AI Summarized Hacker News

Front-page articles summarized hourly.

Quantitative Finance with OCaml

Quantitative Finance with OCaml is a comprehensive guide to building correct, fast financial systems in OCaml. Organized into seven parts, it covers foundations; fixed income and rates; equity and derivatives; credit and multi-asset; risk management; algorithmic trading; and advanced topics, plus a capstone trading system. The book emphasizes production-quality OCaml code, reusable libraries, and correctness-by-construction, with modern OCaml features (domains, effects, OxCaml). Appendices and companion code provide quick references, math and finance glossaries, setup, exercises, and benchmarks. Build with opam/dune (Feb 2026).

A tribute to one of the best games on the Atari 2600

River Raid (1982) by Activision, designed by Carol Shaw, is recreated as a JavaScript port that rewrites every 6502 instruction from the original ROM, not an emulator. The code reimplements the game on 4,096 bytes, generating the river in 32-block sections on the fly from a deterministic 16-bit RNG seeded A814, so the river is endless and exactly the same each play. A tanker, helicopters, jets, fuel depots, bridges, and houses populate the river; fuel management and crashes determine lives. The port is verified against the ROM with byte-for-byte parity; source on GitHub; not affiliated with Activision.

Nearly 200 People Under Observation After Irkutsk Lab Worker Dies from Plague

Irkutsk region authorities say nearly 200 people are under medical observation after a laboratory worker died from plague. The deceased, an employee of the Irkutsk anti-plague institute, reportedly broke a tube with live bacteria. She was hospitalized in Shelekhov, placed on a ventilator, and died; the hospital was quarantined. About 197 contacts are under monitoring, with over 100 in hospital wards. Officials say there is no plague outbreak in nearby Buryatia and all identified contacts tested negative; the plague form hasn’t been publicly specified, though pneumonic plague was cited by some media.

The Tao of Backup

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Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch

CloudFront 403 error: The request could not be satisfied and the app/website server is unreachable, possibly due to heavy traffic or a configuration error. Retry later or contact the site owner. Troubleshooting guidance is available in CloudFront documentation; the message includes a request ID for support.

The logic of gambling undergirds everything coming out of Silicon Valley

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ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust

ArtCraft's Crafting Apps are seven open-source, native Rust tools for creative work: PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, FilmCraft, LightCraft, PrintCraft, EffectCraft, and DesignCraft. Each app is built from scratch, runs locally on macOS/Windows/Linux, uses no cloud, and preserves familiar workflows. They can be automated via CLI/APIs, and some run as WebAssembly in a browser. All are open-source on GitHub, with ongoing development and contributions encouraged via Discord for future crafts.

In the wake of closure, a digital archive of animated materials appears online

After Tippett Studios closed in August 2026, an anonymous donor, known as “TippettFan,” purchased a disc folder from the auction, digitized it, and uploaded it to Internet Archive as ISO disc images. The collection comprises 90 non-duplicated discs from Phil Tippett’s archives. Some clips are viewable online (CGI test creatures, a 2008 Tippett interview), but most files are downloadable, including behind-the-scenes images from RoboCop, Starship Troopers, Star Wars slides, and Catwoman publicity stills. The free archive is a large, ongoing treasure trove for historians and fans.

Demystifying Tufte's data-ink ratio – Tufte's Razor

An interactive guide explaining Edward Tufte's data-ink ratio and how to apply it to data visualizations.

Interview with Chicken Scheme Maintainer Sjamaan/Peter Bex

Peter Bex, CHICKEN Scheme maintainer and Clojure developer, discusses his path from a C64 to Lisp, CHICKEN’s design philosophy, and his deep work on the CHICKEN core, irregex, and the numeric tower. He argues Scheme’s minimal core enables experimentation but standardization (R7RS, SRFIs) creates tension, notes CHICKEN 6’s integration of R7RS and module changes, and reflects on development history from CHICKEN 4–6. He favors Postgres over MySQL/SQLite for reliability and performance, critiques SQL, and values REPL-driven experimentation (though not at the expense of test suites). Off the keyboard, he values family, health, and teaching kids Scheme.

A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE

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Self-hosted HTTP tunnels with SSH and Nginx

Shows how to build self-hosted HTTP tunnels with SSH and nginx instead of third-party services. Expose a local service (localhost:8080) via SSH remote port forwarding, then proxy with nginx to a publicly accessible URL. Use DNS wildcards and Let’s Encrypt for certs via Route53. Add access control using ngx_http_secure_link_module: encode a time-limited hash in the URL username and validate it server-side; return 401/410 on failure. A helper script detects the ephemeral SSH port, enumerates forwarded ports, and prints shareable URLs like https://<token>@p<port>.ssh.luffy.cx/. Complete configs and a NixOS option accompany the post.

Infidel Goes Wild

Zarf exposes a memory-corruption bug in Infidel tied to the ENDLESS-DESERT mechanism. In DESERT-TO-TABLE, the default TBL argument is mistakenly initialized to the global DESERT-TABLE’s address (30) rather than the DESERT-TABLE value (11129). Writes spill over into memory 30+, overwriting header and the abbreviation table, corrupting text (even producing “You” for “the”) and risking interpreter crashes. The bug can be avoided by initializing TBL to DESERT-TABLE explicitly or passing it as a second arg; a related bug exists with PROP-TBL. Infocom’s testing and nostalgia discussed.

All I wanted was a custom domain email

After owning jacobg.co for years, I wanted cheap email with multiple addresses and verified sending/receiving. Cloudflare Email Routing handles receiving but sending is clumsy and slow. Mailflare offered an inbox via Cloudflare with Resend for sending, but outbound deliverability and authentication concerns made it unreliable for use. Purelymail is cheap, provides IMAP/SMTP and unlimited addresses, but I found a better fit. Foundermail integrates with Cloudflare, provides SMTP/IMAP, multiple addresses, and verified delivery at cost. Setup was easy; this account runs on Foundermail, with a pre-send restriction. Conclusion: receiving is easy; sending reliably is hard; Foundermail works for now.

Xray-core concealed a certificate verification bypass vulnerability

Xray-core masked a certificate verification bypass for about six months. The issue stemmed from the pinnedPeerCertSha256 option, introduced after removing the old pinnedPeerCertificateChainSha256; it could bypass standard verification in favor of custom pinning. A bypass vulnerability was found Feb 6, 2026 and silently fixed the same day without disclosure, with later claims of security improvements. By July 3, 2026 the fix was incomplete, and a GitHub Security Advisory was filed. The episode highlights poor security practices and user exposure to MITM attacks.

A man who listens to whales

David Gruber, marine biologist and founder of Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), aims to decode sperm whale communication using artificial intelligence and machine learning. He views this as the natural next step in science, though some see it as audacious or a fool’s errand. Gruber’s life—from a New Jersey kid who felt kinship with tiny creatures to a scientist exploring microbiology, oceanography, and visual communication—shaped his quest to understand whale language.

Incentives in Academic Research

Incentives in Academic Research argues that current incentives push results toward publishing and prestige rather than truth and scientific understanding. The author laments a culture of lax honesty, reluctance to retract known errors, and tolerance for misleading findings. Personal anecdotes illustrate a shift from past rigor and accountability to present indifference among some researchers. He questions how to fix a system that rewards fame over correctness, calling for integrity, transparency about uncertainties, and prompt correction to train the next generation properly.

I asked Claude build a physically accurate O'Neill cylinder you can walk around

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Homa: The End of TCP for AI Clusters [video]

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Remove and Disable Apple Macos27 AI Models Tool

RemoveMacAI is a macOS 27 utility that turns off Apple Intelligence and removes its on-disk models to free space. Changes are fully reversible with removemacai revert. It applies a configuration profile to disable features and blocks model re-downloads via a local port; no data leaves your device. Install with a one-line curl script or via Homebrew. Disabled features include Siri, Writing Tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, the ChatGPT extension, and several Mail/Notes/Safari/nlp features; removed models include foundation models and related image/Spatial Photos/Xcode completion assets. Apple silicon required.

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