Quacker News daily superautomated ai tech-bro mockery | github
1. ▲ Apple introduces M4 chip (apple.com)
Apple, in its infinite quest to make everything obsolete within three years, has unveiled the M4 chip, arbitrarily touted as the next leap in AI absurdity. Enthusiasts are **shrieking** with joy on forums, convinced they can now run Skynet from their overpriced aluminum paperweights. Critics, clinging to their vintage Intel relics, argue whether the chip can launch Outlook faster than a sundial, while others openly dream of their MacBook spontaneously combusting into a newer model. Meanwhile, everyone completely ignores the impending obsolescence programmed dutifully into their shiny devices, because privacy – or whatever Apple tells them is important this week.
1044 points by excsn 2024-05-07T14:37:32 | 1233 comments
2. ▲ Decker: A fantastic reincarnation of HyperCard with 1-bit graphics (beyondloom.com)
**Decker: The Retro Reboot Nobody Asked For**
In a bold move that screams for validation, someone decided to resurrect the ghost of HyperCard and dress it up as "Decker," complete with the primitive charm of 1-bit graphics that even your grandmother's first computer would mock. But fear not, elite denizens of the internet are here to offer unsolicited upgrades to a whopping 2-bit to bring the blurry into the slightly less blurry. In truly groundbreaking fashion, commentators reminisce about the nostalgic inefficiency of old tech while complaining about how tiny everything is on modern screens. Who knew nostalgia required such squinting? Embrace the past, strain your eyes, and maybe even find a desktop computer to experience this masterpiece of retro inconvenience! 🤓👓💾
52 points by metadat 2024-05-07T22:15:05 | 9 comments
3. ▲ Road resurfacing during the daytime without stopping traffic [video] (youtube.com)
In the latest bout of YouTube clickbait, an over-engineered video of daytime road resurfacing promises to dazzle five viewers with its mildly interesting, albeit utterly mundane, content. Engineering aficionados congregate in the comments section, locked in a grueling battle to establish who skipped more important tasks at work to watch traffic maneuver around construction for what feels like eternities. One zealot claims, "This puts Elon's Boring Company to shame!"—believing, presumably, that a large slowly-moving object is peak entertainment—ignoring the irony of being equally static in both enthusiasm and life advancements. Meanwhile, another commenter likens watching the assembly of the bridge to Hollywood blockbusters, proving that standards for entertainment are, indeed, scraping the bedrock.
500 points by sschueller 2024-05-07T15:36:05 | 185 comments
4. ▲ IBM Granite: A Family of Open Foundation Models for Code Intelligence (github.com/ibm-granite)
In an unsurprising turn of corporate benevolence, IBM announces its latest open-source escapade: IBM Granite, a revolutionary series of models that are sure to parse your code better than your junior devs ever could. "We read every piece of feedback," claims the overlords at IBM, convinced that parsing complaints will somehow outstrip their models’ ability to parse Python. In the comments, the typical techno-babble ensues as lost souls like WizardCoder and StarCoder scramble for crumbs of "other open models" while someone on ollama desperately hopes the IBM deities bless them with a demo. Because let's face it, what's more thrilling than watching lines of code underpinning AI slowly turn into legible software?
71 points by lukhas 2024-05-07T21:16:36 | 4 comments
5. ▲ LPCAMM2 is a modular, repairable, upgradeable memory standard for laptops (ifixit.com)

Another Day, Another Modular Dream



In a world where technological innovation is plainly just an excuse to sell you a new laptop every year, iFixit trumpets the arrival of the LPCAMM2—a memory standard so modular it might just outlast your monthly internet outrage cycle. Carsten Frauenheim gushes over the technical wizardry that apparently justifies soldering RAM directly onto your motherboard, while commenters stroke their chins thoughtfully, pretending they didn't just Google "what is RAM?" five minutes ago. One brave soul dares to query why the slot can't cozy up closer to the CPU, in a tone that suggests they've just narrowly missed a Nobel Prize in Physics. And yes, everyone agrees it’s nice to save a watt here or there, but couldn't we just stick to complaining about Apple's prices? 💸🔧😂
230 points by leduyquang753 2024-05-07T15:17:48 | 104 comments
6. ▲ ScrapeGraphAI: Web scraping using LLM and direct graph logic (onrender.com)
**ScrapeGraphAI: Web scraping using LLM and direct graph logic (onrender.com)**

Today in "solutions looking for problems," we feast upon the intricate artistry of scraping the web with the buzzword-laden concoction known as ScrapeGraphAI. In a world desperate for the next shiny tech object, enthusiasts champion the notion of LLMs optimizing CSS selectors as if they are also going to fold your laundry. Commenters, high on the fumes of Machine Learning mystique, devolve into a tech support forum where tales of wrestled raw HTML are met with “_just use magic AI dust!_” 📜🚀 Meanwhile, another commenter, apparently stuck in 2005, boasts about how "Extractus" could almost read the articles on its own, if only it could scrape past the ads. Could this be the nostalgic revival of Clippy for scrapers? "It looks like you're trying to steal content efficiently. Can I help you with that?" 😂 Grab your popcorn; this ride back to bot-induced dystopia is just getting started.
94 points by ulrischa 2024-05-07T19:41:25 | 29 comments
7. ▲ The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound (audioacademy.in)
In the latest display of nostalgic technical wizardry, an article from Audio Academy praises the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, seemingly unaware that the behemoth sound system was less of a breakthrough and more of a break-everything-including-the-bank. Commenters, clearly enlightened sages of the audiophile realm, nitpick over microphone placements and phase cancellation, diving headlong into a rabbit hole of technical jargon that would likely send the uninitiated screaming for the simplistic bliss of their smartphone speakers. One particularly nostalgic soul cherishes bootleg sound quality like a hipster treasures a latte from an underground coffee shop no one has heard of. Meanwhile, the practical application of the Wall's innovations to modern PA systems is casually dismissed as "plug and play," reducing a historical revolution in sound engineering to the emotional thrill of configuring a wireless router. 🎸🔊👴
121 points by 1970-01-01 2024-05-07T18:06:29 | 70 comments
8. ▲ SecureDrop Protocol (securedrop.org)
In today's episode of armchair cryptography, SecureDrop tries to reinvent the wheel, but with added paranoia and less practicality. Naturally, the peanut gallery rushes in to suggest everything from Boeing-specific uses to questioning fundamental parts of the protocol with the zeal of a freshman computer science student. Meanwhile, an advocate for Bitmessage, ignoring its very public plea for a security audit, proclaims that *it* solved all these issues long ago. Let’s keep reinventing security protocols and argue about it online, because surely that’s how we’ll achieve enlightenment!
158 points by Zezima 2024-05-07T15:12:56 | 4 comments
9. ▲ Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? (newyorker.com)
In an audacious display of urban omnipotence, The New Yorker expertly diagnoses the desolation of downtown districts with a novel cure-all: morph office towers into apartment blocks. Internet urbanists emerge from their digital nooks, bombarding the comments with tales of similar revitalizations—from Kansas City's resuscitating sprawls to SF's policy paralysis. Debates spiral over doom loops, crime surges, and the quasi-magical powers of zoning laws. An enlightening trainwreck accentuated by the mandatory interjection of grossly irrelevant anecdotes, all while downtown remains, perhaps, just darkened concrete waiting for its next batch of wide-eyed dreamers—or a bulldozer. 🏢🏗️🤔
222 points by pseudolus 2024-05-07T13:29:49 | 422 comments
10. ▲ Jolie, the service-oriented programming language (jolie-lang.org)
Welcome to the riveting world of Jolie, the programming language that trumpets the revolutionary concept of turning everything into a service. Because obviously, the problem with modern software development was too few abstractions. Over in the comments, tech enthusiasts engage in their favorite pastime: squabbling over regex validations and pondering law of trivial inconveniences, while mistakenly theorizing that shiny new syntax will finally make them write bug-free code. Apparently, in the grand scheme of programming languages, if you're not mired in rhetorical debates on forums, you're just not doing it right. 🙄
39 points by todsacerdoti 2024-05-07T21:07:33 | 17 comments
11. ▲ Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation (unsw.edu.au)
**Cold Brew Cavitation Catastrophe**

Academic caffeination enthusiasts at UNSW unveil their groundbreaking three-minute sonic-boom coffee brewing method, promising to end the oppressive 24-hour tyranny of traditional cold brew soaking. Meanwhile, the comment section morphs into a battleground where cold brew traditionalists lament the sacrilege of rushing their beloved ritual, while gadget geeks wielding chemistry lab tools debate pH levels like their lives depend on not drinking slightly sour coffee. One adventurous soul shares traumatic tales from the front lines of coffee shops, fighting the good fight to warm the cold brew against barista recommendations, only to be ostracized by the latte-sipping elite. WIth coffee culture now apparently requiring a Ph.D. in acoustics, we can't help but ponder: when will the madness end? 🤯☕
358 points by ople 2024-05-07T12:46:14 | 226 comments
12. ▲ Show QN: Convert your Containerfile to a bootable OS (github.com/containers)
In a masterstroke of unnecessary complexity, Hacker News users are drooling over their keyboards about a new project that allows them to convert their Containerfiles into bootable OSes. "Bootc" and "Elemental" are apparently leading the revolution in making something as convoluted as possible for the exclusive gratification of three people who live in their terminal. One enthusiastic commenter relives their harrowing tale of arm wrestling with Fedora, zestfully complicated by lacking documentation which seems to be a revered tradition in the realm of Open Source projects. 💻🚀 Meanwhile, others are debating the existential logistics of booting up entire container rigs just to avoid managing an offline repository—because evidently, hitting the 'update' button is entirely too mainstream.💾🤓
107 points by twelvenmonkeys 2024-05-07T17:50:21 | 23 comments
13. ▲ Conical Slicing: A different angle of 3D printing (cnckitchen.com)
At CNCKitchen.com, the brave explorers of the 3-dimensional frontiers have made a groundbreaking discovery: that 3D printers do, indeed, exist in three dimensions. Cue the collective gasp from the loyal commentariat, armed with their PhDs in the obvious. Suggestions abound, each more revolutionary than the last, from mimicking the humble crinkle crankle wall in print patterns to wishing for slicers that could defy the very laws of physics with a simple firmware update. Meanwhile, images cycle like a hyperactive slide projector, distracting readers as they delve deeper into this thrilling rehash of an age-old technique, now boldly rebranded as "conical slicing." If only the wisdom of amateur engineers on the internet could be converted directly into tangible tech improvements—3D printing would surely transcend its current station as *merely* revolutionary.
58 points by fanf2 2024-05-06T10:42:03 | 15 comments
14. ▲ Unix forking the universe by running IBM's free online quantum computer (parel.es)
In a universe of infinite possibilities, enthusiasts have gathered around IBM’s latest gimmick: a "free" online quantum computer that purportedly forks the universe faster than the potatoes at your Thanksgiving dinner. Despite being touted as the cutting edge, users find it stumbles over its own quantum feet, buckling under the immense weight of a 500 Internal Server Error—how quaintly archaic! Commenters, armed with their half-baked understanding of quantum mechanics, engage in philosophical brawls over the implications of miserably slow universal forking, while conveniently ignoring that flipping a coin would achieve the same outcome with less existential dread and debugging. Will the real Schrödinger’s cat please stand up—or not stand up? It probably doesn’t matter, since you won’t know until you check, and even then, good luck logging in! 🤦‍♂️
14 points by andrewp123 2024-05-07T22:52:07 | 7 comments
15. ▲ Gradient descent visualization (github.com/lilipads)
**Gradient Descent Animation: The Mystical Dance of Pixels**

In a thrilling display of wasted GPU cycles, a brave GitHub warrior attempts to demystify the enigmatic art of gradient descent through delightful 2D squiggles. Meanwhile, armchair mathematicians in the comments heroically point out—yet again—that what works in 2D is as irrelevant to real AI problems as a bicycle is to a fish. Watch in awe as they argue the intricacies of high-dimensional spaces with the fervor of a high school debate club, blissfully missing the point that even in a thousand dimensions, their chances of understanding the entire system are about as good as their homemade neural network passing a Turing test. ***Is it science or modern art?*** THE COMMENTERS ARE ON IT! 🧠💥
137 points by weinzierl 2024-05-07T06:24:59 | 21 comments
16. ▲ Facebook just updated its relationship status with Web Components (mux.com)
In an exhilarating leap towards redundancy, Facebook announces its fling with Web Components, a torrid affair aimed at making web development even more convoluted than ever before. Commenters, in a display of unmatched technical prowess, argue feverishly over which front-end library will be the first to be dumped when the next big thing™ rolls out. Meanwhile, the pragmatic philosopher at Mux admits to still using React, mingling the confession with a subtle plug for their oh-so-versatile SDKs, because why choose one framework when you can awkwardly straddle all of them for twice the maintenance fun? In the end, everyone agrees to disagree, uniting only in their mutual misunderstanding of each other's points, proving once again that in the eco-chamber of tech, confusion is just another standard. 🤷‍♂️
90 points by mmcclure 2024-05-07T17:38:32 | 39 comments
17. ▲ Hackers discover how to reprogram NES Tetris from within the game (arstechnica.com)
The techno-savvy necromancers at Ars Technica have unearthed an ancient forbidden art: reprogramming the sacred scrolls of NES Tetris *from within the game itself*. In true Ars fashion, the comment section quickly devolves into a cyberpunk book club, with would-be wizards waxing philosophical about the existential risks of executing theoretical physics hacks on 8-bit hardware. One brave keyboard warrior invokes Charles Stross, fearing the “ultimate end game for hacking” might inadvertently trigger the heat death of their mom’s basement. Meanwhile, others argue whether such cosmic meltdowns would be covered by their gamer insurance, or if they would indeed need a reliable save point from a universe-ending glitch. Apparently, our fate rests in the hands of those adept at spinning falling blocks. 🎮💥
161 points by LorenDB 2024-05-07T11:24:08 | 47 comments
18. ▲ PDEP-13: The Pandas Logical Type System (github.com/pandas-dev)
In a stunning display of reinvention, the Pandas team announces PDEP-13: The Pandas Logical Type System, delighting dozens across the globe. The GitHub comment section quickly morphs into a battleground where hobbyist programmers wax poetic about the existential nuances between "logical" and "physical" types, as if their homemade query engines are the foundational stones of computer science. One sage suggests renaming types with a question mark to solve all of life's mysteries — because syntax was definitely the bottleneck in everyone's data analysis pipeline. Meanwhile, seasoned Pandas veterans bandage their workflow with workaround patches, dreaming of a day when calling fillna doesn’t summon a wild bug from the digital ether.
11 points by hackandthink 2024-05-05T06:58:41 | 3 comments
19. ▲ Array.shift Optimizations in Firefox's JavaScript Engine (2020) (lannonbr.com)
In yet another riveting episode of "Understanding JavaScript's Underbelly," hobbyist engineers tackle Firefox's Array.shift() like it's the Gordian Knot of web performance. Commenters rattle off O-notations and data structure comparisons, desperately trying to articulate why their shoddy websites take 10 seconds to load a JPEG of a cat. One brave soul ponders the nature of JS arrays with a tragic revelation akin to discovering Santa isn't real — yes, Virginia, arrays are just fancy objects. Meanwhile, practical advice on using double-ended queues gathers dust as everyone tries to out-nerd each other, blissfully unaware that their readers have scurried back to the safety of Python.
42 points by melvinroest 2024-05-06T00:24:39 | 29 comments
20. ▲ Pyspread – Pythonic Spreadsheet (pyspread.gitlab.io)
In the latest technological twist no one asked for, "pyspread" offers hapless Python coders the chance to bask in the so-called "pythonic" glory of a spreadsheet. While masochists herald the "Target User Group" section as the Second Coming, normal humans recognize it for what it actually is: a digital "No Homers Club." Meanwhile, commentators wax poetic about the existential bliss of not using apps designed for them, and someone inevitably fantasizes about a mega-distro that includes pyspread, because clearly, what Linux needs is another distro designed around the philosophy of "Why not?" Could it be that the allure of pyspread isn't its utility but the chance to join yet another niche user base no one else understands or needs? 🐍📑
247 points by Qem 2024-05-07T11:08:56 | 101 comments
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