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Article URL: https://danmackinlay.name/notebook/probabilistic_programming.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43804068

Points: 2

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Article URL: https://newsletter.masterpoint.io/p/multi-instance-vs-single-instance-root-modules

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43804065

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Scratching this itch: tracks suddenly become unplayable in my [carefully curated] Spotify playlists. Fixing them is cumbersome. Spotify usually has alternative recordings of the same song, but you have to find and replace them by hand. I figured I could automate the process, and made it into a website in case others find it useful.

Disclaimer: I'm a backend person with an LLM. Please forgive my UI/UX, and lack of proper mobile support.

--

For the curious, here is a brief explanation of this annoying phenomenon (I worked on the catalogue ingestion systems for Last.fm a few years ago, so I have a rusty and likely out of date but still above-average familiarity with this topic)

On the surface, a music catalogue is based on a naive data model made up of Tracks, Artists, and Albums. Identifiers are basically made up of names and titles, or some composite.

Reality is (a lot) more complex. A slightly less naive, but far from accurate, data model includes the concept of "recording". Take Lou Reed's "Coney Island Baby". It's one "track", but there are actually 9 recordings of it (see https://songstats.com/track/35oekh1n/coney-island-baby). These "recordings" have unique identifiers (International Standard Recording Code). How are they used? Well, take two of them: USRC10300143, GBLLT2105923. Same track, different country (US, GB). E.g. the track issued in two different issues of the same album in different countries. And the licensing for each of those may be completely different (e.g. rights in the US may belong to $companyA and rights in the GB for $companyB). Or $companyC might come and buy rights for distribution in the GB, and perhaps decide to take down the GB recording completely.

For the purposes of your playlist, you want to listen to Lou's song, and don't care if you're listening to USRC10300143 or GBLLT2105923. But labels do, and Spotify (or any streaming service) has to care and report listens / downloads / etc. on the recording, not the track.

But.. when you add a track to a playlist you're actually adding a _recording_. So there are a lot of not-immediately-evident reasons why you may end up losing access to $track because someone took down $recording with a foreign key to $track. And when you go and search for $track, you're annoyed to find exactly the same track playable.

Why doesn't Spotify doesn't keep your playlists healthy? The basic reason this may be simply that the volume of metadata changes into music catalogues is surprisingly large, so not a trivial problem at Spotify scale.

A further reason is that it's actually not trivial. What are acceptable alternatives? Well.. replacing Bobby Womack's "Across 110th street" with Bobby Womack's "Accross 110th street - Original" is probably fine, but using "Accross 110th street - Drum and Bass mix" as fallback may not make every listener happy.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803786

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.writervivek.com/2025/04/god-paradox-of-invisible-hand.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803783

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Pasadena residents have limited options on a budget, but high-speed gigabit service does cover most of the area.

Article URL: https://docs.twine.world/twine-protocol-documentation

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803741

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF51VpevuG0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803730

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://github.com/si14/stuffed-naan-js

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803724

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/business/trump-tariffs-hobbies-costs.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803719

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/interoperable-randomness-beacons

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803700

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://senioraugur.substack.com/p/how-i-taught-ai-to-make-memes

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803692

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/312

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803679

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://oimo.io/works

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803675

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://naml.us/post/thank-you-for-holding-my-duck/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803659

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

We built SPECTRA — a system for transmitting real digital data, camouflaged as natural sounds and optical phenomena.

No Wi-Fi, no GSM, no internet. Just binary or ternary encoded signals hidden in what looks like environmental noise: bird chirps, light flickering, wind-like modulations.

Instead of obvious radio signals, SPECTRA uses:

Acoustic masking: frequency-shifted codes embedded in naturally sounding audio patterns.

Optical masking: binary or RGB ternary codes transmitted through LEDs and lasers, camouflaged as normal light variations.

The goal: create a resilient, stealthy communication system that can survive when conventional networks fail or are under surveillance.

Inspiration came from how native tribes imitated birds to send messages — now reimagined with embedded microcontrollers and dynamic adaptation.

We combined optical + acoustic transmission to boost survivability under different environmental conditions.

Early prototype and more details: https://alexs749266.github.io/SPECTRA-Communication/

Happy to hear any thoughts or hack ideas!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803649

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Sioux Falls residents can enjoy both affordable plans and high-speed internet. CNET's internet experts recommend looking at these options.

Article URL: https://github.com/Seanium/feedme

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803644

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/us/virginia-giuffre-dead.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803643

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Article URL: https://my-fit-ai.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803636

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Article URL: https://medium.com/expats-founders/vibe-coding-you-may-need-this-50-supabase-credit-38bc602862dc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43803635

Points: 1

# Comments: 0