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Transformer Explainer: LLM Transformer Model Visually Explained
Georgia Tech’s Polo Club walks through GPT-2’s Transformer stack—embeddings, multi-head attention, MLP, sampling—with an interactive in-browser model for learning how next-token prediction works.
4 min · 827 words
The Grand Unifying Architecture of Frontend
Ryan Carniato maps 30 years of frontend architectures onto one grid—navigation, content, affordances—covering HTMX, LiveView, SPAs, Astro, Server Components, and SolidJS 2.0.
11 min · 2,432 words
Protobuf, JSON Schema, and OpenAPI
Buf explains how Protobuf schemas can drive JSON Schema and OpenAPI via protoc plugins—extending one source of truth into documentation, validation, and HTTP APIs without maintaining parallel definitions.
6 min · 1,373 words
A brief history of Windows scroll bar shortcuts
Raymond Chen recounts Win32 scroll-bar basics, the Windows 7 right-click “Scroll Here” menu, and the little-known Shift+click jump—then notes how Electron/Chromium scrollbars mostly lost the context menu.
2 min · 462 words
Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived
FoxDev Studio rebuilds Visual FoxPro as a modern 64-bit runtime and IDE in Rust/WebAssembly: open old projects in place, keep .dbf data, bridge 32-bit libraries, and add FoxScript lambdas and HTTP routes.
3 min · 645 words
NobodyWho shows a local, 25-line Python sketch of Jev-style decision models: load a small GGUF, score labeled choices from logits, and print calibrated-looking probabilities without sending data to an API.
2 min · 419 words
Managing the Hidden Overhead of AI Software Engineering
Jessica Doering on verification debt: AI coding tools move the bottleneck from typing to review, why opening another agent terminal feels productive, and habits that spend reclaimed time on specs, docs, and understanding.
3 min · 725 words
A font that reads what you wrote
Rohan Adwankar introduces semfont: a small library that automatically highlights, colors, bolds, and italicizes text so typography tracks meaning as you write.
6 min · 1,295 words
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, IO) in PostgreSQL 19
Franck Pachot walks through PostgreSQL 19's new EXPLAIN IO stats—prefetch depth, request size, concurrency, and waits—using Little's Law to interpret async read streams.
4 min · 1,031 words
NEC V20 CPU: A bit of pep for an XT
A deep dive into the NEC V20 CPU as a drop-in 8088 upgrade for IBM PC/XT-class machines—what it changes, how fast it feels, and why collectors still care.
11 min · 2,628 words
Textbook review: Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?
Andrew Helwer reviews McKenney’s parallel programming textbook: what it covers well, where it frustrates, and who should actually read it.
7 min · 1,715 words
Everything Is a Stream: runtime composability over compile-time plugins
Antigma Labs stabilizes Ante v0.2.0’s Unix-inspired wire protocol—operations in, events out over stdio, sockets, or WebSockets—so agent engines stay separate from UIs while SemVer locks the streaming contract.
7 min · 1,520 words
Max Woolf shows how iterative agentic coding—prompting agents to repeatedly speed up Rust code—produced solutions faster than established libraries, with concrete methodology and caveats.
22 min · 5,140 words
Kit Langton explains OpenCode 2’s hot-reload architecture: plugins register catalog transformations up front so models, tools, and configs update live across sessions without restarts or cache busts.
5 min · 1,112 words
A practitioner walkthrough of type punning pitfalls: why a pointer cast that works at -O0 can silently break at -O2, and how C versus C++ rules diverge in treacherous ways.
3 min · 585 words
A file path looks like identity, but it is not: Ryan Galloway explains why treating paths as durable keys breaks pipelines, and what to use instead for content identity.
4 min · 1,016 words
The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art
There's a recurring argument made about how modern pixel art often doesn't look right. For example, TikTok user "mylifeisanrpg" has made a popular video in which he explains how pixel artists used to work with the innate physical properties of Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs). In short, he describes how the fuzziness of a CRT smoothed out the rough edges of low resolution pixels and made things look much less blocky than if viewed on a modern flatscreen display. This is correct. I also agree that modern, blocky pixel art often is a kind of misdirected, anachronistic nostalgia. However, there's a…
14 min · 3,171 words
Nobody pays for open source. We can force them to.
Thirty years of voluntary funding schemes haven't paid open source maintainers because asking doesn't scale. The real money already flows — to JFrog, Docker, Sonatype — at the registry layer. The fix: registries charge companies for supply (they already do), then route a slice automatically to the maintainers who make that supply worth having.
23 min · 5,396 words
Steve Klabnik digs into what programming languages mean by “arguments,” how calling conventions and type systems shape the word, and why debates about language design often talk past each other when the underlying models differ.
12 min · 2,769 words
Making portable my unportable transputer C compiler
Oscar Toledo recounts porting his 1990s transputer C compiler from 32-bit DJGPP assumptions to a modern 64-bit Mac—fixing int/pointer aliasing, FILE*, and self-hosting constraints along the way.
14 min · 3,196 words