Plurrrr

I read a blog post by Alex Muscar, “Beautiful Binary Search in D“. It describes a binary search called “Shar’s algorithm”. I’d never heard of it and it’s impossible to google, but looking at the algorithm I couldn’t help but think “this is branchless.” And who knew that there could be a branchless binary search? So I did the work to translate it into a algorithm for C++ iterators, no longer requiring one-based indexing or fixed-size arrays.

So how does an attacker find a system to attack? One approach is to send out a ping packet to every IPv4 address and listen for the reply (pong). If there's a reply, then there is a server and they can queue up the address for a subsequent attack. A single host with a gigabit connection can scan all of the IPv4 range in a few hours. (There are some scanning techniques that can go even faster, finishing in minutes.)

Whenever I point out that a common software practice is bad for performance, arguments ensue. That’s good! People should argue about these things. It helps illuminate both sides of the issue. It’s productive, and it leads to a better understanding of how software performance fits into the priorities of our industry.

What's not good is that some segments of the developer community don’t even want to have discussions, let alone arguments, about software performance. Among certain developers, there is a pervasive attitude that software simply doesn't have performance concerns anymore. They believe we are past the point in software development history where anyone should still be thinking about performance.

The story of how one of the world's most popular video games found its way to players around the globe. Businessman Henk Rogers and Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov join forces in the USSR, risking it all to bring Tetris to the masses.