TL;DR summary of stories on the internet
In 1984, British Railways and the Central Electricity Generating Board intentionally crashed a train at 100m.p.h. into a steel flask carrying irradiated fuel rods from nuclear power stations. This was part of a £4m project to test the safety of nuclear fuel flasks. The flask, loaded with steel bars to simulate nuclear fuel rods, survived […]
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Interested in staying current with the Linux and free-software community? Try LWN with a free trial subscription, no credit card required. Matthew Wilcox introduced a new data structure, rosebush, aimed at improving performance compared to rhashtable in the directory-entry cache used for speeding up file-name lookup. Rosebush’s unique design prioritizes efficient cache usage and optimizes […]
Haystack is an innovative IDE that simplifies code navigation and refactoring. It operates on a canvas, minimizing the traditional complexities of coding. Users can conveniently download Haystack to streamline their coding experience. The FAQ section addresses common concerns such as maintaining VS Code settings, data privacy, editor navigation, sidebar extensions, supported languages, Python server issues, […]
The 1975 National Aeronautics and Space Administration Graphics Standards Manual, reissued in 2015 by Standards Manual, LLC, showcases the iconic NASA seal, insignia, and logotype. Despite originating from NASA, the publication is not officially endorsed by the agency, serving instead as an independent project to preserve and share historical graphic design. This edition includes scanned […]
In this insightful article, the author delves into the realm of Napkin Math and Fermi Problems to emphasize the importance of basic calculations in engineering practices. They highlight how predicting simple linear problems related to time, space, and money can ultimately save engineers significant time and effort. The author shares their personal experience with building […]
On June 26th, 2024, the website One Million Checkboxes (OMCB) launched with the unique concept of one million global checkboxes that users could check, and it would be checked for everyone on the site instantly. Surprisingly, within hours of launching, tens of thousands of users checked millions of boxes, causing the site to crash frequently. […]
The author delves into a programming problem involving Graph Theory and nodes representing programming languages and people. They discuss similarities between old languages like Bliss, Pascal, Algol 68, BCPL, and C, which influenced each other despite different purposes. Bliss had unique features like its use of dots to retrieve values and non-portability. Pascal, designed for […]
Decaf coffee is a popular choice for those seeking the coffee flavor without the jitters. Chemistry plays a significant role in the decaffeination process. Three common methods are used: carbon dioxide, Swiss water, and solvent-based. The Swiss water method is favored for its chemical-free approach and preserving the natural flavor of coffee. Solvent-based methods, while […]
The CAP theorem, introduced by Brewer and formalized by Gilbert and Lynch, is often considered foundational for distributed systems engineers. However, it is mostly irrelevant for those building cloud-style systems. It becomes more significant for developers of intermittently connected applications, like IoT or mobile apps. The theorem states that systems can have both strong consistency […]
In this post, the author discusses the challenge of finding the median of a list in linear time, focusing on the median-of-medians approach. The post explains the quickselect algorithm and introduces the deterministic pivot selection algorithm developed by Blum, Floyd, Pratt, Rivest, and Tarjan in 1973. The author provides detailed Python implementations, proofs of average […]