1. Kagi Assistant is now available to all users
Total comment counts : 29
Summary
Kagi aims to humanize the web by providing a search experience focused on user needs, privacy, and lack of manipulation. The Kagi Assistant, previously exclusive to Ultimate subscribers, is now accessible to all users at no additional cost. It allows for personalized interactions, file uploads, and model switching, ensuring user control and privacy. Kagi implements a fair-use policy based on plan value, with no hidden discounts. Users can explore various leading language models and enjoy a flexible, user-funded service. Full rollout of the Assistant is expected by April 23, 2025.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses Kagi’s transparent fair-use policy for AI models, allowing usage based on the plan’s value. The author appreciates Kagi’s clarity regarding its business model, contrasting it with Discord, which despite being high-quality, raises concerns due to its ongoing lack of profitability. The author’s trust in Kagi stems from its straightforward communication around revenue generation.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses that while they appreciate Kagi search, the $5/month price and 300 search limit are unappealing. They have no interest in Kagi AI and believe a rate limit would alleviate “search anxiety” caused by dwindling searches. They would reconsider subscribing if these changes were implemented.
2. Defold: cross-platform game engine
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
Defold is a fully equipped game engine, allowing users to create and publish games without setup hassles. It supports major platforms using a single code base. The article highlights the offline adventure game “Void Scrappers,” where a family must navigate life on a deserted island. Recent Defold updates include releases 1.9.6 to 1.9.8 and enhancements like UI scripting tools and cloud builder improvements. The platform offers extensive tutorials and a supportive community for game developers.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The licensing solution discussed is labeled as a source-available license rather than Open Source, allowing proprietary modifications without the obligation to release changes. Users can monetize games created with the engine, and there are assurances against unexpected changes to the license terms. However, unlike Apache 2.0, monetizing forks of the engine itself is prohibited. Overall, the approach is seen as fair and well thought out.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article commends a company for accurately labeling their software as “source available” instead of misusing the term “open source.” It also praises them for clearly outlining the modifications to their Apache-based license.
3. I analyzed chord progressions in 680k songs
Total comment counts : 39
Summary
The article discusses the “Chordonomicon,” a dataset featuring chord progressions from nearly 680,000 songs, created by five researchers. It explores common chords in various genres, revealing that G major and C major dominate across popular music. Genre-specific differences are noted, with country heavily using certain major chords, while jazz favors 7th chords. The analysis also highlights how chord usage has evolved over decades, indicating distinct trends, such as the rising prevalence of 7th chords in jazz. Overall, the dataset offers intriguing insights into musical composition and genre characteristics.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article critiques the use of absolute chord analysis over relative chord analysis (Roman numeral analysis) in music datasets, highlighting the importance of song structure and repeating chords. It argues that determining the most common key and related chords would provide more valuable insights, especially for genres like country and jazz. The author emphasizes that many songwriters don’t make data-driven decisions about chord structures and that the notion of 7th chords being exclusive to jazz is misleading. Overall, the analysis lacks depth due to a superficial understanding of music theory.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The analysis based on the original dataset is flawed due to its construction, which omits repeated chords that are essential to understanding musical forms, such as blues progressions. This simplification makes it difficult to grasp the underlying harmony of songs. Additionally, analyzing songs should focus on the relationships between chords rather than the chords themselves. A more effective approach would be converting the chords to Roman numerals to reveal common construction patterns.
4. What do I think about Lua after shipping a project with 60k lines of code?
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
Oleg Chumakov from Luden.io interviewed Ivan Trusov, lead programmer of Craftomation 101, about the Lua programming language used in the game. With around 60,000 lines of Lua code, the game involves self-replicating robots and has received positive feedback on platforms like Steam. Trusov emphasized the benefits of Lua, including its lightweight integration with the Defold engine and ease of use for game designers. Despite some initial surprises, like array indexing starting at 1, Trusov appreciates Lua’s simplicity and functional programming features, noting his preference for straightforward coding over complex object-oriented programming.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author discusses the challenges of maintaining a large Lua codebase, highlighting issues with its flexibility in function parameters, which often leads to bugs during updates. They note problems with Lua tables, where list indices could become dictionary keys, complicating array traversal. The author prefers statically typed languages for maintenance but acknowledges that dynamically typed languages like Python and TypeScript can be manageable, especially when types can be added later. They also recommend using named parameters to enhance maintainability.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses their appreciation for the recent Lua-related discussions on HN, praising the Defold game engine for its robust yet quirky design. Despite its steep learning curve, they believe its intentional quirks help developers structure their games effectively. The writer reflects on returning to LOVE2D for experimentation, noting the impact Defold has had on their approach to game development. They highly recommend Defold to anyone interested in game creation.
5. AMP and why emails are not (and should never be) interactive
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
Google’s AMP for email aims to modernize the email experience by allowing users to take actions like booking flights directly from their inbox. This follows Google’s previous implementation of AMP for mobile web pages, which gained begrudging adoption due to benefits such as faster load times and better search ranking. However, developers have criticized AMP for its potential threat to open web principles, as it divides mobile and desktop experiences and reduces site control. Despite these concerns, Google persists in pushing AMP into email, promoting interactive features while facing skepticism from the web community.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author criticizes the practice of sending emails that merely link to external content, as emails should be self-contained and immutable records. They emphasize the importance of being able to reference an email later without concerns about changes or access issues. The shift towards linking instead of attaching documents allows companies to control information, diminishing the reliability of receiving important records, such as invoices, in email form.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author agrees with the article’s conclusion but distinguishes between political objections to AMP and its technical merits. They argue that AMP’s design effectively supports complex publishing needs while mitigating performance and maintenance issues. The author has experience implementing AMP and believes its principles are beneficial, allowing gradual backend migration. They attempted to propose an AMP-like solution but the project was ultimately rewritten in React, leading to increased complexity. While AMP itself may be considered outdated, the valuable technical choices it made should be preserved.
6. The Size of Packets
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The article discusses the optimal size of packets in packet-switched networks, essential for digital communications. Currently, Internet packets range from 20 to 1,500 octets to avoid fragmentation and header truncation issues. Historically, RFC 791 set a maximum of 576 octets unless conditions were met for larger sizes. The evolution of Ethernet, developed in the 1970s for local area networks, emphasized decentralized design and efficient packet sizes. It balances the need for data timing integrity and network efficiency, influencing the design of packet sizes to minimize the risk of undetected collisions.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author recounts a significant bug encountered while developing a component to relay market data to a trading system for a major U.S. exchange. Despite performance tests showing successful results, latency unexpectedly deteriorated due to the addition of a single market to a data list. This small change caused the market data message to exceed Ethernet frame limits, resulting in fragmentation that slowed data transmission. Ultimately, short-term fixes were implemented to reduce message size, although the long-term solution remains unclear.
Top 2 Comment Summary
MTU discovery could be simplified by implementing a default behavior of truncating and forwarding oversized packets. This would enable endpoints to compare received bytes against the packet’s encoded size to identify truncation and determine the inbound MTU size. It facilitates endpoint protocol MTU discovery, ensuring authentication benefits and allowing precise measurement of MTU size with a single large probe packet. Additionally, this approach would help quickly identify MTU reductions from route changes, preventing packet loss or responses from unauthenticated sources.
7. Unikernel Linux (UKL) (2023)
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author, a former supervisor of a now-defunct project due to funding issues, expresses surprise at its mention on Hacker News and invites questions from readers.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article references an LKML thread and a GitHub repository related to the project. You can find the LKML thread at this link: LKML Thread and the project’s GitHub repository here: GitHub Repository.
8. Is it possible to write plain C iOS app in 2025?
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
The article discusses the feasibility of developing iOS applications using C instead of Objective-C. SDL provides a C wrapper that simplifies development, allowing for cross-platform compatibility. While Apple offers some C interfaces like CoreFoundation, UIKit still requires some Objective-C interaction. Many developers prefer using Java/Swift due to familiarity, but there’s an argument for open-source solutions to avoid vendor lock-in. The article also touches on game development and SDL’s integration capabilities, including sound and input, highlighting potential challenges and preferences among developers.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Objective-C allows for C function calls to perform similar tasks, meaning you can develop an entire iOS app in pure C. While using Objective-C syntax enhances usability, SDL provides a convenient C-based wrapper for simple games, enabling cross-platform compatibility without Objective-C. Additionally, Apple offers some C interfaces like CoreFoundation to minimize direct interaction with Objective-C, but UIKit, essential for all iOS apps, requires some Objective-C usage.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Many developers opt for a common codebase for cross-platform development, particularly in video games, where using C++ is prevalent. Game engines like Unreal and Unity utilize C/C++ with minimal integration layers for different platforms. While some might use web apps in Electron (also built in C++), the prevailing trend is to stick with native languages like Java for Android and Swift for iOS due to ease of access to tutorials and resources. There’s a call for more open-source solutions to prevent vendor lock-in in the development community.
9. 1,700 year old egg never broke
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
A well near London, known as Berryfields, dating back to Roman times, has yielded significant archaeological findings, including a unique 1,700-year-old intact egg. Researchers believe Romans used the well for extracting brewing water and later for rituals. The egg, preserved due to anaerobic conditions, is the oldest known intact avian egg, containing liquid yolk and albumen. DNA testing may reveal its origin, likely from a chicken, potentially shedding light on Roman cultural practices related to fertility. The findings underscore nearly two millennia of human activity and will eventually be displayed at London’s Natural History Museum.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author expresses skepticism about the scientific approach to egg shells, predicting they will result in sludge. They highlight the organic nature of egg shells and mention the use of waterglass (sodium silicate) as a sealing method.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The eggshell resembles a century egg, but the contents may have decomposed due to the lack of alkaline conditions necessary for the century egg production process.
10. ChatGPT now performs well at GeoGuesser
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author tested an image recognition system with 11 stripped images and found it performed surprisingly well. It misidentified two photos from a Northeast U.S. college town but accurately identified images from Korea, including Haneul Park and Sunrise Peak. It correctly recognized all U.S. images, including challenging shots from Austin and New York City. Overall, the author is impressed with the system’s performance despite a couple of mistakes.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article expresses skepticism about claims that multimodal LLMs have “solved” the game GeoGuesser, noting that achieving consistent success requires more than a few examples. It raises concerns about potential data leakage and suggests that while the LLMs’ abilities are impressive, they do not conclusively demonstrate what the title implies. The author’s perspective highlights that the LLMs likely benefited from training on location-tagged photos, enabling them to identify features and make educated guesses.