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Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access

https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/pg_lake
104•plaur782•1h ago•34 comments

Show HN: A CSS-Only Terrain Generator

https://terra.layoutit.com
175•rofko•4h ago•56 comments

Launch HN: Plexe (YC X25) – Build production-grade ML models from prompts

https://www.plexe.ai/
17•vaibhavdubey97•1h ago•2 comments

Optimizing Datalog for the GPU

https://danglingpointers.substack.com/p/optimizing-datalog-for-the-gpu
64•blakepelton•3h ago•12 comments

What is a manifold?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-manifold-20251103/
244•isaacfrond•8h ago•75 comments

Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design

https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/
12•meetpateltech•1h ago•8 comments

Recovering videos from my Sony camera that I stupidly deleted

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/recovering-videos-my-sony-camera-i-stupidly-deleted
16•speckx•1w ago•12 comments

This Day in 1988, the Morris worm infected 10% of the Internet within 24 hours

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/on-this-day-in-1988-the-morris-worm-sli...
102•canucker2016•2h ago•56 comments

Show HN: I built a local-first daily planner for iOS

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/to-do-list-planner-zesfy/id6479947874
52•zesfy•4h ago•37 comments

Michael Burry a.k.a. "Big Short",discloses $1.1B bet against Nvidia&Palantir

https://sherwood.news/markets/michael-burry-big-short-discloses-1-1-billion-options-bet-against-n...
31•selim17•26m ago•15 comments

Chaining FFmpeg with a Browser Agent

https://100x.bot/a/chaining-ffmpeg-with-browser-agent
59•shardullavekar•5h ago•36 comments

How devtools map minified JS code back to your TypeScript source code

https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2025/11/04/javascript-source-maps-internals
20•manojvivek•2h ago•6 comments

Bloom filters are good for search that does not scale

https://notpeerreviewed.com/blog/bloom-filters/
126•birdculture•8h ago•22 comments

My Truck Desk

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/10/29/truck-desk/
327•zdw•15h ago•69 comments

Customize Nano Text Editor

https://shafi.ddns.net/blog/customize-nano-text-editor
76•shafiemoji•1w ago•34 comments

The 512KB Club

https://512kb.club/
59•lr0•2h ago•34 comments

Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

348•stillatit•12h ago•319 comments

The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund

https://rustfoundation.org/media/announcing-the-rust-foundation-maintainers-fund/
17•amalinovic•54m ago•0 comments

Things you can do with diodes

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/things-you-can-do-with-diodes
326•zdw•18h ago•86 comments

You can't cURL a Border

https://drobinin.com/posts/you-cant-curl-a-border/
385•valzevul•17h ago•209 comments

Data breach at major Swedish software supplier impacts 1.5M

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/data-breach-at-major-swedish-software-supplier-imp...
17•fleahunter•1h ago•5 comments

AI's Dial-Up Era

https://www.wreflection.com/p/ai-dial-up-era
402•nowflux•21h ago•361 comments

When stick figures fought

https://animationobsessive.substack.com/p/when-stick-figures-fought
294•ani_obsessive•17h ago•104 comments

YouTube AI error costs creator his channel over alleged link to Japanese account

https://piunikaweb.com/2025/11/04/youtube-ai-error-terminates-enderman-channel/
65•rabinovich•1h ago•46 comments

Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/server-dram-prices-surge-50-percent
97•walterbell•2h ago•86 comments

Reverse-engineered CUPS driver for Phomemo receipt/label printers

https://github.com/vivier/phomemo-tools
67•Curiositry•1w ago•17 comments

Aisuru botnet shifts from DDoS to residential proxies

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/10/aisuru-botnet-shifts-from-ddos-to-residential-proxies/
33•feross•6d ago•10 comments

US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation.Just ask Marshall Island

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/04/asia/nuclear-testing-marshall-islands-legacy-intl-hnk-dst
20•methuselah_in•1h ago•10 comments

US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-startup-substrate-announces-chipmaking-tool-that-it...
82•outrun86•6d ago•51 comments

Tenacity – a multi-track audio editor/recorder

https://tenacityaudio.org
99•smartmic•1w ago•29 comments
Open in hackernews

Show HN: A CSS-Only Terrain Generator

https://terra.layoutit.com
175•rofko•4h ago

Comments

jimmydin7•3h ago
looks sick! great job :)
mpeg•3h ago
Reminds me of Populous!

Very cool

johnh-hn•3h ago
I just came here to say the same thing. The raise and lower tools in particular reminded me of it.

For anyone who hasn't heard of it before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populous_(video_game)

dylan604•2h ago
You guys have sent me down memory lane. Hopefully, I don't forget when I have free time to search, but hopefully I can find this to play in an emulator somewhere. This was the very first game I ever bought even though I didn't have an Amiga but had one that was very accessible.

edit: couldn't wait. did the search. it's very much available to play online. hello rabbit hole...

johnh-hn•2h ago
Just in case you never came across it, I think the second game is much better than the first one. Enjoy the nostalgia trip!
linsomniac•1h ago
Do tell, I've been wanting to play Populous again for a few years...
dylan604•47m ago
dosbox top result in search
rofko•2h ago
Thank you! Populous and Transport Tycoon were two big inspirations for sure :)
johnh-hn•2h ago
You nailed it. Well done!
drcursor•2h ago
Next step Populous in only CSS + JS
RugnirViking•2h ago
Really reminds me of openttd, especially the sandy border around the water

Looks really cool and runs great on my phone.

Seems like there's some kind of rendering bug in the corners sometimes causing the walls to intersect the grass

cluckindan•2h ago
Nice! Now do collision checks ;)
all2•1h ago
In CSS?
julius-fx•2h ago
This is incredible - looks like SimCity 2000.
lloydatkinson•1h ago
Does it? All the tiles are usually a yellow brown aren’t they? 3000 has green land
forthwall•2h ago
Wow this really feels like roller coaster tycoon!!! (I can see lots of people refer to this to their favorite sim game though)

Great work!

andruc•1h ago
Funny, my mind went to OpenTTD
mig39•1h ago
Both Rollercoaster Tycoon and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (which lives on in openTTD) are by the same author, and use the same engine :-)
Igrom•1h ago
For me, "Briefing" from Ace Combat 2 played back in my head straight away.

https://youtu.be/5uPVGs7bq3s?t=8

devmor•1h ago
Reminded me quite a bit of Populous[1] as well.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populous_(video_game)

worldai•1h ago
This is exactly what I thought of
yreg•39m ago
I really miss these building games that used an isometric grid. RC Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, Sim City, TTD, …

Yes, it's less realistic, but it is so pleasant to work with. Everything you build aligns perfectly and if you want, you can neatly fill the entire map.

In comparison, (even with many mods) my Cities Skylines or Planet Coaster creations never look quite right. Building the roads and paths is always awkward and frustrating.

(I've commented this before.)

robertheadley•2h ago
This is really cool.
w4yai•2h ago
I got some rendering issues, but otherwise very cool !

https://i.imgur.com/qT6ozyh.png

Firefox 144.0.2, Windows

rofko•2h ago
Thanks for the report! Are you using a dark mode extension by any chance? I’ve seen that happen with Dark Reader in Chrome.
cmiller1•2h ago
Lots of javascript for a "css-only" tool. Looks like just the rendering is css-only.
MarsIronPI•2h ago
Yep. Can confirm this does not work with JS disabled. I'm disappointed by the misleading title.
shermantanktop•1h ago
is it a Generator for CSS-Only Terrain? or a CSS-Only Generator which creates Terrain?

We need PEMDAS for English.

Elfener•1h ago
Let's use sexpr?

actual meaning -> ((CSS-Only Terrain) Generator)

incorrect interpretation -> (CSS-Only (Terrain Generator))

embedding-shape•2h ago
Not to mention of all of those pesky HTML tags and images, clearly not CSS-only, what a fraud.
cmiller1•2h ago
"CSS-only" colloquially tends to mean HTML and CSS without Javascript, sometimes without images.
DonaldPShimoda•2h ago
The tone of the parent comment suggests they were writing in jest and are aware that "CSS-only" includes HTML.
bogwog•2h ago
I guess it'd be more accurate to call it a "Generator for CSS-Only Terrain", as the generator itself is not CSS-only.
tantalor•57m ago
It's a "(CSS-only Terrain) Generator", not a "CSS-only (Terrain Generator)"
jonahx•1h ago
You can open up your terrain in codepen with nothing but CSS/HTML, and it renders fine. It's just not interactive / draggable anymore.

So the JS is only being used, essentially, as a nice UI for configuring your terrain and the camera angle from which it's viewed.

This is still an incredible feat.

ryukoposting•2h ago
Dark Reader mutilates the rendered output, but only certain tiles. No clear pattern as to what tiles get mangled. Peculiar.
OldGreenYodaGPT•2h ago
Crazy that vibe coding can make things like this now! 2026 going to be crazy! There is no AI bubble
stefs•2h ago
1. what's a layou tit?

2. does it sometimes raise / lower by 2 units?

3. the "flatten" tool is missing.

EGreg•2h ago
Can someone please reimplement something like Warcraft 2 on a mobile web device?

It would be a hit, I’m telling you. Even from 1995.

Some people are still playing it 30 years later, obsessively.

And myth ii by Bungie is a classic too

mock-possum•1h ago
The controls would take some serious reworking to make it work on mobile - I could see adding a ‘pause’ feature to give you time to scrub your fingers all over the screen to issue all your unit and build orders, performant pinch to zoom would nearly negate the need for a mini map, lots of reworked GUI for building stuff and managing workers
EGreg•1h ago
Anyone made a real-time-strategy engine for tiled games on mobile?
iagorodriguez•1h ago
Amazing job by an amazing developer!
ModernMech•1h ago
This thing is killing my CPU, what's the actual bottleneck here for CSS? Is it the number of elements visible and rendered at once? Is it the calculation engine backing CSS is super slow? Or just that most of the work is being done on the CPU it seems (on my machine, rotating around the map, my integrated GPU goes to 20% but CPU stays around 40-50%).
paulbjensen•1h ago
Really cool, especially when I realised you could rotate the terrain and do some zooming as well.
hersko•1h ago
This is super cool! Wonder how hard it would be to use with an RTS game.
bodge5000•1h ago
I've used a few terrain generators before but I think this one might be my favourite. Obviously the fact its a "CSS only" demo project restricts things a bit, but its got enough going for it regardless.

It actually comes at a really good time for me, I'm currently trying to make the transition from 2d game dev to 3d and things like this are really helpful.

nefarious_ends•1h ago
Very cool! Do you think it’s possible to do lakes and waterfalls?
rofko•1h ago
Definitely! I'm planning for more landscape features for next versions. I think rivers will be a great addition, and waterfalls/rapids sound really interesting too. In the end it's a matter of adding a few classes and designing some sprites.
throwaway2037•1h ago
It is giving Sega Genesis "Populous" vibes.
em3rgent0rdr•1h ago
Impressive, but there is a noticeable lag after modifying the terrain or moving the camera. Is there a way to know if the browser is using the GPU or CPU for rendering, and is there are way to see the milliseconds per frame?
bob1029•49m ago
It looks like a layout/style/composition issue with the browser engine.

In Safari I'm seeing 91% CPU time on paint, 6% on layout, 2% on styles. It looks like it's taking somewhere between 100-200ms on my machine to chunk through a state change each time.

> Is there a way to know if the browser is using the GPU or CPU for rendering, and is there are way to see the milliseconds per frame?

For Safari, you would go to the Web Inspector and navigate to the Timelines tab. Chrome has a similar thing.

worldai•1h ago
Impressive work
senfiaj•53m ago
When I turn off JS, it shows a loader instead of the terrain. Is this really CSS-Only? I mean it's still a high achievement even with JS, but was expecting it would also work without JS. This one, for example, truly works without JS https://benjaminaster.com/css-minecraft/ .
arbll•48m ago
I'm assuming it's the render engine that is in pure CSS. You could display a static map in CSS but things like the tools to modify the terrain definitely need JS.
psygn89•2m ago
You might not need it using the new :has() and different inputs as modifiers. Though that's a lot of :has() and probably would kill performance.
nightpool•2m ago
GP linked an example of a similar project that allowed you to modify the terrain without any JS at all