AI Summarized Hacker News
Front-page articles summarized hourly.
BMW has patented a proprietary security screw with a BMW-logo head intended to prevent DIY repairs. The head is not compatible with standard Torx or Hex bits, risking stripped screws and making maintenance harder. The patent states its purpose is to keep repairs away from unauthorized individuals. Critics see this as anti-repair gatekeeping, contrasting with the right-to-repair movement. Adafruit even 3D-printed a replica bit to defeat the lock, showing grassroots tools can bypass the lock. The article argues the tactic is a cash grab and harmful to ownership.
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Valve has delayed the Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller from early 2026 to the first half of the year due to memory and storage shortages driving up component costs. It will revisit exact pricing and launch dates, though shipping all three remains the goal. The devices were respectively pitched toward entry-level PC pricing, a Frame price below the Index, and a competitively priced Controller. The RAM shortage has caused prices to surge, complicating a competitive launch price.
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Linux kernel swap subsystem is being modernized. The 6.18 merge of phase-1 work by Kairui Song and Chris Li aims to simplify and speed swapping. The change replaces the old XArray-based address_space layout with a per-swap_table inside swap_cluster_info: a dynamically allocated array of swp_entry_t that tracks slot status. This localizes management, removes XArrays, and reduces contention; initial tests show ~5–20% throughput gains. 6.19 and other installments (targeting 7.0) will continue the effort.
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Adobe Animate remains available and accessible for current and new customers. It is in maintenance mode indefinitely: it will continue to be supported with security and bug fixes, but no new features will be added. There is no plan to discontinue or remove access, and users will still be able to download and access their content.
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CU Anschutz researchers analyzed UK Biobank data (26,362 participants, ages 40–77) and found that greater lifetime cannabis use in middle-aged and older adults is generally associated with larger brain volumes in regions with high CB1 density and with better cognitive performance across learning, processing speed, attention and executive function. Moderate use often showed the strongest benefits; some regions showed high-use advantages, while the posterior cingulate showed a negative association. Sex effects were present but not consistent. Findings are nuanced and require more research on dosage and aging.
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8K TVs failed to go mainstream: scarce native content, high prices, and minimal perceived benefit. LG stopped 8K panel production; Sony, TCL, and others exited or reduced 8K offerings. By 2024, about 1.6 million 8K sets sold since 2015 vs nearly 1 billion 4K, and 8K Association membership has collapsed. Studies suggest 8K helps only with very close viewing on very large screens. Most buyers prefer OLED, HDR, or Micro LED instead. The future of 8K is likely niche or enthusiast use, with only occasional models from Samsung/LG remaining.
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TeleHunt is a comprehensive directory of verified Telegram bots. It lets users discover thousands of bots across categories like AI, crypto, productivity, tools, games, and more, with descriptions, user reviews, ratings, and direct add links. The site features featured bots, trending lists, and a submission system for developers, aiming to help users find the best bots and keep listings up to date.
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Comma.ai runs its own ~$5M data center to train models and store data, arguing that owning compute avoids cloud lock-in and can be cheaper. They operate ~450 kW in San Diego, using outside-air cooling with recirculating fans to control humidity. Hardware includes 600 GPUs on 75 self-built TinyBox Pro nodes, ~4 PB of non-redundant SSD storage for training data, ~300 TB cache, and a redundant model/storage array, linked by 3x100 GbE switches and InfiniBand for all-reduce. They use Slurm, miniray, and a custom mkv storage/experiment service; code lives in a small monorepo. They estimate 5M vs 25M+ cloud spend.
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Jason Moiron revisits Wirth's Law—that software slows as hardware speeds up—and argues the tradeoffs of modern computing. He traces how cloud computing, APIs, and managed services amplified developer productivity while increasing system complexity and latency, not freeing us from it. He cautions against overreliance on LLMs and automation, citing ORM-induced inefficiencies, AI skill erosion, and runaway costs. He relates these concerns to Busy Beaver, showing that software’s potential complexity can outpace even astronomical hardware advances. The piece concludes with skepticism about ‘bad’ Wirth trades and calls for careful design.
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S7 Scheme is a minimal Scheme designed for embedding in music contexts (used by Common Music, Grace, Snd, Radium). It emphasizes a small, fast, thread-safe interpreter with a permissive BSD license, making multiple independent interpreters possible in Max patches. Inspired by TinyScheme/Guile, it combines Scheme simplicity with Common Lisp–style macros, first-class environments, applicative syntax, and an easy FFI for C integration. Scheme For Max uses S7 and S74 (extended functions) to build compact, reusable music tools; drawbacks include sparse docs and a smaller community, but embedding and music-oriented features outweighed others.
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Metaflow-Kubeflow integration lets you author Metaflow flows and deploy them as Kubeflow Pipelines, pairing Metaflow’s Python-native APIs with Kubeflow’s Kubernetes-based platform. It enables development, scaling, and deployment with artifacts, state transfer, observability outputs, dependency management, and CI/CD-friendly namespaces, while preserving existing Kubeflow infrastructure. Setup is simple: pip install metaflow-kubeflow and set METAFLOW_KUBEFLOW_PIPELINES_URL. Run locally (flow.py run) and deploy to Kubeflow (flow.py kubeflow-pipelines create). Some features (e.g., conditional steps) aren’t yet supported; future work may expand Kubeflow coverage.
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Online project reviving Oliver Byrne’s 1847 Euclid’s Elements, reproducing Books I–VI with colored diagrams and symbols, plus interactive diagrams, cross-references, posters, and puzzles designed by Nicholas Rougeux. It highlights selected propositions and figures from each book and explains how Byrne’s edition was made, with licensing notes and display tips.
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ICE's Homeland Security Investigations issued an RFI seeking industry input on ad tech location data and analytics that could assist investigations. Framed as market research, the inquiry asks for Ad Tech compliant location-data services and operational platforms capable of ingesting and fusing location, device, IP, and behavioral signals with other records to generate investigative leads across ICE’s civil, criminal, and administrative missions. It seeks live demonstrations rather than a guaranteed contract, while stressing privacy considerations and regulatory constraints. The agency emphasizes using the commercial data ecosystem rather than building tools in-house, but raises questions about warrants, retention, and oversight.
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The article argues you captivate others by listening, not by talking or fixing. It contrasts egocentric responses with a "listening to understand" approach: before interactions, decide to listen, turn off distractions, use open body language and eye contact. Use prompts to explore the other person’s thoughts and feelings, and paraphrase to confirm understanding. Do not interrupt or rush to solve; give space for them to talk, which builds safety, reduces defenses, and strengthens connection. It’s energy-intensive but improves relationships as listening helps others think through their own problems.
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The post cites a few CPU hardware quirks. Intel CPUs reportedly output misspelled CPUID strings—“GenuineIotel” and “Intel(R) ore(TM) i5-1245U”—likely firmware or microcode errors; embarrassing but usually harmless. It also notes a real bug in IT81202 (ITE Tech, a RISC-V embedded core) where instructions after a multiply can silently have no effect; fixes include disabling mul/div support or implementing multiply/divide via no-ops. Overall, some issues are cosmetic; others warn of core design pitfalls.
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Recall.ai reports a Postgres Postmaster bottleneck at extreme scale. The postmaster, a single-threaded loop that spawns backends and background workers, can lag under high connection churn, delaying new connections by 10–15 seconds. In production (RDS Postgres) delays appeared during large spikes; controlled reproduction showed saturation around 1400 connections/sec. Profiling highlighted forking overhead and HugePages-related PTE pressure. They found enabling huge pages and reducing background worker churn helps, but the main fix is to smooth bursts (e.g., jitter) or use multiple postmasters/connection pooling. Conclusion: postmaster contention is a primary scaling limit.
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Could not summarize article.
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Could not summarize article.
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Peter Babič details his attempt to securely erase a Samsung PM961 NVMe drive after replacing it. He tests Linux shred (bad for SSD), blkdiscard (not supported via USB adapter), and NVMe methods (hdparm-style, nvme format -s2, nvme sanitize) with mixed results. USB adapters blocked commands; native PCIe showed the drive but NVMe format produced invalid opcode errors. Lenovo and Windows tools also failed. An update cites Blancco’s guidance to use forced Freeze Lock Removal (flr=forced) and Tim Small’s data-wipe approach; outcome remains uncertain. In short, consumer tools often fail to securely erase PM961; shred as last resort.
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Steam Hardware: Launch timing and FAQs page from Steam News, accompanied by standard Steam navigation, language selector, and legal notices.
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