Top all-time · #3168
Rusty Russell
Personal blog · rusty.ozlabs.orgprogrammingsystems
Rusty Russell's personal blog at rusty.ozlabs.org covers programming and systems. Since 2010, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-04-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Rusty Russell's blog for C library design, the /usr merge and FHS debate, and Bitcoin scaling essays, often as sources in threads about those topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I have been a full time Free Software developer since the 90’s. I worked on the Linux Kernel, where I wrote ipchains, iptables, and rewrote the module subsystem, along with many other things. I changed careers in 2015 to work on Bitcoin full time, and was the first person to implement Lightning: I t
Most-linked posts?
- The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-08-06
- On C Library Implementation3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-10-23
- Is a memory buffer all zero bytes (in C)?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-10-16
- If you didn’t run code written by assholes, your machine wouldn’t boot2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-19
- On C Linked Lists (Profiling and Optimizing)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-12
- Why Everyone Must Oppose The Merging of /usr and /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-28
What Hacker News says?
Since it's under the AGPL it will mostly be built by people that have been vetted. By switching to this people are one step closer to having a machine that boots without assholes. http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=196
Comment linking /?p=196
on “RethinkDB: An open-source distributed database built with love over three years”Submitted If you didn’t run code written by assholes, your machine wouldn’t boot as a story · 160 points
HN discussion> Larger block size increases computation necessary to solve the block No, they're merkled, so it doesn't. > I suppose block size increases the network latency for advertising solved blocks... but going from 100k to 250k every 10 minutes does not strike me as being particularly problematic. Doesn't matter how often it is, I find a block, I mine the child immediately. You have to wait until you've received and valida…
Comment linking /?p=535
on “The first Bitcoin Cash block has been mined”Submitted GCC and C vs C++ Speed, Measured as a story · 103 points
HN discussionPerhaps you didn't read all of it? Anyway, the person mentioned in this subthread did reply in a comment on the original post. ( http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=196#comment-721 )
Comment linking /?p=196
on “If you didn’t run code written by assholes, your machine wouldn’t boot”Submitted The Bitcoin Blocksize: A Summary as a story · 92 points
HN discussionOn the contrary, the network worked as expected. A somewhat costly stress test resulting in a backlog of transactions that were prioritized by fee, just as predicted. The backlog has since been drastically reduced and high priority fees are back in the 50,000 satoshi per kb range [0]... the average Bitcoin transaction is about 250 bytes, so 12,000 satoshi per transaction, or roughly 3 cents. Low priority transaction…
Comment linking /?p=477
on “Bitcoin Trends in the First Half of 2015”Submitted On C Linked Lists (Profiling and Optimizing) as a story · 60 points
HN discussion(2013) Though I responded in 2012, so it may be older (the log on the site says 2013 though). FWIW, my response, as FHS editor: https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=236
Comment linking /?p=236
on “The Case for the /usr Merge (2012)”Submitted Bitcoin Lightning Networks Part I: Revocable Transactions as a story · 56 points
HN discussionLet's balance the discussion out a bit: Greg Maxwell's thoughts (small blocks): http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090559/ About internet bandwidth growth (~neutral): http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=493 An attempt at a well-rounded overview (~neutral): http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=535 some thoughts by bittorrent creator Bram Cohen (small blocks): https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-crisis-32226a.…
Comment linking /?p=535
on “Why is Bitcoin forking?”Submitted The Bitcoin Megatransaction: 25 Seconds to Verify as a story · 40 points
HN discussionCiting kernel code is not a good argument without actually understanding why they're using linked lists, when they are used and how many of them are used at a time, etc, etc. Most of those linked lists are not really relevant. Because (1) they are far too few of them (2) they do not occur in areas where performance is significantly impacted. Besides which.. the kernel is a single instance program. Its not like there…
Comment linking /?p=168
on “Stop Using Linked Lists”Submitted Superfreakonomics: Superplug for Intellectual Ventures as a story · 23 points
HN discussionBasically, the current block size limit of 1MB isn't sufficient for the current volume of transactions. Some transactions aren't making it into blocks in real-time and have to sit waiting in a queue to be processed. This leads to delays in processing commercial payments, which in turn threatens Bitcoin's viability as a mainstream currency. Some people argue the issue could be easily fixed by simply raising the block…
Comment linking /?p=535
on “Is Bitcoin Becoming More Stable Than Gold?”Submitted Why Everyone Must Oppose The Merging of /usr and / as a story · 16 points
HN discussionRusty Russell summarized this nicely a few years ago: http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=236 (careful, sarcasm follows). The merge does involve some loss of flexibility (for instance, "traditionally", you could use the programs in /bin to recover a failing system), but there are fewer and fewer users relying on it. It also involves departing from the FHS, but Debian already does that (e.g. they use /lib/<GNU triplet> rather…
Comment linking /?p=236
on “Debian considers merging /usr”Submitted Quick Stats on Zstandard (zstd) Performance – Rusty Russell's Coding Blog as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLinux developer Rusty Russell wrote a helpful article about designing C libraries to be easily configured and reused: "On C Library Implementation": http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=140 For such an important subject, there is little practical discussion or good examples of library design. Compare the number of books about C++ object-oriented design versus the design and packaging of C/C++ libraries. The best reference I k…
Comment linking /?p=140
on “Why can't we all use standard libraries for commonly needed algorithms?”Submitted Legal Questions About LocalBitcoins.com and Australia as a story · 2 points
HN discussionProbably this guy, because he curates ccan: http://rusty.ozlabs.org
Comment linking /
on “CCAN - Comprehensive C Archive Network”Submitted Sources of Randomness for Userspace as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou want this: https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=560 Hope that helps! (And yes, the CCAN memeqzero routine is the same as yours above in form).
Comment linking /?p=560
on “A 100LOC C impl of memset, that is faster than glibc's”Submitted Is a memory buffer all zero bytes (in C)? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRusty Russell had a slightly tongue-in-cheek rant about such things recently, http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=140 There's a bunch more recent articles on his blog covering similar topics
Comment linking /?p=140
on “Writing a C library, part 1: best practices for writing C libraries”Submitted Bitcoin Blocksize: Debate Summary as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTwo articles benchmarking Judy arrays compared to hash tables: http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=153 http://www.nothings.org/computer/judy/
Comment linking /?p=153
on “Judy Arrays”Submitted What Bitcoin Transactions Get Crowded Out If Blocks Fill? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOut of curiosity, can you point me to the prior research that you mention? Aside from a couple of blogs, notably [1], I haven't seen much formal research, much less anything showing bounds on supportability. [1] https://rusty.ozlabs.org
Comment linking /
on “Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784”Submitted POLLOUT doesn’t mean write(2) won’t block: Part II as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
