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▲ Launch QN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
Welcome to another round of *Tech Hubris Theatre*, where the dreams of replacing basic pilot skills with shiny gadgets takes flight! 🛫 Airhart Aeronautics, the latest YC alumni, promises to revolutionize general aviation by making planes so smart, even your tech-illiterate uncle could pilot one (hypothetically). Commenters trip over themselves debating whether some half-baked tech solutions might prevent one type of crash, while conveniently sidestepping the myriad other ways flying a plane can kill you. Meanwhile, the real MVPs remind everyone that knowing your plane’s weight isn't just some fuddy-duddy tradition but critical for not dying - yet bizarrely, this can now be calculated by an app. Because, as we all know, apps have never crashed. Literally or figuratively. 🙃
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318 points by n_ermosh
2024-08-05T17:26:43 |
270 comments
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| 2. |
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▲ Can we stop the decline of monarch butterflies and other pollinators? (wisfarmer.com)
**The Great Monarch Meltdown**
In a stunning expose of butterflies and Facebook-based scientific method, wisfarmer.com delves into the terrifying world of vanishing monarchs, documented by ground-breaking butterfly raiser, Nina, whose catastrophic drop from 124 to "nearly none" monarchs sparks existential dread in butterfly enthusiasts across Wisconsin. Meanwhile, armchair environmentalists in the comments cheerfully swap tips on planting milkweed and trapping butterflies in mesh, blissfully sharing links and disputing which method makes them the hero the monarchs deserve. Is it the swamp milkweed or the butterfly bush that will save our fluttering friends? Stay tuned for the next episode in backyard science. 🦋😱
**Fact**: Every comment subtly competes to be the most eco-conscious, though none suggest the simplest solution: stop meddling and let nature sort itself out.
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107 points by speckx
2024-08-05T20:30:01 |
66 comments
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| 3. |
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▲ Andy Warhol's lost Amiga art found (homeip.net)
In a staggering feat of digital archaeology, a dust-covered Commodore Amiga has shockingly coughed up Andy Warhol's **"lost" digital scribbles**, prompting the kind of frenzied excitement usually reserved for discovering a new flavor of potato chip. 🎨 Commenters, buzzing like flies around a neon-sign, either lament about missing out on a cheap retro Commodore's auction that turned out to be an art treasure trove or offer sage advice about ancient power supplies. Because, naturally, the true plight of humanity is preserving the 35-year-old capacitors in our *vintage computer* collections. Oh, and if you're tossing any Amiga in the dumpster, be sure to announce it first—there's probably an eager geek nearby with a basement shrine ready for new relics.
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356 points by todsacerdoti
2024-08-05T15:33:30 |
122 comments
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| 4. |
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▲ The Composer Has No Clothes (thebaffler.com)
In a stunning display of manufactured outrage, The Baffler presents "The Composer Has No Clothes," an article criticizing modern music compositions that are so avant-garde they've circled back to being invisible. Poor souls in the comment section lament the disappearance of 'actual music', earnestly forgetting that Beethoven’s ghost couldn’t care less about their Spotify playlists. Cue the rending of garments as both author and readers mourn the "good old days" of music, blissfully unaware that their hot takes are colder than a well-dug grave. Sound the alarm: culture is dead, and apparently, everyone on this comment thread killed it. 😱😂
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18 points by tintinnabula
2024-08-05T22:58:06 |
0 comments
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| 5. |
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▲ Debugging a rustc segfault on Illumos (sunshowers.io)
**Debugging Adventures in Obscure OS Land**
A heroic tale unfolds on sunshowers.io as a Rust compiler faces the abyss of a segmentation fault on Illumos, an OS so hipster your local barista hasn’t even heard of it. The writer impressively drags us through a nostalgic tribute to Solaris-infused debugging, assuming that anyone *still* cares about manual memory management in 2023. Commenters rally, wielding brute-force searches and fond memories of arcane command line invocations as if they were revolutionary tactics, ignoring twenty years of technological innovation that might render such struggles obsolete. Together, they celebrate finding a needle in a haystack, blissfully unaware that the rest of the world moved on to magnetic haystacks that repel needles automatically. 🤓🔍
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74 points by steveklabnik
2024-08-05T19:54:45 |
15 comments
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| 6. |
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▲ Show QN: Iso20022.js – Create payments in 3 lines of code (iso20022js.com)
Today in "Three Lines to Financial Integration," a bold coder unveils iso20022.js, the latest must-have JavaScript library that promises to simplify the maddening complexities of banking communication into a snack-sized code snippet. Crafted with ❤️ in the payments purgatory of NYC, this tool is essentially the fintech equivalent of slapping a turbocharger on your grandma's old station wagon and watching it blast off—only it's XML-powered! In the comments, techno-enthusiasts engage in the typical ceremonial dance around the bonfire of XML's extensibility, while casually side-stepping the nightmare of parsing bank-specific novellas disguised as "fees." Will it work? Sure, in the same way unicorns harness rainbow power for flight. 🌈✈️
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149 points by svapnil
2024-08-05T17:55:41 |
73 comments
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| 7. |
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▲ A new type of neural network is more interpretable (ieee.org)
In the latest comedic episode of tech buzzword bingo, IEEE Spectrum proclaims the advent of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), a miraculous breakthrough presumably set to upend the whole three people who truly understand neural network interpretability. Proponents of KAN - mainly those who've managed to not throw their laptops out of the window while trying to train them - claim these networks magically combine higher accuracy with stunning interpretability in a smaller package, much like fitting an elephant into a Mini Cooper. 🐘🚗 Meanwhile, the comment section is ablaze with the typical blend of over-optimism and sheer confusion. One enthusiast compares traditional neural network training to KANs, finding the latter about as enjoyable as a root canal without anesthesia, yet still touts its potential, because who needs ease when you can have vague promises of improvement? Tech aficionados continue their merry dance around the black box, optimistically poking it with the next shiny tool.
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184 points by pseudolus
2024-08-05T16:15:19 |
44 comments
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| 8. |
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▲ I don't know how CPUs work so I simulated one in code (2019) (djharper.dev)
**Hacker Amateur Hour: My CPU Simulator is Cooler Than Yours**
In a stunning display of knowing just enough to be dangerous, a brave soul attempts to recreate a CPU by cobbling together code snippets and dreams, blissfully unaware of minor details like signal propagation and clocks. 😱 Meanwhile, the comment section turns into a dumpster fire of one-uppers and Minecraft architects. Gaming the system, one suggests recreating computational elements in blocky landscapes where time crawls because if you can't build it in Minecraft, do you even code? 🤔 Another commenter dives into the nostalgia pool, mourning lost DOS-based simulators that probably didn't work right anyway. Buckle up, kids; the Silicon-inspired ego trip is just getting started!
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46 points by azefiel
2024-08-01T13:54:00 |
14 comments
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| 9. |
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▲ Starting Hospice (jakeseliger.com)
In an emotional vortex of misery and Tolkien quotes, a Hacker News blogger announces his departure into the unknown expanse of hospice care. "I’m entering hospice," he types, igniting a flurry of semi-sympathetic tech suggestions and agonizingly irrelevant anecdotes from the HN collective, all seemingly bypassing the gravity of human expiration for a chance to discuss FDA approvals and targeted therapy links. "Thank you for all the links," he appreciates, possibly regretting not requesting a cure for cancer in HTML format. Meanwhile, the comment section spirals into a techie support group where empathy is measured in upvotes and shared URLs. 🙄🔗
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876 points by jdkee
2024-08-05T03:35:53 |
117 comments
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| 10. |
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▲ Replacing Liquid Metal on an Asus Zephyrus G15's CPU (flemesre.github.io)
**Liquid Metal Laptops: A Guide to Potential Self-Destruction**
The tech savants online discuss the ever-so-stable decision to replace liquid metal in an Asus Zephyrus G15's CPU, because who doesn’t love the constant dread of carrying a thermodynamic time bomb in your backpack? 😱💻 One commenter heroically warns of the liquid gallium turning laptops into expensive paperweights, while another, perhaps auditioning for *CSI: Silicon Valley*, suspects rogue metal droplets of short-circuiting his keyboard. 🕵️♂️ Meanwhile, across the forum, a courageous soul thinks using a solder sucker could be the next big DIY craze - because, obviously, what's a weekend without a little risk of destroying your central processing unit? Safety goggles optional, common sense not included. 🧪👓
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36 points by geomaturge
2024-08-05T20:15:21 |
23 comments
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| 11. |
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▲ Below the Root: A story, a computer game and my lifelong obsession (2015) (stahlmandesign.com)
**Hacker News Nostalgia Fest 2023: Below the Root Edition**
In an enthralling trip down memory lane, dazzled by the sepia tones of 1984, an author reminisces about "Below the Root," a game where the artwork promised more than the pixels delivered and trencher beaks were more coveted than actual gameplay. Commentators, seizing a break from their usual tech ruminations, dive headfirst into the pit of nostalgia. One shares a life-hacking tale from 1984, mastering bugs like a true prepubescent sysadmin, while another envisions great legal risks by reaching out to actual humans for copyright permissions. A few brave souls balk at the impossibilities presented by ancient game physics, comparing their ordeal to "taking a bath in bacon fat." It seems old games never die; they just spawn endless threads of rose-tinted bug reports. 🎮👾
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46 points by olvy0
2024-08-05T19:29:47 |
18 comments
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| 12. |
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▲ Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones (bloomberg.com)
Title: Google Loses Antitrust Lawsuit, the Internet Implodes
First Paragraph: In yet another dramatic episode of "Who Owns Your Phone?" Google gets slapped with an antitrust verdict because apparently, monopoly is still sort of frowned upon. Tech enthusiasts on Bloomberg are clicking frantically to confirm they’re not robots, just very concerned citizens, deeply troubled by the unbearable lightness of not being able to switch their default search engines without hacking their devices. Comment sections are aflame with tech-savvy warriors genuinely surprised that free market fairy tales still don’t offer options to change default settings without a tech degree and the persistence of a cockroach.
Comments: A desperate Kagi user's quest to liberate their iPhone from the clutches of predetermined search engines leads to an existential crisis and a switch to Orion—but not without frequent crashes that leave them longing for the stability of reading manga. Other commenters bemoan the intricate workaround steps, while Microsoft adepts brag about their "simpler" Edge experience, seemingly forgetting the skeletons MS has in its own closet. Each poster inadvertently highlights the bleak comedic reality: No matter the browser, the real search is for a mythical tech utopia where consumer choice isn’t just a settings page myth.
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643 points by rvz
2024-08-05T18:58:16 |
432 comments
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| 13. |
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▲ Uncovered Euripides fragments are 'kind of a big deal' (colorado.edu)
In a world-starved of real excitement, Colorado scholars have stumbled upon some old scraps from Euripides and immediately hailed them as the *second coming* of parchment. Commenters, quivering with the thrill of something classier than Netflix to discuss, dusted off their Classics degrees to express cautious euphoria. "I hope it holds up," says one, visibly struggling to contain their excitement that their degree might finally be relevant in a job interview. Meanwhile, the conversation rapidly devolves into unrelated pop culture references, as another commenter drags in Max Headroom and a bizarre tangential nod to the "Super Mario Bros" movie because, obviously, decaying ancient texts and poorly aged 90s flicks are comparably riveting. 📜🎭
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201 points by caf
2024-08-05T00:11:33 |
69 comments
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| 14. |
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▲ Reflex (YC W23) Is Hiring a Staff Infrastructure Engineer (ycombinator.com)
Title: Reflex (YC W23) Is Hiring Someone to Reinvent FTP
Summary: In the latest act of Silicon Valley Redux, Reflex (a start-up so cutting-edge that even their coffee machine probably runs Python) is on the hunt for a new *Staff Infrastructure Engineer*. This brave soul will ecstatically dive into the ever-shifting sands of an "early product" (read: things barely work and change hourly). Their core product, a framework that deploys web apps with a wizard's flick of a single command, has somehow convinced the world that they've solved a problem developers didn't know they had. Commenters, fiercely debating whether this is "the next big thing" or just another over-hyped YC project, contribute more lines to the discussion than there are of code in the actual product.
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0 points by
2024-08-05T21:00:04 |
0 comments
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| 15. |
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▲ Rosalind Franklin's Methods of Discovery (jstor.org)
Title: Another Paradigmatic Earthquake in The Philosophy of Science Weekly
In a shocking revelation, Rosalind Franklin's Methods of Discovery shatters all previous notions of scientific practice by asserting something already known: Franklin, a genius eclipsed by her own X-ray plates, was a key player in DNA's structural circus. Michelle G. Gibbons, in a dazzling display of academic surprise, tells us that Franklin's contributions were undervalued, an insider scoop colder than liquid nitrogen in a 1950s Cambridge lab. Meanwhile, the comment section erupts in a slow clap of enlightenment, as netizens freshly graduate from Google University's School of Historical Injustice, ready to right wrongs one outraged comment at a time. Who knew science could be so groundbreaking? 🧬😱
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21 points by bookofjoe
2024-08-01T14:19:07 |
2 comments
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| 16. |
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▲ How Postgres stores data on disk – this one's a page turner (silcock.dev)
Today in "Understanding Basic Databases for Absolute Beginners," an eager internet resident tries to decipher the mystical runes of Postgres byte storage. In a desperate cry for help disguised as an informative post, they confess their bewilderment about inter-column bytes and their relation to TOAST. Fortunately, the comment section turns into a high-stakes drama over cursed substrings in URLs and tragic tales of workplace censorship. Who knew that a blog post about data storage could inadvertently expose the wild world of "not safe for work" project names and blocked websites? Clearly, we've got the best minds of our generation pondering whether 0x25 means "Equatorial Guinea" or "Error 403: Forbidden." 🤓💾🚫
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412 points by drewsberry
2024-08-05T08:28:25 |
75 comments
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| 17. |
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▲ Show QN: Visual A* pathfinding and maze generation in Python (github.com/dicklesworthstone)
Title: Show HN: Visual A* pathfinding and maze generation in Python
In an online universe where the bar for "innovation" is as low as remaking a 1970s algorithm in Python, one brave soul unleashes their "high-performance" take on the A* pathfinding algorithm. Complete with **maze generators** that are as diverse as the A* is old, this GitHub spectacle showcases animated pathfinding so that we can visually validate what a string of Python code can make an icon do in a simulated maze. Commenters, embracing their role as Github’s unofficial debug squad, alternate between suggestions for extending YouTube video frames and bemoaning the inability to pause said frames, while unconsciously igniting mini-debates about the aesthetics of algorithmic pathfinding. Meanwhile, the skeptics murmur darkly about whether AI has secretly written half the project, displaying a healthy level of paranoia that would make any A* path twist and turn in uncertainty. 🤖🧩
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82 points by eigenvalue
2024-08-05T15:56:01 |
27 comments
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| 18. |
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▲ A cryptographically secure bootloader for RISC-V in Rust (codethink.co.uk)
Welcome to another episode of "Why not complicate things with Rust?" where the university project - SentinelBoot - tries to fix what isn't particularly broken. 🙄 Codethink somehow convinced a student at The University of Manchester to hammer out a cryptographically secure bootloader for RISC-V in Rust because... well, *memory safety* sounds cool, and academic project funders love buzzwords. Meanwhile, in the comment section, the blockchain bros and TPM aficionados duke it out over security measures that none of them fully comprehend, blissfully ignoring the basic issue: sometimes simpler is just better. Spoiler: the real world continues to use C for such tasks, because if it ain't broke, don’t reinvent it in Rust.
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129 points by fork-bomber
2024-08-05T14:18:13 |
58 comments
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| 19. |
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▲ Show QN: Pie Menu – a radial menu for macOS (pie-menu.com)
**Show HN: Pie Menu – a radial menu for macOS (pie-menu.com)**
In the latest, ***groundbreaking*** innovation, macOS users are introduced to "Pie Menu"—a solution for those who forget shortcuts and simultaneously hate their keyboard. One commenter gleefully declares it a "Must have for all Mac users!", a sentiment as fresh and exciting as store-bought pie. As predictably, someone else muses about adding a cool new feature, as they idly imagine making their own version, only to realize they would never use it. Will Pie Menu revolutionize inefficient clicking, or will it be another forgotten slice of tech pie? Cue the nostalgia for Secret of Mana's menu and the ever-haunting memories of circular decision-making. 🥧💻
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171 points by hauken
2024-08-05T11:38:51 |
72 comments
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| 20. |
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▲ C++'s `noexcept` can sometimes help or hurt performance (16bpp.net)
**The Misadventures of noexcept: A C++ Saga**
A hopeful developer, armed with a copy of "Effective Modern C++," sprinkles noexcept throughout their code like fairy dust, hoping for a performance miracle. Queue the disappointment: performance gains are not only inconsistent but as rare as an honest comment in code review meetings. Meanwhile, in the peanut gallery known as the comments section, every armchair expert with an internet connection and half a CS degree schools our protagonist on "real" exception processing. The saga unfolds with links to very serious GCC documentation, thrilling tales of altered clocks, and passionate arguments on why *__standard libraries should behave like they're from an alternate dimension__*. 🤓😆 Stay tuned for the next pointless debate—maybe someone will bring up compiler flags!
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47 points by def-pri-pub
2024-08-05T16:55:52 |
40 comments
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