1. Marble Fountain
Total comment counts : 24
Summary
An enthusiast at Formlabs builds Marble Fountain, a procedural art piece designed to exploit printing complexity. Starting with random points, splines, and a fixed slope, they add a path solver to pack as much motion as the printer allows. The system evolves by updating point positions and managing velocity: banks, minimum turn radii, and aggressive banking dissipate speed; the lift doubles as a ball-screw with potential wobble. Supports are computed top-down via a particle system. Exports take 5–20 minutes; OpenSCAD limits, so a future rewrite with an SDF library is planned. Work culminated in a gallery submission in Somerville (2024).
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: Discussion of a computationally designed, 3D-printed marble track/fountain that runs smoothly and reliably, prompting analysis of physics, fabrication, and possible feature ideas like audio encoding and LEDs.
- Concern: The main worry is maintaining reliability and preventing derailing on a two-rail, banked track, which requires precise balance of forces.
- Perspectives: Viewpoints range from technical analysis of physics and fabrication challenges to enthusiastic appreciation of the aesthetics and interest in future enhancements and broader applications.
- Overall sentiment: Highly enthusiastic
2. Montana becomes first state to enshrine ‘right to compute’ into law
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
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Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The discussion centers on a Montana bill that enshrines a “Right to compute” and mandates AI-controlled critical infrastructure have a human-control fallback, prompting questions about rights and regulatory reach.
- Concern: The main worry is that the law could pave the way for broader restrictions on owning or modifying computing hardware and software, potentially leading to government or corporate overreach and ambiguous enforcement.
- Perspectives: Some see it as a needed protection against AI-enabled abuses and corporate power, while others fear it mirrors DRM-like controls, could hinder innovation, and hinges on unclear definitions of “citizens” and scope.
- Overall sentiment: Mixed
3. The Manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra
Total comment counts : 15
Summary
Edsger Dijkstra was a renowned computer scientist who bridged academia and industry, and a recipient of the ACM Turing Award. He circulated thousands of EWD manuscripts—notes, reports, and commentaries—by mail for over four decades. Most works remained unpublished until the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center created a permanent web collection with over a thousand PDFs, including diaries and correspondence. Access is via BibTeX and ad-hoc indexes; some items have translations, and crowd-sourced transcription and proofreading are encouraged. Rights vary; the collection also features lectures and interviews.
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The discussion centers on valuing formal, rigorous computer science education and programming, as championed by Dijkstra and his essays, over natural-language approaches and trend-driven curricula.
- Concern: The main worry is that educational trends are eroding intellectual discipline and mastery of language, weakening mathematical and computational thinking, and risking poor software practice as curricula become easier to pass.
- Perspectives: Viewpoints range from defenders of Dijkstra’s rigor and critics of natural-language programming to nostalgia for his writings and support for functional programming as a path to clearer thinking, with some noting ongoing debates about pedagogy and conventions.
- Overall sentiment: Mixed
4. Building a 2.5kWh battery from disposable vapes to power my workshop [video]
Total comment counts : 7
Summary
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Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The discussion analyzes repurposing consumer electronics to build resilient networks (like FreeNet) while weighing broader sustainability and safety concerns around e-waste and battery disposal.
- Concern: The main worry is the potential harm from e-waste, unsafe battery experiments, and fire hazards, as well as the environmental cost of manufacturing obsolete hardware.
- Perspectives: Viewpoints range from promoting reuse of old hardware to support decentralized networks, to warning about safety risks, regulatory issues, and the pollution associated with disposable vapes and e-waste.
- Overall sentiment: Mixed
5. Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)
Total comment counts : 43
Summary
The piece describes a language-learning tool that blends Anki’s word drills with Duolingo’s sentence exposure, emphasizing context and multiword expressions. The developer built NLP aids (a gemma3 finetuned model to parse word senses in sentences) and uses Wiktionary’s multiword terms to teach phrases like “’d better,” ensuring sentences shown only when all words and terms are known. The app is mostly free, with some old Reddit features behind a one-time fee; it has Apple users and aims to expand via Mozilla’s Extensions program. He’s also building SparkType, a client-side CMS/static site generator, and a Mac desktop file-organizer app that runs offline.
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The author is sharing a sprawling array of personal projects and side ventures across language learning tools, self-hosted software, browser extensions, games, and open-source experiments.
- Concern: The main worry is sustaining momentum and delivering quality across many concurrent projects, risking burnout and maintenance burden.
- Perspectives: Viewpoints range from enthusiastic celebration of open-source, self-hosted solutions and learning-by-building to pragmatic critiques of existing tools and the value of combining best features from different technologies.
- Overall sentiment: Very positive
6. The Principles of Diffusion Models
Total comment counts : 3
Summary
arXivLabs is a framework that lets collaborators create and share new arXiv features directly on the site. It emphasizes openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy, and arXiv only partners with groups that uphold these values. The page invites ideas for value-added projects and notes arXiv’s operational status. An invitation to help improve arXiv in 5 minutes.
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: A post shares Stefano Ermon’s CS236 Deep Generative Models lectures and a YouTube playlist, while noting a related Hacker News duplicate.
- Concern: The main worry is whether this submission duplicates a previous post, raising questions about originality and forum rules.
- Perspectives: Different viewpoints include praising the resource for its educational value, questioning the duplication issue, and expressing intent to read the linked material.
- Overall sentiment: Mixed
7. Bumble Berry Pi – A Cheap DIY Raspberry Pi Handheld Cyberdeck
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
A guide to a cheap, easy-to-build Raspberry Pi handheld cyberdeck. Assembly instructions are a work in progress, with the author offering more instructions or videos on request. The 3D parts are designed in SolidWorks, and the designer is open to sharing SolidWorks files for those who want to modify the design. Feedback is welcomed.
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: [Discussion about a compact pocket-sized Raspberry Pi project inspired by HackberryPiCM5, including DIY 3D printing and enclosure considerations]
- Concern: [A major worry is that 3D-printing costs or lack of access could make the project impractical or as expensive as the Raspberry Pi itself]
- Perspectives: [Opinions range from enthusiasm for a mini, pocketable device to skepticism about feasibility and costs, with some people considering doing it themselves or asking about alternatives like RS36 Max]
- Overall sentiment: [Mixed]
8. The Sega Master System
Total comment counts : 3
Summary
Generations are slippery; they don’t track power or release years neatly. The SG-1000 launched with the Famicom yet sits near third-gen, while its hardware echoes the second-gen ColecoVision. Sega’s international debut came in 1986 with the Master System, a Mark III upgrade designed to rival the NES and to be backward-compatible with the SG-1000. The era also includes Amiga 1000 and MSX2. The Master System’s VDP is a compatible upgrade to SG-1000’s; NES’s PPU drew from older principles. Sega favors a practical, “do this and go” approach, while Nintendo bundles multiple mechanisms for richer effects.
Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The thread centers on nostalgia for the Sega Master System’s sound chip and music, and it explores the hardware lineage (VDP origins) and early open hardware IP culture, including possible links to TMS9918 and 2A03.
- Concern: The main worry is that the hardware genealogy may be speculative and nostalgia could bias the interpretation or overstate open IP practices from the era.
- Perspectives: Viewpoints range from admiration for the SMS audio and curiosity about technical genealogy to cautious skepticism about proving specific links, alongside a note that hardware IP may have been relatively open in the early 80s.
- Overall sentiment: Nostalgic and curious.
9. Drilling down on Uncle Sam’s proposed TP-Link ban
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
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Overall Comments Summary
- Main point: The discussion centers on TP-Link router security, firmware support, and the broader implications for consumer networking hardware and security practices.
- Concern: The main worry is insecure firmware and lax security updates leading to breaches, plus potential negative consequences from bans or calls for domestic-only supply chains.
- Perspectives: There are varied viewpoints including blaming TP-Link for prioritizing profit over security, praising usability and openness to alternative firmware, advocating for universal in-depth audits rather than brand bans, and questioning the practicality/effectiveness of regulatory action.
- Overall sentiment: Mixed
10. The Computer Church – Pennsylvania Computer and Technology Museum
Total comment counts : 0
Summary
The piece highlights a vast, world-leading collection of analog computers—crucial to post‑WWII military tech and NASA—whose concepts foreshadowed modern digital computing. It notes a legendary Rangekeeper Mark VII fire-control computer on the USS St. Louis at Pearl Harbor and frames the Newsletter Computer Notes as influential in Silicon Valley’s culture and the PC era. It mentions Bill Gates’s Open Letter in 1976, a unique Hollerith punch-card manuscript, and 1969 Nieman Marcus Kitchen Computer publicity. It also recalls Penn’s 1946 first digital-computer course, Vannevar Bush’s influence, Moore’s Law, and Truesdell’s Hollerith history.