ElasticSearch and many other repos are gone
github.com
— Free and Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine ELASTICSEARCH, 1
Writing in Pictures: Richard Scarry and the art of children's literature
yalereview.org
— The original cover sketch for Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, which was first published in 1974. Courtesy Penguin Random House WRITING, 2
Launch HN: Integuru (YC W24): Reverse-Engineer Internal APIs Using LLMs
news.ycombinator.com
— Hey HN! We’re Richard and Alan from Integuru (https://integuru.ai). We build low-latency integrations with platforms lacking official APIs. We take custom requests and manage creation, hosting, and authentication. To automate our work, we built an open-source AI agent that reverse-engineers internal APIs to generate integration code. Here’s a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OJ4w5BCpQ0. LAUNCH, 3
A Very Deep History of Halloween
substack.com
— You know the holiday: the one where people wear outlandish costumes and sweet things are eaten. It’s fun, but also otherworldly, with roots in an ancient belief that this evening — this one night at the change of the seasons — is when spirits roam the earth. VERY, 4
The secret electrostatic world of insects
wired.com
— The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. SECRET, 5
Show HN: Latex.to – LaTeX to image converter running in the browser
news.ycombinator.com
— I've made a website to easily share a LaTeX math formula. LATEX.TO, 6
How to get the whole planet to send abuse complaints to your best friends
delroth.net
— It all begins with one scary email late at night just before I had to go to sleep: GET, 7
Show HN: Basis – a production focused robotics framework
news.ycombinator.com
— Hey HN! Myself and my cofounder are excited to actually launch the product we've been working for the past six months. It's a robotics framework with a focus on testing and production. The current industry standard (ROS) is great for prototyping, but suffers from performance and testing problems as the robot gets more complex. I would have loved to work on this another six months or a year to polish it up and really, but I know it's better to launch a bit before you think you're ready. BASIS, 8
Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
colmanhumphrey.com
— Back in late 2020, my good friend Raiden and I co-founded Slight. Over the next two and a half years, we got it off the ground, raised a pre-seed round, and got some customers on-board, but in the end we didn’t have enough traction to raise our seed round. We got close with a few investors (after I talked to many…), but getting close still means the company dies. WHY, 9
OutRun: Open-source, privacy oriented, outdoor fitness tracker
tadris.de
— a simple, privacy focused running app.With all the social clutter removed you are left with a cleaner and more focused experience and that completely free and open-source. OUTRUN, 10
A return to hand-written notes by learning to read and write
research.google
— Blagoj Mitrevski, Software Engineer, and Andrii Maksai, Staff Software Engineer, Google Research HAND-WRITTEN, 11
The Pentaconta Crossbar and Exchange
calling315.com
— The Pentaconta Crossbar and Exchange PENTACONTA, 12
The Unnecessary Decline of U.S. Numerical Weather Prediction
cliffmass.blogspot.com
— This week I fielded a call from a reporter from the Washington Post, who wanted to discuss why the U.S. has fallen behind in using machine learning for weather prediction. The story is here. UNNECESSARY, 13
Apple is turning The Oregon Trail into a movie
arstechnica.com
— The film will be a comedy, not a serious historical drama. TURNING, 14
A Venerable and Time-Tested Guide: The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
lareviewofbooks.org
— The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition VENERABLE, 15
Shopify Is Winning Salesforce Clients, Stoking E-Commerce Rivalry
bloomberg.com
— To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot. SHOPIFY, 16
HTML Form Validation is underused
expressionstatement.com
— It’s easy to disallow empty inputs by adding a required attribute: HTML, 17
Show HN: I built an app to use a QR code as my doorbell
news.ycombinator.com
— I didn’t have a doorbell before (multiple reasons) and my house feels unwelcoming without one. So I built a doorbell app that uses a QR code - visitors scan the QR code to ring the doorbell and I get notified on my phone. APP, 18
How I write code using Cursor
arguingwithalgorithms.com
— In forums relating to AI and AI coding in particular, I see a common inquiry from experienced software developers: Is anyone getting value out of tools like Cursor, and is it worth the subscription price? WRITE, 19
Ask HN: Real-time speech-to-speech translation
news.ycombinator.com
— Has anyone had any luck with a free, offline, open-source, real-time speech-to-speech translation app on under-powered devices (i.e., older smart phones)? REAL-TIME, 20
Leave the Internet Archive Alone
computerworld.com
— The web has been a mixed blessing for people who care about information. Yes, it’s made it easier than ever to access facts and opinions from around the globe — but it also throws out older data as quickly as it brings in new data. (And let’s not even talk about propaganda!) LEAVE, 21
Programming a computer for playing chess (1950) [pdf]
unipv.it
— PROGRAMMING, 22
Dispelling Myths about Randomisation
bps.org.uk
— Marcus Munafò explores randomisation processes. DISPELLING, 23
We're forking Flutter
flutterfoundation.dev
— Over the years, Flutter has attracted millions of developers who built user interfaces across every platform. Flutter began as a UI toolkit for mobile - iOS and Android, only. Then Flutter added support for web. Finally, Flutter expanded to Mac, Windows, and Linux. Across this massive expansion of scope and responsibility, the Flutter team has only marginally increased its size. To help expand Flutter's available labor, and accelerate development, we're creating a fork of Flutter, called Flock. WE'RE, 24
Survival Analysis Part I: Basic concepts and first analyses (2003)
nature.com
— British Journal of Cancer volume 89, pages 232–238 (2003)Cite this article SURVIVAL, 25
Improving Xwayland window resizing
vladzahorodnii.com
— One of the quickest ways to determine whether particular application runs using Xwayland is to resize one of its windows and see how it behaves, for example IMPROVING, 26
Steve Ballmer was an underrated CEO
danluu.com
— There's a common narrative that Microsoft was moribund under Steve Ballmer and then later saved by the miraculous leadership of Satya Nadella. This is the dominant narrative in every online discussion about the topic I've seen and it's a commonly expressed belief "in real life" as well. While I don't have anything negative to say about Nadella's leadership in this post, this narrative underrates Ballmer's role in Microsoft's success. Not only did Microsoft's financials, revenue and profit, look great under Ballmer, Microsoft under Ballmer made deep, long-term bets that set up Microsoft for success in the decades after his reign. At the time, the bets were widely panned, indicating that they weren't necessarily obvious, but we can see in retrospect that the company made very strong bets despite the criticism at the time. STEVE, 27
What's New in POSIX 2024
toast.cafe
— In the 1950s, computers did not really interoperate. ARPANET has not yet happened (that would become a thing in the 60s), and every operating system was typically tied to the hardware that was meant to run on. Most communication actually happened over telephone, and no company was more present in that space than the Bell System. Unfortunately, the way they were so present was through exclusive supply contracts (with its subsidiary Western Electric) and a vast array of patents that it would refuse to license to competitors. So they got an antitrust suit aimed at them, which after seven years of litigation culminated in the 1956 consent decree. The Bell System was broken up, obliged to license all of its patents royalty-free, and barred from entering any industry other than telecommunications. So they made Unix. WHAT, 28
Building a better and scalable system for data migrations
yorickpeterse.com
— Recently I read about a new Rust web framework called rwf. I was especially curious about its approach to handling database migrations, as many frameworks released in recent years tend to either overlook this or provide a mechanism that won't scale to larger projects. Reading through the documentation I learned that rwf falls in the second category: it generates two SQL files, one for migrating forward and one for migrating backwards, and evaluates the appropriate files based on the migration direction. BUILDING, 29
Reworkd (YC S23) Is Hiring a Customer Success Engineer (In Person SF) ycombinator.com
Glass Health (YC W23) is hiring founding, senior and lead full-stack engineers lever.co
Hyperbound (YC S23) is hiring a 4th founding full-stack engineer ycombinator.com