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Programming a computer for playing chess (1950) [pdf]

Published: 2024-10-26 | Origin: Hacker News

The content appears to be a snippet of a PDF file encoded in binary format, likely compressed with FlateDecode. It is not readable in its current form as it contains a sequence of binary characters rather than textual information. Therefore, it cannot be summarized meaningfully without decoding the PDF structure and extracting any potential textual content or images it might contain.

How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me

Published: 2024-10-26 | Origin: Hacker News

The Financial Times offers various subscription options for digital access to its journalism, starting at $75 per month. Users can cancel anytime during a trial period. There are options for essential access with a 20% discount when paid yearly, as well as comprehensive access that includes expert analysis for individuals and organizations. Terms and conditions apply, and the FT boasts over a million paying readers.

I built a tiny tool to find performance regressions

Published: 2024-10-26 | Origin: /r/programming

The blog discusses approaches to detect performance regressions in software, emphasizing that with the addition of new code, the app's memory usage and execution time can increase, potentially leading to performance issues. It highlights two methods for identifying regressions: proactively through PR reviews using the Macrobenchmark framework, which runs scenarios multiple times to produce comparative statistics, and reactively when users report performance issues, often lacking sophisticated tools. The focus of the blog is to identify which specific composable is causing regression, using tools like

Adventures in algorithmic trading on the Runescape Grand Exchange

Published: 2024-10-26 | Origin: Hacker News

The author discusses their long-standing connection to Runescape and describes a programming project involving a bot designed to automate trading on the Old School Runescape Grand Exchange. The bot employs machine learning techniques for market making, and the blog post will detail its components, trading algorithms, and comparative performance results. The Grand Exchange is a chaotic yet modelable marketplace where players can buy or sell items, constrained by a four-hour purchase limit per item and subjected to a 1% tax on sell offers exceeding 100 gold

OSI readies controversial open-source AI definition

Published: 2024-10-26 | Origin: Hacker News

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has been working for nearly two years to define what constitutes Open Source AI, which allows for AI systems to be used, studied, modified, and shared for any purpose. A vote on the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) is scheduled for October 27, with the 1.0 version to be published the following day. Concerns have been raised by figures in the open-source community about the possibility of the OSAID setting the standards too low,

Before you buy a domain name, first check to see if it's haunted

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

In mid-2022, the author purchased the domain name musicbox.fun for an interactive online music project, unaware of its problematic history as a site that hosted pirated music. From June 2018 to February 2021, the domain received numerous copyright violation complaints and saw over 20,000 URLs delisted by search engines. After redirecting traffic from their previous domain to musicbox.fun, the author noticed a significant drop in organic search traffic, which they initially assumed was temporary. A

Algorithms for Optimization: Line Search and Trust Region Methods

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The content continues an overview of optimization algorithms, emphasizing the importance of prior sections and foundational concepts, particularly those from the book "Algorithms for Optimization." This part focuses on algorithms that use local models, such as derivatives, to improve designs incrementally. It introduces the line search method, an iterative approach for finding local minima, which involves: 1. Selecting a descent direction based on local information (e.g., gradient or derivative). 2. Choosing a step size for movement in that direction. 3. Re

Inside the CSS Engine: CSSOM Explained

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

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Software Bloat Makes me Sad (2015)

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the issue of software bloat, where programs consume excessive memory and disk space and require more time to run than necessary. It highlights examples like Ubuntu, which now requires at least 2048 MiB of RAM and cannot fit on a CD, and Atom, a text editor that lacks functionality for large files over 2MB. The author describes the significant increase in software sizes over the past two decades, noting that many programs have grown over a thousand-fold. Users bear the responsibility of

In the US, regenerative farming practices require unlearning past advice

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

Investigate Midwest provides insights into agricultural practices and policies impacting rural America. In a feature about farmer Josh Payne, the narrative highlights his transition from traditional farming to regenerative agriculture on his family farm near Kansas City, Missouri. After discovering he had an allergy to herbicides, Josh sought to implement a more sustainable farming approach, including the use of cover crops, sheep grazing, and orchards. However, he faced resistance from his grandfather, Charles Payne, who represented a generation of farmers entrenched in conventional practices

We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

Elizabeth Chamberlain reports that nearly 15% of ice cream machines at McDonald's in the U.S. are currently out of order, with the rate rising to 32% in New York. A recent ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office marks a significant win for the Right to Repair movement, allowing legal repairs of commercial food equipment like McDonald's ice cream machines without violating copyright law. This change challenges the digital locks imposed by manufacturers such as Taylor, which have historically limited access to repair information,

Introduction to CSS @property

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

CSS has seen significant advancements, particularly with the introduction of the CSS @property rule as part of the CSS Houdini specification. This feature allows developers to create custom properties (CSS variables) with enhanced control, including type validation and default values. The @property rule enables the definition of property types (like number, color, or length) and controls their behavior, which enhances dynamic styling capabilities. A basic syntax for the @property rule is provided, illustrating how to define a custom property for element rotation.

OmniParser for Pure Vision Based GUI Agent

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

The recent advancements in large vision-language models, particularly GPT-4V, demonstrate significant potential for operating within user interfaces. However, the effectiveness of these multimodal models as general agents is limited by shortcomings in screen parsing capabilities. Specifically, there is a need for a robust technique that can reliably identify interactable icons and understand the semantics of UI elements within screenshots. To address these challenges, the authors introduce OMNIPARSER, a method designed to convert user interface screenshots into structured elements. This approach enhances

Universal optimality of Dijkstra via beyond-worst-case heaps

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

Open access to arXiv relies on your support—donate this week to help maintain accessible science. arXivLabs is a platform for collaborators to develop and share new features on the arXiv website, emphasizing values such as openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv collaborates with partners who share these values. If you have a project idea that could benefit the arXiv community, you are encouraged to learn more about arXivLabs. Additionally, users

Rails 7.1 adds after_discard method to ActiveJob for discarded jobs.

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/ruby

The author is a full-stack Software Engineer specializing in React, JavaScript, and Rails, who has worked remotely for the past two years after founding a hyperlocal delivery startup called kwiq. They discuss ActiveJob, a Rails feature for handling background tasks, which can fail for various reasons. To manage job failures, ActiveJob has methods like `retry_on` for rescheduling and `discard_on` for discarding jobs without retries. However, it previously lacked a way to execute custom logic for failed

SELinux bypasses

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: Hacker News

The post provides an overview of SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux), its implementation, and methods for bypassing it, particularly in the context of Android kernel exploitation. The tests were conducted on three devices: Samsung Galaxy A34, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, and Xiaomi Redmi Note 12, with a focus on the first two due to their hypervisors which complicate privilege escalation and SELinux bypassing. SELinux is a Linux kernel security module that enforces Mandatory Access Control (MAC)

Mastering Code Simplicity: Why Deep Functions Like JSON.parse() Make Programming Easier

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The concept of "deep functions," as introduced by Dr. Ousterhout, emphasizes the importance of designing functions that simplify complex tasks with a clean and minimal interface. The aim is to hide underlying complexity while providing users with an easy-to-understand way to interact with the function. A notable example is JSON.parse(), which simplifies JSON string parsing into a single, straightforward call despite doing complex work behind the scenes. When writing functions for others, the focus should be on ease of use and understanding rather

Sandblocks: A Projectional Block-Based Editor for Squeak

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

Sandblocks is a new projectional, block-based programming environment developed in Squeak/Smalltalk. This early prototype aims to improve user interaction by clearly communicating program structure and editing operations while minimizing space usage and avoiding usability issues. Projectional editors, like Sandblocks, are beneficial for tasks such as language composition and domain-specific projections. Although the project is designed for Squeak 5.3, it also functions effectively with Squeak 6.0. Users are encouraged to save their

Framework overload: when convenience dulls innovation in software development

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

Web and software developers today enjoy greater empowerment, yet there is a concerning trend: an increasing dependence on frameworks, libraries, and pre-packaged solutions like Laravel, React, Angular, and Django. While these tools enhance development efficiency and scalability, they also risk stifling creativity and promoting uniform solutions. Many developers prioritize mastering these frameworks over understanding the underlying technologies, such as PHP, Python, or JavaScript. For instance, with Laravel, the abstraction of database management via Eloquent ORM helps expedite development

From Python to CPU instructions: Part 2

Published: 2024-10-25 | Origin: /r/programming

In the latest post, the author continues the discussion from a previous article where they converted a Python program to C. Now, they aim to rewrite the C program in assembly language, emphasizing that the goal is not to teach assembly but to enhance understanding of how computers execute instructions. The author explains that understanding basic CPU operations provides a solid foundation in computer science, as all technology ultimately reduces to binary code. Before diving into the assembly code, the author simplifies the concept of a CPU, noting that it uses