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Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
230•theblazehen•2d ago•66 comments

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

https://openciv3.org/
694•klaussilveira•15h ago•206 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
962•xnx•20h ago•553 comments

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/
5•AlexeyBrin•58m ago•0 comments

How we made geo joins 400× faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
130•matheusalmeida•2d ago•35 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
66•videotopia•4d ago•6 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
53•jesperordrup•5h ago•24 comments

Jeffrey Snover: "Welcome to the Room"

https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/01/welcome-to-the-room/
36•kaonwarb•3d ago•27 comments

ga68, the GNU Algol 68 Compiler – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/PEXRTN-ga68-intro/
10•matt_d•3d ago•2 comments

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

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
236•isitcontent•15h ago•26 comments

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

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
233•dmpetrov•16h ago•124 comments

Where did all the starships go?

https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/science-fiction-decline
32•speckx•3d ago•21 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
335•vecti•17h ago•147 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
502•todsacerdoti•23h ago•244 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
385•ostacke•21h ago•97 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
300•eljojo•18h ago•186 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
361•aktau•22h ago•185 comments

UK infants ill after drinking contaminated baby formula of Nestle and Danone

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c931rxnwn3lo
8•__natty__•3h ago•0 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
422•lstoll•21h ago•282 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
68•kmm•5d ago•10 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
96•quibono•4d ago•22 comments

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122
21•bikenaga•3d ago•11 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
19•1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago•5 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
264•i5heu•18h ago•215 comments

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

https://mirageos.org/blog/delimcc-vs-lwt
33•romes•4d ago•3 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
63•gfortaine•13h ago•28 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
1076•cdrnsf•1d ago•460 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
39•gmays•10h ago•13 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
298•surprisetalk•3d ago•44 comments

I spent 5 years in DevOps – Solutions engineering gave me what I was missing

https://infisical.com/blog/devops-to-solutions-engineering
154•vmatsiiako•20h ago•72 comments
Open in hackernews

Computers that used to be human

https://digitalseams.com/blog/computers-that-used-to-be-human
64•bobbiechen•3w ago

Comments

cjs_ac•3w ago
Regarding the quote about the British East India Company, it's worth noting that employees of the company had notoriously poor pay and were half-expected to set up their own personal ventures while in India to support themselves. The company was also poorly administered, and there was almost certainly a great deal of embezzlement going on (in response to the poor pay). So while the expected mathematics was probably comparatively simple, the numbers probably didn't add up (which is the kind of thing we'd expect a Commons committee to inquire into).
advisedwang•3w ago
> half-expected to set up their own personal ventures while in India to support themselves

"ventures" like a small business or is that a euphemism for taking bribes or said embezzlement?

ripe•3w ago
It was naked looting. Not just in India by individuals working for the company, but as official acts of the East India Company itself back home in England. A quote:

"In 1767 the company bought off parliamentary opposition by donating £400,000 to the Crown in return for its continued right to govern Bengal. But the anger against it finally reached ignition point on 13 February 1788, at the impeachment, for looting and corruption, of Clive’s successor as governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings. It was the nearest the British ever got to putting the EIC on trial, and they did so with one of their greatest orators at the helm – Edmund Burke.

"Burke, leading the prosecution, railed against the way the returned company “nabobs” (or “nobs”, both corruptions of the Urdu word “Nawab”) were buying parliamentary influence, not just by bribing MPs to vote for their interests, but by corruptly using their Indian plunder to bribe their way into parliamentary office: “To-day the Commons of Great Britain prosecutes the delinquents of India,” thundered Burke, referring to the returned nabobs. “Tomorrow these delinquents of India may be the Commons of Great Britain.”

The revolving door between government and the corporations it was supposed to regulate, was also spinning:

"Lord Cornwallis, the man who oversaw the loss of the American colonies to Washington, was recruited by the EIC to oversee its Indian territories."

The above quotes are from "The Anarchy" by William Dalrymple.

mcmoor•3w ago
I'm sometimes still curious if EIC ever had a chance to take over UK. It's because I've heard someone claiming that they never had that chance. And this is used as a basis for an argument that corporations can never win against nation-state and that cyberpunk will never happen irl (at least the ultracorps part).
theLegionWithin•3w ago
the other blog posts are pretty interesting too
bee_rider•3w ago
I wonder what we’ve lost, with the loss of human computers. It seems like it would be a nice job that rewards diligence and intelligence. Nowadays pretty much all intellectual work rewards creativity, almost exclusively… the machines are infinitely diligent, so it doesn’t provide much value add when the human is too.

I dunno. It just seems kind of sad, in a way, like we’ve dropped a whole entire way of being seen as intelligent.

hnhg•3w ago
A large part of accounting is intellectual work that rewards diligence and intelligence, but not creativity so much. A lot of QA/certification jobs are like this too. It's important stuff that involves a lot of "checking".
WalterBright•3w ago
I expect it would have been a very dull job.
projektfu•3w ago
This is why so many early computing machines' names ended in "AC" for Automatic Calculaor or Automatic Computer. EDVAC, EDSAC, UNIVAC, though not ENIAC.
skolskoly•3w ago
We have a word for that: Lawyers!
RRWagner•3w ago
Sometime when you're in a used bookstore, thrift store or yard sale, keep an eye out for very old dictionaries, and if found, look up the word "conputer". You will find the proof of the human occupant of this definition surprisingly recently (as in 1930s)
zahlman•3w ago
https://www.etymonline.com/word/computer is also relevant here.
neilv•3w ago
A good movie drama about some of the human computers for NASA, and some of the prejudices that these particular ones faced:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures

buckle8017•3w ago
That movie is race baiting garbage.

Skip to the Historical Accuracy section of that page.

neilv•3w ago
Thank you for pointing out that section. I wasn't aware of those storytelling compromises specifically, and some of them are annoying.

I said "drama" rather than "documentary" because I was sure there were storytelling compromises, but I agree with you that I think some of the compromises this section describes are not OK, when we're talking about real events and real people.

Knowing that the filmmakers made some choices that I think cross the line, I don't know whether I'd enjoy re-watching it, or just find the mistakes irritating to the point that I couldn't enjoy the rest of the film.

As the section goes on, it discusses some of the challenges (e.g., the need for composite characters), and some of the criticisms and dialogue around the filmmakers' choices.

rafterydj•3w ago
Thanks for pointing out this section, but "race baiting garbage" is a strong term, no?

There were historical inaccuracies, some of which I expected like timeline issues and things like that, as well some things which were actually true that I did not expect (John Glenn asking for the calculations personally). In the end it is a movie meant to spark interest in NASA / science and tell a compelling story about people who helped us during a time before the Civil Rights Act. To call it "race baiting garbage" is overly dismissive and I think exposes an alarming personal bias.

buckle8017•3w ago
> In the end it is a movie meant to spark interest in NASA / scienc

No it's not, the movie is virtually entirely about race relations at NASA and lying about what really happened there.

It's not merely the timeline but the substance, try reading it again. Nobody was every actually banned from bathrooms.

DrPimienta•3w ago
> but "race baiting garbage" is a strong term, no?

No. Read the Historical Accuracy section. The movie made up a bunch of pointless racial conflict that literally didn't happen.

vishnugupta•3w ago
Ah such a shame to miss out mentioning the not so well known Radhanath Sikdar the first person, employed as a computer, to accurately calculate the height of Mount Everest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanath_Sikdar

nubskr•3w ago
Finding out "computer" was a job title because precise calculation was so hard to find makes me feel less bad about needing a calculator for basic arithmetic.