News Nug
Why Circuit Breaker Recovery Needs Coordination

Published: 2025-12-09 | Origin: /r/ruby

The blog post discusses the challenges of implementing circuit breakers in systems with concurrent execution, emphasizing that while the state machine (CLOSED, OPEN, HALF-OPEN) is simple, coordinating recovery probes among multiple threads or servers is complex. The half-open state is designed to determine if a downstream service has recovered, typically assuming only one probe at a time. However, when multiple workers probe simultaneously after a failure, they may all see the same eligibility for probing and send requests at once, leading to a scenario

Modern Walkmans

Published: 2025-12-09 | Origin: Hacker News

The Toshiba wireless cassette player, KCS-315, is designed for retro music lovers, allowing playback of cassette tapes for approximately 16 hours using 2 AA alkaline batteries or through USB power. It features Bluetooth capability for wireless listening with earphones, as well as FM/AM radio playback, and incorporates a Voice Activation System and Automatic Stop System. Weighing 230g, it has a retro silver design and delivers realistic sound with virtual surround sound, ultra-low Wow and Flutter, and high

The Lost Machine Automats and Self-Service Cafeterias of NYC (2023)

Published: 2025-12-09 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the historical significance of automats and self-service cafeterias in New York City, highlighting their role in the city's dining culture during the early to mid-20th century. Automats, pioneered by Horn & Hardart, were self-service restaurants featuring coin-operated machines for food and drink, becoming popular alongside self-service cafeterias. The lament of the former Municipal Art Society president, Kent L. Barwick, underscores the loss of these dining establishments as the last automat closed in 1991

Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden

Published: 2025-12-09 | Origin: Hacker News

In a talk that transitions from horses to chess to AI, the speaker compares developments in technology across different eras. They note that steam engines improved steadily over 200 years without immediate impact on horses, which saw a sudden decline (90% disappearance) between 1930 and 1950. Similarly, in chess, computers improved gradually over 40 years, resulting in a surprising turn where human grandmasters lost 90% of matches against computers within a decade. When discussing AI, the speaker highlights a

The universal weight subspace hypothesis

Published: 2025-12-09 | Origin: Hacker News

arXivLabs is a platform that enables collaborators to create and share new features for the arXiv website. Participants must align with arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv seeks partners who share these principles and invites users with project ideas that can benefit the community to learn more about arXivLabs. Additionally, there is a mention of arXiv's operational status.

Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

Kroger has announced the closure of three automated fulfillment centers, signaling a significant shift in its grocery e-commerce strategy. This decision comes just months after the company expressed confidence in its partnership with Ocado, the U.K.-based warehouse automation firm. Initially, Kroger planned to expand its network of high-tech fulfillment centers and improve efficiency with new technology. However, recent assessments revealed that the Ocado network was not meeting performance expectations, leading Kroger to pause further developments. The closures, which also included

Show HN: I built a system for active note-taking in regular meetings like 1-1s

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

Of course! Please provide the content you'd like me to summarize.

Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The author expresses frustration with the default design philosophy of adding icons to every menu item in applications like Google Sheets and macOS. They argue that this approach creates unnecessary visual noise and reflects a lack of thoughtful design. The concern is that designers may feel compelled to fill spaces with icons rather than carefully considering whether each icon aids usability. The author contrasts this with Apple's previous approach in macOS, which did not adhere to a one-size-fits-all icon policy. However, recent updates, like macOS Tahoe

Jepsen: NATS 2.12.1

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

NATS is a distributed streaming system that typically offers best-effort message delivery; however, its JetStream subsystem provides a more reliable at-least-once message delivery. In testing the JetStream version 2.12.1, issues were identified, including data loss due to file truncation or corruption on a few nodes, and complications arising from power failures or single-node OS crashes combined with network delays. These problems stemmed, in part, from the decision to flush writes to disk every two

Strong earthquake hits northern Japan, tsunami warning issued

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

A magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit northern Japan on Monday night, with its epicenter off the eastern coast of Aomori Prefecture. The Japan Meteorological Agency initially reported a magnitude of 7.6 but later downgraded it. The tremor was felt strongly in Hachinohe, where it registered an upper 6 intensity on the Japanese scale. Six people in Aomori were injured due to falling debris. A tsunami warning was issued for Iwate and parts of

Oblast: a better Blasto game for the Commodore 64

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the author's completion of a personal project inspired by the game TI Blasto, which involved enhancing the game's mechanics and gameplay. This project, part of the author's bucket list, took a couple of years to develop and features faster action, animated graphics, a variety of procedurally generated screens, and customizable gameplay settings. While the author appreciates the original TI Blasto, they aimed to improve upon it. One notable enhancement is the way the game now tracks explosions and animations more efficiently, avoiding

Damn Small Linux

Published: 2025-12-08 | Origin: Hacker News

**Be My Hero** discusses the release of DSL 2024, a compact Linux distribution designed for low-spec x86 computers. It features a range of carefully selected applications that are functional, small in size, and have low dependencies. The distribution includes two window managers, Fluxbox and JWM, both known for their lightweight and intuitive nature. DSL 2024 offers four X-based web browsers, various office applications, multimedia tools, and three lightweight GUI-based games. Additionally, it is equipped with

MyCTiger: Use the Ring programming language for generating and building C programs (Prototype of the idea).

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The content outlines the functionalities of MyCTiger, a tool that transforms the Ring programming language into a domain-specific language (DSL) for generating and building C programs. It emphasizes the importance of user feedback and provides documentation for available qualifiers. MyCTiger allows developers to harness the performance of C while utilizing the expressive syntax of Ring, focusing on compile-time code generation rather than runtime language integration. Key features include compile-time execution of Ring code, the ability to treat Ring as a meta-language for structuring

Bag of words, have mercy on us

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: Hacker News

The text discusses the human tendency to anthropomorphize artificial intelligence (AI), attributing human-like qualities and intentions to it. When interacting with AI systems like ChatGPT, people instinctively apply their social understanding and faculties, such as theory of mind and impression management, expecting human-like responses. This tendency to mistake non-human entities for people has historical roots, serving as an adaptive mechanism in human evolution. The author points out that our struggles to understand AI's behavior—such as making up citations or

Mechanical power generation using Earth's ambient radiation

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: Hacker News

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F-35 Fighter Jet’s C++ Coding Standards

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: /r/programming

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How Computers Store Decimal Numbers

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the challenges and solutions in representing decimal numbers in computing, as most everyday numbers are non-integers and computers originally focused on integers. Different numeric formats have been developed over time to handle these representations, with no single solution fitting all domains. The "double" is highlighted as the most common numerical type in modern computing, widely used in scientific libraries, graphics engines, and machine learning frameworks due to its speed and efficiency. Defined by the IEEE-754 standard, a double is a

I failed to recreate the 1996 Space Jam website with Claude

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses an attempt to recreate the original 1996 Space Jam website using Claude, an AI developed by Anthropic. The author expresses frustration with their inability to successfully prompt Claude for this task and seeks help in preserving the retro website, which Warner Bros still hosts as a nostalgic piece of internet history. The author plans to track Claude's interactions through a man-in-the-middle proxy to analyze the AI's performance better. They refer to their technical background as an engineering manager with a computer science degree,

Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: Hacker News

A Guardian investigation has uncovered that Dollar General and Family Dollar frequently fail to honor their shelf prices, leading customers to be charged more at checkout for various items. During an inspection in Windsor, North Carolina, state inspector Ryan Coffield scanned 300 items, finding a 23% error rate with prices ringing up higher than displayed—far exceeding the state's acceptable limit. Items like frozen pizzas and paper towels were among those mispriced, and the store had failed inspections consecutively with fines imposed for previous violations.

Spinlocks vs. Mutexes: When to Spin and When to Sleep

Published: 2025-12-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the differences between mutexes and spinlocks as synchronization primitives in programming. It highlights how engineers often fall into the "synchronization primitive trap" by choosing the inappropriate primitive for their scenario. Mutexes allow threads to sleep, which is beneficial for short critical sections but can be detrimental when latency is critical. Spinlocks, on the other hand, keep the CPU busy while waiting, which can waste resources, especially in scenarios with contention. A spinlock uses a continuous loop with atomic operations