures. This result highlights the limitations of consensus algorithms in distributed computing environments.

atl.wiki

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 11:39:59 GMT

atl.wiki is a wiki created by the All Things Linux non-profit organization, offering resources and support for Linux users of all levels. Anyone can contribute by editing pages, improving content, and following the site's guidelines. For support or questions, users can connect through the Discord server or the contact options available on the site.

Just fucking code.

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 23:39:20 GMT

Programming is not as hard as people make it seem, and relying too much on AI tools can hinder your skills. Many who call themselves developers lack basic coding knowledge and produce poor-quality work. To succeed, focus on understanding and writing code yourself instead of depending solely on AI.

What's the big deal about Deterministic Simulation Testing?

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:12:44 GMT

Deterministic Simulation Testing (DST) helps find bugs in distributed systems by controlling randomness and simulating interactions on a single thread. This method allows developers to test how their code behaves under various conditions while injecting faults to mimic real-world issues. Although DST is powerful, it requires careful setup and cannot test everything without mocking external systems.

How can one write blazing fast yet useful compilers (for lazy pure functional languages)?

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 14:02:44 GMT

The author wants to create a fast compiler for a basic lazy statically-typed functional programming language, similar to Haskell. They aim for the compiler to handle large codebases quickly, ideally completing builds in milliseconds on a mid-range laptop. The author seeks advice on optimizing various compiler phases and has specific constraints like indentation-sensitive syntax and portable bootstrapping.

Self-Host & Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 13:44:54 GMT

The article discusses the benefits of self-hosting and building your own tech, inspired by the author’s experiences with open-source projects and Linux. It highlights the joy and independence that come from creating personalized solutions instead of relying on big tech companies. Sharing knowledge and tools within the open-source community enhances learning and fosters collaboration among like-minded individuals.

a timeline -- V3.1

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 13:01:36 GMT

This text outlines the development of parsing techniques from the early 20th century to 2004, highlighting key algorithms and milestones. It discusses how parsing has evolved from basic operator expression parsing to more complex methods like Knuth's LR parsing. The journey shows the ongoing challenges in creating efficient and practical parsers, as well as the influence of mathematical concepts on parsing theory.

Can We Rely On Timers For Distributed Algorithms?

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 19:17:59 GMT

Timers in distributed algorithms can be trusted if a proper safety margin is applied to account for clock drift and inaccuracies. While there are concerns about timer reliability, especially in asynchronous systems, a bounded inaccuracy model allows for more efficient protocols. Overall, with careful design, timers can support consistent operations in distributed systems like Raft and MongoDB.

TigerBeetle 0.16.11

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 11:59:47 GMT

TigerBeetle is a resilient database system that can continue operating without data loss, even if some replicas fail. However, it has issues with high latencies during single-node failures and can produce indefinite errors due to its retry mechanism. Recent tests have revealed safety concerns and performance problems that need to be addressed.

What Every Programmer Should Know about How CPUs Work • Matt Godbolt • GOTO 2024

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 22:30:29 GMT

The talk explains how CPUs process instructions and utilize techniques like out-of-order execution and branch prediction to improve performance. It also highlights the role of compilers in optimizing code for better CPU efficiency. Understanding these concepts can help programmers write better and more efficient code.

How Scale Makes Distributed Systems Slower • Jonathan Magen • GOTO 2024

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 18:36:14 GMT

Distributed systems can slow down when more resources are added due to the increased need for coordination. This coordination takes time and can complicate processes, leading to inefficiencies. Understanding which problems can be solved without coordination can help improve the performance of these systems.

The Shape of the Essay Field

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:09:51 GMT

An essay should share new information that readers do not already know. There are three reasons someone might not know something: it’s unimportant, they are obtuse, or they are inexperienced. Writing for smart people about important topics often resonates more with younger readers, as they have more room for new ideas.

Designing Error Types in Rust Libraries

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:59:38 GMT

When designing error types in Rust libraries, it's crucial to consider how they will be used by other crates and to avoid exposing inner error types that can create unwanted dependencies. Using the `thiserror` crate with boxed trait objects is recommended to encapsulate errors while providing meaningful messages. Additionally, looking at `std::io::Error` can offer valuable insights for creating structured and extensible error types.

How We Migrated 30+ Kubernetes Clusters to Terraform

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:08:47 GMT

The blog post details how a team migrated over 30 Kubernetes clusters from a mix of tools to Terraform using a structured and iterative approach. They focused on automation, local testing, and hands-on learning to improve their processes and reduce risks. Ultimately, this transition set them up for easier maintenance and better collaboration in future projects.

If you are useful, it doesn’t mean you are valued

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:05:20 GMT

Understanding the difference between being useful and being valued is crucial for career growth. Being useful means you complete tasks efficiently, while being valued means you influence decisions and have opportunities for development. Reflect on your role to see if you are truly valued or just seen as a reliable worker.

0.9999... ≊ 1

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:00:07 GMT

The debate over whether 0.9999... is equal to 1 has many people confused, despite proofs confirming their equality. Some argue that there is a difference, but mathematically, the difference is infinitesimal and effectively zero. In everyday math, we treat 0.9999... as equal to 1, even if it feels counterintuitive.

Building a Linear Regression from Scratch with Python & Mathematics

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:49:07 GMT

This text explains how to build a linear regression model from scratch using Python, focusing on the cost function and gradient descent. It details the computation of the cost to measure model performance and the optimization of parameters to minimize this cost. The process involves iterating through training examples, updating parameters, and using vectorization for efficiency.

Awesome Emacs on macOS

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 13:16:53 GMT

The author shares their experience using Emacs on macOS, highlighting various integrations and tweaks for improved functionality. They discuss customizing key bindings, visual elements, and tools for iOS/macOS development. The post also emphasizes the author's growing use of Emacs and Org mode, suggesting ongoing updates and support for their work.

Crafting your environment

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 03:53:03 GMT

Improving your programming tools can enhance your cognitive resources, but it shouldn't consume too much time. Typing speed isn't the main bottleneck; instead, it's about how effectively you think and learn during the programming process. Small, consistent improvements to your environment can lead to greater productivity and engagement.

Write down what you’ve done

Sat, 31 May 2025 04:56:30 GMT

Composers often regret forgetting their ideas, just as mathematicians forget important tricks they didn't write down. It's helpful to sketch out interesting arguments to keep them accessible for future use and to improve your mathematical writing skills. Even incomplete ideas should be noted down, as they might be useful later, and make sure to back up your files.

Bayes For Everyone - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten

Fri, 30 May 2025 15:03:49 GMT

Scott Alexander discusses how to teach Bayes' theorem to students in a way that makes it engaging and relevant to their lives. He believes that using relatable examples and encouraging discussions can help kids understand and appreciate Bayesian thinking. The goal is to turn learning into an exciting exploration rather than just another subject to memorize.

What does "Undecidable" mean, anyway

Fri, 30 May 2025 01:04:23 GMT

The text explains the concept of "undecidable" in computer science, particularly in relation to decision problems and Turing machines. A problem is undecidable if no algorithm can determine its solution for all possible inputs, with the Halting problem as a famous example. While some programs can be analyzed for their behavior, undecidability means we can't create a universal method to solve every possible problem.

immersive linear algebra

Thu, 29 May 2025 21:26:40 GMT

"Immersive Linear Algebra" is a book that introduces key concepts in linear algebra. It covers topics like vectors, the dot product, the vector product, and Gaussian elimination. The book aims to help readers understand and navigate these mathematical ideas easily.

Awesome Emacs on macOS

Wed, 28 May 2025 13:32:54 GMT

The author, Alvaro Ramirez, shares tips for using Emacs on macOS after transitioning from GNU/Linux. He discusses various customizations and integrations, including setting the Command key as the Meta key and enabling SF Symbols for app development. Additionally, he emphasizes building personal utilities in Emacs to enhance productivity on macOS.

Access Control Syntax

Tue, 27 May 2025 19:58:48 GMT

The author discusses how to manage public and private declarations in a programming language that currently lacks a module system. They explore various syntax options, like modifiers before declarations and using special prefixes in names to indicate access levels. Ultimately, the author leans towards defaulting to public declarations with a simple way to mark private ones for ease of use.

How I use Obsidian

Tue, 27 May 2025 06:39:08 GMT

Steph Ango uses Obsidian for note-taking, writing, and organizing her thoughts in a flexible way that embraces chaos. She prefers a file-based system over folders, using links and templates to connect ideas and streamline her process. Her unique approach includes regular reviews and a simple rating system to help her manage and reflect on her notes.

Against Curry-Howard Mysticism [loc-000S]

Sun, 25 May 2025 20:00:48 GMT

The author argues that the Curry-Howard correspondence is often misunderstood in programming, especially among those without a strong background in logic and type theory. They emphasize that for most programming practices, Curry-Howard is not practically useful unless using dependently-typed languages. The article calls for better education and discourages the use of complex jargon that can confuse and mislead programmers.

Why Algebraic Effects

Fri, 23 May 2025 21:55:54 GMT

Algebraic effects are a powerful feature in programming languages that allow for cleaner control flow, enabling the implementation of various features like exceptions and coroutines. They improve code expressivity and usability by composing well with each other, making it easier to design cleaner APIs. Even in simple applications, algebraic effects can help with dependency injection and ensuring purity in function calls.

Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems that Never Happened

Fri, 23 May 2025 05:40:31 GMT

Improvement programs can help organizations increase their capability and efficiency over time. However, a focus on short-term gains often leads to a cycle of working harder and neglecting long-term improvement efforts. Managers must balance immediate throughput needs with investing in sustainable improvement for lasting success.

The Annotated Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN)

Fri, 23 May 2025 05:15:40 GMT

The text discusses the Annotated Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN), explaining its architecture and training process. It outlines the use of B-splines for optimizations and how KANs can be configured with different activation functions. Additionally, the authors provide insights into the model training loop and visualization techniques for network activations.

The Annotated Transformer

Fri, 23 May 2025 05:15:32 GMT

The Annotated Transformer explains the architecture and training of the Transformer model, which uses stacked self-attention layers in both the encoder and decoder. It describes how embeddings, positional encoding, and feed-forward networks are integrated into the model. The document also includes examples of model predictions and training procedures.

HOWTO: Avoid temptation -- why avoiding temptation is harder than you think

Thu, 22 May 2025 18:11:00 GMT

Avoiding temptation is challenging because it creates a pull on our willpower, leading us to three zones: the safe zone, the danger zone, and the akratic zone. To resist temptation effectively, we need to maintain distance from tempting objects and recognize when our willpower is weakening. Ultimately, it's essential to avoid situations that require unsustainable resistance to temptation.

HOWTO: Change your behavior

Thu, 22 May 2025 17:31:08 GMT

Changing behavior is a multi-stage process that involves understanding where you are in the transtheoretical model, which includes stages like precontemplation, action, and relapse. To succeed in long-term change, focus on targeted strategies for your specific stage and track your behaviors to identify triggers. Remember, experiencing relapse is common, and self-forgiveness is important as you work toward lasting change.

Transpiler, a meaningless word

Thu, 22 May 2025 14:01:37 GMT

The author argues that the term "transpiler" is misleading because it oversimplifies the complex task of converting code between programming languages. Many so-called "transpilers" actually perform functions similar to compilers, including handling different language semantics and transformations. The article emphasizes that both compilers and transpilers grapple with intricate programming concepts, making the distinction between them less meaningful.

What every computer science major should know

Wed, 21 May 2025 19:49:08 GMT

Every computer science major should know key concepts like programming languages, discrete mathematics, and data structures. They must also be comfortable with Unix systems and understand basic systems administration. Additionally, practical skills like user interface design and knowledge of artificial intelligence are important for their future careers.

Good Performance for Bad Days

Tue, 20 May 2025 22:39:02 GMT

Marc Brooker discusses the need for better performance evaluation in systems, particularly under overload conditions. He highlights that many studies focus on ideal scenarios rather than the challenges faced during saturation, which can lead to system failures. Brooker emphasizes the importance of understanding real-world performance to improve system reliability.

The Ingredients of a Productive Monorepo

Tue, 20 May 2025 20:48:08 GMT

A productive monorepo requires specific tools that often need to be created from scratch, as existing solutions may not fully address the unique challenges it presents. Key principles include ensuring operations are efficient and managing source control effectively, especially as the repository grows. Continuous integration and delivery processes must adapt to handle many tests and deployments while maintaining code quality and collaboration among developers.

Not causal chains, but interactions and adaptations

Tue, 20 May 2025 20:24:14 GMT

The author critiques traditional root-cause analysis (RCA) for oversimplifying complex system failures by focusing on linear causal chains. Instead, they advocate for a resilience engineering (RE) model that emphasizes interactions and adaptations within systems, recognizing that multiple factors contribute to incidents. This approach encourages organizations to enhance their fault tolerance and adaptability rather than just eliminating root causes.

SSTable and Log Structured Storage: LevelDB

Sun, 18 May 2025 17:22:48 GMT

SSTable is a data structure used to efficiently store large numbers of key-value pairs in a sorted manner. It is a simple and useful way to exchange large, sorted data segments. LevelDB is a database engine that utilizes SSTables and a MemTable to provide fast read and write access. It is designed to be embedded in applications and takes care of the flushing, merging, and other details of managing SSTables. LevelDB is a powerful tool for managing large datasets and is being used in various applications, including web browsers.

Memtable & SSTable (Sorted String Table)

Sun, 18 May 2025 17:17:44 GMT

Memtable holds data in memory before saving it to disk, enabling faster writes and reads. SSTable is a sorted data structure for storing key-value pairs efficiently. Indexing and merging techniques optimize performance for both structures.

Spaced Repetition Systems Have Gotten Way Better

Sun, 18 May 2025 14:06:48 GMT

Spaced repetition systems have improved significantly with the introduction of the FSRS algorithm, which uses machine learning to optimize card review schedules. This algorithm predicts the best time to review material just before forgetting it, allowing for a more efficient learning process. Anki, a popular spaced repetition software, now uses FSRS as its default algorithm, enhancing the effectiveness of memorization for users.

Overcoming the Legacy Code Challenge

Thu, 15 May 2025 23:26:48 GMT

The blog post discusses the current state of TLA⁺ language tooling and emphasizes the need for improved development tools to enhance the TLA⁺ experience. It highlights existing tools and the challenges faced in making TLA⁺ more accessible to developers. The author expresses optimism about the future of TLA⁺ and encourages contributions to its tooling ecosystem.

Behind the Scenes: Sleeping soundly with the help of TLA+

Thu, 15 May 2025 22:37:23 GMT

The drive manager automates the process of managing hard drives in Object Storage while ensuring data safety through formal verification with TLA+. It uses safety checks to prevent data loss during drive removal and decommissioning. Thanks to TLA+, the system has successfully avoided data loss and improved operational efficiency.

Newtyped Indices are Proofs

Thu, 15 May 2025 21:54:57 GMT

Newtyped indices in Rust help manage complex ownership scenarios, such as in graphs, by providing a structured way to reference types. These indices can be viewed as proofs of existence for their associated types, ensuring that specific values are present. By treating these types as evidence, developers can create more complex types and access patterns while maintaining clear semantics in their code.

Working on Complex Systems

Thu, 15 May 2025 20:40:36 GMT

Complex systems are different from complicated ones because they require unique solutions and can behave unpredictably. They often show characteristics like delayed consequences and nonlinearity, making them challenging to navigate. To manage complex systems effectively, it's important to embrace adaptability, innovation, and observability.

Onwards to the Core: etcd

Thu, 15 May 2025 20:27:36 GMT

The article discusses etcd, the default storage backend for Kubernetes, highlighting its role as a reliable key-value store that supports features like time travel queries and efficient change notifications. It explains how etcd uses a multi-version concurrency control mechanism to manage data and ensure strong consistency. Understanding etcd is essential for optimizing the Kubernetes ListWatch() implementation and improving overall performance.

Statistical Properties: Are We Serious?

Thu, 15 May 2025 20:21:03 GMT

The author proposes adding performance modeling features to TLA+ after discovering the limitations of queueing theory for estimating system performance. They discuss existing tools that handle statistical modeling, such as PRISM and FizzBee, which offer capabilities like cost functions and probability distributions. The text suggests that integrating performance modeling into TLA+ could enhance its usability and effectiveness.

Rethinking Modern Asynchronous Paradigms

Thu, 15 May 2025 20:01:51 GMT

Developers often work with asynchronous operations to make efficient use of CPU time while waiting for tasks to complete. Different programming languages handle asynchronous programming in various ways, with constructs like Java's Future and Kotlin's coroutines simplifying the process. New approaches aim to reduce blocking calls and improve concurrency by using event loops and non-blocking code execution.

Stop using REST for state synchronization

Thu, 15 May 2025 19:33:25 GMT

Many web applications need to synchronize state between the client and server, but using REST for this can lead to complex and error-prone code. The author suggests that we should adopt better state synchronization protocols instead of relying on REST, which is designed for state transfer. New technologies like Automerge and Yjs are emerging to address these issues, and the author hopes they will become widely used.

My 2025 high-end Linux PC 🐧

Thu, 15 May 2025 18:55:35 GMT

The author successfully built a high-end Linux PC after replacing a faulty CPU. They chose an Intel 285K CPU, a 4TB SSD, and an NVIDIA graphics card for optimal performance. The build is now stable and efficient, with good power consumption and convenient component access.

Beej's Guide to Networking Concepts

Thu, 15 May 2025 05:00:43 GMT

Beej's Guide to Networking Concepts offers a resource for learning about network programming. Readers can find various formats like HTML and PDF for easy access. The author encourages feedback for corrections and provides contact information for further communication.

GitHub - miguelmota/bash-streams-handbook: 💻 Learn Bash streams, pipelines and redirection, from beginner to advanced.

Thu, 15 May 2025 03:53:06 GMT

The GitHub repository by miguelmota teaches users about Bash streams, pipelines, and redirection from beginner to advanced levels. It explains standard input, output, and error, along with how to redirect these streams and use pipelines to connect commands. Users can learn practical examples of writing and reading data through these streams to enhance their command-line skills.

Beyond the Wrist: Debugging RSI

Wed, 14 May 2025 19:19:42 GMT

The author shares their journey through chronic wrist pain and how they learned to understand pain as a complex prediction system rather than just a sign of damage. By exploring different treatments and practicing awareness exercises, they managed to recalibrate their pain perception and regain functionality. After years of managing their condition, they now feel healthy and have even taught others how to process their pain.

On becoming competitive when joining a new company

Tue, 13 May 2025 20:36:59 GMT

To become competitive at a new job, focus on building strong relationships and understanding the company's dynamics. Spend time learning the codebase and observing how successful colleagues work to gain their trust and knowledge. By being serviceable, fast, and friendly, you'll position yourself for interesting projects and opportunities.

Why do things go right?

Tue, 13 May 2025 20:10:06 GMT

Erik Hollnagel argues that instead of only focusing on preventing mistakes, we should understand why most things go right in safety management. Many organizations are now recognizing the limitations of traditional safety measures, which often lead to a culture of blame and mismanagement. To improve safety, we should enhance the capacities that contribute to positive outcomes, rather than just trying to eliminate negative indicators.

Learning Containers From The Bottom Up

Mon, 12 May 2025 11:58:05 GMT

The author, Ivan Velichko, shares his journey of learning about containers, emphasizing that they are not just lightweight virtual machines but complex technologies. He outlines a structured learning path that starts from understanding container runtimes and progresses through images, managers, and orchestrators. Velichko advises against relying solely on high-level tools like Docker or Kubernetes, as this can lead to misunderstandings in the container ecosystem.

On work processes and outcomes

Sun, 11 May 2025 21:19:23 GMT

Lorin Hochstein presents two models of work processes and outcomes. Model I suggests that following proper processes prevents bad outcomes, while Model II emphasizes understanding actual work practices that often lead to success. The second model encourages examining normal work to learn from successes instead of only focusing on failures.

How much information is in DNA?

Sun, 11 May 2025 14:32:21 GMT

DNA contains a vast amount of information, but much of it may not serve a clear purpose. While algorithms can compress DNA significantly, the true "information content" is complex and not fully understood. Ultimately, estimating the information in DNA could range from 480 million to 6 billion bits, but many aspects remain mysterious.

Reading "Business" Books Is A Waste Of Time

Sat, 10 May 2025 21:52:09 GMT

Most popular business books are more about emotional appeal than practical advice, often oversimplifying complex situations. The author argues that real business success comes from understanding reality, strategy, and operational details, rather than following generic slogans. Instead of relying on these books, aspiring entrepreneurs should focus on learning rigorous concepts from academic sources.

Virtual DOM

Fri, 09 May 2025 11:49:52 GMT

The Virtual DOM is a lightweight implementation used in web libraries like React for building user interfaces. It allows developers to create and update web components efficiently without the overhead of a full framework. This approach provides flexibility by enabling the integration of various state management libraries or functioning independently.

Critical Architecture/Software Theory

Wed, 07 May 2025 15:51:12 GMT

Tomas Petricek discusses how architecture can inspire a critical approach to software design. He believes that, like buildings, software should question existing practices and reveal contradictions. By applying formal structures, programmers can create software that better fits its context and serves social needs.

Propositions as Types

Wed, 07 May 2025 15:07:58 GMT

Propositions as Types is a principle that links logic to computation and describes a correspondence between a given logic and a given programming language. It provides a true isomorphism preserving the deep structure of proofs and programs, simplification, and evaluation. It underpins the foundations of functional programming and has inspired the design of automated proof assistants and programming languages. Its applications include certified compilers, computer-checked proofs, and verification of browser plug-ins. The principle has many names and many origins and applies to a wide variety of logics and computation.

Tue, 06 May 2025 02:41:46 GMT

The HLC is the first LISP compiler that can compile itself and aims to replace LISP function definitions with efficient machine code. It processes LISP code in two passes: the first transforms the code into a simpler form, and the second translates it into assembly instructions for execution on the IBM 7090. The compiler generates specific instructions for handling function calls and managing local variables during execution.

The most important thing to understand about queues

Mon, 05 May 2025 00:59:28 GMT

Queueing theory explains how systems handle tasks and the relationship between capacity and wait times. As a system approaches maximum capacity, average wait time can grow indefinitely. To manage queues, you can increase capacity, decrease demand, or limit the queue size.

A Better Man Page Viewer

Sat, 03 May 2025 23:09:06 GMT

The article discusses improving the experience of viewing man pages by using Neovim as a more effective pager. By exporting a specific command, users can open man pages within Neovim, allowing for better navigation and link-following. This setup enhances usability, making it easier to look up command flags and documentation.

Parsing is Search

Fri, 02 May 2025 17:13:29 GMT

Parsing is fundamentally a search problem, especially when dealing with arbitrary grammars. Instead of simply following rules, parsers must often backtrack and explore multiple options to find the correct match. This perspective helps clarify how different parsing algorithms work and highlights the complexities involved.

Why Bloom filters?

Fri, 02 May 2025 16:32:46 GMT

Bloom filters are a space-efficient way to test if an item is part of a set, using a probabilistic method that can quickly reject non-members. They work by hashing items and setting bits in an array, allowing for fast membership checks with a chance of false positives. This makes Bloom filters useful in various applications, especially in data storage systems.

Functions are Vectors

Fri, 02 May 2025 13:08:53 GMT

Functions can be represented as vectors in mathematics. The equation shows how a function, p[x], can be expressed using an exponential form. This approach simplifies complex functions into a more manageable format.

The Fuzzing Book

Fri, 02 May 2025 04:09:10 GMT

"The Fuzzing Book" teaches how to automate software testing to find bugs more efficiently. It offers several ways to engage with the material, including reading online, using interactive Jupyter Notebooks, and downloading code for personal projects. The book also provides slides for presentations, making it useful for both learning and teaching.

IO devices and latency

Thu, 01 May 2025 20:07:09 GMT

Non-volatile storage is essential for storing important data like photos and bank records, evolving from tape systems to faster hard drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs). While HDDs improve speed over tape, SSDs offer even lower latency and better performance, but their efficiency can be affected by how data is organized. The shift to cloud storage provides scalable options but can introduce delays when accessing data over networks.

Disconnecting Distraction

Thu, 01 May 2025 19:35:56 GMT

Procrastination thrives on distractions, but avoiding them is tricky as they constantly evolve. The internet has become a major source of distraction, requiring new strategies to stay focused on work. Setting up a separate computer for internet use can help limit distractions and improve productivity.

Battle of the Mallocators

Thu, 01 May 2025 16:23:04 GMT

Using jemalloc or tcmalloc with RocksDB helps prevent out-of-memory (OOM) issues that occur with glibc malloc, especially when managing large buffer pools. InnoDB does not face the same problems as MyRocks, but peak memory usage can still be larger than expected with jemalloc. Overall, jemalloc and tcmalloc offer better performance and lower memory usage compared to glibc malloc for both MyRocks and InnoDB.

What is Entropy?

Thu, 01 May 2025 07:02:27 GMT

Entropy measures the uncertainty of a system based on the number of possible configurations, or microstates, that fit a given overall state, or macrostate. It increases when more microstates are available, making a system more unpredictable. Understanding entropy requires considering all aspects of a system, including position and velocity, to accurately gauge its complexity.

Personal Knowledge Management Workflow for a Deeper Life — as a Computer Scientist

Thu, 01 May 2025 06:58:59 GMT

The author discusses a personal knowledge management system that helps reduce stress and enhances creativity by organizing thoughts and tasks into a "second brain." This system allows for better idea connections and easier management of multiple projects, aiding in memory retention and overall mental clarity. Through journaling and note-taking, the author emphasizes the importance of capturing ideas for future reflection and growth.

Why Vim Is More than Just an Editor – Vim Language, Motions, and Modes Explained

Thu, 01 May 2025 06:56:16 GMT

Vim is more than just an editor because it is based solely on shortcuts and has its own language called Vim language. Learning the Vim language allows users to navigate and edit text faster and more efficiently. Vim motions are a key aspect of the language, helping users navigate within a document. Vim also has different modes, including normal, insert, visual, and command mode, allowing users to perform different actions. Neovim is a popular version of Vim that uses Lua for configuration and has many plugins available. Learning Vim can greatly improve productivity and efficiency for developers.

The Top Idea in Your Mind

Thu, 01 May 2025 04:31:08 GMT

Paul Graham argues that the main idea in your mind influences your ability to solve problems effectively. He warns that distractions, like money and disputes, can take over your thoughts and hinder your progress. To maintain focus on what matters, it's important to be aware of what occupies your mind and to steer clear of unproductive concerns.

Pwning the Ladybird browser

Thu, 01 May 2025 03:22:01 GMT

The Ladybird browser has a vulnerability caused by a use-after-free (UAF) bug in its JavaScript interpreter, which can be exploited by using a proxied function object. This allows an attacker to manipulate the interpreter's argument buffer, potentially leading to memory access issues. By carefully crafting inputs, an attacker can leak sensitive information and gain control over the system.

Why I Blog and How I Automate it

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 05:12:09 GMT

The author explains their motivation for blogging and how they automate their blog posts using a Markdown-based system and Hugo. They detail their process of organizing knowledge, creating blog posts, and automating the publishing process to streamline content creation. Additionally, they discuss their use of the giscus comment system integrated with GitHub for blog comments and share ideas for future improvements.

Tools for keeping focused

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 04:56:05 GMT

The author shares tools and strategies to reduce distractions and improve focus. Key methods include disabling notifications, checking email less frequently, and using website blockers. These small changes have collectively helped the author stay more productive and intentional with their attention.

Attention is your scarcest resource

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 04:16:22 GMT

The author shares that attention is a limited resource, crucial for effective work and management. They emphasize the need to focus on one task at a time and avoid distractions to improve productivity. By learning to manage their obligations and minimizing interruptions, they became better at their managerial role.

Tiny Emulators

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 03:35:26 GMT

Why do electrons not fall into the nucleus?

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 03:35:12 GMT

Electrons do not fall into the nucleus because they behave as quantum particles, which do not have definite positions or velocities. Instead of spiraling into the nucleus, electrons exist in regions of probability, where they are most likely to be found at certain distances. This balance of energy keeps them stable around the nucleus, preventing the atom from collapsing.

Meanings as programs: Programming Really Is Simple Mathematics

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 03:05:23 GMT

Advice for time management as a manager

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 02:41:55 GMT

Managing your time as a team lead is different from being an individual contributor, as you'll need to balance multiple priorities and focus on your team's output. It’s important to prioritize tasks, delegate effectively, and carve out time for deep work to maintain productivity. Don’t hesitate to seek help and adjust your expectations as you navigate these new responsibilities.

Solving SICP

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 04:55:10 GMT

The author successfully completed the SICP exercises, showing they are achievable with focused effort and planning. The report highlights the time needed for both solving problems and providing feedback, suggesting instructors may need to select exercises based on course coverage and time constraints. Despite the challenges, the author believes that teaching SICP to first-year students may be difficult due to the extensive time commitment required.

Transactions are a protocol

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 03:14:25 GMT

Transactions are not built into every storage system, but can be added to any of them, like Redis or S3. Techniques exist to make these systems transactional, and developers can also create their own transaction layers. Understanding transactions is important for ensuring consistency and reliability in data management.

An introduction to Bayes' rule - Chapter 1

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:33:16 GMT

Bayes' rule is a fundamental concept in probability and statistics that helps us update our beliefs based on new evidence. It has applications in various fields, including genetics, psychology, and machine learning. This chapter introduces the key ideas and historical context of Bayes' rule.

But good sir, what is electricity?

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:28:23 GMT

This article explores the basics of electricity and how certain materials conduct it. It explains the structure of atoms, focusing on electrons and their interactions, which play a crucial role in electrical conductivity. The piece emphasizes the differences between conductors and insulators and how the movement of electrons creates electricity.

The Skill That Never Goes Obsolete

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 19:02:16 GMT

Troubleshooting is a crucial skill that involves identifying and fixing problems in various systems. It requires a thoughtful approach, balancing information gathering with attempts to fix issues. By cultivating this skill, one can improve effectiveness across different domains.

Push Ifs Up And Fors Down Nov 15, 2023

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 12:28:13 GMT

Move "if" conditions to the caller to simplify control flow and reduce bugs in your functions. Instead of processing items one by one, handle batches to improve performance. Overall, aim to push "ifs" up and "fors" down for clearer and more efficient code.

Design of a NAND gate using the ICPS PDK

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 12:16:32 GMT

This tutorial explains how to design a NAND gate using the ICPS PDK with tools like xschem for schematics and KLayout for layout. It provides step-by-step instructions for setting up the environment, drawing the schematic, creating the netlist, and verifying the layout. By following these steps, you can successfully create a NAND gate design ready for fabrication.

Impact, agency, and taste

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 01:53:13 GMT

The author discusses the importance of agency and taste in achieving high-impact work. Successful individuals take accountability for their goals and focus on finding effective solutions, often through data analysis and reflection. Developing a good intuition for impactful projects requires practice and a willingness to learn from experiences.

Phil Eaton on Technical Blogging

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 15:39:45 GMT

Phil Eaton is a seasoned tech blogger who began writing in 2015 to boost his career and share knowledge with others. He emphasizes that blogging helps solidify understanding and can benefit both individuals and their companies. Eaton encourages new bloggers to write about what confuses them and highlights the low stakes and high rewards of sharing their insights.

Decomposing Transactional Systems

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 15:21:36 GMT

A transaction in a database involves reading and writing data, with writes often buffered until the transaction commits. The process includes obtaining a read version, checking for conflicts, and validating the transaction before finalizing it with a commit timestamp. Once all checks are complete, the transaction's changes are applied to the database, ensuring consistency and atomicity.

Rust Collections Case Study: BTreeMap

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 03:09:52 GMT

The BTreeMap uses a stack-based approach to manage node traversal and insertion efficiently without parent pointers, enhancing cache performance. Insertion is handled carefully to avoid unnecessary writes by maintaining a search stack that represents the path from the root to the target leaf. The design emphasizes safety and performance by abstracting complex logic away from the main BTreeMap operations.

{transitions} = f(state)

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 03:05:15 GMT

Thinking of a React app as a state machine helps manage state updates and prevents invalid actions. When using asynchronous or concurrent updates, developers need to ensure that the UI reflects the valid states to avoid triggering errors. Implementing optimistic updates or pending states can help maintain this integrity during network requests or transitions.

The Mysterious Flow of Fluid in the Brain | Quanta Magazine

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 02:45:04 GMT

A popular hypothesis for how the brain clears molecular waste, which may help explain why sleep feels refreshing, is a subject of debate.

How the Brain Protects Itself From Blood-Borne Threats | Quanta Magazine

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 02:42:51 GMT

To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is built into the brain’s blood vessels.

How CouchDB Prevents Data Corruption: fsync

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:47:40 GMT

Neighbourhoodie Software is a software development company based in Berlin, Germany. We are experts in CouchDB, PouchDB, and Offline First.

3 thoughts on “Paxos made visual in FizzBee”

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:46:36 GMT

Unfortunately, Paxos is quite difficult to understand, in spite of numerous attempts to make it more approachable. — Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout, In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algor…

Implementing SQL JOIN Support in ChronDB via PostgreSQL Protocol

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:46:08 GMT

Learn how ChronDB, a Git-based database, now supports SQL JOIN operations through PostgreSQL protocol. This technical deep dive covers INNER JOIN and LEFT JOIN implementation, performance optimizations, and how to query related data across tables in a version-controlled database environment.

Faster interpreters in Go: Catching up with C++

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:45:00 GMT

A novel technique for implementing dynamic language interpreters in Go, applied to the Vitess SQL evaluation engine

Just Throw It Into Postgres

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:44:38 GMT

The author discusses the flexibility of using Postgres databases for various types of data, even when they don't fit neatly into traditional database structures. Instead of forcing data into a rigid schema, it's better to store raw data and organize it later as needed. This approach allows for easier adjustments and better handling of unexpected data changes or new requirements.

Hacking the Postgres wire protocol

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:33:21 GMT

PgDog is a network proxy that helps manage queries between Postgres and clients without changing application code. It understands SQL, allowing it to route queries to multiple databases based on sharding keys. PgDog optimizes data handling and ingestion through efficient manipulation of Postgres wire protocols.

SQLite Transactions and Virtual Tables

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:32:45 GMT

SQLite allows virtual tables to support writing and transactions through specific hooks. These hooks manage transaction boundaries, ensuring that all changes commit or roll back together, maintaining data integrity. Virtual table authors must ensure that operations that can fail are handled in the appropriate hooks to avoid transaction issues.

Virtual Machine - Stack Arithmetic

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 22:04:00 GMT

An epic treatise on error models for systems programming languages

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:53:36 GMT

Musings on the representation, propagation and handling of errors in existing programming languages, as well as thoughts on future systems. (15K+ words)

Practical Alloy

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:52:29 GMT

"Practical Alloy" is a hands-on guide that introduces formal software design using the Alloy modeling language. The book teaches how to create models that help explore design options and verify requirements. It includes practical examples to illustrate both structural and behavioral modeling for various software systems.

Antithesis driven testing

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:51:37 GMT

Antithesis is a powerful testing tool that helps developers find hidden bugs in complex systems through deterministic simulation and fault injection. It allows for the creation of varied test scenarios without needing to rewrite existing software, making testing more efficient and comprehensive. With Antithesis, developers can focus on high-level properties, evolving their test suites to continuously improve software reliability.

Revisiting an early critique of formal verification

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:46:50 GMT

In 1979, a paper critiqued the field of program verification, arguing that mathematical proofs and formal program verification were fundamentally different. While some points made by the authors were valid, many of their main arguments have been proven wrong over time, as significant mathematical results have been successfully verified using formal methods. Today, program verification is integral to the development of mission-critical software and hardware, showing that the field has advanced considerably since the authors' original critique.

An Introduction to Virtual Consensus in Delos

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:45:48 GMT

This is the first of a number of posts looking at log replication protocols, mainly in the context of state machine replication (SMR). This first post will look at a log replication protocol design called Virtual Consensus from the paper: Virtual Consensus in Delos . In 2020, a team of resear

Meaning as programs: Programming Really Is Simple Mathematic

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:45:09 GMT

Introduction

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:44:48 GMT

This tutorial series teaches you how to build a BerkeleyDB replacement library step by step, starting from reading data to adding advanced features. BerkeleyDB is chosen for its simplicity and widespread use, making it a great foundation for learning about B-Trees. While familiarity with C is assumed, you can also use other languages to create a compatible library.

Concurrency bugs in Lucene: How to fix optimistic concurrency failures

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:44:33 GMT

Thanks to Fray, a deterministic concurrency testing framework from CMU’s PASTA Lab, we tracked down a tricky Lucene bug and squashed it

Just because you’re getting an index scan, doesn't mean you can’t do better!

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:43:55 GMT

An issue I often see folks missing is that they see that all of their scans involve indexes and they think that the query is as fast as it can be.

MySQL transactions per second vs fsyncs per second

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:43:38 GMT

MySQL transactions per second depend on the number of fsyncs per second that MySQL can commit to disk. A modern disk can do around 1000 fsyncs per second, but MySQL groups multiple writes with each fsync. Depending on various factors such as writes per transaction, number of indexes, hardware, and size of writes, MySQL can handle 5000-15,000 writes per second. The article discusses the author's hypothesis on the maximum throughput of MySQL and the number of fsyncs per second.

Land ahoy: leaving the Sea of Nodes

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:43:09 GMT

V8's compiler, Turbofan, is transitioning from a complex Sea of Nodes (SoN) representation to a simpler Control-Flow Graph (CFG) called Turboshaft. This change aims to make the compiler more efficient and intuitive, especially when handling JavaScript's numerous side effects and branches. The new CFG approach allows for better optimizations and faster compilation times compared to the previous SoN method.

What Fekete’s Anomaly Can Teach Us About Isolation

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:34:17 GMT

Fekete's anomaly illustrates a situation in databases where transactions can show unexpected results due to isolation levels. It involves two users, Pat and Betty, who experience conflicting account balances after separate transactions, highlighting potential issues with snapshot isolation. This anomaly prompts developers to consider whether it is a problem and how to address it, balancing performance with data consistency.

How do LLMs work?

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:34:03 GMT

Large Language Models (LLMs) work by predicting and generating text based on given input, like an advanced autocomplete feature. Creating an effective LLM involves training it on vast amounts of text and adjusting its parameters to improve its predictions. The quality of the chatbot depends on the underlying language model and how well it has been trained using human feedback.

Systems Correctness Practices at AWS

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:33:46 GMT

AWS uses formal and semi-formal methods to ensure the reliability and correctness of its services. Key tools like TLA+ and the P programming language help teams validate system designs and improve performance. AWS also employs lightweight methods, such as property-based testing and fault injection, to enhance testing and catch bugs effectively.

Hacking a Smart Home Device

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:33:00 GMT

The article explains how to reverse engineer a smart home device that uses UDP to communicate with its cloud server. It details the analysis of packet data, encryption keys, and the process of creating a man-in-the-middle attack to intercept and decrypt messages. The author shares insights into the device's firmware and the methods used to understand and manipulate its communication protocols.

Distributed Systems Programming Has Stalled

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 21:17:19 GMT

Despite advancements in distributed systems over the past decade, programming them has not significantly improved, leaving developers facing challenges like concurrency and fault tolerance. Current frameworks mainly provide superficial solutions and do not offer a native programming model that effectively addresses the complexities of distributed systems. A new programming model is needed to allow developers to write distributed code more intuitively while maintaining control over performance and correctness.

Model error

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:53:02 GMT

Software models are often overly simplified, leading to significant errors when they fail to capture the complexity of the real world. These model errors can have serious consequences, as seen in examples like the 2008 financial crisis and recent mistakes in contact management. Understanding that all models are inherently flawed is crucial for improving software design and preventing future issues.

One or Two? How Many Queues?

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:35:36 GMT

Marc Brooker discusses how the common belief that one queue is better than two can be misleading. In some situations, like using a restroom with different facilities, having separate queues can actually reduce wait times. The key factor is whether people have a strong preference for what they want to use, which can affect how efficiently the queues are utilized.

Things that go wrong with disk IO

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:35:15 GMT

When writing applications that handle data, it's important to be aware of potential issues like lost writes, data corruption, and misdirected reads or writes. Many systems, including databases, do not always account for these problems, which can lead to data integrity issues. Using proper techniques like checksumming and ensuring data is correctly written to disk can help mitigate these risks.

Dice and Queues

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:35:04 GMT

Queuing theory shows that as utilization approaches 100%, the average queue size can grow significantly and even towards infinity. A simulation using dice rolls helps visualize how arrival and service rates affect queue sizes. The results confirm that higher utilization leads to larger queues, demonstrating the unpredictable nature of waiting lines.

Size matter

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:34:52 GMT

The shared buffer in PostgreSQL manages data flow in memory but has limitations in buffer replacement strategies. It uses a system called the clock sweep to replace buffers, which can be inefficient if many buffers are in use. The optimal size for the shared buffer depends on the server's memory, with 64GB being a reasonable upper limit to avoid performance issues.

Snapshot Isolation vs Serializability

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:31:02 GMT

Snapshot isolation (SI) is a beneficial database isolation level for many applications, balancing performance and consistency. It allows read and write operations to occur with fewer conflicts compared to serializability, which requires stricter rules and can complicate programming. The author argues that SI, combined with strong consistency, is the best default choice for most transactional workloads.

Versioning versus Coordination

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:30:50 GMT

Marc Brooker discusses the advantages of using versioning in distributed database systems over traditional coordination methods. By allowing transactions to create new versions of data, it enhances scalability, throughput, and performance without blocking operations. This approach minimizes the need for coordination, making systems more efficient and easier to design.

The Challenge

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:26:46 GMT

This article introduces a project to build a client-side search engine using Rust, focusing on cross-platform compatibility and encryption. The author aims to tackle the unique challenges of running a search engine in browsers and mobile apps while keeping it lightweight and efficient. The series will cover various aspects of the search engine's construction, starting with the storage layer and progressing to performance optimization and synchronization.

How to Write Blog Posts that Developers Read

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:25:13 GMT

To attract readers, blog posts should get to the point quickly and address topics that matter to developers. Writers should also think about how to reach a larger audience and plan how readers will find their articles. Adding visuals and accommodating skimmers can significantly enhance a blog post's appeal.

Demystifying monads in Rust through property-based testing

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:21:59 GMT

The article explores monads in Rust, highlighting their performance impact through property-based testing. It explains how the `prop_flat_map` function introduces monadic composition, which can make value shrinking unpredictable. Programmers are advised to prefer non-monadic operations when possible, as they are often more efficient.

Resilience: some key ingredients

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:21:32 GMT

Resilience in systems refers to their ability to cope with challenges beyond their limits, which can be enhanced through graceful extensibility. Key factors for resilience include having spare resources, flexibility, expertise, diversity among responders, and effective coordination during incidents. Understanding these ingredients can help improve responses to unexpected challenges.

Comptime Zig ORM Mar 19, 2025

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:02:59 GMT

The text describes how to define and manage a database schema in Zig, focusing on two main objects: accounts and transfers. It outlines the structure for these objects, including their fields and how to create a database type that can handle them. Additionally, it explains how to set up indexing for efficient data retrieval in the database.

Large Lambda Model

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:40:05 GMT

The Large Lambda Model uses an embedding layer to convert tokens into a format the model can understand. It employs multiple layers, including LayerNorm and self-attention, to process inputs and generate outputs. Finally, the model combines these layers to predict the next token in a sequence.

Compiler Engineering for Substructural Languages I: The Problem with Polymorphism

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 18:38:16 GMT

The text discusses how to handle substitutions in substructural languages, focusing on the relationship between term and type contexts. It introduces data structures for managing substitutions and highlights the importance of indexing term variables by type variables. The author emphasizes that term substitutions must be carefully designed to maintain this relationship while implementing operations like renaming and extending contexts.

How to Sync Anything

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:53:28 GMT

Syncing data between systems can be tricky due to issues like inconsistency and lost updates. Effective replication requires a reliable method to compare source and target data so they can stay in sync. Using a well-defined sync function can help ensure that changes are accurately captured and applied in the right order.

Why The First Computers Were Made Out Of Light Bulbs

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:48:00 GMT

The first computers used light bulbs and vacuum tubes to control the flow of electricity. This technology allowed for the creation of basic logic gates and early computers that could perform calculations. However, these machines were large, power-hungry, and often unreliable.

Good models protect us from bad models

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:29:39 GMT

Resilience engineering offers valuable insights about complex systems, even if they aren't directly actionable. Good models help us understand incidents better and protect us from simplistic, misleading solutions. While these models may feel unsatisfying, they prevent us from relying on incorrect but easy-to-implement approaches.

Flambda2 Ep. 4: How to write a purely functional compiler

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:21:40 GMT

In this episode, we explain how the Flambda2 Optimising Compiler analyzes and transforms OCaml code using two main traversal methods: downward and upward. The downward pass focuses on static analysis and inlining, while the upward pass identifies and removes dead code. This structured approach allows for efficient optimizations and simplifies the compilation process.

100 Ways To Live Better

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 14:42:29 GMT

Jacob Falkovich shares 100 pieces of life advice aimed at improving daily living. His tips include expressing yourself, limiting political discussions, and creating fun habits. The advice encourages personal growth and connecting with others in meaningful ways.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Concurrency

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 14:12:38 GMT

The text introduces concurrent Erlang's concept based on message passing and the actor model. Erlang's concurrency allows multiple independent actors to run, even on a single-core processor. By utilizing lightweight processes and asynchronous message passing, Erlang ensures reliability and fault-tolerance in handling errors efficiently.

Implementers, Solvers, and Finders

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 06:15:58 GMT

Many programmers feel stuck in their careers and want more autonomy instead of just executing tasks. The author suggests categorizing programming roles into Implementers, Solvers, and Finders to better align job titles with responsibilities. Ultimately, the goal is to help programmers find fulfilling roles where they can continue to code while having the autonomy they desire.

Parser Combinators Beat Regexes

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 06:13:13 GMT

In Haskell, parser combinators are preferred over regular expressions because they offer better performance and flexibility. While regex can handle simple tasks, writing parsers in Haskell is straightforward and allows for more complex state management. This approach is especially useful for problems that require tracking changes in state, like enabling or disabling certain instructions.

Demystifying the #! (shebang): Kernel Adventures

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 05:57:10 GMT

The shebang (#!) at the beginning of a script specifies which interpreter to use when executing it, allowing scripts to run smoothly without needing to call the interpreter directly. Linux uses the kernel to process the shebang, ensuring the correct interpreter is found and executed, which simplifies running different types of scripts. If a script lacks execute permissions or a shebang, the kernel will return an error, but the shell may still attempt to run it as a fallback.

Impromptu disaster recovery

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 06:25:58 GMT

The author discusses issues with using the `yq` command-line tool for processing YAML files, specifically how it can unintentionally merge multiple files into one when using the in-place editing flag. This behavior can lead to data loss if users are not careful, as it overwrites the first file in the list with combined content from all matched files. The author suggests that a better approach would be to manage and compare resources more effectively in Kubernetes.

Expose an external resource with a Kubernetes Ingress

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:50:00 GMT

The author wanted to expose their Home Assistant instance to the internet using Kubernetes Ingress, as they already have a Kubernetes cluster set up. They explained that a Service is needed to redirect requests to the Ingress, and shared YAML configurations for creating the necessary Service and Ingress. By following these steps, the author can access Home Assistant externally while also preparing for future services within the Kubernetes cluster.

High Agency In 30 Minutes

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:26:32 GMT

High agency is the ability to solve problems effectively and take action, even in difficult situations. It combines clear thinking, a bias to act, and a willingness to disagree with the norm. People with high agency creatively navigate challenges and embrace their uniqueness, often leading to extraordinary outcomes.

What I'd do as a College Freshman in 2025

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 23:19:54 GMT

As a college freshman in 2025, focus on mastering computer science and soft skills, as they are essential for success in the tech industry. Stay in the U.S. for college to build valuable connections and gain inspiration from peers. Embrace an entrepreneurial mindset, aiming for depth and leveraging your skills to thrive in a rapidly changing environment.

Creating 256 Bytes of RAM (in a simulation)

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 21:57:36 GMT

Sebastian Lague explains how to create a simple simulation of 256 bytes of RAM using registers and memory cells. He describes the process of building a grid of memory cells that can store and retrieve data efficiently. The final result is a functioning random access memory (RAM) system that can be used in a simulated computer.

Async from scratch 1: What's in a Future, anyway?

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:47:43 GMT

This article introduces a series on building an async Rust environment, explaining the concept of a Future, which allows functions to pause while waiting for something. It simplifies the idea of polling for results through an example of a simple dice roll and demonstrates how to manage states with enums. The post also touches on creating timeouts and handling multiple await points, setting the stage for more complex async operations in Rust.

Refactoring won't save you from a layoff

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 20:00:01 GMT

Many software engineers may not realize their work needs to connect to company profits to maintain job stability. If their contributions don't directly generate revenue, they risk being overlooked or laid off. To secure their positions, engineers should understand their company's business model and align their work with profit-generating efforts.

Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued | Kalzumeus Software

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 18:35:12 GMT

Salary negotiation advice, mostly for engineers. Running total of raises negotiated due to this essay: $9M+.

My favorite technical blogs

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 17:57:28 GMT

The text lists various technical blogs that focus on different topics like systems programming, formal methods, compilers, databases, and distributed systems. Each blog is associated with its author, along with their social media platforms. It highlights the diverse range of voices and insights available in the technical blogging community.

The Computer Backup Rule of Three

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 17:57:01 GMT

Always back up your important data in multiple ways. Use at least two physical backups and a cloud service for extra safety. Remember, backups are only useful if you can restore the data when needed.

The Best Programmers I Know

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 17:44:31 GMT

The author shares key traits of the best programmers based on his observations. He emphasizes the importance of understanding tools deeply, continuously learning, and helping others. Great engineers simplify problems, write clearly, and maintain patience while solving challenges.

Build your own SQLite, Part 1: Listing tables

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 13:48:11 GMT

This blog post explains how to read the header of an SQLite database and parse table B-tree leaf pages. It details the structure of the database header, including the magic string and page size, and discusses functions for reading page content and cell pointers. The ultimate goal is to create a simple REPL that can list tables within the database.

There is No Automatic Reset for Engineering

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:55:34 GMT

Engineering decisions are permanent and cannot be automatically reset, meaning that rushed changes create lasting issues in the codebase. While it's important to act quickly at times, cutting corners can lead to ongoing problems that hinder future development. A balanced approach, focusing on advancing features, sustaining quality, and accelerating progress, can help manage these challenges effectively.

A Quick Journey Into the Linux Kernel

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:52:24 GMT

The Linux kernel, even in its older 2.6 version, offers valuable insights into operating system fundamentals like process scheduling and memory management. It handles concurrency and interrupts uniquely, using mechanisms like tasklets and workqueues to maintain system responsiveness. Understanding kernel development can deepen knowledge of performance and system design, making it a helpful area for engineers to explore.

🦀 Building a search engine from scratch, in Rust: part 1

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:34:47 GMT

In the first part of building a search engine, the author explores using the File System API for cross-platform storage with encryption. This approach allows for intuitive file handling and efficient performance while maintaining security. The goal is to create a reliable storage layer that works well across desktop, mobile, and browser platforms.

Apple’s Darwin OS and XNU Kernel Deep Dive

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:21:19 GMT

The article explores the evolution of Apple's Darwin OS and its XNU kernel, highlighting its hybrid design that combines Mach microkernel and BSD elements for performance and adaptability. It details how XNU has evolved to support various architectures and devices while improving system stability and security. Overall, XNU's design allows for seamless integration across Apple's product lineup, from Macs to iPhones.

BTrees, Inverted Indices, and a Model for Full Text Search

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:21:06 GMT

This article explains how full text search engines work by using techniques like tokenization and inverted indexing to efficiently find and rank documents based on user queries. It discusses the importance of storing tokens with their document IDs and positions to improve search performance and support features like prefix queries. The author also compares this efficient approach to a slower, naive search method that scans every document for each term.

Catalog of Patterns of Distributed Systems

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:31:49 GMT

The "Catalog of Patterns of Distributed Systems" by Unmesh Joshi offers solutions for common challenges in distributed systems, such as data synchronization and handling network delays. In 2020, the author began compiling these solutions into patterns, which were later published in a book in 2023. The website provides summaries of each pattern with links to detailed chapters in the eBook, helping organizations improve their distributed software systems.

It's Time to Stop Building KV Databases

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 01:46:29 GMT

The author argues against using Key-Value (KV) databases, claiming they lack flexibility and force users to create their own data models from scratch. Instead, they propose a new type of embedded database that maintains a clear distinction between logical and physical schemas, allowing for easier querying and better schema management. This new database would avoid the complexity of query planners while still offering essential features like type systems and asynchronous schema changes.

How far neuroscience is from understanding brains

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 23:33:20 GMT

Neuroscience is still far from fully understanding how brains work. Recent studies show new insights into brain dynamics and functions, particularly in visual processing. Ongoing research is needed to better connect brain activity with behavior.

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 23:31:17 GMT

The text humorously recounts the history of programming languages, starting from early inventions like punch cards and Ada Lovelace's first program. It highlights notable developments, such as the creation of FORTRAN, LISP, and Java, while playfully critiquing their shortcomings. Overall, the article showcases the evolution of programming languages with a mix of factual details and witty commentary.

Don't Be Afraid Of Types

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 23:03:25 GMT

The author discusses a common hesitation among developers to create new types in their code, often due to fears of disrupting the existing structure. They argue that creating new types, even for simple cases, can simplify code and improve clarity. The piece encourages developers to embrace the creation of types, as it can lead to easier data handling and better organization.

Your Network, Your Rules: Take Charge With Own DNS

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:57:14 GMT

This article explains how to set up your own DNS nameserver for better privacy and control over your online presence. It discusses using tools like BIND, Unbound, and dnsdist to manage DNS queries effectively. By self-hosting a DNS nameserver, you can enhance your security and reduce reliance on public services.

How browsers REALLY load Web pages

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:56:16 GMT

When browsers load web pages, they consider many factors to decide which resources to load first. This talk explains how these decisions are made and how you can influence them for better performance. You will learn about the complexities of resource loading and how to avoid common mistakes.

2024's hottest topics in databases (a bibliometric approach)

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:55:04 GMT

The article reviews the latest trends in database research using citation data to identify popular topics. Key areas of focus include learned indexes, query optimization using machine learning, and improvements in database management systems. The author highlights the importance of data cleaning and matching tools, which are becoming more effective through the integration of machine learning techniques.

to do nothing

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:45:37 GMT

It's a rainy Saturday in Montreal, and the author reflects on the challenge of doing nothing in a busy mind. They describe their thoughts as an annoying friend named Becky, who constantly suggests tasks and distractions. Ultimately, the author decides to embrace silence and do nothing for a while before their date.

The History of the Web

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:22:26 GMT

Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser and website, showcasing the web's potential. Early search engines like World Wide Web Worm and WebCrawler made it easier to find information online. Over time, browsers evolved with new features and tools, leading to the development of popular platforms like Firefox and JavaScript.

Nix derivations by hand, without guessing

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 14:42:50 GMT

Max Bernstein’s blog discusses how to manually create a simple Nix derivation that outputs a "hello world" file without using the Nix language. The author explains the process of generating necessary hashes and paths, highlighting the importance of understanding the low-level details involved. Ultimately, the tutorial leads to successfully building the desired output file using a well-defined recipe.

Total functions and beyond

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:38:06 GMT

Eric Normand discusses total functions, which always return valid values for valid inputs, contrasting them with partial functions that can return undefined or problematic values. He emphasizes that total functions improve code reliability and reasoning, and explores the idea of viewing function types as a spectrum rather than a strict binary. Normand also highlights the importance of handling inputs carefully to avoid invalid outputs, advocating for techniques that ensure functions remain total.

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 17:03:14 GMT

Bret Victor emphasizes the importance of creators being able to see the immediate results of their work, especially in coding. He believes that having a clear connection between ideas and their visual representation can enhance creativity and problem-solving. His principle encourages inventors to explore and interact with their work to amplify understanding and innovation.

Domain-Agnostic and Domain-Specific Tools

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 16:11:30 GMT

This text argues against using a single tool for all tasks, emphasizing that domain-specific tools are more effective for specific use cases than domain-agnostic tools. Domain-agnostic tools like Obsidian are flexible but lack the structured data models found in domain-specific tools, which can lead to inefficiency. The author suggests that allowing data to exist in separate silos can enhance productivity instead of forcing everything into one interconnected system.

What is a CUDA Device Architecture?

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 16:09:39 GMT

CUDA stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, which refers to a high-level device architecture and programming model for parallel computing. It simplifies GPU design by using uniform hardware units called Streaming Multiprocessors, making it easier for software engineers to program. The original vision for CUDA was detailed in a 2008 white paper by Lindholm et al., which is recommended for further reading.

More Drowning Children

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:38:04 GMT

The text discusses the moral implications of helping drowning children based on proximity and personal responsibility. It argues that people feel less obligated to save multiple children nearby than to help one child in their hometown. Ultimately, it suggests that moral obligations should be balanced with practical considerations and the roles of community responsibility.

Philosophy and Methodology of Experiments

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:26:02 GMT

The text discusses the methodology of conducting experiments, particularly in performance testing, emphasizing the importance of separating data collection from analysis. It outlines how to structure experimental data in a spreadsheet and highlights the significance of treating runs as logs of what happened rather than discoveries. The author also mentions using tools like pivot tables and graphs to analyze the collected data effectively.

How does async Rust work

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:22:08 GMT

Rust's async system allows applications to handle I/O efficiently by using asynchronous functions that return a special type called Future. These functions are transformed into a state machine, which the executor polls until completion, allowing the CPU to perform other tasks in the meantime. The article introduces Beul, a minimalistic futures executor that simplifies the execution of async code.

My Beancount books are 95% automatic after 3 years

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:19:58 GMT

The author built BeanHub to automate their accounting using open-source Beancount files. They open-sourced 15 projects while developing BeanHub to give back to the community and promote their product. By focusing on a plaintext-based format, they aim to provide users control over their data and a reliable way to track changes.

What is wrong with the architecture of the Internet?

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:16:18 GMT

The architecture of the Internet has design problems due to violations of important principles like separation of concerns and separation of mechanism and policy. These issues lead to difficulties in maintaining and evolving the network, making it hard to implement changes like IPv6. As a result, innovation is stifled, and developers often resort to simpler solutions that bypass core networking protocols.

Programming Really Is Simple Mathematics

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 06:13:48 GMT

Bertrand Meyer and Reto Weber present a new approach to programming called PRISM, which simplifies programming concepts using basic set theory. This method has no axioms and builds programming principles from just one set and one relation. The authors aim to reconstruct all of programming while proving many important theorems about it, all verified by a formal proof system.

Every Intervention Is A Complex Calculation of Tradeoffs

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 02:50:39 GMT

The author discusses the complexities of various interventions, highlighting that each has benefits and drawbacks. For example, while moclobemide boosts mood and energy, it also reduces emotional depth and cognitive sharpness. Ultimately, the author emphasizes the importance of weighing these tradeoffs to decide what is worth pursuing for personal well-being.

Win Streaking and Reliability

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 01:39:26 GMT

The author is trying to improve their win streaks in the game Slay the Spire by changing their play style from casual to more deliberate. They realize that relying on instinct has limited their success, as they often take risks that can lead to early losses. To get better, they plan to adopt a more structured approach to their gameplay, even if it feels less enjoyable.

What to Do

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:13:24 GMT

One should help people, take care of the world, and create good new things. Making new things shows our best thinking and potential. These principles guide us to live meaningfully and contribute positively to society.

.arpa, rDNS and a few magical ICMP hacks

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:40:58 GMT

The author shares their excitement about obtaining an ip6.arpa zone, which is typically reserved for ISPs. They discuss the history and purpose of the .arpa domains, particularly for reverse DNS, which maps IP addresses to domain names. The post also explores creative uses of reverse DNS and some technical hacks related to ICMP and IPv6.

A Society That Lost Focus

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:43:10 GMT

White-collar work has become a fast-paced cycle of responding to emails, which limits deep thinking and creativity. The internet has shifted to monetizing our attention, leading to a constant barrage of distractions and shallow ideas. To regain our focus, we need to embrace disconnected times and value deeper, more thoughtful work over quick, catchy content.

The surreal joy of having an overprovisioned homelab

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:51:09 GMT

A homelab is a personal space where you can experiment with computers and self-host important services. It allows you to run various applications and learn new skills in a hands-on way. Overall, having a homelab brings joy and flexibility to managing tech projects at home.

An HTTP Server in Go From scratch: Part 2

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 15:45:09 GMT

The author shares improvements made to their HTTP server written in Go, including new methods for handling headers and support for streaming responses. They also introduce middleware and subrouter functionality to organize routes and apply specific behavior to groups of routes. The demo app showcases how these features enhance server capabilities and user experience.

A Field Guide to Rapidly Improving AI Products

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 08:35:07 GMT

The most common mistake in AI development is focusing too much on tools instead of understanding errors. Successful teams prioritize customized data viewers and maintain trust in their evaluation systems through regular human checks. They also structure roadmaps around experiments rather than fixed features to adapt quickly and effectively.

SQL Indexing and Tuning e-Book

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 14:24:10 GMT

The e-book "Use The Index, Luke" explains SQL indexing in a simple way for developers, focusing on its importance during development. It covers indexing for various databases like MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, providing vendor-neutral insights and specific notes. The resource is available for free online and complements a paid book on SQL performance.

The append-and-review note

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 23:08:34 GMT

The "append-and-review note" is a simple note-taking method where you add thoughts and tasks to a single text note without complex organization. You can easily find and review your notes by scrolling and copying important items back to the top. This approach helps clear your mind and allows you to focus on other tasks, while still keeping track of your ideas.

complexity as entropy

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 01:38:53 GMT

The text discusses how software complexity can be understood through the lens of entropy, highlighting that without clear structures, code becomes difficult to explain and maintain. It critiques the idea that cleaning up small issues alone can prevent software from deteriorating, emphasizing that good design requires ongoing effort and attention to the bigger picture. Ultimately, it argues that focusing solely on minor problems ignores the systemic nature of software and risks increasing complexity over time.

1. Lambda Calculus - Grammar & Terms

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 18:18:29 GMT

Lambda calculus is a very simple programming language with only two main instructions: abstraction and application. It allows for the manipulation of symbols to create functions and expressions without needing specific type information. This foundational language can express complex logic and computations through basic operations.

Fixing Recursions In Grammar

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 18:14:11 GMT

The text discusses the problem of left recursion in context-free grammars, which can cause nontermination in parsing algorithms. It explains how to fix left recursion by rewriting the grammar into a right-recursive form. Additionally, the author mentions mutual left recursion and suggests methods to analyze and simplify complex grammars.

How I Biohack My Vitality

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 15:38:37 GMT

The author reflects on moving away from stimulants and focusing on improving daily vitality through better diet, exercise, and mood-boosting activities. They share their experience with the GLP-1 agonist semaglutide and the mixed effects of supplements like SAMe. While stimulants can enhance energy and cognition, the author acknowledges their potential downsides and advocates for more awareness of these issues.

Why cryptography is not based on NP-complete problems

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 16:40:13 GMT

Cryptography relies on problems that are hard to solve for randomly chosen instances, like the RSA problem, rather than NP-complete problems. NP-complete problems may be difficult in the worst case, but they don't guarantee that random instances will also be hard. Therefore, cryptographic security depends on average-case hardness, which is not provided by NP-complete problems.

Added Replication Slots in

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:47:39 GMT

The document provides updates on PostgreSQL features, including new sections on replication slots and conflicts. It explains the complex subsystems of PostgreSQL to help users understand its internal workings. The author, Hironobu Suzuki, has extensive experience with databases and has published several related books.

Turbocharging V8 with mutable heap numbers

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:38:00 GMT

The V8 team improved JavaScript performance by optimizing the Math.random function, which led to a 2.5x speedup in the async-fs benchmark. They introduced mutable heap number slots to eliminate unnecessary memory allocations and allow faster integer operations. These changes also contributed to a 1.6% boost in the overall JetStream2 score.

Lambda Calculus and Lisp, part 1

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 04:07:05 GMT

This text introduces a series of blog posts about lambda calculus and Lisp, highlighting their origins and connections. It explains that while Lisp incorporates the concept of lambda functions, it is not a direct realization of lambda calculus as originally intended by its creator, John McCarthy. The discussion will delve into both programming aspects and philosophical implications of these foundational concepts in computer science.

XOR in boolean logic

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 17:27:28 GMT

XOR is a bitwise operation that compares two bits and returns 1 if they are different and 0 if they are the same. It has various applications, such as in cryptography, graphics, and error-correcting codes. XOR can also be used for tasks like swapping bits and calculating sums without carrying, making it useful in many mathematical and programming contexts.

Time Depletion

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 23:37:08 GMT

The feeling of mental effort helps you switch tasks efficiently. Resolution signals the completion of a task, allowing you to move on without exerting willpower. Endings define beginnings and encapsulate the interaction energies that led up to them.

A brief meditation on formal systems and lying goblins

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 14:17:24 GMT

The text discusses a famous logic puzzle from the movie Labyrinth, where a character must choose the correct door by asking one of two goblins, one of whom always lies. It explains how to solve the puzzle using boolean algebra, highlighting the importance of formulating the right question. The author emphasizes that a formal approach can simplify complex problems and improve understanding of logic.

Zen and the Art of Microcode Hacking

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 09:51:27 GMT

The article discusses microcode, its importance in CPU security, and how AMD updates it to fix bugs. It highlights a vulnerability in AMD's microcode patch signature validation that allows unauthorized patches to be created. Future posts will explore how this vulnerability was discovered and the methods used to address it.

My LLM codegen workflow atm

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 01:49:54 GMT

Harper Reed shares his workflow for using LLMs to write software, which starts with brainstorming and planning a detailed specification. He then breaks the plan into small, manageable tasks before executing them with tools like Claude and Aider. This approach helps him increase productivity and improve code quality through iterative development and testing.

Leader election with S3 and If-Match

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 14:43:08 GMT

This text explains how to implement leader election in distributed systems using Amazon S3's If-Match condition to create a distributed lock. It outlines the steps for acquiring and releasing a lock, as well as the importance of synchronizing clocks to avoid issues with stale locks. The post also highlights that while S3 can be used for locking, it may not be the most efficient choice for high-performance applications.

Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 01:00:54 GMT

To invest in yourself, you often need to rent your time and seek opportunities where you can learn quickly, like in new or evolving fields. Taking on accountability in your job helps you build specific knowledge and develop a founder mentality, which can lead to greater opportunities. Focus on mastering skills that are valuable over time, and be proactive in solving problems that others can't.

Rationalization

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 01:26:29 GMT

In this document titled "Rationalization," the author explores the concepts of rationality and rationalization. Rationality refers to the process of gathering evidence and using it to reach a conclusion, while rationalization is the backward flow from conclusion to selected evidence. The author argues that rationalization is not a true form of rationality because it seeks to fix beliefs in place rather than change them. The author also emphasizes the importance of curiosity in the pursuit of truth and highlights the potential pitfalls of biased thinking in scientific inquiry.

How Core Git Developers Configure Git

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 10:00:28 GMT

This blog post discusses lesser-known Git configuration settings that can improve user experience. The author shares settings recommended by core Git developers and suggests that some should be default options. Key settings include changing the default branch name to "main" and adjusting how diff and push commands behave.

Ask for no, don’t ask for yes

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 01:30:09 GMT

To make progress, it's better to ask for "no" instead of "yes" when proposing ideas to your boss. This approach allows you to take action confidently while still keeping your boss informed. Adding a deadline encourages quicker responses and helps keep projects moving forward.

The Bottom Line

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 19:03:25 GMT

Two boxes are up for auction, with only one containing a diamond, but the evidence for which box it is is uncertain. A clever arguer can make a case for one box based on selective signs, but their conclusion does not change the actual probability of where the diamond is. The true effectiveness of reasoning depends on how well one understands and analyzes all available evidence, rather than just seeking arguments to support a preferred conclusion.

Learning: the hardest problem in computer science

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 15:30:31 GMT

The author reflects on the challenges of teaching coding and how traditional methods often leave beginners confused. They emphasize the need for deeper understanding rather than just surface-level knowledge. Despite the difficulties, the author finds meaning in helping students learn and grow.

Algebraic effects are a functional approach to manage side effects

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:49:54 GMT

Algebraic effects provide a structured way to manage side effects in programs, making them more predictable. They allow programs to handle interactions with the outside world, like random numbers or input/output operations, without relying on hidden side effects. This approach improves code clarity and helps developers understand the effects their functions have.

Meta’s Hyperscale Infrastructure: Overview and Insights

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:44:37 GMT

Meta has built a global hyperscale infrastructure to efficiently deliver its services by optimizing hardware and software together. They focus on fast development practices and autonomous resource management, allowing developers to concentrate on building products without worrying about complex infrastructure. Meta is transitioning to a model where all its datacenters work together as a single unit, enhancing efficiency and scalability.

Picoeconomics

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:48:11 GMT

The text discusses how the perception of choices influences self-control and decision-making over time. It explains that people often struggle with immediate rewards versus future benefits, leading to inconsistent choices. Additionally, personal rules and emotional rewards play a significant role in shaping motivations and behaviors.

Finding Flow: Escaping Digital Distractions Through Deep Work and Slow Living

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 21:33:45 GMT

The author explores how to escape digital distractions by embracing slow living and deep work. They emphasize the importance of environment, routine, and nature in fostering creativity and focus. By slowing down and being present, individuals can achieve a deeper sense of satisfaction and clarity in their work and life.

50 Years of Travel Tips

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 15:49:12 GMT

Kevin Kelly shares his travel wisdom from over 50 years of experience. He emphasizes the importance of organizing trips around personal passions and suggests embracing spontaneity. For memorable journeys, he advises spending more time in fewer places and going straight to remote destinations first.

Using Generics to Inject Stubs when Testing

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:57:27 GMT

The author discusses the importance of fast and reliable unit tests, advocating for the use of stubs in specific situations. They introduce a pattern using generics to create testable versions of a Client struct for TCP communication. This allows for more controlled testing by injecting a TestStream that records written data, enabling effective assertions about the output.

Applied Picoeconomics

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:33:52 GMT

Scott Alexander explores picoeconomics, which models akrasia as a conflict between present and future selves. He shares his experience of creating a strict oath to study for two hours a day, finding it effective for maintaining his commitment. The key is to make the rules clear and binding, avoiding loopholes that could lead to failure.

Fire And Motion

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 02:08:31 GMT

The author struggles with unproductive periods as a developer but finds that just getting started is the key to productivity. He compares the concept of "Fire and Motion" from military strategy to getting things done in life, emphasizing the importance of consistent progress. By moving forward a little bit every day, even small improvements can lead to long-term success in software development.

The Holy Grail of Self-Improvement

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 20:00:23 GMT

The text discusses how behavior change relies on forming new habits by reshaping our mental models rather than just relying on external rewards. It emphasizes that habits are emergent patterns influenced by our environment and experiences, rather than fixed actions. To effectively change habits, we need to embrace curiosity and allow disturbances in our routines to create space for new behaviors.

HOWTO: Be more productive

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 02:10:14 GMT

To be more productive, focus on the quality of your time and choose important tasks wisely. Create a list of different projects to work on, which helps you stay engaged and creative. Avoid procrastination by listening to your body and finding inspiration in your surroundings.

Akrasia, hyperbolic discounting, and picoeconomics

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:44:56 GMT

Akrasia is when we act against our own long-term interests, and psychologist George C Ainslie explores why this happens in his book "Breakdown of Will" using picoeconomics. One key concept is hyperbolic discounting, where we value immediate rewards more than future ones, leading to internal conflicts over time. Ainslie's analysis shows how making clear resolutions and understanding our intertemporal bargaining can help us overcome akrasia and act in our best interests.

How I Am Productive

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 01:46:31 GMT

The author explains how they became productive by implementing systems and habits in their life. They stress the importance of organization, including writing down ideas, keeping track of events on a calendar, and using a to-do list. Prioritization is also crucial, and the author recommends using the Eisenhower Matrix to distinguish between important and urgent tasks. Timeboxing and taking breaks are helpful techniques for staying focused, and regular reviews at various intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, and every six months) can aid in reflection and improvement.

Productivity

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 19:01:19 GMT

To boost productivity, focus on working on what you care about and prioritize tasks effectively. Make lists to stay organized, minimize distractions, and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Remember, it's essential to work on the right problems to truly be productive.

Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 18:55:13 GMT

The author discusses how productivity systems eventually fail and suggests that accepting procrastination can help reduce guilt. He emphasizes the importance of finding excitement in long-term tasks to stay motivated and argues against traditional advice like eliminating distractions. Instead, he promotes creating flexible rules that adapt to individual needs to maintain productivity.

Anatomy of a Formal Proof

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 03:13:40 GMT

The text discusses the use of Lean, a proof assistant, to construct formal mathematical proofs using a library called Mathlib. It highlights how contributors to Mathlib ensure that theorems and structures are reusable and easy to apply in new proofs. The document also mentions the growing role of AI in assisting with proof construction, alongside the historical development of formal proof systems.

Playing to Win Overview

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:33:44 GMT

"Playing to Win" emphasizes the importance of making strategic moves to win games, rather than adhering to self-imposed restrictions. Many players, referred to as "scrubs," misunderstand this concept and label effective tactics as "cheap," which limits their potential for improvement. True enjoyment in competitive games comes from mastering strategies and optimizing chances to win, rather than avoiding certain moves.

Willingness to look stupid

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:38:20 GMT

The author believes that being willing to look stupid can lead to greater understanding and personal growth, despite occasional negative perceptions from others. They share experiences where asking seemingly foolish questions helped them learn more effectively. Overall, the author values honesty and effort over the fear of appearing foolish, especially in challenging situations like interviews or medical appointments.

150 Great Articles & Essays: interesting articles to read online

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 16:49:20 GMT

This collection features 150 great articles and essays available for free online. It includes interesting nonfiction and journalism on various topics, including men. The Electric Typewriter curates the best writing from around the internet.

Storage is cheap, but not thinking about logging is expensive

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 18:01:36 GMT

Storage costs are low, but failing to plan data logging properly can lead to high expenses and inefficiencies. Many teams collect excessive data without clear metrics, making it hard to derive useful insights later. It's crucial to focus on what data is genuinely needed for decision-making to avoid creating burdensome tech debt.

Building a tiny Linux from scratch

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 17:16:22 GMT

Last week, I built a tiny Linux system from scratch that only takes up 2.5 MB and can boot from a USB stick. I learned how to compile the Linux kernel and Busybox, and created a simple init process to run commands. Now, I can boot this minimal Linux on my laptop and explore how it works!

How to Lose Time and Money

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:39:10 GMT

Paul Graham explains that people often lose money not through overspending but through bad investments that don’t trigger warning signs. Similarly, we can waste time on unproductive tasks that feel like work but accomplish little, leading to a false sense of productivity. To protect both time and money, we need to develop new awareness of these hidden traps.

Writing, Briefly

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:29:16 GMT

Writing well is essential because it helps generate ideas, not just communicate them. To improve your writing, quickly draft a rough version and then refine it by cutting unnecessary parts and using a conversational tone. Practice regularly, seek feedback, and remember that many ideas emerge while you write.

What You'll Wish You'd Known

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 05:27:48 GMT

In high school, it's important to focus on learning what you enjoy rather than just getting good grades. Treat school like a day job, taking intellectual responsibility for your own growth and interests. Many successful people regret wasting time in school, so find projects that excite you and help you develop your skills.

Split Out Unrelated Changes

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:32:28 GMT

This blog post explains why it's important to split unrelated changes into separate pull requests for easier review. Smaller pull requests are quicker to review and reduce the risk of bugs, while also keeping the Git history cleaner. The author suggests automating stylistic changes and only including unrelated changes if they truly add value.

how do we set up teams for success?

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 02:21:26 GMT

To set up teams for success, managers must create an environment that fosters collaboration and clarity. Understanding each team member's needs and encouraging open communication are key to building trust and accountability. A strong feedback culture helps teams learn from mistakes and improve together.

How/why to get good at debugging your mind

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 16:27:00 GMT

Understanding your own mind can greatly improve your life and help others as well. By practicing mental debugging, you can identify and solve your own problems more effectively. This skill also allows you to help others by teaching them how to improve their thinking and overcome their challenges.

fold-… and monoids

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 05:54:28 GMT

Monoids are mathematical structures with an associative binary function and an identity element, widely used in computer science, such as in string concatenation or integer addition. The concept of folds, like fold-left and fold-right, allows for processing lists using these monoids, making code cleaner and easier to reason about. Additionally, folds can be applied to create pipelines and manage state transitions without the need for traditional loops.

Holding a Program in One's Head

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 04:25:33 GMT

A good programmer can hold their entire code in their mind, much like a mathematician with a problem. To effectively understand and manipulate a program, it's important to minimize distractions, work in long sessions, and write clean, readable code. Large organizations often hinder this creative process, making it easier for smaller teams or startups to innovate.

"Simple Made Easy" - Rich Hickey (2011)

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 04:11:58 GMT

The text emphasizes the idea of simplicity. It uses repetitive questioning to highlight the difference between complexity and simplicity. Ultimately, it suggests that things can be simpler than they seem.

Try Snapshot Testing for Compilers and Compiler-Like Things

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 04:09:10 GMT

Snapshot testing is an easy way to test programs that transform text, by saving input and output pairs in version control. This method simplifies test writing, allowing developers to quickly add new tests and check for changes. Tools like Turnt make it simple to run these tests and manage outputs, fostering better test coverage with minimal effort.

The 2025 AI Engineer Reading List

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 22:30:35 GMT

The 2025 AI Engineer Reading List features 50 essential papers and models across 10 AI engineering fields, including LLMs and Code Generation. Each section includes five key readings to help engineers stay practical and up-to-date without wasting time on overly familiar topics. The list is curated for those looking to enhance their knowledge and skills in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

HOWTO: Control yourself

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 13:06:36 GMT

The text discusses how to manage self-control by understanding willpower and willenergy. It suggests strategies like avoiding temptation and making tasks easier to conserve willpower. Lifestyle design and habit formation are emphasized for long-term behavior change.

Not every user owns an iPhone

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 12:43:53 GMT

Many software developers use high-end devices like iPhones, but most users have different, often less powerful devices. This disparity can lead to a poor experience for users on lower-end Android phones, which are common and make up a large part of the mobile web audience. Developers should consider these users' realities to create more inclusive and accessible web applications.

Flattening ASTs (and Other Compiler Data Structures)

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 12:12:53 GMT

This text discusses the benefits of flattening abstract syntax trees (ASTs) in compilers by using a contiguous array instead of pointers. By doing this, memory allocation becomes more efficient, and it reduces fragmentation, leading to faster performance. The author demonstrates this with a comparison of a standard interpreter and a flattened version, showing that the flattened interpreter is significantly faster.

Dual N-Back

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 04:00:30 GMT

The study on Dual N-Back training found that both young and older adults improved their working memory after five weeks, with gains lasting 18 months. Although young participants showed some transfer of benefits to untrained tasks, older adults did not. Users reported significant improvements in their working memory but mixed results regarding changes in intelligence test scores.

Operating System in 1,000 Lines - Intro

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 02:47:19 GMT

This book guides you through building a small operating system from scratch in just 1,000 lines of code. You'll learn essential functions like context switching, paging, and file operations while also tackling the challenges of debugging. It's a rewarding journey into OS development, requiring some knowledge of C and UNIX-like systems.

Queues Don't Fix Overload

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 15:33:22 GMT

Queues are often misused to address system overload, but they can lead to bigger problems and system crashes. Instead of just adding queues, it's important to identify bottlenecks and choose between blocking input or shedding load to maintain system reliability. Properly managing these limits can improve performance and prevent failures, making systems more efficient and easier to maintain.

🏆 How I'm advancing my career without neglecting my life. "New year's resolutions" done right.

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 15:26:58 GMT

This guide helps software engineers balance their careers with personal life by reflecting on their values and setting intentional goals. It emphasizes the importance of focusing on different life areas at various times to avoid burnout. By understanding life stages and prioritizing growth, individuals can achieve meaningful career and personal success.

Can we use this index, please? – Why not?

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 22:38:53 GMT

The author shares a story about a query that performed inconsistently due to its complexity and the need for additional filtering on a large dataset. Despite having an index, the query was slow because it required verifying extracted values from a wide table. A revised query approach allowed the database to optimize performance, demonstrating the importance of understanding how query planners work.

The magic of metalinguistic programming The magic of metalinguistic programming

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 17:14:32 GMT

Eric Normand discusses metalinguistic programming, highlighting how using an interpreter can simplify coding by reducing the amount of code needed. This approach allows programmers to switch paradigms, making it easier to handle complex problems. He believes metalinguistic abstraction is a valuable but underexplored topic in programming literature.

Examining Intel's Arrow Lake, at the System Level Examining Intel's Arrow Lake, at the System Level

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:44:26 GMT

Intel's Arrow Lake is a new generation of high-performance desktop CPUs that focuses on maximizing performance over energy efficiency. It features a multi-die architecture with improved bandwidth, but struggles with higher latency compared to AMD’s chips. Arrow Lake has larger cache capacities, yet its L3 cache performance still lags behind AMD, highlighting a need for further improvements in latency and bandwidth.

Basic Awareness in Addition to Deep Understanding

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:43:49 GMT

Software developers need both deep understanding and basic awareness of tools and concepts. While mastery is important, having a general knowledge of various topics can help in problem-solving. Writing about these topics can improve retention and serve as a useful reference in the future.

That's Not an Abstraction, That's Just a Layer of Indirection

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:43:39 GMT

Abstractions in software can simplify complex systems, but not all abstractions are useful; some are just unnecessary layers that complicate code. Good abstractions hide complexity effectively, while bad ones add confusion and performance costs. It's important to evaluate whether an abstraction truly simplifies a system or just adds extra indirection.

About 40 hours (23 min. read)

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:43:21 GMT

Many companies expect employees to work long hours, which can lead to burnout and lower productivity. Simply increasing hours does not guarantee more output, as productivity tends to decline over time. Finding a balance and aligning work with personal productivity cycles can improve performance without overworking.

Here's What the Fight For Your Attention Really Looks Like

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:43:10 GMT

The internet has turned personal enjoyment into a competition, making leisure activities feel like tasks to complete. This shift leads to a constant pressure to quantify our experiences, such as tracking books read or miles run, instead of simply enjoying them. As we seek connection through social media, we often feel more disconnected and overwhelmed by the need to keep up with others.

Use of Time in Distributed Databases (part 2): Use of logical clocks in databases

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:42:19 GMT

This article discusses the use of logical clocks in distributed databases, focusing on three approaches: vector clocks, dependency graph maintenance, and epoch services. Vector clocks are used in some systems to manage updates and conflicts, but their complexity has led others like Cassandra to prefer physical timestamps. Approaches like COPS and Chardonnay show how managing dependencies and using centralized services can improve consistency and performance in distributed transactions.

USB-C head-to-head comparison

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:42:10 GMT

The reign of the Lightning cable is over, and the USB-C era has begun — leaving us wondering what sets one charger apart from another. We do a teardown of Apple's Thunderbolt 4 and its competitors.

I Thought I Found a Bug…

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:41:51 GMT

The reason for the complexity is that COMMAND. COM tries to deal with a case that the file ends with a Ctrl-Z character (which wasn’t the case for me), and if so, the Ctrl-Z needs to be deleted.

Against a universal definition of ‘type’ (pdf)

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:41:37 GMT

The paper by Tomas Petricek argues against having a universal definition of "type," suggesting that this allows the concept to grow and adapt. He believes that requiring a precise definition limits our ability to explore new ideas. Instead, he proposes alternative ways to understand types, drawing on philosophical concepts.

Lock Files Considered Harmful

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:41:25 GMT

This post is about files used by dependency management tools like Yarn, to cache the results of non-deterministic processes (e. g.

Use of Time in Distributed Databases (part 1)

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:41:10 GMT

Distributed systems are characterized by nodes executing concurrently with no shared state and no common clock. Coordination between nodes a...

A worked example of copy-and-patch compilation

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:40:58 GMT

The author is developing a toy compiler to enhance a C compiler by using a technique called copy-and-patch compilation. This involves generating small code snippets that can be inserted into the compiler's operations, allowing for efficient function calls without unnecessary register shuffling. The process includes tokenization, parsing, and generating code that effectively uses registers to perform calculations as demonstrated in a running example.

Andrew Kelley Practical Data Oriented Design (DoD)

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:40:37 GMT

Copyright: Belongs to Handmade Seattle (https ://vimeo.com/649009599). I'm not the owner of the video and hold no copyright. And the video is not monetized. In this video Andrew Kelley (creator of Zig programming language) explains various strategies one can use to reduce memory footprint of programs while also making the program cache friendly which increase throughput. At the end he presents a case study where DoD principles are used in Zig compiler for faster compilation. References: - CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++": youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc - Handmade Seattle: handmade-seattle.com/ - Richard Fabian, 'Data-Oriented Design': dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook/ - IT Hare, 'Infographics: Operation Costs in CPU Clock Cycles': ithare.com/infographics-operation-costs-in-cpu-clock-cycles/ - The Brain Dump, 'Handles are the better pointers': floooh.github.io/2018/06/17/handles-vs-pointers.html

Problem Driven Development

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:40:13 GMT

Problem Driven Development helps senior engineers create effective technical roadmaps by focusing on solving real issues instead of just listing solutions. By identifying and prioritizing the biggest problems, teams can align their efforts and ensure that their work addresses actual needs. Regularly revisiting these problems keeps the roadmap relevant and impactful.

Formal Methods: Just Good Engineering Practice?

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:39:49 GMT

Marc Brooker argues that formal methods are essential for effective software engineering, especially in large-scale and critical systems. He believes that using these methods can reduce rework and the costs associated with changes, ultimately speeding up the development process. While not every type of software benefits equally from formal methods, they are crucial for optimizing complex system designs.

Post-apocalyptic programming

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:38:41 GMT

The text discusses implementing a simple programming language inspired by Forth using an LC-3 assembler. It explains the essential instructions and memory layout needed to create an interpreter that can evaluate and define custom words. The goal is to enable basic operations, such as addition and memory fetching, while allowing users to create their own compound words.

Snapshot Isolation vs Serializability

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:38:20 GMT

In my re:Invent talk on the internals of Aurora DSQL I mentioned that I think snapshot isolation is a sweet spot in the database isolation spectrum for most kinds of applications.

Goodhart's Law Isn't as Useful as You Might Think

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:36:54 GMT

Goodhart's Law is useless. It tells you about a phenomenon, but it doesn't tell you how to solve it. We look at how organisations actually prevent Goodhart's Law, and illustrate this with Amazon's Weekly Business Review as an example.

On btrfs and memory corruption

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:36:36 GMT

My experience with btrfs RAID-1 and a bad stick of RAM on my home NAS, what I did to recover the corrupted data, and my thoughts on detection and prevention of similar incidents.

Chi-Squared From Fundamentals

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:36:26 GMT

The article discusses how to analyze website visit counts to check if page popularity is random or influenced by specific factors. By using statistical methods like the chi-squared test, the author examines the distribution of visits to determine if the patterns observed are due to chance. After fixing their analytics tool, they found that the visit patterns indicated some pages were indeed more popular than others.

The Martial Art of Rationality

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:36:07 GMT

I often use the metaphor that rationality is the martial art of mind. You don’t need huge, bulging muscles to learn martial arts—there’s a tendency t…

Bayesian reasoning

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:35:57 GMT

Bayesian reasoning is an application of probability theory to inductive reasoning (and abductive reasoning).

Utilizing highly synchronized clocks in distributed databases

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:35:46 GMT

This master's thesis explores how using highly synchronized clocks can improve the performance of CockroachDB, a distributed database. By dynamically adjusting uncertainty intervals based on real-time clock synchronization, the researchers achieved significant reductions in transaction latency. Their findings suggest that adopting modern clock synchronization methods can enhance throughput and consistency in distributed systems.

Parkinson's Law: It's Real, So Use It

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:35:32 GMT

Parkinson's Law suggests that work expands to fill the time available for its completion, emphasizing the importance of setting challenging deadlines to improve results. Projects without deadlines tend to take longer and may suffer from scope bloat. By understanding the Iron Triangle of scope, resources, and time, one can manipulate these factors to achieve better outcomes within set timeframes. Deadlines create a sense of urgency, fostering innovation and productivity, and when applied effectively, they lead to tangible progress and improved organizational efficiency.

Property-testing async code in Rust to build reliable distributed systems

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:35:00 GMT

The talk focuses on property-testing asynchronous code in Rust to improve the reliability of distributed systems. It discusses how Zed Industries used Rust's async model to test numerous execution sequences. This approach helps enhance the stability of their collaborative editor based on CRDTs.

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:34:36 GMT

Bayes’s theorem shows how to update a prior probability (like the chance a woman has cancer) when you get new evidence (a positive mammogram). Because cancer is rare, many positive tests are false positives, so a positive result often means a much lower chance of cancer than the test’s sensitivity might suggest. You compute the updated (posterior) probability by combining the prior with the test’s true- and false-positive rates.

Bayes theorem, and making probability intuitive – by 3Blue1Brown

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:34:25 GMT

This video I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now. It another great visual explanation of a statistics topic by the 3Blue1Brown Youtube channel (which I’ve covered before, multiple …

How to Lead a More Rational Life with Bayes' Theorem

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:34:06 GMT

Bayes' theorem is heavily used in machine learning, AI, statistics, and other areas. But it's also a useful tool to lead a more rational life.

Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:32:55 GMT

P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary.

An Introduction To Bayesian Inference

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:32:12 GMT

Posts about bayescraft written by kevinbinz

SemVer Is Not About You Nov 23, 2024

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:31:48 GMT

A popular genre of articles for the past few year has been a SemVer Critique, pointing out various things that are wrong with SemVer itself, or with the way SemVer is being applied, and, customarily, suggesting an alternative versioning scheme. Usually, the focus is either on how SemVer ought to be used, by library authors (nitpicking the definition of a breaking change), or on how SemVer is (not) useful for a library consumer (nitpicking the definition of a breaking change).

Database mocks are just not worth it

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:31:37 GMT

Relying on mocked databases can lead to missed issues that only appear with real data, such as constraint violations and performance problems. Testing with a real database helps catch errors early, especially as your application evolves and features change. Balancing real database tests with mocks allows for thorough testing of both data integrity and higher-level application logic.

A Tricycle of the Mind

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:31:05 GMT

This Christmas, my daughter and I are building a computer together.

Software Design is Knowledge Building

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:30:53 GMT

The story highlights how a software project, initially successful, can become unmanageable when the original developer leaves and others lack the necessary understanding of its design. This situation illustrates the importance of knowledge building in software development, as new teams often struggle without the original context and insights. Ultimately, good software design should focus on creating a shared understanding that helps future teams modify and maintain the system effectively.

The road to Emacs maximalism

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:30:39 GMT

A couple years ago I've started watching David Wilson's channel (also know as SystemCrafters), originally his channel focused heavilly on F# (and that's how I found him), but eventually he started posting more and "GNU slash Emacs" content.

Technical Debt is Entropy In Software

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:30:27 GMT

Technical debt in software is similar to entropy, which inevitably increases over time without outside energy. This complexity arises from poorly designed software and dense dependency graphs, leading to maintenance challenges and increased risks. To move from custom software to a more commoditized state, we need to simplify and reduce this complexity.

On Ada's Dependent Types, and its Types as a Whole

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:30:18 GMT

Ada's dependent types allow the creation of types that rely on concrete values, such as arrays whose lengths are determined at runtime. This feature helps avoid dynamic memory allocation while maintaining good scoping practices. The language's design focuses on modeling the intended use of types, making it unique compared to more formalized programming languages.

Intel's $475 million error: the silicon behind the Pentium division bug

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:30:08 GMT

The Pentium chip had a rare bug in its floating-point division algorithm, causing inaccuracies in certain calculations. This issue stemmed from a faulty lookup table in the chip's design, which led to some values being inaccessible. Despite the bug being extremely rare, it resulted in significant financial losses for Intel.

Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC - by Brian Potter Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:29:52 GMT

Morris Chang played a key role in establishing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which became the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer. Despite initial skepticism and challenges, he convinced Taiwan's leadership to support his vision for a reliable contract semiconductor fabrication service. TSMC's success was unexpected at the time, but it has shaped the semiconductor industry significantly.

Implementing and Verifying "Static Program Analysis" in Agda, Part 1: Lattices

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:29:38 GMT

The text discusses how to use lattices in static program analysis, focusing on the order of signs like positive and negative. It explains that we can combine simpler signs to create a more complex structure while maximizing specificity. The goal is to define operations that help analyze and compare the signs of program variables effectively.

Reads causing writes in Postgres

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:29:26 GMT

The article explains how certain read-only operations in Postgres can lead to updates, specifically through mechanisms like hint bits and page pruning. It describes how multiple versions of a row can exist in a transaction, potentially showing different data upon repeated reads, even without modifications by the transaction itself. The piece also details how updates and deletions create new row versions while leaving older ones, which can lead to complexities in data visibility and storage management.

Server-Sent Events (SSE) Are Underrated

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:29:11 GMT

Server-Sent Events (SSE) are a simple way for servers to send updates to clients over HTTP, unlike WebSockets which allow two-way communication. SSE is efficient and works well with existing web infrastructure, making it suitable for real-time applications like news feeds and stock tickers. Despite being less popular than WebSockets, SSE offers clear advantages in specific use cases where unidirectional data flow is sufficient.

seconds since the Epoch

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:28:54 GMT

POSIX time, often called Unix time, is not simply the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, as it ignores leap seconds that adjust for Earth's rotation. This discrepancy can lead to errors in systems that rely on precise timekeeping, especially in distributed applications. There are calls to eliminate leap seconds by 2035 to simplify time calculations and reduce potential bugs.

Twelve Virtues of Rationality

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:28:38 GMT

The "Twelve Virtues of Rationality" by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky emphasizes the importance of curiosity, relinquishing false beliefs, and being open to evidence. It encourages a mindset of humility and simplicity in thought, while promoting honest argument and empirical understanding. The key is to remain flexible in your beliefs and strive for clarity and precision in your reasoning.

Deliver the Bare Minimum

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:28:08 GMT

The author advocates for simplicity in software development, emphasizing the importance of delivering only what is necessary. They warn against over-engineering, using a hypothetical example to illustrate how adding extra features can waste time and create complications. The key message is to keep things as simple as possible, only adding complexity when absolutely needed.

On long term software development: caring (enough) about the future

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:27:34 GMT

Long-term software development requires careful management of dependencies and complexity to ensure the software remains maintainable over the years. Keeping the code simple, well-documented, and limiting the number of dependencies can help prevent issues down the line. A stable team and regular refactoring are also crucial for sustaining software quality over time.

How bloom filters made SQLite 10x faster

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:27:19 GMT

Researchers improved SQLite's performance for analytical queries by implementing Bloom filters, making it 7x-10x faster. They focused on optimizing join operations, which are usually slow in SQLite due to its use of Nested Loop joins. The changes have already been incorporated into SQLite version 3.38.0, benefiting users with faster query execution.

Ideas from "A Philosophy of Software Design"

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:27:01 GMT

The author explains that software complexity builds up over time, often due to duplicated logic and poor exception handling. By centralizing related code and reducing the number of exceptions, developers can simplify their systems and make maintenance easier. Techniques like exception aggregation and masking help manage complexity and improve code clarity.

Nix is a build system

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:26:46 GMT

Nix is a unique build system that offers composability, allowing build recipes to import from one another. Unlike traditional tools like Make, which can lead to errors when dependencies are missing, Nix can efficiently manage dependencies through its functional definitions. This makes Nix more than just a package manager; it addresses the limitations of other build tools.

The Canva outage: another tale of saturation and resilience

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:25:48 GMT

Canva experienced a major outage due to an overload of requests after clients downloaded a new version, which led to 1.5 million requests per second overwhelming their API Gateway. Automated systems and performance issues compounded the problem, making it difficult for the system to recover. The engineers adapted by manually increasing capacity and gradually restoring traffic to stabilize the service.

UIs Should Be Versioned, Just Like We Version APIs

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:25:21 GMT

User interfaces (UIs) should have versioning like application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide stability for users. Constant changes to UIs disrupt users' skills and create unnecessary frustration, unlike the stable designs of everyday tools. The tech industry often neglects the impact of these changes on people, prioritizing profit over user experience.

Notes From Figma II: Engineering Learnings

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:23:55 GMT

Figma faced challenges with tech debt and out-of-memory issues while racing to stay ahead of competitors. The company fostered a culture of side projects that encouraged creativity and exploration, leading to innovative features. Effective communication and alignment within teams were crucial to successfully navigate complex engineering challenges.

Turing Machines

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:21:51 GMT

A Turing machine is a theoretical device that can compute anything computable, forming the basis for modern computers. The concept of "Turing complete" describes programming languages that can simulate a Turing machine. This post explains Turing machines, their relation to modern computers, and offers a way to write and run your own Turing machine programs.

Pragmatic Category Theory | Part 1: Semigroup Intro

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:21:24 GMT

Dmitrii Kovanikov aims to make functional programming concepts, like semigroups, more accessible and useful for real-world applications. A semigroup is a simple mathematical structure that involves appending values of the same type in an associative manner. Through a series of blog posts, Kovanikov will explore various practical uses of semigroups in programming, demonstrating their value beyond just theoretical concepts.

Energy Cheat Sheet - by Brian Potter - Construction Physics Energy Cheat Sheet

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:21:03 GMT

The author discusses the importance of energy infrastructure for decarbonizing the US and shares a cheat sheet to understand energy better. Most of the country's energy still comes from burning hydrocarbons, despite efforts to increase renewable sources. A significant amount of energy is wasted, highlighting the need for improved efficiency and better ways to move and store energy.

An Introduction to Residuality Theory - Barry O'Reilly - CPH DevFest 2024

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:20:28 GMT

Barry O'Reilly discusses Residuality Theory in software architecture, focusing on managing complexity and uncertainty in system design. He emphasizes the importance of stress-testing architectures to ensure their resilience and adaptability. The goal is to create robust systems that can effectively handle changes and challenges in their environment.

Pushing AMD’s Infinity Fabric to its Limits Pushing AMD’s Infinity Fabric to its Limits

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:19:56 GMT

The article discusses how AMD's Infinity Fabric impacts latency and bandwidth when running multiple applications on their processors. Testing shows that increasing bandwidth demands can significantly raise latency, but isolating bandwidth-hungry tasks to different cores can help control latency. AMD's recent Zen 5 architecture appears to improve performance for latency-sensitive applications, even under heavy load.

"Performance Matters" by Emery Berger

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:19:36 GMT

The talk "Performance Matters" by Emery Berger discusses the challenges of improving computer program performance. It highlights how optimizations can sometimes lead to slower execution times due to factors like cache usage and program layout. The speaker emphasizes the importance of analyzing performance to make effective improvements.

(Mostly) Deterministic Simulation Testing in Go

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:19:21 GMT

The article discusses deterministic simulation testing (DST) in Go, which helps find hard-to-reproduce bugs earlier in development. The author explains how they created a custom concurrency model to run Go programs on a single OS thread, using WebAssembly to achieve more reliable execution. Despite some limitations, this approach successfully uncovered several bugs and shows promise for improving software reliability in Go applications.

(1) How We Built a Self-Healing System to Survive a Terrifying Concurrency Bug At Netflix How We Built a Self-Healing System to Survive a Terrifying Concurrency Bug At Netflix

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:18:57 GMT

A concurrency bug at Netflix caused CPUs to fail rapidly, leaving the team with no immediate fix until Monday. To survive the weekend, they created a self-healing system that randomly terminated and replaced instances to maintain capacity. This unconventional solution allowed the team to focus on their well-being while waiting for the client team to deploy a proper fix.

How We Got the Lithium-Ion Battery - by Brian Potter How We Got the Lithium-ion Battery

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:18:44 GMT

The lithium-ion battery was developed over several decades through the contributions of many researchers worldwide. Key advancements included the discovery of suitable materials for the battery's anode and cathode, leading to practical designs. Continuous improvements in chemistry and manufacturing have made these batteries more efficient and affordable.

Your lying virtual eyes

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:18:33 GMT

The article discusses how software operators interact with complex systems through representations, which can lead to misunderstandings and accidents. It highlights incidents in aviation where sensor failures caused catastrophic outcomes, emphasizing that both humans and automated systems struggle with conflicting signals. The author suggests that instead of focusing solely on fail-safe designs, we should prioritize helping operators make sense of unclear input signals during critical situations.

Telling Stories in Athenian Law

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:17:19 GMT

Ask HN: How do you improve your writing?

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 21:12:40 GMT

The author is looking for advice on how to improve their writing after starting a blog on Substack. They have moved from writing Haikus to longer posts that blend poetry and personal experiences. They seek suggestions for places to get feedback on their work.

I Don’t Use Monads

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 14:32:40 GMT

Joe Marshall, a "mostly functional" programmer, avoids using monads because they complicate code and mimic imperative styles that he finds inferior. He prefers languages like Lisp, which already have features like `progn` and `setf` that handle side effects without needing monads. Marshall believes that while monads are popular in functional programming, they are not always necessary or idiomatic in the languages he uses.

Feel, don't think

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:56:10 GMT

The author shares their journey of returning to music while recovering from illness, discovering the importance of feeling over thinking in both music and writing. They found a teacher who helped them focus on expression and rhythm, leading to breakthroughs in their playing. This approach also transformed their writing, allowing them to connect more deeply with their emotions and creativity.

Time Tracking in Obsidian

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:14:46 GMT

The author shares how they manage their time using Obsidian instead of a paper planner. They create a weekly plan by allocating hours to different projects and tasks, ensuring at least 50% of their time is dedicated to core projects. The setup includes using a Pomodoro Timer to log time spent on tasks and comparing actual time to their planned estimates.

Common Misconceptions about Compilers

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 06:44:29 GMT

This article discusses common misconceptions about mainstream compilers like LLVM and GCC, highlighting that they often don't produce optimal code and focus mainly on running time. It points out that while compilers can be fast, they may not optimize for certain factors like data locality and that separate compilation may not always be beneficial. Overall, it emphasizes the complexity of compiler design and the practical reasons for using interpreters despite the performance advantages of compiled code.

Networking For People Who Don't Network

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 06:06:06 GMT

Networking can be easy and rewarding by following simple habits, much like working out. Building strong connections with coworkers is key, as they are the most accessible and meaningful part of your network. To maintain relationships, reach out regularly, meet in person, and share personal details to foster a genuine connection.

Confusing or misunderstood topics in systems programming: Part 0

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 05:19:05 GMT

The author discusses confusing topics in Linux systems programming, starting with processes, which are fundamental for understanding other concepts. They aim to simplify these topics for beginners and self-taught developers who might find them challenging. Future posts will cover related subjects like pipes, threads, and asynchronous programming.

GitHub - facundoolano/software-papers: 📚 A curated list of papers for Software Engineers

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 01:10:53 GMT

The text is a curated list of important papers for software engineers, compiled by the author on GitHub. It includes influential works by notable figures like Dijkstra, Knuth, and Turing, spanning various topics in computer science. This resource serves as a valuable reference for understanding key concepts and advancements in software engineering.

Implementing Raft: Part 0 - Introduction

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 23:12:06 GMT

This post introduces the Raft distributed consensus algorithm and outlines a series of articles on its implementation in Go. Raft helps multiple servers work together reliably, ensuring that they can recover from failures without losing data. The series will cover key topics such as elections, log replication, and building a key/value database.

Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? - by Scott Alexander Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases?

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 16:27:43 GMT

Ozempic and other GLP-1 receptor agonists are approved for treating diabetes and obesity, but they also show promise for various addictions and even conditions like dementia. These drugs work by controlling hunger and cravings through specific pathways in the brain, making them seem almost magical in their effects. Researchers are exploring how these medications might influence overall health and weight management beyond their original purposes.

OhHelloAna.blog

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 01:01:00 GMT

The blog OhHelloAna shares a collection of bookmarks related to tech and web development, along with other interesting topics. It features resources on CSS, accessibility, and web design, as well as articles on personal growth and societal issues. The author aims to share valuable insights and findings that they have come across.

Lou's Pseudo 3d Page

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 06:40:56 GMT

The text explains how to create a pseudo-3D road effect in video games by manipulating lines and segments. It discusses techniques for drawing curves and applying textures to give the illusion of depth. The method involves adjusting the position and scaling of each line to simulate movement and perspective.

Distributed Erlang

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 04:12:06 GMT

The cool thing is that all three of these things are both built into the language/runtime itself, but they're also all more or less "emergent" properties of the underlying design choices that were made when the language was created.

A CAP tradeoff in the wild

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:49:56 GMT

The CAP theorem states that in a networked system, you can't have both safety (correct responses) and liveness (eventual responses) when partitions occur. A bug in Kubernetes illustrates this tradeoff, where two components can't communicate due to a network issue, leading to inconsistent data. Developers struggle to find a solution that maintains both properties, highlighting the challenges of distributed systems.

In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:43:03 GMT

Raft is a consensus algorithm that improves understandability by clearly separating key elements like leader election and log replication. A study found that students found Raft much easier to grasp than another algorithm called Paxos. Raft uses a strong leader to manage the log, which simplifies the process and ensures all servers maintain consistent logs.

Distributed Systems Horror Stories: Kubernetes Deep Health Checks

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:40:59 GMT

The blog post discusses a mistake in distributed systems that can lead to cascading failure, specifically focusing on Kubernetes deep health checks. Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that allows developers to configure and run applications without needing to be networking experts. The post explains the concept of liveness, readiness, and startup probes in Kubernetes and zooms in on readiness probes for HTTP-based applications. It highlights the potential for cascading failure when a deep readiness check is implemented and offers suggestions for improving the handling of dependencies and failures in distributed systems.

Lectures on Relational Algebra

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:40:02 GMT

Modern Hardware for Future Databases

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:38:35 GMT

The future of databases may see exciting changes, but access to advanced hardware remains uncertain. Technologies like RDMA and SmartNICs promise to improve database performance, yet many of these innovations are not available in the cloud for general use. Without accessible hardware, significant advancements in database capabilities may be limited.

Dependent Types and the Art of HTTP Headers

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:38:03 GMT

The article explores how to use dependent types in Idris to ensure that HTTP header names are valid at compile time. It demonstrates creating types that represent conditions, like even numbers, and shows how to enforce these conditions automatically. The author aims to combine type safety with practical applications, like representing header names, to avoid errors in code.

The Structure of a Worldview - by Regan The Structure of a Worldview

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:37:46 GMT

The essay explores how worldviews are structured and how they influence beliefs and behaviors. It compares worldviews to personality traits, suggesting that both exist in a high-dimensional space with core values that shape individual perspectives. Understanding these structures could help explain the differences among groups and guide further research on worldviews.

On the Relationship Between Static Analysis and Type Theory

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:37:23 GMT

Type systems and static analyses are closely related; one view sees type systems as a form of static analysis, while another sees them as a foundation for building static analyses. Types can represent program properties or define valid programs, which can lead to confusion in understanding their role. A unified perspective on type theory and static analysis can reveal valuable insights across different domains.

The disaggregated write-ahead log

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:35:26 GMT

The traditional approach to replicated systems involves co-locating the write-ahead log (WAL) on nodes maintaining state, often using consensus protocols like Paxos or Raft. Google's Colossus stores logs and state for internal systems and cloud services like Bigtable and Spanner. AWS developed a transactional journal primitive for multi-zone replicated services like DynamoDB and Amazon S3. Other companies like Meta and Fauna are exploring disaggregated log setups for improved management and scalability. The concept of a hypothetical S2, a serverless API for logs, could revolutionize distributed systems by simplifying complex processes and enabling innovative design solutions.

A Roadmap to Security Game Testing: Finding Exploits in Video Games

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:35:15 GMT

This guide explains how to find exploits in the video game Sword of Convallaria for educational purposes. It covers techniques for extracting game data, analyzing network protocols, and conducting security testing. The author encourages readers to improve their skills in identifying vulnerabilities to help create a more secure gaming environment.

Model checking safety of Ben-Or's Byzantine consensus with Apalache

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:33:23 GMT

The text discusses using the Apalache model checker to verify the safety of Ben-Or’s Byzantine consensus algorithm. It highlights the importance of checking message types and responses from both correct and faulty processes, while also emphasizing the need for careful definitions of process behaviors. The method proves effective in finding execution examples and checking invariants quickly, even in the presence of faults.

A Map of Sync

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:33:15 GMT

The local-first and sync space is complex, with various platforms and technologies making it hard to understand their relationships. Convex is working on improving its sync engine for better offline support and responsiveness. This document categorizes sync platforms across different dimensions to clarify their functionalities and trade-offs.

Optimizers: The Low-Key MVP

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:32:43 GMT

The query optimizer is crucial for improving the performance of analytical databases like DuckDB. It automatically modifies inefficient query plans to make them much faster, especially as data changes over time. By using optimization rules, DuckDB can significantly enhance query performance, often by a factor of ten.

How Public Key Cryptography Really Works | Quanta Magazine

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:32:23 GMT

Public key cryptography uses two keys: a public key that anyone can access and a private key that remains secret. This system allows messages to be securely scrambled and unscrambled, ensuring that only the intended recipient can read them. While advances in technology like quantum computers pose threats to this method, new solutions are being developed to keep information secure.

Implementing Type Systems as Macros

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:30:41 GMT

The article explains how to implement type systems using macros in Racket, focusing on creating macros that check and erase type information during function definitions and calls. It introduces key macros like `checked-λ` and `checked-app`, which ensure type consistency and help produce compile-time errors for type mismatches. Additionally, it describes supporting functions that aid in managing type information while maintaining the structure of the code.

Principles of Dependent Type Theory

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:27:08 GMT

Data Replication Design Spectrum

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:23:25 GMT

This post analyzes different data replication algorithms, focusing on their efficiency, availability, and latency. It compares classic and optimized versions of these algorithms, highlighting trade-offs like read throughput and failure tolerance. Ultimately, it shows that reconfiguration-based algorithms can be more cost-effective than quorum-based methods for certain use cases.

PSA: Most databases do not do checksums by default

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:22:48 GMT

Most databases, including SQLite and Postgres, do not have checksums enabled by default, which can lead to serious data issues. A checksum can help detect problems like single bit flips that can corrupt data without notice. Some databases that do enable checksums by default include TigerBeetle, FoundationDB, and MySQL with InnoDB.

Extending MVCC to be serializable, in TLA+

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:21:35 GMT

This blog post discusses how to extend multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) to achieve serializability, addressing its limitations in snapshot isolation. The author introduces a new module in TLA+ that tracks additional transaction dependencies to prevent non-serializable histories. By incorporating new abort mechanisms, the modified MVCC ensures consistent transaction execution while maintaining serializability.

CAP is Good, Actually

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:21:22 GMT

The CAP theorem states that a distributed system cannot achieve consistency, availability, and tolerance to network partitions all at once. It is often misunderstood, leading to confusion in its application to real-world systems. However, CAP is valuable as it helps clarify design constraints and guides decision-making in distributed computing.

lorentz app

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:19:44 GMT

The Lorentz app focuses on making health checks for systems easier and more effective. It covers various types of health checks, including those for processes, containers, and load balancers. The app aims to improve health interpretation and ensure better system performance.

The Prequel to SQL is SEQUEL

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:19:02 GMT

The paper "SEQUEL: A Structured English Query Language" by Don Chamberlin and Ray Boyce is the precursor to SQL and highlights the early ideas of data-processing. Although it was groundbreaking for its time, the paper shows some outdated concepts and grammar issues when read in 2024. Despite these quirks, the foundational ideas in SEQUEL were remarkably advanced and influenced the development of modern SQL.

Viewstamped Replication Revisited

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:18:07 GMT

The text discusses a protocol for building replicated systems that can tolerate failures and reconfigurations without needing disk writes during client requests or view changes. The protocol ensures recovery from failures and allows nodes to rejoin the group, emphasizing the importance of correct recovery through a combination of view change and recovery protocols. It also highlights the need for proper timing in initiating view changes to avoid unnecessary disruptions and ensure the system's continued functionality.

Transaction Isolation in Postgres, explained

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:16:29 GMT

Transaction isolation in Postgres helps manage how multiple transactions interact with each other. It has different levels, from "Read Uncommitted" to "Serializable," which determine how anomalies like dirty reads and phantom reads are handled. Postgres uses a method called MVCC to avoid locking issues, but higher isolation levels can lead to transaction rollbacks in highly concurrent situations.

Two-phase commit and beyond

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:16:07 GMT

The post discusses the two-phase commit protocol and its challenges in distributed systems, particularly focusing on modeling it with TLA+. It highlights issues like consistency and progress, especially when failures occur, and illustrates the FLP impossibility result, which shows that consensus cannot be achieved under certain conditions. The introduction of a Backup Transaction Manager (BTM) aims to address some of these issues, but it still faces challenges in maintaining consistency when resource managers fail.

The Soul of an Old Machine: Revisiting the von Neumann Architecture

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:13:07 GMT

The von Neumann architecture, crucial in modern computing, allows machines to store both data and instructions in the same memory. This design enables general-purpose computing, making it possible for computers to perform a wide range of tasks without physical rewiring. Despite advancements, challenges like memory latency and round-off errors in floating-point arithmetic continue to affect computing today.

SQLite Index Visualization: Search

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 22:11:56 GMT

SQLite uses binary search to quickly find values in an index. When querying, it reads pages and compares cell values, resulting in fewer comparisons than the worst-case scenario. Understanding how SQLite searches indexes helps us see how it manages data efficiently.

Using Nix to Try Tools

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 21:38:03 GMT

Achilleas uses curl with hyperfine to benchmark web performance, but installing hyperfine globally can be inconvenient. Instead, Nix allows us to run hyperfine without global installation by creating a temporary environment. This approach is efficient and demonstrates the benefits of using Nix for quick experiments.

Building a distributed log using S3 (under 150 lines of Go)

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 21:37:40 GMT

The article explains how to create a durable and scalable distributed log using Amazon S3, emphasizing the benefits of using cloud storage over traditional disk systems. It covers key concepts like appending records, ensuring unique identifiers for each entry, and implementing checksums for data integrity. The project is open-source and invites contributions from readers.

Disillusioning the Magic of the fork System Call Disillusioning the Magic of the fork System Call

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 20:59:33 GMT

The fork system call in Unix-like operating systems creates a child process that is a copy of the parent process. After the fork, the parent receives the child's process ID, while the child gets a return value of zero, allowing them to follow different execution paths. The article explains how this process works at a low level, including the use of registers and kernel functions.

Quake 3 Source Code Review: Network Model (Part 3 of 5) >>

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 20:59:21 GMT

The Quake III network model is designed for fast-paced gameplay, using UDP/IP for communication to minimize latency and avoid sending old information. It features a system that efficiently manages game state updates by using snapshots and deltas, allowing for both full and partial updates depending on what information is available. The server keeps track of the last 32 game states for each client, ensuring that updates are streamlined and reliable despite potential packet loss.

Analytics-Optimized Concurrent Transactions

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 16:59:01 GMT

DuckDB uses innovative concurrency control techniques that allow multiple transactions to operate simultaneously without locking data, making it efficient for analytical workloads. It employs Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) and Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) to ensure data consistency and durability. This approach enables DuckDB to handle large-scale updates effectively while maintaining transactional guarantees.

Playground Wisdom: Threads Beat Async/Await

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 14:31:52 GMT

The author believes that async/await is not the best solution for concurrency in programming languages and suggests that threads offer a better alternative. While async/await has driven innovation and made concurrent programming more accessible, it also introduces complexity that can complicate development. Ultimately, the author argues for a return to using threads for clearer and more effective concurrency.

An Overview of Distributed PostgreSQL Architectures

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 14:29:03 GMT

Distributed PostgreSQL architectures aim to improve the availability and durability of databases while addressing the operational challenges of single-machine setups. However, these architectures often come with trade-offs in performance and complexity, particularly related to latency and consistency. Overall, while distributed systems provide scalability, they may also lead to slower responses and require careful consideration of workload suitability.

Understanding Round Robin DNS - by Zsolt Ero Understanding Round Robin DNS

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 14:01:29 GMT

Round Robin DNS allows multiple servers to share the load for a single subdomain, helping to automatically detect offline servers. Browsers and Cloudflare choose which server to connect to based on various methods, with browsers generally performing better in detecting the closest server. However, Cloudflare struggles with offline server detection, leading to potential service issues for users.

Herding elephants: Lessons learned from sharding Postgres at Notion

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:57:24 GMT

Notion successfully improved its application performance by sharding its PostgreSQL database into 480 logical shards across 32 physical databases. The sharding process involved careful planning on which data to partition and how to manage it effectively to maintain data integrity and avoid inconsistencies. They implemented a custom routing scheme from their application to ensure efficient data access during the migration.

Chapter on TLA+ - Software Specification Methods

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:38:06 GMT

A Brief Introduction to Linear Types

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:37:10 GMT

The article discusses how linear type systems can handle exceptions and error management. It explains the challenges of ensuring linear types are used correctly without resource leaks when exceptions occur. The author suggests using affine types, which allow for safer exception handling by automatically managing resource cleanup.

Checking linearizability in Go

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:36:30 GMT

The article discusses how to check for linearizability in Go using the Porcupine tool, which helps verify strict consistency in distributed systems. It provides examples of modeling a distributed register and a key-value store, illustrating how to define operations and validate their histories. The author emphasizes that while Porcupine cannot prove linearizability, it can help build confidence in the system's behavior.

Real-Time Model Checking is Really Simple

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:34:42 GMT

What To Use Instead of PGP

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:34:30 GMT

The author argues that PGP is outdated and often misused, suggesting that there are better alternatives for secure communication. Tools like Sigstore for code signing and Signal for messaging are recommended instead, as they provide stronger cryptographic practices. Overall, the message is clear: people should move away from using PGP due to its flaws and seek modern solutions.

How LLMs work

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:34:22 GMT

A large language model (LLM) is a type of neural network that predicts the next piece of text in a sequence by outputting probabilities for possible tokens. It uses processes like attention mechanisms and feed-forward networks to determine which tokens to focus on and how to generate the next token. The model's structure allows it to learn complex relationships and improve its predictions based on the context of previous tokens.

LevelDB Explained - How to Analyze the Time Complexity of SkipLists?

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:34:13 GMT

The article explains how to analyze the time complexity of skip lists used in LevelDB. It breaks down the performance of search, insertion, and deletion operations, showing that the average complexity can be comparable to balanced trees. The author also provides benchmark tests to evaluate the performance of skip lists.

githublog/2024/11/1/sending-an-ethernet-packet.md at main · francisrstokes/githublog · GitHub

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:33:26 GMT

The blog post describes the author's experience of sending their first ethernet packet while debugging issues with the W5100 chip. They faced challenges in communication due to incorrect command sequences and timing, which resulted in unexpected outcomes. Ultimately, through exploration and adjustments, they successfully managed to send a packet.

Why I Will Always Be Angry About Software Engineering

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:33:05 GMT

The author expresses deep frustration with the waste and incompetence in the software engineering field, feeling that many talented individuals are stuck in unfulfilling jobs. After leaving a corporate position, they started a consultancy to make a meaningful impact and challenge the flawed systems in place. The author believes that anger about poor practices in software engineering—and in other fields—can drive positive change.

One thought on “Reading the Generalized Isolation Level Definitions paper with Alloy”

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:32:54 GMT

My last few blog posts have been about how I used TLA+ to gain a better understanding of database transaction consistency models. This post will be in the same spirit, but I’ll be using a dif…

Exploring Postgres's arena allocator by writing an HTTP server from scratch

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:32:42 GMT

The text discusses creating an HTTP server using PostgreSQL's memory management features. It explains how to handle connections, allocate memory within a specific context, and send responses to clients. The server is designed to process a single connection at a time, simplifying memory management and error handling.

Data Modeling with Sums and Products

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:32:30 GMT

Sums and products are data structures used in programming, where products represent "and data" and sums represent "or data." They are essential in functional programming and can be implemented in various languages like Java, Python, and Haskell. These constructs help organize complex data, making it easier to manage and use in applications.

Mitigation

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 05:09:11 GMT

Mitigation is the process of taking actions to reduce a risk, which usually means lowering the likelihood of an event or minimizing its impact. It's important to consider both aspects when brainstorming solutions to ensure a comprehensive approach. Defense in Depth involves applying multiple mitigations to effectively manage risk.

An introduction to thinking about risk

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 04:43:02 GMT

Jacob Kaplan-Moss explores the concept of risk in his introduction to a new series, aiming to help readers understand and analyze risk more effectively. He explains that risk involves both potential benefits and potential losses, and can be broken down into likelihood and impact. The series will provide tools and frameworks for discussing risk clearly, making it accessible for those outside specialized fields.

Why is it so hard to buy things that work well?

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:22:06 GMT

It is often hard to find products that work well because companies focus more on efficiency and marketing than on creating quality. Many firms make decisions without serious technical consideration, leading to a lack of pressure to improve their products. This problem exists across various industries, resulting in inefficiencies and a tendency to prioritize profit over product quality.

Bypassing regulatory locks, Faraday cages and upgrading your hearing

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 16:23:33 GMT

Rithwik Jayasimha and his dad found a way to unlock the Hearing Aid feature on AirPods Pro 2 for their hard-of-hearing grandma, despite Apple's regional restrictions. They built a Faraday cage and used clever techniques to spoof the device's location to make it appear as if it was in the U.S. Now, they plan to help others in Bengaluru access this feature as well.

The Importance of Saying "Oops"

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 13:35:21 GMT

Admitting to big mistakes can lead to significant improvements in life. Instead of making small concessions and prolonging the struggle, it's better to acknowledge a fundamental problem all at once. This approach can help avoid repeating errors and promote faster growth.

The Monads Hurt My Head — But Not Anymore

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 05:11:53 GMT

John Baez shares his experiences discussing monads with his friend Bill Schmitt, realizing he has become less intimidated by the topic. Monads are mathematical structures that help study algebraic concepts, and they can be described in various ways. Baez expresses his eagerness to understand more about different aspects of monad theory that once confused him.

one big choice shapes a hundred more

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 15:10:07 GMT

Derek Sivers reflects on a life-changing choice when he sees a beautiful house but realizes it doesn't align with his desire for adventure. Instead of settling down, he prefers to explore the world and make choices that lead to new experiences. He emphasizes that one big decision can influence many smaller ones, encouraging us to think about the long-term implications of our choices.

How to Grow Professional Relationships

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:17:24 GMT

The TJS Collaboration Model describes a spectrum of professional relationships, moving from competition to collaboration. Successful collaboration occurs when individuals work together on the same project, fostering trust and synergy. To enhance relationships, it's important to adopt an abundance mindset and actively support each other's goals.

The Art of Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Sighted World

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:57:42 GMT

The author argues that society often prioritizes short-term gains, like taking immediate money, instead of considering long-term benefits, such as investing in lasting assets. This short-sightedness leads to poor decisions in areas like architecture and technology. The proposal is to start thinking about the future by making decisions that will benefit people 100 years from now.

Local Optimizations Don't Lead to Global Optimums

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 14:39:29 GMT

Local optimizations in systems often lead to increased costs and inefficiencies without realigning the entire system. As technology automates tasks, it can create unexpected pressures, making it harder to maintain balance and adaptability. Ultimately, systems need to be continuously adjusted to handle disruptions, rather than relying solely on automation for improvement.

Read, Write, Execute

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 07:29:29 GMT

The paper "Fast Flexible Paxos" introduces a new approach to improve state machine replication protocols by combining techniques from Fast Paxos and Flexible Paxos. This method allows operations to be replicated to fewer servers while maintaining performance and consistency. The authors believe that Fast Flexible Paxos could enhance the efficiency of distributed systems without increasing the burden on server resources.

Sensibly Default

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 07:20:02 GMT

The author expresses frustration with GraphQL's security flaws, particularly its lack of sensible defaults that can lead to vulnerabilities. Many GraphQL implementations enable risky features like schema introspection by default, which can expose sensitive information. The author argues for better default configurations to enhance security and protect users from potential attacks.

Compilers: Incrementally and Extensibly

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 07:16:13 GMT

The course teaches students to build a real compiler that translates a high-level language into x86-64 machine code using OCaml. It emphasizes incremental development, allowing students to gradually extend their compiler while reusing previous work. The approach includes modern software practices like test-driven development and version control.

Predictive Scaling in MongoDB Atlas, an Experiment

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 07:11:39 GMT

MongoDB experimented with predictive scaling in their Atlas cloud service to better anticipate customer demand and automatically adjust server sizes. This aims to save customers money and reduce carbon emissions by optimizing resource use. The results showed that predictive scaling could significantly improve CPU utilization compared to the existing reactive method.

How Good Are American Roads?

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:59:41 GMT

American interstate roads are generally high-quality, but urban roads often suffer from poor conditions. While the U.S. ranks well in international comparisons, many non-interstate roads are in worse shape compared to those in Europe. Overall, major cities in the U.S. tend to have significant road quality issues, especially in California.

Hey, wait – is employee performance really Gaussian distributed??

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 06:37:36 GMT

Employee performance is likely Pareto-distributed rather than Gaussian, meaning a small number of employees make a significant impact while many perform below expectations. This insight suggests that traditional performance management practices, which often rely on the assumption of a bell curve, may be flawed and can unjustly penalize competent workers. Companies should reconsider how they evaluate performance and hiring, focusing on individual circumstances rather than rigid statistical norms.

𝔇𝔢𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔠 𝔰𝔦𝔪𝔲𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔤

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 05:26:34 GMT

The text discusses a simulation testing framework for a Paxos implementation, which allows for the reproduction of bugs by using a seeded random number generator. It describes how the simulator generates actions, such as sending messages or crashing replicas, and tracks the state of the system. The goal is to ensure that the replicas make consistent decisions, even under various failure scenarios.

Pessimistic or Optimistic Concurrency Control? Lessons Learned from Real-World Customer Scenarios

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 22:53:15 GMT

Choosing between Pessimistic Concurrency Control (PCC) and Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC) is challenging for database design. Real-world customer experiences showed that PCC provides more stable and predictable performance than OCC, which can lead to unexpected rollbacks and complexities. As a result, many customers now prefer PCC for its reliability and ease of use.

Category Theory in Programming

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 05:56:42 GMT

The tutorial "Category Theory in Programming" introduces Racket programmers to the mathematical concepts of category theory and how they relate to programming. It aims to help programmers think differently about their work by using abstract ideas from category theory to improve problem-solving and system design. By exploring these concepts, readers can gain new insights and enhance their programming skills.

Crash Course on Notation in Programming Language Theory

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 05:56:21 GMT

This blog post by Jeremy Siek introduces the notation used in programming language theory to help readers understand his other writings. It explains how relations and rules define the syntax and semantics of programming languages, using examples like integer arithmetic. The post concludes by highlighting the importance of relations in defining type systems and the challenges of applying these rules to compile expressions.

7 Databases in 7 Weeks for 2025

Sat, 07 Dec 2024 05:41:28 GMT

The article suggests spending a week learning about seven different databases that are worth exploring in 2025. These databases include PostgreSQL, SQLite, DuckDB, ClickHouse, FoundationDB, TigerBeetle, and CockroachDB, each with unique features and use cases. The goal is to help readers understand various database technologies to solve different problems effectively.

How to Study Mathematics

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:23:09 GMT

To study mathematics effectively, start by understanding definitions, theorems, and their relationships. Focus on the logical structure of theorems and practice applying them to problems. Developing technique is key, as it helps you solve complex problems and gain a deeper understanding of the subject.

The Meditation on Curiosity

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 01:12:49 GMT

Curiosity is essential for rational thinking and helps us question our beliefs honestly. Instead of just fulfilling a duty to investigate, we should seek genuine interest in our inquiries and be open to changing our views. True curiosity ignites a desire to learn and explore, guiding our thoughts and actions in a meaningful way.

Evolving my ergonomic setup (or, my laptop with extra steps)

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 22:24:21 GMT

Nicole designed multiple ergonomic prototypes to make using her laptop more comfortable. Her latest setup is smaller, lighter, and easier to travel with, helping reduce arm and hand pain. She enjoys creating these tools in her workshop and is willing to help others who need similar solutions.

SQLite Index Visualization: Structure

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 01:35:49 GMT

The article explains how SQLite uses a B-Tree structure to store indexes, consisting of Pages and Cells that hold index data. It describes different examples of index creation, including single-column and multi-column indexes, illustrating how data is organized within these structures. The author emphasizes the importance of visualization for understanding and comparing various indexes in SQLite.

Work hard

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 13:45:06 GMT

Mathematics requires hard work, not just intelligence or sudden insights. To succeed, one must read, write, and understand details thoroughly. Enjoying your work and managing your time well are key to maintaining productivity and motivation.

A Smart Bear » Failure to face the truth

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 13:03:47 GMT

The article discusses the concept of "failure to face the truth," which is a primary blocker of progress in both personal and professional contexts. People often avoid the truth because it can be painful or career-altering, and denial and rationalization are the norm. However, facing the truth is crucial for teams to function well, for companies to develop effective strategies, and for individuals to improve in many areas simultaneously. The article also provides examples of famous books and frameworks, such as Radical Candor and Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which emphasize the importance of constructive conflict and facing the truth.

Going a Little Further

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:36:24 GMT

Going a little further in your work means putting in extra effort to learn and grow, whether by seeking help, exploring documentation, or communicating clearly. This approach not only helps solve immediate problems but also builds valuable skills for the future. By investing in your growth, you can make stronger contributions to your team and enhance your own capabilities.

Don't miss the next article.

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 23:30:26 GMT

Scars represent our unique experiences and emotional baggage, shaping who we are. While it's important to embrace these scars, they can also blind us to better choices. To grow, we must align our decisions with our core values and seek guidance from others to overcome our blind spots.

IBM RISC System/6000 Family

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 23:01:16 GMT

Just when PowerSeeker thought they had nowhere to go...

What implementation-independent test file formats exist for language tooling?

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 22:32:37 GMT

The specific format of test files for language tooling is less important than their usability and efficiency. It's beneficial to use a format that combines code and metadata, such as comments, to mark relationships between identifiers. Snapshot testing is recommended for managing test outputs, allowing for easier updates and less manual intervention when changing the format.

Fairness in TLA+

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 16:17:52 GMT

The author shares their journey of understanding fairness concepts in TLA+, focusing on weak and strong fairness. They explain the importance of "progress" and "stabilize" in breaking down complex formulae. The article also provides clear definitions and relationships between these concepts for better comprehension.

Parents & Owners in React: Data Flow

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:10:34 GMT

React components can be organized into a hierarchy, allowing for flexible composition and control over content. Understanding the difference between parent and owner components is key to effective data flow and component management. Properly composed components can reduce complexity and improve encapsulation in a React application.

>>> 2024-02-11 the top of the DNS hierarchy (PDF)

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 03:29:35 GMT

Bitcoin and DNS both rely on a small number of hardcoded domain names for essential functions. DNS translates web addresses into numerical IP addresses and is structured in a hierarchical system, with thirteen root servers at the top. These root servers are crucial for internet functionality and have faced various DDoS attacks, but their design helps maintain stability.

asatarin/testing-distributed-systems: Curated list of resources on testing distributed systems

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 02:32:25 GMT

The text is a curated list of resources focused on testing distributed systems, highlighting various methodologies and tools used by companies like Amazon and Google. It discusses approaches such as formal verification with TLA+, deterministic simulation, and chaos testing, emphasizing their benefits and challenges. Additionally, it includes links to case studies, workshops, and techniques for improving the reliability and performance of distributed systems.

Learning and reviewing system internals: tactics and psychology

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 02:27:37 GMT

Studying and reviewing system internals involves learning, forming opinions, and making judgments. Sharing your understanding with others helps test and improve your knowledge. Building mental models and seeking feedback are key to understanding complex systems effectively.

Lamport clocks

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 02:19:33 GMT

This document is a summary of the paper "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" by Leslie Lamport. The paper introduces the concept of "happened before" relation and logical clocks, also known as Lamport clocks. It explains how these clocks can be used to solve the mutual exclusion problem in a distributed system. The paper provides a formal definition of the "happened before" relation and the Clock condition for logical clocks. It also discusses the limitations of logical clocks and presents a system of clocks using physical clocks that can satisfy the strong clock condition. The document concludes with an example of how Lamport clocks can be used to solve the mutual exclusion problem and a TLA+ specification based on the paper's concepts.

Understanding the BM25 full text search algorithm

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 02:07:41 GMT

BM25 is a popular algorithm used for full text search that ranks documents based on their relevance to a query. It combines factors like term frequency and the rarity of query terms to score documents, allowing comparisons within the same collection. Higher BM25 scores indicate a greater likelihood that a document is relevant to the query.

Jan 14 A career ending mistake

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 01:34:58 GMT

Many people do not plan for the end of their careers, which can lead to dissatisfaction and missed opportunities. It's important to actively consider your career goals and take steps to achieve them, rather than just hoping for success. Start planning now to ensure you reach your desired career destination, whether that involves independence, management, or staying in a technical role.

Property-based Testing Patterns

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 18:15:29 GMT

Charles O’Farrell’s presentation on property-based testing highlights key patterns that help ensure software reliability. These patterns include concepts like round-tripping, commutativity, and invariants, which guide developers in creating effective tests. By focusing on these properties, developers can gain greater confidence in their code compared to traditional unit testing.

6 things I wish I knew the day I started Berklee

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 18:08:13 GMT

Focus on your goals and avoid distractions while at Berklee. Take initiative in your learning and push beyond the standard pace. Innovate in your music and understand the value of making money from your passion.

Build your own SQLite

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 19:39:31 GMT

Build your own version of SQLite in this coding challenge. You will learn about SQL syntax, SQLite's file format, and how to handle basic SQL queries. This project will help you understand important concepts like B-trees and indexes.

It's ok to be afraid

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:42:30 GMT

The author describes how fear affected their climbing this season, making them reluctant to participate. They realized that their fear stemmed from the fear of fear itself, which created a cycle of anxiety. By accepting that it's okay to be afraid, they found ways to manage their feelings and apply these lessons to other areas of their life.

Building Databases over a Weekend

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 04:35:56 GMT

Databases are complex and often seen as a black box by many developers, but innovation continues in this field. Apache DataFusion offers tools for building custom databases, making it easier to create unique experiences. This post explores extending DataFusion by adding a new window operator for stream processing applications.

The Need to Explain

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 20:34:38 GMT

The author reflects on their tendency to spot patterns and how this leads to a desire for explanations. They have learned that finding correct explanations can be difficult and often unnecessary. Instead, they have become comfortable with accepting some observations without needing to know why they happen.

How Often Should We Sharpen Our Tools?

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 20:33:49 GMT

To be more effective, we sometimes need to invest time in improving our tools, as illustrated by a lumberjack who sharpens his axe before cutting trees. The author shares his experience of switching from an outdated text editor, NEdit, to Vim, which enhanced his productivity despite initial challenges. He also discusses the importance of timing and careful consideration when choosing to upgrade tools, ultimately leading to better outcomes.

Choosing What To Read

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 03:12:54 GMT

The author discusses their personal choices for what they choose to read. They explain that they intentionally read very little fiction and instead gravitate towards history because they find it more surprising and insightful. They also discuss their reading habits related to news and academic papers, highlighting their preference for longer-term trends and breadth of knowledge. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of knowing what you like to read and why.

Zero Disk Architecture

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 20:06:33 GMT

The Zero Disk Architecture suggests writing data directly to Amazon S3 instead of managing traditional storage servers, making systems more scalable and efficient. This approach benefits from S3's durability and availability while offloading storage management to AWS. It also allows for various trade-offs between cost, latency, and durability in database operations.

Configuring VSCode with Nix on macOS

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 19:43:59 GMT

This post explains how to configure VSCode on macOS using Nix and home-manager, allowing you to manage settings, keybindings, and install extensions easily. It covers the installation process, how to enable non-free software, and includes steps for integrating VSCode with Spotlight. By the end, you'll have a fully set up VSCode environment tailored to your preferences.

User Interface with Ant Tweak Bar

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 19:26:55 GMT

The text lists a series of tutorials focused on user interface development and graphics programming using Ant Tweak Bar and OpenGL. Topics include basic shapes, transformations, lighting, shadow mapping, and advanced techniques like tessellation and Vulkan. Each tutorial builds on the previous ones to enhance understanding of 3D graphics and rendering.

Petnames: A humane approach to secure, decentralized naming

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 19:15:40 GMT

Petname systems map human-readable names to secure, cryptographic identifiers, making it easier for people to use names meaningfully. They can enhance user interfaces like smartphone contact lists and web browsers by integrating personalized naming with existing systems. This approach allows users to create local names while still connecting to global naming authorities in a secure and intuitive way.

my blogging setup is my writing process

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 18:07:13 GMT

Facundo Olano writes his blog posts using Emacs and org-mode, starting each piece as a TODO entry in an ideas file. He develops his ideas over time, often thinking about them while running or waking up, and eventually types a draft which he revises multiple times. After finalizing his post, he adjusts the details and publishes it on his blog.

Grammars, parsing, and recursive descent

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:19:54 GMT

The video discusses parsing, focusing on generative grammars, recursive descent, and pushdown automata. It explains how to create a regex parser that recognizes or produces strings based on grammar rules. The process involves turning a sequence of symbols into a syntax tree using parsing functions.

How I configure my Git identities

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:46:49 GMT

The author shares their experience configuring Git identities using conditional includes based on remote URLs. They also explain how to set up SSH keys for different GitHub accounts by creating custom host entries. The post invites feedback on this approach to improve their setup.

The Catastrophe of Shiny Objects

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:17:22 GMT

The modern digital world is designed to capture our attention, making boredom seem undesirable. However, experiencing boredom is important for creativity and deep thinking, as it allows our minds to reset and explore new ideas. If we constantly seek to avoid boredom, we may hinder our own cognitive development and problem-solving abilities.

The only computer science book worth reading twice?

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 02:36:59 GMT

The author considers "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP) by Hal Abelson and Jerry Sussman to be a seminal computer science book that has profoundly influenced his career. SICP introduces essential programming concepts and emphasizes layered design and the nature of knowledge in computer science. Despite being published in 1984, the book remains relevant and valuable for understanding foundational ideas in the field.

PlayStation 2 Architecture

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:39:48 GMT

The PlayStation 2, released in 2000, featured a unique architecture that combined multiple processors for improved performance. Its powerful Emotion Engine CPU allowed for advanced graphics and efficient processing, making it popular despite not being the most powerful console of its generation. The console also included various I/O components and memory options to enhance gaming experiences.

The Lost Reading Items

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:39:07 GMT

This post explores the missing items from Ilya Sutskever's 2020 AI reading list, which originally included about 40 papers but only 27 were shared online. It highlights potential important papers related to meta-learning and reinforcement learning that may have been omitted. The author aims to reconstruct this lost knowledge to better understand what was significant in the AI field at that time.

Doing more than one thing at a time: how do computers runm multiple independent programs

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:12:31 GMT

The text explains how a multitasking kernel uses a table of interrupt handlers to manage tasks in a program. Each task has its own stack and state, which are saved and restored during context switches. The kernel ensures tasks do not exceed their allocated stack size and uses inline assembly for low-level control in the code.

Managing High Performers

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 20:38:45 GMT

Managing high performers requires intentional guidance and support to help them reach their full potential. It's important to set clear expectations, provide constructive feedback, and engage in career planning to keep them motivated and invested. Regular management practices should be applied, as even top performers need direction to thrive and avoid stagnation.

A Smart Bear » A life-changing challenge guided by Pascal’s Wager

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:19:29 GMT

The article applies Pascal's Wager to everyday interactions, emphasizing that humility leads to better outcomes than arrogance. It suggests that approaching situations with a mindset of curiosity and a willingness to learn can improve communication and relationships. By being humble, we can gain more from our interactions and avoid unnecessary conflict.

Why you're bad at giving feedback

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 03:37:14 GMT

Giving effective feedback is challenging because it requires honesty without discouragement. Many people make mistakes by using vague language, mixing praise with criticism, or avoiding direct communication. To improve, focus on being specific, timely, and balanced in your feedback, while ensuring it's based on facts rather than assumptions.

Eventually consistent plain text accounting

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 03:36:12 GMT

Tyler Cipriani shares how he uses hledger, a plain text accounting system, to track his spending over six months. He emphasizes the importance of avoiding manual entry by using CSV files from his bank and creating rules to transform them into journal files for analysis. His approach allows him to gradually build and improve his understanding of his finances without feeling overwhelmed.

The Lying p Value

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 02:49:20 GMT

The p-value of 0.05 is often misunderstood, as it does not guarantee that a study's methodology is correct 95% of the time. Research shows that many studies make errors in computing significance, leading to a base accuracy of only 85%. Therefore, a significant result at p=0.05 should be treated with caution and requires further investigation.

The Universe of Discourse

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:26:51 GMT

Principia Mathematica is an odd book, worth looking into from a historical point of view as well as a mathematical one.

Thoughts on Meaning and Writing

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:17:44 GMT

The author reflects on his personal heuristic for finding meaning in life, which involves doing things that will result in discrete, memorable experiences that can be added to a bullet point list. He discusses the importance of relationships, work, money, and passion projects, and suggests that having a child is the simplest way to create an enormous amount of meaning in a person's life. He also talks about the role of writing in creating digital permanence and the opportunity to revisit experiences, and shares his own experience of writing a novel.

# on shortification of "learning"

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 19:33:45 GMT

There are many videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok that give the appearance of education but are actually just entertainment. This is convenient for both viewers and creators, as it attracts a larger audience and generates more revenue. However, when it comes to learning, this content is a trap. Learning should require effort and feel more like a serious session at the gym, rather than a quick and easy workout. To truly learn, it is important to prioritize longer and more in-depth resources, such as textbooks and papers, and to allocate dedicated time for studying and processing the material. Similarly, creators of educational content should aim to provide a challenging and immersive learning experience, rather than simply entertaining their audience.

Every Transaction Matters

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 16:45:03 GMT

Joan Westenberg views life as a series of transactions to minimize waste of time and energy. She reflects on how some activities, like mindless scrolling, lead to regrets because they deplete her resources without value. By being mindful of her choices, she aims to focus on what truly matters to her.

TLA from first principles

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 04:08:24 GMT

The author is revising a chapter on Temporal Logic of Actions (TLA+) for their book, "Logic for Programmers," using a simple example with two variables, Alice and Bob. They explain how to represent valid and invalid behaviors in terms of money transfers between Alice and Bob, incorporating rules to ensure no overdrafts occur. The text also introduces TLA+ as a specification language for modeling such systems and highlights the importance of temporal logic in understanding changes over time.

[yap transcript] On first principles thinking

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 04:05:32 GMT

First principles thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller, manageable parts to understand their fundamental components. This method helps clarify what is essential and allows you to build solutions step by step. By avoiding assumptions and focusing on these core elements, you can develop a clearer approach to problem-solving.

Why I don’t like discussing action items during incident reviews

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 21:09:05 GMT

Lorin Hochstein believes that focusing on learning about system behavior is more valuable than discussing action items during incident reviews. He argues that understanding the system's complexity is crucial, and that time spent on action items detracts from this learning opportunity. Hochstein suggests that learning leads to better action items, while discussions of action items can easily happen later.

If you don’t examine what worked, how will you know what works?

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:57:42 GMT

To improve systems after incidents, it's important to examine what went right, not just what went wrong. Understanding how people adapt and successfully navigate challenges can reveal effective work patterns. By focusing on positive outcomes during incident reviews, organizations can learn valuable lessons and foster better practices.

How should I read type system notation?

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:30:11 GMT

A type system is a set of rules that define how expressions and types work in a programming language. It uses specific notation to represent typing judgments, which state the type of an expression under certain conditions or contexts. Understanding these rules allows programmers to check the correctness of code and ensures that types are used consistently.

How Complex Systems Fail

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:16:12 GMT

Complex systems, like transportation and healthcare, are naturally hazardous and cannot completely eliminate risks. They rely on multiple layers of defense, including technology and human expertise, to prevent accidents from small failures combining into larger ones. Safety is dynamic and emerges from ongoing adaptations by practitioners who balance production needs with the management of potential hazards.

Userland Disk I/O

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 19:36:20 GMT

Databases often use O_DIRECT for unbuffered I/O, allowing them to manage their own page cache and improve data durability. Different operating systems have various methods for ensuring data durability, like using fsync() in Unix or FlushFileBuffers() in Windows. Choosing the right filesystem, such as XFS or Ext4, can enhance performance by optimizing how data is stored and accessed.

PSA: SQLite does not do checksums

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 19:18:22 GMT

SQLite does not perform checksums by default, which means it cannot detect if a database has been corrupted. This lack of error detection can lead to serious issues, like incorrect data being read without any warning. While there are options to add checksums, they come with limitations and may not be compatible with certain extensions.

A mental model for Linux file, hard and soft links

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 18:59:53 GMT

The author explains the concepts of hard and soft links in Linux, focusing on how they relate to inodes and filenames. Hard links connect multiple filenames to the same inode, while soft links point to a target filename but have their own inode. The post aims to clarify these concepts for better understanding.

Rust versions of TAPL's System F and System F-omega type checkers

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 03:56:53 GMT

The author has created Rust type checkers for System F and System Fω, based on implementations from the book "Types And Programming Languages." These ports focus solely on type checking, simplifying variable names and removing unnecessary complexity from the original OCaml code. The project includes various versions of the type checkers and aims to improve understanding of the underlying concepts.

Probability for Computer Scientists

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 23:44:37 GMT

"Probability for Computer Scientists" is a course reader written by Chris Piech for Stanford's CS109 class. The book builds on ideas from previous instructors and the Sheldon Ross textbook. Contributors are welcome to help improve the reader through GitHub.

It's About the Guarantees

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:31:22 GMT

Supervisors in Erlang are often associated with restarts, but their role goes beyond that. One important aspect of Erlang supervisors is that their start phase is synchronous, allowing for stable initialization. It's crucial to provide a stable state during initialization to ensure the rest of the system can be booted knowing that what came before is healthy. Supervised processes offer guarantees during the initialization phase, not just best efforts. When dealing with external services, it's important to expect failure and not make their presence a guarantee of your system. The decision of how much failure to tolerate should be made by the client's callers, not the client itself.

Pattern: Event sourcing

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 19:43:30 GMT

Event sourcing is a pattern that allows services to reliably update databases and send messages without using traditional distributed transactions. It stores the state of business entities as a sequence of events, ensuring atomicity and the ability to reconstruct the current state by replaying these events. While it offers benefits like reliable event publishing and an audit log, it also introduces complexity and requires handling eventually consistent data.

Pattern: Saga

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 19:39:33 GMT

The Saga pattern helps manage transactions across multiple microservices, ensuring data consistency without using traditional distributed transactions. It involves coordinating local transactions either through choreography, where each service triggers the next, or orchestration, where a central orchestrator directs the process. While this pattern provides benefits, such as maintaining consistency, it requires careful design to handle compensating transactions and potential data anomalies.

Logging Guide

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 19:33:16 GMT

Applications need to generate log messages to provide information about their health, status, and security events. These logs can be categorized into informational, audit, warnings, and errors, each serving a specific purpose for operators and compliance. Effective logging practices include categorizing logs, avoiding duplicate messages, and providing detailed context for better understanding and troubleshooting.

Why I use TLA+ and not(TLA+): Episode 1

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 14:45:05 GMT

Igor Konnov explains why he prefers using TLA+ for his projects, highlighting its flexibility and well-defined semantics. He finds it easier to work with than other languages and appreciates its practical set of primitives for modeling complex systems. Konnov also notes that new users often struggle with TLA+'s syntax but believes that a better feedback loop can help them learn more effectively.

Smolderingly fast b-trees

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 14:41:56 GMT

B-trees are generally slower than hashmaps, but performance can vary widely based on specific use cases. B-trees struggle with cache lookups and key comparisons, especially with random strings, making them less efficient in certain scenarios. While they avoid some issues found in hashmaps, b-trees have their own performance cliffs that can impact overall speed.

Sensors and gauges - Observability in distributed systems

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:43:36 GMT

Logs are the most basic and flexible form of instrumentation in distributed systems, helping troubleshoot issues and analyze system behavior. Metrics come next, providing real-time monitoring and insights into system performance. Traces are often added last to complement logs and metrics, offering additional context for specific executions.

How Not to Disagree

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:20:45 GMT

In business, disagreements with management are common but can lead to damaging outcomes if not handled well. Leaders should commit to the new direction, acknowledge frustrations, and empower their team to take ownership of the change for effective collaboration and trust-building. True leadership comes from commitment, trust, and empowering others to succeed.

What Can You Learn from Photographing Your Life? | The New Yorker

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 13:19:16 GMT

Photographing everyday life can help us appreciate the passage of time, even if our pictures seem mundane. While our descendants may not value our photos, they can still serve as a meaningful record of our experiences. Ultimately, photography allows us to find beauty and significance in the ordinary moments of life.

How we shrunk our Javascript monorepo git size by 94%

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 04:02:28 GMT

The team at Microsoft reduced their massive Javascript monorepo size from 178GB to just 5GB by addressing issues with large files and inefficient Git packing. They implemented better management of change files and utilized new Git features to optimize data compression. These improvements not only helped their repo but also aim to benefit the wider developer community.

Five Common Misconceptions About Event-Driven Architecture

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 19:36:59 GMT

Event-driven architecture (EDA) is often misunderstood, with common misconceptions including the belief that it requires event sourcing or specific tools like Kafka. EDA focuses on communication between services through events, which can be implemented without being fully event-driven in every part of an application. While EDA may seem complex at first, it can actually provide clearer roles and responsibilities compared to traditional command-based systems.

Be Suspicious of Success

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:55:06 GMT

Be suspicious when software appears to be successful, as it may be working for the wrong reasons. It's important to verify code through tests and to check not just the "happy paths" but also the "sad paths" where errors occur. Remember, just because something works doesn't mean it won't fail unexpectedly later.

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:45:24 GMT

The document is a table of contents for a book on Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). It covers topics such as Service Level Objectives (SLOs), monitoring, incident response, and organizational change management. The book is divided into sections on foundations, practices, and processes, with various case studies and examples included.

Observability 101: Terminology and Concepts

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:44:45 GMT

Observability is the ability to understand the health of software services using data generated without new code changes. Key concepts include telemetry, which consists of metrics, logs, traces, and structured events that provide insights into system performance. Effective observability requires good data and tools that allow for flexible querying and analysis.

Getting Started with OpenTelemetry Visualization - A Practical Guide

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:44:17 GMT

OpenTelemetry is a framework for collecting and exporting telemetry data from applications. Visualization tools, like SigNoz, help turn this data into understandable charts and dashboards. Effective visualization aids in optimizing system performance and provides actionable insights.

Setting Up Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Tempo & Mimir for end-to-end Monitoring & Logging Atmosly

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:43:59 GMT

The article discusses setting up a monitoring and logging stack using Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Tempo, and Mimir for effective application management. It highlights the benefits of real-time metrics, customizable dashboards, and efficient log storage to improve system performance and troubleshooting. Atmosly offers a one-click deployment of this stack, making it easy for developers to access powerful monitoring tools.

Prometheus 101: Metrics, Monitoring, Practical Setup and More

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:37:52 GMT

Monitoring is the process of collecting and analyzing data to ensure system performance and reliability. Prometheus is an open-source tool that efficiently gathers and stores metrics, allowing users to monitor and alert based on system health. Setting up Prometheus with Node Exporter on AWS demonstrates its practical use for real-time monitoring and analysis.

Monitoring Your Apps in Kubernetes Environment with Prometheus

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 14:36:08 GMT

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring tool that integrates well with Kubernetes and easily collects metrics from applications. To monitor your app, you expose a /metrics endpoint and configure Prometheus to automatically discover it. The article guides you through setting up Prometheus and an example application to visualize its metrics.

Linearizability in distributed systems

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 06:57:27 GMT

Linearizability is a strong consistency model that makes it appear as if operations on a single piece of data happen instantaneously and in a specific order, even when they are executed concurrently. This model ensures that all clients see the same value for the data, maintaining a consistent view of operations. Unlike serializability, which applies to multiple operations across different objects, linearizability focuses on a single object, ensuring clear and ordered operations.

Crushing Castlevania with Antithesis

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 06:56:58 GMT

The Antithesis blog discusses the challenges of playing the original NES game Castlevania, particularly getting past the difficult "stompers" in Stage 6. The authors illustrate how their testing tool, Antithesis, can help navigate complex software states and overcome barriers in both gaming and real-world code testing. By refining their approach, they demonstrate that innovative methods can lead to successful exploration and debugging.

Building A Strong Ownership Culture in A Team

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 06:33:38 GMT

Building a strong ownership culture in a team requires leaders to delegate responsibilities and empower team members to make decisions. Setting clear goals and investing in skill development helps individuals take ownership of their work. Regular feedback and accountability ensure that team members grow and learn together.

Bias For Action

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 06:30:17 GMT

The author reflects on the importance of taking action rather than waiting to learn everything before starting a project. They emphasize that learning through doing, especially in software development, leads to better results and faster growth. Balancing between understanding principles and applying actions is crucial for success in a fast-paced environment.

On Good Software Engineers

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 06:23:08 GMT

Good software engineers are trusted team players who deliver high-quality solutions by effectively collaborating and communicating with others. They understand their organization's processes and adapt to its culture while continuously learning and improving. Great engineers not only meet these expectations but also take the initiative to fix problems and enhance processes proactively.

Damas-Hindley-Milner inference two ways

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 04:42:30 GMT

The Damas-Hindley-Milner type inference system generates type constraints based on how variables and expressions interact, allowing for type determination without programmer annotations. It uses data structures like monotypes, type variables, and type constructors to represent types in Python. The inference algorithm processes expressions to produce a type and a mapping of type variables to their corresponding types, facilitating polymorphism through the use of type schemes.

On the cruelty of really teaching computing science

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 04:42:15 GMT

The author argues that computers represent a radical novelty that challenges traditional ways of teaching and understanding mathematics and programming. This novelty requires a new approach to education, as many in the academic and business worlds fail to recognize the complexities involved in computing. Ultimately, the author believes that computing science should evolve beyond its roots in mathematics and logic to better address these challenges.

Can't trust any VPN these days

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 04:27:59 GMT

Discord was banned in Turkey on October 9, 2024, leading the author to struggle with their VPN setup to access the platform again. They discovered that their DNS was leaking, which prevented the VPN from working effectively. After troubleshooting and updating their configuration, they successfully restored access to Discord.

Sets, types and type checking

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 22:11:07 GMT

This post explains the concept of types and type-checking, highlighting their importance in structuring programs and catching errors. Types help categorize data, allowing for better reasoning about what data is used in a program. The author also discusses how types can be constructed, including operations like intersections and parameter types.

Surfing Complexity

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:31:07 GMT

This blog post discusses how TLA+ can be used to model multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), a method for ensuring transaction isolation in databases like Postgres and MySQL. The author explains that while MVCC helps manage concurrent transactions, it cannot achieve serializability, leading to potential issues like the lost update problem. The post also highlights how MVCC allows transactions to operate on snapshots of the database, ensuring visibility and preventing conflicts during writes.

Multi-version concurrency control in TLA+

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:30:54 GMT

This blog post explains how TLA+ can be used to model multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), a method for handling transaction isolation in databases like Postgres and MySQL. MVCC allows transactions to read from a snapshot of the database, preventing issues like lost updates by blocking concurrent writes to the same object. However, the author notes that MVCC does not achieve serializability, which is a stronger isolation guarantee.

Computer Organization E-book by Stephen Marz

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:25:24 GMT

The e-book "Computer Organization" by Stephen Marz covers key topics about computer systems, starting with computer organization and number systems. It explains how CPU instructions are formed and discusses the digital components of a CPU. Finally, the book integrates these concepts to show how they work together, along with appendices for RISC-V programming examples.

Getting Big Things Done

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:13:28 GMT

Marc Brooker shares insights on successfully tackling large projects by emphasizing the importance of clearly defining the problem and writing down thoughts to avoid self-deception. He advises engaging with diverse perspectives and stakeholders, while also building a supportive team to enhance project success. Adaptability is crucial, as one may need to revise their approach based on new learnings throughout the project.

How Do You Spend Your Time?

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 23:42:38 GMT

Marc Brooker, an engineer at Amazon Web Services, shares his approach to managing time effectively in the workplace. He emphasizes the importance of setting a time budget with clear themes and goals, which helps ensure that work aligns with project priorities. By being flexible in the short term but consistent in the long term, he advocates for thoughtful time management to enhance productivity and job satisfaction.

Solving the Mystery of ARM7TDMI Multiply Carry Flag

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:34:17 GMT

The ARM7TDMI's multiplication instructions include a unique carry flag feature that helps understand its multiplication performance. The CPU can efficiently perform multiply-add operations and sometimes terminates calculations early, which simplifies the process. This behavior allows for optimized handling of signed multiplication and the generation of addends in a compact manner.

Abstract Machines of Systems Biology

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:48:28 GMT

Founder Mode for Non-Founders · Daniel Mangum

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 16:49:41 GMT

Paul Graham’s Founder Mode essay, based on a recent talk from AirBnB founder Brian Chesky, has been getting quite a lot of attention over the past few days. It has prompted many a quote tweet, and founders, such as Bryan Cantrill of Oxide Computer, have started contributing their own thoughts to what founder mode means to them. Having held positions of influence at a few companies, but never having been a founder myself, my initial read raised a few thoughts about my own experience of trying to “scale myself” in a growing organization.

School is Not Enough - by Simon Sarris

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 16:48:17 GMT

Learning is a consequence of doing

stormrider

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 16:15:37 GMT

There comes a moment in life, often in the quietest of hours, when one realizes that the world will continue on its wayward course, indifferent to our desires or frustrations. And it is then, perhaps, that a subtle truth begins to emerge: the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our mind. It is not a realization of resignation, but rather of liberation. For if the mind can be ordered, if it can be made still in the midst of this restless life, then we have already discovered the key to a deeper kind of freedom.

Using static websites for tiny archives – alexwlchan

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 15:49:06 GMT

I've been creating small, hand-written websites to organise my files. It's a lightweight, flexible approach that I hope will last a long time.

A Commentary on Defining Observability

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 12:28:05 GMT

Expanding on Hazel Weakly and Cognitive Engineering's definitions of observability by providing extra context and random ideas.

Writes and Write-Nots

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 12:16:59 GMT

October 2024I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who are good at setting up computers know how many people aren't; writers know how many people need help writing.The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the job, the more writing it tends to require.These two powerful opposing forces, the pervasive expectation of writing and the irreducible difficulty of doing it, create enormous pressure. This is why eminent professors often turn out to have resorted to plagiarism. The most striking thing to me about these cases is the pettiness of the thefts. The stuff they steal is usually the most mundane boilerplate — the sort of thing that anyone who was even halfway decent at writing could turn out with no effort at all. Which means they're not even halfway decent at writing.Till recently there was no convenient escape valve for the pressure created by these opposing forces. You could pay someone to write for you, like JFK, or plagiarize, like MLK, but if you couldn't buy or steal words, you had to write them yourself. And as a result nearly everyone who was expected to write had to learn how.Not anymore. AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work.The result will be a world divided into writes and write-nots. There will still be some people who can write. Some of us like it. But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and those who can't write at all will disappear. Instead of good writers, ok writers, and ...

ADHD and Managing Your Reputation - by Vaishnav Sunil

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 02:58:06 GMT

Paul Graham's essay titled "Good and Bad Procrastination" argues that procrastination can be virtuous when it means putting off small tasks to work on more important ones.

Canvas Fingerprinting - BrowserLeaks

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:52:03 GMT

Canvas fingerprinting is a tracking method that uses HTML5 Canvas code to generate a unique identifier for each individual user. The method is based on the fact that the unique pixels generated through Canvas code can vary depending on the system and browser used, making it possible to identify users.

The Basics - by Thorsten Ball - Register Spill

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 22:30:50 GMT

Here’s what I consider to be the basics.

How do Graphics Cards Work? Exploring GPU Architecture

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:15:23 GMT

Interested in working with Micron to make cutting-edge memory chips? Work at Micron: https://bit.ly/micron-careers Learn more about Micron's Graphic Memory! Explore Here: https://bit.ly/micron-graphic-memory Curious about AI memory and HBM3E? Take a look: https://bit.ly/micron-hbm3e Graphics Cards can run some of the most incredible video games, but how many calculations do they perform every single second? Well, some of the most advanced graphics perform 36 Trillion calculations or more every single second. But how can a single device manage these tens of trillions of calculations? In this video, we explore the architecture inside the 3090 graphics card and the GA102 GPU chip architecture. Note: We chose to feature the 30 series of GPUs because, to create accurate 3D models, we had to tear down a 3090 GPU rather destructively. We typically select a slightly older model because we're able to find broken components on eBay. If you're wondering, the 4090 can perform 82.58 trillion calculations a second, and then we're sure the 5090 will be even more. Table of Contents: 00:00 - How many calculations do Graphics Cards Perform? 02:15 - The Difference between GPUs and CPUs? 04:56 - GPU GA102 Architecture 06:59 - GPU GA102 Manufacturing 08:48 - CUDA Core Design 11:09 - Graphics Cards Components 12:04 - Graphics Memory GDDR6X GDDR7 15:11 - All about Micron 16:51 - Single Instruction Multiple Data Architecture 17:49 - Why GPUs run Video Game Graphics, Object Transformations 20:53 - Thread Architecture 23:31 - Help Branch Education Out! 24:29 - Bitcoin Mining 26:50 - Tensor Cores 27:58 - Outro We're working on more ambitious subjects like computer architecture and graphics cards. Any contribution would greatly help make these videos. https://www.patreon.com/brancheducation Branch Education Website: https://www.branch.education Branch Education Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BranchEducation/ Key Branches from this video are: How do Video Game Graphics ...

Queuing Theory Tutorial

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 18:52:54 GMT

Tutorial on Queuing Theory - Standard Queuing System and Queuing Rule of Thumb

Understanding DNS resolution on Linux and Kubernetes

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 22:06:25 GMT

I recently investigated a warning message on Kubernetes that said: DNSConfigForming ... Nameserver limits were exceeded, some nameservers have been omitted. This was technically a Kubernetes event with type: Warning, and these usually indicate that there’s something wrong, so I wanted to investigate it.

Whence '\n'? – Casey Rodarmor's Blog

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:29:06 GMT

If you do just foo, the following justfile will write a single byte 0x0A to a file named bar:

On the Importance of Typing Fast | rugu

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 04:40:56 GMT

It is often mentioned that the bottleneck in building software projects is not one’s typing ability but ability to think clearly, and to design the architecture effectively. Afterall, if typing speed was so essential to programming, the time difference between rewriting an already existing project with that of creating it from scratch would not be as high as it is.

S-38.3143 Queueing Theory (5 ECTS) L

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 04:21:54 GMT

Lectures notes are in pdf-format. The captions of figures are in Finnish due the lack of time.

Building and scaling Notion’s in-house data lake

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 10:43:19 GMT

In the past three years Notion’s data has expanded 10x due to user and content growth, with a doubling rate of 6-12 months.

Learning to learn | K/L

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 01:53:15 GMT

The fastest way to get better at something is to start slow.

Google Testing Blog: SMURF: Beyond the Test Pyramid

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 01:50:37 GMT

This article was adapted from a Google Testing on the Toilet (TotT) episode. You can download a printer-friendly version of this TotT epis...

What docs as code really means | passo.uno :: Fabrizio Ferri-Benedetti on Technical Writing

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 01:47:57 GMT

I’ve recently started a new job as a documentation engineer. While my work is largely the same as that of a technical writer, the sound and semantics of my new job title gave me some pause and made me think about what it really means to be doing docs-as-code. To say that it’s about writing documentation using the same tools and methods as software developers is correct, but fails to acknowledge the full consequences of the fact. Most descriptions of docs-as-code are naive because they stop at the implications of being developers’ attachés.

start - TLA+ Wiki

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 01:26:37 GMT

This wiki is community driven, and aims to become a useful resource for TLA+ users.

Distributed Systems Reading List

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:58:49 GMT

I often argue that the toughest thing about distributed systems is changing the way you think. The below is a collection of material I've found useful for motivating these changes.

Cognitive load

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 22:38:46 GMT

There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel when going through the code.

Which kernel is the most readable one? | Lobsters

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 22:11:24 GMT

33 comments

On accountability | A Working Library

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 22:00:01 GMT

The word “accountability” gets a bad rap. It’s often confusing—does it mean the same thing as being responsible? (Sometimes, yes.) Is saying that someone is accountable the same thing as saying the...

Accountability sinks | A Working Library

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 21:59:51 GMT

In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held dire...

start - TLA+ Wiki

Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:28:07 GMT

This wiki is community driven, and aims to become a useful resource for TLA+ users.

Focus on decisions, not tasks

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:52:35 GMT

A quote from Every Page Is Page One that has deeply changed how I approach technical writing:

A liveness example in TLA+ – Surfing Complexity

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 22:58:00 GMT

If you've ever sat at a stop light that was just stuck on red, where there was clearly a problem with the light where it wasn't ever switching green, you've encountered a liveness problem with a system. Is the turning light just taking a long time? Or is it broken? A liveness property of a…

Books

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 10:53:02 GMT

I've been asked for textbook recommendations from time to time, which I've been sharing on this page. I'll keep this list up to date as I finish reading more books that I'd recommend. Note that this is not a list of all the books I own, but rather, only those I'd recommend. I've worked in programming, system administration, computer security, and for a while I've now focused on computer performance. My bookshelf reflects my career.

Web Browser Engineering

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 16:37:40 GMT

Web browsers are ubiquitous, but how do they work? This book explains, building a basic but complete web browser, from networking to JavaScript, in a couple thousand lines of Python.

NTAPI Undocumented Functions

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 14:06:40 GMT

RescueTime - Your Weekly dashboard

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 23:24:26 GMT

Time logged — 23h more than the week before

Error Handling in a Correctness-Critical Rust Project | sled-rs.github.io

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 17:18:48 GMT

blog API considerations error handling in Rust jepsen-proof engineering theoretical performance guide

sled book shop | sled-rs.github.io

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 17:10:42 GMT

These books have been vital for shaping my mental models in ways that have helped me to build systems such as sled.

Why do systems fail? Tandem NonStop system and fault tolerance

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 22:38:25 GMT

Explore Tandem NonStop architecture principles and their relevance to high availability in software systems like Elixir, Gleam, and Erlang.

Let the network tell you where you are: a nerd snipe story

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 16:22:42 GMT

I was successfully nerd-sniped a few days ago and figured I'd share my proposed solution with everyone just in case they could benefit from it. I've added a few of my own constraints based on expectations for how things could go wrong. So, if this seems familiar, maybe it is, but I've made it a little more complicated.

How to convince engineers that formal methods is cool • Buttondown

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 14:02:20 GMT

Based on my experiences convincing people it's cool

Build Systems, Not Heroes

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 13:58:42 GMT

Enterprise programming is the management of system complexity. The main goals of most enterprise projects are to minimize bugs, ensure scalability, and release as soon as possible. These goals are unreachable in projects where people rely on individual skills rather than on a system-based approach.

A Dictionary of Single-Letter Variable Names | Blog | jackkelly.name

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 13:55:56 GMT

Haskell’s expressive type system means that type signatures can carry a lot of information. Haskell’s polymorphism means that you sometime write a function that works across an enormous range of types, and are often left wondering “what do I actually call my variables?”. It is often the case that there’s nothing to say beyond “this variable is a Functor”, or “this variable is a monadic action”, and so a single-letter variable name is appropriate. An unofficial and largely undocumented convention has emerged around these variable names, and so I wanted to write them all down in one place.

My process for learning by writing

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 04:15:14 GMT

I have very detailed opinions on lots of topics.

Highlights from the Sequences

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 01:36:59 GMT

"The Sequences" is a series of essays by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

brutalist-manifesto

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 01:12:38 GMT

How I manage my dotfiles · Jamie Tanna | Software Engineer

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 00:29:04 GMT

A deep dive into how managing my dotfiles has (not) evolved over the last 10 years.

rust-gpu.github.io

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 22:12:37 GMT

Rust GPU makes it possible to write and run GPU software in Rust, leveraging the language's powerful safety and concurrency features to enhance performance and reliability. With Rust GPU, you can seamlessly develop for both CPU and GPU using a unified codebase, all while benefiting from Rust’s existing ecosystem.

No Feedback ∴ No Good

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 22:10:25 GMT

The strange character in the middle of the title is a maths symbol pronounced therefore.

Monty Anderson

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:24:19 GMT

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas. — Ferdinand de Saussure, 1916

An Illustrated Proof of the CAP Theorem

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 14:41:45 GMT

The CAP Theorem is a fundamental theorem in distributed systems that states any distributed system can have at most two of the following three properties.

The Problem With Building Good Habits | Stephan Joppich

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 03:12:27 GMT

Today I consider the habit-building lifestyle a nightmare. It’s not that habit-building has ruined my life, but it has done me more harm than good.

Two Workflow Tips

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 20:59:40 GMT

An article about a couple of relatively recent additions to my workflow which I wish I knew about years ago.

There is No Now - ACM Queue

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 23:17:51 GMT

The time elapsed between when I wrote that word and when you read it was at least a couple of weeks. That kind of delay is one that we take for granted and don't even think about in written media.

The Writings of Leslie Lamport

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 23:14:45 GMT

This document is a sort of scientific autobiography. It not only lists the papers I have written, but also describes them and explains how I came to write some of them. I have included almost all my technical papers and electronic versions of many of them for downloading. Omitted are some papers for which I no longer have copies and papers that are incomplete. I have also omitted early versions of some of these papers--even in cases where the title changed. Included are some initial drafts of papers that I abandoned before fixing errors or other problems in them. A table of contents precedes the descriptions. I also include a brief curriculum vitae. A printable version of this document is available as a pdf file.

LEGO IDEAS - Working Turing Machine

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 23:14:01 GMT

What is a Turing machine?Depending on who you ask, it's either an abstract model of an algorithmic machine or an esoteric programming language. It's ...

CRDTs go brrr

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 15:14:09 GMT

A few years ago I was really bothered by an academic paper.

15 rules for blogging, and my current streak (Interconnected)

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 15:11:58 GMT

Posted on Thursday 10 Sep 2020. 493 words, 2 links. By Matt Webb.

Patterns for Personal Web Sites

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 15:09:07 GMT

Guidelines for creating a living personal Web site.

Search for Charts by Data Visualization Functions

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 19:15:41 GMT

The Data Visualisation Catalogue, helping you find the right data visualization method for your data

Why TCP needs 3 handshakes | PixelsTech

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 14:02:53 GMT

Prerequisite KnowledgeFirst, let's look at the control bits and state machine of TCP, which form the basis for understanding the three-way handshake of TCP.TCP Packet Control BitsThe control bits in t

Welcome to Linux From Scratch!

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 13:51:57 GMT

Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code.

TCP Server in Zig - Part 1 - Single Threaded

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:52:46 GMT

An Introduction to building TCP Servers in Zig

Terminal colours are tricky

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:51:58 GMT

Terminal colours are tricky

Programmer's Guide | C64 OS

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:50:28 GMT

This guide is being written and released and few chapters at a time. If a chapter seems to be empty, or if you click a chapter in the table of contents but it loads up Chapter 1, that's mostly likely because the chapter you've clicked doesn't exist yet.

Magic isn’t real - Inside thoughts

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:44:00 GMT

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Why is the Speed of Light So Fast? (Part 1)

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:27:03 GMT

The speed of light is much faster, and the energy in ordinary objects far greater, than what daily life accustoms us to. Why? Step 1: new perspectives

bytecode interpreters for tiny computers ⁑ Dercuano

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 14:19:12 GMT

I've previously come to the conclusion that there's little reason for using bytecode in the modern world, except in order to get more compact code, for which it can be very effective. So, what kind of a bytecode engine will give you more compact code?

How to train a model on 10k H100 GPUs?

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 11:59:35 GMT

A quick note summarizing common knowledge among the large-scale training cohort

Integrity Constraints and the Relational Derivative • Buttondown

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 01:28:02 GMT

In a SQL database, you can set up a foreign key with REFERENCES: nullbitmap=# CREATE TABLE ab (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b INT); CREATE TABLE nullbitmap=# INSERT...

Being who you are, while becoming better

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:44:45 GMT

We're told "be yourself" to seek happiness and success. But what if "being yourself" also means striving to become better? What is "yourself?"

Pivot Points

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:37:54 GMT

Not "enabling constraints", not "weaknesses", not even "strengths". The concept of a "Pivot Point" grapples with the same reality, but more constructive and useful.

William Cotton

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:02:12 GMT

William Cotton

Introduction to the λ-calculus

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 22:07:31 GMT

The λ-calculus has had a pervasive impact on computer science – and not just in functional programming languages, most of which can be viewed as extended λ-calculi, but even in modern systems programming languages such as Rust. Polymorphic type checking emerged in the context of the typed λ-calculus and now exists (to some extent) in many modern languages. Turning to theory, denotational semantics is normally expressed within a form of λ-calculus. Both higher-order logic and dependent type theories are extensions of the λ-calculus. But it is a mysterious beast: let’s take a look.

How Discord Stores Trillions of Messages

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 14:37:45 GMT

Engineer Bo Ingram shares insight into how Discord shoulders its traffic and provides a platform for our users to communicate.

glouw/c8c: The chip8 compiler, assembler, and virtual machine

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 12:43:27 GMT

The chip8 compiler, assembler, and virtual machine - glouw/c8c

Refactoring Invariants • Buttondown

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 00:36:27 GMT

Porting a formal methods idea to everyday coding

Alpha Conversion | Kevin Sookocheff

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 19:32:09 GMT

Alpha conversion (also written $\alpha$-conversion) is a way of removing name clashes in expressions. A name clash arises when a $\beta$-reduction places an expression with a free variable in the scope of a bound variable with the same name as the free variable. — Greg Michaelson, An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus When we are performing a $beta$-reduction it is possible that the variable name in an inner expression is the same as a variable name in an outer expression.

XXIIVV — goals

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 16:01:18 GMT

Internal are goals dealing with personal growth, and external, as having an effect on the outside world.

The guide to implementing 2D platformers | Higher-Order Fun

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 01:39:04 GMT

Having previously been disappointed by the information available on the topic, this is my attempt at categorizing different ways to implement 2D platform games, list their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss some implementation details.

Wealth = Have ÷ Need | Derek Sivers

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:54:35 GMT

Not a new idea, but just another visualization and reminder.

Raft

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 14:34:25 GMT

Please note: this is a working draft. Click here to provide feedback.

Tensor Labbet · A blog of deep learnings

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 22:47:41 GMT

In this post: Ilya Sutskevers AI Reading list in ~120 words per item (15 min read)

Be someone who does things | notes.eatonphil.com

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 10:24:17 GMT

Be someone who does things

Linearizability! Refinement! Prophecy! – Surfing Complexity

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:55:56 GMT

Back in August, Murat Derimbas published a blog post about the paper by Herlihy and Wing that first introduced the concept of linearizability. When we move from sequential programs to concurrent ones, we need to extend our concept of what "correct" means to account for the fact that operations from different threads can overlap in…

Go To Statement Considered Harmful

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 14:47:26 GMT

How not to be boring - PostHog

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 13:28:08 GMT

The world would be more fun if most startups hadn't undergone a personality bypass. But, sadly, most software companies look and feel the same…

Applied Mathematical Programming

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 12:57:26 GMT

by Bradley, Hax, and Magnanti (Addison-Wesley, 1977) This book is a reference book for 15.053, Optimization Methods in Business Analytics, taught at MIT.

Informal History Of Programming Ideas

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 04:47:39 GMT

WelcomeVisitors stated circa 1996 that the Wiki pages hosted by WardCunningham are part of the PortlandPatternRepository and contain "an incomplete and casually written history of programming ideas". I'm suggesting that this page is used to highlight areas in which any Wiki reader feels that the current informally written history is either incomplete or unbalanced.

Visual guide to SSH tunneling and port forwarding - ITTAVERN.COM

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 22:44:02 GMT

SysAdmin Stuff | Linux | Network | Security

A gentle guide to self-hosting your software | ᕕʕ •ᴥ•ʔ୨ Shank Space

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 22:33:22 GMT

There was a time when software (and games! Games are just software for fun!) were distributed on DVD. A physical disk that you would insert into your system ...

Books - Computing History

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 22:32:46 GMT

The UK Computer and Videogame Museum

Code Reviews Do Find Bugs

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 20:40:56 GMT

There’s some 2015 research out of Microsoft titled Code Reviews Do Not Find Bugs11 Code Reviews Do Not Find Bugs; How the Current Code Review Best Practice Slows Us Down; Czerwonka, Greiler, Tilford; IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering; 2015. which seems strangely named because reviewers do find bugs.

Chapter 0 Preface — Programming Languages

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 00:59:22 GMT

NetworkManager or networkd [LWN.net]

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 23:35:43 GMT

Posted Sep 13, 2024 22:42 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) In reply to: NetworkManager or networkd by mathstuf Parent article: Debating ifupdown replacements for Debian trixie

CSCI 181G PO

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 04:44:32 GMT

This is the website for CSCI 181G PO: Game Engine Programming. Course information is available in the syllabus.

My 71 TiB ZFS NAS after 10 years and zero drive failures

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 18:59:34 GMT

My 4U 71 TiB ZFS NAS built with twenty-four 4 TB drives is over 10 years old and still going strong.

Introduction to the PDP 11, Unit 1, System Overview

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 02:16:11 GMT

This is a remake of the first in a set of videos produced for Digital Equipment almost 40 years ago. In 1977, I created storyboards and wrote the scripts for all 28 videotapes. They were part of a training package called “Introduction to the PDP-11”. The original videos were discovered on a computer museum website. I was thrilled to come across examples of the kinds of training packages that I worked on during my time with Digital.

The Lesson to Unlearn

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 02:19:46 GMT

December 2019 The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades.When I was in college, a particularly earnest philosophy grad student once told me that he never cared what grade he got in a class, only what he learned in it. This stuck in my mind because it was the only time I ever heard anyone say such a thing.For me, as for most students, the measurement of what I was learning completely dominated actual learning in college. I was fairly earnest; I was genuinely interested in most of the classes I took, and I worked hard. And yet I worked by far the hardest when I was studying for a test.In theory, tests are merely what their name implies: tests of what you've learned in the class. In theory you shouldn't have to prepare for a test in a class any more than you have to prepare for a blood test. In theory you learn from taking the class, from going to the lectures and doing the reading and/or assignments, and the test that comes afterward merely measures how well you learned.In practice, as almost everyone reading this will know, things are so different that hearing this explanation of how classes and tests are meant to work is like hearing the etymology of a word whose meaning has changed completely. In practice, the phrase "studying for a test" was almost redundant, because that was when one really studied. The difference between diligent and slack students was that the former studied hard for tests and the latter didn't. No one was pulling all-nighters two weeks into the semester.Even though I was a diligent student, almost all the work I did in school was aimed at getting a good grade on something.To many people, it would seem strange that the preceding sentence has a "though" in it. Aren't I merely stating a tautology? Isn't that what a diligent student is, a straight-A student? That's how deeply the conflation of learning with grades has infused our culture.Is it so bad if...

Object-Oriented

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:48:26 GMT

Jonathan Rees, December 2001 -- originally composed as email first to Paul Graham and then to the "lightweight languages" mailing list at MIT.

The Long Road to Fiber Optics - by Brian Potter

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 13:36:07 GMT

Over the past six decades, advances in computers and microprocessors have completely reshaped our world.

Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead.

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:58:21 GMT

"MVP" implies a selfish process, abusing customers so you can "learn." Instead, make the first version SLC: Simple, Loveable, and Complete.

Going Buildless | Max Böck

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:41:56 GMT

Max Böck is a professional front-end developer based in Vienna, Austria.

Legacy

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:41:41 GMT

Humans have always tried to live forever. Maybe you can, but not in the way you imagine.

Closures in Zig

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:31:19 GMT

Creating closures in zig and storing anytype as a field

My Homelab Setup

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:15:41 GMT

I replaced my existing Homelab setup from the ground up with Unifi's latest Gateways, Switches APs, and Cameras. Here is what I did and how it ended up.

What’s in an e-graph? | Max Bernstein

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:14:34 GMT

This post follows from several conversations with CF Bolz-Tereick, Philip Zucker, Chris Fallin, and Max Willsey.

The BITSAVERS.ORG Documents Library : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 03:13:46 GMT

Since the 1990s, the bitsavers collective has been scanning computer-related documentation and materials as well as rescuing software from rapidly-fading media. Intended to be a permanent and accessible collection of manuals, technical specifications and lore related to computer brands and...

"Pushing the Limits of Web Browsers" by Lars Bak (2012)

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 19:15:45 GMT

Innovation is crucial for keeping web browsers a vibrant development platform. In the past four years, amazing performance improvements of JavaScript have enabled new kinds of web applications. However, this is far from sufficient. We clearly need to address the inefficiencies of developing large complex web applications. This talk will discuss advances in virtual machine technology and programming languages that likely will shape the future of web programming. Lars Bak Google Inc. Lars Bak is a veteran virtual machinist. His passion for designing and implementing object-oriented virtual machines has left marks on several software systems: Beta, Self, Strongtalk, Sun's HotSpot and CLDC HI, OOVM Smalltalk, V8, and Dart. Since joining Google in the fall of 2006, Lars has been responsible for the design and implementation of V8 & Dart. He graduated from Aarhus University in 1988 with a MS degree in computer science.

Erasure Coding for Distributed Systems

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 18:44:24 GMT

An overview of erasure coding, its trade-offs, and applications in distributed storage systems.

Constraining writers in distributed systems

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 18:38:14 GMT

This is a note to describe a pattern for avoiding failures in distributed systems, variants of which has been written about multiple ways with multiple names (“copysets”, “read/write quorum systems”).

How does it feel to test a compiler? | by Alexander Zakharenko | Jul, 2024 | Medium

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 11:51:02 GMT

In this article the experience of a Kotlin/Native compiler QA engineer and some compiler QA and testing practices are described with tasks and cases examples

Practices of Reliable Software Design

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 19:42:11 GMT

I was nerd-sniped. Out of the blue, a friend asked me,

B-trees and database indexes

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:59:53 GMT

B-trees are used by many modern DBMSs. Learn how they work, how databases use them, and how your choice of primary key can affect index performance.

What to Do When You Forget Your Root Password – Tookmund – A place for my random thoughts about software

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:42:22 GMT

Forgetting your root password would initially seem like a problem requiring a full re-install, one that you can’t easily recover from without wiping everything away.

What I Gave Up To Become An Engineering Manager

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 17:35:35 GMT

The five things I had to let go to transition successfully from IC to EM.

Explore AMX instructions: Unlock the performance of Apple Silicon | by 郑启航 | Sep, 2024 | Medium

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 14:20:08 GMT

Since 2020, Apple has published M1/M2/M3. They have at least four different ways to perform high-intensity computing tasks. If we use ARM NEON instructions to accelerate the sgemm kernel on the…

Feynman Algorithm

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:03:01 GMT

The Feynman algorithm was facetiously suggested by Murray Gell-Mann, a colleague of Feynman, in a New York Times interview.

Programming languages resources | Max Bernstein

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:01:46 GMT

This page is a collection of my favorite resources for people getting started writing programming languages. I hope to keep it updated as long as I continue to find great stuff.

Implementing HanoiDB - Session 1: Introduction

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 12:57:48 GMT

This is a new series looking at HanoiDB, an interesting indexed key-value storage engine that was originally built for Riak. We start by getting the ancient code running on a more recent Erlang/OTP version, then write out some data to disk and try to read it back from a new Rust crate.

Linux's Bedtime Routine – Tookmund – A place for my random thoughts about software

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 12:21:16 GMT

How does Linux move from an awake machine to a hibernating one? How does it then manage to restore all state? These questions led me to read way too much C in trying to figure out how this particular hardware/software boundary is navigated.

ATProto for distributed systems engineers - AT Protocol

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 10:04:24 GMT

AT Protocol is the tech developed at Bluesky for open social networking. In this article we're going to explore AT Proto from the perspective of distributed backend engineering.

Taming Consensus in the Wild (with the Shared Log Abstraction)

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 14:30:09 GMT

This paper recently appeared at ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. It provides an overview of the shared log abstraction in distributed s...

DNS "propagation" is actually caches expiring

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 14:25:22 GMT

DNS "propagation" is actually caches expiring

The Fundamental Law Of Software Dependencies

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 13:40:06 GMT

Canonical source code for software should include checksums of the content of all its dependencies.

Why is Browser Observability Hard | Hazel Weakly

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 12:58:51 GMT

So the big thing that makes everything so difficult for browsers is that opentelemetry has a concept of a lifecycle for telemetry that doesn’t map very well to...

Programming with Lambda Calculus

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 12:57:24 GMT

Founder Mode

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 12:47:08 GMT

September 2024At a YC event last week Brian Chesky gave a talk that everyone who was there will remember. Most founders I talked to afterward said it was the best they'd ever heard. Ron Conway, for the first time in his life, forgot to take notes. I'm not going to try to reproduce it here. Instead I want to talk about a question it raised.The theme of Brian's talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized as "hire good people and give them room to do their jobs." He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple. So far it seems to be working. Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.The audience at this event included a lot of the most successful founders we've funded, and one after another said that the same thing had happened to them. They'd been given the same advice about how to run their companies as they grew, but instead of helping their companies, it had damaged them.Why was everyone telling these founders the wrong thing? That was the big mystery to me. And after mulling it over for a bit I figured out the answer: what they were being told was how to run a company you hadn't founded — how to run a company if you're merely a professional manager. But this m.o. is so much less effective that to founders it feels broken. There are things founders can do that managers can't, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.In effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode. But we can infer the existence of another mode from the dismay of founders who've t...

On distributed systems | Distributed Systems by Szymon Durak

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 12:32:39 GMT

What are these distributed systems, after all?

Thoughts on "The Future of TLA+" • Buttondown

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 12:09:15 GMT

What could be added to TLA+ without compromising Lamport's vision?

Typed Lambda Calculus / Calculus of Constructions

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 17:49:41 GMT

Dick Grune's Annotated Literature Lists

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 11:45:37 GMT

Peter Calingaert, "Assemblers, Compilers and Program Translation", Computer Science Press/Springer-Verlag, Potomac, Maryland 20854/Berlin, 1979, pp. 270. The only book on compiler construction that gives serious treatment to assemblers, linkers and loaders.

The Art of Finishing | ByteDrum

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 23:19:49 GMT

My endless battle with the "Project Hydra": why I can't seem to finish projects, and the strategies I'm exploring to finally complete what I start. A personal journey through productivity's thorniest challenge.

Ask HN: Resources for GPU Compilers? | Hacker News

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 17:05:48 GMT

Faith Ekstrand has an impressive track record of compiler work and has written a few blog posts[1], [1a]. Her Mastodon[2] is also worth a follow.

Opinions for Writing Good CSS

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 01:20:36 GMT

CSS is a flexible language that, in my opinion, requires opinions to be written well and consistently. Here are some of my opinions for writing good CSS.

Full Text, Full Archive RSS Feeds for any Blog | DOGESEC

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 01:16:17 GMT

RSS and ATOM feeds are problematic for two reasons; 1) lack of history, 2) contain limited post content. We built some open-source software to fix that.

Notes/Primer on Clang Compiler Frontend (1) : Introduction and Architecture - Youssef Ateya

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 13:03:52 GMT

Notes/Primer on Clang Compiler Frontend: Introduction and Architecture These are my notes on chapters 1 & 2 of the Clang Compiler Frontend by Ivan Murashko. The book is focused on teaching the fundamentals of LLVM to C++ engineers who are interested in learning about compilers to optimize their daily workflow by enhancing their code quality and overall development process. (I’ve referened this book extensively, and a lot of the snippets here are from this book.

Authenticated Boot and Disk Encryption on Linux

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 13:03:11 GMT

Posts and writings by Lennart Poettering

What is Table-Oriented Programming? :: Table-Oriented Programming (TOP)

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 12:59:25 GMT

Table-oriented programming is, on the surface, an extremely high level of programming language support for tables. Most languages don't even get close to this level of support. The common language which has the highest level of support, SQL, doesn't support all the features desired by the TOP (Table-Oriented Programming) aficionados.

August 2024 Time Tracking

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 23:37:52 GMT

Every so often ( 2022, 2017, more 2017, 2015, 2011) Julia and will track how we spend our time for a week. This is useful for seeing whether how we're spending our time matches how we think we're spending it (and how we would like to be spending it) while also avoiding a pattern where one of us ends up putting in substantially more hours on childcare or other shared responsibilities without us not

Neurotechnology Numbers Worth Knowing

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 19:58:49 GMT

Facts about your head worth having in your head

A new cycle-stepped 6502 CPU emulator

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 18:47:46 GMT

TL;DR: The how and why of the new 6502 emulator in the chips project.

Putting a meaningful dent in your error backlog – Dan Slimmon

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 18:33:03 GMT

We often don't realize how noisy the errors have gotten until things are already well out of hand. After all, we've got shit to do. Deadlines to hit. By the time we decide to get serious about error management, a huge, impenetrable, meaningless backlog of errors has already accumulated. I call this stuff "slag."

Zig and Emulators

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 18:28:30 GMT

Some quick Zig feedback in the context of a new 8-bit emulator project I starteda little while ago:

Essays: NSA Surveillance: a Guide to Staying Secure - Schneier on Security

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 13:47:07 GMT

Now that we have enough details about how the NSA eavesdrops on the internet, including today’s disclosures of the NSA’s deliberate weakening of cryptographic systems, we can finally start to figure out how to protect ourselves.

My Software Bookshelf | olano.dev

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 13:39:46 GMT

The easiest way to make a to-read pile grow is to read a book from it.

State and time are the same thing • Buttondown

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 20:15:29 GMT

State is time, time is state.

How much of success is luck?

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 20:06:28 GMT

"You're so lucky." That's true. There's also decades of sacrifice, emotional turmoil, long hours, perseverance. So… is it lucky?

How to sync Mac and Linux /home | Derek Sivers

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 16:47:48 GMT

My main computer is a Linux/BSD desktop, but I also use a Mac laptop for recording and travel. This created a problem keeping them in sync.

Distributed systems theory for the distributed systems engineer | Paper Trail

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:55:53 GMT

Writing about distributed systems, compilers, virtual machines, databases and research papers from SOSP, ATC, NSDI, OSDI, EuroSys and others

Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods – Something Similar

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:55:33 GMT

I’ve been thinking about the lessons distributed systems engineers learn on the job. A great deal of our instruction is through scars made by mistakes made in production traffic. These scars are useful reminders, sure, but it’d be better to have more engineers with the full count of their fingers.

Learning about distributed systems: where to start?

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:39:33 GMT

This is definitely not a "learn distributed systems in 21 days" post. I recommend a principled, from the foundations-up, studying ...

Best resources to learn about data and distributed systems - Pierre Zemb

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:14:33 GMT

Learning distributed systems is tough. You need to go through a lot of academic papers, concepts, code review, before being able to have a global pictures. Thankfully, there is a lot of resources out there that can help you. Here's the best resources I used to learn distributed systems

Database “sharding” came from UO? – Raph's Website

Thu, 29 Aug 2024 00:08:12 GMT

Lessons Learned: Sharding for startups is a technical post about database scalability. What caught my eye was the term. What an odd term — “sharding.” Why would a database be desc…

Rachel Thomas, PhD - Your Immune System is Not a Muscle

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 23:56:35 GMT

an AI researcher going back to school for immunology

Fix the machine, not the person (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 01:56:07 GMT

The General Motors plant in Fremont was a disaster. “Everything was a fight,” the head of the union admits. “They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars. They had strikes all the time. It was just chaos constantly. … It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States.”

Cherish mistakes (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:06:49 GMT

At one, they hate making mistakes. How else could it be? “We’re not ever going to enjoy screwing up,” they told me. But this attitude has a lot of consequences. Everything they do has to go through several layers of approval to make sure it’s not a mistake. And when someone does screw up, they try to hide it.

Confront reality (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 01:03:10 GMT

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

Predicting the Future of Distributed Systems

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 15:14:19 GMT

There are significant changes happening in distributed systems.

You Are NOT Dumb, You Just Lack the Prerequisites

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:32:55 GMT

I always thought I was too dumb to understand math. During my school years, it was evident to me that for some kids math was easy, and for others like myself: painfully difficult.

Self-hosting DNS - GHOST

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:31:37 GMT

My journey of DNS, including self-hosting with Pi-hole and AdGuard Home, using paid services like NextDNS and AdGuard DNS, and public privacy-respecting resolvers.

How SSH Secures Your Connection :: Noratrieb's blog

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 22:00:53 GMT

Explaining SSH security by example

B-trees

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 21:04:40 GMT

Say we have some things, and we want to be able to store and look them up in order. We could just put them in a big sorted array:

A ToC of the 20 part linker essay [LWN.net]

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 20:52:16 GMT

Posted Apr 7, 2008 6:28 UTC (Mon) by JesseW (subscriber, #41816) Parent article: Striking gold in binutils

Ethernet History Deepdive – Why Do We Have Different Frame Types? – Daniels Networking Blog

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 19:33:51 GMT

In my previous post Encapsulation of PDUs On Trunk Ports, I showed what happens to PDUs when you change the configuration of a trunk. You may have noticed that there are typically three different types of Ethernet encapsulations that we see:

Home

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 15:47:40 GMT

A collection of examples of using Common Lisp

Obsession | notes.eatonphil.com

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 13:40:05 GMT

Obsession

Applying Books in My Life - TK • Newsletter

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 13:28:37 GMT

Hey! In this newsletter I talk about how books are shaping my life and how I'm applying the knowledge gained from reading them.

Lean into the pain (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:35:48 GMT

When you first begin to exercise, it’s somewhat painful. Not wildly painful, like touching a hot stove, but enough that if your only goal was to avoid pain, you certainly would stop doing it. But if you keep exercising… well, it just keeps getting more painful. When you’re done, if you’ve really pushed yourself, you often feel exhausted and sore. And the next morning it’s even worse.

Look at yourself objectively (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:08:58 GMT

In the 1840s, hospitals were dangerous places. Mothers who went in to give birth often didn’t make it out. For example, at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, as many as 10% of mothers died of puerperal fever after giving birth. But there was some good news: at the Second Clinic, the number was just 4%. Expectant mothers noticed this — some would get down on their knees and beg to be admitted to the Second Clinic. Others, hearing new patients were being admitted to the First Clinic that day, decided they’d rather give birth in the streets.

Practices of Reliable Software Design

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 12:57:43 GMT

I was nerd-sniped. Out of the blue, a friend asked me,

What I Learned Working For Mark Zuckerberg - Noah Kagan

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 12:40:47 GMT

Listen to this email instead 🙂 – Spotify – iTunes When I walked into the first floor of the Facebook building on University Avenue, in Palo Alto, I wasn’t sure if I was in a frat house or a startup. There were cables falling from the ceilings, people running around and I was told to […]

How to write.

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 12:34:07 GMT

Write a lot. This is alpha and omega of writing advice, the beginning and the end, and it's that way for a reason– I don’t know anyone who’s good writing who hasn’t also put in serious hours.

Late Again – Rands in Repose

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 12:24:22 GMT

Awkward. Seven of us now. Sitting around the table. Five minutes since the start of the meeting. We've used up our chit-chat allowance and wonder if you will show. In the scheme of things relevant to a company's success, showing up late to a meeting is not the end of the world. When it happens a l

naklecha/llama3-from-scratch: llama3 implementation one matrix multiplication at a time

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 15:15:27 GMT

llama3 implementation one matrix multiplication at a time - naklecha/llama3-from-scratch

How to avoid losing items? Holding pens. | Alex W.'s Blog

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:48:59 GMT

-- a phrase my mom would always say when she’d lost something.

Efficient and Insightful Generalization

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:10:32 GMT

A short guide on OCaml type checker, describing the surprisingly elegant algorithm for generalization, which generalizes to first-class polymorphism, MLF and local types. Polymorphism and regions have much in common.

The Art of Learning - TK • Newsletter

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 15:42:13 GMT

Improving the learning process to achieve your goals through the meta

The Compiler Writer Resource Page

Sat, 17 Aug 2024 18:35:03 GMT

I know complete pans of the literature are left out, but this is a page for amateur compiler writers. Anything that I did not find practical is not listed here. (I also did not include the things that I do not yet know!) All the remarks in grey and even the selection of documents are personal. If you have suggestions of papers to include, please contact me! Finally, the order of items in the various sections is totally arbitrary.

HTTP/1.0 From Scratch

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:05:08 GMT

Laying the Foundation: Building the Web with HTTP/1.0.

HTTP/0.9 From Scratch

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:05:01 GMT

Building the foundation with HTTP/0.9

Crafting Interpreters with Rust: On Garbage Collection | Tung Le Vo

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:04:48 GMT

I became interested in implementing programming languages a few years ago and discovered [Crafting Interpreters](https://craftinginterpreters.com/) by Bob Nystrom. At the time, I had experience with Rust and decided to use it to follow the book. Albeit, being a noob, I managed to implement a fully functional bytecode interpreter that supported every feature of the Lox language as described. However, my implementation suffered memory leaks due to reference counting. Back then, I didn't fully grasp Rust to design and implement a proper garbage collector (GC)! Now that I have more confidence in the language, I decided to revisit the project and improve its memory management scheme.

A Visual Guide to Quantization - by Maarten Grootendorst

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:04:36 GMT

Explore the quantization of Large Language Models (LLMs) with 60+ illustrations.

Higher-kinded Bounded Polymorphism

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 01:04:19 GMT

How bounded higher-kinded polymorphism arises in practice, and how to express it in OCaml, in several different ways. Some ways are rather concise -- but less widely known.

Examples of Great URL Design - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 04:01:13 GMT

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

Visual Data Structures Cheat-Sheet - by Nick M

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 03:48:26 GMT

A visual overview of some of the key data-structures used in the real world.

Ask HN: What are some "toy" projects you used to learn neural networks hands-on? | Hacker News

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 22:52:11 GMT

And if you can share Docker Compose based set-up, please do (I like Docker Compose for its simplicity).

Some Books I Like // One Year of NULL BITMAP • Buttondown

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 21:55:23 GMT

This is the 52nd NULL BITMAP, which means I have been doing this for a whole year! I skipped one week before I decided that this was going to be a weekly...

How we tamed Node.js event loop lag: a deepdive | Trigger.dev

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:47:31 GMT

We recently experienced some service degradation and downtime due to event loop lag in our Node.js service. Here's how we diagnosed and fixed the issue.

The Illustrated QUIC Connection: Every Byte Explained

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:39:23 GMT

Every byte of a QUIC connection explained and reproduced

Monitoring Node.js: Watch Your Event Loop Lag! - David Hettler 🥨

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:36:22 GMT

Event loop lag is an essential, but often overlooked performance metric for Node.js applications. What is it and why does it matter?

Adam Keys is Thinking - Methods of production

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:28:23 GMT

Herein, a napkin sketch on producing creative work, ideas on finding the spark(s) that consistently lead us to assemble new things, and the hand-wavy stuff in-between. Production is connecting the dots Extensively, manically, collect ideas (i.e., dots). Collect ideas, put ‘em in order. This is the tricky-but-fun part! Boom, that’s something new! Like this essay. Collect, connect, write, post, again and again. Austin Kleon, It’s not inside you trying to get out, it’s outside you trying to get in:

Tales of the M1 GPU - Asahi Linux

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 21:13:42 GMT

Porting Linux to Apple Silicon

SNES: Sprites and backgrounds rendering

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 20:28:02 GMT

The last article discussed the hardware of the Super Nintendo's graphic system. This one describes how these components collaborate to render sprites and backgrounds.

WebGPU Unleashed: A Practical Tutorial

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 20:06:46 GMT

WebGPU Unleashed, your ticket to the dynamic world of graphics programming. Dive in and discover the magic of creating stunning visuals from scratch, mastering the art of real-time graphics, and unlocking the power of WebGPU - all in one captivating tutorial.

Hacking a Virtual Power Plant | rya.nc

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 15:20:00 GMT

I recently had solar panels and a battery storage system from GivEnergy installed at my house. A major selling point for me was that they have a local…

Ray Tracing Harmonic Functions

Sat, 10 Aug 2024 15:13:01 GMT

Denise Yang Carnegie Mellon University& Pixar Animation Studios

Peter DaSilva/The New York Times/Redux

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:06:14 GMT

It was December 2006. Twenty-nine-year-old entrepreneur James Park had just purchased a Wii game system.

Do Quests, Not Goals

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 21:01:51 GMT

South Island, New Zealand, a.k.a. Middle-Earth If you were to make a list of what you want to get done this week, it would mostly consist of things you have to do. Get groceries. Book a hair appointment. Get back to so-and-so. Read that health and safety thing for work. If you were to make a list of things you

Learning & The Power of the First Step - TK • Newsletter

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:17:08 GMT

4 lessons that will make you start right now

How to talk to your parents about hardware memory safety | CHERIoT Platform

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 20:47:20 GMT

Some conversations are difficult to have with members of older generations who grew up with different social norms. In particular, when you’re talking to people who grew up with PDP-11s with their completely flat memory, or Lisp machines or Burroughs Large Systems with their deeply opinionated and language-integrated hardware memory safety, you may find it hard to talk about CHERI. This guide aims to help you have those conversations with the minimum of stress on both sides.

React Compiler, How Does It Work? [1] - Entry Point through Babel Plugin | 장용석 블로그

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:08:08 GMT

We aim to deeply explore the React Compiler. Let's start by examining the compiler's entry point through the Babel plugin.

There is no mystery over who wrote the Blue Screen of Death, despite what some may want you to believe - The Old New Thing

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:39:15 GMT

No real contradictions in anybody's story.

x86re

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 22:32:52 GMT

The algebra (and calculus!) of algebraic data types

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 06:47:46 GMT

Note: This article assumes some introductory Haskell knowledge.

Vector Clocks Explained

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 06:05:24 GMT

January 29, 2010 Vector clocks are confusing the first time you're introduced to them. It's not clear what their benefits are, nor how it is you derive said benefits. Indeed, each Riak developer has had his own set of false starts in making them behave.

EMUBook

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 13:54:10 GMT

No copy may be reproduced in whole or in part within a for-profit commercial publication or Internet site without the express consent of the author.

On writing | What's new

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:42:21 GMT

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. (W. Somerset Maugham) Everyone has to develop their own writing style, based on their own strengths and weakn…

Practical Math: My Journey from Idea to Application | Happiness Machines

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 12:40:29 GMT

An exploration of the process I went through to turn a casual thought into a real-world math application.

DRMacIver's Notebook: Asymmetric vices and the unity of virtue

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 01:48:31 GMT

I was trying to find a post I’d written about this and then realised it was a Twitter thread. This post is just me copying out that thread and lightly editing it for format so I have somewhere more stable to refer to it.

Creativity Fundamentally Comes From Memorization

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:27:11 GMT

July 2024

Lysxia - Where does the name "algebraic data type" come from?

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:17:25 GMT

A blog about functional programming

Elements kinds in V8 · V8

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 20:28:02 GMT

This technical deep-dive explains how V8 optimizes operations on arrays behind the scenes, and what that means for JavaScript developers.

How I Computer in 2024 · Jon Seager

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:15:08 GMT

An extended “uses” post that outlines the hardware I’m currently using, the software and tools that I use to get things done, and how I configure things.

Adam Keys is Thinking - The (Leadership) Discipline

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 12:08:10 GMT

Robert Fripp via Austin Kleon, The Meaning of Discipline: The musician has three instruments: the hands, the head, and the heart, and each has its own discipline. So, the musician has three disciplines: the disciplines of the hands, the head and the heart. Ultimately, these are one discipline: discipline. Bear with me as I try to apply this lively metaphor of emotion and musical creativity to dry-and-boring engineering leadership1.

Advice to the young

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 01:15:19 GMT

I notice I haven't written any advice posts recently. Here is a collection of my advice posts pre 2020. I've been feeling all this e...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Logical Verification

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 21:18:52 GMT

Art of Assembly Language, PDF Files

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 21:14:05 GMT

WEBster Home Page PDF (Portable Document Format) Files: The PDF version of "The Art of Assembly Language Programming" is a complete, high-quality version of the text.

Motivation

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 20:22:02 GMT

I've been using pure FP in production for 10 years. I programmed in Haskell, OCaml, Elm and PureScript.

The Documentation Tradeoff - by Kent Beck

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 13:17:40 GMT

A little, sure, but be careful about more

How to Compile Your Language

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 12:59:59 GMT

This guide is intended to be a practical introduction to how to design your language and implement a modern compiler for it. The source code of the compiler is available on GitHub.

The Four Theories of Truth as a Method for Critical Thinking - Daniel Imfeld

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 12:22:10 GMT

The Four Theories of Truth as a Method for Critical Thinking by Daniel Imfeld

Simple event broker tries Tiger Style

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 12:20:03 GMT

I’ve been on a bender for the past few weeks. I haven’t been able to stop reading and watching content about TigerBeetle. I was especially enamored by videos...

Math 331 Reading Guides

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 11:18:17 GMT

Readings for Math 331 are from the textbook Foundations of Analysis, second edition, by David Belding and Kevin Mitchell, supplemented by some web pages about metric spaces. My goal here is to pull out important points from the reading and give my perspective on them, as well as to give some additional information and examples in some cases. I might occasionally record videos of short lectures and include links to them in the posts. I hope to post two or three of these "reading guides" per week throughout the semester. As the semester gets going and things get hectic, the length of the posts will probably decrease. If the class goes remote, the posts will be an important resource for the course, and their lengths should increase—and I will include more videos.

Complex systems emerge from simple rules

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 10:56:08 GMT

Can you predict your next move? Can you make sense of what is happening around you? And within you?

#001 - Abraçando o caminho sem volta - Insight Espresso

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 02:14:21 GMT

#001 Abraçando o caminho sem volta Enviador por Lucca Moreira | 16 de abril de 2024 A Tuesday Reflections também está no Spotify. Para escutar é só clicar aqui. Por que abraçar um caminho sem volta pode ser a melhor decisão da sua vida Tempo de Leitura: 5 minutos O que vamos explorar hoje? Um […]

A weekend's (re)reading list | Ludwig

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 02:12:02 GMT

This weekend, I am mostly reading about my typical concerns: and a recent addition: font rendering (as I continue to slowly but surely work on ). A ...

Plain text journaling | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Herman's blog

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 02:10:36 GMT

The new/old way of keeping a digital journal

soulmachine/machine-learning-cheat-sheet: Classical equations and diagrams in machine learning

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 16:04:05 GMT

Classical equations and diagrams in machine learning - soulmachine/machine-learning-cheat-sheet

Understanding_digital_signal_processing

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 15:11:06 GMT

Story: Redis and its creator antirez | Brachiosoft Blog

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 05:02:11 GMT

Discover the unique journey of Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez), the mastermind behind Redis, one of the world's most beloved databases. From his early life in Sicily to his breakthroughs in database development and system programming, and finally to his impact on major companies such as Instagram and Twitter. Explore his journey, challenges, and achievements, and understand why Redis continues to be a popular choice among developers.

Not Just Scale - Marc's Blog

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 01:57:42 GMT

Bookmarking this so I can stop writing it over and over.

Forget “show, don’t tell”. Engage, don’t show! • Lea Verou

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 00:06:34 GMT

A few days ago, I gave a very well received talk about API design at dotJS titled “API Design is UI Design” [1]. One of the points I made was that good UIs (and thus, good APIs) have a smooth UI complexity to Use case complexity curve. This means that incremental user effort results in incremental value; at no point going just a little bit further requires a disproportionately big chunk of upfront work [2].

Learning about PCI-e: Driver & DMA

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 18:52:09 GMT

Creating a simple driver for a simple PCI-e device (in QEMU)

Philosophy of How to Learn

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 17:15:33 GMT

The background and context on why the groupings exist the way they do, and the different sorts of pages you’ll find in this section. But, this is all philosophical waxing, so quite skippable.

Database Indexes & Phone Books - by Thorsten Ball

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 17:11:58 GMT

One of the best analogies I’ve ever been taught

Consensus

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:55:36 GMT

Paxos, Raft, and all their flavors, variations, and alternatives.

Taking my diabetes treatment into my own hands | Martin Janiczek

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 16:49:27 GMT

First of all, this blogpost is kinda long. Let me prove to you reading it will actually have some payoff:

Calculus for Beginners

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 15:24:19 GMT

kiennt26's home | Linux Network Performance Ultimate Guide

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 15:22:01 GMT

Author: Kien Nguyen A minimal Hugo theme with Tailwind CSS

Let's Consign CAP to the Cabinet of Curiosities - Marc's Blog

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 07:30:02 GMT

Brewer’s CAP theorem, and Gilbert and Lynch’s formalization of it, is the first introduction to hard trade-offs for many distributed systems engineers. Going by the vast amounts of ink and bile spent on the topic, it is not unreasonable for new folks to conclude that it’s an important, foundational, idea.

sigtt611-bernstein

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 07:24:30 GMT

Introduction · Reverse Engineering

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 07:22:14 GMT

This comprehensive set of reverse engineering tutorials covers x86, x64 as well as 32-bit ARM and 64-bit architectures. If you're a newbie looking to learn reversing, or just someone looking to revise on some concepts, you're at the right place. As a beginner, these tutorials will carry you from nothing upto the mid-basics of reverse engineering, a skill that everyone within the realm of cyber-security should possess. If you're here just to refresh some concepts, you can conveniently use the side bar to take a look at the sections that has been covered so far.

Rediscovering Transaction Processing From History and First Principles

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 07:18:51 GMT

The financial transactions database to power the next 30 years of Online Transaction Processing.

advanced-linux-programming

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 03:26:02 GMT

Ray Tracing in One Weekend Series

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 02:44:27 GMT

The Ray Tracing in One Weekend series of books are available to the public for free online. They are released under the CC0 license. This means that they are as close to public domain as we can get. (While that also frees you from the requirement of providing attribution, it would help the overall project if you could point back to this web site as a service to other users.)

Startup Finance for Founders — Part I, Accounting by Peter Reinhardt

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:17:32 GMT

When we started Segment, we knew nothing about business finance. My background was in aerospace engineering, and my co-founders came from computer science and design. Beyond the hilariously overcomplicated spreadsheet we used to manage grocery bills as roommates, we really had no experience in finance when we started the company.

Tools + Techniques for Procedural Gamedev - Casey Primozic's Homepage

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:16:45 GMT

For a couple of years now, I've been working on and off on some 3D scenes and levels that run in the browser. It started off as a scattering of self-contained demos for some custom shaders or similar that I wanted to try out, but over time the project has grown into a pretty substantial interconnected game-like thing.

My OBTF Workflow & Bash Script

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:18:46 GMT

Several months ago, I wrote a post about my digital notetaking system, which consists of me keeping all my notes in one big t(e)xt file. For whatever reason, people took an interest in the idea (which originated in the 2000s). And to this day, I still get the odd email or message about it.

When Then Zen

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 02:03:07 GMT

When Then Zen is a new project by Christine Dodrill to offer a better way to teach meditation. Meditation has gotten a really bad reputation in Western audiences as overcomplicated, esoteric and baroque; however those couldn't be farther from the truth. It can be as simple as watching breathing happen or build off of there.

How Simultaneous Multithreading Works Under the Hood

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:34:39 GMT

Ever wondered how your CPU handles two tasks at once? Discover the magic of Simultaneous Multithreading and see what’s really going on inside.

Intro | Putting the "You" in CPU

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 21:59:06 GMT

Curious exactly what happens when you run a program on your computer? Learn how multiprocessing works, what system calls really are, how computers manage memory with hardware interrupts, and how Linux loads executables.

lecture18

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 04:56:04 GMT

First Principles: The Building Blocks of True Knowledge

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 04:50:06 GMT

First Principles thinking breaks down true understanding into building blocks we can reassemble into something that simplifies our problem.

Categories of leadership on technical teams | benkuhn.net

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:07:52 GMT

overall direction • people management • project management • technical leadership • example divisions of labor

Haskell for all: Software engineers are not (and should not be) technicians

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 22:23:44 GMT

Why predictable development work is a red flag

onceupon/Bash-Oneliner: A collection of handy Bash One-Liners and terminal tricks for data processing and Linux system maintenance.

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:54:08 GMT

A collection of handy Bash One-Liners and terminal tricks for data processing and Linux system maintenance. - onceupon/Bash-Oneliner

Chase Your Reading - by Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 02:42:47 GMT

Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing. With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions. You may find something else worth chasing along the way, and then switch your focus to a new chase, but you’ll still maintain a focus.

On having more interesting ideas - by Henrik Karlsson

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 02:41:55 GMT

“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least an unexpected way of approaching it.

Build your own SQLite, Part 1: Listing tables

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 01:46:44 GMT

As developers, we use databases all the time. But how do they work? In this series, we'll try to answer that question by building our own SQLite-compatible database from scratch. Source code examples will be provided in Rust, but you are encouraged t...

Structured Procrastination

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 19:47:20 GMT

Author practices jumping rope with seaweed while work awaits.

Parse, don’t validate

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 11:57:00 GMT

Historically, I’ve struggled to find a concise, simple way to explain what it means to practice type-driven design. Too often, when someone asks me “How did you come up with this approach?” I find I can’t give them a satisfying answer. I know it didn’t just come to me in a vision—I have an iterative design process that doesn’t require plucking the “right” approach out of thin air—yet I haven’t been very successful in communicating that process to others.

PostgreSQL triggers and isolation levels - Vlad Mihalcea

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 22:14:27 GMT

Learn how the MVCC-based PostgreSQL isolation levels guarantee read and write consistency when executing database triggers.

Setting up an x86 CPU in 64-bit mode

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 15:24:32 GMT

My personal blog about things I find interesting. Hit me up!

1989 Networking: NetWare 386 | OS/2 Museum

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:58:35 GMT

Thanks to the recent warez mega dump, another long lost gem has come to light: NetWare 386, also known as NetWare 3.0.

why you should write more - by Ava - bookbear express

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:50:58 GMT

and share it online

Learning LLVM (Part-2)

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:10:51 GMT

IntroductionIn the first part of my blog series on compilers and LLVM, I provided a brief introduction to compiler fundamentals and LLVM. We also wrote a simple LLVM analysis pass to print function na

Managing Underperformers | Jack Danger

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 14:03:16 GMT

Kind managers address underperformance early and accurately. Underperformance is when a person or a team is not bearing their share of the organization’s load. Their colleagues are either relying on them and getting let down, or they’ve learned not to rely on them at all. There are two fully unrelated causes of underperformance: Refusal to Align and Failure to Execute. Refusal to align Every person I’ve fired, both ICs and managers, refused to align their goals with the company’s.

Computer Architecture : Foundational Reading - by Babbage

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 13:41:13 GMT

Four alternative texts on computer architecture

time-clocks

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 14:49:20 GMT

/noghartt/u-60-c-25934-167-b-49-d-0-a-77-a-42-bd-746-dfa-17-time-clocks-pd-1909eaffc4c

little-languages

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 14:46:13 GMT

RFC 677: Maintenance of duplicate databases

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 05:43:00 GMT

Alternative Technologies

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 22:15:05 GMT

"Foundation for Object/Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto” by C. J. Date and H. Darwen -- 2003

SQLite Transactions

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 11:32:55 GMT

In the past few years SQLite (not SQL-light) has had a surge of popularity as people have come to realise its power as an in-process, highly reliable SQL database engine as a backend for server processes rather than its traditional role of client or edge applications. This change in stance for SQLite has happened despite the authors almost actively discouraging its use for this purpose.

The Greatest Educational Life Hack: Learning Math Ahead of Time - Justin Skycak

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 01:24:52 GMT

Learning math early guards you against numerous academic risks and opens all kinds of doors to career opportunities.

Self Hosting 101 - A Beginner's Guide

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 01:21:12 GMT

A beginner's guide to self hosting

VisCircuit - Make Circuits Easy to Learn

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 01:04:20 GMT

VisCircuit is a note-taking tool that contains an easy circuit diagram drawer and a beautiful note editor, designed to help you learn about electronics and circuits more easily.

Developing domain expertise: get your hands dirty. | Irrational Exuberance

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:04:32 GMT

Recently, I’ve been thinking about developing domain expertise, and wanted to collect my thoughts here. Although I covered some parts of this in Your first 90 days as CTO (understanding product analytics, shadowing customer support, talking to customers, and talking with your internal experts), I missed the most important dimension of effective learning: getting your hands dirty. At Carta, I’m increasingly spending time focused on our fund financials business, which requires a deep understanding of accounting.

Layers of context. | Irrational Exuberance

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:56:38 GMT

Recently I was chatting with a Staff-plus engineer who was struggling to influence his peers. Each time he suggested an approach, his team agreed with him, but his peers in the organization disagreed and pushed back. He wanted advice on why his peers kept undermining his approach. After our chat, I followed up by talking with his peers about some recent disagreements, and they kept highlighting missing context from the engineer’s proposals.

How to create software quality. | Irrational Exuberance

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 15:45:47 GMT

I’ve been reading Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software, and particularly enjoyed this quote from a memo discussed in the Zero Defects chapter: You can improve the quality of your code, and if you do, the rewards for yourself and for Microsoft will be immense. The hardest part is to decide that you want to write perfect code. If I wrote that in an internal memo, I imagine the engineering team would mutiny, but software quality is certainly an interesting topic where I continue to refine my thinking.

bobbyiliev/introduction-to-bash-scripting: Free Introduction to Bash Scripting eBook

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 03:42:21 GMT

Free Introduction to Bash Scripting eBook. Contribute to bobbyiliev/introduction-to-bash-scripting development by creating an account on GitHub.

untitled1.html

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 03:33:59 GMT

It is an honor and a pleasure to accept the Alan Turing Award. My own work has been on computer systems and that will be my theme. It is the essence of systems that they are integrating efforts, requiring broad knowledge of the problem area to be addressed, and that the detailed knowledge required is rarely held by one person. Thus the work of systems is usually done by teams and so it is in my case too. Hence I am accepting this award on behalf of the many whom I have worked with as much as for myself. It is not practical to name them all, so I will not. Nevertheless I would like to give special mention to Marjorie Daggett and Bob Daley for their parts in the birth of CTSS and to Bob Fano and the late Ted Glaser for their critical contributions to the development of the Multics System.

The Backup And Sync Strategy, Revised | Brain Baking

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 03:30:36 GMT

After fiddling with various ways to sync notes across multiple vaults and iterating on my local data …

Keep perfecting your config • Buttondown

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 22:43:41 GMT

Make your tools work better for you.

interdb.jp

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:23:43 GMT

In the previous two golden ages (1950s-1960s and the 1980s), our expectations outpaced the capabilities of the technology at the time, leading to disappointment. In contrast, the AI technology of the current golden age, which began in the mid-2010s, has consistently exceeded our expectations.

Software Engineering Is Not Engineering | Brain Baking

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 14:18:57 GMT

Rather, it's Reflection-in-action! Or is it?

How to Create a Liquid Raymarching Scene Using Three.js Shading Language | Codrops

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 13:52:35 GMT

An introduction to Raymarching using the power of Signed Distance Fields (SDFs) and simple lighting to create a liquid shape effect.

sbensu: We need visual programming. No, not like that.

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 12:16:33 GMT

Why do we keep building visual programming environments? Why do we never use them? What should we do instead?

Jonas Hietala: Microfeatures in my blog

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:44:53 GMT

A while I ago I encountered a blog post called Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites, and together with the related Hacker News discussion I got nerd sniped. (I spent more time than I care to admit implementing new and exciting microfeatures for the blog.)

Bio-digital jazz, man

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:23:53 GMT

Systemantics is a silly little book by John Gall with some interesting ideas about how systems (barely) work and why they fail. Below is a summary of the book’s axioms.

Linear Algebra Fundamentals

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:21:38 GMT

Learning the fundamentals of Linear Algebra for Machine Learning

Hugo Sidenotes Shortcode :: dade

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:18:37 GMT

I’ve recently really enjoyed a number of small features that make blogs feel more… interesting. One of those features is sidenotes. They are like footnotes, except, well, on the side. As someone who writes with a lot of parentheticals, a sidenote seems like a great way to remove my comment out of the flow of the sentence and I can make it separate, but still easy to read. I am certainly not the first to add sidenotes to my blog.

On reading about optimizing compilers | Ludwig

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 01:06:28 GMT

I was asked (on ) to dump some of my reading from the last two days on optimizing compilers -- here they are. For context, I never actually wrote a compiler ...

The humble beginning of id Software | Brachiosoft Blog

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 21:51:36 GMT

This article is translated from the original Chinese edition.

Understanding 3D Graphics | Azeem Bande-Ali | azeemba.com

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 20:36:56 GMT

First 3D model I ever made! (Jan 2020) I started playing around with Blender to learn 3D modeling and animation in 2020. I loved the experience but I had trouble understanding some …

The Hazardous Life of an Undersea Cable

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 18:22:37 GMT

Links: - The Asianometry Newsletter: https://www.asianometry.com - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Asianometry - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@asianometry - Twitter: https://twitter.com/asianometry

How and why we built our startup around small teams

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 17:56:09 GMT

Creating a startup of small teams can help you ship stupidly fast.

Where Did Combinators Come From? Hunting the Story of Moses Schönfinkel—Stephen Wolfram Writings

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 17:48:54 GMT

A dive into the unknown personal and academic history of the mathematician who developed combinators, Moses Schönfinkel.

A Race to the Bottom - Database Transactions Undermining Your AppSec · Doyensec's Blog

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:54:41 GMT

A Race to the Bottom - Database Transactions Undermining Your AppSec

An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:54:20 GMT

Beating the L1 cache with value speculation

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:53:55 GMT

If we have a heuristic to guess some value cheaply, we can remove a data dependency in a tight loop using the branch predictor. This allows the CPU to run more instructions in parallel, increasing performance. If this explanation does not make much sense to you, keep reading to learn about some of the magic making your CPU fast!

A malleable garden

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:39:01 GMT

Pete Millspaugh's digital garden

The microarchitecture of Intel and AMD CPUs

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 16:32:25 GMT

O tal do Isolamento no A.C.I.D. - Alen Vieira

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 05:26:56 GMT

Vamos aprofundar um pouco sobre o isolamento?

Matrix Theory of Mind - by Thorsten Ball - Register Spill

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:01:53 GMT

A few months ago I listened to this episode of the Search Engine podcast in which PJ Vogt, the host, talks to Ezra Klein about the internet and media consumption in general. In the episode, Ezra Klein shares what he thinks of as the “Matrix Theory of Mind”. Here’s my (slightly cleaned up) transcription of

Three important steps before jumping to the code

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:59:36 GMT

As a developer, how do you start building a new feature? You may think, "It depends," and it certainly does. However, there could be frameworks that fit many situations, and I'd like to suggest one

Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly | benkuhn.net

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:56:15 GMT

non-trust is reasonable • trust lets collaboration scale • symptoms of trust deficit • how to proactively build trust

CSS GPU Animation: Doing It Right — Smashing Magazine

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:41:07 GMT

Sometimes animation that is nice and smooth in a simple demo runs very slowly on a real website, introduces visual artefacts or even crashes the browser. Why does this happen? How do we fix it? In this article, Sergey Chikuyonok aims to help you to better understand how the browser uses the GPU to render, so that you can create impressive websites that run quickly on all devices. Let’s do it!

Adam Keys is Thinking - Journal, highlight, revisit, blog

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:33:47 GMT

Writing from notes is a bootstrapping problem. Anything you can do to get started, overcome static friction, and “defeat” the first blank canvas is the best thing you can do. I started with journaling. Don’t worry about the quality or quantity — yet. Just write. Start with recollections of your day(s) and branch out from there. There is a trough of despair, at some point. It may feel like you’re just writing into a void.

Massively Multiplexed, Body-Wide Gene Editing? Not So Much, Yet.

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 00:19:11 GMT

It’s already standard to do a very simple version of this two-step process.

89 things I know about Git commits · Jamie Tanna | Software Engineer

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 02:48:42 GMT

Some of the things I've learned over a decade of Git usage, and working on writing good commit messages.

Use A Work Journal To Recover Focus Faster And Clarify Your Thoughts

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 02:17:57 GMT

You’re working on the most complex problem in computer science: fixing permissions on a deployment pipeline. It’s been 4 days you started on that simple task...

WebGPU Fundamentals

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 20:25:41 GMT

Learn webgpu

Agda by Example: λ-calculus

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 13:10:45 GMT

Update: I gave a talk at NY Haskell following this blogpost, although I didn’t manage to talk about everything:

The Forth Methodology of Charles Moore by Jeff Fox 12/09/01

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 12:46:16 GMT

Essay about the Forth methodology of Chuck Moore as interpreted by Jeff Fox

Let's reproduce GPT-2 (1.6B): one 8XH100 node, 24 hours, $672, in llm.c · karpathy/llm.c · Discussion #677

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 01:49:04 GMT

In this post we are reproducing GPT-2 in llm.c. This is "the GPT-2", the full, 1558M parameter version that was introduced in OpenAI's blog post Better Language Models and their Impli...

Why I’m Writing A Book On Cryptography

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 01:27:21 GMT

I’ve now been writing a book on applied cryptography for a year and a half. I’m nearing the end of my journey, as I have one last ambitious chapter left to write: next-generation cryptography (a chapter that I’ll use to talk about cryptography that will become more and more practical: post-quantum cryptography, homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation, and zk-SNARKs). I’ve been asked multip ...

Welcome … — Physics-based Deep Learning

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 01:26:52 GMT

Welcome to the Physics-based Deep Learning Book (v0.2) 👋

lorin/systems-reading: Systems and failure reading list

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 02:06:52 GMT

Systems and failure reading list. Contribute to lorin/systems-reading development by creating an account on GitHub.

Deep-ML

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 14:46:07 GMT

1 2 Next

MathPages

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 13:10:59 GMT

Scoped Propagators

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 04:42:01 GMT

My research investigates the intersection of computing, human-system interfaces, and emancipatory politics. I am interested in the potential of computing as a medium for thought, as a tool for collective action, and as a means of emancipation.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 02:29:31 GMT

Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well—usually programs they wrote themselves—and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another's mistakes rather than building on one another's successes.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 1)Berkeley DB

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 02:29:29 GMT

Conway's Law states that a design reflects the structure of the organization that produced it. Stretching that a bit, we might anticipate that a software artifact designed and initially produced by two people might somehow reflect, not merely the structure of the organization, but the internal biases and philosophies each brings to the table. One of us (Seltzer) has spent her career between the worlds of filesystems and database management systems. If questioned, she'll argue the two are fundamentally the same thing, and furthermore, operating systems and database management systems are essentially both resource managers and providers of convenient abstractions. The differences are "merely" implementation details. The other (Bostic) believes in the tool-based approach to software engineering and in the construction of components based on simpler building blocks, because such systems are invariably superior to monolithic architectures in the important "-bilities": understandability, extensibility, maintainability, testability, and flexibility.

Adam Keys is Thinking - Slash pages & micro-features

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 01:40:20 GMT

Slash pages: …are common pages you can add to your website, usually with a standard, root-level slug like /now, /about, or /uses. They tend to describe the individual behind the site and are distinguishing characteristics of the IndieWeb. This sort of thing is what makes personal/humane-scale websites the greatest. So many adventures to choose from! My favorites, already in place here: /about – “a page all about you” /blogroll – “a list of other sites that you read, are a follower of, or recommend” And the ones I need to get off my butt and implement:

The Right Kind of Stubborn

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 21:29:28 GMT

July 2024Successful people tend to be persistent. New ideas often don't work at first, but they're not deterred. They keep trying and eventually find something that does.Mere obstinacy, on the other hand, is a recipe for failure. Obstinate people are so annoying. They won't listen. They beat their heads against a wall and get nowhere.But is there any real difference between these two cases? Are persistent and obstinate people actually behaving differently? Or are they doing the same thing, and we just label them later as persistent or obstinate depending on whether they turned out to be right or not?If that's the only difference then there's nothing to be learned from the distinction. Telling someone to be persistent rather than obstinate would just be telling them to be right rather than wrong, and they already know that. Whereas if persistence and obstinacy are actually different kinds of behavior, it would be worthwhile to tease them apart. [1]I've talked to a lot of determined people, and it seems to me that they're different kinds of behavior. I've often walked away from a conversation thinking either "Wow, that guy is determined" or "Damn, that guy is stubborn," and I don't think I'm just talking about whether they seemed right or not. That's part of it, but not all of it.There's something annoying about the obstinate that's not simply due to being mistaken. They won't listen. And that's not true of all determined people. I can't think of anyone more determined than the Collison brothers, and when you point out a problem to them, they not only listen, but listen with an almost predatory intensity. Is there a hole in the bottom of their boat? Probably not, but if there is, they want to know about it.It's the same with most successful people. They're never more engaged than when you disagree with them. Whereas the obstinate don't want to hear you. When you point out problems, their eyes glaze over, and their replies sound like ideologues talking about matters...

Build your own React

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:44:48 GMT

We are going to rewrite React from scratch. Step by step. Following the architecture from the real React code but without all the…

Magical Music Theory Tools to Learn Music Online for Free

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:30:09 GMT

A collection of interactive online music theory tools and piano references for notes, keys, chords and scales. A fun way to learn and retain music concepts.

A Git story: Not so fun this time | Brachiosoft Blog

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 22:26:43 GMT

Linus Torvalds once wrote in a book that he created Linux just for fun, but it ended up sparking a revolution. Git, his second major creation, also an accidental revolution. It’s now a standard tool for software engineers, but its origin story wasn’t so much fun this time, at least for Linus.

Why you need a "WTF Notebook"

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 21:39:13 GMT

There's a very specific reputation I want to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat get things I care about done."

Notes for new hires | Clinton Blackburn

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 21:35:08 GMT

I’m onboarding new engineers at Vori, and finally took some time to write a few ideas I’ve been kicking around and sharing internally. I have personally found these practices helpful over the past few years, and think others might, as well. This isn’t applicable to only junior engineers, or new hires (despite the title). I didn’t learn some of these lessons until I was eight years into my career as a tech lead at edX, or a couple years later at Stripe.

How we designed our company for speed - PostHog

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:17:19 GMT

Clearly there are exceptions, but we ship a lot faster than the average company. Our first line of code was January 22nd, 2020, after a pivot during a…

Robin Rendle — Creativity is the byproduct of work

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:15:51 GMT

The website of Robin Rendle, a designer and writer from the UK.

Serving a billion web requests with boring code - llimllib notes

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:01:42 GMT

When I worked as a contractor to the US government at ad hoc, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to design large parts of a relaunch of medicare plan compare, the US government site through which hundreds of thousands of medicare recipients purchase their health care plans each year.

Synchronization is bad for scale

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 06:53:15 GMT

In the early days of Mailgun I started working on a distributed lock service. Something I had worked on briefly at Rackspace. Even as I implemented the thing, I had the sneaky suspicion that it was a bad idea.

Modeling B-trees in TLA+ – Surfing Complexity

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 06:53:06 GMT

I've been reading Alex Petrov's Database Internals to learn more about how databases are implemented. One of the topics covered in the book is a data structure known as the B-tree. Relational databases like Postgres, MySQL, and sqlite use B-trees as the data structure for storing the data on disk. I was reading along with…

Learning By Writing

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 06:52:52 GMT

Click lower right to download or find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. I have very detailed opinions on lots of topics. I sometimes get asked how I do this, which might just be people making fun of me, but I choose to interpret it as a real question, and I’m going to sketch an answer here. You can think of this as a sort of sequel to Minimal-Trust Investigations [https://www.cold-takes.com/minimal-trust-investigations/]. That piece talked about how investigating things in depth can b

Be patient with problems - by Henrik Karlsson

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 06:41:53 GMT

Problems are typically richer than our preconceived notions about how to solve them. Grothendieck, problem solving, patience and writing.

How to think in writing - by Henrik Karlsson

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 06:39:15 GMT

Writing advice is usually focused on more superficial parts of the craft. Whatever I knew about thinking on the page, I had picked up through trial and error and conversations with other writers. But then I read Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations.

Dirty writes – Surfing Complexity

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 05:37:52 GMT

For databases that support transactions, there are different types of anomalies that can potentially occur: the higher the isolation level, the more classes of anomalies are eliminated (at a cost of reduced performance). The anomaly that I always had the hardest time wrapping my head around was the one called a dirty write. This blog…

doceamus-edu-sweller.indd

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 05:37:19 GMT

How I use Obsidian - macwright.com

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 23:40:22 GMT

I wrote a little bit about how I published this microblog with Obsidian, and I recently published an Obsidian plugin. I’m a fan: I’ve used a lot of note-taking systems, but the only ones that really stuck were Notional Velocity and The Archive. And now, Obsidian.

How I Use Obsidian – Matt Stein

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 23:36:00 GMT

Plugins and practices for managing my digital brain.

How to implement a hash table (in C)

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 05:30:17 GMT

An explanation of how to implement a simple hash table data structure, with code and examples in the C programming language.

Properly Testing Concurrent Data Structures

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 03:43:59 GMT

There's a fascinating Rust library, loom, which can be used to thoroughly test lock-free data structures. I always wanted to learn how it works. I still do! But recently I accidentally implemented a small toy which, I think, contains some of the loom's ideas, and it seems worthwhile to write about that. The goal here isn't to teach you what you should be using in practice (if you need that, go read loom's docs), but rather to derive a couple of neat ideas from first principles.

What every systems programmer should know about concurrency

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 22:15:02 GMT

A TUTORIAL ON POINTERS AND ARRAYS IN C

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 22:09:44 GMT

Trying Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks in Practice - Casey Primozic's Homepage

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 03:31:51 GMT

There's been a fair bit of buzz about Kolmogorov-Arnold networks online lately. Some research papers were posted around claiming that they offer better accuracy or faster training compared to traditional neural networks/MLPs for the same parameter count.

Reverse Engineering the Verification QR Code on my Diploma

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:56:35 GMT

Hello! I'm Niklas Oberhuber and I write about programming, machine learning and my projects.

Lensy Moore

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 00:51:42 GMT

How far can we get leveraging the lens library in Haskell to model Moore Machines and Wiring Diagrams?

The sad state of property-based testing libraries

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 19:25:15 GMT

Property-based testing is a rare example of academic research that has made it to the mainstream in less than 30 years. Under the slogan “don’t write tests, generate them” property-based testing has gained support from a diverse group of programming language communities. In fact, the Wikipedia page of the original property-basted testing Haskell library, QuickCheck, lists 57 reimplementations in other languages.

Every website and web app should have a service worker | Go Make Things

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 13:29:20 GMT

A service worker is a special type of JavaScript file that acts like middleware for your site. Today, I want to talk about why every website and web app should have one. Let’s dig in! What a service worker is A service worker is a special JavaScript file that gets installed by a user’s web browser and saved locally. Any request that comes from the site—and any response it gets back—first goes through the service worker file.

NMI_Review

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:53:12 GMT

Understanding Deep Learning - Simon J.D. Prince. Contribute to udlbook/udlbook development by creating an account on GitHub.

Neo Geo Architecture | A Practical Analysis

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 00:30:00 GMT

An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally

The Joy of Reading Books You Don't Entirely Understand - Reactor

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 23:53:23 GMT

It really should be acceptable and normal to say “I don’t entirely understand what I just read, but I loved it.”

full-issue

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 21:52:34 GMT

Alexander Gromnitsky's Blog :: 2024-07-01 :: The cheapest NAS

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 21:51:32 GMT

I wanted to replace my old trusty 'router' (with an attached HDD)--that was not working as a router, but as a network drive after flashing OpenWRT onto it--I wanter to replace it with an SBC+HDD combo.

Good and Bad Procrastination

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 21:51:01 GMT

December 2005The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad?Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.That's the "absent-minded professor," who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it's hard at work in another.That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary. It's hard to say at the time what will turn out to be your best work (will it be your magnum opus on Sumerian temple architecture, or the detective thriller you wrote under a pseudonym?), but there's a whole class of tasks you can safely rule out: shaving, doing your laundry, cleaning the house, writing thank-you notes—anything that might be called an errand.Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.Good in a sense, at least. The people who want you to do the errands won't think it's good. But you probably have to annoy them if you want to get anything done. The mildest seeming people, if they want to do real work, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to avoiding errands.Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ...

Don't End The Week With Nothing

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 17:14:33 GMT

A bit of inspiration (and some hopefully actionable advice) for folks who are still working at day jobs.

Falsehoods Software Developers Believe About Event-Driven Systems · Blog · Loïc Carr

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:30:23 GMT

Loïc Carr /dimtion/ portfolio

Programmers Should Never Trust Anyone, Not Even Themselves

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:30:17 GMT

Programmers should be paranoid.

Elaboration of the PostgreSQL sort cost model

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:20:25 GMT

Column order matters

My programming beliefs as of July 2024

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 11:15:31 GMT

Things I believe about computer programming. Might change.

Measuring personal growth

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:29:45 GMT

My founder friends constantly think about growth. They think about how to measure their business growth and how to get to the next order of magnitude scale. If they’re making $1M ARR today, they think about how to get to $10M ARR. If they have 1,000 users today, they think about how to get to 10,000 users.

"Simple Made Easy" - Rich Hickey (2011)

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 15:21:53 GMT

Rich Hickey, the author of Clojure and designer of Datomic, is a software developer with over 30 years of experience in various domains. Rich has worked on scheduling systems, broadcast automation, audio analysis and fingerprinting, database design, yield management, exit poll systems, and machine listening, in a variety of languages. This keynote was given at Strange Loop 2011, and is perhaps the best known and most highly regarded of Rich's many excellent talks, ushering in a new way to think about the problems of software design and the constant fight against complexity. The video was recorded at Strange Loop in partnership with InfoQ, who have hosted it on their site since 2011. This version (released 10 years later) is a new edit made from the original HD video and slides, restoring the slide transitions and animations as it was given in 2011.

A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability | notes.eatonphil.com

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 01:56:06 GMT

A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability

An Experienced (Neo)Vimmer's Workflow

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 22:45:00 GMT

A guy decides to show off his Neovim setup.

A snapshot isolated database modeling in TLA+

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:50:59 GMT

While idly browsing tlaplus/Examples repository, I noticed TLA+ spec for a snapshot isolated Key-Value Store written by my friend Andrew He...

TLA+ modeling of a single replicaset transaction modeling

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:50:51 GMT

For some time I had been playing with transaction modeling and most recently with replicaset modeling by way of a single log. While playing ...

The Work Life of Developers: Activities, Switches and Perceived Productivity

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:50:06 GMT

Introduction | Bmg documentation

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:47:28 GMT

A light theoretical overview of Relational Algebra and Bmg

Writing is a technology that restructures thought

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:43:22 GMT

Hermitage: Testing the “I” in ACID — Martin Kleppmann’s blog

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:32:45 GMT

tl;dr: I have created a test suite for comparing the transaction isolation levels in different databases. I did this as background research for my book. This post explains why.

What is a CIDR trie and how can it help you? · blog | sven kanoldt

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:24:56 GMT

In this post, we will explore the CIDR trie data structure and how it can help you manage IP addresses and subnets in your Rust project.

Understanding React Compiler | Tony Alicea

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:25:20 GMT

Cache all the things. How React Compiler works under-the-hood.

Implementing SHA-256 on the 6502 | Bumbershoot Software

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 07:29:19 GMT

After five implementations of various algorithms built mostly around bit shuffling, how about a properly modern, common, useful routine? We just need to find something that has a very similar structure and then we can deploy the knowledge we've learned in those other domains. SHA-2 fits this bill neatly, and Wikipedia even has handy pseudocode…

How much memory does a call to ‘malloc’ allocates? – Daniel Lemire's blog

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 03:47:10 GMT

In C, we allocate memory on the heap using the malloc function. Other programming languages like C++ or zig (e.g., std.heap.c_allocator) may call on malloc underneath so it is important to understand how malloc works. Furthermore, the same concepts apply broadly to other memory allocators.

malloc

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 03:35:09 GMT

This is basically an expanded explanation of what I did after reading this tutorial by Marwan Burelle and then sitting down and trying to write my own implementation, so the steps are going to be fairly similar.

Malloc_tutorial

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 03:34:27 GMT

Modern cryptography on the NES - Super Tilt Bro. for NES by sgadrat

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 02:59:38 GMT

Super Tilt Bro. is an online game. You can even make an account to be placed on the official ranking, to do that you simply enter your login/password and... the technical trouble begins! Nice little c...

How to evolve a product | Granola

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 02:57:17 GMT

So you started your startup — now how do you find a great product ASAP? At Granola, we rapidly evolved a product using principles from natural selection! We made our software friendly to mutation by using repetitive code, all in one blob, with no tests. For parallel selection of the best variants, we manually sent programs to target users. And to make our variants friendly to extinction, we avoided all launches, landing pages, and docs. Beware: big-company "best practices" make bad early-stage startups!

zine-ali

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 02:28:17 GMT

Differential Analysis: A Summary

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 20:49:06 GMT

For multiple decades we have worked on a the problem of differential analysis. This post explains where it comes from, what it means, and what its consequences are.

Marcus' Blog

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 20:37:20 GMT

I finally have the feeling that I’m a decent programmer, so I thought it would be fun to write some advice with the idea of “what would have gotten me to this point faster?” I’m not claiming this is great advice for everyone, just that it would have been good advice for me. If you (or your team) are shooting yourselves in the foot constantly, fix the gun I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a team and there’s something about the system that’s very easy to screw up, but no one thinks about ways to make it harder to make that mistake.

What Should You Do with Your Life? Directions and Advice - Alexey Guzey

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 14:58:54 GMT

I ask a lot of people about their life plans. At least half of them tell me that they have no idea where to move and are just coasting along, not sure what to do next. Therefore, this post. What to work on? Y Combinator’s Requests for Startups Also see Jay Zaveri’s World’s Hardest Problems (via Gary Basin) José Luis Ricón’s (Artir) Technology some people are excited about Church Lab’s list of projects and of their implications (via Adam Marblestone) Also see …

You probably wrote half a monad by accident – Andy G's Blog

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 07:47:02 GMT

Photo by Krzysztof Hepner on Unsplash It’s the classic love story. Girl meets boy. Boy isn’t sure if his function will succeed, so he returns a metatype for his actual type indicating whether the operation succeeded or failed. Boy loses girl. We’ve all been there. Here’s how it happened. Err, well, at least that second…

making regex from scratch in GO - Lewis Metcalf

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 06:23:28 GMT

This series is a step by step guide to creating an (almost) fully fledged Regex engine using Go. It explores the basics of Finite State Automata, incrementally creates a parser and compiler for turning strings into state machines, walks through the setup of a visualizer for the FSM node graph. All of the development is structured as a TDD project, and uses modern Go features such as fuzzing, generics, and profiling.

being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of procrastinating

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 03:25:47 GMT

I think it's flinching away from the pain of the decision to do the work - the momentary, immediate pain of (1) disengaging yourself from the (probably very small) flow of reinforcement that you're getting from reading a random unimportant Internet article, and (2) paying the energy cost for a prefrontal override to exert control of your own behavior and begin working.

Ordinary Incompetence · Gwern.net

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 04:17:00 GMT

Incompetence is the norm; most people who engage in a task (even when incentivized for performance or engaging in it for countless hours) may still be making basic errors which could be remedied with coaching or deliberate practice.

Inside the tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:56:50 GMT

To use the Montreal subway (the Métro), you tap a paper ticket against the turnstile and it opens. The ticket works through a system called ...

Classic Papers in Programming Languages and Logic

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:55:43 GMT

leandromoreira/digital_video_introduction: A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec (av1, vp9, h265) and more (ffmpeg encoding). Translations: 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇯🇵 🇮🇹 🇰🇷 🇷🇺 🇧🇷 🇪🇸

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:26:27 GMT

A hands-on introduction to video technology: image, video, codec (av1, vp9, h265) and more (ffmpeg encoding). Translations: 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇯🇵 🇮🇹 🇰🇷 🇷🇺 🇧🇷 🇪🇸 - leandromoreira/digital_video_introduction

Virtualization Internals Part 1 - Intro to Virtualization | Saferwall

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 04:25:42 GMT

The purpose of this series of articles is to explain how x86 virtualization internally works. I find most of the information dispatched in academical work and research papers, which is pretty hard to understand for beginners, I will try to start from scratch and build knowledge as needed. This could be useful for understanding how virtualization works, or writing your own hypervisor or in other scenarios such as attacking hypervisors security.

Reversing Choplifter – Blondihacks

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 04:25:33 GMT

The Apple II line of computers had an amazing run, from 1977 to 1993. In that time, hundreds of thousands of pieces of software were written for it, including many tens of thousands of games. Like any platform, however, the number of truly great games within that range is much smaller. If you ask any former (or current) Apple II user what the best five games on the platform are, there would be variation of course, but one game would be on everyone’s list: Choplifter.

How terminal works. Part 1: Xterm, user input | Thoughts-chain

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 03:04:31 GMT

Hi there. I am going to post here thing about my work or my technical hobbies. This means c++, java, haskell, python, linux etc.

Hacking Millions of Modems (and Investigating Who Hacked My Modem)

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 03:03:11 GMT

Two years ago, something very strange happened to me while working from my home network. I was exploiting a blind XXE vulnerability that required an external HTTP server to smuggle out files, so I spun up an AWS box and ran a simple Python webserver to receive the traffic from the vulnerable server.

Database anomalies and isolation levels |

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 03:02:57 GMT

Anomalies An anomaly or read phenomena can happen when a transaction reads data that may have been modified by another concurrent transaction. Dirty read A dirty read happens when a transaction T1 reads data that has been modified by a concurrent transaction T2 that has not has been committed or rolled back yet. T1 ends up working with stale data if T2 does not commit. T2 starts executing and sets x to a new value, T1 starts executing and reads x, the value of x is the value just set by T2, T2 rolls back, the value of x is not persisted to the database but T1 will move forward with the stale value of x that was written before T2 rolled back.

Using d8 · V8

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:29:28 GMT

d8 is V8’s own developer shell.

Understanding V8's Bytecode

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:29:11 GMT

Franziska Hinkelmann, Ph.D., Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft. Node.js Technical Steering Committee member. Former compiler engineer on Google’s Chrome V8 team. Pronouns she/they.

Say Hello to 1-based indexing in JavaScript!

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:28:57 GMT

@juanarbol blog

Terms, types, and functions

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:23:32 GMT

Various varieties of function in programming languages.

Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:03:03 GMT

In this post, I talk about pleasant but seemingly minor features in personal sites

Becoming a go-to person gets you promoted. Here's how to do it as a software engineer.

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 19:07:27 GMT

Learn the key strategies for becoming a go-to person in your team as a software engineer and how it can lead to career advancement. Unlock the secrets to getting promoted in tech.

How to Test

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 17:13:15 GMT

Alternative titles: Unit Tests are a Scam Test Features, Not Code Data Driven Integrated Tests

The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:15:10 GMT

This document describes the working basics of PC-class computers, Unix-like operating systems, and the Internet in non-technical language.

Reflections on a decade of coding

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 23:53:39 GMT

I've been programming professionally for about 12 years. Here are some of the things I worked on in the last 2 years.

antoniosarosi/mkdb: Toy Database

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 20:37:56 GMT

Toy Database. Contribute to antoniosarosi/mkdb development by creating an account on GitHub.

Writing My Own Database From Scratch

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:47:03 GMT

First episode of the #mkown series. In this video I write my own SQL database from scratch without using any libraries or third party dependencies. Only the standard library provided by the chosen programming language is allowed (Rust in this case). The end result is a basic ACID compliant database that can process only one transaction at a time, something similar to the first versions of SQLite from the early 2000s, but with less features (and probably much worse performance). The goal of these videos is to provide a high level overview of how such complicated systems work internally, not explaining all the code in detail as that would require dozens of hours of content. 🌐 LINKS Project Repository: https://github.com/antoniosarosi/mkdb ✉️ CONTACT INFO Business Email: business@antoniosarosi.io Contact Email: sarosiantonio@gmail.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/antoniosarosi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antoniosarosi/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniosarosi/ 🎵 MUSIC 🕖 Time Lapses https://soundcloud.com/temporal-1/temporal-t-lpa-once-upon-a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9YSHgOD_1c 🔉 Background https://soundcloud.com/eunoiamusicofficial/intro-falling-out https://soundcloud.com/audialmusic/silhouette https://soundcloud.com/cerulean-df/cerulean-skyway https://soundcloud.com/vexaic/lifted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkpA-O8P8TQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NDOlXPg2BY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34E4G9JW8B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcxBHU-jR6M 📖 CHAPTERS 00:00 What is Mkown? 00:37 What Do We Know About Databases? 02:18 Research Time Lapse 02:53 Initial Ideas 03:04 Naive Storage Format 05:31 Why Binary Trees Are Not Enough For Indexes 07:46 Why B-Trees Are Better Than Binary Trees 12:21 Software Architecture 13:17 Dev Time Lapse 14:13 Project Demo 18:23 Database Internals 19:24 File System Structure 20:31 Slotted Pages 23:45 Rows, Tables And Indexes 26:50 Overflow Pages 28:30 Sophisticated BTree Balancing Algorithm ...

Hitting the High Notes – Joel on Software

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 16:24:05 GMT

In March, 2000, I launched this site with the shaky claim that most people are wrong in thinking you need an idea to make a successful software company: The common belief is that when you're building a software company, the goal is to find a neat idea that solves some problem which hasn't been solved…

Effective Spaced Repetition

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:00:44 GMT

“To flash conviction on the mind.”

A Distributed Systems Reading List

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 04:10:22 GMT

An old document I surfaced with my quick tour of distributed systems theory fundamentals

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Unexpected

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 03:54:39 GMT

This is a transcript of a talk given at ElixirDaze and CodeBEAMSF conferences in March of 2018, dealing with supervision trees and with the unexpected.

Introduction - Habitual Mastery (Series) - Scott H Young

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 03:02:16 GMT

This is the first part of five in a series about how to change, improve and modify your habits easily and effectively. I have always been very interested in methods for taking control over these subconscious processes that run our life. A few of the more notable habit changes I have made include waking up […]

Why Forgetting Can Be Good - Scott H Young

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 02:58:33 GMT

Discover why I think that sometimes forgetting your learnings is a good thing. There are several different aspects when it comes to learning.

Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning · Gwern.net

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 02:04:49 GMT

Efficient memorization using the spacing effect: literature review of widespread applicability, tips on use & what it’s good for.

Counted B-Trees

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 18:55:17 GMT

B-trees are one of the best known algorithms around. A full treatment of them is available in any good algorithms book. They are a means of storing a sorted list of items, in such a way that single-item insertion, deletion and lookup all operate in log(N) time. They can be optimised for in-memory access (2-3-4 trees) or optimised to be used as an on-disk database, but the algorithms are essentially the same either way.

karpathy/LLM101n: LLM101n: Let's build a Storyteller

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 15:16:44 GMT

LLM101n: Let's build a Storyteller. Contribute to karpathy/LLM101n development by creating an account on GitHub.

Let's write a video game from scratch like it's 1987

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 15:15:25 GMT

This article has been discussed on Hacker News and Reddit

500 Lines or LessAn Archaeology-Inspired Database

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 15:19:24 GMT

Yoav Rubin is a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, and prior to that was a Research Staff Member and a Master Inventor at IBM Research. He works now in the domain of data security in the cloud, and in the past his work focused on developing cloud or web based development environments. Yoav holds an M.Sc. in Medical Research in the field of Neuroscience and B.Sc in Information Systems Engineering. He goes by @yoavrubin on Twitter, and occasionally blogs at http://yoavrubin.blogspot.com.

Ownership

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 14:47:22 GMT

This post is meant as an explainer about how substructural type theory can be applied in programming language design. Terms like “substructural type theory” tend to scare and confuse programmers who don’t write Haskell on the weekends, so one thing programming language designers should do when thinking about how they will present their language is invent metaphors, even slightly misleading ones, to help more ordinary programmers understand how their language works. One such term is “ownership.”

A complete guide to iconography

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 14:46:49 GMT

A deep-dive guide on how to create, organize, name, and use icons within a design system

How to Overcome Plateaus - Learn How To Learn

Sat, 22 Jun 2024 06:34:07 GMT

you, hopefully For long-term learning endeavors (chess, BJJ, etc) you're going to encounter plateaus. These can stall progress by weeks or even years. A great way to break through plateaus is to improve fundamentals. Either improve ones you suck at, or find new ones you're not aware of and

Cheng Lou - "On the Spectrum of Abstraction" summarized transcript (React Europe 2016)

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 21:05:04 GMT

Cheng Lou - "On the Spectrum of Abstraction" summarized transcript (React Europe 2016) - cheng-lou-spectrum-of-abstraction.md

Arbitrariness Costs

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 01:41:45 GMT

I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the sta…

Decision Brownouts

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:25:31 GMT

In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from …

Start With Simple Tools

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 04:00:44 GMT

A while back, a friend of mine was telling me about his experiences playing an online multiplayer video game. The game, which essentially involves players blowing each other up, is not what I want to discuss here. But our conversation did leave me with an anecdote that comes to mind as I write this post about tools.

Always Measure One Level Deeper – Communications of the ACM

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 21:10:44 GMT

Performance measurements often go wrong, reporting surface-level results that are more marketing than science.

Always Measure One Level Deeper

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 20:54:53 GMT

This is a great paper (CACM 2018) by John Ousterhout. Ousterhout is well known for his work on log-structured file system, tcl/tk, Raft, a...

Programmers should stop celebrating incompetence

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:14:49 GMT

In the valiant effort to combat imposter syndrome and gatekeeping, the programming world has taken a bad turn down a blind alley by celebrating incompetence. You don't have to reduce an entire profession to a clueless gang of copy-pasta pirates to make new recruits feel welcome. It undermines the aspiration to improve. It reduces the w...

Richard Hamming: You and Your Research

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:40:21 GMT

Talk at Bellcore, 7 March 1986The title of my talk is "You and Your Research." It is not about managing research, it is about how you individually do your research. I could give a talk on the other subject — but it's not, it's about you. I'm not talking about ordinary run-of-the-mill research; I'm talking about great research. And for the sake of describing great research I'll occasionally say Nobel-Prize type of work. It doesn't have to gain the Nobel Prize, but I mean those kinds of things which we perceive are significant things. Relativity, if you want, Shannon's information theory, any number of outstanding theories — that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.Now, how did I come to do this study? At Los Alamos I was brought in to run the computing machines which other people had got going, so those scientists and physicists could get back to business. I saw I was a stooge. I saw that although physically I was the same, they were different. And to put the thing bluntly, I was envious. I wanted to know why they were so different from me. I saw Feynman up close. I saw Fermi and Teller. I saw Oppenheimer. I saw Hans Bethe: he was my boss. I saw quite a few very capable people. I became very interested in the difference between those who do and those who might have done.When I came to Bell Labs, I came into a very productive department. Bode was the department head at the time; Shannon was there, and there were other people. I continued examining the questions, "Why?" and "What is the difference?" I continued subsequently by reading biographies, autobiographies, asking people questions such as: "How did you come to do this?" I tried to find out what are the differences. And that's what this talk is about.Now, why is this talk important? I think it is important because, as far as I know, each of you has one life to live. Even if you believe in reincarnation it doesn't do you any good from one life to the next! Why shouldn't you do significant things in this one l...

Ship something every day

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 01:01:12 GMT

Edit: A better title would've been "commit every day that you work". I don't mean you should work on weekends or not take time off, and whatever you work on doesn't need to "ship to prod".

A few words on taking notes | All Things Distributed

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:52:11 GMT

As we are about to start the planning meetings for 2024 at AWS, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I take notes.

Simple sabotage for software · Erik Bernhardsson

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:34:07 GMT

How to sabotage software productivity, in the style of CIA

Internet Search Tips · Gwern.net

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 20:20:17 GMT

A description of advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books, with real-world examples.

(1) Do Ten Times as Much - by Bryan Caplan - Bet On It

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 15:25:57 GMT

Unpleasant advice that works

(1) So you wanna de-bog yourself - by Adam Mastroianni

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 15:17:03 GMT

What I found in the mire

On Having Enough Socks · Gwern.net

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 14:59:53 GMT

Personal experience and surveys on running out of socks; discussion of socks as small example of human procrastination and irrationality, caused by lack of explicit deliberative thought where no natural triggers or habits exist.

The simple genius of checklists, from B-17 to the Apollo missions | Inside Nuclino

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 06:09:56 GMT

The year is 1935, and the U.S. Army Air Corps is holding a competition for airplane manufacturers vying to secure a contract to build the military’s...

Don’t Shave That Yak! | Seth's Blog

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 05:53:53 GMT

Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

2000-cook

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 05:50:55 GMT

Useful and Overlooked Skills · Collab Fund

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 19:35:52 GMT

On his way to be sworn in as the most powerful man in the world, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to…

The Law of Leaky Abstractions – Joel on Software

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:35:26 GMT

There's a key piece of magic in the engineering of the Internet which you rely on every single day. It happens in the TCP protocol, one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet. TCP is a way to transmit data that is reliable. By this I mean: if you send a message over a…

The Book of Shaders

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 14:57:11 GMT

Gentle step-by-step guide through the abstract and complex universe of Fragment Shaders.

Exponentially Better Rotations

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 14:56:51 GMT

If you’ve done any 3D programming, you’ve likely encountered the zoo of techniques and representations used when working with 3D rotations. Some of them are better than others, depending on the situation. Based on CMU 15-462 course materials by Keenan Crane. Representations Rotation Matrices Euler Angles Quaternions Axis/Angle The Exponential and Logarithmic Maps Axis/Angle in 2D Axis/Angle in 3D Averaging Rotations Quaternions (Again) Further Reading Representations Rotation Matrices Linear-algebra-wise, the most straightforward representation is an orthonormal 3x3 matrix (with positive determinant). The three columns of a rotation matrix specify where the x, y, and z axes end up after the rotation. Rotation matrices are particularly useful for transforming points: just multiply! Even better, rotation matrices can be composed with any other linear transformations via matrix multiplication. That’s why we use rotation matrices when actually drawing things on screen: only one matrix multiplication is required to transform a point from world-space to the screen. However, rotation matrices are not so useful for actually working with rotations: because they don’t form a vector space, adding together two rotation matrices will not give you a rotation matrix back. For example, animating an object by linearly interpolating between two rotation matrices adds scaling: Randomize $$ R_0 = \begin{bmatrix}1&0&0\\0&1&0\\0&0&1\end{bmatrix} $$ $$ R(0.00) = \begin{bmatrix}\phantom{-}1.00&\phantom{-}0.00&\phantom{-}0.00\\\phantom{-}0.00&\phantom{-}1.00&\phantom{-}0.00\\\phantom{-}0.00&\phantom{-}0.00&\phantom{-}1.00\end{bmatrix} $$ $$ R_1 = \begin{bmatrix}-1&0&0\\0&1&0\\0&0&-1\end{bmatrix} $$ Euler Angles Another common representation is Euler angles, which specify three separate rotations about the x, y, and z axes (also known as pitch, yaw, and roll). The order in which the three ...

Scratchapixel 4.0, Learn Computer Graphics Programming

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 14:55:57 GMT

Welcome to Computer Graphics

Accounting for Developers, Part I | Modern Treasury Journal

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 14:54:04 GMT

In this first part of a two-part series, we walk through basic accounting principles for anyone building products that move and track money.

Complex Analysis

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 14:41:31 GMT

An online interactive introduction to the study of complex analysis.

On Seeing Through and Unseeing: The Hacker Mindset · Gwern.net

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 04:06:52 GMT

Defining the security/hacker mindset as extreme reductionism: ignoring the surface abstractions and limitations to treat a system as a source of parts to manipulate into a different system, with different (and usually unintended) capabilities.

Experts vs. Imitators

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 03:48:06 GMT

Learn how to spot the difference between and expert and an imitator with 5 key tells.

Confusion is a muse | notes.eatonphil.com

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 03:43:04 GMT

Confusion is a muse

How I Cured My Procrastination - Learn How To Learn

Sat, 15 Jun 2024 03:34:03 GMT

I went from a C student to an A engineering student while enjoying work more and having 100x more freedom TLDR (because I also hate digging through articles for the thing I clicked for): When I went to college I did extremely poorly sophomore year for numerous reasons, mostly being lazy an

Never, Sometimes, Always - lukeplant.me.uk

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 14:46:20 GMT

Just like the only numbers programmers care about are zero, one, infinity, the only frequencies we care about are Never, Sometimes and Always.

Ray Tracing in One Weekend

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:51:19 GMT

Ray Tracing in One Weekend

NULL BITMAP Builds a Database #1: The Log is Literally the Database • Buttondown

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:43:57 GMT

It is time to end the tyranny of people becoming interested in database implementation and building a BTree. Let us turn to the succor of immutable storage....

Making USB devices - end to end guide to your first gadget

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:42:03 GMT

Introduction to implementing USB devices. Minimal overview of hardware and software with an example with STM32 microcontroller. Also contains an index to very detailed guides for more information.

Mediocre Engineer’s guide to HTTPS

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:34:59 GMT

As a mediocre engineer, I took Internet and HTTPS communication for granted and never dove any deeper. Today we’re improving as engineers and learning a rough overview of how internet communication works, specifically focusing on HTTP and TLS.

Things you wish you didn't need to know about S3

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:30:15 GMT

S3 is more weirder than you think. Make sure you know all the quirks before they turn into vulnerabilities in your AWS infrastructure.

staniks.github.io

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:15:31 GMT

Personal website and blog.

Notational intelligence | thesephist.com

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:15:04 GMT

I spent the last month wondering and investigating how we might design better workflows for creative work that meld the best of human intuition and machine intelligence. I think a promising path is in the design of notation. More explicitly, I believe inventing better notations can contribute far more than automated tools to our effective intelligence in understanding ourselves, the world, and our place in it.

Proxmox vs FreeBSD: Which Virtualization Host Performs Better? - IT Notes

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:41:59 GMT

Comparative tests show FreeBSD's virtualization performance surpasses Proxmox, especially with NVMe drivers.

Legend of Worlds

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:36:45 GMT

A sandbox game where players create worlds!

Build Your Own X

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:07:36 GMT

This repo is forked from awesome anistefanovic/build-your-own-x , site is created and maintained by Kalan which converted github README.md to website, and probably will add more opinionated resource. Follow me on Twitter or contrinute your article link on Github is always welcomed!

Data Modeling in Document Databases for the RDBMS-Minded

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:06:40 GMT

Blog > Post

A (Draft) Taxonomy of SIMD Usage – Branch Free

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 22:46:46 GMT

I've made many different types of SIMD usage over the years, and occasionally even written about them (on this blog, in papers, and in Twitter). Just for reference, I'd like to cover my taxonomy of SIMD usage so I don't keep writing it up (poorly) on Twitter every few months. This discussion is a draft…

Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 14:20:08 GMT

Learn OpenGL . com provides good and clear modern 3.3+ OpenGL tutorials with clear examples. A great resource to learn modern OpenGL aimed at beginners.

Regular, Recursive, Restricted

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 17:45:10 GMT

A post/question about formal grammars, wherein I search for a good formalism for describing infix expressions.

Feynman's Razor - by Defender of the Basic

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 16:47:17 GMT

If an expert can't understand your explanation, you've dumbed it down too much!

What Color is Your Function? – journal.stuffwithstuff.com

Fri, 07 Jun 2024 17:19:13 GMT

I don’t know about you, but nothing gets me going in the morning quite like a good old fashioned programming language rant. It stirs the blood to see someone skewer one of those “blub” languages the plebians use, muddling through their day with it between furtive visits to StackOverflow.

Biohacking Lite

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 01:04:11 GMT

Musings of a Computer Scientist.

Work hard and take everything really seriously - macwright.com

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:35:43 GMT

Hustlebro thesis

Productivity Versus Alignment

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 20:42:56 GMT

One of the many trade-offs companies face

Systems: The Purpose of a System is What It Does - Anil Dash

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 20:18:03 GMT

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

The Design Space of Wikis

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 16:03:29 GMT

An exploration of the design space of wikis.

CRDT: Text Buffer - Made by Evan

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:31:37 GMT

Collaboratively editing strings of text is a common desire in peer-to-peer applications. For example, a note-taking app might represent each document as a single collaboratively-edited string of text.

Be findable - by Thorsten Ball - Register Spill

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 13:46:56 GMT

“But isn’t that self-promotion?”, said with a disgusted face. Or, equally disgusted: “Ugh, that’s bragging. Narcissistic. I don’t want to do that.” Or, frustrated: “Can’t I just do good work?” Whenever I hear one of these, I want to quote or, better yet, link to a snippet of an episode of

https://segment.com/blog/when-aws-autoscale-doesn-t/

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 13:44:55 GMT

I've been comparing notes with people who run corporate engineering blogs and one thing that I think is curious is that it's pretty common for my personal blog to get more traffic than the entire corp eng blog for a company with a nine to ten figure valuation and it's not uncommon for my blog to get an order of magnitude more traffic.

Cultures of writing. - by Karina Nguyen - sémaphore

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 02:33:59 GMT

It's hard not to notice the pivotal role that strong writing cultures play in enabling innovation.

Developers aren't Nerds | 0xFF

Fri, 31 May 2024 01:05:01 GMT

For the longest of time, I was under the impression that developers and programmers, for the most part, are as or even more so interested in technology, tools, efficiency and productivity as I am. This came from the somewhat outdated understanding that the barrier of entry into programming was mentally taxing and required fucking around with compiling, development environment et al.

Functional TypeScript #1: Algebraic Data Types

Thu, 30 May 2024 22:55:45 GMT

Introduction to typeclasses, ADTs, and HKTs TypeScript

Writing a Unix clone in about a month

Thu, 30 May 2024 21:34:43 GMT

I needed a bit of a break from “real work” recently, so I started a new programming project that was low-stakes and purely recreational. On April 21st, I set out to see how much of a Unix-like operating system for x86_64 targets that I could put together in about a month. The result is Bunnix. Not including days I didn’t work on Bunnix for one reason or another, I spent 27 days on this project.

In the beginning… was the command line | thesephist.com

Thu, 30 May 2024 16:07:18 GMT

Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning… Was the Command Line is one of the most profound pieces of writing about technology I’ve read. I found myself underscoring and highlighting numerous passages in this essay that reads equally as much like political propaganda, memoir, novella, and journalistic reporting all at once. If you have a couple of hours to spare, I’d recommend this essay only behind Greg Egan’s Diaspora, my favorite piece of science fiction, as a must-read.

Feynman's Garden @ marginalia.nu

Thu, 30 May 2024 14:52:12 GMT

The best description of my problem solving process is the Feynman algorithm, which is sometimes presented as a joke where the hidden subtext is “be smart”, but I disagree. The “algorithm” is a surprisingly lucid description of how thinking works in the context of hard problems where the answer can’t simply be looked up or trivially broken down, iterated upon in a bottom-up fashion, or approached with similar methods. Feynman’s thinking algorithm is described like this:

No Wrong Doors. | Irrational Exuberance

Thu, 30 May 2024 14:45:19 GMT

Some governmental agencies have started to adopt No Wrong Door policies, which aim to provide help–often health or mental health services–to individuals even if they show up to the wrong agency to request help. The core insight is that the employees at those agencies are far better equipped to navigate their own bureaucracies than an individual who knows nothing about the bureaucracy’s internal function. For the most part, technology organizations are not complex bureaucracies, but sometimes they do seem to operate that way.

Evolution of the ELF object file format | MaskRay

Thu, 30 May 2024 14:37:12 GMT

The ELF object file format is adopted by many UNIX-like operating systems. While I've previously delved into the control structures of ELF and its predecessors, tracing the historical evolution of ELF

Old Dogs, new CSS Tricks | Max Böck

Thu, 30 May 2024 14:37:01 GMT

Max Böck is a professional front-end developer based in Vienna, Austria.

Doing is normally distributed, learning is log-normal | Andrew Quinn's TILs

Thu, 30 May 2024 13:11:35 GMT

There are few things I think about more than the essays on gwern.net, and there are few with as satisfying a theoretical payout to contemplate in my orb as his essay on “leaky pipelines”, aka log-normal distributions. The skulk: Say you’re working on a Laravel web app. You’re about 90% sure you know how to start the app. You’re 80% sure you know how to handle the infra you’ll need to get it online.

Queueing – An interactive study of queueing strategies – Encore Blog

Thu, 30 May 2024 12:56:27 GMT

In this blog, we go on an interactive journey to understand common queueing strategies for handling HTTP requests.

How Far Can I Legally Make a Scheduled I Substance?

Thu, 30 May 2024 12:22:46 GMT

Today we ALMOST make 2,5-DMA. 2,5-DMA by itself is a Schedule I drug in the USA. However, we can almost make it and bypass anything illegal. I hope you enjoy the video! Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act#Schedule_I_drugs https://isomerdesign.com/PiHKAL/read.php?id=54&domain=pk https://isomerdesign.com/PiHKAL/read.php?domain=pk&id=20#rxa12389 SOCIALS: Patreon: patreon.com/Chemdelic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chemdelic/ Discord: https://discord.com/invite/dmfMKupj9W Cashapp: $ChemdelicLLC Merch: https://chemdelic-shop.fourthwall.com/ Disclaimer: The content provided in these videos is for entertainment or educational purposes only and should not be attempted or replicated under any circumstances. Viewers are strongly advised against attempting to recreate any of the actions, stunts, or activities depicted, as they may involve significant risk of injury, legal liability, or other harm. By choosing to engage in any similar activities, individuals do so at their own risk and assume full responsibility for any resulting consequences. The creators of these videos will not be held liable for any damages, injuries, or legal issues arising from viewers attempting to replicate the content. Viewer discretion is advised, and all viewers are encouraged to exercise sound judgment and respect all applicable laws and safety guidelines.

Megaparsec tutorial

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:29:38 GMT

Published on February 23, 2019, last updated October 30, 2021

Ilya 30u30

Tue, 28 May 2024 12:49:36 GMT

Ilya 30u30

Write yourself a Git!

Mon, 27 May 2024 15:40:59 GMT

The Back-to-Basics Readings of 2012 | All Things Distributed

Fri, 24 May 2024 03:05:32 GMT

After the AWS re: Invent conference I spent two weeks in Europe for the last customer visits of the year. I have since returned and am now in New York City enjoying a few days of winding down the last activities of the year before spending the holidays here with family. Do not expect too many blog posts or twitter updates. Although there are still a few very exciting AWS news updates to happen this year.

The Power of the Marginal

Thu, 23 May 2024 02:43:06 GMT

June 2006(This essay is derived from talks at Usenix 2006 and Railsconf 2006.)A couple years ago my friend Trevor and I went to look at the Apple garage. As we stood there, he said that as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan he'd been amazed at the dedication Jobs and Wozniak must have had to work in a garage."Those guys must have been freezing!"That's one of California's hidden advantages: the mild climate means there's lots of marginal space. In cold places that margin gets trimmed off. There's a sharper line between outside and inside, and only projects that are officially sanctioned — by organizations, or parents, or wives, or at least by oneself — get proper indoor space. That raises the activation energy for new ideas. You can't just tinker. You have to justify.Some of Silicon Valley's most famous companies began in garages: Hewlett-Packard in 1938, Apple in 1976, Google in 1998. In Apple's case the garage story is a bit of an urban legend. Woz says all they did there was assemble some computers, and that he did all the actual design of the Apple I and Apple II in his apartment or his cube at HP. [1] This was apparently too marginal even for Apple's PR people.By conventional standards, Jobs and Wozniak were marginal people too. Obviously they were smart, but they can't have looked good on paper. They were at the time a pair of college dropouts with about three years of school between them, and hippies to boot. Their previous business experience consisted of making "blue boxes" to hack into the phone system, a business with the rare distinction of being both illegal and unprofitable.OutsidersNow a startup operating out of a garage in Silicon Valley would feel part of an exalted tradition, like the poet in his garret, or the painter who can't afford to heat his studio and thus has to wear a beret indoors. But in 1976 it didn't seem so cool. The world hadn't yet realized that starting a computer company was in the same category as being a writer or a...

A Road to Common Lisp / Steve Losh

Wed, 22 May 2024 12:31:17 GMT

Posted on August 27th, 2018.

Tools That Make You Feel Empowered

Wed, 22 May 2024 12:27:55 GMT

Zachary W. Huang

Semantic note-taking | cceckman, from the Internet

Wed, 22 May 2024 01:28:16 GMT

Early in my career,1 I learned a particular approach to taking meeting notes. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about this over the years; here’s my attempt to explain the approach and why it’s effective.

A New Way to Store Knowledge

Wed, 22 May 2024 01:21:47 GMT

HTML | TXT | PDF

Guide: How to start a writing habit

Mon, 20 May 2024 11:21:31 GMT

A short guide to help you build a habit of writing consistently by Peter Suhm.

What I look for in empirical software papers • Buttondown

Mon, 20 May 2024 11:08:45 GMT

Oh God it's already Thursday

The Misunderstood Stoic

Mon, 20 May 2024 02:23:23 GMT

I am a big proponent of Stoicism, the philosophy practised by, among others, Marcus Aurelius, also known as the last of the ‘Five Good Emperors’ of Rome. I believe that Stoicism, with its focus on conquering the impulses to react to external stimuli, has a lot to offer for our current society, which is so ripe with flashy baubles vying for our attention. In this article, I want to clarify two of the core beliefs of Stoicism, which tend to be misunderstood.

Structured Procrastination

Mon, 20 May 2024 01:49:20 GMT

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it?

How and why to make a /now page on your site | Derek Sivers

Sun, 19 May 2024 01:42:42 GMT

I used to wonder what my friend Benny Lewis was doing. He has a website and social media accounts, but neither gave an overview of what he’s doing now.

Pmarchive · Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity

Sat, 18 May 2024 15:09:48 GMT

An archive of the best articles from Marc Andreessen’s now defunct blog

So we built a Reverse Tunnel in Go over HTTP/3 and QUIC | Flipt Blog

Sat, 18 May 2024 15:08:07 GMT

How we over-engineered a solution using some bleeding-edge tech

Kim Young Jin - Ambitious but at peace

Sat, 18 May 2024 15:06:07 GMT

For most of my life I’ve felt a deep discontent myself.

From Any Spot on the Field - by Thorsten Ball

Sat, 18 May 2024 15:04:18 GMT

A few days ago, I came across this tweet from antirez, author of Redis: A soccer player can have a great idea of the game tactic and strategy, the sense of her/his buddies in the field of game, but anyway to be able to kick the ball well is absolutely required. It’s the same for programmers: I’m proud to be a coder.

Reading C type declarations

Fri, 17 May 2024 11:46:57 GMT

Even relatively new C programmers have no trouble reading simple C declarations such as

Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels | notes.eatonphil.com

Fri, 17 May 2024 00:48:02 GMT

Implementing MVCC and major SQL transaction isolation levels

Bye Opam, Hello Nix | Emil Privér

Wed, 15 May 2024 03:39:59 GMT

Article about replacing opam with nix for a easier life

ISP Column - April 2024

Mon, 13 May 2024 17:43:02 GMT

A column on things Internet

GPUs Go Brrr · Hazy Research

Mon, 13 May 2024 10:17:08 GMT

how make gpu fast?

Professional corner-cutting : Havoc's Blog

Mon, 13 May 2024 09:56:27 GMT

Steve Jobs famously cared about the unseen backs of cabinets. Antique furniture built with hand tools isn’t like that at all. Cabinetmakers made each part to the tolerance that mattered. The …

Exploring Hacker News by mapping and analyzing 40 million posts and comments for fun | Wilson Lin

Fri, 10 May 2024 01:15:02 GMT

The above is a map of all Hacker News posts since its founding, laid semantically i. e.

How NASA is Hacking Voyager 1 Back to Life - IEEE Spectrum

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:41:51 GMT

Engineers found space in the geriatric spacecraft’s memory to deal with a stuck bit

Visualization Mnemonics for Software Principles - DaedTech

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:30:40 GMT

Whether it’s because you want to be able to participate in software engineering discussions without having to surreptitiously look things up on your phone, or whether it’s because you have an interview coming up with a firm that wants you to be some kind of expert in OOP or something, you probably have at least […]

pal-iii : Digital Equipment Corporation : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Fri, 10 May 2024 00:29:45 GMT

The DEC PAL III assembler for the PDP-8 minicomputer as of 16 Nov 1966.Source code is read from paper tape, absolute binary code is punched to paper tape, and...

ISP Router Design Mistakes | Brain Baking

Thu, 09 May 2024 22:41:23 GMT

Time for another design mistake, this time from our new Internet Service Provider (ISP). We switched …

Safety and Liveness Properties

Thu, 09 May 2024 03:13:55 GMT

Some useful mental models from the world of formal methods.

Bollards: Why & What · Josh Thompson

Sun, 05 May 2024 22:46:57 GMT

Naming something we see and benefit from every day

How to style React applications while the world burns around us | Herb Caudill

Sun, 05 May 2024 22:44:50 GMT

What tools would you reach for today to style the UI for a hyper-customizable app? I just spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to understand the current landscape and settle on the perfect framework. I was surprised by what I found.

Chris's Wiki :: blog/tech/UEFIAndBIOSAndOtherPCTerms

Sun, 05 May 2024 14:10:30 GMT

May 3, 2024

"Integration tests" are just vibes • Buttondown

Sun, 05 May 2024 14:09:48 GMT

New blog post, and some thoughts on what makes an integration test an "integration" test.

The Time Linkerd Erased My Load Balancer

Sun, 05 May 2024 14:06:22 GMT

Due to a combination of issues with GKE and Linkerd, I ended up deleting my load balancer routes when I removed the Linkerd helm chart.

My favorite teacher - by Thorsten Ball - Register Spill

Sun, 05 May 2024 03:35:50 GMT

My favorite teacher wasn’t a very popular guy. He was confident, had strong opinions, and didn’t exactly teach like the other teachers. He was our history & sociology teacher in 12th and 13th grade and he made us summarize. He made us summarize everything. Through summaries, he taught.

Why Full Text Search is Hard

Sun, 05 May 2024 03:26:45 GMT

It’s easy to find documents containing "large" and "elephant". It’s hard to find documents in German which have "large" and "elephant" together in a sentence, or words with similar meanings to large, and provide only the 10 most relevant documents.

How to Build a $20 Billion Semiconductor Fab

Sun, 05 May 2024 02:13:55 GMT

For the last several decades, one avenue of technological progress has towered over nearly everything else: semiconductors. Semiconductors are materials that can have their conductivity varied by many orders of magnitude, which makes it possible to selectively block and allow the flow of electrons. This property makes it possible to manufacture all sorts of electronic devices, not least of which is the digital computer.

Do Things and Tell People

Sat, 04 May 2024 18:49:28 GMT

Lieutenant George: “I don’t like blowing my own trumpet.”

Figma’s journey to TypeScript | Figma Blog

Sat, 04 May 2024 17:58:03 GMT

Figma's team recently converted one of its codebases from a custom programming language to TypeScript without disrupting a single day of development.

Study of Historical Code | ℤ→ℤ

Fri, 03 May 2024 02:12:14 GMT

I’ve started studying a larger historical code base. Within this post, I want to summarize the sort of historical questions we might ask and notes on how to approach them.

Tracking the Wins

Fri, 03 May 2024 02:11:01 GMT

Stay motivated and avoid burnout

Abstract Heresies: Statements and Expressions

Thu, 02 May 2024 10:12:13 GMT

A blog about computers, functional languages, Lisp, and Scheme.

Ansible is a Lisp

Wed, 01 May 2024 22:12:43 GMT

More specifically, Ansible is homoiconic and has syntactic macros

Bytecode VMs in surprising places

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 21:31:25 GMT

In response to a question on Twitter1, Richard Hipp wrote about why SQLite uses a bytecode VM for executing SQL statements.

Constraints on giving feedback. | Irrational Exuberance

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 23:34:14 GMT

Back when I was managing at Digg and Uber, I spent a lot of time delivering feedback to my management chain about issues in our organization. My intentions were good, but I alienated my management chain without accomplishing much. I also shared my concerns with my team, which I thought would help them understand the organization, but mostly isolated them in a Values Oasis or demoralized them instead. Those experiences taught me that pushing your organization to improve is essential leadership work, but organizations can only absorb so much improvement at a given time before they reject the person providing the feedback.

Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 23:22:30 GMT

Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges

Staring into the abyss as a core life skill | benkuhn.net

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 16:11:16 GMT

thinking about scary things • examples from Wave • examples from elsewhere • finding a buddy • getting the timing right • a list of abyss questions

Learn one thing at a time | Lawrence Jones

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 15:34:19 GMT

Of the mental models and rules I use in my life, by far the most useful is to learn only one thing at any given time.

tsouanas/fmcbook: Matemática Fundacional para Computação: book by Thanos Tsouanas (in portuguese)

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 04:29:31 GMT

Matemática Fundacional para Computação: book by Thanos Tsouanas (in portuguese) - tsouanas/fmcbook

kenjihiranabe/The-Art-of-Linear-Algebra: Graphic notes on Gilbert Strang's "Linear Algebra for Everyone"

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:15:13 GMT

Graphic notes on Gilbert Strang's "Linear Algebra for Everyone" - kenjihiranabe/The-Art-of-Linear-Algebra

Operable Software

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 14:41:13 GMT

Operability and observability sure have led to a lot of blog posts around the web lately, and so this is my take on it. In this post, I'll cover views on simplicity and complexity, how people actually approach their systems and form mental models of them, and how we should rather structure things if we want to make systems both observable and operable. Or put differently, how to start approaching Operator Experience.

Finding Fulfillment

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 14:30:05 GMT

What creates a fulfilling existence? Exploration leads to a framework I've used for years for myself and the people around me. I hope it helps you too.

Wisdom from Marcus Aurelius - by Gurwinder - The Prism

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 02:39:26 GMT

10 thoughts to improve the mind

adam-maj/tiny-gpu: A minimal GPU design in Verilog to learn how GPUs work from the ground up

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:11:09 GMT

A minimal GPU design in Verilog to learn how GPUs work from the ground up - adam-maj/tiny-gpu

"Thought loss anxiety" is the fear of forgetting good ideas due to lack of good record-keeping

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 03:55:32 GMT

hence my obsession with note-making

Other people’s problems | Seth's Blog

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 03:50:14 GMT

Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

The Man Who Killed Google Search

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 02:18:27 GMT

This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google’s head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then the VP of Engineering, Search and Ads on Google properties, had called a “code yellow” for search revenue due to, and I quote, “steady weakness in the daily numbers” and a likeliness that it would end the quarter significa

Good Ideas in Computer Science ・ Daniel Hooper

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 01:03:15 GMT

Ideas every programmer likes and why Garbage Collection and Object Oriented Programming are bad

On Opening Essays, Conference Talks, and Jam Jars

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 23:55:48 GMT

How to open pieces of narrative non-fiction writing, conference talks, and sticky jars

Visualizing Algorithms

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:31:16 GMT

Algorithms are a fascinating use case for visualization. To visualize an algorithm, we don’t merely fit data to a chart; there is no primary dataset. Instead there are logical rules that describe behavior. This may be why algorithm visualizations are so unusual, as designers experiment with novel forms to better communicate. This is reason enough to study them.

50 Years Later, This Apollo-Era Antenna Still Talks to Voyager 2 - IEEE Spectrum

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:31:03 GMT

DSS-43 is the only antenna that can communicate with the probe

Halo 2 in HD: Pushing the Original Xbox to the Limit – I Code 4 Coffee

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 03:29:36 GMT

Everything I went through to add support for HD resolutions to Halo 2 on the Original Xbox. From patching the game's rendering engine and memory allocator, to hot patching the Xbox OS, to overclocking the GPU and running performance benchmarks. This post covers how I pushed the game and console to t

Parsing and all that

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 02:56:52 GMT

A web log. Mostly about computer science-y stuff.

The Technium: 101 Additional Advices

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 23:30:09 GMT

Six years ago I celebrated my 68th birthday by gifting my children 68 bits of advice I wished I had gotten when I was their age. Every birthday after that I added more bits of advice for them until I … Continue reading →

Stop Acting Like You're Famous

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 23:29:50 GMT

Advice for myself around leisure activities.

Tips on how to structure your home directory

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:59:39 GMT

Someone wrote me an email and asked if I could share some tips on how to structure the $HOME directory, so here we go.

The Guide to Stock Options conversations - by Anton Zaides

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:55:14 GMT

Why every manager should talk to their employees about stock options

3 important things I overlooked during code reviews | Piglei

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 04:32:55 GMT

piglei's blog

Linux text manipulation

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 02:33:11 GMT

learning a lot about sed, awk and other commands by making a spotify statusbar widget

Formal Methods: Just Good Engineering Practice? - Marc's Blog

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 02:27:40 GMT

Yes. The answer is yes. In your face, Betteridge.

oss-security - Make your own backdoor: CFLAGS code injection, Makefile injection, pkg-config

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:36:11 GMT

About the author

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:18:01 GMT

There is clearly a terrible need for more effective therapies for drug addictions, but one of the problems is that biochemically, we don't understand it well enough.

Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS [CSS Working Group Wiki]

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 13:04:39 GMT

That should be corrected if anyone invents a time machine. :P

The Psychology of Liminal Spaces

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 12:39:30 GMT

On the transitional zones between “what was” and “what’s next

12 Map Happenings that Rocked our World: Part 9 – Map Happenings

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:16:40 GMT

The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called 'Etak'. I think you'll find it a fascinating read...

What makes concurrency so hard? • Buttondown

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 02:10:39 GMT

Is it something about human brains, or something about the problem domain?

A Visual Guide to Vision Transformers | MDTURP

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 20:59:00 GMT

This is a visual guide (scroll story) to Vision Transformers (ViTs), a class of deep learning models that have achieved state-of-the-art performance on image classification tasks.

RECOMMENDED DESIGN BOOKS/FILMS – How Design MAKES THE WORLD (The book)

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 11:39:34 GMT

The goal of How Design Makes The World (HDMW) was to be the best primer on design for just about everyone. To achieve this I studied more than 100+ books, films and podcasts to learn what they did well and what I could learn. Here are my reviews to help you keep learning. Legend: -…

Double-Entry Bookkeeping as a Directed Graph · Matheus Portela

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:54:39 GMT

In the past couple of years, I’ve been working in billing and payments at Justworks. This experience introduced me to the world of bookkeeping and accounting in ways I didn’t expect: I took a course and read a textbook in accounting, adopted plain text accounting for my personal finances, and worked in a double-entry ledger system.

Discrete logic IC CPU | Ivan's blog

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 17:01:15 GMT

Custom CPU built with discrete logic chips

An IRC client in your motherboard | Phillip Tennen

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 17:01:06 GMT

I made a graphical IRC client that runs in UEFI. It’s written in Rust and leverages the GUI toolkit and TrueType renderer that I wrote for axle’s userspace. I was able to develop it thanks to the vmnet network backend that I implemented for QEMU. You can connect to an IRC server, chat and read messages, all from the comfort of your motherboard’s pre-boot environment. “Why”? What kind of question is “why”?

What makes a great technical blog | notes.eatonphil.com

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 16:38:45 GMT

What makes a great technical blog

Do you really need IPv4 anymore?

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 16:24:40 GMT

Setting up and maintaining access networks today requires double the effort due to the parallel coexistence of IPv6 and IPv4. Dual-stack has network engineers and sysadmins do twice the amount of work, so there must be a good reason for it, right?

How to send progress updates - Slava Akhmechet

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 16:14:55 GMT

If you work on anything worthwhile, sooner or later people will care about it and will want you to send progress updates. These could be quarterly investor updates, weekly updates to your boss, emails to adjacent teams, etc. Here are tips on how to do this well.

If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it? • Buttondown

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 15:45:47 GMT

Alloy Workshop There are still two slots available for the alloy workshop! I've been hard at work adding a bunch of teaching innovations to the class, which...

How I significantly improved my sleep schedule - Issa Rice

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 04:38:25 GMT

In late December 2023, I finally figured out a system for maintaining decent circadian rhythm. The system has been working reliably for 2.5 months now. Previously, I had been going to sleep anywhere from 1am to 3am and waking up around 10:30am to 11am. Now, I go to sleep anywhere from 11pm to midnight, and wake up anywhere from 8am to 9am. (This is in winter at northern USA latitude.)

My favorite technical blogs

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 01:38:20 GMT

My favorite technical blogs

My new home server · g/ianguid/o.today

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 15:17:03 GMT

At the beginning of 2023 I started renting a dedicated server from Hetzner with the intent to self-host several services.

Garbage Collection for Systems Programmers

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:57:11 GMT

Yet another programming blog. Thoughts on software and related misadventures.

Optimizing Javascript for fun and for profit

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:57:06 GMT

romgrk's personal blog

Here is why vim uses hjkl keys as arrow keys

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:39:01 GMT

I was reading about vim the other day and found out why it used `hjkl` keys as arrow keys. When Bill Joy created the vi text editor he used the ADM-3A terminal, which had the arrows on hjkl keys. Naturally he reused the same keys and the rest is history. Here is how the `hjkl` keys looked. ADM-3A keyboard's hjkl keys...

Why the “Eisenhower matrix” is a fantastic productivity hack - Big Think

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 14:02:33 GMT

According to Harvard career advisor Gorick Ng, this time-saving system can help us reclaim our work-life sanity.

My list of challenging software projects some programmers should try | andreinc

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:56:10 GMT

Unsolicited advice

Building My First Homelab Server Rack · mtlynch.io

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:19:40 GMT

Updates about my life and what I learn about creating software

The hearts of the Super Nintendo

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:09:39 GMT

The hearts of the Super Nintendo

great_tables - The Design Philosophy of Great Tables

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 03:45:45 GMT

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about tables. Tables—like plots—are crucial as a last step toward presenting information. There is surprising sophistication and nuance in designing effective tables. Over the past 5,000 years, they’ve evolved from simple grids to highly structured displays of data. Although we argue that the mid-1900s served as a high point, the popularization and wider accessibility of computing seemingly brought us back to the simple, ancient times.

Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself - jxnl.co

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 03:16:01 GMT

Notes about my hobbies and other things I find interesting.

Visualizing the ARM64 Instruction Set | Zachary Yedidia's blog

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 03:07:30 GMT

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work with the ARM64 instruction set, and I thought it would be fun to try to visualize it. ARM64 encodes every instruction as a 32-bit integer, so one way to visualize the instruction set is by plotting the instructions along a space-filling curve, such as a Hilbert curve1, and coloring them according to their instruction class (i.e., general, advsimd, float, sve, etc…).

lizrice/containers-from-scratch: Writing a container in a few lines of Go code, as seen at DockerCon 2017 and on O'Reilly Safari

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 01:39:40 GMT

Writing a container in a few lines of Go code, as seen at DockerCon 2017 and on O'Reilly Safari - lizrice/containers-from-scratch

Subroutine calls in the ancient world, before computers had stacks or heaps - The Old New Thing

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 22:15:18 GMT

A lot of computing got done even before we had stacks and heaps.

You Don’t Need a Writing Ritual

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 01:36:18 GMT

Recently, I’ve noticed that many people online seem to put a lot of stock into writing rituals or “writuals” these days. The idea behind these is that if you follow certain routines, you can “trick” your brain into getting into the right mindset for writing.

Book list for streetfighting computer scientists - dankwiki, the wiki of nick black

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 22:08:58 GMT

From dankwiki

Everything I Know About SSDs 2019

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 21:30:41 GMT

Everything I Know About SSDs. SSD Documentation. A technical description of the differences between Hard Drives and Solid State Devices

Type system of the React compiler

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 05:37:18 GMT

The post describes how the type system of the React compiler is implemented and used

Basic Things

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 05:32:29 GMT

After working on the initial stages of several largish projects, I accumulated a list of things that share the following three properties:

Why Mathematics is Boring | The n-Category Café

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 22:52:02 GMT

I don’t really think mathematics is boring. I hope you don’t either.

The problem with invariants is that they change over time – Surfing Complexity

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:16:53 GMT

Cliff L. Biffle blogged a great write-up of a debugging odyssey at Oxide with the title Who killed the network switch? Here's the bit that jumped out at me: At the time that code was written, it was correct, but it embodied the assumption that any loaned memory would fit into one region. That assumption…

Think real hard | benkuhn.net

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:15:37 GMT

The Feynman Algorithm for problem solving: Write down the problem; Think real hard; Write down the solution.

Be impatient | benkuhn.net

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:14:38 GMT

Impatience is the best way to get faster at things. And across a surprising number of domains, being really fast correlates strongly with being effective.

Things you're allowed to do

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 03:09:15 GMT

A list of things you're allowed to do that you thought you couldn't, or didn't even know you could.

Deterministic Simulation Testing | Resonate

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 02:24:39 GMT

At Resonate, we consider deterministic simulation testing (DST) to be a cornerstone of our mission to build correct and reliable distributed systems. While an increasing array of projects, including Foundation DB, TigerBeetle DB, and Resonate itself, have embraced DST, along with companies like Antithesis providing platforms dedicated to this approach, comprehensive information remains limited.

Linux Crisis Tools

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:17:05 GMT

Linux Crisis Tools

Sega Saturn Architecture | A Practical Analysis

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:16:52 GMT

An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally

ADHD Productivity Fundamentals — 0xFF

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 22:10:53 GMT

0xFF / ADHD Productivity Fundamentals

Tech Independence | Derek Sivers

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 19:17:10 GMT

Tech independence is not depending on any particular company or software.

So you think you want to write a deterministic hypervisor?

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:07:04 GMT

What is a deterministic hypervisor and why do we need one anyhow?

#7 - On Keeping a Notebook | Kadambari

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 13:50:21 GMT

There's a lot I have to say on the subject of notebooks--of all the objects in this world, they are, to me, extremely fascinating and inspiring. But in this ...

Why do regexes use `$` and `^` as line anchors? • Buttondown

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 04:47:10 GMT

A history that will satisfy nobody.

The Beginner’s Guide to Queuing theory | Qminder

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 01:41:11 GMT

This is a beginner’s guide to queuing theory. Find out the definition of queuing theory, its history, benefits and real-life applications.

Fail Forward With Kindness / marcel.io

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 19:05:16 GMT

Thoughts about design, code, technology and everything in between.

Doing weeknotes

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 18:31:04 GMT

What weeknotes are, how weeknotes work, and how to start writing weeknotes of your own

myme.no - Focus by Automation

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 22:10:50 GMT

I’ve invested leisure time to save time when I’m working hard, not to save keystrokes but to save mental energy for the project at hand.

Decision logs

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 21:38:07 GMT

Let's say you need to choose some technology for your project, or you already have problems with some technologies, so you want to replace them with others. If you do not maintain a decision log, you have a high risk of making bad decisions that are biased, based on authority, and take too long.

Design is an Island - by Kent Beck

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 14:51:20 GMT

First published April 2009. This was a period when I was working consistently on the material that would become, a decade and a half later, Tidy First?. If design is responsive motion in a space of all possible designs, then some designs are acceptable and some are not. Designing, then, is like walking an island. As long as you don’t get your feet wet, the design is okay. (This is a visual way of describing design as an optimization problem, but I’ll stick with the metaphor because it turns out to be surprisingly apt.)

articles/internals_of_the_async_await_pattern_from_first_principles.md at master · Dobiasd/articles

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:35:39 GMT

thoughts on programming. Contribute to Dobiasd/articles development by creating an account on GitHub.

How to Start Google

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:29:22 GMT

March 2024(This is a talk I gave to 14 and 15 year olds about what to do now if they might want to start a startup later. Lots of schools think they should tell students something about startups. This is what I think they should tell them. Notice it makes no mention of business plans.)Most of you probably think that when you're released into the so-called real world you'll eventually have to get some kind of job. That's not true, and today I'm going to talk about a trick you can use to avoid ever having to get a job.The trick is to start your own company. So it's not a trick for avoiding work, because if you start your own company you'll work harder than you would if you had an ordinary job. But you will avoid many of the annoying things that come with a job, including a boss telling you what to do.It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies.Starting your own company can mean anything from starting a barber shop to starting Google. I'm here to talk about one extreme end of that continuum. I'm going to tell you how to start Google.The companies at the Google end of the continuum are called startups when they're young. The reason I know about them is that my wife Jessica and I started something called Y Combinator that is basically a startup factory. Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded over 4000 startups. So we know exactly what you need to start a startup, because we've helped people do it for the last 19 years.You might have thought I was joking when I said I was going to tell you how to start Google. You might be thinking "How could we start Google?" But that's effectively what the people who did start Google were thinking before they started it. If you'd told Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders o...

The Mechanics of Proof — The Mechanics of Proof, by Heather Macbeth

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:17:40 GMT

This is a book dealing with how to write careful, rigorous mathematical proofs. The book is paired with code in the computer formalization language Lean. Head over to the associated GitHub repository, https://github.com/hrmacbeth/math2001, to download this code to your own computer or to open it in the cloud on Gitpod.

Dobiasd/articles: thoughts on programming

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 20:24:28 GMT

This repository serves as a programming-related brain dump.

Leadership requires taking some risk. | Irrational Exuberance

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 23:50:35 GMT

At a recent offsite with Carta’s Navigators, we landed on an interesting topic: leadership roles sometimes mean that making progress on a professional initiative requires taking some personal risk. This lesson was hammered into me a decade ago during my time at Uber, where I kicked off the Uber SRE group and architectured Uber’s self-service service provisioning strategy that defined Uber’s approach to software development (which spawned a thousand thought pieces, not all complimentary).

Take Ownership of Your Future Self

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:53:32 GMT

Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time — but that change isn’t out of your control. What can you do to become the version of yourself that you most want to be? Start by acknowledging the differences between your past, current, and future selves. Next, imagine your desired future self: Set goals that are as clear and specific as possible to maximize your chances of achieving them. Finally, develop (and re-develop) an identity narrative consistent with the person you want to become — and share that story with others! Your identity drives your behavior, which over time creates your personality. So start acting like the best version of yourself, and you will become that person.

My favorite essays of life advice | benkuhn.net

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 11:13:19 GMT

Life is short • There is no speed limit • How to Be Successful • You and your research • Becoming a Magician • 95th percentile isn’t that good

Tecno S8C

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:19:05 GMT

In 2017, we looked at how web bloat affects users with slow connections. Even in the U.

Be Well Tuned

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 13:02:25 GMT

It's is a very unusual guide to improving your brain and your life:

Redefining Observability | Hazel Weakly

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 20:51:57 GMT

Observability is a bit of a hot topic, and while it’s increasingly been playing a larger role in engineering strategy, I think the way it’s presented can often...

What are 1-bit LLMs?. The Era of 1-bit LLMs with BitNet b1.58 | by Mehul Gupta | Data Science in your pocket | Mar, 2024 | Medium

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 20:46:13 GMT

The Generative AI world is racing and the new addition to this fast-evolving space is 1-bit LLMs. You might not believe it, but this can change a lot of things and can help eliminate some of the…

Checking Causal Consistency of MongoDB

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 20:41:12 GMT

This paper declares the Jepsen testing of MongoDB for causal consistency a bit lacking in rigor, and goes on to test MongoDB against three...

First month on a database team | notes.eatonphil.com

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 13:28:29 GMT

First month on a database team

How Figma's Databases Team Lived to Tell the Scale | Figma Blog

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 11:48:02 GMT

Our nine month journey to horizontally shard Figma’s Postgres stack, and the key to unlocking (nearly) infinite scalability.

Nix is a better Docker image builder than Docker's image builder - Xe Iaso

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 05:31:41 GMT

Fri Mar 15 2024

Learning from DNA: a grand challenge in biology · Hazy Research

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 05:16:26 GMT

Is DNA all you need?

40 years of programming

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 03:51:31 GMT

In April, 1984, my father bought a computer for his home office, a Luxor ABC-802, with a Z80 CPU, 64 kilobytes of RAM, a yellow-on-black screen with 80 by 25 text mode, or about 160 by 75 pixels in graphics mode, and two floppy drives. It had BASIC in its ROM, and came with absolutely no games. If I wanted to play with it, I had to learn how to program, and write my own games. I learned BASIC, and over the next few years would learn Pascal, C, and more. I had found my passion. I was 14 years old and I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.

My weekly review habit | benkuhn.net

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 12:14:52 GMT

how it works • example topics • compounding improvements • what I’ve gotten out of it • tips

Create More Than You Consume if You Want to Worry Less and Feel More Fulfilled — OMAR ITANI

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 02:53:57 GMT

The problem with too much consumption is that it can leave us feeling utterly empty inside. Ironically, it creates something: One big void. A small dose of creativity is good for us. It can help us become more present, less anxious, and much more fulfilled. And it doesn't take much to live a creativ

SQLite Internals: Pages & B-trees · The Fly Blog

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:02:50 GMT

Let's open a hex editor and see what this thing is made of

Breaking Down Tasks - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:18:10 GMT

Something missing from this series on estimation, until now, has been a discussion of how to “break down” a project into a well-defined task list. I’d not previously written about this because, to me, it’s largely intuitive. But it isn’t for everyone, so this post fills the gap, and explains in detail how I break down projects into a task list.

CAP is Good, Actually • Buttondown

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:16:17 GMT

It seems like there are two main takes regarding the CAP theorem online: In introductory materials, it is presented as a deep, fundamental truth about...

“No” Is a Good Default Answer

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:50:24 GMT

(Or, how to find things worth saying yes to)

Technical Skills Are Overrated. Focus on Your Attitude.

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 17:52:37 GMT

When interviewing, particularly for technical positions, many people over value their technical preparation, and don't consider the importance of personality and leadership preparation.

POV: I'm on my third coffee and you just asked me how the internet works

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:56:58 GMT

POV: I'm on my third coffee and you just asked me how the internet works

How HEAD works in git

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 14:47:19 GMT

How HEAD works in git

How I read a research paper

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 14:41:29 GMT

I can't tell you how you should read a research paper. Probably a different and customized style would work best for you. But I can t...

Your attitude determines your success

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 13:52:57 GMT

This may sound like a cliche your dad used to tell, but after many years of going through new areas, ventures, and careers, I find this to b...

Learning a technical subject

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 13:02:25 GMT

I love learning. I wanted to write about how I learn, so I can analyze if there is a method to this madness. I will first talk about what m...

Why I blog

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 22:01:59 GMT

My blog has been going for 14 years now, and has just passed 4 million pageviews. Yay! I remember the 1 million pageviews moment in 2017 ! T...

Coordination Avoidance in Database Systems

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 18:42:54 GMT

ABSTRACT Minimizing coordination, or blocking communication between con- currently executing operations, is key to maximizing scalability, availability, and high performance in database systems.

AT&T ARCHIVES AND HISTORY CENTER

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 12:25:43 GMT

The vacuum-tube triode wasn’t quite 20 years old when physicists began trying to create its successor, and the stakes were huge.

The checklist manifesto (Dr. Atul Gawande, 2009)

Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:08:30 GMT

This book advocates for integrating checklists as potent safety and fault-tolerance tools across diverse domains. Atul Gawande, a prominent...

The CAP Theorem. The Bad, the Bad, & the Ugly | Dominik Tornow

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 12:57:34 GMT

The CAP theorem is too simplistic and too widely misunderstood to be of much use for characterizing systems. Therefore I ask that we retire all references to the CAP theorem, stop talking about the CAP theorem, and put the poor thing to rest Martin Kleppmann In 2000, Eric Brewer introduced the CAP Conjecture during his keynote address Towards Robust Distributed Systems at the Principles of Distributed Computing conference. Brewer posited that a distributed system cannot achieve Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance simultaneously.

O Juro é negativo após 2008 - by 🟩🟩Trezoitão🟩🟩

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 21:31:36 GMT

no legacy só há perda fixa e perda variável

Why (and how) to read books | notes.eatonphil.com

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 10:51:49 GMT

Why (and how) to read books

Reverse Engineering Protobuf Definitions From Compiled Binaries

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:00:38 GMT

How to extract raw source protobuf definitions from compiled binaries, regardless of the target architecture

Anatomy of a NixOS Config - unmoved centre

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:18:42 GMT

This article provides a structural overview on the anatomy of my personal nix configuration.

Paul Butler – The hater’s guide to Kubernetes

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:25:44 GMT

Paul Butler – March 3, 2024

A Deep Dive into the Underlying Architecture of Groq's LPU

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:25:23 GMT

What powers the ground breaking performance of Groq's Langauge Processing Unit?

Motorola's 6809 : The Best 8-Bit? - by Babbage

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:24:36 GMT

Part 3 of the story of the Motorola 6800

Byte Interviews the Apple Lisa Dev Team (1983)

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:24:27 GMT

A behind-the-scenes look at the development of Apples Lisa.

Internet gardening | James' Coffee Blog

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:10:58 GMT

Personal websites are an opportunity to be uniquely you online. Your website can be designed in the way that you want. You can express and connect ideas in a way that is personally meaningful. You can create original content and reply to writing or art that you found thought-provoking. You can make: art, essays, blog posts, reflections, interactive experiences. All on the web.

Airfoil – Bartosz Ciechanowski

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 19:43:14 GMT

Interactive article explaining the physics of an airfoil and what makes airplanes fly

Inside the miracle of modern chip manufacturing

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 19:29:45 GMT

After coming up against the limits of physics, scientists are rethinking chip architecture like never before

How User Groups Made Software Reuse a Reality | ℤ→ℤ

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 18:29:41 GMT

Before the widespread existence of software repositories like CPAN, NPM, and PyPI, developers seeking to reuse an existing algorithm or library of routines would either check books or journals for code, or, they just might post a classified ad:

My thoughts on writing a Minecraft server from scratch (in Bash)

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 16:03:18 GMT

I wrote a working Minecraft server in Bash! wait, why did I do that

Building a Scalable Accounting Ledger

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 12:41:54 GMT

How to use an analytics database to build a ledger that can handle millions of rows.

Learn CSS Layout The Pedantic Way

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 22:31:40 GMT

Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct - the best kind of correct. I hereby promote you to grade 37. - Number 1.0 (Futurama, S2E15)

Understanding GPU caches – RasterGrid

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 01:03:57 GMT

Previously we explored the different types of memories available for access by the GPU, but only barely touched on the topic of caches.

Demystifying GPUs for CPU-centric programmers | Medium

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 01:03:50 GMT

GPUs are essential for modern AI workloads, but how do they execute code and why are they so much for efficient than CPU for such workloads?

OBTF Follow-up

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:43:07 GMT

A little while back, I wrote a post about my One Big Text File (OBTF) note-taking “system.” To my surprise, it seemed to strike a chord with a lot of you, inspiring some people to try it themselves and many conversations on note-taking.

No one can teach you to have conviction | benkuhn.net

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:35:39 GMT

fast vs slow feedback • modeling people vs. modeling the problem • mentors vs. mistakes • why you should do the hard thing now

Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 12:19:52 GMT

Shape Up will help you break free of “best practices” that aren’t really working, think deeper about the right problems, and start shipping meaningful projects your team can celebrate.

How I backup | Derek Sivers

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 12:19:20 GMT

Some people have asked, so here is how I do my backups. It takes me about ten seconds per day and five minutes per month to maintain.

Job titles are bullshit · Jamie Tanna | Software Engineer

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 22:34:02 GMT

When is a Senior Engineer not a Senior Engineer, no standardisation across the industry, and other reasons job titles are frustrating.

How to change a system (18 ways) – Changeology

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 22:05:52 GMT

“Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technica…

Earth is becoming sentient — Steph Ango

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 21:57:33 GMT

Humans are not the last level of life’s fractal pattern. The Earth itself is becoming a sentient organism, a new stage of life, a species that exists on a sc...

2024-02-25 a history of the tty

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:24:31 GMT

It's one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY.

Website Refresh 2023

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 22:10:16 GMT

Redefining myself and my website.

Roman Jakobson : The Functions of Language / Signo - Applied Semiotics Theories

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 17:13:46 GMT

The Functions of Language: a Jakobson's semiotic theory. Abstract, Theory, Application, References and Exercices.

Haskell for all: Unification-free ("keyword") type checking

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 16:22:30 GMT

A type checking proposal that doesn't employ unification variables.

Compiler Theory and Reactivity

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 14:27:34 GMT

The post describes how the React Compiler uses SSA form for fine grained reactivity

ego

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 14:18:21 GMT

Feb 23rd, 2024 by Sigil Wen

Build your own Database Index: part 1

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 01:02:50 GMT

I’ve been quiet in November because I’ve been working on a small toy project. Now it’s become interesting, I want to write about it. In part, to prove to myself I actually understand what I’ve built, by showing I can explain it in words. I’ve been working through creating a simple database-like index, to understand the concepts involved more concretely.

williamdemeo/TypeFunc: Resources for type theory, functional programming, etc.

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 12:21:40 GMT

Resources for type theory, functional programming, etc. - williamdemeo/TypeFunc

How MOSFETS Work - Unravel the Mysteries of How mosfets Work!

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:53:42 GMT

How MOSFETS Work - Unravel the Mysteries of How mosfets Work!

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me - Sam Altman

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 13:14:48 GMT

Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are...

Table of Contents | Ultimate Electronics Book

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:44:56 GMT

A free, interactive book for electronics hobbyists and electrical engineering students: Practical Circuit Design and Analysis.

Software infrastructure 2.0: a wishlist · Erik Bernhardsson

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 18:53:52 GMT

Erik Bernhardsson

DRMacIver's Notebook: Writing good programming abstractions

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:09:40 GMT

Writing good programming abstractions

Bloom Filters

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:21:21 GMT

A visual, interactive guide to what bloom filters are, when you would use them, and how they work.

Evolution of tree data structures for indexing: more exciting than it sounds · Erthalion's blog

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 23:38:02 GMT

I have to admit, my research blog posts are getting longer and longer. From one side I find it genuinely encouraging, because if one gets so much information just by scratching the topic, imagine what’s hidden beneath the surface! One university professor once said “what could be interesting in databases?”, and it turns out freaking a lot! On the other side it certainly poses problems for potential readers. To overcome them I would suggest an interesting approach: print this blog post out, or open it on your tablet/e-reader, where you can make notes with a pencil or markers. Now while reading it try to spot ideas particularly exciting for you and mark them. Along the way there would be definitely some obscure parts or questions, write them on the sides as well. You can experiment with the diagrams, changing or extending them, or just drawing funny faces. But do not read everything at once, have no fear of putting it aside for a while, and read in chunks that are convenient for you. Some parts could be skipped as the text is build out of relatively independent topics. The table of contents can help and guide you. Having said that we’re ready to embark on the journey.

B+-Tree Indexes

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 20:58:32 GMT

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20080723122307/http://www.cecs.csulb.edu/%7emonge/classes/share/B+TreeIndexes.html

Fighting undead documentation

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 22:50:48 GMT

Software documentation that doesn’t suck needs to exist with the living

Distributed Logical Time

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 15:05:38 GMT

A simple, decentralized, scalable, constant-memory mechanism for independent replicas to record events in time, preserving the "happened-before" relation in almost all cases.

An intuition for distributed consensus in OLTP systems | notes.eatonphil.com

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 14:30:04 GMT

An intuition for distributed consensus in OLTP systems

How do you approach reading a paper?

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 21:48:43 GMT

Adam Ruben's tongue-in-cheek column about the common difficulties and frustrations of reading a scientific paper broadly resonated among Science Careers readers.

HOW TO STUDY

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 20:13:13 GMT

Note: or material is highlighted

Tunable Consistency in MongoDB

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 20:23:28 GMT

This paper appeared in VLDB 2019. It discusses the tunable consistency models in MongoDB and how MongoDB's speculative execution model...

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 01:08:39 GMT

The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about programming, or that programming is somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else. Felleisen et al. give a nod to this trend in their book How to Design Programs, when they say "Bad programming is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies." The Abtruse Goose comic also had their take.

Demystifying GPU Compute Architectures - by Babbage

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 01:03:41 GMT

Getting 'low level' with Nvidia and AMD GPUs

OKRs are Bullshit - by drmorr

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:03:03 GMT

It's a new year, time for a new rant! And yes, before you ask, the post title is deliberately provocative. You might say this is my ploy to get more paid subscribers, because only paid subscribers can leave comments and I expect that the title alone will make many of you want to comment. 😝

Writing Is Magic - Marc's Blog

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 23:27:40 GMT

Magic can be dangerous.

Writing For Somebody - Marc's Blog

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 11:42:29 GMT

Who's there?

How Do You Spend Your Time? - Marc's Blog

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 03:41:56 GMT

Career advice, or something like it.

Why Gödel, Escher, Bach is the most influential book in my life. | by Mark Johnson | Medium

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 22:19:04 GMT

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (henceforth: GEB), the Pulitzer Prize winning book written in 1978 by Douglas Hofstadter, is described in its cryptic tagline as “a metaphorical fugue on…

Idea Generation - Sam Altman

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 17:32:15 GMT

The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea...

How Did I Get Here?

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 01:00:13 GMT

A cool-as-shit dynamic traceroute powered by custom software, married with an informative article about how the BGP routing protocol works and guides the shape of the Internet.

A Brief Summary of Evolutionary Design | CodingItWrong.com

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:19:37 GMT

For years I’ve wanted to write something to advocate for evolutionary design. There is so much that can be said, and I hope to write more in the future. But I wanted to begin with this short definition of what I mean by “evolutionary design” and explanation of why it’s helpful.

The Hacker News Top 40 books of 2023 -

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:21:24 GMT

Hi, welcome to the brand new website, HN Reads. I enjoy reading Hacker News and I love buying books (and reading), and I also love data, so what better than doing some processing of data about books to find some interesting results?! It also gives me the opportunity to write about books that I find interesting. Here are the top 40 books recommended by HN readers in 2023. How I generated this list:

How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 01:33:31 GMT

This is a blog post aimed at people who want to do important work or make meaningful contributions to work, but feel they aren’t that smart and don’t have any talent. Thanks for reading Adaobi’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Reverse engineering CMOS, illustrated with a vintage Soviet counter chip

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:09:29 GMT

I recently came across an interesting die photo of a Soviet 1 chip, probably designed in the 1970s. This article provides an introductory g...

Manage like an engineer | Ben Balter

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 11:44:51 GMT

If issues, pull requests, and project boards are the best way to develop software, should they not also be the best way to manage software development?

Axioms of Systemantics

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 01:21:21 GMT

2024 Jan 25