Well, it’s been a few months, so here’s a new list of articles I’ve found and saved since the previous post. I’ve tried to keep the structure the same as before, minus the author names because of laziness. Once more, my standout articles are above the ..., while everything else is below it, unless the entire category is unsorted. It’s been a few months since I’ve read some of these articles, so the descriptions may be less than precise on occassion, sorry in advance!

If you click on a link and find that it’s dead, send me an email at milddermatographia@gmail.com, and I can send you a raw HTML copy; it won’t work well for articles that rely on images heavily, but better than nothing, I suppose. If you try clicking on a link that has (Gemini) beside it, click that link to find out about Gemini :)

Programming/Engineering/Robotics

Educational content with code snippets, workflows, concrete recommendations, etc.

• Do Low-level Optimizations Matter? - Explores optimizing sorting algorithms and the use of a swap-if function.
• 14,000x Speedup a.k.a. Computer Science For the Win - Simple-ish example of how knowledge of computer science theory can massively improve performance compared to a naive approach.
• Speeding up atan2f by 50x - More of the same, technical explanation of how to optimize the atan2f function.
• What scientists must know about hardware to write fast code - Super in-depth notebook on useful hardware knowledge. I still haven’t this fully, saving it for a rainy day.
• …
• The Whitworth Three Plates Method - How smooth surfaces are made using less smooth surfaces.
• This is How Science Happens - Great summary of controversy in the methodology of a scientific paper.
• No, a supercomputer won’t make your code run faster - More of a micro-rant than an informative article, but a reminder to take a look at why your code may be slow before throwing more hardware at the problem.
• Some reasons to measure - Why benchmarking in important.
• What is the copy-and-swap idiom? - Self-explanatory.
• What is Move Semantics? - Ditto.
• Technical blogs worth reading - A big ‘ol list of blogs.
• Creating and serving gemini capsules - What I used to get this blog up and serving gemposts.

Software/Science and Society

• … (unsorted category)
• The Internet Is A Potemkin Village: Proof Of Dead Internet Theory? - Maybe the internet isn’t as large as we think it is.
• Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse - Common scapegoats for eroding privacy and anonymity.
• Police to begin regular, warrant-free searches of homes for child abuse material - Speaking of… an analogy for Apple’s CSAM detection attempt.
• Keeping Infrastructure Free (Gemini) - Counter-argument to mega-corps paying open-source developers.
• A privacy war is raging in W3C - Details the conflicts in the W3C consortium between advertisement companies trying to push either overtly hostile measures or make consessions to keep some tracking, and everyone else.
• I critiqued my past papers on social media — here’s what I learnt - Author touches lightly on how publically criticising their work went, and then transtions to talking about the importance of critiquing our own academic work.
• Hollywood’s Secret Weapon: DRM - Why DRM is bad.
• Why I Wrote PGP - Philip Zimmermann on why he wrote PGP.
• The PGP Problem - Definitely miscategorized, but placed here due to the above article. A big list of technical issues with PGP.
• The Real Benefits Of Staying Off Social Media - Title.
• Is internet addiction eradicating the habit of reading? - No spoilers here.

Society

• Schelling fences on slippery slopes - Slippery slopes are themselves slippery slopes; how can we make decisions without invoking a comparison to and potentially risk this all-too-common, yet ofetn valid criticism?
• Why Afghan Forces So Quickly Laid Down Their Arms - Very informative article on Afghan society and how it relates to their surrending to the Taliban.
• The Shadowy Business of International Education - “Foreign students are lied to and exploited on every front. They’re also propping up higher education as we know it”.
• Review: Progress and Poverty - A book review which explores how poverty can continue to exist when such massive strides are made.
• Our Self-Imposed Scarcity of Nice Places - We could have more nice places, but give up once we see rich people move in first.
• Crush Point - What causes casualties in crowds, how companies ignore the issues and blame those who participate, and how to solve the issue.
• How The Birth of the Influencer Led to the Death of Hobbies - Individuals are less likely to pursue hobbies for the sake of self-satisfaction, when they might feel the pressure to do what gains the approval of others.
• There is a reason why famous people are often screwed up - Great retrospective by Tim Minchin on how fame messes with your head.
• Against Economics (Gemini) - Copy-Pasta of a David Graeber article on why economics is bullshit.
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (Gemini) - Rich people donating money after they’re already rich is bullshit.
• … (these are all great, the last one is just because it’s been forever since I’ve read it).
• Does capital at home matter more than capital at school? Social capital effects on academic achievement - How social capital at home and at school influence academic achievement.

Misc/Other

Fantasy, butterflies, pyramid schemes, deadly sausages, pepsi fighter jets, and more.

• False Hydra - One of the most terrifying RPG creatures.
• On Thud and Blunder - Hilarious article on dumb tropes and bullshit in heroic-fantasy novels.
• Tucker’s Kobolds - Kobolds can be scary if you play them right.
• The Gradual Extinction of Softness by Chantha Nguon with Kim Green - The author’s harrowing experience around the time of the Khmer Rouge.
• Please, Walk Down the Escalator - Article I found while writing my own escalator piece.
• What do you do after winning the lottery? - It’s not all fun and games; you’re likely screwed.
• I’m an alcoholic, it’s hard, and for some reason this capsule is the only place I’ve ever wanted to write about it (Gemini) - Very insightful for someone with no exposure to alcoholism.
• …
• William Shatner Describes His Experience in Space - Shatner has a way with words.
• On leaving California and the Silicon Valley - Critique of the bay area.
• Please, enough with the dead butterflies! - Most people are illustrating butterflies wrong.
• Who Owns My Name? - Article written by Amanda Knox about her experience.
• One Bad Apple - Technical and legal issues with Apple’s CSAM proposal.
• Better Than Free - The internet is a copying machine, and that’s a good thing.
• Quality and Effort - A good system can work wonders to reduce errors.
• The time Pepsi got sued for a $33m fighter jet - The title says it all.
• The Rise and Fall of Albania’s Pyramid Schemes - Wow, just wow.
• gail.com - gail.com.
• Burning out and quitting - The author’s experience with burnout.
• My Tungsten Cube - An article about owning a Tungsten cube. I don’t what I’m doing with my life at this point.
• Gombe Chimpanzee War - Donkey Kong v Donkey Kong.
• Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals? - A list of HNers favorite blogs.
• 2006: Dwarf Fortress - History of Dwarf Fortress.
• Working From Orbit - Author works in VR, gives tons of details on their setup and how it goes.
• We’re Hiring - Humour/parody piece on software culture.
• Last Exit From The Secret Sea - Escaping from a flooding cave deep underground.
• Telling time in the deep sea - How animals track time where the sun don’t shine.
• Fingerprints are Usernames, not Passwords - Fingerprints shouldn’t be enough to log in by themselves.
• The World’s Deadliest Thing - From sausages to botox.
• Aspen 20 – The SR-71 Blackbird Groundspeed Story - Fun little story about flexing while in a Blackbird.
• Why do dieters regain weight? - Calorie deprivation alters body and mind, overwhelming willpower.
• Hard worldbuilding vs soft worldbuilding, a study of Studio Ghibli (video) - Very insightful for someone who may have tried going a bit too much on the hard side for my own good.

Life Advice and Productivity

• … (unsorted category)
• Your Idea Is Brilliant, Your Idea Is Worthless - Ideas aren’t worth anything until they’re implemented.
• Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice - Title says it all.
• Scattered Thoughts on Why I Waste My Own Time - Top shelf theory, junk food, attention span, lack of evidence, and more. Very relatable.
• Staying warm and safe this winter (advice from a Canadian) - I live in a cold climate and still learned some things.
• I Never Lend People Money (Gemini) - Debt obligations shift relationships, it should never be anything but a gift.

Blogs, Small Web and Critiquing the Modern One

• … (unsorted category)
• You should write blogs - Self-explanatory.
• The Melancholy of Subculture Society - Subcultures give a degree of freedom that monocultures can’t, and more.
• Gemini and the Joy of Niche-ness (Gemini) - Small spaces are nice sometimes :)

Dead Links

• None this time! For now.