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Seeing the Matrix: A First-Principles Approach to Computer Architecture

from Confessions of a Code Addict [alt+shift+b] in programming

Building a mental model of computer architecture from first principles
5th Apr 2025

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x86 Addressing Modes, Part 2: Indirect, Indexed, and Offset-based Modes

In this final part on addressing modes, we learn about indirect, indexed and offset-based addressing modes along with some interesting examples and exercises.

9th Aug 2026 • 1 votes
Why Git Has a Variable Named false_but_the_compiler_does_not_know_it

A small C trick that keeps Clang from flagging valid code as unreachable

3rd Jun 2026 • 1 votes
Virtual Memory: A Deep Dive into Page Tables, TLBs, and Linux Internals

From page faults to NUMA topology: how the Linux kernel manages memory, and what that means for the performance of data-intensive systems.

10th May 2026 • 1 votes
How PyTorch Generates Random Numbers in Parallel on the GPU

A deep dive into Philox and counter-based RNGs

18th Dec 2025 • 1 votes
x86 Addressing Modes, Part 1 — Immediate and Direct Access

The foundations of memory access: static allocation, addressing modes, and the first steps toward low-level thinking.

12th Nov 2025 • 1 votes

More in programming

If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?

Yesterday, I received this email as a response to You Can't Vibe Code Love. It's such a remarkable and powerful statement that I asked permission to share it here, in its entirety, with personal information redacted: Hey Jeff, Hope you and your family are doing well.

yesterday • 1 votes
You are still valuable

A frustrated Reddit post about being a condom between an AI and production made the rounds in our team. Here is why I think the opposite is true and what it means for how we review code, plan work and think.

2 days ago • 2 votes
A Short Update on Designing for Foldable Devices

And here we are three years after I wrote about the Google Pixel Fold being announced, followed now with the announcement of the iPhone Duo...(I have questions about the naming by the way). Four years ago I was talking about web primitives in the platform for the Surface Duo. My how time flies. There are CSS media features, a Viewport Segments API, a Device Posture API but Chromium based browsers are the only ones currently supporting these things. I haven't been able to find any signal yet on whether Safari will support these things in the web platform as the developer docs focus on application development. If you're interested in trying out the platform features, you can emulate the Surface Duo and Galaxy Z Fold in the developer tools. And if you're thinking, do I really have to have my website adapt to two screens? The answer is no. Adding a design to an application or dual screen makes sense if you have an experience that has two simulataneous contexts that are useful e.g. a list of email messages/inbox on one screen, an open message, email thread or email composer on the other. Here's one of my talks from 2022 if you're interested in learning more about what's available in the browser for dual screen/foldable devices. Happy building :)

2 days ago • 1 votes
Mommy bloggers react

After a write-up in the New York Times, Mommy Bloggers had two options. Either lean in, or step back. Given how popular it became after that, it's not hard to guess which option they chose. The post Mommy bloggers react appeared first on The History of the Web.

4 days ago • 2 votes
Haunt 0.4.0 released

I'm quite a bit late on this one, but Haunt version 0.4.0 was released released back in July. I haven't had much time for blogging, but I'm catching up now! This release contains a small set of improvements and bug fixes since the 0.3.0 release in 2024. About Haunt Haunt is a static site generator that uses the Guile Scheme as its configuration language. It aims to be simple, functional, and extensible. Features include: Easy blog and Atom/RSS feed generation Markdown post support Simple development server for viewing edits before publishing Purely functional build process User extensibility Notable changes Added support for HTML in Markdown documents. This was a long time coming because guile-markdown did not support it and the library was abandoned by the original maintainer. As part of my work at Spritely, we forked it, implemented the relevant portions of the CommonMark specification, and released it. Spritely's guile-commonmark fork is now considered to be the official upstream by Guix and others. A further consequence of this is that guile-lib is now a required dependency for building Haunt as we need the (htmlprag) module to parse Markdown documents with embedded HTML. html->shtml from guile-lib's (htmlprag) module is now used instead of xml->sxml in the HTML reader. It was silly of me to use xml->sxml for this purpose years ago, but at the time I wanted guile-lib to be an optional dependency. Added haunt new subcommand for creating a new site. Added default directory, template, and prefix arguments to flat-pages procedure. Added support for index metadata flag to flat pages for pretty URLs. Flat pages now receive all page metadata, not just the page title. This is a breaking change from 0.3.0. Added .scm as an additional extension for sxml-reader. make-file-extension-matcher now supports multiple extensions. Fixed emission of <script> and <style> elements. Fixed handling of no available reader in flat pages builder. Fixed unreachable error handling clause when a reader is not found for a post. Fixed default blog theme template missing an <html> tag. Fixed overloaded -h option in haunt serve. Deprecated post in Skribe reader in favor of document. Download Haunt 0.4.0 is already available in Guix: guix pull guix install haunt See the Haunt project page for information on how to build from source. Thank you to Camilo Rodrigues, Noé Lopez, jgart, Jakob L. Kreuze, and Daniel Meißner for their contributions to this release! Happy haunting!

4 days ago • 1 votes
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