Welcome to issue 122 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering deep learning, protocols vs. services, Raspberry Pi, Notepad vulnerability, AI slop, productivity paradoxes, Android and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday by Cam Pedersen
• Using an engineering notebook by Nicole Tietz
• The Little Learner: A Straight Line to Deep Learning by Daniel P. Friedman, Anurag Mendhekar
• I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers by Matthias Kirschner
• Use protocols, not services by Pablo Baeyens

Work less

• Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison by Michael Klements
• Claude Code is being dumbed down? by Yoshi
• Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
• Keep Android Open by linsui
• AI adoption and Solow’s productivity paradox by Sasha Rogelberg

Stay current

• I started programming when I was 7. I’m 50 now and the thing I loved has changed by James Randall
• ai;dr by Sid
• “Nothing ” is the secret to structuring your work by Steven van Gemert
• AI makes you boring by Viktor Löfgren
• AI is not a coworker, it’s an exoskeleton by Ben Gregory

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Welcome to issue 121 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering PCs refusing shut down, most popular blogs of 2025, Claude, tech monoculture, lessons from Google, booting from a vinyl record, agent orchestration and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Lessons from 14 years at Google by Addy Osmani
• High-Level Is the Goal by Ben Visness
• Unrolling the Codex agent loop by Michael Bolin
• Booting from a vinyl record by Bogin Jr.
• Agent orchestration for the timid by Mark Ferree

Work less

• The Most Popular Blogs of Hacker News in 2025 by Michael Lynch
• PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch by Carly Page
• Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them by Leila Clark
• Route leak incident on January 22, 2026 by Bryton Herdes and Tom Strickx
• The tech monoculture is finally breaking by Jason Willems

Stay current

• Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work by Simon Willison
• The Dilbert Afterlife by Scott Alexander
• Reading across books with Claude Code by Pieter Maes
• How I estimate work by Sean Goecke
• Proof of Corn by Seth Goldstein

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Welcome to our final edition of 2025!

With so many standout pieces published throughout the year, it’s easy for gems to slip by unnoticed. So we pulled together a curated roundup of the most essential reads you might have missed.

Enjoy this handpicked collection of 2025’s must‑read articles.

From all of us at Hacker Bits, wishing you warm holidays and a healthy, inspiring new year ahead!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Prompt engineering playbook for programmers by Addy Osmani
• Software essays that shaped me by Michael Lynch
• Free Programing Books
• Working on complex systems: What I learned working at Google by Teiva Harsanyi
• Push Ifs Up and Fors Down by Alex Kladov

Work less

• Why I Won’t Use AI by James King
• Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too by Marcus Hutchins
• Code like a surgeon by Geoffrey Litt
• Ask HN: SWEs how do you future-proof your career in light of LLMs?
• New junior developers can’t code by Namanyay Goel

Stay current

• A simple habit that saves my evenings by Alik Khilazhev
• The AI coding trap by Chris Loy
• The rise of judgement over technical skill by Alexander Kohlhofer
• Just Fucking Code by Lane Wagner
• My Colleague Julius by Ploum

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Welcome to issue 119 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering FreeBSD, CUDA, AI replacing jobs, code review mistakes, assembly, spoon theory, firing good workers, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Who needs Graphviz when you can build it yourself? by Ben Visness
• Do you know that there is an HTML tables API? by Christian Heilmann
• A brief look at FreeBSD by Yorick Peterse
• What Makes the Intro to Crafting Interpreters So Good? by Michael Lynch
• CUDA Ontology by James Akl

Work less

• Mistakes I see engineers making in their code reviews by Sean Goedecke
• How I stopped worrying and started loving the Assembly by Jonas Eschenburg
• Our investigation into the suspicious pressure on Archive.today by Andrey Meshkov
• The Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino
• Why top firms fire good workers by Sandra Knispel

Stay current

• Microsoft 365 Copilot – Arbitrary Data Exfiltration via Mermaid Diagrams by Adam Logue
• AI isn’t replacing jobs. AI spending is by Gary N. Smith and Jeffrey Funk
• What if you don’t need MCP at all? by Mario Zechner
• Gemini 3 by Sundar Pichai, Demis Hassabis, Koray Kavukcuoglu
• Nano Banana Pro by Naina Raisinghani

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Welcome to issue 118 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering software essays, neural audio codecs, AGI, cookies, coding theatre, simple coding habits, SQL anti-patterns, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Jemalloc Postmortem by Jason Evans
• Software essays that shaped me by Michael Lynch
• Free Programming Books
• Neural audio codecs: how to get audio into LLMs by Václav Volhejn
• How I bypassed Amazon’s Kindle web DRM by Pixelmelt

Work less

• The Programmer Identity Crisis by Simon Højberg
• Andrej Karpathy – It will take a decade to work through the issues with agents by Dwarkesh Patel
• Internet’s biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites
• Code like a surgeon by Geoffrey Litt
• Tell HN: OpenAI now requires ID verification and won’t refund API credits

Stay current

• The Theatre of Pull Requests and Code Review by Meks McClure
• The AI coding trap by Chris Loy
• A simple habit that saves my evenings by Alik Khilazhev
• Structured Procrastination by John Perry
• SQL Anti-Patterns by Jordan Goodman

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Welcome to issue 117 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering judgement over skill, makefiles, cognitive load, effective learning, WASM, motivating yourself, AI for seniors, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• The rise of judgement over technical skill by Alexander Kohlhofer
• Learn Makefiles by Chase Lambert
• AI agent lethal trifecta: private data, untrusted content, exfiltration vectors by Simon Willison
• Unit Testing Principles by Facundo Olano
• Why LLMs can’t really build software by Conrad Irwin

Work less

• Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling?
• Do the simplest thing that could possibly work by Sean Goedecke
• Cognitive load is what matters by Artem Zakirullin
• Effective learning: Rules of formulating knowledge by Piotr Wozniak
• We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds by Sascha Fast

Stay current

• WASM 3.0 Completed by Andreas Rossberg
• How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don’t want to do by Ashley Janssen
• Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI by Gal Elidan, Yael Haramaty
• AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger? by Can Elma
• The Elements of Code by John Mark Wilkinson

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Welcome to issue 116 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering browser fingerprinting, SQL Noir, writing design docs, DeepSeek-R1, vibe coding, AI hate, tricks of the trade, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting by Nitesh Saxena
• Writing documentation for AI: best practices by kapa.ai
• Show HN: SQL Noir – Learn SQL by solving crimes by Hristo Bogoev
• Wirth’s Law
• Writing a good design document by Grant Slatton

Work less

• Being a developer in the age of reasoning AI by Mani Doraisamy
• The Illustrated DeepSeek-R1 by Jay Alammar
• As an experienced LLM user, I don’t use generative LLMs often by Max Woolf
• I know when you’re vibe coding by Alex Kondov
• Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too by Marcus Hutchins

Stay current

• If you are useful, it doesn’t mean you are valued
• Getting Past Procrastination by Rahul Pandey
• I Build Software Quickly by Evan Hahn
• Never write your own date parsing library by Zach Leatherman
• Ask HN: What trick of the trade took you too long to learn?

Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, email us or find us on Twitter @hackerbits.

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Welcome to issue 115 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering GPUs, WebAssembly, not using AI, pay-per-crawl, “normal” engineers, agile, introvert networking, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Basic Facts about GPUs by Damek Davis
• WebAssembly: Yes, but for What? by Andy Wingo
• Self-taught engineers often outperform by Michael Bastos
• Log by time, not by count by John Scolaro
• Garbage collection for systems programmers by Matt Kline

Stay current

• Building Effective AI Agents by Erik Schluntz, Barry Zhang
• Why I Won’t Use AI by James King
• Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI by Andrej Karpathy
• Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots by Will Allen, Simon Newton
• How I keep up with AI progress by Atharva Raykar

Work less

• In praise of “normal” engineers by Charity Majors
• Agile Was Never Your Problem
• Writing Code Was Never the Bottleneck by Pedro Tavares
• How to Network as an Introvert by Aishwarya Goel
• The borrowchecker is what I like the least about Rust by Jakob Nybo Nissen

Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, email us or find us on Twitter @hackerbits.

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Welcome to issue 114 of Hacker Bits!

We have a great selection of articles this month covering complex systems, modelling, generative AI, critical thinking, agents, craftsmanship, bad managers, and so much more!

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

– Ray and Maureen

Learn more

• Cognitive Behaviors That Enable Self-Improving Reasoners
  This study teaches language models to think like humans – verifying, backtracking, and setting subgoals – to unlock smarter, self-improving AI without perfect answers.
  Author(s): Kanishk Gandhi, Ayush Chakravarthy, Anikait Singh, Nathan Lile, Noah D. Goodman
  
• For algorithms, a little memory outweighs a lot of time
  This article proves that a bit of memory can beat massive computation, challenging decades of algorithmic assumptions and unlocking new paths in complexity theory.
  Author(s): Ben Brubaker
  
• Prompt engineering playbook for programmers
  This playbook shows how to turn AI coding tools into reliable dev partners using expert prompts, rich context, examples, chaining, debugging, and anti-pattern avoidance.
  Author(s): Addy Osmani
  
• Frequent reauth doesn’t make you more secure
  Tailscale reveals how frequent reauthentication can frustrate users and inadvertently weaken security, advocating for smarter, real-time access management that enhances protection without the hassle.
  Author(s): Avery Pennarun
  
• Model Once, Represent Everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix
  Netflix’s Unified Data Architecture lets teams define data once and use it everywhere, boosting consistency, automation, and discovery.
  Author(s): Alex Hutter, Alexandre Bertails, Claire Wang, Haoyuan He, Kishore Banala, Peter Royal, Shervin Afshar

Work less

• The Google Willow Thing
  Google’s Willow chip showcases a leap in quantum fault tolerance with 105 qubits and error correction, pushing past classical limits and into true quantum supremacy.
  Author(s): Scott Aaronson
  
• The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
  A survey of 319 workers shows generative AI saves time but often dulls critical thinking, shifting focus from doing to overseeing.
  Author(s): Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee, Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, Nicholas Wilson
  
• The Myth of Developer Obsolescence
  AI isn’t replacing developers—it’s transforming them into architects of complex systems, as every tech revolution from NoCode to cloud to AI has shifted roles, not erased them.
  Author(s): Danilo Alonso
  
• AI Changes Everything
  Reveals how AI reshapes coding and society, turning developers into overseers amid irreversible global shifts.
  Author(s): Armin Ronacher
  
• How I program with agents
  Shows how AI agents, armed with tools and autonomy, evolve from helpers to active, self-directed developers.
  Author(s): David Crawshaw

Stay current

• Just Fucking Code
  Slams lazy AI coding and urges developers to ditch shortcuts and take pride in writing real, thoughtful code.
  Author(s): Lane Wagner
  
• The Case for Software Craftsmanship in the Era of Vibes
  Warns that vibe-driven, prompt-first coding may boost speed, but true mastery demands sweat, rigor, and intentional architecture – not just riding the AI wave.
  Author(s): Nathan Sobo
  
• Breaking My Security Assignments
  Student subverts their VM-based security assignments by gaming token checks, exposing how performative security can leave students clueless and learning hollow.
  Author(s): Abigail Pain
  
• Writing Toy Software Is a Joy
  Toy projects – small, fun builds like regex engines or emulators – ignite deep learning, spark joy, and sharpen dev skills by forcing hands-on exploration and resisting over-reliance on AI.
  Author(s): Joshua Barretto
  
• Ask HN: How to Deal with a Bad Manager?
  A talented engineer battles toxic management after a surprise demotion, sparking fierce advice on when to fight, flee, or endure.

Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, email us or find us on Twitter @hackerbits.

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