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How can AI ID a cat?

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the challenges and advancements in programming computers to recognize images, such as cat photos. While humans can effortlessly identify a cat in a picture, developing a computer program to do the same is complex and involves identifying key traits of cats amidst various backgrounds and angles. Modern advancements have enabled computers to recognize images using neural networks, which learn by analyzing millions of examples rather than being explicitly programmed for each recognition task. These networks are also capable of generating coherent text, excelling at games, and solving complex

Vibe Coding Experiment Failures

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: /r/programming

Al Sweigart has been experimenting with "vibe coding," where he prompts large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to create complete apps without assuming any programming ability. His focus is on determining how well these models can produce functioning software and identifying specific failure patterns. Using Python and the tkinter library for the GUI, he aims to create small applications, including one that displays a map of Africa and challenges users to click on a country. While LLMs excel at

The theory and practice of selling the Aga cooker (1935) [pdf]

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content appears to be a partial and corrupted representation of a PDF file, containing binary data and some recognizable PDF structure elements. Specifically, it includes references to PDF objects (like `obj`), media boxes, and procedural sets which characterize the layout and content of a PDF document. The text is largely gibberish due to the binary format and encoding, making it difficult to extract any coherent information or summarize meaningful content.

Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

Tavis Ormandy discusses his experience with Anubis, a project that uses hybrid art and network security measures to protect websites from AI crawlers. Anubis employs anime catgirl avatars to represent its blocking mechanism, which has impacted Ormandy's access to important Linux kernel resources. Unlike traditional security measures like CAPTCHAs, which are designed to be challenging for bots but easy for humans, Anubis reverses this approach. It requires users to solve a computational problem that’s easy

Show HN: I was curious about spherical helix, ended up making this visualization

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content explores the topic of moving objects in 3D space, beginning with a personal curiosity that led to research and experimentation. It introduces the concepts of positioning objects using three axes: x (horizontal), y (vertical), and z (depth). Through mathematical functions, the text explains how to move objects, using a cube as an example. The x position can oscillate using a cosine function, causing the cube to move back and forth, while the y position can do the same vertically.

That's not refactoring

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content discusses the common misconceptions surrounding refactoring in software development. It highlights that refactoring should involve changing the design of existing code without altering its behavior, contrasting this with the experimental approach some developers take, where they unintentionally change functionality. The author emphasizes that refactoring should be a conservative process, aimed at making effective investments in code improvements. While experimentation has its place in development, such as through "spikes," it should be approached cautiously during refactoring. The key takeaway is that refactoring

Physics of badminton's new killer spin serve

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The spin serve in badminton, where players add pre-spin to the shuttlecock before contact, has proven to be highly effective—so much so that it was deemed "impossible to return" and was banned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) in 2023 until after the 2024 Paralympic Games. This decision was made to prevent concerns about unfair advantages and to avoid making international tournaments a testing ground for the serve, similar to the previously banned "Sidek serve." Recent

GitHub - carter2099/dsa.rb: A CLI test suite to practice implementations of core algorithms in Ruby

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content highlights a CLI test suite designed for practicing core algorithm implementations in Ruby. It emphasizes the importance of feedback and directs users to documentation for additional qualifiers. The test suite is described as a preparatory tool for platforms like LeetCode, with an emphasis on focused application rather than exhaustive performance testing. Users are encouraged to practice implementing algorithms efficiently, ideally mastering five default algorithms in under 10 minutes. The suite supports adding new algorithms and contributing to its development. The recommendation to check out the "pick

Shader Academy: Learn computer graphics by solving challenges

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

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

The Four Stages of Objective-Smalltalk

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the challenges associated with using multiple programming languages, particularly focusing on Objective-C and its complexities when integrated with WebScript, an interpreted language part of WebObjects. WebScript resembles Objective-C closely, allowing for code compatibility and dynamic implementation of features like categories on Objective-C objects. However, it also highlights the syntactic complications that arise from Objective-C's hybrid nature. For instance, Objective-C uses special characters for strings and message sending due to constraints from C syntax. In contrast, Objective-S

DeepSeek V3.1 Base Suddenly Launched: Outperforms Claude 4 in Programming, Internet Awaits R2 and V4

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: /r/programming

DeepSeek has launched a new V3.1 version, which features an extended context length of 128k, an open-source model with 685 billion parameters, and support for various precision formats (BF16 to FP8). Key highlights of the update include: - **Programming Capability**: V3.1 has excelled in programming tasks, achieving a leading score of 71.6% on the Aider benchmark, outperforming other models like Claude Opus 4, with improved inference

Type-Machine

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content describes a PhD student's work in computer science with a focus on using Template Haskell to derive record structures and simulate structural subtyping in Haskell. They highlight the limitations of Haskell's nominal type system, particularly in managing records with many fields. The introduction of record syntax in GHC 7.4.1 improved field naming, but challenges remain regarding constraints and field manipulation. The student draws inspiration from TypeScript's structural subtyping and utility types to create a Haskell library called

China blocked all HTTPS connection abroad for 1 hour in midnight

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

On August 20, 2025, between approximately 00:34 and 01:48 Beijing Time, China's Great Firewall (GFW) interrupted all communications on TCP port 443 by injecting forged TCP RST+ACK packets. This incident led to widespread internet disruption in China, affecting connections with the global internet. The report documented the findings of this event, noting that their analysis was limited due to the short duration of the incident (about 74 minutes) and encouraged community contributions for

Copilot broke audit logs, but Microsoft won't tell customers

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a fully-automated admin platform with features such as tailored simulations, scenario-driven learning experiences with immediate feedback, access to a Partners Hub for Pistachio Partners, a FAQ section, and a video library for onboarding. It then shifts to an incident related to Microsoft’s AI product, Copilot, which was found to access files without leaving an audit trail, raising security and compliance concerns. The issue was reported to Microsoft, which classified it as an important vulnerability but did not notify customers

AGENTS.md – Open format for guiding coding agents

Published: 2025-08-20 | Origin: Hacker News

AGENTS.md is an open format designed to guide AI coding agents and is used by over 20,000 open-source projects. It serves as a dedicated resource for providing the necessary context and instructions for coding agents, complementing the traditional README.md files which are aimed at human contributors. While READMEs focus on project descriptions and guidelines for people, AGENTS.md contains detailed instructions like build steps and testing processes that are more relevant to coding agents. The separation of these two files aims to give agents

Tiny microbe challenges the definition of cellular life

Published: 2025-08-19 | Origin: Hacker News

Recent research led by Takuro Nakayama, an evolutionary microbiologist, has uncovered a microbe with a remarkably tiny genome, raising questions about the definition of life itself. The microbe, named Sukunaarchaeum mirabile, has only 238,000 base pairs in its DNA, which is the smallest known among archaea, a group of single-celled organisms similar to bacteria. Most notably, this microbe lacks metabolic genes and relies almost entirely on its host, a marine din

How to Draw a Space Invader

Published: 2025-08-19 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the author's recent creation, the Space Invader Generator, designed for a code challenge organized by Creative Coding Amsterdam. The author shares their motivation behind the project, which stems from wanting to create something fun while exploring their 3D vector renderer, Rayven. They realized the importance of completing projects rather than getting lost in the development phase and decided to embrace a simple concept that would yield meaningful results—generating random Space Invader designs. The author initially created classic Space Invader renders and

Javadoc is getting a dark mode!

Published: 2025-08-19 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes that feedback is valued and reviewed seriously. It mentions an error encountered while loading a page, encouraging users to reload. For questions about the project, users are invited to sign up for a free GitHub account to communicate with maintainers and the community. There is a proposed enhancement to add a dark theme to javadoc-generated API documentation, featuring a button for theme selection (Light, Dark, and System Setting) with the option remembered across sessions. A link is provided to view the

D2 (text to diagram tool) now supports ASCII renders

Published: 2025-08-19 | Origin: Hacker News

The latest D2 release (0.7.1) introduces ASCII outputs, enabling users to save output files with a .txt extension using an ASCII renderer. This functionality can be particularly useful for creating clear diagrams in source code comments next to functions or classes. The D2 Vim extension allows users to write D2 code and replace selected text with its ASCII rendering. The default ASCII output uses Unicode for better box-drawing characters, but users can switch to standard ASCII for broader compatibility using the flag --

CRLite: Fast, private, and comprehensive certificate revocation checking in

Published: 2025-08-19 | Origin: /r/programming

Firefox has become the first and only browser to implement a fast and comprehensive certificate revocation checking system that maintains user privacy, not disclosing browsing activities even to Mozilla. As millions of TLS server certificates are issued daily, it's crucial to identify revoked certificates, which can be a security risk. Traditional methods have faced challenges, but Firefox's new mechanism, CRLite, allows it to manage revoked certificates more effectively. CRLite enables Firefox to periodically download a compact list of revoked certificates from Certificate Transparency logs,