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I Write Games in C (yes, C)

https://jonathanwhiting.com/writing/blog/games_in_c/
66•valyala•2h ago•33 comments

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes

https://xorvoid.com/sectorc.html
40•valyala•2h ago•4 comments

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC Concludes 25-Year Run with Final Collisions

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/brookhaven-labs-rhic-concludes-25-year-run-with-final-collis...
14•gnufx•1h ago•1 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
131•AlexeyBrin•8h ago•25 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
143•1vuio0pswjnm7•9h ago•170 comments

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
256•ColinWright•2h ago•295 comments

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
839•klaussilveira•22h ago•251 comments

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

https://susam.net/twenty-five-years-of-computing.html
77•vinhnx•5h ago•9 comments

U.S. Jobs Disappear at Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestunson/2026/02/05/us-jobs-disappear-at-fastest-january-pace-sin...
197•alephnerd•3h ago•141 comments

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

https://spillhistorie.no/2026/02/06/interview-with-sierra-veteran-al-lowe/
57•thelok•4h ago•8 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
1068•xnx•1d ago•615 comments

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

https://rlhfbook.com/
87•onurkanbkrc•7h ago•5 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
497•theblazehen•3d ago•186 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
218•jesperordrup•13h ago•80 comments

Show HN: I saw this cool navigation reveal, so I made a simple HTML+CSS version

https://github.com/Momciloo/fun-with-clip-path
19•momciloo•2h ago•1 comments

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

https://blog.alaindichiappari.dev/p/software-engineering-is-back
239•alainrk•7h ago•378 comments

France's homegrown open source online office suite

https://github.com/suitenumerique
583•nar001•7h ago•260 comments

The F Word

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/02/friction.html
5•zdw•3d ago•0 comments

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-fresh-look-at-ibm-3270-information-display-system
42•rbanffy•4d ago•8 comments

Selection Rather Than Prediction

https://voratiq.com/blog/selection-rather-than-prediction/
10•languid-photic•3d ago•1 comments

72M Points of Interest

https://tech.marksblogg.com/overture-places-pois.html
32•marklit•5d ago•4 comments

Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-locked-me-out-of-notepad-is-the-thin-...
15•josephcsible•46m ago•10 comments

History and Timeline of the Proco Rat Pedal (2021)

https://web.archive.org/web/20211030011207/https://thejhsshow.com/articles/history-and-timeline-o...
19•brudgers•5d ago•4 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
116•videotopia•4d ago•35 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
84•speckx•4d ago•94 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
280•isitcontent•23h ago•38 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
203•limoce•4d ago•112 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
291•dmpetrov•23h ago•156 comments

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

https://github.com/sandys/kappal
23•sandGorgon•2d ago•13 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
560•todsacerdoti•1d ago•272 comments
Open in hackernews

Show HN: Python Simulator of David Deutsch’s “Constructor Theory of Time”

https://github.com/gvelesandro/constructor-theory-simulator
84•SandroG•8mo ago
Hi HN,

I turned the freshly published paper “The Constructor Theory of Time” by David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto (arXiv, 13 May 2025) into an executable Python library.

What you’ll find • One-to-one translation of the paper’s formalism: Substrates, Attributes, Tasks, Constructors, and task-algebra operators • Possibility / impossibility predicates and counterfactuals encoded exactly as defined • Test suite that mirrors every lemma and example (>95 % coverage, mypy-typed) • Reproductions of key results: time-keeping substrates, irreversibility proofs, quantum branching tasks, and a self-replicating constructor

Why share? Reading the paper is tough going; expressing each definition in code clarified the ideas and surfaced a couple of questions for discussion. Hoping it helps others and sparks extensions.

Looking for feedback: • Did I miss any subtleties in the formalism? • Which additional theorems or examples would you like implemented next?

Repo: https://github.com/gvelesandro/constructor-theory-simulator

Thanks for taking a look—issues and PRs welcome!

Comments

revskill•8mo ago
What is it for ?
monocasa•8mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructor_theory
nothrowaways•8mo ago
"The fundamental elements of the theory are tasks.. A task is impossible if there is a law of physics that forbids its being performed with arbitrarily high accuracy, and possible otherwise. When it is possible, a constructor for it can be built, again with arbitrary accuracy and reliability."
amelius•8mo ago
Can it simulate a hydrogen atom? How about two hydrogen atoms coming into contact with various energies?
SandroG•8mo ago
Here you go:

https://github.com/gvelesandro/constructor-theory-simulator/...

amelius•8mo ago
Thanks for adding it :)

I do have a question ... it seems you modeled the hydrogen atom specifically, but how does that work if a larger nucleus falls apart? Would it be possible to do the modeling at a lower level?

empiricus•8mo ago
Not sure what to make of this. The only relation with the hydrogen atom is that it has the name "Hydrogen" in the code. And the only relation with the energy is that is has a float value called "energy_gap" which has some random hardcoded value.
canvascritic•8mo ago
Clearly a labor of love. Props to you

I suppose if one is teaching or evangelizing constructor theory, this could be sort of like an interactive textbook

Needless to say, constructor theory hasn't really earned a stable foothold in mainstream physics, and there's a lot of hype in this space, but that's not a criticism of this particular project, just good to know for anyone not familiar

The quantum gravity + graviton tasks stuff especially. without a falsifiable physical model backing it, this can feel like mathematized cosplay. But that has more to do with constructor theory vs this project

Would love to see someone do a pluggable backend so you could test different "task ontologies" against each other.

Mainly I came here to say that categories can likely be used to great effect here a la Geroch

For instance you can start by modeling tasks as morphisms between substrate states (objects), and then enforce composition explicitly. define constructors as functors that map tasks and substrates while preserving structure.

for quantum or irreversible effects, use monads to encapsulate branching and decoherence. Then one could represent task sequences as categorical diagrams and check for commutativity. Or embed substrates via Yoneda to expose behavior in terms of available tasks

SandroG•8mo ago
This is very helpful and insightful. Thank you!
Xmd5a•8mo ago
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05364

>In this work, we show how to formulate fundamental notions of constructor theory within the canvas of process theory. Specifically, we exploit the functorial interplay between the symmetric monoidal structure of the category of sets and relations, where the abstract tasks live, and that of symmetric monoidal categories from physics, where concrete processes can be found to implement said tasks.

moneywaters•8mo ago
when I run the demo.py, its static in matplotlib window, should it move right ?