Sunday, 13 July 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Gaming Cancer: How Citizen Science Games Could Help Cure Disease

Gaming Cancer: How Citizen Science Games Could Help Cure Disease
9 by pseudolus | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: AGI Is Mathematically Impossible (3): Kolmogorov Complexity

AGI Is Mathematically Impossible (3): Kolmogorov Complexity
16 by ICBTheory | 5 comments on Hacker News.
Hi folks. This is the third part in an ongoing theory I’ve been developing over the last few years called the Infinite Choice Barrier (ICB). The core idea is simple: General intelligence—especially AGI—is structurally impossible under certain epistemic conditions. Not morally, not practically. Mathematically. The argument splits across three barriers: 1.Computability (Gödel, Turing, Rice): You can’t decide what your system can’t see. 2.Entropy (Shannon): Beyond a certain point, signal breaks down structurally. 3.Complexity (Kolmogorov, Chaitin): Most real-world problems are fundamentally incompressible. This paper focuses on (3): Kolmogorov Complexity. It argues that most of what humans care about is not just hard to model, but formally unmodellable—because the shortest description of a problem is the problem. In other words: you can’t generalize from what can’t be compressed. ⸻ Here’s the abstract: There is a common misconception that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will emerge through scale, memory, or recursive optimization. This paper argues the opposite: that as systems scale, they approach the structural limit of generalization itself. Using Kolmogorov complexity, we show that many real-world problems—particularly those involving social meaning, context divergence, and semantic volatility—are formally incompressible and thus unlearnable by any finite algorithm. This is not a performance issue. It’s a mathematical wall. And it doesn’t care how many tokens you’ve got The paper isn’t light, but it’s precise. If you’re into limits, structures, and why most intelligence happens outside of optimization, it might be worth your time. https://ift.tt/uASHYDq Happy to read your view.

Thursday, 10 July 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Kite – News App by Kagi

Kite – News App by Kagi
20 by tigroferoce | 2 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Typeform was too expensive so I built my own forms

Show HN: Typeform was too expensive so I built my own forms
13 by preetsuthar17 | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I'm a solopreneur and run a web design agency. I create open-source apps, but I also work as a freelancer and designer. I was accepting any new freelance project via forms on my agency website. I was using Typeform, but as time went by and more people submitted forms, it got more and more expensive. That time, I thought to use Google Form, but it was way too blocky and looked very unprofessional on my agency website. So I thought to build my own forms for my own usage, and it turns out it almost doubled form submissions and inquiry calls. I was happy, so I thought to build it for everyone and make it open-source. I added AI functionalities using Vercel AISDK. I can generate forms almost instantly using AI and also added analytics AI so that users can talk with their forms—more like talk with their analytics data. I hope this product will be as helpful to you as it was for me. Would love your feedback pls Preet

Wednesday, 9 July 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: Dev atrophy test – Can you still code without AI?

Show HN: Dev atrophy test – Can you still code without AI?
7 by mrborgen | 2 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN, I'm Per from Scrimba (YC S20), the code-learning platform. There's been a lot of talk lately about whether AI tools are causing skill atrophy amongst developers. We get a front-row seat to this, and we see more and more students struggle with basic concepts, and building apps on their own. This is almost always a consequence of relying too much on ChatGPT and vibe coding tools. So we built a small side project: https://devatrophy.com It's a test of your core web dev knowledge — no handholding, no back rubs, no AI autocomplete. Just you, your brain, and 10 questions. There are three levels (Noobie, Le Chad, Hardcore), and the questions cover HTML, CSS, JavaScript, databases, and Node. You’ll get a score at the end, plus a downloadable certificate for bragging rights (or public shaming). Would love for you to try it and tell us what you think. And would be curious to hear if you're feeling any signs of "dev atrophy" yourself, or in your team? PS: Ironically we decided to produce it by vibe coding on V0. Oh the irony.

Monday, 7 July 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: Any resources for finding non-smart appliances?

Ask HN: Any resources for finding non-smart appliances?
43 by everyone | 25 comments on Hacker News.
My washing machine broke down. I need a replacement. I must avoid getting a "smart" one though. Are there any lists of products that arent "smart" so I can know which models are viable options to buy? Or other resources? I'm based in Ireland.

New top story on Hacker News: Poland's clean energy usage overtakes coal for first time

Poland's clean energy usage overtakes coal for first time
29 by stared | 4 comments on Hacker News.


Sunday, 6 July 2025

New top story on Hacker News: Show HN: BreakerMachines – Modern Circuit Breaker for Rails with Async Support

Show HN: BreakerMachines – Modern Circuit Breaker for Rails with Async Support
7 by seuros | 1 comments on Hacker News.
BreakerMachines is a production-ready circuit breaker for Ruby/Rails with built-in async/fiber support, fallback chains, and rich monitoring. Unlike existing gems, it handles modern Ruby's fiber scheduler and avoids dangerous thread timeouts.

New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: If AGI were invented tomorrow which countries would fare better?

Ask HN: If AGI were invented tomorrow which countries would fare better?
8 by mattigames | 12 comments on Hacker News.
I know it's unlikely to be available tomorrow or sometime soon but as an hypothetical question. Also, which countries would fare worse? And why?

New top story on Hacker News: Valve conquered PC gaming – what comes next?

Valve conquered PC gaming – what comes next?
7 by HelloUsername | 1 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues

What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues
5 by _tk_ | 0 comments on Hacker News.