The tropical cyclone left more than 180,000 homes without power and 170,000 without running water.
from BBC News https://ift.tt/Wj4Bayh
via IFTTT
from BBC News https://ift.tt/Wj4Bayh
via IFTTT
Friday, 28 February 2025
Thursday, 27 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Wampy, interface addon for Linux-based Walkmans
Show HN: Wampy, interface addon for Linux-based Walkmans
5 by unknown321 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Wampy is an interface addon for modern Linux-based Walkmans, which allows you to switch between standard interface and custom one using hardware Hold switch. The project was born out of handful of standard UI nitpicks and "can I make a prettier UI?". There is no Rockbox port for my device (NW-A55), so I did a UI myself, unlocking and adding various features along the way, such as: - Winamp 2 skin support - Custom cassette skins - Digital clock skin ported from iPod Nano 7g - Audio amplification table editor for S-Master HX - All audio filters are available regardless of firmware - Per-song audio filter options - Standard interface enhancements (add clock and increase cover art size) - Low latency USB DAC module - FM radio on devices with FM chip and Walkman One (A40/50) The result covers 6 models, from cheapest NW-A30 to premium NW-WM1Z. Development process involved a lot of reverse engineering, digging into device internals and was pretty fun overall; there are links to development stories in README.md, describing how this or that feature was added.
5 by unknown321 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Wampy is an interface addon for modern Linux-based Walkmans, which allows you to switch between standard interface and custom one using hardware Hold switch. The project was born out of handful of standard UI nitpicks and "can I make a prettier UI?". There is no Rockbox port for my device (NW-A55), so I did a UI myself, unlocking and adding various features along the way, such as: - Winamp 2 skin support - Custom cassette skins - Digital clock skin ported from iPod Nano 7g - Audio amplification table editor for S-Master HX - All audio filters are available regardless of firmware - Per-song audio filter options - Standard interface enhancements (add clock and increase cover art size) - Low latency USB DAC module - FM radio on devices with FM chip and Walkman One (A40/50) The result covers 6 models, from cheapest NW-A30 to premium NW-WM1Z. Development process involved a lot of reverse engineering, digging into device internals and was pretty fun overall; there are links to development stories in README.md, describing how this or that feature was added.
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Ranked Search for Semi-Structured Data
Show HN: Ranked Search for Semi-Structured Data
7 by alrudolph | 0 comments on Hacker News.
We’ve been working on a search problem that requires querying both text and numbers simultaneously. For example, in a dataset of clothing items with descriptions and prices, a search for “slim pants for $20” should prioritize skinny jeans for $25 over slim pants for $50 because they are semantically similar and the price is closer. I’ve found that standard embedding models struggle with numerical ordering, while text-to-SQL methods rely on exact matches and often filter out too many results. To solve this, we built a system designed specifically for structured datasets like CSVs or tables. Here’s a demo link where you can upload a small CSV to try out (no login required): https://ift.tt/F51MQlB . Unlike most RAG approaches, we process each column independently, handling text with embeddings and numbers with custom scoring. When a user submits a query, we parse it into relevant fields—for instance, extracting “slim pants” as the description and “20” as the price. We then compute cosine similarity between the description embeddings and “slim pants” while also calculating the percent error between the user’s price input and the numerical field. These individual similarity scores are then combined across all columns to generate a final ranking. Right now, our system works best with well-structured data, so some preprocessing is often needed. We’re working on improving this by detecting and restructuring messy data automatically, such as pivoting columns or extracting attributes from large text fields. We’re also adding feedback mechanisms, like a thumbs up/down system, to refine future search results based on user input. I’d love to hear about your experiences with similar search challenges and would appreciate any feedback!
7 by alrudolph | 0 comments on Hacker News.
We’ve been working on a search problem that requires querying both text and numbers simultaneously. For example, in a dataset of clothing items with descriptions and prices, a search for “slim pants for $20” should prioritize skinny jeans for $25 over slim pants for $50 because they are semantically similar and the price is closer. I’ve found that standard embedding models struggle with numerical ordering, while text-to-SQL methods rely on exact matches and often filter out too many results. To solve this, we built a system designed specifically for structured datasets like CSVs or tables. Here’s a demo link where you can upload a small CSV to try out (no login required): https://ift.tt/F51MQlB . Unlike most RAG approaches, we process each column independently, handling text with embeddings and numbers with custom scoring. When a user submits a query, we parse it into relevant fields—for instance, extracting “slim pants” as the description and “20” as the price. We then compute cosine similarity between the description embeddings and “slim pants” while also calculating the percent error between the user’s price input and the numerical field. These individual similarity scores are then combined across all columns to generate a final ranking. Right now, our system works best with well-structured data, so some preprocessing is often needed. We’re working on improving this by detecting and restructuring messy data automatically, such as pivoting columns or extracting attributes from large text fields. We’re also adding feedback mechanisms, like a thumbs up/down system, to refine future search results based on user input. I’d love to hear about your experiences with similar search challenges and would appreciate any feedback!
Wednesday, 26 February 2025
Tuesday, 25 February 2025
Monday, 24 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: I made a site to tell the time in corporate
Show HN: I made a site to tell the time in corporate
36 by steadycourse | 22 comments on Hacker News.
36 by steadycourse | 22 comments on Hacker News.
Sunday, 23 February 2025
Saturday, 22 February 2025
Friday, 21 February 2025
Thursday, 20 February 2025
Wednesday, 19 February 2025
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: (Ab)using general search algorithms on dynamic optimization problems (2023)
(Ab)using general search algorithms on dynamic optimization problems (2023)
12 by h45x1 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote this blog back in 2023 but since then I became a frequent lurker on HN and decided to repost the blog here. For me, writing it was about connecting the dots between dynamic optimization techniques I've studied as an economist and the more general search algorithms studied in CS.
12 by h45x1 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I wrote this blog back in 2023 but since then I became a frequent lurker on HN and decided to repost the blog here. For me, writing it was about connecting the dots between dynamic optimization techniques I've studied as an economist and the more general search algorithms studied in CS.
Monday, 17 February 2025
Sunday, 16 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Hackyournews.com v2
Show HN: Hackyournews.com v2
14 by ukuina | 1 comments on Hacker News.
A year and a half after I published https://ift.tt/VbN1yH3 , I've rewritten it to be neater and added support for more news sources. HackYourNews.com v1 had a great response on HN [1] and consistently sees ~2k weekly unique visitors. There were many long-standing requests that I wanted to fulfill (thanks for your patience!): a proper dark mode, correct rendering on mobile devices, and more cogent summaries. This rewrite is the result. gpt-4o-mini reduces the cost of summarization to an absurd degree, so it's now sustainable to keep this free service going! Someday, I hope to use the Batch API [2] to drive down costs even further. Enjoy. [1] https://ift.tt/1haxQH4 [2] https://ift.tt/zsUGdnq
14 by ukuina | 1 comments on Hacker News.
A year and a half after I published https://ift.tt/VbN1yH3 , I've rewritten it to be neater and added support for more news sources. HackYourNews.com v1 had a great response on HN [1] and consistently sees ~2k weekly unique visitors. There were many long-standing requests that I wanted to fulfill (thanks for your patience!): a proper dark mode, correct rendering on mobile devices, and more cogent summaries. This rewrite is the result. gpt-4o-mini reduces the cost of summarization to an absurd degree, so it's now sustainable to keep this free service going! Someday, I hope to use the Batch API [2] to drive down costs even further. Enjoy. [1] https://ift.tt/1haxQH4 [2] https://ift.tt/zsUGdnq
Saturday, 15 February 2025
Friday, 14 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: A New Way to Learn Languages
Show HN: A New Way to Learn Languages
24 by sebnun | 20 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I’m Pablo, I built this application to learn languages using podcasts: https://ift.tt/5pGWwPb (No signup required) There are a lot of tools to learn languages, but most of them focus on beginners (understandably so, that’s where the money is) but not many exist that target intermediate or advanced learners. The ones that exist make you find content on your own and then import that into their apps, which can be tricky when you don’t know where to look. LangTurbo has a unique curated database of podcasts by language (some even have dialect labels) that you can browse by topic, or search by keyword, so you can discover content and learn in the same place. Having a good language learning method is important, but having the motivation to keep learning is much more important. Some tools like Duolingo try to keep you motivated with “gamification”. I don’t like that, I think it gives you a false sense of accomplishment without real improvement. The way LangTurbo tries to keep you coming back is via the content itself. My goal is that you discover some podcast that interests you enough to keep coming back to listen to new episodes, the same way you listen to podcasts in your native language. I wrote more about the method here [1] The app also lets you learn without looking at the screen, you can listen to a podcast in the background and for each sentence you will first hear the translation in English and the native speaker after. I call it “poor man's Pimsleur mode”. Some things I learned while building the app: * Currently the best SRS algorithm is FSRS, the app uses this algorithm implemented in SQL (thanks to [2]) * Working with Expo (React Native) was a great experience, the app has web, iOS and Android (coming soon) clients sharing most of the codebase. * A lot of non-English podcasts have a feed with English as the language. I had to build a “probe” to get the correct language of a podcast, based on the text and audio of the feed. * Podcasts use “Dynamic Ad Insertion”, that means the content of the audio can change according to the request IP or the time of the request. * Still amazed by all the things Postgres can do Let me know what you think, happy to answer any questions. [1] https://ift.tt/09MeuUE [2] https://ift.tt/ua63kOH
24 by sebnun | 20 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I’m Pablo, I built this application to learn languages using podcasts: https://ift.tt/5pGWwPb (No signup required) There are a lot of tools to learn languages, but most of them focus on beginners (understandably so, that’s where the money is) but not many exist that target intermediate or advanced learners. The ones that exist make you find content on your own and then import that into their apps, which can be tricky when you don’t know where to look. LangTurbo has a unique curated database of podcasts by language (some even have dialect labels) that you can browse by topic, or search by keyword, so you can discover content and learn in the same place. Having a good language learning method is important, but having the motivation to keep learning is much more important. Some tools like Duolingo try to keep you motivated with “gamification”. I don’t like that, I think it gives you a false sense of accomplishment without real improvement. The way LangTurbo tries to keep you coming back is via the content itself. My goal is that you discover some podcast that interests you enough to keep coming back to listen to new episodes, the same way you listen to podcasts in your native language. I wrote more about the method here [1] The app also lets you learn without looking at the screen, you can listen to a podcast in the background and for each sentence you will first hear the translation in English and the native speaker after. I call it “poor man's Pimsleur mode”. Some things I learned while building the app: * Currently the best SRS algorithm is FSRS, the app uses this algorithm implemented in SQL (thanks to [2]) * Working with Expo (React Native) was a great experience, the app has web, iOS and Android (coming soon) clients sharing most of the codebase. * A lot of non-English podcasts have a feed with English as the language. I had to build a “probe” to get the correct language of a podcast, based on the text and audio of the feed. * Podcasts use “Dynamic Ad Insertion”, that means the content of the audio can change according to the request IP or the time of the request. * Still amazed by all the things Postgres can do Let me know what you think, happy to answer any questions. [1] https://ift.tt/09MeuUE [2] https://ift.tt/ua63kOH
Thursday, 13 February 2025
Wednesday, 12 February 2025
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Monday, 10 February 2025
Sunday, 9 February 2025
Saturday, 8 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities
Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities
53 by kevinburke | 41 comments on Hacker News.
53 by kevinburke | 41 comments on Hacker News.
Friday, 7 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: A website that heatmaps your city based on your housing preferences
Show HN: A website that heatmaps your city based on your housing preferences
27 by WiggleGuy | 17 comments on Hacker News.
For the past few months, I've been working on a website that answers two different questions: - Where in my city have the best travel times to all the things and people I care about? - Given a listing, how far is it from all the things and people I care about? Personally this was fueled by my own frustrations when I was apartment hunting in NYC. I was frustrating to have to juggle so many Google Maps tabs when I was evaluating a listing, and it was also annoying to not have full confidence that I was even searching in the right places. I wanted to be close to work, a Trader Joe's, and a major park. Given that public transportation networks can sometimes make close things hard to get to and far things easy to get to, it's not always obvious whether a neighborhood actually even fits my criteria or not! The overarching goal of theretowhere.com is to allow you to make more informed moving decisions while also making things more convenient than they are today. https://ibb.co/pBsX2HjN It can generate detailed travel time breakdowns for individual listings and addresses, making it easier to determine whether a listing is worth applying for without juggling Google Maps tabs. This is great for questions like “How far is this apartment from my friends, work and dancing gyms?” https://ibb.co/mVBjwPrJ It also has the powerful ability to heatmap a city based on which parts of it are close or not to the people and places you care about. This is great for questions like “Where in the city would I be reasonably close to work, friends and a woodworking studio?” https://ibb.co/vCynPSRK You can add these heatmaps to sites like Zillow and Streeteasy to make things super convenient (this was very fun to make). The main thing that's on my mind is whether this is useful or not. Like, is this something you would actually use? I also have other ideas I'd like to eventually intergrate into this (crime heatmaps, noise heatmaps, etc)
27 by WiggleGuy | 17 comments on Hacker News.
For the past few months, I've been working on a website that answers two different questions: - Where in my city have the best travel times to all the things and people I care about? - Given a listing, how far is it from all the things and people I care about? Personally this was fueled by my own frustrations when I was apartment hunting in NYC. I was frustrating to have to juggle so many Google Maps tabs when I was evaluating a listing, and it was also annoying to not have full confidence that I was even searching in the right places. I wanted to be close to work, a Trader Joe's, and a major park. Given that public transportation networks can sometimes make close things hard to get to and far things easy to get to, it's not always obvious whether a neighborhood actually even fits my criteria or not! The overarching goal of theretowhere.com is to allow you to make more informed moving decisions while also making things more convenient than they are today. https://ibb.co/pBsX2HjN It can generate detailed travel time breakdowns for individual listings and addresses, making it easier to determine whether a listing is worth applying for without juggling Google Maps tabs. This is great for questions like “How far is this apartment from my friends, work and dancing gyms?” https://ibb.co/mVBjwPrJ It also has the powerful ability to heatmap a city based on which parts of it are close or not to the people and places you care about. This is great for questions like “Where in the city would I be reasonably close to work, friends and a woodworking studio?” https://ibb.co/vCynPSRK You can add these heatmaps to sites like Zillow and Streeteasy to make things super convenient (this was very fun to make). The main thing that's on my mind is whether this is useful or not. Like, is this something you would actually use? I also have other ideas I'd like to eventually intergrate into this (crime heatmaps, noise heatmaps, etc)
Thursday, 6 February 2025
Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Tuesday, 4 February 2025
Monday, 3 February 2025
New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)
Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)
29 by whoishiring | 107 comments on Hacker News.
Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format: Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé/CV: Email: Please only post if you are personally looking for work. Agencies, recruiters, job boards, and so on, are off topic here. Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. There's a site for searching these posts at https://ift.tt/npNsfTi .
29 by whoishiring | 107 comments on Hacker News.
Share your information if you are looking for work. Please use this format: Location: Remote: Willing to relocate: Technologies: Résumé/CV: Email: Please only post if you are personally looking for work. Agencies, recruiters, job boards, and so on, are off topic here. Readers: please only email these addresses to discuss work opportunities. There's a site for searching these posts at https://ift.tt/npNsfTi .