1. Are we decentralized yet?
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
This page uses the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) to quantify concentration in the Fediverse and Atmosphere. HHI sums the squares of market shares of all servers (Fediverse instances; Atmosphere PDS hosting user data). Values near zero indicate competitive markets, while 10,000 signals a monopoly. Economics bands: <100 highly competitive, <1500 unconcentrated, >2500 highly concentrated. Bluesky Social PBC’s PDSes are aggregated since they’re controlled by one entity. Other metrics are possible. Code and data are on GitHub. By Rob Ricci.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and a counterintuitive corner case. In the late 1980s, Microsoft supposedly had >100% market share in the Macintosh spreadsheet market because Lotus Jazz had more returns than sales, giving Lotus a negative share. With hypothetical shares of Microsoft 102% and Lotus -2%, the HHI is 102^2 + (-2)^2 = 10,408. This shows that, in a pathological scenario, HHI can exceed 10,000.
Top 2 Comment Summary
BlueSky is effectively a drop-in Twitter replacement for average users. While Mastodon has smaller user counts, its ecosystem appears to avoid centralization, unlike the AT-Proto ecosystem. The author suspects that running AT-Proto servers/relays is costly for small players, whereas Mastodon relies on a smaller set of peer-fed servers, though they admit limited understanding of the systems’ internals.
2. Cognitive load is what matters
Total comment counts : 56
Summary
The article argues that cognitive load—the mental effort to understand code—drives confusion and waste. It distinguishes intrinsic (unreducible) from extraneous (presentation-related) load, focusing on reducing extraneous load. Practical tips include using meaningful intermediate variables, avoiding deep or overly complex inheritance, and preferring composition. It warns that too many shallow modules hide complexity, while deep modules should have simple interfaces. Emphasizing fewer, clearer interfaces over clever architectures, it contrasts two projects (80 shallow vs. 7 deep classes) to show easier comprehension with deep, simple interfaces. It echoes John K. Ousterhout: strong components with simple interfaces.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Accessibility should be a core goal in coding. Treat rules as guidelines and cultivate judgment: a master writes readable code by knowing when to bend or augment rules. Develop critical thinking about costs and trade-offs, and consider the next reader (often yourself later). Merely following rules blindly trades one problem for another; accessible code becomes tacit knowledge learned by practice. You’ll gain a feel for when code is over- or under-structured and for heavy-handedness. Yes, decision-making is an uncomfortable freedom, but with practice you adapt.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Designing code that imposes low cognitive load on others is rare and requires persistent effort, even for capable developers. It hinges on mentally compressing core ideas into their essence and ensuring the code reveals only the minimal necessary complexity. This discipline is difficult and uncommon in practice.
3. The Rise of Hybrid PHP: Blending PHP with Go and Rust
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
Originally, the team ran a DDD monolith (the mother) in PHP 8.3 with Go microservices (the children). Go handled high-throughput traffic while the monolith kept feature delivery fast. Recognizing that 80% of requests hit 20% of APIs, they previously used optimization, caching, or service splits to boost hot endpoints. Now PHP’s ecosystem enables keeping more logic inside the monolith without sacrificing performance: use PHP FFI to call C, write Rust (or Zig) extensions, or run PHP under FrankenPHP with Go-based extensions. They avoid full rewrites because rewriting is costly and PHP remains suitable; extensions offer a hybrid approach.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The modern PHP ecosystem blends rapid PHP development with offloading performance-critical parts to languages like C, Rust, or Go, delivering productivity without sacrificing speed where it matters. This hybrid approach suits large codebases where rewriting isn’t feasible. If full rewrites aren’t a constraint, a C# API can offer both quick development and strong execution, reducing the need for C++ or Rust. However, PHP lacks features like typed arrays and can allow mismatched types (e.g., strings in an array of dates).
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article expresses optimism about PHP’s continued viability and ongoing relevance.
4. Can cheaper lasers handle short distances?
Total comment counts : 0
Summary
VCSELs are moving from long-haul to metro-local networks and into data centers, with optics pushed closer to servers and copper in racks increasingly replaceable by fiber. Researchers are exploring how fibers attach to processors and whether linear or co-packaged optics will replace standard pluggables. Core concerns remain reliability, temperature sensitivity, and energy (laser threshold). Today’s incumbent DFB lasers operate in O- or C-band; DFBs offer better performance but higher cost. Silicon photonics aims to enable interconnects, but precise temperature control—down to tenths of a degree—remains the key hurdle.
5. Agent Client Protocol (ACP)
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
The article serves as an introduction to the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) and offers guidance on how to get started with it. It also includes a page-level prompt asking readers whether the page was helpful.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Design a protocol for AI agents to communicate with IDEs/editors, develop Node.js, Python, and Rust libraries to support it, and build a website with a landing page.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Zed appears to return to its collaboration roots, sidelining direct competition in the agentic IDE space. Adoption among CLI agents is anticipated, noting Gemini CLI is already in. Overall, increased competition in LLM and coding assistants should further reduce switching costs for users.
6. AI models need a virtual machine
Total comment counts : 29
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
A prior Hacker News post by John Carmack argued Meta wasted time and money building XROS and that writing a new OS now isn’t sensible. A follow-up post makes a strong case for a lightweight, industry-wide VM layer instead of a full OS—likely built on an existing OS or codebase. It notes a VM isn’t a complete OS, could be lighter and broadly applicable, and would require nuance rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. See HN item 45066395.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The main idea is that the key issue is not which tools an LLM has, but what actions it is allowed to take. For example, a booking task may require price checks and payment while avoiding undesirable itineraries, and benefits lookups should be restricted to appropriate personnel with audit trails. In short, intent matters: the LLM should operate under the same identity and constraints as the user it serves, rather than acting with unrestricted capabilities.
7. Do the simplest thing that could possibly work
Total comment counts : 113
Summary
The article argues that, in software design, you should do the simplest thing that could possibly work. Rather than chasing an ideal, near-perfect system, first deeply understand the current one and implement a minimal solution. Mastery comes from knowing when to do less, not more. The author uses YAGNI-like thinking and practical examples—like rate limiting—where you might use in-memory counters or adjust edge-proxy configurations before adding new infrastructure. Three caveats are inflexibility, ambiguity of ‘simplest,’ and neglecting scalability. Truly great design often looks understated, leveraging simple, reliable primitives.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Despite claims of simplicity, large-scale software is inherently complex. Even simple business problems can take years and fail often due to countless edge cases and scale. Rewrites based on old codebases frequently stumble for the same reason. The piece invokes Chesterton’s Fence to warn against removing established constraints without understanding their purpose.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article traces the origin of the programming maxim “the simplest thing that could work” to Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck, who popularized it in the late 1980s during their coding collaboration and talks. It uses a door analogy—try the handle, search for a key, or break down the door—to show that “simplest” solutions aren’t always easy. The pair were aware this approach can accumulate technical debt, a term Cunningham later coined; in the short term, getting code working often trumped concerns about debt, something the article could have highlighted more.
8. Condor’s Cuzco RISC-V Core at Hot Chips 2025
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
Condor Computing, a 2023 Andes subsidiary, debuts Cuzco, an 8-wide, out-of-order RISC-V core at Hot Chips 2025. It targets 2–2.5 GHz on 5nm with a 256-entry ROB and a 12-stage pipeline (roughly 10-cycle mispredict). Cuzco uses a mostly statically scheduled, “time-based” backend to save power without ISA changes. It features a TAGE-SC-L branch predictor (16K bimodal base, 8K BTB, 32-entry RSB), 64KB I-cache, 64-entry TLB, and decodes eight instructions per cycle. Configurable in clusters (up to 8 cores) via CHI for scalable interconnect and L2/L3 sizing.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article praises a risky, unconventional microarchitecture and seeks insight into its performance, power, and area. It doubts it will match Tomasulo-like designs on raw performance, noting that treating a load as an L1 hit is a fragile abstraction that could cause scheduling stalls if mispredicted, especially in memory-bound workloads. It echoes the view that static scheduling is often weaker than dynamic approaches, despite decades of compiler work since Itanium. Still, the Efficient Computer approach is intriguing, and its future evolution is eagerly anticipated.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests a VLIW-like scheduling pass embedded in the CPU scheduler, avoiding an intermediate microcode cache as NV Denver did. Without addressing memory dependencies or cache hazards, its effectiveness for general-purpose workloads is uncertain. While Denver avoided some locality issues, data loads would still be problematic. The idea is that data cache misses cause “instruction amplification,” replaying instructions until dependencies are ready, which may leave execution ports idle like a traditional OoO design. Practically, cache misses could cascade into stalls, eroding performance toward in-order levels typical of VLIW.
9. You Have to Feel It
Total comment counts : 16
Summary
The piece argues that software success isn’t measured by checklists, schedules, or demos alone. Even with all boxes checked, you may not feel anything. The real value lies in users’ emotional responses—the joy, relief, and confidence a feature evokes. Feeling is integral to both the work and its requirements; when a product truly fits, it makes users want to reuse and share it, something metrics can miss. To create great work, you must use, live with, and feel it.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece argues that you usually must feel it to do your best work and achieve fulfillment, but you shouldn’t rely on perpetual “feeling it.” Constantly chasing intense passion can burn you out if results don’t meet expectations. Passion drives strong effort and emotion, which can take time to recover from. In short: you mostly need to feel it, but balance and sustainability matter to avoid burnout.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author emphasizes engineering should prioritize the user experience across all layers of the stack, with UX being the ultimate focus. They note Apple exemplified this mindset and it’s widely accepted there, but not as consistently elsewhere.
10. U.S. guided-missile cruiser crosses Panama Canal, warships deployed to Venezuela
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
Amid U.S. deployment of warships near Venezuela, the 567-foot USS Lake Erie was seen entering the Caribbean through the Panama Canal after sailing from the Pacific. The move is framed by Washington as part of an anti-drug trafficking operation near Venezuela, with Maduro’s regime accused of running a cartel and facing a $50 million bounty. Venezuela has mobilized tens of thousands of security forces and pledged to patrol waters with drones and ships; Maduro says invasion is impossible. Separately, the U.S. has designated eight drug groups as terrorist organizations to broaden tools against cartels.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Outside the United States, there appears to be little interest in confronting Venezuela, portraying its president as unpopular and eager for a rally-around-the-troops moment, potentially pursuing oil-field seizures to reward supporters in the petroleum industry.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece questions whether Trump’s remark—“three and a half years from now, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections”—refers to the war he mentioned, or to a different future conflict he might start to cling to power.