Links

🕑 Feb 3, 2025

Writing a Wasm interpreter in C

https://irreducible.io/blog/my-wasm-interpreter/

🕑 Feb 2, 2025

Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads
(a nice write-up on privacy issues with mobile apps)

https://timsh.org/tracking-myself-down-through-in-app-ads/

🕑 Feb 2, 2025

Tools for 2025

http://yosemitesam.ch/3-tools-for-2025/

🕑 Feb 1, 2025

Thoughts on the software industry

https://linus.coffee/note/software-industry/

🕑 Jan 31, 2025

"We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase

https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/ugliest-beautiful-codebase

🕑 Jan 28, 2025

My afternoon project turned into four days of AI lies, USB chaos, and hard lessons

https://nemo.foo/blog/day-4-of-an-afternoon-project

🕑 Jan 27, 2025

Dualities in functional programming

https://dicioccio.fr/on-dualities.html

🕑 Jan 26, 2025

Does current AI represent a dead end?

A good TLDR on the current state of things: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/does-current-ai-represent-a-dead-end/

🕑 Jan 26, 2025

Immutability Changes Everything (Pat Helland, 2016):

web version: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2884038
pdf: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2857274.2884038

🕑 Jan 25, 2025

How to build your own ZX80/ZX81 and how it works:

http://searle.x10host.com/zx80/zx80.html

🕑 Jan 25, 2025

File systems: The original hypermedia

https://jon.work/og/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

Snowdrop OS - a homebrew operating system from scratch, in assembly language

http://sebastianmihai.com/snowdrop/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

A WebAssembly compiler that fits in a tweet

https://wasmgroundup.com/blog/wasm-compiler-in-a-tweet/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

Ignore the grifters - AI isn't going to kill the software industry

https://dustinewers.com/ignore-the-grifters/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

Building a full-text search engine in 150 lines of Python code

A good intro to text search: https://bart.degoe.de/building-a-full-text-search-engine-150-lines-of-code/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

This is interesting - two QR codes overlaid in such a way that a reader randomly catches one or the other:

https://mstdn.social/@isziaui/113874436953157913

🕑 Jan 23, 2025

Taking a look at compression algorithms
(dissecting various compression algorithms)

https://cefboud.github.io/posts/compression/

🕑 Jan 23, 2025

Out of the Tar Pit (2006)

This is one of my favorite computer science papers: https://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf

🕑 Jan 23, 2025

Most influential papers in computer science history

https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/01/22/the-7-most-influential-papers-in-computer-science-history/

🕑 Jan 23, 2025

Creating a highly-integrated open-source laptop from scratch

https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation/

🕑 Jan 22, 2025

Minimal 64x4 home computer - a DIY home computer with VGA and PS/2 and 4x(!) the processing power of a Commodore C64 or Apple II.

https://github.com/slu4coder/Minimal-64x4-Home-Computer

🕑 Jan 22, 2025

Simple CPU design

http://simplecpudesign.com

🕑 Jan 21, 2025

Death By Specificity (from Rich Hickey's talk Clojure Made Simple)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSEQfqNYNAc

🕑 Jan 21, 2025

Investigating an "evil" RJ45 dongle

Reverse-engineering hardware can be difficult -- but sometimes, all you need is a comfy armchair and some Google Translate.

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/investigating-an-evil-rj45-dongle

🕑 Jan 20, 2025

It's time to make computing personal again.

How surveillance capitalism and DRM turned home tech from friend to foe: https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/3292/the-pc-is-dead-its-time-to-make-computing-personal-again

🕑 Jan 19, 2025

Booting full Linux on the intel 4004 for fun, art, and absolutely no profit

https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004

🕑 Jan 18, 2025

A filter that blocks AI spam and bad websites from appearing in search results via uBlocklist:

https://github.com/popcar2/BadWebsiteBlocklist

🕑 Jan 18, 2025

Write your own static site generator

https://g9h.io/write-your-own-static-site-generator.html

🕑 Jan 17, 2025

SQL NULLs are weird

https://raymondtukpe.com/sql-nulls-are-weird.html

🕑 Jan 17, 2025

Let's say you've got horsepower and bandwidth to burn, and just want to see these "AI" models burn. Nepenthes has what you need.

Nepenthes is a tarpit to catch AI web crawlers: https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/

🕑 Jan 15, 2025

If you own a computing device outright, you should be able to make any level of software modification you desire. Hardware manufacturers should not be allowed to absolutely restrict distribution of software to their own channels under the guise of safety.

https://medhir.com/blog/right-to-root-access

🕑 Jan 14, 2025

Greppability is an underrated code metric

https://morizbuesing.com/blog/greppability-code-metric/

🕑 Jan 14, 2025

You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/you-are-what-you-read/

"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

🕑 Jan 12, 2025

Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/01/04/cruft/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42599102

🕑 Jan 11, 2025

Programming is mostly thinking (2014)

https://agileotter.blogspot.com/2014/09/programming-is-mostly-thinking.html

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40103407

🕑 Jan 11, 2025

"You do not need to know how useState works"

I feel like you eventually do. The issue with React is that it's a type of abstraction that seems ill-suited for how the web works under the hood, so it's incredibly leaky. Everything seems to make sense [...]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41687963

🕑 Jan 10, 2025

You can't build interactive web apps except as single page applications... and other myths

https://htmx.org/essays/you-cant/

🕑 Jan 9, 2025

Operating System in 1,000 Lines: Intro
(building a small operating system from scratch, step by step)

https://operating-system-in-1000-lines.vercel.app/en/

🕑 Jan 5, 2025

"If you've ever worked on refactoring or improving performance in a software system, you've probably run into a particular frustration: abstraction-heavy codebases. What looks like neatly organized and modularized code often reveals itself as a labyrinth, with layers [...]"

https://fhur.me/posts/2024/thats-not-an-abstraction

🕑 Jan 4, 2025

Software design is knowledge building

https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42557255