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Top stories from https://news.ycombinator.com (with 100+ score) Contribute to the development here: https://github.com/phil-r/hackernewsbot Also check https://t.me/designer_news Contacts: @philr
Show HN: Chonkie – A Fast, Lightweight Text Chunking Library for RAG (Score: 150+ in 21 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hK2m
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hK2m
I built Chonkie because I was tired of rewriting chunking code for RAG applications. Existing libraries were either too bloated (80MB+) or too basic, with no middle ground.
Core features:
- 21MB default install vs 80-171MB alternatives
- 33x faster token chunking than popular alternatives
- Supports multiple chunking strategies: token, word, sentence, and semantic
- Works with all major tokenizers (transformers, tokenizers, tiktoken)
- Zero external dependencies for basic functionality
Technical optimizations:
- Uses tiktoken with multi-threading for faster tokenization
- Implements aggressive caching and precomputation
- Running mean pooling for efficient semantic chunking
- Modular dependency system (install only what you need)
Benchmarks and code: https://github.com/bhavnicksm/chonkie
Looking for feedback on the architecture and performance optimizations. What other chunking strategies would be useful for RAG applications?
Visual Basic 6 rebuilt in C# – complete with form designer and IDE in browser (🔥 Score: 153+ in 1 hour)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hLCx
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hLCx
MdBook – a command line tool to create books with Markdown (Score: 153+ in 12 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKu8
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKu8
Australia's 3G Shutdown – Why your 4G/5G Phone is now Blocked (Score: 150+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKMT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKMT
Algorithms We Develop Software By (Score: 150+ in 9 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKiB
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKiB
Pi Chess Board (Score: 151+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKiQ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKiQ
Show HN: I made a tiny device for automatically recording digital pianos (❄️ Score: 153+ in 3 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hD9Y
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hD9Y
Hey HN!
A few years ago, I left my cushy big tech job to make hardware.
And made the device I always wanted - an automatic piano recorder!
I usually play piano improvisationally, and manually hitting record never meshed well with that. But there are always moments I wish I recorded, and now they are!
Hopefully it scratches a similar itch for some of you as well!
A few of the tech details:
* built on an esp32-s3
* custom injection molded enclosure
* BLE comms, sd card storage, DS1302 RTC
* android & ios apps with Flutter
* Shadertoy vfx support for video sharing
- Chip
What's New in F# 9 (Score: 150+ in 4 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKba
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKba
OpenID Connect specifications published as ISO standards (🔥 Score: 152+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hK8P
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hK8P
FrontierMath: A benchmark for evaluating advanced mathematical reasoning in AI (Score: 151+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hH2k
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hH2k
Show HN: Visprex – Open-source, in-browser data visualisation tool for CSV files (Score: 150+ in 17 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hHKf
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hHKf
Hello HN. I've always found writing data visualisation scripts boring and repetitive in data science workflows earlier in my career, so I built this tool to automate it. The available methods are based on my experience in econometrics where histograms and scatterplots were the starting points to check data distributions.
The link is to the documentation and the app is freely available at https://visprex.com, and if you're curious about the implementation it's open source at https://github.com/visprex/visprex. I'd appreciate any comments and feedback!
Physical Intelligence's first generalist policy AI can finally do your laundry (Score: 150+ in 11 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hJce
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hJce
You too can write a book (Score: 151+ in 14 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hHLD
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hHLD
Zig's (.{}){} Syntax (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6ht7U
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6ht7U
Since the '60s, Ford has stored cars underground in a Kansas City cave (❄️ Score: 150+ in 2 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hBTf
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hBTf
I Sent an Ethernet Packet (Score: 156+ in 5 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hLqq
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hLqq
Apple threatened workers over their talk about pay and remote work, feds charge (🔥 Score: 151+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hLgL
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hLgL
Is 3D printing being held back by an invalid patent? (Score: 150+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKtD
Parts made using the FFM (FDM) process are stronger in some directions than in others. This is due to imperfect adhesion between printed layers. This directional or anisotropic structural strength is a significant limiting factor for the structural integrity of 3d printed parts made with the common FFM process.
A method to drastically reduce this effect is described in an expired Stratasys patent, US1997/5653925A. As of this writing, I have not seen this feature implemented in any of the common open-source slicers. I would have expected this now-public-domain knowledge to have made its way into the slicers we use since the patent expired in 2017.
With some investigation, I believe this may be because of the 2023 patent US2023/11813789B2, to my knowledge only implemented as a proprietary in-house product of a 3d printing service house which appears to make the same claims illustrated in the 1997 Stratasys patent.
I am not expertly versed in patent law, but this patent would seem to have been granted in error. The fact that the 2023 patent actually references the Stratasys patent from 1997* makes the issuance of this patent even more baffling. At any rate, this seems like a low-hanging opportunity for a significant improvement in print strength that could benefit millions of users.
*The 2023 patent references the 1997 Stratasys patent as “teaching a process for adjusting the deposition rate .. to provide a predetermined porosity rate” but neglects to mention that the core claim of the patent was the staggered bead heights claimed.
In referencing the 1997 patent the 2023 work also gives a single-digit error in the patent number, as well as other “minor” errors in other patent numbers referenced in the patent. These misleading references could have impeded the examiner’s role in determining the validity of the patent.
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/08/f6/2b/d3d9964...
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ea/e7/3c/2b836c9...
Looking up the 2023 patent filer leads to this:
https://www.addmangroup.com/
Ractor – a Rust Actor Framework (❄️ Score: 150+ in 1 week)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hkCT
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hkCT
Web Locks API (Score: 152+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKdk
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKdk
JVM Anatomy Quarks (Score: 150+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hK3n
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hK3n
IMG_0416 (🔥 Score: 165+ in 54 minutes)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKyu
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKyu
Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough (🔥 Score: 158+ in 3 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hKbr
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hKbr
Mind-Bending Soviet Era Oil Rig City on the Caspian Sea (❄️ Score: 150+ in 4 days)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hweQ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hweQ
Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hGMV
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hGMV
Audio Decomposition – open-source seperation of music to constituent instruments (Score: 150+ in 10 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hJgM
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hJgM
Notes on Guyana (Score: 150+ in 1 day)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hFMJ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hFMJ
When machine learning tells the wrong story (Score: 152+ in 18 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hHfQ
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hHfQ
NYC Subway Station Layouts (Score: 151+ in 8 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hHH7
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hHH7
Grim Fandango (Score: 150+ in 6 hours)
Link: https://readhacker.news/s/6hHSP
Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/6hHSP