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1. ▲ Show QN: PgQueuer – Transform PostgreSQL into a Job Queue (github.com/janbjorge)
**Show HN: PgQueuer – because PostgreSQL wasn't complex enough already**

Today on Hacker News, an intrepid developer decided that PostgreSQL should take on yet another duty: acting as a job queue. They proudly introduce PgQueuer, a Python library that turns your database server into something that vaguely resembles RabbitMQ, but with more SQL and less efficiency. Commenters, undeterred by the overlap with existing, well-optimized solutions like Celery, dive headfirst into theological wars about the sanctity of PostgreSQL’s dual role. Because, why use the right tool for the job when you can shoehorn your favorite database into doing everything? After all, if you’ve got a database, who even needs other software? 📚💾🚜
137 points by jeeybee 2024-08-18T19:22:31 | 45 comments
2. ▲ Google took three months to remove scam app that stole over $5M (theblock.co)

In the high-stakes world of tech, Google plays the tardy sheriff


In a thrilling three-month saga, Google showcased its finely-tuned inertia by allowing a scam app to pilfer a mere $5M before springing into sloth-like action. Meanwhile, the Internet's armchair CEOs in the comments dissect Google’s entire suite, from search to spam, lamenting the tragic downfall of what was once a Silicon Valley darling, now apparently intent on self-sabotage. 🤦 Yet, amidst the noise, a solitary cheerleader reminisces about the golden days of Gmail and the enchantment of early Androids, clinging to nostalgia like a lifebuoy in the ocean of contemporary Google grievances. 💔 Could this be an elaborate plot twist where Google is just auditioning for a new reality show called "Survivor: The Corporate Jungle"? Stay tuned—or don't, as the spectators might switch channels to a less infuriating provider. 📺🍿
131 points by svenfaw 2024-08-18T22:25:59 | 43 comments
3. ▲ Dasel: Select, put and delete data from JSON, TOML, YAML, XML and CSV (github.com/tomwright)
Ah, Dasel, the Swiss Army knife of data manipulation for the chronically indecisive developer. Why bother learning multiple tools when a single, all-consuming blob of functionality can rot your brain with promises of universal selectors and zero dependencies? Hackernews is ablaze with armchair engineers theorizing about the cosmic potential of a unified query language. Meanwhile, closer to Earth, others are grappling with the realities of querying JSON arrays with SQL dreams. Welcome to the future, where "it could work!" meets "but at what cost?" 💻🔧🤯
263 points by edward 2024-08-18T14:11:50 | 52 comments
4. ▲ Interposer to Fix the Symmetricom SyncServer S200 GPS Week Rollover Problem (tomverbeure.github.io)
**Hobbyists In Desperation: A Compass for the GPS-Impaired**

In a gripping exposé that makes mountains out of microchip molehills, a lone tinkerer fights the tyranny of time with a plucky SyncServer S200, which rebels against something as trivial as a GPS Week Number Roll-Over. 🕰⚔️ Mere mortals in the comments unfold their own tales of battling obsolete technology, wielding soldering irons like swords against the omnipotent threat of an extra second every few millennia. 🛠️💀 One commenter speculates about hacking the unhackable, while another treats 3.6v logic levels with the respect typically reserved for handling nitroglycerin. Everyone seems to forget that a simple watch might solve all their timing woes, but who needs simplicity when there's techno-drama to be had?
28 points by zdw 2024-08-18T21:31:10 | 4 comments
5. ▲ Debugging operating systems with time-traveling virtual machines [pdf] (usenix.org)
**Debugging operating systems with time-traveling virtual machines [pdf] (usenix.org)**

Today in the land of redundant recoveries, a brave soul at Usenix describes their attempt to build a virtual DeLorean, allowing Operating Systems to zip back and forward through time, helping programmers chase bugs like Marty McFly chasing his future. Naturally, the internet chorus, bewildered by such dark sorcery, starts sharing links like trading cards, gleefully pointing out that Microsoft kinda, sorta thought of this pre-emptively—with a tool steeped in the arcane arts of Rust and Bochs. Meanwhile, commenters—clinging to their *vintage*'08 VMWare memories—ponder why this isn't just *everywhere* already. "Remember rr? ❤️" one whispers into the void, tears streaming down their digital cheeks. Could this be nostalgia or just the collective realization that their debugging tools still can’t fix their own lives? Re: re: re: relive those bugs, it’s like high school reunion but with more memory leaks. 🔄🛠️😭
64 points by Intralexical 2024-08-18T18:28:59 | 11 comments
6. ▲ Animate.css: Seamless CSS Animations Across All Browsers (github.com/animate-css)
**Animate.css: The Savior of Web Animations or a Legal Minefield?**

In an internet era flush with libraries that promise to solve all of life’s problems, Animate.css strides in, caped in CSS, vowing to make your static website twirl and wiggle across all browsers. Commentators gather to worship its "easy as pie" usability, only to recoil in horror at the beastly Hippocratic License - a specter vague enough to spook even the most daring of developers. One brave soul asks if the library causes international diplomatic incidents, highlighting just how treacherously wide this license casts its net. Meanwhile, design aficionados condemn the preset animations as louder than a retro Power Point, sending them scampering back to the drawing board. 🎭📜💃
24 points by LaunchpadHacker 2024-08-14T16:37:20 | 4 comments
7. ▲ Linux Memory Overcommit (2007) (opsmonkey.blogspot.com)
Welcome to the **2007 Memory Overcommit Fiesta**, where Linux aficionados and Kubernetes fanboys unite to share their profound affection—or loathing—for mysterious system crashes. 😵 Yet another brave soul attempts to demystify the enigmatic world of `vm.overcommit_memory`, hoping to prevent their ops from resembling a three-ring circus. 👨‍💻 Commenters dive in with all the zeal of a Black Friday sale, energetically debating the virtues of overcommit settings like they're trading Pokémon cards. Each one has a "unique" approach, desperately believing they're one tweak away from turning their swappy nightmare into nirvana. Meanwhile, an enlightened few remind everyone that RAM isn't just an expensive placeholder and maybe, just maybe, we should stop treating system resources like limitless buffet plates. 🍽️
26 points by signa11 2024-08-17T01:10:59 | 15 comments
8. ▲ Renderings Created with Only a Pencil (core77.com)
Title: A Pencil, a Nut, and the Infinite Abyss of Internet Validation

In a world where a pencil and obsessive attention to detail can masquerade as both a crippling disorder and a fast-track to social media fame, Kohei Omori sketches nuts and bolts with such excruciating precision that even the most mundane objects become a cry for help wrapped in graphite. Dive into the comments and witness the tragicomedic spectacle of internet denizens losing their collective minds over something you'd usually find in a high school art class, if the teacher was particularly sadistic. One luminary suggests a photograph might have sufficed, unwittingly highlighting the redundant nature of spending thousands of hours to create something a 12-megapixel camera can accomplish in a fraction of a second. Meanwhile, another commenter trips over themselves trying to redefine 'renderings' to mask their confusion, inadvertently inventing a new art category: "Pencil-Generated Existential Despair."
15 points by surprisetalk 2024-08-16T15:00:39 | 2 comments
9. ▲ The Curious Case of QUEENCREEK (mobeigi.com)
In the gripping thriller that is "The Curious Case of QUEENCREEK," a brave keyboard warrior dives into the depths of their Windows registry to battle the evil malware overlords. 🦸‍♂️💻 Watch in awe as they wield the mighty Sysinternals Autoruns, slicing through suspicious auto-start services like a hot knife through butter. Commenters, in a heroic display of missing the point, debate the ethics of using Baidu Cloud for downloads while subtly bragging about their superior Linux setups. God save us all from automatic software — but mostly, from ourselves. 🤦‍♂️👾
4 points by mobeigi 2024-08-19T00:21:54 | 0 comments
10. ▲ Police Cannot Seize Property Indefinitely After an Arrest, Federal Court Rules (reason.com)
**Federal Court Discovers Fourth Amendment, Comment Section Loses Mind**
In a shocking twist that could only occur in the "land of the free," a federal court has finally decided that the police maybe—*just maybe*—shouldn't hold onto your stuff until the sun explodes. Justice Gregory Katsas scribbles furiously that property seizures need to be “reasonable,” a term which in legal jargon translates loosely to “not forever, or at least not until we forget where we put it.” Meanwhile, the commenters spiral into Kafkaesque tales of missing cameras and legal battles over $800, inadvertently scripting the next season of "Law & Order: SVU - Petty Cash Unit." If only the Fourth Amendment included the right not to have your day ruined by legal absurdity and forum advice that ranges from the cynical to the paranoid. 👮‍♂️💼🕰️
479 points by throwup238 2024-08-18T16:28:12 | 207 comments
11. ▲ How the instrument landing system at Antarctica's McMurdo Station works (flightradar24.com)

Antarctica's McMurdo Station Upgrades to Fancy Beep-Boop Landing Tech


The wizards at McMurdo Station have rigged an ancient technology, known as the Instrument Landing System, to keep their prop planes from turning into expensive ice sculptures. Commenters, in an adorable display of one-upmanship, engage in technical tit-for-tats about GPS, RNAV, and assorted acronym soup that only 0.01% of the population cares about. Meanwhile, one brave soul wonders if this might make McMurdo Station the next major urban hub (spoiler: no). Meanwhile, debates on multi-plane landing capabilities confirm that the station’s traffic resembles that of a rural airstrip on a slow Tuesday.
76 points by rmnwski 2024-08-14T09:07:00 | 16 comments
12. ▲ Markov chains are funnier than LLMs (emnudge.dev)
Welcome to another tech rodeo where hobbyists do the MIT Shuffle to distinguish Markov chains from LLMs like discerning vintage wine from boxed grape juice. Today's highlight features an "eye-opening" comparison that leaves the cognitive bar so low, a digital amoeba could limbo under it. Comments swiftly devolve into a nostalgia-drenched squabble boasting their LLM flunky setups on their grandpa's basement servers. Meanwhile, someone drops a Wikipedia link, perhaps as an attempt to inject some credibility into the discourse or maybe just to help lost readers find their way back to sanity. 🙄😂
10 points by todsacerdoti 2024-08-18T22:52:37 | 3 comments
13. ▲ Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer (complexsystemspodcast.com)
In this riveting episode of "Futile Efforts with Casey Handmer," we dive headfirst into a solar energy rabbit hole that's presumably unseen by anyone but Casey and his friend from Terraform Industries. Prepare to experience the thrill of rehashed solar energy revelations posing as cutting-edge disruptors, served with a side of moral pontification on why burning more energy is actually good for polar bears, or something. Our comment section becomes a mishmash of amateur economists and weekend engineers debating the economics of synthetic hydrocarbons – a concept so obvious, even Casey's dog probably thought of it first. If you crave a regurgitate of armchair expertise and unchallenged enthusiasm for expensive eco-alchemy, look no further; and don't forget to stick around for paychecks from our sponsors at Check, because someone's got to fund this eco-circus! 🌍🚀💸
40 points by vikrum 2024-08-18T18:33:49 | 22 comments
14. ▲ Leaving Neovim for Zed (stevedylan.dev)
Title: Yet Another Developer Swaps Text Chisels

At stevedylan.dev, another brave soul details their harrowing odyssey from the forgotten lands of Neovim to the glittering shores of Zed, thus continuing the eternal cycle of text editor monogamy until the next shiny thing arrives. Our hero mysteriously transitioned through Atom because, why not follow the crowd to VSCode, only to bail (shockingly, not for Emacs) when domestic necessity reared its ugly head! Meanwhile, in the comments, developers engage in the sacred ritual of asserting their text editor's superiority, as if their choice of code-scribbling tool bestows upon them the eldritch secrets of the universe. Indeed, the great Editor War trundles on, leaving no victor – only casualties armed with hefty config files and smug blog posts.
204 points by mxstbr 2024-08-18T18:37:10 | 146 comments
15. ▲ Getting back into C programming for CP/M (kevinboone.me)
**Old Man Yells at Cloud Compiler**

In a quixotic twist of software necromancy, Kevin Boone dusts off a 40-year-old Z80 CP/M machine, because nothing says "cutting-edge" like a platform old enough to be your dad. Diving back into C programming with the fossilized Aztec C compiler, he asserts a touching yet futile resistance against modern programming conveniences. Commenters, swooning over their dusty memories, vie in an obsolete tech one-upmanship while casually lamenting the 'good-old days' of software dev, when you could code in peace without the tyranny of Agile meetings. Because clearly, nostalgia-compiling on an OS that pre-dates the internet is the hill we all want to die on in 2023. 🦕💾
157 points by AlexeyBrin 2024-08-18T11:24:02 | 70 comments
16. ▲ Mike Magee, founder of the Register, has died (fudzilla.com)
Internet Weeps Programmatically: Saga of a Tech Satirist

The tech world loses one of its grandmasters of snark, Mike Magee, and promptly the squad of greasy commentators type out *heartfelt* testaments like they're debugging emotional support software. They wax nostalgic over "the days of true tech journalism," in between arguments on which unofficial nickname for Microsoft was the funniest—computed nostalgia with a side of trivia. Heaven forbid we stick to the sob-fest without a nod to their prowess in understanding tech deeper than your average Facebook memory reminder. Meanwhile, some lament the decline of The Register into "professionalism," as if journalism isn't supposed to be professional, mourning for the golden age when slamming a keyboard produced Pulitzer-worthy sarcasm. 🏆😢👨‍💻
144 points by dannyobrien 2024-08-18T21:56:26 | 21 comments
17. ▲ Bold Edit: An editor written by power users (bold-edit.com)
Welcome to the latest distraction for developers, the **Bold Edit**—a text editor that purports to reinvent the wheel with a secret recipe likely sourced directly from wishful thinking and unicorn tears. In a realm where Emacs reigns as the stubborn immortal, Bold Edit plays the sprightly upstart promising everything and running nowhere fast (at least not on your operating system of choice). Armchair coders revel in prophesizing its quick demise against the eternal Emacs, while others crow about "unique debugging" that seems as elusive as a straightforward Terms of Service. Can't wait for the five-year reunion when we find this quirky editor in the forgotten GitHub repositories graveyard. 🎉💻👻
72 points by thunderbong 2024-08-18T16:36:19 | 34 comments
18. ▲ How the OCaml type checker works (2022) (okmij.org)
Welcome to another day of type-checker esoterica on Hacker News, where the mention of OCaml, Rémy's Algorithm, and various other arcane sorceries coalesce to woo the unsuspecting newbie and scare off the sane. Brushing aside the notion that "it's just HM and Algorithm W," our daring blogger takes a deep dive into dependency tracking, region containment, and probably a dozen other things that 99.9% of programmers will never need to know. Commenters quickly engage in an arms race of obscure knowledge, trying to out-pedant each other with insights about union-find trickeries and the inefficiencies of Algorithm W—it's like the Olympics, but for people who love compiler internals instead of sports. Finally, rejoice, as someone nearby attempts to validate their Saturday afternoon reading choice by declaring this article a "must-read" for changes to the OCaml typechecker, as though it were the hot new Netflix series everyone's guilt-binging. 🍿🤓
154 points by mooreds 2024-08-18T10:52:38 | 32 comments
19. ▲ Ashby (YC W19) Is Hiring Engineers Who Can Design (ashbyhq.com)
At Ashby, a company somehow still in existence since Y Combinator's Winter '19 batch, there is desperately hope-laden news: they are hiring! The startup, a bastion of originality in an industry that definitely needs more job boards masquerading as tech revolutions, seeks engineers who can "design". This can only mean they've made the groundbreaking discovery that their product actually requires building. In the comments, assorted tech bros oscillate between salivating over stock options and mistaking complexity for innovation, while debating whether a ping-pong table qualifies as a "design challenge". 🏓💼
0 points by 2024-08-18T17:01:09 | 0 comments
20. ▲ `noexcept` affects libstdc++'s `unordered_set` (quuxplusone.github.io)
**Hacker News Discovers C++ Again**

In today's "old news as new insights" feature, Arthur O'Dwyer has dazzlingly uncovered that the `noexcept` keyword does, in fact, affect performance in GNU's C++ standard library collections. Shockingly, this revelation is actually documented, albeit hidden in plain sight where practically no programmer has ever thought to tread: the **documentation**. In an exciting twist, the comment section quickly fills with armchair experts who apparently missed their calling as language architects, decrying or defending the noexcept semantics with the intensity usually reserved for debating tabs vs spaces. Can't wait for next week's episode where we discover that compilers do, indeed, compile code. 🎉
74 points by signa11 2024-08-18T15:40:39 | 55 comments
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