frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning [pdf] (2003)

http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf
76•rochoa•1y ago

Comments

buildsjets•1y ago
This is well over 20 years old and is based on pre 9/11 flight data. I would suspect that a lot has changed since then. So proceed with no caution at all.
gwern•1y ago
Since these sorts of things usually only get more and more complex over time, I would guess that it's all still true, but much more so.
throw0101b•1y ago
(2003)
throw0101b•1y ago
The PDF was produced by ITA, which famously used Common Lisp:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

From 2001, a message from the same author as the linked paper:

> (Here's an email Carl de Marcken of ITA Software sent to a friend, describing their experiences using Lisp in one of the software industry's most demanding applications.)

* https://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html

Qem•1y ago
Are there any public, open, comprehensive datasets on flights?
dieselerator•1y ago
> Are there any public, open, comprehensive datasets on flights?

Airlines and commercial aviation operators schedule their own flights. That is a dynamic schedulle. So, perhaps there is no "comprehensive data set".

However, FlightAware makes publicly available scheduled and completed flight data over many routes in the USA. You can search by route and get a list of flights.

Flight information includes filed departure time, route of flight, and speed. For completed flights actual time, altitude, and route is shown. For example, a search on the route Dallas/Fort Worth to Austin lists 45 flights.

I hope that helps.

foundart•1y ago
A very interesting dive into, as the title says, the computational complexity of air travel planning. Graph algorithms with lots of complexity added due to the wide variety of fare conditions that airlines have dreamt up over the years.

The article may be from 2003 but I would call it an evergreen. While I imagine some of the details have changed since then, I suspect that the complexity has only grown since then.

foundart•1y ago
It makes me wonder: Would an airline that drastically simplified its fares be more likely to appear in flight search results?

Simplifying the fares would make it less computationally expensive and, in theory, could take fewer steps to answer a flight planning query.

Imagine a flight search planner that, say, fanned out N airline-specific workers when handling a planning query and then displayed to the user whatever results it got back within some time limit. If FooAir had simple fares, the FooAir searcher would likely run faster than searchers for other airlines. Thus it would be more likely to return results for more queries, assuming the deadline is fairly tight because of usability metrics. (People don't tend to stick around waiting for slow results.)

sjburt•1y ago
At least a few years ago (~2014), the fare search was actually nearly instant, but all major airfare search sites added a delay because customers had the impression they were getting a better deal when they had to wait. It seems like the delay has been dialed back lately.
teleforce•1y ago
This is a very popular article that get submitted every now and then (nearly every year) [1].

I think this kind of problem would be a very nice for logic, optimization and constraint programming that probably can be solved with modern tools like Google OR-Tool or Monash University MiniZinc [1],[2],[3].

[1] Past:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Computational%20Complexity%20o...

[2] Logic, Optimization, and Constraint Programming: A Fruitful Collaboration - John Hooker - CMU (2023) [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/live/TknN8fCQvRk

[3] Google OR-Tools:

https://developers.google.com/optimization

[4] MiniZinc:

https://www.minizinc.org/

.de TLD offline due to DNSSEC?

https://dnssec-analyzer.verisignlabs.com/nic.de
466•warpspin•3h ago•194 comments

Accelerating Gemma 4: faster inference with multi-token prediction drafters

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/multi-token-prediction-gemma-4/
402•amrrs•7h ago•178 comments

Write some software, give it away for free

https://nonogra.ph/write-some-software-give-it-away-for-free-05-05-2026
75•nohell•1h ago•48 comments

Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

https://reflex.dev/blog/computer-use-is-45x-more-expensive-than-structured-apis/
267•palashawas•6h ago•135 comments

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/chrome-silent-nano-install/
1177•john-doe•15h ago•799 comments

Three Inverse Laws of AI

https://susam.net/inverse-laws-of-robotics.html
332•blenderob•7h ago•232 comments

EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JhK8iCQuqI
196•brudgers•7h ago•44 comments

Why most product tours get skipped

https://productonboarding.com/articles/why-product-tours-get-skipped
34•pancomplex•2h ago•23 comments

NPR finds "no sign" of Polymarket at its Panama HQ address

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/05/nx-s1-5807918/polymarket-panama-prediction-market
85•ilamont•1h ago•29 comments

Show HN: Explore color palettes inspired by 3000 master painter artworks

https://paletteinspiration.com/
83•ouli•5h ago•33 comments

GLM-5V-Turbo: Toward a Native Foundation Model for Multimodal Agents

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.26752
95•gmays•5h ago•22 comments

Agents for financial services and insurance

https://www.anthropic.com/news/finance-agents
182•louiereederson•8h ago•128 comments

California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/usda-aid-california-farmers-22240694.php
223•littlexsparkee•5h ago•285 comments

Show HN: Airbyte Agents – context for agents across multiple data sources

84•mtricot•8h ago•12 comments

I'm scared about biological computing

https://kuber.studio/blog/Reflections/I%27m-Scared-About-Biological-Computing
122•kuberwastaken•7h ago•106 comments

Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/2051616759145185723
220•adrianmsmith•11h ago•248 comments

IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260505-00/?p=112298
274•SeenNotHeard•5h ago•162 comments

Zuckerberg 'personally authorized' Meta's copyright infringement, publishers say

https://apnews.com/article/meta-mark-zuckerberg-ai-publishers-lawsuit-llama-5609846d4d840014974a8...
36•jethronethro•1h ago•1 comments

Proliferate (YC S25) Is Hiring- 200k for junior engineers

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/proliferate/jobs/L3copvK-founding-engineer
1•pablo24602•6h ago

I completed 100 Days of Java over 5 years and mapped the journey as a graph

https://mohibulsblog.netlify.app/java/100daysofjava/graph/
11•celurian92•2d ago•2 comments

When everyone has AI and the company still learns nothing

https://www.robert-glaser.de/when-everyone-has-ai-and-the-company-still-learns-nothing/
298•youngbrioche•13h ago•209 comments

Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/meta-ai-mark-zuckerberg-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-publ...
195•spankibalt•5h ago•136 comments

Should I Run Plain Docker Compose in Production in 2026?

https://distr.sh/blog/running-docker-in-production/
335•pmig•5d ago•251 comments

The extended predicative Mahlo universe in Martin-Löf type theory

https://academic.oup.com/logcom/article/34/6/1032/7158523
19•danny00•2d ago•0 comments

Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/underwater-robot-tracks-sperm-whale-conversations-re...
49•thedebuglife•2d ago•10 comments

Researchers print structural colour with an inkjet printer

https://physicsworld.com/a/researchers-print-structural-colour-with-an-inkjet-printer/
37•zeristor•2d ago•5 comments

iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet

https://walletwallet.alen.ro/blog/ios-27-wallet-create-pass/
368•alentodorov•10h ago•281 comments

Comparing the Z80 and 6502 to Their Relatives

https://bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/comparing-the-z80-and-6502-to-their-relatives/
104•ibobev•2d ago•21 comments

Docker 29 has changed its default image store for new installs

https://docs.docker.com/engine/storage/containerd
116•neitsab•3d ago•69 comments

Collaborative Editing in CodeMirror (2020)

https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/collaborative-editing-cm.html
51•luu•2d ago•7 comments