Photo by Koeb

Right-sizing precision – A proposal to add more flexibility to floats by allowing the exponent and mantissa to be variable-length. The precision can reflect the believed accuracy of the value, which is useful information to have around. I’ve been doing a lot of neural network optimization recently by tweaking the precision of large arrays, because memory access is far slower than the unpacking of non-standard formats, so the idea of throwing more logic gates in the core to minimize RAM traffic is appealing.

What’s wrong with GNU make? – I wish I could find a good alternative, cmake is deeply painful too. Is the process of compiling complex projects across multiple platforms fated to be a time-consuming nightmare, or are we just terrible at building tools for ourselves?

What’s your C migration plan? – I’ve been using C for over twenty years and I love it dearly, but after the latest round of security flaws writing new code in the language does feel close to professional malpractice. I’m reading up on Go for when I need compiled code without a JVM.

Wire-tapping the ruins of Pompeii – Using thousands of cheap sensors to keep an eye on decaying architecture.

World airports Voronoi diagram – When I’m flying long distance, I always have a background anxiety process running, figuring out where we could glide too if the engines fall off. This handy SVG animation takes away all the guesswork!