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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
TimeGuessr (❄️ Score: 151+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vSW9
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vSW9
Self-Adapting Language Models (Score: 150+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w78E
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w78E
https://jyopari.github.io/posts/seal
The Tech Job Meltdown (Score: 153+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w7Vq
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w7Vq
Show HN: Tattoy – a text-based terminal compositor (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w6hw
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w6hw
Whereas this is mostly a terminal eye-candy project to get you street cred, it does have some serious aspects.
Firstly it solves the age-old problem of low-contrast text, like when you `ls` a broken symlink and the red background colour is too near your current theme's foreground colour. Tattoy solves this by using none other than the web's WCAG 2.1 contrast algorithm for accessible text.
Secondly, an explicit design goal is that Tattoy should be able to polyfill new terminal protocols, the `xwayland` of the TTY if you will. Say if we want to experiment with completely deprecating ANSI codes, then any application that uses a new protocol can be run in Tattoy which itself runs in any ANSI-standard terminal emulator as normal. You can read more about this idea here: https://tattoy.sh/news/an-end-to-terminal-ansi-codes/
But ultimately this has been something more akin to an art project, something to enjoy for the sheer aesthetic pleasure.
Apple's Liquid Glass is prep work for AR interfaces, not just a design refresh (Score: 151+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w7eQ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w7eQ
Israel launches strikes against Iran, Defense Minister says (Score: 150+ in 19 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w4Z4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w4Z4
Major sugar substitute found to impair brain blood vessel cell function (Score: 150+ in 18 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w4Xq
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w4Xq
OxCaml - a set of extensions to the OCaml programming language. (🔥 Score: 154+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w6jY
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w6jY
The Case for Software Craftsmanship in the Era of Vibes (Score: 150+ in 17 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w4Vi
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w4Vi
Why does my ripped CD have messed up track names? And why is one track missing? (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w378
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w378
If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014) (🔥 Score: 158+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w5H6
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w5H6
First thoughts on o3 pro (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vVyc
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vVyc
Helion: A modern fast paced Doom FPS engine in C# (❄️ Score: 151+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vVVv
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vVVv
The curious case of shell commands, or how "this bug is required by POSIX" (2021) (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vTWT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vTWT
Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust (Score: 150+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w2vp
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w2vp
$1,500 an hour and still using the software my grandma used to make bingo fliers!?
Hi HN! I'd like to submit for your consideration Tritium (https://tritium.legal). Tritium aims to bring the power of the integrated development environment (IDE) to corporate lawyers.
My name is Drew Miller, and I'm lawyer admitted to the New York bar. I have spent the last 13 years in and out of corporate transactional practice, while building side projects in various languages using vanilla Vim. One day at work, I was asked to implement a legal technology product at my firm. Of course the only product available for editing and running programs in a locked-down environment was VS Code and its friends like Puppeteer from Microsoft.
I was really blown away at all of the capabilities of go-to definition and out-of-the box syntax highlighting as well as the debugger integration. I made the switch to a full IDE for my side projects immediately. And it hit me: why don't we have this exact same tool in corporate law?
Corporate lawyers spent hours upon hours fumbling between various applications and instances of Word and Adobe. There are sub-par differencing products that make `patch` look like the future. They do this while charging you ridiculous rates.
I left my practice a few months later to build Tritium. Tritium aims to be the lawyer's VS Code: an all-in-one drafting cockpit that treats a deal's entire document suite as a single, searchable, AI-enhanced workspace while remaining fast, local, and secure.
Tritium is implemented in pure Rust. It is cross-platform and I'm excited for the prospect of lawyers running Linux as their daily driver. It leverages a modified version of the super fast egui.rs immediate-mode GUI library. The windows build includes a Rust COM implementation which was probably one of the more technical challenges other than laying out and rendering the text.
Download a copy at https://tritium.legal/download or try out a web-only WASM preview here: https://tritium.legal/preview
Let me know your thoughts! Your criticisms are the most important. Thank you for the time.
Implementing Logic Programming (Score: 150+ in 15 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w7vM
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w7vM
Endometriosis is an interesting disease (Score: 152+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w7E7
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w7E7
Luxe Game Engine (Score: 150+ in 13 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w6uG
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w6uG
Thiings (❄️ Score: 153+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vUxA
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vUxA
Show HN: Tool-Assisted Speedrunning the Boring Parts of Animal Crossing (GCN) (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w2Mh
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w2Mh
I recently dug my Nintendo GameCube out of storage to revisit the first Animal Crossing game. Things were mostly as I remembered, but the game's heavy reliance on a clunky on-screen keyboard quickly wore my patience thin.
Unwilling to accept this subpar experience, I did what any rational person would do and ordered a rare, Japan-exclusive, keyboard/controller hybrid on eBay, then used a Raspberry Pi Pico to 1. listen for keypresses and 2. send simulated controller events to the GameCube, automating typing in Animal Crossing at a Tool-Assisted Speedrun level.
Of course, this oddball controller's keycaps didn't map perfectly to Animal Crossing's in-game character set, so I watched a 10 hour FreeCAD tutorial at 2x speed, then modeled the 7 keycap profiles to create 81 custom, 3D printed keycaps, taking care to include even the most esoteric Greek and Old English characters that Nintendo chose to include in the game.
And then, having solved my original problem, I decided to sniff out some new ones.
I used my homemade TAS device to automate the entry of customizable "Town Tune" melodies, took advantage of a cracked encryption algorithm to give on-demand access to (almost) every item in the game, and, in a Club-Mate-fueled haze, whipped up a Python script to convert arbitrary images to the game's 32x32 pixel custom design format.
Even at superhuman speed, those 1024 pixels took about 3 minutes to input, but that didn't stop me from extending the concept to video - playing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", Bad Apple!, Shrek, and even a short gameplay video of DOOM very, veryyyy slowly (about 7.5 hours to render 30 seconds of footage at 5fps).
Then, realizing that DOOM at 0.0056fps probably wouldn't be the most "playable" thing in the world, I set out to get some kind of video game running within Animal Crossing, and ultimately landed on Snake.
Since it only needs to update 1 pixel for every frame of animation, I was able to get Snake running at around 1ish* frames per second (for technical reasons, it runs at a variable framerate).
Maybe not the most primo experience the modern gaming world has to offer, but without a doubt, technically a video game. It even has its own, in-memory high score ranking (so far I'm undefeated).
The code and design files are distributed for free on GitHub[0], and a build/demonstration video[1] is out now on Youtube.
[0] - https://github.com/hunterirving/pico-crossing
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw8Alf_lolA
It started as a "quick, simple project", then quickly ballooned into 7 or 8 "quick, simple projects", but I had a ton of fun putting it all together. Thanks for checking it out!
I Convinced HP's Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days (🔥 Score: 152+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w6Wp
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w6Wp
Ask HN: How do I give back to people helped me when I was young and had nothing? (Score: 154+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6w6e2
Throughout my career, I've received incredible kindness and inspiration from experienced people - professors, and strangers who invested time in me when I feel like I had little to offer in return. While I always express gratitude and try to pay it forward, I often feel there's still an imbalance. I feel like I owe something more direct to the specific people who shaped my life.
How do you meaningfully give back to people who helped you early on (when you literally have nothing...haha)?
What forms of gratitude have you found most meaningful?
Appreciate any comments.
Quantum Computation Lecture Notes (2022) (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vPw5
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vPw5
Show HN: I wrote a BitTorrent Client from scratch (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w5pD
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w5pD
I picked up programming in late 2023 and been enjoying it now. Wanted to challenge myself and set a stretch goal, so set out to build a bittorrent client.
Meta Invests $14.3B in Scale AI to Kick-Start Superintelligence Lab (🔥 Score: 153+ in 2 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w69x
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w69x
A Dark Adtech Empire Fed by Fake CAPTCHAs (Score: 151+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w4JE
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w4JE
Rendering Crispy Text on the GPU (Score: 151+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w5cB
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w5cB
Dancing brainwaves: How sound reshapes your brain networks in real time (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vMC4
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vMC4
Jemalloc Postmortem (🔥 Score: 156+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6w57G
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6w57G
Rust compiler performance (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6vTgi
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6vTgi