AI Summarized Hacker News

Front-page articles summarized hourly.

Internet Archive's Storage

David Rosenthal highlights Bruce Li’s deep dive into Internet Archive’s storage: the PetaBox evolution from 1U 2004 to 4U-density racks, reaching about 1.4 PB per rack by 2025 with 8–22 TB drives. The Archive cools with ambient SF air and waste heat, mirrors data across multiple sites, and designs for drive failure. Rosenthal argues long-term preservation is primarily economic, not technical, noting a $25–30M/year budget yields storage far cheaper than cloud storage via tiering. He cautions against simplistic AWS comparisons and sketches Kryder’s vs. Moore’s law in magnetic storage.

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I built an in-memory rate limiter in a Next.js project

Overview of building an in-memory rate limiter for a Next.js app router using a fixed-window algorithm. It tracks client requests with an in-memory cache keyed by getOptsFn(), which returns key, maxTries, and expiresAt; a once-per-minute cleanup removes expired entries. For the reset-password-init endpoint, generateOptions creates key post.reset-password.{email}, expiresAt five seconds ahead, maxTries 1. The limiter allows one request every five seconds, returning 429 with Retry-After when exceeded. It includes Artillery load tests showing 12 successful requests per 60 seconds and a UI for testing.

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Wilson Lin on FastRender: a browser built by parallel agents

Simon Willison profiles Wilson Lin’s FastRender, a research browser built by thousands of parallel agents. At peak ~2,000 agents ran concurrently on large machines (≈300 per machine), producing thousands of commits per hour. The agents form a planning/worker tree to implement rendering and CSS. FastRender began as a personal side project and became Cursor research, using GPT-5.1/5.2 rather than coding-specialist models. It's not production-ready; the system runs autonomous weeks. Key ideas include task partitioning to minimize conflicts, feedback loops, specs submodules, and tolerance for small errors to sustain throughput.

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Open-source self-driving for 325 car models from 27 brands

Comma.ai offers openpilot, an AI driver-assistance upgrade (comma four) that enables hands-off driving in 325+ car models across 27 brands. It provides lane centering, adaptive cruise, dashcam, 360° vision, and OTA updates by plugging into your car. The system is advertised as an active driver aid with vast usage (300+ million miles driven, 20k users; GitHub ~50k stars). The site promotes buying comma four, setup guides, support, and blogs (e.g., openpilot 0.10.3, 0.10.1) and lists hiring in product, autonomy, and operations.

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Workspaces and Monorepos in Package Managers

Andrew Nesbitt surveys why package managers across ecosystems have workspaces and what they solve. Workspaces wire local dependencies so changes in one package are visible in others without publishing; monorepos keep code in one place. He sketches implementations: npm/Yarn/Bun use a workspaces field and symlinks; pnpm isolates node_modules and uses workspace:*; Cargo shares a lockfile; Go uses go.work; Bundler/Composer/SPM/Swift/pub/Mix/NuGet offer local-path or umbrella approaches. Common problems: phantom dependencies from hoisting, version mismatches, tooling/CI divergences, and publishing coordination. The piece argues coordination is the hard part.

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Noora Health (YC W14) Is Hiring AI/ML Engineer

Noora Health India is hiring an AI/ML Engineer in Bengaluru (INR 2.5–3.5M). Requirements: 4+ years in AI/ML, Python, cloud (GCP/AWS/Azure), deep learning (CV/NLP/RL); CS/AI degree or equivalent. Responsibilities: build end-to-end AI systems from data curation to deployment, define metrics, deploy and monitor, optimize performance, integrate into product, document findings, collaborate with engineers, PMs, designers, and clinicians. About Noora Health: trains family caregivers to improve patient outcomes; 30+ million trained across 12,400 facilities; CCP reduces complications; Skoll/WHO partners; YC-affiliated. Diversity valued; apply via link.

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TikTok Is Now Collecting More Data About Its Users

WIRED reports TikTok, now operated by the US-based TikTok USDS Joint Venture (backed by Oracle), updated its privacy policy after the ownership transition to collect more user data. The three biggest changes: 1) precise location tracking if users enable location services; 2) explicit collection of AI interactions (prompts, inputs, outputs, and related metadata); 3) expanded advertising network to include advertisers, publishers, and measurement partners to measure and deliver ads off the platform. Users see a consent pop-up before continuing.

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Some C habits I employ for the modern day

An experienced C programmer shares a modern, pragmatic C style focused on safety and clarity in a language with little standardization. He codes in C23 for new work, uses fixed typedefs (u8, i8, u16, u32, f32, f64, uptr, usize), and enforces CHAR_BIT==8. He prefers a simple String { data, len } and a parse-don’t-validate approach, using opaque types to build trusted interfaces. He experiments with a Tuple2 macro and sum types (MaybeBuffer with ok, val, err). Dynamic memory is minimized; string.h is avoided; stdlib/OS APIs are used when needed. He notes tradeoffs for embedded or performance concerns.

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Nanotimetamps: Time-Stamped Data on Nano Block Lattice

The nanotimestamp wiki welcomes readers, mentions sharing a video (Nanotimestamps.mp4), and notes that the author plans to add more information to the page in the future.

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EquipmentShare (YC W15) goes public

Garry Tan celebrates EquipmentShare's rise from rural Missouri founders to going public, noting their self-reliant roots and focus on solving contractors' problems. They built a marketplace for construction equipment and, with the T3 telematics platform, an operating system for the jobsite. The company evolved into a national, vertically integrated platform that helps manage fleets and track machines. Congratulations to Jabbok Schlacks, Willy, and the EquipmentShare team.

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Mental Models (2018)

A survey of about 100 mental models across disciplines, designed to improve decisions and spot opportunities. It synthesizes tools from general thinking (map-territory, circle of competence, first principles, thought experiments, second-order and probabilistic thinking, inversion, Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors) with physics, biology, economics, and systems thinking (relativity, thermodynamics, leverage, scaling, feedback loops, bottlenecks, margin of safety, supply and demand, constraint theory). It also covers cooperation, hierarchy, incentives, debt, competition, creative destruction, and art/psychology concepts (framing, audience, genre, contrast). Used together, these models help avoid biases and reason under uncertainty.

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New YC homepage

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that funds and mentors early-stage startups, offering an intensive program and a demo day to connect founders with investors.

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TrueVault (YC W14) is hiring a Growth Lead to test different growth channels

TrueVault, a YC-backed privacy software company, is hiring a remote US Growth Lead. The role reports to the CEO and focuses on building a first-principles growth function, emphasizing experimentation across channels (paid, outbound, partnerships, SEO, etc.) and end-to-end sales motions. Requirements: 5+ years hands-on B2B SaaS acquisition across multiple channels; strong data-driven, experimental mindset; ownership of growth metrics. Initial goals: run 6–8 acquisition experiments/quarter, establish 2–4 viable channels within 6 months, lift growth-led pipeline by 15–25% QoQ. Compensation: base $165–$185k, 15% target bonus, ~0.5–0.75% equity, OTE ~$190–$213k. Fully remote in US; benefits include health/dental/vision, unlimited PTO, 3% 401(k).

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