2015-12-26
Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh
Decommissioning a free public API
List of selfie-related injuries and deaths
The Black Hole — a mirror lined room with a dark spot
Fair Source License — a terrible licensing idea
2015-11-16
a tale of software maintenance: OpenSSL and EVP_CHECK_DES_KEY
What’s Up With That: Why Do Cats Love Boxes So Much?
Software Usability II — a story from SGI in the 90’s
Crypto weakness in smart LED lightbulbs exposes Wi-Fi passwords
An Interview with Fred Brooks (cached by Google version)
Track Your Heart with Your Phone, Even If Your Phone’s in Your Bag
2015-10-12
How The Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive
News — Everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1%. Obviously, they can’t all be right.
The Tenacity of Tech Recruiters
Never Invent Here: the even-worse sibling of “Not Invented Here”
2015-09-23
The Apple ISA — An interesting view of what Apple could aim for instruction set architecture-wise.
Internetová jazyková příručka — A reference book with grammar and dictionary detailing how to conjugate each Czech word.
Java is Magic: the Gathering (or Poker) and Haskell is Go (the game)
An Interview with Brian Kernighan (July 2000)
Booting a Raspberry Pi2, with u-boot and HYP enabled
The SmPL Grammar — Description of the grammar used by Coccinelle.
Netbooting Debian Squeeze — A link I had sitting around for a couple of years when I last set up a NFS-root netbooting Linux system.
Are there any 3 dimensional items wwe can’t print layer by layer — A humorous story about Fubini’s theorem and its relation to 3D printing.
The Diagnosis of Mistakes in Programmes on the EDSAC — In some ways, debugging hasn’t changed much since 1951.
2015-09-01
Interchange — This definitely reminds me of xkcd: Highway Engineer Pranks. At the same time, it is fascinating how there is a whole set of standard interchanges.
DxOMark — Very in-depth reviews of SLR lenses and bodies.
Lisp as the Maxwell’s equations of software — Reading this has rekindled my interest in Lisp and Scheme.
This Man Has Been Trying to Live Life as a Goat
What’s going on with a Python assignment puzzle — As a C programmer, this is totally counter-intuitive to me.
Internet Mainframes Project — Screenshots of 3270 login screens of tons of internet facing mainframes.
2015-08-10
Cap’n Proto — an insanely fast data interchange format.
International Obfuscated C Code Contest winning entries — list of all the winning entries for all 23 years of IOCCC.
How to destroy Programmer Productivity
The Open-Office Trap — Having spent a couple of years in an open-office environment, I can tell you first hand that open-office is a bad idea. It was very annoying dealing with one set of light switches for about 70 people. The people near the window wanted them off, while us far away from the window wanted them on. The noise was also annoying — the chatty people (e.g., sales and support) were the worst. They were not malicious, just doing their job or chatting between phone calls.
Inside The Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers
Underwater rugby — It is more like underwater basketball. I find it fascinating that player positions are a 3D location not a 2D location like in “normal” sports.
The Memory Sinkhole — an x86 design flaw allowing ring -2 privilege escalation.
2015-06-26
1980s computer controls GRPS heat and AC
Who Has Your Back? — An annual report looking at how different major companies react to government requests for data.
Mega-processor — A project to build a micro-processor using discrete transistors.
Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant — A rant by a Googler about Google’s failure to understand platforms (vs. products).
2015-06-15
Going under the hood of Inbox — translating Java to ObjC and Javascript
Open-sourcing Facebook Infer: Identify bugs before you ship — a static analysis tool for C, ObjC, and Java
TrainFever — a game inspired by Transport Tycoon
How Computers Work: A Journey Into the Walk-Through Computer
Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible — a thorough “rant” about agile and scrum and their effects on overall productivity
2015-06-11
O(n) binary search for when O(log n) is just too fast.
A Constructive Look At TempleOS
D3 gallery — chock full of neat visualizations.
The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation seems to be a nice book.
2015-05-29
I’m going to try something new. Instead of sharing individual links per post as I come across them, I’m going to try to dump them whenever I have enough of them. It does mean that some of these links aren’t as “hot off the press”. Here’s the first batch.
How We’re Predicting AI — or Failing To
How Typography Shapes Our Perception Of Truth
Bitcoin mining on a 55 year old IBM 1401 mainframe: 80 seconds per hash
What is the difference between an “aggregate” and other kinds of “modified versions”?
SourceForge grabs GIMP for Windows’ account, wraps installer in bundle-pushing adware
Speed tape looks like duct tape but isn’t.