Top all-time · #162
Bruce Dawson
Personal blog · randomascii.wordpress.comprogrammingsystems
Bruce Dawson writes Random ASCII, a personal blog at randomascii.wordpress.com about programming and systems. Since 2011, 276 different Hacker News readers have linked it 451 times, most often “There are only four billion floats, so test them all (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-11-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bruce Dawson's blog for deep technical detail on native code, Windows and CPU performance, timers, floating point and multithreading, often as a source for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Forecast for randomascii: programming, tech topics, with a chance of unicycling
Most-linked posts?
- There are only four billion floats, so test them all (2014)20 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2017-08-15
- /15 people · 17 mentions · first linked 2016-09-19
- Floating-Point Determinism (2013)15 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2014-02-15
- 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse13 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2017-07-10
- Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 36011 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2018-01-08
- /2015/09/24/etw-central/9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2017-07-08
- Intel Underestimates Error Bounds by 1.3 quintillion (2014)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2016-03-19
- Arranging Invisible Icons in Quadratic Time9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-02-16
- Comparing floating-point numbers (2012)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-11-16
- Comparing Floating Point Numbers (2012)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2012-03-01
What Hacker News says?
Remember this story from a few days ago? https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2021/02/16/arranging-invis... I've seen plenty of interesting bugs, best I found personally was a compiler that was outputting files 1 byte at a time. Games are riff with these sorts of bugs, but the volume of released games vs other types of software makes any sort of comparison unfair.
Comment linking /2021/02/16/arranging-invisible-icons-in-quadratic-time/
on “How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%”Submitted 24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse as a story · 1011 points
HN discussionPlease don't compute speed-up like that. Old time: 6 minutes (360 seconds). New time: 1 minute and 50 seconds (110 seconds). Speed-up calculated by article author: 1-110/360=0.694 (69.4% saved). Speed-up calculated by me: 360/110=3.27 (3 times faster). Please calculate it the other way around. It makes great difference when you say you made something 10× faster than when you say you saved 90% of work even if both me…
Comment linking /2018/02/04/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-performance/
on “How I cut GTA Online loading times by 70%”Submitted Why modern software is slow as a story · 645 points
HN discussionhttps://randomascii.wordpress.com/2024/10/01/life-death-and-... https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/vestibular-dysf...
Comment linking /2016/10/17/vestibular-dysfunction-or-how-i-went-half-deaf/
on “How a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2”Submitted 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email as a story · 629 points
HN discussionThat depends https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/float-precision...
Comment linking /2012/03/08/float-precisionfrom-zero-to-100-digits-2/
on “Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments”Submitted Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 360 as a story · 606 points
HN discussionIt can be detected analytically, but you can’t directly query the CPU for throttle state. https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/defective-heat-...
Comment linking /2013/08/06/defective-heat-sinks-causing-garbage-gaming/
on “A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance”Submitted There are only four billion floats, so test them all (2014) as a story · 501 points
HN discussionChrome may be killing your battery to make it feel "peppier" https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-r...
Comment linking /2013/07/08/windows-timer-resolution-megawatts-wasted/
on “Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox”Submitted O(n^2), again, now in Windows Management Instrumentation as a story · 501 points
HN discussionRunning down the battery is a well known feature of Chrome on on Windows https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/windows-timer-r...
Comment linking /2013/07/08/windows-timer-resolution-megawatts-wasted/
on “Fuck It, I'm Going Back to Firefox”Submitted 63 Cores Blocked by Seven Instructions as a story · 480 points
HN discussionThe 'strn' functions are wrong, stop using them. https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/stop-using-strn...
Comment linking /2013/04/03/stop-using-strncpy-already/
on “How to C in 2016”Submitted Intel Underestimates Error Bounds by 1.3 Quintillion as a story · 424 points
HN discussionHe's also written some stuff regarding Visual Studio perf. https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/self-inflicted-... Close to my heart as I use Visual Studio all day. Horrid piece of software. I'll probably get downvoted for this.
Comment linking /2014/04/15/self-inflicted-denial-of-service-in-visual-studio-search/
on “24-core CPU and I can’t move my mouse”Submitted Arranging Invisible Icons in Quadratic Time as a story · 376 points
HN discussionFloating point clocks do lose precision after long enough time though; see https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/dont-store-that... Storing floating point coordinates for example is what causes the "farlands" world generation behavior in Minecraft, for example.
Comment linking /2012/02/13/dont-store-that-in-a-float/
on “Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE”Submitted 5.5 mm in 1.25 nanoseconds as a story · 359 points
HN discussionhttps://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and...
Comment linking /2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and-i-cant-move-my-mouse/
on “The Fastest Mutexes”Submitted There Are Only Four Billion Floats, So Test Them All (2014) as a story · 329 points
HN discussionBruce Dawson's https://randomascii.wordpress.com/ is excellent resource for obscure and complex details of native code and modern platforms.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Life, death, and retirement as a story · 320 points
HN discussionThis isn't always the case that simplistic algorithms don't cause issues Bruce Dawson keeps on finding O(n^2) algorithms in windows that keep on biting him. I'm always impressed with his work. https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2019/12/08/on2-again-now-i...
Comment linking /2019/12/08/on2-again-now-in-wmi/
on “New Grad vs. Senior Dev”Submitted A Not-Called Function Can Cause a 5X Slowdown as a story · 309 points
HN discussionThis is a windows technique, but presumably something similar might be available on mac too: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processe...
Comment linking /2018/02/11/zombie-processes-are-eating-your-memory/
on “Memory leaks are crippling my M1 MacBook Pro”Submitted You Got Your Web Browser in my Compiler as a story · 275 points
HN discussionargh. classic nerd snipe! "simple" discussion: https://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/ more advanced: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/comparing-float...
Comment linking /2012/02/25/comparing-floating-point-numbers-2012-edition/
on “0.30000000000000004”Submitted 24-core CPU and I can’t type an email – part two as a story · 249 points
HN discussion
