1. tolower() with AVX-512
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The article discusses the use of SIMD instructions for efficient string processing. Specifically, it focuses on the utilization of masked loads and stores for handling small strings in SIMD vector registers. The article mentions that certain SIMD instruction sets, such as ARM SVE and AVX-512-BW, support useful masked loads and stores at the byte level. The author explores using AVX-512-BW instructions to implement a “tolower()” function that can process 64 bytes at a time. They provide code snippets and explanations of how the function works. The article also includes benchmarks comparing the performance of different string processing functions, with the tolower64 function consistently performing well.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the “unsafe read beyond of death” trick in Rust and LLVM, which is considered undefined behavior. This means that compilers can assume it doesn’t happen for optimization purposes, leading to unexpected results. The only solution to this is to use inline assembly. The article can be found at the provided link.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the competition between AMD’s AVX512 implementation and Intel’s upcoming AVX10. It mentions that while Intel’s AVX10 aims to resolve their core situation, AMD has taken a better approach by using full width or double-pumped 256bit as appropriate for the situation and making the API seamless. The gains described in the article are achieved on a double-pumped Zen4 core. The frustration is expressed towards Intel for heavily market-segmenting support for AVX512, which hampers its adoption in broad-based client code.
2. ps aux written in bash without forking
Total comment counts : 16
Summary
The article discusses a tool that can be helpful when facing a situation where you are unable to spawn new processes on a machine while using a bash shell. The tool allows users to simulate access to a working “ps aux” command. It claims to work on all machines in every situation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the difficulty of aligning columns in computer programming. The author explains that even a seemingly simple function to align columns can be complicated and time-consuming to implement. They provide an example in Python and express frustration at the convoluted and bug-prone nature of the code. Overall, the article highlights the challenges involved in aligning columns in programming.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses an interview question related to bash/linux. The question asks what to do when all pids are taken and you cannot spawn any new processes. The author suggests looking into the /proc/[pid]/ filesystem to see which processes are exhausting the PID space. They also mention that kill is a bash builtin and does not require forking a new process. The article concludes by mentioning a script that parses /proc without needing to spawn another bash subshell process.
3. Higher-kinded bounded polymorphism in OCaml (2021)
Total comment counts : 3
Summary
The article explains that although OCaml does not directly support higher-kinded polymorphism, it is still possible to express it using various methods. The article provides different ways of expressing higher-kinded polymorphism and also discusses how to avoid it. It introduces the concept of higher-order functions and demonstrates how they can be used to perform operations on collections of numbers. The article then discusses folding over lists of different types and introduces the idea of a parameterized record type to represent operations on lists of various types. It shows how the concept of a monoid can be used to generalize the folding operation. The article also discusses how different types of collections, such as files, strings, arrays, and sequences, can be folded over in the same way as lists. It introduces the concept of a higher-kind polymorphic type constructor and explains how it can be used to generalize the folding operation even further. The article concludes by mentioning that higher-kind type variables are not possible in OCaml and describes alternative approaches to achieve similar functionality.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Type aliases pose a challenge with type equality, as they turn it into a higher-order unification problem, which is not solvable. However, the practical implications of this issue, apart from slowing down the type-checker, are uncertain.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a code snippet written in F# and the author’s confusion regarding the signature of a specific union case. The code line in question adds a union case called List_name to an extensible type called app. The author is unsure whether the parameter x in (List_name x) is supposed to be a list or a function.
4. SVG Triangle of Compromise
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
The article discusses the advantages and challenges of using SVGs on the web. SVGs can be referenced via an tag and behave like any other image, allowing for caching and display customization. SVGs defined via an tag can be styled with CSS and inherit the text color of their parent element. They can also have hover states and dynamic styling applied via JavaScript. However, inline SVGs cannot be cached, so using an to reference a separate HTML file containing the tag is suggested. This introduces the issue of determining the dimensions of the , which can be solved with JavaScript. The article also mentions other ways to reference SVGs, such as using comments and webmentions.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues that the issue is not specifically related to the <svg> tag, but rather the difficulty of including HTML snippets from other files in HTML. The author suggests that if HTML allowed for easy inclusion of external HTML snippets, similar to using the <svg> tag, it would improve caching and performance. Although this functionality can be achieved with templating languages, the author believes that implementing it at the HTML layer would result in better caching by the browser.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses using sprite files for conditional styling of icons in order to avoid visible delays when changing between states. The author suggests using <defs> and <use> tags with SVG to create the sprite files. They bundle two-state icons into a single SVG file and use the object-position: left/right property on the <img> tag to switch between the variants. CSS animations can also be added for further customization.
5. STS-93: We don’t need any more of those (2014)
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
This article is about the launch of the Columbia Space Shuttle mission STS-93, commanded by Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a Space Shuttle mission. The launch was delayed by 7 minutes due to communication system problems. Despite some minor flaws and issues with the spacecraft, the launch proceeded. The mission carried the heaviest payload the shuttle had ever launched, the Chandra X-ray observatory. The article highlights that real spaceships are not flawless and are made and maintained by fallible human beings.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Sorry, but I cannot access external websites or open links. If you can provide the text from the article, I would be happy to help summarize it for you.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the differences between building aircraft and spacecraft. It mentions that building an aircraft involves standard bolts, procedures, and testing, while building a spacecraft like the shuttle requires more manual procedures and tinkering due to the harsher conditions it faces. The article highlights the incredible feat of spacecraft not crashing more often.
6. The Tech of Planetary Annihilation: ChronoCam (2013)
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The article discusses a specific feature, the ChronoCam, in the real-time strategy game, Planetary Annihilation. The ChronoCam is a live replay system that allows players to jump back to any point in the game, play in slow/fast motion, scrub the timeline, and even play in reverse. The article also discusses the game engine and the architecture that enables the ChronoCam feature. The game engine is custom code written from scratch, and the architecture is a client-server model that allows for massive games. The article also compares different game engine models, such as lock step synchronous and client-server, and explains why the client-server model was chosen for Planetary Annihilation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author is discussing the fate of the game Supreme Commander: FA and expressing surprise that they have never heard of Planetary Annihilation. They mention that they still play Supreme Commander: FA but believe that Supreme Commander 2 is terrible and question how it ended up that way with Chris Taylor still involved in its development.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mentions a game called Achron which had a time-scrubbing mechanic to support time travel. Players were able to send units back in time to attack enemies before they could build defenses. Time jumps required energy and paradoxes were resolved by wavefronts moving forward in time faster than 1s per second. The overall opinion of the game is that it was not very good.
7. Dazed and Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of ReCAPTCHAv (2023)
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
The arXiv Accessibility Forum is an upcoming event in September that is free, open to all, and fully remote. It aims to promote accessibility for arXiv, a platform for sharing scientific research papers. The event encourages collaboration and the development of new features for arXiv through its framework called arXivLabs. This framework is committed to values such as openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. The article also mentions the ability to receive status notifications for arXiv via email or Slack.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article claims that reCAPTCHAv2 is not just a security service, but rather a way for Google to profit from image-labeling labor and tracking cookies for advertising and data. It estimates that over 13 years, 819 million hours of human time has been spent on reCAPTCHA, equivalent to at least $6.1 billion USD in wages. The article also suggests that Google has potentially earned $888 billion USD from cookies and $8.75-32.3 billion USD per sale of their labeled data set.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the cost and security of reCAPTCHAv2 and concludes that it is expensive and lacks security. The authors suggest that reCAPTCHAv2 and similar technologies should be deprecated. However, the reader disagrees with the conclusion, stating that reCAPTCHAv2 still offers some level of security against unsophisticated actors. They also argue that finding valid alternatives is necessary before abandoning captcha entirely. They liken the conclusion to claiming that locks offer no security because lockpicks exist, but acknowledge that both locks and captcha provide some security against unsophisticated actors.
8. Movable tree CRDTs and Loro’s implementation
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
This article discusses the challenges and implementation difficulties of managing hierarchical relationships in distributed systems and collaborative software. It focuses on the challenges of Movable Tree CRDTs, which involve handling conflicts and ensuring user expectations are met. The article mentions different software solutions that offer support for managing hierarchical data structures and discusses various approaches to conflict resolution. It also provides examples of how Dropbox and Figma handle conflicts in movable trees. The article then introduces Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) as an alternative approach and highlights two CRDT-based approaches for movable trees. Overall, the article emphasizes the complexity of managing hierarchical relationships in distributed and collaborative environments and explores different strategies to address these challenges.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the development of a new multiplayer editor for tasks and notes. The editor supports both text and outliner operations, with the outliner features turning the document into a large tree structure. The system syncs changes between clients and the server using an operation called “insmov” (move-or-insert). When a client is online, it can sync changes to the server, and the server sends back a list of all changes since the last sync. The client then undoes any previous insmov changes in its own changeset and applies the received changes in the correct order. The insmov tuple includes a parent and a previous sibling guid, allowing for sorting of tree operations. Most of the time, undoing operations is not necessary, except when there are insmov changes that the client is not aware of. This is more likely to occur when reconnecting to wifi after a long flight, rather than when updates are pushed in real-time.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author has open sourced a React Table Library focused on tree operations for a freelance client. The library allows for the manipulation of a folder/file tree structure with a large number of nodes. The author reflects on the challenges and constraints involved in implementing a nested view with many nodes. The library can be found at react-table-library.com.
9. Understanding the design of the the Super Nintendo video system
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
The article could not be found on the server. Error generated by Mod_Security.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the significance of the number 224 in video game graphics. It explains that 224 is evenly divisible by 16, making it compatible with tile-based rendering systems. The article also mentions that popular gaming systems like the NES and SNES had a resolution of 256x224, while the arcade version of Pac-man had a resolution of 288x224. This led to discrepancies and challenges when trying to recreate the Pac-man experience on different platforms. The author reflects on their own experience learning about game programming and realizing the constraints and limitations of the hardware.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article provided is about the architecture of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is written by Rodrigo Copetti and can be found at the given link.
10. SDcard wear leveling and translation layers (2014)
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
This article discusses the internal design of an SD card and how it operates. The article explains that the SD card runs on flash memory, but the user doesn’t need to worry about the complexities of flash memory. The article also describes the boot process of the SD card, including the voltage check and interface selection. Once in the transfer mode, the SD card handles I/O requests like reading, writing, and erasing sectors. The article also explains the translation layer, which maps virtual addresses to physical addresses in the flash memory. The translation layer is responsible for remapping addresses and managing the erase process. The article concludes by discussing the flash translation layer algorithm for writing data.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article tells the story of a team tasked with dismantling broken SD cards to determine why they stopped working. One particular incident involved a batch of cards that stored their firmware on the same data flash, resulting in a bug that caused the wear leveling code to partially overwrite the firmware when the card became full.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the difficulty of accessing the full specifications of SD cards without joining the SD Association, which comes with an annual cost of $2500.