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 […]
Workday project at Washington University hits $266M
The total cost of a Workday implementation project at Washington University in St. Louis is set to hit almost $266 million, it was revealed after the project was the subject of protests from students. In late October, students demonstrated outside the Faculty Senate demanding the University’s leadership reveal more details about its finances, including its […]
Why Twilio Segment Moved from Microservices Back to a Monolith
Given that there would only be one service, it made sense to move all the destination code into one repo, which meant merging all the different dependencies and tests into a single repo. We knew this was going to be messy. For each of the 120 unique dependencies, we committed to having one version for […]
The Rise of Computer Games, Part I: Adventure
Author’s note: I originally intended for this post to cover adventure games, computer role-playing games, wargames and other simulations, a brief look at the home video game market, and finally the rise of hybrids that fused home video game systems with personal computers. In the grand scheme of the story about personal computers that I […]
I fed 24 years of my blog posts to a Markov model
By Susam Pal on 13 Dec 2025 Yesterday I shared a little program called the Mark V. Shaney Junior at github.com/susam/mvs. It is a minimal implementation of a Markov text generator inspired by the legendary Mark V. Shaney program from the 1980s. If you don’t know about Mark V. Shaney, read more about it on […]
Ask HN: How do you handle release notes for multiple audiences?
For those of you who ship often, when you release updates, do you typically write one set of release notes, or do you end up rewriting them for different audiences? For example: • technical version for developers • simplified version for end users • something more high-level for stakeholders etc… In my current position I’ve […]
VPN location claims don’t match real traffic exits
In a large-scale analysis of 20 popular VPNs, IPinfo found that 17 of those VPNs exit traffic from different countries than they claim. Some claim 100+ countries, but many of them point to the same handful of physical data centers in the US or Europe. That means the majority of VPN providers we analyzed don’t […]