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1. ▲ Hackberry-Pi_Zero – A handheld Linux terminal using Raspberry Pi Zero 2W (github.com/zitaotech)
**Hackberry-Pi_Zero**: A terminal for those who can't let go of their BlackBerry past, freshly baked with the sorcery of shoddy battery planning. Enthusiasts on GitHub marvel at a self-inflicted fire hazard, as the creator dismisses trivial concerns like "battery compatibility" and "basic safety features." Meanwhile, commenters dive deep into a technical abyss, debating the explosive possibilities with the glee of pyromaniacs at a firework convention. Embrace nostalgia, embrace combustion! 💥🔥😂
426 points by felixr 2024-08-02T13:34:37 | 103 comments
2. ▲ Magnetically levitated space elevator to low-earth orbit [pdf] (2001) (anl.gov)
Magnetically Levitated Space Elevator Extravaganza

In a stunning display of aspirational engineering, enthusiasts dust off a 2001 PDF to rekindle their love affair with the space elevator – a sci-fi staple as elusive as effective online privacy. Commenters, armed with degrees from the University of Wikipedia, engage in heated debates about carbon nanomaterials and maglev technology, blissfully side-stepping the economic and political apocalypse likely needed to justify such a project. Meanwhile, someone suggests using balloons and railguns as an alternative, because apparently, KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) just isn’t exciting enough. 🎈🔫 Will humanity reach the stars on a space elevator, or will we first be crushed by the weight of collective desperation in comment sections? Stay tuned.
72 points by fosk 2024-08-02T20:03:12 | 42 comments
3. ▲ The Future of Kdb+ (timestored.com)
**The Never-ending Ramblings of the Once Kdb+ Sage**: Havoc strikes in the thrilling world of kdb+ where a former practitioner, now essentially a tech-world recluse, decides to bless the masses with prophetic insights on where the mystical art of **_kdb+_** is headed. Cue a tiresome narrative about historical data and streaming calculations that everyone claims to understand but merely uses to sound savvy in board meetings. The comments section, a dazzling circus of one-upmanship, where every commenter is either a self-proclaimed messiah or starkly clueless, desperately clinging to buzzwords to float through the techie jargon stream. What's more exciting than watching adults play magical chairs with database technology? 🎉📉
5 points by geph2021 2024-08-03T00:18:13 | 0 comments
4. ▲ EWritable – e-ink tablet news and reviews (ewritable.com)
In the technophile den that is EWritable, the scribblings of the future are analyzed with excruciating detail, because what the world needs now is more overpriced flattened graphite smeared on a minimalist-design inspired pad. Readers endlessly debate the pragmatics of having their e-ink gizmos tethered to the web as silently as a monk's vow of silence, while casting aspirations for cheaper, Wi-Fi-only tablets — because who needs cellular connectivity when your life's ambition is to retreat further into your tech-cave? Watch as the site buckles under the weight of Hacker News aficionados crashing it faster than a kid on a sugar high. It seems everyone's an armchair techie until the "Error establishing a database connection" message appears, then it's back to scribbling angry comments into the void. 🙃
17 points by SushiHippie 2024-08-02T23:14:04 | 9 comments
5. ▲ DSCv3, the latest iteration of Microsoft's Desired State Configuration platform (github.com/powershell)
**Title: Microsoft Reboots DSC and Everyone Pretends to Care**

The latest iteration of Microsoft's Desired State Configuration, DSCv3, is here to ensure that anyone brave enough to manage their systems declaratively can also suffer idempotently across all platforms, including Linux and macOS—because why should Windows users have all the fun? 🎉 The repository, a dazzling spectacle of what could be but isn't quite yet, is tantalizingly open for feedback but not code; how very open source of them. Commenters engage in rituals of cautious optimism, though one becomes nostalgic about the simpler, bygone days of checking boxes rather than writing JSON. Meanwhile, DSC remains the favorite playground for that one "PowerShell guru" at work, who can't seem to find any documentation but is certain it must exist somewhere. Probably.
11 points by bsnnkv 2024-08-02T22:28:50 | 7 comments
6. ▲ ArchiveTeam Warrior (archiveteam.org)
**Today in Tech Saviorism: ArchiveTeam Warriors**

The ArchiveTeam has *unleashed* a virtual appliance so simple, even your techno-phobic uncle can save the internet, one byte at a time. Charge forth with your Windows, MacOS, or Linux steed, armed only with the mightiest of tools—VirtualBox. Commenters are buzzing with hot takes on data discoverability, dreaming of a decentralized utopia where Reddit trembles before an army of node-running rebels. Amidst their fervor, they inadvertently outline their own irrelevance, since no one beyond their echo chamber knows how to question a WARC file or finds joy in navigating the icy expanse of the Wayback Machine. 🤓💾
98 points by xnx 2024-08-02T18:34:07 | 15 comments
7. ▲ Kepler's 400-year-old sunspot sketches helped solve a modern mystery (arstechnica.com)
Once again, hobbyist historians on the internet are astonished by archaic chicken-scratches that have somehow helped solve a sunspot mystery from 400 years ago. Imagine the fields of modern astronomy and history saved by Kepler's doodles, much like a seventh-grader's margin art rescues a boring school lecture. Commenters are busy debating whether digital records or ancient scrolls are better at surviving apocalypse, seemingly preparing for their underground bunker life. Meanwhile, the real question goes unanswered: if all it takes to decipher the cosmos is a set of old sketches, why are we even bothering with telescopes? 🌌🔍
60 points by benbreen 2024-08-01T05:46:20 | 7 comments
8. ▲ 1991 WWW-NeXT Implementation (github.com/simonw)
🌐 **Old Code, New Tricks: The Internet’s Dusty Corner** 🌐

In a digital equivalent of resurrecting the dinosaur with its ancient DNA, some internet historian decided it was crucial to mirror Tim Berners-Lee's groundbreaking but crusty 1991 WorldWideWeb code on GitHub because... nostalgia? While the project boldly peeks into the fossilized innards of the web’s early carcass, the commenters stumble over each other to either praise this heroic act of code-preservation or helplessly ask if this relic can do tricks on modern systems. One brave soul echoes through the void, "Cool to see here," underscoring the overwhelming emotional rollercoaster we all face when confronted with *early internet artifacts*. Meanwhile, others are neck-deep in StackExchange threads, trying to Frankenstein this ancient software to life on platforms it was never meant to haunt. *So modern, much wow!* 🖥️
42 points by ulrischa 2024-08-02T19:10:41 | 5 comments
9. ▲ The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning (wiley.com)
Welcome to "The Marshmallow Test Redux: Income Matters More Than Willpower," a revealing study that shows, once again, that everything we thought was about self-control is actually about how thick your wallet is. Commenters are having a field day, armed to the teeth with anecdotes and righteous indignation, ready to debunk decades of psychological studies with stories from their cousin's neighbor who always buys generic brand cereal to save a buck, or their deep philosophical reflections that sound suspiciously like they were lifted from a poorly scripted TV show. "The poor just know how to seize the day better!" declares one internet sage, mistaking economic desperation for some sort of hustling prowess. Another chimes in with tales of wealthy workaholics and their 'strategic' vices, somehow missing the irony of using the word 'strategic' in a context that might make Sun Tzu cringe. 🙄 Gather around, readers, as we navigate this festival of sample-size warriors and pop-culture economists, all while missing the forest for the trees – or in this case, the socio-economic determinants for the marshmallows.
370 points by superposeur 2024-08-02T15:49:33 | 269 comments
10. ▲ Towards userspaceification of POSIX – part I: signal handling and IO (redox-os.org)
In a riveting display of *reinventing the circular wheel*, Redox OS begins its Sisyphean journey to shove POSIX signals into userspace. The blog post, speckled with the adrenaline of grant funds, promises a year of thrilling developments such as improving IPC performance—something every insomniac has been eagerly awaiting. The commentators, proving once again that they can speculate more wildly than Wall Street traders, deep-dive into how file descriptors might just be the unsung panacea for all modern computing woes. Reading the chain is like watching a live enactment of the Infinite Monkey Theorem, except every primate is armed with a thesaurus and a broken understanding of legacy UNIX systems. 🙄
40 points by akyuu 2024-08-02T21:07:25 | 6 comments
11. ▲ Show QN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash (github.com/simonmysun)
**Show HN: Ell - Another CLI Contortionist Act in Bash**
In this week’s episode of "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?", an intrepid Hacker News alumnus presents **Ell**: a command-line tool that marries Bash scripting with large language models. Apparently, managing APIs and secret keys in plaintext config files across the home directory now counts as "cutting-edge tech". Commenters quickly dive into a pool of nostalgia for SQLite and engage in the usual haranguing over environmental variables versus secret stores — because let's reinvent the wheel but make it *more convoluted*. Meanwhile, suggestions to use existing, better-suited tools are quietly ignored because, why use tested solutions when you can roll your own and blog about it? 🙃
155 points by simonmysun 2024-08-02T11:55:59 | 54 comments
12. ▲ Australia starts peanut allergy treatment for babies (bbc.com)
Australia dives headfirst into a "world-first" peanut powder party 🥜, hoping to turn its babies into legume-loving tots. In a nation where every 10th infant apparently comes factory-equipped with food sensitivities, hospitals are practically turning into amateur nut factories. Comment sections are now cluttered with proud peanut parent testimonials, each one apparently more life-changing than the last, and a periodic table of every food item their child can now bravely ingest. Meanwhile, skeptics in the darker corners of the internet muse on whether this might be just one more overhyped public health fad, wedged somewhere between essential oils and gluten-free everything.
187 points by peutetre 2024-07-31T03:43:55 | 137 comments
13. ▲ Judges suspends FCC net neutrality restoration rule (inc.com)
🎭 **The Great Net Neutrality Puppet Show!** 🎭

In an inspiring display of nostalgia, a judge has put the brakes on the FCC's latest attempt to make the internet "fair" again, proving that *reality* can be just as confusing as fantasy. Meanwhile, Internet historians emerge from the woodwork in the comments, reminiscing about the "good old days" of straightforward net neutrality among university elites. One commenter naively wonders why giant ISPs can't just play nice with mammoth streaming services for free, missing the lesson on corporate greed 101. Others preach about a utopia with "4+ viable ISP options" like it's just a choice between Coke and Pepsi, clearly skipping economics class to dream on. Just another day in the digital frontier, where everyone's an expert and nobody agrees on the rules of the game.
54 points by nickt 2024-08-02T21:09:58 | 103 comments
14. ▲ The non-Riemannian nature of perceptual color space (2022) (pnas.org)
In an explosive revelation that shocks absolutely no one, a recent article delves into the wildly controversial notion that color perception does not play by the strict rules of Riemannian geometry. Shocked commenters, armed with Wikipedia links and half-remembered math courses, argue semantics over whether this revelation should shatter the foundations of perception science or just be a footnote in the obscure annals of color theory. Others simply marvel at the audacity of using big words and complex models to say what artists have known for centuries: colors are tricky. Meanwhile, suggestions to sprinkle in a little philosophy of mind, just for kicks, get sidelined because why make it simple when you can drown it under layers of geometric jargon and experimental nitpicking? 🎨📏
31 points by cpach 2024-07-31T08:45:37 | 7 comments
15. ▲ Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died (washingtonpost.com)
In a shocking twist, the medical community spent decades blaming your spicy pizza and "bad day at the office" for those nasty stomach ulcers, until Robin Warren, our hero with a microscope, proved them all wrong by shaking hands with the real culprit: bacteria. But, why rush to update those dusty medical books when you can keep blaming stress and keep the antacid industry thriving? Commenters, some still reeling from those pre-enlightenment ulcer days, share tales of medical misadventure, celebrating Warren’s bacterial breakthroughs while mourning the slow pace at which the actual science trickles down to their local doctor's office. Apparently, medical degrees don’t update automatically with each Nobel Prize awarded. 🦠💊👨‍⚕️
144 points by bookofjoe 2024-08-02T10:47:58 | 72 comments
16. ▲ Fast Lua Serialization (2023) (artemis.sh)
**Another Day, Another Lua-mentary**

In a thrilling exposé surely aiming for the Pulitzer, a brave soul ventures into the uncharted waters of Lua serialization libraries. 🚤💨 Readers are gripped as they learn the shocking truth: some libraries are fast, some are not, and JSON is... well, JSON. 🐌 Commenters, in a dazzling display of diversion, delve into a misleading nostalgia about Lua’s origins with Fortran, sparking a sidebar squabble that has absolutely nothing to do with serialization. 🎭 As usual, the real saga is less about Lua and more about proving who remembers the most obscure computing history. 🤓
58 points by synergy20 2024-08-02T16:04:58 | 28 comments
17. ▲ Early Bookcases, Cupboards and Carousels (lostartpress.com)

Fumbling Through the Annals of Olden Times Furniture


The prestigious Lost Art Press unleashes yet another riveting exposé on how old-timey scripturists stacked their hefty lore-filled tomes around their wooden fortresses of solitude. Apparently, Saint Jerome wasn’t just tackling Latin translations but also early IKEA prototype challenges, judiciously blending open shelving with cluttered desk spaces. Meanwhile, the commenters gleefully digress into the marvels of medieval book storage arrangements - from sizes fit for giants to nostalgia about book carousels. Because clearly, when discussing ancient bookcases, it's absolutely crucial to flex your "I-wanted-one-too" muscles and ponder the compatibility of scrolls in cupboards as if planning a furniture revamp for the Library of Alexandria.
54 points by diodorus 2024-07-30T19:34:09 | 9 comments
18. ▲ What happens in a mind that can't 'see' mental images (quantamagazine.org)
In the latest feat of mental gymnastics, Quanta Magazine dives deep into the blurry visualizer's abyss, questioning the very essence of imagination without a mind's eye—yes, *darkness*, folks, it's just darkness. Everyone holds their collective breath as Sarah Shomstein, a vision scientist mesmerized by the lack of apples in her brain, unveils she doesn't actually 'see' things in her mind like the rest of her apple-seeing colleagues. Cue the armchair neuroscientists in the comments ambitiously debating subjective experiences, tossing around anecdotes about their auditory imaginations and internal monologues as if they've just solved the consciousness conundrum. And oh, don’t miss the hilarious comparisons to "hallucinating" sounds or the pseudo-philosophical muddles about external stimuli being akin to internal ones—it's all just vibrations, man! 🍏👀🌀
115 points by VHRanger 2024-08-02T12:35:59 | 245 comments
19. ▲ The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community (afterbabel.com)
**The Dissolution of Society, Now in Digital!**

As the brisk march of capitalism continues unabated, a fascinating epiphany emerges among Internet commenters: economic interactions have replaced meaningful community bonds, and yes, loneliness can indeed be quantified—just check your latest app notifications! It seems our intrepid conversationalists have pinpointed the downfall of youth mental health to the extinction of non-consumer hangouts, those ancient relics of communal joy now bulldozed by the relentless profit machine. 📉💔 Amid nostalgic tears for a time when people met through quaint, non-monetized means like family gatherings (imagine that!), there's a consoling pat on the back for those embracing online dating, the modern love factory where you can swipe right into clinical depression. And let’s not forget the timeless humor of denying online meet-cutes—because apparently, spinning a yarn about a rom-com style bar encounter is far sexier than admitting to algorithmic matchmaking.📱❤️💔
493 points by throwup238 2024-08-02T14:40:50 | 476 comments
20. ▲ GoGoGrandparent (YC S16) Is Hiring Back End and Full-Stack Engineers
GoGoGrandparent, the latest Y Combinator offering, boldly assumes that what the elder tech market desperately needs is not simpler interfaces or better elder care, but more back-end engineers. To ensure Grandma can erroneously order Ubers to unknown destinations with greater efficiency, they’re now hiring. The comments section, a dazzling vortex of optimism and tech-bro wisdom, overflows with vague encouragements like "innovation is ageless" and bespoke advice on JavaScript frameworks for the discerning octogenarian coder. This hiring spree is a beacon of hope for all aspiring developers who believe the pinnacle of silicon valley success is debugging code while explaining to confused seniors how to unmute their devices. 🚀👵🧓
0 points by 2024-08-02T17:00:39 | 0 comments
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