Quacker News daily superautomated ai tech-bro mockery | github
1. ▲ Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements (royalsocietypublishing.org)
Today's breakthrough in lunar fitness regimes presents Horizontal Running Inside Circular Walls of Moon Settlements, an article making the bold assumption that future moon inhabitants will prefer running in dizzying circles rather than facing the grim reality of eternal boredom and muscle atrophy. Commenters quickly spiral into a brainstorm about space gyms with the elegance of a child scribbling rocket ships on napkins. They suggest "spinning surfaces" and "gravity gyms" as if gravity is just another app you download from the Space Store. Buckle up folks, looks like we're reinventing the hamster wheel for space—charge up your VR headsets and prepare to jog to nowhere, invigorated by the sweet, sweet embrace of artificial Gs. 🚀😵‍💫
43 points by T-A 2024-05-01T23:41:24 | 12 comments
2. ▲ Ask QN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)
**Who is Hiring or Desperate?** May 2024 swoops in with the regular circus of *hiring threads* on Hacker News, where tech utopians and coding mercenaries gather to drop URLs like hot potatoes. Over at the Internet Archive, they're looking for saints to spin web crawlers in their sleep. Meanwhile, E2B wants some brave souls in SF to conjure AI spells without causing Skynet to awaken. Don’t forget the folks at Akkio either, offering a hefty prize to those who can wrestle Python and AI demons alike in the cloud, because who doesn’t want to build backend systems that could be outsmarted by a toaster next year? 🙄 Dive into the comments if you dare, where every poster is a self-professed guru, ready with tales of their epic tech battles and dreams of coding nirvana.
391 points by whoishiring 2024-05-01T15:00:54 | 381 comments
3. ▲ César Aira's Magic (thedial.world)
In a daring display of intellectual gymnastics, an online magazine dives deep into the "magic" of César Aira, without bothering too much with trivialities like coherence or reader comprehension. Naturally, the comment section becomes an impromptu arena where pseudo-intellectuals flex their Google-fu, each determined to prove they understood the article (they didn't), while simultaneously out-obscure-referencing each other. Who needs clarity when you have obscurity? 🎩✨
8 points by Caiero 2024-05-01T23:05:31 | 0 comments
4. ▲ New startup sells coffee through SSH (terminal.shop)
In a desolate landscape devoid of convenience and common sense, a sparkling new startup offers a groundbreaking method to order coffee via SSH: type out more flags than you’d wave at a national parade. The comments quickly spiral into an abyss of security advice borrowed straight from an abandoned corporate IT manual from 1998. A master class in over-engineering a coffee order ensues, with debates heating up over -o this and -i that, each suggestion less practical than a submarine with screen doors but certainly perfect for securing your artisan single-origin espresso. Meanwhile, the mention of "terminal.shop" might lead some enthusiastic participants to mistakenly wipe their hard drives, in the noble quest to prevent SSH Agent hijacking... or just to make room for more unneeded security features. 🤦‍♂️🔒☕
566 points by ethanholt1 2024-05-01T18:26:33 | 291 comments
5. ▲ A pivot point in Maya history: fire-burning event at Ucanal (cambridge.org)

A Historical Dumpster Fire: Maya Edition


In yet another eye-opening piece by academia, we learn that ancient Maya elites didn't just rule; they turned ousted rulers into a forebears' bonfire and DIY home depot materials. Because nothing says "respect for the ancestors" quite like using their bejeweled ashes for brick mortar. Over in the comments, armchair archaeologists correlate this with the dinosaur-killing meteor with puzzling confidence, while others can’t quite figure out if they're looking at Altar #12 or a napkin sketch of Altar #13. It's historical analysis mingled with a dash of creative geography, because who really cares about minor details like accuracy?
12 points by smartmic 2024-04-30T19:11:54 | 5 comments
6. ▲ How A NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery (quantamagazine.org)
On this historic day, a thrilling piece emerges from quantamagazine.org detailing how NASA somehow managed to spend just enough taxpayer money to deduce why the sun is indeed hot. Armchair physicists flock to the comments, engaging in a virtuosic display of ignorance, each attempting to outdo the last with feats of illogical reasoning and a casual disregard for actual science. The truly astounding revelation, lost amidst their self-aggrandizing diatribes, is that the sun’s heat simply exists to fry their collective brains into posting more inane comments. Will humanity’s grasp on celestial realities ever outshine the web's penchant for incoherent babble? ❓🌞💬
29 points by jyunwai 2024-04-29T14:30:27 | 0 comments
7. ▲ An alternative to cursor pagination (medium.com/ramsi.candra)
Today on HackerNews, a Medium blogger bravely ventures forth to tackle the *heinous* complexities of pagination, thrilling readers with a daringly mislabeled "Merkle tree" method that's not really a Merkle tree. HackerNews aficionados, never to miss a beat, **dive into action** with vigor usually reserved for pedantic corrections on less esoteric topics. They generously explain that not only is the novel approach as error-prone as mere pagination in the realm of Elasticsearch’s "eventual consistency," but the entire endeavor of soliciting data consistency from Elasticsearch is much like expecting a fish to climb a tree. Amid a sea of misplaced technical jargon and links to increasingly obscure references, the consensus emerges: perhaps the real pagination was the friends we made along the way. 🍿🤓
41 points by ramsicandra 2024-04-29T07:45:44 | 8 comments
8. ▲ New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars (lanl.gov)
**HackerNews Digs Up Martian Soil for Old-Timey Ethics**

Excitable tech enthusiasts discover yet another shiny article suggesting habitable conditions on ancient Mars, opting to dive headfirst into a quirky historical sci-fi side quest. The comment section quickly transcends space and time, morphing into a retrospective fan club for Kurd Lasswitz and wildly connecting Mars to every notable German from Wernher von Braun to imaginary Martian Hungarians. Meanwhile, the Martian ethics and ideal societies are nostalgically praised, as commenters conveniently sidestep von Braun's murky past with the same agility they'd avoid a Martian sandstorm. Who needs historical accountability and actual science when you've got vintage interplanetary fiction and ethically superior Martians, right? 🚀👽📜
248 points by geox 2024-05-01T14:08:48 | 239 comments
9. ▲ Not all Graphs are Trees (buttondown.email/jaffray)
The Hackernews linguistic gymnastics club tackles the titanic topic of whether all graphs are trees or not—a question surely keeping us all awake at night. In an adventurous leap from trivial truths to profound profundity, the author spectacularly states the *obvious* with the elegance of a mathematical theorem but the novelty of a preschool curriculum. Meanwhile, the commentariat dives headlong into an abyss of esoteric graph theory banter, decisively proving that not all humans are as logical as their beloved diagrams suggest. Truly, a tree-mendous waste of cyclical bandwidth! 🌳💫
19 points by g0xA52A2A 2024-04-30T05:47:04 | 5 comments
10. ▲ Invisible Stitch: Generating Smooth 3D Scenes with Depth Inpainting (paulengstler.com)
In a daring display of what can only be described as academic pageantry, researchers from the Visual Geometry Group at the University of Oxford have unleashed "Invisible Stitch: Generating Smooth 3D Scenes with Depth Inpainting" upon the unsuspecting masses. The paper, filled with jargon that would make even a Scrabble championship blush, heroically promises to stitch together the world’s pixelated voids, turning your choppy holiday snaps into 3D masterpieces. Meanwhile, in the comments, armchair critics battle it out to prove who can misunderstand the technology most profoundly, with bonus points for conflating depth inpainting with the plot of *Inception*. If only we could apply depth inpainting to the depths of these discussions. 🙄
87 points by jasondavies 2024-05-01T10:04:47 | 0 comments
11. ▲ Show QN: Maps and Splats – Mashup of 3D tile maps with Gaussian Splats (maps-and-splats.glitch.me)
In a staggering display of what can only be described as "tech gone wild," a Hacker News user altruistically uploads another *web-based monstrosity*, this time mashing up 3D tile maps with Gaussian splats. Desperation fills the air as commenters clamber to suggest more ways to misuse public data, peppering their posts with links that scream, "I too can contribute to the eventual heat death of propriety!" One suggests using unapproved Google Street View shots, while another dreams of a world where high-fidelity Gaussian splats are on-demand like some kind of dystopian Uber. Meanwhile, an eager beaver points out the innovative 'shift-and-drag' method to navigate the map, reminiscent of the tactics used when your GPS fails in a tunnel and you revert to paper maps. 🤯
64 points by kfarr 2024-05-01T14:12:36 | 18 comments
12. ▲ Show QN: FileKitty – Combine and label text files for LLM prompt contexts (github.com/banagale)
Title: HN Discovers Advanced Feature: Copy and Paste, but Slightly Tardier

Welcome to yet another groundbreaking day where Hacker News users rediscover basic Unix commands repackaged in the soothing balm of a GUI, introducing FileKitty. Watch, agog, as the bustling hivemind trots out its most enthusiastic keyboard warriors to pile laurels on an application that glorifies the age-old art of concatenating text files. As commenters vie to proclaim their slightly modified yet “totally self-made” CLI tools, 💤 boredom creeps in, until someone accidentally re-invents `cat`, triggering hoots of Silicon Valley innovation. Meanwhile, practicality lays beaten and bruised in the corner as the echo chamber ponders whether an eleven-line bash script might hail the next tech unicorn. 🚀🙄
26 points by bredren 2024-05-01T18:10:03 | 11 comments
13. ▲ Postgres Storage as a Transaction Journal (neon.tech)
In an unsurprising twist of tech drivel, neon.tech presents its earth-shattering view of databases, treating them more like a diary of teenage angst than critical data stores. Every transaction is a precious snowflake needing its own journal entry, because why streamline when you can over-engineer? Meanwhile, the comment section erupts into a battleground, where SQL gatekeepers and NoSQL evangelists sling jargon back and forth, each side equally missing the point—much like their arguments. 🍿🤓
17 points by nikita 2024-05-01T20:30:09 | 0 comments
14. ▲ Meter-scale distance manipulation of diverse objects with jet-induced airflow (wiley.com)
In an unprecedented display of academic verbiage, a group of scholars manage to publish a paper explaining how to use a glorified leaf blower to move stuff around from a whole meter away. Comment section warriors, armed with an arsenal of sarcasm, swiftly reduce the breakthrough to 'tractor beam, but make it windy'. Queries about the revolutionary potential of tossing leaves without physical exertion pile in, as the astute readers battle over who can sound the least impressed by rebranding yard maintenance. TLDR: PhDs use big words to justify pushing things with air; YouTube does it without the degree. 👨‍🔬💨
25 points by gnabgib 2024-04-29T23:19:08 | 5 comments
15. ▲ Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (github.com/kindxiaoming)
Welcome to the riveting world of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks, a niche so esoteric it makes regular machine learning look like kindergarten playtime. Someone slapped together a repo after skimming a paper, because evidently, reading is out of fashion and fourier coefficients are the new black—until they aren't, because apparently, switching splines for Fourier is just a minor detail, akin to swapping your latte for an espresso. Commenters, in a daring display of overconfidence, are already tweaking network sizes and activation functions, despite not grasping the basics, let alone checking whether their new Franken-model even works. 🤓 Meanwhile, others are pondering the GPU unfriendliness of it all, as if the sudden realization that GPUs don’t run on hopes and tensor dreams has shaken their world. Get ready for a rollercoaster of baseless optimizations and academic one-upmanship!
400 points by sumo43 2024-05-01T03:30:47 | 85 comments
16. ▲ Ask QN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2024)
Title: Ask HN: Who Wants To Be Ignored? (May 2024)

Summary: Another thrilling month where tech whiz-kids and tired veterans alike dump their resumes into the Hacker News void, hoping for salvation from their current professional doldrums. From a globetrotting "AI collaborator" in Taiwan to a former CS teacher with a restless mouse finger, each tale is steeped in desperation and JavaScript. Below these cries for help, the comment section erupts in a chaos of unsolicited advice and subtle self-promotion, as everyone pretends they aren’t just there to sneak their own resume link into a sympathetic reply. Hope springs eternal in the tech job lottery, even if the jackpot is just another Zoom interview.
135 points by whoishiring 2024-05-01T15:00:52 | 264 comments
17. ▲ Printing Music with CSS Grid (cruncher.ch)
In today's installment of "But Can It Play Chopsticks?", an Internet Hero attempts to print music with CSS Grid because, apparently, traditional music notation was just _too_ mainstream. We're blessed with comments from a glorified sheet music software developer, who can't resist the urge to humblebrag about his decade of contributions to resizing pixels that resemble musical notes. Most commenters debate whether this CSS trickery is "cool" but not quite "Beethoven-worthy," while simultaneously missing the point and promoting their own sundry projects. If you wanted a real understanding of the complexity involved in music rendering, you'd obviously go watch a YouTube video linked in the comments, because nothing screams expertise like sending someone else to do the explaining. 🎼😂
850 points by speckx 2024-04-30T20:39:59 | 77 comments
18. ▲ 500 Byte Images: The Haiku Vector Icon Format (2016) (leahhanson.us)
**500 Byte Images: Visual Poetry or Just Tiny Confusion?**

Another day, another minimalist tech solution in search of a problem it created. Our friends over at Haiku have decided that modern-day icon bloat is the root of all evil, concocting the Haiku Vector Icon Format (HVIF) because apparently standard SVGs just weren’t *cutting-edge* enough. The tech crowd is thrown into a tizzy, part-decry, part-applause, debating the merits of HVIF like it’s the second coming of RMS. As commenters squabble over pixel perfection at micro-sizes, one can't help but wonder if anyone outside this echo chamber has even noticed or, heaven forbid, cared. 😱📉💾
133 points by smartmic 2024-04-29T09:37:42 | 28 comments
19. ▲ Show QN: I'm 16 and building an AI based startup called Factful with friends (factful.io)
The future is apparently here, and it's being unceremoniously ushered in by a 16-year-old and their equally precocious friends at "Factful.io". Their website, probably designed during a particularly thrilling high school computer science class, promises "revolutionary capabilities" presumably because using TensorFlow in a group project now equates to a technological revolution. HN commenters swing wildly between patronizing encouragement ("Keep it up kiddo!") and aggressive skepticism ("Is this just another CRUD app with a Machine Learning sticker slapped on it?"). Somewhere, in a dimly lit corner of the internet, venture capitalists are no doubt ready to throw money at anything that whiffs of AI and youthful exuberance.
143 points by helloduck1234 2024-05-01T12:00:10 | 104 comments
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