I canceled my book deal

227 azhenley 2025-12-31 18:56:10 UTC austinhenley.com Llama Share 139

The author had a successful blog and was approached by a big tech book publisher to write a book about classic programming projects. The author negotiated a contract with a $5000 advance and 12-15% royalties, but the publisher's feedback and requirements stifled the author's creativity and enthusiasm.

Privacy and control. My tech setup

87 todsacerdoti 2025-12-31 18:56:10 UTC toidiu.com Llama Share 43

The author argues that privacy is not the primary concern but rather control over personal data and digital identity. They recommend using password managers, secure messaging apps, and open-source alternatives to protect control.

All-optical synthesis chip for large-scale intelligent semantic vision

19 QueensGambit 2025-12-31 20:56:10 UTC science.org Full Share 1

Demystifying DVDs

45 boltzmann-brain 2025-12-31 17:56:10 UTC hiddenpalace.org Llama Share 4

Sega's Sonic Team faced challenges after the company went third-party, leading to a decline in the quality of Sonic games, with Sonic Heroes being a notable underwhelming disappointment. Shadow the Hedgehog, released in 2005, was a game that attempted to appeal to a wider demographic with its team-based gameplay and dark storyline, but its inclusion of guns and violence was met with ...

Scaffolding to Superhuman: How Curriculum Learning Solved 2048 and Tetris

96 a1k0n 2025-12-31 15:56:10 UTC kywch.github.io Llama Share 20

Training a 15MB policy for 75 minutes using PufferLib and Pareto sweeps enabled a gaming agent to beat massive search-based solutions on 2048, achieving a 14.75% 65k tile rate and a 71.22% 32k tile rate. The key to success was curriculum learning, which allowed the agent to experience high-value states and develop robust strategies, and not scaling up the network until the observation and ...

The compiler is your best friend

116 based2 2025-12-31 15:56:10 UTC blog.daniel-beskin.com Llama Share 74

The user discusses the importance of compilers in programming, specifically how they can help prevent bugs and improve code safety, but often developers lie to the compiler by making assumptions or using casts, which can lead to errors. By being honest with the compiler and providing accurate information, developers can take advantage of its benefits and write more reliable and maintainable code.

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design [pdf] (2011)

242 tosh 2025-12-31 10:56:10 UTC ece.uvic.ca Full Share 64

Microtonal Spiral Piano

45 phoenix_ashes 2025-12-31 16:56:10 UTC shih1.github.io Llama Share 9

This project combines Western music with non-Western scales through N-TET, dividing the octave into equal steps. It allows for rediscovery of lost intervals and harmonies through keyboard input or guitar adaptation.

My role as a founder-CTO: year 8

39 ridruejo 2025-12-31 17:56:10 UTC miguelcarranza.es Llama Share 50

The author reflects on 2025 as a year of growth and change for RevenueCat, a company that helps app developers monetize their apps. The author discusses the company's evolution, hiring, and product development, and looks forward to 2026 as a year of new opportunities and challenges.

When square pixels aren't square

86 PaulHoule 2025-12-31 13:56:10 UTC alexwlchan.net Llama Share 39

The user was experiencing issues with videos not fitting in their allocated boxes due to incorrect aspect ratios, which was caused by missing the pixel aspect ratio in their code. They resolved the issue by using ffprobe to extract the display aspect ratio, which takes into account the pixel aspect ratio, and now their pre-allocated video boxes match the browser's rendering.

Show HN: Use Claude Code to Query 600 GB Indexes over Hacker News, ArXiv, etc.

272 Xyra 2025-12-31 07:56:10 UTC exopriors.com Llama Share 97

You have public access to the ExoPriors alignment research corpus with a provided API key. You can query 60M documents using SQL and store named embeddings for semantic search.

The most famous transcendental numbers

116 vismit2000 2025-12-31 12:56:10 UTC sprott.physics.wisc.edu Llama Share 64

Cliff Pickover discusses transcendental numbers, specifically pi and e, which are irrational and cannot be expressed as the root of any algebraic equation with rational coefficients. He lists 15 famous transcendental numbers, including Euler's constant, Catalan's constant, and Feigenbaum numbers.

Stewart Cheifet, creator of The Computer Chronicles, has died

114 spankibalt 2025-12-31 17:56:10 UTC obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com Llama Share 38

Stewart was born in Philadelphia, attended USC and Harvard Law, and had a career in TV production hosting Computer Chronicles and Net Cafe. He worked as a consultant and educator before retiring and spending time with family.

Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

230 lrasinen 2025-12-31 14:56:10 UTC helsinki.fi Llama Share 244

Researchers at the University of Helsinki developed a recyclable compound that absorbs 156 milligrams of CO2 per gram. The compound can be reused multiple times and releases CO2 at 70°C, outperforming current methods.

The rise of industrial software

192 chrisloy 2025-12-31 09:56:10 UTC chrisloy.dev Llama Share 148

The industrialization of software production is making it cheaper, faster, and more automated, but this may lead to a surge in low-quality, disposable software. This trend could result in an explosion of software output, similar to the impact of smartphones on photo, video, and audio capture.

Doom in Django: testing the limits of LiveView at 600.000 divs/segundo

154 andros 2025-12-31 07:56:10 UTC en.andros.dev Llama Share 47

User tested Django LiveView's limits by running DOOM at 600,000 divs/second, proving its ability to handle high traffic. The experiment successfully demonstrated real-time broadcasting of the game to all players.

Kitchen optimizations

45 Theaetetus 2025-12-31 12:56:10 UTC natemeyvis.com Llama Share 85

Optimizing kitchen tasks can save time and effort by focusing on small, often overlooked areas like boiling water and unloading the dishwasher. By making these small changes, individuals can save time without sacrificing meal quality or choice.

Show HN: Frockly – A visual editor for understanding complex Excel formulas

9 jack_ruru 2025-12-31 19:56:10 UTC news.ycombinator.com Prefix Share 2

I built a visual editor that represents Excel formulas as blocks, making it easier to inspect, refactor, and reason about complex formulas structurally. Frockly is not an Excel replacement. It focuses on understanding and refactoring formulas before bringing them back to Excel. Demo: https://ryuu12358.github.io/Frockly/ GitHub: https://github.com/ryuu12358/Frockly Write-up: ...

Back to the future: the story of Squeak, a practical Smalltalk written in itself [pdf] (1997)

81 fanf2 2025-12-31 11:56:10 UTC vpri.org Llama Share 22

Squeak is a portable Smalltalk implementation written in Smalltalk, allowing for easy debugging and modification. It features a compact object format, efficient garbage collection, and real-time sound and music synthesis, making it a practical and open object-oriented programming environment.

How AI labs are solving the power problem

80 Symmetry 2025-12-31 13:56:10 UTC newsletter.semianalysis.com Llama Share 154

The grid is failing to keep up with the rapid growth of AI infrastructure, leading to a "gold rush" of developers submitting interconnection requests, and a new trend of datacenters building their own onsite power plants is emerging. Onsite power generation involves a complete rethinking of traditional power plants, with various technologies such as gas turbines, reciprocating engines, and ...

Nvidia GB10's Memory Subsystem, from the CPU Side

53 ingve 2025-12-31 12:56:10 UTC chipsandcheese.com Llama Share 4

GB10's memory subsystem has good DRAM latency and high external bandwidth, but struggles with cache coherency and latency under high GPU bandwidth demands. Its CPU setup is density-optimized, but may benefit from more cache and cluster specialization for better performance.

Who invented the transistor?

53 todsacerdoti 2025-12-31 12:56:10 UTC people.idsia.ch Llama Share 47

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld patented the field-effect transistor (FET) in 1925 and the metal oxide semiconductor FET (MOSFET) in 1928. His designs worked and are the basis for almost all transistors in modern computers and smartphones.

Meta created 'playbook' to fend off pressure to crack down on scammers

161 lossolo 2025-12-31 18:56:10 UTC reuters.com Full Share 71

Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker

France targets Australia-style social media ban for children next year

145 belter 2025-12-31 15:56:10 UTC theguardian.com Llama Share 182

France plans to ban social media for under-15s from 2026, following Australia's world-first ban. The draft bill also includes a ban on mobile phones in high schools to protect teenagers from excessive screen use and online dangers.

Tixl: Open-source realtime motion graphics

162 nateb2022 2025-12-31 06:56:10 UTC github.com/tixl3d Llama Share 25

TiXL is an open source software for real-time motion graphics combining procedural content generation, keyframe animation, and rendering. It aims to balance usability and flexibility, with a community-driven development process.

Stardew Valley developer made a $125k donation to the FOSS C# framework MonoGame

480 haunter 2025-12-31 15:56:10 UTC monogame.net Full Share 204

Bounties, Fix bugs and add features faster as well as get paid for your work :)

RoboCop – Breaking the Law. H0ffman Cracks RoboCop Arcade from DataEast

71 birdculture 2025-12-31 10:56:10 UTC hoffman.home.blog Llama Share 3

A hacker cracked the copy protection of the RoboCop arcade game by reverse engineering its HuC6280 sub CPU. They created a patch to disable the protection and made the game work without the sub CPU.

Animated AI

289 frozenseven 2025-12-31 01:56:10 UTC animatedai.github.io Llama Share 25

You create animations and instructional videos about neural networks, promoting your Patreon and YouTube channel. Your videos cover convolution fundamentals, padding, stride, groups, depthwise, and pixel shuffle techniques.

Claude wrote a functional NES emulator using my engine's API

66 delduca 2025-12-31 13:56:10 UTC carimbo.games Full Share 72

Play NES Emulator - Carimbo Game

Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

105 Mgtyalx 2025-12-31 18:56:10 UTC storage.courtlistener.com Llama Share 89

Erik Soelberg believes he's being targeted by surveillance and manipulation, and his instincts are validated by ChatGPT. He's a resilient, divinely protected survivor.