News Nug
Death by AI

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

The author, Dave Barry, humorously recounts discovering his own apparent death through a Google search of his name, which presented an AI-generated overview erroneously stating he had passed away. Intrigued, Barry clicked on the query about his death, only to find that the details were incorrect. He confirmed he is indeed alive, having recently been examined by physicians who found no evidence of death. Despite the error, he submitted feedback to Google about the misinformation, humorously acknowledging the vastness of Google's

NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft begins taxi tests

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft has successfully begun taxi tests, marking its first movement under its own power. On July 10, 2025, NASA test pilot Nils Larson conducted the aircraft's inaugural low-speed taxi test at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in California. This test is part of the final ground tests before the X-59's first flight, with plans to gradually increase speed leading to a high-speed taxi test. During the low-speed tests,

The current technology is not ready for proper blending

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the complexities of working with color gradients in different color spaces, specifically sRGB, linear RGB, and OkLab. It emphasizes the growing consensus on the importance of linearizing sRGB gradients or using a perceptually uniform colorspace like OkLab for specific applications, particularly for color transitions within shapes or textures. Linear RGB is considered physically correct and visually adequate, but its use can lead to different visual outcomes depending on the colors involved. For instance, in monochrome transitions between black and

Availability in System Design

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the critical concept of availability in system design, essential for ensuring that users can access services when needed. Availability is defined as the percentage of time a system successfully serves requests, calculated as (Uptime/(Uptime + Downtime)) * 100. For example, a system that runs for 1000 hours with 1 hour of downtime has an availability of 99.9%. It is closely related to reliability, performance, and durability. High-availability systems are often measured in

Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

Przemysław Dębiak, a Polish programmer and former OpenAI employee, achieved a remarkable feat by defeating an advanced AI model in a 10-hour coding competition at the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 in Tokyo. The competition, which required contestants to tackle a complex optimization problem, marked a significant moment in which a human programmer directly competed against AI in a major event. Dębiak's victory, despite his extreme exhaustion, drew parallels to the legend of John Henry,

My Ultimate Self-Hosting Setup

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

The blog discusses the author's journey into self-hosting, detailing their experiences with various methods like Docker and Ansible. Initially, the author struggled to find a perfect solution, leading to extensive tinkering without significant benefits. After self-reflection, they adopted a "good enough" approach, clearly defining their goals and requirements. This shift has allowed them to maintain a successful self-hosting setup for over six months. The motivation behind self-hosting stems from a desire for data control, enhanced privacy, and

Asynchrony is not Concurrency

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

In the blog post by Loris Cro, the author discusses the concepts of concurrency, parallelism, and introduces the term "asynchrony" as a missing piece in understanding concurrent programming. Concurrency allows multiple tasks to be executed either simultaneously or through time-sharing, while parallel computing involves doing many calculations at the same time. The author explains that asynchrony plays a crucial role in concurrent programming. Using examples like saving files and creating a TCP server, Cro illustrates that in some cases, the

Advertising Without Signal: The Rise of the Grifter Equilibrium

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

Economists identify two key roles of advertising in enhancing welfare, but the internet has disrupted these roles. Instant search capabilities have weakened the effectiveness of ads by fostering a "grifter equilibrium," where marketplace dynamics allow for low-quality sellers to thrive. For instance, when searching for "ankle socks" on Amazon, different types of sellers face distinct profit structures. High-quality sellers earn profits without returns or relaunch costs, while low-quality sellers incur penalties for poor quality and face potential relaunch costs.

Wii U SDBoot1 Exploit “paid the beak”

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the author's efforts in recovering data from GameCube Memory Cards and SD Cards used in the Nintendo factory setup for the Wii and Wii U. After Nintendo attempted to destroy these cards, about 50% were damaged beyond recovery, 25% were salvageable with some repair, and the final 25% required extensive work, including soldering. The work was described as labor-intensive but important, resulting in the recovery of previously unseen data. Additionally, the author mentions the discovery of a new

Bun adds pnpm-style isolated installation mode

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses feedback collection and acknowledges its importance. It mentions the availability of detailed documentation and instructions for users to report issues using a GitHub account. The summary of a pull request (PR) highlights the implementation of a new installation option ("nodeLinker": "isolated") for the Bun package manager, designed to prevent phantom dependencies and allow parallel package installations. Key features and a directory structure example are noted, along with references to related issues addressed by this PR. Additionally, there are mentions of

Mr Browser – Macintosh Repository file downloader that runs directly on 68k Macs

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

MR Browser is a utility app designed for older Macs from the 1990s that can connect to the internet but cannot run modern web browsers. It allows users to access the Macintosh Repository online services and download files directly, limited to those smaller than 1GB. Users must ensure sufficient free hard drive space to prevent crashes when downloading files. For troubleshooting, users should download MR Browser using the link provided specifically for old Macs, as modern browsers may flag it as unsafe. Common issues include a "Runtime

How to write Rust in the Linux kernel: part 3

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the development of Rust bindings within the Linux kernel, highlighting the evolution of interfaces between C and Rust. It emphasizes that non-trivial Rust drivers require various bindings for tasks such as memory allocation and locking. While Rust can use the foreign function interface (FFI) to call C functions, direct integration poses challenges due to differences in memory management and locking conventions between the two languages. Initially, the project aimed to establish a centralized set of Rust bindings for each kernel subsystem, which, while

Debcraft – Easiest way to modify and build Debian packages

Published: 2025-07-19 | Origin: Hacker News

Debian packaging is often seen as challenging, causing many new contributors to give up and seasoned ones to experience burnout due to tedious maintenance tasks. Debcraft aims to address these issues by automating repetitive tasks, facilitating learning of best practices, and improving the tracking of changes in source code and build artifacts. Unlike other package formats like RPM or APK, Debian packages use multiple declarative files in the debian/ subdirectory rather than a single script. This approach enhances robustness and allows for static analysis without needing

EPA says it will eliminate its scientific reseach arm

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: Hacker News

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Silence Is a Commons by Ivan Illich (1983)

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: Hacker News

In this excerpt, Stewart Brand discusses Ivan Illich's critical analysis of various societal systems, including education, energy, medicine, and gender roles. Illich's approach challenges prevailing perceptions by revealing how scarcity is used as a tool for exploitation. The remarks referenced were delivered at the "Asahi Symposium Science and Man - The Computer-Managed Society" in Tokyo in 1982 and are linked to Illich's upcoming book, "The History of Scarcity."

How Go 1.24's Swiss Tables saved hundreds of gigabytes

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: /r/programming

The content describes an integrated platform for monitoring and security, highlighting several key components and functionalities: 1. **Observability**: Provides end-to-end visibility into the health and performance of infrastructure, applications, and logs. 2. **Security**: Offers real-time threat detection, prioritization, and response capabilities, covering code and cloud security as well as threat management. 3. **Digital Experience**: Focuses on optimizing front-end performance to enhance user experiences. 4. **Software Delivery**: Facilit

Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: Hacker News

Valve recently announced the removal of several adult games from its Steam storefront due to concerns from payment processors like Mastercard and Visa. The company stated that these games may violate the rules set by these processors, which, according to Valve, is essential to prevent the loss of payment options for customers purchasing other titles. While Valve is reaching out to affected developers and offering app credits for future games, the lack of specific game titles removed highlights the impact of payment processor policies on content availability. Valve appears to be constrained by

Kubernetes Observability with OpenTelemetry Helm Charts | A Complete Setup Guide

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: /r/programming

The blog discusses setting up Kubernetes observability using OpenTelemetry (OTel) on a Minikube cluster. OTel is a vendor-neutral solution for collecting and exporting telemetry data, including container metrics, application traces, cluster events, and logs. The article aims to provide a practical foundation for instrumenting a Kubernetes cluster with OTel, covering the deployment of an example application and configuring the OpenTelemetry Collector in two modes: DaemonSet and Deployment. This setup captures service-level metrics, traces, and

Using the Matrix Cores of AMD RDNA 4 architecture GPUs

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: Hacker News

The AMD RDNA™ 4 architecture introduces GPUs featuring 3rd-generation Matrix Cores that enhance the performance of Generalized Matrix Multiplication (GEMM) operations. A comparison of theoretical FLOPS per clock per compute unit (CU) shows improvements over previous generations, but the architecture has altered the VGPR layout for Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate (WMMA) operations, leading to a lack of backward compatibility. To accelerate GEMM operations on RDNA 4 GPUs, developers must utilize

“Dynamic Programming” is not referring to “computer programming”

Published: 2025-07-18 | Origin: Hacker News

In Vidar's blog, the concept of "dynamic programming" is clarified by emphasizing that the term "programming" refers to planning and organization, rather than computer programming as it is commonly understood. The origin of the term dates back to the 1950s, when civil engineers used it to denote the planning of projects, such as constructing office buildings. This required steps to be ordered based on dependencies, ensuring that each task relies on the completion of prior tasks. Similarly, in computer science,