AI Summarized Hacker News
Front-page articles summarized hourly.
Film professors say an attention-span crisis extends to cinema: students increasingly can’t sit through feature films. Electronics bans exist, but many students still scroll on phones; some classrooms allow streaming, which correlates with lower engagement. Indiana University data show fewer than 50% start a film and about 20% finish. Students watch distractedly and struggle to answer basic questions. Growing up with smartphones, they switch tabs about every 47 seconds. In response, some instructors teach slow, long-form cinema or shorten assignments, while others tailor courses to on-demand, multi-sitting viewing.
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The piece argues that true AI-native SAAS means API-first products designed for autonomous agents like Claude Code. It recalls Bezos' API Mandate and argues that API docs are now the primary UI, as agents evaluate services in real time. Switching costs collapse with agents, reshaping moats toward API quality, data depth, network effects, and an agent ecosystem. Founders should start with an API, test with agents, enable programmatic discovery, instrument agent analytics, and price by usage. Companies already built for programmatic access (Stripe, Twilio, AWS) will win; others risk obsolescence. Projections: agent-native products by 2030.
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A scriptable 3D game engine and code editor for the Nintendo DS, written in C with libnds, producing a ~100 KB .nds ROM that runs at 60 FPS. It pairs a touch-based bottom-screen editor with real-time top-screen rendering (cubes, camera) and ships with a 3D Pong example. The bottom editor uses a token-based scripting language with 26 variables plus 9 registers, executed ~60 lines/sec; supports up to 128 lines, 16 models, and 6 save slots. Build with devkitPro; run on DS hardware or via a browser emulator; source ~3,100 LOC.
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Minimal CVE Hardened is a GitHub repo with production-ready, minimal-CVE container images rebuilt daily using Wolfi/apko. It offers Python, Node.js, Bun, Go, Nginx, HTTPD, Jenkins, Redis-slim, and PostgreSQL-slim images. Guarantees include reduced attack surface, CVE patches within 24–48 hours, cryptographic signing with cosign, SBOMs, non-root by default, and reproducible builds with a CVE gate (no CRITICAL/HIGH). Built via a CI pipeline (Wolfi, Melange, Trivy) with SBOMs and Sigstore signing; licenses disclosed per image.
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Bloomberg's bot-check page warns of unusual activity and asks users to verify they're not a robot, enabling JavaScript and cookies, reviewing terms, contacting support with a block reference ID, and it promotes a Bloomberg.com subscription.
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Germany’s record potato harvest—25-year high—has produced a 4,000-tonne surplus and sparked a Berlin-wide free-potato drive. Organised with a Berlin newspaper and Ecosia, about 174 distribution points handed out potatoes to charities, schools and residents; Berlin Zoo participated, and two truckloads went to Ukraine. Some 3,200 tonnes remain unclaimed. While farmers and environmentalists warn the market is saturated and the glut reflects flawed food policy, locals buzz about new recipes and potato lore.
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Narwhal is an extensible pub/sub messaging server for edge applications, written in Rust. It combines lightweight edge-style message routing with application logic delegated to external modulators (authentication, authorization, validation, transformation). The architecture uses three connections: Client-to-Server, Server-to-Modulator, and Modulator-to-Server. Configuration is TOML-based; modulators in examples demonstrate various validation/auth use cases. It emphasizes TLS, high performance, and an async design. Current version is 0.4.0 alpha. Roadmap includes message persistence, enhanced observability, WebSocket transport, and federation. BSD-3-Clause license.
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Gwern.net analyzes Death Note using information theory to quantify Light Yagami's leaking anonymity as L de-anonymizes him. Treats the search for Kira as a 33-bit identification problem, identifies key mistakes: 1 killing in non-representative ways (heart attacks) revealing method; 2 timing patterns; 3 provoking canary trap; 4 using his policeman father's credentials; 5 targeting Penbar's fiancée. Endgame: L penetrates Light; Light loses >25 bits. Proposes countermeasures: thorough randomization and disinformation; discusses Bayesian jurisprudence and broader privacy de-anonymization risks in real data; includes appendices on Death Note as a communication channel.
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Anonymous Iranian writer describes protests since Dec 28, 2025 against the Islamic regime, driven by economic hardship and political repression. After crackdowns, internet shut down on Jan 8, hindering communication and education; many students faced missed deadlines and visa hurdles due to sanctions and travel bans. The author recounts being shot at during protests, the toll on families, and how sanctions and Western barriers limit study abroad opportunities for Iranians, while regime elites send their children abroad. The post condemns regime brutality, exposes Western indifference, and urges readers to listen to Iranian voices and support freedom.
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Generative AI has triggered an arms race in colleges over cheating fears. AI detectors flag essays for potential AI authorship, but their accuracy is uneven and prone to false positives, especially for non-native writers. In response, a humanizer industry has emerged to alter text to evade detectors, while Turnitin and GPTZero race to outpace them. Students report anxiety, false accusations, and some dropouts; universities urge conversations and evidence beyond detector scores. Surveillance tools (Grammarly Authorship, Turnitin, etc.) monitor writing habits, raising concerns about privacy and fairness. Educators call for clearer standards and possible regulation.
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Bloomberg shows a CAPTCHA-style notice after detecting unusual activity on the user’s network, asking them to verify they’re not a bot and to enable JavaScript and cookies. It directs users to review Terms and Cookie Policy, contact support with a reference ID, and invites subscription for access to Bloomberg.com.
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Finland is weighing an Australia-style ban on social media for under-15s, backed by Prime Minister Orpo, THL, and about two-thirds of Finns. The policy follows successful school smartphone restrictions and concerns about physical activity and well-being. Critics call social media an 'uncontrolled human experiment,' linking heavy use to self-harm and eating disorders. Australia’s experience shows enforcement and communication are crucial, with some worry kids will switch to unregulated platforms. Proponents argue for stronger digital education and media literacy as alternatives.
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Genode is a toolkit for building highly secure, special-purpose operating systems. It scales from embedded 4 MB RAM to dynamic workloads and uses a recursive, sandboxed structure: every program runs in a sandbox with minimal rights and can spawn sub-sandboxes, forming hierarchical policies. Inter-process communication and resource sharing are tightly defined to shrink the attack surface. It fuses L4 kernel concepts with Unix philosophy, offering small building blocks—kernels, drivers, file systems, protocol stacks—across x86, ARM, and RISC-V, with multiple L4-based kernels, Linux support, virtualization, 100+ components, and open source plus commercial support.
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Apple's iOS 26.3 introduces a privacy feature limiting precise location data available to cellular networks on devices with the new modem, reducing tower-based tracking. However, cellular standards can still push GNSS coordinates to carriers via RRLP/LPP protocols in 2G–5G, enabling centimeter‑level accuracy largely invisible to users. The article cites DEA and Shin Bet, including Israel's GSS tracking and COVID-19 contact tracing, as evidence that such data can be far more precise than tower data. It urges allowing users to disable GNSS responses to carriers and to be notified when attempts occur.
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Billy Moore describes building lhrNet, a browser-based ML tool to infer Heathrow's current runway/state from a grid of aircraft presence. Using data from OpenSky Network (anonymous tier) and HeathrowRunways timeline, he creates a 2D binary grid per frame, treats it as an image with 7 possible states, trains a small TF/Keras model, then exports to ONNX for in-browser inference via ONNX Runtime Web. Data labeling required a Python script polling ~5-minute intervals; compression via run-length encoding. The site at lhr.billyedmoore.com demonstrates the model; it's a personal, educational project, not broadly useful, but he learned a lot.
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OpenJDK contributor Bingwu Zhang (xtex) says he is giving up upstreaming patches after about a year of OCA review delays with Oracle; repeated inquiries yielded no progress. He invites others to pick up and submit these patches, which may be rewritten from scratch to ensure original work and signed by others if desired. He lists intended patches (e.g., an llvm-config check and extending the default thread stack size for zero builds) and Loongson-specific patches blocked by OCA, and signs off.
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AVIF supports animation and is a better alternative to GIF for the web. The article shows how to create animated AVIFs with FFmpeg: install ffmpeg, clip/scale to y4m, then encode to AVIF using libsvtav1 (-crf 30, -b:v 0). Note potential Debian 13 issues, which may require staging via y4m. The workflow applies generally, even when starting from an animated GIF example.
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Nvidia's Shield TV, launched in 2015 as a premium Android TV box, has become a decade-long update project. Nvidia has kept it current from Android 5.0 to 11, patching DRM vulnerabilities (including an 18‑month effort to fix the Tegra X1 DRM flaw) with Shield Patch 9.2 in 2025. Powered by the Tegra X1, the device still sells steadily, and Nvidia continues to iterate, eyeing future Shield updates with newer codecs (VP9/AV1, HDR10+/Dolby Vision) and a smaller Netflix button.
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zpoint/CPython-Internals is a notes/blog-style GitHub repo aiming to illustrate CPython's implementation in detail. The README targets experienced Python programmers and covers objects, modules, Lib, interpreter, extension, learning materials, and contribution. It lists CPython internals topics (dict, int, unicode/str, memory management, garbage collection, GIL, attribute access, import, frame/slots, PyObject, C API, Cython, and C++ extensions) and learning resources, with invitations to contribute. The project has ~4.4k stars and 458 forks.
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US authorities reportedly investigated whether Meta can read WhatsApp messages despite end-to-end encryption, after a lawsuit alleging Meta can access virtually all private communications. Meta denies the claim as categorically false, linking it to efforts to aid NSO Group, the spyware firm. The suit cites anonymous whistleblowers from multiple countries. NSO is appealing a $167m WhatsApp judgment over Pegasus. Experts say true access would be unlikely and would probably leak; a US Commerce Department spokesman called the allegations unsubstantiated.
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