Terence Tao on O1

https://media.mathstodon.xyz/cache/preview_cards/images/016/211/293/original/e94c32bf55143f5a.webp
The user tested OpenAI's GPT-o1, a more capable tool than previous iterations, and found it to be roughly on par with advising a mediocre graduate student, but still struggling with advanced research tasks. They hope for a diverse ecosystem of AI tools to emerge, including general-purpose and specialized models, to assist with various research tasks.

Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP

The user shares their experience with flaky wireless connections and how they switched from NetworkManager to wpa_supplicant-based management. They also discuss common falsehoods about TCP, including its reliability and the possibility of creating a guarantee analogous to TCP's reliability at the application level.

Everyone says Chrome devastates Mac battery life, but does it? 36 hour test

https://birchtree.me/content/images/2024/09/2DB525DC-CA3D-4E17-85BC-6A2F2B6376E6.jpeg
The author tested the battery life of Chrome and Safari on a MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro processor and 16GB RAM, running a 3-hour browsing session with various tabs open, and found that Chrome used 9% less battery than Safari. The results contradict the common claim that Chrome devastates a Mac's battery, and the author suggests that users should not switch browsers solely based on battery ...

Writing an OS in Rust

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/cb2e329ede094df000efd34565cef0308d83c73e924ce89d09236ebaa40dd604/phil-opp/blog_os
The Writing an OS in Rust series provides step-by-step tutorials in individual blog posts, with each post's code available in a separate git branch. The project is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dual-licensed, with contributions subject to the same terms unless explicitly stated otherwise.

One in five genetics papers contains errors thanks to Microsoft Excel (2016)

www.science.org needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

Hadrius (YC W23) Is Hiring New Grads Engineers in NYC

https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/860789e4b5347ff0d9c534e39f80af9c01143ab3.png
The Customer Success Engineer will serve as the primary bridge between customers and the product, defining the culture, processes, and team that comprises Hadrius' relationship with customers. The role requires a self-motivated individual with a technical background and experience in customer-facing roles to work alongside founders, solve customer problems, and build tools to streamline efforts.

Installing Arch Linux on a Laptop

https://giacomo.coletto.io/images/arch-amd-iso.avif
The user installed Arch Linux on their laptop, replacing Manjaro, and customized the installation with features like LVM, LUKS, and Secure Boot. They configured the boot process, set up Plymouth, and enabled Secure Boot with their own keys, and also customized the installation for their specific GPU and network settings.

Making a rickroll laser: A parametric speaker

https://10maurycy10.github.io/projects/speaker/driver_sch.png
The user created a compact directional speaker using piezoelectric transducers that emit ultrasound, which is converted to normal sound as it passes through the air, allowing for a narrow beam of sound. The speaker uses a custom circuit board with 73 transducers arranged in a rectangle, and can produce a beam of sound only a few degrees wide, similar to a laser.

Show HN: Meet.hn – Meet the Hacker News community in your city

The user created meet.hn to connect with the Hacker News community in Toulouse, France, and is looking to meet at least one HN member in the city. They invite others to reach out if they're in the area and have a Twitter page for meet.hn at https://x.com/meet_hn.

The Bastard Operator from Hell

The BOFH is a humorous character who navigates office politics and technology issues with wit and sarcasm. The story follows his adventures and misadventures as he deals with various challenges and characters.

LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live with This

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
Large Language Models (LLMs) inherently produce hallucinations due to their fundamental mathematical and logical structure, making it impossible to eliminate them through architectural improvements or fact-checking mechanisms. The concept of Structural Hallucination is introduced, establishing the mathematical certainty of hallucinations in LLMs.

How America's universities became debt factories

https://i0.wp.com/anandsanwal.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/college-student-debt-burden-shackles.png?resize=1024%2C771&ssl=1
The US student loan system is a trillion-dollar debt bubble that can't be popped due to non-dischargeable loans, which creates a misaligned incentive system that rewards failure and punishes success. To fix this, loans should be dischargeable, tied to degree value, and institutions should be held accountable, but powerful interests profit from the status quo and resist change.

Nesting Arena Allocators in Rust

https://blog.yoshuawuyts.com/twitter-card.png
The author discusses the benefits of using custom allocators in Rust, particularly slab and bump allocators, and how capabilities could simplify allocation strategies. They propose using capabilities to pass allocators as arguments to functions, eliminating the need for manual allocation management and improving code clarity.

European Satellite Burns Up for Science

https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-satellite-burning-up-as-it-travels-through-earth-s-atmosphere-pieces-of-the-satellite-are-breaking-off.jpg?id=53602086&width=1200&height=900
The European Space Agency's ROSIE mission successfully gathered data on the re-entry of a 24-year-old satellite called Salsa, which burned up in the atmosphere, providing insights into how satellites disintegrate during re-entry. The mission aims to improve prediction models and learn more about the re-entry process, which is crucial for ensuring the safety of people on Earth's surface as the ...

Computer Languages Timeline [pdf] (2022)

AWK The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, and Peter J. Weinberger

The Department of Everything – Dispatches from the telephone reference desk

https://hedgehogreview.com/images/identity/iasc/letters-logo-white.png
The author worked as a telephone reference librarian in the Brooklyn Public Library from 1984 to 1988, answering a wide range of questions from callers, and developed skills in finding information through various reference sources. The author reflects on the advantages of analog ways of gathering information, including the importance of critical thinking and not taking information for ...

Rust error handling

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e10bdc20efb8f0d169f85f9/3e334953-aeef-462c-8210-46bdaa9563a3/ferris-options-results.png
Rust's Option and Result types handle "no data" and error situations, allowing for explicit error handling and propagation. These types provide a way to signal the absence of a result or an error, and Rust's ? operator simplifies error handling and propagation.

Factor 0.100 Now Available

Kierkegaard's quote is followed by a list of developers and a tribute to Raghu Ranganathan, who passed away. The text then discusses updates to the Factor programming language, including ARM64 support, improved console I/O, and compressed images.

The Tippy Type makes typing with long nails less tedious

https://duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0x0:2700x1800/2400x2400/filters:focal(1410x854:1411x855):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25553267/247186_Tippy_Type_AKrales_0053.jpg
Life with long nails is not for the weak, but at least typing can be less annoying. By Victoria Song, a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 12 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Long nails are not for the weak. ...

Startup Mortality Rates

https://avc.xyz/api/highlight?text=Startup%20Mortality%20Rates&author=AVC&url=%40avc&avatarUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fstorage.googleapis.com%2Fpapyrus_images%2Fe7524325933060800724a1ec84d9b1ed.jpg&featuredImageUrl=&size=512
A friend asked about startup mortality rates, and the author notes that while it's natural to see some startups close, it's not uncommon and can be planned for. The author references Nate Silver's book, which quotes Marc Andreessen's fund performance numbers, showing that a small percentage of investments produce most returns over a long period.

Lisp implemented in Rust macros

https://opengraph.githubassets.com/56bcaa04550d8c817fc0be823ada7d5f6a399d3e7591dfb1fc774d5754937e4a/RyanWelly/lisp-in-rs-macros
A Rust-based Lisp interpreter written using declarative macros, which evaluates Lisp expressions at compile-time and supports lambda functions, recursion, and basic data structures. The interpreter uses a SECD machine simulation to evaluate lambda calculus terms, but its recursive evaluation can be inefficient and may cause performance issues.

The Rise of Open Source Time Series Databases

https://victoriametrics.com/blog/the-rise-of-open-source-time-series-databases/preview.webp
Time series databases are designed to efficiently store and query large amounts of data with timestamps, and they have become essential tools in various industries such as infrastructure monitoring, finance, and IoT applications. VictoriaMetrics is an open-source time series database that has been developed to address the limitations of existing solutions, offering high performance, ...

Academic Journal Publishers Antitrust Litigation

https://www.lieffcabraser.com/wp-content/uploads/logo-168.jpg
A federal antitrust lawsuit was filed against six commercial publishers of academic journals, alleging a conspiracy to fix prices, limit competition, and restrict sharing of scientific research. The lawsuit claims this scheme has delayed scientific progress, worsened the peer-review crisis, and resulted in a "triple pay system" where taxpayers fund research, salaries, and published products.

Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power

https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240914_STP503.jpg
George Mitchell, known as the father of fracking, pioneered the technique of pumping liquids and sands into the ground to extract gas and oil from shale rock. His innovation, the shale revolution, transformed the global hydrocarbon industry and is now being tested for treating cancer and other diseases.

Porting SBCL to the Nintendo Switch

https://filebox.tymoon.eu//file/TWpjNU5nPT0=
The author is working on porting the Common Lisp game engine, Trial, to the Nintendo Switch, which involves overcoming various challenges such as building the SBCL runtime and compiler on the Switch, dealing with the Switch's unique constraints, and optimizing performance. The author is seeking support to continue funding the project and is asking for donations on Patreon, GitHub, or Ko-Fi to ...

The Reinforcing Nature of Toil (2023)

https://entropicthoughts.com/image/toil-feedback-01.png
As usual when I discuss systems theory (e.g. information flow or material flow), this article pretends to be about one thing, but is really about a much more general concept. Let’s talk about reinforcing feedback loops! I tell non-technical people that the site reliability engineer job is about creating automation to do what a system administrator would otherwise do. The automation does work ...

Billiards is a good game (1975)

https://mag.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/1403_Maclean_billiards.jpg
The author reflects on his experience watching Albert Michelson, a renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, play billiards at the University of Chicago in 1928, noting Michelson's exceptional skill and elegance in the game. The author also shares his observations of Michelson's hands, which seemed ordinary but were capable of great precision and control, much like his work in physics.

Almost all new car sales in Norway last month were EVs

https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/a109627e7bee97b888fe221339217aed.jpg
More than 94% of the new cars registered in Norway last month were electric vehicles, an all-time high for the Scandinavian nation quickly adapting to the EV future. Norway’s Road Information Council said the data puts Norway on track to its goal in 2025 for all new cars sold to be 100% zero-emissions — and places it far ahead of any other nation in the so-called “electric car race.” Norway ...

The Legend of Holy Sword: An Immersive Experience for Concentration Enhancement

https://arxiv.org/static/browse/0.3.4/images/arxiv-logo-fb.png
A VR system provides multimodal feedback to improve concentration by simulating the experience of pulling out a holy sword. This innovative approach helps users confront and control their concentration more effectively.

Defend against vampires with 10 gbps network encryption

https://www.synacktiv.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/vampiretap.jpg
The article discusses the vulnerability of fiber optic cables to tapping and sniffing, and proposes a solution using encryption to secure 802.1q trunk links at high speeds. The solution uses a combination of VXLAN and Wireguard to encrypt and encapsulate 802.1q frames, and is demonstrated to work at speeds of up to 9.86 Gbps with a performance penalty of less than 2%.