HackerX

By year

2020

Ideas that Hacker News readers were still recommending in 2020.

60 posts cited165 citations

Counts show how many picks Hacker News readers cited in each year, not when the post was written.

@mxcl

Career

@mxcl

View on X
Recommended by 42 HN users
From the Hacker News threadleetcode seems to agree with your definition [0]. the meme isn't to say that inverting a binary tree is particularly difficult - anyone familiar with coding challenges and trees could trivially produce a solution. the meme is more pointing out how ludicrous it is that senior/staff/principal interviews can hinge on these types of problems, despite the engineer proving their proficiency by doing something like running DOOM in typescript types or writing homebrew [1]. [0] leetcode.com/problems/invert-binary-tre…... [1] x.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768@LiquixTypeScript types can run DOOM [video]2025
117

@naval

Business

@naval

View on X
Recommended by 7 HN users
From the Hacker News threadtwitter.com/naval/status/10021034977251… > Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy. twitter.com/naval/status/10021036273878… > Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games. From @naval’s Twitter thread “how to get rich (without getting lucky)” twitter.com/naval/status/10021033606468… My note: wealth is options; options are freedom, and buying your time back. Only play status games if you’re playing for fun, but don’t confuse it with success and freedom.@toomuchtodoPursuing status will never bring true happiness2023
14

@StanTwinB

Programming

@StanTwinB

View on X
Recommended by 7 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI like that this story references the #deleteUber tag on Twitter because it helps organize the timeline of events going on at Uber. There was another twitter thread on here recently about the chaotic and disastrous (though successful) Swift rewrite they did which happened during the same time frame. twitter.com/StanTwinB/status/1336890442… During those time frames is also when all of the execs were quitting or being fired, along with their internal harassment problems. It feels like Uber has really succeeded in spite of itself.@notionalUber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend2021
12

@ID_AA_Carmack

Hardware

@ID_AA_Carmack

View on X
Recommended by 5 HN users
From the Hacker News threadSome of that isn't the text editors fault. With the C64 the keystroke may be on the screen before it out of the USB stack on a modern computer. That is even before you start to consider the latency in the video stack. As John Carmack once noted: "I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f’d up is that?" -- twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/193480…@jandreseRegression with the C642021
13

@sinabooeshaghi

Science

@sinabooeshaghi

View on X
Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News thread@quantian1 correctly determined that this was an ammonium nitrate blast by analyzing the footage: twitter.com/quantian1/status/1290695231… CHEMISTRY FACT: Explosives have characteristic "detonation velocities" at which shockwaves expand. Smartphone video records at 30 FPS, so the adjacent frames here suggest the front expands at ~100 m/(1/30 sec), or 3,000 m/sec. Consistent with ammonium nitrate, not black powder. This was confirmed a few hours later: twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/12907585… Lebanese president blames 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate left in warehouse unchecked for six years for devastating Beirut blast EDIT: By the way, one of my friends was almost killed by the explosion. Thankfully they're ok. But they said: twitter.com/cyrilzakka/status/129076621… This was terrifying to experience. Hospitals are being overrun with injured people. We need blood donations and disaster relief. Help however you can. As a US citizen, is there any way I can help directly? Is there any organization that ships blood donations directly to a disaster site? I suppose that would be very difficult, so the answer is probably no; it's frustrating not being able to assist.@sillysaurusxOrder of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT2020
11

@ziobrando

Philosophy

@ziobrando

View on X
Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI opened the video. Saw that it is edited (It does not show the entire meeting from the beginning to the end unedited. He puts clips of himself in the middle. He does his signature "ask for donations" thing. Etc). Given literally the entirety of his work history, I know it is going to be misleading if not an outright lie. So I spent 1 minute realizing it won't be worth my 30 minutes and closed the tab. And if you are going to argue that this is not enough to refuse to believe the video and I should present more concrete evidence, I will refer you to the bullshit asymmetry principle: twitter.com/ziobrando/status/2896350607…...@smnrchrdsToronto is gathering cellphone location data to find people congregating2020
6

@tuomassalo

Design

@tuomassalo

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News thread> There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too). The "legacy" Windows design isn't just so beloved because of familiarity, but because it actually provides visual cues to users [1], and the backstory on how it was designed is also interesting [2]. I know that there was an even more detailed article floating around here on HN but I can't find it offhand. [1] twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292… [2] socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/design…...@mschuster91Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter2024
6

@patrickwardle

Security

@patrickwardle

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News threadOne thing I learned from using Little Snitch is that a lot of Apple apps are seemingly immune from these types of firewalls, due to Apple shenanigans around k-ext signing etc [0]. Ref also [1]: > In Big Sur Apple decided to exempt many of its apps from being routed thru the frameworks they now require 3rd-party firewalls to use (LuLu, Little Snitch, etc.) > Q: Could this be (ab)used by malware to also bypass such firewalls? > A: Apparently yes, and trivially so [0] x.com/patrickwardle/status/131843792949… [1] x.com/patrickwardle/status/132772649620…@plausibilityUpdating from macOS Ventura to Sonoma Silently Enables iCloud Keychain2024
5

@veorq

Security

@veorq

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News threadMore directly and earlier, and, amusingly, a reply to tptacek is: twitter.com/veorq/status/83487298844506… The line of thinking is more fully (if less sha2-specifically) covered in Aumasson's 'Too much crypto' paper, which has also had HN discussions.@pvgBLAKE2: “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” Than MD5 (2014)2022
4

@Rich_Harris

Web Development

@Rich_Harris

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI find this tweet about how Google approaches web standards illuminating. To quote: > 1. design a flawed API (it's fine! APIs are hard) > 2. ship it in the most-used browser, despite objections > 3. get cross-browser working group to fix the API > 4. oops, too late, that would break the web twitter.com/Rich_Harris/status/12204127…@throwaway810Google Is Not God of the Web2020
5

@threepointone

Web Development

@threepointone

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThe biggest difference is that the class based components are an older iteration of the API into React, one that lies closer with how React internally works (or worked), but one that is not necessarily useful for writing correctly working components. Say you have a component that renders some data it fetches from the backend, and it received the ID via a prop. In a class based component you might be inclined to write the fetching logic in the componentDidMount or maybe the constructor. However, if you change the ID you feed the component, the component will update instead of being recreated. In the naive class based version it won't refetch the data, and won't behave correctly. With useEffect hooks you don't really care anymore, you can reason about side effects in the same declarative way. You express the fact that fetching new data is a dependency of the prop changing, which holds true both on first render and later on update. The hooks API fixed a handful of these 'mistakes' that were still present in the class based API. I agree that the syntax might look awkward at first, but the hooks API is much better thought out than the class based one. (Some anecdata: almost any component that I rewrote in hooks-style has been halved in number of lines of code, the concepts have been much less spread out over the file. See this tweet for an example: twitter.com/threepointone/status/105659…)@supericeWhat I wish I knew about React2020
3

@c1truz_

Security

@c1truz_

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI'm sure there are other reasons, but three understandable reasons I've seen: 1) The lack of e2e encryption despite trying to market themselves as having secure video chat. 2) news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22749805 (comment in this thread - they literally phish you) 3) twitter.com/c1truz_/status/124473767293… abusing the traditional installation process on OSX EDIT: OK (2) may be a real system prompt - twitter.com/DigitalResist0r/status/1245…...? I didn't see anyone else in the twitter thread claim that it was using a real system dialog, so I'd still say it was poor practice of them to have such a shady looking system dialog.@obmelvinEx-NSA hacker drops zero-day for Zoom2020
10

@TimSweeneyEpic

Programming

@TimSweeneyEpic

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadWhat you wrote about C versus C++ is largely untrue. C++ is not faster than C, even when “using library functions which use void pointers”. There is nothing about a void pointer that prevents inlining in either C or C++. There is also no “optimized on actual types” for C++ and not C, since everything is compiled into a low level intermediate language in the compiler (typically three-address code). All of the C++ types are absent at that point. The low level intermediate representation is then what receives optimization. For example, GCC will outright inline both bsearch() and the provided comparator in cases where it can see the definition of the comparator, such that there are no function calls done to either bsearch() or the comparator. C compilers will do this for a number of standard library functions and even will do it for non-library functions in the same file since they will inline small functions if allowed to do inlining. When the functions are not in the same file, you need LTO to get the inlining, but the same applies to C++. That said, I have never seen assembly output from a C++ compiler for C++ using C++ specific language features that was more succinct than equivalent C. I am sure it happens, but the C++ language is just full of bloat. C++ templates usually result in more code than less, since the compiler must work much harder to optimize the result and opportunities are often lost. It is also incredibly easy for overhead to be hiding in the abstractions, especially if you have a thread safe class used in a single threaded context as part of a larger multithreaded program. The compiler will not optimize the thread safety overhead away. You might not believe that C++ language features add bloat, so I will leave you with this tidbit: twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/12230…... Tim Sweeney’s team had C++ code that not only did not use exceptions, but explicitly opted out of them with noexcept. They got a 15% performance boost from turning off exceptions in the compiler, for no apparent reason. C, not having exceptions, does not have this phantom overhead.@ryaoMaking C and Python Talk to Each Other2025
5

@elonmusk

Business

@elonmusk

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThe reorg of GM by the Obama administration does not tick all the boxes [1], but is the most recent example that would come to mind of government support via BK management and recapitalization. The administration did this to save jobs and the manufacturing supply chain [2]. Capital is made up, management is fungible, manufacturing supply chains and systems are the hard part (which is why, after incredibly aggressive financialization, Boeing is having to acquire Spirit AeroSystems, which had previously been spun out for cost savings...which went to management comp and shareholders). If you are optimizing for a specific outcome, it is important to understand the malleability and limits of the components that make the whole. Even Elon recognized this during Model 3 production hell [3]. I suppose we must always learn the hard way for the lesson to be of value. If management is the problem (and it is very clear Boeing management is the problem), it must be replaced so that the people who do the actual building can build. This is no different than the tech culture of "employ great people and get out of their way." [1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Ch…... [2] obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/economy/jo…... [3] x.com/elonmusk/status/984882630947753984 ("Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.")@toomuchtodoBoeing, Union reach wage deal to end strike2024
6

@XenoKovah

Security

@XenoKovah

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadIncorrect. Apple's original presentations on Arm Macs suggested that booting other operating systems would be supported, and recently this has been confirmed by two of the engineers who worked on it. twitter.com/NikolajSchlej/status/133979… twitter.com/XenoKovah/status/1339914714… Although you cannot turn off secure boot on Arm Macs, Apple has deliberately provided a path by which you can prove that you really want to chainload to a user provided bootloader not signed by Apple. From there, obviously, it will be possible to load the kernel of another operating system, such as Linux.@krunkcoinAsahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project2021
6

@PalliThordarson

Science

@PalliThordarson

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThere are plenty of commonly-touched surfaces when people spend a long time in the same space: door handles, elevator buttons, countertops, buffet utensils, gym equipment, money... I don't think the hand-washing is epidemiology theater, in part based on this thread: twitter.com/PalliThordarson/status/1236…...@ridajLeaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus2020
3

@gvanrossum

Programming

@gvanrossum

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI think thewhitetulip has GvR's blessing[0]. It makes sense, though: There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. The guy's handle is thewhitetulip, which is the most Dutch thing I can think of. [0]: twitter.com/gvanrossum/status/112670605…@JugurthaShow HN: Easy to understand intro to Python2017
4

@Snowden

Security

@Snowden

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThe PinePhone in its current iteration is unfortunately unusable. It's a shame because while I do wholeheartedly believe in the mission of the project it's simply just not quite there yet. Nevertheless, a much better alternative in the meantime is to do what Edward Snowden did: twitter.com/snowden/status/117543072273…....@james-redwoodI Used Linux-Based PinePhone Daily for a Year. Here’s What I Learned2022
3

@TomerAshur

Security

@TomerAshur

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadNSA put (effective) backdoor in Dual_EC_DRBG: schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the…... Thread by someone directly involved on why the ISO rejected NSA ciphers in the past (hint: they refused to justify design decisions, lied, and attacked the credibility of people who had put out actually-secure crypto): twitter.com/TomerAshur/status/988696306… Either they're too incompetent to be trusted or are bad actors and should be treated as such.@kickDon’t Rush Quantum-Proof Encryption, Warns NSA Research Director2019
3

@VitalikButerin

Programming

@VitalikButerin

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI have to say that I'm happy that Ethereum does not do on-chain governance for this very reason. It more or less follows the IETF principle of "rough consensus". [0] As far as smart contracts are concerned; they're hardly "contracts", but you probably already knew that. Even Vitalik Buterin regrets calling them that way [1]. [0]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_consensus [1]: twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/10511…...@pietjepuk88Ethereum 2.0 launches2020
3

@patio11

Open Source

@patio11

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadAn open source project for external customers (i.e. us) operated by a bunch of unpaid volunteers will never really be able to compete with an application with paid developers, invested users, and the supporting departments. I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. For a corollary: twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785…@falcolasHey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking2018
3

@dhh

Web Development

@dhh

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadGood summary. One of the issues I find with Rails is that the 'old-way' of views, partials and a sprinkling of React is INSANELY productive. I've been trying hard to justify getting into Stimulus properly. DHH is on a four-month sabbatical at the moment and my hope is that he's working on open-sourcing the framework behind hey.com, which Basecamp are calling 'new magic'[0] There's something coming around object-oriented view components and client-size JS. I'm just not quite sure the perfect recipe has been found yet. twitter.com/dhh/status/1275901955995385…@AlexMuirReact is Dead, Long live Reactive Rails2020
10

@rapha_gl

Writing

@rapha_gl

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadHey everyone! Thread author here. Happy to see so many people taking an interest in beautiful scientific communication! If anyone has other examples of beautiful typography or graphing/figures throughout history, I'd love to see them! I've been replying to the original thread on twitter with some favorites: twitter.com/iraphas13/status/1262489387…...@iraphaelHave you ever asked yourself “how did research get done before LateX?”2020
3

@hintjens

Philosophy

@hintjens

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadFollowing that link, I also came across twitter.com/hintjens/status/78325424205… "I'm choosing euthanasia etd 1pm." @12:35 PM · Oct 4, 2016 From Wikipedia: Pieter Hintjens (3 December 1962 – 4 October 2016) was a Belgian software developer It's his choice, and I support it if that's what he really wanted, but it's still really creepy to see.@capablewebSystemd Brand2019
4

@ScienceVet2

Science

@ScienceVet2

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News thread> Why Sex Is Mostly Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum I’m not going to quote problematic points expressed in the introduction, but I want to provide additional context for “mostly binary”, which is somewhat misleading. Biological sex characteristics are also a spectrum, but with most people falling close to one of two points on that spectrum. It’s fairly commonly known that a small but significant portion of the population is intersex, having prominent characteristics from “both” sexes. While this is often explained as anomalous, it’s only by degree. I hope saying this is enough to encourage anyone reading my comment to not take my word for it, but to read this biologist’s Twitter thread[1] explaining in much greater detail than I could do justice, or rolled up by Thread Reader[2] for convenience as it’s lengthy. I know this isn’t a popular format here, but even being familiar with the concept I found the thread very illuminating when I read it around the time it was posted and it’s a common reverence I use when this topic comes up. [1]: twitter.com/sciencevet2/status/10352460…... [2]: threadreaderapp.com/thread/103524603050…@eyelidlessnessAll of Sex Is One Gene–Almost (2016)2021
4

@quinetweet

Programming

@quinetweet

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadTo save people some time, here’s the tweet: twitter.com/quinetweet/status/130995104… In essence, the approach was: * Find out what the tweet id is of a recent tweet * Find out what a tweet is shortly after * Estimate the rate of new tweets appearing * Publish a tweet with a reference to a tweet with a now+guess id The write up is well done and interesting but a little long winded.@alblueI Made a Self-Quoting Tweet2020
3

@oren_cass

Business

@oren_cass

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadWell done: twitter.com/oren_cass/status/1230505794… The guy identified the 4 big government backed monopolies, all with government backed debt, which all now eat a majority of income. We've known since 1776 that the way prices come down is competition. You should know that it's illegal to open a hospital or college without government permission. It's illegal to build a building. It's so bad that in order to open a hospital in most states, any nearby hospital can protest you license application merely for being close to another hospital. Who in their right mind would give an 18 year old $100k for college? Nobody. That's why the government backs it and you can't default on it. Who backs your mortgage? The government. It goes on and on and on. There is no mystery here AT ALL if you studied economics. The answer is very simple, allow competition. Now to lay back and drown in the downvotes :-)@bfieidhbrjrIt takes now 53 weeks salary to earn same as 30 weeks in 19852020
3

@ylecun

AI

@ylecun

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadWell said. I especially appreciate the distinction you're making between balancing liberty with liberty-destroying ideology. This is the kind of difficult nuance that I rarely see in these discussions. One one side there's the free speech absolutists, whose arguments tend to ignore the fact that unmoderated propaganda, and hate speech tends to be more addictive, and spread ignorance faster then fact-checking can fix it. The consequences of this sort of callous attitude are literally genocide[1]. On the other hand, there's the 'cancel-culture mobs' (for lack of a better term) which are now censoring regular speech that disagrees, or appears to disagrees, or isn't sufficiently subservient to their opinions. Just yesterday I was sadly reading this depressing thread where Yann LeCun was run off twitter[2] for explaining how bias (in the social science sense) can be traced back to various steps in the ML pipeline (in this case, mainly a feature of the dataset itself, but also the choice of errors, bias vs variance, etc). The inability to admit nuance is the only thing I can think both these groups share, and maybe what needs to be emphasized more. [1] nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanm…... [2] twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907…@saeranvYouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech2020
3

@mbeckett

Science

@mbeckett

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadBecause the number of positive cases is rising faster than the increase in testing. Also, make sure to split out the data per state/region. The decline from NYC for example made up a huge amount of the decline. Otherwise you run into Simpson's Paradox. Miles Beckett did a decent Twitter thread on the topic: twitter.com/mbeckett/status/12787506521…@SpellmanDecision for 2020-21 Academic Year2020
2

@TerahashCorp

Security

@TerahashCorp

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadIn general it is is not true that Argon2 should be recommended over bcrypt. Even even some of the people on the experts panel for the PHC (where Argon2 won) won’t recommend Argon2 over Bcrypt: twitter.com/TerahashCorp/status/1155129… Looks like for the typical case (~200ms calculating the hash) bcrypt beats argon2. I guess that’s what I understand from those discussions, I’m not an expert by any means. It is related with cache hardness: twitter.com/Sc00bzT/status/114996367506…@jorge_leriaHow To Safely Store A Password (2010)2020
4

@mauritscorneIis

Programming

@mauritscorneIis

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadThank you! It's quite apt isn't it? I'm a really big fan of his and have a print of his Tetrahedral Planetoid on my wall! Although the self-drawing hands are probably more apt for this even more Escher themed one that I've since been made aware of from the author in the comments here: twitter.com/mauritscorneIis/status/1266…...@OisinMoranI Made a Self-Quoting Tweet2020
4

@RealSexyCyborg

Hardware

@RealSexyCyborg

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadI remember this discussion coming up at least once before. AFAIR the argument was that many people had problems interpreting the test strips (not waiting long enough, mixing the results up). So they built a more foolproof way of reading the strips, which then tells you exactly what's up in simple words. Edit: Turns out there's a response in this thread that says the same and in better words. [1] Man I hate twitter UI. [1]: twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/13017…...@GrollicusWhat's inside a digital pregnancy test (2020)2022
2

@DonaldPMitchell

Science

@DonaldPMitchell

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadFor those interested in Venus, I'd recommend trying to keep up with Don Mitchell's stream of stuff on Twitter. This thread where he produces updated imagery from the Soviet Venus landing is great [1]. He's also seemingly made a bunch of progress on his upcoming book [2]. He used to post everything to his website at mentallandscape.com, and it's still up for useful history / structure, but all his work for the past decade seems to be solely on Twitter (until the book happens!). [1] twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1234…... [2] twitter.com/DonaldM38768041/status/1248…...@boulosA young Venus had water for 2B years, habitable for longer than Mars2020
2

@paulg

Startups

@paulg

View on X
Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadEdit: I Googled it and it was Michael Siebel that helped them get into YC. You can debate what "walked in" means but I think it's safe to say the story of Airbnb getting into YC is one of Winning Friends and Influencing People rather than any brilliant ideas or work they did on their actual startup, which is precisely what the blog post is saying. Edit2: just saw on Twitter that @paulg posted the email that got Airbnb an interview. It's hard to imagine a stronger attempt at walking them in than they received. They got very special treatment from friends with connections. mobile.twitter.com/paulg/status/1337011…@staunchThe Airbnbs2020
3

More

RSS feed

Keyboard shortcuts