Hashcards: A Plain-Text Spaced Repetition System
hashcards is a local-first spaced repetition app, along the lines of Anki or Mochi. Like Anki, it uses FSRS, the most advanced scheduling algorithm yet, to schedule reviews. The thing that makes hashcards unique: it doesn’t use a database. Rather, your flashcard collection is just a directory of Markdown files, like so: Cards/ Math.md Chemistry.md […]
Update Now: iOS 26.2 Fixes 20 Security Vulnerabilities, 2 Actively Exploited
Apple today released iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and macOS 26.2, all of which introduce new features, bug fixes, and security improvements. Apple says that the updates address over 20 vulnerabilities, including two bugs that are known to have been actively exploited. There are a pair of WebKit vulnerabilities that could allow maliciously crafted web content […]
AI was not invented, it arrived
For most of our lives, we have been taught to think of artificial intelligence as an invention. Something engineered. Something assembled deliberately, bolt by bolt, line by line, like a machine rolling off a factory floor. But there is another way to tell the story, one that feels stranger and, in some ways, more honest. […]
Zmij: Faster floating point double-to-string conversion
There comes a time in every software engineer’s life when they come up with a new binary-to-decimal floating-point conversion method. I guess my time has come. I just wrote one, mostly over a weekend: https://github.com/vitaut/zmij. It incorporates lessons learned from implementing Dragon4, Grisu and Schubfach along with a few new ideas from myself and others. […]
Illuminating the processor core with LLVM-mca
Originally posted as Fast TotW #99 on September 29, 2025 By Chris Kennelly Updated 2025-10-07 Quicklink: abseil.io/fast/99 The RISC versus CISC debate ended in a draw: Modern processors decompose instructions into micro-ops handled by backend execution units. Understanding how instructions are executed by these units can give us insights on optimizing key functions that are […]
AI and the ironies of automation – Part 2
In the previous post, we discussed several observations, Lisanne Bainbridge made in her much-noticed paper “The ironies of automation”, she published in 1983 and what they mean for the current “white-collar” work automation attempts leveraging LLMs and AI agents based on LLMs, still requiring humans in the loop. We stopped at the end of the […]
Vacuum Is a Lie: About Your Indexes
There is common misconception that troubles most developers using PostgreSQL: tune VACUUM or run VACUUM, and your database will stay healthy. Dead tuples will get cleaned up. Transaction IDs recycled. Space reclaimed. Your database will live happily ever after. But there are couple of dirty ”secrets” people are not aware of. First of them being […]
The Gorman Paradox: Where Are All the AI-Generated Apps?
In 1950, while discussing the recent wave of flying saucer reports over lunch with colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, physicist Enrico Fermi asked a simple question. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and – presumed at the time – a significant percentage have Earth-like habitable […]
Efficient Basic Coding for the ZX Spectrum
[Click here to read this in English ] Éste es el primero de una serie de artículos que explican los fundamentos de la (in)eficiencia de los programas en BASIC puro para el ZX Spectrum: I. Sobre los números de línea II. Sobre las variables III. Sobre las expresiones IV. Funcionalidades diversas y medida del tiempo […]
Show HN: A local-first memory store for LLM agents (SQLite)
VS Code Extension • Report Bug • Request Feature • Discord server Long‑term memory for AI systems. Self‑hosted. Local‑first. Explainable. Scalable. A full cognitive memory engine — not a vector database. Add Memory to AI/Agents in one line. 🔥 Spread the Word! Why OpenMemory? Traditional Vector DBs require extensive setup, cloud dependencies, and vendor […]