There Are Magic Hexagons of Every Order
What is so special about the number 19? The question came up last month in a conversation among YSDA alumni, when the school turned 19. Someone pointed out that 19 is a twin prime. Someone else replied that 19 is the number of cells in the only non-trivial normal magic hexagon. Wait, what is a […]
Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, Native X64 Port
This project is a fully working native Windows x64 port of Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a, whose historical codename was Opus. It builds the original Word source and resources together with modern replacements for the 16-bit assembly, segmented-memory, and Win16 platform boundaries. The result is the original Word application and user experience running as a […]
The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)
Duration 11 years (02011-02022) STAKES $1,000 will go to Bletchly Park Trust if Keith wins,or The Internet Archive if Haughey wins. Keith’s Argument ”Cool URIs don’t change” wrote Tim Berners-Lee in 01999, but link rot is the entropy of the web. The probability of a web document surviving in its original location decreases greatly over […]
”The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years.” (2011)
Duration 11 years (02011-02022) STAKES $1,000 will go to Bletchly Park Trust if Keith wins,or The Internet Archive if Haughey wins. Keith’s Argument ”Cool URIs don’t change” wrote Tim Berners-Lee in 01999, but link rot is the entropy of the web. The probability of a web document surviving in its original location decreases greatly over […]
Incentives Are for Losers
photo cred: my dad We can all agree: the incentives are bad. Everywhere you look, people are being rewarded for doing the wrong thing. This has become the go-to diagnosis for every problem, from climate change to political polarization to scientific malfeasance—“sorry pal, you’ve got a bad case of the incentives.” I don’t disagree with […]
Os8088: A powerful Mac-like OS for the IBM XT, 286, 386
What it is os8088 boots from the first sector of a floppy into a graphical desktop. There is no DOS underneath it and no command line anywhere in it — the 512-byte boot sector loads a 40KB kernel, the kernel works out which display adapter the machine has and switches it into graphics, borrows the […]
Dithered QR Codes
How to make error-diffused QR codes Make your own The rest of my website Source code QR codes: the basics A QR code is really just a way of encoding a few bytes of data in a way that can be easily read froma photo by a smartphone or similar device. They’re designed to be […]
My server is a phone now
For a while, my personal infrastructure lived on a small Hetzner VPS. It ran a few web apps, a remote browser called Surf, Caddy, and the usual supporting cast. Nothing particularly serious. It worked, I just didn’t like paying for it. One of the apps I run, Surf, made the compromise difficult to ignore. The […]
Show HN: iPhone app takes simultaneous images from 2 lenses, fuses into 1 photo
An innovative camera app for iPhone. Each capture fires two lenses at once then combines the results into one high-res photo, giving real optical detail with no generative AI. Upgrade your camera without upgrading your phone. Standard zoom
Shopify replaced Redis with MySQL for inventory reservations–and it scaled
During checkout, when a buyer clicks ”Complete purchase,” we need to guarantee the items they’re buying are still available. If we get this wrong in one direction, two buyers purchase the same last unit: the merchant has to cancel an order, send an apology email, and eat the support cost. If we get it wrong […]