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  • D2: Modern diagram scripting language that turns text to diagrams

    2 days ago
    • D2 is a CLI tool for creating diagrams from .d2 files.
    • Installation can be done via a script or from source using Go.
    • D2 supports SVG, PNG, and PDF exports.
    • Includes various themes and supports custom fonts.
    • Can be used as a library in Go programs.
    • Features language tooling like autoformatter and syntax highlighting.
    • Extensible with plugins for layout engines like dagre, ELK, and TALA.
    • Open-source under Mozilla Public License 2.0.
    • Has integrations with VSCode, Vim, Obsidian, and more.
    • Notable projects using D2 include ElasticSearch, Temporal, and Tauri.

  • Four decades not sleeping well – until a doctor took my insomnia seriously

    2 days ago
    • Author Courtney Maum shares her lifelong struggle with chronic insomnia, detailing how it affected her mental and physical health.
    • Despite seeking help from numerous doctors over 40 years, she was repeatedly dismissed, with many attributing her condition to hormones or stress.
    • Her insomnia worsened after becoming a mother, leading to severe health issues like weight loss, irritable bowel syndrome, and debilitating mouth ulcers.
    • After years of failed treatments (sleep clinics, medications, supplements), a friend suggested seeing an ENT specialist, who diagnosed her with upper airway resistance syndrome and a nasal valve collapse—physical issues obstructing her breathing.
    • She underwent multiple surgeries to correct her breathing, which improved headaches, canker sores, and exercise tolerance, but her sleep issues persist due to psychological conditioning.
    • Maum highlights the lack of awareness in orthodontics and sleep medicine, sharing stories of others (Sarah Canney, Christina Stoddard) who found relief through proper diagnosis.
    • She now explores cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) while managing setbacks, advocating for greater recognition of insomnia as a serious, often physical condition.
    • The memoir underscores the toll of medical gaslighting and the importance of finding doctors who listen, urging fellow insomniacs to seek validation and care.

  • Prof. Sussman's Reading List (2016)

    2 days ago
    • Prof. Sussman's reading list includes a variety of books and papers across physics, mathematics, computer science, and AI.
    • High school recommendations include 'A First Course in General Relativity' by Bernard F Schultz and 'Space and Time in Special Relativity' by David Mermin.
    • Notable student theses explore ideas like using chaos for measurement precision and active control of buckling in structures.
    • Books from Sussman's bookshelf cover topics from network theory to probability and developmental biology.
    • Marvin Minsky's works, including 'Society of Mind' and 'Perceptrons', are highlighted for their impact on AI.
    • For fun, recommendations include 'Stranger in a Strange Land' by Robert A. Heinlein and 'Hackers' by Steven Levy.
    • Selected works by Sussman include 'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (SICP) and 'Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics' (SICM).

  • 'I Want to Make You Immortal' – How one woman confronted her deepfakes stalker

    2 days ago
    • Joanne Chew discovered deepfake pornographic content of herself online, created and distributed by a harasser known as 'Ron'.
    • The harassment escalated over time, with Ron creating thousands of pieces of content, posting on multiple platforms, and directly messaging Chew with disturbing and racist messages.
    • Chew sought help from online investigator Charles DeBarber, who noted the increasing use of AI in harassment and the lack of effective regulation.
    • Despite efforts to report and remove the content, the harassment continued, with new accounts and content appearing regularly.
    • Chew experienced significant emotional distress, including thoughts of self-harm, and faced challenges in her professional and personal life due to the harassment.
    • The harasser, Ron, exhibited obsessive and manipulative behavior, alternating between threats and pleas for forgiveness, while continuing to create and distribute degrading content.
    • Chew's case highlights the broader issue of deepfake harassment, which disproportionately affects women and lacks effective legal and technological solutions.
    • Current legislation, such as the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022, does not adequately address AI-generated deepfake content.
    • The ease of creating deepfakes and the lack of consequences for perpetrators exacerbate the problem, leaving victims like Chew with limited recourse.
    • Chew's experience underscores the need for more comprehensive and inclusive solutions to combat deepfake harassment and protect victims.

  • Show HN: Aperture -Flip your phone case for a less distracting minimal interface

    2 days ago
    • Aperture is an intelligent interface designed to minimize distractions by transforming a standard phone case into a tool for digital wellbeing.
    • The interface is activated by flipping the phone case, creating a small 'window' that shows only essential app functions, inspired by smartwatch minimalism.
    • Aperture uses generative UI and AI-driven minimalism to dynamically adapt the interface based on user needs, reducing digital noise.
    • The design encourages mindful technology use by making it difficult to constantly access the phone, thus discouraging distractions like doomscrolling.
    • In social settings, Aperture can recognize when multiple users flip their cases, promoting playful interactions and encouraging presence.
    • The project builds on previous innovations like Paper Phone and Envelope, focusing on making digital experiences more tangible and less intrusive.
    • Aperture is compatible with various phone models and case designs, adapting dynamically to the available 'window' shape.
    • The concept is moving toward reality, with development underway and feedback being gathered from potential users.
    • Special Projects emphasizes the principle of combining ordinary objects to create innovative solutions, questioning assumptions about everyday technology.

  • Rust 1.86.0

    a day ago
    • Rust 1.86.0 introduces trait upcasting, allowing trait objects to be coerced to supertrait references.
    • New `get_disjoint_mut` method enables safe mutable indexing of multiple elements in `HashMap` and slices.
    • Safe functions can now be marked with `#[target_feature]`, with restrictions on their usage.
    • Debug assertions for non-null pointers added for soundness in debug mode.
    • The `missing_abi` lint now warns by default, encouraging explicit ABI specification.
    • Deprecation warning issued for the `i586-pc-windows-msvc` target, to be removed in Rust 1.87.0.
    • Several APIs stabilized, including `{float}::next_down`, `{float}::next_up`, and `Vec::pop_if`.
    • New const context stabilizations for APIs like `hint::black_box` and `str::split_at`.

  • NaNoWriMo to close after 20 years

    2 days ago
    • NaNoWriMo, a nonprofit challenging people to write a novel in a month, is closing after 20 years.
    • Started in 1999, it became a nonprofit in 2006, fostering a community to write 50,000 words in November.
    • Closure announced due to financial problems and reputational damage from child safety concerns and AI controversy.
    • Complaints arose in 2023 about a moderator accused of grooming children, leading to broader child safety concerns.
    • NaNoWriMo faced criticism for its stance on AI in creative writing, seen as dismissive of disabled creators.
    • Interim director Kilby Blades emphasized financial struggles and inaccurately covered AI controversy in closure announcement.
    • NaNoWriMo websites will remain live temporarily for users to retrieve their data, but no shutdown date specified.
    • Despite closure, the spirit of writing 50,000 words in November will continue through alternative platforms.

  • How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects

    a day ago
    • Demand for Wikimedia content, especially multimedia files, has significantly increased since 2024.
    • Rise in automated requests from scraping bots for AI training data is causing infrastructure strain.
    • Example: Jimmy Carter's Wikipedia page saw 2.8M views in a day, with video playback doubling network traffic.
    • Bandwidth for multimedia downloads grew by 50%, largely due to non-human traffic from scraper bots.
    • 65% of expensive traffic comes from bots, disproportionately consuming resources compared to human users.
    • Wikimedia is not alone; other websites and open-source projects face similar scraping challenges.
    • Need for sustainable content access models to balance free knowledge with infrastructure costs.
    • Focus on 'Responsible Use of Infrastructure' in upcoming fiscal year to prioritize human access.

  • AutoGDB: exploit a binary while sipping coffee

    2 days ago
    • AutoGDB's MCP uses a SaaS-like approach for client-server-client communication.
    • One-line installation command provided for AutoGDB plugin.
    • Steps to connect AutoGDB in GDB session after installation.
    • Instructions to install and configure `mcp-proxy` tool for LLM client connection.
    • AutoGDB is in MVP stage and open for collaborations and suggestions.
    • MCP via SSE is currently supported by OpenAI Agent SDK and Cursor.
    • Contact details provided for inquiries, improvements, and security issues.

  • John Cage recital set to last 639 years recently witnessed a chord change

    4 days ago
    • Construction of an organ began in 2000 in a small east German town to perform John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP for 639 years.
    • The piece’s only instruction was to play 'as slowly as possible'.
    • The world’s longest organ recital started in 2001 at St Burchardi church, Halberstadt, with a 17-month rest before the first chord in 2003.
    • The first chord consisted of two G sharps and a B.
    • A system of sandbags replaces an organist to sustain the sound indefinitely.
    • Hundreds recently gathered to witness the latest chord change.

  • The environmental burden of the United States' Bitcoin mining boom

    a day ago
    • Bitcoin mines in the U.S. consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity from mid-2022 to mid-2023, 85% of which came from fossil fuels.
    • 34 largest Bitcoin mines were studied, with a total capacity of 3,910 MW, and their operations led to significant PM2.5 air pollution.
    • 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m³ of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the mines.
    • Four regions—New York City, Houston/Austin, Northeast Texas, and the Illinois/Kentucky border—were identified as hotspots with the highest Bitcoin mine-attributable PM2.5 concentrations.
    • Bitcoin mining operations often induce electricity production from some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants, exacerbating air pollution and public health risks.
    • The study highlights the need for federal regulation to address cross-state air pollution from Bitcoin mining, as state governments lack jurisdiction over out-of-state power plants.

  • Item Flow, Part 1: A new unified concept for layout

    2 days ago
    • CSS Grid and Flexbox lack native support for masonry layouts, currently requiring JavaScript.
    • Mozilla proposed masonry layouts in CSS, leading to debates and implementations by WebKit in Safari.
    • A new unified concept called 'Item Flow' is emerging, merging ideas from Grid, Flexbox, and masonry.
    • Item Flow introduces properties like 'item-direction', 'item-wrap', 'item-pack', and 'item-slack'.
    • Flexbox could gain dense packing and balanced wrapping, while Grid could support no wrapping.
    • Masonry layouts could be triggered via 'item-pack: collapse' in the new system.
    • The proposal aims to unify layout properties, offering new capabilities for developers.
    • Feedback is sought on the direction and potential improvements to Item Flow.

  • Real-Time Introspective Compression for Transformers

    2 days ago
    • Transformer-based LLMs lack introspection and have ephemeral cognition, limiting their interpretability and debugging.
    • Proposed solution: high-efficiency introspective compression using a learned latent manifold of transformer states.
    • System includes a main transformer, sidecar encoder, and decoder to compress and reconstruct internal states.
    • Three architectural strategies for state compression: layer-specific, grouped layer, and unified encoder-decoder.
    • Specialized KV cache compression using convolutional layers for sequence-aware compression.
    • Applications include reasoning backtracking, thought trajectory optimization, and causal debugging.
    • Potential for metacognitive operating systems enabling reversible cognitive states and iterative cognition.
    • Future work includes attention-based sidecar architectures and integration of reinforcement learning.

  • All estimations are wrong, but none are useful

    5 days ago
    • Story points in Scrum are used for effort estimation but software estimations are inherently inaccurate.
    • Estimations are forecasts of an unknown future, yet commitments are often made based on them.
    • Plans are useful for iterative work but projects are complex with many dependencies.
    • Reasons for failed plans include imprecise requirements, lack of knowledge, and underestimating technical debt.
    • Hofstadter’s Law: Tasks take longer than expected, even when accounting for this law.
    • Brook’s Law: Adding more people to a late project makes it later due to onboarding and communication overhead.
    • Planning Fallacy: Cognitive bias leads to underestimating time and resources needed.
    • Bikeshedding: Focus on trivial details over critical aspects skews estimations.
    • Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted, leading to inefficiencies.
    • Ninety-Ninety Rule: The last 10% of code takes 90% of the time due to bug fixes and polishing.
    • Cone of Uncertainty: Early project stages have high uncertainty, which decreases as more information is gathered.
    • George Dinwiddie’s advice: Track progress, accept wrong estimates, use buffers, and measure completion.
    • Practical tips: Break tasks into smaller chunks, be conservative, and update estimates regularly.
    • Legacy code risks: Assess team knowledge and documentation availability.
    • Vasco Duarte’s NoEstimates approach: Focus on throughput and cycle times instead of story points.
    • Kaizen philosophy: Small, incremental steps provide significant value.
    • Team culture influences preference for estimation methods like Scrum or Kanban.

  • AI Ambivalence

    2 days ago
    • Author's background in computational linguistics and skepticism towards AI's approach to language processing.
    • Initial avoidance of generative AI in coding due to preference for manual coding and skepticism about AI's capabilities.
    • Shift in perspective after using Claude and Claude Code, acknowledging AI's utility in coding tasks like generating unit tests and interrogating codebases.
    • Concerns about generative AI diminishing the joy of software development and the creative process.
    • Ambivalence towards generative AI: recognizing its power but disliking its impact on the industry and personal workflow.
    • Reflection on the broader implications of AI on human creativity and the future of professions like software development.
    • Discussion on the identity crisis in a post-AI world and the search for meaning beyond work.

  • AI masters Minecraft: DeepMind program finds diamonds without being taught

    a day ago
    • An AI system named Dreamer has learned to collect diamonds in Minecraft without prior instructions, showcasing a step towards general AI.
    • Dreamer uses reinforcement learning and a 'world model' to imagine future scenarios and make decisions, improving over time without human input.
    • Collecting diamonds in Minecraft is complex, requiring multiple steps like gathering resources and crafting tools, making it a significant challenge for AI.
    • Unlike previous methods that relied on human demonstrations, Dreamer explores and learns independently, applying knowledge to new, randomly generated worlds.
    • The success of Dreamer suggests potential applications in robotics, where trial and error in the real world could be optimized using similar AI models.

  • AmigaOS 3.2 Update 3 Released

    2 days ago
    • Hyperion Entertainment CVBA releases the third free update for AmigaOS 3.2.
    • Update includes two years' worth of fixes and enhancements since the last update.
    • Highlights include updates to ReAction classes, TextEditor with custom menu macros, and 12 KB chip RAM no longer reserved.
    • New Kickstart 3.2.3 ROM introduced.
    • Over 50 other fixes, including updates to DiskDoctor and HDToolbox.
    • Registered users can download Update 3 for AmigaOS 3.2 from the provided link.

  • What We Knew Without Knowing

    2 days ago
    • Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne had a highly collaborative literary marriage.
    • The New York Public Library opened the Didion-Dunne archive, revealing personal notes from Didion to Dunne about her psychiatric sessions.
    • Didion's notes reflect her concerns about their daughter Quintana Roo's struggles with depression and alcoholism, as well as her own reflections on aging and creative fulfillment.
    • The notes, titled 'Notes to John,' provide insight into Didion's thought process and emotional state, which influenced her later memoirs 'The Year of Magical Thinking' and 'Blue Nights.'
    • Didion's writing often explored themes of loss, grief, and the fragility of life, as seen in her famous line: 'Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.'
    • Her psychiatric sessions with Dr. Roger MacKinnon delved into her anxieties, childhood experiences, and the dynamics of her family relationships.
    • Didion's reflections on her father's depression and possible suicidal thoughts revealed deep-seated fears and unresolved emotions.
    • The sessions also touched on Didion's struggles with memory, aging, and the pressure to maintain control in her life.
    • Didion's work and personal life were deeply intertwined, with her writing serving as both a coping mechanism and a means of understanding her experiences.
    • The archive and 'Notes to John' offer a poignant look into Didion's inner world and the emotional landscape that shaped her literary legacy.

  • When parameterization fails: SQL injection in Nim using parameterized queries

    2 days ago
    • SQL injection vulnerability found in Nim's db_postgres module when using parameterized queries with PostgreSQL databases where standard_conforming_strings is disabled.
    • The vulnerability arises because the module fails to properly escape special characters like backslashes when standard_conforming_strings is off, leading to potential SQL injection.
    • Proof of concept demonstrates how an attacker can bypass authentication by injecting malicious input.
    • Impact includes unauthorized data access, authentication bypass, and potential backend compromises.
    • Mitigation involves ensuring standard_conforming_strings is enabled in PostgreSQL configurations.

  • Hungary says it will pull out of ICC as Orban hosts Israel's Netanyahu

    a day ago
    • Hungary announces withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), citing it as a 'political tool'.
    • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has an ICC arrest warrant, visits Hungary and praises the decision.
    • Netanyahu faces ICC arrest warrants for alleged war crimes, which he dismisses as 'absurd and antisemitic'.
    • Hungary, as an ICC member, is obliged to arrest Netanyahu but instead welcomes him warmly.
    • Hungary is one of Israel's strongest allies in Europe, with widespread pro-Israel sentiment among its population.
    • The ICC relies on member states for enforcement, but Hungary's withdrawal could set a precedent.
    • The EU is divided over the ICC's arrest warrants for Netanyahu, with some countries supporting and others questioning the court's jurisdiction.
    • Notable non-members of the ICC include the US, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
    • The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for top Hamas leaders, all of whom have been killed by Israel.
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