1. Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation
Total comment counts : 62
Summary
There is currently an Apple ID outage affecting multiple users. People are being logged out of their Apple IDs across various devices and are forced to reset their passwords in order to log back in. This issue has gained traction on social media, although Apple’s System Status webpage does not indicate any service problems. There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason for this issue. It is unclear if this outage is related to the ongoing password reset attacks that have been happening. This situation is particularly problematic for users with Stolen Device Protection enabled, as they can be locked out of their accounts when away from trusted locations. Resetting the Apple ID password will also reset any app-specific passwords set up through iCloud. Apple has been asked for more information about this issue.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author experienced being locked out of their iPhone after downloading two apps. They were initially able to get support to unblock them, but then received another ban. After multiple calls, their account was permanently banned and they started receiving legal notices. The author suggests that this issue with the account management system could lead to a class action lawsuit.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article explains their frustration with Apple’s customer support after experiencing difficulties with their iPad. They were unable to access their device for almost three months and despite repeated attempts to contact support, they received no assistance. The author states that they will no longer support Apple financially, except for the MacBook Pro they need for work.
2. Show HN: I made a spaced repetition tool to master coding problems
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
The article is promoting Lanki, a tool that helps with practicing coding problems that users have seen before but haven’t fully understood. It offers a free trial and encourages readers to try it out.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues against using spaced repetition for learning programming. The author believes that while spaced repetition is useful for memorizing facts, programming requires problem-solving skills and the ability to think critically. Instead of memorization, the author suggests mastering programming methods and ideas so that one can derive answers in real-time. The author also emphasizes the importance of understanding when and how to apply concepts in order to be a better programmer and perform well in interviews.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a new and more effective leetcode site called deriveit.org. The goal of the site is to teach users how to quickly master leetcode. The creators of the site have put a year’s worth of thought into making the content as simple as possible. They proudly mention that two people have successfully used the site to land jobs at Amazon.
3. World Wide Web (1991)
Total comment counts : 34
Summary
The article provides a summary of various online resources related to the W3 project. It includes an executive summary, mailing lists, policy information, news, frequently asked questions, pointers to online information, W3 servers, browser help, software products, technical details, bibliography, people involved in the project, history, and how to support the web. It also mentions ways to obtain the project’s code through anonymous FTP.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article is about the author’s experience with upgrading the UCL CS webserver to CERN/3.0 back in 1994. Despite some hardware replacements and changes to the NFS server, the same software installation from the 1990s is still running on the hardware. The server has been in production for 24 years, only needing minor patches for Y2K. Although it is no longer the primary server and does not support SSL, it still serves everyone’s home pages. The article includes a code snippet showing a successful request to the server.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the World Wide Web (W3) and its goal of providing universal access to a large universe of documents through hypermedia. This initiative aims to link everything related to the W3 directly or indirectly to this document.
4. Searchformer: Beyond A* – Better planning with transformers via search dynamics
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
The article discusses an official codebase for a research paper titled “Beyond A*: Better Planning with Transformers via Search Dynamics Bootstrapping.” The codebase includes access to generated datasets and trained models, as well as code for reproducing the paper’s figures and running experiments. The code is designed to work with datasets stored in a MongoDB instance and includes Jupyter notebooks for examples and data access. It also provides instructions for setting up a virtual environment and connecting to a MongoDB instance. The repository includes Jupyter notebooks, documentation, and a license file. The article encourages users to give a star and citation if they find the repository useful.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a paper that explores the use of transformers to solve search problems. The researchers created synthetic data by solving search problems with A* and trained transformers on this data. The transformers were able to learn to solve the problems. The researchers then improved the synthetic data by repeatedly solving a problem with A* and keeping only the shortest step solution. The transformers were also able to be competitive with this improved search heuristic. The article emphasizes the revolutionary impact of transformer sequence modeling in various applications, beyond chat bots, such as speeding up scientific simulations and the potential for a wide range of other applications.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses how Transformers, while effective in many applications, still lag behind traditional symbolic planners when it comes to complex decision-making tasks. The authors present a model called Searchformer, which is a Transformer model trained to solve previously unseen Sokoban puzzles. Searchformer solves these puzzles optimally 93.7% of the time using fewer search steps than standard A* search. The model is trained by predicting the search dynamics of A* and then fine-tuning it to generate optimal plans with fewer search steps. The study shows that Searchformer outperforms baselines in maze navigation tasks with a smaller model size and training dataset. Additionally, the authors demonstrate how Searchformer can scale to larger and more complex decision-making tasks like Sokoban, achieving improved performance.
5. Show HN: React for Circuits
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
The article states that the writer reads and values every feedback received, taking it seriously. The readers are encouraged to refer to the provided documentation for all available qualifiers.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article finds the idea of designing an electronics project in JSX (JavaScript XML) to be interesting. They view JSX as more of a data format than actual code and prefer a simpler language for designing projects. They mention alternatives like LT Spice’s netlist, plantuml, and markdown. The author also considers using HTML and CSS for separating the structure and styling of the project. They suggest having two stylesheets, one for the schematic and one for the board.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a project called tscircuit that explores using React in different contexts. The author mentions previous prototypes, such as using React with Unreal Engine. The author also speculates on the future of the project, wondering if it could become a library of tscircuit components that can be composed together using code instead of using PCB design software like Eagle. Looking at the code, the author notes that there is a reconciler that is a thin wrapper for the tscircuit builder, which does the heavy lifting of converting to a serializable format. The author questions the need for separate repositories, as they feel the tsx portion, reconciler, and builder are all needed together.
6. TIS-100: Tessellated Intelligence System
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
The article is about a programming game called TIS-100 that allows players to rewrite corrupted code segments to repair a computer called TIS-100 and discover its hidden secrets. The game is available for purchase on various platforms such as Steam, GOG, and iOS. It is described as an assembly language programming game.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Zachtronics is a game studio that many people may not be familiar with. However, if you enjoy Factorio, it is recommended that you try out games such as SpaceChem, TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Opus Magnum, Exapunks, and Last Call BBS, as they are created by Zachtronics. In fact, since Factorio was inspired by a Minecraft mod, and Zachtronics’ Infiniminer directly inspired Minecraft, Zachtronics played a significant role in the development of Factorio.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the game TIS-100 and its “mesh of many tiny cores” architecture, which is both cool and mind-bending. It also mentions similar real-world architectures, such as the Transputers and the Connection Machines. The T2 Tile project and the Movable Feast Machine are also discussed as examples of architectures that take the concept further by aiming to create an infinitely scalable and decentralized structure.
7. What contributing to Open-source is, and what it isn’t
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
The author of the article reflects on the advice to participate in open-source projects for career growth. They argue that it is not necessarily good advice for beginners or junior developers. The author uses a metaphor of building a school to illustrate that contributing without sufficient knowledge or experience can be detrimental to the project and frustrate experienced contributors. They also criticize Hacktoberfest, an initiative promoting open-source contributions, for encouraging beginners to contribute without understanding the project and its needs. Instead, the author suggests that the best way to contribute to open-source is to become an open-source user, report bugs, request features, and be willing to contribute when necessary. The author emphasizes the importance of following the purpose of open-source and collaborating with other contributors.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author shares their best open source contribution, which involved identifying user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) issues in a project they cared about. Despite not being fluent in the programming language used, they collected a list of these issues along with proposed solutions and mock-ups. They posted this in several well-organized issues and informed the maintainer, who surprisingly resolved them, greatly improving the software. Additionally, the author wrote documentation for the project’s usage. The author points out that the worst open source contributions are those where someone “fixes” something without coordinating with others on the project and without any actual issues.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author has been contributing to an open source project for over two decades by extensively testing it. They are not responsible for fixing the bugs they find, but they strive to identify them quickly so that the development team can address them before official releases.
8. Laws of Software Evolution
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The article by Andrew Kelly explores the concept of continuous maintenance in software and argues that it is a manufactured demand by companies to increase profits. The author disagrees with this perspective, stating that software often needs to adapt to a changing world and the needs of its users. They also mention Lehman’s laws of software evolution, which discuss the need for quality controls and investing in fixes upfront to reduce long-term costs. The article emphasizes the complex relationships software has with its environment and the importance of considering users and their needs when developing software. It also highlights the difference between software change and change in other engineering fields. Overall, the author challenges the notion that software can be static and argues for the value of continuous maintenance and adaptation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the concept of software decay and the need for regular updates and maintenance. Previously, it was believed that bugs only occur when code is written, but now it is understood that software decays over time due to integration, changes in technology, and security issues. The article highlights the challenge of convincing older developers to update their code, as they often believe in the principle of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”. The author emphasizes the importance of regular updates, even if they are not deemed urgent, and notes that it can be difficult to break the habit of outdated best practices.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author wants products to adapt to their users’ needs, but believes that in reality, products often change because the teams behind them need to justify their existence. They criticize recent UI changes in Slack, such as the removal of the ability to split several channels in the same window and the addition of a toolbar that cannot be removed. The author believes these changes were not made for the benefit of the user.
9. The server chose violence
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
The article discusses a feature called REPLY_FAULT in the operating system Hubris. Hubris uses a small kernel and separates code into isolated tasks that communicate through inter-process communication (IPC). IPC in Hubris works like a function call, with tasks playing the roles of clients and servers. The article highlights the challenges of making assumptions about callers’ behavior when crossing task boundaries and the potential errors that can arise. However, in practice, these errors rarely occur in Hubris due to the build system and generated code. The article also mentions the drawbacks of handling unlikely errors in good programs, such as increased code size and runtime checks. To address this, the option of centralizing error handling into generated code is suggested.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a software feature called REPLY_FAULT, which provides a way to define and implement new types of errors in a system. One example is using it for access control rules in the Hubris IP stack. The article acknowledges that this approach can work well in small systems where developers have a good understanding of the whole system. However, as an application developer, there may be concerns about relying on third-party code that can send back errors at any time. The author expresses mistrust in other app developers, citing the potential for poorly written code or shortcuts taken that result in unsuitable errors being sent.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the potential cascading effect of the REPLY_FAULT feature in a system where tasks are waiting for a reply from each other. The author raises the question of whether a task waiting in a SEND operation would be killed along with the task it is waiting for if the latter experiences a REPLY_FAULT. This raises concerns about malicious tasks using helper tasks to delegate experiments. The author also points out that if circular or reciprocal SENDs exist, a task may unintentionally kill itself, which may discourage the use of REPLY_FAULT in certain scenarios.
10. Relational Graph Convolutional Networks for Sentiment Analysis
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
The article is about arXivLabs, a framework that enables collaboration in the development and sharing of new features on the arXiv website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs support the values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only works with partners that adhere to these values. The article also mentions that users can receive status notifications via email or slack.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the benefits of combining BERT (a transformer model) with RGCNs (Relational Graph Convolutional Networks) for various tasks such as entity resolution, data cleaning, mining social media interactions, and analyzing financial data. The author notes that modern transformers, compared to the BERT-era models, have significantly changed the way they think about this field by enabling reasoning capabilities. They mention that there are many new knowledge graph papers using language models like LLMs, which require keeping up with the latest research. The author expresses interest in discussing and working on projects related to this space.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article expressed their curiosity about the significance of a certain paper staying on Hacker News front page for hours and the typical cost and GPU hours required to train the model mentioned in the paper.