1. I got tired of hearing that YC fired Sam, so here’s what actually happened
Total comment counts : 89
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article discusses their experience running a multi-million dollar non-profit while also having a full-time job. They explain that it is common for individuals to both chair a non-profit and work a regular job since non-profits are typically structured to allow for this balance. However, if the non-profit were to transition into a for-profit enterprise, the author states that they would have had to choose between the two. They mention that if the non-profit had commercialized a specific service, they would have likely quit their full-time job to focus on it. The author admits uncertainty about whether they would have proactively quit one or the other, and suggests that depending on the workload, they may have attempted to work both roles simultaneously for a period of time. They conclude by stating that they do not find a tweet by Paul relating to this situation to be strange.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author finds it strange that Paul G learned about OpenAI’s for-profit arm through an announcement without seeking advice from Sam or Jessica. This aligns with Helen Toner’s narrative that Paul kept the board uninformed, and they learned about things through announcements.
2. Donating forks to the dining hall
Total comment counts : 28
Summary
The author recounts a story about how they bought 180 forks to solve the problem of the dining hall running out of forks every evening. They stamped their initials on the back of each fork and discreetly placed them in the dining hall. Over time, they noticed others using their forks, and the fork shortage issue was resolved. However, the dining hall started running out of knives afterward. The author eventually found one of their forks at their girlfriend’s apartment, suggesting that someone had taken silverware from the dining hall. The author reflects on their generosity and how it can come back to them.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a common pattern in population dynamics where a system tolerates bad behavior up to a certain threshold before everyone switches to the bad behavior. This pattern can be observed in various situations such as line formation, traffic, stealing, and hoarding office supplies. The author provides personal anecdotal evidence of resorting to bad behavior in traffic and cutting lines when returning to their home country. The author expresses curiosity about what percentage of people engaging in bad behavior is needed for everyone to abandon the desired behavior.
Top 2 Comment Summary
In this article, the author recalls an incident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus in the 1980s. During that time, satirical parties often won student elections and engaged in peculiar actions, such as covering the campus with plastic flamingos. One satirical party became upset that the cafeteria only had three-tined forks, so they partnered with friends at Northwestern University to exchange their cafeteria’s forks for UW’s three-tined forks. Though successful in the trade, both universities’ administrations were displeased and the exchange was eventually reversed.
3. After 6 years, I’m over GraphQL
Total comment counts : 119
Summary
The author begins by expressing their initial enthusiasm for GraphQL and how it was a refreshing change from using untyped JSON REST APIs. However, as time went on and they encountered issues related to security, performance, and maintainability, their perspective on GraphQL changed. In this article, the author shares their reasons for not recommending GraphQL to most people and suggests alternative solutions. They discuss the increased attack surface of applications when using GraphQL due to the exposure of a query language to untrusted clients. They mention the need to properly authorize every field against the current user and highlight the challenge of handling large queries and estimating their complexity. The complexity estimation becomes even more difficult when dealing with cyclical schema graphs. The author also mentions the potential for denial-of-service attacks and discusses rate limiting as a mitigation strategy. They conclude by emphasizing the simplicity of rate limiting REST endpoints compared to GraphQL.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article expresses disappointment and frustration with their experience implementing GraphQL. They feel that the permissions/authentication aspect is particularly difficult to manage and that it leads to performance issues. The author suggests that GraphQL may be more suitable for frontend developers who are not responsible for the backend. However, they still find it necessary to save queries as files or abstract them, making it similar to using REST endpoints. In hindsight, the author believes that writing REST endpoints would have been a better choice for their project.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article discusses their experience working on two GraphQL projects and how they were initially drawn to the hype but quickly became disillusioned. They found that as the projects progressed, the requirements became more complex and specific, leading to more time spent debugging. The author also noticed that both projects had signs of “learning-on-the-go” and had bad practices, particularly related to the N+1 problem. Issues were harder to find in logs and performance problems appeared in unexpected places. Interestingly, the original developers who set up the projects were no longer involved. The author concludes by stating that RPC and REST are easier to monitor, log, cache, authorize, and debug compared to GraphQL.
4. How actors remember their lines
Total comment counts : 38
Summary
The article discusses how actors learn and remember their lines by focusing on deep understanding and meaning instead of rote repetition. They engage in elaborative rehearsal by studying the script, understanding their character, and relating their lines to that character. By asking goal-directed questions and analyzing the script, actors develop a deep understanding that allows them to recall lines naturally during performances. The article also mentions a septuagenarian actor who memorized all 10,565 lines of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” through deep understanding and insight. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of deep understanding in enhancing memory and retention for everyday tasks.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The Meisner Technique is a method of acting that emphasizes truthfulness and responding to the other actor. Instead of simply reciting lines, actors are encouraged to genuinely behave and engage with their scene partner. The technique helps actors get out of their heads and into their instincts. Warm-up exercises focus on the importance of responding to the other person in front of you, which also enhances communication skills in everyday life. Remembering lines becomes easier with the presence of another person, as it establishes a connection that aids memory recall.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article emphasizes the importance of deeply understanding material and developing a speaking or writing style in order to effectively communicate. It mentions that these efforts are also crucial for actors.
5. FrankenPHP: Modern PHP App Server
Total comment counts : 27
Summary
This article is a call for donations to support Ryan Weaver, a long-time contributor to the PHP ecosystem. It introduces a new technology called FrankenPHP, which is faster than FPM on API Platform apps. FrankenPHP is written in Go and C and uses Go’s goroutines feature. It can serve apps as-is and runs in process with no need for an external service. The project is led by Kévin Dunglas, creator of API Platform and Symfony Core Team member, with design by Laury Sorriaux and sponsorship by Les-Tilleuls.coop.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article hasn’t done PHP development in about 10 years, but they found a landing page that almost made them want to start a simple project. They liked the design, color scheme, copy, and animations of the landing page. They also thought the value proposition was well highlighted, especially for someone who has been out of PHP development for a while. The code snippet for getting started seemed quick and easy.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article states that the writer, who used to mainly code in C#, now prefers coding in PHP8 because it allows them to get things done quickly. They believe that PHP8 is the direction in which the language should be heading, as it eliminates the need for complex Apache configuration like in the older LAMP setup.
6. SVG Gobbler – Find, optimize, edit, and export SVGs
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
The article discusses an open-source browser extension called SVG Gobbler. This extension allows users to find, optimize, download, copy, edit, or export SVG content in their current browser tab. To make changes to the extension, users need to build it locally and side load it as a developer extension. The extension uses yarn to build dependencies and can be loaded through the Extensions Dashboard. Users can also make local fetch calls related to Node processes by navigating to the server directory. The project initially started as a pet project to improve the SVG Crowbar tool and is now open-source and free to use. The author encourages users to contribute with ideas, bug fixes, or feature requests.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a favorite tool for optimizing SVGs, which is called SVG Viewer. The link provided leads to the website where the tool can be accessed.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a project called “svg-gobbler” that performs an “SVG to React” transformation. The author questions why this transformation needs to be done on a remote endpoint, especially since the endpoint is broken in the Firefox version. The project already includes SVGO bundling, so the author suggests that adding SVGR bundling should not be a problem. The article provides links to the relevant GitHub pages for reference.
7. Fast Shadow Stacks for Go
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
The article discusses the potential benefits of software shadow stacks in improving stack trace capturing in the Go runtime. The author explains that capturing a stack trace involves traversing call frames on the stack and collecting return addresses. The traditional method of adding a pointer to the previous frame to each function has limitations, so alternative approaches like using DWARF or other unwind tables have been employed. However, the author introduces the concept of shadow stacks, which maintain a cache of return addresses to avoid duplicate work. One way to implement shadow stacks is by pushing return addresses to both the normal and shadow stacks. While hardware shadow stacks exist as a security feature for modern Intel CPUs, they are not accessible in user space. The article presents a potential alternative approach of populating a shadow stack during stack trace capture and using a trampoline function to manage return addresses. Overall, software shadow stacks offer potential improvements in stack trace capturing, but their widespread implementation and availability are still limited.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article suggests that in an ideal situation, an ABI (Application Binary Interface) should keep code and data in separate stacks. This would make profiling easier because profiling could then be done by simply copying the code stack.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses accessing stacks from userspace using a tool called ShadowStackWalk, which can be found on GitHub.
8. Meaningful Nonsense: How I generate sentences
Total comment counts : 28
Summary
The article discusses the development of a system in JavaScript that generates sentences of “meaningful nonsense.” The system was created to generate titles for generative diagrams and has also been used to generate content for typographical artworks. The system consists of sentence structures, word lists, and rules for fitting words together. The author has curated lists of adjectives, verbs, and nouns specifically chosen for the desired effects. The article also explains how nouns and verbs are altered for different contexts, including pluralizing nouns and creating gerunds for verbs. The system is an ongoing work in progress.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article emphasizes the importance of human-centered thinking in the age of AI. It praises the process of considering the problem and creating an explainable algorithm to solve it. The inclusion of handwritten output adds a nice human element.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the pronunciation of the word “universal” and whether it should be preceded by “a” or “an” based on its pronunciation. The author states that they pronounce “universal” with a “j” sound, not a “y” sound. They also mention that the letter “y” is pronounced with a “w” sound, and thank the English language for its inconsistencies.
9. Starlink’s disruption of the space industry
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite constellation project, celebrated its fifth anniversary with a successful launch of 23 satellites, bringing its total to over 6,500 satellites. Starlink’s goal is to provide affordable broadband services and generate more revenue for SpaceX. The project has disrupted the satellite industry, with traditional operators facing declining demand as Starlink offers high-bandwidth services with low latency. Starlink’s success has also benefited SpaceX’s launch business, allowing for more frequent launches and reduced costs through booster reuse. Additionally, Starlink’s impact on the satellite industry has prompted other operators to explore multi-orbit strategies that combine different satellite orbits to offer improved services.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the perspective of a friend who used to sell payload delivery for SpaceX and now does the same for a competitor. They highlight the Starlink venture, which is a competitor to some telecom companies. The article suggests that the best way to sell payload delivery against SpaceX is to emphasize the fear of further vertical integration and competition from them. It also mentions that SpaceX is the obvious choice in terms of cost, options, and track record, similar to retailers deciding whether to embrace Amazon as a distribution channel.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article points out that SpaceX appears to be significantly ahead of its competitors, as Blue Origin has only achieved sub-orbital flight while SpaceX is launching satellite constellations and making progress with the Starship project. The article raises the question of how other space companies can catch up to SpaceX and achieve success in the industry.
10. Bootstrapping a Forth in 40 lines of Lua code
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
The article discusses the implementation of a Forth virtual machine using Lua. The author proposes a “mode-based” approach where new modes can be added dynamically. They argue that Forth, along with Lisp, is one of the two quintessential extensible languages. The author provides examples of simple programs in Forth and explains the representation of Forth words in memory. Overall, the article explores the use of Lua as a base language for building extensible languages.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author mentions that they learned Forth many years ago but recently rediscovered it. They have been reading the books “Thinking Forth” and “Starting Forth” and find them interesting and different from modern programming languages. They believe that Forth is well-suited for running on small embedded devices, particularly devices like Arduinos. The author has purchased a kit and is looking forward to exploring Forth further during their free time. They also note that the books they mentioned can be easily found online but were written during a time when computer systems were simpler.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author is looking for information on programming languages that have very small implementations, with a maximum binary size of around 10KB, preferably a few KB. The author mentions Forth, Basic, some small Lisps, and Tcl as examples. The author is seeking suggestions for any other languages that meet this requirement.