1. I, Voyager: Open-Source Software Planetarium
Total comment counts : 13
Summary
The article discusses updates and developments for the I, Voyager software. The author mentions that the software is built on Godot Engine 3.5.2 and highlights the introduction of a new Planetarium feature. The article also mentions the release of the code for crunching asteroid orbit data on GitHub, as well as the development of a game set in our Solar System. The author discusses the introduction of Progressive Web App functionality for the Planetarium, which allows for faster revisits, easier distribution, and less bandwidth usage. The article also discusses improvements in GUI construction and modular code architecture. The author mentions future developments for the software, including the addition of comets and spacecrafts, and the desire to achieve stable API and graphics improvements. The article concludes by encouraging users, testers, and developers to support and contribute to the I, Voyager community.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is a comment from someone who found the topic beautiful and it reminded them of Stellarium, an open-source software. They mention spending a lot of time pretending to be Sulu from Star Trek while flying through a field of stars.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a helpful web application that provides an easy-to-understand visualization of the orbits of each planet in the solar system. The app, which is a Progressive Web App, requires no installation and has been found to be beneficial for individuals learning about the solar system. The author expresses their appreciation for the app and indicates their intention to donate to support its development.
2. 22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage (2022)
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
The article discusses a 22-year-old named Sam Zeloof who has been making his own chips in his family’s garage. While major chip manufacturers like Intel are building multi-billion dollar factories, Zeloof uses salvaged and homemade equipment to produce his chips. He has made two chips so far, with the second one having 1,200 transistors. Zeloof hopes to match the scale of Intel’s breakthrough 4004 chip, which had 2,300 transistors. He believes that making chipmaking more accessible to inventors without large budgets would foster innovation. Zeloof’s project has gained attention on Twitter and YouTube, and he is considering the role of DIY chipmaking in the modern tech ecosystem.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the revolution in garage space and how it has become accessible for individuals to create and manufacture hardware. The author gives examples of the various tools and machines that can be used, such as injection molding machines and resin printers. They also mention the affordability of getting prototype boards made and shipped. Overall, the article highlights how hardware production has become more attainable for those with a software salary.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Sam Zeloof, the founder of Atomic Semi, has recently partnered with Jim Keller to launch the company.
3. A Dutch graphic artist reconstructed Tenochtitlan in 3D
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
The article provides a visualization of the ancient Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. The author uses historical and archaeological sources, along with input from experts, to recreate the appearance and layout of the city. The grid-like structure of the city demonstrates its hierarchical nature, with neighborhoods having their own markets, schools, and places of worship. Canals and walkways connect different parts of the city. Tenochtitlan was built in a lake, so the Mexica people devised a system of causeways, canals, and locks to maintain fresh water flow and prevent the intrusion of saltwater. The city also utilized chinampas, plots of farmland created on the lake’s shallow areas, to grow crops. The article highlights the connection between Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, as well as the importance of the city’s market. The author also discusses the New Fire Ceremony, an important ritual that marked the end of a 52-year cycle. The article concludes by providing credits for the images used and information on copyright usage.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article states that they use mostly open source software, specifically 90% Blender, 9% Gimp, and 1% Darktable. They invite readers to ask any questions they may have.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the remarkable similarities between an ancient city and the modern-day city, highlighting how certain features have persisted over time. It also explores how the older city appears to have had a more ecologically balanced environment compared to the current city. Additionally, it notes that the “places of power” from the past continue to hold significance today, albeit in different forms of power.
4. Startup CTO’s Handbook
Total comment counts : 18
Summary
This article is about a book called “The Startup CTO’s Handbook” that covers leadership, management, and technical topics for leaders of software engineering teams. The book is being ported into markdown format, but the formatting still needs to be cleaned up. The latest version of the book can be viewed in markdown, and it will soon be available for purchase on Amazon. The article also mentions a link to the latest version of the markdown rendered to PDF and provides a Google Docs link to the original manuscript, which is now outdated. The author welcomes contributions, suggestions, and criticisms for future editions of the book. The article includes links to the author’s LinkedIn, website, and email. The book’s content can be copied, changed, and redistributed as long as attribution is given and future versions remain open under a similar license.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article expresses both agreement and disagreement with its content. They acknowledge the potential need for different approaches and leadership styles in various problem domains. They advise readers to trust their own experiences and not consider the article as absolute. Further reference to the author’s disagreement can be found in a provided link.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses their preference for recording meetings as it allows them to re-watch important discussions and fully focus on the meeting without the need to take notes. They also highlight the benefits of being able to listen to recordings at their own convenience, take notes, write summaries, and identify inconsistencies in thinking. The author suggests that recording meetings is particularly useful when someone is unable to attend due to illness, personal commitments, or joining the team after an important discussion. They believe that snooping is not a significant concern in practice.
5. OpenRefine
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
The article explains that OpenRefine is a free and open-source tool used for managing messy data. It allows users to clean and transform data, convert it into different formats, and enhance it with external data and web services. The tool also offers features like filtering, merging similar values, and connecting datasets with external databases. Users can revert to previous data states and track the history of operations. OpenRefine emphasizes that data cleaning is performed on the user’s device and not on cloud platforms. The tool also enables users to contribute to Wikidata and other Wikibase instances.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author shares their positive experience using OpenRefine as a data cleaning tool for nonprofits. They found it helpful in consolidating and migrating data from different sources, especially when dealing with numerous and diverse data sets. The author expresses satisfaction in knowing that OpenRefine is still available for use.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the use of OpenRefine and how faceting can be used to find bad data. The author mentions watching a video that explains how to use OpenRefine, even though it is a couple of years old. They highlight the usefulness of faceting in selecting and filtering relevant data for processing. The author also mentions their preference for using OpenRefine with CSV files instead of running command line pipelines multiple times.
6. The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology (2021)
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
This article discusses a website that uses a security service to protect itself from online attacks. It states that certain actions, such as submitting specific words or phrases, a SQL command, or malformed data, can trigger this security block. It suggests contacting the site owner to inform them about the block and includes instructions on what information to provide, including the Cloudflare Ray ID and the user’s IP address. The website relies on Cloudflare for performance and security.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues that the decline in productivity can be attributed to a failure of software, specifically corporate IT’s failure to provide general-purpose development tools usable by all employees. Instead, non-programmers are stuck using programs that do not meet their needs, forcing them to work around these limitations. The author provides an example of a woman at a bank who manually searches and verifies data entries that could easily be done by a computer. The article emphasizes the need for computers to serve and assist humans rather than the other way around.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the fragmentation of CPUs due to the challenges of heat dissipation and the need for more efficient transistor designs. The author mentions Koomey’s Law, which combines Moore’s Law and Dennard scaling, and explains how the increasing number of transistors on a chip and the decreasing power usage per transistor have led to the current situation. With the limitations of thermal management, CPUs now often have unused transistors due to the risk of overheating, resulting in “dark silicon.” The author suggests that combining different fragments of CPU designs could lead to improved performance and efficiency, such as implementing user-specific processor cores on a separate “brain board” attached to the motherboard.
7. Open Source Firmware Conference
Total comment counts : 6
Summary
The article discusses the importance of embracing open-source firmware development in the electronics industry, especially in light of changing use cases and strict security requirements. The Open Source Firmware Conference is being held to further promote collaboration, knowledge sharing, and a change in the way firmware development is approached. The article encourages readers to attend the conference and stay updated through the newsletter.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article criticizes a website for using a generic term, “open source firmware,” without providing clear information about what it refers to. The author assumes it is related to PC firmware based on the list of players but finds it frustrating when groups assume everyone understands their specific meaning.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article highlights the OSFC as a great event with a friendly community. The author highly recommends it to anyone interested in open source firmware. They are impressed with the hard work and passion of the participants, some of whom have been working on advancing open source firmware for decades. The author notes that everyone they spoke with at the event understands the importance of open source firmware in ensuring platform reliability, resiliency, and user control.
8. Stealing OAuth tokens of Microsoft accounts via open redirect in Harvest App
Total comment counts : 18
Summary
This article discusses a vulnerability in the time-tracking software Harvest, which allows users to connect their Outlook Calendar through OAuth. The vulnerability involves an open redirect that can be used to steal access tokens through an implicit grant. The author discovered that the redirect URL within the OAuth application can be manipulated to leak access tokens. The author reported this vulnerability to Harvest but found the company to be unresponsive and slow in fixing the issue. After three years, the vulnerability was finally fixed without any notification or reward. The author has decided to publicly disclose the vulnerability.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The person in charge of managing the bug bounty program apologizes for a misunderstanding regarding a reported issue. They explain that they were unable to reproduce the problem but hesitated to close it in case they missed something. They mistakenly believed they had resolved the issue, but it remained unresolved due to missed follow-ups. They apologize for the lack of updates and emphasize that customer security is a priority for them.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author shares their experience with using Harvest, a product with excellent customer support and prompt responses. However, they suspect that Harvest may be selling customer lists and raised this concern, prompting a thorough investigation by the company. The author also mentions an engineering issue that remains unresolved despite being a simple fix. They highlight that Harvest only offers multi-factor authentication with Google sign-in, but overall praise the app’s performance.
9. Nghttp3 1.0.0 – HTTP/3 library written in C
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
The article is a copyright notice for the contributors of nghttp3, an index module search page.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article highlights the release of version 1.0.0 of an unknown software or library. It also mentions two other HTTP/3 libraries, H2O and Facebook/Meta ProxyGen.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author mentions finding an article about HTTP/3 support in Caddy, a web server that uses Go’s implementation. They mention that they are currently using Apache, which does not have HTTP/3 support and is the reason they are considering trying out Caddy, Nginx, or OpenLiteSpeed. They ask if nghttp3 could bring HTTP/3 support to Apache in the future.
10. The white furnace test
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
The white furnace test is a useful debugging tool in rendering. When a 100% reflective object is uniformly lit by its environment, it becomes indistinguishable from the environment itself. This test helps verify that a physically based renderer is accurately rendering the object as invisible. This test is also used to ensure that the rendering algorithm preserves energy and doesn’t introduce any errors. In addition, the white furnace test can reveal bugs in the renderer implementation and is often used as a sanity check before testing the BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function). The white furnace test is an important tool in validating the integration and BRDF parts of a rendering implementation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article implemented a Physically Based Rendering (PBR) renderer by following a tutorial. However, the renderer failed the white furnace test, leading the author to realize that they had not fully understood the math they had implemented. Specifically, the random multiplications by pi and 2, as suggested by the tutorial author, did not yield the desired results.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the surprise of a particular topic reaching the top of Hacker News (HN) and mentions two furnace tests related to emissions and albedo. It also mentions the production of pixels with noise and sends greetings to path tracing enthusiasts.