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•7mo ago

Comments

buildsjets•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
(2003)
throw0101b•7mo 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•7mo ago
Are there any public, open, comprehensive datasets on flights?
dieselerator•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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/

Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/japanese-devs-face-font-licensing-dilemma-as-leading-provider-incre...
161•zdw•3h ago•66 comments

Anthropic acquires Bun

https://bun.com/blog/bun-joins-anthropic
1681•ryanvogel•13h ago•795 comments

AI Agents Break Rules Under Everyday Pressure

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-agents-safety
75•pseudolus•5d ago•14 comments

IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-big-tech-ai-capex-data-center-spending-2025-12
423•nabla9•13h ago•503 comments

AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society

https://eyeofthesquid.com/ai-is-breaking-the-moral-foundation-of-modern-society-a145d471694f
63•TinyBig•1h ago•56 comments

Paged Out

https://pagedout.institute
355•varjag•11h ago•34 comments

Quad9 DOH HTTP/1.1 Retirement, December 15, 2025

https://quad9.net/news/blog/doh-http-1-1-retirement/
18•pickledoyster•1h ago•0 comments

Sending DMARC reports is somewhat hazardous

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/spam/DMARCSendingReportsProblems
24•zdw•2h ago•3 comments

Interview with RollerCoaster Tycoon's Creator, Chris Sawyer (2024)

https://medium.com/atari-club/interview-with-rollercoaster-tycoons-creator-chris-sawyer-684a0efb0f13
26•areoform•2h ago•1 comments

Understanding ECDSA

https://avidthinker.github.io/2025/11/28/understanding-ecdsa/
38•avidthinker•3h ago•3 comments

Super fast aggregations in PostgreSQL 19

https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/super-fast-aggregations-in-postgresql-19/
27•jnord•1w ago•1 comments

OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race

https://www.theverge.com/news/836212/openai-code-red-chatgpt
598•goplayoutside•16h ago•657 comments

I designed and printed a custom nose guard to help my dog with DLE

https://snoutcover.com/billie-story
483•ragswag•3d ago•57 comments

Counter Galois Onion: Improved encryption for Tor circuit traffic

https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-cgo/
57•wrayjustin•1w ago•6 comments

Amazon launches Trainium3

https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/02/amazon-releases-an-impressive-new-ai-chip-and-teases-a-nvidia-f...
164•thnaks•12h ago•65 comments

Learning music with Strudel

https://terryds.notion.site/Learning-Music-with-Strudel-2ac98431b24180deb890cc7de667ea92
457•terryds•1w ago•110 comments

Qwen3-VL can scan two-hour videos and pinpoint nearly every detail

https://the-decoder.com/qwen3-vl-can-scan-two-hour-videos-and-pinpoint-nearly-every-detail/
168•thm•2d ago•56 comments

All Sources of DirectX 12 Documentation

https://asawicki.info/news_1794_all_sources_of_directx_12_documentation
15•ibobev•1w ago•6 comments

DOOM could have had PC Speaker Music

https://lenowo.org/viewtopic.php?t=45
78•minki_the_avali•8h ago•48 comments

Zig's new plan for asynchronous programs

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1046084/4c048ee008e1c70e/
264•messe•16h ago•199 comments

Load ZX Spectrum – first Museum dedicated to our first personal computer

https://loadzx.com/en/
36•elvis70•6d ago•8 comments

All about automotive lidar

https://mainstreetautonomy.com/blog/2025-08-29-all-about-automotive-lidar/
142•dllu•1d ago•61 comments

School cell phone bans and student achievement

https://www.nber.org/digest/202512/school-cell-phone-bans-and-student-achievement
130•harias•13h ago•130 comments

Free static site generator for small restaurants and cafes

https://lite.localcafe.org/
120•fullstacking•11h ago•73 comments

Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera

https://varlogsimon.leaflet.pub/3m6zrw6k2bs2p?interactionDrawer=quotes
143•TimDotC•5h ago•127 comments

100k TPS over a billion rows: the unreasonable effectiveness of SQLite

https://andersmurphy.com/2025/12/02/100000-tps-over-a-billion-rows-the-unreasonable-effectiveness...
337•speckx•13h ago•122 comments

Delty (YC X25) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/delty/jobs/aPWMaiq-full-stack-software-engineer
1•lalitkundu•10h ago

Python Data Science Handbook

https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/
261•cl3misch•18h ago•47 comments

Addressing the adding situation

https://xania.org/202512/02-adding-integers
255•messe•19h ago•91 comments

Practical Intro to Operational Transformation

https://archive.casouri.cc/note/2025/practical-intro-ot/
32•casouri•6d ago•3 comments