1. Review of Hetzner ARM64 servers and experience of WebP cloud services on them
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
The article discusses the rise of ARM64 architecture servers and their role in the server field. After discontinuing ARM64 machines in 2020, Scaleway resumed offering servers with ARM64 processors in 2023, utilizing the Altra Max processor. AWS was the only mainstream cloud service provider to continue offering ARM64 machines between 2020 and 2023, using their own Graviton processors. Hetzner then introduced their ARM64 cloud servers under the CAX line in 2023, based on Ampere Altra processors, offering excellent value for money. The article also includes performance benchmark tests conducted on Hetzner ARM64 servers and discusses why Hetzner’s CAX series machines were chosen as their server provider.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author has been using Hetzner’s EX line for a while and finds it very cost-effective. They have not been able to find any other provider that offers cheaper services.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article points out that TFA incorrectly describes the E3-1230 as an 8 core server, when in fact it only has 4 cores with 8 threads. This means that comparisons between ARM and x86 performance per core are inaccurate. The author suggests that Hetzner auction dedis are a good option for affordable and reliable computational power.
2. Show HN: 77 Year old launches SaaS platform today. Seeks feedback
Total comment counts : 63
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author shares their experience of investing and working for a similar model in New Zealand, which failed due to various reasons. The author suggests selling packs of home sale supplies, building relationships with large sellers, offering low-cost Real Estate agent services, and considering a higher price or transaction fee. The author believes that the real value in the Real Estate industry lies in automation, and wishes good luck to the endeavor.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article advises against setting a database location to a user’s location and suggests that websites should provide visitors with direct access to data instead of generic pages of benefits. It also recommends filling databases with AI-generated or random data to avoid having an empty database. The author is interested in the technology and authorship of the website.
3. London Underground Dot Matrix Typeface
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
This article describes a set of dot matrix fonts that mimic the style of the arrivals board at London’s Underground stations. Each font weight represents a different typeface found on the boards, and includes upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and various symbols. However, some characters are unverified and the font is distributed under an open-source license.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author recalls trying to create a graphic adventure game in the style of Lucasfilm games, particularly Monkey Island, in the early 90s. They copied the fonts used in the game by hand, pixel by pixel, onto graph paper to achieve the same look. Although they never finished the game, they are still in possession of the graph paper with the fonts. The author provides a screenshot of the game, showcasing their poor 3D Studio skills and even worse pixel art skills.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article contains links to a YouTube channel run by Geoff Marshall, who, along with his girlfriend, visited all the railway stations in England, Wales, and Scotland a few years ago. Links to their website, Wikipedia page, and YouTube channel are provided.
4. Merging bcachefs
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
The creator of bcachefs, Kent Overstreet, recently led a session remotely at the 2023 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management and BPF Summit on getting the filesystem upstream. He noted that the goal with bcachefs, described as a “massive, 90,000-lines-of-code beast,” is to have the “performance, reliability, scalability, and robustness of XFS with modern features”. Features have been implemented, including snapshots and non-copy-on-write mode, while there is still work to be done around erasure coding. The codebase is approachable by developers, and while there is still a lot of work to do, Overstreet believes “the big feature work is lessening.”
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article states that people are using snapshots to backup MySQL databases in order to test the robustness of the feature. The article also mentions the challenges of using btrfs for such workloads due to crippling fragmentation and recommends ZFS as a better alternative. Furthermore, the upcoming bcachefs filesystem’s handling of these issues is also anticipated.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The developer of the open-source file system bcachefs, Kent Overstreet, is concerned about the number of file systems in the kernel and would like the acceptance process to be more conservative, as any change that affects all the file systems can quickly become a painful process. He believes that some file systems should be removed, and the process for accepting new file systems needs to become more cautious. Kent Overstreet’s concerns are mainly due to the fact that file systems are a lot more integrated and less modular than other subsystems in the kernel.
5. Update: U+237C ⍼ &Angzarr;
Total comment counts : 21
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article mentions that the website http://xml.coverpages.org hosts pre-2000 material related to ISO 8879 (SGML) and XML, and there’s casual mention of ISO 9573 on historical comp.text.sgml Usenet archives. The article also suggests contacting people involved with SGML, MathML, and early entity sets for math symbols on the xml-dev mailing list to learn more about the origin of a particular character. Additionally, there’s a typo in the original post regarding the Belisage Conference.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mentions the existence of kanji, or Chinese characters, whose origins are unknown. These are called “ghost kanji”.
6. Humans have pumped enough groundwater to change the tilt of the Earth
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
A new study found that humans have shifted the distribution of water on Earth by pumping groundwater, enough to alter the planet’s tilt and even affect the Earth’s rotational pole. The research estimated that humans pumped over 2 trillion tons of groundwater between 1993 to 2010, which led to the rise of global sea levels by a quarter of an inch. Humans redistributed enough water from 1993 to 2010 to move the rotational pole approximately 31 inches, according to the study.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is a complaint about the lack of primary sources cited in a piece about the relationship between groundwater depletion and global sea level rise. The author calls for the use of primary sources and provides links to both the official press release and the original study.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article questions the accuracy of a claim that melting icebergs due to climate change can shift the Earth’s axis and cause a change in gravitational pull. The author thinks the claim is exaggerated as the change in angular momentum would be about 7 orders of magnitude smaller than what the claim suggests.
7. The long story of how neural nets got to where they are [video]
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article suggests that David Hume’s theory, as outlined in his book Enquiry, proposes that our experiences and behaviors are determined by networks of perceptrons. However, the author believes that Hume will not receive recognition for this theory.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author is asking for recommendations on resources such as books, links, or videos about the history of statistical inference and is interested in learning more about the evolution of statistical thought from Pearson, Fischer, and others.
8. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls (2013)
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
The article discusses the author’s struggle with productivity in the workplace and how he learned the importance of focusing and working hard to excel. He shares his experience of working with high-productivity professionals like John Carmack who measures his daily output by how many times he plays a CD, pausing it whenever he is unproductive. The author also discusses the trap of easy tasks and how being overconfident in one’s abilities can lead to a production deficit and panic when working alongside high-performers. The author concludes by sharing some tips on how to kill off underachieving habits, such as developing self-awareness and creating a work environment that is conducive to productivity.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the hyper-obsession with productivity in the software engineering industry and how it leads to measuring oneself against others, rather than focusing on how to become productive at a specialization. The author emphasizes the importance of experience, a deep mental model of the codebase, and understanding dependencies as the real secret to becoming productive. The article suggests that the reason a particular task takes more time than expected is due to debugging and reading documentation. The author advises that for becoming more productive, one should focus on gaining a deep mental model of their field, and not on hyper-productivity and grinding.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author, who meets anxious young people daily, says that being productive is difficult for them as they cannot see how they will personally benefit from their efforts. They are frustrated because the value produced only benefits the wealthy.
9. Planescape: Torment pitch document (1997) [pdf]
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author recounts their experience of meeting the creators of Planescape at Gencon in 1995/1996 and sharing details of their own Planescape campaign, which featured the protagonist’s wife playing a red-headed tiefling character named Lilah. They even have a sketch of Lilah from Tony D in the Planewalker’s Handbook. When Planescape Torment came out in 1997, the author was shocked to find an NPC named Annah, who was a red-headed tiefling with a devil’s tail and believes that Annah was heavily drawn from their own creation, Lilah.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article talks about an upcoming game that promises to have a variety of appealing female characters, including fiendish, human, angelic, Asian, and undead babes. The author notes that the honesty about catering to the target audience’s desires is refreshing, similar to finding a mention of addictive qualities in a tobacco brand’s pitch deck.
10. Basics of Proofs (2017) [pdf]
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author initially found mathematical proofs to be fuzzy and intuition-based, with no clear criteria for what counts as a valid inference step. However, they later learned about natural deduction, a formal proof system with strictly defined inference rules, which removes the ambiguity of what constitutes a valid or invalid proof. While this approach may be too tedious for actual mathematical proofs, the author believes that it would be helpful for students to first learn logic and deduction properly before moving on to more advanced mathematical concepts. The author notes the irony that formal logic is often taught in philosophy, rather than in mathematics or computer science, despite its relevance to these fields.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a teaching method used by the author at Dartmouth College to help students understand mathematical proofs. The author gave students a handout with a proof and asked them to follow along as they walked through the proof together. The students were initially skeptical, but the author prompted them to participate and explain each step. By the end, the students had produced a complete proof of a result they initially didn’t understand and gained confidence in the process. One student even compared the experience to making a shopping list.