AI Wobbles as Rust Rises, Tesla Stumbles!

What does computer literacy mean for 2026?

Key Points

• Computer literacy now includes phishing‑resistant security, AI collaboration, and cross‑platform skills.
• Use passkeys or FIDO2 hardware keys to prevent credential theft via fake sign‑in pages.
• Most jobs require medium‑level digital skills, per World Economic Forum insights.

Developers are choosing older AI models, and the data explains why

Key Points

• Adoption is fragmenting by task type, not uniformly upgrading.
• Sonnet 4.5: deeper reasoning, fewer tool calls, larger outputs.
• Early specialization: 4.5 for long-context/complex tasks; 4.0 for deterministic; GPT-5 for explanatory/hybrid.

SPy: An interpreter and compiler for a fast statically typed variant of Python

Key Points

• SPy is a statically typed Python variant with an interpreter and compiler focused on performance.
• Current interoperability: SPy generates CFFI-based extensions for CPython; future plans include libpython.so embedding and full CPython extensions.
• Early demo shows a raytracing example running ~200x faster than CPython.

The Hackers Manifesto (The Conscience of a Hacker) (1986)

Key Points

• Written by +++The Mentor+++ and published in Phrack on January 8, 1986.
• Depicts early hacker culture: dial-up access via phone lines and discovery of “boards.”
• Frames hacking as curiosity-driven exploration while rejecting the criminal label.

Intervaltree with Rust Back End

Key Points

• Rust-backed interval tree exposed to Python via PyO3 with a clear API.
• Install and build using maturin; pip installation also supported.
• Build distributable wheels and run tests with cargo test.

FDD – Diskettes

Key Points

• Four disk sizes and dimensions with common aliases are defined.
• Soft vs hard sectoring affects IBM-compatible usage and formatting.
• Write-protect behaviors and rare hard-sectored examples (e.g., Questar/M) are documented.

A Quote from Belligerentbarbies

Key Points

• The quote warns about risks from AI Copilot integrated into Excel.
• It emphasizes the value of experienced finance staff for accurate Excel work.
• It highlights potential for unnoticed errors when non-experts rely on AI to modify financial reports.

Moving tables across PostgreSQL instances

Key Points

• DMS doesn’t support table-level migration; native logical replication is used instead.
• Use pg_dump sections to separate table definitions from constraints/indexes for efficient initial load.
• Primary keys are required for logical replication; apply them separately before enabling CDC.

Founder in Residence at Woz (San Francisco)

Key Points

• Founder in Residence role to build app businesses using Woz’s AI App Factory
• Compensation includes platform access, salary, marketing budget, and revenue upside
• In-person work in San Francisco required for the first three months

YouTube Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations

Key Points

• YouTube removed three Palestinian human rights groups’ channels due to U.S. sanctions.
• Google cited sanctions compliance policy for the deletions.
• Groups reported abrupt terminations in early October, drawing criticism from legal and human rights advocates.

The Magic of Precision Engineering

Key Points

• Manders and Vermeulen assume leadership of DPPE, succeeding Huub Janssen.
• Precision requirements have advanced from micrometers to nanometers and picometers.
• Case study on ASML’s PAS2500 reveals limits of statically determined designs due to lack of damping.

72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

Key Points

• 72% of developers believe Steam has a monopoly; most studios get 75%+ of revenue from Steam.
• 48% have used Epic Games Store and Xbox PC Games store; GOG (10%) and Itch.io (8%) also feature.
• 80% plan to use alternative channels within five years; 75% expect at least a 10% revenue uplift.

iOS 26.2 to Allow Third-Party App Stores in Japan Ahead of Regulatory Deadline

Key Points

• iOS 26.2 beta suggests third‑party app stores will be allowed in Japan.
• AltStore PAL and Epic Games stores install on the beta; Fortnite IAP is region‑blocked.
• EU support for alternative marketplaces began with iOS 17.4/iPadOS 18 to meet DMA rules.

Parsing Chemistry

Key Points

• Factor EBNF grammar parses symbols, numbers (including floats/exponents), and nested groups.
• Flattening logic converts nested structures into element-to-count dictionaries.
• Validated with unit tests (H2O, (CH3)2, C1.5O3) and code available on GitHub.

The grim truth behind the Pied Piper

Key Points

• Hamelin actively preserves and commercializes the Pied Piper legend through tours, museum shows, and themed goods.
• The legend’s literary versions by Goethe, the Grimm Brothers, and Robert Browning maintain a consistent core plot.
• The town’s architecture and a long-serving official Piper impersonator sustain its fairy-tale identity.

An eBPF Loophole: Using XDP for Egress Traffic

Key Points

• XDP adapted for egress via a Linux kernel packet-direction loophole.
• Approx. 10x performance improvement over existing egress solutions without kernel changes.
• TC’s late-stack execution and sk_buff overhead limit throughput to ~21Gbps egress/~23Gbps ingress.

Optimism Associated with Exceptional Longevity

Key Points

• Higher optimism linked to 11–15% longer lifespan and increased odds of living to 85+.
• Findings consistent across two cohorts (women in NHS, men in NAS) with dose-dependent trends.
• Associations persist after adjusting for demographics, health conditions, and health behaviors.

NY Smartphone Ban Has Made Lunch Loud Again

Key Points

• Phones are banned during the school day in New York, with limited exceptions for specific needs and instruction.
• Cardozo High School uses internet-blocking magnetic pouches; early feedback shows more engagement and social interaction.
• Surveys from NYSUT and the University of Pennsylvania align with national trends showing improved focus under phone bans.

Poor leadership slows down game development

Key Points

• Poor leadership behaviors, not just technology limits, are a major driver of longer game development timelines.
• Seven recurring traits—misunderstanding realities, poor management, mistrust, interchangeability, slow decisions, direction changes, and vague crunch—impede progress.
• Generative AI cannot fix organizational issues; disciplined leadership and clear processes are essential.

The Shadows Lurking in the Equations

Key Points

• FuzzyGraph shows error magnitude, revealing features hidden by conventional plots.
• Examples demonstrate black hole-like regions near singularities.
• Error-based visualization conveys meaningful structure even without exact solutions.

Blue Prince (1989)

Key Points

• The author compares a purported 1989 Apple //e version of Blue Prince with its 2025 remake.
• A hardware-dependent puzzle in the original involved flipping a floppy disk to invert a room.
• The author recommends playing the original via emulation and cites recording footage with RetroArch.

Removing XSLT for a more secure browser

Key Points

• Chromium deprecates XSLT, removing XSLTProcessor and xml-stylesheet support.
• Chrome’s staged timeline ends with full disablement by Aug 17, 2027.
• Origin Trial and Enterprise Policy offer temporary extensions starting Chrome 152.

Carice TC2 – An fully analog electric car

Key Points

• Fully electric, zero-emissions car with classic-inspired, minimalist design
• Lightweight from 590 kg including battery pack for dynamic handling and efficiency
• Orders open with limited production batch and test drives available

Radiant Computer

Key Points

• Clean-slate, offline-first system with its own tracker-free network and no web browser.
• Fully open hardware and software, with all interfaces accessible as editable code.
• Explores AI-native design to broaden coding access and support creativity while keeping data private.

A P2P Vision for QUIC (2024)

Key Points

• QUIC is proposed as a unified basis for P2P NAT traversal.
• STUN provides public address discovery but NAT-type inference is unreliable.
• ICE orchestrates hole punching via candidate exchange and connectivity checks.

Kosmos: An AI Scientist for Autonomous Discovery

Key Points

• Structured world model enables coherent, long-horizon research across 200 agent rollouts.
• Kosmos runs execute ~42,000 lines of code and read ~1,500 papers, with full citation traceability.
• Evaluations show 79.4% statement accuracy and linear scaling of findings up to 20 cycles.

Michael Burry is back with two bets against Nvidia and Palantir

Key Points

• Scion disclosed large Q3 put positions against Nvidia and Palantir.
• Tech-led market pullback saw Nasdaq down 2.04% and S&P 500 down 1.17%.
• Palantir beat earnings but fell 7.95%; Nvidia fell 3.96%, both still up YTD.

Gnome Mutter Now "Completely Drops the Whole X11 Back End"

Key Points

• Mutter has dropped the X11 back-end, moving GNOME to Wayland-only sessions.
• GNOME 50 removes X11 code; GNOME 49 had disabled it by default.
• XWayland support remains for running X11 apps and games.

Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

Key Points

• Core operations run on a 1993 TUI on an on-prem Unix system.
• Legacy automations (Access/VBA/SendKeys) still run on Windows XP.
• Modernization uses Python with telnetlib3 for robust automation.

Learning from Failure to Tackle Hard Problems

Key Points

• BaNEL post-trains generative models using only negative rewards to cope with extreme reward sparsity.
• Policy-gradient methods (including GRPO) and novelty-bonus approaches struggle or are evaluation-intensive in zero-reward regimes.
• Minimizing costly reward evaluations is a core design objective of the proposed method.

'A mass casualty event that could exceed Hiroshima': Yale researcher on Sudan

Key Points

• Yale Humanitarian Research Lab leaders discuss documenting Sudan atrocities.
• Raymond describes the crisis as potentially exceeding Hiroshima in casualties.
• The interview underscores the importance of evidence collection for accountability.

Microsoft Can't Keep EU Data Safe from US Authorities

Key Points

• Microsoft says it cannot guarantee EU data will never be accessed by U.S. authorities due to the Cloud Act.
• French Senate inquiry scrutinizes Project Bleu and the Health Data Hub hosted on Azure.
• Concerns grow in Europe over reliance on U.S. cloud providers for sensitive data despite sovereign offerings.

Faustino Oro (12 years-old) takes Vidit Gujrathi (#27) to the tiebreaks in chess

Key Points

• Game 2 of Round 2 ended ½-½, sending the match to tiebreaks.
• FIDE posted the update on X at 4:41 AM on November 5, 2025, with a 31-second video.
• The post had 57.9K views and used the #FIDEWorldCup hashtag.

Ruby and Its Neighbors: Smalltalk

Key Points

• Ruby adopted Smalltalk’s object model but not its syntax.
• Smalltalk’s commercial era featured vendors like ParcPlace (ObjectWorks/VisualWorks) and Digitalk with significant industry use.
• Squeak (1995) implemented most of its environment in Smalltalk with a small C kernel, aiding portability.

Norway reviews cybersecurity after remote-access feature found in Chinese buses

Key Points

• Hidden Romanian SIM cards found in Yutong electric buses in Norway prompted a cybersecurity review.
• Ruter removed the SIM cards and tightened procurement, firewall, and cloud-security controls.
• Norway is assessing supplier risks outside security alliances to protect critical infrastructure.

Ex-FTC chair Lina Khan joins Mamdani's transition team

Key Points

• Lina Khan named transition co-chair for NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
• Khan’s antitrust record at the FTC targeted Amazon and Meta.
• Transition leadership also includes Maria Torres-Springer, Grace Bonilla, and Melanie Hartzog.

DynGen – Run dynamic scripts on a SuperCollider server

Key Points

• Meta-UGen enables JIT EEL2 DSP scripting and hot-swapping on SuperCollider’s server.
• Examples include 128x oversampled cross-phase modulation and a modulatable delay line.
• Project is beta with open design issues and untested Windows support.

OpenAI ends legal and medical advice on ChatGPT

Key Points

• OpenAI clarifies ChatGPT is not a substitute for professional advice; model behavior unchanged.
• Policy updates disallow tailored legal/medical/financial advice without licensed involvement.
• Studies show limited medical accuracy and high persuasiveness that can influence patient interactions.

Dillo, a multi-platform graphical web browser

Key Points

• Dillo is a lightweight, privacy-focused browser built with FLTK 1.3.
• The repository contains original code with minor patches and welcomes contributions.
• dillo.org is no longer developer-controlled; archived site copies are on GitHub Pages and the Wayback Machine.

Why aren't smart people happier?

Key Points

• Meta-analyses and a large UK study show little to no positive link between intelligence and happiness.
• GSS data (n=30,346) indicate a small negative correlation between vocabulary scores and happiness.
• Intelligence predicts education and jobs, but not reliably higher happiness, challenging assumptions based on general intelligence.

The state of SIMD in Rust in 2025

Key Points

• x86 SIMD support varies; default is SSE2—use x86-64-v3 or function multiversioning to leverage AVX2 and beyond.
• ARM NEON is universal on 64-bit ARM; SVE is not broadly available and Rust support is ongoing.
• Rust SIMD options include automatic vectorization, fancy iterators, portable SIMD abstractions, and raw intrinsics.

Making MLS More Decentralized

Key Points

• MLS depends on a Delivery Service to order commits; removing it causes forks.
• Forks force retention of epoch keys, weakening Forward Secrecy per RFC 9420 concerns.
• Phoenix R&D proposes DMLS based on AMT’s fork-resilient group key agreement research.

Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

Key Points

• Wayback Machine hits 1 trillion archived webpages; SF proclaims “Internet Archive Day.”
• IA loses final appeal over Open Library lending model but reaches a confidential settlement.
• IA confirms no major active lawsuits; also settles case tied to the Great 78 Project.

New gel restores dental enamel and could revolutionise tooth repair

Key Points

• Protein-based, fluoride-free gel regenerates enamel via epitaxial mineralization using saliva ions.
• Regenerated enamel shows natural-like behavior under brushing, chewing, and acidic conditions.
• Startup Mintech-Bio is pursuing product commercialization, aiming for release next year.

Fiber reduces overall mortality by 23%

Key Points

• Meta-analysis links higher fiber intake to markedly lower all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality.
• Soluble fiber lowers LDL via bile acid binding and improves HbA1c by slowing digestion.
• Soluble fiber sources include avocados, apples, beans, lentils, and whole grains; some high-fiber foods are mostly insoluble.

Why Your Best Engineers Are Interviewing Elsewhere, CodeGood

Key Points

• Raises alone did not solve attrition; the root issue was blocked information flow to executives.
• Hierarchy filtered risk signals for months, causing crises and costly departures.
• Direct skip-level communication is necessary to surface ground truth early.

Solarpunk is already happening in Africa

Key Points

• Rural grid economics in Sub-Saharan Africa are unfavorable, hindering electrification.
• Off-grid solar is scaling quickly, with high repayment rates and carbon credit support.
• Falling solar costs, low-cost payments, and PAYGo financing underpin the model.

Tesla's German car sales more than halve in October as wider EV sales jump

Key Points

• Tesla’s German October sales fell 53.5% to 750 units; YTD down 50.4% to 15,595.
• German BEV registrations rose 47.7% in October to 52,425 units.
• BYD’s German October sales surged over nine-fold to 3,353; YTD 15,171.

I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

Key Points

• Earlier ~5°C BAU warming projections were implausible due to unrealistic assumptions.
• Current worst-case warming estimates are near 3°C or less.
• Observed trends show declining mortality from climate and weather extremes.

Wafer-Scale AI Compute: A System Software Perspective

Key Points

• Wafer-scale integration reduces off-chip communication, improving efficiency for AI inference.
• PLMR outlines architectural traits and exposes gaps in current AI software stacks.
• WaferLLM achieves sub-millisecond-per-token latency, showcasing wafer-scale benefits.

3D Geological Models in Minecraft

Key Points

• Five worlds: four UK sites with real data plus a simplified mainland Great Britain model.
• Color-coded glass blocks and in-world signage enable clear, layered geology exploration.
• Featured areas include Glasgow, Ingleborough (18 km²), and a 50 km² region near York (including Haxby).

A Lost IBM PC/at Model? Analyzing a Newfound Old Bios

Key Points

• PS/2 Model 35/40 SX BIOS rev. 2 identified and archived.
• AT-marked EPROMs show PC/AT traits but don’t match known 5170 BIOS revisions.
• Official IBM PC/AT BIOS versions and part numbers summarized from multiple sources.

Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

Key Points

• Rollout begins Oct. 14 for Firefox profile management.
• Profiles isolate bookmarks, logins, history, extensions, and themes.
• Design emphasizes privacy and accessibility, with customization options.

Absurd Workflows: Durable Execution with Just Postgres

Key Points

• SQL-only durable workflows on PostgreSQL with no extensions or external services
• Step-based execution with checkpointing, automatic replay, and race-free event handling
• Iterative agent loops supported via auto-incremented steps and incremental state storage

Vacuum bricked after user blocks data collection – user mods it to run anyway

Key Points

• Blocking telemetry preceded a remote disable event on the ILIFE A11, according to the user’s findings.
• Reverse engineering showed hardware was sound; unsecured ADB and data uploads were key software issues.
• Offline control was restored using custom connectors, Python scripts, and a Raspberry Pi joystick.

Apple App Store frontend source code archive

Key Points

• Frontend source code from apps.apple.com archived due to enabled sourcemaps.
• Archive includes Svelte/TypeScript, state management, UI, API, and routing code.
• Repository is for educational use; Apple retains copyright.

Timing Wheels

Key Points

• The chapter links historical timekeeping to modern software timers and timing wheels.
• Hourglasses and water clocks are detailed as foundational timing devices, including their maritime and legal uses.
• Linux timer wheel implementations—classic and modern—are identified as topics to be covered.

Microsoft and Google overstate job creation at Chile data centers

Key Points

• Permit filings show 1,547 direct operations jobs across 17 projects, far below public claims.
• 32 planned centers would add 909 permanent roles by 2028, per research data.
• Chile targets hub status with $4.1B investments; most sites in Santiago region.

Unicode Footguns in Python

Key Points

• Normalize strings (e.g., to NFC) before comparison to avoid mismatch between visually identical characters.
• Use NFC for storage/transmission and NFD for processing and complex comparisons.
• len() measures code points, not graphemes; use grapheme-aware logic for display-related tasks.

Photos: New Phoenix Microcenter is a 'tech-heaven' for geeks

Key Points

• VIP preview drew large crowds ahead of the grand opening.
• 35,000-square-foot store at 4315 E. Thomas Road with 20,000+ items.
• Broad product range spans PC components, gaming gear, and maker supplies.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1987) [pdf]

Key Points

• First Law: the prevalence of stupidity is consistently underestimated.
• Second Law: the probability of stupidity is independent of personal attributes.
• Education does not reduce the proportion of stupidity; similar rates appear across universities.

The Last Literary Lion of New York, Gay Talese

Key Points

• Gay Talese is a 93-year-old literary journalist known for immersive profiles of figures like Sinatra and DiMaggio.
• A recent, extensive interview covers his reporting ethos, personal routines, and connections within New York’s cultural milieu.
• Talese highlights anecdotes with William Styron and Philip Roth and reflects on his long marriage to editor Nan Talese.

Recursive macros in C, demystified (once the ugly crying stops)

Key Points

• C macros are C’s only compile-time mechanism and are essential for safety-related abstractions.
• Macro recursion is not easily supported; the historical reason for this limitation is unclear.
• The article motivates coping strategies to emulate iteration and recursion for compile-time tasks.

Longtime Mozilla Support Japanese Community Shuts Down over AI Translation Usage

Key Points

• SUMO Japanese community shut down on November 4 due to AI bot deployment issues.
• Sumobot allegedly overrode 300+ KB articles and auto-approved machine translations.
• Leader requests removal of their translations from SUMO AI training datasets.

Gloomth

Key Points

• 1991 NY case declared a house legally haunted, enabling contract rescission.
• Disclosure rules differ: Japan mandates tainted-home notices; U.S./UK vary.
• Journalist’s case study links a property’s past to perceived hauntings.

FAA to cut flights by 10% at 40 major airports due to government shutdown

Key Points

• 10% flight capacity reduction at 40 major airports begins Friday, affecting 3,500–4,000 flights daily.
• FAA cites safety pressures and may implement further measures; airports affected not yet identified.
• Shutdown-related staffing shortages have disrupted flights since Oct. 1; no end date set for reductions.

Rust's TUI Revolution

Key Points

• Compilation of Rust-based TUI/CLI tools spanning system, networking, data, and developer workflows.
• Atuin upgrades shell history using SQLite; tools like csvlens and dua improve data inspection and disk analysis.
• Yōzefu offers Kafka exploration with a SQL-inspired language, positioned against existing GUI alternatives.

Show HN: The Legal Embedding Benchmark (MLEB)

Key Points

• MLEB launches with 10 diverse datasets to evaluate legal embeddings comprehensively.
• Kanon 2 Embedder tops MLEB and has the lowest inference time among commercial competitors.
• Existing benchmarks (LegalBench-RAG, MTEB legal split) are criticized for limited scope, mislabeling, and U.S./task bias.

Brain-IT: Image Reconstruction from fMRI via Brain-Interaction Transformer

Key Points

• BIT predicts localized semantic and structural features from fMRI to guide diffusion-based reconstruction.
• Shared functional voxel clusters and V2C mapping enable cross-subject training and data efficiency.
• Results surpass state-of-the-art and remain strong with drastically less new-subject data (1 hour or even 15 minutes).

The MDL ("Muddle") Programming Language (1979) [pdf]

Key Points

• MDL was designed at MIT as a successor to Lisp with an integrated, extensible development environment.
• The manual focuses on the MDL interpreter for ITS, Tenex, and TOPS-20, while noting essential adjunct tools.
• Features include optional type declarations, class-type checks, persistent storage, coroutines, graphics, and ARPA Network I/O.

Scientists Growing Colour Without Chemicals

Key Points

• Textile dyeing is a major source of industrial water pollution.
• Colorifix grows pigments with engineered microorganisms, cutting water use and toxic additives.
• The technology originated from Cambridge research and leverages DNA sequencing to replicate natural colors.