AI Summarized Hacker News

Front-page articles summarized hourly.

Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica

Waymo says its robotaxi struck a child near a Santa Monica elementary school on Jan. 23, causing minor injuries. The child, age not disclosed, abruptly entered the road from behind a tall SUV; the car braked from about 17 mph to 6 mph. The pedestrian stood up and walked away; 911 was called and the car stayed on scene until police cleared it. NHTSA opened an investigation. Waymo says its model would have predicted a human driver would have contacted the pedestrian at 14 mph in this scenario. The crash occurred two blocks from the school during drop-off hours.

The Sovereign Tech Fund Invests in Scala

Scala received a two-year €377,300 investment from the Sovereign Tech Fund to bolster security, maintenance, and developer experience, coordinated by the Scala Center. The fund, run by the Sovereign Tech Agency and funded by Germany’s ministry, has invested about €34 million in 95 open-source projects since Oct 2022. The funding will support: a security audit by OSTIF; improvements to scoverage; long-term maintenance and modernization of the Standard Library and APIs; better documentation; and a sbt 2.0 upgrade (including adopting Scala 3 for build definitions).

Making niche solutions is the point

The piece argues that the point of making, whether with 3D printing or software, is to create niche solutions tailored to exact needs. A 3D printer lets you print designs others made or craft your own custom tools—often faster and cheaper than buying, and enabling highly specific setups (the author’s minimal, tailored PT supply station being an example). Software engineers likewise craft the tools they use, from dev environments to applications, a practice sometimes called dogfooding. While not always best to build, the magic is that we can build when it matters. Making niche things is the point.

Playing Board Games with Deep Convolutional Neural Network on 8bit Motorola 6809

GPWS 2023 paper by Rémi Coulom demonstrates running a Go-playing convolutional neural network on the Motorola 6809 8‑bit CPU (Thomson MO5), achieving Go strength on par with GNU Go. It shows that while training neural nets is compute‑intensive, inference can be efficiently performed on very small devices.

Deep dive into Turso, the "SQLite rewrite in Rust"

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Break Me If You Can: Exploiting PKO and Relay Attacks in 3DES/AES NFC

This paper analyzes vulnerabilities in MIFARE Ultralight C, MIFARE Ultralight AES, NTAG 223/224 DNA and similar non‑NXP cards, showing that relay-based attacks combined with partial key overwrites and tearing can substantially weaken security. For MIFARE Ultralight C, 2TDEA keyspace can drop from 2^112 to about 2^28 (or less) in real deployments; Ultralight AES breaks if CMAC is not enforced; NTAG 223/224 DNA lacks integrity checks, enabling a ciphertext oracle from a single tag. Non‑NXP cards with flawed RNGs can be defeated in under 60 seconds. Mitigations: CMAC, key diversification, lock memory, AUTH_LIM, verify genuine chips; migrate to DESFire EV3. Tools on GitHub.

How to Choose Colors for Your CLI Applications

Guides choosing CLI colors that stay readable across common themes. The author tests palettes (macOS Terminal Basic, Tango Light/Dark, Solarized Light/Dark, Sorcerer) and notes that greys (black, white, brblack, brwhite) can lose contrast depending on background, so some colors become unreadable in certain themes. Solarized uses a perceptually uniform 16-color mapping via L*a*b*, balancing light/dark accents but making Solarized-bright colors clash with some apps. Concludes with a restricted palette: eleven of thirty-two colors usable, with regular and bold variants, to maximize cross-theme readability for most users.

Claude Code Daily Benchmarks for Degradation Tracking

Marginlab’s Claude Code Opus 4.5 Performance Tracker monitors for statistically significant degradations in Claude Code using Opus 4.5 on SWE tasks. It runs daily, direct Claude Code CLI benchmarks on a curated SWE-Bench-Pro subset (N=50), with no harnesses, and reports degradation status. Key metrics: baseline 58% historical pass rate; daily 50%; 7-day 53%; 30-day 54%. Trends shown with ± thresholds (daily ±14%, weekly ±5.6%). Change view flags 30-day degradation as statistically significant. Methodology uses Bernoulli models with 95% CIs; independent, not affiliated; email alerts when degradation is detected.

Building a High-Performance Rotating Bloom Filter in Java

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A lot of population numbers are fake

Population counts are highly uncertain in many places. Papua New Guinea’s 2022 estimate (9.4m) relied on a 2000 census; a leaked UN report suggested ~17m, but the government gagged it, and a 2024 census broadly supported ~10m yet faced undercounting accusations. Nigeria’s censuses show repeated fraud and politicized fears that counts grant regional oil-revenue power. Across many poor countries, censuses are irregular and flawed; even satellite approaches yield divergent, often biased results, undercounting rural and slum populations. Overall, global numbers aren’t wildly wrong, but country counts are deeply unreliable.

Apt-bundle: brew bundle for apt

apt-bundle is a declarative, Brewfile-like wrapper for apt on Debian-based systems (not a full config management system). Define dependencies in Aptfile and install with apt-bundle. Features include idempotent operations, repository and GPG key management, and version pinning via a simple CLI. Installation options cover a script, a .deb package, or building from source. Aptfile supports apt directives, PPAs, keys, and custom repositories. The project includes full docs, examples, and a Go-based CLI, licensed under Apache-2.0.

Does running wear out the bodies of professionals and amateurs alike?

Running wears out bodies for both pros and amateurs. Elite runners push extreme training, face injuries, and short careers, but benefit from medical support and genetics (e.g., Kipchoge). Amateurs share similar prep and fatigue but have higher injury risk due to less supervision. The Paris Marathon 2025 data show a common challenge: long training blocks and many finishers. Ultra-trail adds greater joint and mental strain. The paradox is that training wears the body to build resilience; good coaching and progressive recovery are crucial—stay active, safely.

Show HN: ShapedQL – A SQL engine for multi-stage ranking and RAG

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TÜV Report 2026: Tesla Model Y has the worst reliability of all 2022–2023 cars

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AI on Australian travel company website sent tourists to nonexistent hot springs

An AI-generated blog on Tasmania Tours promoted Weldborough Hot Springs in northeast Tasmania as a tranquil retreat, but the springs do not exist. The post, outsourced to a third party, was published while the owner was abroad and later deleted. Tourists converged on Weldborough, confusing locals and the Weldborough Hotel. The company said the AI messed up; experts warn AI travel content often contains inaccuracies and advise travelers to verify AI itineraries with trusted sources.

The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat

Tech job market hasn't improved since 2008; liquidity fueled over-hiring for exponential growth, treating 'work in progress' as an asset. When demand fell, talent was dumped; layoffs became a signal of discipline and margins, not failure. Big tech splits Core revenue teams from Bets; interview hype doesn't ensure security. Europe loses safety nets as US practices spread. Verdict: the pain comes from 14 years of financial toxicity and abundance, not AI; the hire-and-dump cycle persists until scarcity replaces excess.

The Origin of Cascades - on the History of CSS (2020)

A Darwinian tour through CSS, linking its evolution to natural selection and a tree-of-life metaphor. The talk surveys how CSS emerged from 1990s proposals to separate content from presentation, the rise of cascading and inheritance, and the shift from HTML-embedded styling to modular CSS. It covers early standards (CSS Level 1, 2) and the later move to many modules, with modern breakthroughs in layout (flexbox, grid), custom properties, and Houdini. It discusses CSS in JS and utility-class approaches, the trade-offs with specificity and the cascade, and why CSS endures: simplicity, flexibility, and adaptation to the web.

Vitamin D and Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants

Vitamin D and Omega-3 show strong evidence for reducing depressive symptoms, potentially on par with or better than antidepressants. Antidepressants: ~0.4 effect size; Omega-3 (~0.6, optimal around 1–2 g daily with ~60% EPA); Vitamin D ~1.8, with best data around 5000 IU/day (up to 10,000 IU safe). Benefits even without deficiency; official guidelines are too low. The author recommends daily Vitamin D and EPA-60 Omega-3 supplements, mindful of interactions; continue current treatments if beneficial; sun exposure is not a reliable substitute for most people.

Winapp, the Windows App Development CLI – Windows Developer Blog

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OpenAI's Unit Economics

Exponential View and Epoch AI assess OpenAI’s GPT-5 economics to gauge model profitability. They estimate the GPT-5 bundle earned $6.1B over four months, with costs: inference compute $3.2B, staff $1.2B, S&M $2.2B, and G&A $0.2B. Gross profit ≈$2.9B (48%); but after all costs, operating profit is negative (~$0.7B), and a Microsoft revenue share further strains margins. The authors argue GPT-5 likely didn’t recoup ~$5B in 2025 R&D in its four-month life. Therefore, models may be unprofitable on lifecycle, though profitability could emerge via cheaper compute, longer lifecycles, stickier enterprise deals, and new revenue streams like ads.

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