Hacker News on Saturday, 24 February 2024

Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution(effectiviology.com)

1513 points by walterbell 2 years ago | 1032 comments

Effectiviology article explaining the Shirky Principle, the idea that institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

GPT in 500 Lines of SQL(explainextended.com)

1038 points by thunderbong 2 years ago | 70 comments

Blog post from Explain Extended implementing a GPT-style large language model inference in about 500 lines of SQL, as a New Year's post.

Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)(openrss.org)

810 points by stareatgoats 2 years ago | 292 comments

An Open RSS blog post from August 2023 arguing that Google's decisions, such as dropping RSS support in its products, hurt adoption of RSS feeds.

Please make your table headings sticky(btxx.org)

292 points by aragilar 2 years ago | 63 comments

Power Metal: is it really about dragons? (2018)(notes.atomutek.org)

269 points by guardienaveugle 2 years ago | 134 comments

Architecture.md (2021)(matklad.github.io)

250 points by mooreds 2 years ago | 42 comments

Does offering ChatGPT a tip cause it to generate better text?(minimaxir.com)

229 points by _Microft 2 years ago | 140 comments

How Does Bluesky Work?(steveklabnik.com)

211 points by steveklabnik 2 years ago | 55 comments

Frugly vs. Freemium(taylor.town)

195 points by nthypes 2 years ago | 59 comments

Losing two jobs in one year(jbennetcodes.medium.com)

180 points by softwaredoug 2 years ago | 116 comments

Coding the anime "woosh" screen on Amiga(dansalva.to)

179 points by dansalvato 2 years ago | 34 comments

GenAI and erroneous medical references(hai.stanford.edu)

161 points by hhs 2 years ago | 134 comments

The Earth is getting greener(vox.com)

157 points by besmirch 2 years ago | 147 comments

Cities stripping out concrete for earth and plants(bbc.com)

151 points by rntn 2 years ago | 49 comments

Show HN: Consol3 – A 3D engine for the terminal that executes on the CPU(github.com)

145 points by victormeriqui 2 years ago | 31 comments

Ledger(lock.cmpxchg8b.com)

144 points by hggh 2 years ago | 80 comments

V Language Review (2023)(n-skvortsov-1997.github.io)

140 points by thunderbong 2 years ago | 70 comments

Some OpenBSD features that aren't widely known(dataswamp.org)

137 points by zdw 2 years ago | 30 comments

How to think about software quality (2022)(evalapply.org)

135 points by adityaathalye 2 years ago | 57 comments

Everyone seems to forget why GNOME and GNOME 3 and Unity happened (2022)(liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org)

134 points by signa11 2 years ago | 199 comments

A modest update to Qubes OS(lwn.net)

130 points by voxadam 2 years ago | 20 comments

Slimming Down Windows 3.1/3.11 (2002)(geocities.ws)

128 points by userbinator 2 years ago | 62 comments

U.S. rice exports to Haiti have unhealthy levels of arsenic, study finds(reuters.com)

125 points by Jimmc414 2 years ago | 137 comments

Chronic stress spreads cancer(cshl.edu)

120 points by bookofjoe 2 years ago | 48 comments

DVD's New Cousin Can Store More Than a Petabit(spectrum.ieee.org)

120 points by mfiguiere 2 years ago | 80 comments

Neat Parallel Output in Python(bernsteinbear.com)

118 points by surprisetalk 2 years ago | 44 comments

We were not accepted into Google Summer of Code. So, we started our own(qdrant.tech)

118 points by andre-z 2 years ago | 38 comments

The Ultimate Guide to PostgreSQL Data Change Tracking(exaspark.medium.com)

113 points by thunderbong 2 years ago | 16 comments

Understanding, using, and finetuning Gemma(lightning.ai)

107 points by rasbt 2 years ago | 45 comments

Quality is a hard sell in big tech(pcloadletter.dev)

106 points by ben_s 2 years ago | 84 comments

A simple MUD server in Python which can be run on a Raspberry Pi(github.com)

105 points by raytopia 2 years ago | 59 comments

David Hahn, the 'radioactive boy scout' who tried to build a nuclear reactor (2022)(allthatsinteresting.com)

105 points by geox 2 years ago | 54 comments

Microsoft Joins the MapLibre Sponsorship Program(maplibre.org)

101 points by maelito 2 years ago | 13 comments

Quantifying the diva-ness of national anthem performances(pudding.cool)

100 points by nickthegreek 2 years ago | 95 comments

Notes from an Interviewer(devwithahammer.wordpress.com)

98 points by thunderbong 2 years ago | 173 comments

Miracle of Wörgl(alexstonethinkingstrings.com)

96 points by yamrzou 2 years ago | 32 comments

Geospatial Nix – create, use and deploy today(geospatial-nix.today)

94 points by l0b0 2 years ago | 18 comments

TOTP Codes in the Terminal(jpmens.net)

90 points by sea-gold 2 years ago | 60 comments

A giant meteorite has been lost in the desert since 1916(arstechnica.com)

89 points by Brajeshwar 2 years ago | 31 comments

Never-Repeating Tiles Can Safeguard Quantum Information(quantamagazine.org)

85 points by digital55 2 years ago | 14 comments

What DNS Is Not (2009)(queue.acm.org)

85 points by SerCe 2 years ago | 32 comments

Plasticity through patterned ultrasound-induced brainwave entrainment in mice(science.org)

84 points by bookofjoe 2 years ago | 42 comments

Ask HN: Anyone use a code to mindmap/flowchart tool?

84 points by Exorust 2 years ago | 37 comments

Almost an open-source boot chain for Rockchip's RK3588(collabora.com)

83 points by voxadam 2 years ago | 10 comments

Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Genetics Papers(science.org)

79 points by car 2 years ago | 35 comments

Archival Floppy Disk Preservation and Use [video](youtube.com)

75 points by hggh 2 years ago | 15 comments

Korea fines Twitch $327k for suspending service(koreatimes.co.kr)

74 points by SkinTaco 2 years ago | 50 comments

Lovecraftian movie posters from Ghana(deepcuts.blog)

73 points by weatherlight 2 years ago | 3 comments

Candy – a minimalistic functional programming language(github.com)

72 points by microflash 2 years ago | 39 comments

Abusing Conda's Turing-Complete YAML Comments(astrid.tech)

69 points by bo0tzz 2 years ago | 24 comments

The complete history of Gondar: Africa's city of castles (1636-1900)(africanhistoryextra.com)

69 points by prmph 2 years ago | 4 comments

Every. Single. New. Google. Product(twitter.com)

63 points by vinnyglennon 2 years ago | 14 comments

Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable(github.com)

63 points by epogrebnyak 2 years ago | 15 comments

Portugal eased its opioid epidemic, while U.S. drug deaths skyrocketed(text.npr.org)

62 points by rntn 2 years ago | 58 comments

Ask HN: How to survive as a homeless programmer in the winter (AB, Canada)?

62 points by krowfooten 2 years ago | 19 comments

Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?(salon.com)

59 points by Timothee 2 years ago | 45 comments

Iterating over bit sets quickly(alexharri.com)

58 points by liamswayne 2 years ago | 15 comments

Contributing Scrutiny to Nixpkgs(jnsgr.uk)

58 points by jnsgruk 2 years ago | 12 comments

The direct influence of Twin Peaks on Zelda(theverge.com)

54 points by ecliptik 2 years ago | 5 comments

Lawyer fined for legal filings that included 'hallucinated' AI citations(universalhub.com)

53 points by ilamont 2 years ago | 52 comments