Quacker News daily superautomated ai tech-bro mockery | github | podcast
1. ▲ SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos (github.com/facebookresearch)
Title: Facebook Conquers the Vast Expanse of AI Uselessness Once Again

The wizards at Facebook, now blessing humanity with their Meta moniker, have rolled out SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos, which is apparently what happens when you don't let programmers go outside. The new revolutionary "toy" magically lets your computer decide what random patch of pixels it wants to call a cat. Meanwhile, the die-hard fans in the comments, who likely believe USBs have a right and wrong way, wax poetic about SAM's powers to make memes, as one fervently hopes it can soon segment the sound of their tears hitting the keyboard. 🎉💻👏
128 points by xenova 2024-07-29T22:52:56 | 23 comments
2. ▲ Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU (davidar.io)
In a daring leap through computational wizardry, a blogger decides to compress four billion years into four minutes, because who's got time for the real thing? Commenters dive into an existential puddle, mistaking shallow pop-culture references for deep insights and debating the soundtrack more vigorously than the simulation's scientific merits. One might think they’re vying to prove who can be the quirkiest armchair philosopher while casually dismissing their own existence as a bad *AI* scenario. Will the real simulated deity please stand up, or is it just another Tuesday on the internet? 🌍👽💻
41 points by diggan 2024-07-29T23:33:51 | 10 comments
3. ▲ LG and Samsung are making TV screens disappear (ieee.org)
In a groundbreaking leap that will surely solve none of our real problems, LG and Samsung dazzle us with the latest must-ignore innovation at CES 2024: *transparent televisions*. Science fiction has come to life, and now you can barely see it! Commenters, ever vigilant in their quest to miss the point, argue over potential uses for tech that nobody can afford while practically salivating at the thought of enduring yet another planned obsolescence cycle. Meanwhile, environmental concerns are waved away like so many annoying flies at a high-tech picnic. Is it clear yet that nobody really needs this, or should I explain it more transparently? 🌈💸
26 points by jnord 2024-07-29T23:13:37 | 49 comments
4. ▲ One-man SaaS, 9 Years In (healthchecks.io)
🚀 *One-man SaaS, 9 Years In:* Laugh along as a solopreneur celebrates the quiet joy of a minuscule bump in his modest MRR, all while pontificating about the virtues of life/work balance to a tribe of internet commenters. With a whopping total of 652 paying subscribers and a business model that avoids both expansion and analytics like the plague, this one-man show proves you can indeed have your cake and eat it too, as long as it’s a very small cake and you’re not really that hungry. Commenters fawn over this revolutionary approach, equating minimal earnings with maximum enlightenment, one self-calming spreadsheet at a time 🎉 Here’s to keeping life balanced, one overlooked out-of-office autoreply at a time.
322 points by km 2024-07-29T22:15:53 | 45 comments
5. ▲ Julia for Economists (2022) (github.com/cpfiffer)

Julia for Economists or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Code"


Just when you thought economists at Stanford's GSB couldn’t get any nerdier, they gather to whisper sweet economic nothings into Julia’s efficient, performant ears 🤓. Over several excruciatingly detailed sessions, they unpack why Julia might just be the next big thing in economics, conveniently ignoring its relative obscurity in mainstream applications. Meanwhile, the repository owner bathes in the adoration of niche enthusiasts, serving platitudes and hope to desperate commenters querying about the language's growth and real-world adoption. It's a riveting saga of academia meets open-source dreams, where everyone agrees that Julia is awesome and ignores that nobody outside their bubble really uses it. 💔📈
77 points by sebg 2024-07-24T20:53:04 | 22 comments
6. ▲ CrowdStrike's impact on aviation (heavymeta.org)
**CrowdStrike Hammers a Blue-Screen-Of-Pain Flyby At Aviation**

In a late-night fit of tech optimism, CrowdStrike decided to enhance the world's Windows devices with an update epic enough to crash a chunk of modern civilization, grounding planes and patience nationwide. As one commenter insightfully noted, other airlines bounced back faster than Delta simply because they weren’t trapped in a '90s software nostalgia vortex. Meanwhile, the commentariat debates whether small airlines are cozy enough to dodge I.T. disasters or if they exist in a magical realm where tech troubles are just fairy dust. And in a touching show of innocence, a commenter suggests higher ticket prices can pad against such apocalypse—a cute reminder of capitalism’s eternal optimism for a quick fix. 🤑🛫💻
226 points by jjwiseman 2024-07-29T19:41:47 | 170 comments
7. ▲ How to save $13.27 on your SaaS bill (dgerrells.com)
**How to save $13.27 on your SaaS bill: A penny-pinching odyssey**

In a world-shattering blog post that rivals the discovery of fire, a stalwart internet hero bravely narrates his epic battle against the outrageous expenses of SaaS by switching from PNG to JPG. This monumental decision, spurred by the cruel constraints of Vercel's billing system, apparently saves our protagonist precisely $13.27—enough for half a hipster coffee. Commenters, bringing the collective might of a Hacker News pow-wow, either mourn their stuffed piggy banks while serving HTML on shoestring budgets or grandly expose their superior server smarts. Meanwhile, web veterans weep for the halcyon days of simple HTML as they gawk at youthful zest misspent on "innovative" yet punishingly expensive tech stacks. 🙄💸
70 points by rustystump 2024-07-29T22:09:04 | 9 comments
8. ▲ Show QN: Create diagrams of complex data flows in software systems (github.com/jodigiordano)
**Show HN: The Ultimate Software Diagram Tool You Never Knew You Needed (Until Now)**

Today on Hacker News, a brave soul introduces a software architectural tool designed to untangle the Gordian knot of your data flows, reminiscent of a drawing by your three-year-old niece—still in the "POC" embryonic stage but with high ambitions, it promises to solve the problems you didn't know you had. The poster enthusiastically assures they read every feedback slip into the abyss of ignored GitHub issues. Meanwhile, the adoring crowd in the comments can hardly contain their enthusiasm, with one bold visionary wishing to reinvent the wheel by merging this fledgling project with every other existing library. "Super cool," echoes another, innately grasping the vast uncharted potential of adding yet another layer to the towering Jenga of their tech stack. Behold, progress awaits! 🎉😂
28 points by j0d1 2024-07-26T16:57:12 | 2 comments
9. ▲ TreeSeg: Hierarchical Topic Segmentation of Large Transcripts (augmend.com)
Title: TreeSeg: Redefining Irrelevance One Transcript at a Time

At Augmend, the visionary temple of "let's solve problems you never knew you had", executives are back-slapping in delight over their latest breakthrough: a system that turns five-hour-long dev slogs into digestible bullet points and cliché chapter titles. Just upload your rambling tech rambles, and voilà, it spews out "structured data" that includes a title so generic it could also be used for a lesser-known sci-fi novel. In the comments, hobbyist programmers and desperate project managers trade buzzwords like Pokémon cards, each hoping their newfound jargon will mask the emptiness of their actual contributions. 🙄
48 points by gklezd 2024-07-29T20:21:19 | 0 comments
10. ▲ What Adults Lost When Kids Stopped Playing in the Street (theatlantic.com)
In another heartfelt cry for the #VanLife, The Atlantic mourns the tragic era when children roamed the streets unsupervised and wonders aloud why we can't return to the good old days of negligible parental oversight. A duo of intrepid mothers--clearly overwhelmed by the oppressive presence of their children--heroically reclaim asphalt for the youth, sparking a nostalgic experiment that likely disrupted local traffic patterns. Comments degenerate into a no-holds-barred cage match between urban vivisectionists and the mythology of suburban despair, with occasional romanticized cameos from rural solitude. Somewhere, a city planner is surely chuckling into their car-free commute. 🚲💔🚗
34 points by jseliger 2024-07-30T00:14:15 | 21 comments
11. ▲ Movable tree CRDTs and Loro's implementation (loro.dev)
**Movable Tree CRDTs and Loro's Implementation: A Digital Jamboree**

Today, in the never-ending saga of tech articles designed to impress rather than inform, "Movable Tree CRDTs and Loro's Implementation" takes center stage. In an effort that only a true computer science zealot could love, the piece waxes poetic about the insurmountable trials of syncing tree data structures across systems, as if knocking out Shakespearean soliloquies about distributed computing. Reader comments quickly devolve into a tech flex-off, with commentators casually dropping links to their half-baked projects and obscure papers, because nothing says "I'm smart" like a reference no one asked for. Meanwhile, the actual usefulness of the discussed technology in everyday applications remains as clear as mud. 🧐💻🌲
240 points by czx111331 2024-07-29T12:24:59 | 29 comments
12. ▲ Launch QN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points
At the bustling intersection of frequent flyers and credit card maximalists, Roame (YC S23) launches as the ultimate savior for those burdened with too many points and not enough flights. Meanwhile, commenters dive into the finer points of shoddy disclosures and refreshing issues, unleashing their inner travel "hacker" etiquette like they're revealing the Da Vinci Code of airline points. The founders respond with promises faster than you can say "system refresh," hoping to balance on the tightrope of trust and affiliate commissions. It’s all about making point-hoarding less of a chore, because who doesn’t want to optimize the fun out of travel? 🌍✈️💳
145 points by zman0225 2024-07-29T12:56:23 | 92 comments
13. ▲ The evolution of Ruby's Range class (zverok.space)
**21st-Century Philosophers Tackle Ruby's 'Range'**

Another day, another tech-savvy individual attempting to excavate the archaic ruins of Ruby’s Range class, a journey not unlike trying to find philosophical depth in a fast-food menu. The original post boasts of peering into the evolution of this core class as if decoding the Rosetta Stone, forgetting that most devs just need code that doesn’t crash during a coffee break. Meanwhile, in the swamps of the comment section, Rubyists huddle around the warm, bug-infested fire of 'Range', debating exotic features—because who doesn’t enjoy extra homework patches on top of homework? 🤓 One particularly disgruntled coder philosophizes on Ruby's lack of explosive errors as if debating the essence of existence itself. 🎭 In Ruby-land, the show must limp on—semver be damned!
31 points by todsacerdoti 2024-07-26T11:12:29 | 2 comments
14. ▲ Notes on Taylor and Maclaurin Series (thegreenplace.net)
🎉 *Welcome to the magical world of Taylor and Maclaurin Series,* where mathematicians turn "just about any function" into an infinite sum for reasons only they find thrilling. Today on thegreenplace.net, we're dishing out yet another guide on how to break down complex functions into something even a high-school calculator can handle, because who doesn't love a good polynomial approximation when they're bored on a Sunday afternoon?

In the comment section, the circus continues! One brave soul boldly connects Taylor series to quantum field theory, because clearly, if you squint hard enough at e^-100, it starts to look like particle interactions. Meanwhile, another commenter gets nostalgic about the intellectual beatings from Calculus courses, lamenting the loss of life's joys one Maclaurin series at a time. 🚀📈 Who needs real-life applications when you can dwell in the theoretical wonderland forever?
76 points by ibobev 2024-07-24T13:30:30 | 21 comments
15. ▲ Low-income homes drop Internet service after Congress kills discount program (arstechnica.com)
**Hackers Mourn as Free Internet Gravy Train Derails**
In a world-shattering event, people are losing a $30 discount on their broadband bills and evidently, civilization as we know it is on the brink of collapse. Meanwhile, Charter Communications sobs into its quarterly reports over losing a trifling 154,000 Internet subscribers, proving once and for all that without discount, the internet is just another unreachable star for plebeians. Commenters are locked in mortal combat over whether having a smartphone equals unlimited internet access and if public libraries magically negate the need for home internet. Rest assured, keyboard warriors with gigabit fiber are very concerned about those with naught but a dream of stable connectivity. 🌐💔
39 points by LinuxBender 2024-07-29T23:27:33 | 27 comments
16. ▲ My mental model of setf was wrong (simondobson.org)
Welcome to another eye-watering episode of "I’ve Been Coding Wrong For Years." Here, Simon has an enlightening revelation that his understanding of Lisp's setf is about as accurate as a stormtrooper's aim. While he waxes lyrical about macros and "generalized places," the hoard of self-proclaimed Lisp gurus in the comments fight over who misunderstood setf first. Dive into this saga where every programmer discovers they’ve been using Lisp wrong. Bonus points for existential dread in the comment section about other misunderstood concepts! 🤓💡
152 points by nemoniac 2024-07-28T15:09:20 | 72 comments
17. ▲ New study simulates gravitational waves from failing warp drive (mpg.de)
In an era where thinking about filling a sink with water can be intellectually taxing for many, the latest treatise on simulated warp drive failures sends ripples through the cerebral basements of sci-fi enthusiasts and theoretical physicists alike. The article generously contemplates how breaking a fictive faster-than-light drive could mimic a space-time blip worthy of intergalactic AAA. Comment sections, as ever, are abuzz with the keen insights of armchair cosmologists debating the probability of our cosmic insignificance, the feasibility of cartoon physics, and whether superluminal travel insurance might cover interstellar roadside assistance. One can only *hope* for a future where the brightest minds continue to ponder on wars of unseen galaxies while neglecting the physics of their overflowing kitchen taps. 🌌💥
40 points by nabla9 2024-07-29T15:23:42 | 53 comments
18. ▲ Do Penguins Have Knees? (2019) (penguinsinternational.org)
In a thrilling expose, Penguins International asks the biting question "Do Penguins Have Knees?" igniting a firestorm of scientific inquiry among the Internet's most dauntless zoologists: the commenters. One might think that an article could confirm or debunk such a mystery, but why bother when you can have recycled comedian bits and a profound discussion about vet communication skills? Fear not, armchair ornithologists, as you debate the finer points of avian anatomy and reminisce over children's books. It's a knee-slapper, for those invested in gravitational management of their digestion, knee-based or otherwise. 😂
94 points by not_a_boat 2024-07-29T16:10:07 | 20 comments
19. ▲ MeTube: Self-hosted YouTube downloader (github.com/alexta69)
Title: The Self-Hosting Shark Tank: MeTube vs. The World

Summary: At the bleeding edge of "not letting Google hold all my data" comes MeTube, a self-hosted pirate ship sailing the turbulent waters of youtube-dl forks. Enthusiasts trade jabs in the comments over whether this memory-hogging, multi-container monstrosity really improves on writing ten lines of bash script. Elsewhere, loyalists of variously obscure alternatives like Tube Archivist and Pinchflat joust for the high ground of minimal database dependencies and ease of deployment. The desperation to avoid the soul-crushing experience of using actual YouTube is palpable, but the likelihood anyone will migrate from their creaky setups is as slim as Google sending you a thank-you card. 🏴‍☠️
212 points by thunderbong 2024-07-29T08:59:41 | 101 comments
20. ▲ Hybrid Search in CrateDB - ranking and scoring calculations in pure SQL (cratedb.com)
**Hybrid Search Woes: IT Brogrammers Rejoice**

Today, in a *startling* display of reinventing wheels, CrateDB announces its latest flight of SQL acrobatic tricks: Hybrid Search! Imagine, combining **not one** but TWO existing search algorithms to achieve the paradigm-shifting result of... slightly better search results. 🎉 Commenters, giddy from yet another "revolutionary" buzzword, trip over themselves to proclaim that indeed, sprinkling some SQL and tech jargon makes everything faster, smarter, and vaguely more enterprise-ready. Welcome to the future, where your database does slightly more than it did yesterday, and somehow this warrants celebration. 💻🚀
20 points by geragray 2024-07-29T19:59:13 | 0 comments
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