AI Coders Crash Jobs As Banks Sweat!

Real Biological Clock Is You're Going to Die

Key Points

• Mortality sets hard limits on generational overlap and shared family time.
• Delaying parenthood reduces the years parents and children spend together.
• Technologies may extend fertility windows, but not lifespan.

Contact the ISS

Key Points

• ISS offers crossband voice repeater, packet (VHF/UHF), and SSTV modes with defined frequencies by mode and region.
• Operate split-frequency: listen on downlink, transmit on uplink; never transmit on the downlink.
• Use AMSAT tracking tools and recommended ground equipment to plan and execute successful passes.

FreeBSD: Home NAS, part 1 – configuring ZFS mirror (RAID1)

Key Points

• Vanilla FreeBSD NAS plan: UFS on NVMe for OS, ZFS RAID1 on SATA SSDs for data.
• Remote install over SSH via bsdinstall from a LiveCD, with networking enabled via ifconfig/dhclient.
• Tmpfs overlay enables editing sshd_config on a read-only LiveCD to allow root SSH login.

Round the tree, yes, but not round the squirrel

Key Points

• The man circles the tree four times but never sees the squirrel’s back.
• One side equates circling the tree with circling the squirrel; the other requires being ‘behind’ the squirrel.
• The core issue is differing definitions of ‘circling’ (geometric vs. orientation-based).

Matz 2/2: The trajectory of Ruby's growth, Open-Source Software today etc.

Key Points

• Rails’ 2004 release is highlighted as the key accelerator of Ruby’s global adoption.
• Startup use, notably GitHub, exemplified Ruby’s practical impact and growth.
• Matz’s leadership roles and recognitions underscore his influence on the Ruby ecosystem.

Ask HN: How do I help a colleague who introduces a lot of typos?

Key Points

• Typos in configs/scripts evade current safeguards and sometimes reach production.
• Proposed mitigations include tooling changes, AI-assisted reviews, and independent test authorship.
• A real-world example shows repeated process hardening after errors, yet frequency remains the core challenge.

Standard Ebooks: Public Domain Day 2026 in Literature

Key Points

• Books published in 1930 enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.
• Standard Ebooks releases 20 free ebooks from 1930, including The Castle and The Maltese Falcon.
• 2019 restarted annual U.S. public-domain additions; U.S. term is now 95 years after publication.

Going immutable on macOS, using Nix-Darwin

Key Points

• Nix replaces imperative Homebrew workflows with a declarative, reproducible system on macOS.
• Rollbacks via Nix generations and read-only volumes enable safe recovery from breakages.
• nix-darwin manages macOS system settings and packages, with flakes/flake.lock ensuring pinned, shareable configs.

Vibe Coding for CTOs: The Real Cost of 100 Lines of Code

Key Points

• Agentic coding emphasizes setting objectives while AI agents plan, code, test, and report.
• RocketEdge uses GitHub Copilot’s coding agent mode in VS Code and Visual Studio Enterprise to speed delivery.
• GitHub reports Copilot coding agents can help clear backlogs and tackle tasks in parallel.

Square Minus Square – A coding agent benchmark

Key Points

• No model fully solved the Rust triangulation task.
• Visual feedback (screenshots/video) improved debugging but not final success.
• Top models performed inconsistently, with some crashes and non-minimal outputs.

10 years of personal finances in plain text files

Key Points

• A decade-long Beancount ledger totals 45,011 lines across 16 files with about 507 attached documents.
• bean-query shows 12,466 directives, 9,895 transactions, 19,743 postings, and 1,086 virtual accounts.
• Monthly workflow: CSV download, importer conversion, append to ledger, and balancing (partly automated).

One Number I Trust: Plain-Text Accounting for a Multi-Currency Household

Key Points

• Rebuilt finances using double-entry, plain‑text accounting, and Beancount for accuracy and control.
• Automated imports from PDF statements, weekly categorization, and scripted report regeneration enable reliable tax reporting.
• Double-entry fixes single‑entry issues (transfers, reimbursements) and supports a single, trustworthy net worth metric.

Beddel Protocol: Sequential Pipeline Executor (YAML)

Key Points

• YAML-defined, sequential AI workflow execution with native streaming.
• Multi-provider support (Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter) and model examples with env-based configuration.
• Clear server/client separation, Next.js/React integration, and extensibility via custom primitives/tools.

HPV vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV16/18 prevalence from 16% to <1% in Denmark

Key Points

• HPV16/18 prevalence fell from ~16% pre‑vaccination to <1% among vaccinated women in Denmark.
• Study analyzed first, second, and third cervical samples from the Trial23 cohort (2017–2024).
• Published in Eurosurveillance by a multi‑institutional Danish research team.

2025 Letter

Key Points

• Silicon Valley and the CCP are portrayed as serious, humor-limited institutions with similar public registers.
• The Bay Area has shifted from apps/crypto/business software (2015) to AI dominance and greater political influence.
• The author relocated from Yale to Stanford and observes widespread driverless cars in San Francisco.

Can I throw a C++ exception from a structured exception?

Key Points

• Converting SEH to C++ exceptions via an unhandled exception filter is unreliable without /EHa.
• printf’s non-noexcept status incidentally preserved try/catch; removing it let the compiler optimize away the handlers.
• /EHa is required to consistently catch asynchronous exceptions with C++ catch blocks.

FracturedJson

Key Points

• Formats JSON to be both compact and readable via single-line structures and aligned fields.
• Supports optional comment preservation and placement near related elements.
• Available via web, .NET, JS/TS, VS Code, with Python options.

Show HN: I built a clipboard tool to strip/keep specific formatting like Italics

Key Points

• Customizable paste “recipes” automate text cleanup and formatting on Windows.
• Quick Menu applies saved recipes from any app via hotkey or mouse.
• Local-only processing with no cloud or data harvesting; free trial and discounted lifetime license available.

High-Fidelity 3D Shape Generation

Key Points

• UltraShape-1.0 uses a two-stage diffusion approach for 3D geometry generation.
• Watertight processing and quality filtering support detailed, high-fidelity outputs.
• An advanced data pipeline prepares and refines inputs for the generative process.

39th Chaos Communication Congress Videos

Key Points

• 39C3 recordings are available with video/audio playlists and sortable listings.
• Podcast feeds offered in opus, mp3, mp4 (HQ/SD), webm (HQ/SD), and vtt.
• Highlighted talks feature speakers including Marc-Uwe Kling, Linus Neumann, Q Misell, 551724 / maya boeckh, and Cory Doctorow.

Show HN: Dealta – A game-theoretic decentralized trading protocol

Key Points

• Three public MIT-licensed repos: C++ L1 core, whitepaper, and TypeScript web interface.
• Whitepaper references Hashcash, Byzantine fault tolerance, and Nash equilibrium.
• Recent updates noted for whitepaper and webview; repos show zero activity metrics.

What You Need to Know Before Touching a Video File

Key Points

• Containers organize streams and metadata; codecs perform compression.
• Reencoding is lossy and compute-heavy; remuxing can avoid unnecessary quality loss.
• x264/x265 are encoders for H.264/H.265, not the codec standards themselves.

OfferGridAI – side-by-side comparison of real estate offers from PDFs

Key Points

• Uploads multiple offer PDFs and produces a side-by-side comparison with risk scores in under two minutes.
• Extracts and normalizes key terms like price, financing, contingencies, closing timelines, and net to seller.
• Offers a free first property analysis, with pay-per-property or monthly subscription pricing.

Windows 11 surges among PC gamers on Steam as Linux stalls

Key Points

• Windows 11 jumped to 70.83% on Steam in December 2025; Windows 10 fell to 26.70%.
• Linux stalled at 3.19% overall, though Fedora gained 0.05%.
• RTX 3060 leads GPUs; Meta Quest 3 tops VR after a 24.42% share increase.

A small collection of text-only websites

Key Points

• The author’s site supports plaintext via .txt on any URL.
• The article lists concrete URL patterns for text-only access across multiple sites.
• Inclusion criteria require serving content as text/plain and excluding richer formats.

Assorted Less(1) Tips

Key Points

• Manage multi-file sessions in less with :e, :n, :p, :x, and :d.
• Use countG and count% for precise line and percentage-based navigation.
• Apply search modifiers (!, *, @, @*) and inline filtering (&, &!) to refine viewing.

TIL: Parental Controls Aren't for Parents

Key Points

• GroupMe enabled an adult to obtain a child’s number; Gabb lists GroupMe as approved but warns of stranger communication.
• Gabb’s blog also flags GroupMe among risky chat apps; navigating Gabb’s safety materials is extensive.
• Nintendo Switch parental controls require multiple steps across an app and website; some controls were not clearly located.

Soho 1851: The Greatest Christmas Meal Ever Cooked

Key Points

• A massive, meticulously organized Christmas banquet was held in Ham Yard, Soho, on 25 December 1851.
• Donations totaled 9,000 pounds of meat plus numerous pies and geese, including a 60‑pound “Monster” pie.
• The event used timed seating, festive staging, and police oversight to serve thousands without incident.

The Netflix Simian Army (2011)

Key Points

• Chaos Monkey randomly disables production instances to validate resilience and recovery.
• Latency Monkey simulates service degradation via injected delays without taking services down.
• Conformity, Doctor, Janitor, and Security Monkeys enforce best practices, remove unhealthy instances, clean up unused resources, and detect security issues.

I'm having the worst career winter of my life

Key Points

• Experienced UK-based SWE seeks a remote role and details tech stack (Ruby/Rails, Node.js, TypeScript, Go).
• Open to new languages and capable of management responsibilities.
• Provides GitHub, LinkedIn, and email for follow-up and requests advice on job search challenges.

Show HN: Jsonic – Python JSON serialization that works

Key Points

• Zero-boilerplate serialization/deserialization for Python objects with type-safe round-tripping.
• Seamless Pydantic integration, honoring aliases and validators with full validation on deserialize.
• Partial serialization with field exclusion, including nested fields via dot notation, plus support for advanced types.

Why do Americans hate A.I.?

Key Points

• Polls show most Americans are concerned about A.I., with skepticism rising.
• Backlash spans labor actions, protests, and public vandalism tied to A.I. messaging.
• Job loss, trust/opacity, financial exposure, and environmental/copyright issues drive U.S. animosity.

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world

Key Points

• IPv6 adoption remains below 50% despite its vast address space.
• NAT and IPv4 feature improvements reduced pressure to adopt IPv6.
• Migration costs, training, performance issues, and legacy infrastructure limit IPv6 deployment.

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2026)

Key Points

• StorPool is hiring Senior Software Engineers for Core Storage; roles are fully remote within UTC−1 to UTC+5.
• Work involves C/Linux systems programming, including custom Linux drivers and kernel-level debugging.
• Product claims include <100µs latency, 113M+ IOPS per cluster, and 99.999% availability.

ThingsBoard: Open-Source IoT Platform

Key Points

• Open-source IoT platform with on‑premise, cloud, and live demo options
• Rule Engine with Rule Chains for data processing and alerts
• SCADA dashboards and flexible widgets for real-time visualization

Vibe Coding Killed Cursor

Key Points

• Agentic “vibe coding” is portrayed as token-inefficient and a poor default for development workflows.
• Recommended approach: human-in-the-loop via AI Studio (Gemini) or OpenCode (git diffs) with Anthropic models.
• Model guidance: use Sonnet 4.5 for most tasks; switch to Opus 4.5 for complex work and manage costs via plan tiers.

Punkt. Unveils MC03 Smartphone

Key Points

• AphyOS powers dual privacy domains (Vault and Wild Web) with hardened security and a Secure Element.
• Proton joins Threema as partners; Proton services are integrated within the secure Vault.
• German-built hardware features include 120Hz OLED HDR display, removable 5200mAh battery, IP68 rating, and 64MP camera.

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2026)

Key Points

• Personal job-seeking posts are invited in a strict, standardized format.
• Recruiters and agencies are not allowed; contact is limited to work-related emails.
• A dedicated search tool (wantstobehired.com) is provided to browse entries.

Clicks Communicator

Key Points

• Standalone Android 16 smartphone with 5G/Wi‑Fi and full app support
• Reservation options: $199 deposit or $399 full early‑bird payment for priority ordering
• Traditional cellular calling requires a second SIM/number; VOIP services carry over

Kling Motion Control AI

Key Points

• AI-driven platform for reference-based motion transfer and precise motion brush editing.
• Three-step workflow culminating in downloadable 1080p character animations.
• Targeted at creators and startups, with a showcase gallery and premium feature options.

Miri: Practical Undefined Behavior Detection for Rust [pdf]

Key Points

• Miri detects de-facto UB in deterministic Rust and supports real-world code execution via OS API emulation.
• Advanced features include pointer provenance tracking, type invariant validation, data-race detection, and weak memory exploration.
• Evaluated on 100,000+ Rust libraries, executing over 70% of tests; integrated into CI for the Rust standard library and others.

US Government demands access to European police databases and biometrics [video]

Key Points

• U.S. EBSP would grant direct access to VWP countries’ police biometric databases.
• The approach exceeds EU’s hit/no-hit model under Prüm; GDPR compatibility is questioned.
• Deadline for VWP states is 31 December 2026; non-compliance risks losing visa-free travel.

Understanding Elasticsearch Percolator Field and Ingestion Lifecycle

Key Points

• Percolation stores queries and matches them against documents during indexing.
• Queries are validated against the current index mapping for compatibility.
• A percolator field must be defined in the index mapping to enable the feature.

Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams

Key Points

• Voice AI oral exams using ElevenLabs tested real-time reasoning and decision defense.
• Multi-agent workflow (authentication, project, case) improved structure and scalability.
• Pilot showed low cost, manageable duration, and reported grading alignment.

TinyTinyTPU: 2×2 systolic-array TPU-style matrix-multiply unit deployed on FPGA

Key Points

• 2×2 TPU-style systolic array with full post-MAC pipeline on Basys3 FPGA
• Open-source (Yosys/nextpnr) and Vivado build flows with automated TCL script
• Comprehensive Verilator/cocotb-based test suite and waveform viewing tools

The rsync algorithm (1996) [pdf]

Key Points

• rsync updates a remote file by sending only unmatched segments and references to existing data.
• It computes differences without requiring both files to be on the same machine.
• Best performance occurs with similar files, yet correctness and reasonable efficiency persist even when files differ.

4th Edition Unix in the Browser

Key Points

• Emulates Unix v4 (1973) on a PDP-11/45 with authentic behavior.
• Claims the only known copy, recovered in 2025 from a University of Utah tape.
• Provides commands, caveats, and demo programs for hands-on exploration.

Accounting for Computer Scientists (2011)

Key Points

• Accounts are nodes; transactions are directed edges labeled with amounts.
• Group expenses into category nodes to simplify analysis and reporting.
• Balances are computed by adding incoming amounts and subtracting outgoing amounts from zero.

Publish (On Your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

Key Points

• Publish on your site first, then syndicate elsewhere with links back to the original.
• POSSE strengthens ownership and canonical control while reducing dependence on third parties.
• Use permashortlinks and backfeed to enhance discovery, SEO, and integrate external responses.

Grok Can't Apologize. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?

Key Points

• Grok publicly posted sexualized edits in X reply threads, including minors’ images.
• xAI’s “Spicy Mode” permits suggestive content and enabled explicit outputs, per The Verge.
• Design and policy choices made Grok less restricted, increasing risk of public harm.

List, inspect and explore OCI container images, their layers and contents

Key Points

• Explore images without running containers: inspect metadata, list files, and read contents.
• Compare two tags efficiently by skipping shared base layers.
• Connects to Docker/Podman/containerd via DOCKER_HOST and defaults to local-cache (if-not-present) pulls.

Jank Lang Hit Alpha

Key Points

• jank targets LLVM and interoperates with C++, differing from Clojure’s JVM/Java setup.
• The language is in alpha and is supported by a comprehensive documentation book.
• Examples emphasize immutability and demonstrate direct calls into C++ libraries.

I wrote a batch script to keep my 2011 ThinkPad alive for 24/7 streaming

Key Points

• Introduces a batch script to sustain 24/7 streaming on a 2011 ThinkPad
• Fixes VLC Video Source audio stutter and CPU throttling during streaming
• Advises reading the readme.txt before initial setup

Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?

Key Points

• Seeks low-effort tech roles updated for the LLM/coding agent era.
• Prefers fully remote, task-based work with willingness to accept lower pay.
• Suggests niche plugin/extension roles in enterprise ecosystems as potential fits.

Uxn32: Uxn Emulator for Windows and Wine

Key Points

• Single-file Uxn emulator with debugger and high-DPI support, runnable on Windows 95–11 and under Wine.
• Flexible builds across VC6, modern Visual Studio, Clang/clang-cl, GCC/MinGW, and Pelles C with CMake support.
• Linux Winelib workflow and winegcc options enable cross-compiling PE binaries; standard Windows libs must be linked.

Tesla sales fell by 9 percent in 2025, its second yearly decline

Key Points

• 2025 deliveries fell 8.6% to 1,636,129; Q4 down nearly 16% vs 2024.
• Cybertruck and in-house battery setbacks; L&F wrote down a $2.9B contract to $7,386.
• Safety/regulatory pressures: NHTSA probe, China’s 2027 handle ban, and a $329M judgment.

Linux kernel security work

Key Points

• Security team focuses on rapid fixes and public merges without announcements.
• Reporting requires plain text email; encryption and attachments are discouraged.
• Security team is separate from CVE/CNA processes; don’t expect CVE assignment.

Daft Punk Easter Egg in the BPM Tempo of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

Key Points

• Author concludes the track’s average BPM is 123.45, not the commonly cited 123.
• Explains why algorithmic tempo detection often yields rounded or approximate results.
• Provides a manual method and example timings to compute exact average BPM from audio.

I wrote the manual Karpathy said was missing for agentic AI

Key Points

• Free manual outlines nine first principles for agentic AI systems.
• Focuses on CLI agents like Claude Code with practical design tips and examples.
• MIT-licensed project with planned expansions and GitHub-hosted updates.

Global software engineering job postings outlook – 2026

Key Points

• 105,115 total openings; 13,985 remote and 91,130 on-site.
• Python, AWS, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and Java are among the most in-demand skills.
• AI skills—especially generative AI, LLMs, and RAG—show strong and growing demand.

Grok Sexual Images Draw Rebuke, France Flags Content as Illegal

Key Points

• France flagged potential EU DSA violations over Grok-generated illegal content on X.
• xAI acknowledged safeguard lapses via Grok’s post and said urgent fixes are underway.
• IWF reported a 400% rise in AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery in H1 2025.

Chain Flinger

Key Points

• KdK series explores the physics of whips and chain-flingers based on historical papers.
• Bullwhips can break the sound barrier; similar physics apply to chain-flingers.
• Small initial velocity boosts can aid launches due to the Rocket Equation’s exponential nature.

NY Fed cash transfers to banks increase dramatically in Q4 2025

Key Points

• NY Fed increased standing overnight repo injections from late Oct. 2025, with multiple large operations.
• Dec. 10 policy change removed aggregate limits on these repo operations.
• Likely beneficiaries include major banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, HSBC, UBS, and Barclays.

2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

Key Points

• Switch to Linux in 2026 with Fedora on the tower and btrfs across three SSDs.
• Use Bazzite or SteamOS for handheld gaming devices.
• Cited Windows 11 UI and Copilot issues as drivers for the migration, with a preference for Linux’s resource efficiency and logs.

The PGP Problem (2019)

Key Points

• PGP/OpenPGP/GnuPG are portrayed as outdated and overly complex for modern use.
• Packet-format complexity has led to practical issues, including quadratic parsing in keyserver scenarios.
• Modern best practices (AEAD, stronger ciphers/KDFs, no compression+encryption) are difficult to achieve within PGP’s design.

Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

Key Points

• Simulates Powerball and EuroJackpot every second with live match tracking.
• Translates odds into time-to-win: ~4.6 years (Powerball) and ~2.2 years (EuroJackpot) at 1 play/sec.
• Weekly ticket buying implies ~5.6 million years for a 50% chance of a Powerball jackpot.

The most friendless place on Earth

Key Points

• Southern Madagascar’s Ambovombe faces scarcity during the dry season, with limited crops and reliance on charcoal sales.
• Residents are short of cash, often hungry, and the article underscores that they are also lonely.
• The piece challenges the idea that loneliness mainly affects rich, individualistic societies.

A Basic Just-in-Time Compiler

Key Points

• Implements a simple x86-64 JIT in C for a recurrence relation challenge.
• Explains OS memory protections and why malloc memory cannot execute code.
• Introduces an executable instruction buffer and recommends querying page size via sysconf.

Blaze: A Dec VT420 (and More) Emulator

Key Points

• Rust-based VT420 emulator with full hardware emulation and advanced features
• Multiple backends including WebAssembly for browser use
• Call for EEPROM images for PCTERM variants via GitHub issues

Proving Liveness with TLA

Key Points

• Temporal logic support in TLAPS enables machine-verified liveness proofs.
• A simple TLA+ channel model demonstrates liveness using the leads-to operator.
• Weak fairness (WF_vars) is used to ensure the receiver eventually reads.

Uxn/Varvara ecosystem is a personal computing stack

Key Points

• Uxn uses a small VM with ROM-distributed apps written in uxntal for cross-platform portability.
• The cross-platform desktop emulator depends on SDL2, with install steps and uxnemu usage documented.
• Uxn extends beyond desktops with ports to many classic, embedded, and handheld platforms.

Rope science, part 11 – practical syntax highlighting (2017)

Key Points

• Incremental algorithm with a stateful function signature enables efficient syntax highlighting.
• Batch processing is simple and serves as a correctness baseline for optimization.
• Memoization cuts runtime from O(n^2) to O(n) for random-access highlighting by caching per-line state.

Einstein Probe detects an X-ray flare from nearby star

Key Points

• Einstein Probe detected and identified EP J2322.1-0301 as a stellar flare on PM J23221-0301.
• Observational evidence includes FRED light curve, H-alpha emission, and positional match within 20″.
• Flare timescales, luminosity, and total energy align with typical stellar flare properties and flare-loop models.

The Cost of a Closure in C: The Rest

Key Points

• Benchmark repetitions increased to 150 for stronger reliability.
• New Plain C categories include extra-argument, Rosetta Code pointer-based, static, and thread_local approaches.
• Signature preservation is crucial for qsort compatibility and FFI integration.

Adventure 751 (1980)

Key Points

• Adventure 751 has been found and is now playable after decades missing from CompuServe.
• CompuServe’s origins tie to University of Arizona hybrid computing efforts and time-sharing development.
• A hardware shift to a KA-10 (PDP-10) enabled CompuServe’s early time-sharing capabilities.

Of Boot Vectors and Double Glitches: Bypassing RP2350's Secure Boot

Key Points

• Five secure‑boot attacks on the RP2350 were found via a public hacking challenge.
• Fault‑injection and double‑glitch techniques bypassed secure boot and accessed OTP secrets.
• Raspberry Pi added mitigations in a new chip revision after researcher collaboration.