1. Eternal Struggle
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
Self-balancing: when one side grows larger by chance, its ball has more space and bounces less often, slowing growth; the smaller side’s ball bounces more in its smaller space, helping it catch up.
Top 2 Comment Summary
I can summarize, but I only see the title in your message. Please paste the article text (or a link) and I’ll summarize it in 100 words or fewer.
2. “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated” Why?
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
Discussion of WWII-era guidance to paraphrase telegrams to avoid leaking plaintext. The author notes documents in the US FDR Presidential Library with notices like “This telegram must be closely paraphrased before being communicated to anyone.” They explore what “paraphrase” meant, suggesting it avoided identical plaintext or cryptograms. Citing a 1950 US Army TM 32-220 “Basic Cryptography,” manual defines paraphrasing as rewriting text to change wording without altering meaning, by rearranging sentences, altering syntax, and using synonyms, while omitting data; emphasis on minimizing data exposure; and never sending the plaintext or a paraphrase of plaintext that has been or is encrypted.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The tale describes a bold known-plaintext tactic: British operatives allegedly planted handwritten “important messages” in dead German soldiers’ pockets, then used those notes as crib material to try to decrypt Enigma communications in the days that followed.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Correcting a mistaken link to ENIAC, the note explains that reusing the same key across paraphrased messages (‘in depth’) helped crack the Lorenz cipher. Bletchley Park lacked a Lorenz machine and relied on reasoning, which contributed to Colossus—the first tube computer and a precursor to ENIAC. Today we use nonces to limit such reuse, but nonce reuse in AES-GCM is dangerous. Some Bitcoin hardware wallets have fallen to this flaw, leaking private keys. The piece cites sources on Lorenz cryptanalysis and cryptography terminology and notes the etymology of ‘in depth’ is unclear.
3. When the sun will literally set on what’s left of the British Empire
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The piece argues the sun never sets on the British Empire thanks to distant territories, especially Pitcairn and BIOT (Diego Garcia). Solstice daylight maps show BIOT bridging the light gap. The UK plans to hand BIOT to Mauritius; this is disputed by Mauritius’s new government, with the US’s Diego Garcia base involved. A lease would erase BIOT, leaving sovereignty to Cyprus’s Sovereign Base Areas (Akrotiri and Dhekelia), whose complex borders and buffer zones arose from 1960 independence and 1974 tensions. The article uses more sunlight graphs to illustrate potential handoffs and questions the empire’s fate.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The speaker argues that the French Republic can still claim certain territories, citing a Wikipedia map as evidence and linking to a Wikimedia image of France’s territories.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece centers on the future of the .io top-level domain, noting its association with the British Indian Ocean Territory. It questions who will ultimately govern and regulate the domain and what changes might affect its administration.
4. I Don’t Have Spotify
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
Version 1.7.0 introduces a feature that lets users start by pasting a link from Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, or SoundCloud. The note also lists the update’s status, source, and the codename “Spooky Planning.”
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece argues for a clearer title: “Convert sharing links between music services.” It criticizes the current name as misleading because the tool can be used to convert to Spotify from iTunes even if you only have Spotify and not other music-service subscriptions.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author runs a fun playlist/mixtape that uses YouTube instead of Spotify, featuring a distinct audio-focused UI. See https://donohoe.dev/mixtape/.
5. Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
Fan of Rock 5 ITX+ but frustrated by its side-mounted microSD, the author decides to boot generic ARM Linux from USB by flashing an EDK2-RK3588 UEFI onto the SPI flash. They boot Armbian 25.2.2 Noble Gnome (kernel 6.1) to desktop, download the rock-5-itx UEFI release, and flash the 17 MB SPI device with GNOME Disks. On reboot, they access the Radxa UEFI setup and enable ACPI/Device Tree (Config Table: both; DTB: Mainline; overrides on). Because kernel 6.15+ is required for hardware acceleration, Debian 13 won’t cut it; Ubuntu daily or Fedora Rawhide are the likely options. Then install from USB.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece argues that ARM single-board computers need a functioning UEFI as the next essential milestone, suggests collaboration to standardize it, and criticizes the current practice of flashing systems via SD cards.
Top 2 Comment Summary
U-Boot can boot EFI binaries, but upstream support for GOP video on RK3588 isn’t provided. It’s device-tree only, so Windows isn’t supported—only Linux and BSDs.
6. Launch HN: VibeFlow (YC S25) – Web app generator with visual, editable workflows
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
VibeFlow aims to solve no-code fragility by generating a complete app from an English description and representing it as a visual workflow. Built for semi-technical builders, it outputs both AI-generated frontends and a deterministic backend powered by Convex, mapping a customizable workflow graph to code templates. Changes to the graph recompile into code, ensuring ownership and predictable deployments. Compared to traditional no-code tools, VibeFlow maintains a visible architecture and enables chat-based frontend edits; the backend is automatically connected with no black box. Try at app.vibeflow.ai; demo at YouTube.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The speaker wishes the startup well but finds the idea clichéd and laden with buzzwords, resembling four buzzwords in one. They remain skeptical and curious about how hard it is to get through Y Combinator’s selection process.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author says the startup’s name and idea are the most quintessentially “2025” they’ve encountered, calling it the standout example so far.
7. How is Ultrassembler so fast?
Total comment counts : 3
Summary
Ultrassembler is a standalone, superfast RISC-V assembler library for the Chata signal processing project. It lets C++ code assemble RISC-V machine code without external binaries or temp files, delivering low overhead and standards conformance. In benchmarks, Ultrassembler handles ~16k instructions about 10x faster than GNU as and 20x faster than llvm-mc (roughly 1,000 CPU cycles per instruction vs 10k–20k). The library uses zero-overhead exceptions for normal flow and reports errors when they occur; std::expected added ~10% slowdown in tests. It integrates with C++ and can pair with libriscv for scripting/JIT.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author greets readers, identifies themselves as the article’s writer, and invites questions to break the radio silence and encourage engagement.
Top 2 Comment Summary
They wonder if perfect hashing was considered instead of a comparison tree. They also note that flex (as with Bison) can generate similar trees, but haven’t benchmarked it against a carefully designed explicit tree.
8. Jujutsu for Everyone
Total comment counts : 29
Summary
This beginner-friendly tutorial teaches Jujutsu, a Git-compatible version control system, using the terminal. It targets Unix-like systems (Linux/macOS); Windows users can use WSL. Unlike many guides, it assumes little or no Git experience and provides level-based lessons built around a growing example repository. To avoid losing progress, each chapter includes a reset script you can run to return to its start. The tutorial and Jujutsu are evolving, with updates on GitHub; it aims for v0.32 as of August 2025. For Git pros, a different tutorial is recommended. Levels 1–2 are especially urgent for collaboration.
Top 1 Comment Summary
While many articles tout jj as superior to Git, this author finds the balance more nuanced. In practice, jj presents drawbacks: for collaborative work, sharing a branch with a coworker using a stream of commits is harder because jj lacks named branches (even with the tug alias). The “Tracking remote bookmarks” tutorial section also feels unpalatable. Additionally, jj previously couldn’t colocate with light clones (git clone –filter=blob:none), though that may have been addressed. Overall, jj’s downsides tempered its appeal.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece argues that Jujutsu is more powerful than Git, easier to learn, and more intuitive, with advanced features that surpass Git. However, it offers no concrete explanations or reasons to switch, rendering the claim an empty platitude and failing to justify trying Jujutsu.
9. Why haven’t quantum computers factored 21 yet?
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
The article argues that the difficulty of factoring 21 with Shor’s algorithm isn’t lack of progress, but the explosive gate cost. The 2001 factoring of 15 used 21 entangling gates; the factoring-21 circuit has about 2,405 entangling gates—roughly 115× more. The bottleneck is performing a sequence of conditional modular multiplications under superposition. For N=15 with g=2, many multiplications are by 1 or can be implemented cheaply (e.g., via a controlled xor or circular shifts), drastically reducing gates. For N=21, those simplifications don’t apply, making the circuit far more expensive.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece asks how many quantum gates are needed to factor a cryptographically useful number and whether there’s a viable path for quantum computers to be practically useful within this century.
Top 2 Comment Summary
It looks like what you pasted is a question, not a full article, so I can’t summarize it. Please paste the article text or provide a link.
If you want a quick high-level summary of the topic (circuit size to factor RSA-1024) in under 100 words: Estimating the circuit size to factor RSA-1024 depends on the model. Classical circuits must perform enormous GNFS-like computations, making 1024-bit factoring effectively infeasible with today’s hardware. Quantum circuits using Shor’s algorithm could factor 1024-bit numbers in time polynomial in log N, but require large, fault-tolerant quantum systems—thousands to millions of logical qubits and deep error‑corrected circuits. Practical factoring thus hinges on advances in quantum error correction and hardware; until then RSA-1024 remains out of reach for real circuits, with feasibility likely years to decades away.
10. The Case for Crazy Philanthropy
Total comment counts : 0
Summary
Private philanthropy is surging in science, with large foundations like HHMI, Wellcome, Novo Nordisk, and Gates Endowing billions. Yet bureaucratic grant processes push funding to traditional universities, reinforcing the status quo. High-profile gifts (Vagelos to Columbia; Griffin to Harvard; Knight to OHSU and the University of Oregon) illustrate this pattern. The piece calls for reviving “crazy philanthropy”—donations to unconventional issues, individuals outside academia, and new research organizations that could spark new fields. Examples such as Parker Institute, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and Arc Institute attempt innovation, but funding remains largely tethered to existing institutions and topics.