1. Why do railway tracks have crushed stones alongside them? Total comment counts : 31 Summary error Top 1 Comment Summary The article explains that keeping crushed stones under the tracks clean is important to prevent fouling, which could cause derailment. The stones move slightly as each train passes above them, and this helps keep the track straight and level. Fouling stops this effect, and railway maintenance involves digging out all the stones, washing them, and putting them back every 25 years....

1. Fq: Jq for Binary Formats Total comment counts : 19 Summary Fq is a tool, language and decoders for working with binary data that allows users to work with binary formats in the same way one would using jq. It can present data like a hex viewer, transform, slice and concatenate binary data. It also supports nested formats and has an interactive REPL with auto-completion. Fq was originally designed to query, inspect and debug media codecs and containers but has since then been extended to support a variety of formats like executables, packet captures and serialization formats like JSON, YAML, XML, ASN1 BER, Avro, CBOR, and protobuf....

1. Radiation-hardened Quine (2014) Total comment counts : 27 Summary The article describes a self-printing program written in Ruby called “robust quine” that works even if one character is deleted from the code. It includes instructions for generating a broken program and running it, and provides three versions of the program, including the latest “ascii-art” version. The program is available for use under the MIT License. Top 1 Comment Summary The article discusses the possibility of a script that can deal with general bit flips rather than just deleting one character randomly....

1. Notes apps are where ideas go to die (2022) Total comment counts : 78 Summary The article discusses how we use notes and bookmarking apps to remember things, but we actually use them to forget. By writing things down, we can clear our minds and organize our thoughts. Our desire to remember everything stems from an innate fear of loss. However, most of what we write down isn’t actually valuable....

1. Rarbg Is No More Total comment counts : 87 Summary error Top 1 Comment Summary The article discusses the history of RARBG, a Bulgarian tracker that was a big player in the illegal warez scene. The author expresses curiosity about how such illegal operations can remain anonymous online and avoid being caught, despite the maturity and commercialization of the internet. Top 2 Comment Summary The author wonders why torrent search is based on centralized websites, which can be taken down, instead of a distributed search that would solve the obvious weak link problem....

1. Setris – Tetris with Sand Physics Total comment counts : 33 Summary The article is about a downloadable game called Setris that is available for Windows and Linux. It combines the gameplay of Tetris with falling sand. Users have been leaving positive comments and suggestions for the game, including requests for a Mac version and a mobile version, as well as some bug reports and feedback on game mechanics....

1. Let us serve you, but don’t bring us down Total comment counts : 34 Summary The Internet Archive experienced an hour-long outage due to tens of thousands of requests per second for public domain OCR files launching from 64 virtual hosts on Amazon’s AWS services. Though the service was restored by blocking those IP addresses, another set of 64 addresses soon commenced the same kind of activity, leading to another hour of outage....

1. Why I Left Rust Total comment counts : 107 Summary The article explains why the author left Rust, stating that the organization did little to defend an expert in the industry who was treated poorly. The author expresses disappointment with the lack of resistance by Rust against the use of Rust as a weapon against an individual. They also mention that the decision to downgrade a keynote speaker who was the recent grant recipient of the Rust Foundation and highlighted Rust’s lack of diversity was disrespectful....

1. Building a Personal VoIP System Total comment counts : 31 Summary The article is a guide for setting up a digital telephone system using open-source tools such as Asterisk. It provides an overview of the Session Initialization Protocol (SIP) and how it works in local and external networks. The article suggests a solution to the problem of network address translation (NAT) in external networks by configuring a fixed RTP port range on each of the SIP devices and creating static port forwarding rules on the router for each device....

1. The Silent (R)evolution of SAT Total comment counts : 9 Summary The article cannot be accessed due to restrictions set by the site owner. An error code 1020 with the Ray ID 7cd9fb35acfe043c was received on attempting to visit the page. The data center is located in HK, and the IP address is 43.132.141.3. The error occurred on May 27, 2023, at 00:01:04 UTC. The website is protected by Cloudflare for security purposes....