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A Primer on Vintage Cassette Decks: How to Find a Good One

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

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Announcing the PlanetScale vectors public beta

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: /r/programming

PlanetScale has announced the open beta availability of vector data type support in its MySQL database, enabling users to store vector data alongside relational data, thereby eliminating the need for a separate vector database. The implementation is grounded in advanced search algorithms derived from Microsoft Research, specifically SPANN and SPFresh, and integrates well with InnoDB and Vitess to handle large-scale, transactional operations and maintain data consistency. The solution aims to ensure fast performance and scalability for vector search, suitable for large databases.

LZAV 4.2: Increased decompression speed by 7-20%. Fast In-Memory Data Compression Algorithm (inline C/C++) 460+MB/s compress, 2700+MB/s decompress, ratio% better than LZ4, Snappy, and Zstd@-1

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: /r/programming

LZAV is a fast, general-purpose in-memory data compression algorithm based on the LZ77 method. It offers impressive performance, achieving over 460 MB/s for compression and 2700 MB/s for decompression, outperforming algorithms like LZ4, Snappy, and Zstd at level -1. The algorithm is portable, cross-platform, and compatible with both C and C++, supporting various memory alignments and endianness on 32- and 64-bit systems. It

Adding row polymorphism to Damas-Hindley-Milner

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

The Damas-Hindley-Milner (HM) type system, used in Standard ML and related languages, is explored in the context of enhancing it with row polymorphism. The post introduces the concept of records as unordered collections of name-value pairs, exemplified by constructs like { x = 1, y = "hello" }. In the dynamic language Scrapscript, records can have variable fields at runtime, allowing for flexible pattern matching that can ignore non-specified fields. However, the

One Square Minesweeper

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

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Necromanteion of Acheron

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

The Nekromanteion, an ancient Greek temple dedicated to necromancy, was situated on the banks of the Acheron river in Epirus, near Ephyra. It was thought to serve as a gateway to Hades, the afterlife realm. The temple was located where the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus rivers converge, with their names translating roughly to "joyless," "burning coals," and "lament." While a potential site

Room temp chirality switching and detection in a helimagnetic MnAu2 thin film

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses advancements in the control and detection of chirality in helimagnetic materials, specifically focusing on the thin-film MnAu2 helimagnetic conductor. Chirality refers to the handedness of spirally ordered magnetic moments, which has potential applications in next-generation magnetic memory. The study demonstrates that chirality can be switched using electric current pulses at room temperature, overcoming previous limitations related to low operating temperatures and complex control methods. Additionally, chirality detection is achieved without magnetic fields through simple transverse resistance

Solving the Mystery of ARM7TDMI Multiply Carry Flag

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

The blog post discusses the ARM7TDMI CPU used in the Gameboy Advance, highlighting its unconventional design choices, particularly the use of the program counter as a general-purpose register. This is characterized with amusing and critical analogies, emphasizing its chaotic nature. The author then focuses on the CPU's multiplication instructions, which allow for multiplying two 32-bit operands to produce a 64-bit result, including options for signed or unsigned operations and a multiply-add feature. However, a significant issue arises with the

How JPEG XL compares to other image codecs

Published: 2024-10-23 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the automation of image and video lifecycles through APIs, emphasizing AI-driven automation for rapid creation and delivery, particularly for enterprise and large organizations. It highlights the use of generative AI and machine learning to enhance creativity and mentions low-code workflow automation for media management. It provides an update on JPEG XL, a next-generation image codec being standardized by the JPEG Committee, which combines innovations from Google's PIK codec and Cloudinary’s FUIF codec. JPEG XL aims to outperform existing codecs

Hoard of coins from Norman Conquest is Britain's most valuable treasure find

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

A treasure of 2,584 Norman-era silver coins, found five years ago in the Chew Valley near Bristol, has become Britain’s most valuable treasure, purchased for £4.3 million ($5.6 million) by a local heritage trust. The discovery, made by seven metal detectorists, will net them half the amount, with the landowner receiving the other half. Dating from 1066-1068, the coins come from a turbulent time during the Norman Conquest, featuring

The Dawn of a New Era for Supernova 1987a

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

Three decades ago, astronomers discovered one of the brightest supernovae in 400 years, known as Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), which shone with the intensity of 100 million suns for several months after its detection on February 23, 1987. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it is the closest observed supernova and offers a unique opportunity to study stellar evolution. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, new images, time-l

Attacking the Samsung Galaxy A* Boot Chain -- "The chain of 4 bugs we presented allowed us to execute code in Little Kernel from USB, get a root access on Android with persistency, and finally leak anything from the Secure World's memory which includes the Android Keystore keys."

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: /r/programming

Researchers have identified several vulnerabilities in the boot chain of various Samsung devices, enabling them to execute code in the bootloader, obtain root access on Android, and leak sensitive information, including Android Keystore keys. The focus of their investigation was the Samsung Galaxy A225F, a mid-range device, where they had previously gained insights into its boot process related to Android File-Based encryption. The vulnerabilities primarily affect two critical components: the Little Kernel (responsible for booting Android) and the Secure Monitor (

How DRAM changed the world

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

Robert Dennard, an influential American electrical engineer, invented the one-transistor memory cell for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in 1966, shaping modern electronic memory storage. His contributions included the MOSFET scaling law, essential for integrated circuit miniaturization and performance. Dennard was recognized with prestigious awards like the IEEE Medal of Honor and the Kyoto Prize. He passed away in April 2024 at age 91, leaving a significant legacy. The announcement also marks the 56

Making Uber’s ExperimentEvaluation Engine 100x Faster

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: /r/programming

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The Tragedy of Google Books (2017)

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a report by Jeffrey Goldberg on Donald Trump's admiration for dictators and his criticism of the U.S. military. Additionally, it highlights the ambitious vision for a digital library project by Google that would have provided free access to nearly every published book, surpassing the collections of major libraries. This initiative aimed to create a searchable and accessible universal library available in local libraries across the U.S. However, the project faced legal challenges, and a crucial agreement to realize this dream was rejected in March 201

USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment, estimated that southwestern Arkansas may hold between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium reserves beneath the Smackover Formation, a geological unit from the Jurassic period. If commercially recoverable, this lithium could meet projected world demand for car battery production by nine times by 2030. The study utilized innovative methods combining water testing and machine learning to assess lithium concentrations in brines associated with oil and

Svelte 5 is alive - Our biggest release yet

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: /r/programming

The Svelte team announced the stable release of Svelte 5 on October 22, 2024, after 18 months of development and numerous contributions. This release is the most significant in Svelte's history as it is a complete rewrite, resulting in faster, smaller, and more reliable applications. It simplifies the learning process for newcomers while maintaining almost complete backward compatibility with Svelte 4 for most users. Svelte is a web UI framework that uses a compiler to convert declarative code

Find the Ruby community on Bluesky (the X alternative that feels more like old Twitter)

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content describes a highly interactive web application that requires JavaScript, emphasizing that while simple HTML interfaces are possible, they are not representative of this application. Additional information about Bluesky can be found at bsky.social and atproto.com.

Show HN: Open-source Counter-Strike-like game

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

The content describes the game "Counter-Strike: Football," a competitive multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) where two teams of football fans compete to win rounds. The two teams are Attackers, who aim to desecrate the Defenders' sanctuary with a graffiti bomb ball, and Defenders, who must protect it. The round structure involves a bomb deployment mechanic, where if the Attackers succeed, the round timer is adjusted, giving Defenders a limited time to defuse the bomb. The game

Computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku

Published: 2024-10-22 | Origin: Hacker News

Today, a new upgraded AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and a new model called Claude 3.5 Haiku were announced. Claude 3.5 Sonnet offers significant improvements over its predecessor, especially in coding tasks, while Claude 3.5 Haiku matches the performance of the previous larger model, Claude 3 Opus, at a similar cost and speed. A notable feature introduced is "computer use," currently in public beta, allowing developers to direct Claude to