Court Dumps Microsoft! AI Refund Rage! 2B Emails Spill!

A Computing Legend Speaks, a New Oral History with Ken Thompson

Key Points

• CHM and ACM released a new oral history interview with Ken Thompson tied to his 1983 Turing Award.
• Thompson created Unix and co-developed C; their influence remains pervasive across modern computing.
• Thompson later helped create the Go language at Google and worked on Plan 9 at Bell Labs.

The Transformations of Fernand Braudel

Key Points

• Braudel emphasized imagination as central to historical inquiry and is best known for The Mediterranean (1949).
• Extensive archival and field work—from AGS to Dubrovnik—shaped his Mediterranean focus.
• Lucien Febvre’s mentorship in 1937 redirected and supported Braudel’s project and career.

How I am deeply integrating Emacs

Key Points

• Emacs serves as the central workspace with Hyprland keybindings driving Emacs functions.
• An Emacs-based universal launcher replaces wofi/rofi and consolidates system tasks.
• org-capture, agenda, file browsing, passwords, email (mu4e), and feeds (elfeed) are all accessible via keybindings.

Flutter_compositions: Vue-inspired reactive building blocks for Flutter

Key Points

• Brings Vue 3 Composition API patterns to Flutter with ref, computed, watch, and watchEffect.
• Built on alien_signals for fine-grained, signal-based reactivity and composable logic.
• Monorepo includes core primitives and custom lint rules, with full documentation and example app.

The human visual system: image shape and binocular vision

Key Points

• HVS provides ~190–200° horizontal FOV with ~120° binocular overlap.
• Vertical HVS FOV is ~130°, with ~50° above and ~70–80° below line of sight.
• Cameras are typically monocular and rectangular; HVS is binocular with an oval-like field.

Erlang Meets Idris: Cure Programming Language

Key Points

• Dependently typed language on BEAM with SMT-backed verification (Z3, CVC5).
• Native FSM syntax with compiler-verified safety properties.
• Full OTP compatibility, LSP tooling, and a 12-module standard library.

What the hell have you built

Key Points

• Contrasts complex multi-service stacks with a minimal single-server approach.
• Promotes explainability as a key design criterion.
• Advises adding complexity only when backed by clear, demonstrated needs.

Mathematical Exploration and Discovery at Scale

Key Points

• AlphaEvolve evolves code with an LLM to generate inputs for optimization.
• Tested on 67 math problems; results comparable to expert traditional tools.
• Scalability and robustness are highlighted strengths, with shared prompts and minimal tuning.

LibreArm – Breathing New Life into QardioArm Devices

Key Points

• Reverse‑engineered QardioArm’s BLE protocol to restore device functionality.
• iOS app logs complete readings to Apple Health via HealthKit with privacy-first design.
• Approved by Apple as a wellness logging app; code is open source on GitHub.

Chibi Izumi: Phased dependency injection for TypeScript

Key Points

• TypeScript port of distage with staged DI and a fluent, type-safe DSL.
• Decorator-based automatic dependency resolution with @Reflected and named bindings via @Id.
• Requires npm installation and experimentalDecorators; offers full feature coverage versus other DI libraries.

Show HN: qqqa – a fast, stateless LLM-powered assistant for your shell

Key Points

• Stateless CLI assistant with two tools: qq (Q&A) and qa (one-step agent with confirmation).
• Built-in Groq and OpenAI profiles; Groq + openai/gpt-oss-20b recommended for speed/cost.
• Simple install and config, with safety rails and per-call overrides for providers and models.

80year old grandmother becomes oldest woman to finish Ironman World Championship

Key Points

• Natalie Grabow, 80, finished the Ironman World Championship in 16:45:26.
• She was the only competitor in the 80–84 age group among ~1,600 female entrants.
• Her finish surpassed the prior age record held by Cherie Gruenfeld (78 in 2022).

The Telegraph: How a secret dossier blew open anti-Israel bias at the BBC [video]

Key Points

• Whistleblower dossier alleges BBC Arabic minimized Israeli suffering in Gaza coverage.
• Claims say coverage framed Israel as the aggressor.
• The Telegraph presents this as part of an ongoing series (Day 2).

Show HN: CoordConversions NPM Module for Map Coordinate Conversions

Key Points

• Converts between DD, DM, and DMS coordinate formats.
• Includes parsing, validation, and formatting utilities.
• Supports hemisphere indicators for N/S and E/W handling.

AI Slop vs. OSS Security

Key Points

• AI-generated vulnerability reports are flooding open-source projects with plausible but incorrect claims.
• Curl’s maintainer reports ~20% of submissions are AI-generated and genuine findings are ~5%.
• Maintainers and volunteers spend significant time disproving false reports, increasing triage workload.

Eating Stinging Nettles

Key Points

• Nettles are edible, nutrient-dense, and abundant in Britain during summer.
• Wear gloves to harvest; boiling neutralizes the sting before eating.
• Versatile in cooking, nettles can be used in soups, curries, and risottos.

Open Source Implementation of Apple's Private Compute Cloud

Key Points

• OpenPCC provides open-source, privacy-preserving AI inference with encrypted streaming and hardware attestation.
• Client tools include a Go implementation and C library for Python and JavaScript, plus in-memory test services.
• Inference requests use an OpenAI API-compatible format and support model routing via request headers.

Pico-100BASE-TX: Bit-Banged 100 MBit/s Ethernet and UDP Framer for RP2040/RP2350

Key Points

• TX-only 100BASE-TX and UDP framer for RP2040/RP2350 via PIO, ~11 MB/s streaming.
• Implements 4B5B, scrambling, and MLT-3 at 125 MHz using PIO side-set.
• Safety: avoid PoE; use pulse transformer or 47 Ω + 470 Ω resistors; ASUS LANGuard needs proper coupling.

The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

Key Points

• AI has driven content creation costs near zero, fueling mass, lookalike outreach.
• Prospects increasingly ignore unknown outreach due to trust erosion and automation.
• A "trust funnel" focused on long-term relationships and advocacy is proposed over traditional lead gen.

Refund requests flood Microsoft after tricking users into AI upgrades

Key Points

• Refund requests overwhelmed Microsoft after customers felt misled into AI-bundled pricier plans.
• Microsoft underestimated compensation demand, with reports suggesting up to 2.7 million dissatisfied users.
• An incorrect unsubscribe link was sent to some affected customers, adding to the confusion.

Say Hi to Kit

Key Points

• Firefox unveiled a brand refresh.
• A new mascot, Kit, is introduced.
• The refresh emphasizes privacy, openness, and user control.

Staying opinionated as you grow

Key Points

• Scaling often drives complexity; disciplined choices (saying no, hiding complexity, cutting features) preserve user experience.
• Messaging should remain opinionated and clear; broader appeal risks diluting identity.
• Writizzy’s manifesto-only homepage exemplifies minimalist, focused positioning despite growth pressures.

IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

Key Points

• 21 new Matter-compatible products across lighting, sensors, and control
• DIRIGERA hub acts as Matter controller and bridge for interoperability
• KAJPLATS bulb range adds eleven variants with enhanced features over TRÅDFRI

Show HN: See chords as flags – Visual harmony of top composers on musescore

Key Points

• Custom color-coded piano-roll notation enables visual chord and structure analysis.
• Interactive tool accepts MIDI files and offers keyboard layouts to explore the 12-note set.
• Linked corpus highlights popular works by notable composers for study and playback.

Cloudflare Tells U.S. Govt That Foreign Site Blocking Efforts Are Trade Barriers

Key Points

• Cloudflare urges the USTR to consider foreign site-blocking regimes as trade barriers harming U.S. tech providers.
• Spain’s and Italy’s blocking practices have caused large-scale collateral disruptions, including a Google Drive outage in Italy.
• France’s automated blocking proposals add to concerns about overbroad, insufficiently safeguarded measures.

I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs

Key Points

• RA 2019 lineups scraped and cleaned; regions included top 20 with “Streamland” excluded.
• Similarity measured via Jaccard index; graph clustering performed with NetworkX.
• 2019 stats: 131 clubs, 8,502 events, 9,405 artists, 30,482 bookings; ~1% average overlap across overlapping pairs.

Musik magazine archives (1995-2003)

Key Points

• Digitized issues are accessible via cover thumbnails and direct PDF links.
• Visible entries span from issue 001 (June 1995) through 015 (August 1996).
• Issue files use a consistent naming format combining number and month/year.

How often does Python allocate?

Key Points

• Printing i + 1 100,000 times produced 100,904 integer allocations in CPython.
• Integer addition without printing led to only 905 allocations over 100,000 iterations.
• CPython’s long_add and _PyLong_FromSTwoDigits implement fast paths that reuse small-int objects.

The seven second kernel compile

Key Points

• Seven-second compile goal on a 32-way PowerPC64 p690 using Linux 2.5
• NUMA-aware policies improved performance over stock 2.4.18 on large systems
• Initial 24-way results: 10.3s compile, limited by single-threaded final link

Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

Key Points

• Australia proposes free midday electricity to pass through benefits of high solar generation.
• Negative wholesale prices during daylight hours are common due to solar surpluses.
• Time-of-use pricing and storage (including potential EV batteries) help balance the grid.

Kimi release Kimi K2 Thinking, an open-source trillion-parameter reasoning model

Key Points

• Open-source agentic model that uses tools during reasoning.
• State-of-the-art benchmark results on HLE, BrowseComp, and SWE-Bench Verified.
• Available now via kimi.com (chat) and the K2 Thinking API; full agentic mode coming soon.

FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site

Key Points

• Archive.today linked to a purported FBI court order seeking its operator’s identity via Tucows.
• The order’s authenticity is unverified; the FBI’s precise focus is unspecified.
• Prior research alleged botnet use and hinted at a Russian-based operator.

Senior BizOps at Artie (San Francisco)

Key Points

• Artie offers a real-time CDC streaming platform and serves 30+ customers.
• Hiring a fully in-person Senior BizOps role in San Francisco with cross-functional scope.
• Recent Series A led by Standard Capital; compensation includes $120K–$210K base and equity.

Springs and Bounces in Native CSS

Key Points

• linear() lets you design custom, piecewise-linear easing curves directly in CSS.
• Overshoot beyond 0–1 enables spring-like motion without JavaScript.
• Supported in major browsers since Dec 2023; ~88% support as of Oct 2025.

ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk

Key Points

• ICC is moving from Microsoft 365 to Open Desk, confirmed by Microsoft.
• Past service disruption to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan underscores risk concerns.
• Open Desk is part of EU-backed efforts (DC-EDIC) and is being piloted in the Netherlands.

OpenAI probably can't make ends meet. That's where you come in

Key Points

• The article claims OpenAI is exploring a federal backstop to reduce borrowing costs for AI investments.
• OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar framed AI as a national strategic asset, citing competition with China, at a Wall Street Journal event.
• Sam Altman defended OpenAI’s growth prospects in response to questions about obligations versus current revenue.

The English language doesn't exist – it's just French that's badly pronounced

Key Points

• Cerquiglini argues English has deep French/Norman roots, especially in vocabulary.
• Norman accent explains several English–French word correspondences.
• The article concludes English grammar is fundamentally Germanic, not a French dialect.

The Parallel Search API

Key Points

• Parallel launched a GA search API built for AI agents with a proprietary web index.
• Architecture features include semantic objectives, token-relevance ranking, dense excerpts, and single-call resolution.
• Claims higher accuracy on multi-hop benchmarks and lowest cost with accuracy parity on SimpleQA.

Swift on FreeBSD Preview

Key Points

• Preview Swift toolchain for FreeBSD 14.3+ (x86_64) is available for download.
• Dependencies required: zlib-ng, python3, sqlite3, libuuid, curl.
• The toolchain is under development; aarch64 support is being investigated.

Supply chain attacks are exploiting our assumptions

Key Points

• Implicit trust in software supply chains is being systematically exploited.
• Traditional defenses (SBOMs, dependency scanning) miss provenance and build integrity issues.
• Recent incidents (PyPI/npm removals, XZ Utils backdoor, crates.io typosquat) illustrate evolving threat tactics.

Phantom in the Light: The story of early spectroscopy

Key Points

• Newton demonstrated white light’s composition and coined “spectrum” in Opticks (1704).
• Wollaston observed dark gaps in the solar spectrum in 1802 with a lens-based spectroscope.
• Fraunhofer’s diffraction gratings enabled higher resolution and wavelength measurement in spectroscopy.

OpenDesk – a flexible all-in-one office suite for the public sector

Key Points

• All-in-one office suite tailored to public-sector needs.
• Focus on digital sovereignty, security, and collaboration.
• Provides familiar tools and an independent, efficiency-oriented infrastructure.

Benchmarking the Most Reliable Document Parsing API

Key Points

• Benchmark focuses on structural fidelity (TEDS) and downstream usability (JSON F1).
• Two-stage evaluation: structural scoring of Markdown/HTML, then JSON extraction via GPT-4o.
• Tensorlake reports 91.7% accuracy and claims to outperform Azure, AWS Textract, and open-source models.

Show HN: TabPFN-2.5 – SOTA foundation model for tabular data

Key Points

• Scales to 50,000 samples and 2,000 features, 20× more data cells than TabPFNv2.
• Outperforms tuned tree-based models and matches AutoGluon 1.4 accuracy on benchmarks.
• Includes a distillation engine for low-latency deployment as MLP or tree ensembles.

What if hard work felt easier?

Key Points

• Early-bird pricing for the Creating Space journaling course ends (priced at $40).
• Kate Mason’s SF talk emphasized joy and authenticity in professional work.
• Personal examples show demanding work can feel effortless when aligned with interests.

LLMs Encode How Difficult Problems Are

Key Points

• Human-labeled difficulty is strongly decodable and scales with model size.
• Steering along the decoded difficulty direction reduces hallucinations and improves accuracy.
• Under GRPO post-training, human difficulty signals strengthen while LLM-derived estimates degrade.

Mark Zuckerberg Had Illegal School at His Palo Alto Compound. Neighbors Revolted

Key Points

• Neighbors alleged an unlicensed school operated at the compound from around 2021 without permits.
• WIRED obtained 1,665 pages of city records detailing years of complaints and city actions.
• Palo Alto officials say enforcement and approvals were handled consistently, without special treatment.

UK outperforms US in creating unicorns from early stage VC investment

Key Points

• UK leads on unicorns-per-dollar in early-stage VC over the past decade.
• Fintech/insurtech and AI are major drivers of UK unicorn creation.
• Seed and early-stage funding in the UK have grown substantially since 2014.

Black Hole Flare Is Biggest and Most Distant Seen

Key Points

• Most powerful and most distant black hole flare observed to date, likely a TDE.
• Detected and monitored by ZTF and Catalina; brightness peaked at 10 trillion solar luminosities.
• Source AGN J2245+3743 is ~500 million solar masses and ~10 billion light-years away.

Two Billion Email Addresses Were Exposed

Key Points

• 1.9B+ unique emails and 1.3B unique passwords processed; 625M were new exposures.
• Data stems from credential stuffing lists and stealer logs; verification confirmed real, active passwords.
• Processing aims to invalidate exposed credential pairs and reduce account takeover risk.

Show HN: I scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation model

Key Points

• Users should input at least three books for better recommendations.
• Only books above a popularity threshold appear in search and recommendations.
• Less popular books are accessible elsewhere on the site but excluded from core recommendations.

Show HN: Dynamic code and feedback walkthroughs with your coding Agent in VSCode

Key Points

• VS Code extension integrates with agents via local MCP to create visual code tours and guided feedback.
• Anonymous telemetry to Azure logging; supports VS Code and forks like Cursor.
• Demo uses Plotly.js repo to showcase learning and visualization-building workflows.

Auraphone: A simple app to collect people's info at events

Key Points

• Phones act as both BLE server and client to prevent role conflicts.
• PROFILE_CHAR (JSON) and PHOTO_CHAR handle profile and image data with caching via photo_hash.
• A Go-based BLE simulator improved protocol understanding but didn’t fix iOS/Android-specific issues.

C++: A prvalue is not a temporary

Key Points

• Prvalues generally initialize directly without creating temporaries.
• Binding a prvalue to a reference forces temporary materialization.
• std::move creates an xvalue from an lvalue to enable moving.

Universe's expansion 'is now slowing, not speeding up'

Key Points

• Correcting age-bias in Type Ia supernovae alters conclusions, indicating decelerated expansion.
• Post-correction data do not support ΛCDM with a cosmological constant; time-varying dark energy fits better.
• Results align with independent BAO and CMB constraints, confirmed at 99.999% confidence.

Hightouch (YC S19) Is Hiring

Key Points

• Senior AI engineer role focuses on LLM prototyping and production pipelines.
• Remote-first, location-independent position with $180k–$320k USD salary.
• Interview process emphasizes system design and agentic architecture over coding tests.

You Should Write An Agent

Key Points

• Build an LLM agent to learn how agents work through direct practice.
• A minimal Python example demonstrates using OpenAI’s API with a context list.
• The article emphasizes practical prototyping over formal agent definitions.

Please stop asking me to provide feedback #8036

Key Points

• User requests a setting to disable Claude Code’s recurring feedback prompts.
• Issue marked as a regression; environment: v1.0.120, Anthropic API, macOS.
• Labeled area:tui, enhancement, has repro, platform:macos; issue closed.

Zohran Mamdani Just Inherited the NYPD Surveillance State

Key Points

• Mamdani plans to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch after his inauguration.
• A major overhaul of the NYPD is not on Mamdani’s agenda, per the article.
• Policy and geopolitical differences exist between Mamdani and Tisch.

Writing Advice

Key Points

• Effective writing minimizes reader effort and maximizes enjoyment.
• Match style to an explicitly imagined communication context.
• Clear initial weak ideas to enable stronger creative output.

Game Design Is Simple

Key Points

• Fun is defined as progress in prediction and mastery of problems.
• Problem-solving elements are core to game systems; experiential elements are secondary.
• Rules and goals define problems; adding a goal can transform a toy into a game.

Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani's policies as 'normal'

Key Points

• European and U.S. precedents exist for fare-free public transit.
• Municipal-run grocery stores have been piloted successfully, including in Istanbul.
• Universal childcare has recent precedents, notably New Mexico statewide.

Writing software is an act of learning. Don’t automate it.

Key Points

• Design emerges through implementation; iterative feedback is essential.
• LLMs help with setup and boilerplate but cannot replace human understanding.
• Agile’s lessons on iteration and collaboration remain relevant in the AI era.

Man who threw sandwich at US border agent not guilty of assault

Key Points

• Jury acquits Sean Dunn of misdemeanor assault in sandwich-throwing case.
• Felony charges were rejected by a grand jury; case proceeded as a misdemeanor over two days.
• Agent Gregory Lairmore’s detailed testimony and defense arguments shaped the verdict.

Blame Wi-Fi drivers for printer (mDNS) discovery issues

Key Points

• Intel Wi‑Fi drivers (AX201/210/211, AC8260) on Windows can break mDNS after sleep; still unresolved as of Oct 2025.
• mDNS/DNS‑SD details: multicast to 224.0.0.251/ff02::fb on port 5353; services like IPP use _ipp._tcp.local.
• Tools: avahi-browse (Linux) and PowerShell Resolve-DnsName (Windows) help verify and reproduce discovery behavior.

Show HN: Auto-Adjust Keyboard and LCD Brightness via Ambient Light Sensor[Linux]

Key Points

• Auto-adjusts keyboard backlight using ALS on Linux; LCD backlight support planned.
• Simple build/install workflow (make; make install) with system service integration.
• Configurable via /etc/als-led-backlight.conf, including a base threshold setting.

The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]

Key Points

• Foundational development from affine schemes and sheaf theory to general and relative schemes.
• Extensive examples: reduced/nonreduced schemes, flat families, and arithmetic schemes over Spec Z.
• Projective schemes via Proj, tangent geometry, Grassmannians, and invariants like Hilbert polynomials.

Scientists find ways to boost memory in aging brains

Key Points

• CRISPR-based modulation of K63 polyubiquitination improved memory in aged rats.
• Epigenetic editing reactivated IGF2 in the aging hippocampus, enhancing memory.
• Results indicate multiple molecular systems drive age-related memory decline.

The APM paradox: Too much data, too few answers

Key Points

• Traditional APMs focus on known performance issues via dashboards and traces.
• OpenTelemetry supports standardized observability data collection.
• Observability 2.0 promotes wide events for flexible, event-centric analysis.

The secret campaign to silence critics of a hospital real estate empire

Key Points

• OCCRP documents show MPT’s large-scale crisis campaign using PR, legal, and intelligence firms.
• WSJ reporting exposed Steward’s vendor debts and questioned MPT’s financial dealings.
• Broader surveillance targeted multiple MPT critics; Audere International was involved.

Gt: [experimental] multiplexing tensor framework

Key Points

• Experimental distributed tensor framework with dynamic scheduling and async execution
• Client-dispatcher-worker architecture using ZeroMQ DEALER/ROUTER transport
• Optional signals/YAML annotations for sharding and JIT compilation with torch.compile

A prvalue is not a temporary

Key Points

• Prvalues are not inherently temporaries and only materialize when required.
• std::move creates an xvalue from an lvalue, enabling move operations.
• Binding prvalues to references causes temporary materialization, while pass-by-value allows direct initialization.

From web developer to database developer in 10 years

Key Points

• Works at EnterpriseDB on pglogical and Postgres Distributed (PGD).
• Practical learning included building an in-memory SQL database and exploring Raft.
• Career path included a startup attempt and a cofounder role at TigerBeetle focused on community.

A Fond Farewell from Farmers' Almanac

Key Points

• The 2026 Farmers’ Almanac will be the final edition.
• Website access continues until December 2025; both print and online editions will cease afterward.
• Final copies are available via FarmersAlmanac.com, Amazon.com, and local retailers.

HTML Slides in 22 Lines of JavaScript

Key Points

• Minimal slide system in 22 lines of JavaScript with added note support.
• Slides/notes defined via simple HTML div classes and navigated using scrollIntoView.
• Keyboard controls (j/k/n) and DOM APIs (nextElementSibling, spread) enable practical functionality.

Dead Framework Theory

Key Points

• React is presented as the de facto platform, with tools and LLMs defaulting to React output.
• BuiltWith and HTTP Archive provide differing but aligning indicators of React’s widespread use.
• Feedback loops between training data, model outputs, and tooling are described as reinforcing React’s dominance.

We built a cloud GPU notebook that boots in seconds

Key Points

• Modal Notebooks deliver fast, collaborative cloud GPU notebooks built on Modal Sandboxes.
• Sandboxes provide secure, high-performance runtime with lazy-loading, content-addressed FUSE storage and Nvidia GPU support.
• The architecture rethinks standard Jupyter deployments for multi-tenant, real-time cloud workloads.

My tutorial and take on C++20 coroutines (2021)

Key Points

• Event-driven C++ with callbacks leads to fragmented logic; Mail Avenger’s SMTP handling illustrates the issue.
• C++11 lambdas help but still result in nested, hard-to-manage asynchronous flows.
• C++20 coroutines enable suspend/resume semantics, but require additional infrastructure not provided by the standard library.