Europe's new robotics unicorn: Germany's RobCo hits $1B valuation
Summary not available.
Hacker News
The Front Page
Press Release: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for their groundbreaking discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel identified the protein channelrhodopsin in the single-celled alga Chlamydomonas, which opens an ion channel when exposed to blue light. Karl Deisseroth subsequently transformed this protein into a light-controlled switch for nerve cells, enabling the precise manipulation of neural signals in living brains. This breakthrough has revolutionized neuroscience by providing unprecedented tools to map the neural circuits that govern memories, feelings, and behaviors, while also offering new clinical possibilities for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders.
In the wake of Tippett Studios’ closure, a digital archive appears online
Access to cloudways.cloud has been blocked by Cloudflare security services after user activity triggered automated protection protocols. The incident may have been caused by the submission of SQL commands, malformed data, or specific phrases, and users are advised to contact the site owner with their Cloudflare Ray ID for resolution.
The Tao of Backup
Summary not available.
Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in First Millennium BCE Babylonia
In the research article Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in 1st Millennium BCE Babylonia, scholar Shana Zaia argues that although ancient Mesopotamia lacked a separate religious education track, theological training was a fundamental component of the formal scribal curriculum. Through an analysis of 1st millennium BCE Babylonian school texts, Zaia illustrates how students acquired vital knowledge concerning divine names, temple rituals, and the theological hierarchies of cities like Babylon and Nippur. By utilizing specific literary works such as the Enūma eliš and various god-lists, the curriculum functioned as a tool for both professional specialization and the socio-political enculturation of the next generation of imperial administrators and specialists.
Safe Optimistic Lock Coupling
As CPU core counts continue to rise, traditional lock coupling in concurrent data structures often suffers from performance bottlenecks caused by physical contention on synchronization locks. To solve this, Thomas Neumann highlights Optimistic Lock Coupling, a technique that provides near-lockfree read scalability by using version numbers instead of standard locks for readers. To prevent the potential for race conditions when developers fail to validate these version numbers, the approach integrates validation requirements directly into the C++ type system. By utilizing specialized wrappers like unvalidated types and OptimisticPtr, the compiler can enforce that data is only accessed after successful validation, ensuring high-performance concurrency without sacrificing correctness.
Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage
Improper redactions in annual reports submitted to the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment have revealed the massive resource consumption of Google data centers across the state. Investigative findings show that Agate LLC in Lincoln consumes approximately 13 million gallons of water and 52.65 megawatts of peak electricity annually, while the Fireball Group LLC facility in Papillion uses 547.88 megagallons of water per year. Additionally, the documents disclose significant expected tax refunds, with Agate LLC anticipating over $55 million and Fireball LLC over $39 million. These disclosures follow an executive order from Governor Jim Pillen requiring data centers to self-report their impact on Nebraska's water, power grids, and local infrastructure.
What is going on with ceiling fans
The article examines the chaotic evolution of ceiling fan design, noting how e-commerce giants like Wayfair and Amazon have flooded the market with bizarre, "algorithmic" fixtures. Driven by the flexibility of integrated LED lighting, a new genre of hybrid products has emerged, including "fandeliers"—chandeliers with fans—and "chandefans." These mass-produced items often prioritize sculptural, non-traditional shapes over functional utility, frequently utilizing cheap plastic and non-replaceable lighting components that contribute to environmental waste. The author suggests this trend represents a breakdown of traditional architectural integration in favor of strange, disconnected hybridizations that blur the lines between light and air movement.
Why don't more developers “use the platform”?
In a recent analysis, Nolan Lawson examines the persistent tendency for developers to build custom solutions rather than "using the platform" via native browser APIs. Lawson identifies several contributing factors, such as historical browser inconsistencies, the familiarity of npm ecosystems and React idioms, and the educational joy of crafting custom tools from scratch. He also suggests that a lack of deep expertise in underlying technologies, such as CSS, often results in redundant or less efficient code. Finally, Lawson explores the potential impact of AI coding tools, noting they could either optimize platform usage through vast technical knowledge or worsen code bloat by favoring repetitive, custom implementations.
Watson Jr. memo about CDC 6600 (1963)
In an August 1963 memo famously known as "The Janitor Memo," Thomas J. Watson Jr. expressed scathing frustration over how IBM lost its industry leadership to the Control Data Corporation (CDC). The document highlights the profound impact of the CDC 6600 on the computing market, specifically noting Watson's disbelief that IBM's dominance was being challenged by a company consisting of only 34 people, including the janitor.
Show HN: AI search for every photo and every frame of video on macOS
SCM, or Screen Memories, is a local-first AI search application for macOS that enables semantic discovery of photos and video frames within any local folder. Developed by allenv0, the tool prioritizes privacy by running all inference locally, ensuring media never leaves the user's machine. The application supports diverse search modes, including semantic vision, video scene segmentation, OCR for text, and Whisper-based dialogue transcription. It also features an opt-in LLM chat for querying extracted metadata and smart tabs for organized navigation.
Page Table Memory Consumption
The article examines the significant impact of page table memory consumption on modern system performance and stability. While multi-level page tables offer superior TLB efficiency compared to hashed tables, they pose a substantial memory risk when numerous processes map identical shared memory regions. The author details historical and contemporary instances where massive page table growth—driven by shared memory in databases like Oracle, Postgres, and ClickHouse—has triggered Out-Of-Memory (OOM) failures. While the use of Huge Pages can mitigate this overhead, it introduces challenges regarding memory fragmentation and allocation. Furthermore, the text highlights emerging complexities in NUMA architectures, where researchers must balance the latency of remote page table walks against the memory costs of replicating tables across multiple nodes, as explored in the Mitosis and Hydra studies.
Incentives in Academic Research
The author of the blog Wonderings of a SAT geek, msoos, contends that the fundamental objectives of academic research are being undermined by a systemic misalignment of incentives. While research was intended to advance scientific understanding and train new scholars through honesty and rigor, the author argues that the modern focus has shifted toward promotions, fame, and publication. This culture, according to the text, encourages researchers to ignore or refuse to retract incorrect or misleading results once their professional status is secured. Furthermore, the author expresses concern that this lack of scientific integrity is being passed down to PhD students, who are increasingly prioritizing successful outputs over the precision and curiosity necessary for true scientific progress.
Nearly 200 people under observation after Irkutsk lab worker dies from plague
Health authorities in Siberia’s Irkutsk region have placed nearly 200 people under medical observation following the death of a laboratory worker, identified as Daria Sh., from the plague. The employee of the Irkutsk anti-plague institute reportedly contracted the infection—suspected to be pneumonic plague—after accidentally breaking a test tube containing live bacteria. The victim died in a hospital in Shelekhov after developing severe pneumonia. While Buryatia republic leader Alexei Tsydenov confirmed the fatality, he noted that the infection was not related to his region. Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev and officials from Rospotrebnadzor are currently managing containment efforts, while law enforcement has opened a criminal investigation into potential health safety violations.
We want you to build the next Git platform on Cloudflare
Cloudflare is challenging developers to build the next generation of Git platforms tailored for the agentic era using Artifacts and Cloudflare Workers. Moving beyond human-centric models like GitHub, the competition focuses on how AI agents can autonomously manage code, context, and workflows at scale. Artifacts, a versioned filesystem currently in open beta, provides programmable primitives that allow for repository management, Workers-based deployments, and automated event subscriptions for tasks such as code reviews. The competition runs until October 14, 2026, with the top prize including $25,000 in Cloudflare credits and an invitation for the winning team to showcase their work in San Francisco at Cloudflare Connect.
What Meta got right with Muse
In an analysis of the consumer AI landscape, product designer Mete Polat argues that Meta has successfully positioned its Muse agent to lead the market through superior design and a distinct business model. While competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic focus on technical complexity and token-based subscriptions, Muse leverages a simple "coworker" metaphor that abstracts away technical jargon, making the interface feel as intuitive as messaging. Furthermore, by utilizing Meta's established advertising ecosystem to fund a permissive free tier, the company avoids the usage limits that often hinder other platforms. Polat also highlights Muse's strategic use of anthropomorphism and personality to build user affinity, contrasting its approachable branding against the sterile, technical aesthetic of its major rivals.
The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux
Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics driver team has spearheaded significant improvements to the AMDGPU kernel driver, specifically enhancing support for older AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 era graphics cards and APUs. At XDC2026 in Toronto, Kristóf detailed his work in transitioning these legacy devices from the outdated Radeon driver to the modern AMDGPU framework, which unlocks the RADV Vulkan driver and provides improved performance and power management. By addressing various defects and implementing features like soft reset support, Kristóf's efforts ensure that decade-old hardware remains viable for Linux gaming and other modern workloads well into 2026.
FTL: A new operating system for clouds
FTL is a novel operating system designed for cloud environments that employs a unique userspace OS design, allowing the operating system to function as a library. By moving OS concepts such as the VFS and TCP/IP into userspace, FTL enables developers to add features, debug, and upgrade the system as easily as writing standard applications. The FTL kernel utilizes a hypervisor-like interface to provide superior container isolation, aiming to deliver VM-level security for lightweight containers without sacrificing performance. The system maintains Linux binary compatibility, supporting both traditional Linux processes and specialized Unikernel-like applications. Following successful initial releases for Rust-based servers, the project's roadmap includes upcoming support for filesystems, Node.js, and Go.
RetailReady (YC W24) Is Hiring
RetailReady, a Y Combinator W24 startup, is recruiting for an Implementations role to support its San Francisco-based operations. Founded by Sarah Hamer and Elle Smyth, the company provides an AI-powered supply chain compliance engine that uses camera vision to digitize warehouse processes and minimize shipping errors. Having secured $6.6M in funding and achieved a fourfold increase in revenue over the last 12 months, RetailReady is working to replace antiquated supply chain systems with a platform designed to power future warehouse robotics. The Implementations specialist will lead software deployment across various tech stacks, travel to client sites up to 50% of the month, and collaborate with engineering teams to influence the product roadmap through on-site feedback.
TurboPython – A Python-to-C++ Compiler
TurboPython, also known as TPy, is a general-purpose, statically typed language that compiles Python code through C++ into standalone native binaries. Distinguishing itself from standard CPython, the language utilizes an ownership and borrowing model to provide memory safety and predictable performance without a garbage collector, automatic reference counting, or a Global Interpreter Lock (GIL). While it retains familiar syntax, TurboPython enforces strict type annotations and lacks dynamic features like monkey-patching or direct compatibility with external pip packages; instead, all dependencies must be written in TurboPython or ported to its subset of the standard library. Currently in early development, the toolchain is distributed via PyPI as tpy-lang and requires C++23-compliant compilers such as GCC 13+ or Clang 19+.
Woking Electrical Control Room (2016)
The Woking Electrical Control Room, a Grade II listed building constructed in 1936, served as one of five facilities designed to manage electricity for the Southern Rail network. Designed by architect James Robb Scott and built by the Swedish firm Asean, the structure features a non-descript concrete exterior that hides an ornate, oval-shaped interior with a white domed ceiling. The control room is distinguished by its decorative cast iron poles supporting large copper dishes with bulbous lights, as well as black control panels used to manage substations and prevent railway downtime. Although the facility ceased its primary operations in 1997, the building's offices remain in use, and the site occasionally opens to the public during the Open London heritage weekend.
Celebrating the 100th birthday of the kidney donated to him as a teenager
Ray Vetuskey, a resident of Webster, N.Y., is celebrating a remarkable medical milestone tied to the 100th birthday of his late mother, Betty Vetuskey, who donated a kidney to him when he was 16 years old. Following a successful transplant at Strong Hospital in March 1978, the organ has lasted 48 years, far exceeding the typical 15 to 20-year lifespan of a living donor kidney. Dr. Miklos Molnar, Director of Transplant Medical Services at URochester Medicine, identified Vetuskey as potentially the longest-surviving kidney transplant recipient in the hospital's history. Vetuskey continues to thrive with annual check-ups, honoring the life-saving gift that has sustained him for nearly five decades.
How to hack time, with C2PA
Researcher David Buchanan, known as retr0id, has revealed a vulnerability in the C2PA metadata standard that enables a technique termed "time-hacking." By exploiting the protocol's "exclusions" feature—which permits certain byte ranges to be omitted from signature calculations—an attacker can exclude an entire file to sign an empty string. This allows for the attachment of a valid, timestamped signature to an image that can then be modified, such as by forging lottery numbers, without invalidating the Time Stamp Authority (TSA) proof. Because existing verification tools currently fail to flag these large exclusions, the flaw presents a significant challenge for ensuring the authenticity of digital content.
Apple and a Hacker's Future
Summary not available.
We ported the original Doom to SQL
Developer Lukas Vogel has successfully ported the 1993 classic Doom to run entirely within a SQL database using CedarDB. The implementation, known as SQLDoom, utilizes complex SQL queries and cedarscript to recreate the game's original Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) tree architecture, moving beyond the limited raycasting of previous attempts. By leveraging a relational data model, the project allows for easy modding and provides native multiplayer support through database atomicity and concurrency control. Furthermore, because CedarDB compiles queries into machine code via LLVM IR, the engine achieves performance remarkably close to the original C source code, maintaining a consistent 35 FPS game loop.
Differences Between `Foldl` and `Foldr`
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Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died
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Lace and Labor: Lessons from the actual Luddites
Exploring the intersection of labor history and fiber arts, Avery Trufelman and Elizabeth Kauma examine how technological shifts have historically redefined textile production. The discussion traces the evolution of knitting from its origins in Medieval professional guilds to its transformation into a Victorian leisure activity, spurred by the invention of the framework knitting machine by Reverend William Lee. By distinguishing authentic, machine-proof crochet from mass-produced imitations, the text provides historical perspective on contemporary anxieties surrounding automation and the changing nature of work.
Demystifying Tufte's data-ink ratio
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Show HN: Glashütte Trash Clock – A 30-minute pendulum clock made from trash
Artist Niklas Roy has unveiled the Glashütte Trash Clock, a fully functional mechanical timepiece constructed from scavenged materials in Glashütte, Saxony. Developed during an artist residency with NOMOS, the clock utilizes discarded items such as paperclips, cardboard, and paint cans to drive its pendulum-based mechanism. Beyond the mechanical construction, the project introduced GTC, a new time scale based on the clock's specific performance rather than Earth's rotation. This experimental endeavor serves as a personal tribute to the creator’s ancestors, Henri and Eduard Roy, who were Swiss watchmakers with deep roots in the region.
Blindsight (Watts Novel)
Summary not available.
Treachery in the Rodin Museum 3D scan verdict
In an eight-year legal struggle, activist Cosmo Wenman and digital rights groups including Communia and Wikimédia France were ultimately denied access to 3D scans of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures held by the Rodin Museum. Although a lower court in the Administrative Tribunal of Paris initially ruled that the high-resolution 3D point cloud scans were administrative documents subject to public disclosure, the Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court, overturned the verdict. The high court determined that these digital assets are part of the museum's inalienable collection rather than administrative records, effectively exempting them from freedom of information (FOI) laws. This ruling establishes a precedent that allows cultural institutions to maintain exclusivity over digital reproductions of public domain works, which Wenman argues undermines the principles of open culture and digital accessibility.
Homa: The end of TCP for AI clusters [video]
John Ousterhout from Stanford presents Homa, a communication protocol positioned as a replacement for TCP within AI clusters.
Former SR-71 engineer talks NASA's Blackbird revival program
Former NASA propulsion engineer Tim Conners has shared insights regarding the potential revival of the SR-71 Blackbird, specifically Tail 844, as a specialized high-speed engine test bed. Following speculation triggered by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's comments on a new high-speed X-plane, Conners suggests the agency may be aiming to use the legendary aircraft to validate new high-Mach engine technologies rather than for aerodynamic research. Despite significant obstacles—including the potential unserviceability of the original J58 engines, the disappearance of the specialized JP-7 fuel, and nearly three decades of component degradation—current reports indicate that NASA may soon begin "power-on testing" at the Armstrong Flight Research Center to assess the aircraft's electrical systems.
Reasons I didn't become an EMT, ranked
In a personal reflection titled 21 reasons I didn't become an EMT, ranked, software engineer Ben Stolovitz details the psychological and practical hurdles that delayed his pursuit of medical certification for years. Stolovitz categorizes his hesitations into three tiers of ridiculousness, addressing legitimate concerns such as time constraints and workplace culture, alongside irrational fears like the possibility of enjoying the role so much that he might abandon his tech career. After finally completing a NOLS Wilderness EMT course in Wyoming, he highlights how many of his delays were self-imposed excuses to avoid scary and new experiences, ultimately encouraging others to overcome similar inertia to pursue meaningful learning.
Show HN: Build with Python – a beginner course where your code draws
SciMigo's Draw with Python module, part of the Build with Python curriculum, teaches fundamental programming concepts through interactive visual tasks. Over 45 minutes, students learn to use function calls, variables, loops, and click events to create a robot, a pattern of circles, and a click-to-draw painting on a digital canvas.
Sales of sub-€25,000 electric car models set to rise sevenfold
Summary not available.
A 40ms Go garbage collector pause caused by swap
Fernando Simões warns that using swap to manage memory spikes in production can trigger severe Go garbage collector (GC) pauses. His research demonstrates that while the Go runtime reads internal metadata during stop-the-world (STW) phases, the kernel may evict these non-heap pages to swap. This results in major page faults that can spike GC pauses from a median of 51 $\mu$s to as much as 40ms—an 800-fold increase that halts all Ps in the runtime and can delay critical I/O operations. Additionally, testing indicates that the Go 1.26 Green Tea garbage collector provides negligible mitigation for this issue.
We're working on a new RuneScape MMO
Jagex has announced a new RuneScape MMORPG, currently working under the title RS4, which is being built using the Unreal Engine. Set in Gielinor during the Sixth Age, the game will begin in Ashenfall, taking place years after the events of Dragonwilds and the destruction of Dragon Queen Kuldra. This new title is intended to expand the RuneScape universe alongside existing games like Old School RuneScape and RuneScape, rather than replacing them. Emphasizing principles of integrity and community co-development, the project is still several years from release, but the studio plans to share more details and involve players in the development process starting next year.
City building games have a Soul Problem pt.2
In a second installment of his critique of the genre, Alex Lingris argues that modern city-building games, specifically Cities: Skylines 2, suffer from a lack of "soul" due to an obsession with sterile, geometric perfection. Lingris contends that the "neurotic cleanliness" and unrealistic, square surfaces of these simulations fail to capture the organic, lived-in character of real urban environments. To improve immersion, he suggests that developers should integrate gritty, visual details such as potholes, graffiti, scaffolding, and decaying infrastructure. By neglecting these imperfections and the visible socioeconomic nuances of actual cities, current titles miss the opportunity to use the landscape as a storytelling tool, ultimately resulting in a lifeless experience that lacks the complexity of real-world life.
Your body of work thinks back at you
In the essay "Your Body Of Work Thinks Back At You," photographer cedric explores how long-term photographic archives can reveal unintended social patterns and truths. By reviewing years of seemingly incidental images of public seating, the author discovered an inadvertent documentation of hostile architecture—the practice of designing street furniture to be uncomfortable or impractical in order to exclude certain populations from public spaces. The piece argues that while photographers often strive for deliberate intent, the true power of a body of work lies in its ability to act as an involuntary witness, allowing meaningful social critiques to emerge through the retrospective analysis of accumulated evidence that the photographer never consciously sought to capture.
To grieve, or not to grieve?
Summary not available.
Show HN: Pi pod – Run your pi coding agent in sandboxes on your own server
pi pod is an open-source software project designed to run pi sessions in isolated sandboxes, or "pods," within composable environments on user-managed servers. Developed by Evan, the tool seeks to enhance the existing pi harness by adding critical components for an agentic engineering environment, such as agent sandboxing, native clients, RBAC session sharing, and surface automation for browsers and native apps. By focusing on self-hosting, pi pod provides software engineers and businesses with increased privacy, customization, and protection against AI vendor lock-in. The project is currently available on GitHub, with a managed service expected to be released in the future.
Web Search API
Cloudflare has released its Web Search API in beta, allowing AI agents and applications to search the internet to ground responses in live information and avoid training data limitations. The service supports three providers, Ceramic.ai, Exa, and Linkup, all of which comply with Zero Data Retention policies and verified bot crawling standards. Integrated with AI Gateway, the API allows developers to view search requests in logs and pay via AI Gateway credits at the providers' standard pricing without markup, while also providing the option to use personal API keys. Integration can be achieved through the REST API or using the AI binding within Cloudflare Workers.
Huawei and Qualcomm Announce Broad Patent License Agreement
In Shenzhen, China, Huawei and Qualcomm have announced a multi-year, broad patent license agreement that includes cross-licensing of their respective patent portfolios in fields such as 5G, compute, AI, and networking. Under the terms of the deal, Qualcomm will also purchase certain Huawei U.S. patents related to compute, AI, networking, and other technologies. The agreement, which is subject to regulatory approvals, adheres to fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principles and underscores the mutual recognition of both companies' significant contributions and innovations in the telecommunications and technology sectors.
Type Safe Generic Data Structures in C
Author Daniel Hooper presents a novel approach to implementing type-safe generic data structures in C, overcoming the inherent limitations of traditional methods like macro-heavy headers and void * pointers. While common techniques often lead to binary bloat or a loss of type safety, Hooper's method utilizes unions to associate specific type information with a structure and flexible array members to enhance memory efficiency and cache performance. By leveraging the ternary operator within macros, he demonstrates how to enforce compile-time type checking, allowing the compiler to catch mismatches when adding data to structures like linked lists.
Infidel goes wild
In a detailed technical analysis, Andrew Plotkin has identified a severe memory corruption bug within the classic Infocom interactive fiction title Infidel. Utilizing a memory-level debugger, Plotkin discovered that a ZIL compiler error causes a "wild pointer" bug when players drop items in the Endless Desert region. Rather than utilizing the correct DESERT-TABLE address, the game writes data to unintended memory locations, potentially overwriting the abbreviations table and causing garbled text or interpreter crashes. This flaw managed to evade detection by both developers and players for decades, as the specific circumstances required to trigger the error were rarely encountered during typical gameplay.
Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back
The RemoveMacAI utility, developed by omlahore, provides a method to disable Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and reclaim disk space by deleting downloaded AI models. The tool removes assets associated with Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, and Image Playground, and employs a configuration profile to prevent the operating system from automatically re-downloading them. Designed for Apple silicon devices, the process is fully reversible and safe, as it does not modify /System files directly and leaves System Integrity Protection enabled. Users can deploy the tool via Homebrew or a curl installation script to manage their system's storage and privacy settings.
Automating my 35mm film scanning pipeline
Photographer Shanna Digel has engineered an automated pipeline to streamline her 35mm film scanning and post-processing workflow, replacing a labor-intensive manual routine. After an early attempt to use Claude to drive scanner hardware led to mechanical damage, Digel pivoted to a software-based system utilizing numpy for color conversion and the LaMa inpainting model for automated dust removal. The workflow also integrates Qwen3-VL for local metadata tagging and Cloudflare R2 for storage, culminating in an interactive digital gallery featuring a 3js-modeled film roll experience.
Decision models like Jev don't beat LLM-as-a-judge or traditional classifiers
A study by Red Hat researchers examined the efficacy of emerging decision models, such as TypeSafe’s Jev, in comparison to traditional AI guardrail methodologies. By testing various candidates across prompt injection and content safety benchmarks, the researchers compared pre-trained text classifiers, zero-shot classifiers, and LLM-as-a-judge architectures against Jev-style models. The findings revealed that while decision models provide advantages like type safety and low cost, pre-trained predictive models remain highly competitive due to their superior speed and accuracy for well-defined risks. Although LLM-as-a-judge remains a viable but resource-heavy option, the study suggests a shift toward pragmatism in model selection to effectively balance accuracy, latency, and computational costs.
Bill Draper has died
Summary not available.
'Neanderthals Among Us' review
In Neanderthals Among Us: The Making of a Prehistoric Human, Peter Sahlins examines the evolution of the Neanderthal from its 1856 discovery in Germany to its multifaceted role in modern science and popular culture. As reviewed by Helen Wickstead, Sahlins traces the trajectory of the Neanderthal image, moving from 19th-century racial science and "brutish" cinematic caricatures to contemporary genetic realities. By bridging the gap between archaeological findings and a vast corpus of media—including novels, films, and political discourse—Sahlins illustrates how the "Neanderthal" has served as a shifting cultural symbol. Ultimately, the book highlights how ancient DNA has proven that Neanderthals are integrated into the modern human genome, while cautioning against biological determinism by framing our view of these ancestors as a Rorschach test for human identity.
Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?
To automate the monitoring of his six various waste bins, Simon Green developed BinRange, an over-engineered home automation system utilizing ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technology. By replacing unreliable Bluetooth proximity sensing with UWB, the setup uses a fixed radio anchor and six custom battery-powered tags to accurately detect when a bin has been moved. Integrated with Home Assistant via MQTT, the system employs accelerometers to recognize "tip events," providing confirmation that a bin has been emptied. Developed with the assistance of AI tools like Codex, the project includes custom firmware, 3D-printed enclosures, and automated notification schedules to ensure collection tasks are completed.
Xray-core concealed a certificate verification bypass vulnerability
Security researcher dyhkwong has accused the maintainers of the popular proxy software Xray-core of concealing a critical certificate verification bypass vulnerability for nearly six months. The issue arose in January 2026 when the software transitioned to a new option, pinnedPeerCertSha256, which contained a flaw that enabled man-in-the-middle attacks. While the maintainers allegedly applied a silent fix in February 2026 without public disclosure, the researcher discovered in July 2026 that the vulnerability remained partially unaddressed. The report criticizes the developers for failing to warn users of the security risk, effectively leaving them exposed to potential exploits despite the software's emphasis on security.
All I wanted was a custom domain email
In a review of custom domain email solutions, Jacob Goldstein outlines his search for an affordable provider for his domain, jacobg.co. Seeking specific features such as unlimited addresses, Apple Mail integration, and verified outbound sending, Goldstein evaluated various options including Cloudflare E-Mail Routing, Mailflare, and Purelymail. While Google Workspace was rejected as overkill and other services failed to provide reliable sending, Goldstein ultimately settled on Foundermail. He concluded that while receiving mail is simple, achieving reliable outbound delivery via SMTP/IMAP remains a significant technical hurdle for personal domain owners.
A map of every lighthouse
The mapped.earth project, titled Lighthouses of the World, provides a comprehensive mapping of every charted light on the planet according to its real cycle. The platform features various global environmental visualizations, including rivers, lightning, and rainfall, covering diverse regions such as Scotland, Brittany, New England, Japan, Norway, and Cape Town.
Magic Switch: Share Apple Magic keyboard/track-pad/mouse between two Macs
Developer Joshua Rogers has introduced Magic Switch, a free, open-source macOS application that allows users to share an Apple Magic Keyboard, Trackpad, or Mouse between two Macs without the need for an Apple ID or manual USB re-pairing. The tool employs a secure, mutually-authenticated connection anchored by a 12-character pairing code and robust encryption to ensure safe device handoffs across a local network. Designed to mitigate common hardware frustrations, Magic Switch includes a refined menu-bar interface that manages complex scenarios such as system sleep and clamshell mode, allowing for the seamless transfer of single or multiple peripherals between systems.
Hacker News addiction and taking simple mundane breaks in life
In a personal reflection on Hacker News addiction, the author explores how the constant pursuit of intellectual novelty can prevent meaningful rest. The author argues that users often substitute genuine breaks with endless cycles of information processing, effectively turning their minds into information-gathering machines. To counter this intellectual version of hustle culture, the author suggests embracing mundane experiences and accepting the value of being ordinary rather than constantly seeking the next stimulating idea. Ultimately, the piece advocates for the importance of living in the moment and disconnecting from the relentless drive for continuous learning to find true relaxation.
The Heilbronn Problem
The website tracks progress on the Heilbronn Problem, a mathematical optimization challenge that seeks to place n points in unit-area regions to maximize the smallest triangle area, A(n), formed by any three points. The platform documents the best-known configurations for three specific containers: squares, triangles, and optimal convex regions. Recent record-breaking entries include advancements by Rob Gardiner in both square and triangle categories, as well as improvements in convex regions by Alexandar Lackovic. The site features a comprehensive leaderboard with A(n) values for n up to 36, providing exact coordinates, symmetry analysis, and an in-browser rational arithmetic verifier to ensure the accuracy of the recorded configurations.
Agents don't need memory, they need documentation
In his analysis of AI agent architectures, Kevin Liao argues that the current industry focus on memory plugins using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is fundamentally flawed. He contends that these systems rely on similarity-based retrieval from vector databases, which often results in the loss of critical context and provides unreliable, unauditable "memories." Instead, Liao advocates for documentation-based memory, where agents maintain a structured Markdown workspace to record specs, research, and instructions. By shifting the agentic loop from mere recall to a cycle of consult, build, and update, agents can develop a more cohesive understanding of their projects. To implement this vision, Liao offers Operator Memory, an open-source tool that replaces black-box embeddings with a transparent, document-driven Markdown brain.
The evolution of effective altruism
Summary not available.
Ncdu: An Updated Fork
The rcalixte/ncdu repository hosts an updated fork of NCurses Disk Usage, a disk usage analyzer featuring an ncurses interface. This 2.x version is a modern reimplementation written in the Zig programming language, distinguishing it from the original 1.x version written in C. Engineered for speed and simplicity, the tool is designed to help users identify large files and directories on both regular desktop systems and minimal POSIX-like environments, such as remote servers. Successful installation requires Zig 0.17, a POSIX-like OS, ncurses, and libzstd.
C++ Insights – See your source code with the eyes of a Compiler
C++ Insights is a Clang-based tool created by Andreas Fertig that performs source-to-source transformations to expose the internal logic used by compilers. By making the "magic" happening behind the scenes visible, the tool reveals details such as compiler-generated special member functions, implicit upcasts, and the underlying structure of lambdas or range-based for-loops. The primary goal is to produce compilable code that translates complex C++ constructs into their compiler-internal versions, aiding developer understanding. C++ Insights is available through cppinsights.io and offers various integrations, including plugins for VSCode, Vim, and Neovim.
Show HN: Thoreau BASIC – What if BASIC hadn't gone out of fashion?
Thoreau BASIC 3.2 is a free 64-bit BASIC interpreter designed for Windows x64 and bare-metal x64 UEFI environments, blending traditional line-numbered syntax with modern high-performance features. The software includes a native x64 JIT compiler, multicore support, and advanced mathematical types such as complex, quaternion, and octonion arithmetic. The latest update introduces integrated file browsing and menu commands, checkpointing functions via STATEWRITE and STATELOAD, and optimized audio playback for MIDI, WAV, FLAC, and Opus. Given its 24-bit graphics and networking capabilities, the language can function as standalone Windows EXE or bootable EFI applications without an operating system.
I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken
Summary not available.
Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking Utah's SB 73, a controversial age-verification law that sought to mandate the detection and blocking of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). In a ruling that aligns with arguments from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Judge Barlow determined that the statute imposes a technical impossibility by requiring adult websites to achieve "geolocation perfection" to avoid legal liability. The court found that the law, challenged by Aylo—the parent company of Pornhub—likely violates the U.S. Constitution by placing undue burdens on businesses and internet users outside of Utah. The decision halts enforcement of the law's VPN provisions, acknowledging that current technology cannot reliably distinguish between masked network traffic and a user's actual physical location with the absolute certainty demanded by the state.
Denmark Data Breach Exposes 8.8M People's Personal Data
The Central Person Register (CPR) has identified a significant security breach in which unauthorized individuals accessed the personal data of approximately 8.8 million citizens. The breach occurred through the misuse of a Danish company's legitimate access to the system, exposing sensitive information such as names, addresses, and CPR numbers. Notably, the unauthorized access did not include individuals protected by name and address protection protocols. The CPR administration has since terminated the company's access and is working alongside specialists and law enforcement to map the incident. The case has been reported to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) and is currently under police investigation.
Run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next (125B) on consumer hardware (RTX 4090) at 100T/s
Developed by Niko1221, Strata is an open-source inference engine that enables the local execution of the massive Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 125-billion-parameter AI model on consumer-grade hardware running Windows or Linux. By intelligently distributing the model's workload across a user's GPU, RAM, and SSD, Strata allows for high-performance tasks—including coding assistance and image processing—at speeds up to 60 tokens per second without requiring enterprise-grade servers. The engine provides OpenAI and Anthropic compatible localhost APIs and requires at least 12 GB of VRAM and 32 GB of RAM to operate.
A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE
Summary not available.
First Implantable Cochlear Implant Launches
The Austrian company Med-El has launched the TICI Unico, marking the debut of the world’s first commercially available Totally Implantable Cochlear Implant. This breakthrough technology moves all critical components—including the microphone, sound processor, and rechargeable battery—beneath the user's scalp, eliminating the need for visible external hardware. According to Med-El CEO Ingeborg Hochmair, the device provides "invisible hearing," allowing patients to listen while swimming, sleeping, or riding motorcycles without the stigma or physical limitations of traditional external processors. Having received European regulatory approval, the device has already seen its first commercial implantations, though it is not yet available in the United States. Clinical data suggests the 20-gram implant offers hearing performance comparable to conventional models, providing users with unprecedented auditory freedom and safety.
Replacement of petroleum based products with plant-based materials (2025)
Summary not available.
Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch
Summary not available.
The Philadelphia Inquirer built Scrape, an AI tool to surface hyperlocal news
To address the challenge of sourcing hyperlocal news from fragmented sources like municipal meetings and social media, The Philadelphia Inquirer developed Scrape, an AI-driven tool designed to automate news lead discovery for its community newsletters. Developed through the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program with assistance from AI Fellow Kevin Hoffman, the tool was built using an iterative, human-in-the-loop process that prioritized existing editorial workflows over purely technical experimentation. By training the AI on curated tip sheets and embedding specific editorial context—such as audience interests, geographical boundaries, and explicit exclusions like routine road closures—the team successfully transitioned Scrape from a manual 12-hour-per-week task into "load-bearing and critical infrastructure" for multiple newsletters. The project demonstrates a successful blueprint for newsrooms by encoding human judgment into AI prompts to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in local reporting.
Self-hosted HTTP tunnels with SSH and Nginx
In this technical guide, Vincent Bernat explains how to implement a self-hosted HTTP tunnel using only OpenSSH and nginx, providing an alternative to commercial services like ngrok or Cloudflare Quick Tunnels. By utilizing SSH remote port forwarding, a local service can be mapped to a remote server and proxied via nginx using a wildcard server_name and Let’s Encrypt certificates. To address security concerns regarding the use of predictable ephemeral ports, the author utilizes the ngx_http_secure_link_module to require a hashed, time-limited token in the request URL. A helper script is also introduced to automate the identification of the allocated ephemeral port and the generation of the corresponding secure URL for easy sharing.
Interview with Chicken Scheme Maintainer Sjamaan/Peter Bex
In an interview with Alex Alejandre, Peter Bex, a CHICKEN Scheme maintainer and professional Clojure developer, discusses the technical evolution of the CHICKEN ecosystem and the nuances of Scheme standardization. Bex details the recent CHICKEN 6.0.0 release, addressing its UTF-8 transition and potential future optimizations for the compiler. He provides a comparative analysis of database systems, strongly advocating for Postgres while critiquing the design of MySQL and SQLite regarding type safety and character set handling. The discussion further explores the utility of the REPL in modern programming, the importance of digital sovereignty, and Bex's personal interests in performance optimization and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
cp: -r or -R?
While the cp command's recursive flags -r and -R once served different purposes in early GNU coreutils, the two options were merged into a single behavior in 2002. However, a functional distinction remains on systems such as OpenBSD and NetBSD. The POSIX.1-2024 standard now recommends the use of -R to ensure consistency across various utilities, identifying the -r flag as a historical convention specific to BSD and BSD-derived systems.
Results from the ASIC puzzle
Jane Street has released the results of its recent ASIC puzzle, a challenge that tasked over 400 participants from more than 30 countries with reverse-engineering a chip's functionality from a raw GDS layout. Built using the SKY130 open-source library, the chip was ultimately identified as a hardware checker for an 11x11 Star Battle puzzle. To reach the solution, entrants utilized a variety of methods, including SAT solvers, custom netlist extraction tools, and simulations implemented in languages such as Python, Rust, and OCaml. The competition highlighted the growing role of AI in hardware analysis and included several hidden Easter eggs discovered by the most thorough participants.
Emitting metadata early makes building/checking Rust up to twice as fast
The headstart project, developed by PowderworksCode, aims to accelerate Rust compilation by allowing dependent crates to begin analysis before their dependencies finish type-checking. By utilizing a new early metadata file produced during the initial interface check, the tool enables cargo to overlap compilation tasks, significantly reducing CPU idle time. In performance tests on major projects like rust-analyzer, bevy, and zed, headstart improved cargo check speeds by up to 54% and cargo build speeds by up to 42%. Although the method increases memory usage and may result in some redundant work if a build fails, it offers a substantial boost to development workflow efficiency.
Fixed Points and Strike Mandates (2012)
In his analysis, Paul Khuong examines the mathematical nuances of fixed point computations, noting a common tendency to design algorithms that converge to suboptimal results by failing to distinguish between the least and greatest fixed points of monotone functions. Drawing on Tarski’s fixed point theorem, Khuong illustrates this through examples like dead value elimination in compiler optimization and applies the concept to student union strike mandates in Québec. He suggests that to avoid deadlocks in strike mobilization, organizers should avoid "bottom-up" algorithms that seek the least fixed point and instead adopt a "top-down" approach—assuming all mandate-holding unions are striking and iteratively removing those that fail to meet specific thresholds—to identify the greatest fixed point.
VGHF Digital Archive passes 5000 magazines. Here's what's next
The Video Game History Foundation has reached a major milestone by expanding its digital archive to over 5,000 magazines, totaling nearly 600,000 pages of video game history spanning from 1981 to 2026. This achievement, supported by community scanning projects and industry partners, has established the archive as a premier research resource frequently utilized by Wikipedia. Moving forward, the foundation is launching a significant initiative to incorporate Japanese-language magazines into its collection, beginning with a pilot project featuring the publication Neo Geo Freak. To facilitate global accessibility, VGHF has implemented specialized Japanese script recognition and a volunteer-driven system to index major articles in English, signaling a broader strategic commitment to preserving international gaming culture.
What's the future for pure math research in the age of AI?
In his analysis, Stephen Wolfram argues that Artificial Intelligence will not replace pure mathematics but will instead function as a powerful tool to augment human inquiry. Wolfram distinguishes between the raw, rule-based generation of theorems via computational irreducibility—which often produces "alien" mathematics—and the essential human role of defining goals, asking meaningful questions, and constructing conceptual narratives. While Large Language Models are highly effective at mining the existing corpus of human knowledge and identifying patterns, the aesthetic and creative aspects of mathematics remain uniquely human. To bridge the gap between automated computation and human understanding, Wolfram suggests utilizing high-level computational systems like the Wolfram Language to create a nexus where human intuition, AI, and formal computation can work in tandem to advance the field.
We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything
In a recent article, Simon Willison argues that pay-by-usage services and APIs must implement default hard budget caps to protect users from massive, unexpected bills caused by runaway processes or AI agents. Unlike "soft caps" that only send warning emails, hard caps would automatically terminate services and return errors once a financial threshold is met. Willison contends that these safeguards should be the default setting, requiring an explicit opt-in for those who wish to operate without limits. He notes that AWS has recently begun rolling out spending limits and Google Cloud introduced Spend Caps in July, signaling an industry trend toward providing more robust financial protections for builders.
LeCun has "zero concerns" about AI wiping out humanity, recent "rogue" incidents
Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist and a Turing Award winner, has dismissed fears of artificial intelligence causing human extinction as "misguided," asserting he has "zero concerns"* regarding the technology's existential risks. In a recent interview, LeCun criticized Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as "deluded" for his perceived ties to Effective Altruism, a movement LeCun describes as "toxic" and "paranoid." He argued that the current emphasis on AI doomerism functions as a form of regulatory capture intended to benefit major tech firms by shaping government rules. Moving forward, LeCun is focusing on his new company, AMI Labs, which aims to develop world models using his pioneered JEPA architecture to address industrial applications such as robotics and anomaly detection.
Dirty Optimization Secrets (C for Playdate)
Developer NaOH has detailed advanced C optimization techniques for the Playdate platform, specifically designed for high-performance tasks such as emulation and 3D rendering. The guide highlights that because the Playdate CPU is significantly faster than its memory access, developers should focus on register-heavy code and optimizing for the limited instruction cache—which is only 4KB on Rev A hardware. Recommended strategies include using the -Os compiler flag to reduce code size, utilizing custom linker maps for contiguous code placement, and leveraging Tightly-Coupled Memory (TCM) via the stack or manual ITCM relocation. Furthermore, the post addresses a "performance lottery" caused by cache misalignment and branch prediction issues, suggesting specific 32-byte and 1024-byte alignments to ensure consistent execution speeds.
So you think you could be an electrician?
In the essay "So You Think You Could Be An Electrician?", Jesse Smith challenges the popular narrative that the skilled trades serve as a guaranteed, AI-proof alternative to the rising costs of college. Smith argues that the perceived economic benefits are often overstated, noting that college graduates still generally command higher lifetime earnings and that the trades carry significant risks of permanent injury or death. He further dismantles the idea that trades are an easy fallback, pointing to the intense competition for high-status union roles and the complex internal hierarchies within blue-collar labor. Critically, Smith suggests that Artificial Intelligence may not spare the trades, as mechanization and AI-driven coaching could reduce the demand for both human dexterity and specialized cognitive expertise. Rather than a "magic ticket" to prosperity, Smith presents the trades as a nuanced career path that requires careful consideration of physical, social, and technological realities.
Kolibri: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model
Aleph Alpha has launched Kolibri, a sovereign open-weight Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model engineered for mission-critical operations in regulated sectors like aerospace, industrials, and public administration. The model features 78B total parameters with 3B active parameters, optimized for efficiency and supporting context lengths of up to 1 million tokens. Designed to uphold European sovereignty and comply with the EU AI Act, Kolibri is natively bilingual in English and German and demonstrates advanced performance in reasoning, mathematics, and agentic tasks. Released under the Apache 2.0 license on Hugging Face, the model utilizes specialized training and grounding protocols to minimize hallucinations and provide reliable, transparent performance for enterprise and government users.
Hole Punch: Sling your spaceship around gravitational fields
Status updates from Sector 01 indicate that the Hole Punch Unit 0426 · Mk II has confirmed docking, despite current telemetry showing no fuel and zero matter or holes.
A Minsky machine in ncurses terminfo
Nicolas Seriot demonstrates that ncurses terminfo parameter expansion can simulate a two-counter Minsky machine, effectively rendering the system computationally universal. While terminfo lacks native loops, its capacity for arithmetic, logic, and persistent variables allows it to function as a small programming language when an external process provides a "clock" via repeated expansion. The author illustrates this capability through addition and Fibonacci programs, including a "parasitic" Fibonacci machine that executes within a terminal while being clocked by the periodic screen redraws of /usr/bin/top. Although this demonstrates how user-controlled terminfo is interpreted by potentially privileged host processes, the article concludes that the behavior is a functional quirk rather than a security vulnerability.
