frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Making the rav1d Video Decoder 1% Faster

https://ohadravid.github.io/posts/2025-05-rav1d-faster/
40•todsacerdoti•1h ago•8 comments

Planetfall

https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/planetfall/
96•milliams•3h ago•20 comments

Gemini Diffusion

https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/21/gemini-diffusion/
661•mdp2021•11h ago•172 comments

The scientific “unit” we call the decibel

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/decibels-are-ridiculous
356•Ariarule•8h ago•220 comments

Show HN: Curved Space Shader in Three.js (via 4D sphere projection)

https://github.com/bntre/CurvedSpaceShader
12•bntr•2h ago•4 comments

Four years of sight reading practice

https://sandrock.co.za/carl/2025/05/four-years-of-sight-reading-pracice/
30•chthonicdaemon•3d ago•13 comments

Why does Debian change software?

https://blog.liw.fi/posts/2025/why-debian-changes/
168•tapanjk•6h ago•96 comments

Inigo Quilez: computer graphics, mathematics, shaders, fractals, demoscene

https://iquilezles.org/articles/
183•federicoponzi•4d ago•19 comments

Kotlin-Lsp: Kotlin Language Server and Plugin for Visual Studio Code

https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlin-lsp
119•todsacerdoti•10h ago•67 comments

Robert Musil Forgotten Plays Inspired His Greatest Work of Fiction

https://lithub.com/the-austrian-writer-whose-forgotten-plays-inspired-his-greatest-work-of-fiction/
3•DyslexicAtheist•1h ago•1 comments

Hotspot: Linux `perf` GUI for performance analysis

https://github.com/KDAB/hotspot
50•jez•2d ago•9 comments

Display any CSV file as a searchable, filterable, pretty HTML table

https://github.com/derekeder/csv-to-html-table
169•indigodaddy•12h ago•33 comments

Devstral

https://mistral.ai/news/devstral
594•mfiguiere•22h ago•125 comments

For algorithms, a little memory outweighs a lot of time

https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-algorithms-a-little-memory-outweighs-a-lot-of-time-20250521/
286•makira•17h ago•85 comments

A lost decade chasing distributed architectures for data analytics?

https://duckdb.org/2025/05/19/the-lost-decade-of-small-data.html
141•andreasha•3d ago•52 comments

How we made our optical character recognition (OCR) code more accurate

https://pieces.app/blog/how-we-made-our-optical-character-recognition-ocr-code-more-accurate
15•thunderbong•1d ago•11 comments

Getting a paper accepted

https://maxwellforbes.com/posts/how-to-get-a-paper-accepted/
151•stefanpie•11h ago•71 comments

Direct TLS can speed up your connections

https://marc-bowes.com/postgres-direct-tls.html
57•tanelpoder•7h ago•20 comments

CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/05/cern-gears-up-to-ship-antimatter-across-europe/
209•ben_w•2d ago•118 comments

Strengths and limitations of diffusion language models – sean goedecke

https://www.seangoedecke.com/limitations-of-text-diffusion-models/
8•rbanffy•2h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Forge – Secure, Multi-Tenant GitHub Actions Runners on K8s or EC2

https://github.com/cisco-open/forge
5•ebrilhante•3d ago•4 comments

Gemini figured out my nephew’s name

https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/May/gemini-figured-out-my-nephews-name/
150•BeetleB•3d ago•76 comments

ITXPlus: A ITX Sized Macintosh Plus Logicboard Reproduction

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/itxplus-a-itx-sized-macintosh-plus-logicboard-reproduction.49715/
101•zdw•15h ago•24 comments

Collaborative Text Editing Without CRDTs or OT

https://mattweidner.com/2025/05/21/text-without-crdts.html
250•samwillis•20h ago•67 comments

Rocky Linux 10 Will Support RISC-V

https://rockylinux.org/news/rockylinux-support-for-riscv
158•fork-bomber•16h ago•94 comments

Animated Factorization (2012)

http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/math/factorization/animated-diagrams/
261•miniBill•22h ago•55 comments

OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-21/openai-to-buy-apple-veteran-jony-ive-s-ai-device-startup-in-6-5-billion-deal
759•minimaxir•20h ago•1032 comments

LLM function calls don't scale; code orchestration is simpler, more effective

https://jngiam.bearblog.dev/mcp-large-data/
247•jngiam1•19h ago•88 comments

An upgraded dev experience in Google AI Studio

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-ai-studio-native-code-generation-agentic-tools-upgrade/
171•meetpateltech•19h ago•100 comments

The Machine Stops (1909)

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-m-forster/short-fiction/text/the-machine-stops
109•xeonmc•15h ago•23 comments
Open in hackernews

Planetfall

https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/planetfall/
93•milliams•3h ago

Comments

bernds74•3h ago
Well, clicked on it thinking it might be about an old favourite Infocom game, but apparently it appears to be about an old favourite Firaxis game...

Are you the author of the web site? Please make sure the PgDn key works for scrolling through the page. At the moment it switches images which are just barely on the screen.

glimshe•2h ago
I was also here for Infocom! Will the knowledge of the old classics die with us?
bernds74•1h ago
For interactive fiction at least there are still people interested in it, and people are preserving Infocom history in particular. Other games might get forgotten over time unfortunately, especially on more obscure systems. Nobody ever brings up Turrican anymore when discussing game soundtracks...
glimshe•1h ago
Turrican will be preserved like Infocom. But I fear they will all be forgotten in the depths of a digital computer history museum. I'd love with LLMs could really bring the excitement of text adventures back. It has been tried but so far it's still in the text version of the uncanny valley.
zoky•1h ago
Not just the classics, there is actually a thriving interactive fiction community producing new games regularly. The annual Interactive Fiction Competition usually gets 60-70 entries each year.

https://ifcomp.org/

7thaccount•14m ago
Yep. There are new converts as well like myself. I like modern titles ranging from AAA titles like Doom to smaller indie titles like Kentucky Route Zero which is more like an interactive theater play than a traditional game. However, IF just really scratches an itch when done well and exercises the brain in a different way. I've played with the old INFOCOM games (Zork, Planetfall...etc), but they don't grip me the same way the modern titles do. They're also obscenely hard in ways we don't typically do these days. I noticed the new Doom game lets you modify the difficulty and damage percentage done to you or enemies at any time. As an adult with little time I love not getting stuck in boss battles for hours. Life is too short. Old games didn't have any of that lol.
reaperducer•6m ago
For interactive fiction at least there are still people interested in it, and people are preserving Infocom history in particular. Other games might get forgotten over time unfortunately, especially on more obscure systems.

Since Infocom games run on everything from a Palm Pilot to a mainframe, there's no reason for them to ever go away, as long as we can find people still interested in building Z-Machines for the latest gear.

reaperducer•7m ago
I was also here for Infocom! Will the knowledge of the old classics die with us?

For all of our modern-day high-powered GPU babble, the Infocom games still have the best graphics possible.

I recently started playing Zork I again on a C-64 emulator, and it really holds up.

The key is to play like you would in the old days: No distractions. Be patient and thoughtful. And actually read everything on the screen, instead of skimming the text.

Since we're now trained to have the attention spans of methed-out ferrets, it can be hard. My tips are to turn the phone completely off, put it in another room, and turn down the lights. Also, do you map by hand on grid paper with a pencil.

Lately, I've seen people bragging about video games providing value because they take 40 or 50 hours to complete. An Infocom game could easily take days, weeks, or months to really explore and appreciate thoroughly.

kaonwarb•3h ago
Remarkable work of love. Thank you for sharing.
johngossman•3h ago
I had to give the disk for that game away in order to stop playing it. It was seriously interfering with work and sleep.
liamwire•2h ago
Seconding the sentiment, this was a brilliant read that gave me a newfound appreciation for the art of cartography, but also for giving oneself over to a pursuit fully. Truly excellent.
bn-l•1h ago
The sound design of this game was so good. Such a superb game.
em-bee•54m ago
they asked if I mapped real or fictional places

yes he does

Tepix•41m ago
The work is great and i like the map and the writeup. Excellent work!

One shortcoming is that its land texture doesn't show any contrasty edges, everything smoothly flows into other regions. We see the mountains but the textures pretty much ignore them and the edges that we see in our planet's texture are missing.

antonios•34m ago
Cartography, check. Alpha Centauri game, check. Very cool.

On my list, Alpha Centauri easily makes it on top 5 games ever made.

Thank you for the trip to memory lane. <goes to GOG to download the game>

_ink_•24m ago
What else is on the list?
VladVladikoff•23m ago
>So, I went over the map and wrote down the elevation value of every tile. All 8,192 of them. Surely there was a more automated solution than to do something 8k times manually?
abraxas•21m ago
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC) was a very interesting title. It came about because Sid Meier lost his rights to the Civilization franchise for a period of time. Yet SMAC was considered the real successor to CivII rather than Civilization Call To Power because of the recognition and the genius of Sid Meier.

But SMAC was in its day quite divisive. Some Civ fans (self included) weren't able to get into the world with unfamiliar tech tree, obscure terrain features and the whole nomenclature of the game just being so... alien.

Now, granted it was likely the best sci-fi turn based title ever made but at the time us fans of Sid's work were really craving for a sequel to CivII and as a result SMAC received a somewhat lukewarm welcome. Likely undeservedly so.

diggan•6m ago
For others who are more curious about Sid Meier's life in game design and development, the appropriately titled "Sid Meir's Memoir" (https://sidmeiersmemoir.com/) was an OK read that goes through everything from the founding of MicroProse, selling it to Atari, to founding Firaxis and a lot in-between.