Bookmarks

• Funny, interesting — https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/

Show how many times frustrated Linux kernel developers have put four letter words into the source code.

• http://www.fillmurray.com/ — Fill Murray

An online tool to provide custom-sized placeholder images of Bill Murray! http://fillmurray.com/200/300.

I like the humor and layout of the page. Images are superb.

Check also PlaceCage (Nick Cage Filler Images) and Steven SeGALLERY (Steven Segal Filler Images) :-D

• Evo-Devo (Despacito Biology Parody) | A Capella Science

An amazing video from A Capella Science on biology science. Amazing song. More to see on the YouTube channel.

AI / ML

See also

• ChatGPT

Bookmarks

• Guppies, an evolving neural network.
• The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Learning Representations.
• GPT2, Counting Consciousness and the Curious Hacker

Student's post about replicating OpenAI's GPT2 1.5B dataset, and is about to release it, and long explanation why. GPT2 generates very interesting samples. Humanity success is more because of collaboration / trust, than intelligence, and our ability has human to identify trustable information. If we have a system charged with detecting what we can and can’t trust, we aren’t removing our need to invest trust, we are only moving our trust from our own faculties to those of the machine.

• Interpretable Machine Learning - A Guide for Making Black Box Models Explainable

A book praised by HN [1].

• Gaussian process

Amazing page detailing the mathematics behind gaussian processes.

• A neural algorithm for a fundamental computing problem

A report on how fly brain compares and processes different colors, and solves the problem of locality-sensitive hash. Very clear and simple explanations.

• Learning to Predict Without Looking Ahead:World Models Without Forward Prediction

Nice animations. Looks simple to understand...

• Artbreeder

Generate new images (portraits, landscapes, album covers...) by mixing together images to generate new ones.

• This word does not exist

New word invented and defined by an AI, using GPT-2.

• Interactive examples on machine learning

Suggested on HN.

• Lo-Fi Player

An interactive room where you can build your own custom music.

• The Unreasonable Syntactic Expressivity of RNNs
• You might not need machine learning

Beyond the subject, what I like is the nice animations, and the simple explanation.

• Introduction to Locality-Sensitive Hashing (lsh_post1.pdf)

Very nice article on how to use projection-based hashing to very quickly find neighbours in a dataset

• https://laion.ai/laion-400-open-dataset/

The world’s largest openly available image-text-pair dataset with 400 million samples. There is an online browser: https://rom1504.github.io/clip-retrieval/. Enter any query (a bicycle in the wood), and it returns relevant pictures.

• Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters

A ML experiment to generate "lowest" and "uppest" case letter from standard pairs of lowercase / uppercase letter. The ML engine is trained to generate the corresponding lower or upper case letter from any letter. Using that engine we can generate the lowercase variant of an already lower case letter, giving a "lowestcase" letter, etc ;-)

• Other examples of crazy lettering: crazy lettering.

• Experiment #1: Creating a landing page using AI tools + No code

Using various AI tools to make a website (ChatGPT, MidJourney...).

• My class required AI. Here's what I've learned so far

Several approaches to making several prompts: Minor variations, letting the AI do the work (poor results) — Adding restrictions and user knowledge (good but lot of variation) — Co-editing. The last approach is the one giving the best result, and also help mastering the subject.

• ViperGPT: Visual Inference via Python Execution for Reasoning

Using AI to analyze a problem / image, produce a Python program to solve it, and execute it.

• The Role of AI in Accelerating Skill Development

A detailed investigation on how to use ChatGPT to learn new skills (here macroeconomy), by creating example scenarios, detailed queries...

• DS-Fusion: Artistic Typography via Discriminated and Stylized Diffusion

An incredible pipeline that produces artistic fonts using some prompts (e.g. making 'R' letter looking like a dragon). Results are amazing and very stylized.

• GPT-4 and professional benchmarks: the wrong answer to the wrong question

An interesting analysis of the capability of ChatGPT-4, in particular about the risk of cross-contamination when evaluating its capabilities. Evaluation methods from less to more useful: Comparison on contaminated exam benchmarks / Comparison on exam benchmarks / Comparison on real-word tasks / Quantitative studies of professionals using AI / Qualitative studies of professionals using AI.

• Cheating is All You Need

An explanation of why AI will become dominant as code assistant. Title is a reference to landmark paper from Google Brain team [2]. Explain the importance of the "cheat sheet", ie the context that is passed to the AI to generate good response about the current code base.

• EmergentMind

AI News, Curated and Explained by AI. Also contains list of prompt / queries to ChatGPT.

• How to use ChatGPT to boost your writing.
• Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code, spelled out. (YouTube)

A must-see video about building a GPT ourselves in Python.

• Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4

A 154-page paper from Microsoft research team evaluating GPT-4 in many domains. Must read.

• Google "We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI" (also printed as PDF)

Leaked Internal Google Document Claims Open Source AI Will Outcompete Google and OpenAI

• A Mechanistic Interpretability Analysis of Grokking

A detailed article on how NN learns complex algorithms.

• Fast SDXL

Real-time image generation with SDXL Lightning

Mathemathics

• http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Correlation is not causation.

• Tangente n°182, p34-35, "Les excès de la corrélation".

Nous allons vers un changement épistémologique majeur. S'en remettre à ce type de calcul traduit un renoncement aux ambitions de la raison moderne, qui liait les phénomènes à leurs causes. Ces ambitions de la raison permettaient d'envisager la prévention, d'agir sur les causes pour changes les effets. Au lieu de cela, on se dirige vers un système de pures corrélations. [...] On ne cherche plus à comprendre l'environnement, on cherche à le prédire. Notre rapport au savoir change, mais aussi notre rapport au monde: on se focalise davantage qu'auparavant sur les risques. "Voir et comprendre" sont supplantés par détecter et prévenir". On passe d'une civilisation du signe, qui était porteur de sens, à une civilisation du signal, qui est une donnée qui ne signifie rien en soi..

• https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-problem-20161006

How to cut fairly a cake in three (and more) pieces.

• https://ncase.me/trust/

The evolution of trust — a fun lecture for understanding game theory in a broader context.

• Who Can Name the Bigger Number?, by Scott Aaronson.

Interesting post about big numbers, including Ackerman series (tetration, etc), and Busy Beaver function (maximum number of steps than a valid n-state turing machine would execute -- that is roughly the execution time of the most complex machine excluding non-halting ones). Updated post here and also discussion on HN.

• Fieldplay - A vector field explorer

A very fast web application showing particle movements in force field. Very fast. See example.

• Desirable properties of mathematical notations

Answer from Terrence Tao about properties of good notation systems (taking dot/scalar product as example).

• handcalcs: Python calculations in Jupyter, as though you wrote them by hand.

Rendering equation (LaTeX) in Jupyter, with value substitution. Nice examples, and lots of features.

• Making the monty hall problem weirder but obvious

A nice explanation on the Monty Hall problem (2 goats and one car behind a door, pick a door, have presentator pick another one with goat, and ask whether to switch or not)

• What Gödel Discovered

A nice detailed explanation of the Gödel proof regarding consistency and completeness.

• Implicit plotter

A javascript plotter using random sampling to plot solutions of any f(x,y)=0, including pathological ones.

• Isabelle is a generic proof assistant].

Here some Some baby examples

• I❤️LA is a novel domain specific language for linear algebra.

The I❤️LA code written with rich Unicode symbols visually resembles chalkboard math, while still being a semantically well-defined programming language compilable to various target languages: LaTeX, MATLAB, Python, C++.

• Erich's packing center

Solutions to problems of packing figures inside figures, covering figures of figures, etc (eg. how many triangles in a square).

• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Mathematics

A book about mathematics, proofs...

• An inifinite descent into pure mathematics

An introductory pure mathematics textbook (under creative common, and including LaTeX source!).

• A truly incredible fact about the number 37

37 is the median of the second prime factor of any random integer, that is, if we pick an integer at random, the second prime factor of that integer has 50% chance to be lower than 37. This post gives a nice demonstration, which is simply based on counting the probability that the second prime factor is 2, 3, 5...

• Entropy Bagels and Mandelbrot

Interesting discussions on the Mandelbrot set, entropy bagels... to read in details some day.

• Is the frequency domain a real place?

A great article about Walsh-Adamard transform and matrices, and how to generate / use them.

Sciences

• Rosalind: Learn bioinformatics by programming it

Many exercices in Python on the theme of bioinformatics.

• How to read a scientific paper

The 10 phases you go through when reading a scientific papers. More tips to read these papers here.

• Electromagnetism using Geometric Algebra versus Components

All Maxwell equations in a single space-time oneliner (see also WP).

• I should have loved biology (James Somers)

Many interesting facts about biology, that we should be amazed at. Many links, in particular to Ninja Nerd Science. Often times more interesting to study the methods than the facts.

Interesting fact: As an example, if only 0.02% of a typical eukaryotic cell’s surface has a receptor for p, the cell will be about half as efficient as if the entire surface were coated with receptors for p.

Quantum computing

• An interactive introduction to surface code

A detailed explanation about surface code, which can be used to reduced noise in quantum computing.

Tools

• oclif, an open source framework for building a command line interface (CLI) in Node.js.
• Mosh, a mobile SSH client.
• Live Chat online typing test
• Warp, create self-contained single binary applications.
• Goosh.org, an unofficial Google shell.
• Jit.si, an open-source videoconferencing service.
• Mumble, an open-source VoIP solution (alternative to TeamSpeak and Discord).
• Jumpfiles, a framework to setup jumpfiles in Shell, to quickly record/edit/recall long commands with shorthand equivalent.
• Argdown: A simple syntax for complex argumentation, a kind of extension of MarkDown.
• unblob: Extract files from any kind of container formats (more tools here)
• up The Ultimate Plumber tool, allows to build complex pipe shell commands.
• Kitty (github) A powerful terminal with hyperlink / image support
• starship The minimal, blazing-fast, and infinitely customizable prompt for any shell!
• Magika (github), Google AI-powered file identification tool with >99% recognition rate.

Services

• Guerrilla Mail, a service to create easily temporary mail addresses for use on (untrusted) web site for registration, etc.
• carsized, a comparator of car sizes.
• Archive today, a website that keeps copies of new site, and can often be used to bypass paywalls.

Apps

• Krita 4.0 released, Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program.
• Draw.io — a free alternative to Visio, very powerful and that integrates nicely in many online platforms (GitLab...). Available offline, and as stand-alone executable as well.
• Excalidraw — A nice drawing tool, making handwriting-like drawings. Nice for presentations.
• Mermaid — lets you create diagrams and visualizations using text and code (flowchart, sequence diagram, gantt diagram, class diagram, git graph) (also discussed here)

Games

• A curated list of engineering-related video games rated Very Positive or higher on Steam.

For when I'll be retired...

• A Modern Version Switcher, Character Isolator, and Mod Manager for Diablo II (Original, Not Resurrected)

Also explain how to install Windows 10 w/o network connection and activation issue (ie. fully isolated Win10). Used Win10_22H2_English_x64v1.iso (2023 Update) with hash bbb1b234ea7f5397a1906ee59187087c78374f35.

Books

• Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory
• Principles of Algorithmic Problem Solving, by Johan Sannemo, 2017.

A book on algorithmic problem solving, the art of formulating efficient methods that solve problems of a mathematical nature.

• Linear Algebra, by Jim Hefferon.
• Practical Typography

Online digital book on typography from Matthew Butterick, including tips to learn typography in ten minutes.

• David J. Eck, Introduction to Computer Graphics, Version 1.2, January 2018

OpenGL, WebGL, 3D, Blender...

• Mathematics for Programmers

prime numbers, probabilities, logarithms, graph theory, gcd/lcm...

• Recommended books for development (source HN):

• The Practical Programmer,
• Code Complete,
• Design Patterns, from the Gang of Four,
• Refactoring, from Martin Flower,
• The Practice of Programming, from Kernighan and Pike’s,

• my updated list of cool machine learning books

Dev

• POSE - Declarative motion system for HTML, SVG & React
• Debugging across pipes and sockets with strace

Crystal-clear tutorial on how to use strace, lsof and gdb to debug inter-process issues on Linux.

• Introducing Plotly 3.0.0

open source Python graphing library, with Javascript interaction.

• HyperPolyglot, showing common-used features side-by-side.
• The microarchitecture of Intel, AMD and VIA CPUs

An optimization guide for assembly programmers and compiler makers By Agner Fog. Technical University of Denmar.

• Why Racket? Why Lisp?

Nine reasons why Lisp and Racket are good programming languages. From Matthew Butterick, author of the book Practical Typography and of Pollen, a digital book publishing system.

• Programming Idioms

Don't reinvent the wheels. Reference solutions to common problems in *many* languages.

Rust

• How to analyze billions of records per second on a single desktop pc

Many interesting comments on RUST, and how to write / debug programs with concurrency/performance in mind.

Methodology

• 5 Red Flags Signaling Your Rebuild Will Fail

5 reasons not to rewrite an existing code.

• Things You Should Never Do, Part I

About the mistake of full rewrite (Netscape 6, Borland Quattro Pro). Instead refactor, rename,

• StranglerApplication

Instead of rewriting, write a strangler application, that will progressively replace the old system.

• Tesler's Law

Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.

• Be nice and write stable code

About Semantic Versioning and tips / pits to introduce new functionality, and fixing security bugs.

• Suffering-oriented programming

Don't build technology unless you feel the pain of not having it. Then: First make it possible. Then make it beautiful. Then make it fast. Use cases are everything in suffering-oriented programming.

• Software Architecture is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design is Underrated

Nice write-up from a designer at Uber on why simple and clean design is better than applying patterns or using architecture tools.

• Going Fast Slowly (varnish-cache.org) - HN comments (Going Fast Slowly)

Many nice quotes:

• "I no longer think about code lines as an asset to be accumulated, but rather as an expenditure to be avoided."
• Edsger Djikstra: If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as “lines produced” but as “lines spent”: the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.
• Bill Gates: "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight."
• Old military saying: “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast”
• A mom / Lewis Caroll: "The hurrie(de)r I go, the behinder I get!", aka "more haste, less speed".
• Motorcycle racing: "a fast rider has slow hands".

• How to Read a Paper

Explain a three-pass technique to read scientific paper (1st intro and conclusion and sub-section titles, 2nd read deeper but skip details like proof but pay attention to graphs, 3rd virtually redo the paper).

• The interruptible programmer

Some advices on how to accept and deal with breaks. Maintain a continuous context in notes (at least every 30min). Focus on one current task, other are distraction. Current task must be clearly identified. Plan next task using negative priority (don't include every task, only consider the one with worst consequence if not included).

• How To Write Unmaintainable Code

An anti-coding style guideline.

• The Wall of Coding Wisdoms in Our Office

Several wise quotes about coding. Some of them:

• Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Donald Knuth
• Rules of optimization: 1. Don’t! 2. Don’t… yet. 3. Profile before optimizing. Michael Jackson
• As a programmer, never underestimate your ability to come up with ridiculously complex solutions for simple problems. Thomas Fuchs
• Get your data structures correct first, and the rest of the program will write itself. David Jones
• The #1 rule of distribute computing: Don’t distribute your computing! At least if you can in any way avoid it. DHH (David Heinemeier Hanson)
• Scalability. The #1 problem people don’t actually have but still solve. Eberhard Wolff
• Shared + Mutable = Danger! Andrey Breslav
• Prefer duplication over the wrong abstraction. Sandi Metz
• Compassionate Tech Values: Ego < Humility. Elitism < Inclusion. Competition < Cooperation. Being Smart < Learning. Being a Rockstar < Being a Mentor. April Wensel

/* KISS > DRY

• Tips for stable and portable software

Pick a stable language (C, Ada...). Avoid/wrap compiler language extensions.

Use / learn the standard library (see here for C std lib), and know the gotchas.

Use POSIX (must define _POSIX_C_SOURCE).

Deal with OS extras (use config.mk in Makefile. See link for example of configure script to test compiler features). Wrap OS functions behind our own.

Deal with third-party libraries. Use pkg-config to find and deal with dependency libraries (or create your own). Use POSIX search.h for simple collection libraries, or C Algorithms for a small and clean library. See also Uthash.

For user interface, there is readline ncurses and SDL2.

• Minimalism in Programming

Define your Minimal Viable Product. Don't fear refactoring, we cannot avoid it (too many unknowns). Minimize your dependencies (external libs)

• This is how I git

Detailed but clear explaination on how the lead maintainer of Curl uses git everyday. No merge but rebase. Commit rewrite. Scripts for release note. CI. We should do the same.

• Coping strategies for the serial project hoarder

Recommended practices from someone who atively maintains 200-ish python projects. 1/ Change one thing at a time, 2/ Write a test (use template project so that all projects come with test framework included), 3/ Embed documentation in project, and update the documentation. Use github issue as extra temporal documentation: background, state-of-play beforehand, links to things (documentation, StackOverflow...), decisions, screenshots, code snippets... Scripting for releases.

• DTSTTCPW – What does it mean? — aka. Do The Simplest Thing That Can Possibly Work.

Three words: do, simplest (aka not complex), work.

• How To Survive Your Project's First 100,000 Lines

Some tips from Vale compiler on how to development an application efficiently (assertion, commenting, testing...)

Productivity

• become a 1000x engineer or die tryin'

A set of command-line script to interface with ChatGPT / GPT4 (hey gpt, data gpt, image gpt, code edit). See also HN comments.

Learn

• Commentary on the Sixth Edition UNIX Operating System

From Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system

• An Empirical Study of Experienced Programmers’ Acquisition of New Programming Languages

All participants spent most of their time studying examples, rather than reading the language documentation.

• Joel on Software — Back to Basics

Illustrate the Shlemiel the painter’s algorithm when concatenating C strings where performance is n^2 because of the lack of efficient strlen() operator.

• What every computer science major should know

With lots of links, recommended books, languages (Racket, C, Javascript...), discrete mathematics...

• The Feynman technique

A technique to learn complex concepts in record time, retain knowledge, and study more efficiently. First, write the name of the concept. Second, write out an explanation of the concept, as if explaining to a layman. Then pinpoint gaps into the explanation, and go back to source material, and repeat previous step. Finally, put the editor's hat, and rewrite the whole (filter wordy / confusing / complex language).

• Learn X in Y minutes

The fastest way to learn a new language from example code. Has course for MANY languages.

• Introduction to D3

An interactive page to learn using D3.

• Scrimba demo - Scrimba is a platform to teach coding
• React Workout: Intro to useState and useEffect with Cassidy Williams

Cassidy Williams is a well-known dev with lots of quality screencast. Here teaching React, using codesandbox.io as a platform.

• codesandbox.io

An instant IDE and prototyping tool for rapid web development.

• Comment on Play the long game when learning to code

Interesting comment on how to learn to code, making a difference between learning to code and learning a programming language. Refer to http://htdp.org/ How To Design Program, a subsest of Racket, and the 34 paradigms and 18 concepts identified by Pr. Peter Van Roy (UCL) in http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/paradigms.

• Learn Python the Hard Way

(link to the book in PDF) A set of exercises once available on a website, teaching Python. Recommended on HN.

• LinuxJourney - Learn the ways of Linux-fu, for free

A set of lessons. Recommended on HN. Do 1 lesson a day.

• Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure.

An adventure game to learn the linux commands.

• Codeamigo

Learn languages interactively.

• JOY.js make happy little program

Nice engine to make nice little program in js, with animation, etc.

• Red Blob Games: Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms].

Web

• Idle-until-urgent pattern

Delay non-critical task to idle thread, while forcing their execution if some user event depend on that task being executed first.

• Performant front-end architecture

A detailed post on some techniques to make front-end web apps load faster and provide a good user experience.

• Staticman

Bring user-generated content to static sites.

• 10 lesser-known Web APIs you may want to use

Fullscreen API, Clipboard async API...

• HN Comment on how to make a website fast

No need for a long post ;-)

• Colorize

A search engine to find colors best corresponding to word or sentence.

• emscripten and V86, that provide a compiler and x86 virtual machine to Web Assembly, that allows running x86 machine in the browser!!!

See x86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary (interactive) for a demo, and nice write up on x86 asm.

• Avoiding bot detection: How to scrape the web without getting blocked?

Set of tools, services, solutions to allow scraping content from the internet without being detected (including proxy services...).

• Cend.me — Direct file transfer

This uses WebRTC. See HN comments. Alternatives are https://wormhole.app/, https://www.sharedrop.io/, and https://file.pizza/.

• HUGO, A fast and lightweight static web site builder.

Advertised on this page, which also shows nice way to make analysis / analytics of web engine (nginx, using goaccess).

• tailwindcss

Rapidly build modern websites without ever leaving your HTML. A utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center and rotate-90 that can be composed to build any design, directly in your markup.

• Spinning Diagrams with CSS

Using CSS to animate mathematical formulas, without javascript.

Network

• The Illustrated TLS Connection

Every byte of a TLS connection explained and reproduced.

• Scaling to 100k Users

Clear, simplified explanation on how to setup a server when facing more and more users (split out DB, split out client/API, add load balancer, add CDN, add database cache and read replica). More discussions on Hacker News.

• The First Few Milliseconds of an HTTPS Connection (2009

Detailed but clear description of the handshake at the start of HTTPS, including crypto details, etc.

• My ISP Is Killing My Idle SSH Sessions. Yours Might Be Too.

A detailed analysis of how NAT works and impact on connections like SSH. Provide some tools to inverstigate such as tcp-send-test, tcp-recv-test and tcp-keepalive-test. Setting ServerAliveInterval fixed his problem.

• How a Single Raspberry Pi made my Home Network Faster

Using PiHole, installed in a Docker container.

• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Explained in simple words

Game

• A Great Old-Timey Game-Programming Hack

Detailed explanation on how to make a fast tile-based game engine. Tricks used:

• Use LEA instruction, most efficient to move bytes, but requiring modifying the stack pointer.
• Pre-process the tiles to cancel effect of fast rendering loop
• Reverse display order to cancel graphical corruption when interrupt occurs and load registers on the stack.

• Super Merryo Trolls

Detailed explanation on 2D game optimization for a Super-Mario-like game. Various tricks are explained about fast scrolling, fast sprite handling...

• Background is generated by a LEA-field, basically a sequence of code generated by the game engine, and when executed, draw pixel to the screen buffer. The LEA-field is organized into sequence of code, each drawing a given scanline.
• Scrolling is obtained by a different offset in the scanline.
• When scrolling, the code in leftmost/rightmost columns of the LEA-field must be updated. This update is done by a code, which is also generated by the engine. This column-update code is generated to avoid duplicate register loading (typ. occurs when the scene has many duplicated pixels, like a blue sky).
• Sprite is also generated by a code, generated from sprite data.

• GTE: The Generic Tile Engine for the IIgs

A very fast tile engine for the Apple IIGS, using advanced techniques to achieve 1 pixels every 1.25 cycles.

• SIGHT & LIGHT - how to create 2D visibility/shadow effects for your game

Amazing tutorial on how to create light & shadow effect in 2D games.

• The polygons of Another World and The polygons of Another World: IBM PC

A detailed review of how Another World was ported on different platform, here on Amiga (original port) and IBM PC. On Amiga, this explains the essential features of the blitter to reach the 20FPS. On PC, it explains how the VGA latch registers are used to perform masked copy, and allow a 4x / 8x speed up.

• Stage.js -- 2D JavaScript library for cross-platform HTML5 game development

• Elo sucks – better multiplayer rating systems for smaller games

Interesting blog about alternative ranking system than ELO/Glicko/TruSkill, that gives less complaints from user. HN comments.

• On multi-player game design:

• Client-server game architecture (Gabriel Gambetta)
• Glen Fiedler's articles for this topic.
• Write-up from JMP Waveran.
• Call of Duty developer discussing not only methods they use to transmit game states between client and server, but also some interesting ways that they measure true perceived latency. See also this video.

• Dijsktra map visualized

• These maps are very useful for pathfinding algorithms. There are several powerful use of these maps for various game use cases (here illustrated for roguelike game Brogue).

• How does Cave/Glade Generator Work

• Explains the different steps in the cave / map generator written by Watabou. Procedural generation using several simple rules effectively.

CVS

• Merging and patches

Explain how to obtain perfect patch using digle (directed graph file) instead of files, as used in pijul, with some mathematical background.

Languages

• Racket

A Scheme/Lisp language.

• Magritte

A language for pipe-based programming. Amazing master thesis, clearly written!

• Introduction to PyGame Zero

A Python library to write games with zero boilerplate.

• Haskell Fan Site

Many pages on Haskell on different subjects.

• The problem with macros

Some advanced stuff on Lisp I need to read someday when I retire (HN comments).

• Syntax Design

Interesting discussion on various syntax style, and how to represent language constructs.

• I❤️LA is a novel domain specific language for linear algebra.

The I❤️LA code written with rich Unicode symbols visually resembles chalkboard math, while still being a semantically well-defined programming language compilable to various target languages: LaTeX, MATLAB, Python, C++.

Design

• Fundamental design principles for non-designers

1. Contrast — Elements of your design (colour, size, weight, style) should be either exactly the same, or significantly different.
2. Consistency — Make sure similar elements appear in similar ways.
3. Occam's Razors (aka Reduce Visual Noise) — The fewer the number of elements you use in your design, the better.
4. Space — The way things are positioned sends a meta-level message about their meaning. This deals with proximity (= relatedness), with negative space, and with importance and order.

• Incrementing vectors

What’s faster, incrementing a std::vector of uint8_t or of uint32_t? This is analyzed carefully, with surprising results. It turns out that uint8_t is much slower because of pointer aliasing issues that prevent the compiler to use vector instructions. To fix it, one much avoid any reference to std::vector data in the loop:

for (auto i = v.begin(), e = v.end(); i != e; ++i) {
    (*i)++;
}

Or another solution is to use keyword __restrict.

• This is a motherfucking website

"Good design is as little design as possible." - some German motherfucker

• The Obvious UI is Often the Best UI

Google product director: "obvious always win." Example: explicit bottom navigation menu better than hamburger button; segmented control menu better than toggle menu; text better than icon. Also, copying does not guarantee obvious design.

• Designing accessible color systems

Accessibility rules require a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5+ for small text and 3.0+ for text. It can be very difficult to design a color palette that fits these requirement, while still keeping rich and vivid colors. Color systems like RGB or HSL don't integrate human color perception. In this post, authors explained how they designed their own tool to define the best palette with accessible colors.

• The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Four books on open source programs (500-line example programs, performance, architecture). Very clear.

• In Defense of a Switch

Comparing switch with polymorphism regarding extensibility / flexibility (and readability), and also performance, on Scala. Turns out switch is more flexible and more performant.

• Web Design in 4 minutes

Focus on content, then center, font family, spacing, color & contrast, balance... See also CSS in 44 minutes (44-page pdf]

• Visual design rules you can safely follow every time

Some design rules to follow...

• How to pick more beautiful colors for your data visualizations

• Use saturation and lightness.
• Avoid pure colors

Graphism

• Ditherpunk — The article I wish I had about monochrome image dithering

An interesting dive into dithering techniques, with examples and code.

• Pixelblog - 41 - Isometric Pixel art

A tutorial on how to make isometric pixel art. See also more blog entries there!

• Metapict – TikZ like figures using Racket (soegaard.github.io)

Nice library to draw figures in Racket.

• Mermaid cheat sheet

A language to make drawings (flow charts, sequence diagram...)

• A journey into shaders

A nice interactive introduction to programming shaders. A shader is a function that transforms a coordinate into a color.

• Penrose

Create beautiful diagrams / graphs just by typing notation in plain text. Many examples available.

Tools

• Compiler Explorer

Inline tool to analyze / compare the assembly code produced by many compilers in many languages.

• Working with GitHub Actions

Nice and very detailed write-up on how to use GitHub actions, that can trigger on various events (push, issue creation). Using Typescript, YAML, Node.js...

• Pipedream

Amazing web integration platform built for developers. Develop any workflow, based on any trigger. Workflows are code, which you can run for free. No server or cloud resources to manage. Very easy to develop.

• Reverse engineering for beginners

A free book on reverse engineering, more than 1000 pages!

• jq - command-line jq processor

jq is to json file what sed is to text file. Example of use here.

• Create diagrams with code using Graphviz

A nice summary of how to use Graphviz to produce diagrams from code.

• Present

inal-based presentation tool with colors and effects.

• Haystack.io

A resilient, scalable tracing and analysis system for SW development. Report various metrics. Seems quite powerful.

• Use echo/printf to write images in 5 LoC with zero libraries or headers

A simple application of netpbm library to visualize easily some data using only printf/echo command.

• Ditch your version manager

About a general package manager called Nix. Looks very powerful. Crystal clear post.

• Ninja

A build system with focus on speed.

• Exa

An alternative to ls with better defaults, to list files in the terminal.

• healthchecks.io

A simple and effective cron job monitoring. Provide dashboard and notifications when period jobs are not completed. Seems very easy to use.

• nginx-proxy-manager

A docker image to easily deploy nginx proxy, to protect self-hosted application (from here).

• Linkding

linkding is a simple bookmark service that you can host yourself. It's designed be to be minimal, fast and easy to set up using Docker (from here).

• Feather Wiki

Feather Wiki is an app for creating personal non-linear notebooks, databases, and wikis that is entirely self-contained and runs in your browser.

• redbean 2.0

redbean is a webserver in a zip executable that runs on six operating systems.

• direnv

direnv is an extension for your shell. It augments existing shells with a new feature that can load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory.

• ntfy - Send push notifications to your phone or desktop via PUT/POST

A free tool to send notification to Android / PC.

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

A list of powerful tracing and visualising tools, including perfetto, Chrome built-in json format, perf and perftrace, Intel Processor Trace

Shell tools

• Offline spellcheck

A shell function for fuzzy spell checking, with clipboard support.

• dict-gcide

webster 1913 dictionnary, available from the command line, eg dict obfuscate.

• Shell tools

Functional programming

• Functor, applicative and monad

Detailed post on the differences between functor, applicative and monad (using OCaml and Haskell).

• Exotic Programming Ideas: Part 3 (Effect Systems)

An overview of koka, a research language that tries to formalize effects (exception, divergence). Discussion over composition, monads, etc. See also this article (perceus) about advanced reference counting.

Concurrency / multi-threading

• Four common mistakes in audio development

Clear description of locking issues (incl. priority inversion), and tips on concurrency when using an audio thread: Don't lock, don't call lib with unbounded exec time (like malloc), use only (aligned) byte/half-word/word assiment (which are atomic), use lock-less data structures (eg. TPCircularBuffer). And a goodies: Billy Joel and Jimmy Fallon Form 2-Man Doo-Wop Group Using iPad App.

• Real-time audio programming 101: time waits for nothing

More advices on real-time programming techniques.

• ARM and Lock-Free Programming

The danger of not using locks. Compiler are free to reorder memory access because of the as if rule. Some CPU are also allowed to reorder these accesses. volatile cannot be reordered, but only versus other volatile access. Using lock-free programming is usually not portable. We can use MemoryBarrier() in VC2005, or _ReadWriteBarrier, but they are expensive. Better solution is to use C++11 std::atomic:

// Producer thread:
Data_t g_data1, g_data2, g_data3;
std::atomic<bool> g_flag // Look at this!

g_data1 = calc1();
g_data2 = calc2();
g_data3 = calc3();
// g_flag = true; // Indicate that the data is ready for consumption.
// ... or better:
g_flag.store(true, std::memory_order_release);

// Consumer thread:
if (g_flag.load(std::memory_order_acquire)) {
  DoSomething(g_data1, g_data1, g_data2, g_data3);

• In Praise of Idleness

Busy loop is usually very bad: wasted power, live lock, CPU starvation, CPU or GPU perf loss, increased cache usage.

• If busy waiting: cap it, do normal read, and use YieldProcessor().
• Don't use sleep(0).
• Don't use smalllock.
• Use a CRITICAL_SECTION, a futex or a lightweight mutex such as benaphore.

• Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It? (kernel.org) (PDF)
• Scheduling Internals

• Nice visualisation of scheduling, and how to make lightweight servers that can serve millions of requests.

Algorithms / libraries

• Timsort — the fastest sorting algorithm you’ve never heard of

Detailed explanation of how TimSort works, why it is so fast on real arrays with natural runs.

• More discussions on sort algorithm here, including reference to a new sort algorithm: GlideSort (FOSDEM 2023).

• uPlot

μPlot is a very fast and memory-efficient time series chart based on Canvas 2D (javascript).

• Variations on symmetric nearest neighbour smoothing

Amazing interactive page demonstrating the effect of a picture smoothing algorithm, with detailed explanation and variations, with running code (observablehq.com).

• Visualizing TSNE Maps with Three.js

Very nice introduction to Three.js, a WebGL-powered visualization library. Very powerful library, for 3D rendering in browser, in javascript, and generating WebGL.

• Dear ImGui - Bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++

a library for designing GUI in C++, with support of a variety of platforms.

• Single-file public-domain/open source libraries with minimal dependencies

A list of single file libraries in many different categories (AI, argv, audio, compression, crypto, data structures, debugging, math, pictures, video...).

• Peregrine - A Pattern-Aware Graph Mining System

Efficient, single-machine system for performing data mining tasks on large graphs. Presentation is very cool, with nice animations.

• The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Quasirandom Sequences

An impressive study on how to generate random-looking sequence with better sampling properties than uniform distribution while less regular than lattice.

• wyhash and wyrand are the ideal 64-bit hash function and PRNG respectively

An efficient hash / PRNG function.

• Donald Knuth’s "Algorithm D", its implementation in "Hacker’s Delight", and elsewhere

Analysis and implementations of Knuth Algorithm D, on unsigned integer division.

• Pixie - A full-featured 2D graphics library for Nim

Pixie is a 2D graphics library similar to Cairo and Skia written (almost) entirely in Nim.

• Bracket pair colorization 10,000x faster

A very detailed blog on how the VSCode team managed to make a bracket colorization extension 10,000x faster, using advanced algorithms, (2,3)-Trees, recursive descent parser, Abstract Syntax Tree, with detailed complexity evaluation.

• Intelligent brute forcing — Solving NP-hard puzzles with the oldest trick in the book

A nice write-up in Rust on how to solve NP-hard problem efficiently, using algorithm techniques like State tracking (don't scan the same state twice), Entropy reduction (identify states that are symmetric, and scan only one of them), A* Search (scan next states according to an heuristic, which gives an estimate of the minimum distance to a solution but never overestimate it), and implementation techniques like reducing allocations (avoid allocating objects on the heap), profiling, container pre-sizing. Also it is recommended to benchmark the optimization regularly to evaluate the real gain.

Other mentionned algorithms are Linear bottleneck assignment problem, and Assignment problem.

• Use ICU libraries that deal with all subtleties!

• A maximally-dense encoding for n-choose-k

A compact way to encode n-choose-k on the minimal binary form. This uses the Combinatorial Number System. It practically means to assign an index to each possible choice, and decode the index for the given n (recursively). A dense formulation of the method is available on HN:

0. set y = 1. set x = 0.
1. How many possible choices are there _given what we've picked so far_? Call it N.
2. Pick one of them. Call it 'a'.
3. set x = x + a * y. set y = y * N.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 until the number of choices drops to be less than 2.

• Using Uninitialized Memory for Fun and Profit

Implementation for sparse arrays.

• Optimizing Open Addressing

Discussion about using multi-list hash tables or single-table hash tables.

• Revisiting The Fast Inverse Square Root - Is It Still Useful?

A fast sqrt() function, taken from Quake III arena, and analyzed.

• Y-Cruncher — Large Multiplication

A bignum library with several multiplication algorithms (FFT, NTT...). Interesting discussion on calculatoin error probability.

• abracadabra: How does Shazam work?

A nice explanation of the Shazam algorithm, using spectrograms, maximum filter, hashing using (f_A,f_B,delta_T), finding matching songs, finding how hashes line up in the song.

Testing

• QuickCheck

A library in Haskell to generate test patterns automatically based on logical properties that a function should fulfill. Equivalent libraries are available for other languagues.

Alternatives: Hypothesis.

• Using make and git diff for a simple and powerful test harness

Generate tests automatically from output of any program / scripts, for comparing again later, using git and make.

• Test::Tutorial from Perl (from TAP - Testing with Perl)

A nice tutorial showing how to use the Test Anything Protocol for unit testing.

• Modern Best Practices for Testing in Java

Lot of recommendations for writing unit / integration tests in Java, but also applicable to other language. Worth a read when writing tests and having no idea how to proceed. Summary: write simple and clear tests (all main test elements must be clearly visible), use meaningful naming ("actual", "expected"...), KISS > DRY, avoid overuse of variables, don't mock too much (favor integration tests), favor composition over inheritance (wrong abstraction), use (parameterized) helper functions to reduce repeat...

• A Case Study of Toyota Unintended Acceleration and Software Safety

A detailed analysis of car crash caused by SW, and the required level of quality needed by safety critical application (also covers Fault Containment Regions).

System

• distri: 20x faster initramfs (initrd) from scratch

An interesting post detailed the inner working of RAMFS and boot sequence on Linux / kernel.

• Why strace doesn't work in Docker

An interesting investigation post on an issue in Docker, to understand a bit better how docker works. Also relate to some docker zine, that might be interesting to read.

• probing my ssd's latency

Example on how to use kernel tracepoints, dt, bt, btrace.

• Quare FreeBSD

An overview of the nice feature of FreeBSD (stable unique base system, ZFS boot environment, simplicity...)

• Easily Migrating from Linux to FreeBSD

AN overview of the main differences between Linux and FreeBSD, useful commands, architecture, etc.

• dwarfs - A fast high compression read-only file system
• What is LXD

LXD is a next generation system container and virtual machine manager. It offers a unified user experience around full Linux systems running inside containers or virtual machines (keyword: docker).

• Why ECC

A very detailed post analyzing the need for ECC in server, reacting to a post from Jeff Atwood. Turns out ECC is pretty much needed...

Benchmarks / optimisation

• Make LLVM fast again (HN)

Nice detailed post on how to track performance evolution across multiple commits to locate regressions in build/compilation time.

• Clang-format Tanks Performance

A detailed performance analysis of toupper in standard C or C++, which turns out to be a "feature" in the compiler headers. Nice Jitter Performance Scatter Plot, that shows the importance of collecting many many data points when doing benchmarks. Post is very clear, and many things well explained. Use a static website, but with staticman to support user comments.

• Beating Up on Qsort

Impressive optimization of QSort implementation.

• It takes a PhD to develop that

Story around a bug report on Windows Terminal slowness, and how someone could make 100x - 1000x faster on a couple days work. [3], [4]. Very interesting to learn fast the basic working of a terminal renderer.

• A FizzBuzz implementation that runs at 50GB/s!

Incredible implementation of FizzBuzz on codegolf, where all data exchange is mostly done in CPU cache.

• Benefits of Bloom filters - pwned password database example

An example to show incredible performance delivered by Bloom filters, which can test whether an element is in a set, with definitive no and probable yes.

• Google benchmark

A framework to measure performance of code snippets. See Google benchmark.

• [5]

A nice story on how to profile perf issue in QEMU, using Poor's man profiler (a very simple profiler using gdb), quickstack, flamegraph, and dealing with Linux namespace using nsenter.

• How fast are Linux pipes anyway? (2022)

A detailed analysis on how to implement fast pipe in Linux, including explanations of page allocation by the Kernel.

• Faster code by duplication

Example of making faster code by duplicating code, by testing special value and giving more local information to the compiler and opportunities for optimization. Also an example of advanced template (using variant template and inlined lambda).

Multimedia

• Render Multimedia in Pure C

Generate simple PPM video and separate WAV audio in a file. Easy to play with mplayer / mpv / vlc. Simple but powerful. Audio generation.

• Observable & creative coding

An impressive set of examples on how to generate very nice SVGs.

• Moiré no more

A method to get rid of the Moiré effect by patching the image in the frequency domain (using FFT).

3D

• Ray Tracing in One Weekend

Step-by-step training on how to build a raytracer. Nice explanations.

• Painting a Selfie Girl, with Maths

The incredible design of an amazing-looking portrait of a girl taking a selfie, in amazing 3D, only with mathematics formula. See more raymarching distance fields. Code available here.

• Gentle Introduction to Realtime Fluid Simulation for Programmers and Technical Artists

Building up equations from a simple fluid case, towards Navier-Stoke equations.

• Encore MIEUX que le RAY TRACING ? (Ray Marching)

Excellent introduction to ray marching, technique using a shortest-distance function.

• Spectral Ray Tracing

Detailed explanation of the impact of the spectrum nature of light on ray tracing and visualization of colors.

Debug

• Tracking down a segfault that suddenly started happening

segfault due to name conflict between dyn. linked library (socket_send, available from libusbmuxd but also samba library). Show usage of ldd, readelf, lddtree.

• drgn (pronounced "dragon") is a debugger with an emphasis on programmability

Uses python for scripting, developed by Meta.

• Hermit: Deterministic Linux for Controlled Testing and Software Bug-finding

Hermit is the first practical deterministic operating system. It is an emulation layer on top of the Linux kernel. Similar to Wine, Hermit intercepts system calls and translates them from the Deterministic Linux abstraction to the underlying vanilla Linux OS.

• Debugging a FUSE deadlock in the Linux kernel

Some advanced signal debugging stuff. Nice to see the process of thoughts, and the tools used.

Visualization

• Friends Don't Let Friends Make Bad Graphs

A set of advises on how to better represent data, including different ways to represent statistical distributions. Include several scripts to rework data before representing them.

Dev - Miscellaneous

• Converting Boolean-Logic Decision Trees to Finite State Machines

Example of how to evaluate quickly firewall kind-of rules (rule combining type:value pairs with or, and... operators), using dynamically-generated FSM. To be compared with Binary Decision Diagram.

• What's in a Linux executable?

Very clear, practical and detailed description of the Linux executable.

• What distinguishes great software engineers?

A large survey about the qualities of great SW engineers.

• No one gives a shit what programming language you use

It's how the software will be used that is important. Performative craftmanship elitism is bullshit. From HW, "toxicity of a culture of elitism and a fetishizing of language purity". See also other post from same author about fascism [6], and some recommendation regarding BLM [7].

• [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28848858 Showing GUI from shell scripts (HN comments)

A list of tools to show a GUI from a shell script (Sixtyfps.io, bottle (py server)+AlpineJS, Zenity, YAD, Tcl/Tk...)

• everything you ever wanted to know about terminals

Tutorial on terminal ANSI codes, and advanced / recommended techniques to make a modern TUI out of them (without using ncurses).

Here an alternative to ncurses, notcurses. See also HN comments.

• printf-tac-toe

A c implementation of tic-tac-toe in a single call to printf. Written for IOCCC 2020. Nice explanations.

• File Formats wiki from Archive Team

Detailed information on various file formats.

• Is this project still maintained

Example text to clarify expectation regarding maintenance of an open-source project

Dev - Examples

• To design and develop an interactive globe

Example on how to design a 3D globe in WebGL, with dotted texture and animations. Very detailed analysis.

• A pedometer in the real world

Example on how to design a pedometer, with lot of explanation on how accelerometers work, the mathematics behind, etc.

• Tom's Practice Repo

Many coding problems and solutions from coding sites or interviews, mostly solved in Python. A must read!

• A FPS game, Wolfeinstein 3D, in AWK
• Knuth-Plass algorithm

Some explanation on the line-breaking algorithm used in LaTeX to produce optimal-looking paragraph, using some "dynamic programming" and tricks to run the algorithm in linear time instead of quadratic.

Game of life

• Conway's Game of Life digital clock

a digital clock implemented as game of life FSM! See also HN comments for more WTF. From here

• Life in life in life

A simulation of game of life in the game of life... all the way down! Can zoom in and out, it's all game of life. This is just absolute WTF madness.

• The Game of Life (EGO)

Travel in the game of life, from the small to the bigger, to the WTF.

Other

• A Mind is Born

A 256-byte short movie program

AI-assisted

• CQK Is The First Unused TLA

Using GPT-4 to find the first unused three-letter acronym in Wikipedia. Mention the case of blind spot where GPT-4 refuses to see an error even if prompted.

The whole site is an amazing resource.

• Building reliable systems out of unreliable agents

A write-up about tips and tricks on using AI agent to do some works. Many useful links. HN comments.

Security

• Trinity: PSP Emulator Escape

Detailed description of Trinity, a fully chained exploit for the PS Vita consisting of six unique vulnerabilities, describing how it works, how it was found and built.

• The PGP problem

Summary of issues around PGP, and alternatives (Signal, Whatsapp, magic wormhole, tarsnap).

• RAFT - protocol for distributed consensus

A nice animation to explain how RAFT works, which is a protocol to establish distributed consensus.

• Signal - Secure Value Recovery (from Signal PINs)

Some very complex mechanism to allow recovery of the signal app data from a small PIN. Not sure this works / is reliable nor if it is going into the right direction, but it refers to some interesting security technologies (Intel SGX, Raft...).

• Open source security tool list
• Underhanded C Contest

Goal is to hide a backdoor in SW while pretending it is a genuine bug.

• Is RAM wiped before use in another LXC container?

A detailed explanation on how memory allocation works in Linux Kernel.

• Open Letter from Security and Privacy Researchers in relation to the Online Safety Bill

On the impossibility to build cryptographically secure solution with backdoor, and on robust client-side monitoring.

Hacking

• Fotoforensics

A tool to analyze image files. Can for instance reveal hidden pixels in files.

• A Neural-based Program Decompiler

Paper on decompiling binaries using neural networks.

• The Hash Monster: ESP32 Tamagotchi For WiFi Cracking

A small device to collect WiFi PCAP captures, for latter cracking. Uses aircrack-ng and rockyou dictionary file.

• How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%

A very clear explanation on how to profile the performance of a game startup sequence, reverse it and patch it. Use Luke Stackwalker for profiling closed source applications. Using IDAPro to disassemble (however speaks of ghidra). Use Process-Dump to dump the content of code being executed, after it has been deobfuscated. Dump some dynamic data from execution using x64dbg. Using minhook to hook a DLL in a code. The slow-down was due to parsing JSON with sscanf(p, "%d") that happens to call strlen a lot repeatedly, and using a useless hash table (useless because no duplicates).

• Reverse-Engineering Apple Dictionary

An interesting post on how to reverse some binary file, using import zlib in Python.

• BinWalk

Binwalk is a fast, easy to use tool for analyzing, reverse engineering, and extracting firmware images.

• GTFOBins

A curated list of Unix binaries that can be used to bypass local security restrictions in misconfigured systems (eg. by issuing !/bin/sh in pager (less) when doing apt-get changelog apt).

• OverTheWire Wargames

Practice security concepts in the for mof fun-filled games.

• This bug doesn’t exist on x86: Exploiting an ARM-only race condition

A nice write-up on exploiting a double-free bug on ARM (due to weak memory model in ARM, that allows reordering of store, which is not allowed on x86]

• A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

Another nice write-up on analyzing Fuchsia, an open-source OS from Google, how to use it, compile it, run it, debug it, fuzz it, exploit it.

• Radare2 The Libre Unix-Like Reverse Engineering Framework

Powerful reverse tool, all in terminal. See Radare2.

• Microcorruption

A CTF about microcorruption using debugger. Example of writeup here.

• pwn.college

pwn.college is an education platform for students (and other interested parties) to learn about, and practice, core cybersecurity concepts in a hands-on fashion.

Management

• The Leaderless Organization

Mission is the boss. Refer to SemCo, a company whose young CEO promoted decentralized and collaborative management.

• How leaders kill meaning at work

Trap 1: Mediocrity signals (e.g. promotove innovation but focus on cost down). Trap 2: Strategic ‘attention deficit disorder’. Trap 3: Corporate Keystone Kops. Trap 4: Misbegotten ‘big, hairy, audacious goals’

• 5 second feedback

How to feedback as a manager to a direct. 1. Ask (“Can I give you some feedback?”). 2. State the behavior (“When you X…”) 3. State the impact (“…the result is Y.”) 4. Encourage effective future behavior (“Keep it up!” for positive feedback or “Can you change that?” for negative feedback).

Don't: Don't feedback if you are angry. Don't feedback on the past. Don't feedback if you can't let it go.

... reality is maybe not that simple, HW comments.

• Future-focused feedback

Stop arguing about the past! We recommend that you give in when a direct argues or gets defensive. Don’t get drawn into a discussion about what happened. That’s unrelated to the future you want to focus on.

Once you’ve given the feedback and the direct has pushed back, pause, smile, apologize, and walk away. You’ve made your point. Don’t let the direct try to win her argument simply because you’ve shown her the courtesy of letting go.

• Simple Product Management Tricks

• Perform an effort/impact analysis — make a 3x3 matrix 'impact' vs 'difficulty'. Implement easy but strong impact first, and avoid hard with low impact, and do a couple of the middle ones. Very useful for planning.
• Timebox hard-to-estimate work — for instance, work for a task for two weeks and see how much progress is done. Or allocate a part of worktime on some task (like 1d/wk on PR solving).
• Write playbooks before automation — that means first write small procedure for humans first, possibly completed with some source code for scripts, etc.

• You can't tell people anything

A post about the limit of communication that, despites best effort, people often don't get what you tell them.

• On a great interview question

A discussion about a technical problem used by Google, using a Trie (a data structure for fast lookup of strings in a dictionary). Interesting problem but most comments on HN are negative. Recommendation is to use a simplified but actual problem that occurs at work, or at the position the interviewee will have.

Life hack

• Most favorited Hacker News posts of all time (on Hacker News)

Life hacks, ebooks, resources, learning...

• Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations?

The 10/10/10 rule when taking a decision: what would you think about the outcome in 10 minutes from now, in 10 months from now, in 10 years from now?

Suspension of (value-)judgement, awareness of the mode of thinking...

Keeping one's mouth shut

• A few Rules

Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty. Most fields have only a few laws. ...

• Every thought about giving and taking advice I’ve ever had, as concisely as possible

An example of "getting things done", about giving advices.

• What I Use Now Instead Of Google

Impressive list of tools / things to do. Buy your life back.

• Screw it, I’ll host it myself

Detailed post about how to host everything yourself, how to preserve your privacy, quit Google, etc. Very nice write-up.

• How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (Gilles Castel)

Another example of high-quality notes by Adam Kelly.

• Noted is Self Hosted - Here's How I did It And Why

A detailed description of self-hosting various applications, web servers, blogging app... securely and in virtual environment.

• What are your Most Used Self Hosted Applications?

An interesting list of applications that can be hosted as docker container (sometimes even on Raspberry Pi). Link to Nginx Proxy Manager, Linkding, proxmox VE.

• Self hosting in 2023

Another self-hosting example on Pi 4. Using Hamachi to work around dynamic IP address (using DDNS).

• TaskWarrior

An alternative to Todo.txt

• A Modern Space Cadet

A review of various keyboards, and advanced tweaking tips for typing. Nice tips include how to use SAME key for TWO different actions depending on whether it is PRESSED or HOLD (eg. CAPSLOCK key), and also how to teach correct usage of LEFT / RIGHT SHIFT keys.

• Jitsi Meet

A free and opensource video conferencing system. Works very well under Firefox (and Chromium). Video, chat, screen sharing... Escape Teams and Zoom ;-)

• Reversible and Irreversible Decisions

Some rules about making decision. fast Ffor reversible, as late as possible for irreversible. Late according to STOP, LOP, KNOW.

• Pretty Good House, a set of guidelines to build "good houses".
• Joplin

Note taking app, todo-list with sync (apparently also works with syncthing). HN

• The "Three Things" Exercise for getting things out of talks

When going to a talk, write down at least three things, and scratch one if getting a fourth one. Exchange them between peers.

Interesting things:

• a definition you want to remember (e.g. "a K3 surface is...")
• a theorem you want to remember ("the moduli space of polarized K3 surfaces is smooth")
• a motivating or key example ("a quartic is an example of a K3 surface")
• a motivating problem ("why are all moduli spaces of polarized K3 surfaces the same dimension?")
• a question you want to ask the speaker ("why is that hypothesis in your theorem?")
• a question you want to ask someone else (a definition, motivation, a question about a connection etc.)
• anything else of a similar flavor: something specific that made you think. Something vague ("I liked the part where she talked about groups") does not count as a "thing".

• Wouldn't charging a lithium battery to 80% only defeat the purpose of putting the battery into longer use in the first place?

Ideal: keep battery between 30-80%, and reload as often as possible (4x more energy txfed). For laptop, I guess the tradeoff depends on whether the laptop is often disconnected or not...

Resources

• Ask HN: Where can I find high-end stock images for a website?

photos

• http://pixabay.com/
• https://stocksnap.io/
• http://www.free-images.cc/
• https://unsplash.com/
• https://www.pexels.com/
• http://librestock.com/
• http://skuawk.com/
• http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up
• http://finda.photo/
• http://foodshot.co/
• http://growthtext.com/free-stock-photos/
• https://www.stockified.com/
• https://www.negativespace.co/
• https://everypixel.com/
• http://startupstockphotos.com/
• https://foodiesfeed.com/
• https://picjumbo.com/
• https://www.stockio.com/

icons and fonts

• http://cssicon.space/
• https://fontawesome.com/
• https://thenounproject.com/
• http://ionicons.com/
• https://zurb.com/playground/foundation-icon-fonts-3
• http://s-ings.com/typicons/
• http://fontello.com/
• https://useiconic.com/
• https://material.io/icons/
• http://brick.im/fonts/
• https://fonts.google.com/
• https://www.nerdfonts.com/

svg icons

• https://feathericons.com/

• Free stuff for the developpers: https://freestuff.dev/

• Unsplash Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos.
• FlatIcon Download Free Vector Icons and Stickers for your projects. Resources made by and for designers. PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats

Books / musics / movies / torrents /

• Library Genesis (libgen) — file-sharing shadow library for books, scholar papers...
• Standard ebooks — Free and liberated ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover.

Cliparts

• https://creazilla.com/

Science & Tech

• Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs — Jamie Wong

The most complete and detailed description on how our eyes perceive colors.

• A circuit simulation and visualisation tool in the browser

Just wow.

• Dynamic Periodic Table

A nice dynamic periodic table of elements.

• Solar minimum is coming

Great video on the cycle of the sun regarding the number of spots and magnetic activity, how it does protect us from galactic radiation, and how it influences on space debris around earth.

• Lights and Shadows

Amazing page detailing how lights and shadows work, with interactive models we can play with. More interesting stuff on the archives page. See HN.

• Cameras and Lenses

From same author, amazing explanations on how cameras and lenses works, with many scientific details on light propagation, etc.

• Do we really travel through time with the speed of light

Comes from the definition of distance in the Minkowski spacetime, ds=sqrt((c.dt)^2 - dx^2 - dy^2 - dz^2), where c is the speed of massless particle. ds=0, invariant for all observers, gives that speed c is a constant. If an observer does not move in space coordinates, the speed he computes gives that he's moving at speed c in time. See also HN, also speaking of four-vectors, and in particular the four-velocity, which has always a constant magnitude (equal to the speed of light).

• Quantum Explanations by Eliezer Yudkowsky

An explanation on quantum physics, trying to debunk confusing myths (in particular confusion between the existence of separate classical world and quantum world).

• Why can’t I go faster than the speed of light? Hints from electrodynamics

A nice explanation on why we can't go faster than the speed of light, based on the fact that moving charge sees a magnetic force, whereas a non-moving one doesn't.

• Lectures on Faster-than-Light Travel and Time Travel

A 25-hour course on faster-than-light physics within the context of currently established science.

• It Took Me 10 Years to Understand Entropy, Here is What I Learned.

Entropy S is defined as the measure of the number of possible microscopic arrangements (microstates) Ω of a system that comply with the macroscopic condition of the system (observed macrostate), e.g., temperature, pressure, energy. So entropy is a measure of hidden information. 2nd thermodynamic law states that When a thermally isolated system has passed from one thermodynamically equilibrium state A to another thermodynamically equilibrium state B, increase of its thermodynamic entropy S is greater than or equal to 0., which means that entropy is only well defined in thermodynamical equilibrium. But it emerges naturally from the H-theorem reasoning, stating that A system will spend most of its time in its most probable state, i.e. the ones compatibles with the highest number of possible microstates.

• Course on rigit body simulation, from Pixar

• Ray Optics Simulation

An open-source web app to simulate the reflection and refraction of light. Suitable for education and demonstration. Nicely written.

• Bicycle

A detailed explanation on how bicycles work, with many force diagrams, deformation, stabilization. Incredible.

• Tennis racket theorem

An interesting theorem showing that rotation of an object around its first and third principal axes is stable, while rotation around its second principal axis (or intermediate axis) is not.

Success stories

• Bootstrapping An Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20K/mo

With good tips about launching new business online.

• How We Wrote a Textbook, from Tim Wheeler.

The success story on how a grad student and his professor worked together to write a 500p text book, and the tools and methodology they used.

• The boring technology behind list notes

Example on how to deploy / develop a successful web application, by one person.

• 3 Tips For Making a Popular Open Source Project in 2021 (Ultimate Guide)

Many short tips on how to build a successful project / how to write README / how to pick the problem to solve / ...

• How Duolingo reignited user growth

Make a model on how user base evolve, telling that CURR (Current User Retention Rate) had the most important impact; using gamification as base mechanic (leaderboard, streaks); use limited notification...

• How I turned my open-source project into a business

How someone turned his open source project into a business. See example of licenses, CLA during PR, API key (see also HN comments about sect239k1).

Miscellaneous

• What is good color

A detailed explanation about color harmony, what makes some painting rich in colors...

• Building Your Color Palette

Tips about creating a custom color palette.

• NERD fonts (github).

A repository of fonts patched with lots of glyphs (icons). Include patches for Fantasque Sans Mono, Iosevka...

• 507 mechanical movements

... animated for the internet.

• Animagraffs

Beautiful animated pages explaining how various things work, like sewing machine, engines, human eye, lcd screen...

• Learn synths

Amazing set of interactive pages to learn how synthesizers work.

• Seven Insights Into Queueing Theory: Even if you don’t understand the math of queueing theory you can still learn from it

Example: shop with one cashier, 10 min processing time, 5.8 job/hour will have an average waiting time of 5 hours! This document explains why and tips to improve. And explains why it is very hard to use the last 15% of anything (wait time double at 50% capacity, and double again at 75%, and so on).

• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner

A phonic-based reading method, with direct instructions. Much more efficient than whole-word system, at least on kids of all backgrounds [8].

• 3D Wireframes in SVG

Elegant Python programs to generate 3D objects in SVG.

• Posits

An alternate floating points representation, claimed to be better than IEEE 754 [9].

• The Slow Death of Hollywood

On how Netflix and Disney are reproducing the old schema of consolidation that happened before with movie studio, and that we should go again for a split into separate production, distribution, and retailing.

• Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

The idea is that there is lot of overlap with previous users. But some concerns on HN.

• Building a hackable editor - in your browser

All tags in the browser are editable with attribute contenteditable="true".

• Operating a Large, Distributed System in a Reliable Way: Practices I Learned

Some insights from someone at Uber who've been building and operating a large distributed system (basically: monitoring not average but 99% percentile, monitor *business* metrics, mitigate first and fix later...)

• Find music by lyrics

A mere wrapper around Google, but the only website that returned as 2nd hit the correct song matching paradise "you and me" (ie. Gangsta's Paradise from Coolio).

• What statistics can and can't tell us about ourselves

Article on using statistics in medicine / police investigation. On average, every human has one breast and one testicle! Besides looking at statistical significance, we must also look at the size of the effect (Like save 1 in 130 lives with p=0.001, high significance but risk of adverse side effects may compensate occurence of the wanted effect)

• Text rendering hates you and Text editing hates you too

Nice posts about the problem of text rendering and editing issues (style change mid-ligature, emoji, sub-pixel and caching, text animation, caret positioning and movement).

• Zero

A small but impressive demo in Javascript that renders 3D graphics using text in a terminal.

• The transformative power of classical music | Benjamin Zander

A piece of Chopin explained by a music conductor. Some important quotes, like "It's one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreamer", "success is measured by the number of shining eyes around you", "I will never says anything that couldn't stand as the last thing I ever say".

• A product pricing guide - Don't just roll the dice 2.0

Small book on tips on how to better price your products. Clear and concise.

• Saving forums from themselves with shared hierarchical whitelists (2009)

Some ideas on how to apply moderation in forums using hierarchical whitelists, shared between participants.

• On Facts and Thinking

An interesting approach on how we make sense of the world. First we have first and second order facts (1st = immediately relevant to a narrative, high = influence an opinion about subject). Then we have first and second order thinking (1st = correlations, ie. given a fact what argument can be made via correlation, high = causation, ie why facts emerge). Then we have four options: 1st fact and 1st thinking = Utility, 1st fact and high thinkng = Wisdow, high fact and 1st thinking = manipulation, high fact and high thinking = conspiracy theory.

• Wacom drawing tablets track the name of every application that you open

Excellent write-up detailing how to analyze the network activity of a device using WireShark (no success because of https), then Burp Suite (with custom TLS cert and adding Burp CA cert to PC trusted certificates).

More excellent write-up from the same author:

• Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
• A zero-knowledge proof for the existence of God

• The Only Type of API Services I'll Use

A discussion on the best pricing scheme for API services, which is usage-based pricing with automatic volume discounts, and why other schemes are bad.

• Ian's knot

The fastest and best shoelace knot on the planet.

• Error message in Haiku

Fun error messages in Haiku.

• The Workman Layout

A new (2010) keyboard layout that shows better stats than Colemak (and much better than Dvorak) when comparing finger movements, and in particular lateral movement. Nice stats.

• Trolley problem

A thought experiment where a trolley on railway tracks with five people on the rails ahead, and a lever to change the trailway course to another rail where only one person lies.

• [10]

The imagery of internet criminals: drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles.

• Fireworks explained by a rocket engineer

Some nice explanations on how rockets and fireworks work.

• Banks create money out of thin air, but it's less impressive than it sounds

Banks does not create money, but "IOU" (I Owe You), ie promise that some debt can be redeemed at some given time. Also explain the role of the Central Bank, which allows banks to settle their exchange accounts when money are transfered between accounts from different banks, avoiding the need to send the real cash at each transaction, or even daily. Only the Central Bank can create money.

• The Puzzle Toad

List of some puzzles, riddles, problems and their solutions. New problems published regularly.

• How to Write Well: 4 Steps to Improve Your Writing

(1) Good writing is clear. Tell it like a story, with characters and actions (verb). Don't use nominalisation too much. (2) Good writing is cohesive. Focus on one concept at a time. (3) Good writing has emphasis. Prefer closing the sentence with the emphasis, rather than in the middle of the sentence. When introducing new technical term, locate them at the end. (4) Good writing is concise. Compress what you mean into the fewest words. Don’t state what your reader can easily refer.

• Where in the world will my Microsoft Teams meeting be hosted

A very interesting and detailed explanation of the network infrastructure behind Teams. Teams mostly rely on MS own private infrastructure, the 2nd biggest in the world.

• Objective reasons to prefer Linux to Windows

Many objectives reasons on why Linux is better than Windows.

• A Visual Survey of Text Visualization Techniques
• Apple's 15% Deflection Tactic

On the unfair competitive advantages of Apple/Google/... market places.

• Zoomquilt

Also http://zoomquilt2.com/, and http://arkadia.xyz/. Impressive and beautiful journey in the zoom world.

• 16 Sorts - Disparity Dots

An amazing and hypnotising visualisation of 16 sorting algorithms, where distance to center indicates how far from being sorted each element is, with color and sound. See also https://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/11/03/.

• The Saddest Moment

On distributed systems conference, there is always talk about Byzantine fault tolerance, that are saddening, because mostly irrelevant.

• Ashers 'gay cake' row: Bakers win Supreme Court appeal

A ruling about bakery that didn't want to produce a cake with a particular message (pro-gay marriage message). Bakery was finally found right because it was not discriminatory to the customer himself. Issue isn't that the customer was gay (bakery did serve him already in the past), the issue was the bakers didn't want to make this particular cake for anybody.

• Illusions:

• Akiyoshi's illusion pages

Interesting illusion. Note there was also another site with lot of categorized illusions, also found via HN.

• 12 mind-bending perceptual illusions

More incredible illusions. See also impossible objects, [11], [12].

• 103-desirability-bias podcast

A podcast containing (at the beginning) a short noise audio snippet, then later a cue telling how to make sense of the noise. Once the cue is heard, the brain will always make sense of that noise snippet forever. This is an illustration of confirmation bias, and the podcast also covers the advantage of it from an evolution perspective.

• zfs: copies=n is not a substitute for device redundancy!

An example on how to use qemu / zfs.

• MonoLisa

A monospace font for developers that looks cool, but costs >50€.

• Victor-mono

A monospace font a bit like MonoLisa, and free ;-)

• Programming fonts

To compare various programming fonts...

• “I don't know the numbers”: a math puzzle (alexanderell.is) - hacker news

Discussion on the puzzle "I don't know the numbers" [13], and several implementations, and links to other puzzles (including the famous blue eyes puzzle a funny one).

Another puzzle with rational numbers.

A discussion on common knowledge

• The problem with bitcoin miners

Interesting financial analysis of the profitability of bitcoin miners, linked to fact that mining equipment are depraciated using a straightline when actually they should be depraciated as a curve. Lack of profitability is currently hidden because BC are also gaining value over time, but in truth investing directly in BC would have been equally if not more profitable.

• Better Than Free

8 things that are better than free, than cannot be freely copied: (trust), immediacy, personalization, interpretation (like support, docs), authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage, findability.

• Book Publishers Won’t Stop Until Libraries Are Dead

Discussion about the legality of the Internet Archive, and the action of publishers that try to destroy it. Copyright law explicitly gives the rights to libraries to make copies, and book scanning itself is fair use for the libraries.

• Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period — explaining that competiting with free is same as competing on any products in a competitive market (where price of goods are pushed to marginal cost).

• I found the best anagram in English

A method to find the best anagrams in English. The best is actually 14 cinematographer megachiropteran.

• What do I think about Community Notes?

An explanation of the community notes algorithm used on Twitter (X) to display corrective notes. use machine-learning (gradient descend) to modelize a user/note matrix, and define the note usefulness, versus possible polarization of either notes or users (trying to be as neutral as possible). The algorithm is open-source.

• Hidden 3D

The world of stereograms, ie hidden 3D images.

• The waste stream of consumer finance (credit card debt collection)

Story and tips to counter debt collector bad practices. Make sure your rights are respected (no legal threats, etc). Ask to produce the contract associated with the debt (most don't have, only a CSV file). If called in court, always show up (and ask then to get a copy of the contract).

• The tyranny of the marginal user

A story on the fall of OKCupid and the reason behind it. Company focus on increasing the DAU (Daily Active Users), and as a result focus more on the wishes of the new users than on existing ones.

• Content style guide - Numbers, measurements, dates and time (NHS)

A set of recommendations when using numbers in content (to made it easier to the reader). Use 1st, 2nd, 3rd.... Use numbers 1, 2, 3... instead of words (except common sense situation like the last one, another one...).

• How To Make Your Own Spooky Magic Eye Pictures (Autostereograms)

Some explanations on how to build autostereogram images. See also https://github.com/Atrix256/Autostereogram.

• Improbable Islands - Code of Conduct

A detailed list of rules, advises in online community, covering abusive behaviour like harassment, manipulation, etc.

• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M Brennan's self-balancing monorail train (YT)

An amazing design of a monorail train that balances itself with two gyros.

Climate Change

• What Can a Technologist Do About Climate Change?

A very detailed page, with lots of infographics.

• Why birds can fly over Mount Everest

A nice write-up on how birds / dinosaurs got their lung, and on the origin of fossil fuel, and the impact of current climate change.

Greta Thunberg

• The disarming case to act right now on climate change — Greta Thunberg

Impressive talk from 16-year old Greta Thunberg on the urge to act now to face the climate crisis.

• Greta Thunberg - Inspiring Others to Take a Stand Against Climate Change — The Daily Show
• GOLDENE KAMERA award speech of Greta Thunberg

Greta receiving a prize and calling celebrities for action.

• Greta Thunberg's speech at the R20 Austrian World Summit, Vienna, May 2019

Another powerful speech by Greta Thunberg. In presence of UN Secretary General António Guterres, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a great number of heads of states.

• School Strike for Climate: Meet 15-Year-Old Activist Greta Thunberg, Who Inspired a Global Movement -- Democracy Now!

Interview of Greta Thunberg by Democracy Now! during the 24th U.N. climate summit, explaining a bit how she came aware of climate changes issue. We are also joined by her father, Svante Thunberg, a Swedish actor.

• Greta Thunberg to world leaders: 'How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood'

Speech of Greta at the UN summit 2019.

• Greta Thunberg urges MEPs to ‘panic like the house is on fire

Greta urging MEPs to “start panicking about climate change” rather than “waste time arguing about Brexit”.

• Greta Thunberg on the Climate Fight: “If We Can Save the Banks, Then We Can Save the World”

Another great interview with Greta and how she deals with criticisms.

• Greta Thunberg speech in Assemblée Nationale

Great speech, also about the opposition Greta's movement is getting by some people not liking her.

• Greta Thunberg to EU's Juncker: "We started to clean up your mess, stop sweeping mess under carpet"

Greta at EU saying EU ‘sweeping their mess under the carpet for our generation to clean up. [...] If you say we are wasting valuable lesson time, let me remind you, our political leaders have wasted decades through denial and inaction and since our time is running out we have started to take action.’

• Greta Thunberg: ‘They see us as a threat because we’re having an impact’

News on The Guardian, where Greta also answers a few questions.

• “We Are Striking to Disrupt the System”: An Hour with 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg - Democracy Now

An interview describing the life of Greta, how she started the movement...

• Greta Thunberg: the speeches that helped spark a climate movement

20190927 - Summary of various speeches Greta made.

• Greta Thunberg and First Nations leaders kick off climate rally in Montreal

Greta joining strike in Canada, and answering a few questions from the media.

• Full interview with Greta Thunberg: – Haters should do something useful instead | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan

Interview in New York by Scandinavian talk show Skavlan, covering her last speech at U.N, how she lives...

• Greta Thunberg on viral Trump-stare: – I think I was very shocked | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan

Interview follow up with Michael Moore.

• Climate activist Greta Thunberg (16) says her Asperger's has helped | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan

16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why her Asperger's is helpful in her fight to save the world.

• Greta Thunberg at the Global Climate Strike in New York City

Greta's speech during the global climate strike in New York, Sep. 20th 2019.

• Greta Thunberg delivers speech at Montreal climate change rally

Greta's speech during the global climate strike in Montreal, Sep. 27th 2019.

• Every Powerful Greta Thunberg Speech From Climate Week | NowThis

This is the year 2019. This is not the time and place for dreams. This is the time to wake up' — Here's every statement Greta Thunberg made during Climate Week.

• 'I want you to panic': 16-year-old issues climate warning at Davos

Speech from Greta at Davos (January 2019)

• The First Time with Greta Thunberg

Short interview of Greta about the movement started (March 2019).

• Climate Scientist: World’s Richest Must Radically Change Lifestyles to Prevent Global Catastrophe

Interview with Greta and climate scientist, by Democracy Now! (December 2018)

• Teen Activist Greta Thunberg Leads Global Climate Protest | NBC Nightly News

Millions around the world took part in a global climate strike, all following the lead of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. The Swedish teenager spoke to Kelly Cobiella before she sailed to New York City. “When a child says, ‘You are stealing my future,’ then people feel very guilty,” Thunberg said.

• Make the World Greta Again (Full Documentary)

May 2019 - Upon realizing her generation won’t have a future unless the world’s politicians act now on climate change, then 15-year-old Greta Thunberg skipped school in August 2018 to protest outside the Swedish parliament. What started as a one person strike soon gained global momentum.

• Teen activist on climate change: If we don't do anything right now, we're screwed

Dec 2018 - Fifteen-year-old activist Greta Thunberg talks to CNN's Fareed Zakaria about her speech at the UN climate change conference, her protest at the Swedish parliament, and what she is planning to do going forward.

• Greta Thunberg Is Leading a Global Climate Movement

Apr 2019 - Yet another (short) documentary on Greta Thunberg.

• Speech by Greta Thunberg, climate activist

Feb 2019 - Speech from Greta at event "Civil Society for rEUnaissance" on 21/02/2019.

• Nature Now

Sep 2019 - There is a natural solution to the climate breakdown: protecting forests. Climate activist Greta Thunberg and writer and climate activist George Monbiot explain.

• Greta Thunberg, Anna Taylor and Caroline Lucas on the new climate movement | Guardian Live

Apr 2019 - The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Anna Taylor from the UK Student Climate Network join the Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, and the Guardian's Zoe Williams to discuss how to address the climate crisis and where to go from here for Guardian Live

• The Right to a Future, with Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg
• #LEuropaebella - Luca Jahier in conversation with Greta Thunberg

Mar 5, 2019 - Interview of Greta by Luca Jahier, President of the European Economic and Social Committee.

• WELT-DOKUMENT - Hamburger Schüler demonstrieren mit Greta Thunberg
• Bruxelles, migliaia di studenti in piazza con Greta - 'Sul clima saremo una spina nel fianco'
• Greta Thunberg vue par ses pairs suédois

Sep 2019 - Greta Thunberg est devenue, en très peu de temps, un symbole de la lutte contre les changements climatiques. Comment est-elle perçue chez elle, en Suède? Que pensent ses compatriotes de cette ascension extraordinaire? Le reportage de notre envoyée spéciale Alexandra Szacka.

• Le discours de Greta Thunberg à la COP 24
• Greta Thunberg speaks at Iowa City climate strike (10.4.19)

Oct 2019 - Global climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke during the strike for a "Town-Gown Climate Accord" hosted by the Iowa City Climate Strikers on Friday, Oct. 4, 2019.

• Climate activist Greta Thunberg on the power of a movement

Sep 14, 2019 - Interview with Greta, Although more Americans than ever are worried about climate change, less than 40 percent expect to make “major sacrifices” to tackle the problem. But according to Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager and climate activist, drastic action is exactly what's needed to address the problem.

• Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Arrives in NYC to Fight “Biggest Crisis Humanity Has Ever Faced”

Aug 29, 2019 - Following weeks of anticipation, Swedish climate justice activist Greta Thunberg arrived on the shores of Lower Manhattan Wednesday afternoon after a 15-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in an emissions-free yacht. She was welcomed on land by hundreds of supporters at the North Cove.

• Greta Thunberg speaks about climate strike | USA TODAY

Sep 20, 2019 - Interview of Greta by USA TODAY.

• Greta Thunberg says the Global Climate Strike is ‘much bigger’ than skipping school | GMA

Sep 20, 2019 - Greta's interview at Good Morning America, “I think this is something very big that is growing, and it will not stop.” (interview).

• Greta Thunberg full speech to UK Parliament | Climate strikes

Apr 24, 2019 - Speech from Greta at UK parliament (bad audio quality however).

• 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg's Inspiring Fight Against Climate Change | Good Morning Britain

Feb 15, 2019 - Nice original interview from GMB, with original photos. Some students in the UK are set to miss school today as they strike in a fight against climate change. The protest is inspired by 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg, who speaks to GMB about the story behind her activism.

• Greta Thunberg at People's Climate March Sweden 2018

Sep 13, 2018 - Greta announcing that after 3 weeks striking, they'll keep striking every friday in front of the Swedish parliament.

• Greta's presentation at the National Sustainable Living Festival

Feb 18, 2019 - Via a live video link from Stockholm to Melbourne, Greta Thunberg was the opening speaker at a sold-out Great Debate event at the National Sustainable Living Festival in Australia on 8 February 2019.

• Climate change - Greta Thunberg is interested!

feb 22, 2019 - Another version of Greta's speech at EU. With some nice intro.

• Thousands Gather at Marble Arch to Hear Greta Thunberg - Extinction Rebellion - Apr21st

Apr 22, 2019 - (Greta's speech in UK) Greta Thunberg, 16, was greeted with chants of "we love you" as she took to the stage in front of thousands of people at the rally in Marble Arch.

• Greta Thunberg Backstage at Extinction Rebellion ⌛( Marble Arch 21.4.19)

Apr 22, 2019 - Greta's interview before her speech in front of the Marble Arch in UK, recommending a book to read, James Hansen's Storms of my Grandchildren (interviewer suggested Joanna Macy's Active Hope).

• Greta Thunberg - Saving Your World

Apr 23, 2019 - Nice excerpts from Greta's speeches all around the world. Greta Thunberg is a 16 year old Swedish climate activist who is a role model for worldwide environmental activism.

• Speech at Brilliant Minds conference in Stockholm 13/6 19

Jun 23, 2019 - Another brilliant speech from Greta at a conference.

• Greta Thunberg speech at COP24

Greta's full speech at the COP24 in Katowice 2018.

• Greta's climate strike

Sep 14, 2018 - Probably the first interview of Greta when she started her movement in front of the Swedish parliament.

• Greta Thunberg: 'I Never Expected Climate Movement to Take Off So Fast'

Sep 20, 2019 - Greta's interview before the strike in New York.

• Greta Thunberg Climate Strike 2019

Sep 21, 2019 - part of Greta's speech during New York strike, seen from someone in the crowd, including cut scene due to situation in the crowd due to the hot temperature that day.

• Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Receives Amnesty International Award

Sep 16, 2019 - Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg receives the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience award at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

• How Greta Thunberg Ignited Climate Strikes Around the World | One Small Step | NowThis

Jun 29, 2019 - Original interview with Greta Thunberg on how she started the movement, how it was at the beginning.

• Greta's strong speech last day of the school strike. – I will continue and urge you to do the same!

Sep 13, 2018 - Clip showing Greta the last day of her three week strike, with lot of people. I will go on with the school strike. Every Friday as from now I will sit outside the Swedish parliament until Sweden is in line with the Paris agreement.

• Greta Lundberg press conference in Davos

Jan 26, 2019 - Press interview after Greta's speech at Davos.

• Anuna de Wever, Greta Thunberg, Kyra Gantois, Adelaide Charlier, Luisa Neubauer press conference

Feb 21, 2019 - Press conference with all the young activists from Belgium, Germany... (38 min).

• Greta Thunberg delivers speech at Vancouver climate strike rally

Oct 25, 2019 - Greta's speech in Vancouver friday strike.

• [14]

On Greta Thunberg:

• Sec. Hillary Clinton: Greta Thunberg Spoke Truth To Power At The U.N.

Secretary Hillary Clinton saying Greta Thunberg is one of the gutsy women who impressed her the most.

• Fatboy Slim mixed Greta Thunberg: Right here, right now

Oct 8th, 2019 - Awesome remix of Greta's speech at UN.

• Climate Strike: Heeding Call of Greta Thunberg, Polish Students Walk Out of Class

Dec 14th, 2019 - Containing video of Greta calling for strike after her speech at COP24, and students striking in Poland, singing Michael Jackson's song "Earth" - Great video on Gret'a https://democracynow.org - Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has called for a global climate strike today to protest inaction at the U.N. climate summit. Greta made international headlines after she refused to go to school in August and began a School Strike for Climate. Greta made the call for today’s strike in a video posted on Twitter.

On Extinction Rebellion:

• "What we want to do is save humanity from extinction", Prof. Jeffery, Behavioural Neuroscience | XR

Presentation of the climate change crisis and the Extinction Rebellion movement.

Music ft Greta Thunberg:

• How dare you! Greta Thunberg Remix Playlist
• The 1975 ft. Greta Thunberg - The 1975 (Music Video)

Courses

• 30 Days to Learn jQuery

Learn jQuery. Recommended here.

• Getting Started with Redux

Teach you how to manage state in your React application with Redux. Recommended here as a good introduction to functional programming.

• C Internals

A detailed course on how C is translated to assembly.

• Explorable explanations

A set of interactive course on various subjects.

• Raytracing in one week-end

Several books on ray-tracing. For when I'll be retired, or dead.

• 18.S097 Programming with Categories

Course on category theory, mathematical tool to organize key abstractions, using Haskell.

• How Music Works - Interactive Music Theory Lessons

Harmony, when waves are simple fractions of each other.

Pentatonic scale, five note scale that always sound nice.

Chromatic scale, 12 note scale, richer, but not always sounding nice. Note that the frequency of starting note does not matter, and that all melody can be shifted up or down on a scale also.

Chords (major, minor, diminished), 3 notes that play together nicely.

Keys, group of notes (seven in the twelve) used in a song and that play nice. Turns out that the C major key are simply the 7 white keys on a piano.

... premium course available.

• Performance Engineering of Software Systems

An impressive course from MIT Open Course. Must see.

Talks

• The Mess We'Re In

Talk from Joe Armstrong, co-author of Erlang language, about the complexity of SW and how to fix it.