Gwern.net — Computer Science & Programming

Hacking Smartphone ESP Apps · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Illustration of how to think about security and reward-hacking by walking through ways to fake psychic powers even on someone else’s smartphone and ESP application. Supply-chain attacks, sleight of hand, bugs…

Gwtar: a static efficient single-file HTML format · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Gwtar is a new polyglot HTML archival format which provides a single, self-contained, HTML file which still can be efficiently lazy-loaded by a web browser. This is done by a header’s JavaScript making HTTP range requests. It is used on Gwern.net to serve large HTML archives.

Towards a Better Hutter Prize, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Hutter Prize compression benchmark has not led to any progress towards AGI because it is too small. To work, it needs to be much larger, move to temporally heldout data rather than compression bounds, and provide a way to share compute/progress (eg. including side information from winners or ensembles).

‘Tools For Thought’ Failure, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The tools-for-thought movement has, like earlier attempts, largely failed. Users wind up doing a lot of work to make the tools work, and save little thought with their fancy notes. The tools are just too stupid—we need AI!

Can You Unsort Lists for Diversity? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of whether there is a general ‘unsorting’ list operation to avoid redundancy, repetition, or lack of novelty. Probably not, there are too many things you might want to maximize or minimize.

Utext: Rich Unicode Documents · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

An esoteric document proposal: abuse Unicode to create the fanciest possible ‘plain text’ documents.

Proposal: Hybridizing Forums/Wikis, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Internet Search Tips · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A description of advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books, with real-world examples.

Archiving URLs · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Archiving the Web, because nothing lasts forever: statistics, online archive services, extracting URLs automatically from browsers, and creating a daemon to regularly back up URLs to multiple sources.

Surprisingly Turing-Complete · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A catalogue of software constructs, languages, or APIs which are unexpectedly Turing-complete; implications for security and reliability.

The sort –key Trick · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Commandline folklore: sorting files by filename or content before compression can save large amounts of space by exposing redundancy to the compressor. Examples and comparisons of different sorts.

How Many Computers Are In Your Computer? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Any ‘computer’ is made up of hundreds of separate computers plugged together, any of which can be hacked. I list some of these parts.

Computer Optimization: Your Computer Is Faster Than You Think · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Compilation of links demonstrating that it is common to find order-of-magnitude speedups in software, especially when designed carefully for (extraordinarily powerful) contemporary computer hardware with end-to-end principled thinking.

Predicting Google closures · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Analyzing predictors of Google abandoning products; predicting future shutdowns

Internet WiFi improvement · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After putting up with slow glitchy WiFi Internet for years, I investigate improvements. Upgrading the router, switching to a high-gain antenna, and installing a buried Ethernet cable all offer increasing speeds.

Alerts Over Time · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Does Google Alerts return fewer results each year? A statistical investigation

Choosing Software · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Criteria making software useful long-term & worth learning in detail

Resilient Haskell Software · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons learned about bitrot in Haskell software