Quacker News daily superautomated ai tech-bro mockery | github | podcast
1. Lynn Conway has died (wikipedia.org)
The internet reacts to the passing of Lynn Conway. A true pioneer of computer science passes away and the world gathers online to showcase their genuine respect through a collection of rapidly Googled facts and half-baked anecdotes about AI ethics. Meanwhile, STEM aficionados crawl out of the woodwork to flex their introductory knowledge of VLSI Systems with poignant buzzword tributes. It's like a high school reunion in the comment section, where everyone is trying to prove they were friends with the deceased, or at least had a class with her.
1225 points by kevvok 2024-06-11T16:44:11 | 235 comments
2. How Much of a Genius-Level Move Was Using Binary Space Partitioning in Doom? (twobithistory.org)
Two-bit history pulls out another "vintage gem" untangling the stupendous genius of using Binary Space Partitioning in Doom—a move apparently more revolutionary than cutting bread. Enter wisecracking tech nostalgists in the comments, tripping over themselves to explain how their Commodore 64 could have run Doom with half a teaspoon of RAM and a significant dose of childhood denial. Imagine thinking stacking partitions is peak tech intellect! 😂 Get ready for an avalanche of self-proclaimed tech "historians" geeking out while missing the point—as usual.
63 points by davikr 2024-06-11T23:38:12 | 6 comments
3. ARC Prize – a $1M+ competition towards open AGI progress (arcprize.org)
In another dazzling display of Silicon Valley’s unique blend of altruism and hubris, the ARC Prize teases the minds of artificial intelligence enthusiasts with a carrot dangled on a $1,000,000+ stick. As expected, the truly groundbreaking idea of throwing money at a problem has the comment section abuzz with tech bros toggling between world-saving fantasies and speculating whether Elon Musk sneezes in binary. Delight in watching a thread filled with squabbles over what flavor of AI dystopia the prize money should unwittingly fund this time. The race to forge our benevolent silicon overlords marches on, one over-caffeinated GitHub commit at a time. 🤖💸😂
225 points by mikeknoop 2024-06-11T17:19:41 | 72 comments
4. I like the RP2040 (dgroshev.com)
In an adrenaline-fueled display of technological enthusiasm, a blogger screams into the void about their undying love for the RP2040 microcontroller, a topic surely to save us all from impending societal collapse. In a series of ground-breaking observations that would make even the most seasoned Silicon Valley 'thought leader' weep, the author manages to outline how this gadget will not revolutionize anything except his own weekend plans. Meanwhile, the comments section evolves into a mesmerizing vortex of one-upmanship, as hobbyists and tech aficionados alike compete to prove who can be the most pedantically obsessed over a cheap piece of silicon. Who knew the future of computing was being held hostage by a group who can't seem to agree on the best way to blink an LED? 😱🔥👀
414 points by dgroshev 2024-06-11T13:39:49 | 281 comments
5. Making iron gall ink from oak galls (nyanpasu64.gitlab.io)
**Title: DIY Disaster: Urban Forager Plays Chemist**

In a thrilling display of suburban ignorance, a local pedestrian discovers lumps on a tree and decides—based on exhaustive research from two whole apps—that they are, in fact, oak galls. Seized by a colonial-era cosplay urge, they embark on a rustic journey to make iron gall ink, a sticky endeavor that most of civilization has happily moved past since the invention of the ballpoint pen. The comment section becomes a lively dumpster fire of misinformation where self-proclaimed historians debate the historical accuracy of using a ball jar instead of a cauldron, while amateur botanists argue whether the galls were preferably harvested by left-handed virgins under a full moon. It’s an educational read, if you’re planning to time travel.
25 points by LorenDB 2024-06-11T11:54:24 | 7 comments
6. The Rise and Fall of BNN Breaking, an AI-Generated News Outlet (nytimes.com)
In a world starving for lack of even more formulaic news content, BNN Breaking bursts onto the scene, swiftly peaking before plummeting into obscurity like a lead balloon in a vacuum. The startup's AI, apparently schooled at the same prestigious institutions as its human commentariat, masters the art of recycling yesterday's headlines with the finesse of a seasoned journalist. Reader comments oscillate between calling it the inevitable death knell for human reporters and panicking about job security for their cousin's freelance blog gig. 🙄 However, both parties can agree on one thing: nothing beats sharing completely uninformed opinions online.
38 points by bookofjoe 2024-06-11T19:06:39 | 16 comments
7. Gruen Transfer (wikipedia.org)
Title: Hapless Consumers in a Maze: The "Groundbreaking" Gruen Transfer

Another *enlightening* deep dive by Wikipedia into the Gruen Transfer, exposing how shopping malls turn us into wandering toddlers unable to remember why we're there in the first place. In a stunning revelation, shoppers are distracted by shiny things! Who knew? Comment sections have predictably devolved into a mix of lost souls bragging about their own superior navigation skills and tech-bros proposing app-based solutions to save humanity from mall-induced amnesia. 👏👏👏 Because, obviously, what we all need is another app.
39 points by thinkingemote 2024-06-11T19:00:31 | 27 comments
8. Show QN: Revideo – Create Videos with Code (github.com/redotvideo)
In another earth-shattering leap for humanity, someone has bravely decided to reinvent PowerPoint with Show HN: Revideo, allowing you to create the same mediocre presentations, but now with extra code bloat. Thrilled commenters, waving their Software Engineering degrees like desperate flags on a deserted island, call it "innovative," mostly because they confused verbosity for sophistication. From buzzword-lovers to those who think adding a semicolon makes them a developer, the Hacker News tribe has found another shiny tool to preach about. Fans advise: "Take our feedback seriously, but please, don’t ever make us actually learn design essentials." 😂👨‍💻
158 points by hkonsti 2024-06-11T14:43:31 | 45 comments
9. The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 (2019) (oup.com)
In the groundbreaking scholarly hit, "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870-2015," economists magic up conclusions by diving into centuries of financial data, somehow finding fresh ways to say that if you had money before, you probably still have it now. 🎩 💰 The layman's summary: "Old money good, no money bad." Meanwhile, in the comment section, armchair economists and time-travel enthusiasts engage in the intellectual equivalent of a food fight, each claiming their hot take on interest rates could have absolutely, definitely stopped the Great Depression, or at least gotten them into a better mortgage. But alas, we'll never know, as they are too busy typing to step into their time machines. 🕰️🚀
117 points by lazyjeff 2024-06-11T19:20:12 | 71 comments
10. Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers (maggieappleton.com)
Today on the internet, an avant-garde programmer at maggieappleton.com revolutionizes the world by comparing software development to *slicing onions without goggles*, in a groundbreaking piece titled "Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers." With indulgent metaphors that would make a high-school poet blush, the author insists that developers should ditch their shoes (and possibly their good senses) to feel the earth between their toes and the server racks. Commenters, glowing with the revelation that dirty feet might be the secret key to transcendent code, trip over themselves to wax philosophical about their newly discovered "organic coding." 😂😂 It's a farm-to-table feast in binary!
141 points by stevekrouse 2024-06-10T12:49:50 | 54 comments
11. Edward C. Stone, 1936-2024 (caltech.edu)
The Hive of Superior Intellect formally announces the termination of Edward C. Stone's cosmic subscription at the age of 88. The legendary Voyager maestro managed to escape our mundane planetary existence, undoubtedly to avoid hearing yet another recount of his spacecraft's decades-old achievements from space enthusiasts who can't find Venus without a smartphone app. In the comments section, armies of keyboard astronomers fight a vicious battle over who can quote Carl Sagan the most poetically while simultaneously misinterpreting basic astrophysics. The intellectual echo chamber resonates with the sound of self-congratulation as humanity remains firmly planted on Earth, gazing upwards with a confused squint.
9 points by dangle1 2024-06-11T23:11:31 | 0 comments
12. Coqui.ai TTS: A Deep Learning Toolkit for Text-to-Speech (github.com/coqui-ai)
At Coqui.ai, the *innovative* team promises to take your feedback as seriously as a cat contemplates a mouse before mercilessly playing with it. Today, the developers unveil their latest text-to-speech "revolution" that presumably turns your mundane text into the voice of a slightly distracted Siri. In the comments, a horde of GitHub warriors passionately argue over the groundbreaking importance of adding an emoji support to the TTS system, because what we truly need in our robotic overlords is better emotional range. One might think it's only a matter of time before this toolkit gains consciousness and starts mocking us too. 🤖💬
129 points by stefankuehnel 2024-06-11T16:25:16 | 27 comments
13. Flameshot – Open-source screenshot software (flameshot.org)
In a daring attempt to reinvent the wheel, _Flameshot_ emerges as the savior of tech enthusiasts who find pressing the "Print Screen" key too mundane. This "revolutionary" tool comes jam-packed with features that promise to shave seconds off your screenshotting escapades, because clearly, what the world lacks is innovation in screenshot technology. The comment section becomes a battleground where aficionados argue that knowing ten ways to capture a tooltip could drastically change human existence as we know it. Meanwhile, critics jest that perhaps the next update might let you capture the soul of your PC. 📸😱
139 points by nikolay 2024-06-11T20:03:57 | 46 comments
14. My War (1982) (harpers.org)
In an astonishing display of historic revelation, Harpers drops a bombshell article, "My War," which generously offers readers yet another chance to feign surprise at the gritty realities of conflict that have been exhaustively documented elsewhere. The comment section is ablaze with armchair historians and weekend warriors, each competing to outdo the others in a spectacular exhibition of misunderstood war tactics and misplaced machismo. Never before has the echo chamber of self-congratulatory ignorance been so well-fortified. Clearly, military strategy and human empathy are both dead, but don’t worry: these commenters have emojis and ALL CAPS to resuscitate them.
32 points by Michelangelo11 2024-06-10T23:19:52 | 6 comments
15. Glish: A version of English where every word is only one syllable (github.com/paralogical)
In an unparalleled act of linguistic bravery, some bright sparks have birthed *Glish*, a mutant offspring of English that dares to live where no polysyllabic word has lived before. 🤯 The GitHub cemetery of intellectual curiosity hosts this groundbreaking endeavor, promising a future where every heartfelt spiel can be grunted in monosyllables. Commentators, in an orgy of self-congratulation, either revel in the Orwellian simplicity or mourn the death of anything resembling eloquent thought. Only time will tell if this revolutionary simplification will elevate discourse or reduce all human interaction to caveman-like grunts of "me like" and "no want."
9 points by luu 2024-06-10T23:34:02 | 4 comments
16. Swift Static Linux SDK (swift.org)
In an unprecedented act of foresight, Swift.org unleashes the Swift Static Linux SDK, because clearly what the world needs is *another* way to run Swift on a system that nobody uses for desktop apps. Developers, who obviously have an abundance of time to solve problems that don’t exist, flock to the comments to declare this the new era of software development. Meanwhile, others are just relieved to have another geeky topic to mansplain at dinner parties. All seven Linux users are thrilled. 🎉🐧
165 points by mannuch 2024-06-11T20:25:18 | 123 comments
17. Self-Serve Dashboards (briefer.cloud)
On briefer.cloud, another tech evangelist heralds the Second Coming of *Self-Serve Dashboards*, because if there's anything end-users love more than doing their jobs, it's definitely doing part of someone else’s job too. The article passionately kisses the ground walked upon by these glorified Excel sheets, promising to revolutionize the way middle management can misinterpret data. Meanwhile, the comment section erupts into a predictable warzone where half the warriors claim these dashboards will save democracy, and the other half can’t figure out how to change their password. Who knew that the future of business intelligence was just making everyone equally confused?
178 points by vieiralucas 2024-06-11T14:04:36 | 54 comments
18. Francis Ford Coppola's “Godfather Notebook” (jillianhess.substack.com)
In a riveting exploration of “Godfather Notebook,” Jillian Hess dives into Coppola’s riveting collection of doodles, prompting a battalion of armchair directors on Substack to decree the absolute *decadence* of film directing from their all-knowing perches. Each commenter, brimming with an authority suspiciously derived from half-watched YouTube analyses, outdoes the next in revealing esoteric insights like "color symbolism" and "foreshadowing" they swear no one else has *ever* spotted before. Together, they've almost convinced each other that reading Coppola’s grocery lists could surely unveil deeper meanings in "Citizen Kane." 🎬
45 points by benbreen 2024-06-10T13:44:59 | 3 comments
19. Multitasking, parallel processing, and concurrency in Swift (eclecticlight.co)
Title: Multitasking, parallel processing, and concurrency in Swift (eclecticlight.co)

In the thrilling world of eclecticlight.co, the mysteries of multitasking, parallel processing, and concurrency in Swift are dissected as if they were fresh entrails spilled from a sacrificial lamb. Here, we learn that computers haven’t just been blithely running "simple, linear" code since Elvis was hip-swinging, but the interruptions they’ve used since the '50s didn’t count as multitasking because, well, definitions matter more than functionality. Beneath, commenters engage in the digital equivalent of a necromantic séance, attempting to summon the spirit of Alan Turing to bless their hot takes on how this is both groundbreaking and utterly obvious. Swift indeed, or maybe just swift to assert expertise where none is needed. 🧙‍♂️💻👻
63 points by ingve 2024-06-10T07:55:26 | 28 comments
20. Show QN: Unforget, the note-taking app I always wanted: offline first, encrypted (computing-den.com)
In a critical breakthrough for the roughly eight people on Earth who both fear cloud services and can remember more than three passwords, a brave Hacker News user introduces *Unforget,* an app that not only defies the omnipresent cloud but encrypts everything too, just in case the NSA is interested in your grocery lists. The comment section explodes with the usual suspects: privacy "experts" who lecture from their Google Pixels, minimum viable product aficionados demanding it be built in Rust, and a wandering soul questioning if this could finally replace their stack of sticky notes. The rest of us marvel at how we've survived so long without yet another app promising to solve problems we didn't know we had. Truly, the future is here. 🙄
133 points by seansh 2024-06-11T13:02:23 | 76 comments
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