AI Hype Crashes, Chips Go Nuclear!

0 A.D. Release 28: Boiorix

Key Points

• First non-Alpha release of 0 A.D. with broad platform support and open-source licensing.
• New Germanic faction introduces semi-nomadic mechanics and unique technologies.
• Added technical features: Direct Font Rendering and support for JavaScript Modules.

How close are we to a vision for 2010?

Key Points

• The article reassesses the EU ISTAG “Scenarios for ambient intelligence in 2010” from the perspective of 2026.
• Modern smartphones, NFC passports, and connected cars partially fulfil the envisioned ambient-intelligence features.
• Key elements like seamless immigration processing and fully autonomous personal agents have not been realised as predicted.

What I learned designing a barebones UI engine

Key Points

• Custom UI engine built on PyGame with strict transparency and Python-based rapid iteration requirements.
• Initial flat-list, manually positioned architecture evolved into a tree-based layout system with depth-first traversal.
• Current layout relies on intrinsic sizing only, lacking constraints, which constrains responsive and fluid UI design.

Crawling a billion web pages in just over 24 hours, in 2025

Key Points

• A modern, billion-page web crawl was completed in about 24 hours for roughly $462 using a small cloud cluster.
• The crawler operated in HTML-only mode without executing JavaScript, yet still accessed a large portion of the web.
• Politeness and simplicity drove the design: strict robots.txt compliance, per-domain rate limiting, and self-contained crawler nodes handling domain shards.

Ask HN: Have you ever cloned a cat?

Key Points

• The author is exploring commercial services to clone a cat, estimating the cost at about $60,000.
• The emotional rationale for cloning is based on strong, family-like bonds with pets and prolonged grief after their loss.
• The article acknowledges that cloning can replicate genetics but cannot guarantee the original pet’s exact personality or behavior.

Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

Key Points

• Pope Leo XIV urged priests to use their own intellect, not AI, when preparing homilies, tying this to a call for deeper prayer.
• He emphasized personal witness, communion, and broadened outreach as key to bringing the Gospel to young people.
• He called for stronger priestly fraternity, ongoing study, and gratitude, particularly to support elderly and isolated priests.

A Bug Is a Bug, but a Patch Is a Policy: The Case for Bootable Containers

Key Points

• Kernel CVEs are now assigned widely without CVSS scores, breaking traditional prioritization.
• Organizations must choose between manual triage and rapid patching as CVSS guidance disappears.
• Bootc enables atomic, automated OS updates with rollbacks and environment-specific triage.

Elsevier Shuts Down Its Finance Journal Citation Cartel

Key Points

• Elsevier retracted 12 papers across three journals, with nine on Christmas Eve and three two days later.
• All retracted papers were co-authored by Brian M. Lucey; conflict-of-interest editorial oversight was cited.
• The retracted papers accumulated 5,104 citations across topics including cryptocurrencies and finance.

Cursor's Debug Mode Is Arguably Its Best Feature

Key Points

• Debug Mode instruments code with HTTP-based logs and collects runtime data during bug reproduction.
• The approach avoids classic debugger integrations, leveraging LLMs’ strength in parsing textual logs.
• Integrations via MCP servers with Datadog and Sentry provide additional observability context.

SETI@home: Data Acquisition and Front-End Processing

Key Points

• Distributed computing enabled ~10^15 FPOP s−1 for SETI@home’s radio search.
• Coherent integration and DFT analyses span 123,000 Doppler drift rates.
• Front end yielded ~1.2 × 10^10 threshold‑exceeding detections for backend RFI filtering.

QRTape – Audio Playback from Paper Tape with Computer Vision (2021)

Key Points

• Audio is encoded as QR codes on a continuous paper tape and read by a webcam.
• An Arduino-driven stepper motor advances the tape at a steady rate.
• Software uses ZBar for decoding and Opus for audio compression.

Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer

Key Points

• MMC claims industrial-scale mycelium packaging with performance and cost comparable to EPS.
• Millions of units produced since 2020; ~10 million more targeted for 2025.
• Multiple brands already use Mushroom Packaging, indicating market adoption.

Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%

Key Points

• Effective date: 1 April 2026; applies to new and existing products.
• Prices exclude VAT; EUR and USD hourly/monthly rates provided.
• Adjustments span Cloud Servers, Load Balancers, and Object Storage across Germany/Finland and USA.

Pinterest is drowning in a sea of AI slop and auto-moderation

Key Points

• Pinterest uses AI plus human review for moderation and labeling, with an appeals process.
• Artists report repeated mislabeling of hand-drawn works as “AI modified,” requiring time-consuming appeals.
• Users say feeds are flooded with AI-generated art, reducing visibility for original creators.

A NASA Engineer Discovered a World of Semi Truck Aerodynamics by Accident

Key Points

• Rounding front edges reduced drag by about 52% on test vehicles.
• Sealing the underside added a 7% drag reduction, with 15–25% fuel economy gains estimated.
• Later tests with underbody fairings and a boat tail achieved a 15% drag reduction.

Hacker News.love – 22 projects Hacker News didn't love

Key Points

• Dropbox overcame early skepticism and IPO’d at a $12B valuation in 2018.
• GitHub was acquired by Microsoft for $7.5B and now hosts 100M+ developers and 420M+ repositories.
• Bitcoin and DuckDuckGo scaled massively despite initial dismissive reactions on Hacker News.

Show HN: AI Timeline – 171 LLMs from Transformer (2017) to GPT-5.3 (2026)

Key Points

• Transformer (2017) established the core architecture for modern LLMs.
• GPT-3 (2020) demonstrated powerful few-shot learning at scale.
• InstructGPT and Chinchilla (2022) reshaped alignment and scaling best practices.

Ladybird Browser adopts Rust

Key Points

• LibJS components were ported to Rust with byte-for-byte equivalence and no regressions.
• AI-assisted, human-directed translation produced ~25k lines of Rust in about two weeks.
• C++ remains primary; Rust migration will proceed gradually via defined interop boundaries.

The Oracle of Bacon: Thirty Years Later

Key Points

• Launched in 1996 at UVA, the Oracle of Bacon automated actor-to-Kevin Bacon paths.
• It showcased early dynamic web content, contrasting with a mostly static web.
• Average Bacon Number is 3.1, reflecting small-world connectivity.

What I Learned After Building 3 TV Apps Coming from Mobile

Key Points

• Navigation clarity is the primary success factor for TV apps.
• Design for viewing distance, not just larger screen size.
• TV hardware constraints demand performance-optimized UI.

Pipelined Relational Query Language, Pronounced "Prequel"

Key Points

• PRQL is a pipelined, concise language that compiles to SQL and supports embedded SQL.
• Showcase examples map PRQL syntax directly to equivalent SQL for common operations.
• PRQL is open-source, with a Rust-based compiler and resources like a Playground and Book.

VTT Test Donut Lab Battery Reaches 80% Charge in Under 10 Minutes [pdf]

Key Points

• Nominal capacity measured at 26 Ah.
• Fast charging tested at 5C and 11C using CC‑CV to 4.3 V.
• Thermal management assessed with one‑ and two‑sided heat sinks.

Facebook's Fascination with My Robots.txt

Key Points

• FacebookExternalHit is repeatedly requesting robots.txt from a Forgejo instance, several times per second.
• Requests originate from Meta IP ranges, and no other site paths are accessed.
• Facebook’s documentation states the crawler gathers metadata for links shared on Meta platforms.

femtolisp: A lightweight, robust, scheme-like Lisp implementation

Key Points

• Compact Scheme-like Lisp (~150 KB) with bytecode compiler/VM and first-class, printable bytecode.
• Rich feature set including proper tail recursion, UTF-8 IO, and Scheme/R6RS compatibility.
• Design emphasizes concise implementations and demonstrates efficient proper tail calls in a pure s-expression interpreter.

The Age Verification Trap, Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

Key Points

• Age enforcement creates a privacy trade-off: verification requires data collection and retention.
• Platforms mix identity-based and inference-based methods, leading to layered, recurring checks.
• Major platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Google/YouTube, Roblox) illustrate current practices and failure modes.

The peculiar case of Japanese web design

Key Points

• AI clustering of 2,671 site screenshots shows Japanese sites avoid dark, sparse designs.
• Earlier theories (CJK typography, culture, tech history) are reassessed; no single cause is confirmed.
• Global platforms and common UI elements form distinct clusters in the dataset.

Microspeak: Escrow

Key Points

• Escrow freezes a chosen build before RTM for intensive observation.
• Bug decisions follow a formal bug bar; severe issues trigger an escrow reset.
• Release proceeds when the escrow period ends without resets, leading to RTM.

Don't host email yourself – your reminder in 2026

Key Points

• A major German provider blocked a dedicated IP for low sending volume, causing hard bounces.
• Resolution required postmaster intervention and up to 24–48 hours for reputation reset to propagate.
• Self-hosting is likely to face worse deliverability due to IP reputation and grey-listing at major providers.

Artist who "paints" portraits on glass by hitting it with a hammer

Key Points

• Berger renders portraits by controlled striking and cracking of safety glass.
• Proximity and brevity of hammer blows determine contrast and shading.
• His technique originated from considering a car windshield and builds on a background in spray painting and carpentry.

Benchmarks for concurrent hash map implementations in Go

Key Points

• Five Go concurrent map implementations are benchmarked across varied workloads and sizes.
• Environment details and reproducible commands are provided for consistent benchmarking.
• Allocation rates are 0 allocs/op for read/write; cornelk/hashmap tested only at smaller sizes.

NASA uses Mars Helicopter's SoC for rover navigation upgrade

Key Points

• Repurposed Snapdragon 801 HBS processor now runs Mars Global Localization for precise autonomy.
• Algorithm fixes rover location within ~25 cm in ~2 minutes and is already in use (Feb 2 and 16).
• Safeguards and memory-bit isolation ensure reliable operation; enables longer drives without Earth contact.

Emulating Goto in Scheme with Continuations

Key Points

• Scheme can emulate GOTO using call/cc to capture and re-invoke continuations.
• GOTO behavior is illustrated via BASIC loops and C cleanup labels within a function.
• Scheme’s multiple values can be expressed as invoking the current continuation with multiple arguments.

How in the Hell Did Joann Fabrics Die While Best Buy Survived? It Wasn't Amazon

Key Points

• Joann’s 2025 liquidation followed years of operational erosion despite strong store-level demand.
• Best Buy’s survival hinged on stabilizing operations, price matching, and vendor partnerships.
• Retail failure drivers affect public policy; misdiagnosis can misdirect taxpayer-funded responses.

A simple web we own

Key Points

• Individuals can publish independently using Markdown converted to HTML.
• Shifting ownership to individuals/cooperatives may alter Web power dynamics.
• Past decentralization efforts struggled when mirroring centralized platforms.

First, They Came for the Journalists

Key Points

• Exile of journalists is rising globally, including 900+ cases in Latin America since 2018.
• Digital tools (OSINT, encrypted messaging) enable real-time reporting from abroad.
• Ekaterina Fomina left Russia post-2022 invasion to continue war coverage with iStories.

If AI makes human labor obsolete, who decides who gets to eat?

Key Points

• Debate needed on redistribution and governance if AI reduces labor’s role.
• UN’s António Guterres calls for global guardrails to protect human agency.
• Economists propose shifting tax bases and using policy to favor labor-augmenting technologies.

C99 implementation of new O(m log^(2/3) n) shortest path algorithm

Key Points

• New C99 SSSP implementation claims O(m log^(2/3) n) and outperforms Dijkstra’s O(m + n log n).
• Design emphasizes zero-allocation, cache-optimized CSR, and modular architecture with precise timing.
• Benchmarks on x86_64 with Clang -O3 + LTO + Fast-Math report 20,000x+ speedups on large sparse graphs.

Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

Key Points

• U.S. tech firms are expanding India hiring as H‑1B costs and scrutiny rise.
• Open roles favor experienced talent in AI, ML, cloud, and cybersecurity.
• Alphabet plans major Bengaluru expansion that could house up to 20,000 staff.

Hadrius (YC W23) Is Hiring Designers Who Code

Key Points

• Full-time Senior Product Designer role onsite in New York, NY at Hadrius (YC W23).
• Design integrated into codebase; fast feedback; mercury.com used as a quality benchmark.
• Milestones include shipping a major project in month one and building the Hadrius Design System.

'Viking' was a job description, not a matter of heredity: Ancient DNA study

Key Points

• 442 Viking Age genomes were sequenced across Europe and published in Nature.
• Four brothers were identified in a Salme, Estonia ship burial, revealing close kinship in a raiding crew.
• Genetic data show non-Scandinavian individuals in Viking-style graves and Norwegian settlement of Greenland.

AIs can generate near-verbatim copies of novels from training data

Key Points

• Research shows LLMs can reproduce near-verbatim text from copyrighted books.
• Measured extractions: Gemini 2.5 (76.8%) and Grok 3 (70.3%) from Harry Potter.
• Jailbreaking Claude 3.7 Sonnet enabled near-complete book extraction.

Show HN: PgDog – Scale Postgres without changing the app

Key Points

• Rust-based proxy for PostgreSQL scaling via pooling, load balancing, and sharding.
• Multi-environment deployment support: Kubernetes (Helm), AWS (EKS/ECS with Terraform), and Docker.
• Query parsing enables single-endpoint read/write splitting with health checks for high availability.

Show HN: Sowbot – open-hardware agricultural robot (ROS2, RTK GPS)

Key Points

• Dual-board architecture splits real-time control (ROS 2, EKF) from perception/AI (YOLO).
• Dual GNSS RTK and CAN bus enable precise positioning and robust field communication.
• Open-licensed hardware/software with Docker support accelerates reproducible research and startup development.

Large study finds link between cannabis use in teens and psychosis later

Key Points

• Teen cannabis use linked to higher risks of bipolar/psychotic disorders (about 2x).
• Depression (~+33%) and anxiety (~+25%) risks are elevated, especially with younger initiation.
• Study excluded teens with prior symptoms and followed 460,000 youths to age 25.

Anthropic Education the AI Fluency Index

Key Points

• Anthropic measured 11 observable AI fluency behaviors across 9,830 Claude conversations.
• Augmentative use exhibits more than double the fluency behaviors versus quick chats.
• Artifact-producing interactions show reduced questioning of reasoning and missing context.

Writing code is cheap now

Key Points

• Code generation is cheaper with coding agents, but quality remains costly.
• Parallel agents enable simultaneous implementation, testing, refactoring, and documentation.
• Teams must develop new habits to align with agentic engineering practices.

Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

Key Points

• Traditional dictionaries underrepresent multi-word expressions compared to Wiktionary.
• Coverage metrics: MW 18% at top 10K MWEs (7% at 100K); Wiktionary lifts early coverage to 75% but later to 48%.
• AI-generated set of 774K MWEs exposes gaps across expression categories.

What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

Key Points

• Rust’s adoption is domain‑dependent, with Amazon showing maturity in specific use cases.
• Safety‑critical software remains cautious; reference customers are key to broader acceptance.
• Canonical’s Ubuntu adoption aims to help Rust cross the user‑land Linux chasm.

The Lighthouse: How extreme isolation transforms the body and mind

Key Points

• Isolation and sensory deprivation can rapidly induce hallucinations, supported by a 1950s McGill University study.
• Stress-related oxytocin may promote temporary social bonding, reflected in the film’s character dynamics.
• The Lighthouse portrays escalating psychological distress worsened by confinement, storms, and alcohol.

Decided to fly to the US to buy some hard drives

Key Points

• Split purchases across Best Buy and B&H Photo to bypass five-unit limits and manage stock.
• Used Amex due to Best Buy’s billing address requirement; incurred FX fees.
• Verified each drive on-site and declared goods, totaling ~£300 per drive after VAT.

US Gov Deploys Grok as Nutrition Bot, It Advises for Rectal Use of Vegetables

Key Points

• RealFood.gov launched with Grok as its nutrition assistant but removed explicit naming after media inquiry.
• A White House official confirmed Grok still powers the site and is an approved government tool.
• 404 Media testing showed the chatbot readily produced inappropriate guidance when prompted.

ASML unveils EUV light source advance that could yield 50% more chips by 2030

Key Points

• ASML’s EUV source power increased from 600 to 1,000 watts, enabling shorter exposure times.
• Projected throughput: ~330 wafers/hour by 2030 vs ~220 today, potentially 50% more chips.
• Technical changes include doubling tin droplet rate and using two shaping laser bursts.

Generalized Sequential Probability Ratio Test for Families of Hypotheses [pdf]

Key Points

• Introduces a generalized SPRT for composite hypothesis families using a GLR statistic.
• Stopping rule uses boundary crossings tied to error probability control (A and B).
• Proves asymptotic optimality in expected sample size as error probabilities tend to zero.

Show HN: Shibuya – A High-Performance WAF in Rust with eBPF and ML Engine

Key Points

• Rust-based WAF with eBPF/XDP kernel-level blocking and sub-5 ms latency claims
• Dual ML engine with explainability and 10 attack classes using ONNX Runtime
• Full OWASP CRS integration, ModSecurity compatibility, and WASM plugin extensibility

A lithium-ion breakthrough that could boost range and lower costs

Key Points

• Gel electrolyte stabilizes anode-free lithium-ion cells and suppresses dendrites.
• Lab tests show >80% capacity retention and strong abuse resistance versus liquid electrolytes.
• Advances support higher energy density, longer life, and safer EV packs at potentially lower cost.

Binance Fired Employees Who Found $1.7B in Crypto Was Sent to Iran

Key Points

• Investigators flagged $1.7B in flows from two Binance accounts to Iranian-linked entities.
• Over 1,500 Binance accounts were accessed from Iran in the prior year.
• Binance fired or suspended at least four employees after the findings were reported.

Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras

Key Points

• People are dismantling and destroying Flock cameras across the U.S.
• Flock’s network of license plate readers enables tracking of vehicle movements.
• Local police have shared access to Flock data with federal authorities despite Flock’s claim of no direct ICE sharing.

India's VIP culture is out of control

Key Points

• Modi’s 2014 declaration to be India’s “chief servant.”
• Home minister’s recent claim that the government is about service, not power.
• The article highlights a disconnect between VIP culture and leaders’ service rhetoric.

Yes there is a right way to stack the dishwasher. Here are the 5 rules

Key Points

• Don’t pre-rinse; rely on turbidity sensors and keep the filter clean.
• Stack lower rack for eating items, upper rack for drinking items; face dirt inward and avoid contact.
• Place dirtiest items in the center for strongest spray; use tablets and salt.

UNIX99, a UNIX-like OS for the TI-99/4A

Key Points

• UNIX99 brings UNIX-like features to the TI-99/4A with standard C library-based design.
• Supports TI-99 and F18A graphics/audio, plus shell features like pipes and redirection.
• Uses SAMS caching and EA5-style memory layout to optimize performance on constrained hardware.

"Car Wash" test with 53 models

Key Points

• Only 11 of 53 models answered correctly in a single run.
• Five models achieved 10/10 correctness across 10 runs.
• Family-level results show wide variance, with Llama and Mistral failing the single-run test.

SIM (YC X25) Is Hiring the Best Engineers in San Francisco

Key Points

• Sim seeks a lead engineer to own its real‑time visual agent builder and front‑end architecture.
• The platform serves 70,000+ developers, integrates with 1,000+ apps/LLMs, and offers a natural‑language Copilot.
• Sim raised a $7M Series A (Standard Capital lead) and operates from San Francisco as an open‑source startup.

IBM Plunges After Anthropic's Latest Update Takes on COBOL

Key Points

• Anthropic’s Claude and Claude Code are promoted for AI-assisted COBOL modernization.
• COBOL’s prevalence and skills shortage are highlighted as key modernization drivers.
• IBM’s share price dropped intraday amid reaction to the modernization narrative.

Flock cameras gifted by Horowitz Foundation, avoiding public oversight

Key Points

• LVMPD’s Flock camera program is funded by the Horowitz Family Foundation, avoiding public comment requirements.
• Flock’s 2023 contract grants broad data rights and 30-day retention for recordings.
• LVMPD operates ~200 cameras, shares data widely, and logged 23,000+ vehicle searches since late 2023.

The challenges of porting Shufflepuck Cafe to the 8 bits Apple II

Key Points

• Preliminary Glider port established core systems for the Apple II.
• Pseudo-3D achieved via one-point perspective with lookup-table-accelerated transforms.
• 6502 constraints addressed using per256 scaling and a 612-byte routine running in 138 cycles.

Stop Killing Games update says EU petition advances

Key Points

• ECI submitted Jan 26, 2026; Commission reply due July 27, 2026.
• Campaign pivots to regulator engagement and legislative work.
• Two NGOs (EU and US) being formed for sustained counter-lobbying.

Show HN: Babyshark – Wireshark made easy (terminal UI for PCAPs)

Key Points

• Supports offline PCAP/PCAPNG analysis without Wireshark; live capture requires tshark.
• Provides TUI features: flows/packets browsing, follow stream, search, filters, bookmarks, and markdown export.
• Offers multiple installation paths: GitHub Releases, Rust/cargo build, and cargo install from Git repository.

AI-powered reverse-engineering of Rosetta 2 for Linux

Key Points

• WIP AI-powered reverse-engineering targets Rosetta 2 for Linux.
• Functions extracted from Rosetta 2 are compiled in a repository.
• Recovered functions are categorized into GF(2^8) and AES cryptographic extensions.

Scent, in Silico

Key Points

• AI is being used to encode smells, with participation from Google, Osmo, and Givaudan.
• Applications include detection of hazards and reduced reliance on natural fragrance ingredients.
• Smell’s biological roots in chemosensation frame its complexity and potential for computational modeling.

FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook. AI build one for me

Key Points

• AI-assisted direct porting of brcmfmac to FreeBSD via LinuxKPI led to kernel panics and nonfunctional modules.
• LinuxKPI feature gaps and accumulating shims made the approach unwieldy.
• The author shifted to a clean-room, specification-first plan focused on BCM4350 (PCI, client mode).

US ambassador to France banned from meeting French government

Key Points

• France banned Ambassador Charles Kushner from direct access to government officials after a missed summons.
• The summons followed U.S. Embassy and State Department bureau comments on an activist’s killing.
• This was Kushner’s second missed summons, after a 2025 incident over remarks on anti-Semitism.

HackEurope 2026: A short rant on AI and hackathons

Key Points

• Hackathon judging emphasized front-end polish and AI-themed solutions.
• MVP: a behavior-based secure registry replacing npm, using eBPF and anomaly detection.
• Planned features span multi-ecosystem support, reproducible builds, source tracing, and HTTPS decryption.

What is f(x) ≤ g(x) + O(1)? Inequalities With Asymptotics

Key Points

• f(x) = O(g(x)) defines an eventual upper bound via formal quantifiers.
• f(x) = g(x) + O(1) implies a two-sided bounded difference.
• f(x) ≤ g(x) + O(1) expresses a one-sided upper bound for large x.

Disappointing Phones

Key Points

• 3G shutdown in New Zealand by early 2026 threatens call functionality on non-VoLTE phones.
• Camera performance—especially zoom—is a primary requirement for the upgrade.
• The author seeks a device with better hardware while minimizing e-waste and preserving a good software experience.

How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes?

Key Points

• Countable infinities: naturals, evens, and rationals share the same cardinality via explicit bijections.
• Uncountability of the reals: diagonal construction proves no complete listing is possible.
• Infinite sizes vary: some infinite sets are equal in size; others, like the reals, are strictly larger than the naturals.

Making Wolfram Tech Available as a Foundation Tool for LLM Systems

Key Points

• LLMs need precise computational tools; Wolfram Language is positioned to fill this role.
• Standard, general access to Wolfram tech for LLMs is now feasible due to LLM maturation.
• A Wolfram plugin for ChatGPT was released in early 2023 following a proposal to use Wolfram|Alpha.

AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

Key Points

• Goldman Sachs says AI investment had “basically zero” impact on U.S. GDP growth in 2025.
• Imports of AI equipment shift GDP gains to countries like Taiwan and South Korea.
• Executive survey shows high AI adoption but little reported impact on productivity or employment.

You are not supposed to install OpenClaw on your personal computer

Key Points

• Install OpenClaw on isolated hardware with its own eSIM phone number for 2FA.
• Use read-only OAuth access and disable outbound email in Google Workspace.
• Treat the agent as untrusted; restrict credentials, devices, and calendar permissions.

I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia's most famous painting

Key Points

• Kramskoy’s portrait was controversial and initially rejected by Tretyakov.
• The painting’s provenance spans Kyiv and Kharitonenko before state seizure and museum entry.
• Soviet-era reproductions made the portrait widely popular; it appears in Trier’s film.

NZ health app breach: Alive patients marked dead, names changed to Charlie Kirk

Key Points

• Unauthorized modifications to MediMap patient records led to the platform going offline.
• MediMap engaged external cyber experts and notified Police, Health NZ, and the Privacy Commissioner.
• Dozens of providers are affected, with potential impact on tens of thousands of patients.

Psychology suggests making a shopping list is a sign of sharper thinking

Key Points

• List-making signals strong executive function and planning.
• Writing lists offloads memory and improves decision quality.
• Handwritten lists may confer additional cognitive benefits.

Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons

Key Points

• Shatner is producing an untitled metal album with 35 hand-picked artists.
• Covers of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden will be included alongside original material.
• The project was inspired by Shatner’s collaboration with Chris Poland on Nuclear Messiah’s Black Flame.

The Rise of Eyes Began with Just One

Key Points

• Research proposes a single median eye in early invertebrate ancestors that later split into two in vertebrates.
• Darwin’s historical reflections and simpler invertebrate eyes support stepwise evolution.
• 1994 modeling by Nilsson and Pelger suggests image-forming eyes can evolve in hundreds of thousands of years.

I Ported Coreboot to the ThinkPad X270

Key Points

• Coreboot/libreboot port completed on ThinkPad X270 (Kaby Lake).
• Firmware built using BIOS region extraction (ME, GbE, IFD) and deguard with patched ME.
• Thunderbolt pins disabled and EC differences handled to match X270 hardware.

Lords of the Ring

Key Points

• Sumo rules and rituals are illustrated through a practice bout near Lake Suwa.
• Hoshoryu, now the 74th yokozuna, won the observed practice match.
• Yokozuna promotion hinges on performance criteria and council evaluation.

Why Your Load Balancer Still Sends Traffic to Dead Backends

Key Points

• Server-side load balancers centralize health checks and routing, enabling consistent removal of unhealthy instances.
• Health check thresholds reduce flapping but can delay failure detection (e.g., up to 15 seconds).
• Client-side active probing creates overhead and inconsistent health views across clients.

NIST Seeking Public Comment on AI Agent Security (Deadline: March 9, 2026)

Key Points

• Comments due March 9, 2026 via regulations.gov (docket NIST-2025-0035).
• RFI seeks concrete practices and methods to secure AI agent systems.
• All timely comments will be posted publicly without redaction.

Unfavorable Semicircle

Key Points

• YouTube terminated Unfavorable Semicircle on February 25, 2016 after intense activity and attention.
• The channel produced tens of thousands of abstract videos at an unusually high posting frequency.
• Community documentation and discussion persist via a migrated GitHub Pages wiki, Discord, and a subreddit.

Show HN: Steerling-8B, a language model that can explain any token it generates

Key Points

• Explains outputs via input, concept, and training data attribution.
• Concept-level control at inference without retraining.
• Competitive performance with lower compute; >84% contribution from concept module.

Iowa farmers are leading the fight for repair

Key Points

• Iowa committee advanced HSB 751 (18–5), pushing agricultural Right to Repair forward.
• Bill ensures fair access to repair tools/software with parity to authorized providers; amendment adjusted pricing language.
• Colorado’s 2023 law provides precedent; manufacturers are required to provide repair resources on fair terms.

GPU Rack Power Density, 2015–2025

Key Points

• Air cooling fails above 50–100 kW per rack; liquid cooling becomes mandatory.
• Rack densities are ~132 kW for GB200 now and ~240 kW expected in 2026.
• Direct-to-chip liquid cooling is recommended for GB200; immersion supports 200+ kW.

Blood test boosts Alzheimer's diagnosis accuracy to 94.5%, clinical study shows

Key Points

• Accuracy rose from 75.5% to 94.5% with p‑tau217 testing.
• Diagnoses changed for about one in four patients.
• Clinician confidence increased from 6.90 to 8.49 after test review.

Terence Tao, at 8 years old [pdf]

Key Points

• Seven-year-old Terence Tao attended Year 11 Mathematics and Physics while also enrolled in primary school.
• Author M.A. (Ken) Clements conducted an initial assessment of Tao in July 1983 using an ACER test.
• The paper frames Tao’s development within family background and the educational strategies used to support gifted learners.

Show HN: X86CSS – An x86 CPU emulator written in CSS

Key Points

• CSS-only emulator runs 16-bit x86 (8086) machine code compiled from C.
• JS-free clock via CSS animations and container queries; demo targets Chromium-based browsers.
• Instruction coverage is partial and built from GCC-compiled program needs.

I Turned Off ChatGPT's Memory

Key Points

• 'Context rot' from persistent memory can degrade LLM outputs.
• Taylor disables ChatGPT’s memory to keep interactions unbiased.
• Examples show memory-induced tone and location bias affecting responses.

Baby chicks pass the bouba-kiki test, challenging a theory of language evolution

Key Points

• Newborn chicks show bouba-kiki sound–shape associations similar to humans.
• Testing within hours of hatching indicates an innate, prelinguistic bias.
• Findings challenge human exclusivity claims and reframe prior ape study results.

Intel XeSS 3: expanded support for Core Ultra/Core Ultra 2 and Arc A, B series

Key Points

• WHQL-certified Intel Graphics Driver 32.0.101.8509 released.
• XeSS 3 Multi-Frame Generation support expanded to Arc B/A-Series and Core Ultra/Ultra 2 platforms.
• Supports Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 21H2–25H2.

Typed Assembly Language

Key Points

• TAL enforces memory, control-flow, and type safety via sound typing rules.
• It encodes rich high-level features while supporting low-level optimizations.
• TALx86 and a Popcorn-to-TALx86 compiler demonstrate practical implementation.

Study shows two child household must earn $400k/year to afford childcare

Key Points

• A two-child household would need $402,708 in income to keep average child care costs at HHS’s 7% affordability threshold.
• Average two-child household income is $145,656, far below the benchmark, with wide racial and state disparities.
• Hawaii shows the largest gap; South Dakota is closest to affordability but still falls short by federal standards.