Skip to content
HomeVideosBooksBlogs
AllTop postsTopics
Podcasts
HistoryListsWatch laterLiked videosFollowing

The videos, books, blogs and podcasts Hacker News keeps recommending, all in one place.

VideosBooksBlogsPodcastsAboutPrivacySettings

Data from Hacker News, HackerTube, HackerBooks, HackerBlogs and Open Library. Credits · Not affiliated with Y Combinator.

HomeVideosBooksBlogsPodcasts
Ctrl K
    A

    Austin Walters

    austingwalters.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2013

    Austin Walters writes about software engineering topics like PostgreSQL search and epoll, alongside essays on COVID vaccine data, firearms, and investing.

    Visit blogHN submissions
    ProgrammingCulture & Society
    What HN says

    HN links it for technical posts and contested data essays; commenters criticize his views and cite a follow-up on vaccine risks.

    Stats for nerds
    21HN people shared it
    188linked in comments
    872story points
    Sep 2022last shared
    2014people per year2022

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      The Last Free Generation (2018)
      3 people · 60 points · first shared 2018 · 34 comments on HN
    2. 2
      Introduction to Markov Processes
      1 person · 55 points · first shared 2014 · 10 comments on HN
    3. 3
      A letter from my congressman
      1 person · 44 points · first shared 2013 · 12 comments on HN
    4. 4
      Please Excuse my Grammar
      1 person · 42 points · first shared 2014 · 36 comments on HN
    5. 5
      The Cache and Multithreading
      3 people · 37 points · first shared 2014 · 5 comments on HN
    6. 6
      Firearms by the Numbers
      2 people · 33 points · first shared 2020 · 8 comments on HN
    7. 7
      On Committing Suicide
      1 person · 33 points · first shared 2020 · 18 comments on HN
    8. 8
      Templating in Go
      1 person · 31 points · first shared 2014 · 12 comments on HN
    9. 9
      Trends on Hacker News: Programming Languages and Tools
      1 person · 28 points · first shared 2018 · 14 comments on HN
    10. 10
      Abstract Libraries in Go
      1 person · 28 points · first shared 2014 · 49 comments on HN

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • lettergramJan 2017

      First, I hold all my investments for a year then dump them (occasionally, I'll rebalance before a year). I've been doing this for 5 years, averaging 35% returns. I said 10% a year, because I'm assuming one down year I will "lose" significantly.

      I always do this in March, after my tax return, because that's my "play money". All the money I made from the prior years investments + tax return I usually dump into other investments that hold up over time i.e. gold, real estate, etc. or invest in my business.

      Here's this years, which has been unusually good:

      http://imgur.com/a/j8YWR

      I pick the high movers using a method I'm not going to describe at the moment. However, I am making a website which will help others invest as I do. It'll be a paid service, but I'm not going to charge outrageously. You can follow on my blog, I plan to release it sometime in late spring:

      http://austingwalters.com/

      Feel free to follow me, and I'll send out an update when I'm ready to release the stuff.

    • clearalMar 2014

      An Objectivist complaining about fairness. That's rich.

      "I hold to several key ideals, I hold that I am a man. I believe that there is nothing higher than myself, no god, I am a god, I can make the world into what I wish. I hold that I have no right to impede another human being and no one has a right to impede me. I aspire to be the best I can be and attempt to only deal with others who believe as I do. I work hard for everything I own and I intend to keep all I can. I am against taxes, I am against a welfare state, I am against anything which forces me to help others that I do not wish to help. What I am is an Objectivist of sorts. I never wish my freedom to be taken from me and will always be willing to fight for it if there is a battle I can win. I believe in reason, logic, and that greed is good." [1]

      [1] http://austingwalters.com/about/

    • spamizbadJun 2021

      Well, take the second link for example: https://austingwalters.com/covid19-vaccine-risks/

      1) The chart shown mixes up lipid concentrations for protein spikes from the original cited paper and data

      2) R00-R99 coded deaths will always be higher for "new" data. Over time, these are revised and coded differently. So if you look backwards from today, it will always seem like this number has gone way up the last month or so. The author notes this in his post (good), but leaves the original one in its place (also fine, but just be aware).

      The author's hypothesis is not supported by data, and the arguments put forth are based on misunderstanding or misinterpreting things.

      Also if the fear here is the mRNA vaccines are dangerous, there's always the more traditional Janssen (J&J) vaccine which does not use mRNA.

    • Philipp__Feb 2017

      From Bryan's interview it's clear they've solved the problem like that. From article I linked, it doesn't indicate so.

      Take a look here[1], at 'EVFILT_SIGNAL'. But does that mean that we have to manually attach signal to monitor, and then we receive "we're done". But that's kinda similar to what you have to do with epoll, the difference is that kqueue structure encapsulates functiona of 'epoll_wait' and 'epoll_ctl'?

      [1] https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=kqueue&sektion=2

      Edit: sorry for spamming with links, but I find these things really interesting, look here http://austingwalters.com/io-multiplexing/ specifically at 4 steps after kqueue code, I think that explains well. So it looks like we wait for signal 'done' after which we rewatch.

    • gruezNov 2020

      >Or Michigan’s mail in ballots: https://austingwalters.com/the-dead-vote-in-michigan/

      So the author turned up a grand total of... 5 "dead" voters, in a state where biden has a lead of 148,635 votes. That's unlikely to make a difference. The comments to that post also said it was likely a data-entry/clerical error, which makes the story even worse.

      >Basic argument is the house sets the rules. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court had not right to extend the deadline.

      I find this argument unconvincing. Laws set by the state legislature is normally bound by the courts. If we go with the literal interpretation, it would also mean that the legislature can enact a law saying "only white men can vote" and the courts wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

    • agentultraSep 2022

      Excellent article! I too have moved towards buying refurbished laptops only and using them for as long as I can. Thinkpads are a decent line for this as they're built to be user-serviceable and have a great market for parts.

      The hard part is actually the software. Many industry developers will definitely choose convenience and ease-of-development over most other priorities like efficiency. Operating systems as well.

      My refurbished Thinkpads all run stripped down Linux distributions. I recommend getting a good battery and tweaking the power settings to get the best life out of them (eg: https://austingwalters.com/increasing-battery-life-on-an-arch-linux-laptop-thinkpad-t14s/)

    Related

    Uber Engineering Blogeng.uber.com525 people

    Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL

    Uber Engineering Blog
    Company · last shared 2025
    The Pragmatic Engineernewsletter.pragmaticengineer.com292 people

    Inside the longest Atlassian outage

    The Pragmatic Engineer
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Aphyraphyr.com551 people

    Hexing the technical interview (2017)

    Aphyr
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Bret Victorworrydream.com936 people

    A brief rant on the future of interaction design (2011)

    Bret Victor
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Better Programmingbetterprogramming.pub319 people

    Three programmers got fired, including me, due to a single app crash

    Better Programming
    Publication · last shared 2025
    Austin Henleyaustinhenley.com64 people

    Challenging projects every programmer should try (2019)

    Austin Henley
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Rachel Krollrachelbythebay.com493 people

    fork() can fail

    Rachel Kroll
    Personal · last shared 2026
    Scattered Thoughtsscattered-thoughts.net186 people

    Against SQL

    Scattered Thoughts
    Personal · last shared 2026