Hacker News on Thursday, 3 April 2025

Stories posted this day, by points. Rank history starts with the October 2026 rebuild.

Screenshot of theaiunderwriter.substack.com: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip (theaiunderwriter.substack.com)

1431 points by participant3 1 year ago | 861 comments

A Substack post on The AI Underwriter about AI image generators reproducing copyrighted characters like Indiana Jones from generic prompts.

image-generation copyright generative-ai indiana-jones

Screenshot of animejs.com: AnimeJs v4 Is Here

AnimeJs v4 Is Here (animejs.com)

812 points by adrianvoica 1 year ago | 122 comments

Homepage of Anime.js, a fast and versatile JavaScript animation engine library, announcing version 4.

animejs javascript animation webgl

AI 2027 (ai-2027.com)

789 points by Tenoke 1 year ago | 518 comments

AI 2027 is a scenario by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander and others forecasting the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade, with interactive capability charts.

ai-forecasting superintelligence agi ai-safety

Screenshot of gatesnotes.com: Microsoft’s original source code

Microsoft’s original source code (gatesnotes.com)

550 points by EvgeniyZh 1 year ago | 289 comments

Bill Gates's GatesNotes post presenting Microsoft's original source code (Altair BASIC), styled with ASCII art on a printout-like page.

microsoft altair-basic source-code bill-gates

Screenshot of pilledtexts.com: I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad (pilledtexts.com)

544 points by Fred34 1 year ago | 482 comments

Blog post explaining why the author maintains a 2008 ThinkPad, using Taleb's ideas of fragility, robustness, and the Lindy Effect to compare it with a 2021 laptop.

thinkpad laptops lindy-effect antifragile

Screenshot of github.com: Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsers

Curl-impersonate: Special build of curl that can impersonate the major browsers (github.com)

507 points by mmh0000 1 year ago | 142 comments

GitHub repository for curl-impersonate, a special build of curl that mimics the TLS and HTTP handshakes of Chrome and Firefox to impersonate those browsers.

curl tls-fingerprinting browser-impersonation chrome

Screenshot of newyorker.com: A university president makes a case against cowardice

A university president makes a case against cowardice (newyorker.com)

447 points by pseudolus 1 year ago | 712 comments

New Yorker Q&A with Wesleyan president Michael Roth arguing colleges need not capitulate to Trump Administration pressure over student activism.

higher-education wesleyan-university michael-roth trump-administration

Screenshot of cs.utexas.edu: Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"

Dijkstra On the foolishness of "natural language programming"(cs.utexas.edu)

390 points by nimbleplum40 1 year ago | 236 comments

Transcription of Edsger Dijkstra's manuscript EWD 667 arguing that programming in natural language is foolish and that formal symbolism is essential.

edsger-dijkstra natural-language-programming formal-methods programming-languages

Screenshot of dutchosintguy.com: The slow collapse of critical thinking in OSINT due to AI

The slow collapse of critical thinking in OSINT due to AI (dutchosintguy.com)

385 points by walterbell 1 year ago | 203 comments

Blog post by Nico Dekens (dutch_osintguy) arguing that reliance on AI tools is eroding critical thinking among OSINT investigators.

osint generative-ai critical-thinking intelligence-analysis

Screenshot of thirty-five.com: Overengineered Anchor Links

Overengineered Anchor Links (thirty-five.com)

378 points by matser 1 year ago | 150 comments

Blog post by Mats Erdkamp exploring the 'active anchor problem' in anchor link navigation and an overengineered solution for headings near the page bottom.

anchor-links scroll-behavior ui-design frontend