Surface Tension of Software
How systems hold their shape through constraint, and why integrity emerges from what you make impossible If you press your finger against water, it pushes back. That invisible resistance, surface tension, keeps the liquid whole even when disturbed. Good software has something like it. Some systems hold together when you change them; others leak at […]
Lean Theorem Prover Mathlib
Mathlib is a user maintained library for the Lean theorem prover. It contains both programming infrastructure and mathematics, as well as tactics that use the former and allow to develop the latter. Installation You can find detailed instructions to install Lean, mathlib, and supporting tools on our website. Alternatively, click on one of the buttons […]
If a Meta AI model can read a brain-wide signal, why wouldn’t the brain?
Did you know migratory birds and sea turtles are able to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field? It’s called magnetoreception. Basically, being able to navigate was evolutionarily advantageous, so life evolved ways to feel the Earth’s magnetic field. A LOT of ways. Like a shocking amount of ways. Here’s a few examples: Magnetotactic bacteria – […]
An Implementation of J
An Implementation of J ‘ An Implementation of JRoger K.W. Hui Copyright © 1990-2011, Jsoftware Inc. last updated: 2000-06-23 Preface J is a dialect of APL freely available on a wide variety of machines. It is the latest in the line of development known as “dictionary APL”. The spelling scheme uses the ASCII alphabet. The […]
Closures as Win32 Window Procedures
December 12, 2025 nullprogram.com/blog/2025/12/12/ Back in 2017 I wrote about a technique for creating closures in C using JIT-compiled wrapper. It’s neat, though rarely necessary in real programs, so I don’t think about it often. I applied it to qsort, which sadly accepts no context pointer. More practical would be working around insufficient custom allocator […]
RemoveWindowsAI
The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include increasingly more AI features and components. This script aims to remove ALL of these features to improve user experience, privacy and security. Script Features Disable Registry Keys Disable Copilot Disable Recall Disable Input Insights and typing data harvesting Copilot in Edge Image Creator […]
Linux Sandboxes and Fil-C
Memory safety and sandboxing are two different things. It’s reasonable to think of them as orthogonal: you could have memory safety but not be sandboxed, or you could be sandboxed but not memory safe. Example of memory safe but not sandboxed: a pure Java program that opens files on the filesystem for reading and writing […]
Flat-pack washing machine spins a fairer future
A former Dyson engineer is rolling out a revolution for household chores in deprived communities after inventing an off-grid, flat-packable washing machine Some five billion people in remote and developing regions still wash their clothes by hand. It’s a task that unfairly burdens women and young girls, who can spend up to 20 hours a […]
Some surprising things about DuckDuckGo you probably don’t know
There is a rumor continuously circulating that we’re owned by Google, which of course couldn’t be farther from the truth. I was actually a witness in the U.S. v. Google trial for the DOJ. I think this rumor started because Google used to own the domain duck.com and was pointing it at Google search for […]
Recovering Anthony Bourdain’s (really) lost Li.st’s
🍇 At least 1 day ago Loved reading through GReg TeChnoLogY Anthony Bourdain’s Lost Li.st’s and seeing the list of lost Anthony Bourdain li.st’s made me think on whether at least some of them we can recover. Having worked in security and crawling space for majority of my career—I don’t have the access nor permission […]