HackerX

By year

2021

Ideas that Hacker News readers were still recommending in 2021.

56 posts cited163 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

@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

@solomonstre

Tools

@solomonstre

View on X
Recommended by 7 HN users
From the Hacker News thread>WASM vs a container runtime isn't a meaningful comparison because they're at different layers of the stack. It's not just comparing pure WASM (bytecode) but the WASM+WASI (runtime) which is what this article's WasmEdge (runtime) is about. It's a meaningful comparison when the original creator of Docker containers also compared them: >Solomon Hykes / @shykes@hachyderm.io @solomonstre >If WASM+WASI existed in 2008, we wouldn't have needed to created Docker. That's how important it is. Webassembly on the server is the future of computing. A standardized system interface was the missing link. Let's hope WASI is up to the task! -- from 2019-03-27t20:39:47 twitter.com/solomonstre/status/11110049…@jasodeContainer Runtimes and WasmEdge benchmarking on Arm2023
13

@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

@CRTpixels

Hardware

@CRTpixels

View on X
Recommended by 5 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI get your point, but also on the other hand, art is subjective, and people subjectively appreciate older / imperfect versions of things. Consider film grain - it's an artifact, an unintentional or unwanted side-effect of how films used to be made. But because it was a part of a production, people wanted it back - it gets added artificially to modern films, added as filters to video games, and video encoding has special features to support it without affecting compression negatively too much. Or take video games, particularly 2d / pixelart ones - they were built for CRT displays and relatively low resolutions. They can remake them now with multiples of the original resolution and fidelity, but for many people it loses some of it. Some art doesn't translate at all - take this digitized artwork from Castlevania, which was digitized specifically for display on CRT displays but which loses all charm (e.g. the eyes reduced to a single pixel) when rendered somewhere else: x.com/CRTpixels/status/1408451743214616… But this probably applies to film as well; if a film was made for a 35mm projector from the 70's, it won't look good or anywhere near that "experience" on a modern day 4K OLED display without editing. At the end of the day I think the viewer should be given options and choices. And for a good while it looked like they would - with DVD and blu-ray offering options like different audio tracks, camera angles, and different versions of the same film in one package. But that never materialized because I suppose it's only a wish from purists. And at that point they're competing with piracy and internet hobbyists like the article.@Cthulhu_Pirating the Pirates2026
9

@eevee

Open Source

@eevee

View on X
Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI was somewhat worried about that until I saw this: twitter.com/nickjshearer/status/1409902…?... I think programming is one of the many domains (including driving) that will never be totally solved by AI unless/until it's full AGI. The long tail of contextual understanding and messy edge-cases is intractable otherwise. Will that happen one day? Maybe. Will some kinds of labor get fully automated before then? Probably. But I think the overall time-scale is longer than it seems.@brundolfGitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?2021
8

@0xdoug

Business

@0xdoug

View on X
Recommended by 4 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI thought the biggest issue wasn't with the models themselves, but how Zillow decided to apply and act on them, which is why it didn't work in practice. So on average their predictions may have been pretty good, but since each transaction also depends on the other party to accept their offer, and whether they get outbid, most of their predictions where the offer actually goes through would be on the tail end of where they slightly overestimated the price. This tweet from the article summed it up nicely > Zillow made the same mistake that every new quant trader makes early on: Mistaking an adversarial environment for a random one. twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1456032851477… I was lucky to make and learn from that mistake pretty quickly with some algorithmic trading on much smaller amounts. With housing transactions being much larger and slower, you wouldn't learn this lesson until it was too late. Models never perform as well in practice as they do in theory, and you need to remember to account for both known unknowns and unknown unknowns.@elesiutaProphet: Automatic Forecasting Procedure2023
4

@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

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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

@Rich_Harris

Web Development

@Rich_Harris

View on X
Recommended by 3 HN users
From the Hacker News threadUnfortunately, as most of them left Twitter they also temoved all their accounts, so you can only see responses from framework authors like Rich Harris. But here's a very on-brand toot from Alex Russel: toot.cafe/@slightlyoff/1132222807127588… This is the article he's reacting to: dev.to/ryansolid/web-components-are-not…... --- Or here's Lou Verou (a TAG member) calling it hate (this is the mildest reaction, btw): x.com/LeaVerou/status/18401346548522477… and uncritically reposting a bullshit article calling it excellent x.com/LeaVerou/status/18397369083705879… (see reaction by Vue author: x.com/youyuxi/status/1839833110164504691 and x.com/youyuxi/status/1839834941884121363) Note that Lea Verou also says that people decided to fix some things around web components after her post in 2020: lea.verou.me/blog/2024/wcs-vs-framework… Here's Rich Harris (author of Svelte) in 2019: x.com/Rich_Harris/status/11983323985613… Here's the 2022 Web Components Group report: w3c.github.io/webcomponents-cg/2022.html. Notice similarities? Literally everything web framework authors have been saying for ever has been completely ignored in favor if the in-group/tribe. Literally nothing has changed. Nothing at all.@troupoWeb Components: The Framework-Free Renaissance2026
14

@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

@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

@cdixon

Internet

@cdixon

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadEven the simple ability to send crypto to/from anywhere in the world at a fixed fee without having to rely on centralized institutions is huge. For countries like Argentina with hyperinflating currencies, strict capital controls, distrust of banks is so high (due to a bank run 20 years ago) people buy houses with cash, the advantage is obvious. Even in first world countries however it's advantageous to be able to transact without being at the mercy of a few payment providers that shut down your account and blacklist you on a whim, and there's nothing you can do about it [1] Decentralized finance is huge. Borrowing/lending without having to rely on a central intermediary. Insurance without any central intermediary [2]. The ability to trade tokens without any central intermediary. Tokenization itself enables decentralized governance in the form of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and to for example fundraise without having to give 5+% to private companies like Kickstarter, Patreon, or whoever. There's an attempt to create a universal basic income [3] Tokens themselves enable communities to have a vested financial interest in their own success, which sure could be a bunch of people holding apes and attending yacht parties, but could also be ENS [4] or MakerDAO managing a decentralized stablecoin with billions in value. NFTs enable creators more opportunity to monetize their work such as via selling NFTs with exclusive privileges where the creator can even obtain royalties upon retrading, decentralized marketplaces for digital or even real life goods like ticketing or real estate, the ability to reuse digital assets across different applications/games. People here love to fixate on the stupid jpegs and the fact that the URL often points to a centralized server, but that's really not the point. NFT again is just digital scarcity (see the Twitter thread I linked in the parent comment [5]) Decentralization and users owning their own data is huge. Imagine owning your own content, and being able to utilize various frontends and/or build on top of the data. This means having a digital identity that can be reused across different platforms (eg. keeping your posts + followers). Don't like Youtube's algorithm? Use a different one. And of course there's censorship resistance. The modular nature of all this would enable enormous innovation, just like it already has in defi (for example look up dex aggregators like 1inch and matcha, or Curve and Convex finance) Zero knowledge proofs in addition to enabling privacy and scaled computing also enable trustless anonymous voting. Meaning that an election can be run in a decentralized manner that's mathematically proven to be legitimate without revealing anyone's individual votes. This is massive. I could go on all day but then I might as well write a damn article. This slide deck is a nice summary [6], as well as these threads from Chris Dixon [7] [8]. It seems most commenters here would rather just complain about bored apes and scammers, but there actually is a lot of cool stuff going on if one actually takes the time to do their research. [1] zerohedge.com/technology/section-230-is…... [2] blog.etherisc.com/etherisc-teams-up-wit…... [3] proofofhumanity.id/ [4] ens.domains/ [5] twitter.com/RAC/status/1490431018792226… [6] linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activit…... [7] twitter.com/cdixon/status/1442201621266… [8] twitter.com/cdixon/status/1425645842552…...@JSavageOneThe Crypto Backlash Is Booming2022
2

@sarahmei

Open Source

@sarahmei

View on X
Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News thread> The fact that people are still contributing with RMS at the forefront of the FSF indicates that they at least are fine with the way things currently are. Some people do. Some do not. twitter.com/sarahmei/status/99401050146… In Github's 2017 survey, 50% of the 5,500 respondents claimed they had witnessed toxic interactions while working on open-source projects, and that 18% of them had suffered through a negative interaction. Also, 95% of contributors were men and 3% were women. Are you sure people are still contributing or is it just men who do with very, very few women who is willing to put up with this? php.net/credits.php here, count the women. Or rather the woman! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictat… not. a. single. woman. Not all of this is on Stallman but as he is the figurehead of an entire movement, certainly at least some of it is.@chxNot the First Time We Tried (FSF, GNU, RMS, etc.)2021
6

@moxie

Security

@moxie

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadBe cautious when using Telegram for important matters. I recently examined a situation where confidential messages from high-ranking Moldovan officials were leaked through Telegram. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, which offer end-to-end encryption by default, protecting your messages even in case of a SIM swap, Telegram does not offer the same level of security. A SIM swap or a breach in their system can lead to message leaks. Despite advertising themselves as a "secure messaging" platform, Telegram lacks default end-to-end encryption, making it less secure than its competitors. Read this excellent thread from Moxie twitter.com/moxie/status/14740675495746…@AdrenalinMdTelegram Web Apps for Bots2023
4

@adamscrabble

Business

@adamscrabble

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadThese debt am purchased only tiny share in total debt. We are spent 2 more trillions in one bill more only just now. Chinese are use currency basically stole from world for to purchase these debt: twitter.com/adamscrabble/status/1094717… We need in total embargo China. She are largest threat among existence for continuing America.@da_big_gheyChinese hacking spree hit an ‘astronomical’ number of victims2021
4

@Snowden

Security

@Snowden

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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

@ForrestFleisch1

Science

@ForrestFleisch1

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadLike others doubting the claims, it's worth noting the thoughts by professor Forrest Fleischman about "Silicon Valley businesspeople who are entranced with the idea of tree planting as a climate solution": twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/1444…... (2021) If you dig around on SER ser.org/ you can find documentation on previous failed restoration efforts - my understanding is these efforts really need an intersection of community involvement/stakeholdership and education.@seltzered_Seed-firing drones are planting 40k trees every day to fight deforestation2022
4

@reidhoffman

Startups

@reidhoffman

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadI really, really love this story. It is another version, and more relatable I might add, of Reid Hoffman saying "if you aren't embarrassed by your first version you have launched too late." (twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/84714292…) Terrific storytelling, and sadly, 99% of founders will never get past their narcissism and just launch it.@xrdHow I helped build a profitable MVP over a weekend2021
3

@_markel___

Hardware

@_markel___

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadnot a bad find, its not unknown that most disassemblers dont do all the things correct. fun when u find one that breaks the further disass tho. intel xed is pretty accurate usually but it also doesnt disassemble all possible opcodes. if you do a jump over some UD but the jmp target is taken from reg value u can also get disassembly to break etc. its kinda the problem of static analysis. it's not easy to see if someone inserted 1 byte of data, or if it was an unknown opcode u dont handle etc. definitely fun, will throw off automated tools for analysis especially if you can make the invalid disassembly just call exit or do something valid but short/benign.. may also wanna look if they are known unknown, like this stuff: x.com/_markel___/status/137305979715577… ive seen now multiple type of either debug or backdoor instructions on x86 based cpus over the past few years@sim7c0010000 dollar RE suite vs. Intel 1997. Guess who wins? (Full research inside)2025
3

@dvir_a

Science

@dvir_a

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Recommended by 2 HN users
From the Hacker News threadSimpler explanation on the Israel data: > You’ve probably seen reports from Israel on low vaccine effectiveness in this wave. Is it because of Delta? Waning immunity? We think the reason is mostly that we got the denominator wrong. twitter.com/dvir_a/status/1420059124700… > This is what we got wrong. This “wave” started from cities with high vaccination rate and couldn’t “find” unvaccined adults at risk. The denominator we need to use until mid-July is >95% vaccination rate and not the country’s average. twitter.com/dvir_a/status/1420059139435…@lamontcgPfizer says 2021 Covid-19 vaccine sales to top $33.5 bln, sees need for boosters2021
4

@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

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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

@aboodman

Productivity

@aboodman

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadWhat scares me about how proud are some people of toxic hustle culture. I get it, it's good to be passionate and work hard, but I'm sure there it's a sweet spot of diminishing returns where just keep working it's not worth for anyone, no taking into account long term productivity and 3rd persons affected by it. I love one of the responses it's about how Chrome was developed with a healthy (in comparison) 9-5 work routine. twitter.com/aboodman/status/14271377251…@javchzDivorces and broken families during the development of Internet Explorer2021
2

@cabel

Security

@cabel

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadFor me, mostly useless. I do however, enjoy using Touch ID for sudo permissions. HT to: twitter.com/cabel/status/93129210737283…@myinitialsaretkAsk HN: After 2-3 years, what are your favorite Touch Bar use cases on the Mac?2018
2

@typesfast

Business

@typesfast

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadRyan Petersen is a smart guy with a good perspective but he started Flexport in 2013. He didn't go to Cal Maritime; he went to Berkeley. He doesn't have a deck license or even a CDL; he was a member of Cal Sailing. He is however smart and smart is good. Time will tell whether his suggestion was a major factor or just a good idea. I like his Twitter thread: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks? Modern finance with its obsession with "Return on Equity." twitter.com/typesfast/status/1453753924…@CalChrisAn unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles2021
5

@JeffBezos

Business

@JeffBezos

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News thread> I think if it survives, the crypto community is in for a reckoning much like 2000. You very well may be right. But the most memorable headline for me from that era is this Barron's article: twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1447403828… If Bitcoin is the equivalent of Yahoo, what are the equivalents of Amazon and Google? People love to use Pets.com as a symbol of excess for that era, but it might not be a great example to use to make that point. At its highest point, Pets.com had a valuation of approximately $300 million (of which ~30% was owned by Amazon). Compare that to the ~$3 billion that PetSmart paid for Chewey.com five years ago, and Chewy.com's current market cap of $12 billion (down ~75% from its high). It's a bit ironic that the pets.com domain redirects to petsmart.com, given that the PetSmart LBO eight years ago, and its acquisition of Chewy five years ago, and the Chewy IPO three years ago—PetSmart sold a minority interest Chewy to protect it from PetSmart's creditors and to pay down debt—were all motivated in large part by the fact that online retail has massively supplanted in-person retail throughout the economy. Was Pets.com overvalued? Or did it just run out of runway before it could displace the incumbents? Is Crypto going to zero? Or is it simply that new technologies take time to find their footing?@legutierrZeroStableCoin is out from stealth mode2022
2

@spoofyroot

Security

@spoofyroot

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadThe actual bug is in the Turbofan JIT, not WASM. Using WASM is the method de'jour for turning arbitrary read/write/object leak into RCE. Without WASM, the writer would have to use ROP/etc, but the primitives are still there. Check out this discussion by a bunch of the big names in the field, including Niklas B who was on the team that originally found this bug: twitter.com/spoofyroot/status/137991178…@albntomat0Chrome zero-day released on GitHub – fixed on V8 but still works on latest2021
2

@cpuGoogle

Programming

@cpuGoogle

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadIt's funny how frequent people bring this up, but the truth is simple, check here [1]. Zircon kernel is not new [2], it has been in development for a while now. By the time the started to work on the microkernel, Rust 1.0 was really new, so they would've to implement several things from ground up. There's a implementation of Zircon in rust called zCore [3], but I don't know how stable and feature complete this one is. [1] twitter.com/cpugoogle/status/1397265884… [2] Like a two years project. [3] github.com/rcore-os/zCore@dbrrtRust for Linux redux2021
3

@paulg

Career

@paulg

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Shared by 1 HN user
From the Hacker News threadI think you and PG are actually in agreement on this: twitter.com/paulg/status/14043219314914… It depends on what your life goals are. If you want to travel the world, do that. If you have big ambitions™ then work hard. Either is OK. This essay is not a call for everyone to work hard, it is a guide for those who choose that path.@csharpminorHow to Work Hard2021
2

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