Pinned
This is a perfect piece of technical writing. alexharri.com/blog/ascii-r...
ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering
A look at how I used shape vectors to achieve sharp, high-quality ASCII rendering.
alexharri.com
January 17, 2026 at 6:07 PM
This is a perfect piece of technical writing. alexharri.com/blog/ascii-r...
Quick reminder that ChiSec is tonight, it's at Kaiser Tiger now (on Ogden in West Loop), starts at 7PM, no RSVPs just show up, I'll probably make it by around 8PM.
January 15, 2026 at 11:02 PM
Quick reminder that ChiSec is tonight, it's at Kaiser Tiger now (on Ogden in West Loop), starts at 7PM, no RSVPs just show up, I'll probably make it by around 8PM.
I wrote a thing. fly.io/blog/design-...
The Design & Implementation of Sprites
So that we may educate as well as horrify: the internals of our new Sprites execution platform.
fly.io
January 15, 2026 at 3:58 PM
I wrote a thing. fly.io/blog/design-...
Final SCW of 2025! We had Matt Bernhard on to talk about cryptographic voting systems, in the wake of the IACR election. (Everybody I voted for in the new election won! Woo!)
NEW EPISODE!
The IACR lost the keys to decrypt their encrypted election results. We welcome Matt Bernhard who works on secure voting systems to explain which Helios bits are homomorphically additive or not and more:
securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/i...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_...
The IACR lost the keys to decrypt their encrypted election results. We welcome Matt Bernhard who works on secure voting systems to explain which Helios bits are homomorphically additive or not and more:
securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/12/30/i...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=euw_...
The IACR Can
The International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) held their regular election using secure voting software called Helios…and lost the keys to decr...
securitycryptographywhatever.com
December 31, 2025 at 5:10 AM
Final SCW of 2025! We had Matt Bernhard on to talk about cryptographic voting systems, in the wake of the IACR election. (Everybody I voted for in the new election won! Woo!)
Rust people should be embarrassed by the people trying to argue that Rust is the only truly memory-safe mainstream language. Far and away the cringiest RESF trope.
December 26, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Rust people should be embarrassed by the people trying to argue that Rust is the only truly memory-safe mainstream language. Far and away the cringiest RESF trope.
They should use Vince Guaraldi's instrumenal Joe Cool diagnostically. If you can hear it and not at some point grin, something's clearly wrong.
December 13, 2025 at 7:26 AM
They should use Vince Guaraldi's instrumenal Joe Cool diagnostically. If you can hear it and not at some point grin, something's clearly wrong.
Quick reminder that ChiSec is tonight at 7PM. It's at Kaiser Tiger, at Randolph and Ogden (just down the street from where Twisted Spoke was).
November 20, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Quick reminder that ChiSec is tonight at 7PM. It's at Kaiser Tiger, at Randolph and Ogden (just down the street from where Twisted Spoke was).
No he didn't. He said other bad shit, which isn't reported here because it's not as exciting as the made-up shit. Shun accounts that do this.
JD Vance calls ibuprofen "useless medication" and implies it's not "necessary, safe and effective."
November 13, 2025 at 4:22 PM
No he didn't. He said other bad shit, which isn't reported here because it's not as exciting as the made-up shit. Shun accounts that do this.
Three dumb ideas that recur constantly in discussions among nerds about intelligence:
(1) IQ tests are illegal in hiring.
(2) There exist national average IQ numbers.
(3) Intelligence research is suppressed.
(1) IQ tests are illegal in hiring.
(2) There exist national average IQ numbers.
(3) Intelligence research is suppressed.
November 9, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Three dumb ideas that recur constantly in discussions among nerds about intelligence:
(1) IQ tests are illegal in hiring.
(2) There exist national average IQ numbers.
(3) Intelligence research is suppressed.
(1) IQ tests are illegal in hiring.
(2) There exist national average IQ numbers.
(3) Intelligence research is suppressed.
I wrote a thing, about a project you should knock out when you get 45 minutes free. fly.io/blog/everyon...
You Should Write An Agent
They're like riding a bike: easy, and you don't get it until you try.
fly.io
November 6, 2025 at 8:55 PM
I wrote a thing, about a project you should knock out when you get 45 minutes free. fly.io/blog/everyon...
@oakparknerd.bsky.social Mask off for Stopeck, I guess.
October 2, 2025 at 2:57 AM
@oakparknerd.bsky.social Mask off for Stopeck, I guess.
Have you moved to the district yet?
It’s official: AIPAC is trying to buy my election to keep me out of Congress.
Apparently, I’m a “dangerous detractor”... by believing Palestinians (like myself and my family) deserve basic human rights.
But we’re not going to let AIPAC win.
Apparently, I’m a “dangerous detractor”... by believing Palestinians (like myself and my family) deserve basic human rights.
But we’re not going to let AIPAC win.
September 30, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Have you moved to the district yet?
Simon calls out this Dan Abramov comment about how ATproto is qualitatively different from ActivityPub. Maybe he's right. But I look at ActivityPub/Mastodon as a midpoint between blog/RSS and Twitter, and I don't remember the blogosphere being ineffective.
simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/27/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/27/...
A quote from Dan Abramov
Conceptually, Mastodon is a bunch of copies of the same webapp emailing each other. There is no realtime global aggregation across the network so it can only offer a fragmented …
simonwillison.net
September 29, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Simon calls out this Dan Abramov comment about how ATproto is qualitatively different from ActivityPub. Maybe he's right. But I look at ActivityPub/Mastodon as a midpoint between blog/RSS and Twitter, and I don't remember the blogosphere being ineffective.
simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/27/...
simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/27/...
New Neko is fine. Good. The music has gotten more interesting. This is better than the last album with all the cigarettes on it. Still not clear how you can ever outdo Fox Confessor.
September 27, 2025 at 11:56 PM
New Neko is fine. Good. The music has gotten more interesting. This is better than the last album with all the cigarettes on it. Still not clear how you can ever outdo Fox Confessor.
Called this. www.galois.com/articles/cla...
Claude Can (Sometimes) Prove It
www.galois.com
September 20, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Called this. www.galois.com/articles/cla...
Good Morning Spider is an underrated album.
September 17, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Good Morning Spider is an underrated album.
New frontiers in carnitas-making. Today: took the fat cap/skin off in a whole sheet, sliced that into big cubes, rendered it for a couple hours, tried not to eat all of that, then browned the shoulder in the fat, cubed up, threw the skin in, and braised it off. I've been doing the fat cap all wrong!
September 13, 2025 at 11:52 PM
New frontiers in carnitas-making. Today: took the fat cap/skin off in a whole sheet, sliced that into big cubes, rendered it for a couple hours, tried not to eat all of that, then browned the shoulder in the fat, cubed up, threw the skin in, and braised it off. I've been doing the fat cap all wrong!
What the FUCK, Microsoft?
September 11, 2025 at 8:55 PM
What the FUCK, Microsoft?
Oogie Boogie bug/uncovered version
YouTube video by kiddodeathsoul667
www.youtube.com
September 9, 2025 at 6:54 PM
My basic thing is if you're going to write a whole big splashy blog post about how a piece of anti-surveillance tech has a vulnerability in it, you should first be sure it has that vulnerability in it. It'll look pretty grim if you write the piece and it doesn't.
September 9, 2025 at 12:29 AM
My basic thing is if you're going to write a whole big splashy blog post about how a piece of anti-surveillance tech has a vulnerability in it, you should first be sure it has that vulnerability in it. It'll look pretty grim if you write the piece and it doesn't.
ANSI art is back, baby. simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/2/r...
Rich Pixels
Neat Python library by Darren Burns adding pixel image support to the Rich terminal library, using tricks to render an image using full or half-height colored blocks. Here's the key …
simonwillison.net
September 5, 2025 at 3:11 PM
ANSI art is back, baby. simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/2/r...
I don't get what Ken White thinks he stands to gain by wading into these social media slapfights between progressives and liberals. Lakshya Jain's first couple polls for The Argument haven't impressed me, but he's not a comic book villain. The people who think he is hate Ken and everything believes.
September 5, 2025 at 1:54 AM
I don't get what Ken White thinks he stands to gain by wading into these social media slapfights between progressives and liberals. Lakshya Jain's first couple polls for The Argument haven't impressed me, but he's not a comic book villain. The people who think he is hate Ken and everything believes.
Somewhere on Kyle Kingsbury's site there's a link to a "What are birds?" video (it is what it sounds like) and I always assumed it was just a meme everyone knew but the Internet does not know about this meme and it lives permanently in my brain and I'm constantly having to go find it on his site.
September 5, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Somewhere on Kyle Kingsbury's site there's a link to a "What are birds?" video (it is what it sounds like) and I always assumed it was just a meme everyone knew but the Internet does not know about this meme and it lives permanently in my brain and I'm constantly having to go find it on his site.
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: heart of the Prairie Demoscene.
September 4, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois: heart of the Prairie Demoscene.