frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Bits with Soul

https://www.darwin.cam.ac.uk/lectures/entry/bits-with-soul/
30•mrkeen•4d ago

Comments

flir•10h ago
"When people think of codes, coding, and computers, they often think of socially challenged nerds like me, writing “code” (whatever that might be) in a darkened basement, all soulless ones and zeros and glowing screens. But in fact computer science (the study of information, computation, and communication) gives us an enormously rich new lens through which to look at and explore the world. By encoding everything in the same, digital bits, we can mechanise the analysis and transformation of that information; we can explore it in ways that are simply inaccessible to manual techniques; we can engage our creativity to write programs whose complexity rivals the most sophisticated artefacts that human beings have produced—and yet fit on a USB drive; we can even learn from data in ways that have made “ChatGPT” into a verb practically overnight.

Given how closely digital technology is interwoven in our lives, having a visceral sense of how this stuff works, what it can do well, and how it can fail, is essential for us to survive and thrive, and should be part of every child’s education.

In my talk I will share some of the joy, beauty, and creativity of computer science. This is serious, because it impinges on our daily lives. But it is also rich, beautiful, and fun."

(Pasted here because it's not obvious where this one's going from the landing page).

maxverse•10h ago
Direct YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2QWxT9a8HU
akomtu•9h ago
Reducing the nature to "the same digital bits", seeing it as a mechanism, is precisely the soulless nature of tech that the normies are worried about, and it's probably why the nerds who are too immersed in tech are so socially awkward.
marcellus23•7h ago
There's nothing inherently soulless about that.
timthorn•8h ago
You perhaps missed the key point - this was Simon Peyton Jones speaking.

I was fortunate enough to be in the audience; while the talk was pitched at a lay audience, Simon is the type of speaker who can make anything engaging and enjoyable to listen to regardless of whether you know the material he's presenting or have not the first idea.

Postgres IDE in VS Code

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/adforpostgresql/announcing-a-new-ide-for-postgresql-in-vs-code-from-microsoft/4414648
684•Dowwie•10h ago•286 comments

Modification of acetaminophen to reduce liver toxicity and enhance drug efficacy

https://www.societyforscience.org/regeneron-sts/2025-student-finalists/chloe-lee/
66•felineflock•1h ago•12 comments

Find Your People

https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/find-your-people
384•jl•9h ago•162 comments

The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding

https://www.thewayofcode.com/
16•CharlesW•1h ago•5 comments

Mermaid: Generation of diagrams like flowcharts or sequence diagrams from text

https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid
39•olalonde•2d ago•18 comments

Show HN: Genetic Boids Web Simulation

https://attentionmech.github.io/genetic-boids/
97•vimgrinder•6h ago•28 comments

Root for your friends

https://josephthacker.com/personal/2025/05/13/root-for-your-friends.html
72•rez0123•2h ago•19 comments

The world of Japan's PC-98 computer

https://strangecomforts.com/the-strange-world-of-japans-pc-98-computer/
56•ecliptik•5h ago•17 comments

Show HN: I built a more productive way to manage AI chats

https://contextch.at
57•tapeo•5h ago•30 comments

A Formal Proof of Complexity Bounds on Diophantine Equations

https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.16963
59•badmonster•5h ago•6 comments

Positional preferences, order effects, prompt sensitivity undermine AI judgments

https://www.cip.org/blog/llm-judges-are-unreliable
103•joalstein•8h ago•57 comments

Show HN: DoubleMemory – more efficient local-first read-it-later app

https://doublememory.com
88•randomor•7h ago•27 comments

UndoDB – The interactive time travel debugger for Linux C/C++ for debugging

https://undo.io/
42•droideqa•5h ago•21 comments

Beyond Semantics: Unreasonable Effectiveness of Reasonless Intermediate Tokens

https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13775
101•nyrikki•9h ago•48 comments

John Carmack talk at Upper Bound 2025

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1925710474366034326
486•tosh•20h ago•327 comments

Visual Studio Code: Text Buffer Reimplementation (2018)

https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation
20•stefankuehnel•3d ago•0 comments

A Bead Too Far: Rethinking Global Connections Before Columbus

https://peterfrankopan.substack.com/p/a-bead-too-far-rethinking-global
16•themgt•11h ago•0 comments

Startup enables 100-year bridges with corrosion-resistant steel

https://news.mit.edu/2025/allium-engineering-enables-100-year-bridges-corrosion-resistant-steel-0520
3•rbanffy•2d ago•2 comments

Caesar's Last Breath

https://charliesabino.com/caesars-last-breath/
123•charliesabino•11h ago•54 comments

Types of optical systems in a lens designer's toolbox (2020)

https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-forms/
55•picture•7h ago•10 comments

How to live on $432 a month in America

https://shagbark.substack.com/p/how-to-live-on-432-a-month-in-america
192•cactusplant7374•9h ago•333 comments

Why I no longer have an old-school cert on my HTTPS site

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/05/22/ssl/
241•mcbain•14h ago•232 comments

Into The Tunnel: The secret life of wind tunnels

https://jordanwtaylor2.substack.com/p/into-the-tunnel
57•iamwil•8h ago•6 comments

The metre originated in the French Revolution

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-05-20/metre-treaty-anniversary-metric-system-measurement-metrology/105302024
78•Tomte•10h ago•132 comments

Japan and the Birth of Modern Shipbuilding

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-japan-invented-modern-shipbuilding
41•m463•7h ago•31 comments

Show HN: High-resolution surface analysis with Lidar data

https://github.com/r-follador/delta-relief
6•folli•2d ago•0 comments

Show HN: GetStack.dev – Track GitHub open-source trends

https://getstack.dev
16•h1fra•18h ago•4 comments

Show HN: hcker.news – an ergonomic, timeline-based Hacker News front page

https://hcker.news
134•postalcoder•7h ago•59 comments

Writing A Job Runner (In Elixir) (Again) (10 years later)

https://github.com/notactuallytreyanastasio/genstage_tutorial_2025/blob/main/README.md
126•rhgraysonii•15h ago•32 comments

MCP is the coming of Web 2.0 2.0

https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/20/mcp-web20-20/
190•freediver•10h ago•160 comments