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▲ DARPA wants to bypass the thermal middleman in nuclear power systems (ans.org)
DARPA's Newest Brainwave: Nuclear Energy But With Lasers Instead of Steam 🚀🔋 DARPA, the governmental agency famed for throwing darts at a board to decide on their next research escapade, is now fantasizing about bypassing the steam turbine in nuclear reactors. Instead of following tried-and-true engineering practices, why not extract power directly from relentless radiation, because clearly, managing high-energy particles is child's play! Meanwhile, in the comments section, an assortment of armchair physicists is eagerly theorizing about scaling nickel-63 into the next iPhone battery, blissfully undisturbed by trifling concerns like practical application or radiation safety. 🤷♂️💥 Could this be the critical mismatch between superhero science and it's the real-world application? Only time, and perhaps a few minor nuclear incidents, will tell.
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103 points by bilsbie
2024-08-09T21:12:34 |
63 comments
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| 2. |
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▲ Urchin Software Corp: The unlikely origin story of Google Analytics, 1996–2005 (2016) (urchin.biz)
Welcome to the riveting world of Urchin Software Corp, where nostalgic tech bros reminisce over primitive analytics tools like they're discussing the lost city of Atlantis. A commenter waxes poetic about "real" support during the good old days, crying into the void about how Google's acquisition of Urchin was the "30k down the drain" event of their life 🎻. Meanwhile, another is absolutely floored that people used single-core servers to process mountains of data and lived to tell the tale. God forbid they ever encounter an actual floppy disk. Who needs innovation and progress when you've got old startup T-shirts to remember the 'epic' Yahoo! parties by? Buckle up, it’s a bumpy ride down memory lane! 🚀
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78 points by cpeterso
2024-08-09T20:32:11 |
21 comments
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| 3. |
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▲ Show QN: LLM-aided OCR – Correcting Tesseract OCR errors with LLMs (github.com/dicklesworthstone)
**HN throws a house party for Optical Character Recognition and invites every LLM in town.** A groundbreaking GitHub project promises to fix the eyesight of Tesseract with the brainpower of Large Language Models, because apparently, it takes a village to read a PDF correctly these days. Commenters, in a feverish display of acronyms and model-name-dropping, juggle terms like SCHNELL, LLAVA, and donuts 🍩, revealing their unbridled optimism that soon, software will read all of humanity's paperwork so we don't have to. Meanwhile, real problems like tables, formulas, and ancient handwriting remain as undecipherable as an alien radio signal, leaving users to debate whether we actually need software to be smart or just less blurry.
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290 points by eigenvalue
2024-08-09T16:28:39 |
126 comments
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| 4. |
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▲ Show QN: Attaching to a virtual GPU over TCP (thundercompute.com)
**n-gate.com HN Digest: Virtual GPU Black Magic and TCP Pixie Dust**
In the latest attempt to make buzzwords pay dividends, Thunder Compute boldly promises the alchemy of scaling GPU usage without the pesky need for corporeal hardware. Commenters, accomplished wizards in their own home labs, dive deep into the spellbook of networked pixels and inadvertently confirm that, just maybe, they didn't quite grasp the incantations—or, hilariously, the pricing models. One brave soul questioned the utility of washing your GPU cycles down the latency drain, hinting that their "disappointment" was less about the technology and more about missing out on another cool toy. Meanwhile, another wonders aloud whether their ill-fated quest for encoding bliss might be solved, only to be educated on the magical realm of I/O bottlenecks, where dreams go to buffer eternally. "Approaching native performance," they claim, as skeptically as one approaches a fire-breathing dragon with a leaky water pistol. 🐉💧💻
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155 points by bmodel
2024-08-09T16:50:41 |
76 comments
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| 5. |
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▲ Grace Hopper, Nvidia's Halfway APU (chipsandcheese.com)
Nvidia decides to half-ass a new APU named after Grace Hopper, because associating half-baked tech with historical figures is how we honor legacies now. Over at ChipsAndCheese.com, enthusiasts debate whether a glorified graphics calculator can indeed resurrect Ada Lovelace to fix the driver issues. Meanwhile, the comment section becomes a tragic battleground where confused would-be tech gurus throw around terms like "tensor cores" and "proprietary spaghetti" – blissfully unaware that their Fortnite rigs won’t run any faster. 😂
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18 points by PaulHoule
2024-08-09T22:52:13 |
0 comments
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| 6. |
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▲ GCVR (YC W22) Is Hiring Lead Animation Engineer (ycombinator.com)
Wanted: Lead Animation Engineer to Perfect Pretend Sports
In an act of heartwarming technological redundancy, GCVR (Y Combinator's pride and joy) is on the hunt for a Lead Animation Engineer to simulate sports no one actually needs to sweat for. If reimagining the exhausting act of physical sports into button presses and headset adjustments sounds like your dream job, congratulations on finding your tribe! Commenters are evenly split between lamenting their lost youth sprawled across real basketball courts and breathlessly speculating just how real unreal football can feel. Join GCVR to create games that promise to connect the world, one virtual dunk at a time. ✨🏀
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0 points by
2024-08-10T01:01:02 |
0 comments
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| 7. |
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▲ .INTERNAL is now reserved for private-use applications (icann.org)
**ICANN Discovers Time Machine, Still Can’t Decide: .INTERNAL Edition**
ICANN, in an unsurprising display of indecision, has now decided (maybe?) that the .internal domain is perfect for those who hate choices and love bureaucratic limbo. Comments on this groundbreaking development reach new heights of pedantry, as readers bicker over certification authorities like divorced parents arguing over Thanksgiving dinner. One bright spark decides to reinvent the wheel by pushing his site, getlocalcert.net, ensuring that nobody can accuse him of not trying to profit from chaos. Meanwhile, another commenter debates protocol encryption like it’s the new flat earth theory. Riveting. 🎭 🍿
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159 points by joncfoo
2024-08-09T16:36:50 |
83 comments
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| 8. |
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▲ Hacking a Virtual Power Plant (rya.nc)
**Hacking the Sun: One Solar Panel at a Time**
In an online world where even your toaster probably mines Bitcoin, *Ryan* dissects how his new solar panels could, accidentally, also mine for... vulnerabilities? Good ol' Ryan, installs some solar and is immediately bamboozled into hacking a virtual power plant unintentionally 🕵️♂️. Meanwhile, the comment section turns into a bizarre hybrid of a self-help tech forum and a low-key hacker meetup, with individuals either mourning their own much less hackable solar setups or providing unintentional comedy by recursively explaining how easy it is to talk to any exec, as long as you've mastered the LinkedIn-Google-email trifecta. 📧😂 If only securing APIs was as simple as cold-emailing the CEO.
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63 points by bo0tzz
2024-08-08T18:52:57 |
17 comments
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| 9. |
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▲ OTranscribe: A free and open tool for transcribing audio interviews (otranscribe.com)
In a world drowning in ***audio files***, Elliot Bentley throws out yet another ***lifeline*** to the teeming masses of journalists with OTranscribe, a "revolutionary" tool that surely no one has ever thought of before 🙄. Meanwhile, the comments section quickly devolves into a tech flex-off, as users scramble to one-up each other with alternative transcription setups that are faster, cheaper, and "not affiliated, just a super happy customer." The humble brag is strong with this one, as users toss around APIs like confetti at a parade, while discreetly dropping in bug report sagas that totally happened. Bonus points for the developer popping in to valiantly promise the moon and definitely not scout for free beta testers.
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386 points by zerojames
2024-08-09T07:31:15 |
91 comments
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| 10. |
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▲ Jerk (ivanish.ca)
In a dazzling display of auditory pomposity, someone decided that reading wasn't enough and blessed the world with what no one asked for: audio with ad libs and tunes for a blog post about quitting a job to 🎮**make indie games**. Tragically, this daring escape from the dreary 'big team' life comes years before hipster docs made game devs into misunderstood geniuses. Comment sections turn into a nerd Coliseum, debating the revolutionary differences between shrinking and growing in games—a spectacle surely as engaging as watching paint dry. Intellectuals further massage their brains by comparing these high-stake game mechanics to Greg Egan's sci-fi novel because obviously, that's what's missing from their game night discourse. 🙄
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176 points by surprisetalk
2024-08-04T17:10:23 |
25 comments
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| 11. |
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▲ Qlot: Common Lisp Library Manager (github.com/fukamachi)
**Qlot: Lisp's Latest Leash**
In a stunning display of missing the point, the Lisp community gifts us with ***Qlot***—*the* groundbreaking tool that promises to manage the chaos inflicted by Quicklisp's own efficacy. But don't worry, if handling numerous library versions across projects sounds like solving a Rubik's cube blindfolded on a roller coaster, it's because it probably is! Reassuringly, the ambitious souls commenting have graciously offered their undying devotion to untangle this mess, eagerly congratulating each other while blissfully ignoring that this is a problem that was solved a decade ago by every other programming environment. 🎉🙄 Surely, this is the peak of software innovation!
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46 points by ducktective
2024-08-06T05:04:04 |
22 comments
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| 12. |
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▲ Voice is a garden: Margaret Watts Hughes's Victorian sound visualizations (themarginalian.org)
In a *stunning* display of Victorian whimsy, the marginals at themarginalian.org take us through the mystical garden of voice visualizations by Margaret Watts Hughes. Here, the harmony of pseudo-science meets art, depicted in hauntingly blurry diagrams that could also pass for your nephew's preschool art project. Meanwhile, the enlightened commentariat dives deep into the fractal void, debating the merits of outdated technologies and the forgotten magic of sound levitating stones. To those aimlessly mulling over cymatics as a 'spirit frequency', rest assured, this profound pseudoscience has been represented in architecture and, transcendentally, in YouTube comments auguring the fall of Jericho. Truly, if the Victorians had the internet, they too would be leveraging 'sound vibes' to hoist their stones up cliff faces. Whatever that means. 🎶🌀🤷♂️
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33 points by benbreen
2024-08-09T19:21:21 |
4 comments
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| 13. |
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▲ Show QN: Personal Interactive Cantonese Dictionary (ctang.art)
In an audacious display of technological overkill, a Hacker News user unveils a "Personal Interactive Cantonese Dictionary" for all twelve people in Silicon Valley who think Cantonese is their shortcut to an Alibaba job. Readers break from their usual skirmishes over JavaScript frameworks to argue about tone contours, while someone inevitably suggests it should have been built on a blockchain. Meanwhile, every commenter with a “founder” in their bio pitches why incorporating AI will solve the apparent crisis of not pushing enough cutting-edge tech into a dictionary. No one asks if it comes in dark mode. 📚🚀
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19 points by ctangy
2024-08-09T21:33:18 |
0 comments
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| 14. |
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▲ VisiCalc – The Early Days (2003) (benlo.com)
**The Vintage Silicon Youth Club Reunion**
In a self-congratulatory haze, a gaggle of tech veterans, led by the illustrious Dan Bricklin, gathers to wax nostalgic about the glory days of VisiCalc, the modest forefather of Excel. The scene is a poignant flashback to 1978, where software was swapped at trade shows like bootleg tapes and big dreams were coded on tiny RAMs. Commenters trip over themselves in digital adulation, reminiscing the days when a 3.5-inch floppy was actually something to marvel at, and not just a coffee coaster. In this corner of the internet, grey beards sparkle with the static cling of bygone binary battles, each keystroke a tribute to the good ol' days of command line interfaces and printed manuals. ✨👴💾🎉
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52 points by hggh
2024-08-06T14:25:35 |
8 comments
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| 15. |
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▲ Infinite Proofs: The Effects of Mathematics on David Foster Wallace (2012) (lareviewofbooks.org)
Today on HackerNoon, the literary-yet-mathematically-amateurish congregation brings forth their critical sagas about David Foster Wallace's flirtation with the infinite. One "surprised" PhD claims inaccuracies are just spice in the math-history stew, recommending the novel with oddly specific conditions that might appeal to precisely three readers and a stray cat. Another DIY mathematician advises coupling the reading with a hefty errata, just in case you mistake DFW’s artistic epsilon for an actual mathematical proof. 📚✖️🤦 Meanwhile, a fellow tries to argue Michael Harris's critique didn't poke enough at factual errors; I guess skimming qualifies as deep analysis in these high intellectual echelons!
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58 points by lordleft
2024-08-09T16:55:14 |
21 comments
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| 16. |
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▲ Using the Moon as an Echo [video] (youtube.com)
Using the Moon as an Echo: Another Day, Another Youtube Video
In the latest testament to humanity's endless quest to make every celestial object about us, a Youtube video details the illustrious history of using the Moon to eavesdrop on Earth's own nuclear secrets. Commenters, in a remarkable display of missing the point, quickly transform the discussion into a humblebrag contest about who owns the nerdiest radio equipment and the most arcane knowledge about moon bounces. One visionary even dreams up a weekend project involving modular synths and lunar delays, blissfully unaware of his audience's collective eye-roll. Meanwhile, the rest of us ponder whether reflecting radio waves off the Moon was just a 1960s version of playing with really, really expensive mirrors.
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45 points by tws
2024-08-08T06:47:26 |
8 comments
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| 17. |
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▲ What the hell is a luminiferous theremin? (extkits.co.uk)
Title: What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?
In yet another twist of musical arcane, the world discovers the luminiferous theremin, because regular old theremins were not sci-fi horror enough. Extkits.co.uk takes us through a historical haunt of Leon Theremin's accidental discovery, proving that any high school science fair project can in fact, become a cult musical instrument—as long as it makes noises suitable for the background of a B-grade 1960's sci-fi thriller. Commenters quickly leap into a spiral of technical jargon and YouTube links to demonstrate that absolutely nobody needs a theremin, but everyone has an obscure track where it is "used to great effect". A debate erupts over whether a synthesizer mimicking a theremin is still a theremin, and important life-changing discussions such as the part number for TOF sensors on a machine no one will build ensue. In the high-fidelity echo chamber of the internet, it appears everyone missed the memo that inventing things for the sake of it went out of style with the steam-powered toaster. 🚀🎶
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27 points by edent
2024-08-09T18:49:45 |
17 comments
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| 18. |
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▲ VFusion3D: Learning Scalable 3D Generative Models from Video Diffusion Models (github.com/facebookresearch)
Meta's new 🤖 creation, VFusion3D, boldly promises to redefine the realms of 3D asset generation using a cocktail of scraped video data and wishful thinking. Commenters optimistically scratch their heads, wondering whether the stumbling quality is part of the design. One eager techie suggests this paper is less about "improvement" and more a playful "it works, I guess?" dance in academia. Meanwhile, real comparisons to other models risk being as elusive as the apparent logic behind this trainwreck of AI development. 🎭📉
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19 points by MrTrvp
2024-08-09T19:55:42 |
4 comments
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| 19. |
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▲ A heck of a wild bug chase (georgemauer.net)
Title: The Epic Olympics of Bug Squashing
In a spectacular display of self-aggrandizement wrapped in the trappings of a job plea, a coder lands on the Olympic podium of delusion by proclaiming their pest control experience as the "Olympic-level Bug-Chase-2024." 🥇🐜 After getting axed ("I just coincidentally got laid off"), our hero seamlessly pivots from debugging to humblebragging about cobbling together a "simple" NextJs app as if they single-handedly dismantled the Gordian knot. The comment section, a dumpster fire of sympathy, misplaced awe, and techie one-upmanship, devolves into an echo chamber where the unemployable meet to swap war stories about their "most epic bug chase." Just remember, when in doubt, overstate your hardship and understate your solutions for maximum LinkedIn karma. 🎭💻
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42 points by togakangaroo
2024-08-08T17:17:19 |
18 comments
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| 20. |
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▲ Show QN: Nous – Open-Source Agent Framework with Autonomous, SWE Agents, WebUI (github.com/trafficguard)
Welcome to the latest circus in HackerNews town: "Nous – Open-Source Agent Framework blah blah with stuff and things". It's another day and another open-source TypeScript platform claiming to revolutionize productivity by adding bloatware agents that can supposedly do everything from AI code reviews to optimizing your coffee breaks. Meanwhile, in the comment section, geniuses are bickering about name collisions like there's a shortage of words in English. One bright spark fantastically realizes “Nous” means “us” in French after a deep dive on Google, while another suggests a name change to avoid confusion with a totally unrelated company. Meanwhile, someone probably named Claude is regretting all their life choices as they consider renaming their project to avoid internet shade. Look out for their next update, hopefully under a name not used by seventeen other projects. 🤡🎪
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82 points by campers
2024-08-09T14:16:09 |
22 comments
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