Hacker News with Generative AI

Stop syncing everything (sqlsync.dev)
Partial replication sounds easy—just sync the data your app needs, right? But choosing an approach is tricky: logical replication precisely tracks every change, complicating strong consistency, while physical replication avoids that complexity but requires syncing every change, even discarded ones. What if your app could combine the simplicity of physical replication with the efficiency of logical replication? That’s the key idea behind Graft, the open-source transactional storage engine I’m launching today.
Databases, Open Source, Software, Data Replication
309 points by neilk 2 days ago | 38 comments
A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports (openculture.com)
Music, Art, Experimental Music
45 points by vinhnx 3 days ago | 17 comments
DEDA – Tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation Toolkit (github.com/dfd-tud)
Document Colour Tracking Dots, or yellow dots, are small systematic dots which encode information about the printer and/or the printout itself. This process is integrated in almost every commercial colour laser printer. This means that almost every printout contains coded information about the source device, such as the serial number.
Privacy, Security, Software, Data Analysis
215 points by pavel_lishin 11 hours ago | 71 comments
Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001) (cs.wisc.edu)
The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie.
Semiconductors, Materials Science, Physics
802 points by tux3 20 hours ago | 332 comments
Circuit Tracing: Revealing Computational Graphs in Language Models (Anthropic) (transformer-circuits.pub)
We introduce a method to uncover mechanisms underlying behaviors of language models. We produce graph descriptions of the model’s computation on prompts of interest by tracing individual computational steps in a “replacement model”. This replacement model substitutes a more interpretable component (here, a “cross-layer transcoder”) for parts of the underlying model (here, the multi-layer perceptrons) that it is trained to approximate.
Artificial Intelligence, Language Models, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Research
71 points by ydnyshhh 2 days ago | 3 comments
Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101 (bbc.com)
A decorated World War Two code breaker who spent her youth deciphering enemy messages at Bletchley Park has died at the age of 101.
History, Code Breaking, Obituaries
409 points by danso 19 hours ago | 67 comments
Where does air pollution come from? (ourworldindata.org)
Millions of people die prematurely from air pollution every year. This problem has existed since humans started burning materials for fuel — first wood and biomass, then fossil fuels.
Air Pollution, Environmental Science, Public Health
134 points by kamaraju 4 hours ago | 53 comments
Open source, 3D-printable smart chess board (thangs.com)
Print. Click. Play. OpenChess is a fully open source smart chessboard designed to make interactive, intelligent gameplay accessible to everyone. By combining low-cost electronics, 3D printing, and customizable software, OpenChess empowers makers, educators, and chess lovers to build their own connected chess experience — without the high price tag.
Open Source, 3D Printing, Chess, Education, Hardware
24 points by bdcravens 3 days ago | 12 comments
Show HN: Offline SOS signaling+recovery app for disasters/wars (github.com/nizarmah)
Igatha is an open-source SOS signaling and recovery app designed for war zones and disaster areas, enabling offline emergency communication when traditional networks fail.
Open Source, Disaster Relief, Emergency Communication, War, Mobile Apps
98 points by nizarmah 10 hours ago | 50 comments
Shared DNA in Music (pudding.cool)
This is a project about shared DNA in music.
Music, Genetics, Creative Projects
169 points by ksampath02 11 hours ago | 35 comments
Glubux's Powerwall (2016) (secondlifestorage.com)
A quick presentation of my project.
Virtual Reality, Second Life, 3D Modeling
367 points by bentobean 17 hours ago | 241 comments
The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst (glthr.com)
Upon reflection, Myst has long been more analogous to a graph than a traditional linear game, owing to the relative freedom it affords players.
Games, Myst, Graph Theory
199 points by tobr 15 hours ago | 54 comments
Why F#? (batsov.com)
If someone had told me a few months ago I’d be playing with .NET again after a 15+ years hiatus I probably would have laughed at this.1 Early on in my career I played with .NET and Java, and even though .NET had done some things better than Java (as it had the opportunity to learn from some early Java mistakes), I quickly settled on Java as it was a truly portable environment.
.NET, Programming Languages, Software Development
324 points by bozhidar 20 hours ago | 283 comments
Testing DVD-R and CD-R 25 years later: optical disks from Japan (goughlui.com)
As it turns out, “thrift shopping” in Japan via the internet can be both very enjoyable as well as very dangerous.
Technology, Reviews, Japan
82 points by csdvrx 11 hours ago | 38 comments
How Silica Gel Took Over the World (scopeofwork.net)
I find them stuffed into the toes of a new pair of sneakers. I find them wedged into a sheaf of seaweed snacks. I find them in the over-inflated bag that contains my new inhaler, and in the vacuum-sealed one puckered around my kids’ 3D printing filament.
Consumer Products, Everyday Objects, Design
110 points by Hooke 13 hours ago | 84 comments
Converting a Go-Kart into a Deathtrap (matto.io)
As a child, I always dreamed of having vehicles that I could drive myself. I remember putting a chair with a fan in front of it and pretending to fly an airplane.
Go-Karts, Vehicles, Creative Projects, DIY
47 points by mattogodoy 3 days ago | 9 comments
Forking Work Simplification – Let's Bring Back Eisenhower's Process Improvement (governance.fyi)
Happy April Fool’s, but frankly we are all (well almost all) business today with a neat little update.
Process Improvement, Management, Business, History
30 points by RetiredRichard 8 hours ago | 16 comments
AI image recognition detects bubble-like structures in the universe (phys.org)
To learn more about the deepest reaches of our own galaxy and the mysteries of star formation, Japanese researchers have created a deep learning model.
Artificial Intelligence, Astronomy, Deep Learning, Universe
68 points by PaulHoule 2 days ago | 36 comments
Show HN: Textcase: A Python Library for Text Case Conversion (github.com/zobweyt)
A feature complete Python text case conversion library.
Python, Text Processing, Libraries, Open Source
54 points by zobweyt 10 hours ago | 18 comments
Train and Weather Tracker with Raspberry Pi and E-Ink (sambroner.com)
I finally built a Raspberry Pi project my wife loves: an e-ink train and weather tracker! If you want to build one yourself, the Github & instructions are here.
Raspberry Pi, DIY Projects, Weather, E-Ink Displays
60 points by tosh 4 days ago | 8 comments
Show HN: I vibecoded a 35k LoC recipe app (recipeninja.ai)
Web Development, Software, Personal Projects, Recipes
82 points by tomblomfield 6 hours ago | 121 comments
Travel Guide for Stateless People (taejun.substack.com)
I’m not sure how many frequent travelers actually travel without a passport, so I don’t know how many people will benefit from this post. Still, here’s a guide for stateless travelers. Please note: this is not legal advice, and I take no responsibility for any outcome if you follow these suggestions. That said, I hope it helps.
Travel, Statelessness, Legal Issues
8 points by mrcgnc 2 hours ago | 5 comments
Silicon Valley, Halt and Catch Fire, and How Microserfdom Ate the World (2015) (grantland.com)
Douglas Coupland’s novel Microserfs is about the spiritual yearnings and time-frittering activities of youngish coders immersed in the drudgery of the software-development process, and how those activities become an expression of those yearnings.
Silicon Valley, Books, Culture, Technology, Software Development
61 points by Apocryphon 11 hours ago | 21 comments
Generate autounattend.xml files for Windows 10/11 (schneegans.de)
Windows 10, Windows 11, Automation, Configuration, Operating Systems
161 points by nixass 3 days ago | 50 comments
Show HN: Zig Topological Sort Library for Parallel Processing (github.com/williamw520)
TopoSort is a highly efficient Zig library for performing topological sort on dependency graph.
Programming, Parallel Processing, Zig, Libraries, Graphs
96 points by ww520 15 hours ago | 38 comments
SSLyze – SSL configuration scanning library and CLI tool (github.com/nabla-c0d3)
SSLyze is a fast and powerful SSL/TLS scanning tool and Python library.
Security, Python, Tools, Network Security
31 points by Brysonbw 8 hours ago | 1 comments
Launch HN: ASim (YC S21) – Mobile app that generates mobile apps (ycombinator.com)
Hey HN, we’re Daniel and Daniel (the Daniels) from aSim (https://asim.sh/). aSim is a mobile app that can generate immediately usable and shareable mobile apps from your phone.
YC, Startups, Artificial Intelligence
56 points by dli123 17 hours ago | 49 comments
The state of binary compatibility on Linux and how to address it (jangafx.com)
At JangaFX, we make several products that run natively on Linux. We love the flexibility and power that Linux offers our developers, but shipping software on it is a whole different challenge.
Linux, Software Development, Operating Systems, Compatibility
128 points by generichuman 10 hours ago | 79 comments
Excitable cells (jenevoldsen.com)
I wrote this post to answer some of the questions, I had as a medical student, when I first learned about cardiac arrhythmias. Mainly, what are the conditions required to initiate and maintain a reentrant arrhythmia? That is, a state where the heart muscles are continuously activated by a self-sustaining loop, independent of the normal pace-making system. These arrhythmias can be benign, as with AV-nodal reentry tachycardia (AVNRT); a common, and usually harmless, cause of palpitations in young people.
Cardiac Arrhythmias, Medicine, Physiology
277 points by johannes_ne 5 days ago | 46 comments