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1. Zamba2-7B (zyphra.com)
**Zyphra Launches Yet Another "Revolutionary" Language Model**

Here at Zyphra.com, we've apparently shattered the boundaries of small language model innovation with our latest wonder-child, Zamba2-7B. Exactly how it stacks up against the competition is anyone's guess, since comparisons to certain leading models are oddly absent. Our enthusiastic forum commentators waffle between skeptical and clueless, questioning everything from our mysterious benchmarks to the absence of vital comparisons, like with the always superior phi-3. Just another day in tech paradise, where every model is groundbreaking until the next one drops five minutes later. 🚀🤔
134 points by dataminer 2024-10-14T22:45:51.000000Z | 18 comments
2. Busy Status Bar (busy.bar)
In the latest rendition of solutions looking for a problem, "Busy Status Bar" graces us with its presence, promising to render the age-old "Am I interrupting?" question obsolete. The comment section quickly turns into a tech support group mixed with a detective agency, as users debate the novelty of a light-up "busy" indicator that either perpetually cries wolf or becomes decorative desk flotsam. Amidst the philosophical reflections on whether constant busyness justifies an always-on red light, a subplot about scam accusations and CEO confirmations emerges, adding just the right touch of cyber-drama. Somewhere, a commenter humorously suggests crafting an office persona named "Larry" for those perennially bathed in the red glow, inspiring us all to either buy the product or revive the "no duh" eyebrow raise when we encounter one. 🙄
834 points by aleksi 2024-10-14T15:19:12.000000Z | 277 comments
3. The Physics of Magic Windows (2021) (mattferraro.dev)
In an era where real magic is just an app update away, one hero decides to *revolutionize* society by making an acrylic square. 💡 Yes, you heard it right—a "magic window" that turns sunlight into a 3D lounge decoration is now mathematically dissected for everyone's DIY nightmare. Commenters, awash in nostalgia for high school physics, wax poetic over caustics as if light bending through plastic wasn't how they already entertained their cats. Grab your flashlights, folks—it's time to watch photons do gymnastics! 🐱🔦
27 points by mhb 2024-10-14T22:25:47.000000Z | 2 comments
4. Project Euler (projecteuler.net)
**Project Euler: Yet Another Way to Feel Inadequate while Doing Math**

In the hallowed digital halls of Project Euler, where even the simplest binary operations morph into Herculean tasks, users face off against the daunting challenge of calculating numbers that lack the tenacity to be three consecutive binary ones. As commenters marvel at how compilers routinely make them feel obsolete, the discussion quickly descends into a nostalgic yet tragic reminder that assembly language was, is, and forever will be a cruel joke to most. Meanwhile, another brave soul attempts to reignite his high school math days by mistakenly calculating lattice paths with fancy formulas, inadvertently uncovering the sad truth that despite the sophisticated talk, everyone is just really good at misremembering factorials. 😂💻🎓
106 points by fzliu 2024-10-14T20:27:29.000000Z | 39 comments
5. Turn your Android phone into a modern ham radio transceiver (kv4p.com)
Title: The Grand Adventure of Ham Radio on Your Android

Summary: In an exciting blast from the past combined with the never-ending charm of open source projects, the kv4p.com article announces you can now turn your Android phone into a full-on *ham radio transceiver*, because, clearly, there's no better use for modern technology than reviving 100-year-old communication methods. Commenters, ever the nostalgic bunch, engage in a passion-infused debate about whether it’s clickbait or a technological revelation. Meanwhile, others wax poetic about "the good old days" of ham radios and telephone patches while loosely plotting to turn outdated repeaters into 5G nodes. Will your ham radio license be the next hot trend or just another quirky tech footnote in your grandad’s memoirs? Stay tuned! 📻😄
219 points by thcipriani 2024-10-12T12:32:29.000000Z | 79 comments
6. Gosub – An open-source browser engine (github.com/gosub-io)
In an epic display of not-invented-here syndrome, some brave souls at github.com/gosub-io have decided to reinvent the wheel, but square this time, by creating another browser engine. Visitor comments swiftly transform into a wild FAQ-fetching fest, exposing the lukewarm haze of uncertainty around using existing resources like Servo. Meanwhile, a lone hero announces their *personal Javascript engine*, likely coded in a basement lit by the glow of disillusionment. As lurkers suggest carving a monument for 'the most modular modularity that ever moduled', the ecosystem of online browsers braces for yet another reinvention of the undefined. 📜🔍🚀
144 points by jaytaph 2024-10-14T07:17:00.000000Z | 105 comments
7. Commonly used arm positions can overestimate blood pressure readings: study (medicalxpress.com)
**Doctors Hate Him! Local Man Discovers Arm Position Slightly Alters Blood Pressure!** 💉🙄

In a shocking find that will revolutionize nothing at all, an internet commenter reveals that the rigid, deeply flawed ritual of getting a blood pressure reading might involve variables. Meanwhile, the comment section transforms into a hive of humblebrag biology experts and armchair physicians, debating **_whether a piece of elastic squeezing your arm can also make you believe you're in an unstable ACME product._** Most agree that the only true readings are done in a Himalayan igloo by sherpas with mercury sphygmomanometers, because science. 🕵️‍♂️🧊
154 points by wglb 2024-10-14T17:57:00.000000Z | 122 comments
8. Remains of an ancient Greek structure found in Croatia (arkeonews.net)
**Archaeology Goes Wild in Croatia**

In a staggering turn of events that shatters millennia and confuses basic arithmetic, amateur time travelers (also known as archaeologists) have discovered a 3500-year-old Greek Starbucks (sorry, a rampart) in Croatia. The internet historians in the comment section, armed with Google and staggering attention to detail, quickly noted that the Greeks didn’t even vacation in Croatia until a millennium later, but who cares about timelines when you can add 'ancient' and 'Greek' in the same sentence? Sprinkle in some crowd-sourced pedantry, a dash of not-actually-Greek Greek ruins, and voilã, you’ve got yourself an archaeological party that’s only slightly less confusing than the time travel plot in any given sci-fi series. Let’s raise our trowels and celebrate another victory for historical sensationalism! 🥳🏺
49 points by taubek 2024-10-11T06:31:19.000000Z | 14 comments
9. Google Funding Construction of Seven U.S. Nuclear Reactors (wsj.com)
**Google Plays Power Tycoon with Mini Nukes**

In an audacious display of Silicon Valley make-believe, Google throws in some spare change behind a pipedream: seven Lilliputian nuclear reactors by Kairos Power. Expected output? A *whopping* 525 megawatts, less than half a real nuclear power plant's capability, generating just enough juice to power up Google's homepage. The tech commentariat oscillates between cynical jeers over "tech virtue signaling" and tentative hope, wrapped in legalese and skepticism about the term "legally binding." Apparently, Google's getting as much energy from this deal as one might from a motivational poster. 🌈🔋
366 points by atomic128 2024-10-14T19:06:22.000000Z | 227 comments
10. Show QN: Vortex – a high-performance columnar file format (github.com/spiraldb)
Title: HackerNews Discovers "Vortex" - Another File Format to Save Humanity

In an era plagued by the crushing ennui of only having a dozen columnar file formats to choose from, a brave GitHub repository heralds a new savior: Vortex. Tagged as the "LLVM of columnar file formats," Vortex promises to revolutionize data storage by being extremely fast, extremely extensible, and extremely like everything else. Commenters, sweating in the glow of their dark mode screens, juggle jargon and speculate on using Vortex to re-innovate their CSVs into something quasi-futuristic. Amid the breathless awe, a single truth remains: thank God it's written in Rust, otherwise skepticism might prevail! 🤓💾
130 points by gatesn 2024-10-14T17:34:26.000000Z | 29 comments
11. Play 3.0 mini – A lightweight, reliable, cost-efficient Multilingual TTS model (play.ht)
Title: Technology's Latest Giggle: Play 3.0 mini

What a marvel of the 21st century – Play 3.0 mini, the TTS tool that tempts you with *the illusion of reliability* until you try using it on Firefox. Users report the novel excitement of "talking to themselves" after a mesmerizing thirty-second cloning caper, proving that it doesn’t take much to dupe your friends these days. Meanwhile, comment land is knee-deep in technical despair, where terms like "CUDA acceleration" and "emotion tokens" are thrown around as if mere mortals stand a chance against the relentless march of obligatory upgrades. 🤖💸 From swapping browsers to buying a 10 Tb drive "just for experiments," the quest never ends. Dear tech enthusiasts: perhaps add "sense of reality" to your setup.
113 points by amrrs 2024-10-14T19:16:17.000000Z | 38 comments
12. DeepSeek: Advancing theorem proving in LLMs through large-scale synthetic data (arxiv.org)
**Today in Tech Novelties: DeepSeek Conquers Undergrad Math Homework**
Apparently, with enough synthetic data, LLMs like DeepSeek are primed to replace freshman math students, according to the latest arXiv offering. Commenters, ever the optimistic bunch, debate whether this is innovation or just an automated way to generate head-splittingly boring math problems, obliterated at each competitive math face-off. *Meanwhile*, in a magic land of mixed metaphors, others are busy forcing a nonsensical comparison between AI systems that play Go and those that should somehow still excel at linguistic feats after mastering mathematical notation. Thankfully, someone points out that not all AIs are built the same, lest we thought AlphaZero was about to recite Shakespeare. 🎭🤖
120 points by hhs 2024-10-14T15:44:04.000000Z | 27 comments
13. Show QN: X11 tool to share a screen area in any video meeting (github.com/splitbrain)
**HN's Latest Obsession: A Screen-Clipping Tool That Nobody Asked For**

Another day, another tech bro reinvents the wheel. This time, a "revolutionary" X11 tool lets you wow your coworkers by sharing just a piece of your monitor in video meetings—because evidently adjusting your chaotic desktop before a call is too mainstream. 🙄 Commenters swoop in with profound remarks about CPU cycles and event loops, because, naturally, discussing micro-optimizations is far more thrilling than addressing why you'd share a tiny square of pixels in the first place. Meanwhile, the real tech avengers debate the moral ramifications of idle CPU states, proving once more that HN is the hotspot for solving non-issues while bigger problems loom. 💻🔄
221 points by splitbrain 2024-10-14T13:11:56.000000Z | 110 comments
14. Extracting financial disclosure and police reports with OpenAI Structured Output (gist.github.com)
The OpenAI fan club has a shiny new toy: the Structured Output from GPT-4o-mini, which promises to extract useful bits from public documents faster than a caffeinated intern. Isn’t technology grand? Now, people who barely managed to turn a PDF into a text file are debating the merits of "json_schema" vs. "json_object". Meanwhile, commenters engage in the classic mix of mild confusion and humblebragging about using obsolete models like llama3.1:8b for "structured information extraction", as if they're hacking the Matrix instead of making glorified spreadsheets. Watch out world, we might just get a correct data field extraction before the next ice age! 🙄
135 points by danso 2024-10-10T20:51:14.000000Z | 29 comments
15. Deep learning-based detection of qanat water systems using spy satellite imagery (sciencedirect.com)
In a stunning display of tech buzzword bingo, a team of thirsty data scientists decides to target ancient water systems because apparently modern plumbing wasn't exotic enough for their groundbreaking research. Using what they describe as "deep learning," which here means "convoluted guessing game," they manage to utilize spy satellite images to spot qanat systems, delighting all twelve people who know what a qanat is. Meanwhile, in the comments, self-proclaimed experts argue fiercely about the ethical implications of spying on water, clearly desperate to add "satellite surveillance critic" to their Twitter bios. Oh, and everyone's worried about privacy for aqueducts now. 🚀🌍💧
12 points by benbreen 2024-10-12T16:53:56.000000Z | 0 comments
16. PayloadCMS: Open-Source, Fullstack Next.js Framework (github.com/payloadcms)
**PayloadCMS: Every Developer's New Toy**

Developers rejoice as yet another *open-source, framework-layered cake*, known as PayloadCMS, dances onto the scene, promising to turn the typical Next.js app into a full-stack powerhouse. According to the front-page puffery, this is where TypeScript backends and admin panels sprout from the ground like daisies—if only one follows the holy docs, of course. In the comment cesspool, seasoned devs swap tales of abandoning WordPress after a decade, dazzled by Payload's shiny, structured charms, while newbies trip over its "too-dev-centric" setup, yearning for the cuddly, hand-holding simplicity of WordPress tutorials. And somewhere in the mix, a comedic gold reply: "Yo dawg, I heard you like frameworks, so we put a framework on your framework so you can framework while you framework." 👏👏👏
99 points by stefankuehnel 2024-10-14T17:55:13.000000Z | 35 comments
17. Sound Lab – A Simple Analogue Synthesiser (technoblogy.com)
**Hobbyists Unite in Solder-Smelling Glory**

In an epic recount of what happens when you're too geeky for regular musical instruments, technoblogy.com introduces "Sound Lab" – a synthesiser that reminds us all why we left circuit boards and soldering in the 80s. It’s apparently versatile enough to replicate everything from your cat’s meow to the unsettling sound of your 2001 Honda Civic failing to start. The comment section becomes a runway show of who can flex the nerdiest synth kit collection, while occasionally questioning their life choices and digital vs. analog existence. Sprinkle in some classic "how do I plug this into my overly complex Apple setup?" and you've got a DIY disaster begging for a YouTube tutorial rescue. 💾🎹🔌
66 points by chrisjj 2024-10-14T12:31:26.000000Z | 10 comments
18. How I Experience Web Today (2021) (how-i-experience-web-today.com)
Ah, the wondrous pain parade known as "How I Experience Web Today" hilariously captures the browser-based ring of Dante's modern Inferno, where every click lures you deeper into ad-laden limbo. Users weep in comments about Google's pushy Chrome suggestions, which sounds a lot like complaining about rain while swimming in the ocean. As they lament over constant ad assaults and privacy-invading pop-ups, someone chimes in with an enlightening suggestion of a new browser, as if switching dinghies will save them from the Titanic. But be wary, fellow surfers! Another helpful comment whispers of betrayals even in the 'privacy safe' haven. Truly, no software boat is unsinkable in the digital sea. 🌊😱
272 points by airstrike 2024-10-14T19:22:53.000000Z | 89 comments
19. Automating the most annoying aspects of blogging (gingerbeardman.com)
Title: A Blogger Discovers Computers Can Do Things

In an astonishing turn of events, a blogger rediscovers that software can be optimized and automated, thrusting us into the brave new world of faster blog build times, much to the shock of 2021's ghost. They've managed to slash build times from a glacial 12 seconds to a blistering 1 second, all through the magical arts of "fixes" and "optimisations" previously unknown to developers everywhere. Our heroic blogger then confronts the Herculean task of uploading images manually, a plight sure to bring even the hardiest key warriors to tears. Meanwhile, the comment section blossoms into a tech support forum where lost souls believe "Jekyll" is a fancy drink and not a blogging platform. 🥃💻
6 points by msephton 2024-10-12T21:24:33.000000Z | 0 comments
20. New images show state of preservation of Ernest Shackleton's ship (theguardian.com)
**Robot Submarines Find Old Boat, Internet Pretends It's New Again**

In a shock to literally nobody, sunken ships stay where you leave them. The Guardian breathlessly reports on the *Endurance*, Ernest Shackleton’s old ship, now famous for doing nothing but sitting under ice for over a century. Excited nerds online, confusing spoilers with history, debate which book about the boat is the "true" experience. Meanwhile, an underwater robot gets no credit for actually finding the thing. 🤖⚓📚
60 points by rmason 2024-10-11T19:33:18.000000Z | 16 comments
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