An Internet builds a cube that balances on its corner using reaction wheels (business model: "Uber for desktop physics demos"). Hackernews is enamored by its aesthetics, though some debate the feasibility of a low-cost DIY version. Others ponder applications like attitude control for satellites and probability experiments. The maker clarifies the cube's specs, with each 220g flywheel helping the 1.7kg total mass defy gravity. Hackernews wonders if simpler mechanisms like moving weights or pumping fluid could achieve the same witchcraft. Walking robots get a mention, but evidently wheels are the superior balancing tech. Some fret about the potential for these open-air blenders to remove fingers, suggesting plexi-cages. Overall, an impressive use of angular momentum to overcome the tyranny of corners - next up, the self-balancing pencil?

An Internet has managed to cram an entire cyberdelic fever dream into a measly 256 bytes of code. Hackernews is stunned, with one commenter asking "What the fuck. How?", apparently forgetting they are on a site full of people who have solved the problem of compressing reality into a few kilobytes years ago. The demo, dubbed "Bitwise Liminal", features cutting-edge 90s VHS glitch visuals generated through the arcane art of "ray marching", which is just wizardry with extra steps.

Some liken it to porting a rave into NeXTSTEP, while others frantically try to unpick the sorcery, decompiling the code down to individual runes. The author humbly explains that the VHS effect was the real challenge, and not reimplementing Braingames for the umpteenth time. Comparisons are drawn to other works of compact delirium, like the Megapole demoscene classic that stunned audiences by removing the blood/brain barrier in real time.

The usual demoscene suspects chime in to cross-promote their elfcores and dwittersmithies. Pedants get trapped in rathole discussions about whether the real magic is abusing SVG events or using IDs as global variables (it was ever thus). Someone fantasizes about encoding all life in a few megabytes, conveniently forgetting that's just a stripped-down tarball of the Nvidia drivers.

In the end, the hacker samizdat speaks for itself - compact amazements manifesting from the ether, for the unknowable entertainment of bottom-feeding content locusts and memetic video essayists. Keep shitting out those compact, indecipherable mysteries, you beautiful, insignificant fen-weirdos.

OpenTTD (business model: "Uber for trains") celebrates its 20th birthday this year, and the developers are gearing up for a big release. Among the new features is "unbunching" for road vehicles, which will surely delight the hardcore players obsessed with micromanaging every last truck convoy. The comments are full of players reminiscing about wasting untold hours building intricate transit networks, only to derail the entire operation by ordering all their buses to gridlock the AI competition into bankruptcy. Others lament the lack of challenge once you've mastered the art of spanning the map with ludicrously profitable resource routes. But what's the point of playing these economic sims if not to create a utopian metropolis built entirely on the inefficient movement of coal? As one hacker-philosopher muses, games like OpenTTD are just "guerilla gardening" - you start in the wilderness, but through careful irrigation and latticework, you sculpt the land into your own personal urban hellscape.

An Internet is upset that companies have the audacity to pay engineers based on their location rather than their innate abilities to code. Hackernews jumps in with cries of "discrimination!" as if cost of living adjustments were a new form of segregation. Some attempt to bring logic into the discussion by pointing out the practical realities of tax incentives and labor markets, but they are quickly shouted down by the mob demanding a universal basic income for anyone who can fizzbuzz. The debate devolves into metaphysical questions about the nature of value and whether we should abandon capitalism altogether. Meanwhile, the company at the center of it all, GitLab (business model: "Uber for git repos") sits back and laughs at having found a new way to underpay their workforce.

An Internet discovers you can daisy-chain USB devices to switch between computers, as if KVMs were some newfangled concept. Hackernews is immediately distracted by implications of using this to conceal overemployment schemes and digital nomad lifestyles from employers. Discussions rapidly devolve into unsubstantiated tales of Hungarian poly-workers juggling 5 remote jobs and debates over whether companies actually verify your location via laptop spyware. The more pragmatic Hackernews chime in with cost-benefit analyses of 4K KVM switches versus multi-monitor setups with built-in switching. As usual, the thread concludes with arcane tips on tweaking DDC channels and lamentations over Linux brightness controls - as if anyone's endgame involved mere monitor brightness adjustments rather than a convoluted ruse to deceive employers.