1. Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
Total comment counts : 69
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article highlights the importance of individuals like Linus Torvalds, who are described as absolutists and visionaries in the field of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). The author acknowledges that while Torvalds may have faced criticism for his personality and hygiene, his contributions to the world have been significant. The article expresses a hope for a return to the ideals proposed by Torvalds and a pushback against elements that seek to control and limit individuals. The author also expresses gratitude for the community of people who connect and support FOSS, even if they themselves are not actively involved.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author emailed Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, asking about rumors of his cancer diagnosis. Stallman responded, expressing disappointment in the spread of incomplete rumors and clarifying that his prognosis is good and he expects to live for many more years.
2. Draggable objects
Total comment counts : 41
Summary
The author describes the code they use to create draggable objects in interactive diagrams for both mouse and touch input. They discuss the challenges of handling multiple buttons, touch events, and interactions with context menus. They provide a recipe for implementing draggable objects and offer variations for handling text selection and other scenarios. The code has been tested on various browsers and devices. They also discuss supporting multiple object dragging and provide code examples for implementing draggable components in Vue.js.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the challenges of coding drag-to-reorder functionality from scratch, particularly with inconsistent item sizes and the need for placeholders and edge detection. The author agrees with the solutions suggested by Amit in the article. Overall, they found the process to be a fun challenge.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article suggests handling all button press and release events as drag events, even when there is no movement. This means that a press always starts a drag, which is finished by the release. The author recommends that the code handling the release should consider the special case of no movement. The article can be found at the link: https://ardour.org.
3. Burning money on paid ads for a dev tool – what we’ve learned
Total comment counts : 51
Summary
This article provides advice for early-stage startups that are building developer tools and want to effectively market to engineers through paid ads. The author emphasizes that paid ads are just one part of marketing and should not consume all of your time and resources. They explain the two main objectives of paid ads: conversion, where the goal is for people to click on the ad and sign up for the product, and awareness, where the goal is for people to see the ad and become familiar with the product. The author suggests splitting the budget between conversion and awareness. They also highlight the importance of qualitative attribution data and recommend hiring an agency to handle paid ads if you’re a startup. The article provides a list of channels to consider for paid ads and encourages experimenting with small-scale campaigns to gather meaningful data. Finally, the author mentions two paid ad options, G2 and Stack Overflow, and suggests reaching out to newsletters and communities in the industry for content collaboration.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses how the company PostHog asks its users where they heard about the company when they sign up or book a demo. Many users mention that they found out about PostHog through advertisements on Google. However, the author argues that while ads may make people aware of something, they are generally not convincing enough to make people try a product or service. The author personally prefers positive discussions in technical spaces to motivate them to try a product, rather than advertisements.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article provides tips and insights for running successful paid ads. The main points are as follows:
Ensure that your product is ready before starting paid ads. It’s essential to have a compelling product that can convince users to stay and explore further.
Focus not only on the quality of your ads but also on the onboarding flows that users encounter after clicking. Poor onboarding flows can negatively affect conversions.
Familiarize yourself with basic ad terminology and monitor vital statistics closely. Don’t assume that an ad expert or agency has everything under control, especially in the early stages of your startup.
Start by focusing on conversion keywords rather than broad match or branded keywords. This approach can help you establish the basics of your ad operation and attract higher-quality traffic.
Be cautious when dealing with ad platforms and their representatives. Don’t rely on auto-optimization options and set tight spend limits to avoid overspending. Plug leaks by disallowing certain apps and scammy sites in display ads.
The author recommends reading posts on the r/PPC subreddit, particularly older posts with high ratings, to learn from other people’s mistakes in the PPC realm.
4. Everything authenticated by Microsoft is tainted
Total comment counts : 34
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses Microsoft’s response to an incident involving abuse of tokens in their Outlook Web App (OWA). The mitigation and hardening measures taken by Microsoft include the following:
- On June 26, OWA stopped accepting tokens issued from GetAccessTokensForResource for renewal to prevent token renewal abuse.
- On June 27, Microsoft blocked the usage of tokens signed with the acquired MSA (Microsoft Account) key in OWA, thereby preventing further malicious activity.
- On June 29, Microsoft replaced the key to prevent the threat actor from using it to forge tokens. They also revoked all MSA signing keys, including the one acquired by the threat actor.
- The new MSA signing keys are issued in updated systems that have increased isolation from corporate environments, refined monitoring, automated alerting, and are stored in the key store used for enterprise systems.
- On July 3, Microsoft blocked the key usage for all impacted consumer customers to prevent the use of previously-issued tokens.
While these measures are designed to address the issue, it is important to note that their effectiveness may still depend on the nature of the threat and any potential vulnerabilities that may exist within the system.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article criticizes the security vulnerabilities and practices of Microsoft’s Azure platform, suggesting that executives of big Fortune 500 companies should not trust it for their workloads. The author believes that the only advantage Azure has in certain domains is that it competes with Amazon. The author expresses a wish for Microsoft to improve its security but believes it may be too late.
5. JAX – NumPy on the CPU, GPU, and TPU
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
The article provides an introduction to JAX, which is a library that allows for high-performance machine learning research on the CPU, GPU, and TPU. JAX can automatically differentiate native Python and NumPy code and supports reverse-mode as well as forward-mode differentiation. It uses XLA to compile and run NumPy code on accelerators like GPUs and TPUs. JAX also offers program transformations such as jit() for speeding up code, grad() for taking derivatives, and vmap() for automatic vectorization or batching. The article provides examples and explains how these transformations can be composed and used together. The article concludes by expressing excitement about the capabilities of JAX.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains that Jax, originally developed for machine learning research, is a promising tool for scientific computing. Jax’s capability to easily run computations on GPU or TPU through its integration with XLA makes it favorable for large-scale vectorized scientific computations. The author compares their experience in astronomy simulations a decade ago, where simulations were primarily on CPU, and the complexity involved in using more specialized chips. However, with Jax, they highlight the convenience of coding simulations using numpy, which can run on a GPU with a significant speed boost. The author believes that despite these advantages, the scientific community has yet to widely adopt Jax.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author finds JAX to be cool but takes issue with its claim as being “numpy on the GPU” compared to PyTorch, as there is a fundamental difference between the two. The main difference is that JAX is functional, whereas numpy and PyTorch are not. The author points out that while numpy allows directly setting a value in an array with x[0] = 10, JAX requires using the x.at[0].set(10) syntax instead. The author believes that this fundamental change in how operations are performed makes it inaccurate to claim JAX as a drop-in replacement for numpy. In this regard, the author believes that PyTorch is closer to numpy than JAX.
6. Visual Node Graph with ImGui
Total comment counts : 16
Summary
The author discusses the node graph system they created for their graphics engine called “RogueEngine”. The system is designed to allow easy interaction and tweaking of content, particularly for artists and designers. The author explains their approach to creating the node system, which involves only two types of nodes: geometry data nodes and shading data nodes. They also discuss their use of Dear ImGui for the user interface and the need to separate the data model from the UI logic. The author describes the data model for their engine and how it makes it easy to serialize and deserialize project content. They also mention keyframing properties, the use of the timeline panel, and the ability to use coding when necessary. Overall, the author provides an overview of their node graph system and its features.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is about a new visual scripting system that the author finds interesting, although they question the need for it when there are already existing systems like Blueprints or Geometry Nodes. The author suggests that the main issue with these systems is organizing and cleaning up the code, and proposes solutions such as smart snapping or machine learning to address this. However, the author acknowledges that the new system presented in the article appears to work well and acknowledges its potential benefits in certain areas. Overall, the author is open to new approaches and appreciates the effort put into developing this new scripting system.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article has been looking for a GPU Node Graph library but has been unsuccessful so far. They are specifically looking for a library that offers video, images, rich text, and animations. They would also like the ability to combine these blocks together with shader effects. They prefer the library to be written in a compiled language like C++, Rust, or Swift and are wondering if such a library exists.
7. Just kidding: the evolutionary roots of playful teasing
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses the idea that playful teasing may serve a defensive role similar to dares. It suggests that both activities provoke certain socially healthy reactions and the absence of such reactions could indicate negative traits, such as psychopathy or narcissism. The article includes references to Pieter Hintjens and other research.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author argues that descriptions of play as either aggressive or non-aggressive are incomplete because they fail to consider the element of conflict in our emotions. The author suggests that play involves a mixture of sub-emotions, including aggression, attraction, and need. They argue that engaging in play as an opponent or being selfish is about finding a balance between these conflicting emotions. The author concludes by stating that our emotions are in constant conflict, and we exist as a balance or imbalance of these emotions.
8. Show HN: SapientML – Generative AutoML for Tabular Data
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
The article discusses SapientML, an AutoML technology that can learn from existing datasets and their pipelines to generate high-quality pipelines for predictive tasks on new datasets. It provides information on how to access and use the technology, and mentions that its origins can be traced back to a research paper presented at the International Conference on Software Engineering. The article also mentions that SapientML is specifically designed for tabular data.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article questions the validity of a study that claims to compare an approach against “state of the art” AutoML but fails to include AutoGluon, FLAML, or H2O. The author argues that the benchmarking paper often referred to in the AutoML field establishes the state of the art and the libraries compared in the study are only average performers.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author ponders whether using the term “sapient” is too presumptuous and suggests it should be only used for something closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI). They question if their opinion is off base and apologize for making a strange comment and question.
9. Show HN: RISC-V assembly tabletop board game (hack your opponent)
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
The article discusses the creation of a game that teaches buffer overflow and assembler skills. The game involves creating a small shellcode in memory and exploiting a buffer overflow to overwrite an opponent’s return address. The article also mentions other educational games designed to teach programming concepts, such as Python, pointers, machine code, and UNIX commands. The author thanks individuals who helped with the game’s design and provides resources for learning RISC-V assembly.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is short and does not provide any specific information or context to summarize. It appears to be a comment expressing admiration for something, perhaps a game, and jokingly mentioning a desire for a CHERI version.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the idea of a table top board game that involves assembly coding. The author finds the idea interesting and wonders why they had never thought of it before.
10. MMO Architecture: Source of truth, Dataflows, I/O bottlenecks and how to solve
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The article discusses the design and architecture of MMO games and the challenges they pose for engineers. It emphasizes the importance of considering the in-memory world state as the source of truth rather than the database. The article suggests using a data broker pattern and caching to meet the requirements of MMO systems. It also discusses the philosophy and design principles behind what and when to persist data. The article highlights the use of CAS (Compare-and-swap) instructions for synchronous writes and emphasizes the need for careful planning and analysis in designing high traffic distributed systems.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the significance of cache in MMO (massively multiplayer online) architecture. The author mentions optimizing a project that handles 2 billion requests per minute with a large amount of RAM dedicated to cache. The article also discusses the challenges of race conditions, message passing, and synchronization issues in MMO architecture. The author highlights the struggle of tracking problems specific to certain shards and suggests using message prioritization and a message router to improve efficiency. The author concludes by mentioning their contributions to various MMO games and their role as a lead back-end in a current MMO project with simplified database requirements.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article discusses the complexity of designing and developing modern massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. They emphasize the challenges of managing the synchronization of game states, such as player locations, animations, and entities, across server clusters. Network speed and prediction are also important factors in ensuring smooth gameplay. The author recommends using a combination of different networking protocols, such as UDP for fast state transfer and TCP for certain services. They mention the use of REST, SQS, and pub/sub for specific game features like the auction house, item delivery, matchmaking, and world chat. The author reflects on the difficulty of creating an MMO game and asserts that only experienced individuals or those involved in crowdfunded projects have been successful in creating one.