Cute demonstration of implementing generators in terms of delimited continuations: https://defn.io/2019/09/05/racket-generators/
It might be Scheme, but the examples have a lot of syntax! parameterize, let loop, variadic functions, call-with-continuation-prompt (with 2 or 3 args).
miniblog.
A new 16-bit floating point format for machine learning! https://hub.packtpub.com/why-intel-is-betting-on-bfloat16-to-be-a-game-changer-for-deep-learning-training-hint-range-trumps-precision/
It increases range at the expense of precision, and often allows 16-bit computation (smaller, faster hardware) to replace 32-bit ML logic.
I'm amazed to learn that Tesla normally disables parts of the battery on cheap models, but was able to remotely enable the full battery during hurricane Dorian!
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/09/12/how-the-world-will-change-as-computers-spread-into-everyday-objects
A car is turning into a computer with wheels, and that computer is sometimes a thin client.
Designing interfaces that take full advantage of the capabilities of the human body: https://worrydream.com/#!/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign
Remarkable history of building radios during the second world war in prisoner of war camps. Very few premade components and all schematics were from memory!
https://hackaday.com/2016/04/21/hacking-when-it-counts-pow-canteen-radios/
A discussion of different Rust libraries and the cost of using them (compile time, binary size).
https://raphlinus.github.io/rust/2019/08/21/rust-bloat.html
A fun 1994 article about the first purchase on the web using encryption!
Phil Brandenberger uses his visa credit card, X-Mosaic and PGP to purchase a $12 'compact audio disk' by Sting.
It includes an explanation of the World Wide Web too :)
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/12/business/attention-shoppers-internet-is-open.html
The Rust mascot is a crab called Ferris. I've only just realised this is a pun! Ferris/ferrous.
Await a minute, why bother?
A great discussion of what Rust's async syntax enables over futures, particularly with conditionals and borrowing.
https://docs.rs/dtolnay/0.0.3/dtolnay/macro._01__await_a_minute.html
Unison is exploring the idea of storing source code by the hash of its AST, which allows some interesting refactoring and testing designs: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2019/09/26/unison_programming_language/
One of the best internal talks I've seen was a teammate demonstrating Docker in the early days of containers.
After explaining the concepts, he showed running `rm -rf /` in a container shell. The drama value made the talk way more memorable and concrete.
Here's a computing paradigm that I think (hope) will become more common: context flowing between devices.
I want to switch between devices (e.g. laptop/smartphone/TV/smart speaker) and have state follow me (e.g. music/messaging/browser/documents).
High level programming languages and internet-oriented package managers have definitely made programmers more productive. Smaller teams can do more.
I don't think we expected the result though: major products can end up spending on libraries written by a single maintainer!
Using machine learning to help moderate Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/17/meet-the-bots-that-help-moderate-stack-overflow/
It's a grassroots campaign! There's definitely value in human moderation but it's helpful to automatically spot e.g. unkind comments to flag early.
How has V8 reduced memory without hurting runtime performance? Lazily building function feedback data, GCing little used bytecodes, and even avoiding generating source positions!
https://v8.dev/blog/v8-lite
What exactly is a subtype?
I've gone through a whole range of mental models as I've learnt about type systems.
How do you think about them?
Twitter treats #foo and $bar as special syntax due to emergent behaviour of users.
I keep seeing similar emergent features in other domains, e.g. airport wifi using '_Foo Wifi' to ensure it's sorted first. Ideally there'd be a priority flag, so a printer is never shown first.
I'm regularly impressed by the engineering quality of OpenBSD.
They're very much keen C developers, but many of their techniques apply to other PL communities. Software designed collectively, refactoring for clear design, even things like pledge.
Fun research demonstration of multi agent completion for machine learning training. The content is interesting, but the cute visualisations really add to the effect: https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/
On the value of tracking upstream open source projects: https://github.blog/2019-09-09-running-github-on-rails-6-0/
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